Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Trump Administration and Elon Are Unleashing Mayhem

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

Tim Miller appeared on MSNBC with Alex Witt and Shelby Talcott. They discussed this weeks mayhem in the Trump administration, from Bondi, Project 2025, Elon Musks "Move fast and break things" technique and much more.

Hey everybody, it's Tim Moore from The Bulwark. Look, there's so much happening, we've got to do weekend news coverage these days. So, after my kids' basketball game, I was over on MSNBC, repping my Flagey Johnson shirt, Go Tigers, discussing all of the latest from what is happening out of the Trump White House. We covered Pam Bondi, something I haven't gotten to on the pod yet, Pam Bondi's eyebrow-raising executive orders about how this government is no longer going to be looking at foreign interference, are no longer going to be prioritizing that in prosecutions, which is basically just saying, come on in, Russia, come on in.

Any foes that want to help Donald Trump politically, you can interfere in our elections, and we're going to look the other way. We talked about Project 2025 getting implemented in real time, the implications of that. We talked about Trump and Musk and how Musk's move fast and break things ethos might be a political anchor for Trump. And I kind of get into the difference between why Trump's kind of phony, fraudulent, smoke and mirrors politics might have a little bit more staying power than Musk's move fast and break things politics. So here it is. I was on with Alex Witt, my friend,

over on MSNBC, breaking this all down. Let's bring in Tim Miller, MSNBC political analyst, writer at large for The Bulwark and host of The Bulwark podcast. And Shelby Talcott, White House correspondent for Semaphore. Welcome to you both. So, Shelby, how is the Trump administration reacting to all this Musk backlash? Are there any plans to rein in his access and power? Not so far. And again, you know, there are people and there have always been people inside of Donald Trump's orbit who are a little bit skeptical of Elon Musk. We heard it during the transition, some complaints that he was sort of always at Mar-a-Lago. But ultimately, if Donald Trump is happy with Elon Musk, then Elon Musk is

going to stay. And so far, it seems like Donald Trump is very happy with what Elon Musk is doing and is content to let him sort of run this government efficiency agency as he sees fit. So, Tim, Yamiche, you heard touch on the Washington Post report that constituents are flooding lawmakers with calls about Elon Musk. Listen to this. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said the Senate's phones were getting 1,600 calls a minute compared with the typical 40. I mean, that is a stunning difference. Is the chaos that Trump and Musk are unleashing on the government exactly what Democrats warned would happen before the election? And have you noticed any Republicans or Trump voters expressing any buyer's remorse?

It is what Democrats warmed of. I did see a there's an article this morning that and we at the at the board do some focus groups where you heard from some people that were Trump voters who said that this was chaos that they were not looking for. So we have seen, you know, a couple of examples of that. That's anecdotes. It's not data at this point. It's pretty early. But just as a general principle, if you stand back, Trump has succeeded with voters when he is doing his kind of PR game, right, which is a lot of pomp and circumstance, a lot of brashness, you know, attacking foes, but then not actually doing a whole lot. Like you remember the first term, like all the discussion of the wall and immigrants and how

much the wall actually got built, not that much. Elon is kind of doing the opposite, right? Like they're doing the Silicon Valley move fast and break things strategy. That is less popular with voters than Trump's, you know, smoke and mirrors strategy, if you will. And I do think that that tension is going to come into focus even more over the next few months. Can you give me a sense, Tim, what the best way is for the public to fight back? Is it grassroots efforts, protests like the one we saw across the country this week? Look, yeah, I mean, I think the calling Congress does make a difference. The Republicans are very narrow majorities in Congress. And so I think particularly, you know, I think the calling Congress does make a difference. Look, the Republicans are very narrow majorities in Congress.

And so I think particularly, you know, if you are from a state like where you have a senator like Lisa Murkowski, you know, like Bill Cassidy here in Louisiana, it seems like he folded on the on the RFK secretary vote. But he was on the fence for that for a while. You know, I think pressuring those types of Republicans is useful. A lot of this stuff is going to be in the courts, right? So a lot of this stuff is legal, and so the regular Americans that are lawyers will be involved in that, not regular folks. And then I think in the government, you know, federal government employees are going to have to speak out.

