The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump Has Lost the Plot

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

After a campaign built on the promise that Trump was going to look out for his voters, he started his administration getting sidetracked by DOGE and Musk's phony ideas about saving money. After that petered out, he got distracted by his need to put his name all over the place. In the process, he's totally forgotten to help his people—or even fake trying to help them. Meanwhile, Trump is trapped in a Groundhog Day of his own making on Ukraine-Russia. Plus, his bruising has now moved to his left hand, Melania can't speak English, the DOJ is still working to find the 'real' people who made the rioters descend on the Capitol, the withholding of information in the Epstein case is worse than the redactions, and Dems need to forcefully call out the Medicaid fraud in Minnesota. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: Monday's "Morning Shots," including what Andrew learned from his extended family The 12 Days of Christmas, Bulwark style Addison's piece on America's two Christmases Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" with Ryan Goodman Phrase Tim and Bill referenced: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Our listeners get the Harry’s Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www.Harrys.com/THEBULWARK #Harryspod

Experience a legacy that lasts at Dawn Valley North Lexus. Right now, Lisa, 2025 TX350 Premium Package from just 898 per month for 28 months at 3.9%. Plus qualified Lexus loyalty guests receive a further 1% rate reduction for rates as low as 2.9%. See Donvalleynorthlexus.com for details. Experience a legacy that lasts at Dawn Valley North Lexus. Right now, Lisa 2026 NX350 Premium Package from just $5.98 per month for 28 months at 2.9%. Plus qualified Lexus loyalty guests receive a further 1% rate production for rates as low as 1.9%. See Donvalleynorthlexus.com for details.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We are back post-Christmas break. Bill Crystal, I saw you notice that our Department of Homeland Security wished everyone to Merry Christmas and said we are blessed to share a nation and a savior, which isn't quite right. think. But the Merry Christmas part was okay. Yeah. Well, now we can say that again. We couldn't say that during Biden. So it's nice to be able to wish my non-Jewish neighbors, most of whom are non-Jewish. I would say, you know, Merry Christmas. And even some of the Jews wish each other Merry Christmas sometimes. Why shouldn't we enjoy? Well, it's just, as someone wrote a good piece on the book website. It's kind of an American holiday at this point, almost a secular holiday as well as a religious one, right? So that's fine. That's fine. I felt that like Santa, for example, not in the Bible, right?

Shocking. Really? Yeah, I was talking to Sam Stein about this, and Santa does not come to the Stein household. And I was like, why not? Yeah, we don't do that either. I don't know. It's different people have different customs, but yeah. Okay.

We're exhausted, giving them the, unfortunately, or fortunately, Hanukkah, which is a minor Jewish holiday, of course, but it's become bigger because of it's partly based with proximity to Christmas. It's eight days. So we're exhausted the Stein's and the crystals from giving the kids eight days. days of presents. So it's like the last thing we need is Santa coming. But of course, the 12 days of Christmas, that's, people don't really observe that, right? That's a thing from the, I mean, it's a wonderful song performed by the, by the bulwark choir there. People should take a look at that organized by Catherine Rappell. I don't think I was that impressive. I was there to make everyone else look good. And, and of course, Edgar was there to be to show that there is a

genuine star in the bulwark. Yeah, Andrew Agar can sing. We'll put that in the show. It's apparently he was in the Hillsdale, Abraham Lincoln Choir. We learned over the break. Speaking of Edgar, he has a nice newsletter. It looks like you were off this morning. Yeah. Despite, you know, I don't know. You could have worked.

I contributed behind the scenes. There's a lot of subtle editing that people aren't catching up on, you know. Well, Andrew Edgar wrote the morning shots this morning, and thank goodness, because it was wonderful. And he wrote about going home for Christmas, and he's going back to Iowa. And his family is more conservative and has some Trump voters in there. and any rights, but how like, but it isn't contentious. I was surprised to learn about him a couple of months ago we were talking about this. He's like,

they have a family text chain where they text about politics. It seems very healthy, actually. Yeah, I know, you made that face, but I don't know. They don't seem to take it too personal, which is, I think, good in a way. Anyway, he's home and he's writing about just kind of the deterioration

of everything and how you, what's the old line about how, you know, a movement becomes a... starts off as an idea and becomes a movement, something like that, and then ends up as a grift. It's not quite the word that's used in the line. Yeah, something like that.

Something like that. We'll find it. And just like the degree of the scamminess of Trump world is pretty disillusioning and depressing. And he talks about how, you know, there was this guy, Jake Elsie, who you might remember, you were in a little drama related to him. He was like the more normy guy running in a big primary in Texas for a house seat. Our friend Michael Wood was kind of the never Trump. or Canada back when those existed.

And then Elsie was more like the establishment person. And then there were some more MAGA people. And Elsie apparently was sending his text to his grandmother, like asking for 10 bucks so that they can get their Trump tariff checks, which is a scam, obviously. Jake Elsie's pack has no purview there. And he's from Texas and she's in Iowa. And so, you know, he's kind of trying to help his grandparents understand what was happening on the scam.

And then he has an uncle talking to him about Nick Fuente. And it's just, you know, it's not one of these stories about how we have a family food fight over the holidays, but just about how it's kind of sad the way things are deteriorating. No, it's really a lovely piece. People should read. Yeah, it's also his grandma said $10. And then it didn't realize she was, I think, signing up for a $10 a month recurring thing, which is one way these scams really do work. Ellsley was a kind of normally Republican.

