The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: The Buzz Has Worn Off

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Six months ago, MAGA world was strutting around with their chests puffed out. But now, many of them are having a blue Christmas over the infighting, the economy, the DOJ's inability to deliver revenge, and Trump's cover-up of child sex traffickers—one of the key things they really cared about. All Trump can think to do is plaster his name on another large object, including most recently a new fleet of warships. Plus, the bourbon shutdown, Bari's getting burned by Canada also airing "60 Minutes," the president could move Ghislaine out of her cushy prison, and Epstein in his alleged letter to Larry Nassar really sounds like "Access Hollywood" Trump.  Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller. Show Notes: Tom on Trump’s new ‘golden fleet’ of warships Navy Secretary John Phelan Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK #oneskinpod

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, by popular demand for Christmas, we've brought to you our in-house Ebenezer. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at U.S. Naval War College. His books include The Death of Expertise. It's Tom Nichols. How you doing? sir you're powerful speaker sir i wonder you don't go into parliament we need it a little scrooge you

want my corn gentlemen you'll have to meet my price other than that i'm great how are you i'm doing pretty good uh things are bad for trump and all my podcast competitors are feuding and i'm well so you're like switzerland in the middle of all this i was looking at the rankings is where it's like feuding, feuding, phuting, anti-Semite, feuding. Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about today. And based on your expertise and my lack of expertise, I figured we would start with the discussion of the new ships. We're getting some new big, fancy ships, apparently.

Donald Trump did a press conference yesterday announcing he had, we have a new fleet, a golden fleet of really big boats. So there you go. Could you tell us a little bit about this? Yeah, it's nuts. Yeah, it's nuts. Is there anything else you'd like to know? I mean, I've been under the impression that we do need new boats that we're a little bit behind China on the boat front.

So, you know, maybe there's something not nuts about this or what's the nuts part? You know, first of all, what the Navy has figured out, and I don't know, you know, I'm not really a close observer of the Navy only having taught for 25 years at the Naval War College. Over these years, what the Navy figured out is, no, we need to be maneuverable, fast, lighter, more float-like. a butterfly sting like a bee, more maneuverable. What Donald Trump wants are big, he's in love with the idea of battleship. We have to have battleships, you know, big battleships. Big green boats, maybe. Golden boats, because gold floats.

The mainstay of the American fleet right now is the Arlie Burke Destroyer. And those are pretty good ships. By the way, when you say ships for the surface fleet, they say, you say boats, people think submarines. So we're going to say ships to be good navalists. Okay. What truss for posing are ships that are like three times the size of an Arlie Burke. Because what he really wants is like he's so stuck in his youth, you know.

He wants the USS Wisconsin and the Iowa belching their guns at, you know, the bad guys. I mean, John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy who has never served in the Navy and has no connections to the Navy and has no experience with naval issues. Does he look the part, though? I don't know. I mean, no, he doesn't have like an eye patch of a pirate hat, if that's what you're asking. Yeah, I don't know. He said, when these ships pull into foreign ports, they will inspire awe and reverence. And I'm like, okay.

And Trump even, Trump even mentioned at one point, well, you know, it's like the Great White Fleet. Now, you probably don't want to, probably don't want to go there, this president. So that's what he's talking about. But what the Navy, if you talk to people in the Navy, they will tell you what they need is reducing the tempo of operations. Because the real problem for our folks in the Pacific is they're exhausted, fatigued. Having the best ships in the world aren't going to matter if you're having accidents or if you're underperforming in combat because your people are inexperienced, exhausted, poorly trained, the ships haven't been maintained. I would rather have the top fit

alert officers and sailors on current ships than a bunch of exhausted people trying to get around on, you know, something that's big and slow and an easy target for the enemy. The other thing about this is we don't have the shipbuilding capacity for this. He's like, we're going to go build these ships. He says, first one's going to arrive in two and a half years. Okay, first of all, the first of anything does not arrive in two and a half. I said, as I said in the piece I put out last night, yeah, I suppose if they slap gold paint on something and call up the USS Trump, it can arrive in time. But there's no infrastructure.

There isn't enough infrastructure for this. He's talking about two and then 10 and then 25 ships. The last time the Navy tried to do this, it was with something called the Zoom Wall class destroyer. And the whole thing turned into such a hot mess. that they made three of them instead of, I think they were going to do like 30 or something, it doesn't work. I mean, they're going to, these things never really saw action. They don't go anywhere.

They were put into commission. There were three of them. They're going to be decommissioned. You know, you can't just snap your fingers and say, create a super ship, you know, that glitters and sparkles and inspires awe. And finally, and then I'll get off my soapbox, even Putin doesn't name class. of ships after himself. Kim Jong-un doesn't name things. I mean, this is crazy. We're going to run around circles because this unhinged old man, you know, wants to have a ship with his name on it.

And people are going to enable him in this crazy behavior because it's going to mean shoveling gobs of money. He ran on, I'm going to bring down inflation. I know ordinary people are suffering. I don't think anybody thought that would include I'm going to, you know, back up dumpsters full of money into a glittering new, you know, battleship that's never going to get built. But, you know, when he announced Space Force in his first term, and I said, look, this isn't going to happen. We're not going to build Klingon battle because he's, because he did the same thing yesterday. The factories and jobs, we're going to put people to work. And I said, look, you know, we're not going to be building Klingon battle cruisers in West Virginia. As God has

my witness to him, I was still at the name of War College and a woman from West Virginia. called my office and said, how do you know? He's going to do it. He's going to build factories for spaceships in West Virginia. And I thought, well, and I was thinking that again yesterday, I said, there is a constituency for this that believes anything he says. You know, sometimes I wonder if that woman in West Virginia looks at her window and says, where's my, you know, where's my Starfleet space dock above, you know, wheeling? But I guess people won't believe what they want to believe. A couple thoughts of that, right.

