The Bulwark Podcast - Piers Morgan: Polishing Trump's Turds

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

After being a guest on Piers' show numerous times, Tim gets a chance to pin him down for answers. Like, how could he have ever thought Trump in his second term was ready to be a "great president?" And even though Piers is now critical of Trump's tariffs and the war he started in Iran, he still thinks the verdict is out on Trump's obvious corruption—and whether the man can evolve and change the course of his presidency. Plus: Mark Hertling discusses the Air Force major who called for the impeachment of Trump and Vance as well as POTUS's confusion over the role of NATO.

Hey, everybody. We got a double header for you today. And it's going to be a doozy. I've been trying to get Pierce Morgan to have the tables turned on him for a while now. And so he booked this date, you know, not planning that the Grand Platner campaign is going to blow up the night before. And so I didn't kind of want to waste time with him on that. So if you want Platner takes, we've got plenty of options for you. Me and Sarah over on the Buller takes feed did almost an hour on Plattenham. Plattner alone, the next level, which comes out on Tuesday nights. Sam is in for JVL.

We're all still sending our love to JVL and his family. But we'll be discussing Plattner more there. We'll also be discussing Mitch McConnell, who is MIA. So there'll be some discussion of that as well. So if you're looking for Platner and McConnell takes TNL or head over to the Bullwark takes feed, on this show, it's a double header. We get into serious business about military affairs in the world with Mark Hurtling. segment two. So make sure to stick around for that. But up first, it's Pierce Morgan.

All right, he is the host of Peers Morgan uncensored on YouTube. It's Pierce Morgan himself. The tables are turned. Welcome to the show. I'm a bit apprehensive about this because I suddenly realized you've never interviewed me. And I've had you on my show many times. Thank you. But this is like the real poacher turn gamekeeper, as we would say in England. I love that. I love that you're apprehensive. Well, I'm going to start with a compliment. We're going to start, you know, we're going to butter you up at the beginning because we may have some disagreements to get to. I've been trying to have you on since your interview with Russell Brandt.

It was a real moment of professional jealousy for me for this reason. For people who didn't watch it, you are asking him about what Bible verse he was referencing. And let's play what happened. Thank you for asking me. Thank you. It was this from Isaiah. You're right. But I did say, you know, be chilled.

Sometimes I lose the chill, man. They don't like that, do they? In the old gallery, but remember you just said it's a hired spot. This is from Isaiah. The verse that I was looking at that day was not this. I can't actually find the verse that I had that day. That goes on for over 100 seconds, Beers. How did you do that?

What was going through your head? How did you summon the will to just sit there and let him turn the pages for almost two minutes? Well, as you know, in our game, silence is normally the enemy, right? I mean, everyone talks about dead air, and it can be just a few seconds. When I was at CNN, if you had three, four seconds of silence, it was something that would launch an investigation into it.

So obviously, my team were in my ears saying, you may want to get in now, let's get in now, because it was as it went on. But I could just sense there was something quite magical unfurling, which was that this grifter, and I think we can safely say he's a grifter, who had become a born-again Christian seven months after all these allegations flew against him, had gone into court in England clutching this Bible, which had all these little notes attached to it,

and passages underline and so on. So I asked him the obvious question, which was, well, which of the passages brought you most sucker at your difficult moment? and he said, well, there's one in particular. Now, if you were a genuine born-again Christian, and you were really, as he claims to be, completely immersed now in daily life with your new relationship with God

and the Bible and Christianity and so on, you would probably remember the verse that you're talking about, which was the one that was most important to you in your hour of darkness. But not only could he not remember it, he couldn't remember where the hell it was in the Bible. So as he continued to Russell, pun intended, I realized this was very illuminating

because I think what it really showed, and this was the view of most people who watched it, was that it's probably all a bit of a grift and that he's not really reading the Bible every day and he's not really into this quite the way he would like us to think. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but that was certainly my feeling. I think you got that one, right. And you know what, Tim, after four decades of being in the media,

it was very unnerving to discover that actually, the most powerful weapon I have in my toolbox was silence and that maybe I should just shut up more. It's also human nature to try to bail people out. Even if you realize it's a quasi-adversarial interview, sometimes you just can't overcome. So I was impressed. You also did the office look straight into the camera at one point.

It was 10 out of 10. Not all your episodes are 10 out of 10. So we've got to hand that. I had somebody come up to me or a crawfish boil. You probably don't know about those. It's a Louisiana thing. I do, actually. You do know about the conference.

So I'm at a boil. Some guy comes up to me. He's like, are you the guy on Pierce Morgan? And I was like, yeah, that's only having me one time. And no offense to this, Pierce, but I was like, why do you watch the show? What do you get out of it? And he says, it's kind of like for me, Jerry Springer, but politics. I just kind of like watching the food fight.

And on the one hand, I understand that. On the underhand, I wonder if that gives you any, I don't know, self-doubt about the seriousness or the value of what's happening. Well, I think, look, people like Joe Rogan and others have used that analogy of Jerry Springer and politics. First of all, I knew Jerry Springer very, very well. I loved Jerry Springer. I actually was on America's Got Talent with Jerry Springer. I was a judge and he was the host. We lived in the same hotel, the Beverly Wilshire, in L.A. for years. And we used to meet three times a week for dinner. So when I get compared to Jerry, I take that as an enormous compliment.

