The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump Hates America

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Nearly seven million Americans peacefully took to the streets out of their love for this country, and Trump in response acted out like a toddler obsessed with his own poop. Indeed, our commander-in-chief really does have more affinity for the Sharia law dictators in the sand kingdoms than he does for Saturday’s true patriots. This may be the moment when the Dems and its allies take the patriotism banner back from Republicans. Plus, the lengths the administration went to imprison immigrants in El Salvador, the Dem base wants a fight over the shutdown, and Trump keeps serving up reasons why the Trump/Russia conspiracy has survived for so long. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Miles Bruner's Bulwark piece on leaving the GOP Jon Cohn on the Americans caught in the shutdown vice The FT on the volatile Trump-Zelensky meeting last week Bill and Sarah on a successful "No Kings" The Post on the El Salvador prison deal Go to https://zbiotics.com/THEBULWARK and use THEBULWARK at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we've got Bill Crystal. Bill, I am in California on an undisclosed, well, I guess it's a disclosed, but a secret mission. Some of my projects will come out in a month or two. And I'm just thrilled that I was far away. from Camp Pendleton while I was out here.

Because to celebrate the Marine Corps' 250th anniversary, they were doing an artillery shell live fire demonstration. It wasn't really a great idea. Gavin Newsom said it wasn't a good idea. Gavin Newsom shut down the highway over the defense department, said that wasn't needed. Nothing to worry about Interstate 5. Shut down about a 17-mile stretch.

Gavin's instincts were right on that because the fragments of the shell, the shrapnel, fell on the highway. landed on the California Highway Patrol and a motorcycle that was part of J.D. Vance's protective detail. And the, you know, here we are. We have shrapnel raining from the sky because I think Pete Higgs-eth and J.D. Vance wanted to put on a much-eismos show. I got a text from a young friend who served in the Marine Corps and mortar platoon commander who actually says, I mean, he doesn't know the details of what happened, obviously. So, but

his sense is, I mean, overhead artillery fire. That is not something you mess around with. And they were told not, you know, that's not like your fun thing to just play with. It can go awry. It can go a little short or a little long and really hurt people, so I'm glad no one was hurt. But, yeah, heck Seth, and what a, I mean, it's all performative, right? I mean, God forbid, they should actually follow safety protocols in terms of unleashing artillery, you know, in a highly populated area of Southern California. It is a clown show. More on the military stuff at a minute, but obviously we should start with no kings. because of my aforementioned trip out here previously scheduled, I was flying during the New Orleans No Kings protests, so I didn't get to go. My family was there in my absentia they were representing. It seemed like you were out and about McLean. Many of my colleagues were out and about. You wrote about it for morning shots. Give us a dispatch. It was great. I mean, I was at the earlier one in June and McLean, and I thought there were three or four times as many people. At this one, obviously, elsewhere in the country, there were more people. And getting seven million people, just that fact, that's a huge number. Maybe the largest photo. protest, I guess, or political demonstration in U.S. history or very close to it.

And so, A, that just, it was a huge success. I mean, you try these things and would have fallen short of the true number. That would have been, you could imagine, the media, Trump world reaction to that. I'd say the atmosphere was joyful and fun and upbeat, which was great in this political era that we're living through, a nice break, a nice change. But what I was struck talking to people, and, you know, we've lived in a long, long time and so many people we, you know, knew slightly. Susan knew, you know, through non-political circumstances. I also met a woman who I didn't recognize, but she had hosted me 20 years ago. She was head of the

local county Republican club and I had spoken to it. And there we both were. And she's the one who had decided to get put it on sexual media about. I'm not a terrorist. I'm an ex-republican. So lots of people talking. And what struck me was the sobriety of their sobriety and good sense about how alarming the situation was. They were upbeat because they were. were there and they were, you know, they were making fun of Trump and wearing funny costumes in some cases and had witty signs, but they weren't engaged in happy talk. It was, I was struck by this. It's rare to get a combination of sort of joyfulness and sobriety. And I thought that's what characterized the little thing at our, not little, a thousand person demonstration there

in Central Park, as they call it, of McLean. The other thing they did in most of the small demonstrations, this wasn't true, obviously of New York and Boston and stuff, was there were no speeches. People just milled around. It was kind of a picnic, neighborhood kind of, you know, like get together type feeling. People had signs, and this is a pretty big intersection of, you know, by our standards, the suburbs of two major roads. So, you know, there were a lot of people going by, so people wait signs and a lot of honking in response. So a very upbeat and noisy. A lot of kids, a lot of two or three generations of families, really, I don't know, I was much more moved and kind of inspired by it than I expected to be honestly.

