The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: The Lawless Administration

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Crime is down in D.C., but Trump is using the pretext of an attempted carjacking of "Big Balls," the former 19-year-old DOGE employee, to take over the city's police department and deploy the National Guard. It's a threat to other blue cities, and an ominous sign ahead of 2026 and 2028. Meanwhile, the DOJ has appointed 'a special attorney' and empaneled grand juries to investigate Trump enemies Adam Schiff and Tish James. Plus, it's odd how JD never seems to defend Trump on Epstein, and Putin has already scored a psychological victory by the promise of being welcomed to the United States as an equal—rather than the war criminal he is. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Cathy's piece on the upcoming Alaska summit Bill in "Morning Shots" on how Vance keeps drawing attention to the Epstein matter

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. As we are taping this right now, Donald Trump is about to give a press conference announcing some sort of federal takeover of Washington, D.C., more troops in D.C. as a response to big balls as a 20-year-old staffer or whatever for Doge getting beat up by street tufts. So we will have some thoughts on that. I'm going to save it to the end of the pod because I want to see if there's anything particularly outlandish that comes out of the White House today as we're talking about it.

So in the meantime, it's Monday. So I'm here with the editor at large of the bulwark Bill Crystal. We're getting to the other material. How you doing, Bill? Fine, Tim. How are you? I'm doing okay, all things considered. I know it's always a mistake. to say how are you because some of the mondays hit a little harder i'm okay but the country's not great

did i say this right as you once that i that's my standard answers like everyone says well i'm fine family's fine you know luckily and thank god and all that but someone chastised me kind of earnest progressive type when i said i'm fine things are fine you can't be fine bill i mean when the country's in this kind of shape really you can't even you can't personally be fine you can't make that distinction anymore but i think we should try to make the distinction don't you think we had the red dress run in new Orleans this weekend. So I put on a red dress and pranced around the French quarter. How can you not be fine as a man in a dress in the French quarter with 88 degrees outside working on a suntan? It was okay. I think if you want to discuss that for five, ten minutes, people would be very interested in more of a detailed account of that. We don't have that in McLean, I don't think. You don't have a red dress runner McLean. You probably should think about the types of folks you get out there. Dick Cheney in a dress. You know, you get a lot of whatever, Boeing contractors out there in a red dress. I don't know. Anyway, okay. Okay, let's move on. Apparently, we're going to have a bilateral meeting between our president and Vladimir Putin,

not a necessary distinction there, in Alaska on Friday. They announced that over the weekend. There's currently no plans for Vladimir Zelensky to be included in this, though there's some kind of discussion. Maybe Zelensky gets invited, but is in a different room. I don't know. They're going to work all that out. Kathy Young wrote for the bulwark this morning about how they,

that's essentially these two guys meeting about how to carve up. Ukraine. Zelensky put out a statement basically saying that Ukraine Constitution requires a vote on ceding any land and that he was not going to have to abide by whatever these two guys come up with. So I've got a bunch on this, but what's your sort of top line on what we're hearing and what we might expect this week? I mean, Kathy Young's piece is really excellent that people should read that for more detailed account with interesting quotes from Russians actually and Ukrainians. So A, getting a one-on-one meeting with Trump is a victory for Putin. I mean, the the line until Trump took over was with no deals about Ukraine without Ukraine being involved,

which is generally a good policy when you're standing with the Democratic ally. This is, you know, that was the problem, the famous problem of Munich, right, with Czechoslovakia, they were not engaged in the carving up of their nation. So it has Munich overtones. Also, having it in the U.S., I mean, Alaska is part of the U.S. is amazing, actually. Is Alaska part of the U.S.? I mean, but I, no, but I mean, leaving aside the oddity of the Alaska's,

of it. And I suppose that's just because anywhere he came in the continental U.S., there would be massive protests and stuff as they should be. Or maybe you want to make it convenient for him. You know, he didn't want to be on the plane for a couple of extra hours. I guess that's true. And he can look at it. You can think about what if he wants to take it back at some point. But Trump could give it him so much some funny crack. Putin will offer to Trump to trade Alaska back to Russia. And in return, Putin will give us Greenland. It's like, Trump might go for that. Whitkoff would have gone for that. He seems like such an idiot. But, you know, he is a war criminal. I mean, he hasn't gone to any European country,

except for, like, I think, very friendly ones like Hungary since the war began. He certainly hasn't been here or met with the U.S. president. Having him come to the U.S. and be treated as a, you know, equal head of state is a big victory, I think, psychologically from Putin. And I think it's going to damage our attempts to hold, well, we're not even trying to hold the anti-Putin pro-Ukraine coalition together. It's going to damage others' attempts to hold that coalition together. You mentioned Wikoff being an idiot. I'm going to get to Whitkoff in a second, but we have other morons that are involved in this. To catch our NATO ambassador, Matt Whitaker.

I think we're unclear whether he had a passport before he came to the ambassador to NATO. But I just want to play what he said about what the contours of the negotiation would be on CNN this weekend. Certainly, I think, you know, I took Zelensky's comments at face value, which is that no big chunks or, you know, sections are going to be just giving. given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield? Earned on the battlefield. You know, I mean, this guy's going to really be involved in the negotiations probably. So at one level, it's like, who cares?

