Bill Kristol: This Is Accelerationist Authoritarianism

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, January the 12th. And so we have our editor at large, Bill Crystal. Bill. Something has been in the water the last nine days. It kind of felt like the beginning of the administration was like this, you know, where Trump was doing all kinds of crazy shit, you know, in quick succession. And it's not as if it was not crazy, you know, towards the end of the year. But it did feel like he was losing a little steam. You know, maybe grandpa was losing, you know, the verve for some of this. But. Man, between what we've seen in Minnesota and Venezuela and then the big news from last night, which is that the administration is investigating Jerome Powell now, the Department of Justice has been a Jerome Powell. it's we've wretched things up. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I guess the last two, three months of the year, Trump seemed a little bit on the defensive, and he was some with Epstein and other things. They didn't do well in the government shutdown. Democrats did pretty well, very well in the November elections. And then the stuff he was doing was bad, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center kind of thing and all that, the East Wing, but it was more performative, you might say, than serious. I do feel like the last 10 days where you've seen real. accelerationist authoritarianism in foreign policy, obviously, with ICE, and now with Jerome Powell. And I'll just add to that list, the Epstein file. I mean, they were pretending at the end of last year they were going to release them. They were they were redacting a lot of stuff. It was a little very slow. But now they've just, I don't know, I guess they've just decided they don't even have to pretend to be obeying a law that Trump himself signed. A couple of months ago. Accelerating is a key word. I got to Texas when we front of friends saying the accelerationists are winning within the MAGA side of things. Interesting. And that is, yeah, I think that's correct and ominous. Well, let's start with Jerome Powell and then we'll kind of go through all these things individually. So what we learned last time is that federal prosecutors are investigating. federal reserve chair over the central banks multi-billion dollar project to renovate its headquarters. You might remember that they had that press conference a couple months ago where Trump went there and then Jerome Powell was in the hard hat and Trump was giving him shit over over this. And so this has been kind of in the ether for a while now. Among those behind the case to investigate Jerome Powell are Janine Piero, Judge Box of Wine, the U.S. attorney, and then Bill Pulte, this housing official that has been going after other enemies of the president over their, you know, supposed mortgage issues, including Letitia James and others. I think, obviously, this is horrendous and sort of keystone authoritarianism.

I think the most striking home of the story was how quickly Jerome Powell responded. I just want to play a clip from a two-minute video he put out last night on the gets to the heart of the matter. Let's listen to that. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation. So you can see there that he didn't mince words. I mean, John Paul is saying that this, this threat of prosecution is directly related to the Fed, not responding to Trump's pressure campaign for them to push down interest rates. I think that's the important part here, because obviously it's bad if he's going after enemies, but if it's specifically tied to undermining the independence of the Fed, there are, you know, a ton of other potential consequences. of that. And you saw, you know, last night, I was saying on social media, even some Trump supporters who are kind of in finance were sort of shaken by by that element of it. Yeah, that's the good news. I think that the business community, which has been so pathetic, honestly, in its response to Trump. Maybe they'll finally decide this is really a problem, though. I don't know. They have such ability to rationalize that a couple of calls from your friend, Scott Bessent, and, you know, a couple of reassurances that, you know, don't worry, Kevin Warsh will be a responsible Fed chair. I don't have a lot of community, a lot of confidence necessarily that the business community will really go into the kind of resistance mode they should, but he's a prominent guy. They're going after him on a kind of ridiculous thing. This, you know. rather rehabbing or rebuilding or of the Fed headquarters. I'm sure exactly what they're building and so forth. Cost overruns, that kind of thing. That's a criminal offense. I mean, so it is part of the broader intimidation effort, obviously. But you're right. It also raises the specter, which as we've seen coming for quite a while, which is Trump does not want an independent Fed and just a... complete that thought. The reason he doesn't want an independent Fed is not because he has deep, I mean, it's probably like low interest rates and that's just as prejudice, but it's not because he has deep thoughts about monetary policy. It's because he wants a Fed that will do what he wants and goose the economy in 28 ways to help Republicans hold the White House. Yeah, look, there's no doubt about that. It's about power manipulation. If the independence of the Fed is, is threatened or altogether eliminated, I mean, the economic consequences are extremely severe. You go through the countries that have had this issue. You know, it's like Argentina, Venezuela, Trump's trying to Venezuela, the whole country. We're going to get into that a little bit.