You seem to have left out the Hamas terrorists, the sympathizers, the enemy within. You know, we were promised by Mike Johnson, Donald Trump, everybody. This was a hate America rally. You didn't see any of that in McLean? Unbelievable. So one of the local organizers was wearing a vest and came over and we chatted. He said they had this turnout, the signups. You didn't have to sign up to come, but they wanted people to sign up so they could get a sense.

The signups had doubled in the last week since the Michael Johnson at all. rhetoric started about terrorists and hating America. I do think they helped. People who were otherwise maybe, you know, sympathetic kind of anti-Trump, but didn't feel they had to disrupt their Saturday, not, you know, be late to their kids' baseball game at the Little League field or not watch someone on college football, you know, might not have come otherwise. I felt people felt they should show up for at least 20, 30 minutes just to show Michael Johnson. So I think it actually helped. And I mean, many of the signs were sort of, you know, we love America, et cetera. I mean, it was very upbeat and patriot.

It may probably help make the protest, honestly, even more patriotic than they would be and would have been anyway. So will anyone hold them, of course, why I'm even asking this question? I was going to say, will anyone hold them accountable for all the unbelievable bullshit about how violent it was going to be and terroristic and hate America? I mean, they just say these things, and it doesn't happen. And it's a smear and a slander, in this case, on millions of Americans. And I guess they just move on to the next smear and slander, right?

Yeah, I don't know. He'll continue the spirit and the slander. I think there is real political benefit. I don't know. I saw some political takes from like D.C. insider types that I think were wrong. They're talking about how the message of no kings is not. It's so vague. It doesn't appeal to people who don't already know.

And like with the Virginia and New Jersey off your elections, it should have been focused on that or Medicaid or whatever. And I just, I think that that is. is like a 1994 view of what of how politics works now um i think that um the kind of big umbrella getting people out as a counter to the status quo to the establishment is useful for democrats um and then i think the contrast between the republican messaging on this as like these people hate america they're terrorists and the pictures and the videos is something that that people notice should they be able to see it right i think it's incumbent upon obviously all of us to promote it and people to go out there and promote it for it to get the appropriate attention from the media,

which I think it's been next, I guess. Mike Johnson is out this morning, your friend, Mike Johnson, as a press conference, has four poster boards behind him about, like, the radicals that were at the start. So they're doubling down on it today to answer your question on what they're going to move. The poster boards, two of them were just eight, six, four, seven. That's the same Jim Comey thing, like, that they're trying to pretend like is an assassination call, which is just not. It's just like, it's just cancel.

It's like, we're out of something, we're done with something in the kitchen. And then one was a bad sign. And one, I didn't even understand what it was up there. It's so confusing. And so it's just like, that's the best they could do. Seven million people are out there. And they found four offensive posters. I don't think that that dog's going to hunt.

I agree. The political consultant thing, I mean, it's obviously most of its, you know, motivated reasoning or not even reasoning, just motivated, you know, propaganda to try to say, oh, it's not working. But it's ridiculous, honestly. I mean, I'm here in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger, you know, is obviously on the ballot in two weeks. Early voting has begun. She's making the case about why she'll be better for Virginia. She's making the case about jobs and about health care and about, let's call them, kitchen table issues, as they like to say. This is a nice compliment. It would have been ridiculous. I mean, I totally, so it's the opposite of what they're saying.

You want to have both things going at once. You want, you know, the Senate and House leaders to be talking about Medicaid and about Obamacare and health insurance. so forth. But you do want to remind people what's at stake. And I think people were happy. I'd say I take the opposite conclusion. These people out there were not, I said there were some activists, but I'm telling you in McLean, it's an awful lot of, a lot of veterans, some retired people, but lots of younger people. I met a guy who was one year ahead of one of our daughters in public school in McLean. And then I met people who were, you know, retired FBI and actually a lot of CIA types of McLean and business types and the usual mix, upper middle class.

you get in a governmental class suburb, as I say, a couple two or three generations of families. I think they were sort of pleased to have a chance to get a little bit above the normal discussion of issues and really talk about what's happening to the country yet. They haven't gotten quite as much of that as they might like, I think, from their political leadership. And I'd say the degree to which people felt they were being patriotic really struck me. Sarah and I discussed this a little on the podcast yesterday. And Sarah said, well, what do you think about those political types? And the Tea Party was more focused on, you know, spending.

and it was sort of more of an issue, not just a vague democracy thing. But, of course, I flipped that the other way, too. One of the genius things with the Tea Party is it was called the Tea Party. I mean, it appealed to American tradition, to the American revolutionary tradition. And the right has done a pretty good job of hijacking that for a heck of a long time. I think we were involved in political efforts that implicitly at least sort of made the Republicans and the conservatives, the party of American patriotism. on the left, a little dubious.

