The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump’s Weak, Sad, and Embarrassing Weekend

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

POTUS humiliated himself and our country with a peace “deal” that strengthens Iran’s hand and apparently pays billions to the regime—which it can use to build more weapons and fund its proxy terror groups. We don’t even know if the Strait of Hormuz is open, despite the credulous reporting by numerous media outlets. Meanwhile, Trump’s cage fight at the White House was beyond parody and truly despicable on so many levels, including: taxpayer money being spent to glorify him, the corruption and kickbacks surrounding the fight, and the Saudis underwriting a White House event, even though they share none of our traditions or values. Plus, the Knicks win and the World Cup are serving up real joy and hope, and the Kennedy Center seems to be under orders to hide that Trump’s name has been removed from the building.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.Show notes Monday's "Morning Shots"  Hertling on the use and abuse of the military at the UFC fight  Brendan's interview with Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sued to get Trump's name off the Kennedy Center  The Bulwark's live coverage from the Kennedy Center Friday eve

Welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. It's one of those Mondays where, you know, it makes me wish, I don't know, I was a gardener or something, you know, Bill, having to wake up and read about the Hector Mountain Dew Camacho event at the White House last night and gather the stamina to come up with an opinion about it. You know, whatever. And there are a lot worse jobs out there in America, but it's a bit of a burden. That's why you get the big bucks, Tim, you know. I myself just watched another hour of Nick celebrations in New York City. I'm kind of tuned out of my hometown. Huge Knicks win, happy for the Knicks. We'll talk about the goodness of America at the end. But unfortunately, Donald Trump is forcing some other stuff on us. Just because I can't begin with the White House nonsense, we have to start with the real news,

which was, well, maybe it's real news. I guess that's something to ponder over. deal, if you will, the deal about a deal, the memorandum about a deal that Donald Trump felt compelled to announce on his birthday yesterday. His 80th birthday, I don't know if you know that, he's 80 years old, the President of the United States extremely elderly. And he announced at his birthday party that they have a memorandum of understanding with Iran. We seem to get nothing out of that. They are planning on having a formal signing in Switzerland on Friday. We'll see if it holds till then.

We've got a lot to discuss about the contours of that. But Bill, what are your initial thoughts? Yeah, I mean, we've acknowledged our defeat. I mean, Trump won't acknowledge it. But every normal person looking at this deal sees that, you know, at best we've sort of walked away with a tiny bit of face-saving from a misguided adventure, a misbeckonial. a misbegotten war that we've lost, that we failed, failed to achieve our objectives.

We strengthened Iran and weakened ourselves. I mean, I really do think that's pretty obvious and clear. So there are details, the nuclear stuff and all. But in a way, all of that, as you say, is murky. Trump's putting his best spin on it. But at the end of the day, Iran has closed the straight, paid no price for it, and really retains the option, I would say, of doing so in the future. We'll see exactly what the deal says, if it says anything exact about, you know,

the street being open. That part, I think the media has been the most credulous about. Like Trump says the state's reopened. Okay, I guess the state's back to where it was before. It's not back to where it was before. At best, it's temporarily opened again. And Iran, I believe, is not given away. It's the option in the future of closing it or imposing various prices and conditions on transit there.

So that's bad. The nuclear stuff's totally unresolved. They're going to get money out of this, maybe not directly from us, but from the UAE. the regime is solidly in place. The Iranian people have been betrayed. And we've antagonized allies all over the world by either ignoring them at the beginning or berating them afterwards. I think especially in the Middle East, the Gulf states are just, you know, they can't say it, but they're in a state. And we'll be looking to accommodate Iran on the one hand, but also get closer to China, perhaps, more reliable aid in times of trouble.

final point, there'll be misleading photos and vibes from the G7, beating the Trump's route to in France. We're going to realize they've got to put the best face on this. They still are in the motive. We've got to kind of buy time here as the U.S. withdraws from the world and from responsibility and try to keep Trump kind of on board for as long as possible. So there'll be a lot of happy talk about how this is kind of an okay outcome, but they don't believe it.

To your point about the street, there was an accidental truth spoken by the vice president this morning on CNBC, he's doing the rounds, where he said this, well, our expectation is that the straight is going to be opened in a toll-free way for the long term. And that's the sort of thing that we're going to figure out in these technical negotiations. I thought we had a deal. We're still doing technical negotiations. Wasn't that what you're supposed to do before you made an announcement that there was a deal where the straight is opened herewith? As Donald Trump said yesterday? Herewith. Here with. It's a good word, a good Trump word. He likes that. So he just likes fake fancy words, you know, to make...

Yeah, he does love those, right? Fake legalistic kind of fancy. Which I hadn't seen, Van said that this morning. It's very revealing, as you say, the notion that that's something we're going to discuss, whether the straits really open, that's supposed to be like a core red line of us and of all of our allies, right? That is the status quo ante. It hadn't been closed for 40 years. It was treated as an international waterway.

No one thought of it as anything but. We are now going to sort of debate that with Iran, which will have all the leverage. incidentally as we're busy getting out of there, right? They're sitting right there. So that's, yeah, that's a very good illustration. I wish I'd seen that this morning. I could have added it to the morning shots, but no. That's okay.

