Bill Kristol: March to Dictatorship

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Speaker 43 Hello and welcome to the Bullwood Podcast.

Speaker 44 I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 3 It is Monday.

Speaker 44 So I've got editor-at-large Bill Crystal back from a very non-vacation vacation.

Speaker 9 You know, people do vacations differently in the summer.

Speaker 49 Myself, JVL, others decided to check out for the news altogether.

Speaker 51 Bill Crystal was texting me more than ever last week while he was with his grandchildren. So maybe

Speaker 51 that's a comment on the grandchildren.

Speaker 53 Maybe not. I don't know.

Speaker 54 Oh, no.

Speaker 54 No comment on the grandchildren. I have to explicitly explicitly and emphatically, and truthfully, we're about that.

Speaker 54 We did have the hurricane, which was out in the Atlantic, obviously, had spillover effects at Bethany Beach. So there were two days of basically, you know, pouring rain and stuff.

Speaker 54 So a little more time in the house and therefore text-prone, I suppose. And also the news, maybe you didn't notice this since you were working so hard all last week, but the news was not all great

Speaker 54 in terms of the health of a liberal democracy in America.

Speaker 57 So on that point, you returned the newsletter this morning saying it's not democratic backsliding, it's a march towards dictatorship, despotism, one or the other, both.

Speaker 61 Talk about the biggest picture there, and then you kind of list a couple of the things that happened that we'll get we'll get through.

Speaker 54 I mean, this term democratic backsliding has become pretty common in the last 10 years, I guess, in the U.S., but it really was invented, I think invented, or certainly you popularized to describe the troubles in Central and Eastern Europe and actually Russia, the former Soviet Union itself, after 1989, the tendency, the difficulty of getting rid of the old authoritarian habits, the old authoritarian people, of getting democratic institutions solidly embedded quickly enough in democratic habits.

Speaker 54 And it's a very reasonable political science concept, and there are different countries that backslid more quickly than others, and some haven't. So it's not an inevitable thing.

Speaker 54 But the impression it gives, and I think it's especially true when it's, well, and why I think it's misleading now to apply it to the U.S., is there's just this pull away from democracy in countries that haven't had it for a long time.

Speaker 62 It's kind of an old habits die hard type.

Speaker 54 Yeah, which is perfectly reasonable. And then you'd be an idiot to go to Poland or Bulgaria or something and not spend a lot of time thinking about how do we get rid of those old habits?

Speaker 54 How do we change them? How do we embed new ones? But that's not the case in the U.S. I mean, so in a complicated way, you could say it's sort of the case in the U.S.

Speaker 54 We have some old habits that have died hard and that are authoritarian and that didn't go away and are now we're backsliding towards, you might say. But that's not the real story here.

Speaker 54 The story here is less backsliding and more a genuine, purposeful march towards despotism, dictatorship. I use the terms kind of interchangeably.

Speaker 54 Authoritarianism seems a little too, I don't know, too fancy and too nice almost.

Speaker 54 And as I said in the piece, there are authoritarian tendencies in every society, in every individual, at every group, and every, and they don't go away. They can be managed.
They can be limited.

Speaker 54 At times, they have to be, you know, part of just life and government, obviously, in different institutions.

Speaker 54 Authoritarianism makes it sound like it's kind of, there's a little too much of that stuff and too little of the liberal stuff.

Speaker 54 That's true as far as it goes, but that doesn't capture what Trump and his people are up to.

Speaker 65 You go through a list of various things that have happened over the past couple of weeks.

Speaker 47 Military leaders, intelligence professionals purged.

Speaker 68 Critics Holmes raided.

Speaker 69 Obviously, John Bolton.

Speaker 70 That happened on Friday.

Speaker 71 You mentioned the continued Epstein cover-up.

Speaker 49 The major corporations extorted.

Speaker 72 I want to get to that.

Speaker 51 Presidential control of law enforcement in the nation's capital intensified with promise that it will expand to other places.

Speaker 72 The list goes on.

Speaker 30 I'll give you a dealer's choice there.

Speaker 51 I want to go through most of those. What is the most acute for you?

Speaker 54 I do think, don't you think, the takeover of the D.C.

Speaker 54 police force, the use of troops in L.A., and then the kind of open-ended promise by Trump that he's just going to do this elsewhere in the country, that's a pretty standard marker.

Speaker 54 You know, that's not backsliding. That's Trump choosing to embrace an authoritarian and

Speaker 54 pre-dictatorial, as it were, method. And then an awful lot of people, awful lot of people going along with it, including the entire Republican Party.
I mean, that's one thing that strikes me.

Speaker 54 I said in the piece, I was being a little careful.

Speaker 54 Something like, almost no, I've heard almost no Republican voices objecting to any of this.

Speaker 54 I actually, I think I originally wrote, I oh, I've heard no Republican voices objecting to any of these things.

Speaker 54 Then I thought, I don't know, maybe one of them has been objected to by one, you know, member of Congress. So I, but it's really kind of amazing.

Speaker 55 It is.

Speaker 53 Yeah, I think on the military thing, NDC, and a couple of things have happened since we last talked about it.

Speaker 68 And Trump explicitly said they're planning to expand this into Chicago and New York.

Speaker 68 He went on a strange Trumpian rant about how all the black ladies in Chicago are very excited, would just really want him to come save them.

Speaker 66 Which has some psychological questions, I think, that maybe would be better explored with a therapist.

Speaker 73 But he's doing that.

Speaker 51 The New York, there's kind of a subtle Zoron kind of threat there, and how we'll see what they decide to do.

Speaker 79 Maybe we'll have to send the military in there.

Speaker 80 He's gone back and forth with Wes Moore about sending the military into Baltimore. I want to get to Wes Moore in a minute.

Speaker 73 But like all of that, I mean, to me, like this is

Speaker 2 what a lot of us that were sounding the alarm had said was going to happen and warned about.

Speaker 80 And I think that the playbook here is the most straightforward of all of the things he's doing.

Speaker 46 Kinzinger posted something either this morning or yesterday, I forget, and I thought it was interesting on this point about how, you know, in addition to just kind of gathering, you know, whatever, military, federal government power in these big cities,

Speaker 68 by using the National Guard in these other states, he's also

Speaker 88 kind of undermining this whole Second Amendment, the other part of the Second Amendment, the part of the need for a well-regulated militia.

Speaker 75 Essentially, the states have these rights to have

Speaker 80 their own forces.

Speaker 13 And Trump is kind of slowly just...

Speaker 90 you know, gathering up those forces.

Speaker 49 I don't want to, you know, catastrophize about what that's for immediately, but as you look at, you know, the march towards despotism, the combination of that, the takeover of the cities and also the co-opting of the guard, I think, you know, those go together.

