The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump Loves Fraud

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Gullible Republicans have really been proving what they're made of recently, including Susan Collins, who claims Trump wants to root out corruption, even though his whole life has been a fraud—the water, the university, and "The Apprentice," just for starters. Meanwhile, the presidents of Mexico and Colombia are showing that they're not going to bend over in service of Trump's vanity. Plus, JD's Johnny-come-lately Catholicism, and the tech titans's clash with DEI may be helping the US lose the lead in AI.  Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: Colombian President Gustavo Petro's statement on Twitter (hit translate post) Timothée Chalamet on SNL

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's Monday, January 27th, Trump's been president again for about a week now, feels longer. And I'm here today with Bill Kristol. How are you doing Bill? It does feel longer than a week. It does. I don't know if it feels like a month, six months or a year, but it's, we're not even

talking like a little longer than a week, right? Yeah. We are gathering today, as you note in the morning newsletter on Holocaust Remembrance Day. So I think it's probably worth starting there. Shadow President Elon Musk zoomed in to a conference of the AFD, which is the German far right party at that gathering. He said he thinks that there's too much focused on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.

You had a little meditation on this for Holocaust Remembrance Day today. I'd like for you to share your thoughts on that. Well, it's, Musk, of course, had done the salute, which wasn't really, of course, a fascist or Nazi salute. On Monday, he joked about it during the week. I actually wrote about that in Friday's morning shots. Then Saturday, he decided to video into an AFD rally in Germany. And OK, he's endorsed them.

He likes them. It's indefensible in any case. But I suppose if you wanted to defend them, you could say he likes them for other reasons They don't like you know, but tax cuts the EU bureaucracy tax cuts course such whatever therefore Judicial appointments and steady actually focus on the German Gorsuch name Feel bad for him Gorsuch in there that wasn't quite fair But anyway, and yeah instead he focuses on what is at the heart of their appeal, one

of their major appeals, which is kind of, we've got to get beyond the successive cult of guilt. Muscat used that phrase, I believe, and that's a phrase they use over there about remembering the Holocaust, basically. And so I quote in the morning, Shasta's tweet stream I came across, I don't know the man at all, Professor Martin Sauerbray, based on Google, he seems to be a 45 year old or so German historian. I love that he's at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War. That's a great, great title.

Yeah. He makes some obvious points. I mean, one point Musk wants to say is, you know, Germany's been crippled by this guilt. You know, Germany's had a pretty good run since 1945. West Germany first and then all of Germany, we've helped them. They're a good part of the West. I mean, really, have they been crippled? Is that a country that hasn't done better than we might have expected over the last 70 years?

And because they did come to grips with the Holocaust more than others, more than Austria. In any case, Sauerberg makes this point and then makes a personal point about his own. He is not crippled by a cult of guilt, but he also thinks that not to be serious about one's nation's past and to take that seriously is denial. It is avoidance of moral responsibility and avoidance of political responsibility in terms of how to prevent this from happening. Again, I didn't draw this, make this point in one of the shots, but you read it and you think a little bit about our own issues with slavery and with our past and coming to grips

with it over the last 60, 70 years, but the last 10, 20 too as well and how I think how healthy that has been. It could go a little too far, sure. But anyway, the idea that Musk calls in on Saturday to encourage them to basically minimize the Holocaust two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, pretty appalling. And then this morning, they're having these moving ceremonies at Auschwitz in Poland, and it's the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, by Soviet troops coming from the East.

And interestingly, they stopped inviting Putin to these, any Russian government representative, to these celebrations after the invasion of Ukraine because they correctly understood this is what Putin is doing. It does not entitle him to be on the side of the liberationists, you know? So they have a kind of sense of the current relevance of what they are commemorating. King Charles is there. I can't quite get used to saying King Charles, but King Charles III of Great Britain is there and Macron from France and Trudeau from Canada. We have a, if I could say honestly, a slightly second tier delegation of some cabinet. I think lower than second tier, Charles Kushner straight out of jail.

She has Charles Kushner, who's going to be our ambassador to France, someone who's going to be our commerce secretary and a representative for the Middle East, all Jews, which I guess is, which actually isn't appropriate. I'm Jewish. Jews have a special connection to all this. No question, though it was not only Jews who were killed in Auschwitz, obviously, but predominantly. But, you know, Macron came. He's not Jewish. King Charles came. He's not Jewish. The German Chancellor, President, and the chancellor who's outgoing and the likely he's likely replaced with all came. Germany has a special standing. Trudeau is not Jewish.

It's something that should be of concern to everyone. Trump sends kind of three semi high ranking Jews from his administration who were nominated to be in his, in his administration. And meanwhile, Musk, who's much more powerful than any of those three is busy giving speeches to the, to the alternative for, the alternative for Germany, the kind of success, the anti-anti-Nazi party, at the very least. So, it got me a little bit upset. Yeah. And it is a good parallel, as you're saying, to what is kind of happening in America, right, with the woke lash about the Elon message about, you know about not remembering so deeply all of the stuff we had over the weekend

that as part of the DEI initiatives, the Air Force said that they were gonna stop teaching about the Tuskegee Airmen. There was mass outrage about that and they might be reinstating that lesson. But like the idea is there, the principle of, let's try to bury some of the more unpleasant, like the Tuskegee Airmen isn't an unpleasant story.

