The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1007: Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Wehner: What's Going on with Our National Security?

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Senior members of Trump's Cabinet got caught sharing attack plans—down to details of who they were planning to kill, and with what kind of weapons, while also wishing Godspeed to our soldiers—and now they'll say anything to get out of the jam they put themselves in. Also, JD Vance openly questioned the judgement of the president in front of those very senior Cabinet members. Meanwhile, vengeance has long been a defining feature of Trump, but the habits of his heart have also infected his supporters. And they've become a moral freak show cheering on deportations of families and starving Africans. Jeff Goldberg and Pete Wehner join Tim Miller. show notes Jeff's original scoop on getting texted war plans (gifted) Pete's piece on Trump's insatiable appetite for revenge Trump's 1992 interview with Charlie Rose

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got an Atlantic double bill today. First off the head boss editor in chief for the Atlantic host of Washington week on PBS and author of the biggest story in quite a while. The Trump team accidentally texted me. It's war plans. It's Jeffrey Goldberg.

How you doing, Jeff? I'm good. Thanks for having me. I guess my first note here on the outline is, holy fuck. I want to know, just talk us through, you do this a little bit in the story, but where were you when the signal message from Mike Waltz, the national security advisor came through and walk me through how you kind of process what was happening as he invited the entire national security team onto the group text with you. Yeah.

Quite randomly, I was in Salzburg, Austria. Let's put that aside. Okay. 60th anniversary of the Sound of Music, that's all I'll say. But I was in Salzburg. He invited me in to chat with him. I've met him like, I think, twice in my life, not recently, probably like a couple of years ago, but didn't strike me as a crazy thing.

He's the national security advisor. I'm the editor of a magazine. I write about national security. We probably agree on a lot of stuff too. At least all of Mike. Yeah, well, that's the issue. Marco too, right? You know, I assume that things that come over the transom are fake, but there's no harm in saying to Mike Waltz,

yeah, sure, here's my, I accept your message request and I'll find out if it's the real Mike Waltz or not. That happens. A couple of days later, I am added to the Signal Chat, Huthy PC small group with a bunch of names, most of which are, you know, spelled out. Some are not. Some are just initials, but, you know, including the CIA director, the secretary of names, most of which are spelled out, some are not, some are just initials, but including the CIA director, the secretary of defense, etc. And then I'm 100 percent convinced it's a fake. 100 percent. Because that doesn't happen, somebody's setting me up.

Well, couldn't you just check to see if it was Mike Waltz's phone number? Like, don't you have his phone? No, I don't want to press any buttons. Right, you don't want to accidentally leave the chat. Well, no. I assume that this is a state actor or a non-state actor trying to, you know, I mean, and it's obviously more subtle than this is UPS. You have to give us your social security number or unless we're not going to give you your

packet, you know, this is some sophisticated thing going on, you know, and signal in the way it's designed. You can't very easily from my limited skills here, very easily see what's going on, and signal in the way it's designed, you can't very easily from my limited skills here, very easily see what's going on. If the person in the group is not in your phone book, then you can't see who it is. Anyway, I just thought of some weird thing. I get a lot of weird things over the transom, as do you every day. It's like, all right, we're moving on. And then over the next couple of

days, it gets very, very strange. First, there's a, with a high degree of, you know, very similitude, there's a discussion about attacking Yemen and whether they should attack Yemen this weekend. You know, it was this is already late in the week. And I'm like, well, some AI is very clever at mimicking the policy positions or the ideological proclivities of JD Vance. That's interesting. Because JD was the one that was against in the in the text chain. JD was the one who articulated and by the way, I find this fascinating. And this is the stuff that interests me the most. I find it fascinating that JD Vance is in the chat. to me the most. I find it fascinating that JD Vance is in the chat, not only saying that he disagrees with the president, but that he doesn't think the president understands the ramifications of the policy. That's interesting. Well, it's newsworthy.

I thought that was interesting too. Trump doesn't understand it. He says that in a chain with 18 people and the editor of the Atlantic. This is where it's kind of bold, right? I mean, he says it in a chain that includes half the cabinet. I'm exaggerating, but only slightly, maybe 30% of the cabinet, including, by the way, the senior-most cabinet departments, the Secretary of State, Defense, Treasury are in there.

And he's like, I don't think the president really gets what's going on here. And he's making strong arguments that this is just, we're just doing Europe another favor and screw the Europeans. And it's making strong arguments that this is just, we're just doing Europe another favor and screw the Europeans. And it's interesting, a conversation that's ostensibly about whether we start dropping serious bombs on the Houthis becomes more animated on the question of how bad the Europeans are.

Really bad or super bad. You know, and that's where it goes That's the Friday but on Saturday blows Higgs has said he loads are Europeans Yeah, no, and they did it all caps Europeans are pathetic all caps, whatever I mean, they're all like sort of mimicking each other and mimicking the boss in that sense Saturday is when it becomes obviously Totally bizarre and I realized that I'm in something that, as much as I enjoy national security investigative reporting, I don't need strike plans two hours before a launch.

That's not, that should not be coming into my phone. I mean, I take this stuff very, very seriously. And I take the responsibility not to get Americans killed very, very seriously. And I'm sitting in a Safeway parking lot I take the responsibility not to get Americans killed very, very seriously. And I'm sitting in a Safeway parking lot and my phone contains now information that really four or five humans should know. Right?

Detailed plans. Who they're going to kill, when, what weapons. When, yeah. The when and the where are what's interesting in the weapons packages. Because what I deduced, obviously what I deduced from this is that these are not uncrewed aircraft drones being used, or missiles, standoff missile platforms.

