Jonathan V. Last: Burning Things Down

is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe.

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Hello and welcome to the Boulder Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

It is Monday.

I promised you a Labor Day podcast on Friday with Bill Crystal as usual, but we have some scheduling snafus.

We have a sub.

Bill Crystal is the editor-at-large.

We brought in instead the editor-in-large.

The editor in charge, JVL, Jonathan V.

Last.

How do you know, man?

What is an editor at large?

I don't even really know what that means.

I think it means he just

goes where he wants and does what he pleases.

You know what?

I can do my best Bill Crystal bit for you if it'll make everybody feel more comfortable.

Jim, yeah.

As, you know, I remember having lunch with Bella Abzug once and,

you know, back in the day.

It was.

I don't know.

I don't know where it goes from there.

But it's okay.

So all of his stories wind up somehow are, and then I was having coffee with lionel trilling right

he does have lunch and coffee yard and and increasingly more recently zooms or i was on a call you know i was on a call with some feckless democrats

um you know anyway

we talked a little bit about you on friday's pod with tom nichols oh i heard that yeah you've been writing some dark triads even for you this past week it looks like friday's triad newsletter which everyone should sign up for thebork.com is about uh how uh simple systems fall apart and how you think we might be reaching a tipping point for liberal democracy.

So that's an uplifting piece of material.

On Thursday, you have Trump was waging war against the government, and then he's going to wage war against the people.

Yeah.

You know, it's pretty heavy material.

You and Sarah hashed us out a little bit on Friday on the secret podcast, but why don't you just give us, you know, you've had a couple, maybe you got a little vitamin D this weekend.

I don't know.

I'm just wondering where your head's at on the autocracy watch.

I'd like to start there.

I mean, it's gotten worse, I think.

Look, I should just say, and Sarah and I talked about this on Friday.

I think the last couple of weeks have been really bad, really bad.

And I went and looked up something I wrote in early January before Trump had been

sworn in.

Since the election, I had done a couple of like, hey, maybe it won't be so bad.

And here's what it would look like if we kind of dodge a bullet here pieces.

And they were, you know, like, yeah, he doesn't mean any of the stuff about tariffs or deportations.

He really just wants to golf and be popular and right.

Redesign the White House.

You know, he had a couple of those things.

Like if he was just focusing on golfing and, you know, doing the Aba Pan

remodel of the Rose Garden, then that would have been nice.

Right.

So I then went and wrote a sort of like, all right, so what does the worst case scenario look like?

And I said, you know, obviously the worst case scenario is always nuclear holocaust and we all die, but let's, you know, let's not look at the 99th percentile worst case, let's look at like the 90th percentile worst case, you know, that doesn't go all the way to like everyone's dead.

And I sort of outlined what it would look like.

And I, I think we're way past

that.

Way past?

Yeah, I think we're pretty far past that.

National Guard in the cities, military in the cities, like masked federal agents just grabbing people off the streets, using third countries as places to deport to, which is one of the, I mean, one of the reasons I did not believe that he would be able to do mass deportations is because

you have to have somebody willing to accept them.

Right.

And,

you know, I just thought, like, Mexico isn't going to take 15 million people.

Like, that's, that doesn't work.

Like, I mean, just logistically.

And the answer that he's come up with is, oh, well, we can just pay Uganda and Sudan and El Salvador to take people and jail them for us.

That's something

I hadn't foreseen.

So

I think things are

worse.

And I'll just preview something I'm thinking through tomorrow for the Tuesday triad.

What we are seeing is that

it's not.

So I don't know if you saw Missouri is thinking about redistricting.

Yep.

Yeah.

Missouri is going to happen.

Yeah.

Indiana is kind of more of a question.

Missouri is going to happen.

But they're only going to

only take one seat, only one, but yeah.

But it's not really the number of seats.

Yeah.

It's the

idea that red states can begin imposing their will

on the rest of the states.

And this is the redistricting thing.

We see this a little bit with some of the abortion laws, which criminalize people for stuff they do in other states.

Yeah, travel.

Right.