And this is, I think this is totally flipped. I don't totally flipped. I think this really could be a marker where the liberals retake the American tradition and American history. The one, I guess, thing that some people are expressing some disappointment about with the protest was, again, it did feel like it was more of an ultra-crowding. As you're saying, you know, obviously there were younger people there. I was texting a bunch of people about this to ask what it looked like where they were.

We'll talk about this more on FYI pod with Cam, obviously, since that's his expertise, having started March for Our Lives. One of the other reasons why I'm out here in California is I'm speaking to some college students. And so I've been having these conversations, I'm sure you have too. The answer they give when I bring out this question, like across the board, is we did march for our lives. We did Black Lives Matter. We did the Women's March. They did the Gaza protests.

And Trump is in again. And it's kind of like, I don't know, we're going on with our lives for a little bit. Obviously, I don't agree with that. And I, you know, and I think that's, but I understand. I understand that perspective. And anyway, so I thought that was interesting. But it sounds as if there were no, like, Gen Z people out there, there were. But I did hear some scuttle butt around that.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think they also have lives to live and they're not, but I don't know. I think some people who were at the big city stuff, I've talked to people both New York and D.C. Thought there were a lot of young people. But I don't blame people for being disparated after November 3rd was that I can't remember blanking a fourth, fifth. It was something, some terrible, some horrible date in the first week. whatever it was in 2024. You know what? It's almost a year.

And I actually feel like in a way this was well, I mean, they didn't time for this reason. And there was the earlier No Kings, but I think it was good that you couldn't have done this on January 21st. I mean, unlike the women's watch. I mean, people were too demoralized. And now I feel like maybe this also could coincide with a little bit of a coming out of it and saying, okay, you know what?

It's been a very difficult year, demoralizing year in many ways. Demoralizing election, demoralizing first eight, nine months. nine months, I guess, at the Trump presidency, but now it's time to fight back. Last thing on this, the president posted on his social media, a AI video of him in a fighter jet dropping poop onto protesters, particularly a young guy that I've had on the other show, Harry Sisson before, a nice guy. You know, J.D. Vance, quote, tweeted it, making a joke about it. I mean, at this point, the thing I guess that I want to mention is this is just where we are now

in our society, I guess, we just have to kind of like accept this at some level. It is grotesque, though, like the notion that, like, the president thinks that, like, the people that are out there exercising their rights are enemies from within, that they're terrorists, and that they should have shit dropped on them. I wanted to mention it in particular because Jed Legum posted, like, the articles that every news outlet, mainstream news outlet, posted about this incident this morning. And they all are just like, here's the New York Times. Trump posts fake videos of himself flying.

a King Trump jet over protesters. It's like that's not an accurate representation of what happened, right? And so, you know, Trump is just so grotesque and crude and disgusting that he gets a pass for it in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's almost so good, disgusting. You don't even want to talk about it. But, I mean, I will say that unlike the ice raids, which allegedly are going after the worst of the worst of those terrifying undocumented immigrants who are taking over America.

And these are obviously 99% of the protesters. here were American citizens, I assume. I actually imagine if one weren't documented, one would be cautious about coming to something like this, thinking that maybe ICE agents would show up. He hates Americans. I now think the liberals just need to say, Trump hates America. Yes. I mean, he and the Trump has hate America.

And that, in a way, this nicely embodies their hatred of actual living Americans. I was talking to somebody about this on the weekend. Objectively speaking, Trump likes and has more of an affinity for the Sharia law sand dictators in the Middle East. to buy them planes than he does for the America-loving patriots protesting at the villagers. You know, the little lady and men with their USA signs and their golf carts protesting in the villages. Trump hates them and actually and thinks that they should have shit drumped on them. But he loves, you know, some people that have no affinity for American values as long as they, like, give them gifts and are nice to them.