It's only an unpleasant story in the sense that at the time they're being discriminated against back home. They didn't have equal rights. Well, and it reminded that the military was segregated at that time, which again, I just think that takes away from what the US did in World War II and certainly not what the black members of the military in segregated units did. But yes, that's why they don't like it the way it's. It's a reminder that they want to yearn for the 40s, but all was not well in the US in the 40s and 50s.

Hegseth this morning, I just saw this before coming on with you, referred in passing, I guess it was in passing, I don't know how much intentional it was, to Fort Bragg, which was renamed Fort Liberty, I think, two, three, four years ago. Bragg was a particularly noxious Confederate general. So that's part of Heg-Seth's kind of, you know, what? That is, I mean, you know, it's one thing if you didn't think about it in 1990,

you talk about Fort Bragg, we all did that, obviously. But it became an issue, the military recommended changes, the Biden administration put them in place. That really is like going out of your way to praise some quasi, in the German context, some, not Hitler obviously, but some quasi-fascist figure from the 20s or something, right? I mean, it's deeply creepy. Pete They're not naming military bases in Germany after Nazi generals? Pete I don't know.

Pete Is that not happening over there? We're bringing it back. We're bringing back the Confederate general naming. We needed to make sure that all of the great Confederates are honored in this country. That is what America First Patriots do, is honor the traitors. All right, I gave you the floor to rant about the mistreatment of the Jewish people by Elon Musk. I've got some Catholic complaints. JD Vance was on Face the Nation over the weekend.

I want to hear him talking about the Catholic Church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week condemned some of the executive orders signed by President Trump, specifically those allowing immigration and customs enforcement to enter churches and to enter schools. Do you personally support the idea of conducting a raid or enforcement action in a church service at a school? Well, let me address this. Of course, if you have a person who is convicted of a violent crime, whether they're an illegal

immigrant or a non-illegal immigrant, you have to go and get that person to protect the public safety. That's not unique to immigration. But let me just address this particular issue particular issue Margaret because as a practicing Catholic I was actually heartbroken by that statement and I think that the US conference of Catholic bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they Receive over a hundred million dollars to help resettle illegal immigrants. Are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?

humanitarian concerns or are they actually worried about their bottom line? This fucking guy has been a Catholic for like two seconds and he converts to the church. He's like, you know, I've got some complaints, all right? You're caring a little bit too much about the indigent and the poor. We need to focus on the real reasons why I became a Catholic, the real Catholic stuff, making people feel guilty, anti-trans sentiment. What? You didn't even have to do it. He had answered the question, which is frankly, maybe, we'll see how these guys execute their immigration raids. I'm not so confident they're going to be very judicious, but maybe they just have changed the rule to be able to go into a church because there's some violent criminal they want and that's the only way they know how to get the person.

Who knows if that's going to happen, but that is a fair dodge as a politician. Then on top of that, he's got to be like, I'm just, as somebody who's been a Catholic since last Tuesday, I am just heartbroken that these bishops that gave their life to the church care at all about the poor immigrants that we're planning on putting on planes and shackles back to their country. Any other thoughts on that, Bill? Well, I leave the Catholics to you and you leave the Jews to me.

We have a good ecumenical division of labor on this. We've got a joke coming here. We got a rabbi and a priest. Well, we need Sarah to come on and take care of the Protestants, I suppose. But no, I just would make one other point that struck me from the outside, so to speak. Yes, you say he made his point. He can defend the detentions and the raids and all that. He could have even said, a normal, if I might say, vice president in this circumstance might

have said, you know, I respect the Catholics. They spend a lot of money on, they try hard to help immigrants. I think some of these policies, though, could be misguided because they could be an inducement for them to come in. I mean, whatever you want to say, right? I mean, you can have a sort of, you know, a critique of their understanding of public policy. He doesn't do that. He says they're in it for the money. I mean, sadly, that is actual bigotry. I mean, unless he has evidence that a lot of people are getting very rich over there at the, you know, working in Catholic relief missions and food shelters and so forth, helping

immigrants. I mean, it's really disgusting. You were too nice to him. Pete Slauson Yeah, thank you, Drill. I can't be anti-Catholic bigotry because he became a Catholic. It's kind of like in Seinfeld where the guy becomes a dentist for the jokes. You know, does he become a dentist for the jokes or become a Jew for the jokes? I forget the story. You are an anti-dentite. It's one of those situations, right? I've become a Catholic so that I can slander the Catholics and

do so with impunity without people calling me a bigot. So, there's our vice president. Unfortunately, I have one more clip from him I'd like to play. He was asked about the pardons. You might remember, more clip from him I'd like to play. He was asked about the pardons. You might remember, it was only like two weeks ago, it was like one week after he became a Catholic, he was on TV and he said that obviously, obviously it was already used, that they would not be pardoning people that violently attacked the police. Obviously, that was wrong and his daddy made a different decision a couple days later. Here's JD Addressing that with CBS face the nation Daniel Rodriguez used an electroshock shock weapon against a policeman who was dragged out of the defensive line by plunging it into the officer's neck

He was in prison sentenced to 12 years seven months He got a pardon Ronald McAbee hit a cop while wearing reinforced brass knuckle gloves, and he held one down on the ground as other rioters assailed the officer for over 20 seconds, causing a concussion. If you stand with law enforcement, how can you call these people unjustly imprisoned? Margaret, you're separating. There's an important issue here. There's what the people actually did on January the 6th, and we're not saying that everybody did everything perfectly. And then what did Merrick Garland's Department of Justice do in unjustly prosecuting well

over a thousand Americans in a way that was politically motivated? Is violence like that against a police officer ever justified? Violence against a police officer is not justified, but that doesn't mean that you should have Merrick Garland's weaponized Department of Justice expose you to incredibly unfair process, to denial of constitutional rights, and frankly to a double standard that was not applied to many people, including of course the Black Lives Matter rioters who killed over two dozen people and never had the weight of a weaponized Department of Justice come against them. The pardon power is not just for people who are angels or people who are perfect.

