White House Admits That Trump is a Liability (w/ John Heilemann & Bill Kristol) | Bulwark Podcast

It seems to be of a piece with many other lame pseudo jokes that went over horribly. I think that even his biggest fans, they watched it honestly would be sort of like, "Uh, he seems to have lost not just his fastball, but his curveball, his slider, and his knuckleball."

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Hey everyone, welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm John Heilmann. I'm have the great extraordinary honor, really it's like the thrill of a lifetime in a lot of ways to be able to sit in the chair normally occupied. I mean, not literally the chair, but a metaphorical chair Bill normally occupied by Tim Miller, who's off, you know, gallivanting around uh Europe having all kinds of fun and leaving this uh leaving us basically here. We're like home alone here. It's a little bit like we're the Culkin we're the Culkin uh brothers here. Uh I'll be Macaulay, you can be Kieran, and we'll have fun here on the show today. Um Bill be by the way, uh he'll be back next week. So, for all of you who are like kind of sick of the replacements, the fill-ins, the subs, the the the the redshirt team here. Uh he's back next week, so everyone can get excited about that. But Bill, I was delighted when I there when I was asked by Tim to fill in for him. I was like, "I want to do a Monday cuz Mondays are Bill Crystal Day." And so, here we are. Good to see you.

>> It's nice of you to say. I wanted to do Monday when I heard you were pinch-hitting for Tim. It's a big upgrade, you know. I'm going to tell Tim that also next week next week, you know. We'll see if our We'll see if Tim's loyal fans out there before I get now 72,000, you know, uh text messages, emails, and posts on social media. How could you be so disrespectful of Tim? He goes away for 1 week, and here you guys are jumping on him. No, it's great to have you, John, and uh you can fill Tim's shoes.

>> They're big shoes, but I'll do my best. Um and and I got to say, uh it was an eventful weekend. I I also like the notion that it's a Monday podcast, which basically kind of a do a little bit of looking backward cuz we never We don't have quiet weekends anymore in our politics, Bill. Used to be back in the day when you and I were younger men, we used to spend weekends in DC padding around the Tidal Basin take taking a taking a bike ride now and then uh you know switching off but every weekend now is a another uh cavalcade of horrors. Before we jump into all of this stuff is what's what like as the at the end of this weekend we head in this week what's like at the very kind of like here's your the biggest thing you were fixated on over the weekend. What was like really most front and center in your mind?

>> I mean one of the bad things about Trump era is when instead of being fixated on whatever your favorite baseball team is not doing well or thinking back still to Spain's fine victory in the World Cup you do get fixated on things that have to do with Trump. So I guess the military stuff look I guess we'll talk about this but I mean the degree to which I one knows that Hagseth is a very bad Secretary of Defense. I'm now worried that he's doing much more damage to our military than I previously had thought which you know that's one of the institutions you think holds up best under adverse circumstances and it has many many times and I had talked with a couple of people who've served in the military just sort of randomly uh ran into saw them or talked to them over the weekend and I they did not disabuse me of my fears.

>> Right. You know so we headed into the weekend after I would say all of last week the question of there's war plans now in front of Trump. He's backed into a corner. You know nothing he's doing is working and might he under those circumstances just decide to finally go forward and do the thing he's been threatening to do basically for the last like five months essentially which is like rain hellfire down on on Iran and escalate the war in a really dramatic way and the news of the weekend was he was presented with those plans. There was thorough going debate and he decided no he was not going to do that. Although the reasons for it to the extent of the reporting is suggest that the reasons are basically we don't have enough bombs anymore. Uh the munitions stockpile is so low that General Keane was basically like I don't think this is a great idea.

>> Um >> [clears throat] >> to talk a little bit about that and and how we've managed to find ourselves you're just talking about Hagseth. Um there's a lot of things to criticize Pete Hegseth, but the one of them it would seem to me is uh if it's the case that we've left ourselves in a situation now where we're we basically can't fight a major war, we used to need to want to fight two major wars in two different theaters at the same time. We can't even really fight one now given the state of the munitions according to a lot of this reporting.

>> Yeah, no, really was striking and I was I guess a little rattled by that. I mean, when you obviously that Donald Trump is not a great strategist or strategist at all and he's doing this based on a kind of few breaths and at a whim and that it's very foolish and we were going to pay a price for it. But the degree to which uh it's not just him being a bad commander-in-chief, but the drawing down our stockpiles, I think especially of the things we used to shoot down incoming stuff and that's presumably where white people were killed.

>> Yeah. >> Not presumably, that is how people were killed. Uh that you know, those the casualties that Trump doesn't want to acknowledge. The Trump Defense Department doesn't believe are part of the war on Iran even I mean, really unbelievable, right? That thing I That actually that thing was on my mind. I I should have mentioned that. I guess I wrote about it last Friday. What I was so furious when I read that uh Thursday night, right? That they've removed those four Army soldiers uh killed in action from the from the website. But But that turns out to be I mean, that's terrible, but that it turns out to be I won't say the tip of the iceberg, but a kind of indication of something much bigger, which is the military is kind of complicit, I would say, in the cover-up of how bad things have gotten in terms of our as you say, our munitions, especially anti-drone, anti-anti-missile, anti-aircraft, maybe anti-aircraft as well. Munitions in in the region. Uh the then over the weekend there were stories, weren't there, about the uh appointment of the new Chief of Naval Operations for the Navy and how incredibly politicized that was. You put that together with all the firings we've seen, obviously. So, we have hirings and firings politicized, uh stories about West Point and the the lack of free speech anymore of teaching at the military academy there. Uh it's sort of one thing after another that just made you think it's not just that Trump is a bad commander-in-chief, it's not just that Hexseth is really kind of repulsive, I'd say, as Secretary of Defense. It's that they really are doing some real damage now to this one institution that has held up so well over the most over recent decades through thick and thin. And I had thought, and do think still, is probably holding up better than most of our institutions in the federal government against the Trump and Trumpist onslaught. But it turns out you can do a lot of damage, you know, when you've got a Secretary of Defense and people willing to go along with him and he removes the people who might have stood up to him. And he's got the backing of the White House and he I guess wanted to show Trump that everything was going great. So he just they just I can't believe the military thought this was wise. They know how many interceptors they have, right? And they don't think it's a good idea to shoot them all off in the first two or three weeks. But Hexseth must have been insisting on it and sadly people in command seem to have gone along with it. What do you think about that? I mean, you've covered this stuff for a long time. I mean

