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- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Okay, it's kind of embarrassing how bad.
- [00:02]
Andrew Egger
I am at budgeting.
- [00:03]
Commercial Announcer
Let me see your charges.
- [00:04]
Tim Miller
Ugh.
- [00:04]
Andrew Egger
Fine.
- [00:05]
Commercial Announcer
You spent over $600 on takeout last month.
- [00:08]
Tim Miller
I can't cook.
- [00:09]
Andrew Egger
You know this.
- [00:10]
Commercial Announcer
Yes, I have had your disgusting food, but you're literally paying for a meal subscription on top of that.
- [00:15]
Andrew Egger
Whoa, wait, wait, wait. That.
- [00:17]
Tim Miller
That can't be right.
- [00:18]
Commercial Announcer
Look, just get Rocket Money. It shows you all of your expenses in one place and even tracks your subscriptions. And if there's a subscription you don't want, which for you, there are a lot you don't need, you can just cancel right in the app with a few taps.
- [00:30]
Andrew Egger
So you mean I don't call anyone to cancel?
- [00:33]
Commercial Announcer
Nope. No hold times or anything. And they'll even try to get you a refund on some of the months of wasted money, which is a lot of money for you.
- [00:41]
Tim Miller
Okay. Okay.
- [00:42]
Commercial Announcer
And if you thought I was done, I'm not. The app can also help you make a budget that works for your income. Anytime you get close to your spending limits, it alerts you so you know exactly where your money is going at all times.
- [00:53]
Andrew Egger
All right, Emin, what do I have to do?
- [00:54]
Commercial Announcer
Go to RocketMoney.com cancel or download the app from the Apple or Google Play stores.
- [01:00]
Tim Miller
With stays under $250 a night, VRBO makes it easy to celebrate sweater weather. You could book a cabin stay with leaf views for days. Or a brownstone in a city where festivals are just a walk away. Or a lakeside home with a fire pit for cozy nights with friends. Or if you're not a sweater person, we can call it Corduroy weather. More flexible, and with stays under $250 a night, you can book a home that suits your exact needs. Book now@vrbo.com hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark, here with my buddy Andrew Egger, writer of the Morning Shots newsletter. If you need a morning newsletter, that's much better than the Politico newsletter. They just gave Donald Trump an award today, I'd recommend signing up for the morning shots@the bulwark.com. edgar. Donald Trump was at the Mount Airy Casino Resort. If he's going to leave the White House and he's not going to go to one of his golf courses, he's. You better bet he's going to be at a casino resort in the Poconos. And he was there to talk about.
- [02:03]
The economy. Ostensibly Susie Wiles, who is new nickname for. We'll get to in a second. The chief of Staff was out there saying, you know, Donald's got to get out there again. He's got a campaign. We're going to get the rallies back going. He's going to get the campaign. Donald, we're going to get the juice back. You watched it, we've got a couple clips. But what were your top takeaway? What's your top takeaway from watching?
- [02:28]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. So I was interested to know what this was gonna be like going in, because Trump has not been doing these. I mean, like, I had almost not noticed that he had stopped, but really, for kind of the first time since he arrived on the scene, Trump has not been doing rallies this year. He did them all through his 2016 campaign. He did them all through all three of his campaigns and all through his first presidential term, right?
- [02:48]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [02:49]
Andrew Egger
And there's been some question like, oh, is Trump kind of, like, losing the ear of his people? Is he not, like, you know, having that ear to the ground, like, he's like, he's had in the past. And there's also been questions like, you know, what'll it be? Like now he's kind of going out there in sort of defensive mode with. With the milk starting to curdle and the mood starting to sour, and what was it? What was it going to be like? And the answer is exactly like, every single other fucking one of these he's ever done, right down to all the same laugh line and all the same kind of boo lines. And it really was just kind of like a. My jaw was on the floor within, like, five or ten minutes. Just like, I guess for some of these people, it's maybe their first one or whatever. Or maybe he's just playing the hits by now, but, like, aren't you a little bored after a decade of, like, ah, look at the fake news back there in the fake news pen. Everybody pointing, boo. Like, is nobody a little bit sick.
- [03:40]
Commercial Announcer
Of that by now?
- [03:41]
Tim Miller
Where's the beef?
- [03:41]
Andrew Egger
I guess they're having a good time.
- [03:42]
Tim Miller
Can't get no respect, Donald. Can't get no respect. You know, it's the same material. That's true. I guess I would say this a top observation I would have, and I just want to cop to this. You said you were going to watch it. I was like, fine, I'll watch it with you. I turned it on. I did a couple minutes, and I was like, I can't. And then I muted it for a while, then I turned it back on. So I didn't watch the whole thing.
- [04:05]
Andrew Egger
We should note it's ongoing as we speak.
