Bill Kristol: The Preposterous and Ridiculous Lies About the FBI

Speaker 1 Ah,

Speaker 1 greetings for my bath, festive friends. The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money.
Getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 1 No fees, no interest. I used it to get this portable spa with jets.
Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 2 Save the offer in the app. Ends 1231, see paypal.com/slash promo terms.
Points can be redeemed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval. PayPal Inc.
at MLS 910-457.

Speaker 3 Tired of spills and stains on your sofa? Wash away your worries with Anibay. Anibay is the only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

Speaker 3 That's right, sofas start at just $699.

Speaker 3 Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabric.

Speaker 3 Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing. The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Speaker 3 Shop washable sofas.com for early Black Friday savings up to 60% off site-wide, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

Speaker 3 No return shipping or restocking fees, every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 2 All right, hey guys, a few programming notes on this January 6th anniversary. Uh, before we get to Bill, the first, we are launching a newsletter this week focused on the Trump immigration regime.

Speaker 2 It's going to be led by Adrian Carascio. Love Adrian, been working with him for a long time.
He's a great reporter, and he's great for this. He knows the immigration beat.

Speaker 2 He's been doing this for a while, and just glad to have somebody of his caliber on one of what might be the most important, or maybe it's top two or three most important issues of the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 The newsletter is going to be called Huddled Masses. I'll be out twice a week.
You can sign up at thebuler.com/slash subscribe if you haven't.

Speaker 2 Former congressional candidate John Avalon, who's been in the extended Bulwark fam for a while now, has a new pod series we're hosting called How to Fix It.

Speaker 2 The first episode of this season is out on civics education. Some folks have given us feedback.
They're looking for more off the news, kind of solutions-oriented content. I totally get that.

Speaker 2 And I'm glad John is going to be taking that on and providing it. So the first episode of that is already out, How to Fix That With John Avalon.
Number three, we're leaning into YouTube this year.

Speaker 2 We've been leaning into it, but me and Sam and others are going to be doing some interviews and hot takes that don't fit the daily pod schedule. And a lot of you guys are kind of in a...

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're in a routine. I've got this routine with other pods where, you know, you got your afternoon, it's a daily.

Speaker 2 And so when there are other things that don't really fit that schedule, either because of breaking news or because it's kind of a niche topic, or somebody wrote an interesting article I want to go a little deeper on, we're going to be popping those up on YouTube.

Speaker 2 So, if you want more, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page. We'll also have a salutary announcement for somebody in the fam at the end of the pod.
So, please stick around for that. All right.

Speaker 2 Up next, it's Monday, so it's Bill Crystal.

Speaker 4 Now, we gather

Speaker 4 due to a selfish man's injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning.

Speaker 4 What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States.

Speaker 4 Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen

Speaker 4 as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. Fairly or not, they'll be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history.
That will be their legacy.

Speaker 2 That was Mitt Romney four years ago today.

Speaker 2 It certainly raises some questions about how the participants of that insurrection will now be remembered. And it's Monday, so I've got Bill Crystal here to discuss, Bill,

Speaker 2 what you think. Is that going to be their legacy? We're on the four-year anniversary here of the January 6th insurrection.

Speaker 1 You know, I hope it's their legacy on the eight-year anniversary, your 9th or 10th or 11th. But right now, the leader of that insurrection, the inspirer of it, kind of the organizer, really, Donald J.

Speaker 1 Trump, is going to be inaugurated in two weeks as president of the United States.

Speaker 1 His administration will be stuffed full of defenders, excusers, defenders, now cheerleaders for the January 6th insurrection and for the...

Speaker 1 attempted coup that kind of preceded it for a couple of months within the government. And they're going to pardon Romney Romney.
Trump will pardon a lot of the January 6thers.

Speaker 2 Romney might need a pardon in the next two weeks.

Speaker 1 Well, that's right. He'll prosecute Romney and Liz Cheney, who told the truth about January 6th, and will pardon the January 6th rioters.

Speaker 1 So, four years ago, and the day after, among conservatives, not just Mitt Romney, but among all kinds of people, this was the one thing that everyone repudiated. This was shameful.

Speaker 1 The people who liked Trump, they were telling him this is going to ruin your reputation, and everyone was walking away from it. And here we are, four months later, and it's a,

Speaker 1 you have to be an excuser/slash defender of JSIC's of the insurrection to have a future in the Trump administration, pretty much, or in Republican politics. And

Speaker 1 they're running the country.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And you get mocked for acting like it's a big deal.
It's like, oh,

Speaker 2 are you guys not over that now?

Speaker 2 That was four years ago. That's ancient history.
You guys are still talking about that?

Speaker 2 We just have a ton of coverage on January 6th because we're not going to be cowed by their their jeers.

Speaker 2 And I want to get through a couple of the different pieces because there's some interesting news as well.

Speaker 2 But you led your morning newsletter with George Orwell saying restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

Speaker 2 It is important to restate the obvious, I think, especially as memories start to fade.

Speaker 2 One of the guys we have writing on the site this morning is Sergeant Gannell, who's the Capitol Police officer who's defending the Capitol that day against the mob.

Speaker 2 He writes this, this is the fourth anniversary of January 6th. This one hits harder than the other three and makes the moral injury far greater.

Speaker 2 What took place was an unforgivable cardinal sin, but clearly much of the country, including one of our political parties, has chosen to reward those who committed it.

Speaker 2 I do think it's valuable to spend time discussing the obvious about why that was bad.

Speaker 1 That's a very moving piece by Sergeant Goodnell, which people should read.

Speaker 1 And I found it moving and

Speaker 1 depressing, of course.

Speaker 1 You know, your friend Steve Bannon, who's smart and often, you know, actually sees around the corner a little more than some of his MAGA buddies, two days, I think, after the insurrection on January 8th, 2021, he was already understanding that fighting for the interpretation of January 6th would be extremely important.

Speaker 1 He wanted to do some stuff in the last two weeks of the Trump presidency that didn't work out. Further demonstrations and showing they weren't embarrassed by it.

Speaker 1 But he understood from the beginning that the definition of January 6th, looking back, would be a defining thing going forward.

Speaker 1 And I think Trump had an instinct of that too, obviously, pretty early on and worked pretty hard on that for the last three or four years. And then so many others just capitulated and went along.

Speaker 1 And it is just extraordinary that when you do read

Speaker 1 what people said, when it was fresh in people's minds and when they knew enough to know what had happened.

