Trump Will Never Have Another 2016! He's out of luck this year! (w/ David Frum) | Bulwark Podcast

the election won't be about Biden, it

will

be about Trump and Trump can't get over 46% of the vote and except with a very

luck

y bounce like the one he got in

2016

, 46% wouldn't be enough if that were the case. John McCain had, I think, 45, but Mitt Romney John Krey Al Gore got more votes than Donald Trump, not to mention Hillary Clinton herself in

2016

, what he believes of the electorate is usually not enough to greet him and welcome the president . to the bullar

podcast

I'm your host Tim Miller. I'm delighted to be here with my favorite David from yesterday we lost Joe Liberman at the age of 82.

Obviously Al Gore's long time vice presidential nominee, Senator Bill Crystal wrote

this

in memory of a public servant of principle and decency an American patriot a proud Jew a happy warrior a kind man an example to us may his memory be a blessing uh rest easy Joe Liberman uh David, thank you so much for being on the Bullwark

podcast

again. a green jacket for all your appearances, thank you very much, um, I wanted to start with you, uh, that was good, I guess 11 months ago, now in April 2023, you wrote The Coming, bound and burst. I

have

some listeners complaining about my Rain Cloud Trends, so I thought, let's start

this

Thursday with a little bit of hope, a little bit of lift, how do you evaluate those 11 months?

Your feeling that Biden was in good shape in the election? Well, it's a rainy day here in Washington, so I'll bring some sunshine. Okay, the prediction of a Biden coup was not a prediction that Joe Biden would win a massive personal reelection, like in 1984 or 1972, it was a prediction that. The Democrats were going to do well or, rather, the Republicans were going to do poorly in every area on the list, and I base this on working out the logic of the Republican positions on abortion and, in general, the called the Human Life Amendment. uh, the master key to understanding 2024 is a story, but during the filming of the first Star Wars, George Lucas handed a terribly clumsy page of dialogue to Harrison Forge, who scanned it and said, George, you can write this but You can't tell, that's the problem.

With respect to where Republicans are on IVF and these other issues, they've signed up for a mass surveillance state for American women, they've signed up for a massive anti-fertility state for American women, and American women They've realized this and they're reacting and I think that's what's driving so many of these special elections in places where Trump and January 6 are so far away, that the election question on January 6 is whether American women

will

live in an American North Korea constantly monitored where they are. They won't even be allowed to cross state lines without a doctor's note or someone else's permission or they won't tolerate it, will they tolerate this or not um and I think you're seeing that all of that takes care of itself and the Republicans are just stuck first, this is something that many of them sincerely believe in and even those who opportunistically believed in it

have

signed so many laws that there is no withdrawal, there is no way to alter this um, George Lucas wrote the uh, but the Republican candidates can't say it, so there's and then we add to that all the Trump factors of January 6th and the growing strength of the American economy, plus the dysfunction of Republicans in the House of Representatives, and it looks like a

year

in which Not that it's going to there will be a massive personal mandate for the president, but, um, Republican losses everywhere.

State losses as well, which are going to be very, very important, um, in the rest of the decade, so how does that square with the the numbers that don't show President Biden's strength show that Trump is doing well. I show Trump basically stuck with the same numbers that he had in 2016, 2020, basically in the 40s, you know, Mike Donellan said you know this is how it is. Election Democracy hasn't sunk in that, maybe the polls are wrong. I have heard several worrying offers. I've heard several Biden people express that they think they have problems with the polls.

What is your evaluation? the survey or is it simply something that has not yet been assimilated. I think the problem with surveys is that you always need to ask very literally what the question is and what people are hearing, not what meaning you're conflating in the survey, but how they did it. the person who was presented with the survey, let me ask him a question: how does he feel about the dentist? not good not great not good how do you feel about gum disease really bad if the option is D means more dentist although more gum disease means more dentists gum disease I guess I'll sign up and that it's the ballot choice it's gum disease versus the dentist um there's a lot about Joe, I mean Joe Biden, his best and worst qualities are the same, I mean, he's a throwback to a different America and he's not speaking to today's America for better or worse, but it also reminds us of a time when politics seemed to be more stable and more functional than it is today, but Donald Trump is gone. insist that this election be a referendum on him, back for God's sake, in the '90s, I traveled with Phil Graham and when he was running for president and, uh, we were on one of his trips, this is the second one that Phil Graham mentioned this week, Bob Shum last night.

