S2 Ep1001: Bill Kristol: Give Back the Statue of Liberty

hello and welcome to the board podcast i'm your host tim miller if it's monday it's bill crystal he's back how you doing bill i don't know what's the right answer to that these days we discussed this already if you say you're doing fine then it seems like you're not sufficiently cognizant that everything is falling apart in our great country and if you dwell on that you seem not grateful enough that you know what is fine and what's family is fine and so forth so i've settled on i'm living that's good i'm living i'm here i like that i've been telling people i need that i need something i need i need an all-purpose answer i'm living i'm here we're here and there's that i'd rather be living dying. We got to start with the pardons that were voided, I guess, allegedly.
Can you void via bleat? I guess that will be a question for Amy Coney Barrett to determine at some point. I think just after midnight in the East, Trump bleated that Biden's preemptive pardons of his political foes, particularly the members of the House January 6th committee, are all caps, void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because they were signed with an auto pen.
This is now an emerging conspiracy theory on the right that Joe Biden was weakened at Bernie's at the White House and that there were like random staffers that were signing pardons that he didn't even know about. And they're using an auto pen to do it.
There's some pretty obvious flaws in this theory, particularly that these were extremely high profile pardons that received a lot of news. So it seems pretty unlikely that that happened while Joe Biden was resting.
So this, like many Trump stories, combines the ridiculous with the fascistic. But I'm wondering where will you make of it? I mean, it's super ridiculous to think that one president can void a previous president's pardons.
Otherwise, we would have had a lot of that over the years, I suppose. You know, they weren't always popular with the other party.
Yeah, it's ludicrous. I mean, I think Andrew Reagan made a good point in Morning Shots this morning, which shows how deeply, deeply Trump wants to go after the January 6th committee people.
I mean, who was pardoned at the end of the day the biden family if i recall correctly liz cheney and representative thompson and one or two others i think sort of very much from that world i guess general milley so trump's going after the rest together 97 of them or of us maybe i should say i don't know kind of how we fit fit into this list, but it really rankles them that he can't use the whole Justice Department and the authorities of the federal government to go after Liz Cheney and Betty Thompson, I suppose. So it shows how deep the hatred is, I guess.
Fascistic, as you say. We're so far beyond any sense of like, oh, this seems unseemly.
Oh, this is kind of contrary to the rule of law. is kind of contrary to the constitution this is kind of contrary to everything you know it's just yeah yeah and look there is again and we all know this but as we're saying there's the new alex eisenstead of from politico is a new book out that kind of covers the trump you know 2024 and through the through the campaign and the transition and you know and he's got a quote in there where trump is talking to aids and being sarcastic and saying listen everybody there'll be no retribution there'll be no revenge wink wink you know i mean like he's obviously like wrapped around the axle around this and he's specifically targeting these people and we talked about a little bit with david french on friday and that, historically, when presidents have, you know, or administrations have gone after political foes, not nearly as directly political foes as this, but people that, you know, where they made decisions that were based in politics rather nakedly, you know, look at the Alberto Gonzalez situation for one example, that the administration usually tries to backfill that with like some other rationale, right? It's like, this isn't, that's not really, this was not really politics, right? Like what we were really trying to do was X, Y, and Z.
And like the Trump administration is not even really doing that, right? Like I think that is the other thing that is pretty striking about this. Like they're nakedly like, no, we're going after politicales, and let's see what you're going to do about it, judges.
Totally. Totally.
It's just one of many, not to belabor the point, but it's one of many or several ways in which the old rules are gone. There were some excesses, God knows, in the past, but they were masked, and the masking itself limited the excess in obvious ways.
That's how the world works, right? But once you throw off the mask and it's just, you know, pedal to the metal on retribution and persecution, I mean, where does that end up? It was a Perkins-Cooey case. I was trying to think, which was the example? They're targeting so many foes right now.
I was like, which was the one that French said that even in their rationale, they just put it bluntly, and it was with regards to the lawyers. The other thing that they have taken the mask off on is the pretense of separation between the Justice Department and the White House.
Over the weekend, Pam Bondi was speaking at the DOJ, and I want to play a little bit from that. And we all work for the greatest president in the history of our country.
We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump. It is, he will never stop fighting for us and we will never stop fighting for him.
And just at the start that the attorney general has to do the like North Korean ludicrous thing that this is the greatest president is not Lincoln, you know, not Washington, not the author of the constitution of the declaration, right? Like it is Donald Trump. It's the greatest president in our history.
The attorney general has to do that as pretty weird and

alarming. But then there's that phrase that we work at the directive of Trump, followed by

claps in the room, at the directive. That's actually not right.
It shouldn't be right.

