The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1001: Bill Kristol: Give Back the Statue of Liberty

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Trump is taking liberties with our country's role in the world as a land of hope and opportunity by summarily locking up and deporting law-abiding immigrants—including people with legitimate asylum claims, people here on proper visas, and people with minor errors in their paperwork. And it's all being done with intentional cruelty to convey the message: Don't even think of coming to Fortress America. Meanwhile, his tone-deaf billionaire treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is mocking Americans for wanting cheap TVs. Plus, Schumer postpones his book tour as Democrats look elsewhere for a fighter, and Trump’s late-night tantrum about Biden's pardons. show notes: White House sizzle reel of immigrants being sent to penal colony in El Salvador Bill's 'Bulwark on Sunday' conversation with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. If it's Monday, it's Bill Kristol. He's back. How you doing, Bill? I don't know. What's the right answer to that these days? Have we discussed this already?

If you say you're doing fine, then it seems like you're not sufficiently cognizant that everything is falling apart in our great country. And if you dwell on that, you seem not grateful enough that, you know, what is fine and what's family is fine and so forth. So I've settled on I'm living. That's good. I'm living. I'm here. I like that.

I need something. I need an all purpose answer. I'm living. I'm here. We're here. And there's that. I'd rather be living than dying. We got to start with the pardons that were voided, I guess, allegedly. Can you void via bleat? I guess that will be a question for Amy Coney Barrett to determine at some point.

I think just after midnight in the East, Trump, uh, bleated that Biden's preemptive pardons of his political foes, particularly the members of the House January 6th committee, are all caps, void vacant and of no further force or effect because they were signed with an auto pen. This is now an emerging conspiracy theory on the right that Joe Biden was weakened at Bernie's at the White House and that there were like random staffers that were signing pardons that he didn't even know about and they're using an auto pen to do it. There's some pretty obvious flaws in this theory, particularly that these were extremely high profile pardons that received a lot of news.

So it seems pretty unlikely that that happened while Joe Biden was resting. So this, like many Trump stories, combines the ridiculous with the fascistic. But I'm wondering where, will you make of it? I mean, it's super ridiculous to think that one president can void a previous president's pardons. Otherwise we would have had a lot of that over the years, I suppose, you know, they weren't always popular with the other party. Yeah, it's ludicrous.

I mean, I think Andrew Agar made a good point in morning shots this morning, which is shows how deeply, deeply Trump wants to go after the January 6th committee people. I mean, who was pardoned at the end of the day, the Biden family, if I recall correctly, Liz Cheney and Representative Thompson and one or two others, I think sort of very much from that world, I guess, General Milley. So Trump's going after the rest, the other 97 of them, or of us, maybe I should say, I don't know quite how we fit into this list, but it really rankles him that he can't use the whole Justice Department

and the authorities of the federal government to go after Liz Cheney and Betty Thompson, I suppose. So it shows how deep the hatred is, I guess. Fascistic, as you say. We're so far beyond any sense of like, oh, this seems unseemly. Oh, this is kind of contrary to the rule of law. This is kind of contrary to the constitution. This is kind of contrary to everything. You know, it's just, yeah. Yeah. And look, there is again, and we all know this, but as we're saying, there's the

new Alex Eisenstead from Politico's new book out that kind of covers the Trump, you know, 2024 through the campaign and the transition. And, you know, And he's got a quote in there where Trump is talking to aides and being sarcastic and saying, listen, everybody, there'll be no retribution. There'll be no revenge, wink, wink. He's obviously wrapped around the axle around this and he's specifically targeting these people. And we talked about a little bit with David French on Friday, and that generally, historically, when presidents have, you know, or administrations have gone after political foes, not nearly as directly political

foes as this, but people that, you know, that where they made decisions that were based in politics rather nakedly, you know, look at the Alberto González situation, for one example, that the administration usually tries to backfill that with like some other rationale, right? That's like, this is not really politics, right? Like what we were really trying to do was X, Y, and Z. And like the Trump administration's not even really doing that, right?

Like I think that is the other thing that is pretty striking about this. Like they're nakedly like, no, we're going after political foes and let's see what you're going to do about it, judges. Totally. Totally. I mean, it's just one of many illusory, not to belabor the point, but it's one of many

or several ways in which, yeah, the old kind of rules are gone. The old, there were some excesses, God knows in the past, but they were masked and the masking itself limited the access in obvious ways. That's how the world works, right? But once you throw off the mask and it's just, you know, pedal to the metal on retribution and persecution, I mean, where does that end up? It was a Perkins-Kuhi case. I was trying to think which was the, they're targeting so many foes right now. I was like, which was the one that French said that even in their rationale, they just

put it bluntly and it was with regards to the lawyers. The other thing that they have taken the mask off on is the pretense of separation between the Justice Department and the White House. Over the weekend, Pam Bondi was speaking at the DOJ and I general has to do the like North Korean ludicrous thing that this is the greatest president and it's not Lincoln, you know, not Washington, not the author of the constitution of the declaration, right? Like it was, it is Donald Trump. That's the greatest president in our history.

The attorney general has to do that as, as pretty weird and alarming. But then there's that phrase that we work at the directive of Trump, followed by claps in the room at the directive. That's actually not, not right. It shouldn't be right. It, it, I've obviously in certain areas of policy, it's correct. The president tells the justice department, I want you to focus on X and not Y or, or whatever. But yeah, not in terms of criminal prosecutions.

