Bulwark Takes - Tim & Bill on the Creepiest Trump Propaganda Yet

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Tim Miller and Bill Kristol take on the Trump administration’s bizarre new Department of Labor ad campaign — a “white nationalist” throwback full of 1950s imagery — and Tucker Carlson’s disturbing interview with Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust-denying/Stalin-admiring streamer. Get free shipping and 365 day returns with Quince at https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES. #sponsored 

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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, Tim Miller from the bulwark here. We got some bonus content with our editor-at-large Bill Crystal after yesterday's his banger pod. You people just wanted more, more, more, more. How you doing, Bill? I'm fine.

I don't quite believe what you just said, but that's nice. Some people wanted more and more and more. It is true. Read the YouTube comments. I never read YouTube comments. Is that, yeah? Subscribe to the feed and comment. Yeah, the YouTube commenters are great.

I should, actually. You know, it's like, in the early days of the Internet, you couldn't read the comment. And then when I was on Twitter first in 2014, I was a war criminal, so I didn't particularly feel like reading those comments. I don't know why. I mean, I'm sure I would have learned a lot for them. So, yeah. I still wouldn't read the comments on Twitter, but the YouTube concept of the bulwark YouTube page,

we've cultivated some good people. I mean, some of you guys are wrong sometimes, and we're going to go over that. But, like, I appreciate your comments. Okay. So the Department of Labor has put out a social media campaign. And I just, I don't think that there's any reason to kind of mince words about what it is. I just think that it is definitionally white nationalist in the sense that it's a nationalist social media campaign that only includes whites. And so I want to put up on the screen just kind of a collage here of images and go through them with you.

So we've got a family behind an American flag, white guy and wife with two kids. All these people look vaguely like they're from the 1950s. There's like a 1950s aesthetic to it. And we've got a, then we do have some diversity here. We've got, let's see, about 11 pictures of mussely white men, a blonde, another blonde, a blonde, a blonde, a kind of a brunette reddish head, a guy, a brunette, a blonde, a blonde, brunette, brunette, blonde, and blonde. So a lot of blonde white men with muscles and collared shirts on in various scenes, oil rigs, refineries, Statue of Liberty. ironically. And then we got one of another family in church, white family, American flag. So we've got another specific campaign I want to get to, but just said the biggest picture.

Is there anything there you notice? No, I'm with you. I first couldn't believe it was real. So I think someone on the first, I first saw maybe you did two on a tweet where someone had assembled those, those images, right? Yeah, good for that person to do that. But I thought maybe it was like fake. Maybe it was a joke almost. Hey, I also, same one. I think I saw it. Maybe in Slack, you said, is this. this a joke? And I had said the same thing to whoever I was on texting with at that moment. You know, I was sure this is real. And I believe it is. And I think people checked. And you can go to the Department of Labor Twitter account and see it. So that kind of suggests it's real. Yeah. I've only been back to the good old days of these healthy white men doing

American jobs in an American way. And then the family in church with the wife looking adoringly at the man and the two cute little kids really yeah yeah in the pew there that's really i mean it is it's so retro it's i mean again it's like it's so retro it's so stupid it's so pointless in a way and one doesn't want to in a way take it too serious i mean i don't know what do you think i i see it like half of me two-thirds we think this is really grotesque and it really is white nationalist and it has a vague germany in the 30s resonance to it you know just literally in terms of the kind of insane maybe not even vague you know, kind of, anyway, the cartoonish character of what they're glorifying and stuff.

And then a bit of me thinks, oh, I'm being too serious here. It's just a stupid advertising campaign. So here's what I think about all this. It is a troll. It's obviously a troll, right? But I think there are obviously some white racists in this administration. And we've seen the text. Yeah.

Like, we've seen the text from people that work inside the administration now. So we know that there are some racists in the administration. We know that it attracts racist. And here's the other thing. I get this a lot. And I just, I always like, I've seen this with younger Republican types and with people that I've followed over the course of the last 10 years. There is a psychological effect that if you keep doing racist jokes, you know, over and over again, just for the laughs. And maybe it really does start with like, I just want to trigger the libs.

I just want to make old Bill Crystal, you know, and Tim Miller clutch their pearls and like talking. about norms and I'll laugh, plain and laugh at them. But like, eventually over time, you start posting more and more of those things and you start to believe it. And you start to become, you self-radicalize. And so that's why, where to me it's like, sorry, I don't, like, the fact that it's a troll is not an excuse. Like, there's plenty of evidence that I have in my life and that people who are research of

this have seen that, like, you go down a radicalization pipeline. a lot of times with things that start ironic or funny, and then you end up finding yourself in a position where you're working for the Department of Labor, posting right nationalization as a prop. And like, that's what's happening here. And other people are also being radical, you know, starting off semi-laughing and ending up fully on board and radicalize. The self-radicalization, I guess I wrote about this in warning shots, of Trumpism, as of other past movements of that's kind, is kind of astonishing. And we see, I feel like we're seeing it, we are seeing it in real time. For me, it's the Nazis thing here.