>> Well, I I think that the to your your broadest points, CQ Brown who was the the chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Trump came back for Trump 2.0. He was a African-American gentleman. He was removed. And and the the argument was was the beginning of of Hexseth's kind of war on DEI, right? And Bill, I think that that to your point about the way in which the the damage has been done to the culture of the military. That was the first thing because the thing that you and I both know, um and I'm I'm not a Pentagon reporter, but I've been around for a long time and talked to a lot of people who have who have been in military in the military at the highest levels and and all the way down is that the we the the military is the most meritocratic institution in America. It's a life and death thing, right? You don't get to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs on the basis of DEI. They have no time for for DEI. And it's one of the wonders of the military is that it's been this meritocratic institution that has also proved to be because of that one of the great mechanisms of social mobility in America where extraordinary figures from from various various parts of the American gorgeous mosaic have been able to rise up to the top. You know, Colin Powell the most notable. The CQ Brown thing was like they're starting to wage war on a culture of DEI that doesn't even exist. And I think that you've seen that now play out over the course of the last 16 months. Not just the DEI thing, but the ways in which all of these things have become politicized. And I don't think there's literally an American institution that one should have more reverence for than the military for those reasons. Not to say that everything that everything the Pentagon's ever done has been great, but that the institution itself I the damage that's been done I think is I don't think we've yet counted the the cost to it. And I don't think we yet have our arms around it. And I do think it's one of those things that when we get to the other side of Donald Trump that is going to need a significant amount of repair. And serious repair. When we think about like what damage has been done to American democracy by Donald Trump over the last 10 years. This is one of those institutions where whoever decides that they're going to be in charge of leading the democratic restoration of America, the first place one of the first place they're going to start is on the military and counting the actual cost and then doing that repair work. Sorry to go on at length about that, but I feel I think it's like one of the things that most upsets me even though I am not a veteran, I but I come over time to really appreciate the value of this institution American life and to see it degraded the way it's been degraded over the last 16 months is really upsetting.

>> No, absolutely. And I mean I've been a critic of the military. I'm not a veteran and I don't presume to have great knowledge of military affairs. But I remember when I was a critic of Rumsfeld and Casey's original strategy in in Iraq in 2003 2004. I was following John McCain's lead, the late Lindsey Graham actually and people who knew a heck of a lot more about it than I did and actual people who served and were serving and quietly were talking to us about the lack of a counterinsurgency strategy and so forth that it wasn't going as well as Rumsfeld's Pentagon was saying. Even there they made mistakes, I think. But you know, they were the mistakes that get made in an institution in a bureaucracy by by individuals, by uh systems. Uh and as we know they got fixed a little too late, unfortunately, in Iraq. The surge worked, but it was too late to really save the overall enterprise and probably shouldn't have done it if it was going to be mismanaged the way it was. But having said all that, it was still a very well-functioning institution, and people respected it, and people respected the people coming out of it as they should have. And the way it was put to someone over the weekend, actually was talking about this, was, you know, he said, "Well, you've been a critic of the military." Yeah, there are times when I thought their leadership was B or even C or C plus as opposed to A or A minus. But that's just life, right? I mean, it's That's different from taking a wrecking ball to it. And that's really what we have now. We don't know how many people have left. How many people I just talked to someone today this morning, actually, weirdly, who has a relative in the military. Not weirdly, but I'm just talking about this person and up for promotion, not at the general officer level, but not too far below that. Uncertain what's going to happen, uncertain whether he or she should stay in. Just the the degree to which people have left, people have requested assignments to get them out of Washington. I talked to someone for whom this was the case recently. And again, it's it's probably not good for this person's career. It's less of a fast track, but couldn't stand really being in the Pentagon and the kinds of things that were happening. And worried that at some point this person was worried that he or she would have to make a real decision that would be unethical or, you know, contrary to what they thought was right. Again, there's a story in the Washington Post this morning. I think it's in the post about these drug boat hits, which I think you and I have both been very unhappy about and very dubious legality and sort of seem like murder on the high seas.

>> This happened last October. By the judgment of almost every military senior military person person that I've spoken to who is no longer in the military, across the spectrum ideologically, they all are like, "Those look like war crimes to me."

>> Yeah, and it turns out they're not even cutting back on the flow of cocaine. So, it's not just that they're doing things you and I and I think most people don't like or don't like to to mild think are really wrong to do and and not [clears throat] the US should not be doing them. It's also not working. It's not as if we wanted I mean, honestly, it would be one thing if they were doing things that we thought were over the line, but okay, you know, that's sort of how war is, blah, blah, blah. It It None of it's working. They're not serving slowing the the the drug traffic. They're not winning the war in Iran, God knows. They're not strengthening our deterrence around the world. They're not making us more respected. They're not only not making us more liked or more trusted, they're not even making us more feared. I mean, it really is So, in that respect, I do think the the And we're only 18 months in, to your point just a minute ago, we got 2 and 1/2 more years of this.

>> I mean, I I could go on at great length about the drug boats, but you don't need to be an expert. All you have to do is watch a few seasons of Narcos to know that like blowing the the an isolated drug boat out of the water, you could blow 50 of them out of the water, and for the cartels, that's like cost of doing business. A, it's not going to change the the the gross tonnage of of of drugs coming into the United States. And number two, it's not going to create any kind of disincentive to to keep trying because those are expendable Those are drug mules. They're expendable. That is all like in the It's a rounding error on the P&L for the Narco states and the Narco terrorists who who run the the drug cartels in in South America. So, you again, you have to be a genius to know that this is not going to be effective, in addition to being morally offensive and legally offensive, that it's going to be uh total waste of time, and that is what it's proving to be.

