The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1009: Bill Kristol: Stiffen Your Spines, Democrats

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

If Joe Rogan is the voice in the wilderness on the disappearing of migrants to El Salvador, then the Democratic leadership really needs to rethink its cautiousness. Meanwhile, the Bluffer-in-Chief is musing about a third term and Elon seems to be skirting the law in Wisconsin over an election he claims will determine the fate of civilization. Plus, the tariffs threats are rattling the markets, Trump's gullibility with Putin is coming through loud and clear, and why does JD hate Europe so much?  Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial on Boston Common Official trailer for the film, Glory Texas Democrat Veronica Escobar on the deportations to El Salvador Elon in a cheesehead *Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Go to surfshark.com/thebulwark for 4 extra months of Surfshark.

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We got a proper Louisiana thunderstorm brewing outside my window. So if you get a little audio accompaniment of some, some thunderous noises, well, I think it's just appropriate for all the storm clouds we got on the horizon that we will be discussing here at the show. It's Monday, so of course, he's editor-at-large of The Bulwark and author of our Morning Shots newsletter. It's Bill Crystal. How are you doing, Bill?

Fine, Tim. And if we lose Tim, I'll just talk. It'll be no problem at all. It'll be one of the greatest Tim Miller podcasts, actually. A Crystal monologue. I had many people bragging about Bill Crystal Mondays at the New Orleans Book Festival this weekend. It was nice to see folks at the New Orleans Book Festival. So you know, if you thought you were going to get demoted, I don't think it's happening. I think we are stuck with each other. Did you sell a lot of books at the New Orleans Book Festival?

Actually, no, because they sold me out very quick, which was nice. So they didn't, I don't think that our mutual friend Mayor Landrieu, Mrs. Landrieu, the Isaacsons, they didn't realize what they, you know, what they had with me as far as book sales is concerned. You know, it takes a while. The locals are the last to kind of catch up to true celebrity. You know, they still think that Mayor, former Mayor Landrieu was kind of a more important person than Tim Miller, in New Orleans, but they'll learn soon.

That is true. I would not try to outshine the Landers. Okay. Much, much, much to discuss. I'm kind of reluctant to have this as the first topic, but I think that we should do it in the right context. That is that Donald Trump was on a call with Kristen Welker, beat the press over the weekend, where he started talking about the idea that he would run for a third term.

A lot of people want me to do it, he said, but I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it's very early in the administration. When asked to follow up about whether he wanted to do it, he responded, I like working, I'm not joking, it's far too early to think about it. He goes on to say there are a couple options, including running as VP and then having the president resign. I mean, this is, I think it's important when talking about this to say this is not legal and not going to happen.

I mean, unless he wants to attempt a military coup, but it is noteworthy that he is openly talking about this without real pushback from within his own kind of party, actually the opposite. Without any pushback, right? As a single Republican popped up to say, gee, that's not such a great idea. You know, the Constitution says otherwise,

but that would be too much to ask. I don't have, I mean, I assume he won't, but I don't know. We've assumed he wouldn't do other things. He loves power, he loves being president. It does show a certain lack of confidence in his vice president, I assume he won't, but I don't know. We've assumed he wouldn't do other things. He loves power. He loves being president. It does show a certain lack of confidence in his vice president. I would say having, I'm a little sensitive to these things. I've been a vice presidential chief of staff and occasionally there was a little lack of confidence that people thought and vice president Cuell from, from top

Bush people and if I were, if I were JD Vance's chief of staff, I'd be like, shouldn't he be saying an answer to this? That of course not. I have a great air, all teed up and ready to continue to advance the Trump agenda. But somehow that answer did not come to his mind. No, it's worth noting just for the facts for, you know, if you're talking to your, you know, MAGA pal down at the bar, the 12th amendment says clearly you can't be vice president if you're ineligible to be president.

And the 22nd Amendment obviously has the term limits. So it's right there, plain text. So even the VP plan, which is the cutesy version of doing it, doesn't really work. I mean, it's like my friend JJ McCullough tweeted, it's like, well, could this plan work for a five-year-old or a five-year-old runs as a VP and then the person resigns? Like, obviously not. So to me, the interesting side of this is part of this is him trying to stave off the lame duck element. And part of it is the fact that, you know, all things being equal, he would want to

stay and I don't think we can have any confidence that a deteriorating 81 year old Trump wouldn't try. And I think it's worth being vigilant about that and, you know, not playing have any confidence that a deteriorating 81 year old Trump wouldn't try. And I think it's worth being vigilant about that and, you know, not playing into his hands with how to talk about this. But I do think it's incumbent on the Republicans to be pressured to, you know, come out of their shell. Not that I'd be optimistic about that, but I think that it should be incumbent upon them.

Not that he would ever try anything to stay in office after he's lost an election or when it's not his turn to be president. But I mean, yeah, no, absolutely. It went to take it seriously in that way. Yeah, in a way it's a harbinger not of running for a third term or maybe just assuming power for, you know, for life, basically, if we can put it that way. I think it also does soften the ground generally for the notion that the Constitution is just a bunch of advisory

statements. It's not actually binding on anything. So just like this isn't binding, other parts of it aren't too binding, the Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment, all kinds of things that they don't like very much. Those can be kind of worked around too. Yeah, due process. We'll get to that.