I had too much stuff. I could barely keep up with Trump's tweets, let alone like Vance is going on TV. Why is Vance? You've done this stuff for a living at one time, as I did a little bit too. Why is Vance going on to you? I guess, is he want to go on TV and sell it,

or is Trump making him do it? Well, I saw him on two. I don't have like one of those TV situations in my bedroom where I have every channel. on. So it's possible to do another network, but he at least did NBC and CBS. I assume he did CBS as a favor to their daddy, Larry Ellison, who will get to more about that relationship in a minute. But, you know, it's the new favorite network. So you wanted to give them a little news bite. And then you're on CNBC to kind of make sure to keep a lid on the markets, who might be kind of jittery. Good news in the

markets this morning. Markets are, you know, stocks are up, oil prices are down. We'll see to the extent to how that holds. You know, having, Vance out there is also interesting from, there was a critique coming from the neocon right on this deal. Mark Levin was extremely upset about it. Lindsay Graham,

I know I'd be surprised to know that your former comrades who decided that they would go full bore for Donald Trump and say that like, this is going to be my man and we're going to hitch our wagon to him and that he's really going to be there as we achieve what we've wanted to for a long time,

which is overthrow the Iranian regime and have a stalwart American military leadership towards that objective so that we can see freedom flourish in the Middle East, you'll be surprised that that deal didn't really work out for them, as Donald Trump was not the ally that they had expected. D.B. is learning the same. Here's Lindsay this morning. This was Lindsay yesterday, rather, before he went to the fight.

Lindsay, I'm somewhat concerned that Iran's U.S. the agreement seems different than what the American negotiations, team is claiming. You don't say. Under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for a view and a vote. Congress has a job now. That's interesting. I look forward to reviewing the final product, and I believe it's imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance, be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress. That caught my eye. The architect of the deal, vice president vans is he is that true even it seems telling i think that he is kind of laying the groundwork for this intra-party squabble and giving himself some cover if he wants to criticize the deal i'm not

criticizing mr trump of course who is brilliant this whole way but but he might have put the wrong guy in charge of this deal yeah i was struck by that too when lindsay graham says he's somewhat concerned about something Donald trump has done it means lindsaying is here on fire you know panicked and thinks the thing is an utter and total disaster because some are concerned is the most critical he's allowed to be of Donald Trump. So, yeah, it is revealing. And yeah, and they want to throw vance under the bus

for this, I suppose. But for what? What was the alternative? To use ground troops with no congressional authorization and not having prepared for it and suddenly seized Cargile in. Would that have changed the outcome? I mean, Trump, in this respect,

his instinct to just get out of there was probably right at this point. They probably could have gotten a better deal, honestly, two months ago. But what do you think the odds are that actually something gets signed in Switzerland Friday. I mean, the Iranians are going to be very tempted to say, well, Israel says they're not

abiding by the deal in Lebanon. And they somehow have managed it. Suddenly, the Iranians to just shove that into the deal, which was totally out of nowhere, you know. We want a little more clarity about the straight. And you can imagine them just continuing to torment Trump, you know? Yeah. I mean, two thoughts on that.

And I had my notes here. Are we sure this holds until Friday? I'm not. I don't, I mean, we'll see. I think there's a lot of incentives on both sides for it, too, because Donald Trump is sick of this war on board and doesn't have any objectives and never had any objectives and thought this was going to be easy and, you know, got himself into just this total quagmire and he's just looking for any way out of it. And then the Iranians keep adding more things and getting more

things, you know, to your point. I know his report yesterday that Trump wound the deal so bad for his birthday party that when Israel bombed Lebanon yesterday morning, Trump called BB and started cussing at him. And then the Iranians said, I don't know, if we're going to sign the deal now, we need more stuff. And Trump made additional concessions yesterday just, you know, in order to make the Iranians happy because they're upset about BB and Lebanon. So, and one of those concessions is that Lebanon is part of the deal, which is like Israel's not a party to the deal. So that doesn't even make any sense. But the fact that it's in there, I guess gives Iran some leverage as well to kind of back away or to get more stuff,

get more money, whatever. The other thing, I think that's telling about how, how, how, bad the deal is, is that we don't actually have it. I think that's important to say. Maybe I should have started with that. But, you know, we're all basing this on, you know, here's what the American state media at Axios and Fox News are saying is happening. And then here's what the Iranian state media at Fars News and Tasnum are saying. And like the Pakistanis put out a statement about what they're saying. We don't have the text. And I think that that is extreme, you know, tells you that, well, A, as J.D. Van said there may be some more technicalities to still work out. And B, they know, the administration knows that once people see the text, there's going to be a lot of anger and

outrage about it. And they probably want to kick that as close to Friday as possible. And we'll see, I don't know, who knows, maybe it'll be out by the time we post this. But like, if they felt like this was a huge accomplishment where they had, you know, gained something that Donald Trump can wave around, you know, beyond just the vague notion of he signed a deal, right? Like, if there was some tangible thing, some tangible accomplishment, they would have put it out before the fight yesterday. Like, the fact that they didn't, I think, tells you that there's nothing to brag about. No, that's really a good point.

