Tom Nichols: All The Circuit Breakers Are Gone

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Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

It is Friday.

He is back.

He's a staff fighter at the Atlantic.

He used to be a professor at the Naval War College.

He's grumpy.

It's Tom Nichols.

What's up?

Hey, Tim.

I'm grumpier than usual, but that's just my natural condition.

All right.

Well, much to be grumpy about.

I don't know.

I maybe have a couple of unusual silver linings at the end of the show.

We'll see if we get to them.

And there's some actual breaking news when we get to about things that are happening with ICE and things that are happening with the

militarization of our cities, but I feel remiss if I would not start by asking you, you know, with a few days to marinate on it, your impressions of our Secretary of War, Pete Hagseh, and his promise to liberate the warfighters.

He told them all that they kill people and break things for a living.

That's what he thinks of our soldiers.

That's an old Rush Limbaugh line, actually, going back to the 90s.

Limbaugh used to do that.

Job in the military is to kill people and break things.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Limbaugh used to say that all the time.

Yeah, I was never a ditto head.

You know, even back in, even back in my Republican days, I was never a ditto head.

So I'm not familiar.

I was almost 30 by the time he came on the national scene.

And

I was living mostly in small town Vermont because I was teaching up at Dartmouth in those days.

And so I would tune in talk radio now and then because it was either that or the one local station we had.

You know, my impression, what can I say?

I mean, he thought this was going to be his opportunity to talk tough to the generals and the admirals.

And, you know, the way it turned out was he looked like a, he looked foolish.

I mean, he did have a lot of makeup on.

He did have more makeup on than the admirals and generals, it seemed like.

Well, the best thing I've read about it so far has been by Elliot Cohen, who said, first of all,

here was this, you know, passed over major addressing a room that had the equivalent of something like 25,000 years of accumulated military experience in it.

You know, and he was going to give them what for about, you know, staying, staying in shape and losing those pounds and doing PT.

And, you know, which is, look, there's nothing wrong with that.

If you're a company commander, if you're a captain in charge of 150 guys,

you know, and you get up and say, now remember, fellas, you know, PT, you know, chin up before you go into the mess hall.

But it's completely inappropriate in a Secretary of Defense who you would expect.

would be thinking about big things like, I don't know, strategy, acquisition, the future of weapon systems, the future size and shape of the force, things that secretaries of defense are supposed to be working on.

But, you know, Heg Seth being in

dramatically over his head, you know, wants to talk about fat guys in the hallways, you know, and as a fat guy, I take a little exception of that, you know.

Okay, you're getting tough.

You're getting defensive.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

They suddenly go, you know, insulted him maybe a little bit.

But also, I thought it was just inane and trivial and not what, you know, and I think on a more serious point, I suspect he pulled all those people in to say, I'm the boss and you will respect my authority.

And I think that backfired.

I think 800 of those people looked and said, wow, this guy really is a clown.

You know, they may not have wanted to think that about the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, but I don't think any of them felt any special allegiance to, you know, getting chewed out again by, a guy that was a major some years ago.

And I think it was an error, a strategic error on Hegset's part in several ways, including that it probably undermined his authority rather than cemented it.

The aforementioned Elliott Cohen, co-host of the Shields of the Republic podcast right here at the Bulwark, people can listen to that.

Mark Hurtling is in the Bulwark this morning, General Hurtling.

And he says this about Hegset's remarks, then I want to get to Trump.

He points out that, sure, at some level, it might have just been this stupid show that he is putting on.

I mean, this is my words, not Hurtling.

I guess it's your words I'm stealing from you, that he's doing his Cartman impersonation to try to look like a big boy.

But Hurtling talks about what the kind of ripple effects are.

He writes this: For the generals, admirals, and senior enlisted who left the auditorium, started their long flights home to the Pacific, Europe, and Middle East, those speeches are just the beginning because when Washington speaks with bluster, ambiguity, or hostility, it's the commanders who must translate to their troops, steady their units, and respond to the challenge of new orders.

I think that his point was: was, okay,

so if you are a gay or lesbian soldier, if you are a Sikh with a beard, if you are whatever, like, and you're now...

If you're a black man with a skin condition.

Yeah.

Where's your head at?

And the people that are running these units are now going to have to go manage all that as a result.

What do you make of that?

I've taught a lot of officers, as you know, oh, there's my...

There's Lily making her appearance.

Second animal appearance of the week on the podcast.

Ken Burns' dog was Moses.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, people have been asking for more Lily content.

So there she is.

She's in the big chair.

Look, I've taught a lot of these officers.

I've met a lot of admirals and generals in my 30 years of being around the military.

They worry about two things.

Obviously, they worry about defending the country, but they worry a lot about the people, the well-being of the people under their command.

Here's Hegseth.

basically putting on a show that reveals just how out of his depth he is, just how unqualified for his job he is.

And I think they had to be thinking, on top of everything else, they had to be thinking, does this person really understand, you know, the

responsibility that we carry?

These are the people, both the secretary and the president, who can order me to order my young men and women into harm's way.

And, you know, am I comfortable, you know, that these people know what they're doing?

And I think, again, Egseth made it very clear he doesn't know what he's doing.

The more ominous speech, I think we all could agree, was from the president.

Ominous in part because,

I mean, at times he looked barely with it.

I mean, he was really, it looked ambient-esque up there for a while.

And so, you know, just didn't, just didn't gender a lot of confidence.

But then, obviously, there's a rhetoric about the enemy within, more dangerous than the enemy outside the country.

And you don't know who they are.

They're not wearing uniforms.

And so we're going to need to go knock some heads and find them.

We have troops going to Memphis.

We've news out this morning that my city, we've got some National Guard troops coming to in New Orleans.

Amusingly, the governor of Louisiana, who could just deploy the National Guard troops himself, went on Fox to ostentatiously talk about how he's requested that the president send the guard troops that are in his command to our city, which is like under an all-time low, not an all-time low, but a decades-long low in violent crime.

So if you're wondering what that is.

I was wondering about that seeing him.

And I remember that, and I thought, you know, you're the governor, right?

I mean,

you actually have this power.

You don't need to ask anybody.

Yeah, well, this guy, all you need to know about Jeff Landry is he

put a satellite kind of TV studio in his office as Attorney General in Louisiana that was just used to beam himself into Fox.

