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- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Hey, everybody, it is Bill Crystal Monday. But Bill is traveling. So on Sunday, I sat in with him on a new thing he's doing on Sunday on our Substack page, which is live conversations around noon Eastern time. So if you haven't checked those out yet, please go to thebork.com you don't have to subscribe to watch it, but we'd love for you to subscribe and check out our conversation from yesterday also. There's just so much happening, so many niche topics, like I can't even get to on the podcast. We are doing these one off hot takes, and sometimes they're hot takes, but sometimes they're like interviews that are deeper dives on issues that we just can't get to on the pod on our YouTube page. But we started the Bulwark Takes podcast feed. If you go and search Bulwark Takes on your podcast player of choice and subscribe to it, you can get kind of one off conversations. Maybe I'm talking to somebody from Canada or I talked to that guy who's reporting from Kiev last week. Those types of conversations, you can get those on the Bulwark Takes feed. So go check that out. All right, up next, SE Cup Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. You might notice I'm sounded more masculine this morning. I'm on day two of the flu. And so I'm excited to have the laugher with me today because I need someone who can carry me on this podcast. And I found the right person. She's political commentator for cnn, contributor to their new show Table for Five, host of the off the cup podcast, which gets off the news, which we all need. It's SE Cup. What's up, girl?
- [01:36]
SE Cupp
Sorry I'm so giggly. That was just really funny.
- [01:39]
Tim Miller
Well, you know.
- [01:39]
SE Cupp
And I'm sorry you're sick, honey. I'm sorry.
- [01:42]
Tim Miller
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm a little worried about the lights in here. I'm going to be sweating through at the end of the podcast. So you need some good material because we're clipping your clips today, not mine. I don't think I'm going to look good. All right. The last time we spoke, I don't know if you remember, I mean, we've texted or whatever, but the last time we spoke on the podcast was the day after the Kamala debate. Simpler times.
- [02:03]
SE Cupp
Wow.
- [02:04]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I know. I know. It feels like a lifetime ago or even another earth. I wonder what you make now of just that. The biggest Picture like the first seven weeks. How does it match or change your expectations? Is there anything in there? Any green shoots? I don't know, like just anything top, top line. What do you make of it?
- [02:24]
SE Cupp
What's crazy is I thought the 2016 campaign was incredibly disorganized. And then his first term for all the things, sure was a. Was a bit more organized or at least an effort at it. It brought in some good people. He kicked them all out when he realized they were actually too good and wouldn't do his bidding. But this is the reverse. I found this 2024 campaign to be run in a very high level way by Susie et al. And the collapse of that organization and order on day one of this term has been, I guess, shocking, but not, I mean, I am sure shocked at the level of disorganization and chaos considering he came in, I think, with a way bigger mandate this time. I mean, I judged people for voting him in the first time, I judged them harder for voting him in the second time. And there were more of them this time.
- [03:29]
Tim Miller
Plenty of judgment to go around here on the Bullock pod.
- [03:32]
SE Cupp
So I actually expected, and I think I said this various places that like I was going to go into this administration with an open mind, Tim, like, and try not to get sucked into the industrial outrage complex.
- [03:46]
Tim Miller
And how's that gone so far?
- [03:48]
SE Cupp
Right. Which is hard in cable news, but also in general, but in politics, possible in this second term because it feels like the outrage is the point of everything they're doing because it's certainly not fixing. That's not the point. So, yeah, it's more chaotic than I thought. It's like unnecessarily chaotic. There are lots of people in place that could help with some ordering of things.
- [04:15]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [04:16]
SE Cupp
And then I look at his cabinet and I'm deeply, deeply scared for some of the people in there.
- [04:22]
Tim Miller
Well, those things are connected, right? I mean, like the types of people he's putting in is. Is contributing to the disorder.
- [04:27]
SE Cupp
Yeah.
- [04:28]
Tim Miller
Surprise is never the right word because I expected an utter collapse. Like I expected everything to go to shit. I didn't know exactly in what manner it would, you know, but. But I just. Everything that Trump has ever done has ended in disaster. Like basically, except for the reality TV show where he pretended to be something that he said. Right. So like, I figured it would end in disaster. The fact that we are seven weeks in and we have this economic shit show, I think is the thing to me that is the most interesting. I mean, the market is down again right now, as we tape, we'll see. Obviously, that could change in the afternoon, but, I mean, the market has been getting crushed. Our trading partners are fucking pissed. There is total instability. There's not been any focus on, like, you know, the side of Trump that's like the ribbon cutting guy. You know, we haven't had that side of Trump at all. Like, there's been none of that, like, we're going to build new stuff here. There's really been pretty little focus even on like the regulation cutting. And occasionally I kill mention that, but, like, yeah, so it's like on. Across every metric, it has been a shit show. And like this weekend you have Maria Barrett Romo, like, basically being like, I think a recession is coming to him. I mean, Maria Bart Romo.
- [05:39]
SE Cupp
Right.
- [05:40]
Tim Miller
I mean, it's. I mean, like. And she was like one of the most insane people during the stop the steal things.
- [05:46]
SE Cupp
Yeah.
- [05:46]
Tim Miller
So. So some reality is breaking in on her show.
- [05:49]
SE Cupp
Yeah. But elsewhere on Fox, I'm sure you've seen they're already messaging the Biden recession.
- [05:55]
Tim Miller
That in itself is a sign of just very dire economic circumstances, I would think.
- [06:00]
SE Cupp
Right. Yes.
- [06:02]
Tim Miller
So anyway, I don't know. What do you make about the economic situation?
