The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: The Cracks in Trump's Power Are Showing

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Unrest has broken out in MAGA, and Mike Johnson looks like he’s losing control of the House—which means that Trump could be losing control of the party. And the fear of Trump is morphing into loathing because Republicans are not winning. Meanwhile, DOGE has ended in another total Elon failure: Not only was no money saved, the program’s biggest success was cutting assistance to the world’s most vulnerable people. Trump has only been ‘fixing’ the government to work for his grift. Plus, Mamdani showed real political skill in meeting Trump, but the left needs to cool it with its 'Trump is a populist' take. As MTG pointed out, he definitely is not. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes 'Bulwark on Sunday' with Bill and Catherine Most recent 'Shield of the Republic' Jon on the fraud in the health care system Tim's 'Bulwark Take' on Trump turning 'fascist' into a punchline The Bulwark's new merch! Don’t miss NOBL’s biggest Sale of the Year! Head to NOBLTravel.com for up to 62% off your entire order! #NOBL #ad

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, a couple of announcements. We have some new merch here, I'm kind of standing up so you can see it a little bit for the YouTube. And some might say that the new merch is a little more Tim coded than the past offerings. You can go to the Bullwark.com slash store to see what we got cooking up. I am also, I've been back from a week on the road, and so I had a lot of takes bubbling up that I did last night after Toulouse went to bed. So you can already see my talk with Will Summer on Candice Owens going even insaneer. Can you say insaneer?

Whatever. Candice Owens way off the deep end. I saved that for Will's summer. So that's already up. You can check that out in the Bullock takes feet. I also grabbed my guy Pablo Torre, who's been just really on a heater. He had the big Riley Gaines story. and he does sports politics overlap and that should be up later today also on the bulwark takes feed

and we got a new mailbag segment coming soon for bulwark plus members to get to the end of the year we want to encourage more bullock plus members black friday is coming up so you can sign up either on youtube or substack i'm going to be taking mailbag questions so are some of my colleagues fun and goofy would be great but we'll also take your politics questions too you can email us at bulwark podcast at thebork.com and sign up for Borg Plus now so you get access to that. For today's show, there's some big threats to Trump's power out there. There's unrest within the mega base. He's losing control over the party. He's losing the fear factor. And to talk about all that, it's the editor at large, Bill Crystal. What's up, Bill? Just pondering that you get all

these fun bulwark takes with Will on Candace Owens and on Bradley Gaines. And I'm having sober discussions on Sunday, bullwork on Sunday with Catherine Rampel on economic data. Is the real economy a little better or a little worse? But everyone does his own thing. Everyone does its own thing, right? I mean, you know.

That was a great bulwark on Sunday, and people should check that out. I mean, if you want to get even more serious, Shield of the Republic had an excellent guest this week, whose name I'm blanking on, former general, who is really good. So, you know, we give people out. Jonathan Cohn's newsletter is deep diving on health care fraud this week? It was really good.

Excellent. No, excellent stuff. I will say you have had, I mean, you and Will, particularly since this is his beat, the amount of material he's had and that you've been happy to help him develop in Maga World. It's pretty astonishing the last couple of weeks, right? Just as a teaser, I guess I'll just tell people. Candice Owens thinks that the French president has issued a hit on her and it's trying to assassinate her. And there is a female French Huguenots or whatever Legionaire

teaming up with naturally Bill you'll be surprised to hear an Israeli hitman and the two of them are currently in the country

maybe even working with the Americans thinking about snuffing out Candice Owens because of her takes and so there's much more there

so that's just a little tease go check that on a board takes I went to Tucker Co Tucker Co my mind is coming with all the jury he's an anti-semide

a cake Tucker Carlson's ex-A because someone told me he had tweeted something about Ukraine. I don't really follow him. But it turns that he has pinned, maybe everyone else knew this, he has pinned a kind of insane 9-11 denier thing to his ex-agate.

So he's gone full, I mean, he's got everything, right? Full neo-Nazi adjacent, but also full 9-11 truther adjacent. Yeah. Did we know that? Okay, you knew that. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. I'm consuming a lot of material over there.

That's the one nice thing about traveling and a lot of train and airplane time for me to just really kind of marinate in the crazy. We've got too much news to get to. Everything happened since we take Friday with Adam Kinsiger. MTG, Margie Taylor Green, the new Apple of JVL's eye. She resigned from Congress or is resigning coming up in January after her pension kicks in, which I should just say, I'm fine with, by the way, that's a normal behavior. Okay, people waiting until after their pension kicks in to resign, but it is noteworthy.

She put out a very lengthy video and four-page note on this. I think trying to divine what are the real intentions and motivations of Marjorie Taylor Green is kind of a fool's errand. It's a little bit of a silly parlor game. We can do it if you want. We can play it if you want. But to me, the more interesting thing is like the actual substance of why she claimed she's resigning. And I'm just going to read a little bit from it. No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman.

If I'm cast aside by MAGA Inc. And replaced by neocons, big pharma, big tech, military, industrial war complex, foreign leaders, the elite donor class that can't relate to real Americans that many common Americans have been cast aside and, excuse me, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well. There is no plan to save the world or insane 4D chess game being played with Trump. Taking that at face value, I Marjorie Green is basically saying Trump has been co-opted by the swamp and the quote-unquote Uniparty that they all campaigned against, that he's abandoned their voters. And again, regardless of what you think about her motivations,

that is objectively true that he has abandoned its own voters and doesn't care about them and cares more about the elites. And I think that that is objectively a real threat to him. It's unfortunate I think that Marjorie Taylor Green has decided not to continue that fight from inside Congress because I think that that's a salient attack on Trump. But it's pretty noteworthy that that is like what her stated reason was. What would you make of the whole Marjorie Taylor Green departure? Yeah, and I think she'll keep this up, even if she's not in Congress, don't you think.

