Bulwark Takes - ShamWow Guy Has America’s Dumbest Campaign Ad

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

Tim Miller, Catherine Rampell, and Will Sommer give their takes on the rise of the infomercial wing of the GOP. From ShamWow and MyPillow to the ambassador selling blood-flow vitamins and miracle sleep aids, they unpack how selling stuff became a political credential and why Trump’s brand of politics made it inevitable.

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you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. I exams provided by independent optometrists. Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino.

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Receips? It's Friday after an annual tape in this. I'm sorry, it's been a long read. It's been a long day. You can sign up at the Bullwark.com. Super Bowl weekend's a big commercial weekend. You know, the gays, we often watch just for other commercials. I'm going to miss a Super Bowl. I booked a flight during Super Bowl. I didn't even realize it until about two minutes ago. It's like, oh, well, I don't know. We'll see. Hopefully the airline has it on. But, you know, there's some high-level commercials you get to see during the Super Bowl.

Some funny ones, celebs, you know. The Republicans have a series of candidates who are more in the infomercial space than the commercial space. And Catherine was flagging this for us, and we thought maybe it'd be valuable just to go through it because it's quite a notable trend. I want to start with, we're old enough to remember the sham wow. Everybody remember shamwows? Oh, yeah, I certainly do. Knockoff shamwows. Yeah.

You own knockoff shamwows. Yeah, I don't think they're like brand name, but they're, you know, that weird. Well, explain to the youth that are watching what a sham wow is. It's like this very absorbent fabric. It's kind of like a felt material that you use to sop up water. And there were these crazy infomercials about all of the wonderful things that it did back in the day. Well, Mr. Shamwow is running for office. Vince Schlomo.

Slow me. Slow me? Slow me. We'll figure it out. Slow me, I think. Slow me. He's running, and he's got an ad. Let's watch it together.

Hey, it's Vince. I'm running for Congress against this guy. Stop having a politician that's worse than Biden. For the discretionary funding. Instead, vote for me. A guy who's not half dead. I'm going to soak up the swamp, clean the house,

and pick up those liberal tears at the same time. I'm going to slap chop the nuts out of the woke, making less blue hair commies and more red-blooded Americans. Both for me so I can represent you and the ones that can't stand up for themselves. Vote for show love. Oh, boy. He got me with that one right at the end. Tom was going in blind there.

At the beginning, I was intrigued because, you know, John Carter is no, you know, nothing to be excited about. He does seem too elderly to be in office. He's been a rubber stamp for Trump. So maybe some fresh blood in there. But then as he made his case for why him, he started to lose. lose me a little bit. Catherine, talk to us about what was it to cut your eye about Mr. Shlomi? Well, besides the fact that it feels like the Republican Party slate of candidates is increasingly like MLM, uh, hawkers and, uh, snake oil salesman all the way down. Like, I just found that

kind of amusing. His platform, this guy, Shlomi's platform is also pretty striking. Tell me about it. Yeah. So this is the stuff that's on his website. His platform is, ending porn on X. Okay. No tax on social security. Ring cameras in classrooms. Human customer service. You know, why this is something that...

I like that. You don't want human customer service? I mean, I would prefer human customer service. I don't know why that's the province of Congress to deal with that. But sure. Then we get to some more interesting ones, including making thoughtism. I hate crime. Thoughtism, he says, is a word I coined that means hating someone on the basis of the color of their thoughts or views. I'm thoughtist towards Mr. Shlomo, so I hope that he doesn't get in because that could be concerning to me. Okay, what else?

Cowboy codes for kids. Maybe it's like scout code, scouts honor. I'm not really sure. Is that mandatory cowboy codes or just? Mandatory cowboy codes. Yaha. Giddy up. And then, of course, course, children must pray in school each week. So it's quite the collection. Not a lot of affordability on this agenda, but a lot of like thought policing and God policing too. Well, did you know, had you been monitoring Mr. Shamwell? Does he have a presence in social media? Did he just kind of like emerge? I've been keeping an eye on Mr. Shanwell for decades. I mean, Back in 2009, folks may remember his tongue was almost bitten off by a sex worker, and in exchange, he assaulted her. This is a guy with an unsavory pass, needless to say.

And the key thing about the tongue. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have no memory of this. His tongue was almost bitten off by a sex worker? Yeah, he apparently arranged this in Miami. In anticipation of this episode, I looked up all the greatest hits of Mr. Shamwow here. And in fact, there was this, he had this, you know, confrontation.

