The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Where Is the $50,000?

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

We thought Tom Homan was just an extreme border hawk and ideologue. Now we know this powerful law enforcement official, who's depriving immigrants of their freedom, may also be a corrupt law-breaker��after he was reportedly recorded taking a $50,000 cash bribe during an FBI sting operation. And MAGA die-hards, like Megyn Kelly, have made clear they don't care. Meanwhile, Kash is having FBI agents pursue Q-Anon leads in the Kirk assassination. Plus, Tucker is a very sick person, Trump is demanding that Bondi file trumped-up charges against his enemies, and Democrats should absolutely not vote to fund this administration. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Leonnig's and Dilanian's reporting on Homan taking a $50,000 bribe Tim on Megyn Kelly's diatribe against him; or watch on YouTube Monday's "Morning Shots" Will Sommer's newsletter, "False Flag" Bulwark Live in DC (10/8) with special guest Rep. Sarah McBride On sale now at TheBulwark.com/events. NEW show added to Toronto schedule: Bulwark Live Q&A Matinee show on Saturday, September 27 —tickets are on sale now, here.

Hey, everybody. A couple of notes here at the top. Just a reminder, once again, tickets still on sale for the Bullwark Live. Borg.com slash events. We added a Saturday matinee for you in Canada. So if you're a Canadian or in Detroit or want to make a last second trip this weekend, come to Toronto. It's going to be beautiful. We're going to have fun. Saturday afternoon. Tickets are still on sale for the matinee event. That's the plan for the next weekend. This weekend, my choices maybe weren't quite as nutritious and wholesome. I got into a social media war with Megan Kelly. And, you know, probably don't want to hear me do a full blow-by-blow of the back-and-forth, you know, where I'm scoring on the boxing cards 10-9 who won each round. But I did a separate monologue on this over on the Bullwark-Takes feed and on YouTube. And I did so because the manner in which Megan was arguing with me is extremely alarming, frankly. And Megan Kelly, who, you know, I never really held in high regard as a person of particularly stalwart integrity, has like really descended to a dark place and the manner when she was lashing out of me and trying to like lump me in with the Charlie Kirk killer and lump everybody that is not MAGA in with the Charlie Kirk killer and try to stoke the flames of division in the country and doing so unapologetically and shamelessly I think it sends a pretty scary message about where kind of we're headed as a country and so anyway I have an extremely long rumination on that that I should shared over the weekend that you can go check out in the Bork Takes Feed. We'll put the link

in here. And also, we're doing rapid response stuff over there as well. So, you know, if you're feeling lonely on the weekend and you want to hear a quick reaction to something that's happened in the news, it's always good to subscribe to that Bork Takes Feed. All right, for this episode, it's Monday. So you know who we got. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we're here with editor at large Bill Crystal on Russia Shana. So thanks for working on a holiday. Well, the holiday doesn't begin until tonight. So I'm strictly, I'm acting in accord with Jewish law. My rabbi is going to be fine. As long as he can watch this before sundown, he'll be happy. He'll be happy. He'll be happy. He'll be happy. He'll be happy. He'll be happy. He'll be happy. You think having gone to George Washington University, I would have been familiar with exactly how the holiday works. But apparently not. I was just happy to get bonus holidays off when I. when I went to school. All right. I want to start with the biggest news of the weekend, which comes from Carol Lennox, one of my favorite podcast guests and one of my favorite co-panelists

on the Nicole Wallachoke. Hopefully we'll be talking to her later this week. And she reports about an undercover operation last year in which the FBI recorded Tom Homan, the White House borders are, accepting 50 grand in cash after indicating that he could help the agents win government contracts if Trump were going to win again, the investigation was launched after a subject in a separate investigation said that Homan was soliciting payments. So maybe not a one-time thing. The Trump administration has shut down the case. Bill, I mean, Dom Homan is going to work this morning, I guess is the biggest top line news here, which is just absolutely crazy and unprecedented in any type of administration that this, not only would they shut it down, but that this man is going to continue

to be a top law enforcement official for the country. Yeah, it is pretty. amazing. You're having Carol Lennox on later this week? That's great. Hopefully. She's... Hopefully, if she's been pressured now that I've said it live, you know. Totally. I can... She'll be guilt-tripped into it now. We love to go. I phrased her in... He's busy. She's busy. She's out there making, you know, breaking news. Interesting backstory. I mean, this tiny footnote out of it. So she was at the Washington Post for, I think, 25 years. You know, won four Pulitzer Prizes, really an excellent investigative reporter, really wonderful work on this secret service. People might remember some of those stories that came out. Those were... That was entirely her.

