Bill Kristol: Trump’s Weak, Sad, and Embarrassing Weekend

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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. It's one of those Mondays where, you know, it makes me wish, I don't know, I was a gardener or something, you know, Bill. Having to wake up and read about the Hector Mountain Dew Camacho event at the White House last night and gather the stamina to come up with an opinion about it. You know, whatever. I mean, there are a lot worse jobs out there in America, but it's a bit of a burden. That's why you get the big bucks, Tim, you know? I myself just read, you know, watched another hour of Nick's celebrations in New York City. I'm kind of tuned out of the... Yeah, it's a nice thing, Bob. You know, my hometown. Huge Nick's win. Happy for the next. We'll talk about the goodness of America at the end, but unfortunately, Donald Trump is forcing some other stuff on us. Just because I can't begin with the White House nonsense, we have to start with the real news, which was, well, maybe it's real news. I guess that's something to ponder over. The deal, if you will, the deal about a deal, the memorandum about a deal, the Donald Trump felt compelled to announce on his birthday yesterday, his 80th birthday. I don't know if you know that. He's 80 years old. The President of the United States, extremely elderly. And he announced at his birthday party that they have a memorandum of understanding with Iran. We seem to get nothing out of that. They are planning on having a formal signing in Switzerland on Friday. We'll see if it holds till then. We've got a lot to discuss about the contours of that. But Bill, what are your initial thoughts? Yeah. We've acknowledged our defeat. Trump won't acknowledge it, but every normal person looking at this deal sees that at best, we've walked away with a tiny bit of face-saving from a misguided adventure, a misbegotten war that we've lost, that we've failed to achieve our objectives. We strengthened Iran and weakened ourselves. I really do think that's pretty obvious and clear. So there are details, nuclear stuff and all, but in a way, all of that, as you say, is murky. Trump's putting his best spin on it. But at the end of the day, Iran has closed the straight, paid no price for it, and really retains the option, I would say, of doing so in the future. We'll see exactly what the deal says, if it says anything exact about the straight being open. That part, I think the media has been the most credulous about. Like Trump says, the straight's reopened. Okay, I guess where it states back to where it was before, it's not back to where it was before. At best, it's temporarily opened again. In Iran, I believe, has not given away its the option in the future of closing it or imposing various prices and conditions on transit there. So that's bad. The nuclear stuff's totally unresolved. They're going to get money out of this, maybe not directly from us, but from the UAE. The regime is solidly in place. The Iranian people have been betrayed. We've antagonized allies all over the world by either ignoring them at the beginning or berating them afterwards. I think especially in the Middle East, the Gulf states are just, they can't say it, but they're in a state. We'll be looking to accommodate Iran on the one hand, but also get closer to China perhaps. We're reliable aid in times of trouble. Final point, they'll be misleading photos and vibes from the G7 meeting that Trump's route to in France. We're going to analyze. They're going to put the best face on this. They still are in the mode of we've got to kind of buy time here as the US withdraws from the world and from responsibility and try to keep Trump kind of on board for as long as possible. So there'll be a lot of happy talk about how this is kind of an okay outcome, but they don't believe it. To your point about the street, there was an accidental truth spoken by the vice president this morning on CNBC. He's doing the rounds where he said this, well, our expectation is that the street is going to be opened in a toll free way for the long term. And that's the sort of thing that we're going to figure out in these technical negotiations. I thought we had a deal. We're still doing technical negotiations. Wasn't that what you were supposed to do before you made an announcement that there was a deal where the street is opened here with? Is Dylan Trump a sound yesterday? Here with. Here with Trump is a good word, a good Trump word. He likes that word. He just likes fake, fancy words, you know, to make fake legalistic kind of fancy words. I hadn't seen the van said that this morning. It's very revealing, as you say, the notion that that's something we're going to discuss, whether the streets really open. That's supposed to be like a core red line of us and of all of our allies, right? That was that is the status quo. It hadn't been closed for 40 years. It was treated as an international waterway. No one thought of it as anything. But we are now going to sort of debate that with Iran, which will have all the leverage, incidentally, as we're busy getting out of there, right? They're sitting right there. So that's that's a very good illustration. I wish that I had seen that this morning. I could have added that to the morning shots. But no, that's OK. I had too much to keep up with Trump's tweets, let alone like Vance is going out. Why is Vance, you've done this stuff for a living at one time. I did a little bit too. Why is Vance going out to you? I guess he want to go on TV and sell it or is Trump making him do it? Well, I saw him on two. I don't have one of those TV situations in my bedroom where I have every channel on. So it's possible he's another network. But he at least is in the CNBC and CBS. I assume he did CBS as a favor to their daddy, Larry Ellison, who will get to more about that relationship in a minute. But, you know, it's the new favorite network. So you wanted to give them a little news bite and then you're on CNBC to kind of make sure to keep keep a lid on the markets. Who might be kind of jittery. Good news in the markets this morning. Markets are, you know, stocks are up, oil prices are down. We'll see to the extent to how that holds. You know, having Vance out there is also interesting from there was a critique coming from the neocon right on this deal. Mark Levin was extremely upset about it. Lindsay Graham. I'm going to be surprised to know that these your former comrades who decided that they would go full bore for Donald Trump and say that like, this is going to be my man and we're going to hitch our wagon to him and that he's really going