Did Trump and DoD Secretly Pull the Plug on Ukraine?

Welcome once again to The Bulwark Takes. I'm Mark Palomaropoulos, a 26-year veteran of the CIA. I'm joined by my co-host, Michael Weiss, an intrepid investigative journalist, father of many scoops, also owner of a great dog named Humphrey. Father of many pets, domesticated and otherwise. Both of us are kind of sleepy because, holy crap, you know, the overnight events in Ukraine are really dramatic. And there is so much in terms of social media has exploded on this. There's confusion on what exactly happened. There was some technical or perhaps man-made difficulties with Starlink, which may have resulted in some Russian drone and cruise missile attacks getting in. But, Michael, you can kind of get into details of that. But essentially, the Ukrainians now are publicly blaming Elon Musk for perhaps tweaking Starlink to, in essence, allow Russia to strike Ukraine, which would be a massive issue. You and I have talked about force protection issues. I think we can put to bed the notion that U.S. intelligence sharing has been pulled back. It is not. Primarily, we talked about for these force protection reasons that are evident when you have thousands of Americans inside Ukraine, including a big U.S. diplomatic presence. But was there some kind of kind of fuckery on the part of Elon Musk? He hasn't commented on this. Can you just give us kind of a dump on this? Because it's a really big deal. And as a former intelligence officer, this is the kind of and as investigative journalists, you got to get to the bottom of this. All right. So before I get into the reporting, I just want to caveat this, that we're recording this at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning. So it's not going to be released until many hours later. So a lot could change. And this is obviously a developing story. So just FYI, what I'm about to say could be completely irrelevant by the time you log on and listen to this. But here's here's what we know. So when the meeting between the Americans and the Ukrainians and actually the Europeans were present happened last week in Miami. And this bilateral U.S.-Russian diesel deal was dropped on the Ukrainians by Kushner and Witkoff. At that meeting, Jared Kushner insinuated, although he did not expressly threaten, that if the Ukrainians just didn't play ball and accede to what was about to happen, intelligence sharing could be cut. And ever since, there have been threats leveled at the Ukrainians that this indeed could be happening. Now, I've reported from the Ukrainian side and from the Ukrainian side. I've reported from the American side almost immediately that there has been no disruption in intelligence sharing. It's been status quo. I said on the last program that one of my American sources, a senior U.S. intelligence official, said, actually, we can't really afford to sever intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians because we need their help for counter drone response in the Middle East. Right. I mean, remember, the Ukrainians are past masters at modern warfare and, you know, we can't do without their their. Know how and their technical savvy. So that's one thing. The other thing, threat intelligence. This is your your notion of force protection. We have a self-interest in maintaining this relationship because we have personnel on the ground. We have diplomats in Kiev. We have Americans elsewhere, journalists, thousands of people. So if we were not if we didn't share with the Ukrainians, ballistic missiles are incoming and they didn't do their air alerts and they have, you know, apps on phones that that notify civilians that, you know, take to the shelter and all that. We would put our own. We would put our own people at risk. And duty to warn statue says we can't do that. Now, Trump administration, of course, always thinks they can do anything. But this goes way beyond the pale. Right. Now, here's what's happened over the course of 48 hours last night and then the night before ballistic missiles launched by Russia got through and some of those launches were not alerted or there was no prior warning given. So Zelensky has tweeted, I think, twice now we were not given notification. So this this sparked a. Fury of hysteria and anger and recrimination and, frankly, conspiracy theories on social media that the Intel relationship has been severed to the best of my knowledge as of now, it has not. And again, this is coming from the American and the Ukrainian side. How do we know this? The comms person for the Ukrainian Air Force put out on Telegram a comment or his comments were reported on Telegram, I should say, that actually what happened last night was the first wave of ballistic missiles were undetected, but the second, third and fourth waves were detected and the intelligence was shared. Now, this can happen in war. Sometimes the Russians launch missiles. Sometimes they launch their air defense system missiles, S-300 and S-400. They use them as land attack missiles, right? These things