Jerry Springer was a former mayor of Cincinnati. He was a news anchor for 10 years, very serious news anchor, and was one of the smartest people I've met in my life and made hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, his show wasn't for everyone, and I don't think my show is like the old Springer show, except in one sense, which is most people, I think at the moment, get fed a diet through their algorithm or their choice,

which is of either people on the left or people on the right, and they're banging a drum which will continually hit the same beat of Trump's the biggest disaster in the history of mankind or Trump can do no wrong, extrapolated out to all the other issues. And I think that's a problem, actually. And I think it's become an increasing problem in fermenting tribalism, quite toxic tribalism. In a way we've gone back, we regressed 2,000 years when tribes used to exist on their own, all shared the same views, all dressed the same, spoke the same as on. And then they slowly went out and encountered other tribes. And the only

solution they found was to kill each other. And it's a little bit like that, I think, on social media. So I think I actually have a valuable place in the public space in this, which is I sit in the middle. I'm a genuine centrist. I've voted in the past for conservative and left-wing candidates in the UK, for example, from Margaret Thatcher on the right to Tony Bear on the left. I always tend to gravitate towards a leader more than a party, because I think a great leader can make a huge difference. And a terrible leader can have the opposite effect. I see myself as a centrist. I do love a good debate. I used to get thrown under my local pub, when I was a teenager for arguing with people too obnoxiously on a Friday night

after 10 pints of scrumpy. So I do like to do a good noisy debate. Let me finish my point being, but it's not just about noisy debates. Anyone who watches are so regularly will know. We regularly do big one-on-one interviews with, you know, I went to Kiev and interviewed Zelensky. I've done Trump for several times. I've done Kanye West several times. I do lots of one-on-one interviews with people. Russell Brown is a good example, two hours of Russell Brand. So it's not all about the noisy debates, but I do think the debates do one thing, which is really important, which is I bring people normally with big, loud followings on big platforms and lots of followers,

and they rarely go at each other. And I think for the viewer trying to work out where they sit, who's not parked into a tribe necessarily, they at least get to weigh up both sides of an argument. I think that's a good thing. Yeah, I guess it's not exactly like firing line with, William Huff Buckley though. Some of the people you're having on are like full of shit. They're all full of shit, but they also have very big following.

So I'll give an example. Someone like Andrew Tate has millions and millions of followers and was clearly for a long time having a big influence over young men around the world. And he's facing very serious charges now. But if you go back two or three years, he was probably the most famous person on the planet after Trump. And I took a decision to interview him repeatedly.

And two things have happened in the prime. process of those interviews. One, I went after him like nobody else has, particularly about his brazen misogyny. Two, the number of people who watched the interviews came down from 10 million down to under a million, showing his deteriorating popularity. And three, the number of young men who come up to me in the street asking about Tate has massively dropped as well. I think I've played a significant, genuinely significant part in demolishing the bullshit around someone like Andrew Tate by platforming him, but going after it. So, My position about platforming people is not that you shouldn't,

I think you should be to platform anyone you like. But if you just give them a free run, you're just giving more fuel and oxygen to whatever bullshit theories they have. I take a view. If you challenge them properly, you're providing a good public service. I agree with you on the platforming argument. We 100% agree on that. I think it's worth challenging people.

Sometimes monitoring your show, my critique is particularly during this Trump era, I think it was a little bit different when Biden was in because there's plenty of legitimate things to criticize Biden about. But during the Trump era, I'll come on, it'll be like, well, you know, ICE killed two people in the streets. That's segment one. And then it's like, segment two, we have to find balance. So like, let's talk about, you know, some crazy liberal school district in San Francisco

where they, you know, tried to take Abraham Lincoln's name off the school or something. And I feel like we're... How interesting that you would cite that as an example of something that's wrong, whereas I would say, Tim, and I know, I love you, dearly, and you're great when you come on my show, and I love what you do here. But right there's the problem. you would only want that show to be all about Trump bashing. And that's fine.

That's what he's doing. I'm just trying to say, you're increasing like crazy, like stupid things. But the other story can be just as interesting to a large constituent of my viewers. Why would I be so, I mean, should I park myself? Should I park myself into the Bull Walk Camp? Should I become a little mini-me-me-a? Obviously, it's interesting because you're feeding them, you're feeding them sucker, to use your words. You're giving them something that's like, hey.

You're right, the liberals are crazy. Let's talk about this random person. Spoiler alert, a lot of liberals are crazy. Well, sure, but a lot of conservatives are crazy. Yes. A lot of people are crazy. Humans are crazy. Yes.

I'm talking about trying to make a judgment call on what is important and what is not. And I feel like a lot of times, like this idea that these woke excesses, you know, there's some movie, you know, The Odyssey has a black person in it. Like, a lot of this stuff is stupid in the grand scheme of things compared to like life or death decisions that are happening in the White House. If you don't mind me saying, again, say it's respectfully,

there's a little bit of pomposity to that statement. In other words, you have decided you know better than me what you think is important. And I would say that that is not necessarily true. A lot of the woke issues actually are things of legitimate mass concern. I'll give an example. The ongoing furority around trans athletes in women's sport, for example. I knew you were going to say this.

How many segments have you had on the show about trans people in women's sports, versus how important that is to people in society. I just think that there's like a... But this is the liberal... It's out of whack. It's out of balance. I'm not saying don't talk about it, but it's also like, who cares?

Yeah, but this is the classic error that my liberal friends make. And by the way, I'm a recovering liberal, so I sit in the kind of Bill Mark place. I'm a liberal immigrant, so we're going this. We're going crossways. But I would say that if you actually go out on the street and ask a thousand people what they think about that, A, they would care, and B, they think it's complete nonsense.

And what my liberal friends do, the terrible mistake you make, I'm afraid, when you try to say nobody cares, is you're missing the fact that they do care. And, you know, it was people like Joe Biden, when he hitched his mask to saying that it was fine for trans women to compete in women's sport, actually Americans went, this is nonsense, which is why he lost. My point is not that nobody cares. My point is that, like, in the grand scheme of things, you're covering a news show, having so many segments about, like, the fifth place performer in a women's swim match. There are plenty of stupid things happening. Again, respectfully, who are you to tell me what my running orders should be? Why should you take the money? I'm not telling you what your running order should be.

