The Bulwark Podcast - Nicholas Kristof: What a Mess Trump Created

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Not only is the new hardline regime in Tehran now more likely to go rogue as a nuclear power a la North Korea, ordinary Iranians—who Trump and Bibi initially claimed we were rescuing—are also living under even harsher conditions. At the same time, the war has burned through billions worth of our critical weapons stockpile, a development that surely will figure into China’s calculations vis‐à‐vis Taiwan. This is the moment for Dems to reshape their brand and win back everyday working Americans. Plus, the settlers’ escalating attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, the Trump administration’s depraved treatment of Afghan refugees, any talk of aid for UAE stinks of Trump family corruption, and Dems need to fix their blue places while simultaneously working to win voters in the red ones.show notes Nick's nonprofit, Kristof Impact Nick's NYT column page Helen Keller International Kristof Farms Tim's playlist Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and LA in May: TheBulwark.com/EventsExclusive $25-off Carver Mat athttps://on.auraframes.com/BULWARK. Promo Code THEBULWARKGet 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, a columnist for the New York Times, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, Chasing Hope is a memoir. He's also the general manager of Christoph Farms in Oregon. He briefly ran for governor of Oregon also in 2022 with a bunch of other stuff. It's Nick Christoff. How you doing, man? Hey, good. Good to be with you, Tim. I'm pumped to talk to you. You were just back from the West Bank, so we're going to get into that and maybe some politics. But obviously, I want to start with the Iran

war stuff. I guess I kind of just want to begin by letting you cook on what you think is the state of play in the Iran war and how you assess where we are today. Boy, I mean, well, what a mess. You know, we got into this war unnecessarily. And now we're in a worse position than when we started. You know, we're now trying to get the straight of Hormuz reopened. And I think it's actually more likely that Iran will end up with nuclear weapons, say, you know, three or five years from now than at the start of the war. Right before the war, Iran was actually offering a pretty good nuclear deal, and we turned it down.

We're not going to get as good a deal now. I believe I think Iran is going to try to really hold on to some kind of control over the strait. You know, and meanwhile, we have spent as much on this war. enough that we could have provided a free college education to everybody or every family earning $125,000 or less in the country and provided a daycare to every three and four-year-old in the country. And so it is maddening when we do these things that cost lives have a huge opportunity cost and leave us in a worse strategic position, all because we haven't thought

through the consequences. That's pretty compelling to me. It's kind of like an Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln assessment of the Iran War. I want to read this counterpoint. Mark Dubowitz over at FDD, has been one of the biggest agitators for the war and supporters of it. And he posted a thread last night that made the case for why things are going so well. I want to go through a little bit of that with you so we can hear the other perspective. Number one, nuke program set back years in Richmond and reprocessing gutted,

weaponization sites destroyed. That's number one. Number two, ballistic missile program crippled. Number three, air defenses devastated. Number four, full economic warfare, not just sanctions anymore, but military pressure laid on top with the blockade. Number five, regime decapitation. Number six, the region turning on Iran. Number seven, proxy network shattered.

He goes on from there, but that's basically the gist. What would be your counterpoint to what Mark offered there? Well, I mean, some of the things he says are true. The ballistic missile program, you know, has been set back. Now, that's partly because they fired ballistic missiles that caused real damage to, you know, the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, for example, to U.S. bases that, you know, killed some Americans. So, but do they have fewer ballistic missiles now? Do they have fewer drones? Yeah, I mean, on balance, maybe half of their missile and drone capacity was used up.

Now, at least that much of our interceptor capacity was also used. stuffs who were less able to defend Taiwan, for example. But have we badly degraded their missile capacity? Absolutely. Have we badly degraded their Air Force, their Navy? Completely. And have we set back their nuclear program? We did with last year's war, not so much with this year's war, but maybe more importantly is whether they actually intend to build a nuclear warhead. And in the past since 2003, the U.S. intelligence community and the Israeli intelligence community have assessed that Iran, they wanted the capability of building one. They did not actually want to build a nuclear warhead. Now, you know, I think that may well have changed. And it would kind of make sense for Iran to see

that, you know, nobody messes with North Korea. They do mess with Iran and that maybe it should make a rush for a weapon. So I fear that we may be turning Iran into a North Korea. It's also Mark makes the point that we decapitated their leadership, and, you know, that is absolutely true. We, in a sense, do have regime change. We have a harder-aligned regime. We have one that is more controlled by the IRGC, one that may be more inclined to take over the strait to build nuclear weapons, and one that I think the Trump administration is finding it harder to negotiate with because they're just harder line. And I think Iran's new leaders feel that the previous leadership was too easy, did not establish deterrence after the Qasemani killing, after the war last year. And so they feel they have to reestablish deterrence. They have to make the U.S. and Israel really suffer. And that is not the right kind of regime change.

