Bulwark Takes - Trump Soft-Launches His Dictatorship

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Tim Miller and JVL take on Trump once again floating the idea of a “dictatorship” while his allies cheer him on. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARKTAKES at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with my buddy, JVL, author of the Triad Newsletter, which you've got to sign up for at the Bullwark.com. We had to get on this morning because while I was taping the pod, our president, Donald Trump, I think basically did a dictatorship trial balloon, I think, is the best way you could describe this. Maybe that's slightly overstating it. We'll be interested to see what JVL thinks. Why don't we watch the clip together and see what we think on the other side? I made the statement that next should be Chicago, because as you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now.

And they don't acknowledge it. And they say, we don't need him. Freedom, freedom, freedom. He's a dictator. A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person.

And when I see what's happening to our cities and then you send in troops, instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take. take over the republic. All right, JVL. So a lot of people are saying, maybe we'd like a dictator, not Trump, he caveats, not me, a lot of other people are saying it. We kind of have a long track record

of Trump floating of a lot of other people saying something and then him coming around to it. Yeah. Yeah. With tears in their eyes, they say. So this is actually the second time he's done this, Tim. Last week,

he was talking about the National Guard sent to DC and he he said already they're saying he's a dictator DC is going to hell and we've got to stop it so instead of saying he's a dictator they should say we're going to join him and make Washington safe you know so once could be an accident twice as coincidence like the third time I guess will you know will be enemy fire um I don't know man I've put all of this of a piece with the cancels and the hand makeup, if that makes sense to you. It doesn't. I'm intrigued where you're going with this, though.

So this is, and one of the things you see in all dictatorial regimes is an obsession with making it look, right? Because dictatorships are, they're brittle, right? So they're, they're very strong, except until the point where they fail totally, right? They're not, they're not resilient. They don't bend. And they don't have a lot of a lot of resiliency to the network. And so they really count on it, always looking like it is inevitable that the guy who's the

dictator is going to live for forever, right? The minute people start saying, well, I don't know, the old. Does the hand makeup make it seem like he's going to live forever, or does that having a counterpurpose? The counterpurs. And I really think, but the length to which he's going to try to make it look, he's like a Morton Joe in, you know, Man Max Fuhr. Road, you know, can never let the people see what he looks like without his battle dress on.

And like, all of this is death of Stalin stuff. Like, this is sending troops into cities, recruiting the National Guard from friendly red states, states that are allied with him. There's a real, like, occupied and occupier dynamic to it, mixed with the guy talking openly about being a dictator, mixed with the regime's intense efforts to the point of ridiculousness to make it look like this old failing, physically failing guy is going to live for forever. Man, like nothing. This story, this story doesn't end well.

No, it doesn't. I want to point out another kind of imbalance, something that I think about. But we've sort of seen this play out in a bunch of different ways in the past. kind of in this take Trump seriously, but not literally kind of sense about how Republicans handle him, which is you have this thing happening out, out in the world, by the world, I mean kind of like the mega media universe and social media, et cetera, like out there in the world, you have a group of people who are like advocating the most maximalist position, Bannon saying like, I want Trump to run again in 2028, Tucker saying it's inevitable that

we have a dictator, right? Like social media posts like talking about passing down to Barron. stuff. So you have like that world, which has like a lot of followers, like big followers. Some people are taking it as a joke. Some people are taking it seriously, right? Okay. So you have that happening on the one side. And then you have Trump playing footsie with a little bit, kind of doing that, well, some people are saying this. Maybe people are saying this. Not me, but maybe. And then you have the folks on the whatever more serious side, the people that ostensibly don't want to truck Trump dictatorship. Notting, not only not engaging with it, though, but like making fun of people like us who engage with it, right?

Like saying, oh, they have, if they're taking this seriously, like they have TDS, they're an alarmist, right? So there's actually nobody really in right wing world, like publicly taking the position. We don't want Donald Trump to be a dictator, right? There are people that hold that position, but they're not saying it explicitly, right? Like they, they're, they have it in their inside voice. And then then the people that are explicitly saying the counter. And then you have Trump kind of going like, well, you know, we'll see what happens, right? And like, again, like we've seen this play out a bunch of times. And I think that's why it's important to watch what the Tucker and Bannon world are saying.

