The Bulwark Podcast - Susan Glasser: The Irredeemable Republicans

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Tim got his hopes up that Bill Cassidy was going to come out against Blanche as AG. But of course, the senator showed once again that Republicans will do anything to stay on Team Trump—including turning our government into a corrupt, gangster oligarchy. Never mind that ordinary Americans are still dealing with the stink bombs Trump dumped on our economy with his tariffs and failed war: We’ve got lousy job numbers and higher prices across the board. Plus: The deportation of legal immigrants is a moral stain on our country, Russia’s energy crisis has backed Putin into a dangerous corner, and Trump is on a goldmaxxing spree. Susan Glasser joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes: Catherine’s latest “Receipts” newsletter Sam and Catherine on the jobs numbers Evan Osnos’ New Yorker piece, “The Future, Made in China” Tim’s playlist

Welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. Staff writer at the New Yorker, co-host of its political scene podcast. Our most recent book is The Divider, co-authored with their husband. I think there's another book coming. It's Susan Glasser. What's happening? Tim, happy August. It's so good to be with you. Good to be with you.

Our friend and frequent guest of the show, David Frum, posted this on X this morning. I thought it was a good way to frame up to start of the conversation. The war on the eastern front is lost. The economy is collapsing. body is decaying, the leader escapes from intolerable realities into fantasies of monument building and renaming things for himself. That's pretty much the story. I think it falls into the established genre of, if I were a foreign correspondent, how would I cover this madness? And I'll tell you, Tim, because you're not here, I had this, like, you know, classic Washington

in the age of Trump out-of-body experience the other day. I was going across Memorial Bridge for the first time in a while and I was in an Uber and I was looking down at my phone and I happened to look up at the exact moment these two gigantic golden statues were literally inches away from my car window and I couldn't help myself. I sort of shrieked out loud. It was as like, you know, I got an actual street like audible shriek? I did and actually the Uber driver was like, oh my God, are we getting in an accident? I said, no, I'm sorry. just Trump's goldification, you know, of the city. Is that the gold, is that the gold fingering of the existing statues or are those new?

Apparently it's the gold fingering of existing statues. What we're living in here is the gold maxing of Washington, I guess, by Donald Trump. Part of my holiday was in Berlin and Paris. So I saw two arches. It took a little bit of the joy away. It was maybe the only time that I let him invade my holiday, which was, and the Brandon Brigade is fine. It's focused more on history. The Arctic Trump is awesome.

But I just found myself thinking about how really all this is was just Napoleon's, Napoleon Trump small man syndrome, wanting to create a bigger one. And it kind of took me out of the moment a little bit. You know, it's really, it's so sad because for me, the Brandon Burgate, and, and, and, you know, just standing there in that plaza is a reminder of what, I suppose, in hindsight, was probably the best moment of our lives. We just didn't realize it at the time, which was the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the, you know, the sort of the final end of, in a way, that World War II and the Cold War was in that moment, I was in college when that happened. And I've always felt like it's so rare, you know, that you sort of wake up in one world and, and go to sleep in a another. That's what that day in November of 1989 felt like. And, you know, I realize now, of course,

that, you know, this sense that we had, which we really had, it's hard to communicate that to young people today. But, you know, we really had a sense that, you know, this kind of moral arc of the universe that Barack Obama loves to talk about, that it really was bending in the right direction after a lot of twists and turns. And it's just, it's such a freaking tragedy. But for me, standing in that plaza in Berlin is always this incredibly positive thing. So I really, really don't like that you're now connecting it here to. Yeah, I'm sorry. It was really more about the Arctic Triomp where I felt it more because the Napoleon Trump parallels. Trump has stated them. He wants to be like Napoleon and Stalin. Interestingly, what a joke, though. I mean, let's just,

let's pause for a second to say Donald Trump is to Napoleon, you know, as Donald Duck is. I don't know who is the great who is a great duck I don't know yeah this is tough we're gonna keep working on this didn't actually Donald duck wasn't there a whole series where they had Donald Duck like playing like historical figures I feel like there was a kind of maybe it's like dark wing duck is to Donald Duck we'll keep working on it but yeah no that's fair I apologize I mean Napoleon has some bad marks on his track record but but yeah to compare him to Trump is is rude the east side gallery gave it to me though I did have I did have I did have some moments, like, just like right at the sort of precipice of, you know, kind of the eastern West Berlin was pretty powerful. I want to talk about the news. Minus 23,000 jobs for the last month reported this morning. Yikes.

A lot of that is loss of public sector jobs, local public sector jobs in education otherwise, but there's like no job gains happening, essentially. I have Fox Business. I was watching their, I like to watch their coverage of it. Always see how they do. They were pretty happy about the better than expected manufacturing numbers. 5,000 manufacturing jobs were created, which would have been just a minuscule number during the Biden age. Huge downward divisions also for May and June.

In recent months, almost 3 and 10 of the unemployed have been looking for work for more than six months. It's the greatest share since the pandemic. We obviously have Catherine Appalgo's into this stuff in depth on receipts every Friday. So you can go check that out. Just at the top line, the economic stories is not good. Yeah, I think that's right. There's been a little bit of hopium going on, right, in the kind of Fox Newsy corners where they're looking for any explanation that isn't, things are really bad in the country. And people are blaming Donald Trump and they're blaming Republicans.

