Bulwark Takes - Tim Absolutely LOVES This New Anti-Rogers Ad

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

Tim Miller shares highlights from his MS NOW appearance with John Heilemann and Jessica Taylor—Trump's political struggles, a scorching anti-war ad targeting Mike Rogers, Bill Cassidy's confirmation vote, and a state-by-state look at the Senate map, from Georgia to Texas to Kansas.

Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the bulwark here. I was on with Nicole yesterday and my friend John Heilman. And I said we wanted to give some of that to you because it was so good. We talked quite a bit about Trump's political struggles, what's behind them, why he's struggling, classic John Heilman style. Give you a little behind the scenes during the show. We're all talking on Live TV on a panel. And during the show, Heilman's still texting the additional takes. about how Magas had learned helplessness, he said.

It texts me. After this many years of being a rubber stamp, they've forgotten how to be anything else. Hell yeah, Halman. I totally agree with that. He's just such a funny guy. I love howlman. So it's a little behind the curtain for you.

After that, we do some just pure politics talk, Senate map talk with a Jessica Taylor over at Cook. She's great. And I want to kind of expand remarks a little bit on the Michigan race because there were two videos yesterday that caught my eye. And I want to play them for you. This one comes from Senate Majority Pack, and there might be some side effects. Let's watch.

There comes a time in life when things start to slow down, when you just don't have the same energy you had 20 years ago. But there's a way to bring some excitement back. What has not helped is the fact that the United States hasn't strongly said that military intervention is still on the table. Introducing Endless War from Mike Rogers. Boy, it's really hard when you have to justify every minute of the war, I think, for the president. With endless war, you can feel like yourself again.

I think when people think about boots on the ground, they're thinking big maneuver elements, divisions, brigades, battalions, no one's talking about that, although I don't think we should eliminate it. Side effects may include death, economic hardship, and global instability. Some patients have reported fuel shortages, which may cause inflation. Endless war has not been proven to make Americans any safer. Ask your doctor if endless war is right for you. I love this out.

I love it. I love it because it's doing something I feel like I've been begging for and shouting for for months now, which is recapture the mantle of the anti-war party if you were the Democrats. Like the Democrats continue to have this thing where they feel like they've got to bitch themselves up because the Republicans code is like the strong pro-military party and the Democrats, you know, don't or whatever. This is out of date thinking.

This is out of date thinking for the Democrats. Okay. Now there's a lot of voters out there that's wrong, but for some reason, see, like the Democrats is like the establishment, you know, kind of military industrial complex party and Trump and as the anti-war party. It was stupid. They're all coming to their senses now, I hope. but you got to bang them over the head with it. And like, I'm going to be probably towards the middle of most Democrats on actual, like, military policy choices.

But like the Republicans handed you one on a platter right here. So take it. They start the stupidest war imaginable. So be 100% against it. Mock them. Ridicule them. Talk about how humiliate. It's humiliating it is that they are left to beg Iran for a deal.

They've been defeated by people that are like, these are moldos. They're in caves. They don't even have communication. We don't even have to talk to them. Their economy is collapsing. We're going to be able to take them out in one day. Well, they beat you.

The guys in the caves. And who was cheerleading at the whole way? Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers. Loves the Iran war. Wanted to do the Iran war before Trump. Trump did it. Was excited about it.

Now he's heading back in there. He wants to be back in the Senate to rubber stamp it to spend more of your money on the stupidest war imaginable that is making life worse for Americans. It's making us less safe. That's ruining our alliances abroad. That's Mike Rogers brand. Endless war should be my Rogers brand. Trump rubber stamp loves stupid wars. Great at.

Great at. There's no caveats. There's no like, well, the Iranians do have a history of supporting terrorists. Like, yes, of course they do. Just go for the jugular. That ad is good. More. More ads like that.

