The Bulwark Podcast - The Counteroffensive Against Trump—and Putin

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Turns out that being a star doesn't allow you to get away with sexual assault after all. The GOP still has an 'Access Hollywood' choice, but now there's a $5 million jury verdict. Plus, Tim Mak joins Charlie Sykes from Ukraine to discuss his reporting on life during wartime, beyond "the booms and the bangs." show notes: https://counteroffensive.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. So, how's your day going? What else can you expect from a Trump-hating Clinton-appointed judge who went out of his way to make sure that the result of this trial was as negative as it could possibly be, speaking to and in control of a jury from an anti-Trump area, which is probably the worst place in the United States for me to get a fair trial, will be appealing this decision. It's a disgrace. I don't even know who this woman is. So he's not taking it well. It is May 10th, 2023. And as you know, the pattern is full. So

we're going to be doing something a little bit different today. Later in the show, I'm going to be talking to a remarkable reporter who just arrived back in Ukraine. Tim Mack is a former NPR correspondent who was one of the staffers who was laid off when NPR cut its staff. But he was so passionate about reporting on what's happening in Ukraine that he's gone back on his own. And he's launched a new sub stack newsletter called the counter offensive. And I'm going to be talking with Tim in just a few minutes, but obviously we need to start with some of the day's rather remarkable news. Uh, Tucker Carlson says he's back on Twitter and be a little skeptical about all this. George Santos indicted on 13 counts charged with fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and false statements.

Jeez, who would have imagined that? Federal authorities say that Santos lied to his donors, the House of Representatives, state unemployment officials, and others, resulting in, just tally this up here, seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of lying to the House of Representatives on financial forms. The weird twist, of course, is that Republicans only have a four-vote margin in the House, so Kevin McCarthy needs George Santos's vote. So, yeah, what could possibly go wrong? And of course, then there's Trump. It almost smells like accountability. I wrote about this in my newsletter, Morning Shots, today. And it does feel as if we are in this weird historical loop. I think we all remember when the Access Hollywood tape dropped back on October 7th, 2016.

You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. I just kiss them. I don't even wait. And when you're kissing them. It's like a magnet. I just kiss them. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want.

Grab them by the pussy. I can do anything. But here's the thing. Actually, they don't let you do it. And as it turns out, you can't do anything after all because we had that federal jury, not the judge, the federal jury, find that the former president actually committed an act of sexual abuse and maliciously then lied about it. In other words, this time around, it's not just locker room talk. When he assaulted E. Jean Carroll and defamed her, he actually attacked a woman. But when I

talk about an historic loop, what I'm saying is that I think the Trump and company and Republicans just kind of assumed the Access Hollywood tape was ancient history, that it was already forgotten, litigated by the 2016 election. But as I described in my newsletter this morning, in one of history's more pungent ironies, that tape helped doom Trump this week, you know, when jurors got to hear him explain that, yeah, stars did get away with grabbing women by the pussy, unfortunately or fortunately. So what I wrote this morning was, here we are again, it's October 7, 2016, all over again. But this time, the issues are more sharply drawn and the stakes are even higher. I mean, back then, you know, and I wrote about this in my book, because I do think that October 7, 2016 was one of those pivot moments. The Republican Party could have taken that off ramp. Instead, they decided that they were going to continue that long're all living through is a little bit different this time because it's not just talk. It's not just a tape. You can't just brush it off. This jury

found that Trump actually assaulted and injured a woman and then lied about it with malice. So the Republican Party has similar choice to make whether they're going to go along with all of this, but it's kind of on steroids. It also is kind of a flashback for me because in private, of course, Republicans are saying they're appalled by this. They're worried about this, but only a very, very few of them are willing to speak out about it. Mitt Romney was one of them. This is what Mitt Romney had to say yesterday. The jury of his peers found him guilty of sexual assault and awarded $5 million to the person who was damaged. I hope the jury of the American people reach the same conclusion about Donald Trump. He just is not suited to be president of the United States.

