The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump Is All-In on Authoritarianism

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Another weekend passed without a promised Iran deal. Despite reporting to the contrary, Iran’s negotiators don’t live in caves, and they’re not interested in dealing with the U.S. anymore, at least according to state media. Meanwhile, the president continues to release unhinged midnight bleats on his social media platform, including one targeting not just a judge who ruled against him in the Kennedy Center case but also that judge’s spouse. That’s just one reminder that the authoritarian threat remains, and we should prepare for election meddling if the midterms don’t go Trump’s way. Plus, the White House seems to have soured on JD Vance, the Epstein cover-up continues, there’s more Graham Platner drama, Susan Collins has enabled the worst of Trump 2.0, and Bill outflanks Tim on Pride Month?Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.Show notes Bill’s Bulwark on Sunday with Nathaniel Zelinsky Bill’s Morning Shots from Friday on Trump’s plans for America250 Text BULWARK to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply.

Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. I'd welcome back to the show. It's the editor at large of this year, Bullwork, Bill Crystal. Hey, Bill. Hey, Tim. How are you?

I'm doing pretty good. It's Pride Month. Can I tell you probably a wrong thought, a wrong opinion that I'm allowed to have, but you're probably not. Can we just do that? It's June 1. It's Pride Month. Is it okay if I listen to it and just don't, I mean, I think it's a little

overkill just for listening to a wrong opinion. Yeah, no. I don't think it'll be canceled for us thing. I do think it's a little overkill at this point. You know, I think the gays, like we had this big transitional moment. I think that the spirit, I love going to a pride parade. The spirit of pride is still important. And, you know, you've got to safeguard the rights that we've secured, of course,

and it's good to celebrate. Forcing the streets to, like, have to deal with a rainbow explosion every time they go into the store for a whole month. You know, at this point, I feel like we could just dial it back a little bit. Like just the parade itself, I do think, is sufficient. That's just one man's opinion. So you can just, you can just, you can just, you can just, you can just, I don't honestly see. I guess the stories here in McLean, Virginia are not, like, wildly festooned with,

with, I don't know, obviously gay pride things. So it's not a, it doesn't really come to the forefront of my mind. Wokeville Crystal outflanking me on Gay Pride Month. I like that. That's perfect. Let's start with the war in Iran. I did get a kick. Bill Maher's had a lot of misses lately, but he did have a little bit where he said he's not going to talk about the Iran war updates because people are going to think it's a rerun.

I am starting to feel a little bit that way about the podcast. But there were some things that happened over the weekend I do want to highlight. On I guess it was Saturday, Friday, Axius, which keeps reporting the deals right around the corner, reported some sources for the Trump administration saying essentially there's a deal on Trump's desk. Trump was just waiting to sign it. and then there were some provisions of that deal that Trump wanted to be tougher, and so they were going to send it back to the mullahs in Iran, but that would take them like three days to get back to them. It's hard to even communicate with them because they live in caves and such.

And so maybe we'd have a deal more like next week, which is now this week. So that was the pitch kind of going into the weekend right there, like the two-yard line. It's like it's almost there. It's just we got to wait for these prehistoric monsters to get back to us from their caves. Since then, the Iranians rejected Trump's counterproposal within like two hours. So the cave Wi-Fi must be better than they thought. And then active fire started last night. The Iranians attacked Kuwait.

U.S. sent more self-defense attacks onto Iranian radar because we're still in a ceasefire. So self-defense attacks. Now, this morning, Iran's negotiators have said, according to their state media outlet, Tasum, that they're suspending all message exchanges. with the U.S. because simultaneously with this, Israel was also attacking Lebanon over the weekend, and they cited those attacks as the reason for ending the negotiations. So it seems like we can communicate with them if we want to. It seems like they're hearing the messages. And it doesn't, to me, seem like a deal is very imminent. I mean, I think one question has always been,

how much leverage does Iran think it has and how much pressure do they feel to have a deal, which maybe gives Trump a little bit of face-saving, you know, fig leaves and how much do they just don't think they have much pressure to have a deal or want to really make clear that they retain leverage on the straits and retain no and make no commitments on the nuclear issue and get some money up front and a lot of it and so forth. So, yeah, I've been slightly on the side that they probably at the end of the day

want to get to a deal and Trump certainly wants to get to a deal, so they'll get to a deal. But I also think at some point, it's like you're on the two-yard line forever, at some point you think maybe they're not going to get into the end zone and maybe the war could begin again. It's not out of the question, right? Yeah. And part of the case for eventually reaching a deal is that it doesn't really seem like either side wants the war to begin again, right?

And Trump wants out badly, but they both want these face-saving negotiations. Like I kind of figured that eventually at some point, there would be like basically two deals. Like the Iranians would say they got one thing and we'd say we got the other thing. And Trump would try to just, you know, flood the zone with BS and kind of move forward to try to cover up his humiliating defeat. and maybe that's still how things end, but it's certainly further away than the Trump folks want people to think as they try to calm the markets. And on the markets, I guess the only thing that they've had any success with, really, with the war is job owning the markets a bit. And, you know, there's an Exxon executive over the weekend that said, you know, basically that the oil reserves,

if you like look throughout the world and all the countries throughout the world, it's like unprecedented, low like the strategic reserves are. I was looking at a chart yesterday about like the Japan, you know, petroleum reserves and it's just like a straight line down. It's kind of like an elephant trunk, you know, after being, you know, pretty steady over the course of the last few decades. And so this exact said, like he thinks that, you know, it's hard to predict a date exactly, but two, three weeks. Now, we can see the oil prices jump to like 150, like way higher than they've been, you know, that's just one person's opinion. But like, we'll see. But it does feel like they've been able to kind of put a lid on the damage because people just

assume what you just said, basically, which is like eventually, like he seems to want to be out of this. And so eventually he can just get himself out of this. Like, maybe he can't. Well, also just going on week to week, Trump seems to says he feels no pressure. He's in no rush. I guess in a way he's behaving that way. But I think the normal understanding, the normal economist or energy expert understanding is every day, every week that the trade is closed, or 90% closed, which is kind of what it is, the pressure increases in terms of energy prices, shortages, fertilized, or everything else. And there's some workarounds, but those workarounds, almost by definition, get less effective, the longer one of the main conduits for energy

and oil in particular is closed. I'm sort of amazed the markets are discounting that. I mean, I think if you had told us two months ago, three months ago, when it all began, and the straight would be closed for that one's what two and a half months, I think, basically closed. We would have said, oh, oil prices are up there 50%. That's not nothing. But still, I kind of think the markets are kind of complacent for the reason you and I've just said, that they kind of think there'll be a deal. They may be underrating how much damage has been done, even if there is a deal.