to be there as we achieve what we've wanted to for a long time, which is overthrow the Iranian regime and have a stalwart American military leadership towards that objective so that we can see freedom flourish in the Middle East. You'll be surprised that that deal didn't really work out for them as Donald Trump was not the ally that they had expected. BB is learning the same. Here's Lindsay this morning. Or Lindsay, this was Lindsay yesterday, rather, before he went to the fight. Lindsay, I'm somewhat concerned that Iran's U of C agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming. You don't say under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review and a vote. Congress has a job now. That's interesting. I look forward to reviewing the final product and I believe it's imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance, be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress. That caught my eye. The architect of the deal, Vice President Vance, is that true even? It seems telling, I think, that he is kind of laying the groundwork for this intra-party squabble and giving himself some cover if he wants to criticize the deal. I'm not criticizing Mr. Trump, of course, who is brilliant this whole way, but he might have put the wrong guy in charge of this deal. Yeah, no, I was struck by that too. When Lindsay Graham says he's somewhat concerned about something Donald Trump has done, it means Lindsay Graham is here on fire, panicked. I think this is an utter and total disaster because somewhat concerned is the most critical he's allowed to be of Donald Trump. So yeah, it is revealing. And yeah, and they want to throw Vance under the bus for this, I suppose. But for what? What was the alternative to use ground troops with no congressional authorization and not having prepared for it and suddenly seize Carg Island without of changed the outcome? I mean, Trump, in this respect, is instinct to just get out of there. It was probably right at this point. They probably could have gotten a better deal, honestly, two months ago. But what do you think the odds are that actually something gets signed in Switzerland Friday? I mean, the Iranians are going to be very tempted to say, well, Israel says they're not abiding by the deal and lebanon and they somehow managed to sell the Iranians to just shove that into the deal, which was totally out of nowhere. You know, we've got a little more clarity about the strait. And you can imagine them just continuing to torment Trump. You know? Yeah. I mean, well, two thoughts on that. I, and I had my notes here. Are we sure this holds till Friday? I'm not. I don't, I mean, we'll see. I think there's a lot of incentives on both sides for it too, because Donald Trump is sick of this war on board and doesn't have any objectives and never had any objectives and thought this was going to be easy. And, you know, got himself into just this total quagmire and he's just looking for any way out of it. And then the Iranians keep adding more things and getting more things, you know, to your point, I know there was a report yesterday that Trump wanted the deal so bad for his birthday party that when Israel bombed Lebanon yesterday morning, Trump called BB and started cussing at him. And then the Iranians said, Oh, I don't know, if we're going to sign the deal now, we need more stuff. And Trump made additional concessions yesterday. It was just, you know, in order to make the Iranians happy because they're upset about BB and Lebanon. So then one of those concessions is that Lebanon is part of the deal, which is like, Israel's not a party to the deal. So that doesn't even make any sense. But the fact that it's in there, I guess, gives Iran some leverage as well to kind of back away or to get more stuff, get more money, whatever. The other thing I think that is telling about how, how bad the deal is, is that we don't actually have it. I think that's important to say, maybe I should have started with that. But, you know, we're all basing this on, you know, here's what the American state media at Axios and Fox News are saying is happening. And then that's accused of the Iranian state media at Fars News and Tosnim are saying, and like the Pakistanis put out a statement about what they're saying. Yeah, we don't have the text. And I think that that is extreme, you know, tells you that, well, a, as JD Van said, there may be some more technicalities to still work out and B, they know the administration knows that once people see the text, there's going to be a lot of anger and outrage about it. And, and they probably want to kick that as close to Friday as possible. And we'll see. I don't know who knows. Maybe it'll be out by the time we post this. But like, if they felt like this was a huge accomplishment where they had, you know, gained something that Donald Trump can wave around, you know, beyond just the vague notion of he signed a deal, right? Like if there was some tangible thing, some tangible accomplishment, they would have put it out before the fight yesterday. Like the fact that they didn't, I think tells you that there's, there's nothing to brag about. No, that's really a good point. I mean, there's nothing tangible. I mean, I was thinking about this. What is their one most tangible, concrete achievement for the deal? You usually have a deal. There are things on both sides. And so the US would stress the two or three things it got Iran was stressed the two or three things they got. And okay, fine. That's what deals look like, right? I mean, literally, what did we get? Nothing. I mean, we got an excuse for Trump to bring the troops home and say the war is over. But I mean, they don't even have to return to how things were before the war, maybe, but worse, but worse, I mean, before the war, we were negotiating over the nuclear before the war. I know they're going to say it's the nuclear, but the whole point of the MOU is that there's now a 60 day period to negotiate over the nuclear issue. Right. And we were doing before the war. So we spent a hundred billion dollars, lost 14 service men and women, antagonized allies, did a million other things that were bad, killed children, killed children. Yeah. Not, not trivial things. Right. And the very best account they can give, which is not in fact true, there's that we're back to where we were in February 27th and we're not even back in nearly as good shape. So I don't know. I was talking to a friend yesterday. I was worried, will Trump succeed in spinning this Fox News? You know, some of these not crazy to be concerned about that given the last 10 years in American politics. But I kind of think