Bill Kristol and A.B. Stoddard : Soak Up the Schadenfreude

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.
I'm so excited to be taking over for the great Charlie Sykes. I don't know why he had to pass the baton to me on LundyGraw.
I've been parading, but we are going to have a great week on this podcast. If you stick around for the end of the show, I have more to say about Charlie's legacy and my plans for maintaining and growing it and what we're going to be doing on the podcast with me in the big chair.
So stay tuned for that.

But before we get to our guests, I just wanted to take a moment of personal privilege on

this first show to tell you about one of the inspirations who got me here, my Mimi, Helen Miller, who died on Friday at the age of 99. Helen was born in 1925 in St.
Louis, Missouri. Her life is a storybook example of the greatest generation.
She lived above her family bakery as a child. She married the championship college basketball captain, who then served in World War II.
She raised a big Catholic family with seven kids, my father the fifth. She was cheery and faithful and a bit of a spitfire.
She had boundless energy. As a child, hers was the kind of grandma's house that you got excited to go to, like it an amusement park because it kind of was really.
When she learned of my love for WWF wrestling, she built a homemade ring in the basement with a costume box for me and my cousins to play in. She had a deep love of music and was still playing concert level classical music for Toulouse, her great grandchild, this year, age 99.
She also cared a lot about politics. She was a lifelong Republican.
Hell, Republican? Her first vote was for Thomas Dewey against FDR. She loved Nixon still, in spite of it all.
She had the Washington Times delivered to her home to balance out the liberal post-dispatch. When I think about my budding childhood interest in politics, I think about my conversations with her above all.
We'd banter about the news and read the paper over our morning Cheerios for as long as I could remember. In the fifth grade, right before we moved to Denver, I bet her $1 that Bill Clinton would beat George H.W.
Bush. I had a child's sixth sense that Clinton was just cooler and was probably going to win.

I remember the sheer delight going to the mailbox and opening up the card and getting my $1 winning.

It was the last time, actually, I supported a Democrat until I supported Bill's wife, Hillary, in 2016.

In the last few years, as my politics diverged from hers, she'd still go along with some good-natured tussling with me from time to time. One Christmas a few years back, after she had a martini and I had a few beers, we went at it a little bit over Trump and immigration and whatever was in the news.
But it wasn't like one of those family fights with frayed nerves and hurt feelings. My uncle tried to

redirect it and intercepted us. She's 95 years old.
Let's not rile her up. But without missing a beat, Mimi just shoot him off.
He didn't see that this discussion was part of our special connection. Yeah, our blood was flowing a little bit, but we liked that.
Beneath the disagreements was the memories, the nostalgia, the love.

The debate petered out.

We hugged. little bit, but we liked that.
Beneath the disagreements was the memories, the nostalgia,

the love. The debate petered out.
We hugged. I gave her a playful little finger wag.

We may have disagreed in the final chapter, but the prelude to me being on this podcast was

all those debates, all that discussion about the news, the shared passion for this country

and how it works. I loved her very much.
I'm going to miss her very much. Hey there, welcome to the Bullard Podcast.
I'm Tim Miller here with Bill Crystal. AB Stoddard will be joining us shortly.
Bill, are you excited for this? The new era? Very much so. Very much so.
Me too. Me and Bill have been doing a YouTube show called Ballot Box every Tuesday.
I am a sicko, but not so much of a sicko, that I'm going to do a daily podcast and a YouTube show with Bill Kristol. So he's going to be coming here on Mondays, many Mondays, where we're going to reconstitute that.
You know, we mostly, I made jokes. He told Dan Quayle stories and we did some politics analysis.
Tim told Jeb Bush stories, John Huntsman stories. We could go down a couple of roads here that would be not great for either of us.
Okay. All right.
Well then let's just move on. We've got a lot here.
There was the successful deep state operation in Las Vegas. I want to wait for AB to get to that.
Israel forces rescued two hostages in Rafa. We had the RFK Jr.
big ad, fake outrage over the Black National Anthem, border infighting at the Biden White House. You had a very provocative opening newsletter that has some feathers ruffled.
I want to start with you with the most important thing, which is Donald Trump and his Russophilia. So let's listen, for people who haven't heard it, to Donald Trump talking about his plans for NATO.

They asked me that question.

One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said,

well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia,

will you protect us?

I said, you didn't pay?

You're delinquent?

He said, yes, let's say that happened.

No, I would not protect you.

In fact, i would encourage them

to do whatever the hell they want you got to pay you got to pay your bills he'd encourage russia to do whatever the hell they want william thoughts about that i think so much to say about it so revealing and on a less important scale can we just stipulate that this did not happen? The president of a big country