One, in the meantime, I've pulled up a picture of John Phelan, because I've got this. We'll put this on YouTube here. Oh, we're not going to do mug shaming at Christmas, are we? Well, no, he's at, I'm just saying he's at the Aspen Institute. He doesn't really look the part. It's an interesting choice. He's very wealthy. He looks like a bowling ball kind of, an interesting outfit.

But he's very wealthy. Yeah. Anyway, people can just judge themselves. It feels like we should be able to build ships. That's my only nitpick with your complaint about Trump. And it's obviously ridiculous to put his name. on it. It's funny that he wants to call them battleships, even though they're not battleships, just because he thinks that sounds good. I understand the absurdity of Trump, but it is,

it's kind of silly that we can't build ships anymore. We should be able to build ships, I would think. We can. We can build ships. But when you say, we're going to develop an entirely new class of ships and, you know, from the ground up and design them, and again, they're going to be three times a size of what we usually built. You know, that requires changing the infrastructure. that builds ships. I mean, it would be like saying, we're going to build a nuclear-powered Boeing, you know, starliner that can go around the world 10 times and carry a thousand people. By the way, for anybody thinks that's too far over the top, we, America really did think about nuclear-powered aircraft in the 50s. We thought we could stick a nuclear reactor on anything

and make it go. So, you know, that's not like no one's ever thought of, you know, nuclear powered aircraft. But we don't have the infrastructure for it right now. Trump used to be like one of the rare good opinions that Trump had was he was like big in nuclear, you know, deep proliferation for a while. We'll say that word eventually, right? But now we're going the other way, it feels like. We're putting the nuclear on the ships. The nuclear. We're going to do the nuclear. Yeah. The one big piece of news, if you're kind of a defense nerd, I mean, mostly these Trump class ships may never get built and And, you know, eventually a lot of people in the 703 and 202 and 301 area codes are going to get rich.

I kind of hope they do build one. Is it wrong to hope they do build one? And then the time it's built, the Democrats will be in there. And then we'll name it the Jack Smith or something and stuff. We'll rename it. It is wrong because we don't need it. We don't need that kind of ship. I mean, you know, it's going to be a floating white elephant.

You don't. You know, the problem with Trump, he reminds me of students and not very good. students I had who would always come into class and say, have you thought about doing it this way? Have you thought about teaching this way? Have you thought about adding that? No, no one ever thought of this before you. You know, like no one, no one in 30 years ever considered doing anything differently. And Trump never asks, well, why did we stop building battleships? You know, what was the rationale? He doesn't ask that question. He says, battleships are cool. I love battleships. And everybody says, well, build the man a battleship. But the big, if you're, if you're,

you're kind of a nuclear nerd the way I am, the big news yesterday was that Phelan just as almost like an aside said, and of course they're going to have all the most powerful weapons, including nuclear weapons. We're going to put nuclear munitions back on this surface ship. Well, that's a really bad idea because the guy who thought it was a bad idea and got rid of them was that well-known weak sister and defense weenie, George Bush, George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney, notorious, you know, anti-nuclear lefties from the 90s, if you talk to naval surface warfare guys, they're like, I don't want nuclear weapons on my ship. They're a giant pain in the ass. It's like having, you know, a royal toddler on board. You have to take care of them to make sure it's always your

first priority because you've got nukes on the ship. And the other thing is, if you're a big, slow ocean-going platform with nuclear weapons sitting on the top of the ocean instead of a submarine under it, you're a target. Of course, the first thing an enemy is going to just say, well, I guess we go back to the strategies of the 70s and the 80s, where the first thing you do is you nuke the surface ships that have nukes on them. It's just dumb. It's so dumb on so many levels, as the French say, it's so stupid it makes my teeth hurt. You're also one of the few people that are suffering through his press conferences these days. I'm just curious if you give us a review. You mentioned that it was slushy. You called him slushy. Yeah, he did. It was the, I don't know, I try to be a responsible

commenter. I don't know, you know, people, they hypothesize about dentures or implants or whatever, but there was a lot of this kind of, you know, kind of speedy, slushy. And I was like, you know, this is not, if this is meant to like reassure people, that the president's in good health and his cognitive abilities are where they ought to be. This is not working. He did not seem to be in good health. First of all, the reporters in there asked not great questions because it's mostly a compliant bunch, you know. But one of them did ask a really good question. She said, what is your end game with Venezuela? You know, you're doing all this stuff. What's the end? That's a important question for the American people to get an answer to.

And he kind of, it's like somebody hit play on the wrong track of a recorder, right? So he went, well, you know, because our borders and Joe Biden, first of all, he can't get through anything now without mentioning Joe Biden. It's just not possible. I guess, you know, being beaten by Biden is just never going to leave him. But he launched into our borders and they're sending people from prisons and mental institutions. I'm like, wait a minute. This is the answer he usually gives about, you know, Mexico. or El Salvador or Honduras or whatever it is.

