The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: The Preposterous and Ridiculous Lies About the FBI

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Kash Patel's Jan 6 lie requires FBI officials to have been able to see into the future: to *know* that Trump would lose in 2020 and then try to get Congress to reverse the election results. And they also would have to have known they could get thousands of people to attack the Capitol—just to make MAGA look bad. Are GOP senators really going to clear this conspiracy theorist extraordinaire to run the bureau? Plus, the martyrology around Jan 6 and the mass exodus of journalists from The Washington Post. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tom Jocelyn and Norm Eisen on Kash Sgt. Gonell's reflection on Jan 6 Michael Kruse on Al Gore and Mike Pence

All right, hey guys, a few programming notes on this January 6th anniversary. Before we get to Bill, the first, we are launching a newsletter this week focused on the Trump immigration regime. It's going to be led by Adrian Carrasquillo. Love Adrian, been working with him for a long time. He's a great reporter and he's great for this. He knows the immigration beat. He's been doing this for a while and just glad to have somebody of his caliber on one

of what might be the most important or maybe top two or three most important issues of the Trump administration. The newsletter is going to be called huddled masses. It'll be out twice a week. You can sign up at thebullwork.com slash subscribe if you haven't. Former congressional candidate John Avalon has been in the extended Bullock fam for a while now, has a new pod series we're hosting called How to Fix It. The first episode of this season is out on civics education.

Some folks have given us feedback. They're looking for more off the news, solutions oriented content. I totally get that. And I'm glad John is going to be taking that on and providing it. So the first episode of that is already out, to fix it with John Avalon number three We're leaning into YouTube this year We've been leaning into it But me and Sam and others are gonna be doing some interviews and hot takes that don't fit the daily pod schedule

And a lot of you guys are kind of in a you're in a routine I've got this routine with other pods where you know, you got your afternoon It's a daily and so when there are other things that don't really fit that schedule, either because of breaking news or because it's kind of a niche topic or somebody wrote an interesting article, I want to go a little deeper on. We're going to be popping those up on YouTube. So if you want more, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page. We'll also have a salutary announcement for somebody in the fam at the end of the pod, so please stick around for that. All right. Up next, it's Monday, so it's Bill Kristol. Now we gather due to a selfish man's injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he

has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. Fairly or not, they'll be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history.

That will be their legacy. That was Mitt Romney four years ago today. It certainly raises some questions about how the participants of that insurrection will now be remembered. And it's Monday, so I've got Bill Kristol here to discuss. Bill, what you think? Is that going to be their legacy? We're on the four-year anniversary here of the January 6th insurrection. You know, I hope it's their legacy on the eight- anniversary or ninth or 10th or 11th, but right now the leader of that insurrection, the inspirer of it, kind of the organizer really, Donald J. Trump is going to be inaugurated in two weeks as president of the United States. His administration will be stuffed full of defenders, excusers, defenders, now cheerleaders

for the January 6th insurrection and for the attempted coup that kind of preceded it for a couple of months within the government. And they're going to pardon Romney. Trump will pardon a lot of the January 6th. Romney might need to pardon the next two weeks. Well, that's right. He'll prosecute Romney and Liz Cheney, who told the truth about January 6th and will pardon the January 6th rioters.

So four years ago and the day after, among conservatives, not just Mitt Romney, but among all kinds of people This was the you know, the one thing that everyone repudiated. This was shameful for the people who like Trump They were telling him this is gonna ruin your reputation and everyone was walking away from it And here we are four months later and it's a you have to be an excuser slash defender of J6 You have to be an excuser slash defender of J6, of the insurrection to have a future in the Trump administration pretty much or in Republican politics. And they're running the country. Yeah.

And you get mocked for acting like it's a big deal. And it's like, oh, you guys, are you guys not over that now? I didn't know that was four years ago. That's ancient history. You guys are still talking about that? We just have a ton of coverage on January 6th because we're not going to be cowed by their jeers. And I want to get through a couple of the different pieces because there's some interesting

news as well. But you led your morning newsletter with George Orwell saying, restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is important to restate the obvious. I think especially as memories start to fade. One of the guys we have writing on the site this morning is Sergeant Anel, who's the Capitol Police officer who was defending the Capitol that day against the mob. He writes this, this is the fourth anniversary of January

6th. This one hits harder than the other three and makes the moral injury far greater. What took place was an unforgivable cardinal sin, but clearly much of the country, including one of our political parties, has chosen to reward those who committed it. I do think it's valuable to spend time discussing the obvious about why that was bad. That's a very moving piece by Sartre Cadet, which people should read. And I found it moving and depressing, of course. You know, your friend, Steve Bannon, who's smart and often, you know, he actually sees around the corner a little more than some of his mega buddies. Two days, I think, after the insurrection on January 8th, 2021, he

was already understanding that fighting for the interpretation of January 6th would be extremely important. He wanted to do some stuff in the last two weeks of the Trump presidency. That didn't work out further demonstrations and showing they weren't embarrassed by it. But he understood from the beginning that the definition of January 5th, 6th, looking back, would be a defining thing going forward. And I think Trump had an instinct to that too, obviously pretty early on and worked pretty hard on that for the last three or four years. And then so many others just capitulated and went along. too, obviously, pretty early on and worked pretty hard on that for the last three or four years.

