Bulwark Takes - JD Vance Just Got BOOED at the Olympics!

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

Tim Miller and Adrian Carrasquillo joined Nicolle Wallace to relish the moment JD Vance was loudly booed at the Winter Olympics. They also talked about MAGA’s meltdown over Bad Bunny to growing signs of global and cultural rejection, and how Trumpworld’s behavior is turning into a real political liability.Watch Deadline: White House on MS NOW: https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. I was just on MSNBC with my friend Nicole Wallace and my colleague at the Bullwark, Adrian Caraskeo. We talked about the election threats again. I'm going to talk about Bad Bunny and the fake controversy and all of the Snowflake whining over in Maga Media about the Bad Bunny halftime show. But then at the end, we got to the dessert. We got to the dessert, which is J.D. Vance getting booed relentlessly. and mercilessly at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Italy. And, well, you can stick around it here, Adrian and my thoughts about that. But because the Olympics are, you know, they're very protective and very proprietary of their video. They've been taking down people's videos when they're posting them showing J.D. Vance getting booed. That is wrong. That is fundamentally wrong. We all deserve this.

Videos of J.D. Vandskine-Bood belong to all of us. It is part of being in the world community. All right. We are the world. And we all deserve to see J.D. Vans getting booed. But in the meantime, I decided I'd do this for you guys. Just a little treat. It's a little weekend treat.

We'll put up the picture and everybody can want to look at it together and we can just kind of imagine that it was something like this. Boo! Boo! You suck! Boo! Bo! Bo,

Boo! You suck. You suck. You suck. Recess side profile, fat face, boo! You suck. Recess side profile, fat face, boo.

Bo loser, boo. This little something for you guys. All right, have a good weekend. We'll see you soon. Stick around for the rest of the video. Subscribe. Hey! feel like I miss the chapters about making losers great again. Like, I understand the autocratic

flex that this is, the power grab that this is, the let's see how audacious and disgusting I can be and keep Tim Cook showing up at my house in a tux. I get all that to humiliate J.D. Vance, who's the only person, I think, ahead of his big sort of political rise to have called him, quote, America's Hitler at the time. I mean, I get the aim and the thirst to humiliate. the people around him by being outrageous. I do not get why they're telegraphing how politically toxic they are. Because the only reason you steal something

is if you can't earn it or win it. Yeah, well, I think part of that is fragility, Nicole, right? That you can't accept any loss. And so you sort of lash out for any possible explanation or spin or a tactic that would prevent you from having to experience the loss.

So I think that's part of it. The other part of it is, look, he needs to hold onto power. They're doing myriad illegal things, and they're doing it largely with impunity right now, like with a few exceptions in the courts, and they've received pushback from the American people in certain places. But in a lot of areas, they're doing with impunity. And the Democrats take the gavel next year in the House, and especially if they took it in both in the House and the Senate, you know, there's going to be some kind of accountability, maybe not the kind that we all want, but too much for Trump's taste. And so it's not surprising that they're looking for every possible vantage point to prevent that or every possible tactic to prevent that. And, you know, I agree with a lot of what Mark said there.

I think that it's important to talk both about the threats and be clear about the threats, but also the ability to push back on those threats. I like the success in the redistricting is just is overwhelming. I think greater than almost everybody except Mark thought it could be. as far as what the potential bullishness was for the Democrats' gaining seats. And Louise Lucas, you played in the intro in Virginia, and that story is particularly, you know, we can take a lot of relish

in that story in particular because Republicans tried to gerrymander her out of her State Senate District a couple years ago, and now she's coming back and getting revenge. And so good on her for playing hardball right back. So that has that backfired. I think that it's very possible that the ban on plan for, you know,

putting mass thugs outside of voting, outside of election locations could backfire. I mean, that could motivate people to vote. In midterms, getting people out to vote is important. It could motivate people to mail in their ballots if there's enough of a campaign to educate people about this and to motivate people. So, you know, I think that what they're doing is predictable, being able to see it clear-eyed now early enough and having Democratic politicians see it clear-eyed early enough

to combat it, I think is important rather than, you know, just being, you know, feeling hopeless about it. I feel like this is an example of how successful they are in moving the goalposts. Like, and it is akin to something I refuse to cover here, which is a third term. Unconstitutional, I'm not covering it. He may want it. I want to be tall. But, like, I can't have that.

And he can't stay a third term. The idea of nationalizing the election is this something he can't have because it's unconstitutional. What are your thoughts about the conversation we're having around this? Yeah. I want muscles. But, you know, maybe I could. I don't spend less time with you. Yeah, I mean, look, I, I, yeah, that's for another day.