And clearly that's what's front and center in everyone's mind. And Bondi and Casper Teller are all in on just, yes, you say, not even pretending that, well, we're weighing the evidence. And we think there's a good case here that X is guilty of something. It's just Trump doesn't like them and we're going to find any excuse we can. I was going to say to be nice to them, we don't know yet how far they'll go in stretching the excuses, but it turns out they'll go very far, right? I mean, we see this in a bunch of cases, including the law firms, which is pretty astonishing. I mean, these are big law firms, they represented a million clients. Some of them were liberal, liberally inclined or democratically inclined. Some are the other way. Honestly, I don't think it's occurred to anyone.

Maybe Nixon at Watergate was, I can't remember if there was a law firm he went after as part of his going after Brookings and Daniel Ellsberg. Maybe he went after Ellsberg's lawyers. But I mean, to publicly just do executive orders. And again, it's not like if he privately whispered to Pam Bond, he's digging into that law firm there. Maybe you can find some law they've broken, you know, some ethics rule they broke, some something we could bring them up on in a civil or criminal

charge. That's bad. That's bad. But that's at least keeps the fiction that, oh, hey, justice just happened to discover that this firm was billing client, double billing clients or something. I don't know. You know, it's not even the pretense, as David French said, right? It's just I don't like them. They represented a bunch of my political know, it's not even the pretense, as David French said, right? It's just, I don't like them. They represented a bunch of my political enemies. It's not even telling Justice Department to look into them or ordering them to. He personally is, if I'm right about this,

stripping them of their security clearances and making their life, making it much harder for them to represent clients before the government. I mean, it's a personal order. It's not sort of a request to justice to look into it. Yeah. And back to the bondy thing too, I just, doing the, oh, the right wing media is hypocritical, you know, has this pretty boring at this point and has some limits, but it's just worth just putting it like going back to one prime example that anybody that

was kind of paying attention to politics in 2015, 2016 will remember, which is, remember this Loretta Lynch tarmac meeting? Yeah. It was this notion that the then Attorney General has a meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton. So not even like the sitting president, right, but with Bill Clinton. And that we don't, we still, I just don't think we know exactly what they talked about, but it was when Hillary was under investigation and there's this notion that like maybe some message was sent to tell, you know, the attorney general then to ease off of, of Hillary and

like Fox news must've dedicated a hundred thousand hours to this. They did, if they did a minute, they did 100,000 hours. It's like the whole pretense of that controversy was that the Department of Justice needs to be separate from political entanglements, and that they should judge whether people are prosecuted based on the facts and based on the law. And if they're not doing that, then that is a scandal. And like, here we have just out in the open, the attorney general under Trump saying, no, yeah, I'm going to do whatever he wants.

Like I will be a political actor. And there's nothing wrong with that. And it's just crickets. Like it's just total crickets. Like there's no, has Andy McCarthy like written a screed against this for National Review? I mean, like there was a whole industrial outrage complex on the right, like dedicated to any sense of wrongdoing, you know, during the Obama or Biden administration. And they've just totally dispensed with that.

And like, you know, I mean, obviously I guess we've seen this across so many verticals, but I can, in this case, it is just as blatant as you could possibly imagine. You know, it's striking when you hear the video, I'd read the clip, but I hadn't heard it until just now. She doesn't say we're proud to work in this administration. She has the North Korean thing about her. He's the greatest president ever. Then she doesn't say

we should implement the policies of the president of the United States. That would be little questionable, I'd say, to be saying that formally, but you know, whatever that could be on the border. She says, what does she say? We're proud to work at the direction of Donald Trump. But it really brings somehow personal, you know, it's a personal fealty. Yeah, right It's not even that G in the executive branch There should be separation between the president and the AG or the White House and the AG. This is the personal Agenda Donald Trump that Pam Bondi is using the Justice Department to carry out cross all these cases I saw a tweet from from this morning that is I just think pretty telling he wrote that

from From this morning that is, I just think, pretty telling. He wrote that over the course of the first two months here, Trump has claimed power to overturn Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress's authority over spending, Article 2, the predecessor's pardon power, and Article 3, and defiance of a federal court order. We're about to get to that next on immigration. But like all of this stuff, there's the boiling frogs element to it. And I think that when put that way, it just shows how completely they are disregarding any legal powers or any legal limits, you know, beyond Donald Trump can do whatever he wants. Yeah, that's a good I hadn't seen the Trump thing as always

with David, that's very tersely but also intelligently expressed and brings home the point, it really brings home the point. from thing. As always, David, that's very tersely, but also intelligently expressed and brings home the point. It really brings home the point. Did you know Fast-Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers? They have all the plants your yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more. Whatever plant you're interested in, Fast Growing Trees has you covered. You can find the perfect fit for your climate and space.

