The Bulwark Podcast - Robert Kagan and Marianne Williamson: Slipping Into Dictatorship

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Donald Trump is going to do everything he can to hold onto his near monopoly on power after the midterms. Beyond his scheme to invoke the Insurrection Act through a riot he’s trying to will into being in Minneapolis, he could also declare foreign election interference—or claim there was skullduggery afoot in Los Angeles or Georgia precincts. Anything to stall or stop the new Congress from being seated. Who’s going to stop him? Meanwhile, America will get the short end of the stick under his stupid new National Security Strategy. Plus, Dem elites since 2016 have failed to appreciate the economic despair among so many Americans, and some spiritual guidance for getting back to the moral and political pillars of the Declaration of Independence.Marianne Williamson and Bob Kagan join Tim Miller.show notes Bob's recent piece in The Atlantic Marianne's Substack Due to popular demand, we've added a second show in Minneapolis on Wednesday, February 18. Tickets are now on sale at TheBulwark.com/Events.

Access Storage presents the Olympic spirit. Hi, I'm Piper Gillis. And I'm Paul Porie. And we are Team Canada ice dancers. When we're in Milan, we aren't just representing all the accomplishments and the success it takes to get to the games. We're celebrating all the people at home. The people that have supported us, they're going to be cheering for us. When we go out on the ice, we're going to be skating.

We know our community's going to be cheering for us. We know the country's going to be cheering for us. And that's such an important and special feeling on the biggest stage. Thank you, Canada. Brought to you by Access Storage, proud partner of Team Canada. Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back, contributing writer at the Atlantic and senior fellow at Brookings. His most recent book is Rebellion, how anti-liberalism is tearing America apart.

Again, it's Bob Kagan. How you doing, Bob? I'm good. How are you? I am well. I should have mentioned the topic. We've got a double header today. We got Mary Ann Williamson in segment two. You know, it's kind of just natural, a natural pairing, Kagan and Williamson. People have been saying that to me. I want to start with your latest in the Atlantic. It is titled America versus the world. I guess the thesis here is about how Trump and his cronies are openly celebrating the end of the post-World War II Graham Bargain and talking about how unfair that was to us. Now we wasted so much money on it and it was too expensive and we're going to take advantage of.

And they have a new plan and a new plan that we're going to come to regret. How's that for the thesis? Does that sound right? Yeah, that's about right. I mean, they are reflecting, I think a broader American sort of, ignorance about how unusual the role the United States has played in the world since the end of World War II, how unusual the way other powers have responded to the United States in the sense that they've been willing to let the United States be the strongest power in the world

to place their security in American hands. That's just unprecedented in history. And it made for a very special kind of international environment and one very beneficial to the United States. And where is now taking us is back to a world that looks a lot more like the world that existed before World War II or leading into World War II, you know, a multipolar world where everybody's fending for himself. And that's a much more dangerous world for the United States. Let's do that little history lesson. I was intrigued by that in your article. And there's the period of a what they called the long peace in Europe where we had some version of what they're talking about with a more multipolar world.

And, you know, that piece wasn't quite as peaceful as the piece that we've had in the post-World War II, I guess. Yeah, you can read a lot of articles by sort of Trump sympathetic writers in foreign affairs these days about, hey, we can go back to a nice, you know, the concert of Europe and the multipolar world and the great powers all work it out. And the problem with that analogy is that if you actually look at the 19th century, yes, it was a, as these things go, was a better managed multipolar world than, say, the beginning of the 20th century. But it was still the case that practically in every single decade of this long piece, there was a major conflict involving two or more great powers, you know, conflicts that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and disrupted economies.

There was the Crimean War. There was the Franco-Prussian War, et cetera. And if we were actually to replicate that kind of world today, we would be having major wars involving Russia, China, maybe Japan, Germany, the United States, pretty much once every decade. And I just think, again, people are so used to the broad peace among great powers that we've enjoyed since the end of World War II that they just don't realize that a normal world is one where great powers are frequently in conflict. The pitch that's coming in those, I kind of even hate to give them the credit that they're writing in

journals, you know, because it's, it's kind of like monkeys throwing poop at a letter, you know, on the chalkboard. And we're saying, wow, very impressive. You know, it's not deep intellectuals in the MAGA foreign policy movement. But basically their pitch here is that we have a spheres of influence type situation where we, you know, get to, you know, take more influence over what's happening in Central and South America and, you know, the Chinese have their sphere of influence in Asia. unclear exactly what the Russian sphere of influences and where Europe fits into all that. But

let's like kind of play that out and what that looks like in your vantage point if that actually came to fruition. Yeah, I mean, the first thing to be said is that our, in that scenario, the American sphere of influence is a remarkably core, not particularly well-developed, not very industrial part of the world, while their spheres of influence include the major industrial centers, the most powerful economies in the world, et cetera. People talk about spheres of influence without really understanding what they're talking about most of the time. So what is Russia's sphere of influence? If you think about it historically, and I mean historically going back to the Tsars, not just back to Stalin, et cetera, Russia's natural sphere of influence definitely

includes the Baltic state. So they will no longer be independent. They will be under Russian control. Almost invariably throughout history for centuries, when Russia has, enjoyed its, what it regards is its appropriate sphere of influence, Poland has ceased to exist. It's either been partitioned between Russia and Germany or Russia and Prussia, or it's been totally subsumed under Russian control. So if you're a poll, if we grant Russia its natural sphere of influence, they cease to be an independent country. And the same is true in Asia. I'm sure if anybody who looks at Chinese history will say China's view of its natural, historic sphere of influence includes all of Southeast Asia and Japan and definitely Korea. So when people

talk about spheres of influence, they're basically selling out all kinds of very significant populations of people who currently enjoy their freedom and independence to put them under the thumb of Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. They're very generous with other people's countries and sovereignty and territory. But also, aside from what the horror that that would mean for those countries that are subsumed under those empires, the United States gets the worst part of this. The worst part of this deal. Maybe the best part for vacationing.

