S2 Ep1030: Bill Kristol: Creepy and Wrong

hello and welcome to the bullwark podcast i'm your host tim miller hope everyone's doing well it's great seeing some of y'all out of jazz fest i was doing my best to chat you up also monitoring two under 10 girls they were having a good time many snowballs we very much enjoyed Haim it's a great set and uh if some other folks want to see us live we got two events coming up we're going to Chicago May 28th and Nashville May 29th it's been a minute since I've been in either city so I'm excited JVL the Chicago event's our biggest venue ever and JVL did not think that we could sell it out. He was very concerned, as JVL's want.
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Let's see in Chicago Chicago or Nashville. Lastly, while I'm plugging stuff, FYPod, which is the Gen Z show I'm doing with Cam Kasky, it's kind of hitting its stride.
You get a bumpy start when you're talking to 23-year-olds doing a generational divide. But I think the last few episodes have been great.
We have a new YouTube page. We'll put the link in the show notes.
Just search for FYPod on YouTube. Manny Fidel this week was awesome.
We made him and Kim apologize to Pete Buttigieg for not recognizing his game in the past. And we get into a lot of other fun stuff.
So I hope you guys enjoy that. All right.
Today's show, we've got terrible Trump polls, election in Canada, a bunch of other stuff, and it's Monday. So I'm here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol.
What's up, Bill? Nothing much. Well lot i guess what do you think what's the right answer to that what's up is a better question than how you're doing which is my standard how you're doing my standard which is a very bad question for this moment because people maybe we've discussed this before people say i'm doing fine and then you feel then they feel bad that well but the country's in such bad shape i'm not really doing fine but then they don't want to get to a whole disquisition in answer to how you're doing what's up is a is a good question.
What's up for you is that you're at the Luigi Mangione Hilton in New York right now. That's what's up for you.
I am at the New York Hilton, which I've stayed at a cage. I'm giving a talk here later, so they're putting me up here.
But I used to go to board meetings one block from here. So I'm very, very familiar with the entrance to this Hilton.
It's slightly weird getting out of a cab last night and walking just around the corner to the exact spot where the CEO was gunned down. Just keep your head on a swivel.
All right? You're coming in and out. Thanks for that.
I guess we have tons of Trump stuff to talk about in American news. But just very briefly, voters are going to the polls right now as we speak in Canada.
Question about whether to give interim prime minister Mark Carney a full four-year term or give the conservative party and Pierre Pollyev a turn at the wheel. It looked like it was going to be all Pierre until the trade war.
And, man, the polls don't look good for the conservatives right now. We'll see how things go.
Do you have a brief thought on what's happening up north? No, it would be, and there's something kind of wonderful about Trump electing a liberal up north in Canada, having picked this pointless fight with them, and with Trudeau in particular. He did, I guess, I don't know if Trudeau was going to run anyway.
He might have forced Trudeau out of the right, not forced, but maybe helped induce Trudeau not to run for re-election, but a new face on the uh line i guess he's the favorite what are you you following it more closely than i am yeah i mean it's been a while that just if you just look at kind of the prediction markets like it went from a you know like the the charts just like the lines just totally intersect as one's going up and the other's going down carney's done quite well and i think it's it goes a bit to our, you know, this, the 2028, that's why I'm so loathe to do like hot stove guessing about Democrats 2028. People are capable of rising to moments or falling.
You might not have thought that, you know, Mark Carney is like basically a technocratic globalist, you know, boring policy operative, you know, gets kind of thrust into this and did quite well, you know, kind of rallying the animal spirits of the Canadians, the moose, the moose spirits of the Canadians and, you know, kind of rose to the moment. Not sure if you would have maybe thought that that would have happened and has been pretty tough on Trump.
There are some reports about, you know, threats, you know, related to the bond market. And, you know, I mean, really kind of given as good as he's gotten from Trump, at least so far.
So I think that's kind of the main takeaway. We'll see.
I mean, I don't, I do not claim to be the Steve Kornacki of Canada. So, you know, it's possible they'll surprise me tonight.
But as you say, there's such a good reminder that the idiocy of taking a snapshot of the present and projecting it into the future three months let alone three and what would be in our case three and three-quarter years to an election i mean politics is a motion picture if you want to think of it this way not a snapshot and it's a motion picture with a lot of surprises and random events happening and contingencies unlike a motion picture which presumably has a director trying to make it tie it know, politics can go in any which direction. So, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, it's a good reminder that plus the immigration issue here, I think in the way that's backfired on Trump are two very useful reminders of not looking at a poll and saying, oh my God, this is what's going to happen. And as we said, in a month, let alone a year, you know? Yeah.
Amen to that. All right amen to that all right well speaking the polls locally everybody i guess decided to do a poll pegged to the 100 day mark which we're coming up on here this week and so cnn gave trump a 41 job approval rating down seven points from two months ago abc has about 39 down six points from february new y-Siena had them at 42% approval, 54% disapproval, with 45% strongly disapproving.
So a greater strongly disapproved number than total approval. I did a little video on this over the weekend.
There's some element of this where I'm like, do I have to care about these polls right now? Having just been through what we went through in 2024, and it's kind of like, who cares? That's kind of the one way to look at it. And I understand why people might want to be like, okay, let's focus on the actual policies over the polls.
On the other hand, I do think there's an intersection here. And he's not there yet.
You know, if the numbers start to get low enough, that is going to change the behavior of people on the Hill, of the businesses that are sucking up to them, of colleges, of law firms. It does matter in that sense.
So I don't know. You wrote about it for Morning Shots this morning.
What do you make of the terrible Trump polls? Yeah, similar to you in that I don't like obsessing on polls, especially when you're pulling approval, which is sort of interesting in a vague way, but it's not like pulling an election where it might tell you what's going to happen in six weeks or something like that. But it does matter because it does capture public sentiment.
Public sentiment in a democracy matters. Maybe it matters too much these days in the sense that people forget they're supposed to lead occasionally and not simply mirror public sentiment, but it is what it is.
And public sentiment is maybe even more powerful than it once was, though I guess it's always been pretty powerful. And look, I mean, here's the way to, I think, see that it matters is, what would things feel like in politics today at the end of the first 100 days, if Trump were 55% approval, or 50% approval, which is not out of the question, most presidents have been around there, right? And honestly, he probably would be there if he just had done nothing.
Right. Like, if he just, you know, or just done like a few little few little things you know what i mean conventional sort of yeah no because people kind of i mean he got 50 percent of the vote one way to think about it would be this and a few percent of the others who voted against him sort of would still like to see the country do well and therefore maybe to approve of what he's done be pleasantly surprised no one seems to have been pleasantly surprised some percentage of voters not as small you look at those three polls, what are the approvals of 39, 41, 42? So let's just call it 42 to be said.
I mean, that means what, seven, eight percent have been pleasantly, unpleasantly surprised by his job performance, assuming if you voted for him, you kind of thought you might approve of him. So that's a pretty big number, eight percent out of that 50, deserting him for now.
It doesn't mean they would vote for a Democrat. It doesn't mean they're – though the one poll had a congressional – Democrats up three and whatever that's worth in the congressional race.
So I do think it matters, and it matters because it affects everyone. It affects business leaders, university presidents, judges.
They're not supposed to be affected, but, of course, they are a little bit affected, and members of Congress, the other elected officials we have in america who have not been exactly rising to the occasion and i think the chances of them rising to the occasion have are not you know overwhelmingly good but they're a lot better than they would be if you were at 50 or 55 i mean i think that there's just no doubt about all that nobody here is looking for uh for courage from the folks on the hill at this point like that's. That's a silly thing to wish for at this point.

