Bulwark Takes - Trump Botched the Army–Navy Coin Flip

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein run through a Sunday potpourri of news and the week’s weirdest internet moments, from Trump’s awkward Army–Navy coin flip, brawls outside of a New York Republican’s Club event, Erika Kirk dominating Twitter’s algorithm, and Tekashi 6ix9ine catching strays.

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from your friends at booster juice, Canadian-born, blending since 1999. Hey, everybody. Tim up at the Bullwark here with our managing editor, Sam Stein. It's Sunday afternoon. We did this couple weeks ago. Just a little weekend potpourri where, you know, I'm like looking at the internet. And, you know, there are a few things out there that don't merit a full video, but that's either fun or sad or annoying. And we can just chop it up real quick. So that sounds good? It sounds great to me. It's like, you know, my family, we would go out to Sunday night Chinese food and we'd get like the, you know, all the appetizers. It's like that, basically.

Yeah, food, some dumplings, you know, some spring rolls. Some spring rolls. Oh, jinks. Okay, here we go. We're going to start with yesterday. There was a pretty boring sports weekend, I will say. But yesterday we had the Army, it was a good Spurs Thunder game. We had an Army Navy game yesterday.

They invited the president to the event. And, okay, an interesting thing that happened was they asked her to do the coin flip. and I, we just should just watch it together. Mr. President, would you do the honor? It is tails. It's like a little bird. It's right there in the name. It's flip.

It's a coin flip. You're just to flip the coin. He let it fall. He's a little coin fall. It dropped. Yeah. I mean, at least it. At least it tumbled a bit.

I don't think it turned over one time. No, it had to have turned over. What that? I mean, it couldn't have just landed like that. I don't think it was not. There wasn't much rotation. Let's put it that way. I don't know.

Do you think he had someone he wanted to get the heads or tell? I don't know. Why was he so gentle? I just don't think he knows how to do it. No. Why he was just really gentle with that coin? All right. How would you have done the like little bing like that, right?

Pop. It's not that hard. It's not something you practice, I suppose. Maybe he got a little like the yips, you know, where you're just sort of anxious about the flip. You want the flip to look nice. And then you're saying like, ah, and then it just falls. A normal person that doesn't live in his own hotel would know how to flip a coin.

It's all I'm saying. Wait, you kind of just glossed over Spurs Thunder. That was a great game. Amazing game. And so absolutely needed for the NBA because the Thunder was running. I was worried. I'm so worried about that. this season. It's just looking like preordained.

But my boy, Steph, my boy, Steph, had a great game last night. Yeah, you can't grab. Yeah, Wembe and Yokin. You're going to have something to say about it. Okay, I had one more thing on the Army Navy game. This, I've noticed a couple times, but I don't think we've mentioned it. And I'm going to have, do a big interview later this week on Palantir and what's happening over there.

Folks don't know Palantiers. It's like the government contractor, Peter Thiel started it. They do spyware. Let's just pull this up here. This massive Palantier ad at the Army. Navy game. I find this very gross. This is the military academies, and we're having, like, a

spyware company. Defense company, contractor, spyware company that has like a very upfront political perspective among their leadership. They're doing ads at the game. I don't know. I mean, they obviously knew Trump was there, right? So they're trying to get it on his radar.

But yeah, it was like, there's a little bit sort of like, we're all going to be basically soldiers. for Palantir down the road. Yeah. It felt like it was out of a creepy dystopian movie. Yeah. It's like,

you know me, Sam, I'm going to be probably more pro-capitalist than the media and commenter on this YouTube feed. I do love capitalism, but like it feels like that we should have some safe spaces from capitalism in the country, like a military academy football game. I show,

I don't know. It's either that or it's sports betting. It's like one of the others going to advertise right there. So it's like pick your poison, right? I would feel a little bit better about, I don't feel a little bit better about draft Kings then Palantir I totally agree

but the draft kings it's everywhere like you cannot escape the sports betting advertising at these events too that makes me uncomfortable a little bit as well here's one more little politics sports take us over the weekend we are like absolutely rifling through these topics we're rolling through it's a poperi

you don't have a full meal of dumplings you take a couple of nice then you move on it's a fucking potpourri Sam are we at the spare ribs portion of his milk. We, I don't, I don't, look, we're it's something a little gayer than spare whibs.

There's a, uh, there's a little Timo Charlie Kirk. He's trying to sell himself like the new Charlie Kirk. Can you see this fellow? Brilyn Hollihan. Oh yeah, that guy. Will's written about him.

