Bill Kristol: Words Are Not Violence

I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. We are here with Bill Crystal, as always. Just wanted to shout out everybody I saw out at Jazz Fest this weekend, especially the guy. Uh the couple actually, uh from central Illinois wearing Tim is always right shirts and this Bulwark Oasis hat.

I received so many pictures from people that got selfies with these characters and so it was great. I also did an interview on the Allison Minor stage of Young River Eckert. It was nice to see some of y'all out there. And so I was I was a little distant from the craziness in D C for that reason, but I was present with the Bulwark community.

Bill. You had to suffer through a Sunday live stream about all this nonsense. So uh may I might have to carry a heavier load today. But how you feeling? I didn't know you had relatives from central Illinois. That's nice that they're nice. It would be strange if that was my aunt. Uh n it was strange as it was, but um I uh I appreciated it and uh, you know, one more weekend ahead of us.

Unfortunately we have to start with the nonsense at the White House correspondence dinner. Uh obviously by this point people have seen there was I guess you call them a gunman that had stayed at the hotel the night before, that tried to storm the dinner. The president and others were evacuated.

he didn't even make it to the floor that the dinner was on. So I feel like there's a little bit of kind of misunderstanding about what actually happened. But uh that said, uh he did engage the Secret Service. That's now in custody. There's a ton of discourse around this. We're going to try to get through it as quickly as possible. The most annoying elements of the discourse. But Bill, why don't you start with what you were uh vamping about in the newsletter this morning?

Well, obviously, uh you know, I deplore violence and efforts to use violence in this in this way, or in or any way, really. We should be clear about that. Yeah, we've we've all said that, I think, and and should.

Having said that, one thing that's made me I think sh that is striking about this pro democracy movement that we are parts of, I think, is how committed it's been to nonviolence. And pretty pretty strikingly so. I mean i they they could easily have been fudging and stuff at the margins, but Uh obviously members of Congress are gonna say they're against violence, and they are, but the No Kings marches, which were the more Mm-hmm. mass protest side of the movement, you might say.

the organizers just got out of their way to say over and over again, it's on the website, that these are going to be nonviolent, that we should be peaceful and l and lawful. And people were, incidentally, eight million people, right? So this is a genuine nonviolent resistance.

Now I did notice that some MAGA types who decided, I'm not sure based on what, but that the shooter attended a local No Kings rally are using that to try to discredit the entire No Kings, which and that's the kind of thing that people need to f push we all should push back on.

There should be no giving of ground here. No, oh well, yeah, it's kind of a problem, you know, maybe on the fringes. No, eight million people showed up. Peaceful, lawful protest. one person showed up who then turned out to go to Washington and and try to commit violence, that that person should be deplored and punished. But uh it does not tarnish the movement re at all. There's no evidence anyway, it doesn't. And and I think it's very important to make that point.

And it's very important now to fight back aggressively against the attempts by the Trump administration and all their lackeys in Congress and outside to try to use this as an excuse. to use this moment as a as a as an excuse to intensify their attacks on free speech, on dissent. on using the federal government to criminalize dissent, on on on passing bad legislation on the grounds that it's necessary at this moment of this n national emergency.

And that that's passed the bad seven oh two legislation or the bad DHS legislation and so forth. Striking how quickly they went to that. by Sunday on t that was the talking point of Ron Johnson and of Jim Jordan on the on the talk shows on Sunday. Totally unconnected, right? Seven oh two has nothing to do with what happened. Funding for ICE and and and the Border Patrol has nothing to do with what happened. But, you know, this isn't it's a moment to take advantage of.

And the Trump administration and Trump personally, of course, have always been pretty good at trying at least to take advantage of such moments. And we saw this also as well with the stupid ballroom discourse, which we can kind of just dispense with really quickly, but that was what was happening on social media was that This is why we need the Trump ballroom that he is building illegally without support for for Congress after, you know, just sending a wrecking ball to the people's house.

These two things have nothing to do with each other. For starters, again, I just want to reiterate we'll we'll hopefully do some more on the Secret Service stuff tomorrow because there are a lot of kind of sub-stories, but just Fundamentally, like the the shooter didn't get anywhere near the president. Like like literally the shoot shooter wasn't even on the same floor as the president. I know we've all been to this dinner.

I haven't been in many years'cause it's stupid. So we'll get to that next. But like go down escalators to get to the ballroom at the Hinckley Hilton and you know, he was stopped on the floor above. And so, okay.

So for just for practical purposes, I don't I don't know why what was what the security issue was. And then secondarily, you wouldn't have had this dinner in the ballroom at the White House because it's the White House correspondence dinner. It wasn't the president's event. Uh he he is invited as a guest. And so uh you know, the whole thing is just kind of post facto kind of rationalization for for Trump's, you know, kind of soft authoritarian desire to remake the Washington and his image.