So the guy is focused.

Smart move, though.

I'm down.

He's the governor now.

And he's a governor who's cucked himself and he doesn't have any actual power as governor because he has to pretend like Mr.

Trump did it all.

But anyway, then you've got troops potentially going to Chicago and Portland.

There's a lawsuit that honestly, by the time this podcast is out, we might learn more from a judge about

the ruling.

There's been pushback from folks in Portland about Trump going over the objections of the governor and local officials.

And then the same will be true in Chicago.

I guess just biggest picture, like, what was your take on Trump's speech about all this and kind of now what we're going to see as a follow-through?

Well, a couple of things.

First, you know, when you

say to senior military officers, the enemy from within, I think, again, these are folks who say, wait, you're talking about fellow American citizens.

You're not talking about, you know, Russian paratroopers or Chinese tank drivers.

You're talking about the people that we are supposed to protect and defend, you know, from the bad guys in the world.

The military doesn't want to be dragged into these domestic missions.

They don't like it.

It's not what they train for.

I can't say I can read their minds, but I think

everyone has had enough time with Donald Trump to know that when Donald Trump says the enemy and enemies of America, what he means is enemies of Donald Trump.

And I think that that probably is what they were thinking of.

You know, what who among our fellow citizens are you really pointing to here?

And why do you need us to do this when you have cops and state police and, you know, National Guards that can be called out by their own governors?

I think the other thing that's interesting about that meeting is that this is the first time, I think, for a lot of these officers where they've had to sit and actually get a full

helping of

undiluted Donald Trump.

You know, three and four-star admirals don't spend all day watching TV.

They don't go to political rallies.

They don't watch, you know, hours of Trump speeches.

They don't do what you and I do, right?

Where we sit there and we have to watch it and write about it.

You know,

we're like Malcolm McDowell in a clockwork orange, you know, our face trapped.

And it is, and it's a different experience in clips than suffering through the whole 70-minute experience.

Right.

And having to sit there and be attentive because, you know, even at rallies, when you watch people at rallies, when Trump starts to go off into Sharkland or my uncle in MIT or whatever it is, you know, people pull out their phones and they laugh and they take selfies and, you know, do all that stuff.

These people had to sit kind of not quite at attention, but being obviously focused and attentive.

And I think for a lot of them, this was the first time they were really strapped down and forced to drink, you know, to smoke the whole carton of cigarettes.

You know, in that sense, you were talking about bright spots when we got started.

You know, my friend Steve Fish out at Berkeley, he made a point to me the other day, and I think it was a good point.

Now, and I want to make sure I footnote him rather than me because it was his.

He said, it was actually a good day for democracy that these guys all kind of sat there stone-faced, didn't applaud, didn't turn it into a rally, did what they were supposed to do, you know, and also now can no longer use the kind of the Mike Johnson excuse of, well, I didn't see the speech.

One other thing occurred to me about this, Tim.

This whole business about sending, when you were talking about the list of cities, Portland and Chicago and New Orleans, can we finally just accept that all of the stuff

about in the 24 election about inflation and prices and eggs.

Nobody cares about that anymore.

Trump's not doing anything.

If anything, all those prices have gotten worse.

And I think it puts the lie, you know, I mean, when every time I hear somebody go through the kind of litany you just did, I think, boy, these are real kitchen table issues that are going to bring down the price of eggs, aren't they?

And I think it's just proof that, you know, when people like me and you and others were saying in 2024, you know, this is a bad faith argument.

You don't really care about inflation, do you?

You just want the Trump show back.

And I think we're seeing that now because if people really did care about this stuff, even Republicans would be saying, what the hell are you doing?

Everything's more expensive.

Inflation's going up.

The tariffs are starting to bite.

cost of living, all those things.

And instead, it's like, no, no, no, go ahead, send troops to Memphis.

That's good too.

All right, everybody.

We are sold out of tickets to all of our shows on the fall tour except for October 8th in Washington, D.C.

And was on a call yesterday planning out what we've got in store for you.

It's gonna be fun.

Obviously, JVL will be there, so there'll be elements of darkness.

But we're also bringing in Sarah McBride for a conversation with Sarah Longwell that I'm super excited for.

Maybe we might get Will Summer up to talk about some of the crazy shit that's happening on the MAGA right.

I've got some other plans in store for you, so it's not too late.

Get your tickets now, Washington, D.C., October 8th.

Go to thebulwark.com slash events.

Thebulwark.com slash events.

I hope to see you all there.

It's at the Lincoln Theater.

Awesome venue.

Appreciate them for hosting us.

And so I hope to see you all in Washington, October 8th.

The one counter to your point about how it's good for democracy that folks had to see that, that they sat there stone-faced, is we have seen a difference between now and

the first term about like people's willingness to push back against him.

I mean, obviously he has Pete Hegseth there instead of Jim Mattis or whoever in these cabinet offices.

And I was struck, I was on with Nicole yesterday and she played this statement that I'd forgotten that Mattis had put out after Lafayette Square.

And I think this is just worth reading really quickly in the context of him, of Trump sending these troops into the cities.

Mattis said this, we must reject any thinking of our cities as a battle space that our uniformed military is called upon to dominate.

At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so on very rare occasions by state governors.

Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in D.C., sets up a conflict, a false conflict between the military and civilian society.

It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they're sworn to protect and of which they themselves are a part.

Just how blunt that was of a rebuke of Trump, it's noteworthy that we're not getting that.

I mean, sure, we'll get it from Mark Hurtling and other retired folks who are kind of out there commenting on this, and that is appropriate and great.

And I'm grateful to Hurtling, but I mean, from people that are like in the Trump orbit, however you'd want to define that, nothing of that nature anymore.

Well, first, I think 99.9% of the people in that room would have agreed with that, with what Mattis said.

Yes, there's going to be a couple of guys, I saw at one point there were a couple of guys, oh, you know, trying to clap, and that didn't go very well.

But maybe it did go well for them.

Maybe all they were trying to do is make sure Heg Seth saw that they were clapping so that when the next rapper- Remember the North Korean rule, never be the first comrade to stop clapping.

Yeah, we'll see how the next round of advancements, you know, up the rank go and see if the clappers do better than the non-clappers.