can get through. Sometimes there's bad weather. This is the excuse the Americans have given the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are highly skeptical that there was poor cloud cover accounted for a lack of good satellite technology. To understand or to detect the ballistic missile launch, whatever, it doesn't make much sense to me why the U.S. would do this for reasons already given force protection. And also, look, up to this point, I think last night, the Ukrainians began to strike at refineries and energy infrastructure. But prior to that, when Zelensky was first saying, oh, maybe, you know, we weren't given notice notification, the Ukrainians had abided by this energy truce, which seems to exist only in Donald Trump's. Feebrile imagination. They refrained from striking energy infrastructure. Instead, what were they doing? They were hitting data centers, taking out Yandex complexes and basically hobbling, you know, everything from mobile payment apps to banking on the Russian side. So because, you know, Trump has said for many weeks now, you can hit anything, but don't hit the diesel, right? That's been his red line. Donald Trump was asked by reporters, did we cut the intelligence? He denied it. Now, you know, he would say that or you can say, take it with a pinch of salt. It's Donald Trump. But this is not this is a guy who's not shy about boasting that he's trying to fuck over the Ukrainians. Right. I mean, he said Zelensky should be replaced. They need a new president. He's called Zelensky dictator. He is he is very out front when he wants to bash the Ukrainians over the head. So you're saying that if they were to cut the intelligence, he would just cut the intelligence. He would cut the intelligence and say, we've done this and we've done it to teach him a lesson because I said, you know, don't hit the energy infrastructure. And they did. Regardless of how, you know, amoral, immoral. Against all U.S. statue would be your argument is that he would do it openly, which is which is kind of what that's his style, to be honest. Right. It is. And, you know, keep in mind, there are different levels of intelligence. There's the threat intelligence, which I've discussed, force protection. There's the intelligence the Ukrainians provide to us about the Russians. I mean, remember, the Ukrainians run a pretty vast human apparatus. They recruit Russian spies. They acquire all sorts of military technical information. From the Russian side. They've been doing this for years. I was there when we were building that. Yes. Yes. And then there is, you know, certainly the more covert liaison partnership stuff where we run ops with the Ukrainians. We don't know about them, nor should we, because they're ops. Right. I mean, and that that has actually not only continued, but expanded, according to people that you and I both know from your former organization. So so far, I have heard nothing to suggest that any of those elements have been disrupted. But what about the Starlink people? The Starlink piece? The Starlink piece. So I woke up this morning first to messages from you, which is wake up, which is your tendency. We got a podcast. Wake up. Right. And so what has happened is Starlink, you know, the satellite Internet technology that's owned by Elon Musk and contracted to various countries and also Star Shield, which is the hard variant of Starlink, which is operated by the U.S. Pentagon. The Ukrainians need Starlink for a variety of reasons. But most importantly. They're middle strike campaign launching drones to disrupt Russian logistics and lines of communication, particularly in the south, where they're trying to essentially bifurcate the direct, you know, the so-called land bridge from Russia to Crimea. And they've had massive success in the last few months doing that, blowing up trucks that are carrying things like diesel, but also just military hardware, resupplies, ammunition, hitting personnel and all the rest of it. They're a middle strike campaign. And they've had massive success in the last few months doing that. known as the geron 5 that's a a russian drone that's jet powered so it sort of functions more like a cruise missile than a drone and these things are pretty devastating so throttling starlink by throttling i mean they've lowered the speed at which um you know the the the devices connect to the satellites it's not that starlink has been cut off but it's been slowed down to a point where it's affecting missions on the ukrainian side that's dangerous now here's what's what starlink is not used for at least not yet although the ukrainians have been trying to get the americans to and elon musk to agree to allow them to use away it's not being used to power homegrown ukrainian mission uh munitions flying into energy infrastructure deep inside russia right you know for musk the red line has always been because that's turned off right right it's turned off right now everyone i'm talking to from the ukrainian side military other reporters on the ground in kiev believe