The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

They end up sounding ridiculous whenever they try—like the treasury secretary saying that access to cheap goods is not part of the American dream. At the same time, Trump’s circle of plutocrats don't seem to mind that the stock market is tanking. And while the administration is cutting Ukraine off from US intelligence to serve up an unjust peace, the Pentagon is on a CTRL-F "gay" delete rampage. Plus, Dems need to skip the kooky TikToks, and the SpaceX rocket explosion was only one part of Elon's very bad day.  Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Tom's piece about Dems acting too normal (gifted) Tim's interview with a reporter in Ukraine Clip from French senator's speech calling out Trump and Elon MAGA hat guy thinking he's gone into the lion's den at Disney World Debris from the latest SpaceX rocket explosion reentering the atmosphere over the Bahamas Tim's playlist

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Friday. We have survived another week barely and I am here with one of your faves, Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic. His books include The Death of Expertise, which has an updated and expanded edition. Go get it. It's Tom Nichols and maybe Cat Lily. We'll see. How's it going, Tom?

Good, Tim. Lily's sitting right here. She's waiting for her close-up. We may have a Lily sighting. All right. Somehow, I went back and looked at the archives. Time is a flat circle. I feel like I'm living a lifetime every day. I also feel like I'm hearing from you constantly and all your various platforms. And so I was like, when was Nichols last on the pod? And it, uh, it was the day after inauguration. Oh yeah. That was a, that was a real upper for people. So it's been six weeks since then.

And I wanted to start by just kind of asking you your biggest takeaways from this in terminal six weeks. What has surprised you? What has outraged you most? I think a lot of things have not surprised me because we lived through the first term, but also because he's doing what he said he would do. He's trying to get even and get revenge and troll the country with this bizarre slate of cabinet officials and letting Elon Musk loose on federal workers who were just trying to do their jobs. I think the speed with which he betrayed Ukraine was a little bit surprising.

I thought he would sort of ease his way into that with Kellogg going overseas and doing something shaky at the negotiating table. I didn't expect him to basically just reorganize American foreign policy into a de facto alliance with Vladimir Putin. Yeah. Well, that's a good place to start then. There is the frog boiling element of this. It's hard to say what is surprising.

I guess I thought that the Elon element has been a little bit more surprising to me, just how, how much he's run roughshod over everything. And I think the way that he's fucked up the economy was a little quicker than I expected, but I don't know, this is like something that Nicole and I talk about a lot, Nicole Lawson, I talk about, which is like, we were the only ones that took him seriously, it seems like, like there were a lot of people that were his supporters that didn't really like expect him to do all the things. And so like there's been anything in particular that shocked me, but like you,

the speed of some of it has, has surprised me. I wish I could go back and, you know, the, the Trump folks that I talked to just before the election and one in particular just swore to me, he's not going to do tariffs. That's, you know, that's just, and I said, he loves tariffs. This is, he is going to rattle the economy. This wasn't hard to see coming, but it was hard to predict both how fast

and how completely nutty it is. It's someone, actually a few folks have asked, like who's out there who knows what he's about to do? Who's like shorting them? Like this is a date. If you have any insight information, it's a day trader's paradise, right? It's like, okay, there comes the tariff, you know, thing. Nope, now he's going to roll it back. Oh, now the market's back up. The one thing I remember you and I talking about, I remember cautioning and saying, well, Elon Musk, he doesn't have that much power yet. cautioning and saying, well, Elon Musk, he doesn't have that much power yet. I didn't imagine that Trump would deputize him to do this, that he would be able to pay

Doge staffers six-figure salaries, which just always proves the point that these folks aren't about getting rid of government waste. They just prefer that it goes to them. And that Congress and the courts would just say, okay, Article 1 doesn't operate anymore. The Appointments Clause doesn't operate anymore. The president can just pull a guy off the street and say, hey, go fire people. And the Constitution and the law just don't operate.

That, I guess, surprised me a little bit. Yeah, I guess we'll have to give ourselves a grade. I punish myself a lot with the amount of information that I'm consuming and the various sources I'm consuming them from. I don't relisten to myself, but maybe I'll punish myself by relistening to our January 21st one to see how it stacks up. On to the Ukraine news. So, over the past 24 hours, Russia has carried out massive strikes across the country using drones and ballistic missiles. That happened a day after the US stopped sharing intelligence with Kiev that had previously given advance warnings of attacks.

Just before we got on, I interviewed a reporter, Kaelin Robertson, who's on the ground in Ukraine. People can check that out on either on YouTube or on the Bullwork Takes podcast. He was reporting from Kiev and says basically, in the last 24 hours, like the amount of air attack material that has gotten through onto the ground has been unlike anything previously. The air raid sirens were going off in Kyiv more often than they had been in the previous months. And all of this is just a direct one-to-one correlation. Trump just decided to flip the switch. We're no longer going to share intelligence with Ukraine. He told the Brits they can't share our intelligence with Ukraine.

And Putin has taken advantage of it. And there's been deaths and destruction, targeting of energy infrastructure. And it is an astonishing, sick betrayal of our ally. And just to make the point that it's not about some sort of strategic calculation, he's also decided to send home Ukrainian refugees. He wants to take that refugee status away from them. This is basically operating in concert with Vladimir Putin my colleague David from had a great line You know that the Trump Russia theory is like now one of the most durable theories in political science because you're watching it play

All the real time, you know, we're getting confirmation of it every day was there any Overwhelming strategic or American interest reason to do this? And the answer of course is no. And it's amazing because MAGA world always reacts to this like, well, we have to bring our boys home. Yeah, right. You know, it's like what, what, what boys, uh, what are you talking about? You know, here's the reason to do it.

