Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Bizarre Rant at the Museum of the Bible

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell take on Donald Trump’s unusual speech at the Museum of the Bible. From suggesting that domestic violence shouldn’t count as real crime, to inventing an “anti-Christian bias” crisis, to reframing January 6th rioters as victims, Trump is showing us exactly how his grievance politics work.

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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 Bullwark here with our publisher, Sarah Longwell. Donald Trump had some remarks this morning, and there is unhinged as usual. So I want to review some of them with her. Trump was speaking at the Museum of the Bible. He loves the Bible, by the way. Loves the Bible. Do you think he's read the Bible? Oh, my favorite, all videos was when my man, John Heilman asked him what his favorite Bible verse was. And he's like, all of them. They're all my favorite. Do you have a favorite between the Old Testament and the New? No, the same.

They're just very similar, the old and the New Testament. Remember when he was out in front of that church and he held it upside down? He was trying to make a statement. I do. It's kind of like a dirty diaper he was holding Bible. Anyway, he was there for a religious liberty commission meeting where he gave some remarks. And I want to start with the most alarming of the remarks. It is, there is this, what sort of, it's kind of like a mental twister that he puts this all in,

where simultaneously he wants to take credit for the decrease in crime that we're seeing over this year, 2025. It started last year, really, but he wants to take credit for it. And also, he wants there to be an emergency that requires him to send in the National Guard to deal with the crime. So, like, those two facts are in conflict, but, you know, that doesn't ever bother Donald Trump. Incongruity doesn't ever bother him. So today, he's trying to take credit for the drop. And he has this aside that I want to show everybody. There's no crime. They said crime's down 87%.

I said, no, no, no. It's more than 87%. Virtually nothing. And much lesser things. Things that take place in the home, they call crime. You know, they'll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?

So now I can't claim 100%. Okay. So things that take place in the home, they call crime. if a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this is crime. So I guess he's trying to decriminalize domestic violence, take us really back, make America great again, like 1952 great. Well, this is one of those things where if it's just a little fight, like if you left the toilet seat up, not a crime, the fight that, uh, uh,

I do that all the time, by the way. Yeah, well, and yeah, Port-to-loose. In our house, like we, you know, our boys, uh, that's a real problem for us. But, you know, when you have, let's say, a fight about that or what you're going to have for dinner and it maybe even gets a little heated, you know, your rival sports teams are playing and you're really torched up at each other. I misplaced the car keys this morning. My husband was taking a kid to school and I was, I was in trouble. It got a little heated at 737 this morning. Because you're late, right?

So everyone's mad. None of those things are crimes. Those are little fights. The things that get categorized as crimes are when violence or threats of violence are taking place. And it's interesting to me that Donald Trump would do like, oh, you know, there's just a little fight in the home. And they try to say that that's a crime. But the reason he's saying that they want to make that a crime is because they want to make him look bad. That they categorize domestic violence as a crime just so they can't say that crime is zero.

Nobody can say crime is at zero because of Donald Trump, and that's how the libs are going to get you. They get you because they still mark down domestic violence as a crime. And I think that it is both the casual way that he dismisses it is the kind of thing we're like, in Donald Trump's mind, the idea that you just have a physical altercation with a spouse, which of course, we know he has in his life, that he has done terrible things to previous spouses. he was accused of rape by one of his previous spouses. He's been accused of rape by multiple people. And so for him, the idea that violence against women would constitute a crime is both silly.

Why would that be a crime? And two, is just somebody trying to do mean things to Donald Trump. Yeah, doing things to men. And one of his most consistent positions, he's very few consistent positions. But one of them is like always being on the side of the perp and Me Too accusations. always the woman is overstating it or lying or being hysterical or they weren't really his type or whatever like there's always a reason why the woman in a situation is not telling the truth and so that's him here and the casualness of the comment is it's reminiscent of the excess Hollywood right right where he's just I he didn't even conceptualize in that Access Hollywood tape that he was admitting to sexual assault right he was just like it was just two guys chat and he's just like, look, they let you do it. You know, if you're a star, they let you do it.

