The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: The Administration’s Stupid Ethnonationalism

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

The white Anglo-Saxon supremacy in Trumpland is so over the top that even child-of-Cuban-immigrants Marco Rubio claims America’s common cultural heritage is European. But then with a schizophrenic touch, our secretary of state went on to endorse the reelection of Viktor Orban, who has decidedly turned Hungary away from Western democratic values. In response, some high-profile Democrats weighed in, including AOC from Munich. Plus, we are constantly reminded to not trust anything DHS says, the Dems should not agree to give one more penny to ICE, and Marco: The music of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones would not have existed without African American culture.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller for the holiday pod.show notes Monday's "Morning Shots" Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE shows in Dallas on March 18 and in Austin on March 19. Plus,,we have a handful of seats still available for our second show in Minneapolis on February 18. TheBulwark.com/Events. NOBL gives you real travel peace of mind — security, design, and convenience all in one. Head to NOBLTravel.com for 46% off your entire order! #NOBL #ad

Welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A little update on the week. We are in Minneapolis for live shows Wednesday and Thursday. Excited to get out there. There's been about a dozen tickets left for Wednesday. So if you have a last second fancy to get up to Minneapolis, buy those ASAP. As far as the pod schedule is concerned, we'll have normal Bullock Pod like four out of the five days this week. I think Thursday we will give you guys the Wednesday night show on this feed. And then Friday, we'll give you the TNL, the next level show from the Thursday night live show, if that makes sense. So no next level this week until Friday. And besides that, you're on your normal schedule. Speaking of normal schedule, it's Monday. So we got Bill Crystal. Apparently it's President's Day. I did not realize it was President's Day until I started reading your newsletter this morning.

Down here, it's just Lundy Grau. But happy President's Day to those who celebrate. You had a little meditation on it this morning, Bill. Do you have any deep thoughts on honoring our presidents? Happy Lundie Grah. I guess I just had a simple mind of you that there was Mardi Gras, which I was intelligent enough to know, I guess, is a Tuesday. That's why it's Marty, but I didn't really.

You guys in New Orleans good at extending these holidays into many days, weeks, months. Yes, it's a whole carnival season, actually. But yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good. My meditation was very simple. I mean, when I was young and conservative, it was sort of fashionable to lament the decline of Washington's birthday

and them out of Lincoln's into this generic president's day. kind of a side of, you know, like all presidents are equal, all presidents are worth in my right. Everyone gets a trophy. Yeah, yeah. That was a very staple of conservative talking points. I may have even published an article to like this in Lutley said it. I can't remember.

So I'm just being contrary and saying, well, maybe it's okay that it's become president's day. I don't think that criticism was totally wrong. It's a little ridiculous. On the other hand, to the degree reminds us that we've had a lot of bad presidents, a lot of mediocre ones, some bad ones, and one or two very bad ones, like our current one. And we shouldn't idolize them. We shouldn't, you know, go out of our way to put them on pedestals. We should just be matter-of-fact about them and sort of hard-headed citizens of a republic,

somewhat skeptical of our leaders. That's a good thing. So that's my contrarian defense of presidents say. All right. Doesn't really seem like something to take a day off of work for, but just being reminded that our presidents are mediocre. They're men, men only so far. Yeah, Congress passed this bill in 68. It turned a lot of the holidays into the Monday holidays we're now familiar with. I guess before then, I guess we celebrated all these days on the day. So you might have like a Thursday or whatever, yeah. Yeah, but we're on May 30th, whatever day it was, you had off. You know, February 22nd, Washington's birthday, you had off. You know, the Monday thing is obviously convenience in many ways

and it's fine. I'm not objecting to it. Well, I do appreciate it. I would have objected to it. 30 years ago, I would have had a big moralistic grant and patriotic rant about it. And I surprised Rubio didn't go out about it actually at the conference in Munich. It's another sign of American decline. But now, I'm okay with having three-day weekends. The whole episode might basically be on Marco, so we're going to get to him in a second to use in Munich over the weekend. But beforehand, as you mentioned, we do like to extend the holidays here in New Orleans.

So I was out and about this weekend. And I wasn't, you know, as in tune to the news as I usually am. And so this morning as I was prepping, I was like, let me read the morning newsletters, make sure I didn't miss any thing. And I opened Playbook, Politico Playbook, which I rarely do, because it has deteriorated and insidified to a great degree. I mean, it's horrible and hackish as you're about to find out. But I was reading it, and it sparked a thought.

They were going through kind of the Trump's laments at the top, like the fact that like this latest, you know, spat for him has not been as good based on their figure skating judging as the first two segments of the presidency. But then they give kind of the counter view, you know, like the view from the other side. And that is framed as chin up, Don. And I want to read that for you. Chin up, Don, beyond the noisy and erratic policy swings, there's plenty of out there for the White House to feel good about ahead of the midterms. Tariffs largely haven't created unbearable levels of pain.

Trump's pectly, the Federal Reserve has been well received. The border clamped down at producing results. Crime rates appear to be down. The high-risk strikes on Iran and Venezuela haven't backfired. So in summation, the Iran and Venezuela adventures haven't backfired, and the tariffs have not been totally catastrophic. And that is the morning newsletter from Politico's spin for how great things are going for Trump. What do you make of that?

Did they put in that the Dow Jones is it 50,000? That's a major Trumpist. It is a major Trumpist talking point, I believe. It's why we're not supposed to care about any violations of civil liberties or killing protesters and so forth. I don't know. Doesn't it cut the other way, Tim? I mean, things look okay in the economy. We're not in a disastrous foreign war.

