The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1030: Bill Kristol: Creepy and Wrong

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

The Trump administration keeps showing it's sooo tough on immigration that it deported three U.S. citizen children, arrested the wife of a member of the Coast Guard because her visa expired, and perp-walked an allegedly immigrant-concealing Wisconsin judge in handcuffs—instead of showing her the kind of deference Trump received over the course of his four indictments. Plus, the wildly wealthy jackasses behind Trump, the missing cargo ships at the ports, and Scott Pelley at 60 Minutes shows how it's done. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Tim on Trump's bad polling numbers for his first 100 days Adrian on a focus group of Latino men in Arizona who are disappoined in Trump Bill's 'Bulwark on Sunday' interview with Ryan Goodman Semafor's piece, "The Group Chats that Changed America"

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Hope everyone's doing well. It's great seeing some of y'all out at Jazz Fest. I was doing my best to chat you up, also monitoring two under 10 girls. They were having a good time, many snowballs. We've very much enjoyed time. It's a great set. And if some other folks want to see us live, we got two events coming up. We're going to Chicago, May 28th, and Nashville, May 29th. It's been a minute since I've been in either city, so I'm excited. JVL, the Chicago

event's our biggest venue ever, and JVL did not think that we could sell it out. He was very concerned as JVL's want. And I told him, no worries. Our people will be there. And guess what? You might need to sell your JVL was always right shirt because I was right about this one and you better get your tickets soon because they're both going to sell out, you go to thebullwork.com slash events, thebullwork.com slash

events, let's see in Chicago or Nashville. Lastly, while I'm plugging stuff, FY pod, which is the Gen Z show I'm doing with Cam Caskey, it's kind of hitting its stride, you know, you had a bumpy start when you're talking to 23 year olds, you know, doing a generational divide, but I think the last few upsets have been great. We have a new YouTube page. We'll put the link in the show notes, just search for FY pod on YouTube. Manny Fidel this week was awesome.

We made him and Kim apologize to Pete Buttigieg for not recognizing his game in the past and we get into a lot of other fun stuff. So I hope you guys enjoy that. All right. Today's show, we've got terrible Trump polls, election in Canada, a bunch of other stuff and it's Monday. So I'm here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol. What's up, Bill?

Bill Kristol Nothing much. Well, a lot, I guess, if you think. What's the right answer to that? What's up is a better question than how you're doing, which is my standard. How you doing? Yeah, what's up? Which is a very bad question for this moment. These people, we've discussed this before, people say I'm doing fine and then they feel bad that, well, the country's in such bad shape, I'm not really doing fine, but then they don't want to get into a whole disquisition in answer to how you're doing. What's up is a good question.

What's up for you is that you're at the Luigi Mangione Hilton in New York right now. That's what's up for you. I am at the New York Hilton, which I've stayed at occasionally. I'm giving a talk here later, so they're putting me up here. I used to go to board meetings one block from here, so I'm very, very familiar with the entrance to this Hilton. It's slightly weird getting out of a cab last night and walking just around the corner to exact spot where the CEO was gunned down. Just keep your head on a swivel.

All right? You're coming in and out. Thanks for that, Max. That's good. I guess we have tons of Trump stuff talked about in American news, but just very briefly, voters are going to the polls right now as we speak in Canada. Question about whether to give interim prime minister Mark Carney a full four-year term or give the conservative party and Pierre Poliev a turn at the wheel.

It looked like it was going to be all Pierre until the trade war. And man, the polls don't look good for the conservatives right now. We'll see how things go. Do you have a brief thought on what's happening up north? No, it would be something kind of wonderful about Trump electing a liberal up north in Canada having picked this pointless fight with them and with Trudeau in particular. He did, I guess, I don't know if Trudeau was going to run anyway. He made a forced Trudeau out of the way.

Not forced, but maybe helped induce Trudeau not to run for reelection, but a new face on the liberal line. I guess he's the favorite. What are you following it more closely than I am? Yeah. I mean, it's been a while that just, if you just look at kind of the prediction markets, like it went from, you know, like the charts just like the lines just totally intersect as one is going up and the other is going down.

Carney's done quite well. And I think it goes a little bit to our, you know, this, the 2028. I, that's why I'm so loath to do like hot stove guessing about Democrats 2028. People are capable of rising to moments or falling. You might not have thought that, you know, Mark Carney is like basically a technocratic globalist, you know, boring policy operative, you know, gets kind of thrust into this and did quite well, you know, kind of rallying the animal spirits of the Canadians, the moose, the moose spirits of the Canadians and, you know, kind of rose to the moment. Not sure if you would have maybe thought

that that would have happened and has been pretty tough on Trump. There were some reports about, you know, threats, you know, related to the bond market related to bond markets and I've been really kind of given as good as he's gotten from Trump at least so far. I think that's kind of the main takeaway. We'll see. I do not claim to be the Steve Kornacki of Canada, so it's possible they'll surprise me tonight. As you say, though, such a good reminder that the idiocy of taking a snapshot of the present and projecting it into the future, three months, let alone three, what would be in our case, three and three quarter years to an election.

I mean, politics is a motion picture if you want to think of it this way, not a snapshot. And it's a motion picture with a lot of surprises and random events happening and contingencies like a motion picture, which presumably has a director trying to tie it all together, you know, politics can go in any which direction. So I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's a good reminder that plus the immigration issue here, I think in the way that's backfired on Trump are two very useful reminders of not looking at a poll and saying, Oh my God, this is what's going to happen. And as we said, in a month, in a month, a year, you know, amen to that. All right, well we said, in a month, let alone a year. Yeah. Amen to that. All right.