Indeed not. Speaking of missile capabilities set back and crippled, it was an interesting New York Times story. The Wall Street Journal is a similar story out. yesterday. This is from Eric Schmidt and John Swan, your colleagues. The U.S. has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for war with China. We fired off a thousand Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number. We currently buy each year. The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot Interceptor missiles in this war at $4 million a pop. This is all leaving inventories worrisomily low, according to internal Defense Department

estimates and congressional officials. story adds on to that that we basically couldn't fully execute our contingency plans to defend Taiwan at this point based on the stockpile loss. In addition to all the costs that you laid out earlier and just how this money could have been spent otherwise, even from a defense perspective, it seems like a risky, risky bet here. Absolutely. I mean, maybe the worst nightmare for international strategist, him, I think, is a war in the Taiwan straight. I think most people think that's less likely than otherwise, but possible. And Xi Jinping, when he calculates whether or not to encircle Taiwan,

whether or not to make a move on Taiwan, is surely calculated what the American response will be. And if we've used up 80% of our patriots, 80% of our THAAD interceptors, as we appear to have done, you know, that will incrementally increase the risk of an attack on Taiwan which would be devastating to Western Alliance, devastating to the supply of chips worldwide, would cause a global economic depression because Taiwan is the source of more than 90% of advanced chips worldwide. So, you know, the idea that we would undermine our capacity to defend Taiwan,

undermine our capacity to defend Europe. You know, we told Estonia that we cannot supply some weapons that it is purchased because they've been used in their Iran war. You know, this is undermining our defense, not enhancing it. Yeah. So given all of the problems and concerns, the war power's resolution gives President the ability to fight this war, even without congressional approval for a 60-day period.

That takes us to May 1 when that expires, which is now next week. The law does provide for a single 30-day extension of the campaign without congressional approval. Certain conditions are met. Does Donald Trump even care? about the law, we'll even follow what doesn't matter, whether he follows those conditions. I think that there's a legal question that is coming up in the next seven, eight days, but also like a prudential one about whether, you know, the Congress is going to have to

weigh in on this. I think that at the beginning of the war, there were some Democrats that were indicating that they might even be supportive of a resolution. It's harder and harder to see that every day. And so then the question is, can the Republicans jam at the through on a party line basis. Pretty, I think, important political moment coming up in the next week. You know, I would push back a little bit because I think President Trump will just ignore it. We'll just do whatever the fuck you want. Exactly. And, you know, in fairness, President Obama ignored it in the case of the Libya war. I think presidents, you know, whatever their political complexion are willing to sail ahead, presidents have always been a little skeptical about the

constitutionality of that measure. And so I don't think. Trump will view that as a constraint. You know, it's not as easy. I agree with that. It might be an inflection point. It could be if the Democrats choose to make it one, an inflection point for them to further solidify, like, the position and being opposed to this war.

And there's been, some Democrats have been very clear and strong on this, but there's been a little bit of mixed messaging, I would say. And it's maybe an opportunity for them to get aligned. Yeah, I mean, I think it's absolutely true that politically it can have impact, and this is a very unpopular war. I think it'll grow more unpopular as supplies of, of oil that are actually on ships, you know, stop reaching their destinations. And so I think this can be a point to, you know, to make this very public.

Can I also just say one other thing, Tim, that we haven't talked about. You know, this started because of the massacre of Iranian protesters in January. And supposedly this was somehow going to help them. And, you know, I've reported in Iran, and I've seen the incredible courage of some of these Iranian, some of these Iranian women lawyers, I just, I'm in awe of them, of their courage, their willingness to go to prison and suffer brutally because they want change. And, you know, then President Trump said that, you know, help is on the way in January than no help was. And now we bomb them. We bomb a girl school. We bomb a volleyball team. And, you know, now we've saddled them with a more oppressive,

harder-line regime that is more likely to be around in five years than it would have been otherwise. And they are the people who are suffering the most in this. And, you know, they've been kind of lost, I think, in our national, international conversation. And my, you know, my heart just totally goes out to them. We've totally screwed them over. Yeah. It's an important point, both from the humanitarian and human rights perspective, for those of us who did want hope and freedom for the Iranian people

and just are opposed to this strategically. It's also important just about the framing and the discussion of the war. The administration has really tried to create new post-talk rationalizations for the war that are much more limited than what they were at the start. Like the initial – this is why we had regime change. I forget where that was on Dibowitz's list of good things that have happened. Like originally the point was – Sorry, like the administration said this, was that we were going to decapitate the regime

and that the regime was cracking down on protesters and that there was BB at least had pitched that the whole regime could collapse and be replaced by something that's more amenable to us. Trump was obviously interested in more of a Delcie Rodriguez-type situation, and that has been an utter failure. Yeah, and one of the paradoxes is that there actually was kind of a Delci-Radriguez model back with a JCPOA. you know, that initially empowered some of the more moderate folks in Iran, Mohammed Khatami, people like that. It would have been plausible that when the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei died, that somebody, you know, a little bit more moderate might have taken over. Somebody like Hassan Khomeini, for example.