- [06:05]
SE Cupp
The other crazy part is the campaign and his voters were so clear on the three issues. The economy being the top right thing that they were going to the polls for. They didn't give a shit about pet seating migrants in Ohio. Like, all the crap that surrounded the campaign. Voters were super clear. Don't care about that. We care about the economy, immigration, crime, period, full stop, end of sentence. Nothing cracked the numbers that those three issues did. And again, economy at the top. So to come in and in his joint address mention the economy spend, like, I think something like 7% of his speech addressed the economy specifically.
- [06:53]
Tim Miller
It feels like a lot. I don't know, it felt less.
- [06:56]
SE Cupp
It took 30 minutes to even get to the economy and lowering costs.
- [07:00]
Tim Miller
Mount McKinley was in there and complaining that the Democrats don't clap for him.
- [07:05]
SE Cupp
Mount McKinley came first.
- [07:06]
Tim Miller
Yeah, that's right.
- [07:08]
SE Cupp
Renaming Denali came first before the economy. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico hit before the economy. All this shit that no one said. This is why I'm going to vote for Donald Trump came before the economy. And he doesn't have great economic news, but that's never stopped him. To still not put it front and center and even claim wins he hasn't gotten would be very Trump. And he didn't. So I'm just wondering when these three issues are gonna come back front and center. And like, instead of addressing crime and policing, the new MAGA thing is to get Derek Chauvin's conviction overturned or whatever or pardoned. I mean, it's just, it's going around all the three big issues and I just don't understand who this is for.
- [08:01]
Tim Miller
The very online, like posters, I think is who it's for on the crime thing, which I didn't even have on my list. But it's a great point. It's been the opposite. I mean, he's let out a lot of criminals. Yeah, so he's let out a lot of criminals and they've stopped, they've said that they're going to stop investigating certain types of crimes of the doj. Yes, a lot of white collar crimes.
- [08:22]
SE Cupp
Right.
- [08:22]
Tim Miller
That's something they're going to do. And there's been no focus on like the getting criminal, like the cracking down.
- [08:29]
SE Cupp
Even rhetorically I haven't heard. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. But also the Doge cuts could delay deportations. The other thing of this three legged stool, like they're getting in the way of their own.
- [08:42]
Tim Miller
And the FBI people getting fired from the FBI. Yeah, yeah. No, the Dougherty situation, the guy in the New York FBI office, it was very well regarded. I was forced into retirement. Reasons unclear. Like it could be related to, you know, retribution. Could be related to the fact that he did some Russia investigations. Like all of that is sure to come out. But like, you know, he gets a standing ovation walking out of the New York office over the weekend and it's like.
- [09:08]
SE Cupp
That's right.
- [09:09]
Tim Miller
So yeah, it's like they're firing law enforcement, they're defunding the police, like the federal police that like investigate real crime. It's not like D.C. desk jockey, whatever, blah, blah, blah, deep state. Like guys out in the field arresting criminals. They're getting rid of them. So. Yeah, no, I hear you in that immigration thing. You can I guess give them whatever Mark's on. But like the economy and he's on again. They've now stuck into this message. They're going to. The Biden message even worse. Like, well, there's the transitory now we're into transitory messaging. They've already gotten into that six weeks in. Right. That they're like, oh, well, it's gonna, you know, there's gonna be a little short term pain. All right. There's gonna be a little short term transition and then Trump on the terrible thing. I don't know where you are at on this but, like, there are still a lot of people out there that think he's bluffing. He's bluffing. But on the plane last night when he was asked about this, you know, he, he basically says the tariffs are going to be what, what gets everybody rich. And he keeps falling back on that. And I think he believes it. So I, I don't. To me, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
- [10:07]
SE Cupp
Part of me, at least strategically, politically, I hope he's not bluffing. I hope he gets to do all the things he talks about doing so that we can see in evidence how they don't work. I mean, I, I think I know how they're gonna go, but, you know, there's a whole half of the country that doesn't believe that, that believes everything he says. And so I'd like to just give him open reign. Now. I don't want the pain, the economic pain that I know that's going to cause and is already causing. But I hope he's not bluffing. I hope he gets to do it so he can't continue to say, well, if I got to do it the way I wanted to do it with no evidence, just do it. Okay, do it. Show us. Do it and show us how rich we're all gonna get. I'm just sick of all the games.
- [10:57]
Tim Miller
Me, too. All right, now moving on to the most outrageous stuff of the first seven weeks here in Ukraine. So the intelligence sharing is still not happening. We paused that, I guess, to create enough suffering in Ukraine to force Zelenskyy to surrender. Zelensky said that Russian forces launched 1200 glide bombs, 870 drones, and over 80 missiles of various types at Ukrainian targets over the past week. Since we stopped the intelligence sharing, a higher percentage of those have gotten through. Trump said last night it could be back soon. Wait and see. We'll see. I mean, it's pretty. It's just sick. What is happening right now. I don't know.
- [11:40]
SE Cupp
Yeah. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
- [11:42]
Tim Miller
We're enemies.
- [11:43]
SE Cupp
I mean, we're enemies. We're the bad guy. We're the bad guy in this. And that's really hard to stomach for all the reasons I know, you know, as a child of the 80s and like a Reagan Republican, this is bananas and awful. But yeah, the intelligence sharing thing is how, you know, this isn't just, as Trump says, a guy who wants a peace deal, a guy who's neutral, you know, this is a guy who wants Putin to win because you don't take away the intelligence sharing for any other reason than you want to give Russia a strategic advantage? Right, that's it. That's the only reason. Because it's not boots on the ground, it's not even weapons. It's information and it's super valuable information. And so withholding that is the dickiest part of this. And also, like I said, the clearest indication of whose side he is on. As if we didn't know. But that's how you know. And if I'm an ally watching around the world, I mean, the stuff he's, you know, he and his folks are saying about Japan, about NATO, about all the alliances that we've had for so long that I think are really important would make anyone very, very nervous about who America is anymore and what we're willing to do for anybody but ourselves.
