The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: This Is So Third World

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

The boss only wants to hear good news: that's the takeaway from Trump's high-profile firing over the weak job numbers. So if a government worker has something bad to report, they now know they'll have to lie to keep their jobs. And this isn't only about key information on the economy—it's also about hurricane forecasts, intel threats, and potential military mishaps. Meanwhile, the Texas redistricting stand-off is fraying the fabric of our democracy. Plus, Fox's own producers think Jeanine Pirro is a reckless maniac, direction from the top was the only way Ghislaine Maxwell could have been moved to a 'Club Fed' prison, and Democrats debate how much to work with Republicans who don't keep their word. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Today's 'Morning Shots' The 'Bulwark Takes' Apple feed Tim on 'Pod Save America' on Friday Some of the victims' testimony from Maxwell's trial Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, August 4th, so we're here, of course, with editor-at-large Bill Kristol. How are you doing? Fine, Tim. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm here in LA and a little programming reminder for everybody. at large, Bill Kristol. How you doing? Bill Kristol, CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO,

Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, , Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO,, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder & CEO, Founder breaking news was happening around the firing of the commissioner of labor statistics. So if that happens where we get off scheduled on this podcast, you can check out that feed.

But I have so much more to talk about. So obviously, nobody's missed it at this point. But Trump ordered the firing of the commissioner of labor statistics, essentially the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a government, after her report, or the government report rather, showed significant slowing in the economy the past three months. He bled that the jobs numbers were all caps rigged in order to make the Republicans and all caps of me look bad. He attacked McIntarfer personally, and she was dismissed from the role.

There are just so many layers to this story and it's pretty alarming from an authoritarian creep standpoint, from a you can't believe your lying eyes when it comes to numbers and then the element of how having to lie about bad news is now your obligation if you want to remain a Republican in good standing or a government worker. And then there's the actual economic numbers themselves. So I kind of want to talk about the first part first. Your newsletter started with democracy dies in daylight this morning. Where's your alarm scale, I guess, following that firing?

It's pretty high. It's been, as you know, it's been pretty high for quite a while. So but for a while, even another ticket, it really is because in the old days, of course, presidents would have and their staffs would have spun the numbers and they would have said that, you know, it's complicated in the modern economy, the internet, these adjustments are a little bigger than usual. So you can't be quite sure, right? I mean, that would be a normal, so to speak, a political reaction. Sure.

Though I will say I saw an Ernie Tedeschi tweet, a shout out to him, about how that seems like that could be true, logically, but it's actually not. It's actually not. The numbers have been more, like very recently, the revisions have been pretty significant, but like the trend line has been towards these numbers getting more and more accurate. But anyway. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. To be clear, I wasn't saying that that would be accurate to say that.

It would be plausible enough to be adequate spin for the White House press secretary. That's certainly for Republican members of Congress and so forth. But that's not okay anymore. Spin is not okay. Now we just have to have, I guess, literally pure, I mean, what, just pure propaganda? You can't report facts if they run it counter to the narrative that America first is fantastic, great, that everything Trump does has instantaneously great results, and that there'll never be a disappointing

or down bump in the economy again as long as Trump is president. It's really in a way that he... There's a bit of a Streisand effect, don't you think? He brought an awful lot more attention to these numbers, which were a little jarring. They were slowing, but they aren't recessionary exactly. Just to be clear, I mean, as I understand it, this woman is a career civil servant, an economist, very well respected, has been in the government over 20 years, took this job in 2023, I believe, as a promotion from a previous job in the government, was confirmed, this one is Senate confirmed, was confirmed by something like 86 to nine or something

like that. Including JD Vance. And the way that works is, it is complicated getting these numbers. It's a survey, and they have to figure out how to weight things. So many, many, many career economists and career civil servants of other kinds, statisticians, work on this. The idea that you could snap your fingers and rig it is literally, it's as ludicrous as saying you could rig the 2020 election, which is conducted by 50

state governments. Or the 2024 state election, if you're one of the three blue and non-listeners out there. But anyway, it's a real... Yeah, good point. And then the firing, again, not kind of waiting, maybe wait a few months. Maybe if you really wanted to kind of change, you really did think conceivably, I don't know why you would, that 50 statisticians and economists, at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are biased against you. You'd have a review, you'd get a little panel together of economists and business types

and labor, you know, you'd do it and maybe six months from now, you'd be, of course, none of that is of any interest to them. They want the firing. They want the demonstration effect. They want the intimidation. They want the sense that the whole government works for Donald J. Trump, right? That me that you were laughing about, the capitalized me in his truth social post is very revealing though. Yeah, he sees himself as a capitalized me, like the capitalized G in God maybe. The intimidation point is I think right. To me, the two most alarming elements of this is just the straight To me, the two most alarming elements of this is just the straight fundamental fact that this woman, a public servant, lost her job because she reported the facts.

That gets you into a really bad place around the government where you, if you're a public employee, you're just trying to make sure that people have the correct information about whatever it is, whether it's hurricane reports or intelligence reports or military, like you go down the list. If you put out information that is true but inconvenient for Donald Trump, then you can lose your job. Obviously that has a ripple effect throughout the government.

