Susan Glasser: The Irredeemable Republicans

[MUSIC] >> Hello and welcome to the Bullock Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to welcome back to the show, staff writer at the New Yorker co-host of its political scene podcast. Our most recent book is The Divider. Call it with our husband. I think there's another book coming. It's Susan Glasser. What's happening? >> Tim, happy August. It's so good to be with you. Our friend and frequent guest of the show, David Frum posted this on "X This Morning." I thought it was a good way to frame up the start of the conversation. The war on the Eastern Front is lost. The economy is collapsing. His body is decaying. The leader escapes from intelligible realities into fantasies of monument building and renaming things for himself. That's pretty much the story. >> I think it falls into the established genre of if I were a foreign correspondent, how would I cover this madness? I'll tell you, Tim, because you're not here. I had this classic Washington in the age of Trump out of body experience the other day. I was going across Memorial Bridge for the first time in a while, and I was in an Uber and I was looking down at my phone, and I happened to look up at the exact moment. These two gigantic golden statues were literally inches away from my car window, and I couldn't help myself. I sort of shrieked out. It was like, I couldn't. >> An actual street like, like, honorable street? >> I did, and actually the Uber driver was like, "Oh my God, are we getting in an accident?" I said, "No, I'm sorry." It just jumps goldification of the city. >> Is that the gold fingering of the existing statues or those new? >> Apparently, it's the gold fingering of existing statues. What we're living in here is the gold maxing of Washington, I guess, by Donald Trump. >> Part of my holiday was in Berlin and Paris, so I saw two arches, and it took a little bit of the joy away. It was maybe the only time that I'd let him invade my holiday, which was, and the brand of brigade is fine. Let's folks who want history, Dr. Trump is awesome, but I just found myself thinking about how, wait, really all this is was just Napoleon's, Napoleon Trump small man syndrome, wanting to create a bigger one, and it kind of took me out of the moment a little bit. >> You know, it's really, it's so sad because for me, the brand and brigade, and just standing there in that plaza, is a reminder of what I suppose in hindsight was probably the best moment of our lives. We just didn't realize it at the time, which was the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the, you know, the sort of the final end of in a way that World War II and the Cold War was in that moment, I was in college when that happened, and I've always felt like it's so rare, you know, that you sort of wake up in one world and go to sleep in another. That's what that day, in November of 1989, felt like. And, you know, I realize now, of course, that, you know, this sense that we had, which we really had, it's hard to communicate that, to young people today, but, you know, we really had a sense that, you know, this kind of moral arc of the universe that Barack Obama loves to talk about, that it really was bending in the right direction after a lot of twists and turns, and it's just, it's such a fricking tragedy, but for me, standing in that plaza in Berlin is always this incredibly positive thing, so I really, really don't like that you're now connecting it here, too. Yeah, I'm sorry. It was really more about the arc to tree out, but I felt it more, because the Napoleon Trump parallels Trump has stated them. He wants to be like Napoleon and Stalin on interesting way. Yeah, what a joke, though. I mean, let's just, let's pause for a second to say, Donald Trump is too Napoleon, you know, as Donald Duck is too, I don't know, who's the great, who is a great duck? I don't know. We're gonna keep working on this. Actually, Donald Duck wasn't there a whole series where they had Donald Duck, like playing like historical figures? I feel like there was a kind of. Maybe as like dark wing duck is to Donald Duck. We'll keep working on it. But yeah, no, that's fair. I apologize. I mean, Napoleon has some bad marks on his track record, but yeah, to compare him to Trump is rude. The East Side Gallery gave it to me now. I did have, I did have some moments thinking like just like right at the sort of precipice of, you know, kind of the East and West Berlin was pretty powerful. I want to talk about the news. Minus 23,000 jobs for the last month reported this morning. Yikes. A lot of that is loss of public sector jobs, local public sector jobs and education, otherwise. But there's like no job gains happening, essentially. I have Fox Business. I was watching there. I like to watch their coverage of it. I always see how they do. They were pretty happy about the better than expected manufacturing numbers. 5,000 manufacturing jobs were created, which would have been just a minuscule number during the Biden age. Huge downward religions also for May and June. And recent months, almost three in 10 of the unemployed have been looking for work for more than six months. It's great to share since the pandemic. We obviously have Catherine and Pelle goes into the stuff in depth that were on receipts every Friday. So you can go check that out. But just at the top line, that kind of story is not good. Yeah. I think that's right. There's been a little bit of hope. I'm going on right in the kind of Fox Newsy corners where they're looking for any explanation that isn't things are really bad in the country. And people are believing Donald Trump. And they're believing Republicans. I saw this morning, Donald Trump saying, Oh, no, actually, yes, people are really mad, but they're mad at Republicans. They're not mad at me, which is a pretty fascinating thing since he's demanded that the entire definition of Republicanism at this moment be dictated purely by his own whims and gets very angry if you say that MAGA is anything other than whatever pops into Donald Trump's head. So even Donald Trump is distancing himself from Republicans, which probably not the best political strategy. You know, I think the sour mood of the country, this close to a midterm election where history and approval numbers for the president and other fundamentals already suggested, you know, it was going to look pretty, pretty tough for Republicans. This isn't what you want to see in, in August. At this point, another distraction, frankly, is probably Donald Trump's best hope. And since he loves to run that play, I would say, expect him to do something distracting. I'm going to try to offer some silver linings on this podcast. I get some feedback from listeners, even from you, even from the guests that sometimes were a little too bleak when we get together. Here's my silver lining here. We're still getting bad numbers. I don't know. I think if you'd asked me in August of 2025, and you said, Hey, in August 2026, the jobs report is going to be disastrous. Do you think that they'll put it out? I think I would have probably said no. So, you know, there's some in the bowels of the government there. I'm probably jinxing it by even bringing voice to this. That's how low we've dropped here. Like government reports are still being put out. That's the way. This is why the silver linings exercise is not always the most constructive one analytically. Look, there is the silver lining here. And I really actually don't love playing this game. But people are so astonished and amazing. It is jaw dropping. How focused the president of the United States is not on the economy, not on the war he unleashed in the Middle East, not one on the sort of profound disruption of the workforce that AI already pretends. But on his own projects like the gildification of statues in in Washington, I know people were like freaking out about Maggie Heyberman saying the other day on a podcast that he spends like 70% of his time on these cool legacy projects. But there is the upside, which is every minute that he's screaming a Janine Perot about not prosecuting an Olympian for ripping up the reflecting pool. That is a minute that he is not spending on further screwing up America. So hey, if you're a Republican, I don't know if you can turn that into a campaign ad. But yeah, and some reports from focus groups and folks were watching yesterday is that like even this, I guess this isn't surprising, but just I sometimes worry that I talked about a vacation how I bubbled myself in the news. Sometimes I worry I bubble myself inside just like I've listened to Megan News, but I kind of inside high information people news, you know what I mean, it's like it's hard for me to put my brain into like what kind of information is trickling to people, but like don't really read the news that much. And so this focus group was kind of that. It was like some Trump voters that have concerns about him or whatever. And this did come up like the like the hey, things aren't going well for us economically and he seems to be focused on all the gold stuff. Right, like that part is kind of matriculating out, which I think is is notable. Absolutely. I mean, for me actually, I do think one of the enduring images of, you know, Maggie and Jonathan's book regime change is that image of Donald Trump with a glue gun. It's personally applying that, you know, tacky fake gold wood. to the walls of the Oval Office, this beautiful neoclassical mansion that is meant to be the architectural representation of this elegant, simple, spare constitution of ours in which we have this chucks and balances. And instead, there's a crazy would-be king, glue-and-gold shit all over it. I mean, to me, that is like Donald Trump is the metaphor made manifest, right? And so I do think that that it's simple. And he is a simple, in a way, character which is made and very effective as a political communicator, except that what he's communicating now is, I don't give a shit about you, and you know, give me some more gold. Right. It's kind of a left-brain, right-brain thing, because for me, the Maggie thing that sticks with me from that book is just talking about how the advisor tells her 70% of his mind share is being spent on renovations. And that is evident, because unfortunately, we get to look into his mind constantly every minute. The economy, I want to tie a little bit to the tariff stuff, too. I saw you posted about this, and they're going to couple terrified, I was lately. We played yesterday a couple of the clips from his ran-lead with Jolombardo and the No Tax on Tips in Nevada, where they were talking about, you know, how important it is to be friends with billionaires because they're the job creators. And in an interview with Fox, he has asked, open into question, you're here to talk about the economy. What's your big message? Trump's reply, so tariffs have been incredible. Then kind of goes on, and then he gets into the kind of the refunds, and he's like, but we're still getting so much money from them. Apparently, 100 billion has been refunded. A lot of this, these companies are just eating though themselves, not getting passed down. What's your kind of sense on all that? Yeah, I mean, a couple of thoughts. One, I do think that the kind of cycle of willfulness and ignoring Trump's adult lifetime preoccupation with tariffs has been responsible for a lot of misinformation flow to people's idea, that just because this Supreme Court shot down his tariffs, he was just going to forget about them was never realistic. He's looking for ever more exotic instruments to impose tariffs. And it's an important example of the kind of bubble reality of Donald Trump. And then reality reality, I noticed that there was a Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, of course, a respected economist in his own right the other day pointing out that what has Donald Trump's aluminum tariffs on Canada done? It's coming back to bite American corporations who manufacture things and that they're the ones in many ways who are suffering from this economic assault that Trump thinks he's launching on our neighbor. And, you know, multiply that by industries, by sectors over time. And I think you have part of the reason why people are so uncertain about the future and in such a sour moon, because Trump has upended expectations about the economy without being able to create any kind of a durable, new, normal. And how's it going to shake out? Donald Trump's theory, the case, was somehow that he's going to impose these magical tariffs and, you know, wave his golden Trump wand and companies are magically going to build new factories and create new jobs. Of course, that hasn't happened. Even if it were to happen, it would play out over years and decades. And the evidence, of course, strongly suggests it won't happen. Do