The Bulwark Podcast - George Conway: For Trump, Harp Strikes a Chord

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Melania had to come out of hiding and practice her English after days of embarrassing coverage of Trump aide Natalie Harp. And now Harp’s newly released gushing notes to POTUS show unparalleled devotion to him. But they also hint at an abusive relationship built around trying to manage his easily-wounded ego with fantasy-grade good news stories. Meanwhile, Michael Cohen reminded everyone that he is a pathetic little lapdog. Plus: Trump is running the country like a socialist, he’s driving up the debt to dangerous levels, he seems determined to muck with the midterms—and the ‘orange man bad' resistance has been right all along.George Conway joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes: Two of Natalie's love notes to Trump JVL on the 'human printer' Tim's interview with Julia Curlee Tim's interview with David Wallace-Wells  Katie Britt's contact page for Venezuelan detainees Freddys Revilla and Edgarianny Gervis Tim's playlistBulwark LIVE: GOOD FIGHT TOUR with Tim, Sarah, Sam and JVL is coming to the Southeast in October. Tickets are on sale NOW. Head to TheBulwark.com/Events for details and to get your tickets.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Before we get to one of our guests, I've got two more favors. I did a favor earlier this week, and the response was overwhelming. The amount of emails that Katie Brits, Chief of Staff has gotten about her total absence and abdication of responsibility when it comes to the children that we are keeping in detention centers, even though they're trying to self-deport, it was at least noticed. Unfortunately, Katie Britt hasn't done anything yet.

She did go on Foxxas night and smear Muslims, but she hasn't done anything to help the people in the detention centers yet. But hopefully that will continue. I heard from some of you that you didn't fully have the names of Fredis and Agariana and how to spell them. So I'll put them in the show notes. If people did not get a chance to contact Katie Britt's office, please do so over the weekend.

My other quick favor is this podcast is going to do great in the algorithm. Okay. The algorithm loves Trump Darrangement Syndrome. The algorithm loves my guest. The algorithm loves it when we talk about Melania having press conferences. We're going to crush. When we talk to Julia Curley about a trans woman being fired and we talked to David Wallace Wells about climate apocalypse, the algorithm doesn't love that serious material as much. So if you liked one of those podcasts, my favor for you this weekend is think about a friend who might like it and help expand our reach. I mean, the Julia Curley podcast just knocked me on my ass. So if you would send that with a friend to a friend who you don't think it listens yet,

I would consider it a favor. So I appreciate you. And then now you guys, I owe you all too. So you can ask me for a favor. All right, today's guest, an old pal, a lawyer. He used to be a Republican. He used to be a candidate for Congress. He's a bolder contributor and maybe a little bit more soon. We'll be talking about that. It's the great George Conway. Hey, George. Hey, Tim. How are you? I am pretty good. I could, I mean, all things considered. I got my wish. All week, I've been saying, if the Natalie Harp Discourse leads to an impromptu Melania press conference, it will all be worth it for me. And I got my wish. Well, I was always there. I was always there. You're just fun paying attention. I was all, I've always at the Vite House. I'm very, very busy. You know,

They tore down the East Wing and now it's a military bunker and I'm in charge of that. Mr. Epstein did not introduce me to my husband. Mr. Epstein? Who is that? Who is that? I do not know a Mr. Epstein.

She made her first public appearance in more than a month yesterday. Last time, if you even call it an appearance, was at the World Cup final. She was announcing, it's hard to understand. We'll play it. Apparently a scholarship program for young adults in foster care,

which is an admirable effort. Partners on the initiative include Fox. So that leaves me a little skeptical. I don't know why. But she came out at the White House, and I just want to play a little bit for you. Good afternoon. I heard you missed me.

Here I am. Welcome to the White House. A warm welcome to our distinguished guests today, Mr. President. My father, Mr. Knauss, education is the one asset that can never be taken away. It is the foundation upon which confidence is built, opportunities created, and the future is invented. Her English is not great. I know that important that immigrants learn English in this White House.

It's an important part of the Stephen Miller, but foundation, inventant. I don't unclear what's happening there. Her English is better than your Slovenian, so I don't know what you're talking about. She might be non-lingual. She's forgotten the Slovenian and not quite learned the English, so we have a non-lingual first lady, possibly. I mean, you know, I don't criticize her for, I'm not going to criticize her for helping kids get education, I guess. But kind of timing, the timing was kind of interesting, don't you think? The timing was interesting. The timing was interesting.

and I guess I do have one criticism about the comment. There was, education is the only asset that you can't take away. It's actually not true in a free country. I mean, Donald Trump might think he can take everyone's assets, take anything that he wants from anyone. But, you know, in a free country, you have an asset. You are actually allowed to keep it no matter what.

So it's just a little quibble. Yeah, the timing's interesting coming off the Natalie Hart thing. It's not like some kind of conservative or something. Yeah. Coming off Natalie Hart. We have more letters which we're going to discuss, but we all speculated that Melania was not going to like these stories, none too much. I don't know what she's doing the rest of the time, maybe just surgery.

Like, I don't, where is she? It's not like she has, there's a lot of spot. No one knows where she is. Has she been in New York or she's been in Florida? I don't know. We don't really know. We need a Melania trap. Do you want to do that job?

Not really. Okay. But, you know, I'm sure the bulwark has some people out there would be willing to do that. We can find a volunteer. Yeah. All right. So that's Melania. She's back.

