Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, January the 12th, and so we have our editor at large, Bill Kristol. Bill... something has been in the water the last nine days.
I don't, you know, it kind of felt like the, the beginning of the administration was like this, you know, where, where Trump was doing all kinds of crazy shit, you know, in quick succession.
And it's not as if it was not crazy, you know, towards the end of the year, but it did feel like he was losing a little steam, you know, maybe grandpa was, was losing, you know, the, the, the verb, uh, for some of this, but, um, man, between what we've seen in Minnesota and in Venezuela and then the big news from last night, which is that the administration is investigating Jerome Powell.
Now, the Department of Justice has been a Jerome Powell. We've ratcheted things up. Yeah, I was thinking about that.
I guess the last two, three months of the year, Trump seemed a little bit on the defensive, and he was with Epstein and other things. They didn't do well in the government shutdown. The Democrats did pretty well, very well in the November elections. And then the stuff he was doing was bad, the Kennedy Center kind of thing and all that, the East Wing.
But it was more performative, you might say, than serious. I do feel like the last 10 days we have seen real – accelerationist authoritarianism in foreign policy, obviously, with ICE and now with Powell. And I'll just add to that list the Epstein file.
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Chapter 2: What recent events indicate Trump's authoritarian tendencies?
I mean, they were pretending at the end of last year they were going to release them. They were redacting a lot of stuff. It was a little very slow. But now they've just, I don't know, I guess they've just decided they don't even have to pretend to be obeying a law that Trump himself signed a couple of months ago.
Accelerating is a key word. I got a text this morning from a friend saying the accelerationists are winning within the MAGA side of things. And that is, yeah, I think that's correct and ominous. Well, let's start with Powell and then we'll kind of go through all of these things individually. So what we learned last night is that federal prosecutors are investigating
federal reserve chair over the central bank's multi-billion dollar project to renovate its headquarters. You might remember that they had that press conference a couple months ago where Trump went there and then Powell was in the hard hat and, and Trump was giving him shit over, over this. And so this has been kind of in the ether for a while now. Um,
Among those behind the case to investigate Powell are Jeanine Pirro, Judge Box of Wine, the U.S. attorney, and then Bill Pulte, this housing official that has been going after other enemies of the president over their supposed mortgage issues, including Tish James and others. I think, obviously, this is horrendous and sort of keystone authoritarianism, but I
I think the most striking element of the story was how quickly Jerome Powell responded. I just want to play a clip from a two-minute video he put out last night that gets to the heart of the matter. Let's listen to that.
The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions that
or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
So you can see there that he didn't mince words. I mean, John Paul is saying that this this threat of prosecution is directly related to the Fed not responding to Trump's pressure campaign for them to push down interest rates. I think that's the important part here, because obviously it's bad if he's going after enemies.
But if it's specifically tied to undermining the independence of the Fed, there are a ton of other potential consequences involved. of that. And you saw, you know, last night, I was sitting on social media, even some Trump supporters who are kind of in finance were sort of shaken by that element of it.
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Chapter 3: How is Jerome Powell's investigation affecting the Fed's independence?
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I mean, the Dems, if you really wanted to get serious about the fact that it is a genuine crisis, the Dems could also offer to withdraw opposition to Collins to reelection if she joins them. So there are many, the Dems have some cards to play here, too, if they're serious about the moment. The ball's in the Republicans' court, mostly, since you say they have agency.
Same in the House, incidentally. It would take, what, two Republicans now, I think, given how narrow the margin is, to say they're going to temporarily vote for Collins. Jeffrey's for Speaker. And again, they could cut deals. They could get some committee chairmen. All the ones I mentioned could get committee chairmanships. One of them could become Speaker or Majority Leader, conceivably.
And if you get really... In this kind of emergency, I think it is worth at least trying to get people to think a little more broadly. And it has been so infuriating for the last year to have all these, you know, everyone's, well, I guess it's 53-47. There's just nothing that can be done as if... People can't act to change the status quo.
And there's enough unhappiness I should think about tariffs, war powers, the Fed now, some about ICE, I would think, I hope. Maybe this is a moment where it all comes together. Maybe it is kind of fantasy, but I put it in warning shots to try to give people something to think about, you know?
No, it's fantasy. I don't want people to think that we think it might happen, but it could happen. So it should be stated. Right. Like this is like the pre surrender. Why is it impossible? And there are two retiring senators who know who who have stated objections to Trump on various things. There's a libertarian senator who has stated objections.
There's Murkowski, who's run as an independent before. And this is not. It shouldn't be outside the realm of possibility, even though it probably is. I want to talk about Renee Good and her murder last week. Since we've not spoken about it since we got together, you talked about it with Sam on your Sunday. Live conversation.
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Chapter 4: What implications does the ICE situation in Minnesota have for immigration policy?
He's got to be worried about what... he would want someone in there who would not want to cause any trouble for him. And I think in a way he probably would judge that Bannon would be more loyal than Vance or Rubio. I think that could well be true. Incidentally.
Yeah, maybe. I mean, again, Bannon went to jail for him. Bannon went to jail for him.
So that probably tells Trump that he could be, he could live with Bannon in there.
So not testify.
So Bannon, Bannon, we've worked that out. Bannon 2028. Yeah. I don't know.
I not for it. I just think that objectively, analytically, I agree. Like there is space that Trump has created the space for someone to run, whether that's Banner or someone else, is an authentic America first person. And if J.D.
Vance decides to go down with the Trump ship and apologize for everything he's doing and pretend like there's an America first rationale for Venezuela and for all this other nonsense that Trump is doing with the fact that he was a never Trumper. And I was going back looking at some of JD's old blog posts over the weekend.
There's one where he's talking about how can conservatives who distrust the government on the government's able to efficiently run all these other things like the post office, etc. How can we then turn around and say that the government can efficiently run a deportation campaign of 12 million people? That was J.D. Vance 10 years ago. He's phony. He's phony.
And no matter how much he sucks up to Trump now, the vulnerability of being phony will always be there. I don't know. I think it's interesting. Tucker, speaking of the America First wing, Tucker was at the White House, had lunch with Trump. Trump gave him as a gift a pair of brown wingtips. Not a brown shirt. I was thinking a brown shirt would have been more appropriate.
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