Obviously, in certain areas of policy, it's correct. The president tells the Justice

Department, I want you to focus on X and not Y or whatever. But yeah, not in terms of criminal

prosecutions and clearly that's

Thank you. certain areas of policy, it's correct.
The president tells the Justice Department, I want you to focus on X and not Y or whatever. But yeah, not in terms of criminal prosecutions.
And clearly that's what's front and center in everyone's mind. And Bondi and Kash Patel are all in on just, yes, you say not even pretending that, well, we're weighing the evidence and we think there's a good case here that X is guilty of something.
It's just Trump doesn't like them and we're going to find any excuse we can. I was going to say, to be nice to them, we don't know yet how far they'll go in stretching the excuses, but it turns out they'll go very far, right? I mean, we see this in a bunch of cases, including the law firms, which is pretty astonishing.
I mean, these are big law firms. They represented a million clients.
Some of them are more liberally inclined or democratically inclined. Some are the other way.
I honestly don't think it's occurred to anyone. Maybe Nixon and Watergate was, I can't remember if there was a law firm he went after as part of his going after Brookings and Daniel Ellsberg.
Maybe he went after Ellsberg's lawyers. But I mean, to publicly just do executive orders.
And again, it's not like if he privately whispered to Pam Bondi, stick into that law firm there. Maybe you can find some law they broke in, you know, some ethics rule they broke, something we could bring them up on in a civil or criminal charge.
That's bad. That's bad.
But that's at least keeps the fiction that, oh, hey, justice just happened to discover that this firm was billing client, double billing clients or something. I don't know.
There's not even the pretense, as David French said, right? It's just, I don't like them. They represented a bunch of my political enemies.
It's not even telling Justice Department to look into them or ordering them to. He personally is, if I'm right about this, stripping them of their security clearances and making their life, making it much harder for them to represent clients before the government.
I mean, it's a personal order. It's not sort of a request to justice to look into it yeah and and back to the bondi thing too i just doing the oh the right wing media is hypocritical you know has is pretty boring at this point has some limits but it's just worth just putting it like going back to one prime example that anybody that was kind of paying attention to politics in 2015-16 will remember which is remember this Loretta Lynch tarmac meeting yeah there's this notion that that the then attorney general has a meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton so not even like the sitting president right but with Bill Clinton and that we don't we still I don't think we know exactly what they they talked about but it was when Hillary was under investigation.
And there was this notion that maybe some message was sent to tell the Attorney General then to ease off of Hillary. And Fox News must have dedicated 100,000 hours to this.
If they did a minute, they did 100,000 hours. And it's like the whole pretense of that controversy, right, was that like, the Department of Justice needs to be separate from political entanglements, right? And that they should judge people's, you know, whether people are prosecuted, you know, based on the facts and based on the law and if they're not doing that then that is a scandal and like here we have just out in the open the attorney general under trump saying no yeah i'm gonna do whatever he wants like i will be a political actor and there's nothing wrong with that and it's just crickets like it's just total crickets.
Like there's no, has Andy McCarthy like written this

