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- [00:00]
Amanda Carpenter
The Iranian stuffed our president in a catering cart by his own free will. He went in there willingly to hide,
- [00:06]
Tim Miller
went into the locker himself. He was like, I don't want the bullies to stuff me in the locker, so I'm just gonna go into the locker and hide by myself.
- [00:13]
Amanda Carpenter
Maybe they lured him in there with a couple Diet Cokes and a cheeseburger to sweeten the deal.
- [00:24]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are taping the next level today before we're gonna get primary results. Picture politics over there on the next level feed AOC's woke one reflections and maybe some hints about what's in the future for her. We'll talk about AOC and a bunch of other stuff. So go check out the next level. And then on tomorrow's Bulwark Daily, we'll do a recap of the South Carolina primary, Lindsey Graham's sister, the craziness in Wisconsin. We'll cover all that tomorrow. But today, my former colleague always like having her back. She's now a writer and editor@ protectdemocracy.org, their substack is if youf Can Keep It. And next, she'll be participating in a live webinar co hosted by Protect Democracy and Vox on threats facing the midterms and the structural reforms needed to renew our democracy. We'll put a link in the show, notes to that with more details. I know a lot of you care about that. It's obviously Amanda Carpenter. What's up, girl?
- [01:19]
Amanda Carpenter
Hey. Good to see you. Happy to be back. Hope you're having a good summer. Everything's going well, right?
- [01:24]
Tim Miller
It's good. I mean, you know, besides the world, the world's gone mad. My summer's good. You're looking good. You're looking refreshed. You, you know, summer vacation, little sun kissed. We've got much to discuss today, but I think we have to start with baby Trump hiding in a catering cart. People that missed this. John Hudson over at the Washington Post had the scoop on this. Everybody remembers the story when Trump was over in Turkey and, and he had his new Qatari hand me down plane, but it didn't have the air defenses and so he had to fly back, allegedly on the old Air Force One. And he threatened to sue the New York Times over their reporting on this. Well, it turns out the New York Times was wrong, but not in the way that he said he wasn't even able to fly out on the old Air Force One. They were so concerned about the Iranians shooting down our planes that they took Trump out of the old Air Force One, hid him inside a catering cart, took him to a different plane. He flew out of Turkey on a different plane. You might remember this kind of weird thing where all the reporters had to put the shades down on the plane when it was leaving Turkey. Maybe something related to baby Trump hiding, but I don't know. A lot of layers to the story. Amanda, what was your reaction?
- [02:48]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah, you are right. There's a lot of layers to the story or story number one. The idea of using the press as a decoy. But what strikes me as the most important is how badly is this war going? Right? Like, Secret Service doesn't take the president off a plane for no reason. He hid in a catering cart, which is embarrassing. This isn't like Taylor Swift going underneath the stage and trying to hide from fans.
- [03:13]
Tim Miller
Or I learned from my text change yesterday, apparently she sometimes would leave her house hidden in a luggage cart. That's something that she did. I received a text like, this is a Taylor Swift ass move. I don't follow all of her. Her decoys.
- [03:26]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah, but that's fun because she's evading fans. This is not fun because Trump, our president, is evading assassination attempts. So that seems extremely serious. And I just look at what's going on and how they downplay the deaths. The stories last week about how we don't know how many munitions we have at hand because apparently people are afraid to tell him that we are run low. You look at the attack where they tested the water sources in Minnesota and Trump tried to cover it up and somehow blame Tim Walls for attacking his own water supply, which doesn't even make sense. And so what I'm most concerned about is what is. What is a straight story about our status with this war. I think we can all agree it's not going well. We appear to not be accomplishing the goals that they set out. The Trump sons are making billions off it in these shady contracts. But actually, what does it mean for our national defense and the safety and security of the President? It seems to be not good. If he had to go into a catering cart and hide from people and keep this information from the public for. I don't know. It's been two or three weeks.