At dinner, he said he was telling me how terrible Phil Graham was as a candidate, he was like all my friends from Crystal and all these guys liked Phil Graham and I was telling everyone that he has no personality, that he will

never

win. that's yours that's your story at least Trum excuse me well, I liked him he was of considerable intellect uh Shrum's not wrong um he had it uh it's no surprise that Phil Graham ended up as a successful banker instead of president um but in this camp had a lot of incisive opinions and on this trip we were talking to a loudmouth local politician who was running for a seat and Graham said to him: when you run against an incumbent, this loudmouth was there.

There are only two issues: your record and you're not a cook, so that's what Donald Trump should be talking about, it's Biden's record and I'm finding some way to make himself acceptable, but instead he insists on making the election a referendum. about him, not about the incumbent, what you want in an election against the incumbent is to say this question, does anyone here have a complaint and if there are enough people who have complaints, like they did when Jimmy Carter ran against Gerald Ford, like they did it when Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy. Carter and going back to the past, if enough people say yes I have complaints then the incumbent loses even if that incumbent has a lot of good personal qualities but Donald Trump will not let this be an election, if he has any complaints he is making an election about whether everyone loves me and agrees with me that the constitution should be overthrown by violent mobs and I just don't think I'm going to find an American plurality that says they know, come to think of it.

I am with the overthrow. of the Constitution by the candidate of violent mobs um well, I hope that's correct and I appreciate you mentioning dentists. I found a good pediatric dentist in New Orleans, but if anyone has a recommendation for an adult dentist, this reminds me to take care of that. um I want one more push back on this idea of ​​optimism, although you're, you're comp, it's compelling, I'm H, you're doing, you're already warming my heart, uh, Bill Crystal's pessimistic view on this would be more. that the parallel is 92, it's true that people have complaints about Joe Biden, maybe things are getting better, maybe things are getting better, but not at the rate that people expected them to get better, or not, it hasn't leaked. so to speak, their lives, their budgets, their impressions and that people have decided, for some reason, that the incumbent is irresponsible, that the economy is not working for them.

I don't agree with those arguments, but there is a concern that that's the parallel and that it's difficult for him that it would be difficult for Joe to get out of that hole, as I think about 20

year

s of sometimes agreeing with Bill on politics and sometimes in disagreement. I realize that the core of our systematic disagreements going back over time and we agree on many issues but have not agreed on predictions and stock recommendations is that Bill tends to believe that candidates matter extremely and I think that candidates matter especially the presidential level not anything but much less um and I think of politics as if the political system convinces people to see attributes in candidates that literally do not exist, I mean, there are a lot of normie Republicans, people who would have happily voted for Mitt Romney and reasonably happily voted for John McCain and, very happily, George W.

Bush, somehow convinced themselves that Donald Trump was a Republican, a normal Republican. That's obviously not true. You mean the effort to believe in self-deception that you have to muster, but a lot of normal Republicans. The car dealers themselves are executive vice presidents and companies convincing themselves of this blatantly false proposal and meanwhile many Republicans are convincing themselves that Joe Biden is an antifa socialist candidate and that's crazy too, but , but, you take your side and then you have your beliefs about candidate C, beliefs about candidate are derived from partisanship, they don't drive partisanship except on the extremist fringe, that's where I would differ from Bill on much of my political analysis, so yes, I think people have qualms about Joe Biden and those are expressed and doubts about the economy, but the economy is really strong, the election will not be about Biden, it will be about Trump and Trump will not can surpass 46% of the vote and except with a very

luck

y bounce like the one he caught in 2016, 46% is not enough if it were good, John McCain had, I think, 45, but Mitt Romney, John KY, Al Gore got more votes than Donald Trump, not to mention Hillary Clinton. herself in 2016 what he sh uh his share of the electorate is usually not enough to make him president, which is a nice transition to the other side where he might be fine, so he's convinced us over and over again. time. a binary option that that uh that maybe Donald Trump is not able to get to the part that he would need RFK Jr uh.

I saw a very interesting riff on what you were doing about him on the merits on CNN and about the craziness of him. I want to get into that but first the politics is what worries me with RFK Jr and there are a lot of Known Unknowns still out there, is he going to appear on the ballot and in the state, what states and are there any details? but if he did get on the ballot, I'm of the opinion that his core base is pretty triumphant, it's like crazy, you know, vaccine skeptics and like anti-establishment weirdos, um, but then the next concentric circle is the people .