And instead, we ended up with the worst scenario where he was exceeded, you know, by his son who has these IRGC connections, who's just harder a line than ever. And so, yeah, was there a Del C scenario? Absolutely. And President Trump killed it. Literally. Hey, everybody. Mother's Day is right around the corner.

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For limited time, listeners get $25 bucks off their best-selling Carver Map frame with code of the bulwark. That's a URAFrames.com promo code of the bulwark. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout, terms and conditions apply. I'm talking about the economic impact, both here and abroad. Because as you mentioned, once the oil that's on the sea, stops getting delivered, I think that the actual consequences of this are going to be hitting home for people even more, and they already are with gas prices. But the worst is yet to come on that front.

You're posted about, in addition to that, there's the sulfur crisis that comes to the straight that impacts fertilizers, which means food prices go up. I mean, it's metals, plastics, and a bunch of, you know, there's a bunch of unintended supply chain consequences coming down the pike. And all of that stuff might be coming for us last because we make a lot of that stuff here in the U.S. as well. But they're global markets. And so it's going to come for us eventually. And in the meantime, there's going to be a lot of suffering in the rest of the world.

And it's going to be the poorest and most vulnerable people worldwide who are going to suffer. You know, Tim, half of the people in the world today are alive because of artificial fertilizer or things like urea. And without Uriel, the world could only support about 4 billion lives. And in fact, we have about 8 billion people worldwide. And so you were already seeing in country, I've had sort of reports here and there about Malawi's and Bombay, other countries, where food prices are rising, partly because of transportation that to truck food around the country now requires more diesel. And when farmers produce things and truck it to the marketplace, cost more as well.

And as urea grows more expensive, then farmers are going to be less able in poor countries to use it. And so yields will decline. And more kids will go hungry at just the time that the U.S., followed by France and Germany and England, have been cutting aid. So there'll be more kids suffering severe acute malnutrition and less aid to try to ease that hunger. Yeah, I just think that the global impact economically is underappreciated right now. Because you're now talking about these are the poorest people in the world that were already suffering because of the cuts. And last time you're on, we talked about your reporting in Africa on that. And now they're going to face higher prices.

But then just working class people in a lot of countries in Europe and Asia are really going to be hit hard by this. And I just think that the potential ripples and unintended. consequences of, you know, there's going to be political disruption in those countries. You know, people are going to be unhappy. And some of them are going to blame the United States, but they're going to blame their own governments. And we've already seen a lot of this around the world. And it's just, it's kind of unpredictable who it could empower.

But, I mean, we have really, like, kicked a massive economic hornets nest that I don't know that people have really kind of processed, like, the degree of disruption that's coming down the pike. You know, I think that's right. And I think that there has been a misperception that China is hurt by this. And it's true that China depends on it all passing through the straight of promulose. So there's something to do that. But it's also true that countries around the world are looking for how they can use more green power, more solar, for example. And, you know, China totally dominates the solar industry, dominates the battery industry. And so it is already getting more orders for, you know, those kinds of. products. And also, I think worldwide, you know, people look at the U.S. and just see us as this unstable, crazy country that causes problems worldwide. And they look at China and they see a more sober, mature power. And, you know, as somebody who lived five years in China and has had somebody friends arrested who saw the Tiananmen massacre, I find that just really painful.

When Mark Carney in Canada, when Canadians are a reasonable lovable Canadians, you know, hedged by building ties with China to balance their dependence on the U.S. What a mess we've created. What a mess. You're talking about it, yeah, from like a human rights perspective. Also, the craziest thing about this is that Trump has a lot of China hawks around him. Yep. Even if you're thinking about it from a great power, like military perspective as well, this is just a disaster.

Total disaster. Yeah. I mean, and they always talk about the importance of defending Taiwan. And, you know, meanwhile, they've undercut. put the defense of Taiwan and I think, you know, raise the risk of this catastrophe, a war, you know, in the Taiwan Strait that could draw in the U.S. and, you know, theoretically could become a nuclear war. I mean, this is just catastrophic miscalculation.

