Bulwark Takes - Tim & Sam Try To Make Sense of Trump’s Bizarre Interview

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein take on another weird interview with Donald Trump. From talk of “stage nine cancer”, to a Rose Garden portrait tour, to ending with a rant about AI robots and “so much electric,” the Daily Caller interview is packed with bizarre moments.

Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with managing editor Sam Stein. The Daily Caller, a right-wing news outlet, dropped an interview with Donald Trump. I do believe that irony is dead following the interview. It is a doozy. There's much to get into, much to discuss. I want to start where the interviewer Reagan Reese starts. Like this, Sam. She thinks it's fitting that we start with the subject of media bias and ask Donald Trump about a New York Times article that she didn't like,

about how they were mad at Trump for not doing the crackdown correctly. I thought that was an interesting place to start. How about you? And if you were to sit down with the president, where would you? Do you think that first question would be about media bias? I would have done a little bit differently, I think. But why is that interesting to you? It's totally expected for me.

Well, it's interesting to me because you would just think there would be some self-awareness. the woman who begins an interview upset about media bias then proceeds to ask a series of questions. We're going to get into somebody's one or the time, but I just want to give you some of my favorites. Okay. Would you like the new ballroom to be named after you? Is a good one.

Are you going to put President Biden on the presidential wall of fame? Do you think there will be Rushagate Arrest? Would you like to see Jim Comey and John Brennan handcuffed and arrested on live TV? Would you like to be on Mount Rushmore? is the Nobel Peace Prize that you're interested in. Those are all questions from the person who is concerned about media bias. You didn't even get to my favorite one. Okay.

Well, as I said, it was just a selection. I just, okay, it's the best one, though. She's going on and on about the cabinet meeting that was like three and a half hours last week. And they're doing this exchange. And Carolyn Levin, who's sitting there. I'm just going to read it. Levin interjects at one point.

She goes, it was actually the longest televised presidential event in history and Reese responds, and this is really the best question of a bunch. Wow. How do you have the stamina for that? I like it. How do you have the stamina? In fairness, we know a little question. Actually, I'm kind of curious. What are he saying response? Oh, it's like, you keep talking. I'm going to look up. Oh, this is it. You know how? Good parents. It's a parental thing. You understand that. Jeans. Yeah. And then he says maybe hopefully you have good genes as well. Yeah. It is interesting that then following, I mean, maybe

one of the ways that he has the stamina for it is that he didn't do a public event again for like five days following. Are you on this? You're on this train. I'm sorry. We have to mention it, though, because I know that viewers are interested. This interview did take place Friday, August 29th at 127 p.m.

And we can see, you can see the picture there. There's Donald Trump. He's looking a little less orange than usual. But does look alive. He's live. He's living there with his communications director, Steven Chung, who's in two chairs,

and then we've got Dylan Levitt there next to Chung and then Reagan, Reese, the questioner. So that's the picture there. You can look at that.

It's quite the picture, yeah. I was just going to say, the thing that I really thought was kind of, and I don't want to jump ahead of you, but there was like a theme to this interview where

if you read the transcript, so much of it is bracketed because they keep doing random things like they get up from their chair to go check out portraits. Like some of this stuff is really hilarious. There's in brackets. It's like Trump and Reese walk out of the Oval Office to the Rose Garden for several minutes while Hotel California plays on the White House speakers. There's Trump and Reese. Trump shows Reese the presidential portraits of the Rose Garden. Trump shows Reese what the Biden auto pen portrait. Paley's putting up a portrait of Joe Biden is just going

to be the auto pen. And then each of it. But there's like seven, there's seven of these brackets. They just interrupt the interview the entire time so he could go show her. portraits and artwork in the Rose Garden. It's really funny. And while listening to the Eagles, it's been too long a day to listen to the Eagles. It's such a classic choice for Trump. Yeah. So she, and there are also lots of periods where they go off the record.

And they just kind of drop that in it. And like you catch up the interview amid the conversation. Anyway, I want, so the first big aside, you know, so after that media bias question, they do get into the military occupation of D.C. where the questioner is just overcome with praise. I guess I wouldn't call this a question they have an aside where she starts discussing her life another interesting strategy if you have a lot of time with the president she says she had been in DC there had been a attempted break in so she got scared so she moved to Virginia in Virginia she witnessed recently a fight between a homeless man and a pedestrian so she had to call 911 and so now she's upset that she says now I'm saying, now I'm like, why did I move from Washington, D.C. to Virginia right after you cleaned it up. So that's a big part of the exchange. And then he goes in to talk about how, you know, he wants to occupy Chicago.

