Bill Kristol: This Is Trump's Cover-Up

Speaker 1 The holidays are already in full swing. The lights are up.
You got good people, good food, and good vibes.

Speaker 1 And there, to help keep that energy going is Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry with that crisp cranberry flavor with a smooth winter spice twist.

Speaker 1 It's the drink that livens up game nights, gift exchanges, or just catching up in the kitchen with a burst of holiday flavor. It's a seasonal favorite, but it's only here for a limited time.

Speaker 1 So grab it while you can. Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry.
Sprite, Obey your thirst.

Speaker 2 Love the night.

Speaker 3 Reach for Zin After Dark, a limited cocktail-inspired series for those who get up when the sun goes down.

Speaker 3 Try Zinn's Mojito, spiced cider, and espresso martini nicotine pouches. Find them at select retailers, available while supplies last.
Zinn After Dark. Bring on the night.

Speaker 3 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 4 Hello, welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Quick scheduling note: We will have shows for you on this feed tomorrow, 1223.

Speaker 4 And then the day after Christmas, Friday on the 26th. Then next week, we'll have shows on the 29th, 30th, and 31st, Monday through Wednesday.

Speaker 4 We will be off on this feed, the Borg Podcast feed, Thursday and Friday, New Year's Day and January 2nd. I'm taking my little daughter to New York for her eighth birthday.

Speaker 4 So I'm not going to be podcasting on Friday next week. Hope everybody has a wonderful holiday.
And, you know, we're giving you enough material to...

Speaker 4 Give you a little break from the family if you need it.

Speaker 4 I also should say if there's breaking news, I'm just kind of sitting around here through the first.

Speaker 4 So if there's breaking news, make sure you're subscribed to the Borg takes feed you know if we invade greenland or something uh i will be popping on there and and you know at the end of next week uh sam or jvall or sarah will be popping on so make sure you're subscribed to borg takes as well uh also at the end of the show we're doing the monday mailbag down for bulwark plus members it's a good gift to yourself this christmas to become a borg plus member so stick around for that at the end uh but it is monday so we've got editor at large of the bulwark bill crystal what's going on bill i have a little cold like everyone else in the east coast I guess, but I'm fine.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 4 I'm feeling great. We took the top off the Jeep on Friday here in Louisiana.
Everyone's welcome to move to the South if they choose to,

Speaker 4 you know, and no cold down here.

Speaker 5 I talked to our friend Ron Brownstein over the weekend about something Austin. He's in L.A.
and he kind of loves doing this in the winter.

Speaker 5 He goes on at 68 degrees, just got back from a bike, and he goes out at great length. And we're going out to lunch at a nice outdoor place.

Speaker 5 And we're sitting here looking at the kind of overcast rain, 31 degrees. Anyway, it's good for your character, though.
It's good for your character being up here in the northeast.

Speaker 4 I disagree. My character's fine.
I want to start.

Speaker 4 We got so much. And the craziness in Phoenix with kind of the MAGA crackup happening with the right-wing influencers we're going to talk about and some drama at CBS.

Speaker 4 And, you know, there's then actual news besides like the real housewives of MAGA. We have actual news happening as well.
I want to start with Epstein, though.

Speaker 4 When we taped this on Friday, we knew that the documents were coming out, but we hadn't actually seen anything from the government yet.

Speaker 4 They put out the first tranche, and they're legally required to release everything.

Speaker 4 They did not meet that legal requirement. Put out the first tranche of information.

Speaker 4 A lot of redactions, a suspicious amount of Bill Clinton pictures and a suspicious lack of Donald Trump pictures, given what we know is in the files, I would say.

Speaker 4 You talked to Rokana, who's been spearheading this for the Crystal Live on Substack on Sunday. What's your take of what we know now and kind of where we're at in this quasi-cover-up?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it is a quasi-cover-up or a partial cover-up, I guess,

Speaker 5 but it's still a cover-up. I mean, that's the key to say.
And you know, the redactions and then the fixing, the non-redactions and so forth is only the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 5 The most striking thing is, and Roe made this point yesterday, it's really, I mean, the stuff that people really expected to see, wanted to see, and it almost really is virtually indicated in the legislation that was passed is what we need to see, would include things like this, the 60-count indictment of Epstein from 2008, which really lays out the real case against him.

Speaker 5 They bargained it down to two counts that he played in that sweetheart deal with Acosta, but that is in there. Everyone knows it's in the files.

Speaker 5 And then, of course, the victim statements, of which we got almost none. And those are statements to the FBI.

Speaker 5 Obviously, you can redact the name of the person giving it and whichever details one feels one should, but they're not even there.

Speaker 5 I mean, I think people have slightly, I think the coverage, because we all got involved, understandably in the redactions and this whole 119 pages was blacked out, have sort of slightly missing the forest for the trees, which is we're nowhere close to seeing what we should be seeing.

Speaker 5 And I think we have to assume that this is, you know,

Speaker 5 it's not just that, gee, they were overwhelmed, such hard work going through all these things. And how did they know?

Speaker 5 And then they're a little monkey with Clinton, but come on, we're going to get it all. Roe, actually, Rochanna, maybe sort of has to say this.
He's a member of Congress. It's his legislation.

Speaker 5 He has to presume good faith until it's proven otherwise, I guess. Sort of seems to think that they're going to get more and maybe ultimately get most of the key things or many of them.

Speaker 5 I guess I'm not there. I think this is a cover-up.
We have to treat Trump's Justice Department the way we spoke about Soviet-era, quote, justice departments.

Speaker 5 This is not a justice department that's a little tilted, you know, a little pro-Trump, the way justice departments often are, not quite, little thumb in the scale. There is no scale.

Speaker 5 This is Trump's defense team, and that's how they're managing this.

Speaker 4 Just a couple of things with that. The victim statements is such a great point, right? Because some of these victims have given the government permission to release their statements, right?

Speaker 4 So like the idea that it's a redaction question and

Speaker 4 that is just certainly the case for some who are anonymous or who have passed away and Virtina Jeffree killed herself since then.

Speaker 4 So there's certain maybe questions there, but to have nothing is notable.

Speaker 4 That's related to the other element, which is I believe it was Massey that said, you know, basically they're like, from what they'd seen, like 20 potential co-conspirators involved in this.

Speaker 4 No one is going to accept that the Epstein files have fully been released if at the end of any document dump, as we had on Friday, there's not

Speaker 4 any other credible accusations about other folks involved.

Speaker 4 And we know for a fact in the New York Times reporting that one of the victims who was talking about how she had met Trump at four different parties, I didn't accuse Trump of wrongdoing, but said that Epstein had

Speaker 4 basically given her, she's underage to other men at the party, right?

Speaker 4 So until the notion that there's information that is revealed about other people besides Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell, you know, nobody's going to accept this and they shouldn't.

Speaker 4 And so, I think that those are two things, in addition to the obvious, the Trump part, there's nothing from Trump in here, which is preposterous when we know they said they have a SharePoint file that lists all of the times that Trump was mentioned.

Speaker 4 It should have been the first thing that they could have released, right?

Speaker 4 Because they've already gathered the Trump mentions inside of this, according to reporting that we've learned from the administration.

Speaker 5 And that's really so important. Just to emphasize this point, when the victims said release the files, they meant release the victim statements.
That was the core thing they wanted to see out.

Speaker 5 They had gone to the FBI off at a considerable personal risk and cost. They had made these statements when they were fresh in their minds, unfortunately.

Speaker 5 And so they said to the FBI the names of the people. They didn't redact themselves.

Speaker 5 It was John Smith and it was John Jones and they were there at this time. And maybe they said, I can't quite recall the second time, but the third time this person was there.

Speaker 5 That's what is in these statements.

Speaker 5 And there are a couple of cases we've seen statements where they did redact, interestingly, the Justice Department, the names of people who were the exploiters or the alleged exploiters, not the victims.

Speaker 5 But in most cases, since they didn't release the statements at all, we don't even have that. Now, Trump could well be in those lists of people.
He could not be. We don't know.

Speaker 5 But again, I just want to bring home how contrary to the idea, the spirit of releasing the files, what they've done is.

Speaker 4 The other news related to this, so Todd Blanche was out doing interviews over the weekend, and he was on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, and she was asking not just about the file release, but also about the transfer of Glene Maxwell.

