The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: What Does 'They' Mean?

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

The administration is threatening to take away money and power—and maybe even freedom—from some vague Trump opponents because of the Kirk assassination. It doesn't seem to matter that elected Democrats have roundly condemned his murder. And it doesn't matter that Trump himself largely ignored the recent political assassination of Minnesota Democratic legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband. But anyone who is pro-assassination is a foe of The Bulwark. Full stop. A free country by definition must protect the right to self-expression. Plus, the giant nationalist march in London over the weekend, the latest stalling tactic on Russia sanctions, and the right of trans people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Today's "Morning Shots" Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" with Jay Nordlinger Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at TheBulwark.com/events. Tix for a second Toronto show go on sale this week! Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/thebulwark today.

Hey, everybody. I just wanted to talk to me and you all for a little bit at the start here. We get to Bill Crystal in a minute. There are a lot of things that were making me very angry over the weekend in the fallout from Charlie Kirk's assassination. Among them are the fact that I see almost nobody discussing the gun culture that this young man was steeped in and that has been ignored and being considered irrelevant to this conversation for some reason. I'm upset about how stupid the punditry is about the online subculture. this killer was steeped in and we're going to be talking more about that this week i'm angry about the despicable attacks on trans people the incitements to civil war i've seen from prominent people on the right ted cruz's creepy a i slop tributes to charlie kirk rfk claiming kirk was his soulmate i could go on there's a lot pissing me off about how supposedly responsible leaders in the MAGA world have acted. And I'm going to be covering all of that and more on this podcast and in the weeks ahead. And by the way, that's one more thing that I'm angry about, that I have to steep myself in this

assassination coverage for the foreseeable future. And that's something that makes me angry at the killer, frankly. And before we get to all that with Bill Crystal, there's one other thing that I'm really upset about and that really shook me this weekend, and I want to talk about that with you. The number of people who I've encountered who told me some variation of Charlie had it coming is deeply, deeply alarming and upsetting, and it's something that has really kind of shaken me to my core. And before I talk about those folks, I just want to be clear about who and what I am not

talking about. I'm not talking about people who are posting their strong disagreements with Charlie, lifting up his past noxious comments or any of that. It's perfectly appropriate to speak the truth about his role in our national discourse to express strong disagreement with him, with the TPSA mission. It's a free country, or at least it's supposed to be still. So I have no qualm with folks expressing their political disagreements with him. I'm also not talking about the algorithmically delivered sludge from random strangers that Elon and the Chinese are elevating into my 4U page, and I've seen some pretty fucking nasty stuff on there, but I'm not letting that get to me. And I'm not, it's important to say, talking about the Democratic Party or Democratic leaders who have been acting extremely responsibly throughout all of this at times in contrast to their GOP counterparts, and certainly in contrast to how their GOP counterparts acted following the attack on Paul Pelosi. and others. So I think that it is important that I distinguish the thing that is upsetting

me about some on the left from what is happening in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Because a lot of my criticism of the Republican Party is how leaders responded to pressure from voters that was pushing them in a direction that they knew to be wrong. And so I appreciate the Democratic leaders for acting responsibly over the last few days. But what I am talking about, The thing that is getting me really upset, it's coming from people that are real, but either I know or I know to be not inauthentic. It's coming from people I follow posting things like, hey, fascist catch. Had to unfollow a couple people on that. Coming from people that I follow on Instagram posting pretty gleefully. It's coming from the people that follow.

follow the show and comment on our posts at times. And it's coming from people in real life that I met at a bar. That's right. On Friday, I was watching my friend DJ. And there was somebody that I've met before, but don't really know that well. And they came up to me. And apropos of nothing told me that they have French ancestors and they know what it's like to fight the fascists. and they're happy that this fascist is dead.

Someone volunteered that to me at the bar. I had a couple other people say something not quite as gross, but close to the same ballpark. I don't know what signals I sent to the universe that led someone to decide that I was a person they should confess that they're pro-assination to. but let me be clear don't fucking do that

I consider anyone who is pro assassination of Charlie Kirk a foe even if we voted for the same person in the last election I know we discussed this last week and I know that probably some folks are sick of it

and that's fine you can fast forward to Bill but I wanted to one more time explain why this is also important to me number one just fundamentally this is wrong I believe that when people ask me about what my ideology is now

that I left the Republican Party I always come back to this one phrase I believe that people should have an opportunity to live a life of purpose and meaning if they choose to and that the government should do what it can to foster it and do what it can to protect people

from threats to that maybe another way to put it threats to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. That's my North Star and I guess it should go without saying but I'll say it explicitly that you can't live a life of purpose and meaning if you get gunned down on a campus.

I also think that people should have the chance to grow and change and find that meeting. It's kind of something that I've been thinking about. It's striking that I, on Friday, I had David Frum on this podcast. Today I had Bill Crystal. And I wonder what some of the people leafly posting about Charlie would have said if one of them had been assassinated 20 years ago? because it sure seems like some people that like Bill Crystal now would have been at least neutral to that 20 years ago

if recent reactions or any signal. And that's a disturbing thought to have. It's a disturbing thought to have. And let me tell you, I've had a lot of people tell me they thought that they hated Bill Crystal when he was on the Sunday shows. They watched him growing up, or they watched him as they were getting involved, as they were, you know, coming into age, into adulthood,

and they didn't like his views on a lot of issues. And that, you know, because of this podcast and because of other things, I've just come to see him for what he is. I mean, it's self-deprecating and thoughtful and a great father and grandfather and somebody who cares about this country. And I'm not saying that Charlie Kirk was any of that, but I'm just saying that, you know, I think that it's important to allow people to space

to demonstrate who they are allow people the chance to grow and learn and change some people change for the worse some people change to the better this is part of the human experience

and I would think that people who thought that Bill Crystal was an enemy and have come to find him charming and lovable and thoughtful might kind of think twice about the one-dimensional way in which they view a 31-year-old who got assassinated.