I think they both faced criminal charges over it. But the important thing about the tongue, right, is that Mr. Shamwound, people may remember. He was such a vibrant infomercial spokesman. And he would stick his tongue out and go, ah, you know, this is so crazy. And so the tongue was kind of his moneymaker. And so that's why it stuck with me. Oh, boy. That's why it stuck with you as opposed to.

If it were any other politician running for Congress, you'd be like totally forgettable to find out that his tongue was a bit off. the things where it's just like, this happens time again. We talked about this yesterday with the trio, Will, it's like, you know, just because you can't control your urges, you know, it doesn't mean now that you get to use the power of the state to control some of ours, right? I mean, if, you know, I'm not into sex working and tongue biting, but for people who are, I'm fine with that. Like, it's always the people who want to come in with the strong, no porn on X, we're going

to crunch the woke's balls and we're going to go after the gay. Like all these people are all getting electric dildos up there butt by sex workers on the side. It feels like to me, you know? None of them are, it's like I can almost accept it if they were, you know, more genuine. If he had a cowboy code, maybe it would keep him from this deviant behavior. We know a cowboys are up to. We're praying for him in school. Yes.

I think that the cowboy code would maybe be cutting off the tongue. Yes. I have not done deep research on that way. So he's running against John Carter. Okay, so that's a primary. Do we know if there are any other candidates? We're going to do a little more research on this race. I'm going to look into that.

But Mr. Shamwell, look at his, can we just pull up his website for a second here? Let's just put that on the screen. That's not a trustworthy face. Very unsettling affect, I would say. I feel like he has not reformed himself. I don't think he's reformed himself either. And I don't want him telling me what is happening in my thoughts. I'm concerned about that.

So we've got the sham while guy. We've also got our friend who we've been covering for a while now. And a close friend of Wills, they're texting buddies, I do believe. This is Mike Lindell of my pillow fame. He's running to be the Republican nominee for Governor of Minnesota. Many of you already know me. You know that I was a crack cocaine addict along with many other addictions. you know that I founded the amazing successful company,

my pillow. If you will stand with me as the next governor of Minnesota, our future will be amazing. Amy Klobuchar is just sitting alone in her home, praying to like her gay prom date or to whatever Lord, Chivalazin, please let it be Michael Lindell. Please let me, Michael Delle. But he's also running.

Have you been monitoring, Will? What's the state of the race up there? Yeah, so I mean, look, this is the My Pillow guy, the former drug addicts. He remade himself with his pillows and his cotton sheets and all this stuff. And obviously he's embroiled in a lot of lawsuits over his claims about 2020 election fraud. How dare him come and sue my pillow. He's a scumbag for doing that. Put that in there.

Scumbag, S-C-U-M bag. You're an... You got that? You're an... Mike is what you are. Mike, sorry. No, he's an... He's an ambulance chasing...

That's what you are. are lumpy pillows. Kiss my how do you guys sleep at night? You obviously don't have a my pillow. That's a fact. So he figures, look, my plate's pretty clean. You know, I got some time on my hands. I should run for governor.

And I have to say, you know, he's doing a little better than you might expect. There have been some straw polls, I think, of various Republican events that some put him in first place. Some put him in third place. It's worth noting the Republican Speaker of the House is also running and she's kind of the favorite. But, you know, I wouldn't rule it out. I wouldn't say he can't win this primary.

I mean, Minnesota's kind of unsettled by ICE and by these Nick Shirley, you know, fraud videos. And I feel like that might whip Republicans into kind of like a more intensive pro-Michaelindell stance. He does have the benefit of having his own network, Lindel TV. I don't know what kind of the reach is of that. But, you know, they're at the White House. I mean, maybe they could ask, you know, wouldn't you say, you know, Mike Lindell is the best candidate all the time? I mean, the other sort of the, the perhaps conflict of interest here is his campaign has spent big on Mike Lindell's own memoir. They spent more than half of what they've fundraised so far, $185,000 buying copies of his book and handing them out.

What is the title of that memoir? What are the odds? Yeah. What are the odds? I guess it's true. How did we find ourselves here? What are the odds? That's not a bad title.

