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- [00:00]
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- [00:24]
Charlie Sykes
Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Hey everyone, we are live from Maga Mondays. Welcome back. What a weekend. Kind of a shitty weekend, honestly. But you know, we're here to sort of do the serious and silly. I will note we were, while we were prepping for this backstage, getting our audio set up, getting the Internet set up, we did notice that there's a couple people in the comment section, you sickos who are waiting for us. One comment in particular that I need to shout out. It is ali can con 6510 writes every minute. Sam is late. I'm doing a shot at tequila. He won't let us public down much. Ollie, I was a little bit worried about you. I was gonna go on about a couple minutes late, but I didn't want you to get sick. It's 10am on Monday. You shouldn't be shooting tequila. So hopefully we made it on time. I think we did. I think we're on time. Will, how you doing, buddy? Good.
- [01:22]
Will
You know, I mean, I. Obviously Saturday night's news was pretty jarring, but otherwise, you know, hanging in there. There's, you know, it will have some from the party circuit and you know, I, I'm, you know, there's a lot of news going on, so I'm excited to discuss.
- [01:36]
Charlie Sykes
There's a lot of news going on. Obviously we're gonna leave with Saturday night. I've had a couple discussions already on these channels about Saturday night. Let me just stress those were for, you know, reaction videos that I did live with Bill here at Mega Monday. This is a Borg Takes Product. Uh, and we are, you know, doing another live stream. We hope you like these. They're, you know, we do this conversation every Monday. It's on YouTube, it's on substack bulwark.com. it's 10am and sometimes we just like to riff and have fun with it. But because of what happened on Saturday night, I just wanted to start with a little bit of a, kind of a monologue if, if you're, if you'll allow me. So, yeah, this show is about right wing Internet culture and extremism. And we, we look at what's going on in the maga Internet, but it's not really possible to do that right now without talking about a little bit about what happened on Saturday night. So we don't really know necessarily with absolute certainty what the motivations of this alleged wannabe assassin were. But I think we do know enough to say that he was radicalized, obviously. Radicalized enough to take a train across the country with a shotgun apparently in order to try to kill people. And if that's not radicalization, I don't know what is. And look, the manifesto that was apparently uncovered that a number of different outlets have reported makes clear that he was anti Trump and that he felt that he had to take violence to effectuate the type of outcome that he wanted. And so Bill has said it, he said it again in his Morning Shots newsletter, which you should get if you aren't a subscriber already. But it's not acceptable, obviously. And I would just say for folks who are watching this program who like this product, and we love you for that, folks who read will stuff on the regular, you know, I think it's important to understand that this type of online culture that breeds conspiracy thinking, that breeds racism, that breeds violent impulses, it's not exclusively the product of the maga Internet. And that this moment is a moment for reflection and to recognize that these trends that are dangerous, that can be comical, but that are dangerous, that they do exist across the spectrum. So I'm not trying to be like a both siderists here. You can make your own independent judgment about what happened in this instance, in any other instance, and what sparks these instances and all that stuff. What I am trying to do here, maybe in artfully is just make a plea to recommit to civil discourse and to civil disagreement and to recommit to the foundational principles of truth and I guess most importantly of liberal democracy. So, yeah, that I want to just get that off my chest before we dive into it. So with that said, we're going to take a little time to talk about how this administration and its MAGA supporters have responded to what happened at the near shooting at the White House Correspondents association dinner. And that is not so much with a plea for liberal democracy as it is a push to build the President's ballroom. They seem to be completely focused on the ballroom. It happened instantaneously, like within minutes. Every account was tweeting about the ballroom. Now, I know Ashley Sinclair, who used to travel in those circles and has become somewhat of a kind of like what she would position as a truth teller about what MAGA Internet is like, says that the White House has this sort of list that they push out talking points to where, you know, you can see it in moments like this. And it, you know, there's been a bunch of screen grabs of these different magic accounts, all talking about building the bottom. But I don't know, Will, is that, like, your understanding of how it works where they all get sort of like their directives and they go with it?
- [05:36]
Will
Yeah, I mean, I think there are definitely group chats, you know, whether it's, you know, directly from the White House or sort of just among each other. And, you know, on one hand, I mean, certainly it's interesting. I think it's. I don't think it's especially, like, sinister in that, you know, I. I think any political group would probably have sort of like a shared messaging or sort of these. So social media, I'm sure, you know, all the liberal Twitter accounts chat with each other as well. On the other hand, you really could see very quickly this them coalescing around this message of like, okay, this assassination attempt means we have to build the ballroom. Now Democrats are putting Trump's life at risk, this judge who won't let him build the ballroom. So really that seems to be sort of the, you know, there's not really an election immediately that Trump can, you know, try to use this to win or anything. And so instead, he gets the ballroom.
- [06:20]
Charlie Sykes
And it's not like it's just a MAGA account. So I got to be honest about it, because it. It jumped into, like, official Republican orthodoxy pretty damn quickly. So let's put up the Todd Blanche tweet. Here you can see this is Todd Blanche forwarding a letter from the Department of Justice to Greg Craig, who's the lawyer representing the people who are suing to stop the construction of the ballroom.
- [06:45]
Will
Great name.
