Krystal Ball: The MAGA Neocon Tears Are So Sad

**Tim Miller** (0:13)
Hello and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show co-host of Breaking Points and Krystal Kyle & Friends. Somebody that's been long overdue to have on the pod, to be honest.
Someone who's, I think career bio should mention a pretty important turn on The Cycle. One of my favorite afternoon MSNBC shows, it's Krystal Ball.

**Krystal Ball** (0:36)
You were a Cycle watcher?

**Tim Miller** (0:38)
I loved The Cycle.

**Krystal Ball** (0:41)
We had fun. It was a more innocent time.

**Tim Miller** (0:43)
It was you, it was Ture, it was Ari Melber, my old girl, Abby Huntsman was on for a little bit.

**Krystal Ball** (0:50)
Who else was on there? The original crew was, instead of Abby and Ari, it was Steve Kornacki, who got pulled very quickly to replace Chris Hayes on his weekend show originally, and then Chris Hayes went to prime time, and Essie Cupp.

**Tim Miller** (1:06)
All right.

**Krystal Ball** (1:06)
And then she moved to CNN, Abby came in.

**Tim Miller** (1:09)
That's right, I was watching it originally.
Well, I feel like you guys were ahead of your time, you know? There was some like a little heterodox arguing kind of show.
I don't know. I feel like MSNBC should probably bring something like the cycle back. Rachel Cutler doesn't listen to me, and it's now it's called out. All right. We're going to do some news. We're going to do some victory laps, and then maybe we'll hash out a couple disagreements. Maybe on some lefty stuff. All right. On the news front, this morning Trump has canceled the nomination hearing for Jay Clayton, who he had nominated to be the head of DNI. This is not traditional. Usually the Senate majority leader gets to decide the scheduling on what happens on the Hill for these sorts of nominations. But Trump is mad at John Thune and the other senators for being mean to him about the Iran war stuff. They're mad because they were mean to him about the Bill Pulte nomination. He basically said, F you, I'm going to pull back the Jay Clayton nomination. We are going to make Bill Pulte the acting DNI, and you guys can suck it basically. That's the state of affairs.

**Krystal Ball** (2:14)
Yeah.
Bill Pulte is a genuinely nefarious character who's been at the scene of many Trump era crimes, including using supposed mortgage fraud allegations to go after Trump opponents. He's also, of course, completely unqualified for the post of Director of National Intelligence. It makes sense that Trump would want him there because he's first and foremost, a toady and a loyalist who would have no business anywhere in any administration other than this one where basically sick of fancy and your ass kissing abilities and ability to stir up trouble for Trump opponents is the top and primary qualification.

**Tim Miller** (2:51)
Yeah. I think that that is particularly nefarious place to put them, right, as Director of National Intelligence. Oh, of course. Trump's bleat was like the Magna Carta explaining this and he's giving all kinds of-

**Krystal Ball** (3:05)
I had a lot of trouble following. Yeah.

**Tim Miller** (3:06)
It's giving lots of cockamamie reasons. It's not worth going into. You have to do some creminology.
I'm unsure whether Trump is just absolutely committed to having Bill Pulte in there for a little bit so he can cause trouble or whether this is Trump the toddler lashing out at Senate Republicans because they have been not showing a ton of spine but bucking him somewhat both on the Pulte nomination and some commentary on the emerging Iran deal. The one thing that happened basically was that FISA had expired last week, and there's a bipartisan group of senators who's just like basically, we're not going to reauthorize FISA with Bill Pulte running the DNI. You can't trust this person with these kinds of powers. There's some interesting subplots to that. So what Trump is now saying is like no FISA without the SAVE Act, and I'm not going to give you a responsible DNI. And at some level, I kind of wonder if the Krystal Ball faction of the Democratic Party look at this and are kind of like, okay, fine, no FISA, that's fine.

**Krystal Ball** (4:04)
No FISA, no SAVE America Act. Yeah, we'll take it. I mean, the consequences for potential election rigging are unsettling. I don't know what he has planned. They were pushing this new rule with the post office that they weren't going to deliver any mail-in ballots for states that refused to turn over their voter roles to the federal government. So an attempt to bully states, many of them are already in litigation against the federal government saying, no, we don't have to turn over our voter roles to you. So there is a lot of shenanigans going on. And with Tulsi Gabbard showing up in Fulton County and doing that whole, whatever that was, he's been involving the intelligence community in whatever they're trying to do to tilt the playing field in the midterm election. So it's definitely unsettling from that perspective, because certainly Bill Pulte has absolutely no scruples or morals whatsoever. You know, on the political side, it's kind of interesting. Trump has successfully taken out a few Republican senators who crossed him in mild ways. Cassidy is now a lame duck. Tom Tillis is now a lame duck. So you've got a handful.