The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1045: Bill Kristol: A New Gilded Age

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

No, the Trump administration is not focused on the forgotten man or bringing industrial jobs back. Instead, the real estate developer is handing out threats left and right—fresh off his Middle East trip, where he scored numerous deals with Islamofascists for himself, his family, and his cronies. And no matter what he says, the 'Palace in the Sky' is for him, once taxpayers pony up all the funds for retrofitting. Meanwhile, House Republicans are attempting to ram through their reconciliation bill—which is a huge debt bomb and is a big reason why Moody's downgraded the credit rating of the United States. Plus, Biden's cancer diagnosis, Epstein's 'absolutely crystal-clear' suicide, Trump proves Springsteen's point, and the administration gladly takes some of Mexico's worst. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Jonathan Cohn on the reconciliation bill's Medicaid cuts El Chapo's ex-wife and extended family at the US Southern border Springsteen in Manchester commenting on the current administration

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You know, I'm doing pretty good All things considered we had a pretty devastating nuggets loss in game seven. It looks very close the last time I looked at the score there Yeah, wasn't close and I was thinking what to say about it as we got the news of Joe Biden's pretty concerning prostate cancer diagnosis And so if people allow me, you know, obviously there's some limits in the comparison between the Denver Nuggets and Joe Biden. But you know, sports in some ways is this facsimile of life, you know, life, life's a tragedy, right? Like

we all, it's not just Joe Biden, like all of us in the end, we're going to die, we're going to decay. And like the challenge is how we find some beauty and fulfillment in the process. Like sports gives us this on the side, but like we find some beauty and fulfillment in the process. Like sports gives us this on the side, but like we have like rules and structure that go along with it. You get to have like actual rewards put in place in the middle of it, which sometimes you don't get in life. But do you know Aaron Gordon, Bill?

Yeah, not really. Okay. All right. I'm going to just tell you one side. People will just allow me one minute about Aaron Gordon because we need some like people in public life to actually just genuinely admire these days. He was the best player on a terrible team. His little career in Orlando.

He comes to Denver to be a role player, sacrifices the spotlight. He's always had, he's just always happy, always joyful. Reading between the lines of his Instagram, pretty sure he's a common voter. His brother, Drew, uh, dies in a car crash last year, his older brother and his three young kids. And so this year, Aaron changes his number to honor his brother and he brings the kids around all the time. His nephews are like around at the games, the press conferences, sitting in the front.

He's nurturing them. You can always see him trying to kind of buck them up. During the playoffs, he hits two Miracle Game winners and a game tying three in the first 12 games of the playoffs. In the pen ultimate game, he pulls his hamstring going for a loose ball with like a minute left at the end of the game. It's the type of thing you're supposed to have like a one month recovery process for. But he decides to play anyway, in the deciding

game, game seven. And like he's hobbling around out there. He's got 11 rebounds. It's just unbelievable. The amount of guts that he's showing. We get our ass kicked as you pointed out, but this is all we're supposed to have in life, right? Like you get these little moments of triumph, you know, that he won a championship two years ago.

You are there for your nephews. You showed that you have guts, You get fulfilled and you get these moments of joy, the game winning shots. And in the end, you know, it's lost. You always lose in the end, right? And so that is kind of like how I was processing all of this yesterday about why I was not as down as I could have been about the nuggets. And then the Joe Biden news comes across and it's, you know, maybe kind of a similar story. I don't know. Am I stretching for you? No, no, you're allowed to stretch. You're the host of this fine podcast, you know.

One of my buddies texted me this morning, he's like, how are you going to handle the Joe Biden news? And I said, I think I'm going to compare it to Aaron Gordon's hamstring. Do you think that's going to land? And he's like, I don't know, man. No, no, It was well done. And I was thinking, so when I was in high school, my last year in high school, Willis Reid hobbled on, I don't know quite what his injury was, but he hobbled onto the court in game seven against the Lakers and played at sort of half speed, half capacity, but the Knicks won.

So that's the sort of, that's the really fairy tale version of the story. Yeah, but Will's read ends up, this is the thing about sports like life, eventually it breaks down. In the end it's over. It's always over at some point. I don't disagree that the fairy tale version is less maybe true to life than the,

can't be carried through forever. Carlton Fisk, the other greatest game I was ever at, baseball game I was ever at, 75 World Series, sixth game, Fulkich League got tickets, Susan and I had tickets. And so Carlton Fisk's 12th inning home run, and I was a Red Sox fan at that point in the American League at least,

I was a Mets fan in the National League, and it's up there in Boston in grad school. And Carlton Fisk has that great home run, really the great, unbelievable moment in baseball. And of course the Red Sox then lose the seventh game, everyone's forgotten that side, and lose the World Series. So yes, that was a good lesson. That's a good lesson.

That was lucky, though. Where were your seats? They were pretty good because the fluke-ish way we got there was we knew someone who knew someone who knew a relative of one of the team owners who didn't want to use the tickets. And I think that afternoon, just hanging around grad school, I don't even know how we got them. Maybe Susan got them. Someone said that you want two tickets to tonight's game and Susan was like I don't know I'm kind of busy I have a lot of work to do and I was

like no we want two tickets to tonight's game you know six game of the World Series at Fenway or something. That's a good memory. All right on the details of Joe Biden we got to do it here's the statement that was put out by Biden last week. He has seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. We're getting really detailed here. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer characterized by a Gleason score of 9, which is very high, with metastasis into the bone. So this represents a more aggressive form of the disease. The cancer appears to be hormone sensitive, which allows for effective management. That was the statement from the Biden family.