I mean, it's very serious. As you mentioned, there have been, you know, some business guys finally showing some backbone of this. Also, just a little bit on the hill, we should mention. Thom Tillis spoke out about this quite quickly last night, and he wrote this in a statement. If there are any remaining doubt whether advisors within the Trump administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Fed, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question. I don't know if it's in question at this point, but we'll give them something. It's better than nothing. Tell us goes on, I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed, including the upcoming Fed chair vacancy until this legal matter is fully resolved. Now, Thom Tillis by himself does not really have the power to hold up a Fed chair vacancy, but yet in a couple of others, Lisa Murkowski, who knows, potentially others, and they really could have a standoff with them on this. No, it's striking to Thom Tillis did this. Now, Thom Tillis is retiring, and it will be very interesting today to see if other people weigh in. This is, I mean, you think of all the issues, I personally am even more outraged about ICE than the Fed, though both are outrageous. and dangerous. But this is the issue that Republicans presumably are most susceptible to breaking with Trump on, as tariffs was. And on tariffs, Trump did back down. So let's see if there's support for Thom Tillis. It was striking that I've got to say, I just can't resist, even Thom Tillis who's doing the right thing here. And I hope he succeeds. I hope everyone wants to support him, all the Republicans on the Hill. He can't quite say Trump, right? The advisors, how does it agree? The advisors to Trump are prevailing and attacking Fed independence. It's like, God forbid, you actually say that Donald Trump himself is doing something terrible. And also that the independence of the Department of Justice is in question. It's like, I don't think it is, actually. I think it's pretty clear that there is no independence of the department. I don't even think that. Trump is pretending like there's an independence of the Department of Justice right now. So I don't know what the question is. You know, I think all sides pretty much agree. The Department of Justice is now, you know, completely just in service to Donald Trump's wishes. Just for one second, we should do it because why not? We do the crystal fantasy politics. Because as we get more and more into a crisis scenario where we are now, people do have agency on the Hill. And you wrote this on X. Thom Tillis Mitch McConnell Lisa Murkowski-Susan Collins could announce a caucus for now with the Dems to give them control of the Senate to check Trump. Like, that could happen. They could just do that. It's not crazy. It has happened before in state legislatures, Texas, some others, and Alaska, I think. I'm going into some Alaska politics later. And Susan Collins probably would not be part of that being up for reelection this year, but others potentially that are retiring. Like, it's not that fantastical.

I mean, the Dems, if you've really wanted to get serious about the fact that it is a genuine crisis, the Dems could also offer to withdraw opposition to Susan Collins to re-election if she joins them. So there are many, the Dems have some cards to play here, too, if they're serious about the moment. The balls in the Republicans court, most of these instances. You say they have agencies. Same in the House. Incidentally, it would take, what, two Republicans now, I think, given how narrow the margin is to say they're going to temporarily vote for. Hakeem Jeffries was speaker. And again, they could cut deals. They could get some committee chairman. All the ones I mentioned could get committee chairmanships. One of them could become speaker, majority leader conceivably. And if you get really in this kind of emergency, I think it is worth at least trying to get people to think a little more broadly. And it has been so infuriating. For the last year, to have all these, you know, everyone's, well, I guess it's 53, 47. There's just nothing that can be done as if people can't, you know, can't act to change the status quo. And there's enough unhappiness. I should think about tariffs, war powers, the Fed now, some about ICE, I would think, I hope. Maybe this is a moment where it all comes together. Maybe I'm, it is kind of fantasy, but, but I put it in warning shots to, to try to. give people something to think about, you know? No, it's fantasy. I don't want people to think that we think it might happen, but it could happen. So it should be stated, right? Like, this is like the pre-surrender. Like, why is it impossible? And there are two retiring senators who know, who have stated objections to Trump on various things. There's a libertarian senator who has stated objections. There's Lisa Murkowski who's run as an independent before. And this is not. It shouldn't be outside the realm of possibility, even though it probably is. I want to talk about Renee Good and her murder last week since we've not spoken about it. So we got together. You talked about it with Sam on your Sunday. Live conversation. But your column this morning and morning shots is about being opposed to ICE has been galvanizing of the resistance. So obviously some references to the French resistance since it is Bill Crystal. So I just wanted to kind of just let you cook on both what we've seen from ICE, Minnesota, the situation with Renee Good and kind of how you think it's appropriate to react to it. I mean, well, the killing of Rene Good and everything else we've seen. And then the administration's lying about it, God, to say at least lying immediately about it and continuing to lie about it and lying in the face of all the evidence about it makes it all the more horrible. And also all the more laying the groundwork for this continuing. And it's not just laying the groundwork for this continuing. They've doubled down. They're sending more people into Minneapolis. They seem to have intensified their brute force intimidation tactics and other. lesser forms of violence so far so someone asked me earlier this morning on a different

I recall about Kent State and how it compared, and I got back and looked at that a bit over the weekend. I mean, that was terrible, but actually less purposeful than the ICE violence. It was young kids in the National Guard. And I think afterwards, and Nixon did defend it for a while, and there was a lot of stupid stuff said. But at the end of the day, they kind of withdrew, I don't believe the Guard got deployed much after that. And they did set up a commission to look into all this. You know, there's none of that with Trump. I won't say they wanted this to happen, but they are. purposely trying to exploit it to further intimidate people not to correct the obvious things that have been shown to be wrong about the way isis behaving The purpose is trying to escalate too. Yeah. I just want to get into it. I got a bunch of stuff to get into it. I want to just talk about Trump's response last night really quick before I rant. And as is our policy, I won't play it. So I'm going to read it for you. So Trump's on the plane. This is a gaggle on Air Force One. He's asked by a reporter, do you believe that deadly force was necessary in the case of Bernie good? Trump replies, it was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement. Then he goes on to kind of talk about how they had been following them around. Law enforcement should not be in a position where they have to put up with this stuff. Law enforcement should not be in a position where they have to put up with this stuff. A truly appalling statement by the president of the United States, like when asked about whether it was necessary to kill the protester. He says essentially, yes, because law enforcement shouldn't have to be hassled. Unbelievable, really. And, suddenly, that comes on top of JD Vance saying Thursday, ICE agents will have absolute immunity, I guess, from state prosecution, which isn't correct, I gather from my lawyer friends, but they have quite a lot of immunity. I'm probably more than they should have with qualified immunity the way that doctrine is developed. But what does that say? That says, JD Vance went to Yale Law School. I mean knows a little bit about this. What that says going forward is, you guys are fine. You guys are free. Go for it. You follow the example of what happened there in Minneapolis, leaving even aside the pardon power, which obviously could kick in and take care of these guys. So the degree of the just, you know, we've seen where this is going and they embrace where this is going. That's why it is accelerationism, don't you think? Yeah. Yes. You know, you just look at the videos from this weekend. And, um, It's there's just so much happening. I couldn't really pull it together in time for this podcast. I'll probably do a separate video in this for folks to watch check out later. But like just the way that ICE is acting in Minnesota is a since this killing is a category difference from how they've been acting. You see certain skirmishes and misbehavior from ICE. since this started, right? Like there are a bunch of examples, but just like the intensity of it. You know, you see the ice agent saying the woman in the car. You saw what happened to that other woman that did this. You know, you see that. You see them storming into a house.

