← Bulwark Takes
Loading summary
Transcript39 lines
- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I was just vibing out with fellow YouTuber David Pakman. I'm sure you know that guy. We were over on Substack doing a live real quick, our newsletters on Substack. If you're into, you know, kind of written material instead of just blah, blah, blah, they're amazing. Go to the bullock.com JBL's daily newsletter is awesome. If I shout everybody out, I'm going to miss somebody. But like, we have newsletters across the board. Immigration, Democratic Party stuff, healthcare. Please go sign up@theblock.com but anyway, me and David were chatting about a wide range of stuff. We did a little bit of a 2024 retrospective. That's David's fault, not mine. He picked that topic. You know, I'm trying to just sort of black out everything that happened in the 2024 campaign, but we talked a little bit about what we could learn from that potentially going forward in the pro democracy movement. If you're in the Democratic Party, what lessons you could learn. We did some Epstein talk because I got to do Epstein talk, especially because we have new breaking news on it today. Donald Trump keeps making new news on Epstein every day, which is hurting his plan to just get people to look over there. And we also talked a little bit about independent media. So if you're into that kind of discussion, stick around for that. Subscribe also to this feed. David Pakman's running circles around us over there on his feed. He's got like millions more subs. So come on, get on board. Subscribe to us here on YouTube and stick around for the discussion between me and David.
- [01:24]
David Pakman
Tim, there's so many things I want to talk to you about. I want to talk about the Bulwark and what you guys are doing. I want to talk about the Epstein stuff. Maybe just to start, I recently sort of recently interviewed both Jake Tapper and Jonathan Allen about their respective books.
- [01:44]
Tim Miller
Original. Good for you. Good for you. I put a ban on those books on the Bulwark podcast. Nothing against any of the authors. I was just like, the last thing I want to do and my audience wants to hear is reliving 2024. So good for you for doing that because it's important. I just don't want to do it. I'm just taking a break.
- [02:01]
David Pakman
That's why I want to talk to you. You know, my thought was there are a lot of things that I could say about the motivation for writing these books, the timing of their release. Right. I could a Long list of stuff, but in reading them and seeing how they're sourced and my takeaway is sort of like if even 10% of the, of the subject matter is true, the Democratic Party's got some real problems to figure out here. And I'm curious your take as someone who, you know, advised Republicans and now I don't even know where you consider that you occupy right now, but sort of I consider you like a centrist guy generically. You know what, what's your take on the kind of state of play right now?
- [02:45]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, welcome to Substack. I'm glad we're doing this little, you know, we're off our natural platform of YouTube and I've already seen Tom Joslin, our man down there, did a great interview with Bill Kristol on Sunday on our Substack. So this is fun to do it, man. I think that the Democratic Party, like if you look at these books and look back at 2024, like has a couple of different problems and some of them persist and some of them were kind of unique to 2024. Um, you know, the Biden part was pretty unique to 2024. I think that Biden himself put the party in a pretty bad place. I just, regardless of what you think about it, you know, he just, his decision to run again and his decision to kind of not be very public and then, you know, to put. Have so many eggs in the basket of this debate and then give the worst debate performance in history, like none of that stuff's gonna happen again in 2028. Like presumably the Democrats will not have a 80 year old candidate running and who, you know, who is who struggles to enunciate points on the debate stage. So we can talk about that. But I think that was like a real issue that the party had that was pretty unique to 24. I think that there are, if you, you know, there's some subplots in those books, you know that you can see some of the other issues. I think that the party itself and part of the, part of this is Trump kind of, I'm sympathetic to it because Trump kind of put the Democrats in this position of being the party of like defending institutions, of being the responsible ones, of being, you know, of defending the status quo from this monster that wants tear down democracy. And while all that is true and right, I think it got them misaligned from where the public is. And the public is pretty mad about stuff, particularly working class people. And I think that upper middle class people have their complaints, but Democrats do pretty well, with that crowd, working class folks are pretty pissed. And they're pissed about a number of things in 24, most acutely inflation, but also just kind of a feeling that the system is failing them. And I think that the Democrats basically, for three straight cycles, put up presidential candidates. So we're like, you know, we want to help you, but like, within this, within the confines of the system. Right. And the Republicans are putting up somebody that's like, I want to burn everything down and I care and we're going to go after the people you hate. And obviously it's all phony and fake, but, like, you can see why it resonated. Right. And I think if you look back at the 2024 books and, like, a lot of the problems that Kamala faced when she got in were either generated by Biden himself and his poor actions or by this, like, feeling of the need to kind of defend, you know, to be. To be the responsible one, to defend the institutions, to defend the Biden leg, to defend. Right. And I just think that in 2024 and going ahead to 2028, people want outsiders. People want folks that are shake things up. People want folks that are going to let it rip. They don't want, you know, conventional and cautious. And she. And Kamala, for all of her great traits, is kind of conventional and cautious, you know, So I don't know. That would be my, like, quick summary of what I. What my lessons are from 24. I think there are some ideological stuff, some issues we could talk about too, but, like, from a brand positioning standpoint, I think that that'd be my takeaway. What about you? You're the one that interviewed them.