Yeah, just two quick points on the the ballroom thing, which is just It was Trump himself, of course, who brought it up right away. I mean, within maybe an hour after the dinner, I think, on social media, and then the press conference he had around ten thirty at night. So he this isn't just, you know, you know, MAGA MOOCs doing this. This is Trump himself making the case.

It's very revealing, don't you think about Trump, because he assumes that any dinner he's at is about him and that he would therefore, if he had the ballroom, leaving aside the fact that it only seats a third of what the Washington Hilton does and all this, it would be moved to his ballroom.

And I guess it would be his dinner. It would be his dinner. It would be at the White House. He would control the White House would control the guest list. The White House would presumably run the dinner. The White House would I mean, as the White House does when it hosts a dinner, it's Trump's dinner. He's he welcomes people.

Uh he arranges the entertainment or so forth. Uh the White House does. White House social staff. The whole point of the White House Correspondence Dinner is it's not that, but it's so revealing that Trump assumes that it should be that, right? And he assumes any dinner he goes to.

Chamber of Commerce, National Farm Bureau, all the million things people speak at, presidents speak at, politicians speak at, that they should be at that ballroom because he thinks it's not just that it thinks it's about him. And it's not just that, of course, there are special security precautions that are taken wherever he goes, and that's fine, you know. But he thinks not just that it's about him, but he thinks that he should run it.

I mean the authoritarianism that lurks behind the ballroom thing, I guess, is what I'm struck by, just in the way Trump presents it, as you say, a and thinking that this was be something he that he should be running.

The press dinner. Because he controls the press. Yeah. Which takes us to like why, you know, I was checked out from the weekend to begin with and, you know, why I wasn't flying to Washington for this, which is that, you know, I don't understand why the press was in the first place even participating in this kind of tuxedo and ball gown awards dinner and toast. with a president who is engaging in a full out assault on them. And many of the people in attendance, the president is suing.

Like he's trying to sue multiple outlets to shut them up, uh getting multiple outlets to you know make payments, you know, to him as part of like totally totally rigged, you know, agreements uh after he bullied them with lawsuits. And then on top of that, like he had a dinner with CBS the night before. CBS How toast? To like him in their correspondence, where he gave an hour-long speech in private. They didn't report on it. We don't we still know what he said at the speech. The CBS journalist.

Did not report on on what the president said to them at their toast? You assume he was insulting people and doing his insult comedy act like he always does? Uh he is orchestrating the takeover of multiple outlets that were in attendance? at that dinner by one of his billionaire buddies. Like the whole dinner shouldn't have taken place. And they're they're gonna do it again in a month. And the idea they're gonna let Trump stand up there and insult and berate them.

While he is trying to silence them and use the levers of power that he has to manipulate them and control them, I like the whole dinner was a total fucking sham. I think that it was in that way, just like the existence of the dinner was a gift to him.

Or certainly the fact that he was an honoree. That's the official title. He was up on the stage because he was going to be asked to speak because he is an honored guest. I mean there were many guests at the dinner and I he could have sat there in the audience, I suppose, but that wouldn't be the way it would work, obviously.

And so yes, he's an honoree uh of the press corps, whom as you say he's suing and attacking in all kinds of ways, whom he's called traitors, right? Whom personally he's insulted in the most grotesque ways, insulting women for their looks, insulting uh people with medical

disabilities for their you know, disability. I mean, that was a member of the press way back in twenty fifteen, right? I mean this is what he's done for ages. And the press corps response is, We'd like to honor you, Mr President. We'd like to have a toast.

And let you and we'd like to sit there and be humiliated as you insult us. So I you know, the whole thing the whole thing was a sh uh was a sham having the dinner, not the shooting. We're gonna get to that in a second. That wasn't a sham. We're coming we're coming back to that. One more thing that you just mentioned though that I think bears discussion about you know this resistance and this movement and the opposition to him and what is

what is not only appropriate but praiseworthy and and like what is outside the bounds. And it is totally, absolutely fine. People should feel unvarnished.

To not only criticize the president, but criticize him in harsh and personal terms. Like he deserves it. Words are not violent. Like you can use words to call for violence, but criticisms are not violence. Okay. This was I felt this way when there was some of the stuff on in campus protest culture where people are like, we need a safe space. speakers we don't like. It's like no.

Sorry. Words are not violence. In a free country, people can say what they want. And I just I was struck watching Jamie Raskin kind of get bullied on CNN over the weekend. This always happens where there's some political violence. People are like, well, what about the rhetoric? It's like what about the rhetoric? It's like it's not the rhetoric. It's like we have people with mental health issues in the country and very easy access to firearms. Like that's why this happens.

