Bill Kristol: Voters Are Realizing Trump Doesn’t Care About Them

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Limited time only, price and participation may vary, cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal. with an either offer or a combo meal. Ba da ba ba. Hello and welcome to the Bollard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So of course we have editor at large author of the morning shots newsletter, a Bill Crystal. You had some almost optimistic notes in the newsletter this morning, I guess. If bad news for Trump is good news for America and the pro-democracy movement, you're focused on the polls. But you framed Trump's bad poll numbers up first by talking about what's happened out here in Louisiana. So let's start there. Bill Cassidy finished third in the Senate primary gear. I should note quick aside for the Louisiana people, Jeff Landry put five ballot initiatives on the ballot. All went down. No, no, no, no, no. So I think that's another good sign about where things are politically in the country. But Lindsey Graham said over the weekend about Cassidy's loss, if you try to destroy President Trump, you're going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump. And that in itself may be the problem. Talk about what you, your little meditation on the newsletter on that. It's just kind of amazing, isn't it? That a Republican Senator been in the Senate quite a long time, the House before it, presumably has some attachment to the broader party, its principles ran against Trump, obviously in 2015, 2016. Just says it's the party of Trump. And he's not saying it regretfully or sort of sadly or in a melancholy way. That's just a fact. And you know what politics is about? And politics is about is adjusting to whoever's in power and just sucking up to him shamelessly no matter what he does. So Bill Cass, I don't know if Lindsey was close, is close to Bill Cassidy. They've served together quite a long time. But no, no regrets. He goes down because he voted five years ago to impeach Trump for what he clearly deserved to be impeached for the January 6th insurrection. Cassidy, unfortunately, then spent the next five years basically sucking up to Trump. So I have limited sympathy for him, honestly, including of course, the key vote to confirm Robert of Kennedy, Jr. and before the committee, which I guess Cassidy's chair is right, the health committee. Anyway, so yes. So that's, it is the party of Trump. Talk about Louisiana for a minute or two. Yeah, it is kind of interesting, right? I mean, yeah, look, I mean, Cassidy goes down basically only wins some districts around New Orleans, which is basically, I don't know, our people probably holding their nose and voting for him essentially at a gathering on Saturday where a couple of people said that, you know, they were in there. We have the best I voted stickers here in Louisiana. That's a little crawfish, you know, looking all of us with those little snappers talking about voting and a couple of them had it on. And I was like, what did you decide to do? And several of them just said that they, I hate Bill Cassidy, but they're like, well, at the end of the day, you know, we know that whoever Trump endorses will just do literally whatever he wants. And maybe Cassidy will go back to being independent after he wins again. I'm not excited about that, but there's no other good option, but not much sympathy for that view and the rest of the state. But I don't know, I thought that the ballot initiatives were telling, you know, they weren't particularly close. And if you look at the turnout and in the deep South, it's sometimes a little hard to look at turnout based on voter registration, because there's still some like basically elderly Republicans who were Democrats, you know, back in the civil, you know, back in the 90s racist Democrats, Southern Democrats who just never changed their party identification, actually registration. But now that they've closed primaries, you assume most people would like choose the party that they're actually in and re-register. And it was only like 8% more Republicans than Democrats voted, which is about a 12% swing. If you kind of mapped that onto the election in the fall, it wouldn't mean that Louisiana would have a Democratic senator, but it would be maybe Texas or Iowa would if there's a 12 point move towards the Democrats. So I thought it was pretty, in that sense, pretty telling, you know, not to be happy about here in Louisiana. I mean, they canceled the House elections because they're trying to steal a House seat. But like the broader dynamics, I think, are pretty clearly at play. And this is like what you get into. If you look at the numbers, CNN approval out this morning, CNN New York Times, Trump approved 37, disapprove 59, CBS, Trump approved 37, disapprove 63. I thought interestingly in the CBS poll, they asked Trump's favorability on the economy even lower than his overall favorability, 30% favorability on the economy. Now we're getting down towards that tricky decline at 30%. So I don't know, what would you make of all that? No, I think the polls are really striking. They're both good polls. And you always want to compare apples to apples. So what you compare them to previous polls by the same outfit, the same organizations. The CBS poll has the approvals ticked down a point and the disapprovals ticked up a point each month. And a point's not much. It's frustratingly slow. It has, but the last half of 2025, Trump was very stable, basically at around 41, 59, within a point, literally either way, cut up just up and down. Then in January this year, he was 41, 59, then 40, 60, 39, 61, 38, 62, and by May, 37, 63. Kind of a trend line, I think. And again, confirmed by other trend lines, including this morning's New York Times, which, let's see, that had Trump. Trump was within two points, I think, in the last September, an approval disapprove gap. And then it opened up some in January, February, I think was the next one. And now it's 37, 59. So Trump has gone down in the New York Times poll as well. So the trends are similar in almost every poll, 37% approval in those two polls, 38, 39%. If you look at the big averages now, which includes some lagging polls, I would say, the New York Times average and the state's silver average. I mean, that's very bad for the midterms. There's a lot of political science data on this. Ron Brownstein spends all his time combating about it in a very intelligent way. Republicans running for Congress will win some Trump disapprovers. There's no question there are some people who say I disapprove of Trump, but I'm still one of a Republican member of Congress. But when you're having a midterm election, when the president's party has controlled both houses of Congress, so it becomes a referendum on do you want a Congress to continue to go along with the president or to check the president, you don't win that many usually if you're disapprovers. Ron says it's about 10% normally if you look at the polls on election day. And especially, and this is what gets to the Lindsey Graham comment, if the party is just tied at the hip with Trump, it's one thing if you have a whole lot of independent members of Congress and they have their own identity, their own brand, and voters can tell themselves, sort of what you said it by Cassidy, but that was more wishful thinking, right? But even so, Cassidy was one of the four or five most dissidents I suppose Republican members of the Senate, the others, Marshall in Kansas and either Pax that or Corned for that matter at this point, have not shown much dissidence at all. And that would be true in other states as well. So I really do think in the house races obviously. So I think the degree to which Trump at 37 means a good Democratic year this November, that can't be overstated. And this trend remains down. Incidentally, Trump could bounce back some of the 37. I expect these trends never go entirely in one direction for 10 months, you know, there'll be some uptick one month of a point, but it just is likely he'll be lower than 37 and higher, especially if you think about the real world, what's the things going to get better in the economy in the next five, six, five months? I'm kind of doubtful, right? So it's the corruption going to get less obvious. So one last point just on the CBS poll, which is what I looked at more closely the Times poll came up very early this morning and I was already writing about CBS, but does Trump care about people like you was terrible for Trump? This is pretty interesting. How much do you think Donald Trump cares about the needs and problems of people like you? A lot 18% some 17%. So 35% cares about you, not much 14% not at all 51%. 