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)
Full Episode
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?
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 –
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