But eventually, the calculus, the practical calculus might become different.

And I think that's the question.

And I think a lot of this is tied to the economic stuff.

And we're going to go deep on the economy in tomorrow's pod.

But at the top level, you're just seeing some things from over the weekend

that I think are worth mentioning, kind of how they intersect with all this.

There's this new Seattle Times story about how there are no ships in the port. April isn't even over yet.
And kind of in a strange way that the March numbers, I guess, of ships were up. And the theory on that is people are thinking that the tariff uncertainty, people are trying to get the material into the country as quickly as possible.
So we'll see. But a former ship worker gave this great quote to the Seattle Times.
Give me a break. There's no container ships.
What more do you need? And took a picture of it. I saw Larry Summers was on with, you know, on the Trump Tech Bro podcast, fighting with those guys.
And he basically said, look, we're a couple weeks away, like mid to late May, from consumers being able to see real changes, either with regards to some empty shelves or prices going up. Already you're seeing prices going up if you're a consumer that uses Timu or Shine.
It wasn't really me ever, but I've seen some screenshots on the internet of the prices of those high quality goods coming straight from China to you are going up. So that's like the fundamental element of this, I think.
Right, Bill? Right. I mean, another way of saying it is the polls are interesting, but reality is even more important than the polls.
And people are driven somewhat by reality, at least even these days. And if we go into have a combination of inflation and recession, which looks quite possible, yeah, that matters a lot, I think.
I mean, reality blurs over into perception, obviously. So on immigration, I mean, the kind of incredible overreach of his immigration policies is a reality that people are seeing and don't like, but also they don't like it.
The economic side is the most kind of pure reality driven. It is, you know, people really see the prices, they see their cousin gets laid off or something some of these other policies it's a blur between you know what they're doing which has real effects and incidentally immigration has real effects on the economy too the collapse the cutting off of immigration and deterring of immigration and tourism probably underrated as a another downside on the economy but then also sort of this people have the sense of what kind of country are we, you know, if this kind of stuff is happening.
Well, you know, and we've been talking about the travel. Those numbers are already down.
That's going to impact. So this is where this stuff does intersect.
All the stuff intersects, right? Like that is going to be reality for people that live, particularly in communities that are powered by tourism, right, and hospitality like mine. And, you know, Adrian Kerskia, our colleague, a focus group of latino trump voters where a lot of them were kind of expressing like unhappiness he said he was just going to get rid of the bad guys you know that there's a point of this it just makes you want to give a deep sigh and be like you know did anyone listen no i guess it is it's intersecting there.
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Terms and conditions apply. I want to get to your conversation with Ryan Goodman, which looks kind of bigger picture about Trump versus the courts.
But I like the one new kind of immigration story that was getting a lot of attention over the weekend that intersects with our life down here in Louisiana, as there have been two cases of US citizen children who were deported to Honduras here. One was born in Baton Rouge, a two-year-old.
The other one was a pair of siblings, four and seven-year-old. They were born outside of New Orleans.
The Honduran mothers, in the former case, the girl's father was trying to keep the child in the country and filing with the courts. And the courts just said, essentially, like, well, no, the mother said she wanted to keep her.
And like, but you don't know. There was no hearing.
They just rushed him out of the country. The lawyer, in the case of the four of the four and seven year old was again trying to keep them in the country one of them i think has a illness and you know they're concerned about medical treatment here versus in honduras so again you know that's like the deport rapists is popular everyone's for that deporting people even honestly more popular than i would like deporting people that came in illegally but haven't committed any crimes deporting people that are born here children deporting people that came legally through a refugee status or not deporting people sending them to a fucking torture prison instead of just deporting them these things are not that popular and and you're seeing it intersect with the poll numbers but i I know you and Ryan talked about the situation with the Honduran girls.
Any other thoughts on that? Well, no, and also just to add to your point, the way in which it is done matters some. So they seem to have deported a woman who's married to someone who's in the Coast Guard.
She does seem to be undocumented. She came and overstayed, I think, and hasn't yet corrected that, though she might have, and she might have corrected it.
And I think if you're married to an American, maybe it's pretty easy to get some kind of temporary status. I'm not too sure about that.
And they could simply tell her, hey, you need to do this, or we're going to ask you to leave. But they don't do that.
They go and seize her from a naval base, kind of amazingly, from the house she and her husband and I think child were about to rent. I mean, so she wasn't like in hiding.
She wasn't, you know, evading anything. She's on a U.S.
government property. That's how they found her because they read her name through some records.
And instead of kind of going to her and letting her fix her status or saying, look, I'm sorry, we're getting tough these days, even if you're married to someone serving in the Coast Guard, a little crazy, honestly, but even if you're married to someone serving in the Coast Guard, you have to leave within a week. She's not going to flee, right? She's married to a guy that's in the Coast Guard.
But no, there's none of that. It's the same with the judge in Milwaukee, which is a ridiculous case.
Ryan discussed it at some length on the show we did yesterday, Ryan Goodman. It was really excellent.
But again, you can certainly tell her, look, we think this, we've got an indictment on you. You need to come and show up and we'll process you just like they processed Trump when he showed up, right? There's a photo and all this.
They seize her at 8 a.m. outside her courthouse, and Kash Patel and Pam Bondi tweet about it, and Pam Bondi goes on Fox about it, and it's all demonstrative.
And some of that, maybe some of the MAGA base likes that, and maybe it deters, I don't know, it has a deterrent effect on other people or something, shows how tough they are. I think most people look at that and think they've shut down the border.
We need to maybe do some things about the undocumented people who are here in the country, especially if they're not being peaceful and law-abiding. But maybe many people would say, I wouldn't, but we have to do something, get rid of some of them even if they have been peaceful and law-abiding.
But do it in a civilized way. And that's where the snatching of the students on the street and so forth, wearing the masks, the ICE agents in the masks and so forth, it's just creepy, really.
And it's bad. It's wrong, also.
I want to make clear, but it's not just a matter of optics. But it is also not what people want their government to be doing unless they need to do it because they're seizing some dangerous criminal or something.
And and it feels un-american as to to your point it's just like what like what we're gonna seize a woman on a on a military base it's like you're not gonna just send her a letter right like it's all these like oh tim and bill the globalists are defending the open borders illegals and i'm like no i just like can we treat people with respect in a free country this woman did she hurt harm anybody did she has she hurt anybody she's married to somebody that's serving the country? Can we just, can we treat people with respect in a free country? This woman, did she hurt, harm anybody?

Did she, has she hurt anybody?

She's married to somebody that's serving the country.

Can we just, if you're really adamant that we have to get this person out of the country,

can we just do it in a way that allows them to do so?

Right.

And it's just like, you know, be like, well, Donald Trump got arrested and stuff.

It was like, we did, you know, judges showed a lot of discretion for Donald Trump over

the course of his four different indictments. He wasn't held in a prison.
We didn't send him to El Salvador, you know, maybe in retrospect. So, you know, that's the whole, that's the thing about this that angers people.
The other thing is it has this whiff of, and obviously it's very much serious in this, but part of the reason it might rub people the wrong way, why it's worth talking about it, is it has this whiff of like, have you ever lived in a community where like at the end of the month everyone's getting speeding tickets because the cops have a you know the cops have a quota they need to get through you know or a parking ticket like it has this whiff of that right where these like mid and low level ice people like feel like okay well i'm getting in trouble from fucking creepy ste Miller because we haven't nabbed enough people.

And it's like, okay, the only person that we've identified

is this lady on the military base because we know where she is.

It does have this element.

And I think that is also something that people just don't really like.

Don't really like.