And even so, Trump's approval is down from what, 50 to 40. Isn't that kind of a bad sign? What if things get a little worse in the economy or what if one of the foreign policy misadventures has more immediate real-world consequences? So I would say it's actually a tribute to the American public and cuts against Democratic consultant orthodoxy that people are just focused, you know, bail on the kitchen table,

you know, it's just the price of everything. And in fact, it turns out public is dissatisfied with Trump for maybe deeper reasons having to do with rights and liberties and dignity and democracy. and that's to the public's credit. But anyway, I don't see why, if I were in the Trump White House, I'd be like, geez, you know, things aren't so terrible as political I was claiming. And we're still down from 50 to 41.

Yeah. I also just think in general, like if one of your proof points of how things are going well that's something that you did did not cause, quote, unbearable levels of pain, it's only caused some modest pain, you know, some light pain. You know, nothing's been achieved from the tariffs. It hasn't caused any successes. There's no evidence that we're reshoring manufacturing. The opposite, as a matter of fact.

But the good news is it didn't cause unbearable levels of pain. I will say one of my notes from walking around, you know, being among the Volk with Mardi Gras. I'm like hearing from people, which I like to hear from people who come out to me. The mood of the average resistor is better now, which I think speaks to political pain. And I think that there are a lot of folks that came out to me, you know, maybe last Mardi Gras would have been like dire. I mean, depressed, should I move?

You know, it was a popular question that I was getting less. this time last year. Like, should I flee the country? Now, on the streets I was getting a lot of it feels like it might be over for him. I had to tamp a couple of people down. It was like a lot of work ahead. But I do think that the sense of his political standing is pretty, pretty rough at the moment. All right. To Marco. I don't even know how to frame this up. He was in Munich giving some grand remarks at a security conference and hopped over to our only European friend in Budapest. and did a little joint press conference of Victor Orban. I want to play some clips from all of that for us to react to.

This is the first one that caught my eye. It was Marco on how to think about the nature of war and how America thinks about the nature of war. Now, let's listen to that. Because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people. Armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.

And that is what we are defending. This is Marco's pivot from neo-conservative into nationalist blood and soil diplomat who just only cares about the material interests of our people. The problem is that I don't believe that anything that he said there was actually right when it comes to the nature of war. But why don't you go on that and then I'll kind of expand up my thoughts. I was appalled by it in many levels. I mean, first of all, there was this thing called the Civil War, kind of a big war in America. I believe to be had more casualties in Civil War than maybe World War II, but anyway, certainly is a percentage of the population, many, many more.

a hell of a lot of people fought the Civil War. They weren't fighting for one nation. We were. There was no question we were a nation. We had a common culture, if that's what you care about. As Lincoln famously said, but didn't you say this in the second an argue, we read the same Bible and prayed to the same God,

you know, so very common culture-ish, and we fought because of principle, because of an abstraction, because all met are created equal, as Lincoln explained, and as the Southerners to their, to be fair, understood perfectly well as well. I mean, they were also fighting for their way of life. I guess slavery was a key part of it,

but it was based on an abstract view of human equality or human inequality. So it's just silly. And incidentally, World War II, which I think that's still an okay war by Marco's standards, though I don't or not by the Trumpists, I guess. We were attacked on Pearl Harbor, so we fought, of course, Japan. But the war again, in Europe, I mean, Hitler declared war on us, which gave Roosevelt an excuse, frankly, to go to war against him. But that war in Europe, we weren't attacked by Nazi Germany,

by Trump and shipping was attacked. And we could have stayed out of that. And we did stay out of it, incidentally. for two years. And what was the justification for the many, many people who died for helping liberate Europe because it was freedom, you know, what Eisenhower called the Great Crusade? I mean, anyway, it's a lot of even worth going on. It's so obvious. But yeah, so it's just not true what Marco's saying. And it just diminishes American history, any sense of actual American greatness of what America means. And final point, I just, since this is more like back to my political

theory days, what is America? What are we based on? We're based on an abstract. All men are created equal. Does Mark have we read any of those sentences in the Declaration of Independence? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Yeah, the kind of abstract, you know, and they are literally at the foundation of our nation. Lincoln famously praised Jefferson in 1859 for inserting in what he called a merely revolutionary document, the abstract truth that would be a stumbling vok to tyrants at all times, something like that, a beautiful letter he wrote in 1859 in praise of Jefferson. And so, I mean, again, Rubio in his slightly gentler than J.D. Vance way, in his somewhat

clever way, I guess you'd say, is still, it's just dressing up the same nationalist nonsense. Okay. So when it comes to airport luggage and suitcases, there are just a couple things I need, all right? I need easy access to the water bottle. We've got to be hydrating. Okay. It's critical that you're hydrating while you're traveling. You also got to be charging at all times always be charging the phone you don't want to land have a dead phone and not be able to uber yourself home and the good news is with our sponsor at noble you can get both of those things and a bunch more figured out the noble carry-on bag has a cup holder on the outside it's got a charging port it's got that laptop pockets all right so if you're not tsa pre you're going to take out your

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That's N-O-B-L travel.com for up to 46% off. After you purchase, they'll ask you what you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. I am going to go on, even though it's obvious, just because that's our want. You were right, just by the way, that's the Civil War, the word more deaths than Civil War, the World War II. I guess I'll just avoid the kind of college dorm room element of the conversation, is that, I mean, our nations and peoples also kind of abstractions, in some sense. I think maybe they are, but we'll just, we'll set that aside.