But the other level, it's like, that's the U.S. ambassador to NATO talking about Russia earning territory on the battlefield, thanks to their unlawful invasion of their neighbor. And that's, like, that's insane. and to the brutality of their invasion and aggression. Yeah, so when they invade Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, I suppose he's going to say that, well, you know, they earned it on the battlefield. I mean, it's so grotesque, right? It's a phrase that I think one would have used in the past

in phrasing U.S. troops or ally troops of their courage, you know, they earned this, and to use it about this invasion is, but that's really unbelievable. I mean, it would have been good in World War II, too, you know, and sort of, well, the Nazis earned France on the battlefield, so who are we to step in here, you know? Back to Whitkoff. So, yes, Wiccoff is negotiating, he's over there, real estate guy. You know, a lot of deep knowledge of Russian history.

After the meeting, Trump said that he's very proud of Steve. He had very productive meetings. The Russians were delighted that Wickeh ate a big meat pie over there, kind of a traditional Russian meat pie. He brought back an award for a U.S. CIA agent whose son, Michael Gloss, died fighting for Russia. Michael Goss's dad, Larry, had said that his biggest fear was that someone in Russia would put two and two together and figure out who his mother was and use him as a prop, he has mental health issues, etc. So Putin, like, trolling Wyckov doesn't realize it, I guess, brings back, like, a medal for this guy's mother. He also confused the specifics of the deal, first saying that Russia would withdraw from some of the southern regions, then backtracking, and then our European allies made him, like, do a clarifying call over the weekend about what is true.

And he said the only thing actually on the table was Ukraine withdrawing from Dynetsk. So that's not really encouraging. I mean, about where we're at going into Friday. I mean, it's not believable. This guy representing the United States of America goes into a meeting with Putin with no one with him, right? No U.S. translator. The one translator is a Russian translator. He doesn't know Russian.

No ambassador, not our ambassador, not a foreign service person, not an assistant secretary of state, not anyone who could help him understand what Putin was saying and what. implied and which place is which in Ukraine and so forth. So, yeah, it's both buffoonish and horrifying, you know, in a sense, right? Yeah, it is buffoonish and horrifying. And I guess it's also just like, you know, Putin, again, has done this so many times. Like, Putin could do English, you know, at least some basic, like levels of English. In Zelensky, when his Inglensky meets in America and speaks in English,

but, like, he likes the control, you know, that comes from English. we're going to speak in Russian and there's going to be some gray area. It's why his comments always, you know, they begin with like oftentimes like long lists of complaints about things that have happened in the past, like before he gets to the thing. And so I guess my point is it wasn't an accident that Wikkoff like misunderstood what they had agreed to, right? Like he didn't have any Russian experts with him. Putin likes for things to be gray to maximize, you know, his negotiating power.

Wikov came out of there thinking he had a bad. better deal than he did, him being confused, contributed to the fact that this meeting is happening on Friday, and now they're already backing off what Russia's obligations are going to be. I just think that that's pretty telling. There are obviously some people out there that have some more bullish views about what might happen on Friday, but I think that augurs pretty poorly. I mean, I just hope it's a fiasco and falls apart as opposed to Trump actually agreeing to something and then trying to impose it on Zelensky and causing a crisis with our European allies and doing even war damage. But, you know, we discussed this.

I think we could do it ago, didn't we? With Trump and foreign policy, you have to root for kind of, you know, sort of chaos and incompetence preventing him from doing too much damage to the country. Point of personal privilege. One last thing. I read Lisa Murkowski's statement on this. She's just getting on my nerves these days. She writes, do you have to do this? I guess is my question.

As the Alaska senator, she writes, this is a. another opportunity for the Arctic to serve as a venue that brings together world leaders to forge meaningful agreements. She kind of goes on to talk about how she has some doubts about Putin, but how she's still happy this is going to happen in a lot. I was just, I don't know, it feels like this is just she's unfrozen caveman a little bit from a different time. You feel like the senator has to put out a statement such as this. I don't think that there's really much reason for Lisa Murkowski to expect that this will be a last. a lasting deal that, you know, historians look back on.

You're right. It's sort of like the old school, you know, it's in my state, so I'm going to welcome the foreign leader. But this is a war criminal. This is not, you know, a nice NATO summit that they're having up in Anchorage or wherever they're having it in Alaska. Look, sometimes it's challenging to get seafood. You know, if you go to your local grocery store, you're not sure if the cuts are up to par. For once in a while, you get something from behind the counter back there and you bring it home and you're like, oh, I don't know if this feels. feels like the freshest fish around. You can resolve that problem with our newest sponsor at Wild Alaskan. The Wild Alaskan Company is the best way to get wild caught, perfectly portioned, nutrient-dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Trust me, you haven't tasted fish this good.

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seafood. That's wildalaskan.com slash bulwark for $35 bucks off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. We had some actual news on the Epstein front. Just this morning, U.S. judge denied the Justice Department's bid to unseal the Maxwell grand jury records. Kind of an interesting sub-bullet to that was in that decision the judge said that he personally reviewed the grand jury material and said there's virtually nothing in it that isn't public already, it would, quote, not reveal new information of any consequence. A couple different ways you could look at that, but Bill, I wonder what you made about.