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You had a, on that third point there, the Defiance of a federal court order is referencing this flight of Venezuelan, we'll kind of get to who these people are, Venezuelan part of this, but essentially a judge had put a stay on this alien enemies act powers that Trump says that he is granting himself as far as deporting people inside this country. And they had had a group of Venezuelans, they put on a flight and the stay happened when there's some debate about this, but maybe the flight is in air and they went through

it anyway and said, well, it's over international waters, so we don't have to respond to this and they don't seem to be having interest in responding to it anyway. So that's like the biggest news on the immigration front. But the biggest picture, you talked to Aaron Reiklin Melnick on our Bullwork on Sundays over on Substack, which I really recommend for people who want to get nerdy on what is happening right now with immigration. But what struck you from that conversation as kind of the biggest picture stayed apply? Yeah, I think it was a good conversation, not because of me, but he really explained well, I think the bigger picture, but also sort of the nuts and bolts of how some of it works I mean just on this thing and the illness an invocation of the alien enemies act is almost being slid over sometimes because of the

Sword of defiance, let's just call it or evasion of the court order and certainly an attitude of contempt towards the court order But the invocation of this act is nuts I mean and that itself should not that I I believe will not, one hopes will not stand up in court. It's been invoked, used three times, the War of 1812, World War I, World War II. It's for actually about alien enemies in war. You know, some German saboteur shows up on the coast, on the West Coast or something. But anyway, they had to invent a fake war with this Venezuelan gang to justify this.

Now, Trump already has pretty broad powers to hold, detain, and to deport people who are not here lawfully. And if you find people involved in gang activities, you can of course prosecute them just under the normal criminal laws of the United States. You can also detain and deport them. And these people were being detained. I think it's really worth making this point that they weren't roaming around free in the streets of the US, but he wants to deport them to El Salvador.

That itself is outrageous, but on the bigger picture, two points. The rule of law is shattered in so many ways in the immigration area or pushed or stretched or distended. You could say in any one of these cases, some of these cases, well, it's kind of possibly plausible but you put it all together. They want no one coming into the country, basically, almost. I mean, that sounds like crazily overstated but it's not that overstated. Certainly no one coming and staying.

They're not even crazy about people coming for a while. If there's some tiny risk they'll stay, even if their overstay would be because they're hiking around on some trail for an extra week. I mean, right? We're really in a kind of hostility to foreigners. I think one point Aaron makes very well is Trump wants to convey the impression that this is Fortress America, that we are hostile to all these people who want to come here. Not that we have to be a little more careful about who we take in, not that we took an

awful lot of people in the last 30, 40 years and we have to reduce some of those numbers, not that it's not good politics or good policy to not know exactly who's here and there's some undocumented people we don't know about, but he wants us to look as if we're hostile to immigrants. Not too crazy about visitors either, but hostile to immigrants, which is really jaw dropping for the United States. We did this a little bit, I guess, in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. I mean, those laws were very restrictionist, but the degree to which Trump relishes and the Trump people and the whole administration, and now people like Rubio, it's really unbelievable.

I mean, Rubio, who was a very pro-immigration guy, famously that gang of whatever it was in 2013, and who has literally told a very affecting story about his life as the son of immigrants, of refugees seeking asylum in the US and getting asylum in the US in Florida from Cuba, that he's just fine with all this. I mean, asylum is gone, the refugee resettlement program is gone. So again, I think what Aaron brings home is just the breadth of the hostility to any notion of the U.S. as a land of refuge, a land of asylum,

or a land of hope and opportunity for people from other countries. I don't know, Lane, that you would want to even come to to visit, to your broader point, like honestly, so I have a rant I on a pop off on this Venezuela flight. But before we get to that, just a couple of others, just stories that have been out there this weekend. There was this American Pie spin-off actress, she was in a spin-off to American Pie.

She's Canadian, 35. She had a previous work visa to be here that had been canceled. She had some issue with her work visa. She's in San Diego. A lawyer said, you know, since she's already in San Diego, she should go to the border to get a new visa. She gets detained and like sent to Arizona and put inside a pen, like where she's like sleeping on a mat with aluminum foil over her. This like lady that was, had been here legally and her

visa had expired or something, like a minor visa issue. It's crazy that we're detaining this person. We have Dr. Rasha Al-Awiya. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. She is a physician specializing in kidney transplants and a professor at Brown University. She's 34. She lives in Providence. The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in these special occupations requiring expertise.

This was the big controversy about Indian H-1B visa applicants in Silicon Valley. Her visa was valid through mid-2027. The lawyers don't know what happened, but she got sent. She was flying back into the country. She got sent back to France and they think to Lebanon. There's a married couple living in Wisconsin. The wife was, she was from Peru.

They're in Puerto Rico for their marriage, came back. They're going to go to Wisconsin. She was on an expired visa, but she was filling out the paperwork to become permanent resident, married to an American citizen, stepmother to an American citizen. She gets detained at the airport and was also sent to Texas to some ICE detention camp across the country. All of these cases are ridiculous. They said that he was going after criminals.

See what you want about any of these folks. Sure, maybe if we're going to have a hard line on visa rules, maybe some of these folks, like, sure, maybe if we're gonna have a hard line on visa rules, you know, like maybe some of these folks are gonna end up having to be having to be deported or having to go back to their home country, I would be against that. But like, in the meantime, to like put them in ICE detention centers, and like use US resources to do this is like purposefully cruel. And to your point and to Aaron's point, like they're doing this because they want to send a message to people that they're not welcome here.

