Bill Kristol: The Musk of it All
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's Monday, so I'm here with the editor-at-large of the Bulwark, Bill Kristol. He's also a longtime member of the Daddy Gang, which we're going to be talking about here in a little bit. How are you doing, Bill? I'm fine. I'm fine. If I knew what the Daddy Gang was, I would rebut that. Maybe it's a good thing to be a member of the Daddy Gang. We'll dig deeper. I should be honored to be thought to be such. Absolutely. You should be honored. We have to start with some seriousness. It is the one-year anniversary of October 7th.

I mean, just like the horrors of that day are still kind of hard to really comprehend. I hate to say it, but without kind of knowing the exact contours of what would happen in the ensuing year, it's hard to be surprised that we've landed in a place a year out where there is still dramatic fallout, where there's still active militantism.

operations, both in Gaza and around the Middle East. So I guess I'm just curious on your big picture thoughts here, one year following the attack. Yeah, I mean, the scale and type of atrocity was so horrible that it's honestly hard to even think about. I thought about writing about it today, and I just thought, you know, I have nothing to say that others haven't said better. So I would also say that, unfortunately, about it.

here on this podcast. In terms of where we are a year later, let's say geopolitically, on the one hand, it's been a rough year. A lot of people have been killed and wounded, and a lot of damage has been done in Gaza, but also in Israel, and now Lebanon, and elsewhere. From the beginning, Hezbollah joined on October 8th. A lot of anti-Semitism around the world, which is very unfortunate.

I would also say, if I can, it's not the right topic to be upbeat on, but an awful lot of friends of mine predicted a much bigger war much more quickly with Iran or even in Lebanon, real ground war, and that hasn't happened yet. It's a good reminder that these things, there are surprises on the, I don't want to say upside and downside, but surprises that things get worse than you expect and also things that can be contained a little more than you expect. In some ways, you could make just a hard-headed argument that

The terrorist groups that most threaten Israel have been pretty badly damaged. Israel probably can feel maybe somewhat secure. Iran's a whole different question. But leaving Iran aside, which is a big thing to leave aside, you know, maybe the Middle East isn't quite as unstable as one expected it would be after a year of fighting. It really is kind of astonishing. Most of these wars in recent times, well, really all the Israel wars, have been

short or constrained or made short by the U.S. or by other allies, this one is very much ongoing. But who knows? We could be in a totally different situation tomorrow. Yeah, we talked about this a little with Michael Weiss last week, but we would have been in a totally different situation talking about this a month ago. And in the last month, I think there's been just a meaningful change

positive change on the Israel side of the equation, just as far as the way that Hezbollah has been degraded, the failure of the Iranian attack. And so, you know, it is

dynamic situation, to say the least. Yeah, and Iran, I mean, there's a lot of demagoguery on Iran, you know, from, I guess, both sides to some degree. Trump messed it up. Obama messed it up. They probably both messed it up some. I do think Obama was very wishful about Iran. I mean, it's not an easy thing to know what to do about it, and that remains just a huge problem. You know, it's a good reminder. I mean,

that are messianic and dictatorial, in this case inspired by a kind of religious messianism, obviously a hatred of Israel, death to Israel. This same would be true in a different way from certain kinds of Putin-like dictatorships or Chinese-like dictatorships.

which have their own dynamics. They're not just terrible to their own citizens. This is where the isolationists and the America First people, I think, are just so wrong. They're dangerous to the world. They are a source of instability, a source of, in this case, of terror, and requiring responses, which then can lead to further instability. So a good reminder that we can't turn our back on any of these situations and where we can

deal with them earlier rather than later, it would be nice to do so. The column was on 60 Minutes tonight, and I want to talk a little bit about kind of her broader media strategy in a second. But they put out a clip of her response to questions, a series of questions from Bill Whitaker about the administration's relationship with Bibi, the way that Bibi is involved

model he's gone rogue, I guess, or not been aligned with what the Biden-Harris administration would have wanted him to do. And I was interested on a couple of her points in the exchange. So we're going to play a little bit of a longer clip than we usually do from the 60 Minutes interview. Let's listen. We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire.

He's resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war. Does the U.S. have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu? The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just...

meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, I think that it is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks.

Now, the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and create a ceasefire. And we're not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure. Do we have...

a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu? I think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes. I thought her little bit at the very end there was pretty deft on talking about the

Not really wanting to weigh in on one side of the Bibi equation or the other. She didn't really want to undermine Bibi in this moment. And this thing is airing on the one-year anniversary of October 7th. She also didn't want to give him his full endorsement. And she pivots this to this statement, which is, well, regardless of our relationship between the leaders, we have an alliance with the Israeli people.

And I thought that was very clear. And I thought well put in pretty stark contrast with the caricature of her that you hear from the more hawkish elements of the right. I don't know what you thought about the exchange. Yeah.