Some of the people we're talking about are dissatisfied with Joe Biden at a low level and they don't like Donald Trump, which maybe is a way out for them, maybe it's in some of Biden's constituencies where he's black. weaker. voters young voters traditional Biden constituencies so how concerned are you about the RFK element of all of this? um, I'm quite worried about him, but not in the way you just described. Well, when people talk about RFK, they talk about the RFK campaign, um and um and the RFK campaign is I think it's going to be a boutique operation um it's uh he can't not talk about vaccines his general views are pretty crazy um himself um it's not RFK Sir and there are people older than there Are there people alive who voted in 1968?

I was talking on the phone a few minutes ago with someone who is a very vigorous person in American politics who cast her first vote in 1968, so there are people with whom that might and who are less in tune. I talked to them, yes, they could make a mistake. RFK Jr will disappoint or disabuse them of that. I mean, he's not her father, but here's what I think about the RK campaign, which is the Super PAC, um, that has raised tens of millions of dollars and could easily raise more now that the Super PAC is independent of RFK.

Jr. is Republic money run by Republican supporters um and as far as I can tell and unlike much of the Trump operation not run by crooks um so it's a pretty large amount. There is an important distinction, so if they raise money they use it for campaign related causes, so whatever the RFK Jr campaign does, the Super PAC will be an anti-Biden weapon and will run negative ads, not run Pro La RFK advertising is going to run anti-Biden ads and in an environment where Trump's money is being wasted or spent on lawyers or outright stolen, the RFK Super PAC could be important in 2024 in a media environment that will be dominated by much more Democrat money than Republican, but where Republicans will have less than usual, RFK's anti-Biden Super PAC may be part of the equation and so may the superNo Labels package if that ever exists, yeah, well. maybe there's some overlap in our concerns then because with that RFK super package, as you rightly pointed out, I don't think I mentioned on this podcast that I should have said the extent to which Republican money has been.

Put eight figures in it already, um, and you know, what we saw in 2016 was a pretty unsophisticated effort by nefarious actors to crush demonstrations of the democratic core, you know? That's largely what the material was. from Facebook Cambridge Analytica, you know, people, you know, it's with the super predators. Hillary went after super predators, all that kind of stuff, you know, nonsense if there's a well-capitalized RFK campaign she's trying to damage. Biden is more than trying to help or RFK, excuse me, you are trying to hurt Biden more than you are trying to help RFK, there seem to be some ripe targets for that, you know, since we've talked about the weakness of the support of Biden. in some of these core rallies, yes, look, the core of the Democrats, the fundamental strategic problem for the Democrats is that they are a large but looser coalition made up of many groups that are at odds with each other, but Biden looks like both to some of you, you know.

The people who are more entrenched in American life, um, well-educated people, own their own homes, who are very safe, I mean, that's basically what Republicans are who have

never

been Trump, um, and Biden would also normally attract to some of the least connected people in American life, uh. young people who are new to the workforce who rent, um, who are burdened by debt, so keeping those two types of people in the same cult coalition is a much more difficult problem than the Republicans have with their coalition smaller but much more cohesive, so Democrats are always vulnerable to campaigns that aim to break some of their support, and that would be the smart play for a Super PAC, that's what Trump's people did, the super Pacs and the Russians in 2016, tried to push parts away. of the Democratic Coalition with very specific messages and if you have an operation run by smart people, it could have an impact.

One of the things that Biden has going for him is that there are a lot of people in the Trump Camp and a lot of Republicans seem to have pretty stupid ideas about what motivates the Democratic Coalition huh. Raven Aroyo has disappeared from Fox Airwaves for saying that black voters will turn to Trump because they like sneakers, so that was too much to say even about For mugshots, yes, yes, but many people who write checks to Republican supperts They really believe that and are therefore vulnerable to appealing to black voters in ways that are likely to be counterproductive, but no, you can't.

I guess everyone who runs these Super Pacs is corrupt idiots. Some of them are smart, corrupt people and some of them are the most idiotic, and they can happen accidentally on issues that are more powerful and look, there are people in America who say. At least during the pandemic he received some type of stipend. That stipend is gone and I can't find the kind of job I want or there are young people saying that because of the changes in the American workforce. I am less attractive where women have certain skills that are more valuable and my skills are less valuable.

I find it harder to get a girlfriend or wife than my father did when he was my age and I'm really angry about it. drives my politics more than anything, there are older people, there are people burdened by student debt who think they weren't happy that Biden didn't get rid of more Stu student debt than he did, and there are people who remember what Ha, they go to the grocery market and they remember what groceries used to cost and they forget that they also had a career or maybe they think about it in different ways, the raise I made, but grocery prices just happened. to me um and they're angry about it so there's a lot of groups that you could try to eliminate and those are the pl Playbook um that's going to be a very important part of the Trump plan in 2024 the Trump.