I mean, there's nothing to answer. I mean, I was thinking about this. What is their one most tangible concrete achievement? You usually have a deal. There are things on both sides. And so the U.S. would stress to a few things it got Iran. stressed to two or things they got and okay fine that's what deals look like right i mean literally what did what did we get nothing i mean we got an excuse for trump to bring the troops home and say

the war's over but i mean they don't even have to return to how things were before the war maybe but worse but worse i mean the street was open before the war we were negotiating over the nuclear before the war and they're going to say it's the nuclear but the whole point of the mow is that there's now a 60-day period to negotiate over the nuclear issue right and we were doing before the war so we were $100 billion, lost 14 servicemen, men and women, antagonized allies, did a million other things that were bad. Killed children. Killed children.

Yeah, not trivial things, right? And the very best account they can give, which is not, in fact, truth is that we're back to where we were on February 27th, and we're not even back in nearly as good shape. So I don't know. I was talking with a friend yesterday who was worried, will Trump succeed spinning this, Fox News, you know, and somebody's not crazy to be concerned about that given the last 10 years in American politics. but I kind of think this one is just hard to, I mean, what do they have?

It was a war. I mean, they were literally negotiating with the Iranians, but the nuclear thing. We hadn't sold out the Iranian people yet on February 27th. The straight was open and unquestionably open. There was no talk about giving them money. There was not much talk about we're leaving sanctions, which in Sally's another thing. Do we believe, I don't believe these sanctions are going to still be on Iran in 30, 60 days. And Trump's going to, you know, that'll be one of the first things he throws up.

So we will have given up what was. what everyone thinks of the Obama deal, when they did keep a lot of the sanctions, there was that snapback. There were endless disputes. I can't even remember them anymore about exactly which sanctions were strong enough and all this.

But they were, like, they actually were sanctions, you know? I think it's, we're going to a deal that honestly, if any, if Biden or Obama, it's such a cliche to say this, but if Biden or Obama done this, the entire Republican Party

would be denouncing it is much worse than Neville, and Munich, you know? Oh, yeah, no. A humiliating week. It's Carter. I know it would have been Carter with the hostage. deal. You know, I just, this idea of just utter weakness, and this is what the Republicans would be

saying, like, that he couldn't even back up his own bluster, said it was going to be unconditional surrender, ended up begging the Iranians to let him get out of the quagmire. The whole thing is just totally humiliating. And if you go back to the pre-war, it is too kind to them to say we've gotten to the pre-war status quo, because, in A, the straight-in-a, the four moves will not be at the pre-war status quo. And Iran will have more control over and some kind of economic benefit from it that they didn't have before.

But even setting the straight aside, one of the rationales that you heard from the misguided but reasonable supporters of the war at the beginning was that this could be the moment to topple the regime because they were so weak. There were protests in the streets. The Iranian economy was in chatters.

The Ayatollah was 100 years old. And, you know, there was some type of regime change coming soon anyway because he was going to die. You know, their proxies have been weakened by a lot of actions that Israel had been taken. The regime was in rough shape before we bombed them and before we decapitated them. And now you come out of this on the back end and you have a more hardline regime that has more control over the country and they're going to have more money, right? Because they're going to have a huge influx of cash. Like, what is that money going to go to? Do you think the money's going to go to the Iranian people?

Or do you think it's going to go to get more missiles and replenish the drones and support their terrorist proxies, other places? That's what I think the money is going to go to. And the degree to which surviving a war, a pretty all-out assault by us, after all, which, as Pete Hacks said over and over, a greatest, huge, humongous, you know, devastating, debilitating assault on every Iranian asset, blah, blah, blah, blah. They survived it. They did more than survive it. they held their own ultimately in a way, and now they're coming out of it better. I mean, what does that do?

It strengthens Iran a lot, but it weak weakens us really a lot. I mean, whatever one thinks of other aspects of our diplomacy over the years and the decades and our, you know, soft power at all, the one thing we were supposed to be pretty strong, right? And it turns out we weren't strong. Even militarily, we couldn't, you know, we get an Apache helicopter shot down. That's a week ago, right? Yeah, Friday, I think 10 days ago, 9, 10 days ago by a drone. Two days after Trump is so, oh, man, if they mean, if they mean,

mess around with our troops. If they put anyone in danger, that's really a red line. And the Iranians just to show, you know, they could do it, shut down in Apache. And we did one or two days of token bombing and then went back to begging for a deal. So I think the degree to which we look weak is really, it can't be overstated, actually. And just last week, also just on the way, it's worth mentioning. Well, you said that Hakeseth was bragging about all of the bombing that we did, that they not only survived, it came out the other side in a stronger negotiating position. It It was just Trump. The president last week said the U.S. military dropped 250 million worth of bombs on Iran in one night.

That's great. And one night. So I don't know. Like, was he lying? And the president's just making shit up about what we're doing? That doesn't seem good. Or is he telling the truth? And we spent a quarter billion dollars of our money on bombs, you know, on bombing

last week to no end, to no purpose, like, or to the purpose of, you know, getting us to a deal that's worse than where we were before the bombing started. And the whole thing is terrible. I'll let Tom Nichols sum it up for it. Everybody the best because he did a nice job in the Atlantic this morning. The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact and in the grip of the IRGC. The straight of Hormuz will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks. Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks.

