Bill Kristol: They're F*cking Thieves

Tim Miller (0:12)

Hello and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. I'm just delighted to get to see my man Bill Kristol again. We were just together in Ohio on Friday and Saturday.

We're going to have a bunch for you on that at the end of the show and then in segment two, we're going to play a little bit from the live show in Dayton, my conversation with Patrick Gaspard, long time Democratic operative, whose family is from Haiti and was really grateful he was able to come to Ohio to be part of it. Hey Bill, how are you doing?

William Kristol (0:41)

I'm fine, Tim. How are you?

Tim Miller (0:42)

I'm doing pretty good, all things considered. We saw some sad stuff in Ohio. We also saw some sad stuff on our televisions this weekend if you're watching sports. The government is now doing just fully taxpayer funded 1984 propaganda paid for by the US government. We played one of the clips on the show last week, and this was airing on Fox News. For some reason, that was a little less offensive to me, and it did hurt my feelings that my tax dollars were being paid for this ad, but it's like, well, Fox News is just propaganda anyway. But this week we can make a new ad out, which we cannot play for you because it's Trump's voice, and I don't want to give him any more attention. But it's Trump walking down a hallway, kind of like The Shining, looking very creepy, where a voiceover of him saying, we will demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government, we will route the fake news media.

And it had a disclaimer paid for by the US government, which means paid for by you and me, that was airing during football this weekend.

William Kristol (1:42)

Yeah, and it was literally a 2024 campaign ad, right? Did they tinker with it even a tiny bit, I think, maybe, or maybe not at all? But there used to be all these constraints. I remember when I was in the White House, you remember this for campaigns. I mean, government money, tech, as opposed to campaign or political money and strict segregating and the travel for, obviously, TV ads. You could not use a political ad as a government public service and ask, well, that's supposed to be sort of, hey, if you're over 65

Tim Miller (2:09)

This isn't even a public service? Yeah, right.

William Kristol (2:11)

Well, no, what government's supposed to put on the air is, hey, if you're over 65, you should remember to get your flu shot, not propaganda.

Someone commented on Twitter that it was like Orban did this a lot. He controlled government two-thirds of the media, I think, in Hungary. And there were massive amounts of Orban ads masquerading as government service announcements and paid for by the taxpayers of Hungary. And it didn't help them in this last election. So maybe that's encouraging.

Tim Miller (2:37)

It is outrageous on its face. Like it is a total affront and Ted Cruz, his entire body would have combusted. You know, he would have spontaneously combusted had Barack Obama done something like this. Looks like, love you in the background in one of them and the other one talking about, you know, how great he is. So it's totally outrageous and insane to spend our money on this. But your point, I just think, is a political matter on this being an old ad. In some ways, it kind of reveals how much he's failed his promises and betrayed his voters. And going back to those lines, we will demolish the deep state. Really? I guess maybe some people will feel that way if all they meant by the deep state was like the liberals that were going after Trump and the DOJ. But certainly, I don't think anyone, even Trump people think that they've cleaned up DC corruption or the swamp, will expel the warmongers from our government.

They couldn't have changed that line.

We're in a war right now. On that level, it wasn't to me a particularly compelling piece of persuasion.

William Kristol (3:41)

No, it's bizarre actually. I had the same, when I skimmed the text, I can't show the Trump's voice. I can't even watch it privately. I didn't watch it, but I read it. They have enough money in Trump world to do a fresh 30-second ad touting whatever they think they can tout. It's crazy to have an ad saying we're expelling the warmongers.

The next voice is saying, I don't accept this bad proposal from a broader, I'd be to start the bombing again, the day after election day, really.