You guys wrote this morning about this and like there is the personal tragedy side of this, which is, you know, like he's just had so much personal tragedy and it's particularly related to cancer with his son Bo dying. And, you know, so there's sort of that side of the discussion, which is just extremely human. And then there's this kind of more elusive legacy side of the discussion. But you wrote about it a little bit in the context of it's Seamus Heaney. Is that how you say it? Heaney?

Seamus Heaney, one of the famous poet, an Irish poet that Biden always would quote often at funerals. Biden was a good eulogizer of all the things about Joe Biden. There's one thing that he's really wonderful at was eulogizing. But anyway, why don't you give us a brief of the takeaway that you offered this morning in the newsletter? I mean, Andrew really has an excellent piece, I think, on, we talked last night, obviously, we decided we should write it up. We both had the sense of, we don't really have much to say. I mean, respect Joe Biden and I'm very sorry about the, obviously both had the sense of we don't really have much to say. I mean, respect Joe Biden and was very sorry about the,

obviously the medical developments. You don't want to write a eulogy for someone when he's around on the other hand. So quite what to say. And we thought maybe we'll just write on, reconciliation bill and all this. And then last night, late last night for Andrew and earlier this morning for me,

we both decided I got to sort of write about it. It's president, aren't that many people have been president and here he is, our most recent president. And so Andrew wrote a very nice piece, I think, on Biden's uncertain legacy and how it's a little unusual in his case and tragic, maybe more so in the sense that he'll presumably die not quite certain about how he'll be judged. I mean, no one's really certain, of course, but you know, other people kind of see the effects of some of their policies and feel somewhat reassured or maybe an unfortunate in some cases not reassured that the country will think of them in a certain way, or future generations will. And Biden beat Trump and

was, you know, an avarable contrast to Trump and I think a pretty decent president, but on the other hand, it succeeded by Trump. Yeah, this legacy question that made me think about something Rudy Giuliani said a couple years ago. Do you remember this? Somebody, some reporter was lamenting to him how he'd ruined his legacy. And he said, my attitude about my legacy is fuck it. I'll be dead.

And that is like a deeply sociopathic view of legacy. It's like I think about all this stuff and like, you know, as a moderate squish, I'm And that is like a deeply sociopathic view of legacy. It's like, I think about all this stuff and like, you know, as a moderate squish, I'm always like, you're looking for balance in all things, right? Like obsession over one's legacy and trying to sculpt and mold it.

Like, especially at this time, I mean, Steve Schell just wrote this great piece for us last week about kind of how Biden, you know, like you can only do so much, right? Like, I mean, he had this life or has this life still where he did all this research into cancer, another kind of irony, a sad irony about what he's going through now, you know, how he cared about this cancer moonshot because of his son and, you know, the legacy of all the build back better and chips and like the things he accomplished and like the things that he accomplished in the

Senate, right? So all these things that he accomplished in the Senate, right? So all of these things that you could, you know, that you want to talk about and focus on right in your post presidency or continue to advance in some way and foreign policy for him too. And then there's kind of like the pop cable news punditry legacy, right? And you know, Shail was trying to talk about how like Biden should think about just trying to advance all of those things that he worked on that he had successes on, you know, like rather than trying to win this fucking tucking head battle that is a unwinnable since Trump won and be like uncertain. how things will shake out. And I do feel like there is, there's like some healthy place in the middle, you know, that we want from public servants that's somewhere between the

horrific nihilism of Rudy Giuliani and kind of like an obsession with legacy that becomes unhelpful, right? Or maybe even counterproductive, like at times. And it just feels so much more acute for him, maybe because of his age. I don't know why. Like maybe it feels less acute for Obama and W because there's, there's a longer arc of post-presidency. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure either. I've always thought that the focus on legacy is both obviously humanly understandable. It can lead in a good direction as you were sort of suggesting in the sense that

you want to do admirable things that you'll be remembered for. It can also lead to a kind of overthinking. I've seen this in other people, not just public officials, incidentally, that you don't know what's going to happen next. You don't know how things are going to be judged 10, 20, 30 years from now. Things that look great at first don't look so good and vice versa. Harry Truman, for example. So I think probably this sounds kind of totally trite, but I mean, the best thing is to try to do the right thing and to take a long view of the right thing. So you are thinking about future generations.

You're not just thinking about, you know, leaving office and everything falls apart a year later. But the legacy thing is hard to shape and obviously hard to control. It's tough. It's such a downer. One other thing worth mentioning about it before we move on to the Trump News, which is downer in a different kind of way, is that Zika Manuel is on Morning Joe this morning. And it bears mentioning because this is just going to be part of the conversation about all of this, sadly, over the coming months. But he just says pretty matter-of-factly to Scarborough, this is the type of cancer that you've had for a while.

The nature of it is not such that it metastasizes in 100 days or 200 days. And so, you know, that's not necessarily to mean that there's any conspiracy surrounding this. I guess, you're more suited to talk about this than me, but I guess, man, over 70, there's certain reason not to, you know, get certain tests particularly with regards to prostate because there can be some over treatment and a lot of times it takes much longer to progress. But anyway, just like the blunt nature with which he said it seemed to take Scarborough off guard this morning and I think certainly it's going to be things that people are talking about. A lot of bad faith Republicans and like not, you know, there'll be a lot of conspiracy theorizing about it. We're going to get into that more on the conspiracy side in a second. But it was interesting to see Zeke's assessment just be so matter of fact on this.