I think she turned it into a book, right? part of the Washington Post collapsed under Bezos. She took a buyout like almost so many of them did. But luckily she's at MSNBC where they let her write these look pretty long. This was a long investigated piece done with Ken Delaney

and who's also a good reporter. So just to say, very well-sourced. They're working the system to get information in an effective way, which is heartening. And they got documents so she actually quotes documents. It's in a way very simple, right? I mean, there was an FBI sting.

Holman actually gets kind of drawn in and it sounds like by accident it's a counterintelligence thing so it's not even true that the Biden Justice Department was going after a critic Tom Holman he kind of comes into it by accident once they discover that he's interested from this other person they're going after I guess that he's interested in this

they set up this sting he's happy to take his $50,000 in a Kava bag and Kava I believe we're pronouncing Kava Kava. I'm confused you know I've been to Kava Medi time there's one right near us in McLean the grandchildren are big Kava fans. Oh, yeah. They like the shug?

What kind of sauce do you put on that? I like the lamb meatballs with avocado or something like that, kind of spicy lamb meatballs. I haven't tried that. But I say in the, in Morning Shots, if you go to their website, which I did for eight seconds, they're advertising some new dish, which I haven't tried, so people should feel free to give us a judgment of that,

some spicy chicken swarmer or something. Anyway, what's interesting is they put out of state, and these are good reporters, and the Trump administration felt required to respond to this speech, which is sort of interesting in a statement from Patel and Blanche the number two guy justice, they don't challenge a single fact. I mean, this is interesting. Some of these other things say, oh, it's lies, it's false. They don't, I mean, literally no one has denied that Tom Holman took $50,000 in cash in a paper bag

in September, almost exactly a year ago, September 20th, 2024, thinking that this was, what he was thinking, the person who gave him the money, said that basically this was to get him to make good decisions once he's in the Trump administration, if Trump were to win, they would benefit solely their business interests. Yeah, they're opposing as business leaders that wanted government contracts. And it's a string. Yeah, yeah. So it's very explicit.

There's no other reason. It's not a tip for, you know, it's not a tip for like having been a good guy in the past. It's not something else. And it's also $50,000 in a bag and cash. That's kind of a little suspicious, I'm just going to say. And, but they haven't challenged those facts. They didn't challenge the fact that it was an ongoing investigation. The Biden Justice Department seems to have behaved very responsibly.

They didn't leak it before the election. They wanted to wait to see what would happen if you came into government and followed through. This is ongoing. The people in the public integrity division of justice think it's a real case, and they have pretty good standards for this. And then it gets shut down by the Trump people. None of that is denied in the statement by Patel and Blanche. They just say, well, there was no credible evidence of a crime, so we just shut it down. So we have the bribe, I would call it.

we have the cover up and I hope a lot more investigating gets done including by uh I mean it would be nice with the public in Congress took a look I'm not holding my breath about that but Democrats can cause some trouble I think at least well I mean they're still open into questions like just for starters at the most basic where is the 50 grand like what did he do with it did he pay taxes on it is it under his bed you know do you use it to buy strippers I I mean I don't know I can't remember when I was in in the in the White House I don't know if you have to make your tax returns public or just you put make a statement i think public of your holdings but anyway it serves perfectly the least one could ask and i hope people are going crazy asking this today

both the media and democrats and everyone else is well what yeah what happened to the money what did you do did you pay taxes on it did you declare it do you still have it i mean what's the story there and then of course well there many many other questions to be asked as well obviously yeah i mean and there's precedent for this i mean jim traffickers went to jail for this like for taking bribes but like not paying taxes on it, right? So there's a tax angle to everything. You mentioned it in passing, but I think it was worth sitting on, again, that the supposedly weaponized Biden and Justice Department didn't say anything about this and didn't say anything about it before the election, but also didn't say anything about it in the interim, right? Like, these are people in the Department

of Justice and the FBI that were doing their job that were acting, you know, according to just normal processes. And the result of it is the actual folks politicizing the Justice Department now come in and shut this thing down and, you know, as Megan Kelly said to me on Twitter, they don't care about it. They haven't just shut down this case. They essentially shut down the public integrity division. Yes. That is a straightforward story. And while the 50 grand is kind of small potatoes compared to the billions that Trump is getting in his stable coin and other crypto coins and all these other corrupt acts that we've seen around the Trump family and the Whitkoff family and others close to the president, this to me, I'm talking about this a little bit over

the weekend is like it's so easy to understand you know any person can has watched a movie and understands 50 grand and a fast food bag right like it is it's not cryptocurrency it's not international it's not you know making a deal about AI chips like it's just like dude is taking cash to hand out contracts and the Trump administration doesn't care about it because they don't care about corruption if it's one of their guys I don't know I feel like that's something that can have some staying power. What do you think? And are we good if some people who are Trump supporters, more or less,

did say they cared about it. National Review had a fairly strong little piece by Andy McCarthy, at least acknowledging this kind of a problem, and we need to have, Congress should look into it, they said. So we'll see if... I'd like for somebody that's in good standing with MAGA to be able to write that. I mean, kudos to Andy McCarthy, I guess.