35, 65. That's been a Trump strength caring about people like you, right? I mean, that's so man, 51% doesn't care about you at all 52% strongly disapprove. That's a very big hill to climb for the Republicans. It is indeed. The only countervailing point to that maybe we'll do a little bit more on this at the end, but I just I just want to flag this is that time, Ciena poll asked people for views of the Democratic Party and it was worse than Trump 2670 26 satisfied 70 dissatisfied. Now a big part of that is Democrats being dissatisfied by that the Democrats aren't fighting hard enough. So it's a little bit overstated. I don't have in front of me, but like among Kamala Harris voters, it was like 46% disapprove of the Democratic Party or something like that. Like it's just a massive number. It's a little worse than it actually is. I think I think it's people who are perfectly satisfied to actually vote for Democrats, but are satisfied with the capital D Democratic Party or but are unsatisfied with the capital D Democratic Party for that matter. But even still, I think that's the one cautionary note to probably won't play out this fall, but I just think the Democrats really need to grapple it seriously that 70% of the country is dissatisfied with them. Now that's a huge 2027 2028 issue for the Democrats when you're actually talking about choosing a president and choosing a Congress to govern as opposed to putting some people in there to check Trump. The proof that it can be overcome at 26 is that in that actual time, Seattle, the generic ballot is plus 11 Democrat. I don't know, it's kind of comical, right? You know, we hate the Democratic Party. Oh, no, plus 11 Democrats this fall. But it's perfectly reasonable. It's perfectly rational, right? You got all kinds of issues to the Democrats that are progressive and progressive enough. I don't like this guy or that one. You know, they need to take to more in this issue. That issue doesn't matter. They're not going to be able to pass stuff on with anything in the next two years. They can check Trump. And so it really is about Trump. So the one piece of advice for the Democrats, therefore, is keep the focus on Trump. Make the 2026 midterm about Trump. Force the Republican members of Congress to vote, to defend the most unpopular things Trump is doing over and over and over. And I think those unpopular things can range from serious unpopular things, the war and the like, to the ballroom and all the symbolic things that show Trump doesn't care about you and he's just obsessed with himself. So that is my strategic advice to Democrats. Forget about yourself. Make it all about Trump. One other thing related to Trump's political power with his own party is Thomas Massie's primary in Kentucky 4 is tomorrow. I've been discussing this a lot. Just wanted to flag it again. His poll number is looking better than Cassidy's, I think in part because he has his own political brand and he's always been a bit of a gadfly, a really extreme libertarian. And the polls have been pretty interesting in that race. Like basically they show that everybody under 55 is for Massie, but that his MAGA AI bought opponent is winning Fosher Assad level numbers among like 65 plus MAGA Kentuckians who are spending all day watching Fox News and reading Facebook. That's not a great place to be in a Republican primary. You probably want to be doing better among the 65 pluses. So Massie might go the way of Cassidy, but I do think the race is interesting because it's the first time that somebody has really bucked Trump, held the line, didn't do it at Cassidy did. I mean Massie continues to be conservative and vote with Trump and what they agree, but he's not sucking up to him. He's not doing apologia. He bucked Trump on a couple of issues, has not strayed, and then has ran a vigorous campaign to win against him, which Liz Cheney would qualify for that up to the last point. Liz Cheney kind of gave up on her real election campaign. If we can be real honest about it, like Massie really is trying to win this race. They've put huge money is going in against him, APAC and MAGA Inc. money, most expensive primary in history, trying to kill Thomas Massie. And somehow he's still close. I think probably what happens is he loses close, but you know, even a close loss, it's kind of a Pyrrhic victory. There's the horseshoes and hand grenades element to that. I don't know. It would be something to be said for the fact that somebody bucks Trump, stands up to him and still gets 40% in a primary. It would mark at least some shift from where we've been, where everybody who bucked him and got just actually annihilated in Republican primaries before this. Yeah, I agree. And the issue in which he bucked him most conspicuously at first, I guess really, was Epstein. Correct. And so I think it would show a little bit also, because, you know, he's not voted to impeach Trump. He's not voted against, you know, whatever, some of the other obvious places you could split with Trump. Now he's in political war unhappy with Trump and Mike Johnson generally. So there are some other issues he's bucking him on. His war powers is the other one, the war in the office. He has been a libertarian Rand Paul type on that. So Epstein in the war, those are pretty big. If Massie were to win or even come very, very close, suggest there's real potency among Republican voters. Now, how many Massie voters are going to vote Democratic in Kentucky for? Probably not a huge number, but elsewhere and statewide in some places. I think that's the Massie vote becomes sort of interesting. All right, y'all. It's the Monday morning podcast when the term brain fog is the most resident with me. I'm making the editors do a little extra work on Mondays as I, you know, get about 10% of the facts wrong when I'm talking on the podcast. And that's where mudwater comes in. The original blend is a coffee alternative made with cacao, chai, turmeric, and functional mushrooms like lion's mane and reishi. You get a warm focus boost without the wired buzz or the midday crash that usually tags along with a cup of coffee. 