The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1014: Adam Kinzinger: Mortal Damage to the American Empire

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

It's been great to live in America since World War II, but Trump is in the process of blowing up that whole order. Even Canada is looking to lead a new alliance, because how can other countries trust us after voters put the stupidest convicted American back in charge? And never forget that Russia is not on the tariff list—despite the fact that the US does more trade with Russia than a number of other countries on the list. Meanwhile, Trump opted to head to a golf tournament instead of attending the dignified return of the four dead servicemen who were killed in Lithuania. Plus, 9/11 truther Laura Loomer is running the National Security Council and we're still bombing the Houthis. Adam Kinzinger joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Video of Lithuanians paying homage to the four American soldiers who died in a training accident Tim's playlist

Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Could not have a better day to bring back our friend. He's a former Republican congressman from Illinois. He served in the Air Force during Iraq and Afghanistan. He's the founder of Country First and he writes a sub stack newsletter and he's got to turn off his notifications. It's Adam Kinzinger. What's happening? Buddy, what's going on? How are you? Thanks for having me on the day when the stock market

collapses. That's a good day to have me. Thanks for saying that. Nothing happened. And you know, we just have like mega conspiracy blogger, white nationalists running the national security council and the stock market collapsing, global economic crisis, the Canadians dunking on us, nothing much to talk about. So we'll get into all that, but I wanted to start, you texted me yesterday this clip and we're 90s kids, you know? So Ferris Bueller's day off was obviously pretty formative. I don't know how old you were, but you know, when I was 11 or 12, getting into my troublemaking phase, catching Ferris Bueller's day off on home video. I don't think I'm quite old enough to, I didn't see him in the theater. I was born in 78, so however old that makes me.

You probably saw it in the theater then. I did, brother. I saw it. We were rebels back then. Well, it's funny. In that movie, Ben Stein, who has now become a big Trumper, gave the class a lecture on a topic and the elder millennials and young Gen Xers among us will remember what it was. But for everybody else, let's take a listen to Ben Stein speaking to Ferris Bueller's class. In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate

the effects of the Anyone, Anyone, Great Depression, passed the Anyone, Anyone, the Tariff Bill, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which Anyone raised or lowered, raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government? Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. It did not work.

Smoot Hawley, actually. I would think that Trump has seen that, right? That's why it's important to talk about, because if he all of a sudden sees Ben Stein saying that Smoot-Holly didn't work, and that's been the interesting thing, by the way, Tim, is I've seen a few Republicans try to reimagine Smoot-Holly actually as having worked,

which is the weirdest thing, and they blame the recession or the further end of depression on something else. Kind of feels like where we're at now when you see some of these guys saying, well, we're just in essence front loading the recession because we were going there anyway and it was going to be way worse and now we're front loading the recession. You got to trust Donald Trump. He knows what he's doing. I mean, it's madness.

Trump's more of a musical queen. He's familiar with Cats, Phantom of the opera, Top Gun. I don't think, uh, I don't think he might not have seen Ferris Bueller's day off. Probably true. Yeah. Um, it didn't work.

Uh, no, it didn't. And we're, we're finding that out as we, as we tape right now, the Dow was down, looks like another two and a half percent NASDAQ down another 3% plus, I mean, it got slaughtered yesterday, the markets. We saw job losses already in various sectors. You know that, I mean, it got slaughtered yesterday, the markets. We saw job losses already in various sectors.

You know that, I mean, any minute now, there are going to be the little signs outside of stores because the businesses don't want the customers to be mad at them. They're like, sorry, we had the increased avocado prices, but it's the tariffs. It's not me. You know that's coming. And it's like the Trumpers have no rationale for it. Really. I mean, there's going to be some magical golden age to come off the back of it. And then our old friends and non-friends, but the people from the pre-Trump time, like even Ted Cruz is out there

like, well, I don't really like tariffs, but this is just a negotiation, right? And it's like, no, I don't think so. Doesn't seem like a negotiation to me. I think the dude is just insane and like really loves tariffs. And now he's going to be in a fucking stubborn off with every world leader around the globe, so it doesn't seem great. What, what do you make of it? Yeah, look, my wife said something yesterday that I guess I had, I mean, I've thought about it, but not really these starker terms, which is like, you know, everybody's like, well, why is Trump doing this?

And so the assumption for the Magas is, this is some grand negotiating tactic, like you said. Here's the truth, I think. I think this makes him feel powerful. Now, listen, if you're a true narcissist, I don't even know if narcissist is what he is. I think like, and I mean this narcissist- Megalomaniac.

Yeah, whatever the worst possible thing is, megalomaniac, all you care about is feeling powerful in the moment. You're impulsive and you wanna feel powerful, you wanna have people gravel to you. And honest to God, I mean, there's no better way to be powerful than to frankly, than to tank the world economy.

And he may not be intentionally tanking the world economy, but what he's doing is saying to the rest of the world that we're in control which we aren't. He's going to learn that soon and here's the other thing. So we're going to watch, the stock market is going to fall. There's going to be a day, it could be ultimately by the time people listen to this today or whatever where it's going to kind of settle and you may get 100 points in the green at some point because ultimately this is just, it's when people make the decision decision okay now it's gone down enough I'm gonna invest some money but

that's the initial hit of what we're seeing from the tariffs that's the emotional stuff the deep tariff stuff is going to last over the next frankly five or ten years you know we talked about supply chains I'm watching even Mark Wayne Mullen who says, well, it's really easy. You don't want the tariffs. Just build your company here in America. Okay. It's a great idea. First off, you're then saying that that company can't really trade anywhere else around the world just to America, but let's say you're a company that trades primarily in America. You sells primarily in America. Great. It's gonna take you at least five years to build a factory in the United States,

by the way., by the way. And by the way, there's a 99% chance that the next president of the United States will see the follies of this and lift the tariffs. So this isn't doing anything to return supply lines. And by the way, this is another big point. Supply lines in the last five years have been rapidly on-shoring or near-shoring, including, by the way, Mexico and Canada, from China, who we were supposed to not like in the past, after COVID. So COVID created a lot of reshoring of supply lines.