- [05:52]
David Pakman
Well, I mean, you know, it's so hard because my audience was really split and I got a bunch of angry emails from people saying, how dare you even have these people on? And it's like, well, what I do is I talk to people and then I try to evaluate the substance of what they say and their motivations, and it's sort of what I do. I've never agreed with the don't have them on unless I just personally don't want to do it. It sounds like you didn't want to do it, which I totally respect on a personal level.
- [06:16]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And nothing against any, like, against Jake or anything, but. Yeah, I just was like, I don't want to. I just don't want to, like, rehash it. Like, well, like, had the news been more boring, maybe I'd do it right. But there's a lot happening in the news. So I, I hear. I hear you, though. But, yeah, I'm. I would. I'm not saying you shouldn't have platformed them or anything. I understand. Like, I think that's kind of a silly complaint.
- [06:36]
David Pakman
One of my reactions, if I'm fr. There was recognition. You know, I. I went to the White house twice in 2024. I went in March when Kamala Harris was not yet the nominee and had like a creator sort of thing that she talked to us for 45 minutes. And then I went in December, and it was basically Biden comms people. And then Biden came in for like 15 minutes, essentially, and one of the.
- [07:02]
Tim Miller
One.
- [07:02]
David Pakman
It's so hard to say it any other way. The stuff that was described in the books about how his schedule was managed, about how he was protected, I, I saw it firsthand. It was exactly the way it was, where it was like the staff was keeping him cloistered. They really limited the scope of our interactions. And there was a risk aversion that went above and beyond anything I've experienced, like, with a senator. And so my takeaway was kind of like, man, until June 27th, I believed that, on balance, Biden was probably the most likely to defeat Trump. In other words, I had calculated on June 26, if he just drops out today, I think Trump obviously wins on June 27th. By about 9:15pm Eastern Time, my view had changed. But a lot of it was the recognition that this. That was probably the state of play before that debate. And I recognize the techniques that were used to prevent us from knowing that. So there was anger, in a sense.
- [08:08]
Tim Miller
I have a lot of anger about it. It's another reason why I don't feel like I have a. I have anger towards Trump and I try to channel it towards that, and the Biden stuff comes up. I went off on Hunter last week on the pod. I, I just. A lot of. I get pushback from this, from people who, like, really respect and like Joe Biden. And he obviously, you know, had a lot of tragedy in his life and gave to public service a lot. He also was just unbelievably selfish in the last year and a very important year, and like, the amount of time that was spent caring and talking about his legacy, his ego and protecting him and what, you know, like defending the record and making sure that, you know, we had to talk about. He's the greatest. I just think all. And then deciding to stay in the race was very hubristic. I just think that there was an insane amount of Hubris and ego that that led you to thinking that all of these sort of machinations were worth it because he is, you know, he deserves it or because in some cases they thought that he was best positioned to win. And so like, that is the more reasonable, I guess, defense. And you still see this from people. I have people in my mentions up till today being like, if Biden would have won, I think that is objectively wrong. Based on every metric that we have. We'll never know. You don't get to run a race. And I think every like qualitative and quantitative and anecdotive and anecdote data that I have is that Biden would have gotten his just absolutely annihilated. Who knows. But I just think that the behavior was not putting first the protection of the country and service to the country and the protection against Donald Trump and instead putting first his parochial interests. And I think that's really sad and it makes, it does make me mad.
