Susan Glasser: Our Grotesque, Corrupted Oligarchy

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Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 1 Delighted to welcome back Staff Writer at the New Yorker, her most recent book, The Divider, co-authored with her husband, Peter Baker. It's Susan Glasser, of course.
Hey, Susan, how you doing?

Speaker 5 Hey, Tim, great to be with you.

Speaker 1 Good to be with you, too. We've got so, I mean, there's just so much happening.
One thing I have not covered this week because of the various

Speaker 1 scheduling demands is the secret deal

Speaker 1 that is being drafted between Steve Witkoff and his counterparties in Russia. This is an Axius story.

Speaker 1 The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine. A top Russian official told Axius he's optimistic about the plan.

Speaker 1 It's not clear how Ukraine and its European backers will feel about it. Witkoff replied to that tweet publicly on his personal Twitter and said he must have got this from K.

Speaker 1 This, I assume, was meant to be a DM saying that this story came from

Speaker 1 Dmitriev, Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian envoy. Seems like a shit show, but I'm wondering what you make of it.

Speaker 5 Well, I think we can say we actually do know what Ukraine and Europe will think of it, and the answer is they don't think much of it.

Speaker 5 It's not funny.

Speaker 5 In fact, you know, Russia's attacks this week have been particularly pernicious, aimed at the civilian population, including in western Ukraine, civilians sleeping in their beds, going about their business.

Speaker 5 This proposal seems to be not that dissimilar, literally, from Russia's 2022

Speaker 5 quote-unquote peace proposal, which was essentially a series of unilateral demands. I mean, by itemizing the peace plan and making it 28 points, it doesn't make it any more of a viable peace plan.

Speaker 5 What it does appear is essentially that the United States, at least one faction of the United States government, Stephen Witkoff, is willing to act as an agent for conveying Russian demands and conditions for the end of the war to Ukraine.

Speaker 5 I don't see this right now as being a serious or viable proposal for Ukraine because any leader of Ukraine, including Vladimir Zelensky, but any other elected leader of Ukraine would no longer be able to be the leader of Ukraine if they agreed to these conditions, which essentially would compromise the sovereignty and the future independence of the country.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and among the things in the deal, cutting the Ukraine army in half, no foreign troops, ban on long-range weapons, just making it an easy target for the future.

Speaker 1 It's interesting you mentioned that parallel to that 2022 quote-unquote deal, there were some members of kind of the mega

Speaker 1 foreign policy sphere that criticized Biden at the time for not

Speaker 1 at least agreeing to that deal or trying to negotiate based off of it. That was not the Rubio faction, right, but the more isolationist faction.

Speaker 1 And so anyway, that's kind of interesting that the same framework comes back up and with maybe more interest from this president.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, look, what's fascinating here also, Tim, is that Witkoff is essentially negotiating against Donald Trump's own previously stated positions.

Speaker 5 This wouldn't be the first time that's happening, but you mentioned that one of the conditions is no foreign forces on the ground in Ukraine.

Speaker 5 Well, what that really means is that it's saying no to the possibility of a European stabilization force, which is a thing that Trump indicated interest in earlier, so that American troops wouldn't be on the ground to secure the future peace.

Speaker 5 And it's, you know, just one of many examples.

Speaker 5 The other thing is it talks about a ceasefire, whereas actually, when Donald Trump had his summit meeting, quote unquote, with Vladimir Putin, you recall him rolling out the literal red carpet for Putin on an American air base in Alaska in August.

Speaker 5 The major kind of pivot there was Trump going from demanding an immediate ceasefire to saying, no, no, we're just going to have a long-term peace deal.

Speaker 5 So now we're back to maybe we're talking about a ceasefire again. It's all very confusing and murky.

Speaker 5 And it, it, you know, the smartest read on it I've seen is someone suggesting that this is essentially a play by the Russians, putting it out there both to suggest, well, no, we are actually serious about negotiating with the United States in order to head off this sanctions bill that may or may not finally come to a vote in the U.S.

Speaker 5 Congress, but also it's just a way of embarrassing Trump, I have to say, right?

Speaker 5 Not that he gets embarrassed, but showing that despite all of the public displays of frustration with Vladimir Putin, that Trump's personal envoy to the Russians continues to be played for a fool by the Russians and to be working on proposals that don't include the other parties to this war.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, just to reiterate, It seems pretty clearly that it was from the Russian side, given that the point person tweeted what they thought was a DM to somebody suggesting that it must have come from the Russian side, which I think would indicate that he didn't know about it.

Speaker 1 Just briefly, because you mentioned at the top, but you know, there's been so much going on domestically, we haven't covered it for a little bit.

Speaker 1 The status on the ground has seemingly changed a little bit as far as Russia becoming more aggressive offensively than they had maybe the last time we checked in. Does that sound right to you?

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, Russia has had a deliberate strategy, by the way, way, in violation of all principles of the laws of international warfare, of targeting

Speaker 5 Ukraine's civilian population with long-range missile and drone strikes, and in particular, targeting Ukraine's civilian infrastructure. And that means heating and electricity.