Like that is what they're trying to scare people. They're trying to freak people out. I think frankly, it's going to work. I don't know. Did he have anything else on that element of this is striking? We didn't dwell on the whether it's working. I just saw some fact that tourism is down some though, whatever that's worth. People are a little freaked out that they could make a slip up on a form and not fill

that a new form. They come here routinely on business. One point Aaron makes is that what does work mean? You're a 27-year-old, you come here, you're here for vacation. You're going to go to the Grand Canyon, you're going to do this, you're going to hike, you're going to see Las Vegas. But, you know, you also flip open your computer and do some remote work while you're here for your employer back in Berlin or maybe you're a freelancer and someone hires you

to do something. We can't have that person in this country. I mean, it's really, yeah, the cruelty is the point. Determining other people from coming in is the point. And the self-deportation is the point, right? To get them all to err on the side of just leaving. And there are people, we've seen reports of people leaving who just are worried they're gonna get snatched

and they prefer to leave maybe with the rest of their family so they're not separated, as we've now seen instances of. So it's, yeah, and the cruelty, it's so unnecessary, so terrible for this country, I think, and not just for our image, but really for our own understanding of ourselves and so utterly unnecessary. What's the problem we're addressing here? Right. I mean.

None of these people I mentioned are criminals, gang members, they're not selling fentanyl. I, you know, and just to get the facts right on that, on the third example I gave her, her name is Camila Munoz. She's living in a small town in Wisconsin, finds love, gets married, is parenting a child. They're on their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. The guy voted for Trump. So I did see some chatter about this case on social media about fucking around and finding out, but I don't like, okay, I'm fine to laugh at the expense of Trump voters who are suffering

the consequences of their actions. But at the broader point, this is preposterous, and which takes us back to the Venezuela situation. So the alien enemies act, as you mentioned at the top, the notion here is that what it gives them the ability to do, tell me this is your understanding. It's essentially just to fast track these deportations without due process, right? Like you don't actually prove, you know, they don't have to have a court date, you know, it's just there's an accusation that they're a part of this enemy group, trend or agwa, and that is all the rationale you need to deport.

Yeah, and they don't have a criminal conviction or anything, which would be another reason you could detain people and deport them. So what we're doing with these people is we're sending them to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. This is, if you haven't seen the videos or pictures of this thing, it's like a penal colony run by the villains and some dystopian robo cop future. It sends a chill down your spine. The idea that you would send one innocent person to this fucking hellscape

should just make you shutter. I mean, like if you've not looked at the videos, the White House itself has helpfully like sent out a sizzle reel of the horrible treatment of the people at this penal colony, I guess, as some kind of deterrent or, you know, maybe to get Stephen Miller hard, I don't know why they, why they post it up up. You can watch that if you want. Here's the thing though. So the CEO of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, that's I-M-M-D-E-F on social media if you want to check it out. This is what she writes. So we're taking her word on this, but I want to actually explain this case in detail. She writes this, our client fled Venezuela last year and came to the US to seek asylum.

He has a strong asylum claim. He was detained at entry because ICE alleged his tattoos are gang related. They're absolutely not. Our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He's LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign. But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he's trend to Aragwa.

We last spoke to our client on Thursday before he was supposed to have a hearing in immigration court, but ICE didn't bring him to the hearing. The government attorney had no info about why he was not there. The judge reset the hearing for Monday today. We've been trying to contact our client ever since. This morning, yesterday, Sunday morning, he disappeared from the online detainee locator. Our client came to the US seeking protection, but he's spent months in ICE prisons, been falsely accused of being a gang member, and today he's been forcefully

transferred, we believe, to El Salvador. We are horrified tonight thinking about what might happen to him now." If this is even in the ballpark of being true, these people are fucking evil. They're evil. Like this is the fundamental part of what America is. Like that we had welcomed people. Like if this is true, this is a gay man fleeing persecution in Venezuela, comes to the border, maybe you could decide that whatever, we need new asylee rules, and that doesn't count, and he doesn't count for asylum or whatever, but that we would do this and smear him and impugn him and put him in a fucking camp and then send him to this dystopian prison colony in El Salvador in a totally different country. It's fucking insane. It is insane.

Salvador in a totally different country. It's fucking insane. It is insane And and I saw this thing from a French member of French Parliament Raphael Gluckman He said give us back the Statue of Liberty. We gave it to you as a gift would apparently you despise it So it'll be just fine back here at home. That's where I'm at reading this story Give it the fuck back Doge can take care of this Elon Musk can put that on a fucking boat back to France because if we're gonna treat this person like this, there's no we're welcoming the tired and poor and huddled masses. There's no yearning to be free here. We're gonna send you to a fucking authoritarian dystopian penal camp in El Salvador where you're gonna get beat and abused and treated like shit and who knows what else

just because you happen to be a Venezuelan that wanted freedom in this country. It is just appalling. So I don't know if you have anything else on that. No, it's horrifying. And look, if you said, look, we have to detain him and it's going to take a couple of weeks where we check out his story on the tattoos before he gets the temporary protection status, which is not necessarily Venezuelans are supposed to get, I believe, if they flee the Venezuelan authoritarian regime. But okay, that would be, and maybe the conditions under which he's held aren't great, and that's kind of the messiness of our immigration system and of the border or something, though. But the idea that we're sending him to this horrible penal colony in El Salvador

is beyond belief. And again, why? What was the rush? The guy was detained. I mean, he wasn't out on the streets being a member, allegedly a member of some gang. So it's purely about the performative cruelty and the, I guess they think deterrent effect and JD Vance being able to go on Twitter and say, we're, we're deporting the criminals and the democratic judges. I don't know if he says judges, but the Democrats want to keep them here or bring them in or

