The Bulwark Podcast - David Frum: Leveraging Violence as a Tool of Power

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Trump and the people around him want to use the Kirk assassination to suppress their political opposition. And Trump is clearly laying the groundwork for cracking down on people he doesn't like—peaceful protesters, Dem fundraisers—while also offering rhetorical comfort to potential vigilantes on the right. Meanwhile, we are witnessing the danger of having an incompetent person atop the FBI, who alternates his time between posting for clicks and purging the bureau of highly qualified personnel for political cred. Plus, Vance is running for the 2028 nomination every day, the raid on the Georgia Hyundai plant shows the incoherence and stupidity of Trump's economic vision, and as Putin tests the resilience of NATO, the White House is playing politics in Poland. David Frum joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Frum's "Trump Is No Nationalist" piece Bill's tribute to Georgia police officer David Rose Bob Kagan's "The Beginning of the End of Nato" Tim referenced The poem, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" Tim's playlist Frum's podcast Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at TheBulwark.com/events. Tix on sale next week for extra Toronto show!

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, in honor of our favorite Canadian guest, we've got today, I got a quick announcement for our friends up north. Toronto, we sold out to the event in two weeks on September 26th in like two seconds. There's so many Canadians who want to come, which we really appreciate. Maybe they want to come just to throw tomatoes at Sam Stein. We don't know. But we are looking to add a kind of a brunch encore show on Saturday, September 27th.

So if you're in Toronto or somewhere else in Canada or looking for an excuse to go to Toronto, Detroit, keep an eye on the bulwark.com slash events early next week. We might have some extra tickets coming. All right. Our guest, he's a staff writer at the Atlantic. He's author of 10 books, including Trumpocracy, as podcast, is the David From show. it's kind of new. It's going up the charts. We're loving it. New episodes released every Wednesday. It's David Frum. How you doing, man?

Hey, thank you. We've got a bunch to discuss, obviously, about the political violence in this country, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I'm going to get to that in a minute. As we're taping this right now, there's a press conference happening in Utah. So I want to make sure we get the listeners the latest on what we know. It seems like we have a suspect in custody. So first I want to start with a different news. that I've been able to get to this week, which is on Wednesday, Russia sent a swarm of drones into Poland. NATO scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down. Our president has now been asked about this twice. Donald Trump, yesterday, he said could have been a mistake, could have been a mistake, repeated that twice. This morning, and Fox and Friends, he said that Poland thing, and they were actually knocked down and they fell into the air. I don't know why that makes it better. In both cases, he kind of came out of it.

He's a little frustrated with Putin. What do you make of the state of play? Well, you need to step back and understand Poland is very important to Trump and the Trump administration. He has been playing politics inside Poland in a really blatant way, much as his vice president has been playing politics inside the UK in a blatant way. For nationalists, these guys are very globalist. So Poland is a political system where it has both a president and a prime minister. The prime minister answers to parliament. The prime minister makes most of the decisions. The president has a big, powerful veto. Poland, like the United States, is very divided between the dynamic metropolitan area. where Poland's economy is thriving, where Poland is benefiting from international trade, where life is very modern, and a countryside that is doing much better than it did under communism, but not as well as the cities. And as the gap widens, the envy intensifies. The president comes from the countryside. He's very reactionary, very socially reactionary, anti-abortion, anti-gay. And you can't be pro-Russia and survive in Poland. He's not,

but he is someone who is definitely hostile to Ukraine and the Ukrainian presence inside Poland. Meanwhile, there's a prime minister who is the product of a majority in parliament. He has most of the day-to-day responsibilities and represents modern successful Poland, which is about to join the G20 as a trillion-dollar economy. I saw this crazy chart about Poland compared to some of the other, just like the GDP growth in Poland as compared to some of the other more stagnant, like Hungary and then some of the other more stagnant European countries, is pretty remarkable. Well, this is a moment to recall you to your Republican roots.

What has Poland been doing right? low, steady taxes, favorable regulatory environment, consistent monetary policy. I mean, all the things that Republicans used to stay. Making friends with other free countries that have dynamic economies that can trade with. Yeah, exactly. Letting go of old grievances that, you know, Western Poland, you're a couple of hours from Berlin, and you know what Berlin loves, farmers' markets. So instead of tanks heading one way, you laid up your trunk with expensive endive

and drive it into central Berlin. And, you know, they let those grievances go. But Trump invited the president of Poland to the White House just last week without notifying the prime minister, snubbing the foreign minister, defying the entire Polish government. And he, not only that, but during the recent presidential election, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem went to Poland to endorse the candidate of the far right over the candidate of the sort of the center parties. So Trump has been playing a lot of politics in Poland to favor the far right.

That's what Vice President Vance was doing in Great Britain on his summer holiday. Again, he was playing politics inside a divided political system for the far right and against the center right. Understand, they have views. And Poland is ground zero for Trump's attempt to say, it isn't that we're writing off Europe. And so we're trying to reinvent Europe as a network of far right parties that identify with Trump and are as sympathetic as possible to Russia. Again, in Poland, you can only be so sympathetic to Russia.

But to the extent you can be pro-Russian in Poland, that's what they want. So you are then tying that backstory of Trump having the, you know, know, more nationalist president of Poland in last week. I mean, how directly to the Russian incursion or just talking to Trump's lukewarm response? I'm going to be pedantic for a moment. Yeah, please. I wouldn't call him a nationalist. That far right president campaigned on the slogan, Poland first. So what kind of nationalist? He's like the local Wendy's franchisor. He sees when he does a trip to, you know, the Midwest, sees that Wendy's works, buys the Polish rights to Wendy's and brings him back to Poland. He's not a nationalist. He has a globalist, too.

He's just a globalist of the far right. And I think it's worth battling for terms about nation because this global far right pro-Russia movement does not speak for the interests of any individual nation. It's loyal to Trump. It's infatuated with Putin. The people who are looking out for the interest of the everyday poll are the people who have delivered this blistering GDP growth by running a modern state in Poland. They are the ones who are putting truly putting Poland first, but these other guys take the slogan and they shouldn't be allowed. Did you see the, I guess, Alexander Dugan is on substack? I don't know.

It was such a weird world. Speaking of Wendy's franchises. Yeah, he is the kind of people call him the spiritual advisor of Putin. He's like the ban on Russia for kind of a shorthand. Maybe you can correct me on that shorthand. But his posts yesterday was who killed Charlie Kirk question mark from Utah to Ukraine. It's one global war. And I just raised that because that speaks exactly to what you're talking about.