All right. So as mentioned, you're just back from the West Bank. I want to hear about that. But first, just as it kind of relates to this war, we also have Israel's ongoing attacks in Lebanon. that was part of the ceasefire. Is it even an agreement anymore? Iranians are just attacking a couple of boats. The U.S. is blockading.

We have a quasi, whatever you want to call this, I feel like ceasefire is too extreme of a word. Something short of ceasefire. Slow fire. Something between ceasefire. Yeah, slow fire. Something between ceasefire and active war. Slow fire. That's good.

And as part of that, Israel started bombing. Hezbollah again in southern Lebanon, including there was a journalist that died and that attack. And Hezbollah now saying that they're back to attacking Israel. And so that theater of this war and this slow fire also seems to be starting to unravel. So we do have this three-week extension of the Israel-Lebanon slow fire. And it is, I mean, I'm glad that President Trump seems to be willing to put pressure on Netanyahu to slow the fire. But, you know, that killing of that journalist you mentioned, Amal Khalil, you know, she worked for a newspaper in Beirut called Al-Aqqbar. and it sure seems that she was targeted.

You know, the car in front of her was hit. Then she took refuge under a little shelter. Her car was then hit. She was injured. She was taken into a house, frantically made calls. And then that house was hit. She was buried under rubble. She was still alive.

They tried frantically to rescue her. and then Israeli strikes made it impossible to rescue her by the time they were later able to go. She was dead. I do think the journalist community should stand up for our colleagues worldwide when they are targeted. Last year, 129 journalists were killed worldwide, a record as far as we've been keeping records. And about two-thirds of them were killed by Israel, often with weapons provided by us in the U.S. with no accountability. And, you know, I hope that journalists will stand up for colleagues like Amal and create some accountability for that kind of killing. And I think that what Israel advocates

would say about that is that like some percentage of those journalists were kind of like quasi journalists and they were, you know, laundering Hamas arguments into the public sphere. This is not It's not my position at all to defend that. But I guess, you know, how do you kind of sort through that argument? Yeah. I mean, so there is something to that. I mean, you know, if you are a journalist in Gaza, you are probably not very sympathetic to Israel. You're not neutral between, you know, Israel and Gaza.

You're sympathetic to Gazans around you to your family. Likewise, if you're in Lebanon, and especially if you're a Shiite in Lebanon, then you may well have lost family members. you were not very neutral as Israel tries to seize southern Lebanon. But it's, I think, a deeply unfair to portray somebody like Amal Khalil as just a Hizbullah stooge. You know, her newspaper, Al-Aqqab. It's not a – Hizbullah is a religious organization. Hizbullah in Arabic means the party of God.

Well, Al-Aqqqqqqar is a secular. newspaper was founded by these secular leftists, not by, not by these, you know, radical Muslims. And was she, at times has it been sympathetic to Hizbollah and to the Shia community in general? And absolutely. But, you know, is she a Hizbullah stooge? No. And, you know, likewise in Israel, there are very conservative newspapers and people who support Netanyahu's, you know, carpet bombing of Gaza, but should they be targeted and killed? Absolutely not.

Neutrality, I don't think, is required to not be assassinated. Absolutely. That's a good way you're putting it. Yeah, full neutrality is not, I don't think, the basis for. As an opinion journalist, I totally endorse that. Yeah, same. It's a podcaster. It's like, I don't, I don't think you can, you can kill me. And then be like, well, he was, he was pretty mean to the regime. He did critique the regime a lot. So you can understand it. No, it's a horrible story of them all is horrible. And I'm glad you can provide additional details about that because I haven't gotten into that this week. Talk about the West Bank.

Obviously, like this is something that is ongoing amidst the broader conversation of Israel's conduct in Gaza, Israel, our partner in this war in Iran, what you're talking about in Hezbollah. But it seems like a huge uptick in aggressive action. into the West Bank. I'm wondering what you saw there in your perspective. Settlers are completely out of control. And, you know, look, I mean, I've been traveling to the West Bank since 1982. And, I mean, there's been long-time repression, but it has pretty steadily gotten worse over the last 25 or 30 years. And it's certainly gotten way worse since October 2020. And now settler, you know, I visited some rural areas where settlers are brutally attacking these Bedouin villagers,

stealing their sheep, threatening to rape and kill the children unless they flee. It's really part of an ethnic cleansing movement. And it's scary. I mean, you know, we were, when I was visiting one village, settlers stopped us and blocked our car as we were leaving. And I spoke up in English and tried to interview them. And I think that maybe that was why they made some phone calls and sort of got nervous and then let us go on. But there is a violence to settler activity and an increase in the way it is now backed by the Israeli defense forces in a way that,