Speaker 54 And ICE.

Speaker 54 That probably should be one

Speaker 54 category. I think I split it up in my little piece, but the huge expansion of ICE.

Speaker 54 A lot of what's happening in D.C., it strikes me most of it actually, is basically a giant ICE raid with some other stuff going on on the side because that is so central to their agenda.

Speaker 9 And kind of like a fascist play. Yes.

Speaker 44 It's like play acting with ICE raids together.

Speaker 54 Yeah, totally. And the play acting part is really striking.

Speaker 54 It's also ridiculous. You mentioned the tweets and the rants and the, you know, getting peeved at people was there on TV or something like that.

Speaker 54 And one tends to dismiss it as kind of ludicrous and ridiculous. But then, you know, one has to remind oneself that things can be ludicrous and dangerous at the same time.

Speaker 54 I don't think we normally think that. And I don't normally, I mean, normally one thinks dangerous is serious.
Ludicrous is comical, you know? And maybe it's annoying.

Speaker 54 I mean, it's not healthy for the country, but it's not really dangerous. But I went back and read a little bit about the 20s and 30s and Italy and Germany in particular.

Speaker 54 And of course, they all thought Mussolini was farcical giving those speeches and reinstating the greatness of the Roman Empire or something like that.

Speaker 54 And Hitler obviously was made fun of by many, many people, including Charlie Chaplin. But it's hard to get one's head around that a little bit, I find.

Speaker 54 Maybe it's just me, but I mean, that the kind of ridiculousness and the dangerousness go hand in hand. And maybe it actually helps them, unfortunately.
It makes it entertaining.

Speaker 54 You know, the dictatorship becomes more entertaining.

Speaker 82 Diary of a Man in Despair was a little homework book reading for people if they want on this point.

Speaker 82 At the beginning of the Trump eras was something I read.

Speaker 75 It was really striking to me.

Speaker 52 It was written by,

Speaker 21 you know, maybe a John Bolton type, because he wasn't really in the government, but like a conservative traditionalist type in Germany who was writing a diary about, you know, the barbarians at the gate, apparently, and how kind of goofy and ridiculous they were.

Speaker 51 And I'd always got this right, that like there was a general impression that Hitler was kind of silly and

Speaker 82 clownish, but like the degree to which it was the case from people inside.

Speaker 72 Anyway, checking through your list here on our march towards despotism.

Speaker 58 This, I don't think I even talked about last week.

Speaker 21 That's the problem with kind of, you know, there's just so much of this stuff is happening.

Speaker 77 So I wanted to spend a second on it because Mark Hurtling writes about it in the bulwark this morning as well.

Speaker 51 And that is the military leaders, intelligence professionals purged item.

Speaker 30 Just a couple of the examples.

Speaker 80 There have been more than this, but a couple of the recent ones.

Speaker 68 Lieutenant General Jeff Cruz is the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Speaker 47 He was removed, all indications are because of the intelligence assessment about how the Iranian nuclear facilities were not obliterated, like Trump said.

Speaker 98 It was more nuanced assessment.

Speaker 68 Air Force Chief of Staff, David Alvin, he was kind of pushed out into an early retirement.

Speaker 100 Again, I guess he had offered some criticism of the focus of the administration.

Speaker 72 These are just a couple of the latest examples.

Speaker 82 This is a category difference from the Boltons, I guess, in an important way, right?

Speaker 61 That it's like, it's not just the regime critics that are being targeted, right?

Speaker 100 It's anyone offering dissent.

Speaker 54 Right. And this goes back to very early in Hexeth's tenure where he fired the chairman of the Detroit Chiefs and others, really just for the sake of firing them.

Speaker 54 There was no evidence of, unlike in these cases, they hadn't said anything particularly. Maybe they did when they were before Trump.

Speaker 54 They said things that HexF found offensive because they, but they were very careful, honestly, and not political, is my sense from talking to people. Anyway, they got fired.

Speaker 54 So part of it is getting rid of people, as Mark Hertling says in the bulwark, who might offer an

Speaker 54 unbiased and honest opinion. They don't want that.
But a lot of it is the message it sends to everyone else to shut up. And a lot of it is bringing in their own people.

Speaker 54 I mean, I don't think one should... One shouldn't forget that the practical effect of firing A is that you get to a point B, you know, and these are important jobs.

Speaker 54 And so it's not just that he got rid of a guy who was going to tell the truth about a U.S. military action when testifying to Congress,

Speaker 54 but also they're putting in someone who's not going to. So I think that's a very important flip side of the firings.

Speaker 5 To the Bolton part.

Speaker 27 We haven't spoken since it happened on Friday.

Speaker 61 So just give me your top-level thoughts, and I'll go into a couple of things.

Speaker 54 It's ridiculous. I mean, that is to say, I don't believe there are any legitimate concerns.
If there are legitimate concerns, they know where John Bolton lives. He's not fleeing the country.

Speaker 54 They can call him up. He has lawyers.
They can arrange a meeting. He's not going to, they can surveil his house if they're worried.
He's going to sneak out with some documents.

Speaker 54 For all I know, they were already wiretapping his phone.

Speaker 54 One thing that our friend Ryan Goodman pointed out to me is Bondi had loosened the rules for phone wiretapping quite a bit two or three months ago. I don't really know the details of this.

Speaker 54 I don't hold me exactly to it. But he thought it was not impossible that they were doing that.
And maybe they've got one sentence somewhere where, you know, who knows, right?

Speaker 54 And then, of course, there's these weird stories about foreign intelligence. Who knows, again, where that comes from? We've been down that road road before with the Russians and so forth.

Speaker 54 So, yeah, he wants to punish Bolton. I don't think we should ever underestimate the retribution part of what Trump's doing.
He wants to send a signal to people.

Speaker 54 You're a real vociferous critic of mine, especially if you worked for me once or knew me a little bit enough to give yourself extra credibility as a critic, which Bolton certainly had, as opposed to maybe people who've just been anti-Trump like us since 2015.

Speaker 54 You're going to get especially targeted. And the rest of you, just be a little more careful.
I think it has a real chilling effect.

Speaker 54 I think that part, everyone's focused on Bolton, but I think people are underestimating that side of it.

Speaker 95 Yeah.

Speaker 68 Just to your point on like the ridiculousness of it, it's just worth sitting on that for a second. Like, we'll see what they are claiming to have or whatever, right?

Speaker 81 But

Speaker 54 we may not. That is to say,

Speaker 54 could this thing could just be left open for months? They don't quite ever go to court. They never produce, you know, the affidavit and so forth.

Speaker 54 But it sort of hangs over and they're, they're working on it.