You know, I agree. And she is the sitting vice president. So she can't just pop off the way a candidate can. I mean, they have to deal with Bibi for the next however long the administration is still in power. What would it be? About three and a half months? Three months. I assume he's still in power. There's no reason for them to prop him up. He doesn't have the support of most Israelis right now. He has a government, obviously. But there's a very patriotic and strong opposition which could take over. So I thought she'd

She said the right thing. I'm leaving aside the political deafness, which I agree with. I actually think it was the right thing to say if you're a vice president or president of the United States. You know, it's not about one person. I'm not going to criticize him, you know, not gratuitously, but I'm not going to identify with him. And I'm just going to reiterate the point.

bond, she says correctly, that the American people have with the Israeli people and the broader American government, she could have put it this way too, has with the Israeli government if you want to get into that, which she doesn't quite there, I guess. You know, you could talk about defense cooperation, intelligence cooperation and so forth, us defending Israel at the UN, etc. But that's kind of implied in what she said. Yeah, the only worry I have with the situation, and maybe it just...

Kind of all falls out in the wash. Is she in the sour spot a little bit where it's like only the bulwark people are satisfied with that answer? Maybe that clip is going around on TikTok and that has a negative impact among younger people that are more hostile towards Israel than she is. And she gets no credit from anybody that's like one tick to our right that is just awful.

so dug in on the fact that this administration is impossibly anti-Israel, like no matter what they, what they do to the contrary, but maybe there's just no way around that. I mean, that just might be the situation that they're in on this issue. Yeah, I think so. I mean, the, the far left, if it's really anti-Israel, I mean, they're presumably not going to vote for either Trump or Biden and vote for Jill Stein, I suppose, or something. And on the Trumpy front,

pro-Israel right, which I mean, I'm distressed by the degree to which people have talked themselves into believing that Trump would be better for Israel than Biden. I don't think that's the case. I think that's an argument that can be made on policy terms. A lot of it is more a matter of affect. And it's just kind of, you know, Trump says a few belligerent things or Trump supporters do, and everyone thinks that's great. And I mean, I've probably participated in such

in the past in a sense of, you know, you like having the psychological reinforcement, but you do need to be hard-headed about this, I think, as the Israeli government is. And I think in practice, a Biden administration and a Harris administration with their overall view of the world and their overall view of the Middle East and their overall view of Israel is much more reliable, much more of a solid view

partner with Israel and a solid supporter of Israel than a Trump administration, which Trump personally has some relations with Jews and vaguely is pro-Israel in some kind of personal way. But the idea that Trump's foreign policy, that an America first foreign policy shaped in part by J.D. Vance and the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, those types who are going to come in with Vance's imprimatur, the idea that that would be good for Israel is

Not so. I used to get annoyed in the Clinton years. I was on the other side of this then. Clinton really has, you know, he flew over to Rabin's funeral and he took many American Jewish leaders and Clinton had a real affinity. Clinton was Clinton, right? So he was good at being very sympathetic and empathetic with Israel. Right.

And I would say, look, I mean, that's nice, but really the policy matters more than the empathy. But here I do think Biden and Harris, they're pretty empathetic, honestly. And, but it's just hard. It's, I mean, it's, it was such a traumatic thing to be fair, October 7th. And the right has demagogued in a pretty big way. You know, they're soft on this. They're soft on that. What really, what's exactly, what alternative thing would you have done that the Biden-Harris administration hasn't done? You know, I guess shown no sympathy to the

for the humanitarian victims in Lebanon and Gaza, I guess, like not like showing sympathy at all, I guess, which Donald Trump doesn't really do is what they want. But I'm clear what the policy ramification of that is really related to this is one of the other big topics is Trump also, in addition to having the American first foreign policy also surrounds himself with anti-Semites. And for some reason, this doesn't bother Jews on the right. And at his rally in Butler,

over the weekend uh he had elon musk who maybe himself is not an anti-semite i don't know but uh who has unleashed a torrent of anti-semitism into the public sphere i mean i i'm a gentile and i'm i

daily assaulted by people on the internet now calling me slurs related to Jewishness. I guess because me and you hang out, I don't exactly know why, but if I'm getting it, then certainly actually Jewish people are getting a lot more anti-Semitic hate now. It runs rampant on the platform. There's no attempt to control it. And he was given a spot of

of influence of honor at the Trump rally and Butler. And so I think that these things kind of relate, but I'm curious, you wrote for morning shots today, more broadly about, about Musk's pernicious role and talked about this. The oligarchic arrogance has teamed up with a demagogic populist nativism. That seems like a bad combo to me, but, but talk about the Musk of it all for me.

Yeah, I was struck, of course, by Musk coming up to the stage and that stare he exchanges with Trump and then the jumping up and down idiotically and all that. But I say in warning shots that I, or I say we, and I think this is true of you and me and Sarah and really a lot of us, and not just at the Bulwark, but in Never Trump World, we were right about Trump. There's a reason we were Never Trump, right? It wasn't that we didn't like the tweets or we didn't like the little bit of protectionism and trade policy. It's that we thought he would do great damage to American politics.

And really to American society, ultimately, if you unleash that level of demagoguery, especially if he won, which he did, unfortunately, and that's been four years making things worse. And now it's been another four years making things worse because the Republican Party didn't have the nerve to shut him down after January 6th. So we were right to be debauched wrong. But I say in the piece that the one thing I didn't really expect was some of the super wealthy turning –

Trumpy to the degree they have. I always expected a lot of them to accommodate. That's what they do. They're not going to pick fights necessarily. They weren't going to be profiles in courage. They weren't going to be Liz Cheney any more than a ton of Republican elected officials were going to be Liz Cheney, but a few more had been there.