I somehow don't think she's going to go quietly into the goodness. night and all that. I think she's going to become a painter and move to Midland and kind of mind her own business. I think, I'm thinking laying the ground work for presidential run in 28. I don't know whether there's

primary Trump in the republic, if he's running again, or if Trump's designee, or maybe it'll be a new MAGA party or whatever. But I'm really, I think anything's possible at this point. Look, you and I discussed this a few weeks ago.

Splits within the MAGA coalition can do a lot of damage, even if you pry off 3, 5, 7, 8%, right? I mean, it's a real, you know, who maybe don't vote in 2026 or who right there, members of Congress or communicate with the members of Congress and say you don't need to vote

with Trump every time. I feel like we're hitting a critical mass where all these hopes have been put, I think not by you and me, in these moderate Republicans, when will they split? You know, the Don Bacon's of the world. What are they going to do the right thing? It turns out, I think we'll see more of what happened on Epstein, which is the MAGA Republicans, splitting from Trump. And in a very narrowly divided House, that has real consequences. I noticed that the House members have realized, hey, that discharge petition worked on Epstein and now it's worked on this union bill. and there seemed to be filing war of them on Ukraine, I think one was filed last week. And I don't know, that one would get the moderate Republicans, not the mega ones.

But I really wonder whether Johnson's control on the House, which is to say Trump's control of the House, is now in risk in a way that we haven't seen in this entire Congress. There's some evidence of this. Again, not to do too much happy talk on Bill until Monday the second week in a row. But I was reading my Punch Bowl news this morning, which is, and I don't usually do on this show, kind of like insidery DC on background comments by congressman to reporters because it's just a lot of that stuff is generally hot air and and you know we don't need to follow the minute by minute. We're not lobbyists. Joe Particone's got that for folks that are really interested in

that. I read his newsletter. But this one caught my eye today because of exactly what you said, how there's some signs of cracks. And what we're seeing in Congress is that fear of Trump is starting to turn into loathing of him because he's weakening. Here was what Punch Bull reported. Marjorie Terry Green's four-page note was stinging for House Republicans. Why? Because the message rang so true to so many in the House of GOP. And then here's one anonymous Republican being quoted.

The entire White House team has treated all members like garbage, all. That is the sentiment of nearly all appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off-putting to members. who are run roughshod and threatened. They don't even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Members know they're going into the minority after the midterms. More explosive early resignations are coming.

It's a Tinderbox. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out. Now, again, for 10 years, we've had anonymous Republicans complaining about Trump. So there's some element of like taking this with a grain of salt. But to me, you look at that.

that. And the fact that is coming out now speaks to this broader trend, which is there's a sense that Donald Trump is losing power, right? Like, there's no sense to even make that point anonymously when the golden age is here again, right? Like, if things are going well politically for Trump, if Trump seems very powerful, if he's making the richest people in the world and universities and law firms cow to him, then the people in the house, they don't need to announce their small grants, right? Because things are fine, right? Like, everybody's happy. The voters are happy. Right now, the voters are not happy. They are not happy. They think Trump's treating them like shit. They're happy to be treated like shit if it meant that they were going to be winning.

But now that they're losing, they're starting to push back against it. And they saw with the Epstein files that that pushback can work. I think that's pretty significant. This happening post-Ebstein files is totally different than if it had been some background quotes before. There's been an instance where Trump was thwarted and ended up capitulating. We'll see what happens obviously in a month what they release and all that. So that's big, and I think the November 4th election. So you put those two have both happened in the last, in this month, right? And that's, those are both real things.

It's not, gee, the polls went from 44% to 39%. That's not unimportant. But on the other hand, they'll go back up. No one's voting for a year. You're a member of Congress. Your own district isn't 39. Your own district is 58 or something because they're, you know, so it just has much less effect.

I think a lot of our friends have overestimated the importance of these movements of the public opinion polls. But this is now affecting actual votes in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere on November 4th, and then an actual vote in Congress on Epstein and actual signing by Trump of the Epstein Fas. I just feel like we're at a somewhat different world here as we get close to enter December than we were certainly just when we entered November, just a month ago. I agree with you on the polls. I've been very reluctant to even talk about them on the show because it's just like it's kind of, it's so early. But it is worth knowing. As of today, I pulled up Nate silver this morning. Trump's at 41% approved, 56 disapprove. And you said, you know, maybe they'll go

back up. Maybe they will. But if you look at it right now, the trend, you know, if you're looking at me on the screen, you know, it's a ski slope right now, down. And it's, you know, it's a green or a blue. You know, it's not a steep double black diamond ski slope, but it's going to, it's consistently going down. And there's a slight pop up after, you know, there's a big dip on Liberation day with the tariffs and a slight pop-up after that. But besides that, it's been mostly going down the whole time. I think that this is particularly important, especially in the Buller context and what we care about and are so focused on, which is the broader protection of liberal democracy, is that his authoritarian ambitions are weakened by him seeming to be

weakened politically, right? Like, there actually is a connection between political popularity and the authoritarian ambitions. And, you know, the degree to which people fight him, the degree to which people, you know, are scared of him, accept the inevitability. Like, he, that's what he wants. Like, he wants an error that this is, you know, that there was a shock wave and the American people called for him. They rejected the woke. And we just, we need to, everyone needs to just accept that this is inevitable. And like, as a con man, like, he's pretty good at that. And it seems like his ability to con his way into more authoritarian power is limited significantly by the series of events that you just laid out. I don't know. At the extent to you agree with that.