And the final point I'd make, and this is a point Bob Kagan emphasized to you when he was on with you. I mean, I've sort of assumed to Ron would accept the deal now intending to sort of monkey with it and semi-violated and torque it three, six, nine, twelve months from now. You know, it's like the U.S., if you want, an analogy of us and North Vietnam, you know, and eventually they broke the deal, and we were out of there. We weren't going to go back in, and they ended up conquering the South. And I've kind of, they could say free passage and leave it sort of murky about exactly, no tolls, of course, no tolls.

It would be environmental fees. Yeah, there are fees, and maybe instead of the free passage, they'll six months or now, it's kind of a problem with that free passage. They need to, you know, I mean, all kinds, they'll be there. So they have that huge advantage, I think. And I've assumed that they would just decide to make sure we get out of there and because we're not going to go back in for some way. And maybe one bombing raid, but nothing serious.

Anyway, I still think it's all jockeying. But the degree to which Trump, I don't know, is he even right? Does it matter at this point? I mean, he's taking the hit on the war. Are people going to be fooled if he looks tougher for an extra week or they get some sentence on a piece of paper on an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, at which. Shiran really pledges a slightly stronger version of addressing the nuclear issue or keeping the straight open. I think it's psychological.

And it's psychological. It's part of his dick measuring contest with Obama, which he's always going to lose. But I think that it's that. Like, he feels like he needs something good. And he has people around him, you know, the people around him that wanted to do this are still talking to him. Like he posted yesterday about how Mark Levins show was good. We know we were here before. Mark Tison still talking to him.

Rubio. People sometimes don't like to throw Rubio in. But this is Rubio's war as much as anybody. like Rubio was pushing for this, Hagsatsats. So I think that those, I think that there are people in his ear that are like, well, you know, you got to be tough. You can't back out. And this is to his, he sent this bleat last night after midnight,

the president posting after midnight. Don't the Dumocrats and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans understand that it's much tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate when political hacks keep negatively chirping at levels never seen before over and over again that I should move faster, move slower, go to war, not go to war, or whatever, just sit back and relax. It will all work out in the end. It always does. That was the president's kind of speech.

I was amused by that, Tudan, I think I tweeted. I just thought I will. Fellow political hacks keep on chirping. I mean, if it's, again, annoying Trump, that's good. But, you know, it's interesting, he equates the people who are chirping from to cut the deal and the people who are chirping for him to start the war again, right? So I wonder if he's getting a little tired of the, you know, Mark Tieson types, heck Seth. You can finish it, Mr. President.

This is the moment. I mean, God, the amount of rationalization is going on incidentally among Trump supporters and the pretzels they're twisting themselves into to explain that it's all working out okay. It could be a little better if he only goes this extra step. But even so, it's been basically a victory. I mean, I was a strong supporter of the Iraq War, but I don't think I was diluted that it was going well. I know it wasn't because I was screaming and yelling about how mostoles should be fired. and we should send in more troops and go to the Petraeus counter-resurgency strategy.

Not everyone was with me and the weekly standard on that, but even the people who were defending Rumsfeld and stuff, well, there was a certain amount, I guess, of lying and self-delusion. But I feel like here the kind of the degree to which people who went in with Trump on this just can't accept the fact that maybe they should just cut their losses and get out. It's probably delaying Trump cutting his losses and getting out, right? Do you think? I think so.

Yeah, that's what I think that, like, he wants the out-of-boys, And he wants those talks to be able to say, hey, this was better than Obama's deal. And he cares about that. We're living in a psychological drama with somebody who has deep psychological problems. And so that's great, great work reelecting him again. One other foreign policy thing briefly, just because I thought it was noteworthy. Zelensky put out a long statement over the weekend about how he wants to have, speaking of deals, a deal with the U.S.

related to the Ukrainian drone technology and a cooperation agreement related to that. They've signed those with several of the Gulf states and some other countries because of all the advancements Ukraine's had and drone technology having to defend themselves from Russia. The U.S. has been slow rolling that. It's unclear exactly why Phillips O'Brien posted this.

The U.S. is putting its own troops in danger by not working as closely as possible with the Ukrainians on drone development, doing it to stay close to Putin Trump is showing once again how little he cares about U.S. soldiers. We'll see kind of how all that shakes out. But it is pretty interesting kind of side development that now that it's like the Ukrainians who have lapped us in other countries in this very important kind of technology of the way the wars are going because of Trump's kind of stupid positioning, whether you want to call it

pro-Putin or neutral or, you know, however you want to describe his positioning in the in the Russia-Ukraine war, we may be cutting off our nose despite our face a bit. For Putin, but also anti-Zolensky and anti-Ukraine, and that's true of Trump, but also I would think of HegSeth, and therefore I suspect they're not like

doing what you would normally do in rush to get that best possible equipment and get it incorporated into your own forces. It doesn't seem like in this case, and the people I respect in the military world really are kind of worry. We're not ahead in drones, especially not the real cheap ones,

but that are extremely effective. We're spending a fair amount of money, developing them at all this. But yeah, Ukraine is literally signing deals with the Gulf states, which are under attack from Iran. So they kind of have a real interest in having up-to-date technology. And now they're signing deals with the Europeans. The idea that the Europeans are ahead of us on cutting-edge technology, military technology, that's a new world. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack hydration and coffee sponsor. IQ Bar Protein Bars, IQ Mix, Hydration Mixes, and IQ Joe Mushroom Coffees are the delicious low-sugar