I could even punch that ad up a little bit, but I'll take it. Endless War. That's really, I think it's the first ad I've seen that's made me happy in months from the Democrats. So great job, Senate majority pack thumbs up over on the Republican side. This is a very long video. We're just going to play a little bit of it. It's a weird video that Mike Rogers put out after the primary on Tuesday. If you're among the majority of Democratic voters that woke up on Wednesday feeling, well,

hopeless, because the person who won does not represent your values, well, just no. There is still hope. Michigan deserves a senator who is ready to sit with you, hear from you, and represent you. The parents across Michigan who won an education system that sets up their kids for success. You have a home with us. To grandparents across Michigan who are heartbroken from watching their kids and grandkids leave the state, you have a home with us. To young people who are looking for real solutions to solve our housing affordability

crisis, you have a home with us. To working families who don't want higher taxes and lower paychecks, well, you have a home with us. And to the vast majority of people across Michigan who do not want to throw their support behind a campaign filled with anger, divisiveness, calls for violence, and the views that are out of touch with your values, well, you have a home with us. The fight is far greater than just left versus right. The fight is for the very soul of our nation. Over the next 90 days, I'm going to work hard to earn your trust, to earn your support, and earn your vote. We have a state to save Michigan.

Let's get to work. What is with, I hate everything about this. Watch this on mute. Just play it on mute while I talk. The color palette is terrible. They are washed out. Mrs. Rogers isn't talking, looks unhappy. Mike Rogers doesn't really look happy. Does anybody smile in this? It's like, I feel like just looking at this, watching it on mute, I feel like I'm in trouble. Like, why am I in trouble with mom and dad. I get in trouble on the report card. I get a bad report card. Did the police call? Did they catch me? Because I did the doorbell ditch to our neighbors the other night. Did he find my porn and weed stash underneath the bed? Like, why are you young? Why is the? What is this? It feels like we're in a very rich person's home in the suburbs that has no soul.

and I'm watching them yell at their children. I kind of, it gives me the willies. Substance of that isn't any good either. This idea that like, oh, Democrats are going to come vote for them. Do you have to do more than just fearmongering about Abdul al-Said to win over some Democrats? Like, how about meet the Democrats somewhere on some issue? Talk about how the Democrats were right and their criticisms of Trump on some issue. No, he can't do that because he's just Trump rubber stamp.

Trump has bigger hair than him now. He was going for kind of the same haircut as Trump, but now Trump has the wig. You know, this isn't a place for opium. I'm more bullish on Abdul al-Sahad's electoral chances than I think most people that I'm hearing from. I just, Mike Rogers lost Alyssa locking narrowly in a really good year for Republicans, 2024. This is going to be a really bad year for Republicans. His campaign looks terrible to me.

We'll see. I'm not guaranteeing anything. You know, I think that obviously there's some risks with Syed. We've talked about that. My sense is that this could actually end up being even a potentially comfortable win for El Syed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Great ads in a majority pack. Endless War.

Mike Rogers. Stick it. Stick around for me. Nicole Wallace. John Heilman and more. Bye-bye. Subscribe to the feed. Under 100 days out from the midterm elections in November.

And Donald Trump is struggling. on his central promise to the country and especially his voters, that he would deliver better than any Democrat on affordability and creating a strong economy. When asked about his party's prospects in November, Trump surprisingly acknowledged voters' growing anger. But as to who voters should direct that anger at, it could be him. It's that his fault.

Here's a little bit of his sit-down interview with Punch Bowl News. if I don't run will those people go out and vote and that's the one thing I can't tell I'm going to ask them to a lot of them are very angry and Republicans to be honest with you they're angry I don't know I mean they're angry at Republicans but they're not angry at me they're not angry at me but they are angry at Republicans I don't know why would it be angry Republicans I mean they're not mad at me just the Republicans over there who are so independent from me. It's nonsensical and the polls tell a very different story. Donald Trump is currently seeing his approval rating hit all-time historic lows for him and for any president.

