Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Immigration Chaos Is Blowing Up in His Face

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Sam Stein and Tim Miller break down Trump’s latest unhinged “bleat” on immigration—where he’s suddenly worried about losing hotel and farm workers due to… his own policies. They dissect the political whiplash, Stephen Miller’s likely meltdown, and MAGA voters realizing too late what they signed up for. It’s legal chaos, GOP backroom panic, and plenty of schadenfreude.

Hey guys, it's me Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwork and I am joined by my buddy, Tim Miller, as we are going to dissect truly a remarkable bleat. Did I pronounce that correctly? Yeah, bleat. Yeah. Bleat from Donald Trump this morning on immigration. It is, I honestly, I've gotten a number of texts about it from Republicans, like just, you know, scratching their heads, wondering what the hell's going on. I will read it. No, I'm serious. I will read it. What are they confused about? He's all over the map. These are, these are non-Trump Republicans. These are Republicans

who are like, I cannot believe this man. That's the reaction. All right. Here's the bleat. You're 10. That's true. All right. We'll get to that in a sec. Here's the bleed. You're 10. That's true. All right, we'll get to that in a sec. Here's the bleed. Our great farmers capital F for some reason, and people in the hotel capital H and leisure capital L business have been stating that our very aggressive policy and immigration is taking very good longtime workers away from them. With those jobs being almost

impossible to replace. In many cases, the criminals, I don't know why he capitalizes this stuff, allowed into our country by the very stupid Biden open borders policy. I'm sorry. So they applied for the jobs to the census, the criminals applied for the jobs. So I just try to understand. I had trouble impacting that part. Yeah, because they, because they allied this point into when it's convenient.

Are the, is anyone that came into the country illegally a criminal? Or when he's talking about criminals, is he just talking about people that came here illegally, but then committed crimes? So they strategically conflate this. When it's opportunistic, everyone who came here illegally is a criminal. Right. But in this case, the criminals are a different category that only Biden led in. Yeah, not the caddies or whatever, not the people cleaning the toilets at Mar-a-Lago

and not the people doing the well-done steaks at Bedminster, not the cleaning ladies at Doral. They're not criminals, right? They're just long-time valued members of the, of the Trump team. Who are vetted very carefully by the Trump organization. Obviously. Is there more to say? Uh, I will finish it.

Hold on one second. Uh, by the very stupid Biden open borders policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. I don't, which part is not good. I'm not totally sure. We must protect our farmers, but get the criminals out of the USA. Changes are coming. All right.

So here we are. He clearly has heard from some, you know, farming conglomerates or, you know, hotel buddies of his who are like, yo, we need these workers, you're disrupting our business, please stop it. This is a problem of his own creation. Never once does he obviously recognize that, but it is a problem of his own creation. And really, this goes diametrically against what Stephen Miller has been pushing, which is that anyone who crossed over the border illegally should be

gone. No, his hands are butts. And so, you know, never, never. Yeah. I mean, so needless to say, you could stop this by just stopping. Yes, that's that could be the change. Just stop. That could be the change. You could just stop deporting people that are long time residents that are working, that are valued members. Like this whole notion, it's like we're deporting. Like, basically the frame that he's put out there, if you just take the lead at face value, is that he's gotten some feedback from his rich farmer and

hotelier buddies. Do you say hotelier or hotelier? I say hotelier. Okay. He's got some rich hoteliers have gone to Donald Trump and said, we have a problem. Nobody is there to clean the fancy rooms of the people at your hotels anymore, because you're deporting them. All right. And so Donald got that feedback when he put this out, and it's like, here's the problem, guys. Because of the very tough immigration enforcement we have, these people that have

been working in the hotel industry are being deported and they're being replaced, not by Americans, but by criminals, by criminal aliens that Joe Biden led it. I'm just saying if you take what he said, this is what he's saying. I'm trying to figure that out. That they're being replaced then by these new criminal aliens with the cantaloupe thighs that Joe Biden brought in. Is his brain broken? Does that make any sense? And that, I know it doesn't. And that's bad because we don't want these criminals in the hotel suites at Doral. We want the long-time

good immigrants that my people have been deporting. So again, if you just take them at face value, easy fix. You don't need to send a plea. You can just send out an announcement, we're going to stop deporting these people. That then creates a problem with Stephen Miller and with the base and with the quotas that they have to do and you know I mean I think probably what ends up happening is that they just try to not have raids at hotels and and farms and or in red states that becomes hard especially when you consider I want to pull up a separate post here from the Homeland Security Department DHS which is under the President that's right. DHS? Yeah which is under the president. That's right. DHS. Yeah, that's under the president of the United States. He has some purview over that.

