Bulwark Takes - Rush Hour 4 and the Billion-Dollar Bribe Machine

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Sam Stein and Catherine Rampell take on Corporate America's biggest concern: how to flatter Donald Trump. From Rolex clocks to Diet Coke trophies, and even a resurrected Rush Hour 4, Sam and Catherine walk through the strangest offerings, the economic harm caused by political suck-ups, and why companies would rather bribe a president than run their businesses. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES

I don't know about you, but when I'm using AI for my business, I don't need it to tell me what to do. I know what I want. I just need help making it happen. With Wix, I finally have an AI tool that gets things done the way I want. I just have to describe the type of website I need and it's ready. I can even ask it to manage my inventory, plan my next marking campaign, or help out my customers. Wix gives me AI wherever I need it. Try it out at Wix.com.

We can have hundreds of followers, thousands of likes, and yet still feel alone. Why is that? It's because humans are meant to be together, to make real connections that make each other better. At the YMCA, people play, learn, and overcome their challenges together. There's really no substitute for a smiling face and feeling a sense of belonging. Together, we're stronger. We're braver and bolder. When we're together, amazing things happen.

Feel what it means to be greater together at your local YMCA. Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of the Bork, and I'm joined by Catherine Rampal. This is our first, this is our first take together. I think it is, yeah. It's like... All of our takes to this point have been just, you know... Yeah, private takes. Private takes.

I was going to compare this to, like, a second bar mitzvah for me. I feel like this is a maturation process in my life here, but I'm very excited about this. I'm almost a little nervous, Catherine. Oh, well, I won't make you do the horror, so... I don't want. I do, yes, actually. We're actually going to be talking about your latest newsletter receipts, which everyone should be signed up for because it's an incredible newsletter. It's off to a great start. This one was kind of funny because, well, I guess all of yours have kind of hit on personal interests, but this one I felt like you've been storing up a lot of data points for this.

And it was about, I don't know, how do you describe it? Like weird bribery efforts to get on Trump's good side? Is that it? Yeah, it's basically all of the bullshit that companies are having to spend their time preoccupied with, related to, like, appeasing Trump, sucking up to Trump in various ways, things that they're doing instead of actual business stuff. Right. So that might mean something like coming up with a golden plaque for the president as Apple did. or, you know, Switzerland came up with a gold Rolex clock. Yeah, I want to get into the ranking, like, the best suckups. But I also want to know, put this in the back of your mind. I want you to think about by the end of this, if you were a foreign leader, let's say you're the president of whatever, you know, we're on Palestine.

And you had to like ingratiate yourself with this White House. I want to know what you would give Trump. what you think would be the smartest gift. Don't say it yet. Hold on to that thought. I have an idea. Okay. But I also want to note that this is like not isolated internet.

You mentioned two, but even this morning, for instance, after you published your newsletter, before we did, recorded this take, Michael Dell, who is, you know, one of the richest people in the world, announced that he was donating something like $6.25 billion to, what do they call Trump bonds or Trump? What are they? Trump accounts. Trump accounts. And they're like these accounts that kids get and they can accrue a bunch of interest over time. And, you know, they're no longer called Trump accounts because I think the IRS didn't want to seem too political. But the White House is just like going ballistic. They love it. They think it's great. They're going to pitch it as Trump accounts. And it's just like this is another case of someone who has clear interest before the government doing things, making strategic investments that he or she knows will, you know, go a long way towards appeasing the president.

Yeah. Yeah. That, the other piece of all of this is rush hour four, which it, which was unmacable for many years. Describe why it was unmacable. Well, a number of reasons. One is that probably as a genre or as a as a franchise rush hour, like it met the moment. It was a very popular franchise, late 90s, early 2000s, but may not work as well today because like it relied pretty heavily on. on racial stereotypes, which, you know, like, I'm not sure how much a lot of that would hold up, even though these were obviously very successful films at one point. And we're in the anti-woke era now, so maybe there's some new, you know. Maybe there's a new audience to mine.

Also, Jackie Chan, who was half of the buddy cop duo, is 71, probably doesn't have quite the same kung fu prowess that he once did. Chris Barker hasn't headlined a film since then, since 2007. Has it been that long? And then the most damning piece of all of this is that the director of the franchise, Brett Ratner, has been unemployable since roughly 2017 when he was Me Tooed, when half a dozen women, including some relatively famous celebrities like Olivia Munn, came out and accused him of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, sexual assault, various kinds of sex pestery. So why make this? Because Donald Trump wants it, you know? But this is a very cheap way to bribe the president, essentially, right?