I saw this morning Donald Trump saying, oh, no, actually, yes, people are really mad, but they're mad at Republicans. they're not mad at me, which is a pretty fascinating thing since he's demanded that the entire definition of republicanism at this moment be dictated purely by his own whims and gets very angry if you say that MAGA is anything other than whatever pops into Donald Trump's head. So even Donald Trump is distancing himself from Republicans, which probably not the best political strategy. You know, I think the sour mood of the country, this close to a midterm election where history and approval numbers for the president and other fundamentals already suggested, you know, it was going to look pretty tough for Republicans.

This isn't what you want to see in August. At this point, another distraction, frankly, is probably Donald Trump's best hope. And since he loves to run that play, I would say expect him to do something distracting. I'm going to try to offer some silver linings on this podcast. I get some feedback from listeners, even from you, even from the guest, that sometimes we're a little too bleak when we get together. Here's my silver lining here. We're still getting bad numbers.

I don't know. I think if you'd asked me in August of 2025 and you said, hey, in August 2026, the jobs report is going to be disastrous. Do you think that they'll put it out? I think I would have probably said no. So, you know, there's some. and the bowels of the government there. I'm probably jinxing it by even bringing voice to this.

That's how low we've dropped here. Like government reports are still being put out. That's a win. This is why the silver linings exercise is not always the most constructive one analytically. Look, there is the silver lining here, and I really actually don't love playing this game, but people are so astonished and amazing.

And it is jaw-dropping how focused the President of the United States is not on the economy, not on the war he unleashed in the Middle East, not on the sort of profound disruption of the workforce that AI already portends, but on his own projects like the gildification of statues in Washington, I know people were like freaking out about Maggie Haberman Singh the other day on a podcast that he spent like 70% of his time on these, quote, legacy projects. But there is the upside, which is every minute that he's screaming at Janine Perrow about not prosecuting an Olympian for ripping up the reflecting pool,

that is a minute that he is not spending on further screwing up America. So, you know, hey, if you're a Republican, I don't know if you can turn that into a campaign ad, but. Yeah, and some reports from focus groups and folks were watching yesterday is that like even this, I guess this isn't surprising, but I sometimes worry that I talk about a vacation, how I bubbled myself in the news. Sometimes I worry I bubble myself inside. Just like, I listen to Magin News, but kind of inside high information people news, you know what I mean? It's like, and it's hard for me to put my brain into like what kind of information is trickling to people that like don't really

read the news that much. And so this focus group was kind of that. It was like some Trump voters that have concerns about him or whatever. And this did come up, like the, like the, hey, things aren't going well for us economically, and he seems to be focused on all the gold stuff. Right. Like that part is kind of matriculating out, which I think is notable. Absolutely. I mean, for me, actually, I do think one of the enduring images of, you know, Maggie and Jonathan's

book, regime change, is that image of Donald Trump with a glue gun. in the office, personally applying that, you know, tacky fake gold wood to the walls of the oval office, this, you know, beautiful neoclassical mansion that is meant to be the architectural representation of, you know, this elegant, simple, spare constitution of ours in which, you know, we have this checks and balances. and instead there's a crazy would-be king,

gluing gold shit all over it. I mean, to me, that is like Donald Trump is the metaphor made manifest, right? And so I do think that that, it's simple. And he is a simple, in a way, character, which has made him very effective as a political communicator, except that what he's communicating now is, I don't give a shit about you and, you know, give me some more gold.

Right. It's kind of a left-brain-right-brain thing because, for me, the Maggie thing that sticks with me from that book because she's talking about how the advisor tells her 70% of his mind share is being spent on renovations. And it's like, okay. And that is evident because unfortunately we get to a look into his mind constantly every minute. The economy, I want to tie a little bit to the tariff stuff too.

So you posted about this and there been a couple tariff items lately. We played yesterday a couple of clips from his rally with Joe Lombardo on the no tax on tips in Nevada where they were talking about, you know, how important it is to be friends with Bill. because they're the job creators. And in an interview with Fox, he was asked, open-ended question, you're here to talk about the economy. What's your big message? Trump's reply, so tariffs have been incredible. And kind of goes on to, and then he gets into the kind of the refunds. And he's like, but we're still getting so much money from them. Apparently $100 billion has been refunded. A lot of these companies are just eating, though, themselves, not getting passed down. What's your kind of sense on all that? Yeah, I mean, a couple of thoughts. One, I do think that the kind of cycle of

willfulness in ignoring Trump's adult lifetime preoccupation with tariffs has been responsible for a lot of misinformation flowed to people, the idea that just because the Supreme Court shot down his tariffs, he was just going to forget about them, was never realistic. He's looking for ever more exotic instruments to impose tariffs. And it's an important example of the kind of bubble reality of Donald Trump and then reality reality. I noticed that there was a Canadian Prime Minister of Mark Carney, of course, a respected economist in his own right, the other day pointing out that what has Donald Trump's

aluminum tariffs on Canada done? It's coming back to bite American corporations who manufacture things and that they're the ones in many ways who are suffering from this economic assault that Trump thinks he's launching on our neighbor. And, you know, multiply that by industries, by sectors over time. And I think you have part of the reason why people are so uncertain about the future and in such a sour mood, because Trump has upended expectations about the economy without being able to create any kind of a durable new normal. And how's it going to shake out? Donald Trump's theory, the case was somehow that he's going to impose these magical tariffs and, you know, wave his golden Trump wand. And

companies are magically going to build new factories and create new jobs. Of course, that hasn't happened. Even if it were to happen, it would play out over years and decades. And the evidence, of course, strongly suggested it won't happen. Do you want to shout out my guys at the The Crown, it's a coffee shop in Oakland. I think a short list from the best coffee shops in America. We got this email because, you know, it was a big frequenter of there when I lived in Oakland, announcing why we're temporarily reducing the coffee prices. We've long maintained the tariffs.

