Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Podcast-Bros Realize Trump Was Never Serious

Episode Date: July 19, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to break down why Trump’s Epstein misstep is sparking backlash from corners of his own base. From scapegoating Pam Bondi to losing support in the manosphere, Tim explains how this scandal hits differently and why some MAGA voters may finally be walking away.

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And we are two of the four hosts of the podcast No such thing as a fish We present every week the most amazing wonderful insane hilarious bizarre facts You've ever heard facts like did you know America has a national grocery bag packing competition? Did you know Anna the company Volkswagen sells more sausages than it does cars? Yes, we've got those two facts and about a billion more in our podcast archives for you to listen to. We chat about them, we laugh about them, we make the occasional terrible pun. It's great fun.

It's called No Such Thing As A Fish. Why don't you listen now? Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from The Bullwork here. Just got off MSNBC with Nicole Wallace. So for you sickos that need even more Epstein takes heading into the weekend, I was with her for the whole damn hour. And so we had a lot that we were able to get into. Among them, Nicole's always interested in my point

of view since I suffer through MAGA media as much as anybody about like, how, like the psychology of this, like how could it be that this Epstein case could be the thing that MAGA voters really care about it? How could it be that they could be mad at Pam Bondi and still maintain Trump support? So we get into that question, like how is it that Bondi ends up being the fall person here potentially at least for the base? And I think as long as she's all the Trump, she won up being the fall person here, potentially at least for the base? I think as long as she's all the Trump, she won't be the fall person for him. So we do get into that.

She also interviewed somebody that started a group leaving MAGA, which is something that we encourage. And talked about kind of my analysis of how likely that is. I was maybe a little less optimistic than some others, just about the extent to which the fever is going to break with MAGA. I never think the fever is going to break. A lot of these folks are deep in the cult, you know? But I do think that there are kind of some little tributaries out of MAGA that are going to be polluted, to extend the metaphor, by this in a very real way.

So we get into that. We get into a bunch of other stuff. Stick around. I was also with my man, Angela Carisone over at Media Matters and Nicole Wallace. It was a good time. Enjoy. Subscribe to this feed because we got much more coming. Don't you worry.

Tim, you and I have worked on campaigns and worked for politicians. I don't even know if this is true in your case, but I've worked for politicians where the campaign is rocked by a piece of reporting. For George W. Bush, it was some of the reporting about his time in the Texas Air National Guard. I wasn't on the George W. Bush campaign, but there was also a moment for him

where his campaign was rocked by a report about a DUI right before the election in 2000. Donald Trump was, in some ways, rocked by the Access Hollywood tape, but it was a different moment in his political life, and it was a different kind of issue. It was something that he survived politically. This is so different in that the journalism is following the outwar from the base, not trying to lead it.

The journalism didn't come first. The outwar from his base came first. And I'm really not sure if that's a good or a bad thing for journalism, but it makes the political scandal for Trump different. And I'm really not sure if that's a good or a bad thing for journalism, but it makes the political scandal for Trump different. Yeah, it does. Look, what I think about these sort of situations, Nicole, something that, you know, from back in my PR days, that it is reminiscent of, right, is when, you know, your candidate steps in

it, says something maybe they shouldn't have. We don't need to pile on the bushes. I could come up with a couple of't have. We don't need to pile on the bushes. I could come up with a couple of examples. We don't need to do it. And then what happens is the story gets out of your control, right? Because something that journalists weren't really looking into or had quit looking into or had moved on from, there becomes a feeding frenzy around it. And I think this is what has happened with Donald Trump.

And so when you hear Trump and his people push back and say, well, I mean, if this was real, this letter was real, Biden would have released it, or the Wall Street Journal would have written about it years ago or whatever. That's just kind of like not how these things work, right? And when Donald Trump made this critical mistake, this self-own of, we assume it was Donald Trump,

I guess it was Pam Bondi that put her name on it, deciding that they were gonna announce that they were not going to release or look into the Epstein files anymore. The result was this fervor, as you mentioned, from his own base. And then the result from that is a lot of journalists, I think, naturally looking at this and saying, what? Like, why? Wait, what is underneath this? Why did they make that announcement? And I think this story, and I presume others to come, are the result of that. And I think that he totally misjudged whether his base actually cared about this story or not. They do.

And I think that he totally misjudged his exposure to it from his, you know, in his own words, decade and a half long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And so now you have this, this gross birthday card out where he's talking about sharing beautiful secrets with a guy whose secret was that he was trafficking underage girls. And I want to dive back into the actual story because it's one of those stories that you remember for a long time where you were when it flashed because you stop and you read the whole thing. I read it twice.

But just on the miscalculations and how we got here, Tim, the miscalculation or the blind spot, and I did some reporting on this of my own, may have been either not appreciating the depths to which Bongino and Patel were steeped and invested in the Epstein conspiracy theories and the Epstein issues, or sort of he appeared in the Manosphere but he wasn't of the Manosphere, maybe not appreciating that this distrust of institutions and these conspiracies that animate the Manosphere, it's not that they liked Trump because they like Trump. They like Trump to the extent that he was adjacent to the conspiracies and that he seemed like a fellow traveler in helping them get to the bottom of them.