The regime will maintain the capability to be a state sponsor of terror, and many sanctions will be lifted, and billions of dollars in unfrozen assets will flow to Iran. In other words, the Iranians have achieved their key strategic aims, regime survival above all, while the Americans have achieved none of their own. I think that's a pretty good summary of the state of affairs. I've been talking about One Skin for a minute, and I like to think I'm basically single-handedly responsible for an increase in moisturizing and skin care

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i want to start with with this the iran situation is like a tangible disaster and people's lives we heard i mean some people are dead as we mentioned children are dead everybody's paying more because of this our position is weaker in the world like these are all like the negative fallout from bad and incompetent leadership and clownish leadership like that we're all experiencing from the Iran War.

The cage fight on the White House is like more just about what we feel America should be, right? It's more about these sort of esoteric questions. No children died last night. There were a couple fat people that got into a fist fight last night in the White House lawn and were arrested because that's that's country that we're. we have right now. But, you know, besides that guy going to jail, nobody actually suffered any consequences last night. It was simply bad propaganda theater. But it was really bad. I mean,

it was propaganda theater that was really bad and harmful and outside of the spirit of what is good about the country. So we might as well talk about it. Before I play some of my favorite audio clips of the evening, do you have anything in particular that struck you? I didn't watch it. As I said, But it's too depressing. Well, none of us could watch it because it was on Paramount Plus. Yeah, that's another thing, right? I mean, the whole thing is so appalling at eight different levels. It's a commercial event.

I guess at one point I struck Mark Hurtley had an excellent piece of the public this morning on this, the use and abuse of the military to provide the trappings of state occasion and a solemn state occasion for this ghastly event is particularly appalling. Well, they did this gimmick. They did this gimmick where every fighter that walked into the ring was paid. with, what is it, a Medal of Honor recipient? Yeah. And so then when they walked into the ring, the military that we forced to be there was saluting them in uniform because they could not tell, you know, whatever soldier sales there meant to salute wrestlers.

But they do salute, you know, matter of honor recipients. So it was kind of a clever, and I don't mean that in a good way, but like a clever like a fox-like way. of Dana White and Trump to kind of force the, you know, soldiers to stand there at attention while the wrestlers went to the ring. And then the honor guards and the whole thing. It just, I found that, I guess, the most off-putting the commercialization, a little bit kind of creepy to, you know, all the signs everywhere. And Trump personally benefiting from it, of course. And I don't know, the violence. I mean, the whole thing is, I don't know.

It's hard to even know which part is most offensive. Did you have a favorite, did you have a favorite part? Yeah, yeah. I did. Yeah, I did. Let's take one at a time. Just really quick on the Hurtley thing. So it's so good. And I'll put the link in the show notes for people if they haven't read the article. His column reflected on a speech that Tom Wolfe had given to the Army when he was, I think, a young recruit. He said it was in the mid-80s sometimes. I think he was back as a kind of a captain, you know, working, teaching a little bit at West Point.

So this is 87, I think Tom Wolfe, the novelist and essayist and died a few years ago. yes, it was a guest speaker there. And Perlain quotes it. It's really amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And the speech is kind of a meditation on FTR's Four Freedoms, which is another speech worth going to read if you haven't. In a minute, it's good to reflect on. But he picked on one particular element where Wolf is talking about how, you know, as fewer and fewer people join the military, you know, more and more, there'll be kind of a select group of people in the military that will be used by the broader society to their ends and it's something to guard against any of this line in particular those in the military will become sentinels at the bacchanal and armed

monks at the orgy quite apt 39 years before what that was exactly what they were doing last night they were literally the sentinels at the bacchanal on the white house lawn and uh it was it was a a bacc and all that was also not really at times joy but it also there was a lot of partisan rancor and and grotesqueries you know and we had to go through this period of like oh the singers are backing out and the trump people in the back of people are like well they don't love america and why do the liberals like we would if obama was president to a conservative singer would go and sing because he loves america why aren't these liberal singers coming to sing in our events it's because you've turned this into, you know, a disgusting display of Trump worship, an orgy, if you will,

of Trump worship. And there's one man in particular, I'm not going to learn the MMA fighters names. I'm sorry. So whatever. It was a guy who was there. And he won his fight. And after the fight, this is what he had to say. And lastly, Moshele Obama is a man.

Am I right America? It's Joe Rogan there interviewing him with the shitty and grin on his face. It's just like, I don't want to do the pearl clutching thing. It's like, this is fucking sick. I mean, this is sick. It's loser behavior. You know, you're at the White House.