I'm just saying it speaks to the idea that I think that it's creating a fake balance. It's like, okay, well, on the one hand, Trump got us into a stupid war. On the other hand, oh my goodness, there was a lacrosse match that had a girl in it in West Virginia. I used to be at CNN for four years. I was on Good Morning Britain for four. five years, and I can tell you it's exactly the same at all at those places, right? CNN has a mix of light and shade, serious and silly, good morning Britain more so, because it was a morning show. The idea that you should only feed people with a diet of what you have deemed is serious and

important is one of the reasons mainstream media in particular have been collapsing in popularity, because most people out there don't spend all day obsessing about Trump and Iran. You're kind of walking past my criticism. You're walking past my criticism. because we agree on this. I don't be silly. It's fine. Yeah. The thing is an excessive focus on random crazy liberal shit.

I live in Louisiana. Let me tell you. There's plenty of crazy random conservative shit happening in middle schools. But anyway, let's, let's, this is my show. So we should talk about Trump. Of course, but I can tell you I've done a lot more, for example, a lot more on the Iran war than anything woke related in the last three, four months. And I've been incredibly critical of Trump from the start of it.

So, you know, I don't will come to Trump and about balance and so on. But no, very few people. people have been out there as critical as I have been about Trump, who perhaps people presume would normally slightly slant my way towards him because I know it. I totally agree. And I had Seger and Genti on the show, maybe about a month ago, and I said the same thing to him. And one thing that's hard for me to do is I don't have Trump bullshitters on my show.

And so I'm looking for people who are sympathetic to Trump, but are also honest about him and critiquing about him. And I appreciate that about your show. To that point, let's go back to some. Trump thoughts that you've had around Thanksgiving after he was elected. You wrote in the New York Post that he called you and you think he's ready to be one of Americans' great presidents. You said that you've been struck by the realization that he's a changed man. Yeah. I'm wondering how that's looking now. Not great because he unfortunately has reverted to type. But more

worryingly, I think, for his legacy, he has begun to do things which he specifically campaigned on the opposite, you know, not going into war in the Middle East, for example, focusing on America first and getting inflation down and so on. Why would you launch a global trade war and why would you go to war with Iran if actually those campaign aims were your priority. It's the opposite. It's going to have the opposite effect, as we've seen. So I think it's unfortunate.

I did think that Trump, Mark II, particularly after he survived several assassination attempts, I felt talking to him he was a bit of a change character. But, you know, there's also the reality check. He's just turned 80. There aren't many people who turn 80 who suddenly become different people. He's had some things which have been great successes, and he's had other things that have been big failures.

He's still not even quite halfway, well, how long has he got till the next election, like two and a half years? So he's still, you know, he's not even halfway through his second term. He's got time to pivot and change course. The concern I would have if I was advising Trump is that I think it's looking more likely than not. You might lose control of the House and the Senate in the midterms. And if that happens, you'll become a lame duck,

which will be for him about as bad as life gets. This is a frustrating thing, though, for some of us, you know, to get accused of having TDS, saying that we only want to talk about Trump is, it's like, you've known Trump for so long. And you've known Trump for longer than I have. I had his number, the first second I saw him, talking about politics.

He is the most obvious person in his. history. Like, he is not at all subtle. He's not changed at all, actually, since the 1980s. He's been the same. Maybe he's a little bit less of a woman hound now. I don't know why. I don't know. Maybe it's not working as well or whatever. He has different interests. But, like, besides that, like, he hasn't changed at all. Like, he's the same. And so how did he run for president three times and have smart people like you get tricked by him again into thinking that he could be better or different? He's Trump. He's Trump. Well, because actually, he can be quite mercurial in that sense.

I mean, certainly the conversation happened with him a week after he got shot, he was definitely sounding up so unlike that Donald Trump I knew. He actually sounded quite vulnerable in that conversation. I was quite startled. And I really did believe that he was second time round. He would do things differently, but would be more mindful of his legacy, having been given a second chance.

I mean, the interesting question I'd throw back at you, Tim, is do you think that the way that you guys on the left went after Trump in that first term and during his four years in the wilderness, a lot of it legitimate, a lot of it bullshit, but do you think the intensity of the rage against Trump, the TDS, if you like, actually contributed to him being re-elected because I do, so I felt up the time it was self-defeating,

I felt the fact that so many of them were left thought it was quite normal to call Trump the new Hitler and call people to support him Nazis and so on was utterly self-defeating. And before you say it, I know J.D. Vance called him a Nazi. Yes, that was wrong too. But the point I would make is if actually all you had done as a collective body on the left to pick Trump off about stuff that he got wrong

and focused on policy rather rhetoric, I think you would have been more successful, and I don't think he would have won second time. Here's the problem with that. Pierce, fair. I mean, obviously, it's irrefutable point because he got back in. So, sure. Obviously, whatever we did was not successful. Right. But my counterpoint to that is, okay, what do you want me to do? Be a liar, shine as turds, pretend like he's something that he's not. I mean, look, if the honest truth is, Everybody who goes into work for Trump and then has a falling out with him and leaves sounds like me in the end. I mean, John Kelly, you know, thought he's a fascist, Mattis, Garamucci. We could go down the list.

They all sound like me because I'm saying the truth about him. And so like, what else am I supposed to do? Like this idea that, oh, I'm supposed to like canned it to him from time to time. It's like, oh, he did a good job. Let me do a test. Tell me one good thing Trump has done. I love that you're trying to take the host seat back from me again. That's good.

It's a skilled move. It's fruit from a rotted tree is the answer to the question. Well, give me one. So here are the two things that people say, would say. What would you say? What would you say? What would you say? The Abraham Accords is something that people say.

What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? I think everything has turned out to be a shit sandwich. So what do you think he's done that's being good? Nothing. I think that it's a disaster. So right there, I'm afraid, is a classic example of a clear symptom of Trump derangements.

Okay, well, what do you think he's done that's good? Obviously shutting the southern border to stop millions of people. Okay, great. Let's debate that. But I think that's totally wrong. America is a free country. You're an immigrant. Honestly, I'm not sure if you're so happy about it's border policies, why you think that your show should be allowed to be played on YouTube in this country.