But the super wealthy, by definition, have done very well in America over the last 10, 20, 30 years. One would expect, out of basic sociological analysis, that they would be a conservative force in the old-fashioned sense of conservative. They would be nervous about

you know, too much craziness, too much populism unleashed. It could turn on us. Maybe we should calm things down here. Downside risk. Yeah, downside risk. You know, so they would have their relationships with Trump. They wouldn't be like us, God knows, but they would sort of be a moderating force on Trump. I just really miss the degree to which this, especially a new generation of tech bro, you

types, but it's more than tech. I mean, it's Musk and Thiel and all these people really have internalized a kind of wish for authoritarianism, dislike of democracy, dislike of liberalism in the broad sense. And that they're not just going along with Trump to try to

keep them in line. That was kind of the first term Republican doter types, I would say. They are totally on board the authoritarian project. And that's very dangerous because they have a lot of power. And Musk's power remains one of the most underrated and underreported stories in America. I mean, so the one story I do say in Morning Shots is a story I tell quickly is I had

lunch recently with a political analyst who worked with labor, has worked with organized labor most of his life. And I was talking, we were talking about the Vance pick, the pick of J.D. Vance. And I was saying, sort of giving an ideological, you know, kind of analysis of why this really embedded, uh,

Project 2025 and America First thinking in a second Trump term, if there is to be one, and presumably the Republican Party for the future. It's more of an important pick when you and I discussed this than a lot of people thought. And he sort of laughed at me. He said, that's true, but you're being a little naive. But I said, I thought it was a risky pick for Trump. I mean, the people I knew, both voters, Republican voters, but also Republican donors, would be nervous about such a pick. He said, you're talking to the Republican donors who were Republican donors 10 years ago.

Teal and Musk want Vance. They can lock in their control on most of the Republican Party with J.D. Vance and through Vance with Trump, who's not entirely reliable. And Trump, incidentally, knows what he's doing. Trump's going to get, he said at the time, this was a little while ago, hundreds of millions of dollars from these people.

And that, I think, has turned out to be true. And I was not much, if you think about it, I don't think any of us really focused on that when he picked Vance. That was not simply Trump being Trump. He's overconfident and all this. That was Trump thinking, you know what? If T.L. and Musk give me a couple hundred million dollars each, I can make up for whatever slight deficiencies Vance has as a candidate. But again, the melding of that kind of the wealth and the ideology is very dangerous. Right.

Yeah, there's a lot there. I want to just pick out just the part about how on board they are with the authoritarian project. You know, because this ties into one of my obsessions, this manifesto from Mark Andreessen. Mark Andreessen was kind of us, right? He was like a center-right, like more Republican, but, you know, moderate person.

was center left in the Obama years, you know, and I kind of took on the technocratic, you know, side of Silicon Valley that, that Obama played into a little bit, probably would have been a Huntsman man in 2012. If he did better, like this is who Mark Andrews is. He writes his manifesto about a year ago.

that is radical, you know, that is talking about what is coming with AI and like the limits that small liberalism and that having a system like of government is putting limits on what they see as some whatever, you know, utopian or dystopian future, however you want to look at it, right? Like they want to be able to be unrestricted with their AI investments. They want their crypto Bitcoin investments to not be regulated like the regular part of the banking system.

And so in order to get that, like they need a Trump, right? Like they need an autocrat is somebody that they can buy, you know, somebody that can deal with that, that, that will just regulate foes, right? It will just regulate the woke corporations, like not them.

I don't think that they have a secret plan, like a Project 2025 for tech in place where they're going to install so-and-so. But just directionally, the T.L. Musk and Andreessen, they've bought in with Trump because they kind of want the lawless element of it. Because they feel like they'll be on the right side of a lawless exchange. And that's super dark. That takes us to a place that is extremely...

you know, that's not just kind of like ideologically extreme, but that is extreme about like the whole change of the, of how like an American system of government works.

I really think that's right. I mean, I quote Rosa FDR, who criticizes his acceptance speech in 1936, the convention, Democratic Convention, the economic royalists of his day, who he says something like, it's natural and human once you, in effect, made all this money to also want to control government, but we have to stop them from doing this. And I think that's true of these guys, too, that they've accomplished a lot by doing

being pretty rough in their business tactics and but fine maybe it was all for the good and competition and so forth and we have all these good products as a result but then they see the next frontier so to speak and for that they do need government to be not just fair or even favorable they really want it to be an instrument of theirs right but i think here it's even beyond the kind of big oil the big businesses whom fdr is attacking or teddy roosevelt attacked you

as the malefactors of great wealth back in the early 20th century. It's sort of even beyond the normal capture of regulatory agencies by, you know, by big companies because it is an authoritarian. Revolving door stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's not just a kind of, you know, we don't want to be regulated too much. And some of that went in a pretty bad direction, right? I mean, you got-

People died as a result of their lobbying not to have safety and other kinds of laws, obviously, but regulations. But still, this is a little different level because of the authoritarian character, I would say, of the current Trumpist project. So you really do have something a little more like Europe in the 20s and 30s.

where a lot of the rising new businesses actually did end up on board with authoritarians and fascists of different kinds, because they saw that cooperation with them would ensure they would be left alone from hostile regulation, but also some of them got personally enthusiastic about the project. I see that very much personally, don't you, with people like Musk and Thiel?