You follow this more closely. And I'll let you talk more about it. So this Fuentes guy who was told, Trump had to pretend he didn't know he was and basically sort of apologize for having a dinner with him at Mar-a-Lago. What was that, 2023 or four, something like that. Now he's, and Tucker Carlson wasn't even okay with him. Tucker Carlson himself has already waved down this road. And now what is it?

He's speaking at the next, well, Tucker Carlson interviewed him on the, on his program yesterday. And this other guy is saying, you know, I'm letting the Nazi streak and me run a little bit. That was the guy who they did have to withdraw from, you know, consideration for the Justice Department Post. But he'll probably end up somewhere else in the administration. And he's, well, he's certainly in good with, I think, that part of Trump. And again, that part, the fever swamp has gotten awfully big. That's the other thing, right? I mean, the fever swamp starts out as 2% is now, I don't know, 25%, 40%, 60% of the Trump movement.

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And I had a friend chastised me. about this actually because I was live texting one of my group text chains about like the crazy things that were happening on this Tucker Nick Flintus interview and somebody's like, you know the World Series is on. I'm like, I'm sorry, this is just my life now. Your friend, you should listen to that friend. He seems like a very sensible, he might have some good life advice for you, your friend there. Yeah, and here's the thing about that interview is that speaks exactly to these memes. It's like the first 45 minutes of it is Tucker,

just very credulously trying to understand how Nick got radicalized, right? And Nick, for people who don't know, is like questioned the amount of deaths at the Holocaust and like has, as, I mean, has just said as overtly

neo-Nazi things you can say and, you know, has a group called the Groyper's that is explicitly white identitarian. Like, like, explicitly like they, like that part, I don't like, Nick, I don't believe somebody can correct me as never said, I am a Nazi, but like, but he is explicitly white identitarian and thinks we should talk about

white identity more and that whites are getting discriminated against. And so anyway, so he's explaining this to Tucker. And I can't say like the first 45 minutes like is him sort of walking through how this happens. Like I was a Ron Paul person and then I thought it was a troll. And then I got met and then I started wearing my MAGA hat around and people were mean to me. And then I, you know, and I noticed it was a lot of black and brown people that were mean to me.

And then I started saying, you know, whatever. And he kind of walks through this whole process. And I'm listening to it. And I'm like, this is, this is so dangerous because he does not come off as a wild-eyed freak for the first that hour. He comes off as racist like me. So he listens. But I can imagine like an 18-year-old, like white kid being like, oh, okay. Like that makes sense.

And it is working. Nick, Tucker says in the interview that he has him on because he's ascendant. Tucker uses that word. You are ascendant in the movement. And Tucker has the number one most listened to. news podcast. Sorry, I wish it wasn't true, but he does in politics. And so it's extremely important. Here's the only ray of life. Anytime we bring this up, it's important to bring on their extremism. I want to play one clip for me for you from that interview. So it was like mid-December,

mid-late December. It's actually funny. It was December 18th. I remember because that's an important date to me. And it's Joseph Stalin's birthday. I'm a fan. You're a fan of Stallons. I was an admirer but we don't need to go into that I guess I'm like let's uh okay let's get back

we'll circle back to that it was so there you go I mean there is there is light at the end of the tunnel they're extremely weird like the last 30 minutes you have the Stalin admiration followed by like a very uncomfortable section about how he hates women basically and how he is scared

he doesn't want to date women because women are terrible and so that's like the only part that gives me a little bit of hope that I think that women hating and and like, like, not, maybe not women hating, but I think that, like, not wanting to have a girlfriend and get laid. I think being celibate and liking Stalin seemed likely to be unpopular, but I don't know. What did you think about that? I would have assumed that was the case a few years ago.

I'm a little uncertain these days. Everything is sliding away, you know? I mean, yes, I sort of agree with that. I kind of tried to make an analogous point, actually, in morning shots, that at some point, the extreme, it, the self-radicalization of Trumpism is really extraordinary. very, well, it's historical, has historical precedence, but it's really dangerous. And it's why you can't assume that we've seen the worst, because it's clearly accelerating. I mean, right, just in terms of the movement itself and MAGA world. And then within the administration, too, there, you know, let's try blowing up one boat.

Well, that worked okay. Let's just do seven a day now, you know, whatever. And let's forget about all laws, norms, et cetera, et cetera. So, no, so on one hand, it's very, very dangerous. So the other hand, one does think it gets so extreme and so crazy that there's got, the reaction gets a real reaction to it gets more likely at some point. Now, how much destruction they do along the way is another question. Anyway, so I guess, yeah, I take the point that it's somewhat hopeful that he's that

crazy and that normalized, and we'll be having this conversation a year from now, and Fuentes will be speaking at the biggest conservative conference. But he went further, he went further than we could possibly justify because he's defending out of God knows what. The Stalin thing is interesting. So he likes all mass murderers, basically, right? He likes Stalin and Stalin, yeah. I should say, at the end of it, Tucker says, okay, we'll circle back to that.

