Loading summary
Transcript39 lines
- [00:00]
Host
Hey everybody.
- [00:01]
Maya
Lady luck here and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long I'm going to be celebrating by playing on spinquest.com which is an American owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.
- [00:25]
Tim Miller
Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [00:30]
Sponsor Voice
Ondeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews, Ondeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes@ondeck.com depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank. Ondeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
- [00:58]
Tim Miller
Hey everybody, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I just got off deadline White House with my friend Nicole Wallace. We discussed at length the world laughing at Donald Trump both over his World cup face plant and his bizarre performance in NATO comics are laughing at him. The Belgian soccer team is making fun of his dance. People are just pointing and mocking our embarrassment of a president the world over. I'm trying to coin just shut up in President. I don't know if that's actually going to hit or not, but we talk about that a little bit. So we get into that. We also get back into this interview I had. It was on the 3rd of July, 4th of July, observed with Clint Smith. And so I do think some of you missed it, so I'd encourage you to go back and check it out. He's awesome. He's a poet historian and we covered his interview with Lonnie Bunch who runs the Smithsonian and Trump's attacks on our history and on the Smithsonian. We also get into just kind of what it means to be an American and how to think about a country that you love that is also really letting us down. Clint's awesome on that, so go back and check that out. So before we get to Nicole hit many laughs there, I do just want to talk about the breaking news out of Iran. You'll be surprised to hear that Treaty of Versailles 2 Electric Boogaloo is not going so well. We have talked today on the pods about how Iran fired two missiles at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, including one apparently at a cuttery tanker. Iran's denying that they shot a missile at the cutter tanker, but. But it doesn't seem like denying that they were going after these ships that were taking the Omani route through the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, the US revoked the license that authorized the sale of Iranian oil under the MoU. So no more free Ayatollah oil for the Americans, at least for the time being. And then we engaged in another round of powerful quote, quote, unquote. Everything's gotta be strong with the Department of War. Even though we've lost the only war we started. Powerful airstrikes in response to the Iranian attacks on the Strait. We have, according to abc, a US official saying that the strikes are expected to be more intense than last month's. Well, you'd hope so since last month's didn't work out. Or you'd hope not, or you'd hope you just stopped doing it. Spending our money on these fucking missiles for no purpose. It's truly amazing how just cocky. I mean stupid. This war is like we're spending my tax money. I mean I get, I pay my tax money for blab and do you guys. So maybe that's not the most sympathetic for taking your tax money. Y' all grinding away out there tiring yourself, trying to make sure your family's got enough money for vacation this year we're taking a cut out of that and using it for missile and drone strikes into Iran. For what? For what? To try to get the Strait of Hormuz back to the pre war status quo. Just cut and run. You've got nothing. More airstrikes. That's the plan. It is an embarrassment that like we're still embroiled in this and that you had this dramatic signing at Versailles. What'd that get you? That didn't. That barely lasted a day. So we'll see how these things go. I mean the, the war, the thing, the only thing keeping this war, this from escalating more is that the Iranians don't really want full scale war. They just want money and control over the Strait. And Trump doesn't. So he does these little, you know, attacks from the sky. He doesn't. He'd rather just get out of us. So this feels like the best of the bad options. Mark Herling and I talked about this. He's getting presented with various options and you know, kind of this half in, half out, nothing is where he's landed for now. It is a bit of a rebuke. You do have to say to the vice president, J.D. vance, who's the point person on Treaty of Versailles to Electric Boogaloo. And it was going around doing a massive media tour, talking about how cool it was he made friends with the Iranians.
- [05:18]
Sponsor Voice 2
The coolest thing about the progress we've made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system, senior leadership, even IRGC officials, say, you know what, we may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we've done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let's try something else. We're going to verify that, of course, but we're certainly, certainly willing to try something else if they comply.
- [05:42]
Tim Miller
This, like, you guys don't understand how cool it is when you actually talk to these people. Like, they're fine. They're chill, chill vibes from the Iranians. So that's what Vance was saying. You know Vance, he's in this condescending matter. He's like, all these stupid leaders of the past got us stuck in these stupid wars. Not us. We did this smart thing where we started a war that doesn't have a point. And then we declared victory and then we decided to end it. And then I went around and was like, hey, I'm the smart one. I can end this easily. All these stupid leaders couldn't get us out of wars, but I can get us out of wars. Because what's really cool is that the Iranians are actually great.
- [06:22]
Maya
Really.
