Bulwark Takes - MAGA Propaganda Machine HYPES UP Fake Arrests

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell from The Bulwark dive deep into the wild world of right-wing YouTube and the bizarre viral success of creators like Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. Why is Benny Johnson gaining millions of subscribers by posting fake AI-generated videos of Barack Obama in jail? Why are so many right-wing influencers obsessed with creating fantasy narratives about Obama, Epstein, and "deep state" arrests?

Discover the exciting action of BedMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer, or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Lifts, Make Insta-Deposits or Same Day Withdrawals. Download the BedMGM Ontario app today. Visit BedMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wage your Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey guys, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I'm here with the publisher of this very website, Sarah Longwell. I want to get a little performance review. We've been looking at some YouTube stats and also take a peek at what the fuck has happened in the right wing media because it is insane what some of these YouTube pages are doing.

So Sarah, here's the bad news. I want to start with the bad news. I'm doing my best over here, but there's a new report out from our guy, Kyle Tharp, that looks at the biggest growing political YouTube channel. We're doing okay, but we're not in the top 10. Number one is this guy named Benny Johnson. He gained 2.2 million subscribers in the last three months in Q2. We only gained like 200,000.

Fox News is second, then some of the big ones, MSNBC, and then you kind of go down. Tim Cast News is beating us, doubled us up. Turning point USA. Tim Poole from Tim Cast? Tim Poole with that little hat. The little beanie? So anyway, I don't know. I'moole with that little hat. The little beanie. So anyway, I don't know. I just, I'm sorry to break it to you.

I'm doing my best over here in the content minds, but here's the, this is the state of play. Tim, this kind of performance isn't gonna cut it. It's not, this is, your performance review is poor. No, hey, look, man, I know you're trying. I know you're out there. You're doing, I, Because as somebody else who creates content on on this here website, nobody creates more content than

you do. Nobody's given more people. He's given it away for free. Tim Miller, guys. This is a key point. It's free. It's fucking subscribe. Why are you letting me get beat by Tim Poole people just click the little subscribe button at the top. If he added 2.2 million, okay, which is more than the total number of subscribers than we had, and we're a big channel.

But that means enough of you who are watching are not subscribing. It means that he gained 2.2 million because he visited alligator Alcatraz and put on the merch from a like place where they're going to illegally detain people. You can't let somebody like that get that kind of positive reinforcement for that kind of behavior. Reinforce good behavior like Tim Miller wearing pearls, telling you the truth, showing up ever.

I mean, what'd you say? Freshwater pearls today, even, you know, the dark ones. Also come for the lesbian who doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time. So guys, you got to subscribe, come help us out. Come ride with us. Please subscribe, one more pitch before, and we got to get into the Benny Johnson page

to give you some, I guess, news or just at least a view of what's happening over there in the other world. Uh, but we also have YouTube plus, you know, so if you really want to support us, if you're like, fuck, you know, you really want to support us, you can, you can, uh, become a YouTube, a bulldog plus subscriber on YouTube. You get bonus content. You get the full secret pod with Sarah and JVL. You know, you don't get cut off at the end. You get a little emoji of my face.

I don't know why you would want that, but some people want it, you know, you get boosted emoji of my face. I don't know why you would want that, but some people want it. You know, you get boosted comments. Anyway, YouTube plus subscriptions. You get my face too. I know it's all about Tim, but also you get my face. You get JBL's face. I haven't seen anybody using your face. Oh, I have.

Okay. Okay. Anyway, let's go to the Benny Johnson page. Because I mean, it sucks we're getting beaten and it's alarming. And it's also, it's all these things. It's scary and funny at the same time. I pulled up, Kyle was looking at his recent content and we'll put up this little graphic that Kyle did in his newsletter where he talked about why Benny Johnson is doing so much better than everybody else.

But since then, since that newsletter came out, you know, there's been a big news item. I don't know if you've seen this, Sarah, which is that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has been suggesting that the former president of the United States, Barack Obama, needs to be imprisoned. And I pulled up Benny Johnson's feed this morning as we're taping this. And I swear to God, I swear to God, three of the last nine videos he's done is about Barack Obama going to jail. One of them says, one of them is headline this, Trump releases footage of Obama being arrested, thrown in jail.