You know, it is not, you know, the manner in which people were speaking about Donald Trump on this week on the Sunday shows. It's like the whole thing is insane. And Janie Raskin ends up being like, Well, I'd have no personal issues with Trump. I just

I just oppose his policies. And it's like, no, I oppose his policies and I have personal issues with him. He's he's a horrible president. He's a terrible president. And I abhor any attempt to to do violence against him. Like those things live totally peacefully together, like the positions of of having harsh criticism of the president, even in personal terms, and also opposing an all

forms any attempt to violence. Like that is not complicated. Anybody that doesn't have a baby brain should be able to understand that. And yet after every one of these things, we go round and round on the cable news panels, you know, about trying to police people's rhetoric. It's crazy. Yeah, I totally agree. And the and the criticisms of the pres of the administration's policies and and administration's rhetoric, genocide and so forth, for a nation's civilization and all that.

Those criticisms are as true today as they were Saturday afternoon, right? And they and there's no reason not to make them honestly and and not honestly, there is no reason not to make them, period. I it we were joking in this morning doing the, you know, headlines for Morning shots. I I suggested Orange Man bad, Orange Man still bad. You know, this is your formula. I believe Orange Man bad. I give you credit for that. I don't know if that's actually your original formulation. I believe it is.

No, it was not my original formulation, but I did uh I I yeah, I did embrace it and I wrote about how important it is actually. People people tried to tarnish the phrase Orange Man bad and say that it was cringe and I wanted to retake it back from Because it actually is really all you need to know about the last decade is that the Orange Ban is bad. Everything else is kind of superfluous.

And you know what? He was bad on Saturday and he's bad today and we deplore violence against him, and being bad doesn't mean he anyone should take matters into their own hands and shoot people at all, obviously. But yes, his administration is bad and he's not a great person either. He isn't. He's horrible. And we and we shouldn't be shot. This is not this is not hard.

The last thing that I wanted to rant about on this topic is there's some stupid discourse coming from in our own ranks about this. You saw this immediately after the shooting, which is that this was a false flag. Attempt. This was fake. The president did this himself because he wanted the attention. Just for starters, the idea that Donald Trump would want to do this.

right before he had the chance to stand on stage and do his favorite thing, which is insult the press for an hour. I find that very hard to believe. And I think Donald Trump was champing at the bit to have that evening and and if you want any evidence of that, he wants to do it again in a month.

So I think he was very excited to l to dunk on all the journalists that stupidly dressed up in tuxedos to like smile and giggle with him. So just as a practical matter. I also just am very annoyed about this because I I made the joke over the weekend that like People on the internet have successfully identified 300 of the last two false flag attempts. Like everything now is a false flag attempt. People don't know what that is. It's basically when somebody in power thinks.

an event fakes a shooting in order to get sympathy for themselves, essentially, or in order to advance some other policy agenda item that they have. It was y it used to be the right wing crazies that always said this. Alex Jones said every shooting was a false flag attempt in order to get us to take their guns.

And now like there are people on the left that are like everything's a false flag attempt in order to make Donald Trump more popular or let him get more power or whatever and it's just like We have to live in reality. Okay. Like every once in a while there has been a false flag attempt. I think there's pretty good evidence that Russia did one in Serbia in order to try to influence the Hungary elections. But I guys, I

Again, what is happening here is that crazy people have easy access to firearms in the country. Like that is what is behind almost all of these. shootings and almost all of this violence, and that is a thing that we should be addressing. And it just doesn't it doesn't serve anybody's purpose. to descend into like total fantasy land, you know, where everything is a scheme. I these guys aren't that smart.

It's just like these guys can't do anything. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House the only person getting anything done? It's like these guys are incompetent on all levels. You think that they can keep this secret? Donald Trump can't keep any secrets. He blurts everything out. Like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the Butler thing was a false fag and one of the pieces of evidence was that Crooks doesn't have a a long internet history.

This guy Cole Allen has a huge internet history. Like you can see everything. He went to he went to a good college. You can see uh back in twenty seventeen, you can see everything that he's posted. He posts a lot on Blue Sky. Ken Klippenstein interviewed some of his friends. You know, he had a psychotic break and an easy access to guns. Like the idea that

I mean what? The CIA planted this guy ten years ago and had him post a lot of anti-Trump stuff at, you know, as part of this cover story, cause maybe Donald Trump would get elected ten years later and they could use him as part of it's all nonsense. Like it didn't happen. Free yourself from it. Truth is an important part of democracy and and if you let yourself get sucked up by a bunch of lies and crazy, um, it's it's gonna lead

to negative impacts on democracy. We've seen that very clearly on the right. So there's my rant about that, Bill. I don't know if you've you have anything you'd like to add. Yeah, I kind of just ignored all that false flag stuff that you're right to call it out and and others should because that is not, you know, a sane or healthy part of the for democracy movement. And people should

fix that in themselves, or we should just c say, as you just said eloquently, that that is wrong. You know, it was an attempted act of violence and we deplore that, you know. This episode is brought to you by Smalls. Smalls makes fresh human-grade food for cats. It's made from the same stuff you or I would eat, but formulated specifically to help cats thrive. Cats are carnivores. Are

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I did see one piece of pushback on me on this that I want to address, which is that I've I also say often that it's not good for the pro democracy movement, that all the cranks and conspiracists are on the right, and then that point

