YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Kristol

lines on the record: 110
first: 2019-10-28
most recent: 2019-10-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That was very revealing, I thought. So McConnell apparently at the lunch with the Republican senators, they have lunch every Tuesday, laid out a timetable which sort of presumed a Thanksgiving impeachment and then has the Republican Senate rushing through a trial and trying to acquit, I think, by Christmas. But McConnell's a candy guy, and he would talk to Pelosi or indirectly, their staffs would confer. And I don't think McConnell just pulled this out of his ear, you know, that, oh, well, maybe it'll begin after Thanksgiving. I assume that they just for sort of purposes of letting Congress do its job have conferred some. And so I think that's probably the reasonable schedule to expect.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, legally had to work. And he just stopped it. And the only reason he could have stopped it really was because he wanted the dirt manufactured or provided on the Bidens. So the degree to which, so they seemed to be investigating that. I think that'll, the private sessions will go maybe for another week or so through August. I think we'll get to public hearings very quickly. And I think we're on a pretty fast track. I wouldn't be surprised if he's on the beach by Thanksgiving.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the house is looking at these close hearings, and I think I can't tell, but I think it seems to be doing a pretty good job of getting the facts about what happened with Ukraine, which seems to be not just an attempt to get information about an American citizen from a foreign government for the president's personal political purposes, bad enough, a quid pro quo, which was holding up the aid, which he did. I mean, that's one of the things that I think has been underreported is that side of it. The U.S. government works in its way. Congress appropriated the money. The Defense Department said, okay, of course, they don't have a choice. They said, yes, Congress, we will make available this military aid. They had huge lists of things that they worked out with the Ukrainians that would be useful. That was circulated within the government. And Trump just stopped it. So it's not the case that, oh, there was an interagency dispute. And Trump just happened to have a view different from some of his cabinet officers. The system was working as it should have worked.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is remarkable. I think you're right to focus on that. I mean, that's the kind of thing he said two years ago in meetings where they couldn't really stop him from talking. Now he dictates the letter. There's no process whereby the National Security Advisor says, Mr. President, we need to take a look at this where the Secretary of State, who presumably saw a draft doesn't get to say gets to say, and I think doesn't have the nerve to say anything, that is just actually dangerous. And we're seeing the actual dangers in Syria. It's no longer, it's embarrassing. He's not a good president. It's not a good role model. He's distorting the way government works. People are getting killed because of his rash and foolish actions.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree with you. I think it's true. One of the things that my son was asking me this morning about the letter that I read the Turkish letter to my kids is what I do in the morning. And they were like, how did that get written in? I said, because there's stupid people around him now. There's people who don't stop, who don't say, no, no, we're not going to put this out. Maybe indulge it for a second and then don't let it get out. But now it doesn't matter. He's just dictating it and they're typing it down.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trump has a little bit of he's the same person he always was, so what's new? Well, what's new is that Mattis isn't there and Sessions isn't there and McGann isn't there and those people were not perfect by any means but they were different from the people who were there now and I would say also if you look at the Ukraine story what strikes me is Trump has sort of learned how to use the instrumentalities of government to pursue his personal political and presumably financial interests whereas in the past it was a little the government was kind of mysterious to him and often stopped him from doing some of these things and that's what's really worrisome you've got Pompeo and Bar in charge of the State Department and the Justice Department who are intelligent people apparently willing to use those departments to pursue Trump's personal interests that is Nixon honestly I mean that is what Nixon was impeached for for using the FBI and the CIA to pursue inappropriate illegitimate illegal enterprises and I think we're in a very serious moment now”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been an extraordinary three years, but I do think something changed about a year ago, and I think the easiest way to think of it is this. In the first couple of years, I mean, I've always been anti-Trump and thought he was unfit to be president and was a bad president and so forth, but he would say things that were disagreeable and really more than disagreeable, kind of repulsive. He would try to do things that were illegal and inappropriate, to say the least. But often he would get stopped. Don Began didn't fire Mueller, and Mattis refused to do various things through the Defense Department or persuaded him not to do things. Tilliston refused to do things that he thought were illegal sessions. You can just go down the list. And their work, both institutional constraints and sort of human barriers to his action. What's most striking to me about the last six, nine months, and has really come out in the Ukraine story and in the Turkey-Syria story is the barriers agone. And I think people should be much more worried today than they were even a year ago. I mean, those of us who have been anti-”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's talk about what's going on right now. So, right in the middle, every day it's like something, it is a reality show in a lot of ways. But there was the meltdown at the White House with Nancy Pelosi. Every day you could comment on something. Talk a little bit about the landscape of Washington right now.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is a good lesson. I mean, not that people need to be taught once again at the end of the 20th century, but technology is a double edged sword, right?”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks, Kara. Can we talk about technology? Yes, I'd love to. Progress, how people are going to make medical advances. Yeah, we will do that. But, you know, Trump is very technical. Trump is opposed to Trump.”
2019-10-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Bill Kristol · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT