Bulwark Takes - MAGA Turns Shooting Into Ballroom Pitch | MAGA Mondays

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Sam Stein and Will Sommer are going live to discuss how Trump's allies are relentlessly using the WHCD shooting to push the new ballroom, the fascinating details of the individual reactions from Trump cabinet members to the shooting, and the absurd fight at the Substack party.Right now, Soul is offering 30% off your entire order! Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES.

Hey, everyone. We are live from Maga Mondays. Welcome back. What a weekend. Kind of a shitty weekend, honestly. But, you know, we're here to sort of do the serious and the silly. I will note we were while we were prepping for this backstage, getting our audio set up, getting the internet set up. We did notice that there's a couple people in the comment section, you sickos who are waiting for us. One comment in particular that I need to shout out, it is Ali Kan Khan 6-5. 10 writes every minute, Sam is late. I'm doing a shot at tequila. You won't notice public down much. Ollie, I was a little bit worried about you. I was going to go on about a couple minutes late, but I didn't want you to get sick. It's 10 a.m. on Monday, you shouldn't be shooting tequila.

So hopefully we made it on time. I think we did. I think we're on time. Will, how you doing, buddy? Good. You know, I mean, obviously Saturday Night's news was pretty jarring. But otherwise, you know, hanging in there, there's, you know, we'll have some tales from the party's

circuit. And, you know, I'm, you know, there's a lot of news going on. So I'm excited to discuss. There is a lot of news going on. Obviously, we're going to leave with Saturday night. I've had a couple discussions already on these channels about Saturday night. Let me just stress, those were for, you know, reaction videos and then I did a live with Bill here at Magumunday. This is a Bullwark takes product. And we are, you know, doing another live stream. We hope you like these. We do this conversation every Monday. It's on YouTube.

It's on Substack. Bullwork.com. It's 10 a.m. And sometimes we just like to riff and have fun with it. But because of what happened on Saturday, I just wanted to start with a little bit of a kind of a monologue, if you'll allow me. So yeah, this show is about right-wing internet culture and extremism.

And we look at what's going on in the MAGA Internet. But it's not really possible to do that right now without talking about a little bit. about what happened on Saturday night. So we don't really know necessarily with absolute certainty what the motivations of this alleged wannabe assassin were. But I think we do know enough to say that he was radicalized, obviously radicalized enough to take a train across the country with a shotgun apparently in order to try to kill people.

And if that's not radicalization, I don't know what it is. And look, the manifesto that was apparently uncovered that a number of different outlets have reported makes clear that he was anti-Trump and that he felt that he had to take violence to effectuate the type of outcome that he wanted. And so Bill has said it. He said it again in his Morning Shots newsletter, which you should get if you aren't a subscriber already. But it's not acceptable, obviously. And I would just say for folks who are watching this program who like this product and we love you for that, folks who read Will stuff on the regular, you know, I think it's important to understand that this type of online culture that breeds conspiracy thinking, that breeds racism, that breeds violent impulses, it's not exclusively the product of the MAGA Internet. and that this moment is a moment for reflection and to recognize that these trends that are dangerous that can be comical, but that are dangerous, that they do exist across the spectrum.

So I'm not trying to be like a both-sided wrist here. You can make your own independent judgment about what happened in this instance and any other instance and what sparks these instances and all that stuff. what I am trying to do here, maybe inartfully, is just make a plea to recommit to civil discourse and to civil disagreement and to recommit to the foundational principles of truth and, I guess, most importantly, of liberal democracy. So yeah, I want to just get that off my chest before we dive into it. So with that said, we're going to take a little time to talk about how this administration

and its MAGA supporters have responded to what happened at the near shooting at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. And that is not so much with a plea for liberal democracy as it is a push to build the president's ballroom. They seem to be completely focused on the ballroom. It happened instantaneously. Like within minutes, every account was tweeting about the ballroom. Now, I know Ashley Sinclair, who used to travel in those circles and has become somewhat

of a kind of like what she would position as a truth teller about what Maga Internet is like, says that the White House has this sort of list that they push out talking points to, where you know, you can see it in moments like this. And, you know, there's been a bunch of screen grabs of these different MAGA accounts, all talking about building the barren. But I don't know, Will, is that like your understanding of how it works, where they all get sort of like their directives and they go with it? Yeah, I mean, I think there are definitely in group chats, you know,

whether it's, you know, directly from the White House or sort of just among each other. And, you know, on one hand, I mean, certainly it's interesting. I think it's, I don't think it's especially, like, sinister in that, you know, I think any political group would probably have sort of like a shared messaging or sort of these social media. I'm sure, you know, all the liberal Twitter accounts chat with each other as well. On the other hand, you really could see very quickly this, them coalescing around this message of like, okay, this assassination attempt means we have to build the ballroom now. Democrats are putting Trump's life at risk, this judge.

who won't let him build the ballroom. So really that seems to be sort of the, you know, there's not really an election immediately that Trump can, you know, try to use this to win or anything. And so instead he gets the ballroom. And it's not like it's just the MAGA accounts. I got to be honest about it because it jumped into like official Republican orthodoxy pretty damn quickly.

