The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: All The Circuit Breakers Are Gone

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

President Trump’s loyalty purges continue. Prosecutors are fired from the U.S. attorney’s office in Eastern Virginia, including people who had nothing to do with the Comey case. And Kash Patel pushes out an FBI agent in training for displaying a rainbow flag in his workspace. Meanwhile, reports surface that Marco Rubio is leading a push among Trump’s top aides to topple Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller to discuss. Bulwark Live in DC (10/8) with Sarah, Tim and JVL. Tickets on sale now at TheBulwark.com/events. Tim's playlist

Hello and welcome to the Buller podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Friday. He is back. He's a staff fighter at the Atlantic. He used to be a professor of the Naval War College. He's grumpy. It's Tom Nichols. What's up? Hey, Tim. I'm grumpier than usual, but that's just. my natural condition. All right. Well, much to be grumpy about. I don't know. I maybe have a couple of unusual silver linings at the end of the show. We'll see if we get to them. And there's some actual breaking news on we get to about things that are happening with ice and things are happening with the militarization of our cities. But I would, I feel remiss if I would not start by asking you, you know, with a few days to marinate on it, your impressions of our Secretary of War. Pete Heggssef and his promise to liberate the warfighters. He told them all that they

kill people and break things for a living. That's what he thinks of our soldiers. That's an old Rush Limbaugh line actually going back to the 90s. Limbaugh used to do that job in the military used to kill people and break things. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Limbaugh used to say that all the time. Yeah, I was never a ditto head. Even back in, even back in my Republican days, I was never a ditto head. So I I was almost 30 by the time he came on the national scene. And I was living mostly in small town, Vermont, because I was teaching up at Dartmouth in those days. And so I would tune in talk radio now and then because it was either that or the one local station we had. You know, my impression, what can I say?

I mean, he thought this was going to be his opportunity to talk tough to the generals and the admirals. and the way it turned out was he looked like a he looked foolish i mean he did have a lot of makeup on he did have more makeup on than the admirals in generals it seems like well the best thing i've read about it so far has been by um elliott cohen who said first of all he here was this you know passed over major addressing a room that had the equivalent of something like 25 000 years of accumulated military experience in it you know and he was going to give them what for about, you know, staying in shape and losing those pounds and doing PT and, you know, which is, look, there's nothing wrong with that if you're a company commander, if you're a captain in charge

of 150 guys, you know, and you get up and say, now remember fellas, you know, PT, you know, chin up before you go into the mess hall. But it's completely inappropriate in a Secretary of Defense who you would expect would be thinking about big things like, I don't know, strategy, acquis, position, the future of weapon systems, the future size and shape of the force, things that secretaries of defense are supposed to be working on. But, you know, Hegseth being in dramatically over his head, you know, wants to talk about fat guys in the hallways, you know, and as a fat guy, I take a little exception of that, you know. Okay, you're getting, you're getting defensive.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. They sudden go, you know, insult them maybe a little bit. But also, I thought it was just inane and trivial and not what, you know, and I think on a more serious point, I suspect he pulled all those people in to say, I'm the boss and you will respect my authority. And I think that backfired. I think 800 of those people looked and said, wow, this guy really is a clown. You know, they may not have wanted to think that about the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. but I don't think any of them felt any special allegiance to, you know, getting chewed out, again, by, you know, a guy that was a major some years ago. And I think it was an error, a strategic error on Hegg's S part in several ways, including that it probably undermined his authority rather than cemented it. The aforementioned Elliot Cohen, co-host of The Shields of the Republic podcast right here at the Bullwark.

People can listen to that. Mark Hurtling is in the Bullock this morning. General Hurtling, and he says this about Hanks us remarks, then I want to get to Trump. He points out that, sure, at some level it might have just been this stupid show that he is putting on. I mean, this is my words, not Hurtling.

I guess it's your words, I'm stealing from you that he's doing his Cartman impersonation to try to like look like a big boy. But Hurtling talks about like what the kind of ripple effects are. He writes this, for the generals, admirals, and senior enlisted who left the auditorium started their long flights home to the Pacific Europe and Middle East. Those speeches were just the beginning because

when Washington speaks with bluster, ambiguity or hostility, it's the commanders who must translate to their troops, steady their units, and respond to the challenge of new orders. I think that his point was, okay, so if you are a gay or lesbian soldier, if you are a Sikh with a beard, if you are whatever, like, and you're now... If you're a black man with a skin condition. Yeah. Where's your head at? And the people that are running these units are now going to have to have to go manage all of that as a result. What do you make of I've taught a lot of officers, as you know, there's my, there's Lily making her appearance. Second animal appearance of the week on the podcast. Ken Burns' dog was Mosy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well,

people have been asking for more Lilly content. So there she is. She's in the big chair. Look, I've taught a lot of these officers. I've met a lot of admirals and generals in my, you know, 30 years of being around the military. They worry about two things. Obviously, they worry about defending the country. But they worry a lot about the people, the well-being of the people under their command. you know, here's Hegseth, basically putting on a show that reveals just how out of his depth he is, just how unqualified for his job he is. And I think they had to be thinking, on top of everything else, they had to be thinking, does this person really understand, you know, the responsibility that we carry? These are the people, both the secretary and the president, who can order me to order my young men and women into harm's way. And, you know, am I comfortable, you know, that these people know what they're doing? And I think, again, Hegseth made it very clear.

He doesn't know what he's doing. The more ominous speech, I think we all could agree, was from the president, ominous in part because, I mean, at times he looked barely with it. And he was really, it looked ambient-esque up there for a while. And so, you know, I just didn't just didn't gender a lot of confidence. But then, obviously, there's a rhetoric about the enemy within more dangerous. in the enemy outside the country, and you don't know who they are. They're not wearing uniforms, and so we're going to need to go knock some heads and find them.