And instead of taking that and incentivizing that, like we should have been doing, we've instead put these massive tariffs. So we're going to shoot ourselves in the sack. I mean, that's what I said yesterday. It's like, this is a self-imposed wound for absolutely no reason. And China loves it, man. They're going to be so powerful from this because they're picking up the slop that we're leaving behind. Yeah. Two thoughts on that. And one is just on the Trump psychology. There's also the notion that getting inside Trump's brain is not a fun process,

but you have to think about this. The dude became president fucking twice. Everybody told him it was insane the first time, he had no chance of winning. He didn't think he had a chance of winning, he won. He gets indicted four times, doesn't have a chance of winning, has his first reelection campaign event in his house

in Mar-a-Lago. The only guy that shows up is the guy in the brick wall suit. Even Matt Gaetz was like, I've got to wash my hair that day. Nobody thought he could come back except us deranged never Trumpers who were like, no, he might still win again. And he comes back. So he has, in addition to his megalomania, he also really has bought the thing that everybody is wrong, all the smart people are stupid and Trump is right. I think he deeply believes that.

And so in a situation like this, when all the smart people, and the economist, and the FT, are out there saying, this is going to... Yeah, the globalists think it's going to crash. Trump is there like, no, they were wrong before. They were wrong on this. They were wrong on the fires. They didn't realize it was the water. They didn't let the streams go down there. It's only Trump that knows all this stuff.

I really think that he's embraced all that. It's hard to... Rationality cannot break through. That's the one side of it. Then to your point on the on-shoring It's like it's all so fucking stupid. We're terrifying Madagascar like 35% or something like 75 70 percent of the world's vanilla comes from Madagascar it's like why what are we doing? Are we in a we're in a trade battle with them over what like Madagascar is screwing us on the on the vanilla You know, it's

like your vanilla latte. You want it to be more expensive now by 35% to get one over on Madagascar? What do you want them to buy more from us? You want them to start buying more jeans? Yeah. And the issue of like Russia. I mean, okay, the MAGA defense now of not tariffing Russia and North Korea, Belarus, all the bad countries is, well, we don't trade with them anyway. First off, that's not true. We do trade with Russia.

It's $2 billion. It's not a ton, but we trade more with Russia than we do with probably Madagascar and any of these other little places that we put a bajillion percent tariff on. And then we tariff, of course, Penguin Island, you know, and then the Diego Garcia, the only asset on Diego Garcia is a United States military base. I mean, what goes to show

and then you get into I even saw Jim Kramer, a clip of him basically on CNN, like, yeah, I feel like a sucker. And by the way, I just want to say, for people that admit they were wrong, give them grace. We need this, right? It would feel very good to dunk on the people that admit they were wrong, but that's what we need. And we all, at least, maybe not you original Never Trumpers, but we all have been in the position

where we had to come to Jesus on that. I don't know, I might want to dunk on him. Yeah, we can dunk on him. I was going to save it for the end. He's fine, dunk on him. I was going to save it for the end. He's fine specifically. Yeah, I was going to save it for the end. I had a fuck around and find out segment of the pod. I was going to save it for the end,

but why don't we flip it? It's Friday. Flip it Friday. I'll do the serious part. I have a dark part, so we'll do it now. Here we go. There are a couple people I wanted to shout out. There's a fella, we'll be nice to the first one.

There's a fella, Richard Hananiah. I think he did some pretty racist stuff in the past. I don't really know his whole background, but everybody can turn over a new leaf, I guess. He was tweeting yesterday, he's very popular blogger in the red pill tech world. Mark Andreessen and those guys read him. Okay, anyway, he wrote this yesterday. For those asking, yes, voting for Trump was a mistake. I thought we'd get a

repeat of the first administration, but we didn't. The signs were there. I just did not take my own ideas about the awful elements of MAGA seriously enough. Here's the thing. On the one hand, it's like, we all fucking told you it wasn't going to be like the first administration, anybody with eyes it was going to be like that first administration. Anybody with eyes, it was going to be like that. But okay. But the kind of hilarious part of it is like it's only been 70 days. It's like it took 10 weeks for people to start doing the I screwed up thing. I mean, even I thought it would take, you know, six months, a year.

I did too. Well, here's since we're going to dunk on it. Let me just say this too. Like, okay, I got it. Your financial pocketbook is taking a hit. So now that it's affecting you financially Right now you all of a sudden care. Okay good. I'm glad that brought you over What about when you had heard about Russia kidnapping? 30,000 children from Ukraine and erasing their identity. And then you saw Donald Trump say,

yeah, I don't know whose fault this war is. Putin is actually a pretty good guy. We get along and you see JD Vance say, frankly, I don't care what happens in Ukraine. Or you watch the missiles from Russia blow up high rises in Ukraine or blow up grain ships, shut down a grain corridor to starve Africa. So that wasn't the thing that made you dislike Trump.