That they're talking about, all I'm comfortable saying is that they're talking about, all I'm comfortable saying is that they're talking about crude aircraft being used in the coming hours to attack sites that I have to assume are protected by anti-aircraft batteries and other defensive weapons systems that I don't know. But it's like, the thought is, if this is real, why the hell do I have this? And I'm serious. Like, I know it might go against people's perception of what a reporter wants to know.

I want to know the strategy. I want to know the arguments. I want to know our foreign policy posture. After action, I want to know if it worked or not, if they killed the right people or if they killed civilians by mistake. I want to know how bad the... I don't want to know what planes are flying when. It's not information I should have. Sorry.

I just, I get very exercised about this because the white house is saying there was no classified information. Classification is a technical term. So put that aside, but the white house is now saying there's nothing in there that was a sensitive. And it's like, yeah, let's get to that. Boys, what are you talking about here?

Here is what the White House Press Secretary said just about an hour ago. Jeffrey Goldberg is well known for his sensationalist spin. Here are the facts about his latest story. No war plans were discussed. No classified material was sent to the thread. The White House Counsel's Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms

Trump's top officials can communicate on as safely and efficiently as possible So what do you make of that no classified material and no war plans the White House says I've detailed without including Particulars or technical issues what was included it was a timeline of coming attacks The weapon systems used in these attacks, some very specific targeting information, who they are trying to kill. Okay? Let me just state that. Who they are trying to kill in the next two hours.

Are we going to split hairs here? To me, that sounds like an attack plan. That sounds like a war plan. That sounds like this is what we're going to do and we haven't done it yet. And literally, They are talking You know and I agree with this kind of language, you know, godspeed to our men. They they understand That they're about to send Americans into harm's way in order to achieve this national security goal Classification is a very interesting subject. I can't get into it. I don't

There's national defense information. There's classification. Look, it's obviously material. There's a covert CIA operative named on the threat, right? So I mean, that is classified. Well, I, yes. And I withheld her name from this. They named somebody who's an active CIA officer in this thread, which is on Signal again, a commercial app in which I'm watching, you know, and I withheld it. I didn't put it in the story because she's undercover. But I mean the CIA director put it into the chat. But so that's clearly classified information though, like covert CIA operatives. By any standard of imagination, I mean we're talking about, again, these are technical terms and there's many, many different layers and complexities,

and I'm not a national security lawyer. These are technical terms and there's many, many different layers and complexities. I'm not a national security lawyer, but look, I've been doing this for more than 30 years. I know what sensitive technical information looks like. Okay? That's all I'm going to say. LWJ So let's go to that national security lawyer question then, because now the Secretary of Defense and the White House press secretary have said you're lying, have said there are no war plans there, have said there's no classified information.

So the obvious question is, shouldn't you now demonstrate it? Shouldn't you publish the text? No, because they're wrong. They're wrong. But how can you prove that you're wrong? Maybe should you provide them to the House and Senate special committees on intelligence maybe? I don't know.

Wow. Well, you want to become my lawyer? I'm throwing this out there, Jeff. I don't know. I mean, look, the White House press secretary an hour ago said you're lying. Look, I feel like, let me just put it this way, my colleagues and I, and the people who are giving us advice on this, have some interesting conversations to have about this. But just because they're irresponsible with material doesn't mean that I'm going to be irresponsible with this material. And you know what? You've had long history as I have with dealing with them.

And at moments like this, when they're under pressure because they've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar or whatever, they will just literally say anything to get out of the moment, to get out of the jam. And that's okay. I get it. I get the defensive reaction. But here's the thing. My obligation, I feel, is to the idea that we take national security information seriously.

Maybe in the coming days, I'll be able to let you know that, okay, I have a plan to have this material vetted publicly, but I'm not going to say that now because there's a lot of conversations that have to happen about that. All of my inclinations, as you can tell, including withholding the name of the CIA undercover officer, all of my inclinations are I have a pretty clear standards in my own behavior of Information that I consider to be in the public interest even if it's technically classified or not information that's in the public interest information It's not in public interest and I'm just gonna like I'm sticking to my principles here Understood to this point though about the unauthorized release Tulsa the director of national intelligence Tulsa Gabbard

Just a couple of weeks ago posted this that any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such. I mean, it seems like this was an unauthorized release. You're not a lawyer, but what do you make of that? I mean, unauthorized release might not be technically the correct term for mistakenly inviting the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic to your signal chat. I don't know what's covered there.

It seems like they have standards. Usually, you know, with glass-side refrigeration, you have a skiff, you have, you know, devices that you're supposed to use this stuff on. I mean, if you could, even if you're using something where you could plausibly invite Jeff Goldberg, it seems like an unauthorized leak. Right. Although I have seen in some corners of the conversation pro-Trump people saying that, oh, I'm sure he was invited on purpose in order to show that JD Vance was strong against

Europe. And it's like, that's one way to show that. The other way is to just look on YouTube at his speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he was deeply critical of Europe. I mean, there's some 3D chess kind of thinking going on around this, which I find obviously amusing. Look, here's the thing. Obviously, it's a very relatable screw up.

We've all sent texts to the wrong people. And there is something to be said for a White House just saying, oh, yeah, looks like we screwed that up. We are going to learn our lesson here and really police up the way we use commercial end-to-end encrypted apps for security communications. I mean, they could just say, yeah, well, that was a doozy. We're not going to do that again. Sorry.

