Tom Nichols
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
yesterday either in the inauguration itself or the other actions that came after um the pardons i thought the inauguration dare i say it was low energy you know the first time around he tried for sweeping he let stephen miller or whoever writes this clunky prose to indulge himself the first time this time around it was like a rally talk You know, we're going to call it the Gulf of America.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Um, I, I, again, I would say that what he got was actually pretty low key. You give it to him and you're going to play hail to the chief and all that stuff because Donald Trump is not the last president of the United States. We don't think we don't, I'm pretty, you know, we're, we're going to hold onto that bet for so far.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I have always argued that the, that we, the institutions and institutions includes the practices, the pageantry, all that stuff blocks to us, the American people. If one man happens to be unworthy of it, and Trump's not the first one not to be worthy of hail to the chief, but he is astonishingly unworthy of it. He's the unworthiest. Unworthy. Andrew Johnson, maybe.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Well, although I suppose if we're going to get into the game of horrible alternatives, that's a good choice, but... But I think we hold on to these things because once they're lost, they're lost forever. And you can't just put them back. And so you grit your teeth through some of this. Are they not lost forever? I don't think so. I take a longer view than that. I don't know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
It's a sham. And I think what a lot of folks are getting wrong about this whole period, you know, like you can see the Democrats now going through the agonizing about how do we talk to people about, you know, eggs and housing costs and policy and everything about this election and this inauguration and this first day tells you it wasn't about policy. None of that stuff really mattered.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
That, you know, the best economy in 35 years didn't matter. That this, for a hard core of people, was Trump's project of vindication. The people that were so humiliated by losing in 2020 that they felt like they had to win one to prove it was possible. And vengeance. And Trump now is just going to – none of this stuff is going to help people. I love the executive order he put out.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
He said, I direct the departments of the United States to think of ways to lower costs for the American public. I was like, okay, thanks, boss. Well, nobody was going to think of that until you put it into an executive order, but we'll get right on it. I mean, this is all make-believe and playtime. But I think that – let me try and find a silver lining.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
The thing that also struck me about the past day is just the – incredible amount of incompetence that seems to be congealing at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I mean, there's a lot of damage incompetent and really bad people can do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
But I think we're going to get a look at what it would have been like eight years ago if there hadn't been people putting pool noodles and baby bumpers on all the corners of government. I'm kind of ready for that. I mean, that's why I'm not as depressed as you might have, you know, you might think the day after. So I'm kind of like sitting back and saying, listen, people voted for this.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
They want to floor it over the edge of the cliff. Have at it, you know, but I think they didn't really expect Trump to lower prices or any of that stuff. And I think, too, you know, we have to remind ourselves that for all the talk about the threat to democracy that is now coalescing rapidly before our eyes, somehow millions of Democrats just didn't think it was that big a deal and didn't vote.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
No, no. I'll just bookmark that. Democrats ran to say, for me, it's a a rant about the entire voting public where you had people who definitely did this for a reason that voted for Trump for reasons that they knew were nonsense. Right. That they weren't really voting. Somebody had a great I couldn't find it. Somebody put on Twitter.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And, you know, I don't agree with Hillary Clinton on much. But when she sort of had to look down and laugh when he said that, I was kind of right there with her. I thought, you know, as you say, it was a shameful exercise. When I looked at this whole group of potential nominees, I thought, what a difference from eight years ago. I mean, this is now just...
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Found kind of the first tweet from someone last fall who was complaining about the price of eggs, who now is posting about how they paid thousands of dollars to go to the inauguration but couldn't get in because it was inside.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
It's like, I'm sorry, you know, normally you don't pay thousands and thousands of dollars to go to Washington and see an inauguration if you're really sweating the price of eggs. There's a lot of things I would.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
spend money on before i get to that so i think it's just the whole voting public the people who voted knowing that that it was nonsense other people who voted totally not understanding what they were voting for and then other people who just didn't vote saying yeah you know i'll i'll do anything to stop donald trump except you know go to to an election polling place
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
See, that's how you achieve true curmudgeonliness, Tim. You hate everybody.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I mean, this is now the Z list finally has made it through all the gates and there's nobody to tell them that they can't be secretary of defense or secretary of HHS. I mean, that was all stuff I expected. I mean, it was depressing to see it. But then the pardons, which I think were, you know, you knew he was going to do some of this.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
The thing with the tech CEOs is, you know, back in the 90s, you had a bunch of young guys who went to the internet casino. A few of them had some good ideas. Hey, I invented a browser. Hey, I invented an app. And then became fantastically wealthy in a short amount of time. I very much like Jonathan Last's argument that Musk was basically made by zero interest rate policies.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
The 90s internet casino plus cheap money created zillionaires. And the thing about zillionaires is that they come to think of themselves. And I don't mean wealthy people in general. I used to work for a billionaire senator. He was a pretty good guy. I mean people who come from that particular background who say, you know what? I must be really smart.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I must be really smart about a lot of things. If I made an app and I got rich, I must totally understand the Ukraine war. And it bothered them that kind of the gatekeeping of policy was like, thank you for your thoughts on national defense. Your app works very well, but we're not going to do that. And so now I think they've said, Trump, who cares about nothing, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I think he'd throw any of that other stuff over if his interests warranted it. I mean, I don't think he's committed enough to any, but I take your point. And so they're saying, great, this guy is malleable. He loves other people with money. This is our chance to govern the United States from behind the scenes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And that's why he had Biden, I think, issuing that kind of Eisenhower-like warning about an oligarchy. Okay. Well, I mean, I don't mean like Eisenhower, but cribbing Eisenhower's thing about the military industrial complex. No, he wasn't Eisenhower. Although, you know, if you look at the table.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You know, you say that, Tim, and then you look at the old newsreels of Eisenhower. And Eisenhower wasn't exactly the most dynamic presidential speaker at the end of his term. But we digress. But, you know, where he cribs from Eisenhower about an oligarchic, you know, tech industrial complex.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I think he's right to worry about that because I think there is also a sense in American society that if you're really, really, really rich and you come out of this kind of, you know, tech background that you must know a lot of things. I mean, there are people are convinced that Elon Musk is really smart. But it's just amazing. I've talked to people and, oh, he's really smart. He knows a lot.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I'm like, there are no facts and evidence here about, you know, other than I have my thoughts about how Tesla and SpaceX are run. The fact that he doesn't have clearances that are as high as people work for him tells you something. But, you know, the one thing that was truly his baby, X... you know, doesn't seem to work very well.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And he, his public statements aren't very bright, but people have internalized this, that the super say just as they did with Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump's rich. He must know a lot of stuff. Americans have never been able to get over. And this goes back to the fifties and sixties.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Even I was surprised at the breadth of the pardons, including the people who got years for violence. against police officers and people who were locked up for a seditious conspiracy. I mean, it really said to you that the rule of law, if not dead, is now under every bit of the assault that we've all been warning about.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Americans have never been able to get over the very dumb idea that business and government are basically the same skill sets.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I agree with you. I tend to think he just he's just not very conscious of his limbs or something. My colleague, Charlie Wurzel, has a great piece in The Atlantic about this today. that I would recommend people take a look at, you know, that basically on the other way, he's awesome. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Um, you know, where the title is, did he, by the way, I want to say those of us who are well-versed in Star Trek understood that what he was really doing was the Imperial salute from the mirror mirror episode of the original, uh, You think I'm joking, but go watch Mirror Mirror and tell me it's not the same salute.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
If you're sitting around parsing and saying, Hey, do you think he really did this right wing, you know, kind of pseudo Nazi thing? Do we need to talk about this when he's openly supporting the right wing extremist party in Germany? Like, this is what I mean about how easily distracted people get when you're dealing with these kinds of problems. It's like.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Hey, I think he did a Nazi salute, as you just pointed out to him. That is the least of your problems with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and, you know, Bezos.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
We have breached a new frontier in physics, a negative Scaramucci. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Two things I want to say about this. One is I don't ever want to hear anybody call the 80s the decade of greed and excess ever again. I lived through the 80s. Practically a quaint, you know, Victorian, genteel decade. period of unrestrained capitalism compared to this level of cronyism and corruption. I mean, this is just insane.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Like, you know, the 80s were the decade of greed, because we cut capital gains taxes, like, oh, no, this makes the 80s look like, you know, an era of restrained virtue. The other is, can we finally just admit, and I think this is where You know, so many people, both in academia and on the left, get this wrong. Can we finally admit what utter bullshit American populism is?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
For history nerds, what a hilarious little call out there to keep praising and lionizing William McKinley. I was like, well, yeah, McKinley, the guy who was the enemy of populism and the choice of capital in his time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
But American populism, this notion that it's like the good sense of the working people and they're going to wrest power and economic well-being out of the hands of the tiny few rich oligarchs, that is – completely a sham at this point. There seems to be no way to get that message across in part, and I'm going to bang this gong again, in part because most people aren't doing so well.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Economic populism thrives in its pure, and I'm not a fan of populism. I don't think populism is ever the right solution to any of this stuff. But it thrives when people are like losing their farms and, you know, unemployment is heading toward double digits and inflation is out of control. And it's too expensive to eat, not too expensive to go to college.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And the fact that people are saying, well, there'll be people listening to this thing, but it is too expensive to eat. Demographically speaking, not for the kind of people who are supporting the MAGA movement. They are overwhelmingly a middle class, reasonably well-off group of people. This is all about culture wars.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I know Thomas Frank is a man of the left, but I can't keep throwing copies of what's the matter with Kansas at people. Because 35 years ago, you could see this coming of people in Kansas saying, how can we have been left behind despite the fact that we keep voting for these rapacious corporations that destroy our towns?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
So that is the most amazing part of this, that Trump has seized this mantle of populism, when in fact, the Democrats could, when I was growing up, Tim, I know that's a long time before TV and in the early days of radio. The teletype machines. Faxes, telexes. You know, the Democrats were the working class party. The Democrats were the kind of the labor and the union party.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I think the eat the rich approach is going to be dumb because there is a way to say, look, I mean, Biden kept trying to do it in his, in his old guy way of, you know, pay your fair share, get as rich as you want. Tim, Like you, I'm a former Republican. I'm a capitalist. But, you know, I used to teach about ancient Greece.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Even the ancient Athenians would do things like build the Parthenon because the treasury would start getting so stuffed with money that they had to figure out a way to get it back into circulation. You know, like they would do public works, basically, so that people would have money to spend.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Well, that's right. That's right. And because we think that saying, if you make $100,000 a year, you shouldn't be taxed unfairly is the same thing as saying, therefore, it's okay to have a class of people who are now soon to become trillionaires with a T. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Of course it is. And it's going to be, you know, it's probably not going to be a good idea because in part because the people who will carry that message forward will be easy to parry. The Republicans are probably waiting for this, but. I'll be interested to see what happens in the next six months about things like tariffs and costs and all of that stuff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
