The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1050: Bill Kristol: Something Worth Fighting For

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Despite our missteps in some of our more recent wars, we were fighting to bring freedom, democracy, and self-governance to others. Now, Trump's mercantilist agenda is showing us what it looks like to not have an American-led world order. And even after Russia's largest aerial assault on Ukraine since the war began, he still won't threaten Putin—only Zelensky. Meanwhile, just looking at the math alone, the reconciliation bill is alarming. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller for a Memorial Day pod. show notes Bill's 'Bulwark on Sunday' interview, "A Marine's Case Against MAGA" Will Selber on Trump's betrayal of our Afghan allies

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Bel Air Direct. Insurance simplified. Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is a Memorial Day. We're working. We're going to have an abbreviated show for you and it's Monday, so that means I'm here with Bill Kristol. How are you doing, Bill?

Fine, Tim. How are you? Did you get to barbecue or anything? Any grandkids? A little bit there. Well, they're of course too busy to actually see us because they're in extremely complicated baseball and softball tournaments, which require multiple travel schedules and, and you know, it's very complicated. Are you an intense sports grandfather?

Like are you shouting at the field? We are diligent and we enjoy it. I don't mean to make it sound like a duty. We go to McLean Little League a lot. You don't go to the two-hour travel games a cow rift can field in near your north And you're not in the arms. You haven't had any conflicts with um, we're against the parents trying to get the arms work We don't have what's that thing that? Our daughters have but I noticed some other grandparents have you know about this It's like let's call pitch watcher, but it's game, game watcher. Anyway, some parent puts in the pitch

by pitch and you can get it on your little device, well, on your own computer, not advice, it was just on your phone. You know, so like if you're at work and you're missing the first two innings of the game, you can get the pitch by pitch of how your kid and all the other kids are doing. It's fine for the parents. I can see why they're very interested, but I think for the grandparents, Susan and I think that's a bridge too far. I think that's a sign of mental illness. Even a care parent. I don't even watch that for Major League Baseball, right?

I think it's okay to not know the result of every swing, every ball and strike. Anyway, well, we have some very unserious Memorial Day thoughts. I thought it's nice. I will do the honor as well here on the pod, Adam Kuyper and our folks at thebullwork.com to bring a little bit of seriousness to Memorial Day. So it's not just talking about Donald Trump and his speech to the army cadets about trophy wives and Alphonse Capone, to talk about what traditionally the point was of Memorial Day. We've got Oliver Wendell Holmes, his 19th century anniversary speech, really about the Civil War veterans, where he talked about why Memorial Day is kept up.

And he said, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith that embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly to fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So, you must do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching." I guess that is kind of the element that makes it challenging, you know, to monitor the Donald Trump speeches, right, about whether there actually is a greater thing that we are reaching for rather than just, you know, whatever, American muscle porn. I don't know if you have any deep thoughts about that on the Memorial Day holiday. I don't have deep thoughts. I like the Oliver Wendell Holmes speech. There's one of the

great Memorial Day speeches and poetry, obviously, in fact. It's more difficult maybe today because the most recent wars haven't been, ultimately been successful, not due to any failings on the part of our veterans, but due to whatever world circumstances or failures of political leadership or just maybe they weren't the right wars to fight. That goes back, obviously, to Vietnam. I remember the Vietnam Fests coming back. I think it's made it all, given it all a little bit more of a,

I don't know what to say, a melancholy feel that Oliver Wendell Holmes, pretty soon after the Civil War, maybe before Reconstruction had really failed, was more in the enthusiasm side of it, which is fair enough. That's obviously a worthwhile sentiment too. I had a conversation with Michael Wood, our friend, young friend from Dallas yesterday, and he reflected on Memorial Day.

Will Selber has a good piece on the website, another Afghan vet. And I think that's tough seeing, you know, you fought there and you had friends, people under your command and your platoons who died and were wounded, and you had Afghan friends who now we got out, and the country's back to where Iraq, at least for a while, looked semi-successful. And even now, it's not Sonoma Lusane, right? But Afghanistan, it's not good. And the way we got out was, of course, pretty bad.