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Text bulwark to 64,000. That's bulwark to 64,000. Messaging data rates may apply, see terms for details. Yesterday in your Sunday live that you're doing on Substack and YouTube, you talked to Nathaniel Zelensky about specifically the case regarding the Kennedy Center and getting,

Trump's name off of the John of Kennedy Memorial and also the question of whether the Kennedy Center should be closed for renovations. He's the lawyer on that case. So he's interesting on that case, but also there's some broader lessons. Just wondering if you wanted to give us a little shorthand of what your takeaways were. Yeah, Friday had two different judges, also halting the slush fund for now, sort of different K-1, Florida, one of these, you see different litigants, different cases.

One takeaway, I think, is the courts can sell things down, maybe reverse them. And a lot of these district judges, I mean, Judge Cooper here is a very well-respected district judge, the Kennedy Center judge. His opinion is 90-plus pages, and very careful. And he's just totally exasperated by the kinds of arguments Justice Department lawyers are making. It does seem like there's more of that going around among district court judges. A fellow court, Supreme Court, we'll see how much, you know, some of this stuff will get overturned. But I think the courts are proving to be a little more of a guardrail than perhaps what expected. You know, on some of these substantive policies, which is so important, they, That's tough for us to intervene against the president, though they did on tariffs, and they will do on birthright citizenship. But it's funny on the less, quote, important things, putting your name on the Kennedy Center or, you know, in a way, these, the ballroom, in a funny way, it's easier for them to just say,

well, look, this is pretty straightforward law. There are processes that have to be followed and you're not following them, right? In a funny way, this fits more in the, maybe it's a little more in the judge's wheelhouses than a kind of taking out a massive economic thing like, you know, terrorist that they did tariffs. But anyway, no, I do think it's encouraging. And Trump was very unhappy about that Kennedy Center.

He was. Let's read. He did an extremely long bleat about this. Trump's social media behavior, and this is another, you know, story that feels like when Groundhog Day, but he posted like 50 times in one afternoon over the weekend, and it's all insane stuff. It's like half conspiracy theories and rants. And, you know, as mentioned earlier, he did the bleed about the war.

where he's just telling everybody to chill out. Here was his post on the judge that you mentioned, Judge Cooper. And I'm not going to read the whole thing because that would take the whole podcast. Yeah, I mean, it was really he benefited from that character limit. And getting rid of the character limit has kind of allowed him to get a little lengthy and rambly in his posts. But here we go. A Barack Hussein Obama judge named Christopher Cooper has stopped a magnificent structural and aesthetic rebuilding of the Trump Kennedy Center, where millions of dollars, material, marble, furniture, steel, air conditioning, heating, and so much else was ordered or soon to be ordered,

with the end result being a structure that would no longer be in a potential state of collapse, rusted, rusted, and rat and bug infested to the one that would be the finest anywhere in the world. Now that won't happen anymore because a judge whose wife is an anti-Trump heater, and he is too, decided unprecedentedly to not allow a desperately need to, did building renovation to go forward on top of that he said rip his name off the building he's got 20 days to do so even though a large board of some of the most distinguished people in the country voted unanimously to put that name up i didn't do it the board did it because they thought it would be good he then finishes with a lengthy attack on the judge's wife amy jeffress as a lawyer has been working with pro-democracy groups and folks that we know so i mean the combination of going after the judge himself you know that is very very very

unusual and not the type of behavior we've expected from a president bullying a judge's wife over her work you know that is very authoritarian in nature the kim jong-un-esque like renaming of the thing after himself and then saying he didn't really do it but it was all these distinguished people that felt it was absolutely necessary that he be put on there i mean it all is extremely fascistic and and outside of the american tradition and and concern it's crazy and i mean as you say all the posts have become so unhinged and this one has all those elements that you mentioned. This distinguished board consists literally of his chief of staff and a whole bunch of Trump administration. Everyone, they're all appointed by him and half of them seem to work for him.

So it's ludicrous, of course. And the place could do some renovations and it has been getting renovated. The opera moved a couple of ten years ago. We had to go to the opera elsewhere in D.C. for years. They renovated the opera house. It's not like they're letting the place fall down. It's a perfectly nice place to go to concerts. A lot of people go.

by people went until Trump took it over and started to ruin it, you know, a year ago. So what struck me most about the post is at the very end, he has a sentence where he says something like our court system is rigged and the political system is rigged and it's all terrible, but I will fight. And I mean, this typical Trump rhetoric and all that he's used to rigged verb for what, over 10 years. Didn't he say it in 2015, 2016, that Hillary is going to be rigged, the elector was going to be rigged against him by Hillary and all this. but I feel like sitting president of the United States, who has already tried to overturn one election result in 2020, saying that both the court system is rigged and the political system is rigged,

that's not good. For me, reading that thing kind of brought back and then reading some of the other news or what they're trying to do about voting lists with the Justice Department and all the other stuff, and he controls the executive branch, and this time, unlike 2020, they're all loyalists and they're loyalists down two, three, four, five levels.

I've been a little too putting in the back of my mind, the concerns about 2026 and 2028. And I'm now getting those back to the front of my mind because his numbers are horrible. He's all in on the authoritarianism. He's all in on the kleptocracy. Can they really afford to lose? They can afford to lose Congress, probably, but can they really afford to lose in 28 and have the next administration turn over the rocks?

