Bill Kristol: Republicans Are a Mess

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we are back with Bill Kristol. We're in the doldrums of August. And, you know, there's still terrible news out there, though, in the doldrums of August. How are you doing, Bill? Yeah, I'm doing fine. But I agree that the news is not universally great. We're going to run through some of the stuff. I'm going to start here because it seems like me and Bill are the only ones who are upset about this. So I'm going to put it at the top of the podcast. The U.S. Senate on Friday did pass a government funding bill that will prevent a shutdown to the midterm elections. The CR passed 90 to 6. So only six, only five Democrats voted against it. Actually, Rand Paul always votes against this sort of stuff. Senators, according to reports from the Hill types, Notice and Punchbowl, senators seem to be gearing up for a bigger fight in December. Why? Why? I don't know. Hard to say. I saw a silver lining. Bill saw a silver lining. One silver lining I saw is that the CR does push back the ban on weed beverages, which I can't believe that they're going through with. It's just a disaster for small business people all over the country, including in red states and districts. But we're going to need our weed beverages to get through the midterm. We're going to need our weed beverages to get through the midterm elections. So any delay on that, I guess, would be good. Besides that, I'm mystified why all the Democrats went along with this. I guess I should say, forget the bill. It's not over yet, or I wouldn't have led the show with it. The CR they passed in the Senate is different than the one in the House. Now the House has to vote on it again. So conceivably, if Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats in the House decided that they wanted to pick a fight over something, that is still possible. I encourage them to do so. Bill, what's your thoughts on the state of play over there, on the Hill? You and I have this in common, that we take a position, it loses 90 to 6 in the United States Senate. And we're still thinking, hey, we're right. What are those 44, whatever they are, 41, I guess, Democratic senators know that we don't know? I mean, look, it's a CR. So there's some argument always for keeping the government open, not getting into a frantic September bargaining, which parts of it are going to be open and stuff. But they are funding a lot of bad stuff. They're funding the ongoing operations of ICE, the ongoing operations of the war, the ongoing operations of this and that. I at least would have made Republicans withdrawing the reconciliation bill a condition of the vote. Maybe they did that tacitly because the Republicans or quietly because the Republicans did withdraw or have not moved on the reconciliation bill, which has the 60 plus billion dollars for defense and various other appropriations, most of which are probably bad. So that is a bit of a silver lining. And which means there still will be fights in September, as you say, partly in the House as they move to accept the Senate bill. If they don't accept it, then they have to go to reconciliation. Not reconciliation. I'm sorry. To a conference committee. Wasn't that a thing that used to happen? And I kind of remember that for major pieces of legislation. That seems not to happen anymore. But anyway, so it still is alive in that respect. And that is to say there still will be fights on reconciliation and on other other issues as well. So well, these guys don't work, really. And so the House is not back until September. Right. I think very end of August. And I think the Senate is September 14th right now. It's like unbelievable. So this could be one of these situations. I mean, we're being a little glib about it. But as I recall, the last shutdown fight, or maybe it was two shutdown fights ago, was really, it was the events of Minnesota that caused it. The Democrats were on path to kind of doing this, continuing kicking the can thing. And then there's this righteous outrage, for good reason, over the behavior of ICE. That then gave a kick in the pants to the Democrats, you know, who are like, okay, well, we can't fund this government right now. And that kind of led to the last fight. Long time till September, I guess. Now, who the hell knows what's going to happen? What horrors the Trump administration will inflict upon us between now and then. But I do think that anything that kind of extends that timeline creates a possibility that there's another galvanizing kind of event to organize around. And I agree that just like the facts of this is that this is kind of continuing. The status quo through December versus a reconciliation bill would have given them more money for the stupid war and for the stupid war at home in deportations. But to me, even still, the status quo is like a no. The status quo is a no. And I anyway, and I just I don't see just steelmating the argument of the Democrats. I guess it would say, we don't want to give them anything going ahead to the midterms. We feel good about the midterms. We don't want to give them the opportunity of saying that we're shutting down the government. And that is harming people. I just don't see how that would be an effective argument for the Republicans. I think that is their private political argument. We're winning. Let's not rock the boat too much. I always get worried. This is like teams going in to prevent defense much too early. You know, I feel like but psychologically, it's a bad sign that they in a sense went along with this. The Democrats won the previous two fights politically, right? The first was at the end of September, right? It was September, October, the government shut down, which coincided with Trump dropping. Some more in the polls and extremely good election results last November in Virginia and New Jersey. And then the second