She's still working on English, and she's concerned about Donald's behavior. I think with all her free time, she could improve it. I mean, it's been 10 years that she's been the first lady. The letters from Natalie Harp that might have led to this press conference keep getting weirder and weirder. The Daily Beast has some of the long-form love notes.

we'd seen some of the short form in the Swan Haberman book. I'm going to read from a couple of points. I'm trying to decide which parts to do first. The running is the funniest ones. We'll start there. Make it dramatic, right? Several videos show Ms. Harps sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump's golf cart

as it putters around the course in Scotland. So we have those videos. Simultaneously to that, the letter says this. I'm also sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland. It's like, it's bore on the floor, is what this is. Oh, I got to see the video. We need the video.

Please leak the video. Some of the weirder parts, though, George, boy, this is Natalie. We could be out on the course with no machines and even forget what time it was. I didn't have to be a human printer. I could take time to enjoy good conversation and still get all my work to at the end of the day. In fact, I even had time to take long morning and evening walks to enjoy each sunrise and sunset, though I did forget to eat and sleep. With so much thinking time, I confess, it did have a slightly negative effect at times that I know you picked up on, that the end

results, I believe, will be worth it. We go on, you have the absolute right to cuss me out if need be when I deserve it, because no one knows or cares about me more. They say I could not have parted with you to anyone less worthy, and I will add, It is I who is unworthy. It's quite amazing. It's just a peon of worship. And there's a bit of kind of like a hint of an abusive relationship there, right? It just feels like, you know, he trashes on her and then she does her best to throw herself back at him.

I did not serve you well enough, master. And did you notice the case that was there some interesting capital? capitalization in that letter or was it another letter that I saw? Yeah, this letter, the human printer was capitalized, sunset was capitalized. And then we get down to the end of this letter. I was saving this, but since you mentioned the capitalization, this is when the capitalization gets really weird. Thank you for being my guardian, capital G, and protector, capital P, in this life. That's what I wanted to use this card for.

When you saw me at the cash register, capital CR, and once again did what you didn't have to and gifted me with mementos of this trip of a lifetime, a coming capital C of age, capital A, I will return a better person. It's almost like she worships him as a capital D deity, right? Capital G, guardian. I was a little worried where you're going with capital D, so I'm happy we landed on deity. That went over my head. So keep going.

Capital P protector. What was the other one? What was the other one? Capital G guardian. Guardian, protector, and then what was the, the cash register is interesting. You know, she went to Liberty University, and someone pointed out to me this morning that cash register has connotations in the evangelical community. Cash register is a term that is used to describe people who treat the Lord,

as a kind of deposit institution where you do not good things so that you can get your, you know, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz at the end of the day. But it's usually, I think it's supposed to be critical of that mode of worship or belief, but she's saying calling him the cash register?

Is that the context now? I saw me at the cash register. That's the cash register. I guess Trump probably just got her like a fucking, like little doily from the Scotland, you know, golf courses pro shop. He got her some like Scotland socks maybe or like a golf tea ball that is inscripted with the course name.

And that was for her a memento of a lifetime, capital L, and a coming of age, capital C. Coming of age. Coming of the Lord Donald Trump. It's weird. I spoke to somebody who covers the White House who was like, It's the type of situation where you remember the old stories about Trump, where he would do the thing, like a guy would come into his office in Trump Tower,

they knew he was having an affair, and then he'd, like, call his wife and put him around speakerphone and, like, say things, like, cryptically to kind of, like, embarrass him and scare him to manipulate him. Yeah, humiliate him. They're like, this is, like, the situation with NAP. She's writing him these long love notes about how, you know, he is her son and her mom.

moon and for him like he thinks it's funny you know he could have a bunch of friends around and say hey natalie like will you go poo in a in a bowl and then come bring it back to me and like she would do that you know like i think that's the type of situation yeah it is it does seem that there is kind of a very that she's very subjugated in this relationship that she's very i hear but the thing that also i'm wondering about is where is this shit coming from? You think she might be a Russian spy? I don't know.

I'm asking that question without having an answer. It's a legitimate question, which I pose to you, the guru of boredom. Where the fuck is this? I mean, okay, so she writes these very personal private notes. She doesn't presumably make multiple copies of them and hand them out to the rest of the White House staff. She hands them to him. So where are these copies coming from?

who is giving them to the Daily Beast? Who is quoting them to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan? I've got a working theory on this. Yeah, I'd like to hear that working theory. I mean, you're supposed to be interviewing me and asking me questions, but I've asked a question. It's a podcast, George's a conversation. It's a two-way dialogue. It's a weekend pod, you know?

I unbutton to button. We're getting loose. And here's what I think. The Swan and Hayer book was very specific in noting that she leaves these for him. I think maybe there's something embarrassing about handing him the letter. She's a little embarrassed. Maybe she knows somewhere in her subconsciously. He's not reading them.

Donald Trump doesn't read. They're very long. We'll put the link in the show. You can look at the letters. They're very long. There's no way in which he's reading these. I mean, Sam Stein was like, is she talking in code when she says cash register?

And I was like, cash register is in paragraph 11. Donald Trump did not make it that far. So if there was a code, he didn't get it. Yeah, I know. What I think is happening is she leaves them around, and there are people in the White House that hate her. She's the conduit by which people get things to Trump, and Trump gets things out.