you want to shut up my guys at the Crown? It's coffee shop in Oakland. I think what a short list from the best coffee shops in America, we've got this email because, you know, it was a, there's a big frequently over there when I loved in Oakland, announcing why we're temporarily reducing the coffee prices. We've long maintained the tariffs. We're not just attacks on businesses, but on the people. We're finding creative ways to try and pay back that debt to our customers at the Crown, passing the refund for the full amount of the Crown's tariff inventory onto our customers. Go support the Crown if you're in the Bay area. But I haven't been getting that email from Apple. I don't think that the iPhone prices are coming back down a little bit, but there was a chart I was looking at about inflation. And inflation really had got down on below wage growth in about 2023, right? Like towards the end of Biden and stayed that way to the beginning of Trump. And it was really not until the, you know, it was, it felt just a little higher than people wanted, but it was lower than wage growth. But it wasn't until the Iran War, you know, kind of the tariff started to tick it up when the Iran War really gets it over. And that's something the people are feeling. Tim, you know, people talk about the Iran War as if it's a simple matter of let's get the price at the pump back down to where it was before. The price of gasoline is essentially the price of all manufactured goods and even much of food in the world in which we live in. And I think that if only it were simply a matter of, you know, how much you pay at the pump. But really it's it's it's a proxy. You raise the price of gas. You raise the price of energy. You raise the price basically of almost anything in a modern society. And the history of Trump 2.0 is going to be the history of the folly of this meme and what he's chosen to do in the second year of his second term. I hope you have a rare opportunity on this taped podcast to do a cliffhanger. Okay, are you ready for this? I was going to go to Todd Blanch next and talk of the top Blanch confirmation, but Senator Bill Cassidy, right, as we were starting taping, tweeted the following. I will announce my decision on the attorney general nominee at 1040 AM Eastern from the Senate floor. Oh my god. So that will happen while we while we are taping. It's so exciting. Just can you feel the excitement? So here it's just just for some bath for people. There are Republicans going to afford to lose four cent. Well, I guess John Fenderman makes all this a wild card, but four senators, assuming the Democrats all voted against. Collins and Mercowsky have already said that they are no. Mitch McConnell's team put out a statement saying that he's alive and out of the hospital and that he'll be back in September. We've still not heard his voice. Stranger, he's been cast a tie breaking amendment votes on the farm bill, which is I think unusual. Senator Bozeman said that he spoke into whatever that's worth. So anyway, this you cannot do by proxy confirmation votes. So McConnell's out for another a few weeks at minimum. And so Cassidy would be the tie breaking vote unless Fenderman kind of tied it back. So it's it's an important announcement. And I think we'll just do all the plans covers at the end once we hear. Do you want to do a prediction? Should we both should we both make a prediction? Predictions are bad. Predictions are bad. Let's just say this to him. Yeah. Bill Cassidy has every reason in the world to vote no. Yeah. It doesn't mean he will, but it means that he has every reason to. Not least of which is that he's already proven the deciding vote, the final vote that got our case junior over the top after proclaiming his deep unease as a physician with the idea of confirming a vaccine skeptic he went ahead and did it. So is that what Bill Cassidy wants his legacy to be? Can I tell you something embarrassing? We're in 2026. We're in year 11. My brain knows that we're going to keep being disappointed by these people, but there's a flicker in my heart right now. That's like my Senator Bill Cassidy might do the right thing. I'm feeling it like that he might just do it. And so I might have to be disappointed live. If not, LSU Clemson's coming up in one month, kick off. I'm going to give him a big I'm going to go find him at the tailgate and give him a big hug if he does the right thing. So we'll see end of the podcast. You're one of his constituents now. I am one of his constituents. Yeah. What was planning before he sent that tweet while while we were podcasting was I was going to tell people by fellow Louisiana and so listen. And then there are many of you to call them and be nice to them and invite them to the. All right. Well, they've got they've got 16 minutes. Yeah. Well, that's not going to work. We can't do that now. So if he does the right thing, calm and thank him. So tell him to bring him a little cup of jambalaya next time you see him. All right. We'll see. We'll get back to Todd Blanche at the end. In that case, I want to do, I felt remiss coming back and not doing immigration stories because that is like an ongoing thing. So it's one to highlight two stories in particular that I saw this morning paging through the the real news, you know, you and your college New York Times and even in a surprising outlet that I'll get to actually second, there was some real news. This is from New York Times. We're now back to sending Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees from like half a century ago back to Vietnam and other places. The Melissa Trance story stuck with me really though. She was born in Vietnam. She arrived in the United States in 1993 as an 11 year old after living in a refugee camp in Philippines. So she's a refugee. Her family settled in Fairfax. At age 18, she made a mistake. She stole from her workplace, a doctor's office, ended up getting a four month sentence. And after that, she's had a clean record. She's now 44 years old. She has a husband. She has four children. She's a small business, small business owner in Fairfax. And we have deported her to Vietnam. A place she doesn't really remember or know, know anybody. And this is like where they are now. Like they said, they're going after the criminals, but now so now you're going after, you know, you're paging through or having AI paged through through criminal records from 