And he's discussing, you know, grabbing women against their will by the generals. Similarly here, you know, he's just kind of making the side and he's just like, you know, there are these cases where the women are complaining about their husbands and after they have a little fight. And like, we all know that's not really, really a crime. They're just being dramatic, right? Like, it is they are revealing asides about what his mindset is in these sorts of situations. You know, and obviously our minds go to access Hollywood because that was sort of the, original kind of stunning. Oh, God, he just says these things. But then also, if you look at when he was

being questioned, and I believe it was by Robbie Kaplan in the E. Jean Carroll case, he is in his deposition saying, rightly or wrongly, yeah, when you're a celebrity, you can get away with these things. Like, he is always casually believed that he can sexually assault women and that assaults on women are something that are just, you know, an annoyance. And yeah, they're making it up or taking it too far or complaining too much about it, which is the implication here. And I do think that when it comes to Donald Trump, there's so many things to be outraged about and so many things that he shows sort of a total moral degradation about. But like, it is wild how much, and it's not just wild about how he talks about women and how he clearly thinks it's fine to treat women.

But, like, that's why voting for him and, like, knowing people voted for him, I think hits so badly. Because you do know these things about him. And people are like, yeah, you know, the way he talks about women. I mean, it's not great, but like, you know, who can, who can hold him accountable for that. And that fits you out about society. Yeah, that's right. All right. I want to just play a couple other clips. Since, as I mentioned, this was a religious Liberty Commission meeting. I guess we'll show you what he had to say about the topic at hand. And I created the first ever Department of Justice Task Force to eradicate anti-Christian bias. And for those people that are a little bit naive or not well-read, there is a tremendous anti-Christian bias. We don't hear about it. We don't think about it. You hear about anti-Semitic.

but you don't hear about anti-Christian. No, you have a strong anti-Christian bias, but we're ending that rapidly, I will tell you. It's a whole, we're in a much different world today than we were one year ago. This is like a different question. A classic Trumpism there. You hear about anti-Semitic,

but you don't hear about anti-Christian. It's just like, this is, they, this is, I think it's important to just address the merits of this because, like, one of the, or rationale that you hear for people, from evangelical folks on the right and others on the right for supporting Trump is, and from sometimes from Jewish folks, but why they support Trump was that, like, there was a big assault on religious liberty and institutions during the Biden years and that, you know, Christianity was coming under attack and that they needed Donald Trump because he'll be,

you know, a fighter for them. And like, again, there were a few, you know, examples of this. I was always sympathetic to the point of view, you know, like forcing, what was it, the one where they tried to force the Catholic nuns to carry birth control on their health care. Little sisters of the poor. Yeah, little sister of the poor. There are certain examples of this where it's true. But like it is like this myth. There's like this origin myth that like the churches are being stormed, you know, by by the left. And like this is something that is, you know, really critical that that is fought back. against. I don't know. Do you think I'm wrong to be dismissive of that? I don't think you're, well, here's the thing. I do think that we are living through a time in which we are trying to resolve the tension between religious liberty and the rights of, let's say, women to hold certain jobs in the church, gay people to be able to get married. And like, there's actually been a pretty normal conversation, you know, so Hobby Lobby or Little Sisters of the Poor, you know, do these religious institutions have to allow gay adults.

adoption. If they run adoption, companies, do they have to provide birth control if they're Christians? And, like, those bespoke questions as a culture, I actually think those are, those are okay rubs for us to figure out. Like, where does religious freedom start and where do the rights of, well, if you're getting federal funds in the case of, let's say, a Catholic charity that does adoptions or churches, you know, if you're getting federal funds, what is that, what is your obligation then to the public? Okay, so those are like normal issues that a society can work out in places. like Utah, Mormons and the gays have been in a really good, productive conversation about how do we balance these things? Because there is a balance there. That being said, the idea that everywhere Christians go, they are under assault. No, no, you have never been more ascendant, my friends, never been more, never been more in charge of all the things. I don't, I don't think there's a massive, and also, they're winning most of the religious freedom cases. Part of this is, like, this feeling of need to be aggrieved. Like you have to tell everybody

and you said that like, oh, the other side, they're cheating and they're, you know, and they're advancing against you because it gets people mad and it drives up their anger. And you see this really across all, you know, kind of political tribes. But like it is particularly acute in MAGA, this desire that like they're aggrieved,

some mysterious other, whether it's the deep state or in some cases the Jews or in some cases somebody, you know, the gays or whatever, are taking this from you and they're taking this from your children. And you need to be mad about. this. And, like, that is what this is, really, more than, like, a specific complaint about the cake baking. It's more about, like, telling these folks, like, you're hearing, you've been hearing a lot about the anti-Semitic lately, but I want to remind you, I care about the anti-Christian because the godless elites are coming for you. I, that's really what's happening.

