Bulwark Takes - JD Vance Sucks. So How Did He Get This Far? | The Trio

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Sam Stein and Tim Miller take on JD Vance's rough day in Wisconsin: playing Fraud Czar while his Iran deal implodes, and telling a cookie story that accidentally describes Trump. Plus: Patrick Dempsey passes on a Maine Senate run, and Riley Gaines isn't sure Helen Keller existed. (Will Sommer will be back soon. Pray for his wifi.)This episode is sponsored by The New York Times.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller for the bulwark. I've got a duo for you, just the two of us, me and managing editor Sam Stein. We had a delicious trio plan for you where we're giving you a update on what's happening with masturbating manny on the mall and many of the other characters from trio videos passed. But Will Summer had some typical difficulties. So that's just a teaser. All right. Press a little alarm bell. Subscribe the feed. And me and Sam and we'll be back, you know, sometime in the next 24 hours.

or so. In the meantime, our vice president, the charisma vampire, J.D. Vance, was in Wisconsin as part of his news role as frauds are. He's frauds are in charisma vampire. And he was discussing the fraud that they're uncovering. It's interesting. They used to fly all the way to Wisconsin since there's someone's fraud happening, like, in his office. But, okay?

He gave a speech there. And I guess let me go to a couple of the clips, but you know, thoughts about the vice president's performance today. Is, well, two thoughts. One is, it wasn't all that long ago that he was in Islamabad or Vienna or whatever, like trying to make this deal and talking about how the, all those cool Iranians that he met along the way. And like, this thing's imploding right now. And J.D. is not, you know, they're not like, hey, J.D. go fix it. It's just like, you know. You're in Wisconsin.

He's in Wisconsin. You got to go to go to Wisconsin this week. Take this one off. Yeah, the deal is spiraling out of control. The war is accelerating. We're probably more than ever. We might have made Carg Island. Trump said today.

And JD was the point man on the deal. And like he's in Wisconsin. So that's a very deepish. As he's speaking, setcom is tweeting out. We're launching more strikes. I mean, I'm laughing, but I want to cry inside because that MOU lasted a couple days and that's it. So great job. On this point.

And one of the moments in the, the speech like JD like weirdly kind of like looks down at his phone and is like hey I might get a text and it's kind of it's almost it's pretty melancholy it's kind of sad it's like oh man maybe it's the president calling to text me or you know or calling or texting to ask me about the deal that I struck with Iran and maybe once my input on the strikes and they that sounds like nope not the president not the president go on local reporter ask your question um yeah there that is a good point it does a diminishment of sorts. But then the other thing is what you talked about is just like this

this just sort of devoid of charisma element to him where he kind of winds up these stories and you know he's kind of workshopped them a little bit or maybe he hasn't wound them up and that's the problem. And you're kind of waiting for the real kicker or the laugh line and then at best you get a chuckle out of it and then there's some point that he's making to it but the point doesn't really make sense

and you're like, I don't get the metaphor. and then he's like, okay, moving on. And you're like, man, someone who lacks that type of, jeunise qua, that charisma, how did he get so far in politics? Sucking up to people is the answer to that. Let's play one of those stories. He tells a cookie story. Yeah, a cookie story.

It's weird. It's not oaky cookie, thank goodness. Let's watch. So that is, you know what? It kind of reminds me of like a couple weeks ago. I get home to the Naval Observatory, the nicest public housing anywhere in the United States of America. And my six-year-old greets me, and I love my little boy, but he's a little mischievous. And he gives me a big hug.

He says, Daddy, I'm glad you're home. I didn't steal any of the cookies. I said, huh, that's interesting that you volunteered that when I wasn't even talking about that. Well, of course, he stole the cookies. So when I hear a guy protesting out of nowhere, I did not do any election fraud. I did not do any election fraud. It makes me wonder, why is that guy protesting so aggressively? It's a little odd.

I just, I mean... What does cookies have to do with anything? What? I mean, guilty conscious, I guess. What is the election fraud? It's Donald Trump is the one that... It's them that are always talking about election fraud. Right.