Speaker 5 We're just headed into the winter. It's going to be a brutal and terrible winter on the ground in Ukraine.

Speaker 5 And, you know, one of Putin's strategies here is to maximally increase the suffering on the population of Ukraine in order to force things on his term, in part Tim, because actually the strategy of going on offense in a more conventional way has not been very successful for Putin.

Speaker 5 It has come at enormous cost in manpower, in the strength of his military, which has been decimated on the ground in Ukraine.

Speaker 5 Basically, they fought on the offensive all summer long to gain minimal, minimal territory.

Speaker 5 In fact, I was really struck by a statistic statistic cited by the times in its story today about this witkov dmitriev peace proposal that suggested a ukrainian think tank has come up with the number of four years which is how long they say it would take for russia to fight at the current rate and gain territory at the current rate to get just this additional portion of the donbass that steve witkoff wants ukraine to give away to russia even though russia doesn't control it right now four years just to get a part of one

Speaker 5 region of Ukraine at the current pace. And so that tells you that actually both parties have failed on the offense in this war after the very beginning of it.

Speaker 5 We're in a sort of a kind of a stalemate, a war of attrition on the front line, which is why the front line has actually become you know, Western Ukraine and civilian populations in the country.

Speaker 5 And also Ukraine itself has been striking increasingly at targets inside of Russia using its domestically manufactured drones and other long-range weapons.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, you mentioned the sanctions bill that's been percolating around Congress for a while now.

Speaker 1 They've had the votes. Many Republican senators, at least saying that they would be for a sanctions bill for Russia, just hasn't been brought up.

Speaker 1 You know, John Thune, presumably not wanting to get the ire of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, I think would be the only obvious reason why the sanction bill has not come up in the Senate.

Speaker 1 I'm interested to talk about that in the context of the other big news of this week, which was the Trump capitulation on Epstein, right?

Speaker 1 For the first time, Trump was made to bow down by someone in his own party. In this case, it was Massey, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Lauren Boebert.

Speaker 1 Truly, and you and I have, how many times have you, it's usually been you interviewing me or Sarah or somebody in this case, which is like, when will the Republicans, you know, actually be able to stand up and fight to him?

Speaker 1 Many have tried. Tomorrow's guest tried.
He's no longer in Congress anymore.

Speaker 1 You know, like Trump has always won anytime he's been challenged inside the party, and he's lost externally, but within the Republican Party, he's always won.

Speaker 1 This Epstein discharge petition is the first really major instance of someone challenging Trump, Trump going at them.

Speaker 1 I mean, he brought Lauren Board into the situation room and having him be defeated. I do wonder if that makes some of, now I think that John Thuden probably has less of a basic support

Speaker 1 than Marjorie Taylor Greene, so there's certainly some differences. But I do wonder if those cracks start to lead to other things such such as this becoming maybe more possible.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 What do you make of that?

Speaker 5 Was that the whiff of a little, you know, possibly irrational exuberance?

Speaker 1 It was definitely irrational. I don't know if it was exuberant.
It was a whiff of a rational hope.

Speaker 5 No, look,

Speaker 5 I actually did, I want to ask you, because I feel like you're a keener observer of the, you know, sort of the former limbs, you know, still maybe echo for you.

Speaker 5 Yeah, sure. You know, my take is definitely it was a huge embarrassment for Trump.

Speaker 5 And if you can't get Lauren Boebert in the situation room to, you know, give you her vote when she owes her entire career to, you know, performative displays of support for you, right?

Speaker 5 Like something, something is off and capitulation is the right word. They went to extreme lengths.
This is Trump. So it's like, you know, add some zeros to whatever you're doing here.

Speaker 5 They went to extreme lengths, shutting down the U.S. House of Representatives for two months from mid-September to mid-November in the effort to block a vote that you then failed to block.

Speaker 5 There's no script for this. This has not happened in any remotely analogous way.
And so I don't want to understate that.

Speaker 5 It does seem to be quite specific to this particular MAGA-based obsession with Epstein, with the files, with the idea that there's this conspiracy, that there's this cabal of deep state pedophiles that's being covered up.

Speaker 5 And so does it translate? We haven't seen that.

Speaker 5 I mean, I would like to point out that Donald Trump, in the same week that he capitulated here, has done a number of truly extraordinarily awful things, even by his own standards.

Speaker 5 And I haven't heard, I might have missed it, but I haven't heard, you know, not even the old bleats of, you know, concern from, you know, the caucuses of the concerned on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 5 And they don't even bother with that anymore. So I think they're very unlikely to break with Trump on a major foreign policy issue like the Russia sanctions, even if they were to start.

Speaker 5 ebbing away on other things. These people are going to start to get very scared for their political survival, the ones who are in frontline districts or in competitive Senate races in 2026.

Speaker 5 But they're going to care about things like the economy, which I could not believe. Donald Trump's numbers on the economy are truly mind-blowingly bad right now, Tim.
You know, for a guy who

Speaker 5 arguably that's what saved him from so many of the scandals and dysfunction and chaos of his first term was the perception that he was good for the economy.