Yeah, but also the Christians are on offense right now. Right. I mean, because, like, he has done things, like, tried to do executive orders that are, like, you know, eradicating anti-Christian bias, right? Like, we've seen him do things like that. So they are using the federal government in ways with religion that are absolutely bizarre, but that are meant to say, hey, we're here for you, Christians. Like, we are, you are the dominant ones. And this is where Charlie Kirk and a lot of these other folks, they want to make sure trad wives, all this stuff, they are culturally ascended.

They are getting actual help from the federal government to say, say, you are the anointed religion. And that's part of where I think that thing's coming from with Donald Trump right there. I just pulled up the eradicating Christian bias executive order. It cites this fake news from 2024 where the Biden administration supposedly declared Easter Sunday, transgender day of visibility, which was just like not actually happened. But it was very popular online. So I think I guess that that.

Didn't just those days happen to coincide? on the calendar? Isn't that what happened? The Democrats are going to make you bow to a transgender god every Easter. And there's no more Easter egg hunting, okay? There's no more Easter egg hunting. What you're going to do is it's going to be a non-binary, it's going to be some sort of non-binary role. Anyway, all right, final, final clip.

You know, people don't realize about the Biden administration. It was a very mean administration. He's a mean guy, actually. Not a smart guy, never was, but he was a mean guy. No, he was a mean guy. And he knew enough about what was going on. He wasn't like some of the people that surrounded him on the resolute, the beautiful resolute desk in the Oval Office.

There was stone cold, mean. But Joe Biden and the Biden, they were mean people. What they did to people, what they did to J6, what they did to so many people, they were mean people. These were really radical, horrible people. And he wasn't that way. 20 years ago. He was never the brightest bulb

in the ceiling. They're very mean what they did to the J-Sixers. They're very mean. It's the only example. I like how that he gives that one example and then kind of just then it's more of the general Trumpism as to how mean they are, the mean Biden administration. This is important.

This is psychology work is what this is. Like it's important for people. Sometimes I think Libs missed this about the right. Most people, not all. There's like Stephen Miller's kind of like to be the villain, but most people on the right want to self-identify as good people. You want to self-identify as good people. And so you have to give them some little chum to make them feel like they're the good people and the other people are the bad people. You know, not everybody wants to be the black cat. And like, even with so little that Trump has

to work with, they still, they still presses forth by talking about how mean Joe Biden was to the poor people that stormed the capital. There's another psychological thing at work, which is to take something that it was universally thought of as wrong and bad. There was nobody post-January 6th that would have defended those rioters. They all said, throw the book at them, go get them. Just got terrorists. No different than the terrorists. That's right. And they are domestic terrorists. And the FBI and the DOJ tried them as such. And the only mistake was that Donald Trump wasn't included in that more effectively, that they went from the bottom up. But so Donald Trump, in absolving folks on January 6th and any other world, that alone, taking the people who stormed the Capitol trying to overturn an election and just absolving them, that would be enough for that should, like, there should be a moral revolt over that.

But what Donald Trump has done, and they just did this with Ashley Babbitt, where they are now celebrating her as a hero. They buried her. They gave her a special military funeral. She didn't die fighting for the country. She died as a traitor trying to overthrow the country. But this is the work of Donald Trump right now. The psychological work is to make you take something that you know deep down is bad and reframe it as good. That is a thing that he tries to do.

And even though I think a lot of, I know listening to voters, they won't go for it as like, no, I think that what everybody did that day was good and right. what it will do is it pushes them to a place we're like, I don't care about this anymore. Yeah, it's a mixed bag and like, I'm just not going to fight about it. That's an insightful point, Sarah. And it's really touching that our president, you know, tried to turn bad people's actions into good

at the most appropriate, rather, place for such an effort. The Museum of the Bible. So thank you. Anyway, subscribe to the feed, everybody. We'll be back soon. That's Sarah Longwell. See yes.