Bulwark Takes - Is This the Greatest Photo in the History of Politics?

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Tim Miller breaks down the surreal viral moment of Lindsey Graham at Disney World—and why it’s more than just a weird photo. He also joined Nicolle Wallace to talk about the government shutdown and rising global tensions, and argues it reflects something deeper about accountability and leadership.

Hey, everybody, Timmy up from the Bullwork here. Just got off with my friends Nicole Wallace and David Frum and Eddie Glead, my friends and yours over on MS now. And we covered a lot of ground. There was one thing that I wanted Nicole to get to, you know, one little softball for her to throw me right across the plate and she didn't do it. So I'm going to take that excuse to talk to you guys about it. The first little preview of what's coming with Nicole. One thing that she did do, shout out to her and her team. our producers always are fucking on the ball.

Big segment on Brendan Carr and the FCC and him doing this just disgusting, authoritarian victory lap over sleepy eyes Chuck Todd, losing his job and Joy Reed and all these other perceived victories at limiting the so-called liberal press. It's insane, insane for a bureaucrat. So it should just be following the law and enforcing the rules when it comes to communications is like a partisan actor trying to weed out dissent in the country and truly authoritarian stuff, truly anti-free speech stuff.

And I haven't given enough coverage on my show. So we go deep on that. I do with Oliver Darcy. And then we also just kind of discuss the state of affairs as the MAGA coalition crackup continues. So stick around for both of those items. But first, you guys have been waiting for it. You've been waiting for it.

You've been asking about it. And I like to please you sometimes. You know, it's not all fan service around here. Every once in a while, I like to need all the fans. Make sure you know that I'm telling you what I really think. That I don't care if you disagree with me. Every once in a while I like to do that because that's how you know you're getting authentic content, which is what everyone is yearning for in this stuff.

day and age. But everyone's fine. I also like to do a little fan service because you guys deserve it. You deserve it. You're suffering through this parade of horribles that is the world. That is the Trump 2.0 era. And so you deserve some joy and some satisfaction and deserve to have your requests met by your humble content servant. And so here we go. Lindsay Graham alone at Disney World. Lindsay Graham alone at Disney World Like I'm sure many of you I started seeing the posts about this on social media Here's a blurry image of someone that looks

The shape of Lindsay Graham In the corner of a cafeteria somewhere in Orlando I was a little suspect I was like, a little suspect I was like, are we sure Is this like that dumb picture of a guy that kind of doesn't even really look like Tom Cotton, but kind of looks like Tom Cotton that's been going around for like 15 years now or whatever,

even that he was at this gay bar in D.C. I hate that. I hate that. I hate the fake stuff, okay? There's enough real craziness to focus on. You don't have to make shit up. And so I was nervous. I was like, this story might be too good to be true. Lindsey Graham alone at Disney World.

That's got to be too good to be true. But there was that picture. And then another picture emerges. that is so ridiculous and absurd. My first instinct was this must be AI. This can't be real. And it is Lindsay, standing alone, outside a restroom in the Magic Kingdom, holding a bubble want. There he is.

It is a work of art. Is it Edvard Munch? It's probably not that scary. Art history majors suggest for me the right artist for this. for this image. It is an image, my colleague Sunny Bunch, called the greatest photo in the history of politics. Maybe a little overstated.

We'll talk about that on tomorrow's show. I have some other nominees even from this weekend. But we should just really look at it here, a little closer. There he is. His mouth of gape slightly. You've got a lady with her child in the background in a stroller, as is kind of how you're supposed to go to Disney World. Another lady, her hands on hips there.

next to her. You have the silly wanted picture. He's got the bubble wand in one hand. And the other hand, it's hard to say. Is that a cotton candy? It's a gift of some kind? I don't know. He's in the pleated khakis.

We should mention the pleaded khakis that Lindsey Graham is wearing. He decided I'm going to go to Disney World, possibly alone. We'll get to that. And I'm going to wear pleated khakis. In a belt, high water. I'm going to stand there with the bubble wand.

