The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1020: Bill Kristol: Staring Down the Barrel

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

We are here: Trump is openly defying the Supreme Court while sitting side-by-side with a Latin American strongman who openly mocked our judicial system from inside the Oval Office. Trump so badly wants his one-man rule and Republicans keep helping him, while corporate America keeps trying to get on his good side. Meanwhile, the intimidation is chilling free speech on college campuses and within immigrant communities.  Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes JVL's emergency Triad from Sunday JVL's latest Triad The latest Focus Group on the fighting mood among Dem voters 

Breathe in. Ah, nature's gift. But let's get real. Your indoor air probably smells stale, funky, like last night's takeout. We don't want to be a vibe killer, but allergens and odors are throwing a funk fest in your living room. Remy Halo obliterates the skunk, funk, and all that junk. Remy Halo, because no one wants to breathe funky air. Clean air is life. Let us help protect yours. Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Thank you to JVL for sitting in on Friday.

How great is David from made it easy on him. Congrats also to my brother from another mother, Rory McElroy on the master's win. Big ups to listeners, Josh and Jason for the little bonus hospitality at Coachella. And with that, I think there's only bad news left to cover. So I'm going to bring in Bullwork editor at large, Bill Kristol,

as is our habit on Mondays. How you doing, Bill? I'm doing fine. How are you? How was Coachella? It was amazing. It was just so marvelous. Everyone was happy. Gaga was just completely on another level from all the other acts, but we saw a lot of good ones. Amare, Viagra Boys. I think I would have trouble dealing with all that happiness, but you are a better person than I, and you can turn off the world around us and enjoy the happiness for a weekend.

I completely turned it off. The only time my happiness bubble has popped was when Sam Stein was texting me about work stuff, or one of the artists, Dark Side, great artist, but did like a three-minute anti-Trump rant, and I'm like, you know, 30 seconds is sufficient You know once you get into the minute for a little much for me. We're trying to escape our dark reality Speaking of our dark reality. I guess we need to start in El Salvador Which David from repeatedly called our only ally on the Friday pod to my amusement close close enough to true So we've got president Bukele in DC today.

I guess we'll be meeting with Trump. The latest in the legal situation with Kilmar Briego-Garcia, that's the father in Maryland who was wrongfully sent to Sackatt in El Salvador. On Sunday, the government stonewalled the district court judge filing an update saying it had no updates and in a separate filing challenge the Supreme Court's 9-0 order to facilitate a Brega Garcia's return and added that the details of the deal with Bukele are classified. Potentially a big legal showdown here. We'll see what happens with Bukele, but JVL has a pretty alarmist triad, which I know

tickles both of our funny bones, but what doL has a pretty alarmist triad, which I know tickles both of our funny bones, but what do you make of it at the biggest picture? It's terrible. It's terrible what's happened. It's terrible that the government of the United States and the Trump administration are defending what's happened or at least professing to be incapable of fixing what's happened or not. It's certainly not trying at all hard or even appearing to try hard to fix what's happened. That part I really can't quite believe.

I can believe, what am I saying? But that part is shocking, in a sense. I mean, of course, what's happened is the most shocking thing, but not even going through the motions of trying to fix what they have acknowledged is an injustice or wrong, which of course they could fix in two minutes. I know Bukele is not going to say no to Trump if he says it's important to get him back and, you know, we'll do it in some way that saves space for you if you want. But anyway, it's so that's not a bug. That's a feature, right? The unwillingness to rectify the injustice. Yeah. Oh, no, for sure. And I think there is kind of a typical

political scandal element to this. And obviously Trump is atypical in so many ways, but they've gotten just way out ahead of themselves with their rhetoric about, you know, like this guy is a, you know, MS-13 member, you know, everyone down there is a violent, dangerous criminal. Like once you kind of do that, it makes it harder to just admit wrong. You see this from all kinds of positions, right? You get in trouble and then it's harder to admit. You keep digging the hole deeper, but it's like once they do, then doesn't that open

the door and God willing it would to like for the other people who are there that may be wrongfully. It's just this just happens to be the only guy they've admitted was a mistake. Right. I mean, I think this is kind of dark, but I, they don't mind having a little bit of fear out there that it could happen to other people who are not criminals and not gang members and any, you know, they like it with the immigrants. Clearly they like that.

They think it'll lead to self deportation or at least a well, self deportation or, or not coming here in the first place or leaving or, I don't know, hiding more or something like that, not causing trouble certainly. It's like with the campus stuff, right? You know, I mean, this stuff does have a deterrent and chilling effect and not just on immigrants incidentally. That part of it is what I find that is classic authoritarian dictatorship beyond the kind of, oh, we're on the way towards authoritarianism.