that the starlink decision is deliberate and if it were deliberate it wouldn't just be elon making this call but it would be the u.s government hold on that so let's unpack that because that that to me is just as immoral just as wrong as if we cut off intel sharing in terms of the force protection measures and you know so so elon musk doing this i guess they're quite well they haven't responded yet but is he doing this on his own? Or is he doing it in conjunction with the Pentagon or with the White House? And which, once again, you are that's that's putting U.S. civilians and U.S. government officials at risk. I mean, to me, that is a massive scandal. If start if Musk did this on purpose, just as bad as if we had cut off force protection intel. So to me, it's important to make that difference. But we've got to get to the bottom of that. I mean, this is a huge if true. It's a huge it's a huge. I mean, so far I've seen nothing. And keep in mind, by the way, on the back of Donald Trump going to war again with Zelensky verbally, Elon Musk tweeted just days ago, Zelensky has gone too far. Now, why is this important? So some of you will recall at the beginning of the full scale invasion, when the Ukrainians were pushing back and going on the counteroffensive, they had an option. They had a mission to basically destroy the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol. Right. Occupied Crimea. And they were going to use Starlink connected munitions to do it. And Elon Musk, and this was reported in the Walter Isaacson biography, basically kanked that whole plan because he got nervous. He doesn't want Starlink to be used for military operations, even though everyone's using Starlink for military operations, including, by the way, U.S. servicemen in the Persian Gulf who confirmed to me that rather than rely on the hard star shield Pentagon variant, you know what these guys are doing? Our men and women in the Middle East, they're going to. They're going to malls in Dubai, buying Starlink terminals and affixing them to drones that we have modeled in many respects on what the Ukrainians pioneered in their war. So everybody's using Starlink for military purposes. But Elon, of course. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. If you want a small business, you know how important it is to stay on top of your numbers. That's why I want to tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a platform built for small business owners that brings accounting, payments, payroll and analytics. You can access reports, visual dashboards, forecasts and AI insights to help you better understand your cash flow and make informed decisions about your business. Learn more at Xero.com. Parrot's Kremlin propaganda was playing patty cake with Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and notorious alcoholic, a guy without much power. But he's sort of like the id of the ultra nationalist hawkish element within Russia about how the war should end. Ukraine should forfeit territory and all the rest of it. So Elon, I mean, he's he's he's lost in the sauce here. And Ukrainians, he went from being a hero to zero because Starlink was critical for the early days of the war. It is still critical as for reasons I've just given. And what had happened after he kind of got wobbly and started to move in a pro-Russian direction, the now former Ukrainian defense minister Fedorov, who is very young and very IT savvy, went and personally liaised with Musk. They had phone calls and persuaded him to switch Starlink off on the Russian side. So the Russians were taking pirate, not pirated. They were basically stealing or buying Starlink terminals on the black market, using it for their military purposes and their warfighting capability. And that was causing enormous amounts of damage on the Ukrainian side. When Musk cut that off on the Russian side, the Ukrainians started to perform better on the battlefield. And right now, I mean, we're sitting here talking, you know, Marco Rubio said that the war is over. That the war is in a state of stalemate. You hear people like J.D. Vance and other so-called restrainers or soft-on-Russia types in this administration say that, you know, the Ukrainians cannot go on the front foot again. It's just going to stay like this and death and destruction is happening on both sides. It's terrible, blah, blah, blah. Actually, the Ukrainians, for the first time, I think, in a long time, have retaken hundreds of square kilometers of territory north of Lyman in the Donbass. So they've gone on a counteroffensive known as Operation Vivaldi. I think it's about three different phases. And they've really punished the Russians, pushed them back to a point where I think the Russians were absolutely surprised by this development. This isn't getting a lot of press attention in the West because we're too busy talking about this bullshit, right? But the Ukrainians are actually doing fairly well on the battlefield. And I think in September, this is according to a Finnish military monitor group