Well, speaking of the polls locally, everybody, I guess, decided to do a poll pegged to the 100 day mark, which we're coming up on here this week. And so CNN gave Trump a 41% job approval rating down seven points from two months ago. ABC has about 39% down six points from February. New York Times, Sienna had about 42% approval, 54% disapproval with 45% strongly disapproving. So a greater strongly disapproved number than total approval. I did a little video on this over the weekend. There's some element of this where I'm like, do I have to care about these polls?

Right now, having just been through what we went through in 2024, and it's kind of like, who cares? That's kind of the one way to look at it. And I understand why people might want to be like, okay, let's focus on the actual policies over the polls. On the other hand, I do think there's an intersection here and he's not there yet. You know, if the numbers start to get low enough, that is going to change the behavior of people on the Hill, of the businesses that are sucking up to them, colleges, law firms.

It does matter in that sense. I don't know. You wrote about it for Morning Shots this morning. What do you make of the terrible Trump polls? Yeah, similar to you in that I don't like obsessing on polls, especially when you're pulling approval, which is interesting in a vague way, but it's not like pulling an election where it might tell you what's going to happen in six weeks or something like that.

But it does matter because it does capture public sentiment. Public sentiment and democracy matters. Maybe it matters too much these days in the sense that people forget they're supposed to lead occasionally and not simply mirror public sentiment, but it is what it is and public sentiment is maybe even more powerful than it once was, though I guess it's always been pretty powerful. And look, I mean, here's the way to, I think, see that it matters is what would things feel like in politics today at the end of

the first hundred days if Trump were at 55% approval or 50% approval, which is not out of the question. Most presidents have been around there, right? And honestly, he probably would be there if he just had done nothing, right? Like if he'd just done, you know, or just done like a few little things, you know what I mean? Conventional sort of, yeah. No, because people kind of, I mean, he got 50% of the vote,

what we're to think about it would be this, and a few percent of the others who voted against him sort of would still like to see the country do well and therefore maybe to approve of what he's done, be pleasantly surprised. No one seems to have been pleasantly surprised. Some percentage of voters, not as small, if you look at those three polls, one of the approvals are 39, 41, 42, so let's just call it 42 to be... I mean, that means what? 7%, 8% have been pleasantly,

unpleasantly surprised by his job performance, assuming if you voted for him, you kind of thought you might approve of him. So that's a pretty big number, 8% out of that 50, deserting him for now. It doesn't mean they would vote for a Democrat. Doesn't mean they're, though the one poll had a congressional Democrats up three and four of that's worth in the congressional race. So I do think it matters. And it matters because it affects everyone.

It affects business leaders, university presidents, judges. They're not supposed to be affected, but of course they are a little bit affected. And members of Congress, the other elected officials we have in America, who have not been exactly rising to the occasion. And I think the chances of them rising to the occasion are not overwhelmingly good, but they're a lot better than they would be if you were at 50 or 55%.

I mean, I think that there's just no doubt about all of that. Nobody here is looking for courage from the folks on the Hill at this point. Like, that's a silly thing to wish for at this point. But yeah, eventually, the practical calculus might become different. And I think that's the question. I think a lot of this is tied to the economic stuff, and we're going to go deep on the economy in tomorrow's pod. But at the top level, you're just seeing some things from over the weekend that I think

are worth mentioning, how they intersect with all this. There's this new Seattle Times story about how there are no ships in the port. April isn't even over yet. And kind of in a strange way that the March numbers, I guess, of ships were up. And the theory on that is people are thinking that the tariffs on certain people are like trying to get the material into the country as quickly as possible. So we'll see. But a former ship worker gave this great quote

at Seattle Times, give me a break. There's no container ships. What more do you need? And took a picture of it. I saw Larry Summers was on with, you know, the Trump, on the Trump Tech Bro podcast, fighting with those guys. And he basically, he basically said,

look, we're a couple of weeks away, like mid to late May, from consumers being able to see real changes, either with regards to some empty shelves or prices going up. Already you're seeing prices going up if you're a consumer that uses Tmoo or Shine. It wasn't really me ever, but I've seen some screenshots on the internet of the prices of those high quality goods coming straight from China to you are going up. So that's like the fundamental element of this, I think. Right, Bill?

Right. I mean, reality, I mean, another way of saying it is the polls are interesting, but reality is even more important than the polls. And people are driven somewhat by reality, at least even these days. And if we go into have a combination from inflation and recession, which looks quite possible. Yeah, that matters a lot I think every reality blurs over into perception obviously so on immigration I mean the kind of incredible overreach of his immigration policies is a reality that people are seeing and don't like but also

They don't like it. The economic side is the most kind of pure reality driven It is you know, people really see the prices they They see the, their cousin gets laid off or something. Some of these other policies, it's a blur between, you know, what they're doing, which has real effects and incidentally immigration has real effects on the economy too. The collapse, the cutting off of immigration and deterring of immigration and tourism, probably underrated as another downside on the economy. But then also, sort of also, people have the sense of what kind of country are we living in,

you know, if this kind of stuff is happening. Well, you know, and we've been talking about the travel, those numbers are already down, that's gonna impact. So this is where this stuff does intersect, all the stuff intersects, right, like that. It's gonna be a reality for people that live, particularly in communities that are powered by tourism, right, and hospitality, like mine.