And then move on. Yeah. Just I want to blow your mind with one way to look at this, because I was watching in a different interview, you said, what if they accidentally put a hootie on there? And at some level, that sounds ridiculous. Until you think about it like this,

I mean, the Secretary of Defense called you a deceitful and highly discredited journalist. The presidents attacked you. And at some level, they kind of did put an adversary on our attack plan. I mean, they call you the enemy of the people. Like, you are an adversary. Yeah, but I don't like the Houthis

as much as they don't like the Houthis. You know, here's the thing. They're using an unclassified messaging system to share very sensitive information. They mistakenly invited the editor of the Atlantic under the thing. Just say, ah, I guess we screwed up, trying to learn from it.

We'll do better next time. I'm all for that. Everybody makes mistakes. I mean, most of us don't invite people to who the PC small group. We just sort of invite them to a party that they shouldn't have been to, but I get that. But just deal with the reality of it,

especially since they've taken such strong positions on classification and on the use of unauthorized servers, as a famous example, but This is the part that I just don't understand just deal with it Well, they're liars Jeff and I've had a lot of success lying and so that's why they're lying I think I'm just gonna alright, you know, I accept your expert judgment So here's the last thing I'm just dying to know just on a human level so you're sitting there in the safe way Yeah, you want to see if there's bombing that is actually real.

Yeah. Had you told other people, like, had you told your wife? Like are you carrying this alone? Like what is it? No, I'm not carrying this alone. I have colleagues and trusted colleagues and advisors who I said, this is a weird thing going. Look, we were all, including my colleague, Shane Harris, who's one of the great intelligence

reporters, one of the great intel community reporters. And we were both convinced that this was an elaborate deception campaign, elaborate disinformation campaign. And the reason we thought that is because it's too improbable. It's too improbable that, and by the way, it's too improbable, given my coverage history of these guys, the suckers and losers piece and other things, how did I get into this group? Therefore, since it made no sense,

it had to be a deception campaign. Right. Yeah, I mean, I guess the people are saying that, I guess it was Jamison Greer, who's a US trade rep is JG. But then again, like why is Mike Waltz, like are you guys on initial relationship? You know, JG, MW?

You know, these are questions for Mike Waltz. Okay. We'll try to get them on the pod. I look forward to that podcast interview. All right. Thank you so much. Jeff Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. What a week.

What a two weeks for you, I guess. It was March 11th you were first put on there. I appreciate you coming on the pod this morning. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. Up next, Pete Wehner. Hey, y'all.

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when using the code thebullwork at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com using code thebullwork at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com code thebullwork. Now is the perfect time to plant, so use thebullwork to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. All right, we are back. He's a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He served in the Reagan Bush and Bush administrations. He's a contributing writer at the New York Times and the Atlantic. His latest piece for the Atlantic is Trump's Appetite for Revenge is Insatiable. It's Pete

Wainter. Welcome back to the pot, Pete. How are you doing? Pete Slauson I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Tim. It's always a pleasure to be with you. Tim Well, I just talked to your boss, the big boss of the Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg about his unbelievable scoop. I'm just kind of wondering what your reaction was as you were seeing that come across the Transom yesterday. Jeff Yeah, I'd say stunning, but not shocked in a certain way. This is an incompetent crew. I think for Trump and his administration, one day it's incompetence, the next day it's maliciousness,

third day it's a combination of both. And I think yesterday with that story, incompetence was the driving narrative. But I'd also say that for those of us who worked in the White House, that kind of security breach is probably more remarkable because you know how sensitive this information is. You're told so many different ways about how you can't do a fraction of what they did.

They were so loose with that information. It really could and may well have done tremendous damage to national security. I mean, if Jeff is on these calls, you've got to assume that the Russians and the Chinese are probably listening to a lot as well. So it was kind of par for the course. And my guess is by the end of the week, there will be some new outrage that we'll be focusing on because that's the nature of this wrecking ball administration. Yeah, talk about that, your experience, and I assume you were a speechwriter in the White House and other roles. I assume you had a

security clearance at times and had access to sensitive information. For people who that's not their world, who are listening, talk about like what the process usually was like if you had worked with the national security team on a speech that potentially had sensitive information or I don't know, any other example where you had access to classified information. Yeah, well, if there was anything approaching what they were talking about on this unsecured signal chat group, you would have been in the SCIF, which is a sensitive compartmentalized information facility in the White House.

If you go into the SCIF, you have to leave your cell phones out and it is just tied as a drum because they don't want these kind of security secrets leaked. And then there are varying degrees of security clearance too. And if you're at the top of the chain, you're talking about things like war plans and that kind of thing. But what's really driven to you in a White House that has a normal culture is how sensitive you have to be with this stuff, that you're in a position of real responsibility and you should take that seriously, that people can die and the national security interests

can be injured if you're not. And you can get in a lot of trouble if you cross the lines. And none of that was sent because the ethos of this administration, this White House is kind of nihilistic and they don't really care. We've seen it in the reaction to the story, which is Pete Hegseth going after Jeff, who's a fantastic, one of the great journalists of our era. What do they do? It's a kind of Roy Cohen philosophy, right?

Which is attack, smear, go on offense, never apologize. But yeah, and answer to your question, if you've been in the White House to see something like this happen, it's almost unfathomable. I mean, it is unfathomable. I think it's why Jeff didn't believe it was real. Until this is all the bombs dropping. He's just like, this could not be. And he said, I. I think it's why Jeff didn't believe it was real until all the bombs dropping.

