Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Trump’s Economy Is STAGNANT!

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC’s The Beat With Ari Melber and The 11th Hour to take on JD Vance’s defense of Trump’s unpopular economic bill and its hidden healthcare cuts, the stagnant Trump economy, Republican redistricting power grabs, and MAGA's authoritarian theater on the National Mall.

Hey, Alton Mill from the bulwark. I had a double header over on MSNBC earlier. First was my buddy, Ari, Melbourne. I'm not on that show very much. You get a little me and Ari for once, a little change of pace. And then later on the 11th hour with Jacob Soberoff sitting in for Staff Rule. And the first one, we discussed J.D. Vance going to Georgia, which I haven't yet to get to on the podcast and giving this speech in defense of the Trump economic agenda and the one big, ugly bill. And he had some interesting thoughts there.

One of the things I didn't really get into was that he talked about how everybody should be able to have access to health care except illegal immigrants and people who are not even trying to get a job. And whenever you think about that policy, that's not the Trump policy. The Trump vans policy is not universal health care for everybody who is a citizen except for those who aren't trying to get a job. A lot of other folks are going to lose access to health care and health services. It's not private market and people are going to get kicked off Medicaid. So, you know, the rhetoric is imagining the reality. We talk a little bit about why he's doing that and what the threats are for them on the economic stuff. So that conversation is focused mostly on economics.

And then in the second batch, we get into the redistricting wars. I express some of my concerns about what the next steps of that are with the red states and also talk about the bullshit going on in D.C. and the Ice Theater, where we have these new kind of fascist characters now in the National Mall that people get their selfies with like we're going to Disneyland. So anyway, stick around for those conversations. Appreciate you all very much. Subscribe to us on this feed.

We got so much more coming today. You're going to want to see it. Talk to you soon. In Georgia, rural hospitals facing not only limits, but possibly having to shutter to close. J.D. Vance. was in Georgia today while the state senator joined this very news channel to discuss the damage. It's not about kicking people off of health care. It's about kicking, kicking illegal aliens the hell out of this country. Defunding hospitals and nursing homes to cut taxes for the wealthiest people in the country.

If you're working hard, the government ought to leave you alone. Ain't that the truth? That bill is like 20 points underwater in Georgia. You ought to have a tax code that rewards you in instead of punishes you. Vance is being sent on this little errand to come and play defense in Georgia, defending a bill they can't defend, trying to sell the unsellable. We're joined by Tim Miller,

a long-time conservative operative, now turned independent critic. You tell me, he's the host of the popular Bullwark podcast, an MSNBC analyst. Many of you know him well. Nice to see you. Hey, Ari, what's up?

What's up? I wanted to get your credentials in there because you come at this from experience working in Republican politics, at least before it went pure MAGA. And so let's start there in states like Georgia, which we just saw that are going to face the brunt of this. What do you think is going to happen? Well, look, I mean, I think it's hard to have a crystal ball for how this stuff plays out in the midterms. I mean, usually the out party does well. I think the problem they have here is mostly that this bill, I didn't really please anybody. Like, it was a big mismatch, right? It didn't please, like, traditional conservatives of folks like myself who wished that they would have balanced the budget more. You know, it didn't please mega populists who like, who don't want Medicaid cuts.

It didn't really, and I guess it pleased some in the super wealthy in a few industries that got tax cuts, natural gas, and others. But, like, for the most part, like, the coalition was really fractured by this bill. And so how Trump has done in the past, he's run of these situations, is he's done a good job as a marketer and a brander out there pushing it and redefining things. He hasn't done this on this bill. Steve Bannon was just complaining with that yesterday on his podcast that I suffer through from time to time. He's like, where is everybody out there on this? I think that explains why you see J.D. and Georgia.

But I think it's an uphill battle because, you know, they ended up passing a bill that was not economically populist. And so it was not going to appeal to the MAGA base. still managed to blow up the deficit as a result. When you look at the health care cuts, there are people who are losing or will lose coverage over this process who may not know it yet. What happens when people, whether they are MAGA voters or just in the community or known, find out this is also what Trump began the term with,

which is just kicking people off health care, a point that's concerning enough that Vance felt the need to bring it up to then deny it, which fact check false, in many cases. Yeah. Well, look, the big tell in this is that a lot of these cuts don't actually go in place until after the midterms on the health care side. There will be impact, particularly rural hospitals because, you know, hospitals have to plan and, you know, there's kind of complicated factors that go into this sort of stuff.

But, like, the actual, like, cuts to benefits, a lot of, most of that is post-2020, or it's 2027 and after. And, you know, the funny thing is, like, Josh Hawley, like, this is a big tell the most, you know, besides Vance, now that he's out, probably the most traditionally mag on a policy front senator, was like, I'm voting for this bill because I don't think that health care cuts will ever go into effect. I think that they'll hurt our voters and I'm going to fight to block them from actually going to effect in 2027.

So that, that tells you all you need to know. They know that it will be unpopular with their own voters if it goes into effect. And I think that's a real problem for them probably in 2028, not 2028. 26. What's the bottom line on how you described the Trump economy so far with 40 seconds left? Yeah. Look, it's stagnant. It's stagnant.

