Bill Kristol: Trump Is in Way over His Head

- Hello and welcome to Board Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday.

“So we are here with Editor at Large Bill Crystal Bill.”

I wanna start with you with what I have titled Stupid War Update. I said okay, can we just-- - That's fine. - I mean, if I go through-- - There's a lot of--

- There's a lot to update, right? - Yeah, I think we should just dispense that the pleasentaries this week can go to the Stupid War update. So since we were last together,

me and the podcast audience, Friday, Trump, lifted the oil sanctions on Iranian oil. That's currently at sea,

giving them a multi-billion dollar windfall while we bomb them.

And then Iran fired a couple of missiles unsuccessfully at the island of Diego Garcia, great name for now, which is far beyond the range we'd previously known their capable of sending missiles. So that missiles-- they didn't succeed.

They're intercepted, it was kind of interesting. A data point. Then Trump threatened to hit and obliterate their power plants within 48 hours. From this exact point of time,

“if they don't open the straight, that was yesterday.”

Iran replied, threatening to hit energy assets across the Middle East. The worst case scenario here could have then just a global energy crisis, like we haven't seen, had both sides gone through with that. Then this morning, Trump blanked, called off the threat.

He pleaded this, I'm pleased to report the United States of American, the country of Iran, have had over the last few days very good in productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,

et cetera, et cetera. And then he goes on to say that they're going to postpone all military strikes against Iran and the empower plants and energy infrastructure for five days. Which you might notice would be like right after the market's

closed again on Friday. Iran denies that these talks occurred at all. Israel news outlets are reporting that this is basically just market manipulation that nothing has happened, that they're pressing forward.

The Israeli Air Force has begun a new wave of strikes targeting Iranian infrastructure sites this morning, while Trump bleated that out.

“And then Trump was on the tarmac after the bleet this morning”

and said that if negotiations go well, we'll end up settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out. So that's the state of affairs on the Iran War. Responds.

But--

Well, I guess I've always been slightly of the view

that Trump would taco himself out of this that he was sufficiently worried about boots on the ground in the Middle East and certainly worried about gas prices that he would find a way to have a negotiation or a fake negotiation or just orders

he's fire kind of stop the war. And assume that Iran would have to open the straight pretty soon afterwards, anyway, because of pressure from other nations. And I think that's where he ended up.

I mean, it is convenient as Andrew Agra pointed out this morning in morning shots that he launched his really big bluff, I guess it turned out, to be at least for now. And these are all just at least for now, I guess who knows where this could go.

But at least for now, the big bluff was launched Saturday, late Saturday afternoon, and called off early Monday morning. So while the markets were closed, Trump was bluffing. Now, hey, belief was only the market. God knows how much market manipulation there's been by various

people in and close to the Trump Trump administration. You know, the threats were pretty draw dropping on Sunday to Israeli radio. He pledged the total decimation of Iran if they didn't pledge to be open the straight right away.

And they haven't done so. They've simply said, well, they said anything. Trump has said, we're talking to them. And they said, actually, we haven't talked to the US at all, but I mean, they could have talked to Omaha or to Qatar or to Japan

or UK or a million possible calculators or have

indirect contacts with some people there and others. Anyway, I was this this morning. I was busy writing morning shots and there at 7 AM. And I had just finished basically saying that I did think Trump would still talk out even though despite all the bluffing

that I took his Friday afternoon post by how we're winding down the whole bunch of objectives he laid out all of which were huge retreat from his early objectives and all of which were either doable, had been done like decimating their missile capacity and weakening them, or they could say they'd been done,

or were vague enough that you could sort of claim to have done them. So I was just finishing writing that one. I saw there on our Slack that Trump had, in fact, tacos. So that required some frantic rewriting.

I would like to publicly urge here the White House not to have big announcements at 7 AM on day morning. It's a little bit, you know, we're just kind of getting the thing, you know, doing some of the other parts of the morning shots and kind of relaxing a little bit after initial spurt there.

And it's very disconcerting. To newsletter writer, toolment. Yeah, it's tough. I guess this guy goes that saying given that we just ran all that through, but they don't know what they're doing.

They don't have a plan to get out.

Like that's just the fundamental fact. Yeah, they have no plan to get out of here. They're doing, they're just throwing shit against the wall and it's like escalatory threats in the hopes that Iran folds, you know, followed by other things, the Israel part of this is, you know, a wild card here

and all of it too, you know, because as I mentioned, that Israeli Air Force is striking to run this morning. If you're, you know, in Iran shoes right now, Trump could taco and that would not necessarily resolve their problems, right? Trump has to deal with the with the entire region as well.

Like this is very different than the Venezuelan situation, I guess. It's not quite. There's no other players. And it's very different from tariffs, the source of the origin of the talk of formulation where Trump can pretty much you'll laterally change the back

and reassure the markets. As you say, he's got to deal with this year. He's got to deal with the region. He's got to deal with the Iranian regime, which is a little unclear. Who's running it in any way.

They may not, they may feel like, got Trump over a barrel.

“Having said all that, I think Trump can stop and make Israel stop.”