of, you know, there's a DoorDash driver who goes to deliver food and he goes into a house and the woman that's house is that is protecting, you know, it's protecting the driver. And it's like, these guys are like storming Fallujah, you know, the amount of, you know, weaponry and masks are going into some like modest, some person, citizens house in the country and just, you know, you could go on and on. There's more. They want that. Like, they want to escalate it. I thought there was a smart. Post I saw from David Austin Walshism. a professor. He said he can't overemphasize how much we're seeing. What we're seeing is this libidinal desire on the right to reenact the George Floyd uprisings. And I do think that's right. I think that there's a lot of like regret on the right that there wasn't more shooting from the cops during the George Floyd riots. And they want they there is like a fantasizing about that and they want that and they want it so that they can take more power. They can want it. They want it for the purpose of accelerationism on their authoritarian mission. And they want it because they hate. the I mean, you just hear it in their voice. They hate the woman. Like they hate the, you know, so lesbian protesting woman who, you know, whose attitude they don't like. I don't think it's too far to say that. Like that there is like a psychological, there's both the authoritarian desire, but also the psychological element that they want to accelerate this and they want to have more skirmishes and violence. And Kristi Noem, I think on TV yesterday, wouldn't even deplore the fact that. And I say, and I think maybe it was the one who shot Renee Good. Maybe it was one of the others, right? And that little cluster called her said a terrible thing. Called her a fucking bitch. I'll say it. You know what I said. Called her fucking bitch after they shot her in the face three times. Yeah. And Kristi Noem didn't say, well, that's very tense moments. And people, of course, shouldn't say things like that. She couldn't even say that. But she doesn't want to say that because I guess they don't believe that. Right. They believe that that's what people are getting what they deserve. As you sort of, as Trump kind of said, right? Yeah, law enforcement shouldn't have to put up with these uppity women. Yeah, like, honestly. Like, that's, that's really what it is. Um, Tapper in that same interview, Tepper was really good, um, with Noam. And also, like, gives her the obvious question to this, which is, okay, well, if. The response to being highly disrespectful to the law enforcement is that people get killed. Like, what about January 6th? Like, those people are very disrespectful to the law enforcement and you pardon them. They didn't even have an answer to that, right? Like, some of the maga media types when you see engaging on that point on social media, like they will do like the, what are you even talking about? Like, they let them in through the Bill Gates and they didn't do it. You know, like there's a lot of that like just fantasy. Like,

earth to like there wasn't even violence against cops like the administration is not that quite that shameless i guess i shouldn't overstate it maybe somebody administration is that shameless but you know so they won't do that so they just sort of like just dance around all that that like they don't have an answer to like because the true answer is that they think that the state and police and ice agents can do violence against their political foes but not against their allies is really the truth and they think their their allies can do violence against the against the capital police where the capital police are defending the elections and their allies are storming the capital right i mean it's really it is kind of remarkable i talked about this a bit on friday but by the time we had posted this podcast um the video from the agent hadn't come out yet. So I do want to just touch on that one more time because it's the most telling of all of the videos. And when I first reacted to it, I said it was body cam footage because this is all like happening so quickly. We found out after I taped was that it was his own cell phone. You can see him switch the phone from his left from his right hand to his left hand so he can have his shooting hand ready. at some point during the um during this kind of 45 second video um and why they decided to leak this video i don't i i think betrays a like a deep darkness and what they think is defensible honestly i got the to me the most alarming thing of all maybe is that they decided to leak this video because to me it's like it showed just very clearly that that jonathan ross was in no danger Like, he really just wasn't. And it's preposterous to think that he was in danger. I mean, people feel more, like, more at risk from being run over at a car in a Walmart parking lot every day than this. I mean, like, he walks around the car. He talks to her. She's, she's smirking. So it's maybe a little teasing, but she says, I'm not mad. You know, she says, don't worry, dude. I'm not mad. 20 seconds later, he kills her. Three shots. Like, he goes around the car. um her partner or whatever girlfriend was was teasing him okay you gotta take that um and then he comes around to the front and you can see her turning the car it's just so like the video and then he shoots her three times and says fucking bitch we think it's him the video itself reveals that like to me that there is no in between like that like that video of his cell phone reveals that he either intentionally wanted to kill her because he was upset that. the lesbians were mocking him or whatever the reason like he had a he intentionally wanted to do it or that he's just that it's like so cowardly like you have maybe as to PTSD or whatever but like this person should not be in the street they're not trained like it's like to think that you were in danger to like genuinely think you were in danger in that at that moment when you watch that video is crazy it's crazy

