Bulwark Takes - JD Vance’s Latest Speech Sends Tim Miller Over the Edge

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Tim Miller and a secret guest take on JD Vance’s disastrous trip to Michigan, from his awkward attempt to defend Trump’s deeply unpopular data-center push to an astonishing 9/11 gaffe and an ugly attack on Abdul El-Sayed’s Muslim faith. Tim breaks down the hypocrisy behind Vance’s “populist” persona—and eventually, he blows his lid.If you value having an outlet that can call out this kind of garbage without pulling punches, become a paid Bulwark member. Your support helps us keep making things like this every day.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark here. JD, the couch Vance, was in Michigan today. Ohio man in Michigan campaigning against Abdul El-Syad. And, you know, he was as uncharming and unappealing as usual. There was one particular segment of his speech on behalf of Mike Rogers that really pissed me the fuck off, to be honest. I'm going to save that for the very end because it made me so much. mad that, you know, I'm worried that I will blow my lid before we get to all the other material. And on top of that, I've got a special guest, somebody you know, a former co-host of mine who is

at my house, and he will come on and rant about J.D. Vance at the very end as well. So do stick around for that. I feel like J.D. deserves a one-two punch today. We want to start with his gaggle before the speech. And Donald Trump set J.D. Vance up for a failure at that gaggle. Really, you know, left him a tough one to have to handle after his bleat this morning about how we must let the data rain. And how anybody that's against data centers is just a poor idiot. J.D. had to respond to that bleat. Let's see what he had to say. Well, what the president said about data centers is they're an important part of the AI economy.

when people build them, they have to build the power plants along with the data centers. I think probably 99% of the backlash to data centers has come in areas where building a data center means higher utility and higher electricity for the people on the ground. So I think what these companies have to do is take advantage of some of the federal deregulatory efforts that we've undertaken. If you build the data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out. And if that is happening, I don't think the data centers are that controversial. It's when the utility bills get so much higher. That's when it's a real problem. Okay, a couple of things there.

I love how he started with, I think what the president said was. None of what he said was what Trump says. Trump said, you're poor. You want to be poor if you're against data centers. And he wants to totally let the data rain. He did not offer any of the caveats that J.D. Vance offered there. I also found it very funny that J.D. Vance is trying to do the populist right thing, trying to be the man of the people, has been forced to go against.

you know, the mega populist right on like the economic issue of the moment. This is what with JD and these guys and Josh Hawley and all the like fake right wing populace always get into trouble. It's that they're donors and Trump don't like the economic populist stuff. So they end up having to backtrack on that. And so they're left with only the racism and the conspiracy theory about medicine. Right. Like that is that ends up being populist right.

you know like don't believe these doctors who are trying to tell you what to do about your children's vaccinations and also the you know immigrants are eating cats like that's what is ends up being populist right you know there are a lot of people who like to pretend populist right ends up being health care for poor whites or whatever and never ends up being that and on top of that jd's in the pocket of peter teal and all these guys so uh he is stuck uh he is a stuck pig having to defend data centers when they have a popularity somewhere around hemorrhoids right now. So we'll see how that turns out for JD. He heads in Zen to work as a surrogate for Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race.

And he is, you know, trying to do Muslim dog whistling about Abdul al-Said for a while. And then he kind of does overt anti-Muslim bigotry. After that, we'll get to that. But the dog whistling kind of gets stuck in his head and he gets a little confused and discombobulated. And we end up with this delicious moment. At 9-11, we're about to celebrate the 25th year or commemorate the 25th year. Celebrate, celebrate, just a gaffe, just a gap, but it's a particularly funny gaffe because he's coming here to smear Abdul-Said and like pretend that he was like for 9-11 or whatever,

like whatever nonsense, anti-Muslim garbage, he wants to push, like trying to paint a picture of the opponent as being 9-11 sympathetic. and while he's doing that, like he accidentally gaffes and becomes the one himself who says that we celebrate the anniversary of 9-11, which, you know, it's funny. It's just a mistake, just a funny mistake, but it's a very JD Vance mistake. It's a very VE mistake. And this is just one of its weaknesses. He can't, he doesn't pull it off like Trump does. Trump makes those kind of booths and ends up making a joke out of it.