Well, this was mildly clever of the Trump people to make this the kind of transparency that they'd been promising, the revealing of records, you know, the one thing that wouldn't reveal anything and that you have to go to a judge to reveal, and there's such a strong precedent, I gather, against revealing these records that the judge found that there was no need to. So it doesn't speak at all to what's in the Epstein Files, obviously. And there are some folks that thought that was like the gambit in it, like, initially, right? It was like, okay, well, and maybe the judge will overrule it.

I didn't know what would be in the Maxwell grand jury. I did think that it was something to protect from Trump, you know, because there's no reason to think that Trump would have been in those grand jury documents. Right. Whereas, obviously, he's in some of the other material. So, you know, who knew whether there would be other info of interest, right? And I guess the more clever thing for them to do would be to put out a grand jury document that would have implicated Democrats or something, right?

Yeah, but I think, I mean, just on the Grand Jury thing, I mean, they purposely, and this is what prosecutors do, right? They, as I understand, indicted Maswell, I think, for three or four, you know, a handful of crimes that they had very good evidence on. They had victims willing to testify. Obviously, that's not the case in every instance. When you go to the grand jury, you don't mess around with the other 997 cases that, you know, show what a monster she was.

You go with a very detailed, I gather, testimony to say she committed this crime at this date and this place. And here's the witness testimony and so forth. So, yeah, I think this was a fake from the beginning by Trump and people, I don't think it'll work very well. Do you think? No, no, no. In the tabloid segment of the pod, we also have the Daily Mail had a report over the weekend.

It said they interviewed Jeline's old cellmate who said that she or Jeline tell another inmate that she had dirt on Trump and that she thought that because she had dirt on Trump, that was going to leverage over the Biden administration. This was years ago. Well, maybe Biden would pardon her in exchange for the dirt. Who the hell knows if this is true or not? But it's interesting. It shows the mindset of Maxwell, the prisoner also, right? Regardless of what the truth is about what she has or doesn't have on Trump. And who knows if they even got to the Biden administration on that sort of idea. But the plan is working for her so far with Trump. And she's manipulating the Trump administration into getting her into the lowest security prison possible.

And she knew Trump, I mean, pretty well. So she knows what makes Trump tick. And she knew that having, I mean, everyone says that once Trump took over, there was the Maxwell team was very encouraged, hopeful. And they did find the occasion to play the cards they have. And now she's in this club fed type prison. And that may not be the end of it. Of course, we'll see what else she gets out of Trump.

You focused on the J.D. Vance angle in the newsletter. I want to hear more from your theories at first. J.D. was on with Maria Bartarillo. I kind of wonder, why do these people all go on Maria Barteromo? I feel like I'm playing quotes from the Maria Barteromo show more than anything these days. I guess she's the Tim Russerts of Trump 2.0 because I think they all think it's going to be, because she just is, you know, like a pro-Trump propagandist.

But like she asked us, asked the questions about what it is in the news, at least. And it oftentimes creates some unhelpful quotes from the administration. But anyway, here's J.D. Vance's. weekend going on Maria's low-rated Sunday morning show. We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires, and now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this, and yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years.

I think you kind of had the maximalist view on what J.D. Vance might possibly be plotting here. A smaller view of it for what I would look out would be. Okay. I mean, it certainly doesn't help the administration's efforts to get off of the story to say, hey, there's a bunch of interesting stuff around Democrats. It's like, okay, well, if that's true, let's see, right? No, for me, that's so decisive. Now, that could be a blunder, just Vance being, you know, having his previous talking points about we want to see all this stuff or being embarrassed to change from that too much. So he repeats it, but focuses on Democrats. But the obvious follow-up is, okay, fine, let's see all of it, Democrats. Hey, hey, isn't dropping those files? I seem to remember reading about that. There were some Oval Office meeting where they discovered that indeed didn't hundreds of FBI agents black out Trump's name many times from these files.

Could we see those too? I mean, I think he's inviting that. My morning news letter sort of gives a more, you know, Machiavellian interpretation that Vance is happy to be sort of throwing Trump implicitly under the bus. It is striking. It suddenly, he doesn't defend Trump. He doesn't say, you know, I know this man. He did nothing wrong or anything like that, right? He, there's zero defense of Trump. There's just this analysis sort of of the Biden should have done more. And suddenly, Trump believes and demands full transparency that also invites, okay, well, he's the president, you know. He's not like some Congress from demanding full transparency. If Trump wants full transparency, he can make the files transparently available.

Do you see this JD story from last week about how the Ohio River was too low and he went to take the family kayaking? And so they like pumped additional water into it so that him and his family and his security detail could get onto the river. I bring this up only just because it's unclear what J.D. is doing. He's like his main job is to be the, it feels like the rapid response man for the administration. He doesn't have a portfolio. And he's been going on a lot of vacations. And it's like, I don't know, from putting on your chief of staff for Dan Quail hat, it feels like in the olden times, that would have been a story that would have waylaid you guys for like a month.

