Bulwark Takes - A Congressman Called His Penis a Pine Cone. We Have Questions.

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Sam Stein, Tim Miller, and Will Sommer are finally doing it live—and before they hit the stage in San Diego, they’re warming up with the week’s most unhinged news from MAGA World. Trump is amplifying bizarre (flattering?) information about Thomas Massie’s sex life. Hunter Biden is going on Candace Owens. And a January 6th grifter made a miraculous recovery the moment reparations money appeared.The Trio is live in San Diego on Wednesday, May 20th—grab your tickets at https://thebulwark.com/events.Make today a good day, and get yourself some Soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering 30% off your entire order! Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES.

Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing it at the Bullwark. And I am with Tim Miller and Will Summer. We're back. It's been a while, boys. How you doing? You're supposed to answer. I'm good. I was letting Will answer.

It's the trio. Here's the thing. We're just, you know, we might be a little awkward because we're about to be together, you know, and there's a little tension building. There's, you might even say some sexual tension building as we're thinking about going through TSA like Thomas Massey did, you know, seeing one another. in San Diego. And people can still get tickets for that right now.

The borg.com slash events. We have a few tickets left for San Diego. The trio live for the first time ever, the inaugural live trio. That is true. They said it wouldn't happen. They said it should be illegal, but we're going to pull it off anyway. I love in most states, but obviously not California. All right.

So Tim alluded to this. We're going to give you a little teaser about what you can experience in San Diego. This may actually compel you to give up your ticket or sell it on the black market, but we're going to go for it anyway. There's a lot going on about. about Tom Massey, who's got an election. We're recording this on a Monday. He's got an election on a Tuesday. I'm not looking particularly great, but it's still up in the air. But a slew of stuff happening from MAGA accounts accusing him of having a voracious sexual appetite in the time

period after his wife passed tragically. Will, can you give us the rundown since you monitor this stuff way more aggressively than either Tim and I do? And you have more comfort talking about Viagra and men's penises? Well, maybe not one to him. I've been monitoring this case very closely um so so the backstory here is that about a week ago this woman named cynthia west came out and she's this kind of like very minor she's like running for school board in some town in florida uh and she said you know i dated thomas massey and there was this kind of like a payoff maybe something like you know this sort of weird situation where she claimed you offered her five thousand dollars in quote unquote cow money so untraceable money uh Thomas massey had

made from selling cows. Basically, now this has evolved into this week, Laura Lumer interviewed Cynthia, and it was like two and a half hours. I mean, it just came out as we're recording this. I'm just diving in now. And it like gets, you know, you could just hate Thomas Massey's guts. You'd be Donald Trump, whatever. Trump's promoting this interview, by the way. But the amount of detail, and Massey has confirmed he dated this woman, so this is real. But the amount of detail we get on their sex lives, nothing criminal, nothing like of a me-to nature. Just like, embarrassing, weird, dirty talk stuff. Give us the top three highlights so that Tim can riff off them.

Sure. So the most important one I would say is these text messages have come out that reveal, allegedly, that Thomas Massey refers to his penis as his pine cone and said things like, I was going through TSA and they brushed up against the pine, or the pine cone set off like the body scanner. And then the girlfriend says, oh, and you just took Viagra. And he says, oh, you. brother, you know. So yeah, I was Randy Rocker, like, you took the pill. So I guess that's the most important takeaway. I mean, a couple thoughts here. I'm just kind of looking at various pine cones. A lot of them aren't really, you know, kind of like the ideal image for your penis. Like, if you're trying to compare your penis to something to brag about it, I don't know that the pine cone shape is what you're really going for. It's not the I platonic ideal. What do you go for? In the gay community, it's just not the Pontonic ideal.

And the non-fruit and vegetable category. Yeah, so I can't do eggplant. What would be another, what would be another more appropriate one? I don't know. Like a miniature baseball bat. A minibat, one of those souvenir baths you get at a game with the kids. I don't know. Anyway, we'll keep thinking about it.

But that's takeaway number one. Takeaway number two. I always do like to say this. We can joke about and tease about it. But sex is good. Sex is important. It's how we procreate the species. And we should be encouraging of it.

And nobody sounds cool or chill in leaked sex. Nobody. Like, no matter how cool you are, like, whether you're, like, whoever the coolest person is you have in your mind. Kendrick Lamar, Justin Bieber, whatever, you know. You go back in time into history, Wilk Chamberlain. Wilk Chamberlain's sex would have been very cringe and embarrassing. You know, there's just, there's no way to do. it that doesn't sound a little goofy when it's taken out of the context of the moment.

