‘Defund DHS’: Famed National Security Hawk Bill Kristol Has Had It With Trump Cabinet Department

The Bulwark Podcast

Famed national security hawk Bill Kristol called for the defunding of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in 2002 in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Kristol, a conservative and foreign policy hawk who has long opposed President Donald Trump, has espoused an increasing number of progressive positions regarding Trump’s domestic agenda. That includes immigration raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Users on social media have shared scores of videos showing masked ICE agents or alleged ICE agents rounding up both undocumented and documented immigrants and throwing them into vehicles to be jailed and deported.

In April, Kristol expressed sympathy for those on the left calling for the abolition of ICE.

Responding to the arrest of an international student at Tufts University in Massachusetts over a pro-Palestine op-ed she wrote in the student newspaper, Kristol asked, “Where does the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement go to get its apology?”

On Monday’s episode of The Bulwark Podcast, he took matters a step further and said that not only should ICE be defunded, but also the entire Department of Homeland Security.

“Police were arresting a woman who’s minding her own business and has lived here for almost 50 years,” he said, referring to an Iranian woman named Madonna Kashanian, who was abducted by ICE in New Orleans. She arrived in the U.S. on a student visa in 1978 and applied for asylum, which was denied. However, she was allowed to stay in the country so long as she complied with immigration requirements, which her family said she met. Kashanian has no criminal record.

“DHS, it should all be defunded,” Kristol said. “I’ve sorta come around to defunding ICE about a month or two ago. But now I’m just on the defund DHS thing.”