Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Trump’s Dumbest Cabinet Member Sank the Epstein Narrative

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Tim Miller joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: Whitehouse to discuss the chaos around the Epstein files as Howard Lutnick contradicts Kash Patel’s testimony, how Democrats can handle the messaging around the government shutdown, and Trump’s continued attacks on ships in the Caribbean. Watch Deadline: White House on MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house Become a Bulwark Youtube Plus Member here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG4Hp1KbGw4e02N7FpPXDgQ/join

Hey, y'all. It's too much for the bowlwork. I'm here in the morning, Joe Greengram. I just got off MSNBC, and I was with my girl Nicole for the full hour. We talked about Howard Nutlick. It was so hard not to say Nutlick, about how he said the stupidest thing. Well, the truth, actually, with the at-scene investigation. And he, I think, really created a lot of problems for Cash Patel and P.M. Bondi and Trump and their Epstein cover-ups. We talked about that. We talked about the shutdown and what Democrats could do. We talked with the insane policy towards bombing. these ships in the Caribbean. We're going to World Venezuela's way over now. There's a lot more on that coming. It was great. Good to be with Nicole in person. We had a blast.

Stick around. So it's got it to our feed right here. And we'll talk to me soon. Without further ado, here is Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary, Mr. Howard Lutnik, talking about Donald Trump's former friend, the dead sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. The guy's gross. Right?

With my wife. The guy's gross. This was not, oh, the deep nuance of Howard Lutton. this guy's gross right so how come bill gates and all these other people could hang around him and not see what you saw or did they see it and ignore it or no they participated right that's what his mo was you know get a massage get a massage and what happened in that massage room i assume was on video this guy was the greatest blackmailer ever what he's so gross i brought my wife there None of that makes sense.

We should say, despite the fact that the American Secretary of Commerce said of those things, you should know there's no evidence that we're aware of at this time of wrongdoing by Bill Gates or other Epstein associates. But importantly, Lettnick is directly contradicting the Trump cabinet's statements and their official line on the Epstein case. The unsigned official memo that the Department of Justice released in July said this, quote, this systematic review revealed no incriminating client list. There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. So DOJ did not find what Lutnik just told us there.

This is from Politico. Musk, Bannon, and Till named a new Epstein estate documents, quote, in what appears to be a copy of Epstein's itinerary, Musk. Elon Musk had a tentative trip to Epstein's Island on December 6th, 2014. A note appended to the plan reads, quote, Is this still happening? At the time, Epstein owned a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Another schedule notes a plan lunch with tech billionaire Peter Thiel on November 27th, 2017,

and a breakfast with conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on February 16th, 2019, just months before Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors. Yeah. And a couple thoughts about this. I think Tara knows this as well as anybody, but like, this wasn't 2003 or whatever. He'd already been arrested for sex trafficking minors in 2017 and 2019 when these guys were going to hang out with him. So they chose to do that. So you don't have to do the whole thing. We're like, well, we don't know if there's any, you know, allegations of bad behavior.

It's like just hanging out with this person and giving credibility of this person after he's already been convicted of sex trafficking minors is bad enough. The other thing I want to say about Letnik, and this is going to maybe seem like a low blow, but it's kind of an important low blow, is that the Commerce Secretary is really stupid. Like in the cabinet of dumb people, like where you have a weekend talk show host and a fake wrestling executive, he stands out as the dumbest,

and if you pulled the cabinet, they would all say that he's the dumbest based on reporting. And that's important to say because, like, sometimes dumb people just don't know how to cover up, you know, how to stay in line with the talking about. All Lutnik is saying there

is just the obvious truth, right? But, like, you and I know that Tara knows, you know, as well as anybody, like, Letnik just, it isn't clicking with him. Like, he needs to go along with the plan. That's part of this cover-up, right? That he needs to be saying these farcical lies,

that Cash Patel and Pam Bondi and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are saying about how, oh, the justice story doesn't know anything more about this, right? Like, we know they're covering, we don't know exactly what they're covering up, but we know they're covering something up. We know that there were other co-conspirators at some level. We don't know exactly what.