There's mixed reporting on what is actually happening here. There's some reporting that he's holding the bubble one for a girl who's in the restroom. There reports indicate he traveled to Disney World with some friends. I got to say, I find that strange. I do. I do find it strange. And I'm sorry if there are some Disney adults in our audience to each their own. I don't want to yuck your yum, but just speaking for myself to be a single.

man, a confirmed bachelor, if you will, who is in his 70s, who has a little vacation time, and they decide that they're going to go to Disneyland with their friends and their children and wait in line at Space Mountain. I find that odd. I find that an odd choice. I don't support that, really. The pictures of him at Space Mountain also, by the way. is fine. It's a fine thing to do as a confirmed bachelor. I just think Disneyland's not for you.

And if you have grandchildren, if you have a nephew, a niece, a loved one, you know, if there is an orphan child that you are a big brother for, you want to take them on a nice trip. Okay, you know, vacationing there with family makes you wonder, makes you wonder, you know, what was happening on the apps at night, you know, whether the Peter Pan actor, you know, whether the Woody over on the new Toy Story ride, got an inappropriate message. You just don't know. It just makes you wonder. It just makes you wonder because it's hard to think that that's like going to be an enjoyable

thing, like waiting in line, you know, at Epcot Center, waiting for the teacups. is like that doesn't feel like that's it for me. I do want to shout out the new music of the new music of the Tiana ride. Very nice. So there's some things to do there at Disney. But going alone as an adult is not great. I mean, I took my child to Universal recently last summer, and we were waiting in line to take a picture with Glinda,

the Good Witch or something. And, you know, a gay man, middle age, waiting in front of us in line to go get his picture taken with Glinda while we are waiting. It's hot. We're a little cranky kids. She's like, that's not really for you.

You know, the Glinda the Good Witch line is not really for Lindsay Graham, the Lindsay Grams of the world. You know, if you're a single man and you just really love roller coasters, okay, that's one thing.

You know, you want to go around the world at Epcot and have a beer in every country. That's fine, I guess, not for me. But, you know, to be there.

the bubble wand waiting in line to get a picture with Glenn to the Good Witch where little children wait behind you. That's annoying. That's frustrating. That makes you wonder, what are you doing? What are you doing here? It's a free country. You can do whatever you want, but as far as societal norms are concerned, it's frowned upon.

At least I frowned upon it. There's been some good research out there over at the Daily Caller, Dylan Houseman, who I've had here on this channel. We had to have a debate back and forth. a couple months ago, if you want to go find that. He said the Daily Callers, crack reporters have found that that bubblewong costs $40. That is also interesting because there's the broader thing at play.

Like even if Lindsay Graham wasn't being a weird out, like even if it wasn't extremely eyebrow raising for a confirmed bachelor to be meandering about the magical kingdom trying to. to like encounter the various characters there, your goofies, your Donald Ducks. Like that would be weird enough as it is something that it would be maybe be worthy of a chuckle. But in the context where we are right now, the Senate is closed. Like the Senate is on vacation.

Lindsay Graham started a war in Iran. Okay. Lindsay Graham convinced Donald Trump alongside BB and MBS to get us in to a a cockamamie war in Iran that's raising everybody's gas prices. It's going to increase inflation that has caused the deaths of American troops. It's causing the deaths of people across the Middle East. It is a total quagmire already. Lindsay Graham started it and he's like the guy sent the fire. Okay. And then a few weeks later, he's like, oh, I'm going on vacation. I'm going to go down to Disney World to see if I can hang out with Woody at the new toy story ride.

Like, that's a no. Okay. You can, you are not allowed to be on vacation. The people, when you went, when you went to the airport, when you went to DCA and then landed at Orlando, there are good people working at those airports trying to keep us safe that you are not paying right now because the government is shut down. They are not being paid. You are going through the security line with a bubble wand and a signature book full of the signature of your favorite Disney stars, Lindsay Graham.

Like that is wrong. That is wrong. Okay. You need to be in the Senate. You should be making sure that people are funded, that the DHS is funded, that the TSA is funded, that the TSA is funded. Okay. You should be doing your job. We probably want Deng Graham to be outside of the conversation.

around the Iran War, but somebody in Congress should be in there ensuring that we're voting on whether there's congressional approval for this war, putting maybe some limits on Donald Trump. There's a lot of things that need done right now. This is not the moment to be taking a holiday as a single confirmed bachelor to Disney World, to go see Ariel. All right. I know that you have your favorite Disney princesses. You have a ranking of them in your Senate office.