And he's upset because J.B. Pritzker won't call him in. And then he somehow says Pritzker is kicked out of the family business. He has so many unbelievable lies in this. My favorite one was, I mean, it's like sad. But he says that Joe Biden claimed to have stage nine. cancer and then he and uh stephen chung are like never heard of stage nine i thought only went to stage four we're going to read that transcript actually um uh this is during the autopin section we'll get we'll just explain the whole section but here we go this is a brief aside um but can you imagine he says he had stage nine cancer that was what two three months ago then reese replies i know you were at the golf course that day i was with you trump stage nine i've never heard more than stage four stage four is the highest i've never if you're stage four you're dead uh reese um how can we didn't know

about it beforehand that was suspicious to me trump especially stage nine is there such a thing stephen chung chimes in never heard of it caroline levitt shimes in me neither and then we are bracketed we pause that conversation to look at the auto pen portrait so there you go i do think it's important just to say joe biden doesn't not they haven't heard of it because it doesn't It doesn't exist. He has a Gleason score of nine, which is a specific score for prostate cancer. It's not stage nine cancer. I mean, I don't know what to say about that. Like, does Trump actually believe that he, Trump, that Biden said he had stage nine? That seems like it. Yeah. Or is it a bit that he just kind of forgot that it was a bit. It's a weird. It would be a totally weird bit to be like,

ha, stage nine. That doesn't exist. He should be dead. No, it's befuddling. So they got to buy. And then based on, as you mentioned, let's see, she was asking about transgenderism. I want to come back to that a second. Trump gets kind of sick of that conversation and wants to move on pretty. So he moves on by asking her, did she realize or putting up beautiful mirrors and portraits in the Rose Garden? She said, no, she didn't realize that. He said, we're doing what's called the Presidential Wall of Fame. And then they go out to look at it.

And then the Biden conversation starts because Reese asked the question to Trump, are you going to put Biden up on the wall? Trump says, no, I'm going to, instead of putting up a portrait of him, I'm going to put up a portrait of the auto pen. Reese is tickled by that and goes on to tell him that that's a very Trump idea, very Trump, very good. She calls it hilarious, yeah. I thought it was a joke at first.

Seems like not a joke. He goes on and then show her like the, draft photos of the auto pen that they're considering for the spot. So Trump is, I guess, planning on doing a wall of all the presidents where in place of Joe Biden, it's an auto pen. And one of those brackets, it says Trump shows Reese what the quote, Biden auto pen portrait will look like in the Rose Garden. They're going to hang a auto pen. These guys are unbelievable. I love it. Yeah. He has also caught of the 2020 stuff, obviously. He goes on to explain why the auto pen is going up. It's because he actually lost.

and then that's when he gets into the stage nine cancer. So is that real? Are we really going to have a portrait of an auto pen in the Rose Garden of the White House? I mean, if you judge the bracket by the bracket. Feels like taking the patrol a little too seriously. You think? But I don't know, you've kind of come around on that, on the new Rose Garden, right? You like the aesthetic?

You cannot pass that off on me. You were the one who's been praising this man's sense of interior design from day one. I said I like the Oval Office. The Oval Pamp patio I've never liked from the start. The Oval Office has become like it's like metastasizing. It's a stage nine gold explosion. Okay. That thing, like maybe a few ornaments, but like it also is now like grown everywhere.

It's like, yeah, it's overgrown gold. I want to get back to. So again, how did we get to this where they were visiting the Rose Garden? listening to Hotel California talking about how they're going to put up a portrait of the auto pen in the white house. We got there because Reese really wanted to corner Trump on

transgenderism. She first asked about the transgender shooter at the Minnesota Catholic Church and asked whether Trump thinks gender ideology played a role in the shooting. Trump does the Trump thing or he's kind of like, well, you could but you never know.

And then he goes on to how it's a very sick person. And then Trump And this one is the one that is actually brings a sensible fact to the conversation where he's like, you know, generally it's people that aren't transgender that have been doing the shootings. Right. That did not satisfy the Daily Call reporter who went back in and said, do you think transgenderism on kids is a safety threat? Trump replies, say it again. Trump doesn't even understand like the brainbroken terminology that they're using.

She repeats. Trump then goes, look, I had it. the military. We had it. It was there for me, and I ended it. That's not really a coherent sentence, but I think what he's saying is transgender people were in the military, but he banned them, which is true, even though he didn't, you know, pretended like he had bones first to not volunteer in the military. And then he goes down and, like, he starts talking about this and, you know, he can kind of tell she's going to ask again, and that's where he takes a hard right turn. It's just like, have you ever seen the Rose Garden? He's like, I'm not going to get pinned down by this crazy woman

Let me show you these portraits. Let me show you these portraits I got. No, I missed the part where he basically said, you're right, where he says, if you look, it was a long time, but generally it's people that aren't transgender. He, like, basically just destroys the entire emergent right-wing fever dream talking point about this Minneapolis shoot. I had totally missed that. Good catch, buddy. All right. We move back on, and I feel, I feel remiss not to get to this point.

The discussion of the portrait gallery was so long in the Rose Garden. I hadn't scrolled all the way down. There's also a period of time where Trump's concerned about using a black and white portrait of the auto pen because the other pictures are in color. And then Reese points out that George Washington didn't have colored photos back then. It would be appropriate.

