Bill Kristol and Terry Moran: True American Spirit

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Speaker 5 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
A quick programming note here. I had the first interview with Terry Moran following his firing from ABC.

Speaker 5 We did it live on Substack this morning. So we'll have that full interview in the B segment for you.
Here, Flex.

Speaker 5 For those of you that missed it, he offered some hard truths about Stephen Miller, the person, and the suits at ABC did not like that none too much. So we talked about that.

Speaker 5 We talked about his interview with Trump and a bunch of other stuff. And so do stick around for that here after I'm finished with our usual Monday guest.
He's editor-at-large of the Bulwark.

Speaker 5 It's Bill Crystal. What's up, Bill?

Speaker 2 It's good that the suits at the Bulwark are fine with hard truths about Stephen Miller.

Speaker 2 You're right every campsites. I'm worried that the suits at the bulwark don't know about everything you've said on this conversation with Terry.

Speaker 5 I think that's probably true. The suits at the bulwark are definitely not monitoring the FY pod for starters.
So who knows what I'm saying over there? We got so much to talk about.

Speaker 5 There are the No Kings parades over the weekend and the status military junta parade in history,

Speaker 5 some political assassinations in Minnesota, Israel-Iran war. It's the 10-year anniversary of the escalator to our current hell.
So I'm sapped. I'm tapped from just talking to Terry.

Speaker 5 Why don't you pick which one of those things you want to start with?

Speaker 2 I think No Kings was a bigger moment than I would have expected. And both bigger just quantitatively, but also maybe in terms of the spirit of us and maybe the spirit of the country.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 How was yours? Did you go and you went to New Orleans, right? Yeah,

Speaker 5 I thought about it that cuts both ways. On the positive side, just the view from the whole country was really astonishing.

Speaker 5 I mean, like, you just look at the aerial views of the San Diego protests or Chicago, the total number of people that were showing up in contrast to the really limp military parade, birthday boy parade in D.C., I think was pretty striking.

Speaker 5 We were talking about that all last week. Like

Speaker 5 there is a power in this, like these demonstrations of public support. JVL has written about that for the triad.

Speaker 5 And that influences things. It influences people.
It influences institutions like ABC when they decide whether they need to fire Terry Murray.

Speaker 5 All that stuff matters as far as countering aspiring authoritarianism. So I thought that was good.
The spirit in New Orleans was great. Everybody, I mean, it's New Orleans.

Speaker 5 So everybody was so kind to me. People were maybe a little hungover.
It was hot and 10 in the morning. So, you know, there was some sweating happening out there, but there was a lot of excited people.

Speaker 5 My only one comment about cutting the other way is

Speaker 5 in New Orleans and hearing from friends in other places, it does feel very much like a kind of college-educated crowd, like a more upper-middle-class crowd and a whiter crowd, frankly, even in New Orleans.

Speaker 5 And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It makes sense.
Like, working-class people have a lot of fucking things to do, you know, besides show up to protest.

Speaker 5 There's an element of like, who has free time in the world to these sorts of things?

Speaker 5 I mean, the types of people that show up to volunteer at any campaign headquarters, like, you know, there tend to be demographic differences.

Speaker 5 But I just, I still worry about that a little bit with the democrats and with like with the resistance whatever you want to call it this broad pro-democracy coalition that we're kind of reaching the people who listen to podcasts and go on sub stack and like and are really engaged and that it does feel a little bit like there's a gap still in reaching folks that are more disengaged and i guess that would be my only note of caution from what was otherwise really i i think a nice and important weekend i don't know what you make of all that.

Speaker 2 Trevor Burrus: No, that's a fair note of caution. I'd point out, as you know, that

Speaker 2 it's easy to get disengaged people the more engaged people you have. I mean, almost by definition, right? They know more people.
They have spillover effects, so to speak.

Speaker 5 I guess I spent the Black Lives Matter parade demographics and the No Kings parade demographics were notably different. I think we should just be able to acknowledge that that is a thing and

Speaker 5 think about that.

Speaker 2 But you need both. And I think I was struck by a few things.
I mean, the spirit, at least here in Northern Virginia, was high.

Speaker 2 A combination of anger and genuine indignation, obviously, at what Trump has done and said, as almost about what he's done to the country.

Speaker 2 This is Northern Virginia, lots of government workers, lots of people who involved, semi-involved in politics and so forth. But also kind of an upbeat spirit.

Speaker 2 I mean, given that it was kind of a grim week with the mobilization in Los Angeles of the troops and Trump's speech on Tuesday and the kind of what was then the

Speaker 2 soon-to-happen military parade and then a war breaking out. People were upbeat and people were really happy to see each other.
It was a, I mean, it's McLean, Virginia.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to pretend it's a wildly diverse crowd. For McLean, it was somewhat diverse.
It was diverse in the sense that there were several ex-Republicans there whom I knew,

Speaker 2 one or two of whom knew, a few of whom knew of me, but I mean some of whom I actually know. And I was slightly surprised to see a couple of them there.
They were not never Trumpers last time.

Speaker 2 They're not close friends, so I'm not intimately involved in their trajectories politically, but I would say they were Trump, maybe adjacent or sort of acquiescent or neutral as late as 2020 or something.

Speaker 2 And they were there. And then there were plenty of liberals and

Speaker 2 upper middle class types and so forth.

Speaker 2 Kind of a nice combination, though, as I say, of being angry about what Trump is doing to the country and a sense of humor. There was this couple of witty handmade

Speaker 2 posters,

Speaker 2 placards. I like the one about one woman had,

Speaker 2 we were laughing about it. And she said, if only Kamala had one, we'd be at brunch now you know which is a very very maclean specific i believe or at least uh upscale suburb specific

Speaker 2 yeah i guess that speaks to my point about the it very much speaks to your point but it's also a certain amount of self i say it puts a self you know mocking or irony in it yeah but i think actually as people understand they need the broadest possible coalition that part i found incidentally i was on various calls of people some of whom were organizing this these these helping organize and organizing these uh the no kings rallies and there's a lot of concern beforehand about this coalition is very broad.

Speaker 2 Will people get in arguments or fights? I really saw none of that, at least here. And I didn't hear about it from anyone I talked to at different events.

Speaker 5 The ideological breadth is important and I think was reflected true everywhere. I mean, we had

Speaker 5 what felt

Speaker 5 like probably what would be the equivalent of the New Orleans DSA folks speaking, as well as

Speaker 5 never Trumper types, Republican types, Southern kind of suburban, former Republican types for sure. And everybody is aligned, I think, about

Speaker 5 what the message is.

Speaker 2 And I felt this. I mean, again, won't get discounted, obviously, we know what side we're on in this, but I felt the feeling was patriotic.

Speaker 2 I mean, partly was there were a lot of American flags, but people really were

Speaker 2 felt they were defending American values, American principles, American history almost against Trump. Particularly, this is probably a little stronger here in Northern Virginia, but

Speaker 2 a fair number of ex-military, military vets there. Active duty probably wouldn't identify identify themselves as such, so I don't know about that, but a lot of vets settled, obviously, in this area.

Speaker 2 Again, the patriotism I thought was authentic. And I guess I thought generally that reading about it all Saturday night and Sunday yesterday, I feel like it conveyed a kind of patient.

Speaker 2 I feel like that was the more patriotic of the two events Saturday.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm so biased, I don't trust my judgment that everyone agrees with this, but I maybe think a little more than 49% of the country would have that perception just from looking at the events, looking at the actually the people and

Speaker 2 millions of people waving American flags against soldiers kind of looking kind of unhappy to be walking down Constitution Avenue with Trump up there trying to make it look like it was a big deal and kind of lame, don't you think?

Speaker 2 I didn't watch the parade. Did you actually?

Speaker 5 Military parade sponsored by Coinbase. You don't think that was that had the American traditions on its side? I agree with that.
I saw a funny post from

Speaker 5 like some far-left person who was trying to be critical of the No Kings parade.

Speaker 5 And they posted that like they went to their local one and there were so many American flags, they thought it was a Trump rally. And I was like, great, good.

Speaker 2 That's a good critique. The best thing I've heard.
That's great. I hadn't seen that.

Speaker 5 That's true. Yeah, so no,

Speaker 5 there definitely is a spirit. And I think that ties into the immigration element and it ties into kind of what the country's about.

Speaker 5 And I think the overlap between that and the anti-ICE parades naturally lends to kind of something. about the American spirit and pluralism, the way what the country is supposed to be.

Speaker 5 So I agree with you. That was nice.
Some of the, my friend's kids had some of the best signs, but I don't want to out on some of the guillotine-themed sign from a child really jumped out to me.

Speaker 5 You know, we're inspiring the youthful imagination,

Speaker 5 the military parade, so to speak. It was really sad.
And this is not a bit or like hyperbole.

Speaker 5 I was prepared. I guess maybe it was on the next level last week.
We were talking about this. I was like, I'm kind of prepared for anything.

Speaker 5 I'm prepared for like a total Mussolini style thing where Trump comes out in a costume, like all like that being the one end.

Speaker 5 I wasn't wasn't thinking that was likely, but I was like, that was like on the most extreme on one end to like on the other end, it being just a total zero flop and be shambolic to like anything in between.

Speaker 5 And it was really the latter. I mean, it was, it was pathetic.
And like the videos of you know, kind of the silent crowd with the wheels squeaking on the tanks.

Speaker 5 And I can't get in the mind of the military folks who participated, but it just didn't really feel like it seemed like everybody's heart was in it out there. And,

Speaker 5 you know, people holding up the drones

Speaker 5 because they didn't want to perform them. It just, it didn't feel impressive.
If any, if anything, it made me kind of sad.

Speaker 5 Like, I was worried that it was going to make me a little scared, but it made me kind of sad about the state of the country.

