Chapter 1: What recent events at Mar-a-Lago are causing concern?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I am your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, but Phil Crystal and I couldn't work out the schedules. So what we did instead was I did a Sunday conversation with him, which you can get over on the Bulwark Takes audio feed or Substack or YouTube. And today we got a special sub, a very special sub. It's my Next Level Podcast co-host.
He's the author of the Triad newsletter, which if you aren't reading, I don't know what you're doing. He's also an editor at the Bulwark. It's Jonathan V. Last or JVL. What's up, buddy?
Hey.
I'll try to make everybody feel a little more comfortable. All right? So, Tim, it made me think about Bella Abzug. I remember being at dinner with her back, I don't know, maybe it was 72. But, you know, it's funny. She was actually closer with Bill Buckley than you would have imagined. And, you know, it just shows that things used to be different. Once upon a time, back there in America.
That was great for like 11 of us. That was really wonderful. We are back. Me and JBL, I still have my cold. We're back from Minnesota. My Lebanese ancestry, my Louisiana residence, I was not built for that, so I still have a cold, but I'm doing okay. We're going to save some time at the end because JBL's newsletter from over the weekend on Minnesota was really powerful and what we learned there.
So I want to chew over that on the end. But we have some news first. Obviously, the big news is the Dutch have finally installed Rob Jett in as prime minister. He's the first of many gay, millennial, neoliberal world leaders that we'll have. Everything will be well once every country has a gay millennial.
Is he the Dutch Jared Polis?
Yeah, he's kind of like the Netherlands Jared Polis. Is that a good thing? For me, it is. Yeah, I mean, you know, nobody's perfect, JVL, okay? Sure. Nobody's perfect, but, you know, given the options on the table, it's not bad. Fair. But I want to really start in Milan. We have the ecstasy and the ignominy. How do you fucking say that word? Ignominy? Ignominy.
The ecstasy and the ignominy of being an American, watching U.S. hockey defeat Snow Mexico for gold in overtime. Just a beautiful victory. Jack Hughes and his handsome brother missing a tooth. I didn't get to watch it because I was live with Bill, but I watched the whole thing late last night on replay. It was wonderful.
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Chapter 2: How does Trump's rhetoric impact U.S. foreign policy towards Iran?
And they just think he's a great... Hey, just a bro. Just a bro. Fuck you guys.
I feel like Sarah on The Secret Podcast right now. I thought I'd bring up an easy content topic to start the show. We'd make fun of Make-A-Wish Cash. We'd attack him. We'd attack Politico Playbook, who wrote this morning that this was their assessment. A little different from what you're getting here on The Bollard Podcast. And frankly...
Such is the national euphoria at Team USA's stunning double hockey golds that it's hard to imagine much serious public backlash to cash in the locker room.
My backlash isn't to cash. It's to the players.
I thought we'd make fun of, you know, Cash and the media, but no. JBL is like, I'm going to do the harder thing. I'm going to do the more challenging thing. Also be mad at the players. Also be mad at the players. That's fine. I'm more mad at the players. Okay, great. Cash Patel is what he is. I can only be mad at who I'm mad at. He is what he is. He is. Well, he's the director of the FBI.
Fair enough. You know, I can't pretend like I'm mad at people I'm not mad at.
But also, you know who else I'm mad at? Please. People like Politico Playbook saying like the national euphoria over, I am sorry, this is hockey.
You're talking about hockey. He's a limey fuck from Britain. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything. Ten weeks from now, nobody will remember that this happened because it's hockey. It'll be interesting to see Jack Hughes' name ID in ten weeks from now. Not that great. Beautiful goal, by the way. We love and honor Jack Hughes. Here's just a couple other things for cash.
Because they think it'll get us into the news. There's stuff happening in the world. Again, I don't begrudge anybody. I like to have a good time. I can't shotgun a beer. I'm not good at shotgunning beers. But, you know, in theory, I would like to be in the locker room with the Nuggets after they win the championship this year shotgunning a beer. My job is podcast host. That was Cash's old job.
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Chapter 3: What implications does Trump's behavior have on the U.S. hockey team's image?
FBI, pretty big job for the FBI, finding Nancy Guthrie, who's been kidnapped.
Well, Tim, in fairness to Kash Patel, the parents of her abductor have not turned him in yet. No. And so what is the FBI supposed to do? That's the way the FBI solves crimes these days is they got to wait for the parents of the perps to put a phone call in saying, oh, I think my kid did this. That's how they solve.
So he's just waiting for the parents of whoever was who abducted Nancy Guthrie to to come to their senses and make a good choice. That's all the FBI can do in such situations.
Timothy, it's probably not a Mormon. Actually, this is the problem with the Mormons have high social cohesion, you know, and so the Mormon boys parents obviously had to jump in. We also have Americans in Mexico are sheltering in place because a drug cartel top leader of a drug cartel has been killed by the country's military. Things are things are insane right now.