again, I think makes us as Americans supplying that weaponry complicit in what sure looks like an attempted ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. And, you know, even like one of the communities that I visited, the school, it's not exactly a school bus, it's kind of a school car taking these little kids, these elementary school kids to school. And now the settlers are attacking it, this little school vehicle, in ways that just have these parents just desperate. I mean, they've been on this land for, you know, thousands of years. They have deep, deep ties to it, and they're terrified that their kids are going to be killed,

that their daughters are going to be raped, and they're just frantically trying to figure out what to do. And again, you know, this is partly because of our American policy. Yeah, my former pod colleague, Cam Caskey, was also there and told a similar story about threats. that he faced. And it's just, it's just a sense that, like, the violence is really spiraling out of control if, you know, people, neutral people can't even visit without, without fear. I'm wondering, like, what you think, what is underpinning kind of why now? Like, is there a sense because of what happened in Gaza that, that settlers and, and folks within the Israeli government feel like, like, this is just an opportunity to kind of rip the Band-Aid off and try to get as much

as they can while Trump is still in charge and while they're already being criticized anyway for the behavior in Gaza? Is there something else that is kind of underneath why this is growing right now? So, I mean, I think the fundamental truth is that since the late 1990s, Hamas and the Israeli right have mutually supported each other. You know, that was when Hamas started bus bombings and car bombings in Israel. And that kind of just, that led to Netanyahu. election in 1996 that kind of destroyed the Israeli left. And then as the Israeli right and Nanyahu took more extreme and more brutal policies toward Palestinians, that boosted the fortunes of Hamas. And so you have these two extremists just mutually reinforcing each other and

destroying moderation on each side. And then that became more apparent after a good 7th, 2023. And, you know, the terrorist attack on southern Israel that led to, I think, this sense among a lot of Israelis that we just have to be much more forceful. We can't ever let this happen again. And we have to, you know, round up every Palestinian in the West Bank and, you know, cut off Red Cross visits, enable torture, which is. is, you know, I talk to detainees, including children, and the torture that is now routine for detainees is just so widespread. And so, and, you know, Netanyahu then, I think, you know, by bringing in Smotrich and Ben Gavir into his cabinet, again, send a signal that there is

complete impunity. You can do whatever you want. And so you get these board prison guards who were low sadists themselves, and they delight in torturing these Palestinian detainees, including kids. No, it's horrible. Not to compare, like, the torture to these sort of corrupt economic crimes in the U.S., but like your point about Ben-Gavir, like the incentive structure is similar to the, like, you know, free reign to do white-collar criming here in America right now, right? Whereas just like if you know that the president and the DOJ aren't going to investigate you and you know if you're a supporter of of the administration that you're going to get pardoned, then like there's just huge incentive to go ahead and get while the getting's good. And I do think that there's some like bad

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After we covered all this miserable, terrible ground, can I offer a little ray of hope? I love that. I'm looking at the list of the rest of topics I have to talk about and there's no hope. So please, anything you want to inject in there, I'll take, yeah. So, you know, I've spent much of my career covering authoritarian nasty regimes. And there are two things that are so characteristic of them, and they're also characteristic. Mr. Trump. And one is that the authoritarian's, they surround themselves with yes men. And so as a result, they tend to have dumb economic policies.

Singapore is a rare exception. But in general, because they don't have intelligent critiques, they don't have corrective mechanisms. And so they have dumb economic policies that lead people to be upset with where things are. And the other thing they do for the same reason, as you just alluded to it, is they become corrupt. If there is a big pot of honey right here and you know you're not going to get in trouble, then you reach in and grab someone. You enrich yourself and your family. And, you know, fundamentally, that was why Orban was pushed out in Hungary because bad economic policies and

corruption. You know, I think that is going to be a real toll on Republicans in the Trump administration. I wish the corruption were getting more attention. in the U.S., I think that is a potential weakness for Trump, because, you know, as you say, it's just endemic. They can do whatever they want. They feel they can anyway. Yeah, I think the attention will hopefully increase when the Democrats get in charge next year, because I do think that focusing on corruption and the investigations is going to be absolutely

their top responsibility, at least assuming they take the House, maybe the Senate, next year, because it's not like any bipartisan policy. are getting done. So they might as well focus on corruption investigations. And I do think that there's a lot there. And while the administration is going to be, I think, Stonewall more than any administration in history when it comes to testimony and providing documents, a lot of these outside business deals that this administration is doing, I think the calculus is going to be different. If you are, you know, hired Don Jr. to be on your board or put money into the Trump coin or are involved in the deal.

