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Chapter 1: What are the implications of Sean Duffy's road trip while gas prices soar?
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so we're here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol. And, you know, last week was pretty heavy. It's pretty heavy. A lot of serious topics, a lot of serious guests. We appreciated all of them. And so I have saved a section at the end of the podcast for some laughs.
I feel like we need some laughter and deserve some laughter, Bill. And so, you know, we'll kind of see. Do you have a favorite stand-up comedian? Is there an old-timer that you're into?
Yeah, no, that's a good question. I'll think about it and get back to you at the end of the show. I can tell some of my favorite Henny Youngman jokes. That'll go over well. That'll date me back to 1946 or something like that.
That's exactly what I was hoping for in the answer. So you work on that. We need to start, though... with serious matters abroad and domestically.
And I want to really begin with our friend and colleague, well, not really colleague, but your former colleague, my aspiring colleague, Bob Kagan, who was in The Atlantic yesterday with an article titled Checkmate in Iran, Washington Can't Reverse or Control the Consequences of Losing this War. And it's really well argued and just basically a full accounting of how
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Chapter 2: How is Trump reshaping the post-WWII order?
Everyone for himself, you know, countries just making their own arrangements. It can become, it can be sort of stable for a while. These countries will watch out for themselves and they'll act in their self-interest. But that's what kind of got us into two world wars. It's not a recipe. Eventually it'll come back to bite us. I mean, it didn't. In 1914, it did in 1939.
And it's certainly going to do huge damage to all, as you say, a lot of things we've just taken for granted. This global trade and commerce, everything that we just sort of assume happens, that it gets interrupted by the pandemic, and that was terrible, but then it got back on course again.
And, you know, we quibble about, argue about, we should try to be permitted to have these particular chips and all that. That's a national security question. Fine. But in general, the principle that we can, all these goods will flow. And I mean, that ends. Nations can't depend on us. They look to their own weapons. They suddenly decide they have to arm themselves.
You just get regional conflicts all over the place. Regional accommodations to all over the place to various dictators. No, it is the end. I mean, it's what a lot of people have been writing about. We've been talking about and it's been sort of clearly beginning to happen for the last year and a half, the end of the post-World War II order.
But this war in Iran really has, I think, been the exclamation point on that, on the end of that war.
Yeah, accelerant was the word I was going to use, but yeah, same thing. Yeah, same trajectory. So just to that point, and the latest on talks is the same as it's been, but I should mention that over the weekend, the Iran foreign ministry responded to a U.S. proposal to end the war, and their response included sovereignty over the state. Sovereignty? People get mad at me. Whatever.
over the Stratiform Moose, and a bunch of other stuff that Trump responded and said was not reasonable. So that's where we're at. We're at the same as it ever was.
But you're right. One thing Trump seems to stress over and over is the nuclear material. It's a little weird. I mean, honestly, this stuff is not usable right now. It seems to be buried away. If they try to start getting at it, we will see it and can act to stop them, I should think.
I'm not against getting the stuff out of there, but the idea that we fought this whole war because of stuff that we pulverized, obliterated,
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Chapter 3: What are the consequences of Trump's actions in Iran?
I made a mistake this weekend, I think. I started engaging with random Louisiana influencer accounts. you know, because I'm just so fucking pissed about the VRA thing. And so then I'm getting more and more random people who are like local political influencers in my feed and MAGA ones. And so I started replying to them.
And my husband is like, is this creating a greater likelihood that we have a confrontation at Lafitte's blacksmith shop? And I was like, maybe slightly. So maybe I should stop doing that. But point is, I'm online a lot. So, you know, you want to
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That's joindelateme.com slash bulwark code bulwark. On the NATO point, you had Phillips O'Brien on your conversation with Bill Kristol. There is some pretty interesting developments happening in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Putin started sounding a little bit of a different note in his, I hate to even call it a press conference, whatever you want to call it, with this kind of kayfabe gatherings that he has to make pronouncements with state media in front of him. But he started talking about how maybe the war could be ending soon. Zelensky wants to come to Moscow.