Can he even afford to ever non-super loyalist Republican theoretically take over? So the degree to which we are at a Kim Jong-un, he only, trust his family and he doesn't want to have real elections situation is alarming. Is there anything in particular that you're worried about the midterms or it's just a general kind of sense of alarm? Yeah, there I think it's more, I mean, what the Justice Department is trying to do, and I don't fully understand, and follow the details as much with mail and voting and stuff. They're trying to butt into the states and localities that run elections,

intimidate election observers, discredit, Fulton County, Georgia and other places that will be strong democratic areas in swing states, maybe lay the predicate for then seizing ballots, you know, and having the military involved. That would be the big extra step that we haven't seen yet. Certainly his people, though, have been saying, can't rule out using ICE. Nothing wrong with having ICE protect polling places after all. So I don't know. I mean, I feel like this will be something to watch closely, I think, over the next two, three months. The good news is there are a lot of, like, lawyers working on this. This is different than 2020. in that sense.

And I've had Mark Elias on, and there's so many others. And I think we'll continue to matter to that. But on that side of things, people aren't getting caught off guard. What I'd say also is I think the blue state, governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general are on top of this. So I don't think he's going to succeed. Well, the purple states. That's the other good thing.

Most of the purple states are have good. Whitmer and Michigan and all the way down and Shapiro in Pennsylvania and down and, you know, Wisconsin. a lot of these states. Georgia's Republicans will go Trumpy, but I guess the current ones will still be in power in November. So, yeah, no, I think that's an important point. The scary thing would be the red states,

red state governors cooperating with Trump's Justice Department. You can have real voter suppression in democratic areas in red states. And there are a lot of those. It's not like there are no Democratic members of Congress from Texas or from, you know, other states. I know. Red state Senate racist. I always said the things that I'm the most worried about is, you know,

if the Senate ends up hinging on Iowa, let's say. Texas. That's alarming or Texas or Florida, right? Alaska even. So those are all red areas and that's the main area of concern. Plus, you know, the delay California's self-owned on the fact that it takes them a month to vote. I mean, like, if we do it, God, the worst case in areas, you end up in a place where the House hinges on like waiting a month for California to count their mail-in ballots. And, you know, I think obviously the elected officials in California end up doing the right thing,

but it just creates such a long period of troublemaking. That's another area that I'm concerned about. But think of the Senate hinges on Texas, which is entirely possible. And, you know, there are all these fake charges by both the Trump's Justice Department, but also by the state of Texas that in, you know, black areas in Houston and in other, and in Austin, in Democratic areas in Austin, there's been voter fraud and there's this, and they've got evidence of that, and they get local people like in the United States. We're voting in the Rio Grande Valley.

That's like in Arizona. They get local people, some local people to say, this is a fraud here, and here's some fake video of this. And so the whole thing gets delayed. And we don't know who the senator from Texas is going to be for a week or two. And the entire weight of the federal government and the state government starts to come down. That's where it gets really dicey, I think. Yeah, we're living in pretty uncertain times.

Not even the reporters that cover the White House knows what's happening. The president's stupid war is tanking the economy and making everything more expensive. AI overlords are coming for our jobs. There's more cruise ship viruses. It's no wonder most of us are buckling down saving and looking for ways to protect our future. One way to do that is life insurance.

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There's two interesting kind of elements of that over the weekend, or late last week. One was Bondi as his closed-door hearing on Friday, where she's getting questioned about this. Notably, it's just Jim Comer himself, and then the Democrats. Like the other Republicans don't even show up

for this close-door hearing. The other notable thing there is that Bondi blames Todd Blanche says that he was the point person on the document review. So that will be something to continue to monitor. And then kind of related,

though there's a lot of things happening with crazy Nancy Mays. So, you know, we're kind of reading between the lines here a little bit. But Trump endorses against her, endorses the lieutenant governor there, Pamela, Avett, and the governor's primary.

Mesa is running for governor of South Carolina. And it just is noteworthy of him endorsing against her, given the fact that she was one of the handful of Republicans that I worked with, Rokana and Democrats, on getting the Epstein files released. Both of those elements that the Republicans not participating in the Bondi hearing, Trump endorsing against people that went against him on that

just provides us a few more data points that this is an ongoing cover-up that they are interested in continuing to keep the lid on as much as possible. And that he personally is very interested in it. I mean, the Massey thing, I always felt a lot of the coverage of it. He was a pain in the neck and some other issues, too, for the House Republicans and for Trump. Epstein was the thing that he famously was kind of a leader on work with Rokana, bipartisan. They were quite effective.

And then who were the four Republicans who defected on the discharge petition for Epstein? It was Massey. It was Lauren Bobert, whom Trump is now going after. Is he going after? He said he was going to go after in Colorado. Yeah, I don't think he's actually endorsed against her. He did call her dumb and his like attack. He's sort of asked for someone to run against her, I think. He's now gone against Nancy Mays in South Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Green left the Congress. He's gone after the four

who crossed her on Epstein. That tells me that he cares a lot about Epstein. Because he hasn't gone after everyone who's crossed him on everything. Cassidy was impeachment. He cares a lot about not being impeached. And he cares a lot about the Epstein files being covered up. And I think in the case of John Cornyn, he cared about protecting his own maga backside because of a potential backlash of him going against Cornyn. Cornyn's Scorpion and the Frog Post, and has been anything more pathetic than this? John Cornyn might be, it's a competitive category.

So if you want to give me nominations in the comments, I'm happy to hear other people. But I think he might be the most humiliated person during the Trump era, like the most cucked of the Republicans, because he just all of the other people that Trump was going after showed an inch of bad. backbone at least at one moment, not nearly as much as we wanted, but that's why he went after them. I mean, Pence's the most famous example of this. Cornyn never really ever bucked him.

And, like, Trump still stung him, to use the scorpion analogy. And now after Trump ends his career, he's like posting this cryptic, I mean, it's not very cryptic, but like he won't, he don't name Trump's name. He's like, there's an old fable, the frog and the scorpion, and you know you're going to get stung and be careful. And it's just, it's unbelievably pathetic. No, when I saw at first, I thought, I must be missing something here. Like, he's trying to make a different point than it seems like this fable is making. It has always been invoked to make.