So you're always going to have a couple of guys in the force that are like, yeah, you know, it's what Hag said, you know, break things.

I remember years ago, there was a guy who came to the war college I was at and we'd asked him to talk about strategy and he kind of shook his head and he said, strategy, strategy is ordinance on target, which, you know, isn't strategy.

So you'll get a few of those guys, but I think most of the people in that room agree.

But here's the thing.

They have no top cover now.

Like those three and four stars could, you know, under Mattis could say, hey, what the secretary said, you know, and I know Jim and I worked with him and, you know, we were cadets together, whatever it was, you know, you know, we ate the same mud and all that.

They, there's nobody to provide that kind of cover for them now.

So they just have to kind of be, you know, stand at attention and kind of take it until they finally get to the point where they're ordered to do something that they might not be comfortable doing.

And so that's the bad part.

That's the bad day for democracy is that even though they would probably all agree with Mattis, there isn't a Mattis to give them the cover that they need to have that approach to their work.

Speaking about that scary order, you in your article for the Atlantic after the speeches referenced something that maybe I knew once or had forgotten, but it's a story of the Air Force nuclear missile officer named Harold Herring.

Yep.

I guess during a training session had asked, how could I know that an order I received to launch my missiles came from a sane president?

This was during the Watergate fallout with Nixon.

It's a pretty relevant historical item, I guess, about Harold Herring.

For folks who don't know this story, in 1973, a nuclear missile officer, Air Force major,

you know, is in a training session at, I believe he was at Vandenberg in California.

And he raises his hand.

He says, you know, not for nothing, but, you know, and then he asked the question that you pointed out.

How do I know that the order to launch my missiles came from a sane president?

And they said, that's an excellent question.

You are fired.

And the reason they fired him, and in those days, this, you know, especially, it made a lot of sense.

The American nuclear deterrent and the ability to deter the then Soviet Union from attacking us relied on the the Soviets knowing that if the president said go,

that the time between his order and missiles landing on Moscow wasn't going to be more than 30 minutes, that you couldn't count on disorder and second guessing and, oh, I got to call Congress and a doctor's got to certify me as sane.

No, the system, and by the way, Tim, you know, I've written about this for the magazine.

That system is still in place today.

The system is there to make sure the president can act alone and instantaneously, which should scare everybody, not just because of Trump, just because we don't need that kind of system anymore.

Well, that's a little happy Friday for everybody, just kind of something to chew over this evening.

Hey, everybody.

Just remember the president, Richard Nixon put it best.

He was having a meeting, I think, with two members of Congress, and he said, I could walk out of this room, and 20 minutes later, 100 million people would be dead.

And that system is still in place.

It's there to enable the president not to slow him down.

And so Herring asked this question.

Now,

you know, you need to be able to tell the Soviet Union, listen, if the president issues the order, the guys, remember the movie War Games at the beginning when there's a drill and one officer turns the other and points a gun at him because the other guy won't turn his key, can't do it, right?

He can't, you know, turn your key, sir, you know, and he's pointing a pistol at him.

So

the other thing is that the Air Force wanted officers like Hering to understand that, listen, if the order gets through all of your superiors, if it gets through the colonel who's your wing commander, you know, the general who's your base commander, the guy at back in those days at Strategic Air Command, the four-star who runs that, by the time that order gets to you, Major, you can be sure that it's a legitimate order.

The problem is that system, all those kind of internal circuit breakers that the military counts on, I think, the constitutional system of circuit breakers and advisors and, you know, the bureaucracy around a president, that's all gone.

I mean, we don't even have a functioning National Security Council anymore.

I was thinking about this yesterday.

Who is the head of the National Security Council?

It's still Marco Rubio.

It's Rubio.

I mean, why not?

That's his fourth job.

Well, speaking of Rubio, among his four jobs is he's agitating for a regime change war in Venezuela.

Why not?

It's Friday.

That's two neocons neocons or former neocons, however, going to talk about ourselves or, you know, strong on defense conservatives.

I, I've, I've been intrigued by a regime change war too in my day, you know, if we're going to be advancing democratic ideals.

I've been known to imbibe from that bottle.

I've been interested.

You know, I'm not exactly, I'm not hostile.

I'm not Mr.

Isolationist over here.

I say that because it's an important context to the following point, which is it is absolutely insane to suggest that we should do a regime change war in Venezuela.

Like, that is madness.

I still have not seen a coherent argument for it.

It's just kind of like blah, blah, blah, drug trafficking.

It's like most of the drugs in this country come from Mexico, Colombia, China.

There's drugs from Bolivia.

Like, some of the Colombian drugs go through Venezuela, but like Venezuela is not the tip of the spear in the war on drugs.

Not that we should do regime change wars in the war on drugs anyway, but like even

taking that at face value, Marco has a bugaboo for this guy.

And so, you know, I guess now we're, we're going to try to topple Maduro while we start taking out boats in the Caribbean.

It's lunacy.

Maybe, and I'm, and I'm just, you know, spitball.

I have no idea what, what Rubio is thinking.

Maybe he thinks liberating Venezuela will be a great calling card for him in 2028 in Florida.

So who's who wants this?

Who's it for?

And even the MAGA base, a lot of MAGA voters are kind of like, I mean, they like the bluster of patriot jingoism, but a lot of them were anti-war.

Like they were, they were like, we're going against the Rubios.

And I'm chafing a bit when you say as a couple of neocons because people always say, well, you neocons never met a war you didn't like.

Well, so far I've met two I don't like, Iran and Venezuela.

I didn't think Iran was a good idea either.

You and Bill Crystal parted ways on that one, but that's okay.

You know, we can have disagreement within the coalition.

How's that going in Iran?

Is the regime still there and is it still trying to build nuclear weapons?

Check and check.

So, you know, we played a really important card in Iran and we played it poorly because I don't think anything's changed.

If anything, you've convinced the regime sprinting for a nuclear weapon is now the smart way.

You know, I mean, they're probably getting mail from North Korea saying, we told you, we warned you, you know, build it fast.

But leaving that aside, the other thing about Venezuela, there is a military rationale for attacking Venezuela, and that is, it is the only front on which you can possibly stop another round of talking about the Epstein files.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean,

that's as logical of a rationale as the stated one that they've put out into the news.