The one thing that occurred to me reading some of this stuff late last night, early this morning, is I think President Biden deserves some blame for his stubbornness and his desire against what was prudent and what was really right, I'm going to say, not just politically right, but right in terms of the country for the next four years to try to have a second term. It was a mistake. Having said that, it's a very natural human mistake. He was the president. He's the guy who beat Trump.

He thought he could keep doing a good job. He could well have, maybe not with this diagnosis now, but he could have kept doing a decent job for a year or two, maybe not for four years, I don't think. It wasn't, as I say, the right thing to do. But I do blame more the people close to him. I mean, they're the ones who have to tell him, no, you can't do this. It's very hard for a person to, this is what friends are for, right? Not to be, again, go to cliches and everything. People don't have great self-knowledge or self-awareness always, or they do, but they suppress it in the interest of other

things. And really, people close to him needed to tell him that he shouldn't run again. The cover-up side of it is not great either, but I do think it's a problem for those people who were close to him. I don't think they told him. They gave him honest advice when he didn't wanna hear it. Yeah.

I agree with all that. I actually, the cover-up thing I think is the stupidest part of all this, like they put him on the stage because they thought he could do it. Like, I mean, I think, is the stupidest part of all this. They put him on the debate stage because they thought he could do it. I think there's a ton of things to criticize all the people around him for, but I think they fooled themselves. They played themselves, so to speak, as DJ Khaled would say. That's fair enough.

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Donald Trump back in the white house. I want to start with just a random oblique he sent. He sent a lot of insane ones over the weekend, but I want to start with one that he sent about Disney. So I think it ties into a couple other topics I want to get with just a random oblique he sent. He sent a lot of insane ones over the weekend. I want to start with one that he sent about Disney. I think it ties into a couple other topics I want to get into with you. I'm going to read it for folks because I assume most of our listeners aren't watching Trump's truth social feed with a close eye. Why doesn't Chairman Bob Iger do something about ABC fake news, especially since I just won 16 million based on the fake and defamatory

reporting of little George Slopidopoulos. He was given warnings but couldn't be restrained by management. Now I see they're at it again and again I give these sleazebags fair warning. The wonderful country of Qatar after agreeing to invest more than one put, da, da, da, da, da, da. They didn't give this gift to me. They give the gift to the country. So this is Trump threatening ABC again. I guess there's some report where they framed

the Qatar plane as a gift to Trump, where Trump is saying that is false. It's a gift to the country. Scott Besson used the same spin on the shows over the weekend. It's an interesting spin for me because I don't plan on getting to ride on the plane. So I don't, you know, I'm not sure it's quite a gift to the whole country. A quick gift to me. I'm not sure if any of our listeners are going to get to get a ride on the palace in the sky. So it does seem kind of like a gift to Trump to me. But the interesting thing here is just how Trump's never subtle, right? And like he just lays bare that giving into him and that what Disney did with this kind of ridiculous settlement over the Stephanopoulos comments about the E. Jane Carroll case was very obvious at the

time. Like that was a mistake. All of a sudden, so it was very obvious that they were not going to get anything out of Trump like making these sort of deals with Trump does not ever pay off in the end. He just wants more and more and more. He's just going to push and push and push. And here's Trump just publicly basically saying that, like holding it over their head and saying

that he's going to keep doing these silly lawsuits, keep attacking them, that there will be no relief from the attacks from Trump and our government just because you've bent over for it. Well, maybe there'll be relief if they just never report anything negative about Trump. I mean, you know, but I'm serious, the intimidation worked. He's going to keep doing it as long as it works.

It's worked. It's worked for media companies. It's worked for businesses. It's worked for law firms. And we'll see what happens to the universities. It's worked, God knows, with the Republican Party and with Congress. And that's why we're in such bad shape, though. I mean, he is in his own cunning and insane and narcissistic way.

He knows that the levers of power matter, and people can snicker at him. Incidentally, Qatar, which gave him the plane, did get rewarded a little bit by him calling it, what did he call it, the tweet? A wonderful country. Suddenly, Qatar is a fantastic place. I wasn't aware of that. That was the conventional view here in America for this country, which hosts Hamas's leaders and so forth. But they're getting something at least in the very short term. We'll see how much more they have to pay down

the road. So it's easy for other people to sort of snicker at the way he goes about being a mob boss. But of course, mob bosses, they usually get their comeuppance ultimately. But if you watch like American movies, you know, but I don't know, the real world, they can do okay for a fair amount of time, unfortunately. Yeah. Highly respected country, Qatar. Highly respected country. It's very much, I noticed it.

Yeah. Yeah. I've got a ton of respect for the, from the leaders of Hamas who they're harboring. Yeah. It's easy to snicker at Trump's ham-handed intimidation tactics. And as you say, they've worked. And so, you know, that cuts both ways. It doesn't really cut both ways for Bob Iger and Disney.

And I think that snickering at the people that folded is actually probably valuable at this point and pointing and laughing at them so that more people don't do this because they folded and got nothing, which was obvious from the start that that was going to be the case. That this was not like a one-time thing. You pay your $16 million with Pope Leo in my mind, I've got the Catholic Church. What do we call the Catholic Church donations back in the old days? Indulgences. That's good. Yeah. That's good.

It's not like you pay your $16 million indulgence to Trump and then you get blessed by dear father and then it moves on. Like it never ends. And so there's no point in paying the indulgence in the first place. We need to make it that there's no point paying the indulgence in the first place.