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I want to talk a little bit about the reporting about Trump's meeting with Zelensky on Friday. Big shout out to Christopher Miller, MacSedon, and the crew at the FT. who I think have really done the best reporting on our side of the world for what's happening the Ukraine war. But apparently the private meeting was much more akin to that first Oval office meeting than recently. There had been some reporting and discussions and rumors, even some optimism from people in Europe that Trump's tune was changing, that he was a pouty

baby who was upset that Putin wasn't giving him the end of the war that he wanted. And this was kind of conventional wisdom around for a while. And that he was starting to turn and maybe he it didn't have any affinity for Ukraine, but he's going to kind of let them do what they want. Well, it turns out in the White House meeting on Friday, according to the F.T., Trump was yelling at them. He was back to warning that Putin was going to destroy Ukraine. If Zelensky didn't just give him land, there was a shouting match, cursing, and, you know, there was pressure from the real estate guy that he made as the point dealer on this, point man on this, Steve Whitkoff, telling Ukraine they have to give up the Don boss, et cetera, et cetera. And also on top of it, it seems like they're not

there have been some reporting in hopes that they're going to provide the long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles that Trump said no. I should mention he also had a conversation with Putin earlier in the week. Pretty bleak stuff. It is bleak. And every time, I mean, I don't blame people, I guess, who we're trying to work on Trump and flatter Trump, but hopefully he is being peeved at Putin would make a fundamental difference.

But he pretty reliable at the end of the day comes down with the dictators, you know? And in this case, it's grotesque because this particular dictator is even worse than most. and has more blood on his hands and obviously is invaded and brutally invaded Ukraine, which has been heroically fighting back. The fact that he has no sense, I come back to this, the fact that he has no sense of just basic human sympathy for Ukraine. You might, in a very hard-headed realpolitik way, decide, you know, we have other equities. There's not limits what we could do.

You could even do a kind of isolationist or Neville Chamberlain. We can't really, you know, it's a fight people we rarely know living far away from us and so forth. I can't really get involved. But that's not his attitude. He dislikes the example of Zelensky and the example that the Ukrainian people are providing. And so does so many of his top supporters, obviously Vance, I'd say very much this way, Hanks, and what so distressing is that one would hope that some of the mid-level supporters, well, they want better, they just can't quite take on Trump.

That's presumably true of some of these senators and members of Congress. but, man, they have been, they've gone awfully silent on this. I mean, the degree to which they were all just capitulated, it's really, why are you been saying this? We've said this every week, but it remains astonishing. It does. I mean, you know, you can keep turning up the temperature and astonishing from 11 to 12 to 13. Let's just play in conspiracy land for a second.

It works well for a lot of my podcast competitors in different ways. David Frum posted in February 25th, and he reupt, yesterday. If the test of a theory is its predictive power, then Trump, Russia, is the most robust theory in all contemporary political science. He didn't say conspiracy theory. I have kind of always fallen down on the side of Putin flatters Trump. Trump is more inclined to dictators than he is to free leaders, that there are incentives, you know, Putin obviously helped him in the 2016 election, and that that explains his thinking more than anything else. But it's interesting your point about how it was rational for actors in the region to try to play to his

personal weaknesses, right, to flatter him to puff him up, to say, you know, to say Putin is letting you down, you wanted this, the Norwegians are going to give you this prize if you, if you just, you know, and Putin is keeping you from getting the trophy that you want. And that way, I think that's kind of why a lot of people were going along with this sort of change of tune theory, right? Because it was in line with what we know about Trump in other ways, that he's like personally weak and he's narcissistic and that he's having a temper tantra about Putin, not that it was like a principal change. And so for him to do a call with Putin in the middle of the week,

and there's been no leaks from that, but he was yelling and cursing of Putin that I've heard. And then to have a meeting with Zelensky, where again, he bullies and browbeats and cusses. He's frustrated. The Putin has something on him side of this argument to ever as far as explanations. It seems to me to be just as logical as anything else. I don't know. Am I crazy? Not crazy.

And we don't know. I mean, I'd say he prefers dictators to Democrats. He's also got pretty good predictive power here. And especially ones who he thinks can do things for him for his family financially. And that gets to the Qatar types and all that. And he prefers people who he thinks of. his fellow authoritarians. I was just across the board, right?

I mean, even small ones he likes. You think, like, Millie, El Salvador, we have to go be nice to that guy, but then it turns that, Rubio's handing over, you know, informants to him. Did you see this right? Let's talk about this story. I didn't have it on that outline, but really quick. This is important Washington Post story. You know, we discussed so much in this podcast about the Venezuelans that we sent to

this foreign gulag. And then, you know, obviously in the months after that, Buckele and Maduro, essentially cut a deal and all the Venezuelans that we sent there, claim. me that there are gang members when many of them most were not, go back to Venezuela. And what we learned with the Washington Post story, what we learned over the weekend is as part of the deal to get Buckele to take those prisoners from us, Rubio had released nine high-ranking MS-13 gang members, some of which were informants who were giving us information about the gang and give them back to Buckele because Buckele has pro-kill deals

that he's cutting with the gang leaders to try to stop crime. in his country. Okay, that's essentially the short of the story. So if you just look at this as a pure math thing, like it's a pure art of the deal question. Like, we gave up MS-13 informants to El Salvador for use of their jail, but we're not sending anybody to their jail anymore because we fucked it up so bad. And so we gave up the MS-13 informants for nothing. So, again, so if your issue, if you really are concerned about gang violence and cracking down on the gangs, you would think that those people would be upset, that the government gave away these assets that were helping us fight the gangs in exchange for nothing.

