The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Resist the Nihilism

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Trump wants us to believe that nothing matters, so we'll brush off all his corruption and grifting as though everybody does it. That's what aspiring authoritarians always do, including the guy who didn't place his hand on a Bible when he was sworn in today. Meanwhile, Trump just launched probably the biggest scam in the history of the presidency with his memecoin—ordinary people will lose real money, nothing like the small-ball amounts he scoops up with his shoes, mugs, and digital baseball cards. Plus, Biden's pardons, Trump's Day One executive orders, and seizing the means of content production with TikTok. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: TODAY AND TOMORROW ONLY: Make The Bulwark your home for coverage of Trump 2.0. Get 2 months FREE of Bulwark+ now for exclusive content, ad-free commentary and more:  thebulwark.com Subscribe to The Bulwark

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is the day of the second Trump inauguration. Like most of you, I'd rather be anywhere other than here, but we're destined to be here right now. Might as well slog through it together. It's Monday, so I've got Bill Kristol, of course, a few programming notes real quick. Me and Bill are taping this at about 930 Eastern and are gonna be covering everything from

The Trump coin on Friday night through the developments this morning this afternoon. We'll have a post inauguration live stream You'll be you'll be able to get that on sub stack or YouTube when that is finished tomorrow We'll have on a favorite of the pod to sort through the wreckage. So that's our schedule to bill No, I usually start these by saying, how you doing? And I'm not really asking how you're doing when I say that. That's just kind of a nicety. But I'm curious how you're doing, genuinely. I tried to cheer myself up this morning by writing a little morning shots about how we

shouldn't be intimidated by all this bluster and executive orders and the entire media deciding that Trump has conquered all and all these people accommodating and capitulating. So I'm trying to cheer myself up but I wanted to begin by congratulating you on Jaden Daniels performance Saturday night for the commanders. So you've been promoting him for what at least three years, three years at LSU but you're a huge LSU booster and I was kind of discounting that you know that just Tim being excessively loyal to LSU. Then he came to Washington and I've learned over the years to discount Washington Redskins

now Commanders fans in a big way because they get excited when they win two games and then they end up having a miserable season. And I haven't seen many games this year, almost any. So I was totally unprepared for Jaden Daniels' performance Saturday night, which was really fantastic, I've got to say. He was unbelievable. And the Super Bowl is in New Orleans So maybe I was down to Louisiana. That's right. He will he'll get you tickets, right? I mean you're on you're at the very top of after the whatever family will come. It's it's Tim Miller's at the top of the list

No question. I would hope so. I'm still in the market for tickets. So we'll see how that goes I I also on suddenly I mean why I mean, I'm happy to be a guest I'll get me wrong, but if you got Jaden Daniels, I would step aside one Monday. I would have gladly done this whole pod with Jaden, and we could have done film analysis. But unfortunately, that is not our fate. No, he was brilliant.

He looked brilliant. The football was brilliant all weekend. I went to a concert last night, so if I don't seem like I'm at 100% this morning, I was trying to get endorphins and distractions from anywhere I can in this moment. And I got to tell you, it's kind of failed. That was my fate too.

I wrote this Friday, I said, I'm going to spend the weekend watching football, catching up on some Brit box crime, British crime shows, maybe reading a book. I'm supposed to be reading a novel, trial. And of course I lasted, I made it to a football game or two, but I mean, I couldn't get distracted. My inbox was full of all the announcements of, you know, the Trump executive orders are coming. And then people texting me, emailing me articles about the horrible plutocrats and the horrible authoritarians. And I couldn't make myself stay away for even the whole weekend, honestly. Yeah. So we got to get to the news.

I'm going to do everybody a favor. We're not going to play his voice today. So that's my little gift to everybody. So we're not going to play clips from him at the rally yesterday. But there was one thing that happened over the weekend that's kind of tied to my feelings of despair and nihilism about all this. It was the coin. Trump minted a coin on Friday. It is a Bitcoin, but it's on the Solana crypto exchange. I'm sure you're very familiar with all of this Bill, as a big investor. Here's the thing about it. It is the biggest scam in the history of the presidency.

And people can't process that really. I mean, this is different than, he does the thing where it's like, get the Trump digital baseball card or get the Trump mug or the Trump shoes. Those are all scams. He's a con artist. But this one, this is an actual investment vehicle.

People put real money into this. Some people could lose real money. The coin went from $44 to $60 something back down to $44. If you had bought at $60 and then panicked and sold, like real people could have lost thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. They might eventually, I would think, because there's no value here.

I'm not an economist, but generally, I don't understand why the Trump coin has the same net worth as like United Airlines or something right now. So the whole thing is preposterous, but it's real money. It's a real scam. People can bribe him through it. I don't know if they are. It's not an accusation, but people could, right?

