Bulwark Takes - Tim & Sam Round Up the Week’s Weirdest Stories

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein recap the week’s news, from Trump’s remodeling of the Lincoln Bathroom, an extremely troubling DOJ decision, Tim’s annual rage on Daylight Savings, and more.

Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with my buddy, Sam Stein and my geese. And it is Halloween afternoon. And we are just chatting on the slack, a little unusually quiet from Mr. Trump. Don't say that. He's in Asia. I know. I'm jinxing it. He's in Asia.

Who the hell knows? And so we're like, what are we going to talk about? And me and Sam, just like, let's, we're just going to bro out before we have to go take our kids trick-or-treating and talk about whatever we wanted. So we're going to pick a variety of topics. I have a few. And Sam, I would like to kick off with the Lincoln bathroom, and then you get to pick the next topic.

How does that sound? Unless you want to talk to the else first. No, no, no, no. That's, I think that's the most important. Okay, so if we're going to do that, why don't we put the picture up on the screen for people who haven't seen it? This was a post from our president on his social media feed. It shows the old Lincoln bathroom and then the new one side by side.

He wrote, he renovated the Lincoln bathroom, but it had been in the Art Deco, green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln era. I did it black and white polished, statuary marble. And then I'm just going to throw up here dye work where Derek Guy has also a little picture. You can look at how the Lincoln bedroom looks as compared to the Lincoln bathroom. He's not exactly noticing the connection stylistically.

But anyway, I'm wondering what your thoughts are. A lot of ways to go on this, I think. Well, it's just a lot of marble. Like, it's just a lot of marble. And you walk in there, I'm presuming, and you kind of, it feels like a fun house mirror of marbles. Also, I was surprised. I thought he would put a bidet in.

I had to be honest. But there's no bidet. And he seems like a bidet guy. He does seem like a bidet guy. Yeah, no bidet. The marble, I'll tell you this. As somebody who bought a house, what? I know you like it because you've basically been the biggest fanboy for every Trump interior design

decision. That is not true. It's true. That's the story you guys want to tell. But the truth is that I am fucking calling balls and strikes here. Okay, unlike you, all of you have Trump designed TDS. Okay, some of the things have been in a movement. Some of the things have been terrible.

And on this bathroom, the ruling is, here's the thing. The bathroom looks, as I just started, like I said, about two years ago that we were in the house searching moved to New Orleans. So I was seeing like the new builds. like this just like looks like what bathrooms look in like new renovated houses now it's fine it looks like what like a new kempton hotel i don't think that's true it is it kind of looks like what a new kempton hotel's bathroom would look like i saw a couple of these that looked just like this it's fine i mean i don't like there's nothing against it i would be very if i walked into a hotel

room and this was the bathroom i'd be like this is pleasant for me yeah no it looks like a hotel bathroom yeah that's what it's not like it's not in the spirit of the lincoln bed room in any way. The old Art Deco Green looks kind of cool. Yeah. So it just, it depresses the spirit. This is just, I feel like I could be, you know, at whatever the new hipster hotel is in Greenpoint. I want to get a little bit uncomfortable. It's not a place I'd want to poop. I'm sitting there a bunch of marbles. What about the Art Deco bathroom? Were you happy to poop in there? I'd be more happy to poop in there. Yeah. You kind of look around. There's a little variety. This is just straight marble. I want some art on the walls. There's no reading material

around there. I just don't think it's a good bathroom to poop in. Then you've got the in case you didn't weren't convinced that this was a hotel bathroom. You've got the robe there. I don't know if you saw that. I did see it. Was there little like cushy sandals or anything like that? I don't see any cushy sandals. I just see a robe and see some lilies. I don't know. I mean, again, it's not hideous. It's not awful. It's just pretty me. And it's like, did we really need to do this? The Art Deco one seemed fine. And that takes us to the more, you know, not to be nerds over here.

But like, we are in a government shutdown right now. Like, people aren't getting their EBT cards. People aren't getting paid. Air traffic controllers aren't getting paid. And like, somehow we're, you know, putting in a Kempton bathroom in the White House. Who's doing that? Who's paying for it? Why does Donald Trump get a fancy, not that fancy, but toilet really, kind of a regular toilet?

Why does he get a fancy sink while other people are going hungry? I assume that Mark Zuckerberg and Meda donated to the bathroom. But also it's like, why does he feel the need to post about it is the other thing? It's like in a way he's kind of like a classic creature of online culture. He feels the need to post about things that we don't even need to know. Like there's no, I don't need to know what it looks like. I don't know why he felt the need to post that. And he like posts at all hours.