Right. If you're like, hey, Dan, Dan's going back to Arizona and we're going to use. federal resources to, you know, pump water into the river that you wanted to go on to, right? I mean, it's one of those things like, that would have been a big story, I think, in a different time. And I guess the Vance staff excuse was, well, the Secret Service told us the river was kind of unsafe unless you pump more water into it. I have no idea if that's true or not. I don't know, or maybe other people were rafting in the unsafeely in the river or that. But you know what?

If I believe when I was Chief of Staff, the Vice President, if the Secret Service had said it shouldn't go there, to Vice President's, it's risky, unless we were to pump, you know, huge amounts of water into this river, use the Corps of Engineers, whoever does that. You know, I think we would have said, you know what, we'll just skip the, we'll skip the raft. We'll have the bad in cages. I'll take the kids to the bad and cages. Exactly. We'll do putt-putt.

Maybe puttut today would be a good idea. Something to think about. I think my interpretation is a little trouble making and extreme in the sense of, I interpret both the meeting last week and it's leaking. Vance was strangely going to host at the Vice President's residence, which then strangely leaked and got the Epstein thing back on the front pages for a day or two. And now his comments yesterday, I interpret them as sort of Machiavellian. Vance would not be unhappy if Trump is damaged by the Epstein scandal.

If you think Vance is worried that Trump will run again in 2028, which he should be. And if he thinks otherwise, if Trump doesn't run, he has a good chance to take over, maybe even before then, who knows. But I would say it's conspicuous how little Vance defends Trump. You know, he sort of has his own agenda. On Ukraine, for example, he had his own anti-Ukraine statements yesterday, which were his typical, you know, callous and sort of stupid, you know, kind of we're tired of that war in something. But I don't think there was a whole lot of the traditional vice presidential.

You know what? President Trump is going to, is a great negotiator and he's going to be able, and there was not the usual praise, you know, of his boss. I wonder what the real Vance Trump relationship is, actually. Is it possible they could have a real relationship? You know what I mean? No. You mentioned the 20th and did you see, I'm going from memory. So I think it was the Azerbaijan leader that was in. when they were kind of joking about the Trump 2020 thing.

Like, he's doing this thing now where it's like a lot of people want it, right? But we can't do, you can't do it here. But maybe, but could you? I don't, you know what I mean? He's kind of, he's doing that where he is not, he's not doing, we're having people looking into it, right? Like, he's not doing that, right? But he continues to tease.

Yeah, I mean, I'd say, I think maybe it's just like, they tell me you can't do it. He is shoving that door open gradually and leaving it open somewhat. He's knocked down quite as far as you say. of commissioning someone to do a study that proves he's able to do it. We're probably, you know, a year away from that or an official, you know, Justice Department memo saying they've re-looked, they've looked together at the Constitution and it's fine. But I think he's clearly, I mean, clearly wants to. I guess he said that himself, didn't he'd like to. And he's clearly beginning to nudge everyone towards, towards normalizing it. One other thing on the Epstein thing,

because I do want to present the other side of this from a political standpoint. Harry Enten was posting this, I believe, this morning, just kind of looking at the numbers. There were some CNN polls looking at the Epstein numbers. And, you know, essentially search traffic, I guess, on Epstein is down. Like, got really spiked for whatever the week when this was really hot. Trump's approval ratings, not good, but it's static and it is better than it was in the first term. I kind of forgot, Sarah and I talked about this on the next level last week. I kind of forgot how bad Trump's approval was, like, already by summer of 2017.

Like, it was just a very immediate regret, I guess, or whatever, among the electorate back then. We haven't seen it quite as dramatically this time. Harry also says less than 1% of people say it's the nation's top issue, obviously, I think. That's not really surprising. I don't know. I kind of see both sides. I think it's worth at least, you know, just sort of talking out. Like, is there a chance?

This is kind of like an August shark attack story that comes and goes that doesn't end up doing damage to him, do you think? There's a chance. I mean, I saw what Enton said, and he's got. this Google search number dramatically down. But of course, I can go back up. I mean, I feel like I'm older than you and Harry. And, you know, there were many weeks, months from mid-73 to mid-74 where people thought Nixon's going to get out of Wardigate.

I don't, it's not saying this is Wardigate, but people have, it's so simple-minded to say it's gone, it's over, you know, it's, Google searches are down this week. I mean, let's see where they are when they come back and when Congress has to decide whether when they start, the Democrats start forcing votes on releasing the FBI files. plus what else are we going to find about the files, plus what's going to happen with Maxwell? And again, Vance is, in that respect, helped to keep the door open to, well, what developments are next. So I think it's just being short-sighted, honestly. In terms of Trump's overall approval, I don't think anyone's ever thought that Epstein by itself is going to move, you know, big swaths of voters from Trump.

