Reflections on the American Anniversary

This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. I'm going to be honest with you. I am online way more than I probably should be. And between me and everyone else at my house, we've got a zillion screens going on at any given moment. So when my internet slows down, it is a full crisis. That's why having fast, reliable internet that can keep up really matters and why you need optimum famously Fast Fiber Internet Optimum fiber blows flaky five G out of the water and keeps it cool with the fastest and most reliable speeds that don't slow when things heat up. And right now, they have the deal of the summer, just thirty dollars a month for five years. So don't wait, callall eight eight eight for optimum. Visit optimum dot com or stop by your local optimum store today Famously Fast Fiber for thirty dollars a month for five years. You can't beat it Terms apply, see optimum. com for details Summer is a gift The gift of days that last a little longer, a brighter state of mind So givet yourself a new Kia at the Kia Summer Sticker Sales event, Epecially tacked vehicles including the Sorrento, Sportage, Carnival, as well as the Nurohybrid All all backed by a ten year one hundred thousand mile limited powertrain warranty. So the gift of summer can keep on giving for summers to come. Kia, Movement that insspires. Call eight hundred three thirty threety four Ka Free details, host ata free event and seven six twenty six to dealer for warranty details Hello and welcome to the Bullark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is the second of july twenty twenty six. Tide to welcome back to the show. staff writer, the New Yorker and host, co host of its political scene podcast. Her most recent book is The Divider, couthd with her husband, Peter Baker It's Susan Glasser. What's going on, Susan Hey man,s so great to be with you. What a treat. Welcome back to the show.. Not much to talk about. Not a lot happening up there. Not a lot of embarrassments for America on the world stage or anything. It's hard to decide where to start, but I think I want to hit on corruption. didn't have time to get into it yesterday. I think Maggie mentioned it briefly on the pod, but Trump had to file financial disclosures. I guess it's something that the financial disclosures are getting filed you know, I mean, these small victories in this day and age It revealed an insane amount of graft and corruption. he brought in at least two point two billion dollars which is compared to much, much less than that from before he returned to the presidency. A lot of this money is from crypto. All of this money is from foreign countries, including the investment firm tied to the UAE. We're gonna get into the cutter plane a little bit. I guess that's more of government grift, but It is pretty astonishing that he has just decided that he is going to make as much money from this as possible as if he is You know, Vladimir Putin or the corrupt dictator country that does not have a rule of law U Yeahah, you know the thing is mayaybe we're one of those countries doesn't have a rule of law at least when it comes to the president of the United States. Well, I mean, actually, that is Donald Trump's theory of the case, which is that no laws apply to him. and the Supreme Court in some ways, has gone along with that theory. You know, there's the sort of you and what army are going to do anything about it challenge to this, right? What accountability is there for a president who decides to shamelessly monetize the presidency? There is increasing evidence that he's doing things like selling off pardons. This crypto business that Donald Trump and his sons have gotten into, along with the sons, I should point out of Steve Witkoff, his all purpose everything envoy, literally making billions of dollars, we know about the investment by the UAE investment fund. We do not have a list of the other investors who have put more than two billion dollars, two billion dollars in the pocket of Donald Trump. This is the guy who went literally like steam flowing out of his ears crazy over the idea that you know, heaven forbiden Joe Biden's son had embarrassed the country by making money off of his father's name. And by the way, an embarrassment, let's be honest, that Hun Biden was trading off of his father's name and the appearance that he might have access when he joined the board of a Ukrainian energy company when Joe Biden was vice president. You know what is that's an embarrassment. We're talking though about maybe millions of dollars. Add many, many, many zeros here to the scale of corruption from Donald Trump. And from my perspective, you know, it's one of those things Are we so annored this that people just won't care or is corruption the issue that finally causes people to break with Donald Trump. I mean, to me, that is the question because it's where he's so profoundly different then essentially any of his predecessors, and we've had some crooked presidents Not this cricket. Not anything and even the ballpark. this doesn't include also the stock trading he's been doing, something that our past presidents weren't doing. I want to just focus in on the Middle East. I mentioned the UAE. deal which is part of the bulk of the money, frankly, which is this massive crypto deal that the UAE is involved in. But then he also has some smaller for Trump, you know, would be nice money for me, licensing deals that are happening in these countries, fourteen million. in licensing deals for hotels in Qatar and in Saudi Arabia ties to the other, you know corruption story from this week, which is our new Air Force one. which was gifted from utter Trump took his first flight on that, the new plane that he feels is more appropriate to his status which again, I think should be noteworthy was kind of a like a hand me down from Qatar. They they wanted a fancier plane for themselves. So that's where we are right now as a country, we're taking Qatter's hand me downs but If you tie all this together He's got a light a personal So he's making