And then so many others just capitulated and went along. And it is just extraordinary that when you do read what people said, when it was fresh in people's minds and when they knew enough to know what had happened. And incidentally, it's not as if we've learned new things that have made it less horrible, less contemptible, less damaging what happened on January 6th. Quite the opposite. We have the January 6th committee report, which Trump's people hate, but which is none of its factual conclusions have really been challenged, which shows how much more was going

on behind the scenes that we didn't quite know about, right, at the Justice Department and elsewhere. So people should be more upset by what Trump tried to do. And instead, he's managed, they've managed to really reverse the narrative. Yeah and to your point, Trump's instinct to defend himself was self-preservation, right? It was ego, right? Like versus what Bannon and others were doing were recognizing the potential death of the movement, what should have been the death of the movement, right? That day. You could do this for a million people, so I almost hate to pick on Eric Erickson, but his post to that day was so jarring to

your point about where people's minds were in the moment to remind people of that. Here's Eric Erickson at 3.02 on January 6th, shoot the protesters, waive the rules, impeach, waive the rules, convict, waive the rules, deny the ability to run for election again It's just worth stating that it's just so plainly stated right that it was not This was not like oh only the never Trumpers only MSNBC thought he should convict, right? It was people that were actively supporting Donald Trump active members of the conservative movement people that host conservative gatherings MAGA gatherings and people that host conservative gatherings, MAGA gatherings, saying that the protesters should be punished by, should be shot by police and that Donald Trump should be denied the ability to run again. And what we have today is a report from Bloomberg, which says Trump is expected to grant clemency to over 1000 people tied to January 6th. That was a report out this morning. And

tied to January 6th. That was the report out this morning. And going from shoot the protesters to clemency for the a thousand people involved is a pretty dramatic switch. The Times had a pretty good piece this weekend walking through how this happened, sort of a little bit of the frog in boiling water over the last four years. First, well, it wasn't as bad. There was an antifa people and then a little, there were some misled people and Pelosi should have taken more responsibility for security. But within about a couple of years, it just became pro January 6. And that's certainly where it's been. That Trump has not hidden his views on that quite the contrary.

He started playing, I remember writing something, it was what, six, nine months, eight months ago, maybe, when he started playing that January 6, quote, anthem at the rallies and how appalling that was. And now as you say rallies and how appalling that was. And now as you say, he's going to pardon them. Various Republican members of Congress are inviting some of these felons, I don't know, I guess they're out of jail by now, so those ones, to be there at the inauguration. And this is what authoritarian movements do. There are two things I guess I would say.

This is if other people who studied this stuff say, the authoritarian movements take a defeat and have to turn it into a victory. Now, it may be a short-term defeat. They get people put in jail, but it has to become a martyrology, not something wrong. They've done that all in. The other thing I'd say about authoritarian movements is they radicalize. I think we've seen that so much over the years. Things that were at the fringe of the movement, you know, six months after January

six, Julie Kelly and sort of bad ends people and the kind of we need to stand up for these people now totally mainstream. Now the Wall Street Journal, having been very nice to Trump for the last year, basically a little upset about the pardons, you know, I mean, these somebody they actually someone they actually looked at what some of these people did. I guess maybe someone there on the page saw some of the videos, was reminded of what happened to Sergeant Goodell and others at the Capitol Police. And so they kind of refer to Trump, not pardon all the whites, especially the ones who committed

anything in violence. Doesn't make them rethink any of their endorsement of this man to be president, basically endorsement, I guess they don't formally endorse. Endorsement of this man to be president of the United States, though. Even even there the kind of establishment republicans are they're not going to be cheering the pardons But they've done their little wish that it wouldn't happen And they're not going to stop them from being all in on a million different things Trump's or or it's not going to stop them from totally refusing to reflect more broadly on what it means that trump Is the next president and what kind of administration he's going to be running

if it's a pro-January 6th, pro-insurrection, pro-authoritarian, pro-violence, pro-political violence administration. Just one more point. This is, I think in March of 2023, a law was passed saying the House should put up a plaque honoring the police officers who fought so bravely on that day.

Capital police who worked for the Congress, you know, protect those members of the House and the Senate. And the Republican House has not done that. I guess Mike Johnson just can't think it's just to be a bridge too far to actually say anything nice about these police officers. It may well have saved the lives of some of these members of Congress. Yeah, I just kind of want to sit with that for a second because I just don't like what can you even say?