You know, Adrian Kersky, our colleague, got a focus group of Latino Trump voters where a lot of them were kind of expressing like unhappiness. He said he was just going to get rid of the bad guys, know that there's a point of this that just makes you want to give a deep sigh and be like, you know, did anyone listen? No, I guess it's intersecting there. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos. Aura frames was named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter and it's easy to see why. There's unlimited storage so you can add as many photos, videos and funny memes as you can find.

And it's so simple to set up. Just plug it in and share away. This is a gift opportunity I've taken advantage of. And it's especially a good one for that grandmother in your life too. If she is away from the grandkids, in my experience, the more photos, the more candids, the more material, the more candidates, the more material, the better for that grandmother.

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bigger picture about Trump versus the courts, but I like the one new kind of immigration story is getting a lot of attention over the weekend that intersects with our life down here in Louisiana. As there've been two cases of U S citizen children who were deported to Honduras here, one was born in Baton Rouge, she was a two year old. The other one was a pair of siblings, four and seven year old. They were born outside of New Orleans, the Honduran mothers. In the former case, the girl's father was trying to keep the child in the country and filing with the courts. And the courts just said, they essentially like, well, now the mother said

she wanted to keep her. And like, but you don't know, there was no hearing. They just, you know, rushed them out of the country. The lawyer in the case of the four and seven year old was again, trying to keep them in the country. One of them, I think has an illness and, you know, they're concerned about medical treatment here versus in Honduras. So again, you know, that's like the deport rapists is popular. Everyone's for that. Deporting people, even honestly, more popular than I would like. Deporting people that came in illegally but haven't committed any crimes. Deporting people that are born here, children.

Deporting people that came legally through a refugee status. Or not deporting people, sending them to a fucking torture prison instead of just deporting them. These things are not that popular. And you're seeing it intersect with the poll numbers. But I know you and Ryan talked about the situation with the Honduran girls. Any other thoughts on that? Well, I would also just add to your point,

the way in which it is done matters some. So they seem to have deported a woman who's married to someone who's in the Coast Guard. She does seem to be undocumented. She came and overstayed, I think, and hasn't yet corrected that, though she might have. And she might have corrected it. And I think if you're married you're an American

Maybe it's pretty easy to get you know some kind of temporary status on that Too sure about that and they could simply tell her hey you need to do this or you were gonna ask you to leave But they don't do that they go and seize her from a naval base kind of amazingly for the house She and her husband and I think child were about to rent. I mean so the word she wasn't like it hiding She wasn't you't evading anything. She's in a US government property. That's how they found her because they read her name through some records.

And instead of kind of going to her and letting her fix her status or saying, look, I'm sorry, we're getting tough these days, even if you're married to someone serving in the Coast Guard, a little crazy, honestly, but even if you're married to someone serving in the Coast Guard, you have to leave within a week. She's not going to flee, right?

She's married to a guy who's in the Coast Guard. But no, there's none of that. It's the same with the judge in Milwaukee, which is a ridiculous case. Ryan discussed it at some length on the show we did yesterday. Ryan Goodman, it was really excellent. But again, you can certainly tell her, look, we think we've got an indictment on you. You need to come and show up and we'll process you. Just like they processed Trump when he showed up, right? There's a photo photo and all this They sees her at 8 a.m Outside her courthouse and and cash Patel and Pam Bondi tweet about it and go out She could Pam Bondi goes on Fox about it and it's all demonstrative and I you know some of that maybe

maybe some of the mega bass likes that and Maybe it deters. I don't know it has a deterrent effect on other people or something shows how tough they are I think most people look at that and think they've shut down the border. We need to maybe do some things about the people who are the undocumented people who are here in the country, especially if they're not being peaceful and law abiding. But maybe many people would say I wouldn't, but we have to do something, you know, get rid of some of them even if they have been peaceful and law abiding. But do it in a civilized way and this and that's where the snatching of the students on the street and so forth, wearing the masks,

the ICE agents in the masks and so forth, it's just creepy, really. And it's bad. I mean, it's wrong. Also, I want to make clear, it's not just a matter of optics, but it is also not what people want their government to be doing unless they need to do it because they're seizing some dangerous criminal or something. It feels un-American, to your point. It's just like, why?

Like what? We're going to seize a woman on a military base? It's like, you're not going to just send her a letter, right? Like it's all these like, oh, Tim and Bill, the globalists are defending the open borders of legals. And I'm like, no, I just, like, can we treat people with respect in a free country? This woman, did she hurt harm anybody? Did she, has she hurt anybody?

She's married to somebody that's serving the country. Can we just, if you're really adamant that we have to get this person out of the country, can we just do it in a way that allows them to do so? Right. And it's just like, you know, be like, well, Donald Trump got arrested and stuff. It was like, we did, you know, judges showed a lot of discretion for Donald Trump over the course of his four different indictments. He wasn't held in a prison.

