Bulwark Takes - Trump Loyalists Learn What ‘America First’ Really Means

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

Tim Miller serves up a double dose of Schadenfreude Saturday. Two die-hard MAGA businessmen just got a taste of their own politics — and it’s not going down easy. First, the Trump Burger chain owner in Texas who plastered his restaurants with MAGA merch… and now faces deportation. Next is Josh Smith: a Montana knife maker who mocked companies for whining about tariffs — until those same tariffs jacked up his costs.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the bulwark here. It is shot in Freud a Saturday. That's right. JVL's been out this week.

It's been on a family vacation, well deserved. I had to take a week off the FY podcast. We need to give you a little something. We deserve it. You know, not that we enjoy other people suffering. But it's interesting to see when people experience the consequences of their support for Donald Trump. And I don't know. Maybe it'll be a little theme.

Just a little Saturday treat a little. Shodden Freud a Saturday. I think that's fair. I think we deserve it. Anyway, there are two mega executives. We're going on to have executives, like CEOs that have fallen on hard times this week, which is tough. And first, I want to turn it over to a report from K-H-O-U in Houston. The owner of Trump Burger restaurants, which has several locations in the Houston area, has been arrested by immigration and customs enforcement and now faces deportation. I says Roland Biani, a 28-year-old from Lebanon, overstayed his visa after entering the U.S. back in 2019. He was taken into custody in May and is now out on bond as he awaits immigration proceedings.

Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry. Boy, did you catch that? Trump is right about everything sign. Oops. Well, here's the thing. I just want to say, up front, I don't know anything about this person. Seems like a decent businessman.

He found a niche in the marketplace. I think that if an immigrant wants to come here and live the American dream, Get a green card marriage, maybe, and open a business, even a stupid fucking business. That's great. They should do that. That's great. I'd be for that. I would not have been happy if Joe Biden went around deporting random business owners

because they like Donald Trump. I'm not for that. That's not we live in a pluralistic society. We like pluralism here at the bulwark. and yet in this case it is you gotta admit it's kind of funny that uh the trump burger chain it was so popular it was a chain the trump burger chain's owner get in the boot be gone long one um yeah that's tough uh why somebody on uh not exactly um fully legal immigration status decided to go all in for Donald Trump.

Maybe it was purely cynical. I don't know. Maybe it was one of these things where he's only going to go after the bad people, not me. I guess if you read any books about stories where Mad Kings start to go after people, you would have learned. I mean, you don't even have to read a book and you could watch a movie. You could learn that usually people who are not bad end up suffering. Maybe this person is bad, but I don't, but for whatever reason, the burger man with questionable immigration status did not have any issues.

He just went full bore ahead with Donald Trump and his Donald Trump-themed business, and now he is getting deported. I do want to flashback. I thought I'd heard of the Trump burger before. I couldn't remember why. And it's because of this epic Houston Chronicle review of the Trump Burger chain. I want to read you guys a little bit from that. I was waiting for my order at Trump Burger in Houston, surrounded by Trump 2024, the revenge tour. Ball caps and your fake news t-shirts.

A man with a Make America Great Again hat approaches me and asks, did you vote in 2016? It's kind of an ominous, a little anecdote. The burger is serviceable. Like one, a cargo short-wearing dad might serve when he's cosplaying a Food Network grill master at a holiday picnic. It's missing the craggy edges, which tells you the meat hasn't been on a hot grill for enough time to develop the beefy flavor. There's no trace of char or smoke.

Each bite doesn't leave you wanting more because there's no juiciness. And a slice of American cheese is barely melted. You know, I'm a man of the people when it comes to burgers. I like a little smash burger, you know, I don't need a, I don't need a fancy hoity, toyed, $18 burger. I like a, I like a regular burger, not a McDonald's, man, but I like a, I like a, you know, regular old, you know, just off the grill. I might, I probably like the cargo short dad's burger, but that doesn't make the creepy propaganda restaurants burger being flavorless, any less funny. So we'll see how it goes for Mr. Burger Man, Mr. Trump Burger. man i guess he's out on body and get sent to alligator alcatraz uh so he's getting um he's getting

leniency maybe he's getting the kind of jillane maxwell club fed treatment from ice uh but uh he's going to have another hearing and um we'll see how it goes if if the trump burger chain collapses i like what will the people of houston do i don't know anyway tough break buddy um i'd like to move on to the Montana Knife Company. This story comes from the Montana Dispatch. Friend of the Bullwark, Ryan Bussie, was writing about this over on Substack. You just check that out.

If you're from Montana or you're into guns and knives, you're a lib, a lib gun owner. Those are out there. We honor lib gun owners. Not me. I'm a little, a little guns are a little scary for me, but lib gun owners, we honor.

And Ryan Bussie's a good guy to follow. Anyway, here's his story. It's about Mr. Josh Smith of the Montana Knife Company. I want to play a video for Mr. Josh Smith. to kind of set the tone here. Montana Knife Company, a very, very MAGA knife brand pictures on his Instagram

with Donald Trump Jr. And his mobs, very proud MAGA soldier. Like everyone else, he's got a podcast even. You know, he parlayed his knife company success into the podcast business. Welcome.

Josh, good luck out here in these streets. It's not as easy as it looks. And, And he did a content activation a couple months ago that was going after the companies that were labeling on their website, how tariffs were impacting the prices of their goods. And he had, he wanted to pick on those companies and, you know, talk to them about how stupid they were. Let's watch that video.

All right. So I hear that Amazon is going to put a number next to the price of a product on their website to designate how much the tariff is of whatever you're buying on their website. At Montana Knife Company, we're going to do the same thing. We're going to put a number next to the price as well. And that number is going to look a lot like the shape of this goose egg, because we've been preaching this all along. We're American made. By American, you don't have to worry about this shit. Buy American, make American made, and you don't have to worry about this shit.