Making a racist joke out of it, the seals clap for JD. He just looks very uncomfortable and awkward. He also tries to become a tough guy. guy and talks to Abdul al-Sayed and wags his finger at him about his rhetoric regarding his wife, Usha Vance. Let's watch that. But whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name, the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league.

I don't know that anybody's really scared of that tough talk. So if you don't know the backstory here, Abdul in a quote tweet, referenced Usha, it was related to this. J.D. Vance kind of gave this weird speech in front of guys in hard hats where he, talked about his papa would not understand Abdul. His papa would not believe that there was a guy who claims to stand for working people that thinks we should have Sharia law. The whole story didn't really make sense. It's like, why would Papa Vance care about a future Michigan senator and J.D's made up lies about his Sharia law? I just, I did not know Papa, but it seems like

Papua would have some more intermediate concerns than, like, time traveling J.D. Vance's lies about a future Michigan senator, but whatever. It's neither here or there. Abdul al-Said then quote tweeted that by saying this. So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papa or no? Kind of cheeky. Kind of, you know, kind of cheeky because we all know, probably not, probably not, right? But also, it's not my favorite, Abdul-Line. I do think that there's some clean hits on JD related to his family. JD is an anti-immigrant fearmonger. And meanwhile, his son's name is Vivek.

And I think that it really undermines the message that JD is offering about how the country can't have social cohesion unless we have a whites-only immigration policy. It's hard to make that case while also having a family like this, having a mixed race family. I also think it's kind of interesting that he converted to Catholicism and his wife didn't. So she's trying to do the Trad Catholic thing where Republicans were trying to make this big deal about how Pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas had said that like you don't necessarily go to hell if you're not a believer in Jesus. There are some right wingers who are like talking about how that was sacrilegious on social media. And I was always like, well, do they all think that Ushah's going to hell? Does JD?

So anyway, I think that there are some apt ways to I kind of point out the hypocrisy. This one from Abdul, it's a little iffy for my taste. But that said, JD's little tough guy, shit. That ain't working. That ain't landed. Oh, I should also mention, by the way, Abdul wasn't the first person to bring up a spouse in this race. Here's the disgusting anti-Muslim tweet that Trump sent about his different Americas,

Donald Trump with his wife, with Abdul, with his wife with the hijab. Melania can't speak English. Like this whole thing is so fucking stupid. It's like racist and stupid. These people aren't even consistent racists. Like they're not even telling a consistent story. It's about to get worse. It's about to get worse from here.

Let's go back to Jady's speech. Here he makes the subtext text by talking about Abdul's faith. What I see is a man who has sympathy and compassion for people who share his religion, but have nothing for people who don't. A person who will apologize for a murderer so long as he looks the right way but will not understand the plight of an innocent child if that person has the wrong faith.

And that is the root of this terrible evil, I believe, in the United States of America that is on the rise. And what I'd ask all of you to do is to reject it in November. Reject the people that try to divide us one race against the other, one religion against the other.

Projection much? Projection much? I do love how the crowd isn't even clapping for this. Just disgusting demagoguery from the vice president. Like everything he says is projection. Like, oh, you don't care about the plight of an innocent child. If they have the wrong faith. I could, when has J.D. been weighing in on the Gaza bombing slightly?

The kids die in Gaza? Has he talked about that? Has he talked about the shillard? were putting in internment camps in this country. Has he shown sympathy for those innocent children? Liam Ramos, did J.D. speak out about that? I don't think it's sick. That Abdul is the person trying to divide one race against the other.

The eating the dogs and cats guy said that. It's Abdul that's trying to divide one race. The idea that Abdul doesn't have sympathy for people that are not his faith? like what what evidence is there for that if you're going to make that accusation at least provide some evidence it's jd who time and again shows he's without any empathy for people and jd is so lacking in empathy that the day after his masked agents of the state murdered a woman he went out behind the podium and smeared her the woman who had left behind a wife and a small child because For no reason, she was murdered in the street by these thugs.