I'd secondly like to say that even if it wasn't morally reprehensible to support assassination or to give comfort to assassination, it is morally reprehensible. But even if it wasn't, does anybody think that this worked or helped the anti-Maga or anti-fascist cause? If you were that guy at the bar and you think that the right thing to do is to fight and defeat fascism in all its forms? Does it seem like that happened over the last week? Because I don't know. I think if you're in real anti-fascists, you should be furious at the man that just empowered the fucking fascists. From the LSU game on Saturday, where I'd watch a flyover about Charlie Kirk to reports from friends at church services about how priests were talking about Charlie

Kirk, to the NFL tributes, to social media feeds. Charlie Kirk is now a martyr. People who had never heard of Charlie Kirk are now hearing these hagiographies and these tributes to him. People that never heard of Charlie Kirk in my section around me at Tiger Stadium on Saturday were cheering and whooping and hollering for him. It sure doesn't seem to me like the anti-fascist cause was advanced in any way. Then you got Stephen Miller, little Gallum in the White House, talking about how to use this to crack down on anti-fascist groups, on liberal groups on activist groups that are working to oppose the MAGA cause to advance the progressive agenda now the arm of the government is planning on cracking down on them even more doesn't seem

to me like any anti-fascist objective was met this weekend seems like the opposite and how about the trans folks do you think that the trans roommate of the shooter thinks that this made their life or the life of trans people safer or better? Because I fucking don't. I really worry for the safety of that person, for their future. I worry for all of trans folks

right now. I think that we're already in an ugly period for them, and I think that it's about to get worse. And while TPUSA was definitely hostile to trans Americans, I don't think that what happened in Utah is going to do anything to make

their lives better. Doesn't fucking seem like it to me, at least. The other political thing about this that makes me think about is last year when people were asking me, like, where we're going, I said, one of my worries that we were going to play similar to an Ireland with the troubles, like not that we'd have a real civil war, but there'd be, you know, just spates of violence, of political violence cropping up in this country. And a lot of times, this was before Trump had won again. In my head, I was envisioning, you know, I don't know, Kamala Harris being president and that there would be spates of MAGA violence. violence and domestic terrorism. And obviously we've seen some of that. Still, I guess the worst case scenario I can think of is a world where the

mega-nationalists are in charge, the fascists are in charge, and there are spates of anti-fascist violence, martering them and empowering them further and creating a cycle that allows them to use their power to crack down even more. That seems like the worst possible case scenario. It seems like there's some people out there on the activist left. that want to careen us towards that. Maybe not that many people, but too many people for comfort. One more thing about why this has hit me so hard.

I genuinely believe what I say on this podcast, which is why you're getting this rant. I genuinely believe all the reasons that I've given you about why I left the GOP, why I upended my life, why I thought that the illiberalism of Donald Trump was such a threat to this country. I'm never offering arguments here as opposed or as, some kind of, you know, triple bank shot, clever way to get back at MAGA. I don't pretend to have views.

I oppose illiberalism in all its forms. I oppose the violent rhetoric that Donald Trump reinserted into our politics. I oppose the ill-treatment of political foes and the dehumanization of political foes that he advanced. I oppose the way in which they want to take away the rights of political enemies. None of this is oppose or positioning. Okay. And so when I oppose illiberalism coming from Trump, I'm not going to then flip around the other side and say I love or I defend or I understand illiberalism from the other side. Let's just give you a specific example.

There was the case of Kilmar-Brigo Garcia this year. It's something that I was really upset about and talked about a lot. This notion that somebody could have their life taken from them, that they could be grabbed and sent to a foreign torture prison without due process just because the government or some people in the government did not like what he stood for. On the right, there was a big conversation on Fox and other places among Republican politicians that I found disgusting about how, well, Kilmer Garcia beat his wife or whatever. He was a trafficker or he sold drugs.

He was a drug dealer. And what I would say to that is, okay, prove it. Prove it. Take him to court. We have a rule of law in this country. If that is true, then find legal remedies for dealing with this problem like we do in a liberal democracy. within the construct of a liberal democratic system, of the rule of law, of democracy, you can't just say that guy's a wife-beater so I get to send him to a torture prison camp.

You have to prove it. You have to go to a jury. You have to prosecute him. Like whether or not he's a bad person or whether or not he's a person that's done bad things is irrelevant to an autocrat wanting to snuff out his rights. And in some cases, if people hadn't objected, if Kewa hadn't. pushed back, Republicans and Maga and Donald Trump was happy to essentially end Kilmar Garcia's life. At the time, nobody had gotten out of Sukkot. It was pressure from the courts,

pressure from lawyers, pressure from activists, pressure from the media, pressure from politicians that led him to be able to get his day in court. And this is all still ongoing. This is a fight that's still ongoing. My point is it was like it didn't, what I said at that time is it didn't matter whether I disagreed with his behavior. He still needed to be treated as a human who has rights in this country. Everybody on the left that I could see fully agreed with that argument. That was an argument. A lot of people advanced, right?

So it's hard for me to understand how you could say, unless you were faking. Unless you could say, if you said, I believe that somebody that allegedly beat his wife and sold drugs and traffic people, you know, should not have their rights taken away from them, should not be sent to a torture prison, then I don't understand how you can flip it around and say, well, I just, I don't care that much if somebody with bad opinions got killed, got assassinated. That doesn't work for me. Like the inverse of that, that doesn't compute, okay? Like, Charlie Kirk had a lot of opinions I disagreed with. We argued all the time. I would go every, every Christmas I went and argued with people at his TPSA function and we met

and we would talk and argue and tease each other. He had bad opinions, some real ones. We live in a country where people are allowed to have bad opinions freely and where they do not need to be afraid, they should not be afraid, that somebody will do a summary execution on them because they didn't like their opinions. So for me, these liberal democratic principles that are applied to Kilmar Abrago Garcia also apply in spades to Charlie Kirk. And I got to tell you, I don't think you are a liberal. You might say you're a little, but I don't think you're a liberal if you're neutral

on the topic of stucatic political terrorism. All right. And I don't think that you're in the pro-demo-no. Let me correct that. I know you're not in the pro-democracy coalition. if you are neutral on someone getting murdered while practicing open debate. Being for liberal democracy means standing up for the rule of law, standing up for people to have the ability to express their views in public on a college campus,

even if their views are noxious, even if you disagree stridently with their views, even if you think that their views are a plague on the country and the youth, it doesn't matter. being for democracy means you are for their ability to express them and that you will push back on them in the public square you will try to push back on them at the ballot box you will encourage you to go out and vote against that worldview that is what being in the pro-democracy coalition is and frankly if you want to really define yourself as being pro-democracy it is especially true especially true that people who have views you disagree with are protected, that they are safe to express them.