The motivation for war, the gallant, the noble motivation for many wars and the bass have been about abstractions, not about, you know, like people's economic concerns, you know, or not necessarily about just, you know, the actual tribe with which you are from. I mean, Crusades, Protestants versus the Catholics, all of the wars, all of the efforts against the communists. Like, it's just not true. Like what Marco just said is not true in any sense of world. A lot of the pernicious wars, by the way, we're about abstractions, like fake abstractions, imaginary, trying to turn, you know, and other peoples into less than human, right? Or subhuman because of, you know, various abstractions about religion or ideology or otherwise.

So why it rankles me so much is because he's doing it in service of creating a new idea of what America is, right? Like that's the whole point of this, right? It's redefining America and it's redefining America's goals and objectives and history, you know, and it's trying to turn us into a country that is only united based on, I guess, some Anglo-Saxon heritage and the fact that we grew up on the same land. And like, that is not what America is about. And it's, it's a dangerous view, frankly, of what America is about. And he expands on that a little bit in this next bit, talking about our cultural element that we have in common.

And this is when I really start to stroke out. So let's take a listen to this. It was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michael Angelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chalien. and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels. They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future. But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic

and our political future. Unapologetic about our common heritage. I do feel like I have to point out that Marco is from fucking Cuba, not Europe, not Europe. And that the music and art of Cuba and of Latin America is different than that of Europe. And obviously, there is a common ancestry in a lot of cases because, you know, Portuguese and Spanish came over and colonized Central and South America. But do people in Malaga wax poetic about how they have a common cultural heritage with the people of Copenhagen? He is trying to sand down the edges of the various cultural differences and create a, I hate to use this phrase, but like an Anglo-Saxon supremacist view of like what our cultural heritage is. And that the only thing that like unites us to Europe is not like commitment to a rule of law,

not common, you know, not common defense, economic trade, but what it is is the fact that we all like the Beatles and the Rolling Stone. and Mozart. And it's like, it's crazy. I'm like, anybody who's been to fucking Miami where he grows up understands that it's crazy. Like,

there is a lot of cultural difference in Miami. There's some similarity. There's some ways which we overlap, which we're different from Eastern cultures. Like, that's fine all to explore. But like, this notion that we have to be unapologetic about this,

and we have to use that to prevent the bad people and the bad cultures from coming to our country. or from being a part of it, and that we have to unite in some right-wing nationalist's historic view of our architecture and our music. It is white nationalist adjutop. And he's Cuban.

I don't really know any other way to describe what he's doing. He's doing it in Germany, too. Just out there. Why did Marco's parents come here? I mean, I believe they came here because they wanted liberty and they came to the land of the free

because they wanted freedom. And so not because they thought, you know, I want to become more Anglo-Sat. accent. I don't believe that was, you know, so you're absolutely right about that. Their son did decide he likes American football better than, you know, the world's football, maybe to their shame. But besides that, yeah, I don't think that that was that either. Yeah, so there's that side of it, if you wish, if you will. I mean, it's really particularly appalling for him to be saying this. And he knew better. He used to

get very inspiring speeches about his parents being immigrants and America being the land of opportunity and so forth. And that's why I kind of liked Marco. I guess I was suckered a bit in 2010 and all what he ran for this at it, but that didn't turn out to go very deep, did it? The other point I'd make is sort of the flip side of the point you're making, but they both equally true, I think we're just, the whole point about Mozart and Bicholangelo and all these names he's dropping and all this is they have universal appeal. They are great. They're not great because they're, you know, because Mozart came from Salzburg and then ended up in Vienna. And in fact, if you look at people who enjoy great art and great music and great literature, it's enjoyed the world over. And

some of the greatest performers are from Asia and from anywhere. I'm not even going to go out. It's such an obvious point. So it's precisely the universalism, one might call it the globalism, of these great works of art and literature that makes them so important. And it's great that we host a lot of them now, that a lot of them are not from America, as Marco suggests, they're from Europe. And it's great that we feel that they're also part of America now. Of course, we also have our distinctive American stuff, which in fact is very popular in Europe, jazz and so forth. So that's why globalism is better than stupid ethno-nationalism, right? I mean, honestly. With Marco, he's not quite vulgar enough, or maybe because he's Marco Rubio, he can't quite go in the J.D. Vance,

hillbilly, elegy direction of just flat-out Scots-Irish, you know, bullshit, you know, ethno-nationalism. So he has this sort of fancier version of it. If you're just a straight-up ethno-nationalist, just, okay, just go be in straight-up ethno-nationalist. But with Marco, it's such a fake thing. thing and it's put on in this fancy way with so much lipstick on that pig in Marco's speech, you know? I should also just note that the Rolling Stones in particular, like stole their music from black American culture, people that we had enslaved and brought over from Africa. So I don't know that there's like a great connection between Mozart and the Rolling Stones

or like a direct line on that front. If you're trying to make it that this could only have been created because of the Western European culture, like the Rolling Stones music was created because of the way in which we enslaved and oppressed other people, and that, like, yielded some great art. And like this whole notion, I can't say that, you know, that there is something special about this culture that needs to be preserved and we need to protect it and we need to be, you know, be thoughtful about how to assimilate people that come from different cultures that don't, you know, have the same respect for these classically liberal theories. For starters, they don't believe in the country. For starters, they don't

