Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller to assess the midterm wave, which he says Democrats won with unusual breadth and depth, flipping state legislative chambers and reshaping the Senate outlook. They discuss the Mississippi and Texas races, the polling misses, and whether Democrats can undo gerrymandering in states they now control.
The conversation then turns to Trump's interview, his handling of JD Vance and the 2028 race, and his promotion of Stephen Miller, which the guests read as a sign of a hardening White House. They also argue over immigration talks, a possible impeachment vote on Pete Hegseth, and reports linking Nvidia's chief executive to a suspected Chinese influence operation.
In this episode Tim Miller, Bill Kristol
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, November 9, and it is the first Monday of a new era that I get to be with Bill Kristol, you know, a defeated MAGA era. And we're going to enjoy ourselves as we discuss it. Bill, how you doing? Mr. Right, Bill Kristol.
I've been enjoying myself for the last 6 days. I have this tendency to always wonder, well, let me worry about this now, or let me think about that. But I've managed to crawl that in, to contain that, and just to be pretty happy, actually.
I'm not worrying about anything.
That's good.
I see some people out there in the content space doing, you know, Chuck Schumer talk and who's in and who's out. I'm just like, guys, guys, this was an overwhelming defeat. Things are on the right trajectory. Let's enjoy it. Let's live together in the moment for a little bit. So let's do that. What was, um, I haven't spoken to you, obviously, since the election last Tuesday. We've talked offline, but not on a podcast. Give me your kind of biggest picture recap of what we saw and what you think explains it.
I mean, you and I think we're always on team wave, right? That it could be a wave, could be a very big wave. I give you a lot of credit. When we did that podcast, was that Labor Day weekend where you said, let's look back at 2006 and 1994 and reminisce about the two waves, and it might be useful, might be a little bit.
Well, I appreciate the credit, but this wave ended up being bigger than that. We should have done 1974. Is anyone alive from that? We could have brought back somebody who was working on the 1974 wave.
Yeah, that would have been, yeah. Anyway, I agree with that. No, it is bigger. I think I expected it to be maybe as big as '06 or '94, but yeah, not bigger. The house, you know, I sort of bought in a little too much to the conventional wisdom on the, I think everyone did kind of on the house that, well, you know, you can't really get beyond 30 seats in this modern environment with gerrymandering and socioeconomic sorting and polarization and all that. But it turns out you could get beyond that if you had a real wave. 11 state legislative chambers. It really reminds me of '94 in the sense of it's not just its breadth, but its depth.
I don't know. I think you did pretty good. And so this morning I had our team, the editors, put together just a little mashup of Bill Kristol's election takes, and I want to play that for you now.
I don't know. I remain pretty optimistic. I actually don't. I mean, I think it's going to be a very big blue wave, and I think it's probably going to swamp these. The house will be plus 30. For Republicans, it would be '06. I think this will be worse. I think this will be bigger than '06. That's my view. I think they will actually pick up more Senate seats and probably more House seats actually than '06, which was, I think, six Senate seats and 31 House seats. So. South Carolina, I think.
It's optimistic.
50-50 South Carolina, Mississippi 40-60, but I think 40-60, not 20-80. Kansas was closer than Iowa, I think, in 2024 in the presidential. So I don't know why everyone thinks Kansas, you know, they have a Democratic governor. It's not like no one in Kansas is ever like, well, voting for a Democrat. That would be crazy. So I kind of think that I put that almost in the same category as those other four, make it five. Something. And also there'll be some surprise. The Senate thing, I just don't, of course, I don't trust myself. Of course, I'm infected by hopium, but I go down state by state and I can get to the 57 or so, you know, without too much, even 58 without.
58?
Without feeling like that it's impossible. I think 58 would be Mississippi and Nebraska, but you know, and those are, we have actual polling showing those are very close. And I know you're going to just scoff if I even mention Louisiana, so I won't mention it, but I'm just, I'm keeping hope alive for Jamie Davis. But anyway, but you know, the more normal result of these 50-50, these very close races, you know, go either way would be 54, 55 in the Senate. But I actually think that is quite reasonable. I think at this point we're closer. I'm closer to 55 just as a pure analytic matter than like 51 or 52.
If anything, you underestimated by one.
Yeah, that's good. I like that. Well, you know, Mississippi did come through. It's coming through. I think it's fair to say Alaska, we don't quite know, but it's coming through. So it'll be 56. Louisiana wasn't, what was the margin? What did the margin end up there? It was pretty close, right?
Yeah, it ended up only being two or three. I was at a big dinner of Louisiana Democrats last week and a lot of, it was like the one group of people that wasn't happy. One group of Democrats that weren't happy this week. A lot of wish about more national money and all that, though. I don't know. Some of that cuts both ways, right? Like had more money come in early there. Does that help, you know, does more Republicans turn out? I think a lot of people voted for Jamie Davis just because he didn't have any money, like just like really as kind of a vessel to express their disapproval of Julia Letlo and Donald Trump.
So anyway, possible though. Had it come in late, had the money come in late at the right time, it was possible. Louisiana was 58 was possible, but let's be happy about 56.
Totally. No, totally. And I thank you for and your team for putting together that nice clip. You omitted all the stuff I was wrong about and people should not, I just want to caution people, do not take this one year's performance is not indicative necessarily of future results or of past predictions. If we can be honest, do not put any money in the betting market on anything I say as a result of this little mashup that Tim and his guys did there. You know, you shouldn't bet on the betting market. It's not politics anyway, but I will feel terrible if someone says, oh, that's great. Now, next crazy thing Bill says, I'm going to put a lot of money down on it.
That would be bad.
You were bullish on Mississippi though, and deserve credit for that. Your newsletter is on Mississippi this morning, and I think that it's not finished yet, but it's hard to see how Scott Column is not the senator-elector Mississippi by the time we're together next Monday, if you just kind of look at where the votes are out and stuff. But if you just say a little bit more about what you wrote about this morning and the state of play there.
It's so moving that Mississippi, which hasn't elected a last black senator was elected in 1875, I think, in reconstruction, and then it left office in 1881. They haven't had a black senator since. So it's the most black state, has the highest percentage of black residents or black voters in the nation. And then obviously hasn't had a Democrat in about what, almost 35 years. And he ran such an admirable campaign. I mean, Texas and Mississippi, I think I want to hear from you since you were in Texas. Those I think were the two most moving races in the sense that people who have been out of power and what's the word?