Yeah, a reminder is if we needed one. Asa Hutchinson, who is former governor of Arkansas, also running for president, has been willing to take on Donald Trump. He also issued a statement talking about Trump's indefensible behavior. Here's Asa Hutchinson. I practiced law for 25 and any time a jury comes back with a verdict, I respect the verdict of the jury. Jury verdicts reflect the community, they reflect America, and they also have weighed, as no one else has, the credibility of the witnesses and the truth of the allegations, and they found unanimously that the allegations of a sexual assault were true. And so I believe we all as a

society and as Republicans ought to take that jury verdict very seriously. To do otherwise undermines our system of justice, which is second to none in the world. And also, it's just simply a reflection of continued indefensible conduct by former President Donald Trump. Indefensible conduct, but in case you haven't been paying attention, what you're about to see is a repeat of the defense of the indefensible, the usual fluffers of fluffing. Senator Marco Rubio said the jury's a joke. The whole case is a joke. I don't know, does Rubio think that there was a contest of, you know, which member of the United States Senate has debased himself more, and he was jealous of the fact that Lindsey Graham was getting so much attention? And by the way, in case you haven't seen this, Will Salatin's, you know, fantastic deep dive into Lindsey Graham is

now an e-book. You can get it on Amazon.com. I think it's $2.99 or you can read it on the Bulwer. Then of course, there was Lindsey Graham who said, when it comes to Donald Trump, the New York legal system is off the rails. And America's dumbest senator also had some thoughts. I know there's a lot of competition for this, but I think Senator Tommy Tuberville has pretty much got a lock on it, at least for this week. He actually said, it makes me want to vote for him twice. I want you to think about that for a moment. I want you to think about the mentality behind that, that here is the former president who has been apparently credibly accused. A jury has found that the preponderance of evidence suggests that he actually attacked a woman, that he injured a woman, that he sexually abused a woman. And Tommy Tuberville's reaction

is, I want to vote for him twice. He said they're going to do anything they can to keep him from winning. How far are they going to keep this going? Now, of course, this is just one of the growing list of cases against Donald Trump. And so on tomorrow's podcast, we're going to go deeper into all of them. As you probably know, we partner with Lawfare. And every Thursday, Ben Wittes and I are going to be taking this deep dive into all the legal problems surrounding the ex-president and all of his minions. So stay tuned for tomorrow's podcast, The Trump Trials. And in the meantime, we're going to Ukraine. Tim Mack is a former investigative correspondent for NPR, and he's also the author of Misfire

Inside the Downfall of the NRA. And he is now back in Ukraine covering the war and sharing his reporting on his Substack newsletter, The Counteroffensive, which I strongly recommend. Tim is also a former U.S. Army combat medic. Tim, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Of course. I love the podcast and would love to try to talk to your listeners and tell them to sign up for the counteroffensive. Okay. So where are you right now? Where are you in Ukraine? So I'm in Lviv, which is in the Western part of Ukraine. It's a major hub for entry into the country. You can't fly commercially into Ukraine, obviously, because there's a war going on. So a lot of humanitarian supplies, a lot of diplomats, and of course, reporters come through Lviv en route to points further east. Now, it takes,

you know, two or three days, probably three days to get to Kiev from Washington, DC, which is where I was last. And it's a long, grueling process. So you caught me in the middle of it. Let's talk about why you're back in Ukraine, because this is an interesting story to me. I mean, I think a lot of people are familiar with your work at National Public Radio, and you were part of the layoffs that dramatically cut the workforce. But you decided that even though you were leaving NPR, you were still going to continue reporting from Ukraine. So you are back pretty much on your own. That's kind of an extraordinary choice.

Talk to me about that a little bit, Tim. Well, look, I'm so committed to the story. And I've always wanted to build something of my own. So that's why I decided to go to Substack, start the counteroffensive, and try to see if there would be an audience out there for the kind of reporting I do, which is focusing on investigations and feature stories about the war. It's what I really enjoy doing. But you're right. I mean, it's a big bet and a big risk. It's a bet that people really do care about this conflict

and really do want the sort of reporting that I want to do. And it's not clear whether that bet will pay off yet. But regardless, I'm willing to put my savings into this. I am really devoted to telling the stories of these people. And we'll see how long I can go for. Well, and you've been there from the beginning, you landed in Kiev on February 23, 2022, to cover a possible war and invasion began that night. And I think people who are familiar with your reporting knows how you try to capture what life was like, as well as doing some of this

