Bulwark Takes - Trump on the Epstein list? Elon Drops a Bomb on Trump.

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Elon Musk has gone full scorched earth—and Donald Trump is in the blast zone. Sam, Tim, and Sarah break down Musk's furious Twitter rampage, including the shocking claim that Trump is named in the unreleased Epstein files.

Rural communities are being squeezed from every side. From rising health care costs to crumbling hospitals, from attacks on public schools to the fight for paid family and medical leave, farmers and small businesses are reeling from the trade war. And now, Project 2025 is back with a plan to finish what Elon Musk started. Trump and the Republicans won rural votes, then turned their backs on us. Join the One Country Project for the Rural Progress Summit, July 8th through the 10th.

This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear, and others for real talk and real solutions. Together we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more at ruralprogress.com. Hey guys, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bullwork.

I'm joined by Sarah Longwell, our publisher, and Tim Miller in the back of an uber We are recording our second video. Maybe third video today on Trump Elon Because it's a continuous shit show Just a cascade of shit happening Tim. You're on the run. You talked about this with medicals I'm going to set this up the last we're recording about 3 20 p.m on Thursday the latest salvo from Elon Musk is Can't even believe that

Is that the reason that Trump is going through this is that he is in the Epstein files? That is the real reason they have not been made public have a nice day DJT exclamation point time to drop the really big bomb. That real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT! So Tim, you were pressuring. I have been saying this. I have been saying this.

Go through our archives. I am on this. Trump is in the Epstein files. The real conspiracy theory here is that Epstein killed himself while Donald Trump was the president. And so for all of those people out there with their theories that Hillary Clinton or the deep state or the Jews or whatever were behind Jeffrey Epstein's death, let me tell you, there's only one person that's been covering it up.

He was president when Epstein died. He's president now. His name's Donald Trump. And you notice, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino have to be in on the game now. Why did they go out there? Why did they go do an interview to talk about how Epstein didn't really kill himself? I don't know. I'm just saying, I think Elon's making some good points.

And I hope that Joe Rogan and Theo Von and Andrew Schultz and all the other people that are in the Elon's Manosphere who have been asking serious questions about the Epstein case might want to dig into this a little bit further because I gotta tell you all arrows are pointing one place. Yeah, Tim, the way to do it is you just have to you're just asking questions you're not making accusations you're just asking questions. I am not only am I just asking questions, I'm pointing to a series of evidence that points to Donald Trump. I don't know what happened. You don't know what happened.

All I'm saying is if you think there was some foul play, it's hard to say that Hillary Clinton, who was a former first lady sitting at home in Chappaqua, was the one that did it. I'm just saying if you have questions, there's a lot of reasons to think Donald Trump and now you have the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, former shadow president saying he's seen some stuff. I don't know. Maybe we can ask Elon. I'm sure he'll be tweeting more about this. And I think this is interesting.

I think that this should be a lot of news coverage about this. And I'm excited to see how it plays out, as they say. Anyway, guys, I got to go to the airport. Good luck analyzing this. about this and I'm excited to see how it plays out as they say anyway guys I gotta go to the airport analyzing this we'll see you guys soon uh yeah okay I'll just say Tim before you sign off yeah Elon has tweeted a second time great saying mark this post for the future the truth will come out so the truth is out there justly Elon knows it. And it's something that I've been thinking. So we will see. Tell your friends about this. You got friends that are

on the Epstein beat. Let's make sure to send this tweet in the video around. Just make sure they, you know, do their research, so to speak. All right. See you guys soon. All right. So that was Tim with his Alex Jones conspiracy hat on. Thankful and grateful for his work. Definitely won't get sued over that. And on the real, though, I did not have it on my bingo card that Elon was going to drop the Epstein bombs. But this has been a totally freaking crazy day.

