Journalist/Reporter (7:08)

world,

Tim Miller (7:10)

find a clip from this that you like, something that you find compelling and send it along. I would really appreciate that. And if you watch all this and you say, tim, you're a stooge. Okay, let's keep. Send me your evidence. Send me the evidence. Because I've been replying to people, I've been getting emails from people who are sending me their evidence. And unfortunately, what I'm getting from you almost to an email is, this looks fishy. That looks fishy. And like, okay, like, things looking fishy is different from. Here is some. Some evidence that this didn't happen. And I'm happy to reply to your. To your theories, to your feedback and engage in good faith. So that's what we got. Stick around. The best damn clip show you ever did see. Subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends we'll see you soon.

Sponsor Representative (8:01)

Borg Takes is sponsored by our Frames link. Look, Mother's Day is coming up and this is the last holiday where you want to get caught flat footed. Trust me, I've been there. It got ugly. Thankfully. Aura Frames Digital picture frames are a complete layup of a gift because you can give your mom more of her favorite thing. And what is that? It's you and your grandkids in pixel form. Whether you're reliving that trip to Disney or you're just reliving moments from your childhood. I love my aura frame. I gave it to my mother in law last year. We put up all the pictures of her grandkids and her she loves it. She displays it right out there in her living room. These digital frames allow you to share your photos and videos effortlessly. Download the free Aura app or text photos straight to your frame and with free unlimited storage, you can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can even preload photos before it ships and then you can keep adding them at any time or anywhere. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. This their top rated App reached number one in the App Store on Christmas Day in 2025. Named number one by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their bestselling Carver Matte frame with code Bulwark takes. That's a U R A frames.com promo code Bulwark Takes Support the show by mentioning us at checkout and terms and conditions do apply.

Tim Miller (9:26)

Interesting. Just kind of reporting on there are a bunch of conspiracy theories floating around about all of this. And you know, everybody's been listening to too many true crime podcasts and are, you know, analyzing the different videos that they see. And one of the things that was going around was like, why was Vance evacuated before Trump? And you explained that and I thought it was kind of interesting. I thought you maybe could share it with the listeners.

Journalist/Reporter (9:52)

So you know what, I feel bad about this. I'm going to let you into my reporting world. So, you know, lots of times you hear something official and it sounds super sketch and suspicious and then you realize two things can be true at the same time. So in this instance, a senior official told me that the reason Vance got moved so quickly and Trump just ever so slightly less quickly was because agents all clambering around him and mostly his detail the shift they were Trying to make sure on their radios, do we have the presidential walk as hardened and all the poststanders, agents protecting that at all of the junctures where someone could get in? Do we have that hardened before we take Trump back through that walk to a holding room? Then the President himself said yesterday that it was a little bit his fault, that he got removed a little later because he had a couple questions, like what's going on? And that that may have delayed things. Both things, I think, are true. I think that Trump doesn't like the optics of looking like he's being taken to the bunker. You know how angry he gets about that. He doesn't want to look weak.

Tim Miller (11:19)

Yeah.

Journalist/Reporter (11:20)

But I think both things are true.

Tim Miller (11:22)

Yeah, got it. This one maybe is going to end up being more of a comment than a question, but.

Journalist/Reporter (11:28)

Oh, I'm so surprised.

Tim Miller (11:31)

While we're doing the conspiracy theories, the. The suspect has been now detained. Right. We have him. We've got the suspect. Right.

Journalist/Reporter (11:40)

Alive.

Tim Miller (11:42)

He's alive and in custody. So the idea that. That he was an agent of Cash Patel or this was a false flag, that Trump wanted this, it breaks down a little bit when he's in custody. Right. Because it's like he's about to go to jail for life. And it seems like if he wanted to get out of that, he could just tell his lawyer, like, hey, this was a false flag attempt. Cash. I was drunk one night and Cash offered and told me to do this, and I did it on a lark, and then I could get out like that. It seems. That seems like a weakness of the false flag theory.

Journalist/Reporter (12:19)

Again, the problem with you, Tim, is you're so logical, you know, it's hard to talk to such logical people. Yeah. This is not a false flag. This was not staged. Let me repeat, this guy, we don't know his mental health status. But I will tell you, every single person who tries to kill a president has usually suffered a mental health devolution challenge and has started getting angrier and angrier. Their rhetoric is ramping up, and they believe that they have been anointed to solve this problem and solve it by killing someone. We'll see what happens with Cole Allen and what we learn about him. But I'll tell you what I'm hearing this morning, which is that his family is cooperating with investigators, and they are sharing with the FBI that they had seen some signs of him kind of coming unhinged about Trump and his rhetoric getting very scary and. And strange. It is just funny. I mean, but you're Logical, but also funny. It is just funny that he, he says in his letter writing that the one person he doesn't want to kill in the administration is Kaj Patel. I assume that's because Kash Patel is a very high profile figure. He read a lot of stories about him and for some reason fixated on that.

Tim Miller (13:54)

Or maybe he thinks cash is so incompetent that it's not worth, not worth it. You know, he's too drunk.

