Luke Russert and Josh Turek: There Is a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy

**Tim Miller** (0:12)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We got a Banger Doubleheader show for you today. Lots happened in the news. In segment two, we have Josh Turek, who won the Iowa Democratic Senate primary last night. He'll take on Ashley Hinson in the general. Much to talk about there. That could be a key race for control of the Senate. But first, he'll be the newest co-anchor on MS Now's The Weeknight, starting on Monday, June 15th at 7 p.m. You might remember, he took a leave of absence from the media in 2016 and went on a three-year, six-continent travel expedition.
That led to his book, Look For Me There, Grieving My Father, Finding Myself. We chatted about that a while back now. It's Luke Russert. What's up, man?

**Luke Russert** (0:55)
And it also led me to seeing you in the USF Gonzaga basketball game in San Francisco, which was a fantastic evening where we saw Chet Holmgren at the height of his college euphoria. And I'd say he's looked better since then. He's put on some muscles. It shows you that if you have a good base, you can build up to great things.

**Tim Miller** (1:17)
That is true. That was just-

**Luke Russert** (1:19)
Albeit his last game was not very good.

**Tim Miller** (1:21)
That was the deal. He already has the ring.

**Luke Russert** (1:22)
He already has the ring though. That's all that matters.

**Tim Miller** (1:24)
That was a delightful little bit of laying you up on your journey. I was going to say the opposite of what you said about Chet. I think that we saw the weaknesses were exposed in the Western Conference Finals.

**Luke Russert** (1:34)
I believe we said that he has to go to the weight room and he has to eat with me for about a year to get where he needs to be. But he's getting there.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:41)
But he's going to get the ring.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:42)
He's going to get the max contract.

**Luke Russert** (1:44)
You know, he's all good. He's having a great career.

**Tim Miller** (1:46)
I've got a little bit more on basketball and you traveling the world like Khan at the end of the podcast here. But there's a lot happening in the news. As mentioned, we had the primary night last night. But I think first we should start with what's happening in the Middle East. So an Iranian missile hit the Kuwait airport last night. There are also Iranian attacks in Bahrain and on an oil tanker near Dubai. These were in response to US attack on an island near the Strait of Hormuz. A lot of bombing, a lot of drones for a war that is over, according to the Secretary of State in his testimony yesterday. Most notably, I think that Kuwait attack left one dead, many injured. The airport records looks horrible.
On The Bulwark Slack this morning, General Hurtling flagged for me that this is the airport that most US servicemen come in and out of. He's been through there a bunch, so it's a relevant location for what our troops are doing in the Middle East.
It seems like the war is still on to me, in the war on, war off, Wayne's World thing we got going on. Yeah.

**Luke Russert** (2:49)
I'll take a step back further. I think the reason why we went to war is still not clear. What they've landed on is that the United States had to stop Iran's nuclear capabilities. That's something that's been ongoing for decades. That was something that President Obama and his team worked through that deal, which seemingly was having success prior to it being ripped up. So you're left to wonder why we're actually in this war. And I think that the prevailing theory is that the president got duped by his luxury real estate partners into going to war with Iran. And got a call from Jay Cush and MBS and was like, hey, let's just do this. It's going to reform the region. Everything's going to be hunk of dory and easy breezy. And it's not. And I think there's a few things still in line here. Number one, it's incredibly dangerous for the region. So the airport you mentioned where US service members are going in and out of, our US service members are in harm's way. I don't think we've gotten the straight story about how many times they've been attacked during this war. Thirteen folks have lost their lives for it. Number two, this entire region that was all supposed to be reformed or having comedy festivals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dubai is the place to be, Bahrain's got the F1, it's now become dangerous again to the point of where all these economic reforms and them opening up to the world doesn't look too good for luxury real estate.