- [13:08]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I want to get to the alliances next. But just one more thing on the deal, the supposed deal. So they're in Saudi, I guess, this week.
- [13:15]
SE Cupp
Yeah. Jeddah again.
- [13:16]
Tim Miller
I guess we've decided to do this on Russia's home court. Yeah, you know, I mean, we didn't. A lot of countries could have picked to do the negotiations we're to do it on.
- [13:24]
SE Cupp
Was North Korea booked or.
- [13:26]
Tim Miller
Yeah, we're just doing. On an autocrat's home court. And there's mixed messages on whether the intelligence sharing can come back in. But like the deal that is being leaked and who knows? I hope maybe it'll be better. We could always hope, but is essentially that Ukraine surrenders, Russia gets the territory, Ukraine gives us the rare earth minerals in the hopes that that will mean that we will defend them, but we won't give them any security guarantees.
- [13:50]
SE Cupp
Right.
- [13:51]
Tim Miller
And we might start giving them weapons again and we might start giving them intel sharing again and they have to have elections or, or another option would be for Zelensky to resign. So like the short is basically surrender, resign and pay us a ransom. That's like the opening gambit here in the art of the deal.
- [14:09]
SE Cupp
Yes. And the maybe we'll give you weapons again, maybe we'll defend you again, is irrelevant. They've already surrendered under the plan of this deal, Right? They've surrendered already. Yeah. It makes no sense other than they want Putin to win, they want Russia to win is how this makes sense. And I don't know where that goes. I'm not very confident in the deal making abilities of this administration, to say the least.
- [14:34]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, here's where it goes. I mean, the Europeans breaking from us. So I've talked a bunch of the last week about France, what they've been saying. There was a report out. High level British sources are saying that they think it's time to stop doing the five eyes intelligence sharing with the US Romania is maybe not our most important ally, but I thought that this was an interesting quote from Romania. The butcher in the White House is knowingly weakening Ukraine's defense capacities in order for Putin to strike cities. My God, that's pretty blunt there from Romania. The Polish foreign minister is in a Twitter fight with Marco and Elon. Marco is like, demanding that he says thank you or the Russians will be on his border. And it's just all collapsing. It's collapsing. It's collapsible. The Western alliance, the Atlantic alliance is just collapse.
- [15:21]
SE Cupp
You could say we're. We're becoming weaker.
- [15:24]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [15:25]
SE Cupp
For all of Trump's talk, we are becoming a weaker force and presence on the world stage. And that is shockingly by design. It seems like what they would call America first, I would call a weakening of American exceptionalism and might and power and influence and preparedness. It's in the way he talks about the economy as well. There's this economic warfare. It's not boots on the ground, but it is warfare nonetheless. Just to get back to the tariffs mucking about in other people's economies, which is what. What he's doing with threats and real tariffs is an economic warfare. And now all these talks of maybe militarily taking over Panama or Greenland and then all of the withdrawing from these alliances and in fact, strategically breaking them on purpose, this is all a weakening of America. And it does not feel like isolationism, which is, I think, what, what he was promising. This is a lot of interventionism to change global economic stability, to change global security, to change long held geopolitical relationships. I mean, this is incredibly interventionist to me. I don't know that anyone on his side will care, really. But I care about things like consistency and honesty.
- [16:46]
Tim Miller
You a little bit more than me. I'm pretty much Persona non grata in this world. But you talk still to national security Republican types, right? Some of them still chat with you. Like what? Like, where are they? We have a big budget thing that coming up this week, March 14th. They're going to need to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. It only take three House Republicans to say, hey, I'm going to vote for this. But like, the string attached here is that we got to do intel sharing again, or we have to at least provide the weapons that have already been budgeted, right? You know, and it can be a small thing. Right. But, like, I don't know. I mean, like, what. What are you hearing from that world that just is just not worth fighting with? The mad king.
- [17:31]
SE Cupp
Yeah, basically. I mean, everyone complains. Not everyone. Let me be more judicious with my words. But I've heard a number of Republicans in the House and Senate and staffers complain about, like I said, Cabinet picks in these security positions, specifically Tulsi. One person I talked to called her a clown and voted for her because not being with this president on everything is, I feel like, not an option. So, you know, Lisa wasn't a very.
- [18:07]
Tim Miller
Significant role that he was voting to confirm a clown for he or she. I guess Lisa was, you know, just the Director of National Intelligence. Just that.
- [18:15]
SE Cupp
Just that. I know that there was some relief when she pushed back on Doge, when she pushed back on Elon and the, you know, the firing he's trying to do. There was a little relief of that. But she has since come out and said some propagandist shit about Russia that confirmed she is exactly who we thought she was. But, no, I think there's definitely anxiety among a lot of Republicans on the national security front, but a total unwillingness to do anything about it.
- [18:45]
Tim Miller
I want to get to Elon and Doge Bradley we've mentioned a couple of times, because I don't think I actually said it. Elon tweeted, be quiet, small man. At the Polish foreign minister. Again, like, what are we doing? Like, what the shadow president is just, like, berating on social media. The Polish. The Polish foreign minister who is just out there saying, hey, I paid for Starlink, so you can't take it away because I paid.
- [19:09]
SE Cupp
And then threatening that he might. That he might turn it off.
