← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
Helene
Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy, but I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all, so farewell, Oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy.
- [00:19]
Tim
Break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM PM Too much. Good stuff. Hey, y'.
- [00:30]
Military Spokesperson
All.
- [00:30]
Tim
It's too normal for the bulwark. I'm here in the morning. Joe Green. Graham. I just got off msnbc and I was with my girl Nicole for the full hour. We talked about Howard Nutlik. It was so hard not to say Nutlik. About how he said the stupidest thing. Well, the truth, actually, with the Epstein investigation. And he, I think, really created a lot of problems for Cash Patel and Pam Bondi and Trump in their Epstein coverups. We talked about that. We talked about the shutdown and what Democrats could do. We talked about the insane policy towards bombing these ships in the Caribbean. We're going to war that Venezuela now. There's a lot more on that coming. It was great. Good to be with Nicole in person. We had a blast. So stick around, subscribe to our feed right here, and we'll be talking to you soon.
- [01:12]
Helene
Without further ado, here is Donald Trump's commerce secretary, Mr. Howard Lutnick, talking about Donald Trump's former friend, the dead sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
- [01:22]
Tim
That guy's gross, right? With my wife, like, he's grow. The guy's gross. This was not. Oh, the deep nuance of Howard Lutnick. This guy is gross, right? So how come Bill Gates and all these other people could hang around him and not see what you saw? Or did they see it and ignore it, or. No, they participated. Right? That's what his M.O. was. You know, get a massage. Get a massage. And what happened in that massage room, I assume was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever. What?
- [01:56]
Helene
What? He's so gross, I brought my wife there. None of that makes sense. We should say, despite the fact that the American Secretary of Commerce said all those things, you should know there's no evidence that we're aware of at this time of wrongdoing by Bill Gates or other Epstein associates. But importantly, Glutnik is directly contradicting the Trump Cabinet statements and their official line on the Epstein case. The unsigned official memo that the Department of Justice released in July, said this, quote, this systematic review revealed no incriminating client lists. There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. So DOJ did not find what Lutnick just told us there. It's from Politico. Musk, Bannon and Thiel named a new Epstein estate documents quote, in what appears to be a copy of Epstein's itinerary. Musk, Elon Musk had a tentative trip to Epstein's island on December 6, 2014. A note appended to the plan reads, quote, is this still happening? At the time, Epstein owned a private island in the U.S. virgin Islands. Another schedule notes a planned lunch with tech billionaire Peter Thiel on November 27, 2017, and a breakfast with conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on February 16, 2019, just months before Epsteum was charged with sex trafficking of minors.
- [03:21]
Tim
And a couple thoughts about this ain't Terran as this as well as anybody, but like, this wasn't 2003 or whatever. He'd already been arrested for sex trafficking minors in 2017 and 2019 when these guys were going to hang out with him. So they chose to do that so you don't have to do the whole thing like, well, we don't know if there's any allegations. Just hanging out with this person and giving credibility to this person after he's already been convicted of sex trafficking minors is bad enough. The other thing I want to say about Letnick, and this is going to maybe seem like a low blow, but it's kind of an important low blow, is that the Commerce Secretary is really stupid. Like in a cabinet of dumb people, like where you have a weekend talk show host and a fake wrestling executive, he stands out as the dumbest. And if you polled the cabinet, they would all say that he's the dumbest based on reporting. And that's important to say because, like, sometimes dumb people just don't know how to cover up. You know, how to stay in line with the talking points. All Lutnick is saying there is just the obvious truth, right. That like you and I know that Tara knows, you know as well as anybody that like Lutnick just, it isn't clicking with him that, like, he needs to go along with the plan as far as part of this cover up. Right. That he needs to be saying these farcical lies that Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and Donald Trump and J.D. vance are saying about how, oh, the justice story doesn't know anything more about this. We know they're covering. We don't know exactly what they're covering up, but we know they're covering something up. We know that there were other co conspirators at some level. We don't know exactly.
- [04:52]
Helene
Ash Patel knows, quote, put on your big boy pants and tell us who the pedophiles are.
- [04:56]
Tim
Right. So it's obvious that there was some kind of co conspirator. And to Tara's point, it's like just the scale of the number of women. It's just not physically possible for it to have been just Jeffrey Epstein. Right. And we know all these people went to the island after he was convicted. We know all this. And so all Letnick is doing is he's just being dumb enough to say the obvious truth, which is that my fellow cabinet members and the President of the United States, who I work for, are covering up something related to this sex trafficking ring. And so we appreciate him for just telling us that.
- [05:26]
Helene
For just someone just rolling the camera and putting the microphone in front of him.
