The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump Wants All-out Kleptocracy

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

POTUS went on a stock buying spree the day before he paused some of his tariffs last year. The markets rebounded on his tariffs' reversal. On Monday, Trump from the Oval Office encouraged Americans to buy stock in Dell, a company he's heavily invested in. And he defended his children having access to insider information because of his presidency. This is Putin-grade corruption. Meanwhile, McMorrow's withdrawal from the Michigan Senate race shows Tim was right about the risks of encouraging factional fighting among Dems. Plus: Michael Cohen has always worn a "for sale" sign, and is there any experience in America that Trump hasn't tried to ruin? Go Team USA. Show notes: Monday's "Morning Shots" Sam and Bill on Trump's July 4 speech For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to:   https://www.3dayblinds.com/THEBULWARK

Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. He is back. Editor at large of the Bullwork, 4th of July content creator extraordinaire, Bill Crystal. You were working this weekend. A little bit in between World Cup games, obviously. It was too hot to go outside.

And I was kind of avoiding watching Trump and his attempt to hijack the 250th. So it was World Cup and a little bit of work. Yeah, we'll get to the World Cup at the end. I also miss Trump. You said you were trying to watch Trump or trying to avoid. avoid Trump? Yes, trying and succeeding in avoiding Trump. Then I had to discuss it a bit with Sam Stein on Sunday, but, you know, luckily Sam had watched it, so I was able to just play off him, you know? Okay, well, you're ahead of me because I just decided I'm going dark. I know this is

my job, and I'm paid by you people and entrusted by you people to watch this sort of sting. But it's midnight, so whatever, 11 o'clock on the 4th of July. I took my daughter and a neighbor kid. We went up to the roof of a hospital parking garage, maybe against the rules, to watch all the fireworks around town. I came home. I was like, I'm not going to turn this on. Why would I do this to myself? And the next morning, I woke up and I was like, I'm not going to rewatch it. Why would I do that to myself? So I don't know how it was. And, you know, there was much to have been said about it in the lead up. And we did. It is sad and unfortunate that our 250th anniversary could not have been more of a unifying celebration.

To your point about the World Cup, I do think that it's been kind of just replaced by, you know, there was a vacuum and it was filled mostly. We'll get to that at the end, mostly by the World Cup team. So that's all. Do you have any other deep thoughts for people who are desperate for observations about his speech?

Just that I think Trump's attempt to hijack it basically failed. I think, you know, 98% of Americans were ignoring what was happening in Washington or, you know, enjoying July 4th in a pretty traditional way in their neighborhoods and their backyards and their local high schools, you know, watching fireworks or like you, somebody legally on the roofs of garages watching fireworks. Now, seriously, that's what people do on July 4th and go to swimming pools and it's hot here. We went to our little neighborhood get together on July 4th.

It's usually a little parade, little kids in their tricycles kind of thing. It was too hot. Actually, so they just assembled in one area where there was some shade and mixed and mingled and provided red, white, and blue pops. But it was charming and it was nice, and I was there about 45 minutes, several bulwark readers and viewers. I'm happy to say, no talk of Trump, actually, except for the implicitly, I'd say, and the praise for the bulwark. But, you know, just chatting about what was people's lives and what was going on and how their

kids were and so forth. So that reassured me that the huge bulk of America was able to tune out Trump, I think. A federalist, a small D, Democratic, 4th of July, us in our communities. That feels right. Well, the president is back this morning, up early, ringing the bell in the Oval Office. This all just all feels so gauche and inappropriate. And it was the first joint opening of the NASDAQ and the Dow to announce the Trump accounts. He just put his name on them.

In his remarks, he mentions Michael Dell, who contributed to those accounts. and he urged people to buy the Dell stock and said that Dell was going to be repaid for his donation. The Dell stock surged this morning after he said that. The last week we heard right before the weekend that some investment accounts owned by Trump engaged in 300 previously undisclosed stock purchases. One day ahead of his surprise announcement that he had paused his Liberation Day tariffs, there'd been a 45-day deadline to report those transactions. He doesn't abide by deadlines.

You replied to that story with just a brief tweet that said impeach and convict that stirred me. I want to talk about the merits of impeachment. But first, the degree of grotesquery around this is hard to even kind of wrap your arms around. It really is. I remember a year and a half ago it was like the Trumpist admired Orban, but we can't, it's America. We're not going to go that far down that path. And people met partly the authoritarian. path, but partly the kleptocracy path, the corruption path.

I don't know, Orban's regime in detail, but I feel like we've probably gone further than Orban, or at least equivalently far. We're kind of in Putin territory almost with this level of corruption, aren't we? And it's really, it's appalling. And the reason I just couldn't resist, I just tweeted impeach and convict because, and I'm curious on your thoughts on this, though, but is that, you know, some of the other stuff is a little more complicated. I'm proving that Trump is being lawless or misusing the Justice Department or shouldn't go

a war without authorization. I mean, these are all pretty obvious bad things that Trump has done, in my opinion, but there are people around who will say, oh, no, it's more complicated. The stealing is just, I mean, no one's ever doubted that you can be impeached for that, right? I mean, it's in a way the most straightforward. It's the least grave of his offenses, you might say, in terms of the future of America as a liberal democracy and a constitutional republic, but it's also the most glaring and obvious, I guess I think. I guess I even quibble with Lee's Grave just because, you know, it is the path towards just being just total banana republic territory. No, true.