We have troops going to Memphis. We've news out this morning that my city, we've got some National Guard troops coming to in New Orleans. Amusingly, the governor of Louisiana, who could just deploy the National Guard troops himself, went on Fox to ostentatiously talk about how he's requested that the president send the guard troops that are in his command to our city, which is like a... Not an all-time low, but a decades-long low and violent crime. So if you're wondering what that's...

I wondered about that scene. I remember that and I thought, you know you're the governor, right? I mean, you know that you actually have this power. You don't need to ask anybody. Yeah, well, this guy, all you need to know about Jeff Landry is he put a satellite kind of TV studio in his office as Attorney General in Louisiana that was just used to beam himself into Fox. So the guy is focused Smart move though He's the governor now

And he's a governor Who's cucked himself And he doesn't have any actual power As governor because he has to pretend Like Mr. Trump did it all But anyway Then you've got troops potentially Going to Chicago and Portland

There's a lawsuit That honestly by the time This podcast out We might learn more from a judge About the ruling There's been pushback From folks in Portland About Trump going over

The objections of the governor And local officials And then the same will be true In Chicago I guess just the biggest picture, like, what was your take on Trump's speech about all this and kind of now what we're going to see as a follow through? Well, a couple of things. First, you know, when you say to senior military officers, the enemy from within, I think, again, these are folks who say, wait, you're

talking about fellow American citizens. You're not talking about, you know, Russian paratroopers or Chinese tank drivers. You're talking about the people that we're supposed to protect and defend, you know, from the bad guys in the world. The military. doesn't want to be dragged into these domestic missions. They don't like it. It's not what they trained for. I can't say I can read their minds, but I think everyone has had enough time with Donald Trump to know that when Donald Trump says the enemy and enemies of America, what he means is enemies of Donald Trump. And I think that that probably is what they were thinking of, you know, what, who among our fellow citizens are you really pointing to here? And why do you need

us to do this when you have cops and state police and, you know, national guards that can be called out by their own governors. I think the other thing that's interesting about that meeting is that this is the first time, I think, for a lot of these officers where they've had to sit and actually get a full helping of undiluted Donald Trump. You know, three and four star admirals, Don't spend all day watching TV. They don't go to political rallies. They don't watch, you know, hours of Trump speeches. They don't do what you and I do, right?

Where we sit there and we have to watch it and write about it. You know, we're like Malcolm McDowell and a clockwork orange, you know, our face trapped. And it is, and it's a different experience in clips. Right. Than suffering through the whole 70 minutes experience. Right. And having to sit there and be attentive. Because, you know, even at rallies, when you watch people at rallies, when Trump,

starts to go off into shark land or my uncle in MIT or whatever it is. You know, people pull out their phones and they laugh and they take selfies and, you know, do all that stuff. These people had to sit kind of not quite at attention, but being obviously focused and attentive. And I think for a lot of them, this was the first time they were really strapped down and forced to drink, you know, to smoke the whole cart in a cigarettes. You know, in that sense, you were talking about bright spots when we got sparse. started. You know, my friend Steve Fish out at Berkeley, he made a point to me the other day,

and I think it was a good point. And I want to make sure I footnote him rather than me, because it was his, he said, it was actually a good day for democracy, that these guys all kind of sat there, stone-faced, didn't applaud, didn't turn it into a rally, did what they were supposed to do, you know, and also now can no longer use the kind of the Mike Johnson excuse of, well, I didn't see the speech. One other thing occurred to me about this, Tim. This whole business about sending, when you were talking about the list of cities, Portland and Chicago and New Orleans, can we finally just accept that all of the stuff about in the 24 election about inflation and prices and eggs, nobody cares about that anymore? Trump's not doing anything. If anything, all those prices have gotten worse.

And I think it puts the lie, you know, I mean, every time I hear somebody go through, they'll kind of litany. just did. I think, boy, these are real kitchen table issues that are going to bring down the price of eggs, aren't they? And I think it's just proof that, you know, when people like me and you and others were saying in 2024, you know, this is a bad faith argument. You don't really care about inflation, do you? You just want the Trump show back. And I think we're seeing that now because if people really did care about this stuff, even Republicans would be saying, what the how are you doing? Everything's more expensive. Inflation's going up. The tariffs are starting to bite, cost of living, all those things. And instead it's like, no, no, go ahead. Send troops

to Memphis. That's good, too. All right, everybody. We are sold out of tickets to all of our shows on the fall tour except for October 8th in Washington, D.C. and was on a call yesterday planning out what we've got in store for you. It's going to be fun. Obviously, JVL will be there. So there'll be elements of darkness. But we're also bringing in Sarah McBride for a conversation with Sarah Longwell that I'm super excited for. Maybe we might get Will Summer up to talk about some of the crazy shit that's happened on the MAGA ride. I've got some other plans in store for you. So it's not too late. Get your tickets now. Washington, D.C., October 8th. You go to the bulwark.com slash events. Thebullwork.com slash events. I hope to see you all there. It's at the Lincoln Theater.

Awesome venue. Appreciate them for hosting us. And so I hope to see you. all in Washington, October 8th. The one counter to your point about how it's good for democracy that the folks had to see that, that they sat their stone face, is we have seen a difference between now and the first term about, like, people's willingness to push back against him. I mean, obviously he has Pete Hegseth there instead of Jim Mattis or whoever in these cabinet offices. And I was struck, I was on with Nicole yesterday, and she played this statement that I'd

forgotten that Mattis had put out after Lafayette Square. And I think this is just worth reading really quick in the context of him of Trump sending these troops into the cities. Mattis said this. We must reject any thinking of our cities as a battle space that our uniformed military is called upon to dominate. At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so on very rare occasions by state governors, militarizing our response as we witnessed in D.C. sets up a conflict, a false conflict between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they're sworn to protect and of which they themselves are a part. Just how blunt that was of a rebuke of Trump,

it's noteworthy that we're not getting that. I mean, sure, we'll get it from Mark Hurtling and other retired folks who are kind of out there commenting on this, and that is appropriate and great, and I'm grateful to Hurtling, but I mean, from people that are like in the Trump orbit, however you'd want to define that. Nothing of that nature anymore. Well, first, I think 99.9% of the people in that room would have agreed with what Mattis said. Yes, there's going to be a couple of guys. I saw at one point there were a couple of guys, oh, you know, trying to clap and that didn't go very well. But maybe it did go well for them.