- [05:29]
Tim
Yeah, right.
- [05:30]
Helene
I mean, let me come back to the politics of this because in this sort of, we cover the moment as being dynamic and volatile, which it is, but. But not this issue. These have been the poll numbers for a long time now. And this is NPR, PBS, Marist, Trump's handling of the Epstein files. 20% approved, 61% disapprove. NPR, PBS, Maris again, should the Epstein files be released? Release all or some of the files. 90%, like you see 80, 20 issues. I don't know that you see any 90% issues in American politics. There is no one that agrees with their current position, which is that one, there's nothing to see here and two, we're not going to seat the new elected member of Congress because we want to avoid this vote.
- [06:16]
Tim
I mean, the 6% has got to be like Trump. It's got to be the co conspirators.
- [06:21]
Helene
There are that many of them, that all of them responded to the Marist poll.
- [06:25]
Tim
I guess, I mean, the 90 to 6 look, here's the bet that Trump is making and he's made this in other issues. And we just don't know if it's going to work on this. One is that he can just gut it out and he's never been on the wrong side of a 96 issue. But when he started doing the stop the steal stuff, everybody was like, this is crazy, you know, and then eventually everybody went along with him.
- [06:44]
Helene
Well, because Kevin McCarthy goes down to Mar A Lago, resuscitates him yeah, so.
- [06:47]
Tim
That'S probably not going to happen this time. You wouldn't think. But the bet that maybe where this risk comes on, the bet is my colleague Will Sommer at the Bullock, who kind of monitors the far right world. He just has an article just out today about how James o', Keefe, the Project Veritas guy, not my favorite character in the world, he does the undercover stings he still cares about. He's still going after Trump about this because that's what far right people who are into conspiracy theories and into uncovering things like this is where the juice is, right? Then you have the manosphere guys, they're still gonna talk about this. They're not here to run cover for Donald Trump. They thought it was an interesting story. They don't wanna be made to look like idiots. So it is a little bit different.
- [07:22]
Helene
Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene, yeah, it's just.
- [07:24]
Tim
A little bit different than some of those other more straight political issues where eventually everybody kind of folded to Trump. I think that the political elites, besides whatnot, the smart political Republicans will get in line just because they probably don't think it's worth the fight. And they're not principled, they've already folded on everything else.
- [07:39]
Helene
But like this is the issue they get primaried on. I mean, the whole thesis of why the Republicans aren't doing their jobs anymore and why they go. I mean, no Republican was ever for tariffs, no Republican was ever against. No Republican ever said it's a good idea to ignore the courts. I mean, they're doing things that they've never believed in or advocated for before, ostensibly because they're afraid of their base. What if the base cares more about the Epstein files than a lame duck president?
- [08:08]
Tim
And at this point they are making the bet against that. But, and I think it remains to be seen, I believe the Thomas Massie case is an interesting one. Him and Marjorie Taylor Greene are the one. I mean, it is like an interesting coalition of like the most maga and then like a handful of principal libertarians that have like taken the consistent line on this of wanting to release the files. So I think that a lot of these guys, again, it just comes back to cowardice. These guys are like, anytime you bet against Trump within the Republican Party in a primary, you've lost. And so eventually that'll end. I don't know when maybe it'll be this. Hopefully it'll be this. But I think that explains their behavior.
- [08:45]
Helene
Viewers of this program already know the government has ceased to function this week as Democrats and Republicans are right now deadlocked on funding how to fund the government. Here's what Tim Miller told Jon Stewart yesterday about how Democrats don't have to explain health care premiums to convince voters that they are the better option compared to Trump's approach.
- [09:06]
Tim
The malpractice here, in my mind, isn't messaging. It's that they don't know where they're messaging us to. They have not created a platform or infrastructure that addresses directly the needs. They are still dancing around the old paradigm. Look, man, I agree with you. So I don't disagree that the Democrats should have a health care plan and the Democrats should have a vision and a direction, and someone should emerge to try to lead them. But that's not actually necessary to be politically successful. I mean, as the former Republican here, may I remind you that Mitch McConnell did pretty good for a few years as the opposition to Barack Obama. Just saying, you will do nothing, and I will blame everything that bad happens on you. That's a good point. That's a good point. And to me, that's kind of like, that's a useful first step, right? Is fighting Trump, doing everything you can to slow him down. And then when bad things happen, many of them Trump is to blame for. So you can credibly say he's to blame for it. But even for some of the other ones, it's like, sorry, man, Buck stops with you. You wanted to be. Want to be authoritarian. This bad thing is happening. We're gonna blame it on you, and we're gonna do so relentlessly, and we're gonna remind people why the current status quo sucks. And that's like, an easier thing to do than what you're asking. And so I just feel like my suggestion to them might be, like the first little baby step towards doing things better.