We didn't send him to El Salvador, you know, maybe in retrospect. So, you know, that's the whole, that's the thing that about this, that angers people. The other thing is it has this whiff of, and obviously it's very much serious in this, but part of the reason it might rub people the wrong way, why it's worth documenting is it has this whiff of like, have you ever lived in a community where like at the end of the month, everyone's getting speeding tickets? Because the cops have a, you know, the cops have a quota they need to get through, you

know, or a parking ticket. Like it has this whiff of that, right? Where these like mid and low level ICE people, like feel like, okay, well, I'm getting in trouble from fucking creepy Stephen Miller, because we haven't, you know, nabbed enough people. And it's like, okay, the only person that we've identified is this lady on the, on the military base, because, you know, we know where she, right? Like it does have this element. And I think that is also something that like people just don't really like,

don't really like, you know, that's just not, you know, the kind of relationship that Americans want to have with their government. It's maybe more comfortable in other places. I don't know. Did Ryan have any other thoughts? This is referencing, we do a build as a bullwork on Sunday on Substack and Ryan's over at Just Security and you did kind of get a more broad update on like the Trump versus the courts

fights. Anything else of note from that combo? I mean Ryan is so great because he gives you the really great kind of overview and then he gives you all kinds of fascinating details about various cases the Wisconsin case the immigration cases that's what we focus on. I thought the most interesting part perhaps in this discussion was the latter part where I asked him how much does all this have a cumulative effect on the judges and this was so much dissembling and deception, really, and evasion on the part of government lawyers at this point,

that he does think that's going to have an effect. And he thinks it's legitimate that it have an effect. He explained there's a doctrine. In normal times, you will rely on government witnesses. If there's an FBI affidavit, you kind of assume for purposes for now, the trial, you don't convict the person, but for charging and for holding the person,

perhaps you assume you don't require eight witnesses to the FBI affidavit itself, right? You know, it's kind of an infinite regress at that point. You have to have some reliance or assurance that people will tell you the truth, especially officers of the court. He thinks that they don't have it. It's very clear from the judges that they do think they've been deceived in multiple different jurisdictions on multiple different cases. And he does think that that generally will predispose courts all the way up to the Supreme Court.

He thinks we're seeing some of this already. Not to give the government the benefit of the doubt. I don't mean that again in some sort of like, oh, that's judges being cute or something. Judges do have to make actual decisions based on kind of what they think is more likely to be the case, often in terms of these intermediate stages of temporary restraining orders and so forth. actual decisions based on kind of what they think is more likely to be the case often in terms of these intermediate stages of temporary restraining orders and so forth. And he thinks they're not going to give this administration, and they shouldn't give this administration the benefit of the doubt because of how they've behaved. And again, this is a good example of what you said right at the beginning.

If they had been a normal, so to speak, you know, normal, just-dispute-armen-pursuing kind of right-wing policies, but doing so in an appropriate and you know Respectful of the court way that's respectful of the court. They'd be in one place But they've really just couldn't resist or didn't want to resist Pushing the envelope and showing real disdain for the courts. Of course in this case They really don't think the court shouldn't be involved They just think they should have the right to run the entire immigration policy involved. They just think they should have the right to run the entire immigration policy, enforce the Alien Enemies Act without anyone having any other say and without any due process.

They pretty much said that in court. That's got to rub judges the wrong way. And I think it probably rubs a lot of Americans the wrong way. Yeah, this is also true and we should do another legal deep dive soon because unlike all the Doge cases, you know, there's something in law fair this morning about just all the ways that the government has been lying essentially in their filings about what Doge is and what its role was in order to protect it from the traditional oversight that federal employees have that would harm its ability to act in some of the broad ways they have. And they've lost a bunch of these cases. It's hard to kind of keep track of all of them.

Like the Voice of America, shutting down the Voice of America, that's on stay now. So I don't know what we're rooting for there. Don't we want them to shut down the Voice of America so Carey Lake can be out of a job and then we can create a new one later. I don't know. Anyway, but like all the great people that work at Voice of America, we don't want to lose their jobs. And we talked about this at the time when they were doing all these firings. Like they're going to lose all like so many of these cases, right? And it's going to end up costing more. But I do wonder, I don't know if there was any other kind of bigger picture thoughts

that Ryan had on that side of things. Mostly what we've seen so far are temporary restraining orders or permanent injunctions, which is one step more serious. Obviously it's permanent instead of temporary. We haven't seen much decided on the merits yet at all. And he thinks that's a real question mark. I mean, the administration, the government will make arguments for why they have this discretion to do this.

Maybe they didn't do it quite in the right way. Thus there was a stay. But some of these things like the Alien Enemies Act will actually get to the Supreme Court on the merits, presumably. Can you invoke an act that was passed in 1798, clearly intended for war or for invasion, used only in American history in times of war or invasion? Could you say that we're at war with Venezuela because there's a Venezuela gang of Venezuelans, of immigrants from Venezuela who are operating in the US, a gang of a thousand people maybe, not a very well organized gang actually it turns out, though pretty brutal at times. Isn't that law enforcement not alien enemies?

We haven't gotten to that kind of more fundamental question either. So awful lot coming in the Supreme Court, you know, so that seven to two decision, that emergency decision a week ago. And that was he thinks that is indicative of something of the seven of the justices just think that we need to set a signal that they cannot just, you know, and run courts and disassemble to courts and pretend that, you know, they don't have to go through due process and executing their policies.

I want to talk about a couple of stories that are out this morning that I'm lumping together under the headline of hubris. There's the degree of hubris in both of these stories from the Trump administration and their friends is so astonishing. But ones from the Atlantic, which includes an interview with Trump, ones from Semaphore about these private chat messages that top tech titans and Trump officials have been communicating on for a few years now. On the Atlantic story, I'm just going to stay out front. I do nothing but praise the Atlantic on here. It's like the official podcast of the Atlantic Magazine. We have so many Atlantic guests, but I just tell listeners to probably go ahead and skip

this story for their blood pressure. It's like, it's about the Trump comeback, something we all lived. I'm pretty familiar with it. I was thinking about losing my breakfast about halfway through it this morning. So I don't want that on any of you, but the takeaway here is, you know, essentially that Trump, Trump says that I run the country and the world and it's about how he's having more fun now, you know, just overall, it's almost like this time capsule because the story kind of goes back through like the election to now.