So if you, if you leave Texas Texas to go and you get an abortion in California, then there's some laws trying to criminalize so that they can arrest you when you come back.

Sending your National Guard, if you are West Virginia or South Carolina, to a

place ruled by the other party that doesn't want you there, and so far it's just the district.

We'll see.

My point is that all of this starts to look like what we had before the Civil War when slave states were actively going and trying to bring more slave states into the Union because what they wanted to do was impose their will on the northern states and vice versa.

And

I, I mean,

that to me starts to look really dangerous, right?

I mean, we're in a world where all the red states are going to start redistricting sort of in a semi-coordinated manner in order to try to steamroll at the federal level the the representation of of blue states that's a real us versus them dynamic and when you throw in the national guard and like red states sending national guard if if you wind up having like south carolina sending their national guard into into illinois or something i mean gee i i just don't know am i crazy do i sound like a crazy person um i mean it depends on what you think what you're saying what the implications are of that there's a lot of subjections are i don't know yeah right right i mean the implications are like this feels like lighting the fuse on something that we don't know what happens when the fuse finally goes off does that make make sense no i i mean i agree with that you know look obviously we had covet which killed a million people but like in a weird way we got kind of lucky in the first term right that like there wasn't like there was no crisis really until the last 10 months right and so it took a little time for that all to build up and it's also he's in a reelection right so there was some countervailing uh incentives for him, right?

In that moment of the final year, right?

And like you just imagine kind of the Black Lives Matter, like the George Floyd situation now or something worse than that.

And, you know, I do think that the potential risk there is.

just extremely high and like much, much different than what we experienced the first time through.

But, you know, I don't know.

We could get lucky again.

How many more days do we have?

We could get lucky.

I mean, this is, so I, you know, the counterparty.

And I should say, like, I'm not saying civil war because I, I mean, I don't think, again, the divide is rural and urban, educated and uneducated.

Like, it isn't a geographical divide.

So I don't think, but what I'm saying is these things look like acts of aggression from one part of the country against another part of the country in ways which are the only precedent is like, you know, the 1850s.

Anyway.

Quick plug, become a Bulk Plus member so you can listen to these deep thoughts from JV on Sarah on every Friday.

But just I listened to Friday's Secret.

The argument you're basically making also is just that it's hard to unwind this stuff then.

Oh, yeah, it becomes that I just don't see how you unwind it.

And do you?

No.

Sarah's like, well, just build something better on top of it.

I was like,

well,

it's like, sure, I can think about ways to unwind it.

Right.

Like, you have some extreme, some

white knight, charismatic, outsider, you know, type Democrat actually wins in 2028 and like gets a mandate to reorganize like the way these systems work.

And sure, like, I don't know.

Like, you can imagine ways out of it, but it's, it's hard to see it practically.

And, and I don't necessarily mean there's a way out of it, like, we live in permanent autocracy.

I'm not doing the Tucker thing where I think that we're going from one dictator to the other.

I just mean like there's a lot of these things that he has broken institutionally.

Like the one that I just keep coming back to is the DOJ.

Like, like the notion of an independent DOJ, I do not understand how that gets reconstituted, you know, right?

I mean, maybe some new fresh thing could, right?

But, like, you know, and the next Democrat that comes in won't be able to act like Merrick Garland.

Then the next Republican that comes in will overstate whatever the Democrat did and use it as a rationale for going even further.

It just seems like a total race to the bottom on

that.

And like, yeah, losing an independent rule of law, federal judicial system is a pretty key cornerstone of liberal democracy, you know.

See, I think it'll be the opposite.

I think what we'll do is we'll have an independent Justice Department under Democratic administrations and not under Republican administrations.

I mean, that's the

better scenario than what I laid out.

I mean, is it?

Barely.

Barely.

I don't see how Republicans don't do this with the Justice Department forever, right?

Unless there are some really bad consequences for the people involved in this, which spoiler, there won't be.

Like, isn't this the norm for Republican governments?

Isn't this just the table ante for if you are a Republican president, this is how your Justice Department has to function?

Yes.

I mean, you think that the next J.D.

Vance government would be different?

