Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller Shreds CEOs Who Choose Trump Over Everything

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle to take on how Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska, why America’s top CEOs are bowing to MAGA power at the expense of democracy and the economy, and Trump’s unwarranted D.C. police takeover.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, 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 Moore from the Bulwark here. Just back from a late night spot with my girl, Stephanie Rule, on the 11th hour, and Pablo Torre and Dan Co. And boy, did we get into a bunch of stuff.

In some ways, one of the segments was a little bit of a follow-up on my interview with Jason Calacanana. So we didn't discuss it per se, but we covered this material, which was, what are the CEOs doing? Why are they willing to suck up to Trump like this? Why are they treating him like a downmarket banana republic caudio or a third-rate royal, you know, who needs to have alms given to him in order to avoid tariffs? It feels like they should be upset about that. It feels like they should be speaking out about that, but they're not.

And so we discuss why. And I also discussed a little bit of something that I wanted to get into a J-Calb. I just didn't get the time, which was, aren't they concerned that the backlash against their behavior is going to yield a democratic response that they like even less than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? That the backlash might be a little Zoron pilled. So we get into that. Steph tries to get me to care about the Kennedy Center thing. And I just can't do it. We talk a little Ukraine.

We talk everything. D.C. A lot to discuss. It was a doozy. So I hope you enjoy it. It's, you know, late night we get a little loose with the late night hits. So I figured you guys would enjoy it. Stick around for that.

Subscribe to the feed. We're going to have a bunch, a bunch of Trump Putin summit talk here on this page today. And we'll do some other fun stuff too. We'll see you soon. We are just two days away from the president's one-on-one meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, that's going to take place in Alaska. This morning, Trump joined an emergency call with European allies that included Ukrainian president Zelensky. NBC News is reporting. The president said he does not intend to discuss any possible divisions of territory with Putin, according to two European officials and three other people briefed on the call.

His goal is to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine. Doesn't Putin have everything to gain and nothing to lose here? But Trump, on the other hand, could lose a lot if he walks away with nothing. And I warn you, before you start, both of these gentlemen went to Harvard, so the bar is high. Trust me, Pablo mentions it to me every time when we've led. And all of his peabody awards. How dare you? Look, here's, how dare you?

Here's what Putin has to lose. Because, as Paul mentioned, Trump wants the Nobel Peace fries. The only way for Putin to get on the wrong side of Trump is for Trump to, is for Trump to feel like Putin is undermining that effort, right? And so we had this first nine months where Trump said we're going to get a resolution on day one, didn't happen. And then there was a period of what, six months where it seemed like he was basically doing Putin's bidding. And then eventually the peace never happened. You know, there's been unconscionable amount of damage happening in Kyiv and in Kersan and there have been unnecessary deaths. And eventually,

finally Trump and it sounded like even Melania, we're like, WTF. Like, where's my, where's my peace prize. I was giving you everything you wanted. I thought this was going to be over. That was the impetus for this meeting. So what Putin is trying to do here at this meeting is buy more time, take the can down the road, offer Trump more fig leaves. And I think the only way for Putin to lose here is for it to come away in some kind of conflict where Trump feels like he's not going to get this big toy, this big prize that he wants. And as long as Putin kind of plays to his ego, gives him what he wants, you know, makes Zelensky the bad guy. then I think that he's going to get whatever he wants.

I want to get your take on this federal takeover, basically, of the D.C. police force. How do Democrats, let's say, communicate this? Because it's a very difficult needle to thread. Because the average person on the street could say, don't you tell me about crime stats, you know, being down? If there's crime, the president wants to take it on, everything Daniel just laid out. Not only makes perfect sense, I mean, it lays out all the flaws. How does that get communicated if you're a Democrat? right now. I just wouldn't let Donald Trump set the terms of this debate. You know, making the

argument that Donald Trump shouldn't be allowed to bring the military into D.C. because crime is down 28.5 percent over year over year. It's a stupid reason to make that argument. Like Pete Eggseth, a weekend Fox News talk show host should not be running the D.C. Police Department. Like, if you have concerns about crime, there are things that Democrats and Republicans could join together on. Dan just offered some solutions that they did in Boston. There There are plenty of things that Democrats could talk about on crime. The issue here is that Donald Trump has created a pretext based on his desire to send in the military in the cities.

And they are already telling you, based on DOD plans, that they want to send the military into other cities. Like, they're just looking for an excuse. This has nothing to do with crime. It's a separate conversation. And I think the Democrats should focus on that side of it and not get into a tit for tat over whether D.C.'s crime rate is high enough or not. Donald Trump is tightening his grip on corporate America.