As you can tell, this is something that I care very deeply about. It is, frankly, at the core of why this exists, why this project exists, why this bulwark exists, because my outrage and horror at Trumpian liberalism is what made me decide that I need to speak out against it and act out against it and organize against it. At the time, I was considering maybe I just quit politics, and I don't know, go be a PR guy for a corporate law firm or something, or a corporate, you know, some company's PR ma'am, right? I was living in Oakland at the time. I used to joke, like, maybe I'll go do PR for Klorox and, like, sell bleach wipes or whatever. I don't know.

Like, screw this. But my passion and my anger and my rage at the illiberalism and the dehumanization that we saw from Trump and from the MAGA movement is why I am here talking about this with you. and I'm not trying to create an equivalent, and obviously, as I said at the top, it is much, much worse when it is leaders of a movement or a party that are acting illiberally, that are dehumanizing, that are trying to undermine our democratic system. And the gap between Democratic leaders and Republican leaders on this front is so wide that you can't even see it with the naked eye. And yet, I still just cannot abide anyone. even feeling just the tiniest bit confused about whether I might be in a fellow a fellow traveler with them if they think it's okay to post hey fascist catch on social media. I am not. I'm not in the business of trading one form of liberalism for another. And I'm never going to be. So

that's what I got for you. Up next, Bill Crystal. All right, everybody. Inflation isn't going anywhere. Our pockets are getting tight. We might have some Trumpian stagflation ahead, and everybody knows there are things you can do to reduce monthly costs and improve your finances. But who has the time to kind of go through all their expenses and really figure it out and figure out what's worth it to cut? But with Rocket Money, crunching the numbers for you, this all gets a lot easier. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions.

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So, you know, it kind of cuts both ways. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals. faster with rocket money go to rocket money.com slash the bulwark today that's rocketmoney.com slash the bulwark rocketmoney.com slash the bulwark hello and welcome to the bulwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. day and so we're here with editor-at-large bill crystal bill uh boy you know how thrilled are you to be podcasting with me today great you know i've always filled to be podcasting with you tim especially when you're in when you're upbeat big lSU victory over the weekend i know that was a big

tailgating that's the first home game you've been to this year first home game was a good win the defense is unbelievable it's like a 2011 defense is that right i was talking to laura our colleague lauren egan a huge Vanderbilt fan uh she has tickets there and they're through the undefeated start too. So that game, you're going to go up to Nashville for that game in a month. It's going to be huge. It's going to be huge.

Intra bulwark. Intra bulwark, tensions will rise. You know, it'll be good. It was not on my schedule, but yeah, no, Vandy's looking good. So maybe I'll have to make an exception. All right. Well, from that upbeat note, we, I want to start with,

I would like to say, I did my best to pretend to be vaguely upbeat and to be living in a normal America where we can focus on college football and for 45 seconds of this podcast. I'd like the record to show that. Well, I just got a, about half of my annoyances out in a monologue before you came on about all things Charlie Kirk assassination. So I just kind of want to give you the floor and wondering what you're seeing out there and what your main reactions are. It's very bad when someone gets

murdered, assassinated. It's very bad when the reaction is immediately polarized and politicized when on all sides. So I think with more culpability and impact on the right in the sense that you have to the President of the United States leading that reaction and weaponizing it, you have a lot of people online on the left saying stupid and foolish and offensive things, but not really many, almost all democratic politicians, I think. And I'd say sort of respectable, liberal opinion types have been pretty responsible. So it's asymmetrical, but not good in either way, honestly. And I mean, it's terrible for him, obviously, and his family and all that. And terrible for the country. Assassinations are a bad thing to unleash. You know, someone reminded

me this of, you know, one does tend to lead to another if you look at history. And so you just don't want to be living in a country where this becomes routine. And it has become more common, right? I mean, the Minnesota assassination, which people didn't talk as much about. But that was an assassination of elected officials. That hasn't happened that often in U.S. history. And it happened. And actually, it was kind of memory hold pretty quickly.

In their homes, in a particularly... Totally ideological motive. I mean, lists of Democrats and so forth. No question about that motive. Would it be nice to have had a president of the United States? on the other side from these Democrats who would have denounced it, which I just do want to make that one point.

I mean, every president we've ever had would have done that. Nixon, Carter, you don't like him, you don't like him. Some of them were not great on everything else. And race makes it a little more complicated, but let's just say, living that aside, maybe. Yeah, every president we've ever had

would have felt compelled and felt it his duty. And it would have been a real duty and a real public good to make clear that this is unacceptable. And we have a president who didn't make that clear three months ago. We have some people not saying it on the left now, and that's very bad. I just to your point in like the contrast, you've got today, like J.D. Vance is hosting Charlie's

podcast to a tribute to him, which is again, he's fine, his right. They had a big Kennedy Center thing last night. RFK Jr.'s talking about how Charlie Kirk was his soulmate. It was a very strange thing to say. And, you know, there will be a big memorial next Sunday, I think, in Arizona. Just, again, like, the contrast between that, it would have been appropriate. Maybe they didn't want him, but it would have been appropriate for J.D. Vance to have offered to speak at the memorial of the, you know, Minnesota, of Melissa Hortman or whatever, you know. And so, and that contrast is pretty noteworthy. Be nice of J.D. Vance invited on his podcast today. The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, who's been responsible in his statements, be nice to be invited on some Democrats