Yeah, no, I agree. And it would be interesting if any Republican even thinks like I should actually call for more facts. or something like that or ask the questions you just ask. And it is crazy, like that, you know, we always go on some of this. Like, there's been a single Republican elect official at the time of this taping that's like that he has even done to Susan Collins. Like, I am concerned.

You're not concerned about the top law? And this person is a law enforcement official. It's not like some random staffer in the EPA or like a deputy press secretary or whatever. Like, that would be any better. This is supposed to be the law and order administration. Tom Holman is deporting people. based on their legal status. Tom Holman has people's freedoms

and their lives in his hand. And he's just being openly corrupt, accepting bribes, and everybody's okay with that. And everybody in the Republican Party is totally okay with that, and that is crazy. And I do think,

I don't know if you agree with this, that one reason I might have a little more political salience is some of these business guys, you know, it's like, what a surprise that they're doing sleazy deals and whatever,

payoff, in effect, payoffs at all. Holman, I mean, he's referenced, in so many ways, in my opinion, but one thought maybe, I kind of even thought, maybe he's just a, you know, nativist, you know, bigot, but I mean, he's a bulldog, and this is what he's done for his life, and this is what he truly believes. And he is, as you say, spent life in law. He looks more like an ideologue, right? Yes, and so changing the money, taking the $50,000

of cash and a paper bag, I mean, amazing. I enjoyed AOC's tweet about this, something in the fact of like, who's the illegal now, Tom Holman? Like, Homan being an illegal, I think also puts into a different light and context, like, what they're doing with ICE and like what their plans are and what their messaging is around it and the credibility around it for regular folks. I had a friend in Denver that messaged me and asked if I'd been seeing the ads that ICE is running in apparently sanctuary cities across the country. I don't watch a ton of network TV in New Orleans, so maybe they're running them here, but I had not seen it. And we grabbed this one, which was running in Sacramento. It seems like it's run a bunch of places. I saw people talking about running in Seattle and elsewhere.

And I just want to play this ad, which is, it's fucking horrifying. Let's just listen to it. Attention, Sacramento, law enforcement. You took an oath to protect and serve to keep your family, your city, safe. But in sanctuary cities, your order to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free. Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst. Drug traffickers, gang members, creditors, join the mission to protect America with bonuses up to $50,000 and generous benefits. Apply now.

Join.js.gov. Our tax dollars are paying for that. That is like out of a spoof. It's out of a Mike Judge movie or something. That is horrific. It's just like, hey, if you're a cop and you're upset, you're not able to hassle brown people more aggressively, join ICE. We'll give you 50 grand of your neighbor's tax.

taxpayer dollars so that you can, you can bully them more on behalf of Tom Holman, the corrupt, the corrupt racist borders are. And I like the fact that they're offering $50,000 as the inducement that maybe that number was stuck in Tom Homan's mind for some reason, right? That's the appropriate. That's what it costs to get someone. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Homan's like, you can win me over with 50 grand. Maybe I can win over these corrupt cops and get them to come work for ICE for 50 grand, too. That is, well, that is a, that's a good, astute observation, Bill Crystal. I mean, it could be a South Park. I give it was a South Park ad this week. Like, would they, what would they even change? And I, like, really, it's just, it's truly astonishing that that's, like,

where we are and that those ads are, like, running on TV in this country that we're paying for them. The kind of people who are joining ICE are presumably, to some degree, the people who are responding to that commercial. The kind of people who are not joining eyes are probably the cops who think that's bad, you know? Who's going to be staffing these new, how many are there, 30, 40,000 positions at ICE by two or three years from now? It's just part of what's really scary about the fact that this is not an eight-month administration, but a three, but a four-year administration. Maybe getting rid of home, and if he could be shamed, they don't do have, they don't do shame, but if he could be somehow driven out of office, or Trump could decide he's too

much of a burden, I'm not sure that would change anything with Steve Miller there, but maybe we would do a little good. But again, it does bring home. I mean, how that reconciliation bill, all that money for ICE, and these are the kind of people they're recruiting into ICE. Still chucking at that. The 50 grand bribe was good enough for Holman, so now it's going to be good enough for the cops. They're giving them the same amount. Boy, you've got to go get a strategic reserve of Kava bags to pay off all the new ICE officials. Y'all, you know, I still love a good night out. In fact, I've got two concerts I'm going to this week, so watch out. And luckily, I've found when, you know, I don't want to deal with the after effects for the next day.