even the classical liberal theories. Like Trump is a straight affront to them. And there have been plenty of people from all these cultures. I mean, like to your point from earlier, does the socialism of Central America mean that Central Americans can't come to America? Like Marco has, to rise to be Secretary of State. He's, again, I should say it one more time, he was in Germany. So, I mean, there's some limits to our culture and its commitment to, you know, these, these principles and values. And so the whole like, oh, you don't have to apologize. from them. You can't acknowledge what the reality is that all of this takes work. You know, a respect for the rule of law and respect for the beautiful and great things that have been created

in Western culture. It requires continued work and effort and commitment to those values. And these guys are a straight attack on all of them. Like they just, they want to do the, like, again, the adjut prop about the good elements of the culture without actually contributing to any of the sacrifice that is required to maintain it. That's my final rant about this. That's really well said at the point about sacrifice. But also the unapologetic thing also, well, we're just being rankled and venting. But we're venting just righteously.

Righteously. Yes, right is righteous venting. The unapologetic thing is appalling. What do you say we have to be unapologetic in our heritage? No serious person thinks there's nothing to apologize about in our heritage. in the American heritage, I mean, let's not just be too obvious here and talk about slavery and talk about the treatment of Native Americans. Let's talk about a million other things.

We made a lot of mistakes. And every serious European thinker, including the ones he mentioned, has understood that if you're, as I'm saying, if you're a great civilization, if you're any civilization, if you're any culture, if you're any nation, if you're any people to use this terms, there are things to apologize for. That's part of what being a serious person is. So the unapologetic thing is so appallingly childish. It really is at the level of five-year-old.

I'm not going to say, I'm sorry, I didn't do anything wrong. Really? Is that now our principle, the greatest American presidents, the greatest American authors understood Lincoln, second inaugural? I mean, there are things that we very much wrong and things we have to apologize for. And that's what makes us to the degree we are great, honestly, makes us great. The nations that don't think they have anything to apologize for are the worst nations or the worst governments of nations, if you want to put it that way. And do you think Putin thinks he has anything to apologize for?

Marky Pudo said that they want this fight. And so I want to come back to that in a second. But first, I just want to listen to what some of the Democrats have said about this. Just kind of wrapping up Rubio first. He then went to Budapest, as mentioned. On the same day, so Orban gives a political speech. He has an election in two months, right? So Orban has an election in two months.

Yeah. It's maybe the most vulnerable he's been in a decade or more. Yeah. I just want to pull out a couple of things. I'm not to put the audio of this because it's in Hungarian, so that wouldn't really do any good. But translated, Orban said this in a political speech over the weekend. We must get used to the idea that those who love freedom should not fear the East, but Brussels. And people should turn their anxious eyes to Brussels.

So simultaneously, Rubio is waxing poetic about, you know, the great Western European culture. our best friends in Europe are talking about the threat from Brussels of liberal democratic countries. Here's what Rubio then says after he lands and they have a joint press conference together. I'm going to be very blunt with you. The prime minister, Orban, and the president have a very, very close personal relationship and working relationship. I can say to you with confidence that President Trump is deeply committed to your success. So two months before the election, Rubio lands there and says Trump wants you to win, basically, and is very committed to your victory politically.

This is obviously a right-wing autocrat. I don't know how to translate that anyway other than a direct affront onto our traditional allies while he kind of pays lip service to this cultural connection. Well, a direct attempt to prop up Orban, who is in trouble, has been in trouble. I think there also were financial commitments made that will help him spend more, go further into debt,

even though the EU's been trying to check that. so Trump will, in effect, backstop him because your success is our success, he said to Orban. So there are actually brave people in Hungary fighting Orban. There's a candidate running against them. There are liberals. I've met some of them. Liberals in the old-fashioned sense of people who believe in a free country who have been fighting the good fight there with many disadvantages because Orban controls, because everything

that's been happening here has been happening in Spades in Hungary. And Orban controls the media. And he controls access to capital and to resources. But there are people trying to fight back. and Rubio goes there and steps on those people. I mean, it's much worse even than just saying something nice about Orban and some out of context. He's two months before the election, as you point out, he goes and weighs in against the dissidents in Hungary who are doing their best to restore Hungary to a free country, really, and to an ally of other free countries. Yeah, Peter McGar is the main opposition candidate.

Right. But there's a big, you know, Sorbonne hasn't succeeded in stamping out all opposition. And so there are sort of opposition structures, although they're weaker in Budapest. And so it's just disgusting what Rubio's doing. And that respect, Rubio is worse than the ones who just say it up front, that that's, you know what I mean? He pretends to be the spokesman for Western and even sort of liberal values, you might say. And then he goes and helps Orban and hurts those trying to fight back against him. Really terrible.

Magyar is the president of the Respect and Freedom Party. Like if Rubio was... not being a shill for Donald Trump. It's a very Rubio-esque party. It's not some liberal, lefty, socialist. Right, no, no. The reason he's a strong opponent to, as I understand it, to Orban, is that he's sort of a center-right-ish,

you know, pro-freedom person, right? Yeah. It's somebody that would have been in the tradition of what Marco argued for up until two minutes ago is trying to help a country that is being, or a lot of freedom and rights are being stamped out by the current quasi-authoritarian government. One more word on this.

You had that thing. I hadn't heard the thing about the Ewe. We have that he said over the weekend that Brussels is the threat. The threat comes in the West, not from the East. Yeah, the threat. We should not fear the East. The East is Putin. I mean, literally, I mean, that's both literally to the East,

but also that's how Putin describes themselves often and his theorists describe himself. So Orban says we should fear the EU because they have too many regulations on something or other, I suppose, more than Putin. who has launched this brutal war at Ukraine, among many, many, many other things. And Rubio shows up one or two days later and says, we're with you.