Yeah, very much so. And one defeat on the hill can lead to a second. We've seen this in past years, especially years that were the prelude to big midterm defeats, 94 in particular. That was more about health care that midterm. But it was the crime bill going down in August, I think, of 94 that was like, oh, my God, Clinton's kind of lost control of what was a very predominantly Democratic Congress. So I do think more instances where he suffers actual defeats can really make a difference. The polls matter, but the combination of steady polling decline and actual defeat, setbacks, failure to ram things through Congress, a little bit more objections from Congress, another discharge petitioner two.

Maybe the Senate even starts to perk up a little. Bill Cassidy yesterday was still in the same mode he's been in for 18. nine months, pathetically refusing to kind of criticize, well, sort of criticizing Kennedy, but Trump doesn't agree with Kennedy. And really, Kennedy, there's a footnote on their CDC website that means that Kennedy hasn't betrayed his promise to me. I mean, so Cassidy is still in pathetic accommodation mode, which maybe he's got a primary in Louisiana, and where you are next year.

So maybe that shows the limits of what we're saying so far. But I feel like people shouldn't underestimate it. What's important, I think, is to think of instances, if you're in the anti-Trump side of things, where actual defeats can be imposed on Trump. I do think the headline of, losing a vote, failing to get a rule through, failing to get a nominee confirmed on the Senate side is really worth a lot in the next month or two. Kathy's so pathetic. He's on two. One of the things, he's even using, like, I want to make America healthy again. He's doing the talking points for what seems to be inevitable primary loss. And I heard some scuttle butter on town

that he was calling folks to give names to be appointed to some of these to replace the people that have been kicked out of a run out by RFK at HHS because, you know, I guess they're doing some behind the scenes. He's trying to get some wins, trying to, you know, figure out how to how to do some stuff that he agrees with while accommodating the RFK madness. Like in the calls to people, he's saying, you know, I need you to give me somebody that's a Republican or I need you to give me somebody that won't, you know, that won't rock the boat on this sort of stuff. And it's like, these are for scientists positions, right? Like, this is not like, oh, I need you to throw me a Republican name to be the political

attach to the Commerce Department or whatever. Like, you know, it's like, these are boards. There's supposed to be scientific experts. And like, anyway, it's just so pathetic what Cassidy's been doing. But it's possible that he's an outlier, though. He also has to overcompensate for his impeachment vote if he wants to try to stay in. right i think he i think he'll be the they'll be the last one so i'll take so you and i were at the dick chaney funeral on on thursday and you had an excellent piece for friday morning

friday's morning shots on the passing of the old order so there were a ton of people that i've known over the years and i was slightly dreading it because anyway a lot of them have accommodated trump in ways they shouldn't have but i was struck and they're the hardest socially actually to deal with you know because there's just a tension yeah a nice guy used to be friendly served in the maybe the old Bush administration with or knew when he worked for W and, you know, kind of cordial and haven't seen him in 15 years

because he's off making money as a vice president for government relations for a major bank. God knows what he's had to do or has chosen to do with the Trump administration over the last year in terms of getting along and going along. Of course, these people are professional types

of their cordial, but my hunches two months ago would have been pleasant but pretty distant. And suddenly it was a kind of, they were a lot of them wanting to say, hey, kind of, I see the bulwark, you know, I don't, I can't really, I work, I can't really do that kind of stuff, but it's good that you guys are doing what you're doing. I think they're not just making it up as they mentioned you or they mention, you know, someone else.

I had several of those, too, people who are like, you're a daily, I'm a daily listener. And I was like, didn't you endorse Trump? I was like, you're a daily listener. Exactly. So I was struck by that. And then I was struck also that went to kind of one step further, some of the ones who are in touch with Trump world, sort of wanting to, I don't know, over to analyze this. You know, but wanting to be friendly and sort of, you know, helpful.

You know, Bill, they're kind of in real disarray. I mean, Vance and HVans and Rubio, not even speaking to each other. Hexeth, more paranoid than ever. One of them put it out to be something that I then tweeted that Driscoll, the Army secretary, who's a Hegsteth roommate from Yale, was in some call, I guess, Vance and Rubio were on. Driscoll was on representing DoD, not Hexeth. Now, Hexeth was probably traveling or something. Still, it's kind of striking.

Secretary of Army is not even the number two or three person. and excess paranoid that Jistel's going to replace him. People were kind of wanting, I don't know if you had this experience a little bit, to share a little gossip to show they were kind of, you know, with us in spirit. I, I mean, I've got to say it encouraged me a little bit about the state of play. Do you think the Rubio Vance thing is true? I mean, or is that wishcasting? That was your sense.

I think it's partly true at least. I think Vance is, they think they're rivals for 2028. I don't think they like each other much also. Vance has really thrown his right around as VP. He has people in the Defense Department, Driscoll we just mentioned, and the Undersecretary Defense for Policy, Fritch Colby.

Rubio's got the lead on Venezuela. Vance doesn't want to do that, so there Vance is trying to undercut him. I don't know. I think that could all be true. Also, these things that seem to be so insane, these rifts that's got back to Marjorie Shelley Green in Mago World, I think they're putting more pressure on all these people,

which means they might make some mistakes. So, Bance, I was told, can't afford to antagonize Tucker, which means he can't criticize the neo-Nazi stuff. Vance has consistently not said that. On the other hand, he's got to get along with, you know, donor world and semi-sane Republican world so he can't actually embrace the neo-Nazi stuff too much.