Because Trump, the organization that launched this coin, which is all the Trump associates, control 80% of it. So if it goes up X amount, they control 80% of the profits. I think that Axios estimated 25 billion or something, potential profits over the weekend, 25 billion. They made Spiro Agno resign over 10 grand, Bill. Yeah, Warren Harding was sort of disgraced in history over the Teapot Dome scandal, which I don't really, I think it was about oil rights, but I don't believe it was at the level of the Trump scam and the associated grifting.

I don't understand any of it. I mean, the Susan was asking me earlier, what's what? Can you explain the crypto and how is it related to what are the coins called Bitcoin? And then there's blockchain, blockchain is an important point of all things. I had no idea. So I'm not the best person to explain this or discuss this, but the degree of Griff, the billions apparently that he stands to make, the degree to which people could just buy favor by letting them know they're investing in something that basically flows right to his bottom, to his pockets, to his bottom line, it is beyond imagining. It's not like selling the incredibly chintzy thing of selling your Bibles or selling your

sneakers. I mean, there are leases of, I mean, it's incredible scam and, and, and, you know, the vulgar and terrible and all this and then taking advantage of people. But you are buying something, you're just paying 10 times more than you should, right? I mean, that's a little different from this, which is, is a level of grift and possible corruption that, yes, you say, I think we've never seen here. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna have a little more on the Bible. And I'm happy to do a private briefing with Susan on the blockchain, how crypto is sold on the blockchain and how there are different exchanges. I'm pretty basic on this, but I think I could get people to level one.

Needless to say, and I think that the key element here is just how much money went into it, and you just don't know. You can't track it. Right when it launched, somebody put in a million. And it's like, was that someone that was in the right place at the right time, or did they get tipped off, or did they, and just like, if you're the Saudis, or you're, you know what I mean?

Just think about the opportunities you have to put money right into his pocket. But here's the thing, this is how it relates to my feelings. It worked, like it's working. For, you know, there was the guy at Barstool, Dave Portnoy said that, you know, when he saw the big rush on this, he put in 500K in the Trump coin, cashed out a million the next day. He just made a half million last night.

Just doing nothing, just doing nothing. A gambling on this worthless fake coin. And it brought to mind a couple of things for me. There's a guy, Ben Dominich, who wrote for the Federalist, conservative writer, was originally never Trump with us, ended up going full Trump. He was cheerleading for Trump on Fox last night. But he wrote something in 2016 that was about LOL, nothing matters, Republicans. And he wrote this. He said, LOL, nothing matters, Republicans realize the apocalyptic predictions are happening no matter what white paper you

publish and that the lights will go down in the West and will not be relit in their lifetimes." That was his rationale for just saying, ah, fuck it, just go along with this. If Trump can win, then nothing matters. That was eight years ago. Trump's now won twice. You wrote me over the weekend when I asked what we were going to talk about. I said, maybe we should just talk about the Romans instead. You sent me this quote from Tacitus. For myself, the more I reflect on events recent or remote, the more I am haunted by the sense of a mockery in human affairs. I was with somebody last night who's younger than me and they were talking about just how

that like they have this sense of like, none of this matters, nothing matters. I don't care about this. Why should I be concerned? I think that this is pervasive right now and it is giving me a sense of despair that I think is going to have an effect broadly on the culture. A sense that just why don't we all just kind of get in on the con at this point? What do you think about that? No, I think that's unfortunately, sadly, right. I mean, certainly if you're what, 25 and under, but maybe even 30 and under, this is the world you've lived in.

I mean, it's not as if we can think back, if maybe it's just nostalgia or whatever, but to other politicians we've known into a political era that seemed a little more was to hang on to standards and to punish people, perhaps even if they violated them. I don't know, didn't Mark Sanford have to, it just comes to mind for some reason, have to resign as governor of, where is he governor of? South Carolina because of his little vacation there

in Argentina or something. I mean, that's so pathetically nothing today, right? I mean, less than nothing. So no, I'm with you. And I do think that it's bad for the country obviously and the culture. And incidentally, this is not fair. I mean, Biden is not like Trump and the Biden administration's misdeeds are not like Trump's. Nothing comparable. Having said that, I do think Biden's pardon of Hunter, the kind of ramshackle way the pardons were done this morning without any really explaining them or the confusion of it all, that weird, you know, the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment is part of the Constitution. I just decided it is as president. Really? He's deciding it is, you understand, based on a ratification by an alleged ratification by a 30-year state in 2020. So he could have

decided this on the basis of Justice Department guidance in 2021 or 2022. No, he's deciding it five days before he leaves the presidency. I mean, I don't think Biden's helping, honestly. And so here we are. Yeah, I agree that nihilism is a good, unfortunately, a good word for it. But this is the thing with the ERA, actually, I mean, it is preposterous. But to your point, it speaks exactly to the sense. It's like, well, fuck it. If nothing matters, like if none of it, if the rule of law doesn't matter,