greeting? there's nothing wrong with that and it's just crickets like it's just total crickets like there's no as has Andy McCarthy like written a screed against this for national review I you know I mean like there was a whole industrial outrage complex on the right like dedicated to any sense of wrongdoing you know during the Obama or Biden administration and and they've just totally dispensed with that. And like, you know, I mean, obviously, I guess we've seen this across so many verticals.
But in this case, it is just as blatant as you could possibly imagine. You know, it's striking when you hear the video.
I'd read the clip, but I hadn't heard it until just now. She doesn't say, we're proud to work in this administration.
She has the North Korean thing about who's the greatest president ever. Then she doesn't say, we should implement the policies of the president of the United States.
That would be a little questionable, I'd say, to be saying that formally, but whatever, that could be on the border. She says, what does she say? We're proud to work at the direction of Donald Trump, but it really brings somehow personal, it's a personal fealty.
yeah right it's not even that gee in the executive branch there should be a separation between the president and the ag or the white house and the ag this is the personal agenda of donald trump that pam bondi is using the justice department to carry out across all these cases i saw a tweet from from this morning that is i just think pretty telling he wrote that uh over the course of the first two months here trump has claimed power to overturn article one of the constitution congress's authority overspending article two the predecessor's pardon power and article three and defiance of a federal court order we're about to get to that next on on immigration but like all of this stuff there's the boiling frogs element to it And I think that when put that way, it just shows how completely they are disregarding any legal powers or any legal limits beyond Donald Trump can do whatever he wants. Yeah, that's a good, I hadn't seen the Trump thing.
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Terms and conditions may apply. Let's get to immigration.
You had a, on that third point there, the defiance of a federal court order he's referencing this flight of venezuelan we'll kind of get to who these people are to the venezuelan part of this but essentially a judge you know had put a stay on this alien enemies act powers that that trump says that he is granting himself as far as deporting people inside this country. And they had a group of Venezuelans they put on a flight and the stay happened when there's some debate about this, but maybe the flight is in air.
And they went through it anyway and said, well, it's over international water, so we don't have to respond to this. And they don't seem to be having an interest in responding to it anyway.
So that's like the biggest news on the immigration front, But the biggest picture, you talked to Aaron Reikland-Melnick on our Bulwark on Sundays over on Substack, which I really recommend for people who want to get nerdy on what is happening right now with immigration. But what struck you from that conversation as kind of the biggest picture stay to play? Yeah, I think it was a good conversation, not because of me, but he really explained well, I think, the bigger picture, but also sort of the nuts and bolts of how some of it works.
I mean, just on this thing, this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is almost being slid over sometimes because of the sort of defiance, let's just call it, or evasion of the court order, and certainly an attitude of contempt towards the court order. But the invocation of this act is nuts.
I mean, and that itself should not, and I believe will not, one hopes will not stand up in court. It's been invoked, used three times, the War of 1812, World War I, World War II.
It's for actually about alien enemies in war. You know, some German saboteur shows up on the coast, on the West Coast or something.
But anyway, they had to invent a fake war with this Venezuelan gang to justify this. Now, Trump already has pretty broad powers to hold, detain, and to deport people who are not here lawfully.
And if you find people involved in gang activities, you can, of course, prosecute them just under the normal criminal laws of the United States. You can also detain and deport them.
And these people were being detained. I think it's really worth making this point that they weren't like roaming around free in the streets of the US, but he wants to deport them to El Salvador.
So that itself is outrageous. But on the bigger picture, two points, the rule of law is shattered in so many ways in the immigration area or pushed or stretched or distended.
And you could say in any one of these cases, some of these cases, well, it's kind of possibly plausible, but you put it all together. They want no one coming into the country, basically, almost.
I mean, that sounds like crazily overstated, but it's not that overstated. Certainly no one coming and staying.
They're not even crazy about people coming for a while. If there's some tiny risk, they'll stay, even if their overstay would be because they're hiking around on some trail for an extra week.
I mean, right, we're really in a kind of hostility to foreigners. And I think one point Aaron makes very well is Trump wants to convey the impression that this is Fortress America, that we are hostile to all these people who want to come here.
Not that we have to be a little more careful about who we take in, not that we took in an awful lot of people in the last 30, 40 years. We have to reduce some of those numbers.
Not that it's not good politics or good policy to not know exactly who's here. And there's some undocumented people we don't know about.
But he wants us to look as if we're hostile to immigrants. Not too crazy about visitors either, but hostile to immigrants, which is really jaw dropping for the United States.
Maybe we did this a little bit i guess in the 20s 30s and 40s i mean those laws were very restrictionist but the degree to which trump relishes the and the trump people and the whole administration and now people like rubio it's really unbelievable i mean that rubio who was a very pro-immigration guy, famously that gang of whatever it was in 2013, and who has literally told a very affecting story about his life as the son of immigrants, of refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. and getting asylum in the U.S.
in Florida from Cuba, that he's just fine with all this. I mean, asylum is gone.
The refugee resettlement program is gone. So again, I think what Aaron brings home is just the breadth of the hostility to any notion of the US as a land of refuge, a land of asylum, or a land of hope and opportunity for people from other countries.
I don't know a land that you'd want to even come to to visit, to your broader point, like honestly. So I have a rant on a pop-off on this uh on this venezuela uh flight but before we get to that just a couple of others just stories that have been out there this weekend there was this american pie spinoff actress as she was in a spinoff to american pie uh she's canadian 35 she had a previous work visa to be here that had been canceled she had some issue with her work visa she Diego.
A lawyer said, you know, since she's already in San Diego, she should go to the border to get a new visa. She gets detained and like sent to Arizona and put inside a pen like where she's like sleeping on a mat with aluminum foil over her.
This lady that was had been here legally and her visa had expired or something. Like a minor visa issue.
It's crazy that we're detaining this person. We have Dr.
Rasha Alouia. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
She is a physician specializing in kidney transplants and a professor at Brown University. She's 34.
She lives in Providence. The U.S.
consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in these special occupations requiring expertise. This was the big controversy about Indian H-1B visa applicants in Silicon Valley.
Her visa was valid through mid-2027. The lawyers don't know what happened, but she got sent.
She was flying back into the country. She got sent back to France and they think to Lebanon.
There's a married couple living in Wisconsin. The wife was, she was from Peru.
They're in Puerto Rico for their marriage. Came back.
They're going to go to Wisconsin. She was on an expired visa, but she was filling out the paperwork to become a permanent resident.
Married to an American citizen. Stepmother to an American citizen.
She gets detained at the airport and was also like sent to Texas to some ICE detention camp across the country. All of these cases are like ridiculous.
You know, like they said that he was going after criminals. Like, see what you want about any of these folks.
Like, sure, maybe if we're going to have a hard line on visa rules, maybe some of these folks are going to end up having to be deported or having to go back to their home country. I would be against that.
In the meantime, to put them in ICE detention centers and use U.S. resources to do this is purposefully cruel.
To your point and to Aaron's point like they're doing this because they want to send a message to people that they're not welcome here like that is what they're trying to scare people they're trying to freak people out and i think frankly it's going to work i don't know did he have anything else on that you know element of this is striking we didn't dwell on the whether it's working i just saw some fact that tourism is down some though for whatever that's worth and people are a little you know freaked out that they could make a slip up on a form and uh not a fill that a new form and using you know they've come here routinely on business one point aaron makes is that what does work mean you're you're a 27 year old you come here you're here for vacation you're going to go to the grand canyon you're going to hike, you're going to see Las Vegas. But you know, you also flip open your computer and do some remote work while you're here for your employer back in Berlin, or maybe you're a freelancer and you're, you know, someone hires you to do something.
We can't have that person in this country. I mean, it's really, yeah, the cruelty is the point, deterring other people coming in is the is the point.
And the self-deportation is the point, right, to get them all to err on the side of just leaving. And there are people, we've seen reports of people leaving who just are worried they're going to get snatched and they prefer to leave maybe with the rest of their family so they're not separated, as we've now seen instances of.
So it's, yeah, and the cruelty, it's so unnecessary, so terrible for this country, I think, not just for our image, but really for our own understanding of ourselves. And so utterly unnecessary.
What's the problem we're addressing here? I mean... Hey, everyone.
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None of these people I mentioned are criminals, gang members.

They're not selling fentanyl.