Speaker 5 Now he's more underwater on the economy in his polls than he is on his overall approval rating.

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Speaker 1 Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1 It's interesting.

Speaker 1 I'll only come back to the Epstein thing, but just while we're on this point on the approval rating, because I was looking at this yesterday, too, if you look at the various issues, like really the only issues where people approve of him on now are the border and Israel-Palestine, Israel-Gaza ceasefire.

Speaker 1 In some ways, that's interesting because it's instructive on how Donald Trump has gotten out of focus on the things that could help his political standing because he is obsessed with that personally and he wanted the peace prize, but and he also kind of fancies himself a deal maker and it is something he's getting positive feedback on, right?

Speaker 1 And so I think that that kind of does tie to the like secret Russia negotiations and how he's focused on that. And it ties to him having MBS, which I want to get to next, at the White House.

Speaker 1 And it ties to what is the domestic priority right now, the escalation of ICE, which we're going to get to.

Speaker 1 So the things that he has good ratings on are the things that they're really doubling and tripling down on.

Speaker 1 The problem is, if you're that far underwater on the economy and people are that unhappy about all this other stuff, at the end of the day, being above water on the Israel-Gaza dispute is not a path to political power here.

Speaker 1 You know, it might be for Bibi.

Speaker 5 You're absolutely right. People do not vote foreign policy and ask any member of Congress whether they want 2026 to be a foreign policy election.
And you know the answer to that.

Speaker 1 A couple of thoughts.

Speaker 5 First of all, it does underscore that Donald Trump is not on the ballot in 2026 and he tends not to care all that much about things that don't directly concern him.

Speaker 5 And he's perfectly happy to cut loose Republican members of Congress if it doesn't fit with what he wants to do at the moment. But it kind of underscores his impending lame duck status in that sense.

Speaker 5 And there's a reason that second-term presidents like to focus on foreign policy, they like to focus on legacy building.

Speaker 5 Donald Trump, he's been out there musing about how he's not going to get into heaven and who can get me into the pearly gates.

Speaker 5 You know, so this is a guy, you know, he's not raising the east wing of the White House and building himself a

Speaker 5 grand white marble palace in the sky if he didn't have a focus right now on his legacy

Speaker 5 in all

Speaker 5 gold capital letters.

Speaker 5 And so I think that's part of it, that he wants to focus on that. Foreign policy is also an area where our very unconstrained presidents really are unconstrained.

Speaker 5 And especially over the recent decades, you have seen Congress cede what role it did have largely in foreign policy to the executive branch.

Speaker 5 And so it's where you see the most undistilled, kind of unconstrained power of a president, any president, and in particular this president.

Speaker 5 He also relishes the statecraft of, you know, it's just, you know, the optics of it's, it's just sort of me and some other great strong man making the world and shaping it according to the power of our will and our leadership.

Speaker 5 And so it very much plays into his vision of what an American president should be and should do.

Speaker 5 Now, on Israel and Gaza, wait until people find out that actually there is not long-term peace in the Middle East because I hate to break.

Speaker 5 You know, I don't want to be

Speaker 5 the bearer of bad news, but

Speaker 5 actually, Donald Trump has not achieved long-term peace in the Middle East.

Speaker 1 Definitely feels like a tenuous place to stake your political

Speaker 1 status on

Speaker 1 maintaining a medium to long-term peace in the Middle East.

Speaker 1 I want to get to other news of the league stuff, but just really quick back on Epstein, and because we don't want to gloss over too much Donald Trump having to bow down to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 1 But I hear what you were saying about how

Speaker 1 you know, Trump's defeat here has not yet spurred a

Speaker 1 wave of courage from other Republicans throughout the land.

Speaker 1 It is just meaningful in the sense that I was thinking about this as I was saying this, like, when was the last time he was rebuffed in such a way?

Speaker 1 And the John McCain thumbs down on Obamacare is kind of the thing that comes to mind from the first term. But John McCain was vanquished after that.
That was kind of like this last

Speaker 1 statement of resistance against Trump, you know, end of a war that you know you've lost, basically, right?

Speaker 1 It's like kind of a final charge to defend one's integrity and obviously has used the policy, which have had ramifications all the way up to this last shutdown.

Speaker 1 So, in that sense, I do think this is different as far as the calculations of Republicans on the Hill, that at least now it opens things a crack. And the Epstein thing, I think, is unique, as you say.

Speaker 1 Marjorie Taylor Green's base of support is very different from all these Republicans.

Speaker 1 She has more credibility with the mega base than a lot of the other more establishment types do for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 1 And yet, the fact that she would get him to fold, she's not really scared of a primary. She expanded it out.
She attacked him not just on Epstein, but on not extending the Obamacare subsidies.

Speaker 1 And I think that issue is going to have ramifications into next year as people's premiums go up. It just gives the lame duck whiff is what it does.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it doesn't mean that it's over, that the walls have closed in on Trump, but it's meaningfully different, I do think, from what we've seen before in a way that just gives me a little bit of, I don't know, titillates me a little bit, gives me a little bit of a

Speaker 1 little bit of a twinkle in my eye.