They might position themselves as a nationalist, but they see it as a global. They're just globalist in their own way. You know, one of the things that has been a real problem for this kind of conspiratorial far right is, remember when Glenn Beck used to draw all those charts on his blackboard? Of course. Oh, yeah. People have been doing the metaphorical equivalent of these charts for 150 years. And the center are always the Jews. So, and for Dugan, I'm sure the Jews are at the center.

But if you're in America, America is like, what? one of the world's less anti-Semitic countries. And the American far right is uncomfortable with this. And unfortunately, a lot of Jews attracted to the American far right. So that box doesn't have Jews in it. The Jews are sort of from a thermodynamic engineering point of view, because there's got to be somebody who's masterminding the conspiracy. And globalists is just so vague and insubstantial.

Globalists, who are they? You need freemasons? Well, no one really remembers them. So to do this kind of conspiratorial. Ross Childs, now we can get excited about that. So I think Dugan's pretty clear about who is running this war, but his American disciples get a little blurrier about it. Okay. So back to the kind of the military side of this.

Our friend of the show and your colleague wrote for the Atlantic, Bob Kagan, that those 19 drones from Russia going into Poland are the beginning of the end of NATO. Maybe the beginning of the end already happened, but we'll give them a rhetorical flourish. And obviously, I have the European NATO countries rallied immediately to Poland. Poland's defense. Our president didn't do anything. And this is happening. It's not just Poland. Meanwhile, I guess it was less than a week ago now that the biggest area assault on Ukraine of the entire war happened or over 800 drone attacks from Russia into Ukraine. So what do you make of the state of play on the war side of things? What is NATO? It's a big building in Brussels. It's a set of treaties and agreements. It's a set of conferences. But ultimately, it's a guarantee. And it's a

guarantee that flows from the United States to America's allies, it says, if need be, the United States will defend you, as if it would defend itself. And so what that means ultimately, and we hope to God it never comes to this, if you're a NATO member and you really need it, there will be an American nuclear response to protect your sovereignty. Once you're in NATO, that's the ultimate guarantee. Now, nuclear responses are decided not by Congress, but by the president, entirely on his own. He's a nuclear, absolute monarch. So what NATO ultimately is, it's a nuclear, ultimately rests on, is a confidence by the NATO members and their potential adversaries that if push really comes to shove, so don't do it, if push really comes to shove,

the President of the United States will use nuclear weapons to protect a NATO country. Does Putin believe that? He does not. He knows if he attacks Poland, there will not be an American nuclear response. If he attacks Estonia, there will be no response at all. So in that sense, isn't NATO already dead? Right. If you think of NATO as a guarantee, it's a promise, and everyone knows the promise will not ultimately be honored.

And the fact that the building is still there and the treaties are still there and all the people go to work in the building, they get off the trams. But what are they doing? It's kind of like that big Washington Times building in Washington, D.C. This huge building when you're coming into town, it says Washington Times on it. The building is still there. And I think they have a website still. But if you go into it, it's empty. There's no one there. And it doesn't do the job it was created to do. I wonder if you have any other thoughts on kind of, you know, where we are with the war. I was reading the Kiev post this morning. And some of their sources say the EU feels like the U.S. is finally coming around. I feel like we've heard this story like the entire term. But they report that. The EU is pushing for formal sanctions on businesses and financial institutions that retain ties to Moscow.

While the Trump administration is eyeing trade tools like tariffs to erode Russia's capacity to bankroll the war. Meanwhile, Ukraine is now is still attacking petroleum sites, energy sites inside of Russia and have had some success with that. What do you make of that state of play? In the complicated politics of the Ukraine war, Ukraine has enemies and it has allies. And some of the allies are more effective and some are less. So it remains true, I think, that a majority of the Republican senators in Congress are allies of Ukraine. And to the extent they can, those senators are to the extent they dare, those senators are pushing every day. And meanwhile, the president of the United States is on Russia's side.

Now, the president of the United States is more savvy and canny, as crazy and stupid as he often acts. He does have a real sort of rodent's instinct for survival. Yes. And one of the things he knows is he can't get too far away from, I mean, if he were to outright say, you know what, Putin's right. Putin's my friend. Putin's right. I want to see the Russian flag flying in Kiev.

That might cost him, Lindsey Graham. That might be the thing that breaks Lindsey Graham. So he needs to give Lindsey Graham and people like him, the other senators who feel the same way, some cover. Any minute now, I'm going to do something. So you don't want to force my hand because I'm, I'm. And that's what he was doing today. Every time Putin does something bad,

Crump said then has some imaginary process to comment. You know, I'm really rethinking this, or I'm getting very fed up, or any minute now, I'm about to do something. Now, that minute never happens. Yeah, here's his exact quote today. Astor he's running out of patience on the Fox and Friends couch. Yeah, it's sort of running out and running out fast.

So it's running out sort of and quickly. Right, right. It's like the Gerald Bird's girlfriend, who is this close to being done with him forever. But then he remembers her birthday and brings her flowers and the romance is back on. So given that, and you don't have a crystal ball, but your sense is a status quo. We're in a status quo situation. Yeah. Here's the good news. Ukraine is becoming a militarily very capable power. Russia has an economy the size of Italy. Europe together has an economy

about three quarters as big as the United States. They have certainly the economic resources to back Ukraine. they don't have as much abundant military supply ready, but they can make it. One of the things that's important to understand that what Trump is doing is Trump is forcing Europe to turn into an independent military power. And the Trump people say, oh, we love, that's the thing we've always wanted, is an independent military Europe. Really? Because an independent military Europe is not going to agree with you about China.