And I think that you're seeing this already with reaching out to people who are involved in USAID. Democrats are going to have to put a face on the people that are doing this work. What kind of work are they doing? You know, there's an example, you know, down here in Louisiana, there's this group that we volunteer with that does tree planting. You know, they're like, we get funded through the U.S. forestry, right? The tree planters, like the farmers, the tree farmers are going to get hurt by this. The guys that are doing the delivery. Right. So putting faces on this that are not just, you know, whatever bureaucrats. Yeah. So, Shelby, you write that the Department of Government Efficiency follows the longtime Elon Musk pattern.

What is that pattern? I mean, Tim just just mentioned the Silicon Valley MO breaking things. Is that how he's doing it? Yeah, historically, Elon Musk has gone into places that he ends up buying or owning, and he sort of takes a wrecking ball to it, and he dismantles the entire structure and then rebuilds it up. And that is how he did things when he took over X. It's how he did things at SpaceX. And so this is historically sort of his pattern of doing things is sort of go big, dismantle everything, and then figure out how to build it back up. And we saw that. We're seeing that.

That's the approach that he is taking to the U.S. government. Now, of course, the difference is this is not a private company that Elon Musk owns. This is the U.S. government. So we're seeing the different repercussions. We're starting to see these lawsuits. We're starting to see legal pushbacks. And there's certainly going to be more of that as he continues with this method. A hundred percent.

And Shelby, in that same article, you said that Doge is turning its attention now to the Social Security Administration. What are you learning about Musk's plans for that agency? And what would that mean for millions of Americans? Well, we heard from Donald Trump yesterday who reiterated what he has said on the campaign trail, which is that Social Security would not be touched. But in the same breath, he also sort of alluded to the idea that they will be looking at Social Security in some way, shape or form. He argued that there are people on there that shouldn't be on there that need to be weeded out. We don't know the specifics of that. But certainly it seems like Elon Musk and his group of folks are going to be looking at this agency in terms of what Donald Trump said last night. And now I also would note that

when I've talked to people affiliated with Doge's efforts, they say every agency is essentially on the books. There is no agency that is fully offline, that is fully unavailable to be looked at. And I think that's also notable because it shows that this is only getting started. We're only a few weeks into Donald Trump's administration, and they're planning to look at every single aspect of the U.S. government in some way, shape or form. So newly sworn in Attorney General Pam Bondi has already issued a flurry of directives aimed at examining the alleged weaponization of the DOJ and stopping investigations into foreign influence. Tim, what does this tell you about Bondi's priorities? And is this what she said she would do in her confirmation hearing? It isn't. What we heard from the confirmation hearing was that they were going to depoliticize the Justice Department. Not going after friends of the administration if they

commit crimes or if they should be looked into is not depoliticizing, it is politicizing it. And I think particularly when it comes to this foreign influence, that's a pretty strange directive immediately, that we're going to de-emphasize investigations into FARA, which is the Registered Foreign Agent, and de-emphasize investigations into foreign interference in our elections. I mean, that is sending a, you know, basically like a welcome sign to foreign governments that want to interfere. That is clearly, even though it's not stated in the

in the EO itself, a reaction to just how upset Trump was and the people around him about the Russia investigation. So in a lot of ways, this is also sending a welcome sign to Russia, though they're a little bit, you know, they're hands full, I guess, in Ukraine. But, you know, I think that that is like the big takeaway here. The other thing that I'd flag is who the U.S. attorneys are that come in. That's going to be under her rubric. We have this guy, Ed Martin, who's been explicitly partisan as the D.C. U.S. attorney. He was Phyllis Schlafly's right hand man is just a rabid partisan that has been put in place at that very important D.C. attorney's spot. And so I think we're going to see

more of that from her as well. OK, last question to you, Shelby. What else do you think we can expect from the DOJ? I mean, what do you think is next on their agenda? Well, listen, I think that they've made it clear in, you know, as soon as she was confirmed, she has set up a task force to examine the the what they call the weaponization of the Justice Department. They've she's warned career lawyers at the agency not to sort of push back on Trump's agenda. And so I do think that that's going to be a focus. And anything that Donald Trump does in the next few weeks, which we anticipate to be a lot, a lot more executive orders, a lot more initiatives, that's going to follow at the Justice Department, and she's going to implement Donald Trump's agenda.