You want some cases that are obviously unjust to really put the fear of God into everyone, that can't do anything that even looks problematic from the point of view of the government. And that seems to be where we are. And this, I think, is just a reasonable fear, particularly for people that are here on visas, Unable fear. Particularly for people that are here on visas, anybody whose status is not permanent residency or citizen, obviously, I don't think I would advise somebody in that shoes to come or stay in the country because the risks are so great. I read an email from a listener just this morning I was reading where his son's roommate

basically had to self-deport who had done nothing You know, but like got a letter was at college here was from the Middle East, you know decided It's just better to just go back and like that seems like a rational choice Then this case he got a letter but even if you if you didn't write I like they want that Fear and I and I don't think it's irrational at this point. Right, at least he got the letter, which is more than the young woman at Tufts did and she just got seized on the street.

I mean, and again, they're there, which that seems very clearly to be unjustified and unwarranted and they're too, they're doing nothing to remedy the error. Well, the Tufts situation, the Post had a story over the weekend that the state department, you know, some career in the state department had determined that there was no evidence she engaged in.

And again, it would not be illegal to have a whatever. I wouldn't support having a pro-Hamas flag. It wouldn't be illegal. But there was no actual evidence that she engaged in any anti-Semitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization. That was like the State Department's own internal assessment. And it may be legally, it's just, you know, immigrants don't have many rights, honestly,

and their visas can be revoked, and legally, they can be done somewhat arbitrarily, and you don't have to defend it. I'm not sure if this went to court. She would win in that respect though, maybe she would, I don't know, maybe the current provisions are unconstitutional in terms of their arbitrariness, but if I'm reading the current provisions correctly. But having said all that,

whether it's marginally legal or not, which is sort of where the debate goes to, it's not the right thing to do. I mean, we're so far down the road of, and I'm not blaming anyone for this, I'm in this trap too, of trying to sort of say, well, you can't do that, you can't do this. We've forgotten the more elementary fact that you shouldn't be doing any of this.

There's absolutely no need for it. It's entirely unprovoked and setting up a terrible system where people don't feel they can speak up. I mean, I really do wonder if anyone who's not here, who's not a citizen basically, feels he or she can express an opinion about any political thing at this point. Why would you? Maybe you can say, okay, well, we'll live in a country where they won't express their opinions, I guess. What if you're a student in a classroom, a student in grad school, and you're asked to join a, I mean, not leave aside protests and

all that. I'm just thinking of writing an article on something or whatever. This is like the past week, we've been having crazy conversations with a friend who had a friend who was coming from abroad who has, I forget what their immigration status is, some kind of mixed status. Their lawyer told them, bring a burner phone, like we're in Russia, because it's just like better safe than sorry. You don't want them going through your phone, like bring a clean phone that doesn't have, you know, any memes on it that might, you know, come a foul of the, you know, agents at the airport. And like, that's crazy that like a lawyer is suggesting that, you know, I mean, even

if it's maybe a little overly cautious, like the notion of it being out there tells you how far down we've gone. You know, everybody except Donald Trump understands that it's important to plan. It's important to have some consistency, to know what is coming. If you're going to randomly have your tariff rate increase by 122% one day and then decrease by 80% the next day, that makes it challenging to plan. But there are other areas in life where you've got control. And trust and will makes creating your will easy and time efficient, meaning you can focus

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encryption and live customer support is available through phone chat and email. Uncomplicate the process with trust and will. Protect what matters most in minutes at trustandwill.com slash bulwark and get 20% off. That's 20% off at trustandwill.com slash bulwark. Just on the legal part of this, because JVL kind of wrote about basically the three doors that we're going to come through here with Bukele in the US. One is basically, he says, you know, I've decided to, in my own graciousness, like give back Kilmar Garcia, and we're not going to change anything else about our program.

There is the option of, well, he's going to kick the can, he's going to wait and see what more comes down the pike. Or there is the option that he just says, no, this person is a danger to El Salvador and I'm going to keep him there. All right. And actually, we might have a little bit of clarity on which dark door we're going through because as we are taping here, the press conference is happening live in the Oval Office with Bukele and Trump.

And here is what Bukele just said about whether he's planning on returning Gilmar Abrego Garcia. Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him? Kylmar Abrego-Garcia. I mean the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States. But you could release him inside of the hotel. Yeah, but I'm not releasing, I mean we're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere

and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That's not going to happen. Well, they'd love to have a criminal released until after. I mean, there's a fascination. They would love it. These are sick people. So he can't smuggle him in. The whole thing is preposterous.