And we saw this with the DNI already, this is not the first time where Tulsi Gabbard fired people for not advancing the lie that Venezuela, us with the DNI already. This is not the first time where Tulsi Gabbard fired people for not advancing the lie that Venezuela turned to Aragua was invading the country under the orders of Maduro or whatever the absurd proposition they put out there was. So now we've seen this a couple of times and who knows what kind of consequences there are of that. There's a lot of unpredictable consequences. And then specifically though in the economic area, you know, the economy is based in a

lot of ways on trust, right? And the belief that institutions are going to pay their bills, you know, that the numbers that they report are going to be accurate, that there is not going to be some corrupt scheme that hyperinflates or deflates the dollar. This is the reason why the US has the world reserve currency while US is still a trusted harbor for investment for people around the world. It is because our institutions are strong and legitimate. If you delegitimize your economic institutions,

that puts you on a path to having an economy that looks more like Argentina than the US, right? So I think that this is just one data point, but in his firing note, he also had this final line about essentially about how Jerome Powell might be next. Watch your back, Jerome Powell. And I think the systemic economic risk is not 100% or whatever.

We're not definitely speed running our way towards Argentina hyperinflation, but it's a non-zero risk that the US no longer feels like a safe and reliable place for investment if you think that the government is going to start putting up fake numbers to please the desperate. Right. I mean, you would like the government numbers to be as accurate as they can be. So if you are making an investment and you see a recession coming, maybe you pull back a bit of the opposite.

The almost more metaphysical point or whatever is the kind of Havel, Hannah Arendt type point. It's a little too deep for me, but it's true, I think. They really want, authoritarians want to discredit the notion of truth, of objective truth, of facts. And it just becomes, he says this, you say that, it means that if things really do go downhill, Trump just keeps saying that don't believe what you're seeing, they're not going downhill or not even quite hang on

through a tough patch like a Reagan message or something like that. Or there are just cycles in the economy, let's say, which might be a more traditional Bush Obama type message. It's, you know, don't believe what you're seeing. And also I do think that this particular data, who knows how important it is, I don't, but there are many, many other data

that the federal government puts out, right? That people depend on for all kinds of things, you know? And I do think in that respect, it just, it's third world. It's literally third world. And Mark Cuban has been good on this over the weekend. He posted just, for example, of other data, the BLS also is responsible for CPI, which is used to set the annual increases for social security. Right? So it's not even like, so that's like a very tangible effect on people's lives, right? Like if Trump, it's not crazy at this point to say hypothetically, they don't want it to seem like there's inflation, you know?

And so they put out fake numbers and so inflation is happening, but seniors don't get the increase in their social security that they would have otherwise. Am I predicting that's going to happen? No. But if you're in a position where you're firing the people that give out bad news, then they're going to be real consequences to that. And Cuban was also going back and forth with some of the Trump fluffers on social media about all this.

Trump takes advantage of these things that are like complicated and people don't understand, right, to pursue conspiracies. And you saw this with the 2020 election, but it's like, I can understand how people are like, it is kind of weird that the numbers, you know, it said 200,000 jobs last month, and then they're like, oh, no, we're off by 100,000. Like, that seems like a big mistake. It's just like, that's the nature of how these things work. You take surveys. At the end of the month, you report on what the surveys

of the business has said. More surveys come in the next month. You update them. And in a lot of ways, this update, getting to the actual economy side of this, brought the government's reports in line with what people were seeing anecdotally. You're seeing a lot of conversation in econ nerd world over the last couple of weeks, which is like, why is the economy so strong?

We're seeing all these underlying things to be worried about, whether it be the tariffs, concerns about the debt and deficit and interest rate increases. You're seeing these anecdotal reports in the regional feds about businesses saying that they're not investing, about hiring right now. Why is the top line number so continuing to feel like the economy is strong and growing when there are all these other negative signs? This adjustment really just sort of brought in line with I think what everybody has felt like was happening,

which is that we have a slowing economy. I don't know what you think of all that. It seems that way. But again, I come back to your point about the CPI. The discrediting of the numbers has all kinds of effects. And the firing has its intimidation effect. The discrediting of the numbers has real effects on politics, conceivably.

Do we trust that before election day in 2026, when there's the third quarter GDP, which I think is usually late October, or many, many other obviously monthly and all kinds of employment inflation numbers, do we trust in 2028 that we're going to get honest numbers? I mean, I really, you know- How could you? Yeah. So that's really bad. I mean, then you really are, you know, it's this is one, in other words, this is the he's doing this six months in, he could easily ridden this out.

I think he wants to establish the predicate for both the firing of people and the intimidation side of it, and the discrediting of facts and government facts that he would afford from put out by the US government and are treated in a very bipartisan way when they come out or few just not partisan when they come out and he wants to discredit that. So then it just becomes, you know, we say this and they say this. Yeah. Do you have any other big economic thoughts? I mean, you know, you are seeing what this big article about how much Vegas is struggling.

Like you're starting to see this in these early indicators of where do people start to pull back? Things like vacations and such. I'm taking the kids to Universal today here in LA, so I'll be able to report back on how crowded that feels. But you're starting to see some evidence of people having real worries about the economy. And if you looked at the actual report, I mean, the jobs right now are essentially in healthcare,

elder care, and, you know, investment into AI and data centers. As our buddy, Derek Thompson wrote about the economy, he goes, economic growth is right now is basically a Friday church service, just old people plus trying to summon God. And like, it's like the underlying numbers were pretty, pretty stark. I don't know. I mean, and like to me, that is the biggest risk for Trump. And while the lying is dangerous, you know, you can only lie so much about the economy, or maybe

you can't. I don't know. Which is it does affect real things like things like social security and other things. It gives them an excuse for concealing to fire Powell in other circumstances, so it could affect real policy. But no, I agree the reality does hit it at some point, that's for sure. So you can't just lie your way through that. The economy is so complicated though, and the people make decisions based on anticipating things are going to happen. But that can be good for short-term

economic growth. People import more. They think things are going to slow down later so they buy prices are going to go up later from tariffs so they buy stuff now. So I kind of think Trump has probably been benefiting a little bit from people front running so to speak expectations and spending a little more than they might have and they're getting ready to pull back. I think the tariffs have had its late effect, but they're not going away and they're not and the chaos isn't stopping either. So it feels to me like it could well slow down, but I mean it's a very big economy on the other hand, a lot of innovation. So who knows. It is, yeah. I will say one thing. I feel like a flyover country bumpkin coming out to LA now.

I've just lived in New Orleans a couple of years and I mean, my hamburgers are very expensive. I don't know how people live out here. Producer Katie, I don't know what you're doing out here if you're not a millionaire. And I do think that there was this big discussion about Biden over, is it the fact that he was messaging it poorly or is inflation really harmful? I'm like, Sarah and JV, I would fight about this all the time on the Secret podcast and, you know, there's a little bit from column A and column B. But I don't know, the reality of people's lives in certain parts of the country, at least, I think are, you can only do so much spin, I guess, if you can't afford your life. I mean, I've had the sense that inflation is higher than I would have thought, given

that it's supposed to be down at, you know at 2.5 or something and not like late 2021 and all of 2022 when it really was at 79%. Of course, you could see it in real time, but it feels like things are continuing to go up quite a lot. I guess that we had that piece about a week ago on Morning Shots, a guest piece by Chris Truex, actually from California, so maybe that's why he was so struck by this, on meat prices, which have gone up quite a lot, hamburger and beef in the last, so maybe that's why your was so struck by this, on meat prices, which have gone up quite a lot, hamburger and beef, in the last, maybe that's why your hamburger was struck by how expensive it was.

But, and certainly one reason they've gone up a lot is we have pretty high tariffs on countries from which we import a lot of beef. Yep. Mexico, but I think especially Brazil turns out to be a... Brazil. And so, that is a thing that's partly at least caused by Trump's actual policies. It's not simply an outside variable that's hitting the economy or macro variable. Democrats might make that

point a little more. Inflation did hurt Biden a lot. I'm all for making a big point about Medicare. God knows I'm for making a big point about Epstein, but they shouldn't forget about inflation. Well, particularly, I mean, there are going be a lot of us, a lot of the swing house seats are actually in blue states. So it cuts against and in places like this because the Democrats did and maybe this is probably why but like the Democrats did unusually poorly in Southern California, New York, you know, places like that and a lot of those, you know, seats are gonna be back up again. What is feeling safe at home really mean to you? For a long time, I thought it was enough to have good locks

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Speaking about more political stuff, I think the big news of the day is what's happening in Texas with redistricting. Talked about this a lot with Mark Elias on Thursday. Sam Stein is interviewing James Talerico, who is in the Texas Legislature of Democrats. He's got one on Rogan recently. And so that will be on the aforementioned blog, Takes Feed. But the Texas Dems have now disembarked to Illinois to not give Abbott and the Texas Republicans a quorum for their redistricting vote for their gerrymandering vote. Abbott is threatening to like strip the, to banish any Democrat who doesn't show up to vote from public office. I don't exactly know what the rules are on that, but that's a threat that Abbott's putting out there. What's your sense of what's happening on the ground

with this story? I mean, the Abbott statement, which I think is very late last night, but I saw it this morning is worth looking at it really. I mean, the Abbott statement, which I think is very late last night, but I saw it this morning, is worth looking at. It really, I mean, it's got some fake legal citations in it and so forth. But it basically says that if you don't show up, they can kind of declare the seat, in effect, vacant. You've vacated your seat. And then you're not a member of the Texas legislature anymore.

And then you have the two-thirds quorum, which is what you need to do business. The number, you know, what is it, the denominator goes, my math's not so good anymore. The denominator goes down so that the Republicans in effect create a quorum. And he says at 3 p.m. this afternoon, if the Democrats aren't back, he says he's going to do this. I was talking to some lawyers earlier who said, well, you really should go to court and establish that you have the right to do it, but he's going to do it and let them challenge him in court. So I think we could be in a pretty big crisis this after that crisis, but just a moment this afternoon where in effect Abbott has vacated 50 Democratic seats, at least for

now, and had a vote and redistricted Texas to try to create five additional Republican congressional seats. And then he'll dare, you know, go ahead and sue. Good luck in the Texas courts, incidentally, and maybe even the federal courts down there. And you know, it'll take a while anyway, right? So Ially, and maybe even the federal courts down there. It'll take a while anyway. It was coordinated with the Justice Department. Remember, they laid the predicate for this a while ago by saying they had problems with the way the Texas seats were constructed because they created some majority-minority districts.

That's contrary. That's DEI-like, I suppose. I'm sure Justice will weigh in defending Abbott. They think they can pick up five seats. Maybe they were overestimating, but that would be big, right, if there's another close, obviously evenly divided vote for the House. Big anyway, it's a lot of seats, given how few are in play, basically. So yeah, you know, the free and fair elections, I'm a little worried about that. People have been saying, it's happening. It's happening. They are trying to move a nontrivial number of seats with a mid-year redistricting, which is almost never been done, and was actually in Texas.