And so apparently there's just endless maneuvering and talking and trying to keep this guy on board and that one on board. And my experience in politics is when you get into that kind of effort, it's very hard. You know what I mean? Things go awry. Yeah, you're already in the barrel.

Yeah. And Vance has Tucker's kid. working for him who there's a lot of arrows coming for because apparently he's been leak he's been one of the ones that has been leaking you know trying to nudge the administration towards abandoning ukraine which we'll get to in some of these areas some of the more hawkish people have been have been tagging for leaking and then you get all this like as a jd is like gets on x and is like defending the honor of tucker's son and be like you can't to attack a young person like this it's like Tucker's kids like a 28 year old like influential senior official

sorry he's not like a child it wasn't like a 13 year old was tweeting and we were like criticizing their tweets it's like sorry you take a job for the vice president and as a spokesperson for the vice president then you can you can be criticized okay we can't we don't need to infantilize them anyway one last thing in the mtg thing that just before you know we get too high on our supply here the one argument in trump's favor of him still having a lot of control and power and fear is that there has been a 10 year trend now of any time you someone really steps out to criticize Trump they end up resigning. And the list, you know, Corker, Flake, to Liz Cheney's credit. She actually did put herself up for election, but kind of, we can just say half-heartedly. I mean, I love Liz.

I was happy that she stayed in that race, but I think she knew, saw the writing on the wall. There hasn't really been anybody that's like, I'm challenging Trump and I'm staying, and I'm bearing down for a fight, and let's see if he can actually beat me. And I think that

that shows that, you know, we're not, we're not at the end state yet, right? Like, I think that if Trump was not preceded death, and I think that she had some concerns about her safety, and, like, that's part of Trump's power, right? That he weaponizes his crazy supporters against people. So, you know, there's some reasons to understand that, but I just wanted to, I think that is a noteworthy that to continue that trend. Well said. Cold mornings, holiday plans.

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lip service to the fact that we're still trying to do efficiency stuff throughout other places of government i just an utter failure from elan the only legacy of doge really is the complete dismantling of assistance for the world's most vulnerable people. Who knows how long the scroll of death is from people throughout the world who lost access to aid. There's no, if you just look at the chart of government spending and outlays, there's no significant cut, in part because a lot of the staff that they cut and they rift or whatever, we're still getting paid. It's still getting paid all year because they did it illegally. And so a lot of them either have back pay and USAID is just is, as we've all been saying forever,

like an infinitesimal part of the budget when you look at it at the biggest picture. And so the legacy is cutting all of that while not really doing anything meaningful to deal with what is a legitimate concern, which is that the U.S. government debt and deficit. So I don't know if you have any Doge thoughts. Eulogy for Doge.

They did a lot of damage all kinds of parts of the U.S. government, obviously some of the biomedical research, NIH, and obviously AID, and the spirit of Doge, the rampage through the Justice Department and through the intelligence community, firing senior officers at DOD, they have done a huge amount of damage. But as you say, with no compensating good things, really, I mean, no savings of money, no efficiencies that one can see, quite the contrary. They still seem to be in total and disarray and having to reverse themselves every, you know,

two minutes and stuff. So, yeah, big failure. So shock and all in this case, as in other cases of shock. I don't know, it didn't maybe work out so well. But did real damage to real human beings, so that's bad. Yeah. And it's one thing to be like, okay, hey, we're bloodless accountants. And it's like, sorry, like there's going to have to be some suffering,

but the budget is just out of control and we've got to bring things back in balance. Obviously, there would have been outrage and everybody would have different opinions on how exactly they went about it. But then at the end of the day, I could at least say, look, you know, we took the deficit from $4 trillion to $1 trillion this year or whatever it is, something like much more manageable. And the interest that we're paying on the debt, you know, in the future will be smaller. So we'll use that money to offset these services and give people more, like there would be a way to make that case an utter failure on that front. They did nothing except for cause suffering.

One more item, though, related to Doge kind of just, this is different from outrage within the MAGA world because it's, it's a little bit of like the backlash of the old Tea Party types or more than the traditional MAGA types. if we're kind of bifurcating the coalition. But again, when it comes to people now being willing to speak out against Trump, after this news this morning I saw on social media, DeSantis, says this, Doge fought the swamp in the swamp one. And Tim Burchett, a congressman for Tennessee, a Tea Party type, and is one of the ones that pushed out McCarthy, talks about how Moscow had been pushed out of Washington

because he was getting too close to exposing the corrupt officials, enriching themselves, and essentially implying that Trump is siding with them. Again, on both of these cases, neither of them are like stating Trump by name, but they are giving support to that building narrative, right? The, like, Trump went in there and was like, we're going to take on these entrenched interests and Doge was part of that on behalf of the Forgotten Man on behalf of MAGA. And now he gets in there and it's like, no, actually, I like to hang out with the rich people at Saudi estate dinners instead.

Yeah, but I think the flip side, which you just touched on there, just to elaborate for a second, And I mean, it's very important, too, that it's both, Trump is not fixing the government. He's not making it work for you, as he promised. But you know what he is doing? He's enriching himself, his family, and they're all enriching themselves. I mean, the degree of just grifts and corruption, not just in tiny little part of, not tiny, but a small part of, you know, Trump family world, but in across all of them, right, is so astonishing. And I do, you know, I've wondered about that.