And he just likes the, he likes the engagement, I think, much like all of us. Yeah. So anyway, it's a. know for me on the Lincoln bathroom. I think it's pretty... The rare Trump aesthetic that you disagree. Yeah, that's not true. It's not rare. I also don't like the all-ball pan Rose Garden about a club. That is not good for me either. What was it? Which one do you like again? No, the Oval Office. It looks great. It does not look great. It's so overwhelmed with the gold. So anyway, that's that. Now you get, we're doing a little

potpourri. What else, what else is on your mind? I've got a couple of things. I can just do all of mine if you want. It's an extremely. It's an extremely. hard transition. So why don't we go through yours and maybe we can transition to something a little bit more serious where I'm going on. Okay. Here's some vents. I can't feel like what was the there's like a Kent Brockman on the Simpsons had a what's grinding my gears. I have a couple things grinding my gears, but I'll pivot to. Number one, we're going to fall back on Sunday. It is the stupidest policy that any government is put forth. It is. It is insane that we are going to You're going to add darkness to our lives.

Don't even comment. If you're a commenter, I don't even want to hear it if you're for falling back or standard time. It is moronic. I want to play with my daughter after school and have sunlight. I don't want to change the clocks anymore. We need daylight savings time permanently. It's not even a close call. I've looked at the data.

I've read Nate Silver's data analysis. And he's for opt-in daylight savings time. I'm for mandatory. Mandatory? Right. Aren't you a little, the data also suggests that, like, more children die from getting hit by cars going to school. This is fake. It's fake. Why is this fake? Well, you want as a creation of, like, the golf states because they want longer tea times in the afternoon. Like, this is your shit is. I mean, I don't golf as a homosexual, but I like, I, I, sure, I wish for people that they had longer tea times in the afternoon. Nobody is away. It's just, the math isn't that hard. Who is awake at? 5.30 p.m. Everybody. Who is awake at 5.30 a.m. Like 18% of the country. It's not 5.30 a.m. It's like you're walking to darkness at 7.7.30 a.m. if you don't move these clocks.

Yeah, but no, we're moving it back now that sunrise is happening like in the, in the 6 a.m. range. Who wants that? Why? I just think you're wrong. I think you're wrong on this one. Sorry. I just think you're wrong. I think, I think, uh, the first of all, I don't think. I just, I just want everybody to know that whatever your positions are, I don't care. I'm going to be sad next week. I'm going to have the seasonal effective disorder. I'm going to be in a grumpy mood. And I'm going to be depressed. You are the type of guy who that's like the sunlight effect. Yeah. Yeah. My moods are very variable and I'm going to be depressed over it. And I think it's unfortunate. I think it's unfortunate. I want to hang out. I prefer to keep children alive, but that's just. I will, I do too. And I think I like the joy of the

child. You like the joy. So after school, like right now it's going to happen. We haven't fallen back. yet i'm gonna go downstairs after this we're gonna shoot hoops when we got to the park me in toulouse we're gonna shoot some hoops that's great two weeks we won't be able to do that we won't be fucking dark and that is stupid aren't you gonna go trick-or-treating with her or now oh you're right it's Halloween well generally what we would do in that at the time of shoot hits but we're gonna go trick-or-treating great points yeah that's why the geese are here i forgot about that i've got my other one is uh also people aren't gonna like so this is an easy transition while we're hot there's this thing going around some of them people

who are my friends are doing it. And folks on the, and it's a lot of, it's the progressive folks that are unhappy of this administration. I'm unhappy. And they're doing the thing now with Usha that they used to do with Melania. Where you're hearing people be like, oh, I don't know, poor Usha, we've got to save her. Or J.D. Vance, I saw a lot of comments about J.D. Vance hugging Erica Kirk too tight. And I saw a lot of people like making fun of Usha. I'm okay, making fun of Usha. Making fun of like saying Usha, maybe she'll, maybe she's in trouble maybe the relationships on the rocks i'm seeing i guess they used to do this with milania the free milania stuff and and it's like guys i'm sorry that's how that i have people talking about how like jd vance is really gay on the inside i'm like no okay no i'm not i'm not i'm unknowing all of this

okay usha is a grown woman she knows what she's doing she is very capable and she's made this choice that she's all she is all in for the soft fascism so i don't want any babying Eric Kirk and J.D. Vance are not having an affair. They did a hug. Erica Kirk's husband got assassinated recently. You don't need to be micromanaging how she lives her life. Like you can criticize her politics. I'm going to criticize her politics.