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For Iran, the clock is ticking and they better get moving fast, all caps, or there won't be anything left of them. I talked about the boy who cried wolf. Trump has been bleeding about ending Iranian civilization for like six weeks now without doing anything extremely humiliating and weak. The general Jack Keane was on Fox this morning. He said that he thinks we're on the cusp of returning to full throttle combat operations. I think that is an interesting note. I mean, he obviously hears from people in the Trump military establishment and he's doing it on Fox. This is not idle speculation. That's something to keep an eye on. What's your sense on where we're at? Just what you say. I think Jack Keane is in touch with people in the administration, including up to the very top. I think he also wishes, he has the sort of, I don't know, even to call it the view at this point, I was going to say more traditional hawkish food, but I don't really give away the hawkish thing to that. He has a certain not crazy view that once you start this kind of thing, you sort of have to finish it and leaving the straight Iran's mercy, the straight-and-form moves at Iran's mercy is even worse than whatever the downsides of starting the war again are. I don't agree with that. I think leaving the straight Iran's mercy is bad, but Trump's already sort of made that bad for himself and for us, unfortunately. The idea of starting up the war with Iran then retaliating against the entire neighborhood and God knows what happens then to energy capacity, I just think that's even worse. But yeah, Keane is not someone to just pop off. There must be serious people within the administration and serious people who are talking to Trump saying, you can't let this just, you do need to go back in. I assume it would be big bombing, not ground troops, but what if the big bombing doesn't work after a week or what if the big bombing starts and then Iran takes out some Qatari and UAE energy places and probably hits maybe a US base or two, I hope not. Then what does Trump do? It's unbelievable he's got himself in this place. The fact that we're having this discussion is such an unbelievable dereliction of duty by the president of the United States to get him aside. People make foreign policy mistakes and they get into things they shouldn't have and they go down past they shouldn't have and they have tough choices then about getting out or staying in. But did he has gotten into this through idiocy and bluster and letting, I guess, Hakeseth persuade him that it was all going great and of course no one wants to help us at this point. Why should they? We haven't helped anyone else or let anyone else even know what we're doing. Also to go with, Jack Keane can say he's going to come back in. I don't know, doing it at this level of public support, that's not quite a constitutional crisis, real crisis of governance. I do think he, I mean, well, I'll ask you, do you think he would hold Republicans out of war powers vote if we go back in in a huge way? I think probably once more. I think they'd probably give him one more go to try to get out of the mess he made. That's my feeling, but I don't know how much longer it could hold because, like you said, and it's just mind bogglingly stupid that he's gotten himself into the situation and there's the old line of don't throw good money after bad. That would be my mind, the Republicans, but I think that they would probably feel like they're in it with him now. And maybe one more push could make the situation better than the status quo. So I think they probably would stick with him once more, but I can't imagine much longer because the unrest is real around the war. I want to ask you, I don't do this very often, to put on your neocon weekly standard hat again for one second, because imagine what Republicans, what Fox, what the standard, what the entire media apparatus of the right would be saying if this was Barack Obama. And Barack Obama had made a threat to a nation such as Iran. It was like, we are going to obliterate you if you don't fold and then they don't fold and then he does nothing. And then he makes a threat again and they don't fold and he does nothing and he makes a threat again and they don't fold and he does nothing. I just, Obama would be mercilessly mocked as humiliating and weak by the right-wing media infrastructure. And that hasn't really been happening on the left. And I guess I'm wondering if you, do you agree with that assessment that that's what would happen? And how do you square that? I certainly agree that it would happen. It did happen. And when Obama said we have a red line in Syria after Assad used chemical weapons in 2013, he then backed off pretty ignominiously. We thought that was terrible. I think we were right, incidentally. I think it led to all kinds of signals to Putin for 2014 that he could go into Ukraine without us doing anything. The Syrian civil war led to the migration crisis of 2015, which had all kinds of horrible effects for the humans involved, obviously, but also politically in Europe and back here. Again, if he'd never said red line in Syria, maybe one thing, but saying it, repeating it even, I think once or twice, saying he might even go to the hill for authorization, then just backing off very bad. And so I think we had a real time example of that we all would have to go crazy. And I think in that case, correctly. So you think the left hasn't gone as crazy about, I don't know. Well, they're more just anti-war, right? So then they are saying he never should have done this in the first place. It's unconstitutional. It's unauthorized. It's foolish. It's another endless Middle East war. But also he's weak. He's weak. He's soft-handed and weak in a coward. I think that this would have already set in if this was Carter, Obama, or Biden, this idea that this is a display of American weakness. I've said this before on the pod, so just briefly. Part of it is I think that some Democrats and responsible commentators are afraid to egg him on. And by calling him weak, he might do something crazy. But I don't know. I'm kind of with the view that we should not self-censor out of fear that the irrational president that got elected might get his feelings heard and do something crazy. I don't know. And I think that on the face of it, he is weak and he's displayed astonishing weakness. I mean, this makes the Obama red line thing look like child's play by comparison. I want to run through just two other foreign policy things real quick. Ukraine successfully attacked inside Moscow this weekend. Very interesting. Attacked a oil refinery in Moscow, big crackdown in Russia on people sharing video of what's happening there. It's, I think, a notable change in the prosecution of the war there and shows, once again, Ukraine being more on the front foot. It's interesting to me, and I wanted to bring it up because there are two kind of ancillary effects. Russia's oil capacity being limited also impacts this kind of global oil market that's being stifled by the straight-of-form moves being closed and could contribute even more to an energy spike. And simultaneously, it does in some way feel like Ukraine, like Trump's backing away from this, which is backing away from being involved and being now preoccupied in Iran and doing the China summit, which I want to get to next, does seem to have given Ukraine a little bit of a sense of, okay, well, we don't have to not do something because we're worried that the Americans are going to give us a tisk or not provide weapons that we need or whatever. And I think that that's a meaningful change in the state of play. I very much agree. The Europeans are now providing the aid. And so that's one point, I don't know if I discussed this last week briefly, but Phillip Rodney made this point in the conversation I had with him. Orban's defeat was very important in this practical way. He was blocking $90 billion of EU aid to Ukraine, which is now there, which probably is what they need for the next year. So they'd be much better off with more American aid too. And there are some American weapons