>> And what a footnote to add, in fact, I think the article shows that the drug cartels have adjusted their their way of getting in. They don't go closer to the shore. They don't go into international. They use bigger boats near the shore instead of small ones in international waters. So, again, that's something that Hagseth, I guess, and unfortunately, I worry about Cain and about some of the senior people. I assume they know better, but they're not speaking back, or they're just overridden, or maybe they don't know better in some cases, or they just decided to go along. But, I mean, this lesson that, you know, what, the enemy can change its modus operandi, it can change the way it's doing things if we start to do things one way, that's kind of an elementary point about life in general, not just about the military. And they seem not to have thought about that about Iran or about the drug boats.

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>> So, let's just think about it a little bit more about the Iran thing. Mike Waltz went on, did a round of the Sunday shows and and basically said, you know, we have all the munitions we need and also at the same time the munitions have been left in a terrible state by Joe Biden. He's the one who screwed us here and you're kind of like, dude, you're really literally contradicting yourself in in every one of these interviews. He's saying this talking out of both sides of his mouth. Uh we the the war now is on hold. The potential escalation of the of the war is on hold uh for the reasons that we've just talked about. You now have uh this week uh the funeral of Lindsey Graham uh and he's got a lot of foreign leaders who are in town. One of them uh we'll talk about both of them frankly because they're both important in different uh theaters of operation right now. One of them is is uh Benjamin Netanyahu has been banging on the door at the White House trying to get a meeting with Donald Trump. Has not been back to the Oval Office uh to see Trump since the meeting now famous meeting from uh Maggie uh Haberman and Jonathan Swan's reporting where she made the case for uh why not only we should go to war but why it would be relatively easy to have regime change and have a an uncork a an Iranian revolution uh from the streets. He's now come He's now back and he's going to get to see Trump uh tomorrow. There's obviously a lot of tension between uh America and Israel now, tension between Trump and Bibi now. What do you imagine that Netanyahu is going to try to get done in that meeting and what will be a win for him uh coming out of it?

>> You know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much his pressure or the pressure of his allies has caused Trump to not do what really was the obvious thing to have done after two or three or four weeks or even six or eight weeks, uh which was to say, "Enough Okay, we did a lot of damage. You can put a nice face on it so it doesn't look like a humiliation to the US even though it is a little bit." Uh it would have been that a little bit and say, "You know, we're getting out. Okay, and the Strait of Hormuz isn't open quite the way it was before, but they'll try to paper that over and so that was the obvious exit for Trump. I kind of thought he would take it actually about two months I mean I think I've been right about Trump that he didn't want to go to a full-scale war and a ground operation. He's he knows that that's not a good idea, but I was wrong that he would just take the L as I say put put the best face on it and get out. So now he here he is 5 months. He's showing up on the fifth anniversary on the fifth anniversary, isn't it? What is today the 27th? Yeah. So he's showing up on the fifth anniversary of Trump and his show going to war against Iran. It has not been good for the US not been good for Israel incidentally in my opinion. Will he try to persuade Trump that yes, you can still do it go for it all. I just I mean with what ground troops? I mean to to to seize the straight and then to try to go after the for regime change. I mean whatever the possibility of doing that was 5 months ago and it doesn't it didn't work and it didn't I don't think Trump was ever going to do quite enough. Well, unless he could have honestly, but I don't think he's going to do it now. So I honestly don't know. I don't know. What do you what do you think is that you have a thought about what he's going to say and I mean

>> I think Netanyahu at this point is is extraordinarily highly focused on the his re-election. In addition to obviously I don't mean to to say that all of the regional security concerns and everything else Israel's doing is not in his mind, but I think his re-election is going to come before the midterms. We know what the midterms have done in terms of shaping Trump's calculus. You know, the remains the case I believe that Donald Trump is a lot more popular figure in Israel than Bibi Netanyahu is and it's not to say that Netanyahu has has managed to turn his bellicosity into a political strength for a long time, but he is he's somebody barely holding together that coalition that he needs to hold together in order to continue to to be prime minister there and he needs Trump's support. I mean Trump actively turning against Netanyahu in an election in that election would potentially be the end of Netanyahu and so I think you know, I my guess is at least part of what Bibi's doing in this meeting is trying to get things back on track enough with the White House that he doesn't have to worry about the prospect of Donald Trump turning actively against him and and thereby ending his his reign in in Israel and then putting him in a position as we all know where he's going to have to just go back and and face these court cases against him for corruption and a whole bunch of other accountability that he would have to face if he doesn't get reelected. I think that's got to be pretty close to the top of his mind when he gets in there which is just like, "Hey boss, can we get back to being friends again? This kind of This kind of This kind of mounting degree of tension and antipathy is not really good for my politics and therefore for my senior years."

>> Now, that's a really good point, you know, I hadn't really the election how much of it for Bibi will be an election visit. And it's not like that will mean he will pull his punches. Would it? Probably. And so, for example, the Saudi nuclear deal, which incidentally is another very bad thing I think the administration has done, Israel is actually against it and normally an Israeli Prime Minister would, I think, feel it compelled as, you know, from his point of view, his his country's national interest to say, "Here are all the cautions about that." And if you don't have the kind of inspection standards even, what are we doing giving this, you know, path to nuclear weapons to another nation in the Middle East? I mean, but maybe he'll pull his punches on that, but then he'll get criticized maybe at home. I don't know. He's probably in a tough position. But you're right, I think for him, he needs he needs Trump at least nominally on board. I guess they'll talk a lot about the Abraham Accords which both have touted as like, you know, big changing big change events in the Middle East. How's that worked out incidentally? These Abraham Accords signed what, 2018, 2019 or something? Since then we've had, you know, huge attack on Israel, war obviously in Gaza and and and elsewhere. And now the attacks on Iran and Iran being seeming stronger than it ever has been, closing the Strait of Hormuz, something they never did after all during all these decades of being at odds, to say the least, with us and of course with Israel. But I guess they'll try to paper it over, huh?

