Bulwark Takes - The Super Rich Still Worship this Loser

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

Tim Miller spent a full hour on MSNBC with Nicolle Wallace and guests digging into America’s biggest challenges, from the latest school shootings and our broken gun culture to Trump’s authoritarian push to put tanks in U.S. cities. They also covered how Trump’s tariffs are driving inflation, the GOP’s redistricting power grabs, and why courts and communities must keep pushing back. A sharp, unflinching look at the threats to democracy, and where hope still lives.

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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. Grab a coffee and discover non-stop action with BudMGM Casino. Check out our hottest exclusive. Friends of one with Multi-Drop. Once even more options. Play our wide variety of table games.

Or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills only available at BetMGM. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. 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 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. I was on for a full hour with my girl Nicole Wallace today and a bunch of other people rotating in and out, including Representative Justin Pearson out of Memphis, who I really like, Ron Insana, the Ravel. Who am I forgetting? I'm sure there's somebody else. Oh, Mark Elias. Me and Mark Elias were super optimistic and positive today, which is strange and uncharacteristic of us. Maybe it's just because I'm getting ready for that LSU game tomorrow. I'm just trying to get in there.

right, mine space. Anyway, we talked about the economy a bit, thrown inside. I thought that was pretty good. We talked to redistricting and Elias at the end. But I think the most important part that we talked about at the beginning was the reaction to the events of this week and the issues with our gun culture and the questions around Donald Trump's power grab, an attempt to send troops into, I think what we should now expect is blue cities and red states because he thinks that will be easier to do. So I had a lot of thoughts on that front. And I think there are a lot of real threats there.

I think there are a lot of green shoots, a lot of signs of weakening. Not don't get too excited, but like of Trump's ability to just run roughshod over everyone. I think the wheels of that are starting to slow a little bit. That's something to monitor. So anyway, a bunch of stuff ahead.

Stick around for that. Subscribe to this feed. Please. Please subscribe to this feed. I want to bring you into this. I think it was the mayor of Chicago who said in a live press conference there after Donald Trump had threatened to go into Chicago. He said, I think the quote was something like Chicago will have a crime problem as long as red states have a gun problem. That problem is in our faces as folks in the political arena and as folks in the news business almost every day. Obviously with the high profile. I was shooting this week of Charlie Kirk, but on the same day, there was a school shooting. Back to school, ushers in a tragic season of school shootings. And I wonder what your thoughts are about any opportunity in this moment to include a

conversation about guns. Well, I think we have to include a conversation about guns. Whether or not it goes anywhere, I don't know. But, you know, this is a uniquely American. crisis, it's a uniquely American problem. In some of these cases, you know, gun laws might not have made any additional difference. And the case in Utah was a bolt action rifle and it was somebody that's over 21 and, you know, they only fired one shot. And I think there's probably a lot of other things about our culture we could get into with that assassination attempt. But

all of these other ones that have not, that has not been the case, you know, and there have been common sense gun laws that could have stopped this. And, you know, I think that there was a period of time in the past where both parties had much more healthy responses to this kind of violence that were politically popular. And the Democrats, I think, were really in the sweet spot when they were talking about supporting more funding for police and simultaneously getting guns out of the hands of criminals, getting guns out of the hands of people didn't want them. It's the assault weapons ban. And it's like the 90s Democratic platform that I think was very popular. The Republicans, after the Parkland shooting, it was Rick Scott, who's in the Senate, who passed red flag laws.

This isn't that long ago, right, that we had common ground on this, but people have really given up on it. And I think it's because people are so beaten down. I understand why people are beaten down by this. They feel like there's no solution. As you mentioned, I feel like every back-to-school year, after-school season brings these ghoulish attacks and these horrible attacks, and you don't want to deal with it,

and you don't want to, you know, go out there and bang your head against the wall for nothing. But that's like the nature of these kind of political movements. You know, things take time. And I do think that losing that conversation, and immediately after these shootings, not talking about guns and instead talking about rhetoric or, you know, talking about sending in the military, right? Like, there are all these other issues that are not going to solve the problem that come to the forefront. And I think it's important that we fight against that. Amen. Let me follow up with you, though, Tim, about one of the other issues that Trump seems intent on normalizing.