And all she said is, what are you trying to do with this military activity against Venezuela? And he kind of meandered off into mental hospitals and prisons. And I thought, uh-oh. Speaking of mental hospitals. As a former staff guy, you know, I was not a bodyman, but I was a staffer. That's when your boss is going off the rails. And, you know, you want to take them by these. Oh, very important meaning.

Got a got a, got a roll. I never had to do that. My boss was a great guy. I never had to do that. But I know that feeling, you know, of watching politicians go off the rails. And you're thinking, get in there. Somebody get in there. And he just couldn't help himself.

And the thing went all over the place. It was really, it was a very haywire performance. And I don't think it's going to reassure anybody to him. Do you know what the end game is in Venezuela? It kind of feels like they just think that they're going to keep that eventually Maduro is going to get tired of having his tankers get intercepted. and that he's just going to say, you know what, it's enough for me. I'm going to go live in the Assad suite in Moscow. And you guys can take it from here.

That seems to be the plan. Well, or, and here's the more, here's the darker and more nefarious idea. I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm actually on the same page as, wait for it, Rand Paul. All right. Pretty rare. I've been saying it must be the season of Christmas that I am, you know, right behind Rand Paul on this. The wacko bird himself.

Well, he's on this, he's not wrong. I don't think. I think that Trump is hoping to provoke Venezuela into some kind of action so that then he can fire back start a splendid little war, as they used to refer to them in the 19th century, in which he can then say, America's at war. I'm a wartime president. here are all the powers I am now going to claim, including, you know, stifling dissent, rounding people up and doing whatever I want to do. And opposing me about anything is unpatriotic and un-American and possibly illegal. So I think, you know, it's almost like they looked around and said, you need a war to shut everybody up and expand your executive authority. Let's pick one in a

completely safe place against somebody we couldn't possibly lose to that's nowhere near. or any major theaters of potential engagement with real enemies. That's my guess. And it's exactly the kind of, you know, Rube Goldberg scheme that this White House would come up with, I think. So that's what I, Rand Paul and I seem to both think that's what they're doing. People told me that Marco was the smart one, though. But it seems like his scheme.

If there's a Rube Goldberg scheme happening, it seems like Marco is the one that is designing it. I have not heard that. But Marco always seems like. a bystander. You think so? I mean, this. Whose idea is this, if not Marcos? That's a great question. That has to be Marcos, I think. He doesn't like the communist dictators. He's the one in there. He's pacing around the Oval Office. Pete Egg's that's too dumb to come up with a plan. We don't have any other advisors. This is a dumb plan. Trump, Rubio is now the national security

advisor and the Secretary of State. None of those titles matter, though. That's the thing, right? I mean, for all you know, this could be, you know, this could have been somebody in in the White House mess, you know, with a cuff of coffee saying, you know what, if you, you know, Mr. President, you know, we ought to really go kick some asses Venezuela. And then, you know, I'm pretty sure it's Marcos, but who, okay. I mean, I don't doubt you, but, uh, I suspect that it started with we need a war. And it's possible that, you know, Marco, I don't, I don't know. I just have a hard time believing that, uh, oh, maybe I don't. You know, maybe you're right. Tim, it's Christmas. I think you may be right.

The big ears, you know, every time he tells a lie, the ears grow. It's like a Pinocchio story with the Secretary of State. If you're anything like me, your skin and lips are just starting to feel a little chappier this time of year, between the colder weather and the holidays, you know, maybe a little dehydration from the eggnog, can feel like a little bit of a stress to your system. That's why it's important in the mornings and at night that you turn to one skin. And you know how much I've been telling you about that OS1 face cream. I've been the number one advocate for straight men to start moisturizing their face using one skin.

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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. that's one skin all right we've got some Epstein news we're going to talk about this a bunch more on the next level but I want to talk about this a little bit there's a new tranche out this morning

that does include the president he'll be surprised to hear he's been he's included in some of these documents and so when the documents released our Department of Justice supposedly independent Department of Justice released to this decree that I'd like to share with you

some of these documents contain untrue and sensational claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false. And if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already. Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency DOJ is releasing these documents with legally required protections for obscene's victims. So there you go. That is an official statement from the Department of Justice. Do things. First of all, you know who you just sounded like, you sounded like

the end of every pharmaceutical ad. Don't take it this. If you're allergic and it'll kill you and it'll make your head explode and you'll bleed from your ears and, you know, it's a, but have these people never heard of the Streisand effect? Apparently not. We have another Streisand effect story coming next, but yeah, I don't think so. It's just amazing. For people that aren't aware of this, right, I suppose we should explain it because it's a very online thing. But the Streisand effect was when Barbara Streisand said, I think it was about our house, right? She said, I'm, to sue you. Don't post pictures of my beautiful house, right?