They're like, well, then aren't you being inconsistent, Tim? Like, shouldn't you be encouraging the conspiracy theories? I'm not trying to create new cranks. And conspiracy theorists. Right? Like of the existing cranks and conspiracy theorists, I think that we should engage with them on issues where there is agreement, like such as

how Donald Trump sucked us into the Iran war and various uh, you know, types of malign influence that was involved in that. I think we should engage with them on Palantir and the security state and the way that they're spying on people and going after people. There are areas of overlap with cranks that I think that it's important for the Democrats to engage on, but um

The bulwark is not the place for like cultivating new, new cranks. Okay. This is this is a place for radical candor and truth and honesty. So And to the degree that one engages with cranks, one engages to try to lead them out of to say, look, this is this thing here is a reasonable point because there is evidence for it. And it's try it's an attempt to lead them out of being cranks, not to double down on being a crank. Okay. I'm done with this. Do you have anything else you want to say about the

No, no, no, no. Okay, the Iran war. So since Friday, I guess here's the update essentially from the two sides in the war. Iran uh has an offer uh that they'll open the strait on their terms and agree to end the war. As long as there's no further nuclear talks. That part, the nuclear enrichment talks, the canists get kicked down the road. I should also note that this offer comes from Iran but So yeah. he said

That there's also no consensus inside the Iranian leadership for how to respond to US demands. Part of the problem with like the initial effort here to just decapitate not only the Ayatollah but everyone else that could have succeeded him is that there are now a bunch of factions inside. The new Ayatollah, we don't even know uh it could be in a coma, like we don't know exactly what's going on. He's suffered serious injuries.

So we don't even go know who we're negotiating with, so that does make negotiating ceasefires a little challenging. On our side, Trump said on Fox over the weekend that his current plan is he's hoping that the oil blockade is gonna lead Iran to cave. He thinks it's gonna cause systemic issues in Iran if they can't move oil out of the country onto the seas. So that is the current state of play. Doesn't seem like A uh a solution is around the corner here, Bill, but uh what do you make of it?

I mean it's pretty amazing eight weeks in that Iran clearly feels they have the upper hand and is playing that those cards, if I can use Trump's favorite analogy, they're playing the cards they have pretty aggressively. And we're saying ooh Gee, I th we hope we can hope there can be peace soon and uh maybe the street could be opened and maybe we won't even look too closely at the details of how much control you'll still have uh uh over it and what tolls you might exact after it's opened.

And I get the feeling that I don't know, we'll see on the nuclear thing whether there isn't some kind of I I Trump really wants out of it and I think the Iranians they're actually being a little more aggressive and pushing their advantage than I might have expected because obviously Israel and we could still do an awful lot of damage, but um

Uh but here we are. Very hard to see that this is cut working out well. And look, and the one thing Trump never mentions, oh I've got patience, I've got plenty of time, is the Strait of Hormuz is closed. The damage that's being done is being done to the global economy and to our economy, uh not just on oil gas prices and on oil, but on petrochemicals and all kinds of things, which people have extensively written about. It's not like once it's closed, it's closed. And so that's sort of that's

part of the cost of the war, like blowing up some place or something. No, each day it's closed increases the cost. So the idea that Trump is just sitting there patiently, it's nice that he's patient.

But I don't think an awful lot of businesses and other finance ministries and others around the world are are are think that's just great and we can just go on like this forever. So the pressure will be on Trump. I don't know he could start bombing again. I guess he could go to ground troops. I I can't believe he will. He could

He doesn't seem to want to. I mean he his own ceasefire expired and he was making threats about how he's gonna escalate and then he pretended like they had a deal because he unilaterally didn't want to go back to Obama. So I think he'll you know, hope maybe things gets a good break in the next few days. Maybe this there is more pressure on Iran internally than we know, the regime's a little unstable. But I I still think we're heading towards a pretty humiliating

A defeat. Really a defeat in which Iran emerges with whatever actually they do with the strait over the next weeks and months. They have established the principle that they can close it and they haven't paid a fundamental price for doing so. Most of the damage was done actually probably before they did that, right? So uh that's very, very bad for the and the nuclear thing is left unresolved.

And our credibility is in tatters in the region and elsewhere. Very bad. And I think the the Iranian foreign minister is in visiting Putin today. Yes, true. China's in the mix, you know, it's really He had a meeting with Oman. They had them Oman and the Iranians are now talking about that toll booth that they can put onto the street. So I uh you know, conceivably, you know, a whole new

funding source, semi permanent funding source for for Iran if it if it turns out like this. And Trump, uh in addition to what I said on Fox, he's like he thinks, you know, it might take a couple more weeks. for Iran to cry uncle. And it's like the long this goes on, why would Iran cry uncle ever? I I they don't even actually care about what happens to their people, certainly not in this point. And so they have a lot more

I would think, appetite for pain or ability to to weather pain e you know, economically than than Trump does. So I you know, like you said, I mean maybe you know, some pressure point happens where things collapse and Trump can get some kind of face saving deal out of this, but like hope isn't really an option and it's unclear what their strategy is besides that. And the Trump administration is talking about

I saw you tweeted about this. I I totally agree with you on this, how outrageous it is. A bailout for the UAE. So we're gonna bail out the United Arab Emirates, which have an average income of, I don't know, whatever, fifty, sixty thousand dollars a year. But of course that average is wildly distorted because the people who actually

run the place or make our zillionaires and then they have a lot of very cheap immigrant labor whom they exploit. A terrible place. Why are we bailing them out at all? I I hope in fact that Democrats make a huge fuss about this. I guess there's some treasury program that they can sort of currency swap.