I just, just to be blunt, I give you as looking at the facts on the ground and you look at what happened in the Oval Office, we even talked since then. looking at the facts on the ground and you look at what happened in the Oval Office, we've been talking since then. And the reason to do it is, is if you're essentially on Putin's side and you're trying to force Zelensky to the negotiating table, like that is what this is. It's like we're going to force Zelensky to negotiate. And you see he sent a tweet this morning that was basically thanking France because they still did have some F-16s to protect their air that were French that they had borrowed.

And he said basically he wants to go to the negotiating table to try to get a ceasefire for air and sea because he can't protect his country. And like that is, I guess if you're going to art of the deal this and say that it's something besides just, you know, capricious, you know, Trump advanced temper tantrums, it would be that he is in league with Putin and trying to push Ryselinsky to the table. It's not trying to achieve a just peace so that people stop dying.

It's trying to achieve an unjust peace on Vladimir Putin's terms so that the people who do the dying are gonna be mostly Ukrainians from here on out. The Macron press conference, I guess it wasn't a press conference, it was addressed to the nation earlier this week, was just, it's just, it still is astonishing. Again, like we all saw this coming, we all saw the Trump of it coming, but like sometimes

you just watch a video and you're like, how is this the world that we're in? We're like, the president of France is giving an address to his nation that's like, don't worry, the French nuclear umbrella will protect the rest of Europe from Russia if it comes to it. We hope that the Americans are on our side, but we will go forth to help defend Ukraine as if they're not. To get across to your listeners just how astonishing this is, I'm going to go into nuclear professor mode for a minute and say, remember, you know, remember that the French created their own

nuclear force, because they felt cut out of the US British kind of nuclear do over it right back in the in the 50s. And they literally said, one of their leaders said, we can't have our security be at the sufferance of Lace Anglo-Saxons. France will have a nuclear force that is not for anybody but France. They literally did things like they had a couple of ICBMs, they're gone now, but they had a couple of ICBMs, so they put them on the French border so that they could say to the Russians, listen, no matter what you do to the rest of Europe,

once you roll in here, you're going to roll over these things and we're going to fire them. And that's separate from NATO and the Americans and their little cousins, the Brits. And this has now turned everything on its head where the French, they haven't made a policy decision yet. But for France to say, OK, basically, we'll take over as the nuclear guarantor of NATO. What?

Wow. And considering that the French nuclear force is relatively small, that doesn't mean nuclear war fighting or tit for tat. I mean, that basically means that if war you know, if war comes and I shouldn't say if war comes, if Russia starts another war, that this is going to be the French, you know, responding to nuclear force with nuclear force. And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be World War Three. And the idea that somehow this will exclude us, that Americans will just say, okay, we're out of it. You know, that's, that's not going to happen.

That's not how it goes in the international. I'm sorry. Did Trump told Zelensky, don't tell me how to feel about this. It might not affect us. I've not read a history book. I don't know anything that happened outside of like my field of vision right this second. It's boring at this point to do the, whether the Republicans thing, and I'm

sick of doing it and yet sometimes you have thing, and I'm sick of doing it. And yet sometimes you have to. And I do think this is a moment where Ukrainians are dying, Ukrainian infrastructure is being attacked for no reason except for, I guess, us helping Putin pressure Ukraine to the table. And you had these guys, Roger Wicker is wearing a Ukraine pin during the confirmation hearings. Brian Fitzpatrick, Don Bacon, the guys that I'm supposed to like, the Republicans that I'm supposed to like who are out there saying, oh, I will go to bat for Ukraine no matter what.

John Thune, nothing, nothing. And we're not hearing anything that they're not using the power of the purse. They're not pressuring Trump. Don Bacon is like meekly criticizing him using no, but not using any of his power. I mean, it is astonishing. Like these guys are just going to let Ukrainians wither and die because of Trump advances whims and they're doing nothing.

And because they don't want to get primaried. And because I keep thinking about Tom Tillis saying, well, I wasn't going to vote for AgCet, and I got threats. They're off the record. Or unattributed, you're hearing Republicans saying things like, well, I fear for my family and my staff. And well, I'm sorry, but if you're a senior US senator and you're not going to senator and you're you're not gonna vote your conscience Because you're afraid of Donald Trump and people in your district that go home

Don't be a senator anymore. You know, I'm sorry, you know if it's that's and I understand I mean, you know everybody who's ever criticized Trump including two guys sitting right here has gotten death threats It's just part of life in the 21st century with Donald Trump but if you're a senior US senator and you're saying saying well i couldn't really vote this way because i'm what will then you know come on home with the rest of us you know and just get out of that business but i think the bigger issue is that they really just love being in washington and they don't want to go home i mean susan collins very concerned very very concerned. She's running again next year at seventy four years old. For another six year term so this kind of incredible amount of political cowardice and careerism and opportunism that says yeah. an opportunism that says, yeah, in my heart, I know it's wrong to let all these people die under Russian bombardments. But, you know, I got to, I'm 74 and I got to run next year and, you know, my constituents are mad at me and we're getting ugly phone calls. And so, you know, that is not the Republican Party that you and I knew 30 years ago.