There may be a way to go up against all of that that isn't, you know, just kind of having your hair on fire, but eat the rich.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, that, wait a minute, you know, America first does not mean Indian engineers first. Right. But... But it's amazing to me that, you know, you've talked to Trump voters. I've talked to them. You know that the defense mechanisms that kick into being here when you say, hey, you know, this cronyism is bad.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And, you know, I mean, during the first one, you know, Jared, my son-in-law is an advisor. My daughter's on the payroll. You know, and people just found ways to say, well, you know, he wants to work with people he trusts. And it's not really a big deal. And I think that kind of small stratum of people – that we used to call swing voters.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I don't know that they're that swingy anymore, but that they are either conservative voters or stay at home voters. Some of those people came out and I wonder if they're the ones that are going to say, wait a minute. No, I, you know, I know everybody else didn't do this, but I really did vote on the price of eggs.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I mean, look, I think everybody right and left can agree that immigration is a disaster. I mean, we've just kind of lost control of the immigration picture in this country. I mean, I am old enough, Tim. I'm going to do it again. You know, when I when I wore an onion on my belt, as was the fashion, you know, I mean, I was working in D.C. when Reagan did the 1986 amnesty.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I can remember, I mean, that's almost 40 years ago, right? Where we were all walking around going, oh, this sucks. But one big amnesty, one big enforcement push, and then we never have to do this again. We will never do this kind of crazy stuff again. And then for 40 years, we've been doing crazy stuff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
But what struck me about that whole business and a bunch of executive orders from yesterday was that they were just kind of pissy. There was just a lot of kind of petty, performative, goofy things. I think one of them, I want to say that, and if I'm mistaken about this, I'm sorry. I think one of my friends told me that there was like a rescinding work at home for federal employees, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Because somehow that was associated with COVID, which in fact it wasn't.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Yeah, the things that will really put groceries on the table for working class Americans. You know, like a lot of those. I was a former federal employee. You know why work at home was encouraged? It's cheaper for the government. The government gets to offload the costs of you working to you. You pay for your own lights and heat and toner cartridges and whatever.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And it's like these just these dumb kind of, oh, I think. I think that was COVID. And I think there's some people sitting at home. So let's do that on day one. Because, you know, with all the things happening in the world, you know, flags and birthright citizenship and all this, I mean, it's just there was just a kind of, like I said, a kind of petty pissiness about the whole thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
That, again, makes me almost, am I going to sound weird by saying almost optimistic, Tim?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
My rage is spent. I'm standing on the corner reading a newspaper while Thelma and Louise are zooming by me in a cloud of dust. But the optimism, I wrote this just as Trump was being elected. And I said, look, he has the soul of a fascist, but the mind of a disordered child. But, you know, on the other hand, a child with a flamethrower.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
So, you know, I'm just trying to find the one bit of possible. Yeah, you're right. There is no optimism to be funny.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
American carnage. This American carnage ends now. He tried to bookend it. And may I just say, as a former speechwriter, his speeches are terrible. Horrible. He's better when he riffs, to be honest with you. Well. He tried to bookend that with, you know, now the greatness begins now, this sense of urgency. But you're right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
He was talking as if, you know, like he was the military governor of Japan in 1946 or something. Look, that's their narrative, okay? These are people who have comfortable lives, who live in – you know, in small towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana where nobody is actually bothering anybody.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You know, you're not having regiments of graduate students marching down the street, you know, plastering rainbow stickers on stuff. This is an imagined sense of grievance and oppression that Trump always appeals to to say, and now I will save you. I mean, I wonder if overplaying that argument As he did in 2016, that people will say, you know, it's been four years, nothing's going to change.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Nothing's going to change for most of those folks. If you live in a small town in, you know, Michigan and you voted for Donald Trump, your life is not going to change. And probably economically for the worse, if he does the things he says he's going to do. But you're right, it's un-American.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And it sends a message that those of you out there, it's almost like he's trying to broadcast to those, you know, in occupied America, right? You know, like Red Dawn, you know, well, here in free America, and here's a message for all my friends who voted for me. John has a long mustache. The chair is against the door, you know, this sort of freedom code.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
There's a part of it that is incredibly dangerous, right? And incredibly silly at the same time. And this is where I wanted to go with your talk about with what you were saying about the media and about the coverage.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
One part of it is that Trump has exhausted everyone into resignation. That's part of what's going on with me where I'm just sitting back and saying, you know, okay, you want to argue for two years about the Gulf of America, whatever. But I think Trump's fire hosing, and I've been saying this for eight years, he fire hoses us and then we just accept it as normal.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
So that nobody stops in the middle of one of these group discussions and looks around and says, okay.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
excuse me this is batshit crazy yeah this is not normal but i think you know there's a problem with trying to report on trump and i feel bad for the people that have to do it every day you know you can't get out there every morning and say here's all the crazy stuff trump no can you not you can i mean again this is the you can't but you lose half the country so that already happened on the other side i i'm kind of serious with this a conventional wisdom is congealed among the smart people
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I'm not justifying it. I'm not justifying it. I'm trying to explain it, but I think that's wrong in general. When you say, well, we should listen, you know, Trump was reelected. We should listen to the people to my, my answer is listen to them about what, if they're not telling you the truth, the ones who said, well, I voted because of the price of eggs.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
who are then spending thousands of dollars to go to an inauguration, then you, you know, no, you cannot derive upon, and this is something I've been, even before Trump was ever elected, back when I wrote The Death of Expertise, I said, look, politicians cannot derive signals from the American public if the public isn't making any sense.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
If someone calls a member of Congress and says, keep the Affordable Care Act and ditch Obamacare, There is no way to resolve those kind of signals from people that don't know what they're talking about. So on this, you know, if Donnie saying, oh, we have to listen to the people and what they're telling us about why Trump lost.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I think that the Democrats who are flagellating themselves about their kind of inability to talk to ordinary voters. I think there is something to that. I mean, the most devastating. Yeah, I'm with you on that. You know, we've talked about it before, right? The trans ad did a lot of damage, you know, and that was a pretty effective piece of advertising.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
But normalizing what he's doing, I take your point about that half the country has been lost. They're already siloed, you know, in the stuff they watch. I don't know what the right answer is. For a reporter at, you know, ABC or CBS who has to cover the White House and come out every day and say, you know, the president did a bonkers thing today.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I think that the answer has been, you know, first, as my editor, Jeff Goldberg, always says, you know, there's this terrible. need to impose coherence because you can't report something that's just word salad. So you try to impose some sense of coherence on it. That is going to keep happening, unfortunately, because otherwise you don't have a story.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Yeah, the guy who said, I have murder in my heart. You know, there was a whole bunch of them. It's a rogues gallery. And the idea that this was like, you know, some tourists who got swept up in the heat of the moment is ridiculous. But it also shows you, again, the J.D. Vance, the one time he said something sensible that went by the boards pretty fast. Obviously, you don't pardon the violent ones.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You can't just say the president, you know, president went out and put a string of random words together and we don't know what it means. The other part of it, I think, is that the shift should be toward, as I know we're doing at The Atlantic, toward accountability to say, OK, this is the government. Here are the things they're doing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
We're going to explain and hold accountable the actions here that people need to understand. And I think we're still in the mode that, you know, well, now we're talking about the president. And so we have to say, the president said, it's part of our civic religion, I guess, that's hard to break.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Or to provide context. I mean, I think one of the things, that's why we had the piece, you know, first thing in the morning about what Donald Trump did to the police. You know, while you're watching him stand there, just remember where he's standing is where police battled insurrectionists to save the lives of members of Congress.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And somehow that's all been memory hold. I think that's what maybe that's where I've been going with this kind of long circumlocution that I've been trying to figure out what I'm thinking here. I think what makes me so angry is the memory hole as if nothing happened until today.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
That inauguration was covered by everybody, you know, by citizens who are watching it by a lot of the media as if nothing happened over the past eight years. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You know, it's like, wait, there was a part we didn't hear there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
He did and commuted the rest of them and basically, you know, turned them loose on American society with a message that says rioting and sedition. and attacking the Constitution and seditious conspiracy are no longer a big deal in the United States, at least for a while. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Senator, it was great to see you. It's great talking with you. Listen, I want to talk again, but right now I got to go because I got to pencil out part of the 14th Amendment and then free a bunch of violent insurrectionists. I like your approach of, if you're in government, stern and silent disapproval, do your constitutional duties, execute your functions, carry out the people's business.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You don't have to pretend that you're enjoying it and that things are okay. Going back to what you said about 2016... I had so many people saying, you know, when Trump finally was like, well, you know, it's over. We shouldn't be bound by norms. We shouldn't have to do this. We shouldn't play by the rules. We should fight dirty because what's it gotten us? And I kept saying what you did.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Well, what it got you in 2020 was a Democratic president and, you know, take over of the legislative branch and actually for pretty good years seemed to work. All you had to do was show up. 225,000 people swinging in like four or five states, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Yeah, I think everybody's trying to make sense of this. This is more the shock than 2016, to be honest. Of course. An Italian writer said about Berlusconi, you know, he said it didn't hurt as much the first time. It was the second time when everybody knew.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And so now you have all these people saying, well, I guess this is what the people want, and I'm just going to have to make my accommodations with it. But there is this sense that you can't, and I think this goes back, this is a point I wanted to make about the media as well, that if 50% of the public, of your audience, of your electorate,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
thought this was a good idea, then you have to somehow split the difference and service that kind of speak for the median. And I think when 50% of the folks have become extreme and potentially violent, there's no way to square that circle.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Well, every time we're trying to find a bright spot, you lead me right back into the dark.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I keep trying to pull you towards the light. And then two minutes later, I'm in an alley. My wallet's gone. My glasses are broken. So I think the only other thing I'll get off my chest about yesterday is let's just end dark. Yesterday was bad. Wait till his cabinets in place. Or at least some of them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I mean, look, some of these folks are, you know, people I would disagree with but would have to admit are perfectly plausible people. nominees at this point. I mean, I didn't want John Ratcliffe to be anywhere near the intelligence community, but a Republican loyalist of the elected president who has already served, you just say, okay.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Rubio's done. That's an easy call in any Republican administration, but I'm saving my inner existential angst for the first crisis where the White House Situation Room includes a briefing from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I think that we were going to just have to do this one the day after Inauguration Day. And it went about as much as people would expect. So sleep well, America. Let's leave America with a beautiful line from The Princess Bride. Sleep well. I'll probably kill you in the morning.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
That whole business about, well, God spared me for a reason, you know, I'm sure that other presidents have thought that they have been placed, you know, in a position of, you unthinkable authority and with some kind of divine purpose. But, you know, presenting yourself as the Messiah during your inaugural, you know, is a little on the creepy side.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Let me say one more thing about the pardons, which is Yesterday I wrote a piece, appeared in the morning, about reminding people what all of these – this was before the pardons, by the way. This was first thing in the morning. Reminding people what all of these rioters and insurrectionists and seditionists had done to police officers.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I just am very curious about the police unions and the police officers who supported Donald Trump, who think he backs the blue, who talk about the thin blue line, the FBI agents, the Justice Department officials, the people that probably were pretty sympathetic to Donald Trump's law and order message when it was aimed at George Floyd rioters.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You know, yesterday was everything we expected it to be and then some. But, you know, we've got to be measured and parcel out. Do we? Well, I mean, in the sense of we've got to parcel out our outrage over time so that we don't burn out.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
But now I'm kind of curious, you know, it'll be I'll be curious to see the two step that the law and order folks make about a mass pardon of people who were duly convicted, many of them by Trump judges, by Trump appointed judges. who put these guys in the slammer. This wasn't a bunch of like, you know, liberal vegan gender studies tribunals that lock these people up.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Some of these people were actually appointed to the bench by Donald Trump. Others were convicted by a jury of their peers. And I guess, I guess we really are in that strong man saying for my friends, everything for my enemies, the law.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Some of them probably were. But on the other hand, you know, just as in, I think, when I listen to veterans that I used to teach, you know, talking about combat, that doesn't overcome your loyalty to the guy next to you. You know, under attack.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I just wonder, I mean, sure, they may have agreed with some of the things the rioters believed in, but I doubt they agreed with, you know, smashing in the heads and tasing the person who shared the same uniform standing right next to them. Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe America is different in a way that I don't understand anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