Speaker 4 I want to play a little bit from their conversation.

Speaker 6 Why was she moved just days after you interviewed her, Mr.

Speaker 5 Blanche?

Speaker 7 So, that's a Bureau of Prisons security issue that I will not talk about.

Speaker 4 Did you have anything to do with it?

Speaker 6 Did you have anything to do with it?

Speaker 4 Let me finish.

Speaker 7 First of all, I am responsible for the Bureau of Prisons. So every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent it needs to.
But just

Speaker 7 let me talk about the security issue. At the time that I met Ms.
Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her.

Speaker 7 And the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life.

Speaker 7 So the BOP is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there's a lot of scrutiny around child sex traffickers. That is true.
You know,

Speaker 4 people have a lot of feelings and opinions about women who are like extremely notorious child sex traffickers. So it's not surprising.

Speaker 4 I think it would be very interesting for a lot of other criminals, lawyers, to know if their client is getting threatened in prison, that they can get moved.

Speaker 4 from genpop to kind of a fancy prison where they get the nice toilet paper and get better treatment. I'm not familiar with that and other kind of high-profile case of child rapists.

Speaker 5 I mean, again, it doesn't meet the laugh test. Obviously, if you have to move her to another prison, move her to another prison at the same level of security.
Keep it quiet where she is.

Speaker 5 Put her in under some assumed name in some wing that doesn't have other people in it. I don't know.

Speaker 5 There are a million things you could do, and they do do, I'm sure, in cases where they're genuine threats.

Speaker 5 You don't move her to the cushiest prison possible where she can have her little puppy visit her or whatever the situation is. I mean, it's horrible what she did.

Speaker 5 And the idea that I just was struck by this, watching the Blanche interview, how horrible it is that she is actually in a cushy, in the cushiest federal prison you can have.

Speaker 5 I mean, this woman who has done things that are very high in the scale of really detestable things that were done by people in federal prisons, I'm going to say, just without knowing all the kinds of criminals who are in federal prisons, but that she's being treated in a favorable way, in a cushy way, it's really horrible, actually.

Speaker 5 And Blanche, of course, doesn't even try to defend it. And again, it comes back to the point about the justice department.

Speaker 5 This is not like a justice department that's acting in anything resembling good faith. It isn't even trying to defend what they're doing in anything resembling good faith.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you just listen to that answer, and it's like, it's hard to tell if this guy is just being totally manipulated by Glene Maxwell and her team, right?

Speaker 4 And he's just that naive, or like whether this is just the best bullshit they could come up with to spin the corrupt actions of the government.

Speaker 4 Honestly, it's hard to know because they're clowns.

Speaker 4 It's just such clowns at the head of DOJ that this guy was Trump's personal lawyer. He has no business being the Deputy Attorney General.

Speaker 4 I assume that this was part of some cover-up and deal and they have a bad job spinning it.

Speaker 4 But I do think it's also possible that they're just totally in over their head to such a degree that it's kind of crazy to even contemplate.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I used to be more, you know, closer to 50-50 on some of these judgment calls about which of those is the correct explanation.

Speaker 5 But I've gone pretty far to the, it's totally corrupt and they know what they're doing.

Speaker 5 They may be stupid in the way they do it, of course, and they're not good at making up good defenses and they are clownish, but there's so much that's now happened in this case and in some other cases that I think it's a mistake probably to assume that they just, gee, I don't know, they got wool pulled over their eyes.

Speaker 5 I don't know, really. I mean, at this point, you know, the questioning wasn't great, honestly.
Did he talk to Trump about this when they moved? Has anyone talked to Trump?

Speaker 5 Is it Elias Bondi talked to Trump? Is all this happening? One thing that I'm slightly annoyed at the coverage about, well, we're just inventing here, is

Speaker 5 this is Trump's cover-up. I mean, it's fine.
It is Pam Bondi's and Todd Blanche's cover-up. They're the executors of it.
They're not doing anything that Trump doesn't want done.

Speaker 5 I don't know whether they literally have spoken to Trump about particular decisions.

Speaker 5 I don't put it past them, but I certainly they're doing what they think is in accord with Trump's wishes, and they'll be notified if what they're doing isn't in accord with Trump's wishes.

Speaker 5 Again, Roe, I think Roe Conno was trying to be kind of naive. And I understand it's sort of his job is to try to win, you know, win them over a little bit, make them do the right thing.

Speaker 5 So it's like, oh, maybe Trump's pretty disappointed. I'm pretty annoyed.
He was saying by what the way it's going badly for them politically.

Speaker 5 And he probably thinks that Bondi has kind of screwed it up, you know, but I don't know. Maybe he does.
And that Bondi isn't very deft at running this cover-up. But I want to, it's Trump's cover-up.

Speaker 5 Watergate was Nixon's cover-up. Epstein is Trump's cover-up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's right. I mean, the whole, like Susie Wiles telling Vanity Fair that he was ticked, that she was moved to the Koshier prison.
It's like, okay, well, then move him back.

Speaker 4 He's not that ticked, obviously.

Speaker 4 So anyway, part of this is, if we're going to do meta kind of media analysis of why it is that people feel more comfortable calling out Bondi and Patel, is I spent a lot of time over the weekend listening to kind of like more MAGA right-wing podcasts to hear.

Speaker 4 I was curious about their takes on the internet scene feud at TPUSA, which we'll get to next, but I was also kind of curious how they were covering Epstein.

Speaker 4 Even in MAGA world at this point, they feel very comfortable going after Bondi and Patel on this stuff.

Speaker 4 You know, like I was listening to these shows and they're like, you know, Patel wants us to believe that they looked at the files and there's just nothing to see here, which is like totally unacceptable and preposterous.

Speaker 4 You know, Bondi, you know, released those partial documents. It was such a clown show.
She's so clownish. You know, then they have some other theories.

Speaker 4 You know, on one of the shows I was listening to, they're like, I refuse to believe that Donald Trump is covering this up because he wants to protect other people.

Speaker 4 That is not the Donald Trump we know and love. You know, and so their theory was like,

Speaker 4 they must be protecting Intel assets. You know, they're covering up something.
Right. And so that's the question to figure out.

Speaker 4 But I do think a lot of times the mainstream coverage feels much more comfortable if they have the cover of like, even Republicans are criticizing Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Todd Blanch over this.

Speaker 4 And so it's like it almost gives them permission to do it. And I think that maybe kind of explains what we're saying.
But I agree with you. This is not happening without Trump's attention.

Speaker 4 This whole idea of like Trump is all powerful, want to be autocrat, except when it comes to the management of a single prisoner and like

Speaker 4 the transparent release of files that he might be implicated in. Those are the only two times where Trump has actually no power and

Speaker 4 he's at the mercy of, you know.

Speaker 5 And he's just watching it. And if he doesn't like what's happening, he can't fix it, I guess.
I mean, it's ironic. These are the big unitary executive guys.

Speaker 5 Their whole line is it's everything goes to Trump. Every decision is Trump's.
If he delegates, then they're still Trump's. He can overrule anything, right? He can fire anyone.

Speaker 5 He can reverse some Federal Trade Commission decision. There's no independent agencies.
There's no independent anything.

Speaker 5 Except here, Trump is somehow, it's like very, you know, hard from D.

Speaker 4 He's Dymeat. You know, it's the head of the Department of Presence, actually, that is the final decider on this one.

Speaker 4 All right, y'all. I want to talk to you once again about our friends at Seoul.
Seoul offers those gummies that Sarah Longwell likes so much. For me, it's that soul out-of-office beverage.

Speaker 4 You don't want to have a hangover if you're going to be podcasting and talking about the parade of horribles, speaking at the Turning Point USA convention.

Speaker 4 You know, you want to be fresh, but you also need to chill out a little bit, you know, when you're watching Pluribus. And the Soul Out of Office beverage, it's been a nice way for me to do that.

Speaker 4 And that might be something you need this. holiday season.
Soul's a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy.

Speaker 4 Soul specializes in delicious hemp-dried THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind.

Speaker 4 Their best-selling out-of-office gummies are designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood, and enhance creativity and relaxation.

Speaker 4 With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe from gentle 1.5 milligram microdose to their newest 15 milligram gummy for a more elevated experience.