who got out of their way to express their revulsion and horror at this murder. Do you think he will? No, I don't think so. I think we're getting the other side. And you guys wrote in morning shots about Stephen Miller is kind of the locus of this effort to weaponize this tragedy against Americans. He said this, the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power. And if you've broken the law, take away your freedom. That was Stephen Miller talking about, I guess, activists left groups and protesters. Soros and troublemakers and kind of this whole grab bag of villains that they are trying to create out of this. That's a pretty alarming sentiment. You is what you guys wrote about. So talk about that a little bit. Yeah. And the you in that sentence is kind of on what's the term for that in grammar when there's no like reference for the for the for the for the for the for the for the for the for the for now. I mean, we don't know who that you is. It could be a very wide swath of people he and Donald Trump don't like or who have criticized them or who at different times have

criticized Charlie Kirk or organizations that fund people who haven't been sufficiently respectful they would judge of Kirk's achievements after his death. I mean, the degree to which we are looking at a, at Miller says it's explicitly, right, a government-led onslaught against the, quote, power and the money of people who apparently haven't broken the law. If you've broken the law, you're going to lose your freedom. I don't know, you know, presumably there would be trials. Maybe not.

Maybe it would just be martial law at that point. But for everyone else, at least the government's going to go after. your power and your money. And again, that everyone else is a very broad group. Since Stephen Miller is the person who said the entire Democratic Party is, what did you say, domestic terrorists just last week, right? So I mean, by his own account, you might say, people who are writing it as if he's going after some radical left groups and thinking deep down, well, I'm not part of that. If you are in any way part of the opposition to Donald Trump, you are part of what Stephen Miller is targeting. Well, while we focus on grammar for a second, you're talking about. You're talking

about the kind of undefined you. And this is what we've seen from Trump and from a lot of MAGA leaders is the undefined you and then defined they, right? And like we, like this was a rant that I went on following the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler last year, which was just the degree of irresponsibility among leaders at the top of the Republican Party talking about how they wanted him dead, they wanted him that even like, even like the more traditional old school type of Republicans who just stuck around for MAGA were doing this, right?

Like, it was, it was completely widespread. Like, they were going after them. They wanted to jail him. They wanted to kill them. And that does contribute to this notion that, like, we have some civil war happening in this country and that it is, you know, maybe, you know, justified to go after this undefined they, undefined you, right? And that is something that this should be.

called out every time people see it in public because it's important to force them to actually talk about what really happened. What really happened is not in both those cases is extremely bad but is not part of some civil war, some generational struggle, right? It's in the case of Trump getting arrested, it was specific grand juries, looked at evidence and decided that he had done wrongdoing with specific people. In the case of Butler, it seems like just a loner kid that had too easy access to firearms and it could have been any famous person that came to its town. In this case, we don't quite know exactly yet, but we're still going to find out more. But even still, it's just one guy.

It's one young guy who is lived in a MAGA family in Utah. You know, you saw people over the weekend talking about how the college radicalized them. Like, he went to some technical college in Utah. It's not like he went to Wellesley and got radicalized by the far leftists, right? He went to Orum, Provo, Utah, they went to St. George, Utah. He's like one of the reddest parts of the country. I think that in talking about it, the responsible way to do it is obviously to condemn this in all forms. But to talk about what it really is, you know, to try to identify what the real problems are that need to be addressed.

This administration doesn't have any interest in that. They have interest in using it to go after their political foes and to try to broaden it out beyond what it really is and create a greater struggle. greater troubles, if you will, than we have now. Yeah, and to encourage fairly vigilante violence pretty directly, I would say, almost. And also to threaten, as we were saying, to use the force of the federal government. Now, the Trump and Steven Miller in charge of that again. So that's very different from denouncing some, you know, there could be some reckless rhetoric, that might lead some people to do this.

That's sort of, I think, a reasonable thing to do if you cite particular rhetoric and maybe there's some connection to the shooter. Again, what's striking, in the case of the murder of the Minnesota representative and her husband, and then the assault on a colleague of hers and I think it was his spouse where they were very badly wounded, that was explicitly political. And I don't recall Democrats then saying they might have said, you know, Trump and his people should be more careful about their rhetoric, but that was about it. And they didn't use anything approaching the kind of rhetoric that Trump and Miller and Vance are using in this case. And the whole MAGA movement seems to be on board this blaming,

Everyone who is not part of MAGA, basically, honestly, or is not at least willing to acquiesce in MAGA's dominance of America. You're not just part of the problem. You're not just insufficiently attentive to MAGA's concerns. You are basically a domestic terrorist. Maybe they'll tolerate you using your rights of free speech and holding your job and so forth for a certain amount of time. But basically, you are not in any way a fellow American citizen.

Maybe I overstated that a little bit, But I think the rhetoric is pretty dangerous and very dangerous and pretty appalling. And that's for sort of the whole, the big picture, the big you and they, as you correctly say. And then the demonizing of particular groups, obviously, some groups is really, really dangerous and terrible. Yeah, a lot there. So just a couple thoughts. Just briefly, I should just say, also the way that they're going after people, I mean, they literally have a list that they're gathering of people who said wrong thoughts about Charlie Kirk, that they went fired from

their jobs, which shows you about how genuine the whole cancel culture, fake outrage was with these guys, of course. But yeah, they do want to punish people and target them. There is an effort to do that, an effort to go after them. And I think it's the most acute on the trans issue, of course. You mentioned it, but I guess just to give people the facts here of what we know so far. Governor Cox on ABC this weekend said that the shooter lived with a romantic partner who was undergoing a gender transition. He said also that the roommate was aghast at the sling when speaking to investigators and was cooperating. So I do think that's an important thing to say at least based on what we know this was not like stoking it or whatever. Yet I don't think that that fact is going to

