Bulwark Takes - LIVE: Stop Blaming the DNC’s Failures on a Conspiracy. It’s Worse Than That.

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Join Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, and Sam Stein live on the Bulwark tour bus, as they head to Los Angeles.Get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping during the Memorial Day Sale at https://www.bollandbranch.com/bulwarktakes with code bulwarktakes.

We're here on the buzz. Hey guys, we're here on the bus. It's me, Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, driving from San Diego to L.A. for our next live show tonight, if you're in L.A., come and see us, and we're talking about pocket hoses for some reason. I love the product. Tim's talking about a different connotation of pocket holes. I love the product as well, and I've seen all the different sizes. Different type of collapsible hose that Tim likes. It's typical. We've had to stop the concept. conversation so that Tim can explain something to me later.

All right. So we're on the Red Run, lovely Route 5 Pacific Ocean over there. How'd you think the show went last night? I thought the show was great. I love the live shows. It's so great to see everybody. I thought it was good. I thought I was really good.

Okay, we're going to stop that right here. I was good. I also thought Will Summer. Okay, that was what I was going to say. I thought Will was like the surprise hit. So many people came up to him and were like, I've been listening to your podcast since the Daily Beast days.

I love you. I need more of Will. And it was going to was already very big head. Yeah. And so... Baratopia was really strong. And people got to wait

once the live show goes up on YouTube. The Baratopia segment. I don't want to give away anymore. Yeah, we're putting up the Baratopia segment a little bit later, but that's a good tease. All right. So quick news of the day as we're driving here. I guess the big story was the...

This morning was the DNC autopsy report came out. Finally, I don't want to call it an autopsy report. It was written in Calibri Fon. There's a lot of red edits on there. I thought your tweet was like probably the most spot on. Why don't you just expand? Yeah. I did.

This wasn't the tweet, but I did love that it was like, and they just basically released the Google Docs with like the comments about how things were wrong. Like they just released a raw Google Doc with people's edits in there. It's like great. No, my biggest tank was like, so there's been for months like these conversations about why hasn't it been released. What is the reason?

The DNC people were trying to make it seem like it was strategic because they were working with the mid. terms. The anti-DNC crowd, particularly on the left, there's a report in Axios that they leaked that they were talking about, which was basically they're not releasing it because it reveals that Kamwa's position on Gaza was the reason that she lost, and they're covering that up because it's all part of the corporate elite scheme. The truth was neither of those things. The truth was that the report was written by like a sixth grader who doesn't seem to have been involved in campaigns since the Super Pack era started or since there was Twitter. And like the guy that wrote it, I think his last big campaign was the John Kerry

campaign in 2004 when we didn't have YouTube yet, our blogs. And so the truth about the DNC, like every DNC controversy, it's like the DNC was coming after Bernie. The DNC cheated the Iowa caucuses against Pete. Like everybody has the DNC conspiracy theory. No, like the DNC is VEP. Like the DNC is run by morons. They have no power. They just screwed it up like idiots. There's no conspiracy. There's no grand cover-up. They just don't know what the fuck they're doing. And so anytime you're curious about what's happening with the DNC,

that should be like your Occam's razor explanation. Not a conspiracy, idiocy. So incompetent, not conniving. Yes. I guess you raise a really interesting point, which is it appears they put the thing together, did all the Google Doc edits, and then never like accepted the edits,

just left it at that first stage. There's basic factual mistakes in there. It doesn't make any sense. Ken Martin. My favorite part, I'm trying to pull this out, is it the conclusion? There wasn't even a conclusion. Can we see this on the camera? This was the conclusion section?

No. Okay, nothing there. Underneath the conclusion section, there's nothing. And then in a red edit, it says, this section was not provided by the author. But why didn't they resolve the edits? Why did they just stop? I don't get it. Okay.