And so I just, I want to offer that caveat for any additional jokes we make about Thomas Massey's Panko. I don't, I think the, I think he comes off looking just fine, honestly. I mean, relative to other sex, to your point, like there's so much worse. The Cal Cunningham sex. He's like, oh, my dick set off the TSA alarm. That sounds pretty cool, honestly. There's sort of a libertarian fantasy to it, right?

This idea of like my virility, the agents of the state were shocked by my like my manhood literally bursting out of my pants. I mean, that is like a guy in the backwoods. He's going to love that story. Yeah. This is the stuff on Aaron Lodging. Yeah, it's almost. Exactly. Exactly.

Who is Thomas? It's almost feminist in a way too. I was definitely shrugged at that one. You know, because Tommy Smithy wants to end the TSA because he doesn't want to expose people. to his pine cone schlong. So it's consistent. There's a consistency. Oh, my God.

Has Massey talked about it? This is he addressed this stuff? He has not. And, you know, again, I mean, Donald Trump is promoting this. I mean, this is like, now the White House is fully behind this, like, two and a half hour,

you know, penthouse forum, essentially, letter. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you already know how much I love Souls Out of Office, THC Gummies, and they're sparkling beverages. Now, they've launched

something new just in time for the summer. Mood gummies. Soul is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp-derived CBD and THC products designed to make feeling good simple. Soul's new mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable effects, so you can choose how you want to feel while staying in control. And let me tell you, staying in control, kind of important. Instead of having a drink, you can take your uplift gummies for the perfect buzz for a night out or when you're just winding down. Take their mellow gummies for fully unplugging. My personal favorite is the Sol's balanced gummies, the perfect one to take when you're

just listening to your favorite podcasts. That's why I take so many of them. I'm always listening to Bullwork Takes. Whatever the moment, there's a Soul mood gummy to match. Make today a good day and get yourself some Soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering our audience 30% off your entire order. Go to GetSoul.com and use code Bullwork Takes. That's getsole.com promo code, Bullwark takes for 30% off.

And what about Bobert, who has been dragged into this? Okay, Bobert, I know. I have my own theories about this. So here's what happened. So in this interview, this woman says it kind of gets dragged out of her. By the way, Laura is like a very, you know, send her to Guantanamo Bay. And she's for maybe multiple reasons. But as an interrogator, because she really like drags it out of this lady.

And so she says, you know, he was in a relationship with another woman. And she says, oh, who was it? she goes, it was Lauren Bobert. And so basically, my theory is this. I think this lady may believe that Lauren Bobert was in a sexual relationship with Thomas Massey. He may have told her that. You know, maybe they were. I don't know.

But I also think that Thomas Massey has a rich sexual fantasy life and that he may have been, you know, based on these accounts. And he may have just sort of been making things up. A rich interior life. Men have rich interior lives, too. Sometimes people don't realize that. I think it's important to point out if we're, going to discuss this reporting by Laura Lumer that simultaneously to trying to expose Thomas Massey's virile pine cone she's also pushing for the deportation of all Muslims from the country

and that was her response to a violent murderous attack on an Islamic center her response was not that we should do something to stop the attackers but that we should ban all Muslims to the country. And, you know, I do think, you know, the bear is mentioning that given, given her access to the president and her influence and her centrality to the story, how grotesque of a person it is, that we're dealing with. I thought you're going to take that in a different direction. I thought you're going to say that she has lived, that it's important to keep in money, she has no credibility whatsoever makes shit up all the time. But yes, she also is a bigoted against Muslims. So there's that too. Again, folks, just reminder, this is just a sampling of what you'll get

in San Diego. Hunter Biden. You get laughs. You get TikTok. You'll get righteous, righteous rants against the illiberal mega right. You know, you get all of it. We're touching all the bases.

All right. Switching topics quickly. Hunter Biden's going on Candice Owens or am I hallucinating well? That's right. He's going on Candace Owens coming out later this week. I think he's kind of like a clout shark now. He's out for internet attention. You know, he teamed up with the guy from Andrew Callahan from Channel 5,

the popular YouTube channel. They did a couple live shows together. I think he's just, you know, I think he's out for attention. Maybe does he have political ambitions? You know, who knows? I'm, I think this sucks very badly. And I express that on X.com, the everything app.