Right. I mean, that is that House Republicans specifically, you know, stating like that they are on the side of the perpetrators, not of the defenders of the Capitol and that the people that risk their lives that they don't deserve to be honored at all. It does make hollow a lot of their comments about Abbey Gate and such. It feels like we should be able to honor the people that defended the country no matter the circumstance, the political circumstance. Your point though about the Wall Street Journal's tepid editorial on these pardons and really the silence from

Republican elected officials. There's been this conventional wisdom congeal that it's like, well, you know, Trump won and he won the popular vote, so what are you going to expect? Everybody just like, you just got to go along now. And there's no actual reason for that, right? I mean, all of these people that were elected to the Senate and the House could choose to reflect their own values or views of their state or district and say, you know, I will try to advance the parts of the agenda I agree with and speak out against those who

oppose. That was like the standard in 2017. They didn't end up acting on it in a lot of cases, but that's how Marco Rubio said he was going to act. Remember running that he was a check on Trump in 17. It's how the speaker at the time, Paul Ryan, said he was planning on acting during this period in 2017. You wrote for the newsletter last week about this within the context of Trumpism being fully triumphant.

And you're right that we're in this unprecedented moment where an utterly shameless demagogue of the head of authoritarian movement is in control of the executive branch and to a considerable degree Congress with a massive media infrastructure behind him, oligarch supporting him and with the demoralized opposition trying to prop up unsteady guard rails and how different that is from 2017 when there was still even within the Republican party these forces that were feeling them out trying to call balls and strikes and all of this. And you would think that this moment on this anniversary, these pardons, this would be

a time to call, I never know how that metaphor works. Do you call a ball or do you call a strike when you do something bad? To call a ball, I guess you don't see it at all. Yeah, it's not as if they don't have access to putting out press releases or making statements or being giving interviews. Today is January 6th. To my knowledge, I haven't exhaustively looked at what's happening on every cable network, obviously, or what's being put out by every senator, house, office.

Is any Republican noticing that fact? Is anyone saying, four years ago, we had this terrible moment? Even Mitch McConnell and people who spoke eloquently at the time, I don't know, maybe one or two of them as Republicans are saying things. I think Democrats are saying a fair amount, but the ones who don't want to address it are memory hauling it and the others are excusing it and then sort of getting pretty close to celebrating it. And they're the ones who are making all the noise.

The most notable event, an event that was unprecedented in I would say modern American history, but maybe in American history, let's pretend it didn't happen. Very depressing. And necessarily I mentioned that piece, I guess, the demoralized opposition. President Biden had a little op-ed in the Washington Post this morning, which the spirit of it was good in the sense that he was saying, we can't forget it. We can't memory hole it. You know, we need to call what happened.

But he wrote it in a polite way. He's sort of tough on the people who attacked the Capitol, but he doesn't mention the name of the person who was behind the tough on the people who attack the Capitol, but he doesn't mention the name of the person who was behind the attack on the Capitol. Donald Trump's name is nowhere in that. Now I suppose from his point of view, he's two weeks from now, Donald Trump becomes president. He doesn't want to have a, he wants to have a polite transition. He'll attend the inauguration.

It's more effective perhaps not to make it look like he's taking a shot at Trump. I'm sure that's what he tells, they tell themselves there in the White House. But I mean really it reads weirdly. Did you know you had it right? I mean when you read it's like well there was this assault on the Capitol. Very bad, really terrible thing. We can't memory hole it. Like why did this assault happen?

I mean you know. I mean the problem here is the man that sent them there and then the man that is planning to pardon them for their actions actually. And so like that is the first one worth focusing on. The forward-looking side of this, I think is also important. And we have Tom Jocelyn, who worked on the January 6 committee and Norm Eisen in the board this morning, analyzing Cash Patel's interviews. And he gave, he had a very active podcasting career between his attempt to overthrow the

government and now being nominated to run the FBI. Cash had a segment called Cash's Corner on the Epoch Times, just a conspiracy rag. And I just want to play one clip from it. How do we have eight people there and Christopher Wray, we'll get to him in a second, refuse to answer questions about it. You have to ask yourself, okay Wray, we'll get to him in a second, refuse to answer questions about it. You have to ask yourself, okay, well that was in planning for at least a year. What was the FBI doing planning January 6th for a year?

So the incoming nominated FBI director seems to either believe or want to perpetrate a lie that the FBI was planning January 6th, that the institution that he wants to lead was part of an effort to plan the attack on the Capitol. It's unclear how that is possible given that they didn't know that Donald Trump was going to lose for a year, among the million reasons that that wasn't possible. They didn't know that Donald Trump was going to challenge the election. Does the FBI have people from the future that flew back to let them know that there was going to be a large stop the steal effort following Donald Trump's clear loss in the

2020 election? It's unclear how this would work, but it is pretty relevant, I believe, that this person that is coming in claims that the FBI was involved and has said so repeatedly. That was not just one clip. In an interview with Tim Pool, who's another conspiracy guy, kind of a horseshoe, mega, far lefty turned mega guy, Pool said that while he could not prove it definitively, it looks like you have a preponderance of evidence suggesting there may have been federal law enforcement involved in making January 6th happen to tell, eagerly went further, I'll get you beyond a reasonable doubt.