Universal Trump plan, yes, the anti Biden plan, I should call it sure, sure, sure, I want to throw a notion at you from my original soul, um, I remind you of one of your times when you were with Charlie, you spoke eloquently and insightfully. about how people who are victims of scams don't like to admit that they are victims of scams and right now it's clearer than ever how big of a scam Trump is running against his own voters while they're paying for um. You know he can barely do events and they're paying for all his lawyers, uh, paying for his lifestyle.

I wonder what advantages Republicans have in being corrupt, they may be corrupt and stupid, but they're also nefarious, right? I'm willing to use these kinds of strategies to try to get, you know, information out of black voters or young voters who might be crushed by ads that you know are dishonest or take advantage of them, and I'm not suggesting being honest, but am I? Do you think there's any appetite or any reason for Democrats to think about ways that they can turn the situation around and have outside groups try to talk about how Trump has you in the red in rural areas? areas with young men, you know, they talk about how Trump has conned them, they talk about how the abortion issue could affect them if they're not ready to be parents yet, right.

No, I don't see much of that from the Democrats, but I think there are potentially green shoots, but on the other hand, maybe these people are not approachable. Some people might tell me that it's a waste of time that these people don't come, but I think so. We're moving toward a very different type of map and the 2018 election, um, I suggest that when Democrats talk about going after Republican voters, they say, I think it was um, now I'm going to forget who said we have to appeal to the types who drive pickup trucks with Confederate Flex, yeah, I forget, us and I, I applaud the sentiment, candidates should obviously try to run for everyone, but you're not going to win the guy who drives a pickup truck with a Confederate flag if a Democratic candidate, Meanwhile, they don't see who's winning, so in 2018, Democrats flipped the House seat held by George H.W.

ER they flipped Eric Kander's seat on the outskirts of Richmond um the seat where W lives is Colin alled now the Senate candidate they flipped yes now in Dallas where the Democrats are making their gains not with um people driving pickup trucks and waving the flag. confederate flag, but actually with the kind of people who 50 years ago were the heart and soul of the Republican Party, people who own their own homes, married, with IAS, who are basically content with life, you know, one of those who remember. If you look at Madman, all the partners at Don Draper's firm are all Republicans, not because they're super ideological, they're just basically satisfied with their lives, so they're Republicans and Democrats are the party of people who aren't. satisfied with their lives um and not make a moral judgment about which is better it's just that there are some people who are happier than others and historically they tended to be republicans well guess who Biden gets but the way he gets them doesn't it is. by saying "hey, you're pretty cocky, vote for me." The way he understands them is by showing.

I just think about the ads that work on me, the ads that work on me are the ads that look like old AT&T phone company ads. You know, people who come home and leave their briefcase and hug their kids and play with the dog, you know, um, people working, uh, in a classroom with kids from all backgrounds, you know, uh, flag, statue of liberty, fireworks, American battleships, you know, I'm susceptible to all of this too yeah, yeah, that same morning, the morning in America and um, now that ad, when you look at it today, it's incredibly dated, like the shots were so long you can't believe six seconds of the Statue of Liberty, are you serious?

Do you think we? I'm going to live forever, but that's what Biden and I did, that's how he launched his 2020 campaign, you know? Do you love this country? Are you proud of this country? Do you think the country is basically right? Do you think we have built something? Is it worth preserving? Do you have more to defend than you have to lose? You have more to defend than you aspire to acquire. Those messages are very powerful in the Congressional seats of George HW Bush and Gingrich Eric Caner, those are the people. where I think we're going to put Biden on top and one more thing and this is about job B.

I can remember being in this never Trump business for a long time in 2017 when it was a clever joke to say never. Trump was a dinner party, not a political party, yes, but in fact, we are not the base at all, but we are the people who are going to put Biden on top, and he needs his base and that to appease. they do things they never do Trump people don't like when meat prices go up he has to pretend it's because of the mines from the evil meat packing companies which is stupid, false and disingenuous when meat prices meat did not become better people when meat prices lower gas prices is not determined by the moral quality of the oil companies, that is childish, but people who have never been Trump and who are on the sidelines of victory are people who would normally be susceptible to Republican messages emotional that you see in Trump people, like this guy is, he should be in a psychiatric ward and not run for office.

