Bill Kristol: Trump Is in Way over His Head
The Bulwark Podcast
The Bulwark
4.6 • 11.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The man in charge is bluffing, blustering, and trying to manipulate the markets by claiming that the administration is in negotiations with Iran and was holding off on further military strikes. Israel's reaction was to drop more bombs on Iran, and the regime itself used Trump's own lines against him in its response. In any event, Iran has shown it can close the Strait of Hormuz, which is much more of a power move than the degradation of Tehran's missile capacity. With the war hitting Americans financially in their daily lives—and Trump now refusing a deal to fund TSA—the Dems have to hammer home that it's POTUS who has delivered higher gas prices and long lines at the airport. Plus, JD is in a job bind, the head of FEMA has a teleporting issue, and Trump showed utter depravity over the passing of Bob Mueller. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.
show notes
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we are here with editor at large, Bill Crystal. Bill, I want to start with you with what I have |
| 0:24.2 | titled, Stupid War Update. Is that okay? Can we just go through the stupid war update? There's a lot to |
| 0:30.8 | update, right? Yeah, I think we should just dispense with the pleasantries this week and go to the |
| 0:34.6 | stupid war update. So since we were last together, me and the |
| 0:38.3 | podcast audience, Friday Trump lifted the oil sanctions on Iranian oil that's currently at sea, |
| 0:45.8 | giving them a multi-billion dollar windfall while we bombed them. And then Iran fired a couple missiles |
| 0:51.0 | unsuccessfully at the island of Diego Garcia. Great name for an island, |
| 0:54.5 | which is far beyond the range that we'd previously known they're capable of sending missiles. |
| 0:59.3 | So that missiles, they didn't succeed. They were intercepted. It was kind of an interesting data point. |
| 1:05.2 | Then Trump threatened to hit and obliterate their power plants within 48 hours from this exact |
| 1:10.4 | point of time. |
| 1:11.5 | If they don't open the straight, that was yesterday. |
| 1:14.4 | Iran replied threatening to hit energy assets across the Middle East. |
| 1:18.8 | You know, the worst case scenario here could have been just a global energy crisis like we |
| 1:24.3 | haven't seen had both sides gone through with that. |
| 1:28.2 | Then this morning, |
| 1:33.1 | Trump blinked and called off the threat. He bleated this. I'm pleased to report the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive |
| 1:36.8 | conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East, |
| 1:43.1 | etc., etc. And then he goes on to say that they're going to postpone all military of our hostilities in the Middle East, et cetera, et cetera. |
| 1:49.4 | And then he goes on to say that they're going to postpone all military strikes against Iran and power plants and energy infrastructure for five days, which you might notice would be like |
| 1:53.5 | right after the markets close again on Friday. |
| 1:56.3 | Iran denies that these talks occurred at all. |
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