← Bulwark Takes
Loading summary
Transcript11 lines
- [00:00]
Shopify Advertiser
When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, Allbirds or skims, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for the shoppers buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify, upgrade your business and get the same checkout, skims uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com audioboom all lowercase go to shopify.com audioboom to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com audioboom hey everybody, Tim Mower from the Bulwark here.
- [01:12]
Tim Mower
I was on with my girl Nicole on Deadline White House now on msnow, and we were talking about the MAGA Fishers and MTG and Megyn Kelly. We get to a bunch of good stuff. But she also asked the panel about something that I've been wanting to talk about, which is Thomas Massie and how he has been responding to just these horrific attacks from Donald Trump. I mean, honestly, possibly the most disgusting thing Donald Trump has done over the last week is his treatment of Republican Congressman Thomas Massie. And so if you've missed that, I want to explain exactly what's been happening. But, you know, Nicole sent that question to Vaughn Hilliard. So here we go on YouTube. I get to tell you what I think about it. I want to play for you a little bit of the clip that you played in this segment of Massie responding to these attacks for Trump and then give you guys the backstory. So let's watch.
- [02:08]
Thomas Massie
The president has gone after you in some deeply personal ways. I mean, attacking you over and over again, even attacking you regarding your wedding, your recent wedding, which, by the way, congratulations. What do you make of all that? And he's obviously supporting your primary opponents. I mean, what kind of retribution are you facing? You know, my wife told me, she said, I told you so. We should have invited Donald Trump. He's mad that he didn't get an invitation. So, you know, we're taking it with a grain of salt. He's being a bully or trying to be a bully and they're trying to beat me here in Kentucky. But here's what's interesting. The people financing this campaign consist completely of three billionaires, and they're all in the Epstein class. In fact, one of them is named in Epstein's phone book. Not the secret files that the FBI is keeping, but in Epstein's phone book. So it's. It's a small world. Dogs don't bark at parked cars, and we are winning.
- [03:09]
Tim Mower
I gotta tell you, man, me and Thomas Massie disagree on a lot, but the good cheer he has shown through this is pretty remarkable. So if you've missed it, Massie is a libertarian congressman from Kentucky. He has been stalwart in pushing for the release of the Epstein files, has been the partner, the wingman, or I don't know who's Batman and who's Robin, but he's been wingman with Ro Khanna on getting the discharge petition filed for the Epstein files. He's also spoken up against Trump on other things, particularly areas of government overreach. Things that, believe it or not, there's, I think, nine authentic libertarians in the country who actually just want to respect people's rights and aren't using it as a cover for supporting, you know, right wing revanchist ideology. So Massey's caught Trump's ire for all this. Trump is working on a primary against him, like the Adelsons and others are putting in millions upon millions of primary Thomas Massie. Good luck with that, everybody. Don't think you know what's happening with the Republican base. If you think that having a bunch of interventionist billionaires throwing in a bunch of money into a random House district in Kentucky is going to be a winning strategy. But rather than just going after him politically, rather than just doing the Trump thing, where he does nicknames, Trump dropped an intensely personal and heinous attack on Massie. And I want to read it to you. This is Trump on social media. Did Thomas Massie, sometimes referred to as Rand Paul Jr because of the fact that he always votes against the Republican Party, get married already. Question mark. Boy, that was quick. Exclamation. Anyway, have a great life. Thomas and his wife will soon find out that she's stuck with a loser. If you don't know the backstory about this. Thomas Massey's first wife died tragically about a year and a half ago. He had been with her since high school. Their high school sweethearts have been married, I believe, for 30, 31 years. Her name was Rhonda. She had health struggles for a long time, but the very end was more sudden than expected. Then over a year later, he married his new wife, Carolyn, who had been a former staffer for Rand Paul, so had been known each other's deliberatearian connections. There is a big profile on this, on the two of them in the Cincinnati Inquirer that I