But I mean, it's like, look, we are staring down the barrel here of the worst case scenario. If this guy will not return Garcia and and the Supreme Court has directly said at a nine to zero vote that he must be returned. Like where are we going? Right, or the Supreme Court at least said that the president has to do his best to facilitate, was that the word? Yeah, that's right. His return.

I don't know, we're doing this in real time, so to speak, so I don't know exactly if the president has had a reaction to Piquet, but it doesn't sound from just a very brief account I've just looked at that Trump has said, oh no, no, we are going to have to persuade you, Mr. President, to send him back. No. So we're just basically have the president ignoring the district court and the Supreme Court, which upheld, slightly modified, but upheld what the district court is now ordering the president to at least try to do.

So yeah, so all this talk about, well, that's going to be amazing when the president just defies the courts, that's going to be the showdown. We're there. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about how, like, look, the air pot committed on like these people being gang members and scary and dangerous. And Trump says these are sick people, you know, not having any evidence. Later in the conversation with Bukele, Trump was trying to question that he's open to deporting individuals that aren't foreign aliens. Does that include US citizens? Trump said if they're criminals, yeah, that includes them. I'm all for it.

citizens Trump said if they're criminals yeah that includes them I'm all for it you know and this like really expands the aperture of like what the what the threats are and you know if we're gonna be in a situation where the only way to determine if somebody's a criminal is if one ICE person or if the president decides they're a criminal then we're really in the bad place and just to make this you know clear as it is so I suppose, it's bad enough if the ass person decides you're a criminal, you're gone, gone from the country. Worse yet, if you're dumped into your home country, or third country, even worse, probably, where you're not going to be treated well, let's just put a say, stipulate that because

you've had your encounters with the government or you're disfavored, whatever. You've got religion or you're gay or whatever. You got on the wrong side of things. Yeah, exactly. Because that's very bad already and that's contrary to US law which tries to give such people asylum and so forth. But way beyond that, we're literally giving them to someone who's sticking them right into a prison from which there seems to be no departure, and which is of course beyond

not humane and so forth. JVL wrote a couple of weeks ago, didn't he? What if he just kills some of these people? What if they have a fake trial or no trial and just decide that some of these guys is cheaper than not to have to keep them alive because they're such horrible human beings and human scum or whatever Trump would call them. I mean, is that now totally out of the realm of possibility that we and that we would have deported people, some of whom at least are not only deserves to be deported to death,

I wouldn't say in a prison without any trial or hearing or anything at all. Some of whom are just flat out innocent of what they're sort of accused of. Yeah. I mean, now we're already there. And look, you have a Latin American strongman, like in the White House, mocking our judicial system, basically. Just like mocking the country, doing it sitting next to the president with the full support of the president, the president as a sponsor, really, in a lot of ways and discussing going further and talking

about how more people are going to have to be put in his jail in El Salvador. Someone resigned from the administration because of this, someone from the council's office, someone from DOJ, someone from the State Department? Well, they put that one lawyer on leave. So we got one government lawyer is on leave over this, you know. Who's on the right side. He's on the side of telling the truth to the court. I mean, yeah.

Marco Rubio is fine with this, though, right? They have succeeded, I think, in making this what Aaron Reithemeldich said very, the very beginning when you and I both, I think, did conversations with them at various times. The immigration expert, they want to make America a hostile place to immigrants. They want people not to want to come here. And they've certainly done that, and they've also made it so people don't want to stay here.

The damage that does to us as a country, and not just in sort of obvious economic ways, but I think in terms of what the meaning of the current, not to sound too sappy or something, but the sort of the spirit of the country, what the meaning of the country, not to sound too sappy or something, but the spirit of the country, what the meaning of America is. I mean, it's pretty terrible. It's not too sappy for me.

My childish love of the beauty of the American experiment has been tarnished, but it's definitely true. It was noteworthy, I guess, that the Supreme Court was 9-0 on this. And so I think that's what really makes the showdown, so to speak, most stark, because if they don't respond to that, we're getting into an even darker place. Quick shout out to Chris Van Hollen, Senator from Maryland, who has requested a meeting with Bukele and says that if Kilmar Garcia is not home by midweek, he's going to travel to El Salvador to check on his condition and discuss his release.