He's just like, this cannot be. I started to think it was real when the emoji started coming through. He's like, I don't think that the Russians would be doing the muscle prayer emoji. Anyway, I want to, this is almost too obvious of a hit to do at this point, but it just merits covering, which is, you know, the 2016 campaign was so focused on opsec, if you will, email security and CNN put together a little package of the people who were on this signal chain talking about Hillary Clinton. I want to play that for you. If there was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now. Nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.

Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espeon object. When you have the Clinton emails, on top of the fact that the sitting president of the United States admitted he had documents in his garage, they didn't prosecute, they didn't go after these folks. I forgot Joe Biden got thrown in there, too. But again, the whole point of the Clinton scandal was that ostensibly because she had this private server, people, foreign governments could have easier access to sensitive information. The second layer of the scandal was that it

protected her from FOIA, right? The people couldn't, you know, that government records were removed, maybe that shouldn't have been. Both of those things are true in spades here. I mean, this is a commercial app, we're discussing a bombing, and I didn't get into this with Jeff, but on the signal chain, it says the messages are set to disappear. So these are not messages that are being preserved. Exactly. So anyway, talk about that. Yeah, I mean, it's rank hypocrisy. We've seen it for so many years that, in a sense,

as you were suggesting earlier, you've got to shrug your shoulders because we've gotten used to it. I will say this, Tim, when I hear that kind of thing. It is, to me, a kind of cat scan into who these people are and what drives them. And what a fraud. So much of their lives have been, and in a sense, how much of a fraud, a lot of Republican politics, a lot of Republican politicians have been.

And I'm saying this to somebody who obviously spent my life, you can tell from my biography, in the Republican party. I entered politics because I had a pretty high view of politics. I felt like it was a noble profession. I still do. But I had usually given the benefit of the doubt to people who got involved. I thought, well, you know, they're getting involved or they're trying to do the right thing. You know, liberals, conservatives had different views of how to get to the same end. But I think the Trump era has revealed to me a couple of things. One is that they really don't care

about truth. They don't really care about principles. They care about his power. All of these things become instruments for power. This is what happens with a moral character with Bill Clinton. You use a figure of two by four every day to hit him upside the head because he has an affair with an intern. You get somebody like Donald Trump who makes Clinton look like a Boy Scout, and all of a sudden it doesn't matter. You see this over and over and over again and you say, oh, this is a window into the soul of these people. They really don't care. That's discouraging, it's alarming, but it's the reality. I think we have to acknowledge that the second thing I'll say, and we've seen this in terms of the collapse

of a lot of institutions apart from the Republican Party and the Trump era, is how little genuine courage there is in life generally and in politics specifically. JFK said that there's a reason that profiles and courage is a thin volume because it is a rare virtue. The way in which these people, once they get close to power, will bend and then break, especially if they're under threat or under attack. It is remarkable.

There are a few shining lights like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and others, but they are rare. Yeah. That takes us well to your article about revenge and just their appetite for revenge. And it's interesting, you get through a lot of the details of the people that Trump is coming after. I want to talk about that But the biggest picture related to what you just said you quote Tocqueville

Who says if citizens in a democracy saw that unethical and corrupt behavior led to riches in power? This would not only normalize such behavior It would validate and valorize it and I do think that we are seeing that broadly but particularly in this Context of being able to use the government to get revenge on your foes or perceived foes. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, Tocqueville had such great insights into the American character. This was, I suppose, some of the gifts that people from foreign lands can bring when they come to America. They say these things that maybe we don't. Tocqueol, of course, did that in spades. But yeah, I have found myself thinking a lot

during the Trump era of a domain which conservatives used to care about, which is our civic and political culture. That is the intersection of politics and how it plays out in broader society and how certain cultural norms and beliefs are changed. And I think what Trump has done is reshape the emotional wiring of a lot of otherwise good and decent people.

And that is really in part the power of the presidency and the omnipresence of the president, if you will. And when I look back at conversations I had with Republicans who were supporting Trump in 2016, I remember those conversations. There was some skittishness about his moral failures and his moral corruptions. They decided it was worth it. At the end of the day, they felt like, well, his policies will advance the things we care

about. But his corruptions were viewed as a bug. I think they're now viewed as a feature. And there's something about what Trump has both tapped into and unleashed in people in terms of the darker parts of their nature. The other day I was thinking of an analogy. Let's say you were brought up in a very strict Christian home, homeschooling movement, the purity culture and so forth, and your parents were trying to shield you from the trappings of the world. And then you graduate from high school and you go to Miami, University of Miami in South

Beach, and your parents aren't there anymore. All of a sudden it's like, wow, there's an entire world. I've been contained and constrained, and then you just let loose. In a way, I think the Republican Party, which is the party of family values and morality and norms and civic culture, that's what they stood for. I think they believe they stood for that. And then Trump came along and turned all of that on its head. And so he gave a green light to all of these, you know, unchecked emotions and passions and anger. And it turned out that a lot of Republicans, the vast majority of the

Republican party were thrilled, you know, by that. So I think he did that obviously to the Republican Party, but I think he's doing it more broadly to a lot of Americans, not all of them by any means, because there's obviously a big opposition to him, but enough that it's really doing injury to America. It's even a little bit more dramatic than the homeschooler at Miami example, because at some level I think that most of those homeschoolers at the University of Miami kind of know that they're doing bad, but are just getting excited anyway. It's weird.

Trump has convinced these people actually that acting in vice is actually good. Exactly. Right? That doing the bad thing is the right thing to do. It's how you gain power. It's how you advance your objectives and that the Democrats, like these school marms that want to wag their finger at you if you do the bad thing, they are the bad ones, actually.

