1061: Secret Podcast: Did Stephen Miller Just Pull Off a Palace Coup?

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Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell,

publisher of the Bullwark.

The Bullwark.

Hey, Sarah.

It's up my guy.

We've got a big show for you guys today.

I am, we're taping Thursday afternoon, and I am like exploding with shot and Freud,

because Cristianoom has just gotten fired in one of the most humiliating ways possible.

There's great news about the war.

Really great war news.

Can't know who doesn't love a good war.

And today, finally, finally, Sarah and I are going to share some news about

the top secret project that we've been working on for low these many months.

But I'm going to make you guys wait for that, because we're going to do it on the back half,

because we do just want to share it first with the members.

So maybe if you want to be part of that big reveal, go hit subscribe.

Yeah, I like that.

All right, best friend.

So I, well, you want to sit down.

I have just taped a 45 minute live shot with Tim and Andrew Egger over Cristianoom,

who was fired by tweet while she was on stage giving a speech.

So that it is not clear that she had any knowledge that she had been fired.

What are your thoughts?

Well, first of all, I wish I had just done the live with you.

So then I would know what everybody said.

My main thing is that to me, it is funny.

When I saw the first Wall Street Journal story that said he was considering firing her,

the story made it sound like Trump's objection was that Cristianoom said in the hearing yesterday,

the public hearing, which was a total debacle for her.

But one of the things she said was she was asked if Trump knew about the $200 million that she had

spent, which by the way, the money was going to like pals of hers.

But then more importantly, it was all about upping her name ID, right?

It was all this self-promotional stuff, which is an old school Cristianoom tool.

She used public funds to do that back when she was the governor of North Dakota as well.

It was specifically about Trump. She says under oath that Trump knew about it.

And so that's what he was mad about, not the corruption itself,

not the handling of the deportations, which were deemed unconstitutional, sending immigrants

to foreign gulags, not the shooting of Alex Pretti or Renee Good, not calling them domestic

terrorists. None of that. Or the corruption itself has been there self-evidently for the

entirety. She's been doing this the whole time, spending public money to advance her own name ID.

It was that Trump will somehow set to approve it, which means that in my estimation,

Trump must not have been getting his taste sufficiently, because if Trump had been getting the

kickbacks that he needed, right? He's like a mob boss, who it's not the corruption,

it's when you don't get your peace, when someone keeps your peace from you, that's when you're

screwed. And so this was like straight up mafia rules. Did you guys talk about that on the thing?

A little bit, yeah. So this was the, and we've seen this before, where for him, the unforgivable

sin is somebody else making money off of him, without him getting a piece of the action.

Now, my conspiracy theory here is that I believe this entire hit was a premeditated inside

a job being run by Stephen Miller. Here's why. Somebody, I maybe was Jared went and did a quick

count. Mark Wayne Mullin has been all over conservative video for the last like seven to nine days

in ways that are, if you're just graphing it, huge spike. So clearly, someone is like,

yep, he's going to be our new guy. We got to get him out there. So that Trump has

recency biased with him. I think that Kennedy, who asked the question, which supposedly got her

fired, was probably set up to ask that question and told she will have to answer it in this particular

way, because she's concerned about burgery. And this is the way we get her. And my guess is that

this entire thing was being run by Stephen Miller. Maybe this was a Stephen Miller op to get rid of her

because she become a problematic to him, problematic for his continued project of

getting rid of 20 million, or 30 million, or every brown person in America. And so this was

all coordinated hit to get rid of her, push her out, and get her replaced with a guy who he thinks

will be even more plant than she was. That's a good theory. I wouldn't push back too hard against

that. I certainly think I was surprised to see Senator Kennedy push her the way that he did.

And so, you know, mostly the way that these hearings go is for Kristi Nome or Pam Bondi,

is that you get to the Democrats. They ask you tough questions. You filibuster and complain about

bias and you scream and yell. And then you get to a Republican and you get in a nice warm bath.

You know, they're just there to tell you how you're doing a good job and boy,

these Democrats are rabid against you, but you're doing great. And so this, this was, you know,

some R on R violence. And when he came for her, it was a setup. It was like, and it was specifically

just, I guess, undergird your theory, is it was about Miller, right? Because this, the thing in

question was when Kristi Nome got asked about, like, when everything was going sideways for them

in Minneapolis after the Alex Freddie shooting. So the second time now and the second time they've

jumped the gun, calling them a domestic terrorist, or saying that it was their fault. They were

doing something in the video contradicts it. She came out and said, I was only doing what I was

told by Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. I was only following orders that him getting dragged

into her mess. I could see him looking for retribution or, or yes. And he does seem like a revenge

that served cold kind of guy. So yeah, I got to say, I'm a little surprised. I've kind of been

under this operating under the theory that as bad as anybody is in the cabinet, Trump

needs to run like he's not going to throw them overboard because they know too much, which is why

they seem to have given Kristi Nome a new, a new little perch. New perch. Question is, did she know

she was getting that perch? Or did she find out when she walked off stage? That I don't quite know.