But my as I said in the article yesterday, my dad was a cop in the 50s. My brother was a cop for years from the 60s and the 80s. The notion that, you know, whatever your other political feelings, people attacking your brother and sister police officers is a pretty hard line. But I guess if you think that's OK, then you think it's OK.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Listen, that's the message Trump is sending. Do whatever you want. Do it in my name. Do it, you know, on my whether Trump means to send this message or not. And I think he does. But, you know, let's let's be charitable and say whatever he intended. The message will be, as you just said, you can do whatever you want as long as you have a MAGA hat on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I mean, there was one of these guys that was pardoned that he goes in when he was being sentenced and he gives this he does this little, you know, song and dance, this little kabuki of contrition. And then on the way out, he pumps his fist. Trump won. Well, you know, he's vindicated now. He's he's feeling pretty good. All you had to do was hold out long enough.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Hope that the Electoral College took the bounce in your direction. And suddenly you're not an insurrectionist doing 17 years or 10 years or eight years. You're a free man with a pardon and practically an apology from the president of the United States. Why wouldn't you do it again?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I don't know, Tim. That's kind of shaky. You know, son, the Constitution, like the Bible, says a lot of things. And do we really, you know, I mean, this is ridiculous. It literally says what it says. And I'm sorry, you know, this was going to be your descent into darkness.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
Rand Paul. It's not going to change anything. It's the audacity of a president who says, well, I mean, it's not even the audacity. It's the callousness to his oath of a president who says, I will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and then takes a sharpie and scratches out some words. The Constitution as I prefer it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And that's really astonishing to say there are just parts of the Constitution that don't I don't think are operable. And of course, the Supreme Court would normally make that decision. But this Supreme Court seems to be more than happy, at least six members of this court seem happy to let Trump be the chief arbiter of originalism.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
You know, Tim, there's a part of me that said this Supreme Court, how many times I've said this Supreme Court, even this court won't dot, dot, dot. So, you know, I don't think so either. But it encourages a disrespect for the Constitution among ordinary American citizens to say, oh, well, you know, maybe that part about birthright citizenship is just bullshit and it can be ignored.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
And I guess I feel it's because I wouldn't be here. My parents. My father in particular, you know, was born illegitimately. Do we not say that anymore? Do we say out of wedlock to a single mom, whatever it was, you know, in Boston in 1918 and whisked off to be adopted by a family.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I mean, he that none of us would be citizens because, of course, that's what that's what America is about, making sure that people born here can't stay here. It's really crazy. And it just shows you that this nativism, this performative nativism is what this movement's all about. You notice nobody's talking about eggs anymore. And eggs have gotten expensive, by the way.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
The avian flu, like there's an egg shortage and eggs have spiked in price everywhere. But, you know, now that Trump's in, we don't talk about eggs anymore. It's not what it was about.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham
I'm sorry, but it's just that there's a... It's fundamentally un-American, but there's also just a flat stupidity to this that says, well, here, I'm going to sign an executive order saying, you know, the words a-n and the no longer operate in this.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Look, part of what helps society keep its guardrails is the old expression. Hypocrisy is the tribute. Vice pays the virtue. Yeah. Right. To say, yes. You know, look, when people talk about somebody was doing a piece, they said the same office held by, you know, Lincoln or Reagan or I can't remember what it was. And Jack Kennedy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And I'm like, Jack Kennedy did things in the White House that are really bad. Would make you blush. Yeah. Exactly. But there was at least a sense that the president had to say things and behave in a way that preserved a certain amount of the social order in public.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And what Trump does, I mean, in a way, I imagine that the Trump White House is probably far less creepy than a lot of things that happened in the Kennedy White House, but far more destructive to the country. Because there is no inspiration there to be better. There is no ask not what your country can do for you. You know, there is none of that. It's Trump. It's crudeness and vulgarity.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And it's all kind of put out there as a virtue in itself. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, I was joking. I was joking about Andrew Jackson a minute ago, you know, being being the kind of Northeast elitist that I am. And I'm not a big fan of Jackson. But on the other hand, I'm like, I look at him on a 20. I kind of get it, you know, that we create a myth around Andrew Jackson of, you know, the populist, the Democrat, old hickory, old. Yeah. You know, man of the people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But because it does inspire us to at least try to be the better people that we are when we are in public and dealing with each other in the civic space. And, you know, when you look back at presidential debates, for example, you know, where you said these are reasonable human beings, we disagree.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And like John McCain said, you know, he's a good family man with whom I have very profound disagreements. Right. And now it's all become this reality show kind of, you know, what's that squid game kind of, you know, nonsense. And it just I think it just makes us into worse people. And I think now we have to wrap up the darkness, Tim. But going back to your point about.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, how do you kind of process how many people voted this way? I think eight years of the age of Trump has made a lot of Americans into worse people. I mean, genuinely corroded their characters. Look, you and I even... You see it on the internet. I mean, I find myself writing about politics in a way that when I was, I mean, remember, I came to writing out of 30, 35 years of academia, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, I tried to do these very measured things about foreign policy and national security. And now I find myself saying, you know, I'm writing about all this lunacy going on and it affects all of us. It has brought all of us down closer to Trump's level. And I'm sorry to see that. And I wish there were a little more hypocrisy in American public life, to be honest with you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You sent me the email this morning because I had missed this piece of news. And you said all it said in your email was, hey, Tom, topics, you know, Jared Moskowitz and FEMA. And I'm like, what is there? Does Trump said he's going to use FEMA to arrest Jared Moskowitz? What does that mean?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And so, of course, you know, being the conscientious podcast guest that I am, I went and looked it up and I went. Again, is this happening?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
First of all, the first thing I thought of is what Democrat who cares about his party, what member of either party, let's not make it about Democrats, what member of either party would leave when their party is close to pretty much a tie in the House and endanger that? But also, then I thought, what do you gain from this? Because And again, there's no comment from Moskowitz, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
At this point, this is all speculation. But assuming that you take a job like this and you say, well, look, rather, to quote Mr. Burns, rather than allowing them to wallow in their own crapulence, you decide to say, look, I'm going to pitch in and help out because it's a really important thing. And if there's a disaster, somebody, you know, respond.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, but that was what every establishment Republican who went to work for Trump in 2016 thought. It did not work. And the other thing is that if you've never worked for a politician, dear listeners, you can't just work part of the street. You can't just say, well, I'm going to be the appointed FEMA head, but I'm going to totally dissent from the president on all these other important issues.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
No, once you're an appointee, you are on the team. You are part of the administration. You're part of the team. You defend the president's positions and And if you don't, if you can't, then you have to get out. I mean, I worked for a senator.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I didn't call my, you know, write stuff and give interviews and say, you know, I think the senator's great senator, but boy, his position on this farm bill is just nuts. You know, if you work for the guy, you work for the guy. I understood that idea in 2016 or 2017. I don't understand it in 2024, how anybody can think that they are going to do that and somehow, you know, end up unscathed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
shit that goes on in washington no to join this administration and really to join almost any administration but especially this one you are going to get caught up in it and especially in an organization that is at the center of so many crazy pants bonkers conspiracy theories Climate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I think that's a really good analogy, Tim. I think she's a good example of that. you know, I tried to defend Berks during the pandemic by saying, look, she's, you know, an appointee, she's an ambassador, she's a career military officer that telling the commander in chief that he's all hosed up doesn't come naturally to a lot of, you know, former military folks. It's not, not part of that culture.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, what do you expect her to do? Just walk out and resign in the middle of pandemic and all that stuff. But, but with all that said, you know, hey, you She's a big girl, grown woman, a colonel in the army. I mean, you know, an ambassador, a doctor. At some point you say, yeah, maybe I do walk out there and say this is too hosed up. But as you say, the lesson is out there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
This time there cannot be any doubt about what happens to you if you become part of the Trump administration.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Really didn't need the thing about the toes, Tim. I mean, I have a lot of theories about the kind of tech oligarchs that came up in the 90s, which I think were a very dark time in American history. I shouldn't plug other people's books, I guess, because you've got to get out there and get my audio book. But I've been reading the John Gantz book about the 80s, which I think are the 90s.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
It's been on my list. It's actually very good. And I think, you know, even where I disagree with it, it's easy to have reasonable but interesting disagreements with it. But the 90s to me were this time where, you know, guys that were not, shall we say, the most socially adept human beings, nonetheless kind of walked into this internet casino and came out gazillionaires. They invented something.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And, you know, God bless them, right? If you invent a browser or an app or whatever it is and you get rich off it, that's the American dream. I think that's wonderful. Somehow, though, as those guys progressed into middle age, two things were true. One is that they became convinced, as rich people often do become convinced, that great wealth means that they have great insights about everything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And also that they still carried those kind of weird insecurities and resentments, you know, from being nerds or whatever they were back then. I mean, you look at Zuckerberg, you look at Musk, you look at, you know, who else do you want to pick? There's this kind of strange, almost outsider status that they can't seem to get over.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, Musk and Trump, such a natural pairing to me of two guys that no matter how successful they get, are always trying to like figure out where the cool kids are.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
There was a lot of stuff in the social network that that was fictionalized. But, you know, there were I mean, there was an essential truth that, you know, this was kind of like, how did this guy become famous? Well, sort of hanging out and. feeling sort of socially excluded and creating this thing, and it makes you super rich. It doesn't make you super smart.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
When I have interacted with some of these guys, David Sachs comes to mind. Nothing makes them angrier than telling them, look, this is not something you know about. No, you don't really understand the Ukraine war. I'm sure you invented a very good app that does a thing on my phone, and I'm glad you got rich from it, but that doesn't mean you have a clue about geopolitics in Central Europe.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
They just get furious about that because, again, it's that sense of like, no, I matter. I'm important. I have big things to say about important stuff. So it's not surprising that when finally Trump says, hey, all the gates are down. Experts don't matter. All that matters is that you come and, you know, kiss my ring and you can talk to me about any kind of important stuff. That's catnip.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
That weds this notion of that great wealth should imply great influence. As opposed to people saying, hey, you know, I'm a really rich guy, but this isn't my bailiwick, you know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
He is certainly the most visible figure He has a lot of influence over a president-elect at the moment, but of course, as is always the case, whoever the last guy in the room is always has a lot of influence with Trump. He certainly seems to spend more time with Trump than – who's the guy I'm trying to think of? He's supposed to be really close to Trump. Vance, J.D. Vance. Oh, the vice president.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
The invisible man, right? I mean, if you were from Mars, you would think that Elon Musk was Trump's vice president at this point. But, you know, all kidding aside, when I think of really influential oligarchs, I think of the guys we never talk about, right? The guys that for years, I mean, you know, if you talked about like the guys from these Wall Street firms, a guy like, you
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Oh, you know, I purposely went there with intending to avoid the news, which I did. I just tuned into the to the Beeb to keep up on the serious stuff. And it was a very nice break. It was a reminder of how self-absorbed American politics has become that, you know, you turn on BBC World and
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Or somebody like that, who these people were part of this permanent elite that even when they were in their law offices in New York, they were running things in Washington. So I don't want us to fall too far down that hole about how powerful Musk is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Now he's like the crypto czar or whatever, you know, while, while we're on the subject, I mean, and Joe Rogan, who has a huge, huge amount of influence, you know, for a guy that used to eat bugs. I mean, it was, I mean, it's just, yeah. And I mean, I'm kind of interested in where Tucker is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
He's been, that's one of those things where, you know, while, while Musk is capering and cavorting, I'm kind of wondering where Tucker is. Well,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