I don't know. China's got some good vacation territory. And that's how you feel about Machu Picchu in Patagonia and places like that. And also, it's a great step forward back to the 19th century when the United States, at the end of the 19th century, it had already accomplished basically hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. And we have enjoyed it ever since, by the way. So I don't even really understand what they think they're accomplishing in that sense. The big groups that are kind of left out of that conversation, as you just sort of did your Carmen San Diego going around the globe and

talking about who would have influence over what, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, you know, are much natural allies. You write that the Trumpist supporters seem to believe that these allies and others such as like Korea will just kind of go along with this. Be happy with the American approach. They're going to continue to tag along, subservient to us while we cut them loose strategically, extract steep economic tribute from them, and seek to establish concert with the other powers that threaten them. It seems like they probably won't be on board for that bargain.

We heard about that from Mark Carney recently, but I assume others will increasingly, you know, check out from that deal. Yeah, I mean, right now what you're seeing in Europe is the same kind of, you know, several stages of grief that we've been going through in the United States, which is to say a lot of denial at first, a lot of, can't we go back to the way things are, maybe in 2028, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that some of the more astute of them understand that it really is over with the United States and they need to start taking care of themselves.

And in the first term, various Trump bees like H.R. McMaster used to write, America first doesn't mean America alone. It's definitely going to mean America alone in the sense that we are not going to be buddies with Russia and China. They will continue their fundamentally hostile and aggressive view toward American leadership in the world. And we are going to lose these allies. And they're going to go from being in the allied column. in many cases to adversaries to the United States. Because one thing that I think people are not focusing on is most of these democracies, public opinion is incredibly hostile to the United States right now.

And it's only a matter of time before political leaders in those countries have to respond to the sort of increasing bitterness at the United States. You know, Americans sort of think that everybody in the world were just sort of put up with whatever we do, but it's not true. And if you tariff, just the tariffs alone, let alone the threatened aggression against, you know, Greenland, which is allied territory, the tariffs alone are infuriating. It's, you know, back in the day, you know, decades ago, tariffs were regarded as an act of war. And so we have basically committed at the very least exacting tribute for our great leader with these countries. And that's going to create all kinds of bitterness.

In the past, when there was anti-Americanism in Europe, for instance, which there was, the governments were like, we are not severing our relationship in the United States because they are providing protection for us. So what did the leaders do when we have made it clear we are no longer providing protection for them? And in fact, we are generally hostile to them, which, after all, the Trump administration from Trump all the way down throughout, you know, the State Department is making clear how hostile they are to Europe. So what do we expect them to do? They're not going to be our buddies.

I've got to mostly side with you there, maybe a little ungenerous towards HR McMaster. I don't think we're going to be alone. And we've got some key allies still. El Salvador, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, who owns half of Trump's business. Maybe Honduras, if they do the crypto city, Honduras, and that'd be on there. No, it's really, it's pretty good. It's extraordinary. In the article, I mentioned this very, I think he's a very, I think he's a a great Chinese strategic thinker. His name is Jan Shui Tong. And he has written a lot about how the difference between the United States and China is not military power and economic power, because China can eventually acquire those things, as it has been doing. But the big difference,

as he wrote some 10, 12 years ago, was that the United States had something like 50 allies and strategic partners around the world. And China had essentially none, you know, maybe a little Pakistan, maybe a little North Korea. And what you've just described is the new America, where we also have no allies around the world except for El Salvador and Honduras and whoever else Trump has seen fit to help get into office around the world.

So it is very much going to be not only America alone, but as I try to suggest, it's kind of America against everybody. You can't abuse everybody and expect them not to want to abuse you in return. One thing that is very opaque to me is how China is actually viewing all this. And obviously, they have their own internal political issues, as always they're dealing with. They're like for some, you know, another spade of purges recently. You know, so it's not like, you know,

they're firing on all cylinders in China. But it's hard for me to think about like how they look at this, whether it's kind of like, let the U.S. keep botching this. And we'll, we'll try to have some reproach mom with Canada and other countries and not do anything. rash or maybe it's like this is our opportunity to start being more aggressive. It's hard for me to figure. What's your sense? Well, I think it's more the latter. I mean, yes, I think they want to benefit from all the nations. We're alienating and it gives them an opportunity. They're a little ham-handed in dealing with that. They're not really great at sounding like you're a generous leader that everybody would want to side with. But nevertheless, people have to do what they have to do.

And so they are benefiting from that. I'm guessing, and I think if you look at what she has doing in the way people interpret these purges, he may well believe that the United States is not going to be like this forever, that it will eventually revert to its old self, which means that there is a brief window of opportunity to really accomplish major Chinese objectives. And I'm not a sinologist, but the sinologist that I read have been speculating that he purged at least one of these generals because they were being too cautious. on a Taiwan scenario, and that Xi Jinping really wants to, as he has said, really be ready to move in 2027. Xi Jinping has said, you know, we're seeing great changes in the world unseen in a century,

by which he basically means American retreat. And I think both he and Putin may see the next few years as a window of opportunity. And so I think there's a very reasonable chance that we will see a contingency, whether it's a blockade of Taiwan or or some other version of a takeover sometime in the next couple of years. The other output from all this is what our first while allies are going to do. And I mean, this is something, you know, while it's hard to predict exactly, you know, what China's strategic comparative is and when or if they decide to move on Taiwan, et cetera, it seems like our allies and former allies, Germany, Japan, Korea,

other European countries are going to have to do military buildups. and start to think about their own security minus the United States no matter what happens, right? Like even if, you know, the wheels start to come off the Trump train and it looks very clear that, you know, some internationalist Democrat is going to be the president in 2029. You can't look at what happened and think we are satisfied, you know, being this needy towards the U.S. for our security. That is the right thing for them to do. Now, you know, it's a challenge for them, obviously, because they have. for so long depended on the United States for all kinds of things, you know, intelligence and

control of the oceans, which they are not even close to being able to replicate. So it's going to require a significant transformation of these European economies and even their societies. And, you know, whether they're up to that, I don't know. It would be foolish of them after we have elected Donald Trump twice. And by the way, it's not like this is Harry Truman, Dean Atchison's Democratic Party, let's not forget. I mean, this wasn't exactly a Democratic Party that was sort of, you know, really showing American global leadership. I mean, that when Ukraine was invaded, Biden did the right thing, but he didn't do it

very forcefully or aggressively. So the notion that you're going to come back to post-World War II America is not true. And by the way, just really quick, one thing on the Democratic Party, just worth putting, I think you accurately analyze the nature of the Biden-era Democratic Party and the kind of limits on their willingness to engage in the world. It seems to me like the average Democratic voter, though, looks at the Hillary Biden-Kamala era as being too interested in foreign meddling. And it seems to be like totally natural that some Democratic politician in 2028 emerges running more towards like some version of. you know, we, you know, should do less foreign adventurism and we should be more focused on, you know, on peace and not have, you know, whatever, this bipartisan establishment,

blob running the party. I think that's probably the likely pivot for the Democratic Party in 28. Look, let's face it, the national consensus on foreign policy in both parties had gotten to the point where everybody thought, we're doing too much out there. Why are we engaged? the Soviet Union is gone, et cetera. That's been happening since the end of the Cold War. So that is a reality. And let's not forget also, when it comes to trade, it was the Democrats who began the major hostility to foreign trade.