Speaker 4 And if you like their out-of-office gummies, as mentioned, try that out-of-office beverage, a refreshing alcohol-free alternative that's perfect for winding down on the couch or doing a little socializing with your neighbors.

Speaker 4 Bring on the holiday cheer and treat yourself or someone you love to soul this season. Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order.

Speaker 4 Go to get soul.com and use the code thebulwork. That's get soul.com.
Promo code thebulwork for 30% off.

Speaker 4 All right, let's move on to what's happening in Arizona. We talked about this a little bit on Friday.
This has been kind of ongoing over the weekend.

Speaker 4 The America Fest, the annual gathering of Turning Point USA, which was Charlie Kirk's organization. It spilled out into.

Speaker 4 And I've gone to these every year. I didn't go this year, which I slightly regret.
But

Speaker 4 next year I'll be back, I guess. But I've been going for the last few years.
And, you know, it's like anything.

Speaker 4 There's always dissent within a coalition where there are like little digs pushed back and forth. And a crooked con early this year.
Like I was on stage with Hazan Piker and Simone Sanders.

Speaker 4 And like we had some disagreements. And, you know, the people at the Atlantic wrote a story about disagreements within the, you know, anti-Trump coalition or whatever.
But it was all pretty much in.

Speaker 4 in decent cheer. You know, there's just going to be disagreements about tactics and policy if you only have two parties in a country within a coalition.

Speaker 4 This was not disagreement about tactics and policy.

Speaker 4 This was like deeply personal attacks from the stage going back and forth with basically the camps being like Ben Shapiro on one side and others arguing that they needed to throw out.

Speaker 4 the bigots and the liars and the conspiracy theorists who are pushing conspiracies about Charlie's murder and conspiracies about

Speaker 4 a whole range of things, the French president's wife being a man and the open anti-Semitism and white nationalism of Nick Funtes and his group.

Speaker 4 So Shapiro's on one side, and then on the other side, you have basically Bannon and Tucker arguing that

Speaker 4 we should let a thousand flowers bloom and that Ben is trying to take over the organization. So with those being the battle lines, J.D.
Vance came to speak to be the keynote speaker at the end.

Speaker 4 And I want to play for you

Speaker 4 where he landed in that disagreement.

Speaker 8 President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests.

Speaker 8 He says, make America great again because every American is invited.

Speaker 8 I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,

Speaker 8 and I don't really care if some people out there, I'm sure we'll have the fake news media, denounce me after this speech.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 8 But let me just say,

Speaker 8 The best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie's death that he himself refused to do in life. He invited all of us here.

Speaker 4 So Bill, I want your take on this, but first I have to fast check the vice president about his supposed friend Charlie Kirk. That's not true, actually.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of things you can critique Charlie Kirk about, but famously, he did not allow Nick Fuentes to come to those events.

Speaker 4 And there was big brouhaha over that, where Nick Fuentes and his group, the Groipers, would protest and try to create problems at Charlie Kirk's events.

Speaker 4 And there are several videos, you can go through the record of Kirk being on stage when someone asked him questions about that, you know, about things, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, where he's like, no, that's not true.

Speaker 4 We're not accepting that here. So I have many different red lines than Charlie Kirk.
And he said a lot of nasty stuff.

Speaker 4 I would have drawn the line in a very different place than he did, but he did banish people from going to his events. That's not true, what J.D.
Vance says. And I think it's pretty telling that J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance refuses to pick a side between the avowed racists, white nationalists that want to have influence in his movement and those who are saying that, you know, no, actually, there's some opinions that aren't acceptable even within MAGA.

Speaker 5 Interestingly, by far the most important thing, which is Vance came down on one side. I think there was a question about where he would be in this international debate.

Speaker 5 And I think maybe we discussed it a week or two ago. You know, he wants to be obviously Trump's successor.

Speaker 5 And I guess the argument was he doesn't want to annoy any of the most extreme elements, the conspiracists and stuff.

Speaker 5 On the other hand, he kind of wants to keep the support of some of the normie Republicans, the business types, the billionaires, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 And those guys, allegedly, they probably do have some red lines. And therefore, he's got to be careful.
But you know what?

Speaker 5 His calculation is that it's the crazy conspiracists and bigots who matter, that the billionaires will go along. He doesn't have to draw any lines.

Speaker 5 That's very striking to me. He's not a stupid guy, and he's making political calculations here.

Speaker 5 And the calculation he has as someone who probably more than any other single human being in America is thinking 24 hours a day, seven days a week about the right-wing coalition that he hopes to take forward.

Speaker 5 You cannot literally, nothing is beyond the pale. I mean, I first heard of Fuentes, I think, when Charlie Kirk banned him or wouldn't let him.
I mean, it shows how far it's got in just a few years.

Speaker 5 That Vance, who is not, again, he's not Bannon, he's not Kirk, he's not Tucker Carlson, he's not one of many, many people operating in this ecosphere. He's the vice president of the United States.

Speaker 5 I really actually don't, has any vice president ever said anything like this, even? I mean, you know.

Speaker 4 Agnew, probably.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Agnew.

Speaker 4 Or Andrew Johnson.

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, that's true. Okay, fair enough.
But these are literally neo-Nazis.

Speaker 5 Also, we're not talking about people who said a couple of, you know, indecorous things, or maybe they have some background. 30 years ago, they said X when they were 19 years old.

Speaker 5 We're talking about just flat-out neo-Nazis who you've been very much on this.

Speaker 5 And I've been slightly, I gotta say, behind the curve on the growth of the genuine anti-Semitism and genuine, not just kind of occasional bigotry, if I can call it that, but deep-seated bigotry and racism of various kinds and bigotry of various kinds on the right.

Speaker 5 And it's growth among especially younger people, unfortunately, on the right. And that's where Vance thinks the future of the right is, I guess.

Speaker 4 I mean, Nick Fuent has called his wife a jeet. You know, I said, and not like again, not 10 years ago when he was an ever-Trumper, like the other day.

Speaker 4 And, you know, here he is just basically saying, well, we don't want to deplatform. Also, can I just say, criticizing somebody is not de-platforming, also.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Like, Ben Shapiro going up there and saying, these people are wrong. They are espousing conspiracy theories that are not true.
You know, the Jews and French legionnaires did not kill Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 4 And it's important in a free society for us to at least be able to understand what is true and what is false if we're going to make make decisions about our self-government.

Speaker 4 Like that isn't cancel culture, deplatforming. It's criticizing.
The fact that J.D. Vance won't even criticize them from stage is like pretty noteworthy.

Speaker 4 And you remember, were you at the 96 convention with Dole? Yeah.

Speaker 4 I just pulled this up, right? Dole, this is, you know, it's not like this is a new thing that there's some there's you know some racist cracks on the right.

Speaker 4 Okay, this has always been a thing, waxes and wanes in level of influence. But Dole in 96, I just pulled this up, wrote this.

Speaker 4 If there's anyone who's mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief we're not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight, this all belongs to the party of Lincoln, and the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

Speaker 4 So it's not as if there's no precedent for somebody in an actual position of authority, you know, going out there and saying, sorry, like there are lines here, and we don't accept racists and bigots.

Speaker 4 And J.D. Vance

Speaker 4 did the literal opposite.

Speaker 5 And Dole's was a message to the Buchanan delegates who were there, incidentally, who had won votes in Republican libraries. Buchanan left the party three years later.

Speaker 5 And again, what everyone thinks of the Republican Party and the extent to which Republicans and people, you know, I was part of it, tolerated things we shouldn't have.

Speaker 5 And there's why some truth to that and didn't want to see certain things that were there and all that.

Speaker 5 Buchanan did leave the party because Dole basically said, who was the nominee, obviously said, you're not welcome.

Speaker 5 And Bush in 2000 also and McCain, the two leading nominees, the two leading candidates then said, you're not welcome. And

Speaker 5 so, yeah, it's obviously a totally different situation now after 10 years of Trump being in charge of the Republican Party. But again, the Vance thing is ominous, I really think.

Speaker 5 Now, will there be a reaction? He's getting slapped on the wrist maybe a little bit by the National Review and Wall Street Journal types. But I mean, the Vance thing should itself be a red line.

Speaker 5 Of course, everything should be a red line, and they've ignored 5,000 other red lines.