you find out a lot about basically that the entire geopolitical order of the Middle East is being reorganized rather than, you know, what Pete Hegseth's tattoos mean.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
One is that I thought when he said, I'm paraphrasing, I thought that word was doing a lot of work. Yeah, like I'm making this up, actually. I'm paraphrasing. Oh, okay. I'd like to know. I mean, I can't say that his account is accurate or not, but I'll just say that when he said, I'm paraphrasing, I said, sure sounds like a lot of paraphrasing going on there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
That was my second reaction as a bona fide Cold War expert. That is not what happened during the Cold War. I'm sure he thinks that that's what happened. No, entire parts of physics did not go dark during the Cold War. Work that was done with physics on things related to nuclear weapons became classified. One of the funniest moments, funniest, one of the
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
coolest moments of the cold war was when a when a doctoral student i want to say princeton basically wrote his thesis on how to make a nuclear bomb and the fbi showed up and the guy was like listen these things have been around for like 35 years or not they're not hard to figure out you know by the time i was finishing my teaching career i would tell students remember this is a technology that came out when you know like before people had tvs and airplanes still had propellers
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
So this notion that, oh, yes, well, they just classified. I don't think he knew what he was talking about there. My gut sense of that, you and I kind of talked about this a little this morning, is that I can't believe that anybody's entire position on who should be president rested on one conversation about AI. But maybe that's how he does things.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But it also struck me that that sounded very much, again, like somebody went down and said, I have many smart things to say about AI. And some government people said, well, we don't agree with all that. And he said, OK, screw you. Yeah. Screw you. And you know who will listen to me? The other moron. Right. The guy who doesn't understand a word of any of this and doesn't care.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
He'll treat me because when you said they're looking for attention, the word I replaced in my head was respect.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
There's stuff happening out there, exactly. But I went to Europe because my wife and I decided that after the election, win, lose, or draw, no matter how it came out, we planned like six months ago that after just living through all this politics that we were going to pull chocks.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Or even unrelated. I mean, I think, again, all these guys have this sense that I am fantastically wealthy, and somehow that hasn't bought me the respect that I crave in all of these areas. And the one place where I can really get it is in the place where expertise and knowledge just don't matter, which is going to be the Trump administration. We're going to have much more where this came from.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
These are the guys to be monitoring right now. I can't believe I'm going to quote Bernie Sanders here, but wasn't it Sanders who said something this weekend about never have so few people had so much money and so much influence concentrated in such a small circle.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, I am not a big fan of Bernie Sanders, and he said a few things that I think are kind of kooky, but that was a pretty good summation.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And for a movement that thinks of itself as populist, which is always, you know, that's never going to be not funny to say, well, we're the populist movement, which is why we're guided by a handful of oligarchs and billionaires, you know, doing things behind closed doors.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And so we started in London and we went through Paris and Brussels and ended up walking the cobblestone streets of Prague. And it was very nice. But it was interesting because I went in 2017 after the election, and people would say, oh, you're an American. What's going on with that new president? This time people were like, yeah, whatever. I ran into a few British tourists.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, first, let me say about the Claris Award thing. I think people are just too hard on journalists on the ground in places like that. In the middle of a total shitstorm, you're going to make a mistake now and then.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But you should, instead of saying, aha, gotcha, as I think too many people wanted to do, because that's the new game with journalists for new, for 10 years or so, you should say, wow, it's really great that somebody had the stones to actually be there and
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
in places that you would be you'd be standing outside the embassy screaming to get you out in the middle of that so i you know i i give all the credit in the world to those folks and if they have the occasional stubbing of their toe that's that's just the way it's it happens and good for them for being there but people should understand how epical this is i mean this is the assad family has been in charge of syria since i was a boy a long time indeed
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, you know, we've had our old man jokes. An epoch is correct. Yes. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
As was the style at the time, exactly. The idea now that this regime has collapsed, the Iranians are in a tough spot, the Russians have been flushed out of their one major geopolitical toehold outside of Eurasia, which is amazing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
By the way, for the Russians, one thing that I think some of the better reports have focused on, but that has been glossed over in all of the jubilation, Putin for years made his name by saying, if you're a friend of mine, you don't go down. I don't let that happen. My friends don't get pushed out of power. And this time, this happens like in, you know, 72 hours. And Putin's like, well...
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
What are you going to do? You know, I'm busy. That stinks. That's a big black market. Unfortunately, and I'm going to bring this back to American politics. Unfortunately, instead of being able to, you know, really hold on the pressure and keep pushing back the Russian position in Ukraine and, you know, in other parts of the world, he's going to get a respite now, which is really unfortunate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But I'm glad it happened before Trump came into office.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
They're like, well, interesting, mate. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. The few times that politics came up when I was with groups, I ran into some Americans and ran into other people overseas. And, you know, I just found myself and them with that sort of same vibe we all have over here of like, I don't know, you can't even sum it up in a word.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, here is my darkest thought. It is my Christmas wish that something alleviates it. When I wrote books about expertise and the decline of democracy in America, I focused pretty heavily on narcissism. What I regret is that I didn't talk more about something that I'm coming to realize is really destroying the country, and that is the epidemic of loneliness.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And the problem where that intersects with the Internet is when you are lonely and isolated, the Internet is this wonderland, this carnival, this theme park that you can just wander through. You know, the days where a kid got radicalized by reading Catcher in the Rye or, you know, I don't know, you know, pick your, you know, the
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
anarchist cookbook or whatever it was at least had to go to a bookstore had to walk through a library had to do something as opposed to just sitting in the dark alone isolated in your room and saying i'm a teenager i'm troubled i have issues oh look turkish nazis something that you probably you know 30 years ago if you lived in wisconsin you were not going to be really
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
you know aware of able to encounter and so that one thing that we know from research about extremist groups is that they are reaching out across boundaries to feel like they're bigger than they are to say i mean the way i always put it is every town has one guy who thinks that aliens are stealing our water right problem is if you have a thousand towns and the one guy in each town reaches others well there's a thousand of us now we're we're a union we're a movement
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
No, you're just the one guy in every town who is, you know, committed to these kind of bonkers ideas. And the Internet has really I was such an Internet optimist. I mean, I was the guy when I was in my late 20s, I was a young professor at Dartmouth. I was the guy that showed other people how to use like Netscape.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Showing these 50, 60 year old professors that were my senior colleagues saying, hey, you know, there's this thing and it's called a browser and it's cool. But I've come to realize that it's, you know, it's basically the Internet is a giant bad neighborhood that you can wander around in if you don't if you just have too much time on your hands and it'll just lead you into trouble.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, love your kids. What's the answer to anybody listening? It's going to be counterintuitive to say, stop listening to podcasts and go outside and go to a movie with a friend.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
It's more like, yeah, you know, this sort of this kind of sigh of exhaustion of like, Jesus Christ, here we go again.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
My Christmas Spotify list. OK, first of all, I'm going to apologize for wonderful Christmas time. Somebody asked me why it's in there. I said, I don't know. I had fond memories of my freshman year in college when it came out. And so I put it there because even though I put it in my list, I turn it off when it's on the radio because I can't help it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I think somebody had a great line about that, which was Paul set out to write a Christmas song, and instead he decided to experiment with every sound a synthesizer could make, which I think is true. On the other hand, I tried specifically to make it a combination of kind of 70s and 80s pop linked to schlock. So, of course, Andy Williams is in there. Of course he is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You don't have a Christmas list without Andy Williams. And if you and I are going to disagree about this, I'm not sure we can be friends. Okay.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You are familiar with a recording artist named Andy Williams, right? You know he existed and was the voice of Christmas for most of the 1960s and 70s.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I don't have. This is why generational conflict exists at all. But I also had stuff in there. I tried to put in things that were not people that didn't think of, you know, as cheery Christmas stuff like Circle of Steel by Gordon Lightfoot, which is a wonderful song. Yes, I included Do They Know It's Christmas? Because actually.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
The first time you could write it off and say, most of us aren't like this. Most of us wouldn't want this guy in our house talking to our kids. But look, he won 49.8% of the vote or whatever it was. He won – As I said in 2016, he won fair and square. Doesn't matter whether you like him or not. He's the duly elected president, you know, 47th president.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I kind of like that song in part because Sir Bob hated it after he wrote it. And I've always enjoyed... I'm Greek Orthodox. And one of the things that always makes me laugh about that song is he wrote it about Ethiopia and the famine in Ethiopia. Apparently, Sir Bob didn't realize the major religion in Ethiopia is Orthodox Christianity. So yes, in fact, they did know it was Christmas. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
you know, but I have this cool 12 inch and you and I fooled around with it in the green room. I have this cool 12 inch that I bought, which again, why do, why do I like it? Because I have fond memories of buying this in a Boston record store. And the other side is this long outro where they finally finish. And then Bob Geldof says it's now like, you know, 6am on November 25th, 1984.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And everybody on the record comes in to say, Merry Christmas. You know, hi, I'm Sarah from Banana Rama. Happy Christmas. Um, The guys from big country, they're all Scottish. One of them says, we're here to wish you Merry Christmas. Feed the people. Stay alive. It's just this great 80s kind of time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And then, of course, at the end of it all, Paul McCartney calls in because, of course, he wouldn't be on the record. But David Bowie shows up in this very quiet recording. And he's like, you know, the scary David Bowie voice about how people are starving. It's just this great kind of 80s Times capsule. So give me my nostalgic moments.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But other than that, there's stuff on there that I will absolutely defend, including if you don't like the Waitress's Christmas rapping. Oh, a great song.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And you can't write that off as an accident anymore. You have to say this is, you know, this is what American voters wanted. And before I get angry mail from Democrats who say, well, it's not what we wanted. Well, you know, you didn't show up. So by default, you were either OK with it or it didn't bother you enough to show up in the numbers that you did in 2020.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
So, you know, it is kind of who we are that either we actively wanted this or it didn't really bother us enough to be, you know, arsed enough to kind of go vote. So, yeah, there was that sense. I think I don't think it's defeat, though, Tim. I think it's exotic. I think you got it right with it's just like acceptance, like whatever, you know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I am both more and I'm going to give you one of those Weasley answers. I'm more optimistic, Tim, but I'm less optimistic too.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
In what ways? I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't expect his cabinet nominations to sound like the setup for a cold open at Saturday Night Live. Like you can see them sitting around the writers room. It's like, okay, okay. All right. So Pete Hegseth comes in, right? Because he's the Secretary of Defense now, right? And Tulsi Gabbard is the DNI, okay?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And you're like saying, okay, nobody, even Donald Trump, nobody would do this. So in that sense, I'm like just – astonished that how quickly we've normalized saying things like defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, as if that's like a thing you would say outside of a parody. On the other hand, I really want to caution people against this
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And preemptive despair and nihilism, you know, I mean, it seems like a lot of the folks who once, you know, were running around being resistance liberals and Trump opponents and, you know, even I suppose I think are never Trump OGs or, you know, always held firm. eight years ago and now. But look, the guy is not a supernatural being.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, the fact that Matt Gaetz got turfed so fast should tell you something. And that the thing going on in the Senate right now, I keep hearing these stories about, oh, Joni Ernst is getting to yes, and they're going to warm to these nominees. Look, I worked in the Senate. Right now, these senators realize there is nothing in it for them right now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
To keep going out there and slamming their head into a brick wall and getting hate mail and death threats from MAGA World. That doesn't mean anything for what could happen in the next month or after confirmation hearings. You know, I guess what I'm saying, Tim, is in a way, I thought it would be. Bad in a very dark way, like there would be all these nominees like, OK, I'll give an example.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