They were the ones who wouldn't pass a trade bill. They were the ones who had to abandon Hillary Clinton's own negotiated partnership with Asia, et cetera. And so, you know, Trump in a way is late to the party on, on protectionism. So I don't know that if the Democrats come back in 2028, that they're going to get rid of all these tariffs. Didn't Gretchen Whitmer say she kind of likes tariffs a little bit? And when Biden kept some of the Trump tariffs in the first time, yeah. By traditional standards in the post-war period, Biden was a pretty protectionist president.

And they'll probably get rid of the stupidest ones, you know, which is nice. And there is some unique elements to Trump's protectionism, just how stupid and corrupt it is. So there's some stupid and corrupt ones they can get rid of. But like, there's corruption and there's the vindictiveness. And I didn't like the way the Swiss president talked to me. So they get that percent tariffs and all that kind of stuff. So sure, we'll have a more rational protectionist system under the Democrats. Anyway, let us get to the point where we have a different administration in 2028. I don't think we're going to have fair elections in 2026. So, and by the way, the world needs to understand that too. They sort of can't believe, it's hard for them to believe the United States is actually slipping into dictatorship.

And as that becomes clearer, that is also going to have an effect on the way the rest of the world views us. At least when we were a democracy, there was sort of shared values, even if we were not behaving as responsibly as we could be. But when the United States is a dictatorship, I don't know why we would expect European or Asian countries that are not dictatorships to think kindly about us. Let's go to that question about 2026. You've been, I think, on more of the leading edge of the alarmism on this, which I like. I'm always interested in hearing alarm mistakes.

You said this. I think it's to the New Yorker. There's no chance in the world that Trump is going to allow himself to lose in the 26 elections because that will be the end of his ability to wield total power in the United States. I guess my quibble with that would be the words going to allow himself. I think that he obviously would like to rig it. I'm just not so sure he's very good at that. expand on your concerns about the midterms?

Well, I mean, first of all, you know, when we say things like he's not very good at it, we've already pocketed the fact that in one year they destroyed the federal government. I mean, it's really quite an accomplishment. I think historians will look back on this period and say, wow, boy, I'll tell you what, Stephen Miller and Russell Vaught, that's world historical stuff that they'd done. They took a democratic system and basically dismantled it in one year. We are used to the fact that the Justice Department is now a wholly owned legal service for going after Trump's enemies. We've internalized the facts.

This is what I'm saying. They're better at some things than others. They're really good at dismantling the government. They're good at the immigration, you know, shit. They've struggled at the taking over the DOJ. I mean, they're trying really hard, but like they keep stepping on Rakes. Nobody's in jail yet. We're free.

You and me are free. Don Lemon is back out of jail. Jim Comey's okay. So far. I'm just like where we're at so far. We're 14 months into this thing, so give it time. But no, I think that we need to take it very seriously because I've seen Minnesota as fundamentally not about immigration and deportation.

I see it as deliberate intimidation and bullying by the federal government of a state. I think that ICE, the purpose of ICE, is in fact to create protests and riots so that Trump can invoke the Insurrection Act and send, you know, the military in to protect the ballots, et cetera, and they get handed over to the Justice Department to see whether there was, I mean, when Trump talks about nationalizing the elections, which he's now done two consecutive days, it's not like this was a throwaway. He clearly has this on his brain. whether he's able to completely pull it off or not, it doesn't have to be pulled off. It just has to be a mess.

If all we have are undecided elections because the federal government thinks that something was done, there was a little skullduggery going on in Georgia or in Los Angeles, et cetera. So we really need to take a good look at that. What could happen is weeks can go by while they take a look at that. Months can go by while they take a look at that. And you don't ever actually seat a new Congress. And that isn't even a direct attack on the Constitution. It's more, everything's a mess.

What do you expect us to do? And here's my question for you. Who is going to stop them? Is the Republican Party going to stop them? The Republican Party is the party of dictatorship today. I wish people would start talking about that more openly. Because, you know, they've sort of, the Republican congressmen have sort of getting away with, well, that Trump, he's doing stuff.

Sometimes we agree. Sometimes we don't want to talk about it. Blah, blah, blah. The fact is, Everybody knows Trump is trying to create a dictatorship and the Republicans are down with it. The leadership of the party is not going to stop him if it costs them their job. So they're down. It's the party of dictatorship now.

So who's going to stop these guys? The court, Supreme Court? I'm going to field that question. And look, I think for starters, the people are going to stop them because they're going to get slonged in the house probably in November. And I was in your boat six months. I was talking to Mark Elias about this. And I was like, I'm not concerned about them, whatever, seizing the ballot boxes and having like an actual fake election.

I am worried about there being an election and them doing what you just laid out, which is stalling and delaying and challenging everything in the courts and not seating people. The issue is that they tried to rig the elections through gerrymandering so they could give themselves more of a cushion and absolutely failed, totally backfired on them. And we should shout out the people in Indiana and others, a handful of good Republicans. left out in the provinces. And so now they have this tiny majority. Like it's a two-seat majority, basically, in the house as it stands right now.