It's terrible. It's just terrible. And that's our Secretary of State. And that's the one in the administration is supposed to be kind of the better one. You know, the one who's kind of quietly going to save us from some of the worst aspects of Trumpism. He's legitimating the worst aspects of Trumpism.

He has. In the same speech, in case the East was not clear enough, basing these translations on Euro News and European news, wire outlets. But in the same section of the speech, he calls it Putining. Putining is primitive and frivolous. And so for me, I was like, okay, well, maybe he's also criticizing Putin, but no, that's a critique of the Western practice of framing Russia and Putin as the scary threat. Like, that is frivolous, you know, to be overly concerned about Putin, because the tangible and

direct threat is Brussels. Total madness and insanity. And that's what Marco has said, that that is, that's who we sidled up to. It's very important to Donald Trump that that person succeeds. This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Sometimes it can feel like everyone else is it all together in their love lives, whether married dating or single, the truth is we're all figuring it out. We're all doing this thing one day at a time. And so no matter where you are in your romantic journey, therapy can help you find your way, help you determine what you want, what feels heavy, and how you can take some pressure off yourself. With better help, you can get quality therapists that work according to a strict code of conduct that are fully licensed of the U.S.

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Let's go to what some of the Democrats said about all of this. I'm just going to read from Mark Kelly and then place some AOC. Mark Kelly wrote this. When Secretary Rubio said the old world order was dead, he was right. It's dead because Donald Trump blew it up. He thinks this somehow benefits us. He is wrong. Our allies no longer trust us.

It was obvious in the more than a dozen meetings I had with president's prime ministers, defensive foreign ministers. If you're Denmark and Greenland, a loss of trust is generous. China is now more popular in Denmark than the United States. This means these countries are looking elsewhere for trade and security. That's making us poor and less safe. I want to play Mark, Kelly and AOC, can I give you a sense of how the various factions of the Democrats are talking about this?

But do you have anything on Kelly? I thought Kelly was very good, actually. Yeah, he's been very impressive for the last few months. I mean, maybe he's been impressive for a long than that. I wasn't following this closely. But ever since the Hick-Seth attack on him, I've been following him more closely. And I mean, he said it well, and he's absolutely right about this thing didn't just blow itself up, this order that we've had for the last.

80 years has been blown up by Trump and Ruby was there justifying it. AOC was over there. This caused a lot of stir. I think it's interesting to listen to her, to actually listen to her, and I'll have some thoughts on the back. We have to have a working class centered politics. If we are going to succeed and also if we are going to stave off the scourges of authoritarianism, this is a moment where we are seeing our presidential administration tear apart the transnational. Atlantic Partnership, rip up every democratic norm. And, you know, really calling into question, as was mentioned by

Dick Carney at the World Economic Forum, the rules-based order, that we have, or question mark, do we have? And we are in a new era, domestically and globally. many leaders who said we will go back. And I think we have to recognize that we are in a new day and in a new time. But that does not mean that the majority of Americans are ready to walk away from a rules-based order. What did you make about AOC? She's impressive, you know. What do you think, Kelly AOC in 2028? Maybe you want AOC Kelly, let's be honest, you know? No, don't try to put me in a box, Bill Crystal.

Here's what I thought was interesting about it. Well, I wanted to play it. Because she expands it kind of both of the points that she makes several times. But like on the one hand, she's talking about the working class politics. It's like a domestic, you know, speaking to kind of her domestic base, really, but also sort of framing that as like also a way to fight authoritarianism. Whereas if working people feel like the left party, liberal party is more on their side, then they might be less susceptible to the authoritarian. advances. And I think there's something to be said for it. And she also talked several times with the democratic norms. And I think it's funny because if you just consume the kind of internecine

lefty debate online, like a lot of times it gets framed up as like the Bernie left, you know, care about working people in economics and the squishy centrists care too much about democracy and norms, right? That that hurt Kamala, that she cared too much about that. And so it's interesting to see here AOC, like, just do both, right? And do both, you know, off the cuff, right? And she's been very comfortable talking about both, talking about democratic norms. And it's the type of thing, I think that a lot of, like, the lefty fans would, like, roll, sometimes roll their eyes when, when other folks do it. And so I thought that was interesting. I also thought it was interesting that, like, at this point, like, the DSA candidates are basically more committed to maintaining the,

the rules-based order, the alliances, the economic and political alliances we have with Europe, than the former neocons are. I think that's a pretty interesting contrast as well. Yeah, no, it's pretty amazing. I mean, has there been any pushback against AOC from the left? I haven't seen it, but maybe, I don't know. She's so invulnerable maybe, right, that she gets to say what maybe lesser social Democrats or Democratic socialists couldn't quite get away with saying, yeah, defending NATO. I mean, that's, but I would say, you know, it's interesting, as I listened to her. So in the early part of the, Cold War. There were many social Democrats or democratic socialism and people who literally were

from the socialist parties of their countries who were great allies in the fight against Soviet communism and who had been allies in the fight against fascism. And then there were the more, let's call them centrist, free market-ish, you know, types who we were more comfortable, usually having as allies in Europe. But there were big coalitions to often to fight against dictatorship and tyranny and oppression. I don't know if AOCs consciously sort of hearkening back to that or whether she just because Trump is destroying the rules-based order and because she does have a sense that this is really bad for the country and for the world. The effect of what she's saying is to begin to put together a genuine alliance, I would say, of a kind of working class-oriented

