Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Insane Strait of Hormuz Shakedown Lasted ONE DAY

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Sam Stein and Will Saletan take on Trump's rare triple L: his 20% Strait of Hormuz toll dies within 24 hours, E. Jean Carroll finally collects $5.62 million after his lawyers claimed presidential immunity, and ICE halts vehicle stops after multiple fatal shootings.Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to https://Quince.com/bulwarktakes for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.E. Jean Carroll receives $5.62 million sex abuse, defamation payment from Trump after yearslong waitTrump cites presidential immunity to try to toss out $83M judgment he owes to E. Jean CarrollICE Ordered to Cease Most Vehicle Stops After 2 Killings in a Week

Hey, did you hear? Watermelon is back at booster juice all summer long. Nice. I love the watermelon explosion. And the watermelon wave. Yep. They even got a new watermelon assaye bowl this year. The one in a melon bowl. And what does that sound like? Like that. Booster Juice. Canadian born, blending since 1999. Hey, everyone. It's me Sam Stein. Man. You got to Borg. I'm here with Will Sain. Salatin with the bulky headphones today.

I got these from Mars. They're imported straight from Mars. They're good. It's a good look for you. We're here to talk about the rare triple L for Trump. Three setbacks, three retreats today. That doesn't normally happen. And if it does, it's usually like one in a day.

But today was three big ones. I'm going to list the three. And I'm going to let Will have the dealer's choice on which one he wants to talk about first. One, Trump backed off. within a day, this idea that he had floated that the U.S. was going to start charging 20% on all fleets and ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. That is no longer an operative policy. It vanished before we could properly assess it. In fact, I had assigned a story already asking folks to figure out if this was feasible. But no, it's gone. So that's one. Two, E. Gene Carroll finally did receive

her $5.62 million defamation payment from Trump after a years-long litigation process, and when Trump did pretty much everything, does not pay this. He ends up paying this. And then three, the most substantive one I would argue, is that ICE abruptly has stopped or ordered to stop vehicle stops for deportation efforts, roundup efforts. This comes on the heels of two very high-profile killings in the past week, including one that happened tragically in Maine yesterday. All right, three major setbacks of different varieties for Trump. Which one do you like the best?

I know you said that the ice one is the most substantive. I would go with the straight of four moves. Okay, let's go with that. Because this was just fucking nuts. This is the, we started this war and we said we were. We're going to make sure that the Strait of Hormuz was open. Nobody, everybody in our government, Marco Rubio, even J.D. Van, everybody said, nobody should be able to charge a toll. These are international waterways.

And then Donald Trump says, no, we're going to take it over and we're going to charge everybody 20%. Which, if you're familiar with the Sopranos or any other organized crime show, that's what they do. Right. Hey, we're going to protect you. We're going to protect you. We're going to charge you a little fee. So it was nuts from the beginning. I'm glad it's gone for now.

I draw my inspiration from Goodfellas where they take over the restaurant. They give them alone to help keep the restaurant afloat. And then they take fees obviously and they take free food and free booze. And they're just taking stuff from the restaurant. And then when they finally run out of cash, they burn the restaurant down. In this case, I'm not sure they're going to burn the straight down. But I will say it is kind of notable that we started prior to the war with the straight being open. No tolls.

totally fine. Then the war starts. Iran mines the strait gets shut down. They have a memory and my understanding. The straight is opened. It's really not because in the MOU, there was like a provision that literally said Oman and Iran would agree on the structure of the strait to just be open for 60 days. Iran then attacks more ships in the straight. Trump then says, we're going to actually charge for the straight. And now we're back to status quo ante. I don't know. Like what is what is going on here? Well, you know, so before Donald Trump, there was this whole, you know, there was kind of a liberal world order. There was, we, the United States and the Western Europe, and we said we all stood for free markets and freedom and all this stuff. And then came the America first people.