Maybe all they were trying to do is make sure Hagset saw that they were clapping so that when, you know, the next. Remember the North Korean rule never beat the first comrade to stop clapping. Yeah. We'll see how the next round of advancements, you know, up the rank go and see if the clappers do better than the on Clappers. So you're always going to have a couple of guys in the force that are like, yeah, you know, it's what Hegg said, you know, break things. Yeah.

I remember years ago, there was a guy who came to the war college I was at and we'd asked him to talk about strategy and he kind of shook his end. He said, strategy, strategy is ordinance on target, which, you know, isn't strategy. So you'll get a few of those guys, but I think most people in that room agreed. But here's the thing. They have no top cover now. Like those three and four stars could, you know, under. Mattis could say, hey, what the secretary said, you know, and I know Jim and I worked with him and,

you know, we were cadets together, whatever it was. You know, we ate the same mud and all that. They, there's nobody to provide that kind of cover for them now. So they just have to kind of be, you know, stand that attention and kind of take it until they finally get to the point where they're ordered to do something that they might not be comfortable doing. And so that's the bad part. That's the bad day for democracy. is that even though they would probably all agree with Mattis, there isn't a Mattis to give them the cover that they need to have that approach to their work.

Speaking about that scary order, you in your article for The Atlantic after the speeches referenced something that maybe I knew once or had forgotten, but it's a story of the Air Force nuclear missile officer named Harold Herring. I guess during a training session had asked, How could I know that an order I received to launch my missiles came from a sane president? This was during the Watergate fallout with Nixon. It's pretty relevant historical item, I guess, about Harold Herring.

For folks who don't know this story, in 1973, a nuclear missile officer, Air Force Major, you know, is in a training session. I believe he was at Vanderberg in California. He says, you know, not for nothing, but, you know, and then he asked the question that you pointed out. How do I know that the order to launch my missiles came from a sane president? And they said, that's an excellent question. You are fired. And the reason they fired him, and in those days, this, you know, especially it made a lot of sense. The American nuclear deterrent and the ability to deter the then Soviet Union from attacking us relied on the Soviets knowing that if the president said go, that the time between his order and missiles landing,

on Moscow wasn't going to be more than 30 minutes, that you couldn't count on disorder and second guessing and, oh, I've got to call Congress and a doctor's got to certify me as saying. No, the system, and by the way, Tim, you know, I've written about this for the magazine, that system is still in place today. The system is there to make sure the president can act alone and instantaneously, which should scare everybody, not just because of Trump, just because we don't. need that kind of system anymore. Well, that's a little happy Friday for everybody, just kind of something to chew over this evening. Hey, everybody. Just remember the president,

Richard Nixon put it best. He was having a meeting, I think, with two members of Congress. And he said, I could walk out of this room. And 20 minutes later, 100 million people would be dead. And that system is still in place. It's there to enable the president not to slow him down. And so Herring asked this question. Now, you know, you need to be able to tell this Soviet Union, listen, if the president issues the order, the guys, remember the movie War Games at the beginning when there's a drill and one officer turns the other and points a gun at him because the other guy won't turn his key. He can't do it, right? He can't, you know, turn your key, sir, and he's pointing a pistol at him. So the other thing is that the Air Force wanted officers like Herring

to understand that, listen, if the order gets through all of your superiors, if it gets through the colonel, who's your wing commander, you know, the general who's your base commander, the guy back in those days at Strategic Air Command, the four star who runs that, by the time that order gets to you, Major, you can be sure that it's a legitimate order. The problem is that system, all those kind of internal circuit breakers that the military counts on, I think, the constitutional system of circuit breakers and advisors, and, you know, the bureaucracy around a president, that's all gone. I mean, we don't even have a functioning National Security Council anymore.

I was thinking about this yesterday. Who is the head of the National Security Council? It's still, it's still Marco Rubio. It's Rubio. I mean, why not? That's his fourth job. Well, speaking of Rubio, among his four jobs is he's agitating for a regime change war in Venezuela. Why not?

It's Friday. That's two neocons or former neocons. How we're going to talk to about ourselves or, you know, strong on defense, conservatives i i've i've been intrigued by a regime change war to in my day you know if we're gonna be advancing democratic ideals i have been known to imbibe from that bottle i've been interested you know i'm not exactly i'm not hostile i'm not mr isolationist over here i i say that because it's an important context to to the following point which is it is absolutely insane to suggest that we should do a regime change war in venezuela like that is madness i still have

not seen a coherent argument for it. It's just kind of like blah, blah, blah, drug trafficking. It's like most of the drugs in this country come from Mexico, Colombia, China. There's drugs from Bolivia. Like, some of the Colombian drugs go through Venezuela. But like, Venezuela is not the tip of the spear in the war on drugs. Not that we should do regime change wars in the war on drugs anyway. But like even if you're taking that at face value, Marco has a bugaboo for this guy. And so, you know, I guess now we're going to try to topple Maduro while we should. start taking out boats in the Caribbean. It's lunacy. Maybe, and I'm just, you know, spitball, I have no idea what Rubio is thinking.

Maybe he thinks liberating Venezuela will be a great calling card for him in 2028 in Florida. Who wants this? Who's it for? And even the MAGA base, a lot of MAGA voters are kind of like, I mean, they like the bluster of Patriot Jingoism, but a lot of them were anti-war. Like, they were, they were like we're going against the Rubios. And I'm chafing a bit when you say as a couple of neocons, because people always say, well, you neocons never met a war you didn't like. Well, so far I've met too. I don't like Iran and Venezuela. I didn't think Iran was a good idea either.

