The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1025: Bill Kristol: Hegseth Keeps Proving his Unfitness

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Republican senators could have insisted on someone who was even minimally competent to run our military, but because of their spinelessness, we've now got a SecDef who can't resist texting top secret war plans. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court shows it doesn't trust the Trump administration, and judges on lower federal courts have stopped believing what its lawyers say. Plus, Joe Perticone joins from Rome to discuss the passing of Pope Francis. And the uncanny relevance of the American revolutionaries' grievances against King George. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Ryan Holiday on the Naval Academy canceling his speech (gift) Prof. Manisha Sinha sharing an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have ended up with a double segment for your Monday pod today. My colleague, Joe Perticone, happened to be in Rome this morning for his wedding. And so, we have a Catholic Rome correspondent who I spoke to about the death of Pope Francis, our first Jesuit Pope, somebody that I feel a little, even as a lapsed Catholic, a little kindred spirit to, or maybe not kindred spirit, but a little connection to Papa Francisco having been the first Jesuit Pope, someone that has acknowledged the existence of gay Catholics and, you know, treated them with humanity, came to, I think, really recognition, washing the feet of AIDS

patients in Argentina. So, it's a sad loss of Pope Francis. I get into that at greater length with Joe Perticone in segment two, but up first it's Monday. He's the editor at large of the bulwark, not a Catholic, famously, it's Bill Kristol. How you doing, Bill? I don't think I'm famously not a Catholic. I mean, you're pretty famously Jewish, I guess. I'm famously okay with Catholics. Some of my best friends are Pinn and are Catholics, and some lapsed and some not lapsed, you know.

A lot of converted Catholics in your world, actually. A lot of people coming in and a lot going out, a lot of movement in the doorway to Catholicism around Bill Kristol. It may be worth mentioning, I guess, that the Angel of Death, our vice president, JD Vance, did visit Pope Francis the day before his death. Pete Slauson Yeah, I mean, it is a little striking. You know, I don't follow the inter-Catholic controversies that much. I used to be kind of follow the internal, the inter Catholic controversies that much. I used to be kind of interested in it, but I've sort of lost touch. But he seems to have been a very decent man, as a non Catholic, looking at it from the outside. He seems to have been a very decent man in an age that's not very decent in many ways. And in that respect, I looked up to

him and I think he was an important public figure for non-Catholics as well. Don't you think in this in this moment? For sure. It was a noteworthy change if honestly like much more in tone than an actual doctrine I bet there's a lot of you know, the traditionalist the trad counts here in America, you know Tried to like I think make him into something that he wasn't as far as radical change I mean, I still can't get gay married in the church. There still aren't women priests, right? Like it was more about his tone and his rhetoric, which was a pretty striking change from the severe Benedict, Pope Benedict. And I think that he was so old when the, I think I forget, 75, 76, I think, when

he ascended to the papacy, it was maybe a feeling that this was sort of a transitional Pope, you know, kind of that would he would back quickly not to be macabre about it back quickly to, you know, a more traditional type of pope. But you know, he ends up like really remaking the types of people that are appointed to become cardinal, etc. And so I don't know, as I get into a Joe, it's possible that maybe more of a permanent shift more than transition. And kind of we'll see how the conclave shakes out.

So that's that. I guess I just would have to recommend one more time that if you have any elderly family members, I'd recommend they stay away from JD Vance for the near future, just in case. People that might be on their deathbed, how about that for a transition? Pete Hakeseth, is Secretary of Defense. A crazy Easter Sunday night series of leaks targeting Hagseth. I guess he had fired three people, including his Chief of Staff, with accusations that they'd been leaking, though there's I think some dispute on those accusations now. Last week, then the New York Times has a story last night about how there's a second signal chat where he detailed war plans in Yemen. And this chat was not started by

Mike Waltz, it was started by Hegseth. And it included his wife, his third wife, the former Fox News producer, included his brother, Phil Hegseth, his personal attorney. Why all these people needed to know when the planes were taking off for Yemen is unclear. So that story is sort of this extension of Signalgate and the extension of this notion that there's just, these guys are totally reckless in their behavior around this type of material. Subsequently, there's a Politico story that was an op-ed

really written by this guy, John Olyot, who's been with Trump, who's a Politico story that was an op-ed really written by this guy, John Ollott, who's a Trump spokesman dating back to 2016 on national security issues. So a long time Trump person. The article is almost grotesquely sucking up to Trump to a degree that is hard to bear. But once you get through all the Trump suck up stuff, I think what she has to share to kind of, I think, get his bona fides out there. He basically says that Pete Hegseth is an incompetent. He'd been hired by Hegseth to help set up the public affairs office.

He turned down a promotion opportunity because it was such a shit show. And he essentially says there are more shoes to drop. So that's like a basic summary of the Easter Sunday night hit job on Pete Hegseth. I'm wondering what your kind of top line reaction was to all that. No, an excellent summary and you said it well last night on the video you did right away. One side note on the perils of being a morning,

early morning newsletter writer, I was planning to write on Hegseth, I watched your video and I thought I read the same thing, the Times article and the political piece by Trump's former spokesman and had basically the same thoughts you had, but I thought I'd write a short thing this morning and just put it in as a, you know, just in the document that we do morning shots in, I just put in a headline and then I was going to get up early this morning, which I did to write it, which I did.

