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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so of course we are here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol. There's so much news to talk about. We're going to try to carve out some time for the NBA at the end, since Donald Trump is sullying the beauty of the NBA Finals. Bill, how are you doing? Good weekend for you? Yeah, good, good.
The Knicks, maybe you're not aware of that.
The Knicks look strong, right? We'll get to that at the end. We'll race through all the other topics to get to the Knicks.
You're looking nice in that green polo. It's a good color for you. All right, let's talk about what's happening in Iran. I'm just going to run through the last 24 hours. We're very much deep into the Groundhog Day portion of the Iran war, but here we go. Yesterday, Israel was carrying out strikes against Hezbollah forces in Beirut. This prompted Iran to fire missiles at Israel.
Trump then urged Israel not to return fire and for both sides to stop shooting. Really strong. That's a strong man right there. Say, after you've been bombed, do nothing. Israel nevertheless responded. They were not moved by Donald Trump's pleas. They launched airstrikes against Iran early this morning. Following that, Iran announced that they're halting military action in Israel.
Israel continues to strike Lebanon. Axios' Barak Ravid posted another siren alarm tweet about how Trump says we are in a ceasefire and a deal is coming soon and the stock market is up. So I don't know what you make of all that. In some senses, a... increase in hostilities in another way. It's just kind of a different version of the same story that we've seen for the last hundred days or so.
Yeah, I do think it's Groundhog Day pretty much. I mean, a couple of little tidbits that are amusing. Not amusing, but depressing about our Commander-in-Chief. He seems to have called your friend Barak Wavid at Axios before calling Bibi to directly tell him not to retaliate. He was like, I didn't. I mean, isn't that right?
I mean, talk to several reporters. There's a New York Post reporter.
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Chapter 2: What recent events in Iran are impacting U.S. foreign policy?
He also spoke to there's a third one. I'm forgetting. It's unusual management of the war, certainly to, you know, have the ally that you're in war with, for better or worse, get attacked. And then for you to immediately start telling media outlets that you want them not to retaliate.
And you're about to call their prime minister to tell them not to tell you. I think the gulf between Trump and Netanyahu and really between the U.S. and Israel is probably greater than they're letting on. And then we might think, given history and given both real history of over decades, but also history of Trump and Bibi, which has been a lot of close coordination, obviously.
And let's not forget that we got into this war. Bibi's urging, he's allowed to urge the U.S. to do it. I don't think it proves anything inappropriate, but He urged the U.S. to do it, had this moment of opportunity to bump off the top leadership, and we took it.
So I wonder really where, once this ends, and I kind of still think it will, because Trump really, really, really doesn't want it to continue as we've seen. It will end, of course, with Iran having some ability to just shut the straight again. I mean, it's not going to be true free passage. God knows the nuclear program, they can kick that down the road, I suppose.
They'll arrange to get some money to Iran through the Gulf states. All of our allies will have lost total faith in us. But I think one thing that will happen over the next several months, I wouldn't be surprised to see the administration turn against Israel. And then you really have an interesting moment, right, for MAGA and for the Republican Party, I think.
I definitely agree that's possible. A couple of other ways to look at this. I don't think this is happening right now, but I think it bears mentioning that Trump and Bibi have done the good cop, bad cop thing in the past. It doesn't appear that that's what's happening now, you know, where Trump kind of pretended like he wanted peace and to give cover for Bibi to continue to prosecute wars.
We saw this in Gaza and other places. So it's possible. I don't think that's what's happening now, but it bears mentioning. I think the one element of what happened yesterday
that makes it slightly different from what we've seen for the past three months is if there are continued hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Iran, and if Trump can't contain that or can't credibly say that he... wants to contain that in a negotiation. I do think that further complicates, you know, his ideal to get a final deal.
I mean, Iran's, it's hard to even say what each side's terms are to end the war because the ball is moving on both sides a lot. You can't really trust anything coming out of, you know, either party. But if you take, you know, Iran's stated metrics for ending the war, you know, one of them is tell Israel to stop attacking Lebanon.
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Chapter 3: How does Trump's recent interview reflect his political strategy?