I just don't even know how you could imagine that.

I just don't.

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Here's a point again in the JVL camp also on the even if there is serious consequences, you know, might that change behavior?

Let's look

in the health ministry of this regime to see about that question.

Because you might have thought,

I literally did think, you know, when I was doing my book rounds, God, now my memory's going off.

Was it right?

It was right before COVID stuff.

So at the time, I was saying,

you know, I get the question a lot, which is like, how do you do this?

How do you re-ravel this stuff back up?

And I was always like, ah, you know, there'll be some external crisis and, you know, people will realize that we need grown-ups in the room.

You know what I mean?

Like, that was my answer, right?

Like, something will happen that will, you know, shake the tectonic plates of our politics and, you know, we'll revert back to,

and like, then that happens.

And like the opposite happened, right?

It sent people more, it radicalized people more.

And so I don't really have hope for that anymore as the thing that will bring the Republicans back.

But here we got today,

Jonathan Cohn is a great piece everybody should read about

just looking at what's happening within the CDC.

He features one guy in particular, Dimitri

Descalakis.

I apologize for not getting his colours.

Dimitri.

I'm just going to call him our friend Dimitri.

Dimitri.

We'll just call him Dimitri.

He was in charge of the CDC's Division for Immunization and Respiratory Disease.

Obviously, he had a huge influence over COVID vaccine and approvals and all that.

He is getting pushed out or pushing himself out basically because

they were getting rid of essentially the COVID vaccine.

There are certain people for whom getting the COVID booster is still really important.

I got a buddy who just got a COVID this weekend.

She couldn't go out.

She couldn't go out and about.

This fight is happening internally.

And you've got Trump now sending a post this morning.

I have to read you, JVL.

It's very important that the drug companies justify the success of their various COVID drugs.

Many people think that they're a miracle that saved millions of lives.

Others disagree.

With CDC being ripped apart over this question, is that what it's being ripped apart over?

I want the answer, and I want it now.

I've been shown information from Pfizer and others that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public.

Why not?

They go off on the next hunt and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr.

They show me great numbers and results, but they don't seem to be showing them to many others.

What's he even talking about?

I want them to show show them now.

I hope Operation Warp Speed was brilliant, as many say it was.

If not, we all want to know about it and why.

I don't know what you want.

He's not the president or anything.

He's just a guy sitting there reading the news, same as anybody else.

You know, look at this thing that's happening at the CDC.

It's being ripped apart by some force.

It's kind of funny that the ripping apart is happening within Trump.

You know, he wants to take credit for it so badly, but he also knows that he needs the quacks and the cranks, you know, and so like within a single bleat, he is, you know, he's vacillating back and forth.

It's the most passive voice thing ever.

Right.

But meanwhile, like, and this goes back to kind of what you wrote on Thursday.

Within this administration, the inertia is to burning things down.

Right.

Like Trump, no matter how much Trump wants to take credit for this, it's like the people with the power and the momentum are the cranks,

the ones that want to tear down the institution.

And so it's kind of like, what could Pfizer possibly put forth besides what has already been put forth that would change the momentum of this, right?

The only way to change the momentum of this would be for Trump to say, actually, the CDC matters.

I care about people's health.

Bobby Kennedy's a quack.

I don't want people randomly shooting off about mitochondrial shortages, you know, who aren't doctors making decisions about vaccines.

So we're going to push Bobby aside and bring in an actual professional.

He's not going to do that.

I'll be hopeful for a minute.

I think the case of HHS in Bobby Kennedy is a very pure

causal relationship to one guy, right?

If

Trump just puts generic MAGA grown-up,

you know, number one in that job, like Mick Mulvaney, right?

Not even like a super grown-up, but just like a good super partisan partisan Republican in there.

Even Mark Meadows.

Mark Meadows.

Mark Meadows in charge of HHS.

None of this stuff happens.

And it doesn't happen because Trump doesn't care about it.

Like this, none of this is the will of Trump.

This is all because this is Bobby Kennedy's personal obsessions and that Trump felt like he owed Kennedy something.

That's all this is.