And I think if he sees that that's the obstacle to him being able to declare victory or even quasi victory, we set them back badly and here and now we're getting out of it. And I know how to not only have to start wars, but I know how to end wars. I'm like various presidents.

And the markets get reassured. I think he will lean on Israel hard and probably be able to bustle enough of the people in the air in the region to kind of accept this, you know, kind of uneasy ceasefire, which isn't really a deal, but it's sort of a quasi deal.

And does basically reduce the violence for now, not that it might entirely go away overnight.

But this is a big retreat. Let us not kid us. It's one thing to have a theory, a strategy where you're going to bomb for X amount of time and then get a good deal out of it. That wasn't his plan.

His plan was to bomb for three days and stop. Basically, it was planned as we've had as well. He's way in over his head. He's throwing stuff with the wall. He's bluffing.

He's blustering.

“What's been, I think most worries from just from the point of view of actually the U.S.”

and the world, the real world, not Trump's psyche, is that he would stumble into a truly insane escalation that would cause genuine economic crisis and all kinds of other second and third order effects. And I think in that respect, it's good that his inclination is to back off. His inclination is to, is to chicken out for sure.

I mean, the last night, when we went to bed, the possible of a completely catastrophic energy crisis, rolling the entire world, leading to, you know, untold, kind of damage and, you know, refugee crisis, you know, and if Trump really had tried to take out the Iranian energy infrastructure and the Iranians fire and that energy assets across the region and there was no plan to opening the straight, you know, you end up in a situation that affects everybody around the globe.

I do think that your point is this is a big back down and, you know, we don't want to escalate. The Iranians, though, more so than in Venezuela, like, have some impact on what is happening here and have a vote, so to speak, you know, I mentioned earlier that they said that they're not even having talks, Jarred Baker, the Wall Street Journal, was intended to be friendly towards Trump in the past, right?

So that's the unsettling realities that with this president, Americans are more time or an unprecedented position of having to suspect that the enemy's version of events is more likely to be true than our own. We have become the Baghdad bobs and then we had this from the spokesperson from the Iranian Armed Forces, I swear this is not from Wayne's world or a spoof movie.

This is the real real life that we're in, let's listen. Hey, Taram, you are fired, you are family of it dissentance. Thank you for your attention to this matter. The censor let go out of Potamolambia. That's not Saturday Night Live.

Isn't it amazing? Yeah, yeah. The Iranian spokesperson to Trump, you're fired. Thank you for the attention to this matter. They don't really seem like they've been obliterated.

No, no, no, not at all. I mean, and that also, one thing we should be grateful for, if this now moves in this direction, and it will, if it does, it'll be fits and starts and be messy, but if let's assume from it, it does move in the Trump backing down and in a cessation of reduction in hostilities.

“It does save us from boots on the ground, which I think Trump was stumbling towards.”

I mean, they were actual thousands of Marines going to the region. So it wasn't just stumbling towards, I suppose. And doing that in the kind of half-assed way, he was going to do it. And not really having prepared it with very unclear what the goals would be. That really could have been a recipe for disaster.

So I hope we've avoided that at least. Some of this is like, you can't really report on this because it's like the whims of a madman. Right? So there are no real inside sources, except for the voices in Trump's head. And like, whoever he literally last spoke to, who can speak to his thinking within that discrete

time frame, that said, the Israeli sources, Israeli news outlets are basically did say that, like,

no, troops are still on the way and where he's buying time.

So I, you know, I just, with that copy up to the idea that he's avoided the troops on the ground.

“I think that's an important caveat, they really two ways that could play out where one would”

do end up with troops on the ground and the escalation has just been delayed and he's buying time, which is possible, or two, Trump isn't really interested in boots on the ground and is trying to kind of back out of the whole thing. In which case we're heading towards a bit of something of a showdown with Israel. I mean, Israel clearly is trying to push Trump in the direction that they want him to go in and they push him pretty well for the last three and a half weeks.

But I wonder how big a showdown it would be between Trump and BB that would be an interesting question. And maybe besides, we'll let him go home for a while and then we'll just do it again in eight months.

You know, honestly, which is what happened last time.

I thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well in last. That's where quince shines. Premium fabrics consider design in everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable. Even as the seasons change, quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that last lightweight cashmere sweater, short sleeve mungolian cashmere polos, linen bottoms, and shorts, t's and 100% pima cotton, and European jersey linen, quince worth strikeably with top

factories and cuts out the middle man, the cashmere's 100% mungolian, the same stuff, luxury brands used. A pima cotton is long staple, which means it stays soft and doesn't pill. You don't want pilling European jersey linen is breathable and lightweight. Everything is built to hold up to

regular wear and still look good. I'm in quince all the time. I got up, I'm going to do another

round. I have another quince ordering that I want to do since it's summer here in New Orleans.

“Now, thank God. I'm looking into the linen bottoms and shorts. I think I'm in a quince shirt right”

now. Yeah, this is a quince shirt right here. Look at this. Look how handsome I look. Black, black short sleeve button up. It's nice. Right now I've got a quince.com/thebolo for free shipping in 365-day returns. It's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will. Now available on candidate too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to q_u_i_n_c_e_.com/thebolo for free shipping in 365-day returns.quince.com/thebolowork.