- [19:12]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he might just turn it off. I feel like maybe this is wrong. I don't know why this exists in my memory, but maybe not during this campaign, but, like, at a time, you were kind of. Elon. Curious. No. Is that wrong? Never. You've always been Elon in curious?
- [19:26]
SE Cupp
Yes.
- [19:27]
Tim Miller
Deeply so. Okay, well, then that gives you clarity of vision here. One thing I guess you have been curious of, that we all have, are. Is streamlining the government.
- [19:38]
SE Cupp
Yes.
- [19:39]
Tim Miller
So what do you make of his effort to do that thus far?
- [19:41]
SE Cupp
Ridiculous, Stupid, terrible, awful. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this interest in cutting the government, streamlining the government, making it leaner and smarter, because this is the rare conservative thing that this administration seems to have been interested in. And it's a bedrock of small government, limited Government conservatism. So I thought, this is good. I did not like the idea of putting an unelected man child in charge of it, but that wasn't my choice. But no, I was very open minded to this. But I cannot believe how clumsily and dumbly they've gone about this. I mean, no expert in anything would say that this is the way to fix any problem. What a waste. What a wasted opportunity. Because there is bipartisan support among the electorate for cutting fraud and waste and making the government smaller. That's such an easy way. It's low hanging fruit. You could easily win at this if you just did it in like a normal way. But, but Elon is, like I said, he's such a man child who I feel like is running around the country playing at politics like it's like with toys, like the economy is a toy. All these agencies are little chess pieces on his like, big game board. It's ridiculous. And I don't know when or if Trump will ever get tired of him embarrassing us on a world stage. Will that ever get tiring for Trump? I don't know.
- [21:16]
Tim Miller
I think he likes it.
- [21:18]
SE Cupp
But what does he like about it? Tell me.
- [21:21]
Tim Miller
I think that he likes that this guy is the richest person in the world and he lands rockets and he hates the same people.
- [21:29]
SE Cupp
He does not land rockets.
- [21:30]
Tim Miller
Well, he's had a few misses lately.
- [21:33]
SE Cupp
Let me just tell you.
- [21:33]
Tim Miller
The one. Cool. The cool landing was cool, I guess, right?
- [21:38]
SE Cupp
More often does not land rockets.
- [21:40]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, it's a hit and miss. I think Trump now we're getting deep into psychoanalyzing Trump, which I don't like to do. But like, Trump sees himself as like the rich guy that wasn't respected by the other rich guys in New York, you know, and, and I think that Elon and him have this in common. Right? Like, Elon's also been very successful and like these dumb liberals that didn't invite us to their parties or whatever, blah, blah, blah. I think that there's to that. There might also be something to the heat shield element of it that.
- [22:12]
SE Cupp
Yeah, I've heard that. How long he wants that kind of heat shield? I don't know. But I don't know. I wouldn't want to be embarrassed this way, especially if I had as thin a skin as Donald Trump. This is just. It's laughable. It's humiliating. We are a laughing stock because Elon tweets at. At foreign leaders like they're just trolls. Like they're Twitter trolls. He's swatting away. It's crazy.
- [22:36]
Tim Miller
Here's the other thing. When I interviewed Bannon, like, back in December, he was very. Because he hates Elon.
- [22:43]
SE Cupp
Yeah, right, Right.
- [22:43]
Tim Miller
But, like, he made this point that I take also, which is that, like, in addition to being a heat shield, he's also Trump's hammer right now financially. Right. And, like, I think that unlike any of these other people that have been around Trump and embarrassing him at various levels, like, none of them had their own base of support. Right. Like, Elon has its own Twitter base of support. Like, you don't. Do you really want to get mad at him and have him sicking people on you? He's. He does seem erratic. He has his own financial support, like, boots on the ground. It wasn't even just, like, writing a check. Like, he was out there doing organizational stuff.
- [23:18]
SE Cupp
Yeah.
- [23:18]
Tim Miller
You know, you could use him to intimidate somebody that's not going to support your agenda. Not that they seem to really care about legislation at this point, since they're just doing everything by fiat. So I do think that there's, like, some element of that to that Elon has a little bit more. More leverage than any of these other Trump people ever have.
- [23:35]
SE Cupp
I think that's right. I think that is true. But then again, what does Elon have over Trump that Trump can't say, hey, let's cool it with this. Let's rein this in, or let's do it this way. Let's get a little more responsible, a little less reckless. Like, why can't he rein him in? He doesn't want to. That's the part I don't. I guess I just don't get. But I'll.
- [24:01]
Tim Miller
It's also been seven weeks.
- [24:02]
SE Cupp
Psychologizing Trump has never been my strong suit.
- [24:04]
Tim Miller
Here's the other thing about Doge that's like, here's just a prime example of the ridiculousness. I don't know if you saw this. This was Friday afternoon. Tom Cole, who's like one of these old line Republicans that's still around, you kind of forget he's still in there. He's from Oklahoma. He's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. So, you know, powerful. And he wrote this after working closely with Doge. I'm thrilled to announce that common sense has prevailed as the National Weather center in Norman, the Social Security Administration office in Lawton, and the Indian Health Service offices in Oklahoma City will remain operational. Blah, blah, blah. He goes on, and Chris Murphy, like, posted about this and is like, this is an insane system. It's a petition to the king. That's how we're going to do this thing. This is a very un American system where it's just like Elon's going to go in with a flamethrower and start burning everything to the ground. And you can get your thing rebuilt if you happen to be the Appropriations Committee chair from Oklahoma. But you know, there are Social Security administration offices and places that don't have representatives like Tom Cole or have Democratic representatives or have insane MAGA representatives. And so I guess those are just going to go away.