Speaker 5 Hey, I'm all in favor of the Tim Miller twinkle in the eye program. Okay, let's just leave it at this.

Speaker 5 I would feel more confident in that theory of the case when, and I don't exclude that that will happen, the U.S.

Speaker 5 Congress actually becomes a legislative separate branch of government again and stands up for itself. So you know

Speaker 5 telling you know the one act of defiance is to pass essentially a meaningless law that orders the Justice Department to release documents that they could have done so at any moment without this law, and then never saying a word when the executive branch of the United States has usurped the most basic power that you have in the Constitution, which is the appropriation and spending of funds.

Speaker 5 Donald Trump has literally flouted the laws of the country, setting up

Speaker 5 large swaths of the executive branch. He's closed down departments without authorization from Congress to do so.
He's refused to spend funds that Congress has appropriated for specific purposes.

Speaker 5 When faced with this action, Congress has not even sued Trump, has not acted in its own interest. So that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 1 Concur.

Speaker 1 Congress, Congress still, still not exactly

Speaker 1 flexing its muscles.

Speaker 6 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 7 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 13 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 8 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 11 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 14 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 16 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 2 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 1 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best. They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 1 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 1 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 1 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

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Speaker 1 The aforementioned Trump Atrocities of the Week, the MBS visit, you posted this.

Speaker 1 You're thinking of all the heat that Biden took meeting with MBS in Saudi Arabia, and there was the fist bump, which I did, I was among the heat givers at the time.

Speaker 1 Only for Trump to lavish the, quote, fantastic prince with praise in the Oval Office and claim MBS told him that America was dead under Biden.

Speaker 1 Obviously, then he lied about MBS's role in the heinous murder of Khashoggi. Things happen, Trump said.
And then he goes on to have the state dinner with the masters of the universe all fetting this.

Speaker 1 horrible dictator. What do you make of that?

Speaker 5 You pretty, you summed it up. I mean, you know, a lot of people didn't like this gentleman.

Speaker 5 And the one other thing is that.

Speaker 1 Gentlemen Khashoggi was what he said.

Speaker 1 Gentlemen being Khashoggi. That's a gentleman I don't like.

Speaker 5 Yeah, exactly. And in fact, defending MBS, his attack on Mary Bruce, the ABC news journalist, who so calmly and professionally handled that awful situation.

Speaker 5 But I'm glad you actually brought up the dinner and the master of the universe because I've just been thinking, like, I know there have been a lot of call them iconic moments over the last nine months that really sort of distill the second term Trump.

Speaker 5 But for me, I think I am going to remember the one-two punch of the lavishing.

Speaker 5 I mean, what other word is there for it than, you know, I mean, practically like just an on-screen, you know, embrace of MBS.

Speaker 1 You're going somewhere a little bit more prurient than embrace.

Speaker 5 I was. I was.
And I stopped myself.

Speaker 5 I use that a lot on my husband.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to use it on your podcast. On the Bulwark podcast, it's probably better, better received than

Speaker 1 in your home. We won't embarrass Theo.

Speaker 5 That would be terrible.

Speaker 5 You know, so this revolting scene of full-on embrace of a murderous autocrat in service of what appears to be, you know, personal business interests as much as national interests in the Oval Office, attacking...

Speaker 5 you know, a journalist in the most crude terms and threatening to withdraw ABC News's license.

Speaker 5 Again, saying this out loud in a way that would have been a scandal with any president of our lifetime, Democrat or Republican.

Speaker 5 And then following it up with this dinner at the White House, there's a photograph of the masters of the universe, as you put it, including Elon Musk and other tech tycoons in the White House for this state dinner.

Speaker 5 And, you know,

Speaker 5 is there any more kind of summing up of the grotesque, corrupted oligarchy in which we find ourselves than this?

Speaker 5 You know, I feel like it kind of sums it all up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I understand.

Speaker 1 I don't endorse, but I understand there's certain members of that business class that was there because MBS is doing kind of massive data center deals for AI, and you kind of rationalize that we have to win the AI war.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, getting the financial resources of Saudi Arabia is important.

Speaker 1 Though simultaneously, I think Saudi is trying to position themselves as the third most powerful country in the ai war such i'm not i'm not sure if that's that great

Speaker 1 just from a values perspective i'm not sure we really as a national from a national security matter should be doing what we can to prop up their effort on that front but anyway so there's some of that that's just direct old school

Speaker 1 geopolitical corruption and business dealings, right? That is standard for politics.

Speaker 1 But then you have a lot of other folks that are there that's just like, is this this necessary like does salesforce does mark benioff of salesforce salesforce isn't in the ai chips game you know do you really need to go do you need to go to this party that badly do you not get invited to other parties that you need to like put on a tuxedo and honor somebody that once again like took a bone saw and behanded and chopped up a journalist just for the crime of speaking out against the regime and using their free speech rights.

Speaker 1 I thought many of these tech guys were free speech maximalists, and there they all were partying with this guy and Trump and doing selfies with Pam Bondi.

Speaker 1 It felt, well, I mean, it felt a little bit French Revolution-ish, I guess, I will say.