That's just not the kind of relationship

that Americans want to have with their government. It's maybe more comfortable in other places.
I don't know. Did Ryan have any other thoughts? This is referencing, we do a build as a bulwark on Sunday on Substack and Ryan's over at Just Security.
And you did kind of get a more broad update on like the Trump versus the courts fights. Anything else of note from that combo? I mean, Ryan's a great piece.
He gives you the really great kind of overview. And then he gives you all kinds of fascinating details about various cases, the Wisconsin case, the immigration cases, that's what we focus on.
I thought the most interesting part perhaps of the discussion was latter part where I asked him, how much does all this have a cumulative effect on the judges? And there's been so much dissembling and deception, really, and evasion on the part of government lawyers at this point, that he does think that's going to have an effect. And he thinks it's legitimate that it'll have an effect.
He explained there's a doctrine. In normal times, you will rely on government witnesses.
If there's an FBI affidavit, you kind of assume for purposes for now of the trial, you don't convict the person, but for charging and for holding the person, perhaps you assume you don't require eight witnesses to the FBI affidavit itself, right? It's kind of an infinite regress at that point. You have to have some reliance or assurance that people are telling you the truth, especially officers of the court.
He thinks that they don't have, and it's very clear from the judges that they do think they've been deceived in multiple different jurisdictions on multiple different cases. And he does think that that generally will predispose courts all the way

up to the Supreme Court. And he thinks we're seeing some of this already, not to give the

government the benefit of the doubt. And I don't mean that again in some sort of like, oh, that's

judges being cute or something. Judges do have to make actual decisions based on kind of what they

think is more likely to be the case often in terms of these intermediate stages of temporary

restraining orders and so forth.

And,

Thank you. make actual decisions based on kind of what they think is more likely to be the case often in terms of these intermediate stages of temporary restraining orders and so forth.
And he thinks they're not going to give this administration, and they shouldn't give this administration, the benefit of the doubt because of how they've behaved. And again, this is a good example of what you said at the beginning.
If they had been a normal, so to speak, you know, normal Justice Department pursuing kind of right-wing policies, but doing so in an appropriate and, you know, respectful of the way that's respectful of the court, they'd be in one place. But they really just couldn't resist or didn't want to resist pushing the envelope and showing real disdain for the courts.
And of course, in this case, they really don't think the court shouldn't be involved. They just think they should have the right to run the entire immigration policy, enforce the Alien Enem anyone having any other say and without any due process they pretty much said that in court let's kind of rub judges the wrong way and i think it probably rubs a lot of americans the wrong way yeah this is also true and um we should do another legal deep dive soon because unlike all the doge cases right you know there's something in law fair uh this morning about just all the ways that the government has been lying essentially in their filings about what Doge is and what its role was in order to protect it from the traditional oversight that federal employees have that would harm its ability to act and some of the broad ways they have.
have and they've lost a bunch of these cases it's hard to kind of keep track of all them like the voice of america you know shutting down the voice of america that got that's on stay now so i don't know what we're rooting for there do we do it don't don't we want them to shut down the voice of america so carrie lake can be out of a job and then we can create a new one later. I don't know.
Anyway, but like all the great people

that work at Voice of America,

we don't want to lose their jobs.

So, and we talked about this at the time

when they were doing all these firings.

Like they're going to lose

like so many of these cases, right?

And it's going to end up costing more.

But I do wonder, I don't know,

if there was any other

kind of bigger picture thoughts

that Ryan had on that side of things.