fight was, you say, was after Minneapolis on DHS. Ultimately, they got that funding back through their earlier reconciliation bill. But that fight did really help, I think, brought home that there was a split between the two parties on this fundamental question of mass deportation. And substantively, they had to use the reconciliation to fund it. You know what I mean? So like, again, that could have been something else that the Republicans had done to pass. And the Democrats successfully got that funding out of, you know, the broader budget. Republicans had to use reconciliation. So again, this is like a minor win in the grand scheme of things. But the Democrats are in the minority. And so minor wins are what you're going for. Right. They had two wins in a row. And God forbid they should pursue the same strategy the third time. That's kind of too complicated for the Democrats. So they've talked themselves into, I think, an excessively passive strategy, but not the end of the world. No, not the end of the world. But again, it's like, it's our people. This is really why I feel like it's incumbent upon us to do it, because it's like, who are the no votes? Warren, Sanders, Tim Kaine. Shout out to Tim Kaine was the one guy that I saw in the bill from one of the mainstream party that was. I think on the war, probably, was what moved him. He's been very outspoken on the war powers stuff. And he's right to be, incidentally. And they couldn't demand a vote from Republicans. I guess they don't need to demand a vote. I guess those resolutions are privileged. They get votes anyway. That's why there have been so many of them. But they really need to be ready to fight on the war and on ICE and on everything. And that's why I think it's important for us to be ready to fight on the war and on ICE and on everything else in those two weeks that they're back in September. Some of this is just messaging and positioning. And like, this is just my view on the war thing overall. This isn't 2003. You don't need to do the thing where like, oh, we're worried that if we fight over war funding, the people are gonna be mad at us because we're not funding the troops. It's like, nobody wants this. The president doesn't even want the stupid war. Like, nobody wants a stupid war. Plant your flag in the ground, you know, and make an argument on the funding side of this that you're not going to provide another penny for this thing. Right. Nobody wants it's hurting people in America that's hurting our standing abroad, and it's achieving no results. So we're gonna get back to the war. Sorry, there's my war rant. But let's just stay on the hill for a second. Max Miller, because you wrote about this morning for the newsletter. Today is like ostensibly the deadline for Max Miller, the very credibly alleged domestic abuser that the Republicans are running in an Ohio House seat for him to get off the ballot and be replaced by somebody else. You pointed out to me that technically he had to write a letter to the House. he was watching his son work what would be really crazy if he won you know democrats looking for guys that are smoking cigarettes and fixing shed doors so that's a good start and i we've been flagging this from before you know the times flag this is a solidly republican house district it was always in that kind of batch of house districts that i've been really focused on that we included in our list which we'll put again here in the show notes people missed it a couple weeks ago of these kind of r plus eight nine ten eleven twelve seats that sure in a good republican year it's our solid r but it was you know kind of in that next edge of vulnerable seats even before this this scandal yeah i think miller in 2024 trump won it by fairly comfortably but i think miller got like 51 point something percent of the vote there was some independent candidates so his margins a little bigger you know it's more than three points or something but yeah so he's never been super popular at nor should he be um you know unqualified trump staffer who was vaguely involved in helping to organize was involved not just vaguely or helping to organize the january 6th the speech by trump i guess he was some kind maybe he's an advanced guy or something i don't know helping arranging the speakers at that just terrible rally which incited the insurgent the storming of the capital so he was involved in that that he wins in 2022 because trump endorses him he's the son of a very son grandson nephew whatever very rich family in cleveland the miller family but has never been so particularly popular in the district so i do think that's a winnable race i think all the ohio races are winnable i think this will spill over to the senatorial race the gubernatorial race it looks like the democrats are at least even in both of those maybe ohio will go back to being what it was in our youth tim you know and when it was an actual swing state the closest state in 2004 yeah i'm glad you brought that up because that's where i was going to go next too because i feel like i've given ohio a little bit of short shrift compared to some of the other big senate races in part just because it's a little more you know there's a kind of status quo and i think that's with sherrod brown against john houstead houstead did not handle this scandal with any sort of honor or integrity and he spent days avoiding saying anything and then kind of put out the most tepid imaginable statement about miller and then over in the governor's ratio of amy acton running against vivek my old pal vivek who i followed around iowa vivek i didn't realize this till yesterday because i was kind of getting ready for the pod like vivek's already spent like that governor's race and acton spent basically nothing at least on the airwaves and it's tied so and he's spending a ton of money just to barely stay above water the data center issue massive in ohio