Yeah, the executive branch has the ability to do that without congressional approval, although Congress could step in and change those rules. And speaking of that, I think the uh the ridiculous uh justification for the war, there was an imminent threat.

Which if they really were an imminent threat, the president can use force and that has sixty days to get congressional authorization or to stop his his military action. Those sixty days run out, I believe, this Friday, I think it's May first. Friday. So even if you buy the imminent threat thing, which no one should have

I wonder though, do some Republicans in Congress say, Yeah, well this is kind of sixty days? I mean, I only mentioned this because a couple of Republicans have used this as a talking point. Well he has sixty days, you know. So I think so and the democrats should pressure them

to have to vote on this. So I just want to think in addition to the UAE bailout, you posted uh a sub stack from David Rothkoff that I was reading this morning and um just the cost of the war is also, you know, kind of lost a little bit in the conversation about this and the amount of cost that that's taking us to run the war every day. The material loss that we're gonna have to replace, now potentially bailout for UAE. Avron as part of the deal is gonna want some kind of

you know, bailout. Trump has even suggested potentially that we might help them with with a rebuild. And it is mind blowing like the amount of waste And the addition to our debt, y you can think about what the what we could have spent that money on domestically and all of that for again, like a strategic objective that is MIA at this point. Like what it like the it seems like the strategic objective at this point is like let the straight get up. Which it was before the war started. Right. Right.

Before we spent all this money and lost lives and killed a lot of people, incidentally, in Iran too, and did a huge amount of damage to our standing credibility around the world. It's really a pretty epic failure, I've gotta say, so far. Did you know the fast growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over two million happy customers?

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Speaking of that damage to our standing around the world, I did just really wanna shout out David French's column from the weekend of the New York Times, which has a headline that really appealed to me, which was Meet the New Leader of the Free World. Vladimir Zelensky. And uh we've covered this a lot, but I I I do think it just when you kind of take the lens back, it's pretty striking.

the degree to which now like Zelensky, because of the experience of the war in Ukraine, uh Ukraine has A very large standing military and a lot of expertise. that now like they are sharing. They developed their own like arms industry and, you know, they're reaching defense deals now with the Gulf states when it comes to, you know, drones and uh weapon defenses.

It is pretty remarkable. Like we we have very few positive stories on here. So I do do like to mention that. Like that Ukraine has not only repelled the r the Russian advance,

But has used this opportunity to build a quite impressive military apparatus. And that Zelensky himself, when there were so many opportunities for this to go sideways, has like really bolstered. their standing in the world, relationship with allies in Europe, uh and and elsewhere. And has done so in defending his own country but his own country as a liberal democracy and a tolerant one and a decent one.

Uh which is a very good reminder to us that liberal liberalism does not have to be weak. And sometimes it is a little weak. And sometimes the party that's on the liberal side can be a little weak. And there's that Robert Frostline, what is it, a liberal is someone so

fraud minded that he doesn't take his own side in the fight and all that. And that's we often see this kind of stuff uh here and around the world sometimes. But not in the case of Ukraine, not in the case so far at least of Peter Magyar in in Hungary. So we're gonna get our uh leaders of twenty first century liberalism from

Central and Eastern Europe. And I guess I wouldn't have predicted that if you know, ten or twenty years ago or fifty years ago. But, you know, I mean I give the but huge credit to them. More credit in a way that they come out of cultures you might say that that don't make this as easy as being, you know, a liberal here in the US, right? I mean

It makes sense. I'm just thinking about it right now, uh, after you said that, people say there's always something about like the patriotism of the immigrant to America, like somebody that has come here and is new, particularly if they'd fled oppression overseas and they have even like more more vigor, zeal, you know, and and their commitment to the democratic system than

folks who've, you know, been here a while and and don't know the alternative. I I mean there is something to that about Eastern and Central Europe. Like the you know, the memory of repression and totalitarianism is more fresh. And you know, the threats are more real and so there's less incentive towards decadence. I don't know that that's that's an appealing theory. I don't know. We'll have to we'll have to explore that later.