They're not going to agree with you about China. They're going to say, you know what, China is as far away from us as it's possible to get. We have no interest in tangling with them. We trade with them a lot. You know, Americas, you told us to be on our own. We're on our own. And congratulations, you also are on your own. The central security challenge of the 21st century is that for the first time since the United States faced the British Empire in the War of 1812, the United States is facing a potential adversary that is as big as the United States, as rich as the United States, as tough as the United States, as tough as the United States and even Nazi Germany were basically pretty decrepit empires and much smaller in population and wealth than the United States. China is a near- equal. And if you're going to balance China, you need friends. And the Trump policy is the only friends we want are Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, and half of Israel. The China policy has been hard

for me to discern from this administration because on one hand, you have a decent amount of China Hawks inside the administration. There's some tough talk. I guess we're in some way, somewhere to Russia. Trump himself, though, you know, whatever your thoughts are in the policy, you kind of got crossways with the China Hawkside on allowing whatever it was, 600,000 students from China to come into the country and he's talking about being very sensitive to she he uh you know the tick talk ban obviously he's going against the law to not enforce that and obviously his USAID and soft power policy is empowering China how do you translate what's happening Trump is a domestic culture warrior he's not interested in geopolitics I mean he's interested in

collecting bribes from foreign countries and those buy you some goodwill I mean it looks like the Trump administration tipped off cutter to the Israeli raid on Hamas HQ and that tip off may have saved lives of the Hamas people gathered there. That's still a kind of blurry story. Carter got something for the jet. It gave Trump. So he's interested in collecting bribes. The thing that the China Hawks would say is we need to balance China,

and that means we need technology policies here at home. That means we need a re-industrialization. But it means we also need to work with new kinds of friends, India and Vietnam. And Trump's not interested in working with friends. I mean, the Vietnamese people allowed him to build a corrupt golf course. Yeah. Really?

big, fancy one. Very fancy. But in the end, they still got hit with the tariffs because maybe it wasn't a big enough bribe. The tariffs are a little less than the other countries. They've got a visit to the new, you know, Panera Rose Garden Club out of it. Exactly. Exactly. One of the things that needs to be said about the tariffs, this is, I think, a secret reason or an undeclared reason why Trump loves them so much, is the tariffs give Trump what no American president has ever had before, would no buddy in the Anglo-American tradition has had since the days of the Stuart Monarchs in the 1600s. He's got a source of revenue that doesn't depend on Congress. First time, if you were to say to the people in Philadelphia in 1787, what's like the one thing you're trying to make sure?

What is like one thing here? Well, the number one thing is to make sure that the new ruler of America cannot have revenue that Congress didn't give them. That's Article 1, baby. There's a reason. It's Article 1. Congress provides the money. The president can spend it, but only after Congress. Congress gives it. Trump is broken free. And to give you an idea, in the month of August, he raised $31 billion from tariffs. How much is that? Well, the entire no tax on tips gimmick, which expires in 2028, most people don't know that, but it's temporary. Over the entire life of that gimmick, it's worth about $30 billion. So in one month in August, he collected without Congress more revenue than the Treasury will pay for the entire no tax on tips program. Wow. It's telling about what that impact is on working people, you know, like actual working people. I did know. One thing I don't think I've mentioned in the pod is they're still kind of defining who qualifies, what qualifies is a tip. And the recent guide and streamers and content creators, our tips count. So if you give a little tip on the YouTube page, we don't got to pay taxes on that, which is a nice bribe, a nice way to get those streamers to be nice to you. And, you know, maybe I get a little trickle down out of that deal.

A couple cents. But there's a number, right? Trump would say there's some number at which Tim Miller sees the error of his ways. He would think so. And his mindset for sure. I was joking with Nicole Wallace yesterday. I was like, I was like, the thing that you got a hand, Trump is he'll try to bribe you. And if you turn, you know, I said to Nicole, I was like, if you put on the red hat,

if you go on MSNBC one day and say surprise, pop, red hat, the scales have fallen from my eyes, you'll be invited to the Rose Garden Club. Marlauga the next day. Like there's no... Or be released from prison. Right. Yeah. Like that's all that takes.

And there's something, and that's obviously not a good moral trait or good trait in a human that you would want. But it is politically speaking, if you're trying to expand your coalition, it's something maybe the left could learn from a little bit. Yeah. This episode of the Bullwark podcast is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Green is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads. seasonal pastries and fresh pastas

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So I didn't ask for the pasta. If it's as good as the pastries are, then you'll be. in good shape. Couldn't recommend it more highly. Some little cinnamon biscuits, apple cider donuts. I could use an apple cider donut right now, actually. This fall, treat yourself and your loved ones to warm sourdough breads and seasonal baked goods from Wild Grain. As I said, they got apple cider donuts and pumpkin cinnamon biscuits as well. So get them before these seasonal items sell out. For a limited time, Wild Green is offering our listeners 30 bucks off the first box, plus free croissants in every box. Already ate some of those. When you go to wildgrain.com

slash the bulwark to start your subscription. You heard me, free croissants in every box and 30 bucks off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash the bulwark. That's wildgrain.com slash the bulwark or you can use promo code the bulwark at checkout. Don't miss their seasonal products. Yum. One more thing on the terrace, then we'll get to Kirk. I'm curious just your overall view of, you know, kind of the state of the economy.

We had jobs revisions numbers earlier this week, dating back to 2024, that look, pretty bad, the inflation number, you know, it's ticking up a little bit, but it seems like it's not maybe hitting quite as hard as some of the tariff opponents would have said on folks, myself included. But at the same time, the economy is looking, you know, extremely shaky. What do you make of that where we sit? Adam Smith famously said there's a lot of ruin in a nation. And what he meant by that is people are always saying, oh, this thing, this is certainly the ruin. That happens a lot. It's an accumulation of things. But yeah, the economy is definitely trending down. Things are becoming

more expensive for most people. Wages aren't keeping up. Job growth has stalled. For the young people, job growth has gone into reverse. If you're 24, 25, this is a recessionary economy if you're under 25 and it's pretty close to a recession if you're under 30. So far, the middle-aged already have a place to live, are doing better, but it will catch up too. A terrible housing market. And the tariffs just, they work their way through. And what we're going to have is a really fascinating test in October of, is there any integrity left in the U.S. Supreme Court? Two courts have said the tariffs are illegal, the Court of Trade and the D.C. Circuit. Now, this case is going to the Supreme Court. They're obviously illegal. If the American Constitution,

as you said, if the American Constitution says one thing, it says the president cannot create a system of revenue independent of Congress, and he can't invoke some imaginary emergency. World War II was a pretty big emergency. Franklin Roosevelt got his taxes from Congress. Trump has to get in this not imaginary emergency. Trump has to get his taxes from Congress. He's created a non-congessional source of revenue. That has to be unconstitutional and illegal. Two courts have said so. And we'll see what the Supreme Court does. We'll see what they do. I wonder if they do, you know, render it illegal, the verdict that it is unconstitutional what he's doing. I was talking to stuff rule about this earlier this week. In some ways, it's kind of a bailout, maybe, of him and sort of gives Trump

