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The Bulwark Podcast

Krystal Ball: The MAGA Neocon Tears Are So Sad

17 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What are the implications of Trump's Iran deal for Israel?

13.058 - 37.243 Tim Miller

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show co-host of Breaking Points and Crystal Kyle and Friends, somebody that's been long overdue to have on the pod, to be honest. Someone whose, I think, career bio should mention a pretty important turn on The Cycle, one of my favorite afternoon MSNBC shows. It's Crystal Ball.

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37.263 - 38.144 Krystal Ball

You were a Cycle watcher?

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38.605 - 39.686 Tim Miller

I loved The Cycle.

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41.392 - 42.053 Krystal Ball

We had fun.

42.173 - 49.88 Tim Miller

It was a more innocent time. It was you. It was Trey. It was Ari Melber. My old girl, Abby Huntsman, was on for a little bit.

49.9 - 69.298 Krystal Ball

That's right. Who else was on there? So originally, the original crew was, instead of Abby and Ari, it was Steve Kornacki, who got pulled very quickly to replace Chris Hayes on his weekend show originally. And then Chris Hayes went to primetime. And Essie Kupp. All right. And then she moved to CNN. Abby came in.

69.439 - 87.624 Tim Miller

That's why I was watching it originally. Well, I feel like you guys were ahead of your time. You know, that was some like a little heterodox arguing kind of show. I don't know. I feel like MSNBC should probably bring something like the cycle back. Rachel Cutler doesn't listen to me. MSNOW, it's called out. All right. We're going to do some news. We're going to do some victory laps.

88.264 - 98.635 Tim Miller

And then maybe we'll hash out a couple of disagreements. Maybe on some lefty stuff. All right. On the news front. This morning, Trump has canceled elections.

Chapter 2: How is Trump's nomination of Bill Pulte affecting national security?

367.534 - 387.079 Tim Miller

I feel like there's been kind of not a lot of coverage of it. We're a little bit into Dianne Feinstein territory for some reason. I don't know. I think Hill reporters don't want to embarrass them or something. But, yeah, I mean, according to Joe Pertico and our guy on Hill, he's been going around in a wheelchair for a couple weeks now. And he's got really bad...

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387.059 - 395.651 Tim Miller

all the stuff that you see on Trump's hands, um, that is kind of mild, you know, like he's got discoloration on his legs and his hands. And that seems not good.

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395.711 - 416.56 Krystal Ball

You remember when he had what, two different instances where he would just freeze on camera and then they were like, no, he's fine. It's like, I don't think so. I don't think that's a fine, healthy thing to do. But yeah, I mean, it's crazy that you do have, uh, thank God that, you know, you guys and drop sign, uh, TMC now are on Capitol Hill and you don't follow these, uh,

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416.54 - 437.975 Krystal Ball

rules of decorum, which are really just meant to protect powerful people because yeah, the American people have a right to know whether their representatives are like with it cognitively and doing anything able to, you know, understand the issues and cast votes and show for work. You still got this, this Tom Keene character in a New Jersey Republican Congressman who's been absent for months.

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437.995 - 438.396 Tim Miller

He's missing.

438.376 - 452.25 Krystal Ball

Completely missing one, his primary while completely missing an action. Zero transparency. One of his aides said something something ominous, like where Tom is. There's no cameras. That's the most that we've heard about it. So I don't know what's going on there.

452.45 - 473.361 Tim Miller

Yeah, that one is wild. There's a really good, like, sub stack of a guy who went to some island off of Connecticut where he heard Tom Keene was. And it's like only a rich person's island. I mean, he couldn't find him. Anyway, Tom Keene's still missing. I want to go to the Trump corruption stuff and we can get some giggles about, you know.

473.341 - 498.538 Tim Miller

Even though it's $13 million of our money, we can still kind of laugh about it, that the reflecting pool, the beautiful blue reflecting pool that we had a full renovation on, you know, because Mr. Trump wanted it to look nice and pretty for his birthday party and for the 250 celebration. It was blue for like 36 hours, and now the algae is back. And, you know, if you put a still water...

498.856 - 517.912 Tim Miller

large pool in the middle of a swamp this is going to happen like you know it wasn't that the past presidents didn't try to make the park pretty because it couldn't because they loved the green pool it's just like i live in louisiana it's like this is what it looks like if you have stagnant water sitting somewhere so the pool is now green again Our guy Brendan was down there yesterday.

Chapter 3: What controversies arise from the recent FISA discussions?