Yeah, no. Number one, Tom, tell us, people get, sometimes people get mad at me when I say this, but like, I have no sympathy for their fear. Like, are you kidding me? You're not going to do something about this? Cause you're scared that you've gotten some empty death threats. Like literally people died. Like Ukrainians died yesterday because of what Donald Trump did. And you're a fucking US Senator.

So do something about it. I tweeted a version of this complaint and somebody sent me this, this tweet by representative Joe Wilson from South Carolina. You might remember him from you lie fame, simpler times. It was retweeted by Don Bacon. So when I was like, yeah. So when I was like, where is Don Bacon? People are like, well, here's Don Bacon.

Here's this retweet he sent. Um, here's what Joe Wilson said. War criminal Putin launched a ballistic missile at a hotel where American, UK, and Ukrainian aid and health volunteers were staying, four dead, over 30 injured. In his deliberate bombing of children's cancer hospitals, maternity wards, et cetera, Putin further confirms his cowardice and contempt for life, including the lives of the Russians he sensed to die in his pointless war. Great tweet, but fucking do something about it.

The ballistic missile hit a hotel where American aid workers live because your president that you supported stopped giving intelligence aid to Ukraine. So fucking do something about it. Don't tweet. Call Donald Trump. Mention Donald Trump in the tweet.

This is virtue signaling. This is the shit that Republicans and conservatives make fun of. That's all this is. This is virtue signaling. That's the equivalent of holding up a little paddle. That's worse than holding up a paddle, actually. It says Putin is bad. Yeah, Putin is bad.

Like you don't even, at least if you held up the paddle, when Donald Trump was in the room, it would have sent a message that he was speaking about Donald Trump. Like this is just an empty critique of Putin. Great. These guys just fucking boil my blood so much. So anyway, since we haven't talked since Friday, before we move on from this, any other thoughts? And you wrote about it, called it one of the grimmest days.

Any other thoughts about that scene? Well, I mean, it was a setup. I mean, it shows you what JD Vance's real role is in this administration, which is sort of chief internet troll. Hey, bring JD in and let him rile up Zelensky so that Trump can then say, I couldn't do it. He said, he's disrespectful. But to know that you're just being brought in to be the kid throwing spitballs from the back row is really, it was just embarrassing. I felt a little nauseous watching it, but I could feel, I felt like embarrassment by proxy. I was like, just, oh my God, this is so, these are grown men. You know, as I find myself with this administration so often just saying, these are grown men and women acting this way. Like these are, these are adults

and it's pathetic. It's just, it really is pathetic to say, to watch people that are, you know, in middle age acting like they're 15 during study hall, you know, trying to piss off all the other kids. I mean, it's really astonishing. But I think, you know, once again, I mean, I, you know, I've criticized JD Vance comprehensively, but I think it really brought home that, you know, Trump runs the country, all the lights are plugged into the Oval Office at this point, which means eventually it all breaks down because nobody can manage that way.

Musk is his, his number two, you know, running rampant and JD Vance has just brought into like be, you know, the guy who is the living embodiment of snarky tweets. Pete Slauson Petulance, yeah, petulance of snarky tweets. My blood is still boiling from that Joe Wilson tweet, so I'm going to move to someone else that we both hate and try to get you to do that. Joe Wilson It's Lent and I'm a Christian, I don't hate anyone. Pete Slauson Okay, sorry.

Joe Wilson But I do have severe reservations. Pete Slauson Someone else that we have some very severe thoughts about, severe Christian godly thoughts about. David Sacks, I don't want history professor Tom again. You task me, Tim. At least I didn't have you on Ash Wednesdays. You don't have to talk about him with the ashes on your forehead like Marco Rigor. I'm Greek Orthodox. We don't do that. I'm Greek Orthodox. You guys don't do that. Not like Marco with the biggest ashes I've ever seen on his head talking about how Donald

Trump has moral authority. Yeah, that was significant. Yeah, I'm like, hey, I get it. I did the ashes. And with big ashes on his forehead talking about the moral clarity of Donald Trump. Luckily, we have confession. So you can get the ashes, lie about Donald Trump, then go back to confession. It's a full day.

Here's the ball sacks on Ukraine and you, you tweeted about it, but I want to, I want to get you going a little more. He writes interesting historical analogy. The Korean war was another three year war with tremendous losses on both sides. It was largely stalemated. The American client, South Korean leader, Rhee wanted to keep fighting.

Eisenhower made him sign the armistice. Great leadership. Tom wrote, a dumb comparison, but naturally attractive to diligence. So please, please extend those remarks. I mean, right, with, by unanimous consent, I'd like to revise and extend my remarks. Sachs is just, Sachs and Vance, they're all part of this small circle of plutocrats who have convinced themselves that they are deep thinkers,

that they are deep geopolitical thinkers, when in fact, they are exactly like getting the kid in your dorm at 2 a.m. or Cliff Claven at the end of the bar. Well, let me explain to you how Ukraine works here, Diane. That's a good Cliff Claven. Thank you. Well, I'm from the area. It was such a dumb analogy. For one thing, thousands of Americans were fighting and dying in Korea, hello, by snarkiness

and sarcasm fail me. So let me go into a more serious professor mode. I also believe just as one other thing, just throwing it out there, that there was this kind of security guarantee as part of that stalemate, something that we weren't going to do. We were going to steal their rare earth minerals and then not give them a security guarantee. So there there were some other differences Let's count all the ways in which David Sacks was wrong for one thing Stalin and Mao cooked up this war and again, by the way

This was also a war that became possible as we now know from doc again I'm sorry to be professorial guys But from documentary history from Cold War documents that released that from the Soviet archives, that the thing that motivated Stalin to say yes, because he had said no to an invasion of the south repeatedly. It's when the Americans left. When the Americans left the peninsula, exactly everything that sacks and others want us to do. That's when Stalin said, go for it. They almost made it. They get all the way down to the Busan perimeter.