that can't be replaced. And they've adjusted so impressively. I mean, what Ukraine's done pretty amazing, honestly. So yeah, now they're more, they're liberated from sort of having to be nice to worry about Trump. I never would have thought, I've got to say, I've been in Washington a long time, you know, the EU is fine with the Ukraine being aggressed. The Europeans, the wimpy, pacifist, welfare state, living in, you know, their own little Disneyland there, Europeans, you know, can't spend any money on defense. They're giving a lot of money to Ukraine and are not limiting what Ukraine can do very much, if at all. And we are sitting here not helping them at all and blustering against Iran without being able to reopen the trade of our moves. I mean, it is a pretty, it springs home in a way how massive the transformation of the world has been. For the worse, mostly, they still worry a lot that without the US is the core of the alliance. It's going to be tough for the Europeans to keep it going in this way with Ukraine. But so far, I give them a lot of credit. And, but again, it shows how much things have changed, doesn't it? Hey, everybody, you guys are all asking me, so you're aware that I'm juggling a extremely intense work life with the fact that I'm a social bee, I'm a social butterfly. And so, I have an active social life as well. And one way to balance those things is on school nights, you know, to not go out and have alcohol, because that might lead to not my best board podcast performance. So one thing I've been turning to when I've got friends in town, like I had Kam Kasky in town this weekend, is to have a few out of office beverages from our friends at Sol. Sol is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp drive CBD and THC products designed to make feeling good simple. Sol's new mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable effects. 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Trump is there trying to save space this morning with some like minor announcements about trade cooperation changes. But for all intents and purposes, Trump goes to China, brings all the American CEOs, doesn't really have an agenda or goals that they want to achieve, doesn't really get anything out of it, gives just over the top praise to Xi, just like a sequious treatment of Chairman Xi by Trump. You know, talking about what an honor it is to see him, what a strong leader he is and how handsome he is. And he's straight out of central casting, he's tall. It's like five, nine or something. It's not that tall. I don't know. And anyway, so Trump is just really over the top praise of him. And on the other hand, it was not really reciprocated that much. And China held very firm on Taiwan and was very clear that they did not want the Americans interfering with Taiwan. Trump waffled on that. No progress was made on Iran. And to me, you go have this, go to the summit amidst this Iran where you started and China has as dealings with Iran economically and otherwise. And so you might think that the president would want to put pressure on China to put pressure on Iran in order to gain concessions. None of that. It was basically nothing. And I don't know, I just don't see how you look at the summit any other way than China demonstrating kind of upward mobility and strength on the world stage vis-a-vis America. Yeah, totally. I mean, everyone's taking it that way around the world from what I've been, what I can make out, what I've been reading and reading accounts of what other people are reading in Europe and Asia too. I mean, really very bad for the US. China wanted it to be a meeting of two equals, two partners, two peers. Trump was fine with that, except not, which is already terrible, honestly, except China is also the much more forceful and stronger peer because on these two key issues on Iran, China made clear they're not going to stop buying oil from Iran. And if I'm not mistaken, a few tankers came out from Iran to Teddi to China out of the Gulf. We don't seem to have stopped them right when Trump was there, which is as he was arriving in China. So they kind of signaled that, you know what, we're not bending to you. And then on Taiwan, Xi was very tough. And Trump himself said that Xi talked to out an awful lot. And Trump's public message signaling on that was appalling. It wasn't even a moderately tough response of a kind of, well, we think the status quo is fine, but no one needs to do anything risky or anything like that. It was a kind of, well, I'm rethinking this arms deal is waiting for Trump's sign off. The Congress is fine with it. The Taiwanese are fine with agreed to purchase $14 billion of weapons. Trump is now publicly saying he's going to reverse that. That is a huge signal. I mean, I don't know, I don't know enough about the military stuff to know how important those $14 billion of arms are actually to the defense of Taiwan, which I would be tough against China anyway, but as a signal to Taiwan, but also Japan, South Korea, everyone else, it's a real sign. Xi bullied Trump and seems to have gotten away with it. What is Trump's response? Nothing. So I agree. I'm thinking more about your point about the weakness and the bluster, but not backed up by anything. People should make that point more, honestly. I mean, it's very bad for the country. Do you ask for one thing? It's very bad for the world. And it also is revealing about Trump. He is ultimately a weak person. I mean, that is actually a true statement, right? I mean, he is like most police. The Taiwan thing, I kind of feel about Taiwan kind of how I feel when we discuss what would happen if Putin would try to invade Estonia. At this point, obviously, there's a lot of ins and outs and what have yous. If you're a China expert about what exactly that means and about navigation of the seas and about what we're doing about the chips and how it looks and whether China militarily conquers Taiwan or whether they buy off a bunch of Taiwanese. There are a lot of details about how it looks, but some of these things, it's hard to go back to the way things were before. And to me, I'd look at the Taiwan situation. It seems like this is a permanent damage that Trump has done now to the world. And it's hard to imagine even if China doesn't make any moves up to 2028, like in 2029 or 2030 or 2031, a president of either party going back to a place where they're like, we're going to send military, maybe maybe aid weapons. Like if the Taiwanese step up in the way Ukrainians have, like a support that looks like that I could see in the future. But it's kind of hard to imagine anything more than that at this point, given how much turf we've given up over the past few years. I don't know. Do you disagree with that? I mean, I hope that's not entirely the case. And the Taiwanese are pretty resilient. I have a little bit of Ukraine in them probably, but I don't know. And this again is the damage, I mean, that's been done by Trump. You can't just go back to the way it was once you give it, once you make clear that the fundamental guarantees or the fundamental commitments aren't there anymore. And it's not, that's the case where aren't there supposed to be all these China hawks in the administration? And didn't they all lecture us in 2024 about how tough Trump was going to be on China and in think tanks and in the conservative journalism world at all those, you know, the kind of respectable normie types who we got to go along with Trump better than Harris. Harris and Biden very weak. Biden on Taiwan was like 20 times stronger than Trump at this point. And are any of them saying anything? We did criticize Republican administrations where we