Mostly what we've seen so far are temporary restraining orders or permanent injunctions, which is one step more serious. Obviously, it's permanent instead of temporary.
We haven't seen much decided on the merits yet at all. And he thinks that's a real question mark.
I mean, the administration, the government will make arguments for why they have this discretion to do this. Maybe they didn't do it quite the right way.
Thus, there was a stay. But some of these things like the Alien Enemies Act will actually get to the Supreme Court on the merits, presumably.
Can you invoke an act that was passed in 1798, clearly intended for war or for invasion, used only in American history in times of war or invasion? Could you say that we're at war in effect with Venezuela because there's a a gang of Venezuelans, of immigrants from Venezuela who are operating in the U.S., a gang of 1,000 people maybe. Not a very well-organized gang, actually, it turns out, though pretty brutal at times.
Isn't that law enforcement, not alien enemies? I mean, we haven't gotten to that kind of more fundamental question either. So an awful lot coming in the Supreme Court.
We saw that 7-2 decision, that emergency decision a week ago. And he thinks that is indicative of something.
The seven of the justices just think that we need to send a signal that they cannot just end-run courts and dissemble to courts and pretend that they don't have to go through due process and executing their policies. I want to talk about a couple of stories that are out this morning that I'm lumping together under the headline of hubris.
The degree of hubris in both of these stories from the Trump administration and their friends is so astonishing. But one's from The Atlantic, which includes an interview with Trump, one's from Semaphore about these private chat messages that top tech titans and Trump officials have been communicating on for a few years now.
On The Atlantic story, I'm just going to say out front, I do nothing but praise The Atlantic on here. It's like the official podcast of The Atlantic magazine.
We have so many Atlantic guests, but I just tell listeners to probably go ahead and skip this story for their blood pressure. It's about the Trump comeback, something we all lived.
I'm pretty familiar with it. I was thinking about losing my breakfast about halfway through it this morning, so I don't want that on any of you.
But the takeaway here is essentially that Trump says to them, I run the country and the world. And it's about how he's having more fun now you know just overall it's almost like this time capsule because the story kind of goes back through like the election to now and to me like my only positive takeaway from it was just how different things feel now like that this like this trump comeback story and these guys were all bragging about it and you know they're quoting people that are talking about how trump bent the whole world over you know and they're just all bowing to him and now it's kind of like i felt like that lasted about a minute so i don't i don't know if you had a chance to glance at it but that was my takeaway i didn't but i'm that's why i'm that's why i'm looking contented and not having come close to having, as you say, been able to eat breakfast.
I mean, Trump himself, however, still seems to be pretty full of hubris, don't you think? I mean, I think his explanation of the tarot, someone pointed this out, maybe this is in the bulwark, I can't remember which piece it was. The way he thinks of it is he's running a giant store, and he sets a fair price.
No, this was the time interview. This was the time interview.
He said this in that lengthy time interview. But then someone commented on it, really captured that part, which I skimmed over and hadn't really thought about it.
I mean, what kind of way is that of thinking about economics? Most people think, you know, you're running a store and you set prices, but you have to compete with other stores. And you have to get consumers to want to buy things at this price.
He thinks that the U.S. is so powerful, and he is so powerful as president of the U.S., that we just tell people, well, here's the price, take it or leave it.
Now, we are powerful, and we can sometimes take it or leave it, right? Because we have so much clout in economics terms and also political and military terms. But basically, he's discovering, I think we're unfortunately discovering as the economy slows down and goes into recession, that we can't quite say, take it and leave it, And that people can go, auto plants can build their factories elsewhere.
We're seeing some of that, right? As opposed to the US. So to avoid the insane US tariffs going both in and out, and we can see that people can choose not to travel to the US.
They can choose to travel elsewhere. And it's that, you know, the laws of economics don't disappear because Trump is hubristic.