Again, this interview this morning was one where the big headline Trump seemed intent on making was the news about a suspect being in custody in the murder of Charlie Kirk. But until that incident, one of the biggest stories we've all been covering and grappling with is Trump's willingness to send the military into American city. So let me read you this from Shelby County mayor urging the Republican governor to reconsider. Mayor Harris said local government would welcome federal and state help to fight crime, specifically noting Governor Lee's action, sending more state troopers to Memphis, but he continued to have individuals with military fatigues, semi-automatic weapons, and armored vehicles patrolling our streets is way too far, anti-democratic and anti-American.

I think we're on the brink of something that is going to change all our appreciation for freedoms. The way you can take away democratic liberties is to make sure people don't have a way to protest, And the way to do that is to patrol the streets with military vehicles. I'm not sure how many weeks it's been since Donald Trump rolled military vehicles and troops into the nation's capital. But there does seem to be an interest in making that look normal, and that is not normal. Yeah, it isn't. And a resounding yes, and to the mayor there in Memphis. And I'll defer to my co-panelist representative Pearson on the details of Memphis,

But, like, at the broadest strokes, it's a similar story, right? And he is discussed sending the troops into my city as well as in New Orleans now, and it's a similar story is playing out that might happen. And it is this authoritarian coastplay, right? It says, like, they're putting on costumes and they want to seem tough as part of this slow-rolling authoritarian takeover. Like, that's what this is all about. It is not about crime.

And I think that's just important to say clearly. This is not about solving crime. If you wanted to solve crime and you believe that more law enforcement are needed in these cities, and surely there are some cities where that's the case, the federal government and Congress could fund a cop's bill and could fund, you know, community engagement programs. They could fund a bunch of stuff. They have a budget coming up here in two weeks.

They control the House and the Senate. They control the White House. they want to act as if they have no agency when it comes to the actual policies of these cities what they want to do is say they're going to blame the mayors of these predominantly back cities say we're going to send in the troops to deal with your problems because you can't deal with them

and we're not going to actually do anything that helps you we're just going to try to scare and intimidate people like that's what they're doing and my senator from here in Louisiana John Kennedy was talking about how Democratic mayors don't appreciate cops and that's why we got to do this I'm like Republicans run Louisiana

There's Republicans that run Tennessee. If you want more cops in Memphis, fund more cops in Memphis and New Orleans. If you want to do an authoritarian takeover and you want to do fascist, you know, costuming, then send in the trips. And I think that we can see what their real priorities are. Tim Miller, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, not as powerful and influential as it once was, but I'll read it to you anyway. Quote, our friends on Wall Street and in Washington keep saying that inflation is banquished, as they hope, plead for lower interest rates. Yet the economic data aren't bearing out their optimism. As the Labor Department's Consumer Price Report for August, revealed

Thursday, consumer prices climbed 0.4 percent in August, 2.9 percent over the past year, both the most since January. Trump's tariffs are clearly driving up some prices, especially in food and goods. Businesses report that they've run through inventory. They stockpiled before Trump's tariff barrage and they're starting to pass on their higher cost to consumers. At the same time, Trump's restrictive immigration policies are contributing to labor shortages, which may be pushing up wages and prices. It's a, you know what, storm. It is all because of Donald Trump this time.