Speaker 52 They've got some worrisome things that they're looking into, right so it's a fair point and like you could just imagine there are other trump administration officials wrote books you know it's like it's hard it's impossible to imagine mark meadows for example like his home being raided right like you just it's like on its face farcical that this was that this was necessary like in this in this situation i and and all you have to do is just think about any basic counterfactual about how they would act if it was a pro-Trump person that like wrote a wrote a memoir from the first term that you know they had some notes or whatever they whatever they come up with i want to shout aaron blake over at the post because he flagged this quote that i think was pretty striking from ed martin back in may he said this there's some really bad actors some people that did some really bad things to the american people if they can be charged we'll charge them but if they can't be charged we'll name them and we'll name them and in a culture that respects shame they should be people that are ashamed you think that ed martin would know that doesn't work since

Speaker 91 since he should have so much shame. But anyway, it's talking about where they're going with all this, right?

Speaker 44 That it's like, okay, well, we're going to use the DOJ.

Speaker 47 We're going to hassle people or to shake them down.

Speaker 53 Maybe we'll charge them.

Speaker 59 Or if not, like, we're just going to create problems for them.

Speaker 54 You know, the Salin had show trials, of course, famously. I think it was, was our friend Ben Wittis or someone else who came up with the term show investigation, S-H-O-W-investigation.

Speaker 54 The point of it is demonstrating to others what can happen.

Speaker 54 It's not an actual, you you know, sincere investigation of a secret that has gotten out from, what, seven years ago that our enemies are taking advantage of, you know?

Speaker 47 I mean, do you get a sense for, I mean, it's not like you and John Bolton are close friends, but like it's like what the level of concern is among him or others in that world at this point?

Speaker 54 People very close to him are saying, you know, he's calm and not worried. He didn't do anything wrong.
And this was expected something like this. And they're projecting confidence.

Speaker 54 And I suspect they have confidence that if it, that I think, well, I don't know, I shouldn't say what they think. I think it won't come to trial.
And I suspect they may think that too.

Speaker 54 And Bolton's a tough guy. And he can kind of, he's got to keep quiet or has to, but I suppose he will choose to.
It's prudent.

Speaker 54 I'm sure his advisor, his attorney is telling him to keep quiet for a while. Now, does John Bolton not being on CNN, you know, once a week for the next two months change the fate of the Republic?

Speaker 54 No, but you know, it's a step, right? It's a step.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's still a chilling effect throughout the entire,

Speaker 47 you know, like this stuff is expansive.

Speaker 78 Like we've already, we've talked about this in the past, like with the chill of from CEOs, you know, which can get into the Intel thing next.

Speaker 75 Like a lot of business leaders don't want to speak out, you know, administrators don't want to speak out.

Speaker 33 We did a jokingly, I think it was a couple of weeks ago about how my guys, Oasis, are coming on tour this year and their band manager told them not to speak out.

Speaker 89 You know, like all that stuff is in individual is

Speaker 61 not that important, but in aggregate it is.

Speaker 54 Yeah, very much. I mean, someone I know with very good intentions, someone I think very highly of, experienced person.

Speaker 54 I mentioned that I had, there's any reason I shouldn't say say this, that I texted John literally a one sentence out of, you know, look, I hope everything's fine and let me know if you want to talk or something like that.

Speaker 54 And I offered to give him a forum on the bulwark. I threw your name in there, but that's the entire text.

Speaker 51 You are welcome on the bulwark, John Bolton.

Speaker 47 Formal invitation.

Speaker 54 I mentioned to someone else who said, look, you know, they probably tapping, they probably got his phones and they probably were tapping them already.

Speaker 54 And I don't know, do you want to be asked, do you want to be called in and asked, well, why were you in touch with him?

Speaker 54 And do you know what, you know, and of course, I don't, I don't know anything and I haven't been in that much touch with them and I would have nothing to say if they called me in and but it it sort of does make you think for a minute right and then you know maybe you shouldn't maybe i shouldn't be talking to john bolton because he's under an fbi investigation and again it's the most trivial thing obviously whether i talk to john bolton but sure multiply that by many many fold and then as you were saying about the business community and stuff yeah it's bad and jd in his kristen walker uh interview this weekend which i did a i did a standalone take on if people want to do that i'm not going to make you listen to his jayd to his voice on the podcast today because he was

Speaker 66 you know, as condescending and haughty and annoying as possible.

Speaker 54 No, but you were excellently, you were excellently, I did listen to that last night. You were excellently and indignant, but perceptively so.

Speaker 54 It's not just that he's a jerk, but he's anyway, go ahead and say what you're going to say.

Speaker 90 He's clever.

Speaker 90 He's clever about what he's doing.

Speaker 47 He doesn't want to defend the worst of their behaviors.

Speaker 103 So he plays a lot of these tricks where he does, you know, he does condescending lecturing and, you know, of the critics.

Speaker 87 And, you know, he puts up straw men that he knocks down with the worst, you know, possible interpretation of what they're doing and the bullton thing in particular i mean a he kind of slips and says we are investigating him which may have just been a slip of the tongue but is a is a bad one um and you know when you were chief of staff to the vp if dan quayle had said that you might have said sir uh you know we're going to use a different like you're supposed to say this is an important distinction so that's one but the other is just that he um he basically lays out this playbook where he he frames it in an orwellian way about how this is the non-political way to do the business.

Speaker 47 He goes, we're not going to do what the others did.

Speaker 72 We're not going to politicize the Justice Department and go after people.

Speaker 50 What we're going to do is we're going to investigate.

Speaker 47 And if we find anything, then he'll be charged. And if we don't, then he won't be.

Speaker 91 And that's the neutral way to do this.

Speaker 1 And that's like.

Speaker 44 totally demonstrating like what they're really doing, which is like, we're intimidating people.

Speaker 2 We're going to intimidate you.

Speaker 63 We're going to investigate you.

Speaker 92 And maybe you won't be charged. Maybe you will.

Speaker 63 But the punishment is the investigation.

Speaker 54 Yeah, you're so right about the we're investigating. I mean, mean, it wouldn't simply be that Vice President Quayle or anyone from any other administration wouldn't have said that.

Speaker 54 His only answer would have been, this is being done by the Justice Department. I can't comment on it, obviously, on any kind of criminal investigation.
Maybe it had a sentence.

Speaker 54 I don't know anything about it, which would have been true, incidentally.

Speaker 54 But Vance feels entitled to, you know, kind of lay out this fake

Speaker 54 explanation, you know, based on his great experience in government and being a Yale law graduate, I suppose. You know, this is how the system works.
And we're just kind of looking into this.

Speaker 54 But the Ed Martin thing puts the light of that, right? Funny how they're just looking into Bolton.