If Kennedy were to drop dead of, you know, like he did so many pull-ups that his arms fell off, you know, and he just

overdose.

HGH overdose tomorrow.

This stuff could all go back to normal because it's just about him.

And there is no, I mean, there are other cranks, but the other cranks don't have any sort of like political power behind them.

And this isn't, as far as I could tell, something that anybody else in the administration.

Does Christy Noam give a shit about this?

Does JD Vance give a shit about this?

I don't think so.

I mean, they might have anti-vax sympathies, but not enough to.

At this point, though, here's the problem.

At this point, he's already hired like the Means family and like, you know, some and some other random like weirdos from Silicon Valley, you know, who have decided that like the right thing to do is just do antibiotic steroids and green juice.

Like that's the thing that everyone should be doing.

It's like they're now in.

And what, these doctors are going to come back?

Like, let's say he did.

Let's say he did say, Bobby, this is embarrassing.

You know, this is how Trump responds sometimes to certain things.

Like some rich guy's wife has cancer and is in Florida and can't get the COVID vax anymore and so he calls Trump and he's like what the fuck my wife is dying and she she can't or probably more likely I'm dying

Trump would care about the wife I'm dying and I can't get the COVID vaccine this is crazy you gotta do and Trump's like all right screw you Bobby you know and he has someone else fire him because he doesn't fire anybody I do you think Dimitri's coming back Do you think that the, you know what I mean?

Isn't it too late?

I don't think Dimitri's coming back, but you could hold the status quo where it is, right?

And ratchet back some of the other stuff.

And here's what I was being hopeful: what if Trumpism is like that?

No, I don't think it is.

Like if Trump and Bobby just both went away, Trump and what if Trump goes away?

Yeah, you know, because he just decides it's too much work, he wants to retire.

I don't really believe that, but this is the again, me trying to be quasi-hopeful that maybe some of this stuff is really idiosyncratic and is really tied to the single figure who has gathered behind him a tremendous amount of popular power and political power.

Maybe things could be okay.

I don't know.

I mean, I think that some of Trump's idiosyncraticities,

that's not the right word, but whatever.

People know what I'm trying to get.

It's a holiday weekend.

Like, you know, the Putin love might go away, right?

At some level, maybe not.

You know, I don't know.

Some of like Trump's random

obsessions, maybe.

But I think the broader

authoritarian nationalist populist project is still continues apace.

I think so too.

I think so too.

I was just trying to be

you said things could be helpful and I thought you were going with the things that could be helpful in the CDC is that, you know, maybe some people, maybe some people suffer the consequences of their own health choices.

I thought that's what's going to be your optimism.

No.

And to be clear, I think that will be terrible when it happens.

But,

you know.

Life is red in tooth and claw, right?

I mean, this is like we have, we have spent a lot of money in America trying to insulate people from the consequences of their decisions.

And maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for people to see them again.

I don't know.

I'm just talking out loud here.

Isn't it crazy that like an anti-vax maniac like fired 500 bullets at the CDC like two weeks ago or something?

And like we just just by the just by luck, the one security guard died.

you know, God love him, R.I.P.

And that's awful.

But like because it was only one person and we live in a country where we have like mass shootings all the time, like one death doesn't really merit like big news anymore.

And so, like, simultaneously, we have this total like insane person who's been radicalized by a specific political movement, shooting literal bullets at the CDC while the president and the head of HHS are dismantling CDC from the inside.

And that story just goes away.

And, like, you, in different years, that would be the biggest story of the year.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I feel like that almost every day, almost literally.

That's why the last two weeks were so hard for me personally, because I felt like every single day there was something that I thought,

well, shit, this would have been the biggest story of the year.

You know, this would be a defining moment.

And it's just, you know, it's just another day that ends in Y.

Yeah.

In 1997, people would have had like CDC ribbons.

Oh my gosh, can you imagine?

Yeah.

The double weirdness of, you know, a guy who's shooting up the CDC at the same moment that the CDC is being realigned to his priorities.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Like, that's the double weirdness of you have to imagine if you're on the inside of it and you're like a normal human being, you know, just going to work, you feel like you're getting it going to work.