Persecuted? Is that too strong? I mean, you know, disenfranchised and treated very badly. Let me just put it that way. By the power in their state, they won. And they won by running admirable campaigns, right? I think, and really, and hopeful campaigns. And Column really did that in Mississippi, I think. And I mean, that he carried Forest County, named after one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, is kind of amazing. And his closing ad, I hadn't realized that until I read about it this week, was an ad filmed outside of Medicare Evers' house.
Medicare Evers was killed by a Klan member in 1963, a civil rights activist in Mississippi murdered. It doesn't even say vote for Column. It's just that this is what he fought for and what he died for, the chance to vote in this election. So I found that moving.
It was moving. I'm so happy for him. And we're going to have a lot more on Mississippi coming up over the next two weeks. I want to talk to you about the polling myth.
Say a word about Texas though, because I myself teared up a little when I saw there's a video somewhere. It's not at headquarters. I think it's someone's home. And they see Talarico is wide and they're very happy. This is 20, 30 people in someone's house, I think. Then they see the announcement about Hina Hosa. And they are in tears, you know, at this moment. It was really, I myself teared up a little.
Yeah, the excitement about Hina Hosa, I'll tell you, there's this corny scene in the newsroom. You remember the show? The newsroom was a sorkin show after, yeah, it was a less successful sorkin show after the West Wing. And this clip goes around a lot on social media because it's like so cloying. It's like these reporters who are on a plane and they get an alert because of the reporters that Osama bin Laden's been killed. And they say to the other passengers that it's their honor to inform them that we've killed Osama bin Laden. And the music plays and people start cheering and crying.
And I got to experience that actually with telling a group of people we were kind of waiting to get into the Talarico party. And, you know, at this point, it was pretty clear that Talarico is going to win, you know, but cell service is bad. And, you know, a lot of folks are just kind of with their friends and like very excited and hoping to get a good seat in there. And I was with this group of women. And, you know, I heard one of them say to the other one, like, I think Gina could even win. I think she's looking good. And I said to him, it's like, well, I have the opportunity to tell you right now that Gina Hina Hosa is going to win and Greg Abbott called to concede already.
And they all start crying and like hugging each other. And I do think just this long period, I was at Travis County Democratic HQ during the day. And, you know, as there always is in one of these grassroots offices, there's probably a 75-year-old lady, you know, sitting at the front, taking people's names as they come in. And I was talking to her and she talked about how she's been volunteering for all these races in Texas, going back to Ann Richards. I've not had any wins.
I just think about the Texas policies that have been put in place the last 12 years. I mean, the abortion bounty law. And I do, you know, to think a lot about the people that have like believed in, or maybe even didn't even believe in Blue Texas, but just wanted to, you know, try to make a difference and were volunteering and working for this for a long time. It was really special. And then Gina and James Talarico met at the Whiteburger afterwards. Because James is a teet, not a drinker, you know, so they had a victory, whatever, Diet Coke or milkshake or something. But it was really cool.
They're going a little too far. They're going a little too far in that, you know, Democratic Party is the party of milkshakes and niceness and stuff like that. Because they could have a drink or two, you know.
It was like a Hispanic woman working the registers shouting like, Gina, I love you. Let me take your order, Gina. And it was really, it was really special. So it's a lot of good vibes in the South over the last week. And I will say, though, LSU lost yesterday or Saturday when I was at the game, it was funny. I was at the game last year after Charlie Kirk died and they did the flyover and everything and everybody's cheering for Charlie Kirk. And I'm kind of like trying to home run to the bushes a little bit. I got, you know, nobody, nobody's talking to me. Nobody sees me. Nobody knows who I am.
And you do realize that, like, you know, there may be some secret blue dots in every space. You know, I go to LSU games a couple of times a year and every once in a while I'll see somebody that like whatever, listen to some bull work. But like every time I walked to the concessions or to the bathroom, like somebody wanted to give me a high five before seeing us. So there was a definite vibe shift even in deep red band rage on Saturday. Let's just talk about the polling business. Then we'll get to new stuff. A guy I follow on social media who's like the statehouse monitoring Chas Nuttycomb.
He's a good follow. He posted this. Anyone notice how there isn't widespread frustration about the polling misses this year despite them being as large as 2020? There were tons of articles talking about how polling was broken after all these past elections when the miss was driven, you know, by whatever quiet Trump voters or COVID. This miss was just as large as any of those, but it was driven mostly by these waiting decisions. And he doesn't think he's seen a single article talking about it. And I do think that's true. It's kind of this asymmetry that we talk about a lot, but Ossoff and Talarico, those races were both off by 10.
10. We did talk about it. I had a polling expert on. We talked about this and I just couldn't actually believe it in my brain, you know, but like there were signs that this could happen with the waiting. I brought up the story a couple of times in the show where I was talking to a guy that was looking at the polling for Sherrod Brown's race in Ohio. And he was like, they can't find Republicans. And so they're waiting so much, you know, to try to avoid that miss. Like there was good reason to believe that they were actually undercounting Democrats. I think that because, I don't know, the shock of Donald Trump winning, I guess, makes it feel like that polling was more significant than this.
But I mean, I do think it's worth, you know, not letting folks get skipped by on that.
Yeah, you and I discussed, I think this a week ago, the times had said, shown what the numbers would be if they had waited in the way they did in the last midterm as opposed to the presidential. And it probably would have gotten them closer to the vote in most of these states. The other thing I would say is, I mean, the generic ending up at 13 there, I wonder if the polls were off some, but also there probably was a late break, especially in the states that were already breaking. That's sort of how these waves go sometimes. You know, you go from your 12-point victory to your 15-point victory just because, I don't know, somehow voters instinctively get on the bandwagon or the bottom falls out more.
And maybe it was only 12 points five days before the election and then it became 15. And I do feel like no one really expected that. What did the generic, the national popular vote end up? It looks like it ended up 13.
13.
Which is massive. It's so much the largest in the modern era.
I was going through your highlight reel this morning and you were talking about eight or nine. And even in like the bullish Bill Kristol pitch.