Yeah, and if these parallels to the 20s and 30s just kind of get your blood going, just wait till tomorrow's podcast. And I guess then we'll have, I think, more extended remarks along these lines. All right, y'all, as I've told you before, I do hate fall, but I like...

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There are two clips from the rally I want to play back to back that take us to a different side of the coin as far as the darkness of the Trumpian authoritarian project. That is the violent side of it. Trump is in Butler, which was creepy in its own way for him to go back there. And I guess there's something to be said for it, going back to the scene of the crime, if you will. And

Overall, I just on balance, obviously, we're getting them on the lowest of bars. I had expected them to do more bloody shirt waving and more allusions to vengeance and all of this in the past couple months since Butler at the convention and elsewhere. And they weren't as bad as I thought, which is a rare pleasant surprise for the mega world.

But there were a couple of lines from the rally in Butler that have me a little concerned. So I want to listen to Elon. This is after he did the jumping where you could see his belly fat. And then he got to the microphone. Let's listen to Elon. You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That's why it's the First Amendment. And the Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment. I don't like that laugh.

President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America. So the evil nerd chuckle after talking about how the Second Amendment is there to protect the First Amendment is disturbing to me. And then this like whole dystopian Orwellian notion like it's Trump that's protecting democracy. I don't know, Bill.

It's creepy. I mean, certainly I would say it's a normal personal reaction, but it's dangerous. He's the wealthiest person in the world. I mean, and he's saying that, in effect, he's justifying basically it's a flight ID3 justification, not by an obscure guy, Mike Anton, writing a paper for Claremont's website, but by the wealthiest person in the world who controls one of those important media platforms.

in the world. And suddenly, what does it say about the next month? If Musk believes what he says he believes, and we have no reason to think he doesn't,

What is going to happen on Twitter over the next month? And how much disinformation is going to be promulgated? And, you know, you read about the disinformation, you read about it with the hurricane and stuff, and then you think, well, hopefully people can get on top of it and stop it. And I don't even know how to stop it. And I kind of hope it doesn't have that much effect. But I don't know. I mean, I think a combination, one way of thinking about it is Putin wants Trump to win and Elon Musk wants Trump to win.

win. And they are both people who will not stop at any normal boundaries of what they will do to help Trump to win. That's a very bad situation.

And you would come on a different place to it than, than where I was, because I think that's true. I worry about the vigilante side of it. Right. Again, it put yourself in the mindset of somebody that is in Butler that loves Donald Trump, that has come there. Trump was almost killed there. They probably haven't are in a bubble where they haven't learned that like the shooter was just one of these disturbed teens who's a 20 year old, but it was who was looking to shoot any famous person. It seems like based on what we know so far with the FBI, uh,

But they probably don't have that information. They assume that they're an agent of the left or whatever. And so they're at this rally. The blood is pumping, right? Just the energy is pumping at this rally. And then you have Elon Musk, who they look up to, who's up there saying the Second Amendment is there to protect your right to the First Amendment. And democracy is on the line if Donald Trump loses. And they are going to try to keep Donald Trump from losing.

I don't think it takes a wild imagination to think about like what kind of impact that could have on somebody. And it's just, it's just completely irresponsible. And then there's Trump doing a similar thing. Let's listen to Trump talk about the Kamala voter. Is there anybody here that's going to vote for lion Kamala? Please raise your hand. Please raise your hand. Actually, I should say, don't raise your hand. It would be very dangerous. We don't want to see anybody get hurt. Please don't raise your hand. What do you even say to that?

It'd be dangerous. You can't even imagine that happening at a Democratic rally. Don't raise your hand and admit you're a Trump supporter. It would be dangerous for you. Some of my supporters might be so unable to control themselves that they would shoot you or hurt you.

Yeah. And if someone did speak up on a Democratic rally, if there were a heckler, obviously that at some point you'd say, well, let the speak and go forward here, would you please leave? But before that, people would say if some people started to attack that person, I believe this has happened in real life, like with Joe Biden and John McCain and other people who believes in liberal democracy. They've tried to tell their own supporters that.

hey, wait a second, no violence here. Being in the majority doesn't justify violence, but it does for them. And this is the thing, you feel foolish if you complain every time Trump alludes to violence, every time there's bullying, every time there's a kind of anti-liberalism, let's call it, in their rhetoric. But it does add up. It does add up. There's a trivial thing that I saw that just struck me this morning. I think someone at Deloitte, the accounting firm and consulting firm,

I don't know, released text messages that he had had, I think it was a he, with J.D. Vance. I have no idea what the legality of that is and propriety. It's not the nicest thing in the world to release private text messages. Maybe there's a reason for it, but whatever. But that's, okay, it's just one employee. It's nothing to do with Deloitte. I don't even think it's on his work email, but maybe it is. But, you know, it's clearly not part of work. It wasn't.

