Bulwark Takes – “Explaining MAGA’s Crime Obsession”

Date: September 8, 2025
Hosts: Sam Stein (B), JVL (C), and Contributor/A (A), D (D, possible brief appearance)

Episode Overview

This episode of Bulwark Takes unpacks the current MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement’s fixation on crime, racial profiling, and the Trump administration’s fusion of immigration crackdowns and law-and-order messaging. Sam Stein and JVL dissect recent Supreme Court actions enabling racial profiling in immigration enforcement, comment on hypocrisy within right-wing media, and discuss how amplifying crime stories serves the administration’s political aims. Throughout, the hosts critically compare public perceptions with reality and argue that underlying many of these tactics is outright racism.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Supreme Court and Racial Profiling

[00:01–06:08]

• Decision on ICE “roving deportation units” in LA: The Supreme Court lifted a hold, effectively greenlighting more aggressive ICE actions based on racial profiling.
  • Sam Stein paraphrases Brett Kavanaugh’s view:

    “If someone is Hispanic, speaking Spanish and hanging out at a Home Depot, it makes common sense that they might be more likely to be here illegally and therefore send ICE after them.” (00:21)

  • The Court’s order lacked a detailed explanation. Kavanaugh’s concurrence downplays harm to legal residents:

    “As for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens...” (01:29)

• Real-world consequences: JVL (C) cites multiple news headlines about U.S. citizens wrongly detained, including a pregnant woman going into premature labor due to improper ICE detention (01:48–02:22).
  • Criticism of Kavanaugh’s view as disconnected from lived experiences—JVL:

    “It is simply not the case. That in practice, what Kavanaugh believes to be true is what is happening universally. And so, like, I don't even know what to—it's like he's living in an alternate universe.” (01:57)

• Burden on Hispanic Americans:
  • Sam notes the implication that Hispanic-looking citizens must always carry proof of citizenship to avoid wrongful detention—calling out the privilege and safety assumed by white male justices (02:22–03:44).

Memorable Quote

• JVL:

  “To not understand the problems associated with racial profiling is beyond me.” (03:22)

2. Contradictory Supreme Court Standards on Race

[03:44–05:09]

• Hypocrisy noted: JVL observes that while the Supreme Court bars universities from considering race in admissions, it now allows law enforcement to use race as probable cause for detention.

  • “Colleges can't use anything that they may intuit about a person's race or ethnicity to bestow admissions. But agents of the state who carry weapons and are authorized to use lethal force can detain people...” (04:17)

  • Suggests both partisanship and racism are at work on the Court.

• Trump’s wins at the Court: Stein and JVL discuss Trump’s near-total victory at the Supreme Court on issues from agency heads to immigration—most often via “shadow docket” decisions (05:09–05:58).

3. Crime as Political Pivot

[08:18–14:00]

• Administration merges anti-immigration and tough-on-crime postures—most recently in Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about Chicago and the Department of War (08:18–09:53).
  • JVL references a right-wing pundit’s flip-flopping (Derek Hunter), and how Trump’s followers saturate social media with crime stories to justify military force in cities.
• Mark Caputo’s Axios piece:
  • MAGA world “is pivoting hard into crime”—amplifying crime videos, especially those depicting people of color, while decrying supposed media indifference (09:53–10:37).

  • “Everything's just crime, crime, crime... videos upon videos.” (JVL, 09:53)

Memorable Quote

• JVL:

  “They amplify it and then they turn around and say, why aren’t you paying attention to it? … It is a pivot.” (10:18)

4. Strategic Purpose Behind “Crime Panic”

[10:37–14:00]

• Crime as justification for military deployment: JVL theorizes the Trump administration aims to use “crime” to rationalize deploying troops to Democratic-leaning cities during elections, thus suppressing turnout marginally—potentially enough to sway close races (10:37–11:11).
  • “If you Moneyball this, I bet you can find ways in which … manages to flip the House.” (11:11)
• Deflection from weak economy:
  • Crime panic provides a new crisis to outrank economic bad news—also creates scapegoats (“Democrat-enabled criminals”) for any hardship (11:11–12:13).
  • Discussion of familiar playbooks: Not just about immigrants (like prior “caravan” scares), but about crime-laden cities seen as Democrat strongholds (12:51).
• Trump’s fabricated anecdotes: Trump’s assertion that D.C. is now miraculously safe, illustrated through a friend’s restaurant outings, ridiculed as disconnected from everyday reality (13:12–13:38).