Viewers will be surprised to learn that Tucker never did circle back to that. I don't think he wanted to explore that any deeper. I was curious, though. And so I went and did some searching to see if he had mentioned his Stalin love before he has. You won't be surprised. And what he admires about Stalin is Stalin is like him. He has five, six, pockmarked, ugly, rural from like the outside of society and then achieved success. And so that is, that's his explanation.

So there you go. He thinks that in-cell turned mass murderer is something that people should inspire to. Okay, where are we? Oh, we got way laid. Final thing. Going back to the, we should circle back to the Department of Labor because here's the most recent post. I want to read it to everybody. We'll put it up on the screen here.

Again, it's restoring the American dream, white guy, you know, kind of dishwasher blonde hair here, strong chin in a New England town. It's weird that they're always in these New England towns that are all. I said that all would vote for a combo by like 80%. But anyway, he's in a new and good town. And here is the text that goes along with this image. The American dream belongs to the American people. The process is in place and the mission is set. Project firewall will restore the American dream by ensuring American jobs go to Americans first.

I mean, I don't, there's no other way to interpret that as the U.S. Department of Labor is working on a project to ensure that white Americans who have stock goes back to the early parts of the country have advantage in job and getting jobs, right? Like reverse affirmative action and racism and anti-immigrant sentiment is the only way to interpret that, right? Right. That's a broader meaning. I mean, I think this project firewall, which I Google for two seconds, is some H-1B attempt to cut back on H-1Bs and get those jobs for Americans. So they would, I suppose, say, well, this is just this one particular tweak of change of the H-1B visa law. But no, the whole message is what you say. There's some of creepy things about it. I just looked at, you know, the American dream capital D belongs to the American people, capital P. What is that? Trump does that, too, capitalizing nouns. I believe you do that in German. Maybe I'm not, not to go all, not to go all Nazi reduction isn't on everyone. But I feel like it has a certain feel to it. As you say, repeating America, but the American dream belongs to the American people. Not to over-interpret this stupid trolling thing is actually revealing, right? Because that is kind of telltale, I think.

I mean, the whole Jefferson, Lincoln, everyone thought the American dream is entrusted to the American people to try to carry out as well as we can. But the American dream is a universal dream, right? for free. It's equal. All matter created equal. Everyone deserves freedom and rights. Not everyone unfortunately can't have it now. Maybe never, maybe everyone won't ever have it. But it's our privilege, our opportunity, if we inherited this, our duty for the people who have to fight for it to try to make this happen here. So it is, in that respect, it is really European blood and soil nationalism, replacing American patriotism. It's reminiscent of what Stephen Miller said at the Madison Square Garden rally, which is also reminiscent of some German rhetoric, which is America is for Americans

and Americans only. And this is just a policy version of that type of rhetoric. And yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't really think that the H-1B visa jobs are taking jobs away from like mussely lumberjacks in the northeast. But it doesn't really quite work their image for like the pictures to be like Bay Area multicultural tech workers. like skinny, nerdy Bay Area tech workers that are a Chinese American and Indian American

and also some white Americans. Like, you know, like, that's who's really losing jobs to H-1V, that it doesn't work with the adjutant prop that way. So, I mean, just to make the obvious point, I mean, it doesn't work for the labor forces as a whole people have made at this point, obviously that most of the labor force is not, you know, the lot of women, 47 percent of the labor forces, female, obviously a lot of non-white Americans in the labor force. So it is, yeah, in that respect, it's not about anything except this, if you want to be nice to it, I guess, nostalgia for an America that some people have, remember, with a very rosy and hazy glow from 1950 with none of the downsides, if you want, of that America.

And if that's the nice side of it, which I don't think is actually what they deserve. And then the true side of it is the creepiness of the, yeah, the racist and misogynist, for that matter, appeal being put out by the U.S. government. I mean, right? And I think it, I wonder. Yeah, not a campaign. That's also an important thing. It would be very creepy and wrong if it's a campaign. But the Department of Labor actually is a department for all Americans, no matter their race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, religion, right?

And this administration does not think that. Correct. Okay. Well, this was enjoyable. Hope everybody enjoyed that. A little ditty. A little bonus, Bill and Tim, for you. And subscribe to the feed, as I mentioned, tell your friends.

where they can find uplifting content like this, and we'll be talking to you all again soon. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro?

The pros at Tread Experts. From Toyos Observe Winterline to Celsius and Open Country, Toyo Trio Tires can handle it all. Get up to $100 on a prepaid visa card when you purchase a set of four eligible Toyota tires. Find a Toyo TreadExperts dealer near you at Treadexperts. com slash locations. From tires are auto repair,

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