Speaker 5 And this sort of, like, there's obviously the split screen with the No Kings protest, but I was struck thinking about the split screen with what's happening in the middle east and you have like israel using these precision strikes to take out the iranian national guard and here we have this kind of pathetic parade that like people nobody's even the people there don't look like they're enjoying that much that didn't look particularly impressive

Speaker 5 At the end, I almost was kind of like, if you're going to do it, I wish it was a little bit more fashion.

Speaker 5 It looked weak and embarrassing and sad. That was my main takeaway from it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I felt bad for the people in the military, dragoon, into participating, ranging from the most junior enlisted guys to some of the senior officers.

Speaker 2 They all looked equally, from the little clips I saw at least, they looked not very happy to be there. And I've talked to people ranging from South Malton, the

Speaker 2 conversation. That was a good interview.
Thanks. Yesterday on YouTube, and a Marine veteran in Fort Tours in Iraq, to Michael Wood, our friend, another Marine veteran who's in Texas.

Speaker 2 I went to his local No Things, but then No Kings, but then to other, lots of other people directly and indirectly who were talking to people in the military currently on active duty.

Speaker 2 And they did report, again, it's slightly self-selected here, obviously, but they reported just general unhappiness in the military.

Speaker 2 Either unhappiness or just not interested in it, if they were far from DC and didn't get dragooned into participating, you know, this was not a big moment for them.

Speaker 2 I mean, in that respect, Trump's, in some ways, this is part of a more serious effort by Trump to politicize and corrupt the military, which I think it is.

Speaker 2 You know, this is a part of just the idiotic self-aggrandizement and giving himself a big birthday party and the performative side of it. But insofar as it's part of an agenda,

Speaker 2 I can't believe it worked. And I would say maybe a little bit of a backlash.
I wonder if you're a normal, you know, a sergeant or major or one-star general and you think, God, is that what we want?

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, of course, we'll go along with orders. Of course, we're part of the military.
We're not going to launch some kind of military rebellion, nor should they. But I don't know.

Speaker 2 I felt to the degree he wants to politicize the military in his direction, I wonder if it had a bit of a reverse effect. And maybe firmed up a sense that we shouldn't be doing that.

Speaker 2 And I thought also General Kane's testimony on the Hill this week, which didn't get much attention. I don't think Hexeth got more because he was so clownish in certain ways.

Speaker 2 Kane, I didn't see enough to make a firm judgment of this.

Speaker 2 Well, certainly the clips I saw, Kane was pretty firm in rejecting politicization and not confirming that there was an invasion going on. In a kind of mild way, he didn't go to MAGA land.

Speaker 2 I didn't see enough of it to know how much more there was of that or how, but I got the general sense that he probably quietly went out of his way not to seem like Pete Hegset's sidekick and best buddy.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I guess one more point on this: the thing that is mildly encouraging.
I guess it just kind of depends on

Speaker 5 what your prior worries or assumptions were, whether this is going to be an encouraging observation. But

Speaker 5 the Fox coverage of it seemed so forced. You can just tell, you know, in politics or in anything, you can tell when the side that's trying to cheerlead for something is really stretching.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I watched like Brett Baer kind of chastise people about how this was, this was really about the army. And some people tried to make this about President Trump's birthday.

Speaker 5 And it's like, you watch the Fox coverage. They showed Trump over and over again.
It was about Trump.

Speaker 5 And it just, it felt really strained, like the efforts to try to make it into something bigger than it just

Speaker 5 was.

Speaker 5 And my worry last week, I think a lot of people shared this with Trump at Fort Bragg and watching everybody cheer him on.

Speaker 5 And, you know, especially before we learned that they had really screened people for coming there.

Speaker 5 You know, there's this worry of like, man, if you're concerned about an authoritarian takeover, like the military going along with a campaign rally and then holding a birthday parade for the president are two pretty concerning data points.

Speaker 5 And I think now we can look back on the week and think, well, Trump still has aspirations in this direction, but it's not like it doesn't feel like people are as gung-ho about it as

Speaker 5 I might have been concerned about. And so I think that's my minor silver lining in the whole thing.

Speaker 2 No, I think that's very much the case.

Speaker 2 I mean, Hegseth has, on the other hand, I mean, Hegset's Secretary of Defense, and he's fired eight generals, and God knows what the promotional boards are doing.

Speaker 5 Tons of things to be worried about.

Speaker 2 Oh, plenty of things to be worried about. The authoritarian agenda is alive and well, sadly, because Trump is president and controls the executive branch and Congress.
But yeah,

Speaker 2 I think I was, yeah, I'm where you are. I mean, if you'd asked me when we talked a week ago, I was worried this week would be a week of decline towards authoritarianism.
And I don't think it was.

Speaker 2 And I think, if anything, it might have been a bit of a

Speaker 2 couple of healthy steps away from it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, pushback. I agree with that.
Just on balance.

Speaker 5 Military parades. Guys getting fired from their job for speaking the truth.
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Speaker 5 Okay, plenty of other things to still be worried about. Deciding which one to talk about first.
I guess let's do this because it's on the topic. Let's do the ICE and

Speaker 5 the kind of military raids, because this is something where Trump sent out a bleat bleat basically saying,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 those conversations about how, you know, we want to dial it back at farms and hotels, like ignore that.

Speaker 5 Like we, ICE officers are ordered to do all in their power to deliver the single largest mass deportation program in history.

Speaker 5 And we're going to do it in the Democratic cities in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and others where these folks live.

Speaker 5 And as someone else talking to Terry,

Speaker 5 that really struck him just about this notion about the militarization of our cities, sending these ICE thugs in to democratic areas to really wreak havoc on these communities.

Speaker 5 And I think that this is maybe the inverse of what we were just talking about.

Speaker 5 There was maybe a moment where some, I didn't really think this, but some were saying that because that Trump was tacoing a little bit on this, on immigration, because of the pushback from Big Ag and his hotel buddies.

Speaker 5 But to me, I think that was rhetorical. And like, he's not, and this is going to continue to level up and might be a really dangerous inflection point.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure it's entirely rhetorical. I basically agree with you, and the ICE thing remains horrible and horrifying.
I mean, I do think they've changed the orders for ICE.

Speaker 2 At least there was some reporting of this, not to go into the fields and

Speaker 2 chase and arrest the detain and deport the agriculture workers the way they were doing in parts of California. I think on the late middle of that last week, there was a video of that.

Speaker 2 Hotel workers, I don't know how you know exactly ahead of time who a hotel worker is, but anyway, maybe if you say you're a hotel worker, they say, okay, you know, at least they don't bust hotels.

Speaker 5 They won't raid the hotel. They won't raise the history.
I do think it's safe. They're not going to be raiding the four seasons.
I don't think the four seasons.

Speaker 2 There wasn't a lot of that going on anyway, but you're right, since they try not to inconvenience too many rich people, basically, and who might be Trump, especially if they're in areas where they're a Trump supporter.

Speaker 2 And I do think the tacoing, the fact that he had to put out that stupid tweet probably changed policy a little bit.

Speaker 2 Now he's invited and said, now that he said the hotels are in the ag, we shouldn't bother them.

Speaker 2 I mean, everyone who's obviously knows Trump and is in the construction business is saying, hey, you know what? We have problems too.

Speaker 2 Maybe you could stop hiring people who are assembling to work in construction jobs at the Home Depot shopping center, you know? And so I think it opens the door to a little bit, sort of like tariffs.

Speaker 2 It opens the door a little bit to kind of pressuring Trump. Once you see it works a little bit, in one case, there'll be a little more of it.

Speaker 2 It sort of takes away a little bit that kind of, you know, mass deportation, no matter what. It's a matter of firm principle.
It's obviously for Trump, it's all who knows what it is for Trump.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a mixture of bigotry and some sense that this is what he campaigned on, but he doesn't really want to inconvenience his rich buddies. He's very different.

Speaker 2 I think Trump is different from Stephen Miller in this respect, who probably would be happy to inconvenience all the rich buddies. So, we'll see what happens in practice.

Speaker 2 And it's still awful to have what's happening, and a lot of awful stuff will continue to happen.

Speaker 2 Does there not be the fact that we've sort of forgotten that Andre has been in detention in El Salvador for 90 days. A totally innocent man hasn't had a chance to call his family.

Speaker 2 I mean, so there's huge amounts of me indignant and outraged and very concerned about it. I don't minimize that.

Speaker 2 But I guess I'm slightly more optimistic maybe than you that a little chink appeared there in the armor of mass deportation.

Speaker 5 I think it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Because

Speaker 5 my counterpoint to that, and we'll see, is that

Speaker 5 we're not yet an authoritarian country, actually. So Trump's diktats then get kind of of filtered through the system, you know, and every and people within the system have their own incentives.

Speaker 5 And I'm just like, I'm here in Louisiana. And I, you know, when I was talking to folks this weekend, I've got lawyer friends I've been talking to and politician friends in town.
And,

Speaker 5 you know, if you are

Speaker 5 the U.S. attorney for one of the districts here in Louisiana, you're the governor, you're the attorney general, your incentives are to get your deportation numbers up.

Speaker 5 Like, you don't want to seem like you're the weak link here. And so, yeah, at the same time, you also don't want to bug your donors, right? So, there are these cross-pressures, right?

Speaker 5 And, and, you know, the U.S. attorneys and the ICE officials and, you know, whoever's, uh, whoever oversees the LA area and the Chicago area, right?

Speaker 5 Like that is where there's going to be total wheels off. And, you know, they want to maximize the number of detentions.
But the incentives across all these other places are too.

Speaker 5 And so, unless they're giving like very clear standdown orders, I don't know. I just, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.
I guess that's fine. That's my thought.

Speaker 2 It's terrible. I mean, the mass deportation thing, of course, I was never for it or in any way well-disposed to it, but in practice is more

Speaker 2 because they pushed it so hard, I suppose, maybe one should have expected it, but it's just more appalling even than I thought.

Speaker 2 I mean, in terms of what it signals, how people are behaving, the ICE agents, the counter-attack, when someone points out that what are they doing here?

Speaker 2 You know, some of the people they're picking up are innocent, and some of them are American citizens, and they're treating everyone in a kind of such a bad way, unnecessarily kind of cruel and brutal way.

