The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1014: Adam Kinzinger: Mortal Damage to the American Empire
Fri, 04 Apr 2025
It's been great to live in America since World War II, but Trump is in the process of blowing up that whole order. Even Canada is looking to lead a new alliance, because how can other countries trust us after voters put the stupidest convicted American back in charge? And never forget that Russia is not on the tariff list—despite the fact that the US does more trade with Russia than a number of other countries on the list. Meanwhile, Trump opted to head to a golf tournament instead of attending the dignified return of the four dead servicemen who were killed in Lithuania. Plus, 9/11 truther Laura Loomer is running the National Security Council and we're still bombing the Houthis. Adam Kinzinger joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Video of Lithuanians paying homage to the four American soldiers who died in a training accident Tim's playlist
Chapter 1: Who is Adam Kinzinger and what is the focus of this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Could not have a better day to bring back our friend. He's a former Republican congressman from Illinois. He served in the Air Force during Iraq and Afghanistan. He's the founder of Country First, and he writes a Substack newsletter. And he's got to turn off his notifications. It's Adam Kinzinger. What's happening?
Buddy, what's going on? How are you? Thanks for having me on the day when the... Stock market collapses. That's a good day to have me. Thanks for saying that.
Yeah, nothing happening. You know, we just have like MAGA conspiracy blogger, white nationalists running the National Security Council and the stock market collapsing, global economic crisis, the Canadians dunking on us. Nothing, nothing much to talk about. So we'll get into all that. But I wanted to start, you texted me yesterday, this clip and we're nineties kids, you know?
So, so Ferris Bueller's day off was obviously pretty formative. I don't know how old you were, but you know, when I was, When I was 11 or 12, getting into my troublemaking phase, catching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on home video. I don't think I'm quite old enough to – I didn't see it in the theater.
I was born in 78, so however old that makes me. You probably saw it in the theater then. I did, brother. I saw it. We were rebels back then.
Well, it's funny. In that movie, Ben Stein, who has now become a big Trumper, gave the class a lecture on a topic and – The elder millennials and young Gen Xers among us will remember what it was. But for everybody else, let's take a listen to Ben Stein speaking to Ferris Bueller's class.
In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone? The Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? A tariff bill, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which... Anyone raised or lowered, raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government? Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects?
It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.
It did not work. Smoot-Hawley, actually.
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Chapter 2: How does the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act relate to current events?
I mean, that's crazy that that is real. You know, I mean, we made mistake Vietnam or Iraq or whatever, but Canada wasn't out there being like, it seems like US has joined the baddies. And so we got to find a new alliance. That is a new thing that's hard to change.
Yeah. And by the way, one of the great ironies is the conservatives were set to crush it in Canada. And that's not the case anymore because of Trump. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a smart speech. And here's the thing. What the moguls will tell you is, well, this is really good because we've always wanted the world to step up and do more. And that's not really true.
Now, first off, I mean, yes, we will always want to drew up to spend more on defense. That's important. We haven't wanted Europe to basically become a competitor to us, kick us out of the realm and basically be a competition because listen,
When the United States, for instance, liberated South Korea, when we took down the Nazis, we took down the Japanese, we invested a ton of money in rebuilding those economies. And we've gotten that back 100, 200, maybe even 1,000 times of what we've invested because we have great trade relationships. Obviously, Samsung, you think in South Korea, you think of BMW in Germany, whatever.
All this stuff has been beneficial to us. We get to write the rules of trade for the world. We get to be the ones to determine freedom of navigation of the seas. This is one of the things that annoyed me about the Signal chat more than anything. J.D. Vance on there talking about how basically Europe needs to be cleaning up the Red Sea and the Houthis.
And, you know, stupid Pete Hegseth agreeing with it. Well, guess what? The United States Navy has always claimed to be the ones that are going to enforce freedom of navigation of the seas. And by the way, every time we've bombed the Houthis up until the Trump administration, sometimes the French and always the British have been with us. to help in those bombings.
But instead, we have basically said to the countries in the past, we are going to be in charge of freedom of navigation. It's been beneficial to us. And now all of a sudden, we're mad at Europe for not doing it, even though we said this was our responsibility. And so what we're doing is we're giving up these leverage. Look, I get it. The United States is a very generous country.
And I honestly think we benefit from that generosity. But if you think that for 200 years we've built this post-World War II order out of generosity and not because it does good things for us, you're insane. This is amazing for us, and we're blowing it up because somebody on Fox News wants to go on and make a five-second cheap line about how Europe needs to pull its own weight. And it's insane.
And by the way, European – If you are invested in the American defense industry, look, I'm not giving you advice, but I would say get the F out of it. Because American defense industry, a good percent of its weapons go to Europe. Europe has made it clear that they're going to buy European weapons now and get off American weapons. Portugal. just canceled the purchase of the F-35.
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