- [04:07]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's still ongoing. We quit.
- [04:09]
Andrew Egger
We felt like we had it. Maybe he'll break some crazy news and we'll have missed it.
- [04:12]
Tim Miller
We'll have to do it in the. We'll do it in post.
- [04:14]
Donald Trump
Let me tell you, black people love Trump. I got the biggest vote. I got the biggest vote with black people. They know a scam better than anybody. They know what it is to be scammed. Thank you, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. We did great. Thank you. I like this guy.
- [04:33]
Tim Miller
My view, though, was there are kind of like, two narratives that are out there about him, and you can only judge so much based on one speech. Right. Like, one is potentially that he's, as you mentioned, like, losing touch with, like, his people and the others, that he's tired and old and can't do this anymore. And on the latter, he seemed to have the same vigor. I didn't watch his walk that closely. He wasn't really doing the weird walk. It didn't look like he looked like an old guy, but kind of normal old. I don't know that he gave us a lot of evidence, though, that his finger is on the pulse of people's concerns about the economy, though. I don't know that he's assuaged many concerns about this as he spent much of the speech complaining about the people who say that there are problems out there.
- [05:17]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. So this is sort of like the subtext of this speech. The reason he's getting back out there now is because the people around him have been, like, kind of quietly and with growing alarm, trying to say, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, like, this economic message is getting away from you. People are really, really starting to look poorly on this whole project. They don't like the tariffs. I mean, nobody's saying this to him in quite this blunt of terms, but this is kind of the subtext is like, you have economic stuff to address. And for weeks, Trump's response to that has been, no, that's a bunch of lies from the media and fake polls. And actually, we're in this golden age and we're richer than ever, and everybody's having a lovely time. And so he's started saying this thing in recent weeks that, that, you know, he's. He's been complaining about the Democrats affordability hoax. Right. That, that, that, you know, Democrats are talking about affordability now. But it's this. It's this, you know, it's this lie. It's this, it's this sneaky move that they shouldn't be allowed to do. Because there's a lot of inflation under Joe Biden. Interestingly, this was one thing he got into in the speech. He kind of.
- [06:19]
Tim Miller
We've got the affordability hoax clip. Should we just watch it?
- [06:21]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, let's. Let's do that.
- [06:22]
Tim Miller
Look at that.
- [06:22]
Donald Trump
Our prices are coming down. Their prices. It's a hoax. They're just. Remember, they said the Inflation Reduction Act. Remember that? Billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, the inflation. And after they got it approved, because we had a few Republicans that went along with that whole hoax. And remember, we're going to pass the inflation. And I said, there's nothing to do with inflation reduction there. There's nothing to do with. That has nothing. Didn't even. It had nothing to do with inflation either way, other than raising inflation, perhaps because it was such a stupid. And then they admitted. They fought it like, oh, no, this is inflation. After they got the thing passed, then they said, we agree it has nothing to do with inflation. Screw you, we don't care. That's what it is. We're dealing with bad people. And the word affordability is the exact same thing. And I can't say affordability, hoax, because I agree the prices were too high. So I can't go to hoax because they'll misconstrue that. But they use the word affordability, and that's their only word. They say affordability, and everyone says, oh, that must mean Trump has high prices. No, our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country.
- [07:45]
Tim Miller
Okay, that's enough. This is enough of Trump. Andrew, have you got the message there? Was that clear his view.
- [07:54]
Andrew Egger
And this is the thing, right? And you were talking about, like, the difficulty of sort of assessing the vigor, right? And how with it he is. And this is like the problem with Trump is like, he's so weirdly, uniquely himself in the way that he talks about all this stuff. Like any other person going up there talking in this way, you would be like basket case, immediate basket case. But he's kind of been doing it for years, right? I mean, he's. He's obviously gotten worse. He's. He's started leaning on this concept of the weave, because this is just how his brain is. He just follows it down every. Every cul de sac and every little cranny of. Of thoughts that he has. There was one other moment in here when, when he started to say, oh, we're gonna break some news for the fake news media. And he started to. Joe Biden put four people on The Federal Reserve. But then he got distracted. He started talking about Elon Omar and It was like 15 minutes before he came back around. Literally 15 minutes before he came back around to say. Yeah, what I was going to say before is we think maybe they might have been authorized with an auto pin signature, which would mean we could just get rid of all of them. But he hadn't even looked that up. You know, he was just like, this is a thought I had. Maybe we should check and see if those were auto pinned, guys. We'll get to the bottom of it. So I mean, this is maybe, maybe he's worse. He's older. He's getting older every day, right? But it's like it all comes through this weird like force field of, of like the weird unique Trump thing that honestly kind of helps him because people just like read it as him instead of as like old maniac.
