Bill Kristol: The Weak Bully Keeps Flailing

hello and welcome to the bulwark daily i'm your host tim miller it is monday so we'll get to bill crystal in just one second a couple of updates on the favors i asked you for last week there was some mixed reports on freddy's and edgariani uh who are stuck in a dillian tournament camp thanks in large part probably entirely frankly to your phone calls and tweets and emails katie brit was forced to respond to their pleas she gave a very susan collin-esque statement but we at least now kind of have this story on the radar of the powers that be which is something the result of that was that edgariani did get a sonogram and and got to see that her baby was healthy and so that is a small positive step on the other side of the ledger though they just heard this morning that they are not going to be able to get on a flight back to venezuela this week so they're stuck in the camp for at least another week and so if you feel like following up on an email that you sent last week i guess it probably couldn't hurt at this point so i appreciate everybody's advocacy on this um and and just uh the other thing it does make a difference when you send a podcast you like to your friends i i did see an uptick over the weekend pretty significant and and downloads and views for the julia curly interview and um you know i just i really appreciate that um because i was so moved by that conversation and i think it's a good opportunity to try and engage people and the work that we're trying to do here so i appreciate you guys for sharing that around all right it is monday he's the editor at large at the bulwark he was on a brief vacation well deserved bill crystal and uh he's gonna keep traveling because he's gonna be with us at the bulwark live event in atlanta coming up in october uh you go to the bulwark.com slash events to get tickets for columbia charlotte and atlanta we had a good surprise guest in charlotte too coming but bill's gonna be there in atlanta come hang out bill are you excited to get down to what's the famous strip club in atlanta what's that called you know i leave that to you and jvl to really you know you know we could discuss that on the stage there you know we could discuss that on the stage there in atlanta you know you can magic city is what it's called that was my quiz for you yeah magic city i'm looking forward to it i think it'll be fun i guess the last one we did was minneapolis right was there's maybe the i guess we were in california you were in california i wasn't there yeah minneapolis was so unbelievable right after the obviously the killings and the kind of incredible civic mobilization there in response to ice can i say i'm glad you got people mobilized on the ice thing i i was at the beach last week and was didn't do morning shots and didn't do your podcast but did follow things the ice thing is just horrible and people are not upset enough about it if i could just preach for 20 seconds here and i'm really glad that you have been so on top of it since the beginning and the audience here seems to be very moved by it i think politicians are wrong to think that it's not couldn't be a huge issue i mean i don't know i obviously agree and at minimum at least in democratic primaries um this is like one of my ongoing like beefs like with the two sides fighting with each other and it's like i think that you'd win plaudits with every faction in the democratic primary if you just were maximalist in your attack on ice uh which is the right thing to be doing uh incidentally both politically and morally and policy-wise those horror stories keep coming out i mean i keep getting sent them and we're trying to vet them as we do more coverage so there'll be there'll be more this week but i mean there's just one story i was just reading nbc this morning about a guy who's on the uss lincoln whose dad gets detained and this is combining all the horrors of the trump administration into one story so more more on that stuff as the week goes on i want to start with you on uh the news out of canada our friends in canada we had a great live show up in canada a couple months ago mark carney now the leader of the free world the leader of the resistance standing up to donald trump trade talks friday after we taped uh this was late on friday fell apart between the us and canada which means that steep tariffs are now going to go into effect from our side putting into effect on september 8th it's going to target dairy appliances agriculture equipment pulp and paper and electronics i think they're already tariffing the hell out of jim beam carney pointed to tensions between howard nutlick and uh and jameson greer seems like nutlick came in late and kind of scuttled the deal trump put out an insane statement about canada and it's a pretty it's pretty dicey situation it is i mean carney's speech saturday was really impressive as had as the speech at davos what six months ago had been i like the idea of carney is we now have several leaders of the free world we have zolensky obviously really fantastic over five years uh we have carney we have the pope pope leo the 14th who again did give an excellent set of remarks last week and we have magyar in uh in hungary so it's kind of bad that we're not part of that and we're indeed on the opposite side if you think literally in each of these cases right trump is against those people basically but carney was interesting i mean he didn't just talk about the trade issue narrowly and nutlick screwing it up he did say you can't trust america basically you can't trust what he say the things are now signed in pencil not in not in pen something like that and uh he really understands the moment we're in and uh i think he's doing a service to the country not to the trump administration but to the country and clarifying it for us that this is where this is where trump has taken us a friend dude from i think pointed this out very succinctly just looking at it from our perspective the domestic side but just how stupid this is trump is fighting a trade war that very few americans support and he's not going to be able to do anything about it support under leadership that most Americans reject to achieve results that virtually all Americans would dismiss as pointless, if not crazy. In some ways, it's similar to what's happening in Iran in that sense. It's just like, what is this even about? Trump is wrapped up in ego. He doesn't have a clear strategic