The Bulwark Podcast - Susan Glasser: Our Money-Grubbing President

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Not only did Trump pocket $2.2 billion last year—vastly increasing his pre-presidency wealth—he shamelessly showed off his new hand-me-down plane from Qatar which Americans paid hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade. Not to mention, there's a massive conflict of interest involved in Trump taking a gift from a country that is directly impacted by his administration's foreign policy decisions. Plus: Vance can't tell a joke to save his life, Trump is the polar opposite of Teddy Roosevelt in almost every way, the Russian casualty count from the war in Ukraine has been catastrophic for the country and potentially destabilizing, and the challenge of celebrating 250 when Trump has inverted the American dream.Susan Glasser joins Tim Miller.Show notes: Susan's 'Political Scene' podcast Tim's July 4th playlist This week only, a full Bulwark membership for everything we offer on our website is $86 a year. That's 14 percent off at http://thebulwark.com/july4

Hello, welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is the second of July, 2026. Welcome back to the show, staff writer at the New Yorker and host, co-host of its political scene podcast. Her most recent book is The Divider, co-authored with her husband Peter Baker. It's Susan Glasser. What's going on, Susan. Hey, man. So great to be with you. What a treat. Welcome back to the show. Not much to talk about. Not a lot happening up there. Not a lot of embarrassments for America on the world stage or anything. It's hard to decide where to start, but I think I want to hit on corruption. It didn't have a time to get into it yesterday.

I think Maggie mentioned it briefly on the pod, but Trump had to file financial disclosures. I guess it's something that the financial disclosures are getting filed, you know, I mean, these small victories this day and age. It revealed just an insane amount of graft and corruption. He brought in at least $2.2 billion. dollars, which is compared to much, much less than that from before he returned to the presidency. A lot of this money is from crypto, a lot of this money is from foreign countries, including the investment firm tied to the UAE. We're going to get into the cutter plane a little bit.

I guess that's more of government grift, but it is pretty astonishing that he has just decided that he is going to make as much money from this as possible as if he is. you know, Vladimir Putin or the corrupt dictator of a country that does not have a rule of law? Yeah. You know, the thing is, right. Maybe we're one of those countries doesn't have a rule of law, at least when it comes to the president of the United States. Well, I mean, actually, that is Donald Trump's theory of the case, which is that no laws apply to him and the Supreme Court in some ways has gone along with that theory.

You know, there's the sort of you and what army are going to do anything about it challenged to this, right? What what accountability is there for a president who decides to shamelessly monetize the presidency? There is increasing evidence that he's doing things like selling off pardons, this crypto business that Donald Trump and his sons have gotten into, along with the sons, I should point out, of Steve Whitkoff, his all-purpose, everything envoy, literally making billions of dollars. We know about the investment by the UAE investment fund. We just, not have a list of the other investors who have put more than $2 billion, $2 billion in the pocket of Donald Trump. This is the guy who went literally like steam flowing out of his ears crazy over the idea that, you know,

heaven forbid, Joe Biden's son had embarrassed the country by making money off of his father's name. And by the way, an embarrassment. Let's be honest that Hunter Biden was trading off of his wife. father's name and the appearance that he might have access when he joined the board of a Ukrainian energy company when Joe Biden was vice president. You know what that is? That's an embarrassment. We're talking, though, about maybe millions of dollars. Add many, many, many zeros here to the scale of corruption from Donald Trump. And from my perspective, you know, it's one of those things, are we so annoyed to this that people just won't care?

Or is corruption the issue that finally causes people to break with Donald Trump? I mean, to me, that is the question because it's where he's so profoundly different than essentially any of his predecessors. And we've had some crooked presidents, but not this crooked. Not anything in even the ballpark. This doesn't even include also the stock trading he's been doing, something that our past presidents weren't doing. I want to just focus in on the Middle East.

I mentioned the UAE deal, which is part of the law. bulk of the money, frankly, which is this massive crypto deal that the UAE is involved in. But then he also has some smaller for Trump. It would be a nice money for me. Licensing deals that are happening in these countries, $14 million in licensing deals for hotels in Qatar and in Saudi Arabia. That ties to the other corruption story from this week, which is our new Air Force One, which was gifted from Qatar. Trump took his first flight on that, the new plane that he feels is more appropriate to his status, which, again, I think should be noteworthy was kind of a like a hand-me-down from Qatar.

They wanted a fancier plane for themselves. So that's where we are right now as a country. We're taking Cutter's hand-me-downs. But if you tie all this together, he's got a personal, so he's making personal money with a licensing deal in Qatar. And then he also is taking gifts from Qatar for the country that he's. then going to use for his presidential library, all the while, like, being involved in negotiations with an active war that involves Qatar. I mean, Iran is attacking Qatar as part of the kind of decrease fire that we're in right now. And so, you know, I don't know if he's making decisions

entirely based on that, you know, brown paper bag of 14 million or the new fancy plane he's on, but it certainly is influencing. And like, this is why, you know, we, have rules around this sort of thing. Like the corruption, the money that he's making is tied directly to ongoing life or death policy affecting American citizens. Yeah, I think that's such an important point, Tim. In fact, Gutter, which gifted Donald Trump in effect personally gifted him a $400 million plane.