But this is not the moment. All right. To go try to see who you think is the most fierce diva between Tiana and Ariel and Snow White. This is not the time for that. Congress should be working in the Senate. TSA agents should be getting paid. We've got a deadline White House segment coming up next. But those are my thoughts about Lindsay Graham at Disney World.

Quite weird, abdication of responsibility, really, really upsetting on a lot of levels. And just as a blanket item, I am against childless adults going to Disney and waiting in line to see their favorite characters. That's a no for me. The line's already long enough. children should get to go to the front of the line as quickly as possible. If you're a childless adult, you're limited to going around the world at Epcot Center and getting blackout drunk. Okay? That's what you got to do.

I'm sorry to break it to you. Especially if you're a United States center, especially if you're a United States center when government servants aren't getting paid because you aren't doing your job. Subscribe to the feed. Where else are you getting this kind of stuff? Subscribe to the feed. Up next, me on Deadline White House. I was going to say I don't derive any pleasure. I derive immense pleasure in watching all these people who dragged Trump over the finish line in 2024, say, oh, my God, oh, my God, OMG, we don't want this.

Because, again, I don't know what's in their heads and hard. Some of them may actually feel some responsibility to their listeners. Again, I do not know. But all of them realize that a dude at 33% in dropping is a commercial loser. Yeah, that's right. on Friday's show when you are on a well-deserved vacation, Nicole, I told Alicia that I'm granting us as like a never-trump priest. Everybody gets five minutes a month of gloating. I told you so, smiling.

And then unfortunately, we have to actually talk and communicate to those folks and offer them a different. Yeah, like five minutes seems excessive, right? Like, like, I take your point. And we can't, you can't mock them because, like, for whatever the reason, they're now telling the truth. And that's a good thing. Right. For sure. And yeah, we did warn them that they shouldn't trust Donald Trump.

But it's also true that Trump lied to them and Trump betrayed them. And I think that's an important message for Democrats and anyone in the pro-democracy movement going forward is that these voters were betrayed by him. And that he made them a series of promises that he's not followed through on. He doesn't care about the forgotten man. He doesn't care about prices. He doesn't care about not sending young men to war. What he cares about is this new ballroom and the new armrests on the Kennedy Center.

He's been talking about that a lot, and he cares about enriching his family and his kids. And that's just, those are all just facts. Like that is what has happened. He's betrayed them, and that's why his numbers are lowering because some people notice it. I don't think it's that surprising that the last people into the boat are kind of the first ones out and the first ones to notice it. And that was a lot of these kind of Manosphere podcasters, but also younger folks and more working class folks that weren't quite is engaged as the Kamala Harris Coalition was, people who had legitimate frustrations with, you know, cost of living and had fond, maybe mistaken memories of, you know, the pre-COVID

economy. And like that kind of explains that. I think those folks that came in are looking around right now and going what the heck. And I think that, you know, we're going to continue to see this is the thing. And that's why I'm trying to put a limit on the amount of gloating because it's going to get worse. And it is going to get worse. Like even if Trump, as we are talking right now, decided, hey, I'm going to give some sham deal to Iran, you know, I'm going to cut some deal where they get a bite out of my crypto coin and I get a cut out of the straight-of-hom-huz and he does some corrupt deal and turns around right now, the long-term ramifications of this,

we all lived through this in COVID. You can only disrupt the supply chains in a global economy so much before there are all kinds of ramifications you can't predict. And if you look and read the news from newspapers around the world, Italy, Korea, Japan, England, people are already feeling real pain. And we're feeling it here at the pump. But I think that it's going to expand beyond that. And I think that there's going to be more people jumping on the bandwagon and sounding quite a bit like Sean Ryan sounded in that clip. To say nothing to Miller of the investments in American media companies that are alive with Donald Trump, your thoughts about people being more interested in the grifting and the crossings? corruption and the insidery storylines as the economy falters.

