The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: What a Bunch of Jackasses

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Instead of doing the job Americans have been paying Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for—like trying to alleviate the high price of gas and air travel—he's been shirking his responsibilities on a seven-month-long family road trip paid for by industry lobbyists. And of course, Trump is also being looked after: His ghastly, 22-foot golden sculpture was unveiled, and Republicans promised a billion taxpayer dollars for what was supposed to be a donor-funded ballroom. POTUS needs a little bit of a psychological boost after his apparent defeat in Iran. Plus, Ukraine is gaining ground and Putin sounds like he's winding his war down, Trump has basically ended the post-WWII order, and Tennessee's redistricting was pure racial gerrymandering.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes Monday's "Morning Shots" Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" Cathy on Putin's pathetic parade Politico's Jonathan Martin on Trump's redistricting Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego on 5/20 and in LA on 5/21: TheBulwark.com/Events Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we're here with editor at large Bill Crystal. And, you know, last week was pretty heavy. It's pretty heavy. A lot of serious topics, a lot of serious guests. We appreciated all of them.

And so I have saved a section at the end of the podcast for some laughs. I feel like we need some laughter and deserve some laughter, Bill. And so, you know, we'll kind of see. Have you do have a favorite stand-up comedian? Is there an old-timer that you're into? Yeah, no, it's a good question. I'll think about it and get back to you at the end of the show. You'll play out now for the end.

Okay. I can tell some of my favorite, my favorite Hedy Youngman jokes. That'll go over well. That'll date me. That'll date me back to 1946 or something like that. That's exactly what I was hoping for in the answer. So you work on that. We need to start, though, with serious matters abroad and domestically.

And I want to like really begin with our friend and colleague. Well, not really colleague, but your former colleague, my aspiring colleague, Bob Kagan, who is in the Atlantic yesterday with an article titled Checkmate in Iran, Washington can't reverse or control the consequences of losing this war. And it's really well argued and just basically a full accounting of how rough the situation is strategically and geopolitically right now for Trump. And he goes into a lot of themes that he went into a month ago when he was on this podcast because not a lot has changed since then.

But I do think he kind of even broadens it out further as far as like why this is such as Geo's political strategic defeat, I think even more so than whatever, Vietnam, et cetera, because of like what some of the implications are for us losing control of the Strait of Hormuz. So I was wondering what your thoughts were on his assessment. Yeah, no, I think it's very strong peace. And he's been arguing this for a while, as you say, but I think he's being vindicated by events. Trump understandably does not want to escalate. He doesn't want to get in an even bigger war. And I think the conventionalism has been, well, it's not great for Trump. And I've had this view somewhat. And he can slide out of it without too much damage to himself. Or I suppose to the US, Iran's capabilities have been degraded. We've paid a price. The world economy has paid a

price, but we can recover. I still think it could be pretty serious defeat. Bob is more struck by the severity of that defeat, also struck by the fact that Iran, he's been right about this for the last week or so we've been talking about it on the phone a lot. Iran's not so eager to let Trump slither away, right? And that's really striking. Iran feels they have the upper hand. I kind of thought maybe they just a little worried up being pummeled again and they just ended in a good situation. Pocket their winnings, it ended in a pretty good situation for them. But so far they haven't seemed to want to do that. And Trump has, you know, bellowed and threatened, but not done much, so we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, the strait is closed and the economy, the global

economy pays more of a price. But I think what Bob's big contribution is, is seeing that what a defeat it is for us to allow Iran to have allowed Iran to establish the principle that they can close the strait. And that's established coming forward. Whatever fake kind of agreement there is, Iran says, well, we'll open it. They're pretty much making clear that it's at their sufferance. Forty years, Trump likes to talk about 47 years, this nation's been plaguing the world. it has been plaguing the world at us and others for 47 years and is a very bad regime. The one thing they've never done in the last 40 years, been intimidated from doing, was closing the strain, really.

Kind of striking, isn't all these wars going out in the region, you know, including with Iran and we hit Iran in 2020. And then again, in June, Israel, the U.S. hit Iran. They didn't close the strait. That principle, they didn't want to challenge the principle that we upheld with many others of, you know, freedom of passage in international waters. And now they've established the principle. they can do this. That's a huge defeat. And then the damage that's been done to our alliances in

Europe and elsewhere, confidence in us by the Asians who depend much more on the strait, you know, for oil and for energy. The Gulf states now signaling who were hawkish near the beginning, they thought Trump might go in and take care of Iran, which not a nation, not a regime they like, get along with very well and are scared by. Now they seem to be telling Trump, could you end this, please? This is just getting worse and worse and worse. I mean, so they're going to make their own deals with Iran. And also their own deals of countries like China, which maybe more reliable allies than us. So I think Bob has seen the big picture of the damage to the U.S. standing in the world. And I think that those are the two things that struck me just like the Arab states may be feeling

like they need to make deals with Iran now, which is just a dramatic change from just a couple months ago just for economic purposes. And then just this general principle, it's kind of a piece of a lot from the Trump era. There are these like kind of general principles that just were things that existed since I was born, like, you didn't really have to think about, right? The president leaves when an election is over, you know, that president follows a Supreme Court ruling, right? You know, that we are going to maybe have disagreements, but, like, generally, you know,

work in concert with our allies and the Democratic nations of Europe. Right. Like, there are just all these general principles that Trump has upended. And this one of, like, freedom of navigation on the seas is something that just has been the norm in the post-World War II era and the U.S. through, you know, sometimes through military power, but also just like projection of strength and, you know, fear from other countries of wanting to incur the wrath of the U.S. You know, we've had like these freedom of the seas for commercial ships to travel globally. And like that is now in question. And if you listen to Trump in his interviews,

he doesn't seem to really prioritize or care about returning to that. And you hear him say a lot, like, well, we've got a lot of ports. You know, we've got ports in Alaska and Texas. And people are getting our oil from us now. I don't know. Like, in some ways, you know, he, like, Bibi was on 60 Minutes talking about how he talked to Trump about how Trump wants to send in troops to go get the nuclear stuff. Who knows if that's true or not?