And several people, Hunter Biden defenders, replied to me, they're saying things such as, but Tim, you said that Democrats should go on to Joe. Rogan and but Tim you should it it's good to engage with us on piker etc etc you are the person saying we should engage with these things why is this different i would like to just address that briefly number one hunter Biden is not as far as we know beside will suggestion like a democrat running for office that is trying to encourage people to support democrats he's a guy doing a lot of past recriminations about the treatment of his family um which is fine totally okay to do but uh i don't

that he's doing this as part of some effort to help the democratic brand inside the Candace Owens bubble. But really more important than that, Candice is a lunatic who has advanced like tons of insane conspiracy theories, like unabashedly racist theories. And so in the same way as I said this about going into those other places, it's like if you are going to do it, you're going to have to be really ready to engage. and fight with him. And that doesn't really seem like his M.O. So we'll see how it turns out. We'll see how it turns out. But like he maybe he's cloud chasing, but this is helping Candace's

clout. Like this is again, making it like Candice is once again a central, you know, node of the conversation because she's inserted herself into this. And it seems like it's doing her a big favor. Would you felt the same way if he did Tucker? I would have probably felt the same way. And there would be an interesting little caveat out there, which is like, Tucker and him were like friends. That's what I was going to get at. So there'd be some level, which I would be like a little titillated by wondering if they went into like the college essay recommendation.

The Hunter asked Tucker for. But I think that there is a eye of the beholder on all of this. Like if you know, if you're going to play in the junkyard, you're going to get bit. But I don't, to me it's like Candice. I just think is beyond the line of acceptability. Yeah, I kind of agree with him that one. All right. last one will talk about your news load tonight uh it involves a kind of a maga figure from yonder

uh what's his name mccluskey mark mccloskey yeah um yes people may the guy and then his wife had the little mini baby gun yeah she had like the barretta and he had like the kind of ar 15 they live catty corner from my aunt big marl when that happened in uh in their family text chain so yeah so people may remember Mark and Patricia McCloskey from the 2020 Black Lives Matter. There was a march in St. Louis, and they went by this rich lawyer's mansion and him and his wife came out with their guns and were kind of, you know, warding people off. Now, you know, for about a year now, he's been deeply embroiled in the quest for January 6th reparations. He teamed up with Trump's old high school classmate, a guy named Peter Tickton, who has made a career out of being like,

I went to a school with Trump 50 years ago. And so basically the two of them, they had this quixotic quest. And they thought, and McCloskey basically bails. He said, I'm sick. I don't care anymore. And then we saw last week, you know, the funds happening. 1.7 billion for victims of the Biden DOJ weaponization. And suddenly, Mark McCloskey, the next day, he says, I'm healed.

I'm back. Guys, I can help with your cases. I can take maybe 20%, 30% again. And so, and now Peter Tickton and McCloskey are at each other's necks. And they are not, and all the J6 people are like, I don't need a lawyer anymore. I'm taking this whole thing myself. The Lord works in mysterious ways. What a magical moment.

I mean, if you, if you listened to, you know, the Trump pastor that talked about how we waited 200 years for the Lord to give us a leader with the strength to bring us a ballroom. You know, you start to think, you know, you can never know when the Lord's power will infuse someone. and make them realize so they can get cash out of a grift. It's amazing. It's amazing when money gets involved. Can I give you guys a little sort of a sweetener to close this out? A little breaking news as we're sitting here talking. Dylan Byers of Puck has a scoop.

Paramount Leadership has had informal discussions about changing Barry Royce's mandate at CBS News and eventually CNN in ways that we give her less control over TV. That's a shame. It's going so well. Tony, Tony, who's saying? stuck in Taiwan, but other than that. It was tough timing, you know, to go to, to put a person in charge of news who had no experience with the news who was an unapologetic banger of the war drums, like one week before the

stupidest or most disastrous war in recent memory was launched by the administration. It did create some problems, I think, for the brand. Well, we'll see how it goes. She still is in the leadership role. All right, fellas, it's great to talk to you both. We'll do this again in a day. We'll see in San Diego. Yeah, get your tickets, folks.

Thebork.com slash events. We're in San Diego on the 20th. Then Tim and I are taking a bus. Going to L.A. 21st, if we get there in one piece. Tim doesn't kill me on the bus ride. Sam's a little queasy. I don't like bus rides.

Don't like them. You might see me puke on the live stream. All right, the bulwark.com slash events. Take care.