Speaker 2 And the counterattack is just, that's great. You know, they deserve it.
They're here illegally. They're all illegal.
I mean, it's really grotesque.

Speaker 2 So that part of it, I'm very much on the kind of both alarmed and disgusted side. And as you say, that part's not, most of that's not stopping.

Speaker 2 Maybe there are some signs that there isn't quite as much support for it as Trump thought. One poster this morning, or last couple of days, asked one of these interesting questions.

Speaker 2 It's not 100% reliable in terms of as much as a real poll, but it's qualitative a little bit, and you have to divide the sample to two and all this.

Speaker 2 But it's sort of: are you happier with the Democrats' message on the economy or responsive to it? Or on immigration? I mean, which are you sort of? And

Speaker 2 they were the same. The poll was like 42, 56, approval of Trump.

Speaker 2 So if you're inclined to disapprove of Trump, there's as much disapproval on immigration or deportation, at least, as there is on the economy, perhaps.

Speaker 2 And so I think that will encourage Democrats in a good way to focus on that.

Speaker 2 Incidentally, I did find that at our Know Things event, at least here in Northern Virginia, there was a lot of, just talking to people, a lot of talk about immigration, much more than about the economy, which is okay for now, tariffs, you know, all that other.

Speaker 2 I mean, it is a real issue. I think.

Speaker 2 At least for the people who don't like Trump, that question is, you know, swing voters and then Trump supporters.

Speaker 2 But I think even among swing voters and some Trump supporters, I think the deportation stuff is just,

Speaker 2 I hope it's just a bridge too far. I don't know.

Speaker 5 We couldn't be more aligned on that part, but the whole notion of people only talk about their bills at the kitchen table is

Speaker 5 this totally ridiculous thing I can't even take.

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Speaker 5 Okay, I want to talk about Minnesota. Just the horrible assassination attempts.

Speaker 5 For anybody that missed it, there was a state House Democratic leader, Melissa Hortman, was killed, as well as her husband, Mark. A state senator, John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were wounded.

Speaker 5 The suspect is a guy named Vance Bolter, who his roommate says he voted for President Trump, was against abortion. Old friend said similar.

Speaker 5 And this guy went to their houses dressed as a police officer with a car that had like fake sirens on it. I guess real sirens, but fake police sirens on it, and assassinated them in their homes.

Speaker 5 And he was finally caught just a few hours ago, which is good.

Speaker 5 He'd been on the loose. He had a list of other Democrats he was going to target

Speaker 5 and other

Speaker 5 left-wing groups, organizations. So I don't know.
I have a few thoughts on it, but Bill, I guess what was your top, what's your top takeaway?

Speaker 2 It's obviously horrible and should be denounced. And the good news is it was denounced by

Speaker 2 Republicans and Democrats pretty much.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't have qualified. I think it was denounced enough.
I hope it was denounced enough by everyone and is appalling to everyone.

Speaker 2 But you had a point, you really noticed and looked more closely than I did, at the immediate, the degree to which the MAGA right was

Speaker 2 willing to spin this on social media based on either fake

Speaker 2 or fragmentary accounts of who the guy was as a left-wing Marxist shooting, endorsed by people as serious as your great buddy, Senator Mike Lee and Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 And I mean, that really is the degree of irresponsibility and cavalier disregard for the truth and just wanting to establish your narrative, even knowing that it could well be totally falsified as it has been 24 hours later.

Speaker 2 I don't know. You thought a lot about that and you spoke eloquently about that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I have. I just, I got to tell you, I've been discouraged by pretty much all of it.
Like,

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 assassinations, like, there's a moment in the country where this was, this happened.

Speaker 5 Like, people got assassinated politically, you know, before I was born, not too long before I was born, but there was a spate of it. And then some other, you know, kind of assassination attempts.

Speaker 5 And we had the Gabby Giffords issue and then Steve Scalise at the baseball field.

Speaker 5 So like it happens, but an actual murder of a politician, like, you know, you would think that that would just call for an immediate outpouring from all leaders that is just no.

Speaker 5 Like we have to be opposed to this. We have to like demonstrate how much we are, you know, all kind of in this together in a messy democracy, no matter what our views are.

Speaker 5 You would expect like this overwhelming response. And it's just not what happened.

Speaker 5 You know, I mean, Trump put out a statement about it, but then was asked if he was going to see Tim Walls, who was very emotional at this, Governor Walls, who knew

Speaker 5 the victims. And he kind of was dismissive of that and then attacked Walls and made fun of him.

Speaker 5 And on that video you mentioned, I talked about Senator Mike Lee has been on a tweeting spree about how this guy is a Marxist based on nothing.

Speaker 5 Bernie Moreno, Senator from Ohio, posted the degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying. Elon Musk tweeted the similar.

Speaker 5 So this is not like, I'm not just picking random crazy MAGAs off the internet. Like U.S.

Speaker 5 senators, richest man in the world, like very prominent right-wing media figures, like immediately spun up a total fake narrative that the assassin was left-wing as part of an effort to radicalize people more against the left, right?

Speaker 5 I mean, in a moment where somebody had, we don't exactly know what radicalized this guy, but where somebody felt was radicalized enough to go kill Democrats, to take that moment to try to radicalize people more against folks on the left is just unbelievably like unconscionable and irresponsible and crazy.

Speaker 5 And so like that part of it was, as to me, very horrifying. And I think augers poorly for the future.
And then the other thing I did talk about the video is I just kind of hate this.

Speaker 5 I hate that after one of these things, everybody immediately like retreats to like, is this murder going to help my team

Speaker 5 or not? Like it's a deeply unhealthy way to think about all of this, no matter what your political alliance is. And

Speaker 5 all you have to do is just look at social media to see that.

Speaker 5 That's a pretty broad sentiment for very, for people that are political posters, at least. So, anyway, across the board, I was just, I felt like it was all pretty disheartening.

Speaker 2 I totally agree. But I would just add, I'd be maybe a little more partisan than you or something like that, but I'm not partisan.

Speaker 2 I mean, it was clear within two hours, I'm going to say it was certainly very, very clear who, what side this guy was coming from. Sure.
It doesn't mean you blame the other side. He's maybe crazy.

Speaker 2 Maybe he had a mental breakdown.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying, but his actual affiliations, the actual list of people he was going after, it was an anti-democratic or anti-left, if you want to call it that, anti-assassination.

Speaker 2 I mean, and that doesn't mean that everyone, there are assassinations from both sides and one individual in a country of 330 million, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 Still, if you are on that side, you have a particular responsibility to denounce it, in my opinion. And even a few people might have said, gee, to the degree that he seems to be a guy who

Speaker 2 kind of agreed with us on some things,

Speaker 2 who was strongly pro-life, who was a Christian minister, who denounced the left, denounced gay people, I think, in this speech in Africa that we got video of.

Speaker 2 Again, this video came out pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 I don't know if anyone has even gone to that next step, which is the right thing to do and the decent thing to do, and which people have done in the past.

Speaker 2 If someone, quote, on their side went over the line to horrific violence, you sort of felt a special need to say, you know, I just want to say that we in the responsible and in the huge majority of the responsible community on this side denounce it.

Speaker 2 So not only didn't they do that, of course, as you say, they spun up these fake conspiracy theories and fake biographies, basically, of the guy, and then stuck with him for hours, maybe for a day.

Speaker 2 I don't know. That last Mike Lee tweet was not just minutes, I don't believe, after the shooting.
It's totally irresponsible to do it minutes after the shooting when you don't know.

Speaker 2 It's even worse to do it hours afterwards when you kind of do know.

Speaker 5 And the degree to which he's just right to the top of his feed. That was his response to the pushback.
He's like, you can choose a particular tweet and make sure it stays at the top.

Speaker 5 I didn't know he'd pin it.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is is a U.S. senator, and one who once was thought to be a little eccentric, maybe, but kind of mild-mannered and responsible, Utah, you know, and all this.
I mean, in that respect,

Speaker 2 the incredible irresponsibility and viciousness, really, of parts of the right, I think.

Speaker 2 And then the social media question and how they are organized to really push this stuff out immediately and really echo each other in a way that the left is often jealous of because it could be politically quite effective, but also it's humanly so corrosive.

Speaker 5 So corrosive, right? Because it's like facts don't matter. True reality doesn't matter.
And you train people

Speaker 5 to believe that. And so what happens? Like when you train all of your followers to think

Speaker 5 the reality of the situation is irrelevant. Every event is part of this imaginary war that we have with our domestic political foes.

Speaker 5 And we can say or do anything we want to rationalize anything that hurts them. Like that, that's basically what is underpinning

Speaker 5 their behavior. And that takes you to a deeply dark place.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the imaginary war becomes a real killing. And it doesn't even cause, well, maybe it caused some people who were not posting and some people who are not United States senators to rethink.

Speaker 2 But again, these are United States senators. I want to come back.

Speaker 2 You did not pick when you discussed this in the video, and we're not focusing now on random people, obviously, online who are idiots and who say totally irresponsible things and who want to get followers.

Speaker 2 We were talking about United States States senators and Elon Musk, who is a totally irresponsible human, but also was the closest advisor to the President of the United States for the first three months of his administration.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Just one more thing on Mike Lee. Again, there are only two options here: either he's so mentally ill and deranged that he has convinced himself that

Speaker 5 this person is a Marxist, I guess, and that Tim Walls is responsible for the death of his friends. Like, either he's so mentally ill that he believes that,

Speaker 5 or or

Speaker 5 he knows it's a lie, and he's advancing it to what end?

Speaker 5 Like because he wants to get retweets, or because he wants the left to be punished, or he wants to, he thinks that is a path to more power, to more political power.

Speaker 5 And like either one of those options like makes him totally

Speaker 5 unacceptable as a person in public trust. Like you cannot have somebody in a place of public responsibility who is like either that mentally ill or that sociopathic.

