Trump Just Made Us The Baddies

Summary

Bulwark Takes: "Trump Just Made Us The Baddies" – Detailed Summary

Release Date: February 19, 2025
Host: The Bulwark Team (including Tim Miller and JVL)

In the February 19, 2025 episode of Bulwark Takes titled "Trump Just Made Us The Baddies," hosts Tim Miller and JVL engage in a deep dive into the United States' current standing on the global stage, arguing that recent foreign policy shifts under Donald Trump's influence have repositioned America as a global antagonist. This comprehensive discussion spans diplomatic negotiations, alliances, and the broader implications of America's strategic realignment.

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1. Introduction: Shifting Perceptions of America

The episode opens with Tim Miller introducing a conversation sparked by internal discussions with Bill Kristol. The key assertion is that the United States has transitioned into the role of the "baddies" internationally—a sentiment both hosts find unsettling.

Tim Miller [00:56]: "We've all come to accept something that we've known for a while, which is, I think we're the baddies on the world stage now. Are we the baddies?"

JVL concurs, referencing the ominous symbolism of the U.S. adopting skulls and crossbones in certain diplomatic contexts, which historically denote danger or antagonism.

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2. Diplomatic Shifts: The Saudi Arabia-Russia-Ukrainia Scenario

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the recent diplomatic activities involving Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Ukraine. The hosts dissect a scenario where the U.S. Secretary of State is seen negotiating with Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia concerning Ukraine's future.

JVL highlights the contradictions in U.S. foreign policy:

JVL [01:05]: "I was not prepared for Donald Trump to tell America that we're switching sides. What happened?"

Tim Miller outlines the troubling outcomes from these negotiations:

Tim Miller [03:42]: "The three major outcomes that Rubio is indicating are coming from this meeting in Saudi Arabia. Also a sign that we're the baddies that were meeting in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia... we're just going to open back up the markets for them and help their economy. So this deal so far is just like a big gift to Russia economically."

This deal entails normalizing and rebuilding staffing at embassies, fostering closer diplomatic ties, and encouraging economic investments, which the hosts argue predominantly benefit Russia without reciprocating advantages for the U.S.

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3. Implications for NATO and Global Alliances

The conversation delves into the potential disintegration of NATO under Trump's administration. JVL speculates on the dire consequences of such a move, including the possibility of a nuclear-armed Germany and the weakening of European defense cohesion.

JVL [08:59]: "If NATO breaks apart... do we really want a nuclear Germany? Is that really what... in the world's best interest?"

Tim Miller ponders whether Trump’s strategies will lead to the erosion of longstanding alliances, leaving Europe to fend solely against Russian aggression without American support.

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4. Motivations Behind Trump's Foreign Policy

A critical analysis is presented regarding Trump's potential motivations for these controversial foreign policy decisions. Tim Miller hypothesizes that Trump's actions may prioritize personal legacy over national interests.

Tim Miller [05:46]: "Maybe what we're getting is not for America but for Trump himself... maybe it's just like Trump, in order to feel like he should get on Mount Rushmore, just wants a peace deal."

JVL echoes this skepticism, suggesting that Trump's maneuvers could be driven by a desire for personal renown rather than strategic benefit for the nation.

JVL [07:34]: "I think that his view of how he gets to Mount Rushmore... That's happening. That's happening."

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5. Broader Consequences: Economic and Security Ramifications

The hosts discuss the broader implications of aligning more closely with Russia, including economic repercussions and security vulnerabilities. JVL raises concerns about the U.S. abandoning key allies and the potential economic fallout from deepening ties with an autocratic Russia.

JVL [04:05]: "We have the US Secretary of State in Saudi Arabia having a conference with the Russians about the future of Ukraine... We are now on the side of the autocrats."

Tim Miller questions the tangible benefits for America, pointing out that the supposed deals favor Russian economic interests without clear advantages for the U.S.