The tariffs have put a big cap on it. If you were a Trump voter who went in there because you were worried that costs were too high, nothing has helped you. Housing costs are still up. Grocery prices are up. I saw thanks to the tariffs, gaming console prices are up now. Gas prices are maybe down a hair. And egg prices are maybe down because the avian prices are maybe down because the avian

birth flu is over. I don't think Trump gets credit for that. So I mean, I think that's why you see his numbers so bad on the economy right now. He's not delivering what he had promised to people. Trump's been celebrating the Texas State House passing a new congressional map to help give Republicans more seats. That legislation is now in the hands of the Texas State Senate, where Republicans hold the majority. Once approved, the bill heads to Governor Greg Abbott's desk to sign. In a social media post that encouraged more states to do the exact same thing, Trump also told Republicans get rid of mail-in voting and move to all-paper ballots. Quote, if we do these two things, we will pick up 100 more seats,

and the crooked game of politics is over. It comes as California moves one step closer to a new congressional map that would help Democrats win more seats there. Just hours ago, the governor signed legislation establishing a special November election that will let the voters decide whether to adopt the new map in time for next year's midterms. And tonight, he reminded people how we got here. they fired the first shot texas we wouldn't be here at texas not done what they just did don't do what he just did he went so far as to follow up and say that he didn't just want

those five seats he said he's quote unquote entitled to those five seats just pause and reflect on that everything should have just stopped there president of the United States claiming he's entitled to five seats that should put two fills up your spine, every Republican, not just Democrat and independent, every American, American. Tim, this is not a change to the system, per se. This is Donald Trump's stated attempt at making this a one-party country and not having to have elections. Am I wrong about that? I mean, I don't know, not having to have elections, you know, maybe slightly hyperbolic because I think he wants to rig the rules to be as favorable to him as possible.

I think that's certainly one thing I'm worried about is having elections and then laying the groundwork to challenge them, just like we saw in 2020. I'm, I think, more concerned about the post-2020 election period than the pre, that I think that there are things to be concerned about on both sides, you know, them deciding that they, you know, are not going to seat members in states where there's a certain percentage of mail-in ballots, accusing it of fraud, you know, if a, if Democratic members win in competitive seats but that happen to be in red states with red trifectas, you know, are those going to be approved? Do you have MAGA county officials that are going to certify votes?

I like, to me, those are like the real acute concerns, but they're going to try to change the rules as much as possible in the lead in. And I think you guys kind of talked about this with California and Texas likely being a draw. It gives me a little joy until May have said that I hadn't really considered that Kevin McCarthy was going to take another L out of all this. So that's a small silver lining for some of us. But there are a bunch of other red states. I think they could squeeze seats out of Florida, maybe Missouri, Indiana, potentially, I think as many as five to ten additional Republican seats if those states, you know, do go the path

of Texas. I think that, as John said, there's fewer options in blue states. Yeah, maybe you get one or two out of a couple of them. I haven't had to even talk about this, but we saw the present. taking this walkabout in Washington tonight, and he seemed to be talking about everything but the law enforcement presence and the National

Guard out on the streets and his sort of the stated goal of why he was doing this. I mentioned him before, but literally not only the White House ballroom and all this, but that he knows grass, Tim, better than anybody else. What was he doing? What was happening out there? The weave, I think,

is what he calls it, Jacob? I don't know, man. The interesting thing about this is the grass was actually something that was in his jurisdiction before all of this kind of a weird quirk of D.C. is that the parks are actually run by the feds. And if this was

a legitimate effort to curtail crime in D.C., you know, without you know, wanting to like bring in the show of the National Guard Force and, you know, all of the pictures that he likes, like that picture right there, you know, they could have done stuff to make the parks safer. You know,

the other parts in D.C. could have, you know, all just traditional good government stuff. More lights, you know, have a couple more police patrols through them from time to time. That was something that was within their jurisdiction. They decided not to do that, of course, to go straight to, you know, militarizing the national police and having these mask guys, you know,

hassle, door dash drivers and things of that nature. So I think, like, what this all comes down to is that he wants the show. Like, he wants, you know, for, there to be a lot of political theater around this. Maybe he hopes that's a deterrent in some way, but I think mostly he wants to use it as a political ledge. Like Tim said, this is a show.

It was a show when Stephen Miller went to Shake Shack yesterday. The founding father of family separation talked about cleaning up D.C. for the families there. It couldn't get any more ridiculous. Now they're talking about gold detailed SUVs wrapped with the words, defend the homeland driving around. them that ICE is going to spend millions of dollars on. Tim, you guys wrote about those vehicles at the Bullwark. You called them cartoonishly fascist.

Yeah. Look, I was just, I took my kid to Universal out there, your neck of the woods in L.A. a couple weeks ago on summer break. And, I mean, like, the ICE people are functionally no different than the Beetlejuice and Scooby-Doo characters at Universal. Like, they're not there to do crime prevention. They want these vehicles, they want these pictures, and there are tourists there. I assume Magatours, maybe some ironic liberals, that are like taking selfies with them.

Like, that's what they're there to do. The crime is not on the mall. They have a big, you know, glitzy ice vehicle sitting on the national mall next to the Washington Monument. It's not there to go after violent gang members. It's there for show. And so people can come take selfies with it. And so they can, you know, advance their political brand. of this defend the homeland, you know, maga nationalism they want to push.

Like, that's what it is. I mean, it is, there is some fascistic elements to it, the way that the police are acting, particularly with the masks, and I'm not identifying themselves, but it's kind of a camp, it's like fascistic camp.