objective. And it's net harmful to Americans, particularly Americans in places and industries that rely on free trade with Canada. And Susan Collins is concerned. We heard from her. She urges both sides to return to the negotiating table, not using any actual power to do anything. But that's because there's a lot of, obviously, cross-border travel between Maine and Canada. And it's a small thing, but like tourists, Canadians aren't going to America. And then there's obviously trade that is being impacted by it on goods as well. I mean, Canada is a small, smallish country in population, 40 million, I think. A little above that. It's our second largest trading partner and not much behind Mexico and ahead of China. And it's our largest export market, number one. So people think Canada, well, it's a nice place. You go there to visit Montreal, Quebec, or there's some Canadian beer and lumber. Everyone's heard of lumber, hockey. But I mean, it's a big, big, especially export market for us. We don't have much of a negative balance of trade there if people care about that also. So it's all insane. It's stupid. The tariffs is also, like ICE, though, I feel like an issue. It really does hurt Trump because whatever inflation there is, and there is more than there should be, and whatever economic slowdown there is, and there is some of that too, tariffs are contributing to it. And that's something Trump is doing. And the Republican Congress is permitting him to do. Democrats, when they get back, they should introduce, in addition to defunding ICE, they should really go after the tariff stuff and maybe do just these particular tariffs. And these are really insane. Trump's invoking, I don't remember the number, 338 or something, some particular part of the code. It's literally part of the 1930 tariff act, has never been invoked by an American president. The 1930 tariff act, I looked this up, I thought, 1930, what was it? It was the Smoot-Hawley Act, the notorious act that turned a recession probably into the Great Depression. That is what Trump is literally invoking in this tariff. That's what Ben Stein was criticizing in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Is that right? I forgot that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smoot-Hawley. That was a big thing in the 80s for us Reaganite free traders, you know. Anyway, so yeah, that's what's, that's what Trump is doing. And the tariff stuff is, is, is really insane. I mean, and of course, the beef tariffs have now, he's taking off the beef tariffs, if I got that right, to import more beef. Yeah, I want to get to the beef in a second. I just, I have a couple other Canada things, just because I think this is worth, all worthwhile to note. Number one, Carney, like this is real. He does have the country behind him politically, but like there's real economic harm that is going to be caused by this. I just want to say this in the context, obviously, there's some limits to this parallel. But, you know, we talk a lot how we want to, you know, we want to, you know, we want to more fight from center left kind of Democrats here. And a lot of times, you know, it's like, well, you're making a pragmatic decision or pragmatic choice. For Carney, like you can imagine him kind of a centrist, like, you know, technocrat type guy, you'd think, well, okay, a bad deal is better no deal. And he's not doing that. And I think that's showing real political courage. It's easy for me to say sitting here at a podcast studio, right. But like, I do think that part of it's no doubt. And the potential for escalation here is real. I mean, some of this feels silly, but I want to play for you what Sean Duffy said, and then some of the rhetoric coming from Canada. Obviously, they're a major partner for us back and forth across the borders, planes, trains and automobiles. DOT has a lot to do with that. Is there anything in your position as Secretary of Transportation that you're thinking about with respect to a tool in this sort of back and forth? We're great trading partners, right? But Canada, gets the benefit of trading with the US way more than the US gets the benefit of trading with Canada. It's a country that doesn't have a military. It has a country that has a single payer healthcare system. some that's failing. They have record high euthanasia rates. And so to think that they're going to go to war with Donald Trump and actually win that war with the US, I think it's foolish on their part. Wow. I mean, he doesn't know anything, and he just plays what he thinks of as the cultural war cards. He has the fake macho military card, let's call that the Hegseth card. And then he has the fake social conservatism euthanasia card. I mean, it's just the euthanasia. They have more liberal assisted suicide laws in Canada. You can like them or dislike them. The fact is, if you look this up, I read about this this morning in Morning Shots, the actual suicide rate, including those, I believe, is lower in Canada than in the US. So, I mean, not something for us to boast about, I don't think. And incidentally, longevity is longer, is higher in Canada than in the US. So that social conservative thing is just a cheap kind of thing that Duffy vaguely remembered hearing once from J.D. Vance somewhere. I suppose. And on the macho military stuff, it's an unbelievable insult, obviously, to the Canadians who were extremely prominent in D-Day, if you've ever heard of Juno Beach and fought with us in other wars, obviously, including in Afghanistan, where they took considerable casualties and per capita, not that much below the American casualties, actually. So it's unbelievably just insulting. And I don't know, it sort of says a lot, right? You remember the cabinet, it's not your area. So normally in the old days, if you were opining on something, it's not in your field to be pretty cautious. And instead, you just try to out-heg Seth and out-Vance Vance and say nothing about the actual substance, right? There's no actual defense of Trump's terror policy. No, it's pathetic. And obviously, Canada does have military and that hasn't, to a point, hasn't needed our defense. Nobody's attacked them. And they've come to our defense when we've been attacked. So that's the reality. After 9-11, that's really, absolutely, they led the effort to invoke Article 5. And as you recall, I mean, I remember this well in 9-11, a lot of American planes, we closed them down. We closed them down. We closed them