So glad that some Democrats are standing up. One last thing, JVL had on this kind of point, if we move on to some other cheery topics, JVL kind of had a provocative lead that I think may be a little over provocative for my taste, maybe, but something worth discussing, which is if you're Chris Krebs right now, are you starting to wonder whether or not you should leave the country? JVL is more of the view that if Garcia is not returned this week, then people that have been targeted by directly this administration, at the very least, would have like a legit asylum case, even if they themselves don't want to go, which is another kind of crazy thing to even

think about. But I don't know. Do you think that's overcooked? I mean, I don't know. I don't think Chris Krebs wants to live in asylum from America for the rest of his life. I don't know him that well, but he's served in the US government and is a patriotic American. So I assume he'd prefer to fight and defend himself in the American courts. One assumes that American courts will still be reasonably fair and that one could win

those cases to damage it could be done in terms of expenses and reputation, maybe slander and so forth. In the course of bringing this case, it shouldn't be underestimated. So it was a little overstated. The fact again that we're having this conversation, it's not crazy. And again, the president of the United States sitting in the Oval Office signing the executive orders, it really got to me actually when he did that with Chris Krabs and Miles Taylor. That's bad enough to pop off if you're president of the United States.

This guy should be charged with treason. That happened some in the first term, or that's happened many, many times on many issues throughout. That has a real damaging effect. We shouldn't kid ourselves that a road to any concept of rule of law, the president's justice board shouldn't be going after person's numbers. To have him sign the executive order, what it made me think was someone wrote that order. Some White House staff made sure it was correctly presented and the right citations, whatever they have, but there were some fake citations, and typed up nicely and put in that nice folder.

There was a staff guy there that handed it to them and other people choreographed it. People at the Justice Department were working with people in the White House Counsel's Office. They are all part of it. Something that's manifestly wrong, contrary to American principles, arguably illegal, but the president has immunity, so we'll see what happens when these things get to court. But those people, I guess, will pay no price. I don't think the way our things work

is very hard to sue them individually or whatever, but the number of enablers Trump has to be able to do the things he's now doing. Yes, there's some ICE agents and so forth who clearly are direct enablers and don't seem to care a heck of a lot about being very careful about who they're seizing. Someone told me who knows this area

much better than I, incidentally, that I guess they have obviously cooperation between ICE and other parts of the law enforcement agencies to seize these people. They're not all ICE people all the time. But this administration is just on ICE having the lead role, because ICE is the least likely to be very concerned about, oh, spelling mistake, it's the wrong guy. But leaving that aside, just the number of people who are cooperating with and enabling, and I'm not talking cooperating like law firms giving Trump

some money, I'm talking actually doing what's, to make possible the terrible injustices Trump is committing. It's kind of, I don't know, unnerving I find. Maybe they will find accountability in Sokote next time that there's a Democratic president, you never know. The other thing just on these agents is they also use the contractors. There's a story, I think it came out since the last pod where like the guy who? like signed the order for André the makeup artist was like a Contractor who got fired from his job as a cop in Milwaukee and to like the district attorney wouldn't use in Milwaukee as a as a witness because his credibility was so shot because of lying so you know That's the person that signed the removal order.

It's not even really a removal order. He signed the document kind of stating that this person is. Again, yeah, who was like a charge of reviewing, I think, even for eyes sort of making sure who we're putting on the list here. So yes, exactly. Unfortunately, very good illustration of the kinds of people who are being, and it gets worse. There's the kind of people who then get attracted to this.

They probably can't get very good jobs, hopefully, with reputable law enforcement. So they're now not with the, I mean, the old days, it was the small towns, you know, somewhere in the middle of nowhere who had the disreputable law enforcement officers, the cousins of the sheriff who were getting kickbacks and all the American novels and TV shows that are based on this kind of thing.

Now it turns out it's the federal government doing sensitive and major things that is using these people. Breathe in. Ah, nature's gift. But let's get real. Your indoor air probably smells stale, funky, like last night's takeout. We don't want to be a vibe killer, but allergens and odors are throwing a funk fest in your living room.

Remy Halo obliterates the skunk, funk and all that junk. Remy Halo, because no one wants to breathe funky air. Clean air is life. Let us help protect yours. Speaking of Trump popping off, he also did a bleat over the weekend about 60 minutes, how they should lose their license, you know, which is kind of repetitive of what he's been saying as mentioned already. I think I was watching Megan Thee Stallion during 60 minutes last night.

So I haven't actually seen the show to see what upset him. But this was the part I wanted to focus on. Hopefully, FCC Commissioner Rendon Carr gives them the maximum punishment. So again, it's similar to the Krebs situation. This isn't an executive order, but it is directing a federal agency to punish a political foe and a media outlet at that. Yeah.