Let's do that. Let's do muscles. Muscles to defend democracy. Yeah. And we're doing our best. We could use some more muscle influencers out there defending democracy because I can't, I can't carry that beat. Look, I, there, do, the story of, of Julie Lee in Minnesota, you know, the attorney who, like,

was working for ICE and as an attorney. I guess we ordered a DOJ and is getting uprated by this judge basically saying that, you know, there are dozens of cases of people where, you know, the courts have told this administration that they are detaining them illegally and they have to let them go and they haven't done it yet. Why aren't you doing it? And she's basically like, I'm doing the best I can. We don't have enough people to defend all this, right? And so, like, I do think that, that, yeah, I mean, you hate to even engage with them in their various extra legal anti-rule of law activities, whether it be in the immigration side or on elections or anything else. But they run into eventually some practical limitations.

And I think that is, like, the smallest of silver linings, right? Like this judge in Oregon basically, you know, is saying we're no longer giving you the presumption that you're telling us straight. You have in Minnesota, they don't even have any AUSA's left. Like, everybody's quit in Minnesota, basically. So they can't, you know, use the judicial branch to add on to the bullying of the agents in the street. Right. So, like, these are small victories. Like, there's a lot of terrible things happening in Minneapolis still.

But I do think that's relevant and important about why the pushback is so important. Because, you know, they have a limit to the scale and the ability of people that are, that are going to go along with their lawlessness. D&I, Gabbard, and I are inseparable. We are constantly together, as are the people behind us, we constantly talk, we collaborate as a cabinet, we're all extremely close, know at each other, what we're doing at all times, pretty much, to keep not only our country safe, but our world safe. And she was down there with Deputy Director Andrew Bailey of the FBI.

And I'm not going to talk about any other details of that matter right now because George is a very important issue to us. She was there. We're inseparable. That's all I'll say. It is example, you know, 4,564 that in 2.0, he did not have access to the very best people. This is the wrong answer even if you love Donald Trump and want all good things from him. And I wonder if you think we're nearing a point where people who understand that it isn't even, good for them to have the DOJ and an investigation in Georgia mixed up with the DNI. Yeah. You did come to the wrong panelist on the devil wears prod our reference. I was ready. I was ready for that one. I was like raising my hand. But the point is like like like like the

answer in a press conference about why the D and and I'm just increasingly aware of the fact that like the world is watching and they're and they're saying WTF like what is happening? Her answer is like, besties? That's why the DNI was in an election office? What? That's crazy. Well, to Mark's point, it is, and it bears repeating, it's like, that is totally inappropriate, even if true. Like, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General shouldn't be sharing calendars and diaries. They both have very sensitive information. Yeah, or freighting each other's hair. Like, they both have very sensitive information that they're supposed to be dealing with. Like, the Attorney General ostensibly is supposed to be independent from

I'm sure there's certain, there's certain sensitive cases where there might be reason to have overlap, but they shouldn't be involved in everything together in the attorney general. We wouldn't want knowing everything, you know, that our spies are looking into. So, like, the whole argument is preposterous. Whether other Republicans are starting to see this as a vulnerability, I'm not sure about that yet, but I've got to tell you, the lame duckedness of Trump is really breaking through this week. I mean, you know, none of these people are profiles in courage. I'm not giving them any awards.

But the fact that you've seen multiple members of Congress speak out about the racist bleat he sent about the Obama's, the fact that Katie Britt gave some kind of preposterous interviewed in New York Times talking about how sad she was about the kids that were being detained. All these things are signs of things that, like, they realize they have a big political problem. They're trying to figure out how to triangulate out of it. I think a lot of them know that this particular issue, the, you know, sort of a mass. imaginary story that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election is very important to him. And so that's probably like not the one issue that they want to distance himself from because it's like the only thing he actually cares about besides, you know, his new ballroom or whatever. But I mean, I think that as a general matter, like the clownishness is seeping out into into magus spaces. That halftime, global superstar, Bad Bunny will perform, fresh off a huge night at the Grammys, his win for album of the year.

Bad Bunny also has the title of being the most streamed artists in the history of Spotify. Those accolades are not enough for MAGA media to calm down. Conservative influencers and Trump administration folks who have waged war on this year's Super Bowl and the NFL over picking Bad Bunny. Turning Point USA has launched an alternative halftime show, a safe space if MAGA people can't just get up and make a snack. they can tune in to the turning points half-time show. Take a look at how the mere existence, a bad bunny, a superstar who doesn't perform in English, has gotten under their very, very, very fragile, little thin skin. It's embarrassing to cover this because I don't know why I still have the capacity to feel embarrassed for them.