personal money. with a licensing deal in Qatar And then He also is taking gifts from Qutter. for the country that he's then going to use for his presidential library All the while likeike being involved in negotiations with an active war that involves Cutter. I mean, Iran is attacking Qatar as part of the kind of decrease fire that we're in right now And so I I don't know if he's making decisions entirely based on that, you know brown paper bag of fourteen million or the new fancy plane he's on, but it certainly is influencing And like this is why you know, we have rules around this sort of thing. Like the corruption, the money that he's making is tied directly to the ongoing life or death policy affecting American Yeah, I think that's such an important point, Tim. In fact, Qutar, which gifted Donald Trump in effect, personally gifted him a four hundred million dollars plane. The American taxpayers have paid an uncertain amount of hundreds of millions of dollars additionally to fit it up in order to have the communications and security gear required for the president to fly on it. So you know, we've paid hundreds of millions of dollars for this gift that Donald Trump now proposes to take with him to his quote presidential library. but actually it seems that he wants to keep using this plane personally. and You know, where's the outrage to quote Bob Dole? Where's the out? But Qatar is not only a key country that is affected by Donald Trump's decision to undertake this conflict in the Middle East against Iran. Qatar plays a key role as an intermediary and negotiator both with Hamas where it has been the key broker of talks over the last few years, as well as with the Iranians intermittently. And you know it's that welter of apparent conflicts of interest and the lack of transparency that was exactly what the entire framework of post wateratergate laws was designed to combat, right people had after Nixon's excesses. And you know there were terrible scandals in that administration, though the dollar figures were way modest compared with Donald Trump's, including Nixon's vice president, St Ag literally taking payoffs while he was in high office as a result of that, which Americans across the political spectrum viewed as a national embarrassment, a humiliation. An entire framework of laws was passed in this country. and it seems like Donald Trump's mission is to undo the final remaining shreds of these post Watergate laws and they were designed to have transparency and accountability that if people were contributing to our politicians, they should do so with strict limits. they should do so with strict disclosure requirements. That's basically all gone now. It's basically all gone. The world, as we know it, growing up, I started out as a young reporter in Washington.im It seems qut. We would write these stories about like, you know, Tim Miller, congressional candidate receives like one thousand dollars, you know thousand dollars p contribion, you know, from an industry in which, you know, his family has an interest. Isn't this a scandal This is the world that we came up in, and it's a world that Donald Trump has sort stood on its head. Yeah, we talked I talked about this a little about David French after the Supremeourt rulings this week about like the degree to which those post fudgate reforms have just been completely gutted and It kind of informs a little bit the thinking about Democrats might do if they ever get back into power where Like at some level You know, I think that my instinct and the instincts of, you know, I Sarah really goes to them. Every once in a while, I go to a pro democracy meet upp You know, Sarah' usually handling that for the bulws. little it's little bit more in her wheelhouse We all of our strengths. But, you know, you go to these things and it's like, look, everybody's earnest. Everybody is thinking about like what reforms, you know, can Trump proof the presidency in the future And then you look at the Supreme Court's rulings and so what radicalizes people, you start to think, maybe that you can't create rules., because there will always be somebody that breaks rules. And And you have to look different types of strategies you know, for cruing power. And you then you end up in a race to the bottom. I don't know, it's a pretty depressing thing to Mul on our two hundred fiftieth anniversary, but it's extremely relevant this week. I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on that topic. Yeah, I was thinking about the timing of this. It's sort of this painful juxtaposition between the soaring aspirations that we're meant to be celebrating of the founders and you know the sort of gritty you know cold hard grubby cash reality of the American presidency right now. You know, it came up in your conversation with David French because the Spreme Court this week has basically gotten rid of the last of the meaningful of restrictions on not just contribution limits post Watergate, but the idea that you couldn't have unlimited amounts of essentially unaccountable cash flowing in coordination to parties and candidates. And that's just Basically gone now, which is why we've had this age of the hyper empowerered. Well as the independent agencies. that was the other thing that was. Yeah. Well, exactly. The independent agencies, that that predates Watergate. that goes all the way back to the New Deal You know, people call them conservatives. they're not. It's a far right radical court. Donald Trump is also a radical president, although interestingly, he doesn't necessarily share the same far right ideology that the justices are imposing right now. You know, where they overlap, the justices have upheld him, where they don't overlap the justices have come in and narrowly reproved Donald Trump on things like tariffs and outright overturning the Constitution's guarantee of birth right citizenship. But You know, it seems to me that the combination of an executive that knows no boundaries and a Supreme Court that is asserting powers at the expense of Congress that we've never seen before. That is