did not say, sir, what would happen if we didn't pay our bills? Whatever that means. Of course, this is usual ludicrous invention.
Secondly, this is also not the most important thing, but the fact that the crowd seems to erupt into applause, at least on that audio clip we just played, does not reassure me about the health of the Trump supporters among the Republican party. I mean, it's just mind-bogglingly irresponsible and dangerous, and many, many people have commented on it.
My only additional comment would be, it's not new. I mean, it's good to call attention to these things when Trump gives us an opportunity to do so, honestly.
And from my point of view, if a few percent more Americans realize, geez, we can't afford a second term with that guy, that's great. So I'm not begrudging anyone commenting on this and pointing out, you know, either at length or briefly how incredibly dangerous this is.
And then there's something a little funny about some of the comments. It's like, wow, we just discovered that Trump would really be a wildly irresponsible foreign policy president who's pro-Putin and wants to support our allies.
So. I mean, I do think there is the new context, and it's not new because the war's been going on for two years, but in his first term, there was the possibility of Putin aggression, but right now, we are seeing the reality of it, and certainly it's much more believable.
You could imagine that Putin, if Trump got in there, would try to move into NATO territory, and so in that sense, this is making it a little more real. Very much.
It's a very good point. I mean, it's one of several reasons why a second Trump term would be so much more dangerous than the first Trump term was.
Our friend Marco Rubio, I think you endorsed him in 2016. I can't quite remember.
I endorsed so many people sequentially, I can't even remember 2016. I think I might have voted from here in Virginia.
Jeb was out at that point? Jeb was out by Virginia. We withdrew responsibly after the South Carolina primary and endorsed the person most likely to win, lying Ted Cruz.
So I didn't exactly cover myself in glory. Okay, your boy Marco.
There was one element of his reaction that I think is just worth chewing over. Let's listen to him with Jake Tapper over the weekend.
Donald Trump is not a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He doesn't talk like a traditional politician.
And we've already been through this. Now you'd think people had to figure it out by now.
What he's basically saying is, if you see the comments, he said NATO was broke or busted until he took over because people weren't paying their dues. And then he told the story about how he used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO.
He's not the first American president. In fact, virtually every American president at some point in some way has complained about other countries in NATO not doing enough.
You know, Trump's just the first one to express it in these terms. But I'm zero concern because he's been president before.
I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance, but there has to be an alliance. It's not America's defense with a bunch of small junior partners.
Some of these are big countries with big economies. Many of them are doing more.
The Germans are doing a lot right now. Yeah, he's just the only one to express it in these terms, Bill.
Other people have criticized NATO before, and, you know, Donald Trump's kind of criticizing NATO, just not in the traditional diplomatic words. He's just kind of saying that Russia could invade a NATO country.
And if they don't pay up, then tough titties. Right.
And Marco, at the end, sort of his little bit of the remains of actual concern about real foreign policy in the real world kicks in. And he says, actually, the Europeans are doing kind of more than we expected.
And some of them have stepped up. Germany's actually doing better than we thought.
Which, of course, totally undercuts and vitiates the whole idea that Trump should be saying this now. But it gets back to just your point earlier.
It's really worth just emphasizing. It's one thing to be irresponsible speculatively in a world of peace or a world of semi-peace where Putin has invaded and it's subsided, so to speak.
It's another thing to be irresponsible now, two years after the attack on Ukraine and two years into the war in Ukraine with things really in the balance in there and, of course, in Europe in general and in the world in general. So there is a level of irresponsibility that Trump's exhibiting, but there's a level of irresponsibility to be defending Trump now.
And it's not true of everyone else. I mean, 17 senators voted to advance the Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, national security bill, 17 Republican senators, even though they sort of would have preferred, you know, to have the border thing.
And they sort of said that we need the border thing. But, you know, at the end of the day, Mitch McConnell and some of these people said, OK, this is really a serious moment.
We can't continue to mess around. Their members of the House, Mike Turner, who was in Kiev last week, says we're going to work around Speaker Johnson if we have to with a possibly with a discharge petition.
So some Republicans, I don't want to praise them as they've been horribly irresponsible in so many ways, but are sort of being a little more responsible now, but not Marco, who voted against advancing the bill. I mean, he was the Mr.
International Responsibility back in 2014, 2015, 2016, right? Yeah. I mean, even Rand Paul said this was stupid.
I mean, when Rand Paul is acting more responsible than you and your talking points, that should be concerning about foreign policy. The thing that really grinds my gears about this, which is why I wanted to play it, is this talking point.
The term gaslighting annoys me, but there's nothing that is more clearly gaslighting than this. You think people would have figured out by now that Trump just has a little bit of rough talk, you know, but that he's actually responsible, that he actually is a good president.
But it's just, you know, sometimes he just, you know, does a little Queens banter. What are you talking about, Marco? The assault on the Capitol was a direct result of Trump's irresponsible rhetoric.
They're still trying to get away with this notion that you should take them seriously, but not literally. Like in 2024, it's just really fucking maddening.
It is maddening. And tomorrow is the third anniversary of the vote in the Senate not to convict Trump after he'd been impeached.
And I think seven Republican senators did the right thing. And Marco Rubio was one of those who followed and Mitch McConnell and said, no, no no, no, no, the system will take care of this over the next three years.
Brutal. Okay.
I want to bring in A.B. Last thing, though.
You have more conversations than I do with folks in Europe that are kind of part of this alliance. As far as the level of alarm is concerned, anything to add on the view from our friends in Europe at this point? No, it's getting close to 10 out of 10.
And my way to say that is 10 on the alarm scale. And I think for the reason you said, I mean, it's one thing to be sort of speculatively, you know, jawbone Europe to get them to spend more again when we're sort of at peace.
But now say this with the Republic, with the fight going on in Congress about continuing our support for Ukraine and with the situation they face, I think they are just really coming to grips with how very, very dangerous Trump's second term would be. So they're very alarmed.
I mean, they always get a little nervous. They're way beyond nervous.
Now they're, you know, true alarmed. All right, let's bring in A.B.
We've got much to discuss. A.B.
Stoddard, can we see what you got on there? Why don't put that together that's for people that are listening that is a red sweater with it looks like some construction paper yellow number 87 on there yeah so i got inspired to do a diy i don't have any chiefs gear around my house so i'm not a chiefs fan i don't follow football but i decided to don some celebratory deep state globalist garb in honor of travis kelsey and taylor and she was covered in 87s people found them on her boots on her neck on her like nail you know the whole thing so anyway i don't know i just like woke up and freaked out and decided i had to just i'm really enjoying the fact that they all had to root with nancy pelosi for a san francisco team in maga land and they just they had a rough night so there's a lot of darkness that we need to get to so this was my way of like brightening my monday i have a little bit more shot from i have one note we could have had the pfizer band-aid from your vaccine that's what we could have added that That would have been my one note to the DIY costume. But it's very, very good.
Just in case you redo it for Halloween. Okay.
On the other side of the schadenfreude scale, we can all admit this is ridiculous. It's absurd that our country has devolved to a place where we have a culture war picking sides on the Super Bowl based on a music singer and a guy that just did an ad for vaccines.
But we are in this place. And so for people who don't know, one of my nemeses is a guy named Clay Travis.
He went to college with me. He is a right-wing sports talk radio head.
That's a thing now. He has a sports talk radio show that is combined with MAGA outrage of the day talking points.
I wrote a very lovely profile from a while back if you want to find it. It was one of my most enjoyable things to write.
And here was Clay Travis on Fox over the weekend with Howard Kurtz discussing who he was rooting for. You waited on the tale of mania a few weeks ago when you said she was partially responsible for the Kansas City Chiefs losing a couple of games.
Do you stand by that comment? But I hope that she's the Yoko Ono of the Kansas City Chiefs and she destroys their dynasty and puts them down in flames. That's why I am proudly supporting the San Francisco 49ers, America's team, on Sunday against Kansas City, Patrick Mahomes, Taylor Swift, and Travis Kelsey.
Go Niners. All right.
Sports expert Clay Travis with Howard Kurtz, whatever happened to whatever shred of integrity was left hosting him. Tough break.
Clay Olsen put a big bet on the 49ers, so that is a shame. On the other hand, we saw Joe Biden.
The team a little bit kind of responsive there. After the Super Bowl win.
Biden with the, what are the eyes? The dark Brandon. The dark Brandon eyes.
Thank you. The dark Brandon eyes saying it was all part of the plan.
Bill, were you involved in the plan to help the Chiefs win? Yeah, I can't talk about it though, Tim. Oh, okay.
It was a secret meeting. Was Bill Burns there or Lloyd Austin? Yeah.
I mean, I don't want to get too much into Bill and Lloyd's private meetings over the last weeks. It's pretty good though.
It's pretty enjoyable. I think that bringing some levity to this, there's a lot of very seriousness about the way that the right and the right kind of media echo chamber has just evolved from a place of kind of light conspiracy and into just total madness and insanity.
And I think that there's some very negative downstream effects from that. But if you always are taking it seriously, you know, and fact checking them, I think there's a limit to how much that works as compared to just mocking.
I think that there's a time for mocking. And Biden is not usually, that's not usually his cup of tea.
You know, he was a soul of the nation reformer, but a little, just a little hint of mocking. That's useful, right, A.B.? Yeah, I think Biden has to do, apparently he's doing TikTok.
He has to do something to make people laugh. He needs to enliven his coalition.
He needs to energize people. They're really down and really worried.
And so I hope the TikTok videos are a success. And I like the dark Brandon memes from Biden, Harris, HQ, or whatever they do on Twitter.
They actually do funny stuff. And it doesn't matter that Joe Biden has no idea that it's going on.
I think that they have some good creative people that are like creating shareable content.