Yeah. And that's so maybe there the polling was also kind of a waiting issue. And partly, as I say, the late break just kind of confirming the wave. That does, I remember that happening in '94. But again, the 13, it makes it a very big deal. It just take one minute on the actual meaning of it. I mean, the extent to which the Democrats are now, at least for a while, the majority party in the country, not overwhelmingly so, not FDR and New Deal coalition. But if you just look at every level of government, basically, except executive branch, unfortunately, and the Supreme Court, the Democrats have the Senate and the House and not that close.
They have 60% of House members. So about 60%. And we know the national popular vote was what, 56, 44 or so. So 56%, 60%, 70% of the public, the American people have a Democratic governor. What, 11 statehouses flipped? I feel like it just changes the whole, don't you think that the whole, I don't know, direction of American, for now at least, it suggests a future for American politics, which is not Trumpism or desperately fighting back against Trumpism to kind of win a 51-49 Senate for two or four years so we can stop some of the horrible damage that's being done.
It really suggests the possibility of a very different future.
Yeah, just thinking about the structural part of it, you know, and like there's a lot of discussion about that, like the structural advantages that Trump had and, you know, the size of the wave just kind of overwhelmed that. You know, it's kind of like a hurry. I was thinking about the levees on election night. It's a hurricane where it's like the levees can hold a cat three, a cat four, a cat five, and even, you know, sort of the manner in which they gave themselves a moat by, you know, cheating in some ways, gerrymandering in other ways, just the kind of structural nature of the Senate and, you know, the way that the coalitions are divided.
I think that that is as significant as anything about the election. It's very hard to see the Republicans getting the Senate back until 2032. I mean, again, anything can happen. The robots could be our overlords by then, but like the map gets very hard for them until six years from now. These state legislatures and the houses, House of Representatives, we saw in Wisconsin, for example, which has been gerrymandered to the Hilt, that flipped. They have a trifecta now, governor, both statehouse, state Senate. David Crowley's already said that he'd be open to, you know, changing the way that the districts are drawn up.
And so the Democrats could kind of, you know, whatever, in two years, some of these seats that they want in insane places will come back. That's kind of how things always work. But they can offset that by fixing some of the gerrymandering in some of these states they won. In North Carolina, you know, they won the statehouse. And in Georgia, now you've got a Democratic governor and Democratic officials everywhere. So there are a bunch of these states that were kind of red-tinged that had really gerrymandered both their congressional delegations and their state legislative delegations. And that has either been swamped by the wave or is now poised to be fixed in the future.
And so, you know, and I just remember talking to Anderson Clayton before the election and she was like, we need two more wins, right? To be able to fix what they have done by giving themselves the structural advantages. And the wave was so big that it ended up not actually, no, like that's fixable now. And so that's meaningful, I think, in a bunch of places. And I do think that that's going to have a long-term positive implication on a lot of stuff. And a lot of stuff we're working on, like the fight for democracy. You know, shout out to all the lawyers and Demarcalys and everybody that's out there like working on all this, but it was like too big to rig.
You know, that was your newsletter the day after the election. I think that's an important takeaway.
Agreed.
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Oh, Trump flailing is also fun to talk about so he can.
Okay, great. He was on 60 minutes last night and there are a bunch of different topics I kind of want to run through. Probably the most delicious. So we'll start with that. We're still on a high is the conversation around JD Vance. He was asked about whether he's going to endorse JD Vance. He was very non-committal on that. Basically saying maybe I don't endorse anybody. Lots of people I like. He's asked about JD Vance's statement that he put out the morning after the election that basically said, you know, the Iran war led to increased costs and that was the reason for this.
A lot of our people didn't turn out. And Ross asked Trump about whether he knew that JD was going to write that statement and he said yes. But then he had an interesting caveat. He's like, there was one thing I wish he would have added to it, which is that he would confirm that he would do the Iran war over if he could. You know, because sure, it might have cost us analytically, but it's just, it was such an important mission that I wish JD would confirm that he'd said that. That's, I bet JD isn't really looking forward to that question getting asked to him soon because Trump has already signaled what he wants the answer to be and it's an answer that could be very harmful to his future prospects.
And Trump's also signaling he is not whatever his weaknesses and, you know, God knows you can overinterpret Trumping so much of it is seems sort of random, you know, flailing and self-indulgence and, you know, God knows what, all of his vanity and idiocies and all. He is not going to go quietly into the night here and sort of, you know, endorse someone and be over, you know, and try to stay out of the spotlight in the 2028. He can't give up the spotlight. And so he's going to not endorse anyone. He's going to toy with them all.
He's going to try to make himself, if not the candidate, which I don't 100% rule out, or if not the selector of a candidate who's not JD and not Rubio, but someone he trusts more or something like that, make himself at least the master of ceremonies and the game show host here for all the way into 2028. I mean, the degree to which he's going to be a problem for the Republican Party is reassuring in a way, which I think he's not going to get more popular. It also means that actually the Democrats should keep their focus on Trump and discrediting Trump because he's not, make it harder for them to deliberate.
It's going to be very hard for them to liberate themselves anyway. Make it really impossible for them to liberate themselves from an incumbent president who will be at, hopefully at 32, Sarah's 32% push line by, you know, by a year from now, which I think is quite possible.
Yeah, I think that that is right. And it also just previews something that, you know, we've all known is coming, but that we can delight in over the next two years, which is that he's not going to just make it easy on JD. You know, he's not going to paint JD's little too cute by half effort to kind of be like, well, I was the one guy that wasn't against the war, you know, that he's been trying to do leaking and then now basically bring it out into the public on with that statement. You know, good luck with that.
And JVL kind of laid this out in a newsletter last week, which is basically that, you know, his options here are, you know, trying to nudge Trump to back off the Iran war and stop doing the harmful things. Good luck with that. Or, you know, there's some people out there, Carville is saying this to me, Nate Silver and others have suggested that Trump might quit. I find that insane, but who knows? Anything can happen. And then the other option would be like JD quitting, which creates a whole nother briar patch of his own, right? Because, you know, Sarah had a great focus group over the weekend people should check out where she's talking to the child of the Trump voters were coping.