It's nice to turn to the products for our sponsor, Soul. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in the delicious hemp drive THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their best selling out-of-office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood and enhanced creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe. from a gentle microdose to the newest 15 milligram gummy for a more elevated experience.

It's kind of like the double black diamond, okay, of the sole gummy experience. So make sure you've been down the slopes a few times before you jump straight into the double black diamond. All right, bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Seoul today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsole.com and use the code of the bulwark. That's getsole.com, promo code, the bulwark for 30% off. Speaking of corruption at the heart of our justice system, the president pushed out to the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Eric Siebert, at the end of last week.

The stated claim was that he had ties to Democrats, was a rhino. A kind of on background claim was that he had been taxed with going after Tish James for alleged mortgage fraud. that investigation stalled because the prosecutors and agents didn't feel like they had any evidence to obtain a conviction. So, you know, how the justice system is supposed to work. They look into tips. They don't feel like they have the evidence. They decide not to charge the person. Donald Trump was upset about that since the person he wanted charged with his political foe that he wanted vengeance against. So he fired the person that did not prosecute. And then he started going off on Pampondi on this on social media over the weekend.

Before we get to the Pambani part, do you have any thoughts just on the Virginia firing? I mean, that's my district right here, Eastern District of Virginia, and it's a very well important district, sort of maybe after the two New York, Southern District, New York kind of thing, what considered one of the most prestigious, most important U.S. attorney positions, they do a lot of national security cases here because it's obviously the D.C. area, CIA's in the district and so forth. So, yeah, I mean, he's very well respected. A tough guy, though, kind of, I think was thought to be as good as fit as you could be for the Trump administration and still be a reputable, respectable, sincere, honestly. lawyer. Turns out you can be a pretty conservative, pretty hard charging, respectable and sincere lawyer, but you're still not a fit for the Trump administration if you're not willing to prosecute people who shouldn't be prosecuted because Trump wants you to, and I suppose also if you're not willing to drop charges against other people who should be prosecuted. So, I mean, yeah, the degree of corruption, the depth of it and the shamelessness of it that Trump just talks about it now, I mean, is pretty astounding. And to what I reference there about kind of the

pressure going on to Pampondi now for these prosecution's not happening. Trump sent out two bleats on his social media feed over the weekend about this. The first one, I just, for people who are very online on the internet, this one that I'm about to read, there's a lot of folks out there saying that this was like a direct message he had accidentally posted. I'm pretty certain that's not the case. This is in the tone of all of his other posts. I think that he's trying to publicly pressure her, whatever the case is.

there's some there's some discussion about that i don't i don't think that's right but here we go here's the first one it's addressed to pam pam i've reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying essentially same old story as last time all talk no action nothing is being done what about comie shifty shift letitia they're all guilty as hell but nothing is going to be done that da da da he goes on and talks about how he fired the uh virginia prosecutor uh and then he suggests a new prosecutor for her to hire and says we can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. And then he goes on and posts again after the backlash,

after people are like, whoa, Trump's really going after Pan Bondi there. And he posts again and says, Pan Bondi's doing a great job. She's careful, very smart and loves our country, but she needs a tough prosecutor. Like my recommendation, Lindsay Halligan, to get things moving. Like, there's no way to read this as any other way, besides the President of the United States is pressuring his attorney general

to prosecute his foes. And like he's doing it. it just in plain Trumpian, plain language, at least in the Trumpian version of plain language. Right. He decided, revealing a little thing you were reading in the first bleed, as you call it, that I've read more than 30 statements and posts. I guess some one of his staffers who has it in for Bondi or has it in for attorneys, Siebert, gave Trump, I mean, God knows who these were from, right? I mean, they could have been from real MAGA influencers. They could be from ninth rate MAG Influencers, if that's a meaningful difference. He didn't actually talk to

anyone knows anything, I suppose, about the law. I was thinking about this. What if you're the White House counsel? You're just cheerfully going about your job. You're like a respectable lawyer, sort of, and you think it's fine that this is all happening. Does no one resign from the White House when this kind of thing happens? I would like to come back to this.

No one, of course, no one does. Why am I even asking this question? But, you know, it is kind of astonishing, I think, right? This is noteworthy. Let's just do a little pop quiz for you in the audience. Who is the White House counsel? Do you know? No.