- [25:13]
SE Cupp
Yeah. It's this sing for your supper.
- [25:16]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [25:16]
SE Cupp
And it's a. It's a theme, Right. Why didn't he thank us? Why isn't he more thankful? This theme of you have to earn. You have to earn your democracy, you have to earn your government. You have to earn services you've already paid for. You have to re. Earn our support, even though you've thanked us a thousand times. It's so much about them, as if. And I said this before, like in that meeting with zelensky, Trump and J.D. vance looked like two losers on bar stools, trying to be like, we own this bar. Who are you coming in here? You don't own the bar. That's not your house. The White House isn't yours.
- [25:56]
Tim Miller
It's our house.
- [25:57]
SE Cupp
It's our house. You are public servants. There is no awareness of the public service aspect of this job. And the only people that could really get in their way are Republican lawmakers, and they're not doing that. So there's no stopping this.
- [26:15]
Tim Miller
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- [29:24]
SE Cupp
You know, I don't know. I know having covered Elon a bit before Doge, you know, people are scared of him, too. Inside his companies, he is vengeful. Inside his own companies, he fires people when they say things he doesn't like. And so I don't know, there might be a culture even among his shareholders of fear, of retribution. I don't know. And Dave is right and it's a great idea, but I just wouldn't put a ton of hope in the idea that someone out there is going to hold him accountable.
- [30:02]
Tim Miller
What do you make of the corruption side of this? I kind of hate the question, will this have political salience? It's kind of like, who cares? It's a long time away. But I, I do just wonder how the port noise of the world and like these more soft maggots, it's maybe even unfair to call them soft maggot, but whatever. Like the people that were that got caught up in Trump, you know, that were. That were less ideological about it, let's put it that way. Yeah, you know, they don't like the corruption. Apparently Musk had 32 investigations into his companies when Trump took power. All of them are being quashed. I've talked a bunch about this Justin sun guy. He's a Chinese crypto magnet that put 50 plus million into Trump's worthless various crypto, you know, Griffs. And now the SEC isn't investigating him. I just, and I think this is just the tip of the iceberg of the corruption that's going to happen on all this stuff. I don't know. Do you think that there's going to be some salience there or do we just live in a kleptocracy now?
- [31:00]
SE Cupp
Yeah, we live in a kleptocracy. Also a plutocracy, what I'm calling a plutocracy because of the tech specificness of our plutocrats today. We do. And yeah, the Starling contracts. I think I said something like, it's like making the arsonist the fire chief, but also the accountant, the head of.
- [31:24]
Tim Miller
Hr, the guy who decides the insurance payouts, like, who gets the insurance payouts.
- [31:28]
SE Cupp
And awarding him contracts and accelerants. Right. Like, because Elon is overseeing agencies that regulate his businesses and decide whether his businesses will live or die. Like, I mean, it's, it's crazy. And this should be a huge V story. Imagine the Clinton era, right, of trying to find bits of corruption Anywhere you can, right? With Whitewater, these really kind of complicated. You really have to look for the corruption. It was there, of course, but you really have to find it. This is such obvious corruption and self dealing.
- [32:07]
Tim Miller
The Hunter Biden paintings, you know, that.
- [32:09]
SE Cupp
Was some corruption, but this is like apples and oranges. And suddenly nobody cares. Nobody cares that the George Soros of Maga. Suddenly, I mean, I feel like I had my memory erased. Like someone's trying to erase my memory from the past 20 years of. Of conservatism where, like, remember when that stuff mattered? Boom. Severance, you're at work now. You forgot all of that. Like, it's crazy.
- [32:38]
Tim Miller
I mean, the real explanation is that for most of these people, it didn't matter. It was team jerseys, and you're putting your team jersey on, whatever. And it's like, this is just like the most extreme. It's like a sociological experiment. It really is of that. It's like, how ridiculous could we make? Like, how ostentatious could we make the corruption and demonstrate that you still don't actually care? Like, we'll have the president start a worthless coin eight hours before he becomes president. See if anyone can let shadowy foreign governments and individuals pay him for this worthless coin.
- [33:09]
SE Cupp
Yeah.
- [33:10]
Tim Miller
Millions upon tens of millions of dollars. And we'll just say, do you care about that or did you just care about the Mark Rich part? You know what I mean?
- [33:18]
SE Cupp
Right, Exactly.
- [33:22]
Tim Miller
Well, while we're discussing the Democrats, I do have one Democrat to pick on today. Just because. I just think it was just such a prime example when I was watching this sick over the weekend of like, why it's important for everybody to get out of their bubble. You know, you got to get out of your bubble a little bit. Oh, good.
- [33:40]
SE Cupp
Tell me who offended. I love these.
- [33:42]
Tim Miller
It's Stacey Abrams. If you get stuck in your bubble and then you start to make arguments.
- [33:47]
SE Cupp
Expect nothing less, by the way.
- [33:49]
Tim Miller
Exactly. They don't make any sense, okay? And you have to at least be able to hear the critiques. Even if. Even if you grant that like 94.7% of the mega critiques are bad faith or BS, you got to at least listen to them so that you can understand how to push back on them and so that you can kind of address the 5% that accidentally were legit. So here it is. Stacey Abrams, I guess, got 1.9 billion. She was the head of this group. And Chris Hayes, in a very friendly way, just kind of asked her to explain what all the hubbub was about. I wanted to Play for you her explanation of how she was going to.