Like the only other explanation besides intentional murder is that these guys are like cowards and that they're trigger-happy cowards. And I think that that maybe as a political purpose might actually resonate better with some of the people who are ostensibly on their side than kind of doing the hair on fire stuff. I don't know. What do you make of that? He wasn't in danger objectively. That is one of the legal standards, I believe it. you know, people have to use before they kill before they discharge. They have to be in, it has to really be in self-defense, not just in some fantasy self-defense or defense of others whom they were not threatening. He didn't even, but he didn't believe he was in danger. He don't, by moving the cell phone to the other, continuing to video. That's why we have this. That's why this is such a telling cell phone video, because he kept it on. He wouldn't, he wasn't, we know how people behave in their danger or what they, you know, And B, none of his colleagues thought he or they were in danger. They're strolling around and then they stroll away. I mean, the whole thing. And of course, they don't let the physician approach as well. I mean, it's, it is grotesque. What a great point. None of them pull a weapon. I've tried, I said this to go people who haven't argued about this. If it was if it was so obviously a dangerous situation. Why didn't any of the other ICE agents pull their weapon in order to protect their colleague? The only possible way that you could justify that he actually thought he was scared is because he was too focused on trying to get his videotape of them. And so he got distracted. But even then, it's like, okay, well, then why do you shoot her execution style through the side window after the car is already pulling away? So, and there's just no possible rationale for this. It makes any sense. The administration thinks that they're on the right foot here. Like, they want to be fighting over this. They do. And I just, I'm not sure that's right. Sometimes people think that they're on the right foot and politically and they're wrong. And I think that it's important to, to continue to push on this because I do think they're big parts of their coalition that are actually not okay with execution style murders of women in Honda pilots with a dog in the back seat and their kids' toys in the passenger seat. And so I want to play this next clip. It's. It's just, it is, it's a little tongue in cheek. Obviously, this is a tragic scenario, and it's just horrible what happened for a good. And I fucking, like my, it's just my heart breaks for her and, and her family, the kid, especially. But I do wonder if this kind of thing resonates with people in a different way. This is like a right-wing comedian who is pushing back on the narrative, the Trump administration narrative on this. I don't believe the cop was justified in shooting her three times in the face. By the way, I've always believed this. And this is something that I've caught heat for, but I've literally believed it since I'm a kid. I don't believe you should ever shoot someone in the face more than once. No, seriously, I think, I just think it's ridiculous. So that they did that and they... You know, the guy, these are not well-trained law enforcement people in ICE right now. We're taking people that did backyard wrestling.

sometimes around like the the slogan abolish ice wasn't popular and you get into this like left wing fight over like should we do abolish ice or should we not say abolish ice and it's like stop like stop it stop pearl clutching over whatever your fucking slogan is like and just being so obsessed with the specific word it's like no just go out there make the argument against what ice is doing And, you know, you can also simultaneously say that, yeah, I support doing what Trump said he was going to do. They can even say that. Like, go after the violent criminals, deport them from the country. We're all for that. Like, we can think about all the money we could be using to go after actual criminals that were wasting. you know, chasing people down the street, chasing DoorDash drivers. This is crazy what they're doing. So I don't know. I was encouraged by what Murphy said. I think that Democrats should really do that. Mark Hurtling's in the newsletter with you this morning arguing they need to take the masks off. He talks very compellingly about his experience in Iraq. I encourage people to read that. And I think that those are all areas where the Democrats can be an offense on this. And on the funding, I mean, just to be clear, I said this, I was having similar conversation for the weekend. So it's well, but isn't that funding all baked in? It is for now. Congress does not have to accept prior Congress's decision about funding, and they can change it. And if they want to make it conditional on these reforms, if they want to reduce the growth of ice, ice has gone from 10,000 to 22,000, I believe, officers in the last year. God knows what the quality of those new 12,000 is. I'm not sure that the shooter was one of the new ones. Incidentally, he may have been someone who was more had other problems. But anyway, it can't be good. And it just increases the chances of all this happening. And they can put a pause on the expansion of ICE. They can put a pause on the expansion of funding. They don't have to totally defund it. I myself not being a member of Congress feel I can maybe slightly irresponsibly say abolish ICE just to get people to think about it and reorganize DHS and so forth. But yes, there are many things they can. push for and if they have to compromise to get some Republican votes and, you know, little more funding go ahead than they want, but return get some of these restrictions, you can't just sit there and say, well, we have to keep the government open and it's a big appropriations bill and it's got a lot of some other stuff in it that we like. And we're just going to go ahead and fund this agency that's doing these kinds of things. I don't think that's, I don't think personally it's acceptable. I wouldn't vote for such a thing. And I really think they could get a lot of support by insisting that this. that this not go ahead the way it is i started in what 2003 something it's like the it's like the country existed we were able to successfully you know handle immigration before uh having you know this this organization so like defunding it is not insane uh i just pulled up here this civics if you look at the they're polling they're tracking on the question of abolishing ice um I had very low support, I will say, in 2024. Right now it's at 50 opposed 42 support. So 42 support for abolishing. So you've seen that number move. Some Democrats have the jitters because of defund the police, which was an extremely stupid slogan. And.

