Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Elon Drags Trump Down; Cory Booker Lifts Us Up

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Tim Miller joined John Heilman and Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC's Deadline: White House to break down Cory Booker’s powerful speech, the revelations from Dan “Razin” Caine, and how MAGA’s obsession with Elon Musk is backfiring spectacularly. Watch Deadline: White House: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house

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Next trip, share a house at Evermore Orlando Resort. You won't believe what you resorted to before. Hey guys, I popped on with my friends, John Howman and Nicole Wallace today to talk about a bunch of issues. But I think, you know, we really were focused on the Cory Booker speech and what kind of impact it could have and why these things might matter and why it is worthwhile to do it even if we don't know what the political impact will be because sometimes there are things that we are called to

that are higher and greater than rank political gamesmanship. So good on Cory Booker. Stick around for my analysis with Heilman on that. We also talked about the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or soon to be the nominated chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, something I haven't got to on my pod. His confirmation hearings happened and his interesting answers, shall we say, with regards to Signalgate and get into a bunch of other stuff. So enjoy it. Stick around for that. Subscribe to our feed.

We'll see you soon. I want to come back to Hegseth with you and what is perhaps being set up today, Tim Miller. Someone who isn't the person Donald Trump thought that he was. Donald Trump thought that the person who was entering confirmation hearings today was a person who walked up to him and in Trump's telling it sounded like he slurred something about being willing to die for him and then put on a red hat. The nominee says that never happened or at least it never happened with him so this is not who Trump thought he was selecting but but more importantly he's going to go to work for a Secretary of Defense in an hour of crisis this is

from the New York Times opinion page today quote why did Hegg said there is fellow officials fail to notice a stranger on the text chain even if we Quote, officers who read through the conversation, Hegseth appeared to be acting more like a junior officer boasting to superiors than the secretary in charge of overseeing the mission's execution. It's difficult to imagine that two of his recent predecessors, Jim Mattis or Lord Austin, who retired six ranks above Hegseth as four-star generals, would have copy and pasted such details onto a publicly available app. Yeah, it's interesting those extras put it like that. I had Susan Rice, who was Obama's national security advisor,

so Mike Walt's job, on the podcast today, and asked her essentially that question, right, which is, like you, Nicole, I'm not somebody who's been on high-level military planning chats. But that, just his tone jumped out to me as well. And I asked her about that. I was like, is this the type of thing that Leon Panetta or Bob Gates would have been sharing? And, you know, Susan Rice was just, like, appalled.

I mean, absolutely not. The tone was off. The platform was off, obviously. You know, something that strikes me, listening to that testimony there from Dan Cain, he said there wasn't anybody from the military on that chat because it was a partisan political chat. And so to me, if that's true, it's like, okay, well, so the Secretary of Defense was sharing the exact time we are going to drop certain bombs on a partisan political chat, you know, with other folks. And obviously now we know with Jeffrey Goldberg on there,

and it's just unbelievable recklessness. I think it reflects somebody who knows that he's a weekend TV host who's trying to impress the other people on the chat and putting people at danger in danger by doing so and You know look during that testimony general Cain was obviously You know not going out of his way to criticize the administration But it was very I mean you didn't have to read very hard between the lines to see that he was essentially saying no This was totally inappropriate, and I think it is I guess on balance It's better at someone like that will be in the room But it is alarming that he's gonna have to be reporting to somebody like Pete Hegseth, who is obviously

unqualified on its face and who's demonstrated so in like the only conversation we've seen. Who knows all the other ways he's been reckless in conversations that he hasn't accidentally put Jeffrey Goldberg on. You can't manufacture that which is grassroots and organic, and you can't stifle that which is grassroots and organic and what John Helms is talking about is Grassroots and organic. It's just in the water. It's out there. You people are showing up at town halls. It's showing up Anecdotally and it is We heard it in those clips. It is anger about the economy. It is feeling Sort of fooled or deceived about the outsized role Elon Musk would play.

And it is the pigheadedness about tariffs. I think that even Trump's base understood the tariffs as a negotiating. I think Trump has this conversation with his own voters that we don't always key in on. But I think even some of his own voters think the conversation around tariffs was that it was a negotiating tactic to strike better deals. Not that it would make literally every product at Walmart and Target more expensive. Yeah you're exactly right Nicole I like your first observation there's just spot-on like what is grassroots and organic that has worked for MAGA in the past is has been mostly like the force of Donald Trump right

that doesn't land for any of us but it does motivate people to turn out and vote that has not there's not been any evidence to date that that's doesn't land for any of us, but it does motivate people to turn out and vote. That has not, there's not been any evidence to date that that's transferable to Elon Musk, and possibly the opposite, actually. I think that Elon Musk is, as John points out, motivating opposition to this administration, motivating people to turn out, as we heard from some of those in that clip. And I think that we're going to see that particularly in Wisconsin tonight where he had the biggest footprint and maybe a little less so in that Florida 6th district congressional race.

But as far as people being disappointed, you just can't look at the first 71 days. The only people who have been served by the first 71 days of Trump and who are thinking, man, this is exactly what I want, is like super online mega troll posters who are just like happy that Andrew Tate is back in the country. And they're happy that, you know, the media is mad. And like, they don't, you know what I mean? Like nothing, their life hasn't gotten any better, but they just, all they want is the suffering of liberals, right? Like, And they want to win this imaginary war that they're in online, and they feel like they're winning now. Like those are the only people who are in their basement

posting onto X that have been served by this administration. If you were just a regular mega American who thought that, you know, you wanted prices to be lower, you haven't gotten anything so far. I mean, I listened in to some of what Senator Cory Booker was saying at the top of the hour. And this is raw. There will be clips of this that will live in places where people don't tune in to a lot of, as John said, a lot of what has been reduced to stunts and showmanship and shallow and on the Republican side,

disingenuous efforts at things like congressional hearings, where Republicans today sat at the story that we started with Tim. They sat before a nominee and didn't have anything to say about whether or not an insecure online app that included a journalist was something that he would sound the alarm on or call Congress if he were ever included on one with Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense. What do you what are sort of your questions or thoughts on this moment from Cory Booker today? Yeah, here's what I think. I think another thing people don't like to say on these kinds of shows is that we are very bad at predicting the future. We don't know what will resonate long term.

That's not something a pundit is supposed to say, but that's just true. And so my continued message over these first 71 days to Democrats has been try stuff, show emotion. You don't know what the spark will be that will get people off out of their chairs and into the streets and into the voting booths tonight in Wisconsin and Florida. We don't know. Nobody would have ever said it's ridiculous that Rick Santelli's rant on CNBC will be the thing that people remember from the Tea Party. Nobody would have predicted that. Nobody would have predicted Obama or Trump, right? So go out there, show that you care, show your passion, show you have emotion, and something

will spark because, you know, the administration is doing too bad of a job of governing for nothing to spark in response to them. The nation's soul is not totally black. And so maybe this will be it from Cory Booker, and I'm happy that he's out there doing it.