Bulwark Takes - Tim Rips Stephen Miller’s Sick Abuse of Power

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Tim Miller joins Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez on MSNBC’s The Weeknight to discuss the Trump administration’s alarming threats to suspend habeas corpus, the disturbing surge in ICE detentions without due process, and how Trump's immigration policies are eroding constitutional protections.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey guys, it's Tim Miller here. I had the opportunity to be in studio with my man Michael Steele and my girls Simone Sanders and Alicia Menendez, who have a new primetime show on MSNBC. So I went up there

to be with them week one. We got into this insane news week to cap it off for everybody. I wanted to show you a couple of clips from it. So check it out here and I'll be back with you on the Borg Podcast on Monday. We'll see you all then.

Peace. We are back you all then. Peace. We are back staying on that breaking news out of Newark, New Jersey. The city's mayor arrested at a protest outside an ICE detention center. Joining the conversation, MSNBC political analyst and writer at large for the Bulwark, Tim Miller, and MSNBC senior Washington correspondent

and co-host of The Weekend, Eugene Daniels. And back with us, Andrew Weissman. I just know we've been talking about habeas corpus, and I think it's important folks have the definition. So it is a... Actually, Andrew Weissman, you're the guru here. Tell us what habeas corpus is. I could get my dictionary, but you're better.

So, I mean, it's commonly known as the great writ, but don't worry, I'm not gonna get too in the weeds. It is something that even before this country was founded, it was incredibly important in England and then in the United States to have this ability to go to court to say, produce the body, that if you have been improperly charged

improperly seized that you had ability to go to court and say under a writ of habeas corpus a judge has to determine that it was valid for the state to do this to you it is such a fundamental part of our freedoms it is that is why what Stephen Miller is saying is both not going to happen, but to Michael's point, is incredibly dangerous. For anyone who is a lawyer, this is, it has to be the most fundamental right in terms of freedom in any country that thinks of itself as a rule of law country. And Tim, and just picking up on that point, I have been moved by your passion on the conversations

over the last few days around what's happening to individuals, persons under our Constitution. And now you've got Tim Miller, excuse me, Stephen Miller standing on the White House. Yeah, I know. Right, dude, I'm sorry. Standing on the White House lawn just cavalierly. Yes, we're looking at the fact that we may have to suspend habeas corpus. Give us a sense of what this threat really means, because I think a lot of folks, you know, can get, you know, lost with me and Andrew's lawyers kind of talking about this stuff. This is fundamental, as Andrew said. And I think folks need to understand with a level of passion how significant what Tim Miller, I keep saying Tim, Steve Miller is saying in this moment that we should be very afraid but ready to lean in and block, stop, tackle any way we can. Yeah, not my cousin, Stephen Millerer no relation um look i listened to andrew in the last segment so the good news about this is he's he's making these empty threats because they're losing in the court so that's the good news but but the danger is really the fact

that this is where their head is going right which is that we are going to take away people's right to do process and we are going to deport them. Maybe we'll deport them to their home country. Maybe we'll put them in the jail four hours north of me in Louisiana and make them sit there for a month. There was a young woman in Georgia the other day who was brought here when she was four, was stopped at a traffic stop. She got sent to some ICE detention center three hours away, shackled, you know, put into

a prison, right? Like, who knows? They're floating, sending people to Libya. We already know that they're putting people in the El Salvador prison. Like, this is absolutely fundamental. And this is a threat to every American. Obviously, people that are here on a green card or on a visa or on an over, you know, they're at more threat if you're not a u.s citizen but if these guys on the white house law are going to say we're going to continue this like this is our objective we are going to take people and we don't care what the court says we don't care what the law says and we're going to throw them in a foreign prison or throw them in a war torn african country or throw them in a jail across the country. That is a deep, scary, fundamental threat, and it must be rejected and it must be pushed back against aggressively. And that's

what I appreciate what the mayor and others are doing in New Jersey. Eugene, let's take a look at some of the headlines we saw just in the last few days. Tim referenced two of them. One, the fact that you had that young woman out of Georgia who was stopped during a traffic violation. You also have a judge blocking the deportation flights of Asians and Mexican migrants to Libya. That happens on Wednesday. And then you had ICE agents detaining one, two others arrested during a chaotic scene out of Worcester, Massachusetts. None of this is orderly. None of this is humane. None of this is focused on criminals, which is what this administration