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6. Internal Threats vs. External Adversaries

A pivotal moment in the discussion addresses the nature of threats facing the U.S., contrasting external adversaries with internal divisions. JVL references J.D. Vance's assertion that the greatest threats come from within rather than from countries like China or Russia.

JVL [15:02]: "The only way to interpret it really... it's like... the real enemy is his fellow Americans, the Democrats."

Tim Miller reflects on the impact of internal strife, suggesting that focusing inward may inadvertently empower external foes.

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7. Analogies Illustrating the Crisis

To illustrate the severity of the current situation, JVL employs a powerful analogy comparing the U.S.'s predicament to tolerating the destruction of one's home to eradicate an unwanted piece of furniture.

JVL [14:20]: "Imagine what sort of weird person you'd have to be to sit back from that and say, 'At least he's getting rid of that sofa,' because that's basically what this is."

This metaphor underscores the notion that sacrificing national stability for perceived minor benefits is both irrational and destructive.

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8. Concluding Thoughts: Uncertain Future and Call for Awareness

As the episode draws to a close, Tim Miller and JVL express deep concern over the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy and its global standing. They caution listeners about the potential long-term consequences of current decisions, emphasizing the need for vigilance and informed discourse.

Tim Miller [16:23]: "We'll find out."

The hosts encourage listeners to subscribe and stay engaged with the Bulwark’s ongoing analysis to navigate these complex geopolitical shifts.

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Notable Quotes:

• Tim Miller [00:56]: "Are we the baddies?"

• JVL [01:05]: "I was not prepared for Donald Trump to tell America that we're switching sides."

• Tim Miller [03:42]: "So this deal so far is just like a big gift to Russia economically."

• JVL [04:05]: "We are now on the side of the autocrats."

• Tim Miller [05:46]: "What we're getting is not for America but for Trump himself."

• JVL [07:34]: "That's happening. That's happening."

• JVL [14:20]: "At least he's getting rid of that sofa... that's basically what this is."

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This episode of Bulwark Takes serves as a critical examination of the United States' evolving role in global politics under Trump's influence, positing that the nation may be undermining its own interests and moral standing on the world stage. Through incisive analysis and poignant analogies, Tim Miller and JVL invite listeners to reconsider prevailing narratives and recognize the potential ramifications of current foreign policy directions.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Hey, guys, it's Tim Miller at the Bulwark here with my buddy jbl, author of the Triad newsletter that you must subscribe to. Go to the bulwark.com to subscribe. Check out the Triad. It's the best daily newsletter out there. A good one today. Real banger about Kevin Hassett, Trump's economic advisor and how big of a fraud he is. I'm just going to leave you there with a little teaser. You should go. You should go read it yourself. We were talking in Slack, Bill Kristol kind of wrote this this morning about how weird it felt for him to kind of rooting against America in these negotiations in Saudi Arabia and how uncomfortable that was for us patriotic lapsed neocons. And I have a similar feeling. And as we were chatting about it, we figured we'd get together and talk about it live. Because jbl, it seems like we've all come to the realization about the same. Realization's wrong word. We've all come to accept something that we've known for a while, which is, I think we're the baddies on the world stage now. Are we the baddies?

[JVL]

Yeah. I mean, we've got these, the skulls and crossbones. Doesn't that, doesn't that tell you something? Why do we have to skull in crossbones? We could just have an eagle.

[Tim Miller]

We could just have an eagle. We had an eagle at one point, actually.

[JVL]

So, I mean, I'd say this is something I didn't fully appreciate. So I was concerned that in a second Trump term to Donald Trump would try to go full isolationist. And would try to, you know, try to break NATO and get the US out of NATO and that he wouldn't care what happened to Taiwan or Ukraine. I was not prepared to have Donald Trump tell America that we're switching sides. You weren't? I was not prepared for shirts and skins. We gonna. I was not prepared for that. So what happened?

[Tim Miller]

I was prepared for the possibility. The possibility. Here we are coming to reality.