- [09:21]
Tim Miller
The lack of clarity, I mean like his lack of ability to talk about a message. And at one point he was talking about how these people are telling me that I have to talk about affordability, meaning his advisors and, and you know, he's very clear talking about who's to blame. And like the one thing he's got down is, is. Is Joe Biden.
- [09:39]
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- [10:57]
Tim Miller
As I mentioned, I was turning it on and off. I turned it off on the first time. Within one minute, he'd already mentioned Sleepy Joe. I turned it off and then I turned it back on. And within a couple minutes, he's polling the crowd as to whether Sleepy Joe or Crooked Joe is better. And that clip we displayed an extended kind of incoherent riff about the Inflation Reduction act, which nobody remembers even what that is except him, and about whether that's inflation is up or down. He does talk a little bit about other people praising him. He mentioned the Emir of Qatar praising him, which is shocker when you bought a plane from him and the King of Saudi Arabia, I think he, I assume he's talking about Crown Prince MBS there. And it's like not a lot of clarity when it came to, you know, the ostensible goal of talking to people about their economic concerns and how he's working to make them better. A lot, a lot of focus on the praise he's received from foreign dictators and from the, and the blame shifting to Biden.
- [12:02]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. And it's not like the message, the economic message that they are trying to get him to roll out there is particularly complicated. Right. I mean, the message they have decided to stick with right now is Joe Biden broke everything affordability wise, and we are fixing it and we're in the process of fixing it, and it's only going to get better and better and better, which is fine as a message, I guess. It's pretty simple. And even Trump, you know, struggles to fuck it up up there. But it's also totally incorrect. You know, I mean, like all of the kind of. Like, the reason, the reason this is becoming such an affordability problem for him is because people perceive that it is not getting better. It's not getting better at all. It's getting worse and worse and worse. The impacts of the tariffs are like, you know, slowly every business in America is, is losing ground against them. And finally the ones that have with or withstood the urge to raise their prices all along are like buckling down and like, they're, they're raising them and people are feeling them and it's just going to keep happening. So I don't know. I mean, I guess like, in one sense he did not really accomplish the thing he came out to do, which is to make that specific pitch, but in another sense, the pitch is not good either. You know, the pitch is not, is not sufficient to the moment. So it's like, even if he had come out and been really laser focused, I don't really know, like, what he would have to do is give up on the tariffs. What he would have to do is like be like, my bad and change direction. And that's not going to happen. So he's a little bit stuck.
- [13:26]
Tim Miller
Yeah. He talked about how tariffs was his favorite word. We get in a little bit. He shouts out his staff quite a bit. A lot of time discussing the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, how great he's. John, he's just doing a heck of a job. He makes Scott Besant stand up. Not to be gay bashed, which is, I guess, a plus of what it could have been. But to talk about how handsome he is, how he's out of central casting.
- [13:51]
Andrew Egger
And how mean he is. I think Trump was surprised to learn that Besant has this kind of like killer instinct when it comes to, you know, financial dealings. And I think that is actually the thing that he really likes and respects.
- [14:03]
Tim Miller
Well, you know, gays, we can do a read. Okay. You know, famously something gays are good at. And then he starts complimenting the women around him on his team. And I do want to play a little bit of that clip where he's mentioning Susie Wiles and Carolyn and I.
- [14:22]
Donald Trump
Have no higher priority than making America affordable again. That's what we're going to do. And again, they caused the high prices and we're bringing them down. It's a simple message. If I had one message tonight, you know, this is being covered like all over the world. This is crazy because I haven't made a speech in a little while. You know, when you win, when you win, you say I can now rest. So Suzy Trump, do you know Susie Trump sometimes referred to as Susie Wild.
- [14:48]
Tim Miller
Susie Trump, Not a bad say.
- [14:50]
Donald Trump
She's the great chief of staff at the. They don't use the word chief of staff anymore because of the Indians got extremely upset. But now the Indians actually want their name used, which is true. They never didn't want it used. But the chief of staff and she's fantastic. She said, we have to start campaigning, sir. I said, I won. What do I have to do already? They said we have to win the midterms and you're the guy that's going to take us over the midterm.
- [15:23]
Where's.
- [15:23]
Tim Miller
I promise, I promise the payoff is worth us staying through this.
- [15:27]
Donald Trump
Come on, Susie.
- [15:28]
Tim Miller
Maybe not. You'll probably get gross.
- [15:30]
Donald Trump
Susie. Susie's the greatest. Who do we see there? We even brought our superstar today, Caroline. Stand up girl.
- [15:42]
Tim Miller
I would have to rank Caroline as pop. Probably the best of the bunch on their White House press secretaries.
- [15:47]
Donald Trump
Isn't she great? Is Caroline great?