Speaker 5 I guess it's just a different type of mental illness, but like that confused about reality or that willing to lie about dead fellow politicians. Like just,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 for some social media purpose. And it's

Speaker 5 really beyond the pale.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

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Speaker 5 Okay. Andrew Eggert wrote this and he guilt-tripped me this morning in your newsletter.
And so I do want to mention it.

Speaker 5 John Hoffman's wife, Yvette, jumped on their daughter and protected her during the attack and

Speaker 5 saved their kid. I mean, and Yvette is also probably going to survive, it seems like, but it was shot eight times or something.

Speaker 5 So, you know, in these moments, you talk about how fucking awful Michael Lee is, but maybe a word for Yvette Hoffman. One last thing is kind of related, but Edward Isaac Dvore posted this.

Speaker 5 I mentioned this in the video. I just want want to mention it one more time because it cuts against my earlier point about the silver lining.
In the last week, Marines were deployed in American City.

Speaker 5 The president called for the governor of the state to be arrested. The Speaker of the House has called for that governor to be tarded, feathered.

Speaker 5 A senator has been pinned and handcuffed to the ground, and two state legislators have been shot in their homes.

Speaker 5 I mean, that is a pretty alarming week in the grand scheme of things. And just because the parade was sad doesn't mean that that trend is not concerning.

Speaker 2 And that most recent or one of the most recent Trump tweets, that long one that I think you you've already quoted a bit from I mean is pretty amazing it's a flat-out statement that we're going into blue cities and they're very badly governed by Democrats and that's where I want ICE to focus so I mean that's pretty astonishing isn't it that law enforcement is now dictated by the city by the

Speaker 2 what kind of government what kind of politics these cities have not where the highest crime i'm making this up but not where the highest crime rates of undocumented immigrants are not where the highest disturbances are.

Speaker 2 You know, you can imagine real metrics that might lead ICE to go focus on city A rather than city B, obviously, right? Numbers and numbers of criminals and stuff.

Speaker 2 We're beyond pretending that's the case.

Speaker 2 It's just these are states that are run by, and cities that are run by Democrats, and I'm going to go focus on them, even though the people elected in those cities and states don't want them doing this, incidentally, right?

Speaker 2 So, I mean, it's the war of Red America against Blue America.

Speaker 2 I was texting with Ron Brown's dude, who's been very obsessed with this, and you've had him on, and I've had him on over the weekend, but obsessed in a correct way, the kind of degree to which Trump thinks of himself as the president of Red America on a crusade, much more against Blue America than against any foreign dictators, obviously, or enemies.

Speaker 2 I've kind of never quite believed you could pull that off in this country of ours where so many people, you know, move around and know people who are different from them and so forth.

Speaker 2 And there are blue cities and red states and red areas and blue states. And I've always kind of assumed that would, I don't know, mitigate that attempt to create basically a civil war.

Speaker 2 But that part, they are just Trump and Miller, but all of them, and Mike Lee and Bernie Moreno, and all these guys are just, they're just 100%

Speaker 2 invested in that, don't you think, on board for that?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's not really even close, like the degree to which they consider the domestic foes the real foes of the country over the foreign foes. I mean, mean, like,

Speaker 5 I wouldn't even know who they would say is the second most dangerous threat to the country.

Speaker 5 They might give lip service to China, but they don't actually do anything about it, which kind of relates to the last topic I want to get to, which was Israel and Iran.

Speaker 5 The Israel attacks from inside Iran have made me start to rethink some of the China threat a little bit and Ukraine's attacks from inside Russia.

Speaker 5 Anyway, maybe a topic for another day with you or a China expert. But

Speaker 5 there are just two elements to this I want to talk about. One, just the actual nature of the attacks and the success, at least short term.

Speaker 5 And then I want to talk about our domestic political side of it. But do you have any thoughts about

Speaker 5 just what we've seen over the last few days just from the war side?

Speaker 2 It's pretty extraordinary. I mean,

Speaker 2 as with the Hezbollah

Speaker 2 attacks a year ago, when they

Speaker 2 had a long-term plan to penetrate,

Speaker 2 create a fake company that sold the pagers to Hezbollah, which then blew up and so forth.

Speaker 2 I mean, that plus Iran, and it's related, of course, because they couldn't have they one reason they were deterred from this level of activity against Iran was that they thought that Hezbollah would come down, you know, rain tens of thousands of rockets down on them from sanctuaries in Lebanon, to some degree in Syria, which are mostly gone now.

Speaker 2 So it's very impressive. I'm not a fan of Netanyahu, and I think the Gaza war has been

Speaker 2 a lot of critical things one can legitimately say about that. But this, just the imagination, the competence of the execution of this attack has been awfully impressive.

Speaker 2 And look, look, if it degrades Iran's nuclear program even for a couple of years, that's good. And it could lead to more.

Speaker 2 And I am not, I know we're all supposed to be scared of saying the word regime change and all that, but I'm not. And I hope the people of Iran could take advantage of this moment.

Speaker 2 They've tried in 2009. They tried in 2022.
We're losing here some of our new friends, you know, who might be watching this podcast and

Speaker 2 part of the Board Coalition.

Speaker 5 I don't.

Speaker 5 There are people that do not want the Iranians to be free.

Speaker 2 They deserve to be free, just like everyone else, you know, and they they want to be free.

Speaker 2 I mean, unlike some of these other countries, where it's fair to say, oh, well, do the people even want to, you know, maybe they like the kind of government dictatorial and intolerant and abusive government they have.

Speaker 2 There's just a lot of evidence the Iranian people don't want that. And I hope Israel can create the circumstances and it we get up a little bit too, where that might come to fruition.

Speaker 5 I hope we're not losing anybody. The Iranians deserve to be free.
That's a pretty,

Speaker 5 I think, universal sentiment. The Trump thing, I just want one point on this

Speaker 5 that I just wanted to get your take on.

Speaker 5 You hate to hand it to Trump on anything, but like his total incoherence on all this has really worked in his benefit.

Speaker 5 And that's not political advice you ever usually give to politicians is you should try to be as incoherent as possible and then let everybody on all sides give you credit for things.

Speaker 5 But for some reason, it works for him. Michael Shearer called him.
and asked him about Tucker's criticism because Tucker's really been the one that has been criticizing him.

Speaker 5 And Trump basically says that getting rid of Iranian nukes is America first and whatever whatever he says is America first

Speaker 5 and then he dropped the call from Shearer to take a happy birthday call from Putin which was some thick irony there's defending the notion of America of him representing America first he's like sorry sir I got a really quick take a happy birthday call from Vladimir Putin but watching the response you have the kind of neocon remaining wing the militaristic wing of MAGA, the Ben Shapiros, Scott Jennings, Eric Ericksons.

Speaker 5 They all are congratulating Trump on the strategic strategic brilliance of like pretending to be against the Israel attacks while really, really letting them do it.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile, you have like the Breitbarts and the nationalist side of them giving Trump credit for opposing escalation and not being as hot on going to war as all the others want.

Speaker 5 And like, at least for now, he's getting away with it. It probably won't work if the war escalates significantly, but I don't know.

Speaker 5 Do you have any thoughts on how he manages to pull that off?

Speaker 2 I mean, one reason he's getting away with it is that the Israeli government is helping him get away with it by correctly from their point of view. I mean, they want Trump on board.

Speaker 2 And if he wants to take a little credit, he doesn't deserve probably for helping out or kind of quietly encouraging Nizan Yahoo to do it or giving him a yellow light.

Speaker 2 My impression is if things had gone very badly, the attack on Thursday night, Friday morning, Trump would be saying, I warned them not to do it.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is what happens when you don't listen to me. They should have stayed at the peace table.
You know, he was willing to go both ways. It's very Trump-like.

Speaker 2 And in a certain way, once I think the Israelis realized that they could flatter him, they certainly went all out doing it.

Speaker 2 And people who talk to the Israeli government, I believe, have been echoing that. And people who are pro-Israel just feel like, you know what,

Speaker 2 if it makes Trump more likely to do the right thing, we'll say excessively nice things about Trump.

Speaker 2 I think the war within, let's call it the Republican Party more broadly, but somewhat in MAGA world too, is pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 I hadn't realized how, this sounds stupid for me to say, but how much being anti-neocon was so so central to some part of MAGA.

Speaker 2 I thought, of course, they were anti-neocon, don't get me wrong, for many reasons, and many meetings of neocon there.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I still thought immigration, there are other issues, the first, second, third, the neocon stuff is sort of a cute, you know, like an additional little thing they, you know, bug they have to, itch they have to scratch.

Speaker 2 I think it's more central than I realized. And it's gone pretty deep into MAGA, and it's deep in the Trump administration.
J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance, Rich Colby, the number three person of defense, Colby's deputies, the National Security Council senior director for the Middle East, as I say, Vance himself, Tulsi, obviously.

Speaker 2 There are a lot of people in the Trump administration who are really, really

Speaker 2 are going to try to flatter Trump by saying he was strong, but he's kept us out of the war. That's his achievement, right?

Speaker 2 And then, of course, there are some others in the administration, not unfortunately as many as there might have been.

Speaker 2 But actually, here I'd say the Republicans on the Hill are more inclined to flatter him.

Speaker 2 The other way, I was told last night that a couple of very senior Republican senators, pretty close to Trump, had a conversation in the last 48 hours in which they explicitly discussed how do we help, they want the U.S.

Speaker 2 to help Israel, basically. And they would like the U.S.
even to finish the job if it can be done

Speaker 2 on Fordow and on the nuclear stuff. Obviously, it depends on the risks and rewards and so forth, but they're inclined.
They don't want to rule that out.

Speaker 2 And they had an explicit discussion of how do we get Trump to at least be open to this and override Vance and people who are going to object.

Speaker 2 And so I said to the person who's telling me the story, well, will they publicly, will I hear from them? No.

Speaker 2 Their sense is privately flatter Trump, tell him this could help his reputation even more if he very carefully and cleverly at the last minute weighs in.