Speaker 1 And incidentally, it's not as if we've learned new things that have made it less horrible, less contemptible, less

Speaker 1 damaging what happened on January 6th, quite the opposite.

Speaker 1 We have the January 6th Committee report, which Trump's people hate, but which is none of its factual conclusions have really been challenged, which shows how much more was going on behind the scenes that we didn't quite know about, right?

Speaker 1 At the Justice Department and elsewhere. So people should be more upset by what Trump tried to do.
And instead,

Speaker 1 they've managed to really reverse the narrative.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And to your point, Trump's...
instinct to defend himself was self-preservation, right? It was ego, right?

Speaker 2 Like versus what Bannon and others were doing, were recognizing the potential death of the movement, which should have been the death of the movement, right, that day.

Speaker 2 You could do this for a million people, so I almost hate to pick on Eric Erickson, but

Speaker 2 his post that day was so jarring to your point about where people's minds were in the moment to remind people of that. Here's Eric Erickson at 3:02 on January 6th.

Speaker 2 Shoot the protesters, waive the rules, impeach, waive the rules, convict, waive the rules, deny the ability to run for election again.

Speaker 2 It's just worth stating that because it's just so plainly stated, right? That it was not, this was not like, oh, only the never Trumpers, only MSNBC thought he should convict, right?

Speaker 2 It was people that were actively supporting Donald Trump, active members of the conservative movement, people that host conservative gatherings, MAGA gatherings, saying that the protesters should be punished by, should be shot by police and that Donald Trump should be denied the ability to run again.

Speaker 2 And what we have today is a report from Bloomberg, which says Trump is expected to grant clemency to over 1,000 people tied to January 6th. That was a report out this morning.
And

Speaker 2 going from shoot the protesters to clemency for the 1,000 people involved is a pretty dramatic switch.

Speaker 1 The Times had a pretty good piece. This began walking through how this happened, sort of a little bit of the frog in boiling water over the last four years.
First, well, it wasn't as bad.

Speaker 1 There was Antifa people. And then a little, there were some misled people.
And Pelosi should have taken more responsibility for security.

Speaker 1 But within about a couple of years, it just became pro-January 6th. And that's certainly where it's been.
Trump has not hidden his views on that, quite the contrary.

Speaker 1 He started playing, I remember writing something, what, six, nine months, eight months ago, maybe, when he started playing that January 6th, quote, anthem at the rallies and how appalling that was.

Speaker 1 And now, as you say, he's going to pardon them. Various Republican members of Congress are inviting some of these felons.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I guess they're out of jail by now, so those ones, to be there at the inauguration. And this is what authoritarian movements do.
I mean, two things, I guess I I would say.

Speaker 1 This is if other people who've studied this stuff say the authoritarian movements take a defeat and have to turn it into a victory. Now, it may be a short-term defeat.

Speaker 1 They get people put in jail, but it has to become a martyrology, you know, not something wrong, right? And they've done that all in.

Speaker 1 And the other thing I'd say about authoritarian movements is they radicalize. I think we've seen that so much over the years.

Speaker 1 And things that were at the fringe of the movement, you know, six months after January 6th, Julie Kelly and sort of Bannon's people and the kind of we need to stand up for these people now totally mainstream.

Speaker 1 Now the Wall Street Journal, having been very nice to Trump for the last year, basically, is a little upset about the pardons. You know, I mean,

Speaker 1 someone there actually looked at what some of these people did.

Speaker 1 I guess maybe someone there on the page saw some of the videos or is reminded of what happened to Sergeant Goodell and others of the Capitol Police.

Speaker 1 And so they kind of refer that Trump not pardon all the ones, especially the ones who committed anything violence.

Speaker 1 Doesn't make them rethink any of their endorsement of this man to be basically endorsement, I guess they don't formally endorse endorsement of this man to be president of the United States, though.

Speaker 1 You know, even there, the kind of establishment Republicans are, they're not going to be cheering the pardons, but they've done their little wish that it wouldn't happen.

Speaker 1 And it's not going to stop them from being all in on a million different things Trump is doing.

Speaker 1 Or it's not going to stop them from totally refusing to reflect more broadly on what it means that Trump is the next president and what kind of administration he's going to be running if it's a pro-January 6th, pro-insurrection, pro-authoritarian, pro-violence, pro-political violence administration.

Speaker 1 Just one more point.

Speaker 1 I think in March of 2023, a law was passed saying the House should put up a plaque honoring the police officers who fought so bravely on that day, Capitol Police, who work for the Congress, you know, protect those members of the House and the Senate.

Speaker 1 And the Republican House has not done that.

Speaker 1 I guess Mike Johnson just can't think it's just a bridge too far to actually say anything nice about these police officers who may well have saved the lives of some of these members of Congress.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I just kind of want to sit with that for a second because I just don't, like, what can you even say? Right.

Speaker 2 And that is that House Republicans specifically stating that they are on the side of the perpetrators, not of the defenders of the Capitol, and that the people that risked their lives that day don't deserve to be honored at all.

Speaker 2 It does make hollow a lot of their comments about Abby Gate and such.

Speaker 2 You know, it feels like we should be able to honor the people that defended the country, no matter the circumstance, the political circumstance. Your point, though, about

Speaker 2 the Wall Street Journal's tepid editorial on these pardons and really the silence from Republican elected officials.

Speaker 2 There's been this conventional wisdom congeal that it's like, well, you know, Trump won and he won the popular vote. So what are you going to expect?

Speaker 2 Everybody just like that, you just got to go along now. And there's no actually actual reason for that, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, all of these people that were elected to the Senate and the the House could choose to reflect their own values or views of their state or district and say, you know, we'll try to advance the parts of the agenda I agree with and speak out against those who oppose.

Speaker 2 That was like the standard in 2017, right? They didn't end up acting on it in a lot of cases, but that's how Marco Rubio said he was going to act. Remember running that he was a check on Trump in 17.

Speaker 2 It's how the speaker at the time, Paul Ryan, said he was planning on acting during this period in 2017.

Speaker 2 You wrote for the newsletter last week about this within the context of Trumpism being fully triumphant.

Speaker 2 And you're right that we're in this unprecedented moment where an utterly shameless demagogue at the head of authoritarian movement is in control of the executive branch and, to a considerable degree, Congress with a massive media infrastructure behind him, oligarchs supporting him, and with a demoralized opposition trying to prop up unsteady guardrails.