Speaker 1 In some ways, it was gross, but in other ways, I look at it and I think, man, he's giving a lot of material for someone from a populist left standpoint to come and

Speaker 1 use Trump's own populist, you know, kind of rhetoric against him, I think.

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, grotesque is a word. I mean, what I'm struck by in the very, I think, calculated and largely opportunistic embrace by the tech tycoons of Donald Trump this year.

Speaker 5 And remember, these are the people who were given prime seats at the inauguration,

Speaker 5 booting the political leadership of the country from the stage and relegating them to the cheap seats, so to speak.

Speaker 5 I take your point that geopolitics requires a certain amount of business engagement with unsavory parts of the world, but it doesn't require you embracing the bone saw murderer.

Speaker 5 We can stipulate to that. It doesn't require you embracing Donald Trump in such public ways.
There are ways to keep integrity that do not involve this.

Speaker 5 And, you know, when you see, I don't know, the CEO of Apple, whose products you use every day, you and I and all the people are funding this, right?

Speaker 5 He doesn't have this power, this clout, this agency in the world that prizes high agency individuals like him. That's my son informs me, a Silicon Valley term.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 5 what are they doing?

Speaker 5 They're giving Donald Trump millions of dollars to knock down the east wing of the White House with no process, no sense of history, and guildify his environment, the people's house, knock down our history.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm not sure that business requires that.

Speaker 5 It seems to me that that's a form of rot and corruption that anyone can be against because it's, I just don't think it's wrong to do the right thing.

Speaker 5 I think there are many people who have shown you can succeed in business, even in the Trump environment, without engaging in these things.

Speaker 1 And I mean, Tim Apple has more money on his balance sheet at that company than any company in the history of the world.

Speaker 1 It sounds as if

Speaker 1 this is absolutely necessary to

Speaker 1 keep things afloat over there. So, no, I'm with you.
Tim Coke is joining us sick, I think.

Speaker 5 It means that these companies pay zero price for

Speaker 5 our entire

Speaker 5 kind of public space, right?

Speaker 5 They think that the rest of us should fund the democracy part of the democracy and they should reap its benefits and be willing to do things that are antithetical to the public comments.

Speaker 5 Oh, sorry, that was just somebody honking.

Speaker 1 That was a great point, though. That was the hog point.
I think it was an unrest. I think there's a lot of people out there saying, like, hell yeah, Susan Glasser.

Speaker 8 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 11 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 6 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 8 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 11 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 14 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 16 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 2 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 1 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best. They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

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Speaker 1 While we're on Edge of Anything, do you have anything on the F-35 sales to Saudi? I haven't followed that that closely, but.

Speaker 5 Well, I think the F-35 sales and that greeting, I'm sure a lot of people saw Trump coming to the portico of the White House to greet MBS in a fanfare-laden ceremony, not only rolling out the red carpet, according to the full honors essentially of a state visit, even though he's not the head of state.

Speaker 5 His father, technically speaking, still is.

Speaker 5 And this flyover of the F-35s, which the U.S.

Speaker 5 government, or which Trump has agreed to sell, that's something that previous administrations had, including Trump's own previous administration, had resisted.

Speaker 5 Saudi Arabia already has a military cooperation channel with China, and one of the concerns is

Speaker 5 possible proliferation of sensitive defense technology that the U.S. has.
And

Speaker 5 this goes back to...

Speaker 5 what we mentioned with Trump and Israel and Gaza, which is that Donald Trump wants to be seen as as a dealmaker, seen as a peacemaker, especially in the Middle East, but is often really not a very strong negotiator, not a strong dealmaker.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 he appeared to give Saudi Arabia a lot of what it had wanted in terms of security promises from the United States and defense cooperation without the part that the U.S.

Speaker 5 had been demanding in exchange, which was please join the Abraham Accords and normalize your relationship with Israel. And Donald Trump just threw that conditionality out the window, right?

Speaker 5 And sort of said, like, oh, well, we didn't get there on this one. So here, I'll just give you all this stuff anyways.
And, you know, a tough negotiator wouldn't have done that.

Speaker 5 So it seems like Saudi Arabia came here and got a lot more of what it wanted. And it's not clear to me what the U.S.

Speaker 5 got out of this aside from possibly more side business deals that would benefit Trump's family or the family of some of his cabinet members.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good investment for MBS into Jared Kushner, it turns out. A lot of other people were counting Trump out.

Speaker 1 MBS,

Speaker 1 I guess you don't have to hand it to MBS or anything, but it certainly has paid off. One of the other atrocities of the leak is this investigation of Jim Comey.

Speaker 1 This is another thing I was just thinking of, watching these tech guys do selfies with Pam Bondi. It's like, Pam Bondi should be treated like a pariah right now.

Speaker 1 And she's running a Department of Justice that is totally out of of step with the rule of law and the separation of powers and traditions of the country, targeting political foes because her boss tells her to.

Speaker 1 And then they appoint this Lindsay Halligan, who has no idea what she's doing.