- [04:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, I think a little longer. Time's a flat circle in the Trump era. I think we should just kind of do our service as former Republicans, Amanda, as people who have been on Fox News before, it's been a minute, but, you know, Back in the day can kind of get our head in that place. The astonishing weakness of this scene, like he started this war that he doesn't know how to get out of, that he doesn't have a plan to get out of, that he's not willing to kind of do what is necessary to get out of, to be honest. So he starts this war. It's a total disaster. It's a humiliating defeat. And amidst it, he, he has to hide in the catering cart amidst the hot meals that they're serving on the airplane. Not a good smell in there and kind of duck and sneak out of Turkey, an allied nation. Just think about the coverage of Fox, of Obama riding the bicycle the one time and how they talked about how it wasn't very manly for him the way that he rode the bicycle. It's just like I, you can't even imagine the wall to wall mockery and coverage that would have been given to a Democratic president who had to like put on his diapers and hide in a catering cart to get out of a country.
- [05:52]
Amanda Carpenter
The Iranians stuffed our president in a catering cart by his own free will. He went in there willingly to hide,
- [05:59]
Tim Miller
went into the locker himself. He was like, I don't want the bullies to start to stuff me in the locker, so I'm just going to go into the locker and hide by myself.
- [06:06]
Amanda Carpenter
Maybe they lured him in there with a couple Diet Cokes and a cheeseburger to sweeten the deal. But I also wonder how much did the Qatari plane of it all make this a factor? I mean, we know that the plane that the President travels on is a target. That plane that he chose to fly on originally was not safe. I think there's a lot more to this story. You don't force a president off two planes now, his Qatari plane, Air Force One and stuff them in a catering cart for no reason.
- [06:35]
Tim Miller
It definitely drew attention to it. And I mean, obviously there are other security issues with the Qatari plane that like a million people flagged before we started moving to this. I guess when we're talking about the layers, it is pretty telling that this leaked also. I mean, I'm happy it's leaked and that we know the truth about what's happening. But like that also I think is should be a pretty concerning signal. Obviously they felt like this was such a serious threat they had to sneak him out in the hot dog cart. And so it's a pretty big security breach for somebody to leak it.
- [07:11]
Amanda Carpenter
How do we know that the president was more safe in the hot dog cart.
- [07:16]
Tim Miller
Do we really trust the Secret Service? I don't. I mean, Carol Lennig, we've got on have discussed. We have a lot of issues with the Secret Service. A lot of reasons.
- [07:23]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah. That also doesn't seem like the most, you know, battle tested plan.
- [07:28]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I don't know. It's crazy. It's a sign of deep weakness. And yeah, you alluded to it just at the front. Just like the fact that then I guess we were like using his staff and journalists as decoys as part of this. Pretty alarming.
- [07:41]
Amanda Carpenter
But the biggest point is that Iran is a bigger threat than we knew. I mean, obviously we know there's been assassination attempts not only on Trump, but John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, et cetera. I mean, when you start to put all these points together, along with the fact that Iran has terrorist cells around the world, there could be a day we look back on this and said, oh, there's a lot of red flags.
- [08:00]
Tim Miller
Well, I think it just shows again, the horrible judgment of the war. I mean, look, we were managing the Iranian threat through multiple presidencies, including the Trump first presidency. And nobody's out here saying that it's perfect or that they weren't a threat, but it's just like the scale of the threat before the war was something that we were managing. And then he starts the stupid war, thinks it's going to be easy, thinks he's going to be able to just decapitate the leaders and put in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or whatever their fucking cockamamie plan was. And now it's like oil tankers are getting bombed in the strait, he's hiding in a taco truck. You know, it's like it's, it's bad.
- [08:43]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah. And I think it argues for the case why Congress does need to take a more assertive role. I mean, this is much different than previous presidents who have bungled wars before. We've been there, we've seen it. But this administration is different because he has screened people for loyalty and not expertise. I mean, the stories last week where Trump is saying that whether you believe him because it's hard to tell who's telling the truth, that he was misled about how many munitions we have at our disposal. You hire messengers to come in the first Trump administration, people that would give it to him straight. But you keep shooting the messengers, you run out of people who will tell you the truth. So now he has surrounded himself with people who blow smoke up his ass like Hegseth. You know, you can go down the line. And our national security really does depend on, like, simple ability. Can people say two plus two bombs equals four? We have four left. No, they can't. They say things are going great, we have a million, don't worry about it. And now, like we're, I do feel like we're getting ourselves into a corner or a hot dog cart.