Remember when they said he was going to deregulate everything and let it rip? Well, in the last few days alone, the president has demanded the resignation of the Intel CEO, the firing of Goldman Sachs, top economists, and made deals with major chipmakers that essentially make his administration a partner in their businesses. And that is not even including his tower for or is a tax on the BLS and the Federal Reserve. of all of this is part of a pattern. Trump seems to want to replace the established rules of American business with his own. Or as my friend Jeffrey Sondonfeld puts it, quote,

MAGA has gone Marxist and even increasingly Marxist. I know you're shaking your head and you're saying, why aren't these CEOs standing up? You just said to me a commercial break. Okay, I'm not saying they're not pathetic. But did Donald Trump play Tim Cook or did Tim Cook play Donald Trump? Because Tim Cook got exactly what he wanted. And yes, he embarrassed himself.

gave Donald Trump a gold phone, but he's not paying the tariffs, and it works for his customers, it works for his employees, it works for shareholders. What it doesn't work for is the future of capitalism and democracy. He is, he is paying the tariffs, just not as bad of tariffs as he thought he was going to pay. And it's humiliating. And these guys, could you imagine the inverse of this? You know, what Wall Street, what your CEO buddies would be saying if Kamala Harris had been elected, and she decided that in order to avoid the wealth tax that I want to put in, all you have to do is come in and give me a woke golden calf that was made by an indigenous woman of color or something.

And as long as you bring me that, as long as you bring me there, I have to this basket. As long as you give me that, then you don't have to pay the tax. I'm going to pay somebody else. Everybody, the Wall Street Journal would be up in arms. The guys on Fox would be losing. The world would be on fire if that happened. And this happened and these guys are all too afraid to say anything. It's embarrassing.

It's pathetic. And by the way, I don't think it's going to necessarily bail them out. This is a massive risk that they're playing. And Donald Trump, the market is a guardrail for him. But there's not like a magic button in the Oval Office, like the Diet Coke button that's like make the market go back up. If things start to get out of hand, if things start to unravel, if we get into a recession, Donald Trump can't taco his way out of it. And so I think these guys are really playing with fire. for no discernible reason to me,

except for short-term interests, just the next report. Okay, but that's it. It's the ultimate in short-termism. That is why Donald Trump was so angry at Goldman Sachs this week because the Goldman Sachs report said the impact of the tariffs

have barely even hit yet. You're seeing increased pricing in some products, but so many big businesses front-load of their inventory but come September, it's the American consumer that's going to pay.

Just today, Donald Trump said, wait until a year from now, all of these factories are going to open. We've not heard from one major company that wasn't already planning any new businesses saying I'm going to open up a factory here. So it's the ultimate in short-termism.

Okay, but for all of those CEOs that couldn't take one more day of having a DEI officer because that was stifling their business. Is that government mandated the DEI officer, by the way, or did they choose to do that? Okay. They all chose to do it. They championed

it. They made commercials about it. They had conferences over it, but then it was killing them. That was killing their business. Now those people think it's easier to have a president who could publicly say, I want you to step down to you. I want to cut of your profits. That's better. Yeah, they prefer this guillotine. They prefer the guillotine, apparently. Well, they do get a tax cut. Well, but speaking of cuts. But the point I guess I'm making here is that if you're, if you're one of these CEOs, what it does cost you to Tim's point, what it should cost them is their credibility. Like, they should no longer be considered serious people in the marketplace of ideas,

because what's happening now, Steph, is very clear. They are taking the short-term gains, and in the meantime, they're hoping you forget the fact that they complained about their free speech rights. But meanwhile, I ask anybody on this planet to find me a CEO who has said anything critical about Donald Trump. They are talking with a shoe in their mouth. And it's Donald Trump's boot. And they're saying, oh, before we couldn't, we couldn't really exercise our First Amendment rights. Now we can. And meanwhile, they're garbling over this boot.

You know what else they're going to do is they're going to drive people into the arms of Zoron? I'm feeling Zoron pilled, just like listening to this conversation. It's a true thing. If these guys go all in with Donald Trump, they make the case that, you know, that we're going to have the five richest guys in the world, sit behind Donald Trump. at the White House that is inauguration. And we're going to give them all this money in exchange for no regulations and make sure we get a carve out for the tariffs. And the rest of the economy goes bust?

Like, what do you think? Where do you think regular people are going to turn? They're not going to turn to the Wall Street Journal Ed Board and say, you know who we need to save us from this terrible thing that happened to the rest of us? Paul Ryan. No, they're going to turn to the far side of the left. And these guys are digging their grain.

It's going to be Occupy Wall Street, but this time it'll work. Yes. 100%. It could work. I think that's a risk. I think that they are risking that kind of backlash to be populist in a real way. It is just reminding the public that you can't trust these capitalist CEOs, guys like Sam Altman, who are Democrats, saying all this great things about diversity, now standing with the president, Mark Zuckerberg, who was doing all of these big initiatives and now is getting rid of fact checkers. People sniff that out.

And they're so sick and tired of the system. And I totally agree with you. You're going to see people go right into the arms of Zormandani and other candidates who are. are saying the system is rigged, and I'm going to be fighting for you, and you should see it with your own eyes. Governor Gavin Newsom is taking up the Democrats' fight against Trump's push to redraw congressional maps. He announced that he is holding a news conference tomorrow morning, likely about a potential

new map in California. He made the announcement, guess where, on Twitter. And you might recognize the style of the post. Lately Newsom's office has been writing these posts, just like Trump writes his, including all caps. Today, today's post warned Trump to be ready for the most beautiful payback you have ever seen. But as the Washington Post points out, if both parties go all out to redraw maps in the states they control, the numbers will still favor the Republicans. Our nightcap is still here.