This is just how things work from Putin in, you know, great powers or once great powers, former great powers, that behave like this, that decline to just like kind of random, you know, tin pot third world countries. Like this is what happens, you know? Like the president gets paid off by the corporation that runs, you know, whatever. agricultural product they have or you know they pay off the TV station owner like all like this is just how things work in countries where there is no rule of law and and we have kind of declined fully into that level of I don't even mean this like as a majority of those countries but like third world is them in that way a lot of times that this is what you need to get kind of third world economies up and going and the successful ones are you know they institute rule of law the leader of the

country no longer can be paid off and cannot like pay off his children and doesn't have his son-in-law running things. Like that's how you build trust in the system and then that's how you get business and money into the system. Like this is just kind of basic stuff and like we're going the other way. He said about his kids almost anything they do, they have inside information. And he kind of starts rambling and he's like if they buy a cupcake company, then the cupcake company, you know, has a contract with somebody. And he's just like, so I don't, we don't have to care about it. We don't care about it. That was like the upshot of this.

Like, they're going to have inside information about everything. And who knows exactly what's happening? This is why you have to have an investigation. Like, who is doing these investments? Did they have inside information? It sure seems like it. I don't know. I didn't buy a bunch of stocks the day before.

He did the pause on the tariffs. So maybe it's luck. And I do think that like just going in on the pure, like, financial corruption is to your point, I think both easy to explain. to people as a political matter, that I also think it's just important in like safeguarding the future of the Republic, just to be like, hey, we can't do this anymore. Like, this isn't going to be allowed next time. They're going to be held to account for this. Just on that level, I think that obviously investigating it is important and holding them accountable based on what is found. But that's,

I think, a pretty compelling impeachment case for me. You know, I think about it, when the founders use the word corruption, which they use about the Republic in general, they also mean just corruption and they understood right from the beginning. This is, as you say, how corrupt monarchies and other kinds of despotism work. It's an aspect to the broader corruption, but maybe I was understanding it a little. It's a kind of important aspect, right? The financial corruption is an important part of the broader political and social corruption, really. I think you've been more pro-impeachment than me from the start. I don't know if this was about being beaten down by the last time or there's like one part of being that's just a little bit like what's the point there's

a little bit of that element to it like is like what is impeachment anymore like he got elected back again like how is it different than a sternly worded letter like at some level like there's that argument that kind of bounces around my head and then there's like the strategic argument which I think is not nothing right which is you don't want to signal to people if the democrats get back in power that their only priority is re-retribution against Trump like you do it. want to signal to people that, you know, the thing that they care the most about they want to spend time on is ensuring that, you know, that their lives are made better. And maybe there's a way to tie the corruption to that, which is, you know, hold Trump accountable so that you can, you know,

focus those resources on, on actually helping the forgotten man or the working man and woman in America. Both of those points, I think, are not totally invalid. I think that that's a worthwhile thing to think about and to discuss if you're Hecking Jeffries and his crew or, you know, whoever is, making those calls next year, presuming the Democrats get back in power. And I think the point that I was making earlier, just that for there to be any hope for repair, you kind of have to say, no, like, there is a line. And it's been well past crossed. And this is how the system works.

And just because we know that there aren't going to be any honorable Republicans, you know, who go along with this does not mean that we are not going to do our obligation to the law to the Constitution by going through impeachment. That's kind of where I've landed. I don't know where you're at. In the 20 seconds I thought before tweeting about impeach and convict, I thought it's kind of a division of labor thing. I do think people like us, if Hakeem Jeffries calls me

after he watches this podcast later today and says, well, should I be talking and encouraging my members be talking more about impeachment? I'm not sure, for the reason you said, I'm not sure I would say yes. And even if he calls me on January 5th or whatever of 2027, and a speaker and says, should we move ahead on it? I don't expect him to, but,

if he were to. I'm not sure what I would say because that's a different role. I do think our role is to sort of tell the truth, obviously, and to be a little provocative. But this is being provocative and telling the truth. So I'm happy to at least get the idea out there. It's important that people understand, I think, that he deserves to be impeached as a practical matter. People deserve all kinds of things and deserve various punishments. And people decide not to impose them for for prudential reasons, but it's important to bring home how, yeah, just how terrible what's happening is. I guess we don't know how many Democratic senators there are, but they'll end up being, but there's no doubt that there would be 20 Republican senators who would gladly go along

with an impeachment process of a Democratic politician if their sons were invested in, you know, 14 different rare earth mineral companies around the world. And, you know, we're doing illegal stock trades with what seems to be insider information and, you know, go on and on. Like, there's just no doubt that these Republicans would go along with it if it wasn't for Trump. Part of it then for me also is when you go back to that strategic question, I think that there's a risk. I think that if Democrats alongside of this strategically need to also demonstrate to Americans that they care about their concerns and not just going after Trump, but I think also there's a strategic benefit of making the Republicans defend this nonsense. Like, really? Like,