The other element of where they're skirting their belief in the law is happening in Wisconsin. So we discussed on, what was it? On Thursday, I guess, with Lovett, this Wisconsin Supreme Court case, which is relatively significant in that if the Republican attorney general of Wisconsin won, then that would shift the balance of power back to Republicans. If Democrats maintain control, some of the gerrymander in Wisconsin might be changed, which could potentially allow for more fair maps in the states. It is important. It is interesting that Elon Musk, the world's richest man is there.

He spent 20 million on the campaign. He says that I think the fall of civilization or something rests on this race. So I don't know if it's that important of a race. So he last night had a speech in Green Bay where he handed out $1 million checks to two people. Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote. Also there's some questions about whether he's running an illegal lottery in Wisconsin. And so certainly a lack of care about following election laws in Wisconsin would be the nicest way that you can put it.

What do you make of Elon in Wisconsin? We'll talk about the race itself. Yeah. I mean, he's not a big election law, dutiful, careful election law obeyer kind of guy. And I guess this is part of that pattern. They seem to think it's an important race, both for, I guess, for what it will do in Wisconsin, as you said, in terms of gerrymandering and other things, and also having a friendly Supreme Court in place in 2028.

Just to get back to our original topic, Wisconsin is a swing state and they have in the back of their mind that, hey, that could be one where we'd want the Republican state legislature, if it's Republican, to contest the race and go to the state courts. Someone told me that he also went on at some length in his speech defending what he's doing on Social Security, that he's just getting rid of fraud. They're all lying about what he's doing, closing these offices and making it harder to get your Social Security, which is sort of A, maybe not what you want him talking about on the Sunday night before the vote in Wisconsin.

And secondly, does show that maybe that issue is, you know, they feel it's hurting them some, or he feels personally wounded by it as he deserves to be incidentally. For sure. I mean, I think that the Doge fraud and the Doge corruption, and just like the haphazardness which they've acted, is certainly hurting them. The other little thing about just this one million, I just want to linger on that for one more second, because one of the winners, so-called winners of the one million appears to be the head of the college Republicans in the state.

So again, we'll see exactly how that works out, but that doesn't seem like that is a process on the up and up. And we've seen some from the left online talking about how Democrats, like one way to play hardball here is Elon Musk should be arrested in Wisconsin. We don't do a ton of arresting over election law violations though we used to, but less lately with the neutered federal election commission. I guess my question is, how do you deal with this? It is just out in the open corruption, it's comically obvious.

He's got the big checks. The whole thing is, it's almost like when you imagine electoral corruption, you imagine behind the scenes, there's a brown paper bag or it's the Mayor Daily. It's like this kind of stuff. What they do is avoid accountability by doing everything so out in the open. Now the Trump's president has the Justice Department, they also avoid accountability by knowing that there's a zero chance that there'll be any federal enforcement against this.

Then it goes to the state and then you get into a slight Alvin Bragg situation where why is the state enforcing a federal law and it's awkward and it looks like it's just politics if it's a Democratic Attorney General or something. So yeah, the impunity is pretty astonishing though and bad obviously for the country. And sadly, we're two months into this administration. Is it going to stop now? I think that's something I've, I won't say I've underestimated, but I'm really struck by it. I mean, when you have a justice department and an FBI, it's not even pretending that it will investigate any problems on your own side or bring charges, even when they're pretty obviously called

for and when it's pretty obviously excusing every single person against the legitimate charges have been brought on your own side. So it's a get out of jail card for everyone on your side and they also going after obviously people on the other side. That really, that's so corrupting. I mean, it's worse than Trump's personal corruption, I'd say, and the grift, you know, or even worse than his personal pardoning of people and stuff to have the entire apparatus of the federal government firing, you know, career prosecutors, as I

say, taking care of your own people, going after the ones you don't, people you don't like out there. That is bad. That is literally what authoritarianism is and that's what we have. I do think it's, don't you think this Wisconsin election, I guess, will be, so it's Tuesday, right? So we'll all be, I guess I'll be writing about it Wednesday morning. You'll be talking about it Wednesday morning. Pretty big deal in the sense that, and I'm, I mean, I think if Democrats win, people will

say, well, they won the traditional election back in whatever that was, 2023. And you know, probably the Democratic governor probably sort of set a reason that they would win by a few points. What if Republicans win this election? They will be a huge freak out, wouldn't you say, on the Democratic side? I do. I think, look, there's the Wisconsin Supreme Court election and then the same night as this Michael Waltz election in Florida over on basically from St. Augustine down to Daytona Beach, quite a red district. And so I think the potential for freakouts just as far as tea leaf reading is very much

possible on both sides. I think that it's this kind of math teacher running Wisconsin against Randy Fine is kind of weirdo and unpopular Republicans. That's hurting Republicans in addition to the environment being concerning for Republicans. As far as these types of things go, they both are decently significant, more significant than they would be in a vacuum. One thing I just want to make sure I clarify and get this right. The sitting attorney general of Wisconsin is Josh Call who's a Democrat. So I mean in theory he could be enforcing election laws

in the state with regards to Musk. I just want to leave that out there. The candidate for the Supreme Court, Brad Schimel, is a Republican that was a former attorney general of Wisconsin. So very significant. Musk had a cheesehead hat on. No I didn't see that, is that right? He looks very silly. We'll put it in the show notes. People want to laugh at him. Tesla stocked down today. A lot.