So she pocket veto shit, you know, she prints out shit that they didn't want them to see, you know, whatever. Like, my guess is Susie hates her, Caroline hates her You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, they all hate each other. They're all very jealous of who has access to him.

So that's what's happening. She leaves them around. One of them knows Trump isn't going to read it, picks it up, takes a picture, or just takes it for themselves. And she's continually trying to fight the staff that's trying to keep her away from the president. Right.

I mean, that's why she's running in the trunk of the car. That's why she's jumping in front of the car, running past after the golf car, and so on and so forth. I mean, it was really, it harkens back, and I say this with the disclaimer that I do not believe that these two have carnal wisdom of each other

because I just find that hard to believe in his current medical condition. I think she serves a completely different function, which we can talk about. But it reminds me of, it reminds me of the Monica Lewinsky episode, where in 98, if you recall, people in the White House basically knew that there was something on with this chick Monica Lewinsky and the president.

And they were very suspicious of it. She was always around the Oval at weird times. And so what happened in 1996 was that the chief of personnel in the White House, her name was Evelyn Lieberman, basically transferred Lewinsky out of the White House, secunded her, or I forget what the government term is, sent her over to the Pentagon to work in the press office, where she faithfully met someone else who worked in the press office at the Pentagon, one Linda Tripp, and the rest, of course, is history. That totally completely backfired.

You know, they wanted her away from the White House. And, in fact, you know, I was one of the first people to hear famous, or infamously the Linda Tripp tapes. And one of the things that's on those tapes is her bitching to Linda about how all the people in the White House wanted to get rid of her and finally succeeded in getting rid of her. And there's a little bit of that flavor here. Yeah. You shared the tweet, which I did not remember this. You lived this.

I was a child. I don't remember this phrase is this Don Van Nod, a great guy, ended up being a sports reporter, but he had the scoop that Clinton wore a tie that Lewinsky had given him to a press conference as like a secret message to her to behave during the grand jury testimony or something. Yeah, that was a great story.

Don and I are now friends, even though he outed me as one of the elves who wrote the Paula Jones brief, he and Jill Abramson on the front page of the New York Times, which got me in a lot of people at my law firm were real happy about that at the time. That seems people being unhappy with you, colleagues, it seems like that's a running story of your life. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

But I did, you know, I mean, maybe I digress here. You can cut this out if you like. No, please digress. What people are here for. I found Linda Tripp, her lawyer. I never spoke to the Linda Tripp, her lawyer. And Linda Tripp's lawyer had to produce these tapes. I think it was January 16, 1998, the day before Clinton's deposition.

And so we're sitting in this lawyer's apartment because he needed to listen to the tapes to make sure he knew what was being what was being produced to the government. We started listening to these tapes. And the thing I remember distinctly, I was eating a blueberry donut on the guy's living room table and he's playing these tapes on his cassette tapes on his stereo. And Linda is talking to my...

Monica. Monica is bitching about how Evelyn Lieberman had her transferred out of the White House to the Pentagon so she couldn't see the big creep, which was her nickname for Clinton. The big creep? The big creep was her nickname for Clinton, the big creep. And then Monica tells the story to Linda about how she gets back into the White House one Saturday, or Sunday. And what used to happen, and this was in the Star Report, was that she would show up at the Northwest Gate early on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and everybody with the Secret Service, they let her in because she was authorized,

Clinton put her on the visiting list, and then they would watch the little dot on their screens that showed where the president was. The little dot would go down to the Oval Office for their assignment or whatever they were doing. But anyway, she tells the story of the one Saturday of Sunday she did this, and she's bitching to Linda Tripp about how she was bitching to Clinton.

about they transferred me out of the White House to keep me away from you. And he said, I'm sorry. You know, this was 96. They felt they needed to do this because he's running for re-election. Clinton's saying, I'm sorry they did that to you. I promise, I'm going to get you back here after the election. And Monica's told Linda, oh, thank you. That's great.

I said to the president, can I come back as assistance to the president for blow jobs? And it was, there's... So given your expertise in this area, you said something that piqued my interest, which was you don't think they have carnal interest in each other. You think she's serving another purpose. What purpose do you think she is serving him? Ego management? Yes, ego management.

But in the extreme, I mean, I think that's what she did. She helped keep him sane during the criminal trial in 24. And that's how we all got to know Natalie Hart for the first time. She was there in the courtroom every day. I was in the courtroom in the back with Norm Eisen and the gang, and we're watching these proceedings, and they would come in every day, and she would print stuff out.

At one point, she printed stuff out about me, and Boris Epstein handed it to, for some reason, Caitlin Collins, but that's how we got to know her, and what she did was she printed stuff out to bring his spirits up. When everybody said, somebody said, oh, he's so good, he's so smart, he's going to win the case. That's what she does. He lives in his own little world at this point, right?