And the headline I put in was goodbye and good riddance, just because, you know, and I thought that I woke up this morning to the news that the Pope had died, and I thought, maybe not, don't have that headline in morning shots, could be misunderstood. So I had to change, at least I was alert enough to change that, and Joe has a wonderful piece in warning shots, which is these warning shots

on the Pope, very similar to the conversation you had with him, of course, but. Really nice. So a couple of points about XF, it's, you know, the degree of irresponsibility, the first participating in the Waltz signal chat was bad. Sharing some of the military details in that chat was bad, but it was with at least his peers, his colleagues in the government. So he maybe just forgot this wasn't on the right kind of phone, whatever.

This is done on his own personal cell phone. It's a group that was set up during his confirmation, so it doesn't have government officials. It may accidentally have some government officials, and some of the people went into government. But it was kind of the group working with him on his confirmation, presumably includes some PR and political types who were helping him out, lobbying the Hill and so forth, who probably didn't go into government, who had no clearances at all, leaving aside his wife and then the brother and his lawyer, both of whom were sort of nominate in the Pentagon now, but they have jobs that do not require them

to know the flight plans for the attack on Yemen. So totally irresponsible, beyond irresponsible, I mean, it would be a firing offense in 10 minutes in any other administration for the SEC to have done this. Incidentally, it would be a firing offense for anyone in the military who did this and for any civilian employee working under Pete Hegseth in the Defense Department. So that's A, he should be fired. B, the Republican senators might have known this was coming. They were warned by an awful lot of people, not just us, just by the evidence of his life that this kind of thing was going to be a big risk. And 50 out of 53 of them voted to confirm him, really a disgrace. of 53 of them voted to confirm him really

a disgrace you know any one of them could have stopped it right any one of the 50 it's worth just setting on us for a second because i feel like sometimes you know even at the bulwark whose mission is to name and shame the republicans sometimes we gloss over it because it's just the expectations are like below the earth they're so low for these guys, but like this is a thing. It was just utterly obvious to anyone, you know, like my aunt who does not pay attention, you know what I mean? Like, like the guy at the corner store, right? Like you don't have to pay attention to politics. Anybody like looks at this person, Pete Eggstead has had never run a large

organization, he was a weekend Fox and Friends anchor, co-anchor. His personal life was a total disaster. He had had problems with alcohol, whether or not he still does, debatable, but like, you know, I mean, this was a grown man at a work conference at 1 a.m. shouting at the hotel staff while drunk, while like cheating on his mistress with a third person, like the whole thing, you know, and then allegedly assaulting her based on that woman, that married woman's testimony. And this is just a person that is a disaster across every possible metric.

Like there's just no way that you could look at this and say, well, you know, his personal life is a problem, but like look at his resume or look at his and say, well, you know, his personal life is a problem, but like, look at his resume or his experience running an organization or, or, you know, he hasn't run a big organization, but he's shown a lot of great judgment and the other parts of his life, you know, like there's nothing like, and, and it was blatantly obvious he should not have this job running the world's largest and most important bureaucracy, really the U S military. And yet these guys support him. Tillis has additional private information about how reckless he is and still goes to vote for him, still decides that his reelection prospects, which are looking pretty shitty

right now anyway, are more important than just ensuring that the US military is run by somebody who's like minimally competent to do the job. And it is just really shameful that like the senators did not take the opportunity to say, no, we can't do this. Like deputy, give them some training wheels. Can we make them the spokesperson? But you can't confirm this person. And so here we are.

And they could have, it's scary to vote publicly I guess against someone Trump is behind. That's no excuse of course. Four of them could have gotten together and told Trump withdraw this or we're going to vote. The threat probably might have been enough. It was with Gates. Wicker, the ranking Republican on armed service, Senate Armed Services, had expressed doubts about Hague-Seth and subsequently just a week or two ago did send, cosigned a letter

asking for the IG investigation of the earlier signal chain, which actually may have triggered some of the events that led to HECSF, this last fiasco with the firings and the like. So he sort of like popped his head up a tiny bit over the rampart, but again, too little, too late and inexcusable. I was in some other text this morning, people were joking about how, you know, there's another case of gamerhood is now resume enhancement to say the least and lying basically some other appointee who's up and someone said, yeah, that person will only get, you know, 90% of the Republican votes or 95% instead of, you know, a hundred percent, you know, it's a, it is terrible.

So yeah, worth, worth calling them out. Yeah. Yeah. And it's worth mentioning that like this unraveled in three months, or three months to the day from inauguration that these stories came out. And it's like, I mean, how horrific of a manager you have to be to take a job and within a single quarter, somebody that you hired that says that they're a friend of yours is already going to like think things are so bad that they need to go to the media and say, guys, we got to move on from this guy.