Speaker 2 So it's all about flattering Trump on all sides, which means you can't trust anyone. No one is telling you the truth.

Speaker 2 I mean, no one is telling you what they really believe at this point because they're all maneuvering in MAGA world and even Republican world, you know, to handle Trump, which again is I don't criticize them for it.

Speaker 2 If I were a senator, I might be doing the same thing if you really think the outcome's important.

Speaker 5 I don't know. I probably just say what what I think if I was a senator, but maybe that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 there's some case in general that's a healthier politics. I will agree with that.
But, you know, at a moment of great crisis, maybe you think, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I mean, I'm struck by how much this one person I was talking to was just matter of factly told me this and said, it wasn't like telling me something big. We were just chatting.

Speaker 2 And he said, you have an O at this one conversation and this incident. This is the way it works.
I mean, this is what... it is like to be in Trump's Republican Party.
You never say what you believe.

Speaker 2 I mean, some people say what they believe, especially the the lunatics, but an awful lot of other people just take it for granted that they have to maneuver and flatter.

Speaker 2 And as you say, I mean, in any one instance, you can see why maybe it's they do it and why maybe conceivably it's even the right thing to do.

Speaker 2 But of course, as a general mode of politics, it's deeply corrupting and bad for the country.

Speaker 5 Indeed. Yep.
No, my last thought on that is like, also, the anti-neocon sentiment is particularly strong among the younger megas and the people that are influential online.

Speaker 5 And so that's another reason for that crowd that you're talking about, those senders, to not speak out, right? Because

Speaker 5 it could have a backlash effect. And, you know, when I go to that TPOSA thing, my favorite question to ask the random, you know, MAGA youth is, what is it about Trump you like the best?

Speaker 5 Like, what are the issues that you care about the most to get you here? And like, almost all of them say, no wars. Like, almost all of them.

Speaker 5 It's a very, it's a very different kind of mindset than back in my day. So what the impact of that will be, we'll see.
but that is their political reality. Okay, Bill Crystal, thank you so much.

Speaker 5 We'll see you back here next Monday. And everybody else, do stick around for Terry Moran.

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Speaker 12 This is exciting, Terry, because I'm welcoming you to the Bulwark podcast live on Substack. This is the first attempt at this for us.
So hopefully it goes well.

Speaker 12 For folks that don't know you, I assume everybody here knows you, but you were senior national correspondent for ABC News up to about two seconds ago, previously chief foreign correspondent, chief White House correspondent, co-anchor of Nightline.

Speaker 12 And now you're a free man.

Speaker 12 How's that feeling?

Speaker 13 Oh, well, it's

Speaker 13 somebody said, somebody used the word skiting, which is a combination of scary and exciting. Okay.
Which all buy.

Speaker 13 I would say it's exhilarating and daunting and scary. But yeah, exhilarating.
You know, I was at the point in my career, 65 years old

Speaker 13 in a business that, just as a matter of demographic fact, is dying. I was having less impact in ABC, ABC having less impact in the world.
I'm like, well, what's next?

Speaker 13 Because I have these inappropriately young children. And so, court substack and a lot of all these new spaces.
And now that I'm here

Speaker 13 on an accelerated timetable, it's a brave new world. And for all of the all the things that come with job loss, there is a great deal of excitement and joy in my heart, genuinely.
All right.

Speaker 12 Well, this is my first hard-heading question. You look great for 65.
What's your skincare regimen? Are you moisturizing?

Speaker 13 You know, well, I will say this. So I met my wife in 2006,

Speaker 13 and

Speaker 13 I'd never put anything, I just washed with bar soap. And and everything.
It's pretty like, what is the problem? Because she's up on all that.

Speaker 13 And so, yeah, I want to use a little moisturizer or whatever.

Speaker 12 It's working.

Speaker 12 Okay, let's get to business. So, the tweet that started it all, for folks, folks who missed it, I just want to read a little bit from it.

Speaker 12 The thing about Stephen Miller is he's not the brains behind Trumpism. It's not brains, it's vile.
Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater.

Speaker 12 You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. What prompted that? What was behind it?

Speaker 13 One thing I can say is that it wasn't a drunk tweet.

Speaker 13 Everybody assumes it was because it was after midnight. And it wasn't.
I had been

Speaker 13 thinking during the course of the day on and off, you know, thinking about the country, right? As we all are,

Speaker 13 ruminating, whatever.

Speaker 13 And I was out for a long walk with the dog and something kind of came to me and I thought, because I was thinking about that guy, like, what is it? And what is it in this moment?

Speaker 13 And there was something there. And I thought, all right, well, so I came back.
We had a family dinner. We then watched a family movie.
We watched Ocean's 11.

Speaker 13 And I can't blame that because that's such an excellent caper movie.

Speaker 13 And then put the kids to bed. We were up for a little while.
It was not a rock and roll wild night. It was a normal family night.
And then, you know, got into bed. And I thought, what was that?

Speaker 13 And I typed it out and I looked at it and I thought,

Speaker 13 that's true.

Speaker 12 And I hit send. You've got to forgive people who think that it might have been a drunk tweet.
I mean, are you usually popping off at midnight?

Speaker 12 Is it a concern that you're thinking about Stephen Miller at midnight? I mean, I guess maybe it says something about the state of the country that you're thinking about Stephen Miller at midnight.

Speaker 13 I believe so.

Speaker 13 It was more

Speaker 13 the moment that we're in, which he represents in such a vivid and, to to me, quite disturbing way. I do, I will say this.
I looked at it, I thought, okay, what is that?

Speaker 13 And I thought, that's a description of the public man that I'm describing him.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 12 I mean, there's no lies detected from my side of things, but I'm an opinion podcaster.

Speaker 12 And you do got to admit, like, you went a little hard in the paint there with that, talking about how his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment.

Speaker 12 So, you know, I guess it does leave people to wonder, like,

Speaker 12 were you and Steven Moore fighting? Like, was there something, was there a news story that prompted it? Like, was it something off of your Trump interview?

Speaker 12 I mean, given your background as a newsman, obviously you had a perspective, but that's, that's hot. That's hot material.

Speaker 13 It's way hot. And I wish I had a better story, Tim.
I just, it was something that was in my heart and mind. And I would say I used

Speaker 13 very strong language deliberately because he, I felt, and it wasn't any, you see him all the time doing the same, spitting venom and lies into our debate, degrading our public discourse, debasing it, and using the power of the White House and what he's been given to grind us down in that bile.

Speaker 13 That's very disturbing to me. I'm actually

Speaker 13 not that liberal.

Speaker 13 I'm like a lot of people, some conservative, some liberal. But there was something about that and what it represented about that movement and Trump himself that I felt

Speaker 13 to describe it accurately needed that language.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's interesting because it does feel like it was something that was weighing on you. I don't have it in front of me, but like maybe a week before that,

Speaker 12 you'd sent kind of a long tweet about immigration. And it wasn't a lefty tweet, really.

Speaker 12 It started with

Speaker 12 a comment about how we need to be able to have self-government, have our borders. Here it is.
It's like people have a right to say who comes into our country and at what pace they're admitted.

Speaker 12 That's not racism. It's self-government by turning migration into a moral demand, a matter of right rather than policy.
Advocates have ignited a backlash. And this was you like a week before.

Speaker 12 Then you go on to talk about how we are seeing a bunch of people who are being racist

Speaker 12 in the ways that they are treating immigration. So like there's something about this issue that has been obviously noodling in your head for a while.
Yeah.

Speaker 13 Yeah. I would say that I'm a member of the most despised political tribe in America.
I'm a proud centrist. What I mean by that is, I guess I'm old and the viciousness

Speaker 13 and the intolerance that

Speaker 13 you feel

Speaker 13 when we argue politics. Somebody asked me the other day in connection with all this, so what are your politics? And I said, well, I guess I'm a Hubert Humphrey Democrat.

Speaker 13 You know, I mean, I'm old enough to remember them. And, you know, get.
practical things done that people need in a decent way and stand up for what's right. And that is my politics.

Speaker 13 So someone like Stephen Miller, in my judgment, and in my observation,

Speaker 13 which is what reporters do,

Speaker 13 is degrading all that and is a danger. And

Speaker 13 that's what was in my heart.

Speaker 12 I don't feel this way, but I used to be a Republican.

Speaker 12 So I want to steel man the Republican argument for a second with you, which is, I think that some of my old friends over there, or former friends, maybe, better put, would say, look, he just admitted it.

Speaker 12 Terry Moran just admitted it. He was a Democrat.
He was hiding it his whole life. He was a Hubert Humphrey Democrat.

Speaker 12 And like one night, it just, the mask came off, you know, and this is the problem with the media. What would you say to that?

Speaker 13 I have had it, you know, but my own feeling is you don't sacrifice your citizenship as a journalism. And your job is not to be objective.

Speaker 13 There is no Mount Olympus of objectivity where a Mandarin class of wise people have no feelings about their society. We're all in this together.
What you have to be is fair and accurate.

Speaker 13 And I would refer to the interview with the president that I did or a lot of my work. And I would also say that this, while very hot, is an observation, a description that is accurate and true.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and we got 10 years' evidence. You know, it's the 10-year anniversary today of the escalator?

Speaker 13 Did you know that? Did not know that. One of the most significant moments in American history, no question about it.

Speaker 12 10 years. What were you thinking about it back then, that day? Do you remember?

Speaker 13 You know, it was a sideshow to me at that point, but I quickly came to understand. I was actually in London because I was the chief foreign correspondent.

Speaker 13 And as soon as I started hearing what he was talking about, I told colleagues who didn't believe me. I told, I teach in the summer.

Speaker 13 I said, he's going to win in 2016 because I did not understand what Hillary Clinton was saying to me in terms of what she wanted to do with that power.

Speaker 13 If you had taken a poll a week before the election, what does Donald Trump stand for? 95% of Americans could have told something, build a wall, dynamite, whatever. What does Hillary Clinton stand for?