I think it's the real one.

Yeah.

I think it's just, you know, it's also part of World War II and then we don't have to talk about Epstein or inflation or, you know, markets or tariffs or any of the other stuff that's just going wrong in every possible direction here.

Yeah.

The legal rationale that they've put out finally, and they first started bombing boats essentially over the objections, or maybe not not objections, or over the abstentions of the fact that there aren't really any JAGs left in there who have any, who are giving legal advice about military operations.

But they didn't provide a legal rationale initially.

And now they have, and it's basically drug dealers in the Caribbean are enemy combatants and the president can kill them.

It's a ridiculous rationalization, you know, that they're harming Americans.

You know, I have to, again, I'm going to steal a line from someone else, but Ken White, the lawyer, said, you know, we are, Americans are threatened by drugs the way I'm threatened by a cookie dough factory, you know, which is that I want to, you know, eat cookie dough.

And to say that, you know, there are some speedboats with drugs, therefore they are the equivalent of people at war with the United States is something so far off

the planet in terms of how you can make this determination.

The other thing that's interesting about the president's determination, he decided to blow up four boats before getting to that rationalization.

Normally you come up with this first, and then you blow up the boats you don't blow them up and then say oh um well you know i remember after the la riots there was that old joke about um an l a traffic stop bang bang bang freeze yeah right you know this this is all ad hoc after the fact i don't think it's going to stand up but but i don't know you know

maybe he'll get away with it because I'm still old enough to remember, as I'm sure you are, when there was a Congress.

Yeah.

Congress.

Oh, that's interesting.

I would have said, excuse us.

Hello.

That's an interesting idea.

Congress.

Speaking of Congress and the Democrats over there.

I think it's still in the Constitution.

I'm pretty sure.

Is that right?

You don't hear much from that.

I saw John Thune the other day and I was like, oh, shit,

there's a Senate majority leader, actually.

It's funny you say that.

I get exactly the same reaction.

It was when he was out in front of the White House, right?

Yeah.

And I went, oh, yeah, that guy.

I remember the majority leader.

I was still on the legislative branch.

On the Democrats over there.

And

maybe this is wrong, but I just want to throw this out there.

And I think that it's out of character for me, which is

hopefully lends some credibility to the advice.

I think they should really be going crazy on the Venezuela thing.

I mean, I know that there'll be some people who say that, oh, like, you know, that if he's doing this as a distraction from the Epstein Fowler's distraction from other things, then why play into his hands?

You know, or other people might say that,

you know, Democrats don't want to seem weak, you know, and being the ones that are pro-drug dealers or whatever.

I think most people don't want war with Venezuela.

I don't think it's popular.

I think that Trump had a big base of people that were anti-war.

He brought in the Tulsi, Glenn Greenwald, RFK crowd.

A lot of the Manosphere bros don't want war.

When I went to a TPUSA event last December, I was pretty shocked when I was asking the kids, like, why, why do you like Trump?

And like, many of them brought up anti-war, America first, we care about ourselves, not these other countries.

I think it divides his coalition, and I don't think anyone's for it except Marco Rubio, really.

And so I think that the Democrats should try to take back that mantle from him a little bit.

What do you think about that?

I think they've made a fundamental miscalculation about this.

And I think you're right.

That, I mean, I think they assume, having watched too many Tom Clancy movies, that they can turn this into a fight with these steely-eyed killers, you know.

And if they had video, if, for example, if the Navy had approached one of these boats,

you know, and a bunch of cigar-chomping Fidel lookalikes got up on deck.

Pirates or pirates

started shooting or training weapons.

I'm the captain now.

Or if they had signed their own death warrants by saying, okay, we're going to fight on the high seas with a U.S.

Navy vessel.

Okay, then you say, well, hey, we just, we were interdicting you because there is.

a tradition that you can interdict contraband and dangerous things on the high seas and you have to stop them and you have to give them warning and you have

And instead, we just, you know, we took the might of the U.S.

Navy, brought it up on a bunch of guys on a speedboat and just vaporized them.

And I think most Americans, despite our, you know, Americans love to fight, Americans do love watching their military do stuff.

I think that's uncomfortable for a lot of people.

And it should be.

And also, there's no reason to trust these guys or even drug dealers.

I mean, you know, they put a makeup artist in a gulag and like just, so they're just saying, trust us, it's drug dealers.

Maybe it is, but like, why should we trust this administration?

And you'd have to say that everybody on that boat who you just have summarily executed

was guilty of a, you know, of whatever you think they were guilty of.

Capital crime.

Yeah.

Maybe it was a couple of drug dealers and human traffickers, and there were innocent people on the boats.

Like, who the hell knows?

I think a lot of people have been worried about that.

Or, you know, people that had, or fishermen.

Right.

Who knows?

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All right, Libertarian Tim's about to come out.

So you can maybe hit me on the nose with a newspaper if you want.

But the other news item from today that has me,

my hackles up is Apple.

Have you seen this?

So there was an app, a couple of apps.

The most notable one was called Ice Block that had popped up, and people were using the app to say, hey,

there are ICE agents in my neighborhood, in Neighborhood X.

And so, you know, folks wanted to look and see where the masked ice agents were.

You know, they could go on the app and there'd be a little map of where the ICE agents were.

The Trump administration said that that was endangering the federal officers and went to Apple.

One of the claims that they made was that the shooter at the Dallas ICE facility used this app.

Maybe that's true.

If so, that's still the stupidest rationale I've ever heard.

He was, I mean, that's obviously we condemn everything that person did, but it was at a ICE facility.

Like the building was ICE.

So it's not.

You could probably be pretty sure there were ICE agents at an ICE facility.

Agents there.

I mean, I don't think he needed the app to figure it out anyway they've used that as rationale tim cook has folded and they've they've shut it down the those apps now are not on the on people's phones people can't do it i think in a free country we should be able to post onto the internet hey there are mass agents on broadway and vine and and not have the government or the tech oligarchs tell us prevent us from doing that but i don't know where you're at on that if you thought i was gonna you know swat you in the snout with a rolled up newspaper and say bad dim i don't know you're an old school law and order republican you know tom but i'm an old school civil libertarian too i don't think it should be against the law or some kind of violation to say to call your neighbor either through an app or on a thing remember telephones we all used to have one on the wall of our house um you know and call your neighbor and say hey i think there are masked you know federal agents coming down the street you're allowed to notice the movement of the law enforcement officers of your own city state and country this isn't Danny, this isn't Russia.