Speaker 54 They're not looking into all the, as you say, Mark Meadows and the and the Trump defenders who wrote books, gave interviews, said things that probably actually did, you know, compromise national security in certain ways the moment they were out of office or when they were in office for that matter, if we can be honest.

Speaker 64 So anyway.

Speaker 68 They're not doing a review of the current president's documents that he had in his bathroom, the best I can tell.

Speaker 55 I don't think that's happening.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I believe that case was dropped on January 20th, the 21st.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 17 I think that tells you what you need to know.

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Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

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Speaker 43 Back to the corporation extorting the Intel 10%

Speaker 30 equity stake that the government is taking.

Speaker 60 I was intrigued by your friend Kevin Hassep this morning on CNBC saying this.

Speaker 9 So I'm sure that at some point there'll be more transactions, if not in this industry, than in other industries.

Speaker 63 Trump posting about the stock price this morning and how it's up and how he's happy about that.

Speaker 79 You know, their defense about why this is not communism is that they are not actually going to be taking controlling stake in the company and they'll be a silent equity partner.

Speaker 72 The U.S. government will.

Speaker 33 But like, there's a reason why we don't do this, you know, because there are a lot of other ways for the government to bully, intimidate, cajole Intel, their customers, their competitors, if the president of the United States has an emotional and financial stake in Intel stock price going up.

Speaker 54 This wasn't just like Intel is a company that has a lot of dealings with China and I guess controversially exports or doesn't export, I can't remember, chips of some sort that are important.

Speaker 54 It was that Tom Cotton attacked the head of Intel, right, who's Chinese or of Chinese origin, at least. Trump saw that on TV, immediately echoed the attack.
He came in and they cut a deal.

Speaker 54 So in effect, he'd be back in Trump. He and the company would be back in Trump's Good Graces if he gave 10% of the company to the U.S.
government. So that makes it even worse.

Speaker 54 I mean, it's not just the generic arguments against the U.S. government owning 10% of random companies or even non-random companies.

Speaker 54 It's that you need to be nice to Trump or he's coming after your company and not in some complicated way that you mentioned, even of, you know, going after your customers, crack a barrel type thing.

Speaker 54 You know, he's coming right at you. And the price will be a fairly substantial chunk of change and obviously total silence and subservience for the next three and a half years.

Speaker 54 I mean, the business community has already been pretty abject, but I don't know. Has the business roundtable objected to this?

Speaker 54 The Chamber of Commerce, all those conservative economists, I mean, a few have, to be fair, the real, the real economists.

Speaker 87 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 37 But is there a DC ad campaign?

Speaker 81 Again, we've done this once before, but like we were both in this world, right?

Speaker 77 Like back during the Obama era.

Speaker 76 You know, you had actual campaigns to push back against what the president was doing, the business community did, if they did not like the policy.

Speaker 51 Like it wasn't just a one statement.

Speaker 54 And what was the name? Didn't Obama have some firm that I believe we, people like us, have made famous? I don't know, it was like some solar energy thing for some reason. Yeah, Solyndra.

Speaker 87 You're thinking of Solyndra.

Speaker 54 Yeah, the federal government took a stake in it or helped it out because it was going bankrupt. I can't remember.
And that was like an outrageous.

Speaker 72 our listeners fact check me if this is wrong but i'm pretty sure that it was part of the stimulus and that it was it was like a startup money it was not the government taking a stake in it or bailing out but like they gave they made these bets in green energy companies some of them succeeded some of them failed badly so the argument was like taxpayers lost their money which this is a legit policy argument like whether the government should be doing this or not but it's not wasn't social right it wasn't like the government taking over a company it was the government was investing in these industries and and some of them didn't work and the money was lost, right?

Speaker 95 It was essentially, I think, that.

Speaker 54 And Obama didn't call in the president of Solyndra and say, well, if you're nice to me, I'll

Speaker 38 give you more.

Speaker 72 Just here, Lip Bhutan is the CEO of Intel. Let me get this right.

Speaker 68 He was born in Malaya, but to an ethnic Chinese family in Malaya.

Speaker 50 So again, this is like...

Speaker 46 The attack on him is that like he was some Chinese crypto

Speaker 38 asset or whatever.

Speaker 60 Like Tom Cotton is going after him about this.

Speaker 51 And now we have to take a stake in the company. We're going to take an additional stake in other companies.

Speaker 84 And now imagine if you're, it's not just a chilling effect on Intel and their CEO or their customers.

Speaker 11 It's if you are any of the companies that got money from the CHIPS Act, from the Inflation Reduction Act, right?

Speaker 13 Like now, like a precedent has been set.

Speaker 57 It's like, oh, if there was, you know, a loan provided, a government-backing loan provided, now if someone goes on TV and gets grandpa grandpa mad, the government might come in and turn that loan into their desire to have a sovereign wealth fund.

Speaker 54 Just on the defense sphere, since we're talking about that for a minute, I learned this last week. I don't know if this is reported much, though.
I don't believe it's confidential exactly.

Speaker 54 One of the big defense firms hired a new consulting firm set up by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, very standard, kind of inside the beltway thing, for consulting, whatever.

Speaker 54 Presumably Austin has good relations with

Speaker 54 some Democrats, whatever. He knows a lot anyway.
Anyway, it's a totally standard thing.

Speaker 54 We could all talk about maybe there shouldn't be this stricter rules against people setting up these firms and being hired by Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or whoever it was.

Speaker 54 But anyway, it was totally conventional. It wasn't a huge amount of money.
They have like 30 other firms on retainer.

Speaker 54 This wasn't, I don't think, Trump personally, but someone in Trump in the administration knew about this. Maybe it was Hexeth or someone at DOD and apparently made a tiny fuss about it.

Speaker 54 And the defense firm dropped, canceled the contract. And so again, just at this level, even, right?

Speaker 54 I mean, again, it says, who cares in a certain way, Lord Austin will do fine, you know, but I mean, and his colleagues there in that firm. But that is permeated down.

Speaker 54 That's not, so people are saying, well, Trump, stay off Trump's radar screen. You're okay.
No, there are a lot of little Ed Martins there trying to effectuate the Trump-ist agenda in all these ways.

Speaker 107 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 111 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 104 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 107 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 113 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 115 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 119 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 20 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 27 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 32 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 36 Same mission, new name, MSNOW.

Speaker 39 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 77 I want to talk about some other news we have this morning regarding Kilmore Abrego Garcia.

Speaker 68 He went to his ICE Baltimore check-in, I guess, backing up.

Speaker 75 He had this trial, dismissed.

Speaker 34 He left, went back home to Maryland, had to check in with ICE about his status.

Speaker 68 The Trump administration, during their conversation with his lawyers, were trying to coerce him to come in to plead guilty to the charges he's facing.