something that really changes the balance of power in a way that invites us to contemplate that on the two hundred fifteth anniversary. I mean, I just I think that Post Trump presidency. is going to test us still in entirely different ways. And I think our experience with the Joe Biden interregnum, I guess, as it will come to be knowe, shows that Democrats They have talked about an existential threat. They talked about trying to put the guardrails back on, but they actually did not do that, even when they controlled the Senate and the House at the beginning of the Biden presidency. and they missed their window to do it, honestly. So that tells me, they didn't make it as much of a priority as their rhetoric would have suggested Yeah, this was kind of the HR one conversation, right? Wh ends up being this very big kind of grab bag of a lot of special interests, like liberal special interest groups plans with varying degrees of you know, merit to them But it was like never like not really a serious effort to get it passed. and I think they could have had a more tailored anti corruption democracy protecting bill that might have fared better. But alas, here we are. I do also want to mention it's not just Trump, that's breaking the corruptules this week, speaking cash, Cash Patel his FBI director also failed to properly disclose a six figure purchase of stock in a Bitcoin jewel business. intelligence and mobile software company that's contracted with the Department of Justice I guess the one thing will be true, your colleagues at the New Yorker, the investigative repeporters, the Jane Mayers of the world and her successors, they're going to have work for a lifetime Following the administration, the Jhns report is bad this morning, but it is a little bit of a makework for investigative reporters in twenty twenty nine And it's going to be like a lifetime employment clause. I mean, you know, remember people are still doing investigative work and putting out books every year about Richard Nixon R sure. So againain, add zeros and add decades to this work when it comes to Donald Trump. And you know, that's one where I do think you know, you listen to Trump's overheated claims, you know, he went out to North Dakota this week to have the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library making these sort of just grotesquely, you know historically inaccurate and inflated claims for his own grandeur and how it somehow mirrors that of Teddy Roosevelt, which you know, is making anyone who knows the history of Teddy Roosevelt roll in their graves, you know, the sort of archetype of the progressive era father of American conservationism And on you could go, but Donald Trump is what you might call a consequentialist. And a maximalist in his desires to be seen as mattering And I do think that his two terms in office mark some kind of a very definitive break with many of the norms traditions rules, laws and history of the American presidency. We don't know where it's going to take us, but I think it's that's one where I'm going to say Donald Trump is right that he is consequential president who's changing the story of our Republic Yeah R right up there with Mal, Stalin, all the other people that he said he wanted to be mentioned with. Did you see the video 'm taking on the side trrack for a second, but you mentioned the Teddy Roosevelt Library. Did you see the video of Trump talalking to the AI, Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. It was extremely disorienting You consider the Panama Canal Your greatest achievement Right then, yes Gine The canal stands as one of my proudest battles, No question, but greatness is a strange thing It isn't always the biggest or boldest job that matters most Panama Canal showed what America could achieve if we held steady and acted fast when the world dragged its feet That's it I measure my greatest work by the lives improved Mark set aside, Food and drugs made safe. The square deal g it to all notot just to a few. still When I stood in the mud watching those steam shutvels, knowing shifts would pass through, changing the world's map forever, I felt I'd left a mark that would last You did. Thank you. So Trump is asking him about the the Panama Canal and then you have this kind of A Teddy Roosevelt's type What would What would you even call it? What did they do at Coachella where they like kind of beamed in the dead artist turned. There's another word for it I'm biking on. But we're getting close to the holiday. but yeah, it's kind of this Teddy Roosevelt visage And it's like he's answering the questions. I don't know. I felt dystopia. I was getting very harsh hard dystopia vibes from it. Yeah, dystopia, but also it was this revealing exchange. him. I thought it was incredibly amazing. Donald Trump is like, whooa, Teddy, what's your greatest accomplishment? Is it the Panama Canal? Teddy Roosevelt is saying, o, no, my thing is about the number of people. I hope and To me, that is the incredible difference again, Roosevelt, the of the American progressive era movement, the idea that government can constrain rampaging mononopolous, rampaging gilded age businessmen, the Elon Musks and toxic billionaires of their era. That's what Roosevelt was about Roosevelt was about national parks and conservation and the environment. He was about the idea that immigrants are teaming into our cities. We need to create an infrastructure to help them. This is the moment of the settlement House movement. Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, an extremely not only a sort of educated man, a writer a thinker, in fact, a prolific writer, a prolific reader in so many ways, except for the narcissism Right? You gott to give him except for the narcissism. I would say he's about the polar opposite of Donald Trump and in particular because the progressive era was literally about the idea that government can do something and ought to do something to constrain and to work for the people of the country against the moneyed interests, which is the exact opposite literally of Donald Trump's sort of Kleptocratic oligarchic view of government Also just in the category of personal bravery, you know, Donald Trump's not exactly a rough rider He had the bones firstur. He had the bones firstur, he h from war. There's an image of the little bald eagle that goes to like and Trump gets really scared when he's in the office when he thinks the eagle is going to peck him So, you know, a lot of differences. he was get a back up. You haven't seen this video, Susan Glasser It is so good. It is my favorite Donald Trump clip. It's the thing that I go to when I need joy. Favorite Donald Trump clip. Yeah, it's revealing something in this podcast, which is unfortunately. He's in Trump Twower And I don't know, they're doing like a photo shoot or something where he's trying to seem patriotic and there's a bald eagle and it's sitting next to him on his desk And the eagle goes to like peck him And Trump. Trump panics like the fucking bird is gonna kill him. It's really good. I'm gonna send it to you after. I actually don't know. although I do know that Donald Trump does not like animals. And Well there you go. Teddy Roosevelt, a big dog guy in addition to all sorts of pets. I think they had more pets. at the White House in the Roosevelt presidency than in any other presidency. So contemplate that for your two hundred fifty This episode is brought to you by the New York Times. It's kind like the Ohio State University. You've got to say it with V. Susan and I just talked about all the corruption news coming from the Trump administration But before we able to get our takes on these stories Somebody el also had to report em Somebody to report out the facts. The foundation of newews commentary is fact based reporting this show and all the other blah, blah, blah, podcasts you listen to depend on people doing real fact based reporting. I'm constantly consonsuming it places including the New York Times's going be aP, which talked about in this podcast and their great reporting on are just tragic missile attack on the girls school in Menab We also got some fantastic beat reporters here at the Bulwark L guy, Jonathan Coh, Lauren Egan, et ccer bringing work to you like the Times does. and also you should be supporting your local paper like I do here in New Orleans. Two T stories we talked about today required a group of reporters doing a deep dive on Trump's new financial disclosures in the first And the second was the breaking news report from the Times on Trump's first flight on the Qatari gifted Air Force one J another example about how he's being bribed by foreign governments. These stories are examples of the results of fact based reporting and now I get to blab about ' them. and you get to decide what you think Whver you seek it out National your locally support fact based reporting. While we're laughing, the vice president's a jokester that transition. Speakingesterday. as good as your cash pel Thanks. The vice president was doing a little stand up bit yesterday in front of our soldiers I'm not sure how well it landed. I pulled one clip of it for you. Let's give that a watch Well, because I'm speaking to all of you our great patriots and service members I've got the angel on my shoulders saying, Jay, don't be partisan We're gonna make this nonpartisan. And then I've got the devil on my shoulder who wants to talk about every time that Joe Biden fell up or down the stairs. And the media didn't care about that, but if I did it time, if I did it one time, it would be a major, major story Justw one smile there under theZO. couple hit a couple other jokes, fell flat. I'm not going to punish little audience with. not really his strength to call that a joke, isn't it? I mean I'm not, you know, the best judge of stand up comedy, but my guess is that you know, JD has appropriately steered away from that line of work. These guys are masters of the whatab Ism and When Donald Trump is now officially eighty years old And he clutches that handrail like, you know, it's the only thing between him and Armaged. I mean Trump's age, his temperament, his ability to do the job, his ability even to stay awake in the course of a photo op is increasingly in question. And it's one of those ones where JD's going to have a tougher time making this comparison when, you know, the argument to the American public is don't believe your own lying eyes when it comes to Donald Trump. And I will say that, you know, it's always posed a challenge to talk about a president and age No matter what. We saw that with Biden. The difference with Trump is that there are so many pathologies to unpack and unravel. You know, what can we attribute to age related dimmunition versus just his general sel. but Trump is aging before our eyes. That's very clear I think we have gone for like literally like two weeks in row where every single day he was on camera Falling asleep And then he forces, you know the people around him. One of my favorite clips recently was Marco Rubio up on Capitol Hill testify and a member, I think it was Ted Lou, plays a clip for him of Donald Trump falling asleep while Rubio is extoing his brilliant leadership. And he says like mister Secretary of State, what do you think about the president falling asleep? And Mark Rub says, how dare you say that The president has never falled asleep in front of me. Then they play it again and he says, you know, did you like to change your testimony? And he's like, No, how dare you say You know, play that for JD Vance. That would be awesome. I would love to see what JD Vance' answer would be to that at a press conference It also is just such a weird thing to do in fromont the troops. You like we're in the two hundred fifty anniversary here. You're supposed to be stirring the spirits, you know, trying to lift them up a little bit. You know, we're in the middle of a conflict and it's like we're going to do Biden stas jokes. That's just kind of I don't know, man. It didn't really have it. I I know you're not a Catholic. Susan, but JVL He' dealing with some family matters and he's out this week. So I didn't get to kind of sit with him and ruminate over JD's interview with Laura Ingrham where he's talking about his book Communion and his Catholic cononversion. So want about Laura Ingrham. I think that she has some traits that go against what I learned as a Catholic school boy growing up, but whatever. She's been a Catholic for a while, talks about it a lot They got together And I do have to play for you how JD explains the administration's immigration policies in the context of his Catholic conversion The other thing Laura, I'd say that my faith really motivates me towards is to remember that our economic policy, it doesn't exist for corporations, it doesn't exist for Wall Street. As much as we want everybody to be successful, it exists to support the dignity of human beings. We want every American to be able to raise a family to be able to support themselves in comfort and in dignity. That's why we're trying to bring investment in manufacturing back to the United States of America. That's why we don't like low wage foreigners coming in and undercutting the wages of American workers. We want normal Americans to be able to live a dignified life. And I think that's a very, very Christian concept C I just say also, I do this every time, but as a Catholic, cradial Catholic, we don't say Christian concepts about our things. It's not what we say. It's converted. you need to convert to our moreres, okay. You're on your book tour. That's just not how we talk And either way, it's not a Catholic or a Christian concept. I don't believe that you want to make sure you only help the normal Americans. And in order to help the normal Americans, we need to punish Low wage foreigners I've never heard a pope talk like that. I don't believes that's correct. Well, no, not only do popes not talk like that, but this Pope has proven to be the single most successful, I think rebter of JD Vance's warped and distorted not only theology, but you know, view of the role of government in the world. And it's, you know, in a fight between the Pope and JD Vance over constitutes Catholic interpretation of Jesus' teachings. I mean, you know, most people are going to go with the Pope every time. And it just it's so flagrantly controlling us, right? T talk about normal Americans and to use that phrase dignity. actuallyually, it was interesting. I hadn't seen the clip. so the word dignity repeated by JD Vance over and over again in the context of this dehumanizing, divisive cr policy. It sort of hit me in the stomach there, you know, Tim. I mean it's really to talk about human dignity in the same sentence as the people who have imprisoned immigrants who've done nothing wrong except seek a better life in this country, throwing them in these ice prisons, you know, with no process with no. I mean Thousands and thousands of court decisions have said, it's not my opinion that I'm offering here since tens of thousands of court decisions since Trump and Vance came into office saying that what they are doing to immigrants is an abuse of power, that it's wrong, and it's a violation not only of the rule of law, but of basic principles of human decency They have dignity as well. I've got nothing to add that That's really good. Hologram was what it came to be It was a Cheddy Russealold hologram It came to me There we go. We've got to go to Disney and, you know revisit the Hall of the Presidents. So what it is. The Hall of the Presidents I loved as a kid, loved. Talk about being a nerdy elementary school student. You're at Disney worldor, you know and the other children wanted to go whatever, meet Pluto or meet the princesses and you know, ride on Space Mountain. I was like, we got to go to the Hall of Presidents So I was a dorky child and I loved it. There's something about the AI hologram that moves us into the Uncanny Valley in a way I don't like. You know, I don't know. it feels unhuman The Hall of the Presidents it's so weird. I don't know. I don't know it's so trippy and like It's scripted. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it is. There's some kind of line there between the Hall of the Presidents and the AI hologram of Teddy Roosevelt that falls to a placet I don't enjoy All everybody we're takaking back the fourth at the Bllwark Miature American flags for some Abortions for others Bular plus subscriptions. for yet a third group borarr from the Simpsons We are running our fourth of July sale Right now, It's happening this weekend. you get a full year membership for everything we offer on our website for just eighty six bucks, fourteen percent off because of this holiday, this flag, this country belongs to all of us Not one party, not one person I got my fourourth of July playlist. I'm giving that to you for free. All right? We're putting that in the show notes right here zero dollars for the fourourth of July playlist eighty six dollars of value from that playlist and all the other reporting and commentary we're doing here at the Bulwark sale runs all the way through this weekend. comeome join us the Bork d. com slash july four That's the Bllk dot com slash July four. link in the shout notes to the offer. in the playlist I want to just run through some foreign policy and is I guess this's kind of foreign policy. We'll start with the trade policy. Trump administration decided not to renew The USMCA whichich is pretty interesting because Donald Trump said that was the best agreement we've ever made, the best trade deal of all time So I think it's strange that they would not renew the best trade deal of all time. I guess the best can always get better. They're now going to do yearly reviews where Trump shakes down the leaders of Mexico and Canada, I guess is the new plan But not great. I mean the farers, farers one hit after another for the farmers. It seems like every Trump policy is like It's almost like an elaborate plot to see how much he can piss off the farmers and still run up the numbers in rural America. But I don't know, do you have any thoughts on them backing off the OSMCI Yeah, I mean, well, the as far as the farmers go, Donald