I don't talk about the economic impact and you would think that the secretary of the treasury would be kind of the point-person talking about that. He was out on Sunday shows on the weekend, but his remet seems to have expanded into military strategy. And so I want to play Scott Bessent talking to Kristen Welker about what the strategy is at this point. Every day we are taking out their missiles, their missile systems, and the factories that build

those missiles, and now are the General Kane Secretary Heggsets are leading a campaign to destroy all the fortifications along the streets of Formos. Just to be able to find point on this though, is the president in the process of winding down this war or escalating. Again, they're not mutually

“exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate crew.”

Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate. I mean, I guess, technically. The problem with that is Trump and each press conference he's giving is escalating and de-escalating simultaneously, the sentence by sentence. How bad has Scott Bessent? I mean, he is the word. I mean, he's not the worst because he's excess so horrible and some of the others are pretty bad. I'm very bad also, but I mean, this patronizing, if you are to the club, so the interview too,

to Christian Welch who's asking totally straightforward honestly in sensible questions. I mean, not very not got your questions. You know, and he's patronizing, that's the incorrect framing Christen. I think it's as he said. It's like kind of come a christening her after every question like you're too dumb to understand the brilliant strategy that we're employing, Christen that has skyrocketed energy prices and worse into the economic situation that he also,

there was kind of like a 50 days to bend the curve, you know, a type 50 days to stop the spread element of his remarks also this weekend. Like, you know, this is with a limited period of stuff to short. Very, very stuff. Sure. You know, the one thing I was thinking about writing, I didn't read this this morning. It's Trump is so incompetent and unsuited. Let's just say that the and the nicest way of putting it to be an actual president at its serious time. Like a war, right?

I mean, it's one thing you can squirp a lot of other things domestically in governance. He has an easy real threat to our liberties. Well, leaving all that slide, he should not be in charge of a war, but also the people around him is there. I mean, what a group of clowns and bosos is they would from set to you on Friday. I mean, it's scary. It's really scary. I mean, Nixon went a little crazy people, I say, I think it's fine to you in those last few months. He had Kissinger

and Schlesinger, and you know, Gerald Ford, his vice president, and Al Hague, and you know, it was Chief of Staff, and Dick Janney was there. I mean, there were people preventing and literally they did try to make sure that he couldn't give orders over the round Schlesinger,

and people were genuinely scared. That was the young keeper war and stuff. But I hope at least

“the Trump, since he seems to be vaguely averse to foreign adventures or city was, until he fell”

in love with them after June and then Venezuela, and decided to pursue foreign excursions for great. One thought the least would Trump maybe wouldn't be risking actual, like massive death, massive destruction, massive economic, you know, catastrophe in that way. We just were just going to hold on to other things. And now it turns out with this love he is at least falling in love for a while with foreign adventures. Maybe this will cure him with that. I don't know, do you think

or do you have he has no, he has the memory of a goldfish, right? That won't, yeah. Yeah. And he thinks that he can get out of everything, and, you know, if this is an area where he

has power rather than doing with Congress when he gets a Congress in a second, one more thing

on that economic part. So oil remains about over a hundred bucks a barrel price is going to go down a little bit this morning after Trump indicated he wasn't going to do mass bombing campaigns on Iranian oil, energy infrastructure. But, you know, you talk to Katherine Repel about this yesterday, you know, people can go listen to that. But every day that this goes on, like the potentially unintended consequences and ramifications of schooling with supply chain, you know, become hard

or harder to unwind. And like that is the other kind of element of this that he has sort of lost the rope on in my view. And that is, again, in fact, obviously people here and him politically, but it has global ramifications. And like they're trying to do these little things right now, like taking off the sanctions on Russia and Iran, while we're at wars with them, and releasing, you know, some of the reserve, but like it's not sufficient to the scale of the disruption.

No, and let's say that I don't know the odds are 70, 30 that he's going to actually talk a little way in this thing will die down. But it could start up again. And the uncertainty now, what you've seen this level of recklessness and incompetence combined by Trump in taking us to war and being as ability to do that one man taking this country to war, you've got to think hard about a whole bunch of other investment decisions you're making and whether you want to hold

you as treasuries. And I mean, I just think, yeah, I very much agree that the economic consequences, both because of the actual destruction has happened, because of the actual damage has been done to energy markets, but also the kind of going forward uncertainty that's now built in isn't going

“away. And I think we'll see it. And I, who knows, I think we'll see it in the actual economic numbers”

over this quarter and next quarter. Yeah, I guess it was on this this morning too on the madman theory, right? Like that there's a moment where people convince themselves that maybe it is better to have crazy Trump in there because the counterparties don't know how to respond to him and like they're worried he will actually do the crazy thing. And so they fold and we're trying to see the limits of that. Hey, everybody Saturdays for the boys, they say, well, you know,