He wasn't as normal as Michael Wooden, my judgment. But I think maybe the reason I got dragged into is I'd give it Elsley, $250 or something, the previous cycle maybe. because he was running as the more Romney Republican. I googled it this morning to refresh my memory. Yeah, you had donated to him in 2018. When there were still a few people one hoped would be normally Republicans who could get elected and would stand up a bit to Trump. And that was kind of his posture in the primary, which he, of course, lost, right?

Yes. And then he ran again as a more Trumpy candidate three years later. And then his opponent used your donation against him. You know, like never Trump or Bill Crystal support, you know, the puppeteer. I aim to be used in Inter-Republican primary fights But that now, Elsley, who I'm sure if wants to talk to in private Is a little, you know, I'm sure he's okay on things

And isn't crazy, but I mean, the fundraising is the worst of it They all go for these, you know, generic fundraisers And MAGA fundraising is the way to go, I guess. So it's a nice little, not a nice, It's a kind of horrible glimpse of how everything has been normalized in a Trumpy, grifty, scammy direction, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even in a world

well, there's always been grift and scams, don't get me wrong. For sure. And then I thought the other thing is, Andrew, as you say, the family's gotten along. They talk about politics politely and stuff. And they still did, apparently, at this Christmas dinner. But I think the degree to which Andrew, who's such a nice guy, was kind of horrified. We're just so disheartened by the deception and the sort of damage that's being done to his family members, really, by Trumpism. I mean, that was...

And the way that tentacles get in, you know, it's like kind of more, you know, less engaged. family members asking about like younger, you know, nephews or whatever cousins that are like into Nick Puentes now and are into white nationalism. And it's just, you can just see the way that things are disintegrating. I don't know. You know, it's the one thing, it's we enjoy the food, watching the MAGA food fight, the TPA USA, the Ben Shapiro versus Tucker. I get there's a little bit of a popcorn element to it. But also, there's not a lot of evidence out there that, you know, even in the best case scenario, a post-Trump right is something where, like, things pivot back. There are all these incentives through, just look at this example, like the fundraising, through the influencers and content creators, through how you get attention, through, like, all of these incentives are towards exacerbating the problems rather than resolving them.

And certainly the dynamic we have a year now of experience of Trump being the nominee, the president-elect, and then the president. and everything has gotten so much worse. That is the position that we now are sort of semi-ruding for because it's not entirely crazy, anti-Semitic and, you know, bigoted and insanely conspiracist. It's still pretty bad by traditional standards and is being held down by people who've got along with pretty terrible policies and other conspiracies

and other bigotries, but they're a little better than Nick Fuentes. It wouldn't have been crazy to say that as president, the thing will get moderated a little. He has to govern. I suppose one could have even argued in 2017-18. There was a little bit of that, right? I mean, it is very striking how much everything has gone in the other direction, I think, in the last year. Well, I was going to end with that. Let's just do it at the start then we get to the news. Where are you at, like, just, like, thinking about the last year, because I have kind of two minds about it. Like, in the one hand,

I'm feeling better than I was about the ability to beat back Trump, I think, than I was probably we sat here at New Year's last year in a pretty dark, dark time to put your head back into. I think there was my crying on the podcast at the New Year's podcast last year. So on the one hand, he looks weaker. I think his movement looks weaker.

On the other hand, you know, like the perniciousness of what is happening on the right does not seem to be abating in any way, right? And AI is just coming, right? Like these sort of scams and grifts that are happening right now are happening, kind of using more traditional methods, right? Like the ability to do that on supercharged ways is coming right around the corner.

He's got three more years left where he's going to be deteriorating. They've done a lot of damage already, particularly kind of on the immigration front and the role in the world institutionally. So I don't know. I'm kind of of two minds about what I think about where we sit now versus a year ago, but I'm wondering what you think. I'm in the same place. I think it's not really two minds.

It's just two realities, which is he's weaker. than he was. The public has been resistant, maybe a little more than one might have expected to a lot of what he's, both the policies and the way he's done things. And that's good. I mean, it makes it makes it less likely that ultimately he and the movement succeed and more likely they lose one or both houses of Congress, et cetera, more likely even if they lose in 2028, I guess, if we have something like free and fair elections. And the other hand, the damage that he's done is greater than we expected, I think. And the radicalization, what we were talking about a minute ago, is maybe greater than we expected. And so these two trends are kind of both correct. I mean, they're both happening. They're just, they cut in different directions. At some point, they hit each other. They can be, they can go along together in a way in parallel, you might almost say for a while. He doesn't have to, he can keep radicalizing and the damage can keep getting bigger if Congress doesn't choose to check him, at least for the next year.

I guess for me, the swing that we vote, as it were, between his decreasing popularity and the increasing damage is maybe the elite. That is the public, I think, is in the right direction. I wouldn't be surprised if his numbers go down a little further. If he's gone from, what, 50 to what do you think, 41, 42, maybe? I mean, he was never going to lose in one year that much more than 8 out of 50. You know, 15% of his support. That's kind of a lot, you know. And great if he could lose another 5% or 8% of his 50% next year.