I just think that's pretty notable. I could feel these three months have felt like many years, but it's only been three months. Now, totally. And also that you fired your chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, two people who work directly for you, not people who were came up through other means, so to speak, and Trump appointed. Yeah, former Lloyd Austin hangovers or whatever. Yeah, or Trump appointees, because they were buddies of his to be secretary of the army,

that kind of thing. People who work directly. And the chief of staff, the deputy secretary, the defense, who I believe was a Hex Seth Crote, who was imposed on Feinberg. These three all get fired. They get anonymously smeared on the way out, apparently smeared on the way out of the door that they were had problems with this leak investigation. They may have leak classified or sensitive material. They deny it. And apparently, and

the guy Ollott reports that they have none of those even had lied. It's extra test. Yeah. Let me just read this a little bit from him because I think, I think it's important. This is from the Ollott article. He said that defense department officials working for Hegsatz tried to smear these fired aides anonymously to reporters claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information. Yet none of this is true, says AllYacht, while the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe. Not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. The Hague Sets team has developed a habit of spreading flat out easily debunked falsehoods

anonymously about their colleague. Now, amazing. Now, one thing you noticed and you stressed last night, and I would say I actually noticed too, and this is probably both from our two backgrounds, you're so much more in campaigns and dealing with the media in that way and maybe a little more in government I guess it's a couple of campaigns like where did this story come from? You know, most people read I find this all the time that you that you and I have had this is like our professional Deformation we read a story in the paper and the first question is less what it did it say then why is that story there?

Especially when it's four sources report. Well, who are the sources that would have known about this text chain, right? It's a dozen people. Maybe they blabbed about it a lot, but you probably have to be pretty close to Hex F. Probably in DOD, maybe over in the White House, I suppose, possibly, to have leaked this. Four people talking to the New York Times about this. I would say the knives are out for him,

and this is the point you made. Probably some reinforcement from people still in the administration, not just the disgruntled aides. I think that's pretty striking, right? And the Trump pushback is very lame, I think. What was it? It was kind of a non-denial. This is the fake news press going at it.

It's not classified. That was their pushback. Not that he didn't do it. Yeah, the flight plans of the F-15s are not classified information or sensitive information that shouldn't be shared on a non-secure cell phone with your wife and other friends, buddies, nuts. Not military people. So, I mean, I do think that's, it doesn't prove that they're going to dump him. It proves that the knives are out for him.

And I suggest to me that he could well be dumped in the next day or two. Do you think? I mean, day or two, I don't know, like Trump't know. Trump is famously stubborn in these cases. And it's sort of like what is Hegseth saying. If Hegseth is on the side of Trump, he could definitely survive. We've been in plenty of these situations where it's like everybody around is like, Mr. Trump, this guy is crazy. But Trump doesn't care until the guy becomes a problem for him.

So I think it's based a lot more on that relationship. But regardless of whether he stays or not, just the fact that these people close supporters of Trump, close to Trump, close to Hegseth are the ones that are trying to push him out, I think is telling. The other thing that you just, from your experience in government, it's just worth maybe saying a word about is just, you do get into these little bunkers and bubbles. And just like speaking a little bit, we talked about last night about like the paranoia, right? Like the idea that you would like fire your close aides and then then you're blaming them with things.

I mean, it seems like a very unstable place for for Hagseth to be, you know, if you're if you're kind of engaging this in the media at this point. No, totally. I was struck by the paranoia too. And I think at one point, one can make it look he's done damage, in my opinion, to our national security in the few months he's been there. A lot of it would have been done anyway, because the policies weren't his idea. And someone else would have pursued the idiotic culture

war stuff and taken down Jackie Robinson's portrait from the Pentagon and gotten rid of books in the Naval Academy and and announced to the Europeans that were no longer interested in defending Europe all that stuff could have been done by some other Trump appointee as sect up, but now that this is all happened Leaving him there is genuinely bad for our national security in a very deep way I mean, what do you do if you're a serious person of the Pentagon now? I guess you try to work around him, but I mean it's that's not so he is literally in the chain of command I mean just let's not, he is literally in the chain of command. I mean,

just let's not forget, this is not like secretary of the interior and it's a little guy's kind of embarrassing and you just have to sort of hope the department cuts and runs itself. He's literally the next in the chain of command after the president's not even vice president, you know? So, you know, the staff can't really end run him on that. God knows whatever, you know, so I think the degree to which he really does need to be. And this is where I get to come back to the senators. Roger Wicker, the serious Tom Cotton, serious people who care about national security. It's intolerable, the situation that he's sect-deaf. And they need to tell the president that. And they need to say it privately if they want for a day or two, but then they need to say it

publicly. I agree. Just real quick, since you mentioned it, my buddy Ryan Holliday, who does the Daily Stoic, some people might be familiar with his work. He's a non-political guy. I've said Maga people on his podcast, I'm like, it's a podcast about the lessons that you can learn from the Roman Stoics, and he's written many books about that as well.

He wrote a book about lessons in fatherhood for the Stoics. We did an interview about him, I think it was last Father's Day. I thought if people want to go check that out. Anyway, he was supposed to speak in the Naval Academy. It wasn't the first time he spoke there several times. And they called him and were like, are you going to mention the book bands? And he said, yeah, you know, I mean, I own a bookstore. I write books. I, it's going to be about lessons in the stories, including, you know, things such as you should engage with challenging ideas. You should engage with ideas that you don't believe in or else you'll not be able to understand

the opponent. Like that's a part of war planning and battle planning. And so it wasn't a never Trump thing. It wasn't like having me speak there, you know, but there was going to be a reference to it. They canceled a speech, the Naval Academy, you know, and this is all again, like going back to this sort of ham handed like on DEI from the TV host. I forgot you'd interviewed, you'd talked to Holliday

and I don't know him at all personally, but he wrote a good piece in the New York Times about this a couple of days ago, which people should read. And the context in which he was going to bring this up, I believe, was he was gonna talk about Admiral James Stockdale, a hero of his, and actually of mine too, and I met him once or twice

and always been concerned to try to redeem his reputation from that unfortunate vice presidential debate in 1992 when he was running with Thoreau, kind of unfair. Anyway, he talked about how it helped him as a prisoner of war, heroic prisoner of war for five years in Hanoi to have read Marx and to have read communist works.