I mean, obviously, I've never seen anything like this. What do you make of what the hell is happening here? I'll do a recap after I get your take, but I'm just sort of curious, what the hell? Well, obviously it's awesome. And I haven't liked Twitter this much in a really long time. I think that Elon's return to the private sector, where he's going to try to improve his companies,

I think he's doing a good job of improving X today by dropping this off. You know he's tweeted over 50 times today about the bill or Trump and like either replies or tweets and I mean he's got a kill bill meme. He's not returning Mike Johnson's calls. Here's the thing Elon as a scorned like hell hath no fury than an Elon scorned. Yeah, he is burning it down the Epstein files stuff, because I don't, I'm gonna, I'm gonna really distance myself from Tim's like, whatever that implication is. What is interesting about this, the idea that Trump tried to bury the

Epstein files because he was on Epstein's plane, because he was going to the island. That's known. Yeah. That is known. I think there is probably, my guess is there's more information about the extent of their relationship, maybe the extent of their travel. And so like that would be real. Part of what's interesting to me though is was Trump discussing this stuff with Elon? Because if Trump gave Elon that, he's giving him a lot of stuff. Put aside the Epstein files for a second. We all knew that this was going to end in some acrimony, this relationship.

I didn't expect, I mean, and we knew it was going to happen at some point. I expected to be faster, but I didn't expect to be this violent and emotional. It's like they just went from zero to 100. Yeah. I mean, I got to say I was, I always thought that Elon posed too much of a risk for Trump to have a big rift. Yeah. And so I am shocked that the way this was handled, I mean, I do think Trump was trying to be conciliatory on the way out the door. It's like, Elon will always be with us. Um, but you know, they gave him a key to the fucking white.

Yeah. Here's your little gold key. Elon. He was trying to be, to keep things on a, on a nice thing, but Elon. What like, and the white house is now doing this thing where they're saying the reason that Elon is hacked off about the big beautiful bill is because it cuts the incentives for EVs, right? They no longer get the cash incentives to buy an EV. And so Elon, he tweeted about

this, though, and he said, You know what, I think that is garbage, because I think it's unfair relative to what you're doing for the fossil fuel industry. But forget that this is still a disgusting pork addled whatever and it's like it is interesting that Elon seems to be so I don't he just he must be so angry at them. This bill is a proxy. This bill is a proxy. Right.

He doesn't care about the I mean maybe he cares about the debt and the deficit in theory but I don't think he's this explains the level of emotion he's bringing to this means just throw I mean, this is a proxy for feeling like he got screwed over somehow. And maybe something of ease. Maybe it's something else. But I'm curious about the reporting that comes out on this. My guess is that something to do with the trap reputational damage that Elon has incurred. Right. And also the fact that my guess is, is they probably early on were like

yeah man we're going to cut two trillion dollars using Doge and Trump puts him in charge of it they elbow out Vivek and then suddenly everybody's like there's not a real thing Elon's doing with Doge is he? So I think that reputationally he feels burned by the whole thing. Yeah. All right. Let me, let me run through just because we cut a video this morning after Trump's press conference and I was like, wow, this is really a lot of drama. And then in the subsequent like hour, it just got crazy and crazy.

So just a few little things. One, Elon decides randomly to stop following Stephen Miller on Twitter. Random. Elon decides to stop following Stephen Miller on Twitter. Random. Elon decides to stop following Charlie Kirk on Twitter. Totally don't understand why, but he just did. Elon tweets at Laura Loomer, who says she's on the Hill talking to people who are torn between him and Trump. He tweets, oh, and some food for thought as they ponder this question, Trump has 3.5 years left as president, but I will be around for 40 plus years. Woof. Okay.

I should say, I talked about that on the next level about the fact that the Republicans are going to have to choose between a lame duck president and a guy with almost infinite money who was talking about primarying them for voting for this bill. And that, I mean, that's the, that's not the subject. That's the text. That's the text. Yeah, exactly.