The American taxpayers had played an uncertain amount of hundreds of millions of dollars additionally to fit it up in order to have the communications and security gear required for the president to fly on it. So, you know, we've paid hundreds of millions of dollars for this gift that Donald Trump now proposes to take with him to his, quote, presidential library. But actually, it seems that he wants to keep using this plane personally. And, you know, where's the outrage to quote Bob Dole? Where's the outrage?

But Qatar is not only a key country that is affected by Donald Trump's decision to undertake this conflict in the Middle East against. Iran. Qatar plays a key role as an intermediary and negotiator both with Hamas, where it has been the key broker of talks over the last few years, as well as with the Iranians intermittently. And, you know, it's that, it's that welter of apparent conflicts of interest and the lack of transparency that was exactly what the entire framework of post-Watergate laws was designed to combat, right? the idea that people had after Nixon's excesses. And, you know, there were terrible scandals in that administration, though the dollar figures were way modest compared with Donald Trump's, including Nixon's vice president, Spirit Agnew, literally taking payoffs while he was in high office.

As a result of that, which Americans across the political spectrum viewed as a national embarrassment, a humiliation, an entire framework of laws was passed in this country. And it seems like Donald Trump's mission is to undo the final remaining shreds of these post-Watergate laws. And they were designed to have transparency and accountability that if people were contributing to our politicians, they should do so with strict limits. They should do so with strict disclosure requirements. That's basically all gone now. It's basically all gone. The world, as we know it growing up, I started out as a young reporter in Washington, Tim, it seems. queen. We would write these stories about like, you know, Tim Miller, congressional candidate receives

like $1,000, you know, $5,000 contribution, you know, from an industry in which, you know, his family has an interest. Isn't this a scandal? This is the world that we came up in, and it's a world that Donald Trump has sort of stood on its head. Yeah. We talked to this a little bit of David French after the Supreme Court rulings this week about the degree to which those post-Watergate reforms have just been completely gutted. And it kind of informs a little bit the thinking about, you know, what Democrats might do if they ever get back into power, you know, where at some level, you know, I think that my instinct and the instincts of, you know, Sarah really goes to them every once in a while I go to a pro-democracy meetup. You know,

Sarah is usually handling that for the bulwark. It's a little bit more in her wheelhouse. We all have our strengths. But, you know, you go to these things and it's like, look, everybody's earnest. Everybody is thinking about, like, what reforms, you know, can Trump proof the presidency in the future. And then you look at the spring course rulings and sort of radicalizes people. You start to think maybe that you can't create rules, you know, because there will always be

somebody that breaks rules. And you have to look to different types of strategies, you know, for. accruing power. And then you end up in a race to the bottom. I don't know. It's a pretty depressing thing to mull on our 250th anniversary, but it's extremely relevant this week. I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on that topic.

Yeah, I was thinking about the timing of this. It's sort of this painful juxtaposition between the soaring aspirations that were meant to be celebrating of the founders and the sort of gritty, you know, cold, hard, ruby cash reality of the American presidency right now. You know, it came up in your conversation with David French because the Supreme Court this week has basically gotten rid of the last of the meaningful kind of restrictions on not just contribution limits post-Watergate, but the idea that you couldn't have unlimited

amounts of essentially unaccountable cash flowing in coordination to parties and candidates. And that's just basically gone. now, which is why we've had this age of the hyper-empowered. As well as the independent agencies, that was the other thing that was this way. Yeah, well, exactly. The independent agencies, that predates Watergate. That goes all the way back to the New Deal. You know, people call them conservatives.

They're not. It's a far-right radical court. Donald Trump is also a radical president, although, interestingly, he doesn't necessarily share the same far-right ideology that the justices are imposing right now. You know, where they overlap, the justices have upheld him. where they don't overlap, the justices have come in and narrowly reproved Donald Trump on things like tariffs and outright overturning the Constitution's guarantee of birth rate citizenship. But, you know, it seems to me that the combination of an executive that knows no boundaries

and a Supreme Court that is asserting powers at the expense of Congress that we've never seen before. That is something that really changes the balance of power in a way that invites us to contemplate that on the 250th anniversary. I mean, I just, I think that the post-Trump presidency is going to test us still in, in entirely different ways. And I think our experience with the Joe Biden in regnum, I guess, as it will come to be known, shows that Democrats, they have talked about an existential threat. They talked about, you know, trying to put the guardrails back on. But they actually did not do that, even when they controlled the Senate and the House at the beginning of the Biden presidency, and they missed their window to do it, honestly. So that tells me they didn't

make it as much of a priority as their rhetoric would have suggested. Yeah, this was kind of the HR1 conversation, right, which ends up being this very big kind of grab bag of a lot of special interests, like liberal special interest groups plans with varying degrees of, you know, merit to them. But it was like never, like not really a serious effort to get a past. And I think they could have had a more tailored anti-corruption democracy protecting bill that might have fared better. But alas, here we are. I do also want to mention it's not just Trump that's breaking the corruption rules this week. Speaking of Cash, Cash Patel, his FBI director, also failed to properly disclose a six-figure purchase of stock in a Bitcoin-jeweled business, intelligence, and mobile software company that's contracted with the Department of Justice.

