Bulwark Takes - They Stopped Fighting. Now Trump Thinks He's Untouchable.

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Sam Stein and Sarah Longwell take on how Trump has broken every source of resistance that once held him back — from corporate America to Congress — and why cowardice, fear, and fatigue have left him acting untouchable. They discuss the Wall Street Journal story about Trump’s growing power, the CEOs too scared to cross him, and the moment he was even too extreme for RFK Jr.

Hey, everybody. It's me Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwark, and I have a treat. I rarely get to do this. I'm joined by Sarah Longwell. She usually tries to avoid me. I don't know why. It's not true. It's true. You never ask. You never ask, Sam. Every day I come in and I say, can I get a video time with Sarah? And I'm told she doesn't want to do one with you. Just JVL. It's not a thing that happens. It's true. It's true. Anyways, I finally got her to do with me. And we're going to be talking about a story that tickled me and I'm probably angered Sarah a little bit. I was going to say, it didn't tickle me. Oh, there's some funny parts.

There are some funny parts. I'll get to that. It's in the Wall Street Journal. It's by Josh Dossi, who is one of the great chroniclers of the Trump White House. This one's about Congress, though. More or less, it's about Trump basically realizing that he's made Congress, his bitch. It's called Trump Feeling in Bold and pushes agenda into higher gear. Sarah, you read it.

Is my description wrong? Is that not the base? of this piece? Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm trying to think about exactly what you found funny. I think there's a part. I'll get to it. Don't worry. Okay, okay.

Because it really is just, it's, it's sad. It's about the complete and total capitulation. Right. Of the business community, of Congress about, it's Trump basically sitting there being like, I can't believe it. They fought me last time. They gave me such a hard time. Now everything's easy.

I can do everything. And he's absolutely right. I mean, there is no pushback coming from anywhere other than, I guess, the fact that Democrats are being unwilling to fund Congress right now. We did an awesome show in New York over the weekend. And one of the questions that we were going around the horn on was, you know, who's surprised you pleasantly? And I would say Democrats during this shutdown have surprised me pleasantly, but only because it's the very first real sign of life. from them. And so there's a reason that Donald Trump is able to walk over everybody. And it's because everyone has just decided, you can't fight this guy, especially, and this is where it comes from.

It's not that Trump has a mandate, mandate, but he did win the popular vote. And he did win with all of his various baggage. And I think the lesson that especially our corporate leaders have taken from that and our congressional leaders have taken from that is like, there's no stop in this guy. We're just going to have to take it for the next three and a half years and then we'll see what happens. But nobody is acting like their hairs on fire or like there's something serious they can and should be trying to do to push back on it. Yeah, it's an interesting point. I hadn't really thought of, but if you were a corporate leader in 2017, and Trump had just

won, but not with the popular vote, and immediately you saw the Women's March and the backlash to this and the shock and revulsion and people going out to the airports and protesting the Muslim band stuff and just like there was this clearly a collective revulsion over this and you could basically say oh the consumer sentiment is clear like if I want to keep my customers I got to be you know seen as not acquiesce to this guy if you're a corporate CEO in 2025 guy just won the popular vote and you know there's little of that and you probably think you know I got to actually stay in this man's good graces because he's vindictive so I do think there's different incentives here

Yeah. And it's, look, he's vindictive and Democrats aren't really. Like, they're a lot more afraid of Trump and him being in power in a way that they're just not afraid of Democrats. And they're afraid of Trump voters in a way that they're not afraid of. I mean, like, I think the Washington Post and Disney Plus and some of these places where people have been able to flex their disdain for Donald Trump by, you know, canceling a subscription. Like that gets Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. But I would say that the zeal and passion and commitment of MAGA voters to say taking down a brand like Bud Light for having a trans spokesperson. Or Netflix recently. Or Netflix. Yeah. I just think they have made Republican voters, Republican leaders, Republican influencers on social media. They have been feeling themselves and they have got everybody running scared that they have the power to take them down. There's a real sense among these guys that the culture has shifted.

decidedly away from the incentives that they thought were there before to be more, I don't want to sort of play into the woke stuff, but just more socially conscious as a corporation that that was the way to consumers' hearts. And they do not think that anymore. Right. And I don't want to go tip or tap, but like Democrats, liberals were doing this, right? But it was not to the, I don't know if it was to this degree.