So let's put up the Todd Blanche tweet here. You can see this is Todd Blanche forwarding a letter from, the Department of Justice to Greg Craig, who's the lawyer representing the people who are suing to stop the construction in the ballroom. Great name. Basically saying, yeah, basically saying, hey, we got to go. We got to do it. It's imperative that we have this ballroom.

There should be no delay anymore here. And to your point, Will, it's not that they've, you know, they're allowing for the construction of the underground parts of that facility. It's that they want an appropriation from Congress in an actual formal process for constructing the ballroom. But Todd Lynch is out there. Then you have Pam Bondi. who preceded Todd Blanche,

ex-attorney general, there she is. We must have the ballroom completed to protect Potus and his guests. God bless President Trump and his administration in our great country. Pam, I think this got to be like one of her first tweets since being. She still thinks she's on the team. I was going to say, Pam, you're not going to pay. She's still in the cabinet. No one cares.

You never know. They always could get there. There's never permanent exile. Well, that's not true. Mike Pence ain't coming back. Nickyaling coming back. But you can always, you know, Like Corey Lewandowski is always around, right?

Boris is always around. Then this jumped into the realm of the congressional. So let's put up Lauren Bobert, who is apparently among many people working on legislation to get the ballroom passed into law. You have Chip Roy who wants to include funding for the ballroom in the DHS bill. That's Pambondi again. There's Bobert. Working with my team to draft legislation ensuring the White House ballroom is completed. There you go.

I don't believe it's imperative. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Activist judges, blah, blah, blah, blah. Chip Roy, as I mentioned, wants this as part of the reconciliation bill where they're using to fund DHS. It's wild. And then Mike Johnson today. Let's play Mike Johnson, who was talking about the incident last night

and, of course, brought up the ball. Finishing last night, drop the TDS, the Trump-Arangement System, syndrome, rather, and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these. Are you hearing enough? from your Democratic colleagues on the tone that Senator Federman struck there? No, he's a rare voice in that camp, and we need more of that. In fact, they've done the opposite.

They've incited violence, in my view. I mean, you have some of the most prominent figures in the House and the Senate on the Democrat side, effectively calling for war. I mean, they use those kinds of metaphors, and it incites violence because there are crazy people in society. And they get radicalized online. And so we've got to recognize that. It's time to turn down the rhetoric. We've been saying this over and over and not use that kind of language. I hope that this will be a sobering reminder for everybody about that very important cause.

I'm grateful to Federman. He's right. The ballroom will be a solution for this because it'll be on the most secure compound in the world. It won't have hotel rooms above it. And it'll have seven inch thick glass, for example, on the windows. So it'll be a very safe environment to do events like this. We need a place. we have needed a place like that, and the president keeps pointing it out.

I mean, what do you make of it? It's crazy. I mean, it's this idea that sort of now Trump, you know, again, he has to get this, this toy essentially. I think this, I mean, is the president never going to leave the White House compound again? I mean, it strikes me that it might be better spent spending, I think, what, 300, 400, 500, 500 million? The number keeps going up. What if we could spend that on improving the Secret Service? And by the way, Secret Service did stop the guy, you know, So, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, there's all kinds of logistical issues here, you know, as a lot of people have pointed out, the White House correspondent's dinner is not put on by the White House.

You know, it also the ballroom would be a lot smaller than the Washington Hilton. So you would have to reduce the size of it. I mean, there's all these things that like, you know, again, if he's just never going to have an event anywhere else, I think, okay, let's do the ballroom. But if he's ever going to venture outside of the White House, I think like there has to be another solution here. All right, just to add a few points to that, the White House ballroom's supposed to see, according to their projections, a thousand guests, okay? The Correspondent Center has about 2,300 guests. So we're talking about over half as small as usual. Who would control the guest list in this situation where you have the dinner at the ballroom?

Would it be the White House? Presumably, right? Yes, of course. their property, right? So now you're saying that the White House can control which correspondence get access to their own dinner. This is a non-profit dinner designed to raise money for journalism and to put a light on good journalism. Just as a sort of, not just as a logistical matter, but as a matter of messaging and what you're trying to project, that doesn't work. You don't go to the White House's property when you're trying to honor people covering the White House.