And to me, like my only positive takeaway from it was just how different it to things feel now, like that this, like this Trump comeback story, and these guys were all bragging about it. And, you know, they're quoting people that are just talking about how Trump bent the whole world over, you know, and they're just all bowing to him. And now it's kind of like, I felt like that lasted about a minute. So I don't, I don't know if you had a chance to glance at it, but that was my takeaway.

I didn't, but I'm, that's why I'm, that's why I'm looking contented and not having come close to having you know She said when I able to eat breakfast, I would trump himself However, still seems to be pretty full of hubris. Don't you think I mean, I think oh, yeah His explanation of the tower someone pointed this out. Maybe this is a bulwark I can't remember which piece was the way he thinks of it is who were running a giant He's running a giant store and he sets a fair price. This was the time I mean if you did this and he said this in that lengthy time interview.

But then someone commented on it, really captured that part, which I skimmed over, but hadn't really thought about it. I mean, what kind of way is that of thinking about economics? Most people think, you know, you're running a store and you set prices, but you have to compete with other stores and you have to get consumers to want to buy things at this price. He thinks that the US is so powerful, he is so powerful as president of the US, that we just tell people, well, here's the price, take it or leave it.

Now we are powerful and we can sometimes do take it or leave it, right? Because we have so much clout in economics terms and also political and military terms. But basically he's discovering, I think we're unfortunately discover as the economy slows down and goes into recession, that we can't quite say take it and leave it and that people can go. Auto plants can build their factories elsewhere. We're seeing some of that, right? As opposed to the US. So to avoid the insane US tariffs going both in and out, and we can see that people can

choose not to travel to the US. They can choose to travel elsewhere. And it's that, you know, the laws of economics don't disappear because Trump is hubristic. I think maybe Trump sees us as a department store, kind of like the only ones he's ever been into. He's the fancy department store in New York. We're like a Bergdorf Goodman. And people are going to buy from Bergdorf's,

no matter what the prices are. And I can sexually assault women in the dressing room of the Bergdorf's if I want because I'm a star and they let me do it. And it's like so moronic the way that he thinks about all of this. I mean, it's state management. Really, it's central planning would be another way to put this. Like I run the store and I get to plan everything, which I know that the Republicans are very happy to call Kamala communist. Communist Kamala is coming in because she's going to raise the top tax rate by 2% maybe if she can get it through the Republican Senate.

And it's like Trump is now wants to centrally manage the economy like it's a department store and the free market Republicans on the Hill are like, you know, the most we can get out of them is a grumble to CNN from Don Bacon before he retires. Well, maybe the poll changes some of the grumbling to louder complaining and ultimately, and this is what I say in the morning, does it lead to actions? I mean, does Don Bacon say, I'm not voting for an appropriations bill for an omnibus or CR or full year appropriations bill, unless it has aid for Ukraine? And do other four members of the house say that?

Do four senators say, I'm sorry, we can't be doing some of these things on immigration or on a million other issues. Incidentally, obviously, terror is a case where Congress has literally delegated the power to the president and could take it back. So I don't know. I mean, the grumbling is better than nothing. Yelling would be better than grumbling and acting would be best of all. Yeah.

Acting would be nice. Weumbling and acting would be best of all. Yeah, acting would be nice. We'll see how that goes. We did get a tweet from Grassley over the weekend on the Russia stuff. I may have even went a little hot at the Senator from Iowa, but whatever. He's like, I've seen enough killing of innocent Ukrainian women and children. President Trump, please put the toughest sanctions on Putin. You ought to see from clear evidence that he's a playing America as a Patsy. I guess it's good that he's tweeting that, but it's like, I mean, he's in the

Senate, I guess Trump met with Zelensky. There's that kind of striking photo from the Pope's funeral. And so, you know, there's some kind of discussion that Rubio and some others were, I guess, talking with the Ukrainians at a level they hadn't been. So maybe we'll get some change, but like, they just need 67 votes. Like they just need 67 votes in the Senate. If Grassley is against him, if Grassley wants the toughest sanctions on Putin, like that would mean that, you know, he just needs to get John Thune

and 18 other Republicans, you would think that those people exist. If like you just gave them truth serum, you know, if it was a secret ballot, you would think that those people exist. If like you just gave them truth serum, you know, if it was a secret ballot, you would have the numbers there. So I don't know, that's just an option to Senator Grassley. And the way politics works is if you introduce legislation and start debating it, maybe you start off with 57 votes, but maybe people start thinking,

gee, this is kind of indefensible. The position I'm now kind of, they're asking me to take on the other side and you get to 67 votes, right? Again, it's the dynamics of politics that no one is taking advantage of. Democrats who have much less power, they're better, but they haven't still been doing a great job,

I would say, of taking advantage of the sort of dynamic elements of politics. I do think maybe this is unfair. I haven't seen the whole interview with Schumer, I guess, at an interview, was on TV yesterday, didn't he, and he said something about, I've sent a very strong letter with eight very strong points to Trump.

And it really, I mean, it's maybe unfair. Maybe this one sentence or two sentences are surrounded by eight minutes of excellence. You know, Schumer saying what they're doing and trying to do, but that sentence or two by itself is not good, right? He's sending a strong letter. There are 47 Democrats in the Senate. He's in the head of, they can do quite a lot more than send a strong letter with eight strong points, I think.