And like the people even the people that argued to defend the police didn't offer like what their alternative what's going to be. It was going to be like community engagement and hugs and stuff. And it's just like this is crazy. Like this is not not realistic. Like that's not what we're talking. Like this is different than that. Like you can go out there and say I like this agency has been corrupted. Like, we can do immigration enforcement. We have a ton of other federal law enforcement. I'm not, I'm not talking about defunding federal law enforcement. I want to fund good law enforcement. I want to fund the local police in Minneapolis who are actually doing good work right now, as we talked with Mayor Frye about. And this fucking organization is, is like Donald Trump's paramilitary. And it's going after U.S. citizens and going after rule that here legally. And we should defund it and replace it with something else. Like, you know, I don't think that everybody needs to get. all panicked about that that's defund the police 2.0 as long as, you know, they're making clear arguments. Totally. And I would just add that, I mean, in a way, Chris Murphy, maybe he's done this even, could present his proposals. As we are trying to make, hold ice to the standards, we routinely hold all police forces to, right? I mean, the things he's proposing are things that are, in fact, the procedures of police force. That's what's so appalling about this. I mean. And again, the Christie known reaction, no sense of, okay, we're going to take a look. We're not going to comment until the investigation's underway. It'll be independent. We provide counseling to this person who killed someone. Like any police forced us, if a police officer unfortunately gets in this kind of situation, they don't even have a scintilla of that kind of attitude. And so I think they can be pro FBI. I mean, if they want and pro, as you say, local police within reason and say this is just totally different. This is a paramilitary force deployed in our cities. Before it was a little speculative about how bad it could be. We've seen how bad it could be. So we have to act. And your point, I just think just worth emphasize one more time, it's like they're not even trying to argue that this should be reformed. And again, like, I look at this video and I see somebody that was just like, they're an unbelievable coward. who was, like, scared and was shitting his pants and decided to kill a woman who had just told him she wasn't mad at him 20 seconds earlier or somebody who intentionally was out for revenge. Those are the two options. Even if you're on the other side of that and taking the view that, like, no, this guy really got scared in the moment. And, like, he's somebody who just can't really even make it through a grocery store parking lot without grabbing for his weapon because he's, like, so afraid of moving vehicles. Like, if you're on that point of view, Then even then, the thing to say is like, this is a tragedy. We need to talk about our procedures. Like we're going to talk with our agents. You know, we're going to make sure people don't. We're to make sure we're to focus on de-escalating. You know, you don't hear them saying that. You don't hear them saying. We're going to try to focus on, we want to de-escalate. We're not at war with U.S. citizens. We're not at war with people that are peacefully protesting. You know, like we're going after people that are here illegally. Like, you can imagine. how they could define what they're doing in a different way. They're not doing that. They're escalating. They're escalating. And basically saying he did nothing wrong, shooting execution style of the 37-year-old lady through the side window for coming. I don't talk about Venezuela. The Trump of this roundtable with oil executives last week to, I guess, gaining some excitement for our imperialist effort to steal the oil from Venezuela. One CEO.

at Exxon, dissented. Let's listen. We have a very long history in Venezuela. In fact, we first got into Venezuela back in 1940s. We've had our assets seized there twice. And so you can imagine to reenter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we've historically seen here and what is currently the state. If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it's uninvestable. Okay, so pretty clearly, clear there from that. Exxon guy is just like, why would I go into Venezuela, basically? Like, what changes? Like, they've seized my oil twice down there already since we went in there for the first time in the 1940s. And now you're just like, trust me, we should go, we should go into Venezuela. That doesn't make a lot of sense for me. Trump lashed out at him on that same plane gaggle and said he's inclined to keep Exxon mobile out of Venezuela. after the CEO's skeptical response. So I just, is that the president's job? Like, does the president of the United States get to decide what companies invest in other countries? Apparently, that's, this is the new free market conservatism. Donald Trump, just, if you're a gas, oil and gas CEO, you got to suck up to Trump. Yeah, the president does get to decide in this and in other areas, it turns out, all such things. And the whole, I think it was an executive order he issued, I think, quietly on Friday also that doesn't, I couldn't quite understand it at first. I think I got this, it doesn't allow the oil companies to go to court, basically, I think, and try to recoup the funds that were taken from them somewhat illegitimately, maybe they say at least, by the previous Venezuela government in 2000, you know, under Chavez or whatever. But Trump doesn't want that. That's actually very revealing, right? Because he said he wanted to get back all the money that was stolen. He doesn't want that. But that would just let Exxon and everyone else, whoever is about, go to court and get whatever they can get. No, he wants to control that money. He wants to give it to the people he favors them. The whole thing is the whole thing, how much oil they're going to get, how easy it's going to get, how much difference it will make on the oil market, which is in any case, we're not short of oil right now. Prices have come to are not high. But anyway, leaving aside the whole. Trump fantasy about oil stuff, it is revealing that, yes, he wants to control it. This is about him being, you know, more authoritarianism in this case abroad, but also back at home, right? Because it does end up, he controls what the oil companies do here. And he wants to control the more. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the U.S. is thinking about taking ownership stakes in oil companies like they did in Intel. This is like beyond. Bernie Sanders level fantasies. The whole thing is about controlling and manipulating these CEOs. And I know that I'm a broken record on this and that good on the Exxon guy for speaking out and for a couple that we've seen on the Fed thing. I just don't understand why these guys are going along with this. The hair would be so on fire if Kamala Harris was president and had the oil and gas CEOs in and was like, no, you have to. You got to say these magic woke words for me to allow you to drill. And if you don't do it, I'm going to ban you from drilling and insult you publicly. Joe Kernan would have had a heart attack on Squawk Box by now. Like he would be so red in the face screaming about the socialism. And they have been screaming about the social. God, if Zohran Mamdani sets up five tiny little grocery stores in New York or gets a little tougher on some of the real estate guys, if California passes it.