- [06:22]
Tim Miller
Well, here we are still bombing each other. I guess that cool friends we made along the way. Results from the negotiations didn't turn out quite like JD Vance had thought it would. Who could have seen that coming? Everybody, actually. All right, we got some giggles with Nicole coming up, so stick around for that. Subscribe to this feed right here on the Bulwark on YouTube on substack. We appreciate you guys very much.
- [06:51]
Host
This message is brought to you by Lorenco. So I've been learning a lot about the importance of dental health. Ton of what you eat and drink, like coffee and tea and acidic food, it can really do some long term damage to your teeth. Trust me. I have an uncle who was a dentist. Teeth are important. I've been leveling up my chewing gum routine with Lorinco. Lorenco is better for you. Chewing gum that uses the same mineral your teeth are made of to support daily enamel health. Lorinco uses nanohydroxy, the appetite. The mineral that your enamel is actually made of to strengthen your enamel and repair damage. It comes in tons of flavors like mint, cinnamon, bubblegum and berry. My favorite. Now they have really great fluoride free toothpaste too. Haven't tried that yet, but I'm on it. Lorenco sent me over my new favorite flavor. Well, this is not my favorite flavor. I want the berry, but this is pretty good too. And after I finish my morning coffee, I pop in a piece of Lorenco and it feels good to know that I'm helping my teeth stay strong and healthy every time that I use it. It's a totally effortless way to make sure that you're taking the best care of your teeth as possible. Right now, Lorinco is offering our listeners up to 50 off. Yes, 50 off@bylorine.com bulwarktakes 50 off to get your teeth in great shape. What a deal. That's buy Laureen L A r I n e.com bulwarktakes for 50% off.
- [08:16]
Maya
The idea that we are considering blowing up our relationship with allies that have kept not just us safe, but have kept peace since World War II is, is one of these insane things that makes me feel like we're watching the Republican zombies, right? Sort of just watching him march the country off the cliff. And other than I think one senator, one of the people that got primaried or someone retiring got mad when he took troops out of Europe. But that's like a standing threat that he makes and it barely gets any coverage. But I think he threatened to do that again today.
- [08:48]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he did threaten to do it again today, particularly on the grounds of Greenland. And his arguments around Greenland start to not make sense. I think you did everybody a favor by cutting up that very long ramble that he's doing today. But there's some nonsensical stuff in the middle there as he was trying to explain why we need Greenland because of the Chinese ships, et cetera, when Greenland has said we can do militarily what we want, what we need to do as far as putting military resources there. To your point about him not being able to actually build things, there is something that he was pretty good at, we should just say, which is just putting his name on other people's stuff. And to me, I think that is the summary of what is happening in Greenland. Donald Trump wants to put his name on new things. He's got this new airport in Palm beach he's happy about. He wants to put his name on a new country. He wants that to be in the history books. That's it like doing things is hard, like putting your name on other people's things is easy. He's made a career for it out of it. Kudos to him. But, and I think that's part of what's happening. And then the other thing, I guess I would just throw out here why to your question to Rick about why he hasn't got out of NATO. I think a lot of it is the fact that Marc Ruda, the head of NATO has been sucking up to him. I mean, Trump is a child and like that's where we're at. Why was he in Ankara? Ankara today? Did he say? Well, because Erdogan's been so nice to him and there have been some reporting, you know, that we haven't really found out the truth actually from the first term about some suspicious financial transfers from Turkey to Trump. And maybe that will come out. But also we know that Erdogan sucks up to him. Mark Rude has been the head of NATO really sucks up to him and called him daddy. And I think that it's like that kind of like he's a child, that kind of base suck uppery is why we're in NATO. And the fact that a lot of the other European countries won't do that to him is why he's mad at them. I mean, I think it's as simple as that.
- [10:39]
Maya
Well, Tim, speaking of being mad, I mean, do we think he's seen people laughing at him? I mean, if he's gonna be mad at anyone, he's gonna be mad at the mockery. I wanna, I think I have some more of the sort of celebrations in the locker room and you know, sports, we've had a lot of sports content to chew on just as fans of the Knicks. But I can't imagine there's anything more psychologically motivating than to try to defeat a team where the American President has involved himself in a way that I don't think FIFA has overturned a call like that since the 1950s. Here's the team that won. What do you think about the Trump curse?