politics with a kind of liberal internationalism, which is good. And you don't have to buy every aspect of the working-class oriented politics in terms of domestic economic policy to think that for the point of view of the country and the world, you need to have that border alliance. We needed it in the 50s and 60s. We needed it through the Cold War and we need it today, I think, don't you think? Yeah, I do. She called it class-based internationalism in a different clip, which I don't really know if that's real or what that is. Exactly, that's a little thin. But that notion, right, I don't think is wrong. If somebody could merge or fuse, right, a idea that the party is going to hearken back to its roots and focusing on helping working people, all of the policies underneath

that I probably won't agree with, but just at least aesthetically. And if the focus is put on that, I think that's probably right. And I think that probably would help in some ways, or at least it would be worth trying in offsetting authoritarianness. I mean, the one thing that is true, if you're just analyzing the world, you know, comparative politics style, is like the left-wing parties everywhere have gotten to, you know, a siloed among college-educated urban elites, you know, and there needs to be some type of effort to change that. Like, there are ways to go about that. AOC is offering one possible way that I think it's worth trying. So, you know, to me, it's like, okay, well, if you're to try that and, you know, continue to, you know, have an internationalist commitment to

allied countries into countries that have, you know, commitments to fundamental, small, liberal values. We could do worse than that. We're doing significantly worse than that right now. So anyway, my last thing I would just say about AOC just as doing my version of Politico's figure skating, judging, as people start to buzz about her 2028, watching the whole speech. She seems a little less sure-footed talking about all this stuff. And so I think it was good that she went there. She would not be the first candidate to enter a campaign for president and feel less comfortable talking about international issues. George W. Bush comes to mind as one.

Many others, even met, I think got a lot better on that in his second campaign, then his first campaign, just thinking about people that I was following more closely. I think that if she does have her sights on that, it would probably be valuable to get more reps in on that sort of stuff. I couldn't tell. I listened to it very closely several times. I think she might have got Mark Carney's name wrong. I'm not 100% sure because she kind of mumbles it, which is sort of what I do.

I see a parent from school and I forget their name. I can mumble it really. fast. So it might have just been that. I don't know. Maybe I'm overstating. Just on an AOC. A, I think it's a president of she went there. And look, I've been there. I mean, there's quite a lot of pressure. I mean, everyone else, Frederick Friedrich Meritz has spoken and the vice and Rubio and she's on a panel. And it's not as if she's reading a text incidentally, I believe, right? So I give her credit for doing it and probably can have people like us say, oh, which wasn't perfect on this or that. But if you're running for president or even, well, if you're running for president or want to be a major figure,

even if you don't quite run for president. That's the kind of thing you do. But it's only February 26. It's impressive that she's doing it this early. I kind of think she may be thinking seriously about running for president, though, don't you think? I think so. I have no inside knowledge.

No, no, nor I. I'm just, you know, but I mean. If there was somebody in age between her and Bernie in her lane, I would think that maybe she would think, the right thing to just primary Schumer, right? Because I think that Schumer is extremely vulnerable. And, you know, she's in New York. and there isn't really.

So I have to imagine she's thinking about it. Lastly, Caputo, Archivore Colley, said that he basically said that in response, I forget who was too, but in response to some of the pushback to Rubio on the left, he said basically, Ruby and Vance want this fight. Like they want the contrast that was just laid out of AOC talking about, you know, internationalism and, you know, there are areas where we need to improve our commitment to human rights. versus kind of a Western culture, unapologetic, tough guy, Americanism. I don't know that that's the kind of thing that actually defines an election.

It really matters. And it's hard to kind of to look out to 2028 and think how salient that may or may not be. But I do wonder if you think that the Democrats just should be a little bit worried about that. That just because the Rubio framing is obviously ridiculous, that doesn't mean that it's not necessarily. effective. What would you say to that? I mean, a certain kind of nativism and unapologeticism.

Never apologize for anything that your country's ever done. I suppose that, of course, there's some appeal, demagogic appeal there, and the Democrats need to think about how to respond. Kelly is effective as he says it's making us less safe. If the actual truth of Rubio's talk is that his administration is portraying Ukraine,

there's not popular support for that in the United States, right? So I think the Democrats need to frame it in a way to say this talk may sound vaguely nice to you, but we're for our allies because that's kept us safe and it's made the World War prosperous. We're for Ukraine because they're fighting gravely against Putin. And here's a little bit about how horrible Putin is. And here's a little bit about how Ukraine is fighting our fight for us and not asking for troops, just for aid.

I mean, I think there are ways to do it that would be effective and not fall into some trap. Yeah, if you sound like some super goopy internationalist, you know, if only let the UN govern us, that would be good. I guess, but I don't think Democrats are pretty far from that these days. Look, I think the AOC thing I really focused on it. You brought it up today. It's very interesting.