I'm sure he's a real authentic Packers fan and Badger fan. And yeah, he's, I'm sure he's such a masculine man. I'm sure he can name more than three present NFL players to definitely as a guy that knows, knows sport. Well, as y'all know, I share my opinions pretty freely on this podcast and sometimes I get my feelings get emotional. So you can imagine why I need a way to boost my online privacy and security to prevent people from snooping around or trying to hack into my devices.

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Go to surfshark.com slash the bulwark for four extra months of Surfshark, and we will link that special bulwark offer for you in our show notes. I want to move on to El Salvador. A lot to discuss, a lot of developments over the weekend. I want to start though with this audio from a town hall because it gets ties to these political questions as well as well as the El Salvador show itself. Victoria Spartz, who is the Ukrainian immigrant that is a Republican representative from Indiana, was at a pretty raucous town hall. She had a lot of negative feedback from the residents. Appreciate those folks for showing up. But she got kind of on tilt talking about the deportations, well, not deportations, the kidnappings, the removals

to El Salvador. And here's a little bit of what she said. You violated the law, period. You violated the law, you are not entitled to due process. We don't mind if the citizens die, and these people violated the law. You violated the law, so you are not entitled to due process. It's not really how things work actually. How would that work exactly? What's the Alice in Wonderland thing? I mean

verdict first Trial afterwards or something like that. I can't remember the Queen of Hearts. I think says that yeah That's I guess that's our new system and it is the system incidentally on these this usually deportations or kidnappings So El Salvador as well as some of the others that we're seeing in airports and stuff I mean, it's pretty horrifying really, as you've pointed out many times. Sgt. Laird Sentence first, verdict afterward from the Queen of Hearts. Good one. Yeah, Victoria's Hearts is just going to give off Queen of Hearts energy. I want to actually go through what we've learned about a couple of these cases and I want to talk about the politics of it too. So, we've been discussing Entree,

the gay makeup artist quite a bit. The ACLU is in court on his and others behalf So we found the government's rationale for removing him. It was the tattoos in this case He has two tattoos that they pointed out. They were crowns one said mother underneath one mom once a dad So I don't know if those are popular gang tattoos, but sure doesn't seem like it to me So, I don't know if those are popular gang tattoos, but sure doesn't seem like it to me. Also, if you can look at like a partial transcript, I guess, of the interview with him where he keeps like saying, no, I'm not part of a gang, no, I'm not part of a gang, no, I'm not part of a gang.

And then ICE agents writing down, yes, trying to Aragwa. And the whole thing is extremely Orwellian. Then the Miami Herald did some good reporting on this other gentleman, Frenkel Reyes Mota. They write that in the filings with regards to Mota, the government uses someone else's last name in several parts of the document, identifies him with female pronouns, uses two different unique ID numbers that immigration authorities use to keep track of individuals. So it doesn't seem like they were really crossing their T's on that. We talked about N Mary Alvarado,

the baker with the autism awareness tattoos, and the Dallas Morning News is done reporting on this. And I'm going to be talking to the Mother Jones reporters. I think I've talked to the families of 10 of the Venezuelans who are in El Salvador on YouTube later today, so people can check that out. I don't understand how you can go through these case by case and not think that there's a real problem here. Maybe in one of these cases, it's like, I've been joking, maybe Andrea is like the hairstylist in the movie Blow who's helping move cocaine in and out, like it's possible. But just the scope of these and the different and reporters doing good work in several different credible outlets,

like it just seems like there's a real problem here. Yeah, you know, I also thought, okay, I mean, it's terrible anyway, but they, one or two people got caught up in the Dragonet. I don't know, maybe it's 10 people, maybe it's 50 people. I have no confidence that even that the bulk of these people are gang members. I mean, maybe, you know, again, what does that even mean?

They're people who hang out with people in gangs and aren't themselves criminal or criminal in a much more minor way, or didn't have much choice if they're, I don't know, you know, if they're. Older brother, older friend. Some relative is in the gang. You can't sort of, you know, turn against it. You're threatened.

So anyway, I really do wonder, yeah, I'm sure these people, of course, God forbid they should actually put out the names of these people like a normal government would do and what evidence they have. Our friend Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, I saw this over the weekend, I'm not sure if he came up with this, we're simply passing it on, but they gave to the ICE agents, I guess, these kind of guidelines for how they should decide who to throw into the, you know, onto the plane and kidnap and send them to El Salvador. And it's, tattoos turn out to be basically key to it, right? Or I mean, there are these different points. It's idiotic.

There are these points you can give. And then, but I think if you have bad tattoos, or what's the other thing, you have to have something sort of slightly also equally insignificant. There's pictures of the phone or like, you know, where you've done things that could be gang signs or gang related, which part of Venezuela you're from. And then, you know, you add up to eight points and there you are, you know?

And these are the things, you look at this, it's one thing to have a list like this as a kind of guidance for who you might want to interrogate more and, you know, bring to court and have an investigation about. It's another thing to put them on a plane to this penal colony in El Salvador. So yes, this thing, the more you look at it, the worse it smells. It's really terrible.