this one is just hard to, I mean, what do they have? It was a war. I mean, this, they were literally negotiating with Iranis about the nuclear thing. We hadn't sold out the Iranian people yet. On February 27th, the straight was open and unquestionably open. There was no talk about giving them money. There was not much talk about relieving sanctions, which is the other thing. Do we believe, I don't believe these sanctions are going to still be on Iran in 30, 60 days and Trump's going to, you know, that, that'll be one of the first things he throws out. So we will have given up what was, whatever one thinks of the Obama deal, when they did keep a lot of the sanctions, there was that snapback. They were endless disputes. I can't even remember any more about exactly which sanctions were strong enough for all this, but they were like the action were sanctions. You know, I think it's we're, we're going to a deal that honestly, if any, if Biden or Obama does have to cliche to say this, but if Biden or Obama done this, the entire Republican party would be denounced to get as much worse than devil, chamberlain and Munich. You know? Oh yeah. No, humiliating week. It's Carter. I know it would have been Carter with the hostage deal. You know, I just, I, this idea of just utter weakness. I miss what the Republicans would be saying. Like the, the, the, he couldn't even back up his own bluster, said it was going to be unconditional surrender, ended up begging the Iranians to let them get out of the Glagmeier. I like the whole thing is just totally humiliating. And, and like if you go back to the pre war, it is too kind to them to say we've gotten to the pre war status quo because I know the straight to four moves will not be at the pre war status quo. And Iran will have more control over in some kind of economic benefit from it that they didn't have before. But even setting the straight aside, I, one of the rationals that you heard from the misguided, but reasonable supporters of the war at the beginning was that this could be the moment to topple the regime because they were so weak. Right. Like there were protests in the streets. The Iranian economy was in tatters. The Ayatollah was a hundred years old. And, you know, there was some type of regime change coming soon anyway, because he was going to die. You know, their proxies have been weakened by a lot of actions that Israel had been taken. The regime was in rough shape before we bombed them and before we decapitated them. And now you come out of this on the back end and you have a more hard line regime that has more control over the country and they're going to have more money, right? Cause they're going to have a huge influx of cash. Like what is that money going to go to? Do you think the money is going to go to the Iranian people? Or do you think it's going to go to get more missiles and replenish the drones and support their terrorist proxies, other places? That's what I think the money is going to go to. And the degree to which surviving a war, a pretty all out assault by us after all, which as Pete Hexass said over and over, a greatest huge humongous, you know, devastating, debilitating assault on every Iranian asset, blah, blah, blah. They survived it. They did more than survive it. They held their own ultimately in a way. And now they're coming out of it better. I mean, what does that do? It strengthens Iran a lot, but it weakens us really a lot. I mean, whatever one thinks of other aspects of our diplomacy over the over the years and the decades and our, you know, soft power and all the one thing we were supposed to be pretty strong, right? It turns out we weren't strong, but even militarily, we couldn't, you know, we get an Apache helicopter shot down. That's a week ago, right? Yeah, Friday, I think 10 days ago, nine, 10 days ago by a drone, two days after Trump is so, oh man, if they mess around with our troops, if they put anyone in danger, that's really a red line. And the Iranians just to show, you know, they, they could do it, shot down in Apache and we did one or two days of token bombing and then went back to begging for a deal. So I think the degree to which we look weak is really, it can't be overstated actually. And just last week, also just on the way, it's worth mentioning, you said that Hexeth was bragging about all of the bombing that we did, that they not only survived, it came out the other side in a stronger negotiating position. It was just Trump. The president last week said the US military dropped 250 million worth of bombs on Iran and one night. That's great. And one night. So I don't know, like, was he lying? And the president is just making shit up about what we're doing. That doesn't seem good. Or is he telling the truth? And we spent a quarter billion dollars of our money on bombs, you know, on bombing Iran last week to no end, to no purpose, like, or to the purpose of, you know, getting us to a deal that's worse than where we were before the bombing started. And the whole thing is terrible. I'll let Tom Nichols sum it up for everybody. The best because he did a nice job at the Atlantic this morning. The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact. And in the grip of the IRGC, the straight up formulas will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks. Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks. The regime will maintain the capability to be a state sponsor of terror and many sanctions will be lifted and billions of dollars in unfrozen assets will flow to Iran. In other words, the Iranians have achieved our key strategic aims, regime survival above all, while the Americans have achieved none of their own. I think that's pretty good summary of the state of affairs. I've been talking about one skin for a minute and I like to think I'm basically single-handedly responsible for increase in moisturizing and skin care among heterosexual male podcast listeners. And so for you same guys that are now realizing how you can keep a youthful look to your skin, one skin is also offering you a new service that can help keep that same density and youthfulness and healthfulness when it comes to your hair. They've got a new scalp serum, OS1 hair. I'm pretty good with my hair. I'm pretty lucky. Look at this, Lebanese AFRIL I got going here. But it's important to take care of it. If you want to keep it, I got a lot of friends in my life who aren't quite as blessed and whether it's stress or hormonal shifts or just getting older, hair changes happen to everyone. 