The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: No Kings

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Thousands of soldiers and Marines have arrived in the Middle East to potentially engage in combat on Iranian soil. Trump has done nothing to make the case for an invasion of Iran, even though he’s got plenty of time to wax rhapsodic about the patios and Corinthian columns on his ballroom project. The Republican congress may have abdicated its Constitutional obligations, but that doesn’t mean Democrats can’t raise hell: Cut your vacation short, demand a vote on the deployment of troops, and go on Fox and denounce Republicans for allowing one man to call the shots on this war—and also make a mess of our economy. Plus, the united opposition in the "No Kings" protests, the wisdom of Lincoln, and life lessons for poor Duke fans. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes Monday's "Morning Shots" Lincoln's letter about the Mexican-American war "Bulwark Takes" pod for breaking and developing news Tim's interview with Al Gore ProPublica on the nursing home owner with a Trump pardpon The Atlantic on how the AI boom wasn't built for this kind of crisis Tim's closing song today For 30% off your order, head to BloodFlow7.com/THEBULWARKand use code THEBULWARK.  Stay ready for anything with the American Giant Classic Full Zip. Go to https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code BULWARK. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show!

Welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we are back with editor at large Bill Crystal. Bill's grandchildren suffered a devastating defeat over the weekend. And we're going to save that for the end. We'll do some life lessons. It's important. You know, if you have children or grandchildren have been disappointed recently, there are things that can be learned from that. And we'll save that from the end. But we'll start with some positives. The no kings rallies were happening over the weekend. I was in attendance at the New Orleans event. It looks like you were somewhere. much chillier in the Northeast. What were your takeaways? It was cold in Waltham, Massachusetts. I should come to New Orleans to the next one. I was in Boston for various other reasons and went to the event with a couple of friends, their families actually in Waltham, younger friends. It was good. It was great. I mean, it's a little different from McLean. Maclean, Virginia is ex-Republican-ish types, many of whom I know I've lived here so long. And also, you know, hey, I remember you from this McCain event or from the Bush administration

or our weekly standard subscribers. WallFam, which is a, western suburb of Massachusetts, Brandeis is there. It's a little past Cambridge and Belmont, all those places. It's more like, I used to hate you. Yeah, yeah, that was more of that. I can't believe we're on the same side here. 20 years ago, I was in this very place protesting against you. It was a little different vibe, but everyone was friendly.

And I was struck by just the, I mean, so this is a more lefty, if you will, group. But they were all sensible so far as I could tell. There were a lot of American flags. There was an attempt to keep on the basic message. but there was not those speeches. This was a thousand people or whatever, honking. But very upbeat bands kind of marching around playing Woody Guthrie, but also the Battle of Him of the Republic.

And so I came away pretty inspired, actually, pretty impressed. What about you in New Orleans? Yeah, we had speeches, which are good, and a lot of local activist groups. It's funny. Like, on the Internet, this even actually eaks out into real life. I did the PBS show in Austin that Evan Smith interviews after our live event a couple weeks ago.

And there's a Q&A period afterwards. And it's a lot of kind of old earnest kind of NPR. I mean, literally NPR tote bag boomer liberals in this case since it was PBS. Right. One or two of them asked me. They're like, my granddaughter, my son doesn't think this is cool to go to the No Kings protests. They're not engaging.

You know, they think it's only for corporate liberals. And it's nothing that's going to actually get done. And I was kind of saying to them, I don't, I don't think you should worry about that. And I think there's value. you to doing it. And it's funny. Like when you get out there in the real world, the no kings in Ireland is like everybody. You know, there is the communists at a booth. And, you know, then there are the people dressed as the Statue of Liberty and you know, former Republicans. And I had a guy come up to me and say, you're my second favorite podcaster besides Hassan Piker. I was like,

okay, well, that's an interesting pairing. But people are more complicated in the real world, you know. And I think that people have a lot of varying different views. And I think everybody I talked to felt good to be out there. It was a good crowd. Registering dissent, organizing, planning other stuff. And I think it's valuable for that for local organizing as well, getting people more engaged, particularly somewhere like Louisiana. To me, I think that the biggest element of success,

sometimes you like to figure, skate, judge this stuff. And it's like, was it big enough? And was there an exact result the next day? And to me, like my big takeaway from, the glass-half-full standpoint is there was a widespread, diverse, but clear message coming from the opposition, which is that we don't like the lawless rule from this president. And some of us are really focused on Iran and others on Epstein and others on the economy and others on other stuff. Some of us are mad about everything. But like, there is a united opposition opposed

to the lawlessness of this administration. And coming from the other side, there wasn't a message at all. But for the second, No Kings, they tried a message, which is that these people were all extremists in Antifa and their radicals. And, you know, if you really love America, you should be on our side. That was like the message they kicked around before No Kings 1 and 2. And they didn't even really do that this time. I mean, there was nothing coming out of the White House. The Republican National Committee did a homophobic joke about Tim Walls. And I'm just like, okay, this is the best you got. Whatever. I mean, it's a tribute to the No Kings, to the rally. and to the organizers of the rallies, I would say, indivisible and others who really did a,

I think, again, a terrific job that that message flopped so badly in October about these are anti-American terrorists and, you know, communists and so forth, that they've just decided to hope, I suppose, the Trump people and that, you know, this just passes by quickly and they don't, and ignoring it was better. But that's a tribute to the no-kings people. I would say the only thing I'm the point I'd make is I'm struck by people like you, Jim Swift was in Cincinnati, people who were in real cities and there were speeches. It was a little more organized. People had booths.

What's striking in Waltham, where it was on the town common, you know, they all have these commons up there in New England or McLean here. When I was there in October and Susan was there this time, is it really is just people getting together. And that's impressive, you know. There's no entertainment. I mean, there are people, you know, six person put together, impromptu band kind of thing.

But they just came out and they wanted to show, you know, show the flag, so to speak, literally in some cases. And the signs were not. 90% I'm going to say homemade. I mean, and very diverse for that reason because people had their own things. And some were funny and some tried to be funny. It were funny and some were big and some were small. And it was really, I found that part kind of moving.