All right. So we've got two infromotion candidates. Is that it? Were there any other infromotion? No, there are more. Okay. Tell me more. Who else do you have a right? So one is, he's actually not a candidate. He's serving at the president's pleasure as the ambassador to Israel. So Mike Huckabee, according to a TV tracking ad site, Mike Hacobie, who's again the current ambassador to Israel is the brand ambassador right now for VINIA, a blood flow vitamin. Can we play that? Mike Huckabee on why he takes Vinia, the red grape circulation superfood for better blood flow. 18 hour days are pretty normal. So, you know, I need all the help I can get.

The Bible teaches that the life is in the blood. Whatever helps blood flow helps life. Well, it's not complicated. It's our plumbing system. The Bible teaches that you need blood. Is that a peptide? I'm not sure. Hell if that's a peptide.

I mean, I guess it's red blood. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what, like, blood. blood flow medication is necessary for a man of his age. I'm not going to assume anything about what the use case is here. I would not like to think about it. This is the second company he's worked with. It's interesting. He's kind of working both sides of the street in the infomercial. The blood flow vitamin, he's talking about how he needs the energy, you know, for whatever purposes, settlements, I think. And on the other side, last year, he was removed from a different infomercial for relaxium, which was a sleeping pill.

And I'm Mike. I'm going to be former governor of Arkansas, part-time musician, but long-time customer of relaxium sleep. So he's kind of doing the uppers and downers together. And now it's kind of like, you need the blood flow vitamin to get you going during the day. And then you need some landing gear with a relaxium at night. So they're not paying? ambassadors enough for him to be able to just do his job and not chill on the side for a bunch of scammy supplement companies is that what you think the issue here is that we don't we don't have enough high enough salary items for ambassadors yeah I don't know is for my cockaby that's what this

this video is actually about um we also uh at the prayer breakfast yesterday we had paula cane and we should mention that she's also selling some stuff. She's slanging supernatural blessings for the Easter season. We're coming up on the Easter season. Only a thousand bucks or more for a little supernatural blessing. That might be something for you to look into. That sounds reasonable. That's a good rate, I think, for a supernatural blessing. You know, it is funny. I mean, just the, the amount of kind of, like, there's so many schemes. I mean, Tom Homan, before he ran ice, he endorsed like an EMP shield that would protect you from the inevitable Chinese EMP attack. You can protect yourself at the same time protect this great nation.

The threat of electromagnetic pulse is real. EMP. If you don't know what it is, look it up. That would like knock out all of our electrical systems. There is like a true overlap between the Trump administration and the world of infomercials and hucksterism. There's snake oil salesmen. It's like if a carnival barker can become president, why can't all the people on the president's,

or I would say the president's payroll, the, The executive branch payroll also be selling crap to the masses. I mean, this is what Trump does himself. This is the key insight. It's kind of like the light, the lantern, you know. Trump is like the grifting lantern. By popular demand, I'm doing a new series of Trump digital trading cards. These cards show me dancing and even be holding some bitcoins.

A new Trump fragrances are here. They make a great Christmas present. That's the real deal. That's the real deal. deal. All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It's my favorite book. All the grifting flies are flying around him, you know, sort of orbiting him, like their little grifty sun. And I don't think it's that surprising that he would attract that type of candidate. And so, you know, or that he selects on it. I mean, Dr. Oz, this was his thing, right? Some of these

other people, this is clearly a side hustle. Like Mike Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, saw before. This is a side hustle for him to be selling bogus drugs on late night TV. But Dr. Oz, this was his whole schick. Today, I'm introducing a new way to help couples everywhere sleep better. Wellness starts from the ground up. So make sure that the arches of your feet are supported. These promote comfort and relaxation. It had been used to help with pain, insomnia, and stress it's not an ear. It's an ear seat. Going on TV and telling people what kinds of crazy supplements or lifestyle changes or whatever, mostly things that he could make money off of or other people could make money off of what they should buy. And he got selected to his current job for that

purpose. So it's not incidental, I guess is my point. All right. Well, everybody out there, you know, you all live out in the country out in real America. So sometimes it's hard for us to monitor for all these ads. If you see weird Republican ads, do send it to us, theborg.com slash tips. and we'll keep I'm interested to see what the next material that Shamuash Lomi puts forward We'll watch that If it's interesting, we'll share it with you guys

Have a good Super Bowl weekend Hopefully the commercials are better for you And we'll see you all soon Subscribe to the feed