So I mean, I'm not really a fact checker usually, that's not my beat, but I don't think that's possible for Trump to release footage of Obama being arrested and thrown in jail, because as far as I know, Obama still walks free. I don't know, have you seen anything to the contrary? I do think Barack Obama is still free. I'm pretty sure that was an AI-generated arrest. And I got to say, this is sort of the point right now we are and this is kind of the serious part of this

conversation, which is we live in an attention economy. And that means everybody is competing for your attention, people who are watching and listening to things. And Benny Johnson, by lying, and this is what a lot of the right wing influencers do, they lie, and this is what a lot of the right-wing influencers do, they lie and they carry Trump's water because this Barack Obama story was, it comes from Tulsi Gabbard trying to sort of remanufacture some of the Russiagate stuff that they think they're on good ground on. Honestly, they're on bad ground on that too. But what they are trying to do is change the conversation

to use the kinetic energy that all of them can generate as right-wing talkers. They are trying to use that in order to move the conversation away from Epstein, right? That's what's happening here. Yeah. No, that's exactly what's happening. And this is why Trump does that stuff. Sometimes we look out and you laugh. You're like, why is Trump even doing it? Like, it's like Rosie O'Donnell is going to be deported. And, you know, it's like some of the stuff, it has to be actually news because he's the president, people elected him. But some of the times it's like everybody laughs and it's like, well, there's this whole other ecosystem out there, which apparently is getting more views than in our ecosystem until we continue to expand and spread the

truth that we're like, this does it, where it works. Trump puts that out and it's like, okay, yes, sir, sir, we'll go out and do this. I actually was incorrect. I need to fact check myself. Four of the last nine Benny Johnson videos are about Obama going to jail. It's just only three of them had Obama in the orange jumpsuit behind bars. One of them is from, is General Flynn sends dark warning to Obama. We will raid your mansion. And it's just all of this is, it's totally fanfic. It's in another world, but it is what, you know, it is the playbook that has worked for

Trump so far. I will say the one good thing that I've seen this morning is that like, it hasn't really worked on Epstein. I mean, it might be working in the fantasy universe of Benny Johnson's YouTube page, but like, you know, the fact that the deputy attorney general had to come out today and say, okay, we've re-looked at it, we're going to interview Jelaine Maxwell. Now, I don't have any trust that they're going to take that seriously or whatever, but just the fact that they feel like they have to do that means that the distraction thing isn't working. So that's, I guess, a modest piece of good news. So I've got two other pieces of good news. Well, one is strategically what they're doing

is they're literally trying to do anything they can to distract from Epstein, but in the, what they're doing with this Obama thing is kind of boxing themselves in the same way they did with Epstein, which is to say, this is explosive, Obama finally going to be held to account. Well, no, he's not because you're making this up. And so like, at what point have you hyped people up so much to say, he's going to jail, and then no, he's not. Not to be the dark guy, but it makes me worry about the safety of some of these people. Right.

And honestly, like, you know, Jim Comey has been on, like, I'm looking at this. It's like, there's so many people in orange jumpsuits on Benny's page. It's Joe Biden, Jim Comey, Barack Obama, uh, Elon Omar, Barack Obama. Yeah. You know, and so, cause if nothing, that's kind of what led to January 6th, right? It's like nothing happens, right? They promised them everything and then eventually it boils over. I worry about that a little bit because that, I mean, but it also could hurt them politically at the same time. Both of those things. Did you see Matt Walsh? So I don't normally pay attention to Matt Walsh.

I only saw the tweet describing the video. I haven't actually watched the video. So I watched the video and it is him in his way, which is whatever. You know, Matt Walsh is one of the Daily Wire, is in the Daily Wire universe, which is Ben Shapiro. And he's the what is a woman guy. Yeah, he usually spends his time talking about why women should not work and alpha males and all this stuff. Real, and he's kind of an a feat intellectual type trying to dominate the manuscript, whatever. The point is he was like- He's a big beard over here. Yeah, that's right.