Yeah, one thing in his favor about that this week, I don't know, is that there was a special election for a state house race in the suburbs of Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama, which was a 25° swing for the Democrat, which has focused a lot on IVF uh Scandal so I can combine no Scandal IVF um governing in Alabama um well,

another

article that you wrote recently uh that I wanted to get into was uh, the good Republicans Last Stand was about the financing of Ukraine , how there was a group of good remaining Republicans, I think at this time Mike Gallagher was still a sitting member of Congress, maybe he was in this category, it was before Mitch McConnell said he was going to step aside, but there was some Republicans who were doing the right thing. and yet here we are a few months later and still nothing has been done because of the bad Republicans.

How do you evaluate the current situation and do the good Republicans resist? I think this is the problem when I say why I'm going. be in line at 5: in the morning to vote for Biden in 2024 it's for Ukraine um and um where Biden has by no means been perfect in Ukraine uh I think he walked slowly with a lot of the weapons that they needed from the beginning, has been trying to micromanage this war to give the UK enough not to lose but not enough to win and who knows what that point is, many, many, many mistakes and 2023 should have been the decisive year of the war. war and because of the bad decisions of the people in the Biden administration, it was not, so we are suffering and bleeding until 2024, but the Republicans are selling them and that is just shocking to me, we are President Biden, he asked for more money for Ukraine.

On October 20 of last year we approached the six-month mark and that has stalled and while there are majorities in both houses of Congress in favor of aid because there is not a majority of the majority in the House of Representatives, aid has been successfully stalled and Republicans have been unwilling to do what is necessary to overcome their own leadership, including the way the people who and one of the people I selected was the ranking member of the Committee on Senate Foreign Relations, Jim Rish, who has been a strong supporter of Ukraine, but he just goes to hell, I mean, behind the scenes, he is doing all kinds of things, but he doesn't even cast a vote before the scene because he has so much afraid of his own voters and Trump, um, uh, there.

It appears to be enough aid from Europe to keep the Ukrainians on the battlefield during the fighting season. They have found thanks to the Czech government a supply of artillery shells in Taiwan that seems sufficient to obtain and the Europeans are paying for them. They can move forward and we hope that the United States will return to its responsible position of global leadership after this election and especially if the Democrats retake the House of Representatives, but it is a terrible, terrible betrayal and it is quite a surprising degree of betrayal. I was talking, I had Stephen Hayes last week and we were discussing all of this and you know there's a hold of Republicans in the House and the Senate who are still holding on to thecomplaint that Biden is not doing.

It's quite true that they try to talk like they know the early 2000s or the 1980s and that's the real Hawks here and what else do you know thinking about your Mike McCalls and your Tom Cotton, huh, but when it comes to actually trying put pressure on Mike Johnson or do or do something procedural to act like they're totally out of line, it's like there's no one who's really politically putting pressure on Mike Johnson to move this forward on the Republican side, right? I'm wrong about that, yeah, no, you can't complain that your friend isn't giving enough charity if you yourself are going around town kicking homeless people, uh, and that's what's happening here.

I mean, Biden is not doing enough. Ukraine um and increasingly catastrophically didn't do enough at a time when doing enough would have actually brought the war to a quicker end, I mean, early last year it didn't do enough, it didn't and it's, um , you have succumbed to the classic problem of democratic foreign policy that you are trying to be too clever, trying to specify the precise outcome you are trying to achieve 24 months in advance and then 24 months in advance, trying to precisely measure the degree of resources and effort it takes to get to that mark instead of just saying: send everything empty, empty, empty the arsenals if they, if the Ukrainians end up with too much stuff, well, that's money wasted, not lives lost, send them everything , send it quick, don't worry too much about how this will play out, no I don't know, I don't know, when people say no, what's the endgame?

The end game is that we win by applying maximum effort to the maximum from the beginning, um, so that was all you can do with that critique, but you can't legitimately do that. critical if Mike Johnson says I'm going to withhold aid to Ukraine altogether because Trump tells me so and Trump is doing it because Putin tells him amen I couldn't I couldn't agree with that else it's okay to move to Gaza um briefly, we had A assumption yesterday that represented the view that Biden should put more pressure on BB than we should have on the table to stop providing weapons to Israel because of the atrocities in Gaza.

I don't share that opinion, but I also had a A guest a couple of weeks ago had the opinion that Biden was trying to distance himself too much from BB, um, that's

another

opinion that I don't share. I mean, I have some concerns. I think that many of Israel's actions were in the first months after the October 7 attack completely defensible and understandable and I am now concerned that we have reached a situation where they have no particular plan to achieve their goals of eradicating Hamas and the plan they do have. It doesn't make much sense, you know, you had Jared Kushner running around, the other week talking to BB allies about how you know they're going to occupy Gaza and build condos there.