I guess the one thing will be true, your colleagues are the New Yorker, the investigative reporters, the Jane Mayors of the world. and her successors, they're going to have work for a lifetime following the administration. The jobs report is bad this morning, but it is a little bit of a make work for investigative reporters in 2029. And it's going to be like a lifetime employment clause. I mean, you know, remember people are still doing investigative work and putting out books every year about Richard Nixon. Right. Sure. So again, add zeros and add decades to this work when it comes to Donald Trump. And, you know, that's one where I do think, you know, you listen to Trump's overheated claims.

You know, he went out to North Dakota this week to have the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library making these sort of just grotesquely, you know, historically inaccurate and inflated claims for his own grandeur and how it somehow mirrors that of Teddy Roosevelt, which, you know, is making anyone who knows the history of Teddy Roosevelt role in their graves, you know, the sort of archetype of the progressive era father of America. American conservationism, and on you could go. But Donald Trump is what you might call a consequentialist and a maximalist in his desires to be seen as mattering. And I do think that his two terms in office mark some kind of a very definitive break with many of the norms, traditions, rules, laws, and history of the American presidency. We don't know where it's going to take us, but I think it's that's one where I'm going to say Donald Trump is right that he is a consequential president who's who's changing the story of our republic. Yeah, right up there with Mao, Stalin, all the other people that he said he wanted to be mentioned with. Did you see the video, I'm taking us on a

sidetrack for a second, but you mentioned the Teddy Roosevelt Library. Did you see the video of Trump talking to the AI Teddy Roosevelt? Yeah. It was extremely disorienting. Do you consider the Panama Canal your greatest achievement? Well, well. Right then, yes. The canal stands as one of my proudest battles, no question. But greatness is a strange thing. It isn't always the biggest or boldest job that matters most.

Panama Canal showed what America could achieve if we held steady and acted fast when the world dragged its feet. That said, I measure my greatest work by the lives improved. Park set aside, food and drugs made safe. The square deal given to all, not just to a few. Still, when I stood in the mud watching those steam shovels, knowing ships would pass through, changing the world's map forever, I felt I'd left a mark that would last.

Okay, you did. Thank you. So, yeah, Trump is asking him about the, Panama Canal and then you have this kind of Teddy Roosevelt type. What would you, what would you even call it? What did they do at Coachella? Were they like kind of beamed in the dead artists? There's another word for it.

I'm biking on. But we're getting close to the holiday. But yeah, it's kind of this Teddy Roosevelt visage and it's like he's answering the questions. I don't know. It felt dystopia. I was getting very harsh, hard dystopia vibes from it. Yeah, dystopia, but also it was this revealing exchange, Tim. I thought it was incredibly amazing. Donald Trump is like, whoa, Teddy, what's your greatest accomplishment?

Is it the Panama Canal? And Teddy Roosevelt is saying, oh, no, my thing is about the number of people that I helped. And to me, that is the incredible difference. Again, Roosevelt, the icon of the American Progressive Era movie, movement, the idea that government can constrain rampaging monopolists, rampaging gilded age businessmen, the Elon Musk's and toxic billionaires of their era. That's what Roosevelt was about. Roosevelt was about national parks and conservation and the environment.

He was about the idea that immigrants are teeming into our cities. We need to create an infrastructure to help them. This is the moment of the Settlement House movement. Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, an extremely not only a sort of educated man, a writer, a thinker. In fact, a prolific writer, a prolific reader in so many ways, except for the narcissism, right? You got to give him that. Except for the narcissism. He's about the polar opposite of Donald Trump, and in particular because the progressive era was literally about the idea that government can do something and ought to do something

to constrain and to work for the people of the country against the moneyed interest, which is the exact opposite literally of Donald Trump's sort of kleptocratic, oligarchic view of government. Also in just in the category of personal bravery, you know, Donald Trump's not exactly a rough rider. He had the bone spurs. He had the bone spurs he hit from war. There's an image of the little bald eagle that goes to like, and Trump gets really scared

when he's in the office when he thinks the eagle's going to peck him. so, you know, a lot of differences. I'm going on, the Eagles got a peck of. You haven't seen this video, Susan Glasser? It is so good. It is my favorite Donald Trump clip. It's the thing that I go to when I need joy. Favorite Donald Trump clip?

Yeah. We're revealing something in this podcast, which is unfortunate. He's in Trump Tower, and I don't know, they're doing like a photo shoot or something where he's trying to seem patriotic, and there's a bald eagle, and it's sitting next to him on his desk, and the eagle goes to, like, peck him. And Trump. Trump panics. Like the fucking bird is going to kill him.

It's really good. I'm going to send it to you after. I actually don't know. Although I do know that Donald Trump does not like animals. And by the way, Teddy Roosevelt, a big dog guy. In addition to all sorts of pets, I think they had more pets at the White House in the Roosevelt presidency than in any other presidency. So contemplate that for your 250. This episode is brought to you by the New York Times.

It's kind of like the Ohio State University. You've got to say it with the V. Susan and I just talked about all the corruption news coming from the Trump administration. But before we able to get our takes on these stories, somebody else had to report them out. Somebody had to report out the facts. The foundation of news commentary is fact-based reporting, this show, and all the other blah, blah, blah, podcasts you listen to depend on people doing real fact-based reporting. I'm constantly consuming it from other places, including the New York Times, it's going to be AP, which you talked about. in this podcast and their great reporting on our just tragic missile attack on the girls' school

in Menab. We also got some fantastic beat reporters here at the bulwark. My guy Jonathan Cohn, Lorne Egan, et cetera, bringing work to you like the Times does. And also you should be supporting your local paper like I do here in New Orleans. Two Times stories we talked about today required a group of reporters doing a deep dive on Trump's new financial disclosures. In the first, And the second was the breaking news report from the Times on Trump's first flight on the Qatari-gifted Air Force One. Just another example about how he's being bribed by foreign governments. These stories are examples of the results of fact-based reporting, and now I get to blab about them, and you get to decide what you think. So, wherever you seek it out, nationally or locally support fact-based reporting.

While we're laughing, the vice president's a jokester. you like that transition. Speaking yesterday... Yeah, it's not as good as your cash Pichel. Okay, thanks. The vice president was doing a little stand-up bit

yesterday in front of our soldiers. I'm not sure how well it landed. I pulled one clip of it for you. Let's give that a watch. Well, because I'm speaking to all of you are great patriots and service members, I've got the angel on my shoulder saying,

J-D, don't be partisan. We're going to make this non-partisan. I've got the devil on my shoulder who wants to talk about every time that Joe Biden fell up or down the stairs. And the media didn't care about that. But if I did it one time, if I did it one time, it would be a major, major story. I think I saw one smile there on the video. He had a couple other jokes that fell flat. I'm not going to punish the whole audience with.

Not really his strength. Hard to call that a joke, isn't it? I'm not, you know, the best judge of stand-up comments. But my guess is that, you know, J.D. has appropriately steered away from that line of work. These guys are masters of the what aboutism. And when Donald Trump is now officially 80 years old, and he clutches that handrail, like, you know, it's the only thing between him and Armageddon. Trump's age, his temperament, his ability to do the job, his ability even to stay awake in the course of a photo. is increasingly in question.

And it's one of those ones where J.D. is going to have a tougher time making this comparison when, you know, the argument to the American public is don't believe your own lying eyes when it comes to Donald Trump. And I will say that, you know, it's always posed a challenge to talk about a president and age no matter what. We saw that with Biden. The difference with Trump is that there are so many pathologies to unpack and unwrap. You know, what can we attribute to age-related to ammunition versus just his general self?

But Trump is aging before our eyes. That's very clear. I think we have gone for like literally like two weeks in row where every single day he was on camera falling asleep. And then he forces, you know, the people around him. One of my favorite clips recently was Marco Rubio up on Capitol Hill Testify. And a member, I think it was Ted Liu, plays a clip for him of Donald Trump. falling asleep while Rubio is extolling his brilliant leadership. And he says, like, Mr. Secretary of State, what do you think about the president falling asleep?

And McRub says, how dare you say that? The president has never followed asleep in front of me. Then they played again. And he says, you know, did you like to change your testimony? And he said, no, how dare you say that? You know, play that for J.D. Vance. That would be awesome. I would love to see what J.D. Vance's answer would be to that at a press conference.

And also is just such a weird thing to do from the troops. Like, we're in the 250 anniversary. You're supposed to be stirring the spirits, you know, trying to lift them up a little bit. You know, we're in the middle of a conflict. And it's like, we're going to do Biden stares jokes. That's just kind of, I don't know, man. It didn't really have it. I know you're not a Catholic, Susan, but JVL is dealing with some family matters.

And he's out this week. So I didn't get to kind of sit with him and ruminate over J.D.'s interview with Laura Ingram, where he's talking about his book Communion and his Catholic conversion. and see what you wonder about Laura Ingram. I think that she has some traits that go against what I learned as a Catholic schoolboy growing up. But whatever. She's been a Catholic for a while, talks about it a lot. They got together.