And Carr has said things that are totally out of whack from any FCC chairman of either party in terms of his willingness to go after people politically. I don't know quite how the agency, FCC, works, but I think he has a lot of power as chairman, even if they don't appoint all the members. Trump can't appoint all the members. So the threat isn't just Trump won't like you or Trump won't give CBS good access to the White House. The threat is fines and lifting your license, I suppose, conceivably even greater, criminal

penalties against people. And he mentions the person who wants to do this and there's Carr thinking, yeah, if I want to go ahead and get ahead in Trump world, I guess I need to move pretty aggressively on this. I would have thought of maybe the first term, Carmel just let it drop, which is what kind of the decent, semi-decent people did in the first Trump administration when orders to do this kinds of thing.

Like, all right, boss, we're right on that. We're right on that. We're reviewing it, you know, hoping it goes away. But this time one can't count on that at all, of course, right? No, of course not. Also wanted to, you know, we've got to do a daily tariff update, I guess. We're going to do much more on the economic stuff tomorrow.

But this jumped out at me. Since last Wednesday, this has been the tariff regime in the country. Began with the universal reciprocal tariffs, quote unquote, and then he backed down to the 10% for everybody. And then upping the Chinese to 50. Over the course of the next few days, you upped that to 90, 104, 125, and then 145 for the Chinese tariffs. Then electronics were exempted. Now electronics are back on, we think, at 20%, not 100% sure on what an official announcement is out of this administration these days. I mean, this is just madness. I mean, who could possibly, you know,

plan their business in these kind of conditions? Right, I think it has real economic, bad effects economically, obviously, and I think it really will have bad effects, and it is having bad effects. It also just mocks any notion, again, of the rule of law. I mean, whatever one thinks of some of these press presidential acts, you know, based on their findings, they changed the tariffs. Sometimes they did it, you know,

for sort of political reasons. They wanted to help, you know, Harley Davidson in the Midwest or whatever in the 80s. And so they increased tariffs on motorcycles or something. But again, there was an actual process by which they did this. People had noticed, people were able to argue against it before the various entities. I mean, we're now just in a total one man, well, one man rule. It's such a simple minded way of putting it, but it's kind of correct, right? I mean, and again, the arbitrariness is in large measure the point. It's a featured outer bug. And it does mean that everyone, everyone has such an incentive to be on his good side.

And on his good side personally, incidentally, not on the government's good side. I mean, that would again be I think a distinction I would make. And I think, didn't someone, when I read this, it was a CBS that someone went to them as a middleman, I think, you know, from Trump to say, well, the way you might get out of this, do what in effect, I guess it was Amazon did with Melania Trump, right? Gave her $ million dollars or some Documentary gift on jr. A show about hunting and you know, there are things you could but it's all personal, right? It's not it's not even accommodate the government's policies, which is problematic enough in a free country. Obviously, it's accommodate

You know the strong man's not policies accommodate the strong man's interests and family and friends I suppose. He gave the Mexico and Canada tariffs like some fake pretense with the fentanyl, you know, that there was an emergency rationale for that. Like that's not even happening anymore. He doesn't even feel the need to do that. It's just he's licking his finger, putting in the air and just picking a number and we kind of did this last week, but the congressional abdication is just totally complete like, you know a lot of chatter like some chatter but

No actual action. I mean here's Dan Crenshaw who is You might remember got into a lengthy debate with me before the election where he, his side of the debate was that it was going to look just like the first term that Trump was going to have people around them that were tough on Russia and, you know, wanted free market economics. Anyway, here's Crenshaw now. C question mark, trust to the president. He understands trade and economics and negotiations better than his critics give him credit for the critiques from

certain Senate Republicans were premature to say the least so you have one of the supposedly more responsible ones chastising like the few of his colleagues who have like even done the minimum to express concern about this moronic policy. No, I think it's so revealing. I hadn't seen the crutch nothing until you texted to me just half an hour ago. I mean, the embassy is, tries to be, and he is sort of one of the more responsible, less, you know, cool a drinking Trump Republicans on the Hill.

He sort of knows better. That's why he cares when you criticize him and he sort of reads or watches the Borg Sommons enough to get annoyed at us and so forth. And there he is, as you say, criticizing the very few Senate Republicans who actually set up a few words against this. It makes me wonder if there's a broader phenomenon. I was thinking about this the last few days because I happened to have seen a whole bunch of people, some of whom are much more in touch with Trump-adjacent

Republicans or certainly anti-ISI Trump Republicans than I am. What struck me talking to them is these are, I was well-educated and sort of, these would be the people, the Dan Crenshaw equivalents, let's put it this way, in business and in journalism and in other sectors. I don't think they've changed their mind. I guess in the polls as a whole, there's clearly some erosion for Trump, which is good, I think. But I don't know that the erosion is coming among the upper middle class Wall Street Journal reader Trump supporters as much as one would assume it would, of course.