So, I mean, I think that part has been sort of encouraging. I feel like the elites in a way are the swing vote. I mean, are they going to start to leave him? And that's where the three years is such a big problem. The executive is so powerful, there's such incentives to get along with him. To the degree that he keeps radicalizing, the elites are more inclined to go along, not less, because, hey, I've got to run this company for three years, and what am I going to do? And you can tell me he's only a 41 percent, but has that changed the fact that I'm not going

to get these contracts if I don't do X or that I can't opportunistically capitalize on this grift for quite a while here, and there'll be pardons at the end for everyone? So I don't know. I feel like the elites, some of the elites need to stand up. The Supreme Court will be interesting on this front, on the elites, and then Trump himself, like, does he have the, does he have it in him to fight, you know? Like, does he have the will and the desire to want to fight in the same way as he has? Like, wanting to stay in power, like the January 6th, like that whole element was driven by, you know, the fact that he couldn't accept losing and he had to stay in power and he couldn't take this indignity and the fact that he's aging. And does he feel like he doesn't need to. go, obviously he's challenging the courts and the norms in a million ways, but like the degree to which he decides he wants to use those bruised hands to grasp onto power, I think is also, you know, what is an unknown at this point. Yeah, no, I agree among others, too. There's

somebody's surprises that could come and stuff. But I would say, I'm just on that point, such an important one. But, I mean, he's now got a movement, though, that desperately wants to hold not to power. I mean, he's got hundreds of people who benefited so much from this administration, both benefited just in terms of their careers and they love being in high office, but also obviously the more direct grift and so forth. And did they think they could afford to lose? That's what gets me most worried. In January 6th, it was him, some of the true believers, but there were a heck of a lot of people in there who were like, come on, this is ridiculous. We can't do this, including the vice president, the United States, for example, and other

important figures. And I don't know. I think now their attitude would be much more, we cannot afford to be out of power here for the next two or four years even so that's worrisome maybe it doesn't work without him though it doesn't work without him i don't know i was noticed the the pictures from the weekend i just from the sledsky thing which we'll get to it next is uh the bruise is expanded to the left hand so if you uh yeah the bruise is expanded to the left hand he's got now the makeup on both hands and so the hand shaking excuse right you know which i don't think any of us really pont in the first place, but I do think it bears mentioning that the idea that you just shake so many hands that his hand gets bruised, that seems to be not what's happening, actually,

unless he's doing left-handed shakes. What is the bruise? Have you looked into this? I haven't really at all. I mean, it could be some medication he's taking. I don't know if intravenously is the right word even, but you know what I mean? Through a injection every week or something like that, which could be for all kinds of things, some of them non-dramatic, so to speak, and others more dramatic.

I don't know. I just haven't followed it. I mean, I'm not a doctor. I have a lot of doctors in my life. And, you know, it's not good about your circulation. I do notice the Queen Elizabeth had the same bruises right before she passed. So I don't know. It's not a sign of health. I'll tell you that much, Bill.

One more thing on the year. Semaphore does this thing where they ask you what they're wrong about over the last year. And you hate to hand it to Steve Bannon ever. There's an interesting answer from Bannon that ties into their deteriorating popularity and how, like, the damage that they've done and the deteriorating popularity are intertwined. And he pointed to Doge. And he's basically like, look, the fact that nobody saw this at the top, right? Which was that, like, we wasted all this time under this fake notion they're going to save $2 trillion, which they never were going to do.

And instead, like, we wasted all this political capital on doing that. and what you and I would describe as the damage caused by Doge, probably different than what Bannon would describe as the difference caused by Doge, right? But there was like direct damage caused to people, various communities, people lost jobs, and obviously there's an international element to it. And they did it and got nothing. That's also something that on, I think, December 29th of last year, we wouldn't have expected was coming.

Like the damage done by Doge exceeded what we expected. That was like on our predictions list that they were going to let Elon Musk run rough shot over Doe and put 22-year-old, like, put 22-year-old, like, Groipers in charge of USAID or whatever. Like, that wasn't on our list. And the fact that they did that, I do think it ends up being very harmful in retrospect. No, I agree with that. And I think, I mean, for two reasons, I mean, one, it wasn't on their list either.

And I do think I learned this a bit in 2005, looking at Bush with that member, he decided not having spoken about it at all in the election in January 2005. His big priority in the second term was going to be Social Security before private accounts and Social Security, which they hadn't laid the ground. worked for it all, which people didn't expect. They didn't quite see the urgency of. Suddenly it emerges as the priority for a second term. There are a lot of other things that were important. I remember it's time talking to people in the administration and close to it and Republican politico types. And they told me, and I think I think they were right. It's both, it wasn't a very

popular idea, and they lost a debate over pretty quickly, and it collapsed by three, four months, even though they had a Republican Congress. But also that people don't remember that much, you know, But they don't really think if they, just if they elect you or reelect you, and Trump's is kind of a re-election, they kind of think you should, I don't know, do what you said you would do somewhat. I mean, of course, if you're a conservative true believer and cutting the federal government, Grover and Orquist, blah, blah, blah, it's sort of, oh, this is great. We're getting this in addition to all the Trump stuff, you know? We get a culture war and we get a massive assault on the government. So I think it was partly the actual world effects were unpleasant. Partly the surprise of it was just, well, what's going on?

