The Bulwark Podcast - David Graham and Pablo Torre: Is Lil Marco a Cuban Communist Agent?

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

If Marco Rubio was NOT playing the long game masquerading as a patriotic neocon who gets placed in the State Department to then give Russia everything it wanted, what would he be doing differently? Meanwhile, a Democratic version of the Tea Party may be brewing, the tensions between Elon and Russ Vought are likely to pop out, and a psychoanalyst needs to explain Mitch McConnell. Plus, the Saudis are getting their claws in our sports with a LIV-PGA deal and Trump's astonishingly corrupt involvement. And also -- Trump doesn't know ball. Pablo Torre and David Graham join Tim Miller. show notes David's forthcoming book, "The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America" David's newsletter on the Department of Education Pablo's podcast, "Pablo Torre Finds Out"

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to welcome to the pod, David Graham. He's the new lead author of the Atlantic Daily Newsletter. He's got a book out in April, The Project, how Project 2025 is reshaping America. What's up, man? How's it going? Well, welcome to the unofficial podcast of the Atlantic magazine. I wanted to make sure to include our flagship newsletter writer.

I'm still waiting for Jeff Goldberg to start giving me a little vig on the subscriptions that come in with all the Atlantic guests, but I haven't quite cut the deal yet. Maybe I need Donald Trump to do some deal making for me. That's right. Well, I wanted to start here. I want to do obviously a lot of project 2025 stuff and there's been a lot of Ukraine news, but I want to start with this. Can just get your take on it.

People keep demanding this Rogan of the left. And so I've decided that I'm going to try to fill the role from time to time when it comes to conspiracy mongering. Great. If you're going to have a Rogan on the left, you got to be comfortable with a little bit, you know, kind of dabbling in some conspiracies. And here's one I've been noodling on. Do you think it's possible that Marco Rubio is a Cuban communist agent who's been kind of playing the long game and they placed him here and dressed him up as a neocon just waiting for the right moment where you know, they could take

This patriotic Explant and turn him in to an asset that gives Russia everything they ever wanted Well, you know we had that situation a few years ago where there was a Foreign Service agent who was a long-running Cuban sleeper cell so we know this is the sort of thing they do I think it get is going That's true. Yuri Besmanov, the Russian KGB guy said that, you know, their goals was to change people's concept of reality. What better way to do that than to put a Cuban neocon expat in the state department?

It's confusing people. It's what would he be doing differently if this weren't the case, I guess would be another question that I would ask. What would he be doing differently if he weren't a long running communist Cuban asset? I don't know. I know that the Atlantic has kind of different standards than what we're offering here on this podcast. So I don't want to put you in a corner, but you have to admit that you're a little intrigued.

Yes, I'm intrigued by the idea. I'm intrigued by what he would be doing differently if this is true. I mean, I think that's a good question. That's a useful question to ask outside of Conspiracy Theories. Well, we're going to keep thinking about it. Unfortunately, I don't have like, Elon Musk won't come on to kind of like, chief the joints with me and like really ruminate on it like Rogan does, but we're kind of dipping our toe in the water of conspiracy podcast content and we'll kind of see what the people think. Who's going to be your eon of the left for podcasting?

That is a great question. That is a great question. You know, like, it's hard to imagine Reed Hoffman coming on the podcast and getting really high with me, you know? So we need to think about who else that might be. Maybe the listeners have some suggestions onto actual news. Uh, so Trump yesterday put out a lengthy statement attacking Zelensky saying that he's a dictator, which is a strange pejorative for Trump since he usually really is kind and complimentary

to dictators. Today the G7 was trying to put out a statement on the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion into Ukraine. The US is opposing the statement because it calls Russia the aggressor. Apparently according to some reporting, the FT and others, Dan Crenshaw, my old sparring partner offered a theory on the Piers Morgan show yesterday that Trump gives negative names to people that he really likes and like butters up his enemies, it's all part of his strategy.

I'm a little confused by that. I guess that would mean that he like really loves crooked Hillary. I don't, I don't, I don't understand how that theory works exactly. So anyway, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what we've seen over the last 48 hours. I mean, this is one of these things that feels like

it shouldn't be surprising, but it still is. The dictator thing is something that is floating around the idea that Ukraine is the aggressor, we know he doesn't pay attention to any of the facts and he doesn't remember any of the history, but it's a wild thing to say. I feel like we got so sick of talking about the question of a big lie and if you tell people something enough times, blah, blah, blah. But that's what's going on here.

We all know who the aggressor was in this case. It was very clear. Trump is going for the, I'm just going to tell you a really brazen lie and see if I can get away with it strategy, I guess. That's a good point about the big lie. I think there's also an ominous element to it. Like when you just think about this strategically, I talked about this, you know, earlier this week was if you're Putin, probably the best deal you could get out of this is to basically get Ukraine without having to fight anymore.

Right? And one path to that is by having Zelensky be overthrown and replaced with puppet. And it feels like calling him a dictator, attacking him, like spreading all these lies about him. There's this other idiotic lie that Trump told yesterday where he said that Zelensky was sleeping and so he wouldn't meet with Scott Besant, who was the Treasury Secretary, who was there on a diplomatic engagement. That's not true. They met with Besant.

He met with Besant, friends like their pictures of it. So like all this attack is kind of laying the groundwork for, you know, some kind of removal of him, right? Like it's a, it's coming up with a pretense that, oh, well, this isn't really democracy and we're going to do, you know, this or that and allow kind of Putin to get most or all of what he wants without having to do any more fighting. Yeah. Trump also has this weird habit of I just think he even at this stage seems and even as he like loves the trappings of the presidency and wants to name himself king, seems to often misunderstand how powerful his words are themselves outside of actions.

You know, he's saying that Russia holds all the cards in this negotiation. And that's a self-fulfilling statement. It's Russia only holds all the cards because you are saying they hold the a self-fulfilling statement. Russia only holds all the cards because you are saying they hold the cards. But he just says these things and fires them off. And it changes the board and it changes the lives of people in Ukraine without him really thinking very hard about what he's saying.