You feel like you're getting it from both sides.

Yeah.

Right.

You have this fifth column, which is now in charge of your organization, and you have also literal people on the outside shooting at your organization because you're not already.

But it's just, it's bad.

But your question is: how does that go back together

i don't think it does i mean for one of the one reason we're going to get a whole bunch of studies coming out of the government around health and science over the next three years three and a half years we're not going to be able to trust any of them right any study that comes out of hhs that bobby kennedy has put his stamp on Nobody can, we saw the first thing they put out that was like written by AI, right?

It is going to be like the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And

like, what does that mean when the federal government is no longer a trusted clearinghouse just for basic information and data?

Like, I just don't know.

Like, so what?

So, we then say on January 21, 2029, okay, now we can all trust the federal government again.

Trust us.

How does that like that doesn't work?

It's hard.

And then people also don't think about the other stuff, which is then the bad faith treatment.

Like, again, let's say a Democrat wins.

Let's say it's somebody who's committed to

changing, to fixing the institutions, which I think would be a pretty, probably not politically potent campaign strategy.

But let's say it works because things are so bad and they get in anyway.

And then

they try to fix it.

It's like, okay, well, what if inevitably when that CDC fucks up?

Because they'll do something wrong because we're still humans, right?

Like even when the adults are in charge, they still make mistakes.

And we saw this during COVID, right?

Then the radical

fifth column within that the people that are still there.

And then on the outside, you know, you use that to undermine their credibility again.

And then eventually the other side, right?

Like that, that, that was really more your point, not that like we are in a dictatorship now permanently, but like that these

problems, you know, that like the thing, the trust that underpinned the liberal democratic society, like once broken, is that's gone.

Right.

And that's, that's that, like, simple, complex system thing.

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While we're doing health stuff, just do you have any hot takes really quick on Trump?

Wasn't out that much this weekend.

He didn't look great going to the golf course.

We saw two pictures of him.

He looked a little feeble.

He was going to golf.

I noticed we didn't get any pictures of him golfing.

We just got him in the motorcade back and forth.

He did post a a bunch yesterday, including never felt better in my life.

All caps.

So I think that does that settle it for you?

Yeah,

a couple things.

First of all, during the cabinet meeting, you notice the great lengths he took to keeping that one hand underneath the table.

That was a thing he did.

Two, I mean, during the Cold War, the CIA had an entire division,

which all it did was keep track of pictures of members of the Politburo to try to figure out their health.

Like, you know, oh, is Volkhodnikov, is he sick?

Does he look like he has cancer?

What is his life expectancy?

They're doing their own actuarial work because they're trying to understand what the dynamics looks like.

And that has now come to America.

Like we, we are now,

we sit around

and the only health reports we get.

from the president are obviously ridiculous, right?

You know, we thought, oh, he, you know, he only weighs 220 pounds, really, right?

He's in the best, the most spectacular health ever.

He can throw a spiral better than Joe Burrow.

Just so, right.

And so none of this, none of, none of this stuff can be taken at face value because, again, that is clear like living in a dictatorship type stuff.

And

we now live in a world where when this president goes dark for 72 hours, people got to be like,

is he dead?

You know,

because we're living in

like the Kremlin of 1980.

Yeah.

Are you like freaked out by this?

Because this fact

really, really makes me like, this is dictatorship stuff.

Like this is not normal democracy.

Yeah, no, it's obviously not normal.

And it's very strange to live in this situation.

And you would have thought that people would have rebelled against it in a greater way than they have.

I mean, I don't know.

Why would I be freaked out by it?

Does

Trump's health,

you know, good luck?

Did you see JD last week?

Yeah, talking about how he's ready.

God forbid.

God forbid.

How do you think Trump takes that?

I think probably okay for now, just because JD has just been such a slavish

suckup.

But I don't know.

Maybe he starts to get thoughts.

Has he been?

I don't know.

He sort of, he didn't like the idea of bombing Iran.

