Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: This Is an EXTRAORDINARY Moment in Politics

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Tim Miller joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to take on America’s slide into political violence, Trump’s immigration agenda, and the disturbing Republican response to recent assassinations in Minnesota. Tim also discusses Terry Moran’s truth-telling moment and the media’s struggle against pressure to put neutrality over reporting the news.

Hey, y'all, it's Tim Miller from The Bullwork. Just got off with my friend Nicole Wallace and MSNBC and also Claire McCaskill, probably my top three favorite ex-democratic senators, top three. I'll tell you who the other two are another day. Love, Claire. And look, we just talked about an extraordinary moment right now in our politics, reflecting back on the no-kings protests, along with the little limp military birthday boy tyrant protest. We discussed a little bit about the immigration debate and how I'm a little bit, I may be more negative about what is to come over the coming months and some others. I think there's some people who think Trump is tacoing on immigration. I don't quite think

so. And then we talked a lot about the assassinations in Minnesota. And a little bit about Terry Moran, who's great. So hope you enjoy it. Stick around for me with Nicole and Claire, and we'll be back here with more. Make sure you subscribe to the feed. We'll be seeing you soon. Nicole Moran Host of the Bullwork Podcast, MSNBC political analyst Tim Miller is here. Yeah, I mean, Tim, the other side of the glory of the size and scope and depth of the protests is it has to be pretty bad historically for people to spend a day protesting especially against

an administration that as Claire points out has shown no limits they handcuffed a sitting US senator last week. Yeah no look I mean it was an encouraging day for sure I was at the protests in New Orleans and I agree with everybody's comments about the spirit of it but if you just look at what happened in the past week, right, and you have military in the streets of Los Angeles over the objection of the governor, threats to jail or tar and feather the governor from the administration, even if they're joking, not in the American tradition. We have the assassinations of two democratic, or one democratic state legislator

and an attempted assassination of another in Minnesota. So if you put all that together, yeah, and like we're in a dark place that all of this was necessary across the country. So it was encouraging and uplifting to see it, but the fight continues. And I just, I wanna echo Claire's point. I agreed with almost everything that Congressman Raskin said, but with this caveat, I just,

I'll believe it when I see it on Donald Trump backing off on the immigration enforcement in some of these industries. I certainly do believe that his friends, the rich hoteliers probably won't have their hotels rated, but we saw what he posted this morning was that they want, like he said, herewith we must have the largest deportation in history. And in order to do that, they need to harass a lot of people that aren't eligible for deportation. They need to deport a lot of people who have been here for a long time, who haven't committed any crimes.

They're going to continue to do that. I think that what trickles out from his demands is a bunch of sheriffs and US attorneys and ICE agents all across the country in blue states and red states that are emboldened. They're going to target blue cities for sure. They want this fight. I agree with Claire more protesting is going to need to need to happen because what they are intending to do this summer when it comes to immigration is deeply un-American deeply

wrong and in the authoritarian playbook and while they couldn't put on a very successful birthday boy parade they have been pretty successful so far at terrorizing recent immigrants to the country and they're going to continue to do it. I reached out to Esther Salas who has generously opened up her trauma and grief at having her son murdered at her home because of her job. She's a judge. There was a disgruntled litigant who came looking for her and murdered her son. And she said the rhetoric has to change, and everybody is responsible or can do something about that. What are your thoughts in the wake of this tragic,

what was described in the moments after it, a political assassination? Yeah, two thoughts. Before I start raging at the Republican response, I do think it'd be appropriate to mention Yvette Hoffman, who's the wife of John Hoffman, who were targets of this. I believe at this point they seem likely to survive.

Yvette jumped on her daughter to shield her and protect her and was shot several times by this alleged assassin. And so, you know, a lot of times in these cases I just think it's important to mention those folks. So we're hearing about the heroes as well as the next group of people I'm going to talk about. But the response on the right to this has just been absolutely deranged. I mean, not random, you know, sometimes you have Beyond Nicole that asks me what they're saying on the random fever swamps of, you know, right-wing blogs. I'm not even talking about those folks.