I wanna offer one contrarian theory on this. It's always important to listen to contrarian points of view. Karl Rove wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal that was, I guess, co-published in The Australian, one of the other Rupert outlets. I'm going to give Carl the benefit of the doubt here. I did not pay for a subscription to The Australian to see if Carl actually wrote this. My suspicion is that this was the subhead that had... You always blame the editors. Somebody who was an editor, as politics editor for The Atlantic,

you know that you take the blame. So of course, we're just gonna give Carl the benefit of the doubt here and say that this was the editor's subhead on the story. But it says this. I can't even fucking read this thing. I'm sorry. I can't dead pan this one. All right, here it is.

Here's the contrary view. It's possible Donald Trump is lulling Vladimir Putin while setting him up for a great fall. Maybe Trump has thought a dozen moves ahead and has Putin right where he wants him. David, what do you think about that? Is that possible that Trump is just 12 moves ahead of us on the chessboard right now?

How are we after 10 years still saying these things? I don't know. I mean, like in 2017, when people said that I kind of rolled my eyes and I was right. But now it's just totally wild to believe that there is some sort of deeper strategy going on here. Talk about Marco Rubio as a sleeper agent. He's playing a really long game with Putin, if

that's what he's doing. Call your editor, Carl. Call your editor. He's not doing you any favors. So to this point, that how the best thing to do Call your editor, Carl. Call your editor. He's not doing you any favors. So to this point, how the best thing to do when assessing Trump is to just actually take him at his word. You wrote about this recently in the newsletter.

What your story was, the president keeps doing what he said he'd do, and some of his supporters keep being surprised. And you kind of went through a litany of folks who, over the first month here have been a little bit caught off guard by Trump actually following through on what the campaign indicated he would do. What have been some of the prime examples of that for you? Well, I mean, I was driving in my car, shouting at the radio. NPR had a story where they were talking to Venezuelan American voters who were upset that Trump is terminating temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees in the U.S.

This is something he talked about doing. There are people upset about a lot of immigration things. There's the Wall Street Journal. Right. I just want to pick just on the Wall Street Journal because you'd think that they would have seen some of this coming. A couple of editorials that they've had recently, they're upset about Trump's rhetoric related to Zelensky. Obviously they are upset about

the tariffs Naturally, they're upset. The Trump is pushing Jerome Powell to lower interest rates You think that is gonna lead to more inflation like those three topics if there's anything that Trump has been consistent on it's been abandoning Ukraine, tariffs, such a beautiful word, and that real estate guys should have lower interest rates for their deals.

If you just, immigration, I guess is the only other thing you could throw in there that Trump has been consistent on since the 80s. Right, I was gonna say, these are things he's been talking about for literally decades, not just in his political career, but since the 80s. He's wanted tariffs and he's wanted to cut immigration. It's so clear.

I have a little bit more sympathy for some of the other things you talked about, like the farmers, you know, who didn't like expect that their program was going to get cut or, you know, very, you know, things of this nature. I think that when we're going to get into project 2025, I think they're legitimate people who are like, cuts to the VA was not really part of his campaign, at least the Trump, if you consider the campaign, the Trump speeches rather than project 2025, it wasn't really part of it. But like at the top level,

the degree to which people just were so credulous about this notion that this is all just a game and he's not really going to do it is like pretty shocking. Well, I mean, I think my favorite just for the outlandishness is the Arab Americans for Trump. We have now changed their name to Arab Americans for peace. But this is a guy who was out using Palestinian as an insult, as a pejorative on the campaign trail. And they're surprised that he's very friendly to the Israeli government and that he wants to clear Palestinians out of Gaza. None of these things should come as any kind of surprise. Yeah. He calls Chuck Schumer the Palestinian, like as if it's, you know, then or something,

you know what I mean? Like it's a racial slur. Yeah. It turns out that wasn't meant to be a compliment. Yeah. Okay. On the list of those people, Tom Tillis on the ad. I'm curious what you think about this. This is an unpopular view that I bring up from time to time, so some people might get mad at me. But Gabe Sherman of Vanity Fair was a source that reports that Tom was telling people around him that the FBI warned him about credible death threats as he considered voting against Pete Hags's nomination to be defense secretary. Pete Hicks has nomination to be defense secretary. And so I guess that that was a rationale that he gave some colleagues, some friends of his for why he was not going to do

it. I just, I really struggle with this one. I mean, like the threats out there are obviously real people get threats, public services is risky. But like, to me, this is just use your center, actually, you're living down there in North Carolina, to me, this is just like, I don't wanna go, what county are you in? What county is Durham? I'm in Durham County.

You know, I don't wanna go to the Durham County Republican Chicken Dinner and get hassled. Like, I think that's really what's happening here. Like, I don't wanna get hassled and I don't wanna get primaried. And also, I've gotten some death threats. And so that sounds a little butcher for me to talk about the death threats for why I'm not going to do the right thing rather than the actual thing.

Yeah. And Tillis has this habit. He's interesting because he dances right up to the line over and over again on things with Trump. I can't tell whether it's brilliant or really foolish. It seems to me like he risks alienating all of the Trump supporters without getting anything from it because he then never actually follows through. He shows himself pretty easily bullied.

But he keeps flirting with the idea that he's going to defy Trump. I don't know what the thinking is there. Maybe there isn't a thinking. Maybe he's just sort of blundering through it or maybe he's trying to strike some sort of moderate pose. I'm not sure. I mean, I think my theory is that he genuinely is repulsed by Trump or at least dislikes him, you know, and, and generally finds some of the stuff to be like against what he would prefer at minimum. And so that is like the initial posture, but he just like hasn't decided that

he wants to retire yet. Right. And like fundamentally it's just that like these guys refuse to try any sort of middle ground. Like they look at Jeff Flake, they look at Liz or whatever. And they're like, look, if I, if I fully oppose, then I'm done. And so I'll express dismay from time to time, but like when push comes to shove, I want to stick. I just think, I kind of think it's as simple as that. Like my uncle Lindsey Graham said, you know, if you're not in this business to get reelected, you're in the wrong business. And that's clearly the attitude that so many of them have versus some sort of public service attitude. Which takes us to, we have a vote today on Cash Patel.