investigative reporting. Let's talk about what you're seeing there. I know that you've written that as you travel across Ukraine, tasting the soups made by Ukrainian cooks, meeting the heroic animal shelter volunteers in frontline cities, and listening to patriotic Ukrainian music that's making a comeback. So you're covering the war, but you're also covering the culture of a country in wartime. I think that's right. I mean, what I want to do is write compelling stories about what's happening on the ground level. I think a lot of people are tired of the bangs and booms story. And a lot of people don't want a daily update on, you know, the Breton line was here in this village, and now it's moved there to that village. What I really want to do is cover the culture and the cuisine and the language and

the history and create compelling human stories, whether they're stories that are based on the anger that some people must feel, the hopelessness some others might feel, the sense of betrayal some people feel here in Ukraine, and then make those compelling stories that happen to be in a war zone that gives that story an extra little edge. That's what's interesting to me. And I want to write stuff that's interesting for me to write and interesting for my readers to read. And so what I want to do is I want to wrap that all together. Well, I want to come back to the point about people feeling betrayed, but I want to just talk about the reality of being a war correspondent, you know, these times. I mean,

before you went back to Ukraine, you talked to three pretty well-known former war correspondents, Sebastian Younger, Chris Hedges, and Kim Dozier, and they offered some words of advice and caution to you. What did they tell you? What advice did they give you going back to Ukraine right now? It's interesting because I asked all of them, you know, the very open-ended question, which is, hey, what should I know about being a war correspondent? Now, I have been a war correspondent for the last year or so, but my experience pales in comparison to these three very experienced war correspondents, right? And so what I found interesting, there were a number of things.

I found very interesting, this isn't in my story, so this is an exclusive for your podcast, at least for now, until I write about it. But one thing I found really interesting is that some of the war correspondents I talked to just don't drink alcohol anymore, that it had, upon reflection, not such a great impact on their lives after they've acknowledged all the ways that the trauma of war affected them. Sebastian Junger told me, look, he's had a number of great drinks in his life. And he said, thank God for that. But that as he's gotten older and as he reckoned with some of the things that he's experienced, he didn't think that it was the right move for him to continue to drink.

And he hasn't drank a single sip of alcohol in years and years and years. What I also spoke to a number of them about was, hey, what do you need to be remembering? And Sebastian Junger's advice was, what you really need is a reality check when you are doing a story. Are you out there as a war correspondent so you can have a personal experience, some sort of member of a team that can tell a good bar story in three or four years? Are you there because there's a real utility would want to take just for the experience of it or one because the news value of it is so great that the risk is necessary to take? And that was really very compelling to me because being a work correspondent is ups and downs. It can be super exciting. It can be super depressing.

It can take a real toll, but there's so much value in it. And I understand the temptation to do a story just for the personal experience of it. But what he's saying is don't do it for a good anecdote. Do it because the public interest requires it and don't do it unless it does. Chris Hedges had a different advice. He said, you got to learn the language, that it's impossible to truly connect in the ways that I want to connect with the counteroffensive on culture and cuisine and history if you are not trying to speak and learn some of that language. And, you know, I've made it a big, big priority of mine to start doing that. Kim Dozier focused more about your responsibility as the head of a

team. No workhorse want to go anywhere alone. They've always got interpreters and they've got folks that they work with, reporting colleagues, security colleagues. And, you know, she kind of used this analogy of, you know, when you're on a plane and the oxygen mask drops down, you have to put the mask on yourself first before you can help others. And she was saying, you have to be really very contemplative and introspective about your emotions and how solid and steady you feel before you can be an effective team leader. So you put all that together. You know, it's a pretty good bundle of advice for war correspondents or not for war correspondents, actually.

Well, I don't know that I could do your job without drinking, though. I don't think I would be able to make it. And of course, there is just the constant danger here. It was just this week, I think it was just yesterday, we had a report that a video journalist had been killed by rocket fire near Bakhmut. And it makes him the 11th journalist or media team member killed covering the war in Ukraine. So this can be terrifying as well. You mentioned something, I just wanted to go back before I forget it. You're talking to the people in the countryside, in the cities, and you mentioned that there's a sense of betrayal. Can you just tell me a little bit about that right now? Because I want to get some sense of