You had Bill Crystal parted ways on that one, but that's okay. You know, we can have disagreement within the coalition. How's that going in Iran? Is the regime still there? And is it still trying to build nuclear weapons? Check and check. So, you know, we played a really important card in Iran and we played it poorly because I don't don't think anything's changed. If anything, you've convinced the regime sprinting for a nuclear

weapon is now the smart. I mean, they're probably getting mail from North Korea saying, we told you, we warned you, you know, build it fast. But leaving that aside, the other thing about Venezuela, there is a military rationale for attacking Venezuela. And that is, it is the only front on which you can possibly stop another round of talking about the Epstein files. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's as logical of a rationale. as the stated one that they've put out into the media. I think it's the real one. I think it's just, you know, let's start a word with Venezuela and then we don't have to talk about Epstein or inflation or, you know, markets or tariffs or any of the other stuff that's just going wrong in every possible direction here.

Yeah, the legal rationale that they've put out finally. And they first started bombing boats essentially over the objections or maybe not objections or over the abstentions of the fact that there aren't really any Jags left in there. who have any, who are giving legal advice about military operations, but they didn't provide a legal rationale initially. And now they have, and it's basically drug dealers in the Caribbean are enemy combatants and the president can kill them. It's a ridiculous rationalization, you know, that they're harming Americans. You know, I have to, again, I'm going to steal a line from someone else, but Ken White, the lawyer said, you know, we are, Americans are threatened by drugs the way I'm threatened by a cookie dough factory, you know, which is,

that I want to eat cookie dough and to say that, you know, there are some speedboats with drugs. Therefore, they are the equivalent of people at war with the United States is something so far off the planet in terms of how you can make this determination. The other thing that's interesting about the president's determination, he decided to blow up four boats before getting to that rationalization. Normally you come up with this first and then you blow up the votes. You don't blow them up and then say, oh, well, you know, I remember after the LA riots, there was that old joke about an L.A. traffic stop, bang, bang, bang, freeze. Yeah, right. You know, this, this is all ad hoc after the fact. I don't think it's going to stand

up. But I don't know, you know, maybe he'll get away with it because I'm still old enough to remember, as I'm sure you are, when there was a Congress. Yeah. Congress. Oh, that's interesting. That would have said, excuse us, hello. That's an interesting idea. Congress. Speaking of Congress and the Democrats over there. I think it's still in the Constitution. I'm pretty sure.

Is that right? You don't hear much for that. I saw John Thune the other day and I was like, oh, shit. There's a Senate majority leader, actually. It's funny you say that. I had exactly the same reaction. It was when he was on front of the White House, right? And I went, oh, yeah, that guy.

He's a majority leader. He's the majority leader. On the Democrats over there, and maybe this is wrong, but I just want to throw this out there and I think that it's out of character for me which is you know hopefully lend some credibility to the advice I think they should really be going crazy

on the Venezuela thing I mean I know that there'll be some people say that I don't like you know that if if he's doing this as a distraction for the Epstein Fowler's a distraction of from other things than why playing to his hands you know or other people might say that you know Democrats don't want to seem weak

you know and being the ones that are pro drug dealers or whatever I think most people don't want war with Venezuela. I don't think it's popular. I think that Trump had a big base of people that were anti-war. He brought in the Tulsi, Glenn Greenwald, RFK crowd. A lot of the Manosphere bros don't want war. When I went to a TPA USA event last December, I was pretty shocked when I was asking the kids, like, why do you like Trump? And like many of them brought up anti-war America first. We care about ourselves, not these other countries. I think it divides his coalition. And I don't think anyone's forward except Marco Rubio, really. And so I think that the Democrats should should like try to take back that mantle from him a little bit. What do you think about that? I think they've made

a fundamental miscalculation about this. And I think you're right that, I mean, I think they assume having watched too many Tom Clancy movies that, you know, they can turn this into a fight with these steely-eyed killers, you know. And if they had video, if, for example, if the Navy had approached one of these boats, you know, and a bunch of cigar-chomping Fidel lookalikes got up on pirates or pirates tattoos, you know, shooting or, you know, training weapons. I'm the captain now. Or if they had signed their own death warrants by saying, okay, we are going to fight on the high seas with the U.S. Navy vessel.

Okay. Then you said, well, you know, hey, we just, we were interdicting you because there is a tradition. that you can interdict contraband and dangerous things on the high seas and you have to stop them and you have to give them warning and you have to. Instead, we just, you know, we took the might of the U.S. Navy, brought it up on a bunch of guys on a speedboat and just vaporize them. And I think most Americans, despite our, you know, Americans love to fight. Americans do love watching their military do stuff. I think that's uncomfortable for a lot of people. And it should be. And also, there's no reason to trust these guys or even drug dealers. I mean, you know, they put a makeup artist in a gulag and like just so they're just saying trust us. It's drug dealers. Maybe it is. But like, why should we trust this administration? And you'd have to say that everybody on that boat who you just have summarily executed was guilty of a, you know, of whatever you think they were guilty of. Capital crime. Yeah. Maybe it was a couple drug dealers and human traffickers and there were innocent people on the votes. Like, who the hell knows? I think a lot of people have been worried about that or, you know, people. People

that had work or fishermen right who knows all right libertarian tin is about to come out so you can maybe hit me on the nose with a with a newspaper if you want but the other news item from today that has me my hackles up is um apple have you seen this so there was an app a couple of apps the most notable one was called ice block that had popped up and people were using the app to say hey, they're ice agents in my neighborhood, Neighborhood X. And so, you know, folks wanted to look and see where the mass ice agents were. You know, they could go on the app and there'd be a little map of where the ice agents were. The Trump administration said that that was endangering the federal officers and went to Apple.