- [34:29]
Stacey Abrams
Use the 1.9 billion taxpayer dollars in 2023 and 2024. I led a program called Vitalizing DeSoto. We worked in a tiny town in South Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your cost. And in fact, we accomplished that for 75% of the community. They got appliances that are lowering their bills right now. We have one woman who saw her electric bill cut in half from 180 to $98. That's what we delivered. And based on that program, a coalition of organizations, famous organizations, came together and said to the epa, if we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans. Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans. And the EPA said, okay, great, go for it.
- [35:26]
Tim Miller
So DeSoto, Georgia has 116 homes in it, in the town.
- [35:31]
SE Cupp
Okay.
- [35:32]
Tim Miller
So, I mean, I guess it seems good what happened in that. Good. It seems that good would happen in that trial program. But it's like, okay, so what do we do? Okay, I guess if you came to me and said our plan was to give 2 million poor people new appliances, I probably would have said, okay, that seems like a dumb program. I mean, that seems like a good program for a nonprofit. The Gates foundation could do that or whatever. Or, you know, but if it's the government, it's like, maybe we should just give them cash or not do that or pay down the debt or whatever. It's just like we have this very convoluted system where we're gonna, like, replace toasters in Homes for 1.9 billion. I just don't think that anybody who is not totally in the tank would listen to that and be like, great point.
- [36:19]
SE Cupp
Right.
- [36:19]
Tim Miller
And like, if you listen to that minute long explanation and compare it to Donald Trump just being like, Stacey Abrams got 1.9 billion to give people toasters. Like, who's winning the argument?
- [36:29]
SE Cupp
He is.
- [36:30]
Tim Miller
He is.
- [36:32]
SE Cupp
Yeah. Those are the kinds of things, like, I don't know if it's bubble or not really understanding where we're at. Money, money. Right. Yeah. And solving big problems. Right. It feels a little like bringing a knife to a gunfight when you're like, this is not what's gonna win your voters back what you need. And this isn't addressing your policy problems. The policy problems that Democrats have are that the top three concerns of the country were not being solved by Democratic policies. We've already said the economy, inflationary economic policy didn't Work at the border, open borders didn't work. And crime, soft on crime policies didn't work. Whether perception or real, that is the, that is where we're at.
- [37:16]
Tim Miller
The crime issue was getting better. What by the time Biden, by the.
- [37:19]
SE Cupp
End of the Biden campaign, the FBI had to revise its numbers and no one said anything about the fact that they then showed crime is actually going up. Sure, I wonder why I gave you the perception part. I gave you that some of this could be perception. But these are the top three problems. Democratic policies did not solve them for many Americans. So to ignore those top three things and decide it's really a question of leadership. David Hogue's gonna fix this over at the dnc. Or it's really a question of like how we, you know, how we message this. Or it's a question of whether we protest at the joints, address and hold paddles up. That's going to solve it. Or Stacey Abrams, big solution. Here's what I did with billions of dollars. This is so missing. This is so missing the obvious point. And Alyssa Slotkin, who I know and really like, got the closest to that. Got the closest to it in her address when she talked about listening. People want cuts. Okay? That's acknowledging something that many Democrats do not. Do not acknowledge. People want cuts. I have a different way to do that than the current administration is doing it. People want to lower the cost of goods. I would have a different approach to that than this administration is doing. Democrats need to accept the problems that Americans are telling them they have and offer different solutions instead of protesting about Elon or Trump paying taxes. I mean, none of that is it. That ain't it.
- [38:51]
Tim Miller
That's very good. And I would add on the list of problems that the American people have, I did not notice a big clamoring that was like, I really want the government to give me a new microwave. What I really need right now is a new high efficiency microwave. And I want to do it at scale. I want it at scale.
- [39:08]
SE Cupp
I haven't gotten a raise in five years. I'm working three jobs. I'm worried about my kid and opioids. I'm worried about crime in my town.
- [39:21]
Tim Miller
But give me a new energy efficient oven, it's going to cut 60 bucks off my monthly bill. My buddies that are in, who I love, by the way, that are in renewable kind of hedge fund world are going to be mad at me for this one shaking their finger. But actually, I just want to reiterate, I'd support this as a nonprofit Effort, Yes. As an effort in the private sector. Figure out ways, raise some cash, go do this. Great.
- [39:45]
SE Cupp
Or what if. What if the government offered like a ge, some subsidies for giving people new energy efficient appliances, something.
- [39:55]
Tim Miller
Something simple.
- [39:56]
SE Cupp
We're on record. We also want to solve this problem.
- [39:59]
Tim Miller
I'm fine with it. It's just, you know, it's like that's just not the best explanation that you can correct. I think the right explanation is just to not do interviews. If that was really the best you had, I want to move on to Andrew Tate, who is a real fucking loser and, you know, make Stacey Abrams look like you should get a Stacey Abrams candle. By comparison. This guy and his brother are back in the country. You hate to hand it to Ron DeSantis, but they came to Florida and Ron DeSantis was like, no, this is not Florida. We're going to investigate you. So good on Ron DeSantis. But then he heads out to Vegas. Dana White, who's now on the Meta board, gives him a welcome to the states boys bro hug when he arrives at USC fight. Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, is at the fight. Just sitting near these two predators. Predators that had trafficked women and like, kept them in a fucking, like video prostitute home, whatever you call that. Bragged about it. J.D. vance, I noticed you pointed out, follows one of them on Twitter. Both of them. Both of them. Oh, Tristan and Andrew.
- [41:08]
SE Cupp
Yep.
- [41:08]
Tim Miller
Like, this is fucking sick. Like, this is s. That this going back to our top thing also. This has been a priority. Like, they could have just ignored this one, but like, the administration decided no. Bringing Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate back to the states was an important negotiating thing that they needed to do with Romania. And now they're all kind of bro. And out in Vegas.