And the surprise of it fit into something that I think Sarah has found increasingly during the year for focus groups, which is a kind of, wait, he was supposed to be watching out for us. And I think the sort of normal liberal critique of don't the Trump voters understand that he's not helping them. That's sort of half true. But it's less the, it's more the sense that at least he'd be, there'd be forgiveness if you were trying to help them or seemed to be trying to help them or faking trying to help them. And it just hadn't happened yet. You can get by some time and people will give you some benefit of the doubt. These policies are hard and so forth. But the fact that it's all about him and he liked Musk, so he let Musk run rampant for four months,

that he decided he wanted to rename everything. So he's doing that for the next four months. I feel like it sort of fits in with the notion that he's forgotten what the point of this was from the point of view of a semi-normal Trump voter. And especially if you're somebody like that that did feel real damage, which I think some did with those, whether that would be health care and the hospital issue in rural areas. I remember being struck at the time just being here in Louisiana, like random people, that would have, like, you know, that were contractors for a program, right?

You know, I just think a lot of, like, the image of it just being, you know, people with master's degrees that live next to you in McLean and Bethesda that were harmed by this was not, it's not right. And I think once that kind of touched people, combining that with his disinterest, did make a difference, again, on the margins. Like, it's not taking them down to zero percent, but did make a difference, I think. Of course, every president, certainly every reelected president seems to drift out in his first year back in office. Somehow people just want to be disappointed these days. It's an interesting thought

experiment. One is, what if he hadn't done Doge? The second is, what if he had been fairly normal as far as he could be normal in his first year? He still wouldn't have got up, right? I mean, he'd be at 40. What do you think? I'm just really curious what you think. Would he be at 46 instead of 42? I mean, is that sort of the difference we're talking at here? I mean, you know. I was trying to think about the positives of him losing power. The one negative to your point, since you mentioned it, was I saw some analysis. Now, I think it was real clear politics, just kind of right wing. And so, like, the makeup of polls they use is a little bit skewed,

they had put out a thing that was like the approval rating of Obama, Bush, at the end of the first year of the second term. And it was like the same as Trump. Like, they both had dropped to the low 40s, basically. And Biden first term is very similar looking. I actually remember because of Afghanistan, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there is some of that that is just kind of like whatever,

a reversion to the mean or, you know, You know, this kind of thermostatic element of political support. I think he didn't have to be as low as he is, though. I mean, like the amount of own goals, like the tariffs, the dough. I was talking about this to Tom Nichols on Friday. I re-listen to our podcast after the last election last year. And we had Tom. And the thing that we were both lamenting was like the economy was getting better slowly.

Like, you know, prices weren't ever going to come down. People who are very sensitive to price increases of the grocery store or have fixed incomes or whatever were still going to maybe. we're still going to maybe, like, not get what they had imagined they would get out of Trump, right? But the economy was getting better when he came in. And between Doge and the immigration crackdown and the tariffs, like a bunch of stuff they just chose to do, they made the economy worse. And so at that level, you have to figure that that made the difference at some amount, you know, in his favorability. And the Trump factor, the style of governance, if you want to call it, that it's got of a matter. because I think if you had given us, more importantly, real political scientists, the current

economic data, you know, and say, where would Trump be? I think you would, people would have said, well, probably some drift down, but not that much. It's not like we're in some recession. It's not like inflation is going up. It just hasn't come down as much unemployment's up a bit. But, yeah, I think the chaos, the meanness, just the combination of the willfulness, yeah, that's probably cost them some. So that's encouraging that's encouraging that it's encouraging that it's cost to some could have cost them more if I could say not to be greedy but that's encouraging could have prevented him getting back in there for starters but okay that's another uh for another day you know it's funny that uh our first time with this new sponsor i'm reading the ad and i am like

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as he popped off on, you know, kind of doing the whole, like, it's a real groundhog day element with this. But I want to just play one clip in particular. So in your conversation with President Putin, did you discuss what responsibility Russia will have for any kind of reconstruction of Ukraine post in agreement? I did. They're going to be helping. Russia is going to be helping. Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. It sounds a little strange, but I was explaining.

to the president, President Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine succeeding, including supplying energy, electricity, and other things at very low prices. So a lot of good things came out of that call today. But they were in the works for two weeks. Generosity of spirit is something you think about when you think about Vladimir Putin. Just a little backdrop on that. So Saturday night, Russia is dropping ballistic missiles and drones on Kiev. at least one person died in that attack.

And then Sunday before the meeting, as Trump mentioned, he had this call with Putin before he met with Zelensky where apparently he expressed a real deep generosity for Ukraine and a concern for Ukraine's success going forward. I mean, it's the farcicalness of Trump always focusing on it risks that one doesn't see how grotesque it is. I know it is both farcical and, you know, just so horrifying. of these, you know, Hitler really isn't getting,

he really wants the Sudateland to do well. And the rest of Czechoslovakia, too, if that comes along, you know. And it's so horrible to have an American president say that. Whatever are past sins of accommodating some dictators a little too much and so forth, I mean, to have that, it's a good reminder, honestly, though, that for all the Ziz and Zags of Trump's policy on Ukraine and towards Putin and he gets exasperated allegedly sometimes and this and that, and people hope, well, maybe he'll do the right thing.

And he does sort of do it for a month or two or three, how fundamentally he's on the wrong side. of the deep struggle that's going out in the world. Yeah, I mean, we're in the same place. I guess it's a point about at Groundhog Day. It's just this whole just kind of rigamarole that happens over and over again where it's like Trump gets sympathetic towards Putin and then he's upset that Putin doesn't give him what he wants and gives him his peace prize and he has got a handful of people around

and they want him to be more supportive of Ukraine. So he meets with Zelensky again. And then it's like, oh, wait, but I also need to get Putin on board to get my peace prize. It's just the same circle over and over again. But you're right, like the grotesquery underneath it. And the Russians, I have kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. I stole children from Ukrainian parents and given them away to Russian families and brainwashed them into thinking that they're Russian. And that's what he did.