One of the claims that they made was that the shooter at the Dallas Ice Facility used this app. Maybe that's true. If so, that's still the stupidest rationale I've ever heard, he was, I mean, it's obviously we condemn everything that person did but it was at a ice facility like the building was ice so it's you could probably be pretty sure there were ice agents on an ice facility yeah agents there i mean i don't think you needed the app to figure it out anyway they've used that as rationale tim cook is folded and they've they've shut it down those apps now are not on on people's phones people can't do it i think in a free country we should be able to post onto the internet hey they're masked

agents on Broadway and Vine and not have the government or the tech oligarchs tell us, prevent us from doing that. But I don't know where you're at on that. You thought I was going to, you know, swat you in the snout with a rolled up newspaper and say bad dim. I don't know. You're an old school law and order Republican, you know, Tom. But I'm an old school civil libertarian, too. I don't think it should be against the law or some kind of violation to say, to call your neighbor either through an app or on a thing. Remember telephones? We all use to have one on the wall of our. house, you know, and call your neighbor and say, hey, I think there are masked, you know,

federal agents coming down the street. You're allowed to notice the movement of the law enforcement officers of your own city, state, and country. This isn't, Danny, this isn't Russia. Is this Russia? You know, it's not Russia. It's not North Korea. You are, I mean, people do this, by the way, and this is a problem for law enforcement during disasters or mass casualty events. people do it with scanners. Yeah, right. I mean, what's next? You're going to ban police scanners so that people can't listen to where the cops are?

Maybe. So I'm with you on this. I mean, the thing with the masks is really getting to me. Seeing masked federal agents. I mean, this is the United States. These are my fellow citizens. And we are their fellow citizens. I mean, there used to be, you know, a time I'm going to go for another cultural illusion here.

There was a time when cops, you know, wore their name. Remember the untouchables when Connery, when Kevin Costner says, what's your name? And it kind of taps his badge with his nightstick. He says, it's right here. You know, and now this thing with, you know, these agents wearing masks as if they're in, you know, like fighting cartels in Mexico City or, you know, disappearing people in Belarus or something. I mean, it's really, it's really ridiculous. And it's meant to be intimidating.

It's meant to take these guys and make. them into kind of mythical, faceless agents of order on the law. And I'm sure that, you know, again, in Belarus or St. Petersburg, that's just fine. But not in the United States of America. One more thing of this. I mean, for started shame on you, Tim Cook. It's just, it's truly embarrassing the way that this person has groveled to Trump. I remember he brought him this little statue to the Oval Office. It's like Apple has more cash on hand than any organization in the history of the world. There's no, I don't understand this.

There's no reason for him to do this. It's pathetic. I don't understand it. I don't understand it with Tim Cook. I definitely don't understand it with somebody like Jeff Bezos. Every time I think of Bezos, I wonder, you know, and again, maybe it's because I'm old school and an older guy. But I would think that Jeff Bezos, you know, every time Trump growls, you'd pick up the phone and say, listen, I have more money than God, certainly more money than you. And I own a newspaper.

you should be afraid of me, not the other way around, because that's how it would have been in the old days. You know, I'm William Randolph Hearst. Don't fuck with me. And yet, I don't understand this, the serial caving. And I'll just add one more thing. I think, I mean, I get it that people say, well, you know, Trump will come and go. I have business interests that are enduring.

I also think, and I said this at the start, I know you and I talked about this at one point, I suspect that a lot of these guys are saying, just give him. some money and he'll go away. Yeah, protection racket. Just give him shiny things. You know, give him a statue, give him some cash, and just get him, he'll move on to something else. But as, you know, as people should have learned by now, give a mouse a cookie when a bully

takes your lunch money, many other folk sayings we could apply here, but they're going to come back. One more and another thing on this, actually, is I've been sitting there getting mad listening to you talk about it. The libertarian guys, the supposedly libertarian guys, the free speech guys. beginning with Zuckerberg all the way down. I mean, this is like one of the radicalization origin stories that they tell, the Zuckerberg, Rogan crowd that the Biden administration told tech companies

that they should take down COVID misinformation. At Taibi, Barry Weiss. Yeah, all that's a big radicalization point for them. And I think they really overstated what actually happened in that case. Like it was like some mid-level Biden people talking to me. And the tech companies could have told Biden to pound sand. So I kind of agree with them in principle, but like the degree to which they got obsessed over it was extremely exaggerated, in my opinion. This is literally the federal government telling directly from the top, the top of the government, talking to the top of a tech company and saying, you must delete any information that citizens posted that they felt like they wanted to post to protect their safety or to at least inform their neighbors about what the federal government's activities were.

in their neighborhood. That is absolutely allowable in a free country. And anybody that got pissed about the Biden administration when it came to COVID misinformation, who's not shouting from the rooftops today is a fucking hypocrite and should be embarrassed about themselves. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, we live in a time of, you know, just almost painful cognitive dissonance now. The people who pioneered, I mean, the Trump supporters who pioneered the what aboutism arguments, right? You know, when I brought up how out to lunch, Trump seemed at this Admiral General Jamboree that Heggseth called. Right away, there were people both in person and online saying, well, you didn't seem concerned. What about Joe Biden?

And I'm like, okay, first of all, Joe Biden on his worst day was not this. But all that says is we are just as bad as we've always accused you of being. Right. And it's the same problem here. It's like if you're not upset, I think you're right. If you're not upset about this, you know, were you full of shit then or are you full of shit now? Because you can't hold both of those positions. And let's add one more thing because the government, I'm sure the government answer would be something like, look, it's a matter of security.

This endangers law enforcement, blah, blah, blah. Look, we're not talking about moving, you know, like somebody posting, you know, the train carrying nuclear warheads is about to go through, you know, Sandusky. Right. This is saying, listen, I live in this neighborhood. There seem to be cops moving around here and federal agents over there. I'm sorry, in an open society, you are allowed to notice where the police are. Yes. Amen. Here's some more things that are happening in our supposedly open society, the purges. Should we start with DOJ or FBI? I guess we'll start with DOJ. The four top prosecutors have been forced out in that Eastern District of Virginia, which is the district where they're charging Comey. There's one in particular, though, that I want to share with you. Michael P. Benari. I don't know anything about this person, but I think you're going to be pretty interested in what happened to him. He was fired shortly after Maga Schill, Julie Kelly.