what he wants, where he can sort of blame the whatever, the deep state and the road people and the freemasons again. And so he was doing his best to make, to bring. about a golden age. On the other hand, in this case, he's just so dug in on it. I do, doesn't he just try to go, you know, use a different, you know, go around, you know, whatever the ruling was and use some different justification for the tariffs. And then it goes back to the courts again. And he kind of does the thing that he did on all of his criminality where it's just stalling, kicking the can, stalling. And eventually he's, you know, either out of office or an authoritarian. There are other tariff routes he could try beyond the

the emergency tariffs that he's imposed. The revenue is really important. A lot of his fiscal plans depend on the promise that he's going to raise a lot. I mean, the thing that makes the tariffs so important to him is exactly the thing that makes them so illegal, that he's looking to get a lot of revenue out of them. They're also going to trigger if the Supreme Court does the right thing, a really nasty scramble inside American politics. So the tariffs are the check to the government issues from whoever imports the original

product. If the government is told you have to pay this money back, then all the people wrote that check, those checks of the government get their money back. But of course, the costs have been passed down from importer to producer to fabricator to ultimate consumer. No one down the chain is going to get their money back. So the person who imported, you know, the sound system for the new minivan, they wrote the check to the treasury. They get the money back. But the carmaker doesn't get the money back. And certainly the people bought the minivan. They don't get their money back. Hey, everybody.

We are going on the road this fall, and I want to see you. Sadly, our Toronto tickets have already sold out, so I'm plotting a return to Canada. You guys just wait on that. But there's still tickets left for our events in Washington, D.C. and New York City in October. Come join me, Sarah JVL, for two nights of camaraderie and joy and resistance and podcasting and maybe some special guests at the D.C. event. We might give a big middle finger to the mass agents of Donald Trump that are roaming, the city's three streets. And we'll be back in New York a couple times later.

First time we've been in New York in ages. The last time we had a live New York event, it was, I can remember because it was during the Nuggets title run. And me and a handful of the folks who came out went and watched Jamal Murray, like put up 40, I think, on the Lakers after the podcast, was quite enjoyable. Maybe we'll have a similar night. We'll see. and if you really want more time with us and you don't want to just place a bet that you'll end up at the same bar with me after

because you never know, you could pay for VIP tickets. They're included in the sale. It'll give you earlier entry into the show and you can hang with us for an intimate Q&A. You can check out all the details and get tickets at theboolwork.com slash events. For more, that's theboolwork.com slash events. See you all on the East Coast.

I'm going to move on to Kirk. Here's what we know as we're taping this morning. Trump, in his way, like he's kind of a, like, you know, the national commenter was live streaming what he has learned about this on Fox and Friends this morning, done them that he thought that they had the shooter. That has turned out to be correct. The reports indicate the suspect is a 22-year-old from Utah who confessed to a family member, and then they turned him in. So it was not, not Cash Patel didn't track him down. The press conference is happening as we are recording right now. they do have there are some questions about the carvings and the bullets there were a there were some reports about that yesterday the carvings that they have here on the fired bullet this is an intelligible to me notices bulges what's this this seems like kind of some internet speak there's another one that says hey fascist catch there's another one that says if you read this you are gay l-m-a-o so i don't i don't know what to really make of all that we'll learn more but at least the the purpose of

is in custody. What do you make of all that and just sort of broadly your initial thoughts on on the political violence we've seen this week? So first, the grief over a human death is in no way dependent on your opinion of the human life. Any act of political violence is an attack on you. Whatever you think of the person on the other end, you were attacked, that your system, the thing that protects your liberties that keeps you safe, that makes you a free person that makes you proud to be an American death. That's what was attacked. The victim was the immediate target, but you are the ultimate target. So just quail whatever. This is not the time to express your views on the value or

importance or worth of turning point USA. That has nothing to do with what happened here. Any more than the assassination of Malcolm X turns on your opinion of black Muslims, any more than your opinion of any other act of political violence. Do you expand on this a little bit? Because J.V.L. wrote about this week, too. Why? Why do you think that is so? What is democracy? There's a classic definition, which I would endorse from Joseph I'm here. Democracy is the belief that political power should be competed for peacefully by the process of free and fair balloting. There's a stake of power, but the commitment is that the competition for power must be peaceful. And there are many people in that competition you would

like to see loose. There are many people in that competition you might regard as sinister or some other way unworthy. Or breaking the rules. And in the case of Charlie Kirk is should be worth noting that he was part of the group that instigated the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, Right. And he defamed Paul Pelosi when Paul Pelosi was a victim of violence. None of this depends on who he is. It depends on who you are. That's what you're fighting for. Is it the way you react to a thing like this is not a statement on the victim. It's a statement on the person making the statement. So we begin by saying this is horrifying and unacceptable and more dangerous than ordinary criminality, as dangerous as that is. And we all have a shared stake in this. Next thing. President Trump and the people around him obviously want to use this as a way. to suppress their political opposition in advance of the dangerous 2026 elections for them. Trump in April tried to shut down Act Blue by personal order, the Democratic fundraising platform. That investigation is still pending. And his speech to the nation was all about how he wants to go after people who stand for order.

His target base is anyone who does anything that he doesn't like to anybody he does like, whether that's peaceful protest, whether that's proper competition. So the goal here, and you can see it taking form, is to suppress speech, to suppress fundraising, to have more arbitrary arrests. This is a tool of power, and that also has to be resisted at the same time as you're clear about condemning the horror of the violence. The last thing is, of course, it's really important to have no opinions before you have information about who the killer is and what muddle of crazy motives led them to the attack. But without predicting anything, just a context. When political assassinations take place in Europe, they usually take place for reasons that make sense within the political system of that country. When the IRA blew up Mountbatten in 1979, I guess the close relative of the Queen of England, the IRA struck for reasons that any English person would understand why did the IRA do what they're doing. It made sense.

They're terrorists for getting the British out of Ireland. They attacked a member of the royal family. It all was horrible. It was wrong, but it made sense. American killers don't tend to, shooting Ronald Reagan to win the affection of Jody Foster, not a coherent plant, even if you kill him. She's still not going to like you any better than she didn't before. Well, so you're saying there's a chance. So you have to find, it's pretty unusual for American political killers to have motives that make sense within the normal political framework.

and normally the typical practice is for them to have quite crazy and bizarre and idiosyncratic motives and to be acting for their own reasons in their own ways. Again, I make no statement about who this person is. I don't know. Sure. But just the idea that you're going to find, oh, yeah, they were a paid up member of their local political committee of whatever party. That's almost certainly not going to be true. A couple of thoughts on that.

First on the Trump and the power grab side of it. So again, as I said, he was on Fox and Friends this morning. A couple of notable quotes from that. One was, he was asked, kind of surprisingly responsibly, by Ainsley Earhart, one of the co-hosts about the radicals on the right and what his concerns are about that. Trump says, I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right, oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the real problem. And then when it comes to the protesters, as you mentioned, he talks about the left, how they have professional agitators.

They get paid for at Soros and others. We're going to look into that. this is more than protest. So I'm just already laying the groundwork for crackdown for maybe not as directly as maybe did with Stand Back and Stand By, but some rhetorical comfort maybe for vigilantes. Yeah. Look, the people who interrupted Trump's dinner at Joe Stonecrap were trespassing. They're engaged in misdemeanor mischief of all kinds.

I'm sure they broke many, many laws. And they all should be arrested and fined and sentenced to whatever. you know, 30 days probation, what do you get for showing up in a restaurant where you don't have a right to be and disrupting dinner? There are consequences for that. So that's not true peaceful protest. Two peaceful protests is standing in front of Lafayette Square in a public place and showing your placard.

But they knew what they were doing. In that sense, they probably were professional, that they assumed they understood that there are consequences for shouting in Joe's Stonecrab. They accepted them. And in a free society, say, okay, $1,000 and 30 days probation, that's the problem. price. You've made your point and now we're going to make our point. And that's, that's the system sort of working. And most American politicians and most certainly almost all presidents would understand, I don't love having my dinner disrupted at Joe Stonecrab, but it's, it's not exactly

a danger to the republic that it happens. The inverse, actually, is the danger of the republic, I guess is the point, right? Like the fact that the president of the United States would use the power to try to shut these people up, to try to intimidate them. You know, who knows? Yeah, send them on a plane to a torture dungeon in El Salvador. Florida or Louisiana. We just opened one at the old Angola prison here. And I think that's the thing that scares me. At some level, it hasn't been quite as bad as I've thought on that front.

As much as I don't, you know, as much as some of the hagiography of Charlie. And I've spoken to about Charlie. And I think that there's something to be said for, again, as you mentioned, for open debate. And I don't know that there's a ton to be said about slandering dead people. But, you know, the hagiography of him at some level is a little. out of step with, with reality. And it's beside the point. It is besides the point.

I guess, but the point that I'm making is that in some ways, I would rather them focus on that than on the retribution. Like the scary part here is using it as a pretext for government retribution. Yes. And not just retribution out of vengeance, but retribution because Trump is heading toward, he's in a situation where free and fair elections in November 26th mean a lot of trouble for him. And unlike many mega people, Trump, I don't think to see.

receives himself, at least not in the second term, about his political vulnerabilities. And so with that rodent-like instinct for survival that he understands, well, if I can't prevail in a free and fair election, I guess the election is going to have to be not so free and not so fair. I want to throw one more thing at you that worries me about all this that has been worried about this week. There's several. And I think that there's been maybe, well, I'm sure there's been someplace besides

the bulwark, but there are very few places besides the bulwark that have been committed to sounding the alarm about right-wing domestic terrorism, about Trump and the mega movement and the kind of violent tendencies that he's stoking and the threats that that that brings to all of us, to the country, to the Republic, to us individually. In addition to that, there's some other scary stuff that's happening to me in the fallout of the Kirk assassination. He looked at a poll recently of, yes, violence can sometimes be justified. Sixth 65 plus 3%, 45 to 64, 8%, 18 to 29, 20%. That's pretty notable jump.

The idea that, you know, you don't have to, there's another poll I don't have in front of me, but it's something the effect of, do you have to, you know, be upset about the death of political figures no matter what their ideology is? And it was people on the left were like, it was like 33% or something. It was a disturbingly small number of folks that felt that way. I'm not trying to create a false equivalence. I'm more worried about right-wing domestic terrorism, but I'm also just worried kind of about a broad-based view among young folks,

maybe driven by TikTok and algorithms that this stuff is part of a society and that people deserve it. I always want to be cautious with these broad social indicator polls. Fair. Because with polling, it's always so important to think. There's the question that the pollster asks, The question that I think I hear and the question that maybe the respondent heard and maybe there's something that has gone wrong in that transmission, it's also possible that the young don't understand the loss and pathos of death the way the older people do. Like, whatever you think of Charlie Kirk, what do you think of his wife and his two little kids?

Right. This is a crime that's going to reverberate through the lives of those two young children forever and through their children. It's going to change them. It's going to change his wife. What do they do to you? So the people in the crowd had to watch it. And I watched that video of that guy that was asking him the question at the time. He was a liberal, the guy that was asking him about mass shootings.

Then he gets shot. And that guy was tormented. That's going to be, that's trauma-tizing. Maybe when you're 22, it's easier not to think about that as you're so obviously going to live forever. Yeah. So I think there's something there. It may be, as you say, TikTok, it may be kind of glibness. it may be that people get caught up in sort of the gamesmanship of politics.

It may be that we're all kind of more alienated from our neighbors. Again, I was talking about the difference in American political assassination and others. The people who blew up Mountbatten in 1979, they had friends. They were part of a community. They belonged to a terrorist cell. The typical American political murderer is usually someone who doesn't have any friends. It's completely isolated from community. Again, no predictions about this particular killer.

we'll find out. Sure. But that's very much the pattern. And as we all become a little bit more like that, self-inflicted loners, maybe our human connection fades and our human compassion fades. I worry about that. I worry about the lack of connectedness. We talk a lot about with experts on that on this pod.

I worry about the social media side. I also worry, I guess my last thought on this, I worry a little bit about cycle of violence stuff. There is, I don't know the streamer Hassan Piker. I've heard of far. Yeah. So he's a far left progressive stream. were very popular with the youth.

And he was live streaming when the current assassination happened. And there was a lot of commenters in the stream again. It's very easy to say this on YouTube who were doing the he deserted stuff or whatever. And Piker was pushing back on that aggressively and was getting kind of emotional. And he was saying essentially, look, I was supposed to debate Charlie next month in a public. Like this could be me. And I'm stealing this thoughts. I apologize whoever I'm thieving it from.

But somebody observed that like the young populist upright. Maybe they need to learn about why their ancestors, why their grandparents had the norms that they did and the rules that they did, right? And I worry a little bit that we go through a cycle of violence period where the young folks are reacting like that because they didn't live through, you know, the 70s and 80s. Their parents didn't live. It's so far away, like kind of that last spate of violence, or 9-11 for that matter, so far away from them that they don't appreciate why some of those traditions and norms are in place. What do you make about it? There's a famous poem. I hope they still teach it in high school, written in the 17th century, that tells about the story of a man who hears a church bell to tell, meaning someone's died.

And he sends a messenger out to find out who did the church bell toll for. And the poet says, it told it for you. Like, I think that's what Piper heard. He heard that it could as easily have been Charlie Kirk being asked, what do you think about the murder of Hassan Piker? And the prohibition here has to be absolute. It's just, and in this violent country with firearms available everywhere, with a lot of, with a lot of loaners cut off from community, the potential for violence is always there and our only resource against it, especially in the age of the Kash Patel FBI, which doesn't seem to be much of a resource for anybody, is our shared sense of right and wrong. And the family, if it's true, that the family turned the killer, and they had that. And that's, that's amazing. And that's, that's our social resource. to cash last item on this which is where i wanted to go next what i mean what a clown show i mean

he gets lucky i guess that this uh based on what we know that this this purpose turned in there's some elements of it that's like vipish and dark comedy uh some elements that's sort of pretty scary right i mean it's it's cash himself kind of live tweeting their failed attempts to find the perpetrator in the in the first day then on the more serious side there's the firing of the woman who should have been the agent in charge in Utah. We don't exactly know why, but it's a Pakistani woman. So potentially part of the DEI purge, we do know that there have been several other top-level FBI officials, experts who have been purged because either of DEI accusations or because

they were involved in the investigation in Trump, sometimes just because they were doing their job, not out of any actual ideology. And so we have an FBI with like a totally incompetent person with BDIs who look scared at the press conference, leading a hollowed out bureau. And for the people who are there, reassigning them more to focus on migrants entirely, it's pretty alarming, really. And it's happening across the government. I mean, if it were a tornado, it could be the same story. You know, the tariff situation is the same that just generally, if you want people in high office who are mindlessly, obedient to the president, whatever he says, and no matter how much he changes his mind,

those people are probably not going to be good at their jobs, because the kind of people are good at their jobs are not mindless robots. They are not chosen for sycifancy and slavishness and, you know, corruption. Competent people have an attachment to their craft and a belief in something bigger than the politics of the moment. So if you're purging them, if you're purging all that kind of independent person, you're going to lose a lot of confidence. And it's going to have, it's demonstrated today at the FBI. It will be demonstrated tomorrow somewhere else. A couple other just rapid fire things I want to get your take on. I'm always wondering, you know, what Frum thinks about this.

Let's start with this. Anytime J.D. Vance dishonors himself. I'm wondering what David Frum thinks about this. A couple recently, there was the Epstein situation where J.D. came out and really slandered the Wall Street Journal saying that they had done wrong journalism, that the birthday letter could not have been Trump. It doesn't even exist, he suggested. Maybe it doesn't exist. Maybe it's just totally fabricated.

This is a news outlet, totally fabricating things. after they did summary execution of 11 Venezuelans who are allegedly drug dealers in the Caribbean and an online opponent of the administration said that this was war crimes. J.D. Vance replied to the person saying he doesn't give a shit. I'm wondering what you make of what we've seen from the vice president. So J.D. Vance is running for the Republican nomination in 2028 every single day. That's his job. That's at least kind of encouraging that he thinks that there's going to be an open effort for the Republican nomination of 2028.

That's the only silver lining of his behavior, I can think of that. Well, he may or may not believe that, but he has to organize his time as if he did. Okay. Let's just put this in some comparison. So in 1984, Ronald Reagan is elected for a second term in November, of course. George H.W. Bush begins organizing the George H.W. Bush for president campaign in December. He has lunch with Reagan in December of 84 and says, I just want you to know. I hope it doesn't put you out. But I'm beginning my own campaign. And Bush records in his diary that Reagan didn't look immediately pleased.

because, but okay, I get it. And by April of 1985, the entire Bush for president campaign structure is in place. He introduces them to the family at Canada Bunkport. He's got his campaign manager, his finance chair, all of them by April. Who was the campaign manager of HV and 88? Lee Atwater. Oh, was he the campaign manager? I thought he was like in the rove roll.

We'll pull it up. You keep talking. I'm upset at myself for not knowing this. You keep going. Okay. So now imagine that J.D. Vance had a whole structure in place in April of this year. Trump would cut him off at the knee. So Vance has this problem, which is he has to campaign without seeming to campaign.

And his other, his problem is at some level, mega people know, this guy isn't really us of blood and bone. You know, he is more at home in my dining room than he is with you. I'm sorry. It's true. Where he spent a lot of time. Was he that smar me back then when he was in your timing room? No, no, because I didn't, the way to please me was not to be smarming. So he was pleasing me in a different way.

So that means he has to do extra. Just suppose, as I think would have happened in a different universe, if Charlie Kirk were running for precedent, which I think was in the cards, he wouldn't have to do all this stuff. He would be going the other way. He would be reassuring sort of normal American. That encounter that George Packer described where Charlie Kirk was very good nature to Packer introduced himself and with the Atlantic. And Kirk said to him, ah, that's where we go to find out what the elites think in a kind of jokey way. Those are the moves that Charlie Kurt, but Vance can't do that. He has to be more obnoxious, more rude, more sarcastic.

This is totally right. I mean, this is my experience also, by the way, like Charlie himself, but also the more MAGA, the more they kind of are nice to me and like me and want to, want to spar with me and the more close they are, you know, the narcissism of small differences, the closer they are, the fact that they, maybe if they know deep inside that there's something morally corrupt about what they've decided to do, they're meaner to me, right? So it's more like to get somebody on this podcast who's MAGA. than someone of the JD fans.

Exactly, exactly right. So I think that's a big part of what's going on. Because they don't trust him, he has to show himself extra personally sociopathic in a way that I think it's probably not real. I think probably I bet he's a great dad and a good husband. And I bet his prayers when he's in church are compartmentalized, but I bet they're very fervent and he talks to God. And I mean, I bet there's something there. I'm going to color myself skeptical on that. I'm happy with you.