And that's a good thing.

The dark branded meme is an upgrade.

I agree.

But getting back to your close friend, Clay Travis there,

what's with the 49ers being America's team?

It does show something not to get too serious

about the way the conspiracy theorizing leads them.

They could just say, we hate the cheese

because of Taylor Swift and all this stuff. pfizer and and therefore i'm rooting

for the 49ers but you can't say that anyway you can't just be lesser of two evils right because

you're in a insane conspiratorial world of say good and evil satan and god whatever how long

ago was it that the 49ers had a quarterback who you know destroyed america's patriotism forever

by taking a knee on the football field yes and you know san francisco with the gays

Thank you. 49ers had a quarterback who, you know, destroyed America's patriotism forever by taking a knee on the football field.
Yes. And, you know, San Francisco with the gays.
Sodomites are in San Francisco. There's that to consider.
Nancy Pelosi is there. It wasn't a natural fit for America's team, I don't think.
But you can't go to a place of logic here. Right.
It was a win for me. It brought A.B.
some joy. Gambling is legal here in the free state of Louisiana, so I might have put a little cash on the Chiefs.
So things are good. I'm happy about it.
there was a win for me it brought ab some joy gambling is legal here in the free state of louisiana so i might have put a little cash on the chiefs so things are good i'm happy about it there was a lightly concerning moment during the game for me which was the rfk junior ad did you get to see it yeah it was pretty good i thought i received several texts about it being good now there have been some fallout how rfk's family members did not like it and he's like apologizing to them on twitter saying it was my super pack that did it i had nothing to do with it meanwhile the ad is the pinned tweet on his feed so he's kind of struggling to manage the social media side of this but just the content of the ad for people that are not you know kind of in the twitter politics bubble he's not a natural fit for this role of I'm a fresh alternative to these two old guys, but he might be enough of a fit to create problems. What was your guy's reaction to it? Who knows? I mean, who really make this really make a difference, but it was effective in its way.
It is funny. He's what is RFK Jr.
69 or 70, I think. And that ad was run in 1960 or the true the visual version of the ad that they pretty much stole in 1960 when jfk was running it it's sort of a famous ad if you're into that kind of you know political consultant and ad makers you know sort of stuff and jfk was 43 i don't know makes me wonder you know nice so now now RFK is the 70-year-old young insurgent against a 77-year-old and an 81-year-old.
What is going on? Yeah, that is concerning. I don't know.
AB? I just find the whole thing so frustrating. It was a big price tag.
He has deep pockets with good funding coming. We have our theories as to as to why that they're mostly coming from the right and people believe he's going to take votes from Biden.
He's only on one ballot, I believe Utah and the DNC is, you know, trying to sue him for collusion with his super PAC. Right.
I think he lied in that tweet to his family saying that he knows nothing about the ads, why it's a pinned tweet. He's a bad mean i think he's very shrewd as is trump to always speak to the politically uninformed because those are the people that see that ad and think that's so cool he's a kennedy and sing the jingle and think he you know he looks younger than 70 and he's like into his biceps and whatever.
His pushups, if we can just say,

the shirtless pushups were not that impressive.