So anyway, I do feel like maybe it's always had this melancholy aspect. How could it not? You know, you're honoring those who died. But yeah, for sure. I do think, you know, it's probably not the moment to rehash, you know, all of our complex feelings about the, you know, neocon American greatness agenda. But there's something to be said for the fact that, like, in contrast with what Donald Trump offered in Saudi Arabia, you know, the idea that there is

something worth fighting for, that we're fighting for a goal that is greater than just mercantilistic, like, American financial interests. And so even in failure, right, like, there's a greater purpose, and I think this ends up getting lost both in Vietnam and Iraq at various points. But in failure, there's a greater purpose. I think this ends up getting lost both in Vietnam and Iraq at various points, but it releases an attempt to create a greater purpose for the people that are serving. I do feel that on the heels of failed wars and then now having somebody that's like the Memorial Day video today out from Trump and Hague South is just like, America, we don't care about climate change or democracy anymore. We just care about war fighting. That probably works for some people, but maybe isn't quite in the

Memorial Day spirit. Now, I totally, again, just to be clear, I mean, I would say I'm more convinced of the merits, you know, in principle of let's call it the neocon, a greatness, true greatness, freedom, democracy, self-government agenda than ever watching the Trumpist alternative. It's one thing to have the alternative be just to be more cautious and a little less, you know, be more careful where we get involved. That's a reasonable debate, obviously. We've had many of those debates over the decades. But the Trump agenda really, for me,

has made me more convinced of the correctness of what's called the freedom agenda as a fundamental principle for this country. And also, the abandoning it abroad leads to correlates with abandoning it to large measure at home. Having said that, it also makes you maybe the experiences of the last decades make one more aware, or maybe one always should have been aware of the, you know, that's just the

inevitably tragic and limited successes of any agenda, including the freedom agenda. So I'm very much more than ever, honestly, have we thought a lot of things as you have, I think, in our political lives? I got to say that the foreign policy agenda is a matter of prudence and particular choices. I've obviously done a fair amount of reflecting and rethinking, but it's a matter of its basic correctness for this country and for the world. I actually am more, that's why I haven't changed from being a Scoop Jackson Democrat more than 50 years ago, to a Reagan and McCain Republican, to a pro-Zelensky Democrat, if I can use that term today. Yeah. I got to hash this out. I texted Ben Rhodes and I was like, it's overdue for you

on the Bullock podcast. We can hash this out with him. But in his recent book, I was like, you know, again, some disagreements with the prudence of what had happened in the recent wars, but the thematics of Ben's book, which is basically that if you don't like the American world order, be careful about what's coming behind it, so is basically that if you don't like the American world order, be careful about what's coming behind it. So it's not pretty. I was like, there's some Bill Kristolian elements in that. So anyway, I guess we'll let Ben defend itself on that point. I'll watch your discussion. I'll watch Ben's face when you tell him, when you put it that way to him. We'll hatch that out together in the next couple of weeks.

Hey guys, it's Tim and Sarah. We're here with my friend and me, John Lovett from Love It or Leave It. We're bringing you guys all a special crossover collab with the Bulwark and Crooked Media. The Never Trump Rhinos Meet the Self-Important Podcast, bros. You are definitely the fucking self-important one. June is Pride Month and we're gonna be live in DC on June 6th for World Pride

for a very special live show fundraiser featuring the three of us plus some gay special guests. This one's a little different. Proceeds from tickets will be donated to support André Romero, the makeup artist who the Trump administration wrongly disappeared to El Salvador and who is currently being held in Sikant. Crooked and the Bulwark will be donating the proceeds from this fundraiser to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Tickets on sale now at crooked.com slash events.

These are going fast, so get yours before they're gone. Go to crooked.com slash events. And we will see you all on June 6th. Trump yesterday, I didn't know why I couldn't watch it. I can't. He is at the West Point graduation. I saw some some pictures. He was in a MAGA hat. I saw a clip, as I mentioned earlier, where he was talking about trophy wives. I saw that he went golfing right afterwards.

I don't know if there's much more to say about that, but I wanted to just give you an opportunity to share any thoughts you had. I mean, the MAGA hat, speaking to cadets on their graduation, it's so unbelievably inappropriate. Something they couldn't do and shouldn't do, right? They're warned not to wear anything that's political. You could say, well, making America great, I guess, isn't political.

It's not like having a Trump 2024 hat, but it is pretty political, obviously. So that was terrible. Biden, in 2022, who was, as we know, a little bit old and frail, stood and shook every cadet, if I'm not mistaken, every graduating cadet's hand. Now you don't have to do that. I don't think every president or vice president or the secretary of defense who's spoken has done that, to be fair.