I think maybe Trump us as a department store kind of like the only ones he's ever been into like he's a fancy department store in new york we're like we're like a bergdorf goodman and people are gonna buy from bergdorfs yeah you know no matter what the prices are and i can sexually assault women in the dressing room of the bergdorfs if i want because i'm a star and they let me do it and it's like so moronic the way that he thinks about all this I mean it's state management of the economy like really it's central planning would be another way to put this like I run the store and I get to plan everything you know which I know that the Republicans are very happy to call Kamala communist communist Kamala is coming in because she's going to raise the top tax rate by 2%, maybe, if she can get it through the Republican Senate. And it's like, Trump is now wants to centrally manage the economy like it's a department store.
And the free market Republicans on the Hill are like, you know, the most we can get out of them is a grumble to CNN from Don Bacon before he retires. Well, maybe the poll changes some of the grumbling to louder complaining.
And ultimately, and this is what I say in the morning shots, I mean, does it lead to actions? I mean, does Don Bacon say, I'm not voting for an appropriations bill for an omnibus or CR or full year appropriations bill unless it has aid for Ukraine? And do four members of the the house say that? Do four senators say, I'm sorry, we can't be doing some of these things on immigration or on a million other issues, incidentally. Obviously, tariffs, a case where Congress has literally delegated the power to the president and could take it back.
So I don't know. I mean, the grumbling is better than nothing.
Yelling would be better than grumbling and acting would be best of all. Yeah, acting would be'll see how that goes we did get a tweet from grassley over the weekend on the russia stuff i mean we went a little hot at the senator from iowa but whatever uh you know he's like i've seen enough killing of innocent ukrainian women and children president trump please put the toughest sanctions on putin you ought to see from clear evidence that he's a playing america as a Patsy guess it's good that he's tweeting that but it's like and he's in the senate I guess Trump met with Zelensky there's that kind of striking photo from the pope's funeral and so you know there's some kind of discussion that Rubio and some others were I guess talking with the Ukrainians at a level they hadn't been so maybe maybe we'll get some change.
But like, they just need 67 votes. Like they just need 67 votes in the Senate.
If Grassley is against him, if Grassley wants the toughest sanctions on Putin, like that would mean that, you know, he just needs to get John Thune and 18 others, Republicans. You would think that those people exist.
If like you just gave them truth serum, you know, if it was a secret ballot, you would have the numbers there. So I don't know.
That's just an option to Senator Grassley. And the way politics works is if you introduce legislation and start debating it, maybe you start off with 57 votes, but maybe people start thinking, gee, this is kind of indefensible.
The position I'm now kind of, they're asking me to take on the other side and you get to 67 votes right again it's the dynamics of politics that no one is taking advantage of democrats who have much less power they're better but they haven't still been doing a great job i would say of taking advantage of the sort of dynamic elements of politics i do think maybe this is unfair i haven't seen the whole interview with schumer i guess had an interview was on tv yesterday didn't he and he said something about i've sent a very strong letter with eight very strong points to to trump and it really i mean it's maybe unfair maybe this this one sentence or two sentences are surrounded by eight minutes of excellence you know schumer saying what they're doing and trying to do but that sentence or two by itself is not good right he's sending a strong letter very strong there are 47 democrats in the senate he's in the head of they can do quite a lot more than send a strong letter with eight strong points i think they could and this was the one frustrating point i had with cory booker who i thought was pretty good on thursday's pod or we got into a little bit of a back and forth on this where can't you just pressure these guys directly and these are your colleagues you know i don't know like if you're just if you're a democratic center looking for uh an idea i don't know why don't you just show up to chuck grassley's office this morning and say you know and say hey like i've got i've got a bill right here that's on it that says we're going to pass the toughest sanctions on putin let's try to how many republicans do you think we can get to sign this let's start going door to door and again that's. Is it actually going to work? Is it just going to backfire and piss them off? I don't know.
I guess my point is, I'm worried about it's going to backfire and piss them off thing. It feels like we're just way past that, right? It's like, these guys aren't going to do anything.
So to me, it's like, what's the worst that can happen from that? It feels gimmicky and then nothing happens? Well, nothing's happening now.