Maybe I'm more cynical. I allow you to have that view. But I don't know. I think it'd be more likely that he has a third faith in 2020 to match his names than that he has earnest prayers. But I would love to be wrong. I hope I'm wrong about that. Sometimes I regret my own cynicism. You mean, like, Mr. Vice President, we've discovered a very interesting way to offset some of your weakness in the Utah primary.

Okay, fair enough. I don't know? I guess, don't you have to be a little sociopathic to pretend to be that sociopathic? I guess it would be my follow-up. Now we're going into deeper waters than I can go. Why is he doing this? I mean, he has, it's part of his campaign strategy. And I think, yes, maybe there's some authentic nastiness there too.

And as you say, it may be shame and guilt that fortifies the nastiness. It may just be his nature. But it's also, he's got something to prove in a way that if Charlie Kirk were running for president, Charlie Kirk wouldn't have that thing to prove. It's just one random story called my eye. I just want to get your take on really quick. it relates to what you're saying earlier about how our only allies are El Salvador and Saudi now. South Korea, we had this ice raid on the plant in Georgia, the 300 some odd South Koreans were caught up in it.

The details of that are kind of less interesting to me than this story, which is out of Korea. The Korean Airlines jet carrying 316 South Koreans touched down at the airport to a rousing welcome from anxious families and friends. the Arrivals Hall buzzed with an anticipation. Outside, buses idled where family members and well-wishers wave signs. Welcome back, free and safe. There was cheering, relief, joy. And this is like people, this is like what we would do after we brought a hot Britney Griner home from Russia. Our ally, South Korea, in South Korea is celebrating the return of their citizens from ill-treatment in our country in a manner that, I guess, places us in the spot of being the blackout.

Yeah. And this is going to be felt and remember it, obviously. It's going to influence a lot of South Korean attitudes. It also, this whole story just drives home the incredible stupidity and incoherence of what passes for economic policy in the macro world. Because foreign investment and trade deficits are two sides of the same accounting coin. All the capital inflows have to balance all the goods inflows. So when you're running a big deficit and getting a lot of capital investment and you're

taking money from the world, you're going to end up also at the same time, for the same reasons and in the same process, having a big trade deficit. So the things that Trump wants are completely incoherent. And if you say, not only do I want a lot of foreign investment, but I don't want any foreign people to come over to help set up the factory. We've asked them to invest. That Americans are working. How does any of the, this can't work. And it's one that this whole mega economy is heading to the brick wall unless the Supreme Court bails them out. Their economic plans make no sense. They can't make sense. They don't care if they make sense.

They don't even understand them well enough to know why they don't make sense. I keep thinking of that scene where Tim Cook brought the plaque or what was it, the trophy. The trophy, and he's talking about how it's a great MAGA American and a veteran that did the trophy. Checking out of the identity boxes. I keep thinking it's like a science fiction episode where the emissary from the advanced civilization says, look, behold, I have here in my hand a device that contains all human knowledge. But you can't possibly understand what it works. So for you, I have this shiny rock. This is more fitted to your...

The rock was carved by somebody who was a big supporter and big fan of yours. It's very special. That's more fitted to your primitive mentality. We could have done a whole podcast of this. We're running out of time. But I just, I'm open-ended your thoughts on what we're seeing out of Israel, the ongoing war in Gaza, but also, as you mentioned earlier, the assassination in Qatar, there was a strike in Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Lebanon, that continues fighting a multi-front war with maybe declining

friends around the world. What do you make of what we've seen from Israel? I want to struck again and again by the American absence. I mean, just think about the two most difficult or most violent political problems or geopolitical problems in the United States are the security situation in the Middle East, the Ukraine-Russia war. Who would put the same person in charge of both? By the way, a person with no relevant experience, no ability to speak any of the languages, never set foot in any of these places before the president gave him the job. And he's got both mandates. I'm generally very supportive of what Israel does. But the United States has its own independent views. But no one person can assert those views. They rest on decision papers. And when you're the superpower, wherever you go, the local partner or the local adversary, whoever has a set of very specific asks that they think about all the time. And your representative, never heard of them, doesn't understand why they're important, doesn't understand why they mean.

Unfortunately, you're the superpower. So you have a giant bureaucracy back home that can have briefing papers and says, okay, we understand what's going on when the Armenians ask for this from the Azerbaijani's. This is what's going on. You don't have to wing it. But Whitkoff's view seems to be, you know, who wings it better than me? I don't need your stinking briefing papers. No exactly George Schultz either, you know. Yeah. But George Schultz was George Schultz because he relied on experts. Yeah, right. And because he went into the room, he said, okay, when the Armenians and Azerbaijan start talking to me and they say, what about Clause 28? What is this Clause 28 and why do we care? And what has been the position that we've had going back to the Truman administration.

After mentioning George Schultz, I must say you were correct. Lee Atwater was the actual campaign manager. Roger A.L. was in the media advisor role. I think it was more like the Bush, the son's model was to have more of a pal on the campaign manager's role. Oh, yeah. I guess just last thing on Israel and then I want to close. So we were talking about this a little bit on the next level this week. And I know that you, for a lot of reasons, I care deeply about the state of Israel and its relationship with America. Do you worry that kind of the actions of the last year risk Israel ending up in a sour spot with both parties?

I look at what we're seeing right now in America. And obviously, a Democratic Party, deep humanitarian concerns, what's happening? in Gaza, Republican Party of kind of a rising, you can call it nationalists, you can call it anti-Semitic, you can call it a variety of things, a wing of people that are not as sympathetic as in the past. And I think Bibi might be making a bet that gets them crossways with both factions in this country. What do you think about? I think Israel is not a country with the size of the escape to do indefinite protracted conflict. The focus on the immediate problems and the immediate threats around you can blind you to the strategic problems that Israel needs support for

the United States. It needs investment from Europe. The long-term goal for Israel has to be to become a member state of the European Union and fully with the rights and responsibilities. And that requires some regard to the opinions of your neighbors, even if you think those opinions are maybe kind of stupid and unfair. You have to at least take those into account. And October 7th was a deeply traumatizing event. And it's a deeply traumatizing event on top of the Holocaust memories, which are not, non-Jews don't know how not far away those memories are. I mean, I'll tell a personal story. I mean, I lived all my life in comfort and security. I've had nothing but, you know, society's showered nothing but blessings on me. But my grandparents moved to Canada from Poland

in 1930. My father was born in 1931. Most of their relatives stayed behind, and they were almost all to the last person murdered. And if my grandparents had made a slightly different decision in 1930, my father would have been murdered when he was 11 or 12 years old, and I would never have been born. Now, that's 90 years ago, three generations. On the other hand, for me, it's not far away. It's in my head. And so October 7th happens. I, whatever, how other people think I should react, this is a movie I know. This is a story I know. And so one of the things that is a dispute, and you see this on social media a lot, is people invoke the so-called lessons of the Holocaust. And the Holocaust wasn't there to teach lessons. It was there to kill people.