I mean, I would add to that kind of a psychological insight to it, which is the emotional thrill of it all, right? There's just an awful lot of people who are Trump supporters in which his transgressions and his nihilism and his attacks and his vengeance and all of those things. It's almost life-giving to them. It's vivifying. It is as if they feel like they're part of a grand and great drama and they're kind of actors within it. So, you know, if I step back from all of the injury that he's doing to America and it's hard to do, just from a psychological standpoint, what's happening is really fascinating and it is not unprecedented

by any means in world history. It's rare in American history to see it to this degree. You know Lincoln warned about it in his young men's lyceum speech in 1830 I think and Andrew Jackson. So you got that Lincoln lyceum speech poll quote in your head? Yeah well it's about what is it free Free men die by suicide, right? Isn't that the main one? But Lincoln understood the dangers like the founders of Ma passions, right? The great concern that they had was demagogues because they could stoke up these unchecked passions. And I'll just add as a person of the Christian faith, a certain painful irony, which is almost to a person, the founders, whether they were believers or not, believe religion was central to the American Republic, is they thought

that it would promote what they refer to as Republican virtues, that religion would create the kind of moral infrastructure that would allow democracy to work. I don't think what they anticipated and what Tocqueville didn't anticipate is when religion does the opposite, which I think is happening in a lot of places right now with white evangelical movement fundamentalists, which is rather than creating a moral infrastructure for the citizenry, it's doing the opposite. It's validating and almost baptizing really immoral and unethical behavior. It's interesting you say that. I mean, at some level, look, there's always been pernicious elements of the Christian

right. There have been some bad actors throughout, but the degree to it now and the all-consuming nature of it, the fact that you have to be for these Trump's vices, not just go along with them, but actively approve of them to be of Christian good standing or whatever. It struck me, Kinzinger, who you referenced, Adam Kinzinger sometimes submits to his own vices, which is quote tweeting the trolls, the random people on the internet that come after him, which maybe you shouldn't do.

I also submit to that from time to time. But this woman, who I don't know, tweeted, you love to see it with a picture of this California couple that was deported after living in the US for 35 years. It lived here 35 years. And Kinzinger retweets this with Christ is King in bio. You know, she's like this woman that is like rubbing the face of these people that hadn't done anything wrong. They've been here for 35 years, a family in America.

They're being deported now. she's rubbing their faces in it, she's dunking on them, criticizing them, and Adam's like, this is Christ, this is what Christ would want. But the woman is more representative of the evangelical and of the Christian right than Adam at this point. Yeah, I mean, the way that it has spread and the layers of rationalization that have gone into it, that somehow you've inverted the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Jesus, and celebrate the cruelty, celebrate the corruption, especially targeted to, Jesus referred to as the least of these, is really, really remarkable. Not all white evangelicals are

in that category, of course. I will tell you what I think a significant problem is though. Those that aren't in that category have for a variety of reasons, not really spoken out. And the people who are fully involved in Magna World have. And so what you've created to a watching world is this narrative where they say, look, 82% of white evangelicals vote for Trump. You've got a whole series of important, prominent figures, Eric Metaxas and Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham. And you go through the list who are speaking out, promoting it.

And then an awful lot of people who know better, who even feel so much of shame at this, they're not really talking. So you've, you've got a few people here and there, you know, Russell Moore. And I was just going to say, but then they get kind of pushed aside like a friend russlemore exactly exactly because institutionally they're afraid like a lot of institutions are afraid and here i'm speaking as a person who is a follower jesus the christian faith. The damage that that's doing to the christian witness is extraordinary because it's essentially showing to the world, this is a moral freak show. This is a game. You guys talk it, you don't walk it.

And when that happens, people will turn and walk away from it. And I can't blame them for doing that. I want to get into some of the specifics you talked about with this revenge and what is alarming you the most. You frame it up with this. It's a nice one. Unfortunately, I have way too much of my brain space is used on things that Donald Trump has said and done.

I wish I could remove some of that and replace it with some nutritious information in my brain. But even I had forgotten this one. In a 92 interview with Charlie Rose Rose Trump was asked to be any regrets Among them he said I would have wiped the floor with the guys who weren't loyal which I will do now I love getting even with people what a strange life regret But I think that that is a telling way to frame up your article because that is really what he's doing now It's one of the most revealing interviews that I think Trump had.

So it was an hour on Charlie Rose or whatever, 50 minutes, and a lot of it was actually focused in on the vengeance, and that was a time in Trump's career where he had sort of been counted out, bankruptcies, and he was just coming back, and that theme of vengeance just came through again and again. And it has been the through line in his life.

You know, I imagine for him, it's a combination of factors. One is, I think he's clearly a person with sociopathic tendencies. So that has to be taken into account. Second is his family of origin, the whole kind of complicated relationship with his parents, mother and his father. And what his father really promoted in him at an early age, right?

They sidelined the younger brother because the younger brother wasn't vicious, wasn't a kind of figurative killer in the same way. And then of course there was that moment in Trump's life early on where he met Roy Cohen, who was a very kind of nasty piece of work in terms of as a lawyer. He really taught Trump at an early age, never apologize, always go on the attack, never settle, counter sue. When you understand that history of Donald Trump, you see that this has been part of him from the beginning and there was no reason to think it would ever change. And so when you combine that

personality, that life experience, those mental disorders, and then give that person the power of the presidency, and then in addition to that in Trump 2.0, get him surrounded by people who are all acolytes. You know, it's a really dangerous mix and we're seeing that play out now. Pete Yeah. You've listed through all the various ways that he's trying to get revenge on people. The law firms have been the most kind of striking example this week, but plenty of other examples out there. What has been the most alarming to you as you kind of project out what we're looking into for the next three plus years. Yeah. I mean, in that realm, I would say probably going after the law firms.