That's what Bibi says. And so you have that, like, kind of pushing for more aggressive. action. Or the other hand, you have Trump not seeming to really care that much the straight of, again, maybe it's bluster, but like if he decides that it doesn't really matter because we have our own ports and our

own oil exports and if Iran decides to put a toll on the straight, like that's a problem for Asia, but not a problem for us. Like, that's what he decides. That's a major shift in kind of how the world has worked and one that decreases our power.

Yeah, I mean, it's America First and take into its reasonable conclusion, not reasonable, but logical conclusion, I guess, which is who needs all this up holding the international order and providing a public good of free transit of the seas, holding open straits that are thousands of miles away from us and so forth. Let others do it. We've got our ports.

Maybe we'll take care of our immediate vicinity, and that's actually in their strategy document. Western Hemisphere comes first. I mean, the price we will pay for letting the whole rest of the world outside the Western Hemisphere, maybe somewhat in the Western Hemisphere too, but certainly outside the Western Hemisphere, kind of just topple into or descend into, you know, man eats dog, everyone eats man, whatever, which is that man, he's dog,

can't remember anywhere. Everyone for himself, you know, countries just making their own arrangements. It can become, it can be sort of stable for a while, these countries will watch out for themselves and they'll act in their self-interest, but that's what kind of got us into two world wars. It's not a recipe. Eventually it'll come back to bite us. I mean, it did in 1914, it did in 1939.

And it's certainly going to do huge damage to all. As you say, a lot of things we just taking for granted. This global trade and commerce, everything that we just sort of assume happens, that it gets interrupted by the pandemic, and that was terrible, but then it got back on course again. And, you know, we can quibble about, argue about what it should try to be permitted to have these particular chips and all that. That's a national security question.

Fine, but in general, the principle of the weekend, all these goods will flow. And, I mean, that, that ends. nations can't depend on us. They look to their own weapons. They suddenly decide they have to arm themselves. You just get regional conflicts all over the place. Regional accommodations all over the place to various dictators. No, it is the end.

It's what a lot of people have been writing about. We've been talking about. And it's been sort of clearly beginning to happen for the last year and a half the end of the post-World War II order. But this war in Iran really has, I think, been the exclamation point on that at the end of that. Yeah, accelerant to the Lord of those news, but yeah, same thing. Yeah, same trajectory.

So just to that point, and the latest one talks is the same as it's been, but should mention that over the weekend, the Iran foreign ministry responded to a U.S. proposal to end the war, and their response included sovereignty over the state. Sovereignty. People get mad at me. Whatever, over the straight of Hormuz. And a bunch of other stuff that Trump responded and said was not reasonable. So that's where at, we're at the same as it ever was.

But you're right. One thing Trump seems to stress over and over is the nuclear material. It's a little weird. I mean, honestly, this stuff is not usable right now. It seems to be buried away. If they try to start getting at it, we will see it and can act to stop them. I should think I'm not against getting the stuff out of there, but the idea that we fought this whole war because of stuff that we pulverized, obliterated.

And was that June of last summer? It's just ridiculous. But it is very revealing that. And that one, I think he says just because that's very important to Israel, honestly, and for Dibi really stopping the nuclear program and not even giving them any remnant of one is so important. It's not consistent with America first. No. That nuclear dust, as Trump calls it, poses zero threat to the United States of America right now or for the foreseeable future.

But it poses the fact to Israel, which is, you know, a real thing. In the old days, we worried about that because we worried about threats to other nations around the world and destabilizing influences and so forth, sort of left off. over in this case because of Trump's being close to Netanyahu, I suppose. But so he keeps repeating that. He never explains why that's so important. But it is very striking how we, after a week or so we're opening the straight-off moves was important to us that we closed it.

So we could, I guess, for the sake of opening it. Now that seems to just receive, we have this blockade there. What's the point of it? I mean, to tighten the screws on Iran, I guess, so they'll then be more reasonable on the nuclear thing. It's an awfully. To me, it just feels like a tangible, I mean, Israel's part of it for sure, but it also just feels like a tangible thing Trump can wrap his head around. It's like this is something that we did.

Like he wants, we'll get to, a trophy, a statue. Like he wants something. Right now, like the argument is is weak. It's like he can sense it. You know, like he tries to say it. Like, they've been obliterated. And it's like, okay. So they've lost their ships. But like the nuclear, the nuclear. That's a thing for him to say. Like, we got the nuclear. That's a good point. I do think that there's a simplicity and talking point element to it. This is kind of related to all this. But it struck me, Trump did an interview with Cheryl Atkinson, who is a little kooky these days who's shot her on YouTube channel. Nothing wrong with doing news on the YouTube.

I'm doing that. Subscribe to the Bullwark YouTube if you haven't already, but she's got a pretty kooky channel. Trump did that. And he said this about the straight. NATO has proven to be a paper tiger. We don't use the straight. We don't need it.