He says all these things, like, you know, on the podcast with Cohen last night, He says all these things that are just completely untrue, like completely fanciful, like Iran was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon. I would win by 25% today if I ran for re-election. All these things are just, he actually, I think, has gotten to the point where he has convinced himself of his lies, which is what happens with malignant narcissist, narcissistic sociopathos, is gradually they just begin to believe their own bullshit because the truth is too painful for them. And that is the function that she serves is to,

to indulge his fantasy world where he lives apart from reality. And, you know, that is the significance of Natalie Hart. And that is the danger of Natalie Hart is she is the ultimate enabler of his psychosis. I mean, he is psychotic at this point. He is not perceiving reality the way reality should be perceived. I think he really does believe this is the renaissance of the American economy that we are going to control the Straits of Hormuz very soon. And it's going to become. the 51st state. I guess I don't know if water can become a state. And that's her function is to make,

he's, she's enabling and extending his psychosis, which is kind of a bad thing to have with the president of the United States. Also sounds a little nice, though. I don't know. I mean, if Katie or Ansley or Jason were telling me that, you know, they're unworthy,

that I'm their guardian, that I'm wondering. I would love that. Nobody does that to me. Of course. I know, but that's the thing is, and he desperately needs that because he is such an extreme narcissist.

It reminds me of, and I should write a blog post about this or restarting my substack, there's a writer named a psychologist, famous psychologist named Eric Fromm who talked about malignant narcissist like Trump, great evil people of history were malignant narcissists.

And they basically says they tip into psychosis. They're basically psychotic because they want to believe the fantasy world in which they control everything and everything is about them. And that's where Trump has always been headed. And I think at this point, he's not even close to reality. And that's just a scary thing. And we just, you know, that's the thing that a little bothers me about the Natalie Harp episode is that people are treating this as a debate about whether it's a low blow by the, Democrats, a low blow by Ossoff, and we're really talking about, we're maligning a poor young woman,

and we're talking about this on basis of whether or not they are having sex, when, in fact, I think J.V. wrote it the other day that that would be better if they were just having sex, because it would just be, at least you could understand that. At least it's in the realm of normal human comprehension, but this is psychotic on both sides. She worships him as some kind of deity, and he sucks that up and is using her as a tool to create and maintain his own fragile reality that is being tested each and every day throughout the world and in reality. One skin is nothing like your typical skincare brand, and that's why I keep coming back to them. Most anti-aging skin care is built to react to smooth over lines and wrinkles after they show up.

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and tell them we sent you. We're going to get back to Michael Cohen, but you mentioned your work in the 90s, and I think let's just be 90s Republicans for a second. Like, whatever, we were that. A couple of news stories happening this week with this party. The debt officially hit $40 trillion on Wednesday. A new high watermark.

The national debt has grown by $11.6 trillion during Trump's two non-consecutive terms, more than any other president in history, at 20 trillion, he said it was catastrophic for the country needed to be resolved. He was going to fix that in 2016. And then famously Elon Musk came in this time talking about how big of a catastrophe this was

and how he was going to be the one man. Yeah, he was going to be the one man to fix it. He ended up just killing a bunch of kids in Africa and then keeping us on the trajectory of the highest debt. in history. How worried should we be about this? I think we should be extremely worried about this, particularly in an interest rate environment that is not favorable. I mean, the bond markets are tanking. Interest rates are going up because people fear inflation. They fear that they don't trust

our future anymore. And what happens is if you have more debt and the rate to refinance, you know, as treasuries come due, the bond markets decide how much people are going to pay for treasury bills and if they're willing to pay less and interest rates go up, the debt goes up because we're paying more and more interest on the debt. And that's what's happening. Is it very much a downward spiral? And I think, you know, we saw J.D. Vance pretty much acknowledged that the other day when he was saying, why do we want to be the nation, the planet's reserve currency anyway? Right. And people are fleeing the dollar, they're fleeing treasuries right at the moment where we need to sell treasury bonds to finance these massive deficits that go on.

And that's just an astounding thing. And I mean, I think when Barack Obama left office, the national debt was something like $25 trillion. So in 12 years, I mean, 10 years, mostly because of him. I think it was like 20 even. I think it's double. No, I remember I used to, one of the things I used to do on Twitter early on when I started going off on Trump, there's this account on Twitter.

called national debt tweets or national debt posts or something. And they basically, every morning, every weekday morning or every day the market's open, they publish their estimate of what the U.S. debt is on any given day. And I used to tweet like, okay, here's what it was on January 20th, 2017, and here's what it is today. Today it's just astounding. It's just absolutely astounding. And it's very, very scary. My message for Democrats on this, because I do think that there is, this is stupid, But, you know, the country is stupid. I saw somebody posting the other day, something like,

you fiscal hawks have been warning about this since the 90s, that Social Security is going to become insolvent, that we're going to become Greece. It's like, well, actually in the 90s, people were mostly saying, you know, around 2030, we're social security is going to come insolvent, and things are going to be out of hand. And so we're coming up on 2030. But I think people are sick of hearing about it,

and people don't think anything that it matters, and anything's going to be done about it anyway. And obviously, speaking of news, narcissists, the boomer and Gen X narcissist don't really seem to care about what it means for their children and the budget that are going to lay for them. So what I think the Democrats should do and how people who care about this should talk about it is the bond market is complicated, but understanding what your mortgage rate does on your house is right?