I want to talk about the UAE deal that we're getting to. I do think for people involved in that, you know, they have other considerations. You know, they realize that there'll be a future where Trump is not in charge, and I think we'll feel forced to actually participate and who knows what that's going to lead to, but we just know that everybody's getting their beak wet.

Yeah, I think that's right. You know, as you know, I live in rural Oregon and, you know, a place that is about two-thirds of people voted for Trump in each election and the arguments about authoritarianism don't really resonate with them. But, you know, beef prices totally do. The Social Security system not working, that does. And I think while they're not focused on news, I think the corruption issue also resonates. What do you mean they're not focused on news? They're just not getting as much information. Yeah, they're just paying less attention.

to news and I think they're less aware of the corruption. I mean, in general also, I think they're suspicious of what they hear. They don't know quite what to believe when they hear things. And often the news they get is from Fox News, which doesn't exactly highlight the corruption issues. But some of it does get through. Yeah, I mean, you've thought about this, having explored a run as a Democrat and as you mentioned living in a more rural area, I have been of the belief that.

that what is happening in the Middle East and the economic wreckage that's coming is tragedy, and it's just horrible for the country in the world. But that also, I think, presents a political opportunity for the Democrats to kind of reintroduce themselves to folks who really did sign up for this because they thought Trump was going to care about them first and not get involved in stupid foreign wars

and not do things that made their prices come up. And I think that a lot of them feel betrayed right now, and I don't think that a lot of those folks are ready to just go sign up for Gavin Newsom or whoever are like super they're not exactly huge big fans of the Democrats. But I just think this is an opportunity for Democrats to be very clear about their values, particularly about war, particularly about caring about the economic concerns of working class Americans.

I think they're doing okay on that front right now. But to me, I just feel like this is a pedal to the metal moment on trying to reshape the brand. And I'm wondering what your thoughts on that would be if you had a Democratic politician calling you for your two cents. So, you know, I think that's right. I certainly see that in my friends. And, you know, Democrats in Oregon always ask me what they can do to overthrow this authoritarian leadership.

And I think they tend to think in terms of no King's protests, things like that. And, you know, that certainly plays a role. But I think what Democrats have to do, what the country needs, is to win the Senate. And that means how do we help Sherrod Brown win this fall? How do we create a possibility for a Democrat to win the Senate race in Montana? And one thing that is maybe more important than any other, I think, is to fix blue places. Because, you know, in truth, we have not done a great job in governance in some of our blue places.

and my neighbors and friends, they don't really know what to believe in some of these larger issues, but they do know that when they drive into Portland, they see a mess. And, you know, in one of the last cycles of voting in Montana, there was a billboard of showing a scene in Portland, a chaotic scene in Portland. And the method was something like, you know, vote for Democrats, and this will come to Montana. and that just pains me. And we can't just have a conversation about how awful Republicans are. We also have to fix our very real problems in blue places.

San Francisco was doing a better job of that than most under the mayor, Daniel Lurie. But governance, you know, you look at Chicago as well. We have a real problem and we've got to do a better job addressing that to show voters we can. and govern. I'm happy you said that. A lot of times Democrats don't like to hear that. And, I mean, there are, of course, good things about California, and there are nice places in Chicago.

And you can over-critique it, right? And the parody of California that you see on Fox News primetime isn't real. But just the reality of folks that live in a lot of deep blue places is that they've been priced out. Like, that affordability is a massive problem. Yeah. That their needs aren't being met. I had John Lovadon the other week, and he was bitching about the, they're planning a new public

transportation program in Los Angeles, where he lives. And he's like, we're going to break ground in 2041. It's like, will we even have a society in 2041? Well, Donald Trump and have gotten us into a nuclear war. Will the AI robots have taken us over by that? It's like, this is crazy. And I think that as you look ahead to 28, you know, two of the candidates, Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker, who I think seem like good people and well, intention. There are things I like about both of them. Critics I have about both of them, but it's like, do the Democrats want to carry the baggage of Chicago and California and the fact that they are losing residents and try to make the case to the American people that the whole country wants

this? I think it's a hard case to make right now. I just think that's a harsh reality for Democrats to assess. I, boy, I totally agree. And I, again, this is sort of seen through the filter of my neighbors. But it's genuinely true that we overreached particularly on the West Coast. You know, in Oregon, we have some of the worst educational outcomes in the country. Adjusted for demographics, we rank number 50 in fourth and eighth grade NAEP scores for English and math. Okay, now don't be adjusting for demographics because I need Jeff Landry to stay at 50th. Okay, because in raw numbers, Jeff Landry here in Louisiana is still 50th.