We're not just a tax on businesses, but on the people. We're finding creative ways to try and pay back that debt to our customers at the Crown. Passing the refund for the full amount of the Crown's tariffed inventory onto our customers. Go support the Crown if you're in the Bay Area. But I haven't been getting that email from. Apple. I don't think that the iPhone prices are coming back down a little bit. But there was a chart I was looking at about inflation. And inflation really had got down below wage growth in about 2023, right? Like towards the end of Biden and had stayed that way to the beginning of Trump. And it was really not until the, you know, it was,

inflation is still a little higher than people wanted, but it was lower than wage growth. But it wasn't until the Iran war. You know, kind of the tariffs started to tick it up and the Iran war really gets it over. And that's something that people are feeling. Tim, you know, people talk about the Iran more as if it's a simple matter of let's get the price at the pump back down to where it was before. The price of gasoline is essentially the price of all manufactured goods and even much of food in the world in which we live in. And I think that if only it were simply a matter of, you know, how much you pay at the pump. But really, it's a proxy. You raise the price of gas.

You raise the price of energy. you raise the price basically of almost everything in a modern society. And the history of Trump 2.0 is going to be the history of the folly of this meme and what he's chosen to do in the second year of his second term. This segment is brought to you by The New York Times. One of the things Susan and I get into in this episode, it's just this brutal story about the real impacts of the Trump immigration regime. But before we can give our takes on it, somebody had to report the story.

Just like we had Jonathan Blitzer on a couple weeks ago to discuss the brutal conditions in the internment camps in Texas. You got to have reporters out there reporting these stories so that we can elevate them so we can use them to help bring pressure to the political leaders, in certain cases so we can comment on them and provide context or insight around them. it's the reporting that underpins everything. The show and every other show with commentary and current events depend on all that original fact-based reporting. Whether that's our fantastic beat reporters here at the bulwark, like Adrian and Jonathan Cohn, Lauren Egan,

or whether it's the reporters at your local paper or those at the New York Times. The immigration story I mentioned was reported by Amy Chin and Albert's son of the Times. They followed the story of these Vietnam refugees who immigrated the United States from Southeast Asia's children and are now being targeted by the Trump administration. We get into it more on the show.

These stories are important. We have to put human names on this so that people like the gentleman in Texas can start to learn a little bit more about the grotesquiries of this administration. That story is just one example of the fact-based reporting wherever you seek it out nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting thanks to New York Times.

We have a rare opportunity on this taped podcast to do a cliffhanger. Okay, are you ready for this? I was going to go to Todd Blanche next and talk about the Todd Blanche confirmation, but Senator Bill Cassidy, right as we were starting taping, tweeted the following. I will announce my decision on the Attorney General nominee at 1040 a.m. Eastern from the Senate floor. Oh, my God. So that will happen while we are taping. So exciting. Can you feel the excitement?

So here is just for some bath for people. The Republicans can afford to lose four. Well, I guess John Fenerman makes all this a wild card, but four senators. I'm assuming the Democrats all voted against. Collins and Murkowski have already said that they are no. Mitch McConnell's team put out a statement saying that he's alive and out of the hospital and that he'll be back in September. We've still not heard his voice.

Strangely, he's been cast a tie-breaking amendment votes on the farm bill, which is, I think, unusual. Senator Bozeman said that he's spoken to him. Whatever that's worth. So anyway, this you cannot do by proxy, a confirmation vote. So McConnell's out. for another a few weeks at minimum. And so Cassidy would be the tie-breaking vote

unless Federman kind of tied it back. So it's an important announcement. And I think we'll just do all the blanche coverage at the end once we hear. Do you want to do a prediction? Should we both make a prediction live? No, predictions are bad. Predictions are bad.

Let's just say this, Tim. Yeah. Bill Cassidy has every reason in the world to vote no. It doesn't mean he will, but it means that he has every reason to. Not least of which is that he's already proven the deciding vote, the final vote that got RFK Jr. Over the top after proclaiming his deep unease as a physician with the idea of confirming a vaccine skeptic, he went ahead and did it. So is that what Bill Cassidy wants his legacy to be? Can I tell you something embarrassing?

We're in 2026. We're in year 11. my brain knows that we're going to keep being disappointed by these people. But there's a flicker in my heart right now that's like my senator, Bill Cassidy, might do the right thing. I'm feeling it. Like that he might just do it. And so I might have to be disappointed live. If not, LSU Clemson's coming up in one month, kickoff.

I'm going to go give him a big hug. I'm going to go find him at the tailgate and give him a big hug if he does the right thing. So we'll see. End of the podcast. You're one of his constituents now. I am one of his constituents. Yeah. What was planning before he sent that tweet while we were podcasting was I was going to tell people to my fellow Louisiana and to listen and there are many of you to call them and be nice to them and invite them to the. All right. Well, they've got 16 minutes.