Pete Slauson They could. And this was the one frustrating point I had with Cory Booker, who I thought was pretty good on Thursday's pod, where we got into a little bit of a back and forth on this, where can't you just pressure these guys directly? And these are your colleagues. You know, I don't know. Like, if you're just, if you're a Democratic Senator looking for an idea, I don't know. Why don't you just, if you're a democratic senator looking for an idea, I don't know. Why don't you just show up to Chuck Grassley's office this morning and say, you know, and say, Hey, like I've got, I've got a bill right here that's on it that says we're going to pass the toughest sanctions on Putin.

Let's try to, how many Republicans do you think we can get to sign this? Like start going door to door. And again, that's gimmicky. Is it actually going to work? Is it just going to backfire and piss them off? I don't know. I guess my point is the, I'm worried about it's going to backfire and piss them off. Thing.

It feels like we're just way past that, right? It's like, these guys aren't going to do anything. So to me, it's like, what's the worst that can happen from that? It's like feels gimmicky and then nothing happens. Well, nothing's happening now. And you're at least getting attention for it and putting pressure on them. As you say, the worst that happens is the status quo

as they can do it out in the country as well. So obviously, as you know, in the Senate office building, that is a Cory Booker can go across the river to Pennsylvania and his neighboring state there from New Jersey and go see Dave McCormick or go through a town hall in Pennsylvania and say that you have a senator who's been the past, been quite tough on Russia, served in the Bush, I guess, Defense Department, right? If I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And has said some

things on the stump that are very pro-Ukraine and why don't you get him to do something here in Pennsylvania? So I mean you could, now that's not senatorial courtesy, they don't go into each other's states and beat them up, I don't know. It's a bit of a crisis of democracy too, so maybe they should let some of the usual, you know, courtesies. Yeah. And there are a million other things to do, obviously. And so, you know, there's only limited time, but we could do something. We're just throwing out an idea. Now you mentioned Pennsylvania. But 122,000 Ukrainians in Pennsylvania, you know, and Democrats could go there. I saw John Fetterman, by the way, palling around with Dave McCormick at Selena Zito's book party over the weekend.

Okay, whatever. You say that you're, if the rationale for doing that is that you want to create bipartisan relationships so you can pass stuff, ostensibly both Dave McCormick and John Fetterman, in addition to why he defets Selena Zito, also want the Ukrainians to be productive, as been both of their positions in the past. Why not have events with Ukrainians in Pennsylvania and invite Dave McCormick to come? And if he doesn't come, shame him.

There is a limit of creative thinking on all of this, I think. It's like, oh, what more can we do? I don't know. Call me up. I've got some ideas. That's a good one. They should call you up. Actually, don't call me. Don't call me. You can listen. I'm giving you my good ideas right now. I'm not a consultant

anymore. You'll accept a few emails, won't you? As to the bulwark. Yeah, I guess. I guess. I didn't even get to the semaphore story. You got me riled up. Nothing gets me more riled up than these fucking Dave McCormick doing nothing. Dave McCormick having a book party. Give me a break. What was the other thing we're going to talk about?

Oh, the Semaphore story. This is also going to keep my blood pressure high. So people should read this one. It might also upset you, but it's kind of in a funny way. It's called The Group Chats That Changed America. It's a series of big tech gazillionaires. It's kind of like the germs of how we got to this dystopia was you had these guys like Marc Andreessen, David Balzac, these other Peter Thiel and some of his acolytes, basically

set up these signal and WhatsApp chats with influential Republicans, Ben Shapiro's on one of them and Republican policy people, Chris Ruffo. If you don't know any of these names, God bless you. Just continue on in blissful ignorance. But anyway, Andreessen said that these chats is what helped produce our natural vibe shift. Andreessen was the person that was writing about how America was this coiled spring waiting to be unleashed by some good free market policies. They said that these chats are the single most important place and where

the realignment towards Donald Trump was shaped from Silicon Valley, the smartest, most sophisticated Trump supporters in the nation were in these chats. These guys are all bragging about how important these chats are and how it changed everything. important these chats are and how it changed everything. And like, here we are and we have like the most smooth brained economic policy imaginable being implemented in the first three months after these fucking smarties masters of the universe thought that they were taking over the U S government.

That is, that's a truly remarkable chain of affairs. I don't know, but did you get to enjoy this article or are you just enjoying my readout of it right now? I really enjoy your readout of it and your indignation and your anger with both totally righteous and justified. And also, I thought all this Trump stuff was coming from people who had unfortunately lost jobs because of free trade and were victims of globalism. Seems like these guys think all their stuff

is coming from themselves, from these billionaires, and some of whom helped Musk buy Twitter and turn it into X and make it a biased platform and also put pressure in other ways, I think, on other businesses to go along with Trump and so forth. So maybe there's a little, maybe the whole Trump thing, if we, are we allowed to say that it maybe was a little more top down or a little less organic middle America than

a lot of people have wanted to, than Selena Zito has said. Who are the forgotten men? Yeah, how are they, there are a lot of them in the Trump cabinet. You got to say that. You look at the Trump cabinet and you think, you know, he really went out of his way to find some, you know, working class guys who would really pay the price for globalization. You know, you look at those guys and they've had a rough time, those people in the Trump cabinet for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years there.