It was that all of a sudden your good jillions of dollars are now only bud jillions of dollars and that's what made you finally stand up. Okay, I'm glad you came around. But a lot of us, it's not the financial side. Like I would actually take a recession if we were a decent country again over an amazing economy in an evil country. It's the human aspect of this. Look, we can want to deport people that are here illegally.

We can want border security, but you know what you don't need to do? Is do an ASMR video of dragging chains so that people can sit around and get their goose bumps up and feel like they're watching a patriotic video as families are torn apart and sent to Latin America. That is inhumane. That didn't do it.

It was the financial stuff. Good. But I'm glad you came around. So, welcome to the team. I hope though in the future, maybe you actually care about decency and not just the finance. Let's get that on TikTok. That was a good right. Turn on the TikTok camera for a Kinzinger right now.

I don't know if the segment is going to need music because I feel like there's going to be a lot of this. I'll talk to Jason about this. We might need a theme song for the fucker on a found out segment. You've got one more though. I've got a short one. Dave Portnoy over at Barstool, the founder of Barstool sports. He, he supported Trump.

His spiny senses had started to tingle during the signal chat situation Which he did a big rant about how incompetent that was and here he is yesterday on his day trading show Trump has put his tariffs all over the place get some wacky formula new tariffs and everything's in the shitter because of it I'm down seven million bucks because of it. I'm down 7 million bucks. Down 7 million. How many do you think it's going to take to go for? How many million do we got to lose before we can go for Kami Kamala and realize that maybe the tax rate going up by 2% wasn't actually the biggest financial threat to your life.

Isn't that amazing when you think about it? Like this whole, oh, well they were going to increase our tax rates is a fraction of what it's going to cost these people in losses. It's amazing of a fraction of fraction of a fraction. And so yeah, I mean, look, portnoy, I guess there's part of me that again, I maybe I'm too young to be this old, but it's like, how is it that somebody like him is somebody we look to for how the political tone is going to go this a guy that drinks way too much nothing against drinking

But he drinks way too much and then he does videos where he's sitting on his beach house in Florida And he all he does on his videos is complain. It's all he does. This guy's like Literally and I give him respect. He built something out of nothing He was originally just passing out newspapers as a kid basically and started this company. Frankly, Tim, my time in politics, this was a big annoyance of mine, is going to meet with like people that are worth half a billion dollars or billions of dollars

and they sit with you and complain about the parts of government they don't like. And I always left there feeling like, wow, money certainly doesn't make you happy because it doesn't make these people happy. Anyway. This is the part of the show where me and Kinzinger start to talk about our transition towards Bernieism Yeah, the only if you want to radicalize a for a classical liberal into Bernieism

All you got to do is make them spend time with cranky billionaires whiny billionaires. It is enough. It's a radicalizing experience I know a guy that is an independent oil producer, just worth a ton of money. Every time I met with him, he'd be complaining because oil is down to 68. He's only going to make however many millions this month. I'm like, bro, I'm hoping to make as much as you make in a month and an entire lifetime. I would be happy about that. I would be excited. But listen, if it takes $7 million, the good thing I'll

give Portnoy some credit for is it's much easier for him for his business to basically be a Trump bro no matter what. Because that's kind of what that group wants. When he does speak out, it has an impact and I respect that. And I think when he spoke out about the signal chat, that was important as well. And so uh, and so I will encourage him to do that. Have you talked to that oil guy? Cause, uh, you know, I was talking yesterday with Tracy Allouay at odd lots, and then she was pointing to the Dallas fed survey where they like survey a bunch of oil and gas guys, and it's like, things aren't actually great in the oil and gas

sector right now, the idea that this is going to be a boom time of drilling for liquid gold because Trump is going to unleash the boom time of drilling for liquid gold because Trump is going to unleash the animal spirits. It's not exactly what's happening. No, I think oil is down 8% either today or in the last couple days. And you know what, it's got to hover around the 70, I learned this from Land Band, by the way, one of the most annoying shows I've ever seen. I'm sorry, we don't need to get into it. But like how many times do you have to go back to the same storybook?

Okay, anyway, what I learned in Landman is that about seven. As almost actual, the notion of a show about a landman is so unappealing that I have no idea what you're talking about, but go ahead, we can continue. Well, here's when I knew I wasn't gonna like it, quick aside, is when they're in the bar and she comes over and she's like, guys, we got a special on Bud Light and Billy Bob Thornton goes, how's that going for you? And

she goes like a fart in church because of Bud Light, right? Anyway, so uh but Landman taught me that $70 is about where oil producers need to be to to be in a nice sweet spot between cheap oil and good production. We're going to be under that. You're going to see a lot of these independent producers once again go under if this continues. It's all because the people that are speculating on the price of energy are probably rightly assuming the economy is going to go into recession.

When the economy goes into recession, people don't use oil. Oil goes down and it just furthers the recession in the energy community. And I live in Texas now. It's going to hurt here. It's another group of people that didn't see what was right in front of their nose. Hey guys, if you love John Lovett, then you're going to love the YouTube series we're doing together called Speech Center, where we dissect political speeches with insight and chaos and gayness and laughs and despair. John, as you all know by now, is the host of Love It or Leave It, America's top late night political gay live comedy podcast where he takes on the biggest and most absurd stories

in politics, helping you stay informed while laughing instead of crying. You can tell that John's producer wrote that. This season is promising some big name guests, unexpected conversations and can't miss moments. He does a monologue with jokes that are mostly funny. He does captivating interviews. Captivating, love it. Are they captivating? They're pretty captivating.