It's important to say. Sure. Sure, yes. I agree with you that Oregon has done some silly stuff and overreached in places, but I just, I don't want to take Landry's, like, I just throw away from it. Well, okay. Well, Oregon, you know, I would argue the demographic, it is important to adjust for poverty level and this kind of thing. But in any case, you know, in 2020, the state legislature allocated $6 million to put tampons in every bathroom, including kindergarten boys' bathrooms.

This is very well-meant inclusive gesture to support trans kids, absolutely. but when you put tampons in kindergarten boys' bathrooms, this is self-parody. Well, they're dirty. They get dirty. You can use it to kind of clean off the dirt on the face after you get off the playground. I'm sure that maybe it leads to ingenuity among the five-year-old boys.

What could you do with this tampon? And I just think that it's an urgent issue for Democrats. So, like, they both need to use this moment to offer a clear message about how, if they do get back in power, they're going to care more about working everyday Americans and less about this adventurism overseas and recapture that. It was a very successful message for Barack Obama in 2008 that the Democrats have lost, and they need to simultaneously do that with kind of fixing some of the business in blue cities.

I want to go back to just a couple other issues that we glazed up before I lose you. The UAE bailout is in the news today, and that's kind of related with the corruption and underpinnings of what's happening in the Middle East. And I guess it also could be related to democratic messaging that could be useful. But it's pretty wild what they're discussing with the UAE. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that. Oh, I mean, it's unbelievable.

I mean, UAE is one of the richer countries worldwide. It's where billionaires who don't want to pay taxes somewhere else where they go to flee. And then, you know, we're unable... Sudan is the world's worst humanitarian crisis right now. kids are starving every day in Sudan. Yemen, brutal situation. We don't provide enough aid to save kids in those places.

We, you know, current humanitarian aid situation, and Lancet said this year that 9 million people will die unnecessarily because of aid cuts worldwide. And meanwhile, we're talking about providing aid to the UAE, one of the wealthier countries in the world. And, you know, magnifying that is this corruption issue, as you say. You know, the UAE signed this deal to enrich the Trump family by half a billion dollars, which sure looked like, you know, a retainer for just this kind of situation.

It's just mind-boggling. It's so frustrating when we have these kids dying unnecessarily worldwide for lack of such simple interventions. And then we're talking about bailing out. the UAE is maddening. Yeah. The geopolitics of the Arab states, too, with us is going to be a super interesting over the next few years as well, because we're already seeing, they're suffering economically for this. Saudi has talked about pulling out of some of their American investments, including the Gulf Tour. I think, you know, they were propping up some nonprofits here as well,

theaters. You know, they had their hands in everything in order to try to kind of get in our good graces, and it worked to a certain degree. But I think now, kind of similar to Canada in a weird way might start looking at this and saying, oh man, like we need to hedge a little bit more as well with China. And it's a complicated geopolitical scene right now where they're simultaneously paying off the Trump family

and also feeling the pinch of what's happening in Iran. I hope that the message goes out that when you think you are buying friendship and support from the Trump family, you know, that you're not necessarily, getting loyalty back, partly because of the competence issue, and partly because that loyalty doesn't run very deep. And, you know, I hope those who were trying to ingratiate themselves with Trump understand that. One of the story I wanted to talk about that I said and been able to get

to this week, and that's something you've reported on and care about is the way that we're treating the Afghan allies and those that were trying to flee Afghanistan after we pulled out And since then, Afghan refugees who had been helping U.S. forces, interpreters, things of this nature, they've been stranded at a military base in Qatar. And now, the Trump administration is making them choose between either returning to Taliban, ruled Afghanistan, or sending them to war-torn Congo. It's like 1,100 people. It's totally insane and offensive and depraved that this is what we're doing to folks that tried to help us. in prosecuting that war. Depraved is exactly the right word.

I mean, these folks, they saved American lives in Afghanistan. And because they worked with Americans and because they did save those American lives, they and their families are at risk in Afghanistan. If they are returned, they will suffer brutally. Some will be killed. and then sending them to Congo, you know, you may remember that as one of the wars that Trump solved, for which he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

You know, it hasn't been solved. And Rwanda is laying waste in eastern Congo. It's a place that is close to my heart partly because we held it by one of the militias in eastern Congo because I happen to come across some. massacres and then chase through the jungle for the next five days in eastern Congo. And it is a mess, the idea that we would send... Can I hear a little bit more of that, actually?

You can't just throw out this as close to my heart because I spent five days being chased through the, through Congo. I just, I like that kind of Reader's Digest version of what happened there. So the quick version is, so I was reporting on the beginning of the Congo Civil War in 1997 and in trying to fly into Kisangani, our plane crashed. And everybody, the plane was destroyed. Everybody in the plane survived, but one person was killed on the ground. And so after that experience getting into Congo, I thought, well, maybe I'll, instead of flying out, I'll drive out.