I didn't know. I had to Google it. I'm not trying to embarrass you. I didn't know. The White House Counsel now is a guy named David Warrington. I know absolutely nothing about that person. It's worth like just remembering that like we heard a lot about Don McGahn. Now Don McGahn, I'm not ready to put him on Mount Rushmore or do a bust of him in the library of Congress or anything.

But like, you know, he went along and thought of bad stuff. But he was in there oftentimes challenged. what was happening within the administration raising to rights previous and we all remember all these stories where they would have like you know heated meetings

in the Oval Office where Don McGahn would be there and say we can't do this we can't do that there was some of that obviously Pat Cipollone again was maybe less even bold than McGahn

but there were times that he was objecting to things particularly during the Stop the Steel stuff after the 2020 election I'd never even heard of this guy's name this is the first time I've seen his picture and so to your point there is not they don't care they don't give a fuck like there's borders are can take 50 grand in a bag of cash the president can pressure the attorney general to prosecute political foes what i'm going to get to next the FBI director can like post insane false things they can target people inside the administration illegally who haven't done anything wrong just because they're friends with never trumpers or whatever and there's nobody there to even offer, it seems like, a word of caution. There's not, I don't know, there's not like any Maggie

Haberman stories about how, like, ooh, some of the lawyers are worried about this internally. Lawyers do have some obligation, I think, to kind of object when illegal things are happening in organizations they're part of. I vaguely remember reading about that and other circumstances and corporations and so forth. But anyway, I guess not in this case. You might as well just have Bacon Kelly as White House counsel, you know, I mean, she's, you know, got to go after your enemies and ignore illegalities by your friends, you know. I think she might have her sights set a little higher than that. Hey, everybody, you've probably heard me mention that the bulwark is headed back on the road

this fall, but we've got some big updates that I want you to hear. First, most importantly, we are adding a show in Toronto. I told you Canadians. I was doing my best to make it happen. I'm so thrilled by the response we've had from our Canadian friends. and wanted to make sure if you wanted to be able to come, you could. So we added a matinee, a brunch show, whatever you want to call it, maybe a drag brunch. Don't tell J.D. Vance the next day.

No promises on drag queens there, but maybe the spirit of a drag brunch. And so that will be Saturday, the 27th. Go to the bulwark.com slash events to get all the details and to get your tickets for that encore show in Toronto. Also, New York, that's going to sell out here any minute. So if you want to see us in New York on October 11th, get your tickets ASAP. There's still a bunch of tickets left for D.C. on October 8th, but we've got some exciting guest announcements coming soon. So if you're interested in coming to D.C., get on that as well. All of information available at the bulwark.com slash events.

It's me, Sarah, and Sam up in Toronto, me, Sarah, and JVL and some of our other Bullwark friends and a special guest in Washington, D.C. Look forward to seeing you all out on the road. We'll catch you soon. those tickets now. As reference with Cash, I want to get to a little bit on the Child Kirk Memorial from yesterday, but related to that, Cash Patel, the FBI director, sent this tweet. It's still weird to say, sometimes I just need to say that out loud to just like,

kind of accept that it's my reality, Cash Patel, the FBI director. Okay. His tweet was also extremely long. This is also a new trend among the magnet types that I don't understand. but like they do these, you know, book, like basically novella length tweets. So I'm not going to read all of it to you, but I want to read a key paragraph. The context here is, in addition to there being some conspiracy theories on the left about this assassination, which I've addressed and tried to debunk on this very podcast, there are also a bunch of conspiracy theories on the right about it.

They think it's a little too pat, you know. For some of them, they think the Jews are involved. For some of them, they think it's even more, the transgender roommate, It was involved. There are a lot of different conspiracy theories. Some of them are hard to even kind of follow. But Cash posts this. We are meticulously investigating theories and questions, including the location from where the shot was taken, the possibility of accomplices, the text message, confession, and related conversations, discord chats, the angle of the shot and bullet impact, how the weapon was transported, hand gestures observed as potential signals near Charlie at the time of his assassination, and visitors to lead shooters residents. Regarding specific details, they also are looking into questions about the plane. that allegedly turned off its transponder after departing from an airport near the assassination site. And this is lunacy. This is cash just basically saying that the FBI is taking assignments from the most crazed people on TikTok. And he is going to have his agents look into the weirdest theories that are out there about what appears to me to be a pretty open and shut case.