You might know her. She's a big social media presence, the Trump Schill. She posted on X, one can only assume Benari was a big part of the internal resistance to the Comey indictment. In fact, Benari had no role in the Comey investigation, according to two people familiar. this is a Washington Post story. He was, though, the lead prosecutor in the case of Muhammad Shrafula, who the plotter of the Abbey Gate attack that killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of others who were being evacuated from Afghanistan.

So the guy prosecuting the man that plotted the Abbey Gate attack in Afghanistan, he's been fired because a MAGA shit poster thought that maybe he was a woke lib that was sympathetic to Jim Comey. If we're going to make national security appointments based on whom Laurel Lumer likes, why would we be surprised that, you know, some stray voltage from somebody like Julie Kelly, you know, took out somebody at DOJ. I mean, this is, this is all about loyalty checks now and about, you know, doing the performative stuff and about not talking about the Epstein files. Oh, I'm sorry, did that come up again?

because, you know, this is, this is meant to keep people, it's meant to churn and to have people like you and me talking about it. I mean, it's also meant to just make sure that only loyalists are inside the Justice Department and then the fact that, like, they don't actually give a fuck if these prosecutors are skilled at prosecuting bad guys. They just care about whether they'll prosecute the people Donald Trump wants. That's the, the bottom line for the American public is that these people are not just being replaced with loyalists, they're being replaced with people who are incompetent opportunists. who are not going to do the business of the American people, who are not going to make sure that the country is safe. I mean, all of this, all of these people spend their day protecting their own positions and consolidating the president's power. And, you know, every time I see stories like this, I think, so who's actually prosecuting crimes? Anybody? That's a rhetorical question,

but I think the answer is basically nobody. I mean, unless the crimes are immigration related. I think that's pretty much what's happening as far as the federal prosecutions are concerned. Cash Retail also did a firing this week. You fired an agent in training. Any guesses? Have you seen that with their... I did. You know, that'll teach you to put a gay pride flag on your...

A gay pride flag on the desk. This is what Cash said. After reviewing the facts and circumstances, this is where we're doing a movie reference. This is like a... What I do is Lobowski? You know, the cops are coming over. It's like, yeah, we've been working in shifts

to try to figure out what happened to your credence tapes. It's like we had to review the facts and... How many people were... involved in this review. It was a guy that had a pride flag on his desk. After reviewing the facts and circumstances, I've determined that you exercise poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment. You're summarily dismissed. So that's where we're at. Just a rainbow flag is now as political signage. That's unacceptable. Like, we've got to run that person out. This from an administration that whose

hatch act violations are going off in every direction like a match thrown into a box of Roman candles, you know, putting things on federal websites that say the Democrats have shut down the government. When I was working for the government, as days you remember, Tim, when I was back a federal employee, people were trying to get me fired every week for violating the hatch act because, you know, it's an inappropriate expression of political, you know, partisanship, because I would write articles and so on. It's astonishing that, you know, a pride flag on a guy's desk is inappropriate signage, but, like, having the Republican convention at the White House, you know, is, I mean, it's just incredible. I wonder if there are any thin blue line flags on those desks or an appeal to heaven flag, maybe. or, you know, one of the, one of Martha Annelito's favorite flags.

Or an upside down American flag or, yes, pine trees or something. Oathkeeper's a skull. I bet there's a punisher skull in one of those desks. But I think it's meant to have a chilling effect. It's meant to say, you know, that to work at the FBI, you have to be a loyalist. And again, it raises the question, well, who's doing FBI work while these guys are running around figuring out who's got a flag on their desk that, you know, about sexual orientation. You can't be proud at this FBI.

You can't be proud of being gay. You can be gay for now at the FBI. You just got to be quiet about it. It's like we're going back to the 90s, all right? We just, we don't want you gays flouncing around talking to us about who, who did well on drag race last night, you know, we don't need any of that. You know, that's a, I've never seen drag race. It's a whole subculture that's, that's a mystery.

Cash Patel is very butch. I said, do you see the challenge coins of the skull? coins that he's handing out. It's most embarrassing thing that I think I've ever seen. The FBI director is handing out these challenge coins and it's like cash, K, money sign, H, and a skull. Oh, Jesus. And it's like a child. Yeah. This is this whole administration operating on this, you know, cable news theory that our law enforcement and the military and all the other institutions have been somehow wussified, you know, that like the defense. department. It just sits around like your commanding general comes in and says, are you okay?

Do you feel included and valued today? I mean, this isn't. Did I make space for you at training? Right. Do you feel that you have space to speak your truth? You know, I just, it doesn't, but that's not happening. And, you know, I, I mean, I, every now and then, I just sit down and I watch Fox and I watch Newsmax and I watch, you know, when I can find RSBN and all these other crazy. And it's like, it's like satellite signals that have made it across the galaxy from some Earth to, you know, that's like orbiting, you know, at the other end of the Milky Way or something. Because it's, it's just bonkers. And but people believe it. And so I don't know if Patel or Hague Seth or any of these guys really believe, it's so hard to tell what political opportunists really believe about anything.

I mean, I think cashmitell is legitimately a little weenie with a micro phallus, and he's like trying to overcompensate, and he's handing out skull coins to feel tough. I mean, I think that, I think that's authentic. I don't think there's any show about that. I can go with you on the skull coins to feel tough. You don't, no comment on his dick size. Okay, that's fine. One more serious item, I guess they're all serious. One more bad news.

Then we'll see if we can find a silver lining at the end of the show. There was a, I guess it was yesterday on Yom Kipp. a British man of Syrian descent drove a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing people outside of Manchester's Hebrew congregation synagogue. Two men died. One of them was possibly killed by errant police fire. This anti-Semitic violence that we're now seeing a bunch of places. I was kind of interested in some of the reactions to this, but do you have any thoughts on that broadly before I get to the politics? I kind of chewed over a British citizen of Syrian descent, and I kept trying to figure out because it does matter in terms of terrorist plots

or trying to deal with, you know, where this threat came from. Did that mean? And maybe you know, because I couldn't divine it from the news. I know what you're about to ask him. I don't know. Right? Was a native born British citizen who's like, you know, like me, being an American of Greek and Irish descent, but I was born in Massachusetts. I grew up here, you know.