called Blackbird. In September. The Russians lost more territory than they were able to gain. And I think it was the biggest, most significant tactical loss for them since, I think, early or late 2022. And there's always that difference between the horrible nature of the strikes inside in civilian areas in Ukraine, which which are terrible and awful. And it's a war crime or terrorist activity by the Russians and what's happening on the battlefield. And, of course, morale does matter for the Ukrainian population. But I think that's a that's a really important. You know, to distinguish that's important that you just did. But let's so put this in, you know, big picture once again. I mean, this goes back to kind of the good guys versus the bad guys. Like, what are we doing here? We're relying on this single billionaire or multibillionaire trillionaire now for a system that he can either turn on or off or tweak on his own or he can do it in conjunction with our government. So my question to you, then, as a journalist, obviously, we have to find out what happened. There is the Ukrainians have already said publicly they've inquired with Musk, with Starlink. Shouldn't there be invest? I mean, the media, I think, should be all over this. Congress, if they had any role, should be investigating this because of not only the humanitarian humanitarian issue of Ukrainian civilians, but the force protection issue of American citizens. I mean, that's the thing that to me, I think, would would generate at least some more outrage here in the United States. I mean, so where where do we go now? We have to get the answers to this. This this this is going to be uncovered. This will be on the front page of The New York Times within hours, if not. Days semaphore had an item about, oh, the administration is considering it is debating whether or not to cut intelligence. And you and I have talked about this ad nauseum on this show. The one outlier, the one person pushing back forcefully against this is John Ratcliffe, CIA director. He better resign, by the way. If they do this shit, that's that's that's something to resign. He's got nothing left to hang his hat on. Yeah, I mean, that's just bullshit if he sticks around. I agree. I agree. This message is sponsored by Talkspace. Therapy is important, but let's be honest. It can also be. Quite expensive. And when life gets stressful, finding the time and money to prioritize your mental health can feel like, you know, one more thing on an already long to do list. That's why I like what Talkspace is doing to make therapy more accessible. Like I mentioned in earlier pod, when I was young, I had a real phobia about my parents traveling. Kind of made me paralyzed in fear. Therapy was really important for me then. Instead of having to work around in-person appointments, Talkspace lets you connect with licensed therapists online, making it easier to fit in. And the cost doesn't have to be another barrier. Talkspace therapy and psychiatry are covered by most insurance plans. And most insured members pay a copay of zero dollars. Let me say that again. Zero dollars. Even if you're paying out of pocket, Talkspace is committed to making quality care more affordable. As a listener of this podcast, you will get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com and enter the promo code SPACE80. That's S-P-A-C-E-8-0. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com and enter the promo code SPACE80. There's a lot of murkiness, but let's leave aside what is actually happening versus what is just being speculated on or hypothesized. I think that the broad strokes to take the 60,000 foot altitude view is Donald Trump is desperate. He's a. He's a busted flush president. His poll numbers are in the toilet. He's probably going to lose one house of Congress, if not both. He knows that people are already preparing for the post-Trump era, including Republicans, who are getting very tetchy about. I don't want to bury the lead here about Guilfoyle because we're going to come to that. But, you know, other things, too. Don Jr.'s wedding being financed by a Putinist oligarch. They see the optics of. I mean, American. He's a president who's not just trying to do a reset with Russia or calm tensions and, you know, restore the European post-war order to something approaching equilibrium, but acts as if he is completely in the tank for Vladimir Putin. He has a hard time not deferring to this man. He just posted on Truth Social, you know, oh, you know, the far left radical media are suggesting that China and Russia are helping Iran. If so, it's just minimal. Literally, Mark, today, the Wall Street Journal had an item that the Houthis in Yemen are building their version of an Iranian advanced missile with Chinese parts. You're saying Ratcliffe is a far left radical lunatic. Yes. The information that Russia is providing targeting packages against our troops to the Iranians is coming from our CIA. So this is the thing. I mean, I said I've said before, you know, the people who keep banging