Trump 2.0 is showing so little concern for his political standing that even Fox made primetime room for Karl Rove to vent about how he's failing at the fundamentals. Our aspiring Gaddafi doesn't care that tariffs aren't popular or that he sounds like Mr. Scrooge when he says kids should have fewer toys. And while belt-tightening is good enough for average Americans, he's throwing himself a giant, ostentatious military parade that will cost tens of millions of dollars. Plus, conservatives in the Anglosphere take another hit, this time down under—and thumbs-up for Maine Gov. Janet Mills, thumbs-down for Gretchen Whitmer. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Today's "Morning Shots" Jonathan's recent newsletter on Gretchen Whitmer The Atlantic's recent interview with Trump (gifted)
Chapter 1: Who is joining Tim Miller on the Bulwark Podcast today?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so we are back with editor-at-large of the Bulwark, Bulwark God King, Bill Kristol. What is up, Bill?
I don't get the God King deference and tributes often enough, frankly, so thank you for that. I agree with that. Thanks to Sarah, JBL, Sam. They're not really into that stuff. I don't know why.
I can be the one that throws roses at your feet, getting prostrate down in front of you. All right, well, let's just get into it. Chance Fest is over, so all my revelry is done. I ended up throwing me wolf last night, and so now I'm just back to the dire reality of... trying to read Trump's bleats and determine how seriously to take them.
You were out with a newsletter this morning that is sort of on this front about Trump's increasing megalomania, about how he wants to be the department store god king of America and the world. Why don't you just kind of summarize the argument that you're making?
Chapter 2: What is Bill Kristol's take on Trump's second term staff?
You know, I first was going to write about the staff, and I do write about that some. I'm very struck, if I could just begin with that, that, you know, in the first term, Who was bumped in the first month? Mike Flynn. Who was bumped in the first year? Steve Bannon. The crazies were, for a while, marginalized to some degree, to some degree. I don't want to overstate this.
And the normies kind of ran the show for the next two or three years, more or less, or at least were able to curb Trump, the Kellys and the Mattises. And so forth, right? So John Bolton, McMaster. In the second term, it's the opposite. I mean, I don't want to make too much of it, but some of it was just personality and idiocy and so forth.
But it is interesting, I think, the more I've thought about it, that Waltz was the first one to go. The most normal, probably, least sycophantic, least MAGA dedicated of the national security team. And I've talked to someone who says – I said, come on, it can't be Steve Miller as National Security Advisor.
And this person who's sort of in touch with MAGA adjacent world said, oh, absolutely, it could be. He's already in effect on the National Security Council. You can see that from that Signalgate chat, right, where Miller weighs in and says, I think what the president meant was this, and corrects Vance, incidentally, corrects the vice president. Miller is National Security Advisor.
So that's one half of it. Things are worse this second term than the first term because he's surrounded by sycophants and authoritarians, not at least –
half surrounded by semi normie accommodators and things are also worse but he's crazier i i sort of resisted that because i don't like the psychologizing of trump much i don't think i'm very good at it and i feel like it's better just to analyze what he's doing and how he's destroying our democracy and not get into his head too much but he's clearly more megalomaniacal it's all gone to his head don't you think i mean i first term he says in the interview i think was it
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Chapter 3: How does Trump's behavior compare between his first and second terms?
The Atlantic, first term, I ran the country. But this term, I'm running the country and the world. And I don't think there's any irony when he says that, you know?
I'm with you. We leave the Trump armchair psychologizing on the bulwark network to George Conway. I don't know whether or not he's crazy. Here's what I do. I think we can judge objectively, though. He definitely seems...
doesn't seem he definitely is more reckless about things right and and that could be because he's gotten more megalomaniacal certainly i mean he was already like the top 0.00001 percent of megalomaniacs in the entire world the first time around so could you up that level a little bit sure i guess maybe it's because he's more megalomaniacal I took to Sam about this a little bit over the weekend.
I think, though, part of it is he has a lack of care about his political standing. He feels like he already has won. He was worried about being in jail for a minute. Now he won again. Nobody believed him that he could win the first time. Nobody believed he'd win the second time. You know, nobody was at his second announcement except for brick wall suit. You know, Gates didn't even show up.