They're going door to door and snowy Minneapolis. JD is like a human lack of empathy. And so to try to like weaponize the fact that Abdul, you know, has talked about Gaza and saying that he only talks about that because he only cares about fellow Muslims is as fucking gross as an accusation. but it's particularly galling coming from someone whose whole political identity right now is based on trying to prioritize Americanness. And wasn't a J.D. Vance that said, you know, that it was like a Catholic teaching to care most about your family

and then after that about your community. And, you know, then after that, maybe you can care about people on the far side of the world. like that is literally JD stated ideology what he's criticizing Abdul for but it's just bad when Abdul does it in his allegations because they're Muslims because JD doesn't care about that like he is such a piece of shit it's just truly gall it's just it's so gawing I told you I'd start to blow my lid that wasn't even the bad segment of the speech

we're going to play one more and then we'll bring in our special guest There's something about Abdul El-Said that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today. And it's people who see themselves not as citizens of a combination fighting for every single person, whether they're Jewish or Christian, whether they're white or black or brown, but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others. That is JD's mission. J.D.'s whole political identity is that he is fighting for one group at the expense of others.

That is the whole idea behind the heritage Americans that there's some special recognition for people who came over on the Mayflower that is different from the people that came here during the Biden administration because they were fleeing terror in Haiti.

Like that is like the entire world, you know, the J.D. Vance is laid out in speech after speech. It's this idea in other contexts that the thing destroying the United States is our lack of cohesion. He's talked about this. There are too many people who have come in to the country. And we've got to clear some of that out to have social cohesion or else the country will be destroyed. It's him. It's him that's plotting one against the other. It's him that's plotting that is demonizing.

child as cat ladies, demonizing entire communities in Springfield, Ohio. That is JD. And now he's like totally, you know, trying to create this other nebulous bad guy where Abdul wants to like whatever bring Sharia law to the country.

And it's like, that's not, Abdul's position is not Medicare for Muslims. It's Medicare for all. You might not like Medicare for all. You might think that's a bad policy. But like that, that's what Abdul is pushing. This is all premised on J.D.'s racism against Muslims and J.D.'s racism against other groups.

Where he gets to, as a heritage American, like, he gets to demonize other people, and that's fine, because that's in the spirit of cohesion for the whites. Whereas if somebody like Abdul criticizes a white person, like that is, really a challenge to the fabric of the country, and we can't survive if we have that. Like, that's what he's doing. It gets very easy to see through the game. I'm concerned that it's powerful.

I am concerned that it's powerful. And that's part of the reason why it makes me so upset. I don't think it's going to work in Michigan is the positive thing I'll leave you with. I don't think it's going to work in the Michigan Senate race. Man, Abdul not exactly my cup of tea as many of you guys know across the board on policy, but I'm getting more and more radicalized into supporting him. and feeling I think it's really important that he wins to send a message to these motherfuckers.

So we have a bonus segment for y'all. It's called And Another Thing. And I'm going to bring back in my old pal from FYPod, Cameron Kowski. I mean, on the whole, Abdul is evil thing, you have to understand. Somebody like J.D. Vance sees Islam as an existential threat because he wishes Jesse Waters would talk about him the way Jesse Waters talks about Abdul. He wishes Trump would compliment him the way the Trump compliments Mamdani. But it's just not happening. And I think it's especially painful with Islamophobia for someone like J.D. Vance to see Muslims in American politics, socialist

Muslims, left-wing Muslims, more liked than he is by so many people on the right. So it's just important that we contextualize these things. They don't come out of nowhere. And to Vance, I can only say, don't make it about people's identity. All right. Judge them on their merits. You know what I'm saying? It's all about jealousy with JD. You know, all I have to do is look at that old picture of JD in the bathroom at high school with his eyeliner.

Not looking that fit. And you just know it's all about the jealousy. It all goes back to that. I wish he was loved in high school. Unfortunately, he wasn't. That's Cameron Caskey. Hey, hey guys. Hey, guys.

Jealous douchebag Vance. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? You can use that. This is why we miss Cameron Caskey. All right, everybody. We'll see you back soon. and subscribe to the feed.