The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Words Are Not Violence

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Trump is a terrible president and he deserves to be criticized, even in personal terms. Our pro-democracy movement has shown time and time again that we can oppose him— and oppose any attempt at violence at the same time. Even putting aside POTUS's own hypocritical calls for violence or his celebrating the deaths of his enemies, Saturday's shooting was related to mental health issues and too easy of access to guns. Plus, Zelensky is the new leader of the free world, Trump looks like he's headed to a humiliating defeat in Iran, the left should work harder to not be false flag cranks, and a look at the Senate map in the context of America Firsters feeling betrayed by Trump's stupid wars and his attempt to redesign D.C. in his image. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes: Monday's "Morning Shots" Ken Klippenstein's reporting on the shooting suspect that Tim referenced David French on Zelensky (gift) Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego on 5/20 and in LA on 5/21: TheBulwark.com/Events For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to Smalls.com/THEBULWARK.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. We are here with Bill Crystal, as always. Just wanted to shout out to everybody I saw out at Jazz Fest this weekend, especially the guy, the couple actually, from Central Illinois, wearing Tim is always right shirts and this Bullwark Oasis hat. I received so many pictures from people that've got selfies with these characters.

And so it was great. I also did an interview on the Allison Minor stage of Young River Eckert. It was nice to see some of you all out there. there. And so I was a little distant from the craziness in D.C. for that reason, but I was present with the Bullard community. Bill, you had to suffer through a Sunday live stream about all this nonsense. So I might have to carry a heavier load today. But how you feel? You should do that. I didn't know you had relatives from Central Illinois. That's nice. Did I sit there showing up wearing your shirt? It would be strange if that was my aunt. It was strange as it was. But I

I appreciated it and, you know, one more weekend ahead of us. Unfortunately, we have to start with the nonsense at the White House Correspondence dinner. Obviously, by this point, people have seen there was, I guess you call a gunman that had stayed at the hotel the night before that tried to storm the dinner. The president and others were evacuated. He didn't even make it to the floor that the dinner was on. So I feel like there's a little bit of kind of misunderstanding about what actually happened. but that said he did engage the Secret Service as now in custody.

There's a ton of discourse around this. We're going to try to get through it as quickly as possible of the most annoying elements of the discourse. But Bill, why don't you start with what you were vamping about in the newsletter this morning? Well, obviously, you know, I deplore violence and efforts to use violence in this way or anyway, really. We should be clear about that. One thing that, yeah, we've both said that, I think, and should.

Having said that, one thing that's... maybe, I think, that is striking about this pro-democracy movement that we are parts of, I think, is how committed it's been to nonviolence. And pretty strikingly so. I mean, they could easily have been fudging and stuff at the margins, but obviously members of Congress are going to say they're against violence, and they are. But the No King's marches, which were the more mass protest side of the movement, you might say, the organizers just got out of their way to say over and over again, it's on the website, that these are going to be nonviolent, that we should be peaceful and and lawful. And people were, incidentally, eight million people, right? So this is a genuine,

nonviolent resistance. Now, I did notice that some mega types who decided, I'm not sure based on what, but that the shooter attended a local No Kings rally, using that to try to discredit the entire No Kings, which, and that's the kind of thing that people need to push, we all should push back on. There should be no giving of ground here. No, oh, well, yeah, it's kind of a problem, you know, maybe on the fringes. No, eight million people showed up. Peaceful, lawful protests. One person showed up, we then turned out to go to Washington and try to commit violence. That person should be deplored and punished, but it does not tarnish the movement at all. There's no evidence. Anyway, it doesn't. And I think it's very important to make that point.

And it's very important now to fight back aggressively against the attempts by the Trump administration and all their lackeys in Congress and outside to try to use this as an excuse, to use this moment as an excuse to intensify their attacks on free speech, on dissent, on using the federal government to criminalize dissent, on passing bad legislation on the grounds that is necessary at this moment of this national emergency. And that's passed the bad 702 legislation or the bad DHS legislation and so forth. It's striking how quickly they went to that by Sunday on, that was the talking point of Ron Johnson and Jim Jordan on the talk shows on Sunday. Totally unconnected, right? 7.02 has nothing to do with what happened. Funding for ICE and the Border Patrol has nothing to do with what happened. But, you know,

it's a moment to take advantage of. And the Trump administration and Trump personally, of course, have always been pretty good or trying at least to take advantage of such moments. And we saw this also as well with the stupid ballroom discourse, which we can kind of just dispense with really quickly. But that was what was happening on social media was that this is why we need the Trump ballroom that he is building illegally without support for Congress after, you know, just sending a wrecking ball to the people's house. These two things have nothing to do with each other. For starters, again, as I reiterate,

we'll hopefully do some more on the Secret Service stuff tomorrow because there's a lot of sub-stories, but just fundamentally, like, the shooter didn't get anywhere near the president. Like, literally the shooter wasn't even on the same floor as the president. I know we've all been to this dinner. I haven't been to many years because it's stupid, so we'll get to that next. But, like, go down escalators to get to the ballroom at the Hinkley Hilton.