I mean, one thing that always put me off, I'm not a big protest person anyway. And of course, it's not the conservative side. But one thing that always put me off at these protests is the kind of the mass chance that has a slightly creepy overtone sometimes. But there was almost none of that here. It was genuine civic activism, I've got to say. I should say the gentleman that said that I was a second favorite podcaster was dressed up as a superhero. I couldn't identify.

So, you know, you get them in all, you get them in all flavors out there. I'm with you. It's not my most comfortable space, the protest, just candor. You know, it's just not where I was built for. But I feel like for there are other folks for whom it's very important and it's valuable and it's community building. And I think that that's good. And I think that it's good to demonstrate that folks aren't going to be intimidated or scared. And the fact that even if it does lose a little bit of its urgency for No Kings 4, which I assume there will be one, that is a good sign, right?

That, you know, I think if you look at like what happened to Minneapolis, for example, where the protesting was very urgent because people in their community were being menaced. You know, the fact that folks stood out there and demonstrated strength and demonstrated that they can't be bullied mattered. and then that kind of opens the door for having these that are a little bit more in a festival spirit or whatever. There was one ominous thing tweeted by one congressperson. I do want to mention because I don't want to let him get away with it. Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins. He posted this. It was a very strange post.

It had four pictures of people from various No Kings Rowlies. And he tweets, we were carefully observing. It was pretty much a flawless operation. We have millions of digital images, billions of identifying data points, height, weight, shoe size, tattoos, gait, all of it. AI eats that stuff, success. So essentially a Republican congressman saying that whatever, ICBP, Palantir was gathering pictures of people who showed up to those rallies and was going to use that for future attempts to crack down on a free population. I'm not really too scared of that that's going to be successful, but it is pretty alarming that that's, you know,

where an elected official in a free country is trying to take things. Yeah, I mean, if they are doing that, Valentia and DHS and all, they're kind of trying to cover it up, right? They always deny they're doing it, which at these shows they kind of recognize they shouldn't be doing it. To have an actual elected member of Congress sort of championing it and celebrating it is, you know, genuinely creepy.

It shows how authoritarian, I mean, he's not maybe typical, but he's not atypical exactly, and how unabashedly authoritarian, the spirit, I'm just not saying anything new, but the spirit of the Trump Republican Party is, I like the shoe size, that's kind of a Rubio,

that was kind of, I thought, floor shimes, Marco Rubio kind of thing. I don't know what it is. It's like, well, there's kind of, maybe shoe size was, it was like, you know,

subconsciously in his mind because of the ludicrousness of the, of Trump giving the oversized shoes to Rubio. I don't know. I don't know where the Gates analysis came from. But, you know, this was a big thing at the Glenn Beck outlet that they decided that the pipe bomber. That's right. That's where it was. They misidentified. They had arrested this person.

They slandered that one person. They smeared that person, you know, who was a January 6 police officer saying that she was the pipe bomber based on gate analysis. And then a couple of days later, the FBI arrested, like one of the only people who cashed successfully arrested, somebody that that admitted to being the January 6th pipe bomber, and the blazo is not backing down. There's just another post just last week about how this man that they arrested, his gate does not match the gate of the person on the video.

The only time I'd ever heard gate was like at Churchill Downs, like in the horse context. Like, does the horse have a good gate? Anyway, or what was it that Mrs. Romney participated in dressage? They're very good a carriage. And Anne Romney could have the gate and dressage. Longevity is all the rage these days because who wouldn't want to spend years and years in the Trump family empire? You know, you want to make sure you can live as long as possible to see Barron's third term.

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All it takes is too easy to swallow capsules every morning. Every juvenile product is made in the USA. Thank God. Head to bloodflow7.com slash the bulwark and use code the bulwark for 30% off your order. Once again, that's bloodflow7.com slash the bulwark for 30% off and make sure you use my promo code, The Bullwarks, so they know I sent you. Anyway, okay, I want to go to the latest from Iran. Just kind of set the table. Your newsletter was very good this morning, and it kind of tied the No King's message

with what was happening in Iran and the lack of action from Congress. And you referenced a letter, as is your want, from Lincoln to his friend regarding Polk entering war with Mexico. Yeah. And Lincoln was upset or in opposition to the unilateral engagement of war with Mexico in this letter. It was another winner. It was Yates last week, Lincoln this week. Every once in a while you have some misses in the newsletter with your historical references,

but I thought this one was also right on the nose. So why don't we start there? Yeah, so Lincoln was against the Mexican war. I think Paralyne Graham said it was slavery expansion and other grounds as well of just an unjust war. And also that folk could sort of unilaterally decided to both do it. and then we had a fake justification for it. Anyway, so he gave a speech in Congress, I understand it, and he was a member of the House for one term, 1847 to 49.

In January of 1848, he gives a speech denouncing Polk for taking the country to war on his own say-so, a false say-so, Lincoln claimed. His law partner, Herndon, or I guess he's back in Illinois, writes him a letter, sort of defending, saying, oh, but the executive's got to have this discretion. And so we don't have Herndon's letter. We have, I'll just read maybe a couple sentences,

We have Lincoln's letter, which is, you can see in the complete Lincoln works here. And, and suddenly, I did not, like, remember this to find this myself, other people who cited this online in the last few weeks. Okay, Bill, come on. We don't need false modesty. No, that was true modesty. Sometimes, like, Yates, I actually, like, remembered. This is other people that said it. So I looked it up, however.

I mean, Lincoln's fantastic. You know, he says, first of all, your position, as I understand it, is that the president can invade the territory of another country. And whether there's a necessity to do so in any case, the president is to be the sole judge. So it's very apt to the current moment. And he says, you know, allow the president to invade a nation whenever he shall deem it necessary. And you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose. You allow him to make war at pleasure. The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it. Lincoln continues, by the following reasons, kings had always been

involving and impoverishing their people in wars. pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention, the constitutional convention, understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions. And they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter and places our president where kings have always stood. It is weirdly apt for the no kings framing. And so that's why other people I think cited it. and why I took their citation and cited it myself.

Where is Congress right now? It is not just about the vote for the warmaking power, which obviously is the prime issue and controversy. There have been very few hearings. I think Roger Wicker is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. He's one of these guys who kind of pretends to be an old school Reagan Republican still. The last time Roger Wicker came to my attention, I forget he's in the Senate still a lot of times.