It is at 11 AM. So we're taping before the vote. I'd love to be surprised. I would just be overjoyed to be surprised that for you guys to have this podcast drop in your feed and you'd be like, Tim, you've missed that one. The spine of the Republican Senate shows. I would love for that to happen. Don't see it. You wrote about the great surrender. To me, the Cash Patel example is, I think, the most extreme. I mean,

you can make an argument to me for Hegseth because it was such a preposterous choice for a weekend TV show host to become the secretary of defense, but- Not Gabbard? I mean, again, we're grading on a scale here. I can understand why people would be most concerned about Gabbard, but she was in Congress. I mean, I don't know. She was in Congress. It's wouldn't have been a crazy choice for President Bernie to pick her for DNI, right? So it's not when it comes to resume. To me, like Cash Patel has no experience in the Bureau. So there's nothing there. He's a compulsive liar, as your colleague, Elena Platt, wrote in her great profile of him.

He lied to all their faces, allegedly, just like a week and a half ago when they asked him if he was involved in the firings of the FBI and he said no. So he has an enemies list and it's just, it's a ridiculous choice to be the head of the FBI and the dangerous choice because of the lack of oversight he has. And you know these people know it. I mean, he did the January 6th song, like the prisoner song. He produced the song of the prisoners that beat the cops. Like this person is going to be the head of the federal, of our federal law enforcement. You wrote about the great surrender. I assume you're with me here that we'll just see a total fold on this in a couple hours. I think that's right. I really

expected there would be at least one of these folks would go down. We lost Gates right from the start, but I thought that they were going to demand something. And I'm, again, I probably shouldn't be surprised, but I'm surprised that not one of these candidates has attracted more serious opposition. Except for Mitch. McConnell's out there. He's doing it. What do you make of that?

It's very strange to see somebody who is in charge of keeping Republican votes together being the one guy defying it. I mean, you know, you said Tillis doesn't want to retire yet, so he has these expressions of dismay, you know, and McConnell's clearly in DJF territory. And I think he doesn't like Trump. He doesn't like these nominees. And he sees no real downside to voting against them. Yeah, kind of like you need more of a psychiatrist to assess

what's happening with Mitch, then right then like a political analyst, because to me, it does feel like a rationalization thing. He's trying to convince himself that he's principled. It's like a legacy reclamation sort of project? Yeah, a little bit about, I guess it's like you need a psychiatrist because it's maybe a little bit about legacy but maybe more about how one feels about themselves. So I spent some time in therapy. I think that maybe this is a little,

I don't think that Mitch is in therapy, but I think maybe he's freelancing a little bit. And it's a little bit of he can retire knowing that, oh, you know, I held the line and the things that I cared about. And I didn't help out this guy who insulted my wife repeatedly, although I did endorse him for president.

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So indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q u i n c e dot com slash the bulwark to get free shipping and 365 Let's talk about the project. I guess let's start with the political and then we'll get to the substance. I can't decide whether Trump getting away with distancing himself from Project 2025 was a failure of the media, a failure of the Dems, or just like on yet another example of a strategic move that only Trump can get away with because he's so shameless and there's like no other politician that would have the balls to just be like, yeah this thing that's on paper that all of my advisors plan on

doing, like I have nothing to do with that. I don't know, what was your sense about that? I mean obviously you're writing this at some level during the campaign when all that was going down. You know I really think it might be the third option that it's just Trump having the balls to say no because I mean I was surprised by how much Dems were able to make it a campaign issue. Like this is a 900 page p PDF full of a bunch of really technical stuff. And these things get put out by Heritage and other think tanks every four years and they usually make no splash at all. And you know, these are coming up at the BET awards and you have the Dems brandishing that oversized book at the DNC. Like they really injected

it into the conversation. I mean, do you remember why you remember why? Like, it was because the Biden debate was so bad, right? They're desperate for anything. I was like, we need a talking point. So like, we're gonna do project 2025. And then it did kind of work. You're right. It is due there. I mean, I live in a blue bubble, but I was driving around and seeing signs in people's yards that said stop project 2025. And

that's a sign of how weekly people were attached to the candidates, but it's also surprising penetration for something like this. I do think though, in spite of what you're saying with the bubble, like he did kind of get away with it, like at least on the particulars, as far as people not really ties to the other topic, like not really believing that he was going to go along with like the most extreme shit that somebody in the basement of the heritage Foundation came up with. But like that's what's happening. So I'm wondering, given that you wrote the book, I'm going to assume you've read all 900 pages.

I have. What so far in this first month, like what is being implemented? What isn't? What might be next? Just give us kind of a rundown of how the pamphlet matches up with what we've seen so far. I mean, I think one thing just in terms of how it's being implemented, Elon has sort of thrown a wrench into a lot of these things. And what they describe in project 25 is really methodical, like how we're going to do this, how we're going to go through these steps. And a lot of these things, he seems to

sort of have hijacked and done his own way. So I think we haven't really felt a lot of the real project 2025 stuff because Russ vote has just gotten in, they're just starting to push on these things. and they attempted this fending freeze and it obviously got initially slapped down, but they clearly want to try this again. Just this week, they put out an executive order about independent agencies, which is part of a, you know, general attempt to overturn a

1930s precedent that says that independent agencies exist. I think these things are still in action. When you say you want to hijacking it, I mean, he's hijacking the process or the aims? You know what I mean? The process. Yeah, because he's getting to the same aims basically. He's getting, exactly, yeah. The people who wrote Project 2025

are whatever else you think of them, pretty serious people who've thought a lot about government and how it should work. And what you see from Elon is he has no idea. There are a few clowns. There's Peter Navarro. There are a few clowns in project 25. Yeah, but Russ Voad is somebody who's like he has thought a lot about this and Elon doesn't know how the basics of the government work and we're seeing that every day.