But in which he appears to be the fool. I mean, that's what, right? He was the credulous person who thought he could, by voting always with Trump, by the would be the equivalent of the frog giving the scorpion the riot on his back across the river. He thought he would get pardoned. but he didn't. So what's the lesson? I mean, God forbid he should actually, well, let's see.

I mean, I'm very, do you think Corner will vote against Trump on some of these things, the way Cassidy seems to be willing to do now that he's a sort of lame duck in his last six months in the Senate? Case by case, I think. Yeah, I think case by case for sure. You might be a little. I'm not getting my hopes up, though. No, me neither. The other little intro Republican political drama over the weekend was a New York Times piece about Trump's relationship with

J.D. Vance. And I just want to give you a couple of the highlights of that. The lead of the time story is this. In recent conversations with AIDS and allies, President Trump often interjects with the question about his vice president. Does J.D. Vance have what it takes to go all the way? He usually answers his own question. He's not so sure. Also in the article, Susie Wiles, I guess, had a meeting with Vance where she told him his tweeting was undignified and not vice presidential. Trump, I guess, this is just such a funny, like, just about Trump's mental mania and compulsions. Apparently, Trump's been saying to Vance, I'm more of a peace person than you are, but I had to do it when bringing up the Iran war. Anytime J.D. offers some light pushback on the choices in Iran.

Trump brings up his Ohio State football trophy fumble, if you remember that. If you don't remember that, I did a funny video with Pablo Toray on that about a year ago, so you can go watch that. In November, the president wondered aloud why Mr. Vance was not more subservient, like the officials who worked for President Xi Jinping of China. Why don't you behave like that? J.D. always butts into conversations. I assume this is reporting is pretty accurate. Someone's telling the Times this, and it's presumably not J.D. Vance's people, right? So I think some senior White House people were not entirely on J.D. Vance's side, which is kind of interesting in its own way. I don't know if they're pro-Rubio. The Susie Wiles meeting one is particularly interesting because.

how many people were in that meeting. Your friend Stephen Chung, the Whitehouse spokesperson, posted about how that was fake news. And the Times replied to them, the communications, like the official Times organ and said, like, we have two sources. We stand by our reporting. And it's kind of like,

it'd be one thing if it was like the Daily Beat. Nothing against the Daily Beast, but you might wonder, maybe they have two sources who heard it through a person, and it's probably true. But if the Times is like saying, we have two sources, we stand by our reporting.

To me, the source kind of has to be Susie Wiles. honestly. I don't even know who else it would be for the time so I go to the mat on just a little detail like that. So anyway, that's retailing. And we know that Susie Wals does talk to the media occasionally, right? Wasn't that that all the profile of her where she was going on about various problems with the Trump White House? And Tim Wals, I guess, has said that he, when he talked to, he said this publicly, he said it to us privately in the Green Room in Minneapolis, but he would call the White House and talk to Susie Wiles and she would sort of like, oh, my God, I didn't know Trump. I leave the White House.

At 8 p.m., I can't control what Trump does after that. And, yeah, I think, don't you think generally the amount of leaking from within the administration and certainly within the White House is much greater than it was a few months ago, I find that sort of heartening. I feel like this. Because it was kind of notable, actually, the opposite. Like the first turn there was so much leaking. Yeah.

And they've locked it down. Somebody who's worked for a vice president. And is this just kind of indignity, just kind of standard fare? Does it feel worse than an average? I mean, the idea that she would say it directly in advance, I was much younger. She is, and he's much younger than Trump, Bush Jr. But I don't know. So in my day, when I was Vice President Quillelts,

they did occasional little ruffles and getting crosswise for the White House. And I was the, they wouldn't come to the Vice President. I think because Bush had been Vice President because there was so much more respect in those days for just stature and status and so forth. Protocol almost, I don't really think any White House staff would go directly to the Vice President and say X.

They would come to me and say, you know, your boss, this thing he said, was kind of a little off and they can you tell him not to say that again. It was always not my most pleasant sort of being in an intermediary there, but it was fine. Who would have been the person at the White House? Well, so Sununu was chief of staff and then Skitter. Sununu was pretty outspoken and he and I ended up not getting along, so I wasn't the best intermediary.

But, and then others, I mean, who just, it was more of that, maybe occasionally Marlon Fitzwater, the press guy. He was a very nice guy. And so he was a little more. But they were transmitting messages. I'd say in each of these cases, incidentally, they were transmitting messages from Bush. There was never any doubt in my mind. if they wanted to go to the trouble of telling me to tell the vice president,

Bush didn't want to tell quail, you know. So it confirms for me that the fact that there are these random, different leaks, all fits into the pattern that Trump doesn't trust Vance to be his heir, which I've never thought he did or would, incidentally. Why would he? I mean, honestly, he doesn't know. And I don't think he trusts any of them. There's now a Rubio boomlet.

Does he trust either of them to really allow the theft and the kleptocracy to go on and to allow none of it to be exposed and all the family stuff, I don't know. We're heading to it in Ivanka Trump, you know, nomination. I'm just going to say that. I think Vance more than Rubio, you just kind of maybe unintentionally made the best case for Vance, right?

Which is, you know, him and Don Jr.'s fake friendship, you know, right? Like, and Vance's willingness over the years to totally, like, sell himself out and shame himself on behalf of his various mentors. It would seem like that would be a more trustworthy person. and to keep the gift going in Rubio. But TBD, well, plenty of time to talk about that. Okay, deep breath. Time for some Grand Platner discourse.