Because I applied, like, legal people do. We're sending people away. I applied to be a legal worker in the United States. I applied for a visa. So did the Haitians. The Haitians that have TPS. They did the same thing. We're sending them back.

Why don't we should send you back too? I'm here legally when I work in America. So, the nations that got temporary protected status. Now we're sending them all back. Why do you think I disagree with it? Well, because you just said his immigration policy was the thing that you think that he's doing well. No, I said stopping millions of people coming over the southern border illegally without going through any process was wrong. It happened under Biden to catastrophic levels.

I agree with that. I think Trump closing down the southern border to that extraordinary tidal wave of illegal immigrants. It was already solved before he came in. It wasn't already solved. Yes, it was. Why can't you just give him credit for doing that? Because, I'll tell you why. As a fair critique of Biden, I agree with your critique of Biden.

The Biden policy got out of hand. Much too late, this is a political criticism of him, Biden went to the Congress and tried to come up with a solution. Trump scuttled that solution, and then he did it via executive order. And the border crossings at the end of 2024 around election time were nothing problematic. We are a free country.

The idea that right now it's preferable to have negative immigration in this country, which is what we have right now. More people are leaving than are coming in. That is horrible for our economy. It's outside of the American tradition. The only people who are letting in are white South Africans. It's fucking crazy. It's un-American and it's wrong.

His policy is wrong. It's also un-American, especially for those who have come into the country legally and done it properly. It's also un-American to just allow millions of people to come in illegally over an open border. No, as Ronald Reagan said so clearly, without a border, you're not a country. Great. So you should agree. You should agree with that. I like the Reagan and Obama order policies, not the Trump border policies.

So no, do you have any other ones that you think he's done well? Well, okay. You mentioned Obama as a glimmering, shining light of immigration policies. Okay, let me do my favorite question to my liberal friends. How many people did Obama deport in eight years? Obama deported a lot. How many? How many?

I don't, this is not, I'm not doing the Tucker Carlson-Tek Cruz thing. It was millions. It was millions. It was a lot. Have a guess? Yeah, it was millions. It was a lot. It was three million.

Yeah. Okay? Now, the significance of that is that made him pro rata, to this day, by far the biggest deporter of people in American presidential history. No, no, but you cited him as an immigration, you know, shining lights. He did the thing you said you want, Pierce. The numbers were so great because at the border they came in and got turned around, and that counts as one.

What Trump is doing is not only shutting down the border, but also menacing people in cities in the interior of the country. But I don't agree with that. But I don't agree with that. Okay, well, that's what he's doing. That's the difference. Unless I misheard you, you just praised Obama

for turning people around at the border. Yes. But you criticized Trump and said... For shutting down the border completely. Yeah, because we're a country of free people. We should let everyone in. So which one is it? Does it depend who the president is?

I didn't say we should let everybody in. I said that if you just look at it and hold, you're talking about the number of people Obama deported. Sure. we also were letting people into the country, as we should during the Reagan. This was bipartisan during Reagan. I don't disagree.

Obama, and that's great. We should have an immigration process. By the way, Obama tried to go to the Republicans back then and tried to cut a deal where we let dreamers stay in the country. And the Republican hardliners that turned into Trump were the ones that stopped comprehensive immigration reform. It was my people, the moderate Republicans that tried to work with, the Democrats, to have a reasonable immigration policy.

That got scuttled time and again by these nativists that don't want anybody in the the country. And so my question back to you is, if you look at this from the biggest picture, right, like this movement towards nativism that you had in your country and we had in ours, that started with Brexit and then resulted in Trump, we are now 10 plus years into that, over 10 years, over a decade in, if you look back on that and you said, hey, we could go back to 2013 and do this over again and not do that, would you take that deal? Well, it's more complicated because right in the middle of that, you have a four-year, tenure by Biden, which particularly in relation to immigration, was a complete disaster.

Okay, no, no, I'm not talking about just immigration. I just mean as a project, as a political project, Brexit and Trump are related. We agree on that, right? Like, it's this kind of nativist sovereignty, excuse me, you know, idea on the right, like this nativist right. But Brexit has been a disaster and Trump's been a disaster, right? They both have failed. Both projects have failed, right? Well, the Trump project is ongoing. Let's judge it at the end of the second term. is what I would say. How's the trajectory?

Well, I think it's better to judge presidents at the end of a term. Let's see what he does in the last two and a half years. I suspect he'll be polaxed by what happens in the midterms. What about Brexit? My position on that is I voted to remain in the European Union. I didn't think Brexit was a good idea. I didn't trust the people selling it, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage. I thought there was snake oil salesman.

And 10 years later, since that referendum took place, there's been no sign to me of it being anything other than a failure. So my argument to the new incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham, the new Labour Prime Minister, would take his position in a couple of weeks, is if you were to have another referendum, there's nothing stopping you. I reckon you would have a 70% landslide vote by the British people

to go back into the European Union. Why can't you see the same clarity with our failed experiment with nativism? Because I'm not American, so it's your business, not mine. Secondly, if I did think that, it makes zero difference to the fact Trump will remain president as long as he says alive in the next two and a half years. If you had a referendum aspect to your presidential system, fine. You don't.

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buck a day. And member pricing on advanced imaging, join at functionhealth.com slash the bulwark and use code the bulwark 25 for a $25 credit. So here's my issue, though. You said that, you know, you voted for some conservative president or some prime ministers from some liberal in the UK. I used to be a conservative. Part of what attracted me to conservatism was this kind of small C conservative notion that came from you guys, was Berkian. It's a notion that like,

when you make a big change, you don't know what the unintended consequences should be, you should make gradual change, you should be prudent, you know? That is in the spirit of Thatcher, in the spirit of Blair. What happened with Brexit and Trump wasn't conservative.