And he took a whole course at Stanford, I believe, where he read, it wasn't balanced even, they just read Marxist-Leninist works and he writes about this in his book and he's a genuine hero and he's a hero at the Naval Academy and even so, they remove Maya Anshulu because it might corrupt the young midshipmen, I suppose. The other interesting thing from the Olyot story is he has this titillating line towards the end, there are very likely more shoes to drop in short order with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week. So we'll see. Again, coming from inside the house. The warning. If your jeans are stiff, uncomfortable, or just past their prime, it's time to swap them

out for something fresh. Enter the perfect jeans stretchy enough to leap over puddles stylish enough for a backyard crawfish boil, and comfortable enough to go from office to happy hour. Spring means random weather and plans, so you're going to need jeans to keep up with over 5,000 options of waist and length sizes, washes and trendy fits, all super soft and stretchy yet durable. The perfect jean makes it super easy to find your perfect pair. That means you can look and feel perfect whether you're battling a 40 degree morning commute or hanging out with the guys,

having a beer, eating some oysters on an 80 degree muggy New Orleans afternoon. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at the perfect gene dot NYC or Google the perfect gene and use code bulwark 15 for 15% off you know a long time for listeners know I've been battling with my identity related to genes and I'm gonna take a Coachella the big genes are in the big genes are in it's tough for me as an elder millennial it's an elder millennial gay whose skinny jeans so central to their identity and I have to admit something embarrassing. I was starting to like it.

I was starting to like it. I like it. I'm getting it. I'm starting to get it. You know, the silhouette's got to be right. You still got to have the skinny top for it to work for me. The baggy on baggy isn't really my thing. But I don't know, slowly but surely I might be exploring. And the Perfect

Gene is a great opportunity to do that because as I mentioned, they've got a bunch of sizes, a bunch of different options. I'm trying it. I'm working on it. The first one was maybe a small leap towards a little less skinny gene. They're nice and comfy. I've been wearing them just to hang out, kick around. But I don't know, I might try to get a little bigger. We'll see how it goes. It's finally time to stop crushing your balls and uncomfortable jeans by going to theperfectgene.nyc. Our listeners get 15% off your first order

plus free shipping, free returns, and free exchanges when you use code BULWARK15 at checkout. That's 15% off for new customers at theperfectgene.nyc with promo code BULWARK15. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you, get rid of those khakis and get the perfect gene. While we're doing foreign policy, a bit on Ukraine, we talked to Ann

Applebaum about this somewhat on Friday, but I was seeing the video as it came in. So I've had a few days to kind of let it simmer. But Rubio is in Europe and essentially says that Trump's getting bored with this. Like the negotiation isn't working and rather than, you know, there were some reports initially that he was pissed. Remember that? It was like that I'm pissed at Putin. Hasn't been any evidence of that or like any actions that would yield the type of response

that a pissed person would have. And instead, you know, what the Larko is essentially saying and the Europeans were trying to kind of translate it was we might just be done. Like if you can't get to a deal here and in a weird way is sort of putting the onus on Zelensky, you know, on this. Like if you can't come to a deal, then the US is just going to be done. What done means, you know, whether that's Intel sharing, whether that's no more money, you know, like all of that's still a little bit vague, but, you know, they're

kind of laying the groundwork for just saying good night and good luck. I think maybe it's even a little more direct is there are some reports now, I think from last night and this morning that we put on the US put on the table on Thursday in Paris, wherever they were meeting with the Europeans, the deal that we thought would be acceptable, which is a terrible deal for Ukraine, needless to say. And that's sort of what Rubio is insisting they accept. So either way, you're absolutely right.

The threat is that we walk away and unless he just takes this deal, that's a very bad deal and leaves Putin in a very strong position and lets Putin say that he will have succeeded in his brutal invasion and also has the prospect of removing sanctions and stuff like that. So yeah, it's what we've all expected, I guess. Again, it's sort of like this isn't a surprise. This has been the direction of Trump and Vance and Hexeth and all of them have been going for since they took over basically and certainly since

early February, mid February the Munich speeches, but still terrible to see it. And this is where the Europeans can make a difference because they they I don't know if the Ukraine can make it just with Europe but I'm not sure they can't they certainly can't for a while and Europe I think is horrified by this and maybe they'll step up. Yeah, and there are mixed views on that and you know Michael Weiss when he was on a couple weeks ago It was very strong on the fact that he felt like Europe could do it if they if the was the will You know to do it just wrote noting because it happened over the weekend on this point The deal was on the table is a bad deal for Ukraine is also not really a deal Right in the way that like because Putin right Putin announced, you know, that he would have an Easter

ceasefire because, you know, he is, you know, such a religious man, so respectful of the traditions and the faith. And then he went and flouted it. According to the Ukrainians, there were 2800 incidents of firing on Ukrainian territory during the period where Putin said that there was a ceasefire. So it was basically one of these, we're calling for a ceasefire, you don't attack us, because we don't want to be attacked on Easter, but we're going to keep attacking you. The whole thing is for post-Russia, Zelensky gave a speech about this where he said that evil may have its hour, but God will have his day, I think, trying to demonstrate, which is on the side of the righteous here on Easter Sunday.