I want to talk about the domestic uh political situation for Trump before the shooting. I guess it was I should just say I do understand the impulse, totally wrong, to want to conspiracize about this thing.'Cause like the best theory of that case is that Trump Trump's political standing was cratering. And if you look at his numbers, he really was around.

the W line as W's approval rating. I keep getting into the low thirties. You're seeing in the data, you know, anecdotally from from people that you you meet, just like a sense that that Trump's like really had really harmed himself with this Iran war and harmed the Republicans' prospects in the midterms. And so, you know, you start to get into fanciful thinking about like what he might do to to co-opt that.

I don't think that what happened over the weekend is gonna do anything to arrest his political decline. Maybe lets him buy a couple of news cycles for whatever nonsense they want to push about the ballroom, et cetera. But the fundamental decline was related to the fact that

Donald Trump said that he was gonna run on America first and caring about Americans and c caring about Americans' economic interests. And instead what he has done is get us involved in stupid wars and focus most of his attention on redesigning Washington.

in, you know, his Gold Lame image, right? Like that's what he's focused on. And this is not really doing anything to change that trajectory, in my opinion. I'm wondering what you think about that. I totally agree. And I do think the the economy. I mean, he did benefit more than he deserved to, and people like us c complain about it and think it's both

The economy was not everything, A and B it wasn't quite as good as people as he said, but he did a pretty good job of selling the fact that it was very good under him. And then they did a very good job of selling the fact, which was partly true, of course, that we had inflation under Biden.

kind of economic growth is actually f okay of the Biden four years is pretty comparable, I think, to the Trump almost entire exactly comparable to the Trump four years, but whatever. People thought that Trump was better on the economy. That's one large reason he he won, as well as getting prices down.

uh the economy's been sluggish and he hasn't got and prices are going back up. And that's not gonna change that's gonna get worse, I would think, over the next few months is the longer the straight of our moves is closed for one thing.

Not better. I wasn't hoping for the magic moment and I don't the Trump, you know, the the the inflection point where Trump gets, you know, i i irreversibly damaged. I maybe I don't know if life works that way. Uh democratic politics does tend to be a little more, you know, slice by slice.

And that's certainly what it's been for Trump over these fifteen, sixteen months. But now, you know, he is probably in the even if he's in the mid-high thirties, which maybe is a more s safer way to put it, uh he's losing almost a point of lost almost a point of month.

And w I keep thinking one one sort of thinks, well, okay, it's gonna stable you know, he's got that solid base. He's got that solid base and therefore he's it's gonna stop going down as quickly. And of course there's some common sense truth to that, right? You lose your

forty ninth and forty eighth percentile support faster than you lose your thirty eighth and thirty ninth, presumably, right? They're th they're the weaker ones. Having said that, what is striking is that the pace of decline hasn't slowed, if anything has picked up during the last two months. during the war. And there's now real evidence in the data that his base is beginning to to lose f confidence in it. The people who strongly approve of Trump, that percentage has gone down.

And it's really lopsided now. We're getting to 50% strongly disapprove and like 20% strongly approve. That is that and you really want to look at those numbers because this somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove. By definition, those are a little bit malleable. You get some good news, they go up a couple of points. But if you're starting at twenty fifty of people who are unlikely to change their mind, that's very bad for Trump and very bad for the Republican Party.

Yeah, I I think part of it is the economic stuff as you mentioned, but part of it is look this is why it matters. that these crazy America first media people are turning on him. Like this is why it is worth paying attention as noxious and gross as he is to what Tucker and Candace and them are saying because like there is some, you know, some slice of his strong backers that genuinely did not want us to get back into Middle East wars. You know, I this is why I think the Iran thing is so

maybe not an inflection point as in this was the moment that, you know, the walls caved in on Trump and he never was able to recover. But I I think that why it was important for him starting to lose that category. because fundamentally like there were a group of, you know, conservative type voters who were genuinely upset.

about the cost of the Middle East wars. And, you know, in some of those cases it was because they had people that were serving in them and their lives. In some of those cases it was just this kind of broad idea that their lives are getting worse. Why are we spending this money overseas? Or there are but there are different reasons.

But like that was a core group that he started with. And this has just been a total betrayal of of them on like a very fundamental thing. You know, like sometimes people say, Oh, well, Trump betrayed conservative principles on, you know, this issue or that issue.

But it's f a lot of times it was on stuff that like really only D C Beltway conservatives cared about in the first place, tariff policy or whatever. Like I there were a lot of America first type voters in the country that did think we were

spending too much money overseas, doing too much overseas, and that usually overlaps with the type of person that also didn't want immigrants to come into the country and other views that I I don't agree with at all. But They are genuinely held and Trump is just totally

kicking dirt in their face on it right now. And so it's like not surprising that some percentage of them are bailing. And again, not the the whole country is not podcast listeners. A lot of these people are Fox listeners and and they're getting

you know, more positive Trump coverage, but some segment of the MAGA base is alternative media listeners. And if you just look at the stats, like Tucker and Candace's audience is growing and the audience of the podcast that are more supportive of what Trump is doing is declining. Like that's That is a real thing. Maybe it's only a couple percent here or there, but that matters.