If you're at the Hilton in Puerto Vallarta and again, some potential remit there for the FBI, the Secret Service. said law enforcement officers had to kill a would-be intruder at Mar-a-Lago. You'd think FBI would be involved in that, identifying the perp, subsequent investigation. We should just say this guy was a Trump supporter who was unhappy with the Epstein files.
Just throwing that out there as well. As what we know initially, obviously more investigation needs to be done, not by the head of the FBI because he's hung over in Milan, but we'll have to wait for more info. I'm sure there are other things out there we don't know about.
Could he get ahead of this sort of threat by maybe working on the Epstein files themselves? And maybe I mean, because it could be there are some criminal indictments to be made or at least investigations of other people in the Epstein files who are obviously co-conspirators. It does seem again, Latvia is able to launch some criminal investigations against people.
Prince Andrew has been locked up in the Tower of London. Like other countries have done this, but it's cash who hasn't been able to get it done. It's very strange. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, Tim. Yeah. Didn't somebody in the administration initially try to pretend that Cash wasn't over there?
Not pretend. That's not quite right. The spokesman, Ben Williamson, who's a longtime MAGA hack, he is now, yeah, Cash is whatever, PR guy. And I believe it was Ken Delaney over at MSNOW who reported first that Cash was going to go over there for the hockey game. He wanted to go over there for the hockey game. And Williamson indignantly said,
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Chapter 4: How are women in Minnesota affected by current political actions?
In the case of Venezuela and the first Iran strike, he put a bunch of assets there. Like, that costs a lot of money. It takes time. I mean, once you go to that trouble, I feel like from his perspective, not going through with it
feels like backing down yeah i think he probably feels like he has to do it i i was pretty convinced you talked about this with michael weiss on friday the financial times sort of criminology of the iranian mullahs and like what their thinking is i found that reasonably compelling actually that they think that their position will be stronger after a kinetic conflict than it is now.
But the other thing that suggests that he is interested in going forward is that he's already having members of his regime admit that there is an Iranian nuclear program. And this is 30 weeks after declaring that the Iranian nuclear program was completely and totally obliterated. That was the phrase.
Yeah. Witkoff, Steve Witkoff, his buddy, the Outer Borough Real Estate guy, who's the point person for all negotiations, says Iran's a week away from having a bomb, which is pretty shocking. A week away from having a bomb.
You know, I remember some of us saying about the strike, like, okay, well, it seems to have set the nuclear program back. And if there wasn't significant blowback from it, then, like, that's basically okay. That's not a terrible outcome. But we shouldn't pretend that The nuclear program is gone because that's not true. And the government lying to us about this is itself very concerning.
And I remember getting my knuckles wrapped by some anti-antis about, no, what are you talking about? It's gone. They've been set back years upon years upon years. It'll be decades before. Okay, well, 30 weeks. We are 30 weeks out and they are evidently fully reconstituted and now just a week away. Huh.
I think I want to call it Kamaniology, instead of criminology. Kamaniology?
Kamaniology, that's nice. Can I ask one other question of you, though, Tim? Please. What do you think the Levin broadside on this means? And when he says, I forget what he said, the exact construct, was it leadership or regime that he said needs to go? Let's just listen to it one more time. Let's just listen to it one more time.
We need to comprehend what we're dealing with. That regime needs to be eliminated to save our children and grandchildren from having to deal with it.
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Chapter 5: What are the consequences of the FBI's handling of investigations?
It's a wag the dog, anything to distract from domestic problems. Okay, I guess. I don't know. Trump's really good at distractions, though. I feel like he could come up with other ones besides war with Iran. There's the Israel theory, like Bibi's just dog walking him, just like putting him on a leash and walking around the neighborhood. Yep.
That seems like the most coherent of the various theories. That's, yeah. There is, like, what? That there's some people inside the administration that really want this, like Pete Hegseth is chomping at the bit for a war. I just don't think Trump listens to any of those people, really. Except Marco, maybe. But I think Marco's pretty focused on Cuba and decapitating Cuba, right?
So I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist. The Israel pushing him into this is the theory that makes the most sense. Or also, maybe it's just machismo and Trump is just like, the Ayatollah won't do what I say, and so I have to bomb him. It's a little confusing because if he had a mandate for anything... It was basically the deportations and not going in Middle East wars.
Those were the two things that his base was most excited about. So what's he doing?
Yeah, I think the Netanyahu answer is probably most likely. I mean, honestly, if Trump needed distractions, he'd just pick a fight with like the U.S. women's hockey team. Right.
Right. Like that.
You could do that this week. It would get even more clock cycles than, you know, you just call them a bunch of. Woke. I don't know. Call them trans. Woke trans something or other. Right. And that would be fine.
And he's got a State of the Union tomorrow, and he could put anything insane in there.
He can make any news he wants, right? He could call AOC a man. Yeah, right. We'll see whether or not it's real. I mean, the New York Times reporting today that he is eyeing an initial large strike, but then being part of a partnership with Israel that is a much larger force. That's interesting. I'd like to see it.