what the mood of the country is, what people are saying, what's happening beneath the surface, because, you know, most of what we do know is, as you are saying, what's happening beneath the surface? Because, you know, most of what we do know is, as you described, the booms and the bangs. So what is the sense of betrayal? Who do they feel betrayed by? Well, you know, there are a lot of people, and you'll meet them every day, who prior to the invasion actually occurring, refuse to believe it could actually happen, right? You hear this with a lot of different other elements too. I think of, you know, Taiwan and Taipei actually, right? Because similar arguments are being made now that no invasion could ever occur. Things like, oh, they have so much cross-cultural

engagement with one another or business ties are so deep between the two countries. And then it happened, right? So many people in Ukraine have family members right across the border in Russia. And they feel deeply betrayed that in many, many cases, I would say in most cases, their Russian family members or former Russian colleagues have totally bought the line from the Putin government, which is that it was necessary and inevitable that Russia invade,

right? So, there's a deep sense of betrayal here. There's also a sense of betrayal among Ukrainians when it comes to Ukrainians who worked with the Russians in the initial stages of the invasion. There is no small number of Ukrainians who took some money from Russian forces and then ended up aiding that initial push in some way. There's an immense sense of betrayal over that. So those would be the two kind of major things that I'm thinking about when I talk about betrayal. Another big thing that I'm hearing is just the feeling of normalcy setting in in certain parts of the country. The further away from the front lines you get, the more relaxed people are. I'm in Lviv, which is in western Ukraine, which is quite far away from the bombings that are happening in Kiev over the last couple of weeks on a near nightly basis.

People are very relaxed here. I went for a walk last evening and there was a nice spring sunset and everyone was out walking in the park. You could hardly even imagine that there was a war going on, but we are in a country at war. And I think a lot of soldiers in the front lines are relating to me. They feel kind of, you know, frustrated that they're losing their sense of motivation if their country isn't along with them. What their concern is, is that people will just adapt and try to continue to live life and kind of forget the folks who are pushing on the front line. That's a real concern.

You know, a few months ago, I was at a cafe in Kiev. You could probably imagine it as any suburban cafe you could find in America, really. I mean, it was an upper-class neighborhood, and you had mothers with strollers and babies and very high-end coffee, and everyone was chattering on the patio. And then an explosion happens nearby, and everyone goes quiet. And there's just this moment of silence. And people kind of look around. They check to make sure everything's okay. All limbs are here.

And then they just start talking again like nothing happened. There's a sense that, hey, there's a war happening. But also, people are starting to get used to it. And that's a concern of some soldiers on the front. On Monday, right before you arrived, Russia launched large-scale attacks on Kiev and across Ukraine with a swarm of attack drones. And the whole country was under a Russian air raid alert. They fired cruise missiles overnight and Tuesday morning as well, most of which were intercepted by Ukraine's air defenses. So talk to me a little bit about Victory Day in Russia yesterday. When we scheduled this podcast, I know that you mentioned that you thought that Vladimir Putin might do something

rather spectacular to mark Victory Day that might disrupt communications. We did have the missile attacks. But all the accounts that I'm seeing are that Victory Day in Russia, which is a commemoration of victory in World War II, was a rather subdued, downbeat kind of thing. What is your take about the way Victory Day went off in 2023? Well, I'd say it was rather mooted for probably a couple reasons. One is that Victory Day is often accompanied by relatives of deceased soldiers holding, you know, placards and photos of their loved ones who have died in war. And you could imagine that it would be a pretty serious political fiasco if folks showed up on the Red Square with all the photos of the deceased soldiers who have died in this ongoing war. I imagine Putin doesn't want that reminder of how

many Russian soldiers have died so far in that conflict. And a second reason, perhaps, for the muted nature of Victory Day in Moscow is a security issue. That, of course, you remember that there was an explosion near a Russian government building very recently, that the Russian government blamed it on Ukraine and the United States. Both of them deny that the explosion had anything to do with them. But still, security was extremely, extremely tight. And that's going to limit what you can do in because of, I guess, Russia's perceived security threat around the marking of this occasion. So they're very worried, obviously. They might be a little paranoid, obviously.