probably, or tries to enforce, probably ill-advised, whatever tax on the wealth of billionaires, probably would just be counterproductive, they'll leave, but whatever. That's the end of, that's it. That's the end of capitalism. This is so beyond the pale. We can't even have a discussion about it or pretend that it's anything but an assault on everything we hold dear in this capitalist country of ours. But Trump, who's gone so far beyond Zohran Mamdani, even what Zohran Mamdani wants, you know, even if he weren't constrained by all these other characters, Trump's not constrained. But even if so far behind Zohran Mamdani, so far beyond Gavin Newsom, that's all, is anyone complaining? I don't know. I mean, they did finally get alarmed about Jerome Powell, as we were saying, but I don't know, are they all screaming about this? Maybe I miss that. I give the Exxon guy, I give the Exxon guy credit for just saying it. I guess maybe Exxon is so big he can just, he doesn't care or he just, he couldn't. He just felt he had to be honest. I don't know. It was unusual. He's just being blunt. What happened to that? Those were the kind of old guys I liked. There was like kind of a type of old guy that was just very, you know, I've seen a lot of things. You know, and I'm just like, I'm just going to be blunt about what I think about this and not engaged in your pipe dreams. More of that would be welcomed among the CEO class. You know, you say that sounds so big. It's just like, whatever. Apple's so big. Yeah, fair enough. Amazon's so big. What is Jeff Bay? You know, they're scared about that he's worried he's not going to get his little, I guess, penis rocket to get into space approved. And that's what matters to him now. I don't know. Trump posts a meme of himself is acting president of Venezuela also. I just want to say that. Post a meme. It was a picture of him in Wikipedia, acting president of Venezuela. That seems like a mistake to me. Actually, that seems like a legitimate mistake. And, um, And I want to get into why here, as we look into 2028 in America First stuff. But this Venezuela thing can end up as a disaster. And who knows? Like right now, they've made the decisions to do everything they can to guard against their being instability. You know, it's like, we'll leave the vice president in there. We'll leave the kill squads in there. You know, we'll do, we'll, you know, buy people off. But, yeah, you don't. You know, you don't control everything. It's a big country Venezuela is, you know? And there's other groups and interests. And I don't know. I just think that little picture of Trump is acting president of Venezuela, if this turns into a total shit show, might be something that could stick with people. Yeah, no, I think said the mission accomplished sort of thing, right? And I don't know, did they elect them to be acting president of Venezuela? There's a little bit of still, I think, fragmenting of the mega base to be done here if people aggressively. push on this, did you think? Yeah, that takes us to 2028 and other stuff. My notes say America First, 2028 here. Steve Bannon, my friend of me, that's not enough, that's right. But me and Steve Bannon have gone around the bend quite a few times together, and he leaked to Axis, not to the bulwark, looking at a 2028 run. He said that he doesn't actually think that he could win, but it's about advancing the agenda potentially. I guess I'd just throw it out there that Donald Trump didn't think he could win when he got in either. So I don't think that Steve Bannon doesn't have that in the back of his mind. I think that he's just trying to say what feels like he needs to say at the moment. But it's notable that you have Steve Bannon out there.

compelling speaker, you know, would actually have an argument for it being genuine in America First. And if you imagine a potential 2028 primary where JD Vance is trying to kind of straddle, you know, the old more traditional Republicanism with the America First Tucker Carlson crowd. And you've got Steve Bannon there basically, you know, kind of as the jockey on the horse, kind of whipping him anytime that he, you know, sort of gets off track. I could have real impacts on that, on like on how a race turns out. And I just, I also think that like if it's banned or somebody else, like Trump is leaving an opening for this right now, just across the, especially if the economy doesn't get better. So you just get worse. It is not hard to come up with an America first argument against the Trump vans administration from the right or from the populist right or whatever that just basically says. These guys ended up caring more about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center and East Wing and Venezuela and the Peace Prize. And you guys got left behind. And we're not, we'll keep up the immigration fascism. And then besides that, focus on you. And Steve Bannon can say truthfully, he was for Trump from the beginning, which JD Vance certainly wasn't, and Marco Rubio certainly wasn't. He was willing to, he went to the White House. He was willing to criticize others. And he warned about what was going to happen in the first term, which from their point of view is correct. He warned that Henry McMaster and all these characters like and Volted and Gary Cohen and all these people were not really on board what Trump wanted to do. And that's why he could, he will say he got shoved out. And he warned about that for the next three years. Then out of power, he was. for Trump, I think pretty much all the way wasn't he. For sure. And he went to jail for Trump. Right. Unlike all. He went to jail for Trump. Unlike the others. What did JD Vance give up? Yeah, who toured with Ron DeSantis or maybe JD Vance. But anyway, who had their own whatever agendas. And then coming back in, he wanted to help Trump and he helped him on some stuff. But unfortunately, Trump got captured again by some bad people. I think it's in a way, I mean, I have to overthink this. And I don't know that you were. our endorsement of that would help him really in the Republican primary. But I mean, he has a pretty good way of being both the Trumpy candidate and the candidate who warned against the betrayal of Trump at the same time, you know what I mean? And I was thinking about this. Would Trump personally, who would he prefer? Let's assume he's not running, which may well be, but let's assume there's no John Jr. He's got to be worried about what? he would want someone in there who would not want to cause any trouble for him. And I think in a way, he probably would judge that Steve Bannon would be more loyal than JD Vance or Marco Rubio. I think that could well be true, incidentally. Yeah, maybe. I mean, again, Steve Bannon went to jail for him. Steve Bannon went to jail for him. So that probably tells Trump, he could be, he could live with Steve Bannon in there. So not testify. So Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon, we worked that out. Bannett in 2028. Yeah, I don't know. Not for it. Not for it. Let's stipulate that. I just think that objectively, analytically... I agree.