if this guy can get back into the White House after being indicted four times on different crimes and convicted. If the rule of law doesn't matter, if this guy can get back into the White House after being indicted four times on different crimes and convicted, I guess he's just going to kind of wave his hand and say that the TikTok ban, for example, which was passed by an overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation in Congress, signed by the president, affirmed by the Supreme Court unanimously, and he can just come in and be like, delayed. You can just wave a wand and say delayed. And then why can't Joe Biden just wave a wand and say, we have a

new amendment to the constitution. It becomes to me, like this is as somebody who does care about this stuff. I begin to understand that it becomes rational to start to act as if like there's no point in abiding by, you kind of these these shared agreements that we have had You know if you you're going to be you know, seeing the pictures of what's happening today in the same building Where he incited a mob? I don't know. I'll make the case to make the case to believe in something bill

That's where that's where i'm at here this morning That's what I want you to make the case to me that I need to believe that any of this matters. I'll make the sort of negative case, which is Trump wants you to believe that none of it matters. And I do think Havel and others, Varko Havel and others who've studied and lived under forms of authoritarianism, always said this,

the authoritarians want to make everyone a nihilist. Because then it's all up for grabs and they're crooked, but the opposition is probably crooked too. And so, why not let them be crooked and get along and not cause trouble and so forth. And I do think that's, I mean, the TikTok thing is unbelievable. It's not just what you said that what you said is absolutely correct, but Trump himself was of course initiated the TikTok, proposed the TikTok ban way back

when, when he was president and praised it as late as 2023, if I'm not mistaken. Right. He was still on board that. Then it turns out one of his biggest donors is a huge big investor in TikTok. And then it turns out he has, God knows what else is happening beneath the scenes. And now he's reversing it sort of without any legal basis, I don't think delaying it.

And he's gonna work something out. Maybe the US government, he said under his control, can hold control half of TikTok. I mean, great, the government controls half of one of the major, you know, a major media platform. Is that kind of the way things are supposed to work in the US. I don't we're going to seize the means of content production, Bill. That is that is true conservatism.

We're seizing the means of content production and short form video. Good point. I mean, my main argument against would be Trump wants us to become nihilists, so we should resist becoming nihilists. And we should look to the future and find a leader like Jayden Daniels to lead us over the world in this year. And I hope for people listening to understand that I was, this is kind of a rhetorical exercise with you.

I did write recently about not letting Donald Trump take my soul. And I'm committed to that, to not fully descending into complete bend dominance level nihilism, or maybe kind of close to tacitess, I guess. I mean, I guess laughing at the mockery of a pharaoh, I might still do. But I do think it's still important to look at what has happened today and believe it can be defeated and believe that there is some value in maintaining the system that we've built. But to your point, you wrote about this, I guess it was the Friday pod, no matter what, like the era

that kind of undergirded this, you know, this Western based rules based order is kind of over. Like that is the one, that's why I wanted to tie back to the dominant side. Like that's kind of right, right? Like, hopefully it will persist in a different form. But the order that got us to hear in the post war order to now does feel basically over, right? Yeah, I think it has to be recreated and that can't be done simply by wishing that it was still strong. And it does require more, I think, bolder thinking for the obvious reason that once the thing is crumbled, you need to build a new, so to speak, not simply, you know, prop it up with patching in a part of the column that's falling down.

That patching is not bad, it certainly is a temporary exped expedient. That's why I do mention Jamin, joking about Jaden Daniels aside. I mean, I think we do need new thinking and really new leadership, and that's easier said than done. And I myself get annoyed when I read all these articles saying, you know, people shouldn't just fight Trump, they need to think in a fresh way. Well, I write that myself sometimes, but what does that mean? Well, I don't write the first part. Can I just, since we're into our feelings, what are my feelings over the weekend when I gave up on my resolution not to think about Trump but about all this?

The number of people writing pieces about, oh, we can't just do what we did in the first term, just oppose Trump. That was really silly, and that didn't work. We need to do something else. I mean, whether something else is, get along with him more, dealing case by case, kind of look. Some Democratic senator said, Tina Smith of Minnesota, I don't know why I'm disguising her name, that, you know, she's not going to oppose everything or chase everything's

foolish Trump does. She's going to watch out for the voters of Minnesota. I guess that's reasonable if you're elected representative. But I don't know. I don't think opposing Trump the first term was so bad. And so it worked kind of, didn't it? He got stopped from doing a lot of bad things he could have done.