So, but Trump just went off to play golf, as you say. After giving this totally inappropriate speech, which in which he litigates various grievances against previous administrations, the one line that I I the trophy wise, it's really insane. But he also says something like, you know, I brought the military back. No one wanted to join the military under Biden. He's saying this literally to 1000 plus cadets who volunteered to go to West Point and serve when Joe Biden was president, right? I mean, it's so, I don't know, what's the word even? I mean, it's grotesque and narcissistic. Narcissistic.

I mean, to the degree the staff wrote some of that, maybe they didn't write those particular lines, they're as bad as he is. Can I make that point generally? This is another conversation, but they are horrible. I mean, they are just sailing through life being Trump staffers, colluding and cooperating and enabling the most grotesque policies and statements and degradation of the American life. Somehow, they do not get called out on it enough, I feel like.

I've sort of thought about that a little. I don't even have the heart to go research exactly who's doing what. I don't even know even who Trump's top speechwriter is or what. I don't even know, do you know even who Trump's top speech writers or anything? I can't even, it's not like old administrations were one cared a little bit and thought maybe this one would be a little better than that one or something. I mean, they're, but they are all just going through doing, I don't know. I feel like the enabling and colluding of so many thousands, tens of thousands of people leaving aside everyone on the outside, all that stuff too.

I find that kind of astonishing. I thought a little bit about, you know, the guy who shows up and gives Trump the executive orders to sign, Trump sits there at the desk with that ridiculous thing and his signs, you know, whatever thing they give him. And I've often wondered, like, who is that guy? And I'd like to a little, someone should do a time, maybe we'll get someone at the board to do this, a little backstory on this. Is he proud to be giving Trump these, you know, orders that are, you know, destroying

our biomedical research and shattering our social fabric? I don't know. Maybe he is. He is proud. I'm blanking on his name right now, but I have read a little bit about him, and he is proud. And it's a self-selected group this time. And so, yeah, no, there is no really social comeuppance anymore.

And so it's enough to really make you wish you believed in hell. So that's something I'm going to work on over the next few weeks. I want to talk about the actual policies. Trump spoke on the tarmac about Putin and how something's really changed with that guy and then put out this extensive bleat. I guess before I read it, just for context for folks who have been checked out over the weekend. The most intense drone and missile strikes of the entire war targeting Ukraine happened

over the weekend, targeting civilian targets, obviously, in addition to military targets in cities across Ukraine. So just very, very ugly stuff. This is the president's reaction to that. I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely crazy, all caps. He is needlessly killing a lot of people.

I'm not just talking about soldiers, missiles, and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine for no reason whatsoever. Likewise, President Zelensky is doing his country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems. I don't like it and it better stop. This is a war that would never have started. If I were president, this is Zelensky's, Putin's and Biden's war, not Trump's. I'm only helping put out the big and ugly fires that have been started. So I've got a lot of thoughts on that. But why don't you take the lead?

You go, you were very interesting. A couple of tweets about it. So go ahead. Well, there's several thoughts. So point one is that he can't help but attack Zelensky and Biden. He can't just simply say what Vladimir Putin is doing is wrong. And you notice when he says to Zelensky, there's just one time in here where it says, and it better stop. He's not saying to Putin and the bombing of people better stop. He never says that. He says the stuff coming out of Zelensky of people better stop. He never says that. He says the stuff coming

out of Zelensky's mouth better stop. So the one time where he kind of butches himself up to feel tough enough to tell somebody to actually change their behavior, he's talking to Zelensky, not Putin. I think that's important to note. It's also important, I think, to note the contrast between, again, as I mentioned, kind of this West Point speech in the video and Hegseth where they're talking about how our war fighters are tough and we're not doing drag shows anymore and our military is just going to be strong again, versus again, this statement which is pretty weak, frankly, which is essentially not threatening Vladimir Putin with any military

response at all, just kind of doing a psychoanalysis of him. But to me, the most interesting thing about it, and I think that this is genuine, like he starts it by saying, I always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin. And I think there is a psychoanalysis element of this where I don't think that's a put on. I think Trump thinks he and Putin had a very good relationship because I don't think Trump has any real friends. I don't think Trump has any complex relationships with people that have good and bad inside

them and where they've gone through struggles together and come out the other side. I don't think he has any real friendships. I think his judgment of a good relationship is, if somebody's nice to me, we have a good relationship. If somebody's mean to me, we have a bad relationship. It's like a very childlike assessment of human nature. And so as insane as this seems, I think it's possible that Trump really has been surprised by this.