Because at some point, this became, such a farce that they understood that the more ridiculous it looked, the better it was for them. The more incomplete, the more like not a polished product, that that meant that they could just disavow it. But I don't know what tweet you were talking about of him. I think you mean my tweet. Because my tweet, yeah, yeah. My tweet was if you want to understand the communications failures of the DNC, of the Democratic Party of the 2024 campaign, the handling of the autopsy release is a much better way to understand the problems in the Democratic Party

than what is in the actual autopsy release. Like the anatomy of the autopsy. That's a good point. Thank you. It was a good tweet. I tweeted that. And it is clear to me that if you just look at the way the DNC handled this, you're like, well, this is the fundamental.

problem with the Democratic Party. It's that they both, uh, they like got a cozy friend to write it. The product was bad. Um, then they decided not to release it. Then they get hounded by the press. Then they release it under duress and when they do, it's garbage. So that tells a story much more than when you read the actual autopsy, which tells you, there's some things in there that are probably true. But honestly, the piece that was in the bulwark by Rob Flaherty, Rob Flaherty. Flarity. Flarity. How you pronounce it?

Faherti, which is actually a clothing brand. By, yeah, it's like filled with soft stuff that a lot of like middle-aged... I love it. Yeah. But that's not how his name is pronounced. I've only ever seen it... That's the old Irish pronunciation. I've ever seen it written down.

I've never actually seen it. I've never heard it pronounced. But anyway, he wrote a great piece about the autopsy and the bulwark. You will get much more nutritious information about it from him than you will if you try to navigate this Google Doc. Get it over your pronunciation. It's so good. Ken Martin. Faharty.

Faharty. Oh, no, Robert Farhartty. Can we talk about Ken Martin? Does he make it to the midterms? I think we're close enough that he makes it at this point, though, right? I don't know. I mean, I will just tell you that my sources tell me that there's a lot of incoming phone calls to a lot of different people being like, Can you please run the DNC? Like, there is a mad dash to try to find a replacement.

That's what Laura Egan report. I've got a nominee. Haley Stevens. Haley Stevens, are you available? You could quit the Michigan Senate race and run the DNC. We'd love to have you. I'm sure that the left would be really excited about that. And I might not go over too hot.

Someone had suggested Rahm Emanuel, too. I don't know if that's going to go over too hot. There was a question. Who has the authority to fire Ken Martin? And my understanding, I don't know if you know better than I do, like there's the Rules and Bi-Lawals Committee at the DNC, there's members of the committee. They'd have to call some sort of session.

I don't really know how it technically works. Probably get a vote in no confidence, but do you know, like, the... Yeah, well, I do for my RNC time. Is it the same? No, it's different because these stupid committees have done bylaws with different, like, provisions, but like the gist is the same. Like, there's... I actually, having been a former Republican only know the number of people

in the Republican version of the committee. but, you know, there's some odd dozen members of the committee, you know, and then, you know, you'd have to have a parliamentary session, you know, you'd have to call them in, they'd have to vote. But it's the members of the committee that would do it. I think Donna Brazile is like the point person now overseeing the members of the DNC. Let me just add this on Ken Martin, and then we'll go to break because I want to talk a little bit about the slush fund, the J6thus one. But the Martin thing, it's like, it's not, people have argued, well, how big a deal is

having a competent DNC chair. And it's not nothing, right? It's like you have to raise money and you have to drive message. You have to support infrastructure and you have to be the tip of the spirit attacking Trump. And this guy has spent 16 months in an absolute defensive crouch doing nothing. And this autopsy report is just a symptom of a very failed chairmanship. Last word and then we'll go to break. I mean, what you want the DNC to be is something.

something that is in the background doing its work and not becoming the center of the story. Like the messaging failure isn't just that they're not succeeding in attacking Trump, it's that their incompetence has become the story. And once that's happening, and this is where, you know, finding the, the mechanisms of a no confidence vote, anything else, look, Ken Martin obviously can't handle the strategy. He obviously can't handle the messaging. And he obviously can't handle the fundraising. Like at some point, and this is a Biden lesson, when it gets this bad, you got to step down, do the right thing for the party, and let somebody else lead it. Like, that's the right thing for a company.