didn't agree with what they were doing. Obviously, we were, you know, we criticized Bush on a rock at the beginning, not enough troops need to counterinsurgency, need to get rid of Rumsfeld and so forth. That was a big weekly stand and talk with, but also on China, but also on other things, right? Supreme Court nominee, the Harris Myers thing and all this. I mean, does no one who sort of conditionally supported Trump or swallowed hard and supported Trump maybe could speak up now? I think that's, I'm looking around for people at think tanks that are Trump adjacent and Trump acquiescent and all that do have had long standing relations to Taiwan. I mean, Taiwan has been close to a lot of these conservative think tanks as you know, right? They conservative, you know, influencers. John Bolton has been tough. John Bolton, who's worked for Trump, obviously now has, you know, is broke with Trump and is now being prosecuted by Trump, but he has been, he's the one who's been forthright. This is terrible. This is a disgrace. All the other people who are getting along with Trump, I don't know. I am kind of listening. Am I wrong? Maybe they're saying stuff. No, Manhattan Institute. Look, Tom Cotton, what I, you know, the Mike Walts, who has been more debased than these people, the China hawks. Honestly, I mean, he has done actually the opposite of everything that they have called for and every Trump rhetorical move is even more soft and forgiving towards China than even the policy moves, right? I, you know, he is trying to expand our relationship with China. And you guys are about platinum. Platinum, that's Platinum's stated policy view. Like he thinks that we should de-escalate with China. But okay, so that, if that's your position, then no, fine. But that's, but Trump was running with the support of the people that wanted us to decouple from China as much as possible. And he's like simultaneously pushing a coupling and strengthening China with his moves elsewhere around the world. And the China hawks are totally silent. And Tom Cotton will have you believe that Mr. Trump was the toughest man on the stage in Beijing and it's preposterous. Nobody does it better than Regent Seven Seas Cruises. Enjoy all inclusive unrivaled luxury with unlimited shore excursions, indulgent cuisine, personalized service, and more all-sweet ships. Visit rssc.com to experience the unrivaled. Based on 2025 Consumer Choice Awards from Calibri, visit kbp.com for more information. We're gonna do a little candy for people because I'm not sure if you're gonna like the very end of the podcast. I do want to talk about Trump's age and corruption real quick. There's this story about Trump's investments, which is pretty astonishing. And, and, you know, it seems like his kids are running it or whatever. Like I don't think Trump's sitting there on his Robin Hood account, like making these bets himself. But I just want to read about this. President Trump reported thousands of financial transactions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, including large purchases and sales of tech giants, NVIDIA, and others in the first three months of 2026. The transactions are valued between $220 million and $750 million cumulatively. Trump's account bought shares of companies like Dell and Intel in February and March just weeks before he touted both companies on Truth Social. He similarly bought NVIDIA shares a week before the Commerce Department approved chip sales to China and prior to a major NVIDIA meta partnership. You know, totally beyond the pale. I mean, it's insane. Why is he even doing it? I mean, of course, he's making so many zillions of dollars off the truly corrupt payoffs that in a way even insider trading in the stock market and gating what 20, 30, 40% on some of these trades, conceivably, I suppose, is that really worth it? It's like he almost just wants to, he just wants to flaunt it, right? And he wants to just, which I guess is what authoritarians like to do, you know, and sort of rub your face in it, that he can do whatever he wants. And don't, you just try to stop him, Congress or the courts. I don't know if the courts can get at this. Yeah. As always, Congress could do more, but they don't seem very interested. Well, this should be illegal. The president shouldn't be trading stocks at all. Yeah. For some reason, I think the ethics rules don't apply to the president, but of course, and maybe they could because of, I don't know, separation of powers or something like that. But it is really crazy. It is really crazy. I think they could sign a lot. That would be constitutional. This is your point about the ethics rule. I got an email from a listener and I don't want to get them into trouble. So anonymize this, but they basically had to divest a few grants like a few thousand bucks from a tech company because they had a job in the government that like dealt with contractors and, you know, conceivably, it could have, you know, overlapped with that tech company getting a contract with the government. It is just a total outrage that like simultaneously you're making, you know, middle manager, government servants, you know, divests from their small little nest egg stock investments while the president is doing, you know, $500 million in what looks like insider trading deals with big tech giants. And by the way, the Republicans last I looked do control Congress and they made a big deal by Nancy Pelosi doing stock trading or her husband doing stock trading while she was a speaker. And they don't seem to have passed any legislation that I'm aware of banning this kind of trading by members of Congress. In fact, this needs to be going on on both sides. The Democrats really, they should make a huge deal of this. I agree. They should make a huge deal of Trump doing it. And they should propose legislation to ban it and let them go to, let the administration go to court and say that there's some kind of, you know, unitary executive separation of powers reason why Congress can't enforce an ethics rule on the president. I'm sure it's why it's true. It would be true. They can enforce the disclosure rules, presumably they can enforce some ethics rules on the president. But anyway, and then they should also do it for members of Congress, including themselves. The Democrats in general, the corruption thing, don't you feel, I feel like the Democrats, I mean, I don't blame the Democrats for everything. The issue is having some salience. That's why Trump's uppers are going down and B, at some point I'm sick of the Democrats should do this, Democrats should do that. We can all do a lot and the Democrats could just kind of follow along, I suppose, and benefit in the mid years. But I do feel like this is an issue of government. They know a lot about this. If you work on the Hill or if you're a member of Congress, you do have ethics rules. So it's a very appropriate thing for them to understand and to get indignant about, I should think, maybe they could do a little more on this. You've seen some Democrats have been good on this, but they got to push it more. And Ossoff, I believe, is the sponsor of the Senate version of the banning the stock acts. And he's talked about this in his speeches. There's some others don't want to give people a short shrift. But yeah, I mean, they haven't passed it. I think it would be an interesting thing. I got a question. I gave a little talk yesterday here in New Orleans to a pro-constitution group, shout out to them. One of the questions I asked is, what can Democrats do in 2027? And in addition to the oversight and the investigations, which is really important, and what I said was, assuming they take the House, or