It's so unprecedented to go after private law firms and then seeing how those law firms have responded. I'd say to me, the one that was most unsettling emotionally was just stripping the security details from the people like General Milley, who was a remarkable man of heroism and courage, served his country so well, was under threat from foreign countries. We know that. To go through and to strip his security clearance as well as John Bolton and Pompeo and Liz Janey and others. It's an act of such pettiness taking down Milley's portrait

as a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs or Anthony Fauci's at NIH. Those kind of acts just underscore for me something I know, but every time you see it, I think it's just upsetting. But it tells you again and again and again that this is who he is. This is what drives him. I think some things in politics he's indifferent to, especially on a lot of policy issues.

I think he can flip around. If he decides that he wants vengeance on somebody or there's some cause that matters to him, he won't let go. And the best illustration of that was January 6th. I mean, he took a situation that would have crippled any other political figure and ended up in some remarkable feat of leveraging it to his advantage and turning them into patriots in his own world. So, you know, there are a lot of other things he's done in the first 65 days, but in the

realm of vengeance, those are the things that kind of jump out at me. Pete Slauson The other one that we're seeing a lot of this week that I want to talk to you about, which you referenced, is the revenge on behalf of Elon. Now, we're not just doing revenge on behalf of Trump, we're doing revenge on behalf of the co-president. I will say, I didn't get to this with Goldberg, but there was one silver lining for me of the signal text chain.

Yeah, what's that? Elon wasn't on it. Oh, that is interesting. So, it's like, okay, well, Elon isn't deciding everything. He's not involved in the bombing decisions. So that was the only silver lining for me. But they have reoriented a lot around protecting him and going after his foes.

I've heard from people inside the FBI saying that Cash and Dan Bongino are putting agents that should be focused on real crimes and refocusing them on whatever, Tesla vandalism. Now that that's not a real crime, but is that really the best use of time for the New York FBI agents? So that is happening. And we saw from the DOJ, I want to play you this clip, Tam Bondi, the attorney general, she was on Hannity demanding that Jasmine Crockett, a congresswoman from Texas, apologize for some incendiary rhetoric she set around Elon. And here she is with Maria Bart-Romo about Jasmine Crockett's comments about Elon. Maria, now you have this Congresswoman Crockett who is calling for attacks on Elon Musk on

her birthday. Wow. Let's take him out on my birthday, she says. Yet she turns and says, oh, I'm not calling for violence. Well, she is an elected public official and so she needs to tread very carefully. The attorney general saying you need to tread very carefully if you're criticizing Elon Musk too harshly. Yeah. Well, that's basically her job description right there, right? Which is she is Trump's instrument, DOJ is his weapon, and that's

what they're going to do. And John Stewart did a piece yesterday in The Daily Show, which is worth watching. And it was just on this hypocrisy of the free speech, right? Which is you heard so much about the anger, some of it legit, you know, in terms of universities and the wokeness and all of that about cancel culture. And of course, they're doing that, you know, 10 times beyond what the left was doing. But it is an illustration, again, of people, you know, in positions of enormous power, targeting others, either to destroy them or to intimidate them into silence. And so far, it's working probably better than they would have imagined because you see so many people going sort of OCE because they're afraid. Yeah. The DOJ element is interesting to me. I mean,

you were, were you in the White House when the Alberto Gonzales kerfuffle was happening with the US attorneys? I think about that story, right? And, you know, without getting into all the details on it, like essentially the scandal there was that there was a politicization of US attorneys and removing some that weren't, you know, meeting the political objectives of Roe and Gonzalez. And Gonzalez was resigning over this. And to me, that is just like such small, when you compare that to now the sitting attorney general going on TV threatening the political foes for speech, placing Trump's personal attorney as the US

attorney in New Jersey that happened yesterday, Alina Jaba, placing Ed Martin as the attorney general in Washington DC, people with no experience as prosecutors who are just political weapons. I wonder what you make of it with that backdrop of the context of living through the supposed very, quote unquote, scandal around Alberto Gonzalez. The kind of things that pre-Trump era would have been considered scandalous and would have dominated the new cycle for weeks, would have caused people to resign or apologize, should be reined in. I mean, those were like the good old days. And that really is what happens when you crash through the barriers, the norms, as relentlessly as Trump has done.

And it's not just who he is, but it's his capacity to impart his ethic into the ethic of others. And in this particular case, it is to target people and to never back up. The shamelessness is a key to understanding Trump. I think he really is shameless. It doesn't come as naturally to most people

who don't have his sociopathy, but they learn by watching. But yeah, to think about the kind of the norms and scandals that happened in the past. I mean, you think about, for example, Gary Hart, who was forced out of a presidential election in 1988, because of a picture on the monkey business, which was this yacht with Donna Rice. And you compare that to Trump's life, Elon Musk's life, it's a different galaxy. I want to go take us back to the old galaxy for a minute and just have a couple of issues I want to

sort of group together as You know the good parts of W's legacy and what the current Republicans are doing with that right now USAID PEPFAR Compassionate treatment of immigrants kind of just want to take through them one at a time. What do you make of what's been happening with USAID? want to take through them one at a time. What do you make of what's been happening with USAID? Oh, that has really upset me. I think of all the things that have happened in the first part of the Trump presidency, the gutting of USAID has really been painful because the number of vulnerable, innocent people who are going to die because of this. I mean, people just don't know really what USAID does, but then when they're told, they just ignore it or they've adapted this,