The journal itself is a little different, but is eroding, I think. I don't know. I think the erosion may be coming from, quote, normal people, actually less well-informed voters who are just looking around and saying, this looks crazy, or these terrorists, I think they're may be coming from quote normal people Actually less well-informed voters who are just looking around and saying this looks crazy, you know, why these terrorists? I think they're gonna raise prices and so it turns out the people who have the complicated reasons for justifying Trump I don't know. My impression is 95% of them are still doing so did you have you sensed this at all or I just know so back in thinking about 2016, right like between Election Day and So back in thinking about 2016, right? Like between election day and say the Muslim ban implementation, you know,

kind of like that, this, or the early period in 2016, I had a lot of people in our old world do like the whispering, I was with you, you know what I mean? Or you were right about that. Or, Ooh, I don't, we got, we, I didn't really think he could win. Like I got all of those kinds of things. And that has not happened this time. I mean, some of that is just that I'm less in those circles than I was eight years ago, but I agree with you.

I've not seen any evidence of it. And I think it's like, look, once you've concocted some complicated rationale for being for it, like in for a penny and for a pound, I guess, it becomes easier to continue to rationalize. I don't know. Someone told me that someone else said this, who was an intelligent person, who my friend respects,

said, that's terrible. Much worse than we could have expected. No, no, the terrace is bad. That was terrible. Last week and a half, it's been bad. But before that, it was all fine. So let's think for a minute about what that says. And this isn't a stupid person or an ignorant person or someone who in a normal world wouldn't think, gee, couldn't

care less about Ukraine, couldn't care less about civil liberties, et cetera. And that stuff's all fine. Terrorists was a little too much. But in a way, the focus on terrorists almost makes the point, doesn't it, that all the other stuff somehow didn't move anyone, I guess. Yeah. The appointment of a TV host to run the military and a total quack to run our health and human services, that part was no big deal. No worries there.

It was just the tariffs that started to get me concerned. The Kennedy thing is, I actually also found that driving me a little crazy late last week, that, I mean, Hec-Seth and Patel are really awful, I think, in terms of what they can do to the country and ludicrously unqualified and all that. But as we said at the time, they are, were Republicans, they were Fox News. You could sort of see why Republican senators were a little hesitant to go against them. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there was none of that. It was Trump's personal deal with him, but Trump could have said if he had been not confirming the Senate,

well, I kept my part of the deal. I can't control these creeps. You can attack them all you want, Bobby. The fact that he's in there and incidentally there hasn't been a huge outrage about all the stuff he's doing and saying. He's actually running a kind of big and important department that does a lot of big and important things and he's running it terribly just as we all feared. And again that's been normalized is really, I don't know, amazing, I think. This guy is Secretary of Health and Human Services in America in 2025. With all that we know about medicine and science and so forth, it's really kind of unbelievable. He's got a lot of apartheid chicks in there too at HHS, right? Because I don't know, you saw the interview with him last week.

Basically, some interviewer was asking him about the specifics of the cuts, because there have been draconian cuts in HHS to a lot of things that, you know, just like research and other kind of core services that the government needs to provide. And he was just like, I don't know about that. I don't know. I didn't know about that I don't know I didn't know that I didn't approve that I don't know that you know it's like he is doing the kind of media you know public-facing side of it and creating some real damage there with his measles with the measles outbreak etc but then behind the scenes like they've got a whole little squad both of Doge and Maha people, that are tearing the

department apart. Breathe in. Ah, nature's gift. But let's get real. Your indoor air probably smells stale, funky, like last night's takeout. We don't want to be a vibe killer, but allergens and odors are throwing a funkfest in your living room. Remy Halo obliterates the skunk, funk, and all that junk.

Remy Halo, because no one's going to be able to get away with this. Remy, you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine.

You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. I wanted to go back to Putin really quick because we had a update, a sad update over the weekend. On Palm Sunday, Russia killed at least 34 and wounded 117 in the city of Sumi, the missile attacks. Trump was asked about it. He called it a mistake. The reporter followed up again and asked him to clarify that.

And he just was like, it was a mistake. They made a mistake. And then later sent out a bleach that said that Zelensky and crooked Joe Biden did a horrible job letting this war begin. So it's been almost a month since we've had these, you know, partial ceasefire deal, which included attacks on energy and infrastructure, which Putin has continued to attack. So it doesn't feel like we got a lot of progress there on the Russia front.

And I guess, unless you're rooting for Russia, then maybe they're having some progress. I think this is one of the worst attacks on civilians in the, maybe the entire war. It came what a day after Trump's buddy there, his envoy. Yeah. Well, these utter incompetence straight, but Witkoff was there being so moved by having met Putin and really loves Putin and looking to so crave in the photo. He really made my skin crawl the video of that, you know. Let's make everybody's skin crawl and take a listen.