You think this is okay for the president and his family to enrich himself at levels like totally unimaginable in past White House's totally beyond anything that you criticized about Hunter Biden or anybody else? I think that's a worthwhile pressure campaign to put on them. And also the emoluments and gifts and bribes, if we can call it that, for foreign governments and I guess foreign companies too, that's kind of worth bringing home, right? I was thinking, I think, I don't know if you mentioned Banana Republic earlier, or if it came to my mind as you were talking about third world countries.

I don't know what the origin of that phrase is. People can look it off. Obviously, these places in Central America and Latin America, I guess, grew bananas, grow bananas. But also, I think part of the phrase comes from the fact that we, the United Fruit Company or whatever, participated in the corruption of their willing corruption, I guess I would say, of their governments, of their dictators by, in effect, you know, cutting deals with them to get good commercial deals. So we used to be on the side of something we didn't work proud of, but we did it for whatever. We let our companies do it.

At some point, we passed laws, I think, in the 70s to stop American companies from this kind of behavior. But it did happen for quite a while. Sure. But it's bad enough to do it, and we stopped it doing it. It's worse to be on the other end. It's pathetic. I mean, we're like Qatar is like the old U.S., and we're like the old, I don't even know what country you in South Guatemala or someone who, United Fruit Hunt, yeah, bribed. Right.

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We get hand-me-downs from Qatar now. That's the state of our decrepit country. And he's flying that plane today to NATO summit in Ankara this evening. I don't know. I mean, I want to get into the NATO of it. But it is truly remarkable. Like, this is where we're at. Like, like, the Trump is in business with the UAE on his crypto business.

And the cutter has now given us our Air Force One as a gift, which we've accepted this broad. simultaneously to this point where we're still embroiled in a conflict that involves Qatar that involves their region where they have interests, were allegedly still working on a final deal to resolve the stupid Iran war that we started that Qatar has a point of view on. And if Trump was ever, I'm skeptical that will ever happen, what was ever to fly to a summit where he sits across the new gay Ayatollah and signs a peace deal,

he'll be flying on the cutter plane. Yeah. I don't have a question. What about that Iran war? That doesn't seem to come up a whole lot there over the last several days. This thing that Trump and Hegg said, they were so proud of. This was America. We were pulverizing and obliterating everyone.

We were back. No other president has ever done this. The American military has ever done anything like this for 200 years. Suddenly we're having this giant celebration of July 4th to Trump. I didn't watch his speeches we were saying earlier. So I don't know if he mentioned it even. I don't hear a lot of talk about it, though, just as well, since it was a humiliating defeat, actually. But, yeah.

We'll see how much talk about it there is at the NATO summit. I guess it's good that Trump's going. Maybe not, though. I don't know. That's the low bar. And he could have just totally given up on NATO by now. I was pretty struck. The Europeans have been pretty good.

And we've had a lot of compliments of the Europeans on Bill and Tim Monday. They've been surprisingly strong-willed, I think, in the Trump's. second term and they've been stalwart in support of Ukraine and standing up Trump on Iran, I think was pretty noteworthy. Even still, you get the kind of little weak-need European nature comes up from time to time. This is a playbook this morning. I was just reading it. These are a couple of various quotes and sentences about the lead-up to the meeting tonight.

European NATO allies are pulling out all the stops to prevent a Trump blow up. The mood in the run-up to the summit is poised, but with a sense of foreboding. While European governments have on paper done everything they can to keep Trump happy, a last-minute surprise can't be rolled out. European allies will be holding their breath as Trump heads to Ankara. Like, do they have to be, do all this?

Maybe Trump should be holding his breath. Why are they letting him be the protection? antagonist of the story. He's the outsider. Anyway, that was a little bit annoying. We'll see exactly what they're going to focus on. I'm sure Trump will bluster on spending money and complain about the lack of support in Iran, but unclear what like tangible might come of it. Maybe these European ambassadors are just saying things to an American media outlet that they know Trump will read or read about and sort of want to make Trump feel important and that they really want him to be behave.

I guess they do want him to behave. They're still in the game, which I don't blame them for, keeping line forward as long as possible. And I do think on Ukraine, it's a practical concern that they just, he seems to be annoyed at Putin. He seems to be less intent on damaging Zelensky in Ukraine. That's the one thing the Europeans have stepped up the most on, and it's the most important thing.