People have said corruption, will that breakthrough, won't have breakthrough. But I kind of feel also there, too. there's, I guess Sarah's finding this in some of the focus groups. It's Trump said he was going to be for you. He's not really doing anything for you. So that's what, A, that's not good. And B, the only thing he's really accomplishing is grifting money for himself and all of his buddies. It's a giant, you know, corruption scheme up there at the top and second, even third tiers of the U.S. government, quite remarkable, actually. And I kind of feel like people are getting a sense of that. Yeah. To play the pronoun game, like the ad was,

what Kam was for they, them. Trump is for you, but it turns out that if the Democrats are for they, them, Trump is for him, he, him, you know, self and his friends. And J.V.L. has been so good on this. And so I guess I'll just leave it to him. But the darkness of Elon, like going into the government, starving the global poor, leaving the government, getting a trillion dollar payout. That's enough to make Tim and Bill's internal Social Democrats.

It's going to come back out again, looking at the government. that story. What about the Saudi States? I know you've discussed this on other podcasts, but you and I haven't discussed it. It was nauseating, right? Oh, horrific. Beyond. Horrific for all those guys to go. And for what? For why? Like, why? And this is kind of similar to some of the people where you're talking about the Cheney funeral. Like, at some level, I can't get my eye up over people that quietly acquiesced. Like, I can, but you know what I mean? Like, you know, You only have so much room for hate in your heart. There's no reason for these people to go to that.

It's not as if Tim Cook and Mark Benioff, if they did not attend the, you know, bon saw dictators like in a state dinner that Trump would have come for them. I would like to go back to 2017 when they're putting out statements saying this is disgusting and nauseating and F you. Okay. They're not going to do that. That's fine. They could quietly just not go and just hanging out, you know, it'll be like, sorry.

I'm a very important businessman, and I have a meeting in Switzerland that day. But to actively choose to go, do selfies, smile. To me, that is the part that gets me the most pissed. I mean, they're either the greedy and maybe there's more money to be made from Saudis. They have a lot of money. But also, they're so terrified of Trump. This is the flip side of our hopefulness of the MAGA coalition being to split. The elites, so far there's been very little sign of them backing off.

And I would say, as the state dinner suggests, continued, just aggressive, willing, and eager capitulation. Now, if that ever stops or there's some signs of cracks in that, that would really be a sign of him losing clout. But that has not happened yet. And it's going to turn out that, you know, lunatics, I could say, like Tim Burchard, whatever his name is, and Marshall Taylor Green are going to have much more courage and integrity than the leaders of a major American corporations. It's a little unfortunate. in a weird way I'm just spitballing

this theory live so I've been really thought about it that deep place people can tell me I'm wrong in the comments if they want but like in some ways

the weaker Trump looks the more the business elites will probably say maybe I should just capitulate because whatever I just got to survive three years and this thing is done right

where it's like I think they probably wouldn't show any courage either if they were scared of him becoming an authoritarian but like there's there's something soothing about that

where they can soothe themselves and be like this this grandpa is not going to be a dictator in three years. And so why not just, you know, make as much money as I can from the Saudi grift, I guess? That's a clever on the run, impromptu insight, I think. I have to think about that a little more, but no, that could well be. That could well be, yeah. Okay. We'll sit on it. All right, I've been traveling a bunch this week. And, boy, I don't know about you, but the luggage deterioration is real. You know, you got these little

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After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Other thing we haven't talked about since Friday, or since it happened Friday, rather, is the Trump-Zoran meeting in the Oval. I've got some thoughts, but I just kind of want any observations you have before I spout off. Zoran is very, he's very adept. I mean, I've got to say both at the meeting itself and on TV Sunday and sort of not actually backing off on things, but nonetheless, getting what I suppose he wanted to get from Trump, which is some, at least backing off, some halt, some delay at least, in his going after New York City, which is important for him as he takes over for mayor. as mayor, it'll be better off. He can buy it. If he's bought a month or two, maybe we'll

see what happens over. He doesn't take over as mayor for another month plus, so we'll see what happens. But I think that's striking. You know what something struck me? This is so trivial, but then I'll, he won't hear your deeper, more considered thought. When I was in the White House, and when everyone's been, every White House till Trump, people came into the Oval Office for a photo or something. The president would stand up and greet them. And often the photo would be in front of the desk, right? With a group of A, a group of three or a group of 15, you know, spread out appropriately, you know, the half semi-circle and so forth. Trump loves sitting at his desk.

I noticed that in the first term, and I remember commenting a bit on it. He loves sitting at his desk and having everyone else standing surrounding him because he's the, you know, it's the monarch. The monarch doesn't get up from the throne. He sits on the throne and everyone else stands, you know, dutifully at attention or send me at attention waiting his commands. And that was the case here. Trump sits kind of rudely, if we could just be like in a normal world, right? sits in his desk while Zoro, my mani is standing

toward his side. And people get a little bit intimidated by that, I've noticed, and rattled. I think it's a weird dynamic, almost. It's like you're looking sort of down at him and stuff. But Mamdani had to look totally smoothly, it seemed to me. I just thought it was an actual matter of stage presence, maybe is the word.

It was impressive on Mamdani's part. Tell me your deep thoughts. I'll just give you rapid-fire thoughts, just a few of them. On the Mamdani being adept, two things that jumped out to me. One from the meeting, the cover Trump gave him on the question of one of the MAGA freaks that they're pretending to be journalists they have in there. I asked him if Trump would feel comfortable, you know, keeping his business or living in New York when the mom, Donnie was mayor.