I haven't had you on since the Kristi Noem pinup video with the Rolex watch. I know we were texting about this. I just want to let you kind of cook on Kristi Noem. No, you and I were, I mean, it's so nauseating really and sick, really just sick. That's what I felt about it. And the idea that she thinks it's funny or great or tough or appropriate and the people, I guess,

in MAGA world are sort of relishing this is awful. I mean, it's one thing to make a, send people somewhere you have to do it or make a mistake and send some other people who shouldn't be there that you don't have to do that, but that happens in life, I mean, it's one thing to make them send people somewhere you have to do it or make a mistake and send some other people Shouldn't be there that you don't have to do that, but that happens in life I suppose but to be relish can is she goes after we know Or have very good reason to believe that some of these people shouldn't be there, right? It's not like she was in this, you know, she didn't know she was there the next day

She went a week after they got there and after a lot of this reporting had begun to come out. It's really awful I mean, I'm annoyed at Democrats and you've talked about this. Yeah, I want to give it to the Democrats. Before we get talking about how annoyed we are at Democrats, let's go through this period where it was like, Democrats, Bernie went on Joe Rogan's podcast. You can't go on Joe Rogan's podcast. He's so awful. He's so cancelable. Well, let's hear who has been more clear-eyed about what is happening with the Venezuelans between our Democratic politicians and Joe Rogan.

Here he is with Constantine Kissin, who I also don't really like. He's kind of one of these contrarian, centrist, comedian, anti-woke types. But here's the two of them discussing the El Salvador prison. And I think a human being being plucked out of nowhere and ending up in a country he's never been in, in a maximum security prison with gang members, seems like a bad thing to happen to me. It's horrific. It's horrific.

I don't think that should be controversial. No, that's not controversial at all. And this is the thing, you know, measure twice, cut once. This is the, like, this is kind of crazy. That that could be possible. That's horrific, and that's, again, that's bad for's bad for the cause like the cause is let's get the gang members out everybody agrees but what's not innocent gay hairdressers get lumped

up with the gangs and then like how long before that guy can get out can we can we figure out how to get him out does ever is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake and correct it well if you think about it from a government perspective, and this is where I think it gets quite sinister is once you've done that, the incentive structure is never going to be to admit that and deal with it. The incentive structure is to say nothing, to cover it up, to pretend it didn't happen. Oh, but that is horrible.

So some- Horrible. More moral clarity and emotion from Joe Rogan. We've seen from basically anyone in elected office over this I sent a tweet the other day because I was like, maybe I'm just missing it, you know I was like, could somebody send me examples of Democrat and obviously fuck the Republicans. None of the Republicans have said anything not only that they're doing their sadistic photo shoots with the With the people that they've kidnapped. So just stated, F them. The Democrats though, so I sent a tweet. I was just like, could people please send me any examples of Democrats saying or putting

out a statement about the Venezuelan refugees that we've sent to this fucking hellhole? And I got a couple of replies. Debbie Wasserman Schultz put out a pretty good statement. I'm blanking on her name. There's a congresswoman from Texas put out a pretty good statement. I'll put that in the show notes because I want to couple of replies. Debbie Wasserman Schultz put out a pretty good statement. I'm blanking on her name. There's a congresswoman from Texas put out a pretty good statement. I'll put that in the show notes because I want to give her credit. But a bunch of people sent me examples of Democrats speaking out about OzTurk. And for whatever reason, I think people feel more comfortable about what's happening on

campuses and free speech. And that's great. The whole situation with Tufts is horrible. But that was it. Those two were the only ones I've seen. And it's like, okay, I know we've got Dems listening to this right now. It's like, what is the holdup on this? Like, what is it about this that lulls Joe Rogan to speak with moral clarity about how horrific it is, but it doesn't allow you to? I truly don't understand. Well, because Joe Rogan is just saying

what he believes. In this case, he's being a normal human being. And Democrats cannot say a word, apparently, if you're an elected official without going through some filter of what pollsters have been telling you for the last six months, and a rather stupid filter at that of polling data. And immigration, bad, very difficult issue. Biden border, bad. So gangs, bad. Tough on immigration, good politically. Therefore,

Trump sends people to El Salvador, including innocent people, and dehumanizes them, and we can't say a word about it. I mean, it's stupid, I mean, A, it's wrong, obviously, and totally lacking courage. And B, it's an incredibly stupid way to think about polling and about politics. You know, the Iraq war was popular in 2004. No one wanted to look like you were a fan of the people we were fighting, it's a bit of terrorists over there and so forth. And Abu Ghraib happened, I think this is what summer 2004, and people were correctly repulsed and there were huge turmoil. The Bush administration should have fired them, but did discipline the people who did

this over there. They apologized, it shouldn't be done, we shouldn't have done this. This is the middle of a war, incidentally, which we're not in with Venezuela. And by the way, Abu Ghraib was awful. But in that situation, it was enemy combatants. It was terrorists. And at some level, this is even worse. Yeah, yeah. No, this is much worse. They're just sitting in a jail here. There's no need to send them to El Salvador. But anyway, and Democrats did not get hurt by, and some Republicans, John McCain and many others, said this is terrible.