stop what we all have already seeing and what is all coming, which is a campaign of demonization, of dehumanization of trans people you posted over the weekend. It should be needless to say, but it is perhaps at this moment worth saying that transgender individuals have the same right as anyone else's to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's not hard to see where this is going, I guess. I got to say, Spencer Cox has been pretty good, and I agree with a lot of the praise of him. He didn't need to say all this stuff on Sunday. It's not appropriate. He's the governor of the state. He hasn't done his own investigation. He doesn't know what's here saying and what's real. He doesn't know if people are saying things to, I don't know, for whatever

reason. I'm not saying they are, but I feel like even he is not, you know, quite following the right protocol and the norms of how one conducts a serious investigation of this kind. As you say, maybe he was saying it with a certain good intention to say that the roommate was cooperating and therefore shouldn't be held accountable. But the roommate's not accountable anyway. I mean, it's all ridiculous, right? I mean, just as the wife of the 57-year-old murderer in Minneapolis isn't accountable, unless that person is accountable and was a co-conspirator, in which case, fine, then that will come out in the investigation and in court,

and the person might be indicted and so forth. But it's holding any relationship what has with a trans person, any person who commits a crime or has such a relationship is now that's going to be blamed on the trans, on trans individuals, on trans rights, or human rights. rights for transgender people. I mean, it really is appalling. And the targeting there is just so over the top. And I will say, Charlie Kirk engaged in the summer of that himself. He was not careful in what he said. He, you know, his entitled to his views, obviously, but he was not careful in the way he framed his objections to, to the extension of human rights to transgender

individuals. So. And you can tell they wanted this fight, obviously from the start, right? And like, initially, it's like, oh, the bullets had trans stuff on it. No, they didn't. Oh, the shooter might be trans. No, that's not true. Oh, the roommate to strand, right? Like, it's like you're desperate for grasping for any way to kind of demonize that community. To your point on Cox, I just want to echo on both points. I think that obviously compared to a lot of other MAGA leaders right now, his tone has been much better.

That said, both on this transit issue and on like the shooter's motivations, I do feel like he's freelancing on that quite a bit. And I think that I've seen a lot of freelancing in a lot of places. particularly from a lot of old people who could not possibly translate the like meme culture frames from the helldivers video game that was on these bullets right i mean like i mean i'm getting old i was trying to explain it to my husband who was like what is oh w out right like this person is 22 years old is deep into internet subcultures and i think that we're going to learn more about what the views are but it was intentionally ironic and cryptic some of what he's

putting on there. And maybe Spencer Cox knows some stuff that we don't know yet, I guess. But I think that he's speaking in a way that's a little bit definitive about motivation when he's a person as a post-middle-aged Mormon man that just doesn't, I just don't know how well he can translate for people what was in the head of this young, young killer. No, and he shouldn't be trying to, just to be obvious. He's the governor of the state. He should be reporting what is real fact facts, but not trying to put himself in the head of a suspect, the alleged murderer, I guess we should say it that way, but presumably the murderer, who isn't apparently cooperating, hasn't therefore I gathers, when gathers spoken directly to law enforcement about his motives and

didn't seem to leave a manifesto. So how do we know? We really literally don't know. I very much take your point about people my age, should not be even pretending we have the foggiest idea of what's going on in gamer world in terms of the eight levels of bizarre irony and self-referential stuff that's going on in these inscriptions in that world. Let me just put it that way. But even if you were a 23-year-old hipster, you wouldn't know what's in his mind, right? Which really makes it irresponsible. So let's, okay, we've been a little tougher on Cox. We should come back to, yes, close the loop by reiterating that he's been better than 99% of Republicans, which of course tells you a lot. Which tells you a lot. They should all be, they should all

be at worst like Spencer, like Governor Cox, you know? Right. Yes, absolutely. All right. These moments of uncertainty, it's important to think about protecting your financial future. And for around the same price per month as one of your streaming services, you can ensure that you do that by finding life insurance at selectquote.com.

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Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash bulwark today to get started. That's selectquot.com slash bulwark. one other person you mentioned you mentioned in the newsletter and on Twitter says I wanted to bring it up I talked briefly to to from about this on Friday kind of taking out the lens and looking at the global side of this I want to talk about the predates in UK in a second but but we had Putin's Bannon if you will I kind of hate that I give that credit to Bannon but it's just the best shorthand I think for it's Dugan who fancies himself kind of a philosopher of some kind wrote a substack

from Ukraine to Utah, one global war. You just talked earlier about, like, how we're seeing some of this in Stephen Miller and also the way to try to, like, turn what very well might be just a mentally ill kids, you know, horrible choice and too easy access to weapons and all of that into, like, some broader cultural civil war that we're saying that's not even just America, but globally, and to directly try to tie the, the Russia-Ukraine war to this, I think is pretty noteworthy. Why did you find it noteworthy enough to mention it a couple of times?

Yeah, I mean, Duke really is Putin's court philosopher, I guess you're right. Bannon's combination of Bannon, I suppose, Michael Anton and, you know, some of Peter Thiel's more recondite, you know, thinking about Carl Schmidt and all this stuff. Heal, it's more like Carl Schmidt, if you want a historical example, the Nazi jurors who justified and provided a rationale for much that the Nazis did. but himself, before that, a distinguished professor at German universities, and Dugan, in his own way, has written long books that some people have taken very seriously. He's basically a fascist, and therefore he's on board with Putin, and Putin's on board with him. What's his

striking is the, he has some qualifications about his admiration for MAGA, not quite where he would be on every issue, wants them to be on every issue, but they're in the right place. They are the American front of this global war between, I will use terms he doesn't quite use, but he almost does, between fascism and liberalism. Liberalism, he uses, he's against it. But whatever you want to call his version of fascism. So that doesn't mean that MAGA, everyone in MAGA is like Dugan, obviously. Be nice if someone in MAGA repudiated Dugan and Dugan's endorsement.