And part of the way to do that is to snicker at it and make it unrespectable and to do so and make people pay a social and cultural and maybe even economic price for doing so. But I wish I were more confident that all those business leaders who went with Trump on his Middle Eastern trip and sucked up to Trump and I'm sure people in their company are not going to be very critical of Trump for the next few weeks and months and so forth.

And all the elites who've gone along with Trump, I wish I were more confident they're not going to end up, at least in the short term, feeling like they made a pretty clever move, you know? Come on, Bill, give me something here. Give me something tonight. No, maybe not Iger and Disney. Media, I mean, honestly, well, it's not even worth getting into. Media is in a different situation in a way, but it's more public facing.

I think that's an advantage in a way that we have with the media than businesses where we don't quite know what they're getting and what they're not getting. That's a good point. You had on the Sunday interview on Substack yesterday, Tom Malinowski, former congressman from New Jersey. And you also were talking about the Qatar plane bribe, and Malinowski kind of had a little bit of a different take on it. So why don't you kind of give us a little recap of what you guys discussed on

that? So Tom, who was both assistant secretary of state under President Obama and had been elected to Clinton NSC and then congressman, so he knows his way around Washington very well and knows the way around foreign capitals very well and has fought a lot with the dictatorial Middle Eastern states. I think he was expelled from Bahrain once for meeting with some dissidents. So he's on the human rights, pro-democracy side of things. He had two things to report though, which I think are interesting that he thinks are

true and pretty confident it seems like are true. One that the Qataris didn't just decide, hey, we got this plane, let's just give it to Trump and try to buy some goodwill. There was more of a shakedown than a bribe. Trump, presumably through Steve Witkoff, saw the plane, he knew about the plane, he heard about it. He knew, he saw it in February, actually, yeah, it was parked in West Palm Beach, yeah. He's had a beef about Air Force One for a long time, and he sort of basically asked for it.

Qatar is in a very weak position, actually. They are one of the strong petro-states, I would say. And so they need US support and goodwill. And so they got shaken down and they shook, or whatever the right way to say that is, and they provided the plane. So the fact that it's more of a, if that's true, that it's more of a shakedown, not just a bribe, is even worse. Now, I will say the founders, to their credit, didn't understand that you can't really tell

often, so they just banned in the Constitution gifts and emoluments from foreign nations, unless Congress approves them, because they understood that in a way you don't know, it doesn't matter that much, I guess, who goes first. Maybe the more interesting thing from a policy point of view that Tom pointed out is the Emirates, the UAE, who got also massive amounts of US investment and promised massive amounts of money for us, for US companies and US businesses. But the deal there was that Trump waived restrictions that had been put on in the Biden administration and had bipartisan support in Congress on sending AI chips to the Middle

East, in this case to the Emirates, which I don't really understand fully how this works. I sort of understand in principle how it works. I don't know anything about AI to speak of, but yeah, we had these export restrictions on these chips because they're very sensitive and powerful and we didn't want them getting to the wrong hands. The wrong hands could be different people hanging around in the Emirates. It could also be China with whom the UAE has a close relationship. This is bipartisan China hawks in both parties and people concerned about AI and how it can be misused in both parties. UAE is a pretty totalitarian place.

They use a lot of facial recognition technology and stuff. Presumably they've gotten that from the Chinese, but it shows how close the relationship is with the Chinese. So suddenly, Trump is basically, Tom takes this very seriously, that AI stuff which is very sensitive and can have pretty dire effects if put in the wrong hands, already maybe too much in the wrong hands with China, but we're just making it infinitely easier with this deal he's made with the UAE.

Yeah, it's interesting. China had a statement out this morning that was on this exact point on essentially these chip, the AI chip exports. I haven't seen that. Yeah, so basically they said that the US seriously undermined consensus reached at the Geneva talks with these conversations. So I guess the broader point is like, who the hell knows? Like what machinations are happening behind the scenes between these big tech oligarchs.

I mean, Sam Altman is there in Saudi, and Trump and Whitkoff, and these Middle Eastern dictatorships and the Chinese. That's like, there's no reason to have any trust that any of the decisions being made are based upon the public interest. Right? And to me, this is like something else I wanted to get into with you.

There's this big hullabaloo last week with Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia about how he was marking the end of this old, you know, whatever you want to call it, bipartisan, neoliberal, neoconservative world, global order, and that we are going to stop caring about making decisions and having relationships based on shared values and the intersection of shared values and shared interests. Instead of that, we're going to stop being so gullible when it comes to all of that. Instead, we're going to just be cold-hearted. It's to all of that. And instead we're gonna just be cold-hearted, you know, it's just gonna be about the bucks. It's just gonna be about money and just gonna be about how America can get ours.

And Donald Trump's gonna do these deals and it's much savvier and we won't get into any of these problems that these goody two-shoes who cared about democracy and values and human rights got into. And now we have a much more savvy relationship. And to me, all of that is so naive and so stupid. And the idea that we would trade away these values-based relationships where we care about the rule of law and replace it with Donald Trump and some Islamofascists and the Chinese and a bunch of fucking wannabe trillionaires at a table cutting deals. I think that there's probably a way to frame that in a way that people won't like. I understand their frame. I can understand how it's appealing

to some people, which is like, we're just going to care about your pocketbook. We're going to stop caring about human rights concerns and Riyadh, right? But like the other side of this coin is that they are making these hugely serious decisions about our future safety and security, like based on some fucking real estate developer and a trillionaires desire to get it, you know, to get extra kickbacks. I mean it is true mad. It's madness Yeah, it's madness that it's personal grift I mean that is to say there is a case sometimes maybe for let's just call it a real politic You know, sure they have a lot of oil. We can't litigate the human rights issues too much with those countries

They China is too powerful We can't stand up as much as we would like to for the winger So you and I are more on the other side of that, but that's a Kissingerian point of view. That still presumes that people are trying to act in what they think are the best interests of the country. They just differ on the balancing of some material interests, economic interests as opposed to values or human rights and so forth. Trump's not even balancing anything.