Speaker 4 I hate to say it.

Speaker 5 But I mean, Vance invites...

Speaker 5 All the big shot business leaders or the tech guys, but not just the right-wing, rabid Peter Thiel tech guys, but the Schwartzmans and the Diamonds to a dinner at the Vice President's residence to really talk about some issues of the future.

Speaker 5 They will show up. How many people will regard this as unacceptable?

Speaker 4 Very few. You already see it.
We've already run this test. Like, you know, like whether people will cower in the face of potential political power.
And like you're seeing it with Vance already.

Speaker 4 Vance cited in this debate with the conspiracy theorists, Candace Owens and the Tuckers, saying that they're allowed.

Speaker 4 And simultaneously, Erica Kirk at that event said we are going to elect you president 48 in 2028. She's the one that they're doing conspiracy theories about, you know, because she knows, right?

Speaker 4 That, like, okay, well, if he's the heir apparent and I want to take over my late husband's organization, I can't be on the wrong side of him.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, we already know that everybody will fold to him. And that's why, you know, you want to have people with some integrity running these sorts of organizations so that.

Speaker 4 you can like ensure that in the future like things will be different than under trump and and and frankly it just seems like the opposite Trump also had red lines.

Speaker 4 The idea that everybody was welcomed at the MAGA table is crazy. I mean, Trump was calling Marjorie Tale Green a traitor like three days ago because, you know, she was criticizing him.

Speaker 4 It's just there were red lines. There have been red lines last 10 years.
There's been deplatforming from MAGA circles. There's been ostracizing people.

Speaker 4 It's just like the thing that you could do to get ostracized wasn't like saying something anti-Semitic. It was saying something mean about Donald Trump.
Right. And if you did, you are out.

Speaker 4 And you can just look at any list of conservatives that got kicked out of the MAGA coalition because they didn't show enough fealty to Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 And so, you know, in some ways, it's like pretty concerning that going forward,

Speaker 4 like Trump at times would say, oh, okay, well, whatever. I think that's kind of weird.

Speaker 4 You know, Trump had weird idiosyncrasies. It was like whatever Trump wanted, he got.

Speaker 4 And like at times, he was extremely, you know, whatever, racist and extreme on immigration and crime and various things. And on other things,

Speaker 4 he had other views. Like that doesn't seem to be the case with JD.
You know, JD is going to be full ideological, taking down the furthest America-first nationalist line on everything.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Trump will end up being a transition figure in a way where he merged the kind of conman, salesman, TV celebrity fursoda with the bigotry and authoritarianism, to be sure.

Speaker 5 But of course, by the time Vance takes over, if he does, it's only the bigotry and the authoritarianism and the no enemies to the right. No enemies at all to the right.

Speaker 5 I mean, obviously, it's the opposite of the conservative movement that, again, which plenty of criticism is legit, but you know, with Buckley, he did say, no, this is too far.

Speaker 5 He said, what said the people he thought was too far was the John Birch Society, which is a hell of a lot less repulsive than Nick Fuente's, you know, I think.

Speaker 4 No doubt. Just one more thing, in case you had any doubt or overreacting about whether JD has gone, you know, is just going full racist to signal to the crowd where he's at.

Speaker 4 I just wanted to play one other clip from his speech.

Speaker 8 Omar Fateh was Ilyon Omar's candidate for mayor of Mogan Issue. What?

Speaker 8 I'm in Minneapolis.

Speaker 8 Little Freudian slip there.

Speaker 4 Okay. Well, two thoughts.
One, just again, I have to fact-check the vice president. That person lost.
Omar Fateh, whatever you think about him, didn't even win.

Speaker 4 Jacob Frey won the mayorship of Minneapolis. You know, his just willingness to do just like base, childish, you know, racist material from the stage, going after Somalis.

Speaker 4 Minneapolis is turning into Mogadishu, like a total, you know, fake narrative that is being created, like whatever, to go after Tim Walls or go after the Democrats.

Speaker 4 I mean, the only silver lining of that is it's so humorless. I don't know.
I just like Trump's racist humor was all a little archy bunkerish. You know, it's kind of like old guy.

Speaker 4 It's a little tongue-in-cheek. It's kind of, you could understand how I didn't approve it.

Speaker 4 Like, you can understand how some people would see it as Trump, you know, being like, you know, I love my Jewish friend over here. He's just good with money.

Speaker 4 You know, it's like those kinds of jokes were the ones he kind of do. Whereas Vance does like nasty, cruel, and he tries to do a little, oh, sorry, Freudian slip.
It's just, it's, it's charmless.

Speaker 5 Sickening, really. Incidentally, Trump also is 40 years older than Advance.
Is that right? Just about right.

Speaker 5 79, 39, I guess. So with Trump, you could, the people I knew who were.

Speaker 5 accommodated, this is, I haven't spoken to the last few years, but back when I was in decent, somewhat speaking terms with them, after they had accommodated Trump in 2016, there was a lot of the Archie Bunker stuff.

Speaker 5 Oh, look, his generation, yeah, they're a little more bigoted than you would like. I mean, they grew up that way in Queens.

Speaker 5 And literally, they would mention Archie Bunker, you know, obviously wealthy, not the cab driver or whatever, but you know, but it's not really, he's reverting to it. It's unfortunate, but it's not.

Speaker 5 Vance has chosen this. Vance is 39 years old.
Vance went to Yale law school. Vance served in the military, went with a very mixed group of people.
The military is that way.

Speaker 5 Went to Yale law school, married the daughter of Indian immigrants. He has chosen this.

Speaker 5 And that's both really more contemptible, I would say, morally, but also more ominous politically.

Speaker 4 Cold mornings, holiday plans. Well, for you guys at least.

Speaker 4 As I mentioned with Bill, we took the top off of the Jeep this weekend. So, you know, warmish.
I had some crawfish. Crawfish season is back.
But for the rest of you suckers, you got cold mornings.

Speaker 4 So you need your wardrobe to work. And I'd recommend you turn to Quince.
Quince makes it easy to look sharp, feel good, and find gifts that last.

Speaker 4 From Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats, Quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and built to hold up without the luxury markup also quince's outerwear lineup is no joke down jackets wool top coats and leather styles that are built to last you might have seen me uh and we had one chilly day here you know one chilly day and so i took the opportunity to wear my it was like a little maroon cashmere

Speaker 4 what What's the name of the shirt with the three buttons on it? The Henley. The maroon cashmere Henley sweater.

Speaker 4 I thought it looked pretty handsome. I thought it looked pretty handsome.
I got some positive feedback from it. So

Speaker 4 if you like that, get one of those for your husband or boyfriend, child. Get the wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince.
Don't wait.

Speaker 4 Go to quince.com/slash the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns now available in Canada, too.

Speaker 4 That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash the bulwark. Free shipping and 365-day returns.
Quince.com/slash the bulwark.

Speaker 4 I want to talk a little bit about what's happening at CBS. I'm doing my best.
I just want to say,

Speaker 4 I truly

Speaker 4 do not care about what is on the CBS evening news.

Speaker 4 I don't think anybody's watching it anymore.

Speaker 4 The influence it has is so much smaller than media commentators want you to think. And so I'm doing everything possible to ignore what is happening at CBS News because it deserves to be ignored.

Speaker 4 But yet, Barry Weiss continues to force my hand, unfortunately.

Speaker 4 And last night, 60 Minutes had previewed a story that's close to my heart about what we were doing, sending these Venezuelans to Saccotte in El Salvador.

Speaker 4 They had interviewed a couple of the prisoners there that we'd wrongfully sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 4 They had said that this is what's coming this week on 60 Minutes on their little football game commercials and stuff. And before the 60 Minutes aired, Barry Weiss made the decision to kill that story.

Speaker 4 They replaced it, I think, with a story about two brothers who are both savants at various playing various instruments.

Speaker 4 You know, a story that probably could have done fine on CBS this morning on the weekends, but hey, I'm not in charge of a network.

Speaker 4 The actual reporter on the story, Sharon Alfonse, said this: Our story was screened five times, cleared by CBS attorneys and standards and practices. It's factually correct.

Speaker 4 In my view, pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it's a political one. That's said by the reporter working for CBS News on that story.