However political gerrymandering is, at least it's sort of attached to the every-ten-year census and redistricting. So it's sort of like, you know what is coming, et cetera. It has a certain legality, well it is legal, it has a certain, you might say, regularity. Now, if every state could just redistrict whatever, it's a good moment for them. Florida's talking about they're gaining a population, they should have a mid-decade redistricting. Also, they should get some more seats, they're saying. Some Republican member of Congress saying they want to introduce a bill to actually

adjust the seats of the states because of the population growth. This is literally the kind of stuff that Orban did. They'll also change the rule. Not so much change. Everyone still goes and votes. You and I will go cast our vote, right? But you change the rules enough and you change the apportionment and districting enough, and then you collude with red states to make it a lot easier for them to do it than blue states, which is certainly some of which have independent commissions. It's happening. It's happening, I guess is what I'm saying, in a bad way.

A couple of thoughts. Here is the actual statement for AVID, just so people get it. The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the House reconvenes at 3 p.m. on Monday, August 4th. For any member who fails to do so, I will invoke Texas Attorney General Opinion Number KPO382 to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House. I mean, that is kind of amazing, right? Elected officials, I mean. Right. It is, I mean, it's extremely amazing and alarming.

Trump thinks he can fire everyone in the federal government, basically, even if they're traditionally protected, or even if they're traditions that they shouldn't be fired, or even if they're laws in some cases, they shouldn't be. Texas, Abbott now thinks he can fire elected Democratic members of his own legislative body. Yeah. He feels like he can take away the choice of his own citizens, right? I mean, it's Texas citizens that voted to elect these people to represent them. And Abbott feels like he can, as I guess, a soft dictator of

Texas determine, you know, whether or not those votes were valid. Just as a quick aside, I do wish they wouldn't have gone to Illinois, which is like the worst gerrymandered state on the Democratic side. They did it, as you mentioned, in the normal, regular gerrymandering sense. But even still, I do hate the talking point. I've seen a lot of social media posts about how the Democrats have fled to a state that then they show the pictures of the district where, you know, they're not the prettiest districts. Let's just say they're not exactly contiguous.

But that said, Taylorico in the conversation with Sam says that, you know, he thinks that California and Illinois and all these states should move immediately to deal with this, which is also what Elias said last Thursday. I think that's true. You end up in this kind of brace to the bottom situation, which kind of adds in larger questions about how we kind of unravel all this if we ever get past Donald Trump. But I feel like that's kind of a question for 2029. And the more urgent question is on what to do now to try to offset some of this.

I mean, I don't, Elias, I felt like in our conversation was more bullish than I am about the number of potential seats that Democrats could find. I think there are more potential seats for Republicans to squeeze out of this than Democrats, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. I agree with that last point. I've looked at it really quickly, but I think California is already like 43 to 9 or something like that, and Illinois is pretty lopsided. New York has a pretty strict rule about the independent commission. It's going to be a little hard to get around that, I think. So I haven't looked in any detail, and I'm sure lawyers

could find their way, and governors maybe can find their way. I think, it's going to be a little hard to get around that, I think. So I haven't looked in any detail and I'm sure lawyers could find their way and governors maybe can find their way. I think New England's going to have a tough time getting it to be much more lopsided than it is though. So yeah, so I'm slightly pessimistic about the real world arms race working out okay for Democrats. I'm not entirely sure they'll go ahead with the arms race. Incidentally, they do believe in these independent commissions in some respects, and they've put them in place in some of these states. If this were happening in a foreign country, as is the cliche these days, you'd say this country is in some danger of splitting apart. This is like the 1850s in America, right?

Each side escalates and are blocking the other side from having any power at all in their own states. It is being caused by Trump and by states, you know, and it is being caused by Trump and by the Republicans, obviously, and the Democrats, you know, will or won't respond, but no question who's going first here. And it's very bad. I mean, it's really dangerous, you know. I feel like we need an 1850s historian on where, I don't know, just regular old tobacco farmers just going along with their lives though in the 1850s while this was happening. Maybe so.

To me, that is the cognitive dissonance that you try to deal with in all this where you're at, structurally speaking, the fabric of the democracy is tearing. It's not just fraying. It's being torn apart. Meanwhile, it doesn't feel day to day when you're at the Ralphs here that we're on the brink of civil war. I don't know. That would be a good thing to discuss with someone

who studied the 50s like that. Ron Brown's been obsessed with the 50s analogy, but he's not himself a historian. He's read a lot of stuff about it. But I do think, I barely remember this one. I used to know a little more about this. One of the puzzles in a way was that most people in the South are not slave owners. Most people were not wealthy, obviously.

They were whatever they were, small farmers and small merchants and so forth. But they went along. You know what I mean? There was never a real resistance to the slaveocracy. There's a way in which these things have a momentum of their own, I suppose. Similar in terms of media though and of one-sided account of everything that's so dominated in these different states, I think it's also true. Well, a little Civil War chat for your Monday morning here at the Bulwark.

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traffickers that we've encountered in the country, recently has been moved from Florida to a more minimum security prison in Texas. I had a listener email and I did not know how to believe at this, but based on their understanding, it's the only example of someone with this type of crime who is now in this type of more minimum security prison in the country. Obviously that was part of a deal that was made with Trump's personal attorney turned deputy attorney general, Todd Blanchanch before they met in Florida. I mean, it doesn't look good.