So anyway, it's a pretty bleak situation in Ukraine. I guess even more bleak though, we keep speaking about it than the situation in El Salvador where there was the tiniest green shoot, which we discussed last week with Kilmar, Braco Garcia being able to meet with Chris Van Hollen, Chris Van Hollen, finally, you know, being the Democratic leader to demonstrate that you can have, I don't know if you can get results, but make somewhat of a difference by actually trying and advocating on this issue. I, there have been some reports from El Salvador that Brega Garcia is the

first person people have seen leave Sokote. Previously anyone that had went in was there and had not been released again. So something to be said for that. Obviously there's the big propaganda back and forth of Bukele trying to make it seem like they were having margaritas and then Trump. There's some debate online. Ibargo Garcia has the tattoos with a marijuana leaf, a smile, and then a cross

and a skull. Some claim that that's an MS-13 tattoo. Who knows? And then Van Hollen kind of does the full Ginsburg this weekend going around on the shows. I'm in for JBL today and write about that and the triad for folks who want to go check out the newsletter. But I'm wondering what you made of Van Hollen's comments upon return. I'm struck by how many Democrats continue to be unhappy with Van Hollen, I guess. I mean, I just think he'd be trying to do the Lord's work. He's doing the right thing. Probably politically the right thing to do too, but that's kind of secondary in this case, I would say. I've been on, I don't know, how many, two or three Zooms, honestly, since he went there. Gee, we're really uncertain

whether this was the right thing to do. I mean, Gavin Newsom, I guess, is the person who said this most publicly on Wednesday, and then we wrote about it, and other, and he sort of, his people tried to walk it back a little bit, but he didn't really mean to suggest that it was a distraction. Yeah, we shouldn't worry about people getting snatched up from the streets of the US and sent to this gulag in El Salvador. And then suddenly over the weekend, they're trying to send more, right? There was this big court case that required the 1 a.m. Supreme Court intervention, which was required at 1 a.m. only because they had no confidence the administration wouldn't

do what it sort of said it would do, kind of, that it would hold up for a while before shipping this next group out, which they previously pledged, incidentally, not to ship people out until there was notice and a chance for people to contest the judgment that they were gang members. Meanwhile, incidentally, Bukele is also saying that he's happy to trade these people to Venezuela in return for some Venezuelan political prisoners. I don't know if he's just being buffoonish at this point, but again, it shows what he thinks he's got here.

He's got human capital, human prisoners. He can sort of trade, like traffic in, right, to get other people. He wants it's all beyond grotesque, and I'm glad Van Hollen did his best, I think, to protest about it and also maybe to influence others in the government, including the courts who do follow the news after all. That's one thing I'm struck by incidentally, just talking to some of the lawyers over the weekend, the degree to which judges, very different types of judges all around the country, now have discovered you can't believe what the Trump administration says, even in court. That is a little... I think the courts have had this, maybe it's a conceit, but a kind of thought that well, lawyers in court aren't going to be, you know, bullshitting the way politicians

do. I mean, that's kind of how it worked in the first Trump term. There was like this little rigmarole, right? Where they were basically honest in court. I don't want to overstate, you know, I'm sure that somebody who has a specific memory of a time where they lied in court, but like, directionally, they would say one thing in court that was closer to the truth, we'll put it that way. And then, you know, Trump would talk or Spicer would talk or whatever, and they would say something totally different, right? At least in that way, right, like the courts felt like they were dealing with, you know, a counterparty in the government that was, like, at least giving them the true facts, regardless of

how then the administration would act. Deep questions about that now, I mean, particularly when it comes to the immigration stuff. And I mean, this is what I wrote about, so I don't want to belabor the point in the newsletter, people can get my long views. I'm so just disgusted with the idea that there's even any debate to be had about what Van Hollen did and whether that's the right thing politically. For starters, like the election is just so far away that it's just so stupid to think it's just, it's the hubris to think that some political strategist or some politician in Washington can know on April 21st, 2025, what will matter in

November of 2026 is just like beyond comprehension. Like you people have no fucking idea. All right. Like you have no idea. And let's not pretend you did. If you knew on April 21st, 2023 that Donald Trump would be elected again, then, then call me and I'll, I'll listen to Dostradamus, but like, let's just have a little bit more humility about what will actually be a big story in 18 months.