But I haven't seen a lot of those complaints from the nationalist crowd. Now, apparently the FBI knows if you start double-crossing people, maybe people who don't have perfect records in the past, but who have become your informants and are taking risks to do that, you're not going to get any more informant. So if you care about gangs, this is a terrible thing to have done. Obviously, and as you say, for what? This gets back to the original thing. The people we sent to El Salvador were already detained in the U.S.

I mean, there was no need to send them there. That was purely performative cruelty. I mean, let's really send them to a gulag, not just to a Guantanamo-type place or someplace we would hold them or send them back to other countries, but that matter. So the whole thing is grotesque and damages our effort to actually deal with this quite dangerous gang. MS-13, a heck of a lot more dangerous, I think, it appears, than the Venezuelan gang. that they're obsessed about, you know. All right, guys, we are back with that game-changing product that I use before a night

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When you use the bulwark at checkout, Zibiotics is back to the 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to Zbiotics.com slash the bulwark and use code the bulwark at checkout for 15% off. Speaking of which, two news items with regards to us eating the boats out of the Caribbean over the weekend. One was President Petro of Columbia, has said that the U.S. killed an innocent fisherman. in a boat attack. I don't know if that is true or not. I don't see any reason to trust our government's story here, given what they did with sending people to El Salvador. So we have one story being provided by the president of Columbia, one by us, but he's saying that we killed

a fisherman, not a drug dealer. Trump then said that he's going to slash aid, I guess, to Colombia and raise tariffs. I guess he's going to raise tariffs on Colombia in response to this. Then in addition to that, one of these other boat bombings that we did, Two people survived. And so, again, if you just look at this from their point of view, if what they're telling us is true, that they're bombing these horrible gang leaders that are waging kind of a proxy war on our country and that they're so dangerous that we can summarily execute them in the Caribbean, then you would think that if we caught two of them, we'd do what we do in other wars, which is like detain them in a military detention or maybe prosecute them for the crimes that they've allegedly committed. No, we repatriated them back to Venezuela because I think they probably don't want victims of these attacks testifying about what the truth is, about what we're doing. They don't think they can sustain, I gather, criminal prosecution, and there would be habeas corpus things. I mean, that would be a real trial, right, and that, God knows if they have any evidence of what any of these people has done, I'd say nothing of justifying, just killing other people on the boat about whom they also have no evidence.

and B, if they treated them as P of Ws, which I guess would be the other way to go, prisons of war, well, then is this really a declared war? Let's go, let's litigate that and bring that issue to the fore. They don't want that either. Trump has the right to declare under this extremely murky terrorist designation kind of thing. It's sort of a weird combination of war and criminal action. But in either case, it allows us to kill people we don't have any evidence about and we have no legal authorization to kill. I mean, in either case, we wouldn't be entitled to kill them.

Let me make that clear, right? Right. So, I mean, yes, so the easy thing is ship them back. But I thought these were so dangerous. I mean, the rhetoric around this, again, it's so removed from facts. There are murky questions, obviously, laws of war, and people have seen. I don't think this is actually one of the murky cases, but you could try to construct it that way. Instead, Mike Johnson just says, what did he say that, look, this is the president. He's well within his power, and we saved hundreds of thousands of lies by blowing up this one boat with fentanyl.

It probably doesn't have fentanyl. at probably at cocaine, actually. And hundreds of thousands of lies. I mean, what kind of level of exaggeration is that? You know, I mean, one vote. I mean, yes, if those drugs got into the U.S., they would do damage, I don't mean to minimize that. But so, again, the insanity of it all is so, you know.

Yeah, but I mean, are we assassinating drug dealers in this country on the streets, like cocaine dealers? Like, I mean, obviously not. Trump has suggested that he wants that. Does Mike Johnson want that? Right. You know what I mean? You can see where this.

where this kind of argument goes. All right. The government is still shut down. I have evidence of this because very long wait lines for TSA headed out to California. I don't know if you had that experience going to Ohio. I had a very short line. I was very happy at National Reagan yesterday coming out here to Ohio. I appreciate the people working at Reagan National, not getting paid.

