‘DHS, It Should All Be Defunded’: Old-school Neocon Makes Stunning Declaration
Bill Kristol takes on the entire federal security and law enforcement apparatus
In one of the most surprising statements, and apparent political evolutions, of the Trump era — if not modern political history — one of the original and most influential figures in the neoconservative movement of the Republican party has publicly called for the defunding not only of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but the entire federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Bill Kristol made the declaration this week on one of the podcasts of the online publication, The Bulwark, where he is editor-at-large.
That Kristol made the statement at all — and in the seemingly casual fashion he did — is a true bombshell.
Kristol has opposed Donald Trump and Trump’s ascendancy in the Republican party since the beginning, but this latest statement takes his opposition to long-held, established right-wing orthodoxy to new levels.
Although Kristol today is a solid and outspoken critic of Trump and Trumpism, it once would have been impossible to think that he would so sharply break with right-wing dogma.
His father was Irving Kristol, who was known as the “godfather of neoconservativism,” and the younger Kristol himself had a long, prominent and influential career in neoconservative Republican politics.
Bill Kristol worked his way up through politics, to become chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the first Bush administration, where he was dubbed “Dan Quayle’s brain.”
Kristol went on to found the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, before it eventually folded and joined The Bulwark.
A decade ago, he was a familiar pundit on national television news programs in he criticized the Democratic Obama administration for not pursuing harsher immigration policies.
Which made this week’s remarks against Trump’s own brutal treatment of migrants more startling.
Kristol was on a podcast with fellow Bulwark personality Tim Miller, when the topic came up of an Iranian woman who had been living in the United States for nearly half a century when ICE agents snatched her as she was tending her garden outside her home in New Orleans, La.
Apparently such tactics affect even neoconservative hearts, as Kristol condemned the woman’s detention as part of the brutal theatrics that allow Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi to “strut around.”
“I mean, the DHS, it should all be defunded. It should all be — “ Kristol said, before co-host Tim Miller corrected with the name of the head of DHS, Kristi Noem.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, Kristi Noem. They’re bad — Pam Bondi is bad, too, just a different department,” Kristol explained.
“And they’re both threats, I think,” Miller said.
“Yeah. DHS, really, I’ve sort of come around to defunding ICE about a month or two ago, but now I’m just on the defund DHS,” Kristol said, sounding very much like a progressive Democrat, if you didn’t know any better. “I think — wouldn’t this country ultimately be safer if there were no DHS?
“Maybe there should be TSA,” Kristol suggested, referring to the agency now within DHS but was established to provide tighter airport security following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
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