The North rolls to the very tip of South Korea. The Americans, at the expenditure of great blood and treasure for two years, not only push them back, but reestablish the status quo ante. There wasn't like, okay, we're going to have an armistice and the North Koreans are going to keep an extra 200 miles. No, it went back to the 38th parallel. There was a demilitarized zone and the Americans who had, I mean, South Korea is full of the bones of American servicemen.

We're still there. Yeah. It's just one of those things where I'm sure it must've, you know, while you were on your way to a meeting somewhere, you thought, hey, I just- I like what you're saying, whatever they're doing out there these days. I will not speculate, but you know,

that you're walking down the hall and you're saying, hey, I just had a deep thought, tweet. It's one of those things that's like, you know, if you've read a book- I think you read one, it seems like, or maybe an article. I want to stick with David's ball sacks for a little bit, because not only, and I was just so excited as soon as I saw that Korea tweet, I was like, I want to get Tom Nichols to start talking about Soviet documents.

I was like, I just want to get him going on that. But yesterday made some more news. There's a strategic Bitcoin reserve now in the country. I've been hoping for some strategic reserves of some other things, baseball cards, Mardi Grabi, et cetera, but we've chosen to have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. David Sachs in his tweet about this says it doesn't cost anything. Doesn't cost taxpayers anything. Now that's interesting.

Why does it not cost taxpayers anything. Now, that's interesting. Why does it not cost taxpayers anything? Well, because it's funded by Bitcoin seized from criminals, which I think raises a few questions about what is cost and why are there so many criminals using this product that we need a strategic reserve of? But go ahead, I want to hear your thoughts on that. Well, again, somewhere somebody's investing and watching all this and having the time of their life. I have all these crypto builds and now send me stuff. He was like, there's some guy made 10 million on the announcement.

Oh, yeah. You can't tell who it is, but they were like 50X long. Anyway. Again, Trump is going through and he's checking, you know, of, yeah, if you help me get in, I'll set up all these schemes. You guys can, I mean, Trump, in a way, I don't want people to attribute too much purposefulness to this because I think what he's really doing is saying, I achieved the thing I needed to achieve.

You and I talked about this on after the inauguration. I'm not in jail. Right. I've defeated all my legal cases. Thank you all. You may all now indulge yourselves. Just go do what you want. And I think that's what's happening.

Hey, can you give us a crypto reserve? Sure. I mean, it's a lunacy to have a reserve of crypto. I also love just not to be pedantic, but like this idea that this doesn't cost anything. I mean, if the US government is investing in an FBI, and I guess we're probably not going to do this anymore, or we'll only investigate foes of the crypto guys that are close to Trump, and they will investigate them and seize their Bitcoin as part of the

corrupt state that we're now engaging in, where you only investigate political enemies. Otherwise, I mean, the president himself is on top of the crypto scam, so he's not going to be investigated, but this notion that it doesn't cost anything. It's like, well, no, if the FBI and the DOJ put money, put taxpayer dollars into investigating criminals and then they seize their assets, we get that money. That's something. So, if instead of using the money for the federal government, we're putting it over here in a federal reserve, in a strategic reserve, like yeah, that does cost something actually.

We're paying to go get it. We could have sold it and like use that money to pay down the debt or used it for what I like. You don't exactly quite get it. We're paying to get it and we're paying to administer holding it. And with all of the, you know, attendant all of the attendant risk, and for what? I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say, and I hold no crypto, so I'm not in this game.

It's a solution to a made up problem that benefits a very, I mean, this could be, you could say this about a lot of Trump economic policies. A solution to a non-existent problem that benefits a very small number of people very handsomely. Among those people, there is somebody put out a graphic of the crypto holdings in Trump's scam company. At 12% of the holdings were from this guy, Justin Son, whom I've talked about a couple times on the podcast.

He runs the Tron Exchange. He's a Chinese national. He runs the Tron exchange. He's a Chinese national. He is investigated by the Biden SEC. The Trump SEC has stopped investigating him. Shocking. And life's pretty good for him. Yeah. So, you know, we've got a crypto reserve now and he's not being investigated and he's, you know, about 12% of Trump's holdings he put in there. So not a bad return. I want to live in that alternate universe

where Democrats did all this, where George Soros was brought in to like slash the government or Bill Gates or somebody. And that they set up a crypto fund with, shady and shadowy figures on the left. I mean, they would be going, this would be deep state conspiracies. Biden has to go. I mean, it's on the left. I mean, they would be going, this would be deep state conspiracies. Biden has to go.

I mean, it's just the double, I know we've been doing this for 10 years, almost 10 years, about the double standard, but it really is remarkable. We're gonna keep moving through the parade of horribles here. It's time to embrace the horror. Peace.