- [06:46]
Charlie Sykes
Basically saying, yeah, basically saying, hey, we got to go, we got to do it. It's imperative that we have this bar. There should be no delay anymore here. And to your point. Well, it's not that they've, you know, they're allowing for the construction of the underground parts of that facility. It's that they want an appropriation from Congress in a actual formal process for constructing the ballroom. But Todd Blanche is out there. Then you have Pam Bondi, who preceded Todd Blanche, ex Attorney General. There she is. We must have the ballroom completed to protect POTUS and his guests. God bless President Trump and in our great country, Pam, I think that's got to be like one of her first tweets since Biggie.
- [07:23]
Will
I still think she's on the team.
- [07:25]
Charlie Sykes
I was gonna say
- [07:28]
Will
she's still in the Cabinet.
- [07:29]
Charlie Sykes
No one cares. You never know. They always could get there. There's never permanent exile. Well, that's not true, Mike. Pennsylvania coming back. Nikayla ain't coming back. But you can always, you know, like, Corey Lewandowski is always around, right? Boris is always around. Then this jumped into the realm of the congressional. So let's put up Lauren Boebert, who is apparently among many people working on legislation to get the ballroom passed into law. You have Chip Roy, who wants to include funding for the ballroom in the DHS bill. That's Pam Bondi. Again, there's Bobert, working with my team to draft legislation ensuring the White House bottom is completed. There you go. I don't believe it's imperative, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, activist judges, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Chip Roy, as I mentioned, wants us as part of the reconciliation bill where they're using to fund dhs. It's wild. And then Mike Johnson today. Let's play Mike Johnson, who was talking about the incident last night and of course brought up the ballroom, this thing last night. Drop the tds, the Trump Arrangement System
- [08:31]
Mike Johnson
syndrome, rather, and build the White House
- [08:33]
Charlie Sykes
ballroom for events exactly like these. Are you hearing enough from your Democratic colleagues on the tone that Senator Fetterman struck there?
- [08:44]
Mike Johnson
No. He's a rare voice in that camp, and we need more of that. In fact, they've done the opposite. They've incited violence, in my view. I mean, you have some of the most prominent figures in the House and the Senate on the Democrat side, effectively, you know, calling for war. I mean, they use those kinds of metaphors and it incites violence because there are crazy people in society and they get radicalized online. And so we've got to recognize that it's time to turn down the rhetoric. We've been saying this over and over and not use that kind of language. I hope that this will be a sobering reminder for everybody about that very important cause. I'm grateful to Fetterman. He's right. The ballroom will be a solution for this because it'll be on the most secure compound in the world. It won't have hotel rooms above it. And it'll have 7 inch thick glass, for example, on the windows. So it'll be a very safe environment. To do events like this, we need a place. We have needed a place like that. And the President keeps pointing it out.
- [09:42]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, what do you make of it?
- [09:44]
Will
It's crazy. I mean, it's this idea that sort of. Now Trump, you know, again, he has to get this, this toy, essentially. I think this, I mean, is the President never going to leave the White House compound again? I mean, it strikes me that it might be better spent spending, I think, what, 300, 400, 500 million. The number keeps going up. What if we could spend that on improving the Secret Service? And by the way, Secret Service did stop the guy, you know, so, I mean. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of logistical issues here. You know, as a lot of people have pointed out, the White House Correspondent's Dinner is not put on by the White House. You know, it also, the ballroom would be a lot smaller than the Washington Hilton, so you would have to reduce the size of it. I mean, there's all these things that, like, you know, again, if he's just never going to have an event anywhere else, I think, okay, let's do the ballroom. But if he's ever going to venture outside of the White House, I think, like, there has to be another solution here.
- [10:35]
Charlie Sykes
All right. To just to add a few points that the White House ballrooms supposed to see, according to their projections, a thousand guests. Okay. The correspondence center has about 2, 300 guests. So we're talking about over half as small as usual. Who would, who would control the guest list in this, in this, in the situation where you have the dinner at the ballroom, would it be the White House, presumably? Right. Like that's their, their property. Right. So now you're telling that, now you're saying that the White House can control which correspondents get access to their own dinner. This is a nonprofit dinner designed to raise money for journalism and to, you know, put a light on good journalism. Just as a sort of com. Not just as a logistical matter, but as a matter of sort of messaging and, and, and, and what you're trying to project. That, that doesn't work. You don't go to the White House's property when you're trying to honor people covering the White House. There is another actual option here in D.C. which is the convention center, which is in the middle of the city. It, it seats a lot of people. It is better protected, according to people I, I've talked to about it. So there, it's not like there's not any other option, but the White House itself as a place for this doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, it really is silly. And on top of that, like, okay, Trump's never been to this dinner before. He's declined every single year prior to this year. Like, let's say they had built the ballroom in the next three months, which they're not going to do, obviously, but let's say they did. Like, is he gonna. Is he gonna have to attend? Would he have to attend the dinner? Could he, like, say no and they still host it? I don't know.
- [12:22]
Will
Oh, it's crazy. I mean, how could. I mean, obviously the planning for these things begins, I would say, like, even before the last one is finished. So the idea that, you know, I mean, and Trump only announced he was gonna go, go, I think, like a month or two in advance. So the idea that you're gonna plan it all around while hopefully the President can come. And, you know, I think also, like, fundamentally he's really mad that he didn't get his chance to roast the media as well. That's why he's saying we gotta reschedule. This changed around here so that Donald Trump can go and own the media, because we had a lot of good jokes and we didn't get a chance to do them. So now we're going to have to build the ballroom to make sure that can happen.