Is this Russia?

You know, it's not Russia.

It's not North Korea.

You are, I mean, people do this, by the way, and this is a problem for law enforcement during disasters or mass casualty events.

People do it with scanners.

Yeah, right.

I mean, what's next?

You're going to ban police scanners so that people can't listen to where the cops are?

Maybe.

So

I'm with you on this.

I mean, I mean, the thing with the masks is really getting to me.

Seeing masked federal agents.

I mean, this is the United States.

These are my fellow citizens, and we are their fellow citizens.

I mean, there used to be, you know, a time, I'm going to go for another cultural illusion here.

There was a time when cops, you know, wore their name.

Remember the untouchables when Connery, when Kevin Costner says, what's your name?

And he kind of taps his badge with his nightstick.

He says, it's right here.

You know,

and now this thing with these agents wearing masks as if they're in, you know, like fighting cartels in Mexico City or, you know, disappearing people in Belarus or something.

I mean, it's really, it's really ridiculous.

And it's meant to be intimidating.

It's meant to take these guys and make them into kind of mythical, faceless agents of order and the law.

And I'm sure that, you know, again, in Belarus or St.

Petersburg, that's just fine, but not in the United States of America.

One more thing on this.

I mean, for sure, shame on you, Tim Cook.

It's just, it's truly embarrassing the way that this, this person has groveled to Trump.

I remember he brought him this little statue to the Oval Office.

It's like Apple has more cash on hand than any organization in the history of the world.

Like there's no.

I don't understand this.

There's no reason for him to do this.

It's pathetic.

I don't understand it.

I don't understand it with Tim Cook.

I definitely don't understand it with...

uh somebody like jeff bezos every time i i think of bezos i i wonder you know and again maybe it's because i'm old school and an older guy but i would think that Jeff Bezos, you know, every time Trump growls, you'd pick up the phone and say, listen, I have more money than God, certainly more money than you, and I own a newspaper.

You should be afraid of me, not the other way around, because that's how it would have been in the old days.

You know, I'm William Randolph Hearst.

Don't fuck with me.

And yet, I don't understand this

serial caving.

And I'll just add one more thing.

I think,

I mean, I get it that people say, well, you know, Trump will come and go.

I have business interests that are enduring.

I also think, and I said this at the start, I know you and I talked about this at one point.

I suspect that a lot of these guys are saying, just give him some money and he'll go away.

Yeah, protection or action.

Like, just give him shiny things, you know, give him a statue, give him some cash, and just get him,

he'll move on to something else.

But as, you know, as people should have learned by now, give a mouse a cookie.

When a bully takes your lunch money, many other folk sayings we could apply here, but they're going to come back.

So one more and another thing on this, actually, as I've been sitting there getting mad listening to you talk about it.

The libertarian guys, the supposedly libertarian guys, the free speech guys, I mean, beginning with Zuckerberg all the way down.

I mean, this is like one of the radicalization origin stories that they tell.

The Zuckerberg, Rogan crowd that the Biden administration told tech companies that they should take down COVID misinformation.

That Taibbi, Barry Weiss.

That's a big radicalization point for them.

And I think they really overstated what actually happened in that case.

Like it was like some mid-level Biden people talking to me, and the tech companies could have told Biden to pound sand.

So I kind of agree with them in principle, but like the degree to which they got obsessed over it was extremely exaggerated, in my opinion.

This is literally the federal government telling like directly

from the top.

the top of the government talking to the top of a tech company and saying you must delete any information that citizens posted that they felt like they wanted to post to protect their safety or to at least inform their neighbors about what the federal government's activities were in their neighborhood.

That is absolutely allowable in a free country.

And anybody that got pissed about the Biden administration when it came to COVID misinformation, who's not shouting from the rooftops today, is a fucking hypocrite and should be embarrassed about themselves.

I mean, it's crazy.

I mean, we live in a time of, you know, just almost painful cognitive dissonance now.

The people who pioneered, I mean, the Trump supporters who pioneered the whatabout-ism arguments, right?

You know, when I brought up how out to lunch Trump seemed at this Admiral General Jamboree that Hegseth called, right away there were people both in person and online saying, well, you didn't seem concerned.

What about Joe Biden?

And I'm like, okay, first of all, Joe Biden on his worst day

was not this.

But all that says is

we are just as bad as we've always accused you of being.

And it's the same problem here.

It's like, if you're not upset, I think you're right.

If you're not upset about this, you know, were you full of shit then or are you full of shit now?

Because you can't hold both of those positions.

And let's add one more thing because the government, I'm sure the government answer would be something like, look, it's a matter of security.

This endangers law enforcement, blah, blah, blah.

Look, we're not talking about moving, you know, like somebody posting, you know, the train carrying nuclear warheads is about to go through, you know, Sandusky.

Right.

This is saying, listen, I live in this neighborhood.

There seem to be cops moving around here and federal agents over there.

I'm sorry, in an open society, you are allowed to notice where the police are.

Yes.

Amen.

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Here's some more things that are happening in our supposedly open society.

The purges.

Should we start with DOJ or FBI?

I guess we'll start with DOJ.

Four top prosecutors have been forced out in that Eastern District of Virginia, which is the district where they're charging Comey.

There's one in particular, though, that I want to share with you.

Michael P.

Benari.

I don't know anything about this person, but I think you're going to be pretty interested in what happened to him.

He was fired shortly after MAGA shill, Julie Kelly.

You might know her.

She's a big social media presence, a Trump shill.

She posted on X, one One can only assume Benari was a big part of the internal resistance to the Comey indictment.

In fact, Benari had no role in the Comey investigation, according to two people familiar.

This is a Washington Post story.

He was, though, the lead prosecutor in the case of Mohammed Shrafullah, who the plotter of the Abbey Gate attack that killed 13 U.S.

service members and dozens of others who were being evacuated from Afghanistan.

So the guy prosecuting

the man that plotted the Abbey Gate attack in Afghanistan, he's been fired because a MAGA shit poster thought that maybe he was a woke lib that was sympathetic to Jim Comey.

If we're going to make national security appointments based on whom Laurel Loomer likes, why would we be surprised that, you know, some stray voltage from somebody like Julie Kelly, you know, took out somebody at

DOJ?

I mean, this is this is all about loyalty checks now and about, you know, doing the performative stuff and about not talking about the Epstein files.

Oh, I'm sorry, did that come up again?

Because, you know, this is, this is meant to keep people, it's meant to churn and to have people like you and me talking about it.

I mean, it's also meant to just make sure that only loyalists are inside the Justice Department.

And then the fact that they don't actually give a fuck if these prosecutors are skilled at prosecuting bad guys.

They just care about whether they'll prosecute the people Donald Trump wants.

That's the bottom line for the American public is that these people are not just being replaced with loyalists, they're being replaced with people who are incompetent opportunists who are not going to do the business of the American people, who are not going to make sure that the country is safe.

I mean, all of this, all of these people spend their day protecting their own positions and consolidating the president's power.

And, you know, every time I see stories like this, I think, so who's actually prosecuting crimes?

Anybody?

That's a rhetorical question, but I think the answer is basically nobody.

I mean, unless the crimes are immigration-related.

I think that's that's pretty much what's what's happening as far as the federal uh prosecutions are concerned cash retell also did a firing this week fired an agent in training uh any guesses have you seen that with their uh you see what they're doing

uh you know that'll that'll teach you to put a gay pride flag on your

a gay pride flag on the desk this is what cash said after reviewing the facts and circumstances this is kind of like this is where we're doing a movie reference this is like uh reminded me of Lebowski.

You know, the cops are coming over.

It's like, yeah, we've been working in shifts, trying to figure out what happened to your credence tapes.

It's like, we had to review the facts.

And how many people were involved in this review?

It was a guy that had a pride flag on his desk.

After reviewing the facts and circumstances, I've determined that you exercise poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment.

You're summarily dismissed.

So that's where we're at.

Just a rainbow flag is now political signage that's unacceptable.

Like we've got to run that person out.

This from an administration whose Hatch Act violations are going off in every direction like a match thrown into a box of Roman candles.

You know, putting things on federal websites that say the Democrats have shut down the government.

When I was working for the government, as days you remember, Tim, when I was back a federal employee, people were trying to get me fired every week for violating the Hatch Act because, you know, it's an inappropriate expression of political, you know, partisanship because I would write articles and so on.

It's astonishing that, you know, a pride flag on a guy's desk is inappropriate signage, but like having the Republican convention at the White House, you know,

is, I mean, it's just incredible.

I wonder if there are any thin blue line flags on those desks or an appeal to heaven flag, maybe, or, you know, one of the one of Martha Annalito's favorite flags or an upside down american flag or yes pine trees or something oath keepers a skull i bet there's a punisher skull on one of those desks

but i think it's meant it's meant to have a chilling effect it's meant to say you know that to work at the fbi you have to be a loyalist and again it raises the question well who's doing fbi work while these guys are running around figuring out who's got a a flag on their desk that, you know, about sexual orientation.

You can't be proud at this FBI.

You can't be proud of being gay.

You can be gay for now at the FBI.

You just got to be quiet about it.

It's like we're going back to the 90s.

We don't want you gays flouncing around talking to us about who did well on drag race last night.

We don't need any of that.

I've never seen drag race.

It's a whole subculture that's a mystery.

Cash Matteo is very butchered.

I said, you see the challenge coins of the skull coins that he's handing out?

It's the most embarrassing thing thing that I think I've ever seen.

The FBI director is handing out these challenge coins and it's like cash, K, money sign H and a skull.

Oh, Jesus.

And it's like a child.

Yeah.

This is this whole administration operating on this, you know, cable news theory that our law enforcement and the military and all the other institutions have been somehow wussified.

You know, that like the Defense Department just sits around.

Like your commanding general comes in and says, Are you okay?

Do you feel included and valued today?

I mean, this isn't.

Did I make space for you at training?

Right.

All right.

Do you feel that you have space to speak your truth?

You know, I just, it doesn't, but that's not happening.

And, you know, I, I mean, I, every now and then I just sit down and I watch Fox and I watch Newsmax and I watch, you know, When I Can Find RSBN and all these other crazy, and it's like, it's like satellite signals that have made it across the galaxy from some earth to

you know that's like orbiting you know at the other end of the milky way or something because it's it's just bonkers and but people believe it and so i don't know if patel or hegseth or any of these guys really believe it it's so hard to tell what what political opportunists really believe about anything i mean i think cash patel is legitimately a little weenie with a microphallus and he's like trying to overcompensate and he's handing out skull skull coins to feel tough.

I mean, I think that, I think that's authentic.

I don't think there's anything he show about.

I can go with you on the skull coins to feel tough.

No comment on his dick size?

Okay, that's fine.

One more serious item.

I guess they're all serious.

One more bad news, and then we'll see if we can find a silver lining at the end of the show.

There was a...

I guess it was yesterday on Yom Kippur, a British man of Syrian descent drove a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing people outside of Manchester's Hebrew congregation synagogue.

Two Two men died.

One of them was possibly killed by Aaron police fire.

This anti-Semitic violence that we're now seeing a bunch of places.

I was kind of interested in some of the reactions to this, but do you have any thoughts on that broadly before I get to the politics?

I kind of chewed over a British citizen of Syrian descent, and I kept trying to figure out, because it does matter in terms of terrorist plots or trying to deal with, you know, where this threat came from.

Did that mean, and maybe you know, because I couldn't divine it from the news.

I know what you're about to ask, and I don't know.

Right?

Was he a native-born British citizen who's fancy, like, you know, like me, being an American of Greek and Irish descent, but I was born in Massachusetts.

I grew up here, you know.

Or was this a Syrian immigrant who was a nationalized British citizen?

Because it makes a difference.

I think the former, but I don't know.

Yeah, I don't either.

And I thought it was just interesting the way it was reported that I couldn't figure it out.

And my point is: if they're looking into was this a kind of planned terror attack, you know, with links back to the old country, it would make a difference about how this person was radicalized.

And that was the only question I had.

Was this a lone wolf, you know, guy having an off day who, you know, decided to take out a synagogue?

Or was this somebody who was radicalized somewhere else and then sent in like a cruise missile?