Yeah. Well, that's not going to work now. So we can't we can't do that now. So if he does the right thing, call him and thank him. Tell him, you know, bring him a little cup of jumbalaya next time you see him. All right, we'll see. We'll get back to Todd Blanche at the end. In that case, I want to do, I felt remiss coming back. in not doing immigration stories because that is like an ongoing thing. So I just wanted to highlight two stories in particular that I saw this morning paging through the real news, you know, you and your colleagues, New York Times. And even in a surprising outlet that I'll get to actually second, there was some real news. This is from New York Times. We're now back to sending Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees

from like half a century ago, back to Vietnam and other places. The Melissa Tran story stuck with me, really, though. She was born in Vietnam. She arrived in the United States in 1993 as an 11-year-old after living in a refugee camp in Philippines. So she's a refugee. Her family settled in Fairfax. At age 18, she made a mistake.

She stole from her workplace, a doctor's office, ended up getting a four-month sentence. And after that, she's had a clean record. She's now 44 years old. She has a husband. She has four children. She's a small business, small business owner in Fairfax. And we have deported her to Vietnam, a place she doesn't really remember or know, know anybody.

And this is like where they are now. Like they said they're to go after the criminals. But now, so now you're going after, you know, you're paging through or having AI page through criminal records from 20 years ago, 30 years ago. just like, you know, I did some bad shit when I was 18, I'll tell you. I got lucky that I avoided the long arm of the law when I don't know about Susan Glasser was probably following the rules when she was 18. But to think that we're going to deport a woman with four children, a small business owner, to place she didn't know a refugee, it's crazy. A lot of what's happening right now is a moral steam on the United States. And it's hard to speak in those terms.

and in a political environment at which there's so much incentive to excuse that which is done in your name if it's by your team. It's very hard to excuse a lot of this. What I find that makes it even more painful is that so much of it is a direct challenge to the idea of America itself. And, you know, if you want to be even more bummed out, listen to the speech that Ronald Reagan, gave before he left office at the end of his second term. And even if you grew up like I did, not exactly a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, you should listen to it even more so if you weren't a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s because it will blow your freaking mind.

And you'll say what has happened to the Republican Party that it doesn't believe in the core vision of the country that led basically all of our ancestors with a small exception to come to this country? And that to me was always the thing that that actually did unite us, right? Is that everybody had their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, come to this country and that we're all a mix and that it was the great opting society in which everybody had the chance to start over. And I feel like that's what's been under assault these last few years by Stephen Miller

and Donald Trump is the basis. notion and, you know, the fact, of course, that Donald Trump, you know, is the product of a draft dodger who came here from Germany and had opportunities he could never possibly had in Germany is, you know, thanks a lot. Yeah, I mean, it could have been a prison guard in Germany, probably. What would this be? I mean, what would the board podcast? Who owed I mean, if I did not play for people, just a segment of my favorite part of the

Reagan farewell address? So we're just going to duck that in right here. I've spoken to the Shining City all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with pre-ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls,

The walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. I say, did Ronald Reagan for you. You did. I know. It's like, hey, this is kind of like when you go to somebody's house and you try to, you know, bye, by their, you know, they don't wear shoes around the house. You take them off. Wait, I'm on the moment. I'm going to talk about Ronald Reagan.

Yeah, exactly. They pray before supper. You know, you bow your head in prayer. And I'm sure there's some Jewish traditions to come to your house. So, you know, that's nice. You come to the bulwark. You cite Reagan's farewell address. So we play a little bit of people.

It's a banger. This story, I have very mixed views on it, has it all. I guess you've got to shout out CBS doing it, covering it. It's a guy named John Gannon. He is a 75-year-old Trump voter, three-time Trump voter, who is not happy about his encounter with Trump's immigration deportation police. I'm going to play you a little bit of the report from this morning. I voted for Trump.

I am saying that they are picking. up law-inbiting citizens. They're destroying families, jobs. John Gannon is a 75-year-old businessman and lifelong Republican who supported President Trump in 2024. I wouldn't do that again, not after this fiasco. His fiancé, 45-year-old Venezuelan immigrant Yasmin Suarez Regis, was detained by ICE at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston in late July. Eight ice agents swarmed Jasmine. and detained her didn't tell us why and rustled her off into a car. Well, Susan.

Do you want me to go first? You know, is this, this is one of those like, you know, leopard face eating party. Yeah. We're shocked by leopard face eating behavior. I guess, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, it's nice to have John on board. Water's warm for everybody. I hope he votes for James Tala Rica, Gina Hinoza in Texas. You know, no empathy for the Haitians who came here legally also were smeared.

We're told that they're pet eaters, you know, are going to be now deported back to a hellscape. But, okay, if we need the face of kind of the victims of the immigration regime to be a 75-year-old businessman whose sugar baby is getting deported, was here legally via asylum, maybe that's how we break through in the Dallas suburbs. Maybe James should bring him to a campaign event. But I don't know, a lot, a lot of unpack. I was watching the story and I was like, oh, his wife got deported. That's interesting. I was like, oh, okay, hey, love comes in many ways.