Now she must have known she was in trouble because she did drag her husband to the to the hearing

with her to sit behind her and be humiliated. And I think she wouldn't have done that because I'm

sure that cost her something. Wouldn't have done that if she didn't think that she was in

serious danger. Yeah. And I know the whole thing is wild. Did you see Jotter Federman has already said

he's an eye. Absolutely an eye. An eye, though. I will. On Mark Wayne Mullin. Mark Wayne Mullin.

Yes. Do you think a single other Democrat will vote to confirm Mullin?

No. No. I can't. I mean, okay, let me just think about who likes to be

unorthodox in this. Here's the thing. I mean, I could see. And this is where I did just.

Slotkin. I don't think so. I don't think so. Here's I don't know what Mark. She voted to confirm

known. But don't you think I mean 99 it was 99 zero to confirm Rubio. I think if I think part of

the problem is that now they know a lot more this this person's going to be sitting on top of a

major budget. They've got a mess to clean up. I mean, Mark Wayne Mullin. I can't say that I know

so much about him other than I know the following things. He's extremely dumb like Tuberville

dumb. Like if you watch his media stuff, he is a not intelligent human whatsoever. So there's that.

He's also he does love to go on TV. So he does love to go on the right wing media do that stuff.

But I don't know. I just tweeted a picture. I probably shouldn't have.

But you know, Mark Wayne Mullin is one of these guys who you know, the election was stolen. And

then when the January 6 people came and we're banging down his door. He's crouching. You know,

he's like crouch. Yeah, he crouches in the well of the of the congressional seeding all like,

you know, scared. And then, you know, then once you're out, he's back defending the January 6 people.

So he's, you know, like a junior, um, Nat Tom Cotton, the other guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, not that.

The Josh Hall with the fist in the air. So I don't know why Mark Wayne Mullin other than I guess

he's part of like the dude squad with Trump's kids and Miller or something. But he's not going to be

good at it. He's not like a better choice. I just was it the reason I asked about the

confirmation is because as a matter of politics, I think it'll be political suicide for any

Democrat to vote to confirm him. Yeah. And I think because what it means is that you now own

anything that happens under DHS, right? You've, you can't say, well, with known, we weren't sure what

they were going to do or whatever, right? For the seven Democrats who voted to confirm known,

which I think basically should end their political careers. Like, I don't think you get to go

any further if you voted to convert, uh, voted to confirm, Christine, um, but you really don't get

to do anything else in Democratic politics if you go to confirm this guy because of what you're

signing up to own. And so I take this vote by Federman basically as a declaration that he is not

even going to bother running again. Yeah. Yeah. This is rushing out to say 30 minutes after like,

you know, he could have waited till tonight. So tomorrow morning till somebody asked him, right? But

to say like, yeah, let me get out and tell people how hard I'm going to vote for this dude. Um,

you're saying, yeah, I'm done with this job. What if he runs as a Republican? Can I just say Pennsylvania

has a long history of this Pennsylvania is one of the few places Arnold's vector flip from R to D.

Yeah. Um, I believe during the Santorum days, uh, yeah, I believe so. And you know, we,

but Pennsylvania's always loved its kind of more. It's not even centrist is not the right word,

but like it's pro life Democrats and it's, you know, like they loved it. They loved it to mix it up.

So it wouldn't shock me if he read again as a Republican. He's a pro choice. He'd be a pro choice for

Republican. But I just don't think I think that the Republicans would not want him. I think he's

a sour, I think he is in a sour spot, uh, the likes of which they would want no part of.

I mean, Trump is not pro life and everybody knows it. Right. But like he votes on pro life,

so I mean, I don't know. Uh, I don't know what that would do. I mean, I do think, I do think

Federman, um, his wife is DSA. He's, he's not super well. He's not. He's not well. He's not well.

So that's interesting. Um, how about the war? I want to talk about the war. Yeah, why don't you talk

about the war today? Did you read? I haven't read it yet. I'm sorry. What did you, what did your

piece say? Basically that it looks to me like, uh, the idiot terrorists hiding in underground

bunkers in Iran, who run that country are smarter than the United States president and that they

have a clearer understanding of their objectives and a better alignment of their strategy to their

objectives in this war than Trump does and that this is, this is bad for America.