Trump loves to provide evidence that his rid or die supporters will be there no matter how much he humiliates them, no matter how much he backs away from policies that would support him, no matter how much he fails to deliver the things that he said he would deliver. That's to Trump. That's like the ultimate sort of political own. and he loves that move I also wouldn't underestimate the extent to which Donald Trump really has at this point, an extremely vindictive view of our neighbors in particular of Canada. Anything he can do to screw Canada and Mark Carney, the prime mininister, who has made standing up to Donald Trump and creating an alternate pathway for the middle powers of the world who still believe in concepts like liberal democracy, you know, this is, I think, pretty personal for Trump in ways that we may be understating. And then I think the most important thing is the thing that you pointed out, Tim, which is that it's a way of aggrandizing his power. And the more that we don't have predictable takeake it to the bank ties deals rules, but everything depends upon the munificence of the czsar. That's Donald Trump's preferred method of policy making, but economic governance. and he sees the economy in ways that is very antithetical to traditional free market Republican capitalism. It's much more a monarchical view of the right of the Lord to intervene and control the economy, to take stakes in companies, to create national champions and to have all deals flow through him in some way And when all deals flow through you, you know, what happens? Some of it sticks, shall we say? It's a good point on the personal relationships because it's not just Carneia shinebone too in Mexico. I've really like shown backbone a number of times. It's interesting. I got two closest neighbors at times I've shown more willingness to stand up to Trump's ridiculousness. I guess the nice thing you can say about it than some of our other allies This is kind of one of these we all know this stories, but I think it just bears mentioning, know the AP, this big breakdown of of what happened with the missile that we shot into the girls schoolool in Iran and They basically reconstruct the strike on the school in Monab. And they have a former Pentagon official telling the AP that The bombing came as a result of changes by the administration to reduce staff for mitigating civilian harm They had these no strike lists that they were doing work on that had been stopped Meanwhile, the Pentagon still't released its findings, Hag Seth just this week said that they'll do so when the time is right Trump last week said, I don't know if they're going to solve his fault it was. or missiles flying everywhere So The administration just refuses to the obvious here and wants us to not believe our ly and eyes when it comes to this missile attack on the school in Iran That's right. I mean, I think it's really important in a conflict, the difference between, you know, a democratic military and something like Vladimir Putin's Russia is not only not to engage in the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure or civilian sites like a school, but when those things happen and they do happen in more to investigate them to be transparent to make amend to try to understand what happened and to do what you can to mitigate that. the United States actually has a long experience because of all the post nine eleven wars that had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to mitigate civilian harm. And a lot of what happened when Donald Trump and Pete Higseth came in talking about liberating the warfighters to do their war fighting was essentially saying, we don't want to have those guarbrails. We don't want to have those constraints that the Pentagon, even under a Republican President George W. Bush, worked to create ways of minimizing civilian casualties. You know, Pete Hegseth literally got his job by his on air, advocacy on Fox News in the first term to make sure that service members who have been accused of atrocities against civilians interact would not be held accountable. That's how he got his job. Donald Trump liked what he had to say on TV. and Trump actually overruled his own military chain of command, you know, largely at the behest of Pete Higseth. That tells you a lot about Pete Higseth and what his attitude toward civilian casualties is, unfortunately. Are we still at war with Iran? Do you know what's happening? What the status is? I assume that we're coming up on the weekend. We'll probably do some we'll probably do some shooting back and forth again once the markets are closed for the holiday Yeah. I mean, you know, the usual dribble of propaganda and you know, sort of there was one that really caught my attention this week, you know, one outlet calling it Donald Trump's landmark memorandum of understanding. it's an interim ceasefire agreement that hasn't even proven effective at being a ceasefire because there's been an awful lot of firing, including this week between two sides for it to actually be called a meaningful ceasefire. More importantly, you There's no sign. of any meaningful progress in the follow on talks that were supposed to be occurring in the course of the sixty days allocated in the ceasefire in which the United States and Iran were supposed to talk about the disposition of its nuclear program, supposed to talk about new arrangements for the Strait of fourorm Mz. If anything, what we've seen over the weeks since this memorandum of understanding is that Iran's understanding of the memorandum is that The straight of F moves is still under its control and essentially a spigot to be turned on and off at will in order to gain leverage in the negotiations in order to show Donald Trump who's still in control, perhaps in order to raise revenue ultimately. But that is definitely not what Marco Rubio and others told us about the memorandum of understanding. And I would be very skeptical that there will be any long term peace deal that comes out of this. They may not start a full fledg shooting war again in