I know, but- He could have gone a little lower, I think.

I see why people, like he's novel.

This is a cool idea.

They believe that a third party can win

because they don't actually focus on the details of this.

And so I could get really worried,

but until he's really has good ballot access,

I'm going to try not to, but he's a bad guy. It's just all around.
He's a conspiracy theorist. It's really takes a lot to have your whole family turn against you publicly.
Kennedy's are not Kennedy's. I do think it was a good ad and I see why it can be effective, but I'm going to not flip out at this point.
Him and Paul Gosar in good company there. The ballot access is, is obviously going to be a thing to really monitor this year.
I've flipped on this just in the interest of candor. Some people might have maybe been listening to me six months ago where I was saying RFK Jr.
being in was maybe good for Biden because of the Trumpy nature of his positions on vaccines and maybe some of the horseshoe type Joe Rogan bros who would vote for Trump in a head to head, would vote for RFK in a three way. And I think that's true.
There's going to be some of those types. But, you know, the more you look at the numbers, particularly with black voters, I mean, if RFK could cut into Biden's margins, even by 10 percent with black men, you know, and draw off 10, 15, get up in the teens, that becomes a real, real problem.
And so I've basically flipped on my political assessment of this. I went to a dark place last night, want to do a little just political parlor games after watching the ad.
I don't know why this thought popped into my head, but it did. And I thought, if we are on the bad earth three, and it came down to RFK Jr.
versus Trump, would I find myself supporting RFK Jr.? And I came down on, I guess I would have to. And I found myself morbidly curious where you guys would land on that question.
Yeah, I haven't gotten quite to that dark place yet. Suicide is also an option.
But I'm going to go to a dark place with you for at least a minute. I guess I'd be with you in this sense i think an rfk junior presidency even saying that it's not a happy place but anyway an rfk junior presidency would be more like a trump first term than a second term right you know he wouldn't have a cadre of committed authoritarians and so forth america firsters with him on foreign policy i don't think he actually he's where trump is for whatever that's.
I don't know what his views on anything are worth, but I mean, for whatever that's worth, so that it wouldn't be right away destroying NATO. So yes, I agree with you.
A.B. is just staring us down.
She's like, I will not spit it out. A.B.
doesn't even want to go there. I'm watching A.B.
here. A.B.
is sort of, we started off with the happy discussion about number 87 and the chiefs, and now why are we doing this, Tim? You know? I can coming back to me i just you refuse to accept i'm putting you on the spot right now rfk jr or trump the gun is to your head ab definitely rfk jr i agree with i agree with this that he would sort of bumble through the first couple years in obvious dangerous but i thought you were throwing this to bill so he could weigh in i just told you guys i'm non-dealing with RFK Jr. until he's on more ballots.
You know what I mean? There's another third-party effort that's on 14 ballots, so I'm not going to lose sleep over him yet because I have a lot to lose sleep over from last week. So I thought you were going to move on.
I was not moving on. I'm putting you on the spot.
Yeah, definitely take him over, Sean. I want the clip for future usage of everyone on this podcast affirmatively supporting RFK Jr., who once tweeted a Bulwark article.
I forget what it was, so you never know. You know, strange bedfellows.
As you say, okay, there was one other Super Bowl thing. I have to get on to Mike Gallagher.
But before I do so, I just... Several people on the right, and I just can't take this anymore, were tweeting about how offended they were about the Black National Anthem.
My friend Matt Gaetz said that he would not watch the Super Bowl because of this. Megyn Kelly sent a mean tweet about it, referring to his Lift Every Voice and Sing, which is the most beautiful song.
It is positive. It is uplifting.
We sing lots of songs before the games. There's no rules about any of this.
It's like the fact that this is a way for them to get angry engagement takes me to a really sad place and pisses me off. And so I want to move on to Mike Gallagher.
But before we moved off the parade of Super Bowl articles, I had to just wag my finger at Matt Gaetz and Megyn Kelly and say, very bad on you. Mike Gallagher, stepping aside, 39 years old.
How old is he? 39. He should be running for president, probably.
In a sane world, it would be a Gallagher-Haley primary, and they would be running for president against, you know, Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer, and we'd have this very vibrant two-sided debate, but that's not the world we're in. Instead, Mike Gallagher is retiring.
That's not normal to retire from Congress at 39 when you have been given the keys to a committee in the China Oversight Committee that he wanted to run, that he asked for. It was an issue that he's passionate about that seemed to run fairly competently.
I mean, I had some occasionally, there were some absurdities that would pop up in in the China committee and, you know, Mike Gallagher, I have my issues with, but like, you know, it wasn't like the Jim Comer committee, you know, there were at least some normal people that were testifying. He responded to media requests.
There was some basic governance that was happening there. And despite having all that, he wants to, I don't know, what, like be on the board of Raytheon or something.
AB, where are you on this? I don't know if he decided. He made this decision to leave before he voted against, became one of the three to vote against the Mayorkas impeachment last week, which he knew he was going to take heat for.
And he was threatened afterwards and attacked

from the wacky right in Wisconsin. But what you say is true.
He was on a rocket to the moon in a former party, right? He was the dream Republican. He has $4 million in his campaign coffers more than any other House member.
He was on armed services, intelligence. He's a combat veteran.
He's a handsome 39-year-old, led the China committee.

