Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Cruel Policies Are Tanking His Poll Numbers

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

Tim Miller joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to discuss how Donald Trump’s reckless immigration and economic policies are driving his approval ratings into freefall, hurting small businesses, and causing political damage even among his own supporters.

Hey guys, I just got off with Nicole Wallace and we got to talk about how Donald Trump is suffering political consequences as a result of his reckless and cruel policy actions across a number of fronts. has less favorability than almost anything else that he is doing or has done, which went against a lot of conventional wisdom on whether or not the immigration issue was something Democrats could fight on. It was right in line with what I've been telling you. But also how we're seeing consequences, economic consequences for small business owners and how the tariffs are starting to hit a home with people that are inside his base of support. So it was a good chat with Nicole, with my buddy Andrew Wiseman. Check it out and we'll see you back here soon. And subscribe to our feed. Tim Miller, I have an infinite curiosity about what people thought was going to happen,

because I think anyone that's watched him just in the political arena understood that a campaign launched in Waco with the words, I am your retribution, was about burning everything down. And so I have watched, it is really the first Trump story that has shocked me in nine years to watch sort of the titans and and tragically in our country the smartest people don't go work in Washington right they don't take hundred and ten thousand dollar a year ceiling salary jobs um on Capitol Hill right they they they go they're either entrepreneurs or they go work in finance and they and so to see the smartest people in the world shocked by the autocratic things that he did early quickly and incompetently um has been amazing the the the piece of it though that i think are are the kinds of folks we work for um would would sort of intersect with it is that american families are

going to suffer consumers are going to feel stressed either by not being able to find something they need or not being able to afford what they've always bought. And I worked for someone whose political fate was tied to the economy and worked for someone running for president. You have too. And to see Trump create the thing that is the most depressive political weight on any politician anywhere in the world is unbelievable. Yeah. So two thoughts on this one on the kind of psychology. I really do think that that's the common wisdom among smart people, among people, maybe even that were Trump supporters or maybe that were Kamala supporters, but, you know, thought he might be good for business, right? of crowd, was that there's no way he could do something this insane.

I think it was just hard for people to wrap their head around the fact that he might do exactly what you just said, which is just, I mean, cut off your nose despite your face would be the understated way of saying it, that he would just crash the economy and crash his political prospects on the issue that was the most important to people, like for no reason, just because he likes the word tariff, right? I mean, like a smart, a savvy, smart person, here's that, like, there's no way he's going to do that. That's just his shtick, right? Like, and he's benefited from this since 2015, that people a lot of times just thought it was shtick,

he's an entertainer, you know, take him seriously, not literally, all that. And I think that a lot of people really got hoodwinked on this one, even though they could have just listened to him or listened to this show or listened to a bunch of people and known what they were going to sign up for. As far as the impact on regular people, this is really where the rubber's going to meet the road on this. I got a couple hours off yesterday. I went to Jazz Fest here in New Orleans, I was out there and a woman came up to me and she owns a tchotchke shop here in New Orleans, you know, kind of stuff that tourists

get. Yeah. And she is just like, I'm screwed, right? Like all, like so much of my stuff comes from China and it's not the kind of stuff that we're ever going to make here, even if you wanted to, right? It's like random buttons or Mardi Gras beads or like you know what I mean like we're gonna make that's that is going to be the new job in America in 2025 is a Mardi Gras bead plant you know it's like it's ridiculous right uh and so a lot of

this stuff is coming from overseas and she's she was like thank God none of my stuff was on the water during this time because if it was already on the way I would have had to pay it I would have to shut down like the the store it's like this store has been open for 65 years it's been in the family and and they're just going to be a million of those stories like all across the country and I think it's going to be really hard for them to use their typical you know bullying narrative bs to break through when people start really see when the stuff really starts to hit home they also won't be able to do what they like to do tim with everything from hurricane uh relief funds where they want to find out who did they vote for me i mean whether whether that business

center voted for him or not he's not going to be able to go out and pluck out the small business centers in america who voted trump and save. Because what was he going to go make the beads himself? I mean, the whole supply chain piece would be surprising if it hadn't happened in America during the pandemic on his watch while he was president and largely had the consequence of making sure he wasn't returned to office, something that even he understood. And so the supply chain piece that retailers went to him and sat in the Oval Office, the head of Walmart, the head of Target and Home Depot, and we're still sort of full steam ahead, no toothpaste back in the tube,

just ridiculous platitudes about calls that don't appear to have ever happened. I don't know what that feels like. It feels like the train just sort of barreling down the track. Yeah, I mean, sure, there are going to be co-op industries, right? So he did this the first time, right? Which was, you know, there were some tariffs the first time, not nearly at this extent, particularly hurt farmers.