one of the biggest states in the country for the amount of data centers being built and like they gave this insane tax break to the companies that's gonna it's causing a budget hole and vivek was out there cheerleading all that so between the data centers and max miller and obviously trump is bringing yeah all of those feel winnable for the democrats for the first time in a minute yeah i agree very much so and it would be nice to have ohio back as a real swing state it'd be nice to have ohio with democratic uh governor etc and a couple of extra members of congress perhaps the other republican politics thing that's just bubbling around this one dimension your old friend tucker you hired tucker right you hired tucker you're playing i did i did 1995 it was 31 years ago 24 years he was 24 years old i think 23 a good a good and did work for the weekly standard for five years it was a good reporter i think in 1995 i was sneaking liquor out of my parents cabinet at too young of an age so we all make mistakes in 19 we all made some mistakes in 1995 there was i guess a meeting of the minds if you want to call it that between joe kent marjorie taylor green tucker thomas massey talking about potentially creating a third party like an america first party talking about coming out of that you know there's obviously like will tucker run is kind of the top line thing that that people discuss out of that though i think that tucker the short of that i think basically is if trump tries to get behind rubio like maybe tucker decides to get in but i think tucker would be pretty satisfied with vance but that's kind of where things stand now but mtg is our quote our argument is the two-party system is a complete and total failure i'm 100 totally completely disgusted with both parties a lot of adverbs this is not nothing i i don't i don't i'm not sure that this is a successful party i don't think this is the beginnings of a successful party per se but it's it is a real political issue for the republicans i mean who knows where these people all end up and who knows what trump does and does he run again does he try to get don jr instead of vance or rubio but the odds are not nothing that there's a genuine third or fourth party on the on the right right an mtg type america first party maybe it's not ultimately the republican party splits in half and we have a sort of 1912 type situation or something but maybe it is buchanan right what if you kind of get two and a half percent or something in 2000 i mean right i don't think that's at all out of the question especially if this war drags on and and trump can't end it and you know things and trump just seems generally unpopular enough that they don't feel intimidated by trump or by the republican establishment they're certainly not intimidated by the republican establishment in any case at this point but trump presumably could squash this personally maybe or maybe not even who knows where he'll be a year and a half later and he'll be like oh my god i don't know what to do with this it's a pretty you know sorry to bring up bad memories for some of the listeners but buchanan almost as a spoiler for bush in 2000 and ends up being a spoiler for gore because a handful of people accidentally voted for him on the butterfly ballot he meant to vote for gore in florida the point of that story is you never know what can impact these kind of things could have right like it might feel like a kind of silly gadfly thing on the side but the thing that he's got going for right and i think that a lot of times i get i would get phone calls from you what i know for years about why can't jeff flake and whoever joe mansion start a third party and it's like there just isn't a real support base for that like there's some people that might support that type of third party in a situational environment depending on what the other two parties put up but most people who would want that like are either happy with the center-left democrats or you know are the tiny percentage of like nicki haley wall street general republicans who still exist right like this group has a real potential base to build from that could cause a lot of problems and obviously they have huge megaphones and trump has made it possible for them like this would not have been possible if trump had not made his own bed by like getting in bed with the tech oligarchs covering up the epstein files and starting the stupid war with iran like trump made this insurgency within the party possible yeah i mean part of me wants to say yeah no one who's anti-trump and anti-trumpism and anti-authoritarianism should count on on this they they could end up with a pretty unified authoritarian ticket and party for sure in 2020 i mean tucker's like 10-point plan was pretty flashy yeah totally flashy yeah but you know not like fans would be that much less so so they could it could be the threat it remains very great having said that a general contrarian principle that people are always you know kind of wrong and these kinds of things there's been so much publicity about the democratic socialists and the huge fights within the democratic party and god knows where they're you know it's going to rip be ripped apart at the seams i kind of assume just on contrarian principles the democrats will end up being reasonably united in 2028 uh and this fall for that matter actually and it's the republicans who might beneath the surface finally sort of start to come apart at the seams there's so much hope wishful thinking that's one reason i'm so hesitant to even say it for 2018 2020 2022 2024 even 2026 they're not really as we saw with max miller they're not coming apart at the seams i mean no one's denouncing him or or an epstein uh in the in the set 50 out of 52 for todd blanch so one shouldn't expect it but it does feel that there's more real tension on the republican side this way trump has held together