Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Building a New Axis of Evil—With America In It

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger take on the U.N. vote on Ukraine, where the U.S. found itself aligned with the worst of the worst — Russia, North Korea, and Belarus. They discuss the implications of this shift, Trump’s approach to international diplomacy, and Macron’s fact-checking moment during a meeting with Trump.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bullwork. I'm here with my buddy Andrew Edgar. I'm in D.C. I was here for the Principal's First Conference.

You might have heard about that. There was a bomb threat and a lot of other weird stuff happened. The Proud Boys came and, you know, but we're here. We're fighting the fight. We're principled. Still alive. Still alive and principled. We wanted to talk to you about some happenings

in the UN today. There were dueling resolutions and the US was on the side of our good friends in these resolutions in Belarus and North Korea and Hungary and also Israel. Russia. Russia is a big one for this particular resolution. So that's our team now.

The two resolutions, one was a European-backed resolution demanding Russia immediately withdraw its forces. And then there was a U.S.-backed resolution that urged to end the war without mentioning that Moscow had been the aggressor or that Ukraine's territory should be kept. Yes, basically the resolution that had been introduced by Ukraine and others, one of the things that it suggested was that Ukraine has internationally recognized borders and it should probably retain those internationally recognized borders. The U.S. resolution did not include that language. And this is something. Ukraine has internationally recognized borders and it should probably retain those internationally recognized borders. The U.S. resolution did not include that language.

And this is something. So the final vote there was 93 to 18 with 65 abstentions. So there are only 18 countries that were like, no, we do not agree that Russia should withdraw its forces. Russia should keep its forces wherever they want. And as we mentioned, they were basically the worst countries in the world. And us and I guess Israel, depending on which side of that you're on. That's not great. I mean, I don't, I guess, at least abstain. And at some level, I was a model UN kid.

So, you know, I do love the UN more than I think most people of, you know, conservative progeny. I just have like an affinity for it as being a Model UN nerd. Even still, some of this stuff is silly. And there's like not that big of a difference between the Model UN and real UN sometimes. And yet, it's like it is, I think, speaks to how alarming it is that we are just at this point, you know, not just resentful of the international community or not hostile to some of their excesses, but like actively siding with bad people. Right, right.

It's like it's not saying, well, the UN is one thing, but we have to be realists. You know, we're going to actually be performative villains when we do our cosplay at the UN. You know what I mean? And I totally agree. When you rattled off that list, when that list came out this morning, it was like, oh, okay, I guess these are our global friends now for at least certain really important

international matters. That's kind of a cool place to be in. Performative villainry. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. And that's bad. We're like Jafar. Right. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And that's bad. Like, we're like Jafar. Right. Right, yeah. They're all over there kind of like Lisa Stefanik. She's not confirmed yet, but she's like, you know, at her home every day sort of practicing her evil cackle and that kind of thing.

So she can roll it out later at times like this. The Lisa Stefanik thing is interesting. She isn't confirmed yet. I was trying to figure out why. And we looked into this and the Senate Republicans have been like saving her for the end of the confirmations because the House is such a shit show right now that the Republicans have a three vote majority and they can't pass anything. I do think that's kind of interesting. But we have like a stand-in replacement or temporary not replacement but like temporary ambassador. Beyond kind of the performative villainy aspect of it, what are the other things that make you like the most – are you alarmed? Are you angered? Are you disgusted?

Like talk to me about your feelings. I mean it's just – I'm bewildered more than anything else and I have been by this whole thing because the whole position of the Trump administration is the Biden administration couldn't end this war, but we're going to, right? And they're talking again like as though it's this – they're going to do the kind of the hard-nosed realism that Joe Biden wasn't willing to do, that Vladimir Zelensky doesn't want to do with his own country. But there's no reason, even if you kind of seed that Ukraine is going to have to not go back to its own borders, that there's no real way to go back to that, or that even if you seed that Vladimir Putin is going to get some of the stuff that he wants out of the end of this war and that it's worth doing that for the cost of in order to get peace you still don't have to grant all of Putin's terms and grant all of his framing of the entire thing you don't have to you don't have to tread lightly around him and be nice and and get mad at people who say he's the aggressor because he invaded Ukraine I mean it's just it's it's it's totally nonsensical to to to see all of these people who are like oh you guys

want to live in this fantasy land where Ukraine is likely to win this war. And like, yeah, we'd really like Ukraine to win the war. That'd be nice. That'd be cool. But like at the very – can't we like agree that like the very bare minimum would be just to acknowledge very basic facts about reality if we're going to be realists about the whole thing? This is right this this kind of uh gets fires me up on the thing on the thing that's been bugging me about this lately is like they've been asked several times like what russia is being asked to give in this negotiation like trump's been asked rubio waltz i think vance

i think vance is always asked on cbs and they don't they don't have an answer and like they all keep seeming like they're surprised by the question kind of like you would think that they could just have like a fine talking point about this but how so like not only are they granting all russia's arguments like it doesn't seem like they're even doing like the hard nose negotiation like even within the mega frame, like I would not be for this, you know, I'm a Zelensky dead ender, but like, I would understand, right. If they're like, okay, we're going to really deal the art of the deal this out, you know, and like, we're going to get some minerals and Russia's going to have to give up this land. And like, Russia's going to be

