The Bulwark Podcast

Snapshot · The Bulwark Podcast

Bill Kristol: Trump Wants All-out Kleptocracy

Explore episode Jul 6, 2026

Where this was said

Trump's Stock Trading Scandal and the Dell Pump

At 4:25 · chapter starts 4:05

Tim Miller walks through the layered corruption story dominating the week's news. Trump's investment accounts made 300 previously undisclosed stock purchases the day before he announced a pause on Liberation Day tariffs — trades he was required to disclose within 45 days but didn't. That same morning, Trump used the Oval Office to urge Americans to buy Dell stock, noting that Michael Dell had contributed to the newly announced Trump accounts and would be 'repaid.' Dell's stock surged immediately. Kristol responds by recounting his two-word tweet — 'impeach and convict' — explaining that while other Trump abuses are more constitutionally complex, the financial self-dealing is the most straightforward, least ambiguous case for impeachment. The founders, he notes, explicitly understood that financial corruption was central to how republics collapse into despotism.

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