And supposedly his wife was like negotiating, talking to Putin about this. And, you know, at a time earlier this year, people were saying, well, Lou, Melania might be a good influence here because she's really concerned about the children. Well, Russia's not giving these children back. Like the whole notion that, like, the person that is bombing and murdering and killing people and kidnapping children also cares deeply about Ukraine is just so insulting and grotesque. How, like, Zonsky doesn't spit on him. I don't know. Yeah, it's impressive self-discipline on Zolensky's part to. He's got to do what he's got to do to try to save his country.

Mali also can't really speak English. I do wonder how that is, you know, kind of amazing. with the new nativist of the group, you know? I mean, they're all out there over the past week tweeting about how people coming from third world countries and not assimilating or hurting America. Like, the first lady can barely speak English and supposedly her point job was here as nothing.

She doesn't do anything. But I guess the one thing that she's spoken out on is the stolen shelter. She doesn't really seem to be making a lot of progress on that. She's white. Maybe that helps, you know. The third world countries is a way of, excusing, I suppose.

And that's some Western Europeans. Well, no, I mean, this is when we got into this thing, Miller had the insane thing over the weekend about, you know, if only we had all these great accomplishments over 50, 60 years, and that's the America we could still have. We kept out these infinite number of third world immigrants and every intelligent person on Twitter said, you know, these great things you're pointing to, the nuclear bomb,

and first flight, and what else was its space program, landing on the moon. They were not accomplished. entirely, or in some cases primarily, by Native-born Americans. Yeah, so that's a fair point, very important point to make in my view. But then other people said, you know what, he doesn't care about, it's okay if some of these immigrants are from Europe, I guess. You are white South Africans? Oh, yeah, that is a very big tip off the white South Africans.

That really, we didn't, you know, it's a tiny number. Someone doesn't think, and it's so insane. One doesn't, again, it's so ludicrous in a way. You don't think much about it. But, of course, it is an interesting tip off, right? Yeah, no, it tells you all you need to know, really. a legacy that lasts at Dawn Valley North Lexus. Right now leads a 2026 NX350 premium package

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But you did talk to Ryan Goodman yesterday. Folks can go watch that if they want on a YouTube or substack, just kind of about what we've learned so far from the releases and just from more of a legal perspective. I just wonder what your takeaways were from that conversation. I think Ryan really gave an excellent sort of snapshot of where we are and where we might be going. I mean, one big point is, you know,

we can focus on the redactions, which are inappropriate and illegal, actually, in many cases, and clearly intentional. You know, Clinton's in a photo with Maxwell. That's fine. Put that out. Trump apparently is in a photo on Bannon's phone with Maxwell. We kind of mentions, you know,

when that comes from and see what the photo is of, or is it a photo of Epstein's desk, or who knows? That's redacted. Why is it redacted? It's Trump and Maxwell. It's not so far as we know any victim or survivor. if there were such a person in the photo in addition,

that person could be, of course, blocked out. So that shows a lot, I think, about what justice is doing. The withholding is more important than the redactions. I guess that would be the point I, that Ryan made, and that I would emphasize that we have seen almost nothing of what we know exists and that everyone expected that we would see, including the victims, the big charging documents, the prosecution memos, the draft indictments from 2007, 2008.

Similar things from 2019. after Epstein's death, there's internal DOJ documents, and then, of course, the victim statements, which I think the 302s, they call them for the FBI, which the victims themselves, some of them, they've seen some of their own, but they haven't seen all of them, and they want them out there,

properly redacted in terms of their own personal information, but that's what they want people to understand what Epstein was doing and Maxwell was doing. None of that's come out, none of it. And again, we've sort of, I don't know, not we, but I feel like some have given the Justice Department a little too much of a break, and well, maybe it'll come out.

Maybe some of it will come out, but the degree to which their behavior is so consistent with wanting as little as possible to come out and delaying as long as possible is a little underestimated. And I think it goes way back. I mean, we just have to, you know, July 6th, the Stonewall memo that didn't hold up and therefore they had to start gradually

trying to build secondary stone walls, as it were, but they tried, Maxwell, Blanche goes to see her, they move her to the Cushy Prison, and then we get the, he fights still the release, People take it for granted. Well, of course we're getting it. I read somewhere someone said the other day. They should have put all this out earlier and gotten rid of, gotten through it.

Ludicrous. There's a reason they didn't put it out earlier and they didn't want to. And incidentally, we shouldn't take for granted that it was all going to come out. It's due to Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert, right? I mean, we forget how that was not like inevitable that that discharge petition was going to get 218 signatures. Well, most people didn't think it would. And even what it did, I remember there was like three days there when people, well, out of the Senate will go along. I mean, it all collapsed quickly, which was good.

but their behavior is so consistent with a continued cover-up. Maybe that's, for me, the most important point to take away from the conversation with Ryan. Can they succeed in continuing the cover-up? That's the drama of the next month, too. It could lead in all kinds of directions. We're in the middle of the story, almost still maybe the first part of the story. It's not like we're about to have the conclusion of it, you know? Yeah, you mentioned the Maxwell example of him getting blacked out.