And I think that we are kind of reaching a polarization point here where I haven't seen quite as much outrage from the sort of Epstein right as I might have thought on something like this. And if you're the type of person who really genuinely cares about predation of children, then giving Glein Maxwell some positive treatment and letting her have a more easy time in prison, you know, you would think would violate those principled views. But I don't know. We'll see. What would you make of the news with Glein? No, I agree with what you said. And I think this really is a kind of club fed type prison

based on my reading about it and their own promotional materials about how they have yoga classes and all this kind of stuff. I mean, it looks a little bit like a, you know, Goat yoga for going. I saw that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was doing some, is doing some goat yoga at some maha HHS event. Now, if that was a democratic administration,

you would think that would be mocked pretty relentlessly as some globalist elite socialist thing, but I guess goat yoga is in now on the right. So Glenn and RFK. It is amazing. I sort of agree about the right. The right seems to, is gradually succumbing to Trump

and losing whatever authentic, if it was authentic, outrage about what Epstein and Maxwell did as opposed to outrage about that's more of a Clinton conspiracy kind of, you know, sort of a QAnon type thing. I hope there's a lot of Americans are still outraged though, I would think. Harry Melvin made this point when I was on with him Friday night, and he actually, I thought, hit the core point, which is this is different from Blanche going and having a conversation with Maxwell.

It's different from even not releasing the files, going to try to get the grand jury testimony. All that stuff is processed and sort of hard to tell. We think it's not legit, so to speak. We think we know what the motives might be. We don't know what Blanche or Maxwell said. This is an actual deed. This is an actual thing. This is an actual

thing that they did. There's no, it didn't happen normally. There's zero justification and I looked at the Bureau of Prisons actual handbook for putting someone convicted of the crime she was convicted of in this club fed, a very light security prison. It can only be done at the direction of the director of the Bureau of Prisons and presumably of the attorney general. Presumably, Trump knew something about it, you know? I mean, this is really straight up, it's not quite a pardon of her, but it's a step towards a pardon, right? They have done something to make her life much better. Yeah.

Are they a promising war? Is it an inducement? Is it a reward? Is it what? I guess we'll find out. But yeah, I think people really should be just horrified by this. And I think a lot of people are. We just see in the town halls and stuff how much it comes up. Yeah, but I think MAGA is sort of, I don't know, how much is Trump able to get them back on board? I can't quite tell. I think he's going to be able to get the core folks back on board for sure.

But I definitely think that there is, my guess is if I looked in my crystal ball, my past is not 100% on the crystal ball, you know, so it's not a magic crystal ball. Shocking. I like it. Every once in a while, I get some false positives, kind of like a chat GBT situation where they get a, every once in a while, it just makes up an answer. But I think that if you look a couple years years from now, and looking back on this, you'll see this is the time that Trump kind of lost that alternative media

Manosphere type person, more than the actual Macca person. And they say that this was the moment where it was like a trust was broken, like he broke trust with us. And you and I and our listeners can all say it was ridiculous that you had any trust with this con man ever, but a lot of them did and they felt like he was going to challenge the status quo and challenge all the things that they had complaints about. And it's just preposterous the way he's acting on this and that will be an easy kind of in

the way that the Hillary deplorable thing was like an easy shorthand. You know, sometimes things just break through and become a shorthand for certain parts of the audience. I think that this group will end up being the shorthand of them seeing Trump as a typical politician or as a liar or as sleazy or as not trustworthy. I think that's not insignificant. Just back to your point really quick on going, for me, we have two facts now about this that are very simple to explain. The Trump administration is covering up the mentions of the president in the Epstein files. We know that.

They have an Epstein file. They have a file that includes all the flags of Trump's names, and they're covering up. They don't want to show it. So we know that there's a cover-up about Trump's involvement. We don't know the extent of it or what is actually in there or why they're covering up, but we know they're covering up, they don't want to show it. So we know that there's a cover up about Trump's involvement, we don't know the extent of it or what is actually in there or why they're covering up, but we know they're covering it up, Trump's relationship with Epstein and the extent of it. And we know also that they're now giving friendlier, lighter treatment to Glenn Maxwell, Jeffrey

Epstein's second in command, whatever, ringleader, the person that was recruiting and grooming of the girls that he was assaulting and raping. So those are just two simple facts that this is what the government's doing. They're covering up Trump's involvement and they're giving Maxwell lighter treatment than she otherwise would have gotten. And so people can take with those what they will. Do you have anything else on this? I want to talk about Judge Box of Wine as well. Here's some news about our new new US attorney.

Just that I think Democrats really need to keep the pressure up. They should read excerpts from these, the documents that are public, which include trial, obviously, transcripts and indictments and stuff, and other things that people have said, you know, other victims have said on the floor of the House and the Senate when they get back. I feel this personally, when you really hear what happened, and when you really hear how close Trump was to what happened, it changes one's view from, oh, he's covering up some embarrassing stuff.

What would we do anyway if we saw it? To really a more sinister thing, honestly. So I hope they stay on this. I do too. On to Pirro. So on Saturday, we're laughing, but you laugh to not cry only in this situation. The Senate approved the nomination of Janine Pirro to be the top prosecutor in Washington, DC, US attorney,

a very prominent and significant post. She was confirmed in a 50 to 45 vote, which I think there were no actual no votes from Republicans. The only reason that she only had 50 was that several people didn't show up to the vote. So I think that she received every single Republican's confirmation for this post. I think it bears mentioning when you consider the fact that Janine Pirro will be the lead prosecutor in the District of Columbia for our government. During the discovery of the Fox Dominion lawsuit, the person that oversaw her shoe, it's not a random person,

Executive David Clark said that he took her off, it's not a random person, executive David Clark said that he took her off the air after the 2020 election because, quote, I don't trust her to be responsible. Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be a token. Internal Fox Communications show her executive producer describing her as a reckless maniac who is nuts, promotes conspiracy theories, and should never be on live television.

So her own staff think she's a reckless maniac who should not be trusted to be on live television, and every Republican member of the United States Senate thought she should be the lead prosecutor in Washington, D.C. It's pretty dark stuff. It is. So he's lost no confirmation votes, if I'm not mistaken. Is that right? They pulled Gates.