personally a lot right i mean there is the personal character of his leadership i hate to even give him credit but it's true it wouldn't be happening without trump and so ex-trump if trump does step aside or is forced aside you know just has to step aside because he's 82 or whatever it could begin to really fracture in a way we haven't seen since 2016 i guess you know i agree with that i think it's a really good point and what's the line these things happen very slowly and then all at once i think that's something to continue to monitor losing weight is one thing but looking and feeling your best this august that's a real goal that's why weight loss by hymns now offers access to fda approved wagovi pill and the wagovi pen wagovi is designed to help you lose weight and keep it off so you can show up this summer feeling like yourself with the govi at hymns is up to 20 of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise it's interesting you can also lose some without any exercise i think if yes the vice president it helps 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learn more including important safety information wagovi clinical study information and restrictions visit hymns.com The Iran war is clearly the instigator for all this and has made something that was like there and like you said, bubbling was under the scenes. There were potential fissures that would have been exposed eventually. The war supercharged that. I was listening to one of the kind of America first podcast I listened to over the weekend and they played this clip from Trump talking in Nevada and we're just mocking him. And we don't play Trump's voice on here, even though John Hellman broke that rule when he was guest hosting for me with Jill Kristol. We didn't warn him. We let the guest hosts do their own thing. Okay, everybody could be a little nicer to John. So I'm just going to read it. The Trump quote. Get comfortable because it's long. Here's Trump, I think, off teleprompter in Nevada because it was supposed to be a messaging event about the economy. So I don't think Iran was supposed to come up at all. And then he does this Trump thing where he does an aside. And we're doing the same thing, by the way, in the lovely Islamic Republic of Iran. We're knocking the hell out of it. Knocking the hell out of them. I'd rather make a deal because I don't want to kill people. I do not want to kill people. But at some point, we're going to. We'll not want to kill people, but at some point, we're going to. We're set for the biggest attack of any attack. And we've hit them very hard the last few months. But we're all set for the biggest attack since World War II. And they called me and they said, please don't do it, sir. Let's talk. And then they said, we never said that. You know what? The fake news knows they did say that. But we are talking. Let's see what happens. But they respect us. They respect us. It's been 47 years. But really, it's been 50 because they've been saying 47 for three years. It's been 50. And no other president has done what you should have done a long time ago because Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, can't have it. But just last week, last week, Kamala Harris called for eliminating the Electoral College. That was Trump in Nevada on the state of play with the Iran negotiations. He also said. It could open as soon as this weekend. It's Monday. It's not open. He called Axios and said, we are low keying. We're only semi negotiating with them. How can you listen to that and think that this person has any any at all grasp on what's happening or any plan or any idea? Plus, maybe threatening the biggest attacks since World War II is not a popular thing to do. Do people really want to have the biggest attacks since World War II? I kind of doubt that, you know. That's what Tim Dillon was saying. He was listening to us. He's like, this is crazy. The biggest attacks since World War II. He's like talking like a crazy. And then he's like, oh, but we said we'd do it. But then the Iranians called me and then they said we didn't call me. And it's like, what? He's lying. He's obvious. He's just obviously lying and lost. Like he's lost. And the straight and forward moves is closed. If we just come back. It's funny how much the press kind of just kind of lost sight of this. They're busy covering the big back and forth. They should remind people occasionally the street is not open. And for all the talk, it opened briefly, sort of open briefly. And now we're basically just saying, yeah, we hope we hope Oman and Iran can work out a deal, which is like 90 percent Iran. Telling Oman what they want the deal to be, needless to say, where the straight is open at Iran's sufferance. And that seems to be fine with Trump at this point. And plus the nuclear program, he's sort of talking about less. I mean, but Iran is making it hard for him to surrender because they kind of keep wanting to rub his face in it. And therefore it might he might, I suppose, try to revert to force. But yeah, I mean, the WSJ reporting says that Trump privately told senior aides he could just walk away from Iran if they open up the Strait of Hormuz. So like all he wants now is just back to status. Well, and he could just quit. And the Times is saying that Iran said Monday that the Strait is going to remain closed until the United States agrees to their demands on a variety of things. That's going to be very hard for him to agree to. Iran took out an oil tanker in the Strait yesterday, last night. So they're still firing. It's just a disastrous situation. And I guess the point of reading his gobbledygook from Nevada is that he doesn't even have a story that he can tell. About it, right? Like even like his loss to Biden, like the story that he was telling about the 2020 didn't make any sense to anybody who's in touch with reality. But it was like a coherent story for people