So I was in Kisangani. I looked at it in the theory, there was this kind of road going through Eastern Congo. So I hired a vehicle that had probably been stolen in the Civil War from somebody or other. And we drove out. And the first day, we ran into this Rwanda-backed militia that was massacring Houtu. And, you know, I asked these child soldiers, what are you doing? And they said, oh, we're killing all the Houtu. I mean, they were unapologetic about it.

So I asked them, well, can I interview your chief, your boss, your warlord? And that was a dumb thing to do because they took me to the war. warlord, and he understood it was a bad idea to be giving interviews about this. One of the basic rules of journalism is you never lie. When you're being held by a warlord who's busy massacring people, you lie. So I told him that I had the approval of his Uber warlord. He tried to reach that guy on the radio. He could not.

So after an hour or so, he let us go. Later that evening, he did reach the Uber Warlord, who had never heard of me. and so we sent a truckload of soldiers after me, and so that unfolded over the next five days. Holy shit. How'd you end up getting out? So we were ahead of them. We got stuck for hours at a time because the road was so bad, but so did the truck.

We had a somewhat better vehicle, and we got to the Uganda border, and then the vehicle turned around and immediately ran into the soldiers, but the only people in it were my interpreter, and the driver at that point, and they did not bother the interpreter and the driver. Wow, that's a happy idea. And the idea that we're sending these Afghans to a place like this. So given that story, it doesn't seem like the place to send 1,100 Afghans,

that helped us in the war. Absolutely not. Fucking crazy. Okay, well, I wanted to end like we did last time with a little convo on Christoph Impact, but is there anything that I didn't ask you about, any reporting you've been doing, anything that's on your mind you want to leave people with? You know, I do just hope that Democrats make a real push for winning back working class voters, both those of color and the white working class.

I think that one of the real mistakes in the first Trump administration was that we were so outraged that he, the Trump pushed us to the left in ways that made it harder to win those working class voters. we seem less sensitive to them. And in particular, too often, I think, concluded that every Trump voter is a racist and a bigot. And it is really hard to win votes from people whom you're accusing of being racist and bigots. So so much is at stake right now in terms of the future of the country. And I just hope we will do better and be so focused on winning Senate races in Ohio and Arizona and Georgia and Maine and Alaska, Iowa.

Yeah, Iowa is now in play, it looks like, you know. Well, we could not be more aligned on that. The next time you're on, I'm going to find something that we can fight about. Oh, right. Well, Pino Noir. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Last time, I fucking hate Pino Noir still.

Pino Loire is disgusting. Okay, if I wanted to juice box, I'd have one. I'm drinking petnats and oranges. Do you make any orange wine? You're doing any orange wine out there? No, we don't. We make hard cider, though. Really good hard cider, some of the best hard cider.

rest aligned on our wine taste. That's okay. We're going to find another issue, though, besides Pino-No-Noard Hard Cider to disagree on. I do want to close this. You posted yesterday that your 2025 Christoph Impact Drive raised $52 million for three non-profits, which is really unbelievable. We try to do this as well from time to time with the Bullwark support certain advocacy groups or people that are a need. Our listeners like yours really love to do that. I want to feel like they are having an impact and helping. So if you have a organization you want to shout out now. I would love to put that in the show notes and direct people to it. Yeah, and maybe there's a way to partner in some form, you know, with the next drive.

You know, I believe it's something called solutions journalism where you not just point out problems, but also point out solutions and give our audiences a way to try to address the problems. And so that's how this evolve. The three organizations that I supported this year were, one is the emergency response rooms in Sudan, which are this grassroots approach to deal with the famine. there. Another is Helen Keller International, which does God's work in fighting malnutrition and hunger. And then the third works in the U.S., Vision to Learn, which gets glasses in the hands of low-income kids, especially in the early grades, who, you know, can't see the blackboard. And how can you learn to read if you can't see the blackboard? Just three great organizations. And if we, in journalism,

him if we give our audiences a way to step up and help, I'm just awed by my audience and how willing they are to step up. We will put the link to the Helen Keller charity in the show notes because I made a Helen Keller joke this week. So I feel like that is needed for carmic balance. Absolutely. We need to bring some carmic balance to the world. So we'll do that.

Nick Christoph, I really appreciate you. Thanks for coming back on the show. And we'll do it again soon, all right? I look forward to that with a glass of, Pino No war next time. Okay, now I'll bring my old pet now. Everybody else, we'll see you back here Monday.

It's a Monday, so it's Bill Crystal. Have a great weekend. Take my down the stairs. Your father walks. I will. His hair is fall.