We don't need the straight. We were doing it to help Israel and Saudi Arabia. We don't need it. We don't use it. I like there's just so much revealing about that there right like that a we were doing this to help Israel and Saudi Arabia like he just comes out and says it again contra america first but also just like the degree to which like NATO had nothing to do with this we didn't call NATO we didn't get NATO involved like this was not a defense issue I has nothing to do with the NATO treaty but he is like looking for any excuse to kind of blame NATO and more kind of formally separate from those countries because he doesn't like them personally because he feels like they're mean to him, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, he wants to blow up to the degree.

He has any view beyond the personal. He wants to blow up the post-world war to order, which he vaguely thinks has been bad for the U.S., though it's been very good for the U.S. And NATO is a key part of that. Yeah, I mean, the normal incidentally person who knows a little bit about international trade, he said, who benefits a lot from the straight, people would say Asia and Japan and South Korea, two kind of important allies of ours. he has no thought about them.

Bob made the point to me, I don't think he stresses this in the piece. The Japanese, the Japanese prime minister, she went pretty far in trying to really accommodate Trump and get along with him. She came here, swallowed hard when Trump made his Pearl Harbor joke. Remember that? And she was in the Oval Office. Shortly after the war began, I think.

And she got a lot of grief back at home, apparently, for not speaking up a little more on that, but whatever, she thought of his point. Trump couldn't care less about that. Why do we have the troops in Japan from Trump's point of view, incidentally? I mean, and therefore, Japan starts thinking, we've got to take care of ourselves. South Korea starts thinking that, suddenly Asia, which has been very stable for a long time,

and that's been pretty good for the world, you know? That starts to fall apart. I mean, the key thing I just, what we're about about is, he uses the word defeat. And I think he does that on purpose to kind of really try to bring home to people. This is a real defeat. It's not, didn't quite work out as well as we hoped

or didn't quite get all the things we wanted or kind of a stumble. It's an important defeat for the United States. days. When Trump, when she was there, the prime minister was visiting, I remember he makes this joke about how, you know, we weren't warned about Pearl Harbor when she was complaining that, like, Japan wasn't consulted. And we were saying at the time, it was like, hmm, how did Pearl Harbor work out for the Japanese? Like, not great in the end. I ended up weakening them quite a bit. And really, there are a lot more parallels than maybe he realized between our action and Iran and Pearl Harbor.

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The only way to get 20% off is to go to Join DeleteMe. com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's joined delete me.com slash bulwark code bulwark. On the NATO point, you had Phillips O'Brien on your conversation with Bill Crystal. There is some pretty interesting developments happening in the Russia-Ukraine war. Putin started sounding a little bit of a different note and his, I hate to even call it a press conference, whatever you want to call it, you know, with this kind of k-fabe gatherings that he has to make pronouncements

with state media in front of him. But he started talking about how maybe the war could be ending soon. Zelensky wants to come to Moscow. He's doing kind of the Putin thing where he was speaking in code a little bit and trolling a little bit. But also definitely, like it was different than in the past, kind of like his bravado of how Russia was on the march, et cetera. So he starts opening the door to maybe finding an off ramp. And this is happening. I don't think coincidentally, simultaneously.

with Ukraine, like gaining a lot of military ground for the first time in a while. And the front lines have been pretty stagnant thanks to drone warfare. So anyway, you had a long conversation with Phillips about this. I'm wondering what your takeaways were. Yeah, I mean, Phil really is a military historian. He really knows the military stuff. And very early on, he thought Ukraine would hold. And he's always been more bullish on Ukraine that the conventional was and was right

for the first two years, three years. Frustrated that the U.S. didn't do more and Europe could have done more. but he was basically right that Russia would not walk right over them. He was right that unlike Trump, who believed they would, and the Russia holds all the cards, and Trump holds all the cards. Now, Phil and everyone else was very worried, obviously, a year ago, when we cut off our aid, which was kind of important. But it turns out Ukraine's progress in the drone side of things

and the progress of drones as a military weapon and the transformation of the battlefield that they have caused is pretty astounding. And he says it really kind of, he doesn't like to use it to a revolution in military warfare, you know, a real transformation. And so that's the able to stabilize the battlefield and maybe have a bit of an advantage now. And also the Russian casualties. Kathy Young has a good piece on the website, on the bulwark website, about this kind of sad victory day parade, Putin ad, where they cut it back.

First, he went to Trump to get Trump to get Zelensky to promise not to attack it with drones. Actually, Zensky did, but he sort of trolled Putin by kind of embarrassing him. And also the other point he made that I hadn't really thought as much about is we're all happy Orbán lost. But one real practical effect of Robyn losing is that he had been blocking the $90 billion of aid from the EU to Ukraine, which probably is enough for them for the next year. So they can keep on, not just keep on fighting, but take the fight to the Russians. So that looks much more promising. Ironically, I mean, in a weird way, Trump's forced the Europeans to step up, and they are doing so much more. Mostly it's Russia, it's forced the Ukrainians to defend on themselves and have this fantastic ability.