What do you think about this? I'm embarrassed to admit I've kind of been liking Gavin Newsom's online game. I didn't want to like it. I'm not a huge Gavin fan. I voted when I lived in California, I'd vote for him seven times because he kept getting recalled. so I have a lot of reluctant votes for Gavin, but he's never been my favorite. I think it's a little slick,

and it's a little bit of a try-hard. But the Democrats got to do something. They've got to do something, and they've no choice but to fight in Texas. I'll let Pablo do the sports analogy, but if they're going to change the rules in the middle of game and cheat, you can't just be like, oh, well, we're going to follow the rules instead and let you guys take these seats.

They have to do it. They have no choice but to do it. And I'm happy with them. Doesn't it just burn everything to the ground? Because it just makes me the best. This is when voters say, don't they all do it? So I'm not surprised that Tim Miller and his deep internet addiction is fond of Gavin Newsom's. That is part of the story here.

There's an internet brainedness here that is both real and maybe on some level strategic. But the sports analogy here, Steph, which you, I think, just implicitly raised is, is it time to just sort of like take your ball and go home? Like, is this a game you actually want to play? I am now trying to think about all these stories through that lens of the would-be Zoran Mamdani voter who's sort of seeing this, and you're a young person in this analogy, and you're disaffected by politics as a concept, and you're like, okay, so what I understand about gerrymandering, which is a complicated story, but very simple insofar as it is literally subverting the rules of who is in charge because there is self-interest on the part of the party that has the power to do it. So if both sides are just going to do that, I just feel like you are daring people again to just get out of the premise of politics. I don't think anybody cares, really, about chair. I don't think any of the people you're talking about care about Jerryman. Or know what it is.

And I think that's a very simple proposition where, and by the way, in California, because of the rules, because the Democrats in California tried to in good faith create a system that wouldn't let politicians just change it. They've got to go to the voters. So the voters in California can decide. And Gavin, you know, the legislature has to pass it. And then Gavin Newsom has to sign it. And then they send the maps to the voters. And there'll be a valid initiative in November. Like they have valid initiatives every month in California,

which is something I don't agree with generally. But they have a direct democracy solution to this. And I assume the California voters will vote for it because they don't want Donald Trump stealing six seats just because he told Greg Abbott that he wanted them. You know what? I'm really tired of consultants getting blamed. But no, but consultants are like these nameless faceless consultants. I never voted for a consultant, but I know I have voted for a Democrat, and I cannot

figure out why they can't figure out how to, when they win a game, run a damn victory lap. Well, I don't know. Obama was pretty good at it. He was great at it. The last administration had a president who was a terrible communicator, and whether he wasn't a particularly great communicator when he was young, and he became a worse and worse communicator. as he got older. And so I think that was a big part of the problem. And I also, but I also do think that, again, not to blame the consultants, but there is a

consultant brainedness of the Democratic Party where the establishment kind of took over and there was just a lot of conventional thinking. And some of that was in response to Trump, how Trump was so anti-conventional. They felt like they had to save it, but just look at the 16, 20, 24 campaigns. And it was, I guess, just the reality. So here we are now. Hopefully they learn from it. But we're going to blame careful consultants and say, Trump,

got it right, he lies. He lies. He's a great communicator and tells lies. Today, Donald John Trump continued leading into culture wars when he announced that he himself will host the Kennedy Center honors later this year. Trump says his staff urged him to become the first president to host the event, and he agreed citing his experience on, you guessed it, the apprentice. Trump says he was very involved in picking this year's honorees, including Kiss, Gloria Gaynor, and Trump's very good friend, Sylvester Stallone. He also said he turned down a couple of wokesters. Our

nightcap is still here. Pablo. Or you're not a wokester? Has she gone maga? I don't know. I wanted the same thing. She will survive. I have to care about this. If Martin, what was his name? Burnett hadn't given him that TV show. Donald Trump could have lived

if we weren't on this dark timeline, Donald Trump would have lived a happy life as a quasi-bankrupt, retired real estate guy, going to see his show. going to see the musicals. He would have been sitting in the box. Everybody would have golf clapped for him.

You know, he would have probably been tweeting some weird racist stuff too. But for the most part, people wouldn't have seen that because he wouldn't have mattered. But here we are. Okay, but in all seriousness, we can joke about this and say,

oh, this is just the arts. But, okay, but then take it to the Smithsonian. Take it to we are watching this administration change history, right? Change how the public. receives history in our most important meetings. I have a lot. I have a lot of worries, and obviously there are parallels to Stalin here, and so they're concerning things. But I don't know. I think that the Smithsonian staff is pretty

steeped in history. They're pretty serious people, pretty woke. And God willing, if we ever get out of this nightmare that we're living, I don't think history is going to be erased forever. We have an internet now. We've books. I don't think Donald Trump is that powerful. the temptation is bad like the fact that he wants to do it is bad i don't like it but i just have i have more pressing concern all right gentlemen thank you all very much