Does it create doubts? Does it create problems, though, down the road? There, I think, to fit into a broader narrative that weakens him, yeah, I think so. My view is always, and I saw some chat on this, because it's hard to kind of get into the nuance and all this. And there were some folks, a feedback we got, I got some listeners are like, I don't know,

at a minute where I thought this was going to be the thing that took him down. And now I don't know anymore. I'm like, I never thought that that was going to take them down. Like, the thing I felt like I kept trying to say over and over again, which I still believe now, is that I do think it's like a little bit of a breach of trust

with a core demo, which is Manosphere types and some of the craziest. like Q&N, Tucker, whatever, Alex Jones types, that it might be a hard breach of trust or repair. And that like it's less of a, oh, this is going to be Watergate and end his presidency. And more of like, you know, it will be kind of something that will stand as a shorthand for how kind of the coalition

started to fray. I maintain that that is still true. And I maintain that the Democrats can use it to effect in that regard. And just like going back, I mean, it was like, did Benghazi take Hillary down? No. Did more than 1% of the public say that Benghazi was the most important issue facing the country? No.

Did it end up hurting her? Like, yeah, it did. It did under purdy. Didn't it create the email story? I mean, that came out of testimony in Benghazi. No, I think that you're absolutely, the taking it down, I'm probably a little guilty of this because of using the worded gate analogy occasionally is ridiculous. Trump is never going to resign the presidency, I would guess. The Republican Party is never going to turn on him.

And we're not going to have. and Justice Department's never going to prosecute his subordinates, all of which happened, obviously, in Watergate. So it's not going to, he's not going to leave office because of this. Unfortunately, very, very unlikely that that's the case. But, yeah, I agree. It contributes to the weakening of him. And, yeah, people are being silly, I think, to write it off.

It's only, when did July 6th? I mean, let's be a little, put things in perspective. July 6 is when he issued that when the Patel Bondi memo came out. It's only a month, well, five, six weeks away, right? It's done quite a lot of, I don't know, it seems like it's preoccupied the administration, caused a lot of trouble, caused heartburn for Republican members of Congress, quite a lot in these five or six weeks. And as I say, I think here, Vance is helpful. It's just, it's not going away. The door, you can imagine it going away at some point, but for now they haven't succeeded

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But Trump at the podium, just about 30 minutes ago, said, This is Liberation Day in D.C. We have another Liberation Day, a second liberation day. This is Liberation Day in D.C. We're going to take our capital back. I'm invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act and placing the D.C. Metro Police Department under direct federal control. He goes on, and he says this will go further.

We're starting very strongly in D.C., and we're going to clean it up real quick, possibly implying that military and other places, he says that they have mobilized the National Guard in D.C., and they'll bring in the military if needed. They'll be strong. They'll be tough. Militarization of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Yeah, I don't even know. Honestly, that's a little more than people expected, the actual federal direction, not just supervision, but, I mean, takeover, I guess, of D.C. police, I'm not sure who they report to and, I mean, how that works in practice. I mean, they do have a pretty big police

department with the police chief and reports to the mayor, so that'll be. But no, they're This is an excuse just like L.A. was, right? He's testing the proposition. And sadly, I think it's interesting what you say about Trump's own statement, which he depends on the peculiarity of D.C. and home rule. It's not like every other city, which is in a state, you know, and therefore doesn't have the direct relationship that Trump has to the National Guard here and doesn't have a home rule legislation that Congress passed. So he's taking advantage of the peculiar historical status of D.C., but he's also speaking about it in a way that would not stop with D.C. There's some other place has a terribly high crime rate, just like with

with LA, right? Remember the statement saying he was going to use the garden and then the Marines in L.A. was clearly not limited to L.A. So these are both canaries in the coal mine for using the military and for federalizing law enforcement in ways that they can be used to curtail civil liberties and to take over conceivably parts of governance in blue cities and in other states, not just in D.C. And I think it's very ominous for 2026 and 28. I mean, I I just think, you know, all you need is some disturbance somewhere in a democratic area, maybe a minority area of a big city and a contested stage, you know, and suddenly, hey, you know, got to help out there, can't have this kind of violence. Someone got, you know, was carjacked in

Philadelphia. I mean, to minimize some of the crimes. But crime is down at DC, incidentally. You know, it went spiked in 20 to 22. It's got down quite a lot, actually, in the last two years. And it's grotesque. You see that footage of these people. masses, apparently a federal, I don't know what they were exactly who they were, around Union Station last night, I placed you and I have been many, many, many, many times. And then walking around the National Mall today. And it's like, so it looks like Pam Bondi, it looks like the Metropolitan Police Party is going to report to Pam Bondi. She doesn't have anything else to do. Yeah, and on the mall, and some of the stuff, in the sense of

so preposterous, and it's kind of an insult to some of these guys. Like, they're, they're literally mall cops now and to walk around the Lincoln Memorial, which is already heavily police. There are a lot of people there. So I just will say, I apologize if there's another impetus for this that I missed. But one of the impetus for this, actually today was what happened last Sunday to the Doge Kid.

At Corsetine, big balls, as they called him. Just like, so folks understand what happened. It was 3 a.m. so Saturday night into Sunday morning. So a guy was out at the bar. What's wrong with that? That is with a girl. They were walking on 14th in Swan Street. So like

basically right by Logan Circle, huge 14th Street is where people go out and party in D.C. It is well-policed. Police had a group of teens approached the two of them. Of course, the time, pushes the woman into the car. He gets beat up. I don't know if they stole anything or whatever. He gets beat up.

