Bill Kristol: Call the Pool Police

**Tim Miller** (0:13)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so of course, we are here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol, who is free, we're all walking free, though we are watching very closely one of our colleagues, who is the first person down there doing intrepid reporting at the Reflecting Pool, noticing, or maybe not noticing, but documenting that the blue paint was coming off.
Chipping would be the most generous thing, you could say, to Donald Trump's Reflecting Pool paint man. Huge portions of it were coming off. And in the intervening period, we've heard that there are arrests happening for any troublemakers who are observing the president's failures.

**Bill Kristol** (0:58)
As Andrew pointed out this morning, it's funny, but maybe not so funny, because people actually have arrested the 67-year-old bicyclist who showed up, and it seems to have simply reached into the pool to see what it feels like, with all the algae and the front of the bottom coming off there. I think he has been arrested, and presumably has to get bail and get a lawyer and all this.

**Tim Miller** (1:21)
Like everything, it is one part indiocracy, one part menace.
There are elements of it that are concerning. There are the North Korean elements. People cannot observe our government's incompetence and waste and buffoonery without fear that the state will come after them. Two example of this, Judge Box of Wine was on Fox News over the weekend, speaking to Peter Ducey, and they talked about how seriously they're taking the investigation regarding any so-called vandals of the Reflecting Pool, and that includes those in the press. Let's listen to that.

**Peter Doocy** (1:59)
Trump's got a Crimestoppers tip for you, he says. Lightweight ABC reporter Jonathan Karl was seen sticking his hand into the pool and trying to rip the rubber off the surface.
Judge, is Jonathan Karl from ABC in trouble?

**Jeanine Pirro** (2:14)
Well, you know, it depends, you know, anyone who is in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the Reflecting Pool will face the criminal justice system in DC. Look, the president has made it a priority to make DC not only safe but beautiful. And there are several citations that have been handed out to individuals. And these are cases that will be prosecuted to the full extent.

**Tim Miller** (2:41)
Prosecuted. Both of those people have a face and voice for print. I'm not sure that what Fox is doing there with their lineup, but prosecuted to the fullest extent.
This is the world we're in.

**Bill Kristol** (2:53)
It is farcical. No one doesn't want to. Mostly it's farcical. And it's actually doing Trump damage, which is good. I think everyone's just laughing at him.
Both what's happened, of course, with the pool itself, and the algae and the paint chips, as you say, to be charitable, if you can call them that. Huge chunks of the whole bottom of the pool, basically. And then this attempt to intimidate people from going and looking at it, or maybe even feeling what it's like or pulling up one of these loose pieces of stuff. Trump has invented this vandalism, capital V, he puts on it, vandalism of 250 feet, then I think it became 300 feet, I noticed in some later tweet. Someone went in and gashed the pool for 300 feet. That's kind of a big gash, you know? I feel stupid even taking it like quasi-seriously. I think this thing is on camera 24-7, no one went into the pool and gashed the bottom. And this is, I mean, the big lie thing. But here we have Fox sort of treating it like a real thing. And I don't know, this, as I say, there could be some people who are being harassed.

**Tim Miller** (3:50)
Yeah, I mean, Peter Doocy, they're basically agitating for John Carle to be arrested. And he doesn't like this fake laughing voice. But honestly, I mean, you're interviewing the person that arrested the sandwich man.

**Bill Kristol** (4:01)
Right.

**Tim Miller** (4:01)
So, I mean, Judge Jeanine is going to do investigations. And it's kind of reminiscent of, it's like a 90s movie with a school principal. It's kind of reminiscent of like a Simpsons or a Ferris Bueller, stay off type situation where you have a grumpy principal. It's like anything you do to embarrass me, you get detention, that like element to this, which is not how things should be going in a free country.

**Bill Kristol** (4:26)
I think we're enough of a free country still that it is more farcical than menacing.
Unlike some of the other things he's doing, which really are probably more menacing than farcical.