How do you think the shipbuilders, the workers and the docs are doing right now as the ships don't come in? You know, it's a big re-industrialization policy. Has anyone in the Trump administration even expressed a moment of concern or sympathy for them even? I mean, they're not only like wildly wealthy jackasses, they're also wildly wealthy unempathetic jackasses, which I guess maybe that's part of the package. Yeah, we haven't seen much shame yet from the big organizers of this or any humility from, you know, the people that thought it was going to be so easy to co-opt Donald Trump and

then make our AI golden age come through their fucking techno fascist policies. But I don't know, maybe it'll come through if the markets get worse. The South Florida article did have this screenshot for the ages, which I do have to share. Ben writes this, one of the chats broke down because David Balzac's, excuse me, he wrote Saks, but we have to use. Ben writes this, one of the chats broke down because David Balsax, excuse me, he wrote Saks, but we have to use our bulwark style, because David Balsax accused the people of having TDS. Brian Goldberg, another founder, replied, I'm not sure we have TDS. I think we Republicans who supported Trump are seeing that it's a failed administration. The next line is a little note that says Tucker Carlson leaves the chat.

Like there are a handful of the second tier, like VC guys who are like, I didn't sign up for this. Like I didn't sign up for fucking my stock tanking, you know, because you guys are like putting 145% tariffs on China, which wasn't, that was never part of the plan. Nobody told me about that. So anyway, that's, if it wasn't for all the suffering, that would be pretty enjoyable. The, you know, the infighting.

If only they could have known that Trump was enamored of tariffs and wasn't going to listen to the grownups in the room. Why would one have thought that, you know? Yeah, and Brian Goldberg could have just listened to us rather than listening to the all in podcast and he would have been much more clear eyed about what was coming. But, uh, it's still nice to see the infighting. There's a Matt Iglesias article this morning that I think is really important. And I feel a little bit like I was, I was wrapped on the knuckles a little bit by

Matt Iglesias unintentionally, cause I had, it was unintentional because I had Beto on the knuckles a little bit by Matt Iglesias unintentionally, because I had, it was unintentional, because I had Beto on the Pod Friday and I love Beto. So, you know, I just, I maybe had Beto colored glasses, but I asked him about running again because he just kind of sounded like somebody that was going to run again. I interviewed him back in August. He didn't really sound like that. It was kind of a tongue in cheek question, really.

I didn't think that he was thinking about it. 24 hours later, he was asked by a local reporter the same question, and his answer was notably non-Sherman-esque, right, to a point where the Texas reporters are trying to think maybe Beto might be running for Senate. And had I thought that, maybe my questions would have been a little bit different just about being practical in running for these sort of Senate seats. And Iglesias just basically writes about this, which is like for the Democrats to be able to take the Senate and have any sort of policy pass, like

to be able to get 51 Senate votes. Like you need to win in a place like Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Florida, Alaska, Kansas, and the 26 and 28 cycles. And if you look at those states, I mean, Kamala did worse in those states than Trump did in places like New Mexico or New Jersey. It's a big task. It's a tall task to win in those states. Iglesias is basically arguing that the Democrats don't seem that serious about finding

answers to that, to that conundrum, right? And there are a couple of potential ones. You know, there is, we're in a great depression. And so, you know, we got lucky. The Republicans put up a terrible candidate like Roy Moore. And so the Democrats got lucky. Like those are the two, you didn't have a plan, but it worked out anyway, options. He floats the Dan Osborne option.

He's this independent, kind of populist, independent kind of guy that sort of mixes like Bernieism with cultural conservatism. This is not my type of candidate at all, but I'm open to that. Maybe that's the right, maybe that's the winning path. There's also more of a, you know, bulwark accommodating type path, right? That's like, you know, where, you know, you distance from Democrats on issues like energy production and you know, whatever. So my point is not that I want to like prescribe what the right answer is, but

like it is important in spaces like this to have like real conversations about it. And just to like say, Oh, we're just going to run somebody who's going to run as a, as a median Democrat and hope that we're in a Great Depression. Like that doesn't seem like a plan. So anyway, that's my summary of that. I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on it. No, I think it's a very good piece.

I mean, I think he's right to think about this and not to just give up on 26 and 28 from the Senate. That's really a disastrous thing. There's some small chance of winning the Senate in 26. You could avert a lot of bad things in 27 20 27 20 28 so it's worth really going for I think he slightly overstates Matt does though the indeed he seems to imply you need to have a whole re branding of the Democratic Party that's hard to do over a year and a half when there's no one in

charge of it anyway and it's just kind of a bunch of people running around saying what they believe basically I think there are two things you can do and it's really I'm thinking of 2006 here where the Democrats you know had massive gains in the off-year election. The two things are one we've already discussed drive Trump's numbers down the single best predictor of off-year performance is the president's approval and if he's at 34 and you get a wave 36 even maybe and you get a wave, 36 even, I mean you get a wave election, then it does bring a lot of people in states that are minus eight and minus 10, not a lot, some people in those states and you don't even have to have spectacular candidates, that's one. And two, as Rahm Emanuel did in 2006, recruit candidates who are good for the states and

localities they're running in. And if you can get that combination, I don't think you need to have a whole redefinition of the Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries led party and, you know, governors will do what governors will do and some of them will be like Newsom and some of them will be like Shapiro and others, you know, will be like Pritzker and maybe you can shape that a tad at the margins. But I think those two things, recruiting good candidates and driving Trump's numbers down are very, I don't know if they're achievable goals, but they're very concrete goals.