But like beyond that, a breakout Garcia isn't out of jail. Andri is not out of that gulag, the makeup artist. There's this new story from The Guardian over this weekend about Arturo Suarez Trejo, who's this musician who's in North Carolina who seems like his situation is pretty similar to the makeup artist who's there in Sokot now who does not seem to have any gang ties. Like, these people are all still in prison. But we've got a proof of life of one of them. There is a stall now on sending more people there. The clock matters here, stopping the clock, preventing them from sending more and more people, which they obviously have an ambition to do, including citizens, that matters. That is a real policy difference and that stall is happening because of the actions

of the politicians and the lawyers and the judges. All of this matters in a substantive way. I don't know, there was a poll that came out about the non-voters over the weekend that I thought was interesting. When you ask democratic leaning non-voters why they didn't vote, a common refrain from a lot of them is like they didn't think they were very strong, that they were fighting for them, they were tough, you know? You know, I don't know, who knows, right? Like if this will be the kind of thing that people will think, but I don't think it would hurt for the Democrats to demonstrate

that there are some people in the party that have some actual backbone and maybe frankly, that would have some political benefit. And I think that there's an argument for that that is just as strong as the argument that like the median voter in 2026 is going to think that the Democrats are for MS-13 or whatever, because they don't think people should be disappeared to El Salvador. So. No, I totally agree. And also I just want one point about, if I could, about the judge, J Harvey Wilkinson, who wrote the very eloquent opinion on Thursday, I guess it was, it's in Friday's warning shots, and I was, people

can read it anywhere, about this program, the seizing of people and sending them to El Salvador and upholding the pause that the lower court had ordered on this. I know J Harvey Wilkinson a little bit. He wrote for the Weekly Standard a few times, very old fashioned conservative, Judge Reagan appointee. One of the things of being an old-fashioned conservative though is you tend to actually defer to the government more than a lot of civil libertarians sometimes want. And in fact, Wilkinson wrote an opinion in 2003, I think, upholding some government actions with regard to Guantanamo and Al-Qaeda prisoners, which was overturned

by the Supreme Court actually because they thought he went too far and deferred to the government. So this is not a guy who's even a libertarian conservative, particularly, he's really that kind of old fashioned judicial restraints. A, I think we sort of ex-Republicans could take some pride that one of the most eloquent statements condemning this policy of Trump's and the actions of the Trump administration is done by an old fashioned

conservative, a Reagan appointee. But secondly, it is striking, and this was much too far for him. And so as I said, it is striking, and this was much too far for him. So as I said, this is not a guy who was looking to be famous by being a libertarian on this, you know, his instinct was if anything, it was rather the other way. Like a resistance judge or like one of these things. No, he's just appalled, just appalled. And this is not consistent with the most fundamental characteristics of the rule of law.

No, the Wilkinson statement was very, very good. I think that the fact that there was a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling also on this, the blocking of additional use of the Alien Enemies Act, again, is somewhat encouraging that it's just Alito and Thomas. And so, you know, like he had Stephen Miller out there saying like, that totally undermined their spin, right? That like the string court was actually on their side, just nonsense spin. And it's like, you know, it becomes pretty tough to make, I mean, you can make the case and it will work for the Newsmax viewers that are not reachable. But it becomes pretty tough, like to make the case broadly that Chris Van

Holland or the Democrats that are arguing for the rights of these people are on the side of MS-13 gang members when Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch are on their side too. In an emergency opinion at 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning, then they joined that. They weren't, who knows what Friday leave, which ones wanted to do it at 1 a.m. as opposed to the next day or something. But that, I agree, the 7-2 on emergency opinion is, it's a real sign that they think we have an executive branch that can't be trusted to follow the law or to follow the

decisions of other courts because in this case, they thought it was very clear that the previous decisions should have bound the executive not to send these further people the next day. I'm going to end with some Hamilton for the cringe resist libs that are listening. So do you have any other news items before we get to the attack on King George? I saw this tweet from historian, I hate to not credit her, I'm blanking her name, I'll put it, we'll put the link to it in the show notes. And it was like a list of the grievances against King George and the Declaration of Independence. And you know, you read or hear various times, like the various

parts of the preamble, like to the constitution or the main thrust of the declaration, but like, you don't reread like the list of grievances all that often. It had been a while since I had read them. And so, I want to read a couple of them for people because it is pretty jarring just how apt it is to our current moment among them. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. Another grievance for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. He has excited domestic insurrections among us. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress.

In the most humble terms, our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. The section in particular relating to El Salvador of the transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, I mean, it's hard to get more on the nose than that. And I gather from my five minutes of research on this, and I vaguely remember this from decades ago when I knew a little more about this, that was actually a pretty big deal. I mean, that it was considered a real affront, I mean, that they were sending these colonists to England to be tried instead of being tried before a jury of their peers here in the colonies. And the king was doing this

unilaterally. So it is an apt comparison, as are the others. It's another conversation we should have some time. I think we discussed this briefly the other day offline that this past weekend was the 150th anniversary, obviously, of Plexigens and the Concord, the midnight ride of Paul Revere and all that. We're going to spend now the next year plus celebrating the revolution and then actually beyond that the actual war that follows from the Declaration of Independence, but the next year plus celebrating up to July 4th, 1926, 1926, 2126, which will be the 215th anniversary. Very important to, I think, Trump will try to hijack this and make this all about his version of America. Very important that we all in our different ways, and I think it should be in

a decentralized way and millions of different people could do millions of different things. Historians can have one kind of, you know, series of panel discussions and people like us could do other things at the bulwark, but insist that we are the ones defending the American Revolution. We are defending what America is about. We are the, if I can put it this way, the patriotic side in this fight. And it's not just a rhetorical trope to talk about Trump as a kind of mad king. It's literally the case that he's trying to abridge some of the most fundamental things that we fought for in the revolution.