and, you know, he was stopped on the floor above. And so, okay, so just for practical purposes, I don't know what was, what the security issue was. And then secondarily, you wouldn't have had this dinner in the ballroom at the White House because it's the White House correspondent's dinner. It wasn't the president's event. He is invited as a guest. And so, you know, the whole thing is just kind of post facto kind of rationalization for Trump's, you know, kind of soft authoritarian desire to. to remake the Washington in his image. You know, just two quick points on the ballroom thing,

which is just, it was Trump himself, of course, who voted up right away. I mean, within maybe an hour after the dinner, I think, on social media, and that the press conference he had around 1030 at night. So this isn't just, you know, you know, Maga MOOCs doing this. This is Trump himself making the case.

It's very revealing actually think about Trump because he assumes that any dinner he's at is about him and that he would, therefore, if he had the ballroom, leaving aside the fact that it only seats third of what the Washington Hilton does and all this. It would be moved to his ballroom. And I guess it would be his dinner.

It would be his dinner. It would be at the White House. He would control, the White House would control the guest list. The White House would presumably run the dinner. The White House would, I mean, as the White House does what it hosts a dinner, it's Trump's dinner, he welcomes people. He arranges the entertainment or so forth. The White House does.

White House social staff. The whole point of the White House correspondent's dinner is it's not that, but it's so revealing that Trump assumes that it should be that, right? And he assumes any dinner he goes to. Chamber of Commerce, National Farm Bureau, all the million things people speak at, President speak at, politicians speak at, that they should be at that ballroom because he thinks it's not just that it's about him. And it's not just that, of course, there are special security precautions that are taken wherever he goes, and that's fine, you know. But he thinks

not just that it's about him, but he thinks that he should run it. I mean, the authoritarianism that lurks behind the ballroom thing, I guess is what I'm struck by, just in the way Trump presents it, as you say, in thinking that this would be something he, that he should be running. The press dinner. Because he controls the press. Which takes us to like why, you know, I was checked out from the weekend to begin with and, you know, why I wasn't flying to Washington for this, which is that, you know,

I don't understand why the press was in the first place even participating in this kind of tuxedo and ball gown awards dinner and toast with the president who is engaging in a full out assault on them. And many of the people in attendance, the president is suing. He's trying to sue multiple outlets to shut them up, getting multiple outlets to, you know,

make payments, you know, to him as part of like totally, totally rigged, you know, agreements after he bullied them with lawsuits. And then on top of that, like he had a dinner with CBS the night before.

CBS had a toast to like him in their correspondence where he gave an hour long speech in private. They didn't report on it. We don't know what he said at the speech. The CBS journalists did not report on what the president said to them at their toast. You assume he was insulting people and doing his insult comedy act like he always does. He is orchestrating the takeover of multiple outlets that were in attendance at that dinner by one of his billionaire buddies. The whole dinner shouldn't have taken place.

And they're going to do it again in a month. And the idea they're going to let Trump stand up there and insult and berate them while he has, trying to silence them and use the levers of power that he has to manipulate them and control them. The whole dinner was a total fucking sham. I think that it was in that way, just like the existence of the dinner was a gift to him. Or certainly the fact that he was an honoree. That's the official title. He was up on the stage because he was going to be asked to speak because he's an honored guest.

There were many guests at the dinner. And he could have sat there in the audience, I suppose, but that wouldn't be the way it would work, obviously. So, yes, he's an honoree. of the press corps, whom, as you say, he's suing and attacking at all kinds of ways, whom he's called traitors, right, whom personally he's insulted in the most grotesque ways, insulting women for their looks, insulting people with medical disabilities for their, you know, disability. I mean, that was a member of the press way back in 2015, right?

I mean, this is what he's done for ages and the press corps's responses. We'd like to honor you, Mr. President. We'd like to have a toast and let you, and we'd like to sit there and be humiliated as you insult us. So the whole thing, the whole thing was a sham having the dinner, not the shooting. We're going to get to that in a second. That wasn't a sham. We're coming back to that. One more thing that you just mentioned, though, that I think bears discussion about, you know,

this resistance and this movement and the opposition to him and what is not only appropriate but praiseworthy and like what is outside the bounds. And it is totally, absolutely fine. People should feel unvarnished to not only criticize, president, but criticize him in harsh and personal terms. Like, he deserves it. Words are not violence. You can use words to call for violence, but criticisms are not violence. Okay, this was, I felt this way when there was some of the stuff on, in campus protest culture, where people are like, we need a safe space from speakers. We don't like. It's like, no, sorry. Words are not violence in a

free country. People can say what they want. And I just, I was struck watching Jamie Raskin, going to get bullied on CNN over the weekend. This always happens where there's some political violence. People are like, well, what about the rhetoric? So what about the rhetoric? It's like, it's not the rhetoric. It's like we have people with mental health issues in the country and very easy access to firearms.