But there's always a projection. I mean, Corey Lewandowski called it a poor choice. I mean, he works for someone who made the poorest choice of all to shoot a puppy in that. the face. Like, who are these people? Do they think that we're not rolling on all the audacious things they say and do, Tim? There's a shamelessness for sure about it. You could even tell the second fella in that Newsmax article, that Newsmax statement was kind of like, you're going a little bit far from me. And I get, do we really need the second halftime show? I guess. You know, normal people that have, like, who book this? Like, why am I here? It's kind of like, I don't know,

a normal human. You know, for example, I haven't liked every halftime show. You know, you don't like it. You go to have a beer with your friends in the kitchen and chat during the answer, whatever. Like, the idea they are so fragile. These snowflakes are so fragile.

And then you add on to just the absurdity of like the alternate halftime show being Kid Rock, you know, who has several lyrics, including young ladies, I like them underage, some call it statutory. I say it's mandatory. That's the Christian counter-programming they have. you know, a kind of Epstein-pilled, you know, pro-sex crime, horrific singer. So I don't know.

I guess if they want to do that, that's fine. And the newsmax people can turn to that. Adrian, why is Bad Bunny drive them all so crazy? I had to do some meditation before this because I started, like, researching. And, you know, Bad Bunny has 87.5 million listeners per month on Spotify and Kid Rock has five million. And artists who have more listeners than him per month, you know, Mack Lamore, Gloria Stefan, Lil Kim, Cypress Hill, artists who had their time, but no one is saying that they should anchor

a Super Bowl halftime show. And so, you know, Bad Bunny is, he's multi-racial, multi-ethnic. He's open to LGBT issues. He stood up for trans women on the Tonight Show before. You know, he's somebody who

used to, I've been a fan since 2017, when people were like Adrian enough with the Bad Bunny. And back then, he didn't really speak up a lot. And then we saw him at the Grammys have a really thoughtful statement that wasn't just ice out, but he said, we can't respond with hate to these people. We love the people that we're trying to defend. And it was really powerful. And so I expect more of that at the Super Bowl.

And it's just clear that it's everything that MAGA and the conservatives don't want to deal with right now and don't want to embrace. So today, Milan, at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, there was a loud reaction and not a good, loud. reaction when J.D. Vance and his wife Ushah were shown on the Jumbotron. Here's how USA Today reports that moment. Quote, as U.S. Olympians walked into the stadium and matching Ralph Laurent ensembles during the parade of nations, choruses of cheers rang out across the crowd of spectators until U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife's second lady Ushah Vance were shown on the stadium's Jumbotron. At the site of Vance waving miniature American flags from the Sancero Grandstand, the crowd booed loudly. Adrian, your thoughts on the broader sort of cultural moment that we're in. I mean,

Trump has a 36, 37% approval rating, but just as significantly, I don't think a year ago, the head of the NFL would have publicly defended someone who gave that speech at the Grammys. Yeah, I think Claire made a great point. If Trump went to the Super Bowl, he was going to get booed, too. The policies are unpopular. He's unpopular here and abroad. And so it just gives more ammunition to their opponents. Goodell, it's really interesting exactly we were talking about. A year ago, we were watching all these institutions folding and just like giving up to this administration. And now you have the commissioner of the NFL saying, yeah, look, this guy, he knows the moment.

Bad Money knows the moment. And like the Grammys was the right moment for that. And he's not saying that bad money is going to do anything anti-ice, but he's saying that, you know, maybe. Like, basically, this is a popular artist and we've chosen for a reason. And so I think it speaks to so much of how this administration has weakened their standing in the country and abroad over the last year. Tim, you get the last word. Yeah. I agree with my colleague, Adrian, their policies aren't popular, but I don't think we should lose sight of the fact also that J.D. Vance is an unappealing jerk.

And this is not the first administration that has advanced policies that other countries, even allies, haven't loved or preferred or agreed with. What is new here is that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, but really J.D. Vance in particular, has tried to cultivate a persona of being a smug bully that attacks countries that have sacrificed for us, that have been trade partners with us, that have been loyal allies with us when we were attacked for decades now. And people don't like it none too much when a smug jerk makes fun of you and tries to rub your nose in it. all the time. And I'm pleased that J.D. Vance got a little bit of that back with Usha at his side. And I know that the index is a little tight on their video licensing and rights. But I feel like that's a historic document that we all should be able to watch over and over again. So I hope they'll be able to show that to us soon.