So again, he is very clear that he believes that the people that he is set to be in charge of instigated, organized, thought up the attack on the Capitol. How does that work? How are these people supposed to report to him? Is he going to have an internal investigation when he starts to figure out who is behind this? Or are we just going to pretend like he doesn't think this or didn't say this? Do you have any thoughts? Well, actually, he will do internal investigations and firings and they're certainly already preparing to do that in the Justice Department as a whole. And the FBI has been usually separated

out from a lot of that, except the director himself, Trump fired Comey. But I think Patel would love nothing better than to have 30 loyalists at the top levels of the FBI instead of career people. As you say, the quotes are amazing and it's really worth looking at it and really worth then saying, okay, this is not a case of a guy who, you know, wasn't really involved but was on some show and didn't quarrel when some host said something. He was spending a lot of time pushing these conspiracies. Yes. I mean, he had some credibility in MAGA world,

but he had served in the Trump administration in various national security kind of related positions. Intelligence related. It's intelligence related, right. He had dealt with the FBI. He before that had been in the Justice Department, I think, at the end of the Obama administration, actually. And so he was a major figure in pushing

This sort of stuff much more than I don't know Other people who were just sort of reading talking points you might say from from maga world not that they should be excused either Yeah, it's just unbelievable to nominate him as head of the FBI I mean, you know for these unsuitable for so many other reasons as well but the willingness to indulge in conspiracy theories and ones that are derogatory, it's the word we're trying to say, you know, with libelous in effect, I mean, to sort of, to the people in the institution

you're taking over. I mean, he seems to want to say that Chris Ray, who was Trump appointed head of the FBI in 2017 and who has been serving for seven years, what can criticize decisions Chris Ray made, or from both sides, probably, is he really saying that Chris Ray, this was an FBI disinformation deep state campaign launched by Chris Ray?

That seems to be what he wants to say. It might be nice if Chris Ray, who I think has already announced he's quitting before as hell takes over, would say, I don't know, maybe wouldn't help, but after he quits at least that this man should not be the next FBI director. Trump's entitled, Chris Ray might say, to have someone who didn't get in fights with Trump and who's sort of a fresh face and all this not someone who's indulged in it propagated these kinds of Really dangerous conspiracy theories. Yeah are offered to testify against or say that he lied or go go in front of the committee and You know provide information because sometimes it's just worth just stating clearly what the conspiracy that

Cash Patel is saying the FBI was involved with is. Because it just shows the preposterousness of it when you state it out loud. And I hope that there will be Democratic senators during these confirmation hearings that take this process very seriously and walk it through with him. Because the theory that he's promoting is that the FBI knew that Donald Trump would attempt to roll back his loss in the election, right? Like the FBI knew that Donald Trump was going to try to stop the steal, so to speak. And so, in order to undermine that effort, they concocted this notion that they were going to put FBI agents among the MAGA masses

and encourage them to storm the Capitol to undermine MAGA. Right? Like that's the theory that the FBI was able to, to recognize that if they just put eight or 20, whatever undercover MAGA folks in red hats, amidst a crowd on the mall, that they could convince the crowd to storm the Capitol, attack police officers, shit on the Capitol, like raise Trump and Confederate flags, do all of these things that would then undermine the movement. Like that's the theory. And it's like, it's nonsensical.

It makes no sense. Like there's no, there are all these things that you would have to know, you know, in advance, like for starters, that the people would go along with this. Right? Imagine yourself being at a protest and having a person on your side being like, Tim, I'm trying to think of the last protest I was at. I was at some gay rights protests around the Supreme Court rulings. It's like you had some people in rainbow hats that are like, Tim, what we really should

do is storm the Capitol and storm the offices of the anti-gay marriage officials. I'd be like, what are you talking about? So the idea that this plot would actually work, even if they had conceived of it, is preposterous. And now that the man that is perpetrating this is set to lead the FBI, it leads to all these questions. And you have John Thune on the Sunday shows this weekend talking about how, well, yeah, the FBI could use some reform.

And so I'm actually, I'm pretty confident that you're going to have cash in there. I would like to know from John Thune, is this the kind of reform that you think it is needed? You want somebody that perpetrated a lie about the FBI officials and said that they were part of a anti-American insurrection effort. Like you want, that's the type of reform you're looking for. You want somebody that is going to try to target political foes. It's going to make up things about people like Ray Epps, like frame random Americans.

You want someone that's going to try to frame random Americans and publicly accuse them of being part of a plot with no evidence. That's the person that you want at the charge of FBI, FBI, John Thune. The whole thing is just ridiculous on its face. And I do feel like it's almost so ridiculous that people don't know how to deal like journalists don't know how to deal with it. And I, and Republicans are getting away with excusing it in a way that I really hope does not happen over the next few weeks.