Like, there is space. Trump has created the space for someone to run, whether that's banned or someone else, is an authentic America first person. And if JD Vance decides to go down with the Trump ship and apologize for everything he's doing and pretend like there's an America first rationale for Venezuela and for all this other nonsense that Trump is doing with the fact that he was a never-trumper. And I was going back looking some of J.D.'s old blog post over the weekend. There's one where he's talking about, how can conservatives who... distrust the government on the government's able to efficiently run all these other things like the post office, etc. How can we then turn around and say that the government can efficiently run a deportation campaign of 12 million people? That was JD Vance 10 years ago. I just, he's phony. He's phony. And no matter how much he sucks up to Trump now, The vulnerability of being phony will always be there. I don't know. I think it's interesting. Tucker Carlson, speaking of the America First Wing, Tucker Carlson was at the White House, had lunch with Trump. Trump gave him as a gift, a pair of brown wing tips, not a brown shirt. I was thinking a brown shirt would have been more appropriate, but he gave him a tip of a pair of brown wing tips. I don't know what to make of that exactly. But it's certainly... There was this whole controversy on the right where people were trying to define MAGA in their own ways and like these more establishment types for like the Heritage Foundation is being too nice to Tucker Carlson and TPP USA is being too nice to Tucker Carlson and that's wrong. And real, if you look at Trump, he's not actually listening to Tucker Carlson. There he is. Trump at Tucker Carlson are having lunch with Trump after advancing a bunch of Nazi shit and conspiracies, et cetera, et cetera. Half the Heritage Board and half the Heritage staff, I think, quit because of the fact that their president at Heritage wouldn't repudiate Tucker Carlson enough. And now Trump, the president, is having a cheerful lunch with the guy after he's indulged with all these anti-Semites and all this other horrible stuff. does tell you a lot. It tells you a lot where the MAGA coalition is and how, again, the radicalization of everything. So now, you know, being, you can't quite probably have, what's that guy's San Nick Fuentes to lunch at the White House, but you can be Nick Fuentes adjacent and be, be, and MAGA. And that's MAGA today, you know. So the accelerationism is both in the policy side and in the kind of coalitional side, right? I mean, of MAGA, I think. Yeah. I mean, Tucker Carlson gave Nick Fuentes like a. So, like, to a softball interview, it would be an understatement. It was more of like a blowjob of an interview that Tucker Carlson gave Nick Flantis and then complimented him after. And he didn't say they disagree on things. Just like, that would be Tucker Carlson's defensive at, but like, he gives him this massive platform and puffs him up and glazes him and then he's at the White House. A couple weeks later having lunch. Speaking of other vulnerabilities on the America first side, uh, I've been thinking this for a while, and it's touchy about how to handle it. But I do think that the Democrats potentially have an angle here, too. And I've been interested in particular in seeing the launch ad from Mary Peltola. She's Alaska Congresswoman, tragically lost her husband on a plane crash recently, was a Democrat who was heavily being recruited to run for Senate.

decided to get in the race today. In my being, I think it's the most important recruitment that the Democrats have had because it legitimately adds another state to the potential myth. It's a stretch. It's Alaska. There's no doubt it's a stretch. But she. assiduously maintained like an independent brand in alaska and she has kind of a funny slogan it's like fish family freedom like she's she's like really focuses on parochial alaska issues and being independent um and she did a whole launch video which we'll put in the notes uh show notes for people you can watch it's like three minutes but i'm to play the last 10 seconds of it because um It's interesting the argument she's trying to make. Let's listen to it. Ted Stevens often said, to hell with politics, put Alaska first. It's about time Alaskans teach the rest of the country what Alaska first and really America first looks like. You know, the whole ad is about Alaska first and about focusing on Alaska and these lower 48 assholes don't know anything. And, you know, the cost of living is higher here than anywhere. People don't even believe us when we tell them how high the cost of living here is. And then the ad ends with, we should be Alaska first and also America first, or a real kind of America first. And I know both you and I Todd Blanche at that because it has a lot of baggage, the phrase. But it also resonates with people. who don't understand that historical baggage. And so I don't begrudge her trying to co-opt it. And I think that Trump is leaving himself very vulnerable here. And I'm going to be super interested to watch Mary Baltola. I've been on this show, I've several times said I'm not super impressed with the Democrats recruiting in these red states right now. And I think that there's stuff that's in play and they have to jump on it right now. And this is the first one I've, I. I'm not predicting she's going to win, but I think that I'm interested in the campaign and how she's positioning herself. Very much agree. And, you know, she won, I guess she won the congressional seat in 2022. Is that right? I've got the chronology, I think, right, which was the last off-year election. And that's a statewide race in Alaska. So, you know, she won the same electorate. The presumably will vote in 2020. She beat a Republican. And Dan Sullivan's an incumbent, maybe a little tougher. But, um, Dan Sullivan is still in the Senate? Is that right? Yeah, you've noticed how courageously... Does Dan Sullivan that she's running against? I think so. Yeah, you notice he's been a real profile in courage. I mean, I've seen his statement this morning supporting Thom Tillis on the Fed. I've seen him condemn the brutality of the ICE agencies. I mean, I know you, Dan Sullivan back in the day when he first got elected. I think that would be right. He elected in 14 and then reelected in 20, so it would be 26. And I know Dan Sullivan a bit, and I think he's in... nice man and impressive service and the military, but he's been a profile in non-courge. Disappearance and absence. Yeah. Honestly, it's just like, if you would have said to me, I know this now, like I've known this this year because I've been, I've been locked in on looking at potential stretch seats for the Democrats 2026 map. But if in a.