We appreciate your service very much. Other places we're trying to notice it. But like there's no, it's an article, So it's funny people talking about Thanksgiving. I thought about this with Hamby on Friday. I don't see any rationale for either side in this shutdown to do anything at this point. Do you? I mean, honestly, I have followed those closely.

I should have follow all these other issues? No, no, I don't think so. But isn't that telling in itself? Yes, it is. Right. And I don't know if that's because I'm just not moving in the areas where it's having us. I just said, we've got lucky maybe with the lines at Reagan yesterday. where it's having an effect on me and so forth.

But I was struck. I mean, so yesterday, McLean, we're inside the bellway, right? Lots of people who work for the government, have friends, relatives, neighbors, work for the government or work for contractors who depend on the government and so forth. There was very little talk about the shutdown. I mean, that was not at the top of people's minds.

No Kings was at the top of people's minds and Trump. And then the chitch chatting was more the predictable college football, McLean and language high schools. How are they doing in their football seasons, you know, et cetera? or playing Little League Baseball. I mean, there was not much. Yeah, the shutdown is weirdly not broken through it a big way. But the Democrats have done fine, don't you think, in the fight so far?

Or they feel they have. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's I don't think there's any rationale for them to change the posture right now. And I think that they are, they've raised this salience of the health care issue. And they're demonstrating some backbone to a base that is looking for fighting. And like, until there's a offset. political cost, I don't see them changing.

You mentioned the government workers. We should say Jonathan Cohn. We hired some serious policy writers over here. You know, I'm doing some policy, right? We're doing some policy, but this is a chat show. You are, you are, Tim. I've got beyond that. But I respect.

Jonathan Cohn has done great work, though. Yeah, very serious policy work over there. At the breakdown, it's his newsletter. And he has a good newsletter on the people that are suffering right now as regards to the shutdown. I don't want to minimize that. I just like at scale, I think that the Democrats feel like they're in a strong, strong position on this.

I felt like we had to mention it before we got to anything. We'd want another great article in the bulwark today that I would like to talk about. It's from a guy named Miles Bruner, who I did not know, working in Republican politics. I'd heard from a couple months ago, and I was happy that he decided to write this article. He'd been kind of like a behind-the-scenes campaign operative working in Republican campaigns, a little younger than me and it just eventually became too much and he decided he couldn't do it anymore and he wrote an article for us this morning titled my last day as an accomplice of the republican party i had some thoughts on it but i was wondering what what you made of of miles i don't know but also

i thought it was excellent very interesting and obviously i'm very familiar with this genre of literature from you and others and the people with whom i'm familiar you know broke in 2015 2016 some 2018 19, Liz Chaney, 2020. So it's interesting. I thought that part was, for me, everyone should read the article, first of all, and it's really worthwhile, and I hope it has a big impact on some of his peers.

But what's interesting to me was the discussion of how he talked himself into staying on board, you know, through till now. So after January 6th and so forth at this direct mail firm, I think he was working at, yeah. Yeah, I thought that way, too. I mean, the social pressure side of it was interesting. To me, it was interesting that when I first talked to them, you know, because you're different options you can make if you're in this guy's boat.

And there are some people that are not going to be very receptive to somebody jumping off the Trump train in 2025. You know, there were some people I've seen in the comments of the article who are bulwark people. I mean, I think that we should be welcoming and encouraging conference, but I understand that you know that that's going to happen. People are going to lash out at you. Your old Republican friends are going to be annoyed with you and be mad at you. Like, there's a social cost to it. There's plenty of options where you could just say quietly, like, and I have some friends have done this.

Like, this is it for me. I'm going to go do PR marketing for some company or whatever. It's non-political and not talk about this anymore and go on with my life. To me, I think the value of having him come out and write it is that even as a pretty anonymous person within this huge apparatus of, you know, staffers that work on Republican campaigns, The value is that nobody's done it this year. Like, we're in October 20th. We've been 10 months in to this administration.

They've done unbelievably heinous things, far worse, in a lot of areas than they did during the first term. And you've seen, obviously, some people from within the government, like resign, prosecutors, FBI, you know, I had Mike Feinberg on the pod who did this recently, and even Republicans within the government. I'm like on the woman's name who was prosecuting. Eric Adams, for one example. Saddam Hussein, I think.

So soon, yeah, yeah, I should remember that. Sigfried Sassoon. It's a unique name. Anyway, you've seen that, but like from the operative class, you haven't. And to me, I thought it was, it's important for people to put themselves out there and say, no, this is like a moral sacrifice I cannot make anymore because otherwise people get cozy, you know, and people who know better just are like, well, this is just how life is now. You know, what are we supposed to do?

