Sam Stein: This Is the Country They Want
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. By the time y'all hear this, I will be flying over the Atlantic with a wine and a novel. So if you need one more hour with my dulcet tones in your ears before a one-week reprieve, head on over to the Next Level feed on your podcast app of choice, because yesterday's show...

was an absolute banger, I do have to say. So make sure you're catching the next level every Wednesday. One other programming note that's very sweet. I received a very grateful message from the folks at MANA, which is a food relief organization Nick Kristof recommended our listeners donate to on last Friday's episode. Apparently there was an outpouring of financial support following the show.

So thanks so much to all of you. I really appreciate this community and we'll re-up. There are a couple of other organizations Nick shouted out as well, and we'll put those in the show notes of this podcast. You know what else we're going to put in the show notes of this podcast?

a couple playlists for you for the week. The Bulwark Podcast playlist of all the outro songs that I play. It's like coming up on 10,000 followers, which is kind of crazy. And I also, speaking of bangers, my 4th of July playlist is really the best thing out there. So we'll give you those two things for you as well.

As for this show, it's my favorite guest. Oh, stop. But he had some summer vacation tech difficulties. So it's Sam Stein as an emergency substitute. What a treat. Managing editor of This Year Bulwark. How are you doing, Sam Stein? I'm actually regretting doing this. It sounds like you are podcasting while also editing the Morning Shots newsletter by Bill Kristol. And you said something interesting to me the other day about how younger Sam would have

would have thought about being Bill Kristol's newsletter editor. And I just kind of wanted to explore that a little bit more. How are you processing that these days? How's that experience for you? Well, I didn't realize I was going on the couch at 7.30 a.m. Oh, yeah, you are. It's interesting. Do you want the honest assessment? I want just full. The ethos of this podcast is radical candor.

It's been kind of out of body at times. I literally, I do remember like 2006, 2007 HuffPost saying Bill Kristol is the devil. Bill Kristol is the devil. Like, I cannot believe he did this to our country and got us into Iraq.

Things change, obviously. There's some overriding principles that have brought us together. Also, I will say this. God, I don't want to get in trouble for this, but he's a lovely man. He's just genuine. What did you get in trouble for with that? The lefties online who still hold grudges.

Bill's a great guy. The truth about this stuff is also, and I discovered this a long time ago, but ever more so now, so much of what we do nowadays in communication is just online and bomb-throwing, and you never actually talk to the person.

And when you do actually talk to the person and get to know the person, realize they're a human being, it radically changes your perceptions of them for obvious reasons. And I used to do this thing, and I'll shut up after this, but I used to do this thing, I don't do it anymore, where someone on Twitter would like,

be harassing me and saying like horrible nasty things and I would try to find their actual these are like not not like total bots but like real people not like John Podhoritz but like actual people like normal people put John aside I would find their phone number and I would call them up and I would say hey I just want to talk about like why you think I'm the scum of the earth like can we can we like oh yeah I would do it once a month and I would just be like you

You know, in this tweet I saw of yours, you like call me like the dumbest human being since, you know, whatever. Like, can you explain why you feel that way? I just like do that. And like almost every single time with a few exceptions, the person would be like, oh, shit, man, I didn't mean that. I didn't realize you would see that. And like, let me take that down.

And I'd be like, no, no, keep it up. It's important. Just keep it up, but let's talk about it. Did anybody say, fuck you, K-word? Oh, yeah. Well, I would try to avoid the anti-Semitic ones because those people are lost. But I would definitely have some people who would be like, how the fuck did you get my number? Don't ever call me again. But more often than not, it was people who realized that you're a human.

Yeah. And Bill's kind of more than human, though. He's kind of superhuman. Oh, Bill's amazing. Bill's the best. And, you know, would I like him to stick on topic for the newsletter every now and then? Yeah, of course. You don't like his newsletters where he does imaginary voice of Donald Trump? No.

And he writes a screenplay? Well, I may not appreciate the artistry of them. Our subscribers do, because metric-wise, they're great. Do you see the same trajectory for you with J.D. Vance? Do you think you'll be editing his newsletter in eight years? Or do you think there's kind of a red line on this? I'm happy to edit J.D. Vance if he wants to submit to the Bulwark. I think it would be an interesting thought experiment. I am not. I am not.

Eat a dick, J.D. Bates. Okay, so you do the morning news when it talks about the news, so we'll start with the most important news of the day. Diddy was acquitted on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. People were smothering themselves with baby oil outside the courthouse. Yeah, Bill's actually writing on this one. He was there with the baby oil. Really? Is he doing a freak off? Yeah, he said. What was the thing they were saying? It's not a... Right?