And like the core Trump base still isn't ready to blame them, right? I mean, the podcast class might be ready to blame them. The, you know, sort of new people onto the, you know, scene, casual, more casual Republicans, you know, people that are annoyed about their money. But like the core MAGA base that will be turning out in the 28th primary, they might allow a little bit of, you know, some light acknowledgment that you would do things a little differently on foreign policy, but they're not looking for somebody to withdo a full assault on Trump.
The Republican Party nominated Trump three times and delivered the general election to him twice. And the idea that they're not, I mean, it's possible that they would sort of all just collectively decide, well, let's just move on. But it's not that easy. And then especially when he's now unpopular and some of them are broken from him, but a lot haven't yet. I mean, obviously by definition, they, you know, they're still a pretty big chunk of the party, majority presumably is still pro-Trump. Well, not presumably, it is, right? We know that. So we don't have a Reagan situation where he's going to hand off to whoever wins the nomination and then it ends up being Bush.
We don't have the normal situation where Bush is George W. Bush is, okay, it's finished for him. He's just going to try to do the surge and do the right thing. And he's going to let the primary play out with McCain and Romney and everyone, right? It's nothing like that. Trump is going to be central and a lot of the party will want him to be central and will listen to who he endorses. But he's not going to want to endorse early because then he's giving up his centrality. I actually can't even imagine, even as late as the summer of 2028, I've been thinking about this somehow the last two, three days. I can't even imagine him sitting in the White House and watching someone else almost accepting the nomination.
It's why I almost, I mean, he's so old, I don't think he can do it, but I almost come back to JVL's kind of, are we sure he doesn't go for another term? Are we sure he doesn't like get a, if Ivanka hadn't married Jared, I mean, he must be, if the other kids were a little more respectable, if Don Jr. weren't, I mean, I can just see Trump's mind must be working like, how do I make this work? Because I just, he can't stand being out of the off-center stage. So I don't think, do you think?
It's hard to imagine him giving a helpful convention speech in 2028. I'll tell you that much. I just, for example, the example you gave on Bush, Bush didn't go to McCain's convention. He understood he'd be a problem. And I don't even believe that there were like leaked stories to the New York Times about how W's mad at McCain. You know what I mean? I just think he was happy to move on. And like that's not, that's not what we're going to be doing here. A couple other 60 minutes things that I want to hit on. I just really quick on corruption. Trump doesn't back off on that, on him getting rich from the office at all.
You know, when Ross asked him about making the 3 billion, Ross said, I didn't make 3 billion. Trump said, well, you should have been in the stock market then too, because that's where I made my money from. No issues with the, you know, UAE putting that much money into a family business that he still is part of. And, you know, you look at what Robert Garcia said on the show a couple weeks ago about how the Trump family is going to be their top priority. Like that is another thing that hangs over 2028. And, you know, it becomes very hard for anybody, you know, maybe somebody emerges from the outside, right?
You know, Ron DeSantis or somebody that has a little distance, but it comes very hard for JD Vance or Marco to not become totally, you know, tainted by all this because Trump's not backing off at all on the self-admission.
I think that's so important. I mean, the one thing he backs, pseudo-backs off on immigration, he does other things, but corruption he won't back on. And that's his greatest vulnerability at this point, I think, because he can move a little on some of these other issues. And you can imagine, or you can imagine a successor moving a little more than Trump and sort of the war would be over. I mean, you can imagine things that make those things a little less damaging by mid-28. I don't see how corruption is less damaging if the Democrats do anything, a minimally competent job of just having the hearings and bringing out the truth. It's not like they have to make anything up. I mean, there's so many instances and there's so much foreign corruption, incidentally.
It's one thing to be, you know, like trimming things here at home, kind of, you know, Richard Daly getting a little kickback on, you know, or maybe Daly didn't personally, but those types, Tammany Hall types getting kickbacks on construction projects and all that. This is different. This is Saudi and UAE and China. I would bet a fair amount on the nominee not coming from the Trump administration, but then I can't quite figure out DeSantis-Cruz, but I don't know, or some total outs person. I don't know. I don't know. But on the other hand, it has to be someone Trump sort of blesses.
Yeah. They didn't have a lot of wins. You know, there's not a lot of fresh faces that emerged in the midterm that could be an outsider choice. I should note, we mentioned the two big tore coming earlier, but there was one other thing that Trump, he did bleep on his social media account this morning that he doesn't believe the election was honest and that there were early voting dumps that were too large. And it's all about the machines. It's half-hearted and much less scary than what we're all prepared for, but it's not over.
It's not ending. And again, that complicates everything for potential successors going forward. You mentioned the immigration. I do want to talk about this for a second. This was, I guess, an unintentional actual news item. I don't really think it is, but I'll just read the transcript here of the back and forth on 60 minutes. Ross asks him, one thing you'd like to work with the Democrats on. It's an open-ended question. Then Trump says, I'd love to do something on immigration. Kind of go back and forth a little bit. And then Ross says, okay, well, so you think your deportation policy was too tough?
Trump says, too tough? Yeah, I think it might be too tough. And so then he talks about, you know, the people that are landscape, you know, it's always the immigrants he always thinks about are the ones that are being treated unfairly or the ones that work in his hotels. So he always starts to mention maids and landscapers. So he goes to do that. And then Ross says, oh, so do you think there should be some type of legal status for the landscapers? Trump says, yeah. Then he mentions the maids again. And then he says, you know, having those kind of people be taken out, it's tough. It's a tough thing. There's a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody to be taken out.
And then Ross asked any of those people working in your administration. And Trump says, well, there are a lot of those people. So, you know, I mean, this whole thing to me is preposterous. Maybe it's true. I do think it's true that Trump, like in an imaginary world, you know, would like to have a carve-out for the people that work at his hotels, but I don't see how that is actually practical or operational. You know, I was going to do the fool me once, fool me twice. It's like what, fool me 700 times by Trump, like this idea that he's going to want to do a deal with it.
Like he's not, he's not a deal-making president. He's not. The amount of things that they'd have to give up on immigration to get a deal are unimaginable to Trump and his coalition. And simultaneously to him doing that, which I think is an obvious fig leaf to try to get Democrats to work with him on something rather than focus on the stuff that he doesn't want, which is oversight. He promotes Stephen Miller to chief of staff, which is the other big news from over the weekend. Susie Wiles gets pushed out. Stephen Miller gets promoted. That is not the thing that you want to do if you're looking for a grand bargain on immigration.