And like thinks he and Putin were friends and thinks that something has changed in Putin and does not recognize that they never really had a relationship at all and that Putin's been using them the whole time. So that's my annotated reaction to his bleach. I don't know what you think. Oh, I think that's very intelligent and interesting. I mean, I also think he's, as you say, he's not doing anything. Putin can find some way to stroke Trump and Trump will be back on board.

Basically, we'll forget this in a week. Decent people who hoped their forces in that maybe Trump will come around. He'll realize that he can't afford to lose in Ukraine. It'll make him look bad. And there are people in the administration who want to do better. I mean, that's looking increasingly like a very slim hope that Trump is going to pivot, but you know, I just come back to, again, it's the enablers, right? I mean, there are half the Republican members of Congress voted

for aid to Ukraine a year ago. They could do so again. There's a lot that Ukraine needs to combat this particularly, these larger and larger waves of Russian attacks and the Russians have improved their capabilities, a lot of help from North Korea and Iran. The Ukrainians have massively improved their capabilities. One of the really, someone was telling me this the other day, who knows this stuff in a way I certainly don't.

What Ukraine has done over the last three years is a matter of actual just military kind of learning and upgrading is sort of jaw-dropping, you know, sort of maybe the US or World War II would be a comparable example, but they can't do it all themselves. We could help them. I mean, that's just the fact. And so I'm sick of all the rep... You know, I just, a couple of people tweeted, it was very nice, Don Bacon, I think one, maybe one or two Republicans, the Republican member from Nebraska, very upset by what Putin's doing, very bad. If only they were actually members of Congress who could, in Bacon's case, have refused to vote for the reconciliation bill if it didn't have aid for Ukraine, or if

Trump didn't separately introduce, or if the leadership didn't introduce and guarantee a vote on aid for Ukraine, that vote would pass, incidentally. Johnson just has to let it come to the floor. Thune has to let it come to the floor. Maybe Trump would veto it. Maybe he wouldn't, incidentally, because I'm not so sure he wouldn't be overridden and maybe just to sign off on it. So again, the passivity of elected officials who have supposedly real responsibilities

and supposedly real commitments and views on these things, I just, I don't know. Pete I want to call out one person in particular on this point, Bill, and that's John Thune. I feel like John Thune has just gotten a really big pass, you know, maybe just because he's like a generic Ken doll of a senator and people don't know him that well. He doesn't have the reputation that Mitch McConnell does. He doesn't pop off on social media. And so I think that he gets to kind of hide in the background more than he deserves as the Senate leader. And I know John Thune. I've got to meet John Thune. I know people that worked for John Thune. John Thune has traditional Republican strong military anti-ussia, pro-NATO views. At least he did his whole career and he's been in there a long time.

And John Thune was never, never had like a Rand Paul libertarian streak or, you know, one of the, like a nationalist isolationist streak in him. I, John Thune was indistinguishable as a politician through his stated words and actions from Mitch McConnell or from pre-Trump administration Marco. Like that was John Thune and he has paid lip service to being pro-Ukraine. He's always voted on the Ukraine side when things came to a vote. He could do this. He could put up a bill, you know, he could spearhead a bill through the Senate

that provides more assistance and help to Ukraine right now. And I agree with you. I think it would pass. And I think it would pass with a veto-proof majority. And maybe depending on how the politics play out, whether Trump pressures people or strong arms people, but I think it would. And the fact that he's not doing it is really shameful and weak. And I think it merits just being called out specifically, John Thune. No, that's really, that's well said. I'm glad you developed that point. Because, you know, and Thune, Johnson gets beat up some because he's not, you know, he's such a right-winger. And that's, the media isn't personally sympathetic, I wouldn't say, to Mike Johnson.

But Thune's their friend. And so he gets, but Thune has in no way been more responsible than Johnson. And indeed, before the reconciliation bill, the one actual series of votes that were cast in either house that mattered were the confirmation votes, where Thune led the Senate Republicans in confirming Hegseth, Patel, Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

And I just, that thing, we fought those. I mean, we fought, we editorialized against the confirmations. We reported on it. It was kind of a big issue for us in November, December, January, which I'm glad we did our best. I wish we had more effect. But that, we sort of memory hold a little bit. I mean, that was a huge moment, I think, in retrospect.