For instance, you know, they demanded like major league baseball and I'll have its all-star game in Atlanta, right, because of the voting legislation there. They weren't saying don't ever show up at Major League Baseball games, but maybe they were. I couldn't miss it. The other thing is collective action as an issue. So this story has this incredible anecdote where all the tech CEOs were just really upset with some of the worker visa policies that Trump was going to be implementing. And they're kind of all waiting to say something to the guy when they met with him. And then they met with him and no one had the, you know, audacity to speak up and say anything. It was for the $100,000 per H-1B visa policy that they were going to introduce.

And so they just stayed quiet. They just sat there and they just didn't do anything. And so he doesn't get pushback because no one wants to be the single person who has to start the pushback. Yeah. So, and I don't know that it's audacity so much it's just like the guts, right? I know you're just looking for the right word. Like, everybody has shown themselves, like, they have been weighed, they have been measured, they have been found wanting when it comes to courage, right? Like, they are, they are enormous cowards.

I do also, what freaks me out is on one hand, I get in a fight with JVL every time he tries to talk about Trump 2028. Like Trump's, Trump's going to run again, Trump's going to be the nominee. And I'm always like, I'll just say I want to make a distinction between that, which I think is not a real threat. and different threats, which is Trump just not leaving. Like the idea of, like, like, part of what I was thinking about when I was reading this story is about how Trump feels not just emboldened, but this idea of like, no one is standing in my way. No one is going to stand up to like everything he pressure tests. There's nobody to, there's no police that come in and say, you cannot do this. There's nobody.

Yeah, everybody's just like, sir, with tears in your eyes, go ahead and do this to us. Well, let me push back. There's been a couple, so yes, I agree with that. But like, this is such a weak pushback, so take it. Well, go ahead. Give it to me. The Jimmy Kimmel thing. Like, Ted Cruz did speak up and say, oh, this is not good.

Don't like it. Don't want it. And then Brendan Carr kind of took his foot off the gas, right? Like, when they have faced a little bit of pushback, it has worked somewhat. I don't know. Oh, that's not what I thought you were going to push back on. I thought you were going to push back on this contention that I'm, I was, I'm mistaken into think that people are overflowing this idea like Trump.

How do you know what the hell? Yeah. No, no, no. No, no. No, but this I do believe. No, actually, I don't think that's weak pushback. I think that's good push. This idea of that people have agency, when people do push back, right? Because this is the problem. He's being lulled into a pretty, a real sense of security. Like nobody's going to stand up to him. And as soon as people do, they do back off, right? Like, Jimmy Kimmel, not only was reinstated by ABC because of the backlash and the it was I think to some degree it was the call was inside Bob Eiger's house his wife who was a big free speech advocate was like you need to stop this I also think all of the canceled Disney Plus subscriptions the backlash in general I think being out

there in Hollywood where there were a lot of people who were friends with Jimmy Kimmel saying knock this like so like pushback really does matter and uh I think that it is like I'm looking forward to the no king's because my hope is that it isn't an enormous showing of force and by force, I just mean like bodies in the street saying we don't approve of this. Because I do think we need to turn the vibes around because the vibes really are, nobody can stop Trump. Nobody's doing anything about Trump. And that is no good. Yeah, there's sporadic. There's like little bits of pushback here and there, but it's nothing major. So like you have Kevin Stipp being like, oh, the National Guard should not be deployed from Texas to Illinois. You have, obviously, the Ted Cruz instance.