to make the drones, but still, Trump's accelerated that probably. So, yeah, that war looks like it's going better. I think Putin's sort of throwing something out here on the, well, it could end, if only Zelensky comes to Moscow, will negotiate something. But of course, Putin's terms are not going to be acceptable to Zelensky. Putin wants to keep probably 20% of Ukraine that they have, and that's not going to happen. So I'm dubious that they'll be an agreement. There might be a bit of, you could imagine some ceasefires, though, and that kind of thing maybe. What Phil is most worried about is Putin and Trump actually getting together, maybe with Chinese sort of backing to

to really kind of agree to actually, you know, make things tougher on Ukraine? Trump has been out of the war. He hasn't really been an aggressive adversary of Zelensky at this point. But it could get a little worse. I mean, the counter to that is, that's been disastrous in Iran, this kind of shift within the Trump administration,

but maybe, you know, points to a little less worried on that front that he's going to align so much with Russia is that like the people with his ear right now at least are the relatively more pro-Ukraine not as pro-Ukraine as we would like but the relatively more hostile to Russia elements of his administration be that Marco or the outside the administration he's talking to Tisen and Levin et cetera like you know the war in iran has been kind of more what that crowd wants and less what the jd vans of the world want so we'll see how that plays out but it's interesting development and the other potential is, which kind of ties to what you're saying at the top, is Trump just deciding to

wash his hands of this altogether. You know, it is the inevitable destination of America first. Like, let's, well, I don't care about this at all. The Europeans can hash this out. The Arab nation, states can hash this out. And I'm going to pivot back to the Western Hemisphere and focus on toppling Cuba. And we have a couple of pieces of evidence of that. Many more surveillance flights over Cuba than previously. There was reporting on that. over the weekend, and that is in line with kind of what they were seeing before. We went into Venezuela and Iran. Trump expressed in that same YouTube interview a frustration that the Cuban regime hasn't

already been toppled by the economic pressure we've been putting on Cuba, and he's basically saying, once we deal with this one, we're on to the next. Something to that effect about pushing towards Cuba. So that seems inevitable at this point. I guess so. I mean, A.B. Suttered, our former colleague said in a conversation, about three weeks ago or so. I said this could lead, you know, Iran could lead him to sort of say,

maybe I should avoid all this foreign adventures and, you know, get back to demagoguing on domestic issues and I'll have better luck with that. But she said, no, the psychology is he can't, he needs a big win. And Cuba's the easiest one, and he's got some support for a year because Cuba is a terrible regime and we've been so at odds with it for so many decades.

Yeah, I really wonder whether he's thinking, you know, August, September, before the midterms, maybe not even that far off, you know, June, July, time for the, I guess, the invasion of Cuba or just the pressure, kind of a Venezuela type situation, I don't know. But apart from the bad ideological elements of the Trump administration, it's driven so much now by his megalomania and vanity and all that. It really is dangerous.

A lot of it could peter out into silly things. You know, I hate all the Triumphal Arch and the statute and all that stuff. But in a way, part of you paid this point before, you know, maybe it's better if he just distracts himself with all that, you know. doesn't go around causing huge foreign policy crises, which are too real damage to us and the world. But unfortunately, it's of a peace, you know, and I suspect we're going to see something with Cuba. Summer is right around the corner. And I love the heat. So that just means I get outside more and more. We moved here to Louisiana. We moved in the summer. And immediately everybody was like, I'm so sorry for this weather.

And I was like, this is why I'm here. I want to leave in the winter to go to other warm places. It's that leaveny's skin. But, you know, when you're outside, when you're seeing concerts, you're just going to a crawfish boil, you need good outdoor clothes. You need something comfy and cute. Thanks to Mac Weldon, I got the wardrobe staples. I need to be ready for anything. You can discover upgraded basics, fresh styles, and more at macwelladin.com.

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The Virginia ruling comes down that negates the will of you and your fellow Virginians who voted in a ballot initiative to redraw the maps. The courts overturn that. So we have a couple of things like happening simultaneously. I mean, there is, I just think, complete, righteous anger about what is happening in the South and how the Republicans are going to try to redraw out all of the districts that are represented by blacks in the Olds Confederacy. And then you also have, I think, a real, I don't know if panic is the right word, but concern among Democrats about, okay, is there any way to mitigate this right now? because I think that the House of Representatives still looks quite likely to flip to the Democrats, but it's a much closer run call now with the way that the Republicans have successfully rigged the map in some of these states.

So a bunch there. I was wondering what your initial reactions are. I'll go through a couple of the elements. I'd say they threw out a referendum on a pretty shaky technical alleged problem with the way the state legislature did it. And the fourth three decision, I think the dissent stronger than the, majority opinion, but it's not in the way to really overturn it, I wouldn't say. I think that would have moved from a 6 to 5 Democratic apportionment to 11, 10 to 1, probably. I think in any kind of decent Democratic year, that 6 to 5 goes, the current 6 to 5 goes 7, 4,

maybe 8, 3, a couple of those districts are pretty close. I think 8.30. You know, yeah. So it's a two-seat loss. That's a Democratic redistricting thrown up by the court. So we have a weird way of appointing judges here in Virginia. It's from court judges. So I don't think, to be fair, that's not clear.

that's racially driven. It's more partisan. The racial stuff in the South is pretty... It's really insane, that just really quick. Like, it's pretty rare that a court overturns an election results. Yeah. Right? Like, there aren't a ton of examples of that.