keep them here or something like that. I mean, so it's really using these people as pawns for the, for a very low political end. It's really horrifying. It's fucking evil. I expect JD Vance, it's sick of who are you? Like what are you, you're, you're religious. You're quoting people about, you know, you's sick. Like who are you? Like what are you? You're religious. You're quoting people about, you know, you're trying to quote Ordo and Morris about like

how we care about each other and you're doing this to this person. Like imagine being this person, assuming that again, assuming like it is reported as true. They're like fleeing Venezuela. They make the long trek to America. They think they might have an opportunity for freedom. They end up getting put into a cell. And next thing you know, you're on a plane with actual gang members. Because by the way, I assume there are actual gang members also on this plane

that we are sending. And I think we probably shouldn't be sending them to fucking El Salvador and paying El Salvador a fee for this. But besides the point, OK, we're sending some fucking gang members. So you're on this plane with like these violent evil gang members and then you're gonna be you get your hair shaved and like you get treated like you are the fucking dreg of humanity by some like like drunk on power like El Salvadoran like Robocop the way that they're like dragging these people around. I just imagine being that person.

Like you are in hell. Like you, like this is the worst thing you could possibly do to somebody. These people are fucking sick, which takes me to the next thing I want to talk about, which is what do you do if you're the Democrats about this? Cause like, obviously at its core, it's sad to admit and it's depressing, but probably on balance, like the snuff porn video of us taking tattooed Hispanic people and throwing them in some fucking prison camp is probably a political winner. I wish that were not the case, but it probably is.

And so, you know, there'd be people out there saying, oh, the Democrats, this is pick your battles. Pick your battles. I don't know, though. What do you think? How do the Democrats handle this? I've gotten radicalized on this. I was never a big pick your battles person. I just think that's, you know, you don't know which ones to pick until you try to fight them. And also, if you don't fight one, you are kind of legitimizing it and so forth. And this is a pretty, as we've been saying, a terrible case and the whole use of the Alien Enemies Act and so forth. They're about, incidentally, in two weeks, I think, they've abrogated. So there are hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans here.

They seem to be doing fine, incidentally. They're great. They love them in South Florida. No one wants to deport them except for Trump, so far as I can tell, except for these 2,000 gang members, if they're that many. And they have abrogated these 2000 gang members, if they're that many. They have abrogated these Venezuelans, temporary protected status. They were let in, and the way TPS, temporary protected status, works is for 18 months,

and the yoke at the end, you can either extend it or not, depending on what conditions are in the home country. They've shortened that period. There are, I think, 200,000 people, Aaron said, mostly in Florida, probably Venezuelans, who will become undocumented on April 3rd, and then who will be subject to deportation. So again, they're addressing a non-problem in this case, and purposely whipping up sentiments about the invasion and conflating the gang members with the overall community and whipping up sentiments about people of brown skin from what presumes mostly from Central and Latin America kind of flooding

this country and invading this country and polluting our blood. I mean, it's really grotesque and terrible. So I'm with you in the rant side of it and the indignation side, which maybe is coloring my political judgment. I've been on two tech chains this weekend and one zoom in which I've been told that we have to pick our battles, defending gang members isn't good. The doctor at Brown, we should defend her because everyone likes, you know, physicians at Brown and- Oh, I don't know. The Lebanese work out. Maybe they didn't, okay, whatever. Or Canadian gal from American Pie.

Yeah, you're right. I take that point too, but, and I guess I got kind of angry actually, one of these zoom call and it's like, really, I mean, with the pit American public is so like sensitive and is judging every case on so much on, you know, on the balance here. And it's so important that if it adds 0.3% to Trump's approval rating over the next month, we can't talk about it. I think it's mostly self-defeating.

Obviously there's some prudence in what fights you pick, but if the Democrats don't pick the overall fight on Trump's immigration policy as being inhumane, indecent and unlawful, that's just pathetic. And I don't think incidentally they would lose that fight, but if they would lose that fight, okay, let's try at least. I mean, we can't just sit here and accept this, I don't think, incidentally, they would lose that fight. But if they would lose that fight, okay, let's try at least. I mean, we can't just sit here and accept this, I don't think. So, but as I say, I don't quite trust my political judgment because I'm too pretty worked up about it, I guess.

Yeah, my fucking blood is boiling, so I don't trust my political judgment either. But like, what is the point of being here if you're not going to fight for these people? Like, what is the point? Like, this is America. Like, this is the fundamental part of America is the immigrant story. It doesn't mean we have to accept everybody. It doesn't mean we can't deport gang members.

But like, if you can't make this case in a way that is compelling, then okay, then whatever. I mean, we're going to descend into authoritarian autocracy anyway. So what's the point? I mean, if you're, I get it if you're a random, like, you know, like I was looking at the D, triple C list and the Republicans think they can gain seats in certain places because people are upset about whatever. Okay, like I get, if you're like one of these three congressmen or four congressmen in a vulnerable place and it doesn't make sense for you to talk about this, but I don't see

it. And, you know, I also just refuse to believe that everybody that is a Christian is Jerry Falwell Jr. I think that there's got to be like a handful of non-fake Christians out there that can be appealed to on the grounds of just the inhumanity of this. I mean, one of the other examples that we talked about, I forget if it was with you or somebody else in the pod, was that case of the Iranian woman that was fleeing religious persecution Christian,

Iranian Christian. And we sent her to Panama, I guess, to be put in some locked up in some hotel. She couldn't speak to anybody. The Panamanians took our unwanted refugees as part of a deal to take the Panama Canal back from whatever fucking nonsense he was arguing. Is the plight of Iranian Christian refugees not something that is material to a single Christian church going Trump voter? I don't know. Maybe not, but it's worth a try. Can I just add one thing on this?