This is the farce of it, right? Some of his defenders want to make it look like there's some kind of theory here. He's just out for himself and his family and his buddies, and they're all out for themselves. So I think that politically, I think that means you don't even have to reach the more sophisticated kind of discussions. You just have to say that if you're the opposition. And it does make me think, I don't know, just the attack on him and his buddies, the plutocrats, the oligarchs, the kleptocrats. I don't know, shouldn't that be effective

politically? I mean, it's really unbelievable to see what's going on. It's being done out in the open and to a degree that really exceeds, I think, the Gilded Age and all the other things we sort of learn about a little bit of the sort know, this sort of unattractive parts of American history or of world history for that matter. Yeah. And you combine it with the, oh, you're just going to have to eat the tariffs. Right? It's like, what are these guys eating? Like, what are they, what sacrifice are they making?

Like, there's nothing. Absolute opposite. They're trying to squeeze every penny they can out of Middle Eastern despots in order to, like, live as opulent lives as they can in order to sell as many of the chips. They're not even shy about it. They're not even acting as if there's some greater good or greater sacrifice. I mean, since you mentioned that, just one word on the Walmart terrorist thing, which

was that Trump attacked Walmart for saying that they'd have to raise prices because of the terrorists and Trump said, you've got to eat the terrorists and stuff. You had billions of profits, record profits last year, billions of profits. I was going to read about this today if Biden news hadn't broken. I mean, who was president last year when Walmart had record profits that Trump is now trumpeting? Joe Biden. I mean, the whole Republican narrative, half the time when they're defending things, they have to talk about how much money everyone was making last year, and therefore can afford to suck it up a little bit this year, you know? And so, I mean, I just think the degree to which all of our friends, some of our ex-friends and acquaintances who had to justify going and reluctantly vote for Trump

because, man, Biden, I can't live with that. I mean, you're in the business world. You just, that Biden, he was just, that administration was out to get you. And then every time you look around, it turns out record profits. The US has never been doing better. Low unemployment. I mean, Democrats should take more advantage of that.

I guess that was the point I was going to make and maybe we'll make tomorrow morning. You know, they are the party that defends a healthy version of democratic capitalism today. The Republicans defend kleptocratic, you know, oligarchic, crony corporate capitalism. And I do think the Democrats could do a lot to sort of, because it's funny how much, don't you find this, I mean, how much that old argument, which is like 40 years old now,

Reagan-Carter kind of Montgomery argument, still linger, I don't know if it really lingers in people's minds or it's an excuse for people to use, why they go along with the authoritarian agenda, but it is kind of amazing how strong it is after we've had pretty good economies under Democratic presidents and the biggest crash happened again, who knows who's to blame, but happened when a Republican is President, George W. Bush.

No, I think that's right. I do think it lingers and I think it's an excuse. I think it's both, but we'll see. This is where I go contra JVL and his total darkness of which like, you know, there's no negative externality that could happen to people that would make them come to their senses. I do think the economic side of this is pretty alarming. And if you get to a point where it's like the only people getting their beak wet are these AI 100 billionaires and the Trump family

and a handful of other grifters around them and people in the regular economy and in the business world start suffering, are doing worse. I don't know. I was laughing at Besant yesterday when he was like, well, yeah, sure, consumers have to eat a little bit of the tariffs at Walmart, but it's being offset because the price of energy is collapsing. It's like, is that actually good? I don't I don't know. That's not actually a good sign for the economy. What about what about all your energy buddies? What about all the what about all the fucking oil guys down in Texas to put you guys under the lighthouse? Are they thrilled about this? Anyway, all right, I could do a rant about the oil CEOs

get me more mad than anybody actually. I like the fact that you pick on Besson so much. He seems like particularly for a guy who's presumably a senior, you know, been around Wall Street and high levels and done a million of these kinds of public presentations, he's extremely bad, isn't he? I mean, unusually. I find him to be just totally appalling and unappealing and on every level.

And I find it the whole thing embarrassing for anybody who's made it this long without falling into deep despair. We're going to end with the conspiracy theorists coming home to roost for some of the Trump administration officials. We can end by kind of enjoying their pain a little bit, but, uh, well, let's stick with the economy. So Moody's is the, I guess, last ratings agency to downgrade us.