Speaker 4 Obviously, the implication there is that Paramount, the parent company of CBS, is actively in a hostile attempt to take over Warner, which is a parent company of CNN, and it's going to require government approval.

Speaker 4 And so they want to stay on the good side of Trump.

Speaker 4 Barry Weiss has said that she killed it because she felt like they needed to have an interview with the White House in order for the story to be worth publishing.

Speaker 4 Also, some people say that she didn't like some of the terminology in the story, calling the... people we sent to El Salvador migrants because they were in the United States illegally.

Speaker 4 I guess you wanted to call them illegal immigrants. This is from the New York Times.
That's, I should just say, again, not true.

Speaker 4 At least 50 of the people we sent to El Salvador came to the country through illegal pathways. There you go.
I mean, to me, this seems obvious what's happening.

Speaker 4 I think that, in theory, sure, there's something to be said that it could be better to have interviews with the Trump administration, but it's hard to kind of take that explanation in good faith.

Speaker 4 What do you make of it?

Speaker 5 They say they had offered, they wanted to interview people from the Trump administration. The Trump administration was just saying, no, we're not cooperating.
So

Speaker 5 if they're not cooperating, they're not cooperating. I think Barry Weiss also suggested that they talk to Stephen Miller because he's in charge of immigration policy, though.

Speaker 5 And she gave them a good phone number to reach him at. That was nice for her.
Is this a business paramount thing or is this a political thing?

Speaker 5 I mean, do we think Barry Weiss just made this decision on her own? I think that's she's new at CBS News. She just went in.

Speaker 5 Maybe she did because she knew that she would get credit for this at the White House and from her bosses at Paramount. They didn't have to talk to her.
Maybe they did.

Speaker 5 She talked to the boss at Paramount. Maybe she talked to people at the White House.
I don't don't rule that out. I mean, she called up and said, do you know anything about this story?

Speaker 5 Did they talk to you? Well, we didn't work. We're cooperating.
Well, I think they should talk to you. Okay.
Well, why don't you say that? You know what I mean? I don't think that's at all impossible.

Speaker 5 I think it means that you don't have, just like we were saying with the Justice Department earlier, if you were working at CBS now, you have a tip on something. Can you tell your higher-ups about it?

Speaker 5 Can you explore a story idea without being confident that it's going to get blown up by being given to someone at the White House or in the administration and 10 minutes later, right?

Speaker 5 I'm not one of these big media, you know, know, ethics and the integrity. Everything has to be, you know, got, you know, in the old days, it was all so wonderful and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 But there is some basic integrity of a media organization. And this seems to me to come pretty close to shattering it, honestly.
Will she take questions on this incidentally?

Speaker 5 Will she explain whether she's spoken to anyone in the administration or not before she made this decision? I don't know.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It definitely seems like there's some real doubts.
I don't know. And

Speaker 4 were the standards of news gathering met with her town hall with Erica Kirk?

Speaker 4 Were there enough counter views

Speaker 4 offered to that effort? I don't think so. The most generous view of this is that

Speaker 4 this is only big news if we get the administration to respond to the claims, I guess. But you know what Steve Miller is going to say.
He's just going to spin his authoritarian bullshit.

Speaker 4 And even in that case, like the management of this is horrible. So reportedly, she didn't talk to the actual reporters on this.
Like in any situation where

Speaker 4 you have underlings who are like going to the press to accuse you of making a political decision. Like even if it wasn't political, like the optics on this are horrible.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, like even people that work for you think, think you're a stooge for the administration.

Speaker 4 So that, I think, just reflects really, really bad judgment, you know, on, and by the way, a story that's like,

Speaker 4 what was the worry? You know, again, it's like, oh, we had to have the, we had to have the two kids who know how to play the Trello on instead.

Speaker 4 It's like, obviously the only worry was that Donald Trump was fucking sitting around watching 60 Minutes or that somebody was going to flag it for him and get mad you know that you have to do a show every week right like I don't I don't know you can have the administration on the record every week it stinks I guess is where I would come down on it She wants the administration to think she's on their side.

Speaker 5 That is very, very important to her and to her bosses. And she's willing to take the little hit of the criticism now because this cements in that she did the right thing for them.

Speaker 5 You know, it's sort of like Todd Blanche. You know, they don't mind looking foolish if Trump and the other big shots understand that they're on the team.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And also worth mentioning that Trump did post this week something like CBS has been worse since the new people took over than it was before.

Speaker 4 So they are conscious of this because it's related to their desire for more mergers. So we'll continue to monitor it as little as possible, but we'll see what happens going forward with CBS.

Speaker 4 I'd probably watch NBC instead or the Bulwark YouTube piece. I don't know.
It's the year 2025.

Speaker 4 You know, you can put us on your TV now. It's crazy.

Speaker 9 Winter is the perfect time to explore California, and there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 9 With 19 fuel-efficient options like the All-Hybrid Camry, the RAV4 hybrid, or the Tacoma hybrid, every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 9 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today. Toyota, let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 2 I didn't even realize I was wasting $415 a month until I downloaded Rocket Money. I thought I had my finances under control until the app laid out all my spending and categorized it for me.

Speaker 2 Takeout, shopping, and unused subscriptions were quietly draining my account. And as a result, my savings took a back seat.
But Rocket Money doesn't just tell you what you're wasting money on.

Speaker 2 It takes action to save you money. First, the app looks at your income and monthly expenses and calculates how much you can safely spend each day to stay under budget.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money also finds and cancels unwanted subscriptions for you and even negotiates better rates on your bills so you have more money in your pocket.

Speaker 2 On average, Rocket Money members can save up to $740 a year when using all the app's premium features. Users love the app with over 186,000 five-star ratings.

Speaker 2 It's time to simplify your finances and take control of your money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started.
That's rocketmoney.com cancel. Rocketmoney.com/slash cancel.

Speaker 4 I don't know how much I care about this, but since I

Speaker 4 infamously was part of the RNC autopsy report in 2012, I feel at least an obligation to mention it briefly.

Speaker 4 The DNC announced that they're not putting out their autopsy report after the loss last year. Ken Martin said their North Star is whether any action they take helps them win.

Speaker 4 If the answer is no, it's a distraction for the core mission. He said that releasing this report would have been a distraction of the core mission.

Speaker 4 Do you care whether or not they're putting out an autopsy report?

Speaker 5 I don't care.

Speaker 5 I do feel like this is, if they just put out the report on like December 22nd or 3rd, you know, with no hoopla, I think it would have less attention than the decision not to release the report.

Speaker 5 It's a little weird, right?

Speaker 5 I mean, I understand the North Star is winning, but presumably this report helps tell you what you did wrong and what you might do to win, or they don't need that anymore because they had a good November 2025.

Speaker 5 I don't know. As you, you know better than I, these autopsy reports, I don't know.

Speaker 4 I wouldn't understand the notion, like, we're not going going to do this. Like, look at what the RNC did.
Like, these things become political.

Speaker 4 You know, they reflect the biases of the people writing them. You know, we wrote the 2012 autopsy report about how, which I will defend to this, to this extent.

Speaker 4 If the Republicans had nominated an autopsy candidate, like a compassionate conservative in 2016, do you think they could have beaten Hillary? I don't know. It's an interesting counterfactual.

Speaker 4 We'll never know.

Speaker 4 But anyway, Trump goes the other route, throws it in the garbage, you know, runs, we're going to try to maximize the working class white vote, works.

Speaker 4 And he loses the popular vote, but works, wins the Electoral College. And so obviously the document ended up being worthless and pointless in retrospect.

Speaker 4 So I don't care that much about the actual document because the future is kind of hard to predict.

Speaker 4 What I do care about is part of me thinks that they didn't do this because they feel like things are going good. It's like we won this a lot.
We won these off-year elections in 2025.

Speaker 4 Like, why mess with the momentum? Things are on the right track again.

Speaker 4 And like, that is the one thing, the drum that I'm just going to continue to bang, which is, God willing, things continue to move on this trajectory. The Democrats will take the House next year.

Speaker 4 They will have an oversight committee. We'll be able to start investigating the administration more.
We'll be able to impeach various members of the administration. Hopefully, that happens.

Speaker 4 If the Democrats don't take back the Senate, it is not a good off year. The idea that the Democrats did well in New Jersey and Virginia, it's good.