So I give them a certain amount of leeway here. But, yeah, when bristles, when one reads that, but I think Ukraine will be the big story. I mean, how much do they do for Zelensky will be there? How much do they do for Ukraine? How much does Trump get in the way? The second story after Zelenskyy is Magyar being there, I think, representing Hungary. So I guess I said this in Morning Chance, you know, I'm going to listen to Zelensky and Magyar speak for American ideals and kind of just try to avoid listening to Trump.

Supposedly Trump had a call with both Putin and Zelensky in the lead up to this. I thought that was interesting. The Telegraph reported this. The source thing on this is a little shaky. I think it's worth at least mentioning. The United States has supposedly warned Poland that Russia could be preparing a military provocation aimed at testing NATO's resolve

and weakening Western support for Ukraine. This is kind of single source to a Polish outlet through a Polish source. And so it's a kind of thing where it's like, who in the United States did this? It's kind of unclear, like, kind of how high level this tip off. is but I don't know it just gave me a little flashback to these types of stories

were sprouting up before the Ukraine more where we were our intelligence services were warning Ukraine this was real and some people weren't taking that seriously in Europe and even in Ukraine and then you know we saw it happened so like Russia is just getting obliterated on the front line

and there is there's been some reports that you know things inside the Kremlin maybe aren't as happy as they were It doesn't seem crazy to me that Putin would try some other gambets to try to change the kind of narrative, change the momentum around what's happening. I mean, I gather from some friends who were more in touch than I am with European diplomats or even European intelligence officials and so forth. They've been to Europe recently at conferences that the Europeans seem pretty concerned. I take it this as partly based on their own intelligence about Putin trying to recover from what's happening on the front with Ukraine by doing something either in Poland or maybe.

in the Baltic states and maybe not a full-fledged invasion, but a lot of troublemaking and false flag-type operations. This may be a subset of that, you know. Yeah. I just think that's important context and the lead up to the NATO summit in that, you know, this is kind of one of those obvious statements, but it would be nice to know for sure that the United States president was aligned with Poland, and aligned with our European allies in the event that something like this happened.

because, you know, Putin doesn't have the guise for a full invasion. Like, we're just seeing what's happening in Ukraine. Like, they just couldn't do it successfully. What could be successful is a provocation that yields what Trump and others of his ilk, starting to be like, well, this isn't worth it anymore. We can see the escalation is happening. Like, it's time to back off, right? And that would be the gambit.

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We're doing it 20 minutes into the show. It's two topics. The Tim is sometimes right segment. JV.L. and Sarah have there always right shirts. I'm not always right. And ethos of the show is radical candor. I admit when I'm wrong. I'm wrong often.

You know, where I'm learning. I'm trying to have guests on who are smarter than me on things. I'm learning with the audience. There are a couple things that I have pretty. astute ear about. I do want to mention them because they both came to a head over the weekend. The first is my friend Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Senate race in Michigan. She was, I don't know, three months ago now at the top. And it was basically a three-way coin flip. I mean, I had lunch with somebody, I don't know, in the spring at some point,

it was very deeply involved in that race, not in the McMorough camp, who understood all the polling. And at that time, they said to me, it's a three-way coin flip. It's totally even like I could hear the argument that McMorrah is leading or not. Iran war starts. Abdul al-Said starts really leaning into anti-war stuff. He has Hassan Piker and some other DSA types come to visit. The third way puts out a demand that all candidates condemn Hassan Piker and condemn these people on the left that have said things that, you know, are anti-American or anti-Semitic or whatever.

And McMorra does, condemns El-Said for having Piker there. That was like one small kind of internet thing, but that leads to like this broader skirmish of kind of a left-right attack where Stevens is not being attacked that much. The more the Chuck Schumer supported candidate, the APEC supported candidate. and McMorough and Said started attacking each other. And if anything, it will have no effect. Worst case scenario will boomerang back on the candidates that you're trying to pressure. Like this is, even if you're right in the principle, like even if you grant everything they said about whoever else he campaigned with

and that they're a bad person, it's still a dumb strategy. And that obviously bore fruit and turned out, like Democratic voters right now are not interested in hearing their candidates decide that they want to pick fights with people on the far left flank. There will be a time for that. There'll be a moment for that. Like, potentially, if you want to have that fight, maybe it'll be the 2028 primary.

We'll see. But, like, that is not what they're interested in. It was stupid. And we lived through this. I said this the whole time. Like, we lived through this. Again, if you're taking outside the morals, you're just trying to win.

All this is, is your interest group, who's trying to help the candidates that you prefer ideologically win. Who did well in the Tea Party time? McConnell. Mitch McConnell did well. Not the people in the party that decided that they wanted to go take a full-on head-on fight with the Tea Party people. They lost. Eric Cantor lost.

How did McConnell survive? McConnell survived by being strategic, being smart, sometimes adapting to appeal to the Tea Party right. Other times picking spots to find weak opponents to go after on weak topics. Like going after the DSA left on over war and Israel, like right when Israel is getting us into a stupid war, it was moronic. Like it was you were fighting from your weakest possible perch at the worst times. Anyway, okay. So they're out, and I think it sucks because I think that Mallory would have been the best candidate. I think that both El Saeed and Haley are imperfect candidates for different reasons.