Like, that's why this happens. You know, it is not, you know, the manner in which people were speaking about Donald Trump on this week on the Sunday shows. It's like, the whole thing is insane. And Janie Raskin ends up being like, why, I have no personal issues with Trump. I just oppose his policies. And it's like, no, I oppose his policies and I have personal issues with him. He's a horrible president.

He's a terrible president. And I abhor any attempt to do violence against him. Like, those things live totally peacefully together, like the positions of having harsh criticism of the president, even in personal terms, and also opposing in all forms any attempt to violence. Like, that is not complicated. Anybody that doesn't have a baby brain should be able to understand that. And yet after every one of these things, we go round and round on the cable news panels about trying to police people's rhetoric. It's crazy. Yeah, I totally agree.

And the criticisms of the administration's policies and administration's rhetoric, genocide and so forth for nation civilization and all that, those criticisms are as true today as they were Saturday afternoon. Right. And there's no reason not to make them honestly. And not honestly, there is no reason not to make them, period. We were joking this morning, doing the headlines for morning shots. I suggested, Orange Man Bad, Orange Man's still bad. This is your formula. I believe Orange Man Bad.

I give you credit for that. I don't know if that's actually your original formulation. I believe it is. No, it's not my original formulation, but I did. You embraced it. I did embrace it, and I wrote about how important it is, actually. People tried to tarnish the phrase Orange Man Bad and say that it was cringe, and I wanted to retake it back for ourselves.

Because it actually is really all you need to know about the last decade. gate isn't the orange man is bad. Everything else is kind of superfluous. And you know what? He was bad on Saturday and he's bad today and we deplore violence against him. And being bad doesn't mean anyone should take matters into their hands and shoot people at all, obviously. But yes, his administration is bad. And he's not a great person either. He isn't. He's horrible. And it shouldn't be shot. This is not, this is not hard. The last thing that I wanted to rant about on this topic is there is some stupid discourse coming from in our own ranks about this. You saw this immediately.

the shooting, which is that this was a false flag attempt. This was fake. The president did this himself because he wanted the attention. Just for starters, the idea that Donald Trump would want to do this right before he had the chance to stand on stage and do his favorite thing, which is insult the press for an hour, I find that very hard to believe. I think Donald Trump was champing at the bit to have that evening. And if you want any evidence of that, he wants to do it again in a month. So I think He was very excited to dunk on all the journalists that stupidly dressed up in tuxedos to, like, smile and giggle with him. So just this is a practical matter. I also just am very annoyed about this because I made the joke over the weekend that, like, people on the internet have successfully identified 300 of the last two false flag attempts.

Like, everything now is a false flag attempt. People don't know what that is. It's basically when somebody in power fakes an event, fakes a shooting in order to get sympathy for themselves, essentially, or in order to advance some other policy agenda item that they have. It used to be the right wing crazies that always said this. Alex Jones said every shooting was a false flag attempt in order to get us to take their guns. And now, like, there are people on the left. They're like, everything's a false flag attempt in order to make Donald Trump more popular or let him get more power or whatever.

And it's just like, we have to live in reality. Okay. Every once in a while, there has been a false flag attempt. I think there's pretty good evidence that Russia did one in Serbia in order to try to influence the Hungary elections. But guys, again, what is happening here is that crazy people have easy access to firearms in the country. That is what is behind almost all of these shootings and almost all of this violence. And that is a thing that we should be addressing.

And it just doesn't serve anybody's purpose to descend into like total fantasy land, you know, where everything is a scheme. These guys aren't that smart. These guys can't do anything. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House, the only person getting anything done? It's like these guys are incompetent on all levels. You think that they can keep this secret? Donald Trump can't keep any secrets.

He blurts everything out. Like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the Butler thing was a false flag. And one of the pieces of evidence was that Crooks doesn't have a long internet history. This guy, Colin Allen has a huge internet history. You can see everything. He went to a good college. You can see back in 2017.

You can see everything that he's published. posted. He posts a lot on blue sky. Ken Clippenstein interviewed some of his friends. You know, he had a psychotic break and an easy access to guns. Like the idea that, I mean, what, the CIA planted this guy 10 years ago and had him post a lot of anti-Trump stuff as part of this cover story because maybe Donald Trump would get elected 10 years later and they could use them as part of it's all nonsense. Like it didn't happen. Free yourself from it. Truth is an important part of democracy. And if you let yourself get sucked up by a bunch of lies and crazy, it's going to lead to negative impacts on democracy. We've seen that very clearly on the right. So there's my rant

about that, Bill. I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add. Yeah, I kind of just ignored all that false flag stuff that you're right to call it out. And others should be. That is not a sane or healthy part of the default democracy movement. And people should fix that in themselves, or we should just say, as you just said eloquently, that that is wrong. You know, it was an attempted act of violence, and we deplore that, you know. This episode is brought to you by Smalls. Smalls makes fresh human-grade food for cats. It's made from the same stuff you or I would eat,

