Bulwark Takes - Trump Didn’t Drain the Swamp—He Joined It

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Tim Miller dives into the corporate corruption funding Donald Trump's East Wing demolition to build his new ballroom, with many corporations and executives' ulterior motives for giving money to Trump in plain sight.

Hey, everybody, Timmo from the Bullwark. There's been a lot of discussion about Trump's excavating of the East Wing to replace with his gilded ballroom, the Donald Trump ballroom. But I don't think there's been quite enough focus on just the blatant corruption of it. And the fact that the fundraising for this ballroom is an admission that Donald Trump has been defeated by the swamp. So if you got on board for Donald Trump because you thought he was an outsider that was going to clean up Washington and, you know,

go after those lobbyists and, you know, the insiders that are making your life worse, right? Go after the people that have been lining their pockets with your taxpayer dollars. Donald Trump has given up in term to on even the pretense of going after the lobbyists and the influencers and the corporate interests that are lining their pockets on your back. Like, Donald Trump is now fully in league with the, the corporate establishment. He's fully in league with the lobbyist. He's fully in league with the deep state.

He's fully in league with the military industrial complex. All of the powerful interests in Washington have co-opted Donald Trump. And they've done so by bribing him with a pretty ballroom where he can have dinner parties because that's what he actually cares about. I want to go through the list of companies that are contributing to this ballroom. And I'm going to read through the whole list first and then focus on a couple of them. Altria Group, it's tobacco, Amazon, Apple, Booz Allen, Hamilton, it's government contractor, Caterpillar, Coinbase Crypto, Comcast Corporation, Pepe and Amelia Fanjul, it's an individual, hard rock international, Google, HP, Lockheed Martin, Military Industrial Complex, Meta, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Next Era, Energy, Palantir Technology, Spying on You, Ripple, Crypto again, Reynolds, more tobacco, T-Mobile, Tether, Crypto, again, Union Pacific, and then some family foundations, the Adelson's

obviously concerned about the state of Israel, Stefan Brody, Betty World Johnson Foundation, Charles and Marissa, Cascarilla, Edward and Sherry Glazer, the Glazers, Harold Hamm, Benjamin Leon, the Nutlick family, excuse me, the Lutnik family that's doing great. Howard Lutnik is the Commerce Secretary, and his family. family, his kids are making bank on the back end and a lot of deals that are related to the government. So it's another sub-corruption. The Lauren Isaac Perlmutter Foundation, Stephen Schwartzman, Constantine Sokoloff, Kelly Leffler, failed Senate candidate, Paulo Tiramani, and the Winkle Vi. So that is the list. Those are the people that are contributing to the Donald

J. Trump ballroom. I'm not sure I'm with JVL and having to raise and bulldoze that ballroom in the first day if the Democrats get back in. But we sure. as shit, aren't going to call it the Donald J. Trump ballroom. I'll tell you that much. Let's talk about some of these companies. There is just the straightforward corruption that's at play here. There is the crypto companies, for example, Donald Trump has deregulated crypto. A lot of them have invested in his stable coin. He's trying to do a government crypto reserve. I mean, the amount of corruption that is happening in place right now so that these crypto companies can continue. to do illegal business with impunity, right, is just truly astounding. And just as we sit here

today, there's been a pardon of the head of finance, one of the crypto companies that invested into Trump's world liberty financial. So there's just a straight direct crypto company that is enriching the Trump family to the tune of hundreds of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. And they're rewarding the president, these crypto companies, in addition to the largest that he's going directly to his family, he's going to get this new fancy ballroom because he's a fancy boy. There's some other examples. You have Apple here, led by Tim Apple. Obviously, he doesn't want to get tariffed by the president. This is a direct quid pro quo. This is the example I've been using over and over again. If the Harris administration had been threatening Apple and saying, we are going

to put an additional tax on all of your products, we are going to put a wealth tax on the leaders of company. We are going to garnish some of the profits from this company. And to keep in exchange for that, if you don't want us to do that, you have to build me a fancy ballroom, make me a trophy, and tell me how great I am. The business community would be rightly and sense. That would obviously be the actions of a state-run government and authoritarian state. And that is what is happening here. And so we've got Apple giving Donald Trump trophies and giving him a fancy ballroom. So great job, Tim Apple, I suppose one of one of the good ones out there.