- [12:57]
Charlie Sykes
Let's talk a little bit about what you said there, which is that the Secret Service actually did its job, you know, because my, when this first happened on Saturday night, you know, to me, and I'm still a little bit sort of, I, I'm still not totally convinced that it wasn't a security labs. I think there's clear issues here. But to me, my initial reaction was like, how the hell did this person get even to that point? Why were there only metal detectors at the bottom of the stairwells? I, I had been there before and like, that, that, that actually does jive. Like, they, they do checks at the tops of each of the escalators down, but it was still shocking to me that this guy had made it that far. Then I read that he actually went on the stairwell to sort of get around the system, which. That, that is a hole. Like you should, you should probably be guarding the stairwell. That seems obvious to me. But then I watched the whole proceedings. I saw him sprint through the metal detector. They took him down. No one was, no one was killed. I do think we, you know, we constantly focus on the lapses and, and we should question whether things could have been done better. But, like, I Do think you're right that ultimately they did their job here?
- [14:12]
Will
Yeah, I mean, it's obviously you want to be catching this guy, let's say, you know, for outside, ideally, or you want to be touching him in the hallway outside his room rather than like, you know, sort of in the antechamber before the event. But, you know, on the other hand, I think if we look at other Trump assassination attempts, like Butler, where the guy had a clear shot at Trump, huge Secret Service failure, the case on the, with the golf course where, you know, yes, they found him, but the guy was able to kind of camp out ahead of time for a while. You know, obviously they stopped him, but, but it was close there. Whereas in this case, it, I mean, you know, I mean, again, it was kind of close here. I mean, I think probably there were some failures. But again, this idea that, you know, everything, we need this ballroom, we need to change everything radically to prevent this from happening again. Well, I'm not so sure.
- [14:59]
Charlie Sykes
Do you think they're going to do anything other than push for the ballroom after this? I mean, just thinking ahead, like, what, what will be the. Obviously, you know, we're seeing a lot of stuff where it's like, oh, you know, Democrats have a violence problem. They have to turn on the rhetoric. I don't know if you saw the Jamie Raskin interview on cnn. That was like one of those things where it's like, do you guys need to stop calling Trump, you know, a king and authoritarian? And then the ballroom, of course, is the big push that they're making. Do you foresee anything else? Have you seen anything else online?
- [15:28]
Will
Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I think this is very similar to what we saw not only after the Trump assassination attempts, but also after Charlie Kirk was murdered. This kind of sense of like, we need to crack down on the radical. Now on one hand that kind of fizzled after Charlie Kirk, there wasn't really this broader attempt to like, you know, just go crazy on, you know.
- [15:46]
Charlie Sykes
Well, they did it initially, right. They, like got a lot of people fired from their jobs.
- [15:49]
Will
Well, that, that's true, but I mean, in terms of like, you know, shutting down non profits or anything. But then, I mean, I think Todd Blanche seems to really be kind of going to be. He wants to be the confirmed attorney general. We saw last week he went after the Southern Poverty Law Center.
- [16:02]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, yeah, they've been mentioning them.
- [16:04]
Will
Yeah. And so it's a different Justice Department now. And so, you know, I think potentially, you know, this is sort of Another, another bite at the apple. You know, conceivably for, for the Justice Department.
- [16:14]
Charlie Sykes
It is interesting. They have mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center a couple times in these interviews. I think Trump brought it up on a 60 Minutes interview where he's like, oh yeah, they found the entire Charlottesville rally.
- [16:24]
Will
Yes, yes. And, and you know, not true, as all flag readers know. And I think a lot of other people as well. But you know, I, I do think potentially, I mean, that is like what I, I think a lot of people on the right about calling for is like, let's use the power of the state to like crush these organizations we don't like.
- [16:39]
Charlie Sykes
Right. All right. There's no clean way to do this, so I'm just going to have to rip off the bandit. But we do have ads that we have to read. You know, we're, we're sponsored. We're such a professional, well loved product that people are paying for us to read their ads on the air. And so to keep the lights on, I'm going to do it. Look, this one's from Seoul. If you've been listening to our show for a while, you already know how much I love souls out of office THC gummies and their sparkling beverages. Now they've launched something new. Mood gummies. Soul's new mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable effects so you can choose how you want to feel while staying in control. Seoul is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC products designed to make feeling good simple, whatever the moment. There's a soul mood gummy to match. Not sure if there was a soul mood gummy to match Saturday night, honestly.
- [17:33]
Will
Although maybe after a relaxation one perhaps.