Journalist/Reporter (13:59)

Are you commenting again?

Tim Miller (14:01)

I'm commenting again. I'm just suggesting. I don't know. Or maybe the, maybe his family's in on it. I don't know. I'm just joking. This is, it's, it's silly because it's, it's one thing, I think for people to watch all this stuff and look at it and say, that looks suspicious, that looks weird. Are you. I read this and this looks a lot. This seems illogical. It's not what I would write if I was, you know, going to write a manifesto. And it's like, well, but you're not an insane person that wants to become president, so. So yes, your manifesto would, wouldn't be

Political Commentator (14:26)

like that every time some kind of event like this happens. And I agree with Tim, like, all political violence is like pretty horrible for the like, social fabric and everything. But every single time they, they very transparently and cynically try to, you know, exploit these kinds of events for some kind of boost in the polls or some kind of political benefit, and it never works. Like, you know, Charlie Kirk was largely kind of like out of the, the news maybe like a week or two later. Trump, I think, only got a boost of two or three points after, but.

Tim Miller (14:57)

And that evaporated with kind of an important two points. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much it helped him. I mean, he only won by two points.

Political Commentator (15:05)

Oh, no, no, that's true. Yeah.

Tim Miller (15:06)

Yeah.

Political Commentator (15:07)

No, but I'm saying, like when you track the polls, like, he went up like a few points and then went right back down. But, you know, it is kind of pathetic and sad that these guys can't even manage to, you know, cultivate sympathy from voters after events like these.

Tim Miller (15:20)

Yeah, yeah. Just who is the voter that's going to change their mind about Donald Trump because of a shooting attempt, though? Like, you know, people have other concerns that they're focus on and you can understand sympathy assessment in the poll. Somebody calls you three days afterwards, you don't feel like you don't want to be a dick or whatever. Say, you have an unfavorable view of the person that was just shot. But I just don't think it's going to fundamentally change people's perspectives, which is why one of my other things, I feel like if I'm on the Live and Learn pod, I should rant about the libs a little bit. One of the other things that annoys me about the discourse this weekend is like the false flag nonsense people. Like, he did this, he did this because of Iran and his polls were flagging. And I was like, well, no, that wouldn't work. Like, that's not going to work. And number two, he just was about to enjoy like the, like this gift that for some reason the D.C. journalist gave him was to allow him in front of cameras to shit on them for an hour and a half. Why would he do the false flag attack right before that? I think that he would have done it after. He would have had a chance to get his, you know, get a couple shots off, no pun intended. But I just, the whole thing is dumb. I did a rant about this on the podcast today and I have inboxes full of listeners being like, are you sure? It seems fishy. There's some things that seem fishy, but you can't put anything past Trump. And I'm like, well, yeah, I guess you can't put anything past Trump. But these guys also haven't demonstrated like a lot of deftness in hiding their behavior. Yeah, you want about Trump, but like all of his malfeasance is pretty much right out there in the open. Like he's not a big secret keeper. And I just.

Political Analyst (17:02)

Ash Patel's getting like absolutely hammered and we're getting like leaks about it and

Tim Miller (17:09)

like, he's getting flat.

Political Analyst (17:12)

No, I mean, he's, he's getting wasted all the time. Apparently. He's, he's, he's drinking a lot. And, and I actually agree with you, Tim. I think one saving grace perhaps for the libs is the administration really has lost all credibility to say anything factual. You know, their relationship with the truth is ephemeral at best. That said, I. There's like no evidence to suggest that this was a false flag. It really does feel, though, with the advent of AI, with the right wing all embracing, like the Candace Owens style conspiracy theory, you know, slock for a better word. It does feel sometimes that there's like no limit to what people are allowed to allege without evidence.

Tim Miller (17:50)