It's not Rico. It's Frico. Frico. Yeah, it's not Rico. It's Rico. So it's you, Andrew Egger, and Bill kind of just rubbing each other with baby oil. Yeah, we're actually doing a YouTube component for this as well. So stay tuned. All right. I always had to miss that while I'm in Madrid. The actual news, the big whatever, Bill, it was late last night. So that's why Sam is punchy. He was staying up to watch it. There were some Republican House members there.

that were showing some spine they were like mike johnson you cannot bully us we are going to hold out on this vote for the rule to proceed very a very principled matter several of them didn't one actually ended up doing i'll talk about him in a second in the end they did the same thing they always do all of them ended up folding right that vote was like to pass it so they could vote on it

And so the actual vote will be today on the substance of the bill, but it's done. It's a fait accompli at this point. So talk about what you make about that whole story. What's your top takeaway? I never thought they were going to hold out. I don't think you did either. I mean, it just seemed performative. It is kind of funny, the contortions that they make.

It was like right beforehand. They're like, we're going to vote for this, but not today. We just not, we need a day. We're not going to do it today. And the speaker would be wise. My friend, Chip Roy, the goldfish was like, he had, he had narrowed his complaints to one thing. And it was like, I,

I just don't think I can do it unless the green energy subsidy program has a one year moratorium. It's like, it's like, that's really where you're going to hold the line on this bill chip. It seems like, it seems like you should just shut up and just vote for it at this point. What's funny to me is that they just continue to draw lines in the sand that they know they're just going to flagrantly violate. Like,

Don Bacon, 500 billion Medicaid cuts is my red line. No, it wasn't. You voted for a trillion. The one that killed me was David Valadao in California who like three days ago... This is a tough one for me because he was one of the impeachers. I know. There are only two left. I know. Well, I mean...

Sorry, but you can't put out a statement three days ago being like, I will never vote for the Senate version. I'm a no. And then three days later be like, all right, I'm ready to ride. I guess if I had a piece of advice, I would tell them or whoever is doing comms to them to like, don't do red lines. You're going to cross them. You should know this by now. I was waiting for Victoria. My favorite is Victoria Sparks. She's just the best.

Ukrainian immigrant. People should Google her. Her voice is interesting, if you don't know her. You're always going into the superficial, and I want to stay elevated. I apologize. She always has the most hilarious twists. And last night it was like, I will not vote for the rule, but I will vote for final passage, which made no sense whatsoever. And then, of course, she ended up voting for the rule. These people are spineless, obviously, and they don't really have any principles other than we need to like,

get something done for Trump. I actually thought the most interesting tweet about this came from the Trump rapid response account when right before they were voting and they were like trying to get everyone ginned up about it. And I think that I don't have it in front of me, but the tweet of Ken was like, let's go Republicans beat the like crooked Democrats. And it's like that sort of encapsulated everything for me, which is like nothing about the bill was like worth mentioning.

pitching in that moment for them. It wasn't like, hey, let's extend the tax cuts or let's fund ICE. It's like, we need to shove it in the face of crooked Democrats who have nothing to do with this at all. They're not involved. You don't need their votes. But it's all about

scoring victories and making Democrats look bad. And it's a horrible way to legislate. And we can get into the sort of more substantive matters because I was intrigued by this idea, like the JD Vance stuff about minutia and the fact that he seems to be not being on all on board, all the bill, but loves the immigration stuff. And then of course, Elon Musk stuff where he hates the bill. It's like,

I'm stealing chate here, but that is really interesting that the two tentpoles of the new Republican ideology don't like what's in this bill. Right now, the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks, making all of us vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Delete Me is here to make it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online.

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I do want to get into substance, too, but it was why we have people on the couch for a second. The insight in that Trump response tweet is was right. The other exchange on social media that I thought was very telling was a little tiff was make more of a one way tiff because I don't know if Don cares, but between retiring Republican Congressman Don Bacon and.

and fellow podcast host, Jon Favreau over the Medicaid situation. I missed this. Yeah. Okay. So Don is like also Brian Tower Cohen, BTC of YouTube fame is also involved in this.

BTC sends an initial tweet that basically just says, hey, this is Don Bacon. If he votes for the bill, X number of his constituents will lose access to health care. And then it's a picture of Don Bacon looking smug. So kind of an aggressive tweet, but not so bad. I mean, it was substantive. Don replies...

Some liberals hate work. What? Yeah. Then it kind of goes on. Some liberals don't value work. He's like, this bill is going to create work requirements for healthy adults.

And like Favreau kind of replies with some actual substance here about how, well, like that's about 3% of the people that are on Medicaid that who can work but aren't. You know, this bill is going to result in health care being lost for people that are not able-bodied childless adults, which is who Don was trying to focus on. And less interesting than the kind of boring back and forth on the details for me was just that like

Don is a retiring congressman. He could do whatever he wants. And you could imagine him being mad at the Senate for jamming him when he said he had a red line. Yeah. You could imagine me, right? He said he had the red line. He could be mad at his Senate colleagues. You could imagine him, you know, being mad at Trump that he has to retire because of how stupid politics has gotten. You could imagine him like being mad at himself.