Mark Hertling, our colleague, when he was still in active duty, when he was a general, lieutenant general, gave the speech maybe 11, 12 years ago, I think shortly before he left, retired, at this ceremony. It's an annual ceremony, obviously. And I was in touch with him over the weekend. He was so personally just offended and appalled that this could be happening.
This is such an important ceremonial occasion, a moving one. Usually the veteran, the old, old veterans are there. The locals in France, but other Europeans as well, take D-Day seriously. They put flowers on the graves of the American soldiers buried in the famous cemetery in Normandy, but also in other cemeteries in France and Holland and Germany, actually.
To use it as an occasion for this is so gross, really.
Yeah, it's depressing, honestly. Yeah, it's gross and depressing. It's just like to have this buffoon giving this kind of like... It's not even a... high-class version of the conservative worldview. And it's like a tabloid Weekend Fox News version of what the argument would be. And it's really... it's really shameful. This is where we're at.
It is striking how much I took to Tom Jocelyn about this and the Sunday bill work show yesterday. And I don't fully understand. I guess I underestimated a little bit. There's a lot of kooky things and Trumpism, you know, a lot of things that I don't like and are deplorable. And there's a lot of just garden variety, racism and bigotry and nativism and all this, but the degree to which the,
The great replacement theory and the re-migration agenda is really at the heart of it. I think I sort of underestimated that. There's so many others. There's so many other things that are very unpleasant, to say the least. But he could have done much more of an America-first foreign policy. He could have had some fake, I don't know what the analogy would be.
We have to be strong and tough in the Department of War. Weakness doesn't work. But he went right to the re-migration agenda. I don't know. Are you a little surprised how central that's all become in the second term? I guess it was central in the first term, too.
I mean, it's tied to the original Trump escalator speech of the invasion of America. In this way, it's just like Father Coughlin stuff all over again. And it's just a sense that the real threat is that you know, these third world lists or whatever are, you know, invading our, you know, pristine Western civilization. And, you know, none of them actually go to Europe either, right?
This is like, it's just, it really, I mean, truly they, um, take the worst examples. Kathy Young wrote about this in the Morning Shots this morning, actually. There is this horrible story in London, you know, of a Brit that gets killed by a migrant. And there's a misunderstanding. The police come and the migrant that killed him had actually called the police.
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Chapter 4: How is Todd Blanche connected to the Epstein cover-up?
There is a psychological barrier. If you are yourself, like I am a Republican. I've always been a Republican. I don't really love Trump that much. If you're that type of person in Iowa, then you're like, we really need a new state government. Like the state government has not been serving us well.
And like the Republicans nominated a guy from Kansas who is a total clown, who is an investor in a cock ring company, Firm Tech. I don't know if you know about Cochran's bill. Just what I've read online a little bit. I haven't read too much. I haven't read too much.
I don't really want to know, but go ahead and tell, please.
Shout out to our friends at firm tech. When they were mentioned last week, I received a free sample, which I've not tried yet. So I can't give an endorsement, but I appreciate them. So the Republican nominee for governor and conquering investor lives in Kansas. Just absolute absurd choice. Yeah. to be governor of the state.
No, a career political operative that he marries a rich person is just a nepo baby that is totally out of step. So back to my point, you can imagine the Republican in Iowa looking at that race and being like, this is crazy. Arab San seems like a middle of the road guy and then struggling to also pull D in the Senate race. You know, I can imagine that.
And so I do think that there's a little bit of an additional barrier for Turek. I think it's doable, though, for sure.
Democrats have won the governorship in Trump time, recent times, Trump times, and obviously in Kentucky and Kansas, actually. A couple other states that are, I'm now blacked out for a second. Whereas the Senate races, which are federal races, do become referenda on the parties as a whole. You know, Trump's weak enough that that could hurt in a couple of cases, I do think now, finally.
And again, if the Republican senators have to vote to confirm that. The organizer of the Epstein cover-up, that wouldn't hurt either to make the federal race less lopsided, but Trump carried 25 states three times. All of them now have two Republican senators. That is, they have 50 Republican senators for those 25 states.
So at the federal level, the ability to withstand the fact that I just don't really want Elizabeth Warren running the Senate, I mean, whatever they're going to tell themselves, you know, has been more powerful. At the state level, there's more reality. This Republican governor screwed up. We're going to put in a Democrat, you know, and so on.
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