There is another actual option here in D.C., which is the convention center, which is in the middle of the city. It seats a lot of people. It is better protected, according to people I've talked to about it. So it's not like there's not any other option, but the White House itself as a place for this doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, it really is silly. And on top of that, like, okay, Trump's never been to this dinner before. He's declined every single year prior to this year. Like, let's say they had built the ballroom in the next three months, which they're not going to do, obviously.

But let's say they did. Like, is he going to, is he going to have to attend the dinner? Could he, like, say no and they still host it? I don't know. Oh, it's crazy. I mean, how could, I mean, obviously, the planning for these things begins, I would say, like, even before the last one is finished. So the idea that, you know, I mean, and Trump only announced he was going to go. go, I think, like a month or two in advance.

So the idea that you're going to plan it all around, well, hopefully the president can come. And, you know, I think also, like, fundamentally, he's really mad that he didn't get his chance to roast the media as well. That's why he's saying, we got to reschedule this. Everything has to be re-changed around here so that Donald Trump can go and own the media

because we had a lot of good jokes and we didn't get a chance to do them. So now we're going to have to build the ballroom to make sure that can happen. Let's talk a little bit about what you said there, which is that the Secret Service actually did its job. You know, because when this first happened on Saturday night, you know, to me, and I'm still a little bit sort of, I'm still not totally convinced that it wasn't a security lapse. I think there was clear issues here.

But to me, my initial reaction was like, how the hell did this person get even to that point? Why were their only metal detectors at the bottom of the stairwells? I had been there before, and like that, that actually does jive. Like they do checks at the tops of each of the escalators down, but it was still shocking to me that this guy had made it that far. Then I read that he actually went on the stairwell to sort of get around the system, which that is a whole. Like you should probably be guarding the stairwell.

That seems obvious to me. But then I watched the whole proceedings. I saw him sprint through the metal detector. They took them down. No one was killed. I do think we, you know, we constantly focus on the lapses and we should question whether things could have been done better. But like, I do think you're right that ultimately they did their job here.

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously you want to be catching this guy, let's say, you know, for outside, ideally, or you want to be catching him in the hallway outside his room rather than like, you know, it is sort of in the ante chamber before the event. But, you know, on the other hand, I think if we look at other Trump assassination attempts like Butler, where the guy had a clear shot at Trump, huge secret service failure. The case with the golf course where, you know, yes, they found him, but the guy was able to kind of camp out ahead of time for a while. You know, obviously they stopped him, but it was close there. Whereas in this case, I mean, you know, I mean, again, it was kind of close here. I mean, I think probably there were some failures.

But again, this idea that, you know, everything, we need this ballroom. And we need to change everything radically to prevent this from happening again. Well, I'm not so sure. Do you think they're going to do anything other than push for the ballroom after this? I mean, just thinking ahead, like what will be the, obviously, you know, we're seeing a lot of stuff where it's like, oh, you know, Democrats have a violence problem. They have to turn on the road. I don't know if you saw the Jamie Raskin interview on CNN.

That was like one of those things where it's like, do you guys need to stop calling Trump, you know, a king and authoritarian? And then the ballroom, of course, is the big push that they're, making. Do you foresee anything else? Have you seen anything else online? Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I think this is very similar to what we saw not only after the Trump assassination attempts, but also after Charlie Kirk was murdered, this kind of sense of like, we need to crack down on the radical left. Now, on one hand, that kind of fizzled after Charlie Kirk. There wasn't really this broader attempt to, like, you know, just go crazy on, you know, well, they did it initially, right? They like got a lot of people

fired from their jobs. Well, that's true. But I mean, in terms of like, you know, shutting down nonprofits or anything. But then, I mean, I mean, I mean, I think Todd Blanche seems to really be kind of going to be, he wants to be the confirmed attorney general. We saw last week he went after the Southern Poverty Law Center. Oh, yeah. They've been mentioning them. Yeah.

And so it's a different Justice Department now. And so, you know, I think potentially, you know, this is sort of another, another bite at the Apple, you know, conceivably for the Justice Department. It is interesting. They have mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center a couple times in these interviews. I think Trump brought it up on a 60 Minutes interview where he was like, oh, yeah, they found the entire Charlestville rally. Yes.

Yes, and, you know, not true. As all flag readers know, and I think a lot of other people as well. But, you know, I do think potentially, I mean, that is like what I think a lot of people on the right have been calling for. It's like, let's use the power of the state to, like, crush these organizations we don't like. Right. All right. There's no clean way to do this. So I'm just going to have to rip off the band-aid.