living in his false reality. He doesn't even really have a coherent story to tell his fans right now on Iran. You know, that's a good point, I think. And I've been struck by that just talking to some, I don't know, various sort of functions, social occasions with people who are not that political and stuff. And yeah, it's like, what is this about the weapons? Don't they know how to use weapons? So they don't. They don't run out of them. I mean, there's enough mismanagement combined with the lack of any strategy, combined with the fact that the war is unconstitutional, illegal, combined with the fact that it's just super foolish and has been executed badly and heck, that's a buffoon. I just feel like altogether, it's adding up to more maybe than, you know, than just, oh, it's a foreign policy misadventure or, you know. We just made some changes in the backyard, you know, making it look a little less like a two lane frat house back there. It's been great. But outdoor furniture is like really expensive and it's hard to figure out what's going to hold up in the weather and what's going to be actually comfortable. One of the things I went and bought on myself is a chair that looked really cool and broke in like eight days. 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Dupe.com and paste any product URL, upload a photo and it'll instantly show you similar items for way less. There's also an app and a browser extension. If you want to make it even easier, no account needed, totally free. Start saving money with dupe.com today. You had, um, Edelman on the crystal conversations over the weekend was pretty good. I was listening to that just because I'm trying to like wrap my heads around like what the particulars are about the, the story with like our munitions being deployed. And then this is something that Edelman knows. Well, I, I point people to that if they want a deeper dive, I was interested also in this story from the Atlantic saying that Lockheed and Raytheon are refusing to license Patriot missile production to Ukraine because I think the Ukrainian manufacturers are going to be more efficient. That would be able to improve and produce them at scale and for less money. I think this is an interesting, like two stories to bring together, right? Which is kind of the corporate corruption. Of this white house. In particular, obviously this is something that goes, this is not unique to this white house, but like, but just the white house is totally for sale. You know, these big DC interests can buy these guys off. And so we have, we've gotten into a stupid war where we're getting dangerously low on material that we need simultaneously to the fact that like the Ukrainians are doing what you would think that like a free market pro national security Republican administration would, would be excited about. Which is like innovating and coming up with ways to make weapons systems faster and more effective. And we're standing in the way of that too. Yeah. And in the conversation with Eric Edelman, but also the one I did when I was pitching for you actually with, with Margaret Donovan, the, who served in the defense department in the last decade as a JAG. And then yesterday with Priya Fram, who was kicked out of the defense department because she had transitioned 10 years before and had an honorable distinguished career, but that's not good for in the Trump exit world. You just go around finding people. You just go around finding people who literally transitioned 10 years before and have had utterly spotless records and just purge them, you know, because they're transgender people. But we talked a little more broadly also about what's going on at the defense department. So she was in until December. So she's in touch with a million, lots and lots of people. And it's bad. I mean, I think the degree of just dysfunction, mismanagement, good people leaving, bad people sucking up to their political masters to get promoted. The defense department already needed to be reformed. It's going to be a huge task. In 2029 to sort of rebuild it in a good way and reform it at the same time and get over and restore some culture, whatever the institutional problems. And you're right. The kind of interest group, Lockheed, Raytheon type problems, procurement problems. I would say that you think the culture of this military was pretty impressive. People respected the military in America for good reasons. You know, there's a kind of professionalism, a kind of serious sobriety, sometimes a little bit bureaucratic. But that's now. I think it's at risk because of Trump and Hegseth. I do think that it was like the Doge critique that Elon offered, right? Which is like there's all this waste in the defense department. And, you know, and like it's not something that like despite him being awful in every way, like he'd seen firsthand. He's like, I created a SpaceX and we can get we can get into space and NASA can't anymore. And so like that's a coherent critique. Right. And then they just botch it in every way possible by putting forth these, you know, buffoons. And, you know, not actually really caring about the outcomes. But I do think, you know, on the Democratic side, it's like it's funny. Like the story offers something both for like the abundance efficiency Democrats and like the Lena Kahn Democrats that are like, hey, we need more competition. We should break up these big companies that are controlling, you know, defense contracting. And also we should be bringing people in to ensure that like taxpayer money is being used. Like all of those are all like legit critiques of the old defense department that now have been totally exacerbated by these. guys like like now it's worse than ever and then you layer on top of that getting back to your other point just the buffoonery there's no feeling of competence you know there's no meritocracy who's getting promoted who's