Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Gross Attack on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins After Epstein Question

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Tim Miller and Sam Stein give their takes on Donald Trump’s explosive White House press conference, where he lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, dismissed questions about the Epstein files, and once again showed how comfortable he is attacking female reporters. They explain why Trump’s treatment of Collins was especially revealing, how it fits his long-standing pattern of defending powerful men accused of abuse, and why the press corps’ failure to step in matters more than people realize.They also break down Speaker Mike Johnson openly casting doubt on the legitimacy of U.S. elections while admitting he has no evidence of fraud. Tim and Sam explain why Johnson’s comments are not a slip or rhetorical excess, but a deliberate signal and why the real threat may come on the back end of the election, through stalling, lawsuits, and refusal to seat members.In the New Year, take ownership of your health with ZocDoc, at https://ZocDoc.com/BULWARKTAKES.

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BedMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. Nineteen plus to wager Ontario only, 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. BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with managing editor Sam Stein.

We were in the green room complaining about youth sports. But now we're here to talk about important matters of state and nation. The president gave a little press conference gaggle, whatever we're calling these little hybrid things that he does in the White House today. and got a little heated with a friend of the show, Caitlin Collins of CNN. So I want to play a couple of those exchanges and then play something really gross at the end for everybody. So make sure to stick around for that. Sam, did you have any big picture thoughts? Should you just jump right in?

No, let's jump right in. Because what I want to say big picture-wise really depends on people seeing the exchange. Yeah, okay. Let's watch the first exchange before things, before Trump starts getting nasty. You talked about Democrats who were in there. Elon Musk was also in there, and so was your Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and correspondence that he had with him. Did you read those new files that were published by the Department of Justice? I have a lot of things I'm doing.

A lot of things I'm doing. I don't know. You mentioned two names. I'm sure they're fine. I'm sure they're fine. Otherwise, it would have been major headlines. I thought that could was interesting mostly just because how cucked he was by Elon. I mean, Elon calls him a pedo.

Elon called him a petto But maybe Trump feels like he needs the money Maybe Trump feels like he needs the X support But no he doesn't That's not that's not the Trump I know He doesn't take an opportunity to swap back at Elon I thought that was noteworthy Good point

I hadn't thought about it in those In that terms he could have easily just said You're not a petty bitch like me is why You know I'm pet This extends from our conversation about youth sports he could have been like boy Elon was in there a lot what's he doing there? Why does he want to party so hard?

But he didn't take that opportunity I don't know if we're going to play we probably could but there's another opportunity he just didn't swing out which was when they asked him about Bill Clinton and he was just like you know I always like that guy we could play that do we have that clip because we could play that clip if we wanted to let's play it

okay today we heard that the Clinton set deposition dates to testify before that the House Oversight Committee. Any reaction to that and related to the Eustin? I think it's a shame, to be honest. I always liked him. Her, yeah.

She's a very capable woman. She was better in debating than some of the other people. I will tell you that. She was smarter, smart woman. I hate to see it in many ways. Here's my, I have a take on this because I was looking, I was doing a deep dive on the original, one of the files that was just released,

the original indictment of Epsine in 07. before. The Costa one. Yeah, before Acosta watered it down. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're going through it. And it's just there are some redactions, like, that are like, okay, well, there are too many people redacted.

It can't just be Jeffrey and Galane. There has to be others. And then there's another email that was just popping around. Somebody to Jeffrey, thank you for a fun night. Your littlest girl was a little naughty. And that's, I know, disgusting. And that's redacted. Whoever sent that email.

And I just think that in this point, Trump. either out of just the fact that he like always sides with the male sexual predator or out of some sort of solidarity with the other people that are in Epstein files doing gross stuff for some reason I do think he's decided his best position here is to just totally side with all the creeps well so there's a one the most generous way probably to think about it is and I don't think this is not how I think about it you could look at this and say he realizes this is just horrible stuff for him, and all he wants to do, all he wants to do is just move off from it. Like he just doesn't want to talk about it. He wants to get out of the

new cycle. In fact, he was pretty explicit. He was like, oh, well, you know, I think we can move on to other stories now. So that's the most generous. The other way to look at it is the way you are talking about, which is that this is his world, or this was his world. He lived in this world. He knew these people. He cavorted with Epstein. We know this because it's now public record. But there's also like little subtle clues. I don't know if he caught this. other day where he caught himself referring to him as Jeffrey, not Jeffrey Epstein. He's like, you know, I was like, oh, you're on a first name basis. And so he knows these people, he's been with these people.