And the war is taking its toll on Russia and the Russian government as well. Well, let's again talk about what's going on in Ukraine. You know, you were describing that surreal scene, you know, from Kiev where people are sitting around having coffee while there are bombs going off. How effective have the NATO-grade anti-missile defense systems, the Patriot missiles, been? Has that changed the dynamic? Has it made Ukrainians more confident? What is your sense about that? Well, obviously, they are shooting a lot of missiles out of the sky. But these attacks continue, and they continue to evade air defenses in some way. So, you know, when I talk to folks in Kyiv, where I'm headed to tomorrow, they say, hey, I have not had, you're going to have to excuse me, I have not slept well

for the last couple of weeks. Because every night there are explosions, there's a serious feeling of tension in the air. People are not well. I mean, you know, this war is dragging on, it's having an effect on things like sleep, it's having an effect on mental wellness, it's having an effect on, you know, your professional lives and your social lives, even though there's a real interest in returning to normalcy, there are clear signs that this lengthy, now one-year-plus war is starting to take its long-term toll and its long-term hold on the residents of Kyiv and other residents in Ukraine. That comes to the question of what is the morale of the country? Because, of course, in that first year, we focused on the Ukrainian morale and the way the country pulled together, the way the whole West pulled together. Is there any cracks in that? I mean, it's one thing to be

exhausted. It's something else to be demoralized. Where are we at in that continuum? I would say people are starting to get tired. I wouldn't quite use the word exhausted, maybe, you know, periodically exhausted, but they're as committed as ever, from what I can tell, to winning this war. I mean, they're willing to sacrifice quite a deal more. The question is, you know, what will the situation on the battlefield be such that they can stop sacrificing, right? I think there is certainly an interest in Ukraine to the war be over and that normal economic life resume. That said, they're not going to take that deal at any cost. They're not going to take a bad deal. I mean, you'll see that most people in Ukraine are uninterested right now in a brokered peace deal with Russia.

Really? Interesting. Well, not with at least the current lines, right? They're not willing to cede Ukrainian territory to the Russians as a condition of peace. And so while people are starting to get tired, they're not willing to say, well, let's just leave those folks who are behind the current lines to the Russians. I don't think they're willing to concede that. And I saw this big turning point happen. In the first few weeks of the war, everyone was alarmed and fearful, but they thought, well, we're hoping that this war will end in a few months. The real turning point was Bucha, I think, and the publication of stories and photos and videos of the war crimes and alleged war crimes the Russians

perpetrated in that suburb of Kyiv, that a lot of Ukrainians could see themselves in the victims there. Oh, that apartment building kind of looks like my apartment building. And oh, that woman kind of looks like my neighbor. And those folks have dogs just like I do. And they saw the way that Russian soldiers behaved in Bucha. And they were so angry and so outraged that that anger and outrage continued to calcify in their souls, basically. This feeling that they would not budge until they had liberated the other portions of Ukraine. Because they're worried that this sort of thing will be inevitable behind Russian lines right now. You said they're committed to winning this war. For the average Ukrainian, what does winning look like? What will it take? You said

the current lines are not acceptable. What is acceptable? Do you have to get back all of Crimea, or are we there yet? Different people will have different opinions on exactly what that means. I found, you know, really instructive, what Reznikov said. Now, Reznikov heads the, essentially, the Defense Department of Ukraine. And what he said is, I will know that Ukraine has achieved victory when I'm able to get on a flight in Kiev, take a commercial flight to Western Europe. And when I land at the Hague, I will personally prosecute the Russian war criminals who committed these war crimes against us. I found that like a really instructive definition of victory, actually, because you notice he doesn't mention anything about territory

in that answer. But there are two elements here. One is the resumption of normal commercial activity, and the second is accountability for war crimes. I think that's really instructive of where some folks are at right now. Reznikov would never, by the way, say explicitly, oh we're willing to acknowledge some level of territorial loss or whatever. You know, he would never be able to say this. But you'll notice he doesn't include it. He omitted it from the definition of victory.

It may be a sort of political acknowledgement that it's not possible to get every inch of territory back or he's leaving room for that eventuality. I may also be overanalyzing his answer, by the way, but I would say that it was instructive to me because his two priorities appear to be accountability and the resumption of economic life. So we're coming up to what looks like it's going to be one of the pivot points in this war, the spring counteroffensive. There are reports the troops are arrested. They have plenty

of ammunition from Western allies, along with they've gotten the new howitzers as opposed to the old Soviet artillery pieces. Did the tanks ever show up? Depends on which tanks you're talking about. It actually takes a long period of time to train the folks to operate these tanks, depending on when the counteroffensive starts. There's still some months away from depending on which tanks you're talking about. But I think the bulk of the tanks are still some some months away. Okay, so they're under tremendous pressure right now, right? I mean, from the West to reclaim some territory or show some progress or inflict serious damage on Russian forces. So give me your sense of when this counteroffensive kicks off and how we should be looking at it, how we should evaluate its success or lack of success.