Pete egg, Seth. The secretary of defense, the merit based Secretary of Defense, no DEI there at all, just the best qualified person for the job. He gave the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlighted the diversity efforts in the ranks. There was a little problem though as people started deleting various things through the program. They got rid of everything with the word gay, including the Enola Gay. The plane that dropped the bomb on Japan.

No, Tom's going to do the hosting job for me. We got rid of the Enola Gay. That is a faggity plane. That was one gay plane. That was one. They loved Dolly Parton on that plane. Yeah, exactly. I tell you, yeah. They did a lot of makeup. That plane flew over Japan wearing a fruit basket on its head like Carmen Miranda. Oh my God.

After I stopped having fun with you, I got to get off the internet and go write about this. I don't even know where to start. I mean, it's like, it's so strangely homophobic. It's a cross between the closeted kernel in American Beauty, you know, which everybody's been kind of crapping on lately. And I rewatched it the other day and I was like, yeah, that's a pretty old homophobic trope, but also an element of truth in it.

I kind of liked American Beauty. I know bad take. I know that's an inappropriate take, but I, but also an element of truth in it. I kind of liked American Beauty. I know bad take. I know that's an inappropriate take, but I like to give people my full candor. And I don't, I don't mind. I was, I was okay with it until this, until that last scene with me in a Savari and I'm a, I'm the dad of a, you know, college age girl. And I just didn't, I had to hear that. But, but I do love, I do love the last line of the movie, which is that I've

loved every moment of my stupid life, which I thought is a nice ending. But this whole DEI thing at the Defense Department is like a cross between that and Homer Simpson in the John Waters episode where Marge comes home and he says, he didn't give you gay, did he? I mean, there is just this weird scrubbing like scrubbing of everything that is to be a little more serious about this. It's Stalinist.

Yes. I mean, it's just kind of a Stalinist, throw everything in the memory hole. And I say this, especially as a long-time federal employee to sit through a lot of the training and all the other stuff, I could have been a natural ally about too much DEI stuff. You know what I mean? Some of these trainings are stupid. I had to take a morning out of my life as a federal employee while a professor came in and tried to explain to people, I still remember this, there were guys much older

than me sitting there nodding, trying to figure out she's like going okay So this is what sis hetero means and I'm like, oh for Christ's sake You know, we really have work to do today and you know, okay, I get it. That's you could say look We're not gonna we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna spend money on that but scrubbing the Defense Department archives to like make sure that somebody who, you know, was gay in the 1990 story or something gets like, you know, vanished. It's panicky.

It's like a gay panic almost. Yeah. What is even the point of deleting? So like, what are they doing? They're just going through their website,, control effing every page, like control F gay control, control F trans control. What control F queer? Like, what are you doing? What is the point of that? I mean, it's just, it's, it's a weird kind of panic. Stop trying the programs. It's fine. I, yeah, I just sat through one of these things the other

day and I was like, if you're a guy and a new young woman comes in on the staff, like, are you supposed to say, nice knockers, babe? Like, yes, no, maybe. It's like, no, that would be sexual harassment. It's just like, who is this for? That's a red light. Yeah, that's right. The red, yellow, green, you know. Who is this training for?

Like, people that are morons. Like, anybody that doesn't know this, like, probably shouldn't have had the job in the first place. I guess there should have maybe been a better vetting. So whatever, like, yeah, they're stupid shit, you know, and change some of the stuff. Like that's fine. But like, this is ridiculous and Stalinist. That's the thing.

There's a, there's a Stalinism to it. I mean, again, I could have, you know, if, if Hegseth had had a quick practice conference and said, listen, these things cost X dollars a year, we're not bringing any more guest speakers to explain to, you know, old retired colonels what it means to be cis, fine. Fine. That was a waste of taxpayer money. I mean, I'm not going to support Pete Hegseth, but I want to nod it and say, okay, I guess, you know, you can save a few bucks there.

This is different. This is this is something really different and almost like it's a larger point. It shows you that Mago world thinks of itself as this embattled minority. Even though they control everything right now, they still think of themselves as like Christians hiding in the catacombs, drawing fish symbols on doors. And so while they have the power, they're going to, they're gonna set the timeline right. You know what I mean?

If only we can go back to 1989, the last time we had a real president, and say, okay, we're going to just scrub the timeline so none of this happened and all the gay and trans soldiers will go away and everything will be okay again and it'll be just like when I was a kid in 1966. Two thoughts on that. One is just on the serious. We can make fun of the stuff.

On the serious side, I haven't confirmed this, but there's no reason to believe it's not true. I received a note from a reader about, you know, a couple of soldiers that they are aware of that have been kicked out because of gender dysphoria or whatever. People that had done nothing else. That is fucking outrageous. Like for a draft dodging, makeup wearing, bone spurs, TV star to like kick people that were voluntarily serving the military out for no Reason I get fucking outrageous in it and it's maddening and your point on the abattled minority. It's funny

I was watching the this video this kind of viral video that was going around. It's a guy in a magi hat at Disney World he's walking around these guys by himself at Disney World and And he looks he's kind of a weird-looking guy He's got his phone up and he's like videot's by himself at Disney worlds. And I mean, and he looks, he's kind of a weird looking guy. He's got his phone up and he's like videotaping everybody that walks by him. And like, people are giving him a look. And the point of this is this embattled minority thing. Like, look at me. I'm so brave.