The last time he came to my attention, And he was like wearing a Ukraine, an America joint pin on his lapel. I forget if it was during the state of the union or during some prominent hearing. And I found myself like screaming at my screen. Like, you could do something about this. So it was like right in this moment where Trump was, you know, taking away funds from Ukraine. So this is another moment, right? And they run these committees.

They could have Pete Hegseth over. They could have General Kane over. There's plenty of things to ask about. And obviously a vote, authorization of the war is more important, but just the scale of their abdication, I think, is also highlighted by the fact that they're not even doing other elements of kind of basic congressional responsibility.

Yeah, we're a month into the war. No public hearings. Some confidential, classified hearings, not many, incidentally, and brief ones, and people have walked out dissatisfied, including Wicker himself, what they're being told, the lack of clarity or even just information that's being provided. And that's it so far as I know. Nothing to educate the public. The Trump administration does nothing to try to lay out a case for the war or now a case for ground troops, the prospect of which seems imminent or likely or at least very possible. Nothing. And they feel no

obligation. It's like we're going to war because one man has decided. So we're conducting it in a way that one man wishes, he has, he, you know, puts out different messages every day or conflicting messages or threats and promises and claims. His administration is not much more responsible that he is, honestly, I guess the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is a little more is more responsible, but he's very careful and very limited in what he says. And that, in a way, is the one place where you're entitled to be careful and limited because it's actual military operations. I mean, it's very bad for the point of view of democratic governance, the constitution, congressional authority.

And so the Republicans obviously are to blame for this, the Republicans who control Congress. I also say, and I say this, I guess, in the morning shots a little bit, that Democrats could do more to complain about this and to make more of a fuss and, you know, scream and yell about what are we doing here? Now we're going to have ground troops, and there's still no hearings, no authorization, no nothing. Can we at least have a vote on the ground troops? Fine, you have bombing for a month. They shouldn't give that away, but still, they can't do anything about that at this point. massive bombing campaign for months and now substantial numbers of ground troops to the region and

may be engaged in combat on Iranian soil. No congressional nothing. I mean, really, I think they could be much more indignant, upset, and outraged about it. And incidentally, where Congress literally is, is on recess for two weeks. Two weeks. Fine. I'm Passover's Wednesday and Thursday night. Good Friday and then Easter. I give them Wednesday to Sunday off. But maybe they could come back like on next Monday and not have a whole other week off. And when we're in the middle, of a war and Trump's escalating it in very serious and, you know, potentially fateful ways.

It is crazy. They're off. And I think the Democrats also could do and they could do stunts. Yeah. Stunts are available. You know, you could go back to the hill. You could go back on Monday and stand on the steps and have a no war with Iran

rally. You must vote. You know, we must vote on this war and there are plenty of things you could do. We'll come back to the political at a second. I just want to give people just an update on where we're at. We're doing little updates over the board takes feed over the weekend, so you guys can tune into those if you're a real sicko. But for everyone else, so over weekend Trump was kind of signaling increased escalation and troops based on his bleats on his social media feed. And he posted a Mark Tison article from Washington Post

where Tison was arguing for Trump not losing his nerve and escalating and kind of babies Trump by giving him a Rudyard Kipling poem where, you know, he's like, he's like, the great man doesn't get bored, like this kind of thing. Trub also told people to tune in to Mark Levine, Life Liberty and Levine, where Levin was talking about sending in ground troops, actual troops have been moved to the Middle East, lots of discussion and smoke around this idea that we might go in to actually seize the nuclear material, a lot of signaling towards actual ground troops. Then this morning, he posts a bleat right before the market's open, again, saying that

the U.S. is in serious negotiations with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. A great progress has been made. That's the beginning of the bleat. Second half of the bleat. If they don't do that, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Karg Island, and possibly all desalination plants, which we have purposely not yet touched. So that's the message this morning from Trump. We have a more reasonable regime that we're negotiating with. If we don't do it, we'll do war crimes. I should note that simultaneously to that bleat, Secretary of State Rubio is on Good Morning America. He's been doing a ton of interviews.

And he said that there is someone that we're negotiating with, but won't say who, because it could get those people in trouble. And there are some fractures going on internally in Iran, which doesn't seem that optimistic to me. You know, if we can't even say who we're negotiating with, if we have to have a secret counterparty because everyone in Iran is so mad at us that that counterparty might get, you know, who knows, I don't know, overthrown if they seem to be too nice to us. I guess my point is, that doesn't really seem to be the thing

that you say if you're on the brink of a breakthrough, which is we're negotiating with someone who we have to keep in secret because there are other people who really hate us internally. And just to finish up sort of what happened over the weekend, Dan Lamath, who was a very good defense reporter in the Washington Post reported Saturday night that a lot of troops are en route

and sort of suggest that a lot of people that Pentagon expect there to be ground operations, combat operations on Iranian soil, maybe not a massive invasion. But Morton's just occasional special forces on the other hand. And then it could be Carg Island, it could be the nuclear stuff, it could be the strait, some combination of all these,

could be some other things. And then there's a journal report last night about the nuclear side. So there's plenty of reporting. Like Marines received a letter from Marine leadership. Marine reservists, I think. Yeah, like you should be ready to, which suggests maybe they're going to call up Marine Reserves.

I don't know. I think I'm right that it was reservists. So, yeah, so there's a lot of evidence as well as Trumpy, you know, vibes that cut in the way of at least wanting to show the ground troops are in the area. Maybe it's all a giant bluff and so forth. They ran into just granderleys and people who know quite a lot about this, you know, sort of ex-general, ex-national, ex-national security types. They're pretty convinced that Trump, when you do all this preparations, you use this one. put to me, you should probably bet on the fact that some of these troops are going to get used. Some of them are more Trumpy than you and I are.

Some of them are sort of, you know, ambivalent about the war and could work out okay. They had a whole theory of it, which was very consistent with that Israeli leak the other day about, massive bombing efforts that might bring around to the table and reopen the straight and let us get out with sort of adequate outcome, you might say. Mostly it's just reopening the strait that was already closed, but, you know, doing a lot of damage to the military capacities and stuff. they were all against any of the use of ground troops that have been in the media. They think the Carg Island think is crazy. They think the Strait is pretty crazy.