If that really begins a move by even the AOC wing of the party into a more liberal internationalist, foreign policy, as opposed to where democratic socialists really had been going the last 10, 20, 30 years, which was a repudiation even of that because it led to first to Vietnam and then to Iraq and so forth. They can still repudiate Vietnam and Iraq or obviously. Yeah, sure. But more of an isolationist, yeah. Yeah. them away from a kind of isolationism or just wishfulness and into a healthier version of a liberal

internationalist foreign policy. That's good for them and it's good for the country, I think. Yeah. Also, this is I'll be Bill Crystal. Events are going to matter. You know, depending on how big of a shit show things are by the end of 2027, you know, I think there can be a compelling argument about how much weaker America is right now. And it's a little bit of an academic argument right now that China is strengthening and we are weakening in the world stage. And, you know, there's not a lot of tangible evidence for that unless you're the type of person that's like really paying attention to, you know, trade agreements and such. But there's some tangible evidence of that develops, you know, I think that there might be

a way to thread that needle. One of the foreign policy thing, it just caught my eye. I just kind of want to mention this because could end up becoming a pretty important. as we go forward on the AI beat. The Anthropic products are used in the Venezuela raid, which I thought was interesting. More interesting, though, was this story I saw this morning, which is that Pete Hagseth is saying that he's close to cutting all ties with Anthropic

and designated the AI company a supply chain risk, meaning that anyone wants to do business with the U.S. has to cut ties with the company. The reason why is that the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amaday says he wants to ensure that 20, tools aren't used to spy on Americans en masse or develop weapons that fire with no human involvement. Pentagon officials are insisting that any relationship with AI companies allows the military to do whatever they want, basically. Anthropic of the AI companies, they're the ones that are trying to focus on, you know, safety and ethical considerations.

And they are, you know, paying lip service to that, at least much more than their competitors. You know, kind of we'll see the proof will be in the pudding on all that. But I think it's pretty concerning telling that our government is about to, is considering at least declaring like full out war on the one AI company that is at least pretending like they care about safeguards. And, you know, we'll see how it all plays out. But I definitely think this is something to keep monitoring. And how much is this just a way of channeling where business to Musk,

since he's one of the other three, right, AI players? It might all be just about that. But now it's terrible. And of course, the same week, isn't it that HECSeth sort of making it harder, I guess, for members of the military to be, who are going to law school to become JAGs, to go to, you know, the 30 top law schools in the U.S. basically, is there so woke.

Yeah, the military might not cover it if you go to a woke. Right. No, apparently. And they're telling people to be applied to other places and so forth. And I think they've also cut back on some of the big career programs that I very much enjoyed when I taught a little bit at the Kennedy School in the 2000s and had wonderful, you know, the majors, the lieutenant colonel. all's there for their year, instead of going to the war colleges, had a very good influence on the other

students, incidentally. But Hexas, they want to throw all that away. But these poor guys, these 35-year-old majors, or these 25-year-old, I suppose, JAG law students. In Hexas's view, they're so pathetically vulnerable, they have so little idea of what they believe, why they're joining the military, that they're going to go to Harvard or Princeton, which is where Hexeth went, incidentally, and get brainwashed by a bunch of professors? I don't think so, really. That was not my experience. also in the list. It feels like we should have members of the military who have certain technical expertise should be able

to go to MIT, I think. Think about what the heck is selling people in the military. You are not a serious enough person to go to a place where the predominant culture is presumably liberal, I guess, though in fact the military's the last 20 years, been treated so much better at these schools than obviously post-Vietnam and stuff. So there's been very few real problems for them. But anyway, you can't

go there because you're going to, I don't know what. You know, you're just going to get the wokeness is going to permeate into your brain in some mysterious way and you're suddenly going to not be a good member in the military. It's so insulting. It's so insulting to these serious people who are trying to become lawyers and jags or who are getting their big career year of education so they can then move up and become, you know, Fulbert colonels or ultimately general officers. It's, you do wonder how much damage it's all going to do. It's so stupid. You almost can't take it seriously. But I don't know. I mean, it's going to lead to more people leaving the military, I suppose, who thought, you know,

I'd like to go to a good law school if I'm going to go the Jag route. I guess the best case for that policy is that Pete Hags has himself a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, so maybe they're not doing as good of a job as we think. On a few ice things, I had never even covered this case, but it's worth mentioning it just because it's so striking. So the district court judge, Paul Magnuson, dismissed felony assault charges against two Venezuelans, Alfredo Aljornah and Julio Caesar Sosa-Sellis. This was in Minneapolis.

They're accused of beating an ice officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel on January 14th. The officer fired a shot from his handgun striking a Sosa Seles in his right thigh. So that was the whole story. They told basically that he shot him because they were beaten. They announced it on the weekend that newly discovered evidence was, quote, materially inconsistent with the allegations. You don't say both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation. we'll see if those investigations actually occur.

But I just think it's so notable, right? Like that we have these prime cases that everybody's debating. That's all in all of our faces where we watch them lie to us with their own eyes. But then there have been a lot of other instances of these guys like menacing people, injuring them, in this case, shooting them, and then lying about them and smearing them. So, I mean, it's good, I guess, that these things are being adjudicated. But it is a pretty notable state of affairs. We literally just cannot trust anything that the Department of Homeland Security says.

Yeah, totally. I mean, the lies are just so, they're not like slight shading of the truth. They're exaggerating, you know, how much trouble they were in or the person hit them, but it really wasn't a shovel. It was just a broomstick, so she wasn't as serious. It's not like that kind of thing. They just made up a story, right? I mean, it sounds like it, yeah.

To justify shooting someone. I am all out of patience with ICE and the Border Patrol in every respect. To that front, the DHS is currently shut down. Just kind of this partial government shutdown happening. We discussed this last week. Which part of the communists are you in? Which wing are you in the Trotskyite wing? I can't remember.