Sundays for the dogs. What do you see the gazing girlies get? I don't know. Maybe all the rest of them, maybe Friday night. When it comes to dog food, look at that transition. We all of the

ideas of feeding our dogs fresh real food, but the reality is the fresh dog food usually means

taking up freezer space, time to thaw and trap, and then a lot of masculinity surveys. But you can get the good without the hassle with Sundays. Sundays is founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tory Waxman who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetic so she designed Sundays, air-dried real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care. You'd use to cook for yourself and your family, everybody of Sunday's clean and made

from real meat fruits and veggies with no kibble. That means no weird ingredients. You can't pronounce and no fillers in the best part. You to scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing or prep, no mess. Just nutrient rich clean food that fuels the happiest healthy days. Long time listeners know that I'd bullied into acquiring a cat, slinky the cat in my house, and so I cannot offer personal experience on the dog food side, at least for now. I don't know. Maybe I'll get fucking bullied

into buying a dog to sometimes soon. We'll see. But we've many dog people at the board and they've been thrilled about the move of Sundays for all the reasons laid out here. I trust them implicitly. And why not? Give it a try. Support the show. Make it the switch to Sundays.

Go right now to Sundays4Dogs.com/bowlwork50 and get 50% off your first order, or you can use code

"bowlwork50" at checkout with 50% off your first order at Sundays4Dogs.com/bowlwork50. Sundays4Dogs.com/bowlwork50 and or use code "bowlwork50" at checkout. On the economic thing, I had a conversation out of the

“weekend that really struck me. I think reflects the scale of their political problem right now.”

I have a friend here that's like best to pay that. Of course, we're tend to the news. It's in the service industry. That's one of the weekend in a van. He has having a real

a Ford, working hard. He wakes up one morning last week and it's like, oh wait, now gas to get to work

is 20 bucks more a week than it was last week. Next week, the grocery bill is going to go up. Like the real ramifications of this for people who aren't paying that close to attention to the news and are wondering, why is this happening? There has been no rationale provided. Anybody who doesn't follow geopolitical news closely, it's like, oh, the Iranians have been funding proxies to go after us for 47 years and so now we randomly out of the blue decided we

were going to bomb them and like the result is just this immediate economic hardship in your life. You know, that it is like affecting your ability to pay bills, do what you need to do.

“I think that it's going to take a little bit of time for that to sink in with people, right?”

You know, like paying more in gas one week is different than having to pay more every week for six weeks. You know, but I do think just I'm not sure it is said in for among the conventional wisdom for people like just the amount of anger there's going to be at the administration over this and in the scale of the backlash. I think that it is a crisis. Well, like an economic crisis, but then also a political crisis that has gotten out of control for them. Yeah, that's interesting

and I think you're right and again, it's not like the pandemic. You know, the pandemic affected

everyone in the world, Trump handled a particularly badly and childishly in many ways and finally

paid some price, but not as much as people kind of thought look at the end of the day. I was having a rough time. You know, this is something to process that. Yeah, and it's like even after 9/11, you and Katherine are going to the gas prices didn't go that much, but like, you know, they flew planes into our building so we had to do something, right? We ended up deciding that's stupid or the the the particulars of the strategy isn't well, but like at least initially there's like this,

okay, I understand what is this happening. There's this global pandemic. I understand what things are costing more. Like right now it's like you just wake up one morning and your gas prices and your grocery prices have skyrocketed and it's like why? Because we bombed the eye at whole

off for question mark reasons. Yeah, because he launched a war with no imminent threat, with no

public debate or congressional authorization, and for no articulated reason, which he then backed off of, let's see if he does, but so far maybe backing off of three and a half weeks in, without having done the things he said he wanted to do anyway, but just having inflicted this damage. I very much agree that the politics of this at home may be a bit a little bit underrated if anything. There's just like, okay, what the end of it, even if he tacos, right? Like even if he quits tomorrow,

all right, then it's like, okay, well, there's still going to be months of disruption. People's prices are going to be high or noticeably high or not kind of like, same, someone like this guy like, you know, living paycheck to paycheck, it is a noticeable difference when, you know,

“what you have to do every week goes up this much. So that happens and then the message is,”

well, we degraded the Iranian missile capacity and the number of ships, okay, I got to see who cares. Like I understand what you care. If you live in Israel, I understand they have different calculations. I understand what you care if you are a foreign policy nerd in Washington or New York that has been following the Iranian proxy threat for decades. Right, but as a regular person, you're like, wait a minute, like there's this tangible negative

impact on my life. And you're telling me we did it in order to degrade the ship capacity of Iran. So, and even from the foreign policy nerd, what do you do? The trade-offs not good. That is to say you degraded some of their missiles and we've done one of our own business price also. They have shown they can close the straight. That is more of a power going forward than the extra, I'm making this up, you know, thousand missiles that we blew off or missile factories. We blew

off or Scott Bessons, you know, deep understanding of the fortifications along the straight. And even though we may have blown up a few of, I don't know, they show they could close the straight. That's bad going forward. Now, do you think it builds in all kinds of uncertainty? What have they decided they have some other reason for, you know, causing trouble for their neighbors

