Bulwark Takes - James Talarico's "Scandal" Makes Me Like Him More!

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

Tim Miller takes on James Talarico's spicy Instagram follows, Candace Owens leaking texts with Charlie Kirk, and Tim's heated panel at Crooked Con.

Hey, everybody. Tim O. from the Bullwork here. I have successfully navigated travel during the government shutdown. Shout out to all the folks doing the work out there. The government workers aren't getting paid at our airports because it's fuck. It's a disaster. It's tough out there. But I was at CrookedCon in Washington, D.C. The event put on by our friends over at Pod Save America. I think I was on maybe the spiciest panel of the whole conference. Shocker. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about that. There are a few other issues that are percolating this Saturday. that I wanted to give you my take on before I go out and enjoy a beautiful fall day here in New Orleans.

But first, to CrookedCon. So my panel, I was moderated by my friend of me, John Lovett, and Jessica Tarloff, who's on the pod on Friday. If you have not watched that, go watch it. Simone Sanders, myself and Hassan Piker, who, if you don't know him, you're probably a boomer. Hassan is extremely popular with the youth.

He is a far left. He's kind of like Zoron on steroids as far as his ideology is concerned. So, you know, a mix of views, right? I mean, Simone worked for Bernie and then worked for Biden. Hassan is left populist, anti-capitalist, I think it would be fair to say. You got me, you got Jessica Tarloff, who's a raging moderate. And so, you know, we're covering the gambit and talking about how Dems can have a good time and have fun and appeal to people who listen to Hassan show, but also who listen to, you know, Shane Gillis's podcast, like people who are, like, in the political center.

who moved to Trump this last time. You know, I almost feel like I should do a longer thing with Hassan because obviously our views are so different. And we did kind of go back and forth a little bit on policing and a few other issues. But the fireworks actually came between me and Simone, who I love. And so nothing personal. Just this is all part of the game.

We're all trying to figure out the best way to do this. There's going to be some disagreements, some heated disagreements. And on a play for review, a little clip from CrookedCon of Simone, and I getting into it a little bit. They didn't win because they opened up the aperture and let people do what they need to do. They won because they tripled down on what they believe, even if what they believed. That's just not right. I'm sorry.

That sounds good, and I like it. I want it to be right. It's just not right. They didn't win because they tripled down on what they believe? No, they did triple down what they believe. Yes, they tripled down on racism. Yeah. It was populism, but it was a, it was a, populism is a thin ideology mixed with a thick

ideology, according to Cass Mutt. His populism was a little, had a, lot of things. It was an economic populace, but populism had a little white supremacy in it, a little racism. Like Bernie Sanders is a populist in a different way than Donald Trump. Yeah, this here's the thing. No, I don't understand. Here's the thing, though. Can I just say really quick, though? Here's the thing. Like, yeah, he doubled down on a bunch of terrible shit that they believe that's extreme. No doubt. No doubt. He also was seen as left of Kamala on foreign policy. He was seen as an anti-war candidate. He was seen as anti-the-Republican establishment of war. He cut to the

middle on that. He lied about that, for sure. He's a liar. He lied. He lied. Then maybe our guy should lie about some things that are popular, too. Okay, okay. It's a little bit of a shorter clip. You know, I don't want to, you know, make you watch the whole deal. But the gist of the argument is, and I think this is a fair representation of Simone's point of view. She's saying basically, why should the left have to necessarily moderate? Because the right didn't.

You know, the right went all in on racism, fascism, misogyny, and they won't. It's maybe a misjudgment to think that the right. the Democrats need to do something different. Maybe the Democrats just need to go all in on their, you know, on views, on extreme views and do so passionately and do so in a way that alienates and ostracizes the right. And maybe the Democrats can take the maximalist views that they have of various issues and win. I think that's a reasonable thing to say. It's a reasonable view, I think, particularly if you're coming from the left to look at Trump and say, he didn't, why do I act moderate he won over how did he win over the middle you know when he's so extreme on all these

issues particularly immigration um and race issues i hear that i understand that perspective i i just as i said in the clip i just think it's wrong and just kind of expanding the one example given the clip was on foreign policy i think this is the most prime example trump does cut to the middle and sometimes in the way that we're using middle here is a little confusing so i guess you should just say like, if you take the Republican Party before Trump, like the far right wing of the party, I guess Ted Cruz would represent the far right wing of the party, they are a very aggressive foreign policy, you know, he's for the Iraq war, very pro-Israel, you know, very pro-interventionist, Ted Cruz, a extremely far-right social conservatism on abortion, on gays, and also on immigration.