Speaker 2 And how different that is from 2017 when there was still kind of even within the Republican Party, Party, these forces that were feeling him out, trying to call balls and strikes

Speaker 2 and all of this. And you would think that this moment on this anniversary, these pardons, this would be a time to call.
I never know how that metaphor works.

Speaker 2 Do you call a ball or do you call a strike when he does something bad? To call a ball, I guess you don't see it at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's not as if they don't have access to putting out press releases or making statements or being giving interviews. Today is January 6th.

Speaker 1 To my knowledge, I haven't exhaustively looked at what's happening on every cable network, obviously, or what's being put out by every Senate or House office. Is any Republican noticing that fact?

Speaker 1 Is anyone saying, four years ago, we had this terrible moment?

Speaker 1 Even Mitch McConnell and people who spoke eloquently at the time, I don't know, maybe one or two of them, as Republicans are saying things.

Speaker 1 I think Democrats are saying a fair amount, but the ones who don't want to address it are memory-hauling it, and the others are excusing it and then sort of getting pretty close to celebrating it.

Speaker 1 And they're the ones who are making all the noise.

Speaker 1 And the most notable event, an event that was unprecedented in I would say, in modern American history, but maybe in American history, let's pretend it didn't happen. Very depressing.

Speaker 1 And it's not the I mentioned that piece, I guess, to demoralize the opposition.

Speaker 1 President Biden had a little op-ed in the Washington Post this morning, which the spirit of it was good in the sense that he was saying we can't forget it. We can't memory hole it.

Speaker 1 You know, we need to call what happened. But he wrote it in a polite way.

Speaker 1 He's sort of tough on the people who attacked the Capitol, but he doesn't mention the name of the person who was behind the attack on the Capitol. Donald Trump's name is nowhere in that.

Speaker 1 Now, I suppose from his point of view, he's two weeks from now, Donald Trump becomes president. He doesn't want to have a he wants to have a polite transition.
He'll attend the inauguration.

Speaker 1 It's more effective, perhaps, not to make it look like he's taking a shot at Trump. I'm sure that's what he tells, they tell themselves there in the White House.
But I mean, really?

Speaker 1 It reads weirdly, did you read it, right? I mean, when you read it, it's like, well, there was this assault on the Capitol. Very bad, really terrible thing.
We can't memory hole it.

Speaker 1 Like, why did this assault happen?

Speaker 2 I mean, you know. I mean, mean, the problem here is the man that sent them there and then the man that is planning to pardon them for their actions, actually.

Speaker 2 And so like that is the person worth focusing on. The forward-looking side of this, I think, is also important.

Speaker 2 And we have Tom Jocelyn, who worked on the January 6th Committee, and Norm Eisen in the Bullwick this morning analyzing Cash Patel's interviews.

Speaker 2 And he gave, he had a very active podcasting career between his attempt to overthrow the government and now being nominated to run the FBI.

Speaker 2 Cash had a segment called Cash's Corner on the Epoch Times, just a conspiracy rag. And I just want to play one clip from it.

Speaker 5 How do we have eight people

Speaker 1 there?

Speaker 5 And Christopher Wray, we'll get to him in a second, refuse to answer questions about it. You have to ask yourself, okay, well, that was in planning for at least a year.

Speaker 5 What was the FBI doing planning January 6th for a year?

Speaker 2 So the incoming nominated FBI director seems to either believe or want to perpetrate a lie that the FBI was planning January 6th, that the institution that he wants to lead was part of an effort to plan the attack on the Capitol.

Speaker 2 It's unclear how that is possible, given that they didn't know that Donald Trump was going to lose for a year among the million reasons that that wasn't possible.

Speaker 2 She didn't know that Donald Trump was going to challenge the election.

Speaker 2 Does the FBI have people from the future that flew back to let them know that there was going to be a large stop the Steal effort following Donald Trump's clear loss in the 2020 election.

Speaker 2 It's unclear how this would work, but it is pretty relevant, I believe, that this person that is coming in claims that the FBI was involved and has said so repeatedly. That was not just one clip.

Speaker 2 In an interview with Tim Poole, who's another conspiracy guy, kind of a horseshoe MAGA, far-left E-tern MAGA guy, Poole said that while he could not prove it definitively, it looks like you have a preponderance of evidence suggesting there may have been federal law enforcement involved in making January 6th happen.

Speaker 2 Patel eagerly went further. I'll get you beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 2 So, again, he is very clear that he believes that the people that he is set to be in charge of instigated, organized, thought up the attack on the Capitol. How does that work?

Speaker 2 How are these people supposed to report to him? Is he going to have an internal investigation when he starts to figure out who is behind this?

Speaker 2 Are we just going to pretend like he doesn't think this or didn't say this? Do you have any thoughts?

Speaker 1 Well, actually, actually, he will do internal investigations and firings, and they're certainly already preparing to do that in the Justice Department as a whole.

Speaker 1 And the FBI has been usually separated out from a lot of that, except for the director himself, Trump fired Comey.

Speaker 1 But I think Patel would love nothing better than to have 30 loyalists at the top levels of the FBI instead of career people.

Speaker 1 As you say, the quotes are amazing, and it's really worth looking at it, and really worth then saying, okay, this is not a case of a guy who, you know, wasn't really involved, but was on some show and didn't quarrel when some host said something.

Speaker 1 He was spending a lot of time pushing these conspiracies. Yes.

Speaker 1 I mean, he had some credibility in MAGA World, but he had served in the Trump administration in various national security kind of related positions.

Speaker 2 Intelligence-related.

Speaker 1 Intelligence-related, right? He had dealt with the FBI before that, had been in the Justice Department, I think, at the end of the Obama administration, actually.

Speaker 1 And so he was a major figure in pushing this sort of stuff much more than, I don't know,

Speaker 1 other people who are just sort of reading talking points, you might say, from MAGA world. Not that they should be excused either.
Yeah, and it's just unbelievable to nominate him as head of the FBI.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's unsuited for so many other reasons as well.

Speaker 1 But the willingness to indulge in conspiracy theories and ones that are derogatory as in the world where we're trying to say, you know, really libelous, in effect, I mean, to the sort of to the people in the institution you're taking over.