All right. Ashley St. Claire, who has allegedly a child with Elon tweets at Donald Trump, hey, at real Donald Trump, let me know if you need any breakup advice. I enjoyed that one. Elon tweets, is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% of the middle? The bulwark Slack channel jokes on no labels gonna jump on that one and no label jumps on that one. Trump goes on his social media and this is a frustrating part for

me. Can't he just get on Twitter so we can just condense our social media feeds? Oh, I know what we've got to go to social and Twitter. It's so annoying. Alright, so he's on true social Trump says Elon was quote wearing thin. I asked him to leave. I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted that he knew for months I was going to do and he just went crazy all caps. Then he bleeds again. The easiest way to save money in our budget billions and billions of dollars is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it. All right, let's pause there for a second. That one I actually thought- Wait, I didn't see that. That's amazing. He threatens the contracts.

That one perked my ears up a little bit. Would he do it? Oh boy, that would really crimp, that would really fuck up our space program in profound ways. Would he do it? I mean, it's getting pretty vicious. This is a bad divorce. This is like, who gets someone else who gets David sacks in the custody battle.

I'm a word does he does. What if David doesn't want to go back with dad? I mean, I don't know. This is, this is why this is the best day. The only winners are us and the only losers are them. Like this is we disagree strongly but go ahead. What do we lose? Okay, you do your you make your point and I will do my rebuttal. Okay, I disagree. Okay. Here's what we win. We get great content. We get great content. No, that's true. Elon's going to spill the tea on Trump. Trump's going to spill the tea on him.

Their fragile coalition between dark MAGA and populist Bannon MAGA is going to fracture, which I think creates a weakness in the coalition. They will spend more time in fighting. Elon, they've lost Elon's muscle. The fact that you're talking about unfollowing, let me tell you what, the purchase power of an Elon Musk retweet for somebody who wanted to be influential, if you're Charlie Kirk,

you are sad that Elon's not following you. If you are Stephen Miller, you are worried. What if you saw, I saw Stephen Miller tweet to try to defend the bill and talk about all they were doing on immigration. And it was just, he got lit up all through the comments. Yeah, he did. Because Elon's people are there to tell them like, no, you are lying about this.

So it might scuttle the actual bill, which means that the Republicans will have a total inability to move their one piece of legislation that they were going to move this session. I think it creates the potential for Elon to do big spending against Trump and his people in the 26th. I don't know what, sorry, tell me the downside. Is it about the space program? Is that what you're telling me about? Okay.

All I can see it all that upsides galore in respect to the tactics and the politics here, except for a small matter. And this is crazy of me to think about this, but like, there's real danger, I think, in Donald Trump, like in this position, not like world danger, like he's going to inflict like severe harm to the world when he saddled with this. Let's say in theory, there is some truth to the Elon accusation that he's in the Epstein files, the Trump's in the Epstein files. Like this is like Nixon in the last moment stuff, right? Where he's like kind of boozing up and he's out of control and we just don't know what kind of insane stuff he might do in that time period.

If this is true, you don't want a president who's got this over his head and who's distracted. Of course I didn't want this guy to be president. Yeah, you're right. I don't want him to be president. I would like him to be impeached and I would like to get rid of him. This ratchets is up to a level that we are not familiar with. Who knows what this caged animal is going to do. It's, it's, I think there's badness here.

No, no, I think, I think that people listen, I'm enjoying the spectacle. Don't get me wrong. Let me make a serious, a serious, cause it actually is a through line. I think in our theory of change, meaning how do you avoid America sliding full tilt into an authoritarian moment? And the number one way is for Donald Trump to be a failure in this term. It has been about people and for that to happen, people need to feel the negative personal consequences.

Like I, I, I get frustrated that Trump keeps reversing course on the tariffs. Because I like, he is a bad person with bad ideas who does bad things to the country and we need to, Americans need to understand we should never make this mistake again. And so I think Elon lighting him up, and if Donald Trump has a nervous breakdown about it, okay, well, go in the graveyard with Joni Ernst. That's where people are having nervous breakdowns right now.

