Bulwark Takes - Billionaire Sickos Cozy Up With Saudi Dictator at Trump Dinner

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Donald Trump hosted a dinner for Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman and America’s billionaire class were all tuxed up, grinning, and taking selfies with a dictator who had a journalist chopped into pieces. Tim Miller gives his take on the most depraved display of American oligarchy we’ve seen yet as Saudi Arabia looks to buy its way into Silicon Valley and Washington. Get 40% off your order during Soul’s Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale at https://GetSoul.com with promo code BULWARKTAKES

Hey, everybody, Tim over from the bulwark here. I don't know about you, but if you're like me and you saw the images from the Trump State Dinner with MBS and the American oligarchy, you were hunched over the toilet dry heaving this morning. And it's not just because I had a couple drinks after the Kamala Harris interview last night. It was just the noxious view of these Botoxed billionaire freaks sucking up to a foreign dictator that had a journalist's bone sawed and chopped into pieces. Like, I just, I will never understand the mind of the billionaire that they feel like they need this.

Okay? Like that these people don't, do you not go to nice enough parties already. I want to go down the list of people who are there. The things that caught my attention, in particular, the selfie from. Mark Beniof, the Salesforce CEO, with Pam Bondi. I found that pretty gross. The various selfies with Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player with Elon and David Ballsax and all these other horrible people, you know, who have been complicit in, I don't know, the deaths of unknown people worldwide through the cutting of USAID or, you know, the transfer of. Venezuelan

asylees to a foreign concentration camp, you know, people who are complicit in all that doing, hey, hell, hey, I'm doing a selfie with a soccer player. So great. Anyway, I want to run through the list. It's truly, it's like, I just, I cannot be more clear. I'm like, even sitting

aside my Trump-drainment syndrome, like if Joe Biden had had a state dinner with MBS and I'd received a call from the White House, and was like, Tim, big fan of the podcast you know uh there's some there's some fox media people at this trump dinner there was there was who was there was there was there was there was there barterromo

we want you to be in the barterromo slot okay tim the democrats are back in it's going to be nbs we're going to be doing this it's going to be great you put on a tuxedo cnb seen you bring your husband you can bring plus one like i would literally have been like is this a prank call this is a prank call i could have laughed in their face like no I'm not going to go to a fucking state dinner with NBS. I don't, what? I don't even, I don't really like fancy dinners that much anyway. Like I guess, I mean, it would be nice.

And if the White House, if a non-Trump White House wanted to invite me to a state dinner with a leader from a liberal democracy who, you know, does not have blood on their hands, who did not, you know, orchestrate a worldwide manhunt for political foes and have them chopped up and left in a box. So I got, would I go if it was just, I don't know, the new neoliberal gay prime minister of the Netherlands? Like, sure, I'd go. Yeah, that'd be great. And I might do a selfie or two, but for ambience. So I just like, why do these people get invited to way better parties than I do? Why do they want to go to this for starters? We have some theories on the back end.

But I just want to go through the names here. Mark Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Michael Dell, Dell Technologies. Congrats to him. Elon, obviously was there. Jensen Huang, the NVIDIA CEO, I think he's got some business deals to talk about, to Lisa. There was one woman that got invited. Congratulations to Lisa. Only female executive in attendance. Obviously, I mean, if you're a female executive and you get invited to go have dinner with a despot who cracks down on women's rights in their country, no choice but to do that. The Open AI CEO, Greg Brockman, was there. Tim Apple is there fresh off the trophy that he gave to Donald Trump back at the White House again. The Palantir CEO, okay, that makes sense. The Cisco CEO is there.

Chuck Robbins, because Cisco is trying to get into the AI game. A bunch of other folks, any of these worth mentions, obviously some crypto guys are there. I understand why the crypto guys go. I mean, they have dudes that participate in B-handings and illicit deals. all over their platforms. So I like the Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, totally understand why he would go. And MBS is probably a big user of the platform.

So it's very easy for, you know, transfer of funds, funds for weapons deals or whatever. So it makes sense of the crypto guys are there. So they're there. Let's see. Oh, it's not just the tech and crypto guys, though. We got the financial elite also showed up. Stephen Schwartzman, Blackstone.