For the story to make sense, they would be the boy that had stolen the cookies. No, it was Trump. He did a whole stop-the-steel thing. No, he's saying, I didn't do election fraud. No, he's saying I didn't do election fraud. fraud. Therefore, I don't know. The whole thing, I don't know. It's just, also he looks down at his notes. It's like, tell the cookie story. He's probably written there somewhere. I don't know. Why he's always putting down his kid? Go home to the Naval Observatory, the Observatory. The Fabricious

housing. Get the public housing line in there? Yeah. I mean, Dick Cheney didn't talk like that. I don't know. The whole thing is just, it's a really, it's trying hard. So with J.D., there's always kind of the two sides of him. There's just like the charismaless, you know, kid that has that in high school was kind of wearing the eyeliner and wasn't very cool. And, you know, you've seen the pictures of him from high school. He was just, you know, the outsider. There's that boy, like his inner child that wants to be loved and is trying to kind of be Joshed with the cool kids. Like there's that side of JD. That's kind of sad. Then there's the dark mean side of JD. And we get to see a little bit of that as well.

during this speech let's watch. You need it. And I want to point to this woman. I want to be clear that the woman in the back did nothing wrong. But look at this woman in the front with the smug look in the Louis Vuitton bag. A woman who quite literally stole from young mothers who needed prenatal care and the state of Wisconsin, ladies and gentlemen, had to scale down that program because of insufficient funds. So a couple of things there.

It's hard to see. You can pull it up because of the glare, not really good stagework. But you can see the picture. It's kind of a black woman who's apparently holding a baton bag. I'm not as familiar with bags as J.D. Vance's handbags. And then there's another black woman behind her. And it's just like, now this other black woman I just happened to put up here, she did nothing wrong.

I want to make that clear. And it's like, well, why didn't you crop it? I mean, we have advanced photo editing tools now that we can use. here on our cellular devices. And so it's pretty strange. You included that out there. And then he's like this other woman with her smug look. And it's just like, I don't know.

This woman might have done something bad with the fraud. And people that defraud the public should face consequences for that, just like Donald Trump and his family and the Wickoff family and the others that are doing that. Should also face consequences. But like, just the manner in which he does it is just so nasty. Oh, yeah. It's like classically nasty, bullish behavior. And the other thing is so unoriginal, right?

Like everyone who's been through these types of political arguments can tell right away what this is. This is the attempt to revive welfare queens like Reagan did. And there's plenty of literature on welfare queens and the attack he made. And I would encourage people sort of a seminal story by Josh Levin and Slate, who actually found the actual welfare queen, a woman named Linda Jackson who was from Chicago. She was like, you know, built welfare and was riding around on a convertible. And it was a real story.

Like she did commit welfare fraud in addition to a lot of other fraudulent behavior back in the 70s. And Reagan capitalized on this and did so quite effectively. But that's the playbook, right? Like that's a playbook. It's find a black woman who has something luxurious and say, and who committed an act and then paint. broad brush. In this case, the argument he's implicitly and explicitly making is black people are on welfare who are committing fraud and using it to buy Louis Vuitton bags. And, you know,

it's both unoriginal and it's misleading because, yeah, there's fraud. There's going to be fraud in government programs. But like, you know, in Minnesota, they were going after these agencies that were already being targeted by prosecutors. And then the prosecutor they're left because of the ice crackdown. And then they're pardoning all these fraudsters. Like they are literally pardoning all these people who are committing fraud in Medicare and so on and so forth. So this thing kind of enrages me because it is so, you know, nasty and honestly a little bit racist and also just frankly on original. Yeah.

Also, JD calling anybody else smug. It's like, come on. You know, it's like me calling somebody a smart ass. Are you calling somebody interrupts too much, you know? it's like okay JD like you are like you the picture of you is next to smug in the encyclopedia we don't have encyclopedias anymore claude when you ask claude show me the photo of a smug man the photo looks mysteriously like jd vance am i allowed to talk now i don't want to interrupt why you say that i interrupt too much just won't be clear you call me smart ass all the time you do

You are a smart ass. Okay, there you go. Moving on. Okay, maybe I was just doing one of the J.D. Van's cookie stories right there, you know, where I was like, I had a concept, was spitballing on it. Point being, J.D. shouldn't be calling anybody smug because he's a smug, son of a bitch. Fair enough. And I am going to continue to interrupt.

