Hannity Bombs Interview with Co-Presidents Trump and Elon

Summary

Bulwark Takes: Detailed Summary of "Hannity Bombs Interview with Co-Presidents Trump and Elon"

Release Date: February 19, 2025

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, hosts Tim Miller and Sam Stein dissect and critique Sean Hannity’s recent interview featuring co-presidents Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The discussion centers around the interview's content, dynamics, and overall effectiveness, highlighting missed opportunities and the interplay between the prominent figures involved.

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1. Introduction to the Interview

Tim Miller opens the conversation by introducing the subject matter:

Tim Miller [00:00]: "Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with my buddy managing editor Sam Stein. And there's an interview tonight. Sean Hannity did an interview with the president, Donald Trump, the co president, Elon Musk."

He admits to not having watched the interview firsthand due to preparing for an upcoming podcast:

Tim Miller [00:00]: "I didn't actually watch it. I was prepping for tomorrow's pod."

Sam Stein characterizes the interview sharply:

Sam Stein [00:23]: "Talk about what's going on in Argentina."

Tim Miller [00:25]: "Yeah, we're going to do Malay. We're going to do the ICOs."

This exchange sets the stage for their deeper analysis, as they plan to react to what they missed in real-time.

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2. Nature and Quality of the Interview

The duo quickly assess the quality of Hannity's interview:

Sam Stein [00:46]: "It's very generous to call this an interview."

Sam Stein [00:49]: "It was a tongue bath. It was a classic Hannity tongue bath."

Tim Miller [00:56]: "Handy, handy, handy."

Sam elaborates on the lack of substantial content, praising Hannity’s ability to maintain control without delivering meaningful dialogue:

Sam Stein [01:04]: "Sean Hannity... he possesses that. He's the ultimate at softball news because he loves these guys and he wants to be part of their administration... sort of informally part of the administration."

The hosts agree that the interview lacked depth, turning it into a mere platform for praise rather than investigative journalism.

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3. Missed Topics and Lack of Substance

Tim Miller speculates on critical issues that Hannity failed to address during the interview:

Tim Miller [01:07]: "Did they cover the firing of the disabled army veteran who was working at the VA hospital? Did that get covered? No."

Tim Miller [01:22]: "What about the firing of the nuclear safety staff... of the food safety people... No, no covered. No."

Sam confirms the absence of these significant topics:

Sam Stein [01:07]: "I didn't invade... N/A."

This segment underscores the perceived superficial nature of the interview, where pressing issues were conspicuously ignored.

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4. Dynamics Between Trump, Musk, and Hannity

The hosts delve into the interpersonal dynamics showcased during the interview:

Sam Stein [02:30]: "Sean Hannity... how absolutely no news from your interview with them."

Sam Stein [03:06]: "Elon Musk: I would think liberals would love the fact that you have the biggest electric vehicle company in the world."

Donald Trump [03:12]: "Yeah, I mean, I used to be adored by the left, you know, not anymore. Less so these days."

Sam Stein [04:05]: "Weird dynamic where, like, who seems like they're in charge?"

They discuss how Trump and Musk navigated Hannity’s questioning, revealing underlying tensions. Elon Musk exhibits more energy and authority, occasionally overshadowing Trump, which Sam finds unusual in Trump’s typical demeanor.

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5. Discussion on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

A substantive yet brief discussion arises around social welfare programs:

Tim Miller [05:50]: "So did they cover anything of substance? It looked like there was some discussion of, of Social Security. Right."

Sam Stein [06:00]: "Trump was there... hooking Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid."

Trump adamantly denies any intention to cut these programs:

Donald Trump [06:55]: "No, of course, no, we're not going to touch Social Security, Medicare. And then he added Medicaid, which they are."

Sam critiques the misleading nature of Trump's assurances:

Sam Stein [07:08]: "They are going to touch it. I mean, that is House. That is the House Republican blueprint."

Tim highlights the complexity and political challenges associated with Medicaid:

Tim Miller [07:35]: "You've even seen Steve Bannon out there saying Medicaid..."

They acknowledge the political landscape where Medicaid cuts are unlikely despite official statements, emphasizing the disconnect between rhetoric and policy.

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6. Ontario Government Advertisement and Its Implications

During a commercial break, an Ontario government ad airs, leading Sam to speculate on its significance:

Sam Stein [08:06]: "The government of Ontario had put up an ad about how great Ontario is... why are they running it?"

They theorize that the ad aims to influence Trump’s perception of Ontario, potentially swaying his policies:

Sam Stein [08:06]: "Ontario seems pretty nice in that ad. That's where we're at."

This observation reflects on the broader geopolitical implications and media strategies intertwined with the interview.