It's supposed to be a celebration of the country. Like that wasn't that the whole point of this originally? It was the America 250 celebration. It was supposed to be a celebration of, you know, you know, the history of the country and our principles. And if you want to have a fight to market, not my cup of tea exactly but okay you know but have the guys then go up there and be like the first black first lady actually has a dick and like have everybody cheer and have the cabinet sit there

and applaud and it's it's despicable totally i didn't see that much i've seen a couple of clips yeah they don't seem to be very happy right it's not a celebration of america i believe some of the money the cut was appropriated for taxpayer money for celebrating the children 15 anniversary went to this event and as it's going to all of Trump's ridiculous other events too. But they're unhappy about America. And it's impossible to imagine like the counterfactuals like somebody like the Democrats all the event somebody being like like Melania was a mail order bride whore, you know, on the White House law. I'm like, you know what's good Tim is that. I mean, like this stuff is. But you know what's good Tim is that. I mean, Lindsay Graham, you recall in 2015, 16 that was quoted

on video actually, praising Joe Biden as a very decent human being. I think. It was after Bo Biden died, and Lindsay spent some time talking to Vice President. He's going to an interview with my friend Scott Conroy, actually. Vice President, Sarah, yeah, Vice President Biden. But people like Lindsay who were there, they've denounced this. I mean, they've said this is inappropriate, and they're kind of embarrassed that this, you know, was a blemish on our event. Because they respect President Obama and Mrs. Obama for their, for having been President and First Lady, and they think this kind of thing is inappropriate. I haven't a lot of the Republicans who were there, the Cabinet members, your friend, Bacent hasn't he spoken up?

Lindsey Graham, John Thune was there, I believe. Mark Zuckerberg, the distinguished corporate Titan head of Facebook, doesn't believe in that kind of thing. With a single person, I would find you to actually try to go ask the law. Of course, they won't say anything, I suppose. Maybe Lindsay would be slightly concerned, you know? In this point, I don't want them to. I actually don't even want them.

This is that. They wanted this, right? They want this. Let them. They had their chance in the moment to say, like, no, this is not appropriate. Like, we're at the fucking White House. We're celebrating the country. Like, why are you making trans jokes about the former first lady?

Like, it's fucking insane. All right, so here's this douche the night before. They had a way in at the ellipse, and they also had a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial the day before the fight. It's worth just noting really quick that out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, there was just a ton of trash. And Trump's been talking about how he beautified the reflecting pool and how great it looks.

Well, the reflecting pool was like green. next morning. And I don't know, these guys were probably pissing in it or dumping their bud light in it or something. But anyway, I don't know if that vomit was real or whatever, but there's this guy spitting up on himself talking about how scary black men are the night before. He goes into the White House and starts making trans jokes about Michelle Obama on what should be a celebration of the country. The whole thing is so just gross and yucky. Some throwing up on himself. So what? Maybe I'll listen.

drinking last night. But who wouldn't, who wouldn't be? I have a giant black man that wants to knock me out is the most knockouts in UFC history. He's still, Josh. Two, three one.

Ugh, God, I hadn't seen that. This is kidding me. The show, this show is full of me. I'm here, I'm happy. Here's part of the reason you haven't seen that. Part of the reason you have been seeing that was because of the corruption of this deal. So when they first said that this is going to happen, again, it was initially supposed to be a national celebration on our 250. Trump gets Dana White on board, who's ahead of the UFC.

Dana White says, hey, that sounds great. It will be non-political. We'll put it on CBS so everybody can see it. You know, we have a partnership with them. Instead, what they did was put it behind their paywall on Paramount Plus. So in addition to having, you know, it just be a total abomination, everybody had to get a little taste, too. So we wanted to make sure that for any of the UFC fans who are not Paramount Plus subscribers, like they had to pay Larry Ellison to watch this.

So like Larry Ellison gets a handout from the event that happens on the White House lawn that we all pay for as taxpayers. So that's nice, I guess, for him. And Trump gets a handout, right? Where's some sponsors? Well, Trump's paying a little bit. That's a little bit of a goes both ways. The Trump crypto was a sponsor. Can we just, let's just play that.

This was in the middle of the event last night. I hardly this is even real. Here's a fucking advertisement in the middle of the event last night. Close captioning for tonight's broadcast is brought to you by Trumpcoins. The official UFC 3 to 250 special edition medallions, graded by NGC. Limited quantities available now at Trump Coins. Trumpcoins.com.

Trumpcoins.com. Get the shout out there in the middle of the event. I guess they sponsored the closed captioning. I'm sure that Mr. Trump and the Trump kids were really paying for the closed captioning there. The ultimate fighting championship also announced that it will pay bonuses to the fighters in the form of a cryptocurrency issued by the Trump family business

World Liberty Financial. So the Trump shit coin was part of the prize purse. last night at the America 250 celebration. I feel like if this had been in, I don't know, Argentina or the Philippines not to pick on these countries, but let's say a third world country that has had dictatorships in our lifetime, you know, and a huge amount of grift and graft and like Russia to take another country.

I feel like someone would have said if they'd gone to this, each of these things had been ticked off, someone would have said, we can't go that far. I mean, even we know what, even we know what, It's too much. Putin's like, I have some fucking dignity, okay? I have some self-respect. I'm going to steal these people money on the back end.

Okay. Like, we're not going to put on the television screen. This is sponsored by Putin coin. Right. You know, and like, we're not going to have a little bit of a little, a logo on the mat that's like, buy Putin stable coin, Putin RX, Putin.com. Like, it's like, this is, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. It is humiliating.