Zero, goose egg, Mr. Smith said about the Montana Knife Company. Gooseg, the terrorist, will not impact him. In fact, he was having a lot of success. Knife company is growing, which is great. We love an American brand. I love entrepreneurship here at the board. Everything's going well for him. He's expanding.

Here's the trouble, though. He's expanding. He wanted to scale up. You know, do it so many other entrepreneurs have done over the decades, over the generations. You know, start. Look at Jeff B. She started just with books. Look at him now.

That's a penis rocket. Wedding in Venice. I forgot, don't tell. I forgot my nephew's birthday was today. So I already overnighted him. A present thanks to Jeff Bezos. Right?

So this was Mr. Josh Smith saw the Bezos plan for him. Start with knives. Expand. So he builds a factory. And a factory, though, has equipment. And, well, I have an update for you. I have another video.

Let's play what happened. And I appreciate our guy Die Workwear over on X for grabbing this because he's deleted some of these videos. But let's see what's happened to kind of the costs and the inputs for the Montana Knife Company since the tariffs went into place. July 17th, 2024, base price 519, July 23rd, 2025, base price 612. The thermal couple interface upgrade, 14,900, 16,700. The loader, 10,200, the loader, 11,400. So this is my point, and this is what I'm getting at. We're trying to build American manufacturing.

This is American-made equipment, 100%. Made in America. This stuff has an effect. Again, I'm questioning why is the cost of a cost. equipment to manufacturing America going up that drastically in one year. I'm not hating on the Trump administration. Again, I'm trying to point out that their policies need some adjustment. Hmm.

All right. That was, yeah. That's like a sticky little fact that he hadn't thought about when he did the Goose Egg video, right? Which was, his is an American-made company. So he doesn't have anything to worry about it. If you are a mega patriot who loves America and makes all your goods in America and buys all your goods from America, the tariffs won't impact you at all. In fact, they might be a good thing. They might help.

They might bring about a golden age, golden egg. The problem with that was, yeah, it just kind of slipped his mind that he had bought all this equipment now as he's trying to expand to the business. And where was the equipment made? not America hmm so I was going up that and you saw that six figures

100,000 plus maybe 200,000 just in this one little invoice think about how much that adds up when you start thinking about the other equipment

hmm not great turns out it's not going to be a goose egg actually the tariffs impact on his customers he's going to have to raise the prices or maybe slow the expansion not hire as many jobs i thought we were trying to make manufacturing jobs here that is something that josh smith

pointed out now i would love to play you the video of that but after ryan bussey at the montana dispatch um posted the video he deleted it embarrassed a little embarrassed so i'm just going to do a dramatic reading i'm not i'm not going to do the he-ha voice i can't do that but um do a little dramatic reading here from this is this was mr josh smithel montana knife company um who has got a pinned photo of him and donald trump junior on his instagram all right donald trump i've got a bone to pick with you in your administration i'm pissed off about your tariffs why am i paying tariffs on manufacturing equipment it makes no sense it's about as dumb of a government policy as government policies get you cannot buy that

equipment here he goes on why are we talking so much about epstein now granted he's a piece of shit and i'm also not happy with trump about that but maybe call me mr trump because the bigger problem is the tariffs and what it's doing to mega business owners we're trying to create jobs here in america sympathetic with josh you know his company i do i guess i should mention Josh's company seemed to boom, kind of skyrocket during the Biden years. He didn't kind of mention that or noted, but he was on the way up, on the way up, had a good product, was growing, was expanding. During the Biden administration, there was no government policy or regulation that was limiting him.

He's in Montana, good tax base, a good client base. Everything was going good. And I'm sure he had some discreements with Joe Biden about various policies. but if you just look at the Montana Knife Company, if you just look at his interests, I might even call it a golden age of the Montana Knife Company during the Biden administration. And here we are, Donald Trump comes in and puts in,

let me get this quote one more time, about as dumb of a government policy as government policies get. Well, we'll see how it goes. I don't know. I'm not a knife purchaser. I don't exactly know the competitive set out there with the quality, et cetera. I'm sure that he's going to find ways.

You know, entrepreneurs are agile. They find ways to overcome the burdens put on them by the government. But it is important just to remember in the case of Montana Knife Company that the burden put upon him was by the Republican MAGA president. And I haven't heard any of, have you heard of any of the Republican Montana elected officials that are supposed to represent him criticizing that? Because technically they could fix this. I do think it would be worth noting Tim Shehee and Steve Dane, senators from Montana. They could take back the power of the purse. They could say, Mr. President, guy, I got to look out for my guy in Montana.

You hear about this at least in Arkansas. She's always like, I'm looking up for Alaska first. I got to do that. You have some Montana Republicans look out for Montana first. Montana knife companies. I haven't heard anything from them. So maybe, I don't know, shoot them a call. Montana Knife Company, Josh Smith.

It might be something free to think about. Tim Sheehe and Steve Danes-Cossey. Where are you? And using your power to ensure that plucky, MAGA, small business owners aren't just crushed by the dumbest policy imaginable. Put in place by Donald Trump. All right, so there you go. Little Schadenfreude is Saturday. We'll be keeping our eye out.

What else is happening out there? I should say. We have some serious material. I mean, this is serious. These are serious consequences. But, you know, coming up later today, make sure to check all that stuff out, all right? Don't just, don't just, don't just, don't just get the dessert. Don't go straight for the ice cream Sunday, always, right?

Go check out our more nutritious fair as well. Subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends, we'll be seeing you soon. Go, Tigers.