And nearby officers step in. Suspects flee. And then two 15-year-olds from Hyattesville end up being arrested and charged with carjacking later. It's not good that this happened to him. It's bad that this happened to him. But this story does not call for military intervention. Like, he was in a heavily policed area. Something bad happened.

The police showed up, right? Like, and so it's good that these 15-year-olds are getting arrested. If the idea is that the carjacking D.C. does have a lot of minors that are doing it. Is there a program? Is there, like, if we've been too lenient on minors, should there be some other kind of deterrence to deter? You know, so under 18-year-olds who are doing carjackings, you know, aren't as likely to do it. Like, sure.

Like, in New Orleans, I went through a spat of carjacking a couple years ago, changed the rules, changed the policies. Like, carjacking isn't really a problem in New Orleans anymore. It's not that it doesn't happen, but, like, it was a spike, and then it's been reduced. Like, there are, like, law enforcement solutions to this problem. And to me, like, the takeaway from this is, like, they're just looking for a pretense to do this anywhere.

And that is, like, the real worrying thing. Totally. I couldn't agree more. Incidentally, it's not clear that the FBI, and certainly not the National Guard, they're not trained to do street-level policing. I mean, and Bondi's not trained, has no background in actually supervising that.

And I don't know if anyone in the Justice Department, I mean, it's pretty different the Federal Justice Department from actual Metropolitan Police Force. This is quite complicated knowing how to do these things, how you arrest people, how you read them their rights, how you defuse situations on streets, a bunch of National Guard people. I mean, I have friends in the National Guard. They admire the fact that they're serving the country.

They're not trained for this. And I guess they can give them a 48-hour course, and then what, send them out to Logan Circle on a Saturday night? That is really asking for trouble, I think. Just throw out the federal government already runs D.C. parks, a lot of the federal parks, where there has been, like, some disorder and some crime. But that's an actual park police who, I mean, presumably are trained as police. Yeah, true, for sure. Yeah. No, my point is, like, that would have maybe been a good place to start. If you're serious about this, like, how about, like, more funding for the police that are already in charge? of what's the Meridian Hill Park there, you know, which is not far from where Big Balls was.

Like that would be a thing to do. They're not doing it. Like, they're underfunding all of that. And, you know, the whole thing is just, it's a power grab. And the L.A. thing, it is, like, it remains crazy that, like, this stuff doesn't get unraveled once it starts, you know? I mean, there's no reason for any of this happening in L.A. now, and it continues. Trump's explicit justification of L.A., and I believe of D.C., well, it's happening as we speak, so I haven't seen what he said, but it's only in the past. is they are Democrat, as he puts it, Democrat-run cities, you know, incompetently run by low- IQ people, blah, blah, blah, whatever the code he uses for blacks. I mean, he doesn't even hide the fact that this is not some neutral application of, you know, of some principle of the crime rate goes above a certain level.

We're going to help out the city. This is a takeover of Democratic-run cities, and that does, I think, is ominous for the future. I mean, you called it, you might not have even noticed it, but this morning Trump was watching his stories before the press conference and Jasmine Crockett was on TV and he was long. tweeting TV, what she likes to do, and he called her low IQ. So not subtle. One more Bondi news item from last week that I didn't get to, I think we should mention. I'm going to read the New York Post's version of this story. Just in case you're wondering, in case you like me, don't pick up hard copies in the New York Post that often.

And I don't really know what the, you know, how style is anymore. It's interesting to be caught up on what the house style is. On Thursday, A.G. Pam Bondi appointed pit bull lawyer Ed Martin as a special attorney to lead investigations of Tish James and Adam Schiff for potential charges, including mortgage fraud, bank fraud, and wire fraud, which carry jail terms for up to 30 years. Grand juries in Virginia and Maryland are weighing criminal indictments against the two Trump deranged Democrats over allegations. They falsified property records to secure favorable loan terms. The story provides literally no information on what the property record situation is and what it was because that's really not the point. It kind of goes on to just talk about how Pam Bondi and Tish James have TDS and how Trump had to deal with lawfare. So now these guys do too.

I mean, again, this is a totally wild insane story that in a different moment would be a massive scandal. It's like the DOJ is directing somebody who has been appointed, you know, to this amorphous role within the DOJ, which is basically just to harass Democrats. Like, that's Ed Martin's job since he didn't get the D.C. attorney job. And now he's, like, going after just enemies of the president using grand juries and using the legal systems. The shift thing, I think I might get this a little wrong. I think this is right. He bought a house or apartment in D.C. and he has one in California, obviously. And I guess there's a question, I don't have two houses on your income tax.

You declare one of primary residence and the other not and that gets you some better. I don't know quite what. You can deduct the mortgage interest only on the first one. And maybe he said this was his first one, which I take it is something that could be adjudicated in tax court if it's a real issue or the IRS can complain if they think it's wrong. The idea that there's a criminal investigation on this is run out of the U.S. Justice Department is kind of, is astonishing. Yeah. Incidentally, didn't we learn this week that the Speaker of the House seems to have, I don't know, he's, again, I don't know what the law is exactly, but some people think it's dubious that he had his campaign committee paying for his rent in D.C. That was at least what was set on the form that was filled out.