And you're right, but Putin would do, you know, savior of Russia.com, you know, or the glory of Russia coin, right? I mean, and that's the more traditional way. And then, of course, you take the cut,

you know, on the back end, as you say, secretly. But that is striking about Trump, right? The kind of, it's so insecure, I suppose. And so maybe he thinks it's better,

it works better this way, the Gryft, or is it just insecurity that his name has to be on anything? I don't know. Yeah, I think it's definitely insecurity. Fred didn't love him.

I think is pretty much what it it's just preposterous. In 2014, SNL had done a segment, 2015 at the beginning of this campaign, and it was like, if Trump wins, this is what it would look like. And it was just a video of last night.

Like, everybody, you know, like all the conservatives sort of, like, these liberals, like don't understand real America. It's so unfair. It's so biased. It's like, like Trump's, you know, just total.

depraved, disgusting, grotesque, clownish behavior is like so far beyond what Hollywood could have even imagined in parodying Republicans. That's that parity is now impossible. Like, how could you even parody from here? But as Andrew pointed out, as Andrew Ego pointed out in Morta Chess this morning, if you actually criticize what happened last night, you're out of touch with Real America, elitist, you don't like this fight, this ultimate fighting championship. You want them to be playing croquet on the White House line, but, you know, Real America likes this stuff. Actually, to it's fair to real America, there's not much evidence that like this stuff. There was some poll that showed, you know, like 16% of people like this.

I don't know what the ratings are in that Paramount Plus thing. I don't know how you do that even with pay for view or whatever. I don't know. A lot of America was watching the World Cup yesterday. I was watching the Stanley Cup finals. I feel like a lot of America was watching the World Cup. I'm willing to bet a lot of higher percentage of America were watching the Nick Saturday night to watch that crap last night, right?

So the real America, yes, is to, I mean, it's not even the real America. so annoying, right? And then Mark Teeson, inside the Beltway here in Northern Virginia and writing for the Washington Post about, yeah, you will lead us who don't like this kind of thing. Maybe we're just decent people who don't like this kind of thing. And it's so embarrassing for our country. And it does sort of tie in the Iran thing, not to overthink this, but, I mean, the decline in power is not unrelated to the decline in self-respect and dignity and, you know, the decadence. Let's put it that way. That's true, though it's mostly Trump's fault. I mean, like, honestly, real America existed for 235 years, 240 years.

240 years before Trump. There were conservatives. Like Ronald Reagan would have never have thought to have an event at the White House. Totally. Yeah. No, no, I totally agree that it's Trump. It's entirely a Trump.

Making fun of Tip O'Neill's wife's, like, looks. Like, that would have never been okay. Kennedy, you know what I mean? Like, Kennedy would never have, you know, gone and said, hey, Mamie Eisenhower's a lesbian. Like, this is like just not the kind of things that, like, so what are you talking about that, like, Real America Demand says?

No, that's right. I agree totally. Trump is hijacked, or Trump has hijacked the term. And it's unfair to the real America. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about the sponsorships because they bother me. I was sponsored by Bud Light. We had to go through a whole year of fake outrage because Bud Light sponsored a trans person's Instagram reel.

Like, that's literally what it was. People made it seem like they put a trans person on their can. Not that that would have been a problem, but they just, I got a sponsorship. for a single influencers Instagram reel. And we had to do Bud Light protests. People were pouring up a way to pretend like this was a real story. Politicians talked about it. I went to, I was doing the circus during all this.

Like Ted Cruz, they would talk about this on stages about how horrible it is that Bud Light did this. Bud Light was there sponsoring last night when the shirtless man was shouting about how Michelle Obama is a man. I don't know if we'll have any statements from Bud Light today. We'll keep an eye out for that. Dodge Ram was sponsoring at Crypto.com, which is just a Walmart of scams was sponsoring at Polymarket. The one that

was really come on either was Riyadh season, which is the Saudis big tourism play that they've got coming up that they sponsored it. And I think because of all of the disgustingness of last night, there will be little

focus on this. And so I just wanted to take a moment for it. So at least here we can express correct outrage about the fact that we needed the Saudis to underwrite our national celebration. Like, why? Why? Trump has turned us into such a broke-dick country where we are like a fucking, you know, QVC telethon of a country that now, like, Middle Eastern Sharia law dictators have to underwrite our national celebrations. they have to underwrite our presidential plane. Like, it's sick. Like, how?

Why? Get that shit away from the White House lawn. The Saudis should not be part of an American celebration. I mean, for starters, they were involved at some level in 9-11. So they're involved in an attack on us 25 years ago during that 250. And they share none of the American traditions and very. values that we are of liberalism and pluralism and rule of law and things enshrined in the Constitution and the Declaration, none of that is a value that the Saudis hold.

So why should the Saudis be able to advertise on our White House law? It's insane. They have a lot of money and Trump wants their money and they actually want to make sure Trump they're in good with Trump because they get things out of it too, I suppose. And so it's a wonderful commercial relationship, I guess. You should have plenty of money. We don't need to beg for their oil money. No, it's disgusting.

It's beyond disgusting. I couldn't. America First really is the greatest fraud in a way of them all, you know? Right? He couldn't care less about America, right? It turns out. Except when it's a celebration of him. I want to close this section with this.