And just be like, look, guys, whatever you think about the national debt, like, if we keep these deficits going, you're going to keep paying this high percentage on a new home. you're not going to be able to get a new home. You're not going to be able to downsize. Your kids aren't going to be able to get a home. Like, it is directly tied to the housing crisis. And I think that's probably the best way to maybe have a breakthrough. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, I think somebody has to start taking responsibility for this. And neither party has done that over the years. I mean, the first of all, Republicans really didn't mean it. All they meant was to do was to cut the budget when a Democrat is president. and then they want to cut taxes for their friends when a Republican is president. When any responsible person, including, you know, so there used to be people who really did believe

in fiscal responsibility in the Republican Party, when they would propose something, they would absolutely be skewered by the Democrats. By say, you want to put children on the streets and so on and so forth. Kick granny off the cliff. Yeah, kick granny off the cliff. And I think both parties overall,

over the last 50, or 60 years, have really contributed our inability to handle our fiscal responsibilities. I would say the one time in the 90s, when you talk about the 90s, that was the one time where we actually balanced the budget or came close to it, or we actually achieved some level of fiscal responsibility. It was a lockbox. Well, no, it was really because of the peace dividend, right? Because the collapse of the Soviet Union meant we had to spend less, we didn't have to try to have

a 600-ship Navy like Ronald Reagan wanted to, and we cut military spending because we didn't need to have as much, all of a sudden we had pretty much a balanced budget, but we couldn't stick to that. And the Republicans deserve every bit as much criticism more than that as the Democrats. I mean, you look at the spending versus taxing for the true Trump administrations. It's just completely out of whack. Biden was fiscally responsible compared to Trump. and he had to deal with COVID too. So, I mean, it's not great.

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Check out theboolwork.com slash events to see what other bullwark friends are bringing to your city and other details. Hope to see you there. The wall might be down, but Soviet beef pricing is coming to America. Trump leaded this this morning. for the next 90 days the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no quota tariff we have a commitment that this beef will be sold

at 25% below current market prices I should note that the tariff is 26%. So, hmm, that's an interesting number that this beef is going to be 25% below. Is it going to be because the tariffs make things more expensive or is he going to undercut the range, ranchers who are working in this country with this foreign beef by price texting. I never understood Trump mathematics, and I don't think the banks that ended up being claimants

in bankruptcies over the Trump casinos understood Trump math either. But I think at the end of the day, he's going to claim that he cut B prices by 600%. That's what I think he's going to do. That sounds right. Kind of like the pharmaceuticals, yeah. He is very socialist. He's our most socialist president. And the types of, like just, I mean, this is just the one example, the cutting of the beef prices.

But if you just go through, I mean, like the most obvious examples is the taking, you know, stakes in Intel, et cetera. But, you know, we have the secret police on the street, like across the board. Trying to determine whether or not media mergers should go through taking tributes from people. Bullying executives into doing what he wants or else he's going to punish them with tariffs. Then taking credit for their success. when they decide to build a new factory or create more jobs. He says, that was me, I did that. Yeah.

It's frustrating for them to be like using this moment to be like the Democrats are communists when he's running the most kind of state-run, like Cold War-style socialist government we've ever had. I mean, you know, this is why I always believe that people were right when they said, you know, when politics isn't necessarily right to left, it really is more of a circle

where the right and the left, the far right and the far right, in the far left meet at the top of the circle or the bottom of the circle, as you may, as however you may see it. And that's right. I mean, he's doing things that if AOC president AOC or president Bernie Sanders even thought about it, even mused about it, people would, the right would go back shit. We'd be listening to, people be listening to Fox News, go on and on with hammers and sickles and whatnot for weeks. But, you know, if our leader, Our great leader does it.

Our great orange leader does it. It's okay. An interesting little, just small item of resistance that was happening against the great communist leader happened a couple weeks ago. And it came from Judge Box of Wine, Judge Janine. This was when Trump was trying to order that an Olympian be put into a gulag because Trump imagined that he was the one that sabotaged his great reflecting pool. and Judge Piero, or now, Janine Piero, not a judge anymore. It's kind of a, I still like to call her judge kind of in the Judge Judy.

I like, you know, I like Judge Box of Wine the best. Judge Box of Wine. Although she came in with Judge Box of, she was a, she came in as Judge Box of documents, apparently, that day. Which was impressive to me. Do we know what is the latest with us? Do you have any thoughts on that? You know, there's litigation about whether or not the dismissal should be with prejudice. The government's sua sponte or on its own made a motion to dismiss the indictment

without prejudice, which the lawyers for the Olympian thought was unfair, because that means that theoretically someday, if Trump found a new U.S. attorney, this guy could be charged again for the same bullshit. And since the government is essentially admitting that the case was bullshit, the dismissal should be with prejudice. I think an argument that's very, very strong. Other than that, I really have heard,

And I do, I mean, there was some tweeting, I think, or some truth socially where Trump was suggesting that the U.S. Attorney's Office have another go at the guy, which is just insane. Where are you at on just the Blanche DOJ and kind of level, fear level? This, you know, I'm always grappling with this on the revenge part of this administration, which is, which, you know, contains, like, everything in this administration, you know, like one part malice, one part, like clownish incompetence. And I feel like the revenge program has been more like nine parts clownish incompetence, one part malice, like the seashells. No, everyone is walking free. You know, Barack Obama, Jacob Fry, Tim Walls, walks free. Sandwich guy, Leticia James, everyone walks free.

Everybody, the only person they caught that they got was Bolton. But that investigation actually began during the Biden administration. And they were just like, what luck they got in there and they're like, oh, shit. Somebody on the list was, I already did something bad. Yeah, he did something, but what he did was he wrote notes and kept his own personal diary that contained classified information or references to classified information. These guys are being really running a tight ship on that, I bet. Yeah, yeah, right.