the short term. but I think it's very, very unlikely that there's going to be a long term stable peace between the United States and Rraq know, as we move over to what's happening in Ukraine, obviously kind of the same. the stuff starts to just continue and and I don't ever likek to lose sight of it. What happened yes last night in Kieiv That was awful. Another just full force attack from Russia onto a civilian population of Kyiv. my guy Koen Robertson, who is there and doing just really critical reporting on the ground was taking some video last night that I just want to play for folks So right behind me is a hotel on fire Bang on in the center of Kyiv. This is a major city with millions of people living here. You can hear ballistic missiles exploding in the sky. Right now, I'm going to go inside. And this is obviously a deliberate attack on civilians. These are residential buildings.. These are residential buildings. bang on in a city center of millions of people here in Europe. And this is evidence, this is evidence not just of a nation is deeply disturbed by a nation that's willing to commit terrorism on a daily basis And honestly, that's why it' so important to see these images like this as well. Because this Oh God. So it looks like the attack is over and I just got out of the shelter and dawn is starting to break over the city. ire city. That was last night Yeah. I mean You know, look I mean, Putin's Egy Her four years has been to target population of Ukraine itself. It's a war in many ways of extermination of the Ukrainian state, the very idea that this is an independent nation, and he's making war on the people of Ukraine. What's interesting is that this massive attack on the Capitol is a response to Ukraine's increase pressure inside of Russia itself, it's had targeted attacks, very different than Dald than Putin, I gott to stop doing that. That's. Ukraine has targeted oil refineries in Moscow, has targeted targets in St. Petersburg, during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. The pressure they've managed to put on Russia has been, you know, days long lines for gas. They've been increasingly cutting off the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in twenty fourteen. You know there, you can't find not only fuel right now, but food or other supplies are running out. So it's this increasing pressure on Putin's government inside of Russia, I think, that prompted this attack on civilian population. But what's so notable is the asymmetry of it you know, you have one country that's fighting for its existence, that's trying to target military targets, that's trying to shut down the Russian economy, and then you have basically random violence against individual Ukrainian citizens indiscriminate bombing. There's a report this week about just like the life expectancy of people that Russia is bringing to the front as like non existent basically. And so Putin is just I could have using humans for fuel essentially and just like sending more and more you know, men to the front to get killed in order to extend this One of the questions about is kind of the thinking in the Kremlin and you spent some time there is whether we're kind of back to a possible instability two kind of news stories that jumped out of me this week. One is this is kind of like the Teddy Roosevelt AI. It's a very twenty twenty six story, but Somebody who doesn't have a history of betting on polymarket made a multim million dollar bet that Putin would be out this year is like the kind of thing that was happening with regards to like, you know the Israel warar and our war where people were like, oh, hey, like there's this big bet that came in on Venezuela that happened before the Venezuela attacked So that's something to watch. And then you did have a Russian, former Russian defense mininister, Sergey Ivanov, one of Putin's closest allies died. could have been natural causes or, you know, who knows what's happening in Russia. But Do you have any thoughts? or I mean it's hard to get kind of reporting on what's happening inside the Kremlin at this point. but just curious what you're iv us. Yeah, well, it is fascinating by the way, Sergy Ivanov was a former KGB official like Vladimir Putin, although he was a high ranking general, unlike Putin who never made it pass Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB. And Ivanov interestingly was initially pegged as potentially Putin's successor. And I think the world would have been a different place had Putin gone for him instead of Dmitri Medvedv, the sort of insignificant loyalist that he chose essentially as a placeholder. and then remember, he returned to the presidency after sitting out a term under Medvvedv, Ivanov was a much stronger potential figure than Medvedev. and it's interesting that Putin chose you know, not to have him be there. It's one of the many, many paths not taken. And it's a reminder that it's not all inevitable. Vladimir Putin was a very unlikely person when Peter and I were there in Moscow and in the first few years of Putin's tenure, if you had said to anyone, that this guy This unknown forty something obscure former mid ranking KGB guy is going to be the longest serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, going to unleash the deadliest war in Europe since World War two. By the way, it's now surpassed in terms of casualties Even the Napoleonic wars for Russia, the only deadlier wars in Russia's history were World War O World War II, It's a catastrophe for the human capital in that society. goingo back to your question about what does it mean for the stability of Putin's government, for the possibility of Russia fighting onwards. there is inherent instability in this level of murderousness. I believe the latest estimates I saw were that Russia has suffered one point four million casualties. So that's deaths and serious injuries in the course of this conflict. That is a staggering The reckless disregard for the Russian people itself is, of course, the great tragedy here. Vladimir Putin could have pursued a very different