Congratulations. Mary Barra, GM. So, okay, well, there's a second. Excuse me. Excuse me. Apologies for that note earlier. There were two female executives. Mary Barra also was there to honor the leader of a country that is deeply oppressive to women's rights.

William Clay Ford, Ford Motor Company, Chevron. there? I mean, just who knows? Who knows? Pfizer? Pharma company's going to be there too. Albert Burla. Albert Burla. I don't know how to say his name. Albert Burla.

The Pfizer CEO. Bill Ackman made it. Hard to see how he has the times with all the tweeting he's doing. It goes on and on Josh Harris, owner of the Washington commanders. He's a big Democratic donor back also under as a Philly sports team. So I guess

he's switched sides as well now that the Washington commanders need a new stadium in town and Mr. Trump puts him to name it after him. So that's the group. That's what you've got there. I think that part of this is just our elites are deeply depraved and we are kind of out of an era where virtue signaling was important in corporate America and now we're to an era where vice signaling is important. So I think that's part of it.

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As the country who supports billions of dollars into a plan to become the world's third largest country for AI. That's definitely what we want. And I think that's definitely in our national interest, which is to have a Middle Eastern country that is a dictatorship. It's a kingdom that has Sharia law and was complicit at some level in a terrorist attack on our country, what, 20 years ago now, almost 25 years ago, we're all getting old. So we want a country that was kind of housing the terrorists that attack our country that does Sharia law, doesn't care about women's rights, as a dictatorship. We want them to be the third largest, you know, power player when it comes to artificial superintelligence. Couldn't possibly imagine how that could go wrong. I just, I definitely, I think that's great that we've decided that these guys are such close allies now, the Saudis, that we want to do these big deals with them where Amazon, AMD, XAI, Global AI, etc.

just kind of collaborate on data centers with Saudi and that we sell these advanced AI chips to the Saudis because our creaky economy is being propped up by these AI data centers. That's totally not a bubble, by the way. To me, I understand why the companies, some of these companies would want to do that. And they've got to care about investor value. I don't know why a government that is America First that is focused on protecting Americans that has our national security interests at heart would feel like this kind of just unfettered trade of these extremely powerful chips. We don't know the extent of their power yet with a country that. that's like, you know, and a soft ally, let's call it.

You know, not exactly a country that, like, shares a lot of our values. I mean, they might show Trump values, but doesn't share, like, the fundamental, classically liberal American values, the values of our founding. So, you know, there's some limitations in our allyship when they don't, when their country is actually an affront to those values in many ways, you know, that maybe we should think a little bit differently about, these chips, these advanced AI chips, and the extent to which we want to intermingle something

that is going to be so central to our economic growth, so central to our future security and safety, do we want to intermingle it that closely with the Saudis? I don't know. Either to keep your friends closer, keep your enemies closer type situation, but I don't think that's happening here. I think this is just a gold rush, and everybody has decided to put in. any sort of moral compunction or practical concerns to the side, and they've decided that they want to do is put on tuxedoes, sidle up to a murderous dictator, so that we can take

some of his oil money to prop up our economy. That's what's happened. That's what these elites have decided to do. I think that whether it's from within the Republican Party or from within the Democratic party or an independent billionaire that wants to shake up the political system, I think that running against these noxious, horrible people is something that I would support and that I think would have a lot of support within the country because this morally vacuous, illiberal, great Gatsby Botox selfie culture in the new grand Trump ballroom where the worst dictators

in the world buddy up with the Silicon Valley oligarchs and the AI elite and the crypto bros. I just, I think that the country is going to turn sour on that very fast. And I would recommend running against it because let me tell you, I'm fucking sour on it already. These people make me sick. So, in case you had missed the pictures from the. State dinner. Honorary state dinner with Muhammad bin Salman, the murderer. And also possibly, I'm not reporting this, by the way.

Don't know this. Just what we're hearing in the street. So it's allegedly, don't want to be sued. We don't know this. But he might be a hermaphrodite and also a murderer. It's quite a dinner. Hope you saw the pictures. If you didn't, you're welcome.

I hope they made you as sick as they made me. Everybody subscribe to the feed, comment below. We'll be keeping you posted on everything else that's happening in Gatsby, Washington. I'm here in Washington for another day, and we'll be talking to you again soon.