He wants this movie made, and if you have business before the president, even if this costs you $100 million, a couple hundred million dollars to make this film that maybe nobody wants to see except for the president, it's still going to have a great return on your investment, particularly if you are, let's say, Paramount. So Paramount Skydance recently merged. They got put through the ringer, you know, as folks may remember, this is part of the reason why there was that big CBS settlement owned by that joint company now because they wanted to merge. Normally there would be big antitrust concerns, but those go away if you do something nice for Trump, like paying him off. And it is Paramount that has reportedly agreed to distribute this film that, again, nobody wants.

because Paramount is also in the midst of trying to buy another, gobble up another company, Warner Brothers. So basically, if you are Paramount, you know, you have tens of billions of dollars potentially on the line in this proposed merger that they're trying to get through. Again, it's pocket change to make a $100 million film in the grand scheme of things, even if nobody watches it, even if you lose all that money. And they're not even like that subtle about, not Paramount talking about the administration, they're not really all that subtle about the fact that they will take. these bribes. So simultaneous to the announcement that Rush are for is in development, there's talk that the administration is a little concerned that Netflix might buy Warner Brothers because they think that's too much of a conglomerate. But they haven't really expressed any concern about Paramount, which, you know, is more to their liking.

And, you know, Allison is like there are a whole bunch of reasons why they might get slightly different treatment than they otherwise would at another administration. And I guess the way that I think about this is like obviously corruption of any kind is bad. Like you want the president to be making decisions based on what's good for the country, whether that means consumers or national security or whatnot, rather than what's good for his ego or his cinematic tastes or his pocketbook. So like in and of itself, that is bad. but there's another piece of all of this

that I'm very interested in that I've been exploring in various ways that's about what does this mean for the economy, right? Well, let's talk about that. Borg takes a sponsor by Aura Frames. This holiday season, I have a lot more gifts on my list than good ideas. If you're looking for something with a real personal touch, I have it on good authority that Aura Frames will crush it. The producer who wrote this ad attest that the Aura Frames he gave his family were a hit last year.

In fact, Sarah Longwell has one in her arms. that she swears by. I've seen it. Looks nice. You can upload unlimited photos and video. Just download the ORA app and connect to Wi-Fi. It's about that easy. You can preload photos before chips and keep adding them anytime from anywhere. If you want to send your parents' photos of the kids, you can load them right onto your ORA frame. Trust me, my Jewish parents love photos of my kids. Each frame comes in a premium gift box with no price tag. You can even add a personalized message for your recipient before the frame arrives. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting oraframes.com to get $35 off Orr's

best-selling Carver Matt Frames, named number one by wirecutter. Use promo code bulwark takes at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code bulwark takes. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out very fast. So order yours now to get in time for the holidays. support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply there's some no there's some good literature uh on this about how corruption actually is damaging uh from an economic standpoint can you unwrap that for us yeah so there was a Nobel economics prize no technically Nobel Memorial

Prize in economics that was awarded last year 24 um for research looking at exactly this that institutions and economic growth and basically the research had found that when you have have degradation of rule of law, when you have more corruption, you end up with worse economic outcomes. And that's because, like, businesses are no longer businessing, right? They are focused on what appeases the political powers as opposed to how to develop more popular products, get new customers, increase their efficiencies, improve their management. Again, all of the things that companies should be doing in a healthy economy to make themselves profitable and via the invisible hand grow the economy writ large. If everybody is like trying to produce better

products, you know, you end up eventually with higher living standards. So that's what companies should be doing. Instead, they're pissing away a lot of their time on this bullshit, whether it's figuring out how to suck up to the president or not piss him off, right? Like you've seen a bunch of stories about how Target amongst others is, you know, they're deciding what to stock in their stores, not based on, again, what's going to make them the most money, what's going to appeal to their customer base, but what's going to at least upset the president, like no pride onesies, no rainbow onesies. So if they're focused on, on all of that, then they're less folk. They're not optimizing on the right things, essentially. And it's not just,

it's not just about corruption, to be clear, like there are a whole bunch of other reasons why Trump has been a drag. It's also tariffs. Sure. I was going to say, like, it's one thing, I mean, whatever, like, Paramount putting whatever money they're putting into Russia are for, like, sure, it's not going to have, like, the most damaging economic consequences. They didn't develop a better movie that could have attracted more audience. It's another thing when you have companies that have to do a bunch of bullshit and jump through a bunch of hoops to avoid tariffs, right? And that actually could have real economic impacts. And you wrote about that, too, where it's like companies basically spend a lot of

time having to, you know, stock up inventory or like hire lawyers or, you know, work lobbyists and things like that when they could be actually doing more efficient stuff. Yeah. Your profit center, if you are a company, should never be the guy whose full-time job is monitoring Trump's truth social feed, right? And that's what this is. Rather than figuring out innovation and product development and better marketing and all of that, The most profitable part of a company is instead the guy who's, like, looking at Trump tweets and trying to figure out, like, what's going to be tariffed when. Yeah. In term one, I remember reporting on this, one of the things, there's a version of this in term one where a lot of people were hiring lobbyists and media consultants in hopes of getting their pet issues on Fox and Friends or just getting a Chiron because they knew Trump would be watching and they wanted to make sure that their causes were in front of the president.