And like, instead he's going to lash out at liberals on Twitter. So you're suggesting it's self soothing, right? Like, yeah, he needs to find a way to tell himself that what he did was right when he knows what he did was wrong. And yeah, I think that's the case for a lot of these people. Yeah. But I also think like, I don't know, is our politics attracting these people who just don't give a shit about

the actual principles of the legislation. And maybe I think that's a problem. Um,

And I just found this whole process to be dumbfounding. I mean, it's so arbitrary. Like, what are we doing? Why did we have to do this by July 4th? Yeah, they keep saying we have to do it because taxes are going to go up on people. Not until next year. No. We have half the year to figure something out. It's crazy. I mean, if there was a deadline, it was about the debt ceiling. But that's in August and maybe September. They could have figured it out. And they just decided, well, no, we have to do this. And

I don't think if you put truth serum in them, I don't think that they would say this bill is good. I don't even think they would say this bill is better than the status quo. I think a lot of them would say this bill kind of screws things up in a way that is really obviously problematic. I mean, the best policy anecdote about how stupid this whole bill is is what they did to SNAP.

So the food relief program, they created this insane incentive just to win over Murkowski's vote. They created this insane incentive where if you're a state who has a horrible error rate in administering this program, you actually get financial relief. You get the feds to cover the full SNAP benefits and

And so states are now going to say, okay, we're kind of at the cusp. Should we, you know, make our administration more efficient or should we just worsen it and hand out benefits to more people erroneously? And they're incentivized to do the wrong thing. I just find that like, in what world would you want legislation passed that way? But,

It goes back to your point, which is they need to self-soothe and they need to say, well, it's great for Trump. It's great for Republicans. And I think mainly it's bad for Democrats that we get a win. Like literally the only substantive, like I said, Dan Crenshaw, make this point. Others, I argument about the merits of the building better than the status quo is that the tax, the Trump tax cuts will expire. There'll be a massive tax increase. But again, like that is not like.

So in their view, that's better than the status quo. But you could have just done that. You could have just stopped. There are plenty of other options. There was one Republican, I mentioned this earlier, that did oppose this and did something that I've been asking Republicans to do for a while. So I want to at least mention it.

It's Brian Fitzpatrick out of Pennsylvania. He wrote a letter earlier in the day that said he wanted to express his concerns with the letters to Trump with reporting that the U.S. is withholding defense material already pledged to Ukraine. Among those bills was the PAC-3 Patriots that is protecting Ukraine from the missiles that they're getting bombarded with right now and essentially says, we need to resolve this if I'm going to vote for this bill.

And me and Bill have been asking for this for a while. It's just like a lot of Republicans wear the Ukraine pin, but it's like, okay, well, why don't you use this for leverage the way that conservatives do for spending or whatever? Brian Fitzpatrick actually does it, and then he runs away. They can't find him. That's like a video of him running through the basement, running through the tunnels of Congress. So I don't know. I would have walked out with my chest puffed after doing that if I was Brian Fitzpatrick, but that's okay. That's more of a style. No, no. I like it. I like it.

find me bitch hiding in the coke closet turning my phone on silent dnd so anyway that's good but you know it's just again it's one guy and he only had two other guys to do it they could have killed it it's crazy because there's so many things that these guys claim they want to like

you know, effectuate and that they need leverage for. This is the one opportunity really that they have. I don't really know what else they're going to do legislatively. And like, they could have done, you know, who used leverage pretty well, Lisa Murkowski. She did. And like, it's hilarious to me that, I mean, I didn't like how she did it. And I thought it was kind of ridiculous the end sum, but like,

It's kind of surprising that more people weren't like, you know what, let's band together. Five Ukraine supporters could have banded together and been like, we will not vote for this bill unless you put those weapons back. And Brian Fitzpatrick was the only one. Plenty of people with universities who are getting stiffed by the federal government of research funds could have been like, we are not going to vote for this bill unless you turn the spigots back on.

And they just basically handed all their leverage to Trump because what? They're fearful of a primary or something. You probably risked a primary on this bill if you were like the one person that was the final. Right. It's a collective action problem, right? Yeah. But like David Valadao, who you mentioned earlier, he's in California. So it's a jungle primary. It's a top two primary.

They've tried to primary him for the right ever since he voted to impeach Trump. He could have survived voting against his bill. There are other people that could have survived. Well, he might still – as we record this, it's 8 o'clock. We haven't really seen the final vote. He voted for the rule. It's possible. You're generous. You're generous. I'm sorry. Once you voted for the rule, it's over for me. You can't sell me on, well, I voted for the rule, but I voted against final passage, John Kerry. Okay, whatever. We're not going to do that.

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Visit your nearby Lowe's on Russell Branch Parkway southeast in Leesburg. So you mentioned earlier the JD stuff. We talked about this earlier in the week that it is worth just

Just ruminating on a little bit more since he's like double and triple down on it. He sends this tweet where it's like everything else in this bill is immaterial. Did he say minutiae or immaterial? Immaterial. Okay. Yeah. Immaterial was one of the words. It might have been immaterial minutiae. I don't have in front of me. Immaterial except for the ICE funds.