I'm pro. This is their new tactic. And I do think that it strikes me as something that's very, very, very likely to backfire with people. There's been a lot of shock videos seen in recent weeks of ICE agents at airports, taking people out, that people find that very jarring, disturbing. It's a setting, which you don't expect it. And it clearly reflects enormous pressure on these immigration agencies to step up their number of arrests. They've gone very, very far from this idea that we're just going to be deporting what what Trump would always call the worst to the worst.

obviously somebody's, you know, peaceful law-abiding, employed 44-year-old wife is not the worst of the worst. And people who've been in the country for decades. And I think it represents something that's not a surprise to the big news consumers, frankly, on the right or the left. But it's that less plugged in undecided middle that's vanishingly small that has been deciding elections in this very polarized country. And so I think it's the paradox, right? Like the less you know, the more power you have in our politics, depending on where you live. So those are the people who are now showing up in these polls.

And I do think if you look at these numbers, it's not just that Donald Trump has bad numbers, right? He's always been a polarizing figure. It is interesting to me that you're seeing the softening of Trump's support among Republicans, lifelong Republicans like our friend there on CBS, Republican-leading independents, younger male voters, exactly the people who essentially swung the election to Trump in 2024. The thing that is

substantively about that story is that what he mentions is that she came here legally. I do think it's more than to just continue to really say that. Like they, in their kind of nativist conferences they have, they're like, it doesn't count if you're an asylum,

if you're TPS because Biden let you in and Biden went around the process. blah, blah, blah. But it's like, as far as these people are concerned, who are living their lives, they didn't swim across the Rio Grande. They didn't overstay their visa. They came through a legit process, had temporary protected status or had a Silea status, lived their lives, were engaged to be married. I guess, to correct myself, I guess I was his fiance.

Worked with the Haitians were working, you know, consent on their kids to school. And it's like, okay, now you're going to treat them like a common criminal. I think your point about the airport is also true. People are anxious in the airport. Are you anxious about going through security? It's, you know, it feels more like East Germany to circle us back to the top than America. Yeah, you mean you feel uncomfortable when there's like masked armed men snatching people in the middle of the airport on, you know, with possibly no legal grounds to do so.

Yeah, that's not America. It's a moral stain on our country that people who came here as refugees from some of the worst, most violent dysfunction. social societies in the world, following the rules as we set them at the time, that America is so rich and disdainful that we're going to change the rules after the fact to screw over a bunch of refugees who come from the toughest places in the world. It's very hard to imagine that this is what Americans, whatever your ideological point of view, that this is what you want. It's hard to believe it, but summer's coming to an end. No, I refuse. I refuse. I refuse to acknowledge it.

End the summer, forever summer. In my mind. Okay? Some of you people are fall people. Fall people are so strange to me, but some of you people are fall people. Not me. Come from a long line of anti-fall people. My mother had a fall funk.

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Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie. he's also opposed to that homosexuality is no place in America so it's just kind of me and the Muslims on our way out for him his personal life is not what I would do he was one of the guys with the Christmas cards with the kids and the weapons he had a go-fund me for a stillborn child's burial grave obviously that's so tragic but apparently he stole the money from it

allegedly there's some investigation into that he lost a primary Republican voters We've been mean to Republican voters this week because they voted for Thomas J. Smith over the Muslim guy or the guy with the Muslim sounding name, excuse me, that Trump endorsed. They booed the cop with the Muslim name who died in the line of action, also a veteran.

And so, you know, Republican voters not covering themselves in glory this week. But apparently in this district, they're like, King of the Ogles, that's enough. We've had enough for you. So that's good. Good?

No? nothing okay all right i'll play uh you know a sort of uh silver linings bingo here silver linings playbook no all right whatever goodbye and i i'm sorry andy ogles peace out that's all that's good done already formed possibly just one other thing on the other side of i guess it's kind of related the democrats did this last cycle and there was all of this kind of like elite pearl clutching i'm not wearing my pearls pearl clutching over like oh the democrats are putting money into peter meyer's district to support the insurrectionists because it'll make them easier to beat. And, you know, there were panels on cable news and, you know, et cetera, being like, the bad Democrats. I thought

you cared about democracy. And I was just like, you know, that's a tactic. You know, it's a legitimate tactic in politics. And I don't really think a lot of these Republicans that they were opposing had exactly been huge defenders of democracy. And Peter Meyer did the impeachment vote, but then after that, like, was pretty Trumpy. So anyway, that's either here or there. Republicans are doing that with no, because they don't ever do this, surrending of garments, they don't trust themselves, and the Democratic side. I'm not sure this has gotten enough attention for that reason. Francisco Hong, the DSA candidate running for governor in Wisconsin, who doesn't like any holidays,

she has no money, is running no TV ads. But there are TV ads supporting her. 3 million plus in Wisconsin right now from Republican groups that are trying to push her forward. They think she's the weaker candidate. So I just wonder if you have any thoughts on that tactic, on that Wisconsin. and governor's race. Syed, anything kind of going on in that,

the Democratic side of the discourse. Look, you know, putting aside any value judgments here, of course they're doing that. Of course they're doing that. The woman, as far as I understand it, the way they're portraying her is she's against Thanksgiving. She did some cleanup on that on Politico and said that she likes. A very popular holiday.

I personally favor Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. I like to cook on Thanksgiving and I like Thanksgiving. So, you know, Republicans this year, They're like kids in a candy store when it comes to, you know, the DSA platform and any statements ever made by DSA candidates. I feel like those are the people who are giving all the page views to, you know, the Democratic Socialists right now. Because what else do they have to run up? You know, they're not going to defend Donald Trump's record.