You have, at that time, kind of what was seen as the right-wing views on economic issues, which is, you know, obviously cutting taxes for everybody, but also, you know, cuts to social security, Medicare, Medicaid cuts to the social safety down, right? So like that Ted Cruz view is a closer analog to like the inverse of, you know, AOC, right, you know, who is taking kind of the left position on basically everything in the Democratic coalition, right? And so if you're kind of drawing a line across, you have the Ted Cruz view over here and the AOC over here. So now Trump comes in and he outflanked crews on the right on a couple of things, right? He comes up with fucking policies nobody didn't even thought of before.

We're going to ban all Muslims. I want to end birthright citizenship, right? So Trump does, and so I hear some of his point on this, he does go to the far right, particularly on a lot of race issues. But, like, we also just need to be eyes open to the fact that Trump also cut to the middle on several issues, on foreign policy, saying that he's going to be the peace candidate, he's going to end wars, these wars have been stupid, the neocons are dumb. Like, he did that.

And that's a popular view, as a neocon, it hurts me, but that's a popular view. He took a smart strategic popular view and some of it was BS, but just like he did that. He did cut to the middle on stuff. He did cut to the middle on abortion. Again, was he lying about his position in abortion? Yeah, but he wasn't taking the far right pro-life view on abortion. And the Democrats are trying to say that he really would enact those policies and he has, right? But Trump himself, in his own rhetoric, you know, tried to distance himself, you know,

talking about how Mike Pence was pretty extreme, you know, tried to cut to the middle on abortion on, on Social Security and Medicare. Again, there have been cuts, well, not Social Security, but particularly the health care programs, but Trump knew that he had a lot of old people in his coalition, a lot of seniors. Like, he was like, I'm not going to, these guys are crazy that want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Like, I'm going to make us a lot of money. And that's how we're going to pay for it, right?

On IVF. I remember he came out on IVF and said the tariffs are going to pay for IVF. Now, a lot of this was bullshit nonsense, okay? But it happened and voters heard it. And so voters looked at Trump and they didn't necessarily see him as like somebody who is a down the line, a far right ideologue. Some of somebody who was extreme on some issues, different on others, practical, business man, whatever. And I think that if the Democrats are going to try to figure out how can they win, how can they appeal to people in the middle, they should learn from that. I'm not saying that they shouldn't take the left. And later in this

panel, I said that I mean, Hassan disagree on a lot of stuff. I agree with him on the fact that the Democrats should take some left populist economic views that are left of where Kamala and Hillary have been. But if they do that and then also take the left, far left flank view on social issues and also take it on foreign, right? You see, I think that ends up potentially being problematic. So much more to discuss about this in the years ahead, but that's kind of a summary of the views. Like I said, a bunch of other stuff happened on this Saturday. I wanted to weigh in on. There's a story from Axis about James Telerico, the Christian pastor, Democrat that's running for Texas Senate. I guess on social media, he follows, quote, several adult film performers, escorts, and only fans models, according to

an Axios review. Axis goes on to show some of the pictures of these folks. Their hotties, Again, not for me, per se, but objectively, they're good looking. They all get a lot of followers. Axis says that staff went and looked to see if Talrico had, like, chatted with any of them. And he had sent one of them a message that just said, thank you, Alice, after she posted a pro-Telarico story. So, um, my response to this is, hell yeah, James Talarico. I mean, maybe there'd be hypocrisy here if he was actually hiring escorts, right? that would be go against his like his stated religious views but like he's a single man he's on social media he's doing well he's a rare democrat who's like doing well communicating with younger people on ticot he's a rare democrat he's able to go into the banosphere hang out with joe rogan for a while like yeah he's going to follow hot girls on instagram great the democrats need more dudes who are into hot girls most dudes are into hot girls it's fine that worked for bill clinton um you know went a little overboard have to

a while. But to me, I almost wonder if this was a self-leak from the Tala Rico campaign to show young men that he's just, he can hang with the bros, because I don't see any issue here, you know? I mean, part of me is thinking that maybe Tala RICO staff's quote should have been a little less defensive. I guess they said, here's what they said. They said, the social media team, including James, follows back and engages with supporters who have large followings and does not investigate their backgrounds. James has never subscribed to Onlyfans or an escort service. Well, if you subscribe to OnlyFans, would that really matter? I don't know.

