Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Bizarre Obsession with “Two Weeks”

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Trump says everything is two weeks away: infrastructure, tariffs, peace in the Middle East, nukes in Iran, and even wiretaps. Sam Stein and Andrew Egger break down the president’s bizarre obsession with a 14-day timeline, tracing it from 2017 to the present day. It’s a running gag with real consequences.

Hey guys, it's me Sam Stein, managing editor at the Buller, come to him by Andrew Edgar, author of Morning Shots. We're here to talk about some breaking news in a trend that many people have noticed about Donald Trump. Kind of a verbal tick, maybe. All right, Andrew, today, which is Thursday, at her press conference, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt led off with some breaking news about the current situation in Iran, saying that the president is going to actually pump the brakes a little bit,

give a small window for maybe a diplomatic solution to manifest. And here's what she had to say, and I'll get your reaction on the other side. Now, regarding the ongoing situation in Iran, I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved.

In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future. I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks." That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today.

Okay, let's start with the substance. If you're following this closely, I think you are of the mindset that you'd like to see a diplomatic resolution. I think this is a good sign probably. We were pretty close to just yesterday. In fact, the journal is reporting that Trump had signed off on authorizing the strike was just waiting for the moment to say, go do it. So this seems like a little bit of a let's lower the temperature move.

Is that how you read it? Yeah. I mean, don't let Bill Kristol here you say that. But yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of- Throwing your co-author under the bus. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of throwing your co author under the bus. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of diverging opinions about about military strikes in Iran at the at the bulwark.com. Yeah, I think I think that, you know, anybody in the more kind of

dovish side of the President's coalition is breathing a sigh of relief over this, especially just because he seemed to be ramping himself up so quickly, right? I mean, it was like, on a sort of psychological level where he was like, just getting really into the idea of like Threatening the molas with extinction and the ayatollah, you know, like hey, we know where you are Yeah, yeah, so this is a little bit at least of a recalibration away from that and and we'll see you know We'll see maybe he's posting again tomorrow

But but yeah at least for the time being it's we know there's truly to be a little bit of a drag. Well, we know there's two, we at least have two weeks. And that brings me to my next part here. My ears perked a little bit. Two weeks, I feel like I heard that before. And lo and behold, he gives everything two weeks. And this is not a notice. This seems to be his preferred measure, his measure unit of time is two weeks. Have you noticed this?

Yeah, let me read you an Axios headline from, actually, my first week as a professional journalist in early June of 2017. Trump's timeline, question mark, always two weeks. It's an Axios headline summing up a Bloomberg piece from that same week. Taxes, we're gonna be announcing something, I would say, over the next two or three weeks.

Wire tapping, I think you're gonna find some very interesting items something I would say over the next two or three weeks. Wiretapping, I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks. Infrastructure, we're going to make an announcement in two weeks. It does the same thing three weeks later on infrastructure. We've got the plan largely completed, we'll be filing over the next two or three weeks. There's like 15 different ones of these. Again, this was just like the opening five or six months of the first Trump administration. He has never really slowed down. Anytime he is like asked to contemplate a thing,

a rollout or like a question that he has not fully interrogated, there's not the ball rolling forward on it yet, there are basically two moves he can make. The one is what he did last summer during the debates and stuff. It's like the concepts of a plan thing. It's just like, you can just admit that there's no real,

there's no real action happening yet. You get kind of embarrassed over that. People make fun of you. They dunk on you. Or you can just say, oh yeah, we're totally working on it. It's totally coming. We're nearly there. About two weeks from now, we'll have more to say. And he almost always has been opting for the latter whenever he's asked this question. And it's something that's continued to his second term in office, I should note. And it's not just with the Iran nukes. Let's play a few of them here.

One, here he is talking about whether he'll get a read from Vladimir Putin on whether there's a resolution in the offing for Ukraine. You crushed President Putin, you know, in about two weeks. Is Ukraine doing enough to get this? I'd rather tell you in about two weeks. Is Ukraine doing enough to get this, to get this? I'd rather tell you in about two weeks from now. You keep saying two weeks about President Putin. What is two weeks? Give us, what is the actual date?