It was an arson. It was like, we're going to blow up this system and try to build a new system in our image. It's just obviously not working in either case. But I would say in relation to Thatcher and Blair, they both had moments where they blew up too. I mean, Thatcher notoriously over the poll tax, which was one of the most divisive and heated taxation systems that ever came into the country. That's incremental change. Hang on. Hang on. And the Tony Blair illegally invaded Iraq, which was his legacy and was one of the biggest foreign policy disasters of my lifetime.

And I opposed that very loudly as Elizabeth, it was a daily mirror at the time. Even the people I voted for had moments where they blew up. Leaders blow up. They do dumb. things, right? The question becomes... But that's all Trump is, blow up, blow up, blow up, blow up. It's not incremental change. It's tear things down. It's Doge. It's we're going to end USAID. It's all impulsive. It's not conservative. It's not a way to run a complicated country.

It's not conservative. I agree with it. I agree. It's not conservative. And a lot of the things that you don't like about stuff he's done, I would agree with. To avoid the charge of TDS, you have to find it in your soul to find some things he's done which are correct. No, some things are just rotten, though. Some things are just rotten.

Like the project is rotten. So it's kind of like even if there is something, like an element of the project that had a good outcome, it's part of a rotten project. I blame the left entirely because if you believe that Trump has been a dismal failure and he's a rotten apple and all the rest of it, well, fine.

You had an opportunity to force out your president, Biden, before it was too late, when he was obviously completely gaga, no one on the left wanted to say what was happening in front of their eyes. And then you left it so late that Carmelah Harris got coronated. It was clearly totally unsuited to take on Trump and got the beating that I think she and the party deserved. And my question for you guys now is it still remains the big theme on the left

is Trump bashing and reacting to every single thing he does, most of which, by the way, he does deliberately to wind you all up. I've been there and he's done it. So what you need, what you need, you need, You need to find a new Clinton, a new Obama, a new Obama, somebody center-left who can galvanize a genuine constituent of Americans to say, I prefer that way to what I have with Trump. Peers. Okay, fine. I agree.

But it's offering a clear-eyed critique of the Democrats that I agreed with while polishing Trump's turds. No, I'm not polishing Trump's turds. Part of the problem. I'm no point of my polishes. Yes, you were. No. I didn't. You said that he was a changed man, that he could be one of Americans.

great presidents. He obviously was not going to be one of America's great presidents. You asked me whether that still stood. I said no. I meant before the election, you're saying it's the Democrats' fault that he's in. I'm saying, well, it's partly the fault of the people like you who are polishing his turds during the campaign and making him seem better than he is. I didn't polish his turds in the campaign. Go back and read what I said. I just felt he would be different second time round. And unfortunately, to date, I don't think he has been. He's played to his worst sensibilities rather than his best. Now, shocking. So I'm right again. though. So I have TDS that I keep being right about him. How does that work? How do I have

derangement syndrome, but also keep seeing him more clearly than you? Well, you might be, but your failure to accept he does anything right is a terrible indication of your chronic TDS. Did you have a second thing that he's done right besides the border? Um, I would say that his, eh, well, you can let me finish. I would say the way he got the remaining hostages out of Gaza for Israel was a major achievement. You think Gaza and the Israel relationships going well? You think that's doing great? I think that. part of it's going terribly. But if you ask me, was it good the President of the United States managed to get those hostages out? I'd say yes. And you should give him credit for that.

And if you can't give him credit for that, you have TDS. Well, sure. It's good that the hostages are out, but that doesn't mean his Israel policy is good. Again, you can have good outcomes underneath bad policies. That's the whole point, underneath a corrupt system. His relationship with Bibi is totally corrupt. And it's been a disaster. I think you agree with that. I've heard you talk about it. Yeah, look, I think that Trump deserves credit for getting the hostages out, but I think that the decision to go into war in Iran with Israel after Trump was persuaded by Benjamin Netanyahu, it would be a good idea, has turned out to be a terrible decision.

I said that at the start. I believe it today. I think it's got real potential, unfortunately, for Trump to become his legacy. And I wish he'd never done it. And across the Middle East, like, he just has these corrupt relationships. We don't know if it's financial with Bibi. Obviously, Bibi was influencing him.

We have Cutter's plane now, his son-in-laws in business with the Saudis. How can you prosecute a war judiciously when you're getting paid off by everybody in the region? Well, I think the United States has to do business with countries and states in the Middle East. The Trump family doesn't, though. The Trump family doesn't have to do business. Well, let's wait and see whether what they're doing is corrupt or not. There will obviously be investigations into this as they were into the Biden.

who seem to be up to their neck of it. Well, this is nothing like the Biden family. Well, you don't think it is. Of course you don't. I know this, the scale in the UAE crypto deal is like $500 billion. Was Hunter negotiating for the country like Jared Kushner is? You said it was corrupt. Let's wait and see if anyone ever establishes it was actual corruption.

What is more needs to be established? Jared Kushner is not a member of our government. He's negotiating as part of this Iran war while taking money from the Saudi government. That's all established. Well, I would like to see these things properly investigated, which I'm sure they will be, particularly if Trump loses the midterms, then you're going to see all sorts of stuff going on in terms of legal actions and possible impeachments and so on. We know that. But I would also stress to you, you know, how much time did you devote? Maybe you did, and I missed it. Did you devote a lot of time

to going after the Biden family for the obvious corruption of Hunter Biden having your job at an energy company in Ukraine without any experience? Or did you just conveniently overlook that, Tim? You don't have a gotcha with me on that one, Pierce. You can get me on some things. But the Burisma thing I think was bullshit. But Hunter kind of hates me now. And on every podcast, he goes on.

He brings it up. I'm in his head for some reason. Anyway, I've taken too much of your time. Hopefully we can continue this. It's not scary to come on the Bullark podcast. I love the Bullwark podcast. I listen to you. I'm a big fan of yours.