- [11:23]
Tim Miller
Yeah, small country Belgium there kind of dunking on Trump. This is fun. It's funny when you take back the clock on this as Trump kind of came into our lives in 2015, a big complaint on the right was like this idea that, you know, sports leagues has gone too liberal or whatever, gone too woke and people should, you know, politics should stay out of it. Like this was the big critique over on Fox for a long time. And you probably remember Laura Ingraham, you know, talking about how LeBron James should shut up and dribble. And I don't know, in some ways, I feel like that Belgium dance is the Belgians telling Trump to, like, shut up in president. You know, like, shut up and do your job. Because it's like, he keeps getting involved in this stuff. Like, he got himself involved in it. The only game the Knicks lost was the one he showed up to, like, Belgium just, like, absolutely shames us. Last night in soccer, after Trump gets involved in it, like, he wants to be involved in everything. He has to try to get himself involved in our lives and in every corner of society. And a lot of what he's touching is doing the opposite. It's the opposite of the Midas touch.
- [12:30]
Maya
I guess this has been on my brain since, I think, before the State of the Union, where it's clear to me that the quality of. And it came from some of the folks who went and saw him that day. And he wanted to show everyone the renovations of his bathroom. Like, the obsession, like, true. I mean, I'm not really good at these things, but even when I have been involved in minor home renovations, they have not been something that I've talked to friends about. He is the President of the United States of America and cannot stop talking about paint colors for plastic linings, repairs to his bathroom. Wants to show journalists the bathroom he renovated. There were pictures out there. I mean, this was the day of his State of the Union address. I mean, what do you make of the absence of any attachment to crisis, not just for the country, not just for the world, not just for NATO, but to his own political coalition?
- [13:26]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And I think there are a couple of things at play here. Some of this is what Ashley just laid out. He's, like, not getting a lot of the same information. You know, he has this human printer who, according to the Haberman and Swan book, is also leaving him some Nash notes around the White House. So there's that kind of weirdness going, I think, we discussed on last week's show. I just. I fundamentally think he doesn't care that much about the midterms. He doesn't.
- [13:48]
Dominic
He.
- [13:48]
Tim Miller
I think he. I think if you just gave him truth serum and is like, what do you care about more that the ballroom turns out great and that people talk about how great the ballroom is or that the Republicans hold the House? I think he would say the ballroom in a second. So I think that is part of it. And again, I just don't. He's always been kind of a power of positive Thinking guy. But when you're not getting bad information, I think this is what happens. You start to delude yourself. I mean, every president gets in a bubble. Rick had talked about this historically, but I think he's in about the thickest bubble we've seen in a while. And one anecdote that sticks with me is I had somebody tell me that they brought, you know, they were working for a principal. They brought them to meet the president for. For, you know, for business. And he, like, went around and introduced this person to, like, Marco Rubio and was like, hey, Marco, how are things going in the world? Great, right? Marco said, great. And then he goes to Scott Bessant and says, hey, Scott, how are things going in the economy? Great. Right. And Scott's like, great. And you think this was a real thing that happened, like, the president is just taking strangers around the White House, like, getting praise, like, asking people to praise him. And so I do think he is in just sort of this bubble, this kind of narcissism bubble that is preventing him from reckoning with some of these crises.
- [15:06]
Maya
Yeah, I mean, I think. We think, because they're so unbelievable, that these cabinet meetings that he sleeps through are the performance, and that what happens behind closed doors is Rubio's like, hey, we need to get in there. You know, the Iran peace deal is falling apart. Or Besant is like, hey, we need to do something. The tariffs are really jacking up the prices of a cart full of stuff from Walmart. No, like, the cabinet meeting is real life, and the fact that we get to see it is just a window into it.
- [15:34]
Dominic
I think she's a nice person, actually. We've had a good week. We had a bad relationship, but it became a little bad because she refused to help us again. I didn't put a heavy press on her, but she refused to get involved with the hormone strain. Or you could also say just a rat. She refused to get involved, so it soured my relationship with her a little bit. But I like her.
- [16:01]
Maya
I like her. I just trolling her on social media. And we know that his words, you know, have a lot of pickup and a lot of people watch them. He. He called for again a, quote, restraining order being needed about her, and then says, I mean, this is hard to even read back to you, but I will. She refused to get involved with the Hormuz straight. Or you could just say Iran. She refused to get involved, so it soured my relationship with her. But I like her. Just this toxic mix of mayhem and bad behavior.