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I did see one piece of pushback on me on this. I wanted to address, which is that I also say often that it's not good for the pro-democracy movement that all the cranks and conspiracists are on the right. And then that point, they're like, well, then aren't you being inconsistent, Tim? Like, shouldn't you be encouraging the conspiracy theories? I'm not trying to create new cranks and conspiracy theorists. Right? of the existing cranks and conspiracy theorists,

I think that we should engage with them on issues where there is agreement, such as how Donald Trump sucked us into the Iran War and various types of malign influence that was involved in that. I think we should engage with them on Pallantir and the security state and the way that they're spying on people and going after. There are areas of overlap with cranks that I think that it's important for the Democrats to engage on. but the bulwark is not the place for like cultivating new new cranks.

This is a place for radical candor and truth and honesty. And to the degree that what engages with cranks, one engages to try to lead them out of, to say, look, this thing here is a reasonable point because there is evidence for us. And it's an attempt to lead them out of being cranks not to double down on being a crank. Okay. I'm done with this.

Do you have anything else you want to say about the dinner? No, no, no, no. Okay, the Iran War. So since Friday, I guess here's the update essentially from the two sides of the war. Iran has an offer that they'll open the straight on their terms and agree to end the war, as long as there's no further nuclear talks. That part, the nuclear enrichment talks, the canis get kicked down the road. I should also note that this offer comes for Iran, but I forget I don't have to say the foreign minister's name Araigachi, I think. I think so. He said that there's also no consensus inside the Iranian leadership for how to respond to U.S. demands. Part of the problem with like the initial effort here to just decapitate not only the Ayatollah, but everyone else that could have succeeded him is that there are now a bunch of factions inside. The new Ayatollah, we don't even know.

It could be in a coma. Like we don't know exactly what's going on. He's suffered serious injuries. So we don't even know who we're negotiating with. So that does make negotiating ceasefire's little challenge. On our side, Trump said on Fox over the weekend that his current plan is he's hoping that the oil blockade is going to lead Iran to cave. He thinks it's going to cause systemic issues in Iran if they can't move oil out of the country onto the seas. So that is the current state of play.

It doesn't seem like a solution is around the corner here, Bill. But what do you make of it? I mean, it is pretty amazing eight weeks in that Iran clearly feels they have the upper hand. And is playing those cards, if I can use Trump's favorite analogy, they're playing the cards they have pretty aggressively. And we're saying, gee, we hope there can be peace soon, and maybe the street could be opened, and maybe we won't even look too closely at the details of how much control you'll still have over it

and what tolls you might exact after it's opened. And I get the feeling that, I don't know, we'll see it on the nuclear thing, whether there isn't some kind of, I Trump really wants out of it. And I think the Iranians, they're actually being a little more aggressive in pushing their advantage than I might have expected, because obviously Israel and we could still do an awful lot of damage. But here we are.

Very hard to see that this is working out well. And look, and the one thing Trump never mentions, I've got patience, I've got plenty of time, the straight of Hormuz is closed. The damage that's being done is being done to the global economy and to our economy, not just on oil, gas prices and on oil, but on petrochemicals and all kinds of things,

which people have extensively written about. It's not like once it's closed, it's closed. And so that's part of the cost of the cost to the war, like blowing up someplace or something. No, each day it's closed, increases the cost. So the idea that Trump is just sitting there patiently, it's nice that he's patient, but I don't think an awful lot of businesses

and other finance ministries and others around the world are, I think that's just great and we can just go on like this forever. So the pressure will be on Trump. I don't know, he could start bombing again. I guess he could go to ground troops. I can't believe he will. He could just...

He doesn't seem to want to. No. His own ceasefire expired, and he was making threats about how he, he's going to escalate and then he pretended like they had a deal because he unilaterally didn't want to go back to Obama. So I think he'll, you know, hope maybe things get a good break in the next few days. Maybe there's more pressure on Iran internally than we know the regime's a little unstable. But I still think we're heading towards a pretty humiliating defeat,

really a defeat in which Iran emerges with whatever actually they do with the straight over the next weeks and months. They have established the principle that they can close it. And they haven't paid a fundamental price for doing so. Most of the damage was done actually probably before they did that, right? So that's very, very bad for the, and the nuclear thing is left unresolved, and our credibility is in tatters in the region and elsewhere. Very bad. And I think the Iranian foreign ministers in visiting Putin today, China's in the mix.