- [10:35]
Helene
Maybe it's because we work for Republicans that we are, like, masters of the baby step, and I'll just leave it at that. But trying to solve, you know, a 3D puzzle isn't the mission. It's like whack a mole.
- [10:52]
Tim
Yeah. And the health care thing is complicated. I'm happy that they're talking about this. And there's a simple part of the health care issue, right, which is that people's premiums are going up right now, and it is Trump's fault. And so for these guys, Democrats on the Hill, to go out there and say, that's Trump's fault, your health care premium is going up, it's higher than it was last year, it's because they didn't you know, you don't have to, they don't have to come up with a plan for their solution because they have no power.
- [11:11]
Helene
Correct?
- [11:12]
Tim
They have no power. They lost. And so the way to get back power is to reach the, is reach people out there. Not the MAGA ideologues, but the people who for whatever reason were unhappy with their lives and wanted to shake things up and wanted to, you know, throw out the president in power. Well, now Trump is the president in power and there's a lot of reason for people to be unhappy with their lives. Nothing's gotten better for most working people and a lot of things have started to get worse. Right? And so that's the Democrats job, right? Is to go out there and make Trump hold the bag for all this stuff. And Trump, and you can see this in the administration right now, they're out there saying, well, the administration is literally saying right now we're going to stop funding projects. You might be a worker. We interviewed a guy for the Bulwark who is a steel worker, I think that works on wind turbines. That guy's going to lose his job. That's a working guy that had a project that was funded. And the Trumps, they're just cutting that and they don't care and they're gonna try to blame that on the Democrats. And it's just the Democrats job to say, no, sorry, you guys are in charge. Manufacturing jobs are going away, costs are going up, the government shut down. Come up with a solution, do it. Let's figure it out. Like you wanna be in charge of everything, Be in charge. And I think it's the Democrats job to do that relentlessly and also everywhere. And I was saying to you before we got on, like I watched Fox on the whole way up here. There's no counter message on there. And I don't know, maybe Fox isn't booking Democrats. Maybe there are folks that are trying to. Maybe it just didn't happen in the two hours between New Orleans and New York. But like that is their job right now. And I think that's a pretty doable job. You know, even if you have some concerns about the Democrats in other areas.
- [12:43]
Helene
I want to show you a poll that the Times has today. It's a Times Sienna poll. Voters who think America's political system is too divided. 64%. It's like almost a 30 point jump. 20, 30 point jump. It's a worse political climate than during COVID when people were literally isolated and upset and scared and angry. A majority of Americans say They would describe America as a Democratic country still 55%, but 41% disagree, including 52% of Democrats and 40% of independents. So you've got, you know, 40% who don't think we are still a democracy. This is the most interesting to me. Donald Trump's position right now, as publicly stated, is that he, quote, hates his opponents. A micro, micro minority of Americans agree with that. When Democrats were asked whether they think of Republicans as the enemy or as FELLOW Americans, like 10% chose the harsher description. And 14% of Republicans think of Democrats as the enemy. Donald Trump thinks all Democrats are the enemy. Donald Trump is doing something to Democratic run cities. I mean, by taking away the counterterror programs in New York. I mean, Donald Trump spends a lot of time in New York. I don't even understand the sledgehammer he's taking to counterterror programs in New York. The revenge politics have the support of 10 to 14% of Americans.
- [14:05]
Tim
Yeah, that's an encouraging poll, actually, because sometimes in our world of hyper partisanship, you hear from the loudest voices, particularly on social media, who are kind of in that on both sides. Like, I see the other side as my enemy. And so, you know, again, this is an area where Trump needs to be pushed outside of the mainstream. But you have to do that, like, you have to run a campaign against him to position himself there, because they do. I know this is crazy to us and the people watching this, but it's just worth looking at what they do strategically. They're all like, well, the Democrats call us fascists and that's to blame for political violence. The vice President is out there doing that. Stephen Miller is out there doing that. It's BS when you're on this show, you cover that and you say, no. The only person that actually called Trump Hitler was the vice President and the Secretary of health.
- [14:52]
Helene
America's Hitler said, JD Man. And then it's important on the fascist thing. Fascism became a term attached to Trump when Bob Woodward's book came out and he had reporting that said that two of his top generals described him as, quote, fascistic to the core.
- [15:09]
Tim
Exactly.
- [15:09]
Helene
That's when that coverage started.