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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. All right. Let's move on to the Hector Mountain Dew Camacho America 250 celebration last night at the White House. I want to start with this. The Iran situation is like a tangible disaster and people's lives we heard. I mean, some people are dead. As we mentioned, children are dead. Everybody's paying more because of this. Our position is weaker in the world. Like these are all like the negative fallout from bad and incompetent leadership and clownish leadership. Like that we're all experiencing from the Iran war. The cage fight on the White House is like more just about what we feel America should be. Right. It's more about these sort of esoteric questions. No children died last night. There were a couple fat people that got into a fistfight last night in the White House lawn and were arrested because that's country that we have right now. But besides that guy going to jail, nobody actually suffered any consequences last night. It was simply bad propaganda theater. But it was really bad. I mean, it was propaganda theater that was really bad and harmful and outside of the spirit of what is good about the country. So we might as well talk about it. Before I play some of my favorite audio clips of the evening. Do you have anything in particular that struck you? I didn't watch it as I said, but it's too depressing. But well, none of us could watch it because it was on Paramount Plus. Yeah, that's another thing. Right. I mean, it's like the whole thing is so appalling at eight different levels. It's commercial. But I guess at one point I struck Mark currently had an excellent piece of the poll work this morning on this, the use of abuse of the military to provide the trappings of state occasion at a solemn state occasion for this ghastly event is particularly appalling. Well, they did this gimmick. They did this gimmick where every fighter that walked into the ring was paired with, what is it, a Medal of Honor recipient? Medal of Honor recipient. Yeah. And so then when they walked into the ring, the military that we forced to be there was saluting them in uniform because they could not tell, you know, whatever soldier said, I was there meant to salute wrestlers, but they do salute, you know, Medal of Honor recipients. So it was kind of a clever, and I don't mean that in a good way, but like a clever, like a Fox-like way of Dana White and Trump to kind of force the soldiers to stand there at attention while the wrestlers went to the ring. And then the honor guards and the whole thing. It just, I found that I guess the most off-putting the commercialization a little bit kind of creepy too, you know, all the signs everywhere and Trump personally benefiting from it, of course. And I don't know the violence. I mean, it's the whole thing is, I don't know. It starts to even know which part is most offensive. Did you have a favorite? Did you have a favorite part? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Let's take one at a time. I was just really quick on the Hurtly thing, so it's so good. And I'll put the link in the show notes for people if they haven't read the article. His column reflected on a speech that Tom Wolf had given to the army when he was, I think a young recruiter, so it was in the mid 80s sometimes. I think he was back as a kind of a captain, you know, working, teaching a little bit at West Point. But so this is 87. I think Tom Wolf, the novelist and essayist and died a few years ago. Yes, it was a guest speaker there. And Hurtling quotes him. It's really amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And the speech is kind of a meditation on on FTR's four freedoms, which is another speech worth going to read if you haven't in a minute. It's good to reflect on. But he picked on one particular element where Wolf is talking about how, you know, as fewer and fewer people joined the military, you know, more and more, there'll be kind of a select group of people in the military that will be used by the broader society to their ends. And it's something to guard against any of this line in particular. Those in the military will become sentinels at the Bakkenal and armed monks at the Orgy. Quite apt 39 years before what that was exactly what they were doing last night. They were literally the sentinels of the Bakkenal on the White House lawn. And it was it was a Bakkenal that was also not really there were times joy, but it also there was a lot of partisan rancor and grotesqueries, you know, and we had to go through this period of like, oh, the singers are backing out and the Trump people and the Mac people are like, well, they don't love America. And why do the liberals like we would if Obama was president to a conservative singer would go and sing because he loves America. Why aren't these liberal singers coming to sing in our events? That's because you've turned this into, you know, a disgusting display of Trump worship, an orgy, if you will, of Trump worship. And there's one man in particular, I'm not going to learn the MMA fighters names. I'm sorry. So whatever. It was a guy who's there and he won his fight. And after the fight, this is what he had to say. And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right? America? It's Joe Rogan there interviewing him with the shit he then grand on his face. It's just like, I don't want to do the pearl clutching thing. It's like, this is fucking sick. And this is sick. It's loser behavior. You know, you're at the White House. It's supposed to be a celebration of the country like that. Wasn't that the whole point of this originally? It was the America 250 celebration. So it's to be a celebration of, you know, you know, the history of the country and our principles. And if you want to have a fight to market, not my cup of tea exactly, but okay, you know, but to have the guys then go up there and be like, the first black first lady actually has a dick. And like, have everybody cheer and have the cabinet sit there and applaud. And it's, it's despicable. Totally. I didn't see that much of it. I've seen a couple of clips. Yeah, they don't seem to be very happy, right? It's not a celebration of America. I believe some of the money that was appropriated for taxpayer money for celebrating the 250th anniversary went to this event and as it's going to all of Trump's ridiculous other events too, but they're unhappy about America. And it's impossible to imagine like counterfactuals, like somebody like the Democrats only event so many being like, like Melania was a male order bride, whore, you know, on the White House lawn. Like, you don't even like this stuff is, but you know, what's good to say. I mean, Lindsey Graham, you were called 2015 and 16. Did