Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
Stop looking for a John Kelly or Jim Mattis in this White House. Rubio is constantly in the West Wing, in and out of the press secretary's office, and by Haberman's eyewitness account, loving every minute of it. He's dual-hatted as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor specifically because he wants to be near Trump — not to restrain him.
Where this was said
At 18:20 · chapter starts 14:30
Tim Miller zeroes in on what he considers one of the most underreported revelations in the book: Rubio sitting with Bukele in his palace and personally hashing out the CECOT arrangement. The original pitch was a 'safe third' style agreement, but Bukele offered up CECOT as a destination for deportees — supposedly the most dangerous gang members, each rigorously vetted. The vetting, as events proved, was fiction: innocent people were sent, including Venezuelans with explicit no-deportation orders to El Salvador. One such case became a weeks-long political controversy for the administration. Haberman argues the Rubio-Bukele scene is emblematic of what this administration actually looks like — and that the desire to cast Rubio as a grown-up or a John Kelly figure is simply not supported by anything in the reporting.
Rubio personally negotiated with El Salvador's Bukele in his palace to create the CECOT deportation arrangement, which ultimately sent innocent people to the foreign prison.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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