>> The level of inconstancy, uh, foreign policy inconstancy on Trump's part, uh, and I don't didn't say incontinence, although, you know, one could metaphorically go there, too. But, inconstancy, which is like the the the notion of doing the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia was on the table for it felt like basically it was it was it was like on the table for like a couple of of heartbeats. I mean, and before it was pulled off again. It's just Anyway, I think as a general matter, not great for American foreign policy to be constantly, you know, we're doing this, now we're doing that, now we're doing this, now we're doing that. Constant, you know, consistency is an important attribute. But, do you think that there was ever any I mean, I looked at that deal from the very beginning and thought, there is no way this is going to happen. Given the kind of pushback you would get from Israel and from others, um, the notion of of of of opening up another nuclear Pandora's Box in the Middle East, I just kind of sort of thought, somehow that thing's going to fall apart, um, under pressure. And and I don't know, maybe it's only temporarily fallen apart, but the fact that it fell apart quite so quickly made me think, you know, this is not really this is not a thing that's long for this world.

>> Now, you could be right. On the other hand, they did sign something, as the Saudis pointed out. So, I don't know. And there's big business interests, real business as well as Trump family business interests, uh, interested in this. I really don't know. But, your your point about the inconstancy is really important. And again, it's one thing to have a obviously administrations change policy over time, and the countries change policy over time. But, yes, to change it every 24 hours is not good on on a matter of some real importance. I mean, this is where I do think everyone in the world looks at this and says, come on. I mean, we cannot depend on these people. It's not just that they're not nice to us. It's not just that, you know, they're not trustworthy the way allies are supposed to be. They're just undependable in the most fundamental sense. And if Saudis think they need to have nuclear weapons now, which is sort of what was signaled by this, right? They're they're pushing for this even more than they have been. What do Japan and South Korea think? What do other nations think? I mean, I just think the degree to which the whole thing is fraying because of really just because of Trump. And I mean, obviously, there were reasons it might have frayed anyway. I don't want to deny that. But, actually, under Biden, a lot of this the alliances in some ways have come back together a little bit more. I'm not going to defend every aspect of Biden's foreign policy, God knows, but uh and it wasn't inevitable, I think, that this whole order would crumble to this with the speed it has. This war really has been uh really bad, really a disaster, I think. More I thought it was going to be bad, I didn't quite expect it would do this much the damage would radiate out in so many directions, you know what I mean?

>> So, let me let me get to to Zelenskyy here, the other meeting uh on Tuesday. Both these meetings, same day. Uh another uh leader from uh who was in town for the Lindsey Graham funeral, and someone who frankly, the loss of Lindsey Graham is a meaningful thing because there's was was Well, you can say a lot of things about Lindsey Graham, a lot of things have been said about Lindsey Graham, but one thing that Lindsey Graham was not inconsistent on was his support of Ukraine. And if you're uh uh Volodymyr Zelenskyy, you show up in town kind of thinking, you know, I have some work to do here. He's got this meeting to go see Trump. And the most incredible thing about this story is the way in which Laura Loomer, who uh is batshit crazy as anybody who's ever been on the MAGA right, uh suddenly starts talking like a a completely sensible, sane person, uh and says, "You know what? I realized that a lot of the stuff that right-wing MAGA podcasters were saying seemed to be influenced by Russian propaganda, and I suddenly decided, you know what? I should go over to uh Ukraine and see for myself." She did this interview with the AP uh where she explained why she's now done a total about-face and is completely on the side of Zelenskyy. Let's play this here.

>> When I started to see a lot of these uh woke right, as I call them, podcasters in the United States turn on President Trump and, you know, start to spew a lot of anti-Semitic rhetoric, I started thinking, "Wow, where are where are people getting their information from? This is just so crazy." And when I looked at the social media landscape and ecosystem, I realized RT was doing most of the clipping and the promotion on social media of these people's clips.

>> So Bill, I saw JBL and and some of your colleagues there saying, you know, in this one very narrow way, Volodymyr sounds like she may be the last sane person or the biggest still grown up in the MAGA coalition, but she was quoted in that story, that AP story. She says, "It's looking good for Ukraine, right?" Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good. And there was the interview she did with Zelensky. Trump on Truth Social retweeted, re-truthed, or whatever they call it, the interview that Lumer did with Zelensky and wrote very good with about 14 exclamation points as is his want. What is going on there in your judgment about Zelensky's standing with the White House and about suddenly him embracing, I mean, I if you're Volodymyr Zelensky, you'll embrace anybody who'll help you with the White House presumably because you're trying to you're the stakes are existential, but what is going on there from your vantage point?

>> I mean, God knows. I guess two things I do I guess I do know. I think Ukraine is doing much better than anyone expected, including me 18 months ago. It's really a really kind of remarkable story. I bet historians, military historians, you know, 5, 10, 25 years from now will write the story of this country 1/4 the size of the dictatorship that invaded it, you know, written off at the beginning and then written off sort of later after Trump comes in and they we did cut off tens of billions of dollars of aid. And somehow with its own technological development and innovation and ingenuity, I mean, that the drone stuff is really kind of amazing. I talked to some military types and they they are amazed by it. And Trump sort of wants to be on the side of winners, and so maybe that makes him less less anti-Zelensky, plus Putin's disappointed in what's up. So, that's good. I'm it's very important that Zelensky hold on, that the Ukraine hold on and they possibly win. There have been some internal issues with Zelensky, Minister of Defense stuff and all that. I can't quite But he it being a democracy there was a lot of pressure on him and so he actually rescinded the initial appointment he made sort of different from from Putin's Russia. So that the Zelensky side. I mean on the Laura Loomer side I'm of two minds as I imagine most people are about this.

>> [laughter] >> At least two. At least two minds.