It's much easier to scare people than it is to defend indefensible things. dragging people's fiancees, you know, out of the line in the airport. And of course, they're doing that. They would be stupid not to do them. I do think it should make Wisconsin Democrats. Just take a second look. If the Republicans are putting

3 million plus in to try to make her the nominee, it's important seat. The governor of Wisconsin being a Democrat in 2028 is pretty important if the Republicans try to do what they did in 2020. It was important to have Democrats in or in a couple of cases, I guess,

Ravensburg and a campaign full of good Republicans in these offices that prevented their attempt to steal the 2020 election. And insurrectionist, Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee, he signed on to the lawsuit, the Texas lawsuit that would have negated the votes of Wisconsin citizens. Like, he wanted to take away the votes of his own citizens to install Trump as president. That'd be a pretty alarming person to have as governor. And I think that if he wants Francis Kong to be his opponent, that should be a little bit of a wake-up call. That election's coming up on Tuesday. JVL might be one 16th of a doctor. I am zero 16th of a lawyer. Not a paperwork guy at all actually famously. So there are some things I end up putting off and I really shouldn't.

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Trust and will.com slash bulwark. I'll do foreign policy with you. A couple of Russia stories. Moscow is escalating its ballistic missile attacks on Kiev this week. Ukraine's suffering from a dwindling supply of air defense interceptors. on Wednesday, 17 people were killed in Kiev by Russian strikes. This is all still happening. And the telegraphs reporting, I think we might have talked about this last time you're on,

but these reports are still trickling out about how the U.S. intel is warning that Russia is looking into attacks in other NATO territory this fall to try to further disrupt the alliance. Yeah, I mean, I think what's really striking is that it's not just that the war between Ukraine and Russia is continuing, But in some ways, it's changed pretty dramatically in recent months. And you've seen, on the one hand, Ukraine has had a great success in striking deep inside Russia using their drone program, hitting Russian oil refineries, hitting most recently Russia's largest e-commerce site. And, you know, that's had a huge impact, you know, bringing the war home to Moscow and

St. Petersburg, making Putin feel the cost of it. Russia is experiencing right now the greatest energy crisis it has since the fall of the Soviet Union. And this is really something remarkable for, you know, one of the world's largest energy producers. And so you've had Ukraine kind of untethered since we're no longer giving Ukraine any aid. Obviously, we don't get to impose conditions on their military actions. And so you've seen them really striking hard at Russia. The Russian response, though, has been to escalate these. ballistic missile attacks on civilian targets. I should really emphasize that. People may just think

sort of on the one hand, on the other hand, it's not. Ukraine is attacking military and infrastructure targets in Russia. Russia is responding by knocking the crap out of apartment buildings where people live in cities across Ukraine. So that's happening. And there's also a clear sense that what is shaping this U.S. Intel assessment that I think is so important for people to understand is what Putin's history, it's when he's in a corner, he tends to escalate. And I think the fear is that Putin, when things are looking even more unwinnable in Ukraine, that he may be looking to take the fight outside of the borders here to poke NATO to show that the U.S. certainly is not prepared to respond to an attack on a NATO member in the Baltics, for example. There have been

increasingly worrisome probing attacks that I feel like had gotten almost no attention here in the U.S. For example, just the other day, there was what appeared to be an explosive-filled drone at an airport in Germany near a Ukrainian aircraft. I think you've seen other examples of drones that may be associated with Russia disrupting civilian air traffic in other airports across Europe in the last couple years. And you could see more cyber attacks. You could see a lot of ways in which Russia may seek to take the fight outside of Ukraine in the next few years. And I think we're not really prepared for it. European publics are probably not prepared for it. And frankly, I just think it's a matter of time. When you talk to other people, like, and obviously for people don't know, you spent a lot of time in Russia

covering it and still speak to foreign policy experts and, and, and, and, you know, and, you know, and electeds and leaders in Europe, what is like their scale of concern about this? I think it's enormous. I think there is a recognition that there is essentially a time clock that we're on. We don't know exactly how long it's going to be. But look at Iran's success as well as Ukraine's in modern asymmetrical warfare, right? I mean, that's what's happening here. You're taking drones in the case of the Iranians that cost maybe 40.

$40,000 shooting them off of small boats in the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States military has been expending $2 million interceptors to shoot down those $40,000 drones. Unsustainable. A lot of people warned about that at the beginning of this conflict. Sure enough, we're now seeing stories come out of the Pentagon that the U.S. supply of these munitions has dangerously dwindled. That means not only fewer munitions for the U.S. in its conflict in the Middle East, it means fewer things like that for its partners in Europe, even if Donald Trump woke up tomorrow and decided he wanted to give more concrete assistance and attackums to the Ukrainians. He doesn't have them anymore to give. That's a moment that Russia and possibly China may find just simply too tempting

not to take advantage of the security environment in the world right now is far, far more unstable and dangerous than it was a year ago. in the grand scheme of things. If you're going to catastrophize, like some of the stuff has been relatively limited, but kind of what Iran has done on airports and hotels, you know, and like Kuwait and Qatar and Bahrain,

you know, like if Russia did decide to do that to test, I don't want to bring this into existence, but like name a specific country, but just started like, you know, doing those types of attacks against countries that were supporting Ukraine, supplying weapons for Ukraine. It's not catastrophizing, Tim. It's happening. The seven different states found their water systems, the target of hacks here in the United States already. Remember, this is the one. You might have missed this. No, Trump said it was Tim Walls. I learned when I came back. Trump said Tim Walls attacked his own state's water system. But of course, it was multiple different states around the country. And this is the scenario exactly that America's national security. experts have been worrying about for the last number of years. And maybe this one was the Iranians.