He's, um, yeah. He did a post, uh, over the weekend. I just, you know, I just,

did you see it? No. I saw I, you gave me some prep work, but I didn't see that one. Great. And, um, it's,

he wrote this. This is a tweet that he posted. Okay. This is one of the worst tweets I've ever seen in my life. Instead of the Super Bowl, I'd rather watch President Trump at Tom Oman, mass-deporting illegal aliens, exclamation point. You're just trying so hard. How are we losing to these people? What?

This is like the equivalent. I know, it doesn't make sense. It's the equivalent of, like, some lib being like, you know what I really want during the Super Bowl halftime show, a Hamilton reenact. It's like, oh, God. No, just watch the fucking game. Brought you by Palantir, okay? You should feel bad watching the Super Bowl. You should not be in a soup kitchen.

No, it's just like, come on. The, like, this little fucking white boy and his blue laser. I know. He's sort of notorious right for trying way too hard, right? That's his thing. he's like going around trying to beat Charlie Kirk and he's I think he had a polo shirt with the master's logo on it when he was on his private plane he was a picture doing that at that point I feel like part of me feels bad because he's like what 22 something like that and it's just

I don't feel bad you shouldn't be spent this way this is this is this is this tweet is bad across all different metrics it's a bad tweet it is morally reprehensible what was the rate what are the responses I haven't seen the response not positive I just did the Taylor Swift doing the loser The fact that you engage this stuff, I don't know. Amazing. You did a bad tweet over the weekend, actually. I hadn't seen it, but it was brought up to me IRL. And an IRL person say to me that what was up with Sam's bad tweet.

And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. There's so many bad ones. I have no idea. You said that Illinois should take the high road now, and redistricting now that Indiana has done the right thing. It's like, the Democrats win one. One little battle and you're ready to just fold. Okay.

I did see the reaction to this. And I just, I feel like I need to clarify because I think people are misinterpreting the point here. I said one state. I didn't say, oh, Maryland should take it off and Virginia should not do it. There's, people have to understand behind the scenes, these, these conversations are happening. Like Democrats are trying to position states to correspond with other states.

Illinois is supposed to correspond with Indiana. Okay. Virginia is supposed to correspond. respond with Florida. Maryland's kind of out there figuring out what it's corresponding with. And if Indiana, which is two seats that could go Republicans, says, we're not going to do it, then Illinois should say, which is one seat, should say, potentially, we won't do it either. It's a net gain of one for Democrats. Now, let's say the reverse. Illinois does go forward now.

And a bunch of the Indiana Senate Republicans are like, wait a second, what the fuck? Like, actually we change our mind. Now you're in a bad, you're in a war spot. So I stand by the tweet. The haters, I told Bill this this morning. It's always good to be flooded with hate online every once in a while. It keeps you, yeah, that's fine. It keeps you sane.

It keeps you grounded. I'm happy to take it, okay? Which side am I supposed to do once for the loser? Oh, you got it. You're a loser. It was brought up to you in real life? Wow. So, yeah, it's a loser mentality that you have.

Strategic mentality. Don't like it. Disagree. So for all of you disagree with Sam, know that you have an ally. Highland, bring it. Yeah, because fucking J.B. Pritzker, man up.

Okay, don't let Sam Stein give you the air cover to wait out here. If this group, we're going with the Chinese food metaphor here, this was the worst dish. Okay, the Republicans need pain. This one might be worse, actually,

because I expect you'd have a bad take on this, too. A lot of discussion on Twitter. Unclear yet in the real world about the Erica Kirk Town Hall with Barry Weiss on CBS. My 4U page on X, it like is just entirely Erica Kirk and like people deranged takes

on all sides like just people have very strong views we'll see what the ratings were for being an actual TV I should start just by saying I don't I don't like have that as strong views as some people in the media commentary space on what happens with CBS because I've not watched CBS news outside of 60 minutes in like probably 12 years

so 60 minutes does matter but it's not like I've watched the CBS evening news It was the last time I watched TV as Evening News. They made it the announcement of who the new anchor is. It's Katie Cher's husband, so congrats. I don't know him, but I know Katie. Big Tony guy. Who did he replace?

I'm not really sure. I'm not 100% sure. So it's not that big of a deal. That said, so maybe it's one of those things where nobody was watching before and he was watching out. But a lot of chatter about it. I had one thing in particular that caught my eye, but was there anything about the Barry Weiss of Erica Kirk Discourse?

she want to weigh in on. Well, two things. One is on the Erica Kirk discourse, I, you know, I'm public with this too. Whatever. People can throw hate at me all they want. I find the attacks on her and what she's doing totally uncomfortable. Like people grieve in different ways. People want to do different things. She wants to, you know, continue the legacy of her husband. She needs to be out there. That's helping her process it. Fine. Who cares? Grow up. Let her do her thing. I don't care. I will say if she's going to do that, you can criticize her takes because she's had, she had some pretty bad ones. Yeah, yeah, sure. Totally fine.

