Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: This Is a Real Warning Sign for the Economy

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC's Deadline: White House to share his takes on the horrible job numbers and how a pardoned Jan. 6th rioter is now working for the Department of Justice. Watch MSNBC’s Deadline: White House –  https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house

Hey everybody, Tim Miller from The Bullwork here. Just got off MSNBC. We talked about a bunch of stuff, including just this kind of insane story about these insurrectionists and conspiracists giving jobs at the justice department at the same time that they're firing good public workers. So I talked about that a bit and a couple of other issues. But the main thing that I wanted to lean in with you guys on was this jobs news. So we haven't had a chance to get to on the other podcasts.

The private sector contracted in June. 33,000 jobs were lost. The expectations among the conventional wisdom expectations among economists was that there'd be an increase of about 100,000. Then if you go back to May, the job growth figure was revised even lower down to 29,000. So if you look over the last two months combined, now we're at 4,000 jobs lost. So you really are seeing a trend there.

And I talked about that a little bit with Alicia Menendez over on MSNBC, but because the stock market has rebounded, the elite narrative, let's say, has been that Trump stabilized things by tacoing on his trade war. I don't know that that is the feeling among working class people. I don't know that that's the feeling when people who are looking for a job right now, because a lot of the conversation around the kids just graduating college is that the job market is tough right now. A lot of the conversation if you see over in Sarah's focus groups from people is that they're expecting better prices to be, you know, start to come down a little bit. They haven't for the most part. And you have this kind of trade deal out of Vietnam that I mentioned in the interview, the deal, it's not, I mean, it's one

of these kind of fake deals, but the framework, and it's a high tariff rate still. And so, you know, it's not like, oh, the market's gonna crash. I remember when we were all like kind of hair on fire, Donald Trump's really serious about this. He's going to tank the whole economy because he likes the word tariff. It's not like that bad, but it's not good. A random 20% tax increase on stuff you get from Vietnam. All that starts to add up. You go around your house and start looking at tags, you're going to see stuff from Vietnam. I think it's our sixth largest trading partner. The kind of uncertainty from the trade war, the actual tariffs that have gone into place,

the insane OBBB bill, whatever we're calling it over on the hill, like all of that together has created a really shaky economic market. And so while we're seeing some continued gains in the stock markets and 401Ks, you're kind of like out there in the more tangible part of the economy, there are some real warning signs. So stick around, we discuss,

we get into this a little bit more, and obviously it's something we're gonna be covering when I get back from holiday. I'll make sure we get one of our favorite economist friends on and can kind of assess the state of affairs. So appreciate you all. We'll be talking to you soon. Subscribe to the feed.

We are waiting any moment now to get the jobs numbers for the month of May. The expectations call for the ADP numbers to be up 95,000 for the month of June, rather. It's the June jobs data and will of course, right now seeing the number actually show a decline in jobs down 33,000 on ADP. Live television can throw you some curveballs every now and then as Maria Bartiroma learned on air this morning. The Fox business host was reacting to the news that private payroll jobs significantly missed expectations for the month of June, according to the payroll processing firm ADP.

Private payrolls lost 33,000 jobs in June, the ADP report showed, the first decrease since March 2023. Economists polled by Dow Jones forecast an increase of 100,000 for the month. Just another sign that Donald Trump's economic promises that he campaigned on might be falling through. I am intrigued, Tim, that when you look at the polling, a good number of Americans know about this legislation. There are also a number of Americans who do not fully understand what it is right now that the House is currently debating.

So they will come to learn. But I can't help but looking at the numbers, wonder about the number of people are going to say, wait a second, where's my tax cut? Like they've talked so much about tax cuts with very purposely not being clear on the Republican side about who those tax cuts are for. You just hear about extensions of Trump's tax cuts, that at some point it has to become clear to a lot of folks in his base that assets and values they once had have been cut

and they are not getting that tax cut that they've heard so much about. Yeah, all right. An extension is not actually a cut. So for those folks that aren't paying attention that closely, they're gonna be at status quo. There are a few other things. There's no tax on tips, et cetera.