I want to pull a bill. I was doing some Googling last night. So I get into trouble when I do some history reading. And I was reading about the Persepolis birthday bash. you know anything about that? No, you're ahead of me. So you were out. Okay, the Persepolis birthday bash

in college. I wasn't paying attention to the Persepolis birthday bag. Was that the Greek Kuntah or something? I'm guessing now? No. This was the 2,500 year anniversary of the Persian Empire.

Oh, the Persian one, right. Yeah, the Cyrus the Great. It was a lavish star-shaped oasis of 50 luxury air-conditioned tents. It was constructed on 160-acre site. There's an 18-hole golf course. There's a beauty parlor flown in from Paris, military parade during the time of the Shah. And it was intended to showcase Iran's rich heritage and the Shah's power.

But the excess amidst local poverty created a backlash. The divide deep in public dissent. And it's widely cited as one of the catalysts for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And so I was just, I was, I don't know, I was looking at that last night and I was like, hmm, eight years away from revolution. I don't know, we can speed things up a little bit more in the modern era. Now that you mentioned it, I remember like when the revolution was happening in 79, when the, you know, when the shot fell, this was cited as kind of like, you know,

the both the cause of it and also, I don't know what's the right, we're like an irony of history thing, right? The moment they celebrate, the most grandiose celebration is usually happens just before everything falls apart. So let's hope, yeah, but let's make it more like eight months, not eight years, okay? Could we have them gone? Someone else pointed out that Nixon, was something Nixon did in 73, about a year before being, I can where we were us now, before he was driven out of office. So I'm more in the one-year time horizon and the eight-year time horizon here, but it's a good, it's a good comparison. Pride comes before the fall kind of, pride goes before the stroke. Yeah, right.

Anything else on that? No? Can we quit? Can we never talk about that again? again? I guess we can talk about again when resistance revolution happens and we can cite it. And we only have three, I guess the only point of thinking, what do we have now? Three weeks till a little less than three weeks till July 4th, right? It's a Friday. So yeah. And I kind of was thinking until this conversation, actually, until last night, we sort of made this through without as much

unpleasantness as I expected of Trump's hijacking of the 250th. And I actually think it's sort of has been a flop. That is he wanted to make it a big thing all about. him. And I think most people have just ignored most of his attempts to do stuff, or they haven't quite panned out the dollar bill, the $150 bill, and the other stuff hasn't happened yet, at least. The arch, that's really worth fighting and stopping. So I was reassuring myself that, and I still am sort of reassured, the public isn't really on board as hijacking. And it doesn't seem to be changing anyone's mind about anything. And we would all forget about it pretty quickly. But this was so I'm still hoping to forget about last night pretty quickly.

this is the part that worries me and this is why I do kind of want to move on from it after this because like he is good at this like manipulating the public dialogue I don't think he'd be watched it last night I'm not saying that there's this deep well of love for you know

a guy fucking shouting about Michelle Obama being trans but like the people that he was able to engage are people that don't pay that quotes of attention to all this and probably wouldn't have even noticed that America 250 was happening to be honest in another world what do they receive?

They get trickle-down stuff. They'll get like a meme that somebody sends them of like the planes flying over the White House. Like, this looks cool. You know? Or like they'll get a video of somebody crying about, you know, what was happening. And, you know, with someone else being like, these guys are wusses. You know what I mean? And like this is the cultural war at base, right?

Like this notion that there are these like fancy boys and girls. who like care about decorum and then there's us you know who just care about fighting fucking bitches and making fun of people you know like that's like they frame that up and and i worry about that that is like that that it's a little bit of a losing fight for people on our side i feel like making fun of them and you know mocking them and talking about how pathetic and embarrassing and sad this is is better path. But I don't know. I worry about it as a propaganda device. You're right, too, given the history of other authoritarian regimes, and maybe people like me are kidding myself, kidding ourselves that, you know, on the other hand, look at the authentic

celebrations of the next, look at the World Cup around the country. That seems heartening, and that's really where the real America is. But they can get moved by some of that insane Trumpist propaganda, too, I suppose. On the failed propaganda front, the Trump name did get taken down from the Kennedy Center, we think. They're still hiding it. They're still hiding and they're still wallowing in their shame and hiding it. They, I guess, put up a big, what would you call it? Like a tarp or something. Yeah, a curtain.

Yeah. In front of the words or on the outside of the Kennedy Center where it initially said the John F. Kennedy Center and then the Donald Trump and, and like they took down the Donald Trump's name from it. We have some images of like some photographers like taking pictures through the side of the tarp where you can see the D coming down. down, but there's not video of it. And as of the time we're taping it this morning, 11 a.m., that Tart blocking it is still up. But that's pretty weak. I don't know. It's pretty sad that this happened.

I don't know. You're more of a Kennedy Center man than me. Do you have any thoughts? The guy who's running the Kennedy Center as a Trump appointee, so I read somebody, he talks to Trump a lot. I wonder if, you know, he just, Trump, Trump, after insisting on this ridiculous appeal that they lost at the last minute, I said, well, I don't want anyone to see this, my name coming down. And at some point, people will see that his name's not on there. So, I think. So that would be good. You know, the one point I think it's kind of a little lost is people say, well, he lost the lawsuit.