So to steal a line from Trump, I just think it might end up being too big to cheat. You know, and if they end up losing by 20 seats, like what, they're not going to seat 22 people? Maybe. Like, maybe they won't do that. But like, we've seen in the past from them that they try to cheat, they try to cheat. And then, like, in certain times they back down, right? Like Doug Maastriano didn't, nobody stormed to the Harrisburg capital after Joshua Peter will beat him by 17 points. Like, if Josh Fierre beat him by one point, I bet people would have

stormed the Harrisburg Capitol. You know, so I do think that stuff matters. And I think that the Supreme Court also matters. Like when it's been close calls, they've been giving it to Trump. When Trump has done like totally insane stuff, well, I guess maybe you wouldn't say the immunity for Trump wasn't a close call. But there have been times that the Supreme Court has rebuffed him. So that would be my reaction. Well, I mean, good luck. I would say good luck, America. Yeah. Just take ICE, for instance. Let's say ICE goes into Los Angeles County and three weeks ahead of the election and is just doing in Los Angeles what it has been doing in Minneapolis. Are people who are non-white going to feel safe going to the polls when they know that whether they are citizens or not, they could wind up being sent off to some Texas detention center and then. released and told to find their own way back home. I mean, it's sort of a euphemism to talk about

voter suppression. What they're really talking about is frightening the hell out of everyone who is not a white American from coming to the polls. So there'd be that element. The purpose of ICE is to spark riots, I believe. That's why they encourage them to be as brutal as possible. This is not an accident. There's so much talk about how, oh, they're not trained. If only they were trained, this nonsense. They want them to do this. They're encouraging them to be brutal so that there will be protest. This is definitely the Stephen Miller playbook so that they will be brutal and therefore spark riots, which then, if you do get into the Insurrection Act territory, historically, the court has been very reluctant to question the president's judgments about national security.

That's how we got the Korematsu decision about Japanese internment. The court was not going to question the president's judgment about national security. And that was Franklin Roosevelt. So when Donald Trump says, hey, there's a national emergency. There is foreign power involvement. I'm sure Tulsi will be there to tell us about how there's foreign government involvement. I don't trust the court in that case to overrule the president's judgment, especially this court. At the end of the day, and this is the thing that I think would just been really slow to pick up on. At the end of the day, things are about power. We keep hoping that the American spirit and the American institutions and all those things,

all those wonderful things that we believe in are the things that are going to protect us. These guys are wielding force and they have a near monopoly of power. And you have to ask, what scruple does Trump have that is going to prevent him from taking these elections and messing with them in any way that he wants to? So I don't know. I'm not as optimistic as you are, Tim. When did someone say that on this podcast before? Can we get that clip and save?

I'm not as optimistic. I love you. I love having it. It's important. Sometimes I feel like I'm totally deranged. And it's like, I like hearing from people that are like, no, actually, you're not concerned enough. I like that.

That's important. It's important ballast. I'm quite serious. I really do. I know you are. Can I just offer here? Just really quick before you. Just let me say, here's the area where I don't know if I called optimism.

I'm just saying that like, the forces of political gravity still exist, I guess. And that's why I'm just saying it's not totally hopeless. And for example, I agree with your assessment about Minneapolis. They wanted to spur riots. It is intentional. The people that killed Renee Good and Alex Pready, none of them are the new Dean Kane recruits. All of them have been around for 10 years.

And so I agree with you. The people of Minneapolis haven't done it. And Trump backed off a little bit. No, not a ton, not a ton. And so it's not a lot to be excited about. I'm just saying that, like, they can be pushed back. And like there are limits to their ability to, you know, be totally shamelessness and how they're going to seize power. I mean, they're extremely shameless.

But, but, like, he has, Trump has demonstrated that, like, he has only so much appetite for pain. I agreed that if I were Stephen Miller, I'd be very unhappy with Trump right now. Because the proper response to what was happening was just shut up and that this is who we are. And Trump does have a weakness as a dictator, which is at certain. points he doesn't like to have people mad about something and the optics are bad. Fred didn't hug you. I thank God Fred didn't hug him, it turns out. If he had a more loving father and didn't have that empty hole in his heart, maybe he could have been a worse dictator. And the Republicans are very sort of amusing about this, which is we're down with the

dictatorship, but can it be less messy? Let's not be murdering people in the streets. That's unpleasant. We get bad mail from our constituents. But but otherwise they're down with it. And by the way, have you noticed that basically 40% of the public is also down with the dictatorship? I mean, it's not like you can't know anymore what Trump's intentions are, how he's behaving. And yet he's still at, I don't know, roughly, whether give or take, he's at roughly 40%. That tells us something about the limits on him as well, right? And again, not to repeat myself, but I just think we don't really understand about what it means when they have all the power.

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Kushner-Wikoff, we're supposed to be in Istanbul Friday for talks with Iran, but Iran wants to meet Noman. We'll see what happens. There's been some encounters in the Gulf with various ships and drones. You know, a lot of folks are pushing for Trump to be more aggressive in Iran. You wrote a couple of months ago now about how alarming that is to you, just for domestic purposes in particular. But just give us a quick summary of your view on what's happening there.

Well, there's two things. There's the foreign policy side of it and then there's domestic side of it. I'll just dispense with the domestic side quickly. Why was Stephen Miller so gung-ho about Venezuela? Was he concerned about oil? No. For him, it is about domestic politics. And the more that you can say, we are at war with someone, the more power the president theoretically has domestically. So there's that. There's also the fact that I think that there's no question that they are trying to militarize American. society in many ways. And it goes with the use of the military abroad and also the sort of desire to use the military at home. We've become an increasingly militarized society under Trump, and that's deliberate on their part. So this sort of let's go bomb people, let's go kidnap people. It just shows how strong I am, Donald Trump. It shows how our military is the greatest institution,

etc. And I'm a big fan of our military, and I'm sorry that they've been put in this position, but they are now a potential weapon against democracy, and Trump wants to use them that way. So that's the domestic side of it. On the foreign policy side of it, I'm sort of amused in a way. We are now back to the 1990s when the Clinton administration and others, including people like Don Rumsfeld and Richard Pearl, they thought they could solve every problem by bombing. The notion that you can accomplish things on the ground simply by bombing places was demonstrated to be wrong in the 1990s. And Trump hasn't shown unusual courage internationally. The reason we used ground troops in Iraq in 2003 was that bombing Iraq didn't accomplish any objectives as we learned.