In his first term, there was some blame you could attribute to a novel coronavirus pandemic. This is all because of Donald Trump's policy choices. why do you think that the political laws of gravity leave it as some sort of political mystery whose fault it is? Why is Trump allowed so much running room with his voters and with Wall Street that Democratic politicians are never allowed? Well, I think that's a question about whether that will bear out over next year. And I think that there's some answers to that. I think that the Democrats, there's a hostility in the business community still, business elites, et cetera, towards Democrats, and they feel like, you know, whatever they can play

ball with Trump, so they think that he's a businessman that they can deal with. It's all this, I sound ridiculous even kind of making, defending their point, but I think that is their perspective, right? And I think the question is, will they continue to hold that perspective if it gets worse and worse, right? So I think the economy is right now bad for, in certain sectors, as the caller to Sean Hannity show. mentioned. It's bad in the farm sector. I think it's bad for, you know, people on a fixed income, you know, who are still dealing with prices going up. It's bad in certain sectors. But, you know, if you're at Wall Street, if you're one of the big tech CEOs, right, like you're not really

experiencing any tangible negative consequences at this point yet. And the question is, you know, does the tune change if they start to? And I think that's the problem that Howard Lutnik faces with his plan to try to take credit for it at the end of the year or whatever next year is it the economy's getting worse. Yeah, the economy's getting worse, right? And the inflation, as the Wall Street Journal mentioned, I think Ron mentioned, a lot of companies were, you know,

eating the cost a little bit. Maybe in the hopes that, you know, the spring court will overrule it or the better senses will prevail. But eventually this stuff is going to be passed even more down to consumers. There's nothing else that Trump is doing that is going to help the economy. And none of the rest of the agenda is, I hate that I'm kind of retweeting the Wall Street Journal here,

but everything that they laid out about the immigration regime, the one big beautiful bill, none of that is no relief is coming for working class people in their agenda. So I don't, I think the plan of wait until January is not going to go as well as they help. We'll put it on our calendars just in case. I get calls by a lot of people in the Democratic Party. I get calls by a lot of people in states. but fundamentally my job as a lawyer is to ensure that there are free and fair elections and that

Republicans are not able to rig the election rules. They're not able to subvert the outcome of elections. That's what I did for Joe Biden after the 2020 election when Donald Trump tried to do it. It's what I've done in these redishing cases. And then my other job is as an advocate for democracy and speaking out with you and with others and being a cheerleader to make sure that we do not simply accept to what Republicans are doing as a status quo given, but rather we have the tools in our arsenal to fight back. I mean, Tim Miller, this ties directly to your comments at the top of the hour about sort of the either the intended effect or the knock-on effect of normalizing tanks in American cities, that it either creates fear that is accepted, creates fear that people grow numb to,

And the whole thing is atmospheric leading up to the midterms and potentially the presidential election beyond that. Yeah, look, I'll be uncharacteristically optimistic, too, on this last segment here. Mark has inspired me. It's a Friday. That has worked. It's not worked as much as we want, right? But the pushback in the courts after L.A.

has led to Trump backing off of Chicago. Like at the top of the hour, why are we talking about Memphis? As Rev mentioned at the top, because of pushback in Chicago from community, because of Cushchecks in the courts after he invaded L.A., now he's like looking, he's going to look at, okay, this isn't worth, this is not worth the hassle. I'm going to look at maybe a more ripe target, right? So that doesn't mean he's going to quit, but it means that you demonstrate that they will back down on various things. We've talked about this before. They backed down on the El Salvador prison, the Gulag. They wouldn't have done that if people didn't speak up, if there weren't at court, if they weren't legal attacks against them. Right now, there's nobody in Sycote that we, set there. So that's not a huge win, but it's better than the alternative. Like, they were planning on using that as a place to send lots of migrants. So I think that's true in this case, too, in the redistricting. It's tougher. You know, to Mark's point, and I think that Maryland should be doing this. I'll throw out in names of a couple states. Illinois should be doing this. You know, fingers crossed, the things go well in Virginia this year in the fall. Maybe

Virginia can look into it next year. So I think there are fewer states where Democrats can do this, but the ones where they can, they should be. And I obviously fully wholeheartedly endorse Mark's effort to try to put some, what is it, tar in the spokes of the Republicans in these other states. I did not have it on my bingo card. The two of you would be the optimism carriers, but I'll take it. Don't get used to it. I'll take it this week.

Mark Elias, thank you for joining us. Tim Miller, Ravel. Thank you for spending the whole hour with me today.