[JVL]

We have the US Secretary of State in Saudi Arabia having a conference with the Russians about the future of Ukraine in which the Americans seem to be stipulating that Ukraine is going to need to have some elections before there can be any peace because you got to get rid of that rat Zelensky out of there. The autocratic Russia does not need to have elections. They're fine. We're hearing that Russia wants to force Ukraine to hold new elections in order to sign any kind of a peace deal. Is that something that the US would ever support. Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine. It's just frankly amazing. You have Trump talking about reinvesting in Russia, the United States reinvesting in Russia.

[Tim Miller]

Let's just sit on this one for a sec. Because this was, this was the thing that has happened since I taped with Susan Glasser. We covered some of this and she's so great. If you haven't watched that video, go watch it. But. So the three major outcomes that Rubio is indicating are coming from this meeting in Saudi Arabia. Also a sign that we're the baddies that were meeting in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You know, like, it wasn't like Switzerland was meeting. It wasn't even Jordan. Right. It was Saudi Arabia. Okay. Anyway, the three items, one, we're going to normalize and build back staffing at each respective embassy. I thought we were firing all the people at all the embassies, but I guess we're going to have a couple Russians, a couple at the Russian embassy. We'll move people that were at the other embassies that have been fired. So that's one, two, work more closely together on diplomatic ties and economic investment. This is what you're, this is what you're alluding to.

[JVL]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Like, in addition to being on the bad side of this, it's also a bad deal. Isn't the point of Trumpism foreign policy that we're getting screwed by everybody and we need to get ours? And, and he's, I guess we're talking about stealing money from the Ukrainians. So I guess that's where we get ours. But the Russians are getting investment. We don't get anything out of mutual investment from Russia.

[JVL]

We.

[Tim Miller]

What are we going to get out of that? Like, so we're just going to open back up the markets for them and help their economy. So this deal so far is just like a big gift to Russia economically. Am I missing something?

[JVL]

No. And, and you know, again, the. Are we the baddies, the same administration who's trying to put the boots to Canada, our closest trading partner in ally. And it's talking about they're ripping us off and we're going to bring them to heel and subjugate them and we're going to, you know, whether they want to or not, we're going to make them the 51st state they are like. And we're going to really work on our relationship with Russia and trying to deepen our economic ties. What the. I mean, it is crazy town. And the only, as I said the only way to, to interpret it really, because this is far beyond art of the deal. Like, well, you know, Trump is just being crazy and unpredictable. This is just full on side switching. And the only way I think it makes sense is if you are Trump and you believe that the world is a jungle and in this jungle there are three spheres of influence and we are going to carve out our sphere in north and South America and the Chinese are going to get theirs in the Indo Pacific and the Russians get theirs in Europe and we're all going to stay out of each other's way and we're all going to shake down our neighborhoods to get as much loot as we can because the entire world is basically like a five block section of Queens or something.

[Tim Miller]

Are you ready for an even dumber potential rationale? Can I float a dumber potential rationale?

[JVL]

Sure.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so, all right, we've given up the idea that we care about American values. That's gone. Okay, so it's part of this deal. There was, I would have assumed now I would not have been for this, but like you could at least hear a rationale that there, that you do some sort of deal that's about American economic interests, like broadly. Right? Like that's where you get, we're going to get the Ukraine's rare earth minerals and like we're going to do, you know, we're going to continue to sort of limit Russia and, and tell them that like we'll give you like promise Ukraine won't be in NATO, but you're not going to get, you know what I mean? Like trying to triangulate on a, on and just uber realism to try to get something for America vis a vis Russia. That's not happening. What if what we're getting is not for America but for Trump himself? And it's two things. One is that there's some financial backdeet channel potentially again, I'm just floating it. That's a personal back channel. We already know that they have released the biggest Russian crypto scammer. He started a Russian crypto coin. Who knows? Or maybe it's even dumber than that. Maybe it's just like Trump, in order to feel like he should get on Mount Rushmore, just wants a peace deal, just wants to say he got the deal done and so he doesn't actually care if Ukraine gets fucked. He doesn't care if Europe gets fucked. He doesn't care if we, America, Americans get anything out of it. He doesn't care if Russia ends up sort of Becoming again, stronger vis a vis America. All he wants is to be able to say, sleepy Joe Biden didn't get the deal. I got the deal. Take whatever you want. It's a win. For me personally, that's possible.

