The Bulwark Podcast
Bill Kristol: The Preposterous and Ridiculous Lies About the FBI
Mon, 06 Jan 2025
Kash Patel's Jan 6 lie requires FBI officials to have been able to see into the future: to *know* that Trump would lose in 2020 and then try to get Congress to reverse the election results. And they also would have to have known they could get thousands of people to attack the Capitol—just to make MAGA look bad. Are GOP senators really going to clear this conspiracy theorist extraordinaire to run the bureau? Plus, the martyrology around Jan 6 and the mass exodus of journalists from The Washington Post. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tom Jocelyn and Norm Eisen on Kash Sgt. Gonell's reflection on Jan 6 Michael Kruse on Al Gore and Mike Pence
Chapter 1: What are the programming notes for this episode?
All right. Hey, guys, a few programming notes on this January 6th anniversary. Before we get to Bill, the first, we are launching a newsletter this week focused on the Trump immigration regime. It's going to be led by Adrian Carrasquillo. Love Adrian. Been working with him for a long time. He's a great reporter and he's great for this. He knows the immigration beat.
He's been doing this for a while and just glad to have somebody of his caliber on one of what might be the most important or maybe top two or three most important issues. of the Trump administration. The newsletter is going to be called huddled masses. I'll be out twice a week. You can sign up at the Borg.com slash subscribe.
If you haven't former congressional candidate, John Avalon has been in the extended Borg fam for a while now has a new pod series. We're hosting called how to fix it. The first episode of this season is out on civics education. Some folks have given us feedback. They're looking for more off the news, solutions-oriented content. I totally get that.
And I'm glad John is going to be taking that on and providing it. So the first episode of that is already out, How to Fix It with John Avalon. Number three, we're leaning into YouTube this year. We've been leaning into it. But me and Sam and others are going to be doing some interviews and hot takes that don't fit the daily pod schedule. I know a lot of you guys are kind of in a routine.
I've got this routine with other pods where you've got your afternoon. It's a daily. And so when there are other things that don't really fit that schedule, either because of breaking news or because it's kind of a niche topic or somebody wrote an interesting article I want to go a little deeper on. We're going to be popping those up on YouTube.
So if you want more, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page. We'll also have a salutary announcement for somebody in the fam at the end of the pod. So please stick around for that. All right. Up next, it's Monday. So it's Bill Kristol.
Now we gather due to a selfish man's injured pride. and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States.
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Chapter 2: What happened on January 6th, 2021?
Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. Fairly or not, they'll be remembered for their role in the shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.
That was Mitt Romney four years ago today. It certainly raises some questions about how the participants of that insurrection will now be remembered. And it's Monday, so I've got Bill Kristol here to discuss. Bill, what do you think? Is that going to be their legacy? We're on the four-year anniversary here of the January 6th insurrection.
You know, I hope it's their legacy on the eight-year anniversary or ninth or tenth or eleventh. But right now, the leader of that insurrection, the inspirer of it, kind of the organizer, really, Donald J. Trump, is going to be inaugurated in two weeks as president of the United States.
His administration will be stuffed full of defenders, excusers, defenders, now cheerleaders for the January 6th insurrection and for the attempted coup that kind of preceded it for a couple of months within the government. And they're going to pardon Romney. Trump will pardon a lot of the January 6th. Romney might need a pardon in the next two weeks.
He'll prosecute Romney and Liz Cheney, who told the truth about January 6th, and will pardon the January 6th rioters. So four years ago and the day after among conservatives, not just Mitt Romney. But among all kinds of people, this was the, you know, the one thing that everyone repudiated. This was shameful for people like Trump. They were telling him this is going to ruin your reputation.
And everyone was walking away from it. And here we are four months later. And it's a you have to be an excuser slash defender of J6 of the insurrection to have a future in the Trump administration pretty much or in Republican politics. And they're they're running the country.
Yeah. And you get mocked for acting like it's a big deal. And it's like, oh, you guys are not over that now? That was four years ago. That's ancient history. You guys are still talking about that? We just have a ton of coverage on January 6th because we're not going to be cowed by their jeers. And I want to get through a couple of the different pieces because there's some interesting news as well.
But you led your morning newsletter with George Orwell saying restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is important to restate the obvious, I think, especially as memories start to fade. One of the guys we have writing on the site this morning is Sergeant Gannell, who's the Capitol Police officer who was defending the Capitol that day against the mob.
He writes this, this is the fourth anniversary of January 6th. This one hits harder than the other three and makes the moral injury far greater. What took place was an unforgivable cardinal sin, but clearly much of the country, including one of our political parties, has chosen to reward those who committed it. I do think it's valuable to spend time discussing the obvious about why that was bad.
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Chapter 3: What is Bill Kristol's perspective on the January 6th insurrection?