And so the story became Barbara Streisand is suing to prevent these pictures, you know, and they went global. They had far more reach than if she had just said, just ignore it. Don't mention it. Let them do this one thing and nobody will ever

remember it again. And it became so well known that it's now called the Streisand effect. When you bitch and whine and draw attention to something that you don't want to have attention. It creates more attention. And it's like they just, it's almost like, you know, they just scatter rakes all over the DOJ and say, all right, let's get out there. Those ranks aren't going to step on themselves, kids. Let's get out there and, you know, really, you know, make a spectacle

of this. And so now, of course, everybody's like, well, which things in particular are you concerned about? Which things, which of these lies would you say are the most awful? It also doesn't to feel like a legalistic phrase coming for the Department of Justice, the idea that if they had credibility, they would have been weaponized against Trump. Yes, lots of use of the subjunctive here. Are you sure Merrick Garland and Sleepy Joe Biden would have weaponized them? Because apparently they didn't. I mean, this stuff is so bad that if somebody had an ounce of common sense, they would have

used it against us already. Oh, okay. Well, what specifically do you mean? Why don't I read a couple of those? things that they might have meant. We have a letter from allegedly, you know, Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar. Oh dear. Epstein is in prison when he's writing this letter. Larry Nassar is the coach of the gymnast who sexually molested the young girls. Epstein wrote this to Nassar. Our president shares our love of young, newbile girls. When a young beauty walked by, he loved to grab

snatch, whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Okay. You know, that is aligned with what Trump said to Billy Bush. You know, he doesn't exactly pride evidence there, but that's a letter from Epstein to Nassar. There's also on Bannon's phone, an image of Trump and Glenn Maxwell together is in there. There is a DOJ email that says that Trump flew on the Epstein plane with Maxwell and Epstein at least eight times. On two of the flights were women who would be possible witnesses. In the Maxwell case, they use a little. women. I don't know. There are, there were girls and women who, you know, made credible allegations against Maxwell. So that was in the email. And then one other item I thought was worth noting I've seen this morning is the DOJs filed, uh, the emails pertaining to the events that led to the Epstein plea agreement. And almost all the names involved in the plea agreement are redacted. So not a lot of transparency there. So I don't know if you have thoughts on any of that. Oh, I do. I'd like to keep them to me. So.

You don't want to talk about the nubile girls? As Kelsey Grammer's sideshow Bob often said on The Simpsons, you know, it's just horrible. It's yeah. I mean, it's just as, you know, as a father, it, you know, it makes your skin crawl. I mean, it's, it's horrifying. Just as a matter of politics, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it if the DMJ hadn't flipped out and pointed to it. Yeah. I mean, this, this memo forces you to think.

Is Jeffrey Epstein lying to Larry Nassar? To what end? And to what end? It's companionship, I guess. He wants a pen pal in prison, someone that would... Yeah, I mean, yuck. I mean, look, the president is a candidate. And again, they were best friends.

We should just say, Jeffrey Epstein, I kind of hate the thing that they do on cable now, which I get why they have to do because they've got a million lawyers where they're like, well, we ought to be clear. President Trump hasn't been accused of wrongdoing. It's like, that's not true, actually. He has been accused of wrongdoing. doing by some of these women, not underage women, he has admitted himself that he liked to grab women by the, you know what, on the Billy Bush tape. And now we have Jeffrey Epstein.

Someone say that's corroboration. Yeah, yeah, corroborating that he liked to do that. Trump admitted it himself. So, you know, I mean, there are accusations of wrongdoing. There's not, there's not, you know, a credible indictment to that he's a pedophile yet, but there are very serious accusations of wrongdoing related to women and girls. You know, the problem. You know, the problem with when you say, well, the president hasn't been accused of wrongdoing or legal, right? It's a very legal formulation. There was once a time in the United States of America where this lack of judgment and poverty of character would be enough to say, you don't need a legal reason to not want him to be in the Oval Office. I am, you know, of a certain age. I still remember the

arguments about I mean there's just no nice way to put this is a blowjob oral sex right you know with Bill Clinton did you have sex with that woman no you know well she was adults there was nothing illegal about that like right as Gary Hart Gary Hart didn't do anything illegal but possibly lying about it but that you know Republicans including people like Lindsay Graham went to the chamber and howled that this this means you know that this man is unfit to sit behind that desk. And you know what? They were right. Bill Clinton, no matter what you think of his opinion, he was morally unfit to be the leader of a great nation after that revelation and all of that parsing and hair splitting about is and, you know, that woman and I did not have

sex with her. I had people literally trying to convince me highly partisan Democrat saying, well, he's right. It's not sex. I said, go home and tell your wife that. right you know try that one out on your your wife or your husband say it's like the old pulp fiction about the foot massage yeah exactly but you let your wife get a foot massage i've given a hundred of them and they've meant them all them meant something to me right um so it's almost quaint now and now we're going to the ends of the earth to say all right so he was with this you know this dead sex criminal and his convicted sex trafficker gal pal repeatedly. They were close for it. There's something, I think it shows you the depths to which

Trump supporters have basically said, listen, we just don't care about any of this. He hates the people we hate, and that's all we care about. That's all that matters to us anymore. I'll just say, and it's just one other thing on this, just kind of adding to yesterday about like an ongoing grotesquery that he has control over. We talked with us a little bit yesterday with Bill, but like Maxwell is alive, not like Epstein. And she got moved from a regular prison, a gen pop prison where she should be as a child sex trafficker to, you know, the kind of cozy prison that, you know, people that don't do violent crimes or sex crimes get to go to. And she got moved. And the deputy attorney general asked about this over the weekend. I'm like, why was she

moved? And he gives kind of a hum and a hum and an answer that comes down to she had threats against her to her safety. And it's like, well, here we have today now, you know, more pictures of Trump with her. It's like Trump and her are friends. Like the President of the United States and this child sex trafficker were friends, we're close friends. She got moved from a regular prison to a cushy prison with no good explanation. And that is ongoing. They have control over that. They could reverse that.