I keep waiting for the evidence of the Black Lives Matter protesters that attacked cops and killed people and weren't prosecuted for that. This keeps coming up in these interviews, but I never actually, they never actually say the name of a person who got off. So I'm still waiting to hear that. But, you know Bill, the pardon power isn't for people. That's perfect. You know, so beating a cop, whatever. Merrick Garland was too mean. I mean, I assume one hopes and I believe it's the case since I think as you say, we would know the names of those who had gotten off or the people who hadn't been the murders for which there were prosecutions. They're prosecuted obviously in the states in which these happened, as most murder cases are or assault cases. And this was a unique situation because it was in DC.

And it was an attack on the US capitals. And so it made sense for the Department of Justice to take the lead and it did. But again, they were convicted by juries. I mean, the degree of dishonesty advances. There are like eight levels of dishonesty advances, Hansel. Right? Speaking of which, on this topic, I've got a segment. We don't have theme music for it yet.

I don't know if it's going to be a permanent segment, but over the weekend I was struck by something. It was in addition to JD. I was talking about how, I forget who I was talking to about this. I was like, I don't understand why I knew that Trump was going to part in the violent cop beaters, but his own vice president didn't. These guys have to kind of suspend disbelief about the nature of Donald Trump in order to continue to exist.

It's something we saw the first time around, but we're really seeing it in spades this time. And so I've got three examples of gullible Republicans who seem to have been fooled by the nature of the man that they've made the president. And the first one is also on this topic of January 6th, Tom Tillis, Senator from North Carolina. You can just hear the indignation in his voice when we play this. He is indignant that people are asking Pam Bondi

to respond to a hypothetical about the possibility that Donald Trump might pardon a violent protester. This was just a few days before Donald Trump did pardon the violent protesters. Let's listen to indignant Tom Tillis. On January 6th, a lot of people are going to say, you're going to have a rubber stamp for letting people have pardons or recommending a pardon for people who did violence to law enforcement.

I'm not going to ask you a hypothetical because I want you to be consistent in not answering them. But I have to believe as a member, I was the last member out of the Senate on January the 6th. I walked past a lot of law enforcement officers, excuse me, who were injured. I find it hard to believe that the president of the United States or you would look at facts that were used to convict the violent people

on January the 6th and say it was just an intemperate moment. I don't even expect you to respond to that, but I think it's an absurd and unfair hypothetical here and you probably haven't heard the last of it. An absurd and unfair hypothetical. Never would Donald Trump pardon somebody that attacked a cop, Tom Tillis says two days before Donald Trump. He pardons the cop eaters.

Exactly what Tillis said, he wouldn't do. What do you think, Bill? What's happening in this man's brain? And never would he appoint to be director of the FBI, the FBI, which kind of an important agency in this respect. Cash Patel would nominate to be head of the FBI. Cash Patel, who was a total defender the head of the FBI, Cash Patel, who was a total defender of the most violent criminals from January 6th, never accepted the distinction

that Tillis wants to make between the kind of innocent ones, the harmless ones and the violent ones, was proud of his association with various violent criminals. And it was having a hearing, I believe Thursday, before that same committee. So let's see if Senator Tillis says, you know, Pam Bondi, she wasn't answering hypotheticals, I was wrong, Senator Tillis about what President Trump would do. But to be fair, Pam Bondi wasn't presumably clued in either way, so she should still be attorney general. But you, Mr.

Patel, have been an explicit associate with, promoter of, and defender of these violent January 6th criminals. So I can't vote for you. Will Tillis say that? That's a great question. We've invited Tom Tillis to go on the podcast. He's scared. So we'll see.

Maybe Joe Pertigone can shake him down on the hill. I don't expect him to say that because he's, he's worried about a primary. I don't know. Maybe in North Carolina, maybe the, maybe the guy that was eating pizza in the back of the porn shop might primary him. And that's probably more, you know, kind of up the alley of Republican primary voters. We'll see.

So Tom Tillis, indignant Tom Tillis, an absurd hypothetical. You can't make it up. We got Susan Collins, his colleague in the Senate, and another story over the weekend. Trump fired 12, I believe, the inspectors general, and he did not provide the 30 day notice that you're required to by law. I'd like to talk about that story more broadly, but here in the Republican gullibility section, here's Susan Collins' quote on this. I don't understand why one would fire individuals whose mission is to root out waste, fraud

and abuse. So this leaves a gap in what I know is a priority for President Trump. Could you help Susan understand that, Bill? Someone told people like Susan Collins years ago that the way you can persuade Trump is by making it seem that Trump cares about these things that you care about, and then you ascribe to him those views, and then he kind of realizes, yes, kind of in his interest to pretend to care about these things that you care about. Then you ascribe to him those views, and then he realizes, yes, it's in his interest to pretend to care about these things. He's ignored all this for years.