They're at times captivating. The one I saw last week with Tom Green, you remember Tom Green? I haven't seen that guy in ages. It was hilarious. What's happened with Tom Green is crazy. Tom Green? I haven't seen that guy in ages. It was hilarious. What's happened with Tom Green is crazy. Love It pulled it out of him. Anyway, plus he's got signature segments and games. Love It or Leave It delivers the type of comedy you won't find anywhere else. So go catch new episodes of Love It or Leave It every Saturday. Watch on YouTube and go catch the speech center on YouTube or join a live show in LA to witness the love it chaos in person. All right. I want to get a little, well, it might go darker. It might be lighter.

I was interested yesterday as the takes were flying by two things that you and my colleague Jonathan B. Last, JVL said. You gave kind of the bright side of this argument, and he gave the dark side, as is his tendency. You wrote this, this is the beginning of a massive fall of MAGA. No amount of division, fear-mongering lies, and cheap lines will overcome the fact that you just took many people's prosperity just because it makes you feel powerful. Mark my words, this is the beginning of the end. It's optimistic look. JVL wrote this, and just like that, the age of American empire, the great hawks Americana ended. We cannot overstate what has just happened.

It took 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the US economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American led world order. So Adam Kinzinger, was yesterday the end of MAGA or the end of America? Well, look, honestly, I do agree with JVL I don't think it's irreparable. But yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing I'm trying to get my arms around that I can't yet is Literally, we may have just taken everything that you and I learned about post-world war two by the way

For anybody that somehow looks back at the pre-world war II era as a wonderful time in America, it wasn't. America, it's been great to live in America since World War II. That's about it, right? And so I feel like we have just bombed that whole order. And now, let's say we get, you know, Jesus H. Christ as president in the next administration, how do you get Europe and these other countries to trust the United States of America again? I don't know. So I do think this has done mortal damage

to at least the American empire, if you will. But I also think that when you hit people's pocketbooks, I've always thought that part of America's problem has been our success. We've been so comfortable I've always thought that part of America's problem has been our success. We've been so comfortable that we have the luxury of hating each other and being annoyed by transgender issues and being annoyed by Bud Light

because they sent a can to somebody we didn't like because we're comfortable. It's like Maslow's hierarchy, right? Let's call those arguments over Bud Light, that's like self-actualization sort of. You can argue about the pinnacle of issues, but you take away your economic prosperity that most Americans have felt.

Even those that are in challenging financial positions have never really had to worry about starving on the street. You start taking that away, and all of a sudden, your interest starts working down that pyramid. And I got to tell you, I think once you mess with people's financial livelihood, there's nothing you can do to bring them back to saying that Donald Trump is good. Not everybody, look, there are some. I mean, literally, Donald Trump could skin a cat alive on TV and they wouldn't care.

I think there are people that once they start really feeling that economic pain, maybe we'll never admit they were wrong, but we'll change how they vote in the future. I hope you're right. The concern I have, the thing that dances around my head on that is I basically used to say exactly what you just said like in 2018 and 19 and then COVID happened. Yeah, I know. I like to think my shtick was always when I would go, like when I was doing my book

tour, you know, a common question a lot of interviewers would ask me is, what will break the spell? Like how will things, what will change things? You know, what will make these people like come to the light? And my answer then was always like, you know, it's going to take some outside shock, right? Like they're going to have to be forced into seriousness. There's going to have to be some other event that that, you know, makes people come to terms with the fact that

this is silliness and games. And then we had a global pandemic, and people got fucking crazy. People got even crazier. And so that kind of shook my confidence that a outside negative event will bring people back towards reality or seriousness. Now, in that case, it was the Chinese or whatever. It was either Chinese incompetence or bad luck or whatever, but it came from China. In this case, I guess the argument in favor of it is it's pretty much just Donald Trump doing this.

Donald Trump is just like, there's no, and I guess people could blame it on, come up with something else to blame, but it's pretty much just Donald Trump. Look, I think it's going to, it's going to ride on something here, which is are the Democrats able, and it's always on them because they're the opposition party. Let's just be honest. Are they going to be able to form an argument pending this on Trump? Because look, listen, 90% of every Republican in the house right now, I mean, I put myself in that position. If I was a sitting

US Congressman, what would I be doing? I would be preparing my arguments for why somehow magically, this is the Democrats fault that the economy has collapsed. And trust me, they will use whatever magic, you know, thing to twist into telling you and convincing you that actually it's the Democrats that have caused this. So Democrats, here's the point, and I know some listen to this.

You need to start formulating your arguments, pinning this on Donald Trump and on Republicans. And by the way, please God, the answer is not further left. It's not leftism. I get it. You know, there's a group of Democrats that still believe they lost the election because they tried to appeal to people like me.

That is not true. You have got to make the case to the middle American that you are the Bill Clinton Democrats again. You care about the blue collar. You care about the working class. That is the only way you're ever going to come back and win. What Cory Booker did in his filibuster that showed a fighting spirit. Everybody has to show a fighting spirit.

But again, the key to the Democrats is this. I don't care if you speak for 25 hours or 25 seconds. The only weapon you guys have is messaging. That's it. So go out and win the message here because that's gonna determine who takes the ownership of this. Cause trust me, Donald Trump is very good. As you were saying, and even on the show yesterday,

he's an amazing political messenger. He's gonna find a way to pin this on you and you're gonna be surprised and angry and you're gonna go out and say, well, it's not my fault. Of course he's president, but unless you come up with a compelling argument, it will be your fault as far as America is concerned.