Speaker 1 And on the third day of her job, she is in front of the grand jury going after Jim Comey because the statute of limitation on this alleged crime is about to run out and because Donald Trump and Pam Bondi want a scalp of a political foe, essentially the only reason she's doing this.

Speaker 1 And she fucks it up. We'll have lawyers on the podcast next week to explain all the details of it.
It's kind of boring.

Speaker 1 I was on with Nicole yesterday and I was listening to it and my mind was, I wasn't a lawyer for a reason. I'm a humble podcaster for a reason.
But long story short, they screw up badly.

Speaker 1 And a federal judge castigated the Justice Department over possible misconduct, saying it could have tainted the proceedings.

Speaker 1 It is simultaneously just an utter clown show and quite pernicious what the Justice Department is doing with Comey.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think you're right to make sure that we talk about it because this is a signature moment in Donald Trump's campaign of revenge and retribution.

Speaker 5 And that, I think, is a huge part of what he wants to do with the White House in his second term.

Speaker 5 And the fact that he's got himself an FBI and a Justice Department, that he's reshaped in the mode of personal loyalty shock troops.

Speaker 5 This case is going to be kind of one of the signature examples of that.

Speaker 5 I was reading some of the filings in this case, and it really, it is remarkable because the allegation, as I understand it, in total layperson's terms here, is that they had two different versions of the indictment of Comey, and that it's possible that the magistrate judge misinterpreted when Lindsay Halligan brought us the second version of the indictment and it was presented by the grand jury four person

Speaker 5 that it's possible the grand jury actually never saw the second indictment of Comey, which was entered under their name. And that would be truly a remarkable thing if that is what happened.

Speaker 5 So that's my understanding of what's going on here.

Speaker 5 And it does speak to the possibility of an enormous screw-up by an inexperienced person who never would have passed muster for this job under any president, Democrat or Republican.

Speaker 5 And that is a through line here. Look, you know, abuse of power is the kind of thing that should, you know, rattle people.
It has nothing to do with ideology.

Speaker 5 This kind of power being wielded by an unchecked executive is literally like the nightmare that the founding fathers envisioned from the very beginning for a reason.

Speaker 5 It's completely devoid of ideology. And what it speaks to is something that, you know, anybody can be targeted.

Speaker 1 Yeah, on the one hand, good for Jim Comey, like, because things seem to be going well for him in this meritless case.

Speaker 1 I think it feels less scary to people, the abuse of power, if they don't feel like they're threatened. Right.
And I think that with Trump right now, immigrants, migrants feel like they're threatened.

Speaker 1 I think Spanish-speaking citizens feel like they're threatened because they're going to be targeted.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't think that the powerful feel threatened right now because I think they look at this and they're like, these guys are, come on, like these guys are clowns and I'm going to get what I can, you know, in the meantime.

Speaker 1 And that is, that's the wrong way to look at it, right?

Speaker 1 Like, just because a, it's a clownish abuse of power does not mean that it is not putting us on a very scary trajectory if it was allowed to continue.

Speaker 1 So, they do want to talk about the ICE expansion that we've seen in Charlotte and in my hometown of New Orleans.

Speaker 1 They've reported that Bovino, the little Nazi guy, the five foot four guy, was supposed to be coming to New Orleans December 1, but there's already some local reports of ramping up of CBP and ICE activities at construction sites.

Speaker 1 And we've been hearing from general contractors and such about people not showing up out of fear and people being grabbed.

Speaker 1 In Charlotte, there were 21,000 kids that missed school earlier this week because they were scared.

Speaker 1 I've heard from a friend who has everyone's legal in the family, but has a mixed immigrant family about fear and their children because of what they're hearing at school and on the news. And

Speaker 1 it's pretty frightening. And I do think, kind of going back to that original point, if Trump feels like this is the area where

Speaker 1 he still has control over things things and they now have added budget to this, that like this is where things really ramp up through the winter. I don't know what you make of all that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, I think that is really important. Through line, actually, from we were talking about Comey and the abuse of power.

Speaker 5 When you get to this question of immigrants and who's afraid in this society right now, who's being targeted most explicitly in the society, you know, it's the spreading of fear on some level that is the most kind of strikingly at odds with the U.S., right?

Speaker 5 Seen as a safe haven, seen as the safe place in the world for generations of people.

Speaker 5 I'm, you know, certainly all of my family, I'm guessing, you know, most of your family, you know, they're all immigrants at some point.

Speaker 5 And they came here in part because they thought it was safe, right? It was a place to get away from, you know, the horrors of the old world, whatever they were. And it's this spreading of fear.

Speaker 5 I think all of us are infected by it to a certain extent because, you know, those videos now are pretty inescapable. Whatever media platform you're on,

Speaker 5 you risk being exposed to horrific scenes at any given moment in your day.

Speaker 5 You can see a clip of some poor woman being dragged out of her car, possibly beaten up by these ICE agents, masked men, possibly in front of her children, on the school line.

Speaker 5 I mean, so we're all being exposed to these on purpose, on purpose, to these horrific scenes. And I think that's very much by design.

Speaker 5 And, you know, to bring it back to Donald Trump, it is a reason among many for his falling approval ratings in the society.

Speaker 5 While people still support, very much so, Democrats and Republicans, what he's done at the border and the idea of

Speaker 5 not having essentially an open way into the country for new illegal migrants, there's not a lot of support, and including ebbing support inside the Republican Party for the tactics that are being used inside this country.

Speaker 5 And I think there are a lot of people, my guess is including a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump because he thought he was going to bring down prices on day one, like he said he was going to do.

Speaker 5 I don't think they voted for cutting research funding for cancer.

Speaker 5 I don't think they voted for like beating the crap out of immigrant mothers in front of their children and large groups of armed masked men roaming the streets of our cities.

Speaker 5 I heard a horrific story story recently about our neighbors to the north in Canada, which is very much integrated with the United States in so many different ways.

Speaker 5 And children at a high school in Canada who decided not to go to their mock trial competition in Chicago because some of the participants from the Canadian team were Canadian immigrants.

Speaker 5 They had, you know, Canadian citizenship, but were afraid to go to Chicago. And the other kids agonized over it, took a vote, said, We got to stand in solidarity with our team members.

Speaker 5 I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 That's so sad. The Democrats are, it's sort of related to this.

Speaker 1 They're folks in the military, a lot of veterans in Congress, Mark Kelly and Justin Crowe and Slotkin and others put out a video talking about it kind of as a message to soldiers.

Speaker 1 And I think this would also apply to people working for Border Patrol, et cetera, telling them to follow their oath and not follow unlawful orders.

Speaker 1 This video has been getting a lot of attention on Fox in particular. So I want to play for you a little bit of Jason Crowe.

Speaker 1 He's a Democratic Congressman from Colorado, from my original home district in Colorado,

Speaker 1 and then a little bit from Stephen Miller responding to that. Let's listen.

Speaker 17 Martha, we're standing by our troops, our service members, who are often put in very difficult positions.

Speaker 17 And Donald Trump has put them in very difficult positions and has alluded to putting them in even more difficult positions in the months and years ahead.

Speaker 17 So we are reminding folks about what the Uniform Code of Military Justice says, what the Constitution says, what the law of war says.

Speaker 17 You know, this is really no different than what I did with my infantry platoon in advance of deploying to Iraq in 2003.

Speaker 17 I trained these young soldiers on their obligation to comply with the law of war, to comply with the Constitution.

Speaker 1 And what is a lawful versus a unlawful order?

Speaker 1 Incredible video, Stephen, and one that you see as insurrection?

Speaker 1 It is insurrection, plainly, directly, without question.

Speaker 1 It is insurrection.

Speaker 5 Plainly, directly, without question. And up is down, and yes is no,

Speaker 5 and the truth shall set you free, Tim.

Speaker 5 You know, it's look, this is a Norwellian full-scale moment. That's, you know, that's a scene where the regime's, you know, chief propagandist goes on his propaganda network and, you know,

Speaker 5 shoulder pads puffing, you know, says, uh uh you know arrest this man he's a traitor he's a you know he's treasonous and just to connect it to our our previous conversation i mean

Speaker 5 and i don't mean to to make light of it but it's so absurd i i we don't need to analyze this okay it's it's literally absurd it's it's it's actually absurd to say that the people who are saying please you know in a time when you're being asked to push the boundaries of what is lawful what is legal in a time when the leadership of our country is telling our uniformed military that their new job that they did not sign up for is to fight the enemy within this country, that is a radical shift in the definition of what national security is.

Speaker 5 It is radically at odds and antithetical to what our nonpartisan military actually is designed for and what they take an oath to. It bears reminding and repeating.

Speaker 5 And they take take an oath not to Donald Trump, you know, but to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of this country.

Speaker 5 Just a final note, because it connects, I think, this question of the immigrants and this idea

Speaker 5 is the fear that's spreading in that community by design of Stephen Miller and others.

Speaker 5 You know, it might not have penetrated to the, you know, the masters of the universe of Silicon Valley, but I think it is, for many people, starting to

Speaker 5 connect. And I know you detect the whiff of, you know, something, and I hear you on

Speaker 5 Republicans breaking with Trump on Capitol Hill over the Epstein vote. But for me, it is about understanding that they spread the fear, not just to the immigrants.

Speaker 5 And my very favorite sign that I saw in the recent round of No Kings protests really speaks to this.

Speaker 5 And, you know, it's a little literary here, but, you know, first they came for the immigrants, and I spoke up because I knew the rest of the effing poem.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 5 You know, and that's right. I mean, that's the difference, hopefully, from the 1930s is that, you know, people,

Speaker 5 they're onto the script. They got the plot line, Stephen Miller.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like that. One political note on this, Democrat.
I want the Democrats to stand up and speak out on everything. So I encourage them for doing this.

Speaker 1 I do think that, like, I can think of about 100 topics that I would like Democrats fighting on Fox about over

Speaker 1 this one. So just, that's, that's ugly.
So I'm just saying it's kind of like, sort of like a compliment sandwich where with a kid where you're encouraging them. It's like, good job.