>> You don't want to give her a lot of credit, you know, as a kind of serious observer or student of these things who knows what's really going on there. But having said that, I got to think it's got to have some effect in Maga world when one after another on different issues Marjorie Taylor Greene on Epstein whatever Loomer on Ukraine starts to say, "Wait, we were lied to." I mean I doesn't have some I mean it's got to have some effect even on that impenetrable Trump base, I think.

>> I don't know how much any of those individual people, like whether it's Loomer or MTG, their comments it to the extent that they amplify a growing sense among a lot of people who in in who voted for Trump that that they have been uh they've been lied to um and that Trump uh either lied to them specifically on on on some specific set of issues or that was in general that he turns out to be a fraud and and in this all for himself and isn't really different from every other politician that they disdain. I think it you know, that that rhymes with with a growing sentiment. It's kind of part of the atmospheric uh difficulty that Trump finds himself in right now in terms of uh not having that many people who willing to uh want to stand with him and it's worth saying as we kind of transition out of this. I mean I think one the last thing about Zelensky here interesting I thought this one thing that I saw over the weekend which was that's one of the things Zelensky's going to do is share evidence with the White House showing that Russia is assisting Iran in targeting American bases in the Middle East uh via satellite surveillance. And it said in this in this reportage it said they had specific dates July 19th and 20th um when four bases fell within the area of interest of Russian satellites two in Bahrain, one in Jordan, and one in Kuwait. I mean Donald Trump likes to be with winners as you said. Donald Trump has also liked to be with with Vladimir Putin um, who is, you know,

>> [laughter] >> I guess in his mind is a winner. Uh, for a long time he thought Zelensky was a loser, even though Zelensky, to your point, has done one of the most extraordinary things in the history of modern warfare in being able to do what he's done over the course of this of this conflict. But, I just wonder when the rubber meets the road, where Zelensky sitting there trying to basically say to Trump, "Look, you want to win this war in Iran. I have specific evidence that Russia is is helping is helping Iran. Here the dates, here's the the receipts." Whether that cuts any ice with Trump or whether that is yet kind of thing that in a rational world would cut ice with any president, but just won't with him because of whatever kind of core reflexive Putin love and fear or admiration or whatever, uh, that he just won't let go of.

>> Maybe at least helps Republicans on the hill say, "Well, whatever the president might have reacted, I this seems pretty convincing and we do need to pass this package Lindsey Graham was working on actually of sanctions on Russia, at least."

>> This segment is sponsored by The New York Times. So, John and Bill's conversation today relied on a lot of original reporting. We had things like Lauren Egan's deep dive into Ken Martin's woes at the DNC. We had Politico's story on Bibi Netanyahu's efforts to get a meeting with Trump. We had NBC and The New York Times reporting on the state of the military and the conflict in Iran. Before John and Bill could give their takes on these stories, however, these reporters had to track those stories down. They had to interview sources and they confirmed the information and then write about it. The foundation of news commentary is fact-based reporting. This show and every other show with commentary on current events, that depends on original fact-based reporting. The Bulwark, Politico, NBC, The New York Times, your local paper are all sources that you can trust for fact-based reporting. Here's one example from John and Bill's conversation. Over the weekend, Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan at The New York Times published this crucial story about the White House's deliberations about the next move in Iran. Now, Eric and Jonathan relied on sources they had spent months and years developing to give us insight into the highest levels of decision-making. They found that Trump had been persuaded by his advisers to hold off on escalating our attacks on Iran, at least in part because of concerns about the dwindling stockpiles of munitions. This is a huge story. It reveals that under the Trump administration, the US military has been so poorly managed that we don't have enough of our weapons we need to fight the war that we started. And while this may not be a surprising story for those of us who have been critical of the administration, without fact-based reporting like this, the rest of us are just guessing about what's actually happening inside our government. Wherever you seek it out, nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting.

>> So, I was thinking this thing about how Trump is various people inside the administration who will who are willing to to to say whatever he wants them to say. But, anyone outside in the Republican Party, the reality of the midterms coming into view is is really starting to change certain things on the ground. And one of them is we're reporting this morning that that the White House is now telling, as I knew this day would come, Bill. I predicted it many times. The day has come where the White House is saying to Republican Congress people in in contested districts and to Senate candidates in contested states, feel free to start putting yourself putting some distance between yourself and the president. Something that, you know, now who knows, Trump may decide to attack those people when they do it. But, the fact that the White House is now telling people, "Yeah, it's time to start to cut her on here." is really kind of extraordinary. And one of the best illustrations I can think of as to why that might be the case was Donald Trump's rather extraordinary performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Which I would love to speak with you about a little bit here. I know Tim does not like to play sound of Donald Trump on the show. And I'm respectful of that. I understand the rationale for it. Uh and and but I was reliably informed that it's not a hard and fast rule and that if we're going to talk about this way as far as the dinner, we want to let people see what we're talking about because I assume most normal people were not watching this on Friday night uh for reasons that we can get into. Donald Trump attacked a lot of people uh over the course of this hour and 5-minute long speech that he gave, Bill, where he attacked, you know, every all of his normal political enemies and you know, went after uh Governor Newsom and Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer and attacked Bruce Springsteen and said that Springsteen's tour is bored in the USA. He's attacking all people. But the the most extraordinary in this rambling, insane, lunatic performance was his decision to suddenly turn on J.B. Pritzker.

>> He's doing a bad job running a state. You can't have somebody like a J.B. Pritzker, who I understand is not president, sadly, but uh you know, some people say never use the fat word. And I don't. I would never call anybody fat. I have my own problems, you know? It's not like I'm perfect. Sir, in the back. Don't call him a fat pig, okay? That's I'm sticking up for him. Don't call him you. You can't do that, sir. You can't call J.B. Pritzker a fat pig, please. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Everyone's starting to figure out who is that guy? Does he exist? But the nice part is when you do that, the press can't get you. Because I'm defending a man who obviously has a problem. Actually, he's lost a lot of weight. I saw him recently. He lost quite a bit of weight. I don't know what the hell he's got. No chance, believe me.

