Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Trump Can’t Stop What He Started

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Tim Miller takes on the rough stretch for Trump as leaked internal polling shows his immigration tactics backfiring, ugly ICE footage sparks public backlash, and even the White House admits the optics are hurting them.Watch Chris Jansing Reports on MSNOW: https://www.ms.now/chris-jansing-reports

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. I was on MSNBC with Chris Jancing this afternoon. We got him to do a bunch of stuff, including some changes and projections for the House Representatives. It's good for the Democrats and also some internal mega infighting over Planned Parenthood funding and other abortion issues. I did that little bit with our new bulwark friend, Sarah Matthews, who I was excited to have the opportunity to be on the tube with. But before we get to that, on a few other issues, I wanted to pop off.

And so much is happening in the news and for the pod today, kind of took a deep literary dive on on civil rights issues and how that's, that's resonating today. So if you don't mind, I've got some thoughts about Trump's fake Nobel Peace Prize trophy and some of the latest craziness out of our Department of Homeland Security. Let's start with Maria Carino Machado's visit to the lighthouse. I've got to say it feels like this is a little too, little too late for Maria Machado. I mean, I don't, Donald Trump likes trophies, but things are already moving down the tracks as far as him garnishing, confiscating, stealing the oil from Venezuela and putting it in a bank account in Qatar and letting the communist Chavista still run the country. So Donald Trump doesn't really seem to care a lot about, you know, freedom and the other things that Machado was talking about. I think maybe she was hoping that he would care about the trophy so much. But I think Donald Trump's kind of a person that says, hey, great.

thank you. I appreciate the trophy. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to put it in my trophy room and then not do anything for you. That'd be kind of my assessment of Donald Trump's character. I do have to mention that she gave him the medal in this kind of framed. It sort of looked like somebody ran to Michaels, like an hour before the event and had the metal framed next to, you know, some parchment paper with, say, the president, Donald Trump and the people of the United States, it's, it's pretty janky. You know, it kind of looks like, you know, the type of thing that you can give, you know, that you give out to, you know, kids for their awards, like at the end of a, at the end of a soccer season. I just, if you're going to try to go the whole way here

and make a big deal out of giving the medal, I might have done some better framing. You know, I use uptown frames here. Orleans. They would have taken care of, they would have taken care of Marie Machado a lot better on that. It would have looked a plus. The other thing that's worth noting on this is the Norwegian Nobel Committee says Trump can have the trophy. But once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time. A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureates cannot. So a little cheeky tweet from the Nobel Committee. yesterday. Like, it's, you know, it feels like we're pretty cooked here for in this situation. Like, this is the kind of diplomacy that we're doing. And, you know, as I mentioned, like,

this all comes in the context of like Donald Trump's war mongering and, and saber rattling of our own allies in Greenland. But also, JVL wrote in his newsletter yesterday, you guys should go check that out. Like, but what about this, this cutter bank account that I'm mentioning, like, Trump is continuing to look for ways to create other funding sources inside the executive branch. So it doesn't have to go through Congress. It's pretty ominous, particularly as we get to this next topic, as you look ahead to how he might behave after the midterms, presuming the Democrats take control of Congress. And I would assume if the Democrats had any balls, stop funding Donald Trump's various reigns of terror. Over in Minnesota,

behavior of the ICE and CBP agents continued and the courage of the protesters there continued. We talked about that a lot yesterday, and it's been really kind of inspiring seeing how many people are getting out in the streets of that frigid Minnesota winter to speak out against this. And I think they should be warned by one thing that there's evidence now, even internally among President Trump's team, that they recognize that this is hurting them from a popularity standpoint. This is out of Axis, our old friend Mark Caputo, reporting on this. Private Trump polling showed support for his immigration policies falling. Those results reflect what we've seen in the public polling, but it's kind of interesting to see that they're confirming that with what they're saying on the internals.

One of these Trump advisors told Caputo, I wouldn't say he's concerned about the policy. He wants deportations. He wants mass deportations. What he doesn't want is what people are seeing. He doesn't like the way it looks. It looks bad. So he's expressed some discomfort at that. Here's the thing.