That's just a remarkable silly expense that you have to make when he's the president. You just create these cottage industries that are essentially regulatory parasites or it's not an efficient use of resources. I guess is how I would think about it. Like if we are taught, if this president allegedly wants freer markets and an economic boom, this is not how you get it by basically dragging down companies with a bunch of nonsense. sense that is not optimizing. Like, actually, a great example of both of these things that I'm talking about with wasting time on bullshit relating to sucking up to the president and wasting time on tariffs is Coca-Cola.

Oh, yeah. Wait, hold on. Before you get into it, because we're going to do this. I want to gamify this. I'm going to read the examples that you put in your piece. And then you've got to rate your favorite one. I'm just going to read them, okay? So, I think this is going to be a favorite one because you've been obsessing on this one.

But FIFA is issuing its first annual peace prize that it's going to reward soon. We obviously have the World Cup coming up in North America. The president of FIFA has said that Trump, quote, definitely deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. We're waiting to see who gets the first FIFA annual peace prize. First annual, yes. This was not just an ad hoc thing. They're going to do it forever. We have Tim Cook giving Trump his 24-carat gold glass.

which was amazing. You had the Coca-Cola company, which you were just alluding to, bestowing upon Trump the, quote, first-ever presidential commemorative inaugural Diet Coke bottle. We know Trump loves Diet Coke. These are also good. It's like we're eating your favorite child. South Korea gave Trump a gold crown after a recent No King's protest.

That's a nice touch. The ceremony lunch included a capped off with a brownie adorned with gold. We're starting to get a theme here with the gold in Trump's honor. We have the Nixon Foundation, Trump, the Architect of Peace Award right around the time of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded. The Swiss delegation giving him a Rolex desk clock as well as a one kilogram personalized gold bar. Oh my God, so much goals. Trump has received Olympic medals, a luxury jet from Qatar, Egypt's Nile Collar, UAE's Order of Zayed, I don't know what that is, an honorary silicone disc

from Navidia and a McDonald's fry cook pin. All right, which one do you think was the best? I love the Diet Coke example. Oh, I thought you were going to go with FIFA. Oh, no, I love that. Well, look, we don't know for sure if Trump's going to get the FIFA prize. So I don't want to count my chickens. Fair enough. But the Diet Coke, I don't know, the Diet Coke one is just so funny to me.

Because the White House was clearly very excited about this. They tweeted it out as like, look at this amazing award that Donald Trump got, which is, it kind of reminds me of there's this Simpsons reference that I'm going to bungle, but it's like the Montgomery J. Burns Award for Excellence in the Field of Excellence or something like that. It's like clearly a made up thing, and it's just there to suck up to the president. So he gets his Diet Coke award. Also, I'm a Diet Coke shrinker. So maybe I'm just a little bit jealous. I know. It's bad. But I drink a lot of Diet Coke. And I didn't get a personalized Diet Coke. Well, if the government relations are of the Coca-Cola companies watching this.

your next award should go to Catherine. All right, I asked you up front, like you're the leader of a country. You got to suck up to Trump. What are you giving them? I think a gilded Big Mac. That's pretty good. Yeah, I think it's just. I was going to go bigger, though.

I think you got to find a golf course and you got to spruce it up and you got to be like, I bestow upon you a golf course because he loves golf. But they're already doing that. Who is? I don't know. He's developing golf courses. He's developing as a business. but if you had like a, I don't know, or some, yeah, whatever.

I think he just would love it. He's being given golf courses already. I think this is less innovative than you realize. You know, he's being given these things. He's being given all sorts of opportunities to develop Trump-branded properties. Fair enough. Well, how about this? For those who are watching, for those who are watching this, in the comments section,

offer your suggestions about what a good bribery gift is for Trump, if you had to. And we will try to pull out the best ones for consumption. All right, Catherine, thanks so much. I hope this experience wasn't too horrible for you being on a take with me. Not at all. Not at all. I enjoyed it as well. All right, everyone, subscribe to our feed.

Subscribe to Catherine's newsletter, and we will talk again soon. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to BenMGMGM casino and check out our newest exclusive. The price is right, fortune pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the online. iconic game show only at bedmgm. Access to the price is right fortune pick is only available at bedmgm casino. Betmgm and game sets remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only,

please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.