I mean, they're goals you can work on achieving, right? They're not like fanciful. You can actually go to states and districts and say, who is a reasonable candidate here? Who might fit the district or state a little better than the natural, the state assembly person from some blue dot in a red state who's otherwise just going to naturally win the nomination, you know, and lose. And secondly, and above all, I come back to driving Trump's numbers down. Everything's so nationalized, it's going to be about checking Trump.

Why would you vote Democratic in 2026 if you're a marginal, you know, unless you're a loyal Democrat? You want to stop Trump. It's like 2018 in that respect. And there you just need to get his number, you need to get the, increase the number of people who want to stop Trump. It's like 2018 in that respect. And there you just need to get his number, you need to get the increase the number of people who want to stop Trump. Then maybe you lose a couple of the percent of them at the end of the day because they kind of look at the Democrat and they think, ooh, a little too left wing for me. But if that number is big enough, you can afford to lose those last 2% and still be at 51, right? So the most

doable thing is to knock Trump's numbers down as much as possible. I agree with that, that that's the most doable thing. I also just think, look, this is, I'll give free advice here, because like I said, I don't like being a consultant anymore. You know, over the last years, I know you do, I get calls from people who like run around red state, run around Louisiana, like, what do you think? What do you think? And I always say to them, like, what is a cultural issue where you disagree with the democratic party on? I literally don't care what it is.

Right. It doesn't matter what it is, I think, actually in a weird way. And frankly, it doesn't matter what it is, right? Pick one and don't just kind of like mention it a little bit. Like talk about it a lot. Don't talk about it quite as much. You talk about how terrible Donald Trump has been for working class people and veterans, et cetera.

Like that's the most important job. But maybe the second most thing you should talk about it quite as much. You talk about how terrible Donald Trump has been for working class people and veterans, et cetera, like that's the most important job, but maybe the second most thing you should talk about is whatever this cultural issue is, where you are more in line with the people of Texas or Iowa or Louisiana than you are with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And like, that doesn't feel like it should be that hard, but it is. Like there's a lot of pressure not to do that. You don't, you know, the rubber chicken circuit, the people don't want to hear that. Right.

Like, and will that even work? I don't know. Right. Like I'm not, this is not a guaranteed path to victory in a red state. It's very hard to win as a Democrat in a red state, but to me, it just feels like an anti of like both giving people an anti-Trump choice and giving them the choice of somebody that feels like they're from that state that feels like on some level, they connect with the people of that state more than they connect with national Democrats.

And even then it's an uphill slog, but like just running as a generic is tough and it's not going to do it. And as much as I love Feddo, even he would say that. And like the grassroots stuff that he's doing is all super important and people should do it. And I love that Feddo's doing it. But like that is another thing that's necessary but not sufficient you know because even he said it in the interview it's like you know this might not pay

off this grassroots thing in 26 or 28 or 30 but it like eventually it will and I and so great I do that but like you know if you're talking about 2026 like it's not gonna be door knocking that's gonna be the solution by itself you gotta do those other things and in addition to picking an issue, which I totally agree with, guns is an obvious one where they're not going to pass any gun control legislation in the next, during the Trump presidency in 27, 28 either. So if you're a pro-gun control, you're not going to, I think you can vote for someone who says, I'm not quite with you on gun control.

You know, it's not going to matter in the next two or four years, probably. And I think the same is true on a bunch of other issues. Also, biography matters. I mean, Ram recruited in 06, but also in 2018, no one recruited anyone in 2018 actually, in 2017. People just showed up. Abigail Spanberger showed up, and Mikey Sherrill showed up, and former intelligence officers, and former military retired veterans showed up, and culturally moderate types showed up, and they did well. So, again, I think the bio plus plus finding an issue or two to distinguish yourself can go

pretty far. All right. Final thing, we'll end with an attaboy. Well, you mentioned Pritzker. I got two attaboys. I don't have the audio of Pritzker. Pritzker was on fire over the weekend. So that's something to monitor.

He's talking about how he's never been the type of person to be a big protest person. And this is the moment for mass protests, if there ever was one. So me and JB are aligned on that. My actual attaboy that I want to close with was the last minute of 60 minutes, which was, I think, pretty bold for Scott Pelley to do this on air live. So in case you guys missed it, let's listen. Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us and you.

Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial. Lately the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing. He was the right person to lead 60 minutes all along.

Not bad. Pretty powerful. Yeah. It's nice. See guys, you can do it. Everybody can do it. Scott Pelley can do it. You can do it.

These guys aren't that scary. Anyway, Bill Kristol, we'll see you back here next Monday. Canadians will be watching your election results tonight and everybody else. We'll see you back here can't get out of the situation Walking in the streetlight, thinking about last time This time I said I would do this right Said I would never break this promise But now I'm back to counting on us We cannot be friends

Cannot pretend that it makes sense We cannot be friends Cannot pretend that it makes sense Cause now i'm in it But i've been trying to find my way back for a minute Damn i'm in it And i've been trying to find my way back for a minute Walking all the doors of my house, I'm alone in my head

But I wish you were in my bed Can't get a feet on myself, gotta change the situation Spent an hour that I thought when I woke up Told me that I shouldn't give in, give up hope Told me that I shouldn't fight for your faith Told me I should not let go Cause he cannot be friends Cannot pretend that he makes sense

Cause now I'm in it But I've been trying to find my way back for a minute Damn I'm in it And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute Cause now I'm in it And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute And the rain keeps coming down on the ceiling And I can hear it The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.