>> Got no chance, Bill. I don't know if you've watched the full speech. I'll just let you I'll let you speak to the Donald Trump performance at this this insane event that I can't believe anybody in my business thought it was like a reasonable thing to go knowing that something like what happened would happen.

>> Well, I totally agree on that point. Um and I agree that he seems to have bombed. I didn't watch it, needless to say. And I haven't really haven't watched all of it or even chunks of it much. Uh Andrew Eggar had an excellent piece on it in Morning Shots this morning, which people should look at though about [clears throat] how how pathetic it is that Trump still wants to ingratiate himself with this White House Correspondents Dinner. You know, that's like a that's it was something he went to 14 years ago now and got insulted by he thought by President Obama and he just hasn't it's like he's finally gets his chance to insult everyone, I suppose. But how sad is that? Your president of the United States is the most famous person in the world, I suppose, and you still got to show that you can do it. But how lame was that thing you I hadn't seen the Priska clip, honestly. I've read about it. I mean, it's it seems to be of a piece with many other lame pseudo jokes that went over horribly.

>> He was terrible. I mean, even by like I sometimes I will say and people will get mad.

>> He could be funny. He could be funny.

>> He can be funny. There were times when Trump is actually, you know,

>> It's part of the secret to why the man has won election twice over the course of the last 10 years, not three times as he claims, but is that a lot of normal people think Trump is, you know, is sort of funny. It's not my again, it's not my preferred mode of humor, but I understand that he sometimes can be quite funny. This was not funny. This was just like incoherent and adult and mean and anybody who's ever found

anything charming about Trump, they were not present in this speech. They were it was just a a kind of rambling adult savage stupid kind of performance that I think that even his biggest fans they watched it honestly would be sort of like uh he seems to have lost not just his fastball, but his curveball, his slider, and his knuckleball.

>> Yeah, no, very much so. And so I don't know what effect it has and um you know, I hope you're right that even Republicans are moving away from him. I don't know. On one hand they they vote dutifully for this stupid war that they don't support in reality and for the defense budget increase that is very unpopular that they probably some of them don't support. And they're going to vote for Todd Blanche despite the fact that they probably know he shouldn't be Attorney General. So, I do I'm just curious cuz you follow this stuff closely and you're shrewd about it and look look around the corners maybe very effectively sometimes. Do you think there really is erosion will be erosion in support for him on the hill or will it be more a little bit of just total change of attitude?

>> I think it's important to make a distinction between erosion on the hill in the sense of what they are when they're forced to vote on something versus what you're going to see in battleground districts and in in Senate seats that are up for grabs where Trump is in Michigan. We'll talk about Michigan in a second, but Trump is in Michigan today. I can tell you I think this will be the last time you'll see Donald Trump in Michigan. Mike Mike Rogers is not going to invite Donald Trump to Michigan between between now and election day. I don't know about Ken Paxton. That might be one exception, but if you're running for Senate in Maine, if you're Susan Collins, Donald Trump's not going to be not going to be in Maine. And what the White House is saying to people now effectively is not so much hey, feel free to vote against us, but is hey, feel free to start making arguments on the campaign trail that are either implicitly or in some cases maybe in a little bit explicitly kind of contrary to to to what Trump says, to to not have him not invite him in the district, to kind of put kind of some distance between yourself. You don't have to be tied at the hip to Donald Trump going forward and I think that's going to be an enormous relief for any Republican who's running in a battleground district, in a in a purple district, in a swing district or or in one of these Senate seats that that that is to get a determine control of the upper chamber. I think you're going to see, you know, you can go around the map. You're not going to see Donald Trump in Ohio. You're not going to see Donald Trump in North Carolina. You're not going to see Donald Trump in Iowa. No one's going to want Donald Trump in their district or in their state if there's if it's going to be a close election. And I think the White House has just basically signaled to those people it's fine. You don't have to pretend like you want Donald Trump to come here. And then going forward, I do think on things on high profile things like a lot of these nominations that that it will still there still will be a lockstep loyalty. I I want to see a situation in which the United States Senate rejects something Donald Trump wants before I'm willing to countenance the notion that that might start happening with any frequency. There's not been a single example of it in the entirety of the last 16 months. So, until there's one example of it, I'm not going to open my mind to the possibility of a whole bunch more.

>> I'm totally with you on that. On the other side, I'm just curious. You've been through some of these midterms as I have. Um do you think it will work? The just the quote distancing. I would say in the past, it doesn't work, right? I mean, I was old enough to remember 1994 and a bunch of Southern Democrats, Tennessee, for example, really did distance themselves from Clinton in pretty big ways and they lost just as badly as they did in Nevada and 2010. I mean, we've been through these wave If it's a wave-ish election, and I kind of feel it will be, I [snorts] I it feels like almost it's the worst of both worlds. Some of the Trump people won't turn out and the normal swing voters, as it were, will say, "Well, then you still need to check Trump. We need Democrats to control Congress." I don't know.

>> The elections have been more more nationalized than they ever have been, number one. And the overriding sense of most voters is correct, which is that the Republican Party has been the is the party of Trump and that they've been basically operating on autopilot at Trump's behest. They're right about that and putting a little bit of distance between themselves and Donald Trump and doing a speech that says, "Hey, I know Donald Trump has kind of pretended like affordability's a a hoax or whatever. I don't think it's a hoax. I think it's real." It's like, that's not going to help That's not going to help anybody. The median voter is like, the Republican Party is the party of Trump and if they are interested in punishing Donald Trump, they're going to punish that party. And and also, to your point before, Bill, they're they're The level of enthusiasm, and this is the thing that there's been some reporting on over the weekend. In fact, I think a piece good piece in the Washington Post that basically was said that Republicans are starting to just freak out over the lack of enthusiasm among core Republican voters. And and I want to get to, while we still have time, I want to get to a few of these domestic things. We'll go relatively quickly through them. But Michigan is the one race in the Senate where Democrats are still nervous. Georgia, which was the other seat they worried about losing, they're not as worried about that anymore. They Ossoff has been better than expected performer, has been a way better than expected fundraiser, and they got the nominee that they wanted in Mike Collins, the Trump backed nominee, rather than the the Brian Kemp backed nominee. So, I think people are not as worried on the Democratic side about Georgia, but they're really worried about Michigan. Um and we have a debate tonight, the last debate between Abdul El-Sayed and and Haley Stevens. We also had Gretchen Whitmer, who remains a very popular governor in Michigan, who decided to endorse Haley Stevens, I think not surprisingly. But on Friday, let's take a look at that.