And, you know, I just, I want people to be smart. And I don't think it means that they have to. swallow their principles. They're not to say what they think, but it's just like the Democratic voters right now are looking for people that are anti-status quo, that are going to fight Trump, that have their eye on the ball,

that are focused on the real enemy, and they're looking for people that are demonstrating that they're going to be against stupid wars, or they're going to care about their economic concerns. Like, every focus group star does, says it, every poll says it. And like, picking this factional fight right now is both dumb strategy, and it's just wrong.

Like, it's not, it's the wrong fight to have right now, even outside of kind of the more Machiavellian political concerns. So there's my rant about the Michigan Senate race. It's in sorrow, not in anger, that I talk about Mallory getting out of the race. And I think she'll come back. She is fine. Like her personal brand, I don't think is heard. And I'd like that she can run for a statewide office in Michigan in the future and be fine.

So I don't do you have anything to add or rebut? No, except the general, yeah. People should calm down and accept that it's a big party. There is McConnell, you know, examples, interesting. I was thinking back to those years. He at times accommodated the Tea Party. He at times fought them, raised a ton of money to defeat some of their candidates in Key Senate races. Remember that Mississippi race was that 2014?

I was going to use the Mississippi race. Chris McDaniel. Ted Cochran, who was not in great shape at that point. But it's like Chris McDaniel is a racist talk radio host. And it's like they went at him and they went at him aggressively. And they used very smart strategy. It was kind of a pincery. attack. They brought in some black voters to vote in the primary, to defeat him. And it was a very

sophisticated strategy to go after like one of the weaker Tea Party people. And that's like you mentioned. And there are other times where they just endorse the Tea Party. I mean, I think it was a couple of percentage points. They were able to save Cochran at that point. And then if I was thinking of 2010, I think it was, 2012, maybe a protege of McConnell's, Trey Grayson, who might knew slightly at the time, ran for the Senate, the open Senate seat, I guess it was, against Rand Paul. And Rand Paul clobbered McConnell's guy at Grayson in the primary. And then McConnell wasn't thrilled about that. But, you know, he decided, okay, Rand Paul is my colleague from Kentucky.

I don't know how to love him, but, you know, got to make the thing work. And McConnell was a pretty effective, better or worse, majority leader, minority leader than majority leader for the next, I don't know, 10, 12 years. And had Rand Paul's vote when he needed it. I don't know about everything except the what issues were Paul really, you know. And partnered with Rand. And this is the same thing with Rubio. Remember, like, again, it was like they had Christ initially at the time,

and then Rubio runs as a Tea Party person, and it's like, you know, McConnell, didn't, you know, go whole hog going after him and look at where Rubio is now, right? So it's just, yeah, like, there are times to have the fight. This was not the right time, particularly given the topic of the war. And El Saeed, say what you want about him. Like, has been run a pretty effective campaign.

And Mike Murphy, who is much, more irascible and grumpy than me and much less willing to kind of hand it to the left side of the Democratic Party and he still is a Republican good standing. I've been watching, I've been listening to his analysis about this and he's like, I'll say he is the best politician in the race. Like, he doesn't have the baggage that like some of maybe those House candidates in New York did from the DSA side. You know, Murphy's not rooting for him. But just as an analysis standpoint, it's like you have to look at the field and say, okay, you know, maybe I'll say this is going to be offensive to both sides

is more of a Rubio, you know, and less of a Chris McDaniel, right? And so then you have to, you know, assess it, you know, from that vantage point. So you also have to know what kind of year and what cycle it is. And I think that in a different year, I think I'll say

you to do a pretty risky bet in Michigan. I'm like less convinced that that's the case this year, like in the first Trump midterm. I mean, is he slightly more risky than Stevens, probably slightly more. But I don't, I'm not convinced like a lot more. And I'm not sure anybody's like demonstrated that. Yeah, Mike knows, Murphy knows Michigan while he grew up there and ran the Anglo campaigns there and the Spencer Abraham campaign. So he knows that keeps a close eye on that state. I like that your idea that you're, what would you claim you are?

You're mostly right or or sometimes right? Yeah, I'm going to be occasionally right. Sometimes. Sometimes. One notch below you say, you know, JVL is going to fill it up there and you always right, you know, or claim to be always right category. But in my occasionally right persona, I've always thought Stevens was a stronger candidate than people thought just because she's such an experience and tough-minded candidate with a good team and all that. And I kind of think she's good.

I mean, if I had to bet, I'd bet on her defeating. I'll say he'd in the primary. But in a way, McMor-if you were designing things, McMurro is kind of the best of the three because she captures a lot of the young change side of things without El Saeed's, you know, being so far alive. So I don't know, but I don't know what's going to happen. I hope, well, we'll see what happens, right?