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Chapter 6: How is the U.S. media responding to the current political climate?
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I have a couple other news items, but let's just do the Israel thing now. We were chatting about this. We were driving around Minnesota in the Uber. How do you think that it's best for Democrats to deal with this? The situation is a very – it's precarious, right? Because on the one hand – You know, Israel has been an ally. You can travel freely.
You know, I can be gay in Tel Aviv and I can't really. And, you know, Abu Dhabi. But Israel's been a longtime ally that were attacked on October 7th. There were a couple of people that were a little on the left or a little too excited about the Tucker Huckabee interview for my taste. You know, it's like, wait a minute. On the one hand, Tucker is a Nazi anti-Semite.
On the other hand, he was really good at pressing the Israeli ambassador with some hard cues. I'm like, OK. So, you know, it's a dicey situation. But like the more Trump sidles up to Bibi after October 7th. I think the more power this gives and the more energy this gives, and there's already a lot of energy to kind of like the anti-Israel left in the Democratic Party. And so I don't know.
I'm wondering how you think like Democrats responsibly navigate this.
Can we talk about this under secret podcast rules?
Sure.
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Chapter 7: What are the ethical considerations surrounding AI and human value?
I mean, I can't help if somebody clips it, but yeah.
I don't mean that. I just mean for the listeners. So what I mean is for people who don't listen to The Secret Show, first of all, shame on you. But secondly, the rules Sarah and I operate on under The Secret Show is we have discussions about things we are not sure about. And we will often say, like, what about this? Does this sound like a good idea? Does this make sense?
And then we'll kick it around for 40 minutes and either not come to a conclusion or two weeks later, we'll be like, yeah, actually, that was wrong. I'm working through ideas with you here, Tim.
Yeah, please, let's do it.
So Donald Trump has... has created a real innovation in American statecraft. Prior to Donald Trump, the way American foreign policy worked was that America has national interests, and these national state interests governed our foreign policy. And so that would mean Israel was our ally, not because we liked Israel, but because Israel was a key country in the Middle East.
The Middle East was an important region of the world. We had leverage over Israel. And yes, there's more component to it, et cetera, et cetera. Sure. But, you know, this is it's all about state interest. And it was important for America.
There was also some of the more abstractions, as Marco calls them. Sure. Just, you know, form of government. Right. And those are the nice things we tell ourselves about America, right? But that was part of it, though. It was not 0% of it.
Not 0%. But again, history of foreign policy is that the determinative things are really about interests. And, you know, you can overlook dealing with not nice governments, like the Saudi government, because... National interests dictate it, right? You got to do business with bad people because this is what the country needs. Trump has inverted that. American foreign policy under Trump
starts with the president's political interests and then conforms the national interests to those.
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Chapter 8: How can Democrats effectively navigate the Israel-Palestine issue?
I mean, Biden did more of what they wanted than Reagan did.
And I'm not saying they meddled in the election, but that Israeli policy was geared towards, we would like to make things difficult for Biden and put the Democrats in a difficult position because we would rather the Republicans win the presidential election. And I think that Democrats need to establish some deterrence
going forward and to assure, for the long-term good of America, assure regimes that have done that sort of calculus That they they don't get to have it both ways. They don't get to assume that a Democratic president will be favorable to them. And so undercut Democrats and try to help the authoritarians who are trying to do away with liberal democracy in America.
And so, for instance, I have long thought that a Democratic president ought to make an example of Bukele. And ought to come to power and say, you in El Salvador, we are going to do everything we can to make your life hard until this guy is gone. Yeah. Again, just talking out loud, Tim. It's not not advocating. I'm just asking. Yeah.
Just from a game theory perspective, shouldn't Democrats take that approach to Israel and the Netanyahu regime? Not that they're hostile to Israel, but they're hostile to the Netanyahu regime and say that America will go back to being allies with Israel when the government of Israel no longer attempts to curry favor with the authoritarian attempt that was ongoing in America.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a way to frame that same position up that's not just about like sticks for a bad prime minister, though as satisfying as that might be, because BP has been a horrible prime minister. But look, just going back to your original frame, there's a lot of warning of Israel about this, about like the behavior after October 7th.
Obviously, they're ready to defend themselves, but the scale of it. and how that was turning off the world community. And they made a decision, which maybe was a rational decision. I mean, I'm about to do David Frum's podcast. David Frum would say this was a rational decision for their own security, which is to say, I don't care about what the world thinks.
We need to protect ourselves from these threats. Maybe that was a rational decision. But there were a lot of efforts during that period to say, hey, if you keep going in this way, you're going to ostracize the world and alienate the world. And you combine that with this Tucker interview with Huckabee, where I thought that the most... newsworthy answer of it.
The most interesting answer was where Tucker is talking about, okay, well, if Israel has a biblical right to this land, why don't they have a biblical right from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is kind of like a Philocude version of from the river to the sea, from the Nile to the Euphrates. And Huckabee's like, that would be fine if they did. And now that's not the U.S.
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