The latest Quinnipiac poll finds only 32% of all Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. A majority of voters don't believe that Trump is focused on the problems facing Americans. new reporting in Politico finds that Trump is essentially hanging Republicans out to dry politically when it comes to his deeply unpopular policies, especially the war with Iran. Quote, the regular messaging guidance, the White House and other parts of the administration provided to Republicans at the start of the war has dwindled to almost no communication at all in recent weeks on how to talk to voters about Iran. That's according to six people with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke anonymous Briefings on campaign trail guidance are scarce and tone-deaf, according to multiple House Republicans.

A tone-deaf response from the Trump administration to American struggles and concerns is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts in front. Puck News, senior political columnist and national affairs analyst John Howlman's back. Also joining us, political analyst and host of the Bullwork podcast, Tim Miller, is back, and the host of Politics Nation, the president of the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton, is here. Tim, I kind of love, I don't even know if it's cognitive dissonance. That might seem like too big of an assumption to make about his cognitive capacity. But I love the, I don't know why they're mad at Republicans.

They're off here doing whatever they do. When they're literally crying as they fall in line behind, Donald Trump on the Senate floor today. Yeah, it is. Who are the people that he's talking to also? On the Mar-a-Lago pool deck, they're mad at Republicans and not him? The gun, the investor golf course. The omelet bar, yeah.

The people that he sees, like, while he's putting, yeah. You see in focus groups from the Texas private? I just, this is like just a classic Trump, only megalomania story. honestly. He doesn't care about these people. He doesn't really care about the midterms. In a different interview yesterday, I believe it was Fox yesterday. They were kind of asking him a similar

line of questioning about whether he's going to be out there during the midterms. He's like, I'm out here now in Nevada, right? They don't have to be. It seems like a waste of my time. He was very dismissive about this campaign event, which was a disaster in its own right, in Nevada yesterday.

And he just, he's moved, he doesn't care about them. And And it's an easy story to tell himself, a comforting story to tell himself, the people still like him. They're mad at these other amorphous Republicans. He can't answer Jake's follow-up question because, like, what would even the substantive answer be, I guess, maybe that they're not giving them what they want on the SAVE Act. I'm just like trying to put myself in his warped brain, which is very challenging. But, you know, the Republicans are doing everything they want besides the SAVE Act, I guess. I mean, Tim, what's interesting to me is how slow Republicans are to respond to the thing that they've been held hostage by for a decade, which is politics.

And the politics of the MAGA movement have reshaped how we cover politics. They've reshaped how we cover elections. They've reshaped how we cover primaries. They've reshaped how MAGA media programs, their programs. They've reshaped how other media outlets staff up their contributors. The only people who haven't responded, though, to the change, which is that MAGA Media is now a toxic political brand. On the generic congressional ballot, Democrats are at 51 percent, Republicans are at 45 percent. That is a loser.

So the MAGA brand is now losing to the generic Democratic brand. How would the country be if Democrats take control of Congress? Again, a plurality, say better off if Democrats win, 38 to 33. How voters are doing financially versus a year ago? This was Donald Trump's one-time sort of ace in the whole political issue. And 49% of Americans say they're worse off, just 34% say they're better off. Again, that 34 down near his rock bottom poll numbers of 32 to 34% in Quinnipiac and AP this week. What is your sense of the inability to respond to the thing that has shaped the Republican Party more than anything else?

And that is the politics of MAGA, which right now suck. They're kind of in a vice, I think, these Republicans. Republican candidates, right? And Trump has left them there, right? Because we're in this situation where it's really bad. I know those poll numbers are really bad, as my colleague Sarah calls it. We're down at the Bush line. That hurts my feelings a little bit on two levels. But anyway, we're there. But it's got to get lower. Like one thing that it's different from Bush is that when Bush's numbers went down after Katrina, as the war started to turn, as the economy started to get bad in the second term, they went down kind of with everybody, right?