But it's very, it is telling that that's how he sees it. And I think he's being honest in his judgment there. Unfortunately, Maga World has given him enough material, you might say, to work with on this. As mentioned, there was the march in England over the weekend, far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who is kind of anti-migrant and also doesn't fully map onto America because kind of anti-cop in a way, but, you know, over there because they think that the cops are sort of in line with the liberal leadership and it's more like pro-military, right? But anyway, he is a far-right activist and provocateur, really. their march drew over 100,000 people.

And I saw it in several places of people on the right, on the MAGA right, celebrating this. Like, I was those people calling it like the biggest nationalist march or rally that they've seen in Europe. There were some clashes with police officers. I bring it up just because I think also in the context of the reaction we've seen to Kirk, let me just caveat this at the top.

I'm the type of LSU fan where after a big, win. I'm like, we're going to win the championship. And after a loss, I'm like, we're never going to win again. Sometimes I'm a little too emotional and reacting to recent events. I try to be thoughtful about putting things into context. I guess there's a concerning amount of momentum that I see on the illiberal right here and in Europe, certain parts of Europe at least. And that march happening the same time, you saw this kind of outpouring of support for Kirk. It's alarming to me. it is i mean i'm not i don't follow british politics as much as i used to and i you know someone like robinson self loads so it's hard to even read about him but i mean he is

far right we're not i mean he's beyond farage he's beyond the sort of let's call it the equivalent almost of trump and maga world here i would say and is often to kind of almost closer to like the proud boys or something yeah yeah laura proud boys uh poentes is that the same yeah yeah he's kind of like a little bitch like i don't like he's kind of a little wimpy He's very far right, but Robinson has the stochastic side. Totally. Like with him, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So really right. I mean, and 100,000 people is not good. And Elon Musk spoke by video hook up to it. So he's on board with them, just as he was on board with the AFD, the neo-Nazi party in Germany. I mean, the degree of both of international coordination or at least support for each other on the far right. And as you say, and the movement of the far right, further right. And the accelerationist, if you want, element of what's happening on the right is terrible. I mean, very, very dangerous.

I mean, Robinson is basically pro-violence against migrants. I am going to say this, and now he'll probably sue us if this is shown her to line. So I'll qualify it by saying I'm not familiar with everything he said, but I think he's pretty far out there. There's a vibe of that. That's what the kids are saying. The vibe gives off pro-violence against migrants. Well, Nick Cohen, who's a very respectable, very sober, center-left, British college. wrote that this was the largest far-right march since Oswald Mosley's

fascist march in London, the Union of Fascists, I think they were called in the 30s in Britain and explicitly pro-fascist. And they also had a march amount of 100,000 people in London. One forgets how popular fascism was all around the world in the 30s. So yeah, so if Nick Cohen said that, and is very alarmed about it, I think we are entitled to be too. But again, the fact that Musk is, you know, all the ties between these groups and the relishing of the fact that everyone's getting more extreme. I mean, that is very dangerous.

But these things have a momentum with their own. We've talked about that before. And it's just dangerous. I mean, obviously it's dangerous in so many ways. But yeah, yeah, terrible. Hey, everybody. We are going on the road this fall and I want to see you. Sadly, our Toronto tickets have already sold out.

So I'm plotting a return to Canada. You guys just wait on that. But there's still tickets left for our events in Washington. D.C. and New York City in October, come join me, Sarah JVL for two nights of camaraderie and joy and resistance and podcasting and maybe some special guests at the DC event. We might give a big middle finger to the masked agents of Donald Trump that are roaming, the city's free streets. And we'll be back in New York a couple times later. The first time we've been in New York in ages, the last time we had a live New York event, it was, I can remember because it was during

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You can check out all the details and get tickets at the bulwark.com slash events for more. That's the bulwark.com slash events. See you all on the East Coast. I want to do something a little constructive on this front rather than just lamenting all of it. To me, I hope that this is a flashpoint, kind of a series of events for liberals. I'm using that word particularly to try to create a kind of a counter movement against this. I think that for all of the accurate, negative things that could be said about Charlie Kirk, this isn't really even a value judgment.

The one thing that I could say just without caveat positive about him is he put in real work to organize young people to communicate his views, his ideology to young people, and to engage with them and get them involved. And when I went to TPSA last year, the article was like 90% of, all the gross, horrible things. I saw that 10% at the top was like that we could use this, right? Whatever you want to call us,

the pro-democracy side, the Democrats, the liberals, whatever, any we that you find yourself identifying with could use something like this that communicates and galvanizes people against illiberalism throughout the world and these kind of far-right activities in particular. Anyway, I don't exactly, this is something that's just been banking,

around my head all weekend. I don't know exactly what that looks like, but it is something that I want to put out into the world because I think that this is a good instigating moment for liberals to start to think about how they can actually put more effort into, to use a now out of vogue word community organizing young people that are open to hearing the message. No, I very much agree with that. I mean, I think there's different levels of different kinds of efforts. And some of them, someone like me, is more better at maybe or more familiar with, let me say, more suited to than others. There's a kind of intellectual effort of, you know, rejuvenating liberalism, recreating it for the 21st century. There's a, let's call a political kind of elite

effort, you might say, bring it together, different elements of the coalition. So they work together and so forth. And then there's this much more grassroots movement effort. And they're all individual stuff and the, yeah, and they're all important. And they should all be broad-based as much as possible, in my opinion. One moment of real, I get really very depressed this weekend as I happened on social media somewhere to notice that there's some fight. I didn't really see what caused it between Chris Van Hollen and Hakeem Jeffries about something or other and they were staff or sniping at each other. I mean, really? I think it was maybe Van Hollen said everyone should support Mondani and Jeffrey should already have done so since he's from New York and Jeffries

was staffer was like, well, stay in your lane or who cares about Chris Van Hollen or something. And so they're actually spending time sniping at each other on something that's utterly unimportant. I mean, it's important, I guess, who's the next mayor of New York? It's utterly unimportant when Hakeem Jeffries supports him, you know. The voters are New York City are not waiting to hear from Haphyme Jeffries on this. I'm going to assist. Which is the reason why I should just support him, by the way. But also continue.