And just to get the facts right on that, on the third example I gave her,

her name is Camila Munoz. She's living in a small town in Wisconsin, finds love, gets married, is parenting a child.
They're on their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. The guy voted for Trump.
So I did see some chatter about this case on social media about fucking around and finding out. But I don't like, okay, I'm fine to laugh at the expense of Trump voters who are suffering their the consequences of their actions but like at the broader point this is this is preposterous and which takes us back to the venezuela situation so the alien enemies act you mentioned at the top was like the the notion here is that what what it gives them the ability to do tell me if this is is this is your understanding is essentially just to to fast track these deportations without due process right like you don't have to actually prove you know they don't have to have a court date you know it's just there's an accusation that they're a part of this enemy group trend or agua and that is all the rationale you need to deport yeah and they don't definitely got a criminal conviction or anything which would be another reason you could detain people and deport them so what we're doing with these people is we're sending them to el salvador's terrorism confinement center this is if you haven't seen the videos or pictures of this thing it's like a penal colony run by the villains and some dystopian robocop future it's like it's it sends a chill down your spine like the idea that you would send one innocent person to this fucking hellscape should just make you shudder i mean like if you've not looked at the videos the white house itself has helpfully like sent out a sizzle reel of the horrible treatment of the people at this penal colony i guess as some kind of deterrent or you know maybe to get steven miller hard i don know why they post it up, but you can watch that if you want.
Here's the thing, though. So, the CEO of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, that's I-M-M-D-E-F on social media if you want to check it out.
This is what she writes. So, we're taking her word on this, but I want to actually explain this case in detail.
She writes this, our client fled Venezuela last year and came to the U.S. to seek asylum.
He has a strong asylum claim. He was detained at entry because ICE alleged his tattoos are gang-related.
They are absolutely not. Our client worked in the arts in Venezuela.
He's LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign.
But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he's tren de Aragua we last spoke to our client on thursday before he was supposed to have a hearing in immigration court but ice didn't bring him to the hearing the government attorney had no info about why he was not there the judge reset the hearing for monday today we've been trying to contact our client ever since this morning yesterday sunday morning he disappeared from the online detainee locator our client came to the u.s seeking protection but he spent months in ice prisons been falsely accused of being a gang member and today he's been forcefully transferred we believe to el salvador we are horrified tonight thinking about what might happen to him now if this is even in the ballpark of being true, these people are fucking evil. They're evil.
Like this is the fundamental part of what America is. Like that we had welcomed people.
Like if this is true, this is a gay man fleeing persecution in Venezuela, comes to the border. Maybe you could decide that whatever, we need new asylee rules and that doesn't count and he doesn't count for asylum or whatever, but that we would do this and smear him and impugn him and put him in a fucking camp and then send him to this dystopian prison colony in El Salvador in a totally different country.
It's fucking insane. It is insane.
And I saw this thing from a member of French parliament, Raphael Glucksmann. He said, give us back the Statue of Liberty.
We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it'll be just fine back here at home.
That's where I'm at reading this story. Give it the fuck back.
Doge can take care of this. Elon Musk can put that on a fucking boat back to France.
Because if we're going to treat this person like this, there's no, we're welcoming the tired and poor and huddled masses. There's no yearning to be free here.
We're going to send you to a fucking authoritarian, dystopian penal camp in El Salvador, where you're going to get beat and abused and treated like shit and who knows what else just because you happen to be a Venezuelan that wanted freedom in this country. It is just appalling.
So I don't know if you have anything else on that. No, it's horrifying.
And look, if you said, look, we have to detain him and it's going to take a couple of weeks where we check out his story on the tattoos before he gets the temporary protective status, which is certainly Venezuelans are supposed to get, I believe, if they flee the Venezuelan authoritarian regime. But, you know, okay, that would be – maybe the conditions under which he's held aren't great, and that's kind of the messiness of our immigration system and of the border or something.
But the idea that we're sending him to this horrible penal colony in El Salvador is beyond belief. And again, why, what was the rush? The guy was detained.
I mean, he, he wasn't out on the streets being a member, allegedly a member of some gang. So it's purely about the performative cruelty and the, I guess they think deterrent effect and J.D.
Vance being able to go on Twitter and say, we're, we're deporting the criminals and uh the democratic judges i don't know if he says judges but the democrats want to keep them here or bring them in or keep them here or something like that i mean so it's really using these people as pawns for the for a very low political end it's really horrifying it's fucking evil i said jd vance it's sick like who are you like what are you you're you're religious you're quoting people about you know you're trying to quote ordo and morris like about like how we care about each other and we're you're doing this to this person like imagine being this person assuming that again assuming like it is reported as true they're like fleeing venezuela they make the long trek to america they think they might have the opportunity for freedom they end up getting put into a a cell and next thing you know you're on a plane with actual gang members because by the way i assume there are actual gang members also on this plane that we're sending and i think we probably shouldn't be sending them to fucking el salvador and paying el salvador a fee for this but besides the point okay we're sending some fucking gang members so you're on this plane with like these violent evil gang members and then you're gonna be you get your hair shaved and like you get treated like you are the fucking drag of humanity by some like like drunk on power like el salvadoran like robocop the way that they're like dragging these people around like i'm at i just imagine being that person like you are in hell like you like this is the worst thing you could possibly do to somebody these people are fucking sick which takes me to the next thing i want to talk about which is what do you do if you're the democrats about this because like obviously at its core it's sad to admit and it's depressing but probably probably on balance, like the snuff porn video of us taking tattooed Hispanic people and throwing

them in some fucking prison camp is probably a political winner.

I wish that were not the case,

but it probably is.