Oh, I agree. And and just other people who are on the in the softer supporting s side who care less about these individual issues, just see the general you know, fracturing of support and the kind of chaos. And they sort of think, Well, you know, these were his supporters, what's wrong? kind of thing. It's more like that. I you know, as opposed to I care so much about this issues. I agree with you, the Iran war.

Wars are wars, you know, and if they go badly and this is the president's war. This was not a by I mean, whatever one thinks of the other wars, which also presidents have paid a huge price for. They did have some s congressional support, at least at first, at authorization. Uh here, this is Trump's war and only his war. The fact that it's it looks like it's ended can end up as a pretty bad failure, a pretty evident failure.

particularly hurts him. I was making the having an argument or discussion with a foreign policy fr friend who does foreign policy this weekend, talking about how all the coverage was on the White House obviously dinner and everything. This was yesterday, I guess. We're talking and not not on this Iran stuff, which is pretty striking that Iran has made the IRG C is making the demands it is now about, you know, well, we'll open the waterway on our terms and but put off the nuclear stuff.

and um this country we were pummeling and allegedly, you know, was we have all the cards. I said, Yeah, well, I guess we have to people get back to making that argument point. And he he said, Look at some point these things do get

I don't know. They escape confinement. You know, people just know what's happening. People see what's happening. People are they this is a war. People have been following it. It's been in the news a lot for two months. And they kind of know that this is not the outcome that he said we were going to get to.

And even if they're not following the news, they see it at the gas pump. Right. Like there's just real tangible impact here. And in that way, uh, you know, you said that, you know, some of the software Trump supporters are seeing You know, th they they do get influenced in some ways by seeing the tuckers jump off the off the ship.

The other comparison, and obviously all of the ancillary stuff around Trump is is so much worse. But just like looking narrowly at this decision to go to the Iran War and like the way that the Afghanistan withdrawal happened, I do think that a lot of the Biden like people that got off the sh the boat with Biden was the sense that was like, uh, I think he's kinda old, but

you know, we needed normalcy back. Things were too crazy under Trump. And then the Afghanistan what's all happens. And it's like, well that seems like like somebody was asleep at the switch at like how that happened. Like that was very it just wasn't handled well. And then right on the heels of that, you see inflation start to tick up. And I and I just think that p again, people that aren't as like tuned in and and aren't as like on one team or the other start to look at all this and say,

This guy, you know, who's driving the ship here? Like who like who do we have a captain? Like things are getting out of hand. You know, and I th maybe I they didn't care that much personally about the Afghanistan policy one way or the other, but it was that combined with the economic stuff and uh th there was just a sense that started to grow that that like

we didn't have s the strong leadership that people wanted to get things back on the right track. I I do think that there's some parallel to that here. That's a good point. But also I'd say a parallel in that Biden paid a price, I think, for seeming uh unwilling to acknowledge that Afghanistan could have been handled better on the withdrawal and uh seeming almost oblivious to the inflation problem or denying it or trying to exp argue it explain it away you know deny it or or kind of minimize it.

for quite a long time. And I think that's also true here, right? Trump Trump obviously never acknowledges any problems. And that doesn't matter as much if the problems seem to be either incidental to his policies or people don't care about them, or maybe it's a global thing like a pandemic and so Trump's been kind of a cloud in handling it, but honestly, is anyone handling it very well? A lot of people told themselves that. These are pretty particular problems that he has

caused or not dealt with, or promised to deal with, and hasn't dealt with, and that he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge maybe the no little course correction is needed. Yeah.

This matters, Trump political standing going down because knocking on wood he's not gonna try to run again is, you know, particularly about the midterms and and for me particularly about the Senate. And so I do wanna kinda do some temperature checks and and and make sure we're keeping our eye on what's happening in the Senate races as we get through the rest of the year. The baseline for this, which I'll just repeat briefly for everybody to make sure they're if they're not as

close followers of the Cook political report as I am and and aware of the map. The Democrats need to save their own seats. You know, obviously the incumbent Democrats or or retiring Democrats, uh those seats need to be protected. That's

The Michigan Senate race is one of those. There's a big primary going on there right now. The Georgia Senate race, John Osoff is gonna be challenged. I think he's looking pretty strong right now. And then there are the two states where Democrats are looking to do pickup. where they've won something statewide relatively recently, so they seem

more gettable, that is North Carolina with Roy Cooper running a really strong race and then Maine looking like Graham Plattner with Susan Collins. That's a bit of a wild card. So let's just separate Maine for a second. Let's pretend like that is going to happen. And and if they get two Senate seats. Uh, then you got to go pick up two in red states. And so Ohio is the first one with Sherrod Brown back running again that people look at.