Speaker 1 I mean, he seems to want to say that Chris Ray,

Speaker 1 who was Trump appointed head of the FBI in 2017 and who has been serving for seven years, what can criticize criticize decisions Chris Ray made, from both sides, probably.

Speaker 1 Is he really saying that Chris Wray, this was an FBI disinformation, deep state campaign launched by Chris Ray? That seems to be what he wants to say.

Speaker 1 Might be nice if Chris Wray, who I think has already announced he's quitting before Pazzell takes over, you know, would say, I don't know, maybe it wouldn't help, but, you know, after he quits at least, that this man should not be the next FBI director.

Speaker 1 Trump's entitled, Chris Ray might say, to have someone who didn't get in fights with Trump and who's sort of a fresh face and all this, not someone who's indulged in and propagated these kinds of really dangerous conspiracy theories.

Speaker 2 Or offer to testify against him or say that he lied or go in front of the committee and

Speaker 2 provide information. Because sometimes it's just worth just stating clearly what the conspiracy that Cash Patel is saying the FBI was involved with is

Speaker 2 because it just shows the preposterousness of it when you state it out loud.

Speaker 2 And I hope that there will be Democratic senators during these confirmation hearings that take this process very seriously and walk it through with him.

Speaker 2 Because the theory that he's promoting is that the FBI knew

Speaker 2 that Donald Trump would attempt to roll back his loss in the election, right? Like that the FBI knew that Donald Trump was going to try to stop the steal, so to speak. And so

Speaker 2 in order to undermine that effort, they concocted this notion that they were going to put FBI

Speaker 2 agents among the MAGA masses and encourage them to storm the Capitol to undermine MAGA, right? Like, that's the theory that the FBI was able to

Speaker 2 recognize that if they just put eight or 20, whatever, undercover MAGA folks in red hats amidst a crowd on the mall, that they could convince the crowd to storm the Capitol, attack police officers, shit on the Capitol, like raise Trump and Confederate flags, do all of these things that would then undermine the movement.

Speaker 2 Like that's the theory. And it's like, it's nonsensical.

Speaker 2 It makes no sense. Like there's no, there are all these things that you would have to know, you know, in advance, like for starters, that the people would go along with this, right?

Speaker 2 Like imagine yourself being at a protest and having a person on your side being like, Tim, you know, I'm trying to think of the last protest I was at. I was at some gay rights protests around the,

Speaker 2 you know, Supreme Court rulings.

Speaker 2 And it's like, you know, you had some people in rainbow hats that are like, Tim, what we really should do is storm the Capitol and, you know, storm the offices of the anti-gay marriage officials.

Speaker 2 I'd be like, what are you talking about? So like the idea that this plot would actually work, even if they had conceived of it, is preposterous.

Speaker 2 And now that the man that is perpetrating this is set to lead the FBI, like leads to all of these questions.

Speaker 2 And you have Jon Thune on the Sunday shows this weekend talking about how, well, yeah, the FBI could use some reform. And so I'm actually, I'm pretty confident that you're going to have cash in there.

Speaker 2 I would like to know from Jon Thun, is this the kind of reform that you think it is needed?

Speaker 2 You want somebody that perpetrated a lie about the FBI officials and said that they were part of an anti-American insurrection effort? Like, you want, that's the type of reform you're looking for?

Speaker 2 You want somebody that is going to try to target political foes? It's going to make up things about people like Ray Epps, like frame random Americans?

Speaker 2 You want someone that's going to try to frame random Americans and publicly accuse them of

Speaker 2 being part of a plot with no evidence? That's the person that you wanted to charge of the FBI, John Thune? The whole thing is just ridiculous on its face. And I do feel like...

Speaker 2 It's almost so ridiculous that people don't know how to deal, like journalists don't know how to deal with it.

Speaker 2 And Republicans are getting away with excusing it in a way that I really hope does not happen over the next few weeks. Sorry for my rant there.

Speaker 1 No, that was very good. And I, John wasn't John Thune, the guy people sort of sort of happy to see win the majority leadership because he was the least Trumpy of the three candidates.

Speaker 1 He's not exactly, let's see if he stands up at all. I mean, Democratic senators, I hope, do a serious job on the questioning.

Speaker 1 I hope a few Republicans think maybe they should think of themselves as United States senators and not simply Republican Party operatches loyal to Trump, and especially in these national security and law enforcement jobs.

Speaker 1 If they want to give Trump some ridiculous education secretary, what's her name? Melinda McMahon. Okay, you know, I don't really.
I'm not going to fall out my sword on that.

Speaker 1 But though, if you actually were like on the education committee, you might care a little bit about the education bill and prefer to have someone more competent in there or more who knows something about education.

Speaker 1 But leave that aside. These are serious national security and law enforcement positions: Justice Department, FBI, intelligence, national intelligence, Defense Department.

Speaker 1 Surely some Republican senators think it matters who runs those departments.

Speaker 2 Surely?

Speaker 1 Well, no, I mean, yes, that surely would be

Speaker 1 a question.

Speaker 2 So I just have to sit on that for a second because I don't know. Yeah, maybe not, actually.
Probably not, I would say, but we will see as the hearings will begin.

Speaker 2 Maybe at the end of this week, early next week.

Speaker 1 I think next week mostly.

Speaker 1 And then Patel is apparently might be a couple more weeks off because they'll do the attorney general maybe the deputy a g first i think patel i mean i'll be interesting to see i i intend to try to keep writing about patel and i know tom jocelyn has done a ton of research and he's a very very good researcher spent most of his career researching islamist extremist groups and many of them overseas and and what he's been so struck by is how much and this gets to your other point i mean how much the media in general just underestimates the network of extremism on the right the fbi was right to try to have informers in the proud boys the proud Proud Boys were violent, you know, and they proved it on January 6th.

Speaker 1 They did it anyway.

Speaker 1 And if only, honestly, if the FBI had maybe been, you know, taking some of the informers a little more seriously and been able to do a little more, but they were constrained in other ways, you know, to stop them from organizing the insurrection and having the weapons they had and so forth, it would have been a good thing, not a bad thing.

Speaker 1 And God knows we've seen enough instances of right-wing extremist violence here in the U.S. in the last many years that the FBI needs to worry about it.
And they have to some degree.

Speaker 1 But Cash Patel is not going to be very interested. I don't believe in stopping any of that.

Speaker 2 When it comes to winter, it's like survival of the fittest out there. And I'm willing to do whatever I can to try to stay cozy.
I hate winter. This is why I moved south.