And so,

you know,

there'd be people out there saying,

Oh,

the Democrats,

this is pick your battles, pick your battles.'t know though what do you think how do the democrats handle this i've gotten radicalized on this i was never a big pick your battles person i just think that's you know you don't know which ones to pick until you try to fight them and also if you don't fight one you are kind of legitimizing it and so forth and this is a pretty as we've been saying a terrible case and the whole use of the alien enemies act and so they're about instantly in two weeks i think they've they've abrogated so there are hundreds of thousands of venezuelans here they seem to be doing fine incidentally they're great they love them in south florida no one wants to deport them except for trump so far as i can tell i'm except for these 2 000 gang members if they're that many and they're they have abrogated these Venezuelans' temporary protection status. They were let in, and the way TPS, temporary protection status, works is for 18 months.
And at the end, you can either extend it or not, depending on what conditions are in the home country. They've shortened that period.
So there are, I think, 200,000 people, Aaron said, mostly in Florida, probably Venezuelans who are supposed to be will become undocumented on April 3rd and then who will be subject to deportation.

So, again, they're addressing a non-problem in this case and purposely whipping up sentiments about the invasion and conflating the gang members with the overall community and whipping up sentiments about people of brown skin from what presumes mostly from central and latin america kind of flooding this country and invading this country and polluting our blood i mean it's really grotesque and and and terrible so i'm i'm with you in the in the rant side of it and the indignation side but i which maybe is coloring my political judgment i've been on two text chains this weekend and one zoom in which i've been told that we have to pick our battles defending gang members isn't good the doctor and at brown we should defend her because everyone likes you know physicians at brown and i don't know 11 the lebanese work and maybe they didn't okay whatever or canadian german yeah you're right i take that point too but and i guess I got kind of angry, actually, whatever. Canadian gal from American Pie.
Yeah, you're right. I take that point too.

And I guess I got kind of angry, actually, at one of these Zoom calls.

It's like, really?

I mean, with the pit American public, it's so sensitive and is judging every case on so much on the balance here.

And it's so important that if it adds 0.3% to Trump's approval rating over the next month, we can't talk about it. I think it's mostly self-defeating.
Obviously, there's some prudence in what fights you pick. But if the Democrats don't pick the overall fight on Trump's immigration policy as being inhumane, indecent, and unlawful, that's just pathetic.
And I don't think, incidentally, they would lose that fight. But if they would lose that fight, OK, let's try at least.
We can't just sit here here and accept this i don't think so i but as i say i don't quite trust my political judgment because i'm too i'm pretty uh worked up about it i guess yeah my fucking blood is boiling so i don't trust my political judgment either but i like what is the point of being here if you're not going to fight for these people like what is the point like this is this is america like this is the fundamental part of of america is the immigrant story. It doesn't mean we have to accept everybody.
It doesn't mean we can't deport gang members. But like, if you can't make this case in a way that is compelling, then okay, then whatever.
I mean, we're going to descend into authoritarian autocracy anyway, so what's the point? I get it if you're a random like, you know, I was the D triple C list and, and the Republicans think they can gain seats in certain places because people are upset about whatever. Okay.
Like I get if you're like one of these three congressmen or four congressmen in a vulnerable place and doesn't make sense for you to talk about this, but I don't, I don't see it. And, um, you know, I also just refuse to believe that everybody that is a Christian is Jerry Falwell Jr.
I think that there have got to be like a handful of non-fake Christians out there that can be appealed to on the grounds of just the inhumanity of this. I mean, one of the other examples that we talked about, I forget if it was with you or somebody else in the pod, was that case of the Iranian woman that was fleeing religious persecution, Christian, Iranian Christian.

And we sent her to panama i guess to be putting some locked up in some fucking hotel she couldn't speak to anybody the panamanians took our unwanted refugees as part of a deal to get take the panama canal back from whatever fucking nonsense he was like arguing and like uh you know is the plight of iranian christian refugees not not something that is material to any to a single christian church going trump voter i don't know maybe not but it's worth a try can i just add one thing on this you know i was just thinking i was on a panel last week off the record and all this this private conference, Democrats, and I was kind of being lectured. It's not fair.
Someone on the panel was saying, Bill, that's very nice that you're indignant. But it's the kitchen table.
It's the economic issues, the price of eggs. That's what killed us in 2024.
It's what we've got. It's just that's what people are talking about.
We've got to hammer it. I'm, of course, fine with making the economic arguments.
And in fact, it seems like the economy is slowing.

And one thing one could say about the economic arguments is if the economy is going to recession, the Democrats don't have to tell people they'll notice. But his particular example was the price of eggs, because that was so popular a while ago.
So I noticed somewhere, maybe I think I'm right about it, the price of eggs is coming down. I don't know why.
Price of eggs is down big right now. So it's like, great, let's just have everyone go and scream about that.

And then they get correctly mocked for making a huge deal of some temporary spike

because of, I don't know what it was, bird flu or whatever.

And there's so much sort of pseudo cleverness about what political arguments to make

that is, I think, foolish.

I don't know.

Wrong is wrong.

Does this get into your friend Chuck Schumer?

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's get into Chuck Schumer.