Again, he's used a couple public formulations of Trump with regard to both Iran and the Epstein files, which were instead of just like, I support him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's he's really earned the benefit of the doubt.

He thinks he's clever.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but if I was Trump, I would look at that and be like,

hey, dude, get in line.

I would just say what I actually think is happening is that Trump needed rest because he's 79 years old and he's been keeping a really, pretty heavy schedule.

People need to remember that he is actually a human being.

Like he's not like a villain from one of the superhero movies that you watch.

Cankles.

A friend of mine said we are going to wind up being like the Cuban people who spent 20 years waiting for Castro to die.

Oh, for sure.

And that then, when it turns out he does die,

it's so late in the day that it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Oh, no, definitely.

I 100% agree with that.

I think he likely will outlive me.

It's like a fucking lizard person.

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We had some actual news I want to talk to you about.

There was a summit in China over the weekend.

Putin, Modi, Xi, all together looking very chummy.

Yep.

Putin and Modi in the back of a limo, which was kind of a noteworthy visual choice by them after Trump night.

Yeah, after Trump invited Putin into his limo.

Modi talking about how insightful Putin is.

I mean, again, in a different world, we would be, this would be setting off really like five alarm fires here in America, right?

Like this Axis forming over there, these other authoritarians.

And you would think that Trump would be wanting to try to coalesce the freedom-loving countries throughout the world.

That's what traditionally we'd been doing in the post-World War II era.

Not happening, actually.

We're alienating our allies and Trump's, I guess, threatening.

Trump doesn't want to ever threaten Putin with any actual consequences.

So the stick that the administration has used to go after Russia, kind of, since they haven't ended the war, is these tariffs on India as a punishment for buying Russian oil.

So we're punishing India, not Russia, really.

And India's response seems to be, you know, sidling up to Russia and China even more.

So I don't know what you make of all that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, here's the good news.

It could have been worse.

Trump could have also been there.

Right.

Right.

I mean,

the good news is that the axis of authoritarians so far does not seem, they seem to believe that they should be setting up an opposition to America and not including America.

So good for us.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I guess.

Right.

I mean, this is, you could see a world in which like Trump is over there and they're all taking sides against America.

When you said 90% worst case outcomes, you know, we haven't reached that one.

We haven't gotten to that one yet.

So it's really pretty interesting.

And I think it's it's a sign.

I wrote this after

Mark Carney came out and said, Canada's got to look elsewhere because the relationship with America is no longer operable.

The rest of the world is moving on.

And that's what I think America doesn't quite understand.

Some of us do, but I think most Americans don't.

The rest of the world is moving on because they realize this isn't just Trump.

Trump happening once can be just bad luck, but twice means that the character of of the American people can no longer be relied upon.

Like, this is a verdict on all of America.

It's not about Trump.

And you can't make plans.

America is weak.

And China is just saying, look, we are what we are, but we're not crazy.

And we don't go careening.

We don't do like, you know, 10% tariffs on day one and then 39% tariffs on day two and then 22% tariffs on day three.

Like, you can do business with us.

You can make plans around us.

Yeah, we might steal some of your IP.

Right, no, like we are what we are.

You know, we're not going to, but that's it.

It's also interesting that China's not trying to pretend that they're something different, right?

They're just saying, like, we are, we are gangsters, but we are orderly gangsters.

And if you go under, under our umbrella, you'll be able to do what you want to do less or more.

You'll have to pay the juice to us.

But, you know, it's not like those crazy guys over there where you can't, you know, that's like going to work for, I don't know, Elon.

Elon or something, right?

So

you have them together.

We're America's friends, right?

Europe is preparing to go without us, right?

They are in the process of making alternative security arrangements that will lead to alternative economic arrangements.

The Sharia oligarchs in the

Middle East are our friends now.

Cutter, kind of, I guess there's that.

Yeah.

The Sharia law oil.

Cutter and the Saudis.

Those will be our.

El Salvador has a key ally of us now.

Yeah, that's great.

This stuff is all going to continue to happen.

And there's nothing.

I mean, clearly, there's nothing Trump can do.

It is also funny to me that Trump wants in with them so bad, right?