down. We closed them down. We closed our airspace. A lot of our planes got diverted to Canada and people were stuck there, but we had to stay there for a few days. We were treated with great hospitality and Canadians didn't ask for reimbursements or anything like that. They put up these people in Gander. And so, yeah, Canada has been a good ally. Really, you know what? Think of all the nations you could have bordering you all over the world. Think what other, what headaches other nations have from their neighbors. You know, we should be extremely happy to have Canada out there in the North. I'm into that. The rhetoric, I just using the word war, again, going to war with Donald Trump. These guys are playing childish games and that you don't know what results from all that. And this is why you speak diplomatically. Like this is why diplomacy is a thing that matters. You have Ontario's Doug Ford saying this morning, he said that Carney should be ready to cut electricity and critical minerals to the US if trade war continues. I like that seems outlandish, but like that is where they're at. They have to have conversations about that, which is nuts. And I should note this was flagged for me this morning by a Canadian friend. It was 212 years ago today, August 24th, 1814, that forces from present day Canada serving the British empire burned the White House in retaliation for the American attack on York during the war of 1812. So only 212 years ago that Canada, you know, showed some muscle. I wasn't aware of that. It's kind of uncanny, but Mark Carney was probably wise not to mention that. Look, Americans are carrying over a trillion dollars in credit card debt at rates north of 23%. And that number keeps going up. That is more than $200 billion a year in interest paid mostly by households who are sitting on the largest pool of untapped home equity in US history. Think about that for a second. You own a home, you've built real equity in it. 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Even stop overpaying for capital even Financial Inc, NMLS 2042345 cards issued pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc by Coastal Community Bank NMLS 462289. And members of the NMLS community bank member FDIC equal housing when they're subject to approval terms apply visit even.com for details. You mentioned this earlier on the beef trade news and the tariffs and the other kind of damages is causing. Trump said on Friday, he was going to temporarily increase beef imports, free of tariffs. Funny thing is he's like, and he's got a commitment to sell the meat at 25% below market prices, but the tariff was 26%. So yeah, this guy doesn't understand 101 basics of what his tariffs are doing to consume. So yeah, he's got a commitment to sell the meat at 25% below market prices, but he's like, and he's got a commitment to sell the meat at 25%. So yeah, he's got a commitment to sell the meat at 25%. So yeah, the notable part of this to me is the pushback from farm country is ties to kind of politics, a lot of the big Senate races this year, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, other places, Ohio, you know, have, you know, big farm communities. And there's been a bunch of videos of ranchers upset about this over the weekend going viral on Tiktok, including MAGA ranchers, and I just want to play one of them. They're going to import a bunch more boxed beef, ground beef, scrap cuts, what I call them, and hopefully bring down the price of ground beef in the store for y'all. We've seen a market crash for live cattle, live cattle that people like myself grow and take to the to the, you know, processing plants or go down through the system. That's dropped 40 cents a pound already just from that plant closure. Now this morning, the markets are crashing. But will your price change? So far, we have not seen that. And you're going to lose more ranchers. And in the long run, you're going to lose everything. Because where there are cattle, there is freedom. And when these disappear, so does your freedom. I don't think this is going to work out like they hoped. MAGA ranchers are pissed. I mean, there's kind of real political effects, couldn't it? In Nebraska, for example, in Kansas. I mean, the sad thing about tariffs, they do real damage. And once you start the business of imposing them and taking them off, you get, you offend people both ways, right? And especially if the prices don't come down when you take them off, really, then you're just not offended. You've injured the ranchers. What is that commitment about keeping the prices being, who's made that commitment? I mean, the supermarkets, the importers, I don't know what he's talking about. I mean, it's just some made up thing, obviously. And it's a made up Soviet thing, too. He's like, okay. It is very much so, yeah. He's like, oh, the SAR will capture the price of beef at the market for you. It's really amazing. And isn't there a line always been that tariffs are not inflationary, but then why is he getting rid of this particular set of tariffs? To bring down prices. I believe that's literally the definition of deflation, just lowering prices. So presumably those tariffs were inflationary. So yeah, I think the tariffs thing, as I say, I think it's, the more he does, in a way, it's less of an inflationary thing. It's less of an inflationary thing, it's less of an inflationary thing. But then it's odd and people get used to it and the system adjusts and economic growth slows 0.1 or 2.2% and inflation goes up an extra 0.2%. And that's not nothing in the big picture, but people get used to it. You know what I mean? This in a way is the worst of all worlds politically, isn't it? The kind of jerking around of the tariffs up and down. I feel like it just reminds everyone like, what the hell are we doing here? You know? And you even get some pushback, light, but notable from Tom Cotton, for example, over in the Senate. He put out a tweet saying, "Beef prices are too high for a simple reason. Our cattle herds too small. Imported beef below market prices will only put more pressure on our cattlemen." He's kind of echoing that cattleman's message there. Of note, and this is one poll, and I don't really expect the Democrats to win Arkansas, but there was a poll showing a farmer, Hallie Schaffner, who's running against Cotton, beating him in a recent poll. So to me, regardless of what actually happens in November, it's like, it seems like Cotton feels enough heat