There was another, like, statement that had been that the DOJ released, but it had also been released in another case. a couple years ago. So the version that had been released already by a judge, like three years ago, I concluded some accusations about Donald Trump and nipples. I don't think we want to get into any more details for our listeners' benefit, not wanting to throw up. Like, his name is randomly redacted from that same section

that had already been released and unredacted in the past. So that's just the type of thing. And again, explicitly, the Epstein legislation says you cannot redact, you can redact victims and survivors. You cannot redact when it's, simply to spare a public figure embarrassment. So that's exactly what they tried to prevent and what Congress voted for in which Trump signed that legislation.

And they're going ahead and doing it. Oh, well, that's complicated. That's a very disorganized, the justice and all. Well, maybe to some degree. But I feel like we have enough data points now that we can say they're doing their best. It's not always successful, luckily, to obscure and to help Trump.

Bondi was claiming that they're going to continue to go after the people that perpetrated the alleged January. January 6 hoax. It's just hard to put your head in their space here, like, because you almost have to, like, accept the premises of Earth 2 in order to understand what's going on here. So just kind of bear with me. Obviously, there was no January 6 hoax, but they believe that there was some hoax that was perpetrated on Trump that, you know, the feds were the ones that really were instigating the riots, et cetera. The DOJ is apparently investigating that hallucination. They made an announcement because there's some complaints, I guess, on the right that they have not moved

fast enough to uncover the people that perpetrated the hoax on January 6th or maybe even the people who stole the election. Who knows what they could find out? And so Bondi says basically, don't worry at the statute of limitations. We're not going to be limited by the statute of limitations on this, which has some problems in its own right. That did not make someone the right happy. They continued to complain about Bondi. Bondi's assistant attorney general Harmeet Dylan then late last night, not going to speculate on what she was doing, but it was very late last night, and she was posting the following on X. Conservative influencers, if you think you're keeping the pressure on by spreading bullshit

attacks on Donald Trump's cabinet, you are not, you are earning money to spread misinformation, you are hoes, learn an honest profession. She went on and she posted a picture of her doing like a crocheted hat and says this hat is an hour behind schedule thanks to the influence or retards. So that's what's happening, I guess. They're extending the statute of limitations to go after a made-up crime. People are upset that they're not going after the made-up crime harder. The assistant attorney general is calling those people hoes. That's what's happening inside the government this weekend. Right. And this I think she thinks is her way presumably in the future to maybe becoming deputy attorney general or attorney general. No,

seriously, because this is the way up in Trump world to show total loyalty to Trump above all, obviously. And then maybe secondarily to your temporary boss just to kind of make sure that you move up the ladder. That's a great point. And to, of course, be unbelievably insulting to anyone out there who might have, you know, said something after. Yeah, her meet on the short list for a future attorney general. That's really, it's noteworthy. She was also, I should just say, we're talking about her meat, Dylan. I've mentioned her a couple weeks ago, but for people who aren't quite as familiar with all the characters was one of the ones that I think she tweeted suss or fishy or something related to the Brown killer like they're spreading around that

idea that there was like a trans Palestinian student who did the shooting at Brown and she tweeted like there was some evidence presented somebody tweeted some evidence of that that was obviously wrong since we found the actual person that did the killing and she I quote tweeted it with Suss so this is you know this is what you're doing this the assistant attorney now, like wildly speculating on social media wrongly about mass murders and also, you know, attacking random conservative bloggers, calling them hoes. That's what the assistant attorney general is up to. And she is the assistant attorney general, right? She's not acting. I mean, she was confirmed by the Senate, I guess, as they all were Bondi and Dill. I mean, but it's nice,

you know, that those Republican senators, the constitutionalists, the ones who care about that stuff, they're very deep conservative. Some of the even clerked at the Supreme Court, I believe. They feel bad about having voted to confirm Bondi. and Blanche and Patel. They're deeply concerned. I noticed that in their public savings. No, it's unbelievable. I mean, this is right.

I just keep referring to this. It's so stupid to me to even do so, because it's so obvious. But the degree of complicity here by the Republican Party at all the normy ones who are still treated and private by a lot of the media and by, you know, certainly by respectable think to access. Well, they're okay.

We can have them at our conference. They're, you know, they're not like Trump. They're not like crazy, you know. They are enabling, totally enabling this craziness. Yeah, 15. 52.45 was her confirmation vote. So there you go. I think she got all the Republicans except Markowski.

I'm quickly scrolling through this right now. So maybe I missed one. But it looks like she got everybody except Markowski. One other DOJ item. Here's the one thing. If we're just going to call balls and strikes around here, Bill. You know, we're straight shooters. I don't know who did it at the FBI, the former podcaster that now quit the FBI.

But they did find the pipe bomber, which was something. It seems like maybe they were motivated by that because they thought that the pipe bomber was part of the inside job to frame Trump or whatever or was Antifa or something. I don't know. There was a conspiracy theory going around about the pipe bomber as maybe being one of the Capitol Police even. The Blaze floated that idea based on the gate analysis. But it turned out they did find a guy and he confessed, his name is Brian Cole Jr. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but we have some more information. now. He told the DOJ, or he told investigators that something as important as voting in the

federal elections was being tampered with. Somebody needed to speak up. Coles told the FBI that the people up top, including people on both sides should not ignore the grievances of ordinary citizens are called them conspiracy theorists, bad people, Nazis or fascists. So it seems like a pretty typical Trumper to me. Was unhappy about the 2020 election, thought it was fraudulent, was unhappy the people were belittling those who held that conspiracy theory of a view, and so he planted two pipe bombs. The thing that's notable about this is that, like, you know, how quickly these guys just move on from conspiracy to conspiracy?