Because Trump really does see himself as a Putin or a G.

And they're happy to like...

coddle him and play him when they're in front of him, but they know he's so stupid that they can also just keep doing whatever they want to do.

Right.

And, you know, and so they're going and creating a post-American world order, which, uh, which so are the Europeans.

And what are we doing?

We're driving biomedical research and pharmaceutical research out of the country.

We are blowing up our own GDP.

I thought Jake Sullivan was so good on this on China, too.

Like, in meanwhile, like, we're just getting played.

And Trump still, like, he cares most about the deal, like the ornament that he can have.

Like, meanwhile, we're like bringing in 600,000 Chinese students to go to, we're doubling the amount of, you know, because he wants Xi to like him.

He wants Putin to like him still.

It would be like easier, I guess, to rail against if it was purely nefarious.

But like there's a nefariousness to it with Trump, but also like this kind of weakness of

admiration that he has for the people at that summit and kind of this disdain for most of the Democratic leaders, besides the ones that are good at golf, like the guy from Finland.

That's why they keep him around.

But so, you know, like that part,

you can imagine kind of a right-wing nationalist leader of America that's malicious, that still has the massed guys taking people off the streets, but that also

is really trying to, like he at least has a vision for what a strong America countering.

like China would look like.

And like, that's not what we're doing at all.

Just take the India stuff, right?

I mean, driving India into China's arms.

I mean, this is, you know, they have a disputed border, and China is being like super magnanimous about it.

They're like, hey, we're not going to let this one thing define our relationship

because Trump doesn't want to go after Putin.

I mean, because that's what it is, right?

He is, he has decided he's going to blow up the American-Indian relationship in order to make sure that he can not offend Vlad, his friend.

That's literally what it's.

And it's crazy because it's so stupid.

And as you say,

there's no sign to...

You know what's going to happen on Wednesday, Tim?

What's that?

Xi's having a big old military parade in Beijing.

He's going to be jealous.

His guest, his special guest, is going to be Little Rocket Man, Kim Jong-un.

And

I would bet you anything that Trump is obsessed with what that parade looks like.

I mean, and that is because

I think we're going to have another military parade.

Did you?

He wasn't happy with ours.

The army let him down.

It was a sad military parade.

And so he's going to ask the, I think it's the Navy to do better.

Hand to God.

I mean, we are going to have an American president watching a Chikom military parade with envy because that's the world we live in now.

Just want to throw one last thing on this.

I don't know if you knew this.

Shout out to our friends at Playbook because

I didn't have it marked on my calendar.

Today is Trump's latest deadline for Putin to make progress on peace in Ukraine.

That was today.

I remember with the 90 and the 30 days.

Didn't Macron say something about

like, you know, Trump, Putin will have played him again if no ceasefire happens by Monday?

There we are.

Here we are Monday.

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All right, final topic.

I just, I couldn't let this go by.

I need to talk to somebody about it.

Did you see the Rudy Giuliani press release over the weekend?

Sure did.

I have so many questions about it.

For anybody who's enjoying their Labor Day and missed it, I don't know, might have been distracted by other things like LSU's dominating victory over Clemson and Little Death Valley.

Here is the statement that you might have missed.

On the evening of August 30th, 2025 in New Hampshire, Mayor Giuliani was involved in a motor vehicle accident.

Prior to the incident, he was flagged down by a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident.

Mayor Giuliani immediately rendered assistance and contacted 911.

That's nice.

Something like a Batman figure.

He remained on the scene until responding officers arrived to ensure her safety.

Following this, while traveling on the highway, Mayor Giuliani's vehicle was struck from behind at high speed.

He was transported to a nearby trauma center where he was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae.

His business partner and medical provider were promptly contacted and arrived at the hospital to oversee his care.

At this time, no further updates are available.

This is the only statement authorized by Mayor Giuliani, signed Michael Ragusa, head of Mayor Giuliani's security.

I have so many questions, starting with, how does Mayor Giuliani still have security?

Who's paying for that?

Why does he still have a business partner?

What's his business?