And then Trump goes on to talk about for himself how he's not using the one with a smile and he wants to use the one where he is, he's grimacing. Then he goes on to do an aside about the auto pen, about your friend Ian Sams. He discusses Ian Sams, who had worked for Biden and said they're doing not Biden twice. And this is how deep this person is in the lore.

He doesn't know what's in the big, beautiful bill, but he knows. No, he and Sam's three meetings with Biden. He knows anything that's happening, you know, that feeds, you know, his various conspiracy theories. Okay, it does go on even longer. It goes on and on and on and on.

We're going to have to stop. It's a 54-minute interview. give or take, and it feels like at least 15 minutes was talking about it. There were two somewhat newsy elements of it. I'll just glosser them very quickly. One Reese asked, so James Comey and John Brendan, would you be comfortable seeing them handcuffed and

rested live on TV? Trump, we're not bothering me at all. All right, whatever. She does press him on Israel. The other thing on that part she's asking him about is is Gabbard declassifying the Russiagate documents and how they've referred the case to DOJ. She's coming around.

She's coming along. Yeah. I just mentioned this because I think that it's kind of a sleepy second Epstein that's growing for them, which is the fact that like, you know, eventually these people are going to want somebody arrested. Oh, yeah. Eventually these people are going to want somebody arrested. And so, like, they get a chance to go interview Trump, the right wing media types.

They're going to have more opportunities. This is what they're pressing him on. And she's over there being like, why aren't you giving me the Comey Perp Walk porn that I'm No, she was, she, yeah, she wanted it. She was like, do you think it's a possibility? And yeah, you're probably out of that. Then finally, last one, Chia says, do you crave the Nobel Peace Prize? Trump? No.

So, there you have it. No, but then he goes on and says yes. I know. He says, no, but yes, but if I say that, you can't put it in. What were you saying on Israel? We lost that. Oh, so there was a little bit on Israel where she actually, this is the only time where she kind of pushes like some sort of quasi-adversarial questioning where she was like,

look, younger Republicans are not like into Israel. They're just not. And I think the question is, okay, there's a growing group within MAGA, American First Coalition Republicans, especially younger Republicans who are skeptical of our support for Israel? Are you aware of this group? Are you worried about it? And Trump says, yeah, I'm aware of it. And then he just goes on in comments of how the Israel lobby is not as influential as it once was. Yeah. He does also a weird aside about Holocaust deniers. And you know you have people that deny it ever happened. They're deniers. You have people that denied the Holocaust ever happens. So they're going to have to get that war over with.

But it's hurting Israel. There's no question about it. Not sure how the two relate, but yeah. He's just kind of jumping all over the place. It's a weave, I guess we're calling it. Yeah, so then the Mount Rush for a peace race. Then we end with a discussion about whether he was the man of the year or not.

It's a high man of the year. When it was upset, they changed it from man of the year to person of the year. He thought that was noteworthy as they've gone woke. And then he mentions the fact that he thought maybe to get around him, naming him, since it obviously should be him, they might name an AI robot.

And then he gets off on a deepest side about AI robots. Reese interjects saying that if you want to be cool with Gen Ziers, you'll start calling them clankers. Trump ignores that suggestion. And then he finishes the interview by saying this, we're getting it. This is AI. We're letting them build it.

they're going crazy they can't believe i gave it to them i'm giving them the right to build right we're going to have so much electric they're all building that's the end of the interview we're going to have so much electric they're all building there's no way no need to follow up on that no need to clarify well that point carol levitt did end the interview according to the transcript at 221 p.m so yeah right yeah but uh that's an interesting place so much electric so much electric So there you go. Trump is alive. Is he sounding coherent?

Not exactly. We don't know. It's a transcript. I just meant, I just meant like, do the sentences have subject, verb, direct object?

Any worse than prior? I don't know. How do you judge that? That's a good point. I'm just reporting. I report you decide on what the transcript says. He seems a little bit more obsessed with portraits than usual,

but a lot of portrait talk. Yeah. And we'll have to keep an eye out for that for that auto pen portrait and I guess we can confirm that Trump was alive between 127 p.m. and two to 211 p.m. on Friday. Are you really getting, are you really getting deep into this? Is this real? I'm not. I want to know. I want to know. No, I don't, I don't think that he's like dead and there's a Trump. I had multiple people come up to me. I had multiple people come up to me this weekend. Is he dead?

No, he's not dead. I do think he looks piquid, and I think that there was an interesting protrusion on his, on his brow today that I was taking a close look at. And I think that if you would have, if you would have consumed all the content that I produced for a Sam, you would know that my, that my theory is basically just the like, dude is whipped. he's 79 he's tired he's been running a big you know an intense uh just even playing that amount of golf is tiring yeah and so you know and he's got the hand issue that the queen had i you know we're keeping our eye on it that's all i'm saying we're keeping our eye on it all right that's sam stein he's the editor he's keeping me in line making sure i'm not out there offering any views that are not fact based we're just keeping our eye on it that's all i'm saying we'll see you guys soon

Thank you.