They are people who he socialized with, a weird, very odd stratosphere of rich and famous. And maybe part of him just, you know, recognizes that, you know, he was once of that world. And he has kind of like a weird affinity for him. And that would be your interpretation. I mean, or he's actively covering up his own behavior as well. Like, I mean, I think that's all the way. That's the thing. We don't know what we don't know.

There's so many files. I just keep coming back to like, I have this little sort of North Star here, which is that Trump and his entire life has demonstrated no empathy for anyone. Like literally like Renee Good gets killed by one of his agents. And the only thing that he can say is like, I hear his dad's a fan. Her dad was a fan of mine. Yeah. And so like he has no ability to do empathy, except for all.

men accused of sexual assault. And then all of a sudden you do see him over and over again being like, ah, he's a good guy. He's a good. And so I, so I think that there's like a blanket. Like he sees the men who are accused of sexual assault as being like his compatriots that he has to defend no matter what. I don't think it's that weird.

I think it's, I think it's psychological. It's weird. Well, it's weird. It's weird, but it's sensible. Like it's psychologically, we logical. Like as somebody who has done this, a lot of, gross stuff with women. He wants the benefit of the doubt. So he wants to give everybody else the

benefit of the doubt. I feel like you don't have it, but you probably have earned a psychology degree at this point from just how much you psychoanalyzed Trump. You're very good at it. Thank you. Yeah. I'm an amateur. I'm, I'm, I'm, I could have been a life coach. I could have been a shrink, I think. I would like to have been a shrink. That would have been a good side job for me. Okay. It continues to get worse with Caitlin, though. Things escalate. Let's go to the next exchange between Kailin and Trump. Women who are survivors of Epstein are unhappy with those redactions that came out.

Some of the entire witness interviews are totally blacked out. Do you think that they should be more transparent? Well, we're also unhappy with the fact that they thought they released too much. You know, I heard that. And you tell me something else. No, I think it's really time for the country

to get onto something else, really. Now that nothing came out about me, other than there was a conspiracy against me, literally by Epstein and other people. But I think it's time now for the country to maybe get onto something else. Like health care or something that people care about. Yeah, what did you say? What would you say to the survivors?

You are the worst reporter. No wonder. CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know, she's a young woman. I don't think I've ever seen you smile. I've known you for 10 years. I don't think I've ever seen a smile in your face. You know why you're not smiling?

Because you know you're not telling me. the truth and you're a very dishonest organization and they should be ashamed of you. Smile, woman. All right, Sam. I have a lot of thoughts, but why don't you go first? I mean, it's, first of all, he does this to female reporters, female reporters, okay? It's gross, but it's not unexpected at this point. Like, we all know this is who he is, okay? What really got me was two parts of this. One is there's a number of female sales. senators holding MAGA caps behind him. You can't see them in that clip. And they're just sort of sitting there, you know, including Susan Collins. And they don't, you know, I guess they're not

going to speak up, but it's pretty grotesque. Bullwork takes a sponsored by Zock doc. We all know health issues don't follow a nine to five schedule. With Zock doc doc, having no time to book a doctor's appointment is actually no problem at all. So let's say you don't have time for yourself until 11 p.m. or cut your finger making a midnight snack or you tweak your back on the dance floor at a family wedding or you doom scroll and panic about your symptoms at 3 a.m. Been there. Or you binge watch a medical drama and you unlock a new health fear. Definitely been there. Go to Zoc Doc anytime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and find a doctor you love to make your health plan happen. Yep, even if it's way after hours. Zoc Doc is a free app and website that

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Thanks Zock doc doc for sponsoring this message. The second thing where I'm really upset is with the rest of the White House Correspondents Association in this case. Now, I don't think people have been in these situations, so just let me tell you. It is crammed. There's tons of reporters there. They all have mics. They all want to get a question in. You know you have a set period of time.

Caitlin Collins is asking a number of follow-up questions. So there's probably some sort of like, hey, I want my turn, right? I get it. But when the president of the United States does that and when he insults one of your colleagues, you have an obligation because you're part of an institution, which is the White House Correspondent association. You have an obligation to stand up for your colleague. And you can do that in one or two ways. You can say, no, she smiles.