Trump doesn't, we all went through this in the first term with the, this was the whole Javanka stuff, right? There's always like Trump would do something. The images on the cable news would be bad. Javanka would go into him and say, you know, this looks bad for you. And then kind of leak to the New York Times that they objected to the

unpopular thing that people don't say thank goodness we have Jared and Ivanka in there like this is kind of a version of that like we haven't seen a lot of that in this term but that's kind of what's happening and and Trump does like one of the only things that has saved us from even a worse catastrophe than the living catastrophe we are experiencing is that Trump you know he is a he's a TV person he's a tabloid person he doesn't like the bad images he never really has you know I think there are other I think Stephen Miller likes them right like you can imagine in a different type of despot

that kind of wants this, you know, wants to see liberals crying on TV. I think Trump likes out like a little bit up to a point, right? And then he gets, he tacos. You know, he gets a little weak need. And it'll be interesting to kind of see

how that plays out here. He doesn't have a lot of options though, you know, besides like admitting that he's wrong. And this is a big David from point on the tariffs. It's also true about this. Like, you know, Trump might not like the images, but what he doesn't like worse, well he doesn't like more is admitting that he's wrong.

And, and, and, you know, that you can't really change, like this is what mass deportations look like, right? There's no way to do it in a softer,

gentler way. And, you know, the toothpaste is already out of the tube on all that. And so, and it's hard to imagine him, you know, on his own accord being like,

we're going to unmask these people and we're going to get rid of little, little Hitler, Greg Bovino and all this sort of, So it's kind of hard to imagine him doing that. And so I'm not sure what he can do to fix, really, the policy change. And I know some of the Democrats can do is push on the gas on this. And anybody who listens to this knows I'm wrong. I don't know the time it was just yesterday, two days ago,

talking about how wrong I was about Havana syndrome. Happy to admit when I'm wrong. The one thing I've been on since day one of this administration is that these immigration tactics are not popular. and we should fight on that turf. And a lot of Democrats have been hesitant to do so. And increasingly, we're seeing more and more who aren't as on a function with some elected Democrats and candidates last night. And I was pretty encouraged on this point.

I was chewing people's ear off on it, as you might imagine. And so increasingly, I think they're coming out of their shell on this. There have been some really great examples of Democrats who are pushing on this. But it does seem like there's still some hesitancy in various places, particularly in the funding fight coming up. And Bill Crystal was out yesterday basically saying, like, where is Amy Kovachar and Tina Smith, senators from Minnesota, you know, making this cornerstone of the fight around the upcoming budget conversations in the Senate? So we'll see how that goes. But I just think that once, if the White House is admitting, and basically how these stories come to pass is

there's somebody in the White House that sees the polls, sees it's a disaster and is leaking about it, so the people talk about it, so hopefully Trump backs off. Like, that's why this story is out. Like, it's not, you know, it's not like, you know, the polls got left on the printer or something at the White House. And Mark Caputo found out. Like, somebody in the White House is unhappy and is trying to get them to back off. And so the fact that that is happening from inside the House, so speak, is telling. And the Democrats shouldn't let up on it.

One last thing, I do kind of want to laugh. Can we laugh with these fucking little, little authoritarian thugs? I was a Susan Glasser. We were talking about this, and throughout the story is the same, you know, throughout the 1930s, just about how hackish and embarrassing and clownish the authoritarians were. I kind of feel like we need sort of a segment on that.

I don't know. Maybe put in the comments if you have some suggestions on what like a, what a brand for that could be, maybe like an award, like a weekly award for the most clownish attempt of authoritarianism. For this week, I want to shout out Trisha McLaughlin. Trisha is the spokesperson for the DHS who has just been, I just kind of unimaginably machine-like in her willingness to defend the worst of the worst actions of this administration. I, you know, and she's putting herself out there and not caveating it, not even like really spinning it. Carolyn Levitt, like, you know, you can tell that she, when things get ugly, she at least tries to spin it or backtrack or push it off to other people.

Like, Trisha is just leaning in and just advancing absurd lies about ICE's actions, defending the most heinous actions of the ICE officers. And she's been out a lot on Fox over the past week. And this was a clip that caught my eye and where yesterday on Hannity she was talking about the protesters and the danger that was coming from the protesters and how the administration plans to crack down on them. And I got to tell you, you're going to be shocked

when you hear what these protesters were doing that is going to demand the full force of the federal government. What other acts of violence have they been committing against these ages? Well, Sean, your viewers can see that that car was driving, pouring cold water on the ground so that it would freeze the ground in front of our federal law enforcement vehicles so that they would potentially slide, crash, and potentially kill them.