The people elected him twice, you know, who am I to be the one to make a moral stand when 77 million people chose to vote for them, et cetera? I guess I'll just, you know, go about my day and do drop off at school and then go into my Republican ad firm and make disgusting ad campaigns on behalf of fascist because, you know, what the alternative is is too challenging. And, you know, there's no reason to think about this any other than, you know, as as an actual ethical question. And so by putting himself out there, I do feel like he re-raises this as an ethical question that people should be forced to reckon with. So I appreciate him for doing it for that reason. Yeah, I very much agree. I'd say if anything, the tendency has been, unfortunately, the other way. I mean, that elites who previously had, there's been more capitulation and more collaboration, really, with Trump now than there was in the first term when he was not nearly doing this many bad things because he had so many internal checks and a few more external checks, too.

and the degree of, obviously, you know, business and law firm and other kinds of elite capitulation, as I say, collaboration has been really startling. So it's good to have someone who's not a lawyer making $2 million a year and is not a, you know, a big shot who's near the end of his career and can just, should be able to just say, no, I'm not doing that. But in fact, they seem to all have to, you know, 78-year-old billionaires. They just have to be on board the Trump thing because life would just be intolerable for them otherwise, you know? And here's a youngish guy, I guess, a little bit younger than you, maybe, you know, with a young family. The dirties. Yeah, kids. Real job.

Has to pay the bills? Yeah, just saying, and one reason he stayed was that he had to pay the bills at various points. I felt that sort of overcame his compunctions. Just saying, no, too much. I hope it really does shame a few other people. Not just his peers, that would be good too, incidentally. And peers, people in the administration who were just sort of going along, getting along. and thinking, it's way up the ladder.

But also, what about shaming some of the people 30 years older than him and 100 times wealthier? It's what I always felt about the Cassidy Hodgison, Sarah Matthews. I said it was to Sarah when she was on her opinion. It's crazy that it was 24-year-old young women working in the comms department, who were the ones that, like, had the courage that people who had already had an entire career and could have, you know, stood forth. they had more courage than these like cowardly old men did.

One last thing I want to pick your brain on that I meant to ask you about was what does Bill Crystal think about the scuttlebutt over Graham Platner in Maine? What do you think about that whole discourse? A lot of online discourse about this. A lot of people really dug in on one side of the other field who missed it. This is the Maine Oisterman. And he had some Reddit posts from 10 years ago that were a couple of jokes that were offensive. a couple of comments one in particular people brought up about sexual assault that was offensive but also some jokes were pretty funny um i have to say you know uh something he did 10 years ago he's coming out now and saying that um you know he was a victim of a male loneliness crisis just a little overwrought for me but um okay but uh you know he also it was very has been very upfront and dealing with it and honest and it's interesting i've said when the start i'm kind of like not trying to dig in one way or the other on these primaries like let the campaign

to play out. We'll see how it goes. But a lot of discourse about Grand Platner's Reddit posts. I wonder what you've made of it. Yeah, I'm sort of where you are. I just haven't honestly looked at it closely and decided oh my God, this is gross of some line. These lines are pretty murky in this kind of thing

where there's no action, I gather, charged against him. And it's, you know, he shouldn't have done these things, but he has to apologize. But on the other hand, he wasn't that young when he did it, but on the third hand, he, okay, he had some crises when he was in his late 20s, early 30s. Not everyone the crisis at age 19 and then and now he seems to be a pretty impressive guy so i i'm i'm

ambivalent too i mean as a matter of stepping back i was somewhat sympathetic to him even though he's a lefty and you know on a lot of issues way to the left of where i am so i thought the idea of nominating governor mills who i otherwise like and think she's a good person and probably but a good governor nominating a 77 year old to sort of like let's have some fresh plot on politics and you got to get beyond this biden trump person but hey we found a governor who's almost exactly the same age as Trump. I don't mean to compare Janet Mills to Donald Trump. She's infinitely better in so many ways, but I just feel like I prefer having more, having younger people as the Democratic nominees, all things equal. I do too. I also throw out there, though,

Janet Mills seems pretty spunky. I've been watching a couple of her interviews. She fought Trump in the White House or stood up to him, which not everyone did, right? So I give her, maybe I'm being yeah, they're no perfect candidates. It's an important race. It's important the Democrats regard who the candidate is the best is most likely to defeat Susan Collins is going to have any chance of taking the Senate, which is a pretty long shot to begin with. The Jeremy Hilton, that does tie me to the Biden question a little bit, which was there was a little bit of,

you shouldn't believe you're lying eyes about Biden that I know that you, Bill Crystal, were resisting throughout. Like, not every 79-year-old is cut the same, you know? I mean, I forget how old Mitt Romney is. He's like 73 and he looks handsomer than if you had put Russ vote, there's, I think, like, 46 or something. A Mitt Romney next to each other, you think the Mitt was younger. So, you know, people age differently.