getting fired why like it's and and to me it's like that last point is why you can't get a hex up right like trump wants stooges in these positions trump doesn't care about that i mean trump is embarrassed i would be embarrassed by the round where he would rather win than not but like he doesn't care about like military effectiveness for the purpose of that right like he cares about it about in service of fluffing himself up right and so he needs people that will continue to do that right and so i don't know to me it seems like maybe i'm wrong about this well the future will let us know but i feel like my hex up feels like among the safest and he's doing what trump wants in terms of the politicization of the military and he's been pretty aggressive and not you competent exactly in that i mean he's been maybe some of the particular things haven't been good from a pr point of view but he's got a lot of people intimidated is what i i gather and you know by firing the generals he fired by promoting the ones he's promoted by making clear that he's willing to just reach into the ranks and politicize everything uh it's not ineffective i mean it's a terrible way of being effective turning us into a you know third-rate authoritarian military which we're not thank god there yet or even maybe near there but in that direction so i agree with that trump doesn't care about any of that if anything he's just going to do what he wants to do and i think he likes what he's doing just it's just a kind of christy gnome uh pr questions at pan bondi question for me at this point does he think he's better off with just the political side of it but it's not so easy to find someone else i mean if you find someone and also in that confirmation fight if he waits till after november really risks you know allowing democrat a democrat certainly democrats from the senate right risks turning over a lot of rocks about what the heck was happening there in the defense department for so and you have to find somebody that is that you can trust to be as loyal as hegg seth and that also presents as slightly more competent than him right it feels like that person could exist yeah yeah no the equivalent of blanche or jay clayton i guess yeah it feels like it but maybe not because military is a little more complicated i don't know i feel like there's a lot of pent-up a lot of people have been quiet who've left the military been fired i think too many of them have been too quiet to be honest if you get you know a lot of but whatever they have their own culture of that and they also have incentives not to talk speak up in some ways but i feel like there's a lot of little pent-up stuff beneath the surface there and maybe the firing of heck seth would unleash some of it you mentioned blanche we didn't talk about it because friday i was so emotionally beaten down by the events you want to share any thoughts about tom tell us and john cornyn and bill cassidy i mean they're pathetic cassidy the vote's pathetic enough but what he said on tv yesterday about how you know it's this is really why what his history books when you really have one of these major moments and i feel honored privileged to have been part of this major moment a major moment of pathetic capitulation to trump to donald trump having capitulated on robert f kennedy jr 18 months before having gotten assurances having watched them all just violated as he himself even as acknowledged right and then i'm just going to do it again with todd blanche you know and not having met with the epstein survivors really really horrible but illusion like i'm just going to do it again with todd blanche you know and not having met with the epstein survivors really horrible but illusion like i'm just going to do it again with todd blanche you know and not having met with the epstein survivors really horrible but he should donate his brain to science for psychological testing because the self delusion here is remarkable people get confused with a lot of things like hopes and expectations and different some people are like tim i can't believe you're surprised that cassidy did that i was like i wasn't surprised i said at the top i'm not surprised so like i when he decided to go speak because these guys have delusion of grandeur i was like i feel like there's an outside chance that the decision to speak is signaling that he wants you know to be seen in this historic moment as somebody that did do the right thing because like blanche was getting in eventually anyway like mcconnell's either getting replaced or he's going to rise from the dead and be able to make the vote right so like blanche was getting in so i was like to go speak might mean that he wants to but and so i was kind of half right he turns out he was speaking because he thought it was a historic moment that he wanted you know to get attention for it was just that he thought that his moment was to like totally cave to donald trump's corruption of the justice department and and just one more point i'm just you were right i mean neither of us was really surprised but it wasn't crazy to think that maybe it's a different circumstance in this way our friend greg nanziata who runs the society for the rule of law is a genuinely conservative lawyer worked for republicans on the hill on judicial and confirmations and that and that sort of stuff and say trump to his credit but still quite conservative i'd say in his jurisprudential views and all that kind of thing very much opposed to blanche and he made the point there's a very good point he said look they all voted for these horrible candidates in january and february and we we warned them that they were going to be horrible and they were horrible and they deserve no pass for that on the other hand you could at least tell yourself then well we don't know maybe they'll be better than i fear let's you know defer to the president the new