She's a great colleague. you shouldn't talk to her like that. No one's going to do that because it's the president. But there is another way to do it, which is to say, you're a special case. The other way to do it is to say, sir, let her finish your question. Or I'm not going or say, take your turn and say, actually, let her finish her question. Or follow up on her question. Don't go and divert to the next fucking question. Like, make them answer the question. You are a collective unit. The only way this works as the press is if you operate collectively.

It is a collective action problem that's hurting our press corps. And when you see that happen, you have to act in that moment collectively to hold the president accountable and ask those questions. And they just don't do it time and time again. It really pisses me off. I mean, and think about all of the other times that he's insulted the other women. And in no other situation would you allow this? I would think most people, most people who have any integrity. Let's go back to our hypothetical youth sport situation.

Why do we have a higher bar for the president? we would for a youth sports coach. I'm coaching girls basketball team. If the other coach or the ref, you know, starts screaming at one of my girls and starts saying, do you not ever smile? Like, or like, or like, what's your problem? Or like, are you, you know what I mean?

Obviously, it's a child versus an adult, but like, you understand the situation. Like, you would stand up for a colleague or somebody that you're working with in that situation and say, what are you doing? Like, that's totally inappropriate. Like, that is totally inappropriate. I'm sorry. I don't care that. Just because

of the president of the United States doesn't mean you get to be a bastard in front of everybody without any a program. It's also tactical too, right? This is what the White House does. And this is what Carolyn Levitt does at the briefing. If they don't like a question, they shoot down the reporter, often in personal terms, they call them fake. And then they quickly go to the next person in the room to get off of that question that they don't like. And all it would take is for the next person who's called upon to say, actually, I'm going to ask her question. Or actually, why don't I see back the time to her? And they never do it.

They never, ever do it. And I would like to see just once, just once, try it. Just say, you know what? I'm going to give it back to her. What another thing we could do while we're spitballing next time what happens in that room? Trump has always been happy to pass the mic. He doesn't always want to deal with answers from the fake news. Could have followed up right there and said, hey, San Diego.

Senator Susan Collins. What do you think about the fact that the president just said to Caitlin Collins doesn't smile unlike that CNN is fake news and that he doesn't want to answer her questions about the Epstein files. Do you have anything to say about that? That's allowed. I just think that like he, I felt this way back when I was a Republican strategist on the same side.

It took a while in the 2016 campaign for everybody to catch up to this. And by the time people caught up to it. It's too late. It's like he wants to play by a different set of rules and everybody else wants to play by the same rules. And I just, I think that you can be a little. creative. You know, it doesn't mean you have to be, you got to stoop to his level. Doesn't mean it to be a

bastard. But it's just like, there's no rule that says you can't ask one of the female senators to follow up on that. You could do that. Yeah. The one way this does fall apart is that he's filled the room with a bunch of sycophants and like people from like gateway pundit who are going to ask ridiculous questions. So that does create complications. But it doesn't mean it's insurmountable. And yeah, you do have to get creative. You just, you just have to get creative with it. Yeah. His behavior is appalling. But we knew that. It is. It really is. It really is. It really is. It really is. appalling. It really is appalling. Why do we tolerate that? He treats, he treats a reporter just like that. I mean, it's just grotesque. You wouldn't tolerate in any, like, literally in any other

situation. Like, if my kid was in a school and the school principal was talking to a teacher like that, I would say, I said, we're getting out of the school. Like, what, like, that's, that, that's the model that you're setting? Like, if you're in a work center, if you're at a bullet office, like, somebody talked to them. You know what I mean? Like, you would never do that. Like, it's just, it's totally, it's totally appalling and inappropriate. And, and And I do think that it's worth mentioning also that the questioning was about the way in which powerful men abuse young women. And then as a response to that question, Trump's like, you're a young woman. You don't smile enough.

I'd say that's revealing in a sense. All right. I want to move on to one of the thing that happened today is related to all this. Trump was also asked about, you know, the nonsense. I don't know what's to nationalize elections and all that. And we've come to expect this for Trump. And I think we've covered this lot on the channel. And we want to be vigilant about this.

I think it's pretty noteworthy, though, how Mike Johnson talked about it to the Speaker of the House. Because that is a change. You know, usually what you've you've had, which is not a good place to be, but you have Trump kind of popping off. Then you have like the Republicans on the hill being like, I didn't see that. Or, you know, I think what he meant was this. And that's bad in its own way. But it's not as bad as starting to dip your toe into the. pool of no, I'm with him. And that's what we got from Mike Johnson today. Let's watch that.