He with Drew Gates and he with Drew Martin. For this post, actually, this was Ken Martin's. Yeah. Martin was for this coast. So he was somehow a bridge too far, but Pirro is fine. And I mean, that sort of does say it all, right? I mean, you nominate Petexeth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and Janine Pirro and that guy Boves for the Third Circuit. And they're all a little much a little bit of hoopla and a little hand ringing at the end of the day, 50, 51, 52 votes. I

mean- Going back to the social security thing though, this is a real job. Yeah. I don't know. This is not like being appointed to the deputy secretary of commerce or whatever. This is a real job. I guess it relates also to the Maxwell conversation that is on behalf of the law and order party. There are very serious prosecutions of dangerous people that need to happen in the District of Columbia. It's a district and you need a US attorney there

that is capable of doing the job. And the idea that they fired Maureen Comey, that actual qualified prosecutors are fleeing this office and Janine Pierrell is gonna be in charge of prosecuting these crimes is preposterous. And it's not, I don't think it's too far to say it's dangerous. And it is certainly essentially, it will get me to my next topic, making the government totally complicit in all corruption,

all public corruption, because I don't think anyone can possibly take seriously that Janine Pirro is going to be a bulldog as the US attorney on public corruption, given who's in power right now in Washington. I think the Justice Department, I was thinking about this this morning, which department has been damaged the worst by Trump and made hopefully not irreparably, but the most lasting damage and also move the furthest. What important department has been moved the furthest from anything resembling responsibility, competence, something one could trust.

And I think justice is probably... I mean, DHS was never great. It's obviously terrible in my view. DOD maybe been tougher. The uniformed military is a little excess ridiculous, but the uniformed military has more of a ballast, so to speak, against this. Treasury, who knows, but it seems a little less crazy. Justice is really, and I was talking with someone who's worked there, a career person, who's leaving. People who tried to stay at the beginning, and that's true of the person I was talking to, thought they could do some good, thought they could

probably not have to do the most political stuff. They just believed in being public servants at the attorneys at the US Department of Justice, turned down in the past at three times the salary and stuff, leaving. They can't deal with it. So you're going to have a hollowed out Justice Department. They're replacing them, incidentally, just putting in all their loyalists. I mean, Justice is going to have, you know, it's going to be 60% PAM bondage, if I can put it that way. It's not like there's going to be a career staff down there that can stop stuff from

happening. I think in other departments it's a little more common. We'll see Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well, for now the number two is taking over. An awful lot of people work there. You'd have to spend a fair amount of time going through them, so to speak, or intimidating them to kind of get to... Steve Bannon said, we got to get our people there into the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And I was like, do you have people that do statistics? Yeah. They do have a fair number of lawyers. I mean, there are a lot of lawyers in the country. They're not great. Anyway, I do think justice is... And if you number of lawyers. I mean, there are a lot of lawyers in the country. They're not great. Anyway, I do think justice is, and if you care about the rule of law, obviously, if you care generally though about the key agencies of government, you were making fun of the Secretary of Commerce before.

If you care about justice, defense, intelligence, community, DHS is important. What's happened to justice is really unbelievable. Joe Fertigo and I did this Sunday show with him yesterday and he said, I wonder if Matt Gaetz was now regretting having pulled out in November, December. He would have gotten confirmed too, right? He has to be regretting. I said this to him. I saw Matt in the lobby of a hotel in Phoenix over Christmas.

You know, Matt and I are like the same age and I worked with the sisters. I know Matt a little bit. I went up to him and I was like, why did you pull out, so to speak? I was like, number one, you made me look like a bad pundit because I was on TV saying you're going to get confirmed. Number two, I think I was right, actually. I think that you would have been confirmed. It's also hard to see how Gates would have been any worse than this because your assessment is correct. I think that the DOJ is getting completely hollowed out.

I think that going back to this question of even in a best case scenario, what do we do in 2029 to reassert some type of rule of law and norms, that's going to be the hardest place to do it because of A, the new lawyers that are in there, cash battalas, since we have a 10-year term, right? You have all of these elements. And once you've kind of broken this idea that the DOJ is independent, it will take smarter people than me to create new rules that reassert a DOJ independence. Because to me, that is like the other element

of this, besides the actual staff. There's no pretense that the DOJ independence. Because to me, that is like the other element of this. Besides the actual staff, there's no pretense that the DOJ is an independent institution anymore. And so once you see that that is how things worked, how do you convince people that we've moved back to a place where it's independent? I think it's very challenging. And if you were worried with election interference

in 2026 and 2028, which one should be, DOJ is probably the key part of the federal government that through which that would run, as we saw that in free January 6 maneuverings where they refused to do what Trump wanted to do, bar, quit, first of all, and then the others wouldn't go along with his attempts. But if you've got people to do, bar, quit, first of all, and then the others, you know, wouldn't go along with his attempts. But if you've got people spending weeks, months, year, two and a half, two and a half, three

years plotting of how, states run the elections primarily, but if you've got people at the federal level plotting how to undermine that and undermine voting rights in the more obvious ways, but also just the whole way the election system is supposed to work, casting doubt on it, supporting legal challenges by troublemakers at every key state, that this election commissioner should be thrown out or disbarred. I mean, I think it's very worrisome. Yeah. Elias was really good on this. And it's like, really, the biggest concern is the post-election. Like, what is DOJ? Not that there's no concerns about pre-election, obviously redistricting is concerned, voter suppression, there's some concerns. But the most acute concern, it's like after election, DOJ interference and throwing out votes, right? Like all this kind of stuff.