Wrong is wrong. I just, also, it it's like i keep coming back to who cares i don't like i don't know like uh isn't this a problem for ad makers and in august of 2026 yeah like in the meantime i don't know man if there was you're telling me that it's better for democrats to give boring talking points about the price of eggs while having there be no protests than having people leading like some massive protests outside the Statue of Liberty or outside of an ICE detention center.
again maybe maybe that's true maybe it would maybe it would backfire to have massive people protesting this i don't know for sure but it sure sure seems to me that mass mobilization against

trump a mass feeling that things are chaotic and crazy is probably better than kind of going along with business as normal and giving your talking points about the kitchen table issues. Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to Bachelor Happy Hour. I'm Joe.
And I'm Serena. And we are here with the iHeart Music Awards and David's Bridal, who are sponsoring this podcast and we are so grateful to them.
Thank you, thank you for finishing my sentence. And we are here with our favorites, Dotton and Charity.
Where were you in Bikinis in the Snow? Montana. Okay, she flew out and joined you guys.
Isn't it cold? Well yeah, it's Well, yeah. It's bikinis in the snow.
First, it's cold. We risk getting hypothermia for those photos.
Wow. They were sick, though.
I don't get bikinis in the snow. It's just like an aesthetic.
I don't know. If him and I did that, if we did Speedos in the snow, you guys would be like douchebags.
No, I wouldn't. Well, Speedos in the snow would be hilarious.
Oh would be like, let's see it. Come on.
I would not complain. I'd beg him to do stuff like that.
He's like, no. That's going to be the name of this podcast episode.
Bachelor Happy Hour, Speedos in the Snow. David's Bridal, if you're listening.
David's Bridal. Shift your branding a little bit.
David's Bridal, Speedos in the Snow. Chuck Schumer.
Yeah, Lauren Egan wrote for us on Sunday, our newest reporter. I'm going to get her on here in the next couple of weeks, but she's going to be covering the Democrats for us here at the Bulwark and just kind of the Democrats in the wilderness and hashing out the different views on these sort of conversations we're having right now.
She writes basically that, you know, privately, there is genuine anger among Democratic electeds at Schumer. I think one Democrat told her that this was like an Eric Cantor moment, which hit home for me.
And I know we lived through that, Eric Cantor getting kicked out by that fucking moron, Dave Brat. But just because he was out of touch with what Republican voters were looking for, I think there's potentially something there on that.
What do you make about the Schumer kerfuffle? So I was slightly, I was open to the Schumer argument about the CR. I don't think that was crazy that a government shutdown was, with neither substantively nor politically, have worked out particularly well.
And it wasn't the hill to fight on. It's just they didn't have a very good fight to make, you know, it wasn't.
So I was sympathetic to Schumer on that. Having said that, we both went back and forth a little.
i think you ended up much more critical on friday was it i was critical just i'll just make my point then you can give yours like briefly because i noticed some people in the comments i think kind of misunderstood my point if tumor decided we cannot win a shutdown because he knows his colleague is fat rid of the me though there'll be an uproar there'll be votes that the people don't have the spine for it for whatever reason if you've made that calculation okay well then still then in the meantime like you've got to use this moment as a flashpoint for fighting and you could still do talking filibusters they still could have spent the whole weekend pointing out all the evil shit Elon Musk is doing bringing bringing people to the floor, you know, getting attention,

you know,

driving interest around this.

And,

you know,

would any of that have mattered in the grand scheme of things in the midterms?

I don't know,

but at least it would have been responsive to the moment,

you know?

And like,

to me,

it was just like,

just this total fold without any fight,

without any clear message on it.

You could have sold me on the full,

fuck it,

let's go through a shutdown for sure.

But at least short of that, I wanted some fight.

So anyway, that's where I was at on Shimmer.

So I'm totally with you, and I might have gone for avoiding the shutdown,

but yes, at least show the fight ahead of time.

Not in a misleading way.

Say we may just have to go ahead because we're over the barrel,

but let's be clear what Elon Musk is doing.

Here's 36 hours on the center floor or whatever, you know,

as you say, through the night, get some attention attention real attention about real bad things that are happening including immigration for that matter if you want if they've been in this weekend they could have highlighted some of what was happening so that i'm very much where you are on that and then it's compounded for me over the weekend by two things i guess schumer's book tour i which he's gonna i guess he's actually going to these places or is it a virtual book tour? I haven't really focused, but either way, he's spending- I think he's supposed to be going to these places and I think it's going to be ugly for him. He's spending tons of time this week charging people admission, as I understand it, to sell his book on anti-Semitism, which maybe like when we actually have this administration trying, which includes a bunch of anti-Semites as well, or it's certainly adjacent to them,

is trying to impose authoritarianism on America.

He shouldn't be just going around having,

you know,

promoting his book.

It'll sell whatever it sells in any case,

I would think.

But anyway,

it's not an inspiring site.

And I also just got to say,

like this whole thing,

look,

I've been through this book process.