I went into the lion's den and wore this hat and people are giving me weird looks. And it's kind of like, well, for starters, you guys won. So you have a majority of the people. They made a majority of the country or made up the plurality, a bare plurality of the people. So there are going to be a lot of people that agree with you. And number two, maybe these people are fucking looking at you because you're at a children's park by yourself. Filming people. Filming strangers. I think it might be your behavior, not your hat. Or maybe a little bit of both. I think it might be your behavior, not your hat. Or maybe a little bit of both.

Even though I live in blue New England, this is we're a divided state. It's like 60-40. There is always this kind of, I dare you to say something, look. The guys in the local supermarket here, having these really loud conversations about you. And it's like, All right, I guess I have to say something. Can you move so I can get the butter? But there is this there's almost this, this thirst for attention and engagement. These performative stunts that are almost like pay attention to me, engage with me, listen to me.

I mean, that's really unhealthy, no matter what your politics are. You shouldn't be going to the grocery store to exhibit your politics. And you and I, when we were concerned, we used to criticize the left about doing this, and rightly so. Yeah, sure.

The people standing and saying, I'm buying the sustainable stuff that wasn't, that was made by Campesinos, you know, I mean, just, just buy your fucking coffee and go home, you know? Let's talk about the economy. We had a jobs report this morning. It was mid, you know, it was a little short on jobs. Joe Biden's fault. Yeah.

Things ticked up a little bit. It wasn't, it wasn't great. Wasn't horrible, but a lot of bad signs on the economy. The stock market has been tanking. There have been some other signs that there's bad jobs news to come ahead. We'll see. Consumer confidence reports, very bad. Atlanta Fed projections, very bad.

The Treasury Secretary yesterday said that cheap goods are not part of the American dream. Wow. I think that this, I think it might be time for somebody to meet some real Americans, the rich hedge fund guy. Maybe some media training. Yeah. You know, like, wow, Mr. Secretary, cheap goods. Let me take you to a magical place that you and I will go.

It's called Walmart. Walmart, and that is central to the American dream, actually. We are going to go over to the TV section, you know, and then we're going to go over to Best Buy and maybe stop, you know, at an Aldi. I mean, it was just, it was so tone deaf. It was exactly the kind of thing a rich guy says on a private jet. People don't care about cheap goods.

No, you don't care about cheap goods. People are just looking to pull themselves up in the dude's jobs and get a good job and I'm poor all day. But like, Hey, there's a lot of people out there that actually don't have the ambition or desire to become a rich guy with a house on Sullivan's Island. All right. Like, and they do cheap goods are kind of important for them. desire to become a rich guy with a house on Sullivan's Island. All right? And they do.

Cheap goods are kind of important for them. And they would like a 65-inch TV. That's their one thing in life that they're going to put in the man cave. It's very American, actually. Yeah. But it's Joe Biden's fault. I heard this was just before we started today. Kevin Hassett was on and he's like, yeah, these jobs numbers.

No, they're good because they represent, I mean, Kevin Hassett is really a kind of, that genial smiling ability to just spin anything where he said, well, yeah, there was, but these were basically jobs that were created by Joe Biden and their government jobs. So really the jobs report is just us, I mean, I'm not making this up, right? It's just us correcting the Joe Biden government jobs boom.

Good luck with that. Again, you're going to have people in a lot of red parts of the country saying, I don't recall Joe Biden giving me this job that I'm losing. And I think with the market going up and down, again, the rationalizations are incredible. Oh, well, buy the dip. You know, it's a good time to buy. Okay, but if you're retired, it's not a good time to withdraw and say,

I don't know, eat or warm your home with what's in your retirement. It is a remarkable inability to ever criticize Donald Trump or even to say what you just said in a kind of measured way, that, you, that the jobs report was kind of meh, but there are some bad signs, but it's not horrible, but there's some clouds on the horizon. And instead, you just get the leader is good, the leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date.

It's totally incoherent. That's what you have the tariffs. So on Monday, they're on. On's totally incoherent. You have the tariffs. On Monday they're on, on Tuesday they might be off, on Wednesday they're on, on Thursday it's like, well, we're going to take them off for things that are already in the trade deal that some idiot me signed five years ago. And then it's like, well, but they might be back on in April and they might be lower. But then I saw a report today where they indicated they might be higher. 25% might be too low.

And you just got at something, Tim, which is all of this is happening. Talk about memory holes and Stalinism. All of this is happening as if Donald Trump had never been president. Yeah. Right? It's like, I'm finally going to make America great and end this terrible situation where you look familiar. You know, weren't you the, and, and, you know, we've got to do something with this terrible deal with Mexico. Who signed it?

It's incoherent. Who knows who can speculate like how long it'll last or for whatever, but like, it doesn't feel sustainable. I mean, any sentient person has to look at this and just be like, what are we doing? You know, it's like, you're going to put on tariffs because it's going to bring about a golden age, but now the car manufacturers are pissed. We'll take the cars off. And then it's like, the farmers are pissed.