This was a guy that was going to be the best Republicans could hope for for president one day in a party that no longer exists. I mean, no, he did not want to leave after four terms.
And again, I don't know if he just made his decision or made it, you know, I think a lot of members who are announcing now have probably made their decision a while ago. This Congress has really shown them what it's going to be like going forward.
And a lot of them are really miserable about it. And that's why you see like Kathy McMorris Rogers leaving a good chairmanship, Mike Gallagher leaving.
So it's not that he responded to an immediate threat, but it is illustrative of what's happening to the party. And it's just tragic.
I mean, that's exactly the kind, whether you agree with him or not, it's exactly the kind of person that we want as our public servant. It's so scary to think of what this is going to do in terms of the makeup of the House Republican Conference going forward, and then what the makeup of the House Republican Conference does to the House as a whole, right? You can't just have a sane conference.
You have to have sane elements in both conferences. And when you think out to next year and going forward, who is going to be running the House on the Republican side or even in the minority on the Republican side.
It's really quite frightening and depressing. Bill, you've been on this for a while.
There's a supply and demand thing that is happening at the candidate level and at the voter level, right, as far as who is opting in and who voters want. So we have this trio of opt-outs.
You mentioned McMorris Rodgers. It's also worth mentioning Patrick McHenry and Mike Gallagher.
None of these people are profiles in courage. I'm not praising any of them.
All of them were accommodationists is the nicest thing that you could say about them during the Trump decade that we've been living through. But reasonably rational people that if you were of the view that this this goes away right that at sometime the trump era goes away and he disappears or we get the hamburger from heaven and then things move back to normal these would be the kinds of people that if you're of that view that you would want to have around because they would stabilize things so they're leaving and bill you've always talked about how the people that would be opting in, how do people that call you for your wise, sage advice, former military guys, conservative, people that might want to go home to where they grew up and run for Congress, they don't want to have to run in a primary right now in the Republican Party.
So on both sides of this, there's just a vacuum that's being created for the most crazy, most sociopathic, most narcissistic people imaginable. And that is just a downstream effect of Trump that I think hasn't really sunk him in with a lot of folks.
Yeah, totally. And I mean, just two points.
AB's praise of Gallagher is true in the sense that he's very impressive. I've known him for 15 years, so he came as a staffer.
I helped him some in 2016 when the Republican representative from his district in Wisconsin suddenly retired. And Mike, should he run or not? I said, yeah, take a shot.
And I thought at that point Trump would lose in 2016 and there'd be Mike Gallagher in Congress. That would be great.
He's not just been not a profile in courage. He's been a conspicuous non-profile in courage.
I mean, he was very close to Liz Cheney. He and Liz Cheney did a million things together between about 2016 and 2020, sort of hoping to be some major voices in a non-Trump Republican Party.
November 3rd happened. Trump lost.
Trump denied losing. January 6th happened.
Liz Cheney broke, fully and fundamentally. Mike Gallagher had one little video on January 6th itself from the Capitol.
Where he looks panicked. He looks like very panicked, kind of.
And then votes against impeachment the next week and is horrible for the next two or three years. Does nothing courageous.
Doesn't defend the January 6th committee. Doesn't defend Liz Cheney.
I mean, really, given that he's actually intelligent and impressive in so many ways, his non-courage was particularly

telling, I think even more than some of the others. The other point I'd just make is analytically,

though, what does it say that McMorris-Rogers and McHenry and Gallagher think what they think? They're not foolish. Trump could lose, obviously, but they think the party is going to be Trumpist for at least the next several years, right? Otherwise, they'd hang on to this one election, Trump could lose, obviously, and then they think maybe there's hope.
But they know that the future of the party is more with Mike Johnson and Mike Gates than with people like them. Matt Gates, watch out.
Matt, whatever his name is. Yeah, the people are going to be coming for you and saying that you've lost a step.
I certainly have. I'm not running for president.
You're handling a daily newsletter. Only with Andrew Edgar doing the bulk of so oh yeah and bill i i think it's just it's worth putting a finer point on one element of the gallagher thing which is i am just so fucking sick and tired of people deciding to do the right thing at the very last page of the book you know and then deciding to retire right and we've seen this over and over again.
We saw it in 2016. Every candidate that ran, except for Jeb, I didn't criticize Trump until their concession speech, basically, until the campaign was over.
And then they finally started to say what they really believed. We're seeing this even now with Haley, where she's really starting to go at them after it's functionally over a chance.
I don't, I don't want to get you sad over there, Bill, but it's functionally over. And now she's finally attacking him.
And you're seeing this in Congress a lot where like people decide to do the right thing, right. As they're about to resign.
And it's like, if Mike Gallagher knew what was right on the Mayorkas vote, and he's able to do it because he knew he was going to the door. He also knew what was right on the January 6th committee and on impeachment and on supporting Liz.
And to me, it's almost like more offensive to like do that. I mean, I guess it's good that he kept Mayorkas from getting impeached, but I don't know.
Part of me is almost like, you might as well have just impeached Mayorkas and gone out like you served, but i don't know ab is that too cynical so this is the problem is that he got on camera right and did some live stream on january 6th saying that the president was the only person that could call this off and this is third world shit or whatever he said at the time right so yeah days later he doesn't vote to impeach him because people get to people

like Mike Gallagher. He's so promising.
He's their best specimen. And they say, we need people like you.
Remember this refrain? We need normal people. And so if it's not you, it'll be someone crazy.
And so you are our best hope.

And so you must not upset MAGA and you must just cower.