And the interesting thing here is he continued digging in on that. And the guy got into a Twitter war with Matt Iglesias on this topic. Yeah, that was amazing. And this number comes out here from Ian Bremmer today. When you just kind of put in context how much the immigration funding is. Once this bill passes, the funding for ICE, our domestic police force now, immigration police force, is...

greater than the the amount of funding for all but like the top 10 militaries in the world the ice funding the ice budget at 37.5 billion is greater than israel's defense budget at 30.5 billion really

That's what's needed. And we did this on the next level a little bit as far as the, there's no judges, you know, we're not funding any judges, immigration judges. Right. So we're just going to fund these massive detention centers and more contractors to like wear masks and hassle people. Like that's, that's what we're doing. Yes. That's what we're doing. I mean, it's very obvious. It's, you know, it's very obvious that that's this, this is the country that they want. Right. I mean,

I think in addition to JD Vance's tweet and tiff with the glaciers, which is just like, I don't know, maybe if I were vice president, I probably would not spend my time that way. But I thought the other thing was like Trump deciding like, you know what, all the shit's going down with this bill. I'm going to just hop on a plane and go to alligator Alcatraz and like check out this Everglades prison that we set up. And there's like, you know, they were like taking photo shoots and they brought along Benny Johnson for some, you know,

sizzle reel footage. And it was just like the celebration of the creation of a immigration police state is really remarkable. They get off on this stuff. They really do. And we're going to have militarized huge portions of our, you know,

I suspect we're going to have people in cages. We're going to have mass deportation ramped up to, from even where it is right now. And I take JD Vance very seriously, literally, not just figuratively or whatever the fuck the phrase is. When he says that this is the main thing in the bill for him, you know, I really do think this is Stephen Miller's administration. I think they're totally focused on this stuff. They believe in it. They think that throwing immigrants out of the country is going to unlock the

It's going to unlock the welfare state to make sure it's more stable. It's going to give people more benefits because immigrants are draining our benefits. All this bullshit. I think they really do believe it. Yeah. It was a wild press conference. I'm not going to punish people with it, but Trump gave like a rambling three minute long. Do you watch this? Like answer to how long people are going to stay in these detention centers. Yeah.

And it's like, I mean, A, his mental acuity doesn't seem quite there, but he's also just kind of going on about how there's going to be a connection of camps. To me, it seemed less... Some people were sharing it as how ominous this is, that he wants his people to stay indefinitely in internment camps, and that is ominous. I interpreted it as like...

A, like you said, he gets off on this stuff and he wasn't all there and he was losing his train of thought and kept rambling about it. But so he does that. And then Ron DeSanctimonious' spokesperson was kind of referring to the backlash to this, I noticed. And she was like, essentially, this is misinformation. We're not going to keep people here indefinitely in alligator alcatraz. We're going to be sending them back to their home country immediately. And I just don't think that people...

like who are not deeply involved in the immigration system, I can really process like what that like means and what that looks like because they, they keep going back to this whole, like, well, Obama deported a lot of people about to put a lot of people. It is such a misnomer because those numbers are all people coming across the border and then going right back around. Right. Hey, people aren't coming to the border right now, but,

if they were, they weren't being sent then to the Everglades to then be deported, right? Like they're being kept on the border. So the people that are going to the fucking Everglades camp and all these other prison camps that they're going to start to build are people from the interior of the U S and their plan, I guess, is then to take the, like the Cuban guy that died in their custody. And instead of leaving him in alligator Alcatraz, I guess their stated plan is that they're just going to send them without a judge or with some fake judge, you know, fake like militarized police, uh,

just straight to some country hasn't been in for half a century. That is literally their plan. Yeah, 100%. And I think you made a really important point, which is, yes, deportations under Obama were high. They did it because, one, I think Obama actually did believe in enforcement more than people recognize. But also, two, they were trying to get by and for...

immigration reform from Republicans. And they thought that would get it to them. But also, to your point, a lot of people cross the border, they're sent back, they turn around, they try to cross the border again, they get sent back. That kind of juices the numbers in this case. That's two. Yeah, that's two right there. Right. It's like repeat offenders. In this case, this is a lot of this isn't almost all of it now because we have no border crossings interior enforcement. I forget who I was talking to. Maybe it was Edgar. But just the way the Overton window has shifted on this stuff.

Trump 1.0 is famous for public recoiling at images of kids in cages. That was the defining moment of when people turned on his immigration policy. Trump 2.0 is they're going down with paparazzi, political paparazzi, to show you the cages they've built. With branded hats and shirts. With branded hats and fun alligators and the dehumanization movement.

of it all is, is it's sad. Honestly, it's, we've gotten to a really dark place where we treat people like we're treating people now. And, and I'm sure Tricia McLaughlin will say, well, they all have these, every single one of them has a horrible record that we can't see. Yes, I'm sure. It was like the Cuban guy that died, you know, he had a drug arrest in 1984 in Miami. I was like, Oh, somebody was doing drugs in Miami in 1984.