Speaker 84 He would serve, I think, a short prison sentence and then be sent to Costa Rica.

Speaker 92 That was the deal.

Speaker 33 The alternative was that he would be sent to Uganda.

Speaker 76 Obrego Garcia's lawyers rejected the plea deal, filed a new suit this morning attempting to block the White House from immediately shipping him to Uganda.

Speaker 68 DHS says he's being processed for removal to Uganda.

Speaker 84 So that's where things stand as we tape this morning.

Speaker 72 This person, Kilmar Bregger Garcia, has become kind of this lightning rod.

Speaker 23 Andrew wrote about this morning in the newsletter that

Speaker 34 Trump has these two kinds of groups that he targets, essentially.

Speaker 52 One is marginalized people you've never heard of who don't have any power to push back on him.

Speaker 79 The other is regime foes that can be used

Speaker 75 as a wedge or as

Speaker 98 something to push back against that his MAGA people can rally around.

Speaker 47 Abergo Garcia ends up falling in both categories in this case because he initially is the former and then becomes the latter.

Speaker 57 The details of this, like, kind of are irrelevant of Vibrigo Garcia's case because they're irrelevant to the government, right?

Speaker 49 Like, it's not as if, you know, in a different world with a different president or a different DHS, you know, you could at least trust that they were trying to, you know, get justice.

Speaker 51 And if Vigrea Garcia did not commit any of these crimes and was here and it was fine, then

Speaker 33 the process would go forth.

Speaker 50 And otherwise,

Speaker 52 he could be deported.

Speaker 99 That's not what's happening here.

Speaker 68 They're sending him to a war-torn country in Africa where he has no ties, obviously doesn't know the language, won't have any money.

Speaker 52 I mean, that's

Speaker 120 an unimaginable way for our country to treat people.

Speaker 54 It is. And this is because he won't plead guilty.
I don't know that they're so confident if they went to trial that they would be able to convict him of anything.

Speaker 54 And he hasn't been, to my knowledge, charged in a criminal. proceeding with anything at this point, right? He's been charged in immigration court and then sent to this gulag in El Salvador.

Speaker 54 I mean, any normal administration would be, I've apologized to him and be leaving him alone, whatever the details of his overstaying his visa, right?

Speaker 54 But this is in a way, Trump, this, again, is very characteristic of despotism and dictatorship.

Speaker 54 You really don't let people get away with winning against you, you know, if you can't, if you can stop them.

Speaker 69 Just for like what the facts about what happened, because I was kind of murky too on the lead-in.

Speaker 72 So when they brought him back to the U.S., DOJ did indict him in Tennessee for unlawfully transporting illegal immigrants for financial gain, right?

Speaker 84 They kept using the word human trafficking because I think it sounds like, you know, people in their mind, when they hear human trafficking, they hear like young girls or whatever being tracked into sex slavery.

Speaker 68 But what's really happening, I guess, is he was pulled over when he was driving across the country with other people who were here undocumented.

Speaker 88 And so that was the DOJ charge.

Speaker 72 And then fast forward a couple of months, his lawyer's moves have the case dismiss on the argument that it was selective or vindictive prosecution.

Speaker 100 And he was released on August 22nd and returned to Maryland. And here we are a couple days later, where the government's going to send him to Uganda.

Speaker 2 So, another thing, just as like context, this was a massive controversy in Britain a couple of years ago now, like where they were trying to

Speaker 52 deal with the migrant issue there.

Speaker 77 And rather than sending people back to their home country or sending people to some third, I think it was Sudan.

Speaker 56 And it became like a, for a good reason, like a massive humanitarian pushback in the UK.

Speaker 91 Like, this is not the way that you treat people, you treat humans.

Speaker 121 And the Brega Garcia case, now maybe this will just be the one that people know and remember, but we're doing this now.

Speaker 47 Like, there are other cases, other examples of people that the government has accused of crimes, not been able to demonstrate, and rather than going through with the court, have now deported the person to somewhere in Africa.

Speaker 54 Under these

Speaker 54 non-public agreements for the the governments of those countries. So we don't know under what conditions he would be there.
Would he be able to work there? Would he be able to

Speaker 54 get some money from some relative and fly to Costa Rica? I mean, normally one could do that, I suppose, but not if you don't have papers, I guess, or a visa or a passport.

Speaker 54 Someone I was talking to sort of thinks, knows a little bit about this, perhaps behind the scenes, saying that he thought there were all kinds of conditions.

Speaker 54 Trump doesn't want to look stupid and have the Ugandan government turn around, let him get a check from his family and catch a flight from Uganda to Costa Rica.

Speaker 54 So they probably are conditions where they can't just let these people fly to other countries that are willing to take them. So it is obviously very punitive and vindictive, to say the least.

Speaker 14 We also don't know the other side of these deals.

Speaker 45 Like, what is Trump getting out of the governments?

Speaker 54 You know, some tariffs have been explicitly on the table with Uganda.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 75 In the Uganda case, the lower tariff rate.

Speaker 71 Yeah.

Speaker 95 Yes.

Speaker 39 And some of these other cases, I mean, who the hell knows though?

Speaker 77 This goes back to like the Trump black box of corruption, right?

Speaker 46 Like, are there investments into the into the crypto fund?

Speaker 43 You know, are we buying a stable coin from Trump, right?

Speaker 48 Like,

Speaker 23 you know, it's not, none of this stuff is being done in a transparent manner.

Speaker 76 Kind of thrust into now a little bit this Gilmore, Breggo-Garcia fight, because it's happening in Maryland, but also what we mentioned earlier about the militarization of police is that Maryland governor Wesmore.

Speaker 68 Trump has been talking about sending military into Baltimore.

Speaker 77 Wesmore sent him a letter basically saying, you know, things are getting better in Baltimore.

Speaker 93 Actually, why don't you come to Baltimore and walk through the streets with me?

Speaker 68 He's doing maybe a more kind of a hybrid version between the

Speaker 68 Gretchen Whitmer and the Gavin.

Speaker 91 You know, I'm not going to troll you, but I'm not going to submit, but maybe we can

Speaker 92 do some political gamesmanship here.

Speaker 76 And then Gavin goes on to Sunday shows. Trump freaks out, starts sending multiple tweets attacking him, including one where he says, also, I gave Westmore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge.

Speaker 120 I will now have to rethink that decision.

Speaker 33 So I think it's grotesque on several levels and a lie.

Speaker 84 The money for the bridge came during the Biden administration, so Trump didn't give them anything.

Speaker 72 Even if it came during the Trump administration, it wouldn't have been Trump that gave them the money.

Speaker 93 It would have been congressionally authorized money.

Speaker 57 And

Speaker 68 you don't get to punish the people of a state because you don't like what the governor said on the Sunday show.