That's why I love having you on my show. Thank you, sir. You've got Norway. The colonizer coming at you again. like 1066. So how's, are you scared of Holland? Well, I'm actually scared of Holland. He's a massive Viking,

but also their captain is Martin Odegaard, who is also captain of my club side, Arsenal. So I'm worried. He's just won us the Premier League. So yeah, they're good. But you know what? I've got a feeling that it's going to be serendipity here where England win the World Cup in the United States

right after you've all been celebrating 250 years of your independence from my country. great country. And if that happens, I want two things to happen as a consequence. One, you get compelled by law to rename soccer football. And secondly, you are compelled to bring back the British monarchy. And I'm happy to serve as your first king since George III. I think the French will probably come to our aid once again and prevent that from happening. That's Pierce Morgan. Thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it. Cheers, too. All the best. For some sober, serious military talk, stick around for

segment two with Mark Hurtling. Yo, I've got a busy schedule. We're turning out content. We're also parenting. We're trying to have a life. We're trying to grow a little media company here. So I'm always looking for ways to multitask and save time. I'll listen to another pod to prep for a guest while I'm on the way to get coffee or cooking dinner.

We're doing subscription and delivery services so we don't have to go shopping. I don't iron. You know, that kind of thing. We all have our own time saving hacks for everyday life. but if you're a business owner, you can save time hiring with ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested qualified candidates first. So you save time by meeting the right people faster.

And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter. At ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. And candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com. Bullwork, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Bullwork, meet your match on ZipRecruiter. All right, and we're back.

He's a writer on Military Affairs for the Bullwork. Boy, are we lucky to have him, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General. He served as commander during the surge in Iraq. He's also a commanding general of the U.S. Army Europe. His latest book is If I Don't Return, a Father's Wartime Journal. It's, of course, Mark Hurtling. How you doing, sir? Welcome back.

Tim, it is good to be with you. Thanks for having me on this morning. Lots going on, for sure. A ton going on. As we are taping this, ongoing press conference, the NATO meeting in Turkey with our president and Erdogan. Among the things he said this morning, I was very disappointed with NATO, as regards to Iran. Frankly, if it weren't held in Turkey, where my friend happens to be a very

strong leader, a very strong person, it's possible that I wouldn't have attended. So he's only going to the NATO meeting in the autocratic country, apparently. He also went off again on Greenland, talking about how it's surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships. Greenland should be controlled by the U.S., not by Denmark. He says, we should remove all soldiers out of Europe when you get to your article on that in a second. Some level, this is a little bit of Groundhog Day, same as it ever was, but I guess with the new element of kind of the first gathering since the Iran War. Yeah, I was listening to part of the press conference with Erdogan this morning, Tim.

It was a smorgas board of contradictions of what he's posted recently. That in combination with continued insults of the insults of the NATO alliances, why he's mad at everybody and why he's not mad at Prime Minister Maloney anymore. You know, the numbers throwing out in terms of battlefield deaths in Ukraine, which seemed to just emanate from off the top of his head and have nothing to do. with reality in terms of casualties in that country, even though the war continues. You don't know what to make of it when you see someone like that offering input to members of not just the National Press Corps, but the International Press Corps from Europe in Ankara. It's baffling,

and I'm sure that's what the NATO members and the presidents who are there, the presidents and the prime ministers feel about how to handle this president who doesn't have a real good feel for what the NATO alliance is all about. Yeah, I mean, spitballing on removing troops, like live at a press conference, I don't know, you wrote about this this week, about how, you know, withdrawing troops for Europe. This is something that Hanksat's been pushing. You talked about how that's not a strategy. I'm just a regular American here, right? I didn't serve in the military. I'm not the command post experts that you got. I'm not Ben Parker pouring over war plans and the different types of ships and planes. So I don't know. You can't know. You can. You can. You can, you can,

could sell me on the idea that there's a strategic purpose for kind of downsizing what we have in Europe. Maybe that's wrong. I don't know. But even if that was the right approach, it doesn't seem like the way to go about that is like threatening to remove all of our soldiers out of Europe because they won't give us Greenland. And that is what Donald Trump did this morning at a press conference. Or that they won't support us in a war that was of his making and which he,

didn't notify them about beforehand. It's also, you know, NATO, you could call a defense alliance, a security alliance. It's not a call on us whenever you need us to help you with your wars of choice. That's what's challenging about that. That's not what Article 4 and Article 5 are meant to commit nations too. And rightfully, I mean, in my view, I'm American, okay? I got it. Our national security issues or our national security issues.

of the other 31 countries that are part of the alliance and the other 15 or so that are part of Europe are not just going to chime in and support us when we need them and when we ask them. You know, it's interesting the UK has been one of the nations that has incurred President Trump's wrath. And in every case before, when they were informed of what the United States was going to do, and in some cases, which was contrary to their national security, they were, would join us. And they did so as part of an alliance that stated back a couple of hundred years. This time, Starmor said no. And in my view, rightfully so, when you're not told what the war is about, when you're going into it with Israel and you don't really have an end state when it seems

the strategy is not calculated very well and you don't have a stated end state, you're not going to get involved. You should be smarter than that. Let's just talk about that kind of how, you know, our presence should look in Europe and how this relationship should look. And you, as mentioned, were commanding general of our U.S. Army in Europe. So obviously you've worked with these other countries, these other militaries, as counterparties and allies over the years. Is there anything to the underlying point that maybe, you know, we are putting too many of our own resources and men and women into Europe

and that Europe should be doing more of that? Like, if you take away kind of the ham-handed manner in which Hague Seth and Trump, have been arguing for it. Is there a point to that? Or do you actually disagree with the underlying premise? Well, I think there's certainly a point to getting many of the NATO alliance members to pony up a little bit more. But that's been happening since 2011 when Secretary Gates went to the NATO ministerial and said, you guys are not paying your way. And it's not a check that's written to a big bank somewhere. It's, hey, your security, it depends on what you do in your budget for your own military forces, and some of you are lacking. And in 2011, Gates proposed

a 2% of GDP figure. Now, that was a very round and generous number. Trump is looking primarily now. It's just the percent, and it's made it almost a fixation, where instead of understanding what the 32 members do, his fixation on percentages has distorted. the discussion of what the alliance is and how NATO generates collective strength and how the members do different things together. And to the audience that's listening to this, not all militaries in Europe will build tank brigades or, you know, artillery units or huge naval aircraft carriers or submarines. Each one of them have a different culture, a different fiscal constraint. They have other things on their plate from a national security perspective, and they do things different.