I was just thinking, I was on a panel last week, off the record, and all this private conference, Democrats, and I was kind of, there's not a panel last week, off the record, and all this private conference, Democrats, and I was kind of being lectured, not lectured, it's not fair, someone on the panel was saying, Bill, that's very nice that you're indignant, but it's the kitchen table, it's the economic issues, the price of eggs, that's what killed us in 2024,

it's what we've got, it's just that's what people are talking about, we've got to hammer it. I'm of course fine with making the economic arguments, and in fact, it seems like the economy's slowing, and one thing one could say about the economic arguments and in fact seems like the economy's slowing And one thing one could say about the economic arguments is if the economy is going to recession The Democrats don't have to tell you know tell people they'll notice But but his particular example was the price of eggs was that was so popular a while ago

So I noticed somewhere maybe I think I'm right about the price of eggs is like coming down I don't know why I think eggs is down big yeah, so it's like great Let's just have everyone go and scream about that and then they get correctly mocks You know for making a huge deal of some temporary spike piece of I don't know what it was birth flu or whatever and There's so much sort of pseudo cleverness about what political arguments to make that is I think foolish I don't know wrong is wrong. Does this get into our your friend Chuckumer? Yeah, let's do it. Let's get into Chuck Schumer. Wrong is wrong. I just, also it's like, I keep coming back to who cares?

I don't know. Isn't this a problem for ad makers in August of 2026? In the meantime, I don't know, man. If there was, you're telling me that it's better for Democrats to give boring talking points about the price of eggs At while having there be no protests then having people Leading like some massive protests outside the statue of liberty or outside of an iced detention center again, maybe maybe that's true Maybe it would hurt maybe it would backfire to have massive people protesting this. I don't know for sure but it sure sure seems to me that mass mobilization

against Trump, a mass feeling that things are chaotic and crazy is probably better than kind of going along with business as normal and giving your talking points about, about the kitchen table issues. Chuck Schumer. Yeah, Lauren Egan wrote for us on Sunday, our newest report I'm going to get her on here in the next couple of weeks. But she's recovering the Democrats for us here at the Bulwark and just kind of the Democrats in the wilderness and hashing out the different views on these sort of conversations we're

having right now. She writes basically that privately, there is genuine anger among democratic electeds at Schumer. I think one Democrat told her that this was like an Eric Cantor moment, which hit home for me. And I know we lived through that, Eric Cantor getting kicked out by that fucking moron, Dave Bratt. But just because he was out of touch with what Republican voters were looking for, I

think there's potentially something there on that. What do you make about the Schumer kerfuffle? So I was slightly, I was open to the Schumer argument about the CR. I don't think that was crazy that a government shutdown was, neither substantively nor politically, have worked out particularly well. And it wasn't the Hill to fight on. It's just they didn't have a very good fight to make, you know, it wasn't. So I was sympathetic to Schumer on that. Having said that, we both went back and forth a little. I think you ended up much more critical on Friday, was it?

I was critical of just, I'll just make my point then you can give yours. Like briefly, because I noticed some people in the comments, I think, kind of misunderstood my point. If Schumer decided we cannot win a shutdown because he knows his caucus is better than me, there'll be an uproar, there'll be votes that the people don't have the spine for it for whatever reason. If you've made that calculation. Okay. Well then still then in the meantime, like you've got to use this moment

as a flash point for fighting and you could still do talking filibusters. They still could have spent the whole weekend pointing out all of the evil shit Elon Musk is doing, bringing people to the floor, getting attention, driving interest around this. And would any of that have mattered in the grand scheme of things in the midterms? I don't know, but at least it would have been responsive to the moment.

And to me, it was just this total fold without any fight, without any clear message on it. You could have sold me on the full, fuck it, let's go through a shutdown for sure. But at least short of that, I wanted some fights. Anyway, that's where I was at on Shumar. So I'm totally with you, and I might have gone for avoiding the shutdown,

but yes, at least show the fight ahead of time. Not in a misleading way, say we may just have to go ahead because we're over the barrel, but let's be clear what Elon Musk is doing. Here's 36 hours on the set of floor, whatever, you know, just say through the night get some attention Real attention about real bad things that are happening including the immigration for that matter if you want if one would have been in this

Weekend they could have highlighted some of what was happening So that I'm very much where you are on that and then it's compounded for you over the weekend by two things I guess Schumer's book tour, right which he's gonna I guess he's actually going to these places or is it a virtual book tour? I haven't really focused, but either way he's spending- I think he's actually going to these places and I think it's going to be ugly for him. He's spending tons of time this week charging people admissions, I understand it, to sell his book on antisemitism, which maybe like when we actually have this administration trying, which includes a bunch of antisemites as well, or it's certainly adjacent to them, is trying to impose authoritarianism on America.