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And it's just like, you know, I did some bad shit when I was 18. I'll tell you, I got lucky that I avoided the long arm of the law when I don't know about Susan Glasser was probably following the rules when she was 18. But to think that we're gonna deport a woman with four children, a small business owner, to place she didn't know or refugee, it's crazy. - A lot of what's happening right now is a moral steam on the United States. And it's hard to speak in those terms and in a political environment at which there's so much incentive to excuse that which is done in your name if it's by your team. It's very hard to excuse a lot of this. What I find that makes it even more painful is that so much of it is a direct challenge to the idea of America itself. And you know, if you want to be even more bummed out, listen to the speech that Ronald Reagan gave before he left office at the end of his second term. And even if you grew up like I did not exactly a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. - It's a great speech. - You should listen to it even more so if you weren't a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s because it will blow your freaking mind. And you'll say what has happened to the Republican Party that it doesn't believe in the core vision of the country that led basically all of our ancestors with a small exception to come to this country. And not to me was always the thing that actually did unite us, right? Is that everybody had their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents come to this country and that we're all a mix and that it was the great opt-in society in which everybody had the chance to start over. And I feel like that's what's been under assault these last few years by Stephen Miller and Donald Trump is the basic notion. And you know, the fact of course that Donald Trump, you know, is the product of a draft Dodger who came here from Germany and had opportunities you could never possibly had in Germany is, you know, thanks a lot. - Yeah, I mean, it could have been a prison guard in Germany probably, what would this be? I mean, what the board podcast? Who would I be if I did not play for people? Just a segment of my favorite part of the Reagan farewell dress? So we're just gonna duck that in right here. - I've spoken of the Shining City, all my political life. But I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city, built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with pre-ports that hung with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. - I stated Ronald Reagan for you. - You did, I know, it's like, okay, this is kind of like when you go to somebody's house and you try to, you know, buy by their, you know, they don't wear shoes around the house, you take 'em off, you buy by their, you know, you're talking about Ronald Reagan. - Yeah, exactly, they pray before supper, you know, you bow your head in prayer and there's some Jewish traditions come to your house. So, you know, that's nice. You come to the Bologna site, site Reagan's farewell dress. We play a little bit of, that's a, that's a banger. This story, I've very mixed views on it, has it all. I guess you gotta shout out CBS, doing it, covering it. It's a guy named John Ganon. He is a 75 year old Trump voter, three time Trump voter, who is not happy about his encounter with Trump's immigration deportation police. I'm gonna play you a little bit of the report from this morning. - I voted for Trump. I am saying that they are picking up law inviting citizens. They're destroying families, jobs. - John Ganon is a 75 year old businessman and lifelong Republican who supported President Trump in 2024. - I wouldn't do that again. - Not after this fiasco. - His fiance, 45 year old Venezuelan immigrant Yasmin Suarez Regis, was detained by ICE at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston in late July. - Eight ICE agents swarmed Jasmine and detainter didn't tell us why and rustle their off into a car. - Well, (laughs) Suarez, show me to go first. - Now, is this one of those leopard face-eating parties that were shocked by leopard face-eating behavior? - I guess, it's one of those things. It's nice to have John on board. Water is warm for everybody. Hope you vote for James Tallerika, Giaanosa, and Texas. No empathy for the Haitians who came here legally also. We're smeared, we're told that there are pet eaters are gonna be now deported back to a hellscape. But, okay, if we need the face of the victims of the immigration regime to be a 75 year old business man whose sugar baby is getting deported, who is here legally via asylum, maybe that's, maybe that's how we break through in the Dallas suburbs. Maybe James should bring him to a campaign event. But, I don't know, a lot, a lot unpack. I was watching the story and I was like, oh, his wife got deported, that's interesting. I was like, oh, okay, hey, love comes in many ways, I'm pro. - This is their new tactic. And I do think that it strikes me as something that's very, very likely to backfire with people. There's been a lot of shock videos seen in recent weeks of ICE agents at airports taking people out. People find that very jarring, disturbing. It's a setting which you don't expect it. And it clearly reflects enormous pressure on these immigration agencies to step up their number of arrests. They've gone very, very far from this idea that we're just gonna be deporting what Trump would always call the worst to the worst. Obviously, somebody's, peaceful law abiding, employed 44 year old wife is not the worst of the worst. And people who've been in the country for decades. And I think it represents something that's not a surprise to the big news consumers, frankly, on the right or the left. But it's that less plugged in undecided middle that's vanishingly small that has been deciding elections in this very polarized country. And so I think it's the paradox, right? Like the less you know, the more power you have in our politics, depending on where you live. So those are the people who are now showing up in these polls. And I do think if you look at these numbers, it's not just that Donald Trump has bad numbers, right? He's always been a polarizing figure. It is interesting to me that you're seeing the softening of Trump's support among Republicans, lifelong Republicans, like our friend there on CBS, Republican leading independence, younger