A lot of people, you know, managed to stay here as immigrants and he didn't succeed in kicking them out or making their lives, in most cases, too miserable. He didn't succeed in a million other things. He didn't destroy NATO. He didn't whatever. And people resisted him internally and externally. And they lost Congress in 20 at the house in 2018 And he lost the presidency in 2020. So there's so much do you find this? I was reading so many people sort of being

Disparaging the efforts that people have made and I don't think that's quite maybe we have a bit of a self-interest in this But I don't think that's that's fair and I don't think it's healthy going forward I mean, you don't know what's gonna work in terms of fighting. I'm not for fighting every single thing obviously has to be going forward. You don't know what's going to work in terms of fighting. I'm not for fighting every single thing. Obviously, I have to be sensible in figuring out where to pick your battles and so forth, but there's too much advanced defeatism here, I think. I'm glad you brought this up.

I do agree. Also, there's value in saying that things are wrong for saying that things are wrong's sake. This is the thing that I, my one pundit resolution for the next two years is when I go on one of these fucking shows and somebody's like, well, do you think that, do you think it'll have an impact to criticize Trump on this thing or that thing? My answer's going to be like, I don't know and don't care. Nobody knows.

We don't have a crystal ball. And nobody asked Navalny every time he said something that Putin did something was wrong with it, like, Alexi, do you think this will have an impact at the polls? When you're criticizing Putin's corruption, like Putin's corruption is bad for the sake of it being bad. Same with Orban, same with Lukashenko and same with Donald Trump. And hopefully we don't take the slide all the way down to that style authoritarianism.

But I do kind of resent this notion that every, that if you took a principled opposition to something and then the voters voted for some other on some other issue or based on some other priorities and that opposition did not have value. I do reject that. Yeah. And just to add a more less elevated point, I totally agree with what you're saying is also it's hard to predict. I mean, you never know, I find. It's very hard to know what issues backfire, where they overreach, what voters click into

and what they know, how the world plays out, of course, right? I mean, Bush had a big problem with the Iraq war when he was in our grade in January 2005. It didn't go well for 2005 and 2006. But the things that really clobbered the Bush administration in its second term in the first year were this, they decided to have a big priority of radically reforming social security, which no one was aware that that's what they were running on in 2004. And secondly, Hurricane Katrina. So things happen, right?

And you don't know kind of where the weaknesses will emerge. And obviously we don't want people to suffer like in a Hurricane Katrina type situation. But massive war in Europe with Ukraine, possible confrontations or lack thereof or capitulations to China, cross pressuring of Trump space. I think there's a lot that can be done there. I mean, I noticed that even Tom Cotton, who's been an awfully loyal supporter of Trump couldn't abide the tick tock flack and at least on

Twitter was criticizing it. Will he do something in Congress? I don't know. But I think you got to test a lot of different issues. Partly because you just got to do the right thing and say the truth for later. Maybe someone will pick it up a year later when the polls change. But also because practically speaking, I think people don't have a good track record, I should say,

of knowing which issues are going to get a hit. And final point, for all the talk about how powerful he is, and I myself have said that he's triumphant and dominant and so forth, and he is, at no point can wish that away exactly right now, his actual approval favorable, unfavorable rating, if we could just be back to politics for a minute, is slightly underwater. CNN had it minus two, and I noticed 538 average was minus one. He's gone up from about 43%, 44% to 47, 48% since the election. I don't think that's a huge rise given that he had a pretty good honeymoon.

No one was attacking him much. People were capitulating right and left and excusing him right and left. I actually was surprised he can't get above 50, which he is not above. It's not as if we're looking at King Kong here in terms of American politics, FDR in 36 or something. How could one even think of opposing him? And it's only just to take FDR as a curse to me as I say FDR. So he was really powerful, right? He wins the biggest reelection victory, maybe in American history in 36, Democrats control, I don't even know what, three quarters of Congress or something like that. He's getting America out of the depression and so forth. And he stopped on his big court stop packing scheme, what, a year or two later.

I mean, things do move fast in politics. So people should be less, yeah, less deterministic and less defeatist than they are. I like you have some grandkids there that are at least keeping you grounded. Yeah, sorry about that in the background. I think it's nice. Yeah, I'll turn off the recording of that. It's just a It's cute. Yeah, I'll turn off the recording of it. It's just a plea for sympathy.

No, they are there. We're at our son and daughter-in-law's house, and they're the two-year-old, three-year-old, almost three-year-old, and just five-year-old are very much enjoying the show. This must be outside enjoying the show. They seem to be inside enjoying having been in the show. The sounds of the children are the only thing giving me a little joy. All right, we have to do some news. The sounds of the children are the only thing giving me a little joy. All right, we have to do some news. I don't really want to, but I'm out of the feelings into the news. You mentioned the pardons. President Biden issued preemptive pardons for Mark Milley,

Anthony Fauci, members of the January 6 committee, and the cops who testified before the committee. They write, the issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as acknowledgement that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense. I don't know. Just in the interest of candor, and I guess daily listeners of the pod will know this, initially I was for this after the election. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Increasingly I was persuaded against it by a couple of people who were on the list for getting preemptive pardons because you can say that the issuance should not be mistaken as an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, but even still tacitly, it kind of is. In addition, there is the precedent and, you know, I don't know. We might still have a rule of law in 2029. I would like to be open to the possibility that there's still a rule of law in this country in 2029 and if some of Donald Trump's henchmen commit crimes that they might have to be held to account for them.