And you're at least getting attention for it and putting pressure on them.

As you say, the worst that happens is the status quo.

And they can do it out in the country as well, obviously, as you know, in the Senate office building.

Let us say Cory Booker can go across the river to Pennsylvania in his neighboring state there from New Jersey and go see Dave McCormick or go do a town hall in Pennsylvania and say that you have a senator who's been in the past, been quite tough on Russia, served in the Bush, I guess, Defense Department, right, if I'm not mistaken, and has said some things on the stump that are very pro-Ukraine. And why don't you get him to do something here in Pennsylvania? So, I mean, you could, now that's not senatorial courtesy.
They don't go into each other's states and beat them up. I don't know.
It's a bit of a crisis of democracy, too. So maybe they should let some of the usual, you know, courtesies.
Yeah, and there are a million other things to do, obviously. And so, you know, there's only limited time, but we could do something.
We're just throwing out an idea. Now you mentioned Pennsylvania.
122,000 Ukrainians in Pennsylvania, you know, and Democrats could go there. I saw John Fetterman, like, palling around with Dave McCormick at Selena at selena zito's book party over the weekend okay whatever you say that you're if the if the rationale for doing that is that you want to create bipartisan relationships so you can pass stuff ostensibly both dave mccormick and john fetterman in addition to wanting to fete selena zito also want the ukrain to be protected, has been both of their positions in the past,

why not have events with Ukrainians in Pennsylvania

and invite Dave McCormick to come?

And if he doesn't come, shame him.

There is a limit of creative thinking on all of this, I think.

And it's like, oh, what more can we do?

I don't know.

Call me up.

I've got some ideas.

That's a good one.

They should call you up.

Actually, don't call me. Don't call me.
You can listen. i'm giving you my good ideas right now i'm not a consultant anymore you'll accept a few emails won't you have yes to the bulwark yeah i guess i guess i didn't even get to the semaphore story you got me riled up nothing gets me more riled up than these fucking dave mccormick doing nothing fucking dave mccormick having a book.
Give me a break. What was the other thing we're going to talk about? Oh, the semaphore story.
This is also going to keep my blood pressure high. So people should read this one.
It might also upset you, but it's kind of in a funny way. It's called The Group Chats That Changed America.
It's a series of big tech gazillionaires. It's kind of like the germs of how we got to this dystopia was you had these guys like Marc Andreessen, David Balsax, you know, these other Peter Thiel and some of his acolytes, you know, basically set up these signal and WhatsApp chats with influential Republicans.
Ben Shapiro's on one of them and, you know, Republican policy people, Chris Rufo. If you don't know any of these names, God bless you.
Just continue on in blissful ignorance. But anyway, Andreessen said that these chats is what helped produce our natural vibe shift.
Andreessen was the person that was writing about how America was this coiled spring waiting to be unleashed by some good free market policies um they said this these chats were the single most important place and where the realignment towards donald trump was shaped from silicon valley the smartest most sophisticated trump supporters in the nation were in these chats these guys are all bragging about how important these chats are and how how but changed everything. And like, and we have like the most smooth-brained economic policy imaginable being implemented in the first three months after these fucking smarties masters of the universe thought that they were taking over the u.s government that is it's a truly remarkable chain of affairs i don't know but did you get to enjoy this article, or are you just enjoying my readout of it right now? I really enjoy your readout of it and your indignation and your anger, which were both totally righteous and justified.
And also, I thought all this Trump stuff was coming from, you know, people who had unfortunately lost jobs because of free trade and were, you know, victims of globalism. Seems like these guys think all their stuff is coming from themselves, from these billionaires, and some of whom helped Musk buy Twitter and turn it into X and make it a biased platform and also put pressure in other ways, I think, on other businesses to go along with Trump and so forth.
So maybe there's a little, the whole trump thing if we are we allowed to say that maybe it's a little more top down or a little less organic middle america than a lot of people have wanted to selena zito where are the forgotten men yeah how are they there are a lot of them in the trump cabinet you got to say that you look at the trump cabinet you think you know he really went out of his way to find some you know working class guys who would really pay the price for globalization. You know, you look at those guys and they've had a rough time, those people in the Trump cabinet for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years there.
How do you think the shipbuilders, the workers on the docks are doing right now as the ships don't come in? You know, there's a big re-industrialization policy. Has anyone in the Trump administration even expressed a moment of concern or sympathy for them even?