I don't give a shit. Great. Love that. And the people love it. No, they don't. This segment is sponsored by the New York Times. Can't believe I'm saying it. Love the New York Times.

glad they're a sponsor. Now look, as the entire country was celebrating the 4th of July this past weekend, the White House was bashing the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, accusing the institution of what it called, quote, extreme political activism. And we found that out from reporting by the New York Times. The Times broke down what was in the White House's report and explained the Trump administration's repeated attacks on the Smithsonian Institution. The reporting you depend on, that this show depends on, It started long before that headline. And it's not just the Times that's doing that reporting. The journal, ProPublica, your local newspapers, anywhere reporters are still working on a beat,

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Let's move on to the other big story of the afternoon in politics circles. Who might replace Graham Platner? Are you in an emotionally level place to do this story? you need me to take it out of it. It's just one disappointment after another following politics the last few years, Sam. So to be honest, I've grown some pretty thick rhinoceros skin dealing with setbacks like the one I'm about to share. But Graham Platner is at the time of this taping, maybe this will change by the time we publish it, still huddled in his home with advisors, trying to decide what to do. Everyone has that told him to resign. Maybe he thinks he can

gut it out. I think in Maine, it's for, I think I don't see how this works in the Democratic side and the Republican side. Many people have got it out controversies like this, but the Democratic electorate has different standards. And also in Maine, they've ranked choice voting. So the Democrats could actually run a right-in third alternative that could simply win, I would think, in a ranked choice voting depending on how things shake out. So anyway, things aren't great for him, but he's still deciding what to do, TikTok. In the meantime, a little parlor, game has kind of sprouted up. Who might the Democrats replace him with?

Who else is out there? A name that I have joked about several times in the YouTube page that for some reason being mentioned was Patrick Dempsey, McDreamy, who looks better than ever right now. Let's put up this picture from today's Portland Press Herald announcing that he's not going to run. I literally, when you sent this to me, I thought it was a troll. Like, I thought you'd have somebody in the office like mock up an AI thing. But it's real.

Can we step back with that? Because Tim's, just so people know, we're in Slack in this channel, and Tim's sort of like, Tim's been salivating over these, I don't know where this polling data has been coming from, that shows that he's got great favorabilities. And also, Tim's trying to manifest this into existence. And Tim finds some random-ass Twitter account. I honestly don't know where you, your algorithm has got to be so fucks right now.

someone named at nc democrat underscore who is this person i don't know but tim finds this tweet with a siren emoji saying new patrick dempsey weighing options on center rates over the next two days considering jumping in it links to a spotify i don't know how it's hex on taps okay i don't know how tim fucking found this shit but like within two hours dempsey has put out a uh uh abet in the portland press Harold saying why I'm not running for the U.S. Senate. And I too thought it was like fake. I was like, is this from like six years ago or something? Because the picture looks great.

He looks great. Look at how good he looks. He's just looking really, you know, like a guy who could win a main Senate race. Brilliant and handsome. Dempsey 2028. So he starts writing, honestly reading about this, I've been kind of doing it as a little troll talking about it. I mean, I also obviously kind of handsome.

But yeah, people are really asking him. He has. I should mention this just before I joke a little bit that he has started the Dempsey Center. I made a joke which I thought was pretty clever. I was pretty happy with this joke and it was, you know how the Libs are always talking on people's lived experience? And I made a joke about how Patrick Dempsey could run for Senate

with a plan to fix health care based on his acted experience. It's a really bad joke. I pickled myself with that dad joke. You're closer to J.D. Vance than you possibly. And then I got some emails for people that are like, no, it's actually his lived experience because he has the Dempsey Center, which helps people with cancer in the community, which is great. And so maybe that's part of the reason why people are taking this seriously. He wrote this. Here's the op-ed.

Over the past several days, I've been asked a question more than once, including on this here, Bullwark YouTube channel. Maybe he's a viewer. What's up? McDramie. Come on. You're welcome any time. would you ever would you ever run to the net state senate it's flattering and i don't take it lightly i love my home state of maine i care deeply about the people who live there and like so many americans

i'm concerned about the direction our country is heading i gave it real thought um and then he goes on i kept coming back to one question do i truly want to serve in congress i realize the answer is no not because public service isn't honorable it absolutely is because i believe i could contribute more effectively. I think most notably, there was a pretty extensive section on how he wants integrity in his candidates.

And I don't, I think that is a not subtle reference to Graham. So I'm disappointed, man. I mean, I was already plotting out the path to Dempsey is the outsider candidate of my dreams for 2028. I think he would have wiped the floor with Susan Collins. I get to, I do get excitable in these sets of things. So, you know, maybe, maybe Patrick knows himself

better than I know. Well, just to get people, because I've already talked about your obsession about it, but it actually is deeper than I even, you know, revealed because I'm now looking back at another Slack channel that you, me, and Jonathan Cohn are in, where you're assigning Jonathan Cohn stories about ACA enrollment, but then suddenly at the end, you're like, eh, you know what? You need to write about Patrick Dempsey anyway.

