Bulwark Takes - Nobody Asked. Trump Brought Up His 3 Cognitive Tests Anyway

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

Sam Stein takes on Trump's escalating war on the press: subpoenas targeting NYT reporters over Air Force One security reporting, a rambling 450-word attack on Maggie Haberman, and the irony of Trump attending the rescheduled White House Correspondents' Dinner—while Mark Zuckerberg stays conspicuously silent on Trump's attacks on free speech.

Hey, everyone, it's me Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bullwork. I am doing a emergency-ish recording here on Saturday afternoon. Don't know when this is going to go out if it's tonight or tomorrow. Either way, figured it was worthwhile to jump on. A couple stories in posts from Trump caught my eye today. All of them fairly ominous, all sort of dealing with freedom of the press, which obviously is sacrosanct for us. The big one came from the New York Times itself. They reported the following. They said that the Trump administration has issued subpoenas. This was on Friday that they issued these subpoenas to several journalists for the New York Times. The reason they did this, the Trump administration did this, is because the New York Times reported on what they called security concerns involving Trump's new Qatari donated Air Force One. Now, if you are forgetting what happened here, Trump had a perfectly serviceable Air Force One. It was admittedly a little old. But instead of updating it, he got a, he got Qatar to donate one. to him, which he then had to retrofit so that it was up to security specs. Now, the big scandal of this is that under the deal, this Air Force won that Trump was gifted by the Qataris, it's going to go into his museum after he leaves office. But he's still using it now. And they took it out for their first ride a couple weeks ago.

They went to Turkey for the G7. And then kind of weirdly enough, they had to take the old Air Force one back. Now, the reporting on this is that Iran was acting belligerently. They're making threats. Part of what happened when Trump's memorandum of understanding fell apart. But it was enough to get the Secret Service nervous that they didn't want him to fly in the Katari-donated Air Force One, which is not obviously up to security standards. Otherwise, they would have used it. Anyways, the Times reported that this was the case.

And what did Trump do? They didn't say, good get. I didn't say, thanks for the alert. he subpoenaed the reporters for their records. And this is what the Times reports on itself. The subpoenas, which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday. That's just a couple days from now, were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump's efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations. In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters' homes.

And think about that. They went to the homes of the reporters. This is an intimidation tactic. It's deeply authoritarian. It's a trampling of First Amendment rights, which include the freedom of the press, folks. Anyways, the Times newsroom lawyer, kind of David McCraugh, had this to say, quote, the appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution, and the press freedom it protects.

And he's right. It should shock your conscience. But frankly, it also is kind of par for the course with Trump. This is a administration that has been fairly belligerent when it comes to going after reporters that it doesn't like and trying to intimidate them or in this case trying to get their records. And this is a huge, hugely aggressive step of intimidation. And hopefully the Times will fight it.

It looks like they're going to fight it. But, you know, Trump's always threatening to sue news outlets. He's successfully sued news outlets. Remember, he sued 60 minutes, which they paid, sued ABC. They paid. He has newspaper tycoons over and he intimidates them. Jeff Bezos is one of them. This is a pattern, but it's really escalating because this was not the only news that happened today that I thought was really alarming.

So Trump was, as usual, on a Saturday bleeding. There's, you know, I can't even count how many posts he made on his truth social page. But in particular, again, he went after the New York Times. So the first one really was kind of alarming in its own, right? The second one was more like a stream of consciousness that went on forever. But I'll do both of them. So the first one is he goes after Maggie Haberman. He calls her a derogatory name.

I'm not going to repeat it. It's stupid. It's juvenile. She and Jonathan Swan, another Times colleague, had this great book out called Regime Change. It's unearthed a lot of issues in the White House and how badly things are going. So Trump says, Maggie Haberman has covered me incorrectly for 10 years. Her book is a joke. 90% of his fake news. She made a living off of her bad reporting. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He then calls her a loser. He says, if she ever wrote the true story about me, it would actually be

quite boring, but loaded with lots of success. Successes in all caps. And then he had this little nugget in here, which really piqued my interest, and you'll see why. Also, I just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed. I do it every six months. And I requested another cognitive test. The only president to do so three times. I ate them all. Got every question right. Few people Washington, D.C. could do so, including Maggie and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan. Well, the way it reads, I thought he was saying he literally just got another physical and another cognitive test, because, I mean, that's literally how it reads. It turns, and I was beginning to one, I was like, why is he getting yet another one of these tests? How many does he need? Isn't this

suspicious? It turns out there's some clarification. He was referencing the test that he got in May. So not, he didn't go today. And yet, it's still a little bit crazy that he's done three of these cognitive tests. At a certain point, it begins to raise questions in its own, right? Anyways, he was not done. Again, like I said, he put up a really sort of, I'm going to actually tally how many words here. So bear with me. Let's do this. So he has, this is a 450 word post that he did. I'm not going to read all of it. But again, he goes after Maggie and Jonathan. He bemoans the fact that he had to run against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. He says, never happened before. And he says, against almost 100% negative press and fake news,

all of them willing to do anything that I lose. And especially Maggie Hamer, one of the most unattractive people, ridiculous. This is the president, folks, in the news business and her lightweight assistant Jonathan Swan in the failing New York Times itself, which spends all of its energy on negative stories about me. All I do is win, often against all odds. But after the big election success, there's no, gee, he won. He did a great job. I mean, this is like childish stuff.

