Bill Kristol: Kleptocrats and Plutocrats
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What are the latest updates on Trump's foreign policy shift?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Congrats to Anora. A great film on a win last night. Lots of wins at the Oscars and happy Lundy-Graw. Much has happened since we last taped. Had it not been my husband's 40th birthday and Mardi Gras weekend, I might have come back on to do an emergency pod. But, you know, sometimes you guys just got to wait for the good stuff. And so I got Bill Kristol back here and it's Monday. How you doing, Bill? I'm doing fine.
Sam and I did a pod yesterday. You'll be glad to know, which covers some of this, but we can get into much more depth here. Sam, you know, you kind of skate across the surface. With Tim Miller, you're talking about the deep dives, you know?
That is great to know. No, I was nursing a hangover yesterday, so I did not tune in for you and Sam, but people can get our little Sunday bonus conversations on Substack. So, you know, go to the Bulwark, sign up for Bulwark Plus. You don't have to wait for me until Monday afternoon that way. All right. Where should we start? I think we got to start with the sneer heard around the world from J.D. Vance. I'm going to play a series of clips from the White House summit, so to speak, between Vladimir Zelensky, Putin. That was unintentional. Between Vladimir Zelensky, Trump, and Vance. Things were going okay. I mean, you know, okay for Trump on the Trump scale until J.D., decided to interject into a question from the press about whether Trump had been too nice to Putin. Let's listen.
One more question.
I will respond to this. So look, for four years in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin. And then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States' words mattered more than the president of the United States' actions.
I signed with him, Macron and Merkel, we signed ceasefire. Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go. We signed him with gas contract. Gas contract. Yes, but after that, he broken this ceasefire. He killed our people and he didn't exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn't do it. What kind of diplomacy, J.D., you are speaking about?
What do you mean? I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that's going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the President for trying to bring it into this conflict. Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have? I have actually watched and seen the stories, and I know what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President. Do you disagree that you've had problems bringing people into your military?
And do you think that it's respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?
A lot of questions. Let's start from the beginning. First of all, during the war, Everybody has problems, even you.
All right. We're going to get to then President Trump intervening there. But I want to start with J.D. since he kicked off the kerfuffle. Kind of a mixed message there. He begins by condescendingly lecturing Zelensky about diplomacy and how we need diplomacy now. And then he proceeds to berate and chastise Zelensky, which isn't maybe the best form of diplomacy I've ever seen. But I'm curious what you thought about that, Bill.
I mean, it was a setup, obviously, by Trump and J.D. I don't know if it was semi-bad cop and really bad cop or what, but J.D. knew what he was doing. He had his little talking points prepared. They wanted to do what Trump later says in the tweet, portray Zelensky as an enemy of peace, to...
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