And the more niche the sections like the more serious the people are like, you know, because I was I was flagging through it and like having worked in politics like I'd be like,, that guy's in there, you know, it'd be like the serious person that I would call, you know, that when I was on a campaign, you would call when a policy issue came up, you're like, oh, that's the person that you talked to about monetary policy or whatever, you know what I mean? So there were like the more niche, the more serious and then there was some kind of some clownish culture stuff in there on top. But I think that like the gender stuff is maybe the thing that jumps out most. I mean, I think that the gender stuff is maybe the thing that jumps out most.

I mean, I think that is, as much as people talked about abortion in Project 2025 during the campaign, the stuff about gender roles and family structure and there being two sexes are things that I don't think you can overstate how much of that is in there. And just this week we see RFK issuing an order on this. We've seen tons of other examples already too. What about, like you wrote specifically about the Department of Education.

That's something that kind of everybody knows is coming next. So talk about what their plans are and like what the real life impacts of that are going to be. They don't want it. Their plan is to get rid of it. Okay. It's a weird situation because you have had conservatives arguing for abolishing the Department of

Education for decades now. But it's a problem because there's also millions of dollars that states depend on. And you can't just get rid of that. And so project 2025 is answer is, you should block grant all of this stuff to states, federal government should still spend lots of money to just send it to states with no strings attached, as long as it, you know, follows state law, they can do what they want. So I think what you can imagine is you would have red states with much more religious schools

and you'd have a different sort of curriculum in different blue states pushing money into public schooling with probably similar to what they have now. I mean, that I guess comes in conflict with the Elon stuff at some point, right? You know, because also if you're just canning, like people ad hoc, you know, because they have a probationary status, right? Like that is, you know, and your goal is to find things to cut. Like that's that's different than block granting, obviously. Yeah, I think I'm curious to see how those sort of tensions play out and whether the real goal is just to cut the funds in whatever way possible or if it is in fact

to sort of, you know, push a more conservative project. And that's like, that's the vote versus Musk tension that I think we're going to see popping out in other places as well. You do think because I don't know, I kind of imagine, it's hard for me to get inside Russ votes head, that I'm going to do my best. I kind of imagine that he's like pretty titillated with the fact that he might be able to get some of his aims here without actually going through the arduous legal process. I think back to that secret interview that he did with the Canadians where he's talking

about how much work he put in over the last four years on like, making sure that, you know, these efforts to call the civil service, et cetera, have legal standing so they don't get overturned like so much stuff did, then the first Trump term. And then here you have Elon just like using a sledgehammer, but like, you'll get some percentage of the vote goals just through that, right at the start, because like some people just quit, you know, some people decide they're not going to come back to work. And in some ways, maybe that makes

what vote is trying to do easier. I think that's true to a point. And the point where I think it gets dangerous is or gets risky for vote vote rather, is some of the things that Elon's doing are just so clearly illegal and unconstitutional that they're going to get rolled back. And something they say a lot in Project 2025 is we have one shot at this.

We have to get this right. We have to get it right in the first two years or else we will get rolled back. And so by coming in and doing these things and getting all of the, he's gonna get results, Musk is gonna get results, but he's also going to get rolled back on some things. And I think that's going to cause problems for actually getting things done through the

legal process. I mean, these cuts, many of these things are going to be unpopular. No one wants to see national parks closed and so on and so forth. And so you've got to get it done before the backlash. Is there anything else, anything that's in there that you feel like has not gotten the media attention? I mean, there's just so much shit happening. Yeah. You know, I just wonder if anything jumps out at you having written about this. I think one thing that we haven't talked about

as much because people are talking about civil servants is how much of it is focused on, in fact, getting the right political appointees. You know, there's just a real fury from Russ Vought and Paul Danz about how bad the political appointees were from their perspective in the first Trump administration. And, you know, know you're gonna get these people in eventually but they're gonna be overseeing departments that are cleared out they're not gonna be able to get the things done that they want to and so I think that's attention yeah but I you're seeing some prime examples of this that I've already backfired like Darren Beatty you know who we wrote about they're trying to put

in Secretary of State as Marco's deputy and that lasted about eight minutes though. I guess Ed Martin as the in the US attorney his office that's actually seemed like that's gonna who knows that might stick. So I don't know like it becomes challenging. I talked to banner about this once where I was like a big problem that you have is you don't have the horses like to do all this. Like there's not the bench of like actual people, you know, and the type of person that wants to advance the most radical elements of MAGA or Project 2025, there isn't like a huge number of them that are like Ivy League grads that are like wanting to work in the federal government. You know what I mean? Like it takes time to build that. I think some more of those people exist now than did eight years ago.

They really worked hard on training them. And they're not going to be people we hear about. They're not going to be Bates. They're going to be folks who are at lower levels, but are still political appointees. You know, they're in the bottom 2000 of the 4000 political appointees or whatever. And I think that's where you could potentially make a difference, but I'm not sure it's going to work in time and I'm not sure what they're going to be left with when Elon's finished.

I want to talk about the Dems a little bit. I want to see what you're seeing in your blue bubble and Durham. There's a CNN pullout this morning. 73% of Democrats or Democratic leaning voters say the party is doing too little to oppose Donald Trump. I think it was like 4% that said that they're doing too much. So if you're one of those, there you go. You're the few, the proud.