And Trump said absolutely yes. That was the only thing from the meeting that was meaningfully significant in like the micro as far as what impact it could have. Because I think that that was a real threat for Zoran. Not really that people had actually all moved to Florida, but that they would dangle that over him, you know, and they'd use it to bully him and that some people would say they might be going to either because they're scared because of policing stuff or because of the text environment. You know, I mean, like Dave Portnoy is the guy that runs Barstool. He was out there saying he's thinking, you know, a barstool has an office there. Maybe we'll move it, you know, with having that socialists in charge. You sound insane when you say that. If Donald Trump is

saying no it'd be fine i'd stay there right and so i do think he gave zon a lot of cover on that and and and just zon's choice to go there and navigate all that i think that was an important win for him his adeptness also the next day when christian welker was asking him about hakeem jeffreys and just kind of being he was so blunt i was like do you think he should be speaker of the house and sounds like yes she said that's a short answer and he's like it's yes or no question. Hakeen spent months, including on this podcast, hemming and hawing about whether or not to endorse Zoron and what to do. And you can imagine any other politician getting that question.

And either one, wanting to do petty, political, backbiting stuff or two, giving like the generic, I'm not really a human answer of, well, the people, this is up to the members of Congress to decide. And Zon is just like answering it like a human. Just like, yeah, he should be the speaker of the house. And I should take over and he should be speaker. I just, that was just a very small thing, but I think it just showed where he is politically skillful in contrast to some other Democrats in particular. Okay, additional takes I have.

I'll do the funniest one first and then maybe the serious one next so we can argue it so we can talk about it. I did see a Persian influencer online, try to explain why Trump likes both Zoron and BS. He wrote this. Trump is, Trump is spiritually Arab. Loyalty politics, no particular ideology, gold. everything big money many wives i don't agree with it 100% and i did i didn't kind of enjoy the idea that trump's real you know everybody's trying to like what is trumpism what is maga is a buchananite is it hughy long and it's like no it's kind of you know it's kind of in

in the spirit of the libyan dictator really it's like he's spiritually arab the thing that bug me well there are two things that bug me but on the one of them i already i already ranched about it on on on the blog takes people can go listen to it i The fascism thing annoyed me, just like that Trump would say, sure, go ahead and call me a fascist, and everybody would laugh about that. That makes everything seem fake and not serious, I think, to real people, and that bugs me. The other thing that annoyed me is after it ended, I saw this, a group on the left, and I hate to pick on Ryan Grimm, because I do kind of like him, but he said it most succinctly arguing about how this is a sign about how Democrats can do populist coalition building. Grimm wrote this. Trump and Mamdani giving the country a vision of what bottom versus top rather than left

versus right politics could look like is, if not historic, a genuinely novel development. And I just need to rant. No, this did not, that did not happen. There was no novel development. They didn't agree on anything. The only specific policy they said that they both kind of agreed on was sort of a yimbiish as recline policy of we both think we should build a little more. Like there was no actual substantive policy agreement, okay?

because Donald Trump is not substantively, in any way, a bottom versus top economic populist. He's not. He's a populist in the culture war sense. The economic stuff is all fake with him. It's always been fake. It's been fake for 10 years. For people on the left, so we've watched people get snowed by him from our old friends. I refuse to let people on the left get snowed by him.

It's like, it was crazy to me that Marjorie Taylor, like the same within, you know, 24 hours, Marjorie Taylor Green is like. Trump is not a populist. Trump is not a mega populist. I'm leaving Congress because he's betraying our people. And at that same time, now you have like lefty DSA people out there saying, like, look, the populists are getting together now. It's like, no, you do not have to hand it to Trump.

Okay, if you want to glaze your guys, Zoran, for managing him, well, fine, do that. Like, you do not have to hand it to him. He's not a populist. The only way out of this is to actually strip him of that, like strip mega of that. you know of having that you know reputation and in order to successfully do that we need this is where we need the lefties like we need you dsa people to be with us on this which is attacking him and undermining him and calling him a phony on that front so there's my rant that's a good rant my only thought is i haven't followed this as closely as you the dsat side of things but it doesn't

show that they're a little weak or desperate maybe and that they got so round one that was pretty good for them pretty unexpected several months ago and pretty striking but some of the Somehow, then, of course, Spanberger and Cheryl won even bigger, and the Democrats then seemed like they're pulling their act together a little bit with Epstein and so forth. And suddenly it was like all that, they needed to reach out to kind of Trump to get the DSA momentum back. I wonder how much of it is kind of a sign that they don't, they're not quite as strong as they expected they would be, you know, the night after Mamdadi's victory or something like that. Yeah, maybe.

We'll see how the prime, there's some developing in primaries, but, um, Anyway, it'll be an interesting to monitor over the next year. Running a business on a clunky old phone system is like competing with one hand tied behind your back. And every time you miss a call, that's money left on the table. Quo, formerly open phone, is the modern alternative, built to help you work smarter, build stronger relationships, and never miss an opportunity. Because that's what your business and your customers deserve. Quo is the number one business phone system that streamlines customer communications. No more juggling to phones or being tied to a landline.

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Quo, no miss calls, no miss customers. Speaking of primaries, we do have to close with some primary talk. But first, just a little foreign policy. Tomorrow, we could go deep on the Russia-Ukraine debacle, shit show, whatever you want to call it. For me to even try to explain the sequence of events about the various leaks on the plans between the Russia plan, the European plan, the American plan is a waste of time because we'll do all that tomorrow. But just at the biggest picture, Bill, I'm wondering what you think of the state of play with kind of this new interest in negotiation from the American and Russian and maybe even European side,

unclear about whether the Ukrainians are interested. Yeah, the European view of what we want to get to is very different from the Russian-American view. I mean, the worst, the bad news is half the American administration is just totally pro-Futin-Prussian is accepting Russian peace plans as their own. The other half of the American administration is a little, is not pro-Ukrainian. God forbid they should actually help with democracy fighting a savage invasion by a brutal dictator. But they are like a little more hesitant to simply sign on to Russia. That would be the Rubio side of it, I suppose.

So I guess we'll see. The Europeans have stepped up. I've got to say they seem to be pretty, they resisted it. Ukraine resisted it. And hopefully the better case will be that nothing comes with all this. It's still not the best case because Ukraine deserves a lot more help and they're not getting it for now. That's where I wonder if the bit of loss of control over Congress could lead finally Congress to just do something about helping Ukraine and putting tougher sanctions on Russia.

We're still a step or two away from that, but maybe this could play out in that direction. Boy, I have no idea, actually. We'll let the expert discuss it tomorrow. I just want to give you a chance to weigh in. I was reading it all. I'm like, I don't have any fucking clue what's happening. And it doesn't seem good. I'm pretty confident that Vance wants to sell out Ukraine and they cut Ruby out of this whole

discussion. Trump himself is a little more ambivalent, maybe. And so the degree to which Vance really is, at Wittgoff, yeah, and really wants to make this happen. Well, Wikov's such an idiot. He's just snowed, I suppose, by Putin. Vance is more malevolent in a certain way. But Wittkoff is instantly

beyond belief that this guy's actually having negotiations with important world leaders. I mean, anyway, it's not good, but hopefully it's not as bad as it seemed at first blush. Your newsletter this morning's on the situation in Venezuela, like this kind of slowly developing regime change war notion in Venezuela that we're at least obviously preparing for. The one thing that caught my on in your newsletter is that, you know, obviously everybody, we've been covering us just sniping these drugboats, alleged drug boats.

But now we have military ships in places that are not even near where, you know, the corridors where drug trafficking goes. And so that's noteworthy. So what do you make of the state affairs in Venezuela and talk to you all that you read about this morning? Yeah, I mean, General Cain is in Puerto Rico meeting with the commanders of Southcom, but also, you know, pre- Thanksgiving visit to the troops. It's a nice thing to do for the troops, but it's being framed as if, you know, this is sort of before they, you know, before the real military action begins. But, of course, Congress has not authorized military action against Venezuela, and there is no grounds for it. There's not even a tendentious grounds the way they've been in some past cases of real self-defense or an emergency, taking time bomb situation, or, an extension of an earlier authorization of the use of military force, a little more broadly

than it was intended. This is, he does not have the right to attack Venezuela. Congress needs to step up and say, and debate it. And look, if they want to vote to authorize a war of choice against Venezuela, we'll have that, that's an interesting debate. Majoro is a terrible dictator. And it's not 100 percent, you know, it's not maybe entirely black and white that that would be a horrible idea, though I think it would be a very bad idea, honestly.

And it's very, very bad to let him just to sit there and have a few members of Congress complain. And they forced one or two votes, the Democrats. This, again, could some Republicans say, look, we cannot. I mean, what is it? You know, this is too much? I don't know. So far, they haven't, right? They've been two votes in the Senate.

Johnson's managed to prevent it from even coming to a vote in the House. I'm not sure they could win a vote in the House, incidentally, because I do think Democrats think Congress has to have a say, and there are Marcheach-Rey-Tale-Green-type Republicans who are not in favor of this. I really think this is a case where we'll see how fast this moves. Maybe it's too quick for the House to do something. But I wonder whether that could be finally, possibly some congressional resistance. The polling is pretty stunning. 70%, 30% against war with Venezuela. A majority of Republicans say that Congress should have to authorize it.

A third of MAGA Republicans are against Trump's idea of going to war with Venezuela. Yeah. This could be one of those issues that everyone said, well, you can't defend the drug blows. We can't defend Meduro. He's horrible. Drug boats are bad. Maduro is terrible. But I wonder if this is one of these issues in a contrary way, sort of like immigration was six months ago.

It ends up looking, it was going to be a great strength of Trump, but maybe not so much, you know? The one polling, I should say, it's kind of a little depressing that the sniping of the drugboats still has a majority, which is, like, crazy to me. And, come on, people. Pull it together. This is crazy. Would you interesting to see a poll about, like, what your view would be of, like, droning a drug dealer. on American soil. Would people be for that?

I don't know. That's what we're doing. We're just like killing people for suspecting them of drug dealing. That seems crazy to me. The thing, though, about that popularity and the polling on every other element of this, being low, you know, you mentioned this last week about the cliche of the wagged the dog and all this. There's some, you know, kind of, I think, conventional wisdom that when a president gets in

trouble, they turn to these military actions as a way to rally. people around them, et cetera, whether that's true or not, it's pretty clearly not true in this case to me. And to me, I think that, like, him doing it, which I am totally against, like, the only thing that I could look at and say, well, that would be interesting to watch is, I think it could lead to even further unraveling of the MAGA coalition in a very meaningful way. I think it would be a massive political mistake. How big the mistake is depends on how big the, you know, the involvement.