I am. I'm assigning Jonathan Cohn, whose newsletter, the breakdown is excellent. You can get at the board.com. I was assigning him a Patrick Dempsey item, which unfortunately won't. get written. So I'm upset about it. The other news item this afternoon, which is, I think, even more weird, is a state rep named Valley Geiger. Let's pull up her photo. Maybe a nice woman here of it. She's a 70-ish-year-old woman in the state legislature, who I guess was an early Graham Platner endorser. She's saying that Graham is encouraging her to be the

Senate nominee? Yeah, well, the plan on campaign's already kind of, for what remains of it is putting a bit of cold water on that one saying he just called her to say thanks for your support. And I think she may be interpreted as saying, calling her offering his support, but no,

I don't think that's happening. Okay. The whole thing is strange. I talked to this Alex Wagner for a while today on the pod, but it's like I don't really understand why they think. I mean, look, I think that there are some people who are excited about Graham Platner because of ideology, and that's great.

And people, you know, should be excited about candidates based on their views. Obviously, there's another group of people that are excited about Graham Platner because he was charismatic and he was younger and they saw him as a fighter and something different and an outsider. And so I think that there's a lot of people who are kind of in the left wing of the party who are like, no. Like we should replace and we should replace Graham with somebody who has his views. but then they keep suggesting like the state Senate president and like the 70 year old state rep and it's like okay well that's fine that's just but that was one part of Graham's appeal but it was one part of his appeal well there's one pretty clear way to just settle this I mean it's in and it's not going to be it's not going to be satisfactory everyone but like hold the convention

vote just that's interesting let people vote and then if Graham Planner wants to endorse somebody he's welcome to do that you can do it go yeah Graham can say that's my guy Would people want his support? That's a question. I threw this in Slack while we're recording, but do you want to do the James Tolerica thing from the, have you seen this one from the National Republican Congressional Committee? It's the second time that Sam has been slacking me mid-podcast recently.

It's just, he has a multitasker. I'm also a multi-tasker. You think I'm not paying attention and giving it my all on these recordings. I do. I think that sometimes you're not really, you're not really, you know, marinating in my wisdom and like really, really. hearing all my bond moths you know but okay here we go there is we have two other stories then because i had one i went down as well uh the nrcc

national why is the nrcc doing this that's the other thing i don't know it's kind of from richard hudson nope that's he's nrcc yeah that's um because he's trying to tie james tell riko to johnny garcia who we've had on this you very youtube page johnny garcia uh that's a good candidate to look at and support um uh who is trying to pick up a seat in Texas, trying to undermine their efforts to gerrymander the state. The press release says this, Texas Demjit Jal Rico hired brains behind Cox,

not Glock's protest, trying to argue that James Taurico is trying to replace guns with dildos. Great. I mean, who is against that? Has anybody against that? People are upset about more dildos. and fewer guns? I mean,

they're not saying the James Taurico is trying to like eliminate your guns or take your guns. It's just kind of like a guns for Dilda's trade. And if you want to be the type of person who like is, you know, I don't know, in middle age,

has some children in the home, no longer wants to have a dangerous weapon around. And you're trying to spice up your sex life, you know? It's a win-win. Not since cash for clunkers. Have we had the government exchange like this? Yeah.

Guns for Dillbos. I think it's great. I guess they're thinking that like the right wingers in Texas will be offended by this. I think they'd be surprised and how much to take them up on the offer, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's probably an attempt to try to bedo Tolerico. You know, they really went hard at Beto over wanting to take people's guns. Tala Rico has been more prudent on that question.

And don't you think at some point it's kind of an abundance agenda thing. Caw and lot. Why can't you have both? What don't you think? Sorry, I'm dying. I'm saying. At some point these attacks get so ridiculous. It's like you read this and you're like, wait a second.

Come on. This guy wants to give us a whole bunch of dildos for our guns. Like, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't compute. Like, just stick with he's trying to take away your guns. That's probably cleaner. This will think so stupid. When I close at this, Riley Gaines,

mentioned this several times. She finished in fifth place in the swim meet. And I had a reader, send me an email, asked me to stop making fun of Riley Gaines for finishing him in fifth place in the swim meet. because it's a it is a big accomplishment to be fifth in a college national college swim meet. I don't want to take that away from her. What I'm mocking Raleigh-Ga-Ga-Ga-Ga-bought is that her whole life now following that swim meet has been dedicated to how unfair it was that she finished fifth because there was a trans-swimmer

that was competing, but they tied. So even if the trans, so even if you got the trans swimmer out of the race, she would have still been fifth. And so, that is the part that's so stupid and mockable about rally gain's advocacy. The whole thing is based on unfairness towards women. I mean, maybe if she was the 10th place finisher or the 11th, and then she could have said, well, I could have made the top 10 if it wasn't. Anyway, fifth and fifth.