>> As governor, I've had one strategy, get things done. And that strategy informs everything that I do. And that's why I'm endorsing Haley Stevens for the US Senate. Just like me, Haley will do whatever it takes to get things done for the people of Michigan. And we need her now more than ever. Republicans in DC are making your life harder and more expensive. Tariffs, cuts to Medicaid, soaring gas prices, it's all piling on. Luckily, Haley has taken them on and putting money back in Michiganders' pockets. She helped President Obama save the auto industry and protect 200,000 Michigan jobs. Brought billions home to rebuild Michigan manufacturing. Took on Big Pharma to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Led the fight to block Republicans from defunding Social Security. And she's standing up to Republicans right now as they jack up the price of gas, groceries, and health care. Haley is as Michigan as it gets. She grew up in a middle-class household. Her parents ran a landscaping business out of their Ford F-150. And she'll tell anyone who will listen about her first Oldsmobile. She knows what Michigan families are going through. And that's how I know she will always put Michigan first.

>> Haley Stevens has been the candidate of the establishment, the Washington, D.C. establishment, not a good thing in this cycle. Abdul El-Sayed has been the candidate of has now been endorsed by basically everybody on the left from Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren. This is a very nationalized race and and I I would say it's like a microcosm of what's been going on this summer in the Democratic Party. You've got the wet hot DSA summer of the We've seen in some of these primaries in New York and in in Colorado. You also, you know, saw the fallout from the Platner thing in in Maine. And so there the notion that that possibly Abdul El-Sayed, you know, he's a rising figure. He's had all the heat. There's polling shows the race is within the margin of error, but he's kind of had the momentum in that race, but now people are looking up for reasons that we can discuss and saying this guy might be just too far left for this very very very purple electorate in Michigan. What do you see on the horizon there for that Michigan race?

>> I mean, I guess with the primary just a week off. So yeah, pretty close. I kind of think Stevens might have I think McNamara dropping out, the third candidate, and then having Whitmer, who's a been a popular elected and reelected governor of Michigan, endorsing. I think I don't know. I'd bet on Stevens. I mean, I also think she's an underrated politician. She's tough. She's won in the past in in house races. And um so I I think she has a pretty good chance. I do think she has a better chance of beating Mike Rogers than than El-Sayed. I also think I don't One thing I'd slightly tweak if I were writing Gretchen Whitmer's little thing there was good. Actually, I thought pretty effective. I'm sure she was advised what to say by the Stevens campaign. You know, I talk about what she's been what she's done in the past in Congress. I actually leave all that out. First of all, as I A lot of it was attempts to stop things from happening that didn't happen. What she did with Obama 15 years ago was on the car bailout. Maybe if you want to mention that, I guess in Michigan that's a big deal, understandably. But still, it's got to be a little she will stop Trump from doing more damage over the next two years and Mike Rogers won't. There's no reason you can't be establishment and also be forward looking. Shouldn't be. And there shouldn't be a reason why you can't be establishment and also saying, "I'm going to be as effective, more effective in stopping Trump." So, I think it's with those slight tweaks, I thought it was an effective little ad by Gretchen Whitmer and I guess I think Stevens is in pretty good shape, but as you say, the would have lost money betting on the establishment people in some of these races this year.

>> I thought the most effective parts of that of that video are the parts at the end where she starts talking about her being more as Michigan as Michigan can be. My my mother was from Ann Arbor, Michigan and when I saw these videos going around of her she was being mocked by the left for her kind of Chris Farley kind of, you know, that, you know, Michigan way and all that stuff. I'm like, everybody I have ever known in in in Michigan from Mackinac Island north, there's a Haley Stevens in every ice cream parlor, in every at every roller rink, you know, like there's that that's that's someone who sounds a lot like a lot of normal people in Michigan and you can make fun of it, but I think that that part of Whitmer the Whitmer thing that kind of keyed in on the notion of she's one of us and that's, you know, that will obviously be to some ears will be coded as kind of a an attack in a way on El Sayed, but the the biggest concerns I think about him if you're really if you're focused mostly on electability has been his unwillingness to climb down from things like his advocacy of defund the police, his embrace of Medicare for all which is, you know, I understand that it's a the putting aside whatever the policy arguments are for it, it is a thing that, you know, I had Adam Jentleson on my podcast on on In Politic the other day and Adam had done they've they're the Searchlight Institute had done a big piece of research about about the political problems with Medicare for all. Um, he's going to be easier for Mike Rogers. Now, it might be that because he's popular with the base he can drive more turnout, but if I'm Mike Rogers and I'm thinking who do I want to run against in in race, I'd rather run against El Sayed. It has nothing to do with the fact that he's that that he hangs out with Hassan or that he's or that he's a Muslim American. It has that he's a bunch of issues that I think are to the left of where the median voter is in the state of Michigan and I think that that will be the big concern if El Sayed does pull this off is that they've got themself out of electrifying candidate who also is just there's this reporting in Politico in a in Politico Playbook this morning who seems to be more interested in fighting with Democrats than he is in fighting with Republicans. You know, there's he's kind of like, "If I win this race, we're going to primary John Fetterman." You're like, "Why are you talking about primarying John Fetterman?" What rather than talking about beating Donald Trump and winning in in the in the general election. I just think these internecine fights among Democrats like your priorities are kind of kind of screwed up if that's where your head's at when it comes to El Sayed.