Speaker 1 Okay, you're fighting them and you're going on Fox. That's good.

Speaker 1 But I've got, I've got a couple other suggestions on topics for going on Fox where I think we're maybe on a little stronger turf with the audience.

Speaker 6 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

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Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 2 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 1 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best. They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 1 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 1 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 1 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 1 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you. Same mission, new name, MS Now.
Learn more at ms.now.

Speaker 1 Lastly, it's been a VEEP week for me. I had Vice President Harris yesterday.
We are headed to Vice President Cheney's funeral after this. We're taping a little early.
So I leave it to you.

Speaker 1 Do you have any thoughts on either VEEP or discussion items? Anything that you want to get off your chest before we end the show?

Speaker 5 Feel free to dish to us on, you know, what was the backstage vibe with, you know, the former vice president Harris. I mean, did you feel like this is her return to the political scene? Or is it just

Speaker 5 a kind of book sales extravaganza?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I think that she's open to all of it.
I do think that she was, it was funny. And she was a little looser during our conversation.

Speaker 1 We were joking, and I was, I made a couple off-color jokes as I do, and she went along with. And,

Speaker 1 you know, but she was sort of vacillating back between that and kind of talking points and stump speech and stuff.

Speaker 1 And that's, you know, that's natural, but it didn't feel like it was the sign of somebody who didn't have at least the possibility of political future in the back of her mind still, I guess I would just say.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, a politician, you know, it wasn't Al Gore with the beard and the sweater and the

Speaker 1 midlife crisis. Like, it wasn't that.
It was definitely somebody that had some political ember still.

Speaker 1 And I will say, and look, and I think that you know we're so far away from 2028 hot stove stuff so i almost hate to like engage in it even and certainly there'd be people that would say that she should not do it for a variety of reasons we're not going back which was one of her comments maybe being one of them but i can see how she might think the other way the lions were wrapped around the block in tennessee and it was nashville but it was a it was sold out rhyme auditorium massive auditorium people in there were pumped to see her a very diverse crowd and she still has a big well of support you know, particularly in the black community, but across the board.

Speaker 1 You know, I've been in those shoes.

Speaker 1 I remember I always tell a story about John Huntsman when we were on our hopeless campaign, walking down the streets of Manchester, New Hampshire, and like every block, somebody would be like, I'm for you.

Speaker 1 We love you, John. And then we'd get to dinner and he'd be like, I don't know, I'm feeling something in the streets, Tim.
And I'm like, oh my God, you know, there's nothing happening in the streets.

Speaker 1 But, you know, that was eight people. This was 2,500 people screaming.
You know, so you can imagine how somebody might hear that and think, oh, okay, I don't know. We'll see what the future holds.

Speaker 1 So that would be my thoughts on

Speaker 1 what the vibe was with Kamala.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And look, I mean, we're also in a world where nine months in, you know, maybe you and I are not stunned by the series of worst case scenarios that are playing out before us, but I think a lot of people are.

Speaker 5 And they're feeling the pain of the Trump economy and, you know, a sense of, I'll do anything, you know, to

Speaker 5 show my concern about this moment. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I think that is part of the moment, right? Look at those election results. I know it seems like an eon ago, but it wasn't even a month ago.
You know, people really wanted to show up.

Speaker 5 They really wanted to show up. What can I do? I get that everywhere.
I'm sure you get that everywhere. You know, what can I as an individual do? So

Speaker 5 that definitely meets the moment. But I don't know.
We're going to Vice President Cheney's funeral right now. And I feel like, to me, it'll be interesting to see.

Speaker 5 And I think Vice President Harris will be there. Vice vice president gore who you mentioned will be there Biden will be there George W.

Speaker 5 Bush will be there but just listing those names it's not names of the moment in in many ways it's you know a portal to the past right yeah I suspect it will be an interesting thing to to watch

Speaker 1 I suspect that there will be significantly more Democratic elected officials there than Republicans.

Speaker 5 I don't think, yeah, I'll be shocked if there's many Republicans there at all, frankly, which is remarkable when you consider who we're talking about here.

Speaker 1 Not to compare myself to Dick Cheney. We're different in very in many different ways.

Speaker 1 I'm going to endorse that. But

Speaker 1 it is reminiscent of my book.

Speaker 1 I was going to DC for my book launch party, and it was like there were more people from Pete Budigic's campaign at my book launch in DC than there were from any job that all of the jobs I had had actually in my life in politics combined.

Speaker 1 There were a couple brave soldiers friends who showed up, but very few. So, you know, that's kind of how things are in politics.

Speaker 5 You know, things change. You know, the center cannot hold.
Things fall apart.

Speaker 1 Susan Glasser, I always appreciate your time and wisdom. We'll see you up at the cathedral.
Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow with another edition of the podcast.

Speaker 1 I'm going to see Geese tonight in New York. I need to cleanse the palate after Dick Cheney.
So luckily, we've got a guest who's going to be able to carry me if I'm moving a little slow.

Speaker 1 Susan, thanks so much.

Speaker 5 Tim, it's really great to be with you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 See y'all.

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Speaker 1 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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