on this that he has to put out that statement. I think that says a lot about where, you know, kind of the midterms stand right now. Yeah. I also saw that poll. I have no idea how legit it is or maybe, or if it's just an outlier or whatever, but it is pretty striking. Yeah, I agree. The statement does say something. Cotton putting out the statement to me, in some ways, kind of buttresses the poll, even if it's not right, the fact that he feels like he's in a race, right? And he feels like he's got to distance himself from Trump, which he has not done on anything. I mean, he's a supposed Trump. China hawk never distances from Trump on all of the ways that he cozies up to China. And he's never distanced from Hank Seth on the way he's fucked up the war, but here he is. Yeah. The war, the terrorists, I mean, those things they've had to vote for or vote, prevent voting, voting on, let's put it that way. Democrats need to really bring that home. This is not just Trump's war and Trump's tariffs. It's the Republicans in Congress war and the Republicans in Congress tariffs. Let's talk about that midterm wise. There's been a lot of scuttle on social media this weekend. Something I've been saying for a minute is that there's some feelings that this is like 2006. Yeah. I've talked about 2006 a couple of times because I was working that year in Iowa on a Republican congressional race. It was a challenger going against Leonard Boswell, R.I.P., who is a Democrat representing the Des Moines area back then. And we ended up being the second closest challenger in the country. The Republicans did not pick up any seats that year. We did not win a single one. And you had the war. You had Harriet Myers, Katrina, Mark Foley. And this thing after thing was happening. Republicans didn't pick up a single seat in the House that year. And I brought it up in the context of, like, the Democrats also won weird places. Like, I was working on this hotly contested, supposedly, like, swing seat around Des Moines. And then the Democrat goes and picks up this seat in eastern Iowa that the Republican Jim Leach had held forever. And, like, the guy didn't even campaign. He was like a professor. And he just won because the, you know, the wave was so big. And to me, I think. I think that is kind of an instructive way to think about how this year could go. A lot of work between now and then. But I don't know. Where do you think things stand right now? I've always been on the sort of wave-ish side of what could happen this year just because of Trump's approval rating and the very consistent, gradual but consistent decline. And I just think history suggests history could be wrong or could be this could be a year where history gets countermanded, so to speak. But history suggests that just if Trump's at 35 or 38 or even 40 among those who act. Show up to vote, which would be a bit of a tick back up for him. That's rough on these candidates, Senate candidates and certainly House candidates. I mean, just by definition, right? If he's at 40, then if a state's plus 10 Trump or a district's plus 10 Trump, he's probably at 50 there. But he's not above 50. And our elections are so nationalized now that if Trump's below 50, as Ron Brownstein likes to point out over and over, but correctly, you're in trouble if you're a Republican candidate. I'd say incumbent or challenger. So I think a lot of these states and some districts, I mean, everything's more polarized. And there are fewer competitive House districts and all that, but fewer competitive states than there used to be in a way. But I do wonder about some of these. I think the farm economy in particular, those Midwestern and upper Midwestern states, I mean, they have had Democratic members of the Senate and Democratic governors in like our memory. It's not like no one's ever voted for a Democrat. Kansas has a Democratic governor. Montana had a Democratic senator. I mean, these, you know, these are not states where it's like. Well, because people, I think, always talk about the, you know, when they think about the way that Trump changed. Yeah. The coalitions, you know, the famous thing to talk about that everybody talks about is like Scranton or Toledo, right? Like he did well in these kind of hollowed out industrial towns in the Midwest. But like that's the same type of shift happened in the farm country, like along the Mississippi, like that Eastern Iowa was very Democratic. Dubuque, the Quad Cities, they had a Democratic congressman for a long time. Tom Harkin was a senator from Iowa. He's ran up big numbers in Eastern Iowa. So I have the people that live there. There's not a huge turnover. A lot of these folks remember voting for Democrats in the not too recent past. And, you know, Trump, you know, you end up having this big flip there. It's not like a huge influx of population there. It's pretty stagnant population. Like all of these older people have like voted for Democrats. They do feel out of touch with the National Democratic Party. But like, might they vote for their local Democrat this time when all of these things are going bad? I think. So in a couple of states, they're independent candidates where the Democrats have actually intelligently stepped aside. So sure, if you can pick up 10 percent of the vote in a Senate race, leave aside the House, if the rural vote is 25 percent of the vote in the state, go from 25 to 35 is worth as much as going from 65 to 75, more or less, if the same number of people obviously live there in an urban area or something like that. So it really matters to reduce those margins, leave aside whether they could actually be Democratic again. And I think that could happen in a lot of these areas. And I think Democrats have a pretty good cast of characters running for both the Senate and the House. I know everyone panics about one or two who are somewhat problematic, and I wouldn't have voted for in primaries like in Michigan. But honestly, if you step back, I tried to do this a little when I got back from vacation on Saturday, just look at the whole map. If you had told us a year ago this was going to be the cast of characters in the competitive 10 or so, if there are Senate races in the competitive House districts, it's pretty good, really. And incidentally, it's a big coalition. There are always going to be one or two on the left and one or two. There are always going to be one or two who aren't on the left and then a lot sort of who are centrist center