- [09:45]
Tim Miller
I mean, I always didn't love the hagiography of the Mattis of the world. And John Kelly's have, I have a lot of anger towards them. But, but yeah. And it is hard to imagine Jim Mattis not like just being blunt with Trump about the, about the risks regarding our preparedness to get into something like this. And, and maybe Dan Cain did try to do that, but this is what happens when you put yes men all around you. So I want to talk a little more about the corruption stuff. I guess you wrote for us while I was on vacation undoing Trump's golden age of corruption. Had some ideas for that. I guess maybe one good place to start just transitioning from the last topic which you mentioned was like the suns cashing in on the military industrial complex and what is the right path forward, both as you look to oversight, assuming the Democrats take control of Congress next year. And then even further down the line,
- [10:38]
Amanda Carpenter
I think it's obvious we're seeing new forms of corruption coming out of the White House that people could not anticipate. And it largely, I mean, you can look at his financial disclosures where he has admitted outright that he made $2.2 billion as president in 2025. And if you look at the buckets of places where the corruption is unfurled, I think there's five large ones, it's no bid, and shady contracts, a lot of what the Trump sons are benefiting from when it comes to defense intent contracts, cryptocurrency, the slush funds and settlements that they are attempting to set up, the foreign gifts that he's being given, which are a way for foreign countries to pedal influence in all the pay for play schemes, whether that's, you know, the pardons, the lobbying business that's cropped up around that, the truth, social access that he's creating a new business around. So when you think down the road about how, how if we did elect a new Congress or administration who was interested, interested in accountability and putting an end to this kind of corruption or what could you do that's realistic and meaningful, also knowing that he's going to continue debuts of pardon power, if you look at the reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, I mean, they, when they speak in interviews, I know they spoke to you about this. They really emphasized that Donald Trump is serious at looking at mass pardons once he's on his way out of office. They've talked about, the Wall Street Journal has reported him giving pardons to anyone within 250ft of the Oval Office. So I think you have to take this seriously. So how do you pursue pardon proof? Accountability. And that leads to a strategy of like, okay, when you look at the corruption that's happening, there's always two sides. Donald Trump can put a big for sale sign outside the White House, but all these people are lining up to get in. And so if they are using this money to engage in some kind of unlawful activity, whether that's bribery, extortion, pay to play, there are pardon proof laws on the books. It's called disgorgement, which is a gross terrible word. Just take out of your mind. Disgorgement, disgorgement, civil disgorgement laws. In plain English, that means we can get.
- [12:45]
Tim Miller
That's weird enough for me to remember.
- [12:46]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah, you can. It means get the money back. If you profit from ill gotten gains, there are ways to get the money back that are pardon proof. And the standard for proving that those are ill gotten gains is not quite as high as criminality.
- [13:02]
Tim Miller
So this is kind of like when OJ Got off and Ron Goldman's family still got paid. Yeah, it's like we're going through the civil courts now.
- [13:09]
Amanda Carpenter
Exactly. And so there's got to be a lot of mapping for what those ill gotten gains could be. But I think a lot of, there's a lot of great reporting, especially when it comes to crypto and the pay for play elements, where I think anybody that's interested in oversight has a lot of strings to pick up and follow. And so if there was a Democratic Congress that was interested in accountability, you know, there could be plans to audit the White House and find out where this money is going, what it is buying, and who is doing it. Because you have to look at the actors on the other side of this. I know we can talk about and complain about Trump all that we can, but it takes two people to bribe or extort or corrupt the economy and our government.