And there's all these calls to boycott and not just to boycott Deloitte, which I guess citizens have a right to do if they take their business elsewhere, but for the government to strip Deloitte of contracts and prevent them from competing. So this is just routine now to assume that if there's something that happens that you don't like, if an employee of some company does something, even as a private company,

matter and a private citizen that you don't like, the government should come down on that company. And that is literally what happens at authoritarian. I mean, that is literally Hungary and it's literally Italy and Germany. And that's kind of the definition of

illiberal or anti-liberal political economy. And I don't know, do we have any confidence? This is where I really think people are underestimating still the second term. Do we have confidence that Trump and J.D. Vance won't act on that and that the appointees they put in there won't act on such instincts and urging? It goes back to your riskiness. Like, why take this risk? I cannot fathom it. I cannot fathom why take this risk. I want to do one more clip from the Trump rally. I apologize to the listeners.

He says kind of a version of what I'm about to play a lot, but I just refuse to be beaten down by it and to ignore it because it's so appalling. I just also think in the context of being in Butler and of this vengeance and retribution and what we've been talking about, I think it's important to listen to this clip in that context as well. So let's play it.

The enemy from within, the crazy lunatics that we have, the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people that we have that are actually running the country, not her. She's not running it and Biden's not running it either. And you all know that those people are more dangerous, the enemy from within than Russia and China and other people.

I mean, again, what do you say about the layers of this? Like he just kind of ducks in a little conspiracy about how there's a imaginary people, you know, puppeteers behind the curtain. I do wonder for people that don't think Trump dabbles in anti-Semitism, who he thinks, who he's talking about there, who exactly are the people behind the curtain. But, but then on top of it, just this notion that there is within our fellow citizens,

some cabal, some enemy cabal that is even more dangerous than Putin, who is bombing cities and kidnapping children. It is without precedent to have a presidential candidate saying something like this. No, it is. You say it's an invitation to violence, to vigilantism, which I think is a real fear, both for election day and for that period right after the election, I guess conceivably before the election too, incidentally.

But also, obviously, if Trump wins, I mean, that's, again, something people haven't focused on. It's not just that the government's going to be authoritarian. It's going to reach out to find authoritarian allies and helpers out there in the country. Armed citizens here need to prevent this constitutional group from frustrating our dear leaders plans. And suddenly you're into a really, really dark scenario. Yeah.

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All right, we got waylaid going down this path. I want to go back to the Kamala interviews. She's on 60 Minutes tonight. But yesterday, they published a podcast with Call Her Daddy, which I know you've been a longtime fan of. It's nice that we got Doug on the blog podcast. Loved to have Doug. Had a great conversation with Doug. But, you know, I don't know. It maybe feels like a little bit of reverse sexism that Kamala got put on Call Her Daddy. Maybe we can do an inverse next time. It's good that Kamala's out there.

I'm a little bit annoyed with there's this meta-media conversation where everybody analyzes every interview. Kamala is like, is this a smart thing? It's like, she should do all of them. She should do all of them. She should do 60 Minutes. She should do Call Her Daddy. She should do local media. She should do the Breakfast Club. She should do the Bulwark. She should do whatever. She should do it all. And so it's good that she's out there and that they seem to be turning up the intensity. But there's a clip I want to play from it. But first, do you have any kind of broad thoughts on...

you know, the more offensive Harris campaign. No, I think it's good. And I actually listened to much of the call her daddy. It's not like, you know, Tim Miller at the bulwark or something that I'm a regular listener to, but I, I, it was interesting. She was good. I thought though, I sent you, I sent you the link.

to it, which you had already listened since you're a member of the daddy gang. The questions were good, I've got to say. I mean, all this, the idea that only professional political commentators have the wit to ask intelligent questions of a presidential candidate is so ridiculous. You know, her questions were fine. And I thought some of Harris's answers were actually interesting and more interesting than you would have gotten on, than you're probably going to get on 60 Minutes.

She was super interesting. And I want to play the abortion clip, but she was interesting on just kind of speaking about her experience as a prosecutor and dealing with victims of sexual assault, I thought was super interesting. Because she's just very comfortable talking about that because of her experience. And so I thought that was eye-opening in a way. She's a lot more comfortable in these settings, I will say, honestly. And she was very comfortable on the...

what was it? All the smoke interview with the former NBA players, you know, talking about her racial identity, talking about sports, talking about the Bay area. And so I think that it's, it's good that, that she's doing this stuff. And I encourage people to listen to the full interview, even though I guess, I guess Alex is kind of a competitor. People should listen to it, even though she is a competitor, but you know,

If she tries hard, she might catch up to you, Tim. There's a fame and fortune. The clip I thought was very interesting was being a child of divorce, actually, which is, she's not very personal a lot of the time. And I don't begrudge her that. People are entitled to have their private lives, even if they're public officials. But she reveals a little more about herself. And I thought it was, but I thought it was very thoughtful and sort of didn't seem staged at all. And impressive, actually, as a human matter.

