Alicia Menendez (5:55)

Donald Trump's latest probe into his 2020 election loss is facing its first major legal test today. Lawyers for Fulton County, Georgia, argued in federal court for the return of thousands of election ballots seized by the FBI earlier this year as part of the Justice Department's reinvestigation of Trump's claims of fraud in Georgia. Debunked by multiple audits, court rulings, and Trump's own former attorney general. Fulton county says agents misled the court with transparent conspiracy theories about what happened in Fulton county during the 2020 election in order to obtain a warrant for that unprecedented raid, which included a baffling appearance by Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Today's hearing and whatever the judge decides, it is a test run for Trump's doj, whose latest probe has alarmed election officials. It will set a precedent for future elections in Fulton county and other jurisdictions where Trump has yet to accept defeat. Joining me now, host of the Bulwark podcast, political analyst Tim Miller. The whole thing to me feels like a stretch stress test, of course, not just retrospectively, but prospectively.

Tim Miller (7:03)

Yeah, look, I think that's right. This is. I think that it's important to kind of disentangle what is happening, you know, with maga, with their efforts across a lot of different verticals, because there are some areas in which they're actually pretty effective and competent. And I think that we've seen that from Stephen Miller and the immigration regime, the deportation regime. Obviously, some of the ICE thugs they've hired have not been competent. But like the effort of we're going to do a mass deportation and they followed through on that Russ vote with Project 2025. We are going to dismantle the government. They followed through on that and been successful in a lot of ways less successful in other places. The DOJ effort to target foes and try to create a rationale for stealing the next election. That effort so far has been a disaster. I mean, these guys are keystone cops. They've been rejected by judges left and right. They've been unsuccessful at going after the folks on their enemies list, despite trying to. And they've been successful so far in their efforts to try to unbalance the playing table for the midterm election. I mean, they first tried to do the midterm redistricting thing. That has blown up in their face in large part thanks to Gavin Newsom and Abigail Spamberger and others. And I think this effort is in that vein, right, where they're trying to come up with pretext and rationale to create problems in November. And so far they're coming up with bupkis.

Alicia Menendez (8:37)

Tim, you know that I generally feel that you are way less optimistic than me. So if Michael Feinberg is less optimistic than you, then we are in a pretty dark place. But I do think he's connecting dots that you too often connect. Right. Which is each piece of this is a part of the larger whole, whether it is the president, Republicans demanding nationalized elections, whether it is redistricting, whether it is what they're trying to do with the SAVE Act. I mean, they are approaching this from every angle with the understanding that any gains they can make advantage them. And so I wonder sort of where you see us on the ladder of escalation when it comes to their efforts to mess with these midterms.

Tim Miller (9:22)

Yeah, that's true. And they're climbing up additional rungs on the ladder to go along with your metaphor of escalation, of trying to mess with the midterms. And I've, you know, we've been on before with Mark Elias and others. And for me, I think one thing that worries me in particular, and I've talked to Mark about is this post election, as Mike laid out there, you create doubts about elections happening in certain states or certain cities and then you challenge whether or not those people can be seated. I guess, though I do want to caveat this, I think it's important to be vigilant. I'm glad that there are people like Mark Elias out there that are fighting this and many others. And I do think we need to be ready for it. I just think we should also be clear eyed about the ways in which they failed and the ways in which their political project is failing right now. And you know, it's, you notice I use this Example, a lot after Doug Mastriano, you probably don't even remember him. He ran against Josh Shapiro in 2022. He was an insurrectionist. He ran for governor of Pennsylvania and he was talking like Trump, like, I'm not going to accept the election. This is rigged, it's fraudulent. And Josh Shapiro beat him by 18 points and Doug Mastriano just conceded. Nobody stormed the Capitol in Harrisburg because the election wasn't close enough to steal. And I think that, like, all of that is at play here. And I think that that part of the democracy movement, you know, making sure that the people who oppose this administration turn out in a midterm election and turn out in such numbers that these efforts, these kind of half baked efforts to try to screw up the election just don't match, you know, the scale of the opposition. And that's the trajectory I think we're headed on. I don't believe that we're. That, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be vigilant, that there won't be monkey business, that they're not going to try to pull whatever levers that they can. But I just think it's important to kind of see clearly where we're at and not let people get too hopeless about the importance of actually voting in the midterms.

Alicia Menendez (11:27)

After subjecting millions of Americans to long lines at airports across the nation, while thousands of thousands of TSA agents worked without pay for weeks, Donald Trump, in an attempt to clean up a mess entirely of his own making, just signed an executive order which will pay TSA workers as the Homeland Security shutdown drags on. That move would not have been necessary if House Republicans would have voted for the bill passed unanimously by the Senate to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security with the exception of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. But House Speaker Mike Johnson instead is refusing to bring that bill to a vote which will extend the shutdown as lawmakers leave town for a two week recess. We are back with Tim Miller. Listen, this has always been a very tricky caucus for Mike Johnson, but they just, they own this now, right? There's no question about that.

Tim Miller (12:17)

Yeah, I mean, this is like the least important element of it, which is who is winning the spin battle of this in Washington. But to the extent that it matters, the Democrats have officially won the spin battle. And the shutdown in Washington just Trump absolutely owned this. The Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate came back together and they said, look, this is getting out of hand. This is unfair to the TSA agents that they're getting paid. It's a disaster for travelers. And let's just pay, you know, let's just fund the other parts of DHS besides ICE and cbp and deal with those conversations later. It's a totally reasonable thing. That's what the Democrats have been proposing for a while. Republicans in the Senate agreed, and now Republicans in the House are holding it up. So there's really only one group of people that can be blamed for the long lines and the lack of pay for tsa, and it's the House Republicans. And I don't even really know what they want to plan to get out of it at this point. I guess maybe they, in theory, they would think that they'd have leverage to pressure the Democrats to fund ICE or cbp. But why would the Democrats do that right now when the House Republicans are the ones holding the bag?