And they're not. They don't care. And there's no other way to look at it. It's because they have friends, they're friends, their pals. This administration constantly demands that you turn your brain off when you listen to their statements. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, she's a convicted sex trafficker and they're credible threats and I can't discuss that. That's a Bureau of Prisons matter. So you're supposed to say, well,

I totally get the internal logic that when she's in danger, you move her to a place where people wander around freely and get puppy visits. Yeah, a nice toilet paper. She gets the triple pie. And you're supposed to buy that. She doesn't get the crusty toilet paper. Let me say this in the spirit of the holiday about some of Trump supporters. This is breaking through because the one thing these people kind of obsessed about for years was the abuse of children. and they were certain that it was being done by Democrats, you know, and all kinds of other bad people, right? Yeah. And it turns out the call was coming from inside the house that it turns out that there's a lot of really icky behavior going on that goes right up to the top, right into the Oval Office.

And you can make fools out of these people on a lot of things. You can tell them that you're going to build a factory and then pull that rug out from under them. You can tell them that you're going to bring back good times and then impose tariffs that makes, you know, Jim Beam have to shut down. in Kentucky. You can, you can abuse them and lie to them and do all kinds of things. But when you're literally, obviously, looking after a sex trafficker for what it seems to me to be political, careful, you know, ass covering reasons, that doesn't fly with a lot of folks. Or just a favor for a pal, unclear, like either way. Right. And I think, you know, I think that does break through with some people. And it should. Again, you know, I'm sure.

you and I and so many other than ever Trumpers are so tired of saying this, but just imagine if another president had done it. Well, from, I had a good point this morning about how this did kind of work for him in the first term because basically like the deal you were getting was, you know, you get a good economy and you get to see your, the deal that Trump voters are getting was you get a good economy and you get to see your enemies suffer. And like in exchange, I'm going to do some corrupt stuff and some crazy stuff and whatever. Yeah. And this time it's kind of inverted, right? It's like you get to see me put my name. on stuff and reward child sex traffickers, like, wild the economy tax.

And like, that's a little bit less good of a deal. Here he is this morning. Let's talk about some economic stuff. He posts the tariffs are responsible for the great USA economic numbers just announced all caps and they will only get better. Also, no inflation and great national security. Pray for the U.S. Supreme Court. That's Trump.

You know, it's funny. I was listening this morning to us last year. year after the election. We were less humor, fewer jokes. Neither of us were having a good day back then. Yeah, no. At one point, I said that I was thinking about jumping off the top of 30 Rock. So not really, though.

I'm fine. But, you know, that's just a sense for where our mental health was. But one thing we were both lamenting and bemoaning on that podcast was that Trump, this lucky fucking bastard with the horseshoe up his ass was going to inherit a good economy. The economy was getting better that had had a soft landing. that was, you know, going to make it kind of, if he did nothing, like make it seem like, you know, his economic genius was working for the forgotten man again. That gave me some joy to watch that this morning because he truly botched that.

And I don't think tweeting about how the tariffs are responsible for the great USA economic numbers is going to resolve, like, people's actual experience with the economy. Yeah. You know, I have mixed feelings on it because I don't wish for economic misery for any of my fellow Americans. Not a single one? There are a couple I do. Funny you should mention that.

I mean, we're talking about Jim Beam, you know, and one of my friends said to me the other day, you know, it's our patriotic duty to drink bourbon now. But, you know, I... The Jim Beam people know, I should just say it because I had it in my notes, I should just say the Jim Beam plant that is shutting down your reference cigarette,

at least pausing production for a year. That's in Bullet County. I love Bullet Bourbon. 75% for Trump. Bullock County. The Tyson beef plant that is closing, 25% of the town is employed at the beef plant. They also went 75% for Trump in Lexington. So, you know, when people lose their jobs, terrible things happen, you know, substance abuse, domestic violence, children suffer. Let me just digress for a moment. I was in Canada some months ago, and I was in a bar and I asked

for a bourbon. And the guy looked at me and he's like, hello? And I went, oh, shit, right, sorry they literally did he said we have some canadian bourbon and i said there is no such thing i mean this is where my patriotic contradiction of terms came out i was like you just stop with that canadian bourbon talk you know you you canuckistanis but you know there's a there is a part of me that says what did you think was going to happen and but again i don't want those i don't want anybody put out of work about this. But I do want them to think about, hey, is this what I voted for? Because again, you're not, as you just pointed out, Tim, you're not getting any of the other stuff. And you're getting a cover up of the only thing you really claim to care about, which is

child abuse. So it's almost like adding insult to injury. You don't get the economy. You know, you don't get revenge on your enemies because that's all falling apart because you have a clown car at DOJ that can't that has now tried what three times or to indict letitia j like americans are now familiar with the term no true bill because they weren't familiar with it because it's so rare that it ever happened that a grand jury won't indict and now it happens all the time so you're not getting the economy you're not getting revenge you're not you know getting all the things you were promised you're suffering and you're getting a cover up of the only thing you care about And he's now at war with people that you, the Trump community, the MAGA world that you once loved, Marjorie Taylor Green, who's now a traitor, Thomas Massey, who's now a traitor and a low IQ guy who's going to be out of office, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, one thing that I think is coming out of this about the GOP, to use a line from the Godfather, the Trump family don't have that kind of muscle anymore. No. You know, when Trump says this guy is no good, you could say, well, that's it. He's going to get primaried. He's out. It's over. I don't think they can do that anymore. I mean, you had Indiana was really the canary in that coal mine, I think. We're a bunch of Indiana, you know, politicians who supported him and voted for him said, oh, no, you don't call my neighbors and tell them to threaten my life. You know, I live here, man. You can't do that. I went to the wall for you. you, but I'm this far and no further. And I think a lot of it's coming apart, which is why I think he's giving shambolic press conferences about slapping his name on battleships. I think, you know, what's left? That's, what else has he got? I'm kind of surprised by how quickly the wheels have come off of that element of it, like Trump's power within the party. And it's like this competent confluence of things, like the Epstein thing is part of it. The economic program is part of it. He seems kind of tired. Like, don't you think he could have. Yeah, he could have bullied the Indiana people. I