Some are landlocked. Some are landlocked. Some are small, like Estonia. I mean, I always use the case of Estonia, a small country with less than 2 million people. Are they going to give up 5% of their GDP, which is pretty precious to them for this? No, what they do instead is say, hey, we will offer you, because we have experience and some pretty good capabilities, cyber defense. So the NATO Cyber Defense Center of Excellence is in Estonia. Poland has said back in 2004 that they wanted to build the strongest military in Europe to prevent further invasions like they've experienced multiple times.

So for the last couple of decades, they've been pouring a lot of money in it. They are now at 4.2% of their GDP, the highest in NATO. So whenever we hear President Trump saying everybody's now at five percent. that's not even close to being true. Poland is the biggest one of 4.2, but that's been a two decades-long plan. And by the way, as long as we're talking about that, the United States doesn't hit 5% of GDP in our defense spending. If we did, we would have to spend a half a trillion dollars more per year than what we're spending right now. And it all wouldn't go to NATO because we are a worldwide force.

So these are the kind of canards that Trump is throwing out there about the NATO alliance and basing it all instead of understanding of what contributions are made by the various countries and how they see national security. He's suggesting all of them should be this high level of price and also do all the things the same. Yeah. And I think HECS is in the same boat too, by the way. Yeah, Trump seems to think NATO is kind of like one of his country clubs. You know, you've got to pay dues. If you're not paying dues, you don't get to use the greens, you know, at certain times a day. And it's a little bit of a different deal.

You mentioned Poland. Part of the reason why Poland is spending the most because they're threats to the highest, being right on the border with Russia. There's some reporting, mentioned to Bill on yesterday's show coming out of Poland. Somebody within our intel services has been communicating to Poland that they think it's possible that Russia might. try a limited incursion into Poland to just basically test NATO and see if it could cause NATO to crack. I wonder if you have any kind of thoughts on that. Yeah, I think that, first of all, would be much like their invasion of Ukraine, even though Ukraine was kind of a, at the time, not a very capable, large force they were getting there

with some of the transformation efforts they had made over the previous five years. But in 2014, Ukraine was not ready for any kind of attack. In 2022, they were partly ready, but they still needed a lot of help. Poland has been building just, I think, the best force in Europe. It's not the largest. It's just beneath Turkey. But I got to tell you, my assessment, if Russia went in and crossed the border of Poland, I think there's a doctrinal term for this, they would get their ass handed to them.

I think it's the doctrinal term. Yeah, I think it would cause most of the alliance to come together in an Article 5 conclusion and say, now you're invading a member, unlike Ukraine. Now you're invading a member. And I think most members would then join in any kind of defensive alliance. Russia would be destroyed just by Poland, in my view. Yeah. Love to hear that.

Shout out to the polls. Yeah. It's not hard to imagine, at least in our country, like the United States having a mixed reaction to that. Right. And having there be some voices from the J.D. Vance wing within the administration saying, well, look at this. We don't want to escalate the types of stuff that you're hearing when Russia invaded Ukraine, right? Like, they'll threaten nuclear. We, you know, we don't want nuclear war over eastern Poland. You definitely, I think, would hear that talking point from some in the mega circles. I don't know, you know, whether that would prevail. But I think that would be out

And I think it would. I mean, if Russia were to invade Poland and use nuclear weapons, then you're dealing with a NATO force that has nuclear weapons in the UK, in France, and in the United States, whether or not we would use them. So I don't think Russia would risk that. It would really be confounding if they did. Let's just talk about the latest in Iran. Iran attacked two ships in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday. One of them was a Quddery LNG tanker. So our new daddy's in Qatar are still getting attacked in the strait. I guess it was traversing the Omani route.

And the Iranians are still trying to control making sure everything goes, you know, on the Iranian side of the street. Attacked another ship as well. You know, it doesn't seem like the Treaty of Versailles II is really going that well. But wondering what your assessment is of the state of play. Well, my assessment is everything I've seen and I've been looking hard for it is we still haven't concluded an MOU. I mean, there's no conclusions on both sides that what's in the MOU is what they are going to do. Those are discussion points for the further meeting. So we're now past the two-week mark of the MOU wearing out.

We're nowhere close to having the 60-day or 90-day conclusion that the president's, and Secretary Rubio has said we should have. So now we're talking about basically nothing has happened in the last two weeks. It also, I think one could conclude because Iran is still using weapons to fire at ships that they still have a capability. And they're standing by their end of what they wanted to talk about in the MOU and who controls the strait. This is a signal that we still control the same.

straight. We are still going to threaten ships that have insurance policies and they're not going to want to go through if we threaten them for fear of damage. So, you know, Tim, the interesting thing is over the last two weeks, I don't see anything having changed. In military circles, is there any even pitch for what the plan is to get out of here? Are there any, like, strategic options? Like, what are people saying? I got to be careful in saying this. What I know is that the president has asked for different courses of action for what to do next. I'm sure one of those courses of action is let's just leave. But that's not very viable.

I mean, we kiddingly in the military say whenever you pitch courses of action, there's normally three. There's a mama, mama, papa, bear, and baby bear. And one of them isn't going to be acceptable to, in this case, the president. And I think they've probably pitched a variety of courses of action, of which none of which bring us out of this with any kind of a win. You and I talked a long time ago about the fact that the best we can get out of this is a draw. And I don't think that's even the case anymore. You wrote this morning for us about this story of Major Jason Watson, who was arrested on the steps of the Capitol calling for Trump in advance his impeachment. he was Air Force in uniform when he did this.