“or for us six months or now, right? You have to factor that into your calculation. So, I very”

much agree that both on the sort of popular reaction to gas price level and on the more, you know, sophisticated investor, you know, Wall Street energy market level. This is bad. I still think it's not coming as better than escalating. Sure. But it's a bad, but it's a bad, but it's a genuinely bad outcome in the real world, but they'll less bad if too bad outcome. And it's related to the, to the regime change part of it, right? Because that's your point. Like, especially if there's no,

if you were unsuccessful in destabilizing the regime, which remember, that was the original stated reason for this, that we backed off on after two days. But, you know, so if they do end up with, whatever, harmony, junior still in charge or some equivalent version of that, and they now have this demonstrated this control over the straight. Yeah, you're right. Like, they have even more

stupid DHS update. The Department of Homeland Security shutdown has some on-the-ground reports

“from the New Orleans Airport this morning, or multiple friends taking flights out. Here's what I can”

tell you. There are ice agents in the airports now. Trump has deployed ice agents to the airports. They don't have anything to do, because they don't know how to use the equipment at the security checkpoint. So they're just milling about annoying people, you know, increasing people's blood pressure as they look at the ice agents that are just standing there, doing nothing with our tax dollars. I guess it's better that they're doing that than menacing people in the streets, based on their

skin color, but even still not a great use of, of our money. The lines were like three to four hours to get through at the New Orleans Airport. This is the last night and this morning, both people missing flights. This is happening in other airports. I just smile, this is my one actual,

first hand reporting or second hand reporting that I can offer. And the report from

Punchball this morning is that they sent it Republicans and Democrats based we can do a deal to back off of this. It's not too far from what you had proposed a couple weeks ago, Bill. And this is this, doing told Trump that Senator Republicans would support funding all of DHS except ice, ice funding would be handled later in a party line reconciliation bill. So the Democrats so accept that offer. Basically the contours of the offer would be Republicans would not have

to make the concessions on ice and CBP because they would end up jamming it through on a 50 vote thing going forward. But the Democrats would have delayed and installed that and successfully isolated ice out from the rest of the budget. And you know, I don't know how we're going to vote on that, but I guess soon, and then Boise, he gets 60 votes for that funding the rest of DHS.

Oh, it's for the funding the rest of DHS. Yeah, that's the democratic position. But Democrats would never

have to vote for funding ice. That would be the key. Yeah, exactly. And so Tune took this to Trump and Trump said no, it doesn't want to do it. He wants Republicans to stay in DC and keep fighting with the Democrats over DHS and the Save America Act, you know, his voting crackdown bill. Trump also warned Dune and Senator Republicans that he would publicly attack them. If they left town for the upcoming recess, Trump said he'd invite all the senators over the

families over to Easter dinner. Some Republicans took that as a threat, not a reward.

“So it's a direct quote from Punch Paul. Yeah, who leaked that punch, while do you think?”

I don't know. Yes, I'm going back. I hadn't really thought about how they got that until you started to read it. It's kind of detailed. And yeah, so Tune's trying to say, hey, I did my best to get us out of this. Here we are. And yeah, it's good. So Democrats need to just scream and yell that

Trump is basically, you know, preventing a deal that they could have accepted. We was really there

proposal almost to fund the rest of DHS without ice. They can't control what Tune does later on around a party line reconciliation vote. Let them be responsible for funding ice and ice has money anyway now. So it's functioning obviously from the last Jewish reconciliation bill. So they really need to attack Trump. I feel like Democrats should really go to the wall. Don't you think against Trump this week? Absolutely. I'm both the war end and ice. I mean, total fiasco.

Absolutely. And some of them are good. Gaggers from good. Murphy's been good. Murphy is out this weekend. There've been others. But I was going to come on this morning. I was thinking about this last night and said, I feel like that the Democrats are we're starting to lose it with messaging battle on this DHS shutdown mostly just because of volume. Like they had not been out there. Like they hadn't been a clear message. Like you want Jeffries talking about this on the one interview

you see that this weekend. It's a little bit winding of a road explaining what is happening and what their demands are and all this. And then Trump just like hands in this gift on the silver platter, which is basically like Trump does a lot of deal. They offered there was a deal. Like Republicans and Democrats had a deal. They resolved the airport problem and Trump doesn't want it.

“He wants the chaos. On last week's pod, I think it was people enjoyed the headline was Bill”

Crystal Cullen and the war. You know, I was just like, that's the Democratic message and the war. Stop it. Stop. It's not helping. You're causing more problems every day it goes on. And that's the message with this. Like, and the shutdown. Trump, like, we want to fund FEMA. We want to fund HSI. We want to fund other Homeland Security elements besides, you know, your internal secret police. Republicans agree with that. They're ready to do it. But you want to cause harm to Americans

and have real security risks by keeping the government shut down in order to like try to game the midterms. I just think that a very blunt straightforward, they should be out in everywhere this week on offense, pushing on pushing the pressure. Totally agree. Higher gas prices, lines at the airports, Trump's disposal for both period. And he is. Some small, it's a late night.

we want to stop it right now, but he won't, he won't sign a bill. I'm not the hill, you know,

“parliamentary procedure, machinations, man. But it also feels like they could force this to a floor too.”

Okay, and this is the other thing that they should be doing, right? Like now they have enough people. They're Republican House advantage is so small, hold now. Anyway, I guess all the Republicans who would be for it in one situation, would maybe not be for it if it felt like it was a review to Trump. But anyway, I don't know. Trump announced this morning one more thing on this that he didn't announce. He bleated. He bleated this morning that he supports masks.