Speaker 4 It's good, but it is not a like, there's no mission accomplished banner going up.

Speaker 4 The Democrats have some major structural issues with their ability to appeal in the parts of the country country where they need to win a majority in the Senate and Electoral College.

Speaker 4 And doing better, like winning back, you know, the swing districts in the country in the House is like not good enough for actually beating back the MAGA threat.

Speaker 4 And that's that is my one note on this. Like if it's, we're not releasing this because we feel like things are getting back on track, like, no, like that's not, that's not good enough.

Speaker 4 Like the Democrats actually have real structural things that they need to address and they shouldn't be papered over.

Speaker 5 And for the sake of the country, they really need to win the the Senate.

Speaker 5 There's so much the Senate does that the House doesn't do confirmations, obviously, Supreme Court, but cabinet, but also just the ability to have both branches means you can pass legislation, make Trump veto it, maybe override the veto, give Republican stuff votes.

Speaker 5 If you control one branch, you could do some good. Better than controlling zero, but much, much, much less.
So I agree.

Speaker 5 I was talking with a Democratic strategist here in Washington this past week, not about the autopsy report, which never came up.

Speaker 5 He's a pretty hard-headed guy, pretty conventional, but sort of conventional in the good sense that he looks at all the data and all. He was not, I said, I think the Senate could be doable.

Speaker 5 And we walked through some states. You and I discussed this maybe last week, even Iowa, Kansas.
He wasn't dismissive.

Speaker 5 I'd say it struck me that I think the conventional wisdom has moved from Senate totally out of the question. Best cases, you get 49 seats to, I don't know, could be a pretty big year.

Speaker 5 Some of the rural economy is horrible. Alaska could be in play.
There's a lot of funny combinations that could get you to 51.

Speaker 4 Speaking of Alaska being in play, another country in the Great North, another part of the world. The Great North is worth mentioning now, back in the news.

Speaker 4 Greenland, my governor, Jeff Landry, was appointed special envoy to Greenland last night. Landry posts this, thank you, real Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 It's an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the United States. This in no way affects my position as governor of Louisiana, he writes.
This is insane, obviously.

Speaker 4 I would hope that my fellow Louisianans would be outraged about this. A lot of problems in Louisiana.

Speaker 4 Insurance crisis, bottom of the list in economic growth, economic dynamism, bottom of the list in education. You would think that the governor of the state would be focused on that.

Speaker 4 He has instead been inserting himself very heavily into the LSU athletic department and also now is, I guess, the point person for our Greenland invasion. That needless to say, I'm,

Speaker 4 I don't,

Speaker 4 I oppose. I oppose.
I think that's bad. I think the governor of Louisiana should probably be doing,

Speaker 4 has some bigger priorities. But

Speaker 4 what do you make of the

Speaker 4 reinvigorated effort to take a wandering eye at Greenland?

Speaker 5 He seems like such a buffoon that

Speaker 5 if you don't want Greenland to be invaded, this is probably a good sign because what if they put some four-star general in charge of this or something?

Speaker 5 You get a little more nervous, right? What does Landry know about any of this stuff?

Speaker 5 It is. I mean, I sort of was mocking it just again a few weeks ago to someone who does international politics and knows Europe.
He said, Denmark is a NATO ally.

Speaker 5 People do not understand, not just in Denmark, but throughout Europe, the fact that he can cavalierly talk about taking land from another NATO ally and not entirely taking it in a concession, you know, in a kind of let's make a deal and sell it kind of way, but in a kind of bludgeon your way to it and use and subvert Denmark's rule over Greenland.

Speaker 5 in that kind of way. It kind of freaks people out over there.
And they're right to...

Speaker 5 You can't have a treaty alliance if you're also trying to

Speaker 5 seize land from one of the allies. And Denmark's been a good ally, incidentally.
They fought with us in key wars and stuff. They're a small country, obviously.

Speaker 5 So, no, it's terrible in that respect and does some real damage. I mean, it's one of a zillion things that's doing damage to NATO.

Speaker 5 Maybe not the most important, but probably a little less unimportant than I had realized.

Speaker 5 That was brought home to me.

Speaker 4 Denmark said it will summon the U.S. ambassador after Trump appointed Landry as special envoy.
Greenland belongs to Greenlanders, and the U.S. should not take over Greenland.

Speaker 4 We expect respect for our common territorial integrity. Yeah, I don't know.
It seems like the governor of the state of Louisiana should be thinking about trade we can be doing, you know, how we can

Speaker 4 bring jobs potentially or sell products, sell Louisiana products to folks in the EU rather than thinking about invading them. But

Speaker 4 one man's opinion. The other creepy news related to the weakening of NATO is the Russian special envoy, that guy,

Speaker 4 Kirill Dmitriev, who's been what appears to be kind of like the self-appointed side negotiator with Kushner and Witkoff. He is a Russian oligarch, spent a lot of time in America.

Speaker 4 I think went to school here, worked at, I don't know, like,

Speaker 4 I don't know what to say,

Speaker 4 worked at some big American finance company. So, you know, he's one of ours.
Now he just decided to throw his lot in with Vladimir Putin. Anyway, he was down in Florida with Witkoff and Kushner.

Speaker 4 I want to read Witkoff's tweet at the end of the meeting. The American delegation included,

Speaker 4 so he's writing this, I guess, in the third person. The American delegation included special envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and White House staff member Josh Grundbaum.

Speaker 4 Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine. Russia highly values the efforts and support of the United States to resolve the Ukrainian conflict and reestablish global security.

Speaker 4 That's from our envoy. That's from Steve Witkoff, kind of the outer borough real estate man that's supposed to be solving this crisis.

Speaker 4 He writes, Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine. Did Dmitriev write the statement? Like, what? What do you mean?

Speaker 4 If Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine, they should leave Ukraine. They're the ones that did the invading.

Speaker 5 I mean, the Russians clearly wrote the statement. They gave it to Witkoff.

Speaker 5 Maybe they gave it to him thinking, well, you'll turn this into your, you know, your own prose, you know, to make it look like it's your own. But here's what we want you to say.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 Maybe they're just sharing the statement with him, just as a kind of, you know, here's what we're saying. And you say, so whatever you want to say.
Anyway, he's such an idiot, I guess.

Speaker 5 He just put out this statement on his own. I guess they have no one minding these people.
Well, he won't accept CIA types, right? He won't accept briefings from the agency.

Speaker 5 He was selected by Putin basically for this job. It turns out.
Wasn't there a good article about this a week ago or something like that?

Speaker 5 Yeah, that, you know, how much Putin looked at the profiles of the different people who might be sort of designated to negotiate with him, with Russia, and sort of decided that Witkoff would be good, you know.

Speaker 4 Dimitriev, thanks to producer Katie, has worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. So, you know, we're not sending our best.
The Golden Sachs and McKinsey alums are now Putin chills, apparently.

Speaker 4 Just a truly insane statement that in any other world would be top of the news. And

Speaker 4 I think people have gotten bored with this and aren't covering it or anything. But like for the U.S.
envoy to write that Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace is extremely crazy.

Speaker 4 I I mean, it's a sputtnik-level statement from Steve Wyckoff.

Speaker 9 Winter is the perfect time to explore California, and there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 9 With 19 fuel-efficient options, like the All-Hybrid Camry, the RAV4 hybrid, or the Tacoma hybrid, every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 9 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today. Toyota, let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 2 I didn't even realize I was wasting $415 a month until I downloaded Rocket Money. I thought I had my finances under control until the app laid out all my spending and categorized it for me.

Speaker 2 Takeout, shopping, and unused subscriptions were quietly draining my account. And as a result, my savings took a back seat.
But Rocket Money doesn't just tell you what you're wasting money on.

Speaker 2 It takes action to save you money. First, the app looks at your income and monthly expenses and calculates how much you can safely spend each day to stay under budget.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money also finds and cancels unwanted subscriptions for you and even negotiates better rates on your bills so you have more money in your pocket.

Speaker 2 On average, Rocket Money members can save up to $740 a year when using all the app's premium features. Users love the app with over 186,000 five-star ratings.

Speaker 2 It's time to simplify your finances and take control of your money. Go to rocketmoney.com/slash cancel to get started.
That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel. Rocketmoney.com slash cancel.