Speaker 25 That would have been behavior that was resoundingly condemned in any other administration.

Speaker 54 We're like almost impeachable. I mean, we're so used to Trump.
You know, I gave him the money, that formulation, which Trump uses for everything, my generals, and I did this and I did that.

Speaker 54 But of course, it's deeply undemocratic and contrary to the rule of law.

Speaker 54 And I just, no one else would have said that, right?

Speaker 54 I mean, literally, you know, no matter how much, you know, how high your self-esteem was as president or how much you sort of deep down kind of thought that you should have the ability to do that, it didn't occur to anyone that you would publicly say, I gave him the money, so he should stop criticizing me.

Speaker 54 Leaving aside the fact that it wasn't even appropriated

Speaker 54 under his administration, as you say.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 78 I mean, the other thing is just, you know, these counterfactuals get tired, but it's like, you know, if Obama had been like, I'm not going to give money to Louisiana to rebuild after a hurricane because the governor said something mean about me on TV.

Speaker 87 I mean,

Speaker 33 it's about the asymmetry, right?

Speaker 69 Like, obviously, Fox would still be talking about that two decades later.

Speaker 71 They'd be bringing that up, you know, and how they don't care about flyover country.

Speaker 121 They don't care about regular people, and they want the people to not have bridges that work.

Speaker 13 But like the mainstream, rightly, like, you know, the mainstream media would have condemned him.

Speaker 55 Their own party would have condemned him, right?

Speaker 8 Like the, you know, pundits, balls and strikes pundits would have attacked him, right?

Speaker 20 This wasn't even covered this week, really.

Speaker 15 I mean, like, Wes is on the Sunday shows, but right, like, they don't, like, that particular threat

Speaker 72 is just lost kind of in the wash.

Speaker 54 Oh, terrible. Terrible.
I mean, I was thinking, you mentioned thinking Maryland, governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, whom we know some. And I don't know.

Speaker 54 It'd be nice if he said, maybe he has, honestly, so I should be careful about it. I shouldn't assert that he hasn't.

Speaker 54 But if he hasn't said anything, it would be nice if he said something about how wildly inappropriate this was and how he stands with the governor of Maryland in believing that Trump should not have any control over their, you know, the funds that were appropriated by the United States Congress and a bill signed by the president.

Speaker 32 Would be nice.

Speaker 34 I'm not seeing anything that he said on a quick glance.

Speaker 77 So, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 120 Who knows?

Speaker 69 Maybe he said something in a private event.

Speaker 14 Just on the Wesmore thing, do you have any, like, just on the politics of Wes, how he's kind of handling this?

Speaker 21 I don't know if you saw any of the Sunday show coverage.

Speaker 54 I didn't see much. I think he's doing pretty well.
What do you think? I mean, I feel like the center of gravity has moved in a Newsome direction

Speaker 54 from a Whitmer direction in the last month.

Speaker 39 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 24 Look, I don't.

Speaker 48 He has such a positive.

Speaker 56 kind of countenance.

Speaker 91 You know, he is a smiley, optimistic person, which

Speaker 43 traditionally in politics is kind of what people said, you know, you want is the happy warrior, right?

Speaker 43 Like that was something that that's a kind of a common cliche in political commentary, like the happy warriors do better.

Speaker 23 And so maybe that will still remain true.

Speaker 43 I like the fact that he's being more visible on this stuff.

Speaker 77 Like he could have not weighed in at all, right, on the Baltimore, you know, and it wasn't like there's an imminent threat of the troops coming to Baltimore to more or said that was coming, right?

Speaker 68 So he chose to weigh in, chose to weigh in kind of a clever way. And, you know, he did sort of a more chill Gavin version, making fun of Trump for draft dodging after Trump attacked him on Twitter.

Speaker 39 So I don't know.

Speaker 6 I think that there's something to it.

Speaker 11 I think that, you know, what we're asking for is for is for people to stand up to him.

Speaker 53 He's doing that. Like, I think that there's kind of this emotional need for that people have to either make fun of him or to be really like visibly angry.

Speaker 80 And I don't know whether that actually matters politically or whether that's, you know, just kind of, you know, satisfying resistance liberals

Speaker 49 need for some emotional gratification.

Speaker 87 I feel that way.

Speaker 21 I need some emotional satisfaction at times.

Speaker 68 I don't know how much that actually matters.

Speaker 47 Like he's not really doing that part of it.

Speaker 83 And I think on balance, it's better or sanctioned from some other people's issues.

Speaker 54 And he did punch back on the topic on which Trump attacked him kind of amazingly since he's a bronze star and so forth, but he, you know, for somehow not deserving it. I don't know.
Trump said that.

Speaker 54 And

Speaker 54 I think it was very wise of Moore. And I think a very important example.
You don't let that sit. You don't dismiss it as he doesn't know anything of what he's talking about.

Speaker 54 You say, he's Mr., isn't he president of Bonespurs? And, you know, whatever, whatever line Moore used. And that, I think, is good.
It shows you're not intimidated.

Speaker 54 It shows you're not pulling any punches. And you're willing to hit back pretty hard when he hits you unjustly.

Speaker 107 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 110 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 104 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 107 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 113 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 115 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 119 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 20 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 27 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 32 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 36 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 39 Learn more at ms.now.

Speaker 46 While we're doing politics, one of our other Never Trumpers, Jeff Duncan, was lieutenant governor of Georgia.

Speaker 51 People might remember, I thought he gave a really great speech at the DNC convention that we're all kind of trying to wash from our memories to not deal with any trauma.

Speaker 43 But I thought the Jeff Duncan speech was good.

Speaker 121 I don't think we can blame the L on that one convention speech.

Speaker 37 And he did something that I've, well, we'll see how he actually executes it.

Speaker 60 But he seems to be doing something that I've been encouraging people to try.

Speaker 59 I'm not sure if it's going to work or not, but I think it's worth a try, which is to have somebody like a socially conservative, traditional Republican try to run not as an independent and not as a Democrat where he says, I've changed all my views on everything and now I'm just a generic Democrat, kind of like the Charlie Crist model, if you will, but saying, I'm going to run as a Democrat.

Speaker 91 I still have some views on issue X, Y, and Z that might be out of step with the progressive base.

Speaker 92 Here's how I would deal with that.

Speaker 77 And C, would that work in a Democratic primary? I don't know.

Speaker 102 Would that work in a general election better than a generic Democrat?

Speaker 92 I suspect so, but we don't know.

Speaker 47 So I'm intrigued that he's thinking about trying.

Speaker 33 And he hasn't announced.

Speaker 51 He had an interview this weekend where he said he was looking at it.