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7. Elon Musk’s Understanding of American Democracy

A critical analysis emerges regarding Elon Musk’s grasp of the U.S. political system:

Tim Miller [10:04]: "It doesn't seem like Elon really understands how the American constitutional democracy works."

Sam Stein [10:16]: "I thought about that, too. He doesn't really quite get it."

They argue that Musk perceives the political landscape as a direct democracy, lacking awareness of the system’s inherent checks and balances:

Tim Miller [10:13]: "He doesn't quite get it. This is not a direct democracy situation where you vote for one single man..."

This segment underscores a fundamental misunderstanding that could impact policy and governance if such views influence leadership decisions.

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8. Critique of Hannity’s Interviewing Style

Tim and Sam express their disappointment with Hannity’s approach:

Tim Miller [11:20]: "Pointed out, for those of us... having to listen to these fuckers talk about how it's a republic, we are A republic, not a democracy."

Sam criticizes Hannity for lacking journalistic integrity and failing to leverage his platform for meaningful discourse:

Sam Stein [12:14]: "You should do something with it. And he didn't, and that sucks."

Their frustration culminates in a direct call-out to Hannity:

Tim Miller [12:17]: "Mr. Hannity, sir, if you're watching, Sam Stein is very disappointed in you as a journalist. He had bigger expectations. And sir, do better."

They conclude that the interview was a missed opportunity for substantive dialogue and accountability.

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9. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode wraps with Tim encouraging listeners to stay tuned for upcoming content:

Tim Miller [12:39]: "Thank you, Sam Stein. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. I already told you, we've got so much good shit coming tomorrow. So stick around, tell your friends, we'll see you soon."

The hosts reiterate their anticipation for future discussions, particularly on cryptocurrency and the live golf tour, signaling a return to more focused and informative topics.

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Summary

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, Tim Miller and Sam Stein provide a critical examination of Sean Hannity's interview with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They highlight the interview's superficial nature, the missed opportunities to address significant political issues, and the ineffective dynamics among the participants. The hosts express disappointment in Hannity’s approach, emphasizing the lack of substantive discourse and accountability. Additionally, they touch upon broader political implications, such as the potential influence of media strategies and misunderstandings of democratic principles by influential figures like Elon Musk. Overall, the discussion underscores the importance of meaningful journalism and the challenges of holding powerful individuals accountable in media forums.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Hey, guys. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with my buddy managing editor Sam Stein. And there's an interview tonight. Sean Hannity did an interview with the president, Donald Trump, the co president, Elon Musk. They were all together in the room. I didn't actually watch it. I was prepping for tomorrow's pod. We have a. We have a deep dive on cryptocurrency tomorrow. I'm trying to, like, learn about what's going on.

[Sam Stein]

Talk about what's going on in Argentina.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we're going to do Malay. We're going to do the ICOs. I had to learn about that. We're also doing a deep dive on live golf tour. I got so much for you guys on our creeping fascism and the corruption around Donald Trump that I couldn't watch what I assume was a really hardball interview with a lot of breaking news. So I'm here to kind of react live as Sam tells me what I missed.

[Sam Stein]

It's very generous to call this an interview.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, really?

[Sam Stein]

It was. It was a tongue bath. It was a classic Hannity tongue bath.

[Tim Miller]

Handy, handy, handy.

[Sam Stein]

It was pretty good, Tim. I wouldn't go there, but I didn't.

[Tim Miller]

Watch the interview, so I got to bring something to this analysis.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, good hand job jokes. No, it was horrible. Well, I don't want to say horrible. There's plenty of horrible things. It was really. I actually admire Hannity and because it does take its unique ability to sit down with the world's richest dude who's creating utter chaos all over this planet and the president of the United States who is facilitating it to have them there in front of you for an hour and make absolutely no news from your interview with them. It takes a special talent and he possesses that. He's. He is the ultimate at softball news because he loves these guys and he wants to be part of their administration, is sort of informally part of the administration.

[Tim Miller]

All right, so let me. So I guess I know plenty of topics they could have gone over. Did they cover the firing of the disabled army veteran who was working at the VA hospital? Did that get. Did that get covered? No. No. What about. What about the firing of the nuclear safety staff? Firing the FAA officials? That could cover that? How about the firing of the food safety people that are supposed to be overseeing the bird fleet blue firing and unfiring of them? No, no covered. No.

[Sam Stein]

You want to keep going? I think.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. What about, what about Donald Trump saying that it was that Zelensky was wearing too short of a skirt and so it was His.

[Sam Stein]

No, I didn't invaded. No, there was. To give you a sense of what it was like. There was like a three minute section I was just trying to follow because it was so confusing where Hannity kept going on to Elon about. He's like, you've done all these great things. You started all these great companies, you're sending people to Mars, you're putting chips in people's brains to make paralyzed people walk and think again. And you're. You did all this. You helped us, you know, launch Tesla and all these great cars. And you're so incredible. And then the question was, you'd think liberals would love you.