Okay. Shelby Talcott, come see me again anytime soon. Appreciate you. And Tim, I'd like you to stay with me because I do want to talk with you about Project 2025 and how its plans are now playing out in this administration. Let's bring back Tim Miller. So Trump is also working to eliminate the Department of Education, Tim. It's another project in 2025's priority list. In response to a post about Democrats trying to enter the DOE building, Musk tweeted, no such department exists in the federal government. I mean, look, this administration is going page by page.

But how and when are we going to get to the limits of what they can actually do? Well, at some point we are already at the limits with some of the court rulings that have come in. You know, there was an injunction placed against the actions that Musk and the team were trying to do in Treasury Department already, trying to get access to people's data. So, I mean, there are going to be legal limits on all of this, now presuming the administration follows legal rulings, which I think is an open question at this point, but what they

have so far to date. But look, I don't think that there is a limit to what they will try to do within Project 2025. Tyler Boyer, who is a Republican National Committee man from Arizona, I saw him tweet the other day that Project 2025 was just the start. And I do think that is the mindset. I think that a lot of people in Heritage Foundation and on kind of the MAGA right, like see this as their opportunity to completely remake the government. And I think they intend to do as much of it as they can get away with. Let's turn now to Trump and Musk's efforts

to shut down this United States Agency for International Development. The White House is claiming that USAID gave massive sums of money for projects that were quite ridiculous and and even malicious. They gave 12 examples and The Washington Post found just one of the 12 claims was true or put into proper context. But how is this playing to the public, Tim? When Trump's allies share information from a White House source, do people just blindly

believe it? And how do you combat that when it's only partially true or it's completely false? Yeah, well, look, they are going to believe some of this. In the aforementioned Bulwark focus groups, there was somebody this week who said, you know, that they were happy that Trump took care of the condoms that were going to Gaza, which was one of the false things that the administration was putting out that USAID was doing. It just wasn't true at all. So, yes, some people are going to believe this. I think, though, as time goes on, the real-life impact of this stuff will eventually resonate.

You can do propaganda, you can do PR, but you can't change people's reality. And I think that whether it's USAID or shutting down some of these other programs, when it comes to NIH and research, we're already seeing some of those community health centers shutting down. Research hospitals in red states and red communities are going to be laying people off. There are a lot of people that work at USAID that are real, earnest Christians that have dedicated their life to serving the poor throughout the world. They're about to be sent back to their communities and their churches, right? So over time, I think the reality of this will break through to most folks.

But in the meantime, the Trump propaganda does work. That's why people have, you know, politicians have used it for a long time. So Trump was asked about his reaction to this Time magazine cover featuring Elon Musk. Let's take a listen to what he said. Did you have a reaction to the new Time Magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your resolute desk? Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know that. Elon is doing a great job.

He's finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. Okay, so on this week in 2017, Steve Bannon made the cover of Time. And the article for the, or rather the title for the article was, Is Steve Bannon the second most powerful man in the world? Six months later, Tim, Bannon was gone from the administration. So what are the chances Times' Elon cover bothers Trump? I think it could. There's one key difference between Bannon and Musk as far as their relationship to Trump. And I interviewed Bannon on this about two months ago at a MAGA conference in Arizona. And he acknowledged this off the record.

And that was that Musk has his own power base, which is the quarter billion that he spent to help Trump, the money that he's pledged to support Trump loyalists in primaries in 2026, and also his huge following that he has on his social media account. So getting into a fight with Musk is a little bit trickier for Trump than getting rid of some of the stooges that he's gotten rid of in the past. I mean, Trump has a lot, or Musk has a lot more power than Corey Lewandowski or some other random Trump staffer who flew a little too close to the sun and then got fired. So I think it's a trickier situation for him, but I do think it's going to bother him and that the tensions will continue to grow.

OK, I guess you're saying that Elon Musk is no Icarus. But thank you, my friend, Tim Miller. It's good to see you.