Our system, the states have been in charge of administering their elections. What you're hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some of the blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections. We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle. And every time a new trunch of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No. Can I prove that? Nah. Nah. Just going to throw it out there, though. It's fraudulent. And these magical ballots, I think this is really explicable, you know, more ballots come in. Oftentimes it's the mail ballots that come in later,

because they take longer because it's the mail and Democrats vote more in the mail. And so, like, their explanations just, it is explicable. Like, you could just ask somebody who's an expert about this or who knows the district who understands. So, like, this is a knowable thing. He's pretending not to know. But the reason why it's so alarming to me, I mean, he's a little twirp, I guess I would say first. But the reason why it's alarming is that the thing that is worried me most, I feel like folks who kind of just watch this casually and are just not back because followers are

like, they're concerned. It's like, oh, they'll cancel the elections or they'll screw with them on the front end. And who knows what they'll try to do? But I think that that risk is less than the risk of Mike Johnson on the back end. deciding I'm not going to seat these guys because we want to wait and see about these mail ballots. We're not sure. We're going to litigate. It seems like fraud.

Can't prove it. But I don't think I can seat anybody until whatever. We go through some, you know, cockamamie legal process, right? And it's a, maybe it's an attempt to steal. Maybe it's just an attempt to stall by a couple more months before the Democrats get the gavel. That is, to me, I think, the most likely. shenanigan now that the redistricting gambit failed. I mean, it's an easy combo, right? And him saying that makes it even a little

bit more likely in my head. Just paint a picture, right? California's got all these ballots coming in. Let's, first of all, I want to just level set. He's totally wrong, right? Like, California, yes, it does more ballots come in. It tends to go more blue, male ballots. The opposite is true in Arizona, where they have what's called the blue mirage, where it looks like the, you know, remember, Ruben Gallego had a big lead over Kerry Lake and it dwindled. And everyone's like, whoa, is he going to hold on? Okay. So he's wrong. But the scenario you paint is it's pretty, I mean, doesn't seem far-fetched, right, where you have a Trump Justice Department,

launching lawsuits and investigations into balloting in blue states, drawing out legislation, or sorry, litigation. And the Speaker of the House saying, well, we can't seat these people because there's too much unknown. There's too much ambiguity about what happened. There's too many questions left unanswered. Now, remember, Mike Johnson led the amicus brief from the state of Texas seeking to overturn Biden's win in 2020. So he has history of getting involved in this stuff. And I thought his comments today were some of the more irresponsible comments from a House Speaker that you could possibly get.

He is directly undermining faith in the integrity of our elections, doing so while openly admitting he has no evidence. he has no evidence, just that it feels funny to him. I mean, think about that. Think about how reckless that is. It's unbelievable that he would do something like that. And I am worried. Obviously, you should be worried as Trump's talking about nationalizing elections and all and stuff.

But to have that one-to punch where the Justice Department clearly at the behalf of the president doing all the stuff and the Speaker of the House who was in charge of seating members saying, well, I believe in this stuff, you end up with a very, very bad combination. Yeah, I got to say, Gavin did a good job. combating their first gambit with the redistricting. He deserves props to that. The California ballot counting thing, though, is a nightmare.

And people have been screaming this for the world to do with it. Yeah. They've been screaming this for those tops for a long time. You know, they shouldn't have to change their ballot the way that they tally votes because the other side is going to screw with them. On the other hand, in a first world country, like people should be able to count the ballots in a night. Okay.

They count their ballots at a night. It's a good point. And it's a good topic maybe for Lauren Egan. for opposition. Like, what is California going to do in advance of November to make sure that this, you know, hypothetical scenario that we're just painting doesn't happen. All right. Well, there you go.

It's a good assignment. Assignment editor. You're welcome, Lauren Egan. Net's Sam Stein. He's the managing director. He does the assignments like that. I'm Tim Miller. I just pop off.

Let's subscribe to the feed. Well, yeah, tell your friends. I was on with Brian Tyler Cohen the other day. Dude has like five million subscribers. I was feeling a little bit of subscriber. Jealousy. Envy? Envy, yeah. We need to up it.

People need to really get on it and subscribe. This is enough. We've been too patient. Appreciate you. All right. We'll see you all later.