Bulwark Takes - Stephen Miller Flips Out Over Tim's Tweet

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Tim Miller responds to Stephen Miller’s tweet accusing him of being a leftist for criticizing Trump’s massive tariff hike. He breaks down why the policy makes no sense, who will really pay the price, and calls out Stephen for defending everything Trump does to stay in his good graces.

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark, Trump's top domestic policy advisor, Santa Monica gobbles himself, Stephen Miller has come after me on social media over a position that I thought was like a pretty standard free market position. He's calling me part of the left for saying this. I'm going to run down what happened here. Make sure to subscribe to the feed. Appreciate, I guess, that the Trump administration is monitoring what we're saying over here we did have my colleague andrew egger had the opportunity to question trump press secretary uh last week about his crypto grift uh so they're keeping tabs on us um here's what happened uh they made the announcement this morning about the the deal with china where we've de-escalated the trade war down to 30% tariffs, which is a 20 percentage point higher rate than we were paying before Trump came in on tariffs from China. It is significantly lower than the insane 145% total trade embargo that we had with China. So I wrote this about it. Yay, so happy that we'll be paying 20% higher taxes on all Chinese goods in exchange for

nothing. Great victory, Chairman Trump. Art of the deal. I wrote in Chinese lettering. Stephen Miller responds to that. Fascinating to watch the left embrace the proposition that all American factories should be relocated to Asia. This is not at all responsive to my critique, to say the least. I'm not saying that anything should be relocated to Asia. I do not think there is really... Is the administration even making a coherent argument that this 30% tariff will lead to more factories being built here? I have not heard that argument.

And they've been all over the place. This tariff was 10. It was 20. It was 30. It was 80. It was 145. Now it's back down to 30. idea that just this madness and this uncertainty and this like random, like putting your finger in the wind and deciding what the tariff rate should be today is the way to get American factories to

be built here in America is just insane. It's totally against reality. And you could maybe make some arguments that we could do some targeted tariffs on specific industries on China and that we could have incentives here. And we could create some stability and give manufacturing businesses some confidence that could be built here. That's a sane industrial policy. We can argue about the merits of that. I mean, Joe Biden had an industrial policy that was, frankly, a little bit left from my point of view, but that invested a lot of money in factories to be built here in America and chips factories. So that is one path to building factories here.

And there are a lot of different various policy levers that could be pulled to encourage manufacturing here. Having totally schizophrenic tariff rates on China, I've not even seen any America First people make a coherent argument that that is going to yield, um, uh, uh, more American factories coming here. Uh, but really like the thing is the funniest thing in here is, is that like, this is Steven Miller saying that I'm on the left now, I guess. Um, I don't take that as an insult if the right is Donald Trump. But Stephen Miller saying that I'm on the left because I opposed this 30% tax they're putting on working

Americans, on the people that they say are their base, the forgotten man. Who is going to pay that 30% tariff on goods coming into America? It's going to be mothers and fathers, parents who are going to have to pay more for their strollers and their car seats. It is going to be anyone that was buying clothes online from China china it's going to be electronic parts um i gotta tell you i don't know if you've been to mag america i have i've been to some tail sec tailgates and uh there are a lot of folks out there that are buying big screen tvs to watch their football on and that's fine that's great that's the american dream even though scott besant says that it isn't um you know it's just going to be across the board, all of these

products, all of these goods, some of them, some like the semiconductors and this high-end manufacturing. We should try to bring that back to America. We should try to decouple it. There are certain things where some people are going to want to choose to pay higher prices for shirts that are made in America. And that's totally appropriate in a free market. But it's people whose budgets are tight, you know, who need to buy household goods, clothes, electronics, you know, and the prices on all of those goods are going to be more expensive for them. It is going to be a lot of these companies that do manufacturing that are going to be paying higher prices on the parts or the components of their product that come from China. So it's like everybody's going to be punished. And this is

one of the biggest tax increases in American history that is being put in place by a Republican White House. And so, Stephen was trying to position this as like any critic of this as some leftists. It's like, no, anybody who is not for a massive sales tax increases against us. And up until about two minutes ago, that included conservatives. That included Republicans. That included people on the right. It includes Rand Paul, Libertarian Rand Paul, who's been the one principled person talking about this over in the Senate Republican Conference. So kudos to him.

So I guess, I don't know, is Rand Paul leftist now or me and Rand Paul leftists because we don't want a random 30 percent increase on on Chinese goods with no actual strategy associated with it? You know, with no plan to invest in America to offset it with no real decoupling plan like it's just like this this is like a shot it's like a shit throwing monkey like throwing shit at the wall and being like 30 80 140 this is not industrial policy this is not economic policy this is not conservatism it's it's nothing it's a narcissistic buffoon emoting and his little henchman, Stephen Miller, his little golem-ish henchman, like defending whatever he does, whatever the dear leader does, as something that it is necessary to support to stay in good standing inside the cult, inside the right. And so, yeah, guess what? Not a member of the cult, not interested in signing up for that, Stephen Miller. I'm able to assess the merits of your policies outside of the construct of whatever dear leader does is good and i assess this policy i assess your policy of

trying to do a deal with china and at the end of the deal uh ending up with a 20 higher tariff a 20 higher sales tax on uh the american consumer in exchange for literally nothing literally nothing that has been your art of the deal we We're ensuring that people pay 20% more on goods they get from China on the one side and on the other side, we get nothing. That's the deal. Great, awesome. Great work.

That's conservatism now. Whatever, that's fine. You can have it. So appreciate Stephen Miller for monitoring what we're doing. I think it's important to hash these things out. It's important for people these things out. It's important for people out here in the YouTube world to hear and assess for themselves. Do they think

that the Trump administration's policy of charging a 30% tariff on the stroller that you want to buy? Do you think that is a winner in service of some unclear future machine manufacturing plant? If that's the deal you want, that's fine. I'm not for that. I don't think that we should have an additional 30% tax on products coming from China in exchange for nothing. I think that's a very bad deal. I think it's a very stupid deal. I don't think it puts one on the left to believe that, but it certainly puts one in opposition to this administration and the really ludicrous and harmful economic policies they've been putting forth on top of the cruel and dehumanizing and un-American immigration policies that Stephen Miller has been central to. So I embrace your ire, Stephen. I think it's being on the wrong side of Stephen Miller means that I'm on the right side of a lot of things these days. So

appreciate your feedback. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. We'll be monitoring what's happening and we'll be talking to you all soon.