But we do have ads that we have to read. You know, we're sponsored. We're such a professional, well-loved product that people are paying for us. to read their ads on the air. And so to keep the lights on, I'm going to do it. Look, this one's from Seoul. If you've been listening to our show for a while, you already know how much I love Souls out of office,

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It's definitely helped my parenting at night, folks. If you're a parent of young kids, pop a soul right before bedtime, the reading, it's great. All right. One of the thing that has happened in the aftermath of this is that there's been, and I wouldn't normally talk about this stuff because it seems so superficial. But because they are talking about it, I feel like we can and should talk about it, which is there's like this weird kind of grading system happening about who was very cool under fire. And, you know, like each kind of principle in the administration was caught on camera or in the moment it's being passed from the internet to like talk about whether they were, you know, savage enough or they did the right thing.

I don't know how the hell I would react in a moment like that. I probably would have been under a table, honestly, if I'm being serious about it. So who am I to judge, except they're judging, so I'm going to judge too. Let's put up one of the ones that's been talked about a lot is Cash Patel. Let's put up the picture. Cash was out there at night on his cell phone. This was considered him sort of organizing, but I did see some folks, cash critics, wondering if the cell phone was the proper way, the most secure way to do this.

Did you see that? You know, I saw some kind of bag of accounts like, Cash Patel's just out here like a regular guy. And it's like, I don't want that for the FBI director. He needs to be in like the, you know, the situation room or something. I don't think he should be like, where's my Uber or whatever, you know, he's doing it. He was not saying, I saw that too. They're like, he's just ordering an Uber, but I don't think he was ordering an Uber.

I think he was trying to coordinate over his cell phone. But yeah, to your point, I mean, in an ideal situation, he would have gone to the FBI headquarters. The other thing, and I'm laughing by, I shouldn't be, the manifesto where he was like, I want to kill them all minus cash was kind of. What do we make of that? I mean, on one hand... You tell me, you're the expert here. Well, yeah, so, I mean, it's hard to define this guy's motives, needless to say, like, why he would say that. But on one hand, it was, like, unclear if he was saying, you know, I consider all of these people a problem,

and then I think cash is, like, totally pointless and I'm leaving him aside. Or is he saying, I have a cash on kind of a higher... Cash is, like, a target for me, and the rest of these people are kind of, you know, you know, high standards or, you know, collateral damage. I hadn't thought of it that way. I think if this guy in the manifesto, he's talking a lot about, like, you know, this dictatorship or like, you know, America's under this totalitarian thing. And I think certainly the FBI director would sort of fall into sort of, you know, from that point of view, more of a target. Yeah, I think that's probably right.

But, yeah, that brings up a good point. All right. The other one who got a lot of the discussion was Pete Heggseth. I think it's because of what was going on with his jaw. First of all, you're standing up. So like everyone's like, man, cool under fire. This guy's been in a combat zone clearly. And, you know, applause for Heggseth for doing that.

But then there was like a weird speculation about what was going on with this jock. We play the video. All right. One more time. Let's just play one more time because you got to watch the jaw. I'm not sure. I think it's a Zen. Oh, I bet that's it.

Yeah, I think he was in. I thought it was another, you know, upper substance. Oh. Oh. Okay. I thought, I just thought it was in it. He can't drink. I think it's the end. You know, you can't drink. I think the larger picture is, you know, we'll get back to Heggseth, but like is people like after Butler, it was so iconic. The Trump image, you know, he's got this up, what have you. And I felt like a lot of people were, and so then afterwards, people are really being analyzed by the riot of like, who looked epic, right? And so, like, the big Heggseth video, the cash nose was going around, was like, you can tell Pete Heggsets mad. And it's like, well, yeah, I should hope so. You know, I would be. mad, you know, if I were in the administrations, I want to try to assassinate, you know, some of us, you know, the, I, I think there's, you know, Dan Scavino stood up and said, USA, USA, you know, I did. I felt like, I didn't see that. He was, he was trying.

I don't think it was on video. I think it was just reported. I feel like he was kind of trying to get a similar kind of Butler type moment, kind of rally the troops. Okay. Interesting. Then let's go to Trump. There was obviously a lot of talk about Trump and what happened with him.

So like there's a weird sequence here where the Secret Service comes in and they grab J.D. Vance first and they usher him off stage. And I think Carol Lening over at MS Now had some explanation for the sequence of this. The Trump situation was he was ushered in under Secret Service protection. He was asked about on 60 minutes. I don't know. Do we have the video of it? If we do, let's play. Yeah, we have video.