It's like a pretty short episode of a long order SVU for me. It's like, guy has a motive, guy confessed on Discord text message and to his family. Guy got caught. Anyway, he's going to have his agents looking into all this. And rather than even just saying, we've heard your feedback, we're going to be looking into additional, any other theories about this, he lists them all. And he's giving oxygen to all the craziest people out there. I don't know how we live as a society if this is the way that we're going to be,

where the social media account algorithms push the craziest fake theories forward and the people who are supposed to be in charge. advance it. Do you share my just total, total, I just, I'm apoplectic about it, I guess. Yeah, there's always been a lot of craziness. It's obviously amplified and much kind of goes much faster on social media. But, I mean, part of being a serious person is ignoring the craziness. And I mean, I also feel, what about these FBI agents? I mean, some of them might be think they should be investigating an actual crime like Tom

Homan. And instead, go look at whether the transponder was turned off on something plane, which it wasn't turned off, I don't believe, anyway, that flew out of, I don't know, what the alleged conspiracy even was, what they were transporting some secret assassin. Yeah, one of the guys of the hand gestures, this was posted in our Slack and our guy, Will Summer, who have you even signed up for Will Summers' newsletter following all these crazies? It's the best, but he's like, the guy with the hand gestures is like a famous character and like Magus, like they're saying one of their own evangelical guys is like in on it. Like, none of them make any sense.

You're an FBI agent. You got to, what, you got to track that down and then write a. report for Mr. Cash so that he doesn't get yelled at on by Q&N people that, you know, in his audience that he cultivated over the years. I guess that's where we're at. I think it is where we're at. I mean, I hope it, honestly, it leads to FBI agents without breaking any laws and violating, you know, actually important restrictions on what they can talk about. I hope more stuff comes out, honestly, about what is going on at the Justice Department of the FBI, because it must really be, it is appalling. It is obviously appalling. And they should be

And we see part of it, but we just, God knows there must be a lot we don't see. You know, it'd be good to see. Yeah, Cash in his open testimony in the Senate last week was talking about how they fired all these people like the DRIZ, et cetera, you know, for cause that they weren't living up to the standard. If you're an FBI agent, you got to be like, fuck you. The Dries wasn't living up to the standard. He was doing his job.

He's been in the building for 20 years. Like, you're not living up to the standard. You're tweeting, live tweeting the investigations and getting things wrong. I agree with you. Hopefully the agents are, you know, they're continuing to do good work. Help us get a full picture of what's happening inside the bureau on the Kirk Memorial. We both said this in the green room. We'll just say it to the audience here, I couldn't watch it.

I just couldn't. No disrespect or any intended. I just didn't have it in me yesterday. I needed to spend it the Sunday with my daughter. Luckily, some of our colleagues did. Andrew Eger watched. And if you want to hear his review of the Erica Kirk eulogy, apparently it was extremely dignified and respectful and unifying and I appreciate that she did that in contrast to that

the speaker right after her was the president of the United States and I've only watched I think three clips I've seen three clips from the whole thing and this is one of them and I weighed back and forth whether or not to play it on the pod this morning and I just I feel like we have to play it because I was going to read it and it just doesn't quite do it justice after Erica Kirk advocating for people to turn the cheek and, you know, follow Jesus of this teaching. Here was Donald Trump. He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents.

He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent. And I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry. I am sorry, Erica. But now Erica can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that's not right,

but I can't stand my opponent. I mean, that's just so fucking noxious to do during a funeral, essentially, funeral service, memorial service. And you see what happens. He's reading a teleprompter, some words somebody else wrote for him,

and he pauses. You could hear the pause in that clip, which allowed him to play it. Like somebody told him to say, Charlie Kirk did not hate his opponent, and he paused because that notion, that sentiment was so anethymut to him that he could not even keep reading his telepromp.

and then he has to go off and aside about no, how he hates his opponents and that we should, and that is the value that he wants to put forth at a very fraught time for the country. Pretty sick and alarming stuff. It sounded like I didn't see it, watch it either. It gets a certain amount of applause or kind of a roar when he says that from this crowd at a memorial service. I mean, terrible, terrible. The only other thing, I'm not going to play this audio from the service. It's just worth mentioning Tucker Carlson during his eulogy, I guess, said that he wanted to reflect on his favorite story, which was an apocryphal story about Jesus in a room full of hummus eaters that wanted him killed, tying Kirk's murder to Jesus' murder and feeling like the Jews are responsible for that is worth noting that the first recorded recipe for hummus was in a 13th century cookbook.

Cairo, Egypt. But I don't think accuracy was what Tucker was focused on in that. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but just wanted to mention it. I saw the clip on social media. I felt that I didn't really want to watch it, but I watch, you know, it takes 45 seconds. And there's this maniacal laugh of Tucker's that you've seen elsewhere that he does this again in the middle of this memorial service. And this is just such a fantastic story that he's come up with or heard about just not literally i guess in the gospels but as you know a sort of a you could see where he's getting it i guess getting it i mean it's well it's just beyond in so many ways so grotesque tucker's are very sick as we really i do say this honestly i think has become a very

sick person yeah you know some of these people are just yeah some of these people are just not just tasteful and bad and bigoted and you know terrible and opportunistic and corrupt at all but Tucker is, yeah, there's something wrong there. All right, you said another thing you were riled up about, which I've not talked about anywhere, so just want to let you cook for a second is a change in the Pentagon press rules. The Pentagon said Friday it would impose new restrictions on reporters covering the Department of Defense requiring them to pledge not to gather or use any information that had not been formally authorized for release or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.

Not to gather or use, incidentally. I mean, it's bad enough that you can't pull. you discover that there's a fight going on. I'm making this up between the Marine Corps and the Air Force about some helicopter or jet and whatever, kind of standard Pentagon reporting or about any million of other things. You don't get to report that because it's not authorized for release. I was not talking about classification. None of this applies to classified material.

This is all about unclassified material that reporters could get. They can't even gather it, let alone report it apparently. I guess you try to make a phone call and you're going to under this, you'll lose your Pentagon credential. It's really, well, it just shows. I mean, this is of a piece with their general desire to curb various freedoms, including freedom of the press. And the Kimmel thing is so much more dramatic, of course, First Amendment. But, you know, it's kind of important that we have decent reporting about what's going on

in this massive military enterprise we have and a little bit of exposing of things when people deserve to know about them. It's amazingly shameless, too. It's one thing informally, they're doing all these other things, of course, to cook the books sort of to slant the playing field on reporting and all that. But this is pretty extraordinary, I think, you know. There's something that's related to this. It's kind of a softer type of, I wouldn't even call it a challenge to free speech,

but it is an assault on, you know, what has been traditionally thought to be the role of the press core in a free country, but maybe a more accurate way to say it. Yes, that's the way that they have stacked the press corps all across. administration. This is just kind of an expansion of that in the Department of Defense. But if you watch, I forgot what it was. There was a press conference. It was, you know, one of the more, in the actual, in the briefing room. And, you know, these days I'm so busy on, like, usually, like, you know, we've got folks working hard suffering through all this for us, which I appreciate, like, sending me the best stuff. And it's like, I'm not usually like sitting down to watch 50 minutes of a press

briefing, right? And I was watching it. And I just was struck by just how many sycophants are in the room, right? Like, they have really stacked the press room with people that are just pure propagandists, like, no different from having Sputnik in the press room for the further off, you know, for Putin. And, you know, they kind of mask this assault on the press by all the access Trump gives. Like, Trump does give out access, so it doesn't, like, really feel like they're shutting down the press, but they are, like, shutting down people that are doing legitimate reporting and pushing them out and not giving them access and replacing it with people that are doing a lot of buttering up of him. And it hasn't been complete in total, right? They kind of like having, you know,

a couple of regular press people in there that Trump can, like, be rates or whatever to use as foes. But even still, it makes it hard to get information, right, in a press room. If any time, like, there's one, because usually traditionally, you know, a reporter asks a question, the politician responds. If a politician is it fully forthcoming, the next reporter has a follow-up, that's like, that's not happening, right? Because half to three-quarters of the questions are from people like buttering them up. So I think that's very good point about the broader what's going on throughout the administration, including maybe especially in the White House.

But the Pentagon thing also, think about the context. We've had these three strikes, apparently, on fishing boats that may or may not, well, contain people, civilians, I mean, who may or may not be spuggling drugs and do not propose an imminent threat to the United States and can be turned away by the Coast Guard. But leaving all that stuff aside, there's been some reporting that's been pretty helpful in helping us understand the fragility, maybe that's like quite. even the right word, the whatever, the dubiousness of some of the administration's claims about whether they really knew what they said they knew about who was in these boats. Very good piece in the Wall Street Journal was the middle of last week, as I recall, that lawyers in the Pentagon, both military lawyers and civilian, apparently, very worried about the legality of what had happened.