- [41:32]
SE Cupp
The corrosion of the Republican Party and the place MAGA has pushed it into is one now where you, you have to reflexively. You don't have to, but people believe that you have to reflexively defend the worst kinds of people to own the libs, to champion free speech, whatever it is. You, you have to, because it's the Young Republicans, a group that helped bring me into a movement of conservatism with principles. It's Dana White and these other Trump acolytes. It's the Vice President following these boys and it's a ton of right wing influencers giving them a moral pass and even saying, though they haven't been proven guilty, they've admitted to doing what we're saying that they're doing, as if there's some Technicality. So we can ignore all of that is insane. But so reflective, so illustrative of how far the Republican Party has devolved. And in jettisoning all the principles, this is what's left. This is what they're moored to. I think, more than anything else. I don't mean this like child predators. I mean, defending the indefensible is kind of what they're left with because the principles are gone. The things binding conservatives together inside the Republican Party, that's gone. This is what they have.
- [43:19]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And I saw. I thought the most telling exchange by this was Gates posted something about DeSantis and basically said that DeSantis is virtue signaling. It's total nihilism. Right. Like there's nothing that is. That is worth defending just on the merits.
- [43:34]
SE Cupp
And it's nihilism and it's personal grievances. Right. Matt Gaetz is mad at Ron DeSantis. That's why he tweeted this. This has nothing to do with the Tates. Just like nothing has anything to do with morality or principles or even whether things are working. It's just personal grievances and what you can get from people.
- [43:55]
Tim Miller
Depressing.
- [43:56]
SE Cupp
I am pleased to see a lot of Republicans and sort of conservatives come out against the Tates saying unashamedly. You know, people on the far right in right wing media saying unashamedly. These people are terrible. Stop defending them. I've seen more of that than I thought. Maybe I would.
- [44:16]
Tim Miller
Okay, that's worth saying. I would ask, though, who do you think is going to win that battle?
- [44:20]
SE Cupp
Sure. Yep.
- [44:21]
Tim Miller
We know this is a rhetorical question. Yeah. Speaking of terrible people, our HHS secretary, rfk, he's been kind of quiet. I've been noticing we haven't maha'd a bunch, but we do have a new measles case in Maryland.
- [44:34]
SE Cupp
Right.
- [44:34]
Tim Miller
And then we've got the Department of Ag. A new character for our show is Brooke Rollins. I don't feel like anybody gives this woman enough attention. He's the Secretary of Agriculture. She posted on Instagram. I feel like this is related. Darfk. You'll see why.
- [44:48]
SE Cupp
Yep, I know. We're good.
- [44:49]
Tim Miller
Rollins told the Breitbart News that Trump's administration will be focusing its egg price reduction efforts on repopulation of chickens. And that administration is now ruling out any vaccines for animals against avian bird flu. We'd actually just come up with, like, a vaccine for chickens, I guess. In February, it'd been finally approved and the AG Secretary is saying, nope, not gonna do this. I Don't know. Worried that Bill Gates is gonna get his microchips into the chicken, which will get into your Popeyes, which will then get into your system. I don't, I don't. I don't exactly know the rationale for not doing that, but. So, no, we're not gonna vaccinate the chickens and we've got measles in Maryland, so I don't know if you've been.
- [45:30]
SE Cupp
And also you should raise your own chickens if you want to lower the price of eggs.
- [45:34]
Tim Miller
Yeah, just get a little in your backyard. Get some, get some wire.
- [45:38]
SE Cupp
Yeah. Inner city, who cares?
- [45:40]
Tim Miller
Get a little crate. Now, the lumber for your old crate, it's gonna cost a little more because we're tariffing Canada now. But that's okay.
- [45:49]
SE Cupp
That's steel wiring too. That's gonna go up, but. Yeah, I don't wanna laugh about measles. In 2025, one child has died. It's happened. This is heartbreaking and disgusting and preventable. And if this happens in numbers, we are no longer a first world country. Right. If we're dying, if our children are dying of diseases we can prevent, Science has a tool for this. I don't know how we call ourselves a civil society. I don't know how we call ourselves a first world country. It's crazy.
- [46:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's pretty bad. Do you have any other. Any other rfk, Any other MAHA thoughts?
- [46:34]
SE Cupp
I'm pleased at how quiet he's been, but that also makes me nervous. What's. What's he doing in this? When we're all paying attention to Elon, what is he doing?
- [46:43]
Tim Miller
We're going to keep our eye on rfk, our final topic. It's kind of a big thing. Thing. I mostly just wanted our listeners. I just wanted to point our listeners to it because it's very interesting. Noah Smith, we've had on, wrote a substack post. The thesis of it is basically that, like the liberal world order from FDR essentially through 2015, now we have a little bit of distance. It seems like with Trump's election in 2016, that might be the end of that era. And there's this question about what will replace it. I think he's of the view. I still have the hope that it could be cobbled back together, looking worse and worse every day. But if the view is that something else is going to replace it, he points out, I think pretty sharply that MAGA cannot actually be the thing that replaces it because it's a destructive force and that they haven't actually Built anything. They don't seem to be capable of building anything. It's a very long think piece, but I think it's important, you know, kind of start to wrap our heads around, you know, both that question, whether MAGA is capable of doing this and. And if not that, what. So I just wanted to see if you had any deep thoughts on that. You want to leave us with.
- [47:53]
SE Cupp
Well, yeah, I challenge this premise a little bit.
- [47:58]
Tim Miller
Please.