I mean, all the way up to Elon Musk, richest man in the world, former shadow president, two United States senators, Mike Lee and Bernie Moreno, and a bunch of other very prominent right-wing media folks are still up until this moment trying to claim that this person is a Marxist. They invented some rationale that I guess one of the victims had voted against something that Tim Walz was pushing through with regards to healthcare for undocumented immigrants

or something. And so they were accusing Tim Walz, even Mike Lee, US Senator Mike Lee was kind of obliquely accusing Tim Walls of this and then directly accusing Marxism of this. I mean, this is like a deep brain rot and it is infecting all of their followers. It's infecting people all around the country. And at a moment where, as Claire said, you know, we should be trying to bring people together and tamp down the rhetoric, what they're doing is inciting people more. And at a moment where Democratic legislators were targeted and in one case killed by an

assassin, these very influential people, elected senators, top advisors to the president, richest man in the world, are all out there trying to say, no, it's actually far left people that are doing this type of violence and that kind of implying that that is radicalizing people more towards the victims. So I know it's just, I know it's been really kind of disheartening to watch all that because it's absolutely, and it's crazy, but it also is dangerous. There's reporting today about this as another metric of the toxicity of our politics, that we live in a post-political violence world. Post-January 6, where hundreds of officers were injured, where people lost their lives due to suicide, post two attempts on Donald Trump's life, post attacks on Governor Shapiro, post a kidnapping attempt on Governor Whitmer.

What is the coalition look like to break the fever if the fever keeps spiking? I think we all have to just recognize that even that in ourselves and everybody, there's a desire to like want to be part of a side that is doing something righteous or good or that's not on the side of evildoers right and so sometimes it can be easy to nudge people into this space where they start to believe things that aren't true or be you know not thoughtful about the other side and I'm sure some of you guys have heard I've heard people say

to me that oh they think that the butler assassination attempt on Trump was staged or whatever and it's like well no it wasn't, a man died that day, he was a MAGA person and that's really sad and it's sad for his family and we should just be truthful about what happened and you know we don't have to lie about who the shooter was that day, like someone on the right have, but you But I think it's just important for everybody to kind of recognize. And these moments is important to just be truthful, be empathetic, be compassionate.

The problem with that, as you guys know, is that there is one political party with leaders in the Republican side that just doesn't play by those rules right now. And I think back to like the time just before I was born, like there was a lot of political violence in the 60s and 70s right I probably more than now as far as high-level assassinations and we come came back from that but you

had mostly leaders mostly there were some responsible people that mostly leaders in both major political parties that were like trying to bring the country together you know in that next in the ensuing decades. And that's just not happening on one side right now. As long as Donald Trump is president, that's just not in his makeup to try to bring the country together. It doesn't really seem like it's in JD Vance's makeup. We haven't seen a lot from him on that front.

We've seen a lot of divisiveness from him. And so now we see the senators spreading conspiracy theories. And we saw it with Nancy Pelosi's husband. And he has see the senators spreading conspiracy theories. And we saw it with Nancy Pelosi's husband. He has attacked the spreading of conspiracy theories. So that part is the tough one to break when you got one size leaders that won't do what is right in the wake of tragedies. Tim Miller, I've known Terry Moran for as long as I've worked in politics, longtime ABC reporter.

His defense of the tweet he sent was that it was the truth and he stands by it. Tell me about your conversation with him. Yeah, I talked to him this morning for our Bullock podcast and look, what he's trying to say I think is pretty simple. And sometimes there's pressure in media to try to be falsely fair, to try to be objective, to be fair to both sides. And he's like his tweet about Stephen Miller and his hateful rhetoric was truthful. And I think that the ABC cracking down on him comes in the context of ABC kind of folding around the George Stephanopoulos lawsuit and other examples of this from the media.

And Terry, as you know, reported in Russia and has reported in authoritarian regimes. And I think he was very fair about all that when we talked. He's not saying we're going to be Russia or we're already Russia, but he's saying he's seeing some concerning hints where people have to be careful about what they say, even if it's the truth or they might suffer retribution. And so I'm happy he's out there speaking the truth and he's doing some independent media stuff now and was happy to talk to him for the pod. It's so good.

It's so, so, so good. You guys are so good together. Tim Miller and Claire McCaskill, thank you so much for being here. A really important day. Thanks to both of you.