male voters, that exactly the people who essentially swung the election to Trump in 2024. The thing that is substantively, about that story, is that what he mentions is that she came here legally. I do think it's more to just continue to really say that. Like they, like in their kind of nativist conferences they have, they're like, it doesn't count if you're an asylum, if you're TPS, because Biden let you in and Biden went around the process, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, as far as these people are concerned, they're living their lives. They didn't swim across the Rio Grande. They didn't overstay their visa. They came through a legit process, had temporary protected status, or had a silenced status, lived their lives, were engaged to be married. I guess to correct myself, I guess I was just fiancee. Worked, like the Haitians were working, kids and other kids to school. And it's like, okay, now you're gonna treat them like a common criminal. I think your point about the airport is also good. It's true, people are anxious in the airport. Should I anxious about going through secure? It's, you know, it feels more like East Germany, to circle us back to the top than America. - Yeah, you mean you feel uncomfortable when there's like, massed are men snatching people in the middle of the airport on, you know, with possibly no legal grounds to do so. Yeah, that's not America. It's a moral stain on our country that people who came here as refugees from some of the worst, most violent, dysfunctional societies in the world, following the rules as we set them at the time that America is so rich and disdainful that we're gonna change the rules after the fact to screw over a bunch of refugees who come from the toughest places in the world. I, you know, it's very hard to imagine that this is what Americans, whatever your ideological point of view that this is what you want. - A couple of the quick political items. Good news, I'm trying to find us some good news. We can wish happy trails to Andy Ogles, two-term Republican Congressman. Earlier this year, he posted on social media Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie. He's also posted that homosexuality is no place in America. So, it's just gonna be in the Muslims on our way out for him because personal life is not what I would do. He was one of the guys with the Christmas cards, the kids and the weapons. He had to go find me for a stillborn child's burial grave, obviously that's so tragic, but apparently he stole the money from it, allegedly, there's some investigation into that. He lost a primary. Republican voters, we've been mean to Republican voters this week because they voted for Thomas J. Smith over the Muslim guy or the guy with the Muslim sounding name, excuse me, that Trump endorsed. They booed the cop with the Muslim name who died in the line of action also veteran. And so, you know, Republican voters not covering themselves in glory this week, but apparently in this district, they're liking ideogles, that's enough. We found it out for you. So, that's good. Good. No, nothing. Okay, all right. I'll play, you know, a sort of silver linings bingo here. Silver linings, playbuck, no, all right, whatever. Goodbye, ideogles. Peace out. That's all, that's good. I already formed positive. We just want another thing to pull a cool thing on the other side of, I guess it's kind of related. The Democrats did this last cycle, and there was all of this, kind of like elite pearl clutching, I'm not wearing my pearls, pearl clutching over like, oh, the Democrats are putting money into Peter Myers' district to support the insurrectionists, because it'll make them easier to beat. And, you know, there were panels on cable news and, you know, et cetera, being like the bad Democrats. I thought you cared about democracy. And I was just like, ah, you know, that's a tactic. You know, it's a legitimate tactic in politics, and I don't really think a lot of these Republicans that they were posing had exactly been huge defenders of democracy. And Peter Myers did them impeachment vote. But then after that, like was pretty Trump-y. So, anyway, that's either here or there. Republicans are doing that with no, because they don't ever do this. Rending of garments and or chest eyes themselves, and the Democratic side. I'm not sure this has gotten enough attention for that reason. A Francisco Hong, the DSA candidate running for governor in Wisconsin, who doesn't like any holidays, she has no money, is running no TV ads. But there are TV ads supporting her. Three million plus in Wisconsin right now, from Republican groups that are trying to push her forward, they think she's the weaker candidate. So, there's one or a few of any thoughts on that tactic, and that Wisconsin governor's race, Psyad, anything kind of going on in that, the Democratic side of the discourse. Look, you know, putting aside any value judgments here. Of course, they're doing that. The woman, as far as I understand it, the way they're portraying her is she's against Thanksgiving. She did some cleanup on that on Politico, and said that she likes. Very popular holiday. I personally favor Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. I like to cook on Thanksgiving, and I like Thanksgiving. So, you know, Republicans this year, they're like kids in a candy store when it comes to, you know, the DSA platform and any statements ever made by DSA candidates. I feel like those are the people who are giving all the page views to, you know, the Democratic Socialists right now, because what else do they have to run up? You know, they're not going to defend Donald Trump's record. It's much easier to scare people than it is to defend indefensible things like dragging people's fiancee's, you know, out of the line in the airport. And of course, they're doing that. They would be stupid not to do that. I didn't get you to make Wisconsin Democrats. Just take a second look. If the Republicans are putting three million plus in to try to make her the nominee, it's important seat. The governor of Wisconsin being a Democrat in 2028 is pretty important. If the Republicans try to do what they did in 2020, it was important to have Democrats in or in a couple of cases, I guess, Ravensburg and camp handful of good Republicans in these offices that prevented their attempt to steal the 2020 election and insurrection. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee, he signed down to the lawsuit. The Texas lawsuit that would have negated the votes of Wisconsin citizens. Like you wanted to take away the votes of his own citizens to install Trump as president. That'd be a pretty alarming person to have as governor. And I think that if he wants France is going to be his opponent, that should be a little bit of a wake up call. That election's coming up on Tuesday. I'll do foreign policy with you. Couple Russia stories. Moscow is escalating. It's a ballistic missile attacks on Kiev this week. Ukraine is suffering from a dwindling supply of air defense interceptors. On Wednesday, 17 people were killed in Kiev by Russian strikes. It's all still happening. And the telegraphs reporting, I think we might talk about this last time you're on. But these reports are still trickling out about how the US intel is warning that Russia is looking into attacks in other NATO territory this fall to try to further disrupt the alliance. Yeah. I mean, I think what's really striking is that it's not just that the war between Ukraine and Russia is continuing. But in some ways, it's changed pretty dramatically in recent months. And you've seen on the one hand, Ukraine has had a great success in striking deep inside Russia, using their drone program, hitting Russian oil refineries, hitting most recently Russia's largest e-commerce site. And that's how the huge impact, bringing the war home to Moscow and St. Petersburg, making Putin feel the cost of it. Russia is experiencing right now the greatest energy crisis it has since the fall of the Soviet Union. And this is really something remarkable for one of the world's largest energy producers. And so you've had Ukraine kind of untethered since we're no longer giving Ukraine any aid. Obviously, we don't get to impose conditions on their military actions. And so you've seen them really striking hard at Russia. The Russian response, though, has been to escalate these ballistic missile attacks on civilian targets. I should really emphasize that people may just think sort of on the one hand on the other hand, it's not. Ukraine is attacking military and infrastructure targets in Russia. Russia is responding by knocking the crap out of apartment buildings where people live in cities across Ukraine. So that's happening. And there's also a clear sense that what is shaping this US intel assessment that I think is so important for people to understand is what is Putin's history? It's when he's in a corner, he tends to escalate. And I think the fear is that Putin, when things are looking even more unwinnable in Ukraine, that he may be looking to take the fight outside of the borders here to poke NATO to show that the US certainly is not prepared to respond to an attack on a NATO member in the Baltics, for example. There have been increasingly worrisome probing attacks that I feel like had gotten almost no attention here in the US. For example, just the other day, there was what appeared to be an explosive-filled drone at an airport in Germany near a Ukrainian aircraft. I think you've seen other examples of drones that may be associated with Russia disrupting civilian air traffic in other airports across Europe in the last couple years. And you could see more cyber attacks. You could see a lot of ways in which Russia may seek to take the fight outside of Ukraine in the next few years. And I think we're not really prepared for it. European publics are probably not prepared for it. And frankly, I just think it's a matter of time. When you talk to other people, like, and obviously for people that don't know, you spent a lot of time in Russia covering it and still have speak to foreign policy experts and elected leaders in Europe. What is their scale of concern about this? I think it's enormous. I think there is a recognition that there is essentially a time clock that we're on. We don't know exactly how long it's going to be, but look at Iran's success as well as Ukraine's in modern asymmetrical warfare. That's what's happening here. You're taking drones in the case of the Iranians that cost maybe $40,000, shooting them off of small boats in the state of war moves. And the United States military has been expending $2 million interceptors to shoot down those $40,000 drones. Unsustainable. A lot of people warned about that at the beginning of this conflict. Sure enough, we're now seeing stories come out of the Pentagon that the U.S. supply of these munitions has dangerously dwindled. That means not only fewer munitions for the U.S. in its conflict in the Middle East. It means fewer things like that for its partners in Europe. Even if Donald Trump woke up tomorrow and decided he wanted to give more concrete assistance and eight hack 'ems to the Ukrainians. He doesn't have them anymore to give. That's a moment that Russia and possibly China may find just simply too tempting not to take advantage of the security environment in the world right now is far, far more unstable and dangerous than it was a year ago. In the grand scheme of things, if you're going to catastrophize, like some of this stuff has been relatively limited, but kind of what Iran has done on airports and hotels, you know, and like Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain, you know, I can, if Russia did decide to do that to test. I don't want to bring this into existence by naming specific country, but just started like, you know, doing those types of attacks against countries that were supporting Ukraine, supplying weapons for Ukraine. It's not catastrophizing, Tim. It's happening. The seven different states found their water systems, the target of hacks here in the United States already. Remember, this is the one you might have missed. Trump said it was, no, Trump said it was Tim Walls. I've I've learned when I came back. - Thompson Tim Walls Attaction. own state's water system. But of course, it was multiple different states around the country, and this is the scenario exactly that America's national security experts have been worrying about for the last number of years. And maybe this one was the Iranians. What happens? We know that the Russians and the Chinese are already inside many of our critical infrastructure systems. A sort of deterrence, as I understand it, has sort of held sway, which is to say that they know that we have capacities to disrupt their own systems, which is part of why you haven't seen the great powers