And I do have to play for you how J.D. explains the administration's immigration policies in the context of his Catholic conversion. The other thing, Laura, I'd say that my faith really motivates me towards is to remember that our economic policy, It doesn't exist for corporations. It doesn't exist for Wall Street. As much as we want everybody to be successful, it exists to support the dignity of human beings. We want every American to be able to raise a family,

to be able to support themselves in comfort and in dignity. That's why we're trying to bring investment in manufacturing back to the United States of America. That's why we don't like low-wage foreigners coming in and undercutting the wages of American workers. We want normal Americans to be able to live a dignitary. unified life. And I think that's a very, very Christian concept. Can I just say also, I do this every time, but as a Catholic, cradle Catholic, we don't say Christian concepts about our things. It's not

what we say. It's converted. You need to convert to our mores. Okay. You're on your book tour. That's just not how we talk. And either way, it's not a Catholic or a Christian concept. I don't believe that you want to make sure you only help the normal Americans. And in order to help the normal Americans, we need to punish low-wage foreigners. I've never heard a Pope talk like that. I don't believe that's correct. Well, no, not only do Pope's not talk like that, but this Pope has proven to be the single most successful, I think, rebutter of J.D. Vance's warped and distorted not only theology, but, you know, view of the role of government in the world. And it's, you know, in a fight between the Pope and J.D. Vance over what constitutes Catholic interpretation of Jesus's

teachings. I mean, you know, most people are going to go with the Pope every time. And it's so flagrantly trolling us, right, to talk about normal Americans and to use that phrase, dignity. Actually, it was interesting. I hadn't seen the clip. So the word dignity repeated by J.D. Vance over and over again in the context of this dehuman. humanizing, divisive, cruel policy. It sort of hit me in the stomach there, you know, Tim. I mean, it's really to talk about human dignity in the same sentence as the people who have imprisoned immigrants who have done nothing wrong except seek a better life in this country,

throwing them in these ice prisons, you know, with no process, with no, I mean, thousands and thousands of court decisions have said. It's not my opinion that I'm offering here. thousands, tens of thousands of court decisions since Trump and Vance came into office saying that what they are doing to immigrants is an abusive power, that it's wrong, and it's a violation not only of the rule of law, but of basic principles of human decency. They have dignity as well. I've got nothing to add to that.

That's really good. Hologram was this one came to me. It was a Teddy Roosevelt hologram. It came to me. There we go. We've got to go to Disney and revisit the hollow of the president. So I don't know what it is. is the Hall of the Presidents I loved as a kid, loved.

Talk about being a nerdy elementary school student. You're at Disney World, you know, and the other children wanted to go, whatever, meet Pluto or meet the princesses and, you know, ride on Space Mountain. I was like, we got to go to the Hall of Presidents. So it was a dorky child, and I loved it. There's something about the AI hologram that moves us into the uncanny Valley in a way I don't like. You know, I don't know. It feels unhuman.

The Hall of the Presidents, it's so weird. I don't know. It's so trippy and like it's scripted. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it is, but there's some kind of line there between the Hall of the Presidents and the AI hologram Teddy Roosevelt

that falls to a place I don't enjoy. All right, everybody, we're taking back the fourth at the bulwark. Miniature American flags for some, abortions for others, bulwark plus subscriptions for yet a third group to borrow from the Simpsons. We are running our 4th of July.

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Theborec.com slash July 4. That's the bulwark.com slash July 4. Link in the show notes to the offer and the playlist. I want to just run through some foreign policy news. I guess this is kind of foreign policy. We'll start with the trade policy. The Trump administration decided not to renew the USMCA, which is pretty interesting because Donald Trump said

that was the best agreement we've ever made. the best trade deal of all time. So I think it's strange that they would not renew the best trade deal of all time. I guess the best can always get better. They're now going to do yearly reviews where Trump shakes down the leaders of Mexico and Canada, I guess, is the new plan. But not great. I mean, the farmers, one hit after another for the farmers. It seems like every Trump policy is like it's almost like an elaborate plot to see how much he can piss off the farmers and still run up the numbers and rural.

America. But I don't know, do you have any thoughts on them backing off the USMCA? Yeah, I mean, well, as far as the farmers go, Donald Trump loves to provide evidence that, you know, his ride or die supporters will be there no matter how much he humiliates them, no matter how much he backs away from policies that would support him, no matter much, how much he fails to deliver the things that he said he would deliver. That's to Trump, that's like the ultimate sort of political own. And he loves that move. I also wouldn't underestimate the extent to which Donald Trump really has at this point an extremely vindictive view of our neighbors in particular of Canada, anything he can do to screw Canada and Mark Carney, the prime minister who has, you know, made standing up to Donald Trump and creating an alternate pathway for the middle powers of the world who still believe in quaint concepts like liberal democracy. You know, this is, I think, pretty personal for Trump in ways that we may be understating. And then, I think the most important thing is the thing that you pointed out, Tim, which is that it's a way of aggrandizing his power.