You know, it's really... He had a meeting with Oman, and the Iranians are now talking about that toll booth that they can put on to the street. So, you know, conceivably, you know, a whole new funding source, a semi-permanent funding source for Iran, if it turns out like this. And Trump, in addition to what I said on Foxy, he's like he thinks, you know, might take a couple more weeks for Iran to cry uncle. And it's like the longest goes on, why would Iran cry uncle ever? They don't even actually care about what happens to their people, certainly not in this point. And so they have a lot more, I would think, appetite for pain or ability to, to, to.

to weather pain economically than Trump does. So like you said, I mean, maybe, you know, some pressure point happens where things collapse and Trump can get some kind of face-saving deal out of this. But like hope isn't really an option. And it's unclear what their strategy is besides that. And the Trump administration is talking about, so you tweeted about this,

I totally agree with you on this, how outrageous it is a bailout for the UAE. So we're going to bail out the United Arab Emirates, which have an average income of, I don't know, whatever, $50, $60,000 a year, Of course, that average is wildly distorted because the people who actually run the place are a zillionaires and then they have a lot of very cheap immigrant labor in whom they exploit. A terrible place.

Why are we bailing them out at all? I hope, in fact, that Democrats make a huge fuss about this. I guess there's some Treasury program that they can sort of... Currency swap. Yeah, the executive branch has the ability to do that without congressional approval, although Congress could step in and change those rules. And speaking of that, I think the ridiculous justification for the war, there was an imminent threat, which if they really were an imminent threat, the president can.

News Force, and that has 60 days to get congressional authorization or to stop his military action. Those 60 days run out, I believe, this Friday, I think it's May 1st. So even if you buy the imminent threat thing, which no one should have, I wonder, though, do some Republicans in Congress say, yeah, well, this is kind of 60 days? I mean, I only mentioned this because a couple of Republicans have used this as a talking point while he has 60 days, you know. Correct. I think so. And the Democrats should pressure them this. I think they're going to have to vote on this. So I just want to think in addition to the UAE bailout, you posted a substack from David Rothkopf that I was reading this morning.

And just the cost of the war is also, you know, kind of lost a little bit in the conversation about this and the amount of cost that is taking us to run the war every day, the material loss that we're going to have to replace now potentially bailout for UAE of Ron as part of the deal is going to want some kind of, you know, bailout. Trump has even suggested potentially that we might help them with a rebuild. And it is mind-blowing, like, the amount of waste and the addition to our debt. You could think about what we could have spent that money on domestically. And all of that for, again, like a strategic objective that is MIA at this point.

It seems like the strategic objective at this point is like let the straight get open, which it was before the war started. Right. And before we spent all this money and lost lives and killed a lot of people, incidentally, in Iran too, and did a huge amount of damage to our standing credibility around the world. It's really a pretty epic failure, I've got to say, so far. Did you know the fast-growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over two million happy customers? They have all the plants, your yard and home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and house plans all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live, with more plants and you'll find anywhere else. Whatever you're looking for, fast growing trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate, space, and lifestyle. Fast growing trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. I'm getting mine.

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Offer is valid for a limited time, terms and conditions, the pamphi. Speaking of that, damage to our standing around the world, I did just really want to shout out David French's column from the weekend of the New York Times, which has a headline that really appealed to me, which was Meet the new leader of the free world, Vladimir Zelensky. And we've covered this a lot. But I do think just when you kind of take the lens back, it's pretty striking the degree to which now like Zelensky because of the experience of the war in Ukraine, Ukraine has

a very large standing military and a lot of expertise that now, like, they are sharing. They develop their own like arms industry and, you know, they're reaching defense. deals now with the Gulf states when it comes to, you know, drones and weapon defenses. It is pretty remarkable. We have very few positive stories on here. So I do like to mention that. The Ukraine has not only repelled the Russian advance, but has used this opportunity to build a quite impressive military apparatus. And Zelensky himself, when there were so many opportunities for this to go sideways has like really bolstered their standing in the world, relationship with allies in Europe and and elsewhere. And has done so in defending his own country,

but his own country as a liberal democracy and a tolerant one and a decent one, which is a very good reminder to us that liberal, liberalism does not have to be weak. And sometimes it is a little weak. And sometimes the party that's on the liberal side can be a little weak. And there's that Robert Frostline, what is it, a liberal, someone so broad-minded that he doesn't take his own side in a fight and all that. And that's, we often see this kind of stuff here and around the world sometimes. But not in the case of Ukraine, not in the case so far, at least, of Peter Magyar in Hungary. So we're going to get our leaders of 21st century liberalism from Central and Eastern Europe. And I guess I wouldn't have predicted that, you know, 10 or 20 years ago

or 50 years ago. But, you know, I mean, I give them huge credit to them, more credit in a way that they come out of cultures, you might say, that don't make this as easy as being, you know, a liberal here in the U.S., right? I mean, it makes sense. I'm just thinking about it right now after you said that. People say there's always something about like the patriotism of the immigrant to America, like somebody that has come here and is new, particularly if they'd fled oppression overseas and they have even like more, more vigor zeal, you know, and their commitments to the democratic system and folks who've, you know, been here a while and don't know. the alternative. I mean, there is something to that about Eastern and Central Europe, like the,

you know, the memory of repression and totalitarianism is more fresh and, you know, the threats are more real. And so there's less incentive towards decadence. That's an appealing theory. I don't know. We'll have to, we'll have to explore that later. I want to talk about the domestic political situation for Trump before the shooting. I guess I should just say, I do understand the impulse, totally wrong to want to conspiracize about this thing. Because the best theory of that case is that Trump's political standing was cratering. And if you look at his numbers, he really was around the W line. W's approval rating.