- [15:11]
Tim
So it's a legitimate point. I'm just talking about the rhetorical fight. Right? Like they are, like, making it seem like the Democrats are the extreme and crazy ones. Going back to my watching the Fox yesterday, Fox only plays one clip of the most insane thing that Elon Omar said. It was the only Democrat I saw the whole two hours, you know, and.
- [15:24]
Helene
Some of them are from like 2019, right, exactly.
- [15:26]
Tim
So it's not incredible, but Democrats got to fight back and do that and go into those spaces and say, no, it's actually this guy that is the first president ever. Ever. Or at least back to whatever pre Civil War times that is like, no, our fellow citizens are the enemy within and they're more dangerous than the enemy without it. We've got to target them. Like, we all see that. But that message has to go out there to more. People need to understand the degree to which Donald Trump is pushing this type of division, and that's the way to start pushing people away from him again.
- [15:56]
Helene
It's true. No, I mean, it's all in an Aaron Sorkin script somewhere. I mean, this is, you know, the crime bill. Right. I'm putting it in the drawer because there's no chance of actually fighting crime. I mean, this is like the fights that you don't engage are fights that are impossible for you to win.
- [16:11]
Tim
Yeah.
- [16:12]
Helene
Do you see any Democrat doing this?
- [16:14]
Tim
Sure. I mean, we mentioned last segment, Roe was out there with Massie. That's notable. Yeah. Chris Murphy's out there doing, I hate to like, shutting it down. I guess what I don't. I'll say what I don't see. And like, you know, Pete's out there doing interviews. You see some for Westmore. What I don't know is like, who is the Democrat that is carrying this fight right now about the Washington fight to the rest of America, not to just pro democracy America, you know, and that's not Hakeem or Chuck Schumer. And maybe Chris Murphy should be appointed to do that. And there are people that are capable. Maybe it should be Madeline Dean. You see Jared Moskowitz on Fox. Sometimes there are people out there that can do it. And I do think that there needs to be more of a concerted effort to do it, though.
- [16:53]
Military Spokesperson
We in uniforms are unique. We are unique among the world's armies. We are unique among the world's military. We don't take an oath to a country. We don't take an oath to a tribe. We don't take an oath to a religion. We don't take an oath to a king or queen or to a tyrant or dictator. We don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don't take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that it's America and we're willing to die to protect it. The millions won't in our nation's wars did not sacrifice their limbs and shed their blood to see this great experiment, democracy, perish from this earth.
- [17:43]
Helene
We're back with Helene and Tim. Tim, it was powerful when he said it. It's almost more eerie to hear it now in light of everything that Trump is asking of the military. And one of the things he's asking of the military is that they strike boats coming from Venezuela without providing evidence of the drugs he says are on them. And I wonder what you make of today's escalation.
- [18:09]
Tim
I think it's crazy. I looked really quick on Millie. It's like, it's kind of melancholy and refreshing to hear that at the same time. It's crazy that we're not hearing more of that. So it's nice to hear that again on Venezuela.
- [18:20]
Helene
I could play. I should play it every day.
- [18:21]
Tim
Yeah, Really, I could hear it every day. I needed to hear it every day.
- [18:24]
Helene
The soundtrack for our times.
- [18:25]
Tim
But I think that both on the policy and the politics, I think what they're doing in Venezuela is insane. And it's completely insane. It's like Venezuela isn't even the biggest country that brings drugs into our country. Even if you took this on the merits, that we're going after drug cartels because we don't want drugs in this country, it'd be kind of crazy to start bombing drug cartels. But like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, China, I think Venezuela's like sixth or seventh. And so we're doing this, I guess because Marco Rubio really doesn't like Maduro or because Trump's mad about something, it's hard to even tell why we're doing this. Trump ran as the anti war candidate and some people believed him, by the way. He had some success running as that. And now he's going to change the name of the department of the Defense, Department of War. Start an illegal war in our own hemisphere, in the Caribbean, for no really stated rationale. Like, it's unclear what even the rationale is. The New York Times was reporting two days ago that maybe we wanted regime change in Venezuela. We're going to do a Venezuela. I mean, we used to be Bush Republicans. Like, I'm for pro democracy, but like, that's not even what he's arguing. So we're going to do a regime change. War in Venezuela.
- [19:28]
Helene
Okay, Something Russia take Ukraine. But we're gonna do regime change.
- [19:33]
Tim
And it makes no sense. It is insane policy. It is illegal. And I think it's potentially really bad politics for him with not like the Fox News watching part of the base, but the. You know, whatever.
- [19:45]
Helene
The country?
- [19:45]
Tim
Yeah, the country. The RFK crowd, you know, and there's a lot of people in his base that don't want this.