I've,

I had booked things that fell through and that went south, you know, and it's like, who cares? The anti-Semitism of warning would have been a very powerful book for Chuck Schumer during the Kamala Harris administration. So it would have been like a message to my own side.
I think that was the point of it, presumably, right? Right. But then once Trump wins and you are supposed to be the leader of the resistance, I don't know.
This feels like kind of an evergreen topic. And I maybe would say to my publisher, let's kick the can on this a little bit.
For the first hundred days, my job is fighting fucking Donald Trump's authoritarian regime, not making this needed but kind of unsadly evergreen point about the problem of anti-Semitism. Totally, totally.
And then he also gave this interview to the New York Times. I assume he gave it actually before Friday.
I was thinking about that, but Sunday Times often is pretty far in advance. Possible.
In which he just seems totally out of touch. I mean, he's going on about how, I think the Republicans could fall away from Trump, but let's make him a little more popular.
It happened in 2005 with Bush and as if it's the situation, the relationship between the president and the party in Congress is comparable. And, you know, but I work out in the gym with these guys.
And when you're working out with them on the treadmill, you really, you know, you kind of get a real sense of who they are. And those Republicans, I mean, it's like you, it's not just cringe, but it is horrifying, honestly, because it does, it is a window into how he's thinking.
And I think he should go as leader. I hadn't been there a week ago.
I mean, who cares if the majority of the minority leaders in some ways? He's not necessarily the face of the party. Other people should step up.
But I actually think he's now an impediment in a way that like Jeffries probably isn't. He's just not.
I don't know if he's a great leader or not, but he's not. Whereas Schumer now epitomizes out of touchness to Trump's authoritarian project.
And I don't know. Do you think there's a chance? I've picked up a couple of glimmers or murmurs about challenges to Schumer.
Have you heard anything? Do you think there's a chance someone will actually literally challenge him this week? It could happen. I don't know.
I kind of doubt somebody will challenge him this week. I had heard some murmurs before all this, like a month ago, that maybe Schumer himself was thinking that it might be the moment for him to sort of do what Mitch and Nancy had done and not leave the Senate, but step back and let somebody else be the leader.
So I don't know if this type of backlash against him is the type of thing that would encourage him more in that direction or the type of thing that would steal him and make him feel contrarian. I think it's pretty hard to see him getting pushed out before the next big reconciliation fight that is coming ahead.
I mean, if you're him, that's what you're saying to your members, right? Like, I have a plan. We're going to fight them on this reconciliation bill.
And the other thing is there's not really an obvious person. I think that Chris Murphy's been great

messaging-wise. He was the only one

sounding fucking

even close to reality on the Sunday shows

this weekend on the Democratic side

or obviously there's nobody on the Republican side.

But he's junior.

The people in the leadership

voted with Schumer mostly.

Didn't Klobuchar? I know Schatz did.

Dick Durbin is obviously not going to be it.

So Klobuchar and Schatz are kind of like the next generation people

in the leadership.

And it's kind of, I don't know, do either of those names really

tickle your pickle?

I mean, they should skip the people who are currently in leadership.

Certainly Durbin, obviously, and Patty Murray,

who are both Schumer's age or more.

But I wouldn't mind.

I like Klobuchar personally, and I don't know if they should should ask much, but I'm okay with either of them, I suppose, if they want to run. But you know what? Chris Murphy, in my opinion, I don't know the Democratic conference well, and I'm just going to volunteer this irresponsible opinion.
Chris Murphy should announce he's challenging him. He should get, if he can, I think you'd do 10 signatures, I understand, to call a special 20% of the conference, can request a special meeting of the conference.
I don't know what the rules are in terms of the actual challenge, I suppose, at that meeting. Someone nominates Murphy to replace Schumer.
So fine, he'll lose. I guess he'll lose 35 to 15 or something, or however many there are, 35 to 12 or something, maybe less.
But A, I think it would show something.

And I don't think it would be, I suppose Schumer wouldn't like it, but I think it would show a certain willingness to say, look, it can't just be business as usual.

And if Schumer wins, Murphy can be gracious in defeat and say, good, we're all going to

move ahead.

But I hope I've sent at least a signal to Chuck that we need to be making our case to

the American people a little more aggressively here and not assuming that jogging on the treadmill in the gym is the way to win over our Republican colleagues. So that's my advice to Chris Murphy.
He watches you, right? He watches you every day. I think that sometimes the senator tunes in.
Go for it, Senator Murphy. The gym thing is such a triggering thing for me.
She's like, we're fucking a decade into this, all right? It's not like, oh, they're're really good guys are going to do the right thing in the end we know that they're not going to like god i apologize for impugning amy klobuchar's integrity she was not one of the ten the voter for cloture so maybe she is the the unity candidate well this is one of these cases though gene mccarthy wasn't the guy in 67 until he decided no one else is doing it so if amy klobuchar steps up she'll be the person right i mean it's not like whatever you were however you know you've been 85 fourth fourth you know out there on the barricades or 65 until now the person who says i'm sorry this is unacceptable we need new leadership will be the person i think hey everyone think. Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to Bachelor Happy Hour.

I'm Joe.

And I'm Serena.

And we are here with the iHeart Music Awards and David's Bridal.

Who are sponsoring this podcast.

And we are so grateful to them.

Thank you.

Thank you for finishing my sentence.

And we are here with our favorites, Dotton and Charity.

Where were you in Bikinis in the Snow?

Montana.

Okay.

She flew out and joined you guys.

Isn't it cold?

No, it was.

Well, yeah. It's Bikinis in the Snow.
Of course it's cold. We risk getting hypothermia for those photos.
Wow. They flew out and joined you guys.
Isn't it cold? No, it was. Well, yeah.

It's bikinis in the snow.

Of course it's cold.

We risk getting hypothermia for those photos.

Wow.

They were sick, though.

I don't get bikinis in the snow.

It's just like an aesthetic.

I don't know.

If him and I did that, if we did Speedos in the snow, you guys would be like douchebags.

No, I wouldn't.

Well, Speedos in the snow would be hilarious.

I would be like, let's see it.

Come on. I would not complain.
I would be like, let's see it. Come on.

I would not complain.

I'd beg him to do stuff like that.

He's like, no.