I've been in the 4% side of a poll before. So sometimes that's righteous. I think that there is the potential for a Democratic Tea Party brewing right now. I feel like I've seen this movie before that the voters are more upset than the elected officials are, that they're looking for a rabid takedown and that you don't really know what will set it off. I mean, like the Tea Party thing in retrospect, like it's absurd to think that it was about spending, you know, but it's like the CNBC, the Rick Santelli

rant was about people being resentful that they were bailing out their neighbors underwater mortgages and then it like turned into a balanced budget thing. And I was like, really, it was kind of like a racial resentment or it was like, really, it was just kind of like a hating Obama thing, you know, and, and there was a lot of people that wanted to fight him. And, you know, John Boehner just was not up for that. And I just kind of think that that's coming for the Democratic congressional members. So I don't know, let's say you. I think you're right about this sort of structural landscape, but I, and you're right, you don't know what it's going to set it off. But I think what I have a hard time imagining is what the organizing principle is and the

real organizing principle, maybe more than the sort of superficial one. Like insofar as the Tea Party was about hating Obama, the Dems have kind of tried hating Trump and it worked okay in 2020 and it worked really poorly in 2024. So I don't know what their next move is or how you sort of package that in a way that's going to excite people differently. Yeah. And maybe Elon is the flashpoint, you know, maybe it's an anti-billionaire thing. Maybe it's something about, you know, the actual ramifications of what I mean, like

at this point, like you're not, you're not going to have a tea party filled with upper middle class college graduates who lost their jobs in the government. Not that many of those people haven't gotten screwed over and that many of them aren't sympathetic. There are. There are certainly specific examples, examples that are particularly sympathetic. So it's probably not going to be that. But I do think that Elon as a flash point is potentially it.

And I think that you could probably finagle an outsider populist type rage that unifies people that have pretty different actual ideologies on the left, like people from bullwit people all the way to like lefty people like if it's Aimed at the right person, you know what I mean? Like if it's just oppositional, right? It's like deal with the details later on what comes next. But like I wonder if there's like kind of an a populist oppositional Posture that could they could animate it Yeah, I saw Charlie Kirk tweeting about the Hannity interview saying, you know, isn't this exciting?

The world's most powerful man and the world's richest man are really just great friends and they're in charge. And I thought if I was a Democrat, I would be broadcasting that everywhere I can because I think that's a, I mean, that's a scary idea for anybody who believes in limited government. It's a scary idea for anyone who is really populist. It puts the lie to a lot of the things they said. That's a message right there. But I don't see, you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries really jumping on that very effectively.

I don't either. The king, you know, Trump is the king. So he says. So he says the king is back. You know, I don't know, you'd think there'd be something there. I like Hakeem Jeffries. I don't I don't have anything in particular against him, but his temperament is not one of channeling anger. You know what I mean? I talk about this a lot with Jeb, I like what I missed. And we're actually on the nine year anniversary

of Jeb's concession speech. If you wanna go back and read it, I think it was pretty well written. I had a lot of good points. You know, I remember being with him one day when the polls were really bad and you know, I was trying to buck him up a little bit and I was just like, look, if the people want like Trump's anger, you know, Trump's just like desire to burn shit down, then there's nothing you can do. Like, you know what I mean? Like you can change your posture. You can be tougher, Jeb. Like we can put you in a new outfit. You know what I mean? Like you can change your posture.

You can be tougher, Jeb. Like we can put you in a new outfit. You know what I mean? Like you can change your rhetoric. You can talk about different issues. Like it doesn't matter. It's like it isn't in your constitution. And I do kind of feel that way

about the current Democratic leadership, right? Like it's like nothing against any of them or any of their policy issues. And it's like, if the people are filled with rage and want to rage against the Trump and Musk duo, then like they need somebody that leads them that like is capable of channeling it. That's right. Neither of those guys is, I mean, it's a tough position.

I think, you know, minority leader is not a great spot to do that. But Pelosi was really good at channeling rage, even as she's not an inspiring speaker. Even as she doesn't have any clear political program, she was able to sort of become a focal point for that. Yeah, I agree with that. You write on your skeet. You're over on Blue Sky now. What's the deal with that? Why are you skeeting?

Because it's like methadone. I can't quite get rid of the Twitter thing, but I don't know. There's a little bit of the sort of fun, low-key atmosphere you had in, I don't quite get rid of the Twitter thing, but I don't know. There's a little bit of the sort of fun, low key atmosphere you had in, I don't know, circa 2009, 2010 Twitter, but I'm sure that'll go away. Yeah, I'm locked out of my account. I still haven't figured that out yet. And I'm kind of happy about it.

I don't know. I don't know that I want the most annoying people on blue sky to be impacting my my view of the world. So it's probably good for all of us. It's kind of like when I was 20, and I was like, I really needed to do, or 18 or whatever. I was like, I need to go to college on the other side of the country from my mother.

And it was really nothing against my mother who I love. It was just like, I think that we're going through a period right now where it'll be better if we're two time zones away. And I think that I might feel that way about some of the blue sky people. But you write on there that you're a nouveau lettrist. I want you to educate me about the lettrists before I let you go.

I don't know any French and it's so totally like hack work, but it felt like a... Now that I'm writing this newsletter, I was trying to translate newsletter to French. So I hope no one speaks French here. Oh, it's a French effort. So it's not like an homage. No, not like an Well, they're belletrists. And I definitely don't write pretty letters. I just write new letters.

Yeah, do you have an oma? Are there any newsletters that you're that you're modeling yourself after? Do you have a favorite newsletter besides Jonathan Last, the triad? I do love the triad, actually. You're setting me up there. But it's true. No, I don't. I mean, I think that the best writers are writing the best stuff and it doesn't really matter what the format is. And so I'm still feeling it out. And it's really fun to have this direct relationship with people, but I haven't cracked it yet, I think. All right. Well, I've been enjoying it. Folks, sign up for the Atlantic Daily. Eventually,

Jeffrey Goldberg will, you know, compensate me, at least give me a nice, I don't like steak. I was going to say a steak dinner, a nice omakase dinner or something out of this. But you guys go subscribe to the Atlantic. I have a bonus segment today. I taped yesterday for YouTube with my buddy Pablo Torre. As some of you guys might know, he was on Pardon the Interruption from time to time. He was a sports guy, but he's also a Harvard man and has a lot of deeper thoughts than just sports. So we were talking about the Trump live golf PGA scam. It's hard to keep track of all the scams that are happening right now, but this weekend, Trump is going to be holding a golf summit in Florida with the Saudi Splinter Golf League that hosts their events at Trump Golf Courses and the PGA, which refused to after January 6th.