It's like, okay, so this one didn't work out. So now we're going to go just talk about something else. You're not seeing a lot of this on Fox over the weekend last week. God forbid anyone point out, which would be, I believe, analytically correct, that I don't know, he seems to have maybe been inspired to this act of violence. It didn't, thank God, result in actual damage. death, but could have, by Donald Trump? I mean, just as an actual, you know, a matter of apparent causality, you know.

Well, if Donald Trump had just conceded after he lost the election, it seems pretty clear he wouldn't have planted the pipe bombs. And the guy seems unstable, maybe they'd have done something else. But, yeah, but there's a pretty direct causality between Donald Trump's lies and this planting of the pipe bombs. That is important to note. Thank you. I feel like I want to keep a list.

I'm going to talk to Will Summer about this. I want to keep a list of all of the wrong conspiracy theories because they have this thing that they do where they're like, you know, oh, they called us conspiracy theories, theorists until they turned out to be right. And they have like a list of things that like was against conventional wisdom

that, you know, turned out to have, you know, like maybe some value. Like the thing that jumps to mind is like the COVID origin at the lab. Like, and you know, it went from that was anyone who said that was a conspiracy. theorist and now a lot of experts think,

maybe probably it was the lab. We don't really, we're not 100% sure, but it seems like it was the lab. Right. And then, you know, if you're one of those people, you have like a list of eight of those. I do feel like it would be compelling for us just to gather the counter list. Like, no, the shooter of Brown was not a trans-Muslim student, actually. You guys all thought it was

and they were not. Like, no, Charlie Kirk was not killed by the French Lesionaires. You guys all thought he was. Like, no, the pipe bomber was not inside job from the Capitol Police. It was actually a Trump supporter. I do think that'd be valuable. I'm going to get well summer on that. Good. I don't know if it won't change any of their minds, but maybe it'll change some other people's minds. I mean, this is what's so crazy. It'll make me feel

good. No, no, it's important. Look, it's important for the record, God knows, but it is amazing. This is, I think, part of conspiracy theories. I think this is just people sort of studied this in history. All kinds of things get wildly disproved, right, in the midst of some conspiracy theory. And it has surprisingly little effect on the overall conspiracy theorizing. You know, I mean, you know, it is a little unnerving. that once people, this is, gets back to Andrew Eckers's thing we were talking about earlier. I mean, once you drift into that world, it's, you can get hooked and it's not, it's not like one piece of data liberates you from it, unfortunately, or even several pieces of data. Having said that, we should, you should have Will Somer do this.

I should, yeah. There's one thing that the right is talking about a lot this past week. There's not a conspiracy theory that I want to talk about for one second, and that is this fraud story in Minnesota, just like pretty shocking. like the scale of it, you know, essentially it's like a Medicaid fraud, like fake daycares and all this kind of fake groups was being run in particular in the Somali community in Minnesota. The result of this has been predictably like J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller, et cetera, like using the most noxious rhetoric imaginable to target Somalis and, you know, talking about how they, you know, that in particular Somalis can't assimilate and all this kind of shit that people said about both of their ancestors. 100 years ago. And that's bad. But there's just something that I'm noticing that it has stuck in my craw a little bit on this. I'm wondering if I could just rant for a second to what you think about this bill. Is it like the Democrats who are talking about this that I've seen. Maybe there's an exception. Please somebody send me. So there's an exception. All like, you know, their rhetoric around

this is entirely like, you know, this fraud is bad and we should look into it. But the racism is really the bad part here. And like I really need to condemn, like I looked at one to Amy Cole Bischar's tweets about this. She's a senator from Minnesota. Search her tweets for fraud and Somalia. And like, the only real tweet was kind of about how, like, the bad people are the vice president for being racist, actually. And like, the fraud is also a problem, like, we're going to look into it. And it's going to the process. And I just think like as a matter of like doing politics, it would benefit the Democrats to be actually mad about the fraud or to have at least a couple of people who like really bang the drum on this and like

talk about it a lot and talk about how. we need to investigate this. We need to take it seriously. And if we want to be the side of the defense Medicaid, we got to make sure that there's not $100 million or whatever, billions. That wasn't $100 million is way more. That we don't have like some significant percentage of the Minnesota state budget

being defrauded when it comes to Medicaid. Like that's real. Like that's money that should have gone to people who have real medical issues in this country. It came from people that did real work. And I don't know. I think that there's like a fear. of being like thought that to that that you will be thrown in with the racists or something if you say this and it's like it has nothing that you can you can disentangle it from that and just talk

about this i think that a democrat that did this and like really made the circuit and like talked about this a lot and and talked about how bad it is and also talked about how jd vans is a racist we should be able to assimilate immigrants would do themselves in the party quite well because people are looking for somebody that is looking for politicians that are willing to do that. I don't know. It's just there's a little bit of a caution around this that I don't

like or like a instinct to be like, well, Fox News is talking about that that's not a real problem. It's kind of reminiscent of the immigration stuff to me a little bit at the border. It's like we can't talk about this. And it's like, no, this is a bad problem. And someone should actually act like it's a bad problem rather than doing like a perfunctory tweet about

it and then pivoting to JD vans being bad. What do you think about that? Is that Maybe that's wrong, by the way. Maybe the only right thing to do is to demagogue against J.D. Vance. So, politically speaking, but I'm not so sure. I mean, you can do both, and you can point out that his allegations against the Haitians in Ohio wasn't based on so far as you know, any particular Medicaid fraud conspiracy there. But, no, I totally agree.