One nominee that I think flew right under the radar who is really dangerous because I think he does know what he's doing. He's thought about stuff is Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like we're all sitting here saying, oh, you know, you know, again, what does it mean when Pete Hague said, you know. Took his shirt off. No, Russ Vout is the guy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
If I'm going to worry about anybody, I worry about the guys who know what they're doing, who have made plain their intentions, you know, in numerous writing and speeches. So I expected more guys like that. not this kind of, you know, clown bus of, you know, stuff that is just, but that's bad too.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And I don't get off my soapbox, but I don't want to minimize that because one thing that occurred to me, I was trying not to think about politics in Europe. I was going to Christmas markets and I was trying, I had mulled wine for the first time in my life and it's bad. Yeah. So I'm just going to say that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I think it didn't taste, it didn't taste good. But I kept watching this news from Syria and saying this is a momentous event. earth moving, you know, geo strategic change. And I'm trying to imagine if this had happened and somebody walks into brief secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth and DNI Tulsi Gabbard and, you know, attorney general Pam Bondi. Well, the DNI is on the side of the deposed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, exactly. You know that I kept thinking that it's like, it's like, okay, how do you go in and tell, uh, how do you walk into ODNI, you know, and, and there's Tulsi Gabbard saying, um, madam director, uh, You're not going to like this because I got good news. I got bad news. No, I'm lying. There's no good news. So, you know, I'm worried.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But I think there were a lot of strategic mistakes in this tranche of nominees. And one last thing. These are the nominees right now. Remember that everybody that Trump appoints, even after they're confirmed, they're
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
It is hard to feel the same way about the country. These days, at least for me, patriotism is an act of will. I still love this country. I love what it stands for. I love the values on which it's based. And I think most, I still believe that most of the people in this nation
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
believe in the founding principles of America, at least in some core gut way of constitutional, not the legal sense, but that constitutional guarantee of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. So before I descend too far into the darkness, I'll just say that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But with that said, yeah, there's something, there is a, when Jimmy Carter loses to Ronald Reagan, I mean, that was my first election, right? You know, you had gripey college kids and I was living in Boston at the time, you know, liberals walking around Boston, oh, this is terrible and America's screwed. But, you know, you didn't have this sense of like existential doom, even among the far left.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, Nixon wins a landslide in 72, right? and you don't get this existential doom, and in fact, he's gone two years later. This time, I think the problem is, and you can tell that we both spent some time talking to Jonathan Last, who is the king of this kind of gloom.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
JBL, he's the prince of darkness when it comes to this, to say that if Donald Trump were impeached or removed from office three days after he gets in, you still have to live with the fact that that in any, you know, many settings, you can look around the room and say, at least, you know, if you live in a blue state, at least three or four people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And if you live in a red state, seven or eight people think that everything Donald Trump said was basically okay. And that's hard. That's a hard thing to grasp. I was with some friends here where I live. And one of them said, well, you're not, you don't judge people based on how they voted, do you? And I said, I I said, I don't want to, but it's hard. And I know you and I have brought this here.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I use the David Duke analogy. I said, replace Donald Trump with David Duke. Say, I'm a good family man and I love my country, but I voted for David Duke. I'm sorry, but you reach moral conclusions about people when they do stuff like that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
That they just really didn't tune in or pay attention to any of this stuff. Or they tuned out years ago. But yeah, I share that kind of existential dread that can the country. When I was a kid, and now I'm going to do the old man thing. When I was a kid, every classroom in the 60s, you know, we had a calendar. And the calendar always had a picture of all the presidents.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And you just felt like that was like this. I mean, at the time, you didn't know that Warren Harding was a womanizing doofus. You didn't know Andrew Jackson was a genocidal maniac. Now Trump's on that picture twice. Oh, my God.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And I can remember when Nixon resigned, and I was just coming out of that kind of grade school, and I was like, wow, there's a guy on here who got forced from office. And now it's like, yeah, maybe just don't put up those calendars anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
who is brilliant and creative and understands that, just like Trump understands, you have to keep going forward, forward, forward. You've got to keep the initiative and define the terms of the debate every single day.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Jim McGovern, who may not be quite as well known, but he's the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, and absolutely, I think, would be not just a master of these rules, but willing to use them in creative and aggressive ways. Most Democrats are a little bit more cautious. I mean, you know, you've gotten to know a lot of Democrats the last few years. We tend to think through things a lot.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
We weigh the pros and cons of everything endlessly. We obviously want to make sure everything we do is legal and that's good. We over-interpret polls. We've got consultants who say you should only take on issues that are already popular and only oppose things that are already unpopular. Be very careful. And if we keep going that way, Trump will have made 60 decisions before we even make one.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And we have to understand the kind of fight we're in. We actually need to learn some things from him. He is very good, I think, at psychological warfare. And Democrats are not.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
I was known as a moderate Democrat in the House. I think government shutdowns are stupid for all the obvious reasons. But this is a very unique situation, right? The government is being shut down.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And if I'm still in the House of Representatives, it's March 14th or whatever the day is, and we're facing a decision about whether to fund the government for a few more months. What I would say to the Republicans is, you don't want a government shutdown? Fine. You have the votes. You have a majority in the House and Senate. Be my guest. Fund the government.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Oh, you can't do that because you're lame and you're in disarray? You need my help to do it? Okay. You know what? I'll give you my help. I'll help you pass your Republican budget. But I've got this one condition that the president actually has to respect the budget we pass. He's got to respect the laws we pass in the Constitution.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
So if we give him $100 for a Head Start program or a community health center or to feed hungry people around the world, he is going to spend $100 as Congress directs. That's my condition. And if you can't give me that, if you want me to pass a budget that he's going to treat like a piece of toilet paper, then I'm out. You're on your own. Do it yourselves. So that is the moment of truth.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
That's the ultimate moment of leverage where Democrats have in the House, they have the power to work their will.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
It's a good question. I think you can negotiate that. You can write language into the appropriations bill that strengthens your hand down the road. You can get written commitments from OMB and from the president. Can they go back on those? Yes, absolutely. But then that brings us back to the courts, like the stronger commitments you get.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
If they break those commitments, then our hand when all of this eventually gets to the Supreme Court is even stronger. And look, at the end of the day, I think they're not that tough. And I do think that if they're forced to back down, they will back down.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yes, that's what I would say. You want to keep the government open, be my guest. You got the votes. Yeah. This is only relevant if you need my help. And if you need my help, you know what? I'm going to be really conciliatory. I'm not going to insist on progressive policy priorities. I'm not going to insist on democratic budget priorities. I get it. You won the election.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
No, none of that shit, right? Like you won the election. You get to pass a budget. It's going to have stuff in it that I disagree with. It's going to have more cuts than I would like. But at the very least, just fucking assure me that the budget we pass, the law we pass, is going to be respected. That is the most reasonable demand that you could make. And I think, look, explain my party.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
I think a lot of them were made for different times. I don't dislike them for this. They're good people. They're used to a world in which the rules are followed. And we're in a world where a president of the United States is trying to assert, trying to amass powers that the Constitution doesn't give him. And he's daring us to stop him. And if we don't stop him, then he has those powers.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And we're in a very, very different country. And so I think my message to Democrats is you have to have the stomach for the fight ahead. If you don't, the exits are clearly marked. There are other people who can step up and lead for you if this is not a fight that you're comfortable waging. But it's also one that we can win.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
We've got all kinds of power that is real, unlike the kind of performative power that Trump is using. So use it. And also, Americans want leaders who are strong and not leaders who are weak. So politically, it also pays to be strong.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yes. And also, again, imagine you're a member of the House of Representatives and somebody shows you an appropriations bill or C.R., that funds USAID. But USAID has been shut down. And the staff have been fired. What are we doing here? This piece of paper you're showing me is a lie. I will vote for it if it's the truth. I'm not going to vote for it if it's the lie.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And Democrats have to become comfortable using power. And I think politically, they will be rewarded if they project strength and confidence and a comfort with using power within the law, obviously. just as Trump is rewarded for it, right? I mean, even when he does unpopular things, if he looks strong doing them, a lot of people like it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
I mean, it's kind of obvious, right? I mean, they do illegal things. You got to challenge it. But the reason I stress this is that there are still a lot of folks out there who are hesitating for understandable reasons. So like take, take USA ID, the employees union did file a suit on behalf of employees who were being unlawfully fined. forced to go on leave or fired, and they immediately won.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Everybody's immediately winning, at least in terms of stays and temporary restraining orders. But most of the organizations in America and around the world that implement these programs, like take Catholic Relief Services, for example, they have not filed suits because they're afraid. Because they're afraid if we stick our necks out and file that suit, Then we're in the crosshairs.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
There's so much shitty stuff going on right now. I actually think I'm less depressed about Ukraine than I am about a lot of other things.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
They're still hoping against hope that maybe we can find a way to get to Marco Rubio. He's a good guy. We've known him for many years or somebody else, or we can find a donor who can talk to Trump at some fundraiser. And convince them, spare us, maybe go after everyone else, but spare our wonderful program to feed children in this African country.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And some of the big democracy promoting institutions like the National Democratic Institute, National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute that are doing work with democracy campaigners, anti-corruption activists all around the world. They've also been laying low. They're worried if we file a suit, we're going to war against the Trump administration.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And so they're all frozen. They're furloughing their staff. Their work is not happening. People are suffering as a result. And I completely get why they're afraid. If you're running an organization like that, you also have an obligation to your employees. You want to keep them employed for the next four years. But if they were suing, they would be winning and their funds would be unfrozen.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And I think we're at a time where I would want to see every single organization that spends U.S. money in support of U.S. interests and values around the world to band together right now and to file a joint lawsuit and to do it together. So that's why I stress that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
But they haven't done it yet. So the other side of this, though, is that we shouldn't over-rely on the courts. I think we're going to win a lot of victories. I think most judges, even Trump judges, are going to uphold the law. But I could see a point where this gets to the Supreme Court.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Because... Do we have to rank? Yeah, well, it's a low bar. I mean, what he just said was insane on about five different levels, but we can work with it. Zelensky and the Ukrainians are smart. I think they've made the best of this situation. And there are actually a couple of smart people that Trump has hired, including General Keith Kellogg, to run this Ukraine negotiation.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And I could see some justices saying, you know, we got a dispute here between the executive branch and the legislative branch. You guys are big boys. Work it out. Congress, you have the power of the purse under the Constitution. If you think the president is usurping his authority. You're supposed to use the power of the purse, just as we were discussing, right? March 14th.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Don't come to us to resolve your little dispute. There's a lot of precedent for the Supreme Court kind of backing away and forcing the branches to use their powers to fight it out. At the end of the day, I think this may all come back to the Congress and the Democrats in the House. Are you willing to use the power of the purse to preserve the power of the purse?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