He's done fine ignoring Susan Collins. Of course, the idea that, geez, Trump really doesn't want abuse in any of these departments. He wants people there who are going to blow the whistle on contracts going to his buddies and political appointees, you know, manhandling career civil servants in ways that are not legal and so forth. I mean, it's of course beyond farcical. You know, just as a sidebar, but I think it's related in a way. What's interesting also is Trump's doing all these things.

They're being done by nominal acting appointees. There's always an acting secretary in every department. There's always a chain of command. But there are people who are not even close to the top level, they've been put in temporarily. And of course, most of, almost all the nominees haven't been confirmed. I mean, in a normal world, you would at least let the pretend to have,

we're gonna ask the cabinet secretary to review the performance of these IGs, let the Pan-Bondes and the, whoever in all these different departments, Doug Burgum and all these guys, quote review Find that they'll of course end up firing them at a quarter the White House's wishes, but at least there's a certain patina of Respectability orderliness, you know

Here it so they had their list they were gonna go after all but they didn't have a list in this case They just basically went it literally went after all of them and if people should understand I'm not was in a department and dealt with the inspector General quite a lot when I was Chief of Staff at the Education Department. I mean, not too much. I think obviously we didn't do many things wrong, but they had issues and would come up and we'd talk about, you know, we'd try to resolve them in an appropriate way. They are the watchdogs. Some are more effective than others, I'm sure. They can't watchdog everything, but they are a check.

They are a check, as Susan Collins said, on fraud and abuse. And again, there wasn't even a pretense that, well, this guy here in the Interior Department, I think it's time for a change there. Doug Bergam recommended that to me that we're going to do that. Not even a pretense. It's just they're all gone. You have two thoughts on this, one on the Susan Collins point just briefly. The idea that it is a priority for President Trump to root out fraud is just, you call it beyond farcical. It flies in the face of everything that we know about Donald Trump. Donald Trump's whole career has been premised on leveraging fraud successfully. He lied about how much money he was worth

in businesses. The apprentice is a farce. All of the Trump water, Trump Air, Trump's whole life has been a fraud. Trump loves fraud. What are you talking about? That's a priority for Donald Trump to root out fraud. That is like, that shows you know nothing about Donald Trump. It's like you were a baby who was just born yesterday and played, played straight into the United States Senate. I, the whole thing is just ridiculous. Next thing you're going to tell me that Trump's university, those degrees

weren't important and weren't worth the thousands of dollars Trump milked out of people for the tens of thousands of dollars for those. The guy ran a fake university. You think it's a priority for him to root out fraud? What are you talking about, Susan Collins? Anyway, but as far as the inspector general, there's a longer line of perniciousness here for me also, but that, you know, I guess everybody's decided not to care about because we're just going to not think about any long-term damage that

Donald Trump could potentially do if you're a Trump enabler. But like, what exactly is the rationale, if a Democrat ever gets back into the White House, what exactly is the rationale for them to bring back Inspector General? Right? I mean, like no president wants an Inspector General. To your point, like was the Secretary of Education ever excited to have a meeting with their Inspector General? Nobody, like the Inspector General are there to represent the people and the interests

of the people to make sure that our money is not being wasted or that there's not other illegality happening, that any other cover-ups that help the administration not be accountable for actions that are harmful to the citizenry. That is the whole point of the Inspector General. If they just blanket fire everybody, to me it's like, well, okay, are Inspectors general over now forever? Because who is going to be the president? That's like, you know what? I really want to bring these guys back. I mean, is Trump going to even put in nominal inspectors general?

I, I don't know. I mean, general, from that was taken, the intelligence community was the person to whom people went in the summer of 2019 to report on the Ukraine and what Trump was trying to do and withholding funds for Ukraine and sort of Pressuring them to to do a fake report on Biden, right? So they were actually and it worked I mean and it's an elderly inspector generals inspectors general have relationship with Congress So if you know if they don't get satisfaction within the executive branch This is the kind of threat that they'll go to the congressional oversight committee

So this is also Congress's we'll see if Congress responds at all, but Congress is, I'm not holding my breath for the Republican senators. So there they are running the Congress, they have Inspectors General in these ranches to help them as Susan Collins might know to root out fraud and abuse. And are they going to do anything serious about what Trump has done? I do find that hard to imagine. But if they were, you pointed this out, I do find that hard to imagine. But if they were, you pointed this out, they have opportunities to do things here. You wrote on social media over the weekend, Grassley also claims to be upset about this, Collins, the most straightforward pushback to these firings would be the Senate reasserting their power. And McConnell, Grassley, Ernst, Collins and Murkowski saying they won't vote to confirm nominees until they're satisfied.

There'll be oversight in the agencies. They could do that. They could, but are you holding your breath? I'm not. On the gullible Republicans list. So we have Tom Tillis, Susan Collins. I also need to shout out Congresswoman Maria Salazar down in Miami. She put out a very stern statement this morning.

I'd like to read to you. She is urging Homeland Security to protect all caps, Cubans awaiting legal status adjustment through the Cuban Adjustment Act, and we must also protect the Venezuelans and Nicaraguans without a criminal record going through the asylum process, don't penalize them for Biden screw ups. Do I've got some bad news for you, Maria Salazar. These people don't, it wasn't even that they weren't taking Trump literally or seriously, they weren't listening to Donald Trump at all, apparently.