And incidentally, I would say even maybe go, I have to, you apply this, but didn't quite say this. I mean, not just talk about it if you're a Democrat. There's an actual, I don't know. I think these would be state crimes, not just federal crime, maybe primarily state crimes or local crimes. They're Democratic mayors and Democratic governors in Minnesota. And they, I assume they're prosecuting this. They're looking into it. Yeah, they're prosecuting. The prosecuting is happening. But like, you know, there's not happening with enough umph and enough, you know, vigor. And shouldn't they be saying? Shouldn't you have a committee looking into how we could

reform the process to make sure that this isn't happening on our watch? This is bad. This has happened. It turns out the system wasn't well set up. And we're fixing it right now. And there's a task force of 13 extremely distinguished Minnesotans of different political backgrounds and they have experts and how to

how to get on top of fraud and we're going to fix this pronto and I want to report in 30 days I don't want this thing to be

dilatory I don't there are ways that executive know how to both do things but also convey that they're doing

things and taking something seriously and my sense and this may be a lot of favorites they just haven't followed the

intra Minnesota side of it much my sense is that's not that's not the that's not the vibes one's getting from

the state government state authorities. No, there are, just to be fair, like, there are investigations, there have been investigations into this going back to 2020. So, like, the justice system is, I haven't found this closely enough to be able to say, like, if it's working per se, but like the justice system is, is, that process is ongoing. The political side of it is what I'm talking about.

And just like, yeah, trying to, I demonstrate, I just pulled this up just so I had it right, because I pulled a number out of my ass and I was like 100 million. Right now, they're saying that it's potentially exceeding $9 billion. Like in the federal budget, like if there was $9 billion of Medicaid, I'm not for $9 billion in fraud and the total Medicaid budget. But that's like, okay, in Minnesota alone, that is extremely significant. And I don't know. I just think that like outrage about the people that defrauded Minnesota

and also about a system that's obviously broken that could allow for. the scale of fraud would benefit Democrats who like for whom there are a lot of people out there that they don't have a ton of trust that they're looking out for them. So that's just me. I don't know. We could go on Fox and talk about it. These are just ideas. Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot.

Last thing. I want to do a little cultural exchange. Brigitte Bardot died, apparently. I know nothing about this person. I did read Lamond this morning. Apparently, she openly defended. defended the far right and she married an advisor to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the far right front national. So LeMond was kind of putting a damper on the odes to Brigitte Pardot that they

were seeing out there in the media. So I don't know, Bill, did you have a poster of her in your dorm room or anything? I don't believe so, but she was the type who might have been, she might even have been a little earlier in the kind of poster side of things that we were more like Catherine Deneuve, maybe, a generation of French sex spots, Deneuve. Do you remember her? She was in some movie, like, around when I was in high school or college. But Bordeaux was more maybe early, I don't know, late 50s, early 60s. But, yes, a very famous French actress and attractive woman of her time.

I didn't really follow her politics. Subsequently, it is. Apparently, she went full, you know, far right. She went full Stephen Miller. I think she was the Katie Miller of France, it seems like. Yeah. part of now. It's uh anyway there's a guy seeing that name did bring back vague memories of my youth and if you know, she was one of those who won, I think who the American equivalent would have

been with Jane Mansfield. And there were these, you know, people of this, of the prior generation, I mean, was she 20 years old and I am. So I mean, people generation ahead of me, but of course, one new is of what is 18, then they're 38 and they're sort of at the height of their career maybe, you know, we're super famous five years earlier in some, in some movie or something. And the French movies were more risque at that time than the American movie. So being French was good. I will say. Okay. Brigitte Pardot. Okay, I learned

a little bit. There we go. Anything else that I forgot, Phil? Anything else you want to leave us with besides Brigitte Pardot? Yeah, no, it's good that you always Susan's always am used, by the way, you subtly introduce something to emphasize how, how aged I am and how a young person like you can't be expected to have

ever heard of any of these figures from God forbid, the bid or a late mid-20th century. I don't know. I think that's a little bit of an act. I think that's a bit of an act on your part. I think you know a little more. You know a little more about Casablanca and Brigitte Bardo and Mickey Mantle and

I don't know all these characters that I knew about, then you let on. That's my, that's my thesis. I can tell you about Mickey Mantle. I can tell you about Mickey Mantle. It's damn usual, that's for sure. Most I just wanted to hear, I just wanted Susan to be able to watch you respond to my questions about how sexy Brigitte Barton was. That's really the only reason I brought it up.

Okay, everybody, as I mentioned, I will be back tomorrow. We'll have another pod. It's going to be good. And then we'll have a year-end pod, a year-end review. It won't be like a clip show, though. We're doing it live this week on Wednesday. I'll take a couple days off and we'll be back to the normal schedule next week. So I appreciate you all very much.

Bill Crystal, enjoy the relatively quieter week. And we'll see you back here next Monday. Let's see everybody. Peace. me things I didn't know she did it right there out on the deck put her k-9 teeth in the side of my neck the bulwark podcast is produced by katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by jason brown