I mean, they're not only like wildly wealthy jackasses, they're also wildly wealthy, unempathetic jackasses, which I guess maybe that's part of the package. Yeah.
We haven't seen much shame yet from the big organizers of this or any humility from, you know, the people that thought it was going to be so easy to co-opt Donald Trump and then make our AI golden age come through their fucking techno-fascist policies. But I don't know, maybe it'll come if the markets get worse.
The Semi-4 article did have this screenshot for the ages, which I do have to share. Ben writes this, one of the chats broke down because David Balsax, excuse me, he wrote sacks, but we have to use our bulwark style, because David Balsax accused the people of having TDS.
Brian Goldberg, another founder, replied, I'm not sure we have TDS. I think we Republicans who supported Trump are seeing that it's a failed administration.
The next line is a little note that says, Tucker Carlson leaves the chat. It's like...
Like, they're a handful of the second tier, like, VC guys who are like, I didn't sign up for this. Like, I didn't sign up for fucking my stock tanking, you know, because you guys are like, putting 145% tariffs on China, which wasn't, that was never part of the plan.
Nobody told me about that. So anyway, that's, if it wasn't for all the suffering, that would be pretty enjoyable.
The, you know, the infighting. If only they could have known that Trump was enamored of tariffs and wasn't going to listen.
Of course, of course. And wasn't going to listen to the grownups in the room.
Why would one have thought that of thought that. Yeah, and Brian Goldberg could have just listened to us

rather than listening to the All In podcast,

and he would have been much more clear-eyed about

what was coming, but it's still nice to

see the infighting.

There's a

Matt Iglesias article this morning

that I think is really important, and

I feel a little bit like I was

wrapped on the knuckles a little bit

by Matt Iglesias unintentionally, because I had it was unintentional, because I had Beto on the pod Friday. And I love Beto.
So I maybe had Beto colored glasses. But I asked him about running again because he just kind of sounded like somebody that was going to run again.
I interviewed him back in August. He didn't really sound like that.
It was kind of a tongue-in-cheek question, really. I didn't think that he was thinking about it.
24 hours later, he was asked by a local reporter the same question. And his answer was notably non-Sherman-esque, right? To a point where the Texas reporters are trying to think maybe Beto might be running for Senate.
And had I thought that, maybe my questions would have been a little bit different just about being practical and running for these sort of Senate seats. And Iglesias just basically writes about this, which is like for the Democrats to be able to take the Senate and have any sort of policy pass, like to be able to get 51 Senate votes, like you need to win in a place like Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Florida, Alaska, Kansas, and the 26 and 28 cycles.
And if you look at those states, I mean, Kamala did worse in those states than Trump did in places like New Mexico or New Jersey. And so it's a big task.
It's a tall task to win in those states. And Iglesias is basically arguing that the Democrats don't seem that serious about finding answers to that conundrum, right? And there are a couple potential ones.
You know, there is, we're in a Great Depression. And so, you know, we get lucky.
The Republicans put up a terrible candidate like Roy Moore. And so the Democrats get lucky.
Like those are the two, you didn't have a plan, but it worked out anyway, options. He floats the Dan Osborne option.
He's this independent, kind of populist, independent kind of guy that sort of mixes like Bernieism with cultural conservatism.

This is not my type of candidate at all, but I'm open to that.

Maybe that's the right.

Maybe that's the winning path.

There's also more of a, you know, bulwark accommodating type path, right?

That's like, you know, where you distance from Democrats on issues like energy production and, you know, whatever. So my point is not that I want to like prescribe what the right answer is, but like, it is important in spaces like this to have like real conversations about it.
And just to like say, Oh, we're just going to run somebody who's going to run as a median Democrat

and hope that we're in a Great Depression.

That doesn't seem like a plan.

So anyway, that's my summary of that.

I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on it.

No, I think it's a very good piece.

I mean, I think he's right to think about this

and not to just give up on 26 and 28 from the Senate.

That's really a disastrous thing.

If there's some small chance of winning the Senate in 26,

you could avert a lot of bad things in 27, 2027, 2028.

So it's worth really going for.

I think he slightly overstates, Matt does, though,

the need, he seems to imply you need to have a whole rebranding

of the Democratic Party.

That's hard to do over a year and a half

when there's no one in charge of it anyway.

And it's just kind of a bunch of people running around

saying what they believe, basically.

I think there are two things you can do. And it's really, I'm thinking of 2006 here where the Democrats, you know, had massive gains in the off-year election.
The two things are, one, we've already discussed, drive Trump's numbers down. The single best predictor of off-year performance is the president's approval.
And if he's at 34 and you get a wave, or 36 even, maybe, and you get a wave election, then it does bring a lot of people in, in states that are, you know, minus eight, minus 10, not a lot, some people in those states, and you don't even have to have spectacular candidates. That's one.
And two, as Rahm Emanuel did in 2006, you know, recruit candidates who are good for the states and localities they're running in. And if you can get that combination, I don't think you need to have a whole redefinition of the Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries-led party, and governors will do what governors will do, and some of them will be like Newsom, and some of them will be like Shapiro, and others will be like Pritzker, and maybe you can shape that a tad at the margins.
But I think those two things, recruiting good candidates and driving Trump's numbers down, are very, I don't know if they're achievable goals, but they're very concrete goals. I mean, they're goals you can work on achieving, right? They're not like fanciful.
You can actually go to states and districts and say, who is a reasonable candidate here? Who might fit the district or state a little better than the natural, the state assembly person from some blue dot in a red state who's otherwise just going to naturally win the nomination, you know, and lose. And secondly, and above all, I come back to driving Trump's numbers down.
Everything's so nationalized. It's going to be about checking Trump.
Why would you vote Democratic in 2026 if you're a marginal, you know, unless you're a loyal Democrat? You want to stop Trump. It's like 2018 in that respect.
And there you just need to get his number. You need to get the increase the number of people who want to stop Trump.
Then maybe you lose a couple of