What did you think of him? I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me. Of course, by the way, I've said that and you can imagine, by the way, I say that I get pilloried, oh my gosh, you're actually saying. Called communication, which many people would say, I shouldn't have had because Putin is a bad guy.

I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it. It's never just one person, right? So We're gonna I think we're gonna figure it out No, it's just one person. It's not a complicated situation. He invaded Ukraine What is like there's not a lot of ins and outs and what-have-yous into this war and the circumstances around it Yeah, say nothing of all the other people he's killed and know, and put into gulags at home and so forth.

I mean, it's, it is just unbelievable, really. This is not a kind of random third level person. It's not a, if it were the Biden administration, some left wing activists on campus said this, the entire Fox News and the right wing would go crazy. And, you know, this is what the Democratic party, this is literally the president's negotiator with Putin, who turns out to be, I don't know, more pro-Putin than what Henry Wallace was with Stalin, right? I mean, it's unbelievable. Yeah. Like lavish praise. Just like I thought he was really straight with me. It's like, how can you be so fucking stupid, by the way, honestly, like just like the credulousness and the gullibility. just the credulousness and the gullibility, if it wasn't so serious, would be the funniest aspect of it.

Because really? We're 20 years into this? It became a joke, the way that W looked into his soul. We've been through this. That was 20 years ago. You haven't learned anything? Anyway. I want to close here with two things.

You had a nice newsletter on trust that I want to play a clip from at the end, but I thought Richie Torres really summarized the state of affairs pretty well, and so I wanted to read that to you. He wrote this this morning, if a superpower were intent on engineering its own decline, it would antagonize its allies, paralyze its economy with the certainty of uncertainty, erode confidence in the world's reserve currency, discard due process, defund medical and scientific research, sabotage the most critical form of manufacturing, domestic chip making, and grow its deficit until debt service devours the largest share of its budget.

You would think, I guess going back to the people we were talking about earlier, you would think a succinct summary such as that would resonate with some of our old friends. I mean, that could have been a Mitt Romney statement in 2012, really. I wouldn't have been about the current president. I would have been a speck in a bit. He's not advancing any far left progressive, woke notions there, and it's just the basics. I think he kind of hit it. That was great. None of our ex-friends will, of course, comprise it because they can't be on board with the

full board criticism of Trump, apparently. I guess I just come back to that and how terrible it is. People might have said at this point, and some have, a few have, I guess, I was wrong. There have been a few actually random people online, not the people I would have said at this point, and some have, a few have, I guess, I was wrong. There have been a few actually random people online, not the people I would have predicted necessarily, some people I haven't thought that much of, which just sort of did kind of have this moment of, oh my God. But the people who allegedly, we've all said to ourselves, and they've privately sometimes said to us, well, we know better, and this and this, we wouldn't go this far, of course,

but I think we can help at this point. Nothing, nothing. Yeah, it takes Richie Torres, who's a good guy, don't get me wrong, but a Democratic elected official to say what all the people at the free press and commentary and all these other estimable journals of opinion, but also the business leaders. None of them could say that, right? The business leaders can say, we've still been a little more consistency in the way they've done this terror stuff, but I'm not criticizing, I'm not complaining about anything else. God forbid, you know, they should say anything about, you know, the collapse of the rule of law here in the United States of America. Okay, well, so the superpower engineering its own decline, and

while that is happening, here was the White House press secretary on Friday talking to people that might have concerns. So trust in President Trump. He knows what he's doing. This is a proven economic formula. What is he asking of Americans at this time? He talked about transition costs, transition problems. Is he asking something specific for Americans to do? No, I think the president is asking for Americans trust in in Trump as I just said trust in his economic agenda and formula It's a proven formula that works trust in Trump trust in Trump those Crenshaw again trust the president You had a little meditation on that this morning. What you know, I hadn't realized I as you read it I heard the trust word. I hadn't even realized Crenshaw. It's that I should have added that to my little meditation and morning shots

well, I'll just said me we used to believe in God we trust and that's appropriate. But the flip side of that, the implicit message of that is we don't trust human beings. We don't trust dear leaders too much. Our whole system is set up based on a kind of distrust of that. That's why we have checks and balances and separation of powers and the like. But now we're supposed to in the era of Trump, but just a nice, nice, it's a terrible encapsulation of authoritarianism and bad authoritarianism, not even kind of a certain type of authoritarianism where, look, you don't have to love this government, just shut up and obey

the rules. That's kind of what we're used to in certain countries. We're not for that. That's not America. But people can kind of still live their lives to some degree if they don't bother butting into politics. We're supposed to trust the guy and we are really just one step from being ordered to love the guy and sort of pay and bow to him, which in fact a lot of that is being asked, of course, of a lot of a lot of people, right? I mean, it's cultish. Yeah, I mean imagine you know some of those law firms that are having to do pro bono work for them. Who knows what kind of good stuff that they're-