want to point you to. Seems like they found somebody that they can both share their unique interests with. Carolyn said they got together, they butchered chickens at private ceremony, they enjoyed raw milk with their wedding cakes and margaritas, and they signed a waiver indicating they take full responsibility if any guests got sick from the raw milk. So again, not my people, really. But I want everybody to be able to live a life of purpose and meaning and find love and find fulfillment and happiness in whatever weird corner of this world they search for it and they can find it in. And apparently Thomas and Caroline have done that after this horrible tragedy and good on them. When asked about Trump's attacks and asked about the criticisms that he gets about this, but how he was too quick to find another wife, Massie said, I still cry every day. People, they're like, wait, he didn't grieve long enough for his wife. I'm still grieving. I believe him. I don't know Thomas, Nancy, personally, but I mean, this is a man that for all by all signs was in a multi decade faithful marriage to his high school sweetheart. That life is taken from him at age 50 and he finds somebody else to share life and interests and I assume to cry on their shoulder and to nurture each other and to go and do, I don't know, whatever they want to do in their life. Drink milk straight from a cow's udder. If that's what you're into, great, that's fine. Good for you. I hope that's fulfilling. I hope that's meaningful. I hope that brings Thomas Massey some kind of comfort after this tragedy and for Trump to go after that, for this thrice married, cheating, tiny dicked asshole to go after him and to make some sort of judgment on this, as if something is amiss and as if there's something that should be frowned upon in this behavior, like the Donald Trump, this person that bragged about sexually assaulting women on tape that would call into the New York Post under a fake name to brag about his own sexual prowess, which is really a sign that you're really great in the bedroom. In his affairs, he would brag about himself under a fake name about how he really was this Big tough man in the bedroom. And these tabloid stories about his self described raunchy and torrid affairs. Who knows, would be on the, in the tabloids, in the papers for his kids to see. Like, I, I just, I, I find this so repellent. I find this so repellent. And I don't know any how any of us. This is why I'm just gonna say it. Some of you guys are mad at me. This is why I really, I really get uncomfortable with the attacks about, on Erika Kirk too. Like, I do. I'm sorry. Like this idea that this should be part of politics, that we should judge people based on how they act after a tragedy. Like, I have no idea how I would act after if my husband was killed or died tragically from an illness. Would I podcast the next day? I don't know. Would I be in a hole and cry? Like, would I want to date again? We all, none of us want to even imagine this. We don't know. I don't know. Sure. Maybe some combination of all of that. Maybe a little bit and one day and a little bit the next and you just muddle through and try to live life. And I think the President of the United States, who has just a abominable record in his private life about his behavior and his marriages and his behavior towards women who he made sexual advances on against their will. Like for him to try to like do a caddy tabloid like Real Housewives drama shit, posting on, on a member of his own party because he went out and got remarried to somebody a year and a half after his wife died is truly reprehensible. It's truly reprehensible. I think that I'm impressed that Thomas Massey has shown good cheer. But I wish in the same way that as I talk about in a minute here about Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think that having people from within the MAGA world talk about how gross it is and how unacceptable it is is useful. And so I wish Thomas Massey would talk about it a little bit more. But I respect his choice to handle this however he so chooses. So there you go. Kudos to you, Thomas Massie. I haven't, I will say my one area of non kudos. I have invited him on and he doesn't seem like he wants to come on the Bulwark. We have a lot of disagreements about a lot of things. I understand maybe it's probably not helpful to his cause to come on, you know, the YouTube home of Trump derangement Syndrome. But if he changes his mind, he's Always welcome kudos to Thomas Massie for sticking to his guns on the Epstein files. And I wish him and Carolyn the best. Up next is a little bit more from my segment with Nicole Wallace. We talked about Marjorie Taylor Greene and Megyn Kelly and the other fractures within maga. Stick around for that.
- [11:30]
Nicole Wallace
Mtg, what do you think?
- [11:34]
Tim Mower
You know, look, it's hard to know what's going on in her brain, but I got to tell you this, I think it's important a, in our society and our political culture that we incentivize people coming back from the brink instead of just incentivize sending people over the edge. And I think that currently a lot of folks, whether it be social media algorithms or running for Congress, getting small dollar donors or getting attention on TV like the incentives are for politicians and even regular people to say the most crazy thing possible, the most extreme thing possible. And so seeing somebody who went down that path try to try to back off it and apologize, I think is a good thing. I don't think that we also, we don't need to be snowed by her. I mean, you read through her history, you know, I've heard some people say, you know, complain that that all the strange new respect for Marjorie Taylor Greene means people are whitewashing her. I haven't seen a lot of whitewashing of her, actually. I've seen a lot of people playing her comments now and within the context of her past experience, I think that's appropriate. And here's the thing, regardless of what you think about Marjorie Taylor Greene, the person, and whether this is a genuine Saw the Damascus moment or whether it's something else more personal, you know, whether she's trying to get attention or something, a crack in the MAGA coalition is really only going to come from the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world. And so everybody that wants the MAGA coalition to crack, anyone that is fighting against maga, that thinks they're an authoritarian threat, should welcome people that were part of maga, you know, even if it's too little, too late. Because right now I think we've tried the route of trying to bring in people that are of the kind of college educated, suburban, former Republican, moderate McCain types. Me and you fit in that boat, Nicole. We grabbed as many of those as we could and Donald Trump still won last time. And so in order to crack his coalition, now you need to get people that were with him the third time after the insurrection. And that's going to be a gnarlier process. Okay, that's going to be a gnarlier process. We're going to have issues with all those folks. And so she wants to say she's sorry if she wants to speak to this, if she's representative of other people out there who feel betrayed by him, who went with him the third time, that's a good thing.
- [13:47]
Nicole Wallace
Tim, I want to come back to you about a fissure that exists in sort of the non Trump MAGA world. And that is right now, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene are looking at MAGA and both trying to make calculations about where it's heading. Right. For different reasons. Maybe. Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene for running for president. Maybe Megan trying to read the media moment. They've ended up on opposite sides. Right. SNL had a quip about in the Trump character saying, you know, Megyn Kelly said, you know, Jeffrey Epstein wasn't really a pedophile. I mean, it was so bad. It's become part of comedy which becomes part of culture. So bad. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has made this opposite calculation or decision or revelation. I'm actually open to the fact that it's an epiphany. I mean, all the things, however she got into the boat, at least she's rowing towards something better for democracy. How do you think those two prominent MAGA figures ended up looking at the same thing and reaching totally opposite conclusions?
- [14:47]
Tim Mower
It's interesting. I guess this will add one little bit to their potential motivations because we're in a strange world. I feel like I have to say this. Maybe Megyn Kelly's also thinking that she might run for president in 2028. I mean, who knows?
- [15:00]
Nicole Wallace
Everything is selected three times.
- [15:02]
Tim Mower
I think everybody sees is now looking at that and be like, well, if he could do it, why couldn't I do it? Look, I think that part of it is the fact. I think Megyn Kelly is looking at this and saying, look, nobody's ever won a bet in the Republican Party, at least betting against Donald Trump at this point. And that's why I think the Marjorie Taylor Greene case is so interesting. Right? Because everybody that has tried to go against him within the party has lost, at least as far as primaries are concerned, you know, et cetera. I mean, obviously he lost the 2020 election. A lot of people have maybe gained something for their soul by going against him, but politically they've lost. And so I think Megyn Kelly is making the safer, the safer bet here. I think what's more kind of, and I guess just one more thing on the Marjorie Taylor Greene side, I think she maybe feels a little bit more free to distance herself from Trump because she's like built up this credibility with the MAGA base, whereas Megyn Kelly's like this newcomer. And so they might look, MAGA base might look at her more askance. But to me, the more interesting thing about this discussion is it's a sign of just how weak Donald Trump is. We wouldn't have been having this discussion a month ago because everybody was scared of Donald Trump and he seemed so strong and they were making Trump 2028 jokes and the richest people in the world folding in front of them. And now it's just has taken this one off, off your election in Virginia, New Jersey, plus the Epstein issue, plus the failure to message around the shutdown. And now all of a sudden, I do think you're seeing calculations happening. And that's interesting in itself, the fact that MAGA people themselves starting to say, hey, there's a future here. And that's a, that's a real change from a month ago.
- [16:39]
Shopify Advertiser
When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, Allbirds or Skims. Sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making selling and for the shoppers, buying. Simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify, upgrade your business and get the same checkout Skims uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com audioboom. All lowercase go to shopify.com audioboom to upgrade your selling today. Shopify. Com audiobox.