Okay. Let's, I guess, uh, boy, this is a, this is a real classic JVL. Um, so I don't know any of

these people. I like, I obviously don't think highly of Donald Trump's intelligence.

Um, I, but I don't know any of these people. So I'm not, don't feel like I'm in a position to

evaluate, uh, their actual intellectual capabilities. Uh, the idea that they are more clear on their

objectives than Trump is sort of interesting, but let's just tease that out, right? So if their

objectives are, uh, death to America, no, their objective is regime survival. Okay. period

at the end, regime survival. How do you do that in this moment? In this moment, you do it

by making the United States declare victory and leave while you still control the country.

Because Israel is not capable on its own of regime change in Iran. Uh, they are capable of

high value target assassinations, but they don't have the throw weight to actually,

you know, like put boots on the ground or do anything like they don't have to throw weight to

arm rebel groups or anything like that. They can't do that. You, they need the United States.

And my just looking at what's going on is that the Iranians realize that they, I mean,

their doctor on this is, is mosaic that they are a distributed network organization throughout

the government in order precisely to not have chains of command concentrated in one place.

The idea is you can kill one node, but then the other nodes are able to function independently.

And they have already succeeded in widening the war in ways that America was hopeful they would not.

And to take the simplest stupidest example, so America,

American war planners seems to have believed we can keep the Strait of Hormuz open

because we can prevent the Iranians from militarily closing it.

And the Iranians seem to have understood we don't need our military to close the Strait of Hormuz.

We need to make it dangerous enough that insurers won't ensure traffic that is going through it.

Because if you can't get insurance on your ship, then you can't send the ship through it.

And when this happened and all of a sudden maritime insurers were saying, whoa, hold on, hold on.

Cut that traffic out. We can't do this. The United States seemed totally flat-footed.

Yeah.

So that's a problem.

Is the question, so this is maybe what I'm, what I'm reacting to is sort of the framing

of your point when what it is to me is like it goes back to everything else. It's not that they're

smarter than Trump or it's that we went in without a lot of contingency plans

for what happened. And they know what to do in that region of the world to exact

an enormous amount of pain from us, right? And that's sort of just simple in general because

they know that there's a very low tolerance threshold for mass casualties of Americans

or for this to go on for a long period of time or the price of gas.

So all you need to do if you're them, this is again going back to the, they have the watches,

but we've got the time, is like, okay, like we can just shoot rockets at you guys

and do a bunch of things that make you both more ensnared in the region. And like we know Donald

Trump is eventually, and I think this, I guess this is your point, right? It's, it's not about

smartness. It's about them understanding Trump, like knowing his play, his game, better than Trump

sort of knows theirs, what they have access to. So they know that Trump

unable to endure pain over a long period of time, or at least they think that he won't, which is

why I guess headsets out there saying, we'll stay as long as we need to, and we'll do this is like

they're trying to counter the idea that Trump might just turn tail and walk out. So I, but I

agree with you that Trump isn't going to have this, either isn't going to have the stomach

for the amount of pain that will be political pain that will be inflicted on him.

If this goes on too long and if too many Americans die and if the price of oil goes up too much,

on the other hand, maybe he doesn't care. And he just keeps doing it. He cares. So, so here's my

theologist later. It's this, I'm going to save you the five minutes so you don't have to read it.

My thesis, basically, that we're playing checkers, the Trump administration playing checkers

and they're playing chess. The Trump administration's view seems to be, look at all the explosions.

We can win a war through explosions. And the Iranians seem to believe that wars are one

through logistics and political will. I would argue that that is the correct understanding of things

and that explosions do not determine who wins a war. Logistics and political will tend to.

And they understand that Trump almost uniquely among Americans, like another American president

might get suckered in to like sending boots on the ground and staying for a long time.

But Trump has never believed that there is a universe in which personal accountability applies to him.

And so he could fuck all of this up over there. He could leave the whole and just

in ways that no other American president could. He could simply say, and I won.

Look at that. Biggest win. Biggest they said it couldn't be done. A guy came up to me. Big

strong, tough guy. He said tears in his eyes. It's sir. Sir, they said we could never do it. But we did it.

A strong historic victory. And now we're going back and where America has been great like never before.

We're going to do a cage match, 250 year anniversary birthday party. Cage match on the lighthouse

long. Dana White. Very strong. Love that guy. Bald. Liars. He looks at his ears a little weird.