- [10:02]
David Pakman
If we now kind of think forward and talk a little bit about Epstein. And in a sense I'm so sick of the topic. But also I think in the last I'm not six hours.
- [10:11]
Tim Miller
Here we go. This is the difference between our shows. I am not sick of this topic at all. We could do the next 45 minutes on Epstein if you want.
- [10:18]
David Pakman
Well, what's interesting is I recently did a live with Heather Cox Richardson.
- [10:22]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [10:23]
David Pakman
Who I did not expect to come in and go, oh, this Epstein thing is huge. As a historian, I believe that this Epstein thing is huge. And that's exactly what she said. And there were a couple reasons, but one of the big ones was that this seems to be having a divisive effect within maga that voting for the anti war president who bombed Iran hasn't really done it. Voting for the guy who would build the wall Mexico would pay for. And of course he didn't do it. None of those things got the sort of purchase to get MAGA divided in the way that it seems to have divided them so far. What, what's your like in two months, Will this still be a story? In three months, will it be a story? What do you think?
- [10:59]
Tim Miller
I think because of the way that they've managed it, this is going to be a story until 2027. Because I think if the Democrats take back the House, they're going to have hearings about it. And, and I think that they should. And they should model, you know, whatever you think about the merits of the Benghazi hearings, I think probably the first one did have merits, the next 38 probably were unmerited. Right. But it did have a positive political effect for good, you know, and that. And I think the Democrats should look to that. I think there are legitimate things to look into. This is a cover, like to me, what has changed about this story? And some people, like, you know, they asked me, like, why you weren't talking about this two months ago or Biden wasn't dealing with it three years ago. And my response to that is the Epstein story itself is a massive story and a tragedy and it had a lot of coverage. And just because, you know, that lets some. That you watch or that might maybe not have been covering it. It was very. There was. It got a lot of attention, a lot of quarters. Yeah. In conspiracy quarters, but also in more casual, you know, kind of podcast, you know, news adjacent quarters. But it became a massive political story because of how they handled it. Like they are participating in a cover up. Like, what are they covering up? I don't know. Like, are they covering up that there is really damaging stuff about Trump in there? Maybe I'm a little bit skeptical of that. Right. You'd think that would be leaked out by now. Is it just kind of damaging stuff about Trump in there? Almost certainly. Right. Is it damaging stuff about friends of his, donors of his? Maybe, Probably. Right. And so they are engaging in a cover up on behalf of people that were at some level involved with a child sex trafficker and they're doing it for political ends. And I think this puts him in a very political box. Right. Like he's now just. It's kind of like Nixon. Right. It's kind of like any of the COVID It's Iran Contra, it's Lewinsky. Right. Like it's more of a traditional political scandal and he is no longer kind of like the outsider. He is just like a politician, a slimy politician trying to protect powerful people. And I think that really cuts against his brand in a way that a lot of this other stuff that we all were outraged about didn't. Right. You know what I mean? Like, yeah.
- [13:17]
David Pakman
The sense I'm getting, it's funny how fast this stuff moves, but like the sense I'm getting over the last eight hours of video of Trump as he sort of started to say, I stopped talking to Epstein because he took some employees from me. And then he was asked, were any of those employees or were any of these people under 18? And he goes, yeah, I think they might have been. The sense that I'm getting is that Trump is probably aware that he Knew of a lot of stuff he stayed silent on. And I have no as. Like, you're saying. I don't think necessarily that he was a client in the sense of having committed crimes or whatever. Maybe he was, but I haven't seen any evidence.
- [13:56]
Tim Miller
But.
- [13:57]
David Pakman
But the way he's sort of like, explaining why they had this falling out to me, speaks to. He's aware that he said nothing about a lot of stuff he knew about, and maybe that's what he's afraid of coming out.
- [14:08]
Tim Miller
I don't know. Yeah, I don't. Well, he's also lying about that. Right. I think that's it. Like, this is just happening in this last couple hours. But they. He was, you know, talking about. I don't want to butcher her last name, but Virginia, the staffer at Mar A Lago Frey. Yeah, yeah. Giuffre.