>> I think that's right. I I think don't you think if if Stevens wins I let's leave aside the merits I mean I prefer on the merits honestly, but still just on the electability thing I think Democrats end up they got lucky in Maine honestly and I think they end up with a pretty good slate of candidates in these key Senate races. I mean if you just go one by one it's kind of there's some older ones, some younger ones, some more establishment ones, some more you know, sort of progressive ones. Boyd Cooper is a very different candidate from I don't know, you know, from Haley Stevens or from uh Tal Rico, but really if you just go Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Alaska >> Alaska, yep. >> Yeah, even Kansas it looks like, Montana maybe, but then also the key states that we mentioned. They they ended up I mean it's not perfect when it when is it ever though in American politics? I mean it's a pretty strong I would say electorally and I would say even substantively slate and mostly youngish which is good for the Democratic Party. It's good to look like Ossoff and Tal Rico and Haley Stevens not like, you know, necessarily like with all due respect to Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and all these characters, so.

>> We should mention Troy Jackson became the formal nominee and there's the early polling is giving some is heartening to Democrats who are thinking that maybe the primary implosion will be the best thing that happened to them because his support was looking pretty soft and and Troy Jackson is you know the people have been saying for a while that a generic Democrat beats Susan Collins. The early polling suggests that he's got a two or three point lead even before he's really in the race there. So that's reason for Democrats to be cheerful. The one thing that is not a thing that for Democrats to be cheerful about is is the state of the national party and I got to get this in just because Lori Egan for the bullwork today wrote a fabulous piece that broke a bunch of news about just how bad the financial situation is the DNC. I could go on about this at great length but Bill, you look at Ken Martin and think about I mean has that guy had a good news cycle since he got became the chair of the DNC? The party's broke. They're using the the headquarters as collateral on loans. There's a like literally literally mortgaging the furniture over there. And of course there's the autopsy and all the other things that he gets a heap for. I mean I guess my question is do you think that that guy will survive and do you think it matters?

>> I mean I'm inclined not to think it doesn't matter too much. People I know who are really in real politics think a little more worried about the money stuff than I do. I assume the money can go to the other committees and to obviously these days of super PACs and stuff and to the campaigns themselves and get spent probably just as well. There's some issues I guess to get a better rate if the DNC works with them and all that and TV rate and all that stuff but yeah I I don't think it matters that much. The irony will be Martin probably have done a horrible job then they'll win the House and the Senate. Can you dump the chairman after you win both houses? I guess I guess you can, right? They probably should honestly. He really does seem unusually I you and I have seen many party chairman who weren't great. He does seem unusually not good.

>> Yeah, the problem is that that people say things like well, you know, you know Rahm should do it and you're kind of like you know, I don't know. Back in the day of Haley Barbour at the G at the at the RNC and Ron Brown at the DNC when the parties were more powerful, you had serious people who wanted to be party Like apart from the fact that Rham is running for president, Rham would never want to be the chairman of the DNC again. I mean, maybe you could maybe convince like Terry McAuliffe who doesn't seem like he's like over employed right now to come back in and raise some money for the party. But like the part of the issue here is that like the the chairman of the Republican Party, I had to look this up. Do you know who the chairman of the Republican Party is right now?

>> Yeah, that's a good question.

>> I yes, I ask you that question because I looked it up this morning.

>> from South Carolina, but isn't he running for

>> No, it it says now that is the head of the chairman of the Republican National Committee right now is a guy named Joe Gruters. Joe Gruters who is a Florida State Senator who Donald Trump likes a lot and is someone who I guarantee you not just me and not just you, but almost everybody who covers politics and lives this stuff could not pick out of a lineup. This is a job that's been devalued to enormous to enormous extent and it's because the central parties, I mean, maybe in the wake of the Supreme Court decision about spending this parties will start to rebuild some power because they'll be able to direct funds in a different way. But man, this is not a job that a serious person wants anymore. And so, I mean, I don't know. I think you know, you if if unless the Democrats collapse completely and don't take control of either the House or Senate, I think that happens, Ken Marten's out pretty quick. But if they take control of one or both, it will be very hard to get rid of that guy. The last thing on my list uh Bill for you is your you did a conversation with an Epstein survivor over the weekend that I think is worth promoting. So, why don't you just you can find this on the Bulwark site. Talk a little bit about what that conversation was like and what you got out of it.

>> Yeah, Bulwark on Sunday with Danny Abensky. I mean, she really I had seen clips of her and she testified against Blanche on Wednesday and so you could see clips of that and people saw them and that she was on a couple of interviews afterwards and stuff. But I I actually she was it was really personally for me kind of not just interesting, but moving. I mean, she was just so eloquent and herself but obviously moved about the situation about the general of course neglect of the Epstein survivors. But about the as you made the point, it's not just about them. You know, this isn't just about getting justice for them, for what happened to them in the past, for the truth out about them. It's for the future. If we're going to have the attitude that, "Oh, well, I guess we're not going to investigate anyone, no one gets prosecuted, the whole thing gets washed under the shoved under the rug." What does that say about going forward about our attitude towards these terrible crimes? And so, she was very eloquent on that and very, you know, just impressive. I I've interviewed, as you have, many, many people over the years online and otherwise, and she was one of the most impressive that I've that I've had the pleasure of of talking with for over half an hour or so.

>> Well, everybody should go take a look at that. Make sure you go and read Lauren Egan piece about the DNC. And and actually, you know, Jonathan Cohn also has a piece of about why that Gretchen Whitmer endorsement in Michigan might matter in a way that endorsements don't generally in this day and age because of Gretchen Whitmer's not just being a future governor, but also she's still sitting, I think, her approval rating still north of 50%, which is, you know, almost unheard of for either party at this point given people's unhappiness in general and their disdain for all elected officials in both parties. Bill Kristol, it's great to see you. Thanks for thanks for coming on. Thanks for and everybody here at The Bulwark, thanks for having me on. Hopefully, I haven't totally destroyed the franchise and we'll still be left standing for when when Tim returns from wherever the hell he is.

>> That was great. That was great, John.