I don't have much hope that Donald Trump will be held to account, but you know, maybe there is still hope that some of the people around him are. So I fall down on being opposed to this after consideration, but I do think it's a tough call. I don't know what you think. Yeah, I'm skeptical at least of it and more or less opposed. I mean, if individuals were contacted and said, yes, I would like one, I don't begrudge Anthony Fauci, who's 81 years old and who's going to be unjustly gone after, certainly by the Republicans and

maybe by the Trump administration, because it doesn't stop them from being called before hearings in the House and so forth or in the Senate. But I don't begrudge that pardon. I guess he accepted it. But they did it in a pretty haphazard way. It's the members of the January 6th committee and staff. I happen to know some of the staff. I know some of the members, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger.

I have the impression they didn't want the pardons. I don't know that they were, it was explained to them exactly what they're supposed to do now if they don't want them. Do you not accept them? Can you not accept a pardon? Even though I think it's legally murky actually. Maybe you can, but no one, again, my impression, I know this for a fact. I won't say this is an impression.

Many people who may be on the list didn't know if they were on the list and don't know now as we speak at 9.30 in the morning. It's been a bit of a chaotic thing. Mark Milley, I mean, I respect Mark Milley, but you know what? Mark Milley, there would have been totally free legal work volunteered for him to defend himself against baseless charges. I almost think, wouldn't he welcome standing up to these bullies and making a point about proper behavior as a senior military officer.

So I'm disappointed in the pardons, I guess is the way to put it. And I don't think it helps. It gets back to the point we were discussing a little bit earlier. I think it's unfair. It's not like pardoning, God knows, a bunch of January 6th rioters, but will it be used that way by all Trump defenders? Absolutely.

Biden did his pardons, Trump did his pardons. What's the issue, right? We're going to get to the January 6th folks, but one more Biden news this morning. Usual or disappointed. That's probably a little bit understating where I am on this topic. Dr. Jill Biden and President Biden will host a tea and coffee reception in the Blue Room this morning. It's probably happening as we speak right now, actually, with the Trumps before all

four ride to the U S Capitol together for the inauguration. Gag me. Was the tea and crumpets necessary? I don't think it was. I don't know. Some people might, might disagree with that. It feels to me. It's not the biggest deal in the world, but it's a no for me, I guess, as Randy Jackson would say.

It's a tradition. I guess I seem to remember it from when we were leaving the White House on January 20th, 1993 at the end of the Bush-Quayle administration. Not that I was there, but the Bushes did it for the Clintons. Vice President Quayle, I don't remember if he had to do it for incoming Vice President Gore, and I'm sure if they were supposed to Bushes did it for the Clintons like Vice President Quayle I don't remember if he had to do it for incoming Vice President Gore And I'm sure if they were supposed to they did it in a nice way, but yeah, it's a little bit much I mean it gets to the broader point you could be a traditionalist or an institutionalist as people say a lot these days But at some point simply being a traditionalist or institutionalist in the kind of sense of I'm just following this because this is what was done before

It undercuts actual institutionalism or healthy traditionalism where you're upholding standards. And I don't think it would be a miss. President Biden shouldn't gratuitously necessarily attack Trump or anything like that. But it wouldn't be a miss to simply pass on this, as you say, and beat him at the Capitol at noon, right? You know, I mean. Yeah, I don't know. You can't really sell me on. I'm an institutionalist when we're doing smiley photos with Donald Trump at the White House and having tea. And I'm not an institutionalist when I'm adding amendments to the constitution randomly a

couple of days before the election. That just isn't a match for me. You kind of need both or neither. I would be on the side of neither. You could sell me on both, but either or is not working for me. To Trump's moves. So he had a rally yesterday and as part of my pledge, we're not playing any audio from that because people just don't need that in their life today.

They had a rally at the, what are they calling it? It was the MCI Center, the Verizon Center where the Wizards play, Capital One Arena now. And he talked about how he plans to pardon the hostages today is what he called them and how that was going to make people very happy. Elon got to speak, the vice presidential elect did not. I thought that was interesting. It was Trumpian, it was garish and absurd. You know, Stephen Miller was doing some racially motivated attacks on people. Wasn't quite at Madison square garden level, but again, I mean, it's, it is in

sharp contrast with the tea this morning, I guess that Trump decided to have a non-traditional pre-inauguration rally where he talked about releasing the people that savaged cops at the Capitol. And I guess having moved the inauguration indoors, there's not space for all the buddies and donors and others, prospective donors who are going to pay quite a lot in effect to be there. So they're being shuttled over to the Capitol One arena, which is where the Capitol is and

the Wizards play 20,000 seats. I'm sure, I don't know, maybe they get the nice boxes there at the top so they don't have to sit just in the upper deck. I don't know. But I mean, I don't know. Do you think someone's made this point to me yesterday when I was giving up on my attempt to stay away from Trump stuff this weekend, that the grift could really get to people? No.

I mean, the grift and the plutocracy side of it, I mean, it's so evident and it's so grotesque and it's not available. I mean, I guess individuals can buy these bitcoins or whatever, but it's not the, the grift is available to wealthy people, even your buddy there. They're taking on risk, the individual people that buy the bitcoins. I mean, who knows? The Trump Bitcoin could go to the moon and it could just go up, up, up forever. You know, what the hell?

The rules of capitalist economics seem to not be applying these days, but they're at least still taking on risk. The plutocrats are not. Right. The people who, yes, and you read these articles, the banking CEOs, of course, the financial guys, but million dollars too, just kind of glorying in their access and in their ability to get things done. And of course, we see this all with Bezos and Zuckerberg and so forth. I don't know. You did, people might look at that and think this is, I mean, this has always been an element

of this, God knows, two cheers for capitalism, not three, and always an element of robber barons and all that. I was thinking about that. I got to go back and reread about the robber barons. What? Robber barons is obviously a pejorative name for these business sites. But my impression of them is I'm sure they were not beyond a little bit of, you know, jimmying the system

and paying off state legislatures and, you know, whatever to maybe government agencies to get the right railroad route or the right oil drilling permanently. But they did produce oil. I mean, they did like actually, you know, there are actual railroads that were built by these guys. Right? And then they gave somebody to philanthropy and we have Carnegie libraries

and we have, you know, the University of Chicago from the Rockefellers and so forth and Duke University from Mr. Duke. And I don't know, I mean, was that, does that make up for whatever misdeeds they did? I don't know, I'll let other people judge that. But there's not even a pretense of any of that now. I mean, it's all just, don't you think?

I mean, it's just grift, 100%, all grift all the time. It's the exact opposite. Not only is there not a pretense of that public mindedness, they're actively hostile to it. Mark Yandresen said this, like the VC who is in Trump's inner circle has been, according to The Washington Post, been interviewing people for jobs, who has tons of interest in crypto and AI, was a seed donor to the free

press. Did notice the free press got a nice exclusive leak from the Trump administration. I don't know if Mark Andreessen was involved in that. But like he said recently that he was, I don't know exactly the words, but resentful towards this notion that you have to make all this money and then to be good in liberal society and you have to give it all away. He was attacking the exact thing that you're talking about, like this other, this era of

exceptionally wealthy, the Rockefellers, the Carnagies, etc., that made all this wealth for themselves, but then also redistributed back in various other pursuits. And so, again, it's just like, you can not like the Rockefellers and have plenty of complaints about that, but it does seem better than the alternative, which is making ungodly sums of money and then being resentful when being told that you might have some obligation back to the people in your society. And those guys didn't treat workers well all the time and there are many, that's why we have labor unions and so forth.

But the degree of contempt these people have, and you see this in the rhetoric around Doge in particular, for actual civil servants. Look, I call them bureaucrats, not civil servants if you don't want to be so nice to them. I was at the education department for three years. I worked for them and then the White House saw them a little less directly. But some of them, there can be changes and reforms, and maybe they have too hard to move them around or to fire them and so forth.

The idea that these people, though, deserve no respect at all, who are working for middle class, sometimes if they make it up near to the top or for middle class salaries, working quite hard, trying to do the right thing, mostly, and doing jobs that are kind of important that they be done. And it's one thing to treat them with a certain kind of politeness, but deep down think, okay, we can really improve the system here.

You know, it's too bureaucratic, and so forth. They're not treated with any courtesy or politeness. And I find it kind of disgusting, honestly. And I suppose this is just me, you know, Washington, D.C., deep state person who knows a lot of people who work in government talking, but it's really terrible, I would say. And it just shows what they made a lot of money, fine. No one's actually proposing to take away, Joe Biden

was president for four years with Democratic Congress for two years, they didn't take away a lot of those people's money, quite the contrary. They're richer than ever at the end of the Biden administration, now they're presumably gonna be even richer than ever because of all the grifting, if nothing else, but they can't just sort of politely enjoy being billionaires and respect other people who haven't succeeded

that way and haven't whatever for whatever reason they didn't choose to, or they weren't able to work the system quite that way, or they didn't have Elon Musk's self-promotional abilities, or to be fair, they didn't have some actual abilities, because some of these people have, I don't have them either, but those abilities. The notion that you should basically respect your fellow citizens and you should respect people who are making $50,000 a year working as nurses and people who are making $140,000 a year working as higher ranks of government and you should respect people who are working for you and that's all out the window.