And so my question is, what are we accomplishing from bombing Iran? And by the way, I would like to see very much this regime fall. I pray for the Iranian people that this regime falls. But if you ask me, does Trump actually give a hoot about democracy in Iran or the people of Iran? In Venezuela, he turned the government over to the next in command of the dictator that had to be removed because he was so terrible. So who are they going to hand the government over to in Iran in the event that Iran actually falls? But I'm even skeptical that bombing is really the solution to anything right now. So until you show me an actual plan with an actual outcome that I can imagine, I just think

Trump, this is all about Trump. It's about his glory. It's about, look at me. I can bomb places, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm just not that enthusiastic about it as some people are. Lassie, you are ahead of the game on leaving the Washington Post. You popped out of there. My God, a year ago, maybe the last time you were on, on your own volition.

And they're firing a bunch of people today, getting rid of local news. I guess they're going to lean into more glowing Melania documentary coverage. But I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on the layoffs today. Well, it's funny because I resigned the day that he announced that he was not going to endorse Kamala Harris. And it was not because I cared a great deal about endorsing Kamala Harris one way or the other. But it was clearly, to me, a sign of where he was going, which is that he was going to knuckle under to Trump. That very same day, I feel like this is underreported. The very same day, the Post announced that the Blue Origin executives, which are Bezos's, you know,

space program met with Trump on the side of one of his events in a clearly orchestrated me quid pro quo meeting. And so none of this is really surprising. And the fact is he couldn't care less about the Washington Post, obviously. I don't know why he won't just sell it, to be honest, but he took it over as a kind of charity when he was when he was like thinking he was a good guy. But now he's just thinking like he's an oligarch in the Trump entourage. So the post is a victim of that. Bob Kagan, thank you so much, man. You got to be back more often. Okay, I need somebody to check me. You need a wake-up call, Tim. There's more question about it. Yeah. All right. Up next, Marianne Williamson. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sometimes it feels like everybody else has it all together in

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this. She writes, I love your willingness to examine your consciousness. And I heard you say, recently you want to have more guests on who may have different views. So I'd like to suggest you talk to Marianne Williamson. If you took her seriously as a presidential candidate, but she learned some things. I think she'd be interesting. Cheryl, in parentheses, one of your boomer granny fans. And so Cheryl, I listened to a good suggestion. And I got that. I forwarded it to everybody. I was like, this is exactly right. We should have Marianne Williamson on. So thank you. I'm just curious kind of at the biggest picture how you're seeing things now, the state of a state of affairs? I don't think it's hyperbole to call them catastrophic.

Yeah. It will go down in the history books as one of the darkest chapters in American history. I hope that those history books will be written when there is still an American democracy. I think there will be, ultimately. I don't think it's going to be quick. I think this is a deep cancer in the bones, as it were. It will. take time, I think will ultimately come out on the other side better than ever, but not real soon. That's what I think. You do think will come out the other side? Why?

I think some generation of Americans will rise up. I don't know if I as a boomer will see it in my lifetime. This could take up to 20 years. But I do think this. I think that there is in the DNA of this country a spirit. and you see it on the streets of Minneapolis. Most of the institutions, which we would have looked to to either prevent this horror or have stopped it by now, have either been so corrupted to be nullified or have themselves fallen.

But what has not fallen are the people of Minneapolis. That is our Lexington and Concord. These are the heroes of this moment. And the reason what they have done is so important is because they have created a temple, They've not only stood up in Minneapolis, but they've created a template so that when and if Tom Homan takes that show on the road. And I don't know if you know it's just come over the wires. You know, they are taking 700 ICE agents out of the city. I don't know if you've seen that fact yet.

But if there are things that ICE is doing, for instance, that the people don't like, then the people are showing in Minneapolis and hopefully we'll show elsewhere where to happen. that they will not take this. It's the character of the American people that will save us now. I agree with all that. And I was making that same case to Bob Kagan just three minutes ago. I kind of want to learn a little bit more about like why you wanted to get into the Democratic presidential nomination the two times. Like what were you seeing that you felt like the more traditional candidates in the Democratic Party were missing? Like why did you feel like you, you know, offered something different? Because I have traveled this kind of. country in my work for over 40 years. And my work has put me very up close and personal

with the deepest human suffering. And what I saw as human suffering in the 80s through things like AIDS, the crisis was the exception and not the rule. By the end of the last century, I saw way too many people all over this country for whom the crisis was the rule and not the exception. The problem wasn't just that they were diagnosed with cancer. The problem was that they didn't have health insurance. Or even if they had health insurance, I was so underinsured that they could afford to go to the doctor, but they couldn't afford the tests that the doctor said that they needed. And I heard that horror story from doctors as much as I heard it from people. I saw up close the economic despair, the chronic economic despair. And I saw who was making

the decision in the Democratic Party. These are people who rarely leave Sun Valley. These are people who rarely leave the Hamptons. These are people who are so ensconced in Georgetown and the Upper East of New York or Tribeco or Bel Air, they didn't have a clue. And they thought they were so smart because they understood the mechanics of modern American politics. They had no clue as to the mechanics of evil. And if they had even had a rudimentary knowledge or even thought that they needed to have a rudimentary knowledge of world history, they would have known how unsustainable it is to have that many people living with that kind of of chronic economic despair. When you have that much misery, human misery in masses of people,

it becomes a petri dish out of which all manner of societal dysfunction and personal dysfunction is absolutely inevitable. That includes attraction to a political strong man. That includes ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces. You don't have to be a sociologist to know this. You can have a seventh grade understanding of every revolution in history. And what I saw was the unbelievable arrogance of those who didn't think that they owed it to the party or to the American people to even listen to voices beyond the narrow mechanistic 20th century. Let's just treat the symptom. Let's not have any broader view of what's really going on beneath the surface. And I knew that that was a prescription for disaster.

And I knew in 2024 that what the Democrats were offering would not beat Trump. I had seen up close the rage. I had seen how in 2016, two candidates in 2016 said to the American people, your rage is legitimate. Your pain is legitimate and it's valid. Two people told them that, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Only one of them meant it. And what I saw in 24 was that this rage had only multiplied and that telling people that the economy was really doing well and these incremental approaches towards people, 60% of whom paycheck to paycheck, I don't think that the people who are making the major decisions in the Democratic Party really viscerally understood or took the time to even try what it means in the life of a family, a man and a woman,

or two men or two women, to live paycheck to paycheck. That means you're one disaster away from living in your car. And so, as a friend of mine said, it went to hear Trump speak, he said, I wanted to just understand. And he said that when he left the rally, what he heard in his heart was, people will go with false hope before they'll go with no hope. So I saw it. And I kept waiting for some Democrat to talk about it. So I thought, well, I will. Nobody else.