- [14:23]
David Pakman
Yeah, I think Giuffre.
- [14:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [14:25]
David Pakman
I'm not sure.
- [14:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So Virginia worked at Mar A Lago and then was. And then Epstein hired her away, and she was part of a really kind of gruesome sort of sex trafficking part of the. And, you know, where a lot of people are complicit in really bad behavior towards her, which is just. Which is horrible. And. But Trump's story, like, is like, okay, well, Epstein was taking people from me, and that's why I got mad at him. Which, by the way, is different from the White House's original story, which is that Trump said Epstein was a creep, and so he said he couldn't come to Mar A Lago. So they'd already changed the story once. And then today, reporters are like, are you talking about Virginia when you say that Epstein stole staff from you? And he says yes. And by the way, he shows no empathy or sympathy to what she went through and answering yes. But it also turns out that that is like, well, it's not a lie that he took her from Mar A Lago, but the timing doesn't work. That happened in 2000. Epstein was banned from Mar a Lago four years later. So it wasn't that. So, like, whatever the truth is of why him and Joshua had a falling out, it wasn't this. So what is it? And so I just think that Trump is handling of this has also just been like, his usual tricks aren't working. You know, like, the usual tricks of, oh, it was just locker room talk, you know, or, oh, like what? You know, look at, you know, the. I'm gonna change the subject because, like, they've mismanaged the disbursement of information on a topic that his own media allies, who usually run cover for him on this stuff, actually care about or actually have covered enough that they have to protect their credibility on. So I don't know what exactly they're covering up. I don't know, but it's not pretty. And we know that they're covering up something because we know that they have searched through the files for mentions of Trump and flagged them.
- [16:18]
David Pakman
What is, you know, at this point, I don't know if you agree, but to set up this next question, are we on the same page that essentially, no matter what comes out, it's not going to end Trump's presidency a day short of when it's scheduled to end? Are you. Do we agree on that?
- [16:34]
Tim Miller
We agree on that. And there's a funny conspiracy view that J.D. vance and, and, you know, Peter Thiel and the tech bros are not hating this, you know, and wouldn't mind a scandal that would push Trump to the side and let them consolidate power. I don't really believe that theory. It's kind of funny and juicy and something to think about. Stuff's coming from somewhere. I don't think it's actually J.D. vance. I think it's. And I don't actually even think it's like Elon. I just think that having been in a lot of these stories, sorts of stories back when I was a PR guy for candidates, this stuff has a life of its own. If you get caught up in something, then people start to look and pay attention to things that they weren't before, you know, and I think that that is really what is driving this is just kind of like a traditional feeding frenzy. But no, anyway, no matter what happens, I think Trump is. We're stuck with him.
- [17:27]
David Pakman
So given that, what is the potential impact of what we might learn? Is it. It'll hurt Republicans in 26 and 28? Is it like what. What is. Is it Trump's legacy?
- [17:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that just on the actual substance of what we might learn, I don't know, there might be legal consequences for people, probably not Trump. But I do think it's preposterous to think that Jeffrey Epstein and Gillian Maxwell were the only people that were involved in this effort. So there could be actual consequences for evil, politically speaking. I think the potential consequences of fragmenting of maga, and I don't mean. And I mean it in the broadest sense, let me rephrase that. A fragmenting of the Republican, of the Trump coalition, because I think that MAGA eventually Comes back around to everything. He was right when he said Fifth Avenue back in 2016. And it's like essentially a cult. And some people leave cults, but the preponderance of people stay right. And so I think that the core MAGA base will be resilient in the face of this. But the broader coalition, I think has real potential for fragmenting. And if you think about the newest people that came in, the kind of lefty horseshoe people, you know, the RFK Tulsi crowd, they cared about Epstein and they also wanted Trump to be a peacenik on foreign policy. He's failing them on both. And you could see them kind of reverting back either, I don't know, to the Democrats or just no longer being part of a Republican coalition in the future. And then you have an even bigger group which is more of the younger, non ideological men who, you know, for shorthand will call the manosphere type people who went with Trump across races, black, brown, white, and who also are just looking at Trump and seeing him do this cover up and be like, this guy's a fucking politician like everybody else. Like, I didn't like him because I'm a conservative or I'm a MAGA nationalist. Like, I liked him because he seemed like he was not a politician. He was going to go in there and cause problems. And you can just already see the disillusionment. I know, like, you can see it in Rogan and the Ovan and Andrew Schultz. Like, I don't like and that, that is a significant part of his, his coalition. So I think that is like the political ramification of this. I don't know. What do you think?