You know, I think you're absolutely right though. The key thing Trump's trying to do is sucker the Democrats into, let's have a meeting. I mean, you know, we could really maybe work it out. They're not going to work it out. But meanwhile, with the photos of Schubert and Jefferies and Trump and Stephen Miller, I guess, all sitting there talking and leaks and earnest back and forth on different parts of the immigration agenda, Democrats need to say, forget it. They could say, we're going to pass parts of immigration bills, immigration bills, or even a big immigration bill. That's probably too ambitious, but they'll have majorities in both houses.
They should pass some good immigration stuff and let Trump sign it or let him veto it. They should not get into some stupid negotiation with Trump that they need to stay on the offensive, pass their agenda, and let Trump, you know, say accept it or not, including some of the immigration agenda. You know, on the Stephen Miller thing, which we should talk about for a minute if you want. For me, I mean, I think, yeah, A, it makes him harder to go the other way on immigration. For me, that was an enforcer pick. Trump is a mob boss. You know, that's how he thinks that way.
He has had a lot of associations with mob types over the years. Roy Cohn was always his key inspirer and organizer, and Roy Cohn was, among many other things, a mob lawyer. So he knows that once you've had a defeat, and he knows he had a defeat, you do lose control of things internally. You need a tough guy to crack the whip internally. That's the first thing you have to do. I don't think he's wrong about this. And the Miller thing, a lot of people say, I can't understand it. What an unforced error? I'm not so sure. The administration could literally fall apart if he had Susie Wiles still as chief of staff, I think, being nice to everyone.
Or if he had taken, at first I thought, why doesn't he take someone who's less controversial, but who's totally in Trump's pocket, you know, your friend Witkoff or someone, you know, just kind of, you know, someone who he'll make sure all the grift and graft go on, but he's not heated by people. But I think he thinks he needs a really tough guy to call, you know, to make sure the whole thing gets tightened up as you would do if you're a mob boss and you've lost some territory or something like that. You can't have defections internally. You can't even be more leaking. You can't have half the intelligence community deciding not to cooperate with you. You can't have the military deciding, I don't really think we should commit war crimes anymore.
That stuff can start to happen in a flailing and failing administration. So I don't think the Miller thing's entirely stupid in a way, but it is, of course, the effect of it is going to be, is a kind of doubling down. And I don't know if he can pull it off. I don't know if Miller can, Miller has been effective in his own horrible way, but can he do it as chief of staff? What do you think? I don't know.
He survived a long time in Trump world. And like somehow, I mean, you know, you go all the way back. He won over Javanka in the first term. Like, you know, they saw it as, you know, this kind of dirty business. Like the dirty business they like is making money. Like the dirty business they don't like is the deportations and the culture war stuff and, you know, the menacing tone. You know, they would prefer to get rich nicely, you know, but they recognize that, you know, Trump needed somebody to represent the id of the party, right?
And so they, you know, he cuts a deal with them in the first term and now he's still there. Like I think about how many people are gone. I think if you sat in 2017 and said, hey, 10 years from now, Trump's still going to be president. You know, look at this cast of characters that are around him in the White House. Who do you think is going to be the one to still be there? I don't think a ton of people would have picked Stephen Miller as the one that was most likely. So, you know, to me, I think that, you know, he's demonstrated that ability to navigate Trump world. And yeah, look, I think that's the ominous part about all of this is that Trump is going to want to have the loyalists around at the end.
And what did Biden do for the last two years? He brings in, you know, somebody from the outside, business leader to be the chief of staff. And like that's what a normal president does, right? It's like, okay, well, you know, the last two years, you know, we bring somebody with some fresh eyes, who's an organizer, you know, who can, you know, help, you know, ensure that things are getting done. Like that's not what Trump wants. Like that's not what this administration is. It's about protecting the grift, protecting the illegality, and, you know, protecting his desire to build the arch in the ballroom.
And, you know, and like those are the things that matter to him.
And suppressing any kind of internal dissent or dissent in the movement as much as you can more broadly or even in the party. And Miller and Vote in there is the top two guys in the White House. I mean, that's, they're both skilled operatives in a way. They know an awful lot about government and where the levers of power are. And they're not embarrassed to use that power. And as Miller said, it was striking and it was a Friday night where he took the stage in Mar-a-Lago. I mean, what a world. Anyway, and you know, he pledged, I don't know, like undying loyalty. It was really kind of creepy, actually. He didn't talk, I don't recall that.
I didn't see the whole thing. I don't think he spoke about immigration or any substantive policy issue to speak of. It was just, I am, this is an honor beyond anything I could have thought. And I pledge to you my fealty, my loyalty, my devotion, my whatever. I mean, it was really grotesque, you know, fury prince-ip type stuff. Like it's, and, but that's what Trump wants. And that's why, and that's why he wants Miller more. And it's not, it doesn't mean Miller, and he could override Miller on some substantive issues. I think people are doing, overdoing the ideological side of it and underdoing the kind of, yeah, enforcement, the enforcer side of it.
You know, like Trump is very responsive to what's in the news and what's in front of his face, right? And so if you have another horrific ICE moment, like the idea that Trump tells Miller and tells Mullen to pull back is certain. And the fact that Miller says, you know, yes, sir, and still kind of continues his ideological vendetta under the cover of darkness as much as possible. Like that's very possible, like the outcome. That's not the big deal. And like this is the thing that I just, I can't look at my email this morning from a listener who pointed out that on Friday, ICE arrested a student at Berkeley, Paula Hernandez.
She was at SFO waiting for a flight. She's 23. She came from Colombia. She had gender-based violence against her, pending asylum case, no criminal records. She's now in the Mojave Desert in, you know, some fucking ICE hellhole. This stuff is happening still.
Totally.
This stuff is like still ongoing right now and it's still going to continue to be ongoing. And if it's not at the top of the news, Trump's not going to know about it. And Stephen Miller isn't going to show it to him. And like to me, like that agenda, like the disappeared while driving style deportations and nabbings of people like are going to continue. And the Democrats like absolutely, you know, need to have like an opening negotiating posture of letting all these people out of detention.