And so I think that he sees a way to get himself, get his courses back in play. I'm glad that the president is really focused on this, on the forgotten man and ensuring that golf returns to his golf courses. So Pablo and I got into that, but it kind of spiraled into a discussion about masculinity and the youths. And so I really enjoyed it. So I wanted people that, but it kind of spiraled into a discussion about masculinity and the youths. And so I really enjoyed it. So I wanted people not to miss it. So we're going to include it on this podcast feed as well. So I appreciate Pablo. I appreciate you, David Graham. Thank you.

Thanks to David Graham. Up next, Pablo Torre. Hey guys, Tim Miller with the Bullork. I'm here with Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out Fame and you know, a bunch of other stuff, damn Levitard stuff, ESPN, World Sports Commentary. I saw you and Nicole Wallace yesterday or Monday, so you're coming into my space as a sports commentator. That's right. I'm peeing on all the trees, Tim, that you thought were just your urine. Guess what?

I'm on there too. You're peeing on it now. All right. Well, I was jealous of Nicole that she got to hang out with you, so I messaged you. The main topic here is this meeting happening this weekend about the Live Golf Tour and PGA Tour merging and Trump wanting to be the deal man in that merge. Some of our viewers might not give a fuck about golf, but I think this is very relevant in two senses.

One, it is just gonna be another example of a Trump grift. So I think it's worth talking about that part about it. But more, it also is like the golf world has like mirrored the political world in like this, you know, sort of decline in caring about principle or values or anything that we once held dear. So I want to just kind of cover both of those, but to do it, could you explain to any newbies like the live origin story? Give us like the TLDR on the live origin story.

Yeah, happy to, because I've been following this story for years and it's crazy and we're numb to it, which is a good opportunity to remind people, hey, don't be numb to this. So the PGA Tour had a monopoly effectively on golf. And this is not to say that they were praiseworthy in any way, right? Like golf as an institution, lots of old and ancient and, yeah, flawed rituals around all sorts of demographic groups.

That's not why I'm talking to you about the PGA tour. However, we remember the Tiger Woods is first, uh, first master's dinner. That's right. And yeah, some of the jokes at his expense. Yes. Yes. Uh, the same club Augusta that also had Condoleezza rice as its first member of her demographic also was making jokes about fried chicken

and watermelon Tiger Woods, uh, an August institution, unlike any other truly. But the reason PGA and its enterprise is relevant here is because they were disrupted, let's call it, let's use that term of art, by Saudi Arabia, by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and their private investment fund. So the Saudi Royal Wealth Fund came along and said, Hey, you know what we're interested in? Stealing golf from America in order to make ourselves look better to Americans. And I frame it that way deliberately because on its face doesn't seem like it should be successful.

But, but as a, as a very wise person once told me once the answer to all your questions is money. And so what they did was they said, Hey, we happen to have a desire to launder our reputation. We happen to be the kingdom that you may know from episodes like the bonesawing of journalists, Jamal Khashoggi being one example in that genre. You may remember us from our treatment of gay people. We have executed them previously.

You may remember us, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from our generally abysmal human rights record. Prisoning of political foes, you know, and there's cases people always forget. They sent people to Canada to kill a political foe. They tried to do another bone sawing that failed. And that guy in Canada who they tried to kill, his teenage kids are still like in captivity in Saudi Arabia. So we could go on and on, but I just wanted to throw that one out there.

And we shouldn't just yada, yada, yada over the laundry list here. Truly the laundry list, they're trying to sportswash and launder because by the way, also in that catalog is 9-11. Right. 15 of the 19 hijackers just, and that'll come back as I proceed deeper into this. But the point being they said, hey, golfers, we're going to create a rival tour to compete with the PGA, and you take our money, you become employees of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and we're going to basically prove to all of America we're warm and cuddly, we're warm and fuzzy, you might even say, and come around to seeing our new modern way of life. And what happened was all these golfers took the money.

And so there was this big fracturing between the PGA and Liv, which is what they called their rival tour, the Liv Golf Tour, which is, spoiler alert, not going to wind up being a good product, but will be successful in drawing big names from the PGA. And so anyway, there was this fracturing, there was this seemingly blood feud between the PGA and Liv, but over time what happens is Donald Trump, I mean, do we want to get to the Trump part here? Because I think it's probably instructive.

Let's get to the Trump part after one quick morality thing, because my brother from another mother, Roy McElroy, is I think kind of like the tragic figure in this story. I see the resemblance. I do. Yeah. My little brother, like really looks like him. He's much handsomer than me. And Rory, like, takes the moral high ground in this case, right? And it's like, no, I'm not going to go take the money. I'll take less money to stay on tour. These are bad people. We shouldn't do this. We should have standards and values. And like, essentially what happens is we fast forward and now you get into the Trump world is like, the public just kind of didn't care. And Rory's like competitors ended up making all the money and then getting everything,

right? Like there was going to be a moment where people are going to be like, if you go take the Saudi money, you can't be in the masters, you can't be in the US open. And what ended up happening was everybody kind of folded and they're like, well, the Masters US Open won't get as good ratings if we don't have the live people in there. And so Rory like lost all the money

and all the people that did the bad thing got rewarded for it. And that brings us nicely to Donald Trump. Well, yeah, and I just want to add one more thing too because you just reminded me, right? 2022, this is all going down and Phil Mickelson has an interview with the author Alan Shipnuck for a book he's working on and Phil Mickelson gives away the game okay so we'll set the stage for the moral high ground here by quoting

Phil Mickelson he said yes the Saudi kingdom killed Khashoggi yes they do all these things to gay people yes they have a horrific human rights record. This is essentially a paraphrase. You can go look it up. But what we have here is an opportunity to disrupt the business of the PGA. And therefore I feel Mickelson, I'm, I am taking the money, right? So that he says it, he says it, he says it all they know it. And what happens is 2022, you may also recall was after 2021. And on January 6 of 2021, what happens is after the insurrection on the Capitol, a lot of the PGA tour stops, they say, we can't do the Trump thing. We can't have events at Trump courses in Scotland and America. And so Trump temporarily is out. And so the PGA Tim now is the disloyal party. And so what comes around in 2022 is it's

ahead of September 11th, the anniversary, and there are families, 9-11 families protesting at Bedminster in New Jersey at Trump National, his golf course, ahead of a live golf tournament happening at Bedminster with Donald Trump as the business partner hosting the event. And so you have these families saying all the things about, wait a minute, what happened to never forgetting? What happened to what the Saudi Arabians did to literally Americans in one of the worst, if not the worst, modern atrocity that everybody agreed to care about forever. Spoiler alert again, nobody really listened to them. You know, what we never forgot is that we love cash.