- [17:35]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, yeah. Around like, you know, 1 1am When I was done with all the work, I probably could have used a good soul gummy to relax and unwind, making today a good day. And get, make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, Seoul is offering our audience 30 off their entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the cold bullwork takes. That's get soul.com promo code bulwark takes for 30 off. On a serious note, soul is awesome. Definitely use it. It's definitely helped my parenting at night, folks. If you're a parent of young kids, Papa Soul right before bedtime, the reading, it's great. All right. One other thing that has happened in the aftermath of this is that there's been, and I wouldn't normally talk about this stuff because it seems so superficial, but because they are talking about it, I feel like we can and should talk about it, which is there's like, this weird kind of grading system happening about who was very cool under fire. And, you know, like, each kind of principal in the administration is, Has. Was caught on camera or in the moment. It's being passed around the Internet to, like, talk about whether they were, you know, savage enough or, Or. Or they did the right thing. I don't know how the hell I would react in a moment like that. I probably would have been under a table, honestly, if I'm being serious about it. So who am I to judge? Except they're judging, so I'm going to judge, too. Let's put up. One of the ones that's been talked about a lot is Cash Patel. Let's put up the picture. Cash was out there at night on his cell phone. This was considered him sort of organizing. But I did see some folks, cash critics, wondering if the cel was the proper way, the most secure way to do this. Did you see that?
- [19:11]
Will
You know, I, I, I saw some, Some kind of MAGA accounts. Like, Cash Patel's just out here like a regular guy, and it's like, I don't want that for the FBI director. He needs to be in, like, the, you know, the, you know, situation room or something. I don't think he should be like, where's my Uber? Or whatever you know, he's doing.
- [19:29]
Charlie Sykes
He was not saying, I saw that too. They're like, he's just ordering an Uber. But I don't think he was ordering an Uber. I think he was trying to coordinate over his cell phone. But, yeah, to your point, I mean, in an ideal situation, he would have gone to the FBI headquarters. The other thing, and I'm, I'm laughing about Shimpy, the manifesto, where they, where he was like, I want to kill them all, minus Cash was kind of,
- [19:50]
Will
what do we, what do we make of that? I mean, on one hand, you tell
- [19:53]
Charlie Sykes
me you're the, you're the expert here.
- [19:54]
Will
Well, yeah. So, I mean, you know, it's hard to define this guy's motives, needless to say, like, why he would say that. But on one hand, it was, like, unclear if he was saying, you know, I consider all of these people a problem, and then I think cash is, like, totally pointless and I'm leaving him aside. Or is he saying, I have a cash on kind of a higher cash is like a target for me, and the rest of these people are kind of you know, you know, high standards or. Or, you know, collateral damage.
- [20:19]
Charlie Sykes
I hadn't thought of it that way.
- [20:22]
Will
I mean, I think if this guy in the manifesto, he's talking a lot about, like, you know, this dictatorship or, like, you know, America's under this totalitarian thing. And I think certainly the FBI director would sort of fall into sort of, you know, if from that point of view, more of a target.
- [20:34]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I think that's probably right. But I. Yeah, no, that brings up a good point. All right. The other one who got a lot of discussion was Pete Hegseth. If. I think it's because of what was going on with his jaw. He was standing up. So, like, everyone's like, man, cool under fire. This guy's been in a combat zone, clearly. And, you know, applause for. For Hegseth for doing that. But then there was, like, a weird speculation about what was going on with his jock. We played the video. All right, one more time. Let's just play one more time, because you gotta watch the jaw. I'm not sure. I think it's a zin.
- [21:11]
Will
Oh, I bet that's it.
- [21:14]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I think he was in. In.
- [21:16]
Will
I thought it was another. Another, you know, upper substance.
- [21:22]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, okay.
- [21:24]
Will
Yeah, I thought.
- [21:25]
Charlie Sykes
I thought. I just thought he was in. And he can't drink.
- [21:27]
Will
I think it's his end, you know, can't drink. I think the. The larger picture is, you know, we'll get back to Hexaz, but, like, is people, like, after Butler, it was so iconic, the Trump image. You know, he's got this up, what have you. And I felt like a lot of people were. And so then afterwards, and people are really being analyzed by the riot of, like, who looked epic, right? And so, like, big Hegseth video, the cash shows going around was like, you can tell Pete Hegseth's mad. And it's like, well, yeah, I should hope so. You know, I would be mad, you know, if I were in the administration. Someone had tried to assassinate, you know, some of us. You know, the. I. I think there's, you know, Dan Scavino stood up and said, usa. Usa. You know, I felt like I didn't see, like, he was. He was trying. I don't think it was on video. I think it was just reported. I feel like he was kind of trying to get a similar kind of Butler type moment, kind of rally the troops.
- [22:13]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, interesting. Then let's go to Trump. There was obviously a lot of talk about Trump and what happened with him. So, like, there's a weird sequence Here, where the Secret Service comes in and they grab JD Vance first and they usher him off stage. And I think Carolining over at Ms. Now had some explanation for the sequence of this. The. The Trump. Trump situation was. He was ushered in under Secret Service protection. He was asked about on 60 Minutes. I don't know. Do we have the video of it? If we do, let's play. Yeah, we have video. So. Yeah. All right, so that's. You know, he was asked about 60 minutes. I. I don't know why people are badgering him for falling like he had. He's rushing out of there with a bunch of Secret Service people trying to keep him down. He's also, like, 80 years old. You know, like, whatever. Who gives a.
- [23:18]
Will
Well, I think the point is to be down. Really? Like, yeah, point of view. You know, it's like, we'd much rather have him fall than you up. And, you know, Atari, I mean, I think they're. They're literally like, get down. Get down. You know, so, yeah, do we have.
- [23:32]
Charlie Sykes
We don't have what he said to 60 Minutes. He said he was. He was told to get down, I believe, and that he didn't fall. But. Yeah, so that. That was the other one. There's two more. One is Stephen Miller with his wife Katie, where they were, you know, Steve Miller is protecting her, uh, and ushers her out. Let's take a look at that. If we have the photo of it or the video of it. All right, you can see that's not him, but here he is. And good for him. Oh, you know, I'm not good for him. Okay. Whoa. Yeah. So good for Stephen Miller. That. That's how you do it. That's how you do it.
- [24:06]
Will
You.
- [24:06]
Charlie Sykes
You know that. I thought that was noble. Good for him. You know, you don't really give kudos to Stephen Miller all that much on the. On these channels, but I'm. I'm happy that he did that. Which, though, leads me to this one, which cracked me up a little bit. The one moment of levity from an otherwise shitty night, which is RFK and Cheryl Hines. Let's look at the video. Just contrast it with Stephen Miller and Katie. Here we go. No, that's not it. We gotta get the video. Oh, there it is, right behind him.
- [24:38]
Will
Oh, wow.
- [24:42]
Charlie Sykes
Hold on. Let's play it again. No, we gotta play it again one
- [24:44]
Will
more time because it's the one thing
- [24:46]
Charlie Sykes
that made me laugh. All right, Steven's gonna come across. Thank you, Stephen. Look, right there. There's Cheryl being completely left behind.
- [24:58]
Will
Yep.
- [25:00]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, my God. Any thoughts?
- [25:03]
Will
I mean, you know, it's. Again, you know, I. I feel like the Secret Service kind of grabs you, you know, and kind of ushers you out. You know, I didn't see, you know, some speculation that, you know, this is a real sign of, like, how clouded up you are in the administration. Obviously, some of these people got rushed away by the Secret Service, and some people, they're like, all right, you'll. You'll find your own way out.
- [25:25]
Charlie Sykes
Is that it's. To get the Secret Service escort out really is clout.
- [25:30]
Will
Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, maybe an awkward thing to discuss with the Secret Service afterwards. Like, guys, I know that I. I noticed no one came for me.
- [25:38]
Charlie Sykes
Okay.
- [25:39]
Will
Yeah.
- [25:39]
Charlie Sykes
I suppose, again, I'm gonna just reiterate that I would have been under the table.
- [25:45]
Will
Yeah.
- [25:46]
Charlie Sykes
Like, I. I'm not. I'm not, like, pretending to be brave. I did love the. I love the agent who just sat there. The CA Agent. Who's that? CAA agent who sat there and ate his salad. Did you see that one?
- [25:56]
Will
Yes. And he said. He's like, I'm not getting on that dirty floor. I mean, I. I think we all wish we'd be. We'd be that cool under fire, but,
- [26:03]
Charlie Sykes
you know, well, he was just like, it.
- [26:05]
Will
I'm old.
- [26:06]
Charlie Sykes
I'm hungry. The floor of the Hilton is nasty. The carpet's been trampled on.
- [26:10]
Will
Dana. Dana White, the UFC guy, was also. He was looking around like, whoa, this is crazy. You know, like, oh, I gotta take it all in.
- [26:18]
Charlie Sykes
Any other reflections from the dinner before we move on?
- [26:22]
Will
No, I don't think so. I mean, it was obviously, you know, eventful. Glad no one was hurt. But the. Yeah. Kind of a crazy situation.
- [26:29]
Charlie Sykes
Let's play just to end the segment and to underscore why I'm not, like, I'm being defensive about this, but whatever. Why we are focused on how they reacted and, like, the imagery and all that stuff is because they care a lot about this stuff, as you pointed out. You know, they're tweeting out photos from the Oval Office and the. The iconography of the butler moment they're trying to recreate and all that stuff. And so it's important for us to talk about it. And then you get stuff like this Cash Patel this morning, going on Fox to talk about this stuff. And, you know, first and foremost, like, there is this kind of old rule that you're not supposed to talk about live investigations. Right. Like, that's just not something that DOJ does Except when they want to. And this administration clearly has no problem doing that. But then Cash goes on, and he uses this opportunity not just to, like, talk in sort of a measured, somber fashion about what happened, but to pump up Trump. So let's play it.
- [27:29]
Cash Patel
Thanks so much for having me on. First and foremost, I want to remind your audience of President Trump's leadership, literally courage under fire, that evening at the press conference to announce the world and be as transparent as possible. He's assembled the greatest law enforcement team that I've ever seen. And between myself and Mark Maine Mullen and the interagency in the White House, we are prepared to tackle this investigation as we've done since it started.
- [27:55]
Charlie Sykes
Like, you know, just be a White House spokesperson at that point. Right, like, join the press shot.
- [28:00]
Will
Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, you know, Cash, I think, loves flouting that rule about investigations. I mean, he's more than happy to talk about them.
- [28:08]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, all right, we're gonna switch to what?
- [28:12]
Will
All right.
- [28:12]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, there was a bunch of stuff.
- [28:13]
Will
That's what people came for.