Like there's absolutely no reason that we should be detaining a single person who does not have a violent criminal history. Like that should just be like step one and a good faith operation if he wants to do this. And like just how preposterous it is to think that that would happen with Stephen Miller's chief of staff like shows you how like unserious the whole thing is. But to me, if I'm the Democrats in the House, I mean, obviously there'll be a big funding fight over ICE and there'll be a lot of conversations around that. But like at the start, there's absolutely no reason that we should have non-violent immigrants and people asking for asylum in internment camps in the Mojave Desert.
If I'm Speaker Jefferies, if I'm over in the House, like that is my ask, which is I want a jailbreak for all of these people whose like rights are being just completely infringed upon and who are being treated like animals. Like they need the dignity of being able to at least be in their own homes and with their families.
Totally agree. And the Democrats should ask that. They shouldn't just ask it. They should pass it, in my opinion, and at least once or twice to make Trump veto it. Maybe eventually they have to, you know, accept something a little less, but that has to be their opening position and their position on the record. I mean, I'm a little worried. They all have a tendency to pre-negotiate with themselves. You know, well, of course he'll never accept this. So we won't ask that. Who cares if he'll accept it? You just want a massive landslide election. You should go with your agenda and then see what he instantly, Trump is capable of accepting more than we think because he's so, you know, God knows what he, if he thinks it's popular.
And incidentally, Stephen Miller will grumble, but he will be a loyal chief of staff and go along. Or Trump will replace him incidentally. It's not like Trump is loyalty to all of his loyalists. His loyalists have to be loyal to him, but he can dump, he can dump his loyalists when he wants to. Pam Bondi, he thought was supposed to be loyal to him. And what's her name? DHS. I blank out all these, all the women he replaces with. It's kind of good that he's keeping the pattern up of always replacing the women with men though.
Yeah.
What is this? It's really astonishing.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
You know, I add Susie Wiles to the list. All right, let's go to Hegseth and men that aren't going to be replaced, in my opinion. And we'll see. It's going to be interesting drama over the next six weeks with Pete Hegseth because Trump had said, did say last night that he has confidence in Hegseth. He always says that. You know, he said that and then tweeted that somebody's fired like three hours later before. So, you know, we'll see. The Republicans on the Hill, you know, so there'll be a, there will be a vote on this during the lame duck while Republicans are still in charge.
So I think that's important to kind of think about. And obviously it'd be much more meaningful for him to be impeached during the lame duck Congress with Republicans in charge. I just think that's a lot harder for the administration to like brush aside than not to say the Democrats shouldn't do it too when they get back in charge in January if it doesn't go through. But French Hill, one of the few Republicans that was on my list of stretch goals for a stolen seat from the Democrats didn't quite get there. Chris Jones is a good candidate.
Another minister finished about three or four points short in that Arkansas district. But French Hill, recognizing that is on the Sunday show this weekend, saying basically he's open to Hegseth impeachment, which I thought was meaningful. Then you have all these guys that are out on the way out. Don Bacon, for example, in Nebraska said Hegseth doesn't have a lot of love within the House conference. I just think about all the Republicans who lost, who have been swallowing their pride for the last five years, 10 years in some cases.
Maybe a vote against Hegseth is just kind of a minor way to retain some dignity on the way out from some of them. I don't think it's crazy to think that they, that he, that Hegseth could lose an impeachment vote in a Republican House in the next six weeks.
Oh, I think he will. I actually think he will. Some of those guys won't want to vote against him. They'll just not show up because what's the point of coming back, you know, this week and so forth. I don't quite understand the schedule. It's supposed to be maybe this week if Massey can force the vote. No, I think that he could lose the vote and that would be excellent. Democrats should insist on the vote one way or the other as soon as possible. And again, they have to have the attitude that they're already pushing their agenda as hard as they can. I don't think they can't have the attitude of we're going to take two months to get better organized, which we haven't quite staffed up yet. And also we haven't moved the offices into the majority.
You know what I mean? And that's the natural tendency to do when you win something like this. You have too much, and it's understandable. You want to plan, but they need to really hit the ground running. And impeaching Hegseth would be a good start. I can argue with the Hegseth thing either way from Trump's point of view. He doesn't want to, he likes, it looks weak maybe to fire him, but I don't know. I think after Susie Wiles, the one two punch has got to be dump Susie Wiles, blame the election on her, dump Hegseth, blame the war on him. Those are his two biggest weaknesses right now. I think he gets rid of those two. You know, he takes a little hit short term.
Oh, you acknowledge Hegseth screwed up. And three months from now, at least Pete Hegseth's not defense secretary, which he's got to know is, it would be terrible for Trump, I think, to have that hang over him, that human being hang over him for the next six, nine, 12 months, I think. I don't know.
All, you know, kind of like all sensible considerations would point to what you just laid out. I just still keep coming back to who could Trump find to replace Pete Hegseth that would be suitable for him? And maybe that person exists, you know, like who is there a department of war, Todd Blanch?
Right.
Does that person exist? I don't know. Can they get confirmed? Are they going to do a confirmation during the lame duck? Can they rush that through? Maybe, you know, or if so, the move was to get Hegseth now, like ASAP this week. So maybe that happens, but if not, then you're looking at a Democratic Senate. I don't know. Maybe Trump decides that he can just have temporary secretaries that aren't confirmed. Like in a position like that would be totally unprecedented. Obviously, is there somebody he could find that could get through a Democratic Senate?
Maybe, I don't know. I don't, it's hard to imagine who that is really, but maybe that person exists out there. So, and then at the end, doesn't, isn't that the most important thing to Trump? Just like he said with Miller, that he has somebody there who's totally loyal through the last two years. I think, I think that there's some hurdles to it as well.
I agree, but I agree with you that he should do it this week, honestly, if he's going to do it. And that's why I kind of think he will, but I could well be wrong. And as I say, do not, do not, if I accidentally got a few things right during this election season, do not take any of these, any of these predictions or as gospel or even as probably correct. But I kind of think he'll do, yeah, Jay Clayton or the equivalent of a Todd Blanch is what he needs, right? Someone who's sort of, maybe someone who's already in there in the admit who's been confirmed once to something. Clayton, it'd be kind of weird to move him over from ODNI just two or three months after he got confirmed or something. Or the current CIA director, Ratcliffe, who's sort of vaguely acceptable, I think, to some Democrats.