Right. So the guy, the guy who actually took crates of boxes of documents, like tons of documents, or roomful of documents to his personal. club in South Florida and then hid them from the FBI, had his lawyers lie to the FBI about the documents and moved them and tried to destroy camera footage of the moving and the concealing of the documents. He's the president of the United States who basically encourages this prosecution. He can't make this stuff up.

I guess the printer has some classified documents that she's not been handling appropriately. I mean, the additional reporting Maggie did that was, you know, since the book was like one of the other reasons that there were concerns about her is that she's, Trump's taking world leader calls and extensive calls on speaker phone and she's just there. She didn't have a full background check.

Yeah, and that's the other thing about that is like. Not exactly a tight shot. How do you go to work in the White House and refuse to have a background check? Repeatedly. She refused to undergo the background. She refused to fill out, I think it's what the standard form,

50-something that you're supposed to fill out when you apply. It does make you wonder. It does. It does make you wonder. She comes out of nowhere. Her brother's like in Nicker Wogwa. It's like a left-wing freedom fighter.

It's like it was on CNN high as a kite, which is great. God love him. But it's like she comes out of nowhere. All of a sudden she's around them all the time. I don't know. It's a little, it's suspicious. Yeah, I don't think we've heard the last of this actually. Back to Blanchoy quick, though.

What is your, what's your concern level, I guess, about the last two years when it comes to political prosecutions, all that? Well, I just think we're going to see more of it. I mean, Blanche clearly does not give a shit about the rule of law. He doesn't give a shit about whether or not the Justice Department is used as a kind of weapon by the president. He basically is openly declaring that he will do whatever the president wants. Now, you know, he's right in the sense that the president is the ultimate, you know, executive. And I don't think you have to believe in the unitary executive theory that gets liberals all excited to,

believe that, you know, at the end of the day, the president is responsible for what the Justice Department does and does not do. The thing that the Justice Department has to do is to provide justice and to lead to justice. And part of that process, in order to act as the enforcer of the laws, you have to show that you're enforcing them fairly. He doesn't want that to happen. I mean, I think the fundamental problem isn't that we have a unitary executive theory that has run amok. It's really the fact that we have a, executive who doesn't believe in obeying his oath of office and doesn't believe in the law and doesn't believe in the Constitution and doesn't believe in government as anything but a weapon to

boost his own finances and ego. That's the fundamental problem. And Blanche, the fundamental problem with Blanche is he's good with that. He's absolutely good with that because he wants whatever he wants, which is he to be attorney general of the United States, to be important, to be powerful, something he never was. He was just sort of a middling, former assisting United States attorney with a not-so, you know, this mediocre criminal law practice until he met Donald Trump and now he's Attorney General of the United States. You know, that's what happens with these cacistocracies is that mediocre people rise to great power because they are willing to do what it takes to satisfy the whims of an exalted sociopathies.

apathic leader. And that's, that's classic, that's classic authoritarianism. That's, that's, that's, Blanche fits right into that. Yeah. What's your level of alarm about the 2028? The thing that has me the most alarmed right now that the Blanche ties into is just, you look at the power ministries. And it's like, you got Blanche, Cash and Hegsef. And it's pretty strange that Hegseff and Cash are the two that haven't been fired. Like, you kind of look at the incompetent people. They've been pushed out of other areas, but not there. And man, I don't know, that's the one thing that has my spidey sense tingling a little bit besides the bunker he's building at the White House. Just so like he has his most loyal hackish people at Justice Defense FBI.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that he's going to pull some shit, even maybe before 20, actually this year in connection with the off-year elections. And I think he's going to pull some shit in 2028. I mean, this man who launched an insurrection in 2020, one, I agree with you. I'm very worried about it. And what worries me most about it is there is, and I think the Democrats are going to do well in the midterms, but there is just sort of this lethargy, this sort of acceptance of our fate, even among people who consider themselves as opposing Trump.

And you see it everywhere. it's just like, well, we can't do anything about Trump. We should be worrying about affordability. It's like, well, how are you going to do that when this guy is starting wars that raise the price of gasoline and imposing tariffs that raise the price of consumer goods and food? And they want to pretend that Trump doesn't exist because they feel that he's convinced them that they can't do anything about him. There's this kind of learned helplessness is what psychologists would call it.

And because of that learn helplesses, we reach this kind of, again, what psychologists would call a malignant normality where we're accepting things, we're accepting like a Watergate level scandal every week. He does something that's just incredibly, that ought to, would be paralyzing of an administration for a month or two or a month or end of the administration. But he, you know, it's just, oh, it's Tuesday.

There's been some conversation about resistance one figures falling on hard times. You know, Michael Avinati went to jail. I want to get into that broader discourse, but there was a particular example of this that you've already mentioned, which is the current president going on to Michael Cohen's radio show. Before the last presidential election,

he said that if Trump, Cohen, so that if Trump ever returned to the White House, he would change his name and flee the country. He's called Trump, a racist, con man, everything. But yet last night, he played,

why can't we be friends by war? And then welcome Donald Trump to the show. And I want to play a couple clips of Cone. You and I have obviously traveled a pretty rocky road together. Do you remember, sir, when I went on CNN with Brianna Keeler and she told me that you were underwater in the polls. And I responded with those famous two words, says who. So maybe what we should do is then have a press conference

and literally put out all of the accomplishments. because what's happening, boss, you remember when I was by your side? Boss? It's kind of like a fascist Uncle Rico situation. I mean, I got to say, I mean, they out did Saturday Night Live there. Particularly with the lead-in and the sycophancy, it was a parody of itself. I will say this also at the same time, while it was amusing. I mean, the absurdity of the suck-upery,

and then the lead-in, where Colin made it all about himself. It's not about the country, about what Donald Trump is doing to the country, it's about the last 10 years of about his relationship, his personal relationship with Donald Trump, and now you get to see the reconciliation, and it was all about him.