We'll see. Janet Mills has shown some fight in some of these interviews worth continuing to monitor. All right. You're at Kenyon, final thing? You're Kenyon Sierra Longwell's alma mater. It seems like you're not that impressed with the lords and the ladies. It felt like in the green room. No.

It's certainly great people watch this this afternoon and then I have to speak tonight. I love it. It's really one of the finest places I've ever been. I, Gambier, Ohio, I'm thinking, Susan and I're thinking of relocating to Gambier because, you know, the small town atmosphere and all that. I'm not a real small town person, I got to admit. I mean, I grew up in New York and have lived in big cities in the East Coast. So it's, no, but it's a lovely place. I've always admired the college. I've sort of forgotten. I got to see just how, I mean, most small colleges I've been to are small colleges often in small towns, but there's like a town in which the college is the main employer, but there are other people there. whereas Gambier is Kenyan. I mean, almost literally, I think there's, you know, there are a couple of restaurants of, you know, pizza places and coffee shops, obviously, but it's entirely Kenyan faculty, students, administrators.

Mount Vernon the big city, five miles away. We were driving, so they said nicely sent someone to pick me up at the airport in Columbus. We're driving back. It's 7.15, 7.30 last night. My work here starts, you know, this afternoon tonight, Monday. So he says, look, you want to stop Mount Vernon to pick up maybe a little hamburger or something for the road? because everything will be closed in Gambier. I said, well, everything.

I mean, I said, yeah, actually Sunday night, the actual Kenyon Inn where you're staying, which is a lovely place. I want to say, an old, you know, old school kind of place. They don't serve food Sunday night. I said, well, how about like just some piece of place or, you know, even just grocery? Actually, everything closed by about 7 or 8 p.m. So it's like, basically, I had actually, someone had warned me about this. I know that I wasn't quite as pitiful or as surprised as I'm pretending in this.

Besides, I picked up a couple of things at the Columbus airport, like, you know, some brazenettes for the room while I watched the Maritors game last night. So, anyway, it is a lovely place. I've always admired Kenyon. Sarah got an excellent, is very fond of it, very loyal alumni. I think most alumni here are very, we have, what, three or four Kenyan employees at Belmont. Yes, it's kind of a, yeah, they're getting it totally on merit, you know, it's no, we don't

have DEI and, we don't have DEI at the board. It's kind of like Barry Wice's sisters, KEI or something, Kenyon Equity. Kenyan equity. They're all excellent, incidentally, and they're very nice people, and I'm totally pro-Kenyan. I want to say that for the third time, just in case anyone is going to be there tonight. Good to know. Maybe you'll uncover some of the trauma that made Sarah the way she is while you're there. We'll see how that goes. We can report back next Monday. That's Bill Crystal. Everybody else, we've got a double-hitter that might be interesting tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. So stick around for that. We'll be seeing you all then. Peace.

John is in a basement mixing up the medicine. I'm on a man thinking about the government the man in a trench coat badge out laid off says he's got a bad cough wants to get a paid off look out kid it's something you did god knows when but you do it again you better duck down the alleyway looking for a new friend the man in the coon skin cap in a pig pen wants eleven dollar bills you only got ten The heat put plants in the bed, but the phone's tapped anyway. Maggie says a man, he says they must bust in early, man. Orders from the DA, look out, kid, don't matter what you did.

A walk on your tiptoes, don't tie no bows. Better stay away from those of care around a fire hose. Keep a clean nose, walks a clean clothes. You don't need a weatherman to know a tray the wind blow. Oh, get sick, get well, hang around the ink well. Bell, heart tale of anything he's gonna sell. Try hard, get bark, get back, right rail, get jail, jump bail, join the army it fail. Look out, kid, you're gonna get hit by losers, cheaters, six-time users, hanging round of theaters, girl by the world pools, looking for a new fool, don't follow leaders, watch a parking heater. Learn to dance, get dress, get blessed. Try to be success, please her, please him.

Buy gifts, don't steal, don't lift. 20 years at schooling and they put you on the day shift. Look out here to keep it all head. Better jump down a manhole like yourself a candle. Don't wear sandals and try to forge your scandals. Don't want to be a bum. You better chew gum. The pump don't work because the vandals took the handle.

The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.