Is that cash is green. That's what we never forgot. And so the Saudis want to have a golf tournament at Bedminster. That's good enough for the America first party. Yes. So America first now fast forward into the future. Donald Trump has been foreshadowing for two years complaining about the PGA welcoming business from live and Saudi Arabia.

He's been saying a merger is inevitable. Anybody who is fighting live is going to lose. You might as well allow me now Donald Trump this week to basically moderate a detente a business merger in which again, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump becomes a major winner because yes, now his business at his golf courses, the things he loves the most, they will get to profit in ways that are just very clearly corrupt given that he's, you know, the president. Yeah. Guess what? PJ's coming back to Doral, you know, PJ is going back to Bedminster.

Yeah. Whatever the fucking course is in California that he's got, you get additional stops there. Who the hell knows? Maybe the PGA tour will accept Trump coin in exchange for, you know, tickets to other events. I go, we don't, we don't know the contours of the deal yet, but, um, seems like it's going to be a financially beneficial one for him. I do want to just phrase this in terms that I think

are pretty undeniable. It's really an amazing trick that Trump is pulling where he gets to bathe in nationalism while being the direct business parter to Saudi Arabia. Tim, I'm trying to track what bigotries we want and which ones we don't. I'm trying to track when foreignness is supposed to feel foreign and not like one of us. It seems like the only through line is literally, are you giving Donald Trump money? Yeah, because the Chinese don't count either. We were just interviewing Zeke Fox about the crypto stuff. This guy, Justin Sun, this crypto magnet from China, who has some pretty illicit dealings himself, is dumping tons of money into the Trump crypto.

Somebody that would be disallowed from donating to his campaign as a foreign national, somebody that obviously if he's giving money to the Bidens would have been seen as this huge attack on American patriotism in addition to being corrupt. He's giving money to the Trumps. And it's like, nobody cares. He's taking money from the Saudis and the chip from Chinese crypto magnets from, from everybody. And, and, uh, I guess that's part of the American first deal. Cause Trump is America now.

Maybe that's really it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A bit of a fine print we're missing is that when we say America first, we really mean Trump and his associated golf courses and meme coins. Which is why I said it should have been golf of Trump.

Just make it golf of Trump. I know. Let's just cut to the chase here. Yeah, just make it golf of Trump. The Saudi Arabia thing though, just to like, what's frustrating to me is that, look, I understand that we're all playing hypocrisy detective, right? And sort of the big win of, of the MAGA party has been to say, but you do this.

We're bad, but you do bad stuff too. What we're dealing with with the Saudi Arabia stuff and so many of the other things that you're outlining in terms of corruption is a reminder that not all corruption is created equal. Right. And in fact, when it comes to dealing with

Saudi Arabia again, if you're to pick 9-11 as this thing that we all said was a pretty good standard for when America coalesced around really what felt like let's value our own country instead of the people that fund terrorism, you would say that Saudi Arabia, okay, that's probably beyond the pale, but we've been testing and again, in sports, by the way, this is say that Saudi Arabia, okay, that's probably beyond the pale. But we've been testing, and again in sports, by the way, this is not just a Trump story.

This is a sports story in which everybody, unfortunately, is thirsting for their money. It's a really interesting thing. So like basically in sports, by the way, as I always like to say, the lone monocultural institution we seem to have left, these American institutions, everybody is putting a toe in the water of, okay, you say the cable bundle is being disrupted, which means that our billions of dollars in revenue as scheduled are going to be eroding or changing. Well, we need to find a new backer. And there is Saudi Arabia themselves thinking we got to switch over from oil at some point to something else, maybe tourism, maybe entertainment. And they're

saying, if we can use sports to cover up atrocities that we have committed, then maybe that's our future. And so there's this just meeting of, of desperate interests and it's a marriage made in hell and sports is quietly across the board. They are quietly meeting and deciding let's get some of that money in because we don't want to be left out. I'm Dante and I'm taking you one step lower into hell. We're going even deeper right now, because maybe the one thing that the Saudis missed was that it turned out. They didn't need to sports wash it at all. Like maybe it real, what it really turns out is that as long as they came with

the money, everybody was going to eventually fold to their interests anyway, particularly in a Trump 2.0 world. How about that? That's a particularly, you know, Tim, I can always count on you to make it even more, uh, staggeringly dystopian, but you're right. Like when we joke about the fine print, they're not even bothering to hide it in the

small cereal box spot. We're seeing it in the newspaper. Like this is unsubtle, right? Like MBS, Yassir Al-Rumayan, his head of sports. I mean, truly, again, I come from sports. I've been monitoring this story and I'm like, okay, cool. Liv is back in the news. All right. I'm familiar with that. What's happening? Oh, Russia and the US are meeting in Saudi Arabia. Like all of the streams are crossing. Like, what the fuck is this? All the streams are crossing? Like what the fuck is this?

All the streams are crossing. All right. So this takes me to my other final topic for you because it's my obsession and what I'm going to be talking to people that I'm thinking about a lot over the next year or two is that we being, you know, whatever the defenders of liberal democracy or Democrats in some cases, however you want to put it. I've been bleeding support from young men, from the bros, so to speak. And this conversation is like kind of, I think speaks to the challenge, right? Because if I'm coming into this

as like a 22 year old dude, vaping, you know, selling my fucking shit coin, my fart coin. Right, looking for nudes. I'm just looking for nudes mostly. Yeah. I'm like, I just stumbled upon this because I saw Pablo on TV one time and I thought this was going to be some fucking sports talk. I thought we were going to be talking about how good Bryson DeChambrough's driver is or some shit. And I stumbled upon this. And what I got is these two fucking millennial scolds talking to me about how like, don't we have values anymore?