Alicia Menendez (13:29)

Right? I mean, I understand your point about this in the broader context being the least important element of this debate. And yet the reason that it feels relevant to me is we are reminded over and over again that there is a small part of the Republican caucus and the larger Republican caucus notwithstanding, that makes it very difficult for common sense, practical, bipartisan measures to move. And you have made the point to me many times like, this is not a Republican Congress so concerned with legislating. And perhaps given their priorities, it is best that things aren't just, like, speeding through there, but in addition to sort of the role that Congress should be playing in pumping the brakes on this president's worst impulses, whether that is on Iran, whether that is on tariffs and all of the power that Republicans, Republicans, have conceded to the executives. There's also just a reminder of the opportunity cost of their not understanding, Tim, how to get things done.

Tim Miller (14:30)

Well, they just can't govern. This is just fundamentally it. They can't govern, and we're in a crisis. And you need to have people in Washington that can govern. And even if, you know, look, we've been in times before where you and I disagreed, Alicia, where people disagreed with who was in Congress. We understood that in times of crisis, in times of emergency, you needed grownups on Capitol Hill who could come together and say, hey, we need to figure out something to solve this crisis. These guys can't do that. Like, they're not capable of doing it. And so they're to blame for the continued lack of pay of the TSA agents and the continued lines that people are gonna have to suffer through this weekend. And, you know, look, I think it's an ominous sign as things start to unravel as a result of the Iran war. Be that economically or militarily or both. You know, there's nobody home on Capitol Hill to, you know, try to rein the president in. I'm not attached to the, you know

Angela (15:29)

the phrase, make America great again. I don't care. Then fine. That phrase sucks. Here's the thing, like, first of all, America is great. Make America greater. I'm down. But make America great again. And then it becomes a movement of a bunch of dorks. Because a lot of them are dorks. A lot of them, these really weird, uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something they cling to. And there's a lot of people that are just real, genuine patriots. And they're all lumped into this one group. And you gotta accept the dorks, too, that, like, the concept of making America great is a great idea. But as soon as you have a team and you allow anybody to join up, you don't even have tryouts for your team. So you've got a bunch of dip that are running around spouting out opinions, and you have to go along with them because they're maga.

Alicia Menendez (16:21)

Okay, I just wanna say Tim Miller, I'm not sure. And he didn't name names in that particular clip. It shouldn't have taken anyone who was listening or paying attention this long to realize that. Let's just say Stephen Miller is a huge dork and that his ideas are so radically out of line with where most Americans are and that he is not actually interested in making America great. And he focused on looking, vision, but still. Welcome. Glad you are here. Welcome to the party. I am curious what you think this says, but, like, also, what is motivating this, folks, Because I think we have to be honest about the fact that they have brands, too, and that they recognize that the brand proximity to Trump no longer has the prestige that it once did.

Tim Miller (17:07)

Yeah, I think it's gonna be tempting for about a year now, or maybe longer, to just do. How didn't you see this before? We were so right. We tried to tell you. And so, I don't know, maybe we can all allow ourselves, like five minutes of that a week, so then you can move on to something more productive. Because I hear you on all that, Alicia. Right? They were always dorks. If you've gone to a. I've been to CPACs, okay? It's nothing new. It's not the cool kids table. So, look, I think that the significance of the Joe Rogan thing to me is twofold. One moving from being critical of Trump and doing kind of what Angela is talking about Megyn Kelly doing, kind of saying that he's being misserved or something must be wrong. There must be something else happening in Washington. Doing the conspiracy talk. That's a baby step away from Trump starting to become, starting to mock him, starting to mock his movement, mocking the name of his movement. That is different. You know, that is somebody that, as you said, is trying to separate himself brand wise from Trump and it's someone that's trying to save face with his audience because he sees that it's going very badly and he doesn't want to be made to look like a fool. And that's extremely potent. Once you move away from disagreeing or criticizing or trying to do a 4D chess rationalization for why it's happening into mocking and contempt, I think that is gonna resonate with the audience. And I think that what you see from these guys is them moving to again, I think, as Angela said, again, not to the Democrats but, but back to where they had been. A lot of these guys were non voters. A lot of these guys were not engaged in the process. And I think that is, that's the first step. And I was watching kind of one of the barstool podcasts with a couple of these guys. It's a smaller show than any of these, but I thought this was telling. The two of them were talking to each other, these two guys, and they're like, you know, he's doing terrible, but like, you can't say it because then the Ms. Now people will start to come for you and tell and rub it in your face. And he's like. And then, you know, you, you lose the fact that the other side is still unacceptable to me. And I think that is where they are in the process right now. Accepting the fact that Trump has betrayed them, accepting the fact that he is a disaster and trying to maybe do the first step, which is maybe I'm not involved in politics at all. I'm checking out of politics, which is better on balance than voting for maga.

Alicia Menendez (19:33)

I've been gifted five minutes a month of saying I told you so by Team Miller. I think I've used up about 30 seconds of it. Look to forward forward to the next 4 minutes and 30 seconds. While March remains Tyler Redick here from

Tim Miller (19:44)

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Hallmarkies Podcast Host (20:29)

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