I'm fine with that. Let me press you on Bill Crystal's column this morning, because I had differences of opinion on that column. Should Democrats try to strategically reel Elon back into the tent and use him? No. No. No. Elon's-

Wouldn't that sort of go to your point though, like weaponize Elon against Trump a little bit? There's no tent for Elon. This is just, this is about Elon. Elon and this, there was, I watched Mountainhead last night. This is just this is this is about Elon. Elon and this there was I watched Mountainhead last night. What is that? It's the it's the new HBO movie. It's got Steve Carell and it's about four tech. Oh yeah. Dominant people. It's by the people who did Succession. Is it good? It's mediocre but there's some very very interesting stuff in there that that Tim had made a point, or maybe JVL made this point.

But in any event, one of them made the point that the fact that these guys have so much money, and so much access, like one of the things that happens in the movie is they're like, Oh, well, I can shut down the grids in places like I can do this and this and this. They have so, Elon has so much money and as a result, so much power and it is too much. We have allowed these tech oligarchs to have too much power and control. They now control our politics, Peter Thiel, JD Vance. And so I think both of them destroying their

credibility against one another is important. I think Americans have to find a way to reject this. Yeah, I'm into that. I think two things to add to that. One is, and I know this is non-controversial, but it's worth stating, imagine if this was a woman in this leadership position. I mean, they'd be laughed out of the boardroom. They would be like called hysterical and emotional. Men are too fragile. We need to get rid of male leaders. It's a problem. Two is I'm not so sure Elon's going to have that much money anymore. I mean, obviously he's going to have a lot of money. His stock is down significantly. It was at down 17% when we started talking. It's now 13.5%. But that's a huge loss in

one day. If you're on the board of Tesla, I mean, you got to be looking at this be like, you just shot 55 tweets off about government bill and you're pissing off the president and threatening our contracts. Like, let's get this guy the fuck out of here. This is nuts. I do think that's true. I mean, look, Elon has enough money and clout to go it alone in a lot of ways. But like, Elon's not doing himself any favors. Like he's gonna end this whole thing alone. Like when you say like, do the Democrats really back in? Like no, Elon gets no home. Let Elon, like he has a lot of things. He has a platform.

He has many companies. He has enormous government contracts. I would love it if Trump canceled. It's insane that our government relies on Elon to the extent that it does. Yeah. It's crazy. One person, one contractor for so much. You cannot exist like that. Yeah. That'd be an interesting outcome if this is where it ends.

All right. Final thoughts? Anything you left on the cutting block? I just, I wouldn't want people to miss the fact that I try to be a person who, look, I don't want harm to come to anybody, but whatever. But these are bad people hitting each other with their mutual badness. I am so here for it. I love it. Do we see the Epstein files if they actually exist? Maybe. Like, I, this is because you know what? Donald Trump was traveling with Epstein. Like, we as a society, just like, let it go. It's like we all, not we, us, because obviously the bull work we didn't, but like, average people were just like, whatever. I don't care if he's an adjudicated rapist. I don't care if he was on that plane, but the fact that his coalition has allowed themselves to become Epstein conspiracy adult as though it were somebody on the left, like they need to drink the tonic of truth.

That is Donald Trump was the one doing that, like on Epstein's plane. They, they, people need this. Everybody's getting, are you going full 10 here? Are you going full? Everyone's getting with, are you going full to bill here? So I don't understand. Actually, you'd have to explain to me the conspiracy theory about Epstein dying and like, like Tim's theory is that Trump, the president, Bill Barr was the attorney general.

If she was killed when they were in power and therefore, I don't know, two and two, it's crazy. Let's not, let's not dip our toes in those waters. Yeah. I don't do that. I don't, I don't even know enough and two. It's crazy. Let's not let's not dip our toes in those waters. Yeah, I don't do that. I don't even know enough to have a conspiracy theory on this. What I do know is like the real part, the part of Trump being on Epstein's plane going to that island where they were abusing young girls is real and which should matter. And there's video