Like the idea that Stephen Miller is planning an immigration regime that has very lenient asylum processes for nonviolent Venezuelans or Nicaraguans is ridiculous. They've completely shut down the CBP one app. They're trying to get asylum down to zero. That is what they're trying to do. There was a whole kerfuffle during the campaign. Maria might not have heard about the Haitians and those that were here on temporary protected status. This administration doesn't plan on taking care of those people.

So I just don't know what they thought that they were getting. I mean, how gullible are they? How much are they pretending to be gullible because the alternative is more dishonorable that they knew it was all a lie and they just went along because they were scared to take on Trump? I don't know. I don't think that they're pretending. I don't know.

I think that this is cope and how you survive in a rising authoritarian world because there was an off the record briefing. I discussed this with Sam on the pod last week that he attended with a Republican senator, I believe, with the terms of that conversation. And the person seemed to not think Trump was going to do any of the bad things. You know, you keep adding, it's like, anytime it's like, well, wait, well, what about the mass deportations? What about the violent pardons? What about this?

It's like, well, no, all of that stuff, no. You know, we're just going to get the tax cuts and doge and, you know, no wars. I do think that they have convinced themselves, but we'll continue to monitor global Republican hour. I'm reading some other news this morning. I want to talk about there's an executive order Trump signed banning trans service members. I do think that there is something particularly gross about a draft Dodger banning people who had volunteered for service.

The executive order, I don't know if it's the same one or a separate one, also reinstates service members that were kicked out for not taking vaccines that were required by the military. So we're just doing straight political effort to kick people out of the military if they're trans, bring people back who, you know, whatever, disobeyed orders. I'm open to that being something that is smart. I never served in the military. I kind of will defer to Hartling and others on whether that is smart. I never served in the military. I kind of will

defer to Hurtling and others on whether it is smart to reinstate those folks. It's possible, but it is pretty galling to do so at the same time that you're kicking people out who haven't done anything wrong and that you're doing so to appease like racist Twitter users and Reddit posters. Like we're going to take keyboard warriors and appease them and we're gonna kick out people that volunteered to serve in the country because they're transgender. That's pretty gross. Yeah, terrible.

And it's not even an issue of, I don't know, should the government pay for certain treatments and procedures people want going forward? I mean, maybe you can, I think it's kind of hard to distinguish, but maybe people could make some kind of color, well, plausible argument on that. These are just people. I mean, they're just that. These are just people.

I mean, they're just people who we don't know. Some of them have transitioned 10 years ago, some two years ago, some are in the midst of it conceivably. But anyway, you're just kicking out people for who they are, right? You're not denying. It's a little more plausibly legitimate, though not really, to deny a service, as it were, a special service to right, to someone. I mean, this is just discrimination flat out, you know?

Flat out discrimination. Well, I don't know. What about the Defense Department? Are they going to go out to the civilians there too? If any of them are transgender people, I don't know. Yeah, a lot of this stuff is pretty hackneyed, so I think it remains to be seen. But it's pretty depressing, I will say. Have you ever wanted to learn more about wine but can't figure out where to start?

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you know, we're here we are in week two and the tangible actions that they have really been focused on are all of the culture war actions, right? Like within, for the first two weeks, they have betrayed the notion of the Wall Street Journal types, you know, who are like, well, you know, we're really, we're really going to focus on economic issues and economic growth. Maybe all that stuff's coming. I guess they did do the announcement about the investment in AI, which then Elon Musk shadow president said was fake immediately afterwards.

But they're really dialing in on this. I think the contract is particularly sharp this morning because, as we're taping this, it looks like stocks are down significantly. We had this Chinese AI application DeepSeq that launched and it appears to be a strong competitor, if not superior to chat GPT and the American AI apps. You can't trust anything that the Chinese government says, but, you know, apparently it was created in about a year more cheaply than the amount of money that we're investing in these apps. So it has had a negative impact across kind of all the big tech stocks that have been

pumping up the market. We're about to enter into some very serious times. And I think that the trans service member bans morning, just in addition to being straight bigotry, just like the lack of focus on the serious matters before us is in pretty stark relief this morning. Well, on the economic, the one thing he does seem to want to do is put tariffs on everyone. That one which the Wall Street Journal was desperately hoping wasn't serious, he'd be talked out of that by his serious advisors. So there's a dispute with Colombia about whether they'll take people being repatriated if they're treated in some ways or flown on a military plane. That's just Trump showing off when the military is involved. Biden, I believe every two or three days in the Biden administration, a plane full of people being repatriated went to Colombia. The Biden administration deported a lot of people who were there who were criminals and who had been apprehended. And there was no issue with Columbia. I think it was the

same president then. Now this guy, the president, maybe caused more of a ruckus than he should have because Trump chose to use military planes, doesn't really matter. I don't know, maybe she just take them in and I guess they now worked out something. But Trump's first response was tariffs. I mean, it's the one thing he believes in economics, actually. And I do think there's an article, I think, yesterday, that February 1st, people are now increasingly thinking he is going to slap just across the board 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, kind of incentive to get them out of the water actually. But, you know, is Canada being very mean to us?