That's the path of least resistance. But if there is resistance from the Democrats, if they need Democratic votes for something, which they will, and the Democrats do the obvious simple thing that we've just been discussing, then that's a real negotiation. that Johnson would have to engage in. You get to that point, we're not going to save everything. Trump is still president.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Republicans still have the majority. There'll be a lot of casualties, but we will have established that the constitution is still worth the paper it's printed on and that Congress does have power and that the president can't do everything he wants. And we have to establish that this year, because if we don't, then the next four years will truly be a nightmare.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And, you know, the answer on rare earth minerals is that they're mostly in Eastern Ukraine and the parts Ukraine that the Russians have occupied. So you want American companies in there, which the Ukrainians would be delighted to allow helping to mine rare earth minerals. Well, the Ukraine's got to control that territory, not Russia. Putin's not going to give us access to anything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yeah, that's what I would do. Like, I mean, we do have to bring it back to issues that swing voters care about. And look, it's true. A lot of folks out there, I canvassed and talked to voters in Jersey and in Pennsylvania. And they weren't saying, I got to elect Trump because I want it to be the Gulf of America.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And I want to take Greenland like there was inflation, it was the border, totally legitimate concerns. And We gotta keep bringing it back to that. My kind of gimmicky suggestion in the article that you cited was that Democrats come together around a message that, you know what? The guy's only been president for two or three weeks. It's actually not fair. Thank you. Thank you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And then the stuff about giving us our money back, right? Obviously, that's just nonsense. Most of the money we've spent has been spent in the United States. So you're going to have to ask American companies and American workers to give the money back, which is just nonsense that he doesn't understand. But there is at least a decent shot
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
that we're going to get to a point where the Russians say what I think the Russians are going to say in response to Trump's peace initiatives. They're going to tell him to go fuck himself. And then the real question is, what does Trump do at that point? Does he double down on pressure on Russia because he's pissed at Putin for giving him the back of his hand?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Or does he pressure the weaker party, Ukraine, to concede more? That's going to be the moment of truth.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
,,, , , , , , ,, P. , , , , ,, P. P. P. P. P. P,實實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a dough a , , , , , ,, P P P P P P P P G實實實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a . . . . . ., en P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P,實, not. ,, ,, , ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a in in
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
, , , , ,, P. P. P. P. P.實, ac , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , to P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P inதத gi la� ac la� la� la� la� la� ac la� gi la grà gà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà gr ac gr hair g ac gr ac g
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
So I call that the, that's the Russian strategy. That's the strategy the Russians used to beat Napoleon.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Which is basically let them in, withdraw, let, you know, burn down your capital, burn all the crops and then wait for winter to come. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
I'm not with you. I'm not going to go that far.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
He just doesn't understand the values and principles at stake in this conflict. But I think he also doesn't want to look like a loser and an idiot. Yeah. And a lot of people have told him that if he lets Russia take over Ukraine, it's going to look worse than Biden in Afghanistan, which is true, objectively. So I hope that argument prevails. We'll see what happens.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yeah, but if we fight and we win, then the crops won't get burnt. So this is a real question, and I'm still on the side of let's try to fight and win as many of these battles as possible.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
She's a very troubled person who needs help. I didn't know her well when I was in the House. She had a period when she seemed more reasonable, obviously more independent from Trump world. And what's happening now, I think, is a subject more for psychological than political analysis. And it's kind of sad.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yeah, go girl. My favorite news about Lauren Bovert recently is that she had a Politico subscription in her office.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
So when I got to the House in January of 2019, one of my first missions was to find the Republicans I could work with on national security. And I got a lot of advice and Got to know a lot of them. And there was kind of this solid group that I ended up working a lot with at first. And it included Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Who at that point, Liz was the super partisan leader of the Republican caucus. Adam, Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin, Elise Stefanik, and Mike Waltz. It's interesting. They all went in different directions. And interestingly, the one who I was closest to at first was Elise Stefanik.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And she ended up being the only member of the House of Representatives I would not make eye contact with, whose hand I would not shake, because I think she is the least honorable person in Washington, D.C., deserving of absolutely nothing but scorn and hate for betraying every principal and every friend she ever had. So that's one extreme.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Oh, I mean, she was totally, I mean, she was totally anti-Trump. I mean, like I had a lot of conversations with her.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And super smart and thoughtful about it. And like she co-sponsored two of my first national security bills that were designed to keep Trump from withdrawing our troops from South Korea and Syria. in 2019. And we were like, we're going to work together and form this friendship. Two years later, she's tweeting that I'm a corrupt pedophile. She really said pedophile? Well, the NRCC did.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And I think she was boosting some of that. And we'll call anybody who recounted conversations with her from when she was normal. I mean, she said, saw lies, never said those things. Like I have friends in the Freedom Caucus. I mean, they're Republican guys who I played football and baseball with and all the sports teams that I loved in the House of Representatives.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And they were good dudes and they were always decent people. in their personal interactions and sincere and their convictions. And I respect that. And no, at least completely different. The Elise's are the worst.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
So she's one extreme Liz and Adam, of course, are the other extreme. They went all the way. Mike Gallagher kind of kept his head down a little bit and focused on the very good work that he was doing on China policy. And didn't do anything wrong, did a lot of things right, but he didn't step out in the way that Liz and Adam did.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And Mike Waltz was kind of, you know, he didn't pull an Elise and he still continued to work well with Democrats, but he made his peace with MAGA successful. in sufficiently that he got the job that he now has. But he was one of them. He was absolutely a old-fashioned Reagan, McCain, Bush, Republican.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yeah, look, so this sucks. We are right now giving up America's greatest comparative advantage, which is that we stand for something in the world, that people follow us not just because we're big and powerful and rich, but because they think that we were willing to use our power for something larger than ourselves. That's a huge advantage that we've got over China.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And any adversary that may come along. So yeah, we're totally giving that up right now. But the demand for that kind of leadership is always going to be there. And a United States under responsible leadership, four years from now, eight years from now is still going to be the one country in the world capable of providing it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
You know, this is a lot worse than other examples of this that we've experienced in the past. But, you know, go back to the Bush administration, the combination of the Iraq war and Abu Ghraib and torture and waterboarding and all that stuff that I used to fight against back in those days. People were saying the same thing, that America's brand in the world was completely tarnished.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
But even then, like I would go to places like Egypt and Egypt, Syria and all over the world. And people would scream at me about what's your president doing? You're losing your moral authority. And then the next question was, can we get a grant from USAID? And can you introduce me to somebody in Don Rumsfeld's office? Because we really need America's help.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Because we're the only provider of that thing that people all around the world desperately need. So, yeah, we get rid of Trump in four years. A lot of people are going to be angry at us. There'll be a lot of questions about whether we can be trusted for the long term. But we can absolutely rebuild the supply for what good people around the world will continue to demand.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yeah, USAID is a very practical ramification because there's material support that we're providing to good people around the world fighting for democracy and against corruption. All the stuff that China hates when we do, we're going to stop doing. doing it as much. We'll see what happens with USAID, obviously.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
But I think the biggest ramification is just that the voice of the president of the United States is no longer going to be projecting the values that people find so attractive about the United States. He's going to sound very much like the leader of China, very much like the leader of Russia.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
He's going to be talking about global politics as if it's just a mercantile imperialistic competition over resources and power in which bigger countries crush smaller countries and we're no different from anybody else. And that, again, that squanders the main comparative advantage that we have with our adversaries.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
The main reason why anybody would want to be our ally, would want to follow us, would want to do anything to help us.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Well, they're, they're reeling and it's only been like, what, three weeks. Yeah. They're dealing with these tariff threats now and tariff realities. So I think the, the Europeans are now bracing. They know that they're probably going to be next. And the, the dilemma for, uh,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Anybody in the crosshairs is, do you stand up to it and say, well, we're going to retaliate and you're going to feel the pain just as much as we're going to feel the pain? Or do you try to make a face-saving deal in the way that Canada and Mexico did, where they give Trump a couple of crumbs and he gets to go back to his base and say, I won and they lost, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
but you avert the crisis that hurts people in your societies. And probably their first instinct will be try to do that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Yeah, my advice would be to, actually push back more strongly. I think it's pretty clear from the opening salvo against Mexico and Canada that Trump doesn't actually want the consequences of this fight, or at least he fears those consequences, because he completely backed down. at least initially.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
On the one hand, he feels compelled to do tariffs because he promised it and his base expects it and it makes them feel good. On the other hand, there are real consequences to the US economy and he would be held responsible for those consequences. So in a sense, my advice would be if you're a powerful, large, powerful economy like the EU, my advice would be to call his bluff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
And yes, you would feel some pain. Americans would feel tremendous pain. I hate to say this, but at some point, I think people are going to have to learn that a tariff is a tax on American consumers. A tariff is a tax on American manufacturers that it's lose, lose, lose all around. And, you know, if we just continue having these performative,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
outbursts, where it looks like he has threatened something and gotten something in return, then I think it just could continue to happen. And eventually, we're going to feel the pain anyway, as Canada has realized two weeks later.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
Well, so first of all, if I, if I were still in Congress, one of the things I'd be doing is asking the rules committee staff talking about dweebs in a good way to, um, Give me a deep dive on every single provision in the House rules that allows for what's known as a privileged vote or privileged resolution, which means that a single member of Congress can bring an issue before the House.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
It's privileged. That means it has to get a vote. Most bills you introduce are just like for messaging. They don't go anywhere, right? But where can you actually force a vote? And one of those rules is when the president declares an emergency,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
to do something like impose a sanction on a foreign country or impose tariffs because he used an emergency declaration to impose those tariffs or threaten them against Canada and Mexico.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
That's right. They did stay. So there are other ways of imposing tariffs, but when he uses a declaration of emergency, a single member of the House or Senate can bring forward a resolution to repeal that state of emergency. And there has to be a vote very, very quickly.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
So on tariffs, you know, I'm not sure if I would do this on China, but certainly on Canada, Mexico, the EU, I would absolutely force the Republicans to vote up or down on an action that is absolutely going to hurt workers, consumers, and manufacturers in their districts and in their states. And either you get a vote that actually defeats the tariff, Trump could veto it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems
So eventually, you know, he'll probably win that confrontation. But it either puts Republicans on the record against him, which is politically useful, or it forces them to hold their nose and vote for something that's going to hurt their constituents badly, and they will be punished for that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I mean, right. With that, by unanimous consent, I'd like to revise and extend my remarks. You know, Sacks is just, I mean, Sacks and Vance, and they're all part of this small circle of plutocrats who have convinced themselves that they are deep thinkers, that they are, you know, deep thinkers.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
geopolitical thinkers when in fact they are you know exactly like you know again the kid in your dorm at 2 a.m who says you know i i think or cliff claven at the end of the bar well uh let me uh let me explain to you how uh ukraine works here diane that's a good cliff claven Thank you. Well, you know, I'm from the area. It was such a dumb analogy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
For one thing, thousands of Americans were fighting and dying in Korea. Hello. My snarkiness and sarcasm fail me. So let me go into a more serious professor mode.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Let's count all the ways in which David Sachs was wrong. For one thing, Stalin and Mao cooked up this war.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And again, by the way, this was also a war that became possible, as we now know from, again, I'm sorry to be professorial, guys, but from documentary history, from Cold War documents that were released from the Soviet archives, that the thing that motivated Stalin to say yes, because he had said no to an invasion of the South repeatedly, it's when the Americans left.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
When the Americans left the peninsula, exactly everything that Sachs and others want us to do, that's when Stalin said, go for it. And they almost made it. They get all the way down to the Pusan perimeter. The north rolls to the very tip of South Korea. And the Americans, at the expenditure of great blood and treasure for two years, not only pushed them back, but reestablished the status quo ante.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
There wasn't like, okay, we're going to have an armistice and the North Koreans are going to keep an extra 200 miles. No, it went back to the 38th parallel. There was a demilitarized zone. And the Americans who had, I mean, South Korea is full of the bones of American servicemen. We're still there. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