And the more that we don't have predictable, take it to the bank, treaties, deals, rules, but everything depends upon the munificence of the czar. That's Donald Trump's preferred method of not just policymaking, but economic governance. And he sees the economy in ways that are, it's very antithetical to traditional free market Republican, capitalism. It's much more a monarchical view of the right of the Lord to intervene and control the economy, to take stakes in companies, to create national champions, and to have all deals flow through him in some way. And when all deals flow through you, you know, what happens? Some of it sticks, shall we say. It's a good point on the personal relationships, because it's not just Carney, it's Shinebound, too, in Mexico. I've really like shown backbone a number of times.

It's interesting. Our two closest neighbors at times have shown more willingness to stand up to Trump's ridiculousness. I guess the nice thing you can say about it than some of our other allies. This is kind of one of these, we all know those stories, but I think it just bears mentioning, you know, the AP, this big breakdown of what happened with the missile that we shot into the girls' school in Iran. and, you know, they basically reconstruct the strike on the school in Monab. And they have a former Pentagon official telling the AP that the bombing came as a result of changes by the administration to reduce staff for mitigating civilian harm. They had these no strike lists that they were doing work on that had been stopped. Meanwhile, the Pentagon still hasn't released its findings,

Hegsef just this week said that they'll do so when the time is right. Trump last week said, I don't know if they're ever going to solve whose fault it was. missiles flying everywhere. So, you know, the administration just refuses to do the obvious here and wants us to not believe our lion eyes when it comes to this missile attack on the school in Iran. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think it's really important in a conflict, the difference between, you know, a democratic military and something like Vladimir Putin's Russia is not only not to engage

in the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure or civilian sites like a school. But when those things happen and they do happen in war to investigate them, to be transparent, to make amends, to try to understand what happened and to do what you can to mitigate that. The United States actually has a long experience because of all the post-9-11 wars that it fought in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and trying to mitigate civilian harm. And a lot of what happened when Donald Trump and Pete Hengseth came in, talking about liberating the warfighters to do their warfighting, was essentially saying, we don't want to have those guardrails. We don't want to have those constraints that the Pentagon, even under a Republican president George W. Bush, worked to create ways of minimizing civilian casualties. You know, Pete Hegseth literally got his job by his on-air advocacy on Fox News in the first term to make sure.

that service members who had been accused of atrocities against civilians in Iraq would not be held accountable. That's how he got his job. Donald Trump liked what he had to say on TV, and Trump actually overruled his own military chain of command, you know, largely at the behest of Pete Hegset. That tells you a lot about Pete Hegsaith and what his attitude toward civilian casualties is, unfortunately. Are we still at war with Iran? Do you know what's happening? What the status says, I assume that we're coming up on the weekend, we'll probably do some, we'll probably do some shooting back and forth again once the markets are closed for the holiday. Yeah, I mean, you know, the usual dribble of propaganda and, you know, sort of, there was one

that really caught my attention this week, you know, one outlet calling it Donald Trump's landmark memorandum of understanding. It's an interim ceasefire agreement that actually hasn't even proven effective at being a ceasefire because there's been an awful lot of fire. including this week between two sides for it to actually be called a meaningful ceasefire. More importantly, you know, there's no sign of any meaningful progress in the follow-on talks that we're supposed to be occurring in the course of the 60 days allocated in the ceasefire in which the United States and around were supposed to talk about the disposition of its nuclear program, supposed to talk about new arrangements for the Strait of Formoos.

if anything, what we've seen over the week since this memorandum of understanding is that Iran's understanding of the memorandum is that the Strait of Formoose is still under its control and essentially a spigot to be turned on and off at will in order to gain leverage in the negotiations in order to show Donald Trump who's still in control, perhaps in order to raise revenue ultimately. But that is definitely not what Marco Rubio and others told us. about the Memplerandum of understanding. And I would be very skeptical, Tim, that there will be any long-term peace deal

that comes out of this. They may not start a full-flight shooting war again in the short term. But I think it's very, very unlikely that there's going to be a long-term, stable peace between the United States and Iraq. As we move over to what's happening in Ukraine, obviously kind of the same.