[JVL]

I think that his view of how he gets to Mount Rushmore, which, by the way, is a thing we should all just resign ourselves to. That's happening. That's happening.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I've actually done a deep dive on this, and I'm not sure there's enough rock around there. So there might just be like a Mount Trump. That's, like, near Mount Rushmore. That's just Trump on it. But anyway, continue.

[JVL]

God help us. No, I think the way he thinks he does that is by expanding the American sphere of influence so that it is entirely unchecked. And so basically, I think he wants to turn both North Central and South American to vassal states, basically. But vassal states where the brown people stay put. And Greenland.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[JVL]

Vassal states where the brown people pay tribute but don't ever try to come up to America. And I, you know, I, I don't wanna, I don't want to do any sort of ethnic national stereotyping, but I will say this. The end result of what Donald Trump is proposing in terms of realigning the. The world is Germany with nuclear weapons. I think maybe that might not be a great idea. Not, not trying to make any stereotypes. The Germans have been excellent allies.

[Tim Miller]

Whose Germany was in this case, Russia or us?

[JVL]

No, no, I mean, the, The Germans will have to get nukes. So, you know, NATO breaks apart. No, no, what I'm saying is if NATO breaks apart. Oh, yeah, Germany, which has, you know, Mona and I talked about this today on her show. Germany has nuclear weapons on its soil, but not under its control. They are NATO nuclear weapons. If we break apart NATO, then Europe has to band together against Russia within Europe. The French have nukes, the English have nukes, the Germans don't. But the German economy is by far the biggest in Europe. And so, you know, the EU cannot hold together as a world power without Germany, and Germany can't exist within that as a junior partner of the coalition. Do we really want a nuclear Germany? Is that, Is that really what the. Is that in the world's best interest? I just feel like, like maybe we shouldn't go for that. But again, none of this matters because we are now on the side of the autocrats. And here's the question I asked on Slack. How far away do you think we are from Trump? Not even tacitly but basically winking a G and saying, yeah, God, do the Taiwan thing. Go do your deal.

[Tim Miller]

And are we already there? So I talked to. When I was talking to Glasser today, she was like, do you think there's any world in which Trump would. The Trump administration would defend Estonia, who's a NATO ally, that were required by law? And I made the same face. You just did. Absolutely not. Nobody thinks so. And I think the same is for Taiwan. I guess I do think there are some other people out there that have deluded themselves that Trump is, like, kind of a tough guy and that he. He just likes to keep people on their toes and he doesn't want to be embarrassed. He just wants to win. And so if push came to shove, many, maybe he would defend Taiwan or European countries. I just don't see it. I don't see a single piece of evidence that, that he gives one wit about any of the Baltic states, Taiwan, et cetera. Now it's harder for me to game out Xi's and Putin's interests here. Like, if you're Putin and you're like, hey, okay, well, they're on the side of the baddies now. They're on my side. Maybe I can, you know, maybe I don't have to waste any more resources on this. Like, maybe I, Maybe Ukraine will just fold. Right? Like, maybe we can do a fake election in Ukraine where I get a puppet in there and. And we just. And I just take over Ukraine sitting behind a big fancy desk, you know, rather than having to.

[JVL]

That's why the election is one of their preconditions.

[Tim Miller]

Right, Exactly.

[JVL]

They want to see if they can simply torpedo the Ukrainian people.

[Tim Miller]

So if you're. Then maybe like, we don't need to interfere to, to invade any of these places yet, because we can kind of just gradually keep getting what we want.

