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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's Tim Muller from the Bulwark. I was on with my girl Nicole Wallace for a full hour today, and we covered some of the same ground that I covered in depth with Chris Hayes over the shutdown and the ways in which Trump is losing his anti establishment cred. And so you should definitely go check out that Chris Hayes podcast video if you haven't. At the top, though, we really talked a bit about the economy and Trump losing the narrative around the economy. And I wanted to expand on that and kind of tie it into that broader conversation about why I'm a little bit more bullish on the Democrats handling of this shutdown than some other people you're hearing from out here. And, and that's just because my view of this right now, if you've been around here, you know, this has been that, like, I'm not rooting for this, I don't want this to happen. But, like, the number one way for us to get out of this mess is for Trump to absolutely fuck up and botch the economy. That's the easiest way out of this. It's not a guaranteed way out of it. Okay. That's why sometimes, like when I, Joe Manchin on, I was asking, I was like, why haven't the people of West Virginia turned away from Republicans running West Virginia if they've mismanaged the economy so bad? It's like, it's not a guarantee. But I just think if you look at all the political science, all the focus groups that Sarah does, all of the reality of, of, of what we've learned from recent election years, like, the number one thing people are responsive to is how their lives are going economically and how they are experiencing the economy and how they feel that, how responsive they feel politicians are being to it. And right now, on all those scores, Donald Trump is just stepping on rake after rake after rake. Like, this is not opium. It just is like, the economy is worse than when he got in. The economy is worse than when he got in because of the policies he's put in place, particularly around tariffs. Costs are higher on some issues since he's got in. Costs are higher on some issues since he's got in because of the policies put in place, particularly on terrorists, but in this case, also around healthcare and the other issues that are coming to the forefront during the shutdown. And meanwhile, while that's happening, while people are feeling unsettled and uncertain about this economy, while new graduates are having trouble finding jobs, while people are dreading the increase in their health care bills, Coming up, what did the Democrats do? The Democrats said, hey, we're going to pick a big public fight with Donald Trump over this for 40 days and we're going to be on the side of wanting to help people whose costs are going up and offer him a chance to meet us at the table. And he didn't do it. What have the Republicans been doing about this? They've been putting in place the policies that are increasing the costs. And Donald Trump has been throwing Great Gatsby parties and putting fake gold bullion on the White House and buddying up with the richest people in the world. I think that's a pretty good place for Democrats to be. I think it's about as good of a place as we could have possibly expected them to be on November 11th of 2025. Is it? Are we still in a shitty place for the country? Yeah. Yeah, we're still in a shitty place. Are we still. Do we still have a bunch of risks out there? Yeah. We elected Donald Trump again. There was no path to things being great and the Democrats being triumphant in November of 2025. But given where we could have been, given where we were last year, November 11, have the Democrats been perfect? Do I love the way Chuck Schumer's handling this stuff? No. Are they in a better spot than they were 40 days ago? Yeah, yeah, they are. Is a big part of that Donald Trump's fuck ups more than the way that the Democrats have handled it? Yeah, sure. Yeah, it is for sure. But all things considered, I think it was a good point to stop and say, hey, we're going to take some of our chips off the table. I'm going to go back to the negotiating table. We're in a debate. We're going to live to fight another day. One battle after another. Could be worse. Look at me, look at me. Rain cloud telling you guys it could be worse. More on that with Nicole Wallace. She's the best. So subscribe to our feed right here, please. Please. By the way, please subscribe. Subscribe to the feed. You know you don't want me being beat by these MAGA chuds. Do me a solid. Subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends, Stick around for me and Nicole Wallace.
- [04:44]
B
I'm Tim Miller. I'm going to start with you. I worked for the Bush family. One of the most iconic sort of images or instances of a president who sort of lost touch at the price of things and the modern way that people lived was George H.W. with a grocery scanner for my time in politics. And now as the person who does all the grocery shopping in my house, I always know how much a gallon of milk is of, you know, eggs, bread. Most politicians have people around them that make sure they know how much a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, you know, meat, steak, those things cost. Clearly Donald Trump doesn't know how much any of those things cost. I'm sure he's never been inside a grocery store unless he wanted to knock it down and stick something tacky there. But no one around him has told him that these things matter to literally everybody else in the country. What do you make of what we're seeing of his inner circle first?
- [05:45]
A
Yeah, I think they're in a bad place. That was a wonderful intro. I just have two minor nits that.
- [05:50]
B
I need to please edit away before.
- [05:51]
A
I answer your question. Is that okay? I'm Pretty sure George H.W. bush got a raw deal on the grocery scanner thing. It's been a while since I watched that, but I gotta Google it. Totally. Number two, the Great Gatsby party. There were two parties. Do you notice after the Great Gatsby party they did a truffle and opera party.
- [06:07]
B
Oh, there was an after party.
- [06:11]
A
I think it was the next day or later the next week or something. I looked at the menu for the truffle and opera party. They had a truffle daff on wa on the menu. I don't know what that is. Maybe some of the viewers who are fancier than me do, but. So it's just many, they're doing many, many fancy parties down there while this is happening. And you know, look who he's hanging out with down there is well represented by Scott Bessant in that video. You know, getting back to your question about his inner circle, right, and his inner circle right now is mostly extremely rich people who, at least in some of the cases with Howard Lutnick and Steve Wyckoff and others, have family members who are in on the Trump family grift. So you have extremely rich people that are in on the grift and the corruption as part of the inner circle. And then you have like wild eyed ideologues, you know, like Stephen Miller and that's it, that's who's there. Like that's who he's got around him now. And so I don't think it's that surprising that this stuff isn't breaking through to him. I mean, obviously, you know, he has always been out of touch, but there was something to be said for, you know, kind of the rally stuff that he was doing in a while, like, he had this kind of call and response, like, ongoing focus group with people that, you know, sort of helped, you know, drive his little lizard instinct towards what, you know, the types of people that showed up to those rallies at least cared about. But he's not getting any of that feedback down. And he's at Mar a Lago with cougars on the pool deck. And he's got billionaires in his cabinet. Like, that's who he's talking to. And it's not surprising that he does that interview with Laura Ingram. And he doesn't just do the, say the obvious thing that politicians say in this moment, which is, you know, we're trying to deal with this. You know, obviously we understand people are suffering. Like, we have a bunch of plan. Here's our plan A, B and C. They don't have any plans. Like, it's not just that they're out of touch. They're out of touch with people's affordability issues. And they don't have any proposals to deal with it. Like, they're not, like they're not even trying to deal with it. And I mean, I think that is, you know, the main political issue that he faces over the next year.
- [08:08]
B
So you edited me. I'm just going to underline something you just said. What was it? Cougars on the pool deck and billionaires in the cabinet. I feel like that's like an album title or a Netflix series or a book title or something. I want to see more of Show Me the Lie. I love it. And on the question of inflation, specifically in the Washington Post, do you blame Trump for inflation? 60% blame him. A great deal or a good amount? Only 40%, not much or not at all. So regardless of what Scott Bessant says, Tim Miller, this is their economy.
- [08:43]
A
It is. And you know, we've talked about this a couple of times. I think it's just more stark now than it's even been in a while just how much it's his fault that it's his economy. And obviously whoever is the president was going to own the economy at some level. But you could imagine an alternate Trump universe where he just even rhetorically, like, he really focuses on, you know, working class stuff, working class affect. And, you know, we all rolled our eyes out. If you go back to the campaign and he's in the McDonald's thing and he's like a big boy in the truck, right? Like, you do that. If he just did that kind of stuff right where he is talking about the supposed forgotten man that he was supposed to care about. And he didn't do the tariffs that are unconstitutional and are actually hurting people. And he listened to Steve Bannon and did a tax hike, even a small one on the wealthiest as part of the bbb. You could imagine a totally different political situation with that. He's done this all to himself. He has stopped caring about regular folks concerns. He cares instead about his gilded White House and bombing boats in Venezuela and the trophies that he's getting in Korea and all that stuff. Stuff. And the one bill that they put through was a bill that cut taxes for the rich and the one outside of the immigration. The one other political priority he's had that has dealt with economic issues has been tariffs, which just raises costs on everybody. This is just a mess of his own making. And frankly I just think it gets worse as you go into next year because he's already done the things that he said he was going to do about to allegedly help the economy. And it's all backfiring.