And the America first people were like, hey, we're not going to be chumps, you know, we're not going to have any of that stuff. We're going to take what's ours. And they just kind of discarded that whole world order. And part of what they discarded was this assumption, which was the pre-war, pre-Iran war, straight of four moves. of, you know, international waters and international law. And, you know, when you do that, this is kind of what you end up with. You just end up with the rule of whoever has the power. And so instead of the United States, at least claiming to be the protector of freedom and free transit,

we're now the people, we're just like Iran, Sam. You know, Iran's like, we're going to, we have the power to shut down the strait, so we're going to charge you money. And America comes in and says, we're going to do exactly the same thing except for us. This is brought to you by Quince. So one thing I love about the summers, how easy everything feels. The days, they're a little bit more relaxed. And I find myself reaching for the same, comfortable, go anywhere pieces again and again and again.

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Go to quince.com slash bulwark takes for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash bulwark takes for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash bulwark takes. He did reverse his position. Here's him in the Oval Office explaining why he reversed his position.

We've been doing that for many, many years. It was never fair to me that we would be guarding the strait when we basically don't take anything we don't need the oil at all and it wasn't important for us but it was important for allies it was important for people that we get along with very well including the you know major gulf state countries so i put it out yesterday i thought it was good i was called by different people different countries kings and amears and all of the people that we all know and we all love, and they've been, frankly, they've been very strong partners. And they said, we'd love to do it a different way.

We'd love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars and continue our record setting, because we would, there's never been a time like this with the United States, with the factories, with the plants, with everything else. And we would like to invest tremendously in the United States, as opposed to charging a fee. And I like that, actually, because I don't think anybody should be able to. to charge a fee for the straight or for any other straight relationship in terms of other sections of the world. I don't think anybody should be really in that position.

But we were doing it as a reimbursement. The Gulf states are going to invest a tremendous amount of money into the United States, and that was very satisfactory to me. I think it's actually much better. Different countries, kings and mirrors, they're calling him. They all love him. There's a lot of love. And so the straight's going to bury open.

It is truly one of the most insane ways that we're making policy. Although I don't even count this as policymaking. This is just like him splurting out or blurting out some wind that he had. It's akin to, I compared it to Mexico paying for the southern border wall, right? Like, it's that. It's like some idea in his head that he thinks sounds good that everyone knows is never going to happen. Eging Carroll, let's do that one next because I have more thoughts on the ice one after that. But Eijing Carroll, are you surprised he?

paid up? I'm surprised any time Donald Trump acknowledges defeat in court because he's legendary for A, not paying people, B, for defying courts. So eventually, so Sam, correct me if I'm wrong because I was not up to speed on this. There's two different

Carroll verdict, right? This is the original $5 million verdict. And then there's a separate $83 million verdict, which I think he still hasn't paid. That is correct. Still being contested. So this is a $5 million verdict. The reason it's $5.62 million in payment is that it does include interest, which goes to show you how long this thing's

been out there. $620,000 worth of interest on this thing. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the craziest thing when I was looking at this case, I did not realize that part of what Trump was contesting about these defamation verdicts is he was claiming presidential immunity. Have you, did you catch up with it? I'd not known that one. I mean, okay, you have, you are accused. of, I got to be careful because George Stephanopoulos had to pay millions of dollars for not saying this, right? Trump lost in the civil verdict about having sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her. Yes. So these are all what you might call personal behaviors. They're not presidential. Furthermore, the verdict was in 2024 when he was not president. But Trump's lawyer argued,

his legal team argued that he had presidential immunity against these. On what grounds? On the grounds that I'm just going to read you, this is from the clip in Politico, that the legal team argued that the principles underlying the immunity decision also protect Trump from Carroll's civil lawsuit because Trump's statements about Carol were distributed through the White House press office and came in response to reporter inquiries about a matter of public interest. what the hell?