You know, during COVID, by the way, the left went way too- It's a little less complicated to do that this time in COVID. I mean, they control everything and the economy was fine before he came out. Yeah, well, totally. And if you think about the COVID, like, you know, yes, the right went too far in saying no masks ever, we're going to have COVID parties. The left, some on the left went way far and saying no masks ever, we're going to have COVID parties. The left, some on the left went way too far with like masks all the time. I remember, was it my good friend, Gavin Newsom or somebody that said like, when you go to

the restaurant, take your mask down in between bites of food, like that kind of stuff annoyed people. So don't do the equivalent of that, please. Trump sucks. It's probably pretty good. Trump is really stupid and he bankrupted a casino and now he's bankrupting you, that was probably, you know, welcome in. I want to go back to the JVL dark side because as usual, he was channeling

me cause this is kind of what was rattling around my head before I saw that he wrote it, which is like, I really am not sure that it's fixable. I really do think something fundamentally has changed. And I don't mean whatever, like it takes a long time for empires to collapse. I know that you're a straight man, so you've probably spent a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. It took a long time.

It didn't just happen overnight, right? It takes generations. So I'm not saying that like the whole country is going to collapse or whatever. We're going to become an anarchist Libya state, but like the world has changed in a way that I don't think is fully reprehensible, right? Like it, it just has, and other countries are going to have to make calculations. And they look at us and just be like, like you elected your stupidest American a second time after he got indicted, after

he got convicted on criminal charges, you put him back in there and now he's fucking us. How could we possibly trust you? How could we possibly trust that you'll have a stable leaders in the future? You're acting like a Libya. You're acting like a failed state. The world reserve currency is not the Turkish whatever, you know? Like the lira is not the world reserve currency because people are worried that

they can't trust the government, the stability of those countries. They felt like they could trust us. You know, we've had decisions, but that our, our institutions were strong. And I just think that that has changed permanently. And there was one piece of evidence of that, which is Mark Carney speaking yesterday. I don't know how to play that for you. At the same time, Canada must be looking elsewhere to expand our trade, to build our economy and to protect our sovereignty. Canada is ready to take a leadership role in building

a coalition of like-minded countries who share our values. We believe in international cooperation. We believe in the free and open exchange of goods, services, and ideas. And if the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will. I mean, that's crazy that that is real. You know, I mean, we made mistake Vietnam or Iraq or whatever, but Canada wasn't out there being like, seems like US has joined the baddies, and so we got to find a new alliance.

That is a new thing that's hard to change. Yeah. And by the way, one of the great ironies is the conservatives were set to crush it in Canada, and that's not the case anymore because of Trump. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a smart speech, and here's the thing. What the mago's will tell you is, well, this is really good because we've always wanted the world to step up and do more. And that's not really true. Now, first off, I mean, yes, we will always want to do up to spend more on defense.

That's important. We haven't wanted Europe to basically become a competitor to us, kick us out of the realm, and basically be a competition. Because listen, you know, when the United States, for instance, liberated South Korea, when we took down the Nazis, we took down the Japanese, we invested a ton of money in rebuilding those economies. And we've gotten that back 100, 200, maybe even a thousand times of what we've invested because we have great trade relationships, obviously Samsung, you know, you think in

South Korea, you think of BMW and Germany, whatever. All this stuff has been beneficial to us. We get to write the rules of trade for the world. We get to be the ones to determine freedom of navigation of the seas. This is one of the things that annoyed me about the Signal Chat more than anything. JD Vance, you know, on there talking about how basically Europe needs to be cleaning up the Red Sea and the Houthis.

And, and, you know, stupid Pete Hegseth agreeing with it. Well, guess what? The United States Navy has always claimed to be the ones that are going to enforce freedom of navigation of the seas. And by the way, every time we've bombed the Houthis up until the Trump administration, sometimes the French and always the British have been with us to help in those bombings. But instead, we have basically said to the countries in the past, we are going to be

in charge of freedom of navigation. It's been beneficial to us. And now all of a sudden, we're mad at Europe for not doing it, even though we said this was our responsibility. And so what we're doing is we're giving up these leverage. Look, I get it, the United States is a very generous country, and I honestly think we benefit from that generosity. But if you think that for 200 years we've built this post-World War II order out of

generosity and not because it does good things for us? You're insane. This is amazing for us and we're blowing it up because somebody on Fox News wants to go on and make a five second cheap line about how Europe needs to pull its own weight. It's insane. By the way, European, if you are invested in the American defense industry, look, I'm not giving you advice, but I would say get the F out of it because American defense industry look I'm not a giving you advice but I would say get the f out of it because American defense industry a good percent of its weapons go to Europe

Europe has made it clear that they're gonna buy European and weapons now and get off American weapons Portugal Just canceled the purchase of the f-35 Canada's considering doing the same This is gonna kill the American defense industry and then we sit around and wonder what's happened to the American defense industry that we don't Have enough shells to take on China, which by the way this administration actually doesn't want to take on China. Let's be clear and Anyway, that's my rant for the moment Since you mentioned the bombing of the Houthis that stuff is still ongoing It's kind of like gotten pushed out of the news I guess because what the world economy is collapsing.