And to do so on four, three grounds. And a highly litigated one. Yeah, no, it's a little unusual. And, you know, forces, yeah, and turns around what people were planning on in terms of the districts they were going to run on in the primaries in August. The Southern stuff is very unusual. pretty grotesque. I mean, I really feel, I just can't quite believe, you know, to see it happening in 20-26, let's just have no blacks in our congressional delegation in these states that have 20, 25%

black people. 30. 33. Yeah, 30% black population. I mean, I don't know. And also, it's so undisguised. I mean, now the partisanship and the racism have a high correlation, as Gelliam Morris pointed out. But of course, one reason the court was able to get to the decision was sort of a fake, statistical thing about well, it's not really about race. It's about partisanship. But you know what? If one party gets 92% of the white vote and the other party gets 90% of the black vote, what are you proving when you say it's about party, not about race? I mean, it's the ludicry. It's the same thing. And this is about race. Literally, I mean, the decision, the Supreme Court's decision, the U.S. was about race, you know, and gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which had been passed and repassed by Congress by huge majorities. Again, it's a good case, sort of like you're saying about the referendum. This isn't just tweaking with something or an administrative. interpretation of the Clean Air Act. This was a major legislation that was passed by Congress. That's three times. Yeah, it was reauthorized under, it was reauthorized under Reagan and then reauthorized again under W. Bush. Right. By big bipartisan majorities. And they've been chipping

away, more than chipping away at it, but undercutting it for quite a while. And this was maybe the final blow. So Sarah and I discussed this on yesterday. I mean, I guess Sarah's very, got to persuade more people and stuff, which is correct, I think. I think also some of the anger. can be beneficial in the sense of mobilizing democratic turnout, including minority turnout in some of these states, which could help with the state with these Senate elections, actually. They can't redistrict the Senate, you know, so can't jury mandate to the Senate any way that it is already in terms of,

you know, rural representation. I remain pretty optimistic. I actually don't, I mean, I think it's going to be a very big blue wave, and I think it's probably going to swap these. The House will be plus 30 instead of plus 25 instead of plus 30, honestly. And I think the Senate's in play. But maybe I'm kidding myself, and I don't blame the pros, the operatives for looking at it and thinking, yikes. Final point, though, I'd say people are a little too fatalistic about these districts

and about the ability of the Republican legislature to draw them so brilliantly. I saw the Tennessee districts. They've shot Memphis up into three pieces, so there's no black, no majority of minority district. Yeah. In 2018, when Bretterson ran for Senate, I guess, right, and lost. Yep. He was a strong Democratic candidate, so that caveat stipulated. he got in the new districts, if you go back and calculate what his vote was,

48 or 49% of the vote, I think, in those three Memphis, partial now Memphis districts. If 2026 is a good year, Democrats could win one or two of those seats, you know, maybe three. So I think that's true in some of these other states too, I think, that they're not so sure that Democrats can't, but, you know, can't do okay. But it is certainly a hurdle. And there are two things to look at there. I'm just on that point about whether the Democrats can win. They can win some of these districts,

but it's not as if they'll win so many that it backfires on Republicans. And they can mitigate the Republican gains by winning some of the districts. And that is definitely true. Tennessee is going to be very hard, though. The state's moved more to the right since 2018, and Brett is the most good candidate. And it is just a total outrage. You mentioned, like, they cut out Memphis into a third of third, a third.

They also cut up the black vote, a third, a third, a third. I mean, it was a purely racial gerrymander in Tennessee to ensure that black voters in Memphis do not have the representation that they choose, notably in this one case and all of the other districts. It's a black representative. In this case, it's a white representative of Steve Cohen, though he was in a primary of Justin Pearson.

But, like, however that, like, you know, ends up playing out, right? They divide the city into thirds, which is illegal and an affront and racist and all of those things, right? And so, look, I don't want to totally demoralize the people of Tennessee, like, because they simultaneously are living in a basically undemocratic, a state that is, like, basically done everything possible to minimize their democratic rights. They also have the benefits of having a couple of horrific candidates, like Andy Ogles and Scott Dejolay are, like, particularly offensive, even within the construct of MAGA, right, where everybody is offensive, like, they stand out as uniquely offensive. So that's possible to go win some of those seats. But it's pretty, it's tough. And Lauren Egan's article, which is well reported,

and the way of the board yesterday, it was pretty depressing to me. You know, because it was just like, what is the Democrats plan? And it's, oh, we've got to run candidates more suited to winning these districts. And I agree with that. We do. But it's too late to recruit candidates now.

It's in May. And there are a lot of things preventing Democrats from doing that. And you can't overcome this level of cheating solely with persuasion. And persuasion's part of it. But the cheating is pretty effective, at least in the South, for the Republicans. It's spring cleaning time, which is a great time to address some of those household tasks you've been putting off. If you've noticed that you're not sleeping well and it's time for a new mattress, our friends at Helix are here to help.

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That's helixleckslip.com slash bulwark for 27% off. The Virginia thing, I just want to throw this at you. There's a proposal going around in some quarters about changing this rule to lower the mandatory retirement age of Virginia judges to 54, which would essentially fire all the judges on the court. And Sue Haas, Super Money,

we had on the podcast, who's a big supporter of the, Amendment said this. We have Republican states ignoring their constitutions interrupting early voting and ignoring their Supreme Courts altogether. We know based on that, Republicans would explore every single option possible to move this forward. So we should do the same. He's pushing for that. I think that that is interesting as a political matter that a quite moderate member of the Virginia congressional delegation is like pushing maximum warfare here. I think that's notable and encouraging. Like this specific tactic feels like a bit of a stretch to me even.

But I don't know. I'm curious. I'm intrigued. What's your reaction? Yeah, I think it's a stretch. And I mean, what he's responding to is what is happening in the other states, right? He doesn't act. I mean, Virginia Supreme Court has been pretty bipartisan-ish that this is a pretty

partisan decision. I think if people ahead of time had said this is a disaster, it shouldn't go to the court at all, whatever. But, you know, they have, if they argued the case, I think they thought they were going to win it. at the state. So no, I don't think that's going to happen. Probably shouldn't happen. I'm certainly for all kinds of hardball. I was for the Virginia redistricting on that grounds. But that was a legal constitutional matter. And precisely, they had to have the referendum because

the Virginia Constitution required it. And they also required the two state legislative sessions passed. And that's why they did the October or November, whatever was session. And then the next one. And that's what the little technicality is about was that really voters went to the polls in October, not knowing that members had voted or, would vote in favor of this thing. Honestly, kind of ridiculous technicality, I would say. I mean, it is. But anyway, technicality may have given it a little too much dignity.