I mean, how can I, even if you accept the immunity decision from the Supreme Court, it was explicitly about official acts. Just because the White House press office sent out of the statement. You committed sexual abuse, you committed defamation, you issue a statement about it through the White House, and that entitles you to presidential immunity. Insane. That's actually in the Constitution.

I probably haven't read Article 7, Section 2, which says something about the C.C. field on the White House press email list. It provides blanket immunity if you are included on there. No, this is net madness. Carol is 82 years old. She's getting paid. I will just say this because we want to be 100% clear. No lawsuits for us, please. This is from CBS. Carol's lawsuit made claims of sexual abuse and rape as defined by New York's penal code. The jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but rejected the rape claim the state's statute requires proof of force of penetration involving the attacker's genitals. This is me just quoting from CBS, just so

people know we are being dedicated to every little nuance. We don't want to have a Stephanopoul on our hands. All right, the ice thing is what actually I think is the most interesting to me. Tell me why. Well, so we've had these tragedies, first in Houston and yesterday in Maine. And in each case, we've had fairly similar circumstances. Ice agents in cars, in cars. following a suspect who actually turns out to not be their target. In each case, it appears, this is me guessing, but I think it's not so far off, that the people who were being erroneously targeted panicked because they have agents swooping in on them. And they may have steered away or they may have been just panicked,

but in this moment of intense chaos, tragedy, ensued. Ice agents came out and shot people. Yesterday in Maine, they didn't even try to do the usual thing where they say, oh, this person was trying to run over the ICE agent. They said this person was trying to flee the scene and they shot this person because of fear of public safety. This is like callous authoritarian BS behavior. And it's part of something broader, which is ICE's efforts to ramp up deportation numbers to some sort of artificial level to satisfy Stephen Miller. And they've been pretty committed to the proposition of not bending on these on this issue specifically. Even after Pretti and Renee Good, right, they were,

they were not like, oh yeah, we got to unmask our agents and we should just kind of step back. I mean, they momentarily stepped back, but they passed also tens of billions of dollars more for ice. They ramped up. And so for them to now at least acknowledge that these car chases are highly problematic in leading to unnecessary death, to me at least signals that they recognize public opinion has moved fairly rapidly and that they don't want to risk having another type of Minneapolis situation. This is not me saying, and I'll shut up after this, this is not me saying that things are going to permanently change.

there's certainly a real likelihood that this is just window dressing that you're doing this because in Maine specifically Susan Collins knows that this is bad and she's been asked she made a statement saying I asked for them to stop these vehicle stops but I do think it says something about their sense of public opinion actually I don't want you to shut up I want to hear more from you so because here's what I want to know I think you know a good deal about this Isn't it police training, basic law enforcement training, to de-escalate,

that you certainly don't want to create situations where violence is more likely to occur? Yeah, and to take it a step further, there is, at least there wasn't D.C., and I'm not sure if it's still current law, there was ordinances that instructed police to not chase after people who were fleeing the scene in cars because they were worried about the ramifications of having, you know, fast-moving cars going through densely populated areas. I'm not saying that's what happened in Maine, but it does get to your point about de-escalation, which is if you are worried about public safety, the answer is not to chase after or to take out your gun and start shooting.

It's to step back, recognize that there's better ways to detain people or arrest people. And I think the whole folly here is that there are, better ways to do this. You don't have to swoop in with vehicles on someone driving a separate vehicle. You can go to that person's home. You can follow them for a little bit. You can approach them casually, try to de-escalate. But that's not been the case here with ICE, especially in Houston and now in Maine, where they chose direct confrontation. In each case, neither the people were the actually intended targets. Yeah. And following up on that, I want to come back to what you said about Stephen Miller. So the original premise of these ice raids and all these law

enforcement activities was we're going after criminals by which they meant people who had done something aside from just being illegally in the country, people who had committed some kind of violent act or theft or whatever. And then the quotas came in that you were talking about. And so we started getting more and more people who were just here illegally or questionably. And And in those situations in particular, because I think I'm trying to remember what Susan Collins said, I think she used the term non-urgent. Like, you can pull over vehicles if it's urgent, if there's some crime directly involved. But for some ordinary person who just happens to have overstayed a visa or be here otherwise illegally, that's not enough grounds to create this dangerous situation. That's what I thought she was saying.