And because I don't know the answer to that, to where the guy came from, I don't know the answer to that question.

And just leaves me saying it's a tragic, terrorist, terroristic incident, but I don't really know how it, how it came about.

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I want to just talk for a second about Zarah Mandani's response to it.

It was pretty interesting to me.

And I kind of want to talk about it in sort of a broader context of where we're at in our dialogue.

He wrote this, On the holiest day in the Jewish year, an anti-Semitic attack at the synagogue in England has taken the lives of two and gravely injured others.

My thoughts are with the victims and their families.

While this terrible violence occurred in Ocean Away, a very real fear casts a shadow here, too.

I appreciate Governor Hochl's calls to increase state police presence at synagogues.

As mayor, I will do everything in my power to protect Jewish New Yorkers as I will every faith community.

The right to worship in peace is sacred.

A totally appropriate and empathetic and correct statement to put out on the merits.

The reaction to that, so I saw that and I was like, oh, that's good.

That's good.

Like, just good.

I'm not, we don't need to throw flowers at somebody's feet for saying the right thing, but like, that is good.

I was happy to see that.

And then I clicked on it and I looked at the responses.

And it was mostly from

pro-Israel right-wingers who were saying, fuck you, you did this.

You were the one who, you know, who wouldn't condemn globalized antifada.

which was on my podcast.

And I'm looking at all this and I'm saying, wait a minute.

Don't we want to model good?

Why?

I just think this is what is wrong with where we are right in this discourse.

People modeling good behavior, even if they're on the other side of you on an issue, you should just say, this is good.

Great.

I absolutely want Zorah Mandani to be promising to protect Jewish New Yorkers, to be saying the right things, to be trying to, you know, calm tensions, you know, to be exercising human empathy.

Like, that's what you want.

And yet, like, we get, we're in this situation where, like, you fucking can't win.

Right.

And, you know, because like you do this, and like you treat, you're, who knows?

I don't know.

It's in Zoron's heart.

Maybe you're growing, or maybe he would have said this before that whole controversy.

I don't know.

But like, but this is what people should want.

And yet, like, every reaction to him was nasty, was condemning it.

And I think that's just kind of telling because like that's, that's where we're at right now, like, where the, you know, Trump and these guys will never, never try to model good behavior in these instances.

And in some ways, I worry they get rewarded for it.

And like Zoron does, does the right thing, gets no credit.

You know, first of all, this is, let me just go back to, this is why I was curious about who the attacker was and where he was from.

Yeah.

Because we have a tendency right away in all these attacks that, you know, the guy that shot at the guy that tried to kill President Trump, you know, the guy that shot up.

I mean, we had over the weekend, a week ago, we had like three mass shootings with, you know, weirdo lone wolf guys you know just yeah like we still don't know how to categorize the guy who burned down the mormon church you know like he was like he was a maga guy but he hated mormons and he had issues and i can agree with people who who say well you're a little late to the party after globalize the intifada kind of crap you know that i mean a stupid thing to say to begin with on the other hand if now as an emerging political leader, he puts out a statement that, as you point out, is absolutely the right thing to say, then it's the right thing to say.

And the bind we're in in American politics is you can't ever change your mind.

You can't ever try to correct or model good behavior, because then if you've ever engaged in bad behavior, it's as you say, it's unwinnable.

Hey, the other day, I actually said something nice about President Trump and people were like, oh, you fan now.

I said, we're doing intelligence sharing now with Ukraine again.

Yeah.

And I said, good.

Okay.

You know, I doubted his commitment to this when he said he, you know, he's washing his hands of it.

I said, one of the things I would look for is, is he going to allow intelligence sharing?

He did.

I'm not going to say anything bad about a good thing.

happening.

Great.

You know, more of this, please.

Sure.

Wish it was nine months ago.

Wish it was nine months ago.

But like, great.

Let's do it.

By the way, speaking of Mamdani, I was in a day and a half social media kerfuffle because of the other thing mamdani said which was that i would definitely arrest netanyahu

you know if he came to new york and i had to in my intern i used to teach international relations i was a professor all those years and i said Ladies and gentlemen, Zoran Mamdani cannot arrest anybody on an ICC warrant and remand them to the Hague.

He doesn't have that power.

I know you all liked it when he said it.

It's a dumb thing to say.

He can't do it.

Please move on.

I think that's where a lot of politicians get themselves in trouble.

They put out a good statement, then they say something dumb, then they go back and forth.

But as you say, look, if you want to send signals to your political leaders, whether they're Zoran Mamdani or President Trump, you know, you should be as critical as you can be of the bad stuff.

But when there's good stuff, it's okay to say it's good stuff.

You don't lose your, I don't think anybody's going to think that I'm now like, you know, on the Trump 2028 train

because I said one good thing about something he's doing.

Yeah.

Also, if it's not performative, it's not fake.

If like, because I hear from people about this, like there are folks that have legit concern about Mandani that is like, there is a spike in anti-Semitic violence, right?

There's also

maybe related to Zoran, not to his fault, but just like his prominence.

There's a story I just saw this morning about some spikes in anti-Islam violence as well.

But there has just undoubtedly been a spike in anti-Semitic violence.

And there are people that I've heard from who are like, My legit concern is for the safety of Jewish people in New York, right?

Like, as somebody who's a New Yorker who has family there, and I just want to make sure that, like, the next administration is going to take that seriously and like that that's going to be a priority, right?

And that this,

and like, he says it right there.

Yes, that will be a priority.

I will do that.

And so, if you're concerned, if like you have a legitimate concern about that as policy, and he says, I'm going to, I'm addressing your legitimate concern, I'm telling you, I'm going to to do this.

You can hold him accountable if it doesn't happen in three years, but like that is good.

And so, if you don't, if you don't accept that, then what you're saying is, well, no, actually, this is just performative bullshit.

And I just actually don't like his politics.

And I'm just like using the specter of violence against Jews as a cudgel to attack somebody I don't like.

Yeah, and that's where I was going to go with this, Tim, which is, for example, again, in a bipartisan mode here, I think there are people who almost would be rather that Ukrainians would suffer than say Trump did the right thing.

Because they want their political allegiances and partisanship to be neat and clean and black and white and a morality play.