So, no, I'm not really with, I'm not with that particular move. But I'm certainly in favor of, I agree with you. You can't wish away the chief. Look, this is, we have all been saying for a year and a half, some of us have been saying, that they're going to do whatever they can for 26. They're going to do whatever they can for 28. And whatever they can involves voter suppression. It involves, God knows what kinds of shenanigans in terms of the actual voting.

in September and October and then in the counting of the balance. It also involves this kind of thing. So we shouldn't be surprised by it. We should be ready for it, I suppose, as much as we can be. I think going for the intra-Virginia, destroying the Virginia Supreme Court, you know, is a little bit of a weird way to fix this problem, I'd say. Yeah, I kind of with you. I love the energy, though.

Right. So keep the energy there. People should be looking to Sue Haas as kind of a way to have the right out of it. People really need to look at these states and districts. I think Lawrence Peace was excellent. Tennessee, maybe the worst case, but I don't know in some of these other states where there could be competitive Senate races, for example, really increased minority to turn out could make a difference in the Mississippi or something like that.

And so it would be ironic. I've thought about this. Everyone's conventionalism, I was like it were conventionalism could be, you know, it's wrong, could be wrong or reversed. Everyone, absolute conventional wisdom. House is pretty easy for the damn Senate pretty impossible. That was six months ago. Then it became House, very easy Senate, possible.

I would be funny if the Senate ends up being sort of, you know, because of this redistricting, the House becomes a war of a headache, and the Senate starts to fall into place. I don't think, I think it's overstating it, obviously. Well, J-Mart wrote in Politico about worries about backlash, and I don't know. I think maybe I'm too beaten down by the last 10 years to be helpful about that. But the point that he was making is that Republicans did make a lot of ground with black voters,

not really with black women, but black men, Trump was the high watermark in a couple decades for Republicans and and just the overt effort to like overturn the progress made of the civil rights era and to take away voting power from black folks I think could help on margins and on engagement turnout and that could make a difference some of these states again will that make up for the rigging and the cheating I don't know, but it could matter in some of these districts. And I hope it's true. And people should be outraged and motivated rather than dispirited.

Because I do think that while the House seems tougher today than it did when we taped on Friday, the Democrats are still favored to take it. So. so aggressive and out beyond the pale, should infuriate black voters. So, you know, Trump doesn't win without better numbers. They're not huge. Blacks, they're pretty big among Latinos. Yeah.

It doesn't win in 2024. They don't win the House Republicans without that spillover from Trump. So it does matter if there's a real reaction, leaving aside, like maybe some decent white people might be offended by this too, you know? God willing. I'm a little dispirited about the hope for decent people. Coming to the defense of others. know, but maybe it will happen.

And they should be fucking righteously pissed and hoping to make a difference this November. And maybe that will, you know, also come in concert with some MAGA voters feeling not that motivated to turn out. So I do think that's the caveat here. But boy, it's enraging. And pretty negative development. Let's get to the fun. Here's some other things that could cut against the Republicans. Just their total lack on focus.

about the concerns of the American people of all races and genders and ages. The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, not like that important of a role. Secretary of Transportation, usually not at the center of our public debate, but in a moment where everybody is pissed off about gas prices, pissed off about the rising price of air travel, you'd think that he would be laser-focused on trying to alleviate those concerns. Instead, he was on Fox and Friends on Friday announcing this. So I wanted to lean into America's 250th birthday.

Rachel and I actually met on a road trip on a reality TV show. And so over the course of seven months, we just kind of found these moments where I might be able to do some work. I could take the kids with me, do a road trip. Oh, yeah. And our motto is to love America is to see America. And there's so much to see in this beautiful country. A seven-month road trip for the Secretary of Transportation where we're paying his salary. He's going to do some work.

He's going to do some work. Well, he's on a seven-month road trip while everybody is enraged about a skyrocketing gas prices. To call that tone deaf feels like an understatement. I couldn't agree more. They're also, you know, they're so self-centered and smug and self-satisfied, such jackasses. They don't see how this stuff looks. I hope it looks bad. I hope people take advantage of it, honestly.

Democrat should create fake road trips and have like little, I don't know what they should. I'm not good at this kind of thing, but some of our friends who are. some of our friends that would be good at figuring me out putting little, you know, mockups of Duffy and his family in some car and having them go around everywhere, you know, not doing his job. And isn't it paid for? Was it paid for it by various corporations who put the money into some 501C3? Yeah, it's paid for by a nonprofit run by a transportation industry lobbyist and funded by various transportation companies that are seeking Duffin's favor, things like Brightline, the private railway. And I think Toyota is in there. It's like, what?

The swamp is buying off Sean Duffy so he can take his family to go see Mount Rushmore and the Arch and the Grand Canyon. To see America. To love America, Tim. You know, I want to go do that. You're typical anti-American lefty, bullwark type, you know. People aren't going to be able to go on road trips this summer because they can't fucking afford it, Sean Duffy.