- [28:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that was happening simultaneously to this. So there was the. You know, there's a bunch of parties that just so people understand, there's parties that happen on Thursday night. On Friday night. Saturday during the dinner, Saturday before the dinner, Saturday after the dinner, I was actually at a karaoke bar with some friends, so I never actually attended. I was gonna go to the. To the substack party, which was happening simultaneously with the dinner. But then word of this shooting happened, and I just ran home. You were at the substack party? I was while this was happening. So I'm gonna just step away. See the. For. First of all, tell us what the party was like with knowledge that. With knowledge that substack is our publishing.
- [29:02]
Will
Yes.
- [29:02]
Charlie Sykes
One of the. And we love them.
- [29:04]
Will
I'll give Sub Sack this. They Com. They committed to the theme. A bit of a surprise, but basically, I think to set the scene, we have to understand that the subject party was at the Renwick Museum, which is part of the White House complex, and it's right across the street from the White House. So I start coming in there around 8:30. That was like, roughly about when the shooting happened. I think it happened a few minutes earlier. And then the news kind of starts filtering out, but basically because the Renwick right now has a museum of about, like. Like farm stuff. The. The.
- [29:32]
Charlie Sykes
The farm or foreign farm? Farm.
- [29:35]
Will
Like farm. Oh, okay. And so. And so it was a cowboy themed party. So you have giant glittering corn stalks.
- [29:44]
Charlie Sykes
Did you know this prior to going?
- [29:46]
Will
No, no. I was walking in and everyone checking me in was wearing like, like cowboy shirts and bandanas. And I was like, is this a cowboy party? And they said, oh, yeah. So they had a giant substack logo in butter and they had, they had cowboys. And this is interesting, they had cowboys who were quite handsome men from the show. And we found that one of my friends talked to the cowboys. One of them was so hot. He was on the HBO show F Boy island, right? So he was one of the hunks. And so then they were handing out, and this is a bit odd, they had big boxes of cannolis. And then I'd have to go up to this like, you know what they call a giga chad, right? Like, I'd have to come up and be like, can I have a cannoli? And he's like, sure. You want some sprinkles, little fella? You know, so. So that's the scene.
- [30:34]
Charlie Sykes
Wait, sorry, cannolis. Is that like a farm?
- [30:38]
Will
I didn't get that connection either. But you know, you know, you know, here we. We trust in sub stack. You know, I. Okay, Mr. Subs, I will never question
- [30:46]
Charlie Sykes
substack because they're great, but cannolis doesn't really quite fit the farm vibe. Like, what would your farm. I would have done like stalks of corn.
- [30:56]
Will
That's. Here's your corn. You know, there was a lot of that. So then. And this is going to set the stage for the brawl. You know, this isn't just the Will party report, so stay darn near brawl, but basically about 8, 45, 9 o' clock, they say, okay, gang, because the shooting at the White House, we're so close to the White House.
- [31:13]
Charlie Sykes
This building is now on stop for a second. How did you find out about the shooting? I was, I guess, well, I was
- [31:18]
Will
walking in with some of our, our Bulwark and Longwell colleagues and we were looking at Twitter and people were saying, oh, oh. And so we, we get through and then, you know, the substack guy gets up and he gives a speech and he says, so, yeah, there was a shooting at the White House, or, excuse me, at the, the Washington Hilton. And it's our understanding that we're safe, but out of an abundance of caution, no one can leave this building or enter. So now we're on lockdown.
- [31:41]
Charlie Sykes
Oh my God.
- [31:42]
Will
And you know, the Secret Service was milling around outside with like AR15s, I would come to find out. So it kind of had Like a, you know, we were kind of in. People were comparing it to sort of like an after prom lock in. So basically you're stuck in this building with all the most notorious characters of substack for two hours.
- [32:01]
Charlie Sykes
Did you just eat cannolis?
- [32:04]
Will
I eat some cannolis. I wrote, you know, I, you know, I, I like a party. You know, I was kind of rotating and then I hit a point where I was like, oh, wait, no one knew was coming into this thing and I've already burned through everyone I needed to talk to. So, you know, it was interesting social experience. But to set up our. Next thing you know, we're looking around who's, you know, all these subset characters. Clavicular had vowed to mog me at this very event. He didn't make it. So I win by default. I'm going to assume. So we're looking around. Several people said to me, oh, Michael Tracy is here. And I said, you know, we'll get into who that is. But I was like, well, yeah, it's a party. Who cares? It's, you know, it's substack. But, you know, this was a. This is Chekhov's Michael Tracy.
- [32:44]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, before we get to Michael Tracy, I just. Because you mentioned Clavicular, just a quick aside. There's a video going around that he may have impregnated his girlfriend. Is there any veracity to it?
- [32:58]
Will
This was a big topic at the party. I. Look, we have a false flag coming tonight. It's gonna be. It's gonna blow the doors off. I'll just preview it right now. Clavicular has made a powerful alliance with a reputed, and I say reputed with saying. There's a lot of court documents behind this claim with a reputed powerful member of the Israeli mafia who has a history of cutting people's ears off. Allegedly, he's claimed to have done this. So we'll be getting into this in false flag. But anyways, Clavicular, I don't think he's. He's gotten this woman pregnant. I think this was a bit of a stunt. He's only known her for 10 days. You know, we can all do the math in our heads there. So I don't think he's, he's. He can be duped though, as we're going to find out in false flag. So I think, you know, who knows?
- [33:45]
Charlie Sykes
Wait, can you explain the math? Sorry. Well, I get the math. Tell her about it
- [33:54]
Will
myself there.