that was quoted on video actually, praising Joe Biden as a very decent human being. I think it was after Bob Biden died and Lindsey spent some time talking to Vice President of my friend, Scott Conroy, actually, Vice President. Yeah, Vice President Biden. But people like Lindsey, who were there, they've denounced this. I mean, they've said this is inappropriate and they're kind of embarrassed that this, you know, was a blemish on our event because they respect President Obama, Mrs. Obama for their, for having been president and first lady. And they think this kind of thing is inappropriate. I haven't a lot of the Republicans who were there, the cabinet members, your friend, Bassent, hasn't, best of whatever his name is. Hasn't he, hasn't he spoken up and Lindsey Graham, John Thune was there, I believe. Mark Zuckerberg, the distinguished corporate Titan, head of Facebook, doesn't believe in that kind of thing, you know, with a single person. I would find it actually try to go ask the law. And of course, they won't say anything, I suppose. Maybe Lindsey would be slightly concerned, you know. At this point, I don't want them to. I actually don't even want them to. They wanted this, right? They want this. Let them. They had their chance, like, in the moment to say, like, no, this is not appropriate. Like, we're at the fucking White House. We're celebrating the country. Like, why are you making trans jokes about the former first lady? Like, it's fucking insane. Yes, you are running a business. So of course you're working hard, but your web hosting isn't working at all, darlings. If it can't cope with the visitors, you can't grow the business. Try Ionos. It loads up to three times faster, so you get much happier customers at unbeatable price. It is easy, peasy way to get hardworking website. That is nice, nice, nice. Try Ionos, your digital partner at Ionos.co.uk. At Ben and Jerry's, we had a thought. I'm listening. Our cookie dough ice cream is already loaded with chunks. But could we make it even more cookier? Go on. Introducing the new cookie dough ice cream sandwich. Legendary cookie dough ice cream between two cookies. No spoon needed. More ways to enjoy cookie dough. The new Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream sandwich. All right, so here's this dish the night before. They had a weigh in at the ellipse and they also had a press conference at Lincoln Memorial the day before the fight. It's worth just noting really quick that out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, there was just a ton of trash and Trump's been talking about how he beautified the reflecting pool and how great it looks. Well, the reflecting pool was green the next morning and I don't know, these guys were probably pissing in it or dumping their blood light in it or something. But anyway, I don't know if that vomit was real or whatever, but there's this guy spitting up on himself talking about how scary black men are the night before he goes into the White House and starts making trans jokes about Michelle Obama on what should be a celebration of the country. The whole thing is so just gross and yucky. And throwing up on himself. So what maybe I was drinking last night. It's about who wouldn't, who wouldn't be. I have a giant black man that wants to knock me out is the most knockouts in UFC history. He stood, Josh. We got to look at that. Oh God, I hadn't seen that. This is kidding me. The show, this show is full. There you go. I'm here. I'm happy. Here's part of the reason you haven't seen that. Part of the reason you haven't seen that was because of the corruption of this deal. So when they first said that this is going to happen, again, it was initially supposed to be a national celebration on our 250. Trump gets Dana White on board. Who's the head of the UFC? Dana White says, Hey, that sounds great. It will be non political. We'll put it on CBS so everybody can see it. You know, we have a partnership with them. Instead, what they did was put it behind their paywall on Paramount Plus. So in addition to having, you know, it just be a total abomination, everybody had to get a little, get a little taste too. So we wanted to make sure that for any of the UFC fans who are not Paramount Plus subscribers, like they had to pay Larry Ellison to watch this. So like Larry Ellison gets a handout from the event that happens on the White House lawn that we all pay for this tax taxpayers. So that's nice, I guess. For him. And Trump gets a handout, right? Where's the sponsors? Well, Trump's paying a little bit. That's a little bit of a goes both ways. The Trump crypto was a sponsor. Can we just let's just play that. This was in the middle of the event last night. I can talk to believe this is even real. Here's the fucking advertisement in the middle of the event. So closed captioning for tonight's broadcast is brought to you by Trump. Coins.com, the official UFC 3 to 2. Biggy special edition medallions, rated by MGC limited quantities available now at Trump coins.com. Trump coins.com. Get the shout out there in the middle of the event. I guess they sponsored the closed captioning. I want, I'm sure I'm sure that Mr. Trump and the Trump kids are really paying for the closed captioning there. The ultimate fighting championship also announced that it will pay bonuses to the fighters in the form of a cryptocurrency issued by the Trump family business, World Liberty financial. So the Trump shit coin was part of the prize purse. Last night at the America 250 celebration. And I feel like if this had been, I don't know, Argentina or the Philippines, that's a pick on these countries, but let's say a third world country that has had dictatorships in our lifetime, you know, and, and, and, and a huge amount of grift and graft and, and like Russia to take another country. I feel like if someone would have said, if they'd gone to this, you know, each of these things has been ticked off. Someone would have said, we can't go that far. I mean, even we, even we know what this is too much. You know, it's like, I have some fucking dignity. Okay. I have some self-respect. I'm going to steal these people money on the back end. Okay. Like I don't, we're not going to put on the television screen. This is sponsored by Putin coin. Right. And like, like we're not going to have a little bit of a little, a logo on the mat that's like by Putin, stable coin, Putin, RX, Putin.com. Like it's like, this is, it's, it's embarrassing. Like it's embarrassing. It is humiliating. And you're right. But some Putin would do, you know, saviorrussia.com, you know, right? Or the glory of Russia coin, you know, coin, right? I mean, and