you know, a lot of these horror stories, which a lot of them actually aren't attributable to USAID in terms of promoting woke programs and so forth. So you're talking about just an entire range from saving kids from malnutrition to different kinds of diseases and Ebola to starvation. It's just extraordinary, the damage that's being done. There are plausible estimates that between maybe a million and two million people will die as a result of this, certainly in the hundreds of thousands, quite apart from just the human suffering. And it's

so unnecessary and it's so capricious. And it is as if there is no human sympathy, not an ounce of it, no compassion, even a celebration of like destroying this program. Pete Yeah. It's not even like the Rubio, I know Rubio who quotes all the Bible verses, you don't even get like a sense of, oh, we're trying to maximize our dollars, you know, we don't want to leave people out in the lurch. But you know, there is some fraud there, you know, and some of that would be BS.

But you can imagine a way they could talk about this that would express some of that human sympathy, and there's zero. I think most people who are familiar with what USAID does would say that there are reforms that are needed. Samantha Bauer, who was there during the Biden administration, I think would say so. Others would as well. It's one thing, though, to say a program needs reform. Virtually every government program does, but the way that they did it, which is to decimate it, to gut it, and to

catalyze all of this human catastrophe, the suffering and the deaths that will emerge from this and not carrying a wit about it and in fact celebrating it and using it as a talking point for Doge and what they're doing to destroy the federal government. It's just, it's sick. And this is getting close to blood on your hands sort of stuff because it was unnecessary. They have to know on some level what's happening and they're doing it anyway. Talk about PEPFAR in particular.

I mean, it's just such a point of pride for Bush administration folks. And I guess it's the one thing that there's still some conversations, potentially, that it might be protected. But in the meantime, there are groups on the ground that are doing this work, NGOs, that are having to shutter. So some of the damage is already done. That's right. I mean, the PEPFAR was the Global AIDS Initiative, which was promoted by President Bush in the early 2000s. It was promoted by him, Josh Bolton, and Anthony Fauci, Mike

Gerson, and a number of others. And the latest figures are that it saved somewhere between 25 and 30 million people on the African continent from AIDS. It was also the malaria initiative. It was a source of pride for President Bush and his administration. It should have been. It was one of the most remarkable humanitarian achievements in the history of this country. It had complete bipartisan support ever since it was started. Other presidents, Democratic presidents, Barack Obama, embraced it, built on it, and that was fantastic.

But even PEPFAR in the end was put in the crosshairs. It started actually, I think it was a year ago, with the Heritage Foundation, which promoted a paper attacking PEPFAR. And that was the signal that we're going after that program. I think there's some effort to try and save it, to keep it from suffering the same fate as USAID.

But that's a very open question right now. But falls under the same fate as USAID, but that's a very open question right now, but falls under the same category, which is these are life-saving, literally life-saving programs, and it is almost all good and no bad, and it's pennies on the dollar. It's one of the most effective things that you could do both in terms of saving lives, but also America's image in the world. Yet, they go after it, and they want to destroy it. That, I would say, Tim, is the nihilism that is part of this movement.

It is destruction for destruction's sake. It is what I was referring to earlier, which is that the destruction is kind of vivifying and life-giving. So they're taking these wrecking balls to the load-bearing walls of democracy and programs that are saving millions of lives, and they're just having a jolly good time.

I mean, look, I guess it's a complicated calculus because you don't want to trigger them into enjoying the destruction even more. But it does, at least with regards to PEPFAR, and we haven't heard from W, Condi, other types of people from that era. What do you make of that? Why there's not been a more vigorous defense from Bush era colleagues of yours? I don't know. I haven't had the conversations.

It wouldn't surprise me. I don't know this for a fact if they're maybe working behind the scenes to try and salvage it. I hope that's going on. PEPFAR does seem to be immune in some ways that other programs are not. And I should note Andy Natsios has spoken out who was the head of the SID then, but some of the more prominent names. Yeah, yeah.

So that may well be what's going on, but I'm not doing any behind the scenes work, so I'm happy publicly to talk about it. I wrote actually a piece in the Atlantic on it last year when the Heritage Foundation decided to catalyze this movement within the Republican party to go after it. And that was, you know, that was another straw in the wind. To the immigration side of it, you know, again, this is just another example on a theme of what we've been discussing, but it's not just the

deportations, it's like the glee at the suffering, you of what we've been discussing, but it's not just the deportations It's like the glee at the suffering, you know, they've been putting out these snuff videos You can hear the sound of the chains clinking and now gleefully sharing this These videos of the of the immigrants and are being sent to San Salvador But then being having their head shaved I they're putting all this out like it's a Michael Bay movie trailer where they're bragging about the treatment of these people. Some of them are probably criminals that deserve poor treatment, but we don't know that. They haven't provided any evidence of it. What do you make of not just the policy shift from quote unquote compassionate conservatism

on immigration, but just the manner in which they've dehumanized immigrants. Yeah, that's a key word I'd say, I guess, what comes to me, which is a dehumanization. I mean, that has been going on across the board. It's been going on ever since Trump really entered the national stage politically. And there's a history of that in world politics, which is the dehumanization of people, which leads to much, much darker and uglier and other things. And again, it is the joy and the delight and the thrill that people seem to get out of this. It's a kind of MAGA ethic. It's a kind of hyper-faux masculinity. I think what it's tied to in part, just in

part, is decades of resentment and grievances which had been building on the right, a feeling of being disrespected. It was interesting. In 2016, I was at Stanford doing an event just before the election with Arlie Hothchild, who's a very esteemed historian. I was on a cab ride with her. I think it was to the event. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. It's sort of in the bayou country in Louisiana, which you know about.