Big supporter of masks, not COVID masks, but the ice agents wearing masks, but he respectfully request that the ice agents don't wear masks at airports. I don't quite understand that. Why that works? I guess that you understand why people don't like seeing the masks if you want them to not wear them at the airports. So why would you like it when they're going to the streets of our cities? I thought about the mask question and I actually was going to drop to ask you what

you've heard about whether they were wearing masks or not at the New Orleans airport, but I haven't

“seen that reported. In terms of this morning, physically at the airports, are they wearing masks or not?”

But the doubt you say, Trump's bleated this, which is, of course, very revealing, isn't it, right? Yeah. The offer middle class Americans who are, let's just over generalize middle class Americans who are flying around the country. And probably slightly disproportionately Republicanish voters, I guess, maybe aircraft travelers might be. They don't want to see those masks, you know, very distasteful, right? So the four people in the, in the Walmart parking lots who are trying

to, you know, get their day jobs and so forth, tough on them. They got to see the masks, you know, with people in Minneapolis, now very revealing. I think very hard and silly there for them to now continue to wear them. Well, maybe I'm overstating it. This is hard for them to continue to wear them in the streets. Like, what's the rationale now? I mean, I can also be able to hear the state of rationale is the doxing. Right. Right. You know, that ice agents were being

identified and that the crazy antifa left was targeting them in their homes, et cetera. It's

“once they could see their faces. But, okay, well, now once we're sent up to the airport,”

everyone could see their faces. What that doesn't compute, right? Like, if the point was to protect their identities, they needed to hide their identities because the threats to them were so great. Well, I wouldn't need to hide their identities at the airport. More people are going to see them at the airport, then we'll just solve them on the streets. My impression to be going through airports recently is it's full of travelers maniacally taking photos of everything. I don't even

know why you're in a white airport. It's interesting, but you know what I mean? You're sitting here. You're a little five guys burger and people are taking photos. All I ran into was, hey, I'm showing the kids that I'm on my way home or something. So, yes, this would be very easy to take

photos of all these ice agents at the airport. And the people are never nothing else to do,

well, they wait. I guess they're very, very long lines except look at the ice agents and have their resentment built and try to decide who they are. So, anyway, no masks at the airport. I should done this during Iran, but I want to throw one other political fall out from the war. It's what's happening at the vice president. He's not tweeting anymore. That was his job for year one, was posting shit posting, you know, quote tweeting people, making fun of people, being very

kind of sending on the internet like that was his job. And then obviously, after a Renee Good was murdered by the agent of the state, he was out the next day, publicly fighting the people about that on the internet and doing press conferences. Not as much from that anymore. I haven't really seen him posting on the internet lately. He did get another job. He has been sent to Hungary, Victor Orbans reelection is up next month. I want to do more on that here in the coming weeks,

here on the show, but the JD is being sent to Hungary to support Orbans one of our only allies left. He's in a pickle. It's hard to do the condescending home monitor thing, you know, about how everybody's stupid and you're smart when everything's going to shit and privately you think that what you did was stupid makes a little more challenging to do his stick. Now, let's say soon the tackling process and he gets, you know, the hostilities or the bulk

of hostilities, you know, wind down over the next week or two. Does he get out there and say, see, Trump knew what he was doing all along and we were stayed out of these endless wars. It's not like Iraq. Thank God, it's Trump. God knows if Kamal Harris were there would be

still bombing them. Of course, if Kamal Harris there, we never would have gotten into this horrible mess

at all prices would be much lower than they are than anyway. Kind of, this is why he stopped posting. Like this is what he wants. He's praying the Trump will just quit the war so that he can do the thing where he's like, see, we didn't get into the endless wars like these other stupid presidents. He was smart. He got us out of there. Right. It's unclear to be the efficacy of that, you know, especially given the potential long-tail economic consequences from it, but I do think

Americans have already died and intimized that, but I think he's hoping that it's something

that can be spinnable and manageable so that he doesn't have to come out against us or because like he isn't able to like Trump doesn't give him any ability in 2028. God willing, let's say Trump steps aside and we have a normal campaign. Like JD can't be like, you know, I was against him on the war. Like he can't do that because, you know, Trump will post all over and maybe he could try, but Trump would make a very challenging. So, and we'll keep monitoring JD.

I do just want to touch briefly on the depravity of our president and how just grotesque he is at a personal level in addition to how terrible the policy choices have been over the last week or two. He posted on his social media, he's been posting a lot, unlike JD who's going

silent on social media, Trump's been bleeding quite a lot. There were two posts over the weekend

that we should definitely not ignore. One was now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the radical left, highly incompetent Democrat party. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I mean, with some level we're kind of used to this, with from Trump, this type of stuff, the enemy of the people talk, et cetera, but I just think that that, however, that is that 20 words, like encapsulates how disturbing his worldview as in a lot of ways. I mean, it's

begins with just a blatant lie and conspiracy theory about the success of their effort in Iran, it's not dead, quite the opposite. And then he compares his domestic political foes to the people that he's literally bombing. You know, who he says are such a great threat, they require us

decimating and obliterating them and saying that the next target essentially is his domestic

political foes, the Democrats. Right, and God, you know, they'll try to claim that they're all these