I also agree with that. I'd encourage people to listen to the whole thing. I will say when I texted you this one clip, it's kind of a sultry photo of Alex Cooper on the front of this. I was hoping that Susan wasn't looking over your shoulder and thinking I was sending you anything untoward. So if she's listening right now, it's all good. It's just, you know, it's a little bit more R-rated than I think the usual fare that I'm texting you. But the clip isn't R-rated. I thought this was interesting. For people who don't know Alex Cooper, she started with Barstool.

And I do think like the Democrats sometimes look down their nose like this kind of the more culturally conservative, but not like politically conservative, but, you know, more bro-y cultural, you know, more comfort talking about non-PC type stuff. And so Alex, I kind of came out of that barstool world and I did not realize this about her, but she talks in the interview about how she grew up Catholic and was pro-life. I thought that this was interesting to hear how

how the two of them discuss the abortion issue through that Catholic context. And you know what's interesting, Alex, to your point, what I'm finding as I travel? People who before, two years ago, before Roe v. Wade was overturned, people who felt very strong about that they are anti-abortion, anti-abortion, are now seeing what's happening and saying, hmm, I didn't intend for all this to happen.

And I think that's also why in state after state, so-called red states and so-called blue states, when this issue has been on the ballot, the American people are voting for freedom. Because ultimately it's about, look, this is not about imposing my thoughts on you in terms of what you do with your life or your body. It's actually quite the opposite. It's saying the government shouldn't be telling people what to do. I think that...

Unfortunately, we have these real life names. We have these horrific moments that these people are losing their lives, right? We have a woman named Amber Thurman who died in Georgia because the abortion bans in that state, the doctors were too afraid to treat her.

Kamala continues to be very good at this, as talking about abortion in a way that appeals to people that consider themselves personally pro-life and talking about the fallout. I just think this lands with me. So I think it lands with people talking about the fallout since the Dobbs decision of what we've seen in some of these states and how there have been a lot of instances that really are outside of the pro-life ethos, right? Like that where women's the

the mother's life is being not respected and being put at risk, frankly, and how they're not being supported and how the babies aren't being supported. And I like it. And I'm happy that she has this conversation with somebody like Alex, right? Because it puts it in a different context than if you're talking to a pro-choice interviewer, a liberal interviewer, you know, that might take the conversation in a different direction. So anyway, to me, I thought that was the most noteworthy exchange of the interview. I don't know what you thought.

No, I thought that was interesting. And it happened that this today is the day of the Supreme Court comes back first Monday in October. So reasonable day to think about get more political for a second. The next president is going to appoint a lot of federal judges, including maybe one or two Supreme Court justices.

And a very legitimate issue about not just Dobbs and its own implications in terms of how it's played out at the state level. And there's a ton of things that are unresolved, as we know. Some of these travel bans and other kinds of things are being challenged in federal court, district court. And we don't know how that will actually be interpreted at the Supreme Court level. But, of course, all other things that go beyond Dobbs and abortion itself in terms of the right to privacy. And I do think, honestly, of all the issues she has, it's both a totally legitimate issue

I mean, there's foreign policy, which for me is extremely important. Economic policy is important. The differences are pretty great. But at the end of the day, as we've seen in the last seven, eight years, the American economy seems to be able to chuckle along under an awful lot of different mistakes and different kinds of foolishness in some ways, not to minimize economic policy. And there's foreign policy, which is really real, I think. There's politics.

preserving democracy, which is really real. And then I do think abortion is like right up there. Maybe it's number three, but it's not, it's in the, for me as an actual matter of what matters, you know, and what would distinguish a Trump and a Harris administration. I think it's very high on the list. And I think she's totally entitled to close on this issue in large part. If she does it in the way she did on that podcast, I think it'll be effective.

I wanted to get into some of the disinformation around Helene, but I feel like we've been in the muck a bunch. And I talked about this on YouTube with Sam Stein, so people should check out our YouTube feed. So I just want to close with you just on just politics, politics.

What are you feeling? How's Bill Kristol feeling? We're one month out. There was an interesting Nate Cohn article today, which might make people feel better or worse. He digs into the different polls and it gets super nerdy. But the takeaway from it is in polls that are waiting towards the 2020 vote, you're getting a different result every

and in polls that don't wait to the 2020 vote. Cohn's New York Times polls don't wait to it. And the result that they see is that Kamala does worse

in national polls, but better in the swing states, which to Cohn kind of states that like we are having this realignment that is happening. And maybe that maybe it will turn out that the electoral college and popular vote gap won't be as wide because Trump's starting to do better in California and New York, you know, and Kamala is doing better with white voters that over index in the upper Midwest swing states. So it's

It's an interesting piece. I'll put it in the show notes here for people that want to nerd out. But I'm wondering where your head's at on the state of affairs.