But like, who the fuck knows what I would do if my husband got assassinated? Maybe I'd hug somebody. I don't like it's not a good hit. And if you're not a gay man, you can't call J.D. Vassler. I'm the only one that can do that. So those are my rants all around. Usha sucks. Go attack Usha.

Attack her. Attack turning point USA. Make fun of J.D. Vance. Call him a soft boy. You know, call him a little soft-bellied little wuss boy. That's fine. I'm all for that. Like somebody who's being cruel to others and mean because he was bullied in high school

back when he wore mascara. Like, I'm make couch fucking jokes. I'm down. But like, I'm not game for the, oh, we need to free Usha. She seems scared. Yeah, blink, Usha, if you're, if you need help. I don't like that either.

This one, I, I, I am in full agreement. Mostly because I think, you know, she's a professional, accomplished person who has agency and she made her choice. And, like, criticize her for that. Like, you don't need to, you don't need to, like, come up with some weird conspiracy theories that she's being held captive or something. Yeah, I hated free Melania. I'm like, Malani is the worst.

Mani knows exactly what she's doing. Well, yeah, it turned out that she was totally fine with everything. I mean, the text came out and, you know, with her and her ex-friend and it was just like, yeah, she actually wasn't like, you know, being held against her will. She was an abler of it. So I think people want to believe these things, but it seems a little weird and petty to do it. It is. And last thing, I just, I do want to just re-emphasize. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry to the straight women out there who are big fans of ours and the wine moms. We love you. I support you. You can shit on JD Vance all you want. You can. You can make fun of his sexual prowess. Talk about how you'd never bang him. Great. Like, however you want to slag him, that's fine.

I'm the only one that gets to call him a homo. Okay? No. No, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do homophobic slurs as a straight woman. You can't. I'm sorry. That's fine.

That's fine. But other gay men can call him that, right? Oh, yeah, that's true. It's not just me. Yeah, it's not just me. If gays can do it. This is, see, this is the thing we get. Okay.

You know, my marriage wasn't, I couldn't get married for a few years. for about a decade that we were together, you know, me and Tyler. That was a burden on me. In exchange for that, I get to have a monopoly on determining whether or not I want to make fun of J.D. Vance's eye makeup and the fact that he dressed up like a girl in the girl's bathroom and the fact that maybe he got on Craigslist M for M. I get to do that. You don't get to do it.

It's like, you know, I can tell Jew jokes, but you cannot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like the anti-dentite. It's like the Seinfeld. Yeah, exactly. You know, the dentist became a Jew for the jokes or did he become a dentist for jokes. I forget how the episode worked. He became a Jew for the jokes. Yeah, but you can't do that. You can't, by the way, okay, yeah, no, I guess you could become gay for the jokes.

If you want to get, if you want to get down, so that you can start doing homophobic jokes. All right, I'm cool. We'll see how that goes. All right. Now over to you. Those are those, that's it. That's my, what's grinding my case. This is like, this is going to be the worst transition of all the time. Do you not want to do yours? Do you have any other topics? No, I don't. I actually don't because it's like, we're cutting yours? up. What was it? That people are going to be wondering now. Oh, man. I wanted to talk about this guy who was, it's like really hard transition here. This guy, Taylor Toronto, who was a part in J6 defendant, was arrested near Obama's home, threatening to like blow it up. And he was just released on time served. And I was, I'm like, boggles my mind that they're doing this. That's a okay transition topic. That's scary. It's Halloween night. A criminal. We've led a criminal. We've led a criminal. I'll back out onto the streets? Yeah, we have.

And it's just so ridiculous and insane. Our Justice Department. This was the famous case, now famous case, where they fired the prosecutors because they had the temerity to say that January 6 was a organized riot at the capital involving thousands of people. And so they fired these people for standing a fact. And then they just let this guy go on time served. Meanwhile, the guy who threatened Brett Kavanaugh and turned himself in got eight years. And that, you know, yeah, totally. but like this this dude's a repeat offender and he was like going after Obama and doing you know the exact same thing and he's just going to walk the street the Justice Department just got this deal yeah it's ridiculous it's insane what what I mean does he have to wear an ankle monitor I don't know about that but he is out so who knows what he's up to I mean honestly it's like it's actually irresponsible and it doesn't seem like law order to me no and especially when you're like preaching all we got to get you know the scourge of political violence

and people need to, like, recognize that this is a real threat. And they're like, actually, this guy who was a J6 rider and threatened to kill Obama, we'll go a little lenient on this one. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. You know what, you know what, Sam, I think that, like, this little popery of topics, every news outlets has this. So, like, how are we going to cover this?