I wonder how that's going to really work out in practice. They all think, I talked to a couple of lawyers as it happens in various things over the weekend, they all kind of, I mean, they don't work for those firms, but they know people obviously who do it. And their own firms may be facing these choices. And they all think they're going to fudge it and they'll do some work for some decent, semi-decent cause that's sort of Trump adjacent though. And so, they'll get away with fulfilling the pro-voter work that way.

But I don't know that we know that at all. I presume these agreements are memorialized somewhere. I don't think we've seen any of these agreements. Who's going to judge? Do we think Trump's just going to let the law firm show up and say, Hey, did $8 million in pro bono work for you this last six months? You know, yeah, it's all fine. It's good stuff. Don't worry about it, Mr.

President, you know, or if they'll tell us representative, we don't think the representatives can say, I want to see what, who you were doing the work for. Furthermore, next six months, I want you to do work for the following five individuals or groups that we think have been treated badly. And those groups could be very bad, creepy groups, right? These Holocaust deniers were shut up, didn't get treated equally. God knows, right? On some campus.

We want you to be helping them. I don't know. He floated the coal companies last week as a possible group that lawyers love to do work for. So good luck with that and the greenwashing program at the law firm. All right, Bill, anything else? Did I miss anything? Bill Nye I wish it's not a slightly up. I will say this.

I do think the tariffs is hurt even though I'm griping about how they should be rebelling on 10 issues, not just one. And I do think the Richie torres statement shows the devil in others Savings like that show some of the Democrats are more in a fighting mood than they were I think Sarah found that from those two focus groups She did this week and a good discussion on the podcast Including what has been a gripe of yours that I very much agree with that the the progressives seem willing to fight But the moderates not so much but in these focus groups the moderates and the progressives were equally

sort of aggressive and wanting their representatives to be aggressive against Trump. So maybe all of that is getting a little bit better I think than it was. Okay I'm not gonna let you end on a high note I gotta end on a low note because I forgot to talk about one other thing the Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiros was an arson in his home last night. Very serious. When I first saw it, I thought, until I saw the pictures, I guess, of the governor's mansion, I didn't realize, like, just it was a very serious attack by somebody that I guess hopped the fence. They had homemade incendiary devices. I mean, obviously the attack was targeted, but they haven't released a specific motive yet.

So it also was I guess at the time of a was the Passover Seder. Is that right? This is your area. It was it was Sunday morning. So it was after the first Seder and and they had been some publicity around that Seder publicity, but he put out a photo of his family and some friends at the Seder dinner. So maybe that's you know, even even more provoke this guy even more, but he seems to hate Shapiro and, um, yeah, maybe you shouldn't be able to jump the fence to the governor's house and get in, get inside at 2am, but whatever, I'm sure they'll look at security again. No, it's terrible.

And again, the vibe, you know, you can't blame it directly on Trump, I suppose, and all this, but the atmosphere of vigilante violence that's out there, the failure of Trump, I guess personally to say anything about it, is that correct as we speak at least here late warning on Monday? I believe that's true that he's not a governor of a major state is subjected to a dangerous attack and there's not the routine kind of expression of concern from the presidents. Trump mom on Shapiro is about an hour ago, according to USA Today. So we'll be waiting with bated breath.

I'm sure he'll give a very generous statement of support from the White House. Bill Kristol, uplifting as always. Sorry about that. Next week, next week. No, no. The people don't come here to be uplifted. Okay. There are other podcasts in the scene.

Four years from now, four years from now. Cheerful podcasts, maybe. Every once in a while, we'll do a Shot in Freud podcast every once in a while. All right, everybody, I'll be back here tomorrow and look forward to seeing you all then, peace. Arakuta pra, orta ugaga Phantom of the dance, flow come to me Sing for me your sinful melody Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm out. I forgot Deborah, I forgot Debra, I forgot Debra, I forgot Debra, I forgot Debra, I forgot Abra-Kudabra Abra-Kudabra Abra-Kudabra Abra-Kudabra

Feel them until you feel the floors on fire Abra-Kudabra Abra-Kudabra Abra-Kudabra I'm on una stop Abra-Kudabra, I'm on una stock Abracadabra, mortal ugaga Abracadabra, Abracadabra Abracadabra, Abracadabra The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.