I don't know if it's for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. I'm slightly more optimistic maybe than I was a few days ago. I think the Vance-Walls debate was not a highlight and therefore I maybe was a little too worried about that. I think it's now faded into the obscurity that all vice presidential debates fade into. And I think her coming out maybe has just cheered me up a little bit more that she's doing all these interviews. She'll get beat up on one of two things, but I think it makes it easier to tell people, look, I mean, she's

competent and he or she is talking to everyone. And Trump does a lot of stuff, I guess, but it's almost entirely with super friendly interviewers, right? I mean, Fox basically, and then a couple of other things. Yeah, he does. He's kind of random YouTubers and like milk brothers and streamers and stuff. He does like favorable interviews.

you know, alternative media, but favorable alternative media. Right. So I think she gets some credit for that. And I agree about the Nate Cohen piece. It does feel... Look, every...

I mean, who knows? But basically, there are very few polls, almost no polls that have Trump ahead in the national popular vote. And the range of which he's behind is anywhere from about one to four or five. I'm just going to think that she wins by two or three points at this stage in the national vote, which seems also to be confirmed by some other evidence that the gap between the Electoral College and the popular vote is shrinking back to something closer to what it was before 2020. That's got to help her. And she seems in pretty good shape in Wisconsin and Michigan. And then she needs...

Pennsylvania or Nevada and Georgia or Nevada and North Carolina. I don't know. They could all go south, obviously. I mean, but the key is going to be the Bulwark tour, the Bulwark as it combined with Republican voters against Trump. Yeah, the Bulwark tour next week, the 17th in Philly and the 18th in Pittsburgh and the 19th in Detroit. So come on by and hang out with us. Bulwark.com slash events. Keep an eye on that for tickets. They should be on sale here in the next 24 hours or so. Yeah.

Yeah, I've got a wedding that weekend, but I'm going to make it at least to Philly. And I'm saying if Pennsylvania comes through, it's the bulwark. It's the best tour. I mean, of all the things that have happened, could anything compete with that tour as a game changer? I don't think so. And I think people should come if you're from out of state. I know I have friends who are from out of state or here in Louisiana or in Colorado that wanted to

you know, wanted to go and, and help on the march. That's a good excuse. Come hang out to some Pittsburgh, do a live podcast and go door knocking the next day or earlier in that day. And, you know, put some of the nervous energy to use. So I do think that's right. And I guess I'll close with my few asking like why the vibes have shifted, why it feels a little more nervous than it did for Kamala two weeks ago. Like my answer to that is that we were in a period of just growth, right?

like unprecedented really growth for the Paris like ballot, you know, both in her favorability and the ballot with Trump, how far down the ticket was when Biden was in. And then she has this good convention and good debate. And it's like, there's this feeling of positive momentum and we're just into the trenches now, you know? And so like, it feels different just because,

It feels better to be growing than to be stagnant, you know, and I think that that kind of explains the vibe shift, if you will. And it is a little close for comfort, but I kind of concur with your assessment there. It's close for comfort, but it's still Harris still in slightly better position. All right, Bill, any final thoughts from you?

No, just on the polling, her favorability, unfavorability in almost every poll is better than Trump's. And I continue to think that is a core thing that people, voters come back to at the very end, especially in a way, less ideological voters who aren't voting on some checklist of issues, but they just like Harris better. And if that holds up, I feel...

somewhat optimistic. It's been a good week to be optimistic. The Mets come from behind on Monday night. They come from behind on Thursday night and then on Saturday night. Kind of an amazing week for the Mets. And Vanderbilt. What about your SEC? That was fantastic. And showing the Nick Saban clip there on the scoreboard after the game, that was amazing. It was a beautiful win for Vandy. And it's beautiful to live in 2024 where I was

I took my daughter to dinner and I was watching it on my phone. You know, you can watch the final minute on your phone now when you're walking down the street on magazine street and, uh, technology is wonderful. The victory was wonderful. I was happy for the Vandy kids. And, um,

Yeah, the SEC is crazy. Everybody has a loss. LSU is undefeated in conference. The LSU is terrible this year, I think. It's supposed to be a down year and who knows? Maybe a hope springs eternal for the Mets and the Tigers. I guess my only disappointment was that I didn't get to have Caitlin Collins, Alabama fan on after the Alabama loss so that I could have been a little more smug and trash talking her beloved Crimson Tide, but such is life.

All right. And on that note, I want to revise and extend my remarks on something that Caitlin and I got into on the podcast last week. So I'm going to let you go, Bill. Thanks so much. We will see you next Monday, as always, and then next Thursday in Philadelphia for everybody else. All right.

I want to break the fourth wall a little bit because I got some feedback about an exchange that Caitlin and I were having at the beginning of the podcast. I think it's worth getting into a little bit more. We were kind of joking around at the beginning and she was talking about how she doesn't want the election to be over.

And I was saying I kind of agree, thinking about the prospect of the post-election, of having either Trump or having a more boring coconut time with Kamala. I just kind of want to expand where I was coming from. Like, for starters, me and Caitlin don't actually know each other that well. And so when you have a guest who's like more of a serious news person, I'm trying to loosen them up at the start, you know? We're trying to make sure we're having cool, casual convo. Because if a pod guest sounds like...

they would sound on CNN, like I have failed you. That's not the point of this platform, right? To have kind of a talking point convo. And so, you know, I have a lot of people on here who are friends of mine, but when there are other folks, you know, you're trying to get everybody comfortable. And in this context, we were getting comfortable

And that like notion, right, I think, given the stakes of the election, us cheerily kind of talking about how much we're enjoying the election, I think did rub some people the wrong way in a way that I get. And so to explain what we meant a little bit more, to me, I think about this election as like the sword of Damocles.