No, I agree. If I were asked, I would say that. But the idea that this is the moment to let's have a lot of really fun intra-democratic fights. So let's have the centrists attack the left and the left attack the center and Young attacked. I mean, it's not that they should suppress their opinions about various things, but there's going to be a shutdown, I fight about a shutdown in two weeks. Maybe the members of Congress actually, who do actually have to coordinate their effort. The rest of us don't have to. We can say whatever we want, I suppose.

Maybe they should actually work a little harder on that and not sort of, I don't know, so I do feel like, yes, the opposition could use improving on a lot of different of these, on all these areas, the intellectual, the political, and the one you've mentioned, which is so important to kind of organize. I guess you call. Yeah, I agree with that. And just since you mentioned Zoran, again, like he was, he was a flashpoint for getting people involved, right? In some ways that were not specifically how I wish it would happen, but it was working and people were getting involved in excited New York. Now, he's going to have a real big job of trying to govern the biggest city in the country

well should he win. So he's not really the person for this. But like that same notion like could be channeled. towards a more broad-based activation of young people throughout the country. And it's just, you look out and, like, who's doing that? And it's hard to kind of think about that. I mean, like, you could throw out some names, but they would feel insufficient, I guess. And one footnote to that, my impression, I saw something quickly that he had said, I think,

at a rally or something over the weekend, was responsible about Charlie. His was great. I played it on the podcast. Oh, okay. Well, good. You're ahead of a year. Thursday. Yeah, I played it on Thursday because it was really, really good.

Yeah, so all this talk about the left has gone this way. He's the most prominent leftist, like leftist Democrat running for office, not quite in, well, in office and state office. Right now in America, I guess he and AOC, you know, and he was utterly responsible and did not say any of the things that Trump and Stephen Miller are saying the radical left types are saying, right? So it really does show, form I now having complained about the Democrats for a while, it shows that they are so much more responsible. And I would just say one more thing of us about the left, just as this is not, you know, again, as I specifically chose the word liberal, because of where I identify myself, after having myself complained in the intro about how some regular Americans in my life were responding to this tragedy, gosh, I'm really gassing this guy up by saying this right now. But probably the two most prominent leftists to use that word, like maybe three most are you mentioned AOC and Zoron and then the streamer Hassan Piker. and all of their responses were extremely responsible

and Hassan is tamping down the people in his comments who were doing the opposite and they were all talking about the importance of people being able to speak in a free country and that is really encouraging and so I just want to say that

the other big news of the morning is related to China and TikTok Trump sent this bleat this morning The big trade meeting in Europe between the U.S. and China has gone very well, all caps. It will be concluding shortly. A deal was also reached on a, quote, certain company that young people in our country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy. I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday.

The relationship remains a strong one, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. Donald Trump really loves Xi. And that is a lot of exclamation points to use when talking about how much you're friends with somebody. Since that, Bessent has now come out and said what Trump was implying by saying that they have a framework for a TikTok deal. And I thought this was the most grotesque part of all of this was this statement from Besson at the end. They have a deal between two private parties. Then he goes on, the two leaders, President Trump and party chair, she will speak on Friday to complete the deal. Is that how things work here?

Like, the president of the United States has to stamp off a private deal between a private company and a foreign country. It's one of our adversaries and us. Like, Trump and she are the same. Like, we have state-run deal-making now when it comes to social media accounts, I guess. Anyway, what do you make of all that? When it comes to other corporations as well, it turns out, right, Intel and stuff, yeah. I mean, Trump is being taken to the cleaners by G is my sense, as he has been by Putin. And some of our Trump accommodating or acquiescing foreign policy hawks thought, okay, we can work to get him okay on Ukraine.

And anyway, at least he'll be tough on China. That's the one thing. He'll really be tough on China. That's the real competitor for the 21st century bill. You're a little too obsessed with the Europe stuff. And some of these are NATO. That's kind of old school. And as gee, he's going to really be tough.

Look how tough he was in the first term. And he was somewhat tough in the first term. Up until that last year and a half, we won the trade deal on COVID. Right. So the trade deal always cut against the Pompeo's and the others in the administration who were authentically, I think, pretty anti-China sometimes in intelligent ways and useful ways, sometimes somewhat silly ways. But still, Trump's just thrown all that under the bus. And he's now all in on a trade deal with Xi and let them have whatever chips they need to improve their semiconductors and let them have obviously no political challenge to them. We're not going to let the president of Taiwan travel through the U.S.

I mean, yeah, it's all fake. I mean, it starts to know how much of the China toughness was always fake among a lot of Republicans, just a kind of bellicosity, because they sort of vaguely think that if you're for American greatness, you can't just be for being a wimp, but you don't actually do anything about Ukraine, where there's actually a massive brutal assault out of ally in Europe by Putin. But, you know, we can pretend to be tough on China. Nothing's happening there, really. I mean, but now that's beginning to collapse.

And so, yes, Trump's getting along with the dictators. everywhere. Yeah. The relationship remains a very strong one, hard eyes emoji. It's just like, okay, whatever. I don't think that's the right posture. What's good, Tim, is that the Republican Hawks, Senator Cotton and all the far, the theorists of the anti-China side of the Republican Party who are also, you know, pro-Trump.

They'll speak out. You know, they're going to call Trump on this. They're not going to just roll over. The people who screamed and yelled about TikTok 18 months ago and who screamed and yelled about Taiwan and shamed and yelled, again, not without some reason in some cases, about the balance in Asia and so forth. They're going to call balls and strikes on this. I wonder who will call it. I guess the Wall Street Journal might, do you think? I don't know. National Review, but any actual elected official? No way, right? No way. I'm just being obviously sarcastic when I say.

I mean, I don't know. Rand, one of the libertarians, like Rand maybe or something. Yeah, well, they're against being hawkish. Oh, China anyway, yeah. No, but I mean, I'm being obviously sarcastic when I say, They're not going to, of course, they're going to work quietly. The behind the scenes, they're going to really work hard to make Trump more responsible on this. Don't believe so. Moving on to Russia, Trump, the other news on that front is he has said that he is willing to do sanctions, harder sanctions on Europe.

