Bulwark Takes - Trump Goes Off the Rails in Wild New Interview

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Sarah Longwell and Sam Stein share their takes on Donald Trump's wild interview with Time Magazine, which exposes his incoherent plans for immigration, tariffs, and the economy. Read the full transcript here.

Hey guys, it's me Sam Stein, managing editor of The Bulwark, joined by Sarah Longwell, our fearless publisher. I'm live in an El Salvadorian prison. You can tell from my backdrop. It's horrible. Is your family keeping you in the basement? What is going on? I'm at an Airbnb. I'm out in Chicago, about to go to Wrigley Field. I just want to be clear, I'm doing the hard work here. I'm not being detained by Bukele. I don't think so yet. I'm so glad. Thank you. I hope you will bail me out when it comes to that. We're going to be talking about

Trump's Time Magazine interview. Before we get to that, subscribe to the feed, as always. Look, I woke up today. I saw this posted, this transcript posted. I read through it. There's four or five totally remarkable parts of it. I'm going to save my favorite one. But when it comes down to it, when you read it and you step back, it's kind of like the man's brain is a little bit fried, I think. And he just goes and weaves. I know he thinks the weave is a form of art, but it's like a deranged weave at this point. What were your big picture takeaways? And then we can get into the specifics. Yeah. I mean, look, so first of all,

part of what's funny when you read it is like, you can hear it in Trump's voice of him being like, this is a very nasty interview. He's getting mad at him as he's doing it. Because the guy's asking, I don't know, perfectly reasonable questions like, did you talk to Xi about this deal? Because the Chinese say you haven't. So nasty. So nasty. What is funny to me is like, whether he's being asked about sort of immigration

or his promises about groceries or whatever, he keeps just going back and saying, we're going to have so much money. We're going to be so rich. This country is going to be so rich and beautiful. And like, he just kind of says that over and over. And so it's less of a we. He tries to create a reality, right? He lapses into some groove that has formed in his brain where he just talks about how it's all going to be rich and beautiful and you can't let them rip you off. Did you notice that on four

times he mentions trade as the United States is a department store? On four separate occasions. We're a department store. He's like, I'm like a store and I'm open for, I'm a big, beautiful store open for business. You can come and do business. In my store. Yeah, no, it's bananas. But I mean, we're not breaking any news with like the whole thing is bananas.

But this whole point about, you know, he creates his he creates his own reality. I will read some of it. For example, he says, the price of groceries have gone down. The only price that hasn't gone down is the price of energy, the cost of energy. I'm sorry. Well, energy has gone down. Excuse me. Let me change that. That is the interest rates. And interest rates have essentially stayed the same. But almost every other thing, I mean, you take a look at what's going on. And this is, we're taking in billions of dollars of tariffs, by the way. And just to go back to the past, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs from China. And then when COVID came, I couldn't institute the full program. But I took in hundreds of billions. And we had no inflation. That was a question about groceries. I don't know.

We don't know where it goes there was one part there was one but grocery prices aren't going down like whatever all the rest of that was in their grocery price is not going down one part similar to that i'm trying to find in transcript but i hope i can find in time but where he he talks about well you know joe biden would never do something like this like actually we did interview joe biden and he's like oh yeah how did it go uh and they're like, oh, here it is. They go, we spoke to him a year ago, him being Biden. And Trump goes, how did he do? He said, you can read the interview for yourself. And Trump goes, not too good. I did read the interview. It's like, you

just said you don't know. You just said you didn't know about the interview. And now you're like, yeah, I read it. It's like, where are you? Where's your brain? brain i'm gonna keep reading some of this fun stuff like one of my favorite lines was he's talking about immigration he just starts talking about the wall and he goes i completed the wall what i was doing but we have i wanted to build additional because it was working so well an extension first of all so he finished wall, but now he wants to build an extension because it's working so well. If you built the wall, bro, how did they all get in when Biden was president? How did they get in if your big, beautiful wall was up? There is no wall. No, there's no. And the other thing that stood out and got a lot of attention was they were

talking about these trade deals, right? So we have this 90-day pause of the tariffs, part of the tariffs. And Peter Navarro says, yeah, we're going to do nine deals in nine days. And so they asked Trump about it. And they said, well, why haven't you? There's been zero deals announced. What's the deal with that? And Trump goes, no, there's many deals. And they're like, well, then why announce them? And he's like, I've made 200 deals. No one's talking about 200 deals. I've got this right in front of me. This is your trade advisor.