- [47:58]
SE Cupp
Because MAGA hasn't built anything. Is true a bit. But he seems to be dismissing the. I mean, he is dismissing the online infrastructure.
- [48:13]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [48:14]
SE Cupp
His indictment is that MAGA is just an online fan fiction kind of correct movement. And he's. He's not wrong. But that is incredibly powerful. And for everything that Democrats built their grassroots and their young Democrats and their. It has not made them a dominant force in American politics in a very long time. I mean, since Obama, I don't think Democrats have. Have had a ton of persuasive power. I think he's right about identifying the nature of the MAGA movement, but that is powerful in itself. I would also say whatever's gonna replace Trump and Trumpism, the Republicans have not built yet. The Republicans haven't created that. And because, like I said, they've jettisoned the conservatism, the principles. There's nothing more ing MAGA to anything static. It's only moored to what Trump just said. The last Trump impulse is what is currently defining the MAGA movement. Well, that's by design. Trump not defining his principles, the Trump, you know, the Trump order, the Trump version of foreign policy. Not defining that is intentional. And it's actually, you know, people who study mass movements will say that that's a really important thing to do. If you want a movement to grow and continue, you can't define it because once it's accomplished those minimal goals, it ceases to be important. So you have to leave it sort of ambiguous. And Trump leaves it ambiguous because he doesn't know, and he doesn't know what he wants it to be or what he stands for other than these transactional kinds of, you know, ideas. So MAGA is moored only to Trump, which means when Trump goes, either, you know, he's not in office anymore or he dies, it's really not more to anything. And it's not more to Don Jr. It's not more to JD Vance or whoever the successor is. It's really just attached to him and defined by him. So that could leave room for a lot of things to come and fill that Void some really ugly, gross things, but also maybe conservatism again, who knows? But it's not going to be. It's. It's not. It cannot carry on. Trumpism can carry on in voters, but it can't carry on as a defined movement. I don't think without Trump, and I don't see anything past past Trump for maga, other than just the kind of chaos and running around and how do we try to emulate it, but no one's going to be able to do that very well. And so I think you're going to have all these, like, fractious groups of, like, the white nationalists over here, the America first people over here, and I just think it's going to be kind of a mess.
- [51:12]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I can be messy, too. And at some level, there is, like, some weak links, but some links between, you know, Orban and Bolsonaro, although he's out now, and, you know, Le Pen and Maloney and, like, and Farage and I, you know, and so maybe there's something that kind of emerges out of all that, but I don't know. To me, the most interesting thing about it, why I wanted to raise it, besides just recommending to listeners they go check it out, is that I. I essentially agree with the premise that. And I think Bannon does, too, who is, I think, really the person that is most in touch with the actual ideology, to extent there is any with maga, is that it's a destructive movement. Like, I think that is, like, the right thing that like it. And it is not really, you know, it's not really prescriptive at all about, like, once we tear down the administrative state, once we tear down the Western alliances, once we get rid of these liberal elites that everybody hates, then it's kind of like, we'll see what happens. Like, honestly, like, we'll see what happens. We're going to tear down this order and rebuild something new. And some people have thoughts. Yeah, some people have thoughts within the movement, but there's no cohesiveness. And I just think that, like, because of that, it will leave us, assuming we get rid of this guy and get over it with kind of like a really open aperture, like, both on the right and on the left.
- [52:33]
SE Cupp
Yeah.
- [52:33]
Tim Miller
For, like, different types of things to fill it. And in some ways, this is why I wanted to leave with this. In some ways, that is exciting. I don't know. My small c. Conservatism is, like. It's, like, scary in some ways, because it's like, I thought the old order was, like, pretty good. I had some complaints on the edges, but I could have stuck with the old order. But if you accept the thesis, I do think that there's an opportunity there for somebody that wants to seize it. So anyway, I don't know. Do you have any final thoughts on that or is that good?
- [52:59]
SE Cupp
I do too. And I think I was trying to get at that, like, there's going to be such a vacuum because of all of this unmooring that it could create an interesting opportunity for either or both parties. But by that time, like, will we survive this? Like, by that time, like, how much more corroded and eroded and diluted will we be as as a country? But also these two parties. It'll be interesting to watch. I might maybe hope I'm not alive for it.
- [53:38]
Tim Miller
It was important and on brand for the Borg podcast that you take us to the Dark Notes to end because I agree. Will we survive it? Open question. We'll be discuss. We'll be discussing it every day, even when I have the flu. Thank you, Se cup, for carrying me today. Let's do this again soon.
- [53:53]
SE Cupp
Feel better.
- [53:54]
Tim Miller
Doing my best. Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow. I'm gonna do it. I'll be here with the newest member of the Bullock. I'm very excited. I think you guys are gonna like them. So we'll see y'all then. Peace.
- [54:05]
Andrew Tate
40 ounce in my right hand Watching Drunk History alone It's a vibe here Working through a few things Feeling like I'm Jordan in the flu game Liquid alleviate the nightmares yeah, I got a whole lot of baggage Grew up in a place with a whole lot of static it's been a couple years since I strolled out of traffic and made a lane all on my own I've been living for my soul by that I mean my son they hoping that I fold But I have just begun I'm f to tell my story to there's nothing in my lungs and my face turn blue and my fingers go numb I've been getting over I've been going through Life would be the Titanic if it was a cruise Shit But I ain't no dicaprio I ain't finna sadly go I'm swimming to the sh Call the force Every body getting carried home Never been as happy Though the fashion got swaggy but my legs still assy bro I'm still the same fool I'm still the same dude the bottle changed up but the spirit ain't new.
- [54:57]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.