No, I do not know. Maraga Gaza or maralago Gaza is an option, it is a solution that will make a lot of sense in the region, so where do you fall in this discussion about how Biden is calibrating this and, frankly, how BB is Cali W? Well, first I want to make it clear that I am not any kind of military expert and particularly not in the most difficult form of warfare, Urban Warfare. I have no idea what is the right strategy and what is the right tactic. I have been and to the extent I had views, they turned out to be completely wrong.

I was concerned that Hamas had had attacks on Gaza in all sorts of ways and it really seems like, actually, one of the big surprises of the war is how little effort Hamas has made to fight or defend and defend the people that it's supposed to It represents. I mean, your plan seems to be to save yourself and expose the civilian population to maximum harm in hopes of generating a response on Tik Tock, which is also not a good plan because a lot of people suffer while you wait for the Tik Tock Brigade to get you out of rush, which they are not doing.

First I would say I'm going to repeat what I said about Ukraine. don't micromanage these things um the reason wars should be avoided at almost any cost is because they are big animals destructive, wasteful, cruel, unpredictable, unpredictable and um uh once Hamas made the decision to wage this war of atrocity against Israel, unleashed responses that were simply incalculable but that will surely be horrible um and um the most important thing because wars are so horrible the most important thing is to end them as quickly as possible um and that means not confronting your violence, the same criticisms that I have about Biden's people in Ukraine, they do not meet their violence with an exact measuring gauge in the hope of reaching exactly the right amount, they do too much too soon in the hope of ending it as quickly as possible and then getting to the work of restoration and peace to end um and then he adopted maximalist goals that can never be achieved, so the war will never end and he will never end, so in my opinion one of the biggest Israeli mistakes was to say at the beginning, okay, we're trapped by Surprise, but the president and we will change the government as soon as the war is over, they should have changed the government immediately, yes, and where were you at the Schumer talking about that?

Did you think it was appropriate? um, I didn't think it was smart, no, um, but for another reason and it's also late, I mean, the point is that Netanyahu should have resigned on October 9 and, if he hadn't, he should have forced him. but he should have been expelled by the Israeli public and once the Israeli political system reached its consensus it will change it after you put in place very perverse incentives um on the American side I think Biden has stalled and um I think some of my friends in the pro-Israel community they are simply comparing Biden to their idea of ​​what they would like rather than what has existed before a war, that situation very reminiscent of the 1982 Israeli war in Lebanon, thank you for mentioning this .

This began when the PLO murdered Israel's ambassador to London on the streets of the United Kingdom on the streets of London, a truly shocking crime that culminated a decade of terrible PLO atrocities in attacking Israel. on the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich Olympics, atrocious kidnapping of some of them from the PLO, some of them affiliated with the PL, and then, and then, this attack on a diplomat on, uh, on the soil of a country of NATO, so Israel entered Lebanon to try to drive. The PLO after the war was very brutal and, um, the Reagan administration at first came back and then completely changed and started putting enormous pressure on Israel and at one point I, someone in the administration, I don't think the president himself Reagan, but a senior official used Holocaust genocide language from an anonymous White House source against Israel, which is such a shocking and offensive thing when you know people in Congress do it, but the idea that someone in a Administration would do it if that is their reference point.

If Reagan 82 is his benchmark, then Biden has been a staunch friend and it is unrealistic to ask him to do more than he has done and I think they have been able to be very generous to Israel with information. weapons with high technology Israel needs different things than Ukraine needs um uh and Israel's needs have been met better than Ukraine's needs now maybe it will be different if the war continues for two or three years, but for now I don't . I don't think there are any reasonable complaints against the Biden Administration, um, but as far as giving them advice, I don't have the advice that they're facing, so no, no, I don't keep track of live hostages but there are still over a hundred Israeli hostages in hands of Hamas um people have been murdered and mistreated in the most horrible ways on video with the int um with the intention of provoking the reaction um and so I don't know that there is any way out of this path until we reach a true result of the war.

Yes, I totally agree with you about Biden and obviously I want to say that the hostages should be freed and this is all up to Hamas. They encouraged me throughout. negative things happening on campus these days. I was with us this week and I was encouraged that there was a free meeting of the hostages in the USC courtyard that was unfazed and there was a fairly large group that was, you know, I think there are some reasonable concerns that there might at least have been been yelled at, not that their safety would be um uh in doubt, so I was encouraged to see that I guess I'm the only one who should keep track of this, the only area I think I would choose.