Speaker 4 I want to close with some candy, some final, a final topic. Our old friend, both of our colleagues, really, she worked for a little while out of your office at one point.

Speaker 4 I worked with her on the aforementioned autopsy, Elise Stefanik.

Speaker 4 She was the great hope of the moderate neocon establishment for a minute there, you know, believed that we should address climate change and was for gay marriage early, you know, before the SCOTIS ruling and got into Congress as a great moderate hope.

Speaker 4 Wouldn't even say Donald Trump's name for a while. Then she went on to completely sell her soul and give away every ounce of integrity to become Donald Trump's most slavish supporter.

Speaker 4 Stefanik started tweeting like Trump, weirdly, and became just a slavish devotee to him and his movement in the hopes, I think she at first, of being vice president and then didn't get that.

Speaker 4 JD got it. She got U.N.
ambassador or something. I think she really wanted to do.
Then she got pulled off of that because they were worried that they were going to lose her seat in Congress.

Speaker 4 And then she decided she might want to run for governor of New York. Donald Trump wouldn't endorse her.
He was a neutral, the primary between her and some rich guy.

Speaker 4 And last Friday, late on Friday, she announced that she wants to spend more time with her family. At least Stephonic is going to be leaving Congress and not running for governor.

Speaker 4 Her career, for now at least, is over. All of her

Speaker 4 efforts to sell herself and her beliefs to Donald Trump amount to nothing. So, Bill?

Speaker 5 That's a good story. That's good,

Speaker 5 if true.

Speaker 5 It's so weird that people actually

Speaker 5 fail in this last 10 years that people like her have failed in their effort to

Speaker 5 shamelessly and shamefully climb up the greasy pole in Trump land.

Speaker 5 I don't know. I kind of assume, though, do you think maybe she's still in line for the next cabinet job or something? I can't quite tell what her relationship with Trump is these days.

Speaker 5 That's a little bit. She has bad relations with Mike Johnson, apparently.
She attacked him and stuff. But she could replace Christine Ohm next week, right?

Speaker 5 She'll decide she spent the week she needed to spend with her with her family and she can go back. Now she could be a cabinet secretary.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 Or do you think she's really out of it for a while? I can't tell.

Speaker 4 Yeah, she wants to be

Speaker 4 Stephen Miller's secretary, basically, and the deportation regime. I don't know.
Who knows? Yeah, she could replace Nutlick after the midterms, the Secretary of Commerce. Who knows? I don't know.

Speaker 4 I know this. It has just been like

Speaker 4 an unbelievable crash from what she had hoped. I really do think that she believed herself to be in the short list for VP.
And

Speaker 4 if not that, Speaker, F. Mike Johnson failed, you know, kind of rising through the House ranks.

Speaker 4 She gets totally sidelined with the House, recalled from the UN ambassador job, and not even endorsed by Trump.

Speaker 4 I think she thought that she was going to get something out of this shameless self-sacrifice. I don't, you know, of totally giving herself over to Donald Trump and she gets nothing.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump, I think it just would be worth mentioning that like

Speaker 4 this is the risk that you run when you throw yourself into Donald Trump. I mean, like, sure, a lot of people have gotten a lot out of it, you know, so it's not, it's not without.

Speaker 4 potential opportunity. Like, you know, his golf caddy is now one of the most powerful people in the world.

Speaker 4 So, you know, you can get a lot by being, by sucking up to Trump, but also it's a one-way street of loyalty.

Speaker 4 And you're also, if you're a woman, selling yourself to somebody that is, like, has no respect for women and is misogynist and wants to like appoint people to his administration based on whether they look the part.

Speaker 4 And I think that at least probably harmed herself by hitching her wagon to somebody that was going to only appoint her to high roles if she looked the part.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I do think that it's, it's a little bit of a morality play. It's a little lesson.
No, we can't get a little bit of joy out of it.

Speaker 4 You're girding for like another piece of news next year that Elise is going to be.

Speaker 5 Yeah, she'll sign a $5 million contract with a lobbying firm. She'll be on Fox News for $3 million a year, and she'll have speaking engagements.
Everyone will decide she's respectable now.

Speaker 5 She'll be put back on the boards of various major corporations.

Speaker 4 She'll still be empty, though, inside. Empty? She'll still be empty.
That's good.

Speaker 5 Okay, good. You've shared me off.

Speaker 4 I think she'll still be empty inside with the Paul Ryan Memorial Board seat

Speaker 4 at News Corp.

Speaker 4 That's probably right. Bill Crystal, thank you so much.

Speaker 4 You're going to be back next Monday

Speaker 4 because you're working through the holidays.

Speaker 4 Totally, totally.

Speaker 5 Holidays are overrated, if we can be honest.

Speaker 5 You have a kid. You have a little kid, so it's actually holidays are good for kids, but for adults, come on.

Speaker 4 I appreciate you. My love to the Crystal family.
Up next, for everybody else, it is our Monday mailbag. We're going to play just a little bit of it for everybody.

Speaker 4 But to get the whole mailbag, you're going to need to be a Bulwark Plus member. I'll tell you how to do that over on the other side so stick around

Speaker 4 to the mailbag all right everyone this is our second go at this we've been getting some great questions coming in so please keep them coming the email is bulwarkpodcast at the bulwark.com i want serious stuff about what's going on in the news but also goofy stuff life advice just keep it interesting you know let's have some fun with this.

Speaker 4 I want to start here with some topical follow-ups, including the first about Susie Wiles, my former boss.

Speaker 4 Charlie writes this, at Trump's first term, there are a handful of people who had some integrity. It wasn't disqualifying the way it is in the second term.

Speaker 4 I don't know why, but I've had the sense from day one that Susie Wiles may be an exception. I'm not saying she's some hero, just that she has non-zero integrity.

Speaker 4 Of course, that's a low bar in a normal administration, a high bar in this one. But you know her a little bit.
Did you get the sense that she has non-zero integrity?

Speaker 4 Could you ever imagine her telling Vanity Fair, yes, write all this, just know, I'm going to call you fake news? It's from Charlie.

Speaker 4 I don't want to take your hope away this holiday season, Charlie, but I'm not seeing it with Susie. This is a fundamental principle.

Speaker 4 I think that basically all humans except Stephen Miller are redeemable and have elements inside them of goodness. I saw that with Susie, folks who don't know what he's referencing.

Speaker 4 Susie was my, was the first campaign manager of the John Huntsman campaign in 2012. It's kind of crazy when you think about it.
And John Huntsman was the most moderate Republican candidate

Speaker 4 of my lifetime, certainly of recent memory.

Speaker 4 Running for president was the antithesis of Donald Trump in a lot of issues, even though he did end up going to serve Donald Trump in the first administration as ambassador to Russia.

Speaker 4 That's a story for another day, actually. If you want to follow up about that, you can send that question to the mailbag.
But

Speaker 4 Susie was the campaign manager on that campaign, and I was the spokesperson. So I got to know her pretty good.
And

Speaker 4 I got to tell you, her whole heel turn has been kind of a mystery to me. Like reporters call me a lot and ask whether I saw this coming or whether I can provide any perspective.
And I got to tell you,

Speaker 4 I don't understand from an ideological perspective, sure, how you can run John Huntsman's campaign and then run Trump's, but just as a makeup, you know, like her industriousness, if you will, I mean, she really struggled as campaign manager of that campaign.

Speaker 4 We're in last place most of the campaign. And, you know, campaign made some mistakes.

Speaker 4 Anyway, we could go into the details of what happened behind the scenes, but like, I mean, she basically had an emotional breakdown and like couldn't handle it and ended up having to be replaced.

Speaker 4 And how that person like could not survive the pressure cooker of the John Huntsman campaign, but could survive Donald Trump, it's hard to know.

Speaker 4 And I think the answer that we learned from that Van Die Vehr story is that she just like gives Donald Trump everything that he wants, basically, you know, picks a few fights, like handles internal stuff.

Speaker 4 You know, I noticed the quote in the story about how, you know, she said that previous chiefs of staff have had these big confrontations about constitutional questions and, you know, about

Speaker 4 weighty issues with their principal. And she's never had that with Trump.
And it's like, what?