The thing that she told me as we were talking about Trump's take over the Republican Party in This 2016 is she said Pete thing. Yeah, you have to understand is that these people feel dishonored and they feel disrespected And that led to a conversation about when people feel those emotions What it stirs up in them the anger and the lashing out and I think a lot of that is is behind this which is these feelings that we haven't been respected that we've been patronized and then there is This is particularly true, but not exclusively true of the Christian world, which is this existential struggle? Like these are unusual times that the country is on the edge of the of the abyss and so we have to use country is on the edge of the abyss. And so we have to use means and politics that are not normal to get our way because the

survival of the country depends on it. So a lot of this roiling anger and resentment and rage has been building up. And Trump came in and tapped into it and accelerated it and then channeled it. And so I think what has happened is that now a lot of people in his movement, people who support him, they look at what's happening, they're controlling the lips. And so they are, they're delighting in this.

Again, this is the psychology of mass movements and politics. And it turns out that it's a lot trickier than maybe those of us in America who have been spared from this really understood. Where are we now? I think we're in the midst of an authoritarian takeover attempt, and we're going to see how it unfolds. and we're gonna see how it unfolds. So I hate to then lower this to kind of rank politics, but I do wonder your thought on this. Is there any potential way, do you think, for Democrats to make inroads into Christian communities based on this? I think about this from the standpoint of, like, obviously there are going to be some people that have just fully embraced the MAGA ethic and that are going to be unreachable.

But you think about what Trump has been doing with working class black voters, for example. He didn't win that group, but you tried hard, you make a message to them, you peel off certain group of people. Do you think there's anything there that potentially Democrats could make this case to faithful Christians? It's just like, this is crazy. Just the obscenity of what they're doing is so extreme that maybe they could win them back. Or do you think the Democratic brand is just so toxic? That's probably wishful thinking, toxic in that community. Yeah, I think right now it's too toxic, but it doesn't mean it can't change. I think it can

change really two ways. One is as the Trump era unfolds and his policies and his presidency begins to cut in ways that they begin to feel and reality really begins to take over. And all of a sudden this person that they've deified turns out to be a person of clay feet. So I do think it's gonna take some time, but that is one thing that may well happen. Continuing these narratives about the human cost I think is important too. I think it's right in its own right,

but I think it's also important to make that. I do think that the Democrats may have a chance, but they have to get over a kind of an aversion toward Christians and religious faith more generally. Democratic party is much more secular in general now than it was a generation or two ago. But even if you go back to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, I mean, they use from time to time religious language and made religious. And Barack Obama sang Amazing Grace in a church.

Exactly, which was a moving moment. The Democratic Party is in a bad place, obviously. I'm sure, I mean, you've talked to a lot of people about that. So it needs to reform itself. It actually has to, in my estimation, make the decision to change before they're going to change in terms of their policies. They have to make that conscious decision that we're on the wrong track in some fundamental

way that our problem is not communications problem, but it goes much deeper than that. And then I would say for Democrats, look to models that you had before, Bill Clinton, DLC in the 90s, Tony Blair and the Labour Party in England in the 90s. And if they can go ahead and use those as models of how to reform, I think that'd be all to the good. All right. I want to end with one more heavy topic, just because it's been so light so far today. But you did an interview for The Times that was kind of moving.

I just wanted to reference that for people. It was with Nicholas Waldersdorf. I was a professor of philosophical theology at Yale. He wrote a book about lament for his son who's 25 and died in a climbing accident. I know obviously we have some listeners who have gone through that and I've had David Froman and we've talked about this. I'm just wondering if there are any parts of that conversation that struck you, left you with any wisdom for people dealing with grief? Dr. David Froman Yeah, thanks. You know, I first got to know Nick,

because I did an article on him and I did an article on lament for a son, which was essentially a kind of fractured journal of his feelings after his son died in a climbing ascent in the 1980s. And that book was so powerful to so many people because for one thing, he wasn't able to explain what had happened. He wasn't able to answer the question of theodicy, which is how does a good God allow evil to happen? But when I talked to him, he was able to give voice to why he didn't give up on his faith, but how his faith changed and how deep the wounds went. And he talks about the mystery of God

and his ability to give voice to the pain that he went through created an enormous amount of solidarity with other people. And I know from what Nick has told me that over the years, people would actually travel to him and to talk to him because they felt like there was a solidarity in grief. And so Nick was very honest in that journey. His faith did change. And he also talked to me about what it means to redeem grief.

And what he means by that is to take that grief and to try and channel it in some kind of constructive way. He would never for a moment say that he would take the redemption of grief as something that was worth the death of his son, but his son died. And so that capacity to take grief and redeem it and not to be completely crushed by it is something that really moved me and I think it spoke to a lot of other people. Pete, thanks as always. I always love talking to you. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. It's not the best month for the country, but we soldier on. We'll try to redeem it and we'll be talking to you again sometime soon.

Great. Thanks for speaking up, Tim. It matters what you're doing and what your colleagues are doing. And we're going to play for the long game here and all we can do is be faithful. Whether it's successful or not, that's on its own time schedule, but you be faithful and that's what you're trying to do. So we're grateful for that. We appreciate it, brother. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulldog podcast. We'll Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason

Brown. Nothing left to do but hang my head and cry What was the intent? Looking to prove this move is dignified And you got an alibi Give me some