Don't we? You know, and so I just, I do wonder in like the context of sports, like how you think the live thing has been resonating with people who come from, not from the nine 11 era like us, but from, from younger folks. Yeah. I mean, so first and foremost, like on my show, Publatory Finds Out, as Effer mentioned, like my entire mission there is to make sure I melt cheese on the broccoli, right? Like you're going to get nutrition.

Can I get some chocolate on the broccoli? We will. Chocolate, some MSG, some Mali. We'll microdose some LSD. We'll do that too. Whatever, whatever you need to make this feel like you're enjoying yourself, we'll do it. Um, but I mean that seriously, right? This stuff shouldn't just be scolding. It should also be truly like a realization that there is great comedy, albeit a dark comedy in the absurdity of what we're seeing, which

is a parallel to politics. So how is sports a parallel to politics here? Well, what's happening is that a sacred institution that you loved growing up has been sold piece by piece to truly the modern equivalent of the Axis powers. It's the bad guys in the most on-the-nose movie you've ever seen. And the question is, as it is to the voter, are you having a better time consuming the product that's being sold piece by piece to the bad guys?

And Live Golf, what I will confidently say, is that no one really likes that shit. It's not better now than it used to be. It's not the masters. Does it give you the chills when the music comes on? You know, you don't get the vibes. It's not the old flashbacks of Payne Stewart in the fucking pants, you know?

It's worse, the product's worse. It's inshitification. It is being inshitified. And so even if, by the way, we led with some acknowledgement as we do as liberal cucks towards the idea that, by the way, the PGA, Augusta, they have some issues, not trying to enshrine them. The point is what you're getting as a result of the insidification of everything due to outright unprecedented corruption is not

good for the normal person. It's not good for the fan. It's not good for sports. And by the way, the other thing that's funny to me, the comedy in this, Tim, was watching all of this happen as the Super Bowl just sort of like turned over to me. Okay. What did the Super Bowl reveal? Lots of things. But one of them was that Donald Trump doesn't know ball. Tommy Tuberville, literally a football coach, does not know ball. They're both making shit up about Patrick Mahomes, right? In a way that should signal to you, these people are not who they claim they are. They're using sports as if they are the bros and we're the Cucks. In reality, they're revealing at every turn that they don't actually know what they're talking about.

And that part is just fundamentally, I'm just like, look, you can get me on the moral level. Maybe you disagree with my philosophies, sure. But if you're telling me that those people are convincing you that they're actually diehard familiar with the shit you care about, we just aren't going to be able to agree on anything because they're revealing all the time that they're lying to you for their benefit and they're using you for, spoiler alert, their benefit. Yeah. Okay. I like this.

This is how we're trying to reframe it. I mean, if you're the guy in the back to back World War champ shirt, you know, drinking the net, pounding the natty light, we're on the bad guy's side now. You don't want this. We should be fucking kicking these guys' ass. We don't need their Saudi fucking money and that we don't need them ruining our sports. Like this is our shit, all right?

Get in line. Maybe there's a jingoistic way to take this back from Trump. It's, yes, yes. If I can give you the people who, uh, we should, I mean, again, look, Tim, I'm from New York, right? And so there's a parallel here to just like the New York thing because nine 11, I am somebody who has found a way to truly like not have that be the thing I want to club people over the head with every day. But when it just comes to like the most

cinematic version of patriotism, I'm like, really? We're gonna let those guys who did this help that guy who's doing this to us? Like this is we pick whatever movie that you love growing up. Pick fucking Rocky. Guess who we're on the side of now. Yvonne Drago. Guess, I mean, just come on, man. I grew up with a sense of who the villains are. I'm not even asking you to otherize anything. I'm just saying use the same shit that you grew up watching. Now just think of the world through that lens.

What do you see? No, they're plane jacking Air Force One from Harrison Ford right now. All right. Be fucking Harrison Ford. Okay. Yeah. Instead of fucking Con Air, by the way, which is what this movie feels like. That's Bob Littori. Everybody subscribe to our feed, but go check out Bob Littori, finds out, which I love. It is awp. How should I put this? It is sometimes a welcome reprieve

from the dystopia that is my life. Every once in a while, his shit overlaps with my dystopia and that's good then too, but I enjoyed it. It's plain listening for me. You know, it's evergreen. I was on with him right after the election. So if you want to go see how sad I sounded then. Oh, that was a good one. You guys can go listen to that app.

Sad Tim Miller in person with a Denver Nuggets hat, a skew on his head contemplating. Is all the success I'm about to have in this post-election cycle really worth it? And the answer is no, but I appreciate you all. Go listen to that episode of Pablo Joy Finds Out. We'll be seeing you all soon. Please.

See you, brother. See you, Ben. All right. Thanks so much to David and Pablo. What a delight. We'll be back tomorrow for the weekend edition of the Bulwark podcast. And I guess probably by then, Cash Patel is going to be the director of the FBI. So I'll have much to discuss on that and other topics with one of your favorites. We'll see you all then.

Peace. Can we set the world within tonight? That we'd be ashes in apocalyptic light I said break out the champagne If we won't be, see you tomorrow Let's get on with the ship show Let's get on with the show Somewhere above the Newfoundland Sea Pilots said we'd lost an engine In a split second, I made an executive decision In a split second, I made an executive decision

I said break out the champagne, everybody look out below Let's get on with the shit show, here goes the toast Adios! This morning love told her he was leaving He said they'd be better as friends It's no one's fault The heart wants what it wants And then she thought I'm rockin' low

In your golf Break out the champagne I've been thinking the same thing myself We might as well Break out the champagne If this really has to go Let's get on with the shit show. Let's get on with the show. Audio. The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.