Over the weekend, there was a Wall Street Journal story about the, I guess we call it, the presumptive main Democratic Senate nominee. The actual election hasn't happened yet. But he apparently told one of the early staffers on the campaign as part of the self-oppo process that, his wife had discovered that there were some texts that he was sending to other women, sexual texts. He had a kick profile that we've now got to see the picture of,

of him in a towel with his shirtless torso. That staffer and maybe some other sources, I guess, went to the Walser Journal in the Times and told them this. So they've reported the story. I noteworthy on that timeline, you know, they got married in 2023. So this is, you know, part of the story of Platner is that like he did these Reddit posts back when he had all these indiscretions and he had PTSD and he's come around. This most recent situation doesn't seem to fit that timeline really. It's like in the last

couple of years as he was looking into a candidacy. There's pretty powerful video, to be honest, from his wife, defending his behavior and saying that they're going to marriage counseling, Plattner, like kind of quasi denied the story in a press conference, kind of a weird press conference yesterday. And so a lot of discourse about this. Everybody has thoughts. Some of them about Platner, some of them about their own feelings of hypocrisy and integrity and meta conversations. It yields a lot of conversations that aren't really about the main Senate race at all. But I have some thoughts, but I figured to just give you the table first. I haven't followed the race closely probably as I kind of once Mills dropped out, or even

when she was the designated by Schumer candidate. I was a little dubious about that, but I was stupidous about Platner, and I thought, I'm not going to be so happy with the main Democratic Senate nominee this year. But you know what? There are a lot of races, and it's not my, you know, I don't have much. I can't control this. And it's better if the Democrats win the Senate. So I'm for the Democrats winning the Senate. And I will say my only general point, this is an evasion, I will grant, but I think it's a legitimate evasion is if you look at the roster of, let's say the Democrats were to win the Senate and who would have to win the races that they would win, it's mostly people who I'm fine with, you know, and who in the world

should be fine. They may not be perfect. They may be too liberal on some issues and all this, but no one thinks that Sherrod Brown or Mary Patola in Alaska, Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Roy Cooper. I assume Josh Turrick may win in Iowa tomorrow, Tallinniko in Texas. These are not people who, like, you know, what has to be horrified that they're the Democratic nominees who are going to make, we're putting the Senate in play, Roy Cooper in North Carolina. That's been my rationale for not paying close attention to Maine in particular. I did look, after the story broke this weekend, I look to see what this guy Costello

who's running in the primary, which I think is a week for tomorrow in Maine, like didn't he have an outside chance? I've got sent him $250. He's a normal guy. It seems like a normie dem, kind of a bureaucrat and a lawyer and stuff. He worked on environmental protection

for most of his career in his 60s, but he seems to be 65 points behind. So I think it's going to be hard for it to catch up. Yeah, I think it'll be hard from catch up too. Okay, I've got a long sermon on it. So just, you know, buckle up, Have a sip of tea. It's complicated.

And I think that a lot of people, like the big Plattenor supporters and, you know, both the good faith and bad faith opponents of Platner, you kind of want to, like, sand this down into kind of a one-dimensional question. Like the supporters of him really want to say, hey, they're really coming after him because he's this economic populist and he's a challenge to the status quo and don't let them do that. I think that's kind of true. But I don't think if he was a moderate candidate that also. was like, you know, had this whole roster of history that he does. I think that there would also be a lot of consternation about that. So I don't think it's like quite true how they're putting it. Like the opponents of Plattenor just want to sell like Nazi tattoo, hypocrite, you know,

you can't support this person. You can't be consistent in opposed Trump and also be for Platner. You know, there's a lot of that kind of discourse out there. And like the reality is that it's just, it is more complicated than all that. And he's not running for president. He's running for the Senate. So like the negatives of this on the one hand, I would say from a political matter, and I've said this from the start about him, it does feel kind of unnecessarily risky for such an important race is Maine. You know, like throwing them in the, throwing a platinum in the Nebraska Senate race.

And it's kind of like, well, we'll just let's give this a try. Like maybe the people really do want an uncouth left populist. And it would be a worthwhile political science experiment to see how that goes in Nebraska. But the main race, Maine's a blue state. And this is a point I'm stealing from Madaglacius, but like, all you need to do is to win the Maine Senate race is win the Kamala Harris voters. So it's not like really a great place for an experiment of like, can we win back these Obama Trump voters or working class types or whatever, like Kamala Harris won Maine.

So you just need to win Kamala Harris voters. So on the one hand, like it seems kind of unnecessarily risky to do this in Maine. Another thing I've just kind of been reflecting on personally, because this was a take I've had for a while, But, you know, it's hard to know, like, the future ramifications of getting on board with somebody. And I think that, like, the echoes of the Clinton, like, personal behavior issues, it continued to cause problems for the Democrats until 2016. I mean, it's like Clinton had the Monica Lewinsky blowjob in, what, 1996 or something? I know whatever it was.

Like, it was, like, 20 years later, like, there were echoes. And so, like, you don't always know, like, when you're kind of, you know, getting on board with somebody that has unknown baggage. You don't always know what the unintended consequences will end up being. And I don't think anybody, even Plattor's most loyal supporters, would look at us and say, hey,

there's nothing more that's going to come out. Like, obviously more that's going to come out. We just don't know what exactly. So, like, that's like the case for, like maybe just going back to a,

you know, whatever, the guy that's at 5% that seems to, like, not have any baggage. Like, is that not a better bet? Just in this case.

Yeah. on the other hand, he has demonstrated extraordinary political skill. And I think that a lot of his opponents don't want to say that. Like he's traveled Maine a lot. Like the voters, I've talked to people about this. Like voters in Maine have got to know him. It's not like a California race. It's a state, you know, where like everybody kind of knows him or a family member.

He's been doing the town halls. People like him. He's really talented. Like even if he's not your cup of tea exactly. Like he's objectively like a really dynamic speaker. And like his message is resonating with. people. And so, you know, like, that's what democracy is. Part of democracy is like that the people are going to go along with the people that they, you know, feel like reflect their values.