on about the deep state. Where's your fucking deep state? This is your deep state. This is your intelligence community. Telling you these things and you're denying them. Why? Because Putin picks up the phone. He whispers sweet nothings in your ear. God knows what else he's whispering. And you come away wholly persuaded. Now, the generous interpretation is Trump is saying these things because he wants to project an image to the Russians that he's open for dialogue and he wants a negotiation. He wants a deal. But even by his own standard of being a, you know, savvy boardroom operator, he just looks like a pathetic fucking cuck. You know, I mean, I said the gimp. And even Pulp Fiction had more self-respect than the American president right now. Our hostile adversaries are eating our lunch for us. They are embarrassing us. And innocent people in a European theater of war, the largest land war since World War Two, are dying. I always believed and I still do. Actually, I have to give a talk on this coming up on the notion of American exceptionalism. I mean, I had to because that was the part of my job as a CIA officer. I mean, it's the idea that, you know, America is the bright, shining city on the hill. It doesn't feel very good these days. It's a little bit depressing because we're just not seen as the good guys. And so, well, look, I think that, as you said, the next several hours and days, we're going to find out the kind of the secret of the of the Starlink issue. There is just reporting. I just checked again. I think the Financial Times is saying very clearly that and you just alluded to it, that in order for this, if Starlink was shut off, it needs Pentagon concurrence or tweaked to do so. So there does look like there would be some DOD involvement, which is, again, just I can't put grasp this notion of. Of DOD turning off a force protection system in which Americans at Embassy Kyiv could be killed. They did it before. Bridge Colby, who really runs the Pentagon because Hegseth is in his Bombay Sapphire and doing his chin ups all day. He cut Intel at one point. Remember, and he is slow rolled and and he is slow rolled and tried to kank security assistance. Lawyer up, everybody. You know, again, crazy hearings, hearings galore. If the Democrats take the House hearings galore, corruption. Witkoff Kushner, the kids. Oh, what are you going to say now? Malfeasance. My favorite subject we're going to next. Oh, yeah. The Greeks. OK, let's go. I know you've been you've been tweeting me about this and more you've been tweeting me like Daily Mail articles like the Daily Mail is killing it. OK, so here's what I did. So, first of all, I love The Wall Street Journal and I know the journalists involved in the story. And by the way, just as an intro, Ambassador Kim Guilfoyle, otherwise as we call her, KG is gone. She's been asked to resign. She has resigned. So this is an interesting story. Thank you. She's kind of a, you know, kind of the bookend to this. Well, sort of. She's not out yet. The Wall Street Journal is great. And then The Daily Mail has this incredible salacious gossip all the time. And by the way, it's all accurate because I know what's going on there. I actually subscribe to The Daily Mail because of this. They got me for 15 bucks. It's a deal for 15 dollars. I can't believe I'm saying this on this show now. We should be talking about people subscribing to the bulwark. But The Daily Mail has this kind of penchant because don't forget, they also broke that Kristi Noem story about all the crazy shit her husband was doing. And so but where we are right now is that the White House asked KG to resign. She resisted doing so. It's pretty funny. She's kind of holed up at the embassy. She's screaming at her security detail because she thinks they're the ones who leaked. But it's really not true because everybody on the planet knows kind of all of her malfeasance. And I think the key things on this now and, you know, we've talked a lot about this issue and they're real. And more and more reporting is coming about the corruption. I think I do know that. And that's going to be for congressional investigators and perhaps criminal prosecution. If it really was pay for play and things like that, that will be borne out by the investigation. But there's there's two things on this. One is the Greek government and the Greeks have deserted her. Like, it's hilarious. So I just got a note from a friend of mine in Greece who's totally tied in the whole Greek foreign policy stuff. She people are wiping their like Instagram photos of her, everything on X like she does not exist anymore. Everybody is fleeing, including the Greek government. So all these people who were kind of mesmerized by her for so long, she literally goes because she does not exist anymore. And, you know, that's it. That's an incredible fall from grace. There's a number two at the embassy, the D.C.M. deputy chief of mission. He will be the acting charge d'affaires. His name is Josh Huck. He's very competent. The Greek prime minister