There's a sanctions bill on the Hill. Speaking of the bellicosity talk, Lindsay Graham keeps doing press conferences over on the Hill about how worried about ready. We're going to crush them. We got the sort of Damocles hanging over Russia. head. We're going to pass this bill any minute now. We're just waiting for Trump to tell us we can. We're just going to pass it. It's been ready. We have it the co-sponsors. Trump said he's willing to do those hard sanctions only if Europe has to do it first. He wants Europe to make sure

Europe is getting no gas from Russia, that all the countries are fully on board. He can't do it unless the Europeans are willing to sacrifice themselves. You wrote over the weekend since President Putin's invitation to Alaska by Trump, the Russian leader has ramped up attacks and you Ukraine, threatened to kill any future foreign forces in Ukraine, hit Western targets in Ukraine, and unleashed a drone incursion into Poland. And the response from Trump is once again, well, I'll be tough, maybe. We'll see. Let's give it another couple weeks.

And the Europeans have been moderately tough on the Poland situation. It's right there. And what is, didn't Trump have some, what was this important contribution on social media to that? I've never forget something last week. He was like, let's see what happens. I was like, I was like, it's like, it's really. Really getting started now or something.

It was just a surprise exclamation. And then when he was asked about it on the tarmac, he said something to the effect of like, oh, well, like the drones got knocked down before they landed in Poland. So, you know, not that would be a deal. I mean, the degree of weakness, there's been a lot of wishful thinking, in my opinion, in the first eight months of, you know, well, he's not quite as he said some bad things in February with Vance and Texas gave those speeches in Europe and all that. But, you know, it's not quite as weak as you think, Bill.

and it's not there's some good things it's all weakness and that's very dangerous too so he's very strong and persecuting and I think that's a fair verb to use people he doesn't like in launching the federal government against his enemies his perceived enemies

his opponents whom he thinks of his enemies here at home and very weak against actual brutal dictatorships abroad that's kind of the Trump the Trump doctrine right you know attack transgender individuals who are minding their own business, 99.8% of them here at home and do nothing against brutal dictators who are killing people abroad. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's good. That sums things up. I think we can kind of

leave it there. I ended the pod last week with a reading of your newsletter. I thought it was about David Rose, who's killed, the police officer was killed at the CDC. So I figured we could see if you had any final thoughts or ruminations on that before we let people go. Well, it's encouraging. that people like heroes like David Rose exists. Yeah, he's a young man. He's almost the same age. It was a young man. It was the same age as Charlie Kirk.

And so for all the talk about social media and all the talk about how horrible our politics are and they are pretty bad, you know, David Rose grew up in America and came from, you know, American family. And it was a really admirable and heroic person fought in Afghanistan. And then obviously ran to the gun, so to speak, here in Atlanta and that assault on CDC. It was tragically killed. there are people like there was i was talking to jane ordliger on the sunday bulwark thing and he's been at some college campuses so we just talking about that in general and he said he's heartened

so for whatever that you know again for all the talk i do think the social media stuff is a little overdone like it's rooting the soldier i don't know are they so much worse than people my age or you know like don't trump or people j g vans's age who's your age basically or you know i mean what was he hardened by i'm ready to be heartened give me something to be heartened by the students he was seeing it, the campuses where he, he had just was coming back from the campus, we just talked about J.D. Van's being shot in the campus and sort of the... And he said a lot of the students he meets are, you know,

intelligent. They don't like Trump and Trumpism. They don't like the radical parts of the left that you criticized earlier and therefore, you know, actual American greatness, which means tolerance at home and standing up to bullies abroad. But it'd be nice if there were more people reflecting that, I'd say, in our leadership, both political leadership, and there are some, but also, let's call it civic leadership.

You know, that's the one thing I was struck by read some little thing over the weekend. If I can just close on this, the collapse of the elite institutions is also very damaging. And that compounded with Trump and Miller creates a very dangerous situation, obviously. Well, you had me encouraged there until the final caveat. I'm sorry. You have the final caveat. Anyway, but Jane Norliger had some great conversations with students at college. So cheer up.

So cheer up. I find this as well. I go to campuses. I always, because I am sympathetic to the stated notion that a liberalism is happening on campuses, that like people are shouted down, people aren't, you know, free to kind of share their views if they're wrong thoughts or whatever. But I feel the same way when I'm on campuses. I don't, I always ask about that question.

Kids, do you feel like you have to self-censor? Do you feel like this? And I don't know, maybe the people self-selecting to come see me talk are. are a different category from the broader campus or the broader generational cohort, which is why it's something I'm exploring in, you know, an FYI pod and our other efforts to reach out to young folks. But I agree with that.

And I think that there is some things that are alarming, of course, but I also am heartened when I'm hearing from actual students who have to live this stuff every day. It's just, I don't know. It's just eventually it becomes, too much, right? The overwhelming amount of the negativity in your face and your feet every day. But we soldier on. All right, that's Bill Crystal. Quite an episode. I don't know if this one's going to go in our Hall of Fame, you know, at the end of the process. But we did the best we could.

We'll be back Monday. That's the good thing about this. We get to do it again next Monday. And who the fuck knows what's going to happen then? We'll see you all then. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwark podcast. Peace. I play it with my hand It's part of me Just like the song I sing This is my life I live the best I can

It's part of you I'm part of everything I know it's hard I feel like you've been broken So much love is missing so much love is missing from the start I know it's hard not to feel like you're alone

and a world is lost and spinning in dark oh help me This is my voice. I sing the best I can. The music in my head is from my heart. This is my chance. The only chance I've got just try to live a light into the dark.

And I know it's hard. I feel like you been broken It doesn't seem to work it should I know it's hard But I know that I'll keep holding Because all I've ever seen here It's good

Oh, help me Help me Oh, help me Help me Please The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.