- [15:52]
You know, when she goes on television, Fox, like, I mean, they dominate. They dominate. When she gets up there with that beautiful face and those lips that don't stop like, like a little machine gun, she's got no fear.
- [16:06]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So we got. Got the chief of staff's name wrong and complimented the press secretary's lips. So, you know.
- [16:16]
I guess that's Trump. Guess that's where we're at. I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on that, Andrew, but I did feel like I had to watch it, so the viewers had to watch it.
- [16:24]
Andrew Egger
I sure don't. Yeah, that was. That was a peak moment of like, man, we're just really.
- [16:30]
We talked about the age thing. There is definitely a gross old man energy that comes through right there.
- [16:37]
Tim Miller
In particular, we had a couple more clips. I don't know if I can stomach any more Trump tonight.
- [16:43]
Andrew Egger
It was the same old shit. It really was.
- [16:46]
Tim Miller
Yeah. The two things I pulled out here which are worth mentioning. He does do the four more years thing and he says, I'm not allowed to run. But then they do the four more years chant. You know, that got as much of an applause as anything that you saw tonight. Sort of tells you where the crowd's at. And then he does a extended rant about Elon Omar. And one thing that he says in that rant is all she does is bitch. And I guess one other observation I had is he's really letting loose on the cussing. A lot of cussing, you know, and I cuss. So it's not really. It's just an observation. Like, all she does is bitch. Is like a real. I don't know, there's an edge to that. This little misogynistic edge to that for me. And, you know, a lot of very lengthy, as you mentioned, rant about Elon. So those are the other observations. I don't know if you had anything else.
- [17:45]
Andrew Egger
I've been letting the cussing fly a little in this video, too. Maybe it's just something in the air this evening, but on the Ilhan Omar and the sort of the Somali rant, he's been doing a lot of this the last few weeks, it was very interesting to see. This was another moment when the crowd just sort of came alive. Right. And they're cheering and they're jeering and they're chanting, send her back. You know, she's an American citizen. But they're chanting send her back, presumably to Somalia. And it was striking to me because again, this is supposed to be an affordability thing, right? And like the affordability message, people are like, you know, kind of idly clapping along with his talking points and whatever. They're happy that he says, like the price of the Thanksgiving turkeys was down or whatever, gas is down. But like the stuff these guys really still come alive for is not the affordability stuff. And Trump knows this. I mean, I think this is like part of why Trump has sort of like resisted this, this push from his advisors to talk about, you know, affordability because he sees it as sort of this issue he has to go on the defensive about. And he knows what gets, what gets his people going. And it's, it's the bigotry, you know, it's the, it's the, it's the hate, it's the, like, let's all get our blood pumping while we talk about the people that, whose lives we're gonna destroy, you know, right around the corner, like any minute now we'll be sending her back. And isn't that so fun and so awesome and so, yeah, I think that's like, even when he's trying to come and like do this other thing where he's talking to the median voter, he's here in front of his people and they're all having a good time with the stuff that gets them going.
- [19:12]
Tim Miller
To me, the Somalis are filling the role of you need an enemy if you're Trump. And one of the things that I think, and there've been a lot of things that have got him out of his groove this year, mostly the self inflicted wounds of his own policy and focusing instead of on building a ballroom instead of doing populist right stuff. But kind of an atmospheric point that is too kind of what you talked about there is like he needs a foe and he needs somebody to get people routed out to be mad ass. Key Trump his whole career was the people in charge are idiots, they're stupid, they're screwing you over and you can't do that when you control everything. Right? And he tried it out a little bit on Jerome Powell.
- [19:59]
It's that guy Jerome Powell over there you should really be mad at. And that didn't really, that doesn't have the same oomph. And I do feel like the Somalis.
- [20:11]
Are the ones that are kind of filling that void.
- [20:15]
And it's a lot easier to vilify a group than to, like, make the case that your policies are making people's lives better. And I think that. Anyway, that'd be my observation on the Ilhan Omar bet. Okay, that's Andrew Egger. I'm Tim Miller. Hopefully he doesn't do too many of these. Donald Trump is tired and he doesn't want to do them anymore. Susie Trump slash. Susie Wiles really wants him out there.
- [20:41]
Maybe she just. Maybe she misses flying around. Who knows what's inside her head. But Susie Wiles wants him out there. I'm hoping she doesn't win because that wasn't fun for me. Edgar, appreciate you staying up with us.
- [20:57]
Everybody else subscribe to the feed. I thought you were going to talk. Everybody else subscribe to the feed. Comment. Tell us. We're great. We'll see you later.
- [21:18]
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- [22:03]
Tim Miller
Com hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.
- [22:16]
Andrew Egger
Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.
- [22:20]
Tim Miller
So that means a half day.
- [22:23]
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- [22:23]
Tim Miller
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- [22:27]
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