They didn't like him for his policy positions or his looks. Yeah, look, I think that's a great, and there's a cockiness to Trump. I think there's the, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. I think that is part of the blind spot. But another part of the bright side is, to your point about him not being of this world, he talked about this from time to time, but he didn't care. I mean, obviously he didn't care. He was paddling around with Jeffrey Epstein, to put it in a phrase, right? I mean, he knows the people that were going to Jeffrey Epstein's island and parties.

This was not something that Donald Trump deeply cared about. He used it to advance his ends, and the people around him really grabbed onto it. And you remember on the campaign trail, for a little while they're playing that creepy QAnon song you know which shows that at least his campaign team recognized that the base did was animated by these this kind of nexus between conspiracy and reality around elite pedophilia and so Trump because that's not hit right like the tariff stuff the immigration stuff Trump feels this like as kind of a outer borough talk radio call-in guy right like he at least under kind of at some visceral level

understands why people care about immigration I don't think he really does in this case he was faking it and to your point and I think that while in the Fifth Avenue theory his main base will eventually come back around to him they might rally around the flag now and just be like all the media and fake news all those other folks in the minister that we talked about around this Nicole they're not they they they don't like being played for fools they're not in the cult they were with college Trump as a matter of convenience and you're already seeing this and Shane

Gillis is a comedian was on the SP's audience p.m. last night making fun of him for this one of those pockets he went on, Flagrant, those guys put on fake tin foil hats to like make fun of Trump, Rogan did the same. So he's in deep trouble with that crowd. Tim, can I ask some dumb questions of you, my friend? I feel like you might tolerate them the best. I accept all that everyone has stipulated and I am trying to understand the base as it is, not as it should be if we all were held to the same gravitational pulls. But does anyone think that Pam Bondi is doing anything that, I mean Pam Bondi has done nothing that hasn't been directed by Donald Trump.

So why wouldn't Donald Trump, who is an adjudicated sexual abuser of A. Jean Carroll, a jury found him liable for sexual abuse, the base doesn't care, who's credibly accused by I think 19 women of sexual misconduct, the base doesn't care, they elected him twice, he's a convicted felon, why wouldn't Donald Trump just just dump it all out there, post it himself on True Social? Yeah, I wish I had a more satisfying question than the answer to that question, that this is just an article of faith with Trump.

It's like a religious type thing. You know, I mean, I apologize as a cradle Catholic to the Catholics for comparing Donald Trump to the Catholic Church. There's a lot of differences in quality there, but you know, it's reminiscent of, right, like during the pre-sexual abuse scandal, right, faithful Catholics and the pews found it hard to be like, you know, it's the Pope's fault or it's the Cardinal's fault that I really like and that I know and I trust that person. It must have been these one-off bad actors. They must have been giving bad advice, right? Like, it's that.'s like they even the

Maga base is an article of faith with Trump that he is good in spite of all of the evidence like this Last letter to Jeffrey Epstein is just a tiny you know little cherry on top of just a lifetime of Bad behavior on behalf of Trump and they don't care So bondy is like this easy scapegoat for them in that case and to me i think that but to be unsatisfying answer by i think i understand that back with rich lodges ten dollar and as a curse and richard have to come back

from much longer conversation but i want to get my friend to know a chance to react okay i appreciate the risk in on and is telling his story and talking about this I may be a little less optimistic than him about the fever breaking over Epstein. I hope to be wrong. I think that there are a significant number of people in the mega base that are in rich's shoes excuse me who had been told this story for ten years that Donald Trump was going to take on the elite cabal and as Angela mentioned the deep state and

That there are a lot of bad people there and pedophiles that are now finding out that he's not going to I Think that there are gonna be some people that are disappointed and mad about it I think there are gonna be other people to come back around to Trump I think his bigger vulnerability is the new people to the coalition as we've mentioned before the the folks that were kind of in this contrarian RFK ma maha, Manosphere world. A lot of them, these younger men, are naturally skeptical. And I think this is going to be a shorthand for them in the future when they think

about the ways that Trump let them down, that Trump's a regular politician, the way that Trump sucks, basically, just to use their, you know, common language. And they'll be like, this is the example. Every time you got a co-op one, it's like Epstein. He said he was different. He said he was going after the bad guys. He wasn't. He's just another politician. He's just another liar. He's just another fake. And I think that is his vulnerability as much or more than with the core MAGA base. Hi there. My name's Andy. And my name's Anna. core, core Maggot base. in competition. Did you know Anna, the company Volkswagen sells more sausages than it does cars?

Yes, we've got those two facts and about a billion more in our podcast archives for you to listen to. We chat about them, we laugh about them, we make the occasional terrible pun. It's great fun, it's called No Such Thing As A Fish, why don't you listen now?