Just really quick on the corruption, thanks for mentioning it. There was a big New York Times story over the weekend. We'll just put in the show notes if people want to read it. I mentioned it, there was a big New York Times story over the weekend. We'll just put it in the show notes if people want to read it. But the scale of Trump's corruption, I do think might be the biggest story that is getting lost amidst all of the other craziness. The crypto contributions that you've talked about several times here, but the Times sort of lays them out, talking about people that give huge amount of money and then the SEC stops looking into them, people that are giving huge amount of money and then the SEC stops looking

into them, people that are giving huge amount of money directly into Trump's coin. There were some people giving money to his campaign coffers, which is bad enough, traditional insider corruption. In these cases, it's people giving money directly to Trump and Trump's family. There's one case in the New York Times story as they talk about Coinbase, which contributed 10 million or something. The Times article didn't even mention the fact that there was some oversight of Coinbase. There were some investigations.

SEC was looking into them that were dropped. In this story that lays out all the different corruptions, they even weren't including some things. There was the part in buying. It goes on and on. I mentioned it just because I don't want it to get lost. And I do think, you know, when you think about the political side of this, making Trump into a normal, dirty politician is an important job for the Democrats,

I think, in the coming two years. And sometimes I feel like it gets lost. This goes all the way back to 2015. I was briefing the Hillary super PAC on like what we learned from the primary or maybe I guess it was 2016 And I was like, you know We never really tried to like turn them into a corrupt like make it about corruption I'm making about screwing people over to enrich himself And I think a lot of times broadly people that pay close attention and Democrats are

like, everybody knows that Trump's a huckster, right? And a shyster. And it's kind of like, not really. I don't think actually. I mean, I think that some people know it and like it, that support him. They're like, it's fine. We want our, you know, it's a corrupt system. We want our own corrupt guy.

But I don't know. I think that there's another group of people that are reachable by turning them into somebody that's more looking out for his own interests. I don't know. Is that wrong, do you think? No, I think that's right. I think, yeah, I thought Trump University might be really ripping off working class people with fake promises that this would help their lives and their incomes in a shameless way. I thought that might have been a fact in 2015-16. I think you did too, I think, but it didn't. This is a little different though, because he's president, right? So the corruption is not... So I think for a businessman to be a bit of a huckster, but okay, he'll get to Washington and there'll be rules and he'll be constrained. Now he is president. Corruption is, as you say, utterly mind-boggling. I think

it could be politically taken advantage of, maybe. On the other hand, a huge amount of money is flowing to his personal pockets, obviously, and the family, but an awful lot is flowing to his super PAC and other Republican pockets. I don't know. If this goes on for three more years, the disproportion of... And also, they're scowling at people who might give to the Democrats. I've been told there is some intimidation going there in terms of self-intimidation, you might say, by some donors and by corporations.

They used to give the evenly very, you know, we're a big business. We've got to support our Democrats. You and I remember this. You got to support our Democratic and Republican friends equally. Now it's a little more, well, we'll support a few Democrats a little, but we got to support the Republicans much more. And you know, money doesn't buy elections. I mean, in America, luckily, it's overrated, I'd say, generally.

But still, if it gets to enough of a disproportionate, it can have a real effect. It's another form of election interference, right? Yeah. Murphy, Chris Murphy is really strong on this. It's something I hadn't really been thinking about, and now I'm kind of dialing it on a little bit more. So we're going to keep monitoring that stuff. All right. While we do Democrats, just really quick, one more thing. Cory Booker was on the floor of the Senate late last week going crazy over, like the details of this are kind of not really even worth getting into, but like it's a police kind of reform bill and funding bill and that Booker is the Booker side of the argument is basically we shouldn't be cutting deals

with these guys on anything. I represent a blue state. Who the hell knows? We cut a deal with them on some police funding issue and they end up clawing it back for blue states under some pretense that we don't do DEI rights or something. And why should we be going along with them at all? Especially after what they did with rescissions. We should just be fighting them on everything, tooth and nail. Basically I came down on the side of some of the details of Corey's point were a little bit hard to follow. It was a little bit hard to follow the intensity of his speech on the Senate floor and what exactly he was arguing. But like the broader principle, I found myself very much on his side of this. And I think that it is pretty, you know, you see things like Jean Shaheen agreeing

to, you know, advance, was it Beauvais? I forget who she voted to confirm one of these horrible people that they're confirming in exchange for, you know, money for Haiti or whatever. And I'm for money for Haiti. I'm for all this. These guys have proven themselves totally untrustworthy. And just from a strategic standpoint, I don't know that there's really a lot of strong arguments for doing bipartisan deals with John Thune, I guess, at this point. But maybe, I don't know. Where are you on that, Bill?

Exactly where you are. I think the details, yes, Booker could have raised this months ago. They got it through committee. It's a classic bipartisan bill. You introduce a poison bill amendment, it breaks apart a bill that's probably mostly okay. Yes, sure. Klobuchar negotiated with Republican members.

I don't know if the administration was even that much involved. But having said that, yes, so on the trees level, I'm slightly, you know, booker-man, is that the best instance of maybe picking this fight? Sure. You know what, I'll say, and just, you can't sit around saying, well, that, this is really a good one to pick the fight on.