Peter Navarro says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that? He says, no, there's many deals. When are they going to be announced? You have to understand I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China.

We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals. Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them? I've made 200 deals. You've made 200 deals? 100%. Will you call President Xi if he doesn't call you? No. You won't? Nope. Has he called you yet? Yep. When did he call you? He's called. And I don't think that's a sign of weakness on his behalf. But you would think it's a sign of weakness if you called him. I don't. I just look. Well, what did he say? If people want to, well, we all want to make deals. But I am this giant store. It's a giant, beautiful store. And everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own giant store. It's a giant, beautiful store. And everybody wants to go shopping there.

And on behalf of the American people, I own the store and I set prices. And I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay. Like, look, honestly, it's obviously, I think it would be different if we watched it because he has this way of sort of projecting confidence. But when you read it, you think to yourself, boy, like, imagine Joe Biden speaking like that. We would be in a collective shock. This man's brain is totally fried. Like what is he talking about?

This is insane. This is inane. But when Joe Biden said, I beat Medicare, we were all like, oh, boy. Oh, no, you're short circuiting. But Trump says this and we're all like, well, that's how this guy talks. The United States is a general story. And that's just it. Now, there was a couple – Tim and I talked about this for the video we did on the FBI arrest of the judge.

But there was a part in this that I thought was actually kind of notable. When they started talking about immigration, he talks about Abrego Garcia in the case there. He basically is like, look, I'm fine with him coming back and getting retried. I don't really care. Let's do it, but I'm going to defer to my lawyers. Now, two things about that. One is he's using his lawyers as a human shield, which is strategic. But two is he kind of is undermining the entire case that Stephen Miller is out there saying, which is like, this is totally illegal. Of course, we can't bring him back. We would never

do such a thing. You have Trump saying, yeah, bring him back. I don't really care if they want to do it, do it. This is my favorite version of Trump. My favorite version of Trump is the one that throws his underlings under the bus repeatedly by making them defend absolutely insane things. Then him being like, yeah, well, it'd be fine if we if we do this. Let me let me just read this part of this. It says the guy asked him, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that you have to bring back Kilmar Obrego Garcia.

You haven't done so. Aren't you disobeying the Supreme Court? Well, that's not what my people told me. They didn't say it was, they said it was the nine to nothing was something entirely different. Let me quote from the ruling. The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego-Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador. Are you facilitating a release? I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. Give give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you're saying, but I leave that to my lawyers if they want. And that would be the Attorney General of the United States and the people that represent the country. I don't make that decision. It's unbelievable. Sure. Sure, boss. Later in the interview, he did say that he

instructed them to go after Chris Krebs, just for the record. So, you know, it's selective, very selective stuff. But yeah, I think that that one was notable. And then the other one that stood out to me was how he talked about the law firms. Because it was, and you know what, actually appreciated this from Trump, because the firms acquiesced to him, they bent over, totally capitulated. And then he just decided to rub it in their faces a little bit more. Because they're like, well, don't you think that's authoritarian and wrong of you to do? He's like, well, they wouldn't have done it if they didn't do stuff that was wrong. They wouldn't have paid me if they wouldn't have done it.