Ash Patel knows, quote, put on your big boy pants and tell us who the pedophiles are. Right. So it's obvious that there was some kind of co-conspirator. And to Tara's point, it's like just the scale of the number of women, it's just not physically possible for it to have been just Jeffrey Epstein, right? And we know all these people went to the island after he's convicted. We know all this. And so all Letnik is doing is doing is he's just being dumb enough to say the obvious truth, which is that my fellow cabinet members and the president of the United States, so I work for it, are covering up something.

related to this sex trafficking ring. And so we appreciate him for just telling us that. For just someone just rolling the camera and putting the microphone. Yeah, right. I mean, let me come back to the politics of this because in this sort of, we cover the moment as being dynamic and volatile, which it is, but not this issue. These have been the poll numbers for a long time now. And this is NPR PBS Maris.

Trump's handling the Epstein files, 20% approved, 61% disapprove. NPR, PBS, Maris, again, should the Epstein files be released? Release all or some of the files, 90%. Like, do you see 80-20 issues? I don't know that you see any 90% issues in American politics. There's no one that agrees with their current position, which is that, one, there's nothing to see here, and two, we're not going to seat the new elected member of Congress

because we want to avoid this vote. I mean, the 6% has got to be, like, Trump. It's going to be the co-conspirators. There are that many of them that all of them responded to the Marist Paul. I guess. I mean, the 90 to 6. Yeah. And here's the bet that Trump is making, and he's made this in other issues, and we just don't

know if it's going to work on this one, is that he can just gut it out. And he's never been on the wrong side of a 96 issue, but when he started doing the stop to steal stuff, everybody was like, this is crazy. You know, and then eventually everybody went along with that in 2020. Well, because Kevin McCarthy goes down to Mar-a-Lago and resuscitates him. Yeah, so that's probably not going to happen this time, you wouldn't think. But the bet that maybe where this risk comes on the bet is my colleague Will Summer, at the Bullock who kind of monitors the far right world.

He just has an article just out today about how James O'Keefe, the Project Veritas guy, not my favorite character in the world. He does the undercover stings. He still cares about it. He's still going after Trump about this because that's what far right people who are into conspiracy theories and into uncovering things. Like, this is where the juice is, right? Then you have the Manistphere guys.

Like, they're still going to talk about this. They're not here to, like, run cover for Donald Trump. they thought it was an interesting story. They don't want to be made to look like idiots. So it is a little bit different. Well, Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah, it's just a little bit different than some of those other more straight political issues

where eventually everybody kind of folded to Trump. I think that the political elites, besides what, the smart political Republicans will get in line just because they probably don't think it's worth the fight and they're not principled. They've already folded on everything else. But like the voters, the media. But what if this becomes the issue they get primaried on?

I mean, the whole thesis of why the Republicans aren't doing their jobs anymore and why they go. I mean, no Republican was ever for tariffs. No Republican was ever against. No Republican ever said it's a good idea to ignore the courts. I mean, they're doing things that they've never believed in or advocated for before, ostensibly because they're afraid of their base. What if the base cares more about the Epstein files than a lame-deck president? And at this point, they are making the bet against that. But I think it remains to be seen. I believe the Thomas Massey case is an interesting one. Him and Marjorie Taylor Green.

of the one, I mean, it is like an interesting coalition of like the most MAGA and then like a handful of principal libertarians that have like taken a consistent line on, on this of wanting to release the files. So I think, I think that a lot of these guys, again, it just comes back to Caledith. These guys are like, anytime you've bet against Trump within the Republican Party in a primary, you've lost. And so eventually that'll end. I don't know when.

Maybe it'll be this. Hopefully it'll be this. But I think that explains their behavior. of this program already know, the government has ceased to function this week, as Democrats and Republicans are right now deadlocked on funding, how to fund the government. Here's what Tim Miller told John Stewart yesterday about how Democrats don't have to explain health care premiums to convince voters that they are the better option compared to Trump's approach. The malpractice here, in my mind, isn't messaging. It's that they don't know where they're messaging

us too. They have not created a platform or infrastructure that addresses directly the needs they are still dancing around the old paradigm. Look, man, I agree with you. So I don't disagree that the Democrats should have a health care plan and the Democrats should have a vision and a direction and someone should emerge to try to lead them. But like, that's not actually necessary to be politically successful. I mean, as the former Republican here, may I remind you that Mitch McConnell did pretty good for a few years as the opposition to Barack Obama, just saying, you will do nothing. And I will blame everything that bad happens on you.