His kids didn't even show up, right? And so he's like, fuck it. I do think that there's like a recklessness about him that like when... Ashley Parker and Michael Shearer were asking him about, you know, his political standing and whether he's worried about the terrorists in the economy. He definitely just feel like he doesn't really care that much about the normal political ramifications.
And I think that does make him much, much more dangerous to the country. Maybe the one silver lining of that is it kind of means that he isn't really thinking about politics. doing a coup at the end, because if he was, maybe he'd be more concerned about his political standing. I don't know.
Now we're maybe getting a little too deep into the brain, but I think that is objectively true, that he is less concerned about normal political considerations than he was last time, and so less willing to be reined in by people around him, even if there were people around him to rein him in, which there aren't, as you pointed out.
Yeah, I mean, coming back in January 6th, look, he was counted out after that. And he probably thought that deep down, Jesus, maybe I botched this and I am not going to make it back. And then Kevin McCarthy showed up in Mar-a-Lago and everything fell into place. But as you say, it wasn't obvious he was going to crush DeSantis in late 22, early 23.
So then the assassination attempt, maybe, even psychologically. I've always discounted all the nonsense. You know, I was saved by God, but who knows what he thinks, right? I mean, I don't think he believes in God in a conventional way, but he could believe in his own fated dominance and destruction of the American political system. His own God-like, you know, whatever, traits.
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Chapter 4: Why is Trump planning a military parade?
And Trump seeing, I think, for him, more importantly, that it was his birthday as well, decided to go for the huge parade with him up there in the reviewing stand. I don't know. I don't know the history of this entirely. I could be wrong. I have the impression, certainly, Military parades are pretty rare in the U.S. and they tend to happen after a military victory.
The only one I've seen is the one after the Gulf, first Gulf War in 1991. And that was even a fairly modest thing. And there was even then at the time, should we be doing this? But I think for the first President Bush thought we got to, this is so long ago, we've got to shake the Vietnam syndrome so we can like be proud that we won this one.
in early 1991 and so there was a modest parade down pennsylvania avenue yeah this is not something that normally and they've been parades obviously after world war ii and so forth but this is not the kind of thing that normally happens and from arlington for people who don't know washington geography all the way over to the white house that's much longer than the inaugural parade or anything like that and the text it's going to be grotesque and trump will be there and i bet the rhetoric by june 14th will be more about trump's birthday and less about the u.s army's birthday
We also haven't won any wars. I mean, he's actually currently surrendering in a war. I mean, you know, I was a little child, so I do not remember the national victory celebration in 1991 that you referenced.
It was modern. I mean, that's the point. It wasn't, even if you hadn't been a little child, it was forgettable. And to Bush's credit, he sort of wanted to do it because he sort of wanted to show we weren't suffering from the Vietnam syndrome anymore, but it was not a big thing.
Yeah. Previously to that, it looks like 1946, New York City victory parade. I don't know. Trump was... Impressionable. Since he's 100 years old, he might have remembered that one. The point, I think, the whole thing is kind of grotesque and definitely feels more authoritarian than American.
But to this point, just about how it is not a result of some celebration of military success, it's centrally about him. Right.
Like, even if they try to position it as an army celebration, it is essentially about, like, him overseeing, you know, the power and the might and, you know, trying to, you know, menace foes and maybe menace, who knows, maybe menace Greenland, who he volunteered over the weekend that he does not want to rule out military conquest over. And like that element of it.
And, you know, I mean, like the branding side of it, like that is how the Trump brain works, right? That that is what this is. It's about a Trump USA branding exercise.
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Chapter 5: What is the controversy surrounding Trump's view on Alcatraz?
But I mean, all I'm saying is, I don't know how long it's been a museum, but it's like forever in my lifetime. I don't believe it's been, I think it was closed in the 60s or 70s or something. as a prison. So just the, I mean, it's all insane. Let's spend a fortune to rehab this thing into a prison so we can, what do we helicopter the people out there, take them out there on a boat for what?