Well put. We'll leave it there. Up next, a little bit from Joe Perticone from Rome. Folks want to hear more about the passing of Pope Francis, Bill Kristol. I'll see you back here again next Monday. Tim Miller Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from The Bullwork here. Pope Francis died this morning on Easter Monday, born Jorge Bergoglio. He's the first Jesuit pope. Shout out to the Jesuits, first Latin American Pope. And we are lucky to have our congressional correspondent, Joe Perticone, in Rome for

a wedding, weddings and funerals. You know, there's always a connection. How are you doing, Joe? I'm very sad, but very happy because it's my wedding, but then the sadness of learning about the death of Pope Francis, someone who I admire greatly, was a big shock. And I found out when I was five minutes walking distance from the Vatican. And so I was like, let's walk over.

We knew beforehand, because we're sickos who check our phones all the time. But most of the people there didn't appear to know. It was like not a lot of crowds because it was early in the time. But most of the people there didn't appear to know. It was like not a lot of crowds because it was early in the morning. And then I started watching people and nuns, priests, you know, tourists, you know, Jews, Muslims, there's tons of people there just as tourists. And you start seeing people look at their phones and then you see people gasp. And then you start seeing people like tearing up a bit and then suddenly I turn around and what was five people behind me was hundreds, thousands, a sea of people just all walking over to pay

their respects, to wait to see what happens. Kind of a shocking moment, but it was very powerful. Yeah, talk a little bit more about the mood. I mean, reverentially, you sent a picture to our Slack of a couple of folks doing the rosary, a very familiar picture to a Catholic schoolboy like me. But Catholics also, you know, funerals are a mixed emotion with Catholics, right? I mean, you're going home to God, it's less dour maybe than in some funerals have been to and some other faiths. What was the mood like in the square? Matthew 18

Because we were there like right when it happened, there was just a lot of shock because he had been sick for a long time, but then he had really looked like he turned the corner and this past week was Holy Week. So, he was doing public events, he did the Stations of the Cross, we snubbed JD Vance and then met with him very briefly last night. He drove in the Pope Mobile through St. Peter's Square just yesterday, so he was doing a lot more events. So people thought he had turned the corner. So it was not surprising, but I think the abruptness and especially the morning after Easter. And so here in Italy, Monday after Easter is Pasqueta, which is the, it's another national

holiday. So there's not a lot going along. A lot of stores are closed. So it was just like very, very sudden. People expected, you know, if he was going to die, it was going to be in the same kind of dramatic fashion that the several months prior to him getting better were, then it would be more expected. Pete Well, since you mentioned it, we have to at least do the brief on the rank politics

of our Vice President JD Vance having briefly met with him yesterday. JD tweeted this morning about how he got to meet the Pope yesterday, the day before his death. I don't know if there's anything more to say about that. Do you have any other, anything else on the JD of the situation? Matthew 11 Here's a quote. So Vance was, I guess, wanted to meet with the Pope like any Catholic would and JD Vance converted to Catholicism just a handful of years ago. And then the Vatican just said, no, you're going to meet with the secretary of state of the Vatican. That's it. And Pope Francis then did his Good Friday Stations of the Cross in which he gave a

long series of remarks, and one of them stuck out to me, which you can read in morning shots, was a very obvious critique of the West and of the United States. Right now, he said, today's builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for a very obvious critique of the West and of the United States right now. He said, today's builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of hell. And that really was another example of how Pope Francis was very critical of right-wing governments, of overly aggressive, dis-compassionate capitalist governments.

And for him to be talking that way to the very end and then to give Vance a very brief meeting. This was just like an exchange of pleasantries. He gave a couple Easter eggs for Vance's kids. He gave JD a pie or something and was just like, great. And the photos the Vatican released, he's sitting there like, and Vance is giddy as anyone and any Catholic would be meeting the Pope. But Vance's politics differ greatly and Pope Francis is a huge, huge advocate for migrants,

which this administration is an active danger to all migrants. And so the politics are there and they're going to be throughout the, especially throughout the selection process for the new pope, because Pope Francis, people think, oh, there are so many conservatives in the American Catholic church that they don't want another, you know, progressive like Pope Francis. I don't think that's true. He's really remade the College of Cardinals in a way that very much mimics his idea that you place priority on the poor and on migrants. And so

you might see a continuation of his style of leadership. If you look at the Preferiti, which is, you know, the guys who they expect to be in the running, you know, the Final Four to be the next popes, a lot of them are very similar to Pope Francis ideologically. And so if their personality is similar to his, which was very unafraid of very powerful people outside the church, you know, you can expect that to continue and you can expect the divide between, you know, these very new Catholics like Vance who practice things that aren't Catholic at all, really, don't really align with Jesus'

teachings. And so, the politics are still going to be there. And you're going to hear from a lot of them as this process goes forward. Pete Yeah, I'll put a link in the notes here. There's a very long, the pillar is just a very good Catholic media outlet that had a very long obit that I read this morning of Francis. And he really does position it as like, Francis was not like the radical left pope, like the, you know, that the mega bishops in America, like tried to make them