And it's kind of comfortable when the sword is hanging over you because it's just there. It's been there. And for us, it's been there for like almost a decade. And so it's just like sitting there and we are getting to kind of live in our political life and get comfortable knowing that it's up there. And so I shouldn't really be surprising that two people who really love politics, who have daily politics shows, I kind of...

are enjoying the moment of like high political interest. But that said, like when the sword is now up there and you know that there's somebody with scissors coming and like the scissors are coming in 30 days, that brings a little bit of restlessness, you know, knowing that we're either bucking up for four more years where I'm going to have to be

like a voice resisting a lawless president. That sounds scary and it sounds intense. Or,

The other option is that the sword drops, it doesn't fall on us, and we're at the end of an era. And there's something really gratifying about that and like this exhale. But at the same time, like for me, that's also like scary in a different way, right? Of the staring out again into the abyss, you know, because there is Trump has been my nemesis now, maybe a one-way nemesis.

for like nine and a half years and this is this is a story as old as time it's like ahab and the whale like you need a nemesis sometimes like to keep you going and for people who haven't like listened to me talk about this when jeb lost after jeb lost i had three hours at the beach i went to the beach with a book and i sat there and i was there for like three hours then i got a phone call to be asked to be the spokesperson for the anti-trump pack that was in spring of 2016.

It is now 2024. I was unmarried and without a child. So it was that long ago. And throughout that entire period, like the constant has been fighting this asshole. All right. Fighting him and trying to beat him. And the end of that, because I think if we beat him this time, it would be the end. It will not be the end of the threat of MAGA or the threat of authoritarianism, but of Trump, like the notion of Trump winning at age 82 after having lost twice in

Never say never. JVL is listening to this right now going, no, Trump will be back in 82. But it will feel like an end of sorts. And that in itself is something that gives me a feeling in my pit of my stomach like, okay, well, there will be first the relief and the sense of accomplishment. And then there will be, okay, now what? There will be like an emotional crash that's related to that.

And while I would trade literally anything to have that emotional crash, besides my family, I would trade anything. I would love it. This is like the first world of first world problems. Please let Trump get annihilated. Let him go away. Let him go into the dustbin of history and let us figure out what we are going to do in a world where Kamala is running against a normal Republican, Glenn Youngkin. I would love for that to be the case. I don't really think that's going to happen, but I would like in the sense that I don't

I think that there'll be a period of unrest within the Republican party that does not land on somebody like Glenn Youngkin. But if I could just, you know, throw a penny into the well and have that be the outcome, I would throw the penny. Please let that be the outcome. But if that happens, like then there is this question of, okay, everybody's exhaled. We've defeated the nemesis. And that's like, what's next? What do we do? You know, and in a way that's, that is a little scary. It's also exciting because,

I think that there will be a lot of challenges. All of these disinformation things that we're talking about with AI, the MAGA conservative media verse isn't going anywhere. J.D. Vance versus Ron DeSantis, how Kamala handles the presidency, challenges coming from the left. There'll be tons of shit to talk about. We are cursed to live in interesting times. But the prospect of it and of having this decisive moment after 10 years of struggle is an

in a way, a little bit nerve-wracking. I'm sure you're all feeling, some of you are feeling those nerves as well. And so we're sort of doing a little casual banter where I was talking about how there is...

An ominousness to the post-election and the pre-election, as stressful as that is, is in some ways preferable. And so we're doing a little bit of banter about that. And I can understand why some people are like, no, Tim, what the fuck are you talking about? No, this is awful. Let's beat him and let's move forward into the happy times.

And I hear that. I hear that. I really do. But it also is nerve-wracking. And it's also an end. Sometimes I struggle with the ends of things, and I do better with the beginnings. So hopefully in December – well, not December, unfortunately, because we'll have to stop this deal. Hopefully in January, we'll be turning the page to a new spring. We'll be working through this all together.

in a way that is very exciting but that's like where my mind was when I was having that exchange with Caitlin I want you guys to kind of really know where I'm coming from and how I'm thinking about all this and in the days where I get nervous about it sometimes I think about all these great ideas I have for stuff that we're going to be able to do here together in January and February and March so there is cool shit coming and the thing that makes me the most happy when I think about that era is if Kamala wins we might be able to have the Trump trials with Ben Wittes back and that

would be something that would bring all of us some joy. So I appreciate you all for listening. We have a doozy tomorrow. So buckle up. We'll see you all back here then. Peace. I'll never be alone, daddy. I'll never be alone. I'll never be alone, daddy. Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy. I'm daddy, I'm daddy,

The dot, the dot connector The dot connector, the spot corrector I say I love you, you say whatever

It must be the lifestyle time, but I sweet love you got me round Fuck heaven thoughts right now, only her two hands can let me down I'm finna walk with you, the one that was so much that got me through Tell her that think of that name I got from you, tell her we do the king shit we bout to do She want a romance, she can quit that day job off My nigga said life starts when you get that power

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

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