And I, and I don't like, there's almost an inertia towards it, you know, because there's no pushback. There's no countervailing force. Well, this is, and the people you're talking about, important to understand that they will never say it out loud, right? They will or if they say it out loud, it'll be in a, well, you know, maybe we ought to take a. real serious look at Nikki Haley running again. And, you know, there are some very serious constitutional questions about this. The Supreme Court is going to have to adjudicate whether or not he can run again because his terms weren't consecutive. And this is a, I mean, nobody's ever really thought this through. It's an open legal question. And when push comes to

shove, they will be okay with it. And they'll be okay with it because the alternative is the bad people, right? The alternative is, is, is, Democrats with their socialism and their, you know, five publicly owned grocery stores in the five boroughs of New York City. And I'm here, I think John Bolton is like the perfect, perfect example of this. Did you remember that Bolton did not support Kamala Harris? Oh, of course. Yeah, I have a list. Okay. So, so John, let's right back there. People that did not specifically say they're supporting Kamala Harris. Yeah. So for people who who do not keep lists. John Bolton, who was under constant attack from Donald Trump, who could have or should

have reasonably guessed that a second Trump administration would attempt to criminally prosecute him again. And whose own life's work of hawkish foreign policy stuff was almost directly opposed to what Trump promised to do as president and was basically aligned with what Kamala Harris was promising to do. I mean, the overlap between Bolton foreign policy and Kamala Harris foreign policy was probably like 80%, 85%. And even so, he insisted that he was going to do. Earmuffs to some far of us. I'm sorry. I don't want you guys to be triggered by this. Maybe 68%. Maybe 68%. An argument could be made for 70. And Bolton said, that he was going to write in Dick Cheney's name for president because he just couldn't

abide by either the isolationist who wanted to jail him or the robust internationalist who happened to have a D next to her name. And Bolton was so out to lunch on this that after Dick Cheney, who he was going to write in, said that he was going to vote for Kamala Harris, Bolton was like, well, I have to reconsider my right-in vote. And that's what, that's where all of these guys are, I think. I meant to bring this up with Bill this morning and I forgot, no, so this is, now we're down a tangent, but it's, it's too funny that to bring up.

Do you see the Wall Street Journal Edboard on, on Bolton? I've written an entire newsletter about it today. Oh, thrilling. Okay. Well, for the listeners who haven't it, I love this. I love this. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, to their credit. Huge credit.

opposed the raid on John Bolton. So great job, guys. Do you want to give credit we're due? They've spoken out against the regime on this one. But I love this, though. The real offender here is a president who seems to think he can use the power of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump turn, and it's turning out to be worse than we imagined. Now, remember, unlike the, unlike John Bolton, the Western Journal Edboard, I did not formally endorse Trump.

per se, but they did a series of why you might be for Trump editorials and compared with why you might be for Kamala. It was clearly written so that the median reader of theirs would decide that it's probably, they should probably go with Trump, right? Like when you looked at the way that they framed those two pieces. Yeah. It was a soft sound. And so that's where they were.

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Give your skin the scientifically proven gentle care it deserves with one skin. And they landed on its turning out to be worse than we imagined, which is just, I mean, you've got to laugh just to keep from crying. But what was your newsletter, uh, summary? I mean, people are going to have to subscribe to it. No, I'm kidding. I'll just give it away for free here. But you people should go and sign up for it because it's like the best daily newsletter in politics. Many people are saying. Many people are saying tears in their eyes. So here's the thing. It's I don't want to, you know, what you should never do is when people start agreeing with you, you should never then like yell at them that why didn't you agree sooner? You should just take it, right? Happy to have all the allies we can to push back against authoritarianism. And yet. And yet, I would say it isn't just that the Wall Street Journal said, oh, Trump doing vendettas is a thing that might happen in the second term. They did that as a way of attacking those of us who were warning that he was going to do very dangerous vendettas. So it was as it was excuse

making that they did when anybody could have seen. But what this is all about. Right, because you're ears from referencing, though, because this is like somewhere deep in my brain of my personal vendettas. But the editorial was something on the lines of like, we're not like one of those crazy never Trumpers who think that, who like think that Donald Trump is going to institute gulags. Like we are slightly concerned about the use of power. Like that was kind of how they framed. Right. But here's what this is all. This is all sprung from the same delusion, which is that whether you are the Wall Street Journal editorial page or.

John Bolton, or any of the people in Republican worlds, people I just refer to as good Republicans, you think still that you're using Trump and that you're the ones with the whip hand and that he is the unwitting pawn of yours and that you're getting what you want policy-wise out of him. And it might be unsavory, but you know, this is realpolitik. And these guys seem utterly blind to the fact that it's the opposite. Like, Trump is the one in charge. It has been that way for years. Yeah, for, for, and eight years ago.