Again, I'm perfectly happy to let this be solved by the FEC if there were a functioning FEC or just let it sit there. But I noticed that there's no special counsel looking at that, right? Yeah, the other thing is just similar to your neutral application of the law point on, on D.C. and on whatever, overtaking cities with militarized police, like the same DOJ that is doing this has gutted both the public corruption sector as well as, you know, the group that investigates white-collar crime, tax crimes, such as this, right? So it's like they've de-emphasized, gutted, said they're not going to look into these types of crimes because they need to focus all of their, you know, resources to immigration.

And, you know, simultaneous, it's like, well, but, you know, we really do have to make one exception for Adam Schiff, Shifty Schiff, you know, because he, because of the mortgage deduction he took on the wrong house. And it's extremely brazen. You mentioned immigration prompts this thought, too, which hadn't really occurred to me, that immigration was the entering wedge for this, you know, for what they did in L.A., of course, in terms of calling out the guard and the Marines and beginning the, you know, to go after the Democratic cities. But that's not the issue here. I mean, it's not it's not even claimed. to be the issue here. It's just purely the crime rate. D.C. does not have the highest crime rate in the country. D.C.'s crime rates has been coming down. So again, the door is being gradually open to, you know, you don't even need the original excuses for federal action because immigration is a federal issue and the border patrol was used right in L.A. So that's, you know, it's crazy because it's 100 miles of the border. But I mean, it's sort of the border patrol does exist that is used, you know, on the border and so forth. This is just, I mean, again, he has a slight excuse that D.C. has a

special status, but the door is now open to the next place. This is one of these things that was a red line. January 19th, this was an absolute red line. People would go crazy. Even Republicans wouldn't accept this to him. They all told us, right? You know, I mean, this is something, oh, man, hundreds of years of history, Republican Party, the party that's against federal overreach, they would never let this happen. I'm curious to see if any Republican anywhere says a word about this. I'm not curious. I think that we'll be for it. The lawless administration continues another pretty big issue. White House made an agreement over the weekend with AI chip producers,

Navidia, and Advanced Micro Devices, AMD. The companies have agreed to pay 15% of revenues on chips sold to China to the U.S. government. This is explicitly unconstitutional. You're not allowed to charge an export tax. It's like a third term or birthright citizenship level of clear constitutionality. they have pushed forth with it anyway. So in addition to the unconstitutionality of it, I also should throw in as it relates to just being totally lawless on issues related to China.

The TikTok ban, whatever you think about it, was a bipartisan past in Congress, was signed into law by the president, Supreme Court upheld it, nine to zero, and yet the White House still is not enforcing it. So this is another issue where I think that there's a lawlessness angle to it, but also kind of like a soft-on-China angle to it, right? Like, you could, if you're going to be an autocrat here, and it's going to be part of, you know, sort of this great power struggle, you can imagine a different type of Trump policy here, which would be like, fuck, no, our companies are not going to sell advanced AI chips to China. Good luck. Like, over there, Sherman She, that's not what they're doing.

Instead, they're letting China get the advanced AI chips as long as they pay a VIG to the mob boss. Yeah, no, my China Hawk friends are really, actually think this is pretty serious. is maybe more than TikTok, actually, you know, in terms of what the AI, this is kind of the, are we serious about curtailing China's threat to us about making sure they don't get too far ahead of us or stay ahead of us, get ahead of us, I'm not sure which it is in AI and so forth. And this is really undercuts that. I also wonder about that 15%, I mean, it's all illegal and I don't even know where the money would go, you know, just get sort of just write checks to the federal government. This is how we now run things here, you know. I also wonder what's

going on with Trump first. Trump couldn't care less. I don't think about whether the federal government gets 15% more revenues from this particular company or this kind of illegal tax. What Trump cares about is his own money, right, his own pocketbook. And it would be worth looking to see what is happening behind the scenes and investments in fake, you know, Bitcoin companies that Trump and his family control and that just flows right to his pocket, you know, in a way. I kind of suspect there's a lot of that going on in these. And the whole terrorist, this again is a very traditional critique and a very true one of why you don't want this kind of. It's one thing to have tariffs that are too high if they're universal and set in law. It's another thing to have presidents

moving around at will. That just is just an invitation to graft and corruption. Indeed. Another just aside and AI point. Maybe I'll talk about this more with a tech person later in the week, but I don't know if you saw this. Do you use chat GPT, Bill Crystal? Do you use any LLMs, none? No, but of course, we all get AI now because of Google, that's the first option. Google gives you on search and you're writing a morning newsletter maybe you should let chat gbt right at one time thank you for that vote of confidence in the in the high quality of morning shots i really am egger and i are really deeply moved by your by your endorsement of a unique editorial project well it's five days a week we just give one over day to tell you so there is this story i don't know

