Hello and welcome to the Bullock podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back,

former mayor of South Bend, Transportation Secretary in the Biden administration.

He ran for president in 2020, tied the Iowa caucus. It's Tinker, Mayor, Soldier, Secretary, Pete Buttigieg.

What's up, man?

I'm doing well. Good to see it.

You got a lot of titles now. I don't know what to call you anymore.

Yeah, guys. Let's just stick with Pete. I get a little easier. Pete sounds good. I want to start with news. Then we'll get into, you know,

whither the Democrats, with their democracy and all that. I guess those things are related.

Over the weekend, Trump, both in a bleat on truth social and in a kind of a gaggle outside of an airplane, talked about how Putin's gone crazy. And he's not the same man he wants to

new. And meanwhile, we got the Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that the U.S. is

working on reinforcing Europe's northern front and preparing for an escalating war with Russia

as Russia's taking more territory in Ukraine over the weekend. I'm just wondering what

you make of all that.

I think no one should be surprised to see Putin continuing to play the president. And it's really

tough to watch. It's, again, unsurprising, but still upsetting to see this unravel the way it is.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I remember Trump saying that he would solve the war on

day one. Like most of what he says, I think even as supporters assume that was an exaggeration,

but for it to start getting worse beginning on day one and now be getting much worse as we go

into day 150 or whatever this is of his presidency shows what happens when you have someone who doesn't know

what he's doing and is incapable of standing up to Putin. Yeah, there's actually, in some

circumstances, there's an important distinction between bluster and misjudgment, right? Like a lot of

the Trump's defenders will argue that like a lot of what he says is just bluster and negotiation

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