And there's some parts of the economy that are doing well. The private prison industry, for example, is really crushing right now. But like overall, this bill, like the economic part is that people are going to feel quicker than the healthcare part. Like for good reason, there's a lot of focus on Medicaid, but that stuff doesn't really actually come into effect till 2027. And on the economic side, what you have here is a ballooning of the national debt, which is going to keep interest rates high, which affects everybody. If you have a home mortgage, if you're looking to move a car mortgage to months, like that affects

everybody. If interest rates stay high, they are stopping jobs that had been in place for stuff from the Biden administration. A lot of those green energy construction jobs, a lot of which are in red states, they're just shutting that down. And you've seen the trade unions talk about how this is going to be a job killer of a bill. So those are two tangible things that you have on this bill. And you put on top of that the uncertainty with tariffs.

He announces this so-called deal today with Vietnam, which has, I think, a 20% tariff from Vietnam. One of the economic econ guys I follow, Joseph Politano, said that like five years ago, if you said we were putting a 20% tariff on Vietnam, that would have been the craziest, biggest trade war we've had in a half century. And that, like he's saying, is a win because it looked like it was going to be a greater disaster before that. You know, and then you have all the doge cuts to the public sector industry. So like you put all that together and there are a lot of people that are feeling real, tangible pain and like not nearly as many that are feeling any offsetting gain.

Used to be agreed upon from those who experienced it, Republicans included, that the January 6th attack on our Capitol was a violent assault on our democracy, that the angry mob, especially those who attacked the police officers, should be held to account. Yet that shared assessment quickly faded as Donald Trump and his party whitewashed the events of that day. Members of the mob were held up as prisoners,

martyrs, even heroes. Then all their wrongdoings were erased when Trump pardoned the 1,500-plus defendants that had been charged by the Department of Justice. Now, one of those defendants has been chosen to join the very DOJ that charged him. According to new reporting in The New York Times, a former FBI agent who was charged with encouraging the mob that stormed the Capitol in January 6 to kill police officers has been named as an advisor to the Justice Department Task Force that President Trump established to seek retribution against his political enemies.

Former agent Jared L. Wise is serving as a counselor to Ed Martin, the director of the so-called Weaponization Working Group. It's according to people familiar with the group's activities. Wise was charged with two felonies and four misdemeanors in May of 2023 for his actions on the 6th. It was in the middle of his criminal trial at the time Trump issued his pardons. The Times calls Wise's new appointment a remarkable development. First came the rhetoric where they tried to pretend we didn't all watch what happened

on January 6. Then came the pardons. And now, to Miller, comes the lionization, the placing not just in the public domain, but in an actual position of power, a person who has undermined American democracy. What does that say to you? Well, look, Alisa, those of us who've been watching this closely have seen this trend for a couple of years now. You know, there was a brief period after January 6th where Republican politicians

felt like it was the right thing to do, at least some of them to speak out about this. But we've seen what Republican voters wanted in the ensuing midterms in 2022, and then by nominating Trump in 2024, and by nominating a lot of insurrectionists for office. It isn't just a disappointed position, but across the country, people that were there on January 6 or participating at various levels you know ran in Republican primaries for offices were that were supported and I had a friend working on a campaign in West Virginia against one of those one of those candidates and it was like it was a plus for them with the electorate according to all of their polling. So I mean this is kind of the dark heart of what we're seeing in the MAGA movement so it's not particularly

surprising that some of these folks will have positions in the Trump administration. I mean the degree of outrageousness of the behavior of this and of this in particular individual you know is is alarming and it's not just this particular individual they're gonna. There are others in this administration who are horribly unqualified, who have been advanced horribly extreme views on a variety of issues. So I think that's what we know. The other thing that we could learn politically is that the whole back the blue element is very selective. It's back the kind of police we like. We'll back the ICE of police we like.