That's going to be the name

of this podcast episode.

Bachelor Happy Hour,

Speedos in the Snow.

David's Bridal,

if you're listening.

David's Bridal.

Shift your branding a little bit.

David's Bridal,

Speedos in the Snow.

Room wear.

I'm going to do much more on the economy tomorrow, but I do want to close with this because Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, who is just not exactly, I think instilling confidence in the markets out there was on the shows this weekend. And I just wanted to play a couple of clips for his spin on what's happening with the, with the economy right now.
Let's talk about what happened in the stock market this week. Worst week for the market in two years.
Does that worry you, Mr. Secretary? Not at all.
I've been in the investment business for 35 years. And I can tell you that corrections are healthy.
They're normal. What's not healthy is straight up that you get these euphoric markets.
That's how you get a financial crisis. It would have been much healthier if someone had put their brakes on in 06, 07.
We wouldn't have had the problems in 08. So I'm not worried about the markets.
The Trump administration is comfortable to have consumers pay more for goods in America? Not at all, Christian. What I'm saying is the American dream is not let them eat flat screens.
That if American families aren't able to afford a home, don't believe that their children will do better than they are, the American dream is not contingent on cheap baubles they have from China, that it is more than that. And we are focused on affordability, but it's mortgages, it's cars, it's real wage gains.
I don't know what's more alarming there, having a multi-billionaire tell people that being able to afford goods in their home is not part of the American dream or the fact that he's like, you know, I don't think that he has watched the big short. I'm not even asking you to read the big short.
I don't think he understands what happened in the 2007 and 2008 economic crisis. I don't think that the Dow giving off three or four points during the 2006 run-up would have done anything to prevent the mortgage crisis.
But anyway, I don't know. In defense of the strategists, this does seem to be their shakiest political turf.
But I'll also say that turf will take care of itself, so to speak. Like if the market's down 10%, it's down 10%.
And it's, you know, every Democratic congressman should go around, I guess, telling his constituents, in case you didn't notice, the market's down 10%. And in case you didn't notice, inflation is not going down.
And in case you didn't notice, super confidence doesn't seem great. But the one thing with the economy is you don't really need to go around doing this kind of sales job.
But whatever. If they want to talk about it, that's fine.
If they want it, maybe they should see what they would do that was better. I mean, it's not too early to attack the Trump tax cuts, and I hope they do that.
I'm just so annoyed. Again, as you can tell, I can barely speak.
I mean, I had friends, you did too, in New York, kind of plugged into the financial world. Ah, Scott's up.
He's good. He'll be a voice of moderation and also a grown-up person there.
The reason he's defending all this, if you realize, about the ball, quote, the flat-screen TVs, is, of course, he's got to defend the idiotic tariffs, right? I mean, that's the reason he's backed into that. And he can't just say, look, the president's made a judgment.
I think we can, I think it's going to help the economy. You know, whatever the vaguely respectable thing is, he has to go in this demagogic, what, attack on consumers for caring that they could afford things.
TV, is that like a luxury good these days? You're not allowed to want to have, be able to afford a television set so you can watch the sd double a's for the next three weeks i don't know i mean i think it's it's so tone deaf and politically it is i mean people should attack him honestly though and i think i hope bernie sanders and aoc spend the next week or two bitterly attacking him and and and making him look like a ridiculous out-of-touch billionaire which he which he certainly seems to be They're on the road this week, AOC and Bernie, like later in the week.

Arizona.

We're on board.

Yeah, you should go out there with them and do like an exclusive interview

for Tim Miller for the Bulwark with AOC and Bernie, you know,

some of our former conservatives.

We're both in Arizona this week.

I think AOC and Bernie are there on Thursday,

and we've got our, sadly sold out for people who wanted to go, live event on Saturday in Phoenix. So I don't know, maybe we'll, maybe we'll see them on the road.
All right, Bill, one more thing before I lose you. Chuck Schumer has actually canceled the book tour.
So I guess he didn't want the heat that was coming to him. Don't blame him.
Hopefully he can turn to some more productive work on behalf of the minority

party because the minority party does still exist in this country for now so uh there you go chuck

schumer no book tour bill get back to your baubles get back to your silly little baubles you know and

uh we'll uh we'll see you next monday see you tim everybody else will be back here tomorrow for

another edition of the bullard podcast it's gonna be a good one we'll see y next Monday. See you, Tim.
Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullard Podcast. It's going to be a good one.
We'll see you all then. Peace.
Hey, sunshine. Oh, how the day can be so long.
I say I don't got no march in me. I can't turn the other cheek.
Why they're testing your patience. They just tested my reach.
Funeral flowers. Every 28 hours.
Being laid over hours. Sworn to protect and serve, but who really got the power, looking over their allowances, building prisons where the mountains is, laptops is for the county kids, metal detectors is where ours is, they'll never rewrite this, like they rewrote history, the fact that the statue of liberty was black is a god damn mystery, and so it goes, every truth don't get told All these cops get cleared and lives are stowed Every goose don't let go, whoa Just another nigga dead, just another nigga dead Send another to the feds, send another to the feds They calling a National Guard, public enemy I am Chuck D, Flavor Flav and Louis V, but I'm Huey'm Huey P the new elite it's either you or me let the sunshine cuz they dark clouds trying to ruin me it's more than Baltimore from show to show Patience torn, patience gone Oh, love Shine, shine, all the day Be so, be so, be so, be so Shine, shine, all the day The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brout.