Bulwark Takes - Inside Tim Miller's INSANE Jubilee Experience

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

NOTE: This is a special preview of Tim and Sam's members-only Q&A. To listen to the whole thing, become a paid Bulwark member on Apple Podcasts, Substack or YouTube! Tim Miller and Sam Stein take on Tim’s wild Jubilee experience—the secrecy, the debate tactics, the generational clash, and the moment things actually boiled over. Watch Tim on Jubilee here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOz63coD7M Get 40% off access to Calm’s entire library at https://Calm.com/BULWARKTAKES

Behind every BP fill up, thousands of people across America go to work every day, people producing energy offshore, people turning it into products at our refineries, people doing R&D to make products that are better for your engine, people trading and shipping fuels to their destinations, and the people who help you at one of VP's growing family of retail stations. They're part of almost 300,000 jobs BP supports across the country. Learn more at VP.com slash investing in America. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing it at the Bullock. I'm joined by Tim Miller, who looks fresh from his Jubilee appearance. You look fresh. He looks good. How was it? It's a fake if I look fresh. I'm happy. I'm happy you think so. You know, look, I just wanted to do a little, give everybody a little treat for their Thanksgiving holiday. You know, I wanted everyone who is in a mixed family, you know, to have an opportunity to turn on the Apple TV, turn on the YouTube, get together as a family. and watch me debate 20 Gen Z conservatives and model what it's like to have disagreement with people and good faith and that's something that everyone,

not everyone, I guess that many people deal with during the Thanksgiving season and this is an outlet for that disagreement. When you say mixed family, what do you mean? You know, I mean, some people that are Trump voters, you know,

some people that are Trump opposers, rather than throwing the gravy across the table, rather than, I don't know about you, Sam, but I think you have a pretty little. Do you talk politics at Thanksgiving? Not in a while. So we, uh, now we've come back around, but, um, we, we ended up having an institute. This goes against conventional wisdom. No, no, no drinking. No, like limited

drinking. Like the Thanksgiving, let me, like, it went for a while. That's bad. Once me and my brother hit 21, Thanksgiving drinking went up like a lot and then the fighting or the family went up a lot. And so then we had to downgrade the drinking. And so now hopefully we've reached an equilibrium. Well, usually it goes like this. Usually you're sitting around. It's like 2 o'clock and you're like, is it acceptable to start drinking? And then you're like, yeah, it is.

And then he starts shrinking. And then it goes up and then it goes down. And then you get a second wind and all that. Anyways, we jumped right into it. I should back up a little bit. Tim was on Jubilee. For those who don't know what Jubilee is, it is a widely popular debate show in which one person is sacrificed virtualistically has to go.

against 20 people who are in opposition to him or her. It makes for great virality. People have probably seen the infamous Sam Cedar facial expressions and Medi having to deal with neo-Nazis and all that stuff. Tim, I think you decided before this, and I want to get a little bit into the chronology here, but I think you came in with a different perspective. Can you talk about how you went about approaching this? I did.

I watched both Sam and Medi's. I thought that they were good in various ways. And I had prepped, I didn't know, right? Like I thought about, I'd imagine that maybe I would get Medi-type fascists, in which case I would have a different strategy, of course. So I did some mental prep for many-type strategies, but I got the sense that maybe the Jubilee people thought that was a little bit hot in the kitchen for their taste, having some, like, actual Nazis.

And that they were hoping for a little bit more of, you know, kind of an actual constructive dialogue. And so, you know, I kind of went in thinking that I was like, you know, the camp counselor, like the old, the cool teacher, you know, that was a little bit more liberal than the students. It was kind of kind of kind of. A little bit. Yeah, try to nudge them, you know, try to try to push them the right direction, try to make arguments that maybe would resonate with them.

I think I did that at times. Other, other points, you know, like Sam, my face, betrays a lot so I'm guessing you said you would always be a bad white house press secretary for that reason yeah so it definitely got hot at some points but um sure you know i was doing my best i i think that my most useful service to the extent that you can do anything that's useful yeah in this world is like to be somebody that used to be a conservative used to be a republican at least rather um that um you know understands the point of view that does not have like views that will be totally an ethema and crazy to these people.