- [33:55]
Charlie Sykes
Trying to explain that one that would easily go viral. I'm a little bit upset. I gotta Be honest, because we don't need any more people talking about the Israeli, you know, forces that are behind the scenes, period. He goes and he does it. All right, back to the main show. So explain who Michael Tracy is, please.
- [34:16]
Will
Okay, so Michael Tracy is a guy, and you. You probably have some background to fill in here as well.
- [34:20]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, I'm not touching this.
- [34:23]
Will
Who was kind of like a. In, like what? Like, the Obama administration was like, sort of a. Like, relatively mainline liberal reporter. And then he sort of went. He's become much more of a contrarian guy. He does a podcast with Matt Taibe now. He had, like, a lot of kind of, like, you know, he became what, you know, some people on the Internet kind of call a wall cow. Like, he kind of gets into these. You know, it's a guy who produces LOLs for you to laugh at. Like, he kind of had, like, he. You know, there was an incident with Maxine Waters where, yes. You know, she was, like, in her 70s, maybe even 80s already at that point, where he tweeted, like, there was like, some scrum and he claimed vaccine Waters assaulted him. And you see the video, and she's sort of like, pushing him aside to, you know, let her through. And he was, you know, just. Oh, you know, so that's his backstory.
- [35:11]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. So all I saw was that, like, as all this real drama is happening, like, scary real drama involving a potential shooting and assassination at the White House correspondence dinner. And we're all following it frantically and trying to get information. All I see is this tweet from Michael Tracy going after Jim Acosta, basically calling him. And we can put it up. Let's put up the. The Tracy tweet. Still have no idea whatever went on with Trump tonight. Who cares? Just know that Jim Acosta threw a hissing fit. Jim, meet me in front of the Hampton Inn. And then he puts the address of the. The poor Hampton Inn gets called out. Okay, so what happened?
- [35:52]
Will
Okay, so, yeah, so, you know, I. I was having a, you know, a substack conversation with someone, and then someone came up and said, Michael Tracy just got in a fight. And I. Oh, my gosh. And you have to keep in mind, there were. There were substack staffers again in cowboy shirts preventing us from leaving. They were like, barring the stairs physically. So under this environment, here's what happened. So Michael Tracy, over the past year or so, has become kind of like an Epstein counter narrative guy. He's done a lot to, you know, tried to cast doubt on the testimony, like Virginia Giuffre various sort of Epstein victims. And so, you know, look, I mean, I, I haven't looked closely at his claims. I mean, you know, he's, he's welcome to do it, but, but he, you know, he's kind of this nemesis for, for people who are, you know, pursuing the Epstein story. And he's been very critical of Julie K. Brown, the, the Miami Herald reporter who kind of like got Epstein back in the news. So as we find out, basically, Julie Brown shows up at the party, Michael Tracy's there, and he, according to him, starts, you know, sort of accosting her about. She's claimed or suggested on Twitter that he's being paid by people connected to Epstein to sort of to, to criticize what we understand to be the Epstein story. And then, you know, a lot of people, I think, you know, tensions are already running high, right, because of the shooting. And so a lot of people kind of like, what's all this shouting? And, you know, he's kind of a, kind of a crazy looking guy. And basically security takes him out at Jim Acosta, formerly of cnn, he sort of intervenes and has some words with Michael Tracy. Michael Tracy, as you can see from that tweet, challenges him to a fight. Now, one thing I want to note here is because of the shooting, again, not just the White House area, several blocks around the White House are under total lockdown. When I left this party later, I tried to take a go down one street and a subsect person was like, they will shoot you if you go down this guy. So the idea that Michael Tracy and Jim Acosta were gonna like the secured service are you boys can settle it like men. Oh, you know, we'll set up some of the cordons over here.
- [37:52]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, let's just move some of the fencing to get you guys a stage. Jim Acosta to respond on Twitter. This whole thing. Here we go. We saw what you did at the substack party. You're bullying Julie K. Brown in a menacing way and would not let her walk away from you. Your behavior was shameful and ugly. So, yes, I stepped in, as did several other people, including security, to escort Brown away from you. It continues because Michael Tracy then goes to the Hampton Inn. I guess that's where he was staying, and he posts this Butte.
- [38:24]
Will
Yeah, so it's a picture of the Hampton Inn. And he says, jim, I'm literally waiting for you right now, you piece of.
- [38:31]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, that poor car that's just sitting there. Some Uber drivers getting strays here.
- [38:36]
Will
Well, and in fact, you know, I want to know. Michael Tracy even said he had extended his stay in D.C. later in the weekend. He said, look, I'm taking all comers. I'm still at the Hampton Inn, if anyone wants to come. And, you know, you know, as they say, talk, get hit.
- [38:49]
Charlie Sykes
Are you gonna go to the Hampton Inn today just to see what happens?
- [38:52]
Will
You know, some people did swing by and they said, no, no, I don't see the fight. You know. Yeah, this reminds me of. There was a classic Internet moment where, you know, I think two sports guys. The meet me in Temecula, where these guys are, like, gonna fight each other in Temecula, California. So, you know, we got our own here at the White House correspondence.