He's doing kind of the Putin thing where he was, you know, speaking in code a little bit and trolling a little bit, but also definitely like it was different than in the past, kind of like his bravado of how Russia was on the march, etc. So he starts opening the door to maybe finding an off ramp.
And this is happening, I don't think coincidentally, simultaneously with Ukraine, like gaining a lot of military ground for the first time in a while. And the front lines have been pretty stagnant thanks to drone warfare. So anyway, you had a long conversation with Phillips about this. I'm wondering what your takeaways were.
Yeah, I mean, Phil really is a military historian. He really knows the military stuff. And very early on, he thought Ukraine would hold. And he's always been more bullish on Ukraine than the convention was and was right for the first two years, three years. Frustrated that the U.S. didn't do more and that Europe could have done more.
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Chapter 4: How does redistricting affect representation in Tennessee?
And it is just a total outrage. Like you mentioned, like they cut up Memphis into a third, a third, a third. That's they also cut up the black vote, a third, a third, a third. And it was a purely racial gerrymander in Tennessee. to ensure that black voters in Memphis do not have the representation that they choose.
Notably in this one case and all of the other districts, it's a black representative. In this case, it's a white representative, Steve Cohen, though he was in a primary with Justin Pearson. But like, however, that like, you know, ends up playing out, right? They divide the city into thirds. which is illegal and an affront and racist and all those things, right?
And so, look, I don't want to totally demoralize the people of Tennessee because they simultaneously are living in a basically undemocratic state that has basically done everything possible to minimize their democratic rights.
They also the benefits of having a couple of horrific candidates like Andy Ogles and Scott Desjardins are like particularly offensive, even within the construct of MAGA, right, where everybody is offensive, like they stand out as uniquely offensive. So it's possible to go win some of those seats. But it's pretty it's it's tough.
And Lauren Egan's article, which is well reported that we have in the book yesterday, it was pretty depressing to me. You know, because it was just like, what is the Democrats plan? And it's, oh, we've got to run candidates more suited to winning these districts. And I agree with that. We do. But it's it's too late to recruit candidates now. It's in May.
And and there are a lot of things preventing Democrats from doing that. And you can't overcome this level of cheating solely with persuasion and persuasion is part of it. But but the cheating is pretty effective, at least in the South for for the Republicans. It's spring cleaning time, which is a great time to address some of those household tasks you've been putting off.
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Chapter 5: What are the political ramifications of the Supreme Court's ruling on redistricting?
But that was a legal constitutional matter. And precisely, they had to have the referendum because the Virginia Constitution required it. And they also required that two state legislative sessions pass it. And that's why they did the October or November, whatever it was, session, and then the next one.
And that's what the little technicality is about, is that really voters went to the polls in October not knowing that members had voted or would vote in favor of this thing. It's honestly kind of a ridiculous technicality, I would say. But anyway, technicality may have given it a little too much dignity. So no, I'm not really with that particular move. But I'm certainly in favor of it.
I agree with you. You can't wish away the cheek. Look, this is – we have all been saying – year and a half, as I've been saying, that they're going to do whatever they can. They're going to do whatever they can for 26, whatever they can for 28, and whatever they can involves voter suppression.
It involves God knows what kinds of shenanigans in terms of the actual voting in September and October, and then in the counting of the ballots. It also involves this kind of thing. So we shouldn't be surprised by it. We should be ready for it, I suppose, as much as we can be. I think going for the intra-Virginia, destroying the Virginia Supreme Court, you know, is a little bit of a weird...
a weird way to fix this problem, I'd say.
Yeah, I'm kind of with you. I love the energy though. So keep the energy there. People should be looking to Suhas as kind of a way to have the right attitude.
People really need to look at these states and districts. I think Lawrence Beach was excellent. Tennessee may be the worst case, but I don't know in some of these other states where there could be competitive Senate races, for example, really increased minority turnout could make a difference in the Mississippi or something like that. And
So it would be ironic, I've thought about this, everyone's conventional wisdom, I always like it when conventional wisdom is wrong, could be wrong, or reversed. Everyone, the absolute conventional wisdom, House, pretty easy for the Dems, Senate, pretty impossible. That was six months ago. Then it became House, very easy, Senate, possible.