Occasionally, a Republican will speak out about the appropriations process and be like, we don't like this, but like, that's it. I mean, that's it. And he just says, upon saying, I mean, I guess like the Indiana Republicans haven't done redistricting yet. But we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here for moments. So I think we are. They do see. There are some people. So one of the interesting things to me is when there is an admonishment about Trump shouldn't do this. They don't say for pure because it's wrong reasons. It's mostly because what happens if it's turned on us. Yeah, Democrats could do this to us. And honestly, I think that I think that I think that is both BS, but I also think it is important that people have some sense of, and this is why I don't love

the sort of fate of complete about we're not going to have elections in 2026 or won't be, you know, Fair 20. No, they have to believe, we have to believe you to do everything. Winning Congress in 26 is enormously important for oversight reasons. Donald Trump is so fearful of oversight from Democrats, so fearful that they will start to have hearings, that what they are doing to people, dragging them in front of Congress, going after Comey, going after political enemies, the people in Trump's shop should be afraid that that kind of turnabout turns into fair play. They should should not want that to happen. And I think that Democrats should say, should be clear, like, you guys break these rules. Like, if these are the new rules, it's a real problem.

And I do think, I've never liked this because I always feel like when it gets into a real, you know, Hatfields versus McCoy's, you know, Capulets versus Montague's, we're in a, in just a backlash, like a vortex of backlashes that leads straight to the bottom. On the other hand, I don't think you can decide that if Republicans think there is no world in which there is accountability for their actions. They are acting entirely like there is no accountability for what they're doing. And you have to reinstate the idea that there can be accountability for Stephen Miller, for the corruption, for breaking the law, for Christine Nome and the Hatch Act. Like, Christy Gnome right now at airports is just, there's a video that's like the normal video when TSA's there. You see that Mayorkis was there before and now you see Christy Gnome and just somebody talking about the importance of the safety, whatever, fine.

And now she's saying the Democrats in it, that's illegal. You're not allowed to do it. But because there's nobody who goes and enforces that, they think they can do everything. And so, man, I will tell you the only way out of this is if Democrats do win, I would like that. to have a serious discussion about reining in executive power. It's very hard to do when it is your team who's in charge, but that is part of what is going to be required is rolling back executive of power.

I hear you. Do you want to know what I thought was funny about the piece now? Yeah, tell me what I was funny about the piece. I'm going to read the piece. It's a perverse humor, which is my specialty. It goes into sort of the differences between Trump 1.0, Trump 2.0 and Josh dossier writes. And Trump's first term aides kept Robert F. Kenny Jr.

from working on anti-vaccine effort after he met with Trump at Trump Tower. He might remember that in 2017. This time, Kennedy is the Health and Human Services Secretary, and Trump is willing to go even further. This is where it got dark and humorous for me, I guess. Minutes before Trump in an Oval Office news conference repeatedly instructed pregnant women not to take Tylenol and offered his thoughts on changing the childhood vaccine schedule, Kennedy tried to talk him out of making such broad proclamations about childhood vaccines,

advisor said. Trump didn't listen. and instead he said he believed the schedule needed to change. So he's so crazy. He's too crazy even for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccines. That's the shit we're in. Yeah, because he doesn't care about people. He doesn't care about their kids.

He doesn't care what happens to anybody. And Sam, let's just talk for a second. I want to contrast this. I'm watching a lot of people today feel like they got to hand it to Trump. They feel like they got to say, hey, you know, Trump really helped get these hostages home and broker this peace deal in the Middle East. Now, I want to tell you, I am thrilled. The hostages are home.

I'm heartbroken for the children who've lost their lives. But I am glad that there is this ceasefire, that there's going to be humanitarian aid, that we might be working away out of this. The idea, though, that Donald Trump's, you know, smart, strategic mind on this, you know, really, I, A, object to that line of thinking, but because I don't think Donald, this is Donald Trump, other than pursuing his Nobel Peace Prize, has, does not care about what anyone is doing. And also, he made a lot of big bombastic claims about how he would immediately be ending things, both the Israel, Palestine, but also Ukraine and Russia, which of course he has not done.