- [10:21]
B
Tim. Some of the, I mean Shane Gillis, you know, was one of the first folks to jump on the Epstein critiques. He had a joke at the ESPYs months ago. Now I had an Epstein joke in here, but somebody deleted it. I mean the air bubbles have been, have been in there, I think. I don't know if they're hedges or strategy. I don't understand the space enough. But the absolute face plan on the economy, I mean these are their listeners. And to do sort of a cover up for Trump and the failures on the economy really cross pressures them with their own audiences.
- [10:53]
A
It does. And there's another element to it which is what you'd mentioned in the last segment and when talking to Nick about just this element of how Trump somehow managed to maintain a anti establishment cred in the first term while being president. And so in some ways, like. Well, a lot of us were rightfully upset and mad about these huge figures of tech and finance folding to Trump after the inauguration. In some ways that kind of set the seeds for this problem for him because he became the establishment very quickly. You cannot be the anti establishment when you're partying around with Mark Zuckerberg and all the richest people in the world. Right. And I think that if you're a comedian, and that's what you know, Tim Dillon is and he's political, but he's a comedian if you're in that space. Right. It's hard to be a comedian and be for the man, you know. And it's especially hard to be a comedian and be for the man when the man is screwing up and when the man is putting policies in place that are hurting the listeners. Right. You know, in order to be, you gotta speak to some level of truth. Right? And, you know, that's what humor is, right? It's, you know, either an exaggerated or some kind of observation about something that is fundamentally true about human nature. And so I think that that's like another thing that has happened here is where Trump has really turned himself into not only kind of, as you mentioned, like, a pathetic figure, just in his, like, physical presence and the things that he cares about, he caring about these trophies and the bruises, but also an establishment. And you can't be cool and countercultural, you know, if you also are in league with Palantir while they're spying on Americans. You know, like, it doesn't work like.
- [12:30]
B
That, including your listeners. I mean, the brand is so clunky for what some of them, I think, thought they were signing up for.
- [12:39]
A
I understand why people are upset, but, like, my view on this, on this shutdown overall, is that over 40 days, the Democrats are in a lot better place now than they were 40 days ago politically. And it's because they picked a clear strategy for once. They talked about an issue that people care about, excuse me, health care costs, which are going to rise. And I think that if you. I understand people are upset because if you went into that fight thinking, okay, at the end of this, the Democrats are gonna get a scalp, they're gonna win, right? And the Republicans are gonna fold. I just think that was the wrong expectation to have for this fight. I just. I never believed that the Republicans were gonna fold. The Republican House and has no interest in extending Obamacare subsidies and is never going to. And over the course of the 40 days, the Democrats gained a single vote, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came over to their side. And so to me, this is the longest shutdown in history. It's longer than any shutdown that the Tea Party Republicans ever did. So I don't want to hear from people that's like, the Democrats don't know how to fight like Republicans anymore. They're folding, you know, and Republicans fight harder. This was a harder, longer fight than anything even the most extreme and radical Republicans have done in the past. And what they got out of it was the Republicans in a worse political position, voters understanding where Democrats are now on health care and the fact that Democrats wanted to make healthcare cheaper, and the Republicans don't care about that. And I think the Republicans right now are in as bad of a political position as they've been in in a long time, probably since 2018. And I think that's a modest win for the Democrats. I know that's not cold comfort for people whose health care prices or whose health care insurance costs are going up, but that's not the fault of these eight people. Their insurance costs are going up because Donald Trump won the election and the Republicans won both houses of Congress. And the only way to fix that is to vote them out next time.
- [14:36]
B
And my only thought on this is just. And I know people hate advice from ex Republicans, but skip the circular firing squad and go on to the fight. Just go back to fighting. Like, that's how, that's how you swept the elections Tuesday night. That's how you, as you said, Tim, pulled off a shutdown longer than even the most extreme Republicans in modern political history. You know, get back in the trenches and fight. Basil, thank you for being here. Tim Miller, thank you for being here.