Our prisons aren't secure enough elsewhere. I mean, it's all crazy, obviously, but he loves, he saw movies about Alcatraz when he was a kid. It was very Trump-like, right? And it was a big, it was a thing kind of in the 50s and 60s, Alcatraz, you know, the stories about it, the impregnable place you couldn't escape from. And he just likes that idea.
You have more prisons, bigger prisons, bigger walls. That's what Trump's all about.
Close 1963. It is, I mean, not, it's like, how seriously do you take this stuff? Like, it is noteworthy, right? Like, this is where the focus is. Like, we are, we're building this massive prison outside of San Salvador. He wants them to expand it. We want to rebuild our most famous prison here and, like, reopen it, right? Meanwhile...
There might be a little pain for small businesses, and kids might have to have fewer dolls and pencils than will. The whole thing put together, and we're going to have a military parade. You tie it all together, and it is the picture of...
I keep coming back to Libya because I feel like Gaddafi is my most, I think, acute comparison right now to Trump because Gaddafi was also very interested in the costuming and the branding. And it feels like a tin pot dictatorship where we're focusing on expanding our prisons. Possibly we're going to have to tighten the belt a little bit on the economy.
But we are going to have big ostentatious parades to celebrate the leader.
Yeah, totally. And even the terrorist stuff, I mean, it is a kind of autarky. We're going to not depend on these other countries. All the movies are going to be made here. That's sort of a piece with it too, don't you think? It's not quite the brutal side of it, but it's the kind of self-obsessed and insanely nativist side of it.
Yeah. I mean, he also wants to tear up foreign movies. It's unintelligible. Sonny Bunch wrote about it in the newsletter this morning. People want to read about it. I've gotten a couple of texts from Hollywood folks. So, you know, well, obviously, Hollywood folks are panicked because it's like, what does this cover? You know, does it cover movies that have multi shoots?
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Chapter 6: How are tariffs and foreign movies connected to Trump's policies?
It's like we export them to the rest of the world, as one knows if one ever travels and finds all these people who've watched all these American things, and everyone else is offering incentives to
film stuff elsewhere to catch up with us but even there those incentives end up helping you know american actors and american you know camera cameraman and so forth i mean it's not worth getting into as i said but it's it is it's utterly insane yeah yeah i do like how it's like the other countries are offering incentives and so we're gonna tear up we're not for tariffs i don't know if you understand really how incentives work but you did bankrupt a casino so that makes sense
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Chapter 7: What is Karl Rove's criticism of Trump on Fox News?
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash TheBullwark to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash TheBullwark. I want to go back to your comment earlier because I don't want to get lost on Stephen Miller as national security advisor. Let's think about that in the context of I'm breaking a rule, trigger warning, Trump's voice is coming.
Very briefly, I want to play Trump talking to Kristen Welker about the situation in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Are you any closer to reaching a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia? I hope so. I do believe we're closer with one party and maybe not as close with the other. But we'll have to see. I'd like to not say which one we're closer to. But we did do a deal for the American people that was good. We were able to.
get rare earth you know the europeans are getting paid back they have a loan we didn't biden just gave him 350 billion dollars he has no idea where the money is what happened and at least we'll in one form or another get our yeah i don't feel so foolish boy let's just dissect that a little bit so we we do have a deal with ukraine where we are taking a ransom back for helping them so we've got that done the rare earth you know we've got we've got our bounty
But we're trying to do a peace deal. There's one of the parties, it's a secret, which is not playing ball as much. It sure seems like he's talking about Russia there, right? Because he just did the deal with Ukraine, but he can't criticize Putin, never can criticize Putin as the junior partner in the relationship.
And it doesn't seem like there's really any evidence there that because Putin isn't going on with the PCO, that's going to change his attitude towards Ukraine because he goes on to continue insulting Ukraine and talking about how we wasted money there.
So I tie that into the Stephen Miller as National Security Advisor and Mike Waltz, whatever you think of him, as a quasi-traditional Republican being pushed out over to the UN. And it's like... I don't see much hope here.
I basically analyze that Trump is pivoting more towards the nationalists and that he's annoyed that his buddy Putin isn't doing what he wished, but that's not going to actually change the policy towards being tougher against Russia. Do you interpret it any differently than that?
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