of the two of them like dancing together. It's fucking weird. All right. Well, we're gonna be watching. We'll probably end up cutting another video tomorrow because this shit is just never ending Elon keep tweeting through it. Yeah Trump get on Twitter so we don't have to check truth social, please. Alright, Sarah. Thanks so much. Appreciate it really do Thank you guys for watching this subscribe to the feed where you get all this great juicy content We'll keep you posted. We'll talk to you soon. Alright, so we took a a, I don't know, 20 minute, 30 minute break and I knew this was going to happen because in the, in the interim, we've had two things occur. One is that Elon has now said he's going to decommission some of his government contracts

for SpaceX in light of Donald Trump saying he was going to cancel the government contracts. Great. But the big one is that Elon has, it seems, embraced impeachment. He is retweeting Ian Miles Chung, an Elon fan influencer online guy who says, quote, President versus Elon, who wins my money's on Elon, Trump should be impeached. And JD Vance should replace him. Elon just responds with Yes. So, Sarah, it seems like your theory of the destruction is happening in real time. Sarah's always right in the 20 minutes that it took us to get here. So

first of all, Ian Michael Chalk is like some weird MAGA influencer that lives like not in this country and but he is foreigner. Yes, but he is followed by the mega universe. And this is where the splitting of this coalition right now in two sides like we are watching it happen in real time is an enormous development and how this plays out. But also, okay, so calling for impeachment, I mean, the Epstein thing was nuclear calling for impeachment is nuclear getting MAGA double nuclear to start saying he should be impeached, get JD Vance in there, which it does expose that tech tech techno fascist side.

So maybe they're not advanced. Maybe they're not as attached to Trump as we thought. I don't know. I, when I started the day, I was like, well, Trump's going to Trump as we thought. I don't know. I when I started the day I was like well Trump's gonna win them all over and maybe the I think the congressman the elected officials probably are Mostly Taylor green has written a long missive about how she is still holding fast with Trump Yeah, I think those people are Trump but the influencer crowd the breakdown is different Well, I guess Trump can influence whether or not someone wins an election and how money is allocated in those elections But elon, this is where trump in many ways won the culture

But he won the culture because he won the tech bros, right and and losing this crowd Is A problem for them like it just is so tim had a theory yesterday when we were talking about this. And this is when it was like, you know, the beginning stages of the war. And it seemed so quaint yesterday. It was just like a little volley here and there. But Tim compared this to when he was on the Jeb campaign. And by that, he said, you know, we're on the Jeb campaign.

We were like, well, we got to like, you know, craft out press releases and make sure they're nice. And like, you know, we don't want to overstep it and so on and so forth. And Trump would just fire like rapid fire tweets, just going crazy. And it was moving at a speed that they weren't accustomed to. Yeah. And what's interesting now is that it's reversed. Like Trump is out there putting out a bleat and, uh, you know, by the time that

bleak gets sent out into the ecosystem, Elon's fired off 25 tweets, including, you know, he's in the upstair files and impeach the motherfucker. And we're decommissioning the dragon. I don't even know what the fuck that is. Doesn't sound good. Sounds, sounds like a problem. Uh, like is Elon going to start pulling like this? This is, this is why I always thought they couldn't afford this blowup.

The intertwining of the sort of Elon, both, both culturally and in terms of This is why I always thought they couldn't afford this blow up the intertwining of the sort of Elon both both culturally in in terms of actual Infrastructure that Elon both provides and then like needs like everybody knows Elon was digging around Not just like I think Kara's swisher's theory was always like he's hoovering up people's information and like maybe But like more importantly he could get every tweak to things that make it easier for Starlink. He could look at all of the information that the FTC had on his competitors like there was a million ways in which getting under the hood of the federal government benefited Elon Musk. And he was trying for it. He was looking for all that information.

He got more power, more power, more power, even as he got less popular. And now he's wielding that power against Trump. Fascinating. By the way, Tesla stock ended the day down 14.27%. Not great. So you know. Real wealth destruction there.

Clearly. All right, Barry wants us to go live. We're not gonna do that yet I'm sure he's gonna pitch us on doing it later tonight, so we'll think about it in the meantime enjoy this video Maybe we'll come back and do an update in 20 minutes. We don't know crazy things are happening Sarah. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Talk to you