You know, the pressure is purely a political point, right? The pressure is from Western allies who have committed so much aid and weaponry and training that they're looking to see some results on the ground. Now, from a military perspective, Ukraine could choose not to launch a counteroffensive at this point or delay a counteroffensive, but purely from a political perspective, because we talked a little bit about how Ukrainians are starting to get fatigued about the war. Obviously, other people in Western capitals are also starting to get fatigued, and they want to see that their investment in terms of aid and weaponry is going somewhere. You know, the Ukrainian generals and officers who are planning this counteroffensive, they don't generally feel that sort of pressure. It's the politicians in Kiev that are kind of pushing for it because they realize the reality, which is Western capitals are starting to say, hey, let's see something here.

Well, how worried are Ukrainians about the West losing interest or losing commitment or the political wind shifting here in the United States? I think that there's an acknowledgement by some Ukrainians that it's inevitable that over time, people will not feel as strongly about events in Ukraine as they did in the past. But what I also get is a sense of, you know, Ukrainian steadfastness and their own personal commitment to this war and to whatever their individual versions of victory are. You know, that a lot of Ukrainians are grateful for Western support, but without it, they would still fight on. You know, that they're determined to achieve some sort of military victory. You know, that said, I think every Ukrainian recognizes that the aid from Western governments has been totally critical to where they stand right now in the war. So you've named your Substack newsletter, The Counteroffensive, obviously

referring to the planned military operation. But you've explained on Twitter that the name has other meanings as well. So why did you pick The Counteroffensive, other than the fact that we're about to go into a counteroffensive? Well, yes, it's named after the planned and coming counteroffensive in Ukraine. But I kind of mean it to mean a number of things, to counter Western apathy and cynicism and ignorance about this war, to teach people about what's going on in Ukraine on a ground level. That's what I hope to do. And I hope this is – this substack, the counteroffensive, is also a counteroffensive against the rise of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and in Asia. I want to also bring stories to you from Estonia and from Taipei.

I want the publication to be able to humanize the conflict in ways because, you know, when you think about autocracy, that's a society in which really the only human with power is the single person at the top and then the other kind of minions below. But if you humanize a society and you and to tell the stories, like you mentioned, of people who care and love their dogs and would do anything to save their lives, even evacuating with them on trains. This story is so much more. This war is so much more than just, like I said, the bangs and the booms.

And I really want to give some life and color to that. How long do you think you're going to be there? Indefinitely, as long as long as I can, I think. Indefinitely. Wow, that's that is a hell of an answer. How often are you going to be putting out the newsletter for us to follow what you're doing? I think two times a week with more as needed as required by the news. I think that's a good amount. I've been experimenting with a lot of, you know, Substack tools like their chat function and their kind of Twitter alternative notes as well. I'd be curious to see what readers and your listeners think about how to best, you know, effectively use it. But ultimately, I'm trying to give a ground level look at what's happening here, what's happening on the street as I'm walking down or as I'm jogging through the park or, you know, what I'm seeing as we get closer to the front lines, things that

would be part of your reporter's notebook, but never really make it into a story, if you know what I mean. The kinds of stories that you wouldn't be able to tell at a major news outlet, but which I think people are really hungry for because there's really nothing like it. I'm kind of like live tweeting the war in some senses. I'm expanding on that a little bit, obviously, with the newsletter, but I want to make it as human as possible. I want folks to meet Ukrainians and understand more deeply what their lives are like, you know, from electrical station workers to musicians to comedians to everyone else who takes part in the society and soldiers, of course, as well. I think the reporting is going to be absolutely invaluable. Tim Mack's newsletter is the counteroffensive.

You can find it on Substack. Tim was a longtime correspondent for NPR. I think many of you are familiar with his work. After the layoffs at NPR, he said, I'm going to go back to Ukraine because he is so passionate about covering this and is speaking to us from Ukraine today. Tim, thank you so much for joining the Bulwark podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again.

The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.