You shouldn't be just going around having, you know, promoting his book. It'll sell whatever it sells at, in any case, I would think. But anyway, it's not an inspiring site. And I also just got to say, like this whole thing, look, I've been through this book process. I had booked things that fell through and that went south, you know, and it's like... Who cares? The anti-Semitism of warning would have been a very powerful book for Chuck Schumer during the Kamala Harris administration.

Yeah, exactly. So it was like a message to my own side. I think that was the point of it presumably, right? Yeah, yeah. Right. But then once Trump wins and you are supposed to be the leader of the resistance, I don't know, this feels like kind of an evergreen topic. And I maybe would say to my publisher, let's kick the can on this a little bit. For the first hundred days, my job is fighting fucking Donald Trump's authoritarian regime, not making this needed, but kind of, and sadly, evergreen point about the problem of anti-Semitism.

Totally, totally. And then he also gave this interview to the New York Times. I assume he gave it actually before Friday. I was thinking about that. It was times, Sunday times, often is pretty far in advance. In which he just seems totally out of touch. I mean, he's going on about how I think the Republicans could fall away from Trump, but let's make it a little more popular. It happened in 2005 with Bush and, and, uh, as if it's the situation of the relationship between the president and the party and Congress is comparable. And, you know, but I work out in the gym with these guys and when you're working out with them on the treadmill, you really, you know, you kind of get a real

sense of who they are and those Republicans. I mean, it's like, it's not just cringe, but it is horrifying, honestly, because it does, it is a window into how he's thinking. And I think he should go as leader. I hadn't been there a week ago. I mean, who cares if the majority of the minority leaders in some ways, he's not necessarily the face of the party. Other people should step up.

But I actually think he's now an impediment in a way that like Jeffries probably isn't. He's just not. I don't know if he's a great leader or not, but he's not. Where Schumer is now epitomizes out of touchness to Trump's authoritarian project. And I don't know, do you think there's a chance? I picked up a couple of glimmers or murmurs about challenges to Schumer. Do you think, if you heard anything, do you think there's a chance someone will actually literally challenge him this week?

It could happen. Yeah. I don't know. So I kind of doubt somebody will challenge him this week. I had heard some murmurs before all this, like a month ago, that maybe Schumer himself was thinking that like it might be the moment for him to sort of do what Mitch and Nancy had done and like step back and not like leave the Senate, but step back and let somebody else be the leader. So I don't know if this type of backlash against him is the type of thing that would

encourage him more in that direction or the type of thing that would steal him and make him feel contrarian. I think it's pretty hard to see him getting pushed out before the next big reconciliation fight that is coming ahead. I mean, if you're him, that's what you're saying to your members, right? Like, I have a plan. We're going to fight them on this reconciliation bill. And the other thing is there's not really an obvious person. I mean, I think that Chris Murphy has been great messaging wise. He was the only one sounding fucking even close to reality on the

Sunday shows this weekend on the on the Democratic side or obviously there's nobody on the Republican side, but I keys junior, you know, the people in the leadership voted with Schumer mostly didn't club a char. I know shots did Dick Durbin is obviously not going to be yet so Klobuchar and shots are kind of like the next generation people in the leadership and it's kind of I don't know to either of those names really tickle your pickle. I mean they should skip this the people who are currently leadership certainly Durbin obviously and and Patty Murray who are both Schumer's age or more but but I wouldn't mind to, I like Lobacher personally, and I don't know really much, but I'm okay with either of them, I suppose, if they want to run, but you know what, Chris Murphy, in

my opinion, I don't know the Democratic conference well, and I'm just going to volunteer this irresponsible opinion. Chris Murphy should announce he's challenging them. He should get, if he can, I think he would do 10 signatures, I understand, to call a special 20% of the conference can request a special meeting of the conference. I don't know what the rules are in terms of the actual challenge, I suppose, at that meeting someone nominates Murphy to replace Schumer. So fine, he'll lose, I guess he'll lose, you know, 35 to 15 or something, or however many there are, 35 to 12 or something, maybe less. But A,

I think it would show something. And know, I, and I don't think it would be, I suppose they wouldn't, Schumer wouldn't like it, but I think it would show a certain willingness to say, look, it can't just be business as usual. And if Schumer wins, Murphy can be gracious and defeat and say, well, good, we're all going to move ahead. But I hope I've sent at least a signal to Chuck that we need to be making our case to the American people a little more aggressively here and not assuming that jogging on the treadmill in the gym is good is the way to win over our Republican

colleagues. So that's my advice to Chris Murphy. I don't know. He watches you, right? He watches you every day. I think that sometimes the Senator tunes in. Go for it Senator Murphy. The gym thing is such a triggering thing for me. She's like, we're fucking a decade into this. All right, like these are it's not like they're, oh, they're really good guys that are going to do the right thing in the end. We know that they're not going to like, God, I apologize for impugning Amy Klobuchar's integrity. She was not one of the 10 the voter for cloture. So maybe she is the unity candidate. candidate. Well, this is one of these cases though. Gene McCarthy wasn't the guy in 67 until he decided no one else is doing it. So if Amy Klobuchar steps up, she'll be the person, right? I mean, it's not like whatever you were, however, you know, you've been 85% forth, forth, you

know, out there on the barricades or 65% until now, the person who says, I'm sorry, this is unacceptable. We need new leadership will be the person I think. I'm going to do much more in the economy tomorrow, but I do want to close with this because Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, who is just not exactly I think instilling confidence in the markets out there was on the shows this weekend. And I just wanted to play a couple of clips for his spin on what's happening with the with the economy right now. Let's talk about what happened