Speaker 2 And for the ultimate cold weather necessities, whether cold weather for you means 48 degrees like it is here in New Orleans or actual cold, snow Mageddon, like it is in D.C.,

Speaker 2 you got to check out our friends at Quince. With Quince, you can treat yourself to true quality at an affordable price.

Speaker 2 Something everybody needs in their closet is Quince's iconic Mongolian cashmere sweater, which starts at just 50 bucks.

Speaker 2 They have super soft fleece sweatpants, which are a major upgrade to whatever you're lounging in right now. Wind resistance responsible down jackets are perfect for keeping warm.

Speaker 2 No matter what you're looking for, all Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.

Speaker 2 By partnering directly with top factories and cutting up the cost of the middleman, Quince Quince passes the savings on to you.

Speaker 2 And they use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. I'm just pumped to get into my new Quince winter wear.

Speaker 2 They treated me so well over the summer with my little button-up sweaters. And I've got this long-sleeve tee from Quince I've been using.

Speaker 2 You probably saw it on the road during the Bulwark bus tour last year before the election. The stuff has been great.
Got a new batch coming in soon.

Speaker 2 Highly recommend you guys should get out and get one as well. Luxuriate in coziness without the luxury price tag.

Speaker 2 Go to quince.com slash the bulwark for 365-day returns plus free shipping on your order.

Speaker 2 That's q-u-in-ce-e.com slash the bulwark to get free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash the bulwark.

Speaker 2 One tell from Chris Ray

Speaker 2 about what he expects from the next administration in Cash Patel was a news item, I think for the back end of last week, I didn't have a chance to get to.

Speaker 2 The FBI released new information that they had never released before about the unknown suspect who planted two pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 2 They showed video of the person. They gave a height five foot seven.

Speaker 2 So they can be seen wearing distinctive Nike Air Max speed turf shoes in yellow, black, and gray, saying less than 25,000 of those were sold.

Speaker 2 So that was maybe the most distinctive feature of the person. To me, the timing here is so telling, right?

Speaker 2 That it's like they feel like this investigation is over under the new administration, and this is a last-ditch effort to try to identify the person that really intended to cause much more harm and carnage on that day.

Speaker 2 And I believe Kamala Harris was in the DNC around the time that the pipe bomb was discovered. So, I mean, a huge crisis averted there.

Speaker 2 And I think it's pretty telling that this was the moment that the FBI decided to kind of release that tip publicly.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, Jr.: There was also at the end of last week, a couple of resignations that weren't widely reported.

Speaker 1 I think they were reported a little bit this weekend from the Justice Department, quite senior levels, career people who had been in the national security side of things, and including the person who ended it, whose name I'm now blanking on, but he wasn't that well known, obviously, beyond legal worlds.

Speaker 1 I think very well respected, who led the investigation of Trump's taking all the documents to Mar-a-Lago, which is a cut-and-dry investigation.

Speaker 1 They seem to have done a competent job of discovering which documents were there and securing them and so forth, and then indicting Trump on a very good case, which, of course, Judge Cannon has totally delayed and now is presumably going to make moves when Trump orders the Justice Department to dismiss it.

Speaker 1 So he retired, and I think a deputy perhaps who had also worked with the special counsel retired. I don't blame them for retiring.
People have their own reasons, their own

Speaker 1 considerations. I don't want to second guess, you know, someone saying I'm not going to hang around and possibly get fired and go, they'll try to take away my retirement benefits.

Speaker 1 I mean, who knows what it is, or it's just, you know, it's hopeless anyway to fight that. So why not just leave a week earlier?

Speaker 1 But the degree to which you're going to have, whether they get fired or people resign early, and without being judgy about that, the degree to which you'll have a lot of chances for Bondi as AG and Patel at the FBI and others to put their own people in.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, the Schedule F reform. We can have a federal government six months from now that really does not look recognizable in some ways.
And this could be especially true in key agencies.

Speaker 1 That's what's so worrisome about Patel and about the Justice Department stuff.

Speaker 2 Jay Bratt, that's the name of the person you're referencing. In this specific instance, I'm not going to use the word judge people, but I think that people that

Speaker 2 are in these agencies that are responsible public servants that do not have,

Speaker 2 you know, what's the word, exposure with regards to Trump, I think it is kind of incumbent upon them to stay. Obviously, personal issues, et cetera, accepted.

Speaker 2 Somebody like this, somebody like Brat, they're going after him.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, Trump has talked about how like this, you know, the raiding of my home, you know, was the most outrageous thing that's ever happened in the history of the country.

Speaker 2 And so for somebody like that, I think, A, they're on the top of the potential list of folks that Patel is going to come in and try to root out internally and potentially externally.

Speaker 2 I have no judgment for people that were involved in those investigations that did the responsible thing and are now going to find themselves on the other end of the barrel of the government.

Speaker 2 We are kicking off the new year and we are back with our friends at One Skin.

Speaker 2 I was in Colorado over the holidays. I was up in the mountains, and man, my skin was chapped.
That dry skin, I'm a Colorado boy, and the dry weather didn't used to get to my skin like it does now.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it's something about aging or the fact that I'm a Louisiana humidity man now, and my skin just hasn't adjusted, but for whatever reason, I was piling on the One Skin to keep myself feeling refreshed.

Speaker 2 Only One Skin has the OS1 peptide, the first ingredient to target cellular senescence, a root cause of aging responsible for lines, wrinkles, and crepey skin.

Speaker 2 With OneSkin's groundbreaking approach, you're not just helping your skin look and feel younger and healthier on the surface, you're helping it behave better at the cellular level.

Speaker 2 So you'll see improvements now and in the future.

Speaker 2 So, whether you're looking for a scientifically proven cleanser, moisturizer, sunscreen, or a whole new routine, we love the Complete Skin Longevity Regimen. Give it 12 weeks and see for yourself.

Speaker 2 Make 2025 the year you invest in habits that keep your skin healthier and help you look your best. Use code Bulwark for an exclusive 15% off at oneskin.co.

Speaker 2 You know, so when I was in Colorado, just moisturizing myself and my family, you know, there's some straits around. And every time you get to the holidays, you get to Colorado, people are talking.

Speaker 2 They're like, you got to hydrate. You have to hydrate.
Very, very popular recommendation for tourists. You know, you always got to be drinking water.
That is very true.