campaigned on it is the point the chaos is the point the fear that folks are feeling that are looking at this that is the point when you have you're watching black and brown people getting snatched up and and taking taken places that's the point we have people being removed from the country and not just sent to their home countries, right, without due process, possibly being sent to another country that is not their home country without due process, right? All of this is how they want people to feel because they want folks to feel, from every conversation I've had with folks in the administration and everyone around them, is they want people to start self-deporting. They want people to start taking themselves out of the country because they know that they're not going

to be able to legally in the way that we all know that folks, how this process happens, how long it takes. They won't be able to do that in the next four years with all of the promises that they made. And I will say they talked about the criminals, but when you actually talk to them, right, as all of us have, when you actually sit down and talk with them, whether it's it's the Stephen Millers or even Karen Levitt, the White House press secretary. And you ask, what does a criminal mean? Are you just talking about someone who came here at some point 10 years ago and broke the law last week. It could be anyone who is here undocumented in this country, and I think that's something for folks to really pay attention to. That includes people that are

brought here when they were four, by the way. It doesn't include people that chose to come here illegally. Yes. This is the... I want to stay on what Eugene just said because I wrote about this for MSNBC. I'm a turn to talk. But I just I wrote about this for MSNBC Daily this week because the Constitution is actually not a suggestion. It is a guarantee. And if we allow the president of the United States and his staff, because that's what Stephen Miller is he is a staffer baby. Okay, and his staff to

Act as though they govern the Constitution and not the other way around There is actually no coming back from that the Constitution is so much of a guarantee that you know people You know, we talk about the Emancipation Proclamation Oftentimes our children are still learning it in school It is the Emancipation Proclamation did not enslave. The 13th Amendment did. The 13th and 14th and 15th Amendments were so important that what they contained was so critical that the

elected officials at the time during Reconstruction said, we must put this in the Constitution. Because at the end of the day, it's all we have, right? It is the document that we're supposed to go to. And the Founding Fathers missed a lot of things, right, when they were creating these documents as supportive amendments.

But at the end of the day, due process, that's in there, right? That is in there. It's in there for a reason. And at the end of the day, when you're watching, whether it's President Trump or his team, kind of trying to skirt around that because they made some promises to his base during the election. They cannot do that. The problem is you have to have people stand up and say no, right? So the courts are starting to do their jobs, but the courts don't have armies. And so we're still hurtling toward this, when is it a constitutional crisis situation, right? Because what Stephen Miller is saying is that at the end of the day, they are they want to do what they want to do.

And looking at they can be looking at whatever they want. But I will say one of the things I kind of always have to remind myself with dealing with Stephen Miller is that he says we're looking at a lot of things. But what are they actually doing? Is he trying to distract? Are they throwing something out there because they want us to look at that and not something else? Not saying that they don't want to do it, but it is like you have to really look at the whole conversation that that they're trying to have what does stephen miller actually want to do when he's saying they're looking at this and who is he kind of signaling to that they're looking at this right is is that to the doj is that to dhs who are they talking to when they're saying that

so one of the things that you've got to i was going to say, one of the things to answer that question is that Stephen Miller, not Tim, actually answers that question because when he says, you know, we're thinking about this, he said, but one of the reasons we may not do it is we're going to keep our eye on how the judges are ruling

and let's see how they do, and then we'll decide what we're going to do so it's just such mafia talk which is you know let's see if you actually you know rule in our favor and if you actually start pulling back from these rulings against us maybe we won't go down this road i mean this is such a transactional use of that but again going back to michael's point the idea that you would float something that is so blatantly unconstitutional and violates just deep-seated fundamental rights

is really the sort of the shocking part of that. And a lot of times they float stuff just to see if they can get away with it. You know, and if there isn't pushback, then they'll go and do it. Such an important conversation. Andrew Weissman, Tim Miller, and Eugene Daniels, thank you all for being with us tonight.