So yeah. All right. So that's, you know, he was about 60 minutes. I don't know why people are badgering him for falling. Like he's rushing out of there with a bunch of secret service people trying to keep him down. He's also like 80 years old, you know, like whatever. Who gives a shit? Well, I think the whole point is to be down, really.

Like in his point of view, you know, it's like we'd much rather have him fall than, you know, be up and, you know, Atari. I mean, I think they're literally like, get down, get down, you know. So, yeah. Do we have? We don't have what he said to 60 minutes. He said he was told to get down, I believe, in that he didn't fall. But yeah, so that was the other one. There's two more.

One is Stephen Miller with his wife, Katie, where they were, you know, Stephen Miller is protecting her and ushers her out. Let's take a look at that if we have the photo of it or the video of it. All right, you can see, that's not him. But here he is. And good for him. You know, I'm all right. Good for him.

Okay, well, yeah. So good for Stephen Miller. That's how you do it. It's how you do it. You know, I thought that was noble. Good for him. You know, you don't really give kudos to Stephen Miller all that much on these channels, but I'm happy that he did that, which, though, leads me to this one,

which cracked me up a little bit, the one moment of levity from an otherwise shitty night, which is RFK and Cheryl Hines. Let's look at the video. Just contrasted with Stephen Miller and Katie. Here we go. No, that's not it. We got to get the video. Oh, there it is.

By behind him. Right behind him. There's Cheryl. Oh, wow. Well, let's play it again. No, we got to play it again. One more time. It's the one thing that made me laugh.

All right. Stephen's going to come across. Thank you, Stephen. That looks right there. There's Cheryl being completely left behind. Yep. Oh, my God. Any thoughts?

I mean, you know, it's, you know, I feel like the secret service kind of grabs you, you know, and kind of ushers you out, you know. I didn't see, you know, some speculation that, you know, this is a real sign of like how clouded up you are in the administration. Obviously, some of these people got rushed away by the Secret Service and some people, they're like, all right, you'll find your own way out. Is that a much? To get the Secret Service escort out, really is clout? Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, maybe an awkward thing to discuss with the Secret Service afterwards. Like, guys, I know that I noticed no one came for me.

Okay. Yeah, I suppose. Again, I'm going to just reiterate that I would have been under the fucking table. Yeah. Like, I'm not like pretending to be brave. I did love the, I love the agent who just sat there, the CAA agent who sat, CAA agent, who sat there and ate his salad. Did you see that one? Yes.

And he said, he's like, I'm not getting on that dirty floor. I mean, I think we all wish we'd be that cool under fire. Well, he was just like, fuck it, I'm old, I'm hungry. The floor of the Hilton is nasty. The carpet's been trampled on. Dana White, the UFC guy was also, he was looking around like, whoa, this is crazy. You know, I got to take it all in. Any other reflections from the dinner before we move on?

No, I don't think so. I mean, it was obviously, you know, eventful. Glad no one was hurt. But the, yeah, kind of a crazy situation. Let's play just to end the segment and to underscore why. I'm not like, I'm being defensive about this, but whatever. Why we are focused on how they reacted and like the imagery and all that stuff is because they care a lot about this stuff.

As you pointed out, you know, they're tweeting our photos from the Oval Office and the iconography of the Butler moment. They're trying to recreate and all that stuff. And so it's important for us to talk about it. And then you get stuff like this, Cash Patel this morning. going on Fox to talk about this stuff. And, you know, first and foremost, like, there is this kind of old rule that you're not supposed to talk about live investigations, right? Like, that's just not something that DOJ does, except when they want to. And this administration clearly has no problem doing

that. But then Cash goes on, and he uses this opportunity, not just to, like, talk in sort of a measured somber fashion about what happened, but to pump up Trump. So let's play it. Thanks so much for having me on. First and foremost, I want to remind your audience of President Trump's leadership, literally, courage under fire that evening at the press conference to announce the world and be as transparent as possible. He's assembled the greatest law enforcement team that I've ever seen. And between myself and Mark Main-Mullen and the interagency in the White House, we are prepared to tackle this investigation, as we've done since it started.

Like, you know, just be a White House spokesperson at that point, right, like, join the press shop. yeah i mean look i mean you know cash i think loves flouting that rule about about investigations i mean he's more than happy to talk about them okay all right we're going to switch to what i mean there's a bunch of stuff that's what the people came for yeah there's a bunch of stuff that was happening uh simultaneously to this um so there was the you know there's a bunch of parties that just so people There's parties that happen on Thursday night on Friday night, Saturday during the dinner, started before the dinner, Saturday after the dinner. I was actually at a karaoke bar with some friends, so I never actually attended.