So it's a good example, though, if they looked at the polls and didn't want to be on the wrong side of the war on terror, they wouldn't have said a word. Now, obviously, there was some of that that happened back then, incidentally. Obama said this to someone else the other day, rock war, you couldn't afford to support, to offend, to oppose that. John Kerry, you know, the one guy who did was Obama, but he was just a nobody. You know, you know, the state senator from Illinois, and he figured out to say what I believe,

and he ended up being president six years later. So politicians are too poll driven generally. Democrats in particular though, you should explain this to me. I mean, Republicans, well, I'll give you one tentative explanation. Why are Democrats so poll driven or poll intimidated? And Republicans, I think a little less so. And I'm actually at this conference here with some Democrats and one guy made a very good point to me.

He said, you know, the Republicans are used to having issues where they're not really on the winning side. Being pro-life has never really been the majority view in America for the 30 years that Republicans were. Being pro-gun to the degree they are is not the majority view. People kind of like reasonable gun control. They had to defend these things. That was what their coalition wanted, or they believed it.

And so they found ways to kind of fight back, a partial worth abortion, or to claim that they wanted to confiscate all your guns. But Republicans are the way we're used to looking at polls and figuring out, well, how do I deal with it? How do I work around it? How do I mislead people a little bit? But whatever, instead of simply saying,

oh my God, I'm on the 60-40 losing side or something. I can't say a word, right? Maybe that's one reason Republicans are a little more aggressive and in not simply collapsing when they see a negative poll I don't know. What do you think? Is there something to that or here's I think it's part of it At least in the modern day in the Trump era I don't know if I can speak to whether this was true or, or the case, you know, among Democrats back when I was on the other side. I think that a lot of Democrats really feel confused by the country right now. And I think that is what was driving it. Like they're like, they just genuinely cannot understand how Donald Trump had won. Don't really understand,

it kind of do, you can pay lip service to the appeal, like get it at, get it at one level, but I get a deeper level somewhere deep inside them. They're like, I actually really still don't understand. And I kind of feel this way a little bit too. And so it's like, I should probably be more cautious. I should probably listen to, you know, look at the numbers and look at the data and like think about what issues can I talk about that might appeal to these people who I don't understand, right?

Who voted for Donald Trump. That's my armchair psychology analysis about why it's happening now. And this is why I'm playing the Joe Rogan clip for these folks, because it's like, I assume it's surprising to some Democrats that are like, oh, wow, Joe Rogan is speaking out on this clearly. And it's like, maybe this is not as unpopular of an issue as I thought. Like maybe, maybe the American people aren't that terrible. Maybe like the American people have some terrible instincts and are easily manipulated and are easily kind, but like when it comes to the case of a gay hairdresser getting sent to a foreign gulag for no reason, you know, maybe we can get majority support for that. I don't know.

It seems to me like it's worth a try. A, it seems to me that it doesn't fucking matter actually whether it's popular or not, but it's also worth a try. Like if you can listen to a Joe Rogan podcast and hear them speaking like that, like a normal human with empathy, with clarity about how this is something that Americans should be against, it's fundamentally anti-American, then maybe that will stiffen the spine. I will tell you, as a carrot, maybe they don't want this carrot actually because they don't want attention about them talking about immigration. I think

that is another really big part of this. Democrats have decided that any talk about immigration is bad for them But you know if you're a Democrat looking for attention and want to do a selfie video For you're talking about how horrible this is. I will share it I will send it to my other friends who have big accounts and they will share it and we will you know Get attention for you because attention is important these days will get attention for you because attention is important these days. We have the tariffs coming again. Liberation day is this week, April 2nd. That is Wednesday.

We will see what happens obviously. I'm always a little hesitant to do a stock market talk on this pod because things can change over the course of the day. But off the open today, Nasdaq NASDAQ's down about 2%, Dow's down a little bit, S&P's down about 1%. So the market continues to dip on the idea that Trump is serious about this with the tariffs. He's given no indication.

There's a big political story over the weekend that like the people around him don't really understand what the plan is, but all they do know is that Trump wants to go big. He's serious about it. Those little leaks coming from inside the White House. You know, eventually if he doesn't actually follow through, you would think that his own ego would prevent like that, right? I mean, given how much he's put into this, there's a good chart that was like for people who are struggling to follow this, like what tariffs have has he talked about what is coming and what has actually happened? What has actually happened is the steel and aluminum tariffs and the China tariffs. Everything else has just been discussed. To me, I've

always felt like this is actually going to happen, that it's not, that's not WWE, but I guess we'll know more in three days. What do you make of it? One thing to say is that an awful lot of damage is done just by the endless talking about it and going back and forth on it. So I talked to someone from European government last week, someone in Washington, and what if he doesn't do it this time because he gets spooked or something. He could do it three months from now or six months from now when he needs to appeal to the base or he gets annoyed at some government doing something totally random, you know,

it's some other issue, right? So I mean, I think the degree to which it disrupts the alliance, not that he cares, I guess, about that, and disrupts the world economy, which he should care a little bit about, which is what the markets are reacting to. Even those of us who are very alarmed about a Trump second term sort of assume that on the economy, he'd be constrained and on terrorists, he'd be constrained because he cares about the stock market. So I didn't think he'd be constrained on mistreating immigrants.

He wouldn't be constrained on the rule of law. He might not be constrained on destroying NATO, but on the economy, economic stuff, somewhat constrained. But it may all have gone to his head so much, it doesn't even feel constrained on this. He's talking tough now, right? We'll have to go through some tough times, but we'll come out of it. Afterwards, stronger nation maybe really has internalized the argument. I think so.