Sorry for my rant there. No, that was very good. And I, John Bush and John Thune, the guy, people sort of happy to see within the majority of leadership because he was the least Trumpy of the three candidates. He's not exactly, let's see if he stands up at all. I mean, we, Democratic senators, I hope do a serious job on the question. I hope a few Republicans think maybe they should think of themselves as United States senators and not simply Republican Party operatrix loyal to Trump and especially in these national security and law enforcement jobs. If they

want to give Trump some ridiculous education secretary, what's her name, Linda McFann. Okay, I don't really, I'm not going to fall by sword on that. But though if you actually were on the education committee, you might care a little bit about the education bill and prefer to have someone more competent in there, but, or more who knows something about education, but leave that aside, these are serious national security and law enforcement positions, justice department, FBI intelligence, national intelligence, defense department, surely some Republican senators think it matters who runs those departments.

Surely? Well, no. I mean, yes, that surely was kind of a question mark. So I just have to sit on that for a second because I don't know. Yeah, maybe not actually. Probably not, I would say, but we will see as the hearings will begin. Maybe at the end of this week, early next week? I think next week, we will see as the hearings will begin. Maybe at the end of this week, early next week? I think next week, let's say.

And then Patel is apparently might be a couple more weeks off because they'll do the Attorney General, maybe the Deputy AG first. I think Patel, I mean, I just want to say, I intend to try to keep writing about Patel, and I know Tom Jocelyn has done a ton of research, and he's a very, very good researcher, spent most of his career researching Islamist extremist groups and many of them overseas.

And what he's been so struck by is how much, and this gets to your other point, I mean, how much the media in general just underestimates the network of extremism on the right. The FBI was right to try to have informers in the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys were violent. Yes.

You know, and they proved it on January 6th. They did an interruption. And if only, honestly, if the FBI had maybe been, you know, taking some of the informers a little more seriously and been able to do a little more, but they were constrained in other ways, you know, to stop them from organizing the insurrection and having the weapons they had and so forth, it would have been a good thing, not a bad thing. And God knows we've seen enough instances of right-wing extremist violence here in the US in the last many years that the FBI needs

to worry about it and they have to some degree, but cash hotel is not going to be very interested. I don't believe in stopping any of that. When it comes to winter, it's like survival of the fittest out there and I'm willing to do whatever I can to try to stay cozy. I hate winter. This is why I move south. And for the ultimate cold weather necessities, whether cold weather for you means 48 degrees like it is here in New Orleans or actual cold, snowmageddon like it is in DC, you got to check out our friends at Quinn's. With Quinn's you can treat yourself to true quality at an affordable price. Something everybody needs

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suspect who planted two pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. They showed video of the person. They gave a height, five foot seven, so they can be seen wearing distinctive Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes in yellow, black, and gray, saying less than 25,000 of those were sold. So that was maybe the most distinctive feature of the person. To me, the timing here is so telling, right? That it's like, they feel like this investigation is over under the new administration. And this is a last ditch effort to try to identify the person

that really intended to cause much more harm and carnage on that day. And I believe Kamala Harris was in the DNC around the time that the pipe bomb was discovered. So a huge crisis averted there. And I think it's pretty telling that this was the moment that the FBI decided to kind of release that tip publicly. It was also at the end of last week, there's a couple of resignations that weren't widely reported. I think they reported a little bit this weekend from the Justice Department, quite senior

levels. weren't widely reported. I think they reported a little bit this weekend from the Justice Department, quite senior levels, career people who had been in the national security side of things, and including the person who ended it, whose name I'm now blanking on, but he wasn't that well known, honestly, beyond legal worlds, I think very well respected, who led the investigation of Trump's taking all the documents to Mar-a-Lago, which is a cut and dry investigation. They seemed to have done a competent job of discovering which documents were there and securing them and so forth. And then indicting Trump on a very good case, which of course, Judge Cannon has totally delayed and that was presumably going to make move to when

Trump orders the justice department to dismiss it. So he retired and I think a deputy perhaps who had also worked with the special counsel retired. I don't blame them for retiring. People have their own reasons, their own considerations. I don't want to second guess someone saying, I'm not going to hang around and possibly get fired and go, they'll try and take away my retirement benefits. I mean, who knows what it is.

Or it's just, it's hopeless anyway to fight that. So why not just leave a week earlier? But the degree to which you're going to have, whether they get fired or people resign early and without being judgy about that, the degree to which you'll have a lot of chances for Bondi as AG and Patel at the FBI and others to put their own people in, and then of course the Schedule F reform. We can have a federal government six months from now that really does not look recognizable in some ways. And this could be especially true in key agencies. That's what's so worrisome about Patel and about the Justice Department stuff.