On top of that, like, I just, this is like maybe where I'm a solo outlier and people can hold me to account on this. But like, I'm not really a pearl clutcher on cheating. Like, I do think that's kind of like between the person and their spouse, like there's been a long history of senators cheating. The idea that Grand Platter would be the first senator that is unfaithful to their spouse, I don't think so. There have been good senators who are cheaters and bad senators who are faithful. It's just like it doesn't really have anything to do with the job. And like when it came to Trump, that was like never, I have like a lengthy list of things that I dislike about Donald Trump.

And like his horrible behavior to his wives is not at the top of my list. The sexual assault is for sure. And, you know, there's something to the fact of like the hypocrisy of the Christian conservatives going along with him. But, you know, look, if you. are a David French or somebody who does like genuinely care about that. I respect that. Like just for my sake, it's like, I mean, the whole history of the Senate is people flying to D.C. and being away from their spouses and behaving badly. So I like this is no new thing under the sun. This takes me in my final part of my ramp when I look at this, which is I really struggle

to take seriously the criticisms of Platner, particularly on the Nazi tattoo from people who are fully in lockstep with what this administration is doing. And Sarah said something on the secret podcast that piqued a thought of mine on the plane, and I started to start to roll around in my head. And it's particularly when you compare Plattner's Nazi tattoo to how Susan Collins handled the sending of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. So just bear with me for a second. The critique of Plattner, I guess, is that like, because he got this tattoo,

the skull and crossbones, like, he's a Nazi. And so you, like, you can't support a Nazi. But, like, there's not any really evidence that he supports any of those policies at this point. And our government literally sent people to a foreign prison camp based only on their nation of origin and the tattoos that they had. That happened a year ago. Like, we did Nazi adjacent shit. to people based on their tattoos. The United States government did.

Susan Collins is the chair of the Appropriations Committee. She could have stopped that. They could have stopped funding for ICE and for the program that was sending innocent Venezuelans without due process to a torture prison because of their tattoos. She didn't do it. We looked into this. And she made one statement about the Kilmar-Bergo-Garcia case where she said this was

troubling. Maybe she said something somewhere else that we couldn't find. There was no opposition from her in the Senate to this. And so when I hear people say, like, oh, your choices between a moderate senator and a person with a Nazi tattoo, like, no, actually, the choices between somebody that got a Nazi tattoo and covered it up, and a senator who went along with our policy, American policy, to send people to an internment camp based on their tattoos and based on their race. That's what we did, to Venezuelans. You know, you look at that, and all the sudden, like, this sort of, like, moral grandstanding on behalf of Susan Collins, it just really fucking pisses me off.

As the chairman of the appropriation committee, she is the power of the purse. She could have stopped anything the Trump has done. The ICE campaign in Minneapolis, it killed Alex Freddie and Renee Good, the drugboat bombings that we're doing in the Caribbean, the stupid Iran war, the triumphal arch, etc. She could have held up any of that, held up the power of the purse, and she hasn't. So, like, yeah, she voted to convict him, but she also voted to confirm RFK. She's voted to confirm all these horrible judges. So I'm just, she hasn't demonstrated any independence on any of this stuff. And it's a complicated race.

I'm not arguing that there's not any baggage or any ethical considerations to consider. Like when the question is, if Trump was to propose another migrant internment camp for people with tattoos in 2027, it seems like Graham Platner would oppose that and Susan Collins would be for it. And so that's where we're at at this point. Not ideal, but that's kind of my assessment of the situation. I do continue to be concerned that there's more to come about Platner that's even worse than all this, but TBD.

So do any thoughts on that? I think I was already pretty much where your rant ended up, but that was very well articulated and explained. And I'm really very much with you. The only thing I'd say, if there's more to come, I mean, look, there's still a week till the primary. there's then a month, I think, about in which the Democratic nominee could drop, according to Maine law, could drop out without having, for reason, could withdraw himself from the race, even though having won the nomination. And then I think the party would appoint a successor nominee. And, you know, look, if it's really bad, people should urge him to drop out. I don't think he will. But again, I mean, Cuomo did quit the governorship, right? And then, you know, for when he was charged for things and with a lot of pressure from Democrats, Al Franken, I think that I think, I think it was good to Cuomo quit. Al Frank got a little more dubies about that, but he also

resigned from the Senate under pressure. That's a very different thing from giving possibly the 50th seat plus the VP, so the key control of the Senate back to Trump. I think that is a different level of calculation. It's not a matter of being opportunistic or unprincipled. That's a principle. It's a principled position that the country would be much better off if Donald Trump did not have Republican apologists controlling the Senate. So, but I'm somewhat on board if we, depending on what we learn, about calling on him to step aside if we think he should not be Senator from Maine. But as you say, it also is up to the voters at some point.

I mean, just one last point. And also governors and presidential race is different than a Senate. Oh, presidential race is totally different. And governor considerably different. I really think it's a really good point. I remember being outraged as a youngish Republican when Democrats kept voting for Ted Kennedy for senator from Massachusetts after Chapo-Quittic. What Chapo-Equittic was horrible.