It's just one of those things where I'm sure it must have, you know, while you were on your way to a meeting somewhere, you thought, hey, I just had a credo saying whatever they're doing out there. I don't I will not speculate. But but, you know, that that you you're walking down the hall and you're saying, hey, I just had a deep thought tweet. It's one of those things.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Well, again, you know, somewhere somebody's investing and watching all this and having the time of their life.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Again, Trump is going through and he's kind of checking boxes and paying dues, you know, of, yeah, if you help me get in, I'll set up all the schemes you guys can. I mean, Trump, in a way, I don't want people to attribute too much purposefulness to this, because I think what he's really doing is saying, I achieved the thing I needed to achieve.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
You and I talked about this on after the inauguration. I'm not in jail. Right. I've defeated all my legal cases. Thank you all. You may all now indulge yourselves. Just go do what you want. And I think that's what's happening. Hey, can you give us a crypto reserve?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
We're paying to get it and we're paying to administer holding it. And with all of the, you know, attendant risk. And, you know, for what? I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say, and I hold no crypto. So, you know, I am not in this game. It's a solution to a made up problem that benefits a very, I mean, this could, You could say this about a lot of Trump economic policies.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
A solution to a non-existent problem that benefits a very small number of people very handsomely.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I want to live in that alternate universe where Democrats did all this. where George Soros was brought in to like slash the government or Bill Gates or somebody. And, you know, that they set up a crypto fund with, you know, shady and shadowy, you know, figures on the left. I mean, they would be going, this would be deep state conspiracies. Biden has to go. I mean, it's just the double.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I know, you know, we've been doing this for 10 years, almost 10 years about the double standard, but it really, it really is remarkable.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
They got rid of everything with the word gay, including the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Japan.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
That plane flew over Japan wearing a fruit basket on its head like Carmen Miranda. Oh, my God. After I stop having fun with you, I got to get off the Internet and go write about this. And I don't even know where to start. I mean, it's it's like it's strangely homophobic. It's a cross between the closeted colonel in American Beauty and.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I wish I could go back and, you know, the Trump folks that I talked to just before the election and one in particular just swore to me, he's not going to do tariffs. That's, you know, that's just, and I said, he loves tariffs. This is, he is going to rattle the economy. This wasn't hard to see coming, but it was hard to predict both how fast and how completely nutty It is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Which everybody's been kind of crapping on lately, and I rewatched it the other day, and I was like, yeah, that's a pretty old homophobic trope, but also an element of truth in it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I was okay with it until that last scene with Mina Suvari, and I'm the dad of a... college-age girl, and I just didn't... I hear that. But I do love the last line of the movie, which is that I've loved every moment of my stupid life, which I thought is kind of a nice ending.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
But this whole DEI thing at the Defense Department is kind of like a cross between that and Homer Simpson in the John Waters episode where Marge comes home and he says, he didn't give you gay, did he? I mean, there is just this weird kind of... scrubbing of everything that is to be a little more serious about this. It's Stalinist. Yes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I mean, it's just kind of a Stalinist, you know, throw everything in the memory hole. And, you know, I say this as... especially as a longtime federal employee, to sit through a lot of the training and all the other stuff, I could have been a natural ally about too much DEI stuff. Some of these trainings are stupid.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I had to take a morning out of my life as a federal employee while a professor came in and tried to explain to people, I still remember this, there were guys much older than me sitting there, nodding, trying to figure out. She's going, okay, so this is what cis...
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
hetero means and i'm like oh for christ's sake you know we really have work to do today and you know okay i get it that's you could say look we're not gonna we're not gonna do that we're not gonna spend money on that but scrubbing the defense department archives to like make sure that somebody who you know was gay in the 1990 story or something gets like you know
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And Stalinist. That's the thing. There's a Stalinism to it. I mean, again, I could have – if Hegseth had had a quick press conference and said, listen, these things cost X dollars a year. We're not bringing any more guest speakers to explain to old retired colonels what it means to be cis. Fine. Fine. That was a waste of taxpayer money.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I mean, I'm not going to support Pete Hegseth, but I would have nodded and said, okay, I guess you could save a few bucks there. This is different. This is something really different and almost like it's a larger point. It shows you that MAGA world thinks of itself as this embattled minority.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Even though they control everything right now, they still think of themselves as like Christians hiding in the catacombs and drawing fish symbols on doors. And so while they have the power, they're going to set the timeline right. You know what I mean? Like, if only we can go back to 1989, the last time we had a real president and say, OK, we're going to just scrub the timeline.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Actually, a few folks have asked, who's out there who knows what he's about to do? If you have any inside information, it's a day trader's paradise. It's like, okay, there comes the tariff thing. Oh, now he's going to roll it back. Oh, now the market's back up. The one thing I remember you and I talking about, I remember cautioning and saying, well, Elon Musk, he doesn't have that much power yet.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
So none of this happened. And all the all the gay and trans soldiers will go away and everything will be OK again. And it'll be just like when I was a kid in 1966.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Or maybe a little bit of both. Even though I live in blue New England, this is word divided. You know, it's like 60, 40. And there is always this kind of, you know, I dare you to say something. Look, if you know, like, like the guys in the local supermarket here, you know, having these really loud conversations about John, it's like, all right, I guess I have to say something.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Can you move so I can get the butter? But there's almost this thirst for attention and engagement, these performative stunts that are almost like, pay attention to me, engage with me, listen to me. I mean, that's really unhealthy no matter what your politics are. you shouldn't be going to the grocery store to exhibit your politics.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And we, you and I, when we were concerned, we used to criticize the left about doing this and rightly so, you know, the people standing and saying, I'm buying the, you know, sustainable stuff that wasn't, you know, that was made by campesinos, you know, I mean, just, just buy your fucking coffee and go home. Well, you know,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I didn't imagine that Trump would deputize him to do this, that he would be able to pay Doge staffers six figure salaries. which just always proves the point that these folks aren't about getting rid of government waste. They just prefer that it goes to them. And that Congress and the courts would just say, okay, Article I doesn't operate anymore. The Appointments Clause doesn't operate anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Like, wow, Mr. Secretary, cheap goods. Let me take you to a magical place that you and I will go. It's called Walmart. Walmart. And that is central to the American dream, actually. We are going to go over to the TV section. And then we're going to go over to Best Buy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
and maybe stop you know at an aldi i mean it was just it was so tone deaf it was exactly the kind of thing a rich guy says on a private jet people don't care about cheap goods no you don't care about people are just looking to pull themselves up in the dude's heads and get a good job and i'm poor all that but like hey there's a lot of people out there that actually don't have the ambition or desire to become a rich guy with a house on sullivan's island i'm
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And they would like a 65 inch TV. That's their one thing in life that they're going to put in the man cave. It's very American, actually. Yeah. But it's Joe Biden's fault. I heard this was just before we started today. Kevin Hassett was on and he's like, yeah, these jobs numbers. No, they're good because they represent. I mean, he Kevin Hassett is really a kind of.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
you know, that genial smiling ability to just spin anything where he said, well, yeah, there was. But, you know, these were basically jobs that were created by Joe Biden and their government jobs. So really, the jobs report is just us. I mean, I'm not making this up, right? It's just us correcting the Joe Biden government jobs boom. Good luck with that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Again, you're going to have people in a lot of red parts of the country saying, I don't recall Joe Biden giving me this job. that I'm losing. And I think with the market going up and down, again, the rationalizations are incredible. Oh, well, buy the dip. It's a good time to buy. Okay, but if you're retired, it's not a good time to withdraw and say, I don't know, eat or warm your home.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
with what what's in your retirement it is a remarkable inability to ever criticize donald trump or even to say what you just said in a kind of measured way that you know the jobs report was kind of meh but there are some bad signs but it's not horrible but there's some clouds on the horizon and and instead you just get you know the leader is the leader is good the leader is great we surrender our will as of this date
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And you just got at something, Tim, which is all of this is happening. We talk about memory holes and Stalinism. All of this is happening as if Donald Trump had never been president. Yeah. Right? It's like, I'm finally going to make America great and end this terrible situation where you look familiar. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
You know, weren't you the... And, you know, we've got to do something with this terrible deal with Mexico.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
As with Ukraine, as with all the other things we've been talking about, you can't defend it without completely sort of staring into the middle distance while your body and your mind where your mind dissociates from your body like an accident victim. And you end up having to say things that you know are true. Just bonkers. I agree with you, but I disagree with you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I agree with you this is unsustainable in a normal world. In the first Trump term, we would say these things are unsustainable. And sure enough, Tillerson or Mattis or even Mnuchin or whoever would kind of say, all right, all right, we got it. But this bunch, this is just kind of –
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
A sort of, you know, looting the ship of state and pointing out that the masts are breaking and the ship is listing and we're taking on water. They're like, look, we don't care. We're just going to take as much stuff out of the hold as we can jump into little lifeboats and paddle away. And, you know, all the circuit breakers on this stuff are gone.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
The president can just pull a guy off the street and say, hey, go fire people. And the Constitution and the law just don't operate. That, I guess, surprised me a little bit.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And ironically, and I know, you know, people really enjoy the shot and for it about this, but these are our fellow citizens, you know, like the policies are not, these are our brothers and sisters as American citizens. The people that are going to really pay the price for this are ordinary Americans. And most of them are going to be Trump voters.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
It just astonishes me how much he punishes his own voters for,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Well, normally he pays attention to the markets, but in part because he had to pay attention to the markets because he wanted to get reelected. Now he doesn't have to care. I mean, now it's, am I doing good? Are my enemies yowling? Remember, you know this, Tim, the one rule in MAGA world that the test of a policy being good or bad is how loudly someone else yells about it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Normal is better than TikToks of female congressmen in fighting stances, which, you know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
No, no, no, no. I was cringing. I felt my cheeks get warm and embarrassment. We don't want that. It was bad, Tim. And again, it's bad. It's not just cringy. It's evidence of a kind of unseriousness. Like that's the kind of tick tock you put out when a normal Republican president says, I'm going to lower the minimum, the marginal tax rate from thirty seven point nine to thirty.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
We're going to fight. All right. We're going to fight that, you know. What I said, and I took some static, I took some grief from Democrats. Look, Senator Slotkin gave a very good speech. It was clear, it was direct, but it was a very 2017 speech.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And when I think about Democrats, you know, getting more into fighting trim, they really should ask, always take a number and put it out there to say, you know, fighting for working families, don't want to give tax cuts to plutocrats. Did you really vote to have Kash Patel run the FBI? Yes, in MAGA World, we know you did.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
But the voters were talking to, did you really vote for the, did you really vote for, to have the president of the United States publicly draw the link from autism to vaccines and put Bobby Kennedy in charge of it at HHS? Really? You have children. You voted for measles. Yeah, exactly.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And I think, you know, instead of saying, well, we have a different vision for jobs for the future, you know, is just, it doesn't move anything. It does in 19... It does in, you know, 2007. It does not do it now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
You know, I am always loathe to give. I'm not a Democrat, so I can't advise the Democratic Party. But no more TikToks and, you know, kind of seriousness about, you know, Both the policy issues, because part of the problem is that every time you challenge Trump on a policy issue, you realize that Trump doesn't care about policy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
So you end up sounding like a wonk and he ends up sounding entertaining.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
One of the things that I've got on my to-do list is to talk at some point about Trump's missile defense plans. which sound great, right? But if you want to talk about cutting government spending, we're not going to create a golden dome over America. It'll be billions and billions of dollars to defense contractors. It's not going to go anywhere.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I worked for a defense contractor that worked on the original Star Wars plan. I know something of those days. But I guess it's always a tough thing to tell Democrats that they should have more unified messaging because they're Democrats. And I don't know what the legislative response is, but to act...