Very, very narcissistic. It was comical, yet at the same time, two or three, a few minutes into, to the interview, it was boring, because Trump has this flat effect now. He's got, he's low-energy dawn, and he's just repeating the same bullshit over and over again. It's like, oh, they were two weeks away. Iran was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon. And then Cohen's like, well, why don't you tell the world that? That's amazing. This is a new revelation for our program. He even said that on CNN yesterday. Oh, that's a really big revelation about Iran. It's like,

No, no, no, they made that argument months ago, and everybody laughed at it because it wasn't true. And then, you know, he's saying, Trump is saying, I would win by 25 points today if I were running for re-election, and the economy is in a new renaissance. We've got more job. It's better than ever. And Iran no longer has a nuclear program, and we're going to control the strait of Hormuz. Huh? You know, again, it's all very, very delusional. And the whole thing is just this exercise in, reciprocal narcissism. What was interesting I thought, too, was there was an interview that Cohen did yesterday,

late in the day, on CNN with Jake Tapper. And he basically admitted there of Cohen. He said, I haven't asked the president for a pardon, but he expressed great disappointment, which he has done in the past, with the fact that he applied for a pardon during the Biden years, and he had people like,

Jamie Raskid and Norm Eisen and lots of other people, liberals, saying that he deserved a pardon and the Biden administration. Call them liberals because fuck them. Sorry. I don't know. You did the crime. You do the time, Michael. He did the time.

So I don't really, you know, it doesn't. Kind of. He was on an ankle brace in the house. Yeah. And he was denied the pardon. And then of course Joe Biden pardoned Hunter. I can't say that Michael is completely wrong in being resentful of that. I think his completely being obsessed with that and being very angry and letting it rule his life is excessive.

But he comes in with that attitude and then he also feels tremendously exposed when his former boss becomes president again because, my God, he's going to be high on the shitless. So he immediately starts turning, pivoting. And Tara Palmeri, I was on with her last night on Anderson Cooper's show, Tara Palmeri basically said that Cohen asked her for the president's phone number because every journalist in town has it and said, I know how to get back in his good graces. And he did. And the way it is that you listen to the guy, you pretend he's right,

and you say you're sorry. And they weaponize me too. the way the way they weaponized the government against you. It's so pathetic. It's just like a pathetic little lap dog. It's so degrading. He's like laughing. You remember when we did this?

It's fucking embarrassing. But Trump eats it up. It works. I know. But here's the thing. If I felt like Michael was pulling the wool over Trump's head and he was pretending and he's faking it and he was using Trump's narcissism against him, I would be against that. I could accept that whatever.

This is a strategy. That's, I looked at that video. People can turn on the YouTube version, and he is giddy. He's like a giddy little Yorkie. What kind of dogs do you have? He's a corky. I have a corgi. Cori.

He's a more. Yeah, of course he's not giddy. I'll never how much you like me. Please pat me. Please pat me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's Michael Cohen. That's my point about Michael Cohen.

I mean, look, you have two narcissists, right? Trump is the most extreme narcissists you will ever imagine, and he is a malignant narcissist because he's a sociopath and he wants to destroy everything deep down psychologically. He's a very, very dangerous. Man, Michael Cohen is just your run-of-the-mill near-do-well narcissist.

Who just wants to be in the thick of things, just feels that he's never gotten his just desserts and he's just looking for a home. He wants somebody to love him. He is like that puppy dog that you just described that needs to be loved. And that's, to me, that is pathetic. It makes me feel sorry for Michael in a way that I could never possibly feel sorry for Donald Trump.

And I'll tell you a story, which I mentioned last night on CNN, which is he, you know, he's looking for affirmation wherever he can get at, this guy, Cohen, right? He didn't get enough affirmation from the left. You got a show on the Midas Touch Network. I don't know. He did pretty good. He did, but it wasn't enough for him. And now he's looking for affirmation wherever he can get it.

I'll give you an example. And again, I don't say this. I like Michael in the sense that I feel sorry for him and I don't have anything against him. He's always been nice to me. So looking at it from that now perspective, I don't want to go out and dump on Michael. But here's a funny story. You know, I had my ill-fated run for Congress earlier this year. And we announced it on January 6th.

and Michael kept contacting me. And he wanted to help me, help my campaign. He said, let's go out for coffee. Let's walk the streets together. People like me on the east side. They'll see you and I can help you. And it sort of amazed me because I remember getting off the phone with him. And now I'm looking at my phone and I'm seeing some kind of alert for a news story that says that Michael Cohen is now claiming that he

was pressured into giving the testimony at the stormy tango's right. And I'm like, what is going on here? And I didn't think he could really help me among, you know, politically. You know, I was very flattered and grateful that he was being nice. But it was like, it was totally weird because you could see him. He was in the middle of his pivot. And he's helping. He wants to help a guy whose basic platform is that the president of the United States should be impeached and removed and then prosecuted and sent to jail for the rest of his life instead of spending it on a Qatari donated 747 and in the White House in a ballroom. Amen. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you just wants attention. He's a sad. It's a pathetic situation. Would you do this? How would you handle this? I don't know. Hypothetically, let's say,