This is an eight. I'm not gonna do the fight that's only a four, because, you know, I don't, that's ridiculous. At some point, you just gotta say, you know what, they should all fight. Some of these fights are gonna be more, you be more worthwhile and a little more defensible in the details than others. But all of this is setting up a huge question for September, which we'll talk about undoubtedly over the next several weeks, which is what does Schumer

do when it really does come to a serious question of compromising with the 80 and 60 votes to get, keep the government open and pass appropriations bills? And does Schumer provide or Democrats provide votes to go along with food and keep Trump's government working away, transferring Maxwell to low security prisons, you know? And firing heads of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I mean, you can't shut down the government

for three years, obviously. But somehow it can't just be business as usual. I guess I'm with Booker on that. Yeah, I can't. And sometimes I find myself like my, Somehow it can't just be business as usual. I guess I'm with Booker on that. Yeah, I can't. And sometimes I find myself like my, I don't want to be blinded by my personal hatred and distaste for the Republican senators

and their fucking craven behavior over the past nine years. But I've just seen the whole thing of like, if you're sitting down with them to do some bipartisan deal at this point, shouldn't they be forced to take some pain? That's my thing. Even the notion of Senator Klobuchar, like, oh, we need to cut a deal with them because this bill is so important. It's like, well, okay. Well, if it's that important, then shouldn't they not get Jeanine Pirro,

a total psychopath as the US attorney? Shouldn't that be part of the deal? Shouldn't they not get Jeanine Pirro, a total psychopath, as the US attorney? Shouldn't that be part of the deal? Shouldn't the food that is rotting away in storage bins and the UAE be delivered to the poorest people in the world? Shouldn't we make sure that we're doing that? They're doing so much stuff that is so beyond the pale that the compartmentalization, like there's an easy, like I think it's much easier if you're a US Senator, I get it, to compartmentalize all the bad stuff and be like, okay, I'm not going to pick fights with them on this.

I don't want, I'm not going to make enemies. I'm not going to shout at them on the Senate floor. Like, I'm just going to, you know, argue against the bad things they do and on these few areas, work with them in ways to make things better. Most of the time I would say that's probably the right and grown-up thing to do. I just don't think we're in most of the time right now, I guess is where I land on it. Well this is a piece of legislation I'd say in Booker's defense, I think he said he was only a four, only he deserves a four or something. I mean there's appropriations I think is the strongest case for you got to keep the

government functioning. We need to get Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security work. So you have to ultimately probably vote for appropriations bills for the different agencies of the federal government. And you don't get everything you want or most of what you want in those bills.

I'm going to make you on that. This is a fresh piece of legislation. It wasn't obviously necessary that it exists, right? So in that respect, Booker is right. Why are you going out of your way to pass this legislation? Which is basically, it was about law enforcement, which you think you could add some provisions about like ICE people wearing masks and shipping people to club fed or whatever. I guess I will say a little afterwards, but anyway, yeah. So I'm where you are on this. They need to toughen up, but it's hard. There's a lot

of kind of inside baseball institutional pressure, go along, get along pressure, some pressure from within their states to make sure they get certain things. So I think September will be very, that will be an interesting moment for the Democrats. It will. We've come a long way, Cory Booker.

You blocked me on Twitter in 2011. Really? Oh, yeah, he blocked me. I was going after him. He had a kind of a composite character in one of his books called T-Bone. Oh right. That's quite true. That's kind of not true.

Not really a true person. He kind of made it up. And I was teasing him about that on Twitter. And you know, it got a little too close to how it turned out. But he unblocked me recently, which I appreciate. Has he been on the podcast? Oh yeah, he came on. I got him to unblock me live.

I guess you missed that episode, Bill. It's OK. Not everybody can listen to every episode. It's fine. That's for sure. Yeah, I got him to unblock me live. Many of your fans do listen to every episode. I know.

And I appreciate the every dayers. But it's a lot of content we're putting out there. So we unblocked you. That's good. Yeah, Corey, blocked, unblocked, and now here we are coming to his defense in an internecine democratic fight. Life is long. It's important to keep the opportunity to keep relationships open.

I have one final thing, Bill, that is not really aimed at you, but for the audience, we send people out with a song. Over the weekend, your friend, Kam Kasky, my FyPod co-host, his ex-girlfriend is a notable Olivia Rodrigo, and she was at Lollapalooza and brought out Weezer to do a cover of Say It Ain't So, which was my favorite song in sixth grade. It was unbelievable. I got to tell you, Olivia is just, she's 22, she's a Zoomer, and she's doing everything possible to hook in the millennial girl dads

to make sure that we indoctrinate our children into her music over Taylor Swift and the competitors. I got to tell you, it is working on me. She absolutely annihilated Say It Ain't So at Lollapalooza. So I'm going to take people out to that. I'll be back here tomorrow. Pray for me, everybody. Speaking of being a girl dad, I'm going to Universal with two girls, two seven-year-olds today.

We'll see how it goes. Got one more pod from California tomorrow and then I'll be back home. Appreciate everybody for listening every day. Bill Kristol doesn't, but so I appreciate you if you do. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace. Somebody's hiding, it's caught in my eyes But somebody's cold one's giving me chills The stars just closed my eyes

Oh yeah, alright All right, feels good inside Flip on the telly, wrestle with Jimmy Something is bubbling behind my back I'm a lame, I'm a bad Bottle is ready to blow Dang it! Danger! The drug is a heartbreaker My love is a heartbreaker My love is a life taker I can't confront you, I never could do When you say this way Is the water slide away from me

That takes you further every day To be cool, yeah When you say this oh oh oh Your drug is a heartbreaker I'm saying so, oh, oh My love is a life-taker Remember how I chewed In spite of his desire

He could walk the dreams of things I could also I could His bottle of Stevens awakens ancient feelings Like father, stepfather, the sun is drowning in the blood The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.