punished with this sanction and Ukraine's going to give up that land. And we're going to cut a deal. Like the only people being asked to give anything is Ukraine and us. Yeah. Yeah. And you can kind of see in the way that you always see with Trump, you can see that that sort of viewpoint kind of metastasizing in real time because he's, as always, is kind of filtering everything through the lens of who he thinks is being nice to him and who he thinks is being mean to him. So even though, you know, just a couple months ago, he still had a lot of good things to say about Zelensky because he felt like Zelensky helped him out a lot the first time he was impeached. The further this has gone on and the more he's been willing to kind of just like give in to everything Russia wants on this stuff

and the more Zelensky has been kind of like, oh, well, I guess maybe we're going to have to go it alone without the United States help. Then you see Trump kind of like getting mad about that. He's like, well, don't – oh, my gosh. Don't you realize how much help we've been giving you all this time and now you're going to treat me like this? Well, I'm just going to – I'm going to go with Russia even harder. And that's how we're doing our international diplomacy now is like through his id, and it's very cool. This takes us to the other topic I wanted to get to related to this. So back at the White House, after we shamed ourselves at the UN,

Macron and Trump were meeting and we had a little fact check, a little live fact check from Macron on Trump. I don't know, have you seen this? Let's watch this together. Just so you understand, Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back. No, in fact,

to be frank, we paid. We paid 60% of the total defaults. And it was through like the US, loans, guarantee, grants, and we provided real money, to be clear. To your point there about his aid, you see Trump gets mad at

Macron. Again, he is mad at the people that are supposed to be our allies. He's making fun of them. He's doing little hand gesture, whatever. When Macron is like, no, we actually have been giving aid to uh to ukraine and we have been doing the thing that you been fucking asking for 10 years about like putting more money into the military and so like we're doing all this and still like you seem to be siding with the other guys right and you can like actively see in this clip kind of the the bind and the no win situation that guys like Macron end up in because Trump will just say something like that. Right. And then the decision tree is, do I just let him get away with saying

that completely true thing, untrue thing about how we're not pulling our weight in this war effort? Or do I correct him, kind of show him up here in front of everybody, get like a kind of a chuckle out of the pool reporters? And then you can kind of see as he's talking, Trump, kind of show him up here in front of everybody, get like a kind of a chuckle out of the pool reporters? And then you can kind of see as he's talking, Trump just kind of sitting there seething at him. And, you know, actively whatever like remaining pro-euro brain cells he has, he's like killing them off on the spot. Right. So it's like it's and this is the way he approaches every interaction with all of our allies. It's like it's like if it's an ally, it's like you've been you have been, you know, sucking off of us too long and slipstreaming behind us for too long. You've had it too easy for too long, and darn it, we're not going to put up with it anymore.

And if it's an adversary, he's like, the sky's the limit. We can do anything. We can make any deal. You know, like this is going to be great. We're going to get in there and we're going to deal. And it's this completely ass-backwards way of doing the new international order that I guess we all get to live in now. And the Dan Crenshaw's of the world and the Waltz's, they'll be like, well, you know, you don't – and Vance said this. Like, you don't need to poke the bear.

Like, you can be just nice to him. You can just suck up to him. And, like, again, like Macron – like, a lot of these guys have been doing what Trump wants and, like, going along with his ridiculous demands. And they still get nothing out of it. So eventually it's kind of like, well, why? Like, why should they do this? Like, maybe Zelensky should poke Trump in the eye now. Like, I don't know.

Like, what is he getting out? What was he getting out of the suck-up routine? Right, right. And that's kind of the main thing. It's like, it's really the only big difference is that now we are getting it with the added kind of indignity of the ritual humiliation of Zelensky that Trump is going along with, you know, every day on his Truth Social account now, just like spouting. I mean, can you imagine being Ukrainian right now?

And just like you're already kind of like suffering these like kind of grinding slow battlefield losses. And now not only is the U.S. about to pull the plug and actively siding with your enemy in all of these different ways, he also just can't shut up about how kind of wounded and hurt his feelings are about how Vladimir Zelensky has been treating him. I mean, it's just this insane, insane reality that we all live in now, which is like everything else is happening right now. It's like if we were not actively living through it, it would just be like this stupid idea that nobody would even contemplate. I know you're religious, so you might fight with me,

but it is a point for us being in a simulation. This is not really real, actually, at all. There's a teenager up there in the sky who's making us do all this. My final point for you, unless you have a thought on our simulation that you want to share. I took a closer look at the 18 votes against, and we also have a vote from the audience. I'm going to hide this from you so you can't watch it

where the audience can see. The country is Palau. Palau was one of the 18 that voted with us in Belarus and the world's worst people. Can you tell me one fact about Palau? P-A-L-A-U. No, I cannot tell you a single fact about Palau. It's a country in Oceania, and they have a great flag. Look at this flag.

We'll put the flag up on the screen. Blue with a yellow circle. Look at that flag. That'll put the flag up on the screen. Blue with a yellow circle. Look at that flag. That is a cool flag. What are we talking about? You're right. That's a cool flag. I'm glad we have some cool flags in our new Axis of Evil in which we are participating. Palau might be my favorite country

in the new Axis of Evil, though. They're part of Micronesia, and who knows why they're Russophiles, but they're part of our new team with Hungary and Belarus and Niger and Venezuela, and that's what we've got. That might have a little more to do with China than Russia. Palau? More cinephiles than Russophiles.

We're going to do more research on Palau. We'll get back to you on this for our next video. I suggest, yeah, right. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. I hope you enjoyed this in our fancy studio digs here in DC. I'll be back at home with the pinto beans tomorrow. So we'll see y'all then. Peace.