Yeah, and the black vote is another thing that is subtext to all this, you know, which is you got to do well with black voters in the Democratic primary. And I do think McMorrow was struggling there, and I think that's kind of unrelated to that other tactical element that I was talking about. And, you know, I think that's something that people are going to be continually reminded up as you head up to 2028 discourse. Okay, Tim is sometimes right. number two. Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's fixer, a resistance star for a while.

The resistance, certain resistance outlets loved Michael Cohen, and they wanted to welcome him in and talk about how great he was and give him shows. He is back in Trump's Good Graces, who could have predicted, oh, wait, I did, W-A-B-C owner John Katzimatidis, said Cohen and Trump have smooth things. He offered him a radio show on WABC. Katsa Matitas says, I checked with the White House. They had no objection. What a wonderful world we live in. You're running in a media outlet. And he just says, as if it's a, of course,

I checked with the White House to make sure they didn't have a problem. Cohen gave a quote. I was told the president gave me a glowing recommendation for this gig because he believes I'm going to be the next Rush Limbaugh. We all have our weaknesses. We like being told that we're right, you know. We like having our biases flattered. This has benefited some of the never terms.

I'll be honest about it. It's fun. A lot of Democrats like coming to us. They're like, C. One of the things they like that, this is C, Bill Crystal, who I always used to disagree with when he was on this week, now says I'm right. Okay.

You also have to use your judgment. I never had Michael Cohen on the show. I will have people on the show that have Trumpy views. I might this week, as a matter of fact. But as long as they're not bullshitting me. We cannot have people that are completely full of shit. that have their for-sale sign up that are obviously going to go back and forth

depending on what is convenient. That was true about Cohen. Cohen was not like, he got flumped in with us. This is why maybe it's a little bit offensive at times. He's not like the never-trumpers, who some of us never supported Trump, you and me, or others who like reluctantly were on the outskirts

and then came around or people who are young, like Sarah Matthews, who went in there and then saw it was gross and came out. That was my old Cohen was Trump's fucking bag man. He was his bag man. Like he was doing gross, disgusting, illegal, corrupt things on behalf of Trump for decades. I was never really convinced that that that M.O. had changed. You know, and then he'd go on the shows, it's like, it's the end of Trump.

It's like, okay, all right. He is what we thought he was. So Michael Cohen off. So if you ever wonder, why hasn't it not Tim had random resistance superstar on the show? Maybe the Michael Cohen lesson is one of why. Any other thoughts on that before we move on? I don't know if I was ever on anything with him. Maybe there were one of the two shows

I didn't control, so to speak, where you know, like Zoom's or whatever, I found myself on with him, and I guess we were cordial enough. But I do recall, I'm worried someone who'll double-checked this and maybe I once went on. He asked me to be on his,

he had a podcast, I think, and he asked me to be on a million times, many, many, many times. It was kind of offended. I was just polite, he said, and I think I'll pass. You know, I didn't say anything about why. And then he got kind of frisly,

as I vaguely recall from our brief exchanges on DMs, I think on Twitter at the time or whatever was. I think I never went on the show. So I'm with you and being that one too. You had good sense on that. My summer vacation is almost here. I can't wait. I need the time to relax and unwind.

I'm going to shut down the Twitter machine. You guys are going to have to hold me accountable for that. I want you looking. I want you spying on my Twitter account. Seeing if I even do any retweets, retweets are also not going to be allowed. So one thing I'm trying to do is I prepare for my restful, no-twitter European vacation is a little bit of language work, some fun with our sponsors at Babel. If you're traveling with summer, here's a real travel hack.

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That's babb-b-e-l.com slash bulwark for up to 60% off rules and restrictions may apply. Speaking of just really on the media corruption thing, you mentioned with the WABC remind to me, there's another story that's been kind of happening in the background, which is like there continued to be a right-wing effort to take. away the licenses of these local ABC TV stations. So this all kind of burst into public over the Jimmy Kimmel element, right, where Brendan Carr was threatening, one of the, I think, was pernicious. Parts about that is he was threatening these local ABC affiliates where the government does still have licensing power, you know, saying, hey, if you don't take him off the air,

like, you know, we're going to challenge these licenses and then Kimmel gets back on the air. But that part of it continued. Right. you have this media research center who has one of the stupid Bozell kids that runs it. They're well funded though on the right and they have like a lawsuit

against these local stations or a challenge against these local stations saying that they're doing communist propaganda and who the hell knows what else. And it's just worth noting that that pressure from the White House on media outlets where they have power is still ongoing.

And you know, Brendan Carr's a good example. I don't follow up very closely, but I know a tiny bit about what he's doing at the FCC. That's the term they use a kind of stupid term. I always, all of government, we have an all of government foreign policy on whatever something, you know, get the Treasury Department and commerce. Everyone's involved in some effort. This was used a lot during the early days of the war in Iraq and the war on terror and then to some degree on Ukraine. And it's true.