Yeah, and it's been obvious for years. I remember this reminds me when I published the book and I got a call from Breitbart's Matt Boyle, who I like describe as like a grown-up Ralph Wiggum and like I like with the description of him was extremely pejorative. I was worried. I was like, okay, he's going to yell at me. opposite. He called to be like, yeah, you have to do that. You have to like make fun of me for your lib readers, but like, what you're right that we're using them. Like the nationals authorities are

using the, uh, using the Republican establishment cucks. And like, you understand the power dynamic and they don't. And so I wanted to tell you good job on the book. I was like, okay, great. So it was idiots like Matt Boyle could see it. We could see it. Everybody could see it except them the entire time. Um, we've got this is this, this, this is turning into a full podcast, because this press conference is ongoing. And so I want to just throw out you a couple other things that have been said. Hegseth speaks during the press conference and says, as at your direction as well, sir, it's common sense to make sure the National Guard is armed.

So he's confirming their plan to arm. Just common sense. The National Guard soldiers that are taking over the cities. Stephen Miller also speaks, says D.C. is now so safe that women are wearing jewelry and carrying purses again. That was something that wasn't happening in D.C. No women were wearing jewelry anywhere. And now Trump is riffing about maybe renaming the Department of Defense, taking it back to the Department of War. Well, I mean, that would be interesting since Trump promised no more wars.

I don't quite fully understand that. But, you know, there we are. Maybe I'll find some wars he's open to getting into against, like, I guess, I'm sorry, I've forgotten. Are we no longer invading Greenland and Canada? Because those things were, I mean, annexing those two pieces of territory were absolutely vital to the national security interests of America for eight weeks. Is that, is that not?

There's some chat about going after the cartels of Mexico. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. I think that they are planning war. Like, not to be glib about it, but like, we're arming the National Guard troops that we're sending into blue cities. Like, that's the acute enemy. Right. This is a very deep point, and I forget who made this. It's not mine. I'm regurgitating somebody else's. But the America first thing, it really is predicated upon the idea that all of the important enemies are actually domestic.

Right. That's what it's really about. Forget American leadership in the world. That far out group out there in North Korea, we don't care about them. the people we really need to crush and wage war against are right here at home. That's where we are. All right. I should close by saying this press briefing that we had that included kind of discussion of women's purse carrying in D.C. and a soft launch of dictatorship was actually about, do you know what? An executive order on desecrating the flag. Oh, okay.

The free speech. Let's just watch a little clip from that. The executive order does, sir, charges your Department of Justice with investigating instances of flag burning, and then where there's evidence of criminal activity that where prosecution wouldn't fall afoul of the First Amendment and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute those who are engaged in these instances of flag burning. And what the penalty is going to be, if you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing, you get one year in jail. If you burn a flag, you get, and what it does is incite to riot. I hope they use that language, by the way, did that?

Insight to riot. And you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don't get 10 years, you don't get one month. You get one year in jail, and it goes on your record. And you will see flag burning stopping immediately, just like when I signed the Statute and Monument Act. Ten years in jail, have you heard any of our beautiful monuments? Everybody left town.

They were gone. Never had a problem after them. that. It's pretty amazing. We stopped it. But this is something that's, I don't know, in a certain way, it's equally as important. Some people would say it's more important because the people in this country don't want to see our American flag burned and spit on. And by people that are, in many cases, paid agitators. They're paid by the radical left to do it. You talk to these people, they don't even know, half of them don't even know what they're doing. They say, I don't They gave me money to do this.

I see the same things that you do. They're bad people. They're trying to destroy our nation. So the free speech absolutists here. We have a fiat from the leader. The flag cannot be desecrated. Unclear if there is a penalty for the flag flying that upside down like Martha Annelito did. Oh, does that count?

Unclear if that counts. Unclear of like using the flag to beat cops. Like on January 6th of those folks are going to be. I don't know if they're going to be targeted. Not sure, but that's where we're at now. They're playing the hits on flag desecration. Do you have any thoughts on this as it ties to the subject of, you know, maybe some people are saying dictatorship? I just that when the chips are down, none of these people we've been talking about, whatever their private feelings, will be willing to push back against it.

They're never going to join the cause. And so if we get through this, it's going to be because of us, all of us, like you guys listening. And don't burn the flag while you're fighting back. Carrier sandwich. Carry a sandwich just for protection, but don't burn the flag. All right, that's it. That's Jonathan last. Subscribe to the feed.

We will be covering the, you know, maybe some people are saying dictatorship. Maybe not day to day for you guys. Tell your friends. We'll see you all soon. Thank you.