Conversations with Bill Kristol

"For the first time ever, the United States homeland cannot be taken for granted as a secure rear area against non-nuclear attacks." So argues Steve Rosen, professor emeritus of government at Harvard, in a bracing Conversation on the radically new security environment created by AI, precision strike weapons including drones, and cyber capabilities. Because these technologies give a distinct advantage to the offense, Rosen contends the US must "think about ways of similarly putting adversary assets at risk." He also explains what twentieth-century history can teach us about mobilizing the nation's resources in government, industry, and the wider community of experts, to counter critical threats to America and the free world.

We are less than seven weeks away from Election Day, and early voting already has begun in some states. To discuss where things stand and where American politics might go after the midterms, we are joined again by David Axelrod, chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Axelrod shares his perspective on how the election might play out when Trump “is in a deep hole and keeps on digging.” He explains how the fundamentals point toward a historically bad year for Republicans—with a war and tariffs, unmistakably the president's own doing, felt acutely by voters through rising energy costs. Kristol and Axelrod also discuss how the Democratic Party is dealing with the rise of economic populism, and where both parties might go in terms of ideology and character of candidates as we look toward the presidential race in 2028.

How has the second Trump presidency differed from the first? How did Trump’s experiences during his time out of office and on the campaign trail in 2024—including his trial in New York and the assassination attempts—shape him? What can we expect in the months and years ahead? In this Conversation, Jonathan Karl, a leading chronicler of Donald Trump and author of Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign that Shaped America, argues for the centrality of retribution in understanding Donald Trump’s second presidency. Drawing on his extraordinary access to the president over many years, Karl reflects on how we got here and considers where we might be going.

“It’s hard for me to imagine a voter that votes in 2026 that doesn’t have Trump on their mind.” According to veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, Trump "keeps jacking the stakes up, every day” and remains the focal point of American politics as we head towards the midterms next year. As he puts it, the Republican Party has become a “personality cult” while the Democratic Party is "a coalition in search of itself." As he explains: “I don’t think Democrats can know who they are until Democratic primary voters weigh in and decide. It’s not up to me to say what the Democratic Party should be. It’s for eight people to run for president and then have Democratic primary voters pick one, and then that’s what the party becomes.” In a wide-ranging Conversation, Carville shares his distinctive perspective and characteristically shrewd insights on where our politics might be headed as we look toward the midterms and 2028.

Much has happened since we were last joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum in February, including the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska and the Zelensky visit to the White House that provoked an alarmed and last-minute rush to join by European heads of state. In this Conversation, Applebaum shares her perspective on the situation on the ground in Ukraine and the response in European capitals to reduced US support for Ukraine on the battlefield. Drawing on her recent book Autocracy, Inc, out this week in paperback, Applebaum considers the growing authoritarian threat and dangers to liberal democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. As she states, “the farther you go down the road [to authoritarianism], the harder it becomes to turn back.”