I got to think that's, A, it's very corrosive and B, that it does fit into the kind of nihilism that is a sustainable devotee vote, is that what? People don't want that, I should think. That's why I wonder how much the plutocracy side of it, the grotesqueness of the grifting side of it could end up hurting the Trump administration politically. I do think it's possible. And I do think that there will be some backlash. I can sometimes worry about the nature of the backlash.

And I think a lot of it will also depend on the results. Good news is I'm not expecting a lot of great results from the Donald Trump administration. We've got these executive orders. We're going to have a lot of time to kind of sift through all of them and discuss the impact. There's going to be, I guess, potentially, according to reports, that question of emergency on the border, ending all kinds of DEI programs within the government, ending any efforts to accommodate people who have a different gender identity

than the one that they were born with, those that will be eliminated. We have already mentioned the pardoning of the people that beat the cops at the Capitol on Donald Trump's behalf and potentially the TikTok extension. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on any of those in particular or big picture. It feels almost silly at this point to be like, conservatives used to be against executive fiat. I think this is probably something that has been really pernicious throughout this century. Bush too did more on executive orders than previous presidents had, at least the recent previous presidents.

Obama then did more than him and then Trump and, you know, obviously Biden with student loans, et cetera. So this has been kind of an ever escalating thing that I oppose, but I think it's, I don't know at this point how to roll it back. So any big picture thoughts on the executive orders or any of the individual items? Yeah, no, we don't have so much time to talk about it. I guess the one thing that strikes me is he's doing it all with such shock and awe. We had a good piece, a great piece by retired general Mark Hurtling about shock and awe.

That doesn't always work out so well. He first heard the phrase as a junior officer, I guess. It's like, I don't know, is that really going to work on the battlefield? And, you know, it works for like a day or two. And then if you're not ready for the to dig in and for them to do the hard work over the for the counterinsurgency and so forth, then that didn't work out so well in Iraq. And he sort of makes the point that maybe that'll be the case here. It implies that'll be the case. That could be the case.

I sort of feel that way. I think on immigration in particular, I get put that I put it this way. The impression he's giving is that he can do everything and that the executive orders are going to solve all these problems. And I'm in the economy, I suppose, that has been pretty good, actually, energy production under Biden, maybe it'll go up some more, maybe in some other areas, he can do some things, he can make some people's lives unjustly unpleasant in the transgender realm and other such things. Immigration strikes me, he's claiming he's going to solve this problem. I wonder, and I'm basing this partly on the conversation I had with Aaron Reiklin-Melnick

and other stuff that people have written recently. It's not clear how much of it's a problem as opposed to a good thing for the country to have these immigrants working here and how much of a damage he's going to do if people get deported or self-deport because they're so fearful. And again, leaving aside almost the human damage in a way to these unjust, the injustice of what's going to happen, he's taking a lot of responsibility on. And I just wonder what that looks like six or 12 or 18 months from now. You know, there's a reason presidents don't mind sometimes saying, I'd like to do this,

but you know, Congress has to act and Congress is being recalcitrant here and what could I have done? I think Trump's not giving himself much of an excuse in that way. I agree with that. I think another potential thing we'll see how it plays out is there's now going to be a big gap between the shock and awe and when they actually do anything. It's going to take Congress a long time to do stuff. This is why generally people, in addition to the fact that some presidents cared about

the limits on executive power and had legal experts and people within the government reviewing these sorts of things before they got announced, as I traditionally have said, there weren't 200 of them or however many that ended up being on inauguration day. But also just politically speaking, you kind of roll them out over the course of a month or two while your agenda gets moving through Congress. And so I think that's also something to monitor. One other thing, Senator Ron Johnson told reporters this morning that Trump is talking of tariff revenue of as much as $1 trillion. That's just obviously preposterous on its face.

That would be about a 25% tariff on all imports. Johnson said he's trying to talk Trump out of it, but doesn't know what he'll decide. So that's another thing to monitor coming down the pike. I remember this number. I'm sure I've got it wrong, but like maybe $80 billion in tariff revenues right now, that would be a pretty big increase in tariffs, which will have unanticipated or anticipated maybe economic consequences, which will not unanticipated or anticipated maybe economic consequences which will not all be good.

That's what I mean. I mean, in a way, I was thinking as you were talking about a month or two, I guess Roosevelt introduced maybe the concept of the first 100 days in 1933. They had to really get going fast. And 100 days was considered lightning speed. And that's kind of last. It hasn't even into modern times. I think Gingrich talked about the first 100 days in 1995 with a contract for America.

That gives you at least a little running room. You also get Congress on board. So it's sort of like a lot of people. He's doing this all himself. It's on him. It's not Steve Miller. It's on Ross Vaught. It's on JD Vance.

And I do come back to something we have discussed a bit, which is I'm not so sure all these guys are that popular and all their ideas are that popular. And all these cabinet secretaries are going to be like, oh yeah, they're the guys we want enforcing this because, you know, Pam Bondi, she's really thoughtful of legal complexities of how to do all these things and how to deprive people, some people of some civil rights they thought they had without actually harming other civil rights or harming people in ways that are totally unjust and the same in some of these other policy areas. We really trust Pete Hek's aesthetic. He understands the military well enough. He has enough experience managing huge institutions to really get rid of the DEI stuff without actually

doing huge damage. Maybe this will all work out a little. Maybe they'll have a good run for a week or two or three. I suppose they probably will. I feel like two months from now this could feel pretty different than it does in the first blush of shock at all. I agree. All right. I'm going to leave us with this. We are about an hour and a half away from Donald Trump putting his hand on the Bible as we tape. And we had a little bit of news last night from country music singer Lee Greenwood about what Bible Trump will be using. Let's take a listen to that. When Donald Trump puts his hand on the Bible and swears the oath to take care of the country and he's the 47th president of the United States, I'm hoping it'll be this Bible, which is released tomorrow as a tribute to Donald Trump, the 47th president.

It's godblessusabible.com. There are only going to be 5,000 of these. And I know he's going to take the oath by putting his hand on several Bibles. He might do this one as well. You know, Lee, what I teased earlier that, hey, maybe we'll sing us out in a bit when he joins us. A viewer wrote in and said, no, no, he needs to save his boys. It's turtles all the way down, Bill. It's grifted all the way down We are who we don't know maybe putting our hand on the God bless the USA Bible as you can just get if you go to Lee Greenwood's website And you know only a little bit of a cut of that is gonna go to the president-elect and only four thousand of these bad boys

So get them while they're hot. I Can't yeah, I'm at a loss the words, you know It's usually often in these in our, we go back and skim through them, they begin the presidents, incoming presidents, begin with a little riff on the Bible that they've, you know, this is the Bible George Washington used, or this is something to my family, you know, and it kind of is a nice way of getting into the solemnity of the moment, but also its greatness, the peaceful transfer of power that Washington began, and now 200 years later, I think this was a big, I think George H.W. Bush did this in 1989, if I recall.

And of course, well, Trump can't very well do a peaceful transfer of power, rhapsody, can he? That's not kind of his thing, you know? One thing Trump said, kind of final point of that, over the weekend that I didn't get any attention, I was, where was this? I think it was in his speech yesterday, I saw a clip of it. They stole the election from us in 2020. We're not going to let that happen again. And it struck me as ambiguous. I mean, maybe saying there wouldn't be fraud again and they'll have changed the rule. I don't know what they'll do with the federal government, but they'll change the rules so those

votes can't be stolen allegedly in Georgia and Arizona. And by the way, it had a slightly more ominous sound to it too, as if like, you know what? We may not be allowing an election that removes us or our party or himself, if he wants a third term or J.D. Vance or whatever, from power in 2020. There'll be an election, don't get me wrong, just the way there is in Hungary and Russia for that matter. But the playing field will be pretty tilted by that. And I don't know, you know,

I've been one who's not gone down that path, I will never have another election again or whatever. But you look at TikTok and you look at X and you look at what they're doing with the federal government and the amount of money they'll be doling out to friends and allies and making clear that if you aren't on board to reelect, the next reelect or the election advance or whatever, that money goes away. I don't need to end on its down-note though. No, this is an appropriately alarming and downer final note from you, Bill Kristol. I had a text, I'm in New York, I'm going to be on MSNBC today if people really want to

suffer and do self-harm and watch me talk about it on the news. And so I don't have my usual setups, my texts are popping up here on my computer. As you are giving that alarming close to this podcast, I received a text from a friend that said Trump getting inaugurated on MLK day. We are a failure. I can't really do much better than that. I'm going to leave it there. Everybody else, come hang out with us if you want.

Post inauguration if you're desperate for like-minded folk on YouTube or on Substack. Otherwise we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulldog podcast. Thanks to Bill Crystal. See you all there. hands over your eyes with a foot on the gas and the best I can tell the crowd seems ashamed it sounds like a warning when they call out your name The boy genius has grown now The competition got fierce And you'd rather be anywhere other than here But it can get so much worse

I reckon it will In best avian hands Last night was a long one You made a lot of new friends And your band was on fire light up till the end Met a girl from the suburbs But you missed all the cues I bet you don't remember me telling you she was Boy, genius has grown as And you're an angry young man Well I won't be around when you die in the van

I got kids of my own Not much of a will Investate your heels The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.