5. Perception vs. Reality — Crime Levels

[14:00–17:28]

• Rejecting the “crime is up” narrative:
  • JVL (and Stein) argue it’s misleading to talk about an epidemic of crime—crime rates, even in troubled cities, are a fraction of what they were in the 1990s.
    • “No, don't give in to that. That's absolute bullshit. Even American cities where things are relatively bad are still infinitely safer than they were in 1990.” (JVL, 15:27)
  • FBI statistics confirm continued declines from 1990 to 2023.
• Media framing:
  • Sensationalist coverage, both by partisan pundits and mainstream networks (“if it bleeds, it leads”), distorts public understanding of crime risk (17:28).
• Racial targeting in crime narratives:
  • MAGA-aligned social feeds overwhelmingly showcase Black perpetrators—or, in special cases, trans people—rarely white criminals.
    • JVL: “Look at all the crime videos they're showing. Count the number of ones where the perps are white… I'm telling you, it's zero.” (16:39–16:43)

Memorable Quotes

• JVL:

  “This is the other thing I want to say, just if you please anybody listening to this, go look at some MAGA feeds on Twitter… Look at all the crime videos they're showing. Count the number of ones where the perps are white. … it's zero.” (16:37–16:43)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 00:21 | B (Sam) | “If someone is Hispanic, speaking Spanish and hanging out at a Home Depot, it makes common sense that they might be more likely to be here illegally and therefore send ICE after them.” | | 01:57 | C (JVL) | “It is simply not the case. That in practice, what Kavanaugh believes to be true is what is happening universally. And so, like, I don't even know what to—it's like he's living in an alternate universe.” | | 03:22 | C (JVL) | “To not understand the problems associated with racial profiling is beyond me.” | | 04:17 | C (JVL) | “Colleges can't use anything that they may intuit about a person's race or ethnicity to bestow admissions. But agents of the state who carry weapons and are authorized to use lethal force can detain people...” | | 09:53 | C (JVL) | “Everything's just crime, crime, crime... videos upon videos.” | | 10:18 | B (Sam) | “They amplify it and then they turn around and say, why aren’t you paying attention to it? ... It is a pivot.” | | 15:27 | C (JVL) | “No, don't give in to that. That's absolute bullshit. Even American cities where things are relatively bad are still infinitely safer than they were in 1990.” | | 16:37–16:43 | C (JVL) | “Look at all the crime videos they're showing. Count the number of ones where the perps are white… I'm telling you, it's zero.” |

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:01–06:08] Supreme Court, ICE, and Racial Profiling
• [08:18–10:37] MAGA Crime Panic and Social Media Amplification
• [10:37–14:00] Political Motives: Election Suppression and Economic Diversion
• [14:00–17:28] Perception, Reality, and Racism in Crime Narratives

Tone and Language

The conversation is unapologetically direct, critical, and occasionally profane, especially in its frustration with both the administration and the Supreme Court’s decisions. Both Sam Stein and JVL dismiss right-wing rationalizations and address the racialized underpinnings of the current scare tactics in plain, forceful language.

JVL: “Give me a fucking break. … It's all just racism, Sam. Like, I, I honestly.…” (15:53–16:00)

Summary

This episode delivers a pointed, fact-based, and reality-checking breakdown of how the MAGA movement’s latest crime obsession is less about public safety and more about political strategy, racial scapegoating, and diverting attention from the administration’s shortcomings. By reviewing Supreme Court decisions, media coverage, and the deliberate stoking of fear, the hosts argue the crime panic is both cynical and effective—and urge listeners not to fall for it.