[JVL]

Yeah. Keep rolling it over. I. It's.

[Tim Miller]

Can I.

[JVL]

You know what? I'm going to say something and may. Maybe it's bad and we should. And we'll cut it. Maybe Jamie will cut it.

[Tim Miller]

Let's just say it. This is a safe.

[JVL]

Do you. Do you read Ben Thompson from Strate?

[Tim Miller]

Occasionally? I, I should read him more because it's always good when I read it.

[JVL]

Yeah. I've canceled my stratechary subscription finally. Because Ben is like so many tech bros. Trump, curious. Like, he's never outright pro Trump, but he talks about how, you know, the deis are so terrible and the censorship on this Internet and the.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe I'm only getting sent the good.

[JVL]

Ones media and, you know, those things are quite bad. And so whenever he dips into politics, he sounds like he's in 10th grade. You know, he's very, very smart about chip manufacturing.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[JVL]

Like, he knows, you know, as much about chip manufacturing as anybody. It's very valuable. But when he talks about politics, it's all bad. And he lives in Taiwan. I don't think he's thought through the logic of his position, you know, and I. It is amazing to me to have somebody who is, again, like a Trump curious type who. Who literally lives with a giant target painted around his house thinking that, like, well, you know, as long as we get rid of the deis and the overaggressive censorship that that Meta used to do during the pandemic, that was all terrible. Fuck you, dude. This is.

[Tim Miller]

This is not dissimilar from the FBI, like, agent class, right? I don't know. I've been, you know, having some conversations off the record with people in that world, and it's like, you know, there's like a Trump advanced myth that the FBI is full of deep state libs, you know, and, like, the truth is, the FBI is like, you know, 75, 25 Trump voters, probably.

[JVL]

Oh, my gosh.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, maybe higher. And. And. And, you know, like, what I'm hearing is like, there's a lot of you. Like, well, doesn't seem great, but, like, we'll see. Let's. Let's see how everything shakes out. And maybe it all worked out for me. And it's like, all right, I don't know. Maybe it'll work out for all you guys. We'll see.

[JVL]

I made this analogy with Sarah. It's like, you. You have a house. You basically like your house, but there are a couple pieces of furniture in it that are your wife's, and you hate them like this. There's this sofa that she clings to, and every time you see it, it makes you want to throw up. It makes you angry, actually, that you have to have this sofa in your life, right? And. And then a guy comes into your house with a blowtorch and just starts, like, burning it to the ground gleefully, and he's going to burn your entire house into ashes. Imagine what sort of weird person you'd have to be to sit back from that and say, well, you know what? At least he's getting rid of that sofa. Because I hated that sofa. Because that's basically what this is, right?

[Tim Miller]

I just want to sit around and watch the sofa burn.

[JVL]

I want to watch. I don't care that everything else is going. And I'm, you know, I understand that that guy isn't trying to burn the sofa. He's just burning the sofa in the midst of burning down everything in my house because he hates me. The reason he's burning my house down is because he hates me personally. But that's basically where we are. And you know, the other thing J.D. vance said was, remember J.D. vance said in, in Munich that he wasn't really worried about the Chinese, the Russians. He was worried about the enemy within. The threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. I mean, that's saying that he thinks the, the real enemy is his fellow Americans, the Democrats. Right? Yeah. This is that Putin's real enemies are like the, you know, the people who keep falling out of their first floor windows. And this is.

[Tim Miller]

Wow, you really took us to the dark place here. Jvl.

[JVL]

Look, look. Trump's dearest wish is to be able to do to his opposition what Putin and Xi do to theirs.

[Tim Miller]

And maybe his dearest fantasy. But he doesn't have the balls.

[JVL]

Oh, I. We'll find out.

[Tim Miller]

We'll find out. Let's leave it there. JVL Everybody subscribe to the feed for more content like this where we just sort of talk about the world and don't doom about it at all and, you know, game things out. Subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends we'll be seeing you soon.