Tim Miller: The Wheels Are Coming Off The Trump Train

Summary

Bulwark Takes: “Tim Miller: The Wheels Are Coming Off The Trump Train”
Podcast Summary – November 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the accelerating unraveling of Donald Trump's political standing and administration, as observed from multiple ideological perspectives and current polling data. Host Tim Miller and the Bulwark team—with contributions from Nicole Wallace, Angela Carson, legal analysts, and others—dissect the latest news, including the botched prosecution of James Comey, Trump's waning credibility, public dissatisfaction, and hopeful notes from a recent interview with Kamala Harris. The tone is urgent, sardonic, and analytical, reflecting both frustration and cautious optimism about American democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Botched Comey Prosecution: Incompetence Meets Cynicism

[01:41 – 05:26]

• The group discusses the failed attempt by the Trump Justice Department to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey:
  • Described as worse than “Keystone Cops” level incompetence (Tim Miller: “The Keystone Cops would be pissed if you compared this group to the Keystone Cops.” [01:46]).
  • Republican Eric Siebert’s refusal to bring the case shows how empty the charges were.
  • The legal team is exploring multiple strategies to dismiss the case, highlighting the debacle’s seriousness.
• The episode underscores the global embarrassment for rule of law:
  • "It is a stain on the rule of law in America seen the world over." (Tim Miller [03:00])
• Visual contrast: Mark Benioff’s selfie with AG Pam Bondi at a state dinner with MBS is cited as grotesque in light of ongoing political prosecutions:
  • “That selfie, to me… just picture, in contrast with this story, to me I just found extremely gross.” (Tim Ohr [03:59])
• Angela Carson argues that bureaucratic incompetence only papered over the perniciousness: the entire affair reveals overt politicization and the misuse of state power.

2. Historic Democratic Polling Advantage & MAGA Disunity

[05:26 – 07:35]

• New Marist Poll: Democrats lead Republicans on the generic congressional ballot by 14 points—the highest since 2017.
  • "Registered voters prefer a Democrat over a Republican by a whopping 14 points. It is the highest advantage Democrats have had since the year 2017." (Lawyer/Legal Analyst [05:44])
• MAGA movement fissures: Insights from Tim Dillon, a comedian with influence among young pro-Trump men, note Trump’s “lame duck” status:
  • Tim Dillon: "This is the end of the Trump administration. This is the beginning of the lame duck presidency. It's obvious to everyone, even his most ardent, ardent supporters..." [06:26]

3. Compounding Scandals and Loss of Credibility

[07:01 – 08:13]

• Paul Krugman’s analysis cited: Trump is “collapsing on multiple fronts,” including the Epstein investigation, economic confidence, and the weakening fear that once supported his rule.
  • "Power is unitary. Trump seems to be collapsing on multiple fronts, with the collapse on each front reinforcing the collapse on others..." (Krugman quoted by Lawyer/Legal Analyst [07:01])
• Discussion emphasizes how Trump’s unfulfilled promises and personal entanglements now reinforce each other, further undermining his legitimacy.

4. Disaffected Trump Voters and Loss of Connection

[08:18 – 09:40]

• The group explores the mindset of 2016/2020 Trump voters who weren’t hardcore MAGA, but sought economic improvement and action on key issues:
  • Costs remain high; promises unmet.
  • Trump's current lifestyle (gold decor, parties with dictators, ostentatious White House renovations) is seen as disconnected from ordinary Americans:
    • “What is Trump doing? Trump is… turning the White House gold and he's bulldozing part of the White House and he is gallivanting around having Great Gatsby parties…" (Tim Ohr [09:03])
• Kitchen-table issue pivot lacks credibility, with hosts doubting Trump can plausibly “care” about ordinary concerns given his current image.

5. Epstein Files: Transparency and Gaslighting

[09:40 – 12:11]

• Trump’s failure to release the Epstein investigation files is a hot-button issue among base voters:
  • He promised transparency but is now dodging and making excuses.
  • Rep. Swalwell calls Trump’s shifting blame to Congress a classic gaslighting move:
    • "Since when? All of a sudden, now he's waiting for Congress to greenlight what he will do or wants to do. Come on. So release the files..." (Swalwell [11:14])
• The group concludes Trump's credibility with both his base and swing voters is crumbling.

