Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Cracks May Be Appearing in Trumpworld

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC to talk about the immigration fallout, the absurd smear of the “No Kings” protests, and cracks forming in the MAGA world as Trump’s tactics backfire.

Hey, everybody, Timor from the Bullwark here. I was on over on MSNBC with Nicole Wallace, Jacob Soberoff and Cornell Belcher. We did a lot of immigration talk, advanced a lot of the material that Jacob and I talked about last Friday on the podcast with the new information that's coming out over the weekend. And then kind of got derailed unintentionally into this interesting conversation about upcoming elections and the upcoming no-king's protests and whether the administration's efforts to stifle them or mess with them or fuck with them, we're going to work. You'll be surprised to find out I was on the optimistic side of that little dispute is the wrong word. Discussion back and forth between me and Cornell and Nicole

in particular. And, you know, we also just got in a little bit more to this. Joe Rogan MTG Manosphere, getting frustrated, getting, you know, some cracks forming when it comes to immigration. And I just, I can tell you, I think that the focus on the U.S. citizens, the veterans, the George Redis, as Soberoff brings up the guy that was gardening outside of the IHOP, who had three sons that were veterans. And Jacob, I think, astutely mentions that, like, you're seeing, and I'm also hearing this, just kind of behind the scenes, like, from military, from veterans, but also active duty folks, not everybody of course

but an interesting amount of people that are feeling uncomfortable and discomfort with what the administration's doing and how they're being used so much to discuss on all those points stick around subscribe to our feed here and we'll be talking to you soon we have a labor force in America

across many industries that has been built on illegal labor that's a fact that also cannot be ignored And as a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry and as a realist, I can say, we have to do something about labor and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that. Tim Miller, let me bring you in on this. Your thoughts? The interesting thing about the Marjorie Taylor Green quote, I thought, was her saying that she's going to live in reality, something to that effect.

Going forward, I'm going to be in reality. This was her, you know, effet moment. Oh, boy. So, welcome to reality. That's great. I love that. I feel like we should send her a basket. Yeah, the water is warm here in reality.

And so that part, that is the funny part. And it's like, okay, well, great. That's a good place to start. But there is, like, this kernel of truth there about where the pushback can come from, particularly on this issue when it comes to immigration, is that the other people have to, new people have to live in reality that haven't been before, right? And I think this is true to the Rogan point. This is true to folks that are watching other networks at this time.

Like, what has to happen is that what Trump is doing has to be bad enough that people's unreality is pierced, right? And that was to your point about how that happened after Liberation Day. It was starting to happen for a little bit on the tariffs before he tacoed. And you can sense it is starting to happen here. And it sucks that we're here, that that has to be our situation. But if, you know, all of us can do our job of, and Jacob, obviously, at the front lines on the ground, get our job of showing people, the videos of this, of what is happening, and having people see firsthand the way regular people are being menaced,

the way, you know, old lady is going to get meat for a stew, are getting menaced, the way that U.S. citizens are being menaced. I interviewed George Redis for the board podcast last week, this guy that was the security guard outside the weed farm in California, who is a U.S. citizen, a veteran, and he gets target, he gets tear gassed, racially targeted, jailed for three days, two days in isolation. Or he said he was naked and the lights were on,

and he's in solitary confinement for two days, without access to a lawyer, without access to family, he missed his daughter's birthday, she didn't know where he was. Like those stories, the examples of U.S. citizens, of veterans getting menaced, of people trying to live their lives, having it be disrupted by, you know, these masked agents, there is a new batch of people that can be got on that, that are not for that, as long as they are made aware that it's happened, right? And, like, that is the challenging part. Tim, is the optimist here on the election front set us straight? Well, for starters, a lot of these midterm elections, the key races and the House races are going to happen in blue states in places where people like Gavin Newsom are the governor. And so, you know, who knows what the, we could all catastrophize together.

But in the lead up to the elections, if we're concerned about, you know, troops being outside voting locations, Trump's forces trying to intimidate folks outside of voting locations, Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochel and Governor Prince, and others, you know, could try to counteract to that in various ways. I hope we don't end up in that situation, but that's possible. And a lot of these house races are going to be in blue states or in swing states. So, you know, look, I think that's part of it. And I think that a lot of times these efforts do backfire. And this is not to be scared about anything. We can bring, I talk to Mark Elias and you have.

I'm actually kind of more scared about the post-election, like whether they try to do stop the steel again and fake seat people. But a lot of times these voter suppression efforts backfire. And we're seeing that in the streets now. Like, their efforts, I mean, do you think that their efforts to smear the No King's protesters as Antifa and un-American and terrorists and all that? Do you think that's going to make for smaller protests this week or bigger protests? I think bigger. And so a lot of times these efforts backfire. And I do think that you might see that both in the voting suppression and in the protest space.

What's so great? The optimist. No, no, no, I love it. I love it. This is your job until further notice. But my favorite thing about calling the no king's protest. anti-America is it's literally the whole kernel of the idea about America was to not have a king. So like if that's become no kings, like I'm out, what are we doing here? And I think what is

being tested is sort of the laboratory for fantastical lies. And to me, like the news value of Rogan and Green isn't like, oh, look, it's too icky for them. No, because they went along with all of the BS ahead of the election. But the, once you start talking on a podcast, it is infinitely more difficult not to swear when you're having normal conversations. But the whole fantastical nature of No Kings is somehow Antifa. No Kings is the most American brand for any protest movement

that America could ever have. Yeah. Well, and, I mean, this is them always with the projecting bit. What they're doing is anti-American. And there's nothing more, in addition to the kernel of the idea of No Kings being an American idea, the idea of being able to protest and speak out peacefully in March and say that what your government is doing is wrong is a fundamentally American principle. And then on top of that, if you just want to layer into it, I went to the No Kings protest in New Orleans in June,

and, you know, it wasn't an antifa-type crowd. It was a lot of fanny facts and NPR tote bags at the crowd. And so it's not even attached to reality. he's like on every level it doesn't work it's it's like offensive and a lie and you know again maybe it works in their information silo but eventually eventually that stuff gets popped if it if it if it's this you know fantastical and if people see the difference with their own eyes