It really signaled that for the foreseeable future, there would be no opposition to the most easily opposable thing, the most obviously unqualified, the kind of craziest nominations. And they didn't oppose them, one or two or three Republicans opposed all those nominees. And now they're A, they're in office and doing a lot of damage, if I could just say, whether it's Hank Sath or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard firing intelligence analysts who try to tell the truth. And it really was a marker of just, I guess, even afterwards, some of I thought a little,

well, maybe that's Trump's personal nominations. They didn't want to oppose Trump on something he cared about, but on policy, it'll be a little different. But no, the capitulation was thorough at the beginning. It has been thorough ever since. Yeah. And just a simple way to put it is John Thune carried water for Tulsi Gabbard and has abandoned Zelensky in Ukraine.

That's what he's done. No matter what he says or what he thinks his position is on private or what he may be in private, he's made a phone call or two. But from a public standpoint, through five months of being leader, that's what his record is. Just one specific example of this, I sent you this article Michael Weiss flagged for me about these specific missiles, these PAK-3 missiles, which are the response missiles

that Ukraine needs to stop the ballistic missiles that are coming in from Russia. As you mentioned, Russia has stockpiled a bunch of these and they were the ones causing a lot of damage this weekend. Zelensky is saying that Ukraine will pay whatever it takes. Presumably Europe is helping with that. It's a Lockheed, I guess, that makes these. And the White House remains just non-committal on this. So again, there are specific things that we can do that are defensive to protect Ukrainian

civilians. And Ukraine has said they will pay for them. That's not even aid. And yet we're still not doing it. Pete Slauson Yeah, it's shameful. It's shameful, really. Yeah. Peter O'Brien Okay. Shameful. I don't know much more to say on that. One more thing in Congress and then we'll let everybody get back to their holiday after this uplifting listen. The big beautiful bill. I want to play, I was listening over the weekend, a listener flagged for me the All In podcast

for folks who aren't familiar. It's these like four tech bros who to varying degrees have kind of thrown in with Trump. David Balzac's most famously is actually working for Trump. This is AI and Crypto czar. Chamath Pappatia has been, I think, the most... He was an Obama supporting tech guy who's gone full in with Trump to do the fundraiser forum. There are a couple other guys also.

It was interesting because they've been also water carrying on this show for the most part. I should... Jason, who I had on this pod before the election at times has been critical of Trump, but Chamath in particular and Sachs have just been carrying water for all of the most noxious things that Trump is doing, particularly on immigration. And so I thought it was noteworthy that like now that we're kind of closer to these guys wheelhouse when it comes to finances, what they're saying about the bill. And so I want to listen to Chamath here real quick. You're going to see energy prices spike.

You're gutting the number of electrons that will be available for things like AI. You're going to increase Medicare prices. And the math is wrong. So when you sensitize this thing to a four and a half or five or five and a quarter rate. So meaning not what the CBO used but the real conditions on the ground, this thing is an albatross. And I think unfortunately for President Trump's agenda and for a

MAGA movement, this is the worst of all conditions. The financial markets will punish this. Yeah, I think they're just kind of taking out the sort of ideological and like the political side of this. Like the folks that are just looking at it as straight math have pretty alarming things to say about the bill that's going through Congress right now. Yeah, I don't know these guys as well as you do. But maybe they could have weighed in a little bit, like what it was in play and gotten a few things changed isn't like one of those in the white house But I guess you know you just complain about the one that's in the white house was actually spinning for it

I should say on this pod But all the other three were all criticizing and the others maybe the others did make some calls and of course You can't really get any republican to desert trump or to insist on even some changes in it though I mean there were particular aspects of it that are more damaging than others. Now it's all terrible and the immigration policy, these guys should, I think, understand why it's important to have lots of immigrants in this country. But just from that point of view, probably especially high skilled immigrants who will help us maintain our edge if we still have it. I hope we do.

Who maybe went to Harvard, for example. Innovation, high tech, right. Or any other place where they're busy. Harvard just is obviously the tip of the spear there. So I don't know. Are they weighing in in a big way? Who maybe went to Harvard, for example. Innovation, high tech, right, or any other place where they're busy. Harvard just is obviously the tip of the spear there. I don't know, are they weighing in in a big way? I guess I haven't really heard that, but I welcome them. To the degree that they're tiptoeing away from total slavishness to MAGA,

of course they still have to put it as if what's really bad about this, it's hurting the MAGA agenda. Not, it's hurting the countryG agenda. Yeah. Not, it's hurting the country. Yeah. Okay, enough of my... It's starting to get bad. No, no. I know I have to, we need to welcome all of our new allies, etc., etc. I'm not welcoming Chamath.