That is a federal crime that your viewers are seeing there. That is a federal crime. That is a federal crime in Minnesota. Pouring cold water on the ground. That's what the party of freedom wants to tell us. citizens this week that if they pour cold water on the ground around an ice agent uh they might they might get bullied all right they might get pushed around thrown to the ice you know have their necks knee have have have the knee of the agents uh affixed to their neck they might be detained even if they're

a u.s citizen um that's what that's what these guys have planned uh so you know because they can't and we've seen the videos. I mean, there's some pretty funny videos if you haven't seen them of the ice agents walking around Minnesota and just eating shit on the ice left and right. Just like full yard sale like style face planting on the ice. I've seen several of those. You know, these guys aren't trained at all. It certainly might not be trained for winter conditions. A little preview of how the Greenland invasion would look like. And so because, you know, we're not going to actually do the work to train them and make sure they act responsibly when they eat shit on the ice, the administration has to find a

boogie ban. And they're going to say that it's, I guess, the Antifa domestic terrorist pouring cold water on the ground that it's causing them to slip and fall. And who knows, maybe kill themselves, maybe killed themselves, thanks to the cold water spilling. So that's Trisha. I encourage the people out there in Minnesota to be peaceful. And, you know, but nothing wrong with grabbing yourself a subway sandwich and, you know, getting the full value meal and kind of dumping that ice on the ground when you're done with your iced tea. It's just you might want to have a have a hoagie in hand just in case.

Tim Miller, host of the Bullwork podcast and an MSNAL political analyst. So, Look, we have some elections, you know, Cook Political Report put out today that they're moving a lot of elections that look like they could go Republican to Democratic. Including in a few red states, it looks better for the Democrats than it did just a few weeks ago. Do these anti-abortion groups have the potential to make what seems to be even closer elections, even closer than that? I think that they probably want to think that they do, but here's the thing. you know, Trump has a lot of leverage to call their bluff, you know, because Marjorie Dan, so I know her, you know, I know these activists. Trump was, Tred Cruz was the pro-life candidate in 2016.

You know, Trump on various times, this isn't the first time we've been through this rodeo, and the kind of pro-life ink has come around to Trump every time, and so I think he sees this as an empty threat. Now, there are risks on both sides of this issue in a general, in a midterm, right? Like on the one hand, there is, you want to make sure you're turning out your voters. And on the other hand, you know, with swing voters, as you mentioned in these poll, the midterms looking worse and worse, you know, I think the Republicans are looking at this and Trump's looking at this and be like, where are some things that we can moderate? He's done that

before in the past in various issues. Trump's bet is that, eh, I can kind of be a little wiggily on this in the hopes that it helps my political standing, and these guys are going to vote for me anyway. It's a risky bet, but also, you know, if passed his prolog, my guess is that he'll give them a fig leaf in the pro-life groups will be back on board. So according to findings from the public religion research institute, Tim, 24, around one in 10 residents in most states said abortion should be illegal. One in 10. There are only seven states where fewer than half of the residents support abortion rights. So we're talking right about a relatively small number of people. But when it comes to congressional

districts in red states, and I'm talking micro here, not macro, understanding your argument, could it make a difference? Well, I think it could make a difference in some of these particularly red districts. You know, if you get in a wave election, I think back to 2018, right, where Trump, or excuse me, where the Democrats end up taking seats in, like, Oklahoma City and Charleston, places they never had before. And so those are places where you do need to juice your red,

the base turnout. The only caveat to that is, if you look at the Senate map, like where the Democrats need to expand, Alaska, even in a place like Kansas, they voted on the pro-choice side of that, of the abortion amendment in that state. And so, you know, there are very few districts at this point where

I think that these pro-life groups have juice that they used to have. Even Trump's supporting conservatives are acknowledging the tough situation that Republicans are in, right? Listen to what Ben Shapiro had to say on Gavin Newsom's podcast. Publicans have no chance in this midterm, right? I think that they are in for a world to hurt right now in the midterms. I mean, they're the incumbent party. They have a bare majority. That alone would put them behind the eight ball.

There are not a lot of swing districts that are kind of, left because of all the redistricting, but the swing districts that are left seem to be trending more blue. President Trump isn't on the ballot, so he doesn't really have coattails among the low propensity electorate. So yeah, I think that Republicans are going to have a rough ride. So what do the Democrats do to make that happen? Well, look, I think the question for the Democrats is more about expanding the map, right? And, you know, I was at an event last night here in town with some of these Democrats who were running in districts that, like, you know, Republicans won by maybe 13 last time.

right like that would have been a traditional swing district like to bend point because of all the redistricting we don't have a lot of those coin flip districts that we used to have but in a way of election year you know if republicans voter turnout is depressed if democrats really excited to turn out if you have the type of candidate that can appeal across party lines so that has to be a kind of a heterodox type candidate uh... you know i think that's possible and i and to me that's where the democrats

should be focused on kind of looking into that next tier of more sweat-stretched districts like i mentioned earlier the Oklahoma cities the Charleston's the I was talking to a guy last night from North Tampa, right? Like those kinds of places where, you know, maybe... Louisiana? A state. I don't know about my home state. That might be a stretch, okay?

Let's win Tampa first, and then we'll talk in Louisiana.