in the stock market this week, worst week for the market in two years. Does that worry you Mr. Secretary? Not at all. I've been in the investment business for 35 years and I can tell you that corrections are healthy, they're normal. What's not healthy is straight up that you get these your for it markets That's how you get a financial crisis It would have been much healthier if someone had put the brakes on in 06 07 We wouldn't have had the problems in 08 So I'm not worried about the markets the Trump administration is comfortable to have consumers pay more for

goods in America? Not at all, Chris. What I'm saying is the American dream is not let them eat flat screens. That if American families aren't able to afford a home, don't believe that their children will do better than they are. The American dream is not contingent on cheap baubles they have from China, that it is more than that. And we are focused on affordability, but it's mortgages, it's cars, it's real wage gains. I don't know what's more alarming there. A multibillionaire tell people that being able

to afford goods in their home is not part of the American dream or the fact that I don't think that he has watched the big short. I'm not even asking you to read the picture. I don't think he understands what happened in the market in the 20, 2007 and eight economic crisis. I don't think that the Dow, you know, giving off three or four points, you know, during the 2006 run up would have done anything to prevent the mortgage crisis, but anyway, I don't know in defense of the strategists, this does seem to be

their shakiest political turf. But I also say that turf will take care of itself, so to speak. Like if the market's down 10%, it's down 10%. And it's, you know, every democratic congressman should go around, I guess, telling his constituents in case you didn't notice the market's down 10%. And in case you didn't notice inflation is not going down. And in case you didn't notice super confidence doesn't't seem great but the one thing with the economy is you don't really need to go around doing this kind of sales job but whatever.

If they want to talk about it, that's fine. If they want it, maybe they should say what they would do that was better. It's not too early to attack the Trump tax cuts and I hope they do that. I'm just so annoyed. Again, I am almost as you can tell, I can barely speak. I had friends, you did too, in New almost as you can tell I can barely speak. I mean, I saw I had friends you did too in New York, you know, kind of plugged into the financial world. Ah, he's got some, he's good.

He'll be he'll be a voice of moderation. And also, you know, grown up person there. The reason he's defending all this, if you realize about the ball quote, you know, the flat screen TVs is of course, he's got to defend the idiotic terrorists, right? I mean, that's what that's the reason he's backed into that and he can't just say look the president's made a judgment I think we can work I think it's gonna help the economy, you know, whatever the vague least Respect to her thing is he has to go in this demagogic what attack on consumers for caring that they could afford things TV is that like a luxury good these days?

You're not allowed to want to have be able to afford a television set so you can watch the SCAAs for the next three weeks. I don't know. I mean, I think it's so tone deaf and politically it is. I mean, people should attack him, honestly though. And I think I hope Bernie Sanders and AOC spend the next week or two bitterly attacking him and making him look like a ridiculous out of touch billionaire, which he certainly seems to be. They're on the road this week, AOC and Bernie, like later in the week, Arizona. and making him look like a ridiculous out of touch billionaire, which he certainly seems to be. They're on the road this week, AOC and Bernie, like later in the week, Arizona. We're on board. Yeah, we should, you should go out there with them and do like an exclusive interview on

the, for Tim Miller, for the Bullwork, with AOC and Bernie, you know, some of our former conservatives. We're both in Arizona this week. I think AOC and Bernie are there on Thursday and we've got our sadly sold out for people who wanted to go live event on Saturday in Phoenix. So I don't know, maybe we'll see them on the road. All right, Bill, one more thing before I lose you. Chuck Schumer has actually canceled the book tour.

So I guess he didn't want the heat that was coming to him. Don't blame him. Hopefully he can turn to some more productive work on behalf of the minority party because the minority party does still exist in this country for now. So there you go, Chuck Schumer, notebook tour. Bill, get back to your baubles. Get back to your silly little baubles, you know, and we'll see you next Monday. Bill Bollingham See you, Tim. Tim Cynova Everybody else will be back here tomorrow

for another edition of the Bullard Podcast. It's going to be a good one. We'll see you next Monday. See you, Tim. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulldog podcast. It's gonna be a good one. We'll see you all then. Peace. Sunshine, oh how the day can be so long, I say. I don't got no march in me. I can't turn the other cheek. Why they're testing your patience?

They just testing my reach. Funeral flowers, every 28 hours. Being laid over hours Sworn to protect the cerebral who really got the power Looking over their allowances, building prisons where the mountains is Laptops is for the county kids, metal detectors is where ours is They'll never rewrite this, like they rewrote history The fact that the Statue of Liberty was black is a goddamn mystery And so it goes Harry truth don't get told all these cops get cleared and lives are

stole Harry Goose don't let go whoa just another nigga dead just another nigga dead send another to the feds send another to the feds they calling a National Guard public enemy I am Chuck D flavor- Flav and Louis V, but I'm Huey P The new elite, it's either you or me Let the sun shine, cause they dark clouds tryna ruin me It's more, more, more, more, more Than Baltimore, from shore to shore Outlawed, patience torn, patience gone

Oh love Hey, hey Sunshine, sunshine All the day, all the day Be sore, be sore Hey, hey Sunshine, sunshine All the day, all the day

The Bulldog podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brepp.