That's a very moving piece by Sartre Goodell, which people should read. And I found it moving and depressing, of course. You know, your friend Steve Bannon, who's smart and often, you know, actually sees around the corner a little more than some of his MAGA buddies. Two days after the...
insurrection on January 8th, 2021, he was already understanding that fighting for the interpretation of January 6th would be extremely important. He wanted to do some stuff in the last two weeks of the Trump presidency that didn't work out, further demonstrations and showing they weren't embarrassed by it. But he understood from the beginning that the definition of January 5th, 6th,
looking back, would be a defining thing going forward. And I think Trump had an instinct of that too, obviously, pretty early on and worked pretty hard on that for the last three or four years. And then so many others just capitulated and went along. And it is just extraordinary that when you do read the
what people said when it was fresh in people's minds and when they knew enough to know what had happened. And incidentally, it's not as if we've learned new things that have made it less horrible, less contemptible, less damaging what happened on January 6th. Quite the opposite.
We have the January 6th committee report, which trumps people hate, but which is none of its factual conclusions have really been challenged, which shows how much more was going on behind the scenes that we didn't quite know about, right, at the Justice Department and elsewhere. So people should be more upset by what Trump tried to do.
And it said he's managed, they've managed to really reverse the narrative.
Yeah. And to your point, Trump's instinct to defend himself was self-preservation, right? It was ego, right? Like versus what Bannon and others were doing were recognizing the potential consequences death of the movement, which should have been the death of the movement, right, that day.
You could do this for a million people, so I almost hate to pick on Eric Erickson, but his post that day was so jarring, to your point about where people's minds were in the moment, to remind people of that. Here's Eric Erickson at 3.02 on January 6th. Shoot the protesters. waive the rules, impeach, waive the rules, convict, waive the rules, deny the ability to run for election again.
It's just worth stating that because it's just so plainly stated, right? That it was not, this was not like, oh, only the never Trumpers, only MSNBC thought he should convict, right? It was people that were actively supporting Donald Trump, active members of the conservative movement, people that host conservative gatherings, MAGA gatherings,
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Chapter 4: How does Kash Patel's nomination relate to the FBI?
Chapter 5: What are the implications of the January 6th committee's findings?
There's been this conventional wisdom congeal that it's like, well, you know, Trump won and he won the popular vote. So what are you going to expect? Everybody just like that. You just got to go along now. And there's no actually actual reason for that. Right. I mean, all of these people that were elected to the Senate and the House could choose to reflect their own values or whatever.
Use of their state or district and say, you know, I will try to advance the parts of the agenda I agree with and speak out against those who are opposed. That was like the standard in 2017. They didn't end up acting on it in a lot of cases. That's how Marco Rubio said he was going to act. Remember running that he was a check on Trump at 17.
It's how the speaker at the time, Paul Ryan, said he was planning on acting on. During this period in 2017, you wrote for the newsletter last week about this within the context of Trumpism being fully triumphant.
And you're right that we're in this unprecedented moment where an utterly shameless demagogue at the head of authoritarian movement is in control of the executive branch and to a considerable degree, Congress, with a massive media infrastructure behind him, oligarchs supporting him, and with a demoralized opposition trying to prop up unsteady guardrails and how different that is
from 2017 when you know there was still it kind of even within the republican party these forces that were feeling him out trying to you know call balls and strikes um and all of this and you know you would think that this moment on this anniversary these pardons this would be a time to to call i never know how that metaphor works do you call a ball or do you call a strike when you do something bad to call a ball i guess you don't see it at all
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Chapter 6: How do recent pardons relate to Trump's actions?
Yeah, it's not as if they don't have access to putting out press releases or making statements or giving interviews. Today is January 6th. To my knowledge, I haven't exhaustively looked at what's happening on every cable network, obviously, or what's being put out by every senator in the House office. Is any Republican noticing that fact?
Is anyone saying, four years ago, we had this terrible moment? Even Mitch McConnell and people who spoke eloquently at the time, I don't know, maybe one or two of them as Republicans are saying things. I think Democrats are saying a fair amount, but... The ones who don't want to address it are memory hauling it and the others are excusing it and then sort of getting pretty close to celebrating it.
And they're the ones who are making all all the noise. And the most notable event, an event that was unprecedented in, I would say, modern American history, but maybe in American history, let's pretend it didn't happen. Very depressing. And incidentally, I mentioned that piece, I guess, the demoralized opposition.
President Biden had a little op-ed in the Washington Post this morning, which the spirit of it was good in the sense that he was saying, we can't forget it. We can't memory hole it. We need to call what happened. but he wrote it in a polite way. He's sort of tough on the people who attacked the Capitol, but he doesn't mention the name of the person who was behind the attack on the Capitol.
Donald Trump's name is nowhere in that. Now, I suppose from his point of view, he's two weeks from now, Donald Trump becomes president. He doesn't want to have a, he wants to have a polite transition. He'll attend the inauguration. It's more effective perhaps not to make it look like he's taking a shot at Trump. I'm sure that's what he tells, they tell themselves there in the White House, but
I mean, really? It reads weirdly. You read it, right? I mean, when you read it, it's like, well, there was this assault on the Capitol. Very bad, really terrible thing. We can't memory hole it. Like, why did this assault happen?
I mean, you know. I mean, the problem here is the man that sent them there and then the man that is planning to pardon them for their actions, actually. And so, like, that is the person we're focusing on. The forward-looking side of this... I think is also important.