This is Bloomberg this morning with the market route intensifying. Also Goldman has rising recession concerns. And Bloomberg says that it's leaving the S&P 500 index on track for its worst quarter as compared to the rest of the world since the 1980s, which again shows that this is just like, this is not some global downturn that has happened in the first three months. Like it is something unique to the uncertainty that Trump is inserting into the market. Just as far as buying their own BS, one thing I thought was interesting over the weekend

was our vice president, the poster in chief, quote tweeted, it's this guy that writes for red state named Bonchi. You don't need to know all the characters here, but he's conservative. Red State was Eric Erickson's thing. He's quite conservative occasionally, is maybe not the biggest MAGA, but it is decently MAGA. And he posted about how like this tariff thing is crazy.

And I think you're gonna help a small number of people who are in one sector, in this manufacturing sector, but it's not even gonna do that much. You're to help a small number of people who are in one sector in this manufacturing sector, but it's not even going to do that much. You're going to help a small number of people and there's going to be massive other groups of people who are MAGA voters who are harmed by it. Just to his tweet. JD quote tweets him and says, it is this brain dead liberalism pretending to be conservatism that saw the US go from the world's manufacturing superpower to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The guy didn't tag JD. JD just decided to dunk on some random conservative blogger and calling him a liberal now because he's against tariffs because now to be for tariffs is to be conservative in their worldview. I just thought that was interesting because it reflected a real defensiveness and an emotional attachment to defending the tariffs because he thinks that they're actually coming. And also, I think it also was interesting because to me it read like him trying to intimidate people

and to stand on side. Like this thing is coming this week and if you're a right winger and you're gonna criticize it, well then you're gonna get the vice president giving you a spanking. I was struck when I saw this European I mentioned earlier, I think, for large diplomat. He said they were, you know, I said,

what's most got you upset and rattled? Of course, that was a huge long list. And fundamentally, it's Trump's basic policies of reversing 80 years of the Alliance and all this and the Hague, South and banned speeches in Europe in early mid February. But he said, actually, he thought for people in government, it was the transcript, the signal text transcript of Vance, the hatred of the Europeans.

And Hague Seth echoes it just to suck up, I suppose, to Vance. All caps pathetic. Yeah. I mean, what are we even talking about here? I mean, there's no, the Europeans have done a pretty good job standing up in Ukraine. They've sent a ton of money to Ukraine. In response to us. They're now saying they'll do even more and they're going to spend a lot on defense or

whatever. I mean, it's as if the Europeans had just told us to get lost or something like that. We've told them to get lost. They're reacting in a pretty grown up way. What is that all about, Selly? Why did just JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, what do they care one way or the other, honestly, about? They have a deep hatred and resentment of the Europeans.

I guess it's sort of owning the version of owning the Libs, owning the Europeans. I don't know. I think that that is related to it. It's related to me to the Denmark thing. Yeah, it is. Right. It's Greenland. So JD's in Greenland last weekend on Friday.

You know, like he's giving this preposterous press conference, so it feels like it's from a different universe. The thing that's struggling from the press conference, maybe the most, was the parts where he's going after Denmark. Because it's like deeply personal, like the way that he's going after Denmark. He's like, you know, I don't know in front of me, it's essentially like the Danes let us down, they let Greenland down, they're not doing their job. Like we have to be, it was one of his tells whenever he's being ridiculous, he starts with we have to be honest about this. We have to be honest about this. The Danes have really failed as a partner. But he never says

what they did. Denmark didn't do anything. Denmark actually, as far as a percentage of their GDP, is spending above the NATO, what is required for NATO, and they're increasing it over the course of the year. The Danes sent people to the wars. JD mentions that and kind of dismisses that also too. He's like, oh, well, great. So the Denmark, Danes sent some soldiers 20 years ago and now I'm supposed to be nice to them. It's like, what, you know, they can't even articulate it.

It does feel, and I can understand why the Europeans then would feel more alarmed by that because it feels like they have a deep emotional hatred for our allied nations. That's frankly like irrational. And they love bullying them, especially the little Denmark's a very small country. They've kind of done their best to help and to be a good partner. They did send I believe troops to both if I'm not mistaken Iraq was certainly to Afghanistan. And you know, they've been cooperative when we wanted to actually have some troops in Greenland and stuff. I mean, it's not even worth getting into

because it's so ludicrous except to say that yes they there's a deep hatred apparently of these European not just the European governments incidentally one of the striking things about Vance's speech in Munich was he hates the European nations you know it's not just this particular lefty government a lot of these countries don't have particularly lefty governments right now actually I don't know about Denmark's. You met Frederiksen as she's kind of like a center left. Yeah.

I mean, for Europe, she'd be pretty left for here probably, but yeah, I mean, she's not like, she's like a rabid social... No, it's not. Believe me, one thing you got to say, in fact, I would say the moment Trump won, they've all gone out of their way to try to be nice. They visited Mar-a-Lago, we're up in our defense spending for NATO. We understand that he's got some concerns about trade. We want to talk to him. They've been much nicer than we have been, you and I, to Trump.