Speaker 2 But for me, I'm always adding skin moisturizing. to the men in Colorado because you can hydrate.
That might help your chapped lips a little bit.

Speaker 2 Might help you feel a little bit more energized when you're up there at altitude, when you're 52.80 in Denver, or even higher up there in the mountains. But it's just not enough.
It's not enough.

Speaker 2 And if you're going to a dry location, you got to moisturize. You got to get your one skin.

Speaker 2 Founded and led by an all-woman team of skin longevity scientists, OneSkin is redefining the aging process with their proprietary OS1 peptide, the first ingredient proven to help skin look, feel, and behave like its younger self.

Speaker 2 Get 15% off with code Bulwark at oneskin.co. oneskin.co.
That's 15% off oneskin.co with code Bulwark. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them.

Speaker 2 Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Invest in the health and longevity of your skin with Oneskin.
Your future self will thank you.

Speaker 2 I want to do a couple of other closing items about Trump, but there is one other news news related.

Speaker 2 I try to stay away from media news on this and being too navel-gazy. It's like media people love talking about media news.

Speaker 2 I don't know if regular people love talking about it as much, but it's gotten to a point where it is a real news item, I think, what is happening at the Washington Post that is relevant to kind of our broader discussion about pre-surrender to the Trump administration and how our institutions are going to handle it.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is the institution that had, you know, democracy dies in darkness as their kind of cringy slogan, you know, in the early Trump 1.0 years.

Speaker 2 Now you have Jeff Bezos, Amazon, agreeing to do a documentary, a flattering documentary of Melania with somebody that had some serious Me Too accusations against him being the director.

Speaker 2 So Amazon has picked that up right at a moment where

Speaker 2 everybody,

Speaker 2 all the people I know in the Hollywood world and streaming world, when, you know, who are trying to pitch shows or pitch political-related things, everybody's like, no, no, no, we're too scared of politics right now.

Speaker 2 Politics is too risky. We're not going to do any politics shows.
We're not going to do any documentary shows. Well, we'll do one exception.
Trump's wife. We'll do a suck-up documentary to her.

Speaker 2 Bezos doing that. And at the same time, you have

Speaker 2 just a mass exodus from the Washington Post. Just Josh Dossi today going to Wall Street Journal, Leanne Caldwell leaving, going to Puck.
Others are coming. There may be some firings coming.

Speaker 2 It sounds like there's some reporting today. And there's been a long list of people leaving the Post.
It's pretty astonishing what's happening over there. I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 1 Now, if they end up at other places and continue to do good reporting, maybe we're just watching a transition where the Post is no longer a major figure, major player in American journalism, and Puck and Politico and the bulwark are, you know, and I do think there's some truth to that, obviously, right?

Speaker 2 I don't know about Politico, but we'll be able to.

Speaker 1 I know we'll go.

Speaker 1 I'm being nice to them. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Axios, whatever, any of these places, you know, like smart brevity. Anyway, but yes, whatever happens.

Speaker 1 But, you know, the Post is sort of, so I came to Washington in 85, went to the education department. The Post had one reporter, a younger reporter.

Speaker 1 reporter, it wasn't a prestigious assignment, but a good reporter, assigned to education and labor, I think it was.

Speaker 1 And she covered us, and she covered, you know, policy initiatives of the usual kinds of things.

Speaker 1 Secretary Bennett testified to Congress and so forth. But she also dug and found things that had gone wrong and controversies and cases where we were fighting the career of bureaucracy.

Speaker 1 And the Post actually did more of that than the Times. The Post was really the Washington kind of inside baseball paper.

Speaker 1 There were trade journals that did the real detailed stuff to some degree and a couple of the places like the National Journal, which barely exists anymore.

Speaker 1 But the Post was kind of the place that kept an eye on what's happening at these agencies. To the degree that that's already been collapsing for a couple of decades.

Speaker 1 I bet the Post now has one reporter assigned to nine domestic policy agencies, not two, you know. But nonetheless, they keep some eye on these things.

Speaker 1 And the idea that Trump's just going to be running an administration here, putting God knows who in key political positions, doing God knows what to drive out bureaucrats who are on some heritage list of someone who honestly tried to implement a law correctly five years ago and ignored some conservatives, doing all these kinds of things, money going, again, God knows where,

Speaker 1 and grants and so forth and contracts. And who's going to keep an eye on this? So in that respect, I mean, again, it was never great.
I don't exaggerate.

Speaker 1 And the Post wasn't, you know, plenty of stuff happened to government that shouldn't have happened when the Washington Post was much bigger. But I do think it's...

Speaker 1 It's bad for this to be happening at the same time of Trump taking over with a genuine authoritarian playbook and surrounded by grifters and people happy to take advantage of the federal government.

Speaker 2 I think it's a real problem, actually, the decline of the post in this moment, because

Speaker 2 to exactly your point, hey, look, there are going to be other people doing investigative work. It's a good ProPublica piece over the weekend.
They're independent groups such as that.

Speaker 2 We're moving more into reporting, as I mentioned, in the top. The Times is a BMF.
They'll still exist.

Speaker 2 But, you know, like the amount of crap that is going to be coming down the pike from this administration, you know, the fire hose of shit,

Speaker 2 beginning day one.

Speaker 2 And to have the paper record in the city be just totally collapsing like this and making strong signals towards capitulation, even, frankly, in certain cases, when it comes to basis.

Speaker 2 And having a moment, Sam Stein has reported on this for us, that a lot of the also traditional outside watchdog groups that just kind of behind the curtain here a little bit on how Washington works.

Speaker 2 A lot of these groups that are in the nonprofit watchdog groups that are doing these investigations and then feeding stuff into the main outlets, right?

Speaker 2 Like they're doing investigations and then working with reporters with information they found to try to uncover more. A lot of those are collapsing.

Speaker 2 Kind of the good government, you know, the crews and things of this nature are not getting funding, you know, because the donors don't want the exposure, I presume.

Speaker 2 All of that happening simultaneously. It's not like there's going to be no scrutiny on this administration.

Speaker 2 There'll still be people doing good work, but it isn't going to be as robust, I don't think, as it was in 2017.

Speaker 1 And I think to take the piece we had from Tom Jocelyn and Norm Eisen this morning, it's getting retweeted, and people are going to,

Speaker 1 this obviously will get to Democratic and hopefully Republican senators and their staffs to use for questioning for Patel and others can follow up on some of the investigative stuff.