- [39:08]
Charlie Sykes
I have no recollection of that one. Yeah, I might send you down to the Hamptons and. Or at least just call the Hampton and to just sort of of get a sense if they know what's happening, like, are they ready for this? This could be a real, real moment.
- [39:19]
Will
The rings set up in the basement. You know, fair fight.
- [39:25]
Charlie Sykes
All right, I think we've devoted.
- [39:26]
Will
Oh, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. One thing I want to point out here. This is crucial for the scene setting. Can we put up the picture of the butter cow? Yeah.
- [39:34]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, my God. This was in the.
- [39:38]
Will
So again, yes. This was in the Renwick. So this is a giant frozen butter cow. And you can see it's surrounded by glass because it's really cold. What I want to point out to everyone is this famous fight took place roughly 10 to 15ft away from a butter cow. So that's sort of like. So, you know, the very serious stuff happening at the Washington Hilton, bit of a, you know, bit less serious fight by the butter cow at the Red. That photo's by me, by the way. I just want to make sure everyone was aware.
- [40:04]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, well, look at you. Multi dimensional journalism right here doesn't just write or talk on live shows. He can talk, do photography, too, folks. That was an incredible stuff. All right, how many canolas did you have? I need to know.
- [40:16]
Will
I just had the one. I, you know, I had some other stuff. They had some sliders. You know, I felt, you know, I had already had dinner, but. But I was like, you know, I gotta experience this. This cannoli. FYI.
- [40:27]
Charlie Sykes
What's your. What's your take. What's your take on proper etiquette in terms of, like, meal? Like, how you're supposed to, like, nourish yourself on these events because, like, you can have a dinner beforehand and then you Go out to these events. Or you can just skip the din. Just eat a ton of little pass arounds at these events. What's your preference?
- [40:48]
Will
Well, my preference is sort of like, eat whatever in front of me. I mean, like I ate, you know, then I was talking to someone and I was like, well, what the heck? They got sliders. I gotta get some sliders. Yeah, so that's my strategy.
- [40:59]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I had. I stuffed myself at. There was a crooked media party. I stuffed myself. I had these little crab cakes. I must have had like 10 of them is by the end I was just like, I can't do it again. But I did not eat dinner beforehand. So that was my dinner. All right. Hey, look, buddy, thank you for doing this. A bit of a odd show, kind of weaving into the serious and unserious. But I think we handled it deftly. I really do. I think we're real pro.
- [41:21]
Will
I hope so. You know, we read.
- [41:23]
Charlie Sykes
We read a soul gummy ad in the middle of it all too. Like, I mean, come on. That was. That was like, really. That was good stuff from us, if I do say so. Program.
- [41:33]
Will
Oh, wait.
- [41:34]
Charlie Sykes
Programming note. You have a story you want to tell. I almost forgot about this. Weird.
- [41:37]
Will
Yeah. So we have.
- [41:39]
Charlie Sykes
I gotta set it up. I gotta set it up.
- [41:40]
Will
Up.
- [41:41]
Charlie Sykes
We are doing live shows. We've talked about this for everyone, but we're doing live shows out in San Diego in LA. May 20, May 21. I'll be there. Tim, Sarah are going to be there. These live shows are awesome. It's different than this type of live show, which is just online. This is in person live and we got tickets if you want to get them. The bullwork.com events is where you can get them. Folks like, honestly, if you're in the area, I would highly recommend doing it. It's such a fun evening. Now, Will came up to me today. He's like, our great San Diego story. What is it?
- [42:12]
Will
Yeah, my San Diego story is like this. You know, I've only been to San Diego once. I'm more of an east coast boy. But I went there once and I had number one. I had carne asada fries. Have you had these? They're a San Diego delicacy. No, they're like nachos with french fries. You'll have to get them when you're there. And the San Diego Zoo has a fabulous hippo exhibit. And I love hippos. So I actually went to see the hippos a couple of times. So it was a near perfect day. And I was thinking about this and I thought, what would have made it a perfect day? A Bulwark Live show in the evening. And so hopefully, you know, a couple other things for people to do if they go.
- [42:43]
Charlie Sykes
So just to be clear, you wake up, you go see some hippos.
- [42:47]
Will
Yeah.
- [42:47]
Charlie Sykes
Chow down on some carne asada fries, and you top it off with a Bulwark live show. And it just does the perfect day. You know, maybe we can convince Acosta and Tracy to come as our guests.
- [42:58]
Will
Yeah. Bury the hatchet, boys. This is why we need a White House ballroom. So these guys are separated, these maniacs. We can't have them brawling.
- [43:07]
Charlie Sykes
Gotta build a bottom if you're gonna have Tracy. And a cost to fight it out. You need a secure location. All right, folks, thanks for tuning in to Maga Mondays. We'll do it again on Monday. Next Monday, hopefully with a little less serious stuff happening in the backdrop. We like to have fun here too. Will, thanks so much. Looking forward to your clavicular dispatch this afternoon. For those who are not subscribers yet, do subscribe to the Bulwark. You get Maga Monday is the show on Bulwark Takes. And as a reminder, we have those live shows out in San Diego, IN LA on the 20th and the 21st. Hopefully you get a ticket and we will see you there. Come say hi to me, Tim and or Sarah. Till then, take care everybody. Bye bye.
- [43:47]
Will
Thanks everyone.
- [43:49]
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- [44:10]
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