Or was this a Syrian immigrant who was a nationalized British citizen? Because it makes a difference. I think the former, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, I don't either. And I thought it was just interesting the way it was reported that I couldn't figure it out. And my point is, if they're looking into was this a kind of planned terror attack, you know, with links back to the old country, it would make a difference about how this person was radicalized. And that was the only question I had. Was this a lone wolf, you know, guy having an off day who, you know, decided to take up.

out a synagogue, or was this somebody who was radicalized somewhere else and then sent in like a cruise missile? And because I don't know the answer to that, to where the guy came from, I don't know the answer to that question. And just leaves me saying it's a tragic terrorist, terroristic incident, but I don't really know how it came about. I want to just talk for a second about Zara Mandani's response to it. It was pretty interesting to me.

And I kind of want to talk about a sort of broader context of where we're at in our dialogue. He wrote this, on the holiest day in the Jewish year, an anti-Semitic attack of the synagogue in England has taken the lives of two and gravely injured others. My thoughts are with the victims and their families, while this terrible violence occurred in ocean away, a very real fear casts a shadow here too. I appreciate Governor Hokel's calls to increase state police presence at synagogues. As mayor, I will do everything in my power to protect Jewish New Yorkers as I will every faith community. the right to worship in peace is sacred, a totally appropriate and empathetic and correct statement to put out on the merits. The reaction to that, so I saw that and I was like, oh, that's good, that's good. Like, just good. We don't need to throw flowers at somebody's feet

for saying the right thing, but like, that is good. I was happy to see that. And then I clicked on it, and I looked at the responses. And it was mostly from pro-Israel right-wingers who were saying, fuck you you did this you are the one who you know who wouldn't condemn globalized antifada which is on my podcast and i'm walking around all this and i'm saying wait a minute don't we want to model good why this i just think this is what is wrong with where we are right in this discourse people modeling good behavior even if they're on the other side of you on an issue you should just say this is good great i i absolutely want zora mandani to be promising to protect Jewish New Yorkers, to be saying the right things, to be trying to, you know, calm

tensions, you know, to be exercising human empathy. Like, that's what you want. And yet, like, we're in this situation where like you fucking can't win, right? And, you know, because, like, you do this and like you're, who knows, I don't know, it's in Zoran's heart. Maybe you're growing or maybe he would have said to say before that whole controversy. I don't know. But like, but this is what people should want and yet every reaction to him was nasty was condemning it

and I think that's just kind of tell it because like that's what we're at right now like where the you know Trump and these guys will never never try to model good behavior in these instances and in some ways I worry they get rewarded for it and like Zoron does the right thing gets no credit you know first of all

this is let me just go back to this is why I was curious about who the attacker was and where he was from yeah because we have a tendency right away in all these attacks, the guy that shot at, the guy that tried to kill President Trump, you know, the guy that shot up, I mean, we had over the weekend a week ago, we had like three mass shootings with, you know, weirdo, lone wolf guys, you know, just, like, we still don't know how to categorize the guy who burned down the Mormon church, you know, like he was like he was a MAGA guy, but he hated Mormons and he had issues. And I can agree

with people who say, well, you're a little late to the party after globalized the intifada kind of crap, you know, that, I mean, a stupid thing to say to begin with. On the other hand, if now as an emerging political leader, he puts out a statement that, as you point out, is absolutely the right thing to say, then it's the right thing to say. And the bind we're in in American politics is you can't ever change your mind. You can't ever try to correct or model good behavior because then if you've ever engaged in bad behavior, it's, as you say, it's unwinnable. Hey, the other day, I actually said something nice about President Trump and people were like, oh, you're a fan. I said, we're doing intelligence sharing now with Ukraine again. Yeah. And I said, good. Okay. You know, I doubted his commitment to this when he said he's, you know, he's washing his hands of it. I said, one of the things I would look for is, is he going to allow intelligence sharing? He did. I'm not going to say anything bad about a good thing happening. Great. You know, more of this, please. Sure. Wish it was nine months ago.

Wish it was nine months ago. But like, great. Let's do it. By the way, speaking of Mom Dani, I was in a day and a half social media kerfuffle because of the other thing Mom Dani said, which was that I would definitely arrest Netanyahu, you know, if he came to New York. And I had to, in my internet, I used to teach international relations. I was a professor all those years. And I said, ladies and gentlemen, Zoran Mamdani cannot arrest anybody on an ICC warrant and remand them to behave. He doesn't have that power. I know you all liked it when he said it. It's a dumb thing to say. He can't do it. Please move on. I think that's where a lot of politicians get themselves in trouble. They put out a good statement and they say something dumb. Then they go back and forth. But as you say, look, if you want to

send signals to your political leaders, whether there's Zoran Mamdani or President Trump, you know, you should be as critical as you can be of the bad stuff. But when there's good stuff, it's okay to say it's good stuff. You don't, you don't lose your car. I don't think anybody's going to think I'm now like, you know, on the Trump 2028 train because I said one good thing about something he's doing. Yeah. Also, if it's not performative, it's not fake.