think if he really, like, his heart doesn't seem, his heart doesn't seem to be in it. I do think people can sense it. Like, you can sense it on somebody. Like, Trump, we've said every nasty thing in the book about this guy over the last decade. But I do think people sense that he was fighting, at least against what they perceived to be their enemies. It was imaginary, right? Like, he was fake.

But, like, he was demonstrating, like, he was going to go after the people that had screwed them over, that they had perceived to be screwed over by. And, and, like, now. it's like I don't know they I don't think that they feel like he is right I mean he like he seems to have his energy focused on putting his name on shit people can sense that putting his name on things lining his pockets taking care of his elite elite to use that dreaded word his elite friends I mean you can talk about um saving american lives and blowing up fentanyl boats of course fentanyl is doesn't come from Venezuela but let's you know let's not quibble and then he pardons this gigantic

drug trafficker. Right. Here is, and this is a completely unscientific observation from both here with people in areas I know support Trump and people around the country, the flags and the bumper stickers and the yard signs are gone, which I think is an interesting change, you know, that he doesn't seem to have the power to invigorate his base and make them drive around with, you know, trump flags flapping on on their pickups anymore because they were crowing i'll tell you this this again this is totally anecdotal but like obviously so i went at the airport a ton in new orleans right so

new orleans is blue but like the people that use the norleans airport come from mississippi alabama north louisiana right like and so you get a lot of red america coming to the airport and that first six months after the election i think i saw more trump hats at the airport than i did even during the election or and I didn't live down here in 2016 so I can't compare it to that but like people are crowing you know puffing out their chests it was like we did it you know these guys tried to take us down the last one but we got it back we got it back and we're crowing and we're going to walk around the airport and I want to admit and I want you guys to give me a dirty look because I feel you know what I mean like that you were seeing a lot I felt like anecdotally

and that that is chance you know like this sense of that I like it's not that it's totally gone it's not as if you don't see a maga hat anywhere but like the degree and the amount of bravado about everything is changing i see the same thing and and before people say well you live in new england nobody you know no fall river massachusetts went for trump for the first time like there was a big shift i mean where i live you know i live in the kind of blue band that surrounds narragansett bay but the interior of rhone island and when you start getting up into like Northwest Connecticut and Central Mass, there's a lot. I mean, there was a let's go Brandon store 20 minutes away from me. I kid you not. I mean, it's gone. Yeah. And as one of one of the

legislators from this area said to me a while back, he's noticed a real decline in what he calls the heraldry factor. Yeah. The flags. The, you know, and I think the buzz of beating Kamala Harris and getting back into power has worn off, in part because I think that they understand that this administration is a clown show. I mean, is there anybody out there who really, you know, even in MAGA world who says, boy, am I glad Pete Hegseth is a secretary of defense? No. What have you done with me lately, element?

Like, they kind of liked Pete Hanks in the beginning because it's a troll. You know, they'll say that the border part is good. Sure. There's things that people can say. It's not like he's at zero, but like. admit something, Tim. The Republicans have always had a point about the border. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's a real issue. The Democrats have never really coped with it. And, you know, it's a legit issue to say, well, at least. But then what do they do?

They send ice into the cities to, you know, rough up people who are waiting, trying to go to work. You know, you can say, as I would, yes, if you are here illegally, you risk deportation. You know, if you've come to the United States and broken our laws to get in here, you ought to think about going home. But Trump's promise was the most violent people, the most dangerous people. And it's just one story after another of, you know, these thugs going into American cities. Look at how fast the whole business about that poor National Guardsman, you know, died off because people don't want it to, like, why was she standing there? What was the point of this? Why are you sending the military into cities? What was the shooter all

about it. Clearly wasn't, this wasn't like a drug gang that did a drive by. And so in typical Trump world fashion, everybody's saying, you know what, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want, I have met Trump voters who literally told me I won't watch the news anymore. And I've had friends in places like Wisconsin in really bright red areas say things like nobody wants to talk about this. Like it's now just the people that you, as you said, come on, give me a cross-eyed look. Let's argue. Let's fight. You know, the answer I'm getting from people live in redder states than mine are like,

nobody wants to talk about this. Nobody wants to have those arguments. Maybe he'll come back. And he's got to find an enemy. But I don't know. He seems tired. I don't think he's well. Yeah, no.

And I think everybody around him knows it. He doesn't seem like he's got the energy for it. Let me throw out my one little bit of conspiracy theorizing. The other day, through no fault of my own, I overheard Scott Jennings on TV. And he said, well, you know, they're not. in 2028, you know, probably J.D. Vance. And he just went right on by that. And I thought, do you know something? The rest of us don't? Like, you know, yeah, you could say the vice president is a presumptive nominee, but as Joe Biden and other vice presidents could tell you, it doesn't

always work out that way. And I just thought, what an odd thing to say, you know, after all the trolling about three terms and, you know, we're going to have the Republicans are going to have a big, you know, kind of energetic debate. Something's going on. And I think people just don't want to talk about it. And I think he just doesn't, you know, that's why going back to the Golden Fleet, when you say it had to be Marco, I think, you know, it could have been anybody walking through the Oval at the wrong moment at this point.