likes him. The embassy staff likes him. He's going to be fine. I don't think there's a huge rush to nominate someone else. But if there is, then here's kind of two other points. One is Senate better take confirmation seriously and they better do background checks because you had a compromised ambassador who had a terrible alcohol reported alcohol problem. I mean, I mean, for God's sakes, half the you know, there's 500 sources on this and she was in debt and all the reported, again, alleged corruption. So the back just as a background investigator, that would take about six seconds to find out. And then the Senate, you know, Republican colleagues. I mean, my God. You know, they didn't know this. I mean, the Journal report, you know, Rubio went to Athens to give his Western Civ lecture at the Acropolis. Full knowledge of what was going on. But he didn't want her shenanigans to eclipse his big quasi campaign moment, I guess. But yet to piss off Donald Trump because you're so corrupt. Imagine what that would have to take. Right. It's not the crime. It's not the crime. It's the sloppiness with which she perpetrated the crime. And he was asked, you know, he goes, I kind of knew her. Like then there's all sorts of things now coming out. You know, all of all of Trump's fawning over her. And he had weird nicknames and all kind of stuff like that. Now, the part about this that I love. So I was trying to think of I did a TV hit this morning on MSNOW. And it's good because, you know, I love this story. And they finally agreed after my pleading. Let me fucking talk about this. And so I was coming up with the idea. Is she the most corrupt, awful diplomatic envoy in U.S. history? And the answer is no. And in some in some of the archives, there's some great State Department archives. We had a U.S. ambassador in the mid 70s. And she was removed, but she actually refused from from U.S. Embassy Kathmandu from Nepal. But she was removed because she was having sex orgies in her residence with the Marine House and with Nepali airline pilots. And the great story is one day and I can't remember. It was I think it was literally the king of Nepal or maybe it was the president or whatever it is. But he knocks on the door of a political officer in the middle of the night and he says, can I come in? And the political office says, what are you doing here? He said, I was invited to your ambassador's residence, but I'm too scared to go because I think. She's going to force me to join in. So KG does not get number one worst envoy of all time. And by the way, this envoy, the ambassador in Nepal, refused to leave when the Carter administration pulled her. And she lived in Nepal doing crazy shit for the next couple of years. So, you know, it's you know, God bless political appointees. Apart from the the alleged criminality and the moral squalor, you know, I mean, just prostituting Americans. American foreign policy, American national security to not even the highest bidder, but just any bidder. There's an aesthetic component to MAGA that pisses me off. Right now, John Waters, you know, the great like trashcan Oscar Wilde filmmaker. I think he put it best when he says they make they make tastelessness look bad. Right. It's so cheap. It's so it's so unselfconsciously camp. I mean, everything from the reflecting pool. To those little gold Home Depot appliques. He's he's just, you know, completely polluted the Oval Office with to this. I mean, she's driving she's driving a Mercedes wagon and she has a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar car loan on this on this fucking. And she's trying to get Greek industrialists to pay her car loan. Oh, yeah. And I think so. Yeah, it's just so gross. But again, is that behavior of hers? Is that new? The answer is no. I mean, it's crazy. And, you know, there's no vetting. I'm sorry. Look at the white the new White House press secretary, aside from her catastrophic start yesterday. And I did watch it ten times. And, you know, for those of us who do a lot of public speaking like we do or media appearances, I mean, every once in a while we get, you know, you kind of throw up a brick. You have a dud of a of a hit or something goes wrong in a public speech. Not like that. And on top of that, she's not even a lawyer. She went to law school and then she was practicing in China for six or seven years. I'm sorry. You can't get a job in the U.S. government if you were practicing in China and living there for six or seven years. There's no vetting whatsoever that goes on with this administration. It's mind numbing to me. And by the way, Trump looked back when she said that. And he seems surprised. I don't think he hired her for her robust CV, if I'm being honest. It's just an incompetent administration. You know, one thing after another. But just do some fricking vetting. Even Susie Wiles, you know, it's one of the. In term one, the term of art for this was the adults in the room. Right. And everyone saw Susie. She'll kind of rein in all this craziness. Our friend David wrote at