And this is related to what is happening on the Hill with this reconciliation bill. There are two elements that I want to talk to you about. One, Jonathan Cohen wrote about for us, which is just how last night, whichever we should go read, was just about how rushed and how opaque this is and what the implications of that are

But first just really quick on the moody side of it Also, it's just like the debt bomb that is coming like all this stuff is interacting together, right? Like we have these tariffs that are going to you know, increase increased prices on people We have the you know the cuts that are coming to the federal government And then you have this tax bill that's going through that is going to increase the deficit more than anything that any of the previous Presidents have done and in our lifetime none of whom have been particularly fiscally responsible And they're gonna do it at a time of high interest rates relatively higher interest rates at least recently speaking maybe not as much with a full historical perspective, but relatively high interest rates and

the results of which is really going to be us having huge payments on interest on the debt coming during the next decade and interest rates staying high on people and business. And it's just a totally irresponsible bill that they're jamming through. You see little green shoots of truth coming out of people on the Hill, some Republicans on the Hill that are like, this is too bad for me to not say anything about. And yet they still, last night in the middle of the night, kind of advanced it to the next step. So I don't know what you make of all that. Yeah, I like the fact that the rules committee

markup in the House now will be, has been scheduled, noticed, you know, formally for 1 a.m. Wednesday morning. I don't think I've ever seen that. Sometimes things go late, obviously. Like this hearing the other day went all through the night and they sort of attend that and they want to get it done and they don't care and it's all kind of rubber stamping. But to actually officially call a hearing for 1 a.m. Wednesday, I think it has to do with them getting it to the floor

before Memorial Day but they don't feel they'll have it done before Wednesday or something so that's the earliest they can do it on Wednesday. I don't quite understand the timing rules of Congress, so to speak, with the rules committee. Still it's pretty startling, right? Huge pieces of legislation. Jonathan Cohen makes a very good point. Obamacare, I was a pretty big opponent of it and the weekly standard published more pieces than I care to remember and I don't remember, thank God, about all of its problems and deficiencies

and bad policies and misleading rhetoric. That thing was debated for a year and there were extensive hearings with critics as well as defenders of it testifying. Waxman held I think eight hearings in energy and commerce, and there were others in other committees and every little part of it. Remember all the debates, the death panel? The reason Sarah Palin was able to discover the death panels and Joe Lieberman had a huge fight with the left about what was about to be a more public option and all these things. It was like, whatever you think of the legislation, it was examined, debated, changed actually in the course of its progress. Here, they're jamming it through with a 1 a.m. rules committee markup after a 10 p.m. committee

hearing the other night. No public hearings. Lots of it just released the text a couple of days ago, so the Medicaid cuts, which are pretty complicated actually to figure out. Jonathan's helpful on that, but, you know, still kind of murky. Putting it all together, I was thinking about this. I've been a little skeptical that Republicans will pay a real price for it, but I don't know. I think the combination of the tax cuts for the rich, busting the deficit open as well, cutting Medicaid, the foreign grift that we

just saw on this trip. I mean, it is a pretty good story, and it's a pretty easy, sometimes they're good stories, but they're hard to explain or where they cut against the image of the party. It takes a lot of people to assimilate them. This is like such a perfect, I think, classic democratic story to tell about what happens when you give Republicans, especially Trump Republicans, control of the executive branch and both houses of the legislature. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that there's gonna be real price to be paid for it politically and Trump's instinct as is usual like it's just his like lizard instinct on some of the stuff of breaking from traditional Republican policies when they when they're unpopular was right on this where he basically kind of alluded to the fact that each could they let the

You know tax increase on whatever 500 000 or 600 000 plus earners expire But the tax cut on on that top tax bracket expire and that's still because of what they're doing with a bunch of other stuff It still would have been a disproportionate tax benefit for the rich but That would have complicated the story quite a bit, right? And the fact that these guys in the hill won't let him do that And you're just gonna kind of jam through a full extension of the tax cuts for the rich in addition to these Medicaid cuts in

addition to the debt bomb I just yeah, no, I think it's gonna be a very easy story to tell and I think it's gonna be complicated for them to continue to get it through I part of the reason will be an easy story to tell is because Republicans are going to help the Democrats tell the story by doing by infighting. You know, Johnson is trying to fight that with this, you know, pushing these stuff through in the dead of night. But, you know, even if they get it through, and as a funny aside, Mike Johnson, his threat to people was that they're not going to get to leave for Memorial Day. If they don't pass this bill, I wish it's just so insane when you think about it. It's like you need to jam through this total reordering of the economy or you

don't get to have your Memorial Day vacation. Like they're a child, you know, like they're a teenager who isn't going to be allowed to go on the spring break trip with their friends to Mexico unless they get their homework done. And it's just embarrassing. It's pathetic. But even if they do jam it through this week, and then it goes to the Senate, you know, the senators, senators are still senators. There's still 53 Republican senators that are gonna wanna put their, you know, mark on it.

It's gonna be the only thing they do this year. So, you know, the handful of them that still have an ego that hasn't been totally stripped away from them and given up to Donald Trump are going to make changes. So, and they're going to criticize what happens in the House. So I think they've got major issues ahead on all this. The only thing I'd add is, I mean, you and I have emphasized the past Trump's approval

rating on important that is for what happens in November 2026. I think that's true. It also helps though when you're actually in the last two months of a campaign and running ads to have something they've, your opponent has voted for that is unpopular and bad policy. The immigration stuff's horrible and tariffs are very bad. Congress should be doing things about both issues. They're not doing, but no Republican member of Congress has exactly voted for, you could say Trump's cruel immigration policies or his idiotic back and forth on

tariffs. They're going to vote for this. This is a vote. I mean, the ad writes itself. Mr. So-and-so voted for this massive tax cut for the rich and for cutting healthcare for working class and middle class Americans. And if there's a little bit of an economic dip over the next year, just to compound it, interest rates don't come down.

You just tack that on and blame them for all of it. Even the Democrats can probably take advantage of this, you know? I don't know if you saw the story. It's been kind of flying under the radar. Mexico's security chief confirmed Tuesday that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the US last week as part of a deal between the son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration. So this is El Chapo. Some of El Chapo's brothers and family members were like walked across the border from Tijuana with suitcases and they're here.