At least, like, engage with them on the level and try to make a case that opens their mind to the possibility that there's another perspective besides what is in their little bubble. Well, I want to get, again, I still do want to get to, like, how it actually works. But I guess one last question on this specific thing. When you went in there, did you think your audience was the 20 conservatives who were opposing you or the people who were going to watch it? I was, yeah, I mean, I was mostly thinking of the types of people that were watching it that were rooting for the people that I was debating against, right?

Like, I was trying to think, how could I convince the other 20-somethings that were more, you know, whatever, conservative leaning or Maga-leaning, that they could watch this and think, oh, you know, the old guy got a few in. The old guy had a few points there. That guy might still have a fastball on. Yeah, that's what I was hoping to do. And yeah, and interestingly, in the room, at least a couple of them, a couple of them came up to me after and said that, which I thought was very gratifying. Well, let's get into the sort of granularity of it. So, like, how does it work? Like, how far in advance were you told?

How far back did it shoot? Where is it even held? Like, what's the prep? Like, I want to know all of it. It shot the No Kings Day. when people were asking why it wasn't at the No King's protests because I flew it was flying out there I already agreed to it before

they had the No Kings date so I agreed to this probably three months ago now and you know they pick a date out ahead of time we go back and forth both I'm like how they want to frame it I talked about this a little bit with JVL and Saras we probably people can go to the next level to see more about like they wanted to call me a liberal we kind of went back and forth and then I'm like I'm a liberal

I got you know it's not like really how I would describe myself the first word I would use but, like, it is true about me that I'm... Liberals don't describe themselves as liberals anymore. Right, exactly. I wouldn't have let them describe me as a progressive because I'm not, but I'm definitely a liberal. And so we went back and forth on that,

and then what the claims would be. Like, I pitched them, like, I think 12 ideas of topics to debate. They sent me back some, and then we went back and forth. And then once we kind of settled on it, we got a date, and you're in L.A., and you're in, like, a warehouse in the middle of it south of downtown LA and it's hot in there. The one thing I wish Medi and those guys had told me because I did call them before and asked them for advice was like how hot it was because I was dressed in like a red

long-sleeved shirt and a flame all overshed. I was going to ask you by your outfit. Yeah. And so I'm a little concerned that I'm going to look kind of red and like a red apple a little bit. So I'm a little nervous about that. But Borg takes a sponsor by Calm. There's a lot out there telling us how to be better. Be better parent, better partner, better worker, better version of yourself.

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listeners of our show, get 40% off a com premium subscription at com.com slash bulwark takes. It's an amazing value. Go to c-alm.com slash bulwark takes for 40% off unlimited access to com's entire library.com.com slash bulwark takes and tell com you heard about them for me, the calmest person on the internet. So you go there and it's a bit's a secret. They don't, they don't tell the kids who they're debating. So bring me in a side door because I had to pee and the bathroom was in the main room. So they made them all turn around so they couldn't see me. Oh, my God.

Yeah, like so going to the bathroom, go to the bathroom before they miced me up. And yeah, I mean, it's a real, it's an intense process. And they're all sitting in a circle and there's a table in the middle and they just walk you and you sit right at that table. Yep. And then I go and sit at the table. You don't even, you don't say hi and introduce yourself. Yeah, I kind of greeted everybody, but like one at a time when they come up, I greeted them.

And, yeah, they, you know, they ask you to kind of state the claims in front of the camera. It was the most awkward part. I didn't realize I was going to do that in front of an audience. And, uh, wait, is there an actual audience watching or just? No, no, I'm in front of all them. Like, I had to do like the, hi, I'm at Miller. I'm a whatever. So, um, so you do all that.

And then it just gets, just kicks off. Then they do like the running in the chair thing. You see these kids around you and you know the sequence of topics that you're going to talk about? Yeah, yeah. Because I made the claims, right? So then I had selling the claims. They get to see them. And they don't know the claims or they do know the claims.

No, they don't know. So they get right out loud and you hear them be like, ooh. So you get, oh, nice. Well, that puts you on a little bit of an advantage, right? Little advantage, yeah. Yeah, okay. Did you look around and you like in your head were like, I want to take. on that person?