And I don't know that Donald Trump really wants to talk about it for some reason, but what do you make like what's happening? I mean, we've continued to send more jets over there, more bombings. I mean, part of the spin from Meg out of the signal chat situation was like, yeah, sure, it was kind of dumb, but the operation was a huge success. It's like, okay, maybe I guess

but like, the seas aren't clear. I mean, we're, we're still kind of getting into this. I don't know if you want to call it a quagmire, but we're still involved over there. So what's I mean, you're kind of monitoring this stuff closer to me, what do you make what's happening over there? Now, first off, they just shot down their third MQ nine of ours, they've shot down 17 MQ nines, which are the unmanned drones, but this isn't like a small drone, they're the size of jet airplanes are expensive. They just shot down 17 MQ-9s, which are the unmanned drones, but this isn't like a small drone. They're the size of jet airplanes. They're expensive. They just shot down their

third in the last month. So let's be clear about this. They have anti-air capability, which is why the single chat was so dangerous. And so what do I make of it? Look, we're doing the right thing in terms of, you know, when you find anti-air or you find cruise missile sites, you know, blowing themair or you find cruise missile sites, blowing them up or weapon stores. Yemen is by the way, it doesn't look big on a map. I've been to Yemen, actually right before the Houthis took over.

It's a very dangerous country. It's actually a huge country and it's very rough terrain. The UAE has tried to use troops in Yemen. Saudi Arabia fought with Yemen for a long time and nobody can beat the Houthis. I don't think we're gonna beat them because we're not gonna put American troops on the ground and another quagmire in Yemen.

So the best that we can hope to do, which again is not a bad decision, is try to degrade their weapons as they come in to open it up. The problem though is the issue with shipping around Yemen is the insurance companies. And you have to basically clear the threat to get insurance companies to start insuring ships again. That's really the key to how to how to like kind of open up the Suez Canal. So that's a big concern but really if you actually want to starve Yemen of

the weapons you have to interdict them coming from Iran and I haven't heard the administration doing that and frankly the last administration did a terrible job of that. And so as long as we just kill them at the end point and we're not blowing up weapons in transit, I don't know what's gonna happen. I also think it's possible, I don't know anything that you don't,

but it's possible that this military buildup is kind of a cover for a potential strike in Iran, which I hope if that happens, it's not based on, because Netanyahu is asking us to, I hope it's based on real intelligence that is saying, for instance, Iran may be a few months away from a nuclear weapon. Well, here's the good news.

Those are complicated issues, thorny issues, requires a lot of expertise. People are familiar with what happened in UAE, with UAE in Saudi, when they fought with the Houthis. So, as you know, there's a lot of ins and outs in what have you. So, we're going to have the best people involved. And there's some news yesterday. Four officials were fired from the National Security Council. Brian Walsh, who was a director of intelligence and a former top staffer for Marco Rubio. Thomas Boudry, a senior director of legislative affairs, who previously served for Mike Waltz on the Hill. David Faith, somebody that oversees technology

and national security in the State Department and another official. They were fired because Laura Loomer, the kooky, who's tweeting at me right now actually, the kooky, unapologetically white nationalist, anti-Muslim, conspiracy theorist, 9-11 questioner, she was in the White House with her new face talking to the president and I guess convinced him that he had, I don't know, neocon spies in his midst and that he needed to fire them.

She also was pushing for the firing of Alex Wong, who's a guy I know who used to work for Romney. He has maintained his job so far, but she was accusing him of being like a Chinese operative because- Because of Wong. Yeah, he's a Chinese defense, same as Wong. So that's the kind of stuff we're dealing with here. Somebody is just like, oh, the name's Wong, he must be a Chinese spy. So that person successfully engineered the firing of four national security officials, two of

which are former high level staffers for Rubio and Walt. So it seems like the mega blogger has more influence over our national security staffing than the secretary of state or national security advisor. So what do you think? What do you think about that? By the way, you must be a, it's Miller's German, right? Is that German or is it spit? Miller's German. Yeah. So you and I must be German spies, right? Nazis, you never know. Is that German or is it spit? No German. Yeah, so you and I must not German spies, right? Can see that's easy. Never know first off someday you need to dedicate about ten minutes tomorrow

Lago face to understand like that whole thing. Yeah, Kristi Noem among that like I have so many stories about no But anyway, okay, by the way, and I just want to say I support people that want to get a little Botox I want to freshen up whatever I just I do find it strange when somebody's like, I'd like a whole new face. Like I'd like to completely change my face and become a different person that lives like in the uncanny valley between human and robot. Like that's just, I don't, I don't really quite get the appeal of that. And Christie Gnome rolls out her new face with pig tails, you know? Like, dude, what?

Come on. And this is the woman that, by the way, when I was elected with her, she and her husband decided she was going to do no national TV because there were inappropriate comments about her on Twitter whenever she would do TV. It went from that to this. Anyway, okay, another story. Laura Loomer, and I saw you guys's tweet back and forth by the way Laura if you're listening you can be nice ish and still bat shit crazy just so you know yeah no the fact that she could go into the oval

office is frightening this is somebody that is a 9-eleven truther I was in a specific I don't remember which committee it was but a committee hearing that she interrupted back you know before she was in anybody's good graces. She's nuts and literally nuts, not just performance art here. So she gets into the White House and in front of, from what I understand, in front of Mike Waltz is going after these and it kind of goes to him where he tries to defend these members. And then she wins. goes to him where he tries to defend these members and then she wins. The fact that Mike Waltz was overruled by Laura Loomer and then still put his head down and walked out into Trump's helicopter like a wet puppy. Don't tell me you're an alpha male. Okay? Please

stop saying that you guys are alpha males. If you're gonna let Laura Loomer come in and stomp all over you, okay? I wanna be very clear about that. I met Mike Waltz in Bluffton, South Carolina when he was thinking about running, and I'm like, what do you think about Trump? I hate Trump, okay? I'll support you, and I supported him. He came in until he flew one day in Air Force One

with Trump, and he was totally different, right? This is a beta male. I'm sorry, it's okay to be a beta. Nothing wrong with it. It's America. It can be whatever you want, but quit trying to pretend like you're an alpha. And so, yeah, if I was him, I would have resigned at the spot. I would have said literally, and maybe the president wants him to resign and everybody wins, but I'd be like, Mr. President, if you listen to her over me, I'm out.