What happens? We know that the Russians and the Chinese are already inside many of our critical infrastructure systems. A sort of deterrence, as I understand it, has sort of held sway, which is to say that they know that we have capacities to disrupt their own systems, which is part of why you haven't seen the great powers directly doing this to each other yet. But they are inside our critical infrastructure already. The capacities are there. Drones have been proliferating. And of course, it's only a matter of time before it hits outside these active conflict zones. Remember the amazing Ukrainian operation in Russia. It was just a year ago where they hid the drones inside the truck and then, you know, brought them, you know, hundreds of miles into Siberia and then unleash them.

Yeah. I was just talking to somebody the other day who really follows this closely. That was just a year ago. the Ukrainians no longer need to do that. They've already figured out how to make their drones so much more long range, Tim. They don't need the whole hollowed out truck, the whole incredible deception operation anymore. They're able now to strike that deeply inside the heart of Russia now from more than a thousand miles away. I mean, this just potential risk just emphasizes even more how stupid the Iran war is and how stupid it was. that we got ourselves into the situation that we're losing like these defensive capabilities. So losing the munitions and the material that we would need in the sort of situation.

Like in that picture that you paint, right, like where Russia really does do this in Germany, et cetera, other places, and it's not really just a one-off, but it's an actual, even just as kind of a test campaign for a little while. It would look so stupid that we would be unable to defend against that because we would, We had wasted all of this material on a pointless war in Iran that has not only just gotten us nothing, but actually, you know, caused negative consequences. Indeed. Indeed, it would.

I mean, look, it's not catastrophizing. These are things that are happening right now already. All right. Well, my silver lining's effort has totally failed. I want to ask you about your colleague Evan Osnows' China story, like a typical Louisiana and Bill Cassidy is late for his speech. So we'll see if we get news on that before I want to let you go. I want to... He's your colleague on the political scene podcast.

And, you know, writing for the New Yorker, Evan kind of wrote about the ways in which we're losing the competition for the future of China. One thing I would kind of use to sum it up is that you talk about how China is concentrating on AI, biotech, robotics, batteries, energy, advanced manufacturing. While we're increasingly focused on tariffs, deportations, building arcs, if you're being nicer, I guess AI. but fossil fuels, crypto. Uh-oh. Okay, here it is. We got it? He's voting yes. Why did I have hope?

Tim, Tim, dude. I just, here's, can I just tell you what's going on in my head? We're going to come back to China. Can I tell you what's happening in my head? Can I tell you what's happening? And by the way, Evan's story is fantastic. Everyone should read it. Yeah, we're going to do at least one sentence on at the end.

I'm Sarah Longwelling. I'm losing with football. I do have some people that know Bill Cassidy, and his wife seems like a nice person. But in my brain, I'm going, okay, he's going to give the speech on the floor. You're only giving the speech on the floor for two reasons, right? There are two possible reasons. One, because you're a good old boy from Louisiana that wants to signal to your friends in the Senate

and your friends back home that when you're tired, you're still on the team. Don't be mean to me at the tailgate. Don't be mean to me at the country club, all right? You don't got to yell at my face. I'm still on the team. If I want to lobby a little bit maybe for some pharmaceutical company or something next year, you got to answer my phone call. That's one reason to really loudly signal you're on the team. The other reason, like the good angel reason, would be that you feel like this is really important.

And you want people to know that it's really important that you don't think that the government should be targeting political foes just based on revenge and the vengeance of the president. There was just, I don't know, there was like a little Jiminy Cricket in me that thought maybe he wanted to do that to signal, you know, that he had good intentions in the end. But no, there are no good angels in our politics right now. And I think... There are not any good angels in Republican politics. That's for sure. I mean, it's really remarkable to me. And a great epitaph for the so-called Republican establishment,

which is to say that they would provide again and again the critical votes for the most extreme aspects of Trump. program, I think, is the proof in and of itself that there is no such thing as a Republican moderate or Republican establishment, because the Republican establishment are the handmaidens of this assault on America's norms and traditions. Oh, look at this fucking quote. I will vote for Mr. Blanche. I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new?

Fuck you, Bill Cassidy. Honestly, oh, my whole, it's just... This man was broken for me when he gave his smug, self-satisfied speech about how much he cared about science and integrity and medicine and protecting America's children and then voted for RFK anyways. Like, how could you possibly

have any shred of hope for that man after that moment, okay? Because this isn't just some theoretical threat, okay? You know, talk to the families in South Carolina whose kids are suffering in a measles epidemic in America in the year 2026. Bill Cassidy owns that, it seems to me, as much as R.K. Jr., as much as Donald Trump. And so, you know. Amen. That was my case against that was because that was so obviously bad that maybe that, you know, there was a feeling of need for redemption, of guilt inside, that there's some humanity, none. I hate this. I'll be, I know.