And the way I feel about Donald Trump is not a secret, certainly not to you or anybody who listens to this podcast.

That shouldn't inhibit me from saying, okay, this is one thing that's happening that I like and I'd like to see more of it.

And it's the same with Mom Dani.

Look, I, you know, I'm a New Englander.

I care so little about who the mayor of New York is.

I mean,

I'm like, you don't have deeply held views about Mayor Lindsay growing up?

No.

No, you know,

I mean, really, when I'm down, you know, getting a lobster roll at the beach, I don't look across the water and say, hey, what's going on in New York City?

Who are they going to, who's going to be the mayor of that place?

You know, it's just across the Long Island Sound here.

I'm a little worried.

We've got some concerns about some of the municipal policies being put in place

going to get picked up and you know on park slope but you know again whatever your feelings about montani if he says look i'm going to if i am elected i will use the power of the new york city police to because you go to new york i go to new york i'd like to feel safe there you know to protect all faith communities in new york there is no bad part of that And it's okay to say it, even if you don't want free grocery stores and, I don't know, socialism and, you know, Marxist-Leninist subway tokens or anything.

Also, socialist grocery stores, not my favorite policy, but

a five-grocery store pilot in New York City does seem a little bit less pernicious than and

a little bit less scary and socialistic than, I don't know, like paying soybean farmers to not sell their soybeans with my tax dollars or taking a 10% stake in a tech chip company or any of the other fucking MAGA communist shit he's doing.

Let us just point it out again.

It may be that it's a bad idea to have five socialist, you know, grocery co-op exchanges.

Who cares?

Let me just speak to all of the Americans who don't live in New York City.

You are not going to be paying for it.

It's not your city.

Right.

You know, you are paying for the farmer bailout.

But we are paying, which is where we should go next, because yes, you are going to pay for the farmer bailout.

We predicted it.

We said it.

I'm going to go back to my infamous conversation with with some Trump voters and one in particular back in Pennsylvania, just before the election.

I said, there's going to be tariffs.

You're going to have to bail out the farmers again.

And this voter said to me, I don't know what you're talking about.

And I said, you live in Western Pennsylvania.

You don't remember that Trump had to bail out farmers?

Oh, that's fake news stuff.

And I'm like, okay.

And here we are.

I kind of almost wish I could go back and just start looking around for some of those folks and say, hey, remember that conversation we had about the thing that didn't happen?

and here we it's like

it was as predictable as a sunrise here we are again although apparently did you see i think it was percent who went on television and said well you know why they're not selling soybeans joe biden like what they sold soybeans last year

but but they know their audience yeah they know their audience tim all they have to do is say joe biden and millions of you know fox viewers go ah we're also bailing out argentina and that's where china's getting their soybeans from now so it's like because of our stupid fucking trade war, like we are simultaneously bailing out farmers in South Dakota and the Argentine president.

And wasn't Argentina supposed to be the role model we were going to emulate six months ago?

I don't know.

Tom Nichols, I was going to bring up Ukraine as my silver lining at the end.

So do you have anything in your personal life you want to share?

Give people a happy note to leave?

You know, any cat updates or anything happening in Rona?

Oh, well, she's gone.

She visited for a while.

My cat is now a teenager, and she is hilarious.

Any television shows?

Anything bringing you joy?

Anything sparking joy in your life, right?

There is a new season of Slow Horses, which I am enjoying because Jackson Lamb is my spirit animal.

A whole bunch of new stuff arrived all at the same time.

So I'm making my way through Tulsa King and Slow Horses.

But I have an old man gripe that we can finish.

Okay, great.

Love this.

Are you guys ready for this?

This is an Andy Rooney moment.

I love old man.

Am I the only person that occasionally has to turn on closed captioning because because the new thing in television is to mumble?

Not only is this not an old man cry, Tom Nichols, this is something I've learned from my work on the FY pod.

People should check that out, our Gen Z focus pod.

The Gen Zs do closed captioning on everything.

Really?

Yeah, they're closed captioning all the shows.

Maybe it's because they're multi-screening.

I don't quite get it,

but maybe, you know, maybe you're young, actually.

Maybe you're young at heart, young in spirit.

Because I just find on occasion now, like this method acting or something, right?

Yeah.

Where it's, you know, two characters and they start,

you know,

I'm like, I'm, oh, because the other thing I'm watching where this happens to me all the time is Task, this rough show.

Yeah, good show.

The dark, dark show.

And I mean dark, like literally, like it's always at night and there's no sunshine and it's not exactly a postcard for rural Pennsylvania.

I can tell you that.

But again, I find myself, I keep turning to my wife and saying, what?

Like, you know, like I'm the old guy, you know,

I do have to break it to you.

I am watching Task without the closed captioning.

So, uh, maybe, maybe it is your ears.

Yeah.

Well, except my wife has very good hearing.

And I turn to her and I say, what do you just say?

And she goes, she nods and she says, no idea.

And so we back up.

And if it's a major plot point or seems to be, we have to back up and say, ah, okay.

That's what he said.

And I, so

I'm sorry to end on this cranky old man note, but come on.

And the, but you doing cranky old man things sparks joy in me, Tom.

So

it is a positive for me.

This is what you have to look forward to in about 20 years, then.

I can't wait.

We'll see if we still have a liberal democracy then.

Everybody, thank you.

It's been another great week at the Bulwark podcast.

Hope you enjoyed it.

We'll be back on Monday with Bill Crystal.

Ooh, we got a little double header coming on Monday.

It's not just Bill Crystal.

We've got a bonus guest that I hope you all enjoy as much as I will.

We'll see y'all then.

Thanks to Tom Nichols.

Thank you.

Bye, everybody.

Peace.

You're etiquette.

Your rules of interaction.

What are you waiting for?

My buddy's home.

We're all out

trying to find one.

What are we waiting for?

The recipe,

a clear connection.

The dime, the dime, the dime, the dime, the dime, redirection.

We just want

we don't know.

This one wants the art, this one wants the politic.

Everybody wants their own damn station.

If we're so fine,

maybe you can tell me why.

No one counts until they're dead.

I just want

the imperfections are here to find.

If your position is so unkind,

everything

is not alright.

And since we live in present tense,

the only hope of making sense all depends on the source of light.

But everything else

caption

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

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