And then he does. And no, actually making your last stand on the impeachment of Alexander Mayorkas is really not brave at all.
It has nothing to do with shit in terms of what we're facing, right, with the threat of Trump. So it's like a joke.
But I was describing him as the kind of person just a few years ago we would have all really hoped, you know, we would have in the leadership of the Congress or as president. And so cowards get to run again.
Half cowards, you know, are somewhere in the middle where they're maligned and then they're threatened with primaries. And then if you're Liz, you have to leave.
This is the spectrum. Romney has to leave.
And we just thank him for writing a book an entire year in advance where he shat on his Republican colleagues in the Senate and still walk the halls with them. That, to me, is a definition of bravery in this environment that we're in.
That concept that you mentioned about how people feel like I need to be there because someone else crazy will come in. I wrote about this a ton for the book.
I call it the junior messiah fallacy, right? Like if I'm not here, then I'll be replaced by a crazy white nationalist or conspiracist. And my problem with that theory was always like, does that not say something about the spot that you're in? Right? If your replacement is going to be so fucking insane, like maybe shouldn't that you be reflecting on, you know, the situation you put yourself in? Again, it was maybe logical if you are the view that Trump goes away.
But then to follow that logic to its end, you had to help him go away. And they never did that.
So anyway, all right, Joe Biden. Is everybody ready? Is everybody ready to do this? Bill Kristol began his newsletter this morning.
And, you know, there are a lot of ways to go into it. You know, he could have opened his newsletter with a little meditation on Donald Trump's tweet about how 2024 is our final battle.
And with you at my side, we'll demolish the deep state. He could have gone into his first newsletter and talked about how Donald Trump made fun of Nikki Haley's husband for serving in the Horn of Africa.
Tons of possible things. Harvard-Yale football rivalry.
Could have written about anything the. The world is your oyster.
Instead, Bill Kristol made a kind of half-hearted, three-quarters-hearted argument that Joe Biden might consider stepping aside. So let's do it.
I think we have a family disagreement on this one, but let's hear you make the case, Bill. I thought it was reasonably fully-hearted.
I mean, I don't have a- Fully-hearted? I don't know. It felt a little three-quarters-hearted.
I don't have as big a heart as you do, Tim. So for me, you know, for your point of view, it was mildly a little bit too qualified.
But believe me, I'm outraged about all those other things. I'll write about them a million times.
I hope over the next, I hope, I mean, I expect over the next eight, nine months, the Michael Haley thing, it's particularly appalling. And there, I do think that could hurt Trump.
So just take a second on that. Are there no veterans in the country who just find it appalling that Trump makes fun of the fact that

Nikki Haley's husband is deployed in Africa as if he's doing nothing, he's having a good time,

he's just avoiding being with his wife or something like that? And does that move some

veterans to say he just can't be president again? Again, one always hopes these things have a little

bit of effect that's cumulative. But you know what? To defeat Trump, people have to, mostly they have

to want to defeat Trump, I take that point, but they have to be okay with the alternative. And