You know, your products are being made in sweatshops overseas and you are sidling up to an authoritarian and giving him a gift that he can use to propagandize through the decades. the centuries, all thanks to Tim Apple. It's a truly great legacy that he is carrying on for Steve Jobs. A more direct bribe situation is from our friends at Google. I want to note that Google has also donated to this ballroom. They recently were in a legal filing with Donald Trump where there was a settlement where Google was paying Trump because YouTube had banned him from the platform after January 6th, totally appropriate thing for YouTube to do. Google's parent alphabet noted in the legal settlement reached with Trump over the YouTube banning, they wrote this, that they would be contributing $22 million to help build the White House ballroom.

So, and this is just direct. Alphabet wants Trump off their back. They engaged in a settlement with him, private settlement. In that settlement, in the legal filing, they said that, you know, that part of this deal is that they'll be donating to the ballroom, $22 million. So, again, this is just a direct quid pro quo. Alphabet doesn't want to deal with Trump's ire. And so they've just stayed directly in legal filing.

We're going to bribe you. We're going to bribe you $22 million. Obviously, I think it's also worth noting in addition to the quid pro quo, that Alphabet along with Microsoft and Amazon to other companies that have contributed to the ballroom, room. They have received lucrative contracts from Trump's second term. They landed contracts for AI and cloud tools. Amazon Web Services received up to $1 billion in cloud credit incentives. So, I mean, these guys are making bank and they're just printing money with government contracts. And then throwing Donald Trump some little bribes so the theater queen

can have, you know, really fancy plays inside of a ballroom and that he can bring, you know, foreign kings and queens and get all dressed up in costumes and have nice parties, if that's all it takes to let Donald Trump, you know, have his fancy boy parties in exchange for you not having the government go after you and in exchange for on top of that, more than that, you get in government contracts. Well, that's a great deal for the big tech interests and the big tech oligarchs. So all of these guys have totally co-opted Donald Trump. He's no longer going after, even if you ever want.

has no interest in going after the most powerful interest in the world, the leaders of the tech companies, because, you know, they're giving him the toy that he likes. But, yeah, obviously, it's more gross than that. You've got Palantier. To think that libertarians voted for Trump? To think that civil libertarians think that, like, podcast bros, that just wanted the government that didn't like the government, the state security service, just think that some of these leftist Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald types voted, went along with Trump. It's crazy. I mean, the expansion of the security state, the expansion of the spy technologies, going after regular Americans. The assault on our civil liberties that is going to be done by Palantir and these other companies is just totally unprecedented. It is dystopian. And so talk about how dystopian it is, that Palantir is getting money to spy on you from the government. Palantir is getting money to spy on you from the government. Palantir is getting money to spy on you from the government. government. And they're taking like a tiny little percent of that money and giving it back to the government, giving it back to Donald Trump so he can use it to have his little fancy ballroom, his gold ballroom. You want that? You want your tax dollars going to the government. The government is giving that money to Palantir, to spy on you. And as part of that deal, Palantir, it's like

patting Donald Trump on the head and saying, yeah, you can have your fancy ballroom as long as we get hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to spy on Americans to institute an advanced security state. That's going after the deep state. That's draining the swamp? Interesting. How about the just straight on old school military industrial complex? How about that?

Let's talk about that. Donald Trump, remember back in 2016 the column in the New York Times? Donald the dove, Hillary the Hawk. Donald Trump was going to be the anti-war candidate. He was the one that was going to go after the deep state. Here's my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption. After, you know, these entrenched interests in Washington that have gotten us into these unnecessary wars and, you know, that take taxpayer money and it goes to, you know, executives of these multinational corporations,

like which ones? Which ones could we mention? How about Lockheed Martin? One of the most central companies in the military industrial complex. the type of company, the type of military contractor that if you took at their word, Donald Trump and the civil libertarians that were for him, the people that were going after the Unip Party. You remember those people? They're going after the Unip Party because they were too in league with the military industrial complex. The Unip Party, you know, was paying off and bribing, you know, these big corporations. And the big corporations were nudging them into wars. And the American people were losing out.

the working man, the forgotten man, the middle of America was getting hollowed out because we were doing too much military adventurism. And it was all wrapped up in this big military industrial complex where, you know, the contractors and the DOD and the White House were all in league together. And everybody was getting rich while you were, you know, getting screwed over. Remember that story? That was the story that Maga told. No longer. The military. industrial complex, the deep state, the swamp, has defeated Donald Trump. Lockheed Martin pledged at least 10 million, which is just about what the company spent in 2024 on all federal lobbying. Lockheed Martin said this in a statement. Lockheed Martin is grateful for the opportunity to help bring President Vision to reality and make this addition to the People's House, a powerful symbol of the American ideals we work to defend every day. I bet you're grateful Lockheed.