I'm just saying that it is interesting that somebody... It is. I think it actually makes the point stronger. The fact that people that understand, you have to assume, if you speak to them privately after their microdosing ketamine or whatever it is that people do in Silicon Valley these days when they're being candid, you have to assume that they are not thrilled with at least the high-skilled immigrant, that side, the useful-to-them side of the immigration policy and the fact that people

are being scared away from this country. And you might assume, maybe not, I don't know, that some of them would have issues with the research being gutted since that is supporting a lot of the high tech work that these guys are investing in, particularly in biomedical space and elsewhere. But the fact that none of that rose to the level where they're like, we have to raise, we have to kind of wave a flag of caution and that this did, I think just speaks to how bad it is on the merits. And because it is a pretty traditional Republican framework, I do think maybe the intensity

of the criticism is a little different than on the stuff that is uniquely Trump, banning foreign students from Harvard or something, El Salvador. Since this is tax cuts and spending cuts, right? It's like traditional Republican stuff, but it's tax cuts and spending cuts just on steroids. And it is at a time that it's particularly ill-suited for, you know, given what's happening in the broader economy. And just really quick, here's Jessica Riedel summing it up. This bill costs more than the Trump tax cuts, the Biden Cares Act, and the Biden American Rescue Plan combined. They're going to spend a $52 billion to bail out farmers. That's tucked in here. And most importantly,

and this relates to something Chema said, it's already raising interest rates. We have interest rates that are high for recent times. Every time I bring that up, some of our boomer listeners are like, interest rates are nothing compared to 1978. Okay, but it's high for recent times, interest rates already are. And you saw it in the bond market last week, Chamath goes on and talks about this at greater length in that podcast. And you're seeing it now that it's so irresponsible fiscally that it is going to keep pushing

interest rates higher, which has an impact on everybody. So anyway, I just think that's why, that's the interesting part of why kind of it's worth flagging the criticism here. No, I agree with that. Actually, I myself have been a little too, and this is just another stupid Republican bill that cuts taxes predictably and doesn't cut spending.

And the only spending it cuts is for poor people, the food aid and especially Medicaid, obviously. But I think that's a good point that I, it's one thing to pass this in 2017 when after the Great Recession and after we'd fixed, I think, a lot of the financial sides of things, we'd had a slow growth, growth for six years, we had low interest rates. You could afford to pass a maybe somewhat foolish bill, but the country sort of, the economy chugged along. If you looked at some big chart from 2013 to 2020, you would barely notice as a macroeconomic

thing I bet that tax bill kind of just the same rate of growth, right? Doing it when you're in a much more precarious position, well, he inherited a good economy, mind you, but with interest rates especially being high, inflation not quite under control, and the pandemic leading to a lot of more deficit spending. Yeah, I think it's probably riskier. I think the interest rate focus is right. Just borrowing at 5%, the federal government borrowing trillions of dollars or billions of dollars, at least hundreds of billions at 5% as opposed to at 2% or something, really

changes the math, right? It changes it significantly. So, okay, we'll keep monitoring this. I was just going to go to the Senate. We'll see. I don't have a lot of hope for my man, John Thune, to really find his old, you know, fiscal hawkish muscles. Maybe text him, email him today and say, look, we were pretty tough on you today.

And if you want to come on, have a respectful half hour discussion, that'll be a test of you, but it'll be good. We should do that. I will email Jonathan. I'm not counting my chickens on that one, but we will. We'll send Jonathan an email, see if he wants to come on the pod and hash it out. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there is some really smart, considered policy happening behind the scenes when it

comes to our fiscal situation in the war in Ukraine. I'm not optimistic about that, but hope springs eternal. Bill Kristol, thank you so much. Have a great Memorial Day. You too, Tim. Thanks. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwork Podcast,

and we'll see you all then. Peace. I got that shit y'all, I got that shit y'all Everybody wanna know where the crib's at Niggas just now gettin' nice, so we did that Mommy staring at me like she wanna get kidnapped Money looking happy with his life, but we trans that Along with Lisa, Aisha, Sean, and Renee Even ran through the door down in Morgan State

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Yeah, we thuggin', rollin' on theug, get off up in the club, wildin' like what? Got Chris on pop, Henny with no chase, Samari don't stop, growin' up six o'clock Cause I got four honeys in the drop, and my manager on scouts, the keys to the spot And it's full of honeys, pennies with no tops, we take a perfect tour, be like, ooh, we in the room The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brown.