Speaker 4 I mean, you've been chief of staff in an administration where we like wrongly sent people to a foreign torture prison over the ruling of a judge. Like we,

Speaker 4 this administration rejected a judge telling them to stop sending people to a foreign torture prison and they did it anyway.

Speaker 4 You didn't have a big constitutional question with him about that. We have masked men running around the streets, grabbing people, people that are citizens, people that are legal residents.

Speaker 4 You haven't had a single constitutional question where you've discussed that with Donald Trump and a lawyer. We're bombing people in the Caribbean.

Speaker 4 We're going after his political foes with obviously ridiculous, trumped-up charges.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 how can you, as a human, be in the role of chief of staff over the past year and say, I've never had an uncomfortable conversation with Donald Trump about what the administration's been doing?

Speaker 4 To me, that seems like a person that's made a decision that they want to enable Donald Trump. And

Speaker 4 joked about it on the next level. I don't know.
She kind of references it. She brings it up about how she reminds him of his dad.
Maybe there's a daddy issues thing there.

Speaker 4 I don't know. But she never was to me a bad person or an evil person.
Like I found her to be perfectly nice to me personally.

Speaker 4 To that end, again, like I don't think this is a person with non-zero integrity or value. But I think that that can be a flaw when you're in service of evil, right?

Speaker 4 Like being the type of person that just wants to kind of manage the process and, you know, be

Speaker 4 a kindly courtier is a fine job, I think, if your boss is John Huntsman, but it's an evil job if your boss is Donald Trump. And that's what she signed herself up for.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 I reject all the people who did like 3D chess about that story about how she meant for this to come out and it was a wink and she's on her way out the door.

Speaker 4 I think if you actually read every word of that story, you came away with a pretty clear picture of a woman that has decided to fully go along with the Donald Trump project

Speaker 4 and be

Speaker 4 somebody that facilitates it for him. So

Speaker 4 not great. Next question.
I get this fair amount, but it is pegged recently to my conversation with Gavin Newsome. If you haven't listened to my pod, I went on Gavin Newsome's pod a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 4 You can go check that out.

Speaker 4 The question was, would you ever consider getting back into politics, specifically the 2028 campaign, listening to your podcast with Gavin Newsom, the warm and fuzzy Aaron Sorkin movie starts to run in my elder millennial brain?

Speaker 4 That's funny. And we did get into, Gavin was kind of asking me for advice.
So I understand why that idea might have been sparked in somebody's brain. But I'm telling you, I'm not going back.
I'm not.

Speaker 4 Working on a presidential campaign is so fun, I will say, for any young people listening.

Speaker 4 And I should say, I asked for feedback from people under 24 listening at the very end of the next level podcast last week. And it's been insane how many emails I got from people.

Speaker 4 So appreciate all of all of you. It's good to know that there are some Gen Z's out there not only listening to Candace and Hassan Piker.
It's really fun to work for a presidential campaign.

Speaker 4 Highly recommend it. It's just an unbelievable life experience.
There's nothing really like it as far as...

Speaker 4 you know, particularly if you're kind of a high metabolism person, as far as like intensity and pressure, but also fun and like creating memories.

Speaker 4 I just, I loved all the presidential campaigns I worked on, even the ones that like were like a baton death march at some level, because we knew we were going to lose, and it was painful and

Speaker 4 hard at times.

Speaker 4 Still,

Speaker 4 in retrospect, I would not trade any of them. That said, I have got a great job.
This job's awesome.

Speaker 4 I don't know why being communications director for Gavin Newsom, even if he would have wanted me, would be a better job. I think that this is meaningful, what we're doing here at the bulwark.

Speaker 4 I think it's really important. I appreciate all of you guys for listening every day.

Speaker 4 There is plenty of opportunity out there for folks who want to make their mark and take a chance and pick a candidate that inspires them.

Speaker 4 I fully recommend that people do that if that is possible for them. It's a great entry into politics, by the way, if you're young or kind of middle-aged.

Speaker 4 A lot of these campaigns, like the ramp-up is so great. You can kind of go into one of these early states and

Speaker 4 take a job that is, you know, going to be probably not paying that much and hard work, but super rewarding. And, you know, if you pick the right horse, who knows? You could be Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 4 You could go from being the driver of Barack Obama to

Speaker 4 working in the White House to then coming out of the White House and having the exact same job that I do. So, you know,

Speaker 4 that's

Speaker 4 something that is an amazing journey. I recommend it.
It's over for me, though. You know, you never say never in life.

Speaker 4 If like a friend of mine becomes president of the United States, what are the odds of that?

Speaker 4 I'm just hoping for a president in the future that I don't think wants to turn the country into authoritarian. It doesn't like I have a pretty low bar for my hope for future presidents.
But

Speaker 4 if for some reason a friend of mine becomes president or chief of staff of the president, wants to do me a favor, went to lose his in college, like, I don't know, or not wants me to do a favor, not wants to do me a favor,

Speaker 4 wants me to come in and like so they can have somebody around. I thought that would be an amazing thing.
You know, who knows? Who knows what the future is to hold?

Speaker 4 If you asked me 10 years ago, what I'd be doing now, I would not tell you I was like sitting in this hole upstairs in my house in New Orleans talking to a bunch of people about the second Donald Trump term.

Speaker 4 So it's hard to know what what the future holds, but I'm not, I'm going to be here for the 2028 campaign.

Speaker 4 And all the men and women running for 2028 on the Democratic side are going to be rolling through here, I think. And we've got some fun plans for that.
And I look forward to doing that. All right.

Speaker 4 I got a few more questions on the other side, including one. I received a lot of criticism for people that I should not be making fun of Greg Bovino for being a shorty.

Speaker 4 So I'm going to respond to those critiques and have a couple other quick, fun questions. You can keep listening to the rest only if you're a Bulwark Plus member.
There are a few ways to join.

Speaker 4 It depends on what's best for you.

Speaker 4 The best way to access everything the Bulwark offers, that means any bonus content, the rest of this mailbag segment, getting it ad-free, all of our written reporting and analysis, you go to thebulwark.com and you can sign up there.

Speaker 4 If you're someone who's just hanging out with us on YouTube, that's all you need. You can become a YouTube Bulwark member as well.
We'd love to have you join that.

Speaker 4 And if you're an Apple Podcast only person, you're just an audio person, you can subscribe on Apple Podcast Now too.

Speaker 4 I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 I know there's a lot of places y'all could spend your hard-earned dollars, and we appreciate those who want to support our effort and support independent media and our mission of protecting this liberal democracy.

Speaker 4 So, if you're not a Bulwark Plus member, I'd love for you to join. And if you haven't yet and you're not sure, have a wonderful holiday.
Catch you on tomorrow's show.

Speaker 4 For everybody else, stick around for the rest of the mailbags.

Speaker 4 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 1 The holidays are already in full swing. The lights are up.
You got good people, good food, and good vibes.

Speaker 1 And there, to help eat that energy going is Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry with that crisp cranberry flavor with a smooth winter spice twist.

Speaker 1 It's the drink that livens up game nights, gift exchanges, or just catching up in the kitchen with a burst of holiday flavor.

Speaker 1 It's a seasonal favorite, but it's only here for a limited time, so grab it while you can. Sprite, Winter Spice, Cranberry.
Sprite, obey your thirst.

Speaker 9 Winter is the perfect time to explore California, and there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 9 With 19 fuel-efficient options like the All-Hybrid Camry, the RAV4 hybrid, or the Tacoma hybrid.

Speaker 9 Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 9 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today, Toyota. Let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 10 When never thought this would happen actually happens, Serve Pro's got you. If disaster threatens to put production weeks behind schedule, Serve Pro's got you.

Speaker 10 When you need precise containment to stay in operation through the unexpected, Serve Pro's got you.

Speaker 10 When the aftermath of floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and other forces that are out of your control have you feeling a loss of control? ServePro's got you.

Speaker 10 Simply put, whenever or wherever you need help in a hurry, make sure your first call is to the number one name in cleanup and restoration.

Speaker 10 Because only ServePro has the scale and expertise to get you back up to speed quicker than you ever thought possible.

Speaker 10 So, if fire or water damage ever threatens your home or business, remember to call on the team that's faster to any size disaster at 1-800-SERVPRO or by visiting ServePro.com.

Speaker 10 Serve Pro, like it never even happened.