I don't know, kind of an anti-Trump, pro-democracy, a YouTube channel provided you a show in the future. Would you be interested in having the president on? Oh, absolutely. And I was ready to say that on Anderson's show, but the conversation didn't get there. But I wanted to say to the president of the United States, look, I expect to be starting up a new podcast

with something like what you just described. I don't know where it would be. I don't know what kind of organization there would be that would have such a podcast. I don't know. And I would love to have President Donald J. Trump as my first guest. You're going to spend the time reminiscing about all the good times you had together. Oh, my God, about the E. Jean Carroll case.

And I love talking about the psychological aspect of things. I've become kind of an amateur psychologist. I'd love to talk about the Montreal cognitive assessment test, the one he keeps taking and the nature of it with him and ask him why he's been taking that so many. times. And of course, we would talk about Natalie Harp and the important functions that she serves with him. And I agree, Mr. President, it's crazy that they're saying that you are having sex with her. We know that couldn't possibly be true. Medically.

Medically, yes. Great. I hope that that happens. We're rooting for it. Yeah. Just to close in a series, like, because I have some thoughts about this. You know, it was never like the hipsters that were the Trump resistance. You know, like the two, there was all. always like a category of people. Obviously, people on the right hated the resistance. There's always a category of people on the left that would like talk about this as a pejorative. You know, MS, NBC, resistance, wine, moms.

And like, all they just, all they do is Orange Man bad. And so after Alex Vindman, I've got nothing for love but love for lost, you know, has Florida primary. You know, they're Olympin, you're in. They're talking about Cohen. There's a lot of people that are kind of saying, like, your resistance one is over, you know, that didn't work or whatever. Like, what do you say to that critique?

I don't know exactly what the theory of it is, but I do think there is something to be said for the proposition that people are exhausted by Trump, including people who oppose Trump. And they don't want to hear about Trump. And one of the things that I was fighting over the last several months, I mean, I had a lot of problems. The problem was like, you know,

to make an argument that you're not a politician, Only a good politician can make that argument and win. People don't want to hear about Donald Trump. Even people who say they despise Donald Trump. They do not want to hear about Donald Trump. They want to close the end, which I can't blame them because it's unpleasant. But it just gets us deeper into the hole. We're sleepwalking into situations.

It gets worse and worse than we're getting more accepting of it. It's the narcissism, as you say, of the baby boomer and Gen X eras that people just, they're just like, I'm going to just focus on my own thing. I'm going to focus on my job. I'm going to focus on my social media. I'm going to focus on everything, ESPN. I'm going to focus on everything but politics. It's just a lot of noise. And that's very, very dangerous to our democracy. And that is actually what scares me more than having Cash Patel and Pete Heggseth in the power ministries, as you as you described. the apathy, the complete lack of historical perspective that we are at a stage in our democracy

of decline, that people don't want to face up to that and that people want to turn away from that and don't want to engage in the kind of collective action that's necessary to turn things around. That, to me, is the most dangerous thing about the current moment. I agree with the danger, but it's a weekend, so I'm going to end on a positive. You want a positive? Here's what I think about this discourse. I think that some of it is silly social media talk, and it's personal jealousies and beefs and whatever. And I think there are two good things that have happened and are happening.

Number one, to all the resistance folks out there, to the Women's March, to the No Kings people, if you're guiding North Star the last decade was The Orange Man is bad, and that's the most important thing that faces the country right now, you were correct. And you keep being proven correct. Every time, everybody thinks that is proven correct. If you go back to 2016

and you find like the most caricatured, outlandish, kind of you almost want to roll your eyes at it, op-ed or commentary piece about what was going to happen if Donald Trump becomes president. It's been 50 times worse. It's been worse.

That has been totally vindicated. So I think everyone who's, involved at all in any resistance, whatever number we're on should feel vindicated about it, and eventually will win. I agree with that. I think simultaneously to that, I think it's totally rational for Democratic voters in a primary to look at Donald Trump having won a second time and think, we need to do new shit. And I don't think that's bad either.

Like, I think that's how, both those things can live together harmoniously, that there is a continued fight against Donald Trump that is that we need people like George and others for over the next two years. And also, the Democratic Party needs to kind of assess how it got into a place that voters wanted him again and maybe try new strategies, new things. Both those things are true. And I don't think that they need to live in conflict with one another. That's right.

I mean, I don't want to go all JV last on everybody. But, you know, what I just said and what you just said, I think actually coexist. Right. Because we need more of it, actually. We need more people that are engaged. And it may well be that things have to get worse before they get better. Yeah. And I've felt that for a very long time.

But the problem is we're so far beyond the moment where I thought everything would turn around and people will say, pasta. We'll end on Basta. George Conway. We appreciate you. I think we'll be hearing more from you soon. We'll see how that goes. Everybody else, enjoy your August weekend. And it's about back to school time.

I'd to send my girl back to school. I was emotional. And so enjoy, you know, these final August weekends. We'll be back on Monday. Bill Kristol will be back. So I'll be warm on Monday. We'll see you all then. Thanks, George.

Bye, everybody. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.