that's the more traditional way. And then of course you take the cut, you know, on the back end, you say secretly. But that is the striking about Trump, right? The kind of, it's so insecure, I suppose. And so maybe he thinks it's better that works better this way, the grift, or is it just insecurity that his name has to be on anything? I don't know. Yeah. I think it's definitely insecurity. Fred didn't love him. I think that's pretty much what it is. It's just preposterous. If in 2014, SNL had done a segment, 2015, the beginning of this campaign, and it was like, if Trump wins, this is what it would look like. And it was just a video of last night. Like everybody, you know, like all the conservatives sort of put it in the front like, these liberals, like don't understand real America. These like, it's so unfair. It's so biased. It's like, like Trump's, you know, just total depraved, disgusting, grotesque, clownish behavior is like so far beyond what Hollywood could have even imagined. In parodying Republicans, that parody is now impossible. Like, how could you even parody from here? But it's Andrew pointed out, it's Andrew Erickle pointed out in one of his shows this morning, if you actually criticize what happened last night, you're out of touch with real America, your elitists. You don't like this fight, this ultimate fighting championship. You want them to be playing croquet on the White House lawn. But you know, real America likes this stuff. Actually, to it's to be fair, to real America, there's not much evidence that I like this stuff. There was some poll that showed, you know, like 16% of people like this. I don't know what the ratings are in that paramount plus thing. I don't know how you do that even with, with pay for view or whatever. But I don't know. A lot of America was watching the World Cup yesterday, was watching the Stanley Cup finals. I feel like a lot of America was watching the World Cup. I'm willing to bet a lot of America, a higher percentage of America were watching the Dicks Saturday night. They watched that crap last night, right? So the real America, yes, is to, I mean, it's not even the real America. That's what's so annoying, right? And then Mark Teason inside the beltway here in Northern Virginia, and writing for the Washington Post about, yeah, you elitists, you don't like this kind of thing. Maybe we're just decent people who don't like this kind of thing. And it's so embarrassing for our country. And it does sort of tie in with the Iran thing, not to overthink this, but I mean, the decline in power is not unrelated to the decline in self-respect and dignity and, you know, the decadence. Let's put it that way. That's true. Though it's mostly Trump's fault. I mean, like, honestly, real America existed for 235 years, 240 years before Trump, like, there were conservatives like Ronald Reagan would have never thought to have an event at the White House where people were like... Totally, yeah. No, no, I totally agree that it's Trump. It's entirely a Trumpy thing. Yeah, making fun of Tip O'Neill's wife's looks, like that would have never been okay. Kennedy, you know what I mean? Like Kennedy would never have, you know, gone and said, hey, may me eyes and how is a lesbian? Like, this is just not the kind of things that... So what are you talking about that, like, real America demands? No, that's what I agree totally. Trump is as hijacked or Trump is hijacked the term and it's unfair to the real America. Yeah. At Ben and Jerry's, we had a thought. I'm listening. Our cookie dough ice cream is already loaded with chunks. But could we make it even more cookier? Go on. Introducing the new cookie dough ice cream sandwich. Legendary cookie dough ice cream between two cookies. No spoon needed. More ways to enjoy cookie dough. The new Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream sandwich. I want to talk a little bit more about the sponsorships because they bother me. I was sponsored by Bud Light. We had to go through a whole year of fake outrage because Bud Light sponsored a trans person's Instagram reel. Like, that's literally what it was. People made it seem like they put a trans person on their can. Not that that would have been a problem, but they just, like, got a sponsorship for a single influencer's Instagram reel. And we had to do Bud Light protests. People were pouring out Bud Light. We had to pretend like we care, like this was a real story. Politicians talked about it. I went to, I was doing the circus during all this. Like Ted Cruz, they would talk about this on stages about how horrible it is that Bud Light did this. Bud Light was there sponsoring last night when the shirtless man was shouting about how Michelle Obama is a man. I don't, I don't know if we'll have any statements from Bud Light today. We'll keep an eye out for that. Dodge Ram was sponsoring it. Crypto.com, which is just a Walmart of scams was sponsoring it. Polymarket. The one that was really coming out either was Riyadh Season, which is the Saudis big tourism play that they've got coming up that they sponsored it. And I think because of all of the disgustingness of last night, like, there will be little focus on this. And so I just wanted to take a moment for it. So at least here we can express correct outrage about the fact that we needed the Saudis to underwrite our national celebration. Like, why? Why? I Trump has turned us into such a broke dick country where we are like a fucking, you know, QVC telethon of a country that now like Middle Eastern Sharia law dictators have to underwrite our national celebrations. They have to underwrite our presidential plane. Like, it's sick. Like, why? How? Why get, get that shit away from the White House lawn. The Saudis should not be part of an American celebration. I mean, for starters, they were, they were involved at some level and 9-11. So they're involved in an attack on us 25 years ago, um, during that 250. And they share none of the American traditions and values that we are of liberalism and pluralism and rule of law and things enshrined in the Constitution and the Declaration. None of that is a value that the Saudis hold. So why should the Saudis be at be able to advertise on our White House lawn? That's insane. They have a lot of money and Trump wants their money and they actually want to make sure Trump, they're in good with Trump because they get things out of it too, I suppose. And so it's, it's a wonderful commercial relationship. I guess we don't need to beg for their oil money. And now it's disgusting. It's beyond disgusting. I couldn't America first really is the greatest fraud in a way of the mall, you