- [19:43]
David Pakman
Yeah, no, I agree with that. And one of the things I've been interested in looking at, and I kind of want to hear from you as someone who worked in the PR and the messaging side, is from reading a lot of political books, it seems as though it's common that when there's some crisis, when the messaging, comms and PR people get together, it's tell me if I'm wrong. It seems like it's common to game out every possibility. What if we went with this story? What if we went with that story? And so, like some of the anecdotes we've learned about Harris's staff when Biden was in this period of is he going to run? Is he going to not was like, okay, let's have a plan for if he drops out and endorses you. Let's have a plan for if he drops out and doesn't let's have a plan for if he dies here. What you see, they had all these plans. Can you talk a little bit about, like, when you were doing this stuff, did you game out even ridiculous ideas just to go, let's thought. Let's game it out to see what would we say? And then people go, okay, that's crazy. We're not going to do that. But we've thought about it.
- [20:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah, not really would be the honest answer to that. I mean, we definitely like a version of this, like, in a campaign setting, which is not a PR issue like this, but is more like we gained out a lot of different ways to deal with Trump, you know, in 2016, as in the job campaign, and, like, kind of crazy. Like, what if he does, you know, what if he says this crazy thing on stage, right? Because, like, Trump himself is very unpredictable. But, like, most of these types of stories, like, there aren't that many types of options. You know, you got door A, which is you rip the band aid off and tell every, you know, do sunlight and tell the truth and say, guys, here it is, Whatever. Right? There's door B, you know, which is like, we're going to stonewall and try to ride this thing out, and eventually people will stop caring and they'll care about something else. Or we'll give door C, where we, like, give an excuse or an explanation that we hope. Right? Like, that's kind of it. Like, those are the options. Like, this is a very unique case where it's like, you don't even know what's in there. You know what I mean? Like, I think back to Jeb, and like, there were. He had, like, one example, this is kind of similar, is Florida has very open sunshine laws, and Jeb is a big emailer. So he emailed, like, you know, for eight. Like, there's 10 years of the emails, and we're like, who the fuck knows what's in there? Right? And so, like, there was like, a planning of, like, what if he sent an email? You know what I mean? So that is, I guess, a more similar version to this. And. But I don't even know if they can do that because this is all being driven by Trump. Yeah, right. Like, there's no way that this. That the strategy they've put forth would be the strategy that Susie Wiles and Chris Lazevita, like, have come up with or the strategist or whatever.
- [22:13]
David Pakman
Like, they're just reacting to what Trump simultaneously. The files don't exist, and my name's in them. But only because Comey put it in there. Yeah, I can't imagine that. Susie Wiles.
- [22:27]
Tim Miller
Yeah, no, no, I think this is all Trump and they're just kind of live reacting to the principal. So it's. So luckily, I mean, they've been to the White House, so I guess not luckily for me, but luckily I never had any candidates that were just like randomly posting crazy shifts and I just had to figure out how to deal with it. So I think it's a unique situation.
- [22:46]
David Pakman
I want to talk a little bit in the time we have left, just about like what you all are doing at the Bulwark, how you're growing substack. I mean, the success you all are having. I see that you're doing the live events. I don't even know what size team there is at this point. But, like, what, what's the, what would you say is the key thing that you've done that has allowed you to grow so quickly?