I mean, it was the death of a young woman, and he behaved horrible. and lied about it. And I remember thinking, what's wrong with the Democrats? And I think I wasn't wrong to be outraged, but I was also a little bit naive, maybe not to see that he was, I mean, his case was a little complicated as he was a Kennedy. Anyway, now, of course, he's a whatever, that's a certain other 30 years and did some good things. And I don't know, it now seems almost wrong to criticize and bring that back up. But I'm just saying in truth in the 70s, that was one of my little outrages that kept me going as a young Republican. It's somewhat legit, I think. And so I think I'm sort of where you're,

you are and we shouldn't under on the one hand it's not the fidelity thing is anything but it's legitimate to be outraged about people's character and i guess people do have to decide how much the accumulated evidence we have of platinum not being quite what we might want uh nonetheless doesn't add up to a disqualification on character i mean that would be i guess the thing and i'm i guess i don't know you're what you're saying is you're you're doubtful that at this point we're at a disqualification level i am i mean again because he apologized for his posts and i tend to think i don't really care if he's cheating on his wife. I just, I don't. And the tattoo thing is, is fake. I mean, I'm not, I don't really take that seriously. That's not terrible. He's not a Nazi. I mean,

he's not a, and I think there are a bunch of red flags, though. And so it's like, okay, well, now we don't know. And that's the part that is scary. It's just like, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And you don't want to be in a position where you find yourself defending the indefensible. Like, we're not there. And in the Senate, like, the amount of damage that Trump controlling the Senate would do is significantly more than anything that one Democratic senator, you know, could do. It's at an executive position. And so, you know, to me, like that question is pretty clear. Obviously, there are other considerations and there's no primaries and over yet, et cetera. But people of Maine also seem to have made

a determination. So we'll see. One other thing on the Collins appropriations, among the other things they're appropriating. I saw you did a post on this with the ballroom. He also announced the bunker and the drone port. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Like, when you look at the overhead picture of the White House right now and you have like the MMA arena

on the front of it and then the East Wing is in rubble and now like he's demanding that they jammed through this. Like, again, that's another thing. Where is Susan Collins? Like, is, you know, if she's supposedly an institutionalist, like you would think that the Senate Appropriations chair, who was an institutionalist, would have demanded that the

executive branch, like, come to them with the plans for what they're going to do with the East Wing, get it funded, get it approved, get it signed, right? And like, that's not what he did. They just bulldoze the East Wing, and now he's like, hey, I need a bunker for in case I need to stay in here. There are underground facilities. That's called them a bunker at the White House. Traity famously was taken to what on 9-11, right? We have photos from within there. Either that's not in the East Wing, in which case, there remains presumably quite good underground facility that could be strengthened and even more, but it isn't successful to drown attack and so forth. Or, it was under the East Wing, in which case Trump shouldn't have bulldoze the whole thing.

I mean, so I feel like, you know, it's a totally fake justification, right? I mean, it has nothing to do with the ballroom. If we have to have better anti-aircraft stuff on the roof of the White House, again, I believe it's publicly known that there are abilities to protect the White House complex that go beyond, you know, having a signal savers agent with a sharpshooter. And if those abilities need to be strengthened, they could be strengthened right now. and it doesn't have anything to do with the destruction of the eastern ring or building the ballroom. So it's totally fake.

People really need to come to goes to that. I mean, people might want to acknowledge that, though. But it's not, we're not having a serious discussion about presidential security, let alone national security. It's entirely his, he was more honest about this at the beginning. I kind of like Trump better when he was speaking a little more honest. He wanted the ballroom because we should have a great ballroom because he's a big ballroom guy, you know?

Yeah. Well, I mean, we do know also the Trump. Trump was in the bunker during the George Floyd protests, and maybe he just decided he didn't like the accommodations. All right. Final topic has mentioned the MMA fight. We've got the America 250 now about a month away. We talked about this a little bit with Liz on Friday. Six of the nine singers have dropped out. Trump did a post over the weekend. He's like, if these singers don't have the courage to do, you know, in the patriotism, then I'll just have to give a MAGA rally speech. And I don't know. The whole thing I just find so depressing, the idea that he's going to give this MAGA rally speech. And like you could just imagine any other world that we're in of literally any other president

where it was a really nice celebration of the American anniversary that maybe didn't live up to Eddie Glead's demands, but also wouldn't have sent us all into a spiral of misery. But that's not what we're going to get. Yeah, I remember that from the 200th anniversary of Gerald Ford. it was nice and it wasn't particularly focused on Gerald Ford, and it wasn't the most meaningful and deep thing I've ever lived through, but it was appropriate. David Frum was a good piece about this in the Atlantic over the weekend,

and I guess I wrote about Friday and morning shots too. So it's depressing that he's hijacking it all and the triumphal arch. Everything is being justified by $250, right? I mean, the stupid $250, bill, he's such an idiot. I mean, the kind of childishness, right? 250, it's a number or so going to have a $250 bill, and the slush fund is going to be for one, billion, $776 million because that's 1776. I mean, it's so juvenile, but also offensive,

of course, that it's his attempt to personalize and hijack and politicize it all and make it all about him. So it deserves to be discredited. And it's suppressing that it's sort of dragging the 250th anniversary down into the sewer with him in a way. My slightly optimistic take is this, that July 4th has ever been about what happens at Washington. Yes, they have a big fireworks, here. They have big fireworks all over the country, and they have more importantly, local fireworks displays. We have them at Langley High School right here, even though we're only 10 miles outside Washington. And people go to that, and people go to their barbecues. If they go to whatever they go to, local parades, certainly in every small town and every other city, too.

So on the one hand, it's important to discredit what Trump is doing. But I guess my only slightly upbeat side of it is we should recapture the spirit of July 4th, which has always been local and dispersed and celebrations and barbecues and backyard, ranging from that to gatherings at Langley High School of 2,000 people to watch some local fireworks and so forth. And I think that's important to kind of talk about as we get into July 4th. I was thinking of getting in touch to the No Kings people. They should say that the next no Kings event is July 4th. And they're not going to actually organize anything front of it, but they would regard everyone celebrating July 4th locally as making a statement for no kings.

Because you know what July 4th is about? It really is about No Kings, right? And Trump's tried to hijack it here in D.C. So it's all the more important than all the rest of us appropriately celebrate. It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be a lengthy parorations or speeches or anything. It just has to be whatever you like to do on July 4th. But think of that as we the citizens celebrating July 4th in an appropriate anti-royalist, anti-Orocratic way. Does that make sense?

I love it. It does make sense. We'll leave it there. That's Bill Crystal. We'll have him back here next Monday. And we will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the book. podcast. Look forward to seeing you all then. Peace.