It's the right thing for a political party. It's the right thing for an ancillary group in the political party. And so, I mean, it's over. Man, this has been as badly handled as anybody could be. You want the DNC to stop being the story. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're talking J6 reparations. And will the president attend his son's wedding?

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Yukon. You can't. That's a good hat is. Are you feeling queasy? I get a little, you know, I have a very Jewish constitution and I don't like long trips on the bus, so deal with it. For now, I haven't vomited. This morning, Donald Trump gave a press conference. We were boarding, and so we didn't see it live, but the clip basically is a reporter

asked the president, are you going to attend your son's wedding? And this would be Don Jr. who's getting married for the second time. And the president said, more or less, I don't know, maybe I got things going on like Iran, and I would get killed no matter what I do by the press. If I attend his wedding, you're going to say, I'm taking my off the ball. If I don't attend his wedding, I'm a bad dad. I happen to think that no one would get mad at him for attending his son's wedding, I find it odd that this is debatable. Am I wrong? I think you're not wrong that the press would not give him a hard time about attending his son's wedding. The best part about that clip is him being like, I've done this person for a very long time. I think, I'm pretty sure he means whoever

he's like betrothed, but it does sound like he's known Don Jr. for a long time. He actually says, too, he's like, he'd like me to come. But I'm like, yeah, he says he'd like me to come. But I'm like, yeah, he says he'd like me to come, but this is a very, but I told him, you know, I got a lot of things going on. This is a hard time for me. It reminds me of the episode of Succession where the mogul dad doesn't come to his oldest son's wedding, the Rupert Murdoch character. And it is, you know, him. What is the oldest son's name? Do you remember? Do you guys watch Succession? Whatever. The chat will give it to us. Yeah. No, Kendall's the, no, here's an older son from a first Connor. That's right. The one, the one who's like not really treated as the oldest son.

He runs for president. He gets like one percent. So he just doesn't go home to us. Now they have to spend the many millions more to get him to one percent. Anyway, that's, it's just reminded me of that, which is, by the way, a story about the intense failures of a human being to love his children and then for them to be able to love him back adequately. You're going to go to the, do you have any thoughts on the wedding? Not really. I mean, I don't, I don't think that Donald wants to go. I don't, I guess it is my take. I don't know if this is obvious, but yeah, it seems pretty obvious when you're floating that you won't go to your own son's wedding. I don't think it's Iran. I don't think Iran is the reason. Nothing seemed pretty stable in Iran.

We've been in a ceasefire, not ceasefire where the Strait of Hormuz is closed and Donald Trump's threatening to end their civilization one minute and then being like, well, maybe not the next minute. That's been kind of the status quo for about five, six weeks now. So I think that I don't know why. Yeah, you're right. The excuse would be a lot more convincing. if he's like, I really need to see this ballroom through. Like, that's something you care about. He's obviously focused on that. He's been spending a lot more time and intensity on that.

The other big news, people are asking if others on the bus... What? Turn your camera. There are others on the bus. Okay. I couldn't read that. All right, put it back on us.

All right. We could have done an RV, though, when you look at the total number here. Yeah, this bus is excessive. There's a fair number of open teams. back there. Road rules, the bulwark. Yeah. All right. The other big story this morning, J6 reparations, there's like an absolute who's who of psychopaths lining up for money here. We talked about a little bit last night. Michael Endell wants $400 million. There's some rioters who want $5 million, $30 million.

They put out a, DOJ put out a one-pageer trying to like clarify the processes by which people will be eligible for this stuff. And one of the things was like, hey, senators, you too could be eligible for this if your phones were like, you know, monitored by Jack Smith. And it just struck me as like a very obvious bribe, right? Like, you can get this money if you really want. So we'll see if that works.

So obviously, I think the Slash Fund is one of the most corrupt, nakedly corrupt things we've ever seen out of the government. What's an honest second? Like, what are the competition? What is the thing that like the NRO types keep talking about? It's like the Eagles Keep. I will tell you, there is a line of argument out there on the Twitters by some of the anti-antees that everything Donald Trump is doing right now, he learned from the Democrats.