Were you for Bernie and 16? Oh, absolutely. Were you for Bernie in 16? Yeah. Yeah. I guess my more generous interpretation of the Democrats is I think that a lot of them do understand the pain that people are going through, but their answer to it was very white paper oriented. Like, here's the list of my bullets for how things will get better and that there was not

an emotional connection. And it's like, who was the last Democrat that like really? demonstrated an emotional connection with people's economic pain that was of the nominees. And you kind of have to go back to Bill Clinton, I think. I mean, like Bill Clinton, I don't, you know, people might not like his policies or whatever. You can quibble over, like him and Bernie's policies were very different, of course. But Clinton was good at making people feel like he heard their suffering and wanted to do something about it.

I feel your pain was one of his famous, yeah, one of his famous lines. I think that's true. But I think that also during the Clinton administration, and by the way, I agree with you, there are a lot of certainly Democratic voters. There are a lot of Democratic politicians, and they're demonstrating it now. My condemnation was of a small group of elite who are making decisions at the top of the heap, and if I have any problem with all the people that you're mentioning, is that they were willing to go along. Of course, I mean, I'm a Democrat.

I remember, and I agree with what you're saying, although it was under the Clinton administration, that the Democrats turned into a party that more than not said, we do feel your pain and we want to help you up until the point where to go any further would challenge our own donor base. Thus began the era of incremental change. I feel like a lot of times folks, you know, coming from your critique of the Democratic Party and a lot of like the Bernie left type. just critique of the Democratic, but you do come back to that, which is like you're too in league with your corporate donors. And I think that there's kind of like two elements to that. Like, I think that they were very in league to the corporate donors sometimes on economic issues, but also too responsive to them on social matters as well. I mean, like the, there is, you know, the old saying about kind of like the limousine liberal, the Berkeley liberal that is like,

I want to protect my own wealth, right? Like, we don't want to build new houses in my neighborhood, We don't want to do too much to change the economic system. But I also am like extremely left wing on social and cultural matters that are very out of step with like how the average voter in Ohio thinks about them. And I wonder what you think about that like kind of balance. The Democrats, I think, felt like they were reaching the left by really kind of leaning in on a lot of cultural issues, you know, rather than on economic issues. It's not that I don't agree with you. The problem is that we're doing what I believe is done too often when we're talking about the Democratic Party. You're talking about the decision makers.

You're talking about the elected officials, but not necessarily the base of the Democratic Party. And that's a mistake that, interestingly enough, the Republicans do not make. The Republicans have the more elitist policies, God knows. But they have a strangely more egalitarian relationship with their own base. Everything that you're talking about, we talk about the Democrats, like it's these people up. there. And what I learned running twice and traveling this country for over 40 years is that the people, and I think this is to me the great possible tragedy of this moment, is that the problem is not with the American people. The American people are decent. The American people are smart.

And the American people, it's a truism of psychology that people hear you on the level that you speak to them from. To me, the problem with the Democratic Party is that, number one, and I certainly, saw this up close. It was willing to compromise its dedication to the democratic process in its own ranks. And it was unwilling to have a deeper conversation based on the real principles not only traditionally of the Democratic Party, but of the country itself, starting back with the Declaration of Independence. It stopped talking to the American people about the things that matter most. And that is how we lost people. The American people lost our emotional connection with the principles of the people. on which his country is founded.

And that, to me, that is the story that the Democratic Party should see itself as the keeper of. And stay with that and stay with the traditional principles of the Democratic Party and none of this other stuff would have even mattered. By the way, just as like from a strategist standpoint, speaking about your second run

when Biden was the incumbent, probably would have been better for Biden to actually debate other Democrats and be on stage and for us to see firsthand where he was rather than waiting and told us with Trump. That's probably would have better for us to, like, you know, walk him around the block a few times before the Trump debate.

Let's talk about that. CNN was having all these town halls. They would have it for the Republicans. They wouldn't have it for the sole Democrat at that time, even when my poll numbers were higher than Chris Christie, Vakramaswamy, et cetera. But it wasn't just about one individual. It was about the fact that with those Republican debates, with those Republican town halls, the Republicans were eating up all the oxygen.

And the Democratic voters, which will just be quiet, be quiet. Everybody stand in line. And when the time comes, we'll all show up to vote. That's not a democratic process. We needed to be in there. It wasn't just that Biden himself needed to go around, you know, take the car around the block, as you said. But Democratic voters needed to hear something to be excited about. The memo had gone out to the Democratic senators and congressmen.

We're not having a primary. What? Ron Clayne and a few people in the uptop decided that. And then they spread every narrative possible to make the Democratic voter buy him with that. So you're absolutely. It probably would have been better. We have a political media industrial complex, Tim, and they think they have the right to make the decisions for the American people. I want to ask about one other Democratic thing and then take us back to the Trump administration. There's a lot of conversation. I do this because I do think it's important. I think that the Democrats lost a lot of ground with a specific demographic of men, men that had been voting for, you know, Democrats have voted for Obama and then flip to Trump, a lot of working class types, talk about the Manosphere and the Joe Rogan. crowd. And it's true. But I do think that what is lost a little bit in that conversation is that Democrats also lost to ground with kind of a demographic that followed you and the type of

work that you did. The female voters, you know, who are more into the whatever health and spirituality kind of space got attracted to what RFK was offering. And when RFK ended up going with Trump and bringing Maha with him, you see, you know, whatever it is, fitness. You know, not all this is, you're not a CrossFit influencer, but I mean, it's the same types of people. The wellness community. No, you're right. Right.

And those had been traditionally Democratic voters. And some of them, I think, felt like they were not being listened to. And they went along with RFK. And so I'm curious both of whether you think that's correct analysis and what you think that demographic is thinking about how RFK is doing. Well, I think that your analysis is correct, but the first one you mentioned is equally as important as the wellness. And that has to do with men. I was living in Detroit.

I was the minister in a non-denominational church, a large non-denominational church, and more in Michigan during the economic crisis of 2008. And all day, every day, I was counseling people. This is in a blue-collar neighborhood in Michigan. Now, this is a generality. It's anecdotal. But when you're on the street as a minister at a blue-collar church, you're seeing what's really going on. And I saw something very interesting, a difference between how women handle, generally, women handle an economic crisis versus how men handle it. So the woman would come in.