It's just the phrase is a little bit pompous and pretentious. Trump has an all-of-government assault on his opponents. It's not like it's only the White House or Stephen Miller. or Blanche's Justice Department. Regulatory agencies that we don't think about a lot and then mostly have been pretty passive or ineffectual over the recent decades, you might even say, they're involved.

And as you say, and each of these things adds up, right? Brendan Carr is not quite as scary as having the FBI or the Justice Department chasing you down or maybe having our friend there at ODNI, you know, trying to find you and prosecute you. But it's not nothing if you're running a local TV station, right? The degree to which they have done a pretty good job, from their point of view.

But again, this is Orban-ish, right? And Putinish. Every part of the government, they're going after you from many different angles at once. When I had John Gans on, he had this jock-creep theory of fascism, and we're noting that there are a lot more jocks

in this administration than creeps. But Brendan Carr definitely fits in the creep category. I'm not sure how much there is to say about this story, but it's, like, so shocking, I have to mention it. So this is a Bollard podcast, Gus, true crime. An Idaho mother was charged with the murders of her 18-month-old twins. A year after suggesting their deaths were the result of vaccinations.

Days after the kids, a boy and a girl were found dead, Sean or husband appeared on a podcast produced by RFK's Children Health Defense Fund, the anti-vaccine organization. I mean, that is just horrifying and astonishing, that that is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Like what? Well, that's another aspect. The going after opponents is pervasive in the government.

I don't know what to call this exactly. I don't know the right word for this is, but the being adjacent to truly detestable and despicable actions, not to say criminal actions, that's also pretty pervasive in this administration, right? It is. And it also just is the danger. This is, obviously, something that is much more acute on the right,

but occasionally, you know, we see unless, media and that I like to comment on why this is important. Participating in conspiracy theory culture is dangerous in ways it's hard to predict. It just is. And like you get into this world where you have people that are mentally unwell and like they attach onto your conspiracy theories and something like this happens. I mean like this is not wholly unconnected kind of what the situation was with Tina Peters. And obviously Tina Peters didn't murder somebody. Like, what was the underlying corrupt act in that story?

Well, it was that she was, like, so convinced that the elections were stolen that she tried to rig the machines herself, right? Or go into the machines to get proof of it, right, against the rules, right? Like, that type of thing happens, right? People become so convinced of something they try to make it through. It's not, it's Pizza Gate, right? It's the guy showing up to the basement of the pizza parlor with a gun. When, like, you participate in this type of conspiracy culture in advance, these conspiracies, like, you know, it's just, not be surprising what comes of it.

Should we end with soccer? Are there any of the burning stories that you have on your mind that you want to cover? No, no, we've covered them. So, great England-Mexico game last night was very fun to watch. The Brits now had against the Norwegians. I noticed in your Twitter feed there's a historic reference about the last time the Brits and the Norwegians met. What do you know about the Battle of 1066? The Battle of Hays.

I don't know, but some Brit, needless to say, was talking about how they lost that battle. They defeated the Vikings in that battle. They then lost the wing of the conqueror coming from France, so they still have to make up for their French defeat. But he's hoping that they defeat Norway for the first time in a millennium, I suppose. The Battle of the Stamford Bridge. Yeah. That Norwegian dude, Holland is a beast, though.

He is. I've been intrigued by that. So the joy that has been brought to the World Cup, similar to the next joy, Donald Trump obviously has to try to ruin everything and, like, involve himself and everything. We cannot, there's no part of the human existence that Donald Trump does not want to get his little tentacles onto, his little tiny little orange digits. He wants to touch everything and make everything tainted by his burnt orange aura.

And as such, it has happened here. The American player gets, I don't fucking know. I'm not a soccer person. It seemed like a pretty ticky-tack red card to me. If you get a red card, you can't play in the next match. People, I think, seemed to be rightly outraged about this to me. So he was going to be out for the game against Belgium, which takes place this evening. The FIFA, which gave Trump, you might remember, the FIFA Peace Prize.

I don't know if they've given anyone a FIFA Prize for literature or science yet, but they have handed out a FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump. They rescinded the red card. It had only happened one time before in 1960-something to a Brazilian. and Trump is now taking credit for this kind of cheekily said that they called FIFA. There's kind of conflicting reports on how many times he called and how aggressive he was, etc. I kind of don't care. But, you know, it's unfortunate.

The right thing to do is somebody that is not a megalomaniac like Trump, even if he did call, the right thing to do would be to say he did not. If you were to say that righteousness prevailed here, you know, that, that the player had not committed the red card. And so it was smart of FIFA to rescind it and honorable and fair, but that's not what they're going for, fair play. So anyway, he's back, which is good news for the Americans. But, I don't know, it's, you know,

similarly to Trump showing up to Game 4 of the next finals, is my comparison. I mean, I see like a tiki-tacky red card, and we joked in the morning shots, I think on Thursday morning, Trump's, whatever it was, Trump's a mob boss. He should be arranging this stuff. didn't really think he would. I mean, if you were, incidentally, if he wanted to do this in a way that didn't make one kind of conflicted almost about watching him here, but, you know, it was really, even if it's a bad

call, they probably should have, you know, gone by the rules of the game once the call was made and the, and everyone was preparing for a game in which he wouldn't play. If he was going to do it, he could have done it through an intermediary. And that head of FIFA is such a tool and he's such a, you know, toad he to Trump that he probably would have made it happen anyway. But Trump can't resist, right? he has to let it be known that he personally called, that he's been on top of this and all that.