This stuff starts to just continue. And I don't, ever liked to lose sight of it. What happened yesterday last night in Kiev was awful. Another just full force attack from Russia onto a civilian population of Kiev. My guy, Kailen Robertson, who is there and doing just really critical reporting on the ground, was taking some video last night that I just want to play for folks. So right behind me is a hotel on fire, bang on in the center of Kiev. This is a major city with millions of people living here. You can hear ballistic missiles exploding in the sky right now I'm going to go inside. And this is obviously a deliberate attack on

civilians. He's a residential buildings. Wow. He's a residential buildings bang on in a city center of millions of people here in Europe. And this is evidence. This is evidence not just of a nation that is deeply disturbed, but a nation that's willing to commit terrorism on a daily basis. And honestly, that's why it's so important to see these images like this as well. Because this Oh my God. So it looks like the attack is is over. And I just got out of the shelter and dawn is starting to break over the city. And the entire city is filled with smoke. That was last night. Yeah. I mean, you know, look, Trump, I mean, Putin's strategy for four years has been to target the population of Ukraine itself. It's, it's a war in many

ways of extermination of the Ukrainian state, the very idea that this is an independent nation. And he's making war on the people of Ukraine. What's interesting is that this massive attack on the capital is a response to Ukraine's increased pressure inside of Russia itself. It's had targeted attacks very different than Donald, then Putin, I got to stop doing that. That's okay. Ukraine has targeted oil refineries in Moscow, has targeted targets in St. Petersburg during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. The pressure they've made. managed to put on Russia has meant, you know, days-long lines for gas. They've been increasingly cutting off the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. You know, there,

you can't find not only fuel right now, but food or other supplies are running out. So it's this increasing pressure on Putin's government inside of Russia, I think, that prompted this attack on civilian population, but what's so notable is the asymmetry of it. You know, you have one country that's fighting for its existence that's trying to target military targets that's trying to shut down the Russian economy, and then you have basically random violence against individual Ukrainian citizens. Yeah, indiscriminate bombing. There's a report this week about just like the life expectancy of people that Russia is bringing to the front as non-existent, basically. And so Putin is just using humans for fuel, essentially,

and just sending more and more, you know, men to the front to get killed in order to extend this. One of the questions about kind of the thinking in the Kremlin, and you spent some time there, is whether we're kind of back to a possible instability. There are two kind of news stories that jumped out of me this week. week. One is, this is kind of like the Teddy Roosevelt AI. It's a very 2026 story, but somebody who doesn't have a history of betting on polymarket made a multi-million dollar bet that Putin would be out this year, which is like the kind of thing that was happening with regards to like, you know, the Israel war and our war where people are like, oh, hey, like there's this big bet that came in,

Venezuela that happened before the Venezuela attack. So that's something to watch. And then you did have a Russian, former Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, one of Putin's closest allies died. That could have been natural causes or, you know, who knows what's happening in Russia. But do you have any thoughts? And it's hard to get kind of reporting on what's happening inside the Kremlin at this point. But just curious what your perspective is. Yeah, well, it is fascinating, by the way, Sergei Ivanov was a former KGB official like Vladimir Putin, although he was a high-ranking general, unlike Putin, who never made it past Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB. And Ivanov, interestingly, was initially pegged as potentially Putin's successor.

And I think the world would have been a different place had Putin gone for him instead of Dmitri Medvedev, the sort of insignificant loyalist that he chose essentially as a placeholder. And then remember, he returned to the presidency after sitting out a term under Medvedev. Ivanov was a much stronger potential figure than Medvedev. And, And it's interesting that Putin chose not to have him be there. It's one of the many, many paths not taken. And it's a reminder that it's not all inevitable. Vladimir Putin was a very unlikely person when Peter and I were there in Moscow

and in the first few years of Putin's tenure. If you had said to anyone that this guy, this unknown 40-something, obscure former mid-ranking KGB guy, is going to be the longest serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, going to unleash the deadliest war in Europe since World War II. By the way, it's now surpassed in terms of casualties, even the Napoleonic wars for Russia. The only deadlier wars in Russia's history were World War I and World War II.

It's a catastrophe for the human capital in that society, going back to your question about what does it mean for the stability of Putin's government, for the possibility of Russia fighting onwards, there is inherent instability in this level of murderousness. I believe the latest estimates I saw were that Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties. So that's deaths and serious injuries in the course of this conflict. That is a staggering total. The reckless disregard for the Russian people itself is, of course, the great tragedy here. Vladimir Putin could have pursued a very different path. He led the nation down this path of catastrophe, war, death, and disaster.

But he's done so by reinstating a kind of 21st century version of a suffocating dictatorship. He has eliminated most forms of civil society. There is not a meaningful liberal opposition, I would say, that is functioning inside of Russia today. So the alternative might be even worse. Hardliners who believe Putin isn't prosecuting the war enough. And so it's bad to worse the scenarios that we contemplate for Russia right now. I want to close with the America 250 stuff coming up this weekend. You won't be attending.

You don't have any plans. Donald Trump said yesterday, North Dakota, that he's planning an extremely long speech to prove his vigor. It's going to be really hot in D.C. I assume that the orange paint on his face will be melting. I was hostile to the idea that someone even turn on the speech on the 4th of July and ruin my peace on Saturday. But my interest is a little bit piqued by old man in 107-degree weather. I don't know if you can watch it on videotape.