Yeah. Look, the story I'll tell is kind of similar to one that David says, but, you know, I think I'll put a little bit more of like a campaign lens on it, which is, you know, I was noticing this weekend that Ron DeSantis, Republican governor of Florida, was posting kind of obliquely, but about the downturn in the economy. He was talking about how the bond ring was going up. mortgage rates are going up. I think he also highlighted energy prices.

And that caught my eye. And he's done a few of those recently, not criticizing Trump by name, per se, but like obliquely criticizing the economy. And to me, like that is interesting, right? Because he's not a pundit who has an audience to care about, right? He's a politician that is looking at the future. And we've talked for so long on the show, Nicole, like for years about how all the incentives of your Republican politician was to look the other way.

at all Trump's misdeeds and focus on the areas where you agreed with them, because that's what the voters wanted you to do, right? And we're starting to see some signs. I don't wanna overstate it, because it's early, but we're starting to see some signs where those incentives might be switching. And what is an area that you could turn to,

in addition to the Iran war, as David laid out, if you wanted to say, hey, you know, I was on board for the policies and the good stuff and the MAGA and the nationalism and whatever, the immigration, but it seems like, the corrupt dealing, you know, began to get too serious, right? And, you know, I heard that, you know, the liberal said stuff, and they always accused him of it. And it was from, but in the second term, you know, we started to see, look at, look at how much Jared Kuster's making from Saudi Arabia.

Look at how much the Trump family is making from this cryptocurrency. I was against this because I was betrayed, because I trusted him and they betrayed me and they stole. And I still am America first. I'm still MAGA. But Trump, you know, started to steal. and he started to, you know, let us down. And whether it was Iraq or Epstein or the theft, for those reasons, you know, I'm starting to move off the train.

I think that we're going to start to see that more and more of that. And I think that that is something that some of these guys will at least try out, and we'll see if it works with the base. Well, it's so interesting. I mean, corruption is historically a 90-10 issue, right? Like, everyone is against corruption. And when Trump is committing it in public, in full view, it's pretty hard. to defend against it, if you're Trump or any of his traditional defenders. I want to push

sort of behind these abysmal poll numbers. And even within the Trump coalition, picking up on Tim Miller's points, sort of the last one's in or the first one's out, this is an emerging age gap in terms of the soft coalition that assembled in 24. This is from Politico, quote, he's lied about everything. Iran War puts Trump on shaky ground with young Maga Men. Quote, Joseph Bollick feels betrayed by Trump. It's because of the war in Iran. The 30-year-old veteran served in Iraq and Afghanistan and voted for Trump in 24. But at CPAC, he spotted, he spotted a hat emblazoned with America First, a slogan Trump championed during his campaign, along with the promise not to start new wars in foreign countries. He's lied about everything, he said. If you go into a war

where there's no end game, how is it going to end? There's no clear objective. What happens to these voters? Well, it's a good question. I think that there is some of the voters who kind of become non-voters. My first starters, young voters are the least likely to vote in general. And I think Donald Trump activated a lot of people who felt disconnected by the two-party system. And so I think that a big chunk of these voters will become non-voters. I think some of them will look for somebody within the America First coalition who can carry that banner, whether that be, God forbid, Tucker Carlson or an MTG, or if J.D. Vance can refashion himself as an anti-war candidate, somebody who is trying to stop it from the inside. I think he will struggle to do that, but that might be something

he tries. And then I do think that that Democrats should not count these voters out as somebody that could be appealed to. Not all of them, probably not the guy in the America first had at CPAC, but some of their counterparts who are young men who are disaffected, who are anti-war. Look, if you look at the successful Democratic candidates of my lifetime, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both ran kind of against the Democratic Party, against the two-party system in different ways, right? Obama ran against the war, but then also kind of from the middle as a uniter, somebody's going to do racial healing. Clinton ran kind of from the middle as a southern governor. So it could look a lot of different ways, but I think that a Democratic candidate who has a message for these young voters,

who is, you know, who separates himself from some parts of the Democratic brand that are unappealing, who has clear kind of moral framework about how they talk about foreign policy in the wars? I think that Democrats should try to reach those voters. I think that some portion of them will be getable. Tim, we have a lot of these conversations about the watchful eye I keep on the Manus Fair.