Speaker 55 I'm running for governor, that is.

Speaker 63 Brian Kemp is term limited out.

Speaker 72 And I don't know.

Speaker 70 What do you make about that possibility?

Speaker 54 I also have my minor way encouraging people to do this or think about doing it. I guess he's thinking about doing it at this point.

Speaker 54 And I think, look, even if you don't win, it might have a very positive effect. What if you get 20%? What if you get 30% of the vote?

Speaker 54 Then you're part of the coalition and you bring, quote, bring your voters over to support presumably the Democratic nominee and you have some say perhaps in some of these policies. So this is how

Speaker 54 a party expands, right? The challenger, the outside element that's being recruited to the party doesn't necessarily win its first race.

Speaker 54 But so many people have talked themselves out of doing this, it seems to me, because they probably won't win.

Speaker 54 You know, left is very strong a democratic primary, and it is, and you probably won't get to 51%, and maybe you won't.

Speaker 54 But I think there's really a case for people doing this at every level of government and in every, you know, both in running for office, but also in, you know, a point of office and the like.

Speaker 60 The state-level offices, I think, also provide potentially a little bit more room to have some heterodoxy and opinion.

Speaker 56 And so it's an interesting way to kind of test that out.

Speaker 46 Like it becomes challenging if you're, you know, going to be, if you're going to be in a 50-50 Senate.

Speaker 48 And it's like, are you going to be the last vote to do this? Are you going to be the last vote to do that?

Speaker 25 Right.

Speaker 51 Like the stuff gets nationalized where I think this kind of model becomes a little tougher on the Senate side than it does in the governor's races.

Speaker 48 So anyway, I hope he gives it a shot.

Speaker 77 And it would be interesting to see exactly

Speaker 83 what that campaign looks like.

Speaker 47 We're seeing it a little bit in other places.

Speaker 21 You know, David Jolly is doing this, I think, think, in Florida and other situations.

Speaker 99 And I just,

Speaker 91 and you see this going both ways.

Speaker 66 Like, what's the right way to put this?

Speaker 19 Like, the path of least resistance in these sort of cases is to say, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

Speaker 49 I'm switching sides.

Speaker 68 And like, here are all the, you know, I'm told, I'm like the Democrats' strongest warrior now or the Republicans' strongest warrior.

Speaker 121 Jeff Van Druh did this the other way going in New Jersey.

Speaker 11 And I think that there's conceivably some.

Speaker 53 room for that.

Speaker 58 And if that's authentic to what you really believe, then great.

Speaker 59 But just as a political matter, particularly in these red states, Georgia is kind of a purple state, but particularly in red states, I'm more interested in people trying this if they hold on to some heterodoxy.

Speaker 54 And I think it'd be healthy if progressives say, look, we prefer, I don't even know who's running, but X, who's a more progressive candidate, if that's what they prefer. But of course, we'll support.

Speaker 54 Duncan if he wins, and we would expect him to support our favorite candidate. I mean, it makes the big tent and the coalition a little more real, maybe going both ways.

Speaker 34 Yeah, going both ways, exactly.

Speaker 91 It's like, oh, if Zoran Mandani wins, maybe we should just endorse him as well

Speaker 92 and identify the party as a broad coalition.

Speaker 71 Just so we have it right,

Speaker 99 there are a bunch of other declared candidates in the Democratic race, which maybe helps Duncan, frankly, in a way that you don't have to get to 51.

Speaker 100 But Keisha Lamps Bottoms, the most famous former mayor of Atlanta, who I think probably seems like she would be a very strong candidate, and a bunch of state

Speaker 100 state legislators as well.

Speaker 55 So anyway, we'll keep an eye on that.

Speaker 107 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 110 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 104 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 107 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 113 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 115 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 119 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 20 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 26 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 32 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 36 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 39 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 25 Just two other quick things, Bill, that I want to make sure we touch.

Speaker 55 This morning, there's reports out of Israel.

Speaker 51 This is from Axios.

Speaker 72 20 Palestinians, including four journalists, were killed in an IDF strike at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza.

Speaker 88 It's the only open hospital, I believe, in Gaza right now.

Speaker 34 There was one strike, and then notably, several minutes later, a second strike took place that resulted in the deaths of reporters and some in a rescue team who tried to reach the casualties of the first strike.

Speaker 13 You know, I'm just curious at this stage.

Speaker 70 I talked about this a little bit with Tommy on Friday.

Speaker 120 And obviously, there's the humanitarian concerns, and

Speaker 69 this appears to be a Reuters reporter, and this is fairly tragic, and that's something that it's legitimately concerned about.

Speaker 45 I'm just scoping up to like even the generous view of what Israel is doing now.

Speaker 101 It's kind of like hard to see

Speaker 5 what the outcome is that's going to be amenable to like the region, to them, to the global community.

Speaker 98 Anyway, I think that this is developed to geopolitically something that is like a massive problem for them.

Speaker 77 I don't know if you have any updated thoughts on what's been happening.

Speaker 54 I mean, I agree. It's doing huge damage to support for Israel around the world and then here in the U.S.

Speaker 54 And, you know, strong supporters are becoming weak supporters and weak supporters are becoming doubters and doubters are becoming hostile. And it's, you know, that's very important.

Speaker 54 Israel is a small country and does need some help and support, you know, various kinds with economic trade, but also with the U.N. and so forth.
So just generally, no one wants to be isolated.

Speaker 54 And so it's terrible in that respect. You know who thinks it's terrible?

Speaker 54 Hundreds of of thousands of Israelis who are demonstrating against the war in Gaza at this point, and a huge chunk of the Israeli security establishment, very well-respected former chiefs of staff and head of the Wasad and head of the Shinbeit, the FBI equivalent.

Speaker 54 And so, and they're against it. And they're against they're not against doing anything in Gaza necessarily.

Speaker 54 Some of them probably are, but they're against the way Nizan Yahoo has been conducting and certainly is now conducting that war. So it's not a bunch of doves.

Speaker 54 And then some of the pro-Israel commentary here is very either foolish or disingenuous or offensive.

Speaker 54 I would almost say, you know, if you're not for this, you somehow don't care about the interests of Israel or you're some dupe of Hamas and you believed in some photo was not taken where it was taken or whatever.

Speaker 54 And that's why you're, as if one, you know, as if one, as if these people, as if the former head of the IDF is making his decisions, his judgments based on that.

Speaker 54 I saw someone kind of very pro-Israel militant type, you know, dump, oh, the IDF's been wrong about everything for 10 or 20 years, really. I don't know.

Speaker 54 It seems like a pretty impressive military organization. You know, the Gaza situation is very bad.

Speaker 54 I think the other thing, Iran, Hezbollah, you could give Dustin Yahoo credit for doing a lot of things that strengthened Israel.