But the idea that she's like, why aren't you parenting your child, woman and stuff like that? I'm like, everybody comes down. You don't know what you're talking about. Shut up. Just shut up. So that's one. Two, on the Barry Wise thing, look, she's obviously a dynamic figure. I would just say, look, she's now overseeing this entire news agency.

I was a little bit surprised she took the interview. like if i were her i you know i would have you know i i would have given it to someone else he said any tony yeah anyone i would have been like i am now the manager i need to show that i have i need to get buy in from the people i'm not going to big foot or take this interview that was that's the only take i have on this yeah there might be some reason why she took the memory it was only granted to her um but yeah that seemed like a weird choice to me the thing that i found weird about it was well I guess I'm just going to be candid

it was Saturday night I was a tippinus I love in New Orleans I was at 8 o'clock on Saturday night I wasn't watching this town hall like okay like the only people watching it were 80 all right so network TV Saturday night at 8 p.m. I think is when it was aired I'm not 100% sure because I was

a tip of tippinus enjoying dragon smoke because it's a good show so I've seen a couple of clips though and I saw the Sunday morning clip of Barry talking about the interview so this is a meta take here it's me commenting on Barry commenting on her interview. Let's watch Barry. I think the thing that was baffling for many of us that watched that.

I mean, I remember watching it and thinking, I can't understand this. What does this mean? She was able to explain the distinction between forgiveness as a personal choice to almost let go of something, to not let it be this anvil around her. And forgiveness in the mode of her face, and to make a distinction between that

and her desire for justice, which is quite different. It doesn't mean that she forgives the... Like, it doesn't mean that she does not want this alleged murderer to be held accountable. And I think that's the really, really important distinction. Here's the thing that I, that I, you know, it's like... Take the interview, I'm fine.

Whoever do... I don't really care who is doing interviews for CBS. But you do the interview and then afterwards, rather than, like, being an analyst who, like, is saying, like, she has some good points, she had some bad points. Right. It's like, it's doing this thing where, like, you're puffing yourself up, like, you're a Don King, Don King promoter for your own work.

And you're just like, so amazing. I just, I had to bear witness. I got to bear witness to this historic moment and historic moment where Erica Kirk taught the world how to handle something. I don't think people could understand, which is that you can forgive somebody. and also want the justice system to work. And I'm like, that's the most anodyne take in the world. Like, that's like, that's one of the first three things you learn about when you learn about Jesus.

Like, you know, it's like the good, it's like, oh, she did the golden rule. It's like, it's great. It's praiseworthy that she did it. But like this notion, like what we saw was something that we, that nobody could possibly behold. And that very wise was like navigating the Amazon and found this remote culture of Christians. And here's what the Christians do out there in the woods. They forgive people. It's like, okay. And that was that just, that caught me a little. I just, you know, I want a little bit more balanced analysis of the, of the interview, I guess. Yeah. And it suggests that like the stuff

you got from the interview wasn't. I mean, it's a good interview. It's important, I suppose. But it's not like a high profile. I don't think it's like you're not, you're not, people aren't going to remember this, you know. What's happening with the for you page? What's happening with the algorithm? Oh, it's awful. Why does the algorithm want us to know, to see every terrible opinion about Erica Kirk, do you think? I don't know. This morning, it was every, I mean, I woke up, it was all the Bondi shooting, but it was like the most grotesque, horrifying stuff from that shooting. I mean, corpses all over the place, you know, 10 minute long segments of people like sniping at each other.

They felt like we were in some sort of, you know, movie, like some horror show movie or some, like, video game reenactment and I was just like you know if you're just an average kid hopping on this platform like that that I just I just it is wild west shit and it is rewarding bad actors and it's all people need to get people need to go to the following page get off the for you page it's bad that's really bad I should say you you already talked to bill this morning about both the brown shooting and the Bondi shooting and again and I think again that's just another I was one of the reasons

I was like I'm so annoyed by getting this town hall I pushed it by face so much it's just like we're in this that is you know some news judgment but there are no new that's a problem there's no one judging the news on this platform which is the biggest purveyor of the news it's just hey whatever people are like

spending their most time on and of course they're going to watch horrific you know gun fights and dead bodies all over the place I mean we're primal people and it's like I don't know it just it felt very raw and and kind of irresponsible frankly

you sent the uh you sent also uh the story about the girl at brown that like had been shot in a school shooting already and she was then at Brown it was going to be at the area or the Brown? Yeah it's unbelievable anyway this is

this is why if you go um on on my Jubilee video people are like why did you argue about guns why did you choose guns is one of the topics to argue with the kids about it. The reason is because I'm like, I just think it's crazy that we've now just decided. It's kind of like, okay, well, now that, you know,

