Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Trump Bullies One Ally While Another Slips Away

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Tim Miller Tim digs into Trump’s ugly attacks on Rep Thomas Massie, the backstory Trump ignores, and what it says about the cracks forming inside MAGA. He also joins Nicolle Wallace to dig into it.   Watch Deadline: White House on MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house Take our quick listener survey and help us make The Bulwark even better. https://bit.ly/bulwarkaudio

Hey, everybody, Tim Moore from the Bulwark here. I was on with my girl Nicole on Deadline White House, now on MS now. And we were talking about the Maga Fissures and MTG and Megan Kelly. We get to a bunch of good stuff. But she also asked the panel about something that I've been wanting to talk about, which is Thomas Massey and how he has been responding to just these horrific attacks from Donald Trump. I mean, honestly, possibly the most disgusting thing Donald Trump has done over the last week. This is treatment of Republican Congressman Thomas Massey. And so if you've missed that,

I don't explain exactly what's been happening. But, you know, Nicole sent that question to Vaughn Hilliard. So here we go on YouTube. I got to tell you what I think about it. I want to play for you a little bit of the clip that you played in this segment of Massey responding to these attacks for Trump and then give you guys the backstory. So let's watch. The president has gone after you in some deeply personal ways. I mean, attacking you over and over again, even attacking you regarding your wedding, your recent wedding, which, by the way, congratulations.

What do you make of all that? And he's obviously supporting your primary opponents. I mean, what kind of retribution are you facing? You know, my wife told me, she said, I told you so. We should have invited Donald Trump. He's mad that he didn't get an invitation. So, you know, we're taking it with a grain of salt.

He's being a bully or trying to be a bully. And they're trying to beat me here in Kentucky. But here's what's interesting. The people financing this campaign consists completely of three billionaires, and they're all in the Epstein class. In fact, one of them is named in Epstein's phone book, not the secret files that the FBI's keeping, but in Epstein's phone book.

So it's a small world. Dogs don't bark at parked cars, and we are winning. I'm going to tell you, man, me and Thomas Sassie disagree on a lot, but the good cheer he has shown through this is pretty remarkable. So if you've missed it, Massey is a libertarian, congressman from Kentucky. He has been stalwart in pushing for the release of the Epstein files, has been the partner, you know, the wingman, or I don't know who's Batman and who's Robin,

but he's been wingman with Roe Kana on getting the discharge petition, filed for the Epstein files. He's also spoken against Trump on other things, you know, particularly areas of government overreach, things that, you know, believe it or not, there's, I think, you know, nine authentic libertarians in the country who actually just want to respect people's rights and aren't using it as a cover for supporting, you know, right-wing, revanchist ideology. So Massey's caught Trump's eye for all this. Trump is working on a primary against him, like the Adelson's and others, They're putting in millions upon millions of primary, Thomas Massey.

Good luck with that, everybody. Don't think you know what's happening with the Republican base if you think that having a bunch of interventionist billionaires throwing in a bunch of money into a random house district in Kentucky is going to be a winning strategy. But rather than just going after him politically, rather than just doing the Trump thing where he does nicknames, Trump dropped an intensely person. and heinous attack on Massey. And I want to read it to you. This is Trump on social media. Did Thomas Massey sometimes referred to as Rand Paul Jr. Because of the fact that he always votes against the Republican Party get married already?

Question mark. Boy, that was quick, exclamation. Anyway, have a great life, Thomas and question mark. His wife will soon find out that she's stuck with a loser. If you don't know the backstory about this, Thomas Massey's first wife died, tragically, about a year and a half ago. He had been with her since high school, their high school sweethearts had been married, I believe, for 30, 31 years. Her name was Rhonda.

She had health struggles for a long time, but the very end was more sudden than I expected. Then over a year later, he married his new wife, Carolyn, who had been a former staffer for Rand Paul, so they'd been known each other's the libertarian connections. There is a big profile on the two of them in the Cincinnati Inquirer. I want to point you to. Seems like they found somebody that they can both share their unique interests with. Carolyn said they got together. They butchered chickens at their private ceremony.