president on his first round of appointments todd blanche has been deputy attorney general and then acting attorney general we have a record of how todd blanche is going to run the justice department under donald trump it's not a speculation the way the way some of these other people you could have said at first was a speculation and as and greg is very very tough on this he says it's such a disgrace therefore to have confirmed this guy having seen what he has done on the politicization of justice on everything else he's done there on the dishonesty on the epstein cover-up and so they they deserve the 50 out of 52 are still willing to go along it really is extraordinary utter disgrace that's the right word i want to do immigration a little bit you guys have been covering this well in morning shots in part because jim swift is in ohio i'll be able to go to springfield um but you know this the removal of the haitians is just so horrifying like the situation back in haiti is awful remember the don roe doctrine given that this is in our hemisphere of anything that we should be trying to help the conditions in haiti and people all everybody made fun of kamala harris that she was the one who was the one who was the one who was the that her job during the Biden administration was the root causes of immigration, which is a very challenging job. And, you know, it's like we don't have total control over what's happening in Central America. But like, I don't know, we could at least try to help the conditions in Haiti instead of that. We're planning on sending people back to it. I saw you posted one of these and there's there's so many now like this really saddening video of a guy in Ohio, Haitian guy getting an ankle bracelet put on him because the government wants to monitor all the Haitians now so they can't run away. And it's very Eastern European socialist in these images and the actions of the ICE officials. So I don't know what more there is to say about it besides the fact that it's horrifying. But I don't know if you have any thoughts. No, just that. I mean, it's one thing to, you know, send people back to a country they came from or Mexico, let's just say, and if they're not personal. You know, they're not a real threat. You know, OK, it's maybe we should keep them. Maybe we shouldn't send them back. Shouldn't send them back. They've been here for 10 or 30 years, obviously, in my view. But here you are literally sending people who came here back to a place where they are could well be killed. I mean, no question about it. And totally unnecessary. They're doing fine. They're working hard. No one in Springfield wants them to leave. No one in Miami wants them to leave. And didn't you, I think you retweeted or commented on this. This guy made me so mad. I couldn't play it. I thought about playing it, actually. And then I was just like, I'm so upset. He runs a chain of Creole, I guess, food trucks. Maybe there's some brick and mortar stores, too. It's like Haitian food in Miami. And the guy's like, my business is going to collapse because the people that work, you know, the Haitians that work in the kitchen and that do other jobs are all like going into hiding now or some of them are self-deporting or doing other things. And he's like, and he voted for Trump. And he's like, I couldn't believe Trump said he's going to be a businessman. What is this doing to my business? I just wanted to scream at the guy. I was like, they did a whole thing about how your people were cat and dog eaters. Like, what did you expect? Right. Agreed. I covered this story on Bullock Takes with Ike Saul over of Tangle News and similar to your conversation with Eric. If people want to deep dive on this, I'd encourage you to go check that out on the Bullock Takes feed. His family is from kind of the Big Bend area of Texas, and he has a house there. And so has a really personal view on what's happening. And the story where Trump now, the wall is still being built. It's hard to kind of keep all these stories, you know, in hand, right? And, and the wall wasn't completely built during the first term, and they didn't build it in stupid places. And, you know, ran out of time after four years, there's lawsuits, etc. And now they are putting the wall through Big Bend National Park. And, you know, everything about this is outrageous and stupid. It's like the cost of it is insane. It's 10x what the proposed cost was, you know, 16, $18 billion of our money is going to be spent on this stupid thing. There's no crossings that happen here. It's the most desolate part of the border. It's mostly a tourist area where people go because it's beautiful, the National Park, you can see the dark skies at night. If anything, they're gonna make it easier to cross there, because in order to build the wall, they got to build a bunch of roads to get the construction guys in there. And so now, like the tiny number of people that did cross the border here, it ended up in this kind of desolate National Park. And a lot of times ended up having to just concede themselves to Border Patrol. Now, potentially they'll have roads to be able to get out so it might actually like help the coyotes that are trying to like get people into the country illegally and the most humiliating part of it like in addition to the fact that it's a waste of money it's stupid it's counterproductive it's going to harm a national park we're also ceding territory to mexico as part of this project because you know just the way that they have to place the wall there's like land that had been american land which i guess came from mexico originally that now is going to be on the opposite side of the wall and some of this is like eminent domain like we're taking private property from people building a wall on their property and then giving some of their property to mexico so trump has been talking about a lot of territory expansion