Leonard is Trotskyite wing. You're in the Trotskyite wing and somebody else's. And you're in the Trotskyite wing, you know, saying, no, not a single penny for DHS, shut it down. Negotiations are ongoing about whether maybe, you know, Republicans might change some of the various policies. You know, because we take good faith criticism. here. We're not perfect. We're not unapologetic. There was a column that was unhappy with your hardline point of view is from Marcy Wheeler, who's, you know, been monitoring the Trump administration successes for a long time now. So we'll take it. Basically, her argument was this. Not funding DHS in

this fight doesn't really do anything to change ICE and CBB's behavior because they have so much money. And so she says, like, to have that be the only ask is to basically throw up your hands in the hopes that in 11 months, Democrats love the tools to do something more, all while letting ice continue to spend billions unmalested. So the idea is basically, why not get some concessions now because they have enough funding anyway and then refight the fight next year, essentially. What would you say to that dissent? I mean, I'm forgetting some concessions, too. I didn't really think I was advocating totally dropping. I do think the money is extremely important. 16 billion isn't that much given how much they got in the reconciliation bill last year,

but it's not nothing. And I, people, Aaron Reckland-Mell and others say, you know, they'd let them draw down some of that other money. It means it's less available for the next couple of years. And also, I just think it lays the predicate for making the broader case against ICE and the border patrol if Democrats win the House and or the Senate and to really, and then they really do need to get serious about the funding. So I think you need to get people used to the fact that the funding is as important

as some of these concessions or adjustments in how they do business. I'm for going after all of them. I'm uncomfortable with just, not uncomfortable. I'm more than uncomfortable. I don't think it's a good idea to just swear off doing anything about funding. I mean, I respect Marcy Willer, and maybe, you know, look, this is a matter of tactics. Are Democrats going to vote? Let's say they get a couple of concessions on masks or on, you know, I don't know what, body can.

They're not going to get masks incidentally, but anyway, body canvass or something. And they're then going to vote to add funding. Again, not as small. I had $16 billion to ICE and to border patrol. I don't know. I would have a tough time after everything. We've just talking about the way they behaved in giving them a whole lot of money with pretty limited modifications and how they're doing business and no change in their leadership

to speak of, right? I don't see how you can without very real changes. And so this is kind of a devil in the details thing for me. But I don't know how you can give them another penny while they're masked, for starters. It's just no one else gets to be masked, which seen the problems that has caused already. Like, it's an odd starter for me. I'm never going to be in the United States Senate, but that's where I would be. That'd be my message for them.

You haven't changed your mind about running? You haven't changed your mind about the Senate race? I've not changed my mind. Since we discussed it a week ago, you know? I've not. I think I'm worse. The more I reflect on it, the less competitive I seem. So I appreciate the feedback.

Lastly, I would feel remiss if I didn't ask you. Former President Barack Obama was in an interview this weekend where he said he believes that aliens exist. He said he didn't have any evidence that. He hasn't seen any evidence. And so I'm just curious. where Bill Crystal is on aliens. This shows my limited imagination, I'm sure,

but I've never given it that much thought. Not a lot of thought on aliens? What did Dan Quayal think about aliens, do you think? Don't you think in Republican circles? We were sort of, we were vaguely doubtful about aliens, I think. Doubtful about aliens. I think the people who are pro-ali-alien. It's a little bit of a front to religion, I think.

If you're devoutly- Yeah, so that's true. It is an affront end to, at least to biblical religion as we understand it. And also, the people who were pro-seeing aliens, I guess there were elements. Was that a horseshoe thing? There were elements on the right and the left. Probably horseshoof, yeah. I don't know.

I'm still a skeptical. I'm interested that Barack Obama is just, I mean, I only saw the sentence. So we said, it's a very big universe. So why couldn't there be alien forms of alien life? I guess that's, if you define it broadly enough, that could be true. I don't know. I kind of, I guess I'm old-fashioned enough in that respect. I think maybe kind of like the idea that we're the only actual human beings who have this,

I believe, quite think and feel the way that we do. I don't know. Maybe it's just a prejudice. I've kind of backtracked. I'm not even sure if we exist. Well, that's good. You know, this might all be fake. That's a good position.

All I can know is that I exist. All right, Bill Crystal, thank you so much. We'll be seeing. I'll be seeing you in Minnesota. You're coming. I'm coming. Stan Stein is with us. JBL and Sarah.

We're going to have some special guests from the community. Very much looking forward to it. I'll be back for Marty Grabs said tomorrow. Well, I'm just going to tell you now. It won't be with James Carville. We've done two James Carville-Mardi Grub episodes in a row. And I had dinner with him about a week or two ago. And I was like, we're going to continue the tradition, right?

And I'm not going to try to do his voice. But he was like, I'm 81. I'm going on a cruise by myself. I was like, what? I was like, you're going on a cruise by yourself? And he said, yes. Mary didn't want to go. I'd never been.

And I want to go. And so I was like, God bless him. That's great. I think good on him. Just think about, like, what a gift that is. to whoever is sitting next to him at dinner. I was thinking about that. You look up, you're on the cruise.

They give you your, they get like table assignments and stuff. There you are. That would be something. It's James Carvel. It's like people pay $25,000 a pop for this and you're going to get a full weekend of just unmolested James Carvel material.

So anyway, we'll have another good one. It'll be good. We'll have a Mardi Gras episode for you tomorrow. And then we'll see everybody in Minneapolis. Appreciate to you, Bill. See everybody else tomorrow. Peace. The Bullerickin'ass.

We're going to need to rehearse. You got the East and the West Bank coming on the verse. Lunday crowd wood. The Bullock podcast is produced by Katie Cooper. The Bullock podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.