Jay brought this name of the person you're referencing. In this specific instance, I'm not going to use the word judge people, but I think that people that are in these agencies that are responsible public servants that do not have, you know, what's the word, exposure with regards to Trump, I think it is kind of incumbent upon them to stay. Obviously, personal issues, etc. Excepted somebody like this, something like Brat, they're going after him. You know, I mean, Trump has talked about how like this, you know, the, the rating of my home, you know, was the most, was the most outrageous thing that's ever happened in the history of the country. And so for somebody like that, I think, a, they're on the top of the potential

lists of folks that Patel is going to come in and try to root out internally and potentially externally. I have no judgment for people that were involved in those investigations that did the responsible thing and are now going to find themselves on the other end of the barrel of the government. We are kicking off the new year and we are back with our friends at One Skin. I was in Colorado over the holidays. I was up in the mountains and man, my skin was chapped.

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longevity of your skin with Oneskin. Your future self will thank you. one skin, your future self will thank you. I want to do a couple of other closing items about Trump, but there is one other news related. I tried to stay away from media news on this and being too navel gazey. It's like media people love talking about media news. I don't know if regular people love talking about it as much, but it's gotten to a point where it is a real news item, I think, what is happening at the Washington Post that is relevant to kind of our broader discussion about pre-surrender to the Trump administration and how our institutions are going to handle it.

I mean, this is the institution that had, you know, democracy dies in darkness, since their kind of cringey slogan, you know, in the early Trump 1.0 years. Now you have Jeff Bezos, Amazon agreeing to do a documentary, a flattering documentary of Melania with somebody that had some serious me too accusations against him being the director. So Amazon has picked that up right at a moment where everybody, all the people I know in Hollywood world and streaming world when, you know,

who are trying to pitch shows or pitch political related things, everybody's like, no, no, no, we're too scared of politics right now. Politics is too risky. We're not gonna do any politics shows. We're not gonna do any documentary shows. Well, we'll do one exception, Trump's wife.

We'll do a suck up documentary to her. Bezos doing that. And at the same time, you have just a mass exodus from the Washington Post. Just Josh Dawsey today going to Wall Street Journal, Leanne Caldwell leaving going to Puck. Others are coming. There may be some firings coming. It sounds like there's some reporting today. And there's been a long list of people leaving the Post. It's pretty astonishing what's happening over there. I'm wondering what your thoughts are. It is. Now, they'll end up at other places

and continue to do good reporting. Maybe we're just watching a transition where the post is no longer a major figure, major player in American journalism and Puck and Politico and the bulwark are, you know, and I do think there's some truth to that, obviously, right? And- I don't know about Politico, but we'll-

I know, okay. Your point is- I'm being nice to them, I don't know. Axios, whatever your point of state. I'm being nice to them. Axios, whatever, any of these places. Smart brevity. Anyway, yes, whatever happens. The Post is sort of, so I came to Washington in 85, went to the education department. The Post had one reporter, younger reporter, it wasn't a prestigious assignment, but a good reporter, assigned to education and labor, I think it was.

And she covered us and she covered policy initiatives and the usual kinds of things. Secretary Bennett testified to Congress and so forth. But she also dug and found things that had gone wrong and controversies and cases where we were fighting the career bureaucracy. The Post actually did more of that than the Times. The Post was really a Washington kind of inside baseball paper. There were trade journals that did the real detailed stuff to some degree and a couple of the places like the National Journal, which barely exists anymore.

But the Post was kind of the place that kept an eye on what's happening at these agencies. To the degree that that's already been collapsing for a couple of decades. I bet the Post now has one reporter assigned to nine domestic policy agencies, not two, you know? But nonetheless, they keep some eye on these things. And the idea that Trump's just going to be running an administration here, putting God knows who in key political positions, doing God knows what to drive out bureaucrats who are on some heritage lists of someone who honestly tried to implement a law correctly

five years ago and ignored some conservatives, doing all these kinds of things, money going, again, God knows where, from grants and so forth and contracts. And who's going to keep an eye on this? So in that respect, I mean, again, it was never great. I don't exaggerate. And the post wasn't, you know, plenty of stuff happened in government that shouldn't have happened when the Washington Post was much bigger. But I do think it's bad for this to be happening at the same time of Trump taking over with a genuine authoritarian playbook and surrounded by grifters and people happy to take advantage of the federal government. I think it's a real problem, actually, the decline of the post in this moment, because to exactly your point, and look, there are going to be other people doing investigative

work. It's good ProPublica piece over the weekend. They're independent groups such as that. We're moving more into reporting, as I mentioned, in the top. The Times is a BMS. They'll still exist. But you know, like the amount of crap that is going to be coming down the pike from this administration, you know, the fire hose of shit, beginning day one.

And to have the paper record in the city be just totally collapsing like this and it, and making strong signals towards capitulation even frankly, in certain cases when it becomes to base us and having a moment, uh, Sam Stein has reported on this for us that a lot of the also traditional outside watchdog groups that, uh, just kind of behind the curtain here a little bit on how Washington works, a lot of these groups that are in the nonprofit watchdog groups that are doing these investigations and then feeding stuff into the main outlets, right? Like they're doing investigations and then working with reporters with information they've found to try to uncover more.