That's a good point. That's a good point. And to me, that's kind of like, that's a useful first step, right? Is fighting Trump, doing everything you can to slow him down. And then when bad things happen, many of them are Trump is to blame for. So you can credibly say he's to blame for it. But even for some of the other ones, like, sorry, man, buck stops with you. You wanted to be a, want to be authoritarian, this bad, this bad thing is happening.

We're going to blame it on you, and we're going to do so relentlessly. And we're going to remind people why the current status quo sucks. And that's like an easier thing to do than what you're asking. And so I just feel like my, my suggestion to that might be like the first little baby step towards doing things better. Maybe it's because we work for Republicans that we are like masters of the baby step. then I'll just leave it at that. But trying to like solve, you know, a 3D puzzle isn't the mission. It's like whack-a-mole.

Yeah, and the health care thing is complicated. I'm happy that they're talking about this. And there's a simple part of the health care issue, right, which is that people's premiums are going up right now. And it is Trump's fault. And so for these guys, Democrats on the Hill, who go out there and say, that's Trump's fault. Your health care premium is going up.

It's higher than it was last year. It's because they didn't, you know, you don't have to come up with a plan for what their solution is because they have no power. Correct. They have no power. They lost. And so the way to get back power is to reach people out there, not the MAGA ideologs,

but the people who, for whatever reason, were unhappy with their lives and wanted to shake things up and wanted to, you know, throw out the president in power. Well, now Trump is the president in power. And there's a lot of reasons for people to be unhappy with their lives. Nothing's gotten better for most working people, and a lot of things have started to get worse, right? And so that's the Democrat's job, right, is to go out there and make Trump hold the bag. for all this stuff. And Trump, and you can see this in the administration right now,

they're out there, you know, saying, well, we're, like, the administration is literally saying right now, we're gonna stop funding projects. Like, you might be a worker, we interviewed a guy for the bulwark who is a steel worker, I think, that works on wind turbines. That guy's gonna lose his job, that's a working guy that had a project that was funded,

and the Trump, they're just cutting that. And they don't care, and they're gonna try to blame that on the Democrats. And it's just the Democrats' job to say, no, sorry, you guys are in charge. Manufacturing jobs are going away, costs are going up, the government shut down. Come up with a solution, do it. Let's figure it out.

Like, you want to be in charge of everything, be in charge. And I think it's the Democrat's job to do that relentlessly and also everywhere. And I was saying to you before we got on, like I watched Fox on the whole way up here, there's no counter message on there. And I don't know, maybe Fox isn't booking Democrats, maybe there are folks that are trying. Maybe it just didn't happen in the two hours between New Orleans and New York. But, like, that is their job right now. And I think that's a pretty doable job, you know, even if you have some concerns about, the Democrats in other areas?

I want to show you a poll that the Times has today. It's a Times and a poll. voters should think America's political system is two divided, 64%. It's like almost a 30-point jump, 20-thirty-point jump. It's a worse political climate than during COVID

when people were literally isolated and upset and scared and angry. A majority of Americans say they would describe America as a Democratic country, still 55%. but 41% disagree, including 52% of Democrats and 40% of independence. So you've got, you know, 40% who don't think we are still a democracy. This is the most interesting to me. Donald Trump's position right now as publicly stated is that he, quote, hates his opponents.

A micro, micro-minority of Americans agree with that. When Democrats were asked whether they think of Republicans as the enemy or as fellow Americans, like 10% chose the harsher description. and 14% of Republicans think of Democrats as the enemy. Donald Trump thinks all Democrats are the enemy. Donald Trump is doing something to Democratic-run cities. I mean, by taking away the counter-terror programs in New York, I mean, Donald Trump spends a lot of time in New York.

I don't even understand the sledgehammer he's taking to counter-terror programs in New York. The revenge politics have the support of 10 to 14% of Americans. Yeah. That's encouraging poll, actually, because sometimes in our world, of hyper-partisanship, you like hear from the loudest voices, particularly on social media who are kind of in that on both sides, and that, like, I see the other side as my enemy. And so, you know,

again, this is an area where Trump needs to be pushed outside of the mainstream, but you have to do that. Like, you have to run a campaign against him to position himself there, because they do, like, it's, I know this is crazy to us, and the people watching this, but it's just worth looking what they do strategically.

They're all like, well, the Democrats call us fascists, and that's to blame for political violence. The vice president is out there doing that. Stephen Miller is out there doing that. It's BS. When you're on this show, you cover that and you're saying, no, the only person that actually called Trump Hitler was the vice president and the secretary of health and human services.

