Bulwark Takes - This Might Be Their Most Brazen Ethics Violation Yet

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein break down Fox News' latest defense of Elon Musk, the Tesla stock slump, and the administration’s odd fixation with promoting Musk's businesses. Ethics, politics, and PR spin—this one has it all!

Hey guys, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with managing editor Sam Stein for your late night Fox News react and respond. Last night it was Laura Ingram, tonight it's Howard Lutnick and Jesse Waters. Boy, Sam, I guess I want to play for everybody the clip of Howard Lutnick, our Commerce Secretary, who's really out there quite a bit for a Commerce Secretary. He's got to be the most visible Commerce Secretary. They're all out there. They're all out there. Yeah. Pam Bondi is out there. You know,

it's like, I just, I've been getting a lot of luck in my life, I guess I'm saying, but I want to play this clip. But before we do, do you want to set, set the scene for anybody about what,

what, what's happening here? Yeah. Well, I mean, the backstory is that Tesla, Elon Musk's company is under a lot of pressure from uh buyers and from uh democrats who are saying you know use you know use it as a form of protest dump your tesla don't

buy tesla even tim wallace is out there being like look at how tesla stock is going down we can talk about that so nice yeah he liked he made him feel tingly um and so this is becoming a thing and then there's these acts of vandalism and and basically the white house and the administration has taken upon themselves to try to pump up uh tesla's reputation and shares and stock and purchases obviously donald trump had a uh like what are we going to call this like a tesla showcase like a car show a car show showdown yeah we had like five teslas which one do i like the cyber truck uh but then there's something that was obviously unseemly but like then lutnik gets on tonight and it's like even more unseemly because he's just basically like invest your money oh it's late night chilling it's sham

wow yeah it's unbelievable okay i'm about to play the clip one more thing one more piece of context it's important and we'll get into the details on the flip side but a fox news poll is out just talking about how how unpopular elon and doge is even with independence right so it's so tesla's stock price is down tesla's popularity is down. That's related directly to Elon's administration work, and that popularity is down. And so they're in crisis comms mode here. They're in crisis comms meets kind of home shopping network mode. Here's the Commerce Secretary with Jesse Waters. If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla.

It's unbelievable that this guy's stock is this cheap. It'll never be this cheap again. When people understand the things he's building, the robots he's building, the technology he's building, people are gonna be dreaming of today and Jesse Waters and thinking, gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk's stock. I mean, who wouldn't invest in Elon Musk?k you gotta be kidding all right there that man he's in the cabinet what's happening well i just it's like sometimes you kind of look at these things and you're like how big a deal is this and then you're like this is a really this is like a big deal and like we don't even need to go back that far to understand like that

this is a big deal because i remembered instantaneously back in 2017 kellyanne conway who was not the commerce secretary she's counsel to the president at the time she went on fox and was hawking ivanka trump's you know clothing lines from the white house with the fox news interview and it was a big deal because people were like wait a second it was ivanka's made in China clothes, right? Wasn't it the Ivanka? Yes. Well, that was the secondary big deal.

But the first big deal was that you're not – you really aren't supposed to use the office, the office of the presidency to push private businesses that are directly tied to the president. I mean it's just crazy. And so at the time time this was treated as a huge deal and we and i went and i looked it up and jason chaffetz who was the chair of the house oversight committee at the time republican he's he was republican from from um utah utah right yeah so he says he sends us he sends a letter says conway statements clearly violate the ethical principles for federal employees and are unacceptable. But he himself said it's absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong.

It is over the top. Jason Chaffetz. Who ended up on the Fox show. He was now on Fox. Everything is circulating. And then in the same thing, you sent me this article because the one that jumped out to me is that then White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, spicy. Spicy, what did he say? He said that Conway had been counseled over her remarks and how it was inappropriate.

So again, just the fact – it's not as if they were more ethical then or whatever, but the fact that they felt the need to do the pretense of ethics. Right. It is a notable shift from that to just fuck it like we're just gonna do showcase showdown on the lawn and what the thing is that conway's comments aren't even like on the same level because right she was talking about buying clothes and and ivanka was like a senior advisor to trump but not really that like she wasn't at the elon level this is the commerce secretary again the person who was in charge of commerce a senior advisor to Trump, but not really that. She wasn't at the Elon level. This is the Commerce Secretary.

Again, the person who was in charge of commerce in the country, going out there and encouraging people to buy stock in the company of the biggest donor to the president, who happens to be the biggest advisor to the president, who happens to be throwing- And happens to be the biggest recipient of government money. It's all unbelievable. David Frum, friend of the pod, points out also i think very aptly that it's already a very serious ethical offense

as evidenced by the fact that kelly and conway was reprimanded for less but if letnick owns the stock it might be it's a perfect dump yeah this might be an sec violation there's reason to believe he does own the stock i know his kids already in business It's a pumpkin dump. This might be an SEC violation. I'm sure they're going to get rid of it. There's reason to believe he does own the stock. I know his kid's already in business with Trump's kids on the crypto scam. And he does have personal potential. But Frum points out that if he doesn't own the stock, it's bad too because then he's just like duping people. And he doesn't actually think it's a good stock.