So I think that's, you know, that head of FIFA guy, that guy, they've put out, I've got to say the World Cup's been terrific. So someone, some people at FIFA know what they're doing. But that guy who runs it, whose name is escaping me, he seems like a total creep. And someone had a funny comment on Twitter. Maybe this was Tommy Pito or someone like that,

or one of the guys from the Obama people. Did the contract with Fox require that we have a, that they move, they show us what this head of feet, who no one cares about. Inventino. Infantino. Watching the game from the stands every 30 minutes. It's really ludicrous. You know, they go to him more often.

To their credit, they don't seem to go to politicians. They don't interview politicians. And you get a pretty straight 90 minutes of soccer or football, as they say. And you get good commentary by former great soccer players. But that Infantino guy could do without you. It's kind of how I feel about Ruta, too,

as we go to NATO. It's like, I understand that sometimes as part of your job, you have to deal with this asshole that we, our country elected president twice, and that there's certain things that you need to do to kind of make things move along. But some people suck up to them with a little too much relish. And it's in the eye of the beholder. But for me, both Infantino and Trudeau have fallen on the wrong side of the relish line.

And it's like they seem to be enjoying it. They seem to kind of like it in the end. And maybe even like Trump. Some of these people come to like Trump. And it seems like that happened to Bill Maher. They get there and there's something about them that appeals. I'm lucky I don't have that gene at all. I can see it.

He was a successful con man for all those decades, and con men always have some ability to get people to like them, right? That's how the con works, I think. And the one time he called me in 2015, after I wrote the initial weekly standard editorial, saying we could ever, of course, support Trump. But I actually then argued, this was like as June July, 2015, I suggested that, you know,

politicians probably could learn something. from Trump's success. There's more of a mood out there than some of us realized that was one of the few things, one of my occasionally correct points. But I said, of course, we could never support Trump. And Trump called me, I think I've told us,

and said, oh, no, you'll come around, Bill, and all this. And, you know, he has that kind of jocular, back slapping, kind of New Yorkie manner on the phone that I wasn't deeply moved, but I wasn't moved at all by it, I will say. But I remember thinking when I hung up or put down my phone,

that, you know, I could see how we can sort of get people to think, ah, he's not a bad guy, you know, kind of a back-slapping sort of type of thing. Just objectively, that's a good interpersonal trait. Is somebody like you and me who write about people in the public eye or tweet about people and the public guy occasionally, there's a much less appealing trait of other famous people, which is when you do that to call and like bitch and moan and talk about how unfair it is and try to work you over.

And it's like, okay. And that's a turnoff. And if you're somebody like me, when someone does that, that makes me want to shit on you more. So it backfires. And so Trump does it in a way that's like he's also her. He's also complaining, right? But like you said, the jocular, it's just a better interpersonal way to handle it.

And so he does, by all accounts, like in private, he wins people over that way. I mean, he also has the other side, of course, as well. He'll be right and scream and yell and threaten. And of course, after all, that Dracula conversation by the next three years trying and succeeding ultimately and getting the weekly standard closed down. So, you know, I don't overstate,

I don't overstate how charming and Dracula he is. But I did get a felt like at a glimpse there of why he's got some people who I remember at the time thinking, how could they even work for him thinking, I guess maybe he's just, they discount all the horrible things and they find it sort of entertaining or amusing or whatever, flattering, I suppose. Me too. I want to be abundantly clear.

just doing a couple of things from this podcast as we close. Number one, I was not comparing Abdul Saeed or any of the left Democrats to the racist radio host in Mississippi. So I'm using an analogy about how to handle popular insurgents within a party. Okay, that's all in learning from good strategies. So I just want to be abundantly clear about that. I also want to be clear. I don't find Trump particularly charming or jocular myself. I think that actually it's a sign of deep weakness to be sucked in.

by such transparent efforts to win people over. That said, other people in politics could learn from the idea about how you win people over via private conversations by using that strategy rather than the bitching and moaning strategy. That's all I'm saying, no need to get mad. You can get mad if you want. I take feedback. I was very right on this podcast. So please, in the comments, let me know all the ways in which I was wrong as well

to keep me humble. Bill Crystal, thank you. Appreciate you very much for coming in on this Monday. Go USA tonight against the Belgians. And they do have yummy waffles. But besides that,

thumbs down for Belgium tonight. And we'll be back tomorrow. Could be a spicy one tomorrow. We'll see. See you all then. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.