is, but to me, I just think it would be a crazy thing to do substantively, but also politically. I agree with that. I think I agree with that. A lot depends on, is it just a few bombing strikes and then people think, but I don't know. I mean, I totally agree with you, believe me, on the drug boats, but people have in their minds, for maybe not very good reasons, you know, a distinction between little boats on the high seas, which somehow it's like kind of law enforcement, you know, on steroids to blow them up, as opposed to attacking bases and institutions within another country and that is an act of war unambiguously the other is also an act of war but it doesn't look quite as much like one and i think people i mean they are not always

against it when we go to war but they've gotten more nervous cautious about it over the last 25 years obviously and again without congressional authorization i i mean that's what strikes me here and as you and these wars do not tend to get more popular over time they tend to get less popular right as things don't happen don't work out quite as much as wanted to hope so It makes me wonder, Trump has always understood this, though. The one thing he's learned over 50 years of following American politics is wars don't work out very well for the incumbent presidents who start them. Even George H.W. Bush, who was successful in the first Gulf War, didn't end up helping him a year later when he's running for re-election. So I sort of think Trump might still pull the plug on it, but you're sending General Cain.

I mean, there's so much stuff now going on that it's could have looked would it look humiliating to just back off. I don't know. I don't know. And in some ways, I was just thinking about, like, there's kind of, more of a substantive case for getting rid of Maduro than a political case. I really think it's that bad. I don't understand what even the political case is. Last topic. There's a congressional seat open in New York, New York 12. Jerry Nadler is resigning. There is one full work podcast contributor who has already declared for the race, my FY pod colleague Cam Caskey, who was, I believe I have this right either like one week or one month older than the than the floor for running for

congress and he would be the youngest democrat ever if he was to win so something to be said for that it's a massive field there's already like 11 other people in there among the people that seems interested in getting in is another bulwark podcast contributor george conway of george conway explains at all we saw him at the funeral and i don't know i don't want to speak for him but he seems seems like that is not a social media gag i guess i'll just say it seems like he seems like he's kind of serious about getting in to me, hasn't announced yet. And so my question for you, Bill, is, I believe that is your family district in New York. And if we are going to have a bulwark podcast primary for a congressional seat,

I don't know why you wouldn't also consider throwing your hat into the ring. I'm wondering whether you've been mowing that at all over the weekend. Yeah, I mentioned that to George at the Cheney funeral, and he turned to, which makes me think he is running, he turned slightly like fail for a second. And I said, I'm kidding, George, obviously. Yeah. I said, well, I'll throw the fundraiser for you here in McLean, Virginia. I guess I grew up in that district.

I mean, I grew up in that district. It's a different district than what I grew up. Obviously, in terms of its shape, but where I grew up in the upper side is in that district, solidly in that district. And went to high school there and went to Zabar's, you know, everything important for that district. I have some connection to, so. But I think I'll pass. Why are you thinking about passing? Why not?

Why not Bill Crystal? You know what? It's more important to be on this podcast every Monday than to be a member of Congress. I guess you could politely answer where you could do both, Bill. No way to argue that. I noticed you didn't. I noticed you didn't answer that way.

I didn't. No, we have to keep a clear policy here at the bulwark. I don't know. If somebody wins, if one of them wins, maybe we might be able to have them as a congressperson. I mean, half of Congress has a podcast now. I'd have to think about that. what the rules we would have to put around that but uh yeah it sure it sure is interesting i don't know um my only concern about the whole thing i because i kind of kind of find it kind of funny frankly

and i love cameron and george so good on them is like you know if they finish ninth and thirteenth respectively that could maybe be not good for our juice and so i do feel like i have to co-endorse them and if you are listening in new york 12 i think for like the honor of the bulwark I feel like you do have to kind of go with one of our candidates, so it doesn't, you know, so it doesn't diminish us by extension? Do you think that's a fair fear? You know, I haven't thought of that fear, but that's, you're always, you're shrewdly thinking about the brand as a whole.

That's why you're wearing the bulwark t-shirt. I'm just thinking naively about, I don't know, George especially, you know, Cam, much better than I do, but George especially would be good to have in Congress, if I can just say this, there's going to be, if they control the house, there will be a ton of investigations. the whole question of what they've been doing at the Justice Department and elsewhere will be front and center and having George Conroy there

along with Jamie Raskin and Dan Goldman and people who actually understand sort of some of these legal issues would not be a bad thing. He'd be a good interrogator of Trump your minister. Can you imagine George as a congressman interrogating questioning Pam Bondi

at a hearing in early 2027? It would be fun. That's a great visual. That's a great visual and I would like it. The only thing I'm disappointed in is that there's not that neither of the New York senators are up at this time because I was trying to pitch George on primary, in one of them as well, because George, a George Chuck Schumer primary would be really fun to watch, just as if we're talking entertainment value. And, you know,

in the Senate, fewer senators, more opportunity for him to question people. But alas, it will be the House for George, for Cam, or one of the other, whom I'm sure very great contenders that just have never been on one of our podcast platforms. Bill Crystal. Thank you so much. Anything else? Any other wisdom? I think we've covered everything. We've covered everything.

We've touched all the bases, I think. All right. Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow with some Russia talk. And who knows what the hell else will happen between now and then. So look forward to seeing you all. Peace. Some might say with sunshine followed Sunday. To the man who cannot shine

Because some might say That we should never ponder On our thoughts today Cause they hold's way all the time Because I might say We will find the bright a day Some might say We will find a brighter day

Because I've been Signed at this patient In need of education in the lane You made no decorations For all the reputation Once again The snake is full of dishes She's got many dishes

She's got many dishes on the brand It's all but flowing gently But it's all of actually my plan The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brett.