And I swear to God, there is no more pathetic attempt from these people to try to gloss over how nakedly corrupt Donald Trump is being. Like, it is out front for everybody to see. However, I have decided that. that I sort of like this slush fund story for us, meaning every single person, if Mike Lendell gets millions of dollars, every January 6th insurrectionist

that gets millions of dollars, OANN getting millions of dollars, while people are paying six bucks for gas and their groceries keep going up and inflation keeps going up, every news story about who is getting millions of dollars is a news cycle that is bad for Trump and that is emphasizing this,

level of corruption. So like, let's just put it all out there and make them defend each one of these one by one. I sort of love that for them. Yeah, I mean, my question is, people want to know my, yeah, okay. The question I have is, like, they're trying to claw this back. Like, is that even possible at this point, you know? One proposal that's been introduced is to tax every dollar that is used through this, given out through the fund at 100%, which would claw it back, but you need Donald Trump's signature for that. So that's not going to happen. I think there's some other Republicans who want to just sort of put more strict, you know, requirements on who can apply for it. But it's just blatantly corrupt that they even created it out of thin-in-in.

Is there a website for applications? Like, can we send people on the YouTube there to- So that's the subterfuge thing happening here where everyone's, there's this talk in like liberal committees that just deluge them with applications and like see what happens. But that just presumes that they haven't already decided who they're going to reward it to. So, I don't know. Yeah, it's bad. It's not good. It's not good.

A, Ranks is the most corrupt act. I guess I'll close it on this. Oh, they want to know our road snacks. I don't have one. I'm waiting on some yogurt parfait, which is probably not a good idea. Yeah, I don't know. It's been sitting up there in the sun, excited to dive into it. I had a banana nut muffin.

That's very nice. I spilled my cold brew already, and that chair over there right next to my oasis bag. You can see the spill that I did. So I spilled a cold brew. I have some peanut butter crackers that I brought for myself. I might have to grab one. Okay, I think they're under the bus, though, actually.

But we'll see. We can always stop. And I have a joint, too, that was given to us last night. Oh, yeah, you took it. Good for you. It's in the bank. I would just say that was a very suspicious joint given to us. It was already opened.

And he just like came up to me after he's like, hey, this is for Tim. I was like, this thing is opened. Your snacks. Oh, sorry, you want to talk to the joint. My favorite joint story from one of our live shows was in Philadelphia when, I don't know, we were very security conscience. I forget something must have just happened. So we had more security than we usually do. And the security was like adamant that they escort me home to the hotel.

And I was like, okay. And I was like, but I'd run outside and have a cigarette. And I went out there and a guy was smoking a joint. And he's like, I've always wanted to smoke a joint with Tim Miller. And I was like, okay, I turned it. So we turned the corner and I kind of like did a little joint in the corner. And the security guy's like, what the fuck? And I felt like I was a teenager again.

I was like hiding from the security. I felt like, you know, on V, on one of those on the West Wing or something, when the child of the president's like hiding from the Secret Service trying to. Why did the security care about your, okay. What are we talking about now? Am I telling the stories about getting caught smoking weed? You can tell the Canadian news. I don't know.

I think, you know, my favorite road trip snack is always combos. When I was a, when I had my younger days, the pretzel ones. And listen, they're hideous. Like, they are filled with, they're filled with processed, like, canned cheese, surrounded by a, you know, circular pretzel. But I used to get that and a Dr. Pepper on every road trip when I was young, but I can't drink soda anymore. So now it's just combos and a tepid coffee.

You know, the glamorous life. All right, well, we're going to leave it there. I'm looking around. This ride is gorgeous. We got the Pacific Ocean to our left. We got some mountain range to our right. Making our way gradually up to Los Angeles for our show tonight. If you're in the L.A. area, we still have a few tickets left, I think.

Bullwark.com slash events if you want to get them tonight. For those who watched this and didn't get car sick through our live stream, congrats. I made it too. I'm happy for myself. We'll see you later tonight, LA.