Speaker 1 But I was told this morning, someone who said called and said a great piece, but he had been trying separately just to push it.

Speaker 1 He's more of an activist who had read the piece and and he was trying to push it to activist groups to get them to promote it and make a little bit of deal of it and get it out more into the country so people could call from

Speaker 1 the state of North Carolina, call Tom Tillis. I'm making that up, you know what I mean? And get to say, hey, what about this? You can't confirm this guy.

Speaker 1 He said a lot of these groups did not want to really take it on. And these are left-wing.
These are basically left-wing groups. I mean, these are liberal groups.
These are not Trump supporters.

Speaker 2 Because they're worried about what Patel is going to do.

Speaker 1 Right. And

Speaker 1 it probably won't work. We'll keep our powder dry.
We're going to have to defend a million other things we care about. I don't begrudge them that.

Speaker 1 And we're going to have to defend civil rights programs we care about and other government programs we care about. And we don't need to have some nomination fight that may not succeed.

Speaker 1 There is a kind of self, I don't know what's the word, what does Tim Snyder call it?

Speaker 1 Pre-capitulation.

Speaker 2 Pre-submission, pre-capitulation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, kind of going on. Now, if it's really...
keeping their powder dry so they'll be even more effective when Trump announces the deportations on January 21st. Okay, maybe I take that point.

Speaker 1 But generally, that's not how politics works.

Speaker 1 If you fight the first fight, you build up steam. If you win one, you really build up momentum.

Speaker 1 Then you're better off when you fight the second or third fight, even if you lost the first fight, incidentally, I would say often.

Speaker 1 You get in on the first fight to hold the powder, keep the powder dry for the second fight. It's often a good reason to keep the powder dry for the second fight, for the third fight.

Speaker 1 Then there'll be a fourth fight because when the deportations will start off probably pretty small with just the real criminals. So let's not make too big a deal of that.

Speaker 1 We'll get to the new newsletter Colonel Ford on all this, of course, very intelligently, but and and with much more detail than I have.

Speaker 1 But I just worry that there's a ton of rationalization going on that's leading people, again, not out of bad motives, really, and not out of personal cowardice or anything like that, but is leading people to accommodate much more than they should.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well. You got your homework assignment then, people.
Go hassle your senator with Tom Jocelyn's article about Cash Patel's conspiracy mongering.

Speaker 2 And if you've got a minute today, coming up on the inauguration, there's one item of news related to Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 We discussed Jimmy Carter's death last week on the pod, but I wanted to give you one update here, Bill. Donald Trump's not happy about something related to Carter's death.
Traditionally, after,

Speaker 2 and honestly, maybe this is the moment to get rid of this tradition because I'm not going to want to do this when Donald Trump dies. But traditionally, after a president dies, the flags are at

Speaker 2 half staff for 30 days, I think, whatever it is. There's a traditional period, and that period will overlap with the inauguration.
And this upsets Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 He writes this: the Democrats are all giddy about our magnificent American flag potentially being at half-mast. I don't think he knows the difference.

Speaker 2 During my inauguration, they think it's so great and are so happy about it because they don't love our country. They only think about themselves.

Speaker 2 In any event, because of the death of Jimmy Carter, the flag may, for the first time ever, during the inauguration of a future president, be at half mast.

Speaker 2 Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let's see how this plays out.

Speaker 1 it's kind of like when you hit the uss john mccain when he's when he's going to japan totally no american could be happy about it tim though it's i think 30 days honestly is a little excessive but uh it's in some regulation or something it's not biden didn't invent this i mean i think it's been done for the last x number of presidents so he just did what what has been done in appropriate respect and kind of weird to change it now suddenly maybe they could just turn the flag upside down instead you know with kind of a martha and all that yeah for maybe yeah that would be maybe in front of the supreme court in honor of Justice Alita, you know, right?

Speaker 1 Suddenly, Trump's so concerned about proper flying of the flag.

Speaker 1 Has there been any movement in American history that has abused the American flag more than MAGA? I mean, you know, it's upside down, backwards on every piece of clothing, every thing, right?

Speaker 1 That they think.

Speaker 2 Putting blue lines on it or putting 1776 on it.

Speaker 2 There was more heartwarming. January 6th anniversary piece out that I wanted to close on.

Speaker 2 And that was Michael Cruz wrote of this for Politico. I love him.
I took a shot of Politico earlier, but Michael Cruz is maybe the best profile writer out there right now, certainly in the top tier.

Speaker 2 And he wrote about an exchange between Al Gore and Mike Pence. At Joe Lieberman's Memorial, Al Gore thanked Pence for his actions on January 6th.
And Pence said something surprising in response.

Speaker 2 Cruz writes, he suggested to Gore he had done what he'd done that day in part because of what he had seen as a newly sworn-in member of Congress on January 6th, 2001.

Speaker 2 He had witnessed a vice president stand up to pressure from his own party to defy the Constitution, even though doing so by definition meant personal defeat. I never forgot it, Pence said to Gore.

Speaker 2 You don't know how much that means coming from you, Gore said back.

Speaker 2 But that was very nice.

Speaker 1 It is nice. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 We have a lot of horrors on this anniversary, so I thought people might want to.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it is worth, yes, remembering that Pence did the right thing and other people weighed in and did the right thing.

Speaker 1 And the guardrails did pretty much hold from November 3rd through January 6th, through January 20th of 2020, 2021, which makes it all the more tragic, really, right?

Speaker 1 That I mean, it wasn't as if everything came crashing down and it was a free fall afterwards.

Speaker 1 And so you got to expect, in a sense, that the center would not hold, that the principles of peaceful transfer of power and no storming of the Capitol and no political violence and no inciting to violence, it wasn't crazy to think that those principles could and should hold.

Speaker 1 It had been a little too close for comfort on January 6th, but now they could. Biden was in charge.

Speaker 1 What's really terrible is that, you know, the Biden administration kind of went out of its way to respect a lot of those principles.

Speaker 1 And nonetheless, Trump wins the nomination and the whole Republican Party's with him.

Speaker 2 I was trying to end on a positive, Bill.

Speaker 1 And he explicitly does it with this repudiation or endorsement, I guess.

Speaker 2 All right, let's go back to Gore.

Speaker 1 Sorry to ruin your. Cut that out.