It is harder to find a defender inside, sort of those late arrivers that you talked about than it is to find a critic. Do you think that they will, like it's an applause line at CPAC to say, they defunded PBS and they took these sort of normal journalists out the air. Do you think it will extend if their censorship extends into one's friendly terrain? I don't think so. I don't know.

You know, we'll see where the blowback comes from. I think in some ways there is this overlap between people we've been talking about, the crowd that was anti-war, that cared about the Epstein files. They also said at least that they cared about free speech. you know, that is different from the CPAT crowd. You know, that is different from the people that have put on the Trump hat and are going to cheer everything.

But it should be chilling. It is chilling what he's doing. I mean, people, you're not really even supposed to know who the head of the FCC is. It's like not really a great sign of what the FCC chair is up to if you know who that person is and can name them. Like that we've got a brandy car beat reporters, yeah. Yeah, right.

I mean, you worked in the Bush administration. Can you name the FCC chair for the Bush administration? I'd be impressed if you could. So, look, that's, yeah, exactly. I don't know, but that's the point because their bureaucrats are doing a job. They're trying to make sure that people don't break the laws. That's not what this is. Shouting about sleepy eyes Chuck Todd on a partisan stage is insane.

And it is authoritarian, and it is a threat. And, you know, I think that these guys should probably be a little bit concerned about where this goes. Because I think if the Democrats, take back power, you know, and if you look at the way that they have corruptly consolidated media, the way that the algorithms are being abused by Elon Musk on X or by the Ellison family, potentially, we'll see with the purchase of TikTok, you know, the lies that are being spread on some of these outlets like Newsmax and Fox. I mean, the Democrats in the past have pulled a lot of punches on this in the spirit of free speech because they want to protect free speech.

And these guys are changing the rules of the game in a way that I think is pretty ominous and I think might actually boomerang back on them. Tim, you've talked about this before, specifically the algorithms. Your thoughts about protesting the merger? Look, I think it's important. I think that it's important to frame it in the context of politics and corruption. That's what this is about, right? Like, I think you can have a policy disagreement over, you know, two companies merging and, you know, where antitrust should. kick in and what's the right number of media companies.

I think that Norm would probably be more anti-merger in general than I would be. I think that there's a lot of media companies out there right now. I don't know if consolidation in itself is the biggest problem. But the problem is corrupt consolidation, political consolidation. This is unprecedented. This is something we haven't seen in a century in this country. The idea that the president would choose who the owner is of media companies, but also these tech companies.

And in the tech companies, it's particularly stark because of the algorithms. I think if the Democrats get back in charge, yes, they should try to, we'll think about antitrust and disaggregating some of these, particularly the ones that came about of corrupt deals, like the Ellisons, but also making rules around what they can do with the algorithms, because that is controlling a lot of what people see. So, you know, to me, this is a corruption story, and I think that it's important to really focus it on that, because that can bring in the broadest, you know, possible options for disentangling it. I mean, the two of you are sort of leaders of independent media, of creating it and of creating the content

and of drawing massive audiences. Isn't that the check on the corrupt consolidation on the other side, Tim? Yeah, to me, this is why I do think in some ways we're kind of in a golden era of speech. You can get speech from so many places. TikTok, from both the bulwark, you can get it from MS now. You can go, you know, yeah, like they're beehives. Subject now is a competitor now. So that's why I'm like a little, you know, there is a group of people who are very concerned about consolidation

and they think that consolidation is a problem in its own. And I think we can have that debate. My issue is, okay, sure, there are a lot of places where people can go get information and they should. Sign up to be a board plus member, you know. You can get independent information anywhere. The problem is the algorithms, right? And if you have a small number of rich guys who got in charge of the algorithms out of a corrupt deal, because that was the thing with the adolescents.

Like, this was a corrupt deal. It was an illegal deal. We had banned TikTok in this country. And Trump did this, you know, by Fiat. And he put his friend in charge of the platform, which now has an algorithm that can impact what people see. I mean, that is corruption. And so, yeah, there are opportunities out there in independent media. But that shouldn't make us any less vigilant.

I want to fight against the corrupt part of us.