- [13:52]
Tim Miller
Yeah, there are two different things I want to explore there. One is auditing the White House, which we'll get back to in a second. But just so I don't forget, kind of like, what are some strategies for going after these folks, even if they've Imparted. I'm intrigued by the engorgement, disgorgement idea that you've put forth. The other one that I've been talking about is at least for the up and up business businesses, right? Like we're going to come back to crypto in a second, but for everybody else, for the up and up, for the, for the companies that are, you know, defense contractors, for other, you know, deals, pardons that Trump is doing with, you know, people that still want to have businesses in the future. There are plenty of articles for people who have been pardoned and then started new businesses and stuff. Okay, Like Democrats need to start calling all of those people now. That's my message to them in 2027. Like, if you did business with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. Eric Trump, etc. Witkoff Kids, Letnik kids, you know, preserve your emails and like, we're gonna be bringing you, bringing you forward and like, maybe Trump will pardon you. Okay, but like, you cut this deal with the Trump administration, well, the next administration can, can come after you and like they're gonna go after your business and like they can. You can be pardoned personally. But like we're gonna investigate these deals and like, you can't pardon, you know, whatever. The Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan Mining Company, right? Like, that's a, that is an entity that needs to follow the laws. Right? And so like, that has kind of been my angle and it's like a little less satisfying than imagining Jared Kushner and shackles. But like, even still, I think that that's another way. Like, what do you make of that?
- [15:28]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah, well, I mean, the message needs to be sent. Now if you are making money off these unlawful schemes, don't plan on keeping it because there are laws on the books to claw it back. And that not only goes like, you know, from the federal side. I mean there are state AGs that can be start, start to take an interest in this. And then if SEC does happen to change in a new administration, the world changes again. But it's not about just, you know, punishing the Trump kids or Jared Kushner. If you are a company that is ripping off the taxpayer because you are party to fast tracking these no bid shady contracts where people are not getting the contracts based on expertise and ability to deliver for the government, then you're out. Like you're not going to keep that money. I mean, this really is about ripping off the taxpayer because when the government gets corrupted, yes, like all the goons make money and people get really mad about that. But the services are sure to decline for the Americans. I mean, we would, we recognize this when it happens in other countries. And we laugh at, like, oh, the Soviet Union hands out all the money to the goons and, like, you know, they're, they're selling these Potemkin villages. But it is also happening here. And, like, there's no better illustration than the reflecting pool. Right? Like, a Trump lackey got the contract to do this egotastic pet project for Trump, didn't deliver. It ruined the reflecting pool. They smeared anyone who pointed it out, and in the end, taxpayers got ripped off. Like, how many times are we going to pay to repave or reline that pool? Probably three or four times by the time this is over.
- [17:06]
Tim Miller
And they're just varying degrees of this. Right. Like, the reflecting pool is the most comical. Like, we talked yesterday about the wall project and the amount of money that they're spending, you know, for this.
- [17:16]
Amanda Carpenter
By the way, I've got to say, your interview that you did last week is the first time I'd ever heard it. Not only is it a travesty that they're going through the national parks, but the fact that they are building a road where there was no road before that will make it easier for people to traverse a path that was previously unpassable. I mean, how stupid?
- [17:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, stupidly stupid.
- [17:38]
Amanda Carpenter
Yeah.
- [17:38]
Tim Miller
And then again, you have, like, the internment camps example of this before, you know, the vacation when I was talking with report on the New York from the New Yorker, who is, who is working on this story. And it's just like, you know, there are bigger things to be outraged about about the internment camps and the fact that, like, the contract went to somebody who doesn't know how to run them and that, like, it was, you know, a shit show in there. But that's just another example of what you're talking about. And then that goes all the way up to kind of the legal but insider corrupt stuff that we were talking about yesterday with the military contractors where they're trying to block us from learning from Ukrainian innovators because they want their own. Raytheon wants to keep its own contract. So you see this all the way through. And I do think that the Democrats can simultaneously take back, hey, you know, we're reforming things, we're doing good government things. We're doing the doge stuff they said that they were going to do. And also we're doing accountability. And also we're calling that, like, it's all kind of one big, like, package that I think somebody's just got to figure out the right way to wrap up that can resonate with people out
- [18:47]
Amanda Carpenter
at the White House.