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
like an article one power and to say, no, we're not going to allow, you know, we're going to put in bills, even if they die every time that they have to keep putting them out there and getting out and talking to the American people about the scary stuff. And I think they're loath to do that because they're,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Trump has been so effective at providing his surrogates with sneering, dismissive talking points. You say, listen, did you really vote to let Donald Trump leave the Ukrainian people defenseless? And then what they hear on Fox or wherever is Russia, Russia, Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia. Oh, it's Russia, Russia, Russia. You know, did you really vote for tariffs?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And, you know, then it's, again, this kind of Jedi mind trick of, well, it's not really tariffs. It's equality. It's fairness. And I think Democrats have just kind of thrown up their arms. Now, I'll say one last thing about this and get off that soapbox, Tim. There is a good argument, and I've made it myself. Let him drive the car off the cliff. Let him fuck everything up. Just bring the pain.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Let people experience what tariffs really do. I wrote this in his first term. I said, if people really want to trade more and they want to touch that hot stove, then let's get on with it and get it over with.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Cold and clear and sharp as a knife instead of, you know, kooky TikToks and ping pong paddles. I guess that's the most you can hope for.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And he had a French senator call him a buffoon on ketamine, which was also kind of put a little charisse on the top.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And being the richest guy in the world is not what's important to him anymore. I mean, that's the thing. You know, it's like Tesla could crash. SpaceX could and did blow up again. It doesn't matter to him. He is fine. I think you see this to go back to him and Sachs and Thiel and the others. It's like, look, we're not the rich nerds anymore. We're important. We matter. We have power.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I was watching an interview with Warren Buffett the other day, which was so reassuringly normal, but unlike somebody like Buffett. You know, for them, the money was never enough. It's about affirmation and self-actualization. And I don't think I don't think it matters to Musk.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I mean, I don't know the man, but I don't think it matters to him very much anymore if Tesla tanks or, you know, SpaceX doesn't work.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I guess I guess he could and he could say, fine, you know, I quit. I'm still there. I mean, all of this could go away. And it's still like Jeff Bezos. You know, everything could go wrong at The Washington Post. That's a rounding error in his pocket at this point. You know, all of these guys are fantastically wealthy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I'm telling you, they've to quote our friend Bill Kristol, you know, this level of wealth is starting to bring out my inner socialist side.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
We're going to have to go check the quote. But this is an object lesson in what happens when you are so fantastically wealthy beyond any comprehension in a normal capitalist economy that you become ungovernable. You say, do whatever you want. I don't care. I'll go buy an island. I'll be Mark Zuckerberg. I'll build a bunker. somewhere.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Good, Tim. Lily's sitting right here. She's waiting for her. She's waiting for her close up. So we may have a Lily sighting. All right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I don't know how you reason with folks like that other than to, again, take legal and legislative steps to basically curtail their power and say, no, the government is not your actual. I've been thinking about this. I'm going to totally jump tracks. I'm thinking about this because I've been watching a show called Paradise. Have All right, I won't ruin it for you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
It's what happens when multi-gazillionaires go completely nuts, and it's a fantastic series. So if anybody out there hasn't watched it yet, the first season is now over.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
It depends on what you mean by suffer. Financially, no. I think what Musk and the others really fear more than anything is ridicule. You know, like that's why they're in this game.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Dude, I'm not taking it away from you. And I actually think that there is a, I think that there are several people in this administration who are headed for some kind of major emotional break. sooner rather than later, because I think they're all in over their heads and working at an unsustainable pace beyond their already fairly limited talents. How's that?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And just to make the point that it's not about some sort of strategic calculation, he's also decided to send home Ukrainian refugees. He wants to take that refugee status away from them. You know, this is basically operating in concert with Putin. Vladimir Putin. My colleague David Frum had a great line.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
You know, the Trump-Russia theory is like now one of the most durable theories in political science because you're watching it play out in real time. You know, we're getting confirmation of it every day. Was there any... overwhelming strategic or American interest reason to do this? And the answer, of course, is no.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And it's amazing because MAGA World always reacts to this like, well, we have to bring our boys home. Yeah, right. It's like, what boys?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
It's not trying to achieve a just peace so that people stop dying. It's trying to achieve an unjust peace on Vladimir Putin's terms so that the people who do the dying are going to be mostly Ukrainians from here on out.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
To get across to your listeners just how astonishing this is, I'm going to go into, like, nuclear professor mode for a minute and say, you know, Remember that the French created their own nuclear force because they felt cut out of the U.S.-British kind of nuclear duomvirate, right, back in the 50s.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And they literally said, one of their leaders said, we can't have our security be at the sufferance of les Anglo-Saxons, you know, like France will have a nuclear force that is not for anybody but France. And they literally did things like they had a couple of ICBMs. They're gone now, but they had a couple of ICBMs.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
They put them on the French border so that they could say to the Russians, listen, you know, no matter what you do to the rest of Europe, once you roll in here, you're going to roll over these things and we're going to fire them. And that's separate from NATO and the Americans and their little cousins, the Brits and everything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
This has now turned everything on its head where the French, they haven't made a policy decision yet, but for France to say, okay, basically we'll take over as the nuclear guarantor of NATO. What? Wow. And considering that the French, you know, nuclear force is relatively small, that doesn't mean, you know, nuclear war fighting or tit for tat. I mean, that basically means that the, you know,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
if war comes and I shouldn't say if war comes, if Russia starts another war, that this is going to be the French, you know, responding to nuclear force with nuclear force. And it's going to be, You know, it's going to be World War Three. And the idea that somehow this will exclude us, that Americans will just say, OK, we're out of it. You know, that's that's not going to happen.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And because they don't want to get primaried. And because, you know, I keep thinking about Tom Tillis saying, well, you know, I got I wasn't going to vote for Agseth and I got threats, you know, like they're off the record. You know, you're hearing or unattributed. You're hearing Republicans saying things like, well, you know, I fear for my family and my staff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I think a lot of things have not surprised me because we lived through the first term, but also because he's doing what he said he would do. He's trying to get even and get revenge and troll the country with this bizarre slate of cabinet officials and letting Elon Musk loose on federal workers who were just trying to do their jobs. I think the speed with which
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And well, you know, I'm sorry, but if you're a senior U.S. senator and you're you're not going to vote your conscience down. Because you're afraid of Donald Trump and people in your district that go home. Don't be a senator anymore. You know, I'm sorry. You know, if it's that's and I understand.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
I mean, you know, everybody who's ever criticized Trump, including two guys sitting right here, has gotten death threats. It's just part of life in the 21st century with Donald Trump. But if you're a senior U.S. senator and you're saying, well, I couldn't really vote this way because I'm worried. Well, then. then come on home with the rest of us and just get out of that business.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
But I think the bigger issue is that they really just love being in Washington and they don't want to go home. I mean, Susan Collins, very concerned, very, very concerned. She's running again next year at 74 years old. For another six year term.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
So this kind of incredible amount of political cowardice and careerism and opportunism that says, yeah, in my heart, I know it's wrong to let all these people die under Russian bombardments. But, you know, I got a I'm 74 and I got to run next year. And, you know, my constituents are mad at me and we're getting ugly phone calls.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
And so, you know, that is not the Republican Party that you and I knew 30 years ago.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
That's the equivalent of holding up a little paddle. That's worse than holding up a paddle, actually.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Well, I mean, it was a setup. I mean, it shows you what J.D. Vance's real role is in this administration, which is sort of chief internet troll role. Hey, bring J.D. in and let him rile up Zelensky so that Trump can then say, I couldn't do it. He said he's disrespectful.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
But to know that you're just being brought in to be the kid throwing spitballs from the back row is really – it was just embarrassing. I felt a little nauseous watching it, but I could feel – I felt like – embarrassment by proxy. I was like, just, oh, my God, this is so these are grown men. I find myself with this administration so often just saying these are grown men and women acting this way.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Like these are these are adults. And it's pathetic. It's just it really is pathetic to say to watch people that are, you know, in middle age acting like they're 15 during study hall, you know, trying to piss off all the other kids. I mean, it's really astonishing. But I think, you know, once again, I mean, you know, I've criticized J.D. Vance. comprehensively.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
But I think it really brought home that, you know, Trump runs the country. All the lights are plugged into the Oval Office at this point, which means eventually it all breaks down because nobody can manage that way. Musk is his his number two, you know, running rampant. And J.D.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
He betrayed Ukraine was a little bit surprising. I thought he would sort of ease his way into that with, you know, Kellogg over going overseas and doing something shaky at the negotiating table. I didn't expect him to basically like just reorganize American foreign policy into a de facto alliance with Vladimir Putin.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
Vance is just brought in to like be, you know, the guy who is the living embodiment of of snarky tweets, petulance, petulance of snarky tweets.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0
It's Lent and I'm a Christian. I don't hate anyone. But I do have severe reservations.