But I don't know if you have any thoughts on the America 250 celebration that has turned into a MAGA rally. Yeah. You know, there is also the great algae. conspiracy that Donald Trump, you know, has recently promoted because, of course, yesterday in North Dakota. He's like, who put the algae in? Who put the algae in? You know, one of the great questions of our times when they, when they have the America 250 time capsule and, you know, somebody opens it up, let's open America 350. They're going to be

what in the holy hell is this algae reflecting pool situation here? Or maybe they'll say this is the beginning. You know, now we're in a dystopian future and the algae has expanded to such a degree that it has ensconced the entire monument. Who knows? You know, I feel like I watched that movie late at night as a kid growing up. Donald Trump, at a 9.50 p.m. start time July 4th speech, I don't like to make predictions normally to him, but I feel like the ingredients are in place for one of these inauguration, crowd-sized, conspiracy. theories that Donald Trump will be promoting forever because I really genuinely, who in the hell is going to actually physically be present for this speech? Even if they paid to bus in

thousands of MAGA supporters. I mean, how much would you have to pay somebody to be there in a hundred four degree heat on the mall? You're not even allowed to have a chair. I don't even know if you're allowed to bring in like water to drink. I mean, it's hard to imagine that even a really genuine big America first patriot Trump fan is going to sign up for that one. So it seems to me...

You can watch it on your own TV while you do sparklers outside in the backyard. You know, that's... You've got air conditioning. The crowd size issue, frankly. I mean, I feel like Donald Trump has already pre-written the true social in all caps in which he complains that the Democrats have, you know, somehow lied

about the greatest crowd in the history of crowds and Martin Luther King nothing on this crowd. Like, I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that you will not be surprised if the crowd-sized grievance is one that we're litigating for a while. There's nobody there all week. I'm like, our guys, Jared and Brendan back at Bork, H.Q, I did a video with them because they've been walking down there.

And it's really sad. I mean, there's somebody, that's a lot of masturbating Uncle Sam got caught masturbating because there's nobody else around. You know, you're... So it was easy to see him. You didn't know about that, Susan? that there was an uncle guy dressed up an Uncle Sam costume

that got arrested on live stream for doing some personal business in front of the acrobatics tent at the Great American State Fair? Donald Trump's America, man. You know, somebody said to me the other day, and it's crazy because I just was thinking of this myself,

but I guess I'm not the only person to have thought that we're really living in like Mr. Potter's America. You know, like forget about Bedford Falls. Like we're in Potter'sville. Donald Trump. is Pottersville and, you know, the sort of caricature of the over-the-top celebration of all the things that we might think of as the inversion of the American dream. I mean, for me, that's what

makes it hard. You know, you ask a young person in particular today, what could make them proud to be an American? And I know Gallup found that those numbers have plummeted in the last decades since Trump took the presidency only, I think it's like 53% of Americans even can summon any notion of being proud to be an American on the occasion of the 250th anniversary. And, you know, I have a hard time making that case to a young person right now, you know, about what it is supposed to be, except the idea that giving in isn't the answer either. And I think that's really important. and that if somebody can change the meaning of that history so radically as as Trump is done,

then also somebody can change it back as well. And I just think that, you know, it's never too late to show up for the ideals that you claim to have. And even if you have sort of lost them along the way over the last decade, you know, it's still possible to sort of show back up and say, hey, this isn't who we are. And it isn't who we want to be. It isn't who we want to be. Yeah, I have Clint Smith on tomorrow for the show to kind of talk about this, talk about America, because he had this great book called How the Word is Past,

it kind of looks about the history of slavery and how we process it and how we learn about it and how we update it. He's good about talking about being real about what America is, but going back to the themes of Dr. King and of Lincoln, et cetera, about the promissory note part of America. and it's a little bit of a tough pitch to 13-year-olds, but it's the best we got. And, you know, he's out there doing it. So I look forward to that conversation tomorrow.

Susan Glasser, should we end with a laugh? You've already rocked me a little bit with the eagle and the uncle Sam. We've got the eagle. Producer Jason has the Eagle video. I want to show it to you live. I want to experience it together. Let's pull it up. There's Trump with the Eagle, if you're just listening.

Eagle's on his arm now. It's nice. His hair is getting must. Now the eagle goes a peckerb. This bird is seriously dangerous. You can see why I enjoy that so much. You know? Really scared.

This bird is seriously. Okay. This is a video podcast for people. If you want to really experience the full joy of the Bullwark podcast on July 2nd, 2026, you can visit us on Substacker YouTube. but that is Susan Glasser.

I always appreciate your insight and your wisdom on the show. We'll talk to you on the flip side, all right? Thank you very much, Tim, and happy 250th. All right, enjoy your independence day. Everybody else will be back tomorrow with, as mentioned, Clint Smith. It's going to be a good one. We'll see you all then. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper,

Associate producer Anselaer-Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.