They enjoyed raw milk with their wedding cakes and margaritas. And they signed a waiver indicating they take full responsibility if any guests got sick from the raw milk. So again, not my people really, but I want everybody to be able to live a life of purpose and meaning and find love and find fulfillment and happiness and whatever weird corner of this world, they search for it in. They can find it in. And apparently, Thomas and Carolyn have done that after this horrible tragedy and good

on them. When asked about Trump's attacks and the back, asked about the criticisms that he gets about this, but how many was too quick to find another wife, Massey said, I still cry every day. People, they're like, wait, he didn't grieve long enough for his wife. I'm still grieving. I believe him. I don't know Thomas Nancy personally, but I mean, this is a man that for all, all signs was in a multi-decade faithful marriage to his high school sweetheart. that life is taken from him at age 50 and he finds somebody else to share life and interests and I assume to cry on their shoulder and to nurture each other and to go and do, I don't know, whatever they want to do in their life, drink milk straight from a cow's udder.

If that's what you're into, great, that's fine, good for you. I hope that's fulfilling. I hope that's meaningful. I hope that brings Thomas Massey some kind of comfort after this tragedy. And for Trump to go after that, for this fucking thrice-married, cheating, tiny-dicked asshole

to go after him and to make some sort of judgment on this as if something is a miss and as if there's something that should be frowned upon in this behavior. Like Donald Trump, this person that bragged about sexually assaulting women on tape that would call into the New York Post under a fake name to brag about his own sexual prowess, which is really a sign that you're really great in the bedroom in his affairs. He would brag about himself under a fake name about how he really was this big tough man in the bed. bedroom and this these tabloid stories about his self-described raunchy and torrid affairs who knows would be on the tabloids in the papers for his kids to see like I just I find this so repellent I find this so repellent and I don't know any how I need of us this is why I was going to say it somebody goes to be mad at me

This is why I really, I really get uncomfortable with the attacks on Erica Kirk, too. Like, I do. I'm sorry. Like, this idea that this should be part of politics, that we should judge people based on how they act after a tragedy. Like, I have no idea how I would act after if my husband was killed or died tragically from an illness. Would I podcast the next day? I don't know. Would I be in a hole and cry?

Like, would I want to date again? And we all, none of us want to even imagine this. We don't know. I don't know. Sure, maybe, maybe some combination of all of that. Maybe a little bit. And, you know, one day and a little bit the next. And you just muddle through and try to live life.

And I think the president of the United States who has just a abominable record in his private life about his behavior and his marriages and his behavior towards women who he made sexual advances on against their will. Like for him to try to like do a catty tabloid, like real housewives drama shit posting on a member of his own party because he went out and got remarried to somebody a year and a half after his wife died is truly reprehensible. It's truly reprehensible. I think that I'm impressed at Thomas Massey's shown good cheer, but I wish in the same way that, as I talk about the next and omitted here about Marjorie Taylor Green, I think that having people from within the MAGA world talk about how gross it is and how unacceptable it is, is useful. And so I wish Thomas Massey would talk about a little bit more, but I respect his choice to handle this however he so chooses. So there you go.

Kudos to you, Thomas Massey. I will say my one area of non-cudos, I have invited him on and he doesn't seem like he wants to come on the bulwark. We have a lot of disagreements about a lot of things. I understand maybe it's probably not helpful to his cause to come on, you know, the YouTube home of Trump derangement syndrome. But if he changes his mind, he's always welcome. Kudos of Thomas Massey for sticking to his guns on the Epstein files. And I wish I wish him and Carolyn the best. Up next is a little bit more

from my segment with Nicole Wallace we talk about Marjorie Taylor Green and Megan Kelly and the other fractures within MAGA. Stick around for that. MTG, what do you think? You know, look, it's hard to know what's going on in her brain but I've got to tell you this. I think it's important

A, in our society and our political culture that we incentivize people coming back from the brink instead of just incentivize sending people over the edge. And I think that currently a lot of folks, whether it be the social media algorithms or are running for Congress, getting small dollar donors, or getting attention on TV, like the incentives are for politicians and even regular people to say the most crazy thing possible, the most extreme thing possible. And so seeing somebody who went down that path, try to back off it and apologize, I think is a good thing. I don't think that we also, we don't need to be snowed by her.