You don't need me, obviously. The fact that he then talked his tail and walked onto the helicopter is the is the one image of him I will never forget never every one thing if it was like you know Doug Burgum over at the interior and You got some staffer who did some tweets in the past that were mean to Trump and you got Laura Loomer going into the lighthouse and like, good Donald, we got to get rid of the, you know, deputy undersecretary at interior.

You might take one for the team on that one. I mean, I wouldn't, I would never be in terms of Canada, but you could at least understand that you're the fucking national security advisor. Right. You're the national security advisor. You're your senior director for technology and national security. You're like your top staffer that you brought with you from Congress that you trust, one of Rubio's top experts on foreign policy,

are getting fired because Laura Loomer said so, somebody with no foreign policy experience, someone who thinks 9-11 was an inside job, she gets to be in charge of the staffing. And that is just madness. And it's just humiliating. It is. And to go along why what do you like? What are you even getting out of this? And I throw on top of that my old boss Susie Wiles What is she doing? I thought you were the chief of staff. Yeah, isn't Susie Wiles supposed to be in charge of the staff She's getting you know, I layered I guess Be one way to put it by Laura Loomer. I don't know.

And I'll tell you the, the, the crazy thing about this, this is a moment where I had implied it looks like we may be planning a strike against Iran. We are certainly having an anti whatever campaign against Yemen right now. You know, there's still the Ukraine Russia war that we supposedly we're going to solve in 24 hours. You know, China is still growing. And at the same time as all of this, you know, the Laura Loomer National Defense Establishment,

we also are now saying that we're gonna cut the military 8% and 90,000 active duty troops. Now, by the way, we have struggled in the past 20 years to grow the size of the army, because without a draft, you have to grow through incentives. And obviously when the economy is good, it's hard to incentivize people to go in the army because without a draft you have to grow through incentives and obviously when the economy is good it's hard to incentivize people to go in the army. So that's the grand plan.

Yeah, totally. Now they want to just cut it. We're going to crush the economy so people have to go into the military. Yeah, maybe that's it. Brilliant. Brilliant. But now they want to cut the military 90,000 people? This is insane.

Was that in the budget or the reconciliation bill? Yes. It's like put out as what they're trying to do in the budget or the reconciliation bill or? Yes, it's like put out as they're what they're trying to do in the budget or something. Remember they want to cut, they want to cut 8%, which they claim they do that through fraud, waste and abuse. Guys, can we just drop the fraud, waste and abuse thing? It doesn't exist to the level that people think it does. Is there fraud and waste? Yes.

Is it 8% of the budget? Oh, hell no. And by the way, we used to fight tooth and nail with the Biden administration. to the level that people think it does. Is there fraud and waste? Yes. Is it 8% of the budget? Oh, hell no. And by the way, we used to fight tooth and nail with the Biden administration, with the Obama administration, that we had to grow the defense budget every year by more than they wanted to grow it,

or they were peace hippies. Now they're talking about cutting at 8% and somehow that's still consistent with the conservative values we've always had since Ronald Reagan. People, can we get rid of this idea that there is anything conservative about the GOP anymore. The GOP is not conservative.

The conservative movement, it's dead basically. There's some people with conservative views, but the movement itself is dead. Yeah. Kind of like the American empire. Right. So, you know, we've killed a lot of stuff the last 71 days. Yep. In addition, while this is all going on, Ford Americans died in a NATO

operation in Lithuania, their funeral, their service was last night, first in Vilnius and then they get brought to Dover Air Force Base. Traditionally, the president goes to those things to, you know, kind of greet the families and the caskets. Trump did not do that. He flew to Doral, his golf club in Florida, where he went to meet with the Saudis because the Saudi golf league live is having a tournament at his golf club. So our American first president skipped the services of the dead soldiers to go

cavort with the foreign autocrat that is trying to disrupt the American golf tour? That's what's happening? The level of self-dealing corruption that we are going to discover someday, you know, we're discovering it now, but I think when the Trump administration is over and we're kind of doing the post-mortem, no matter what our country looks like, is going to be astounding. I really believe there will be new laws that will have to be passed in the wake of Donald Trump because of the absolute stuff that we used to think human decency just would prevent that it doesn't prevent. You talk a ton, and I would encourage you to keep talking about it, about the cryptocurrency stuff.

I didn't even realize the depth of that until you had that one gentleman on who was really good talking about it. Zeke, he's really good, yeah. And the golf thing, the PGA versus the live, this is a big battle right now. Shouldn't we be on the side of the PGA? I mean, probably shouldn't the president

not care about this, given the fact that the economy is collapsing. But if you were going to pick a side, shouldn't you pick the PGA side? Yes, absolutely. You should. But he thinks the PGA is democratic now all of a sudden. So there's something about that for some reason.