Like, Democrats went from 12% support to two, and independents from 50 to 20, and Republicans from 90 to 70, or like it went down across the board. That's still not really, like, happening. And with the core MAGA base, that is the remaining 32. And so you have these candidates,

who I do think are scared of, of, you know, if they try to get away from him too much, then they'll do him themselves. If they stick with him too much, they'll do him themselves. It's really bad in the plains and the farm country

and Roger Marshall's out there talking about in Trump we trust he's been the best and I'm like why Roger Marshall is never a big kind of neocon war person he's out there defending the Iran War why? I think it's because it's like well if I distance from him

it still might not be enough and it might backfire because the MAGABAS will get mad at me and I'm not going to be welcome at the Capitol Hell Club people are going to get mad at me right so why not just ride the course and see if it works out and I think that's what a lot of them are doing. It doesn't really explain the Bill Cassidy of it. And Rev left that word of self-respect, which I think is pretty important. Cassidy today, to me, looked like a man that had lost all

self-respect, a completely broken shell of a man. Because the quote that really stuck with me from the speech was like, before you'd explain why it's going to confirm Blanche, she was like, people are going to criticize me for this. They always do. There are some very real and growing signs today that some of the biggest stars in the Democratic Party have real crossover appeal, pulling in high-profile support from across the political aisle, even in these polarized times. In Georgia, two Republican mayors are breaking with their party to endorse Senator John Ossov. Our friend Greg Blustein reports this in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, quote, Valdosta Mayor Scott James Matheson and Tifton Mayor Julie Smith are not household names,

but their willingness to cross party lines, signal a weakness for a Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins, who has struggled to unite his party and broaden his appeal following a bruising primary fight. Valdosta Mayor Matheson of Valdosta has cited his long record of working with Senator Ossoff says this, quote, I will take heat for this endorsement and it does not matter. There's no way I can turn my back on this relationship. The voters put me in here to do a job, and that man has been absolutely incredible. That man being Senator Ossoff. I want to bring in Cook Political Report

Editor for Senate and Governor's Races. Jessica Taylor, John and Tim are still here. Tim Miller, how do you see the map today? Not too much. I'm a little bit more bullish on Texas than Jessica. There definitely is a lucy with the football element to it, but I think it's

important to remember Beto never led in the polls. There was a lot of positive vibes around Beto. He raised a lot of money. He was close in the polls. I think a lot of people were excited because it was like, wow, Texas, Beto's only down by three. Tala Rico is consistently leading in the polls. So it doesn't mean that he's going to win. We've seen poll misses, of course.

We just saw one this week in Michigan. But I think that Pax is a pretty uniquely bad candidate. I think the Hispanic numbers, you know, the bottoms falling out for Republicans among Hispanics. I think that Tala Rico can appeal to kind of the, you know, suburban college women in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, et cetera. So, you know, I think that that's not completely out of the question. I think that Ossoff, moving to Georgia in that race, I think that race is over, basically. I don't, Mike Collins was a horrific nominee, you know, for all of the garment

ending about some of the Democratic nominee issues. Mike Collins' Twitter feed was like the Twitter feed of a groight, of a college-aged racist groiper. I mean, and I think that's because he handed it over to one of those. and John Ossoff, on the other hand, Eric Erickson, and if people don't know him, he's a pretty conservative,

right-laying radio host in the state that's kind of had an on-again, off-again, relationship with Trump, mostly on-again. And he was talking, and he just was being blunt on the radio show this week around these mayor's endorsements,

and he said, hey, like, Assoff, he's like, I know business guys who are Republicans, never voted for a Democrat, but if they need something in the state, they call Ossov, he calls him back. And I do think that

Ossov has been really good just kind of that blocking and tackling there in Georgia. So that's where I met. I agree with Jessica about Iowa. I think I was in Alaska, places to watch. I mentioned Kansas earlier. I think that's a big long shot. But if you're going to look at a long shot for Democrats, I'd look at Kansas.

And we recently shifted our rating this week on Kansas as well. So I do think Kansas is coming on the board. Well, there you go. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today. John Hellman and Tim Miller. Thank you both so much for spending a Friday afternoon, power with me.