A lot of those are collapsing, kind of the good government, you know, the crews and things of this nature are not getting funding, you know, because the donors don't want the exposure, I presume. All of that happening simultaneously. It's not like there's gonna be no scrutiny on this administration. There'll still be people doing good work,

but it isn't gonna be as robust, I don't think, as it was in 2017. And I think I'm going to take the piece we had from Tom Jocelyn and Norm Eisen this morning. It's getting retweeted and people are going to, obviously, will get to Democratic and hopefully Republican senators and their staffs to use for questioning for Patel and others can follow up on some of the investigative stuff. But I was told this morning someone just had called and said it was a great piece, but he had been trying separately

just to push it. He's more of an activist, you know, who had read the piece and was trying to push it to activist groups to get them to promote it and make a deal of it and get it out more into the country so people could call from, you know, the state of North Carolina, call Tom Tillis. I'm making that up, you know what I mean?

And say, hey, what about this? You can't confirm this guy. He said a lot of these groups did not want to really take it on. And these are left-wing, these are basically left-wing groups. I mean, these are liberal groups. These are not Trump supporters. Because they're worried about what Patel is going to do. Right.

And why, you know, probably won't work. We'll keep our powder dry. We're going to have to defend a million other things we care about. I don't begrudge them that. And we're going to have to defend civil rights programs we care about and other government programs we care about. And we don't need to have this some nomination fight that may not succeed. There is a kind of self, I don't know what's the word, what does Tim Snyder call it? You know, pre capitulation, pre

submission, pre capitulation. Yeah, kind of going on. Now, if it's really keeping their powder dry, so they'll be even more effective when Trump announces the deportations on January 21st. Okay, maybe I take that point, but generally that's not how politics works. If you fight the first fight, you build up steam. If you win one, you really build up momentum. Then you're better off when you fight the second or third fight, even if you lost the first fight, incidentally, I would say often. If you give in on the first fight to hold the powder, keep the powder dry for the second

fight, it's often a good reason to keep the powder, keep the powder dry for the second fight. It's often a good reason to keep the powder dry for the second fight for the third fight. Then there'll be a fourth fight is when the deportations will start off probably pretty small with just some real criminals. So let's not make too big a deal of that. We'll get to the new newsletter, can report on all this, of course, very intelligently, but, and with much more detail than I have. But I just worry that there's a ton of rationalization going on that's leading people, detail than I have, but I just worry that there's a ton of rationalization going on that's leading people, again, not out of bad motives really and not out of personal cowardice or anything like that, but it's leading people to accommodate much more than they should.

Yeah. Well, you got your homework assignment then, people. Go hassle your senator with Tom Jocelyn's article about Cash Patel's conspiracy-mongering. If you got a minute today, coming up on the inauguration, there's one item of news related to Jimmy Carter. We discussed Jimmy Carter's death last week on the pod. I wanted to give you one update here, Bill. Donald Trump's not happy about something related to Carter's death.

Traditionally after, and honestly, maybe this is the moment to get rid of this tradition because I'm not going to want to do this when Donald Trump dies. But traditionally after a president dies, the flags are at half staff for 30 days, I think, whatever it is. There's a traditional period. And that period will overlap with the inauguration. And this upsets Donald Trump. He writes this, the Democrats are all giddy about our magnificent American flag potentially

being at half mast, I don't think he knows the difference, during my inauguration. They think it's so great and are so happy about it because they don't love our country. They only think about themselves. In any event, because of the death of Jimmy Carter, the flag may for the first time ever during inauguration of a future president be at half mast. Nobody wants to see this and no American can be happy about it. Let's see how this plays out.

It's kind of like when you had the USS John McCain, when he is, when he's going to Japan. Totally no American can be happy about it. Tim, I think 30 days, honestly, is a little excessive, but, uh, it's in some regulation or something. It's not Biden didn't invent this. I mean, I think it's been done for the last X number of presidents. So he just did what, what has been done and appropriate respect and kind of weird

to change it now suddenly. Maybe they could just turn the flag upside down instead, you know, kind of a Martha and Alita. Yeah, that would be, we're maybe in front of the Supreme Court in honor of Justice Alita, you know, right? Suddenly Trump's so concerned about proper flying of the flag, when all of it wouldn't has there been any movement in American history that has? Abused the American flag more than MAGA. I mean, you know, it's upside down backwards on every piece of clothing Every thing right today putting blue lines on that we're putting 1776 on it

there's more heartwarming January 6th anniversary piece out that I wanted to close on. And that was Michael Cruz wrote on this for Politico. I love him. I took a shot of Politico earlier, but Michael Cruz is maybe the best profile writer out there right now. They're certainly in the top tier. And he wrote about an exchange between Al Gore and Mike Pence. At Joe Lieberman's memorial, Al Gore thanked Pence for his actions on January 6.