One catch with what you said is that it's not so much about military strategy as I'm not a military strategist. I'm not going to tell BB that you should do it this way, you should do it that way. If we are going to engage in an offensive action like this that will have the number of casualties that we have seen in Gaza and the tragedy that we have seen in Gaza, I would like there to be at least one myself. I wish someone could enunciate what the endgame is and I simply have never done that. I don't think they've offered one that makes much sense.

This is like a question mark. One question mark is Israel. They are going to occupy it no, there is going to be a foreign group that is going to occupy who is that, the Egyptians don't want to do it, the Saudis don't want to correct it, so we are going to keep coming in and bomb H without and I guess maybe the only answer to That's good, we'll just do it until the hostages are freed and then we'll see where we sit, but that's the element of this. It makes me think a little bit that I wish we could bring it to the negotiating table and I know that, again, that's about Hamas, but that's the part that worries me. um.

I'm G. I give you a very sincere answer to this and maybe also. I'm honest for my own good, but please don't do it. I think the reason people don't talk about the endgame is because there isn't a good one, there really isn't. That Hamas did this on October 7th and they did what they did in the way they did it with the video with the goal of making it impossible for Jews and Palestinians to live together in neighborly relations state by state and I think that for a generation they succeeded that goal. So people, we have these impulses, which is fine, we have to renegotiate the two-state solution, but Hamas said what we want to do is video ourselves or GoPro doing things to the Israelis so they can never . did you ever trust us and not just us, Hamas, but us, the 15,000 people who came to your country every day since I think that was the number of people from Gaza to work with, who are trustworthy people who worked in the kutzas and that revealed the identity of those who participated.

It seems that in the rapes and robberies we want to make it possible for those people to be trusted and in the same way our military plan is one in which we do not have air raid shelters, we do not have pl, we do not have, we have not stored food and water for what who are technically our population, we are going to expose them to the revenge of a highly technologically advanced military state that is seeking revenge for the terrible crimes we committed and they will inflict that revenge in ways that make it impossible for our people to ever forgive them when this is over. , when you say what the End State is here, you know it's a technocratic question about a war that was designed to stoke so much hatred and the perpetrators of that war.

It was Hamas, uh, but there is Israel, they are the counter-perpetrators because they behaved exactly the way they had no alter, no human possibility not to behave and that leaves behind only rubble, um, I don't know, uh, who will go to who will to the police. Hamas, no one and if anyone comes in, it will be like um Iraq in late '23, early '20, sorry, 2003, early 2004, if an Arab force or a European force comes in, Hamas will commit terrorist atrocities to drive them out. and they will probably succeed, so there will be no law and order in Gaza except in the small areas that Israel retains, which means there will be no reconstruction there, there will just be tension, there will just be poverty and that was the goal of the people who They started this war and I don't know if you can be more cunning than that or overcome compassion or bring something good sometimes sometimes evil people get their way at least in the immediate term and I'm very afraid in this case I have to say Well, let's make up a plan to outwit them, it's just asking human intelligence to do more than I think human intelligence in this situation can probably do.

A thoughtful, thoughtful response, albeit quite depressing, but on the topic of this podcast at times. Okay, the final topic isn't going to get much easier, so when I took over this podcast from Charlie, a couple of weeks ago, months ago, now time flies, I told Katie Cooper that in the first week I wanted to make sure we had our favorite recurring guest, uh, which one was you?, and uh, that was our plan until you got what I imagine was the worst call of your life, um, that your daughter Miranda had collapsed, um I imagine most of our listeners already know that she died a few weeks ago. ago, atage 32, you wrote beautifully about his life and his final gift to you in the Atlantic last week.