Like, what are you doing? Clever people than I should think of ways to bring this home. Yeah, as airplane ticket prices, as soar, because of the price of jet fuel and his gas prices soar. Yeah, I absolutely got to really make Sean Duffy more famous. They're really bad. You know, the Trump, maybe you haven't noticed this. The Trump cabinet is really bad. They're not just incompetently bad. They're just all smug assholes, if I could say so, you know? Yeah, it's true. You know, Sam and I a couple weeks ago had did our cabinet ranking worst cabinet officials and it's tough and it's competitive it's a it's

really tough choosing you know having to narrow it down to the worst four was a challenge is one of them two of them respectable do you think we always keep coming back to dug bergum is the respectable one but that said there's some there's some stories about some pretty strange ways which he was treating his staff so i don't know it's really one of the worst collections of individuals you could possibly imagine. Speaking of which, why don't we get into the comedy? One of the other ones this is macabre, dark comedy I guess, was our Secretary of Health

and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. We have the haunt of virus going around. Pretty serious. The people on the ships, for some reason we're bringing one person that was exposed to antivirus on one of these cruise ships back to America

to quarantine. I'm kind of like, can't we quarantine that person somewhere else? Do they have to be quarantined? here and there's some concerns that Robert F. Kennedy is in charge of that, you know, given his past comments and beliefs about how to deal with these kinds of pandemics and epidemics. John Mulaney, the comedian who did the famous, Trump is the horse in the hospital bit, which is really good. He had a comedy show at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend and some of the video leaked of that and it's so good. I just want to play it for you.

Back when I lived in New York, he was in charge of a thing called the riverkeepers. They were in charge of keeping the Hudson River clean. That was his job. That's how good he is at jobs. His old job was keeping the Hudson River whose native fish is tied off used condom clean. Now I'm in charge of your bones in your tummy. Stupid fuck, your thing can't eat the measles. Did you get the measles?

Did you read the card? It was from me. Do you like having the meals very much? So that leaves me pretty concerned about the haunt of virus, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, no, I think I'm staying off cruise ships. I was going to stay off cruise ships anyway for the next N years. Forever.

Yeah, that's the easier way to say that. I think I'll just stick with that resolution. Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to go in the MAGA gay cruise? We had a little bit of video. You looked at that more closely. That's your kind of.

Yeah, I have an update. I have an update. There was a cruise of gay MAGA influencers for people who don't follow who are just pod only. We do a series of videos with Will Summer and me and Sam Stein trio videos where we talk about the craziest stuff happening in MAGA over on the board takes feed. And we did one on this. And I didn't really know a whole lot about it. I just, I'd seen a MAGA gay that I follow had posted about his time there. And so we kind of, we watched that video and made fun of him and riffed on that.

But after we published a listener posted on the Boller Credit page that they were on the ship, that they hadn't like rented out a ship for the MAGA gay cruise. Like when you did the weekly standard cruises, I assume it was all weekly standard people. No? No, no, no. At times you would get 250 cabins on a thousand cabins ship. So I did not realize. And you would eat together.

And you would have your own seminars and stuff and your own. you'd get the ballroom but no no no so i did not realize that and so in this case that cruise was about a third and then this person was posting the pictures of them like all of the gays and their red shirts like over on the corner of the boat and they weren't the cute gays we should at least say that but i don't i just i can't imagine i mean a i can't imagine going on a cruise vacation in any circumstance but talk about the bad luck and i guess we had to rank worth luck of getting on cruises getting on the Hanta virus cruise would be definitely number one, you know, since your life is at risk.

The poop cruise, I think, number two, would be the second worst. But then getting on a cruise and having it be the game. Because that has to be number three. Nice three-generation family from, you know, Worcetka, Kansas, safe. This is going to be the 75th birthday of the grandparent. This is not a lot of these crazy things, right?

You know, the teenage kids, the in between the parents, your age. And then, yeah, it's showing up. You're on the pool, there you are. And it's a guy in a Hillary for prison, speedo. You're like, what? Okay. I want to go with your newsletter this morning was about,

I told you there to be laughs. So the moodslet this morning was about the gold statue. Because we have the policy of not playing Trump's voice, I'm not going to play the audio. But there was a dedication of a golden calf. at Marilago. I don't know any other way to say it. It looks just like Kim Jong-un's golden statue. It looks just like the calf from the Old Testament. That's more of your area than mine. The Old Testament's and you have some ruminations on that. Trump calls in to the dedication.

Talks about how great it is, how excited it is, how excited he is. He talks about how he went to the golf course. People were complimenting him about the golden statue. Pastor Mark Burns, who was the pastor, I guess, in charge of the statue. posted this. Today at Trump National Dural history was made. I'm deeply honored to lead the dedication event for President Donald J. Trump in the unveiling of the

22-foot statue created his honor. This was far more than a ribbon cutting. It was a moment for gratitude, honor, and remembrance. Let me say this plainly. This is not a golden calf. The statue is not about worship. It is about honor.

So, I don't know. Do you have protest too much a little bit, maybe? Do you have any thoughts on that? You think, I think let me say this plainly, this is not a golden calf. It's like not a good thing you ought to have to say. That's something. If you're a pastor, blessing and consecrating this wonderful grotesque, pretty ugly. Why was it a pastor if we're not worshipping it?