We could get some ships through the Strait if we want to really deploy a lot of naval assets and some air assets over them and maybe some special forces on selected parts of the bank of the strait. But I mean, even there, not clear, it's worth it. Anyway, that's a very targeted operation. But the idea of actually going to Seasland, they are all against it. And these are people, as I say, who are not exactly, some of whom, were ambivalent about the war, some of whom have been involved in the military against Iran for a long time and in other agencies. So I was very struck by that. Now, maybe, look, maybe they

don't know. They would always be cautious. They don't want a second-guess Admiral Cooper or Chairman Kane. Maybe the military has better plans than they realize, but these are people who know a lot more than I do. And I was just struck by, as I say, not the unanimity. They didn't quite have my position, which is basically we should just cut our losses at this point. But they did not think there was any good case for ground troops. And again, none has been made. I mean, that's what's most striking. We are literally going to put hundreds, thousands of soldiers, and Marines on the ground in Iran, perhaps. And no one has explained for even a minute why we're doing it or justified it. I kind of have a little bit of a justification from Rubio over the weekend, but I want to save that

for a second. So it's been the most clear thing that we've heard, but I just want to run through a couple the other news items first. Another thing that we should mention was that a plane sitting on the runway and Saudi was absolutely obliterated by an Iranian missile. This is type plane, I'm sure you know more about this to me that we don't have that many of. It's an AWACs. It's the ones that fly around with all their radar. I think we have 16 of them operational right now. And this is one of them. And I think it costs $600 million or something like that. I read $700 million, but whatever. Upteen hundred million to make one. And it was demolished, right? totally demolished.

And the original reporting, if I could just say, I think the original indications from both SETCOM and certainly from the administration from the way it's been damaged. So I think one now has to worry a little bit about Vietnam style. Are we being totally honest about every aspect of how it's going? I feel that way about the Gerald Ford. And I don't really know, but like they said about the Gerald Ford, the big ship, that there was a laundry fire. And that's why it was out of commission.

But yet then when Trump was on stage one time recently, he was talking about how, the ship was under fire from Iran from a bunch of different directions. That makes me wonder. Anyways, the Gerald Ford thing, I think you have to at least question whether they're telling us the truth about the kind of attacks that were suffering. So another report that happened after that is that we're now, I guess, searching for more underground facilities to protect our material, our planes and other, you know, tanks, et cetera. does seem like the kind of thing that you probably should have thought of before the war. A lot of people have been paying very close attention

to the Ukraine-Russia war. So this was like a big takeaway that because of the new drone warfare now, the manner in which you have to protect your own equipment is different than it would have been 10, 20 years ago. Apparently we didn't do that. And then moving on to the economic impact, oil prices are up again this morning.

30-year treasuries are up to about 5%. We're getting close to great recession territory. on in the bond markets. This is not necessarily exactly related, but farm bankruptcies. There's a new report out to this morning doubled last year. Certainly that's going to be exacerbated by the increase in fertilizer prices that we're seeing now.

We had Meatball Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida. I thought this was a notable signal. He posted this yesterday. Market seems to be pricing in further inflation, mortgage rates up in recent weeks. And he shows a link to a picture with like stocks going down and bond prices going up. You know, doesn't say Trump by name, not exactly a profile and courage, but pretty notable,

I think, for DeSantis to be weighing in on the economic consequences of this. Yeah, I hadn't seen the DeSantis thing. That is interesting. So you think he runs in 2028 as the kind of real America first candidate in Vance is stuck with Trump's war? Is that the theory, I guess? Yeah, I don't know if he's quite savvy enough for that. I don't know if he demonstrated a lot of savvy.

I think probably what he's eyeing is competence. Can I run like, I think in his head you see, you think like Florida did great under me. And this was a disaster under Trump. And maybe I can run under that rubric. But the fact that somebody like that, like not a Tom Massey, not a libertarian, not somebody who's retired, you know, not whatever. Like a active Republican and good standing who ostensibly maybe cares about his political future. And obviously he's term limited out. governor, but he could run for Senate, could run for president again. For him to even be kind of

dipping the toe in the water of criticizing the administrations, handling the economy is pretty noteworthy. No, I think your interpretation is better than mine in the sense that I'm overthinking it with the America first time. It's more like if you are a Trump administration member and participant in this war, which is fancy Rubio, maybe that's not the right place to be. And maybe the combination of whatever military mishaps there are and not turning out well itself and then the economic side of it, maybe it's just better to be, you know, the tough right-winger who wasn't part of this administration. But it's very revealing that DeSantis is taking this moment. I guess doing it on the economy is a little safer for him, maybe, than doing it on the military, you know, on the

foreign policy and military side. But it is striking. Some people he's talking to are probably pretty good economists. You know, this thing goes much longer. The economic consequences get very real and very hard to correct in the air term. You know, one week, everyone understands, okay, hiccup. It does some damage, but, you know, you come back after it. A month. two months. Now you're talking real. I think you are talking in recession and stuff like that.

Predictions are hard in politics. I was doing this thing. I was saying this when I was asked about this last weekend and I was like, look, we can mark this down and come back to it in Labor Day and you can clip it and be like, Tim, you are overly catastrophizing. It's possible.

I think that the economic consequences are spiraling out of control. And I think that people are way to you know, cavalier about it right now and imagining that Trump is just going to, can just stop the war and that everything basically goes back to normal and that there's some disruptions and that, you know, by the fall or whatever, like we're back to some pre-war kind of baseline. I just don't think so. If you just, you kind of look around the world, and just this morning, like I'm, you know,

poking around the internet for the podcast and it's like a politician in Italy is talking about how they're having trouble sleeping at night, thinking about that. consequences. And I figure somewhere in the United Kingdom, they're already having, like on one of the Isle of Wight or something, like they're already having oil shortages. Like Sam sent the history in India

where some ingredient in the buttered chicken, they can't make butter chicken now. There are little things, but right, like if you shut down this major thoroughway where there's aluminum, where there's fertilizer, where the ingredients are going to fertilizer,

where there is helium, in addition to oil, like all the products that are made out of it, plastics, et cetera. It's been 30 days already. It's been 30 days. Even if it goes on just another month, 60 days, that is a long time to kind of reintegrate the supply chains in the global economy. And the economy is already shaky before the start. The economy was already unshaking.