left. And that's kind of what's happened. But I think the variety is pretty good. A lot of them are younger. Some of the ones who are older are well-established, well-liked, like Roy Cooper in North Carolina. Our colleague Laurie Deegan had a good piece about his race this weekend. So, no, I feel like the pieces are falling into place pretty well, I've got to say, for the Democrats. I mean, knock on wood and with all the obvious caveats, but I do feel like it could be a pretty big wave. And waves can surprise. They tend to kind of have another. They tend to surge, if that's the right, continue that metaphor, often in September. That certainly happened in 94, which I remember very well. I mean, a long time ago, but I was sort of much more involved in that one. But I think that was true in 06. Certainly in Virginia was where I live. George Allen was still ahead in polling, I'm pretty certain, at this time. And I would say into mid-September even. George Allen was staffing up for 2008. Right, first presidential campaign, no. Yeah, I had some calls. I was looking for jobs for 2008. He was popular. He did a governor. He elected governor first time in 95. I don't think he'd ever left. Lost an election in Virginia. He was elected to the Senate, obviously. Running for re-election, likely presidential candidate. And just made one sort of mistake on the trail. Didn't handle it well. But mostly it was just the national wave. And it was early indicated Virginia moving purple and then blue. That would be a fair point to make also. But again, we don't know whether some of these other things happening in the Midwest couldn't be early indicators of things that could happen two, four, six, eight years from now. People are a little too convinced that what's happened in the last one, two, three cycles necessarily is going to hold, you know, forever, right? Maybe our Labor Day podcast should just be a 1994 and 2006 retrospective. I think people might like that. Take people back from before Trump. At the end of the summer, we'll talk about it. Give us some feedback if that's what you want. If you want one Monday off, we'll do a little, you know, this is political history with Bill and Tim. Eating well can be difficult when life gets busy. Finding time for meal planning and prepping isn't happening for me. I just, I honestly. I honor all the moms and dads who have like a meal plan and meal prep for the week. They do that on Sunday. Some of my friends do that. God love you. That's not my life. And if that's not your life, you might need something that's a little easier. Easy cleanup, easy cooking. That's where our friends at Forkful come in. They have meals that prioritize flavor, function, and health. Ready-to-eat meals made with high-quality premium proteins, grass-fed bison, well-caught salmon, and fresh veggies. They have delicious menus that fit your lifestyle and meal preferences, including gluten-free, dairy-free, keto, plant-based, GLP-1, and low-carb meals. No meal prep, cooking, or cleanup. Just clean flavors and ready in just three minutos. Delivered right to your door within 24 to 48 hours. Boom. You can do it right now. And you got dinner for Thursday already. This week, we did the chimichurri filet mignon with spinach and asparagus. My daughter likes spinach and asparagus. Can you believe that? Hmm. Not all kids do that. I feel blessed about that. It was very flavorful. The steak was tender. The chimichurri was fresh and citrusy. Could have been a Buenos Aires. Restaurant-quality stuff in the comfort of your own home without all the hassle of cooking. Explore our plans and menu of fresh, ready-to-eat meals at forkfulmeals.com and use code THEBULLWORK to get 50% off your first order. That's forkfulmeals.com slash THEBULLWORK and use promo code THEBULLWORK for 50% off. Thanks to Forkful for sponsoring this episode. The other news kind of related to, I think, the political dynamics that are happening right now was, the New York Times reported over the weekend that Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner had a private one-on-one meeting that was brokered by a mutual friend. There are a couple ways to look at that. The generous way, which I don't share, but I will state, is that MAGA is already basically conceding the House that Trump already is, and so they're trying to think about what to do going forward, and, you know, maybe it's a good, political sign that Kushner wanted to talk to Jeffries. The less generous way to see that is that Hakeem Jeffries is already standing down from the battle stations and is planning on being more accommodating than we would wish he would be during the 27, 28 end-of-Trump years, where, as far as I'm concerned, the only conversation he should be having with Jared Kushner is across the table during an oversight hearing. After he's been subpoenaed. But, Bill, where were you at on the report of that meeting? I'm on the ungenerous side. And one thing, it's not even about 27, 28. I think some of them have talked themselves into the notion that, you know, we have to look like we're ready for governing in 27, 28. We can't just be running against Trump and against the Trump administration and against ICE and against terrorists, against corruption and against the war. I mean, God forbid, that would be like a pretty good platform to run onto me. But for them, you know, we've got to show that we're willing to govern and affordability. And that means working with them. And so meeting of this kind might signal that we're not just saying no. Just say no. Just say no for the next three months. You end up going to really have to say no for the next two years, honestly. And that's good, too, because you know what? Saving us from autocracy, from a stupid war, from failed terrorists, from ICE's horrors, that would be a very, very good thing to do. But no, they have to be working with Jared Kushner on affordability. Kushner, of all people, is at the center of all the corruption, right? Why are they meeting with him? He hasn't testified. in like eight years or something. I pulled this up the other day. It's crazy. He's a point person on negotiating the Iran war deal, the Ukraine deal, both that have failed while he's taking money from Saudi, while he's also sparked an uprising in Albania. Kushner should be under oath talking to Hakeem Jeffries. And like the idea that, oh, we can find some common ground. Why would you want to find common ground? What would you find on what? Like