So her statement today, and I'm going to read it right now, is while the investigation of the Bitter shooting is not yet complete. It raises sufficient critical questions that I spoke with DHS Secretary Muln last night in urge him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops. Non-urgent. I guess that means, yeah, if it's not a suspect, someone who's suspected of a crime, an actual crime, as opposed to being here illegally, they'd stop. So it does leave discretion to ICE to choose that I understand, I suppose, you're not going to say, you know, someone's just committed like a murder and you can't chase after them, right? But yeah, I guess that does sort of stand out here.

But the other thing that you were talking about, which I think is the bigger issue. And Tom Homan mentioned this too. There are like 50-50 now in terms of going after people who have criminal records versus people who have just been here or whose status is expired or who are here illegally. And that's just more innocent people or people who don't really suspect they're going to be deported or people who have, you know, contested deportation getting targeted by ICE. And in the case of the guy in Maine, as I understand it, he was here under a work permit. And so that's even, that even adds another element here where he, you know, he not only was he misidentified, he probably didn't need to be targeted at all in the first place. What the whole thing has the feel of to me is that Americans, there was support for deportation at the beginning.

And the premise was the people that they were going to pick up were really bad because Trump kept saying they're all criminals, right? And that's we're just going to go after criminals. And then what happened is they started going after more and more people who were not criminals. So the justification for creating a situation like this decreased. And simultaneously, the consequences of the confrontations increased. started to see the Renee Goods and the Pretties. But we get more and more people who, you know, where there was no premise to bring to pull them over. They were, as Susan College would say, non-urgent cases. And then so it's become net destructive. It's become net harmful. More life

has been lost as a result of the ICE actions than theoretically would be prevented by picking up some killer. Right. And I think that's why the public opinion has shifted. And that in turn is why DHS and Trump are back and down. They're back and down, first of all, because nationally, the mood is going to turn against them every time this happens. And secondly, Sam, you brought up the point of Maine. Susan Collins is vulnerable for this to happen. In Texas, they're not too worried about that seat.

They probably should be, but they're certainly worried about the seat in Maine. And the other reason is how, I mean, all that's true. And then, of course, the ubiquity of cell phone cameras. Like, you have to wonder how much of this stuff we would never have seen or heard of in the past. And maybe how much we still don't know in the present. But in each of these cases, within 24 hours, you had cell phone footage or security camera footage or testimonials ricocheting through the internet from family members and friends about who these people were, what had happened.

I mean, in the shooting yesterday, you saw almost within hours footage of the slow turn that car was taking and his basically dead. body being dragged from the car after being shot in the head and being handcuffed. And frankly, if that doesn't like get the population uncomfortable with this type of enforcement behavior, we're in a lot of trouble. Right. Like that is you can't really sit there and just be like, okay, I'm okay with that. It's hard to stomach. Part of it is the bloodshed, the death, the violence. And then part of it is the gradually eroding public confidence in DHS and all of the agencies that are doing immigration enforcement. I don't trust the government anymore. They make statements. As you

say, cell phone footage disproves them. They sometimes don't have cell phone footage, but the government claims that something happened and they can't produce any video of it. No one believes them. Yeah, no, that's been true throughout the past year, where we get a response usually from DHS about how you know, they were attacking the ICE agents. I mean, the same thing happened with Pretti. All right, man. Well, thank you for covering this. That's three. setbacks we covered for Trump today. Doesn't always happen. And so when it does, I tell Will every time, go grab those bulky headphones,

get into the studio. We got to talk. Will Salton, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, buddy. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching. You got to subscribe to the Bullwark. Please hit that subscribe button on YouTube. We appreciate it. Take care.