We hadn't created any jobs this year, according to Trump Powell. We had a net zero job creation in 2006 in our country. So I think it's a disaster. And I think that right now, you know, people are looking at it. Like, gas prices are going to be up a little bit. That's not great. I think we're looking at 2022 style inflation and disaster coming forward. And I'm not an economist.

So, you know, if you're listening to this and you think I'm wrong, you can clip it and play it back to me at Labor Day. And we'll see it. We'll see how things look at. Megan Kelly also agrees with me, which is concerning. That's an anti-signal. She just posted, just posted as it said to me right now, this is a five-alarm fire. She posted a poll with Trump at 33% approval. One poll, but, you know, he seems less responsive to all that stuff than before.

Whether it, you know, there's the dark version of the theory, the JVL version of the theory, is he's not ever planning on leaving, so he doesn't care about this. Or maybe there's more of like the optimistic version of the theory, which is he's thinking about his legacy and he wants, you know, and he cares about that more than his political standing. He doesn't give a fuck about the House and Senate Republicans, so whatever. Or maybe it's just he has dementia or ADHD and he's just like living minute to minute and he doesn't have object permanence and like can't think long term. There's some combination of all those things that he seems less responsive to the political implications that he would have been in the first term.

Maybe he sort of agrees with us on the economy deep down and sort of thinks that that stuff's already bad, so I got to at least win the war. But that can be very dangerous, but then it really leads to escalation and risk taking on the military. and geopolitical side and sort of discounting all the economic stuff is already done. I just think 60 days is very different from 30 days. It seems like a lot of companies have 30, 45 days of reserves.

Some of Taiwan has 12 more days of what they need for the chips, supposedly, something like that. So 12 plus the 30, it's been cut off. But it seems like this, you hit a point and it isn't sort of incremental at some point, right? It's just you're out. They just can't make any more chips, you know? And so that's kind of bad.

And who knows where and what's, supply chains, this is all hitting, but it has a feeling of getting close to a tipping point. There's a big Atlantic article today about the whatever you think about, the AI boom, it's been partially carrying the economy, you know, where there isn't a lot of other growth industries right now, you know, private prisons, crypto, and data centers as the Trump economy and home health care workers. He deported all the immigrants that we're doing that. So those are the four places where you see job growth. And it's like it could be a major crisis in that in the AI industry, right?

Just because they need more and more of all those things, steel, helium, oil. One thing that you start to learn about as you get older in life is the importance of consistency, dependability. The Bill Crystal Monday podcast, consistent, dependable. You know, you're getting it from us. Reflects the numbers. I can see it.

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When you use code bulwark at checkout, there's 20% off your first order at American dash giant.com code bulwark. Okay. I wanted to give the counterpoint. It is important, I think, especially when I'm apoplectic. Like my level of catastrophizing is beyond where I've been in a while, at least about the state of the country and how things are going to turn out in Trump 2.0. I'm not an economist or a military expert, so it's important to listen to others, hear what the

case is for the fact that this is going to be okay. I think that Rubio gave the clearest case for what they're doing over the weekend. Let's listen to it. Let me explain to you guys this in simple English, okay? Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics. They have an ambition to have nuclear weapons. They intend to develop those nuclear weapons behind a program of missiles and drones and terrorism that the world will not be able to touch them for fear of those things. And this is the weakest they've ever been. Now is the time to go after them. The president made the decision to go after them, take away their missiles, take away their

navy, take away their drones, take away their ability to make those things so that they can never have a nuclear weapon. That's why the president made this decision. It was the right decision. And the world will be a safer place when these radical clerics no law of them have access to these weapons. You see how they're using them now. Imagine how they would use them a year from now if they had more of these.

So that, I think, is at least honest, which is unlike what they've been saying otherwise, which is that Iran was weak, which is why they went into this, not that Iran was an imminent threat, but that they saw them as so weak that this was the opportunity to eviscerate the regime. Javier Greveh Ghr, as an Israeli analyst, quote tweeted that video and said this. Perfectly said, Marco, my kids just spent a month in shelters so they won't have to spend years of their lives afraid or far worse. our generation's task is to get this job done. It's a test of resolve. If you have the resolve, you change the course of history.

That is the case, I think, for the people who are like, don't turn this around. That Iran is so weak that they really can finish the job in a few weeks. If you're Israeli, obviously, that is a potentially existential opportunity or a very serious opportunity, given the scale of the threats from Iran and their proxies. If you're us, maybe that is not. an opportunity because if you're all is world leader and, you know, who knows, prevent future destabilization, Iran is so weak. I just, I don't think that there's a ton of evidence for this, you know,

particularly the way that warfare is going. China and or Russia and or other countries could rearm Iran, particularly with the, you know, drone capabilities and other capabilities. I don't know how long that's going to take. So I think to like to actually achieve this, you really would need regime change, right? Like the idea that the Ayatollah Jr. is going to not. continue to go after weapons and that this is going to be something that is, you know, going to resonate for years and years to come. I find that a little hard to believe, but

anyway, that's the case. If we're going to steal man their best case, that's, that is it. Yeah, no, no, I agree with that. But finishing the job means regime change. Because otherwise, I know Haviv, his kid, Javier Gore, he's a wonderful guy. I mean, I'm afraid if you leave that regime in place, unless you are occupying the country, unless you have a kind of Benazilist-Soyal chokehold on it, which is not going to be the case for a country of 90 million people in the Middle East with relations with China and Russia. That regime will threaten to rebuild weapons. Maybe you can go in modal grass, as they like to say, you know, every six or 12 months and stop it, but it really is a case for an invasion. It's the case for Iraq. I mean, that's what you know, it wasn't a crazy case. It

turned out to be not to go well, but, though incidentally Iraq is not a threat to anyone right now. Because whatever, even though the war was a mistake and didn't go well, at the end of the day, it was a, we did change the regime. Yeah, seven-year commitment. Yeah, but I mean, that's not what Trump envisions. It's not what they've prepared for. And they, there are all kinds of stuff you would have had to have done militarily to make that plausible. Now, the massive bombing to just so degrade the place that they can't come back for years, not just for months, that the regime is in shambles, even if it's controlling it, sort of.