Pence said something surprising in response, Cruz writes. He suggested to Gore he had done what he'd done that day in part because of what he had seen as a newly sworn in member of Congress on January 6, 2001. He had witnessed a vice president stand up to pressure from his own party to defy the Constitution, even though doing so by definition meant personal defeat. I never forgot it, Pence said to Gore. You don't know how much that means coming from you, Gore said back. But that was very nice. It is nice.

Yeah. We have a lot of horrors on this anniversary. So I thought, I thought people might want to. Well, it is worth, it is worth it is worth Yes remembering the pence did the right thing and other people weighed in and did the right thing and the guard rails did Pretty much hold from November 3rd through January 6th to January 20th of 2020 2021 Which makes it all the more tragic really right that I mean It wasn't as if everything came crashing down and it was a freefall afterwards and so you got to expect in a sense that the center would not hold that the principles

of peaceful transfer of power and no storming of the Capitol and no political violence and no inciting to violence. It wasn't crazy to think that those principles could and should hold. It had been a little too close for comfort on January 6th, but now they could. Biden was in charge. What's really terrible is that, you know, in the Biden administration kind of went out of its way to respect a lot of those principles.

And nonetheless, Trump wins the nomination and the whole Republican party's with him. I was trying to end on a positive bill. And he explicitly does it with this repudiation or endorsement, I guess. All right, let's go back to go. Sorry to ruin your cut that out. Have our crack producers take that. I'm going back to Gore. Sorry to ruin your, cut that out. No, no, no.

Have our crack producers take that all out. We're going to keep it in. I'm going back to you on Gore. This will give people a little something. We've got to update our priors on Gore a little bit. I mean, you know, I just, I think back, I was a child during this time, but like the sore loser man stickers, you know, that were around in the early 2000s, I, pretty astonishing what Al Gore did.

Oh, it was nice that Mike Pence mentioned that to him in retrospect. Very much. So I agree. All right. One last thing. Our good friend, A.B. Stoddard is going to be stepping back for the bulwark. This is a stressful life.

We're not, we're not coal mining out here. We're not looking for anybody's sympathy, but having to care about this every day is a burden and A.B.'s been caring about it for about a decade and I just appreciate her so much. I didn't know A.B. that well. I knew her a little bit from work, pitching stories or whatever back when I was with Flack. Before Trump had even won the nomination, so this is very early in 2015, I saw her in a green room at MSNBC and she pulled me aside and we started kind of in whispered voice, started talking about how bad it was and what was coming.

And she started sharing with me her apocalyptic views about what was ahead of us. And I knew that I had a soul sister in that moment, somebody that I was aligned with. I felt like very early on, you as well. We were among the people that were sounding the alarm that this is actually worse than people think and this is potentially going to go to the depths of hell in a way that a lot of the conventional wisdom did not anticipate. And so I'm sad that we were both proven out on that point, even if maybe, you know, we

don't have t-shirts about how A, B and Tim are always right. But yeah, you know, we were proven out on this one point. And so, you know, I do feel a kind of cosmic connection with her that dates back that about a decade now. She's still going to be around. We're going to have her on the pod from time to time when, you know, she can, after she can have a few breaths from looking at the fucking Twitter, which she well deserves. And so I just wanted to give her a little shout out on that point, Bill. I don't know if you have anything, Dad. No, that's great. She's one of my favorite people really. And I've known her pretty well for quite a while. And you know, we broke with the Republican party and people say that

was the right thing to do. I hope they have to say that. And some people excessively say it was, you know, courageous and all this. But A.B.'s world was very much the centrist, sort of, established world. I'm going to say this in a good sense in Washington. She worked for mainstream journals. She covered the hills. She was friendlier, I think it's safe to say, with the moderate Republicans and the moderate Democrats. That's her own personal disposition. A lot of them though did not go into the let's confront, as we were discussing earlier in a sense, the let's confront Trump camp. They went into the, they weren't Trumpy, but they went into the let's not overreact camp. But I think she was courageous and she really felt so strongly about this.

She wanted to join the bulwark. We were thrilled to have her, obviously. Sorry that she feels she has to take a little time, certainly understandable though, to just get away from it for a bit, but she's really a terrific person. And I also look forward to, yes, seeing her around socially,

but also she'll do a few podcasts, write a few pieces, and she'll certainly be part of the extended family. Yeah, always part of the family. We love AB. She'll be back around. And we've got a lot coming, as I mentioned in the intro. There'll be even more than the folks that we have already announced to come.

So the opinions will be plentiful. The outrage will be plentiful here. Maybe the darkness not quite as dark without AB every week. I appreciate her very much. Appreciate all of you for tuning in. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullock Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Lying on its side The ruins of the day Painted with a scar

And The more I straighten out The less it wants to try The feelings start to rot One week at a time Police can swear to God Love sleeping from the guts I know my friends and I Would probably turn the clock

If you get out of bed, come find us heading for the bridge Bring us snow, all the rage, my little dark age I read in stereo, the stereo sounds strange I know that if you hide, it doesn't go away If you get out of bed and find me standing all alone Open my eyes and burn the page, my little dark age The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.