September of 2024, you'd said, you'd said to me, you know, is Dan Sullivan still the U.S. Senator from Alaska? I think I would have been like. I think so. I just, I wasn't, I'm not sure. He's been that, he's been a ghost. And so, I don't know. And I think that could potentially harm up with my, I don't think the MAGA people are like super excited about Dan Sullivan or feel like he's been a huge advocate for them. So, I don't know. Alaska is so weird. And, you know, I don't want to pretend like I'm an expert on the eccentricities of Alaska politics. But like you said, she won the statewide thing already. We'll be interesting to monitor that race. Mary Paltol. I want to close with, I want to get it, there's some crazy corruption stories. Do you want to talk about Ron louder? Or should we just, I'll do that later this week. I'll tease people. Yeah, do that later. Maybe, yeah, yeah. The cosmetics air, the 81-year-old cosmetics air, he's expanding, okay? He's doing perfume. He's also doing rare earth snow in Ukraine and Greenland. That's something we're going to talk about later this week. But I want to close with Iran. The protests. bigger than we've seen in years in Iran over the weekend, major crackdown by the regime, thousands killed at this point of the protesters. And Trump kind of played a little footsie with the idea that we might get involved in the press conference yesterday. He did kind of one of those wait and see things that he does. What do you make of what we're seeing and what could be useful at this point? I mean, people who know a lot more about this than I do, do think the regime is in real trouble. It would be good to have some of the instruments of soft power and public diplomacy and ability to help them get their message. The internet, they've shut down the internet there. I think we could do a lot to help them with that. And I'm not sure we are. I think we're not. And I think, in fact, we've. disabled parts of the U.S. government that could be pretty good at that. Now, maybe he and Elon Musk could get together and really decide to help people who are genuinely fighting for freedom against a horrible regime there. So that would be nice, but we'll see if he does anything more than bluster. Look, you know better than everybody. It's complex and our role is complex, right? Because like simultaneously, it's like the more the U.S. is publicly seen as being on the side of the protesters, the worst it is for them. right uh internally not always but but just like it can backfire i guess maybe it would be a more accurate way to put it but also too like unarmed protesters aren't going to overthrow the regime right and if you like look at syria like what did it take to overthrow Bashar al-Assad it was like basically turkish-backed militia groups uh you know in short um that ended up getting rid of Bashar al-Assad uh and so like if this is actually going to work in overthrowing the regime

You need either internal defection from the military, you know, or the U.S. or some other combination of outside, you know, maybe Arab, you know, countries like providing. weapons and resources to the folks that are, you know, on the ground. Like that's just, right? I mean, it's not, the thing doesn't just collapse just because a lot of people are in the streets. And like, that's kind of a complicating factor here. And the Bashar al-Assad regime collapsed when Joe Biden was president. And I would, you know, point out to all my chest beating Trump, you know, defending friends. Oh, you see, he's really much doing much war to get rid of Maduro. And Biden, I believe, I really don't, I think this is correct. quietly was willing to let others help the people who did end up deposing aside, really the Turkish-based forces there. And we're not in great terms of Turkey. We've got all kinds of issues with Iran. But you know what? That's part of what you do is you do that stuff quietly and behind the scenes. And you ended up with a real victory for freedom there. We'll see how that works out in Turkey, Syria. But so far better than it was, certainly. And I don't know, is Trump administration even have the wit to do anything resembling that in terms of getting others to help behind the scenes? to get real support to these people who deserve it i i wish they did but i there's no evidence of it it'd be nice something good happened in the world you know we've had a lot of uh the the forces of autocracy and authoritarianism have advanced quite a bit the last decade so it would be nice to have uh in advance for people that want freedom. And just to go all for 30 seconds of us of neocon kind of, you know, people want freedom. I mean, are we allowed to say that anymore? I mean, it's sort of encouraging that they do. And it's at all honor to them and they're being unbelievably courageous. And there's something heartening about that, right? We are allowed to say it on the bulwark podcast at least. It is heartening. And I'm hoping for continued positive progress there. So we'll keep monitoring it. And if it reaches a boiling point, we'll bring on somebody with more expertise on what's happening in Iran. So any final thoughts from you, Bill? Are you going out of here? A little of resistance? Do you want to give us a French? Do you have a French poem that you want to share? No, no. I just struck that I don't became, I'll just take 30 seconds on this. I mean, it became sort of fashion. I noticed this on the last few couple of weeks. People were saying, well, I'm not a resist lib, but, you know, and they were about to make a perfectly sensible point that I agreed with. I thought, I don't know, why can we just say we're all resist libs now? You know, let's just get beyond that. Maybe we were right not to be incidentally six months ago or certainly two or three years ago. There were more complicated aspects of building a broad opposition, but we should be resist libs. And that gets to what you said about Mary Patelta. I mean, if she's going to have to say America first to win, go for it.

People need to stop messing around. We need to, the Senate is really important actually in 26, more than just winning the House. And if it takes Mary Patulta saying that one thing and someone else saying something else, I am as long as they're going to stop what Trump is doing, I'm for it. Amen. We're all resist lives now. Thanks so much to Bill as always. Finally, I went also fairly well to the great Bob Weir, who died over the weekend. He meant a lot to so many of my friends and I know so many of you I've heard from you with emails over the weekend. The Grateful Dad was essential to much of the music that changed my life. I think there are others who are much better suited to offer credible tributes to Bobby. So I'll just leave you all with a little bit of his music. And may the four winds blow him safely home. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwark podcast. Peace.