I recommend everyone read that with some tissues. Many in the Borg family have had the privilege of knowing her, Mona, Ab and others. And so I didn't have that privilege, so I was hoping that maybe you would share a little bit about her for those of us who never had the opportunity to meet Miranda, well, we have this intimate bond of this coincidence of time. um uh she was going to talk to you on February 16, our call was going to be at 11 o'clock um and 10:40 a.m. m. that morning um I got what was, as you say, the most horrible call um and uh my wife and I ran to New York where Miranda Liv we live in Washington and um, but of course, yeah, all we could do was plan A, a funeral, um, there's a lot to say, and it could take me a long time to say it. that and I won't do it because one of the things that I have to do when you go through this is that suffering is the great human equalizer um and uh different people different people have different types of suffering um and some have it in their past and some have it. have in their future, but we will all do this and as a writer, you can only demand attention to your suffering, which is as raw for you to the extent that you are able to make it part of the universal uh Human Condition and to speak to everyone um this it's a world full of suffering um so what I tried to do when I wrote about this was um well first I didn't write directly about it because you can But it's like the sun, you can't look at it, it's like a rock it does have, you can only get close to it to her indirectly, so I talked about inheriting my daughter's dog that's at my feet right now, um, and I talked about that experience. as a way to make things a little lighter, but also to try to talk about something that I think is the universal part, this is what I talked about, which is when you're a parent, you're a parent, um, you. you're bringing these human beings with you you're dragging them into the world um and that means you're not always their friend um you're um you know you're you're one of the least you try to be funny most of the time but you can't be funny all the time. time is that you are the person who is in charge of saying no when you need to hear no and to say say you have to try in a certain way they You may not want to say it when you and what you hope are at the end of a long and full life.

That the parents and the child can agree. Well, it was worth it. I understand it now and Miranda lived long enough for us to have that understanding, but. not so long that I didn't have many doubts about the things she had done when she could have done better, they were more understanding and insightful and, in particular, the nature of her death was one that she had She died because she had undergone surgery a brain tumor and required constant interventions to adjust the B hormone. The brain tumor had devastated his endocrine system and so he had to take pills to control everything, from his thirst to his habit of sleeping for hours at a time. immune system and if you got it wrong and it had to be changed every few weeks, um, you're at a terrible risk, more risk than any of us who think we got it right and then you're left with, well, what if we had paid a bit? more attention to this medical clue and temperature and I turned the knobs a little bit this way, could she be alive today?

So, like a lot of people in my situation, we're very tortured by those thoughts, so I wrote the talk about what was that dialogue at 3 in the morning of self-doubt and uh, and then the punch line of the piece was, for On the other hand, she left us this really not a good dog. I refer to the piece as Ringo bites everything, bites rocks. Who does that? So I talked about living with Ringo and I just said that when she loved him so much and when I feel these torments, I think well, I'm taking care of Ringo, so whatever else he's done wrong, I'll do it. right, yeah, I mean, I could ask you a million things about her.

There's one thing she really wanted, although I know at least one of our listeners also had a dead child not too long ago and it's just a situation. where I just can't imagine that it's hard for me to understand, so I'm wondering if there's anything that has been a balm or a buoy in the midst of the pain that I feel for anyone else who is struggling with this and has been through this. I'll say well, um, if so, if there's a lot of things in the long term, but in the short term, I'll let myself capitulate a conversation I had with someone who was strangely helpful to me, okay, I had a conversation with someone who had lost his daughter at 33 two years ago and um uh similarly I have a very close family um you know and um and their families where that's not true and that's another problem, but I was talking to this person that we were my wife and me and he said look if the angel of death came to you and said if you and Danielle agree to jump off the top of this building we can bring Miranda back would you take that, would you and he said of course , you do it, you do it in a heartbeat you do it with a smile on your face said this person was uh this person was a Hollywood agent guy said but that's not on the table and and this phrase but that's not on the table that ha been the best crutch we have we just carry on like you always say, but that's not on the table, we can't have that, so what can we have?

What can we do? So that's the bomb I would set off. There are things you can do and my case could write. a commemorative piece we can keep our family closer we can do it in our hearts and to the extent that you do it in public commemorate the person you can make sure that their story is known by the people who want to know that and you can, you can try live more according to your values ​​um Miranda, she is not a fearless person, she had fears, but she was very, very, very brave, um and we all can and I try to be, uh, I have done some television. things since uh uh mirand we lost Miranda and one of the things that I've done on every show is to say I always had an idea of ​​the things that I could say and the things that I shouldn't say and one of the things that I've been doing since The February 16 says that when I talk about the things I could say, I will say them, yes, because Miranda would have said them, so I will say them.

I love it, well, thank you, thank you for being willing to share that with us. uh, the item was Miranda's last gift. I don't know if I said that. uh you also posted the eulogy that you and Danielle did on your social media, if people want to fight, find that and um, boy, that was. It was hard to watch, but it was full of love, yes, it was full of love, and at the beginning of the eulogy, she recounted a memory of her singing a hauntingly charming karaoke rendition of the passenger, so I'm leaving friends. with that song as a tribute and, to the extent that we can, we know that many of us are trying to accompany you and I hope to have you back on the podcast soon.

Thank you very much, David, I am.