His wife, El Chapo's wife, their kid. This is a matter of fact CBS story. Again, it was the Mexican security secretary that mentioned it. I don't know anything about El Chapo's wife. I've watched enough drug dealing movies to know that the wife usually knows what's happening. I don't know that she was in the dark. I don't think that she thought that El Chapo was just like a very successful businessman selling lawn mowers or whatever to people in Mexico City. I think that she knew it was going on. And the contrast, I just had to bring this up because the contrast between this, these guys are making deals with the rich, successful gang members and drug dealers, the ones that were bringing fentanyl into the country and

doing the rapes and the murders. He's making deals with the top guys while they are kidnapping people off the street who just happened to be Venezuelan, were here fleeing communism, had the wrong tattoo and sent them to a foreign gulag. And it is fucking outrageous because this is the type of thing I'm not sure why it's one of the radar. It should be the type of thing that people can get which is like Trump is doing favors for El Chapo's family as part of a deal while he's kidnapping regular Venezuelan refugees and sending them to a prison. I think it's

of a piece of the stuff we're talking about in the Middle East. Yeah, who made the deal? I mean, it's not as if the border's exactly wide open to people coming from Mexico these days. And this family, however, 17 family members show up with the end of the photo was pretty, you know, these large suitcases. I guess there was $70,000 of cash in some of these suitcases

was the headline I saw. And so that's not your normal, I'm going to just guess, your normal customs agent border patrol guy doesn't just let them through, you know? He's like, hey, wait a second, this is, I don't think we're supposed to be letting you guys through. So some orders came down from on high. And that's, I guess, Christina Ohm, I think, it may be testifying tomorrow. She never answers anything, obviously, but it really would be where exactly who ordered that these people be let in. What deal was cut by who? It was Donald Trump Jr. I mean, God knows, right? Right. What was the deal? What did deal was cut by who? It was Donald Trump Jr.?

God knows, right? What was the deal? What did we get out of it? What was the exchange? Well, on this point, just a reminder folks, June 6th, me, John Lovett, Sarah Longwell, and some special guests. We're going to be doing a fundraiser for Andrea Hernandez-Romero and a couple of the other – for the legal team supporting Andrea Hernandez-Romero and a couple of the other folks that have been disappeared to El Salvador. So come hang with us if you're in Washington June 6th. It's going to be serious. I'm going to rant and yell, but we'll also laugh a little bit and have some fun because

it is World Pride. So hopefully, you know, it won't be too big of a downer for you on your Friday night. All right. Speaking of laughing, let's get to our guys Cash and Bongino. So the fact that this had to be scheduled, I just think tells you a lot about the priorities of the Trump administration and who they're responsive to. Outside of the view of almost everybody listening to this, except for those who like me, enjoy following random mega weirdos on social media, there's been some angst about how the FBI has not been following through

on a lot of the conspiracy theories that were advanced in the MAGA world. Why hasn't any of the Biden crime family been arrested yet? Why haven't they revealed that it was the deep state that was behind the assassination attempts or the Russia hoax? Why haven't they revealed that it was the Clintons that were behind the Epstein murder? Some of the people, some of the rubes want the payoff on the QAnon stuff. They got the QAnon guys and the FBI, so where's the payoff? In order to manage this, Cash and Bongino do a joint interview with Maria Barrett-Romo, the biggest conspiracy theorist on Fox. It's just an insane scene. And I want to play a couple of clips from it. First, their response to the Epstein situation.

You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. People don't believe it. Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion. But as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who's been in that prison system, who's been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who's been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that's what that was. He killed himself. Again, you want me to...

I've seen the whole file. He killed himself. Hmm. The lady doth protest too much, maybe a little bit for me. I don't know. I always come back to why the Epstein didn't kill himself is not a conspiracy theory about Donald Trump, who we know had a very close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, was pictured with him, flew with him, was president when Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. He was in the custody of federal officials in the Trump administration. He had cabinet members in Alex Acosta that did lawyering on behalf of Epstein, at least

his firms did. And so, I don't know. Anyway, if you're going to be a conspiracy theorist, it's kind of intriguing. It's kind of intriguing. I don't know. Maybe it's Trump or maybe it's nothing. But it's funny that these guys had to go do the hostage tape about how Jeffrey Epstein really killed himself. What did you think? Did you enjoy that clip, Bill? Bill Nye I did. I was a little struck also that, of course, they were able to knock down conspiracies

when they want to and say, I've looked at the facts and it's not true. So for me, it brings home how unbelievably irresponsible, not even close to the word, cynical and demagogic they are in exploiting the people who believe in all these things. They don't believe it. I think that's a bit of a mistake some of our friends make that they're all gone down this rabbit hole. I don't believe that. They all know what they're doing. They are all utterly cynical people exploiting foolishness and

misinformation for their own political and mercenary ends. But they're also capable of when they feel they have to, of course, they knock down the, weren't you amused by how much the rhetoric is so much like it when one of, you know, a public health official says, look, I'm sorry, I've looked at the data, it's not right. I mean, it's like suddenly they sound like, you know,

semi-normal public officials, right? Yeah, I know, immediately. Dan Bongino has to sound like you, Andrew McCabe, right? Or like whoever, right? It's like having to do the responsible thing Andrew McCabe, right? Or whoever, right? It's like having to do the responsible thing. The only silver lining, I guess, is that there's an alternate universe where Cash and Dan Bongino were trumping up charges on people over all of this stuff. So I guess this is preferable to that.