Speaker 13 I think harder to get a hold of that. And, you know, I think that was kind of an issue.
But I also felt like he was onto something. Yeah.

Speaker 12 That bile and that hatred, though, goes back to that very speech. You know, I mean, it's like the rapists and the murderers, the cantaloupe legs and the grievances, right?

Speaker 12 I mean, it's not a lot has changed there

Speaker 12 over the decade. I mean, your observation, we've got a decade of evidence, I guess, about your observation about Stephen Miller and the Trump movement.

Speaker 13 Well, I would say this. I agree, yes, that that's part of the sale.
That's part of the revving up of the resentment and all of that.

Speaker 13 And you saw it also in Britain and in other places where Trump is a nationalist. The night he was elected, I was on ABC News as we were covering the election.

Speaker 13 And I said, Trump's not a Republican, he's a Democrat, he's a nationalist.

Speaker 13 We haven't seen one in a long time, and he's now basically reframing the political debate,

Speaker 13 which he's now successfully done. The Republican Party is a nationalist party.
And I do think that part of that is going to be hard to get out of our system.

Speaker 13 Once it gets there, it's, and I don't mean a patriot, I mean a nationalist. I'll tell you one thing about

Speaker 13 their sending rapists and murders.

Speaker 13 I covered a mock election in a little town in the middle of Pennsylvania as part of the story. And it was a school election, and the teachers were kind of gathered around watching the kids vote.

Speaker 13 Trump won overwhelmingly. And the teacher said, yeah, you guys in the media, you saw that thing, and all you said was, yeah, he's sending the rapist.

Speaker 13 I said, well, yeah, that was kind of bad. He said, I bet you don't remember what he said next.

Speaker 13 And I said, all right, what do you say next? And they said, they're sending the drugs.

Speaker 13 He said, the guy said, you go into any one of these classrooms, you ask, how many kids have a loved one or somebody they know who's been in drug addiction?

Speaker 13 And I did it, and we put it on Nightline because every hand in that classroom went up.

Speaker 12 I want to get into a couple other news things for you. Just a few more things on the tweet that changed your life.
So

Speaker 12 were you expecting the next morning? You know, obviously it leads to you leaving ABC.

Speaker 12 I'm sure there's some limitations on what you can talk about, but what were those conversations like? Like the next morning, were you kind of expecting that it was over? Were you bullworthing it?

Speaker 12 Were you Jerry Maguiring this? Or were you kind of upset that there was even an issue? Because you felt it was so accurate.

Speaker 13 Yeah, well, the Bullworth reference, I have to say, I hate that mood. But the Jerry Maguire, no, I wasn't Jerry Maguiring it either.

Speaker 13 I don't want to go into all the gory details about what happened to me,

Speaker 13 but it was, I was rocked clearly and full of fear, okay?

Speaker 13 And I realized that this was going to be a very serious situation and had to stand up, you know, and deal with it. And activity is one of the best things to assuage fear.
But also,

Speaker 13 I thought about it in my own conscience first, and I thought, as I tell you, I wrote it because I thought it was true.

Speaker 13 And at the end of the day, when all the bad stuff has happened, my children will know that whatever it means,

Speaker 13 it means that.

Speaker 12 Did you feel like you should have been able to stay this within the context of what?

Speaker 13 you wrote i don't know that's a bureaucratic thing i don't know you know actually it wasn't bureaucratic it was their calculation. And the Stephanopoulos press, I shouldn't get too close to the line.

Speaker 13 From my perspective, it looked like a business decision. And I became bad business, it feels like.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I understand those limitations. But just one more thing on that.
It is worth seeing what happened to you in that context, right?

Speaker 12 Like there was a settlement with Trump over the Stephanopoulos thing, which to me was pretty borderline.

Speaker 12 We're seeing this in some of the other areas, 60 Minutes, we've seen folks have to walk away from. So what do you make of just the broader environment around

Speaker 12 you having to leave with regards to the media's response to Trump 2.0?

Speaker 13 That's a huge challenge because these media companies are part of bigger companies that have major business interests.

Speaker 13 And Trump has demonstrated with law firms, with universities, with companies, that he will bring all the power he can,

Speaker 13 rhetorical and the power that is the people's, to destroy them if they don't kowtow to him. That is the story in industry after industry.
The media is no different.

Speaker 13 And that has to be the calculation in the in the calculation of, and I'm not talking about any particular person of any executive. And we can't live like that.

Speaker 13 So, you know, one of the great things about where we are right now, Tim,

Speaker 13 is that we are free to speak our minds here

Speaker 13 in a way that

Speaker 13 people in other ways aren't. I'm not slagging anybody.

Speaker 12 Were you worried after the settlement? Were you worried after the settlement that things might be going away that concerned you?

Speaker 12 I should have been, but no, I wasn't.

Speaker 13 I was kind of known at ABC as somebody put it, and I think I know who it was, somebody who I don't think enjoyed my explorations of the issues and such.

Speaker 13 He said he's always had a very high opinion of his opinions,

Speaker 13 which is nasty when somebody's been fired, but it's fair comment,

Speaker 13 I suppose. But no, I didn't think anything like that was.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, you got the Trump interview in the meantime, like in between that.

Speaker 13 That was accidental.

Speaker 12 It was.

Speaker 13 There were factors like the settlement, like the debate, like other things. I was kind of low man on the totem pole, and some of the others were kind of knocked off.
So

Speaker 12 it was accidental that it was you, you mean? Like you were kind of the default choice. That's what you're saying.
Yeah, yeah, which I was, I had that blast.

Speaker 13 Of all the things I've done at ABC News, I've been in 86 countries and lots of elections and conflict zones. I've had a wonderful career there.
I love a lot.

Speaker 13 I love most of my colleagues who were there and have tremendous respect for the work they do under difficult circumstances. But it was clear that

Speaker 13 I was not the first choice there. And I had three days to.
prepare and that was the most fun I've ever had.

Speaker 12 I want to get to the interview right next, but just really quick, have you seen Palis' commencement? I assume you have since he left 60 minutes. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 I mean, like,

Speaker 12 quite powerful stuff.

Speaker 12 It is your departure from ABC is within that context, right?

Speaker 12 You have somebody leaving 60 Minutes and giving a commencement, which is who is basically warning that we have real threats to democracy, to freedom of speech, to the free press, to diversity.

Speaker 12 And what did you make of his remarks?

Speaker 13 I thought Scott was absolutely spot on.

Speaker 13 I'm now in a position where I can help in that good work. And that fills my joy as well.
We can all put our shoulder to the wheel because I do think

Speaker 13 he's right. This is a moment of danger.
And I'm happy to be able to help if I can.

Speaker 12 All right. Dr.
The Trump interview.

Speaker 12 I have many thoughts on it.

Speaker 12 I've now watched like the Zapruder film like three or four times through.

Speaker 12 What was going through your head when he starts arguing with you about how Kilmar Verger Garcia actually did have the letters MS-13 tattooed on his hand?

Speaker 13 I couldn't believe he went there. okay and also

Speaker 13 so we were in the oblives and we had a time limit so i had a couple of uh issues to get to and then i i couldn't let it slide and so i said no so no mm-mm-mm not right you know no photoshop and it was like a dog with a bone okay it was like he was he was nuts about it and I'm thinking and so I'm a little freelancing at this point this this is not something I had attended to grill on him to grill him on and had fact-checked everything but I'm kind of, no,

Speaker 13 in the photographs, when he's in El Salvador, they're not there and da-da-da-da. People interpret them.
I don't know. I'm not an expert in tattoos, all that stuff.
And he kept at it. So much so,

Speaker 13 he was very angry at the end of the interview. And we were supposed to do a rose garden walk.
And he said, not after that interview. You know, it's a bad feeling.
And he stormed out.

Speaker 13 And of course, I said, okay, that

Speaker 13 good day's work. And of course, we were going to put an hour in prime time, so we were short.
So we had to get him back. And

Speaker 13 there were executives who went and Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, went back. And then he managed to come back and he said, look, I'm just going to sit at this desk.
You're going to stand there.

Speaker 13 I'm going to point some things at. And then that's it.

Speaker 12 No rubble for me.

Speaker 12 Oh, so that was, because it ended up being at the beginning when he's showing you the photos of my favorite one, a favorite part of that exchange is you asked him why he has the James Monroe photo up there.

Speaker 12 And he's like, well, the Monroe Doctrine. And you're like, well, what was it about the Monroe Doctrine? And he's like, very important.
It's very, it was very important. So I was like, I'm not.

Speaker 12 I think it

Speaker 12 leaves some questions about his familiarity with what the Monroe Doctrine actually was. So my nitpick of you, I know you're doing it live.
I have to live through all this. I re-watch my shit now.

Speaker 12 And it's like, it's harder than it looks. But, you know, at one point, you're like,

Speaker 12 you know, he's adamant that it's like, it said MS-13. And you go, agree to disagree.
I want to move on to something else.

Speaker 12 And he would not let you stop. Then he continued.
And you're giving him agree to disagree, which is maybe

Speaker 12 wrong. And it's kind of like if Trump was saying, the moon is made of cheese.
And you're like, agree to disagree. Let's move on.
And then he's like, no, the moon is made of cheese, Terry.

Speaker 13 Well, and the last thing I said in that, that's fair. And I've seen people who said I should have gotten up on my soapbox and say, how dare you, Mr.
President? First, I don't do theater.

Speaker 13 And second, I felt the facts had been well established for anyone who to look at them. And third, the last thing I said was, it's contested.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 So, yeah, the agreed to disagree thing was an error. I agree.

Speaker 12 But he was adamant. That's the funny part.
And like, you had him, but he really thought it. Right?

Speaker 12 I mean, like, there's no way to interpret that other than that he really thought that the MS-13 was on his fingers.

Speaker 13 Yes. Not only is back in

Speaker 13 his hold or wherever he went, because we were in the Oval, he apparently told Stephen Chung, go get the photograph. I'm going out there.
I'm going out there. I'm going to show him.