know, right? He couldn't care less about America. Right. It turns out it's a separate one. It's a celebration of him. I want to close this section with this. I want to pull a bill. I was doing some Googling last night. So I get into trouble when I do some history reading. And I was reading about the Persepolis birthday bash. You know anything about that? No, you're ahead of me. 1971. So you're around. Okay. The Persepolis birthday bash in 1971. I wasn't paying attention to the Persepolis birthday. Is that the Greek unto something I'm guessing now? No, this is the 2500 year anniversary of the Persian Empire. Oh, the Persian one, right? Yeah, the Cyrus the Great. It was a lavish, star-shaped oasis of 50 luxury air conditioned tents. It was constructed on 160 acre site. There's an 18 hole golf course. There's a beauty parlor flown in from Paris. Military parade during the time of the Shah. And it was intended to showcase Iran's rich heritage and the Shah's power. But the excess amidst local poverty created a backlash. The divide deep in public dissent and it's widely cited as one of the catalysts for the 1979 Islamic revolution. And so I was just, I was, I don't know, I was looking at that last night and I was like, eight years away from revolution. I don't know. We can speed things up a little bit more in the modern era. Now that you mentioned it, I remember like when the revolution was happening in 79 when the, you know, when the Shah fell, this was cited as kind of like, you know, the both the cause of it. And also, I don't know what's right. We're like a irony of history thing, right? The moment they celebrate the most grandiose celebration is usually happens just before everything falls apart. So let's hope, yeah, but let's let's make it more like eight months, not eight years. Okay. Could we have him gone? You know, someone else pointed out that Nixon was it something Nixon did in 73 that about a year before being a cameras now, before before he was driven out of office. So I'm more in the one year time horizon, the eight year time horizon here, but it's a good comparison. Pride comes before the fall kind of pride. Go before the structure. Yeah. Anything else on that? No, can we quit? Can we never talk about that again? Well, until I guess we can talk about it again when the resistance revolution happens and we can cite it. And we only have three, I guess I'll take it. What do we have now? Three weeks till little less than three weeks till July 4th, right? It's a Friday. So yeah. And I kind of was thinking until until this conversation actually until last night, we sort of made this through without as much unpleasantness as I expected of Trump's hijacking of the 250th. And I actually think it's sort of it's been a flop that is he wanted to make it a big thing all about him. And I think most people have just ignored most of his attempts to do stuff or they haven't quite panned out the dollar bill, the $150 bill. And the other stuff hasn't happened yet at least the arch that's really worth fighting and stopping. So I was reassuring myself that I still am sort of reassured the public isn't really on board his hijacking. It doesn't seem to be changing anyone's mind about anything. And we would all forget about it pretty quickly. But this was so I'm still hoping to forget about last night pretty quickly. This is the part that worries me. And that's why I do kind of want to move on from it after this, because like he is good at this, like manipulating the public dialogue. Like I don't think it'd be watched at last night. I'm not saying that there's this deep well of love for, you know, a guy fucking shouting about Michelle Obama being trans. But like the people that he was able to engage are people that don't pay that close attention to all this and probably wouldn't have even noticed that America 250 was happening to be honest in another world. What do they receive? They get trickle down stuff. They'll get like a meme that somebody sends them of like the planes flying over the White House, like this looks cool. You know, or like they'll get a video of somebody crying about, you know, what was happening and, you know, with someone else being like, these guys are wusses. You know what I mean? And like this is the culture war at base, right? Like this notion that there are these like fancy boys and girls who like care about decorum. And then there's us, you know, who just care about fighting fucking bitches and making fun of people, you know? Like that's like they frame that up. And and I worry about that, that that is like that that is a little bit of a losing fight for people on our side. I feel like making fun of them and, you know, mocking them and talking about how pathetic and embarrassing and sad this is is a better path. But I don't know. I worry about it as a propaganda device. You're right to give in the history of other authoritarian regimes. And maybe people like me are kidding myself, kidding ourselves that, you know, on the other hand, look at the authentic celebrations of the next, look at the World Cup around the country. That seems heartening. And that's really where the real America is, but they can get moved by some of that insane Trump is propaganda too, I suppose. On the failed propaganda front, the Trump name did get taken down from the Kennedy Center, we think they're still hiding it. They're still hiding and they're still wallowing in their shame and hiding it. They, I guess, put up a big, what would you call it, like a tarp or something? Yeah, curtain in front of the words or on the outside of the Kennedy Center, where it initially said that, you know, John F Kennedy Center and then, you know, the Donald Trump and like they took down the Donald Trump's name from it. We have some images of like some photographers like taking pictures through the side of the tarp where you can see the D coming down, but there's not video of it. And as of the time we're taping it this morning, 11 a.m. That tarp blocking it is still up, but that's pretty weak. I don't know. It's really sad that this happened. I don't know. Do you you're more of a Kennedy Center man than me? Do you have any thoughts? The guy who's running the Kennedy Center is a Trump appointee. So I read somewhere he talks to Trump a lot. I wonder if, you know, he just Trump Trump after insisting on this ridiculous appeal that they lost at the last minute, said, well, I don't want anyone to see this, you know, my name coming down. And does that really at some point people will see those names not on there? So I think so. That would be good. You know, the one point I think it's kind of a little lost is people say, well, he