I thought Donald Trump was supposed to make the executives at Lockheed Martin shaking their boots. The types of people who are, if you're the vice president of corporate affairs, which is just, you're just the fucking lobbyist point man for Lockheed Martin. You'd think that person would have been scared of the Donald Trump administration, right? Because supposedly Trump was going to come in, Doge was going to run havoc over the DOD. Donald Trump allegedly did not care about this dumb, stupid military.

interventionism that both parties have been engaging in for decades now. He was going to be different. He's a populist. He's an isolationist. He is going to drain the swamp and attack the deep state. Well, Jalen Drummond, Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Lockheed Martin doesn't feel attacked. He loves Trump now. He is grateful. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Trump. We are going to give you the amount of money that that we spent on lobbying last year so you can have your little Versailles, your little ballroom Versailles. We're going to give you that money as long as we get to keep doing all the things that we've

been doing, contracting for billions and billions of dollars with the government, new weapons, new tools. I mean, say what you want about that. There are, I'm sure many people, military hawks out there, I'm more sympathetic to, you know, of the U.S.'s role overseas and investing in the military that maybe some of you are and less than maybe some of you are. But like, no matter what your view is on how much money we should be spending on the military, right, no matter how much what your view is on how involved companies like Lockheed Martin should be in the government, this is an objective matter. If you are one of the

people in MAGA who believed that Donald Trump was going to go after the swamp and go after the deep state and deconstruct the military industrial complex and bring that money back home to help the forgotten man, you can conclude now officially that that is not going to happen. Donald Trump did not go after the deep state. He got co-opted by the deep state. Donald Trump has no interest in bringing money back from the Washington, D.C. swamp and taking it away from the lobbyists and taking away from the amount we're investing and stupid foreign interventions.

You know, all these things he said he was going to do, he's going to take that money and reinvest it back in America. That's not happening. Your tax dollars are paying for us to continue to contract with people like Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Apple. All these big corporations are continuing to make bank with money that you are paying in taxes. And Donald Trump is not just totally fine with that.

He's supercharging it. He's supercharging it. The big tech CEOs are happier than ever. Military industrial complex. Jalen Drummond from Lockheed Martin. He is grateful. He is thrilled. Palantir is thrilled.

I forget the same as it ever was. This is swamp on steroids right now. These guys are just buying off the president. Buying his crypto, giving him a fancy ballroom. he's not going after them anymore, if he ever was. This is not some anti-establishment attack on the security state. Donald Trump is, like, wants that meme with the muscle dog. He wants a muscled security state.

He wants a mussely deep state. I sure, he's going to go after a handful of people that he doesn't like personally, individually, because they're mean to him. But he's not going after it broadly. He is not trying to take, the money that people all over the country working Americans have contributed to the government and reinvest it back in them. He's not doing that. He's not, he doesn't care. If the forgotten man is mad about somebody, Trump's not going after that person. Trump's only going after people

in the government that have been mean to him personally. So he's going to flush all those people out, random bureaucrats that are mean to him that don't have any impact on your daily life. And And then everybody that sucks up to him and all the big corporations and all the moneyed interests that come to his new gallus, all of them are going to get exactly what they want and more. This is the mega establishment now. It's the mega deep state. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Worse than the old boss. Meet the new boss doing all of the swampy, corrupt insider dealings. that you hated before, and now on top of that, a more overt type of corruption, that past presidents were a little too shy to engage in, or the past presidents were too principal to engage in, that past presidents thought went against their oath of office, because it did. So that's what's happening. I just wanted to really focus in on just this one aspect of it.

that I think we can mark, mark it down, October 23rd, it is the time of death of Trump being able to argue to people that he's going after the swamp in the deep state on behalf of the forgotten man on behalf of the American people. He's not doing that anymore. He has been bought and paid for by all the same interests that tried to buy and pay for other politicians. They bought him off pretty cheap, really. Just giving him a fancy ballroom. not a bad deal everybody if you have somebody in your life that was upset about the establishment and the way that and the corruption in Washington

and Donald Trump was appealing to that them because he was an outsider send him this video or send him some articles about the way that Trump has been just handing out contracts handing out deals

to all of the big players in the swamp that have been their time memorial. And he's added in a few new ones for good measure, the crypto guys and Palantir who are now going to be spying on you on behalf of big government. Enjoy all of that. We'll be talking to you again soon.