Bill Kristol: Trump Is All-In on Authoritarianism

79.785 - 93.522 Bill Kristol

I don't honestly see, I guess the stories here in McLean, Virginia are not like wildly festooned with, I don't know, obviously gay pride things. So it's not a problem.

93.502 - 110.97 Tim Miller

really come to the forefront of my mind woke bill crystal outflanking me on gay pride month i like that that's perfect um let's start with the war in iran i did get a kick bill maher's had a lot of misses lately but um he did have a little bit where he said he's not going to talk about the iran war updates because people are going to think it's a rerun

111.44 - 130.886 Tim Miller

I am starting to feel a little bit that way about the podcast, but there were some things that happened over the weekend I do want to highlight. On, I guess it was Saturday, Friday, Axios, which keeps reporting their deals right around the corner, reported some sources for the Trump administration saying essentially there's a deal on Trump's desk. Trump was just waiting to sign it.

131.406 - 149.205 Tim Miller

And then there were some provisions of that deal that Trump wanted to be tougher. And so they were going to send it back to the mullahs in Iran. But that would take them like three days to get back to them. It's hard to even communicate with them because they live in caves and such. And so, you know, maybe we'd have a deal like more like next week, which is now this week.

149.645 - 171.128 Tim Miller

So that was the pitch kind of going into the weekend right there, like the two yard line. That's like it's almost there. It's just we got to wait for these. prehistoric monsters to get back to us from their caves. Since then, the Iranians rejected Trump's counterproposal within like two hours. So the cave Wi-Fi must be better than they thought. And then active fire started last night.

246.929 - 264.053 Tim Miller

Yeah, and part of the case for eventually reaching a deal is that it doesn't really seem like either side wants the war to begin again, right? And Trump wants out badly, but they both want these face-saving negotiations. I kind of figured that eventually, at some point, there would be basically two deals.

264.434 - 285.845 Tim Miller

The Iranians would say they got one thing, and we'd say we got the other thing, and Trump would try to just flood the zone with BS and kind of move forward to try to cover up his humiliating defeat. And maybe that's still how things end. But it's certainly further away than the Trump folks want people to think as they try to calm the markets.

286.246 - 297.743 Tim Miller

And, you know, on the markets, I guess the only thing that they've had any success with really with the war is jawboning the markets a bit. And, you know, there's an Exxon executive over the weekend that said,

297.723 - 314.728 Tim Miller

you know, basically that the oil reserves, if you like look throughout the world and all the countries throughout the world are, it's like unprecedented how low like the strategic reserves are. I was looking at a chart yesterday about like the Japan, you know, petroleum reserves, and it's just like a straight line down.

314.748 - 335.196 Tim Miller

It was kind of like an elephant trunk, you know, after being, you know, pretty steady over the course of the last few decades. And so this exec said, he thinks that, you know, it's hard to predict a date exactly, but two, three weeks, you know, We can see the oil prices jump to like 150, like way higher than they've been. That's just one person's opinion, but we'll see.

459.414 - 468.008 Bill Kristol

Anyway, I still think it's all jockeying and, But the degree to which Trump, I don't know, is he even right? Does it matter? I mean, he's taken the hit on the war.

468.068 - 485.883 Bill Kristol

Are people going to be fooled if he looks tougher for an extra week or they get some sentence on a piece of paper on an MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding, in which Iran really pledges a slightly stronger version of addressing the nuclear issue or... Keeping the straight open?

485.943 - 501.834 Tim Miller

I think it's psychological. And it's psychological. It's part of his dick measuring contest with Obama, which he's always going to lose. But I think that it's that. He feels like he needs something good. And he has people around him. The people around him that wanted to do this are still talking to him. He posted yesterday about how Mark Levin's show was good. We were here before.

501.974 - 516.723 Tim Miller

Mark Thiessen is still talking to him. Rubio. People sometimes don't like to throw Rubio in, but this is Rubio's war as much as anybody's like Rubio was pushing for this. So I think that those I think that there are people in his ear that are like, well, you know, you got to be tough. You can't back out.

516.743 - 522.214 Tim Miller

And this is to his he's in this bleat last night after midnight president posting after midnight.

637.535 - 656.689 Tim Miller

One other foreign policy thing briefly, just because I thought it was noteworthy. Zelensky put out a long statement over the weekend about how he wants to have, speaking of deals, a deal with the U.S. related to the Ukrainian drone technology. and a cooperation agreement related to that.

657.07 - 672.872 Tim Miller

They've signed those with several of the Gulf states and some other countries because of all the advancements Ukraine's had in drone technology, having to defend themselves from Russia. The U.S. has been slow rolling that. It's unclear exactly why. Phillips O'Brien posted this. The U.S.