I

thought that he had to pay the Georgia election workers.

So I thought he had a lot of debts still.

Maybe the security is being provided pro bono, Tim.

By who?

I don't know.

This is the fishiest car accident story since the Tiger Woods golf club thing.

Remember, like, oh, Tiger Woods is being involved in a car.

You know, he was in his driveway.

It was, it was the holiday.

Who can say?

We don't know what happened here.

It's like, wait a minute.

Why was

he injured in a car accident in his driveway?

What is he doing in New Hampshire?

Does he have business in New Hampshire?

Is Giuliani doing a lot of business up in New Hampshire?

I think he is a lover in New Hampshire.

Maybe, allegedly.

I've heard.

I don't know for true.

Does he just pull whenever he sees a car pull over on the side with flashers?

Does Rudy just hop off and is he a white knight of the roads?

Is that what he's up to?

And then he's like, oh, yeah, well, I'm.

Any of the Rudy Giuliani that we have seen in public over the last eight years suggest that he has the wherewithal to operate a motor vehicle on his own?

Was the security driver?

Was he driving?

Why was he at high speed after this?

How does it relate to the domestic violence incident?

He's then waiting on the side for the police.

He's the one who interfaces with the police.

He is then being pursued at high speed.

All of this is, I mean, Maybe it's true, but I get the sense.

And then following this, the sort of this is the only statement, please respect your privacy.

Again, I have to feel that if it unfolded in the way that it has been presented to us, that Rudy wouldn't shut up about it.

Yeah, he'd want to do many interviews.

He'd be on the Today Show.

He would be in every, like, you know, Rudy Giuliani rehabilitates himself.

Rudy Giulia, finally, the, the, America's mayor is back.

I hope we find out what this is all about someday because I bet it's great.

Do you have theories?

Do you have have any any guesses as to what this might be i i mean i think the safest theory always is that rudy was drinking because he drinks a lot uh which is fine i mean you know as long as it's not causing other problems in your life and i i don't know if that caveat applies to rudy clearly rudy's been fine

so yeah but again i mean it's 10 p.m saturday night on 93.

i i don't i don't know I i don't really have a great theory.

And I think that probably the

best theory,

who the hell knows?

Who the hell knows?

I'd like to know more.

We'll keep an eye on this story.

We'll be monitoring the story.

But, you know, the reason I want to know more, Tim, is because I want to make sure that I can afford Rudy the plaudits that he deserves

for saving a woman who is the victim of domestic abuse.

Allegedly.

And so that is the only reason I want to know more is because I feel like his reputation, which has taken a little bit of a hit over the last eight years or so, we deserve to be able to see him for the real man of courage that he is.

And I just want to know more so we can all celebrate that.

And at the bulk, we like to give credit where due.

Even if we have some disagreements,

it's important that we acknowledge the successes of our political foes.

All right.

JVL, thank you for subbing.

What a show.

A little longer than I meant it to be, but hopefully everybody enjoyed the bonus minutes.

And we'll be talking to you on Wednesday at the next level.

If people aren't downloading the next level with you, me, and Sarah on Wednesdays, what are they doing with their lives, honestly?

I mean, clearly, they're just Tim stands who don't like it when me and Sarah are there.

I don't think that that can't be, that could not possibly be it.

Skating over your genius.

I mean, I don't think so.

I appreciate that.

All right.

Thank you, JBL.

And no more compliments, please.

Everybody else, we'll see you tomorrow.

We got an old friend coming on the show.

It'll be a good one.

Catch you then.

Peace.

But you can't stop if you waste time.

Yeah.

So when you got hit, shake on.

And if you got free,

Juliana's gotta be what we ain't gonna lose.

Let's break on.

Yeah, yeah.

So when you got hits, shake off.

And if you got free,

Juliana's got a few more.

Let's break on.

Let's let's let's break on

Let's break on town

And on the way

we'll make him save.

Maybe

everybody cut,

everybody cut,

everybody cut loose.

Everybody cut,

everybody cut,

everybody cut loose.

Now

and shake that butt.

And all the ways

Will make a mistake.

Maybe

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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