Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: There's One Issue That Splits Trump’s Base

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Tim Miller joins Nicolle Wallace to react to Jimmy Kimmel’s return and what it means for Trump’s attacks on free speech. Tim even admits to a rare moment of optimism as he explains why standing up to Trump’s bullying matters. Watch Nicolle’s show on MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house

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that people are rallying around the commitment to free speech in this country. And I do think that people, with some exceptions that are concerning that we need to keep talking about, will broadly be rallying against some of the worst of the free speech abuses of this administration.

Let's put it that way. So I offered that a little bit of optimism. We talked about kind of a bunch of other stuff related to the Jimmy Kimmel news. So if you want a little skipping your step with optimistic Tim, stick around. Subscribe to the feed right here. Next video probably will be a little darker, but who knows? We'll see how it goes.

Your first reaction. Well, my action is good and finally, kind of, finally. We've seen this from a corporate leader who has been targeted by this administration, who has done the thing that we've suggested on this program in a lot that John Oliver put so succinctly on his show which is the administration F you make me and like that's been that was the most frustrating thing about this thing from the start

right was you know this is a threat to the First Amendment this is Donald Trump you know trying to bully and intimidate and silence people but he was able to do it in kind of his way where he just sends

out bleats and he just intimidates and he just says nasty things about people and he makes veiled threats and he hopes that people will just fold to his wishes. And way too many people this year, maybe too many prominent organizations and institutions, have just fell, have just folded to his pressure campaign. And throughout all of this, we've said,

well, we don't exactly know how far he will go. You know, we know how extreme his rhetoric is, but we also know about Donald Trump that he is tacoed a lot. He's chickened out a lot when the heat gets turned up. And so rather than just fold and say, hey, you know, we want to grant you all of your authoritarian wishes and we're going to fire people to criticize you and we're going to, you know, give you pro bono legal services and on and on, why don't these institutions say, okay, you want you want to come after us? You want FCC chairman Brendan Carter come after us? Do it. Let's go to court. Like, we'll see you in court. You want the Department of Justice to go after your political foes? Find a grand jury. Find a grand jury that will support your allegations. right and and if you start doing that then this administration i think is going to be slowed down quite a bit in their authoritarian aspirations then you can see that maybe the pro democracy side can get some wins under their belt and i think that to me like that is the big message of this

which was you know the main issue as serious as the threats to the first amendment from the administration was the main issue in this particular case was just how easily people were folding, right? They did this. They silenced Jimmy Krimmel without any actual, uh, tangible threats to them, at least at the Disney level. That might be different when we get down to the affiliate level. In the category of how bad is he, he's so bad. He's lost the likes of Ram Paul and Ted Cruz and many others. Tim, just take me insight what's happening on the MAGA right. Well, look, this is maybe a glimmer of hope. I love when I get to do a rare glimmer of hope on this show, Nicole. It's like, there are a bunch of issues in which the right is happy to be

totally cynical and partisan, like nearly all of them, frankly, and we've seen that with Donald Trump, right? Where they've been willing to be locked step with him and apologize for him, no matter what his corruption is, no matter his cruelty, no matter how non-conservative he is, tariffs, we can go down the whole list. The free speech issue is just so fundamental. It's not even just Republicans, but it's just society-wide. It's just such a part of the American fabric. Like, anybody that's American is like, this is, it's the First Amendment.

Like, we are, in America, we get to say what we want. Like, we don't have kings. We don't have dictators telling us to shut us up. And it's, it is instinctual for a whole lot of people, not everybody, but a whole lot of people. And that is, including some people within the, the

Trump, within the MAGA movement. It includes a lot of the people who are in, like you played all the actors. It's obvious why, earlier in the show, why all of them care about this. But that's also true of the podcasters, of comedians, of a lot of the Manistphere folks we talk about. This is just essential for a lot of folks in this country, including a lot of people

that supported Donald Trump. And so while they're willing to suffer a lot of other indignities and humiliations on his behalf, there's at least some minority percentage of them that start to get their backup. And it's like, hey, I'm not allowed to say what I want. I'm not allowed to criticize people in power. I'm not allowed to make jokes about things. That feels very un-American, and I think it's a good sign that we've seen some pushback from within his coalition on this from a bunch of different vectors.