I don't know, you know. Yeah. The Columbia trade war thing is also telling just kind of about, you know, how they plan to do propaganda in the second Trump term. You know, and like what happens, this all happens in 24 hours, you know, Pedro sends back the deportation flight because it was a military plane with people in shackles. He had accepted deportation flights under Biden. Trump then threatens the tariffs, Pedro threatens them back. His statement, people should go read. It is so bizarre and it's so interesting, so un-American. And just like the tone of it, he like name checks Walt Whitman and Paul Simon. It's a journey, the reciprocal tariffs statement. I'll put it in the show notes for people.

But then behind the scenes, there's essentially an agreement. You know, she said, like, we're back to the status quo. Like they'll accept the deportation flights, just not, you know, in the way that the Trump regime had wanted to do it. And Trump like declares victory, right? Like, oh, look, the tariff threat really worked. And every, all the mega media accounts are pushing that those, this was a victory. Like that is the thing that's going to be kind of hard to combat, right? and all the mega media accounts are pushing that this was a victory. That is a thing that's going to be kind of hard to combat.

He is going to be very good at creating for his people the sense that these victories have been achieved when nothing actually happened. He really just put us at risk, honestly, and he's created additional risk and additional tension with an ally and got nothing out of it, but they're going to spin these things as propaganda victories. Yes, but some of these things won't work out quite as nicely as bullying Colombia a little bit with their president. May have worked out, we don't know yet, obviously quite. So, you know, I think he could get us into trade wars and genuine price hikes because of tariffs. The propaganda side of it is underrated.

I myself, I feel like I've underrated that. You don't want to believe that it works and so you sort of discount it, but you think Dr. Phil has been embedded with ICE or the Border Patrol or in Chicago for these raids. It's so ludicrous and jaw-dropping and inappropriate. These are very serious things, Tim. We have undocumented immigrants who are criminals. It's very sensitive. We need, we are having precise rates to go snatch them. And it's the professionalism of ICE and the border patrol and how dare these cities try not to cooperate and stand in the way. And it's

certainly, we have Dr. Phil in there, you know, as part of the show. I mean, how can you take seriously? Biden did deport plenty of people. There are people who should be deported. How do you take it seriously though? And the propaganda swamps everything else. You wrote about the Columbia thing that there's a pretty clear pattern that Trump's picking fights with allies and signaling weakness to dictatorial adversaries right out of the box. And I guess that we did see this in the first term, you know, with him picking fights with Merkel and all that. in the first term, you know, with him picking fights with Merkel and all that. The difference to me seems like I think they're ready to commit like capricious attacks, you know, economically or otherwise on our allies and almost have like an itchy trigger finger

to do so this time, which is a little different than the mean tweets. No, I think that's an interesting point. I mean, I myself couldn't take the Greenland thing seriously and it came up in the first term, but the degree to which he's been prosecuting it, so to speak, this first 10 days of his week of his administration, as opposed to 2019, where it kind of came up and then it disappeared,

you know, it was people like Pompeo and others just put it on a back burner. I mean, that's where you have, Pete Hexhast is gonna, I mean, he's thrilled, right? He's, I mean, it's where you have, Pete Hicks, I mean, he's thrilled, right? He's, I mean, since his idea of being sec def is, you know, writing something and DOD does not equal DEI, and that's his first act, really. He becomes Secretary of Defense

of the United States of America, in charge of a million and a half people in the military, a lot of civilians at DOD, huge responsibilities around the world. And his act is this performative childishness, and that's how he thinks of his job I mean the propaganda stuff's infuriating or annoying but this is serious. This is bad This is really bad and I also think just like think about from an incentive structure standpoint

I was reading the Petra statement and to me it's just about going forward Trump is not popular anywhere except for here and You know a handful of other countries mostly with autocratic leaders right he's not popular in the countries with our democratic allies either to the south of us or in Europe and so if you're one of these leaders I know that there'll be one side of the coin that says well Trump can bully them because they need America and they need American products and it helps their economy and and that's all true. But if you just have a couple of these leaders that are themselves just looking at the pure

political side of it, the optics, it helps them. Unless there's actual pain, up until the point that there's actual economic pain in the country, it helps them politically to be seen as a person standing up to Trump, right? It butches them up a little bit. Domestically, he's not popular, makes you seem strong. And so, like, Petra's statement was pretty strident, and it's shinebounce has been in Mexico as well. It's a bit of a powder keg.

Like, I think that this idea that all these guys are going to just bend over like the Republican senators have, I think is incorrect and it kind of misunderstands the incentive structure of some of these leaders. And it also misunderstands that China and others can step in and I guess China already has said that about Colombia, that we're much closer and China can't quite do what we might do in terms of trade with Colombia, but they can do some things to help out if we're, you know, raising tariffs and stuff and stuff. And so again, if you care about fighting China, the balance of power with China, other adversaries, this is crazy, right? I mean, there are times when you have to get a tough situation, be a

little rude to allies, perhaps if they're not being, you know, this happened to the Cold War a lot, and we've paid some price domestically in some of these other countries. This is totally and utterly gratuitous. This is entirely for Trump's vanity. I mean, really, and as you say, propaganda, especially if you beat up a country like Columbia, which has, you know, a fair number of undocumented people here, and it's a country that's had troubles in the past, or

seems to have done pretty well last 1520 years with our help, incidentally, bipartisan basis Bush and it's a country that's had troubles in the past, though it seems to have done pretty well the last 15, 20 years with our help, incidentally, a bipartisan basis Bush and Obama signed a free trade agreement with Colombia, which has helped the economy there a lot. Nonetheless, if you know, for Trump's base, it's good to be fighting with those people down there in Central Latin America, right? You know, Frum made this point about Colombia, I think it's worth sharing because there's always so much negativity about, oh, things are so terrible. This is why we tend to, the American people had to turn to Trump because of all of the crises in this country over the past two decades.