MSNOW reported just a few days ago and he talked about it on Morning Joe on Monday when I was on Susie Wiles. His daughter was posing 100 miles from Srebrenica, one of the biggest mass graves in Europe after World War Two, with like an assault rifle and with some some flunky from the U.S. regime saying, you know, having serious fun here. And I mean, it's it's incredible. Like I say, just leaving aside just the the the the lack of morality, the lack of of wisdom, just the aesthetic is enough to indict these people. Right. I mean, somebody somebody was was reporting. It was Oliver Carroll from The Economist, a great reporter in Ukraine and also Russia. He said, you know, the mood in Kyiv is quite great. And some of the Ukrainians he queried said, you know, if this were 1939, the Americans would be on the side of Adolf Hitler. That's the sentiment in Ukraine right now. That's how much we have alienated the victim of this war. And a as I've called them a model ally, somebody who's who's lining up to help the Americans fight campaigns that we shouldn't have even started. But that's the price of an alliance. And this is how we're portraying them. It is disgusting. It is depressing. And again, you know, I don't know how you serve in the US government right now. I hate to say this because I when I do a lot of public speaking, I go to colleges. I want people to join the US government. I love the idea of public service. You know, I want to pass the torch to the next generation. So I talk the talk, but I'm not sure how much I would be comfortable. in serving right now because this is the public face of america these are the people it's horrible and as a u.s diplomat i just i don't know how people do it but i will say there's probably going to be quite a party at the u.s embassy athens when kg eventually leaves if she leaves and she's got to get out of there and the last piece on that is we're all you know what are they going to give her to keep her mouth shut because she has so much dirt on this family there's got to be a payday or payout somewhere because and the daily mail i think it was or maybe it was another outlet did say she's pissed and an angry kg i don't know if you want that now we want it i don't think the trump family necessarily wants it but what a what a bookend to a crazy uh story i mean of athens of all places how do you screw up being the ambassador in athens it's such a great posting i mean if you look up who and what she was just what 20 years ago not even when she's married to gavin newsom she's in some magazine spread she sprawled out on the rug in california with a young gavin newsom who looks the same just fewer gray hairs right and it was it was called the new kennedys you go from you go from camelot 2.0 to being like anna nicole smith on the aegean how does that happen maga is how it happens right i won uh several years ago i gave a talk i made it through a live it was a it was a private event to a financial institution i was the keynote speaker down at the breakers which is about a mile from mar-a-lago and i thought i was going to get killed down there but that's the look there's a lot of there's a lot of there's the mar-a-lago looks like south florida is a is a is a crazy place um all right so another episode of bulwark takes uh with the polymeropolis and weiss combo in the books if you like this please subscribe to the bulwark um i'll note again our podcast comes out officially the reporter and the spy next month in november we are super excited uh for that until then we're going to do these uh at least weekly takes sometimes even more um and again this was this episode was filmed um this morning uh perhaps when it comes out there'll be some development and we'll see you next time on the bulwark takes on the on the uh on the star lake piece and we will also follow up on that because we're going to do another podcast shortly i think we're going to record this on friday and we're actually going to have the one of the authors of the new book on havana syndrome we talked about it last episode um 60 minutes producer mike ray is going to come on the show and talk about the book um and as he did so this morning on cbs morning uh he teased that there is a uh a new 60 minutes episode that will come out in several weeks which will have some blockbuster information michael i think you talked about this too you've been involved working with them and been integral to this but a lot more on that subject so we're going to do a special uh bulwark takes on that too but until then please subscribe to to the bulwark uh michael thank you you got up in the morning for this i'm going to leave you alone tomorrow morning and not have 400 uh now i gotta just be honest i'm going to be at the gym tomorrow morning although i screwed up my wrist i tweaked my wrist weight lifting i had to get a a ganglion cyst drained yesterday with an ultrasound it was gross never want to hear ganglion cyst on the show ever again thank you till next time thank you all and uh we'll see you soon on bulwark takes