But no, your point is well taken, just about how embarrassing it is that anybody who's being honest with themselves, had Kam one cash and bungee know would have been every day on their podcasts on their social media feeds on their grifty book tours talking about how the Harris administration was covering up you know Epstein because of a Clinton body count or whatever and how they're covering up the fact that the assassination attempt on Trump was a deep state effort to take out the Republican presidential candidate and they would be banging the drum on that. They'd be getting rich on that. That is what those guys would be doing. There's absolutely no doubt about it. And you get into a responsibility

and they have to say what is real and it to be I guess the victim of the type of demagoguery they would have been engaging in so there's a little joy in that. Well the type they're still engaging in for the issues where it's useful for them to engage in it. They certainly haven't come clean, they haven't looked at all the data and decided you know what that 2020 election wasn't rigged. I believe the evidence for that is as strong maybe stronger than the evidence of Jeffrey Epstein having committed suicide. There's a lot more impartial observers who have said the 2020 election was not rigged.

Why doesn't one of them tell the truth about that? That would actually be a contribution to the public welfare. That's a great point, Bill. Just for kicks, let's listen to them talk about the assassination attempts too. Are we going to be surprised at what you learned? The there you're looking for is not there. And I know people, I get it. I understand. It's not there. If it was there, we would have told you. This goes on for like a minute and a half. I just, I spared everybody. But it's hilarious. It's like, it's like Dan Bagino, who was a podcast host, advancing these conspiracies. Now it's like, I know, who was a podcast host, advancing these conspiracies. Now it's like, I know that there's a there that you're looking for, that I promised you

would be there, that I'd tell you there, that there was some evil deep state that was going after Mr. Trump. But actually, it wasn't that. The problem was that we live in a society with way too easy proliferation of guns and weaponry and bullets, and that a crazy young man was able to get access to all of that and go after Donald Trump. And that actually that's the problem, not the conspiracy theory that you want it to be. But you know, it's fun watching them squirm. It is.

Did you get to enjoy watching them squirm a little bit? I did. I did. I just can't still. It's fun watching them squirm, but it's kind of bad for the country that they're in the positions they're in. I'm just going to remind you. It's really bad for the country. Not to end on a downer note. I know we're not going to end on a downer note. I know we're ending on an upbeat note, but I just look at those, the idea that FBI Director Cash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, that those words have to cross our lips in that order. I can't quite live with that.

I hear you. I must add that this morning at the press briefing, just in case you thought that maybe once the people heard from Cash and Dan that that would be the final word on the matter. Unfortunately not. In the new media seat where Andrew Egger once sat, they brought in a gentleman named Zero Hedge who's funny. If you've seen this guy on Twitter, his Twitter picture, is it still like that? Oh yeah. His Twitter picture is maybe from the movie Fight Club. I don't know. We need a bunch to tell me what movie it's from, but it's an image of a shirtless muscled

man with like a little bit of blood coming down the middle of his body showing how tough this guy is. I've never seen the person's face. I've seen his Twitter account. There he was in the Andrew Egger chair, in the new media chair in the briefing room, and he looks like the biggest dork, like the biggest just total dweeb, couldn't even comb his hair. I don't think he's ever done a bicep curl. And there he was asking our press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, about the

Clinton body count and how Jeffrey Epstein was maybe the most famous Clinton-related suicide and he points to allegations of a blackmail ring with potential ties to the Israeli government. I think it might be part of the anti-Semitism campaign that the administration is going after, but this guy didn't qualify for that, I guess. There we are. It feels like we're in a total Looney Tunes world where the FBI director and the deputy FBI director have to be like, no, this stuff isn't true. Then any the next day anyway They put a guy in the briefing room to be like well you never know and and Carolyn Levin instead of saying This is an insane question. Do this is not true. You I refer you to cash Patel's interview yesterday She said no, you know Pam Bonnie and the DOJ is looking into it next question

It's pretty sad state of affairs bill. Not good. Not good. We're supposed to end with an upbeat note, but. Okay. How about this? Is this an upbeat note? Trump wants to investigate Bruce Springsteen. Yes, that's good. That's another bleak from the weekend. How much should Kamala Harris pay Bruce Springsteen for his poor performance during her campaign as president? I'm going to call for a major investigation into this matter. Isn't that a made illegal campaign contribution?" So there you go. Their eyes on the ball, Bill. No question. They're concerned about the Forgotten Man. They're worried about bringing back jobs to industrial America. And as part of the process, they just need a palace in the sky. They need to investigate Bruce Springsteen and the Disney corporation

and make sure El Chapo's family members get back into the country safe and sound. It's a great agenda. Make America great again. Well said. Well said. All right. I guess we should also close just once again. The story is so fucking sad. It just really sucks so bad. So best wishes to President Biden and his recovery and hopefully kind of what they alluded to there at the end of the statement about how it is treatable. Hopefully that turns out to be the case. I know we've all had a bunch of friends who have gone through cancer and it sucks and the treatment sucks. And so sending our best wishes to him and his family. We've got a good guest tomorrow.

So make sure to stick around for that. Hopefully he'll be able to bring a little bit more of sunshine than Bill Kristol is able to. Low bar, I guess. Low bar. So tune in tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Well, I'm at Saturday night You're all dressed up in blue I've been watching you while Maybe you've been watching me too So somebody ran out Left someone's heart in a mess Well if you're looking for love, honey I am tougher than the rest Some girls they want a handsome dime Or some good looking Joe

On the run some girls like a sweet talking Romeo The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brown.