Oh, really? Breaking news. That's a shock to the system. We should have been deported back then. No, it's crazy. They come up with... You didn't see his social media post where he threw up a peace sign that looked like an MS-13 symbol. Come on, man. Speaking of social media posts, I just got a text this morning from one of my friends who I'm meeting on my holiday. And he said he's already talking to foreigners about...

like why they aren't coming to America. And like, I can guess. Yeah. Right. Right. But like the social media thing, I don't know if it's really like sunk in with people, like the degree to which like people that are coming in on travel visas now, like they're being asked to look through their phones. Oh yeah. Like they're, I, again, it is, it is like, you're going to an authoritarian state, you know, like when I land in Spain, you know, after the red eye,

Like they're not going to be like, hey, Tim, have you said anything mean about the Catalonian party? Like, you know, before you come in. Are you a Basque separatist? Is there any memes about like where you make Basque separatist leaders look like they have a fat face? It's like, no, that's not what's happening. But that like that is it's a small thing.

Like when you combine it with the interior enforcement and with the fear, like it paints a picture that I just think things are going to look worse than, than a lot of people realize by next year. Oh yeah. Also, I don't think it's that small thing. I think, um, well,

We'll see what the numbers end up showing, but just think about the downstream ripple effects, even economically from this. Less tourism, less international business. Adrian had a piece for us about the Latino music industry. The concert venues are just getting...

absolutely shredded because no one wants to show up at a Latino music festival because they think ICE will come down and raid them. Legit. They don't want to do it. Artists aren't coming here because they can't get their visas satisfied. And you might say, well, is that like...

impactful. Yeah. Like, it's a profoundly, we are coming up. I'm going to end with some, some, you know, you know, patriotic pains to, to the American spirit, to the American declaration. Yeah. Like, even if it's not that big of a deal to you, practically, whether or not,

you're going to have a big, a bad bunny concert here in the country. It like is extremely impactful about what the spirit of the country and what the country is supposed to be about and whether you want to be able to live in a free country. If there are people that decide they can't,

They can't sing their songs here because they're race. Yeah. And then you think about like, well, every music venue has vendors who need customers. They have surrounding restaurants and shops that need clientele. I mean, just the ripple effects of it all. And then you get to like, well, the farming industry, the hotel industry. I know he's trying to create carve outs for them, but they're not showing up.

They might not believe there's carve-outs yet. And that's just like the surface level stuff. I mean, think about it under the surface. And then you get into a place where the country is closed off, the economy kind of slows down, and culturally we're so homogenous that we become less and less recognizable.

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I want to talk about the econ stuff because you mentioned it. Our man, friend of the pod, Stan Voiger over at AEI was posting that the U.S. will fall to net zero immigration or below.

This year, as a result of everything we're talking about. And so what that means practically is that the country only needs to create 10 to 40,000 jobs per month to keep unemployment at 4.2%. So on one level, you're like, okay, well, unemployment won't be spiking like it was in the Great Recession. That's good. On the other hand, this is a picture of a country that is stagnant.

You know, you're slashing public sector jobs across the board, and we're not bringing any new people into the country. And that is the great stagnation. I thought that's what Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen were fighting against, but that's what we're doing. When you get to a place where you just don't have people coming to the country to do more work,

to pay into our social insurance programs, to pay taxes, even if they're not citizens. And they do this. They don't get the benefits. They pay into it. But also to be customers, to buy things, to generate economic growth. Sure, we can have, you know, our unemployment rate's going to be fine because we're going to have a lot of open jobs and very few people, or fewer people, I should say, able to fill them. So yeah, we'll have a fairly low unemployment rate.

But Joe Biden had a fairly low unemployment rate, right? And inflation really sucked. And I'm not saying we're going to have inflation here. But my point is, unemployment rate does not always mean good economic vibes. And I think we're going to be in a place where economic growth seems like it's going to be real close to stagnant. We'll see. Maybe these tax, extending the tax cuts will help us. Hey. Hey.

And it is true that they're doing the tax cuts. Like, I got a text yesterday from somebody who's on Medicaid that are like, how screwed am I? And it's like, well, these fuckers are extending the tax cuts and funding the private prisons immediately. Right. And they're cutting health care in a year and a half. Right. So, you know, it takes time for all this stuff to sort of –

seep through the entire economy? Yeah, I wish I had the data in front of me. I think Cohen told me some stuff is going to get triggered earlier than that, but I think mostly the pain is coming down the pike past the midterms.

the 2027 side of things. Yeah. And that's the Josh Hawley argument that this won't ever happen. We'll fix it before 2027. We'll just give you your tax cuts, which I'm sure Ron Johnson is very excited about. We covered the Ukraine weapons thing. I just have one other thing on it. Like,

The story's kind of weird. I know you've been kind of deep in BBB world, but have you been following this? Yeah, so what happened? What's his name? Ridge Colby. Ridge Colby. What a name. Yeah, who is the kind of J.D. Vance stand-in in the Pentagon. You know, kind of more of the nationalist America first, doesn't want to do stuff. I guess my theory of the case is like,

Was Rubio not like looped in on this? That's kind of what I want to know about. Cause I don't really understand how they could just, it seems like it just came out of nowhere. And the second thing is if you're Zelinsky, right? Like you just cut this minerals deal with Trump.