She's very nervous. How am I going to feed my kids? How am I going to pay the rent? Believe me, I saw horrible things. I saw women who were having to choose between their insulin. And, you know, if I buy my insulin, we won't be able to pay the rent. But if we're living in the car, at least my kids will have a mom. I saw this over and over.

But I saw women who felt the economic crisis as something that just needed to be dealt with. It was men over and over and over again for whom the economic crisis, crisis was a psychic crisis, a psychological crisis, an emotional crisis. And on a level of my wife will not respect me, my kids will not respect me, what it meant for these guys that her paycheck was paying the rent, I saw grown men, big grown men crying. The Democratic Party had no idea what it was doing, how it was undercutting the sense of manhood and power and productivity of men, particularly in areas like that, who would drive your people. through the neighborhoods. They grew up in. My father worked at that factory before him. His grandfather

worked at that factory. When I was a kid here, we used to play ball. This is what happens when your politics does not allow for any level of psychological or emotional understanding of just what it means to be human living at the effect of these things. Yeah. And I see that in my life. You just see it. Like the psychological impact of economic struggles on men. For men, it just is a fact. It's not true 100% of the time, but their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is so much more tied to work. Absolutely. Their productivity. To women, they want their feelings, cherished.

Men, they want their thoughts respected for a man to feel disrespected, particularly in his home. I've seen it over and over and over again. And sometimes this leads to fragility. I mean, we see this on the rich side of the skills, why a lot of these rich tech bros went with Trump because they were so fragile. They felt disrespected by the Democrat. And so they went on with Trump and I have no empathy for that or no sympathy for that. That's a whole different thing. Yeah.

No, it is it though. It's the same psychological thing. There's just no credibility behind it. There's just, you know, they just don't, right? I don't think so. You don't think so? No, no, I don't. If I understand what you're saying, because if I understand what you're saying,

you're referring to a bunch of tech pros and went to the by the- I'm talking about like just, I'll say it specifically. Like Elon Musk, people say that Elon went for Trump because he didn't get invited to the White House and like he didn't feel respected in his work. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

That is who I'm talking about. And they went to the White House and they were met by a 25-year-old aide rather than Biden and everything they tried to suggest. They were told, no, no, no. Of course, they were insulted. That's real different than what I'm talking about. They weren't leaving their thinking, oh, my God, how will I pay my rent? How will I raise my kids? Will my wife respect me?

Of course not. By the way, the strategy on the part of the Democratic power elite was equally stupid. In what way? Well, what you just said. If you're dealing with an Elon Musk, if you're dealing with these big tech pros who are coming from Silicon Valley and are coming to Washington, you at least pretend to have some of their ideas. Well, some of their ideas might have even contributed to the party. I want to go back to Maha just really quick. What do you make of RFK and what he's doing?

In the past, you also had some vaccine skepticism. We're seeing measles rates go up. We're seeing a lot of kind of fake lip service towards healthy eating with not a lot of, you know, policies that are doing the opposite? What do you make of RFK in that movement? Many of the things that I stood for as well certainly did not represent what I call, certainly not anti-vax or anything like that. And that, of course, is used to slap onto anyone who has any legitimate questions at all. And I think particularly a lot of mothers, there were mothers who were biochemistry PhDs who just had questions about all of the different chemicals

that were in one particular vaccine, etc. I don't think these women, this is an example of treating those mothers like they were stupid and they should just fall in line. That was not a smart thing. I certainly don't agree with Bobby that we should not have childhood vaccines or anything like that. I think it's terrible what's happening. I heard the other day that he's talking about making the polio vaccine optional. It's outrageous. So of course we should have childhood vaccines and all of that. A lot of the things I talked about in terms of food, Bobby was also talking about. talking about. There were other reasons why my voice having been as erased and invisibleized as it was, I could not match Bobby's megaphone in terms of talking about some of these issues regarding food and so forth. I'm not saying anything to you that I wouldn't say to his face. Sure. That I haven't said to Mark Hyman and others, nothing justifies, nothing justifies playing along with Donald Trump in my book. Nothing would have justified going along with him and nothing would have, even now, when they talk about, well, some of my friends who are highly placed,

advisors and so forth, saying, well, we will be able to make a difference in food policy. I don't care. You're still supporting what I believe is ultimately a fascist division. So that's how I feel about it. Do you think Bobby's genuine about that or do you think this is just another kind of male insecurity thing where he wants his recognition? He didn't get his recognition and now he's got it. I don't want to comment on that. It's not for me to say. Okay.

I'm not living inside Bobby's heart. Another thing that you that I think is probably telling is a contrast between what you were campaigning on in this administration is you're, and some people, some people made fun of you. We can just say about kind of the Department of Peace, you know, this notion that we needed Army of Love, Department of Peace. And I think that it's pretty striking now to see that this administration has changed the Department of Defense name, but opposite of what you suggest. to the Department of War. I'm wondering what your kind of reaction to all that is. We were complaining for a long time shouting about the fact that the U.S. military budget was almost a trillion dollars. Now the new budget that Trump wants is $1.5 trillion. If you put together all of the military spending of all the nations in the world, double that.

We have more. Everybody knows about the military industrial complex. This is obviously not about making America secure. It certainly isn't making America secure. Plus, you add to that now, if you listen to people like Jacob Silverman, that pretty profound book, Gilded Rage, now with all the tech bros who have found the military, their new toy, you have a military tech industrial complex. Then you compare that with the constantly diminished budget that is given to the State Department. Ronan Tera wrote that real interesting book years ago called War on Peace. And there's one image in that book I thought was really interesting. He said if it was 50 years ago, the president would be meeting about foreign policy,

and the State Department would be at the table, and the military guys would be sitting in chairs on the outer rim of the room. He said now, if the president's talking about foreign policy, he has the military guys at the table, and the State Department on the other side of the room, on the far end of the room. It used to be, he said, that if any policy was suggested and someone piped up and said, I don't know, state would have a problem with that,

then they would have to put it by State Department because the State Department was talking about diplomacy. Today, if somebody said State would have a problem with that, somebody would go, ooh, we're scared. And probably Marco Rubio is playing along with those guys anyway. We have militarized our whole idea of foreign policy. Now also, with the complete demolition of USAID, we're not even using powers of soft power.