And then you get in this jumble of Alaska, Mary Tel Paltola, it's that's when I have my eye on the closest. You have Texas, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska even independent running, Mm Montana independent running. Those are all Trump ten plus states. So uh you need Trump standing to get really low to start to have hope that either vot Trump voters are so sick of him that they'll vote for the Democrat in those states or that they'll stay home. How do you kind of assess

the state of play right now. I think there was a period of time where people were starting to get very excited in conventional wisdom. I was like seeing some posts on Nerd Twitter like the Democrats might get fifty four seats in the Senate. It's like maybe who knows? But I don't know. I I've looked at the data at recently. Um, there's that Ohio poll that really stuck out to me that had Sherrod Brown down three that makes me think, okay, like more work.

needs to be done here. Trump's numbers need to be driven even lower. But uh I'm wondering what your your view is on the state of play in the Senate. I think the Senate is doable. I would still are you probably little it's under fifty fifty, but it's not, you know, ninety ten either anymore. And I think it's very, very important. I think they're gonna win the House. And I actually

got an argument with some Democratic operative we can't get lose sight of the House, you know, that's where the winnable seats are. We could waste a lot of money on these Senates, especially in big states. Obviously they should win whatever they can win in the House. But honestly it makes much more difference to win the Senate by one vote than to

win the House by twenty seven as opposed to twenty two, you know. Uh I think the House will happen now, uh especially if Virginia gets upheld in in the courts here, which I think is likely. Yeah, I mean Alaska there's actually a poll showing uh the incumbent

Sullivan's down by like five or something. So I agree the Ohio thing is a good reminder that look, these states are sticky and they can look possible, but then the last minute reversion often is to the baseline Republican. On the other hand, if Trump's numbers go down a couple more points.

I mean Iowa looks like it's very much in play. I think Kansas, we're gonna get a poll this week. I'm very curious to see this. Uh could be in play. And then there are these, yes, s sort of wild cardish, Montana, Nebraska states, southern states, Mississippi had a fairly close. just about to say uh the Mississippi candidate is kind of interesting yeah in that Senate race and Yeah, it wasn't

Uh what was it? The El Elvis Presley's cousin or whatever, Brandon Presley ran uh down there statewide and got a little closer than you would think. Uh you know big black vote in Mississippi. Uh that's a totally different type of kind of strategy than like for a Talarico, like there you're trying to just maximize the black vote. Hopefully, you know, the Trump unpopularity depresses turnout among white Republican voters. A tough, but not a zero percent chance.

No, and I I mean these states are different and this is where vote you know, it's a lot of Washington Denver operatives are like, What's the magic? But there's no one bow. I mean, different issues work differently. If the farm economy is really suffering and continues to get worse because it could be as a straight to four moves, affects things like fertilizer.

Yeah, then Iowa and Kansas, I think, really aren't, but they both elected Democrats statewide in recent times, in Trump times. I mean, so this is not like such an amazing thing that a Democrat could win. Now they tend to win the non federal offices because the state offices rather than the federal. example in Iowa Rob Sand, who is a statewide elected official as auditors running for governor.

I think he looks very good. The Senate the Senate race is a little different. And and in some ways that complicates it'cause now you're asking some Trump voters to go out and tuck two Democratic boxes, Governor and Center. There's some psychological effects there. But I I agree. I I mean depending on how the pharmaconomy goes, Iowa might end up looking but I for all the talk about Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska, you know, very well could end up being much closer.

I think it's all in play. It's a w if it's a wave election and it's it's getting not quite there. I agree that one should be cautious. The generic ballot isn't quite where it might be at this yet. But again, I history suggests it tends to continue trending in the direction it's in, not not to reverse back. But a lot of things are gonna happen. Will there be a Supreme Court retirement? What will the economy be in six months? How will the war end? We sort of see

where it seems to be going, where we don't see the ending. Will there be other wars? God knows what Trump could try. Will some of the election subversion stuff work? How much will his desperation And I do think there's a lot of desperation coming here in terms of, you know, m making him more authoritarian, not less. I don't think I don't think we're gonna see a triangulation s situation here. I one could see

Triangulation. I guess some of that might work, but this is a big year. It's really a big year, you know? It is. Scott Colem is the Mississippi candidate's name. I had it in my head. I knew it was that, but I didn't want to get it wrong. And so I just I double checked. It's an interesting race in Mississippi. As you mentioned, you said it's below fifty percent. I was just curious. Polymarket, which I do not support.

Okay, I do not support protection market gambling, but you know, just as a benchmark, it's interesting. It has Democrats fifty two, Republicans forty nine right now for the Senate. That feels a little bullish for me on the Democrats. Um that's higher than I would have it, but it's

It's telling and I I it also just kind of is reflective about like that that's where the real real battle is gonna be this year. Okay, Bill Crystal, anything else? Anything I missed? Anything grinding your gears you need to get off your chest? I think we got a fair amount off our chest today. Uh Tim, that was good.

That's wonderful. All right. Well, um, I appreciate you. We'll see you back here next Monday. Everybody else, we got a good guest line up this week, so we'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. P The Bork Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by J.