lost the lawsuit. That's great. You know, the representative of Baydie Joyce Baydie of Ohio, a 75 year old woman, black woman from Ohio, who's an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board who wasn't allowed to speak at the meeting where they made this decision. The Trump appointed members of the board to honor Trump. She brought the lawsuit and I was talking with someone who was very involved in this. I mean, she didn't have that much support at the beginning. It wasn't like everyone was running to say, do this, you know, the other members, the other other people on the board who were ex officio, including Democrats, were like, well, come on, let's not pick this fight here. You get a lot of trouble. She had to go to a meeting in the White House alone. They wouldn't let her bring a staff member with the entire rest of the board. There's like 30, you know, Trump appointees, cabinet officials and big shot rich people. And she had to go alone and object. So she would have standing then to challenge the illegality of what happened. So she deserves a real shout out, I would say, real credit. And it's not like she's, you know, she's not like a, I don't think a real arts, you know, famous person in the, who loves the arts. That's what she was put on this was that's her, you know, she had a certain position in Congress that she got, she became ex officio on the board. And someone asked her, I think it was our colleague, Brendan Hart doing the live stream at 2 a.m. when she was, she was there and said, why did you do this? He said, it's just, it was the right thing to do. It was terrible what Trump was doing. So I miss, I didn't like it to watch the whole live stream. So Brendan for being down there at the Kennedy center, but she was there. That's cool. Yeah. Good for her. That showed me up too. She's actually like from Ohio. She is not a, a, a East or West Coast elitist. So I can point out pride of central state university in Wilbur force, Ohio. That's real America too, by the way. Totally. Good for her. Joyce baby. All right. Anything else grinding your gears on this Monday morning? Anything else you want to, or, or do you want to chat about the next triumph for? Well, of course I could do that for two or three hours, but you've, you've cleverly run out the clock here and not let me really go. And now if it were, if it were your guys, if it were, the Nuggets, it would be you, the Nuggets, it would be you at the whole first 35 minutes would have been on them, but no, I'm not complaining. It's okay. The first fourth and sixth greatest comeback in NBA finals history, all in one series. We don't need to discuss that at all. Really. It was beautiful. I know I'm for it. I got a little emotional watching Jalen Brunson, who's, you know, dad, Rick had played in the NBA and then it's coach, assistant coach and the team. And, and the dude, Jalen Brunson is like, these listed at six, two, but I was, I was like, I've, yeah, I've been there. Uh, I've been next to him, close to him. And I'm, I'm tall. I mean, he's my, I'm taller than I might think. So I think he's five, 11. And, you know, for him to score whatever it was, 45 of 94 points or something like that in the last game. Yeah. It was the only guy scoring in the fourth quarter, basically, just willing them to victory, going around seven foot six, when he, um, and, you know, finding what's way to the hook. I mean, just total triumph of will good for the next fans. It was fun. The New York stuff was really fun to see. And don't you think that, and I thought the video, all the videos from New York city as a native New Yorker, maybe that's a little more to me. And I recognized some of the places, obviously, and all I was, I was really touching and it was, I mean, not to sound cliche, but it was genuine diversity and multiculturalism in the very good sense. Right. Huge numbers of people who hold different skin colors and races and ethnic backgrounds and, and, and, you know, ages and wealth and politics. And well, you know, and, and, and staff, you know, unfortunately, Maggie got shouted at George Conway and tried to ruin the moment. But, you know, there's always a lot there, but for the most part. And then watch, I'm not a, I played a little soccer when I was a kid. So I'm not a huge World Cup fan or soccer fan, but I, I don't know, for some reason, I watched the Netherlands Japan game yesterday, which was an excellent game. And suddenly it was really, it was sort of touching. I mean, there they are playing in Texas, I think, in Arlington, in the Cowboy Stadium. And first half of scoreless, then back and forth in the second half ended up 2-2. Japan rally twice to catch up with Netherlands, which I think would be the favorite team there. Both teams played with sportsmanship. Their fans were, you know, crazily enthusiastic for their own team and also totally, so far as one could tell, friendly to the other fans and sort of shared some, you know, like photos together and like seem to, you know, some food and so forth in the parking lot. And the Japanese, the Japanese fans cleaned up their section after the, after the event. So they have a different custom in Japan in the US. That's that was maybe that was interesting. Yeah, that we didn't have that circles us back to the Lincoln Memorial. The Maga fans did not clean up the after themselves in front of the front of Lincoln Memorial. But I mean, the other makes the point, Andrew makes the point in, in Morning Shots. The World Cup, it is kind of nice. I got to say on this, I think I give them credit. They scattered it all over the country. People seem to be very, very well to see the Algerian team is somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the middle. Not to be not to be east coast of the lead is somewhere out there in Kansas or something. And the people Lawrence are being very nice to them and getting a lot. It's really flatter to have them there. And the Algerians are very pleased to get to see, you know, real America. I mean, I really feel like maybe the combination of the next and the World Cup will will save us from Trump's Horribleness. I hope so. I hope so. All right, Bill Crystal, we will be back tomorrow. Thanks for doing this one with me and we'll see you next Monday. Everybody else. Lots happen on this week. Hopefully we can focus on some real news tomorrow and we'll see you all then. Go next. Peace. Go tell that long tongue liar. Go and tell that midnight writer. Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back fighter. Tell him it's gonna cut him down. Tell him it's gonna cut him down. The Borg 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.