Why shouldn't it have been a layman? I don't know if the clergy was necessary. Yeah, they could put up the idiotic statute. It's his own golf course, I guess. is it's private property. None of the rest of us has to see it anymore after this one video. Much well-deserved ridicule for Pastor Burns. A lot of people rallying to his defense, that guy Jeffreys, who's like an anti-gay, anti-Semitic, racist, anti-Catholic, actually pastor, I guess. Is your policy that we don't call them pastors if we don't, I mean,

I'm open to that. Pastor Doug, I didn't want to call a pastor, Pastor Doug Wilson, because he doesn't seem to even do any pastoring. I like, Like his entire persona is just that he's a pastor that, like, wants to bring slavery back. So, Jeffress, I don't, I remember him being very bad. There's a big controversy around McCain. Yeah, terrible. He said he didn't want to campaign with him. I mean, somewhere down.

I don't know. I'm on the fence. I'm okay with what we're just calling him Robert. Okay. Anyway, pastor, yes. The pastor does protest too much about it. It's not a golden gaffe, you know. Everyone's immediately sees it and thinks.

It's not a golden gaffe. And everyone immediately thinks golden gaffe. So the first words out of Israel, that's hard. It's not a gold gap. Don't even think about that. It's raising some additional questions. I could have made it silver. Could have made it orange.

Trump's orange. That would have been an option. Purple. Trump tweeted that it's like it's the real deal. It's gold. It's of course like one eighth inch. I'd say, one-sixth-th-th-inch gold leaves. Whatever.

It's ghastly. But at least it's, I mean, I make this point in the newsletter. It's not as stupid golf. People signed up for Trump. Doral have to endure it, I suppose. I think the world leaders is in the G20 meeting there at the end of this year. They have to walk by it. How humiliating.

I mean, really, you know, a really semi-serious country, and you have to walk by this 22-foot grotesque gold statue of Trump, which he's put up, I mean, electorally daughters have put up at his club, you know, and he's thrilled about it. He's thrilled what he called in, the people are taking pictures of it with themselves with it. On the other hand, it's not good for Trump politically. It brings home even more. It's all he cares about is himself.

And then, of course, I do think the arch here in Washington, which would intrude on Arlington Cemetery, so that's not something that's one of our most sacred public spaces. That's a different matter than putting up some idiotic statute to yourself at your private club. And the ballroom, he wants a billion dollars for. Democrats really need to go crazy about that stuff. I'm worried there like being a little too, you know,

we've got to focus on affordability, Tim, and it's a kitchen table and the gas prices, which is important. It's all the same. It's all the same. But he is, I mean, the solipsism, the narcissism, the focus on this, couldn't care less about the gas prices.

Sean Duffy doesn't care about it. None of them cares about them. That guy, right, the energy secretary, maybe he does a little better job pretending to at least be concerned about them. I don't know, but they're not, it's pathetic, really. None of them cares about what actual people

are going through. And I say this in the newsletter, I think you and I discussed this maybe shortly after 2016. When Trump said in 2016, Hillary says, wants you to say, I'm for her, but I say

I'm with you. I'm with her. I'm with you, right? Yeah, I'm with her. I'm with her. That was their proud slogan for the woman president. And I say, I'm with you. And I remember thinking when I heard that, first I think it's some speech in New York,

but then at the convention in Cleveland, think, that's a pretty effective line, you know? And then, of course, with Kamala was the same thing. She's for, she's with them, she's for them, they, I'm with you. That I'm with you thing is gone. And people need to just hammer home. that he's from only could care less.

He's a narcissist who cares only about himself. And the ballroom, the statue, and the arch are pretty good, concrete examples of it that people could understand, I think. Amen. I think it's a big political opportunity. It does make you a little sick to your stomach. I don't really consider the Durrell part.

I like the fact that the G7 is a Doral is a total insane affront. I'm thinking about Matt Iglesias posted by this this weekend. It's just I got mad all over again about the coverage of Hillary's email server from 2016. He, like, posted an analysis of it. And it was like, the three major nightly news spent like 4X more time on her email server than all policy issues combined. And it's like, they're not, they don't even cover this stuff anymore.

I do, you know, what server is Jared Kushner talking to BB and MBS on? I don't think a public server that we can get access to. You know, like the whole thing is absurd. And, you know, so there's not even the commensurate level of outrage at all. that the fact that the G7 is at Dural. But then on top of that, to have like Friedrich Mertz walking by like the Trump golden calf

when he comes to the G7. It's like fucking ridiculous. It's crazy. It's sickening and hopefully politically useful, but sickening. And I was thinking about that in the context when we're in the green room discussing we have our bulwark confab in D.C.

on Wednesday. And so Pod might be out of a weird time on Wednesday. FYI on that. We'll love a full announcement for you guys tomorrow and how we're going to do it. But I'm like, I don't want to have to go by the buildings that have his face on it. I don't know how you all live there, to be honest. Like, that makes me kind of sick, just like thinking about it, about how gross it all is.

And that's of a piece with the calf, too. So I don't want to end us on a down note. So there was the Netflix was a joke thing last night. I didn't really have an angle for like a deep political analysis angle for this Chelsea Handler joke. It just was very satisfying. So, Bill, why don't I say goodbye to you? And then we can just leave people with a little,

we can just listen to Chelsea Handler together and laugh. How does that sense? I'm for that. It's good being with you. Good being with you. I'll see you. Now we'll listen to the joke. We'll laugh.

And I'll see you tomorrow, right? Yeah, we'll see you tomorrow now. We'll see you on Wednesday in D.C. Everybody else will be back tomorrow with another edition of the podcast. Here's Chelsea. Now that your favorite leader is making the draft mandatory, I assume that all of you will be signing up to go fight in Iran. Or do you tough talking pussies only go to the Middle East for comedy festivals?

I'm so happy we can say pussy again. Bye, everybody. See you tomorrow. 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.