And they did this huge bailout of farmers. A fun fact for people is this huge bailout of farmers. A fun fact for people is that that bailout of farmers cost more than the entire USAID program that we shut down in the name of whatever, government efficiency. So, you know, I think that shows you how serious they are. So there could be some targeted bailouts, right, in certain industries. But when you have an across-the-board tariff like this, right, when you're hitting all of these industries, all the big box stores, you're saying you can't do that. You can't just say, oh, I'm going to bail out red states or just going to bail out farmers or just going to bail out whatever coal miners. That just isn't going to work when it's a systemic

thing that's going to hit the whole supply chain. Today, another in a streak of intentionally intimidating acts aimed at key figures and institutions. This morning, agents with the FBI arrested a county judge in Milwaukee as she was in the parking lot on her way into work, into court. She's now out on bond. According to the charging documents, the Bureau alleges this, quote, Judge Hannah Dugan obstructed the detention of an undocumented immigrant who was wanted by federal authorities. Just last hour, lawyers for that justice released

a statement that reads in part, quote, Judge Dugan will defend herself vigorously and looks forward to being exonerated. Joining our coverage, former top prosecutor at the Department of Justice and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman's here and Washington Post Justice Department reporter Perry Stein joins us. Tim Miller is with us as well. I want to go to the reporting. I do just because this moment has now come, I have to start with you, the FBI arresting judges and the director of the FBI tweeting about it. That's how I first saw it. So there has been a violation here that we know for sure, and it is not the judge. That's something that remains to be proved. The thing that we do know is that the FBI director has

violated DOJ policy. I know I can hear Tim looking at me going that's so quaint. The norms, the norms. Right, exactly. But that is, you don't do it. Remember sitting here going, you know, James Comey, you know, really flouted the rules because he started talking about his own personal opinions of somebody who is not being charged. This is somebody who's being charged, and you are supposed to stay mum,

and instead, you completely denigrated her, and you don't do that. The same thing, by the way, Pam Bondi was on Fox News talking about how we're gonna go after judges. That is what they're doing. I mean, this is a much more sinister view of the president saying we need to impeach them that led to the chief justice

having to step in. Here, that is really the way to see this. Even if you thought that there was a ground for doing this, the judgment call that you thought that this is the case to bring, it tells you everything about what the strategy is. And by the way, that's a huge if. I mean, I can't imagine this case is going to hold up for a whole variety of factual and legal reasons. But again, there is no adult in the room who would have said, are you kidding me? This person was apprehended steps from the courtroom, steps from the courthouse. It's going to be so hard to prove, even if you could somehow show this was the judge's intent, was to obstruct. Why would you possibly do this? And the answer is because we want to send a signal to the judiciary.

And that's what you shouldn't be doing. I mean, that is that is fighting the last branch of government to oppose the executive branch. Yeah. I mean, Tim, I get it back into the latest reporting on this with sort of all of the context. I mean, this comes at a moment when Trump's approval rating is in freefall and it is plunging around what he has done to his own pretty hot economy. He's tanked it with this obsession over tariffs. Whether it's causal or not, we'll never know. But he has also tanked his two political sort of shields have always been people thinking he was actually a businessman, even though that was a character he played on a reality show. And people liking his energy or aggressiveness around immigration. He's tanked his approval on both fronts. I think this was a distraction from the first weakness on the economy and a case that they wanted to be arguing in the press instead of that of kilmar abrigo garcia so i

i just want to lay down the foundation so we're not sort of covering the shiny object they wanted us to focus on today yeah and i think that's right and i think that the pr operation around this is the real relevant element as far as the big picture is concerned right obviously like we'll wait to see what the facts are on the specific case regarding this judge but like this was an entire this was entirely motivated by pr we can all sort of speculate on what their motives are was it a distraction maybe that's part of it was it trying to intimidate people and chill people that want to provide aid to undocumented migrants? I think certainly that it's been part of their plan all along. Is it a shot across the bow of the judiciary? Probably.

You know, I think it could be all three of those things, but like that is what is motivating, not just the arrest, but like the way that they handled it and that, you know, having the FBI director tweet about it and Pam Bonnie Glenn Fox, as Andrew mentioned. And so I think those are very like it's obviously very serious to think about that. And I think the chilling effects, even if this case doesn't work, I think the chilling effect might work. Because if you're somebody that, you know, is is in some way helping an undocumented worker, you might think, do I an undocumented immigrant? Excuse me. You might think, do, is this worth it? Like, do I want to put out the risk of the FBI is going to come after me? I think they want people to be thinking about that and having those conversations. The only good news in this, the only silver

lining is what you alluded to about how his numbers are tanking on immigration. And I think there's just been so much depressing out there about the state of the country and how we think about the country that they elected this guy again but to see people already starting to reject this immigration regime i think is extremely encouraging and and hopefully it will be a continued reminder to democrats and others that oppose this president to stiffen their spine to make these arguments because some people were worried for months i was like we got to let him do whatever noxious stuff he wants to do on immigration because that's what the people voted for. Well, it turns out that there actually is a broad majority of Americans that are not for just nabbing people off the street and sending them