ideally both houses, they should push things like this and pressure Trump to veto them. Like pass a bill that is just executive branch members are banned from stock trading with these caveats. And if Trump wants to veto it, he can veto it. But I think that is like a vehicle for the Democrats to raise the salience on this stuff. But in 2027, conceivably, if they take care of business this year. And in 2026, they can't get it. I suppose they can't quite, well, they can introduce legislation, they can't get it forced to the floor of HAPS, so they could try more than they have. But also every challenger should just go crazy about this. Every Democratic challenger, once they win the nomination or before they win the nomination, I am today putting my assets in, I don't know, a blank trust or an index funds or something that's clearly not manipulable, you know what I mean? But mostly index funds and furthermore, they'll be run by, you know, by my broker. I'm not going to talk to him. And that's going to be my practice as long as I'm in public office. And meanwhile, my opponent here has traded stocks or my opponent here doesn't care when Trump trades stocks or my opponent here doesn't care what his colleagues, whatever you want. You know, I just feel like it's, that can be a pretty kind of fun issue with the local people get kind of interested in. Yeah, maybe who we had on the pod, she's a mayor in Scranton running for Congress there. It's been a good issue for her too. But yeah, I agree. I think more is more on this one. And it relates to the other corruption issue, which is just a slush fund where conceivably Trump's going to give $107 billion out to his friends who were allegedly targeted by the Biden administration. You know, there aren't even words to describe the insanity of them stealing money for us and handing it out to insurrectionists. Yeah, $1.7 billion or something. But it's sort of fake kind of, you know, he drops the lawsuit that was already a fake. $107, excuse me. It's a Monday morning. $1.7 billion. December's got a little out of control here, right? Yeah. Of course, his budget deficit is so high. Yeah. No, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I want to talk about the Trump is old article that Lauren Egan said. I'm softening everybody up for the harsh topic at the end. We're going to do some intra-coalition recriminations. Lauren Egan last night in her newsletter, which she absolutely should be reading, sign up at TheBullock.com, talked about Trump's age. And this paragraph just really tickled me. Here we are. Trump's been to see a dentist three times so far this year without explanation. Last fall, he told reporters he received an MRI but didn't say or at times even seemed to know what it was for. He repeatedly bragged about ACE incognitive tests, raising questions about why he's taking so many in the first place. His ankles have been visibly swollen. He keeps a fairly light public schedule, especially compared to his first term. There have been multiple occasions where he's appeared to fall asleep during televised White House events. Episodes, AIDS and SIS are just prolonged blinks. That is in addition to obviously the bruises on his hands, which have now seem to have expanded to his neck that he's covering up with makeup. It is important on the merits. I feel like every time people talk about this, they want to do a meta conversation about Biden and the media criticism. But separate from the media criticism, it's pretty alarming that we're in a hot war and we have a visibly deteriorating precedent. Yeah, I agree. I mean, Democrats need to get beyond Biden. They just need to forget about it. Yes, that was an effective issue against Biden. That doesn't mean they don't get to talk about it. And if someone wants to say, hey, you should talk more about that about Biden, fine. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? They're not going to lose because of that if you're a Democrat. And the Republicans will pay a price for refusing to have any trans... I mean, Trump has been utterly unforthcoming and untransparent, obviously, with medical records. You know, the thing about the dentist, I haven't really seen this look today. I guess he's gone to Walter Reed and he said three times is for dental care. There's a very good dental office in the basement of the old executive office building, I believe it is. And I think that's where presidents have had their dental care. Maybe it's a root canal. You can't do it there, but I think you probably can actually. So what is he actually going to Walter Reed for? I really don't like that whole conspiracy road thing. And I've... We've shied away from it. I think it's fair to say in a kind of sensible way, I think, here and elsewhere at the bulwark. But yeah, there's enough going on now that you really do wonder, right? And we were... Since I was early and saying Biden shouldn't run again, I mean, I suppose some Republican might say that maybe there should be a little more visibility into what Trump's problems are. And presidents can step down if they're getting too old for the job and getting ill. And JD Vance, their favorite guy is there. Number two, it's not as if the Democrats have to take over if Trump steps down, but of course he will never will. So as Lindsey Graham said, you can't get on the wrong side of Trump. No one can say a word. And that's not just true for members of Congress. That's true for everyone, right? Big shot Republican donors, doctors, all the people who did lean on Biden, right? The actors, I can't remember anymore. Remember the wall, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, he also went to the dentist in Palm Beach too, in addition to Walter Reed. You know, he had an emergency appointment at his dentist in Palm Beach. Yeah. I don't know. He doesn't seem like he's in ship shape to say the least. So maybe weakening as a leader and also physically our president. You're on a GLP one. But now you're wondering, how do I manage my side effects? What do I eat to stay strong? Because reaching your weight loss goals can take more than meds. That's where Weight Watchers Med Plus comes in. Get access to trusted experts, food plans that work with your body and habit coaching to keep you on track. Plus access to GLP one medication. Get started at Weight Watchers.com. All medical services are provided through our affiliated medical group Weight Watchers Clinic. Medications require eligibility and prescription individual results may vary. See site for more details. All right. Here it is. Okay. Everybody, you get to the fun part. You talked to Rob Flaherty about the 2024 campaign on Sunday Conversations with Bill Crystal. I want to kind of end with that and any kind of thoughts you had. I know everybody really loves reliving the 2024 campaign. So, you know, just a little trigger warning for that. But beforehand, the other big news of Friday, which many of you have emailed and tweeted me about, was Jared Polis, Governor of Colorado, commuting the sentence of Tina Peters. I understand that many of my colleagues at the Bullwork, many of our listeners are very upset about this commutation. Before I give my thoughts, Bill, why don't you, why don't you tee off on it? This sounds like a duck and it is a duck. I really haven't followed it that closely. I mean, I'm sort of ambivalent. I don't, she was bad. She was real. She tried to corrupt the election. She has served several years in jail and I don't know. There's some plausible people who say the term is kind of longer than it would normally be for this kind of offense. I don't know. I respect Polis. I don't know why. I assume he thinks he's doing the right thing. On the other hand, I don't like the signal it might send that it's okay to kind of tamper with elections. It's not the serious crime. It's the judge's thought. It should be in terms of the sentencing. But on the third hand, since Trump is busy pardoning every single January and paying off every single January, six insurrectionists and all the other people who tried to tamper with the election have seen your positions in the Trump administration. At this point, I feel like Polis commuting the sentence or I guess giving clemency for the rest of the sentences at our works is pretty low on the totem pole of things that are going to encourage bad behavior. Well, if you're looking for more outrage in that, I'd turn to Sarah Longwell's Twitter feed because she is fucking pissed at Polis. My view is informed somewhat by the least popular article I've ever written on theBowlWark.com. It was in 2021 regarding my feelings about the sentence that the Kulinan Shaman released. You might remember him as the fellow with the horns and the paint on the face that stormed the Capitol. Here's what I wrote in 2021. It's kind of crazy that I've been writing for the BowlWark this long. It's very weird to go back and read something I read five years ago. I don't know. It all time flies. Here's what I said. The prison industrial complex is a menace. Conditions in our penitentiaries are horrific and sentencing guidelines that require minimum stays for non-violent criminals are imprudent and inhumane. None of this stops being true when the guilty party is of the other political tribe and it feels good to see them locked up. If we want real justice for January 6th, the government should be cutting the Shaman slack and turning its energies to those who are orchestrating the overthrow of our democracy. I feel the same way about Tina Peters. Tina Peters was sent to prison for nine years. Nine years? I just call me the lib now in this one. You guys are the lib listeners who are bloodthirsty about Tina Peters and want her punished. I guess maybe I'm the softy because I don't think that anybody should go to prison for nine years except for violent criminals and people that engaged in massive fraud, like SPF or something. People like ruined lives via fraud and theft. That's it. I don't think that we should send people to prison for nine years if they did not physically harm or grievously harm someone and there's concerns about wanting to keep that person away from society. That's just my view. I've always been, even when I was a Republican, a criminal justice softy. It was what me and Rand Paul, that's like me and Rand Paul and Tom Massey now are all back on the same side. I always was on the Rand Paul side of that debate when it was happening inside in the Republican Party. I think that a lot of people saw what Polis did and I think that this is a rational human reaction, an emotional reaction, which is this sucks. Our guys don't fight hard enough. The Trump side, they're pardoning all their people. They're trying to jail Jim Comey. They're doing all these bad things. We should get one too. What's good for the goose is good for the gander kind of thing. I understand that reaction. I truly do. I don't obviously think Tina Peters, she was in jail for four years. I think that's an appropriate punishment for her crime. I don't think that she should ever be allowed to have a position of public office again. She's a felon. She shouldn't be able to vote again. If there are other penalties, non-prison related that she should continue to have, I'm totally fine with that. I don't think she's a danger to society and I understand people's frustrations, but I think it's a very weird thing to be very upset about. I think that Polis looked at just the facts and made a judgment based on the facts of what was happening with Tina Peters, not on the broader political dynamic. I will say Jared Polis is disappointing me in one other way though. This is not about Jared Polis' stand-up. There is a ballot initiative in Colorado right now to redistrict. The Colorado rules are such that you have to take it to the voters. You have to do an regular election so they couldn't have jammed it through like Virginia did, which backfired anyway. But they have a redistricting ballot initiative that would redistrict the state in 2028 and 2030 that would likely make it a 7-1 state rather than 4-4, which it is right now. The Republicans have not won a state-wide election in Colorado since Cory Gardner in I think 2014. Been a long time now and it's a Democratic state now and I think that they should do that and Polis is wishy-washy on that. I think this is a case where this is a forward-looking fight about our ongoing fight for democracy. I think that obviously Colorado should play maximum hardball on redistricting and I hope that Jared reconsideres that and comes out more strongly in support of that ballot initiative, which is on in November. I encourage all my family and high school friends and listeners to go vote yes on that redistricting bill in November. I think that is a much more prudent and useful way to fight the bad guys than making sure an old lady stays in jail for four more years. That's my opinion. I'm sure I'll have overwhelming love and support for it. They still love you when they disagree with you, Tim. I feel like our community understands that we have different views. I was hardliner on criminal justice when you were a softy, but I moved some honestly just because I think I've learned more about it, but I'm sort of in between probably real squishes like you and the real hardline. Sunny Bunch is ready to throw away the key. Sunny Bunch is the hardliner. Diversity of views. It's funny. Can I just mention one thing? You said you're most unpopular piece ever. I tweeted a few days ago. I haven't read something about Mom Donny's, the budget. I guess he's now, he has to submit a balanced budget in New York, and he is doing so. He got a little help from the governor. He found some tax, little minor tax hikes and some spending savings. He's submitted a budget. I understand it. Well, it is balanced. I think it's going to become law basically. I think it's like an increase of 1% maybe in real dollars over the budget he inherited. I just tweeted something about, you know, Mom Donny's more fiscally responsible than Trump. I mean, I'm just looking at the data here. I mean, he's basically kept spending level and is a balanced budget. Trump has increased spending and increased the deficit hugely, and we're now running a $2 trillion deficit and actually, I think causing real dangers down the road for the economy here. That debt is now above 100% of GDP and stuff. People did not like that. I was a little surprised by that. Oh really? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. It's interesting that they have to be able to be mad at you because they can't be mad at Trump. And so it's frustrating. It's easy to lash out at Bill Crystal if you are, you know, a commentary magazine, international review author who like spent your whole career talking about the dangers of the debt. And then for some reason never talk about it when Donald Trump, the person the Republicans have nominated three times for president, who's won twice is the worst president in American history when it comes to debt and deficit. You would think that there would be, I don't know, you know, some outrage about that from people who've spent their whole lives and careers talking about how important the debt is, but not really. You know, Jessica Riedel, there are a few couples that you'll hear from from time to time. But not too many. I haven't seen a lot from Charlie Cook or Rich Alawry on that. All right. Finally, I guess we can just go quick on the rehash and people can watch the whole interview with Rob if you want. But we had a great piece Rob Flaherty did. He was the deputy campaign manager, really overseeing digital for the Biden-Harris campaign and then the Harris campaign. And since the DNC wasn't doing an autopsy, he did a, here was my autopsy, basically. He kind of said what he told the autopsy committee that they didn't release and expanded on his thoughts a little bit. For us, if you're into like the campaign, nerdery, a very important piece, I thought, my biggest takeaway from that and from your conversation with him that I think he was right about, there's a lot of little details about who's matter who and super PACs and like what kind of spending mix should be and all that. But I thought his most insightful point was that like in politics now, even always, but more than ever, you have to have a brand that people can connect with, that you're advertising, that your speeches, that your social media, all supports that people can understand and grab on to. And partly because of the nature of the short campaign, 107 days, partly because of failings of the campaign, the Kamala Harris just really didn't have it. And like my version of that is as I asked James Carville on this pod to give me the three, what was on Kamala's whiteboard, harkening back to his Clinton whiteboard and he couldn't answer it. And he tried to, but it was just a very long question, a very long rambling answer. And it's not James' fault, it's the campaign's fault, like they didn't have one. And to me, that was the most interesting takeaway, which is less like the insider DC circles, like less fun to talk about them, the various recriminations about who did what wrong and who betrayed who and who handled what thing badly. But that was my biggest takeaway from the piece. I was wondering what your thoughts were from your conversation with him. That's an excellent piece. I really enjoyed talking with him on the bullwork yesterday on Sunday. I think he has a lot of interesting stuff on the details of digital, you know, advertising and this kind of thing, how to organize campaigns in the modern era. We talked quite a bit about the brand issue though. And I think that is an interesting one. I think the Republican version of that, when you and I were Republicans was the values matter more than issues. We've all used, heard and used that formulation, which I think was correct. And I think Republicans have always had a better sense of that than Democrats actually who have their issue papers and think that, you know, if only we got to really emphasize people, you know, this part of the lunch table issues or whatever it is, dinner table issues, all this stuff. So yeah, the other thing, the most interesting part of the conversation, honestly, was we kind of went through a lot of the stuff that you covered in the piece and I can't remember how it came up. But AI came up. I guess it came up in the context of using it for digital, you know, for the campaigns. But then it came up and I said, well, isn't it, are you one of those who thinks it's a huge issue? I hadn't realized it actually, I felt bad, written something about this, sort of giving him a, etc. Like I suppose people think I was like, I was serving him up this softball on purpose. I was just genuinely curious what he felt because he's a smart young guy. And he's totally obsessed with AI and thinks it's the issue. The issue of 2028 couldn't be a huge issue in 26. Huge resistance to it. Both on economic grounds, but also kind of social and cultural and resistance is too strong. It's a huge sense you can't just let it go wherever the private sector wants to take it and wherever the most irresponsible parts of the private sector want to take it. And I thought that was an interesting 10 minutes to solve the conversation. And I think you and I have, and Andrew actually, Edgar have also been all had this sense that AI is just exploding as an issue. And I need to really educate myself more on what the right way to handle it is. But for now, at least having a conversation about the right way to handle it and a serious policy conversation is key. And Democrats need to make clear they are very much intended to do that and make clear that the Trump administration has been totally and utterly irresponsible and in the sold out to people who want it totally unregulated. And many Republican candidates I gather, he made this point in Connecticut, I guess, there was some bill to stop, prevent the sexualization of minors or having chat bots, lots of sexual conversations with minors. A cousin issue is the undressing of minors and by AI and so forth. And 21, only all Democrats who are out of Fort in Connecticut, Republican split 21 who I take it, we're on board with either the tech pros and probably getting huge amounts of money from the AI world, which is unbelievable out of money pouring into campaigns for them voted against this. Can't the Democrats just pulverize? Unfortunately, Connecticut doesn't matter, they already control everything. But still pulverize Republicans who are willing to not willing to regulate AI at all. I feel like this is not a hard issue. I agree. I thought that was interesting. I'd point people to it, because Rob's really smart on this stuff. And it was sort of a piece with your conversation about how important it is for Democrats to run kind of against the entrenched interests next time. And you did a little kind of, it's funny, that was his opinion. And then Bill Crystal did his history lesson about how Jimmy Carter also was like that. And Bill Clinton was like that in ways. And so was Obama. Like the successful Democrats have been future oriented and running against the status quo. And I think that that means you can't be like a leadite about AI and wish it away. You have to be talking about like what, how can we build a future that is better for people that is not a total sellout to the existing interests? I thought he was good on that. And I think that's another area that if you just kind of look at the last three presidential elections, the Democrats did not do a good job really of branding the ways in which they were different from the status quo. Any of the three last presidential elections, frankly, Biden a little bit on, kind of solve the country type stuff and just making the pitch that Trump was the status quo at that time. And so they'll have that opportunity again and they should take it. So I think that's good. We should listen to the whole conversation with Rob Flaherty. If you want more, appreciate it, Bill. Everybody else, we'll see you tomorrow on the podcast. By guys might have a little bit of a wonky schedule on timing this week because we're heading to California. There are still some tickets available in San Diego and LA. Go to thebluark.com slash events. And I'm not going to be there, but go to those events and yell at Tim about, about Jared Polo. Sarah, are we with you? You know, it'll be, it'll be, you can disrupt the whole event could become a huge, you know, intra bowl work food fight. You guys can take it out and heckle me, please, but do come to the events, you know, if you come to the events, you get a heckle, you get to heckle. If you come to the event, you get to heckle. Otherwise, you know, otherwise you just keep that old lady in prison, Miller. Anyway, I appreciate it. I hope to see some of you guys out there and we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. The board podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer, Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.