Okay. Sure. Well, they posted this around the same time. Help your country locate and arrest illegal aliens. To report criminal activity, call 866-DHS-2- to ICE and then there's a picture of like this kind of racist cartoon about reporting all foreign invaders. I guess that racist image was originally posted from a Christian nationalist. They stole it. They don't have a, I guess they don't have an art department anymore at DHS because of Doge and so they stole a racist meme and and they posted that so there are problems here I mean not that I would want to cause anybody any harm or that I'm suggesting this but I mean maybe some people should call the hotline about the people working at Donald Trump's hotels and the people working at

the at the farms where all these great farmers are these MAGA farmers who are upset that they're losing their folks that You see how this, you hit an issue here. You hit a crossroads where you can either do one thing or another. You can have a hotline where Americans are calling on their neighbors and calling on ICE and asking for them to be shackled and deported. You can live in a country where you do that, or you can live in a country where no, you just look for criminals and deport, as we've always done, you just deport people who have deportation orders. And Trump is trying to do that, but both ways, at least in the context of his buddies, I guess. I don't know if he's trying to have it both ways so much as ping ponging back and forth, right?

If you take his bleep from this morning and just logically extend it, what he's saying is, hey, let's have a system in place in which we go after real hardened criminals and those people who are here illegally but are working in certain sectors where it's beneficial for us economically to have them work. Let's give them some workplace protections. Let's have them be here with some sort of comfort

that they won't be deported so that they and their employees or employers can go about their business and do it effectively. That's called comprehensive immigration reform or a version of it. That's something that Stephen Miller would have like a fucking heart attack if anyone else proposed that. But as obviously his boss is proposing now, we're not going to hear shit from Stephen Miller. And look, I think I obviously in this case, I think obvious, but most likely in this case, really wealthy people got to Donald Trump and said, yo, we need this to stop. But, you know, I've been seeing all these

local news stories, and I'm sure you have two, of people whose businesses, Trumpers whose businesses have been disrupted. We'll play the video because I'm going to find it. There's this one of this guy down in Key West. Have you seen this one? No, I've got a different one I want to talk about. The guy in Key West. Okay. There's this guy in Key West, and this has been making the rounds. He's got a construction business in Key West. Six of his employees were rounded up.

Well that's a shame. In a a shame. Maybe he should be arrested. He's a Trumper. He's a Trumper. He voted for Trump. They asked him about it. Can I get his name? I might want to call the ICE number on him because it seems like he's been harboring illegal immigrants. Apparently this is now I want to be clear about this. I'm not sure there's some contention about whether they were here seeking

asylum, going through the legal channels or not. Either way they were rounded up and deported or are in the process of getting deported. And he's on there. He's like, well, I voted for Trump, but I just didn't expect this. You voted for Donald Trump? Yes, I did. Six Nicaraguan men on May 27th were detained along US 1 in Sugarloaf Key on their way to a job.

Vincent Scardina is the owner of the roofing company where they worked. Given his support for the president, we asked what he would tell the commander in chief. What happened here? This situation is just totally, just blatantly not at all what they said it was. You know, that's happening all over the country, right? Like that's happening all over the country. And you're seeing this in our first I was skeptical about these, these polling

numbers on immigration. I really was I was like, No, I'm still skeptical. Okay, fine. I still am skeptical a bit. But we've now had a couple polls in a row, where the numbers are not great. They're dipping. And again, it's all in the presentation of the question. And, you know, some people clearly are supportive of these deportation raids. But I think something's happening here where it's percolating and Trump's got a little bit of hesitation politically now that he's that this bleed underscores. So you know, I don't want to overstate.