[Elon Musk]

I would think liberals would love the fact that you have the biggest electric vehicle company in the world.

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, I mean, I used to be adored by the left, you know, not anymore. Less so these days.

[Elon Musk]

Killed that, huh?

[Donald Trump]

I mean, less so.

[Sean Hannity]

I really didn't.

[Sam Stein]

Well, I mean, and it's like, why, why are they there?

[Tim Miller]

You wouldn't think liberals would love them if you, you know, read what he says about liberals. Right. Like, again, why don't Liberals like the 2017 version of you? Elon Musk.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. Think what Elon's response was. He's like, yeah, it's weird. Why don't they love me? And I was like, yeah, you are. You know, I don't know, there's maybe like five years of evidence in between. But yeah, I think the most interesting thing, honestly, was kind of the, the dynamic between Trump and Musk, because for a while, Trump kind of just sat there as Musk was speaking. You don't normally see that with Donald Trump. I'm not saying he was like, just like perturbed by it or anything. He didn't come off that way. But it was just sort of a.

[Tim Miller]

Weird dynamic where, like, who seems like they're in charge? Who seems like.

[Sam Stein]

That's the thing. It's like if you watched it, you would say, well, Trump's in charge. But, like, Elon's got, like a little bit more pizzazz and energy and authority. And he and Elon was sitting there trying to figure out when to jump in. And. And he obviously was aware that he doesn't want to be seen. I mean, they did spend. The first portion of the interview was spent going. Henry was like, you know, people are trying to pitch you two against each other and, you know, say that he's the shadow president. They were like, we're on to them. We're so much smarter than they are. We know that they're trying to do that. So, like, it would. But that just only reinforced the fact that there was this weird tension going on. Like, you don't need to say it if it, if it's not a problem. But that was sort of the 10 of the interviews. Like, here are these two guys. And where's J.D. vance?

[Tim Miller]

Where was J.D. vance? I did see one clip on social media where Trump is, like, talking about how he wanted to find somebody smarter than Elon.

[Sam Stein]

Couldn't do it.

[Tim Miller]

Couldn't.

[Elon Musk]

You're the richest man in the world. You may not like that part. You're pretty competitive. But that's why. But he's on your team President. Well, that's true. He can't top that.

[Sean Hannity]

He's, you know, I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over. I just couldn't do it.

[Sam Stein]

I couldn't. Well, that was because the, the, the, the preface of the question was Sean Hannity point out that Elon was richer than Trump. And then Hannity, clearly sensing that he might have stepped in, it was like, I know that, you know, you, that doesn't make you happy, but, you know, he's just sort of stumbling. And then, and then Trump kind of came back and was like, well, you know, I tried to find someone smarter and I couldn' Are you guys talking about. We just wasted like an hour.

[Tim Miller]

An hour.

[Sam Stein]

I wasted like a minute and a half just doing this weird dance, you know.

[Tim Miller]

So did they cover anything of substance? It looked like there was some discussion of, of Social Security. Right.

[Sam Stein]

So that if, if you had to pull.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

If you had to pull some news threads out of it. And trust me, it was hard. I was talking with another reporter and, and they were compared it to, like, I think, like, you know, having conversations with your dog, basically. Yeah, it was like, you know, you're.

[Tim Miller]

Not really the dog. Hannity interviewed him like a dog, pretty much.

[Sam Stein]

There was two. Okay. There's two things that were of interest. One was on the interview and one was during the commercial for, for news value purposes. The first was Trump was there. You know, Hannity's like, setting up again, classic Sean Hannity thing where he basically tries to lead Trump to water. He's like, you know, they're saying you're going to cut all this stuff. You're not really going to cut, like, Social Security. Right. Like, they're going to accuse you that, but you're not going to do it. Just tell them you're not going to do it. And Trump's like, no, of course, no, we're not going to touch Social Security, Medicare. And then he added Medicaid, which they are.

[Tim Miller]

He did.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Sean Hannity]

Social Security won't be touched. Other than this fraud or something. We're going to find it's going to be strengthened but won't be touched. Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be nothing. I want to have to.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, and they are going to touch it. I mean, that is House. That is the House Republican blueprint. I mean, a lot of their money is through Medicaid cuts. So, you know, these guys tend to get away with these lies. So I'm not, like, going to, you know, think too much about it, but that is.