It's like, because I hear from people about this. Like, there are folks that have legit concern about Mondani that is like there is a spike. anti-Semitic violence, right? There's also, maybe related to Zoran, not to his fault, but just like his prominence, there's been, there's a story I just saw this morning about some spikes in anti-Islam violence as well. But there has just undoubtedly been a spike in the anti-Semitic violence. And there are people that I've heard from who are like, my legit concern is for the safety of Jewish people in New York, right? Like, as somebody who is in New Yorker, has family there. And I just want to make sure that, like, the next administration is,

going to take that seriously and like that that's going to be a priority right and that that's and like he says it right there yes that will be a priority i will do that and so if you're concerned if you have a legitimate concern about that as policy and he says i'm going to i'm addressing your legitimate concern i'm telling you i'm going to do this you can hold them accountable if it doesn't happen in three years but like that is good and and so if you don't if you don't accept that then what you're saying is well no actually this is just performative bullshit and i just actually don't like his politics. And I'm just like using the specter of violence against Jews as a cudgel to attack somebody I don't like. Yeah. And that's where I was going to go with this, Tim,

which is, for example, again, in a bipartisan mode here, I think there are people who almost would be rather that Ukrainians would suffer than say Trump did the right thing. Yeah. Because they want their political allegiances and partisanship to be neat and clean and black and white. And white and a morality play. And the way I feel about Donald Trump is not a secret, certainly not to you or anybody listens to this podcast. That shouldn't inhibit me from saying, okay, this is one thing that's happening that I like and I'd like to see more of it. And it's the same with Mum Donnie. Look, I, you know, I'm a New Englander. I care so little about who the mayor of New York is. I mean, I'm like, you didn't have deeply held views about Mayor Lindsay growing up or?

No. No, you know, I mean, really, when I'm down, you know, getting a lobster roll at the beach, I don't look across the water and say, hey, what's going on in New York City? Who are they going to, who's going to be the mayor of that place? You know, sit across the Long Island Sound here. I'm a little worried. We've got some concerns about some of the municipal policies being put in place. Yeah, I mean, is the trash going to get picked up in, you know, on park slope? But, you know, again, whatever your feelings about Monta, if he says, look, I'm going to, if I am elected, I will. use the power of the New York City police to, because you go to New York, I go to New York, I'd like to feel safe there, you know, to protect all faith communities in New York. There is no bad part of that. And it's okay to say it, even if you don't want free grocery stores and, I don't know, socialism and, you know, Marxist, Leninist subway tokens. Also, socialist grocery stores, not my favorite policy, but a five grocery store pilot in New York City He does seem a little bit less pernicious than a little bit less scary and socialistic than, I don't know, like paying soybean farmers to not sell their soybeans with my tax dollars or taking a 10% stake in a tech chip company or any of the other fucking mega communist shit he's doing.

But let us just point it out again, it may be that it's a bad idea to have five socialist, you know, grocery co-off exchanges. Who cares? Let me just speak to all of the Americans who don't live in New York City. You are not going to be paying for it. It's not your city. You are paying for the farmer bailout, by the way. But we are paying, which is where we should go next, because, yes, you are going to pay for

the farmer bailout. We predicted it. We said it. I'm going to go back to my infamous conversation with some Trump voters and one in particular back in Pennsylvania just before the election. I said there's going to be tariffs. You're going to have to bail out the farmers again. And this voter said to me, I don't know what you're talking about.

And I said, you live in Western Pennsylvania. You don't remember that Trump had to bail out farmers? Oh, that's, you know, fake news stuff. And I'm like, okay. And here we are. I kind of almost wish I could go back and just start looking around for some of those folks to say, hey, remember that conversation we had about the thing that didn't happen? And here we, it's like it was as predictable as a sunrise.

Here we are again. although apparently did you see I think it was percent who went on television and said well you know why they're not selling soybeans Joe Biden like what they sold soybeans last year but but they know their audience yeah they know their audience

Tim all they have to say Joe Biden and millions of you know Fox viewers go ah we're also bailing out Argentina and that's where China's getting their soybeans from now so it's like because of our stupid fucking trade war like we are simultaneously bailing out farmers in South Dakota and the

Argentine president. And wasn't Argentina supposed to be the role model we were going to emulate six months ago? I don't know. Tom Nichols, I was going to bring up Ukraine as my silver lining at the end. So do you have anything in your personal life you want to share? Give people a happy note to leave. You know, any cat updates or anything happening

in Rona? Oh, well, she gone. She visited for a while. My cat is now a teenager and she is hilarious. Any television shows? Anything bringing you joy? Anything sparking joy? in your life right now? There is a new season of slow horses, which I am enjoying because Jackson Lamb is my spirit animal. A whole bunch of new stuff arrived all at the same time. So I'm making my way through Tulsa King and slow horses. But I have an old man gripe that we can finish

with. Okay, great. Love those. Are you guys ready for this? This is an Andy Rooney moment. I love old man. Am I the only person that occasionally has to turn on closed captioning because the new thing in television is to mumble? Not only is this not an old man gripe. Tom Nichols. This is something I've learned from my work on the FYI pod. People should check that out or Gen Z focus pod. The Gen Zs do closed captioning on everything. Really? Yeah. They're closed captioning all the shows. Maybe it's because they're multi-screening. And I don't quite get it. But maybe you know, maybe you're young actually. Maybe you're young at heart, young in spirit. Because I just find on occasion now like this method acting or something,

right where it's a you know two characters and they started I'm like oh because the other thing I'm watching where I where this happens to me all the time is task this stuff dark dark show and I mean dark like literally like it's always at night and there's no sunshine and it's not exactly a postcard for for rural Pennsylvania I can tell you that but again I find myself I keep turning my wife and saying what like like you know like I'm the old guy you know I do have to break it to you I am watching task without the closed captioning. So maybe it is your ears. Well, except my wife has very good hearing.

And I turn to her and I say, what do you just say? And she goes, she nods and she says, no idea. And so we back up. And if it's a major plot pointer, seems to be, we have to back up and say, ah, okay. That's what he said. And so I'm sorry to end on this cranky old man note. But come on. And the out, but.

You doing cranky old man things sparks joy in me, Tom. So it is a positive for me. This is what you have to look forward to in about 20 years then. I can't wait. We'll see if we still have a liberal democracy then. Everybody, thank you. It's been another great week at the Bullwark podcast. I hope you enjoyed it.

We'll be back on Monday with Bill Crystal. We got a little double header coming on Monday. It's not just Bill Crystal. We've got a bonus guest that I help you all enjoy as much as I will. We'll see you all then. Thanks to Tom Nichols. Thank you. Bye, everybody.

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