And for this, they've just gotten slapped around by Vance and by all of them, really. Part of the same call with Welker where Trump floated, you know, becoming an autocrat. He also talked about Putin. And we're going to get into this tomorrow. This is going to be more of a foreign policy focused pod, but I think this bears mentioning is that he says that he's kind of disappointed with Russia. Like over the fact that they haven't like cut a deal, I guess Russia, Putin made some comments about how Ukraine should have some other temporary government during the deal, like it shouldn't be Zelensky that they're negotiating with.

And Trump said he was disappointed with us. And then he kind of went on to say, if Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia's fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia's fault, I'm going to put secondary tariffs on oil and oil coming from Russia. So again, he thinks tariffs is a magical solution. The whole thing again, I mean, there's always, this is important because when you're analyzing

the situation, like there is a school of thought, a tendency that's just like, Trump is a Russian asset. He's crowzing off, it goes back to the eighties. He's gonna do whatever Putin wants. Then there's another school of thought that's like, which I like lean more towards, which is Trump is a child. He's like extremely naive. He just wants people to suck out to him.

Usually Putin's nice to him. He really thought that like if he got in there, Putin would just like do him a solid because they are buddies and because the world is, the deep state was after them and Russiagate and like, and they can do economic deals together and he'll make Russia rich and that he misjudged the fact that like no Putin is actually kind of serious about this and I don't know I there's just some indication that like Trump is a gullible fool this is the right operative theory it always be working on. Don't you think he's intimidated by Putin? For sure. I mean that's the kind of fake I'm gonna really have to be to be serious if he doesn't go along with this,

which I've never thought he would, and he's going to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And in Ukraine and elsewhere probably. And I'm going to put those secondary, I mean, really, are we serious? Is that a serious threat at this point? We have massive sanctions on Russia. He said pissed off. I just think that was interesting. He didn't say disappointed.

I want to pull this up. He said, I was pissed off when Putin started getting to Zelensky's credibility. I don't know. I just think the right operating theory with Trump is that it's all talk. It's all bullshit. He's going to be nice to you as long as you suck up to him. And nobody really called his bluff the first time through. And I think that if like there's this theory like, oh, he's this tough guy. And if Putin calls his bluff, he's going to really come hard at him. I don't think so. And I think that Putin has his number on it.

I'm very confident that you're right about that. Maybe Putin occasionally, after pissing him off for two months, will give him a little piece of candy to keep him, so Trump can feel like, oh, now he's really trying to be nicer to me. And that'll keep Trump going for another two months, we'll give him a little piece of candy to keep him, you know, to so Trump could feel like, oh, he's now he's really trying to try to be nicer to me. And that'll keep Trump going for another two months. You know, I want to close with your newsletter on which, which regimen was it here? The 54th, 54. It was a response to the executive order that was put in place late last week about, you know, DEI and the Smithsonian, and we're going to get

rid of, remove improper ideology from our museums, remove anything that talks about how the US has used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement. And you're in Boston and went to see a memorial and kind of give a little screed on this regard. And so I wanted you to verbalize the screed Okay, I'll do my best race turns out to be doesn't incidentally about what 75 80 percent of all the stuff they hate I mean in terms of the culture war stuff, there's the transgender thing is bad and some other stuff But it is a lot of it's about race It's like striking in that stupid executive order how much of it's about he doesn't like that

we're being too woke about race. So anyway, I'm here in Boston. I got here, turned on the TV in the hotel room to watch the NCAA. This has been a bad, can we just say this has really been a disappointment. It's horrible. Yeah, there's no close games, no drama. Girls tournament's been great. Unfortunately, LSU lost to us in the Elite 8, but the girls tournament's been great.

Yeah, I'm too bad about that. But four number one seeds in the girls' tournament's been great. But this is hard. Yeah, I'm too bad about that. But four number one seeds in the finals, that's really not America. America's about some St. Peter's is America. 15th seed winning. Anyway, so the game was crummy. So I went out for a little walk.

It was freezing actually here in Boston on the Comet. And I vaguely remember there was this memorial on the other side of the Comet. It had been a long time since I'd seen it though. And it's this fantastic memorial erected by Augustus Saint-Gaudens the famous sculptor I guess and he did it and it was dedicated in 1897 It was a huge deal president of Harvard William James spoke and all these characters and a beautiful sculpture of Robert Gould Shaw who the son of a kind of aristocratic young man who volunteered to lead one of the first black regiments in the Union Army.

I hadn't realized that the Emancipation Proclamation explicitly provides that for the first, that black soldiers can and should be recruited to fight in the Union Army, which ended up being pretty important. Like 10% of them by the end were black soldiers. The Confederates treated them, the Al- captured horribly and also they're white officers, so they had white officers with these black regiments back then, treated them horribly, any of them were captured. So this was one of the first ones.

They marched down Boylston Street or some street here in Boston. Before going off, they launched an ill-advised heroic attack two months later and half of them were killed actually, including Shaw. It's amazing that Frederick Douglass recruited people for this regiment, two of his sons served. So much later, it became famous at the time, that is, I hadn't realized that till I did my Wikipedia type reading.