[Tim Miller]

I don't. I think that the Medicaid debate is actually going to be pretty challenging. You've even seen Steve Bannon out there saying Medicaid. Well, there are a lot of Trump voters on Medicaid.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. People don't get it. People don't really appreciate Medicaid. Everyone. The perception of Medicaid is for poor black and Hispanic people. That's just not true. There's tons, tons of rural, white, poor white people, including in very red states, who are on Medicaid. And Steve Bannon is not wrong about that. Let's just put it there.

[Tim Miller]

I think the Medicaid numbers right here, Louisiana, is like, towards the top of the list. We're in, like, the top two or three.

[Sam Stein]

Oh, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

You know, we've got the worst governor in the country and, you know, Trump won here by like, 40 points, so.

[Sam Stein]

Well, you know, it's the whole what's the matter with Kansas? Adage. But whatever. The second newsy thing, again, nothing to do with Hannity, who, who really couldn't, you know, care less about news, came during one of the commercial breaks where suddenly the. The government of Ontario had put up an ad about how great Ontario is and what a remarkable ally Ontario is to the United States. Ontario is your third largest trading partner and the number one export destination for 17 states. And I was watching, I was like, that's. That's an interesting ad in Ontario. Seems really lovely, but why are they running it? And then it occurred to me they're banking on the fact that Donald Trump is watching his own interview with Eli, with Elon Musk and Sean Hanney, that he's going to see that ad and be like, oh, man, Ontario maybe isn't that bad and maybe, maybe I should, like, rethink these terrorists. Because Ontario seems pretty nice in that ad. Like, that's where we're at. So I thought that was Kind of newsy.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. I don't know about that. Oh, come on. There was one element of it. Our colleague Andrew Egger pointed this out in Slack. So I did watch one. He's back from paternity leave. I did watch one clip. I lied earlier when I said I didn't watch any, and it was Elon talking. Let's actually. Let's just all watch it together.

[Donald Trump]

Why are they reacting like this?

[Elon Musk]

Well, first of all, do you give a fly and rip or number one and.

[Donald Trump]

Well, I guess we must be over the target of doing something. Right. You know, if, like, they wouldn't be complaining so much if they we weren't doing something useful. I think what all we're really trying to do here is restore the will of the people through the President and, And what we're finding is that there's an unelected bureaucracy. Speaking of unelected, there's a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the President and the Cabinet.

[Tim Miller]

Now, I don't think this is a news flash, probably to you, Sam, but it doesn't seem like Elon really understands how the American constitutional democracy works.

[Sam Stein]

I thought about that, too. I was like, he doesn't really quite get it.

[Tim Miller]

He doesn't quite get it. This is not a direct democracy situation where you vote for one single man and then their will and their whims reflect the wills of the entire people. There are a lot of checks and balances, a lot of different. We have governors in various states. There's. There are two actually bodies in Congress. I heard some rumors. He didn't know that until recently. There's a House and a Senate. They all get elected. They all have their interests. And so, yeah, it's not just like a soft dictator gets to say this, gets to say, call it the Gulf of America, and then that is the law now, that's not. Not how democracy, or at least our democratic republic works now.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. And if Hannity had a pulse at that moment, he could have pointed out, he might have even said, like, look. Well, that's interesting. Like, what. What happens in, like, a situation like 2016 where Trump wins but he doesn't get the most votes? Like, is. Does he have to implement Hillary's agenda? Like, what. What's the deal on that one? But Hannity just was like, yeah, Edgar.

[Tim Miller]

Pointed out, for those of us, like me and Andrew, who suffered our whole lives through going to Republican rubber chicken dinners, you know, having to listen to these fuckers talk about how it's a republic, we are A republic, not a democracy. And if I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I could buy a few Trump coins. Let me tell you something. But you're not hearing a lot of that from the Hill.

[Sam Stein]

No, I would get the Trump coins, not the Malay coins, you know, the Libra or whatever they call. Yeah, I don't want them. No, the whole thing was pointless. You didn't really miss anything. But it does go to show you that, you know, it's just these guys who have all this access to Trump. I mean, the reason they got the access is because they're just sycophants and they don't actually. I mean, Hannity doesn't even pretend to be a news guy, so I shouldn't criticize him too much. But you have that type of platform, you have that type of access, you should do something with it. And he didn't, and that sucks.

[Tim Miller]

Your expectations for Sean.

[Sam Stein]

Why?

[Tim Miller]

I don't even know what to say to you. Speechless, Sam. Mr. Hannity, sir, if you're watching, Sam Stein is very disappointed in you as a journalist. He had bigger expectations. And sir, do better. Can I just say to you, do better.

[Sam Stein]

Mr. Hannity says it's a direct democracy. I don't give a shit.

[Tim Miller]

Thank you, Sam Stein. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. I already told you, we've got so much good shit coming tomorrow. So stick around, tell your friends, we'll see you soon.