Like he's getting into the low 30s. You're seeing in the data, you know, anecdotally from people that you meet, just like a sense that Trump's like really had really harmed himself with this. or on war and harmed the Republicans' prospects in the midterms. And so, you know, he's struck to get into fanciful thinking about, like, what he might do to co-opt that. But I don't think that what happened over the weekend is going to do anything to arrest his political decline.

Maybe he lets him buy a couple of news cycles for whatever nonsense they want to push about the ballroom, et cetera. But the fundamental decline was related to the fact that Donald Trump said that he was going to run on America first and caring about Americans and caring about Americans' economic interests, and instead what he has done is get us involved in stupid wars and focus most of his attention on redesigning Washington in his gold LeMay image, right? Like, that's what he's focused on. And this is not really doing anything to change that trajectory, in my opinion. I'm wondering what you think about that. I totally agree. And I do think the economy. I mean,

he did benefit more than he deserved to and people like us complain about it and think it's both economy's not everything, A, and B, it wasn't quite as good as people as he said. But he did a pretty good job of selling the fact that it was very good under him. And then they did a very good job of selling the fact, which was partly true, of course, that we had inflation under Biden. Economic growth is actually okay of the Biden four years. It's pretty comparable, I think, to the Trump, almost exactly comparable to the Trump four years, but whatever, people thought that Trump was better on the economy. That's one large reason he won, as well as getting prices down. The economy's been sluggish, and he hasn't gotten, and prices are going back up. And that's not going to

change. That's going to get worse, I would think over the next few months. It's the longer the Straight of her moves is closed, for one thing, not better. Everyone's been hoping for the magic moment. And I don't, the Trump, you know, the inflection point where Trump gets, you know, irreversibly damaged. I don't know if life works that way. And democratic politics does tend to be a little more, you know, slice by slice. And that's certainly what it's been for Trump over these 15, 16 months. But now, you know, he is probably in the, even if he's in the mid-high 30s, which maybe is a more safer way to put it,

he's losing almost a point of, lost almost a point a month. And I keep thinking, when one of the, one of the first, sort of thinks, well, okay, it's going to stay, well, he's got that solid base, he's got that solid base, and therefore he's going to stop going down as quickly. And of course, there's some common sense true to that, right? You lose your 49th and 48th percentile of support faster than you lose your 38th and 39th, presumably, right? They're the weaker ones. Having said that, what is striking is that the pace of decline hasn't slowed, if anything, is picked up during the last two months during the war. And there's now real evidence in the data that his base is beginning to

to lose confidence in it. The people who strongly approve of Trump, that percentage has gone down. And it's really lopsided now. We're getting to 50% strongly disapprove and like 20% strongly approve. That is, and you really want to look at those numbers because somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove. By definition, those are a little bit malleable. He gets some good news. They go up a couple of points out. But if you're starting at 2050 of people who are unlikely to change their mind, that's very bad for Trump and very bad for the Republican Party. I think part of it is the economic stuff, as you mentioned, but part of it is, like, this is why it matters that these crazy America First Media people are turning on him. This is why it is worth paying attention as noxious and gross as he is to what Tucker and Candace and them are saying. Because, like, there is some, you know, some slice of his strong backers that genuinely did not want us to get back into Middle East wars.

You know, this is why I think the Iran thing is so made at an inflection point as in this was the moment that, you know, the walls caved in on Trump and he never was able to recover. But I think that Wyatt was important for him starting to lose that category because fundamentally, like there were a group of, you know, conservative type voters who were genuinely upset about the cost of the Middle East wars. And, you know, in some of those cases, it was because they had people that were serving in them in their lives. In some of those cases, it was just this kind of broad idea that their lives are getting worse. Why are we spending this money overseas? There are different reasons.

But that was a core group that he started with. And this has just been a total betrayal of them on like a very fundamental thing. You know, like sometimes people say, oh, well, Trump betrayed conservative principles on, you know, this issue or that issue. But a lot of times it was on stuff that like really only D.C. Beltway conservatives cared about in the first place, tariff, policy or whatever. There are a lot of America First type voters in the country that did think we're spending too much money overseas, doing too much overseas. And that usually overlaps with the type of person that also didn't want immigrants to come into the country and other views that I don't agree with at all. But they are genuinely held. And Trump is just totally kicking dirt in their face

on it right now. And so it's like not surprising that some percentage of them are bailing. And again, the whole country is not podcast listeners. A lot of these people are Fox listeners and they're getting, you know, more positive Trump coverage. But some segment of the MAGA base is alternative media listeners. And if you just look at the stats like Tucker and Candace's audience is growing and the audience of the podcasts that are more supportive of what Trump is doing is declining. Like that is a real thing.