6. Kamala Harris: Hopeful Messaging Amidst Democratic Angst

[12:26 – 13:09]

• Tim Ohr and Angela Carson reflect on a campaign visit and interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
  • Harris’s persistence and optimism are highlighted as model leadership for a battered pro-democracy coalition:
    • “She is adamant that this is still our country and we should still be fighting for it.” (Tim Ohr [12:41])
    • “The overarching kind of attitude of positivity and forward looking and belief that this can be defeated was something that was pretty striking to me.” (Angela Carson [13:09])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Legal Incompetence:
  • “The Keystone Cops would be pissed if you compared this group to the Keystone Cops.” — Tim Miller [01:46]
  • "It is a stain on the rule of law in America seen the world over." — Tim Miller [03:00]
• On Trump’s Position:
  • "This is the end of the Trump administration. This is the beginning of the lame duck presidency." — Tim Dillon [06:26]
  • "Power is unitary. Trump seems to be collapsing on multiple fronts..." — Paul Krugman (quoted) [07:01]
  • "No one thinks he knows what the kitchen table is for." — Lawyer/Legal Analyst [10:31]
• On Hope and Resilience:
  • “She is adamant that this is still our country and we should still be fighting for it.” — Tim Ohr [12:41]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:41–05:26] — Discussion on botched prosecution of James Comey, political misuse of DOJ, and public perception.
• [05:26–07:35] — Analysis of new polling, MAGA infighting, and Tim Dillon’s “lame duck” assessment.
• [07:01–08:13] — Krugman’s commentary on Trump’s accelerating collapse.
• [08:18–09:40] — Voter disillusionment and the symbolism of Trump’s lavish White House activities.
• [09:40–12:11] — The Epstein files, Trump’s lost credibility, and Rep. Swalwell’s response.
• [12:26–13:09] — Kamala Harris’s messaging, campaign updates, and notes on Democratic resilience.

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Takeaway & Tone

The episode delivers a brisk, pointed, often sardonic assessment of Trump’s administrative and political collapse—blending humor, exasperation, and cautious hope. It underscores the magnitude of recent failings, but also the growing resolve among pro-democracy forces, with Kamala Harris symbolizing persistence and optimism even in challenging times.

Recommended for listeners wanting a clear, engaging rundown of why “the wheels are coming off the Trump train”—in the words and voices of top Bulwark analysts.

Transcript

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[Tim Ohr]

Tim Ohr from the boat work here. Back in my hotel, I'm just running around. I just got off with Nicole Wallace and we discussed a bunch of stuff.

[Nicole Wallace]

We'll give you the candy.

[Tim Ohr]

First we discussed why we think the.

[Nicole Wallace]

Wheels are coming off of the Trump train right now. And we went to how people from a bunch of different ideological sides see that I've played you the Tim Dillon, the kind of bro magish comedian, his take on Trump being lame ducked. We read Paul Krugman and then kind of batted around between Nicole and myself and Angela Carson over at Media Matters. We also discussed my interview with Kamala.

[Tim Ohr]

And I just, I talked about the.

[Nicole Wallace]

Good parts of it and what is encouraging about the interview with Kamala.

[Angela Carson]

So I hope you listen to that.

[Nicole Wallace]

And then also the breaking news around the botched political attempt to put Jim Comey in jail. So lots of stuff me and Nicole Wallace. Hope you enjoy. Subscribe to the feed Comment below Tell me what you think. Sorry about the background on this one. I'm doing the best I can out here.

[Angela Carson]

All right.

[Nicole Wallace]

Stick around for me, Nicole.

[Tim Ohr]

Peace.

[Tim Miller]

Tim Miller Let me take a non.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Lawyer.

[Tim Miller]

Cable host swing at this. The Keystone Cops would be pissed if you compared this group to the Keystone Cops. I am told Lindsey Halligan was chomping on gum in court today. I am told that the judge's silence might have been to sort of the best case scenario for the government in there.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

That there was nothing to say.

[Tim Miller]

And you know, not for nothing, if this was someone that the government thought.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Had carried out horrible violent crimes, they would jeopardizing their own ability to put a violent criminal away because of their misconduct. So we can sort of trivialize the severity of the procedural mistakes that were made.

[Tim Miller]

But if this were prosecution of someone.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Really really bad, which the vast majority, the reason Mary never got no true bail, which means no indictment is because.

[Tim Miller]

What the government is supposed to do.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Is prosecute people who are really really bad.

[Tim Miller]

Jim Comey's innocence can be testified to by Eric Siebert, who is the sort of a Republican in very good standing who ran that office and was run out or resigned because he refused to.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Bring a case against Jim Comey.

[Tim Miller]

So the whole thing is a debacle and an embarrassment on the Trump side. Legally, you've got the Comey team looking at five different ways to make this go away, but we should stare at the sun of what this is. And it is a stain on the rule of law in America seen the world over.

[Angela Carson]

Yeah, you and I are aligned on this, Nicole. I'm just a simple country podcaster, so I can't get into the details that Mary and Carol, with their expertise can on this, But I look at all.

[Tim Ohr]

This, and it's just. It's blatantly incompetent.

[Angela Carson]

Right. And so I don't know how much more time is necessary to spend on that.

[Tim Ohr]

To me, it's like the incompetence almost.

[Angela Carson]

Papers over the perniciousness of this.

[Tim Ohr]

Right. I mean, I was.

[Angela Carson]

I don't know why this struck me in particular, but I was looking at this selfie that Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, took with Pam Bondi at the state dinner with MBS last night.

[Tim Ohr]

I was just looking at that, and I was like, that. Just picture.

[Angela Carson]

In contrast with this story, to me.

[Tim Ohr]

I just found extremely gross, because I think that there's something to the fact.

[Angela Carson]

That we all kind of know the.

[Tim Ohr]

Story, that this is a preposterous case.

[Angela Carson]

And that Jim Comey's not a real criminal and that they're doing this for show.

[Tim Ohr]

And so the stakes feel a little bit low for people at some level. But to me, it's like, look, this is the government of the United States. That's the attorney general in that selfie.

[Angela Carson]

With a tech CEO who is ordering.

[Tim Ohr]

An investigation against a political foe that's purely political. It's based on nothing. It's just based on pure politics because her boss told her to do so. Like, it's a banana republic. And she assigned a Florida insurance lawyer to do it because none of the professionals would actually do it. And then that lawyer botches it so.

[Angela Carson]

Badly that the judge is gobsmacked.

[Tim Ohr]

Like, to me, that series of facts would makeyou know would want to make anybody in polite society want to say, I don't want to be seen with Pam Bondi. Like, what she is doing is a frontal assault on the rule of law. She's doing it in an extremely incompetent manner. So maybe the risk is a little.

[Angela Carson]

Bit lower than if there was an attorney general who was really good at assaulting the rule of law and going after their political foes. But I mean, it is, it's really outrageous. You know, when you look at it from kind of that 30,000 foot perspective.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Given everything we've covered today.

[Tim Miller]

Ask yourself when actually not wishful thinking, but when was Donald Trump actually this week this diminished politically and otherwise? Don't answer. We'll look at the polling. Congressman Swalwell just alluded to it though.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

The latest from the Marist poll illustrates a rather stark picture on the generic ballot right now, registered voters prefer a Democrat over a Republican by a whopping 14 points. It is the highest advantage Democrats have had since the year 2017. One year ago, the same poll had these numbers tied. Literally the same number in the generic ballot. Part of this has to do with what's going on inside of the MAGA movement itself. Tim Dillon, he's a voice inside the manosphere who is adjacent to the MAGA coalition. They help Trump reach young men during the election.

[Tim Miller]

He said this as part of a conversation about H1B visas.

[Tim Dillon]

This is the end of the Trump administration. This is the beginning of the lame duck presidency. It's obvious to everyone, even his most ardent, ardent supporters show up to the White House like Laura Ingraham and she's kind of shocked on what the hell is going on. Now we'll start, you know, three years of talking about the ballroom. He will trail off, he will get older, he's going to, he's, he's adorned the White House in gold. Epstein is going to suck the oxygen out of a lot of this. We're going to talk about that a little later on.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Pretty much on Trump's political standing. Paul Krugman writes this quote, power is unitary. Trump seems to be collapsing on multiple fronts, with the collapse on each front reinforcing the collapse on others. The Epstein affair is coming to a head even as the public loses all faith in his economic policy and the whole structure of fear on which his regime rests appears to be evaporating. He also seems to be unraveling. Personally, I don't know how this ends, but all of a sudden a rapid implosion looks possible. No, I don't know what that looks like, but the US Political univers looks very different than it did a few weeks ago.

[Tim Miller]

Tim.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

His problems too are, as Krugman writes.

[Tim Miller]

They all exacerbate the other right.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

He has no credibility because he promised to release the Epstein files and then he had his government go through the Epstein files. So we know they're A pile of things or a data file of things, we know that they went through them, so we know they exist. So whatever he says next, whether he says, I can't show them to you because I'm looking for Democrats in them, we know he went through them already. He already knows the answer to the question he's asked Pam Gandhi to go investigate on the economy. He hurt the economy. And it just seems like whatever he tries to do, the thing he can't.

[Tim Miller]

Get back is his credibility.

[Tim Ohr]

Yeah, look, just one way to look.

[Angela Carson]

At this is like, think about the types of people that we're talking about, people that voted for Trump but aren't. You know, the people in the red hats at the rallies. Right. And up until about three weeks ago or a month ago, they were like.

[Tim Ohr]

They weren't getting the core thing they wanted, which was a better economy and things to be cheaper.

[Angela Carson]

Right. But Trump was doing some stuff that liked. Right.

[Tim Ohr]

And so you could, you know, whether it would be, you know, we didn't.

[Angela Carson]

I did not support National Guard in the streets. But if you're somebody who's concerned about law and order in the cities, that was a big issue for you. Like, okay, Trump is caring about that. He's trying to clean up the cities. If he cared about the border, Trump is doing that. And then like October comes around and.

[Tim Ohr]

You'Re thinking, everything is as expensive as it was before.

[Angela Carson]

It's more expensive in a lot of ways.

[Tim Ohr]

And we're coming up in this first.

[Angela Carson]

Round of elections, this first inflection point.

[Tim Ohr]

And what is Trump doing? Trump is, is turning the White House gold and he's bulldozing part of the White House and he is gallivanting around having great Gatsby parties and he's having foreign dictators over for the fancy ball last night with MBS at the White House. And if you're one of these people and you're looking and all of a sudden you're saying, what is he doing? He's not doing anything to help me. And that's what Tim Dillon was basically.

[Angela Carson]

Getting at in that.

[Tim Ohr]

And by the way, on all these other non economic issues that you cared about, one of them was the Epstein files. And Trump is doing the opposite of.

[Angela Carson]

What you wanted on that.

[Tim Ohr]

And it's starting to seem like that he's complicit in it. And so to me, like, the interesting thing was one of his bleeds he.

[Angela Carson]

Sent out earlier this week on Truth Social.

[Tim Ohr]

He was sounding like a losing political consultant. He's like, fine, we'll let The Epstein files get passed because we wanna pivot back to affordability. He's like, now it's like Trump is the one that's like, we need to talk about kitchen table issues. And it's like, well, the kitchen table issues aren't getting better for people. You don't have a plan, you've made them worse. And the people for whom that really matters, they're looking at you and saying, you're completely disconnected from my concerns. I do think that's hard to get back on track. Maybe other things will happen that will.

[Angela Carson]

Give him a chance to get back in their good graces. But, like, right now, it's a tough road for him.

[Tim Miller]

I think the bigger problem is someone told him what that. Well, I don't even know if they told him what it means.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

What does kitchen table mean to a man who has gilded the Oval Office in gold and knocked down the east wing of the White House to replace it with a ballroom? Like anything. Like, that's fine. We're going to pivot back to kitchen table. No one thinks he knows what the kitchen table is for. No one understands that most people's kitchen table doubles as the place where they wipe away the dishes to one side and sit down with a stack of bills and tries to pay them. No one will ever believe that he knows what that feels like. And not that they ever did, but they used to think he was going to make those problems better. And now I think that he surrounded himself with autocrats and gold and ballrooms. I just. I don't know how he re engages that conversation. Conversation with credibility.

[Congressman Swalwell]

I think it is, again, just another. The current president's statements, most recently about this are another example of him attempting to gaslight the American people. And I say that because all of a sudden he is saying he'll wait to see what Congress does. Since when? All of a sudden, now he's waiting for Congress to greenlight what he will do or wants to do. Come on. So release the files. Release the files. He is the President of the United States. He is the head of the executive branch. He has taken unilateral action without concern about the three CO/ of government on almost everything he has done. So release the files. Tim.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

What I've seen is great. It's published since I've been on the air, so I haven't watched the whole thing.

[Tim Miller]

But this is not just the former.

[Lawyer/Legal Analyst]

Vice president saying it. This is what the American people believe on this. He has the power to do it.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, for sure.

[Angela Carson]

And the people in the room were very excited. We were in Nashville for that and it was really cool to be with her. Here's the main thing I took away from her message on the Epstein files on a number of different topics we talked about.

[Tim Ohr]

She is adamant that this is still.

[Angela Carson]

Our country and we should still be fighting for it.

[Tim Ohr]

And to me from her, given just how painful it was.

[Angela Carson]

We've all read the book and heard from her and just know intuitively how painful it must have been to be back out there on the road and have that positive, uplifting message and attitude I think is meaningful.

[Tim Ohr]

You know, she could have disappeared into the bushes and I don't think anybody would have blamed her. And so it was cool to see.

[Angela Carson]

Her out there doing that. I mean, we covered a bunch of other stuff too, but I think we did a little bit of going back into the campaign. But the overarching kind of attitude of positivity and forward looking and belief that this can be defeated was something that was pretty striking to me.