the effect that's cumulative. But you know what? To defeat Trump, people have to, mostly they have to want to defeat Trump.
I take that point. But they have to be okay with the alternative.
And the polling is just not getting better for Joe Biden. And Americans think he's too old.
And he looks somewhat frail. And it was not good.
I don't care that much about what the special counsel wrote, but his own performance in those 14 minutes Thursday night was bad, in my opinion. And it's unlikely to get better.
And why are we being fatalistic about this? He likes being president. Well, fine, everyone does.
And if they get to that status, and he's done a good job as president, which he really does deserve credit for. But we could do better.
And I'm very convinced that a younger candidate would do better against Trump. And I'm pretty convinced, and this is where the three quarters hard comes in, but I think that's just trying to be realistic.
I don't want to be pan-glossing about it, that I think the process could still produce, without too much messiness and too much damage, a much better candidate. So I think it's important to beat Trump.
I don't think Biden at this point is the best bet to beat Trump. So I think Biden should do the right thing for the country and step aside.
How would that work? How would the process work? So Biden just steps aside. Then we have a whole bunch of primaries.
You'd have write-in candidates where it's too late to get on the ballot. You can still get on the ballot for some of the last few states.
It probably would become a kind of slightly chaotic, you know, a lot of people would run or people would write them in. Even if they said they weren't running, they'd be draft Whitmer, draft Shapiro, draft Newsom.
Some of them would run, actually, especially talking in this case about Biden stepping aside. Certainly, Vice President Harris would run.
Probably no one might get a majority, might have a brokered convention. I did point out that we had brokered conventions in 1932 and 1860, also in Chicago, where the Democratic Convention is, and that produced Roosevelt and Lincoln.
So maybe brokered conventions aren't always so bad. I got an email right away at like 931.
The newsletter goes out at 9 i think from someone who said what about the 90 there's another convention in chicago you're not mentioning 1968 that wasn't such a good democratic convention which is the point i had thought of actually i had actually a couple sentences in about it and andrew and i discussed it being like too complicated now but i was this is an interesting case study that was a total mess right lbj gets gets out. Robert Kennedy tragically gets assassinated.
McCarthy, Humphrey, terrible convention. I still think Hubert Humphrey was actually a better candidate and probably ran better against Nixon, almost one, than LBJ as the incumbent would have.
Now, Biden's not LBJ. There's no Vietnam War.
I don't mean to, you know, that wouldn't overdo the analogy or anything. But I just think an incumbent, it's getting harder and harder to say that the judgment of Biden hasn't settled in or isn't settling.
And Doug Sosnick, a veteran Democratic strategist, had a very good piece in the Times yesterday, which really made, I mean, it's advice to Biden, but it's really not encouraging about just hardheaded look at what Biden's numbers already is the incumbent. It's going to be somewhat about him.
It can't totally be about Trump. Carville and Axelrod were quoted in the Times article.
Pretty tough comments for people who have to really work in or associate with democratic operatives in a way that I don't quite have to, honestly. So I feel like, you know what, analytically, if I'm with Sosnick and Carville and Axelrod, I'm okay.
If people don't like that, I urged him to step aside. Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe he's right that he's the best alternative. That's what he says.
The one who can beat Trump. Fine.
Then he'll reject the argument. But I feel bad not making the argument.
So I figured, why not start with that? And then we can get to beating up Donald Trump, you know? Okay. Well, I have a half-hearted, a three-quarters-hearted disagreement that I'll get to, but I'm deeply curious where A.B.
stands, because A.B. was really with you last year, right, and arguing that there should be a primary.
Are you still with Bill, or are you digging into your heels for President Biden at this point? So I started writing about this in July of 2022 because the polling is two years old on the fact that Biden's age has disqualified him amongst a majority of the electorate, including from his own party. That's only gotten worse.
And he dug in anyway. So I wrote that from July to the end of 2022.
I wrote it throughout 2023. And Bill and I were expecting he would go on holidays at the end of 2022 after a great midterm, come out, say he wasn't going to, but he waited till April.
And when he was waiting, I thought he was going to say no. I thought this is his way.
He's dithering. It's Biden's way.
But he knows. The man knows how old he is.
He's been humbled by life so many times. And by the twists of fate, he certainly is not going to do this.
And I'm, to this day, completely stunned that he decided to run again. I have different theories about why and who pushed him and this type of thing that I'll leave aside.
I'm not certain about the calendar and brokered conventions and like ways that, you know, ways that this would go. What I would like to think, because now as of this morning, especially I'm very pro deep state, you know, I would like to think that some cabal, if he stepped aside today, could sort of just push some kind of juggernaut, you know, where it's like down to Harris and one other person, right? And they have like, that it's not 13 people, including Elizabeth Warren, like not a silly situation.
Can we put in the House of Cards music under this section? Do you know what I'm saying? I just think that that would be my hope, my fantasy. I don't know if it's possible.
But I do think at this point, it's all but clear, and it should be to Biden, that the people who decide these elections are not partisans, and they're not politically informed. And they are in a handful of swing states, and there are only a few thousand of them.
And they are just looking at Joe Biden and saying, this is elder abuse, and the man needs to go home. And so we have to stop denying that.
Again, I don't know about the logistics, but I'm still with Bill on the fact that it's way too grave a risk for us to sit here on election night and say, oh, let Joe Biden, he shouldn't have done that to us. I mean, it's at some point he and his wife made the wrong call.
And I want to circle back to one thing. His accomplishments have nothing to do with this.
In every column that I wrote about this, and everyone go back to them, I talk about his accomplishments, which are extraordinary and unprecedented legislative record in the Congress in a time where there's no margin, no math, and a completely gridlocked, polarized political environment. But no one knows about these accomplishments.
And it's too late for them to quote unquote, learn about them through cabinet secretaries traveling the country and blue ribbon cuttings and some TikTok videos. So this is the denial in the, in the democratic party.
Oh, we haven't started spending the money. Oh, abortion, all this, all that, you know what? That's great.
It's not working so far when people don't pay attention to the stuff and have written it off completely and think it's not only impossible for him to win the election and carry on, that he can't serve a second term and then he needs to go maybe to a hospital bed. This is the problem.
This is the problem is that it's not what we think of him. You know.
There's been plenty of polling that shows that his accomplishments have not broken through with the voters they need to have broken through with. And that's really disappointing, but that's the reality.
Well, you pre-budded a big part of my little speech I was planning about his accomplishments. So we'll save the Biden accomplishment speech for another podcast.
My other objection is just practical. The reality is if it's not him, it's Harris.
I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that.
Those are the options on the table. At this point in February 12th? Totally not.
If he got out tomorrow, they would be right in Canada. Do you think others wouldn't run? Do you think it would be Harris because she would beat everyone else or because everyone would be too intimidated to run against her? I think that a lot of people would be too intimidated to run against her.
And I think it'd be very, very challenging to defeat the first black woman vice president with a candidate that isn't of a white man for sure that does not fit those democratic bills. And just as a practical matter, Bill, I remember, I think one time when you're sitting in this podcast, we're having Carville.
Carville gave a very, I think, poignant point about the democratic primaries, which is like the people that win the black church win every time. He's like, if you go back through history and the democratic primaries, it's like whoever does the best with older black voters can win the black church.
That is the core of the democratic base. You would add onto that, I think, suburban women.
So you have to come up with a candidate in this fantasy world i love ab's deep state plan that we're gonna like put a new you know person forward but like you have to come up with a candidate that can beat a sitting black woman vice president in with black voters and with suburban women and you're gonna have to do it like maybe at a on a convention floor boy i find that very very hard to imagine you might be right obviously yeah look i'd make only two points a you know the fact that kamala harris is a black woman doesn't mean that all blacks or all women will vote for her obviously they didn't in 2020 of course be in what i don't even agree with a multi-candidate race including elizabeth warren that doesn't terrify me i believe we had that in 2020 and won the presidency? Joe Biden. He won it in part because he won the primary against a lot of other people.
And so C, I'll make this point, I think probably Vice President Harris probably wouldn't win the primary. If she did, she would be stronger as a result.
And I've now come to the view, and this may just sound crazy to people, that a Vice President Harris who defeats Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and to which the other people in a set of primaries, write-in votes, who gets the nomination in a kind of open convention, picks the Vice President who would balance the ticket sort of. I'm not sure that's not a stronger ticket than Biden-Harris.
I mean, I'm not so terrified of, I'm actually less terrified of Kamala Harris at this point than worried about Biden trying to make the case to the American public that Joe Biden should be president for five more years and that he should do so with a vice president Harris who has had no chance to prove herself really as vice president. Maybe she missed some chances.
Maybe that's her fault. Maybe it's the Biden White House fault.
If she actually won a primary, be like George H.W. Bush in 87, 88, the wimp, the mush, he's a very bad, he's a lame vice president.
He's ever been a great candidate. But you know what? Once he beat people, he was a stronger candidate in the general election.
So that's my wishful thinking. Well, here is where we kind of agree.
I'm actually not so scared of Kamala, but I'm just not. I think that she has obvious weaknesses that are some of which that she's brought upon herself, some of which that are totally not her fault about the nature of the swing voter and the swing electorate and how they might feel about the first black woman president.
But I'm not that scared of her. It comes down to AB was being very dismissive of the, well, the Democrats response to this is, well, abortion, well, our accomplishments, well, we haven't spent any money.
Well, people haven't really sunk in that what the reality of Trump too would look like. Isn't that all true? Isn't that all true though? That in 2022, that system worked, that range of issues worked, and that in 2024, the Biden White House is going to have an advertising juggernaut, is going to be able to highlight the weaknesses? People like me will all be trying to help make those issues work, and they should work.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm for Biden against Trump, 100%.
But I don't think it's quite like 2022 for various obvious reasons we can get into. Mostly that Biden, for the talk that 2022 is a vindication of Biden, you know who actually won big in 2022? Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, a lot of people who are a generation younger than Joe Biden.
So I'm kind of simple-minded. Why not let them run in 2024? I feel like that would be stronger.
There's such anti-incumbency. There's lots that's unfair about it.
But again, I think Joe Biden was not on the ballot in 2022. Final one about 2022, just incidentally, it was a very good off year for the Democrats by the standard of off year elections.
The Republicans won the national popular vote in 2022 by about 1%. It's not as if, if we replicate 2022, Trump will win the presidency.
Yeah, well, but some of that, but the Democrats did well in the key states, in the electoral college states. They did, yeah, exactly.
The Republicans overperformed in California and New York. I couldn't agree more.
Whitmer, Shapiro, Warnock, they were great. All right, Bill, pretty convincing.
A.B., I'll give you the last word. It's a question of what they're going to break through on in a non-midterm year, in a presidential year when those voters I talked about who will be turning out, who can decide these elections and are not informed about who Carrie Lake is, is an election denier.
Bill's right. More Republicans turned out in 2022 than Democrats.
Most of a lot of them just voted for Democrats in the right places and spared us secretaries of states and governors in key states who were election deniers. A lot of those motivated young people who came out on abortion in the right places really saved the day.
But we can't count on strategic turnout in the right places, stopping the fact that Trump has new converts. And I know this is dark and you guys don't like to hear it, but like a lot of people are perfectly fine with Donald Trump.
The average voter doesn't know about the Insurrection Act, doesn't know what a kleptocracy will mean, doesn't understand what guardrails will now be gone. And so they do look back and think it was fine.
We see that in polling, guys. I think they're really jaw with the first Trump term.
And the Democrats are really in denial about that. They just are.
They think Trump is so radioactive with the general electorate. He's not.
You know what's great about this podcast, Tim? Tim Brake brings on A.B. to moderate my insanity.