What is the timeline? Two weeks or less, and if it's a little more at the time, I say, but, you know, they're losing a lot of people. You see those little dates up at the top, April 27th, May 19th. Today is May 28th. So two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. Now we're still two weeks away. There's a couple of times where he said two weeks.

I believe the dates were April 27th, May 19th and May 28th. It's just spanning a few weeks itself. Here's Trump at the Kennedy Center on June 11th, talking about how he's going to give countries their tariff designations. And you guessed it, two weeks. Well, we're dealing with Japan, we're dealing with South Korea, we're dealing with a lot of them. We're dealing with about 15 countries, but as you know, we have about 150 plus, and you can't do that. So we're going to be sending letters out in about a week and a half, two weeks to countries and telling them what the deal is.

Like I did with EU. So there you have it. And then as you noted, you know, recommendations for a couple other things. Paris climate accords, you mentioned bomb wiretaps, healthcare, infrastructure plans, NAFTA decisions. He's also done this and I know you're gonna push back, whatever, I'm gonna throw it out there. He seems to incorporate this time frame for his executive orders too. I was looking through a couple of them. On several occasions he's given agencies and states 14 days, which is two weeks, time to get things done. In one case it was to provide recommendations for designated groups as drug cartels, 14-day

deadline for agencies to do that. And he gave the Ohio schools 14 days to rid themselves of race-based policies. So two weeks seems to be when he thinks things should get done by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying, by the way, that 14 days is the same equivalent length of time for our viewers, I'm sure. Not our forte.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the funny thing about all this to me, I mean, it's one thing to do this for domestic policy, right? I mean, I guess, whatever, if he wants to be like, yeah, we're going to have a rollout on that, we're going to have a rollout on that, he can set his own timetable for these domestic policy plans. I just want him to switch it up.

I want him to switch it up. Every now and then throw in a four week or five week. But what's funny is what he's been doing recently, which is doing this with these global conflicts. Right? I mean, it's like, you know, Vladimir Putin and Malinke. These guys better shape up or two weeks from now, I'm going to have something to say.

And like the same thing here, right? Like Israel and Iran are beating the shit out of each other over there. And he's like, all right, guys, hold on. on we're really gonna give this a great deal. Let's talk about home Let's let's pause for a second is two weeks. Is that a do in your estimation? Is that a good time frame? Is that like a substantive is that enough too little too late? Is that the right amount of time? You want to ask literally anybody else this question my Personal sense of time has been utterly ruined by a decade on Twitter and five years of doing daily newsletters. I cannot assess the way that normal people

react or relate to the calendar. I'm aware that you have trouble with timelines and deadlines. Yes, I'm aware. But I'm wondering, do you think two weeks is an appropriate amount of time to get these things done? I think it's a great, I think it's great. It depends on the thing. I think it's totally fine to say, we'll have some infrastructure news to share in two weeks. And then two weeks later say, we'll have some infrastructure news to share in two weeks and to continue to do

that on a rolling two week basis for the duration of one's first presidential term. I think it makes a little bit less sense to like have again, like, like, like one of those like old bit less sense to have, again, like one of those old cartoons where you have two people brawling abroad and there's exclamation points flying out. If you can't do something in two weeks, it's not worth doing. If you cannot do something in two weeks, it's not worth doing. That's probably true. That includes making peace in Ukraine, getting rid of Iran's nukes.

It includes building robust infrastructure and coming up with a healthcare plan. If you can't do it in two weeks, it's not worth doing. Or two weeks from now. There's two weeks, the sun will come out tomorrow, it's only two weeks away, right? And that will always be the case. And that's a beautiful thing, I think.

That was beautiful, Andrew. I didn't know you had that in you. All right, on that note, we'll leave it there. I'll just note Over your right shoulder is a beautiful smiley picture of you What a great a great way to do a YouTube hit there used to be more art in here But it literally fell down So so now this is literally the only thing you yell at me when I have a white backdrop Colorless backdrop my colorless backdrop,

my colorless clothes, my colorless skin. Like there's the most washed out YouTube frame on the entire website. So yeah, so there's a picture of me hanging up back there, man. Sorry. I'll give you two weeks to get new. Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for watching.

Hope you enjoyed this semi comical YouTube clip during a very serious time. Talk to you.