- [16:37]
Tim Miller
Yeah, look, I think there are a couple things at play here. First, just on the straight of Hormuz and on the Iran situation, this was another case of just Trump's brazen as a megalomania. He didn't consult the allies. Right. We've been through this a bunch, and there's a playbook for how you do this. And presidents in the past have gotten countries on board, even for international missions or wars that they weren't fully on board with because they did the diplomacy on the front end. And Trump doesn't do that. And so he starts this war. He can't explain it. It has no real purpose. There's no plan. We're still not really out of it. We're worse off than we were when it started. And he's like, now I'm mad that Italy won't go along with it. Well, it's like, well, that's your fault. And so then his treatment of Meloni after that is, I think, a combination of one. He doesn't really like it when women stand up to him and say no to him. That's true in his personal life. It's also true in his professional life. And so what does he do? He trolls them on social media. He's also kind of personally a coward, so he's not as willing to do that at a press conference or in person with her, which is why he kind of does the, oh, I like her still at the end. And then he becomes a keyboard warrior and gets on Truth Social and talks about how she's really obsessed with him. Again, it's all. It's childish, it's a hint of misogyny, and it's just. And it's unserious. And I think that there was this big. One of the other big ideas of the Trump term was that we had all these pencil heads that were doing diplomacy in the past, and they all did stupid deals and they all did dumb deals. And what we should really do is just kind of deal like, we're a car salesman on the lot and just shoot by the hip and have no. And that's not working. You can see why anyone who would
- [18:25]
Nicole Wallace
accept the results of a free and fair election is a sociopath, a madman. A man like that could even foment an insurrection. Rather than just admit that he lost, he could use the presidency to enrich himself and his family.
- [18:44]
Dominic
No.
- [18:44]
Tim Miller
No.
- [18:45]
Nicole Wallace
He could send troops into American cities to terrorize and even kill American citizens, all to distract from the fact that he's friends with a pedophile who can Attack universities, even the free press, silencing anyone who dares to criticize him.
- [19:04]
Tim Miller
Ah, come on.
- [19:06]
Dominic
That could never happen.
- [19:07]
Nicole Wallace
That's what you think.
- [19:08]
Dominic
Are you suggesting that the president would
- [19:11]
Tim Miller
taketh the time to challenge anyone who dare make fun of him as if he were a big baby?
- [19:18]
Nicole Wallace
A big baby?
- [19:20]
Tim Miller
I don't see it.
- [19:24]
Maya
We're back with Maya, Dominic, and Tim. So, Tim, you know, because you've been on the. All of you have been on this journey with me, this is sort of the response that I've been waiting for for 18 months. And they were all there. I mean, Rob Reiner and Jimmy Kimmel and Larry David. What did you think?
- [19:43]
Tim Miller
Typically saw it all from Larry David there. I'm trying to figure out who he's talking about. But no, it's good. You have to laugh at him. Pointing and laughing is important, you know, and I think that it is a much more effective way of getting at Trump than kind of getting on the high horse. Sometimes it calls for getting on the high horse. So I hadn't watched that little HBO show. I'd seen it on my scroll, and so now I'm more intrigued to go click on it. So that was a good promo.
- [20:10]
Maya
Oh, it's funny.
- [20:10]
Tim Miller
If you don't mind, I just want to say one thing about Lonnie. Yeah, I want to say one thing about Lonnie Bunch, who mentioned the last segment, who's the secretary of the Smithsonian. I had Clint Smith, who's at the ATL and wrote this amazing book about American history through the eyes of what happened to slavery called how the Word Has Passed. I had him on for the Fourth of July podcast over the weekend, and he had interviewed Lonnie Bunch, and it's like, this is such an amazing person. And the just amount. He was the first person to run the African American Museum, and then just the amount of commitment to trying to protect our history in the face of Trump. And this is somebody that could have retired but decided he wanted to stay. And Clint's interview with him is just wild. You know, it's like, how is this real life? He had this lunch with Trump where, you know, Trump's talking to him about whether to move Dulles and to name Dulles after himself and. And why the end. And Bunch took him to the museum and showed him an exhibit about Dutch slavery. And Trump's response to that is, the Dutch loved me. You know, I like the whole thing is preposterous. But, like, it's important that we have people like that who are suffering Trump's incompetence and have the dignity to do it. And who care about all that, who are out there doing it. And so I think that what Larry David's doing is probably reaching more people. But what Lonnie is doing is really important.
- [21:37]
Sponsor Voice 2
Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for
- [21:57]
Tim Miller
10@Spinquest.com Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.