She is such a wonderful, genuinely wonderful, thoughtful, judicious person. But I'm glad, A.B., that you're making Tim even more happy than I am.
Yeah, lapping you. Lapping, Bill Kristol.
Go harder. Guys, we didn't promise you happy talk on this podcast.
We promised we'd tell you what we'd really think. I will say this, and this is important.
I've seen the Reddit memes about the bulwark, where they've changed the art on the podcast to provide in his old podcast. And I've seen it and I hear the feedback, but I just have to say, this is the thing.
When I said at the time, it's a family argument. What is happening here is everybody agrees on one thing.
The threat is so great. The threat is so great.
And so if there are frayed nerves among people on the same side, it's because we're trying to work through what the best answer is to deal with such a great threat. And that's going to be something that we're going to be doing all year.
And I hope you'll be doing it with us. Bill Krist will be back next Monday.
A.B. Stoddard will be back a lot.
I don't know. After that last performance, though, we might need a week or two break.
We might bring A.B. back in March.
We'll see. You can catch her on the dark side of the JVL.
Before we let you go, I wanted to talk to you briefly about what is to come in this space. For five years, Charlie did an amazing job providing this outlet for people who are either thrust out of their political tribe or trying to understand how the right lost its mind.
My goal is to continue in that spirit. I recognize I don't have his dulcet voice and talk radio cadence, but I'm going to do my best.
I'll be bringing along the other friendly voices in the Bulwark podcast cinematic universe you've come to know and love. I'm going to make my North Star meeting his standard for quality and consistency and maintaining a willingness to always say the things I believe are true, even if not everybody wants to hear it.
I think you might have just heard some of that. And to that end, this podcast is also going to evolve a bit.
I want to widen the aperture, include a broader range of voices ideologically, demographically, bring in some more newsmaker interviews with politicians, take a few detours from the endless parade of Trump horribles with subject

matter experts.

I want to argue a little more.

My Mimi would want that.

Arguing something that keeps me sane and sharp.

So we're going to be looking for opportunities to have people on to spar with.

Maybe even Carrie Lake will be on this podcast.

Who knows?

And speaking of arguing with Carrie,

I want to also make sure this is fun and not a slog.

So we might mix in some goofier stuff from time to time, but it will not be Broadway trivia. Sorry, Charlie.
That broadening means that we're going to be rejiggering the lineup a little bit. As you heard, we'll be having Bill Kristol on most Mondays.
As for the beloved Trump trials and Will Salatin Mondays, those gents will be by the pod as the news demands, a little bit more sporadically. You can catch Will with Mona on Just Between Us from time to time as well.
With all that said, here's the thing that's most important. I'm absolutely convicted that this election is existential, that everything is on the line.
It's our unfortunate reality. We're going to be taking it head on.
Sometimes that will mean tough love for

those of us who share the same goal of protecting liberal democracy from the Trumpian threat.

Sometimes it will be pure Trump schadenfreude right into your veins. So it's time for all of

us together to sharpen the knives, steel ourselves for the shitstorm of lunacy ahead. I hope you do

it with me. I look forward to doing it all over again.

We'll see you tomorrow.

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason

Brough.