“plots, the terrorist plots to disrupt the election by the Democrats, and that's why they have”

to have troops in several October polling places. I mean, I think this is, it could be, I mean, it was mostly just Trump and Trump, I will stipulate, but there's some notion here of laying the predicate. If you combine it with sort of that order they had about domestic terrorists at all that, not calling protesters domestic terrorists, some predicate being laid for going after the 2026 elections, it seems to me. No, it's not. I'm going to film that front. And also,

I don't know, I think it's important to talk about it. Part of it is like, okay, this is Trump being Trump you ignore it, but I do want to like, to Joe Rogan's of the world that to sit with us and like see this tweet, right, that it's like, this is what the person that you rank cover for is, is posting. Like he's gotten us into a war that you said you didn't want. It's really stupid war. Americans have died. People died all in Iran, also in all over the world.

You're being negatively impacted economically. And, you know, he is overseeing just chaos domestically in a broad. And what he's telling people is that the greatest enemies these is just fellow Americans. Like that's the greatest enemies that he's right now is people in this country who disagree with them. And it's deeply, deeply sick. And I don't know. I understand how it plays with the Red Hat people, but I do think that I don't know. It's sad that somebody might have to have a wake up

call, year 11 or whatever we are of Trump, but I don't know. I would think it'd be a wake up call for people. There's other bleeds. We talked with this on Saturday. We have to on on YouTube and make sure you're subscribed to the board takes feed and YouTube if you're a total sicko. And the one hour a day of this of the parade of horrible is not enough for you. And you need more Bill and I talked about this. A greater length. I do want to just cover it here briefly as well. Bob Mueller died after

a lengthy battle of Parkinson's, AJD-1, Trump's response to that. Robert Mueller just died good.

“I'm glad he's dead. That's what Trump tweeted about it. Disgusting. Really disgusting.”

And most people have said, well, a lot of people have said it's really disgusting and almost a new low in a parade of lows. Haven't seen a lot of Republicans. I guess Scott Bessant, your friend Scott Bessant got asked about this. And he had some three times had to say that you have to understand Trump's, Trump's family is family very effective. Trump is family, even through a lot. You know, I'm really... Oh yeah. They're stealing money. Still not having

millions of dollars. Not knowing that Trump actually pull his punches to the very end you might say. And decided to couldn't because he was sitting president and therefore couldn't recommend even that he did he be impeached instead of being guided. But it made a very, very tough on Trump and Belania and Ivanka and Jared. And there's just really... That's the... That's where the sympathy goes. When Robert Mueller and AJD won dies after suffering from Parkinson's having served really

heroically in Vietnam. And it did a really admirable public servant for his entire life.

“Yeah, it's important. You know, he did serve in Vietnam, volunteered.”

Well, Donald Trump ran from that. So, lied about his health conditions. Let me think about

they're stealing money hand over fist right now with their corruption. And godly amounts of money is from foreign entities and god knows who else is going through the Trump family, cryptocurrency, etc. And Hunter Biden had to... Had to see... Eventually, he gets part in by his dad. But Hunter Biden had to see a court room. I suspect that the Trump children might have to see a court room that he can try to part of them. But I imagine they've committed some state crimes.

We'll see. And I do think that we should go through. We go through their taxes and their financial interests with the fine kids come for years to come. So, hopefully they can continue to suffer. I'm sure. I'm sure. Pam Baudi will be... Yeah, I don't think they're currently one of the Trump kids. Just the way America Island actually went ahead and left his Justice Department authorized the indictment and had a special counsel. And then authorized the indictment result

of Hunter Biden and went to trial. And he was convicted leaving... So, the pardon... I don't approve of that necessarily. And that was after the election and all at the end of it. But he was...

Yes, it's kind of amazing, right? I mean, I mean, it's one getting to say it was straight-faced

that the Trump Justice Department will prosecute any Trump relative or any Trump Crowdy or any Trump administration officials, of course, won't could tell. Well, Joe Kent, they're going to go after. Yeah, anybody who quit the administration gets to get the arm of the law, targeting them. That's pretty good to ask. She just mentioned about the Mueller report because, you know, the stuff gets feels memories get fuzzy. He indicted 26 Russians and eight Americans

for working together to interfere with the election. And then about five of the Americans that are getting part in by Trump. But, you know, those that was real work that they did about a real threat to our elections. And he did so very modestly and, you know, by the book. And it's nothing

“like the picture that people painted of them. You used it over the weekend, but I think it's worth”

chewing over one more time because you offered a very depressing Yates quote to honor Bob Mueller's death and kind of hit me like a ton of bricks when you read it. Yeah, I was impressed to like dark. I was impressed that you were impressed by that. Well, I liked it. So I'm impressed you just pulled that, right? I like be most depressing possible reflection on Mueller's life and career came from a poem and you just pulled it immediately. So I would like to do it one more time for

people that missed that. So that poem, I would say, it was always a favorite of

Susan's of my wife. And when we met in college, she was a big fan of Yates. I knew a tiny bit about him as Susan's work. Better educated and more literary than I at the time, as since. And so of course, when you meet someone, you know, you want to get along, you have to pretend, oh, Yates, I like Yates too. Yeah. So I had to meet a little Yates to kind of keep up with Susan there in college because our relationship on a good path. And so this was her favorite, I believe, and yeah, and this was her

favorite poem, anyway, clearly read the poem. It's very short. Two of friends whose work has come to

“nothing. Now, while all the truth is out, be secret and take defeat from any brace and throat,”

for how can you compete being honor bread with one who were proofy lies, where neither shamed in

his own nor hinders neighbors eyes. That's the first half of the poem, and that's the key part.