Maybe there's massive state failure. I think that's kind of what Israel is now hoping for. Kind of just chaos. and this country of 90 million people is a horrible mess, you know, for... A refugee crisis in Iran would be amazing for stability in the Middle East. No, that's got its own horrible spillover effects, obviously. Having said all that, the strait of Hormuz is closed. Rubio did not say anything about that.

And look, that would be, certainly the argument for Iraq, whatever you'd think of Iraq, God knows, you paid a terrible price and human price and Iraqi, we had a human price and Iraqi deaths and then some economic price. But we didn't have the equivalent of the strait or... or removes closing and a possible global, you know, slowdown. I don't, you know, that was not really related to Iraq. What happened in 2007, 2008, I don't think.

So, again, you've got to also build that into your equation there of cost and benefits. So, I mean, if they wanted to do what Rubio said, they needed to have had a plan ahead of time to prevent the most obvious thing the enemy was going to do, which is close the straight, right? They also are increasing the number of missiles and drones they're shooting every single day. If you look at the chart, like, right, this was the chart that the Trump side was showing at the beginning to show how successful it's been, which was like they shot 100 missiles. I'm just making this up, but I don't have in front of me, you know, day one. And then by day six, they were shooting 15. But now we're at day 30 and it's back up to like 30, right? Again, just using those as kind of ballpark figures. You've seen the increase now. Again, so there isn't a ton of evidence of that.

One of the other military guys I follow was saying that, you know, like the one third of Iran's capabilities were very easy to get rid of. It's a low-hanging fruit. Another third we can maybe get rid of is possible, but like last third is very challenging, you know, because of how they built it out, because the mountains, because, you know, a variety of reasons. But on top of that, you know, the drone capability allows for asymmetric war, and we've seen this in Ukraine. And here we are, like, Ukraine is now doing deals with the UAE and Qatar so they can learn the Ukrainian technology of how to deal with this. So I listed the Rubio case and it's like, okay, that at least is a straightforward argument for what they're trying to do that is not based on obvious lies.

I'm not sure it's going to work, but I don't think it's going to work. Let me be clear. No, and it seems to be nuclear-focused, which probably does mean going into, or getting a regime that's willing to get rid of what they have locked up there in those caves and stuff. What are they going to get out of that deal? Well, also, just how are we going to do it and how are we going to know we've done it? Again, the way we knew that we didn't Saddam turned out not to have the weapons of mass destruction program moving back ahead, as we thought. But nonetheless, the reason we would know that we had gotten rid of Saddam's Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,

threat and arrest threats to his neighbors, and they had invaded neighbors consistently for the preceding 40 years, is that we both got rid of the regime and we took off in the country. And so there were no weapons of mass destruction to speak of left there. We're not willing to do either in this case and are able to do either in this case. So I don't quite know how we get to what Rubio thinks we're going to get to. On to the DHS. When we last spoke on Friday, it seemed like there was a deal because senators, the Republican senators, were sick of the shutdown.

I don't know if they're just annoyed with waiting along lines. Delta said they no longer got priority access. And so the Republican senators like, okay, that's enough for me. I felt enough pain. There was essentially a unanimous bipartisan effort in the Senate to say,

hey, we're going to fund all of DHS except ICE and some parts of CBP. And then we'll move forward and debate the rest. It went to the House. Mike Johnson said, no, the House Republican. and said, no, we're not going to do this. They funded an eight-week extension of all DHS, including ICE. Obviously, that is not going to land anywhere in the Senate.

So we're still at an impasse. TSA agents still not getting paid. Who knows what other parts of DHS are not being funded adequately, given the domestic security threats we have right now. They're on vacation for a week and a half, as you mentioned, two weeks. Again, this is another thing that I'm back to the Democrats. on with it's just, I feel like the Democrats have won this fight now because they got the Republicans in the Senate to agree to their proposal. And now it's Mike Johnson and Donald Trump that are

holding it up. And I don't know. I mean, shouldn't they be standing outside of airports with signs being like Republicans did this, flying back to Washington themselves to have stunts outside the White House, outside the house, go to Mike Johnson's district and be like, fund the TSA. I don't know. And there are a million things you could do. I do think that on both the war and DHS, I could use a little more pedal to the metal. Yeah, I agree. Incidentally, does Mike Johnson do that without consulting with Trump? Did Trump tell him, kill this deal? I mean, I haven't seen much reporting on this. I mean, I feel like it's being treated as if, I don't know, these House Republicans, that's just kind of ornery and they just decided not to go along with this deal. But it's not that,

I mean, when you have that deal in the Senate and Thune and everyone signed off on it, included all the Trump loyalists in the Senate. And then for Johnson to do that, that feels like Trump pulling that string and Johnson being the puppet. And people should blame Trump for it. I agree. Yeah. It is Trump's fault.

It's their fault now. Yeah. I mean, like the Republicans at least had an argument when the Democrats were shutting it down over ice and they, you know, had the, you saw this argument, basically when Greg Gazzar in Austin and John Cornyn had a confrontation where Greg Gazar was like, you, you aren't paying these people. And he's like, no, you guys aren't paying these people. And like, you went back and forth.

and there was kind of like each side had a point. There's no point anymore. And the Republicans passed a funding bill in the Senate. And it's just now House Republicans and Trump that are the ones that are holding it up. And so, I don't know. Put on a clown costume. I don't know what you want to do. Whatever.

24 hours straight of streaming. Do anything. Give me something. I would just, I think that the degree to which the Democrats should feel like they're politically on offense because of the multi-front disaster that Donald Trump is overseeing should be taking advantage of. Totally agree. And look, there are 47, whatever, Democratic senators and 2012 or something like that,

2013. I can't remember Democratic members of the House now. They can all do their own thing. It doesn't have to be. I mean, people, Jeffries and Schumer, I mean, fine, they should do more too, honestly. But I'm not sure they're the best spokespeople either. But let everyone do it in their own district, go to their airports locally and say, this place is closed because of Donald Trump and Mike John. I mean, how can a House Democrat not do it?