Speaker 1 Have our crack producers take that out.

Speaker 2 Back to you on Gore. This will give people a little something.
We've got to update our priors on Gore a little bit.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, I just, I think back, I was a child during this time, but like the sore loser man stickers, you know, that were around in the early 2000s.

Speaker 2 Pretty astonishing what Al Gore did. It was nice that Mike Pence mentioned that to him in retrospect.

Speaker 1 Very much so. I agree.

Speaker 2 All right. One last thing.
Our good friend A.B. Stoddard is going to be stepping back for the bulwark.
This is a stressful life.

Speaker 2 We're not coal mining out here. We're not looking for anybody's sympathy, but having to care about this every day is a burden.
And A.B.'s been caring about it for about a decade.

Speaker 2 And I just appreciate her so much. You know, I didn't know A.B.
that well. I knew a little bit, like from work, you know, pitching stories or whatever back when I was with Flak.

Speaker 2 But before Trump had even won the nominations, this is very early in 2015. I saw her in a green room at MSNBC.

Speaker 2 And she pulled me aside and we started kind of in a whispered voice, started talking about how bad it was and what was coming and and she started sharing with me her apocalyptic views about what uh what was what was ahead of us and i knew that i had a um a soul sister in that moment somebody that i was aligned with i felt like very early on uh as you as well uh we were among the people that were sounding the alarm that this is actually worse than people think and this is uh potentially you know going to go to the depths of hell in a way that a lot of the conventional wisdom did not anticipate.

Speaker 2 And so I'm sad that we are both proven out on that point, even if maybe, you know, we don't have t-shirts about how AB and Tim are always right. But, you know, we're proven out on this one point.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, I do feel a kind of cosmic connection with her that dates back that about a decade now. She's still going to be around.

Speaker 2 We're going to have her on the pod from time to time when, you know, she can, after she can have a few breaths from looking at the fucking Twitter, which she well deserves.

Speaker 2 And so I just wanted to give her a little shout out on that point. Bill, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Speaker 1 No, that's great. She's one of my favorite people, really, and I've known her pretty well for quite a while.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we broke with the Republican Party, and people say that was the right thing to do. I hope they have to say that.
And some people excessively say it was courageous and all this.

Speaker 1 But AB's world was very much the centrist sort of establishment world. I'm going to say this in a good sense in Washington.
She worked for mainstream journals. She covered the hills.

Speaker 1 She was friendly, or I think it's safe to say with the moderate Republicans and the moderate Democrats. That's her own personal disposition.

Speaker 1 A lot of them, though, did not go into the let's confront, as we were discussing earlier in a sense, the let's confront Trump camp.

Speaker 1 They went into the, they weren't Trumpy, but they went into the let's not overreact camp. And I think she was courageous and she really felt so strongly about this.
She wanted to join the bulwark.

Speaker 1 We were thrilled to have her, obviously. Sorry that she feels she has to take a little time, certainly understandable, though, to just get away from it for a bit.
But she's really a terrific person.

Speaker 1 And I also look forward to, yes, seeing her around socially, but also

Speaker 1 she'll do a few podcasts, write a few pieces, and she'll certainly be part of the extended family. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Always part of the family. We love A.B.
She'll be back around. And we've got

Speaker 2 a lot coming, as I mentioned.

Speaker 2 In the intro, there'll be even more than the folks that we have already announced to come. So the opinions will be plentiful.
The outrage will be plentiful here.

Speaker 2 Maybe the darkness is not quite as dark without A.B. every week.
I appreciate her very much. Appreciate all of you for tuning in.

Speaker 2 We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark podcast. We'll see you all then.

Speaker 1 Peace.

Speaker 1 painted with a scar.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the more I straighten out,

Speaker 1 the less it wants to try.

Speaker 1 The feelings start to rub,

Speaker 1 one week at a time.

Speaker 1 Police can swear to God,

Speaker 1 not see me from the guns.

Speaker 1 I know my friends and mine would probably turn and dungeon. If you get out of bed,

Speaker 1 come find us hitting on the bridge. Bring a stone on the rage, my little dark age.

Speaker 1 I breathe it's stereo,

Speaker 1 the stereo sounds strange.

Speaker 1 I know that if you hide, it doesn't go away.

Speaker 1 If you get out of bed

Speaker 1 and find me standing all alone,

Speaker 1 open eyed and burn the page, my little doggage.

Speaker 2 The Bull Orthod Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 2 America, America, you used to be so fun,

Speaker 2 but now you go to bed at night, scrolling on your phone.

Speaker 2 Well, listen up, America. Carnival is here with world-class crew and ropes, course to end comedy and snorkeling and dining like everything

Speaker 2 from sea to shining sea.

Speaker 1 Find your fun again at carnival.com. Carnival is calling.
Ships ready to street the bombs and panels.

Speaker 6 Gun violence isn't just a policy issue. It's personal.
It's a friend who never made it home. Every day in America, 125 people are shot and killed.
For too many of us, gun violence has left a mark.

Speaker 6 And for all of us, it's a crisis we can do something about. Every Town for Gun Safety Action Fund is the largest gun violence prevention organization in America.
We fight for common sense gun laws.

Speaker 6 We've helped pass life-saving legislation in states across the country. We've built the largest grassroots network of volunteers fighting for gun safety.
and we're not stopping.

Speaker 6 You believe in progress, in justice, in doing the work? So do we. This is your moment to act because this isn't someone else's problem.
It's all of ours. Go to everytown.org and donate today.

Speaker 6 Together, let's build a future free from gun violence. Support Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and our fight to save lives because gun violence isn't just a policy issue, it's personal.

Speaker 6 Make your donation today at everytown.org. That's everytown.org.

Speaker 7 This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart podcast. Hi, darlings.
I have a little seasonal secret to share. It's the new Kahlua Duncan Caramel Swirl.

Speaker 7 Kahlua, the beloved coffee liqueur, and Duncan, the beloved coffee destination, paired up to create a treat that is perfect for the holidays. So go ahead, treat yourself.
Cheers, my dears.

Speaker 8 Must be 21 or older to purchase. Drink responsibly.
Kahlua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueur, 16% alcohol by volume, 32 proof. Copyright 2025, imported by the Kahlua Company, New York, New York.

Speaker 8 Duncan trademarks owned by D DIP Holder LLC. Used under license.
Copyright 2025 DDIP Holder LLC.