America's Hitler, said J.D. Vass. And it's important on the fascist thing. Fascism became a term attached to Trump when Bob Woodward's book came out, and he had reporting that said that two of his top generals described him as, quote, fascistic

to the core. Exactly. That's when that coverage started. So it's a legitimate point. I'm just talking with the rhetorical fight, right? Like, they're like making it seem like the Democrats are the extreme and crazy ones. Going back to my watching the Fox yesterday, Fox only plays one clip of the most insane thing that Elon Omar said, was the only Democrat I saw the whole two hours, you know? And some of them

are from like 2019. Right, exactly. So it's not incredible. But the Democrats got to fight back and do that and go into those spaces and say, no, it's actually this guy that is the first president ever, ever, or at least back to whatever, pre-Civil War times, that is like no, our fellow citizens,

the enemy within, and they're more dangerous than the enemy without, and we've got to target them. Like, we all see that, but that message has to go out there to more. People need to understand the degree to which Donald Trump is pushing this type of division, and that's the way to start pushing people away from him again. It's so, no, no, I mean, it's all in an errandsorkan script somewhere. I mean, this is, this is, you know, the crime bill, right? I'm putting it in the drawer because there's no chance of actually fighting crime. I mean, this is like the fights that you don't engage are fights that.

that are impossible for you to win. Yeah. Do you see any Democrat doing this? Sure. I mean, we mentioned the last segment. Roe is out there with Massey. That's notable. Chris Murphy's out there doing it.

I hate to like to shut it down. I guess what I don't, I'll say what I don't see. And like, you know, Pete's out there doing interviews. You see some for Westmore. What I don't know is like, who is the Democrat that is carrying this fight right now about the Washington fight? To the rest of America, not to just pro-democracy America, you know? And that's not Hakeem or Chuck Schumer.

And maybe Chris Murphy should be appointed to do that. And there are people that are capable, maybe it should be Madeline Dean. You see Jared Moskowitz on Fox sometimes. There are people out there that can do it. And I do think that there needs to be more of a concerted effort to do it there. We in uniform are unique. We are unique among the world's armies. We are unique among the world's military.

We don't take an oath to a country. We don't take an oath to a tribe. We don't take an oath to a religion. We don't take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don't take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution. And we take an oath to the idea of this America and we're willing to die to protect it.

The millions wounded in our nation's wars did not sacrifice their limbs and shed their blood. To see this great experiment, democracy perish from this earth. We're back with Helene and Tim. Tim, it was powerful when he said it. It's almost more eerie to hear it now in light of everything that Trump is asking of the military. And one of the things he's asking of the military is that they strike boats coming from Venezuela without providing evidence of the drugs he says are on them. And I wonder what you make of today's escalation. I think it's great.

I looked really quick on Millie. It's like, it's kind of melancholy and refreshing to hear that at the same time. It's crazy that we're not hearing more of that. So I say that again. On Venezuela. I could play it. I should play it every day. Yeah, really.

I could hear it every day. I needed to hear it right now. It's like the soundtrack for our times. But I think that, I mean, both on the policy and the politics, I think what they're doing in Venezuela is insane. And it's completely insane. It's like Venezuela isn't even the biggest country that brings drugs into our country. Even if you took this on the merits that we're going after

drug cartels because we don't want drugs in this country, it'd be kind of crazy to start bombing drug cartels. But like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, China. I think that it was like sixth or seventh. And so we're doing this, I guess, because Marco Rubio really doesn't like Maduro or because Trump's mad about something. It's hard to even tell why we're doing this. Trump ran as the anti-war candidate. And some people believed him, by the way. He had some success running as that. And now he's going to change the name of the Department of the Defense Department of War, start an illegal war in our own hemisphere in the Caribbean for no really stated rationale. Like, it's unclear what even the rationale is. The New York Times was reporting two days ago that maybe we wanted

regime change in Venezuela. We're going to do a Venezuela. I mean, we used to be Bush Republicans. Like, I'm for pro-democracy, but that's not even when he's arguing. So we're going to do a regime-change war in Venezuela because something, something drugs. Russia take Ukraine, but we're going to do regime change. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. It is insane policy. It is illegal. And I think it's potentially really bad politics for him with not like the Fox News watching part of the base, but the, you know, whatever. The country.

Yeah, the country, the man, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Gland, the RFK crowd. You know, and there's a lot of people in his base that don't want this.