It's like, yeah, you know what? I have no sympathy for the firms. They deserve all this humiliation that they're going to get. And rightfully so. You earned it. Congrats, Mr. President. Honestly, I feel that way. It's like he absolutely rubbed it in their faces because they absolutely

deserve that stuff so um anything else him saying that the that the money is a basically an admission of guilt on that part also like they do deserve it for being stupid enough to pay his ransom money thinking it's gonna buy them something yeah that's my point it just is so clarifying they thought they could get out from under his thumb and And of course, you can't do that with this guy, because he'll always hold it against you. Last bit that I want to talk about is he mentions, what was it? It was the war in Ukraine. And let's talk about the style of interview after we talk about this, because I think the interviewer in this case did a really good job. They said, you know, look, you said you would end the war in Ukraine on day one. And this is the other default that he does. I was just joking. Well, it's just

a punchline that you guys took literally. So yeah, this is a classic Trumpism. He said, well, I said that figuratively. And I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news. Obviously, people know that when I said that it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, totally. You just deceived a bunch of people. He was also joking about grocery prices, guys. I have one more to throw in to your thought that jumped out to me that I thought was fun. He said, you asked President Bukele of El Salvador to build out the CISAP prison to house American citizens. You said you would send homegrown criminals there. You are

our homegrown criminal, Sam. Smooth criminal. And Trump says, no, I didn't say that. He was on hot mic. Like he was on a microphone. You can hear him say, he said, no, I didn't say that. I said, if it were permissible, according to the law, I would like to do that. Yes. Do you remember as part of that conversation, him saying, if it's permissible, according to law, do you hear him following up? I don't recall that little addendum to the statement now. All right. So what do you think of the interviewer style? I really liked it. I thought this is how you do it. It's like, no, you actually said this or no, like you made this promise. And they're like interjecting. And, you know, obviously, this person had a lot of time with Trump, which is great. But I really thought that this was like one of the few interviews where you

actually penetrated Trump's bullshit. Do you know who this person is? Like, who did this conducted this interview? Yeah, okay. So the interview says it was conducted by Time senior political correspondent, Eric Cortell-Y and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs. I wish I knew more about past interviews they've done, but they did a really good job. He did. So that Cortellessa guy did the one of Trump, the Time magazine that Trump did, that was pre-election, where Trump was like, no, I'm going to put troops in the streets. That Time magazine article was also notable. And so I think in both cases, this particular reporter, it's interesting that Trump sat down for a second interview. He loves Time. He loves Time. He just loves Magazine.

That's right. And so I think the reporter did a good job, yes, I think of just saying like, these are the things you said. And a lot of it is like Trump being Trump. But there it is, it is always revealing when he does these things with not Fox News toadies that hold up the mirror to him. And obviously, he weaves his way out of it. But it's still, you can you can tell where he has no plan. Look, and I think it's I think it's fair to say that he's very good at evading being held down on specifics. And so when you get him for 10 to 15 minutes, and it's just TV, and you know, you're crunched, you're trying to squeeze in all these topics, it's not going to work. When you get him for an hour, or something like this, and you can sort of say, you know what, I'm going to just hone in on this part. And you push him.

That's when it works. And we saw that. We see that every now and then, like Jonathan Swan's famous interview in the first term. He had a fair bit of time and he just decided, you know, I'm going to focus all on COVID. And that was great. And it's really, I don't envy people who interview Trump. I've talked to a bunch of people who've done it. It's really hard. He's very, you know, he's just hard to pin down. But in this case, this is one of those rare interviews. And same with the earlier one that we did, where actually get news you get an interesting insight into how his brain is kind of operating if you want to use that word uh and it was just well done that was well done you're melting is another way um no it was a well-done job kudos to time uh i i encouraged the president uh to go on the podcast you know it could be it could be yours yeah it could be yours. Do a focus group. Whatever. Anything. It would be fun to have him

react to a focus group of people reacting to him. Sarah, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching. We consume the time interview transcript so you don't have to and then we give it to you. Subscribe to the feed in exchange for that and we'll talk to you later.