He's just like, you know people and he doesn't actually think it's a good stock he's just like you know what go help elon out it's all it's all really bad and grotesque uh and it's also like really tacky too like you shouldn't do that you know me and jbl did the video we're talking about the private business problems for tesla and they're real but this box poll um you know is i think pretty striking because the way that I, they obviously, I kind of tried to game the poll wording in a way that would be sympathetic to them. I may name it as overstated, but they framed it up way. Like, for example, they're asking, Do you think the national debt is a crisis or a major problem? Six and 10? Say yes, right? It's like they, they set it up in a way you know that's like you sort of condition the response to be like oh i do care about the debt and oh there's this thing that's going after the debt and like that way you get engender good feelings basically for a bunch

and then even after that still like elon musk's uh elon musk's numbers are like totally underwater with the voters. And I just – like eventually you would think that Trump and him would find the same level. Well, it's kind of interesting because I think – I guess I didn't say the actual number. 58% disapprove of Elon Musk. That's very bad. I guess I didn't say the actual number. 58% disapprove of Elon Musk. That's very bad. So that's the inverse.

Like when they ask people, is the debt a problem? Should we have a program to stop the debt? It was like 60-40 in favor. And Musk's favorability is 40-60 against. So there's like one-fifth of the respondents basically are people that could be on the side of a department of government efficiency if they did it, if they did it. My theory of the case, this is my theory of the case is that Republicans kind of, and I don't know if they are aware that this is happening so much as they're just doing it intrinsically. You know, there's like,

they probably have some general discomfort with what Trump's doing in the aggregate, but they like Trump. Are they're happy that Trump's president still. And a way for them to exhibit that discomfort with the direction of Trump's presidency, they kind of say, well, I'm not totally on board with how Elon's going about things.

And he kind of becomes a conduit for them to express their discomfort without having to admit that Trump empowered him. And so Elon gets- That's good psychology, Sam. That's good armchair psychology. I thought about that a lot. But like, look, I mean, I think if you chisel down on these poll numbers, I mean, you can

see that there is discomfort because, and this one was the biggest one, seven in 10 of respondents say they expect a recession this year. This includes the majority of Democrats, that's 93% and independents, 72%. But half of Republicans expect it. So that number really stood out to me because that's like Republicans basically like it's not going totally well. But I don't want to blame Trump necessarily for that. Like I kind of want to blame Elon. And so Elon takes the brunt of it.

Now, the question is, does Trump like it? Again, we've talked about the human shield element of this. I will note, Joe Pertikone had a piece exclusive on this VoteLets ad going after all the doge cuts. The ad doesn't mention Trump once. It just mentions Elon. That's a Democratic allied group that put out a minute-long ad targeting House Republicans, and they're just making it all about elon fascinating stuff all right well we'll see what's happening on tomorrow night on prime time i just make one point i just want to make one point about this tesla thing which um it's kind of remarkable the degree to which like different apparatuses of the federal

government have been like engineered to help elon out like the the show on the white house lawn lutnick in the Commerce Department helping him out, DOJ investigating these vandals, the FBI getting in on the act. Like that's four major departments that are all coming in to rescue Tesla. And like, look, I'm not supportive of the vandalism and the fires and all that stuff,

but like that's a fair amount of government resources devoted to one company. I would also, just now that you mentioned it, also, again, like, where you put your time, here's a little preview. If you're on the late night and you made it to the end of this video, you get to have a little secret. I've got Wes Moore on the podcast

from Maryland. I know. Great. And Wes was, and I pre-taped the interview, so we've already spoken. And Wes was talking about in the context of how Democrats lost ground with younger black voters younger black men a lot of folks just weren't didn't feel like the democrats were like really caring about them putting in the time like showing up like putting in the time putting in the

effort demonstrating that you care about their their concerns so i i say that to just say that like this administration that ostensibly like costs than one or two issue for them coming in, depending on whether you think it's immigration or inflation. They haven't demonstrated the level of care and interest on costs that they have on Elon Musk companies. You mentioned the four agencies you can imagine a similar thing trump doing a goopy thing on the white house lawn where he's where he's showing off all the all the companies that have cut costs you know made things cheaper for people doing a pr stunt about that having the commerce secretary you know what i mean like you could do all kinds of gimmicks about groceries or about whatever.

They're not doing any of that. Like where they give their effort is, you know. It's crony capitalism basically if you want to call it that. But, yeah, it's kind of remarkable. Like the biggest thing they've done from like propping up an industry perspective is they've stopped killing chickens, putting bird flu – put the bird flu concerns aside, and they've propped up Tesla. And I really don't recall much else. Oh, Canada. Anyway, all right.

We'll see what happens tomorrow night. I guess we hit Laura, Jesse the last two nights. I guess maybe we'll have to keep our eye on Hannity tomorrow. See what's happening. Pick it up, buddy. All right, guys. We'll see you all then. Subscribe to the feed.

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