I just really, I just really think so. I wasn't going to do this. But we're being Scrooge today. So why you mentioned Biden was another story that came across my radar today? Hunter Biden did an interview with a Sean Ryan podcast. Well, she should probably stop. It says he's $15 million in debt. It's tough.

He says that he's no idea how to pay that back. Nobody's riding to the rescue for Hunter Biden. Get a fucking job, sir. Get a job. Did you find a story that I could care less about than this one? You did, you'd have not. That is. I saw that.

I'm hoping he gets a job. One line of it. and I moved on. I want to talk about the 60 minutes story. I have anger, okay? I have anger at some other, at some people. I know you do. I've always said, you've, you have issues.

I have some anger. Sometimes I need to give it out. And Hunter Biden's on my shit list. That was a very scrogy story about that's good. Yeah, I'm scrogy about Hunter Biden. How are you in $15 million in debt? You were selling horrible paintings for a million dollars a pop. Like, what are you doing?

Where's the money going? It's like when you read story. stories about rap stars, you know, who got arrested and we're doing drugs and whatever said, losing their mansion. I'm like, you know, it's the, it's the Jerry Seinfeld meme. Gee, that's too bad. You know, what a shame. The board of a Ukrainian national gas company, making like 80 grand a money.

Okay. I do just really quick have to mention, and then we're going to close with a little joy. The 60-minute story fiasco. We discussed this yesterday. Barry Weiss was unhappy, apparently, with a story about how we sent innocent people to a foreign gulag weaving in the United States. She killed the story the last second, replaced it with a story about two young cello savants, which felt more pressing newswise to her. Because they couldn't find a rerun of Swan Lake. Unfortunately for Barry, the Canadians didn't get the memo. So they aired

the story on some like, some spinoff. This is what happens to one of these big conglomerates, you know, some like, you know, subsection of Paramounts aired it. Oops. We got to learn the story of Louise Munoz Pintel. I want to play a little bit about it. He was a college student in repressive Venezuela and hoped to seek asylum in the United States. In 2024, he says he waited in Mexico until his scheduled appointment with U.S. customs and border protection in California. During that interview, they just looked at me and told me I was a danger to society. You have no criminal record.

I don't even, I never even got a traffic ticket. Nevertheless, he was detained by customs. He says he spent six months locked up in the U.S. waiting for a decision on his asylum case when he was deported. One of 252 Venezuelans sent to sea caught between March and April. Inside, he says, their hands and feet were tied. Forced to their knees, their heads were shaved. There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people.

people who couldn't take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves. When you get there, you already know you're in hell. All right, Tom, so this guy like, he did everything right. He came here. He's fleeing communism, tries to come to the country. He is at the border. He wants to be an asylum.

Maybe you're the opinion that he shouldn't be allowed here. Okay. But what happens to him anyway is he gets put into a cell for six months in the U.S. So he's not a danger to anybody. We have them in custody. and then we sent him to a fucking foreign gulag in El Salvador where he thinks he's going to die. That's what happened.

That's the story of this guy. It's a pretty cut and dry story. Bari says that doesn't follow 60 minutes standards. She wants to hear the White House's spin. It's unclear to me what the other side of that story is. We felt the guy deserved it. I don't know. But anyway, what do you make of that?

Well, two things. First of all, talk about stricand effect. More people are going to see that story now than if they had just erred it without further comment. They would have aired it, and people would have said, wow, that's really terrible, and they would have moved on. Now you're going to have millions and millions of people downloading this story because it's all over the internet, watching it and saying, why doesn't Barry Weiss want us to see this? And the, you know, first of all, as Chris Hayes pointed out, has Barry Weiss ever been an investigative journalist? I mean, this is what happens when you make a political appointment.

You put somebody at the top of a news organization who really has no serious experience in this. But there's a kind of a journalistic rule she invented that I find really disturbing. If we ask the government for comment and the government refuses to comment, we can't run the story. What the hell is that? I mean, that's a government veto on any story, right? I mean, you know, did you commit war crimes? No comment. Well, I guess we can't run it.

You know, did the government do this? Did the government do that? No comment. Well, I guess we can't report on the government. that is an absolutely bonkers rule to put into place that unless the government answers your phone call, you can't run the story. I mean, the world is full of stories where people in the government say, I don't want to talk to you. Sometimes that's what governments do. Yeah.

I mean, aside from the horror of what they're doing to people who, you know, as you say, maybe they shouldn't be here, but they don't, you know, there are other ways to deal with this besides putting people, you know, in a torture chamber. and, you know, beating the shit out of them. And not that it would have been okay if this guy came in illegally to send him to a foreign torture prison. But he didn't. He followed the rule. He waited Mexico. He signed up on the app. He reported a port of entry.

He said he was an asylum fleeing communist. That's what the country has been about for our whole history. The whole point of a good immigration policy is it should be able to distinguish between those guys and coyotes and drug runners. You know, we already knew that what ICE and what the government's doing is bad. what is shocking to me is that a major news organization that, you know, really, you know, the courts and the press being among the last barricades to what Trump wants to do as a would-be authoritarian has now said, well, we're going to just give the government a veto over our reporting. And that's, to me, that's crazy.