I mean, you read through her history. You know, I've heard some people say, you know, complain that all this strange due respect for Marjorie Taylor Green means people are whitewashing her. I haven't seen a lot of whitewashing of her, actually. I've seen a lot of people playing her comments now and within the context of her past experience. I think that's appropriate. And here's the thing, regardless of what you think about Marjorie Taylor Green, the person, and whether this is a genuine solid of Damascus moment or whether it's something else, more personal, you know, whether she's trying to get attention or something. A crack in the MAGA Coalition is really only going to come from the Marjorie Taylor

Greens of the world. And so everybody that wants the MAGA coalition to crack, anyone that is fighting against MAGA that thinks they're an authoritarian threat, should welcome people that were part of MAGA, even if it's too little too late. Because right now, I think we've tried the route of trying to bring in people that are of the kind of college-educated suburban, former Republican, moderate McCain types. Me and you fit in that vote, Nicole. We grabbed as many of those as we could, and Donald Trump still won last time. And so in order to crack his coalition now, you need to get

people that were with them the third time after the insurrection. And that's going to be a gnarlier process, okay? That's going to be a gnarlier process. We're going to have issues with all those folks. And so she wants to say she's sorry. She wants to speak to this. If she's representative of other people out there who feel betrayed by him, who went with him the third time, that's a good thing. Tim, I want to come back to you about a fissure that exists in sort of the non-Trump MAGA world. And that is right now, Megan Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Green are looking at MAGA and both trying to make calculations about where it's heading, right? For different reasons, maybe, maybe Marjorie Taylor Green for running for president,

maybe Megan trying to read the media moment. They ended up on opposite sides, right? SNL had a quip about in the Trump character saying, you know, Megan Kelly said, you know, Jeff Ripsstein wasn't really. a pedophile. I mean, it was so bad. It's become part of comedy, which becomes part of culture. It's so bad. And Marjitogne has made this opposite calculation or decision or

revelation. I'm actually open to the fact that it's an epiphany. I mean, all the things. However, she got into the boat, at least she's rowing towards something better for democracy. How do you think those two prominent MAGA figures ended up looking at the same thing and reaching totally opposite conclusions?

Yeah. It's interesting. I guess I'll just add one little bit to their potential motivations, because we're in a strange world. I feel like I have to say this. Maybe Megan Kelly's also thinking that she might run for president in 20228. I mean, who knows? Everything is possible, right? Yeah, everybody sees is now looking at that and be like, well, if he could do it, why couldn't I do it? Look, I think that part of it is the fact, I think Megan Kelly is looking at this and saying,

look, nobody's ever won a bet in the Republican Party, at least, against Donald Trump at this point. And that's why I think the Marjorie Taylor Green case is so interesting, right? Because everybody that has tried to go against him within the party has lost, at least, as far as primaries are concerned, you know, et cetera. I mean, obviously he lost the 2020 election. A lot of people have, you know, maybe gained something for their soul by going against him, but politically they've lost. And so I think Megan Kelly is making the safer bed here. I think what's more kind of, and I guess just one more thing, on the Marjorie Taylor Green side, I think she maybe feels a little bit more free to distance herself from Trump

because she's, like, built up this credibility with the MAGA base, like, whereas Megan Coney's like this newcomer, and so they might look, you know, Maga Base might look at her more askance. But to me, the more interesting thing about this discussion is, like, it's a sign of just how weak Donald Trump is. Like, I really, we wouldn't have been having this discussion a month ago because everybody was scared of Donald Trump, and he seemed so strong, and they were making Trump 2028 jokes,

and the richest people in the world were folding in front of them. And now it's just has taken this one. off of your election in Virginia and New Jersey, plus the Epstein issue, plus the failure to message around the shutdown. And now all of a sudden, I do think you're seeing calculations happening. And that's interesting in itself, the fact that maggot people themselves starting to say, hey, there's a future here. And that's a real change from a month ago.