Lincoln talked about it and stuff. And it really had an effect on sort of, this is really, real equality. There's emancipation, proclamation, sounds nice, slaves should be liberated when the war ends, basically, in the southern states. But here in the north, we're actually going to have a regiment that wasn't quite integrated yet, but still, you know, of black soldiers fighting, you know, with a, this part is kind of a little patronizing to say it this way, but I mean, you understand at the time how

it was with a white colonel who's actually a serious person who volunteers for that job and others too, actually, to be the officers. They fought very well, people at the time said, and I think that they were fought as well as white regiments. It was a big deal at the time, and then 30 years later, they put up this war. Again, it just struck me as such a contrast with the kind of history, the kind of pablum, the kind of whitewashing that Trump's trying to do. Hank Seth is getting books removed from the Naval Academy's library, if they're biographies

of Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King's autobiography. I mean, that's really, it's really what the answer is. Here's my code into this. So Mitch Landrieu, who I think we mentioned already, you're the former mayor of New Orleans, your friend from down there, he's at this conference I ran into him this morning. So he's Mr. Monuments, right? He famously took down the Confederate monuments in New Orleans and gave a very good speech on this, about how a lot of them were put up not right after the war, but much later

as part of a kind of southern defense of the Confederacy. So I said, have you been to see it? He said he'd seen it years ago, he thought, but I said, you should walk over if you want a break from this conference. It's pretty amazing. And it's just as a work of art, it seems to me. And also he has a real interest in this kind of thing. And he was interested.

He then said he gave the speech removing certain monuments, one of which were put up in 1893 by a racist mayor of New Orleans who had actually fought as a young person for the Confederacy and put up a monument to Lee or something like that to kind of make a statement about Jim Crow and the end of Reconstruction and kind of, you know, that was what that was about in the 1890s. I wonder, this I don't know, I wonder how much the monument here and the speeches that were, they made such a big deal of it, was kind of a Northern response to the Southern attempt to re-legitimate the Confederacy. But anyway, it's a moving memorial, and you can go online and read speeches that were given at the time by William James and Elliot, the president of Harvard.

The spirit of that memorial is a lot better than the spirit of Trump's executive order and Hexeth's idiotic directive to the Naval Academy and will outlast them. That was my quite confident conclusion. Maybe too confident, not too confident, right? They can't possibly. No, it will outlast them. I don't know if they're loyal or not. The movie Glory, which also depicts this, will certainly outlast them. Denzel, you know, has their number on this. But I don't know, man, the extent to which like people, and I guess we should go to this because this is about the conversation we're having

in the green room, I think it's related. The extent to which there is just a CYA reaction to this sort of thing across a ton of different institutions and stuff where you're already seeing people are just like, oh, let's not do Frederick Douglass Day this year, I don't wanna deal with the hassle, or let's not do this thing that we've been doing to honor a particular marginalized group. The executive order is going to forcibly remove some things from the museums, which is horrible.

But then on top of that, there are going to be all these other institutions that are saying, oh, better to be cautious. Let's just not do this. There will be a counter reaction as well by some groups. I think Gay Pride this year is going to be probably as rowdy as it's been in a while. It sort of lost its luster, I think, after the Obergefell ruling, but I think we might be back. Gay Pride might be back this year. But a lot of institutions are doing that. And I think that that is going to have a negative impact with regards to education and history and what we're learning about our past.

But then it also has a tangible effect on what's happening right now. And you mentioned your conversation with the Boston College professor when we were off air. I think we should maybe close with that, which is just that people who are worried about the nonsense that they're doing with visas at the airports. And if you're a foreign student or a foreign professor or here on a work visa or whatever, it's like, maybe this year I shouldn't travel outside the country. Like we're already seeing people from, you know, the incoming flights from Canada this year way down, right? And so, like, some of this

is like the authoritarian, I make a decision and there's a response, but a lot of it is then the choices that are made in the culture and how things ripple out. I think that's very concerning. Absolutely. I mean, it's the authoritarian offensive by Trump and his people is bad and has gone more aggressive than people perhaps expected. But the lack of response by outside and the accommodation and acquiescence to some degree or at least silence and quiet accommodation and lack of willingness to pick fights has

been also very bad. That is the one-two punch. I don't know what would you call it, the push and the pull or the, you know what I mean? It's sort of the flip side, right? As one could have imagined Trump being as bad as he's been for these first two and a half months, but one could also imagine a pretty different scenario in terms of everyone's reaction, you know, and not half the law firms, but all the law firms standing up, not some universities sort of sounding firm, but others just collapsing,

but all of them together taking a stance and other civic institutions and so forth. I'm not sure I would have expected that. I don't know. I think, again, people were sort of like the Democrats, so rattled by some of their own mistakes in the past and sort of the country that it turned out they didn't understand well. Overestimating, I think, Trump's power in many ways. These are massive institutions with a lot of resources.

And it's a little bit of, I don't want to fight with these guys. I don't know. But really, what bit of I don't want to fight with these guys. I don't know, you know, but really, what's what's gonna be so terrible to fight with? You know, what's her name? Linda McMahon? Is that her? The Trump secretary of education? I don't know. I don't know. The courts, I think have been pretty good. I guess the judges seem to have a certain amount of, you know, metal in their spine and maybe life tenure turns out to be a good thing. But I don't know. All right. Well, we'll explore it more next week. Thank you, Bill, as always.

And everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. I stand Long, long, long Watch your chips Move on Just saying the seven sayings And hold my tongue

Here In judgment Watch the tide erase our memories The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.