I was going to go to the substack party, which was happening simultaneously with the dinner, but then word of this shooting happened and I just ran home. You were at the substack party while this was happening. So I'm going to just step away, see the floor. First of all, tell us what? the party was like with knowledge that substack is our publishing. Yes. One of the,

we love them. I'll give subsect this. They committed to the theme. A bit of a surprise, but basically I think to set the scene, we have to understand that the substack party was at the Renwick Museum, which is part of the White House complex. And it's right across the street from the White House.

So I start coming in there around 8.30. That was like roughly about when the shooting happened. I think it happened a few minutes earlier. And then the news kind of starts filtering out. But basically, because the Renwick right now has a museum about like farm stuff, the, the, farm or foreign? Farm, farm, like agribal. Oh, okay.

And so, and so it was a cowboy themed party. So you have giant glittering corn stalks. Hold on. Did you know this prior to going? No, no, I was walking in and everyone checking me in was wearing like, like, cowboy shirts and bandanas. And I was like, oh, is this a cowboy party? And they said, oh, yeah.

So they had a giant substack logo in butter. And they had cowboys, and this is interesting. They had cowboys who were quite handsome men from the show. And we found that one of my friends talked to the cowboys. One of them was so hot, he was on the HBO show, F Boy Island. Right. So he was one of the hunks. And so then they were handing out, and this is a bit odd, they had big boxes of canoles.

And then I'd have to go up to this, like, you know, what they call a giga-chat, right? Like I'd have to come up and be like, can I have a canoli? And he'd be like, sure. You want some sprinkles, little fella. You know, so that's the scene. Wait, sorry. Canolies. Is that like a farm thing?

I didn't get that connection either. You know, here we trust in substack. You know, I, okay, Mr. Substack. I will never question substack because they're great. But canolies doesn't really quite fit the farm vibe. Like, what would your farm? I would have done like stocks of corn. that's, here's your corn, you know, there was a lot of that.

So then, and this is going to set the stage for the brawl, you know, this isn't just the Will Party report. So stay dark, the near brawl. But basically, about 845, 9 o'clock, they say, okay, gang, because the shooting at the White House, we're so close to the White House. Wait, stop for a second. How did you find out about the shooting? I was, I guess, well, I was walking in with some of our bulwark and Longwell colleagues,

and we were looking at Twitter, and people were saying, oh, oh, oh, and so we get through and then, you know, the substack guy gets up and he gives a speech and he says, so yeah, there was a shooting at the White House, excuse me, at the Washington Hilton. And it's our understanding that we're safe, but out of an abundance of caution, no one can leave this building or enter. So now we're on lockdown. Oh, my God. And, you know, the Secret Service was milling around outside with like AR 15s.

I would come to find out. So it kind of had like a, you know, we were kind of in, people were comparing it to sort of like an after prom lock in. So basically, you're stuck in this building with, all the most notorious characters of substack for two hours. Did you just eat canolies? What did you do? I have some canoles.

I wrote, you know, I like a party. You know, I was kind of rotating. And then I hit a point where I was like, oh, wait, no one knew was coming into this thing. And I've already burned through everyone I needed to talk to. So, you know, it was interesting social experience. But to set up our next thing, you know, we're looking around who's, you know, all these substack characters,

clavicular had vowed to mock me at this very event. He didn't make it. So I win by defense. fault, I'm going to assume. So, we're looking around, several people said to me, uh-oh, Michael Tracy is here. And I said, you know, we'll get into who

that is, but I was like, well, yeah, it's a party. Who cares? It's, you know, it's substack. But, you know, this was a, this is Chekhov's Michael Tracy. Okay. Before we get to Michael Tracy, I just, because you mentioned clavicular, just a quick aside, there's a video going

around that he may have impregnated his girlfriend. Is there any veracity to it. This was a big topic at the party. Look, we have a false flag coming tonight. It's going to be, it's going to blow the doors off. I'll just preview it right now. Clavicular has made a powerful alliance with a reputed, and I say reputed with saying there's a lot of court documents behind this claim with a reputed powerful member of the Israeli mafia who has a history of cutting people's ears off, allegedly he's claimed to have done this.

So we'll be getting into this in false flag. But anyways, clavicular, I don't think he's gotten this woman pregnant. I think this was a bit of a stunt. He's only known her for 10 days. You know, we can all do the math in our heads there. So I don't think he's, he can be duped, though, as we're going to find out in false flag. So I think, you know, who knows? Wait, can you explain the math?