Donald Trump's going to sign some bill and that you're going to go to the White House, you know, for a bill signing next to the rebuilt East Wing. Like, what are you even talking about? Like, what are you imagining? The whole thing is crazy. And there were some people that were defending him talking about like, well, people complimented Zoran when he meant to meet Trump. And it's like, these are different jobs. Like Zoran is the mayor of a city. He went there, I think, in the hopes of talking Trump down from sending ice thugs and invading his city. And, you know, he sat there and Trump complimented him. It was kind of an alpha dog move, really. That is different. It's different from the Speaker of the House, supposedly, allegedly, incoming Speaker of the House, who is going to have to be the point man in holding Trump accountable over the next two years. That's going to be his main job, doing like a behind-the-scenes meeting with his son-in-law. Like, these are not comparable. Zoran had been elected mayor. So, obviously, if you're the mayor of New York and you have a whole bunch of issues, maybe you need to go meet with the President of the United States if he asks to meet with you or is willing to meet with you. He did probably put off the ice attack on New York. I think it's beginning to happen. Now, probably. So, maybe that was worth it. And, anyway, he didn't give away much. But, yeah, the private, the secret meeting arranged by an intermediary with someone who's not the President of the United States, but the son-in-law of the President of the United States, who's engaged in all kinds of corruption and, as you say, all kinds of failed policies to the degree he's doing policies and hasn't never testified to Congress. I mean, yeah, it's utterly, utterly ridiculous. To the war, your friend Bob Kagan wrote about this in The Atlantic. And, yeah. Clever. Bob is the only person outflanking me on how bad the war is. Every time I think I'm at the outer edge of my rhetoric and opinion on how bad this war is, Bob writes something that I was like, oh, it's actually a little bit worse than I thought. His take was that Iran has now reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and will be the dominant power in the region going forward rather than Israel or us along with our allies in the Gulf states. He writes, for years, the world has been dealing with an Iran constraint. It will now. We'll discover what Iran unleashed looks like. You know, obviously, Trump has been making these threats and then backing down. But an interesting thing he pointed out is that Trump was specifically ordering attacks on Iranian infrastructure, oil and energy infrastructure, and did one time make an attack on them. And then Iran attacked oil fields in the Gulf states. And the Gulf states are like, holy fuck, this is a huge threat to us. And so now every time Trump threatens that, the Gulf states are calling Trump and saying, don't do that again. Don't. Don't do the energy infrastructure again. And Kagan's point is like the particulars of that just shows why kind of Iran has gained more leverage in all this. Yeah, I think it's a very good piece. People should read it. And I think it's consistent with what he's been saying, what we've been saying, honestly, for six months. It's not just an embarrassing loss. It's not just tragic, obviously, in terms of the fatalities and the casualties. It's an actual strategic loss in the Middle East and I would say in the world for the U.S. And it has all kinds of ramifications people haven't, you know, focused on yet. And we're not sure. These things are, the world is, these things are contingent. They may not happen, all of them. There could be, Iran could screw up and overreach and there could, other nations could rally against Iran and so forth. But the degree to which all kinds of things are being unleashed now, including Iranian control of the Strait, but also a nuclear proliferation scenario in the Middle East and then elsewhere, incidentally. I do think this will turn out to have been a very, unfortunately, a very big deal, this war. The best hope for it, and this is something we were urging, I think, and talking about a month into the war. The war was ended, ended quickly. You take the loss, but not cataclysmic. The longer it goes on, the longer Iran gets to show how strong they are and how weak we are. We look both erratic and weak, if you want to think of it this way. It's one thing to be erratic and strong. That's kind of what Trump looked like in the first year. That's the Nixon thing. Okay. People are a little intimidated. They don't like you. You're a bully. Ultimately, that's not good for the U.S. To be a bully, but you know, bullies do kind of carry a certain power with them and people don't quite want to take them on. If you look like a weak bully, not good. Not good. And the real world results have been, I think, worse than also people realize. Washington Post reported over the weekend that the number of U.S. service members reported wounded or killed in the Iran war has jumped to 774. The previous estimates were much lower than that because the Pentagon was hiding the ball on this. And I guess the true numbers have now trickled out. That's significant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously. Yeah. And of course, they've they haven't told the truth about how much the bases were damaged and so decades of building up this base infrastructure in the Middle East, maybe it was getting out of date. Maybe we should have rethought it at some point. But now just to be deprived of it, we can't use it. Well, why couldn't the USS Lincoln, why couldn't the sailors get decent food? Because they couldn't decide to be shipped for over 2000 miles, I think, from Diego Garcia. She couldn't use our base in Bahrain, the whole point of the base in Bahrain. I mean, literally, the reason we have these giant bases that are quite expensive and important if you're a global power is to support for deployed troops. I mean, what else are they doing there? You know, I mean, there's some diplomatic stuff and other stuff, too. And if they can't support the forward deployed troops, it's it's a very big defeat for us. And then they the army chief of staff announces the new army chief of staff, who's excess crony, who replaced the very, very well respected chief of staff and fired suddenly during the war. So closing that down, that drone thing we were working on, you know, that experimental drone unit seems kind of important to get a little bit up to speed here on drones. Maybe they're doing it elsewhere in the army. I hope they are in the military. But again, the degree of damage has been done. Done to the military kind of across the board because of excess politicization and favoritism and and firing of somebody well qualified people. We haven't seen, unfortunately, all of that yet either. August is the perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush begins, and a wardrobe refresh is a good place to start. And that's why I love shopping with our friends at Quince. Quince is all about fewer, better pieces. 