672.892 - 686.113 Tim Miller

is putting its own troops in danger by not working as closely as possible with the Ukrainians on drone development, doing it to stay close to Putin. Trump is showing once again how little he cares about U.S. soldiers. We'll see kind of how that shakes out.

686.133 - 696.533 Tim Miller

But it is like it's pretty interesting kind of side development that now that it's like the Ukrainians who have lapped us and other countries in this very important situation.

696.513 - 714.15 Tim Miller

You know, kind of technology of the way that the wars are going, you know, because of Trump's kind of stupid positioning, whatever, whether you want to call it pro Putin or neutral or, you know, however you want to describe his positioning in the in the Russian Ukraine war, we may be cutting off our nose despite our face a bit.

877.43 - 895.752 Bill Kristol

Yeah, Friday had two different judges also halting the slush fund for now. Sort of different K-1 Florida, one of these different litigants, different cases. One takeaway I think is the courts can slow things down, maybe reverse them. And a lot of these district judges, I mean, Judge Cooper here is a very well-respected district judge, the Kennedy Center judge.

895.852 - 911.055 Bill Kristol

His opinion is in the ID plus pages and very careful. And he's just totally exasperated by the kinds of arguments Justice Department lawyers are making. It does seem like there's more of that going around among district court judges. Appellate court, Supreme Court, we'll see how much some of this stuff will get overturned.

911.075 - 924.818 Bill Kristol

But I think the courts are proving to be a little more of a guardrail than perhaps what expected. You know, on some of these substantive policy issues, which are so important, they, yes, tough for us to intervene against the president, but they did on terrorists and they will do on birthright citizenship.

924.798 - 940.355 Bill Kristol

but it's funny on the less quote important things, putting your name on the Kennedy center or, you know, in a way these, uh, the ballroom in a funny way, it's easier for them to just say, well, look, this is pretty straightforward law where there are processes that have to be followed and you're not following them. Right.

940.375 - 955.9 Bill Kristol

And a funny way, this fits more in the, maybe it's a little more in the judge's wheelhouses than, than a kind of taking on a massive economic thing, like, you know, uh, terrorists that they did terrorists. But anyway, no, I do think it's encouraging. And, um, And Trump was very unhappy about that Kennedy Center.

1132.546 - 1150.909 Bill Kristol

our court system is rigged and the political system is rigged and it's all terrible, but I will fight. And I'm this typical Trump rhetoric and all that. He's used the rigged verb for what, over 10 years. Didn't he say it in 2015, 2016, that Hillary is going to be rigged. The election is going to be rigged against him by Hillary and all this.

1150.889 - 1162.907 Bill Kristol

But I feel like sitting president of the United States, who has already tried to overturn one election result in 2020, saying that both the court system is rigged and the political system is rigged, that's not good.

1163.208 - 1178.01 Bill Kristol

For me, reading that thing kind of brought back and then reading some of the other news or what they're trying to do about voting lists with the Justice Department and all the other stuff. And he controls the executive branch. And this time, unlike 2020, they're all loyalists and they're down to loyalists down to three, four or five levels.

1177.99 - 1195.945 Bill Kristol

I've been a little too putting in the back of my mind the concerns about 2026 and 2028. And I'm now getting those back to the front of my mind because... His numbers are horrible. He's all in on the authoritarianism. He's all in on the kleptocracy. Can they really afford to lose? They can afford to lose Congress, probably.

1196.005 - 1215.591 Bill Kristol

But can they really afford to lose in 2028 and have the next administration turn over the rocks? Can they even afford to have a non-super loyalist Republican theoretically take over? So the degree to which we are in a Kim Jong-un, he only trusts his family and he doesn't want to have real elections situation is alarming.

1306.105 - 1306.926 Tim Miller

Katie Hobbs in Arizona.

1307.246 - 1321.974 Bill Kristol

The scary thing would be the red states. red state governors cooperating with Trump's Justice Department, you could have real voter suppression in Democratic areas are red states. And there are a lot of them. It's not like there are no Democratic members of Congress from Texas or from, you know, other states.

1322.354 - 1340.162 Tim Miller

I know. A red state Senate race is... I've always said the things that I'm the most worried about is, you know, if the Senate ends up hinging on Iowa, let's say. Texas. That's alarming. Or Texas. Or Florida. Right? Or Alaska, even. You know, so those are all red areas. And that's the main area of concern. Plus...

1340.817 - 1353.892 Tim Miller

You know, the delay, California's self-owned on the fact that it takes them a month to vote. I mean, like if we do it, God, the worst case scenario is you end up in a place where the House hinges on like waiting a month for California to count their mail-in ballots.

1354.573 - 1363.804 Tim Miller

And, you know, I think obviously the elected officials in California end up doing the right thing, but they just create such a long period of troublemaking. That's another area that I'm concerned about.