807.694 - 820.36 Krystal Ball

But I heard actually Dave Smith, who's a libertarian, putting it in perspective in a way that I thought was very compelling and very important, which is like, I live in a relatively small town. My kids go to public school here.

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820.4 - 837.876 Krystal Ball

The public schools here struggle to pay their teachers competitive salaries so that we're not constantly losing them to Northern Virginia where they have more wealth and larger tax base and are able to pay people better. Imagine what... a few million dollars would do in a place like this, right? There's a lot of good.

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837.896 - 839.859 Tim Miller

You could probably use some new facilities at the school.

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839.899 - 854.618 Krystal Ball

Absolutely. We are, you know, really in need of some new schools. We could use a rec facility. Like there's all kinds of things that teacher pay, like I said before, that we could use as a big deal. They're putting in a sidewalk so kids don't risk their lives crossing the street to the sheets. It's like our big capital investment here.

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855.119 - 868.775 Krystal Ball

And so, you know, when you think of it in those terms, for local communities, that money could make so much difference. And instead it's going to his ego, project. And it's not just, I think, about his ego and these monuments to himself.

869.135 - 886.671 Krystal Ball

I think also as he approaches the end of his life, he's very fearful about his mortality, continually talks about how it's going to be this bunker, how they're going to have a medical hospital, et cetera. And so I think that's also part of his obsession. But the Washington Post, I think, were the ones who also did the analysis about how much he talks about it.

887.131 - 899.623 Krystal Ball

And it's not just our Trump derangement. It literally is. The thing, if you analyze the words that he says, it is the thing he talks about the most. It truly is the thing he is most obsessed with.

900.059 - 912.416 Tim Miller

I've been saying we think it might be an ADU for him, you know, after 2028. He's hoping to get JD or Don Jr. or Marco in there that he can kind of live in the bunker. They go back and forth between the bunker.

913.037 - 913.698

Can you imagine that?

Chapter 4: How is the reflecting pool incident a symbol of Trump's administration?

1738.766 - 1758.848 Tim Miller

I'm not optimistic about that, but fair. Americans are carrying over a trillion dollars in credit card debt at rates north of 23% insane. That is more than $200 billion a year in interest paid mostly by households who happen to be sitting on the largest pool of untapped home equity in US history. Think about that for a second. You own a home

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1758.828 - 1786.793 Tim Miller

you've built real equity in it and yet when you need capital for a remodel for a debt consolidation for something your household budget didn't plan for the financial system routes you to a 23 unsecured card instead of letting you borrow against the asset you already own that is one of the quietest taxes in the american middle class and the big banks are not racing to fix it they even built the first home equity line of credit issued on a visa card so the same swipe these cost you 23 now cost you a fraction because it is secured by the value you have already built

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1786.773 - 1801.044 Tim Miller

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1801.104 - 1822.252 Tim Miller

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1822.752 - 1840.441 Tim Miller

Aven cards are issued pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc., terms and conditions apply, subject to credit and property approval. Visit aven.com for more details. Let's move to the tears. Let's move to our agreement. When I had your colleague Sager on, I don't know, three months ago, the start of the war.

1841.022 - 1860.646 Tim Miller

One thing, he was kind of surprised, I think, by how much I agreed with him on this because of my – I am more sympathetic, as people can tell, I think, from this last conversation about – creative ideas, creative solutions for spurring freedom around the world than maybe I think some who believe that the U.S. should just mind their own business are.

1860.766 - 1881.343 Tim Miller

And I maintain more of a globalist perspective on that. That said, the particulars of this war was obviously stupid. And it was in particular the pro-Israel right that was pushing this and pushing Trump to get in it. I'm not saying that they were like puppet masters behind the scenes, but that they were arguing for it and that the biggest supporters of the

1881.323 - 1908.445 Tim Miller

kind of neocon right and the pro-israel right in the commentariat were the biggest supporters of the war as you mentioned earlier ben shapiro marco vinn etc on the next level we went through a long list of the tears and i don't want to do that right now because a lot of them are still trying to stay in their good graces like i watched ben shapiro and it just didn't really satisfy me to i want him i want him to actually cry about how bad it is but he still wants to kind of like play both sides a little bit so he was being very measured

1908.425 - 1931.519 Tim Miller

The folks at the commentary podcast. were not measured. Yes. They were very, very upset. And so I listened to the entire podcast, which I've not done for a while because we're all fallen and we can enjoy schadenfreude. They wanted the war. They thought it was going to help Israel. They thought it meant that Trump was going to be more on their side than he had been.

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