Bill Kristol: Make It the Summer of Epstein

**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. There is so much news to talk about. We're gonna try to carve out some time for the NBA at the end, since Donald Trump is sullying the beauty of the NBA Finals. But Bill, how you doing? Good weekend for you?

**Bill Kristol** (0:31)
Yeah, good, good. The Knicks, maybe you're not aware of that, the Knicks look strong, right? We'll get to that at the end.
We'll race through all the other topics to get to the Knicks.

**Tim Miller** (0:39)
You're looking nice in that green polo. It's a good color for you. All right, let's talk about what's happening in Iran. I'm just going to run through the last 24 hours. We're very much deep into the Groundhog Day portion of the Iran War, but here we go. Yesterday, Israel is carrying out strikes against Hezbollah forces in Beirut. This prompted Iran to fire missiles at Israel. Trump then urged Israel not to return fire and for both sides to stop shooting. Really strong, that's a strong man right there. Say, after you've been bombed, do nothing. Israel nevertheless responded.
They were not moved by Donald Trump's pleas. They launched airstrikes against Iran early this morning. Following that, Iran announced that they're halting military action in Israel. Israel continues to strike Lebanon. Axios' Barak Ravid post another siren alarm tweet about how Trump says, we are in a ceasefire and a deal is coming soon and the stock market is up.
So I don't know what you make of all that. In some senses, an increase in hostilities in another way, it's just a different version of the same story that we've seen for the last 100 days or so.

**Bill Kristol** (1:48)
Yeah, I do think it's a groundhog day pretty much. I mean, a couple of little tidbits that are amusing, amusing but depressing about our commander-in-chief. He seems to have called your friend Barak Ravid and Axios before calling Bibi to directly tell him not to retaliate. He was like, I didn't, I mean, isn't that right?

**Tim Miller** (2:06)
Yeah, you can talk to several reporters. There's a New York Post reporter he also spoke to. There's a third one I'm forgetting. It's unusual management of the war certainly to have the ally that you're in war with, for better or worse, get attacked. And then for you to immediately start telling media outlets that you want them not to retaliate.

**Bill Kristol** (2:26)
And that you're about to call their prime minister to tell them not to retaliate. I think the gulf between Trump and Isen-Yahoo, and really between the US and Israel, is probably greater than they're letting on. And then we might think given history, and given both real history of over decades, but also history of Trump and Bibi, which has been a lot of close coordination, obviously. And let's not forget that we got into this war. Bibi's urging, he's allowed to urge the US to do it. I don't think it proves anything inappropriate. But he urged the US to do it, had this moment of opportunity to bump off the top leadership.
And we took it. So, I wonder really where, once this ends, and I kind of still think it will, this Trump really, really, really doesn't want to continue, as we've seen. It will end, of course, with Iran having some ability to just shut the strait again. I mean, it's not going to be true free passage, where God knows the nuclear program, they can kick that down the road, I suppose. They'll arrange to get some money to Iran through the Gulf States. All of our allies will have lost total faith in us. But I think one thing that will happen over the next several months, I wouldn't be surprised to see the administration turn against Israel. And then you really have an interesting moment for MAGA and for the Republican Party, I think.

**Tim Miller** (3:33)
I definitely agree that's possible. A couple of other ways to look at this. I don't think this is happening right now, but I think it bears mentioning that Trump and Bibi have done the good cop, bad cop thing in the past. It doesn't appear that that's what's happening now, where Trump kind of pretended like he wanted peace and to give cover for Bibi to continue to prosecute wars. We saw this in Gaza and other places. So it's possible, I don't think that's what's happening now, it's where Bear's mentioning.
I think the one element of what happened yesterday that makes it slightly different from what we've seen for the past three months is, if there are continued hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Iran, and if Trump can't contain that or can't credibly say that he wants to contain that in a negotiation, I do think that further complicates his idea to get a final deal. I mean, Iran's, it's hard to even say what each side's terms are to end the war because the ball is moving on both sides a lot. You can't really trust anything coming out of either party. But if you take Iran's stated metrics for ending the war, one of them is tell Israel to stop attacking Lebanon.