but so far only territorial concessions from trump so that's a typical trump story as well crazy it was a good conversation i learned a lot from i don't know how to think about big band i've never been there but uh yeah it seems like a beautiful place and totally again what's most striking is you say totally 100 unnecessary again in other circumstances you can at least there's some argument on the other side what's there there's no one crossing it's insane yeah the maga sheriffs down there are like we don't want this what are you doing right did make me want to visit big bend because i actually didn't know a lot about about it but it's challenging to get to which i guess is the point okay i had some listeners that gave me some negative feedback about something which was that when i came back from vacation i said i promised banana facts because i was reading about sams murray who is a new orleanian of some uh i was about to say a great new orleanian not sure about that a new orleanian of note who started a banana company ended up instigating a coup in honduras on behalf of his banana company then he ends up taking over united fruit which is like kind of the big bad fruit company that is that was behind you know our phrase banana republic you know some of what united fruit did was just unconscionable so anyway i learned a bunch about bananas and i just wanted to i felt like with bill with you here you have surprising knowledge about things i just want do you have united fruit anecdotes do you have any thoughts about the fruit trade i used to work for them you know back in the day were you born in the period where bananas were a delicacy many neocon efforts no no i know very little about them except this degree of american imperialism back then was a little bit surprising to those of us who wanted to believe they were younger slightly edifying uh you know sanitizing but anyway that uh yeah united that's what united fruit did i guess a couple countries and maybe just a couple and what banana republic where the phrase banana republic's company no i have no strong opinions about bananas i'm not a big banana eater honestly so i am a big banana eater they were non-existent in the country in like the late 19th century beginning of the 20th century but even before the middle of the 20th century the bananas became the most popular fruit in the country we gave people a banana united fruit did when they got off the boat at ellis island it was like a welcome to america because the europeans had never seen a banana before and so in some ways was like the most was a very american fruit at that time the power that they got came not so much from the bananas here's an interesting relevant i think a relevant lesson for our current day i mean i guess it was the bananas but we ended up but zamori and then united fruit separately and then we ended up with the banana fruit and then we ended up with the banana fruit separately in in honduras and guatemala and elsewhere i gained so much power because unable to get the banana from central america here fast enough you know you can get to people's grocery stores or local you know markets at that point a lot of times it's like still like fruit and vegetable markets you just had to create a ton of efficiencies so they were going into these countries buying up tons of land creating the roads creating the railroad similarly to california now promising to create a railroad for the government and then only creating part of it so that the railroad doesn't make it all the way through the country they had their own ships they had their own ports and so this is how you know you get the power as a banana company to like do a coup because it's not it's not just for money it's that you're controlling the infrastructure so i'm stretching this very much to the ai oligarchs of today and what they're trying to do buying up all the land you know controlling energy generation drawing communications channels we should learn from the countries that allowed the fruit companies to get out of control to such a degree that they were more powerful than the governments themselves i think that's a good lesson for us on the banana front so that's good i like that it's even worse today because of course the bananas presumably couldn't conspire against their human overlords and escape confinement and do god knows what ai is going to end up doing which i think the bananas are pretty in that respect the bananas have well they have more interesting traits than you would think uh but i'm not going to waste all my banana facts on people on one podcast so we're gonna uh we'll save some more for later lastly a lot of buzz on my social media about chris hayes going on to pond save america over the weekend in a pink tank top with a gold chain uh and that was the outfit that he wore on the podcast a lot of discussion i think he looks great that's just me but it made me wonder and it made some others on my text chain wonder if you might ever consider that wearing a pink tank top and a gold chain on to this podcast on a monday just kind of give people a different look no that's bill crystal we will not see him next monday he gets to have a little break thank god hardest working man at the bulwark bill crystal so we'll have another one of our bulwark friends standing in from him and uh we'll see uh on august 24th great all right everybody else we'll see you back here tomorrow with one of our old friends looking forward to it the guys like a fly on the wall with my secret eyes taking it in trying to be feminine with my makeup bag watching all the same misfit i sit lit up wicked everybody else surrounded by the girls with the tank tops and the flirty ways the bulwark daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer katie cooper associate producer ansley skipper and with video editing by dante de chico and audio engineering and editing by jason brown