Speaker 13 And A, that shows he's got terrible staff work who are too afraid of him to tell him the truth.

Speaker 13 B, that he was still fixated on.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And that he's like extremely gullible.
It also shows. I just,

Speaker 12 I mean, truth is truth.

Speaker 12 It wasn't a convincing tattoo, really, on the fingers.

Speaker 13 It wasn't, but he has demonstrated the capacity to bend reality, to bend truth for tens of millions of Americans simply through sheer force of will.

Speaker 12 Another thing when I was re-watching the interview this morning that struck me was

Speaker 12 there's a section on his meeting with Zelensky that happened in

Speaker 12 Vatican City. And you were talking about how striking it was and like how there was this historic photo, you know, moving photo maybe or historic meeting between the two of them in the Vatican.

Speaker 12 And, you know, there's that somber photo that people have of Trump leaning forward and staring at him. And I just watched that with like a month's difference.

Speaker 12 And it really is striking how that actually was nothing. You know, like Trump, like Trump is very,

Speaker 12 you said you don't do theater. Trump does theater.
Like he was happy for that to be theater, like him and Zelensky having this serious meeting in Vatican City.

Speaker 12 But it, unfortunately, it's changed nothing. Right.
And, you know, I guess we had over the weekend that Trump got a happy birthday call from Putin and nothing has changed.

Speaker 13 Well, has nothing changed, though, Tim? Because it's like he's disappointed. And I think he's still going to abandon Ukraine.
Trump's clearly bent on that. But

Speaker 13 I do feel that he thought he could just wave his bending reality wand and make peace there.

Speaker 13 And the reason I did kind of lay it down a little thick, this moving forward, this historic forward, whatever it was, was to get him to open up a little bit about it.

Speaker 12 Yeah, no, no, I wasn't really Christmas. In that moment, it felt that way.
You know, there was like a moment of, okay, well, gosh, we've got a new pope. They're meeting there in the Vatican.

Speaker 12 And, you know, his fake reality about what Russia wants is, you know, crumbling, right?

Speaker 12 And, you know, we had, it had been a month prior that they had had the shouting match, you know, the kids, you know, food fight in the West Wing, right? And maybe this is a sign of progress.

Speaker 12 And it's kind of like, this guy is not movable. You know, I don't know.
I guess my point is

Speaker 12 the majesty of the Vatican and the reality of Putin's behavior

Speaker 12 directionally hasn't really changed where Trump's posture is on all this.

Speaker 13 He came into office bent on abandoning Ukraine. He has, as far as he has this kind of thing, he's one of the world historical figures.
Henry Kissinger, just before he died, saw it.

Speaker 13 He said, Trump is one of those. One of those figures that history brings forward who marks the end of one era, right? And I thought, right, that's Trump.

Speaker 13 How much he has a grand theory, I don't know, but he does, as far as he does, sees great power politics as the world. You get Ukraine, we get Greenland and Canada or whatever.

Speaker 13 That's the way he sees the world, like risk.

Speaker 12 Was there anything else that struck you from the interview? And you mentioned he got more and more mad over time.

Speaker 12 I do think it said something about...

Speaker 12 says something about his personality, right? That he comes in, his tone at the beginning of the interview. Like he's malleable, right?

Speaker 12 Like if you had just kind of sucked up to him and just said, sir, look at all this progress on the border and, you know, whatever, like, and

Speaker 12 Henry Kissinger said, you are, you know, you marked the end of history. You know, he would have went along with you throughout it, right?

Speaker 12 Like, like the dramatic change of his temperament, I think is pretty noteworthy.

Speaker 12 Cause, you know, I mean, a lot of politicians you've interviewed probably keep it a lot cooler than that, even when challenged.

Speaker 13 Yes, I'd say a couple of things about that. First, I did say that the accomplishment on the border is staggering and a judgment on Democrats.
The fact that

Speaker 13 arrests at the border are down to close to zero, basically, simply because obviously there's cruelty. I believe there's

Speaker 13 the actions in courts have found to be illegal. But simply saying we will enforce our laws and you will be arrested, that it was, it's the force of that.

Speaker 13 more than any individual arrest and the terror campaign that it amounts to against people who are here, you know,

Speaker 13 without the authority of law. But it really is the credibility that was lacking in, whether in a vicious way or a virtuous way.
There was no credibility to our border. So I gave him that.

Speaker 13 I said, you know, it's amazing. The other thing I'd say is that I tried to be as respectful as I could.

Speaker 13 He's the president of the United States. People in the Constitution put him there, and he deserves respect in that regard.
And I just don't think he brooks anything but praise.

Speaker 13 And that I couldn't, obviously I wasn't going to do.

Speaker 12 And that's the striking thing to me.

Speaker 12 It's like, it's not like you went in there with Trump Durant, you know, like going at him in the hardest possible way or being rude or whatever, but he just is unable to handle like the slightest amount of pushback.

Speaker 12 I mean, that is a noteworthy trait when you consider,

Speaker 12 you know, he's going to have to make some high stakes decisions here over the next three and a half years.

Speaker 13 Over the next three and a half years. That's it.
Yeah. No, he's a

Speaker 13 he's a piece of work, as we all know. And I just will also say this, you know, just kind of batting it back and forth with him for that amount of time.

Speaker 13 You're looking into someone's eyes, you know, what do you see? Yeah, I saw

Speaker 13 he's mean. He can lash out at any moment.
You can feel that. And I think there's also, obviously, he's a...
you see him on the golf course. He enjoys people and he's a sociable person.

Speaker 13 But what I don't think,

Speaker 13 I don't think he's that tough.

Speaker 12 If he can't handle you, you mean he's not that tough?

Speaker 13 At one point, he said something like, you know, because I asked the question, do you have 100% confidence in Heg Saft? And he said, ah, stupid question. I don't have 100% confidence in anything.

Speaker 13 I don't have 100% confidence. This interview is going to even is going to, whatever, we're going to finish the interview.
And I just said, no, we will.

Speaker 12 And he just said, all right, go on.

Speaker 13 He just gave that up. I just felt like, and I didn't really even intend to back him down, but he did.

Speaker 13 He's never mentioned me. I have a name built for a Trump tweet.
And I've heard it since I was in third grade, Terry Moron.

Speaker 13 I was waiting for the everybody, and everybody says it thinks they invented it, right? I've been hearing it my whole life. And

Speaker 13 he hasn't whispered anything about it, not even about this. He hasn't even dunked on me for this.

Speaker 13 Not that he, not that he, I want him to. I don't, but I don't know what that means.

Speaker 12 It's the weirdest part of the whole Trump phenomenon. I mean, you said, you know, you said you were kind of on to it.
You saw the appeal of the nationalism and really the Brexit at the beginning.

Speaker 12 But something I can't really grasp is that to me, he's just obviously weak, right?

Speaker 12 And that he's not, he's not the traditional, you know, kind of tough man and the John Wayne, you know, kind of, which is obviously fake, but like, you know, like this sort of strong, silent type that, you know, conservatives and folks have traditionally held up as being what it means to be a tough, strong guy.

Speaker 12 Like he's the opposite of that. He's like a whiny child.
And it is interesting to me that

Speaker 12 that myth of him as a tough guy persists. Yeah.
What do you think that is?

Speaker 13 That's a great point. Although there's one moment when he rose from the ground after being shot at.

Speaker 12 That was tough.

Speaker 13 And told him, told his, I got to stand up. And he had enough of a sense of

Speaker 13 his own persona in front of the country to do that.

Speaker 13 I'm not going to take that away from him.

Speaker 13 That's a fair point.

Speaker 13 But I hear what you're saying, which is that,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 13 my dad was, I was thinking of my father yesterday, and he was in World War II.

Speaker 13 He joined right after Pearl Harbor, ended up in the airborne paratrooper in the Pacific, on the islands, you know, Philippines, Okinawa, and then in the occupation of Japan.

Speaker 13 Never much talked about it. He hated braggarts.

Speaker 13 He hated blowhards because men of that generation, and by tradition, Americans,

Speaker 13 we used to like to think those guys bullies, all those. And now

Speaker 13 he is, you know, the leader of the biggest and most important political movement, certainly of my lifetime, if not, you know, one of the, one of the biggest in history.

Speaker 12 Yeah, wild. You are right about the Butler thing.
I know it almost feels like it's fake. It almost makes me think we're living in a simulation.
What happened in Butler, to be honest?

Speaker 12 Just one more thing. I just was thinking about right now, like thinking about the interview you had with him and the MS-13 fingers

Speaker 12 and his, like his ability to kind of suspend disbelief when it benefits him.

Speaker 12 You did ask him about the other thing that I'm obsessed with, which is the Venezuelans that we have now kidnapped and sent to El Salvador without any due process. And you asked him about that.

Speaker 12 And you, you did push him on it about how like, we don't know. Some of these people might not be bad people.
Right. And he kind of had the same response to you that he did on the fingers.

Speaker 12 He's like, no, Terry. He's like, we know that these are, these, these people are bad.
I do think that he's convinced himself of that, right?

Speaker 12 And to me, that like presents an opportunity in the same way that the fingers did, that like the bubble can be punctured, like the disreality bubble can be punctured.

Speaker 12 That does happen with Trump from time to time. It didn't happen on the 2020 election, but it's happened on Oprego Garcia was able to come back.

Speaker 12 You know, his buddies in the hotel industry now aren't going to have deportations, right? Like there are certain ways that the stuff can, and I don't know. What do you make of that?

Speaker 12 His response to you on the Venezuela issue.

Speaker 13 You know, what I hear, what you're saying to me, and I agree, I left a trick on the table there, if you will, right? I did.

Speaker 13 And it was the way we figure it out if they're bad guys is through due process. And you know what? You get large majorities of Americans who agree with that.
He will be stopped.

Speaker 13 But he needed to be pressed on that because it's circular. How do you know? Well, I know.
And that's easily punctured. And I did leave that trick on the table, let's say.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 On this,

Speaker 12 he did a bleat over the weekend on his feed. I want to get your reaction to because it's related to sort of all these issues.
ICE officers are here with.