The guy going on and posting about his gripes with the media coverage on a Saturday afternoon, he feel like he's got to get more hobbies than golf. This is bad. Jonathan Swan, I think properly responded by tweeting that, hey, I'd love to sit down with President Trump for another interview if he wants to give it a go. You might remember Jonathan Swan when he was at Axios, had a great interview with Trump during the height of COVID, or I guess it was sort of in the middle of COVID, really knocked him off his feet. Probably one of the most probing interviews that we've had of Trump, really knocked him out. Like I said, he really knocked him

off his feet. He got a lot of news. He has not, as far as I can tell, sat down for another interview with Jonathan Swan since then, but I would love to see it happen. But this, you know, look, it's easy to sort of dismiss this stuff as just Trump being Trump. But I do. don't. I think this is unsettling. I think it's highly problematic. I think people who care about the freedom of the press, which again, is a first member right, they should be worried. They should really be worried about this stuff because if he's subpoenaing reporters for the notes on the Qatari Jets security standards, what's next? I mean, what is next? You can easily envision him doing it for other things. And it gets me back to a few.

two things that I want to just end on. One, all these guys who went to Trump after the Troy and 24 election and we're like, well, one of the reasons I'm really hopeful for this administration is that it's just an ironclad commitment to the First Amendment and free speech. And like, you know, the one who really got my goat was Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, who complained bitterly about the fact that during COVID, a Biden administration official, reached out to Facebook or meta officials about disinformation on their platform and said, hey, you've got to get this stuff down. They didn't say, we're going to, like, subpoena you, or we're going to come after you.

Like, this is problematic. Can you get this stuff down? And Mark Zuckerberg was like, oh, that is jaw-boning. That is the worst government interference in, you know, free speech and publications. We can't have that. Like, that drove Mark Zuckerberg to Donald Trump, according to Mark Zuckerberg. Okay. I haven't seen Mark Zuckerberg issue.

a peep about any of this stuff. Nothing. It was all phony. It was all bullshit, really. And yeah, I would love to know if Mark Zuckerberg was awake. Is he awake? Is he witnessing anything? Does he care? Like one little, hey, this is not good. I stand with reporters. That would be nice. Not expected. The other thing that's really interesting, to put it mildly, is that the White House correspondence Association dinner is happening still. Now, you remember, obviously, the first one was canceled in the middle of it happening because a deranged gunman came in trying to assassinate people, administration officials who were in attendance. He did not get into the room, but he came close. And there was a question about what they were going to do. And now they have decided that

they are going to have a makeup dinner on July 24th. So we're talking about two weeks. weeks. And as far as I know, and as far as he's made clear, Donald Trump will appear at this one. He was already at the last one. He says he's going to go to this one, which means they're going to have Donald Trump at the dais for an event honoring the First Amendment. Now, this is not an event honoring Donald Trump. I'm not saying it is. It's not an event saying that he's been a good steward of press freedoms. That's not what this is. It's a dinner to honor White House reporters for the work that they often do very tirelessly and often without thank or recognition. And I appreciate that they deserve this dinner. But it's hard to really internalize that two weeks after his administration

issued subpoenas of leading reporters for the New York Times as he continuously berates reporters on his website all the time as he threatens lawsuits against outlets all the time. As he launches lawsuits against outlets all the time. As his Pentagon tries to restrict access for reporters who are covering the defense secretary, and as they fight it in time and again in court, even when they get defeated and knock down, they appeal time and again. All this is happening. Donald Trump would be fed by the White House Correspondent Association. And look, it's a choice. And I'm not saying, I'm not going to like, I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that I don't understand why there is a tradition here. But frankly, I would like to and hope to see

some sort of pushback at that evening directly to the administration and directly to the president. I doubt it's going to happen, but it would be frankly really kind and nice and a good thing if it did. I will just read this. Lueira's Correspondent Association did put out a statement after the subpoenas were issued. And it goes like this. The White House Correspondent Association stands with the New York Times reporters who are targeted for doing their jobs to uphold the public's right to know how its government operates. The White House Correspondent Association condemns any act of intimidation against journalists, including attempts to pressure them into revealing sources. That's good. I'm happy that they put out a statement.

I am intrigued by what will happen on July 24th when President Trump is there for the dinner. All right. That's it. That's all I got for a Saturday. I just wanted to jump on and do a quick video about this because there's a lot going on in this world that I occupy. It matters deeply to me as you matter to all you. And frankly, if you do support independent journalism, if you do support reporters who aren't going to buckle to this stuff, if you like the idea of holding the administration accountable through the press,

there's something you can do, which is you can subscribe to the bulwark. So do that. And subscribe to our YouTube page two. Thanks.