to a gulag. I know maybe there was some doubt about that. I mean, some people in the Trump administration thought that would be a winner, but it's turning out that that's a loser. And a new poll that came out right before we got on from sienna showed that the kilmar abrigo garcia case he he is less popular like that is uh people are less favorable to his treatment of kilmar abrigo garcia than they are to the tariffs or to the or to his behavior with russia and ukraine right it is his lowest number and so i just i think that is a really encouraging sign that people are going to need to continue to fight back against, you know, these efforts broadly. We run a little bit of a problem if we are going to say that the criteria to get your visa revoked is writing an op ed. Horrific. It's horrific.

I don't think that should be controversial. No, that's not controversial at all. And this is the thing, you know, measure twice, cut once. This is the, like, this is kind of crazy. That that could be possible. That's horrific. I never thought that I would see a day where I would be rooting for a university above Donald J. Trump and his administration. But I don't recognize his administration right now.

I was going to use the expression cracks. Those are bigger than cracks. Those are giant fissures in the MAGA coalition around the issue of, in the case of Candace Owens, Tim, that was about the fight with Harvard and the other cases around the deportation. Folks who did things in terms of what we know publicly, like write an op-ed. And that's where we are. Some of those folks being detained seemingly indefinitely for exercising their First Amendment rights. Where do you think this pressure plays into the calculations about one, how to treat the people who have been detained and two, how aggressively to pursue others. Well, I do think it's playing into the slowing down

of what they were trying to do about immigration. Like, let's be honest, those three planes that went to El Salvador with Venezuelans, mostly Venezuelan asylees, like, that wasn't going to be the end, right? But the fights in the courts, the pushback in public opinion, the imbroglio over Abrego Garcia and the Justice Department having to admit that they made a mistake, having people like Joe Rogan and their own side speak out on this,

all of that has basically put a stop to sending more people there. So now the fight continues. There are people that are probably wrongfully there. We're almost certain that should be brought out. But, you know, that is an encouraging step. And I think that you can see the administration responding to it. And secondly, I just want to, the Charlie Kirk thing is also similar. You notice that we, you know, there haven't been a ton of other students being grabbed off of campuses over the last few weeks. Again, I don't, we can speculate on what that is for, but, you know, having somebody like Charlie Kirk, who is essentially

a paid cheerleader for the president, you know, looking at what they did with a tough student, Ozturk, and saying, whoa, whoa, that's a little bit too far for me. I mean, that is a sign that you're in deep trouble as public opinion. You have like a paid shill, essentially, or not a paid shill, but a guy not a paid shill, but a guy whose organization essentially just shills for Trump. I mean, I've been to his organization events. They have huge Trump signs.

It's like a, you know, it's like a cult gathering. And so if he's out there even expressing a little bit of doubt about it, I think that tells you where public opinion is heading. Trump 2.0 has kept judges busy all across our country. They've had to meet and confronted with Donald Trump's haphazard and extremist priorities with a rather humiliating lesson for him in the rule of law, with loss after loss after loss for Donald Trump in court, at least for now. And just yesterday, three times over, Donald Trump lost on his federal

funding freeze against so-called sanctuary cities and counties, which a federal judge in California said violates the Fifth Amendment. Trump lost on his attempt to mount a takeover of elections. A federal judge in Washington blocked portions of that executive order. Trump lost on his anti-DEI takeover and punishment of K-12 schools and classrooms, with three federal judges issuing three separate rulings in that area. Also this week, Trump lost on his attempt to shut down the 83-year-old Voice of America, something we haven't talked about in days and weeks around here. Two federal judges further paused his use in their districts of the Alien Enemies Act from the year 1798 to deport people without affording them due process. And we learned that Trump's turning to the Supreme Court after several lower courts blocked his transgender service members in the military.

We're back with Andrew and Tim. Tim, to your point about the Time-Siena poll, 66% of all Americans, which includes a whole lot of people who ostensibly voted for him, described the second Trump term as chaotic. They do not like what they see. No, they don't. And, you know, unfortunately, this is sad and we can all go relive 2024. But, like, there was just a false memory about the first Trump administration. I think, had a lot to do with COVID and all the disruption that happened after COVID. And unfortunately, I think that there are a lot of folks who are looking at this, be they the Chachki store owner or at the Bullard.

We just had some new focus groups of Latino voters, working class Latino voters who are, you know, did not, you know, who just thought he was going to be deporting the criminals. Like, you know, the list kind of goes on and on. So we're seeing this. You know, the other thing that just jumps out at me about his political weakness, like looking at all those headlines, is this might seem if they would just pass this stuff through Congress. But they don't have the political will or capital to do so. And I think that's also kind of a noteworthy context around all this.