So it's like, oh, the potash, the, like, we're going to do a carve out for the potassium. Like what, how do you even, you can't defend it without sounding like an idiot because there's no rationale to it. It's just random, arbitrary, president, the king, fiat, and like whatever he says is good. Right. You can't defend it without finding yourself saying things like Americans don't care about cheap goods. As with Ukraine, as with all the other things we've been talking about, you can't defend it And as with all the other things we've been talking about, you can't defend it without completely sort of staring into the middle distance while your body and your mind,

where your mind dissociates from your body like an accident victim. And you end up having to say things that you know are just bonkers. I agree with you, but I disagree with you. I agree with you this is unsustainable. In a normal world, in the first Trump term. I agree with you this is unsustainable in a normal world. In the first Trump term, we would say

these things are unsustainable and sure enough, Tillerson or Mattis or even Mnuchin or whoever would kind of say, all right, all right, we got it, but this bunch, this is just kind of a sort of looting the ship of state and pointing out that the masts are breaking and the ship is listing and we're taking on water. They're like, look, we don't care. We're just going to take as much stuff out of the hold as we can, jump into little lifeboats and paddle away. All the circuit breakers on this

stuff are gone. Ironically, and I know people really enjoy the schadenfreude about this, but these are our fellow citizens, like the policies or not. These are our brothers and sisters as American citizens. The people who are going to really pay the price for this are ordinary Americans, and most of them are going to be Trump voters. It just astonishes me how much he punishes his own voters and convinces them that they like it. I totally agree with that.

And it sounds like you're with me. And I just, who knows? I don't have a crystal ball. I'm not an economist, but I just looking at the tea leaves, like it seems like we're going to be in a downward spiral here. I just, it seems bad. Like I don't know how he gets out of it. And I guess my guess is the worst.

It gets the worst he gets, like, you know, just like during COVID. Well, normally he pays attention to the markets, but in part because he had to pay attention to markets because that was he wanted to get reelected. Right now he doesn't have to care. I mean, now it's am I doing good? Are my enemies are my enemies? Yelling. Remember, you know this, Tim, the one rule in MagaWorld that the test of a policy being good or bad is how loudly someone else yells about it.

That's all they care about. If David French is mad about it, then that means it's a conservative policy. That's the new rules. You mentioned about how, you know, the area where you disagreed with me slightly was just about like, there could be constraints if we were in normal times, we might not be in normal times. And you wrote for the Atlantic this week about how the Democrats are acting like things are too normal. I agree with that.

I think it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what to do. I find myself in this situation where I'm like, the Democrats should be out there more and trying new things and be, you know, trying to reach people in different ways. And then they do stuff and I was like, eh, maybe not that. So I don't know. So maybe normal is better than abnormal.

But what do you say? Normal is better than TikToks of female congressmen in fighting stances, which, you know. It was a good try. That one was a good try for me. No, no, no, no. I was I was cringing. I was I felt my cheeks get warm and embarrassment. I don't want that. It was bad, Tim.

And again, it's bad. It's not just cringy. It's evidence of a kind of unseriousness. Like that's the kind of tick tock you put out when a normal Republican president says, I'm going to lower the minimum, the marginal, you know, tax rate from 37.9 to 30. Like we're going to fight that. All right, we're going to fight that.

You know what I said, and I took some static, I took some grief from Democrats. Look, Senator Slotkin gave a very good speech. It was clear, it was direct, but it was, it was a very 2017 speech. It was clear, it was direct, but it was a very 2017 speech. And when I think about Democrats getting more into fighting trim, they really should ask, always take an opportunity to put it out there to say, fighting for working families, don't want to give tax cuts to plutocrats, did you really vote to have Cash Patel run the FBI? Yes, in MAGA world, we know you did, but the voters were talking to, did you really vote to have Cash Patel run the FBI? Yes, in MAGA world, we know you did, but the voters we're talking to, did you really vote for the, did you really vote for, to have the president of the United States publicly

draw the link from autism to vaccines and put Bobby Kennedy in charge of it at HHS? Really? You have children. You voted for Measles? Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, instead of saying, well, we have a different vision for jobs for the future, you know, is just, it doesn't move anything. It does in 1998.

It does in, you know, 2007. It does not do it now. So, so I like to be constructive in these cases. I hear you. It's easy to nitpick. What do you want? What do you want from them? The democratic elected leaders.

You know, I am always loathe to give, I'm not a Democrat, so I can't advise the Democratic party, but no more TikToks and, you know, kind of seriousness about both the policy issues. Because part of the problem is that every time you challenge Trump on a policy issue, you realize that Trump doesn't care about policy. So you end up sounding like a wonk, and he ends up sounding entertaining. One of the things that I've got on my to-do list

is to talk at some point about Trump's missile defense plans, which sound great, right? But if you want to talk about cutting government spending, we're not going to create a golden dome over America. It's not, we're not going to, it'll be billions and billions of dollars to defense contractors. It's not going to go anywhere. I worked for a defense contractor that worked on the original Star Wars plan. I know something of those days,

but I guess it's always a tough thing to tell Democrats that they should have more unified messaging because they're Democrats. And I don't know what the legislative response is, but to act like an Article 1 power and to say, no, we're not going to allow, we're going to put in bills even if they die every time that they have to keep putting them out there and getting out and talking to the American people about the scary stuff. I think they're loath to do that because Trump has been so effective at providing his surrogates with

sneering dismissive talking points. If you say, listen, did you really vote to let Donald Trump leave the Ukrainian people defenseless? And then what they hear on Fox or wherever is Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. Oh, it's Russia, Russia, Russia. Did you really vote for tariffs? And you know, then it's, again, this kind of Jedi mind trick of well, it's not really tariffs, it's

equal, it's fairness. And I think Democrats have just kind of thrown up their arms. Now, I'll say one last thing about this and get off that soapbox, Tim, there is a good argument. And I made it myself, let him drive the car off the cliff and fuck everything up, you know, just bring the pain, let people experience what tariffs really do. I wrote this in his first term. I said, if people really want to trade more and they want to touch that hot stove, then let's get on with it and get it over with.