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And in some ways, I think it's what the Republicans in the country deserve, is having somebody who's just totally an empty vessel for whatever Donald Trump wants. It is unbelievable on immigration, since we began with that. That is one issue with the Republicans. On some of the others, tariffs, that's clear distancing, the war, they don't want to talk about it. That's their way of distancing. On immigration, I feel like the Republican base, I mean, there's some evidence for this even in the polling, has not moved that much. There's been some movement among soft Republicans and some swing voters against ICE and mass deportation, but certainly in Republican primaries. She's not wrong to think that she should be more fervently anti-immigrant than even than Lindsey had become. I mean, Lindsey actually never quite could convincingly do it. Because he actually, on that one issue, probably remembered that he had been a co-sponsor of the bipartisan immigration bill in 2013 and stuff. So, Lindsey didn't really go down the most demagogic rabbit holes, did he, on immigration? I don't think so. Not in his campaign. He kept quiet, I guess. Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure he said something gross about it at some point. But obviously, some political consultant said, here, we've got data here. The one thing, you know, he had once been with McCain on immigration, so you've got to go right-wing lunatic on that. Norman is kind of a right-wing lunatic, was the head of the Freedom Caucus, I think, in the House. I have this hunch, totally based on no evidence, that's probably wrong. So, I mean, I don't know. If I could get good odds, I would bet on Norman, in the sense that she's been so ridiculous as a candidate, and is just, if I can, the sister of Lindsey Graham. It's sad that he died, but I mean, that's not really a qualification. And Trump coming in, maybe Trump's clout isn't quite what it was. I don't know. I wonder if it's possible. It would be interesting if Norman made her close or beat her, I'd say. It would be. Yeah, the Norman situation is weird, like, because he was one of the point people in the instruction, as I mentioned, like one of the people plotting. Along with Mo Brooks in Alabama, and the Republican nominee for governor in Arizona, Andy Biggs, who I did a big video on, you can go check out in Bullard Takes. He's a lunatic. But then he endorsed Haley. Right. You know, so he's kind of, you know, he doesn't map very easily on the kind of MAGA internecine war, but we'll see what happens tomorrow night. In today's world, planning ahead isn't always top of mind. But not having life insurance can leave families facing. difficult financial uncertainty during already emotional times. In many cases, loved ones are left managing expenses, debts, or long-term obligations without a clear plan in place. Life insurance is one way to help provide financial security and support when it's needed most. 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Last night, Enes Kanter, who was a traffic cone of a center in the NBA, played for a bunch of teams, including the Portland Trailblazers, where he got absolutely dominated by Nicole Jokic in one playoff series. He went to the Fever versus Sky game. In Chicago last night, sat courtside in some anti-trans shirts. It seems to me, just kind of based on my reading of social media, that this is funded by one of Trump's C4s. They were posting about an America First Policy Institute. It seems like he's on the take now from a Trump-affiliated group to do this. He gets in a verbal dispute with one of the women on the court. She starts to go towards him. He walks out onto the baseline. He gets kicked out of the game. Then he cries like a little bitch in the lobby for getting kicked out of the game. Before this, it all happened. It was before bedtime. I was watching some of this with my daughter. Just a great game. Really fun game. I mean, the Fever, like, just draining Steph Curry threes all over the court. And it's an unfortunate situation because Enes was actually, I think we both had kind of worked with him a little bit a while back because he was a big advocate for political prisoners in his homeland of Turkey. In particular, his dad was a political prisoner. But again. I did some work with him on political prisoners in Saudi Arabia. I don't know. His dad's out of prison. It'd be one thing if he was, like, putting on this show to help his dad and figuring it would help him get in good graces with Trump. I know it would be horrible, but you can understand that. But now, I guess this is something very much darker than that. It is darker. No, I knew him a little. We sort of, you know, it was like a DM-level relationship on Twitter or something at the time. And I think I met him a couple times. But yeah, yeah, he's very tall. That was my main memory. But no, he was a brave, I mean, opponent of the Trump administration. And a good spokesman for human rights, it seemed like, around the world. And then he got sucked into Trump world. And now he's all in. I guess that issue, too, the transgender issue and the immigration issue, strike me as the two where people get sucked in and they don't stop. I mean, they go all the way. And it's really terrible. I mean, sad, but really terrible for the country, obviously. And for them, if I could say, for their character, in my opinion. They just become haters. They hate. And what is this whole idiotic WN? I'm declaring myself. I'm declaring myself transgender woman so I could be drafted in the WNBA. It's really funny. I mean, it's just so gross, really, and disgusting. As were the attacks on the immigrants. And it is dangerous. They are demonizing people. They're going to get people hurt. They are getting people hurt. And people