Obviously, there was reporting about the Iranian strikes, and maybe they didn't do quite as much damage as Trump said, and other things like that. and Hexeth doesn't want any of that. I mean, military is kind of important to actually have good, and they have been good reporters in the Pentagon. And the Pentagon traditions in the State Department, too, for that matter, are a little more, I don't know, as been to be a little less political because people of all parties have understood

it's kind of necessary to have serious reporting and not food movements, nothing that's going to danger people's well-being, but after the fact reporting of this kind. And I don't think it's an accident that this just came out Friday, right after these three boat strikes and the reporting of how little support there is for this up and down the Chandragram. Maybe more stuff is about to come incidentally, and maybe the HECS trying to sort of, you know, chill further reporting on that. Just your point on that about how the kind of traditions have been different in the Pentagon. Just as one example, it's like worth noting that even Fox has had a pretty straightforward, really strong reporter in that Pentagon seat for as long as I can remember, Jennifer Griffin's been doing it for recently.

but even before her. And she's like, Higgs-up hates her, right? And you can see that when he's out there. And he gets very kind of, he's lashed out at her a few times. And so anyway, just to your point,

like, even like pretty partisan folks in the past have recognized like the importance of this, that space having a different type of credibility and standard. And like everything else with this administration, that is being attacked, that tradition. Final topic.

I'm going to get deeper into this this week on the shutdown. fight and what the Dems are going to do, but I just wanted to give you one chance to offer your wise, stately advice to the Democrats as they look ahead to the coming potential shutdown and the need to, you know, pass a budget. I mean, I think they should just should not vote to provide funds to this government in the way it's now functioning. And now, ultimately, if there were certain concessions were made, could they either vote to provide those funds or, I guess, release a few people, vote to proceed on the filibum. They shouldn't vote for the funds, period. Should they insist on a filibuster? Maybe not under certain circumstances. But I'm right now

pretty hard line on this. I see no case for being particularly a conciliatory or for asking too little or getting in some negotiation even for now with Trump. There's so much one would have to ask for, including what about Tom Holman? What about the Pentagon Press Rules? I just feel like, how can you vote to authorize your vote, you're authorizing a government, which is doing all these things. feel like the right stance going in is we are not, we do not feel it is right to vote for this. Now, whether it's two weeks from now or even conceivably, you know, the day after the shutdown begins, they could, circumstances could change and they could accept some deal or, as I say, release some people to vote for cloture or not to oppose cloture, I suppose, but even if they

wouldn't vote for final passage, which they certainly shouldn't. I suppose that's another question. Yeah, and I don't like the fact, I've got to say, if I could just criticize our friend, to our friends, the Democratic leaders here. I mean, Schumer and Jeffrey sent this letter of the president Saturday. It was ludicrous. I mean, instead of listing all the horrible things they're doing and saying, stop doing these things,

and then we can have a government that we could actually, you know, support, though governed by the opposition party. Obviously, many, many, many members of Congress have voted for government funding when the other party controlled the executive branch. Instead of that, they write, we really feel like we need to talk to.

Thune is being kind of mean and he's not talking to Schumer. And so we need to go right to you, that's the tone. You've read the letter, right? That's the tone of it, really not the tone, the substance of it. And so we really want a meeting with you. I mean, how, but really, really, this is what Schumer and Jeffries think. Is it effective?

I mean, maybe they don't believe it, I guess. I don't know if they believe it or not. But maybe they really do want that White House meeting. I don't know what's going to happen there. But again, the tone of it is so much of a supplicant and not of, I don't know if it's really damaging to them, but it was annoying to me. I'm just going to say that. I was annoyed reading that letter.

I was also annoyed. Bill Crystal. Well, I was going to wish you a Shana Tova and let you go, but I just received this text. The BBC is reporting that Brigitte McCrone has presented photographic evidence in court confirming she is not a biological male. So you can have a happy new year and sleep deeply, you know, rest easy, knowing that Brigitte McCrone has, you know, demonstrated her womanness to the what is a woman crowd. What a world. What a world. Thank you.

Thank you for the good, for the Happy New Year, salutations, and happy New Year to you. Even if those, I think we're allowed to wish, Janatoa, to those who themselves might not be part of the tribe. And I'll be off for a couple of days. I really try not to tweet at all during Russia's shot. I think it might be easier to observe that for the first day, but, you know, maybe I might have, the second day as a sort of a question mark as in terms of observance. You know, only the orthodox really observe that. So I might bend a little bit on Wednesday, but tomorrow I'll try to try to. trying to stay silent i'll keep an eye on your feet all right bill thanks a bunch shana tova to you

to everybody else we'll be back here for another edition of the bulwark podcast we'll see you all then peace make your money with a student tie make your money with true denial make your money expertise you can win you make your money with the power fly make you You're money with a bad I can't find As long as you're being it I'm not too comedy

I'm going to get in screams Make your money with this plantation Make a home nation Staying a river Every station Don't forget to ask for mercy Make your money with a pretty face Make it easy and crowded place

I'm not going to waste in the state of queer life. I'm not your television. I'm not your television. I'm not your television. The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brett.