I know. Susan, I know. You can't say anything to make me feel any worse than I feel about my own self. Donald Trump for re-election in 2024, knowing all that had gone before it, which is to say, all of these people, what more do you need to know? Nothing. I do just want to sit on this sentence for one. second, though, I'll be criticized for this vote, what's new? This is such a common excuse for the weak

and cowardly Republican establishment, right? This idea that, oh, these liberal critics, the media, the gnaughey, the, the, the progressive, you know, bedwetters and pearl clutches, they are going to criticize me anyway. Like, they're going to criticize me anyway, so why should I have to do that? thing, right? And even when I did do something good, remember that one time I did something good? They criticized me anyway. They criticized me anyway. So why should I do anything good?

If they're not just going to heap praise on me and throw flowers at my feet and talk about what a great man I am, what's the point of doing the right thing? What's the point of doing the right thing? Why don't I just let our government turn into a corrupt gangster oligarchy where the president gets to target his political foes and spy on them because they posted seashell pictures on the internet and do gulags and, you know, raid people at the airports who tried to get here legally. And the whole, it's like the DOJ, like what Blanche has done the DOJ is like not even in the ballpark of acceptable. You know what I mean? Like it takes the

Nixon stuff and puts it on steroids times a thousand. Like they're not even pretending to try to do fair, impartial justice, except for, I guess, Judge Janine this week. And like, they literally are targeting political foes.

They're not at all investigating or looking into any of Trump's allies or corrupt pardons. It is blanketly corrupt. And Bill Cassidy's like, well, if I say no to that, though. John Mitchell,

Nixon's attorney general, ended up in jail. God willing. I would point out that Todd Blanche is not above the law and that sooner or later, you know,

that option is available to those who seek to restore a sense of the rule of law. It's not going to come from the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the Trump Republican Party. That's the thing that Donald Trump keeps saying, and I don't know why his critics don't observe it even more. Like the point is not that there's going to be some hope remaining within this Republican Party. One of the results that we already know about from this election will be to consolidate even further Trump's ownership and control over that party. People like Bill Cassidy will be gone from the Senate, and it will be even more overtly

pro-Trump, Trumpist. Which I'll take. What? Actually, I'll take. I'll take overtly trumpist over this crap. You think so? I don't know. I don't know.

What's Bill Cassidy? How's Bill Cassidy any better? Right. Well, that's the point. That's exactly the point. The system is broken to him, and it's blinking red. and we've got the message, but so many people just didn't want to accept it. And I understand that.

It's easier to keep some little flickering, you know, bit of hope alive. Yeah. I mean, my hope is pretty dim. So if my little flicker is too much, it's too great, then we're in a really dark place. We're deep in the caverns when my daughter call it the down some show she was watching. We're going to the down deep. the deep dark, the deep dark. We are in the deep, we are in the deep dark if my flicker is too bright. The other thing is, I guess is like it, besides being Louisiana, that hits me in the gut is like,

he voted to convict him. He voted to convict him and ban him for running for office again. So it's like, you knew, you know, you know, you knew that you could not allow this person to run for offskin. What was the reason for the conviction? Well, because he instigated an attack on the democracy and the rule of law. And so now he got elected again, he endorsed him in that election. and what is he doing? He's attacking the democracy and the rule of law. And your answer is basically, well, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? If I try to stop them, they're going to criticize me. So, I don't know who likes being criticized? Not Bill Cassidy. Great doctor, man. Only compliments aloud for Bill Cassidy. All right. Well, in the green room at the beginning,

Susan said that I looked rested, that I was looking lighter. I forget what word you is. It's something that's less beaten down. It's over. It's over. I'm back. I'm back. I'm back. I had a one week of kind of bouncy Tim, tanned Tim, and now I'm beaten down by the world again, and next week's going to be ugly on the pod. So I just warned everybody for that. So thanks for the transition on that, Susan. You know, Tim, you have now upset me so completely. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, it's 11 a.m.

Can I relax to bed? No, it's a little drink. Okay, we're different places. I'm feeling very upset now. let's remember our 10.20 a.m. cells. They were, they were cheerier than our 11 a.m. cells. We were so innocent then. One sentence on your friend Evan Osse's article, just so people notary, because it was really good. I don't want to give it short shrift. Yeah, the future made in China. And I really think, in a way, it is, we've spent the last hour

sort of proving the point, which is that America's dysfunction is such a five-alarm fire that we're really almost unable to process the extent to which in the real world as opposed to the kind of hysterical Trump world that we live in, you know, real facts on the ground are being created by the Chinese that are going to reshape basically the structure of the global economy that are giving China levels of dominance that even, forget about 10 years ago, even five years ago would have been unthinkable, that percentage of the world's drones that are manufactured in China now, the percentage of the world's electric vehicles, the extent to which even AI, which started out in America's research and development laboratories, is now being pushed forward in China.

The way in which the sort of framework of a whole alternate society organized, completely differently, the modern surveillance state. It's all taking shape in China in ways that not only will we be living with the consequences, but I don't even think we're aware of the consequences. And like anything, it's probably the thing that people will look back on 50 years from now, 100 years from now and say that's what was really happening at this moment. But here we are in Trump's Theater of the Absurd. All I can say, my advice to your listeners, if you're If you're going across Memorial Bridge in Washington, don't look up. You'll be blinded by the gold.

And I think that's what's happening. America's blinded by the gold. All right. Susan's going back to bed. I'm going to have a cigarette. Don't listen to that mom. Everybody else will be back on Monday with Bill Crystal. Thank you so much, Susan.

Love to the family. Everybody else, have a great weekend. We'll see you all on Monday. Bye. Bye. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you. thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper,

and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.