We'll back ICE cops and we'll back the folks that are, you know, in the streets in Los Angeles, but that doesn't extend to everyone. Let's talk about the retribution goals and this weaponization working group that Jared Wise is gonna be a part of, specifically who it's being run by, Ed Martin. I wanna read you a little bit more

from that Times reporting, just reminding us and our viewers who he is. Mr. Martin, a longtime supporter of January 6th defendants, was put in charge of the weaponization group in May after Mr. Trump withdrew his name for a Senate-confirmed position as the U.S. attorney in Washington. His nomination faltered in part

because of the work he had done as an advocate and defense lawyer for people charged in connection with the Capitol attack. Talk just a little bit, Tim Miller, about Ed Martin, what it is he plans to do. Yeah, Eagle Ed Martin on social media. Well, for folks who don't know, just as a refresher for everybody. So as you mentioned, he was the temporary U.S. attorney for Washington DC. And during that period, he went after Congressman Robert Garcia for a metaphor or figure of speech. This is the free speech party, right?

Saying that the office was going to investigate him. That didn't go anywhere. I went after Georgetown University for minor issues related to curriculum said that he was going to be ... This was back when Elon Musk was in good standing, the person fighting on behalf of Elon Musk against those that were attacking Tesla. It is just deeply an example of just the Orwellian false speak, the idea that this person will be in charge of a committee that's supposed to look into the weaponization of government. He wants to be a weapon of government. When he was in the US Attorney's office, his whole objective was to use the power of government

and weaponize it against political foes of the president. And so, and this is a person that's been unabashed about that. There's some that are more, how should I say, more casual about it than others are more willing to, you know, use weasel words or, you know, not exactly be so blunt about their goals. Like, Eaglehead Martin wants retribution. Like that's what he's going for. So to put him in charge of this office is basically to say, let's do more. We want more retribution, we want more revenge. And you listed out all the Democratic politicians that they've already targeted.

And I would expect to see more of that. I think sometimes it's easy to talk about this as the, which it's important to talk about it, the consequences for what it means in this period of time, the permission structure that it opens up in the not so distant future. But I'm also obsessed with the Humpty Dumpty of it all, right? Like this is being deconstructed. And if we are able somehow as a country to live and survive our democracy past this moment, it is going to fall to someone to put it back together.

And the putting back together of these institutions will not be easy, especially because all the career folks, lots of the career folks have left. They have undermined the value and the mission of the institution. If there is another side of this, if we all return to Earth One, what is it going to require

to put these institutions back together? I think it's easy to give like happy talk to this answer and kind of say, well, you know, we're just gonna have to work and do it and join hands. And it's gonna be hard, Alicia. And some of it is not going to be is irreparable. I guess just the reality. You know, I had Nick Kristoff on the board podcast last Friday, I think. And he's talking about USAID, which got shut down officially on Monday.

The harm is done, right? Like a future president could come back in and restart USAID. But things change, the world moves on, you know, and it becomes hard to, these complex systems, it becomes very challenging to put them back together in a way that they worked before. And so we're not gonna be able to save as many people's lives as we were before. I just I think that's true about everything. It's certainly true about the Justice Department, just thinking about the people that are checking out, the career people.

You focused on the folks that were fired, rightly. Think about the people that are just choosing to leave, right? And then think about what types of people are being attracted to go into the government right now. Who wants to go work for Kristi Noem and Cash Patel and Pam Bondi? And it is know, like it is gonna take a generation to unwind all of that stuff. And, you know, like in the, just as one example of the people that are going back in versus those coming out, you know,

there's a CNN story by a friend, Andy Kozinski, about this Paul Ingrassia who's going into the DOJ this week. And here's the sentence, he has a year of government experience, he just passed the bar, he has a history of racist, inve invective conspiratorial rants and an affinity with a well-known Holocaust denier That's was that's was Andy Kaczynski is reporting Like these are test people that are going in good people who are trying to do the work or they're getting fired or leaving

I it is gonna be a long time before we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again