She was on Stephen Miller's wife's podcast. Katie Miller. Katie Miller. It's the fascist mommy hour. And they were discussing conspiracy theories. Let's just watch. What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in? Okay, I'm a pretty horrible conspiracy theorist, to be honest with you.

I would say a conspiracy theory I believe in. Or what about the ones that I don't? How about that? Like Helen Keller, if I'm being honest with you, did she really exist? Like, did she really exist? I can't wrap my mind around it. Like, you're telling me there's a woman who can't see, she can't hear, but she wrote a book? I don't know.

Like, I'm the worst conspiracy theorist ever. Like, I'm, like, way too naive to believe that actually happened. That's going to be the part that's clipped, by the way. It's going to be like, Riley is so stupid and doesn't actually think Helen Keller is real. Okay, fine, maybe, but I don't know. I think it doesn't sit right with me. me. No, I don't disagree with you. But I also think there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there and every single one's proven true. So like... I don't disagree. Every conspiracy theory is proven

true. I'm stuck on this one. And there's a lot to unpack there. I'm stuck on this. Where she says, okay, to be honest with you, I would say a conspiracy theory I believe in. Or what about the one that I don't? How about that? Like Helen Keller. If I'm being honest with you, did she really exist? it's hard to diagram that paragraph. But it seems to me like she believes Helen Keller existing is the conspiracy theory. And she does not believe in that conspiracy theory, which is strange. I want to work through that again.

That's a good point. Or what about the ones that I don't? So what about the conspiracy theories I don't believe in? How about that? So she doesn't believe in a conspiracy theory. And that conspiracy theory is that. Helen Keller exists. So she does believe Helen Keller existed.

No. She's saying that the conspiracy theory is that Hallie Keller existed. That's a conspiracy theory. And she doesn't believe in it. So she believes Helen Keller never existed. Correct. Wait, the conspiracy theory is Helen Keller existed.

According to Ryan. Well, I'll give Riley credit on one thing. She's right that that shit was going to get clipped. Because it's so dumb. Does she not? Again, I'm having trouble here. She thinks Helen Keller didn't exist. or she thinks Helen Keller didn't write the book?

Didn't exist, I think. Yeah. But then she gets very specific. How could she write a book? She says, like, you're telling me there's a woman who can't see. She can hear. But she wrote a book? Yeah.

Wait. So does she not believe that the book was written or that she just doesn't believe Helen Keller ever existed. Yeah, I'd recommend to her that she visit Tuscumbia, Alabama. we can visit Helen Keller's birthplace. It's a nice stop. Not a lot of great stops in Alabama, but to scumbia is one. Does she know there's photos of Helen Keller? No.

No. She doesn't know anything. Let's just be honest. I'm not getting images right now. Again, there's photos of Helen Keller. It's there. You can look them up. There's at least 1,227 photos on the Getty Images library of Helen Keller.

Yeah, her whole life, young, old. Oh, there. It's there. The house that she was in, yeah. Graduation. I mean, this is a great story. Yeah, it's a good trip. I mean, I was just imputing Alabama to the Alabama's get mad at me.

I have to, you know, do that as a New Orleans. But, you know, I mean, if you're going to visit Alabama, that's a good part of the state to go to, Muscle Shoals. You can go see where a lot of great music was recorded. You can go to Cisumbia. There's a cute little shopping. You can see Helen Cullors home. I would recommend that to Riley or anyone who's looking for a little summer road trip. Gas prices are going up again.

So it's going to cost you a little bit more to go to Cumbia. But it'll be cheaper in Tuscumbia than it is other places in the country probably. So that's something to do. All right, Sam, anything else? Anything else out there catching your eye? I know you're reading Slack and editing and reading Twitter while posting this video. So anything else? We got some good stories coming tomorrow.

Do we? Yeah. At the Buller. Will Summers got, he's been working. Speaking of multitasking, his internet is shit, which is why we couldn't record the trio, but he has got enough connectivity to write this great story on the guy who's maybe going to bankrupt Candace Owens inadvertently. So that's coming tomorrow. Prayers up.

Prayers up. Subscribe with the Bullard.com to watch that story. That's Sam Stanley. I'm Tim Miller. We'll see you guys soon. Bye. Bye.