There's a story just on this point, circling Louisiana, I've been getting a lot of texts, because Trump's biggest supporter here is a guy that they call Boise. He owns a Bollinger. Who is it? I'm blanking on his real first name, Boise Bollinger. I forget what his name, what his God given name is, but his name is Boise Bollinger. And Trump's biggest supporter had a fundraiser for him the whole time. And his company got, there was a rate. And like three people got, and so I was kind of like, what is happening? You know, so it's some texts going around. It's like, was this, you know, kind of like

a, oh, you know, we're going to take a dive on a couple people to like get these guys off our back, you know, like, is there a backroom deal happening? Or is the US attorney down here just out of control just going after immigrants and doesn't give a fuck if they're mega people or not? Or I don't know, like, you know, what exactly is happening? I haven't got a good answer on that. And when we haven't like quite quite figured it out. But it definitely, you know, so to your point, I guess it's- Did Boise say anything? I haven't seen him on the record yet, no. Okay.

So it just drew interest because of, you know, the company that had happened to that, right? I mean, look- And some people are like, maybe he knew, you know what I mean? Who knows, right? Like it could be a situation where there's a heads up, but I don't know. You start to see this in a number of other places. And I think that obviously, I just want to be consistent with what I've been talking about on other podcasts. They are obviously targeting blue areas, right? Like they're obviously targeting LA. They went after Martha's Vineyard, you know, Chicago. Like they're essentially targeting blue areas. But like our economy is very integrated,

right? And it's like, it's impossible to just target blue areas and blue companies. There are red, there are MAGA people that will have businesses in blue areas. And also, if you empower all these different US attorneys, and you tell them you got to go out and get as many fucking deportations as possible to appease Stephen Miller, well, the people, the guys that got appointed in the red areas, they have their own political interests, right? They don't want to be seen as the people that aren't doing any enforcement, you know, like they might want to run for something in their future life. If you're a, you know, prosecutor, right, in one of these red states. So, so like, even if you're even if the, the

intent is to focus on blue states, and blue areas, like, like in practice, that doesn't really work. Like once you kind of once the cat's out of the bag on all this, you know, you're you see the, you see the kind of splash back. 100%. And I don't think this is what compelled Trump to issue his bleep. But I do think there's a different conversation happening online than in the real world. Shock, I know. But if you look online at any of the MAGA accounts, when they post about soccer mom in Missouri, who was here illegally for 20 years, is deported and people are freaking out in the community. Most of the MAGA responses are, oh, let me get my little violin. Yeah, this is what I voted for.

This is what I voted for. And so, you know, that might compel local officials to be like, yeah, I guess I got to ramp up the deportations. But I do think there's a different type of conversation happening offline. And enough of these instances are taking place where either top business leaders, hoteliers, or whatever we're going to call them, agriculture, tycoons, things like that. And then frankly, the like local construction guy in Key West are just like, you know what, this is too much. And at some point that percolates enough that Trump gets wind of it and you get bleeds like

this. Yeah. Okay. Well, I just want to reiterate for our viewers and listeners. I mean, up to you, obviously, I certainly don't want to do anything that helps ICE or DHS. I think they should, I don't appreciate what they're doing. But if you do happen to have a tip of a mega business owner that you think might be a foul of the law,

I do want to let you know that the DHS has given a number 866-DHS-2-ICE that they want you to call. And so if you know anybody that fits that bill, it might be something to think about. Public service there, Tim. Thank you. Yeah. It's important to do a PSA from time to time on the board podcast. Don't endorse the actions of DHS or ICE, but it's important to kind of know that that option is out there for people that want to avail themselves of it. Sam, anything else?

No, nothing to add on that. On that note, as Tim snitches or encourages snitching. Did I encourage snitching? No, he did not. I did not encourage snitching. He just informed you that there was a hotline. Alright, folks, thanks for tuning in. As our ISIS sub agent to miller advises you of their hotline. And as we bring you the latest on Trump's bleats, subscribe to the feed

and we we will cover all of this the wide spectrum. Take care.