You've literally conspicuously said thank you every single time you meet with him. You tweet thank you every time because you know that that's what they demand. You had a fairly smashing success with the drones, but the Russians are still pounding you. There's not much more you can do to win over the favor of the administration. And for a bureaucrat at the Pentagon to then suddenly decide, you know what, we're going to hold these weapons, that's got to be incredibly deflating, obviously.

Obviously, it's frightening, too, for the country. I don't know. It just seems like Trump just doesn't care for Ukraine. He just wants to get the Russians to a point of yes so that he can end the war. Yeah. So Keith Kellogg, this guy, he was at the NSC in the first Trump term. He's Pence's old guy, right? Yeah, yeah. There's an advisor. So he currently serves as Trump's envoy for Ukraine. And he is...

Like pretty MAGA as far as the generals are concerned, but on the right side, from my perspective of the, well, I'm from just the accurate perspective. From the moral perspective. Yeah, from the moral perspective, you know, since they were invaded. He's been good on the Ukraine issue. So he's Trump's special envoy to Ukraine. So the story is out there, like you're mentioning about how the weapons aren't going there. People are saying Bridge Colby, you know, put a stop on these weapons being sent there. Kellogg's daughter,

Megan Mobs, who is at one of these foundations, is tweeting about how this isn't true. This is fake news. This is people leaking stuff to try to advance an agenda. And there are other people out there saying that Trump didn't even know about this. That's what I was getting at. Did they not? Did Rubio not know about this? Trump not know about this? Are they just allowing this dude to just decide on a whim, hey, we're not going to do this anymore? Is there not a process here?

Also, it is true. It's been confirmed by about 15 outlets. Yeah. It kind of seems like no is the answer. And they're happy to have the, you know, fog of war element out there because it, I don't know. Trump seems totally schizophrenic on this. I know the popular thing on the resistance YouTube is to be like, Trump is Krasnov and he was, or he's been a Russian asset since 1983, where the time when a Russian hooker peed on his face at,

And I don't know. I don't I would say there's not a zero percent chance of that. Maybe one percent. That's possible. But to me, first of all, it seems more just like Trump is just like Trump likes Putin because Putin sucks up to him. Putin helped him win. Putin's been on his side. But then he gets annoyed with Putin sometimes because he doesn't do exactly what he wants. And you know what I mean? He's like he's a little bit. He has an instinctive tendency towards the strong man.

First of all, like he's been kind of schizophrenic on it. The rumor was that the hooker peed on the bed, not on his face. Let's not exaggerate. Okay. I thought the rumor was the hooker peed on the other hooker. That has two hookers. They're peeing on each other. He was watching.

I think they just peed on the bed. We got to pause the pause. Why would they just pee on the bed? Clearly, you've never been to a freak-off, Sam. What would be the sexual interest there? She just pee on the bed like it was a toilet? Just pop a squat on top of the pillow? I've been to my share of ditty parties. Do not question my credentials. No, I think we're going to have to go back to the dossier. I'm pretty sure it would be one hooker.

peeing on another hooker. That would be the turn on, I would think. See, this is why you should have had Frum on because he could have... I don't think Frum would have gone down this path.

What were we talking about? Oh, Trump. Is he Russian asset? I don't know. He's not. I don't think so. You're talking about HuckerPet. I think he does like... I think he's partial to Putin, though. I mean, isn't that very evident that he kind of appreciates... Yes, of course that's very evident. I guess my point is this. Part of the reason... I guess I'm trying to say that...

he doesn't want to make the final decision that I'm abandoning Ukraine. He doesn't want to make any tough decisions. Yeah. He wants it to be like, you know, all of these little cuts and like slowly but surely the Ukrainians lose access to our weapons. But then he can like kind of say to people that he wants to like, Oh, he was the first one to do it. What's the end game then for him? What's that?

I think he hopes that the Ukrainians just give Russia some land and we get our minerals and it's the Nobel Peace Prize. I think that's the endgame for him. I don't doubt that. He's obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize. Which is so weird. I thought he didn't like the elites. Well, no. He's the most obvious. He so wants to be considered among the elites. It's such a driver of him. He just feels totally disrespected by that class that he needs to join it.

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Speaking of Russian assets, I've got one piece of audio I do want to play for you. Okay. An interesting story. Candace Owens, one of my competitors in the podcast space. We've talked about this. Have you and I talked about this? Her obsession with the fact that Brigitte Macron is a man. Oh, my God.