The Alissa Slaugin strategy could work if you're just basing it on him fucking everything up and that's not a terrible bet. In the meantime, I just want more righteous anger. That's just what I keep saying. I just want more righteous anger, like righteous anger, not silliness, not goofiness, but righteous anger. Cold and clear and sharp as a knife instead of kooky TikToks and ping pong paddles. I guess that's the most you can hope for. I'm going to leave people with some shot and probably they'll enjoy.

Elon had a pretty bad day yesterday. That's when I go check through it. The Tesla stock is down 5.6% on Thursday, 29% for the month. He was demoted. John had to have a meeting where he was like, you don't get to fire people anymore. Actually the cabinet secretary's dude, we'll see if that holds. Yeah, we'll see if that's not. Not really a great sign, though, that I guess it was the first sign that like, maybe that there will be a leash put on here at some point.

They had a second failure in a row for SpaceX Starship. There was a spectacular shower of debris on the test flight. And this was kind of a double whammy for him because I think he's also trying to redo the FAA. And the FAA had to halt flights to several Florida airports to avoid the debris. He's being tweeted at by multiple baby mamas. And as I mentioned to James Carville on Tuesday, I was at a parade on Monday where all the cyber trucks were getting pelted with beads. So, you know, I don't know.

And he had a French senator call him a buffoon on ketamine, which was also kind of a put a little Cherise on the top. That was the righteous anger I've been looking for. I watched that speech. That's that that speech was awesome. So, you know, I mean obviously still the richest guy in the world like whatever but there's certainly some signs that maybe maybe he's bit off a little more than he can chew. And being the richest guy in the world is not what's important to him anymore. That's the thing. It's like Tesla could crash, SpaceX could and did blow up again.

It doesn't matter to him. I think you see this to go back to him and Sachs and Teal and the others. It's like, look, we're not the rich nerds anymore. We're important. We matter. We have power. I was watching an interview with Warren Buffett the other day, which was so reassuringly normal. But unlike somebody like Buffett, for them the money was never enough. It's about affirmation and self-actualization.

I don't think it matters to Musk. I don't know the man, but I don't think it matters to Musk. I mean, I don't know the man, but I don't think it matters to him very much anymore if Tesla tanks or, you know, SpaceX doesn't work. Eventually, it's going to matter to his shareholders and eventually he's going to have to get called back to the office, you know? I guess he could and he could say, fine, you know, I quit. I'm still the, I mean, all of this could go away and it's still like Jeff Bezos, you know, everything could go wrong at the Washington Post. That's a rounding error in his pocket at this point, you know, all of these guys are fantastically

Wealthy I'm telling you they've to quote our friend Bill Kristol, you know This level of wealth is starting to bring out my inner socialist I think he says Democratic Socialists to be fair to Bill Kristol, but he might be We're gonna have to go check the quote, but I mean, you know, but this is an object lesson in what happens when you are so fantastically wealthy beyond, you know, any comprehension in a normal capitalist economy that you become ungovernable. You say, you know, do whatever you want. I don't care.

I'll go buy an island. I'll go, I'll be Mark Zuckerberg. I'll build a bunker somewhere. I don't know how you reason with folks like that other than to, again, take legal and legislative steps to basically curtail their power and say, no, the government is not your actual. I've been thinking about this,

I'm gonna totally jump tracks, I'm thinking about this because I've been watching a show called Paradise, have you been watching it? No. All right, I won't ruin it for you. It's what happens when multi-gazillionaires go completely nuts and it's a fantastic series. So if anybody out there hasn't watched it yet, the first season is now over. Can you just leave us with any hope? Can gazillionaires

eventually suffer the consequences of their actions? Is there any hope in the show? It depends on what you mean by suffer. Financially, no. I think what Musk and the others really fear more than anything is ridicule. That's why they're in this game. This is the ridicule though. I mean, if the spaceship's breaking up and that your car company is imploding and you have to report to little Marco now before you can fire people, you know, eventually the ridicules can pile up. This is my hope. Don't take this from me.

I'm not, dude, I'm not taking it away from you. And I actually think that there is a, I think that there are several people in this administration who are headed for some kind of major emotional break sooner rather than later, because I think they're all in over their heads and working at an unsustainable pace beyond their already fairly limited talents. How's that? We can only pray. That was a great way to end. Thank you Tom Nichols. Everybody enjoy your weekend. We'll be back here. Actually, Bill Crystal, I forget what he's doing on Monday. He's doing something else. I have a

new guest for the Monday show, but me and Bill are gonna be hanging out on sub stack Sunday afternoon So if you can't wait till Monday for me you can come on over to the Bullock sub stack on Sunday afternoon get a little bit of Tim and Bill and Tom you'll be back in six weeks. Who knows what horrors will await us then. I will see you in some fresh hell next month. Sounds good. Tom Nichols. Thanks so much. Everybody else, we'll see you soon. Peace. In all the games you should have stayed at home yesterday. All words can describe the feeling and the way you lied.

These games you play, they're gonna end in more than tears someday Oh, and no luck, hey, it shouldn't have to end this way It's 8.15 And that's the time that it's always been We got your message on the radio Conditions normal and you're coming home Enola gave His mother proud of little boy today All this kiss you give It's never gonna fade away The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.