So I could just do that and walk from the in ways that like it doesn't even matter what has happened.

It doesn't matter if the region's a mess. It doesn't matter if all of a sudden Israel's like,

what the fuck? I thought you were riding with us, bro. Like it doesn't matter if it creates

short term or medium term danger for America. Trump can just walk in ways that no other American

president would ever be willing to do. And I think they understand that about him.

Yeah, I think when you say can walk, what you mean is Trump is the kind of person who does not

he won't, if he walked into a store that was filled with precious things. And it had a sign on it

that said, if you break it, you've bought it. Trump would knock those things over, smash them and

walk out the door and not feel the slightest bit of compunction about the damage that he'd caused.

And so I think in that regard, you're very correct. I think when again, I always, you know me,

I don't love the phrase, it doesn't matter because I do think these things matter. And,

and I think Trump, he might be able to do it. I don't think he can do it without consequences.

Not the least of which is, although I'm open to the idea that he does it in such a way that

just like makes a mess that some other president has to come clean up, which is, but it also like,

he does. Sometimes I feel like I have to remind people it's only been like 13 months.

It's like, so like, if he does it, if he did that, in the nearest term, there would still be years

of us being like, I mean, the Iranians could conceivably reconstitute whatever they were doing

during the point at which Trump is still president. So that's a problem for tomorrow Trump.

Today Trump, it's not a problem at all. And I think he is going to be sensitive to things like

gas prices, right? So gas prices, we've had two of the biggest single day jumps and gas prices

in the American history over the last week. It was two weeks ago. The Trump's entire affordability

agenda was predicated around, look at the price of gas, look at the price of gas.

Yeah. He will notice that. If energy prices go up as a, for instance, one of the things that

happen is inflation goes up. If inflation goes up, that means the Fed can't cut rates in the way

that they might want to in order to stimulate the slowing economy, which he is sitting on top of,

right? Again, you just look at all the stuff that's coming up, right? Shipments of the raw

components for fertilizers are like being totally disrupted, which means you're going to wind up

with downstream effects with food prices going up. In Qatar, there's this huge aluminum

smelting operation. It counts some significant percentage of world aluminum supplies.

They've had to shut their smelter down because they believe they aren't going to be able to cure

the supplies of liquid natural gas needed to run it, at least not at the prices they need in order

to be profitable. Shutting a smelter down, it turns out, it takes months to restart it because

these things are so complicated. Yeah. That's going to drive commodity prices up. You see like all

of these things, which again, when I say checkers versus chess seem to have occurred to no American

planners involved in this war, who could possibly have guessed that they would be like,

you see them saying like it, these things are all like somebody on substax that it's like not

understanding how the plumbing in your house works and thinking, well, I can just go over and jack

hammer this wall here and everything will be fine, right? And not even bothering to look, is there

anything in here? Does this wall have any? Is there anything in there that you know, and I,

I just, we are being led by a bunch of fucking morons. Yeah. And they have walked us into war,

and I just think, wow, man, this is great. We're being outthought by a bunch of guys who basically

are from the medieval ages, who are terrorists and like spend all their time in bunkers,

and they're the smarter ones than our leadership. Great. That's good feeling, America.

Yeah. It's funny, you know, Bill, our buddy Bill has been taking some some heat online

because he has been opposed to them this sort of half-assed way that they've got into Iran.

And he's getting, you know, the, his former friends, our former friends are all over him.

Like, how dare you, Bill, you have said always we need freedom for the Iranian people and at it.

That's great. Are we doing that? I'm not doing freedom for the Iranian people. I'm old for that.

Me too. Me too. And in fact, and this is where, so I was asking him, I was like, because you know,

Bill doesn't actually read what anybody else says. Because he's smart. Yeah, yes, he never reads the

comments. Great lesson. And so I was like, hey, what do you make of people who are kind of,

you know, dogging you because you said that Rubio shouldn't have just like walked into this war

from Rubio and Trump. And he was like, yeah, because they don't trust them. And I was like,

that's like just a perfectly legitimate reason, right? Like the idea for people who, I mean,

people like Eric Erickson, who made me crazy, are sharing like 2012 articles from Bill about how

you can't let Iran get nuclear weapons. Here's the thing. We all agree with that. We all agree

that Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons. We all think they're nuclear weapons. We are going to totally

completely abbreviated Sarah. Yeah, I know. Five months ago. I can't, it's amazing how quickly they

rebelled them. But, but this idea that you might as somebody who does not think Iran should have

nuclear weapons, as somebody who thinks that the Iranian people should be free. He didn't even,

it's one thing like they're a month ago. They were in the streets. We could have gone to support

them then. If someone could have established a no fly zone. It's just, uh, look, I, um, again,

I will hope to hold out the biggest of optimism that they're, this could turn out not, not horribly.