percent of them at the end of the day because they kind of look at the Democrat and they think,

ooh, a little too left wing for me. But if that number is big enough, you can afford to lose

those last 2% and still be at 51, right? So the most doable thing is to knock Trump's numbers

down as much as possible. I agree with that, that that's the most doable thing.
I also just think

Thank you. we get 51, right? So the most doable thing is to knock Trump's numbers down as much as possible.
I agree with that, that that's the most doable thing. I also just think, look, this is, I give free advice here, because like I said, I don't like being a consultant anymore.
You know, over the last years, I know you do, I get calls from people who like run around Red State, run around Louisiana, like, what do you think? What do you think? And I always say to them, like, what is a cultural issue where you disagree with the democratic party on i literally don't care what it is right it doesn't matter what it is i think actually in a weird way and frankly it doesn't matter what it is right pick one and don't just kind of like mention it a little bit like talk about it a lot don't talk about it quite as much you talk about how terrible donald trump has been for working class people and veterans, et cetera. Like that's the most important job.
But maybe the second most thing you should talk about is whatever this cultural issue is, where you are more in line with the people of Texas or Iowa or Louisiana than you are with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And like, that doesn't feel like it should be that hard, but it is like, there's a lot of pressure not to do that.
You know, you know, the rubber chicken circuit, the people don't want to hear that right like and will that even work i don't know right like i'm not this is not a guaranteed path to victory in a red state it's very hard to win as a democrat in a red state but to me it just feels like an anti of like both giving people an anti-trump choice and giving them the choice of somebody that feels like they're from that state that feels like on some level they connect with the people of that state more than they connect with national democrats and even then it's an uphill slog but like just running as a generic is tough and it's not going to do it and and as much as i love feto even he would say that and like the grassroots stuff that he's doing is all super important and people should do it and i love that that was doing it but like that is another thing that's necessary but not sufficient you know because even he said it in the interview it's like you know this might not pay off this grassroots thing in 26 or 28 or 30 but it like eventually it will and i and so great i do that but like you know if you're talking about 2026 like it's not going to be door knocking that's going to be the the solution by itself like you got to do those other things And in addition to picking an issue, which I totally agree with, guns is an obvious one,

where they're not going to pass any gun control legislation in the next,

during a Trump presidency in 27, 28 either. So if you're a pro-gun control, you're not good.

I think you can vote for someone who says, I'm not quite with you on gun control.

So you know, it's not going to matter in the next two or four years, probably.

And I think the same is true on a bunch of other issues, but also biography matters.

I mean, Rahm recruited in 06, but also in 2018. No one recruited anyone in 2018, actually, at 2017.
People just showed up. Abigail Spanberger showed up, and Mikey Sherrill showed up, and former intelligence officers, and former military and retired veterans showed up, and culturally moderate types showed up, and they did well.
So again, I think the bio plus the finding an issue or two to distinguish yourself can go pretty far. All right.
Final thing. We'll end with an attaboy.
Well, you mentioned Pritzker. I got two attaboys.
I don't have the audio of Pritzker. Pritzker was on fire over the weekend.
So, you know, that's something to monitor. He's talking about how he's never been the type of person to be a big protest person.
And this is the moment for mass protests if there ever was one. So me and JB are aligned on that.
But my actual attaboy that I want to close with was the last minute of 60 minutes, which was, I think, pretty bold for Scott Pelley to do this on air live. So in case you guys missed it, let's listen.
Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us and you.
Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial. Lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration.
Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way.
But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.
Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.
No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing. He was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.
Not bad. Pretty powerful, yeah.
It's nice. See, guys? You can do it.
Everybody can do it. Scott Pelley can do it.
You can do it. These guys aren't that scary.
Anyway't that scary anyway Bill Crystal we'll see you back here next Monday Canadians will be watching your election results tonight and everybody else we'll see you back here tomorrow for

another edition of the situation Walking in the street, thinking about last time This time I said I would do this right Said I would never break this promise But now I'm back to counting on us We cannot be friends Cannot pretend that it makes sense We cannot be friends

Cannot pretend

That it makes sense

Cause now I'm in it

But I've been trying to find my way back for a minute

Damn, I'm in it

And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute Fuckin' all those things in my house, I'm alone in my head But I wish you were in my bed Can't get a feed on myself Gotta change the situation And I'm the way that I felt when I woke up Told me that I shouldn't give in, give up, ho Told me that I shouldn't fight for the feeling Told me I should not let go Cause he cannot be friends Cannot pretend that it makes sense Cause now I'm in it But I've been trying to find my way back for a minute Damn, I'm in it And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute Cause now I'm in it And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute And the rain keeps coming down on the ceiling And I can't hear it I feel like you The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.