Yeah. One of those guys could go to defense, I should think. Maybe the number two people is the business guy, people sort of Feinberg. I think that people respect him. Apparently number three, Rich Colby. I don't really respect him, but he's like.
Could not get, could not get.
He probably couldn't, right?
There's no way Rich Colby could confirm him.
I agree. Even by a Republican Senate, probably not. So maybe it would have to be Feinberg or Ratcliffe or Clayton or someone like that. Who knows?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oof. All right. I want to talk about the other big story. You posted this this morning. There's a lot going on from ballots still being counted to Miller's chief of staff to Hegseth's impeachment, but the Trump-Huang scandal is exploding. Expect it will likely soon be the big story. Senator Warner and Representative Himes ought to insist on briefings and hearings in Congress now. This is referencing Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia. I got honeypotted by a Chinese spy. Cheated on his wife with a woman, Chinese woman who also runs like some kind of AI cutout company.
Complimented how good he looked in the leather jacket. It should have been the warning sign, I think. Anytime, if you're a super nerd, tech nerd, and someone says you look great in a leather jacket, I'm sorry. They're trying to get you over. They're trying to get, trying to get one over on you. Okay. Nerds don't look good in leather jackets. All right. It's just not, it's not for us. Okay. If you don't have tattoos and muscles, you don't look good in a leather jacket. You might look fine in a leather jacket, but certainly not good enough that, you know, a younger woman is just moved to sexual excitement over it.
So just to break it down to a quick summary, the US intelligence community discovered that Jensen was sleeping with Alice Huang, two Huangs. It's also kind of weird. A Chinese spy and an executive at MegaSpeed. Okay. Multiple independent investigations concluded that MegaSpeed is a Chinese cutout, which helps Chinese companies access AI chips or circumvent export controls. The US intelligence community also concluded that Alice Huang's goal was to convince Jensen to lobby the US government to loosen export controls on advanced AI chips.
The intelligence community relayed this information to a small group of top US government officials earlier this year that included Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, who briefed Trump on this in the spring. So they knew in the spring that a Chinese spy had infiltrated Nvidia and Jensen Huang and that that spy was encouraging Jensen to advocate for us to sell these chips, his chips to China. And we did that. We did what they wanted. We loosened the export controls. And then Jensen's like on the trip to China, even though he's compromised.
We'll have to find out so much more. And I hope they are extremely aggressive and insistent on private briefings. This is the Democrats in the Senate and the House, the heads of the intelligence committees, Senator Warner, Representative Jim Himes, but, and then also public hearings. I think this could be huge. I mean, the TikTok just seems so damning. Rubio, as National Security Advisor, supervises this process, which produces this finding. He presumably briefed Trump on it. At least the story in The Times says he briefed senior officials, but who's more senior than Rubio?
It's ridiculous. And then interestingly, they don't have Jensen Huang on the original manifest, right, to go to China on Trump's trip over there. What was that, three, four months ago? Obviously, they are aware of this problem, right? Because otherwise he would have been on. All the other big tech titans were on that, as I recall. And then somehow he gets to Trump and Trump invites him to join last minute and he joins, remember this? He joins at Alaska. It's kind of weird. Remember, he's not on the original group and then he joins when the Air Force Two, Air Force One, Air Force Two, that's a slip of mind from the old days.
Air Force One refuels. We refueled in Alaska a lot. Refuels in Alaska. So Trump personally intervenes to get this guy whom he presumably has been warned is sleeping with a Chinese spy and who is lobbying for huge relaxation of export controls. And Trump intervenes. Why? I mean, he's either, he likes Jensen Huang. That's sort of the press reporting is a little credulist. He likes, you know, and Trump says that himself last night, right? You know, in the, into a gaggle at the airport, I think, in down in Mar-a-Lago.
I think he's a good guy. I don't think he really did anything more wrong than anyone else did. This is ludicrous. He's been, the president of the United States has been briefed that this guy is, you know, sleeping with a spy and is acting to go around rather important export controls, I believe. I don't know. I'm not an AI expert, but it seems like it's kind of important to keep the Chinese from getting our top chips and all this. And, and he personally intervenes to make it happen. Why? Because he doesn't care. Because he does want the Chinese to get there. He wants to do Xi a favor. I mean, I think you're at a level of, of presidential either mis-malfeasance, but even, well, I guess malfeasance is the way to say it.
Either, either carelessness or, you know, positive subversion of our national interest. That's pretty astounding. And, and so I, yeah, I think this becomes a huge story. And, and also, and I like the way the memo gets leaked somehow to The Times, the fact that the, and it's presented as if Rubio is kind of key. That had an interest, I mean, which he is, I guess, as National Security Advisor, the memo was done by the intelligence community, not directly by Rubio, but, but by the NSC, but, you know, they obviously would have been involved in it.
Felt, that felt a little bit like Rubio desperately trying, don't you think, to cover his tracks here and get a little bit, well, I tried to warn them about this. I wonder how soon he'll be gone too. I think they're all, I don't know, the rats, there's an awful lot of rats looking for exits from this ship, it seems to me.
Yeah. I don't, is that Rubio covering his tracks? Is somebody else trying to pin it on Rubio from inside?
This is why this, yeah, that's a good question.
It could be either, but it's, you know, this is one of these things where it's like, okay, like last night Trump is saying that it's important that we beat China in the AI race. Like that's critical. Like these two things cannot live side by side. Like this is absolutely critical that we need to beat China in the AI race. And also we need to relax export controls on our highest level chips to help China in their, you know, AI development process. Like that's always not made any sense. And, you know, I can understand why Jensen would want that.
A CEO of a company that helps his business can understand why the Chinese spy that's fucking him would want it. But why does Marco Rubio want it? I mean, he's the National Security Advisor. Like you would think that if this was a national security issue, Chinese access to these threats and China infiltrating the CEOs of our biggest companies and our most sensitive industries, that like that is within the purview and the remit of the National Security Advisor to flag it, to stop it, to start an investigation, internal investigation, refer to DOJ.