Maybe it's only a couple percent here or there, but that matters. I agree. And just other people who are on the softer supporting side, who care less by these individual issues to see the general fracturing of support and the kind of chaos and they sort of think

these were his supporters what's wrong kind of thing as well like that as opposed to I care so much about these issues I agree with the Iran war wars are wars you know and if they go badly

and this is the president's war this was not a by I mean whatever one thinks of the other wars which also presidents have paid a huge price for they did have some congressional support at least at first at authorization

here this is Trump's war and only his war. The fact that it looks like it's it can end up as a pretty bad failure, a pretty evident failure, particularly hurts. I mean, you know, I was having an argument or discussion with a foreign policy, a friend who does foreign policy this weekend,

talking about how all the coverage was on the White House obviously dinner and everything. This was yesterday, I guess, we were talking and not on this Iran stuff, which is pretty striking that Iran has made, the IRGC is making the demands it is now about, you know, well, we'll open the waterway on our terms and put off the nuclear stuff. And this country, we were pummeling and allegedly, you know, we have all the cards.

I said, yeah, well, I guess people get back to making that argument point. And he said, look, at some point these things do get, I don't know, they escape confinement. You know, people just know what's happening. People see what's happening. People are, this is a war. People have been following it. It's been in the news a lot for two months. And they kind of know that this is not the outcome that he said we were going to get to.

And even if they're not following the news, they see it at the gas pump, right? That's right. There's just real tangible impact here. And in that way, you know, you said that some of the software Trump supporters are seeing, you know, they do get influenced in some ways by seeing the tuckers jump off the ship. The other comparison, and obviously all the ancillary stuff around Trump is so much worse. But just like looking narrowly at this decision to go to the Iran war and like the way that the Afghanistan withdrawal happened. I do think that a lot of the Biden, like people that got off the vote with Biden was this. sense. It was like, I think he's kind of old, but, you know, we needed normalcy back. Things were too crazy under Trump. And then the Afghanistan, what's all happens? And it's like, well, that seems like somebody who was asleep at the switch at like how that happened. Like, that was very, it just wasn't handled well. And then right on the heels of that, you see inflation start to tick up. And I, and I just think that, again, people that aren't as like tuned in and aren't as like on one team or the other, start to look at all this and say, this guy, you know,

you know, who's driving the ship here? Like, do we have a captain? Like, things are getting out of hand, you know, and maybe they didn't care that much personally about the Afghanistan policy one way or the other, but it was that combined with the economic stuff. And there's just a sense that started to grow that, like, we didn't have the strong leadership that people wanted to get things back on the right track. I do think that there's some parallel to that here. That's a good point. But also, I'd say a parallel in that Biden paid a prize, I think for seeming unwilling to acknowledge that Afghanistan could have been handled better on the withdrawal and seeming almost oblivious to the inflation problem or denying it or trying to argue it or explain it away, you know, deny it or kind of minimize it for quite a long time. And I think that's also true here, right?

Trump obviously never acknowledges any problems. And that doesn't matter as much if the problems seem to be either incidental to his policies or people don't care about them or maybe it's a a global thing like a pandemic. And so Trump's been kind of a cloud in handling it, but honestly, is anyone handling it very well? A lot of people told themselves that. These are pretty particular problems that he has caused or not dealt with or promised to deal with and hasn't dealt with, and that he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge maybe the little course correction is needed. This matters. Trump political standing going down because knocking on what he's not going to try to run again is, you know, particularly about the midterms. And for me, particularly about the Senate. And so I do want to kind of do some temperature checks and make sure we're

keeping our eye on what's happening in the Senate races as we get through the rest of the year. The baseline for this, which I'll just repeat briefly for everybody to make sure they're, if they're not as close followers of the political report as I am and aware of the map, the Democrats need to save their own seats. You know, obviously the incumbent Democrats or retiring Democrats, those seats need to be protected. That's the Michigan Senate race. is one of those. There's a big primary going on there right now. The Georgia Senate race, John Ossoff is going to be challenged. I think he's looking pretty strong right now. And then there are the two states where Democrats are looking to do pickups, where they've won

something statewide relatively recently. So they seem more getable. That is North Carolina with Roy Cooper running a really strong race. And then Maine, looking like Graham Platner, or Susan Collins. That's a bit of a wild card. So let's just separate Maine for a second. Let's pretend like that is going to happen. And if they get two Senate seats, then you got to go pick up two in red states. And so Ohio is the first one with Sherrod Brown back running again that people look at. And then you get in this jumble of Alaska. There you tell Paltola. It's when I have my eye on the closest. You have Texas, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, even independent running, Montana independent running. Those are all Trump 10 plus states. So you need Trump standing to get

really low to start to have hope that either Trump voters are so sick of him that they'll vote for the Democrat in those states or that they'll stay home. How do you kind of assess the state of play right now? I think there's a period of time where people were starting to get very excited in conventional wisdom. I was like seeing some posts on nerd Twitter like the Democrats might get 54 seats in the Senate. It's like maybe who knows? But I don't know. I've looked at the data recently. There's that Ohio poll that really stuck out to me that had Sherrod Brown down three that makes me think, more work needs to be done here.