out to be like the very politicized American church, right? And we see this in a lot of different areas. Denver, where my family, my brother works at the Jesuit school, the bishop there, archbishop is, you know, extremely far-right doctrinaire, pro-Trump bishop. It's kind of like, what is that? It's a rather new thing, this influx in the Catholic Church. But like that is not really how Francis is seen. Obviously, he's not seen as a far right, and he didn't identify as that. And obviously, he focused more on the poor. Like his changes around giving a blessing to same-sex couples or whatever, were a lot more mild than what a lot of folks wanted to paint him out to be. And it was more about kind of his focus on the poor and his image and he became, he came into, you know, recognition as Archbishop in Argentina,

going to the slums, right? Like washing the feet of AIDS patients and, you know, doing the types of lowering himself that is so counter to kind of this whatever, faux masculine, faux tough guy, you know, sort of element that we're seeing on the right. There isn't one other political kind of element here. Tom Homan, the immigration czar for Trump, went after Pope Francis not just a few months ago saying, I've got harsh words for the Pope. The Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church. And so, you know, you are going to see, I think, a very kind of politicized treatment of this, you know, from this White House and from Magna World. I don't know if you have anything else on that.

Yeah. And you could have seen it on Thursday. Every Holy Thursday, Pope Francis visits a prison outside of Rome where he washes the feet of the inmates, which is a very symbolic gesture. Because back in olden times, if you didn't take care of your feet, you were as good as dead. And so now it's more of a symbolic thing of washing the feet. And he goes into these prisons every year. And this this year he said, every time I come here, I ask, you know, why them and not me? And that same day, you have Republican members of Congress, even one who claims to be a practicing Catholic like Riley Moore from West Virginia, doing the thumbs up pose at the world famous

torture prison in El Salvador. And so there is that huge divide. I think when we look at the way that Pope Francis approached things, a lot of people liked to make him in their image. And so they would say things like, oh, he's this radical liberal or he's this huge progressive. That's sort of misreading the situation. When he would say, oh, I want to give blessings to LGBT people, or I, you know, want women to be treated fairly. He wasn't saying, Well, let's have some, you know, purple haired woke priest now, you know, he wasn't doing that. He didn't change. There's no women in the priesthood now. You know, like, there's like

a lot of things that didn't change. And most Catholics aren't demanding that. Right. And he's just made it a more inclusive for, you know, the worshiper, which is the most important thing. That's what affects the most people. And that's what stuck out to me. And the way that he's stared for the poor, like, he made this quote. So, right around inauguration time, I read this quote from Pope Francis where he said, when you give money to the poor, don't just drop a coin in their cup and keep walking, stop and make eye contact with them. That's the more important thing you can do than anything. And when I was walking to the January 6th inaugural ball, which I wrote a piece about, there was a homeless

man outside. Everyone was ignoring him. And I stopped and I gave him, I think it was 10 bucks, and I looked him in the eye. And I was like, he's 100% right. That is much more meaningful. And then I went into the January 6th inaugural ball. That was another story. But what are you making eye contact in there? That eye contact was a lot more uncomfortable. You know, having like even the smallest amount or changing, calibrating the way you view the most vulnerable people, that was a huge theme of his message. And that was something that I think a lot of people, especially over in St. Peter's Square, where I just was like, that that was the vibe. It said this was

a very decent man in a very indecent period in history. Well, I mean, he named his life. The Francis comes after St. Francis of Assisi, who's kind of a hot saint when we were growing up. But besides that, known for, you know, care of animals mostly, but really for society's outcasts, right? And that's like how he tried to frame himself. Did you get to hear the bells? Were the bells tolling at the St. Peter's Basilica? Yeah, they do their like standard bells at 11 a.m., but they were kind of going off and on throughout the morning. I'm going to try and head back there later this evening when

the camera lingo, which is essentially the Suzy Wiles of the Vatican will lay him in the coffin and an ouch well, you know a much nicer version of Suzy Wiles basically the chief of staff and I'm gonna try and go there that I'm expecting a much bigger crowd even then I saw This morning because more people will get word more more people are going to come in from out of town. And right now too, every 25 years in the Catholic Church, it's called the Jubilee, and it's a period where everyone floods to Italy. And so it's more packed in general with especially religious people. All the people on my flight, half, maybe two-thirds of them were just, you know, church groups making the 25-year pilgrimage to Italy. You know, there were huge groups and you could tell. And so it's going to be really packed and this is going to make it even more packed.

I did not realize it was the Jubilee. I remember the 2000 Jubilee as a Catholic schoolboy, vividly. Anyway, Joe Pritigan, give us more. If you go there schoolboy, vividly. Anyway, Joe Perticone will give us more. If you go there later tonight, do it, give us a little video of the scene and we can post it on the page here and appreciate it. Congrats on the wedding and thanks for doing a little work on your wedding week. Joe Perticone Yep. Pete Slauson Alright, thanks to Joe Perticone for hopping in on his wedding week live from

Rome, from Vatican City even, on the death of Pope Francis. Thanks to Bill Crystal, as always. Rest easy, Papa Francisco, and we'll see everybody else back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Peace. and accidents That the nature of life is chaos and confusion That man's rules of law and order may not stand, And I should be at peace, not afraid to reach for heaven I may think that I know

The true hearts and needs. My pride may bring me low, unable to see. I know closer than yesterday But tomorrow I may stand afraid to reach for heaven. The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.