But as Frum points out, rescuing Colombia from civil war, redirecting its economy from drugs to lawful commerce was a supreme achievement of the Bush and Obama administrations. The US-Colombia free trade agreement was negotiated by Bush, signed by Obama, and has served both countries well. Now what? That's not right. We're blowing this up for what? Over nothing?

Because Donald Trump wants to play tough guy in some reality TV show? It's preposterous. But it does feel like there's also a lack of, particularly this time around, Trump 2.0, a lack of desire for people to say things, like Fromm is saying this blatantly, like, no, actually, we have done some good things, right? Like everybody has to just accept as basis that, well, you know, our institutions are so broken and that's why we turned to Trump. You know what I mean?

It does feel like there is a dearth of people making the case for the rules-based order that got us here. Yeah, and I totally know. I've tried to make this point a couple of times, J.V.L., but at this point too, that, I mean, especially on the international side, I mean, can we just, you know, can people take a minute and think about the first half of the 20th century and then the 75 years, three quarters of a century since the first half of the 20th century? I mean, there's a pretty simple test case. It's not too complicated. It divides up kind of neatly.

And I think the, the arguments are pretty strongly. I made this point about Germany. I mean, you know, the principle of the AFD in Germany is that Germany is a nightmare and it's been a disaster to have gone basically to have come to grips with their past and then by coming to grips with it, move beyond it and to have come to grips with their past and then by coming to grips with it, move beyond it and to be proud to be a liberal democratic state, proud to be part of the EU and of human rights treaties and so forth. That's the AFD's claim, its agenda.

And we have Elon Musk, very close confidant to the friends of the United States, just endorsing it. I want to finish with the latest from Ukraine and Russia. We don't have t-shirts on the website, Bill, that say Bill and Tim are always right, because I have humility and we've had some misses. Some of our colleagues do have those t-shirts if people want to invest in that. But one thing that you were early on, we've been talking about almost every week, is that there was almost a unified feeling, I think, on the right and the left that if Trump won, that there was some backroom deal happening with Putin and that there would

be a cessation of violence, and that they'd cut some sort of deal and there'd be a friendly to Putin deal and they'd be a friendly to Putin deal. And then, you know, who knows, some things might change in a couple of years, but like that would come to pass. And you were skeptical of that. A couple of other people I've had on the pod, Michael Weiss was skeptical of that. And we had the head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy for Russia, Sergey Karaganov over the weekend, a prominent advisor to Lavrov and Putin, a serious advisor to them, saying this, Russia must escalate in 2025 to force our American enemy to crawl

away so Russia can finish off the Europeans. That's A, pretty alarming and B, kind of in line with what we have been expecting, right? I mean, the Trump people seem to believe they can get at least a face-saving deal for them so that there's not an immediate disaster. Putin, I'm not sure that Putin wants to give him a face-saving deal. Putin might benefit more around the world

by just humiliating the US, and Trump is the president of the US, so he's happy enough to humiliate Trump. For all of Trump's affinity for Putin, Putin is never quite reciprocated, right? Wouldn't you say he treats Trump with a certain amount of contempt, you know? Like at Helsinki in 2018 and stuff. Kind of subtle Russian mockery at times that maybe goes over Trump's head.

Yeah, that could be. You know, instead of the brat-borish mockery that Trump likes to give. Yeah. And then some of my friends who are adjacent to Trump, we all think, well, Trump, if he sees that this really has to do with politics, he doesn't care about anyone dying or hundreds of thousands of people, millions of refugees, or a nation being crushed. But if he sees it could be a political problem for him, maybe he'll do something. So they're busy writing articles, which I don't criticize them for because it's the

right thing to do, I think, in this case, to try to appeal to them somehow. It'd be politically bad for you if Ukraine is crushed and is it just nightmarish situation and, you know, millions of refugees and deaths, et cetera. I don't know. I mean, maybe that could make Trump get a little tougher. There's just no evidence though. I mean, that's what's it, maybe he will. I hope he will for the sake of the Ukraine and for the, of the world.

But is there any area where the range of possibilities was Trump will do the extreme things he said he's going to do or he's going to be more cautious and moderate, really? I'd say the bulk of areas he's going in, that's only a week, in the extreme and radical direction, wouldn't you say? I mean... Yeah, and I think that there's some TBDs. Right. I don't think that there are any cases where he has clearly gone

the moderating direction, right? We haven't seen it yet on tariffs. We haven't really seen it yet on immigration. We're a little bit in the fog of war side on that right now. So I think that is to be determined. A lot of this damaging stuff, I don't have longer conversations this week about like what's happening with NIH

and funding of kind of health studies, all that stuff's temporary. So, it's kind of like, well, let's see what happens in April. So there are opportunities, I guess, for him to moderate in various ways still, but we haven't seen it. And in the case of the immigration executive orders and the NIH funding stops, I mean, there was a way to do it that would have been tough and we wouldn't have liked it, I don't

think, where he would have said, okay, you have 90 days to justify every single one of these study groups and NIH and review processes. Obviously, they're going to go on for now because people are in the middle literally of doing these studies and reviewing proposals. But the Secretary of HHS in 90 days is going to tell me which ones we should cancel, how we should change the thing. That would be pretty tough, actually,

but that would be a sort of more reasonable way to do it. The willingness to just cut the stuff off, to take a little bit of a PR hit, presumably, when the implications of stopping everything at NIH hit through. When you see the executive orders and immigration, I would say, very much in this direction, that they're on the radical side of what he could have done that still would have been very tough and still pretty negative.