He's never punched through his life. They all grew beards. Ted Cruz, we know what you're doing, guys. You all grew beards to butch up for whatever. But here's what he was saying. And I think this is right. He says, look, I believe what Tulsi Gabbard says. I like Tulsi Gabbard. I think this, this theory about what Obama did, like, I think the evidence is overwhelming that they manufactured evidence against Trump and the Russia, Russia, Russia scandal. And so I want to see people in handcuffs. I want to see accountability.

I want to see them do something. And this is where, like, this is what happens is like, at some point, people are like, well, if this is true, if you've got them, if you've got them, Benny Johnson, then I want to see it for real, not in an AI generated, you know, fake video. And I do think there's a period of people or people who are sort of like, Obama is in jail. Like if you read the comments,

and who knows how many of them are Russian bots, who knows how many of his likes are his fans. Andy Johnson, we should say, was one of the people that took money from the Russians, or is that like about a year ago, was him and Dave Rubin and Tim Poole. Two of the top 10, two of the people beating us took Russian money in the past.

So maybe some of their subscribers are writing in Cyrillic, not English, but even still. Everybody wants accountability for people when they think they broke the law. We wanted it for Trump. Sure. Because we think he broke the law. I also think he was convicted. And I think had the cases gone on or been moved faster, he would have been convicted in several other situations. But Barack Obama has

not been indicted for anything. He hasn't been impeached for anything. Like this is a right wing fantasy. And so but at some point, these voters like with Epstein are going to say, you're in charge now. So, give us the accountability. This is why we elected you. Yeah. Well, okay. Hopefully there's some backlash to that. Hopefully we will see. My final question for you just kind of as part of the performance review is, should we consider doing AI images of Stephen Miller in jail? I mean, I could do that. I could come on tomorrow and be like, Stephen Miller, the Hague, it's happening. The International Police Force and the Marshal

of the Supreme Court are coming for you any minute now. Should we do that? I would, no, I would like to achieve narrative dominance for the bulwark by doing it right. By telling people the truth, by not lying to them. All right. We are always going to tell you what we think, even if, and we'll always tell you when we By telling people the truth, by not lying to them. All right. We are always going to tell you what we think, and we'll always tell you when we think what the other people at the board think is wrong.

I can tell you weren't a cheater in school, were you? You didn't cheat at Kenyon? At Kenyon, no. High school, a couple times. I would say in high school, I was so bad at math that my brother and I were in the same math class. And there may have been attempts by me to ask my brother if he'd done his homework. Did you do your geometry homework? Is this right? Yeah.

Okay. A little cheating. Yeah. Some light cheating. We're not going to go over my track record on that front because we're doing it right now. We're following the rules. Subscribe to record on that front because we're doing it right now We're following the rules subscribe to the feed become a board plus member Let us at least compete with fucking Tim pool in his hat and I can't be the second biggest Tim on this place The I'm a little suspect of the Benny Johnson numbers

I mean we should beat him but still it could have possibly be real I mean, I don't know Donald Trump got elected president twice. So it could be real I guess Yeah, and this is where I mean, I don't know. Donald Trump got elected president twice, so that could be real, I guess. Yeah, and this is where, look, the right has cornered off big parts of the internet for themselves, and somebody's gotta come back. And what if, Tim, here's what I wonder. What if we're, we centrist lapsed Republicans, what if we're the Joe Rogan of the left?

When people are like, we need a Joe Rogan. What if that's us? I think it might be a guy in the mustache who was interviewing Hunter Biden for three hours. That might be the Joe Rogan of the left. Okay, no, no, no. We're not going to go there. Sarah Longwell. I've got a separate thing on that letter. Sarah Longwell, thank you for not coming down too hard on me. Everybody subscribe to the feed, as I've mentioned. We'll be back here soon. We've got some great interviews today. I've got Chris Marks.

Help him out, help him improve his performance, guys. Thank you so much. We'll see you all soon. Bye.