So anybody who laughs, you know, this whole idea of laughing at that. There are people who have treated, obviously, well, how naive to think love and humanitarian values and democratic values should be the bottom line of how we organize human civilization. You know what I say? I'll tell you what's naive. What's naive is thinking we will even have a reasonable chance of surviving this planet for another hundred years if we don't at least try. and so if anything the current situation is showing us their way took us to where we are how are we doing guys and i think that that's opening a lot of of ears and i hopefully it's opening a lot of women's mouths so that women will begin to speak their peace more we should be saying the wisdom

of our own hearts a little more and fearing the abject derision and mockery of the old patriarchal border, much less. Kind of related topic, I see you posted about just the just horrible tragedy of the situation that has befallen women and girls in Afghanistan. I was happy to see you posted about that. I think a lot of people on the left have been hesitant to want to talk about it because they feel like to say they're concerned about women and girls in Afghanistan in some way also means that they're like for the Afghanistan war or like against Biden's

withdrawal from Afghanistan. And so, like, their plight, I think, is not as at the forefront as it might have been otherwise. And what is happening to them in Afghanistan is just so tragic. And so I'm just wondering how you, like, think about balancing that, like talking and advocating for them without necessarily, you know, banging war drums. Even before 9-11, Jay Leno's wife had brought the treatment of women by. the Taliban into public consciousness. Many women, I was one, were made aware of the treatment of women by the Taliban, mainly by Maeve Leno, even before 9-11. When we went into Afghanistan, the problem was not just that we went into Afghanistan, and I have a lot of this on my substack. It's what we

did once we were there. It was so terrible that, first of all, that we gave so much to the warlords and that we did not, in fact, build a democratic society. We got to the point. We got to the point where the hatred of the Afghan people for America was just a little bit less than their hatred of the Taliban. Then when we left, my problem was not just that we left, how we left, how we left, and all of the women that we ignored, all of the women who had helped us who were left behind. Yes, it was absolutely shameful. And you're right. People on the left, in my opinion, were way too quick to say, oh, no, we had to leave. It's good that we left. Yay for Biden that we left.

And when you say, but these women who were left behind, that we didn't even try to say that human rights groups and women's groups were saying, you've got to take these women with you. Even the left was like, no, no, no, we have to leave. We left. It's good. Terrible.

And even now, even now we'll not stand up for. It's really tragic. Okay. I want to leave you with this. I have one of my good friends as a big longtime Marianne fan and was kind of awakening me to your sort of audience. and following a niche within the Democratic primary whenever you first ran, whenever that was seven years ago now.

So I asked her what I should ask you. And she asked this. She said, I want you to ask her as a faith leader how we can wake these evangelicals the fuck up and just more broadly about the kind of role of spirituality in our society right now. Our job is not to wake other people up. Our job is to wake up. and if we are going to do a true spiritual healing, you know, we're living in an all-systems breakdown here. And the only way we would be able to deal with it is through an all-system's response.

It's like when you heal the body. Our mode of politics has been like old-fashioned allopathic medicine. You didn't take care of your lifestyle. You didn't take care of nutrition. You didn't take care of exercise. You just hoped you wouldn't get sick. And then if you did get sick, you hope to have an external remedy that could suppress or eradicate the symptom. We now have an integrative approach.

You don't just heal sickness. You proactively cultivate health. We did not proactively cultivate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We were the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world. Americans will only be able to interrupt the horrible devolutionary trajectory of our country, at this point, if a critical mass of us are willing to look deep at all the ways that this could have been prevented, all the ways that we ourselves as citizens were too eager to just hand over our critical thinking to political parties and other elite, rather than recognizing the deep

devastation that was being wrought in people's lives in a 50-year slide, $50 trillion transfer of wealth, the fact that you had 17 to 90 million people who were underinsured or uninsured, that you had over a million people rationing their insulin, that you had people having such a difficult time getting into the economy, getting into higher education and other portals that might give them a better life. So right now, the issue for those of us anywhere near the left is to not worry about what other people think. The problem was not just Donald Trump. Donald Trump was a symptom. He was a symptom of the thing. He was a symptom of the things I talked to about before, that we squandered. America needs to own the fact that over a million

Iraqis died. America needs to own the policies in Latin America that created such devastation that contributed to our immigration problems as an individual and as a nation. You don't heal by just pointing the blame at other people. At this point, obviously, it's not left versus right. It's democracy and humanitarian values. It's the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, versus forces of authoritarianism, a totalitarianism. But we won't win that struggle just by pointing to other people and thinking they should have done it differently. We have to really own in our hearts how we pave the way to this. But does it require a spiritual response or just a policy response?

That's just language. Spirituality simply means the path of the heart. Not really, though. It means the path of the heart. And some people see it through a religious lens, some through more agnostic, some do a secular. But it means that you put first and foremost, there is no religious or spiritual path that gives anyone a path on addressing the suffering of other human beings. When you look how many people have suffered both in this country and around the world because of American domestic

and foreign policy over the last 50 years. And by the way, if I may say so, two things I'd like to point out, every great social justice movement in the history of the United States from abolition to women's suffrage, to the civil rights movement, were based in religious and spiritual circles. Among white Americans, the abolitionist movement, emerged from the early evangelical churches in New Hampshire. Many of the women who were head of the suffrages movement were religious Quakers, and Dr. King was a Baptist preacher. Their politics was based on a deep moral commitment to, I believe, what is the spiritual basis of Declaration of Independence. That's what we have to go back to, to the moral as well as the political pillars of the Declaration of Independence, which is the philosophical basis of this

country. And that's what we have lost. We've lost our emotional connection to the deep moral. You don't have to call it spiritual, call it philosophical intent of the Founding Fathers as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Marianne Williamson, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. you. And let's keep the conversation going. We can do it again another time, all right? Great. I would love to. Thank you so much. All right, everybody. What a show. The Neocon godfather and the Department of Peace Advocate coming together to agree that dictatorship is imminent. I mean, if we can all align and hold

hands, maybe there is hope for the country. After all, thanks so much to Bob Kagan and Mary Ann Williamson. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwark podcast. Now see ya all then. Department of Peace. Peace. The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.