if you saw it but it caught my eye in a concerning way so chat gbt four was updated to chat BT5 recently, and it created a backlash among some users for the reason that some of these users had thought that ChatGVT4 was their friend and that it was, you know, the first person, quote unquote, to ever give them positive feedback and encouragement, and now they feel like that person's been replaced and erased and a new friend has been given to them. That was alarming enough when I was caught that. And then late last night, Sam Altman, who runs Open AI, wrote like a 8,000 word tweet, you know, since you don't have limits anymore on X about this and about how they want to treat people like adults. And yeah, some people

are going to have delusions like other people are going to use this AI as a life coach and it's going to be useful. I'm just like, I don't know, man. I don't think it's really a great sign. The head of Open AI felt like they needed to put out a statement because people were upset about their imaginary friend disappearing. I mean, I need to educate myself much more an AI and I really do, and I've been thinking this for two or three months. But I'd say people I know who know a lot about this and use it, but also understand a little bit how it works and where it's going and how fast it's going are much more alarmed than they are. Well, they certainly think it's going much faster than they thought six months ago. And I would say, though the people who follow

this, of course, tend to be tech optimists because that's why they're in the field and following it in some respects, they're a little freaked out. I mean, I think the degree to which we are now in totally uncharted waters and no grown-ups is supervising anything, right? I mean, in a normal political system, you know, you could imagine both the executive branch and the legislature's, you know, trying to say, well, let's be careful on this, both from a national security point of view, that's the China question, but also just from a human point of view here. No one's trying to even think about how this works, right? Trump's basically just told them to go off and do what they want.

Yeah, the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like the one industry that is getting just sort of free reign in here and the Trump administration. You know, it's interesting. I guess I'm going to have to tech guy on later this week, so we might talk about this a little more. But as part of the rationale for a lot of these Mark Andreessen guys supporting him, right? Because they wanted just, they didn't want any adults in charge.

They didn't want a principal. They wanted the, you know, inmates. I'm mixing all the metaphors, but, you know, they wanted to be in charge themselves. All right. Well, we'll just leave that there. I'm sure that's a little lifting note for people. I want to close. This is kind of a silly example of authoritarian creep, but it is in my area of interest. So I felt like I needed to mention it. Oasis is coming to America. They did the reunion tour. As listeners know, I want to see their comeback in Manchester. Their homecoming show was unbelievable. They're now coming to America soon as the Unity Tour continues. Daily Star had a, front page tabloid story on how OASIS is being warned that they should not talk about Donald Trump. Top showbidge manager Jonathan Shalett says, my advice to OASIS is simple, stay out of American politics if they want their U.S. tour to go ahead without disruption. It would be wise to keep quiet on all things Trump. Both of them have shit on Trump in the past. Liam called him a dick.

Noel talked about, you know, his threat to the environment. In 2018, when the two brothers were still feuding. Liam said Noel was even worse than Donald Trump. That's his attack on his brother. And so, I don't know. I mean, it's a silly tabloid story. Yes. It also is like an unimaginable story

in this country any other time in my lifetime that people would be like, you know, if you're a foreign rock group and you're going to come do shows in America, you shouldn't make fun of the president because they might fuck with your they might fuck with you at customs. They might fuck with your ability to do the shows. Yeah, but the worst case, I guess, in the Bush years, or maybe you'll lose,

they would say, well, you might lose viewers if you, you know, if you insult Bush, or conversely, obviously, but that's more of like a legitimate, you know, you might say market response. This is, yeah, this is very different. I was struck. I won't say the details was it's not, it was told to me, you know, just privately, but I mean, a very decent group, a group that you and I would mostly approve of, and the centrist, not Trumpy or anything like that, here in Washington and was scheduling some lectures. And the staff recommended three or four people who were very good and balanced politically.

But one of them was pretty anti-Trump, but very respectable scholarly and so forth. And they said, no, it's too risky. You know, with the Trump administration looking at all of us, looking at every think tank, every 501C3, we don't need to pick a fight right now. So the kind of, what did Tim Snyder call that,

anticipatory compliance, something like that? Pre-submission? What was it called? Whatever. Yeah, yeah, something like that, right. That's happening more broadly, I think, than I had realized or that I had expected, certainly. And again, it's a little hard to blame you're running one particular think tank or one particular organization. You've got to watch out for your own people, so to speak, and you don't want to pick a fight.

But that stuff really adds up. And so I think we're not in good shape here on the authoritarian measurement. Anticipatory obedience. That's not happening here at the Bullwark podcast. No obedience. A little bit of anticipation. Anticipative. What the fuck is that one? That's just going, no, that's not happening on the Bullwark Podcast. Bill Crystal, Monday.

See you back here next week. Appreciate you very much. Thanks, Tim. Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwark podcast. We've got an old friend coming back, see you all then. Peace. When you change to the mirror on the razor blade. Today's the day that all the world.

We'll see Another sunny afternoon Walking to the sound of my favorite tune Tomorrow never knows What it doesn't know too soon Need a little time to wake up Need a little time to wake up Wake up

Need a little time to wake up to rest your mind You know you shut So I guess you might as well What's the story Morning calling Where We need a little time

To wake up, wake up Where? What's the story Morning glory, Where? Need a little time to wake up, wake up. All you're trying to believe.