Sorry. Well, I'm John, Joe, I'm Joe. I get the math. Tell her about it. I'm just, I'm a little upset. self there trying to explain that one. That would easily go viral. I'm a little bit upset. I got to be honest,

because we don't need any more people talking about the Israeli forces that are behind the scenes. This one doesn't want good. And he goes and he does it, motherfucker. All right. Back to the main show. So explain who Michael Tracy is, please. Okay, so Michael Tracy is a guy,

and you probably have some background to fill in here as well. I mean, I'm not touching this with the tempo pole. Who was kind of like a in like what like the Obama administration was like sort of a like relatively mainline liberal reporter and then he sort of went he's become much more of a contrarian guy he does a podcast with Matt Tybee now he had like a lot of kind of like you know he became what you know some people on the internet kind of call a law cow like he kind of gets into these you know it's got a guy who produces laws for you to laugh at like he kind of had like um he you know there was an incident with Maxine Waters where yes I didn't you know she was like intercepted. 70s, maybe even 80s already at that point, where he tweeted, like, there was like some scrum, and he claimed vaccine waters assaulted him. And you see the video, and she's sort of like pushing him aside to, you know, let her through. And he was, you know, just, ah, oh, you know.

So that's, that's his backstory. Okay. So all I saw was that, like, as all this real drama is happening, like, scary real drama involving a potential shooting and assassination at the White House Correspondence dinner. And we're all following it frantically and trying to get information. All I see is this tweet from Michael Tracy going after Jim Acosta, basically calling him. And we can put it up. Let's put up the Tracy tweet.

Still have no idea whatever went on with Trump tonight. Who cares? Just know that Jim Acosta threw a fucking hissing fit. Pussy, Jim, meet me in front of the Hampton in. And then he puts the address of the poor Hampton in gets called out. Okay. So what happened? Okay.

So, yeah, so, you know, I was having a, you know, a substack conversation with someone, and then someone came up and said, Michael Tracy just got in a fight. And I thought, oh, my gosh. And you have to keep in mind, there were there were substack staffers, again, in cowboy shirts, preventing us from leaving. They were like barring the stairs physically. So under this environment, here's what happened. So Michael Tracy over the past year or so has become kind of like an Epstein counter narrative guy. He's done a lot to, you know, tried to cast doubt on the testimony like Virginia. Virginia, Joufrey, various sort of Epstein victims. And so, you know, look, I mean, I haven't looked closely at his claims. I mean, you know, he's, he's welcome to do it. But he, you know, he's kind of this nemesis for people who are, you know, pursuing the Epstein story. And he's been very critical of Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who kind of like got Epstein back in the news. So as we find out, basically, Julie Brown shows up at the party. Michael Tracy's there. And he, according to him, starts, you know, sort of a cost of a cost. her about she's claimed or suggested on Twitter that he's being paid by people connected to Epstein

to sort of to criticize what we understand to be the Epstein story. And then, you know, a lot of people, I think, you know, tensions are already running high, right, because of the shooting. And so a lot of people kind of like, what's all this shouting? And, you know, he's kind of a, kind of a crazy looking guy. And basically security takes him out at Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN. He sort of intervenes and has some words with Michael Tracy. Michael Tracy, as you can see from that tweet, challenges him to a fight. Now, one thing I want to note here is because of the shooting, again, not just the White House area. Several blocks around the White House are under total lockdown.

When I left this party later, I tried to go down one street, and a sub-sac person was like, they will shoot you if you go down and try it on this. So the idea that Michael Tracy and Jim Acosta were going to, like the Secured Service schools when we are, all, you boys can settle it like men. Oh, yeah, we'll set up some of the cordons over here. Yeah, let's just move some of the fencing to get you guys a stage. Jim Acosta did to respond on Twitter. This whole thing, here we go.

We saw what you did at the suspect party. We're bullying Julie Kay Brown in a menacing way and would not let her walk away from you. Your behavior was shameful and ugly. So, yes, I stepped in, as did several other people, including security to escort Brown away from you. It continues because Michael Tracy then goes to the Hampton. in. I guess that's where he was staying. And he posts this, bute. Yeah, so it's a picture of the Hampton Inn, and he says,

Jim, I'm literally waiting for you right now, you piece of shit. Oh, that poor car that's just sitting there. Some Uber drivers getting strays here. Well, and in fact, you know, I want to note, Michael Tracy even said he had extended his stay in D.C. later in the weekend. He said, look, I'm taking all comers. I'm still at the Hampton in. If anyone wants to come and, you know, you know, as they say, talk shit. get hit. Are you going to go to the Hampton in today just to see what happens?