Make a thing. Well, half of them can't do it, but they're out of codels, you know, in some nice European capital or something like that, you know, examining our diplomatic, you know, how we're doing in diplomacy in Paris or something.

I don't know what they're doing or they're just enjoying. I don't mean to be, you know, they get to spend Passover or Easter with their families and all. But still, yeah, they need to really hammer them on both the war and I assume. I'm becoming basically a Tea Party Democrat now.

I'm becoming one of the insane people I made fun of in the focus groups five years ago. there's this focus group that I remember that really stuck with me. I've mentioned a couple times, but it's like, I forget why Sarah had convened, like a group of, it was Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, MAGA Republicans. I forget why it was those three states, but anyway, I just have this very clear memory of one person, the focus group, saying only members of Congress that are doing anything are Matt Gates and Marjorie

Taylor Green and everybody going around and be like, yeah, we need more people like that. And I was sitting there watching it, being like, these guys are stupid and they don't know anything. And they don't realize Congress does serious work. It's like, Congress doesn't actually do work anymore. And so those people are kind of right. The Democrats need more Marjorie Taylor Greens and Matt Gates that draw attention and get people to understand what's going on. I looked at a list of the California Democratic delegation for some other project I'm working on over the weekend. And it's like, I haven't even heard of half the people.

What are you doing? What are you doing? We are in a crisis right now, like across multiple vectors. We are in a democratic crisis, but we also are in this stupid war. Department of Homeland Security is shut down. What excuse do you have to not be front and center yelling about this? You don't have one. And they should find Congresspeople who are capable of getting attention for this

if the others aren't able. All right, there's my rant. I did want to mention the pardons. We're going to just skip over it today, but I just want to leave this with people. There's a pro-public article that's truly insane about a Trump pardoned, a nursing homeowner. Joseph Schwartz. Schwartz had a $39 million fraud scheme. The families who won the wrongful death suits against Schwartz haven't received dissent.

This guy got a pardon. And there's like a whole list of Medicare fraudsters or other health care fraudsters of this guy's pardoned, which I think is. pretty notable in the context of all the Somali bullshit in Minnesota. In addition to that, Trump was on Air Force One. We talked about how the Democrats aren't maybe doing enough to focus on all the various outrages. Here's what the President of the United States was focusing on. He was on the plane coming home from one of his clubs this weekend.

He takes out a huge cardboard picture of the new ballroom, and he starts going through to the reporters. I don't know if they were all from Newsmax. something because none of them were objecting to this. They were all asking follow-up questions about it, but he was showing them the pictures of the new ballroom saying things like, it's going to have an open porch on the top level. Underneath, there'll be a closed porch under the columns.

It's hand carved. The columns are Corinthian columns. It's the top, top of the line. Marble is like going through all the details of the construction that is happening. And, you know, I mean, like the country is unraveling right now. Well, he's talking about the marble armrests at the Kennedy Center and like what the portico is going to look like, the Corinthian portico. Morning shots at the end. We have the, you know, the cheap shots.

Cheap shots. Yeah, I can just, I just quick hit, sheep shots. It's hard to keep in Australia. We have the cheap shots. And it was a very witty tweet by someone saying that, you know, Trump, this says it all right. Trump is personally reviewing the plans for the forum in quite a lot of detail, apparently. I mean, who knows, you know, insisting on his chinty gold everywhere and on fake columns, as you say it all in the kind of columns that he likes better, the Corinthian ones and all this.

So that he's really engaged in. The actual war, he seems to be depending on, you know, what he sees on Fox or even less reputable outlets. And then things he vaguely remembers for some briefing he got somewhere about this island might be worth getting or, you know, They're showing in the videos, the highlight reels, the bombs hitting things. It's really bleak. I mean, I suppose a slight defense one could give the Democrats, it gets back to DeSantis' point to is,

you know, maybe he's digging himself a pretty big hole and honestly, given the Democrats' issues of some of them with being very good at messaging, maybe they could just, they're probably telling themselves, you know what, we'll just stay out of the way. He's going down in the polls. There's this new one you mentioned, though apparently of him at 33%.

I guess that would be the slightly generous more than slightly generous account of why some of the Democrats don't need to be screaming in yelling all the time, except I do think on the war in particular, but also DHS, they actually have a constitutional obligation to be serious about this. And to try to say, you know what, if they scream enough about the ground troops, they might stop Trump from doing the ground troops, either, I don't think legally stop him, but they might deter him from going down that path. He thinks, you my God, this really could be even more of a disaster. And that would be a service to the country. I mean, it really would be a service to the country. So I don't think it's

excuses them, but I can see that they're telling themselves quietly when they're rationalizing, taking the week off on some nice place that, you know, Trump's doing plenty of damage to himself. We don't have to do too much. Sure. Okay. That's fine. I know that part of this is about fulfilling my emotional needs. Well, but some of it's real, too.

This is hierarchy of needs. But you would think that there would be, I mean, Jason Crow, shout out, goes on Fox from time to time. Mark Kelly has been doing this a little bit. but I don't know let me put it to this perspective the stupid peers Morgan show on the internet people are like why do you go on Tim and I sometimes and I say no to them a lot

and I usually go on whenever Trump has done something so outrageous that I feel compelled to yell but also I know that my counterparty I can't even offer up a bullshit defense right like that you know I wait until the moment where I'm on the strongest footing

to eviscerate any MAGA-apologist, okay? This is that moment for going on Fox if you're a Democratic politician. I mean, the country is in shambles. The economic situation is a disaster. The war is going way worse than they said it was going to go.

People can't even fly anywhere because the House Republicans and Trump are shutting down the airports and not paying TSA agents and sending ICE agents to the airports apparently. This is the moment to go on Fox and say to people, like people, you signed up for this for no new wars and for lower costs.

and we're in the stupidest war I could possibly think of and everything is costing more and it's about to get worse. If you don't want to do a stunt, Fox will have you. There are people on Fox that will have you. There have to be at least four Democrats who are capable of going on Fox.

That's my request for any staffers that are listening to this. Maybe they are going on their local news, to be fair. Maybe they are doing their stand-ups outside the airport in their community and flaming the incumbent. I mean, in Texas, Houston seems to be one of the worst, the big Houston airport, not hobby, but George H. W. Bush. And I assume Tala Rico is making hay with that.

