Bill Kristol: Trump’s Weak, Sad, and Embarrassing Weekend

**Tim Miller** (0:13)
Hello and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday.
It's one of those Mondays where, you know, it makes me wish, I don't know, I was a gardener or something. You know, Bill, having to wake up and read about the Hector Mountain Dew Camacho event at the White House last night, and gather the stamina to come up with an opinion about it. You know, whatever. I mean, there are a lot worse jobs out there in America, but it's a bit of a burden.

**Bill Kristol** (0:39)
That's why you get the big bucks, Tim, you know? I myself just watched another hour of Knicks celebrations in New York City. I'm kind of tuned out of my hometown.

**Tim Miller** (0:48)
Huge Knicks win. Happy for the Knicks. We'll talk about the goodness of America at the end. But unfortunately, Donald Trump is forcing some other stuff on us.
Just because I can't begin with the White House nonsense, we have to start with the real news, which was, well, maybe it's real news. I guess that's something to ponder over. The deal, if you will, the deal about a deal, the memorandum about a deal that Donald Trump felt compelled to announce on his birthday yesterday, his 80th birthday. I don't know if you know that. He's 80 years old. The President of the United States is extremely elderly.
He announced at his birthday party that they have a memorandum of understanding with Iran. We seem to get nothing out of that. They are planning on having a formal signing in Switzerland on Friday. We'll see if it holds till then. We got a lot to discuss about the contours of that. But Bill, what are your initial thoughts?

**Bill Kristol** (1:47)
Yeah.
We've acknowledged our defeat. I mean, Trump won't acknowledge it, but every normal person looking at this deal sees that, at best, we've walked away with a tiny bit of face-saving from a misguided adventure, a misbegotten war that we've lost, that we've failed to achieve our objectives. We've strengthened Iran and weakened ourselves. I mean, I really do think that's pretty obvious and clear. So there are details with the nuclear stuff and all, but in a way, all of that, as you say, is murky. Trump's footing is best spent on it. But at the end of the day, Iran has closed the strait, paid no price for it, and really retains the option, I would say, of doing so in the future. We'll see exactly what the deal says, if it says anything exact about the strait being open. That part, I think the media has been the most credulous about. Trump says the strait's re-opened, and okay, I guess the strait's back to where it was before. It's not back to where it was before. At best, it's temporarily opened again. And Iran, I believe, has not given away. It's the option in the future of closing it or imposing various prices and conditions on transit there. So that's bad. The nuclear stuff's totally unresolved. They're going to get money out of this, maybe not directly from us, but from the UAE. The regime is solidly in place. The Iranian people have been betrayed.
And we've antagonized allies all over the world by either ignoring them at the beginning or berating them afterwards. I think especially in the Middle East, the Gulf states are just, they can't say it, but they're in a state. And we'll be looking to accommodate Iran on the one hand, but also get closer to China, perhaps, more reliable aid in times of trouble. Final point, there'll be misleading photos and lives from the G7 meeting that Trump's on route to in France. And our allies are going to put the best face on this. They still are in the mode of, we've got to buy time here as the US withdraws from the world and from responsibility and try to keep Trump on board for as long as possible so there'll be a lot of happy talk about how this is an okay outcome, but they don't believe it.

**Tim Miller** (3:54)
To your point about the street, there was an accidental truth spoken by the vice president this morning on CNBC, he's doing the rounds, where he said this, Well, our expectation is that the street is going to be opened in a toll-free way for the long term, and that's the sort of thing that we're going to figure out in these technical negotiations. I thought we had a deal.
We're still doing technical negotiations. Wasn't that what you're supposed to do before you made an announcement that there was a deal where the street is opened here with? As Donald Trump said yesterday?