Why don't you just kind of summarize for people what you're arguing about it? Yeah, I went on MS now the night that he did this. And the anchor asked me, what do you think about this? And I said, it's wrong, and he will likely be disciplined for it. And I don't know how that discipline is going to occur, whether it's going to be an admonishment, a court-martial, or anything in between. But this is not what the military does. And I think there were a lot of citizens of the United States that said,

boy, isn't this a brave guy that he would put his uniform on and go on the steps of the Capitol and ask for impeachment? Okay. And allegedly, Major Watson had a great deal of angst about doing it, which is good, because we teach those who wear the uniform not to have any openly political opinion when they're wearing the uniform because it reflects on an entire 2 million force

and not everyone agrees with you and plus it causes the citizens of the nation to say can we trust the military to be representative of all of us or are they now taking ideological sides because of politicians? That's the problem with it, Tim. I mean, anytime somebody in a uniform says something against the government, that's the first step of what one might call a potential coup action.

And that's not what the military does. We serve all, the military serves all American people, whatever their ideological viewpoints are. And anyone that puts on a uniform and goes to the steps and recommends a political action is in the wrong because it violates several articles of the uniform code of military justice. violates a Department of Defense regulation, and it violates professionalism. That's not what we do. Is there an appropriate or is there not a course for somebody that's in the military to exercise their First Amendment right to protest? I addressed that in the article and say that, unfortunately, sometimes when you join the military,

you give up or you're restrained in some of your constitutional rights. And the First Amendment is one of them. You don't talk about politics when you're in uniform. So the action that one might take is say, okay, first of all, I'm going to talk to my commander of my thoughts. I could say, hey, I'm a conscientious objector and won't deploy to any kind of war like Iran that is being waged. I could go to the lawyers in my command. I could go to write a letter to Congress and say, hey, I'm in the active service and I don't like this. but the final step is you say if I don't like this to the extent that evidently Major Watson

doesn't the next step is instead of going on the steps of the Capitol you tender your resignation as a military officer and go on the outside in civilian dress and say I used to be in the military and this is what I think about this but that's the only step and by the way Tim I think we've probably seen, and we haven't seen the results of it yet, but we've seen probably a couple of retired generals and admirals who are likely going to do that when their retirement papers come through. People who have retired during this Trump's second term, you expect to see that? Yeah. And as long as they're waiting for retirement, which most of them are, I could name three that I know of that may be willing to speak out after their retirements are approved or they're waiting

for the end date, but I won't. But I think some of them have seen some things that they're ready to talk. We should invite them on the Bullwark podcast. We're on Command Post with Mark Hurtling on the Bullock YouTube page. People can subscribe now. This is a little bit outside of your wheelhouse, but something that you wrote about in the article, I think just kind of struck a thought in me about kind of something that we're discussing

in the political space today, and that's the grand platinum question. And you wrote about, you know, as somebody in the military, you have to balance, like having this moral courage versus professional responsibility. And I think that there have been, basically the woman that came forth with the report on Platner and, you know, the alleged assault, essentially said the same thing. I was talking about how she was grappling with that

in her interview with Politico. And I thought that was an interesting parallel, how she was talking about how basically she wanted Platner to win because she agrees with them politically and she understands like the importance of the Senate and she understands, you know, how important this is, but like she also felt like she had a responsibility to speak out so that people could see the full picture.

And anyway, I just kind of want to give you an open-ended opportunity to kind of discuss balancing like these questions and tricky situations. Yeah, you know, I teach. an MBA course and we talk about values and how every single person has to have their own personal values. I have four. I won't cite them except for one. One of my personal values is personal courage. The requirement to speak up and not stand back when I see something wrong occurring. But even by applying that particular value of personal courage, and by the way, that's an army

value too. You have to think about the repercussions and how you do it. Everybody struggles. I mean, I read the piece that you're talking about with the young woman. Everybody struggles with that conundrum of when do you step up, when do you hold your tongue. And I think everybody finds that sometime in their life it's hard to do. And they're kind of fraught and caught in a dynamic of, do I speak up or just stay quiet? We all have to deal with that. That's not. a military value, but it is. I mean, it's something we teach them. Personal courage is not just what we do on a battlefield by throwing ourselves on a grenade or facing the enemy. It's also providing, especially at the general officer level, providing input to our civilian masters, you know,

whether or not they want to hear it. So yeah, personal courage is a big deal, I think, for all of us. And it came through in this young woman. Do you have any thoughts in that class on how people balance it? Like what what factors to look at or is it really a judgment? It really comes down to judgment. Well, you have to identify, first of all, what your values are. Yeah. And that's one thing I find talking to most classes is they haven't even thought about it.

What are the things you truly believe in? And how do you approach those on the street? Personal courage can get you in trouble. You got to sometimes hold your tongue or find a more polite way to say things. So it requires a lot of thing in terms of your character build. But yeah, it's fascinating because all of the students, by the end of the leadership course that I teach, they have determined what their values are, they've defined them, and how they're going to approach them. But I tell them even when they turn in that assignment after they define anywhere from three to seven values,

I say, okay, you're still going to have trouble with each one of these trying to live by them. And it's true. We've left me with something to think about today. I've got a couple of them that are coming to mind, but I'm not just going to start. at spitball and I'm live on the podcast. Maybe we can do a check-in. We can do an MBA class check-in the next time you're on next quarter and I can report back on the values that I've been ruminating on. Well, I will give you one of my other ones, not only personal courage, but respect. And I respect all the things you're doing. Okay. Thank you so much. General Hurtling, it's so great to

have you as part of the bulwark. Thanks for sharing your expertise. As mentioned, go read his recent pieces of the bollwork.com and check out the work he's doing on command posts. on Substack and YouTube. Thanks so much. All right, Tim. Talk later. See you later. Thanks so much for a spirited discussion with Peers Morgan. Hopefully he's not scared anymore and we'll come back and do it again soon.

And also, boy, are we lucky to have Mark Hurtling. Appreciate him very much. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the show. We'll see you all then. Peace. The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.