are getting beat up, right? It's because of the cause of the, you know, at a time when there's this unabashed demonization of people who have done nothing. Whatever the controversy is about, very minor, if I might say. You know, transgender women in sports or about maybe some of the stuff, how you handle children and parental consent or and all that. These are adults, I mean, who have done nothing to anyone like Julia Curley, who you interviewed so well. And they're just going after them because out of hatred. It's just hatred. I mean, there's nothing. There's no rationale. There's no argument. There's no nothing. And I think the same is very much true, obviously, of the immigrants, especially the ones who've been here a long time and are doing no harm to anyone. And we're welcomed in their communities. What's happening in spring? Springfield with the Haitians is terrible. I mean, so I those two issues, really, I feel like there's a dark side of the soul. And unfortunately, that's been exposed. And unfortunately, a lot of Americans, a fair number of Americans are OK with that. Yeah. And he's in the stadium shouting at people like in the fans. Like, what are you doing? Also, this controversy, just my final thing. This is to your point, like whatever you think about youth sports. And anyway, I think it's overblown, but I think it's complicated. There's certain sports where there should be different rules and other sports. Like the I just think the reasonable view on all this. But like none of it has anything to do with the WNBA. There's never been a transgender person in the WNBA. There's no transgender person trying to get into the WNBA. Like the only person trying to get into the WNBA is Enes Kanter. He's made it up himself. He's pretending like he's being like there's no problem here. It's like it's so so you've totally inserted yourself into this and and created and stirred up all this hate and animus over nothing. And it's really it's really shameful. Final thing. On the intersection of Trump and sports, did the dumb car race, whatever. If you're into car racing, that's fine. Everybody has to have their own interest. That's what makes our country beautiful. I can't think of anything less appealing to me than attending a car race meant to be a tribute to Donald Trump. And to me, like that, like combines two of my least favorite, you know, endeavors. And I could not imagine anywhere I would want to be less than that. I went to a single car race in my life. I'm a fragile gay boy. It was very loud. My ears hurt. I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't know what I was watching. It was not not a fun experience for me. They had it through the streets of D.C. That it was an eyesore on D.C. It created all this traffic. Do you have any interest in going? Were you wanting to monitor? I did not. I've never really been to one of those big car race. But at least if you do it in D.500, there's like an actual racetrack that's set up for this here. They had to, you know, do a lot of closed National Airport and close a whole bunch of avenues in D.C. And, you know, you spent a lot of money making sure the streets could support these cars and all this. And so it's all I don't I don't have the impression it was that big a deal. I don't have the impression. I talked to someone who's in D.C. yesterday that there were D.C. was wildly crowded or the hotels were full or anything like that. So I think it was all kind of much. much ado about not too much. I do think that, I mean, it's the last, I guess, of those Freedom 250 events, the 250th anniversary events that Trump commandeered and got the federal government to spend money on. I feel like the whole thing, this is good news, I think it was a bust. I mean, Trump's attempt to hijack the 250th anniversary, this is the end of it, presumably. And it kind of ended up going nowhere. And that's good for the country. Totally failed. The other good thing, the other kind of silver lining of all this is that Melania attended with him. And so we got video of them fighting during the car race, which I enjoy. It appeared to be fighting, I guess. I think I know what a couple spat looks like. And maybe they just both have RBF, but they seemed like they were quite upset at each other for a few, you know, for about a minute there. And then, you know, Natalie was kind of over Melania's left shoulder standing 10 yards away. So it was that element to it. So, you know, if the result of this was a little marital tiff, I can take just a modicum of joy out of that. No? And we deserve a lot of credit for going 45 minutes or whatever it is in this podcast without mentioning Natalie. I feel like I missed it. I think I went on to the beach on a week ago Saturday. And I think that's kind of when the whole thing flew up, wasn't it? Because Ossoff made his remarks and then they all hit back at him. So I spent the week at the beach reading about Natalie Harper. Do you have any, I don't, I don't. I mean, I just, you got you and JVL and everyone have done an excellent job discussing it. And I mean, it's all, it's all ridiculous. It's all ridiculous, except it tells you a lot about the Trump administration, not something we didn't already know, but still about the Trump White House, that one of the five or six people, apparently closest to Trump and most influential on Trump. I think that's fair to say one of the three took with him on that ridiculous food cart thing in Ankara, right? A woman who's making $150,000 a year, as Trump's special assistant is Natalie Harper. I mean, given what we know about her qualifications or lack of qualifications for any senior job in the White House at any, of any kind, right? I mean, you know, I mean, it tells you something about the Trump White House and about Trump's psychology that he likes that. I mean, it's terrible. I mean, I don't know. I don't know her at all, obviously. And I don't want to pop psychology and all that stuff, but I don't feel like it's doing her any favor for her to be treated in this way. I know enough having read the letters and that's all that I need to know about what's happening with Natalie Harper. I think that's true for everybody. Bill Crystal, appreciate you very much. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the show. We'll see you next Monday, all right? Great. All right. We'll see everybody. 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 DiCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.