And there's a bunch of stuff that could be done. And, you know, it gets a little bit lame to do these sorts of things, but it is important just to think about this. Like imagine what Marco Rubio would be saying if this was Tony Blinken. You know, she was on the other foot, right? I mean, this would be a wall-to-wall story on Fox, like, and it should be for good reason. And Marco Rubio would be the one that was out there talking about how weak the Secretary of State is and the National Security Advisor, that they won't, you know, protect our interests and that they're like going along with the Chinese op. And, and that's like what is happening in this administration.
And so I think it's a really big potential threat for Rubio and also just betrays something we've known for a long time, which is like all of the China hawks in the right are fake. Like it's all performative. There's not been a single China hawk within Congress or the Senate. Our buddy Tom Cotton, none of these people have like done anything to try to pressure Trump to be tougher on this. And, and now we know that like Trump has been accommodating to Xi during a period where, where he knew that they were infiltrating our AI companies.
And Jensen Huang or, and/or Nvidia personally or Nvidia corporately, I can't remember, gave $25 million to the ballroom and has done all kinds of other things to be nice to Trump. So they basically bribed, if we could just be honest here, why isn't this just bribery? I mean, you know, I really feel like we're in, we're in a high crimes and misdemeanor kind of situation here conceivably with Trump. It reminds me a lot of Iran controversy for incidentally right after the 1986 elections. I think it was sort of random timing, but that was bad. The Reagan administration was doing things that shouldn't have been doing and deceiving Congress and so forth.
But Reagan wasn't taking bribes and, and it was a mistaken policy and they kind of covered it up a little bit, but then they basically went all, you know, they exposed everything. Howard Baker comes in as chief of staff. The White House counsel's office gets very serious. They have an independent commission. I mean, you know, they went pretty far, very, very far actually in, in trying to be acknowledging their wrongdoings. The National Security Advisor quits. I don't know. It feels like that to me. This is more serious than Iran controversy. Just objectively, you know, Iran controversy was problematic. No one needs to be so nice to the Iranians.
You shouldn't be able to shovel a few tens of millions of dollars to the good guys in Nicaragua without congressional authorization or contrary to congressional appropriation language. Still, that's nothing compared to this kind of thing. We're helping China's AI, you know, AI capabilities. So I guess maybe I'm overdoing it. Maybe it'll turn out to be a little bit more confusing or complex or, you know, they never quite get the goods on them. But yeah, and they're all complicit. I think your point's very important. How, if you're a National Security Advisor, will you just watch?
Okay. Mr. President, I guess you just want to be nice to Jensen Huang and, and so I'm just not going to do anything, say anything. Does no one resign over this? The entire intelligence community produces this report and then they just sit there and watch Trump go ahead with what they've warned him.
Or even confront Trump, right? I mean, we hear everything leaks out of this administration. Like there hasn't been a story of Marco Rubio, you know, going into the Oval Office and being like, Mr. President, the Chinese threat is too serious for this. You can't have this guy that's a Chinese that is like being manipulated by a Chinese asset on the foreign trip with you, right? Like there's not been nothing, none of that.
I just, I can't even keep a straight face at the idea of Marco Rubio walking into the Oval Office and confronting Trump, saying anything strong or, you know, upstanding to Trump. So I'm, I'm, that's why I'm chuckling. Yeah. No, I totally agree. And maybe one of these people, someone should resign and say this is an outrage, but I mean, God forbid. But, and Himes and Warner, I think, are pretty serious about this stuff. The intelligence is, you know, something that has been taken a little more seriously than other things, even in recent years, but some people in both parties, I wonder, I think, and also Trump's going to Asia this weekend, right?
Where he might meet with Xi and Putin and all that stuff. Oh, he is going to meet with Xi, I think. And there might be this bizarre three-way meeting with Putin. I mean, really, you just have to say, I'm going to, you know, with respect to both Xi and Putin, whose interests are Trump representing? Whose interests are Trump acting in? There's, I mean, it's really, you know, I mean, you know, you're getting a little close to a like non-dare call it treason moment here. And I'm not calling it treason, but still, it's, it's really astonishing. And I do think it blows up in a big way this week.
I do as well. All right. I had some notes to some other kind of Republicans coping with their defeat and that I was going to review, but I'm going to save it for this week. We got just, I want to keep providing candy for people as the week goes on. This is going to be a happy place, this podcast, you know, and that's not something I've been able to provide to listeners very often over the past few years that we've been doing this every day. So we're going to indulge ourselves. We're going to treat ourselves for a little while and, you know, so more, more good stuff to come as the week goes on.
But I appreciate it, Bill. And I apologize for my, you know, gobsmacked reaction to your 57 Senate choice. You were just, you're almost there.
I was off. I was off. You know, you're a strict grader. 56. Come on, Bill. How'd you get that wrong? I take your point too.
I appreciate it. That's Bill Kristol. He'll be back here next Monday and we'll be doing this all again tomorrow. We'll see you all then. Peace.
You can put your clothes back on. She's leaving you. No time to apologize for the things you do. Go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues. Believe that Clapton was the second comet.
It falls apart. We all got work to do. It gets dark. We all got work to do. She's leaving you. She's leaving you.
The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
Nearly a week after the midterms, Trump made a feeble rigged election claim. He also made a phony offer to work with Democrats on an immigration deal, hoping somehow to distract them from their oversight powers. And like a true mob boss, Trump elevated tough guy Stephen Miller to keep the administration from falling apart—and to protect the grift. But he knows he was swamped in a massive defeat and that the country now has the possibility of a very different future. Still, the ICE terror state is ongoing, and the Dems have to push for the release of nonviolent immigrants from the internment camps. Plus: Now we know Bill had just about the right amount of hopium, the polling misses continued, Trump will play game show host in choosing a successor in ’28, and he sure looks like he subverted our national security interests just for a $25 million bribe for his ballroom.
Bill Kristol (Mr. Right) joins Tim Miller.
show notes:
Sarah on how committed GOP voters are coping
Video of Texas voters celebrating Hinojosa’s and Talarico’s wins, which Bill mentioned
Scott Colom’s ad featuring the home of Medgar Evers
JVL on JD’s options now
The Bulwark store
Closing Song: MJ Lenderman - “She’s Leaving You”