But to the extent there were lessons, non-Jews, look as saying, Jews, don't you see, the lesson of the Holocaust is we should all be better. We should all be better. And Jews react to say, I don't trust you that way. I'm sorry. I don't trust you. I don't mean this in a personal way. I don't mean this to be critical. I don't mean this to be harsh. But I don't, I just don't trust that you're going to be there. So to me, to me, the lesson is don't wait to find out how bad this is going to be. Wow. It's one reason for a lot of the sort of if you watched Larry David or Woody

Allen before that, like the fabled story of Ashkenazi Jewish neuroticism which I fully inherit. Look, for a thousand years, you know, you've had the random genetic mutations that make Ashkenazi Jews born either with an optimistic or pessimistic disposition.

And what happens is in a time of trouble, the optimist stay and they don't have grandchildren and the pessimists leave and they do. And so you've genetically engineered a population over many generations say I'm just not going to stick around to find out how bad this is going to get. And that's

what is going on in the post-October 7th world. This is an event with such deep meaning. And the reactions it pulled strike a lot of people as, and this, I remember having to say this to when I was growing up in Canada, say, you know, here we are in the city of Toronto and beyond Toronto is Mississauga

and beyond Mississauga's Oshawa. And after that, you've got a thousand miles of nothing and then you get Winnipeg, which is kind of nothing. Then vagina. And then the Pacific Ocean. There's this huge margin. You have this huge, huge margin.

And now you've got this group of people who feel they have no margin, and they are going to react that way. So this war has to come to an end. Israel needs it to come to an end pretty fast. Then it has to do a lot of human and economic reconstruction and reintegration into its neighborhood.

But if you're evaluating what is going on here, you need all to understand the reaction, actions and how the way this has landed on people and what its continuing meaning is and how in the end they're not afraid to be isolated because they think they're going to be isolated no matter what final topic bill crystal's newsletter this morning if you indulge me i thought was extremely important as we've discussed earlier in this podcast you know i think that there is obviously significance increased significance to political violence political assassination no matter who the victim is of it but there was another political assassination that happened the last month that I don't feel like got the appropriate attention because it didn't end up being as bad as it might have been. But there was a victim. His name was David Rose. I'm going to read a little bit from from Bill's newsletter. David Rose is the DeKalb County police officer who rushed to the CDC campus in Atlanta when employees that were under attack from a gunman who believed he had been poisoned by the COVID-19 vaccine. Rose had served as a Marine in Afghanistan and then decided

to come back and serve at home in law enforcement. When he graduated from the Police Academy this past March, Rose, as a class leader, addressed the graduates at guests. He said, from the very first day, we learned that policing isn't just about enforcing the law. That's about protecting the vulnerable, standing for justice, and being the person who runs towards danger when others run away. David Rose ran toward danger and gave his life in doing so. Let us now praise famous men, as the old saying goes.

Let us also praise men like David Rose. And I just think that it's really important to bring that up because this was also political violence with somebody who was radicalized by, who knows what, but probably misinformation, certainly believed a lot of misinformation that was pushed by political leaders. And he was trying to kill government officials at the CDC and ended up killing David Rose, who was a hero and didn't deserve it and deserves our honor. As beautifully said. Yeah, it would also be well for someone to go interview Nancy Pelosi about how she feels about these calls for decorum and decency because, look, we can't control every sociopathic utterance by every random account on Twitter, many of which are computers anyway.

But we can certainly expect from the son of then a past president of the United States, from a sitting United States senator, that they would react to a murderous, intendedly murderous attack on the husband of the speaker of the house with something other than glee. Trump on Fox and Friends this morning, it was kind of a revealing moment. He does his weave, his internal monologue that he shares with us all the time. And during it, I don't have it right in front of me, but it says something to the effect of, you know, the other side's really having a hard time with us. He's like, you look at NBC, you look at CBS, you look at MSNBC, and they're terrible and unfair, but even they've been like, this cannot be allowed to happen. So he said, even they've been like, this can not be allowed to happen. It was like, it was a surprise to him that the mainstream media and, you know, the more left media acted as normal humans might, acted responsibly, you know, as opposed to how him and his elk have acted in these sorts of events. Well said.

Well said. I want to close this. Congratulations. You walked a new granddaughter last month. Abigail, really happy for you, your son Nat. And that's just, it's so lovely. So have you got a time to spend some time with her? We've spent some time with her.

My wife has spent a little more than me, but we've had a chance to meet her. She will be turning this weekend. She'll be turning one month. And we'll be spending some time. In fact, together over the Jewish holidays ahead and really looking forward to that. Grand parenthood is a very different kind of experience because it's all the fun with none of the responsibilities. Or not all the fun, but because a lot of a lot of, a lot of fun with very few responsibilities. And so that's a different kind of feeling. And

you have then the pride and pleasure of watching your children and their spouses step into the role. And I think one of the things that, maybe there's a larger meaning here, one of the things that I think has troubled American political life over the past years is people don't know when it's their time to move slightly to the side and then altogether off the stage. And one of the things from this experience is it's not altogether an unhappy experience. to move to the side and then be ready to move off the stage because you're making way for people you care about. And, you know, just be great. If you've lived long enough to see the end of your term, don't fight that. Embrace it and say, you know what? It's a miracle of modern medicine.

You get to outlive your time. Action. Now turn it over to the next group. Well, we're so happy for you, David. That's a great place to leave it. Everybody else, we'll be back here Monday with Bill Crystal. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you all then. Peace. Back on the run Back to the blue Winding is fun Losing is too Roses are falling

Roses from falling for you The ache inside the hate I found a way to sit and wait And now I can't Your voice, your face Without a trace I'll wait for you Roses are falling

For you You Under your skin Over the moon Don't let me in I don't know what I'd do Roses are falling Roses from falling for you

Ooh You know darling you bring out the worst in me Sometimes when I'm around you I feel like pure evil I guess they say nobody's perfect But they've never met a devil like you Roses are falling for you. Roses are falling for you. Roses are falling for you.

podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.