Trump's numbers need to be driven even lower. But I wonder what your view is on the state of playing the Senate. I think the Senate is doable. I would still allow you. It's under 50-50, but it's not 90-10 either anymore. And I think it's very, very important.

I think they're going to win the House. And I actually got an argument with some Democratic operative who can't get loose side of the House. You know, that's where the winnable seats are. It could waste a lot of money on these Senate, especially in big states. Obviously, they should win whatever.

they can win in the House. But honestly, it makes much more difference to win the Senate by one vote than to win the House by 27 as opposed to 22. I think the House will happen now, especially if Virginia gets upheld in the courts here, which I think is likely. I mean, Alaska, there's actually a poll showing the incumbent. Potola Head. Potola Head, right? Sullivan's down by like five or something. So I agree the Ohio thing is a good reminder that, look, these states are sticky and they can look possible, but then the last-minute reversion often is to the baseline Republican. On the other hand, if Trump's numbers go down a couple more points. I mean, Iowa looks like it's very much in play.

I think Kansas, we're going to get a poll this week. I'm very curious to see this. That could be in play. And then there are these, yes, sort of wild cardish, Montana, Nebraska, Nebraska states, southern states, Mississippi had a fairly close way. I was just about to say, the Mississippi candidate is kind of interesting in that Senate race. And, you know, it wasn't, well, was it, the Elvis. Presley's cousin or whatever, Brandon Presley ran down there statewide and got a little closer than

you would think. You know, big black vote in Mississippi. That's a totally different type of, your kind of strategy than like for Italarico. Like there, you're trying to just maximize the black vote. Hopefully, you know, the Trump unpopularity depresses turnout among white Republican voters. A tough, but not a zero percent chance. No. And I mean, these states are different. And this is where, you know, there's a lot of Washington operatives. They're like, what's the magic? There's no one bill. I mean, different issues work differently.

If the farm economy is really suffering and continues to get worse, as it could be, the straight-of-form moves, affects things like fertilizer. You know, then Iowa and Kansas, I think, really aren't. But they both elected Democrats statewide in recent times, in Trump times. I mean, so this is not like such an amazing thing that a Democrat could win. Now, they tend to win the non-federal offices because the state officers rather the... Like, for example, an aisle, Rob Sand, who is a statewide elected official. auditor's running for governor.

I think he looks very good. The Senate, the Senate race is a little different. And in some ways, that complicates it because now you're asking some Trump voters to go out and talk two Democratic boxes, governor and center. There's some psychological effects there.

But I agree. I mean, depending on how the pharmacone goes, Iowa might end up looking, for all to talk about Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska, you know, very well can end up being much closer conceivably. I think it's all in play. If it's a way of election,

It's getting not quite there. I agree one should be cautious. The generic ballot isn't quite where it might be at this yet. But again, history suggests it tends to continue trending in the direction it's in, not to reverse back. But a lot of things are going to happen. Will there be a Supreme Court retirement? What will the economy be in six months?

How will the war end? We sort of see where it seems to be going. We don't see the ending. Will there be other wars? God knows what Trump could try. Will some of the election subversion stuff work? how much will his desperation, and I do think there's a lot of desperation coming here

in terms of making him more authoritarian, not less. I don't think we're going to see a triangulation situation here. One could see tiny bits of it. Let's get rid of Bovino and bring it home kind of thing. But I think on the whole, what you see to the Justice Department and in the Defense Department at this point is intensification, not triangulation.

I guess some of that might work, but this is a big year. It's really a big year, you know? It is. Scott Colum is the Mississippi candidate's name. I had it in my head. I knew it was that, but I didn't want to get it wrong. And so I just double checks.

It's an interesting race in Mississippi. As you mentioned, you said it's below 50%. I was just curious. Polymarket, which I do not support, okay, I do not support prediction market gambling, but just as a benchmark, it's interesting. It has Democrats 52 Republicans 49 right now for the Senate. That feels a little bullish for me on the Democrats.

That's higher than I would have it, but it's telling. and it also just kind of is reflective about that that's where the real real battle is going to be this year. Okay, Bill Kristol, anything else, anything I missed, anything grinding your gears, you need to get off your chest? I think we got a fair amount off our chest today. Tim, that was good. It was wonderful. All right.

Well, I appreciate you. We'll see you back here next Monday. Everybody else, we've got a good guest lineup this week. So we'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace. Or podcast is brought to you. thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anseley Skipper,

and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.