And we have Tom Jocelyn who worked on the January 6th committee and Norm Eisen in the board this morning analyzing Cash Patel's interviews. And he gave, he had a very active podcasting career between his attempt to overthrow the government and now being nominated to run the FBI. Cash had a segment called Cash's Corner on the Epoch Times, just a conspiracy rag.
And I just want to play one clip from it.
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Chapter 7: What are the concerns about political loyalty within the Republican Party?
As you say, the quotes are amazing, and it's really worth looking at it, and really worth then saying, okay, this is not a case of a guy who wasn't really involved, but was on some show and didn't quarrel when some host said something. He was spending a lot of time pushing these conspiracies.
I mean, he had some credibility in MAGA World, but he had served in the Trump administration in various places. national security kind of related positions. Intelligence related. Intelligence related, right. He had dealt with the FBI. He before that had been in the Justice Department, I think, at the end of the Obama administration, actually.
And so he was a major figure in pushing this sort of stuff, much more than, I don't know, Other people who were just sort of reading talking points, you might say, from MAGA World, not that they should be excused either. Yeah, it's just unbelievable to nominate him as head of the FBI. I mean, he's unsuited for so many other reasons as well.
But the willingness to indulge in conspiracy theories, and ones that are derogatory is the word we're trying to say, you know, libelous, in effect, I mean, to the people in the institution you're taking over. I mean, he seems to want to say that Chris Wray who was Trump-appointed head of the FBI in 2017, and who has been serving for seven years, what can criticize decisions Chris Ray made?
Well, from both sides, probably. Is he really saying that Chris Ray, this was an FBI disinformation, deep state campaign, Launched by Chris Wray, that seems to be what he wants to say.
It might be nice if Chris Wray, who I think has already announced he's quitting before Faisal takes over, would say, I don't know, maybe it wouldn't help, but after he quits at least, that this man should not be the next FBI director.
Trump's entitled, Chris Wray might say, to have someone who didn't get in fights with Trump and who's sort of a fresh face and all this, not someone who's indulged in and propagated these kinds of really dangerous conspiracy theories. Yeah.
Or offer to testify against him or say that he lied or go in front of the committee and provide information. Because sometimes it's just worth just stating clearly what the conspiracy that Kash Patel is saying the FBI was involved with is. Because it just shows the preposterousness of it when you state it. out loud.
And I hope that there will be democratic senators during these confirmation hearings that take this process very seriously and walk it through with him. Because the theory that he's promoting is that the FBI knew that that Donald Trump would attempt to roll back his loss in the election. The FBI knew that Donald Trump was going to try to stop the steal, so to speak.
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Chapter 8: How does the media portray the January 6th events today?
Amidst a crowd on the mall that they could convince the crowd to storm the Capitol, attack police officers, shit on the Capitol, like raise Trump and Confederate flags, do all of these things that would then undermine the movement. Like that's the theory. And it's like, it's nonsensical. It makes no sense. There's no, there are all these things that you would have to know about.
you know, in advance, like for starters, that the people would go along with this, right? Like imagine yourself being at a protest and having a person on your side being like, Tim, you know, I'm trying to think of the last protest I was at. I was at some gay rights protests around the, you know, Supreme Court rulings.
And it's like, you know, you had some people in rainbow hats that are like, Tim, what we really should do is storm the Capitol and, you know, storm the offices of the anti-gay marriage officials. I'd be like, what are you talking about? So, like, the idea that this plot would actually work, even if they had conceived of it, is preposterous.
And now that the man that is perpetrating this is set to lead the FBI, it leads to all of these questions. And you have John Thune on the Sunday shows this weekend. Talking about how, well, yeah, the FBI could use some reform. And so I'm actually, I'm pretty confident that you're going to have cash in there.
I would like to know from John Thune, is this the kind of reform that you think it is needed? You want somebody that perpetrated a lie about the FBI officials and said that they were part of a anti-American insurrection effort? Like you want, that's the type of reform you're looking for?
You want somebody that is going to try to target political foes, that's going to make up things about people like Ray Epps, like frame random Americans? You want someone that's going to try to frame random Americans and publicly accuse them of being part of a plot with no evidence? That's the person that you want at the charge of the FBI, John Thune?
The whole thing is just ridiculous on its face. And I do feel like it's almost so ridiculous that people don't know how to deal, like journalists don't know how to deal with it. And Republicans are getting away with excusing it in a way that I really hope does not happen over the next few weeks. Sorry for my rant there.
No, that was very good. And I, John, wasn't John Thune, the guy people sort of happy to see when the majority leadership, because he was the least Trumpy of the three candidates. He's not exactly, let's see if he stands up at all. I mean, we Democratic senators, I hope do a serious job on the question.
I hope a few Republicans think maybe they should think of themselves as United States senators and not simply Republican party apparatchiks loyal to Trump. And, and especially in these national security issues. And law enforcement jobs, if they want to give Trump some, you know, ridiculous education secretary, what's her name? Linda McMahon.
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