And so, like, let's not go overboard and having to hand it to him. but it also smacks to me of, look, the guy's president of the United States who's basically taking unilateral authority, he ought to be able to get a couple things done that aren't terrible. Like, but that doesn't negate. Like, I don't think people should talk about the wins without the context of the fact that he currently is sending troops into American cities for no reason, even when judges have told him it's wrong.

Like the idea that you have to say, like to be on, to be a good neutral observer or just a good balls and strikes type that Donald Trump really got this one. No, but I just think we should be circumspect before we give him, uh, too much credit personally for these things. No, totally hear you. I had a really interesting conversation actually with Dan Shapiro, right before, uh, you and I got on to talk. Dan is the, uh, former ambassador to Israel under Joe Biden.

And we talked a bit about this, what actually facilitated the end to the conflict. And the sort of psychic blow that it took on both, you know, obviously Gaza and Israel, but also on the U.S. foreign policy apparatus, like what it means for managing that region and affecting the U.S. Israel relationship. And it's deeply complicated. Obviously, a lot of things went into this. One of them may have been Trump, but he's not solely responsible for getting us to this point. There's a variety of different factors, including the other Arab states.

uh you know israeli leadership amos you know they had to be brought to the table somehow at some point so i encourage people to listen to that as i do encourage people to subscribe to our feed uh where you can get stuff like this sarah see it's not so bad being on with me it's not it's not so bad we didn't even talk about the second article though i was like well the second article was just the second like a reiteration of the first right it was just sort of like oh congress is lame why did you have a thoughts on that well i just had one thought can i just all close Let me, let me set it up this, because the second article is the Washington Post piece, kind of the same, but it's mostly focused on the appropriations process and how Trump has given Congress the middle finger on that one, too. It's called Congress losing its grip on the power to spend America's money. What did you think about that one? Why was that? What did that get your goat? Here's why. And it's, I'm going to apologize in advance. This is a very political sciencey take. But I just do want to reiterate something. I've talked about this before, but it's important to me.

The thing about Congress lying down is that our system is literally built on the idea that the ambition of each of the branches of government, right? Our separation of powers, our checks and balances, they are predicated on the idea that the ambition of each branch will counteract the ambition of the others. Our checks and balances rely on having a Congress that is obsessed with. its own power, that is protective of its own power. When you lose that, we lose the fundamental checks and balances that guide our system that undergird liberal democracy, American liberal democracy. It's a very fundamentally American idea of these checks and balances. And when you have a Supreme Court, but most importantly, a Congress, when you have a Congress that does not do its job, that allows Trump to do pocket recisions and to control the power of the purse and to decide

everything and ignore things that Congress did like TikTok's illegal. Like when those things happen, we do not have an American government with checks and balances anymore. And so that is why I want to talk about that. Well, and also, and I'll just say this, it's like this whole government shutdown debate has centered around health care and the Obama care subsidies and whether this is the appropriate vehicle for cutting a deal or not on that. And I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because to me, I mean, obviously that stuff's important. But like fundamentally, if they're going

to pursue a policy for decisions, if they're going to disrespect Congress's authority to make a deal on appropriations, if they're going to say you can pass a spending bill with 60 votes and Senate, but we'll just undo it with 50 votes, then what the hell is the incentive to cut any deal at all. Like, why would a Democrat say, yeah, sure, I agree to this level, knowing fully well that in two weeks, Mike Johnson will just say, you know what, let Donald Trump decide what to spend and whatnot. So that's right. I just don't get it. Like, have some dignity as a lawmaker. If you can't protect your institution on this very basic ground, then your institution will have no authority. Zip. And that is, they do seem to have decided they do not care about

they don't care. They don't care. They don't care. It's crazy. all right sarah thank you so much appreciate it everyone subscribe to the feed where you get great conversations like this talk to you soon