- [23:08]
Tim Miller
I appreciate that, man. I think that, like the key things were one, that the fact that now, now we've kind of expanded beyond this and we have people, well, from a lot of different backgrounds, like ideologically, experience wise, but like the original core ever Trumpers were people who are kind of cast out of the party or cast out of their magazine, in the case of the Weekly Standard. And I think that because we were cast out of the party because we didn't really have a realistic hope of getting back in, because we didn't really think that the Democrats. It wasn't like a hope that I was going to be comms director for Hillary Clinton or whatever in 2016 when this all started, it was like, we might as well just say what we really think. Like, we might as well just be honest and we might as well just be candid and like, you know, we'll see and maybe this will turn into something maybe it won't. Like, when we started, it was kind of a flyer. It was like a side project for a lot of people that were involved. And I just, I think that worked, right? Like, it just worked. It's what people want, like, is authentic, you know, is authenticity or whatever. That's a little eye rolling cliche. But people want, you know, right now they're craving people that are just telling them what they really think, showing their real feelings. And so I think that ethos, like, worked. And then as we've expanded, like, we're really only bringing in people who are committed to that. Right? Like, there's like, we've tried to expand to do more journalism. And we have good traditional journalists alongside kind of whatever, our podcast commentary folks who are focusing on substack and Lauren Egan's writing about the Democrats, John Cones writing about healthcare, et cetera. But, you know, there's some reporters that wanted to come that just aren't a fit because they, like, don't want to do that. They don't want to say what they really, you know what I mean? They want to be reporters neutral, you know, and that isn't what we do. So I think that is, like, that ethos has really worked. And the YouTube stuff, look, man, you were ahead of the game on all this. So while we're confident each other, you were there first, I think there's a big demand out there in the space for kind of middle center, left, anti Trump. I think YouTube was really dominated by MAGA and then secondarily by left left folks. And like, there wasn't a lot of other stuff out there. A lot of people were cutting the cord. There's this huge engagement in politics and interest because of all the crazy stuff that's happened with Biden's age and the assassination attempt and Trump's back. And so I think that we got kind of, in part, I think is lucky. Like, I think we got on and decided to commit to YouTube and try it at a time where there was a spot in the marketplace for it. And, and, and so that, and then also the thing that you do well is we just post a lot of stuff. Well, you know what's funny? There's a lot of content.
- [25:39]
David Pakman
I've. I'm always sort of like, loosely mentoring a few people that are trying to get into this. And the number one piece of advice I give, which they almost never follow, is forget about what lights you buy. Don't worry about getting a PR person. It doesn't really matter what camera you get. Like, you. If you're doing five hours a week of content or one hour a week or whatever, you've got to commit to that and you've got to do it and post it everywhere, all of the other stuff flows downhill from that. And so when people come to me and they're like, overly focused on how do you do ad sales, or do I need a stream deck or what about this? I'm like, it's just the con. You just got to commit to the content. And I think that that's kind of what you're picking up on.
- [26:19]
Tim Miller
Yeah, volume and volume. And because people want, you know, people get in a relationship with you, if you're being real with them, and so they want your reaction to stuff. And I want to hear from what the audience thinks about stuff. Right. There's a little bit of a two way street. Like, the piece of advice I got, which is very similar to that when I was being mentored by a couple of buddies who were in sports podcasting, I was like, what? Like, I'm taking up this podcast. What's the daily podcast? What's your advice? Their main advice was like, you got to do it every day. You don't, you know, and you also gotta do it when big stuff is happening. Like, people want to hear from you immediately. And, like, the example one of the guys gave that I just won't forget is he's like, I'd like to get drunk on Thanksgiving with my family and then eat a bunch of turkey and, like, hang out. He's like, but I do NFL podcasting, so I don't do that. I'm sober on Thanksgiving and I'm with my family, but I'm watching the games. And then as soon as the games are over, I'm taping, you know, because people want to hear my thoughts about what happened that day. That's kind of silly compared to politics, but, like, the principle is the same, you know, like. And so I think that is. That's. That's been working for us, which I. And I appreciate everybody's kind of effort on that.
- [27:19]
David Pakman
Well, listen, if you're here because you follow me on Substack, make sure you're following Tim and the Bulwark. If I'm the new guy here because you follow Tim, I'd be honored if you also follow me. And we're going to keep in touch. There's so much going on. I do feel that this is a critical time with at least two or three important inflection points. And it's always good to talk to.
- [27:41]
Tim Miller
You, Tim, man, I appreciate it very much. I'm glad we're able to do this. Let's do it again soon.