Now the hope is, well, the executive orders and the rhetoric and the pauses and those are on the radical side, but maybe 60 or 90 days from now, he walks back from that a little. And I hope he does for the sake of the country in some ways, and maybe he will in some of these cases if there's enough political pressure, but it's not heartening. Yeah. One last thing on just what you said on the Ukraine side to close the loop on that. I agree with you, sure. If there are Republican security types

who are in Trump's orbit, who want to make, try to appeal to him and make the argument that it'd be politically beneficial for him to be supportive of Ukraine, I'll take it. Whatever. That's fine. I do think it is also just wrong. It's gullible and incorrect. If you're doing it knowing this, knowing this and hoping that you can get a good result, that that's a noble effort, you should do that. They should continue to do that. But just objectively, spending time with, you know, going at that TP USA event at America Fest, like watching and consuming, you know, that kind of MAGA media, like they're not supporting Ukraine is just like the ante among that base right now.

Like among things that they care about, like that is about at the top of the list and it gets tied into everything, right? Like in the fires, it's like, oh, we're only spending X on the fires, but we're giving Y to Ukraine. I mean, like they are just trashing the support from Ukraine just across the board on any mega platform, even like one inch to the mega side of Fox. I mean, I think that he is going to feel very handcuffed by that and obligated to follow through on his plans to further abandon the Ukrainians.

Maybe the Senate can do things, maybe there are other ways to kind of delay all that, but I just think that's the state of affairs. Sadly, I mean, I think, so I've been told you for this, that the two questions that are asked are almost of all the political appointees, whatever, certainly in the foreign policy, national security areas, but maybe beyond, they have to be okay on January 6th, they have to be okay on Ukraine,

which means willing to sell out, eager sometimes to sell Ukraine. So it's not as if he's going to be getting that much pushback from the second and third ranks of his own administration, at least from the political appointees, and they're weakening the career civil service. So in the first term, there was a lot of pushback. We know that from the 2019 impeachment. There was Fiona Hill, there was Alexander Bindman, there were people in there who were saying, ooh, and so that didn't have an effect, ultimately, stop some of the worst things from happening. There's not going to be that. So as you say, MAGA on the outside is fervently for the betrayal of Ukraine. As they were for the pardon of all the rioters, I come back to the pardon where we began, I think I fear that that was indicative, right? That was a place where he

had a clear choice. And you could argue that even if he thought of it in his own self-interest, the better choice was the J.D. Vance way, you know, much easier to defend. And instead he went all the way, so to speak, went all in. And you'd have to explain why he's not gonna do that in some of these other areas, I'm afraid. I agree.

Well, pretty disheartening day across the board there, maybe by, I don't know, who knows, one of these Mondays? Are you cheered up at least by the football results? I'm not cheered up by the football at all. It's horrible. It's like, you know, I mean, it's like Trump versus DeSantis in the Super Bowl down here. Why are people so excited to see me? I haven't followed it that closely, but why are people anti-Kansas City? He's a great coach. He's a great coach and Mahomes is a great quarterback.

So what's not to like? I hated Kansas City growing up. They were division rivals of the Broncos. Oh, okay. Well, you have it legit. But why are people so anti-Kansas City, honestly? I just think they're sick of it. People are sick of it.

And also just all the... Taylor and Travis getting thrown into people's faces. I was watching some sports podcast and it was a non-political sports podcast and the guy's like, I don't want to hear about Elon Musk or Travis Kelsey or Taylor Swift again. They're the only three people anybody talks about. And so I think that there's a little bit of that. And well, for anybody who's worried about all of these topics we went over and all the negative affairs that are plaguing our nation, the minority leader, the democratic leader in the house, had these words of solace. Presidents come and presidents go, through it all, God is still on the throne. So there's that. Maybe that'll make some folks feel better.

I've got this, I do have one other thing, Bill. I do have one good thing that I can leave people with. Timmy Chalamet's Bob Dylan covers on Saturday Night Live. He does three deep cuts. That was amazing. That is what brings me solace. I'll take people out with one of Timmy's favorite Bob Dylan tracks. Hope you all enjoy that.

Bill's gone next Monday on a little holiday. We'll see him in two weeks. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow. We'll see you all then. Peace. Three angels up above the street, each one playing a horn, dressed in green robes with They've been there since Christmas morn. The wildest cat from Montana passes by in a flash. Then a lady in a bright orange dress. One U-Haul trailer, a truck with no wheels

The 10th Avenue bus going west The dogs and pigeons fly up and they flutter around A man with a badge skips by Three fellas crawling on their way back to work Nobody stops to ask why The bakery truck stops outside of that fence Where the angels stand high on the poles The driver peeks out trying to find one face

In this concrete world full of souls The angels play on their horns all day The whole earth and progression seems to pass by But does anyone hear the music they play? Does anyone even try? The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.