That's great. You know, the representative Beatty, Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a 75-year-old woman, black woman from Ohio, who was an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board who wasn't allowed to speak at the meeting where they made this decision to Trump appointed members of the board to honor Trump, she brought the lawsuit. And I was talking with someone who was very involved in this. I mean, she didn't have that much support at the beginning. It wasn't like everyone was running to say, do this, you know, the other members, the other other people on the board who were ex officio, including Democrats, were like, well, come on, let's not pick this fight here. You get a lot of

trouble. She had to go to a meeting in the White House alone. They wouldn't let her bring a staff member with the entire rest of the board. It was like 30, you know, Trump appointees, cabinet officials, and big shot, rich people. And she had to go alone and object. So she would have standing then to challenge the illegality of what happened. So she deserves a real shout out, I would say, real credit. And it's not like she's, you know, she's not like a, I don't think, a real arts, you know, famous person in the who loves the arts. She was put on this, was that, you know, she had a certain position in Congress that she got, she became ex officio on the board. And someone asked her, I think maybe was our colleague, Brendan Hart, doing the live stream at 2 a.m.

When she was, she was there and said, why did you do this? He said, it's just, it was the right thing to do. It was terrible what Trump was doing. I miss that. I didn't like it to watch the whole live stream. Shout to Brendan for being down there at the Kennedy Center. But she was there. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Good for her. That cheered me up too. She's actually like from Ohio. She is not an east or west coast elitist. I can point out. Pride of Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. That's real America too, by the way. Totally.

Good for her, Joyce Baby. All right. Anything else? Grinding your gears on this Monday morning? Anything else you want to or join a chat about the Knicks Triumph? for? Well, of course, I could do that for two or three hours, but you've cleverly run out the clock here and not let me really go. Now, if it were, if it were your guys, if it were your nuggets, it would be the nuggets. It would be you, the whole first 35 minutes would have been on that.

But no, I'm not complaining. It's okay. The first, fourth, and sixth greatest comeback in NBA finals history, all in one series, we don't need to discuss that at all really. It was beautiful. I know. I'm for it. I got a little emotional launching, Jane Brunson, whose, you know, dad, Rick had played in the NBA and then his assistant coach and the team. And the dude, Darren Brunson is like, he's listed at 6-2, but I was, I was, yeah, I've been there.

I've been next to him, close to him. And I'm taller. I'm taller than him, I think. So I think he's 5'11. And, you know, for him to score, whatever it was, 45 of 94 points or something like that in the last game, he was the only guy scoring in the fourth quarter, basically. just willing them to victory,

going around seven foot six, wimby, and, you know, finding the way to the hoop. I mean, just total triumph of will. Good for the next fans. It was fun. The New York stuff was really fun to see. And don't you think that I thought the videos, all the videos from New York City as a native New Yorker,

maybe that's a little more to me. And I recognized some of the places, obviously, and all it was, that was really touching. And it was, I mean, not to sound cliche, but it was genuine diversity and multiculturalism in the very good sense, right? huge numbers of people of all different skin colors and races and ethnic backgrounds and, you know, ages and wealth and politics and well, you know, and and staff. Unfortunately, Maggie got shouted at George Conway and tried to ruin the moment, but, you know, there's always one asshole out there, but for the most part.

I then watch, I'm not a, I played a little soccerer as a kid, so I'm not a huge World Cup fan of soccer, but I don't know, for some reason I watched the Netherlands Japan game yesterday, which was an excellent game. It was really, it was sort of touching. I mean, there they are playing in Texas, I think, in Arlington, in the Cowboys Stadium. And first half of Scoralists and back and forth in the second half ended up 2-2. Japan rally twice to catch up with Netherlands, which I think would be the favorite team there. Both teams played with sportsmanship. Their fans were crazily enthusiastic for their own team. And also totally, so forth as one could tell, friendly to the other fans and sort of shared some, you know, photos together.

and like seemed to, you know, some food and so forth in the parking lot. And the Japanese, the Japanese fans cleaned up their section after the event. They have a different custom in Japan in the U.S. That's good. That was maybe, that was interesting. Yeah, we didn't have, that circles us back to the Lincoln Memorial. The MAGA fans did not clean up after themselves in front of the Lincoln Memorial. But I mean, Andrew makes the point in Morning Shots.

The World Cup, it is kind of nice, I guess I kind of say on this, I think, I give them credit, but they scattered it all over the country. People seem to be very well to see. The Algerian team is somewhere in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nowhere. It's in Lawrence. Not to be east coast of leaders somewhere out there in Kansas or something. And the people of Lawrence are being very nice to them,

getting a lot. It's really flattered to have them there. And the Algerians are very pleased to get to see real America. I mean, I really feel like maybe the combination of the Knicks and the World Cup will save us from Trump's horribleness. I hope so I hope so all right Bill Crystal

we will be back tomorrow thanks for doing this one with me and see you next Monday everybody else lots happening this week hopefully we can focus on some real news tomorrow and we'll see you all then go next peace

go tell that long tongue liar go and tell that midnight rider tell the rambler the gambler the gambler, the backfighter. Tell him that God's going to cut them down. Tell them it God's going to cut them down. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.