It would be funny if the Senate ends up being sort of, you know, because of this redistricting, the House becomes more of a headache, and the Senate starts to fall into place. I don't think, I think it's overstating it, obviously, but...
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Chapter 6: How is the Biden administration responding to challenges in foreign policy?
John Mulaney, the comedian who did the famous Trump is the horse in the hospital bit, which was really good. He had a comedy show at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend, and some of the video leaked of that. And it's so good. I just want to play it for you.
Back when I lived in New York, he was in charge of a thing called the River Keepers. They were in charge of keeping the Hudson River clean. That was his job. That's how good he is at jobs. His old job was keeping the Hudson River, whose native fish is tied off, used condom, clean. Now he's in charge, now I'm in charge of your bones and your tummy. Stupid fuck, your thing can't be the measles.
Did you get the measles? Did you read the card? It was from me. Do you like having the measles very much?
So that leaves me pretty concerned about the hantavirus. Like, yes, I don't know.
Yeah, no, I think I'm staying off cruise ships. I was going to stay off cruise ships anyway for the next N years. Forever. Yeah, that's the easier way to say that. I think I'll just stick with that resolution.
Yeah. You're not going to go on the MAGA gay cruise?
What is going on with that? Have you looked into that more closely?
That's your kind of... Yeah, I have an update. I have an update. There was a cruise of gay MAGA influencers for people who don't follow, who are just pod only. We did a series of videos with Will Sommer and me and Sam Stein, trio videos, where we talk about the craziest stuff happening in MAGA over on the Borg Takes feed. And we did one on this. And I didn't really know a whole lot about it.
I'd seen... a MAGA gay that I follow had posted about his time there. And so we kind of, we watched that video and made fun of him and riffed on that. But after we published a listener, uh,
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Chapter 7: What role does comedy play in political discourse?
It's gold. It's of course like one eighth inch, one sixteenth inch gold leaf, but whatever. It's, it's ghastly. And, but at least it's, I mean, I make this point in the newsletter. It's, it's, it's not his stupid golf. People,
signed up for trump dural have to endure it i suppose i think the world leaders in the g20 meeting there at the end of this year they have to walk by how humiliating i mean really what a great point semi-serious country and you have to walk by this 22 foot grotesque gold statue of trump which he's he's put up i mean electorally daughters have put up at his club you know and he's thrilled about it still the people he's thrilled what he called in the people taking pictures of it with uh of themselves with it on the other hand it's not good for trump politically it
He brings home even more. All he cares about is himself. And then, of course, I do think the arch here in Washington, which would intrude on Arlington Cemetery. So that's not something that's one of our most sacred public spaces. That's a different matter than putting up some idiotic statue to yourself at your private club. and the ballroom he wants a billion dollars for.
Democrats really need to go crazy about that stuff. I'm worried they're like being a little too, you know, we've got to focus on affordability, Tim, and it's the kitchen table and the gas prices, which is important.
It's all the same.
It's all the same. But he is, I mean, the solipsism, the narcissism, the focus on this, couldn't care less about the gas prices. Sean Duffy doesn't care about it. None of them cares about them. That guy Wright, the energy secretary, Maybe he does a little better job pretending to at least be concerned about them. I don't know, but they're not. It's pathetic, really.
None of them cares about what actual people are going through. And I say this in the newsletter. I think you and I discussed this maybe shortly after 2016. When Trump said in 2016... Hillary says, wants you to say, I'm for her. But I say, I'm with you. I'm with her. I'm with you, right? Yeah, I'm with her. I'm with her. That was their proud slogan, you know, first woman president.
And I say, I'm with you. And I remember thinking when I heard that, first, I think it's a speech in New York, but then at the convention in Cleveland, that's a pretty effective line, you know? And then, of course, with Kamala, it was the same thing. She's with them. She's for them. They, I'm with you. That I'm with you thing is gone.
And people need to just hammer home that he's from only could care less. He's a narcissist who cares only about himself. And the ballroom, the statue, the arch are pretty good. concrete examples of it that people could understand, I think.
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