But it doesn't seem like we have a plan. And you shouldn't trust any of these people. Like it's

perfect. It's, no, I don't want to go to war with a president who seems to be running this whole

operation. Uh, like the CIA did a really good job of planning the initial strike of knowing

where everybody is. Like those things, American still have really good infrastructure.

The massage did a good job. Okay. Whoever he's really intelligence on this was wildly impressive.

If you listen to Hegseth, like they just have, they don't have any idea going back to the beginning.

They don't know what the objectives are. Really, they've got conflicting reports from everybody.

And all of that has created, I think, for a thinking person, for a thinking person. If you

just want to be like, well, you guys were a four regime change in Iran 10 years ago. Uh,

and we say, sure, and if any responsible president wanted to have a plan for how we would do this

had made a case to the public in their state of the union, perhaps, since it was that week,

had gotten congressional authority laid out a series of, um, you know, objectives and done it.

That is different than what is happening right now. We even told us today that the plan is

regime change. This is, I mean, this is the other like, it is not even a, the case, it is not

even the case of like, oh, I don't trust them. It's that there, we have five different versions of

what's happening. Just like with tariffs, by the way. Yeah. Pick one. Tell us, which is it

regime change? Is it not regime change? Are we arming the Kurds and sending the Kurds into

to do it? Are we not arming the Kurds? Are we as a proxy fight? Uh, are we committed to have

what form of government should succeed this? Is it we want to find a moderate element within the

current Islamic Republic? Is that the answer? Or is the answer that the whole Mullah system has to

go? Okay. How are we going to neutralize the police in the Islamic Republican guard, whatever

the fuck their name, the revolutionary guard? Um, what is the plan to deal with them? Like what?

I'm, I'm open to those things. But those don't even, you just, you don't even have to get to the

step of, well, I don't trust them to execute that plan is that nobody has identified the objectives

or the plan to get the objectives. Everything is, look at how much stuff we're exploding, bro.

Boom warfighters. Yeah. Could get me some slits. And the other side of it is people were just saying

whatever it is, I'm down. Yeah. I'm like, I don't know if that's ever where we've, anybody has

ever been like whatever it is, I'm down. I know what to say. Uh, well, a lot of people keep running

around with the number that Trump has, you know, 80 something percent approval of his own base

of Republicans or of, sorry, it's like, it's like, they actually split it up into mega Republicans.

There's some stats somebody asked about like, mega Republican specifically, they support him like

96 percent. And I'm like, okay, but what about just like all Republicans generally? Well,

then the number drops to in the 70s. But of course, independence among independence, who are the

reason that Donald Trump is president today? 70 percent of independence are against the bombing

of Iran. I, as I wrote about this on Monday, there's a wide range of outcomes that are possible.

And I don't think any one outcome is like a lot more likely than any other.

But I don't have a catastrophic view of this. I don't think there's going to be World War

3. I do not think it'll be a quagmire. I do not think that America will wind up sending

troops in. I think the most likely outcome by most likely, I mean, it's like a one in seven

chance is we drop a bunch of bombs for a few weeks, whether that number is two weeks or seven

weeks. I don't know, but it's something like that. It's less than 90 days. And at the end of it,

prices are up. And there's been a bunch of global instability. And the region is a little bit on

fire. And trade is going down. We've worsened relations with India. We've worsened relations with

the EU. And Trump says, look, we won. And he pulls out. And the Iranian regime continues,

although it is degraded and a bunch of people are dead. And the global economy is stalled out again.

And this becomes another, you know, like we get to Q3 in 2026 as we're coming up and the Q3

numbers are very weak because of all the downstream effects from this. And we're on to whatever

the next crisis is like we're on to Cuba and Evanna because by God, I am telling you right now

that Trump is going to intervene and try to topple the regime in Cuba. That is take that to the

bank. Right. Go to Kalshi or Polly Market. That is I don't have the time. Don't do that. Don't do

that. Don't you don't have to bet on Kalshi or Polly Market. It'll be basically fine. We will have

killed a bunch of people, dropped a lot of munitions, hurt the economy and not accomplished very much.

And and we'll be on to the next thing. Yeah. Well, you're the foreign policy guy. So I defer,

I defer to you. All right. Time to talk about the big reveal. All right. So everybody else if you

are listening, come join us. Come be part of the team. Let's get to something I am an expert in.

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