Yeah, I mean, he was honor bread, Mueller. And this is what's so insightful, I think about Yates. Where cruelty lies were neither shamed in his own nor hinders neighbor's eyes. That's when the key to Trump's success, right? He has no shame, but unfortunately, many of his neighbors and associates and much of the American public seem to have no shame either. Yeah. It has been a superpower, shamelessness, and shamelessness gives you an advantage against people that are on our bread.

Hopefully not permanently. I guess I was like stretched to find some glimmer of hope in that poem. And I guess it's part, as we discussed on Saturday, the idea that at least Bob Mueller's children, his progeny, the folks who read about him in the history books will know that he was honor bread, and there is something to be said for that, of course. But I do think he's kind of see this a lot of how the Democrats and democratic bases processing the Trump era,

that there is a big poll for people to decide, maybe it's time to be a little more shameless and a little less honor bread ourselves. And it's hard not to understand the draw of that in the moment. Maybe the middle ground is to not be shameless, exactly, but not let be, don't let being honor bread make you pull your punches. And you could argue, and while they did a little bit, because it was so felt so constrained by this previous Justice Robert opinion, you couldn't

die to president, if you couldn't even recommend the indictment of a president, or you could do it's the double negative of we're not saying here that he didn't commit a crime. And so Mueller

“may have been too much honestly a product of a honorable pure era, where one did pull one's”

punches to some degree, and would it have a shavial, like to put it, that so much of our politics

and you know that doesn't mean if you shameless, but it does mean you have to be aggressive.

“And this is your recommendation. You can be responsible and aggressive, right?”

It is. It is my recommendation. I want to end on a little bit of a lighter now, to Palaclanza, for the podcast, if you will. And it is in ski over at CNN, was going through some old podcast interviews of Greg Phillips. It was a very important role at FEMA, which is an agency that does things. It's not kind of like commerce department, where you would be a deputy to Howard Lutnik. It's like he is in charge of emergency response. It's something very important for people across

the country, but completely adhering to Orleans. Here is Greg Phillips talking about an interesting life experience. We had a teleport, an incident, two of them, and I ended up at a waffle house, like 15 miles away from where I was. That man who is, yes, talking about teleporting

to a waffle house is Greg Phillips, and he now holds one of the most important jobs at FEMA

overseeing the office of response and recovery. It was an incredibly frightening moment. I would take the experience yourself in your car, flying through the air. But I tell you teleporting is no fun. You know, I would say in college a couple of times, I kind of came to a waffle house.

“I wouldn't say that it was teleporting. That experience, I think is one that others have,”

you know, could relate to until you get to the part where he's in his car, I guess. A little bit concerned about the driving, the quality of the driving that was happening in that

car that teleported 50 miles to a waffle house. I think his car was, was, you know,

was good like a gestance. It was not on the highway. It was, it was coming up in the air and then laying it to get the waffle house. That's my interpretation of what Mr. Phillips went there. Yeah, it is kind of terrifying. I couldn't quite tell whether he was most terrified by the teleporting side or the waffle house. But I guess it was teleporting side. Yeah. Where do they find these people? What is assembly equipment, right? I mean, it's like, you know, you think they're vinyl,

“they're corrupt, they're authoritarian, they're semi-fascist, they're bigoted, they're horrible,”

and so many personal ways. And then it turns out some of them were just crazy. It's the biggest cheat code for jumping to the front of the line in your career in history, the Donald Trump era. Any clown or Joker could just put on a magnet and start pretending to be an expert on a topic, and they would immediately get a job with it like they're in a democratic administration. They're like 10 strivers from Princeton competing over the job, you know,

working their whole career to go up the ladder. And these guys just catapulted in front of the line by being shameless Donald Trump supporters. And now we have somebody who believes that he teleported to a waffle house running in emergency response. So we've got a tree. So I hope you can sleep well at night, thinking about that one, everybody. It's speechless. It's just speechless. Okay. We have a big week coming. I had so many guests I wanted to get to that we've got, you pray for, pray for Jason

and Katie and Katie in the editing team, because we have some double headers coming. They're going to be some marathon pods coming. Lots of content for your ears and eyes this week. So do stick around for that. And on top of that, I'm going back to the live streaming thing tomorrow night Tuesday evening. Not sure what time yet, but keep an eye on your YouTube feed, press little, press little alert bell. And I will be I'll be live streaming with a glass of or as I or orange

wine or something tomorrow night. And so much, much, much to come. And, you know, check out Bill Crestone is morning shots newsletter. Appreciate you, Bill. Thank you. See you next week. Everybody else. We'll see you tomorrow for a big show. 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.