Speaker 54 And I think we're legitimate things to have done and important things maybe to have done. You can give him some credit for all the Abraham records and all that stuff.

Speaker 54 But this Gaza is a real stain and I think

Speaker 54 maybe an indelible one. And of course, people don't separate.
He is the government. He is the prime minister of Israel.
They don't entirely separate this government from the country.

Speaker 60 Yeah, we talked to David French about this.

Speaker 56 And the one thing that really stuck with me and that I've been feeling since the beginning, even as a non-military expert, but as a novice, just looking at like

Speaker 18 you can still assess and say, okay, well, if you have a mission, if you have a war, even a just war to respond when you are attacked, there has to be a strategy for

Speaker 101 ending it, for like bringing it to a conclusion, for extricating yourself from it.

Speaker 58 And there never really seemed like there was one, right?

Speaker 89 I mean, like, in various times, it's very just different things, you know?

Speaker 9 And, like, in this case, like, we're at this point now where that is very murky.

Speaker 57 And, and it makes the case of, oh,

Speaker 78 you know, we're doing our best to, you know, to tamp down civilian deaths.

Speaker 16 Like, we're doing our best to take in humanitarian concerns, you know, but like we need to achieve this end of X, Y, and Z so we can get that.

Speaker 52 Like, you know, without that, you know, A, I mean, I think people rightly start to,

Speaker 68 the humanitarian questions take on more weight.

Speaker 95 But B, it's like, well, what's the point of this now?

Speaker 17 Like, you know,

Speaker 17 where are you going?

Speaker 54 I mean, there's some in the government who clearly want to say they want to retake Gaza. That's not even a secret or hidden.

Speaker 54 And they really want kind of ethnic cleansing of Gaza and to just get them out somewhere to Egypt or Jordan or something.

Speaker 54 And so that, and I wouldn't say Netsenyah, who is necessarily of that camp, but he certainly hasn't repudiated it very hard now as his coalition government and all that.

Speaker 54 But again, the price that's being paid for these people.

Speaker 54 And there's some justice to say that if you don't have a clear alternate strategy, you tend to default maybe to this, in practice almost, to this strategy, which, if it's a strategy, but to this goal, which does not have support in Israel or outside.

Speaker 68 Final topic, you did a Sunday conversation with Brie Farmer about the transgender military ban.

Speaker 62 I like to keep coming back to this issue from time to time.

Speaker 68 I think it's an important one to bring up, in part because it's just such a clear injustice and so despicable that you have this draft Dodger kicking people out of the military

Speaker 83 for no reason. I mean, really just out of bigotry.

Speaker 98 Like, there's not even a pretense for another reason.

Speaker 28 And secondly,

Speaker 62 because it's both wrong in the merits, and I think it's good politics.

Speaker 39 And I think those are good things for Democrats to talk about.

Speaker 46 And I think they can be encouraged to talk about them because I think there are parts of the trans debate, sports, et cetera, that are pretty thorny, to say the least.

Speaker 73 Like, I don't think this one is.

Speaker 78 And so,

Speaker 77 you know, I think it should be made an example of.

Speaker 68 But anyway, is there anything else that you took away from your conversation yesterday?

Speaker 54 I mean, I don't really know Rifrom well. We've talked a couple of times on the phone, and she agreed to do this.

Speaker 54 She's really impressive. And her account of why she joined after 9-11, her account of her military career, of coming out in 2016 when the transgender ban was lifted, it was finally

Speaker 54 done away with. And the support she got from her colleagues and superiors in the military and in the Defense Department.
She made it through the first Trump term.

Speaker 54 There was all that back and forth, as you recall. They ended up banning new people from coming in, but she was there.
She's a colonel. She's had serious responsibilities.

Speaker 54 She's an Air Force colonel and now Space Command. Serious responsibilities in many areas.
And no problem.

Speaker 54 I mean, all the arguments that were once used that, you know, had some credibility, perhaps, or plausibility, maybe is a better way of saying it, unicohesion, women in combat.

Speaker 54 That's different from, you know, elsewhere. And the foxhole is different from sitting around the Pentagon.

Speaker 54 this is literally i mean it's not even plausible that any of these could apply in her case or in many of the other cases of her colleagues and peers and so it is pure i mean i don't know what it is i mean she's an adult she's transitioned you know she's it's not we're not talking about complicated issues of 12-year-olds whose parents want one thing and doctors recommend something else or high school is forced.

Speaker 54 I mean,

Speaker 54 yeah, there's no reason to do it, except if you want to just eliminate basically transgender people from, I don't don't know, from public life, from

Speaker 54 national life, you know, really is kind of a side. It is, in that respect, the totalitarian side of it is really horrifying, I've got to say, I think.

Speaker 14 100% agree.

Speaker 21 Bill Crystal, appreciate you as always.

Speaker 47 We'll see you back here next Monday.

Speaker 25 Thanks, John.

Speaker 47 And everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwork Podcast.

Speaker 67 See you all then. Peace.

Speaker 67 Will someone please say the unsayable?

Speaker 67 Will someone please tell me I'm wrong

Speaker 67 I live every day like a sad beast of prey

Speaker 67 For I have to appear to be strong

Speaker 67 And that's wrong

Speaker 67 I'm too weak to be strong

Speaker 67 Today I met with the generals

Speaker 67 The head of my secret police

Speaker 67 Discussing conspiracies and prison facilities for opponents I can never release

Speaker 67 There'll be no peace until they're released

Speaker 67 Of course I'm in lead with the army

Speaker 67 It's not like I've got any choice

Speaker 67 They officially adore me and my father before me But Gone Point has a firm voice.

Speaker 67 The joke is, I'm not even a demagogue.

Speaker 67 Have you heard me giving a speech?

Speaker 67 My facts are invented, I sound quite demented. So deluded, it beggars belief.

Speaker 67 It would be

Speaker 67 such a relief not to give another speech.

Speaker 67 Can someone please say the impossible?

Speaker 67 Crowds should be out on the streets.

Speaker 67 I've lost any will, just threaten or kill.

Speaker 67 I'll be easy for you to defeat.

Speaker 67 And any resistance I meet, I'll beat a retreat.

Speaker 67 I'd rather that you didn't shoot me.

Speaker 67 But I'd quite understand if you did.

Speaker 67 Watch out for the army, the generals and the army. At the thought of a takeover bed.

Speaker 67 Oh, please, will somebody put me

Speaker 67 out of my misery?

Speaker 67 This sad dictator must sooner or later

Speaker 67 flee so that you can be free.

Speaker 67 If you get

Speaker 67 rid of me,

Speaker 67 we can all be free.

Speaker 30 The Bullard podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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