Yeah, I mean, like none of these conspiracy theories survive, like past a few questions. Like, it's all the people Messaging me that are like, well, maybe they recruited a disgruntled guy. I'm like, he was like, again, he was posting on Blue sky about Will Stancil, like last week. Like, you know, this is all part of an elaborate plot. Like, this was a CIA thing. They recruited him. And they're like, okay, your cover stories, you're going to go into Blue sky for four years, you know, and post lib slop. And like, then you're going to go try to kill Trump and we're gonna tackle you before you can do it and you're gonna go to jail for life. Why would he sign up for that? Like, why? Like, that is a more compelling theory than like, like a guy went kind of crazy and we have too many guns in this country and like, he tried to do something nuts. Like, I just. That seems like a much more, you know, much, much, you know, like much more likely from an Occam's Razor standpoint. Like the Butler thing that people always talk about his ear and stuff. Like, we have the photos from the New York Times. They're unbelievable photos right underneath them. They take the picture and it's like a, you know, kind of rapid fire, like multiple click, click, click, click. And you can see like Trump turn his head. Then you see him put his hand up and then you see him put his hand to his ear and then you see him go down. And then a guy dies. And they all go to the hospital. Nurses and doctors see them. All these people are in on the COVID up. Like the nurse at the Butler Hospital that did the intake on Trump was part of the CIA plot to do this. Like, these guys can't even get the fucking Strait of Horus open. They can't do anything. Like, they're like, that's totally. They're totally incompetent. They haven't arrested a single one of their political enemies. The last thing that I wanted to rant about on this topic is as there is some stupid discourse coming from in our own ranks about this. You saw this immediately after the shooting, which is that this was a false, false flag attempt. This was fake. The President did this himself because he wanted the attention. For starters, just for starters, the idea that Donald Trump would want to do this right before he had the chance to stand on stage and do his favorite thing, which is insult the press for an hour. I find that very hard to believe. And I think Donald Trump was championing at the bit to have that evening. And if you want any evidence of that, he wants to do it again. In a month. So I think he was very excited to dunk on all the journalists that stupidly dressed up in tuxedos to smile and giggle with him. So just, this is a practical matter. I also just am very annoyed about this because I made the joke over the weekend that, like, people on the Internet have successfully identified 300 of the last two false flag attempts. Like, everything now is a false flag attempt. And I'm just, I'm sorry. Like, it's people who don't know what that is. It's basically when somebody in power fakes an event, fakes a shooting in order to get sympathy for themselves essentially, or in order to advance some other policy agenda item that they have. It was, it used to be the right wing crazies that always said this. Alex Jones said every shooting was a false flag attempt in order to get us to take their guns. And now, like, there are people on the left are like, everything's a false flag attempt in order to make Donald Trump more popular or let him get more power or whatever. And it's just like we, that we have to live in reality. Okay? Like every, every once in a while there has been a false flag attempt. I think there's pretty good evidence that Russia did one in Serbia in order to try to influence the Hungary elections. But like, guys, like, again, what is happening here is that crazy people have easy access to firearms in the country. Like that, that is, that is what is behind almost all of these shootings and almost all of this violence. And that is the thing that we should be addressing. And it just doesn't, it doesn't serve anybody's purpose to descend into like total fantasy land, you know, where everything is a scheme. Like, these guys aren't that smart. Just like these guys can't do anything. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House the only person getting anything done? It's like, these guys are incompetent on all levels. You think that they can keep this secret? Donald Trump can't keep any secrets. He blurts everything out like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the butler thing was a false flag. And one of the pieces of evidence was that Crooks doesn't have a long Internet history. This guy, Cole Allen has a huge Internet history. You can see everything. He went to a good college. You can see it back in 2017. You can see everything that he's posted. He posts a lot on Blue Sky. Ken Klippenstein interviewed some of his friends. You know, he had a psychotic break. And an easy access to guns. Like the idea that, I mean, what, the CIA planted this guy 10 years ago and had him post a lot of anti Trump stuff, you know, as part of this cover story. Because maybe Donald Trump would get elected 10 years later and they could use him as part of, like, it's not, it's all, it's all nonsense. Like, it didn't happen. Free yourself from it. Truth is important part of democracy, I guess is will be what I'm trying to say. Truth is an important part of democracy. And if you let yourself get sucked up by a bunch of lies and crazy, it's going to lead to negative impacts on democracy. We've seen that very clearly on the right. So there's my rant about that. Bill, I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add.

Guest Commentator (23:06)

Yeah, I kind of just ignored all that false flag stuff that you're right to call it out and others should, because in a sense we should all say that is not part. That is not a sane or healthy part of the deferred democracy movement. And if people should fix that in themselves or we should just say, as you just said eloquently, that that is wrong. It was an attempted act of viol. We deplore that.

Tim Miller (23:27)

I did see one piece of pushback on me on this that I want to address, which is that I also say often that it's not good for the pro democracy movement that all the cranks and conspiracists are on the right. And then that point they're like, well then aren't you being inconsistent, Tim? Like, shouldn't you be encouraging the conspiracy theories? And I'm not trying to create new cranks in conspiracy theorists of the existing cranks and conspiracy theorists. I think that we should engage with them on, on issues where there is agreement, like, such as, you know, how Donald Trump sucked us into the Iran war and various, you know, types of malign influence that was involved in that. I think we should engage with them on Palantir and the security state and the way that they're spying on people and going after. There are areas of overlap with cranks that I think that it's important for the Democrats to engage on. But the bulwark is not the place for like cultivating new, new cranks. Okay? This is, this is a place for radical candor and truth and honesty.

Guest Commentator (24:27)

And to the degree that one engages with cranks, one engages to try to lead them out of, to say, look, this is, this thing here is a reasonable point because there is evidence for it.

Tim Miller (24:36)

Right?

Guest Commentator (24:36)

And it's try. It's an attempt to lead them out of being cranks, not to double down on being a crank.

Tim Miller (24:43)

Okay, I'm done with this. Do you have anything else you want to say about the dinner? Let's move on. Okay.

SpinQuest Advertiser (24:48)

You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slots, live blackjack, live craps with a live dealer. New players $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again.

Tim Miller (25:12)

Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.