You know, some people did swing by and they said, no, I don't see the fight. You know, yeah. This reminds me if there was a classic internet moment where, you know, I think two sports guys to meet me in Tamicula, where these guys were like going to fight each other in Tamicula, California. So, you know, we got our own here at the White House correspondent. I have no recollection of that one. Yeah, I might send you down to the Hamptons in or at least just call the Hampton and to just sort of get a sense if they know what's happening. Like, are they ready for this? This could be a real moment for the ring set up in the basement.

You know, fair fight. All right. I think we've devoted more. Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. One thing I want to point out here, this is crucial for the scene setting. Can we put up the picture of the butter cow? Yeah. Oh, my God. This was in the Renwick.

So again, yes, this was in the Renwick. So this is a giant frozen butter cow. And you can see it's surrounded by glass because it's really cold. What I want to point out to everyone is this famous fight took place roughly 10 to 15 feet away from a butter cow. So that's sort of like, so, you know, the very serious stuff happening at the Washington Hilton, bit of a, you know, a bit less serious fight by the butter cow at the Redmond.

That photo's by me, by the way. I just want to make sure everyone was aware. Okay. Well, look at you, multidimensional journalism right here. Doesn't just write or talk on live shows. He can do photography too, folks. That was an incredible stuff. All right, how many canolaes did you have?

I need to know. I just had the one. I, you know, I had some other stuff. They had some sliders. You know, I felt, you know, I had already had dinner. But, but I was like, you know, I got to experience this, this canoli, F-Boy Island. What's your, what's your take? What's your take on proper etiquette in terms of, like, meal, like, how you're supposed to, like,

nourish yourself on these events? Because, like, you can have a dinner beforehand and then you go out to these events. Or you can just skip the dinner and just eat a ton of little pass-arounds at these events. What's your prep. preference. Well, my preference is sort of like eat what's ever in front of me. I mean, like, I ate. And then I was talking to someone and I was like, well, what the heck? They got sliders. I got to get some sliders. So that's my strategy. Yeah, I stuff myself. There was a crooked media party. I stuffed myself. They had these little crab cakes. I must have had like 10 of them.

And by the end, I was just like, I can't do it again. But I did not eat dinner before him. So that was my dinner. All right. Hey, look, buddy, thank you for doing this. A bit of an odd show kind of weaving into the series and serious. But I think we handled it definitely. I really do. I think we're real pros. I hope so. We read a we read a sole gummy ad in the middle of it all too. Like I mean, come on. That was that was like really that was good stuff from us. If I do say so. Oh wait, programming note. You have a story you want to tell. I almost forgot about this. We are called. I got to set it up. I got to set it up. We are doing live shows. We've talked about this for everyone. But we're doing live shows out in San Diego in L.A. May 20th, May 21st.

I'll be there. Tim Sarah are going to be there. These live shows are awesome. It's different than this type of live show, which is just online. This is in-person live. And we got tickets if you want to get them. The bulwark.com slash events is where you can get them. Folks, honestly, if you're in the area, I would highly recommend doing it.

It's such a fun evening. Now, Will came up to meet today. So, like, our great San Diego story. What is it? Yeah, my San Diego story is like this. I've only been to San Diego once. I'm more of an East Coast boy. But I went there once, and I had, number one, I had carneasada fries.

Have you had these? They're a San Diego delicacy. They're like nachos with French fries. You'll have to get them when you're there. And the San Diego Zoo has a fabulous hippo exhibit, and I love hippos. So I actually went to see the hippos a couple times. So it was a near perfect day. And I was thinking about this, and I thought, what would have made it a perfect day?

A bulwark live show in the evening. And so hopefully, you know, a couple other things for people to do if they go. So just to be clear, you wake up, you go see some hippo. shows. Yeah. You shower down on some carnace out of fries and you top it off with a bulwark live show and it just doesn't. The perfect day. You know, maybe we can convince Acosta and Tracy to come as our guests. Yeah, very the hatchet, boys. This is why we do a White House ballroom. So these guys are separated in it. These maniacs, we can have them brawling. Got to build a ballroom if you're going to have Tracy and Acosta fight it out. You need a secure

location. All right, folks, thanks for tuning it into Maga Mondays. We'll do it again on Monday next Monday, hopefully with a little less serious stuff happening in the backdrop. We like to have fun here too. Well, thanks so much looking forward to your clavicular dispatch this afternoon. For those who are not subscribers yet, do subscribe to the Bullwark. You get Maga Monday as a show on Bullwork Takes. And as a reminder, we have those live shows out in San Diego in L.A. on the 20th and the 21st. Hopefully you get a ticket and we will see you there.

Come say hi to me, Tim and or Sarah. Till then, take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Thanks, everyone.