That's happening. And they should keep doing that. That's good. Doing good stuff in community is there. But it's also the year 2026. And a lot of people are getting their information right here and not on, not on their local, local news. All right. Lessons for children and grandchildren.

Was it your daughter that went to Duke or was it your son-in-law? Our oldest daughter, Rebecca, went to Duke and met her now husband there. So they're both two grads. They waited like in the insane thing where they sleep out there, Duke, you know, on the lawn to get tickets for them. the games at Cameron, but it's only seats nine, that's people or something. And their freshman year, I think it was, Duke was a national champion, 2001. You were probably in college, right?

Duke one, it was over Maryland. That was a great year. Carlos Boozer was a classmate, I believe, Rebecca and Elliott's, you know, so. Okay, there you go. And his two kids are on this team. And now his two kids, there's Cameron Boozer. There are three kids who are young, obviously,

are Duke fans, big Duke fans. And they, and the Games Friday and Sunday were here in D.C. and they were able to get tickets. I little was worried about them. They seemed to be recovered from Rebecca's texting this morning about normal things. So I think the families pulled themselves together after last night. That was a rough game. If you were a Duke fan, that would be a rough game.

I know 95% anywhere. That's like a 2016. Are not Duke fans, but that's a rough game to go to and see that ending. If you're like an eight-year-old who is, or nine-year-old, who's really getting into sports right now and this is your team and you get to go see them live and Duke is winning by 20 and they're winning the whole game. and they're about to go to the final four and your parents are getting you cotton candy

and you have the finger and you know you have all your Duke stuff on and then they suffer I can unimaginable collapse I was kind of annoyed that Sam Stein that Yukon man was going to be happy and so you know cut both ways for me a little bit but I let out a yop

like a gutterall yop when they threw the ball away and then he makes the shot from 40 feet away to win the game and thinking about those grandkids I mean, that's, like, for a nine-year-old, that is like a 2016 election level loss for them. I mean, that is a catastrophe. I would imagine that there would be catatonic. The older two are just turned 13 and their boys and their little sister, probably is a little less into it.

So, I don't know. It's a better for a 13-year-old. Is it better or worse for a 13-year-old? You think it's a healthy life lesson for a 13-year-old? I think it's a very healthy life lesson. You were trying to cheer me off about this. You think it's a healthy life lesson. I think it's important.

Rebecca. Rebecca's a fan of this podcast. She will watch this. Okay, hey, Rebecca. Life is about disappointment. Okay. And unfortunately, you know, I did not have to experience, like, just a devastating level disappointment until adulthood. When everyone that I had admired and looked up to, all of my heroes, not only allowed,

for Donald Trump to take over the party, but signed up for it, affirmatively, and then he won the election. I was sent into despondency, like, months and months of despondency, and I feel like had I suffered a loss like this at 13, you know, had my sports heroes at 13 disappointed me, it's at such an extreme level, like, maybe I would have been slightly more prepared, maybe like that, my skin would have toughened in teen years, and I would have prepared myself a little. little bit more for adulthood. And then on top of that, the joy of being surprised, a victory now. Think about how great the joy of victory will be. Your children are Duke fans. Okay, your children

are Duke fans. They never have to work for anything. It's like being born with the silver spoon in your mouth of fandom. They were born as Duke fans. And now, you know, they get to, when Duke eventually wins again, which we know that they will, they'll have gone through the valley of suffering before experiencing victory. And that's, That's what life's about. So I hope that they cried. I think that it was important for them to cry and, and wake up this morning and feel down and not want to show their face in front of their classmates in school.

I think that's all an important part of life's journey for your grandchildren, Bill. So that's where I'm mad. That's, I'm sure that'll be helpful. I'm not sure how much of that I'll say it to Seder Wednesday night when I'm chatting about this for them. The value of despair. Make sure to get value of despair. Maybe I'll. Yeah.

That's good. It's kind of like walking through the desert. I take your point, though. I take your point. I've been a big just rationalizer of many disappointments over the years on those grounds. The Egyptians, they had to walk through the desert. And your grandchildren had to walk through Chinatown after suffering that defeat last night. So it's kind of similar.

All right. That's Bill Crystal. We don't know who we have on a show tomorrow, but it'll be good. I promise. We're working on it. we are working on it. There'll be somebody good. And you know next Monday,

Bill Crystal will be back. I appreciate everybody. Actually, you probably lose you. Did you have any Al Gore thoughts? Did you listen to Al Gore? I saw clips. I haven't listened to the whole thing.

So give me your, well, you're the one who would have thoughts. Give me your... It was just so bizarre. Did he let you call him Al or not? I couldn't quite follow that. He did let me call him Al.

Good. I kind of set him up for a gay joke right off the top. You know, because I asked if I could call him Al and the song in the Paul Simon's song, you know, the chorus goes, I can call you Betty. And Betty,

Eddie, when you call me, you can call me out. And so, you know, I sent him up to be like, you can call me out if I can call you Betty, but he didn't take that opportunity. We were just kind of building a rapport. So maybe it was a little early off from that opportunity. And he took the rest of my jokes well. I thought he was in good spirits. He was funny, deadpan humor.

He obviously is following the news a lot. Very sharp. 77. Really sharp. Sounded much sharper than our president. He's like dropping references to monoskew. and, you know, he's doing the Bill Crystal thing. He's all over the place on dropping historical and philosophical references.

I don't know. I mean, I was 18, so what did I know? 17. Whenever when he beat Bush, but I would beat him, rather. So I can be forgiven for my childhood thoughts on that election. But in retrospect, the counter-narrative, you just start to think about a different world, you know, where Al Gore was, he was saddled with the Great Recession.

and then John McCain gets elected. Anyway, different world possibly. It was wonderful. Everybody should go listen to it if they haven't. I was pleasantly surprised. It's a strange world for me and Al Gore to be there. Bill, thank you very much. I'm going to leave people with an oath.

King's theme song, a friend of mine listened to. So go check that out. We'll put a link to the song on the show notes. If you want to go, let's do it on Spotify. Give them the 0.001 pennies that you get for every stream on Spotify. I appreciate everybody. and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Bye, Bill. Bye, Tim.

The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.