Speaker 12 He's come up with an old English word he likes now, here with.

Speaker 12 ICE officers are herewith ordered by notice of this truth to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest mass deportation program in history.

Speaker 12 In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in L.A., Chicago, New York, where millions upon millions of them reside, and other such cities, which are the core of the Democratic Power Center, where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base.

Speaker 5 I wonder what you made of that.

Speaker 13 That's the real thing. We're there.
He wants to send troops into the

Speaker 13 homes, homelands, the strongholds, political strongholds of his opponents,

Speaker 13 and punish them

Speaker 13 for

Speaker 13 objecting to his policies and trying to stop him from exercising the authorities of the office that he has in this way. And I think that we're there.
We're there, right?

Speaker 13 This is a threat to send troops into the cities run by Democrats so he can do what he wants there. And

Speaker 13 I also get a feeling.

Speaker 12 Is there in that sentence authoritarianism? What is the there?

Speaker 13 Where we're there at the crisis of

Speaker 13 our free government.

Speaker 13 If a president of the the United States is saying, I'm sending troops into cities in part for political reasons, because my political opponents are in power there, and I want the troops there in defiance of

Speaker 13 the black letter of the law,

Speaker 13 I think it's safe to say this is, we can't turn our eyes from it anymore. This is an attempt at changing the nature of the American democracy, right? And they do so with lies.

Speaker 13 Let me just raise Stephen Miller once again.

Speaker 13 When the Supreme Court said that the government must facilitate the return of Brego Garcia, Guillermo Brego Garcia, to the United States, Stephen Miller came out and said with his venomous demeanor, the Supreme Court, nine to nothing, upheld the president's right to.

Speaker 13 What the Supreme Court says, no court can tell you how much money to spend, what flight they have to be on, by what date, but the order is law, and you must facilitate it.

Speaker 13 You must do it under this order. And he spit on that with his lie that the Supreme Court upheld the president's position nine to nothing.
That kind of lie and then this kind of decree.

Speaker 13 What would you call that if you saw that in another country? What would you call it?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, it's a path to urbanism for sure. It's a crackdown on

Speaker 12 due process. And so, you know, we can cope with whatever words you want.

Speaker 12 Authoritarianism, white, urbanism, whatever. You know, we can, uh, we can debate that.
Academics can debate that, but I think the true facts are there.

Speaker 12 To me, Terry, it's like, and I see Stephen in this post from Trump. It is, in addition to everything you said,

Speaker 12 it is him

Speaker 12 ensuring

Speaker 12 that

Speaker 12 there is no misunderstanding about his statements from last week about how maybe trips should, maybe, maybe the ICE agents should chill out on the farms and the hotels. Right.

Speaker 12 Like, and I think that he, there was a concern that there was a misread of that. And he wants to reassure everybody that, no, my top priority is we are going to deport these people.

Speaker 12 We are going to deport these people no matter what, no matter whether they've committed crimes or not. Like we want to have the biggest deportation in history.

Speaker 12 And we're going to come into your towns and to your businesses and do it. And I think that was the point.

Speaker 13 It was the point. But combine those two social media posts and statements.
And what you get is we're going to come into their towns and their cities.

Speaker 13 And if you are on my side, I can do a deal with you. But if you stand up to me, then I will send the troops into your towns and cities.
And that is not just orbitism.

Speaker 13 Look, the godfather of all this is Putin, right? KGB, but never forget, was a lawyer, right?

Speaker 13 And I think he, if you look at how, because I covered, I've been in Russia since 1999, probably, I don't know, 12, 15 times.

Speaker 13 And I have seen and have felt, and my friends and colleagues there have felt the civic space shrink more and more.

Speaker 13 And in Poland as well, dear friend, in Poland, when the law and justice government there was

Speaker 13 trying to destroy the judiciary, and I asked my friend and colleague, Tom McKrollsky, I said, we were late one night at the Bureau in London, and I said, what does it feel like?

Speaker 13 How do ordinary people do it? And he said this.

Speaker 13 He said,

Speaker 13 your life gets smaller.

Speaker 13 You don't put your head up over the parapet. You don't look at it.

Speaker 13 You go to the cafe. You have the best life you can.
Think how many people

Speaker 13 are already leading that life in the United States and

Speaker 13 may be soon.

Speaker 12 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And you see that happening here, not just among immigrants, but also among the broader population?

Speaker 12 Or right now, you're saying that that's kind of limited to the, that's kind of the first step as the immigrant class.

Speaker 13 Well, whatever one decides about the journalistic ethics of my post, right? And I let that conversation continue.

Speaker 13 I'm happy to think it's an important conversation at this moment and people can make up their minds one way or the other. I'm proof that you don't want to get in the way of

Speaker 13 this administration. Not that I want to make it about me.
Let me withdraw that, but say a lot of people, a lot of people are watching what they say and where they say it.

Speaker 12 And just from your experience in Russia, like

Speaker 12 how much of a parallel are you seeing? Well, all right. I mean, mean, look, obviously,

Speaker 12 we're at a different level now, but it's been a long arc from Gorbachev to now. So, like,

Speaker 12 do you see us on that trajectory somewhere?

Speaker 13 I would have to say we're such a different country. The instruments of oppression were at hand in Russia.

Speaker 13 And their civil institutions were not. We have a robust system, and it'll withstand a lot.
But the idea that one person defines the national interest, one person defines

Speaker 13 what's good about the country, what's not, one person defines who's a good guy, who's a bad guy, one person exercises the power that they have in those ways. Yeah, it's similar.

Speaker 13 But what I feel is the experience of that space shrinking, right, for people. And I don't think it'll work.
I mean, I could be wrong, but the good guys are going to win.

Speaker 13 And as I said in one of the first sub stacks, you know, what a joy it is to be an American and alive at this moment in our history.

Speaker 13 This is a privilege that we have right now to speak out and use our voices. And to say, you know, those no kings protests were a moment, right? Got to build on it, but it was a moment.

Speaker 12 All right. So that takes us to the last thing.
So you are free now. You're a free man, just you, you and your sub stack, your subscribers.

Speaker 12 If you can go check them out on Terry Maria Substack, you know, at least until the ICE troops come into Frederick, Maryland, you're a free man.

Speaker 12 What do you want to do? What do you want to pop off on? I mean, it could go a lot of different directions. Are you going to let all those opinions out you've been stifling?

Speaker 12 Are you going to do interviews? What do you think is the most valuable thing for you to be doing right now?

Speaker 13 Yes, all the above and more. Look, I'd like to do some more of what I was doing at ABC.
Look, the great thing about ABC and all those legacy media organizations, and they are great in their way.

Speaker 13 And as I say, I've got nothing to say against them. I had a wonderful career.
We're working out some details at the end. But the great thing is the resources that they can bring around the world.

Speaker 13 I don't have those resources at this point, but I'd like to keep doing reporting as I did. I'll tell you the first place I want to go.

Speaker 13 I want to go to Springfield, Ohio, go back to Springfield, Ohio, where I spent a week or so twice during the campaign.

Speaker 13 And I want to go back to the Haitian community that was there and their neighbors now that they are being you know, sent sent out, sent back to Haiti and what that's going to do to the town and not just the Haitian people there, but the town had come to depend on them.

Speaker 13 That town was falling flat and now it had risen. The mayor wanted them there.
Governor DeWine wanted them there. And now that's going to be a radical and cruel change.

Speaker 13 And so that kind of thing I'll do. But interviews, I hope,

Speaker 13 newsmaker interviews. And I love, by the way, I love the bulwark.
And

Speaker 13 it's why I wanted to be with you. It's absolutely thrilling to be in these new spaces.
I don't have a great idea what the brand is going to be, but if there is such a thing, but I'm keen to find out.

Speaker 12 I'm obsessed with that Springfield story, too. So that's great.
Check in. Let's do a check-in when you get out there.
I would love to do that.

Speaker 12 And final thing, do you see a beer summit coming for you and Stephen Miller? Or are you planning to meet in his cave somewhere? Or any thoughts on that?

Speaker 13 I'm going to emphasize. I was describing the public man.

Speaker 13 I don't, by my nature, want people to feel bad from something I said or wrote or did.

Speaker 12 But sometimes. That's the difference between you and me, Terry.

Speaker 12 We found the one area of disagreement.

Speaker 13 But you got to tell the truth, right?

Speaker 13 That's the job. You got to tell the truth.
So I don't see a beer summit. In fact, I see probably maybe a couple of cop cars pulling up and then I need a lawyer.

Speaker 12 Good luck out there, man. I really appreciate you doing this.
I'm excited to watch what you're going to be doing going forward. And

Speaker 12 let's check in from time to time. How about that?

Speaker 13 That's great. Thanks, Tim.
All right.

Speaker 12 Good luck, brother. We'll see you soon.

Speaker 12 You better not try to stand in my way when I walk out the door.

Speaker 2 Take this job and shove it.

Speaker 2 I ain't working here no more

Speaker 5 I've been working in this factory

Speaker 5 pretty close to 15 years

Speaker 2 I've seen some of my best friends women

Speaker 2 standing in a pool of tears

Speaker 2 I've seen a lot of kinfolks dying

Speaker 2 had a lot of bills to pay

Speaker 2 Lord, I'd give the shirt right off in my bag if I had the guts to say:

Speaker 2 take this job and shove it.

Speaker 2 I ain't a working here no more.

Speaker 2 My woman done left and took all of the reasons I was working for.

Speaker 2 You better not try to stand in my way when I walk out the door.

Speaker 2 Take this job and show me

Speaker 2 I ain't working here no more.

Speaker 5 The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 7 She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding.

Speaker 14 Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease.
And that was a different kind of difficult.

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Speaker 14 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rick Sulti.

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Speaker 15 Duncan trademarks owned by D D IP Holder LLC, used under license. Copyright two thousand twenty five, D D I P Holder L L C