I mean, part of me thinks that they should just reply. James likes big butts and we cannot lie about it because we're running an honest campaign. And I think that'd be fine because people are allowed to like beautiful other people and want to enjoy

the fruits of that interest. That's good. That's how the species procreates. So good on you, James Talarico for getting your dog on on Instagram. I don't see any issue here. If anything, this probably only helps him as far as I'm concerned, and particularly in the Democratic Party, where I think there's been kind of a little lack of masculine energy in ways that have hurt them with some key demos of voters over the past couple cycles. So also, by the way, inverse is true.

Inverse is true. Okay. So probably not, I'm trying to think of a woman in Senate, I'm going to have to my head right now. Probably not going to be Janet Mills. You know, if Mikey Cheryl had been following some muscle guys on social media, I would have been like, hell yeah, Mikey Cheryl as well. You know, we're all humans after all. Another thing, just while we're kind of elder millennial talk, Donald Trump has pardoned Daryl Strawberry, famous New York Mett.

He was a Cardinals fan as a child, but it was hard not to like the Mets. The Mets were cool in the 80s. Doc Good and Darryl Strawberry. Then Darryl Shrubby makes the appearance on that Simpsons, that great Simpsons episode. You stink, Strawberry. We want home run homer! Daryl.

This is a fine pardon for me, but it seems to be like Trump's flailing. Like, he's looking at this, and it's like, he's out there last week saying he doesn't want to hear people talk about affordability. And so what's he doing? And it's like, we're doing a ballroom. We're doing all these pardons. He pardoned another Chinese agent, actually, this weekend, too, a CCP agent. I'm going to get into that a little bit more than this coming week.

But we're doing pardons of CCP agents, partner to crypto guys, pardons of baseball players. We're putting some new avant pan lettering outside the Oval Office. We're bombing boats in Venezuela. It's like maybe dial back the focus on all that stuff and actually focus on the fact that people's lives are being harmed materiality right now by the shutdown and by the shitty economy. That's probably what I would do if I was Donald Trump.

but I'm not here to give Donald Trump advice. Do I want to talk to, should we, do you want to hear about the Candace Owens stuff? She's leaking old Charlie Kirk texts or Kirk's Trash and Ben Shapiro. I don't know. I want to do a deeper dive on this, actually. It's part of me is like, don't leak people's text post-humously, I don't think.

I don't leak my, if I texted you out there, and you can leak something, if I text you something really nice, and I get killed, you can leak that. That's nice. But like, don't leak my text. text as part of your beef. That said, I think that like the substance of all of it is interesting, just kind of like basically Kirk being more on this more populous side of this debate

in private than this ongoing feud between Ben Shapiro and Tucker and Candace. And so I'm going to do more. I want to do more on that maybe as well summer later this week. So we'll, that'll be just a little teaser for you guys. We'll put a pin in that. So that's that. A bunch of stuff happening from this week. I also really enjoyed The Secret Show with Sarah and JVL

where they were talking about the just devastating USAID news and kind of pairing that with Elon Musk trying to get a trillion dollar package, getting a trillion dollar package from the Tesla board after single-handedly

killing, like being responsible for the deaths of the poorest people in the world because we had to I don't know, tighten our belts. It's truly, the world deserves better, rich people, or fewer, maybe. So go watch that. It was really good. Go watch Sarah and JVL, their secret podcast.

Check that out if you haven't. It was a good conversation with what came out yesterday on Friday. That's my rundown of everything. We'll see what the news brings tomorrow. Maybe back here on Sunday or otherwise Will Salatin or some of my Sam Stein, and my colleagues will be here. And we'll be seeing you for the podcast on Monday. Subscribe to the feed.

Go Tigers. Have a great weekend.