Oh my God. You have, yes, I'm upset. Yes. I'm obsessed with this, but you're also going to be stepping on Will Summer who's got original reporting coming down the pike on this one. I'm not stepping on, I'm excited to hear the original reporting. I don't want to give away too much. Candace for listeners who are not, who have not really fully engaged or glazed over when I bring this up, like Candace Owens isn't obsessed like with the question of Brigitte McCrone being a man and,

Like at the level of like me being obsessed with like the nuggets or something like she has done a full documentary on it. Like if you go to the YouTube page, it's like about as likely that it's about this as any other issue. I mean, she has just totally embraced it as her cause celeb. And so she got according to her.

Got a phone call from the president about this. I want to play the audio. President Donald J. Trump. He is calling me. He tells me that Emmanuel Macron is requesting to his face. I stopped speaking about his wife. I said to him, you know, respectfully, Mr. President, it's not my fault that he married someone with a penis. Could that be real?

I think it's real. I think it's real. I think Donald Trump called Candace Owens and was like, I need you to do me a solid with Emmanuel Macron and stop talking about whether his wife is secretly trans. Again, I don't want to get ahead of our colleague. How can you not get out of the reporting? It's our show. When is it going to come out? When's the newsletter coming out? It's supposed to come out today. Great. This podcast comes out at three o'clock.

You're keeping a secret? No, no, no. Subscribe to the Bulwark, people. This is where you get the truth. There's two things. Will has a newsletter today that's not the Candace Hone thing. He has a newsletter that is so ridiculous. And this one I'm fine teasing because it will be out, I think, by the time this podcast. His newsletter today is about this report that Kash Patel sent to Chuck Grassley.

Chinese election interference in 2020. It's supposed to be this groundbreaking report, and it turns out that the source of the stuff that the FBI was investigating back in 2020 also may have pushed the rumor that the Chinese had built a bunch of underground tunnels

in America to spread the COVID virus. And that the issue of passing around fake IDs was also an internet hoax that this person found. So clearly not the bombshell, but Chuck Grassley ran with it anyway. That's his newsletter today. He, in addition to that, has a story come out of this Candace Owens stuff. I will say this. It's, I think based on what Will has told me that it is likely true. That Trump called it. Do you think Trump thinks it's true? I,

I don't know what Trump thinks about her allegations. I do know that Macron, according to what Macron has publicly talked about this, where it's like this woman, this commenter needs to stop. And it's just so ridiculous. Like,

If ever there was a symbol of like how far we've fallen, the fact that like Candace Owens is fucking around with geopolitical affairs and like has the president, two presidents, two heads of state, like kind of needing to respond to her absurd anti-trans commentary is, I don't know, man, we're in trouble.

It's hard for me to also disentangle, so maybe this is what we'll look for in Will Summers' newsletter, which I won't read until July 14th because I'm going on blackout. But her claim is that the peace in Ukraine...

Was hinging on this in some way and that, and that McCrone needed her to stop as part of, I don't know, maybe a negotiation with Putin. I like that. You try to make some sense. I, that's what you're here for. Yeah. It's strange.

The white nationalist affinity for Candace is another thing that, I don't know, it's hard for me to wrap my head around. That one's easy to wrap around for me, but I won't get into it. The husband? No, I think that she's black. They like the fact that she kind of echoes what they say. Interesting. A friend once asked me if I would rather my daughter grow up to be Candace Owens or a stripper. Oh my God. How would you feel about that one? Would you?

child got to be a conspiracy theorist maga commentator or a or a stripper uh kind of a sex worker i can't believe if someone asked you this um it's a weird how drunk were you guys her husband i don't know probably both yeah what are we supposed to chat about it's a fucking it's tough world out there which one would you go with

I have a very serious close. What are the options here? It's a stripper or a white nationalist podcaster? Yeah, go to a white nationalist podcaster or like a stripper, like a Chippendales person.

Yeah, because I have boys. I'm definitely Chippendale. Yeah, not even a close call. This person was outraged at me, actually, when I made that suggestion. It didn't even take me as long as you. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? A stripper. Amazing. Great. Great life. Whatever. I don't know. Own your body. Have you seen Enora? She seems awesome. I'd way rather be Enora's mom than Candace.

She really struck gold there. Nora went through some issues, but I don't want to spoil it for people. Great movie. Okay. We're going to close with some seriousness. Are you ready? This would have been better with David Frum, but we're going to do it with you. The whole pod would have been better, really, but that's okay.

You pod with the guests that you have. It is the 4th. Whoa. Okay. Deep cut. This is the 4th of July podcast. As a former Republican...

I guess, let me ask you this first. Does the patriotism of the bulwark make you uncomfortable as part of your transition here? Why would that make me uncomfortable? The jingoism. The jingoism. We're not jingoistic. No. We're patriotic. We have some traits. I don't know. No, of course not. I love this country.