It's the weekend. We need some material. You know what Fox News did? Did you see this? I saw this one. Was this the Snaps one with the mother? Yeah, Fox News just posted an article and how they fill their space. You know, where we just do Tim and Sam Hangs, what grinds our gears, we get mad at the fact that people trying to do political violence, get off because they're friends of the administration.

What Fox did was find TikToks of, I'm just going to say it, black people, complaining about not having it. Yeah, black women. Good point. Good, good clarification. Complaining about not getting their snap benefits. And they found one woman. Who the hell knows if this is like, you know what I mean? Like TikTok.

Do they really bet? Who's the Fox News intern who has to scroll through all the TikToks? Yeah. Yeah. Was there anyone vetting this person? I don't know. But supposedly she said on the TikTok that she had seven baby daddies and none of them are stepping up and so she needs us to feed her kids, which is like if it's even real,

it's like that is sad. And it's like those children deserve food rather, not not scorn and mockery. But, you know, that's how they're filling the space over there. So the welfare queen's are alive and well. Yeah, classic Fox News segment where it's just welfare, black people taking advantage of welfare. Aren't you mad? aren't you mad?

Barack Obama's hip-hop barbecue won't bring back jobs. That was a good one. You probably participated in that. I did not participate in that. Yes, you did. I did not. I had, trust me, I, I'll go back to my emails. I'm sure back then you were emailed and be like, look at this.

Common at the White House. Comment. How could they get caught? No. The least controversial rhaps. I made fun of it then. I was always cool. I might have been a Republican, but I always liked fucking hip-hop.

I wasn't scared. hip operas going to the right house not at the white house denigrating the white house all right what are you what are the kids all over the place but not have calm in there what are the outfits you got for the kids uh so uh look guys going as a skeleton really original but uh elder guys going at so he two months ago he we showed him um back to the future and he was super into it and like he watched it again and then i think the third time he's like you know what i want to go it was marty mcfly for Halloween. And so we're like, cool. That's going to be so awesome for the parents. No other kids are going to get this. So he's dressed up as Martin McFly. He's got the, the bomber vest. He's

looking for some plutonium, approximately 1.21 gigawatts of it. And I was supposed to go as George McFly, but I didn't want to dress as like a total dweeb. So I'm not going to do it. What are you going to do? I'm just going to go as where's Waldo. I have a go-to outfit. Where's Waldo? You're a bunch of geese. What kind of judgment you're giving me? These are just a couple of the elements of my costume. This is not my actual costume.

But yeah, I'm going to have a white tutu, and I'm going to put the geese. I'm going to put the geese on me. And then I have a goose head. One of them is a head. And what are you supposed to be? I'm geese. I'm geese. It's a play.

And I'll have a guitar. It's a play on where there's a hot band. It's called geese. And so I'm just geese. I'm many geese. Yeah. I wanted to, what was it? I had a good idea for the whole family.

Oh, yeah, we were going to be the K-pop demon hunters. Oh, God. She was going to be the, she was going to be the hunter household. Yeah, she was going to be the hunters and we are, and, and, or excuse me, the cave up, the demon hunters are girls, so we're going to do a gender inverse where I was like me and Tyler were going to be the hunters and, and she was going to be the demon. And then at the end, she just backed out. You just can't win over a seven-year-old anymore.

It wasn't like the year. I got to make us all be three Britney Spears. She... I have a friend who's going as a... I have a friend who's going as... He's going as Cash Patel. He's got an FBI vest. He's got a list, which he's called the Epstein list.

And I was a little bit worried as like, you know, you don't know who's around there who might abduct you for false identity. Yeah. I went as jailed Rudy last year. Did you have... Did you have... Did you have the hair die dripping? Yeah, simpler times.

Yeah. Anyway, okay. Well, this has been enjoyable. Happy Halloween to everybody. Happy Halloween, everyone. And we'll be back this weekend as news requires.