And, you know, the whole story of how CBS got to where it is now with Trump being deeply involved in the mergers and all that stuff, this is. everything people worried about. It's everything people worried about when Barry Weiss was elevated from, you know, basically running a website to becoming the head of CBS News. Hey, hey, hey.

I'm just kidding. Hey, right? That's not disparage running a website, okay? All right? We're doing fine work over here. You website guys. We haven't put a bust of ourselves up, you know, outside the office. I didn't know about that until like a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, that's something Barry and Trump have in common.

That, for people who don't know, that's the the University of Austin that is not a university and is falling apart quite rapidly that, you know, kind of free-thinking academic exercise. I didn't realize there was a bust of her. Yeah, yeah. She's put a bust of herself up there. Normally you want to wait until you're a little older or maybe, you know, past this veil of tears before you put up, have busts of yourself.

Not anymore, Tom. Not anymore. Now in Trump's America, you put up a bust of yourself. everywhere where you look a little bit better than you're doing real life and you name yourself. My car, I'm going to stencil the USS Nichols on the side of my car, man. All right, final thing, we'll do a year in review.

You promised joy. Is there going to be joy in this? Yeah, this is going to be joy. This is going to spark joy for me. I can't speak for you or for the audience. Batia. A big Trump supporter is on News Station this week. And she described Trump's year and I want to listen to it.

The president gave a speech to the nation on Wednesday. He talked about all of his accomplishments this year, closing the border, bringing down the cost of drugs, and creating jobs. To me, the common theme of it all is dignity. Dignity restored to the forgotten men and women of the heartland. That's what Trump's entire year has been about. Dignity. He's brought down the cost of drugs.

I don't know if she's talking about the cocaine cost that's come down or something else. but he's brought down the cost of drugs and he's brought dignity to the heartland this year. If I had to think of one word to describe Donald Trump in his year, it is dignity. That man has dignity, grabbing snatch, dignity. Everything he does, dignity. You know, to take a classic line from a classic movie,

why you do this to me, Demi? I'm curious, Tom, what would you describe Trump's year to you? Could you describe his year in a word? a hot shambolic mess that is in a national and international embarrassment, a festival of crudity and bad taste. Because, you know, when you look at all that gold stenciled all over the White House, you really think dignity, quiet, quiet, stoic dignity. For the farmers, who don't who can't sell, by the way.

I did see it before I came on the show. And I just said, what, like, it's just North Korean levels of, you know, nonsense. I mean, the North Koreans are blushing. You could pick a lot of work. Like, if I, if I were a Trump apologist and I'm not, but, you know, if I were, if I were tasked with the job, I'd say, all right, what does your like? Strength, struggle. Strength. Hubris.

I'd pick words like strength, struggle, combat, security, you know. Dinkney would be way far down the list under words. I mean, it would be beneath, it would be my choice long afterwards like, I don't know, cherubic, adorable. If we knew now what we knew a year ago, I think we'd have been a lot less concerned. You know, because I thought they were going to go after this with a lot more competence and purpose and drives. That's an interesting question. That the administration was going to be a lot more like Russ Vout and a lot less like Christine Nome or Pam Bondi. Yeah.

But they have done a lot of damage. There's no doubt about it. And they've done a ton of damage. I guess that's true. They did a ton of damage earlier in the year. I would say, I guess put it in this. Yes. The durability of it.

It feels way less durable than it did a year ago. I wouldn't say that they've done less damage than I expected, but it feels less durable. And that is an encouraging Christmas thought. Tom Nichols, do you want to leave us with a favorite Christmas song? A favorite, do you have a, do you have one you like to play? Well, actually, tomorrow I will have a, on Christmas Eve, I will drop a piece about songs for a new Christmas nostalgia. Okay. Because, you know, when I was a kid, right, it was all Andy Williams.

We're tired of the boomers shit. Well, I mean, I love the songs that my parents loved, right? I mean, you can't, it can't be Christmas without Andy Williams. I'm sorry, Andy, you hear Andy Williams, you know, it's Christmas. That's Nat King Cole for me. Right, Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis. But I want to hear the songs from my young adulthood. We are as far away.

This is something I, my editor, Isabelle, and I were talking about this this morning. We are as far away from the 1980s as Judy Garland in Meet Me and St. Louis was from the 1980s like that was in 1982 that was 40 years ago okay so the new music that I let me suggest that always marked the beginning of the Christmas season for me Christmas rapping by the waitresses it's a great song I love that right I believe in Father Christmas by Greg Lake she's right on time by Billy Joel I mean I I want to hear stuff from Mike into I know you everybody turns out nose up at poor Billy Joel but I think it was a cute song okay Christmas rapping was a great gift Let's just stop it there.

All right, because I got a wrap. I've wrapped nothing. In the spirit of Christmas present, let us agree. Christmas rapping will be the song that we will go out on. All right. We'll take it out with that. Tom Nichols, my love to your wife and give Merry Christmas to you and yours. All the best to you and your family, Tim.

Take care. Merry Christmas. I think we'll be back Friday. We're having a little scheduling shuffle. So take a look at that. Take a look at that little phone Friday afternoon. If you need some content, hopefully we'll have something for you. And appreciate you all very much.

Merry Christmas. talk to you all soon. Peace. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.