now that we didn't solve this after Sandy Hook, what's the point of talking about it anymore? I kind of feel like maybe we should talk about it a little bit. Of course. There's a kid that is in college that's been in two school shootings now. And she's not the first one. No, yeah, this is not the first. And I thought all these people in my plies being,

well, these are two gun-free zones. Like, of course there's going to be shootings. It's like, come on. man what do you just you know do like basic research just any fundamental basic research about gun violence and in educate yourself before doing this i want to take you uh over to the new york young republican gala yeah i followed these guys around for a while this is like a mega youth group maga unlike cocaine youth group yeah yeah yeah like they're like the mag i was um i ended up ended up not happening but i spent a decent amount of time with them because i was i was pitching

kind of a broader project before i got you know kind of busy making 100 videos a day for the YouTube about this group because they're really important because like people do forget this. There's a moment in time between the January 6th insurrection and Trump announcing who's going to run again where like most of the right wing institutions were kind of like we're just want to move on to DeSanto. Yeah. Like you know what I mean? Fox was for it.

Rupert was for it. Most of the young college Republican groups were more DeSantis like, you know. The New York Young Republicans were the first group to be like, we are endorsing. Trump again after the insurrection. And they kind of made a name for themselves this way. And so anyway, to your point that they're like mag on cocaine, that's their deal. They had their gala last

night. The first to endorse President Donald J. Trump in 2024. And Mr. President, the New York Young Republican Club is prepared to endorse the end. There you go. So, I mean, obviously

there's some trolling elements to this, but like that's the type of that you're getting out there. Yeah, I mean, this is just them trying to, like, be, you know, the most Trumpy, most, you know, provocative people in the room. And, of course, there's a little New Yorker mentality, obviously. Like, they don't give a shit. They want to, like, fight. But it's a cult.

Like, it's very cultish, right? It's a cult. I will say, there was one sign from outside that these internal MAGA tensions are existing them, like even in this place where it's like you're self-voluntarying to be the most mega, yeah. Outside the event, there was a guy protesting, he appeared to be a left-wing guy wearing a Nazi costume, protesting New York Young Republicans, accusing them of Nazis. This is like a pro-tip, like, as a protester, like, you don't, even if you're making fun of Nazis, you're really dressing like a Nazi, it can send some mixed messages. So just a little pro-tip for protesters out there.

I wouldn't wear the Nazi guard myself. It's when you're taking the troll in a touch too far when you look in the mirror and you got a swastika on. Exactly. So you got the guy in the Nazi suit then hands one of his swastikas to a New York Young Republican attendee, Gala attendee, who's a groiper, it's a Nick Frentice type, who takes the swastika and it's like, you're right, I am a Nazi, okay, basically. And so he holds it. Thank you. I've been looking for my swastika. Yeah. And then another New York Young Republican, kind of a portly fella, comes out. And I guess, he is an anti-groyper so he's a mega anti-goyper so there you go and um and let's do what he does to the groyper guy you invited him to your fucking club you gave him a ticket to the fucking

whoa whoa okay let's let's let's let's see that there you go an open hand slap an open hand slap i got to tell you i chuckled in bed this morning watch that you love to see that shit I mean, this is so, these people are so, it's like tough to know who to root for sometimes. But in this one, I'm rooting for the, the slapper. The slapper. Absolutely. Yeah. So you're not, violence is sometimes the answer for you then, Sam, is what you're saying.

No guns, yes, slapping. Yeah, I can get down with slapping, sure. Open hand slapping. All right, my final topic for you, we've, like you said, we've been banging through. This is the dessert. This is your fortune cookie. And this was from TMZ. Takashi 6.9 caught a stray shot for being a snitching Mexican in a laced front wig during 21 Savage's three-hour interview, and now he's clapping back.

I have no idea what any of that means. Like, that just completely went over my head. That was a TMZ headline. Takashi 69 caught a stray shot for being a snitching Mexican in a lace front wig during 21 Savage's three-hour interview, and now he's clapping back. A lot of numbers. A lot of numbers in that headline. I would not have gone with that headline if it were us. But, you know, the fact that you caught your attention,

maybe you should put, like, a bunch of weird numbers and names in our headlines. I wonder what he's saying now that he's clapping back. I did click, but then it was too confusing to restart. It's like, what? Who are these people? All right. Anything else? Catch your eye?

Any other Pope? No, man. I got to go watch some football. Yeah, your kids sound like, sounds like your dadding down there. It sounds like you're doing a great job. There's chaos. bag. I said, Harry, I got to go do some YouTube. Get out of here. This is where you get all the gold, the real gold, right here. We'll see you soon.

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