Okay, I do too. So unfortunately, during campaigns, I would read to the staffers from the letter from Thomas Jefferson to Roger Waitman on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. Are you familiar with that letter? Fucking loser. No. It's fucking awful. It's really something. It's truly a banger. If you want, I mean, obviously, when you read it, you start to, you know, think about,

Maybe the elements in which Thomas Jefferson did not live up to this message of the letter. Even still, it says a lot about what we're trying to be. So I'm going to read a part to you right now. And I would like to get your reaction. Are you ready? Okay. Do I need to get some tissues ready? If you want to. It's up to you. I mean, I've...

I've made several people cry on this podcast recently, so it could happen to you. He's talking about what the 4th of July should mean. I think he dies the next 4th of July. He says to Waitman, May it be to the world what I believe it will be, to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to the world.

Finally, to all the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs nor a favored few booted and spurred ready to ride them legitimately.

These are the grounds of hope for others, for ourselves. Let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them. Do you feel like this 4th of July, we are going to forever refresh our recollection of the rights of the Declaration? Do you see that spirit in the country right now, Samuel? No. No.

No, I don't. It's a difficult time to be in here. I don't want to be too negative about things, but I think you have to be realistic that we're in a bad spot. I guess the thing that really gets me is the...

what we're doing to migrant communities. And I just find that to be like, not in the spirit of what that Jefferson letter represented. I don't want to be too like, I don't know what the word is, but I find the discourse in the way that we're conducting the political

political conversations that we're having with each other to be really depressing too. I don't know if like that's historically, you know, different than any other time. I'm sure that, you know, we're not beating each other with canes. I know that's always the thing that they say, but like, I do find like,

People are just nasty to each other in a way that I find really unfortunate. And I think like we, we, we basically have forgotten how to learn to talk to each other. It's pretty bad. Yeah. I just looked at this and I did a separate thing. People should go check out the board takes feed. If you want, if you want to really cry, I did a separate thing on the Kilmar Breger Garcia lawsuit where he makes a lot of allegations about what happened in Sukkot and to him. And you know, well, who knows exactly what the truth is of it, but he paints an extremely bleak picture of,

And to me, when I think about the letter and the most distressing thing to me about all of it is no matter like there was something to be said for the fact that we were flawed. We fucked up. We did Abu Ghraib. We didn't let Jews in after World War Two. Thomas Jefferson fathered a slave's kid. Like, right. It was not that we were a perfect country, but like there was an aspiration for.

It was like, we are going to try to do this, not just for us, but for people who want to come here. And Jefferson's telling for people around the world that these are grounds for hope for others, that they can also be blessed with these rights. And now, the thing to me that is the most disheartening is that I...

With Trump, they've dispensed even with the notion that we should aim for this. Right? That it's like, actually, who gives a fuck if others have saddles on their back? It's a virtue to go after those people with Trump. And it's a virtue, and you're mocked, actually. Like in his speech in the Middle East, you're mocked.

If you say that we want these rights for others, right? Like not, not just like, oh, we don't want regime chain wars or whatever, but like to even express the view that the U S should want and encourage people to have, you know, the rights and the blessings of the declaration is now something that is derided. Right.

And to me, that is the sad part about this 4th of July. That's a really interesting point. It's a really interesting point. Like we, to even think that way makes you either, you know, unrealistic or naive. Yeah. And it's, you know,

That is, it kind of saps you of any sort of sense of idealism and it just reduces you to their level of cynicism. And that is actually pretty, pretty sad. I won't be reduced. I will be half a world away though on this 4th of July. Congrats. Thank you so much. You guys survived the week without me. Do you think you can do it? Think you'll be okay? Will I be replaced when I come back? Do you think you'll live? No. Will your life be better or worse without me next week? Do you think Sam?

I'll probably have to do more takes, but I think that's going to be okay. I'll be all right. I'm going to make it. All right.

Do you have any vacations planned? No. August. God, I got to get out of town. You got to do it. All right. And I owe your wife one. So, you know, we'll cover for you. Thank you for coming in this morning for an early call. I appreciate you very much. Everybody else, we'll be back here July 14th with Sam's favorite neoconservative, Bill Kristol, for Bill Kristol Mondays. And we'll see you all then. Enjoy the break.

Bye.

And when I leave this island, I put myself into a soul asylum. Cause I can feel the warning signs running around my mind. So here I go, still scratching around in the same old home. My body feels young but my mind is very old.

So what do you say? You can't give me the dreams that are my way. Half the world, half the world away. I've been lost, I don't feel bad. And when I...

Leave this planet, you know I'd stay, but I just can't stand it. And I can feel the warning signs running around my mind. And if I could leave this spirit, I'll find me a goal and I'll reach.

I can feel the warning signs running around my mind. Here I go. I'm still scratching around in the same old home. My body feels young but my mind feels old. So what do you say? You can't give me the dreams that are mine anyway. Have

Don't feel down Don't feel down

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.