Because anyway, and then about the soldiers. Look, these are four Americans, one actually from my old district. They're on a recovery vehicle. They basically flip in a swamp that's like, you know, deep, deep mud, like kind of what you think about almost quicksand. So it took a week for Lithuania and the United States

to recover their bodies. But if you actually look at what the Lithuanians have put out, their level of respect for these soldiers is something that'll put a tear in your eye. I tweeted one of the videos yesterday that the defense minister put out. They have been honoring these four soldiers as if they were their own. And you see this like this this brotherhood between America and Lithuania and America and frankly all of our allies. And even though you know Trump and the leaders of the countries don't like each

other, the brotherhood on the military level is still very allies. And even though Trump and the leaders of the countries don't like each other, the brotherhood on the military level is still very strong. And I mean, literally you see the whole country, a moment of silence for these four Americans. They come back here and Donald Trump doesn't even bother to show up is, you know, I'll just, all I can say is what I say basically to all this stuff,

had this been Biden, this would be Fox News Front headline every hour that he didn't show up to Dover when it's Trump Like that's crickets, right? That's okay There's no consistency here Fox News and the Republicans no longer believe in any value The only value is what is good for me and what can I convince people is good for them. That's it. I will go to your feed and we'll put in the show notes that the link of the Lithuanian thing

because I would like to see it. Because this thing is sad. I get it. And obviously the deaths are tragic, but it is. Like it comes to this moment where it's like this, it's an artifact of like a previous time where like we will eat had these alliances and valued them and cared about them. I've been noticing for the YouTube viewers,

you'll see this for the listeners. Adam has a statue of Liberty behind him as your backdrop. Is that a comment on how like we should, we need to give that back to the French or is there honestly, man, I think it's just time at least let them, you know, what we can do for the next three years is they could take like ownership in, you know, of it, even though we don't necessarily need to move it.

Keep it on Ellis Island? Yeah. They can take ownership of it, and then we should prepare to move it. I think we should ship it back. Maybe the Athelanians can do it. Yeah, we're getting to that point. I think we can give it to somebody else. I mean, we're not really...

I don't think our shores are the shores of liberty. All right. You've kind of mentioned a couple of times, I just do want to close because I think it's worth mentioning because the Russia deal, I thought we did a deal. I would happen there. We had this Trump and, and we sent Steve Wyckoff over there and he met with Putin and, and Putin gave him that great painting and everything was going to be cool and, um, it doesn't seem like everything's cool.

It seems like Russia is still bombing Ukraine. Well, they are. And look, you know, Zelensky comes here, gets chewed out in the oval office. And Zelensky has agreed to everything that we've put in front of them, you know, a ceasefire in the black sea, which does not benefit Ukraine because they've actually won, I mean, this is like the most untold and amazing story is the Ukrainians defeated the Russian black Sea Navy with no Navy, you know, and energy infrastructure, you know, ceasefire that that would have benefited Russia because

of their energy, the bombings that are happening. Look, Russia's not interested in peace, period. And by the way, Donald Trump who said he was going to inflict in, you know, intense sanctions or whatever against Russia if they didn't do it, well, they didn't do it. And you don't hear anything. And Russia doesn't even get put on the fricking tariff list. I mean, I don't know if Donald Trump is necessarily truly in the tank of Russia, but I think he feels a kinship to Putin.

And I got to tell you, what was very- What would he be doing differently? What would he be doing differently if he wasn't I don't believe it I also don't believe that it's actually like because I think it's way stupider than that yeah, that he's I think he's just a fucking moron, but but if he were a Russian assets in the White House, it's hard to think about something that he would have done differently the first step Well, he'd be less obvious about it differently the first 71 days. Well, he'd be less obvious about it if he was an asset.

You know what I mean? He wouldn't be this blatant. I think what was very revealing was in the Zelensky meeting when Trump went off on to how he and Putin together had to bear the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Putin didn't have to bear anything. He loved it. But that's what you start seeing is I think he feels a kinship with Putin and he's jealous of the fact that he has control of his country and Trump wants that.

At least we're doing the intel sharing with Ukraine. I think the aid has basically wound down, to be honest with you. Ukraine can now produce 40% of its own weapons. It's going to produce 4 million drones this year, which is amazing. They did 1 million last year. Europe is stepping up. Ukraine's not lost without the United States, but there's no doubt it's going to cost more Ukrainian lives than it should.

And I had to tell you every day, I mean, it's not rare that I watch a video out of Ukraine and get pretty choked up watching this because it just reminds me of really honestly, the World War II generation of Americans that just went to fight fascism. And it's, I don't know, it's inspiring to me, but sad at the same time. Slava. All right. Adam Kinzinger, have you said thank you yet?

I've had you on quite a few times. Have you said thank you? I haven't heard a thank you. Thank you, Tim. I so appreciate you. You're so amazing. You're my favorite. You are very talented.

Oh, okay. Appreciate that. All right. That's Adam Kinzinger. He used to be a congressman. Now he's got a sub stack. Go check it out. Everybody else, have as good a weekend as you can. Don't look at your Charles Schwab account. We'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Kristol. Peace. Here at the end of the empire Makes me cry on the ocean. Where California used to be, it's now half bad.

Spend half your life being sad. Don't be scared Uh-oh, just chronically impaired Uh-oh, just take my hand Standing at the end of the American Empire One last song Here at the end of the movie They seem so sure At least that's the way I remember

The war when New York used to be It's not that bad It's been half your life being sad But don't you weep Don't you weep Uh-oh, half your life fast asleep Uh-oh, feeling uninspired Uh-oh, standing at the end of the American empire And we thought that it's time to go

Heard the news on the radio The last round before we go Through the pain, atmospheric glow And the oxygen's getting low Get in line Sing the song that we used to know The last round before we go The last round before we go

So sad