path. He led the nation down this path of catastrophe, war, death and disaster. But he's done so by reinstating a kind of twenty first century version of a suffocating dictatorship. He has eliminated most forms of civil society. There is not a meaningful liberal opposition, I would say, that is functioning inside of Russia today. So the alternative be Even worse, hardliners who believe Putin isn't prosecuting the war enough U And so it's it's it's bad to worse the scenarios that we contemplate for Russia right now I want to close with the America two hundred fifty stuff coming up this weekend. you won't be attending You don't have any plans. Donald Trump said yesterday North Dakota that he's planning an extremely long speech to prove his Vagar It's going to be really hot in DC I assume that the orange paint on this face will be melting I was hostile to the idea that someone even turn on the speech on the fourth of July and ruin my peace on Saturday, but I do have to my interest is a little bit piqued. by old man in one hundred and seven degree weather I don't know if you can watch it on videootape, but I don't know if you have any any thoughts on the America two hundred fifty celebration that has turned into a MAGA rally. Yeah, you know, there is also the great algae conspiracy that Donald Trump you has recently promoted because of course it was yesterday in North Dakota.'s like, who put the algae in? Who put the algae in? you know, one of the great questions of our times, when they when they have the America two hundred fifty time capsule and you know, somebody opens it up, let's open America three hundred fifty. they're going to be what in the holy hell is this algae reflecting cool situation here? Or maybe they'll say this is the beginning. You know now we're in a dystopian future and the algae has expanded to such a degree that it has ensconced the entire monument Who knows You know, I feel like I watched that movie lead it once as a kid growing up. Donald Trump at a nine fifty PM start time. july fourth speech I don't like to make predictions normally, Tim, but I feel like the ingredients are in place for one of these inauguration, crowd size conspiracy theories that Donald Trump will be promoting forever because I really genuinely Who in the hell is going to actually physically be present for this speech, even if they paid to bus in Thousands of MAGA supporters. I mean, how much would you have to pay somebody to be there in one hundred and for degree heat on the mall? You're not even allowed to have a chair even know if you're allowed to bring in like water to drink. I mean, it's 's hard to imagine that even a really genuine Big America first patriot Trump fan is going to sign up for that one. So it seems you can watch it on your own TV while you do sparklers outside in the backyard. You know, that's you' had air conditioning. The crowd size issue frankly. I mean, I feel like Donald Trump has already prewritten the true social in all caps in which he complaints that the Democrats have you know, somehow lied about the greatest crowd in the history of crowds and Martin Luther King has nothing on this crowd. Like I could be wrong I'm guessing that you will not be surprised if the crowd size grievance is one that we're litigating for a while There's nobody there all week. our guys Jared and Brendon Beck at Bork HQ. I did a video with them because they' been walking down there and it's It's really sad. I mean, there's Shy, that's why the masturbating uncle Sam got caught masturbating because there's nobody else around. You know,'re is easy to see him. Shouldn't be. I know about that, Susan. that there was an uncle guy dressed up in an uncle Sam costume that got arrested on live stream for doing some personal business in front of the acrobatic tent at the Great American State Fair. Donald Trump's America, man You know, somebody said to me the other day and it's crazy because I just was thinking of this myself, but I guess I'm not the only person to have thought that we're really living in like Mr. Potter's America. You know, like forget about Bedford Falls, likeike we're in Pottersville. Donald Trump is Pottersville. And you know, the sort of caricature of the over the top celebration of all the things that we might think of as the inversion of American Dream. I mean, for me, that's what makes it hard. You know, you ask a young person in particular today what could make them proud to be an American? And I know Gallp found that those numbers have plummeted in the last decade since Trump took the presidency. Only, I think it's like fifty three percent of Americans even can summon any notion of being proud to be an American on the occasion of the two hundred fiftih anniversary. and You know, I have hard time making that case to a young person right now, you know, about what it is supposed to be except the idea that giving in isn't the answer either. And I think that's really important and that if somebody can change The meaning of that history so radically as Trump has done, then also somebody can change it back. as well. And I just think that, you know, it's never too late to show up for the ideals that you claim to have. And even if you have sort of lost them along the way over the last decade. You know,'s it's still possible to sort of show back up and say, hey, this isn't who we are and it isn't who we want to be It isn't who we want to be Yeah I have Clint Smith on tomorrow for the show to kind of talk about this, talk about America because he had this great book called How The Word is Pasted that kind of looks about the history of slavery and how we process it and how we learn about it and how we update it. He's good about talking about being real about what America is, butre going back to the themes of Dr. King and of Lincoln, etceter. about, you know, the promiss Sory note part of America. And it's a little bit of a tough pitch to thirteen year olds. It's the best we got. And you know, he's out there doing it. I look forward to that conversation tomorrow. Susan Glasser, should we end with a laugh