No, no. That person looks like a fascist. I went in trying to like, come on. That's bullshit. You must, no, no, you must have looked around. You must have seen who you thought would be weaker and said, I hope that person. I did. I did.

I really, I truly did it. I don't believe. I honestly do not. I truly did not. It's hard to, you know, you're looking around and I was interested. What did you think was going to be the easiest of the topics going in? And then what did you think was going to be the hardest? I kind of put the, the final topic was.

that red states are being governed worse than blue cities and I wanted to put that at the end because I thought it was kind of easy and boring like this is just pretty straightforward we're doing stats stats like you know and so it's a little bit less of um did you memorize the stats

because I memorized some stats like yeah I took some notes and memorized some stats you can't bring notes in you can't I'd like a couple little notes on the paper you really don't have a chance to look at them no no no I like a little note card that I'd like written down a couple of like on the guns one you'll hear me

say like in japan now i don't remember so i need the note card japan had 10 deaths and and and and what are they got a live fact check you i did just kind of write down those numbers i had it right because they do fact check you they do on the actual jubilee they fact not live in the room yeah but this is something that betty said told me to think about he's like look they come out with a fact check after and you don't want to you know you don't want to be embarrassed by that um so so no i was i was thinking that the guns one i figured the gun's one i figured the sounds when it was going to be the hardest. I thought it was interesting. I purposely framed it as a play on the Charlie Kirk quote because, you know, I thought it was really relevant to

them. And I thought that maybe brought a little bit more of an emotion. What was the Charlie Kirk quote? Charlie Kirk quote was that like part of having the Second Amendment, you know, Oh, right. You know, totally death. Yeah. There are going to be a few deaths. You know, you have to understand that they're going to be deaths if you're going to have the Second Amendment. And so I basically made my current the inverse, right, which is like we don't have. have to do that. We don't have to do that. Shocking. Yeah. And I thought that'd be hard because you can interpret that as me saying, I don't think we should have in a Second Amendment, which wasn't really the argument I was making.

The argument I was trying to make was that, you know, like, we can try to mitigate the deaths within the framework of having a Second Amendment. And, like, we should do that rather than just accepting that, like, death is going to be, like, death is going to be the outcome. And so that's kind of a complicated argument. And so I did the most kind of prep thinking about that. And I did think I got owned a little bit off the top on that one. He went in immediately on my knowledge of what gun licensing processes is. Processes. And like, I had prepared some pushback to what I knew I was going to get, which was like, you don't know the difference between an AR-15 and a semi, an armolite and a semi. And like, I had an argument prepared that's just like, look, guys, you don't

understand the different ways of heroin injection. And yet you understand that we need to have regulation of it right like i don't think you it's pretty good yeah yeah so until the guy comes up with a needle in his arm is but he came in very specific though on the registration and licensing and it was like the first point and i was like ooh i got caught a little bit on my back foot with that guy um but um but you know look oh and and one thing i noticed that the kids were ready for so i might have had an advantage in knowing the topics but the kids were prepared in like the debate bro style of jubilee and one thing i noticed before is that like you're on the upper hand of you're the one asking questions and so the

smart ones came up and immediately started asking me questions about my claim and so then I'm defendant you know so then rather than making a claim that I could rebut they are they're putting me on my back foot by like being the you know tough Senate Senate president questioner and uh and a couple of those guys did that pretty well and I and I kept it was hard for me to deal with that because I wanted to put the questions back on them but then you see rude you know well it's interesting do you think like culturally people are just more tuned to you know how to debate these days like i didn't grow i mean i was not on the debate team or anything like that um but it seems like everyone nowadays online at least is just like i know how to

debate and i'm going to like get at it like is they're miss the generation i don't know i think so they're inspired by kirk and and jubilee's been happening for years now right and and a couple of The other thing is, on their end, you know, the kids that did really well in the circle, like there have been some of them gotten very famous. It's like a little bit of an American Idol thing. Like Dean. I know. Will Summer has written about one of them or a couple times for his false flag.

Yeah. Yeah. But on both sides, right? On the liberal side, like Dean and Parker are very famous. Yeah, yeah. The rest we're going to do for paying subscribers. So if you want to hear the rest of our conversation about how Tim's Jubilee event went and also what it's like to be. in there, hit that button, subscribe to the feed.

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