directly doing this to each other yet. But they are inside our critical infrastructure already. The capacities are there. Drones have been proliferating. And of course, it's only a matter of time before it hits outside these active conflict zones. Remember the amazing Ukrainian operation in Russia is just a year ago, where they hid the drones inside the truck and then, you know, brought them hundreds of miles into Siberia and then unleashed them. Yeah. Just talking to somebody the other day who really follows this closely, that was just a year ago. The Ukrainians no longer need to do that. They've already figured out how to make their drones so much more long range to them. They don't need the whole hollowed out truck, the whole incredible deception operation anymore. They're able now to strike that deeply inside the heart of Russia now from more than a thousand miles away. I mean, this just potential risk just, like, emphasizes even more how like stupid the Iran war is and how stupid it was. We got ourselves in the situation that we're losing like these defensive capabilities. So losing the munitions and the material that we would need in sort of situation. Like in that picture that you paint, right? Like where Russia really does do this in Germany, etc. Other places. And it's not really just a one off, but there, but it's an actual, even just as kind of a test campaign, for a while, it would look so stupid that we would be unable to defend against that because we had wasted all of this material on a pointless war in Iran that has not only just gotten us nothing that actually caused negative consequences. Indeed, indeed, it would. I mean, look, it's not, it's not catastrophizing. These are things that are happening right now already. All right. Well, my silver lining's effort has totally failed. I want to ask you about your colleague Evan Osnoss' China story. Like a typical Louisiana and Bill Cassidy is late for his speech. So we'll see if we get news on that. Come on. I want to know, I want to, you know, he's your colleague on the political scene podcast and, you know, right for the New Yorker, Evan kind of wrote about the ways in which we're losing the competition for the future of China. One thing I would kind of use to sum it up is that he talked about how China is concentrating on AI, biotech, robotics, batteries, energy, advanced manufacturing. Well, we're increasingly focused on tariffs, deportations, building arcs. If you're being nicer, I guess AI, but fossil fuels, crypto. Uh-oh. Okay. Here it is. We got it. He's voting. Yes. Why do I have hope? Tim, Tim, dude. I just, here's, here was, can I just tell you what's going on in my head? We're going to come back to China. Can I tell you what's happening in my head? Can I tell you what's happening? And, and by the way, Evan's story is fantastic. Everyone should be, yeah, we're going to do at least one sentence on the end. I'm Sarah Longlong. I'm losing with football. I do have some people that know about Cassidy and his wife seems like a nice person. But in my brain, I'm going, okay, he's going to give the speech on the floor. You're only giving the speech on the floor for two reasons, right? There are two possible reasons. One, because you're a good old boy from Louisiana, how that wants to signal to your friends in the Senate and your friends back home that when you're tired, you're still on the team. Don't be mean to me at the tailgate. Don't be mean to me at the country club, all right? Don't, you don't got to yell at my face. I'm still on the team. If I still want to lobby a little bit, maybe for some pharmaceutical company or something next year, you got to answer my phone call. That's one reason to talk really loudly signal you're on the team. The other reason, like the good angel reason would be that like you feel like this is really important. Anyone people know that it's really important that you don't think that the government should be targeting political foes, just based on revenge and the vengeance of the president. There was just, I don't know, there's like a little chimney cricket in me that thought maybe he wanted to do that, to signal that he had good intentions in the end. But no, there are no good angels in our politics right now. And I think, no, it's not any good angels in Republican politics. That's for sure. I mean, it's really remarkable to me and a great epitaph for the so-called Republican establishment, which is to say that they would provide again and again the critical votes for the most extreme aspects of Trump's program. I think is the proof in and of itself that there is no such thing as Republican moderator, Republican establishment because the Republican establishment are the handmaidens of this assault on America's norms and traditions. Look at this fucking quote. I will vote for Mr. Blanche. I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new? Fuck you, Bill Cassidy. Honestly, oh, my whole. It's just. This man was broken for me when he gave his smug, self-satisfied speech about how much he cared about science and integrity and medicine and protecting America's children and then voted for RFK anyways. Like, how could you possibly have any shred of hope for that man after that moment? Okay, because this isn't just some theoretical threat. Okay? You know, talk to the families in South Carolina whose kids are suffering in a measles epidemic in America in the year 2026. Bill Cassidy owns that. It seems to me as much as RFK Jr. as much as Donald Trump. And so, you know. Amen. That was my case against that was because that was so obviously bad that maybe that, you know, there was a feeling of need for attention of guilt inside that there's some humanity none. I know. Susan, I know. You can't say anything to make me feel any worse than I feel about my own self. Donald Trump for re-election in 2024. No, I'm all that I've gone before it. Which is to say, all of these people, one more do you need to know? Nothing. I do just want to sit on this sentence for one second though. I'll be criticized for this vote what's new. This is such a common excuse for the week and cowardly Republican establishment, right? This idea that, oh, these liberal critics, the media, the nattering nebombs, the progressive, you know, bedwaters and pearl cultures, they're going to criticize me anyway. Like they're to criticize me anyway. So why should I have to do the right thing, right? And even when I did do something good, remember that one time I did something good, they criticized me anyway. They criticized me anyway. So why should I do anything good? If they're not just going to heat praise on me and throw flowers at my feet and talk about what a great man I am, what's the point of doing the right thing? What's the point of doing the right thing? Why don't I just let our government turn into a corrupt gangster oligarchy where the president gets to target his political foes and spy on them because they posted seashell pictures on the internet and do gulags and you know, raid people at the airport who tried to get here legally. And the hope, it's, it's like the DOJ, like what Blanche said, the DOJ is like not even in the ballpark of acceptable. You know what I mean? Like it like takes the Nixon stuff and puts it on steroids times with pals. Like they're not even pretending to try to do fair, fair impartial justice, except for I guess judge Jeanine this week. And like they literally are targeting political foes. They're not at all investigating or looking into any of Trump's allies or corrupt pardons. It is blankantly corrupt. And Bill Cassidy's like, well, if I say no to that though. John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general ended up in jail. God will know, I would point out that. God Blanche is not above the law and that sooner or later, you know, that option is available to those who seek to restore a sense of the rule of law. It's not going to come from the Republican party. The Republican party is the Trump Republican party. That's the thing that Donald Trump keeps saying. And I don't know why his critics don't observe it even more. Like the point is not that there's going to be some hope remaining within this Republican party. One of the results that we already know about from this election will be to consolidate even further Trump's ownership and control over that party. People like Bill Cassidy will be gone from the Senate and it will be even more overtly pro Trump Trump's. Which I'll take. Actually, I'll take I'll take real overtly Trump best over this crap. I don't know. I don't know. What's Bill Cassidy? How's Bill Cassidy any better? Right. Well, that's the point. That's exactly the point. The system is broken, Tim. And it's it's it's blinking red. And we've got the [BLANK_AUDIO] But so many people just didn't want to accept it and I understand that. It's easier to keep some little flickering, you know, bit of hope alive. Yeah. I mean, my hope is pretty dim. So if my little flicker is too much, it's too great to them. We're, then we're in a really dark place. We're deep in the caverns when my daughter called at some shows. She was watching. We're going to the down deep, the deep dark. We are in the deep, we are in the deep dark. If my flicker is too bright, the other thing is I guess is like it. I'm besides being Louisiana that it's being the God is like he voted to convict him. He voted to convict him and ban him from running for office again. So it's like, you know, you know, you know, you knew that you could not allow this person to run for off skin. What was the reason for the conviction? Well, because he instigated an attack on the democracy and the rule of law. And so now he got elected again. He endorsed him in that election. And what is he doing? He's attacking the democracy and the rule of law. And your answer is basically, well, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? If I try to stop them, they're going to criticize me. So who likes being criticized? Not Bill Cassidy. Great. Dr. Mann. Only compliments allowed for Bill Cassidy. All right. Well, at the, in the green room at the beginning Susan said that I looked rested. That I was looking lighter. I forget what he is. It's something that's less beaten down. It's over. It's over. I'm back. I've got a one week of kind of bouncy Tim, Tand Tim, and now I'm beaten down by the world again. And next week's going to be ugly on the pod. So I just want everybody for that. So thanks for the transition on that, Susan. You know, Tim, you have now upset me so completely. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, it's 11 a.m. Can I relax a bit? No, it's really great. Okay. We're doing very upset now. Let's remember our 10, 20 a.m. cells. Um, they were, they were cheerier than our 11 a.m. cells. Yeah. We were so innocent then. One sentence on your friend. Evan, awesome. It's an article. Disappear. No, to read it because it was really good. And I don't want to give it a short stretch. Yeah. The future made in China. And I really think, in a way, it is, we've spent the last hour sort of proving the point, which is that America's dysfunction is such a five alarm fire that we're really almost unable to process the extent to which in the real world as opposed to the kind of hysterical Trump world that we live in. You know, real facts on the ground are being created by the Chinese that are going to reshape basically the structure of the global economy that are giving China. Levels of dominance that even forget about 10 years ago, even five years ago, would have been unthinkable that percentage of the world's drones that are manufactured in China. Now the percentage of the world's electric vehicles, the extent to which even AI, which started out in America's research and development laboratories is now being pushed forward in in China. The way in which the sort of framework of a whole alternate society organized completely differently, the modern surveillance state. It's all taking shape in China in ways that not only will we be living with the consequences, but I don't even think we're aware of the consequences. And like anything, it's probably the thing that people will look back on 50 years from now, 100 years from now, say that's what was really happening at this moment, but here we are in, you know, Trump's theater of the absurd. All I can say, my vice-year listeners, if you're going across Memorial Bridge in Washington, don't look up. Be blinded by the gold. And I think that's what's happening. America's blinded by the gold. Soon's going back to bad. I'm going to have a cigarette. Don't listen to that mom. Everybody else will be back on Monday with Bill Crystal. Thank you so much, Susan. Love to the family. Everybody else have a great weekend. We'll see y'all Monday. [Music] The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico.