Bulwark Takes - Trump's Latest Presser Made Our Heads EXPLODE

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Sam Stein and Tim Miller react to the jaw-dropping moment Trump boasted about taking a luxury plane from a foreign government. No spin, no denial, just a full-on flex. They dig into why this matters and what it reveals about how Trump sees the rules.

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bork, and I'm joined by Tim Miller. I always want to get a little Tim Miller on Monday, start the week off right. We're going to be talking about Donald Trump's press conference, which concluded earlier this morning. But before we get into that, subscribe to the feed. All right, Tim, look, the press conference was an out-of-body experience to some degree, because here you have a Democratic, no, sorry, a Republican president, Freudian slip, Republican president next to RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz talking about price controls for prescription drugs

and talking about, you know, alluding to direct negotiations with Qatar to release a hostage apparently going over the head of the Israeli leadership. You have RFK Jr. saying, look, this is Bernie Sanders' dream. And my Bernie Sanders supporting kids were reduced to tears. They were so happy to hear what Trump was doing. So I felt like I was in HuffPost 2007. I was about to write a joyous article about everything that was going on. Well, I mean, you were probably an Islamofascist back then, too. Back then? Yeah, we're going back and forth during this press conference over, you know, is this a, you know, Islamic kleptocracy Petro state that we're running?

Or are we like a Northern European democratic socialist? Well, not democratic socialist, I guess, because Congress didn't actually do this we did this by decree so uh you know kind of a soft authoritarian socialism or maybe a petro islamic islamo-fascist state it's the best of both it's the best of both and the worst of both at the same time um yeah i don't know i mean i guess this is what john thune is for now and mike johnson i guess the party has just totally accepted this. We're just doing price controls. We're doing deals with the people that are funding the Hamas protests. It's fine for us just to take $400 million bribes from countries that are allied with Iran. I guess that's what's happening now. The interesting thing about it is they're unapologetic about this.

Trump was not – maybe I'm overstating it. I noticed a little bit of a slight – kind of like the body language doctor when RFK was like, this was central to Bernie's agenda. The fulcrum. I think he said the fulcrum. Trump did kind of like adjust his body a little bit. And so I don't know if that's just kind of old man being tired standing or whether there's something uncomfortable about that. But, you know, I mean, that is like where these guys landed. I think it's important to note that regardless of what and this is an area where there are a variety

of views on the bulwark slack, what your views are about price controls for uh for pharmaceutical drugs this is not something that a president can do by fiat there's certain things you can do with the negotiations of prices over like government health care sure medicaid or medicare whatever though there are real rules around that and so like some of this is just i just think it's important to contextualize this by saying like they want this to be free PR for them. That's like they are unilaterally reducing pharmaceutical prices, and that's not a smaller version of this in Trump 1.0 and it got shut down because they shockingly sit down, didn't follow the proper rulemaking processes. And the courts were like, no, you can't just do this.

This time around, if you read the exact language of the executive order, it's actually not as far reaching as you would have thought given the sort of boasting that was happening on social media. But it gets to a larger point. And I'm actually curious for your take on this, which is, I think there's way more division within Republican ranks than gets appreciated right now, because there is actually legislation from Josh Hawley to do some version of, you know, reducing pharmaceutical costs. And Josh Hawley also is out there with an op-ed in the New York Times saying,

do not touch Medicaid. Like this is what our people depend on. Josh Hawley seems like he's doing a lot of kind of interesting unorthodox stuff. What's your take on how widely, how widespread that sentiment is survive the next four years and somehow end up in a place where there's like back to some normal political competition where there's not kind of an overhang of a cult-like leader leading the party, I think it's going to be a very interesting debate. I mean, look, I always look to, say what you want about Bannon, but my view has always been that if you look at it, if there's a policy debate between Bannon

and the National Review online, Bannon has pretty much every time been more in line with where actual rank and file Republican voters are than the National Review, the more traditional type view of being less interested in cuts to social services, at least quasi-curious in some tax hikes. But, you know, they're a little bit kind of fake. They really want tax hikes on like one certain class of people, which is like rich salaried people. They want people, they want carried interest, right? Yeah, not really corporations, but still. Sure. So I think that there's something that is interesting about that. You have to know in the current world we're in, right, which is like this kind of rhetorical stuff is happening while the actual people that are still in charge of legislation on the Hill are going to jam through a massive tax cut.

Exactly. Hill are going to jam through a massive tax cut for rich people. And where Trump wants to do handouts for corporate, any billionaire that wants to do him a favor, he'll do favors for back. So those two things are in tension. The actual policy that's happening now with the very slow trajectory towards something a little bit different. Right. Now, you mentioned it, so we'll play the clip. But the RFK Jr. got up there

and was talking about like, you know, no one is, you know, no one has been more willing to stand up to the oligarchs than Trump. Let's play the video and then we can get to it. There has never been a president more willing to stand up to the oligarchs than President Donald Trump. And I'm very, very proud of you, Mr. President, for your courage. I'll say, because I don't want to be crude, your intestinal fortitude, your stiff spine, and your willingness to stand up for the American people. So this one sort of like tickled me a little bit because that's just, I mean, we could go through the list. Like, what are we talking about? Like,

if you're, if you're, you know, a big pocketed donor with access to Trump, more likely than not, you're going to get your way. Just look at what happened with TikTok. Like what? So obviously it's bullshit, but it's just kind of funny to see it play out in public like that. Yeah. I mean, I think the RFK is, is like narrowly thinking about his lane, right, which is like the big medical companies and all that. And like it is true, I guess, that Trump more so than like Mitt Romney was going to – you're not going to see Mitt Romney doing something that the pharma lobby is hostile to. No, pharma never lost before until like the last couple of presidencies. So there is something to be said for that. But it's like – this is kind of like what is the definition of oligarch right you know what i

mean if like your definition of oligarch is like dc lobbyists and university presidents you know like trump has been pretty sure trump has really given them the fucking thing um you know if it's tim cook yeah yeah but if it's like the richest people in the world or by the way aspiring mega aligned dc lobbyists who are crushing it right now you know or like a different category of dc or or the richest people in the world like trump or the richest uh you know oil baron families in the world uh middle eastern oil baron families like you're doing quite well um under trump and so i think that that rf RFK is trying to do a cute rhetorical thing to push back. He also knows that this is – he knows it's a Trump talking point that he can't be bought.

And so he just wants to mimic it. And so he gets up there and he has to say what he has to say. Perhaps it's the water from Rock Creek where he was swimming yesterday that's got the brain worms reactivated. Last thing is the Qatar jet. Have you ever thought about jumping in the water at Rock Creek? I've gone in the water in Rock Creek. Not during the time when there was an advisory not to swim in the water. Even at the non-advisory times.

And not with my jeans on. No, it's nasty water. I'm not like – first of all, I'm not like diving in there and like doing laps. I'm like skipping stones with my kit. But like I'm not going in there with jeans, first of all. I thought not diving in there and doing laps. I'm skipping stones with my kit. But I'm not going in there with jeans, first of all. I thought that was the weirdest part. Who swims with jeans? But also, the bacteria levels are pretty bad right now.

Putting that aside, the $400 million jet or plane, he gets up there and he's like, you losers, you wouldn't accept this thing. Like, obviously, I'm going to take it like this is this is what you do. I think he has some some thing about Sam Snead. We can play that. That's why you have to. Yeah. What do you say to people who view that luxury jet as a personal gift to you?

Why not leave it? You see fake news. It's only only ABC. Well, a few of you would. Let me tell you, you should be embarrassed asking that question. They're giving us a free jet. I could say, no, no, no, don't give us,

I want to pay you a billion or 400 million or whatever it is. Or I could say, thank you very much. You know, there was an old golfer named Sam Snead. Did you ever hear of him? He won 82 tournaments, he was a great golfer. And he had a motto, when they give you a putt, you say thank you very much, you pick up your ball

and you walk to the next hole. A lot of people are stupid. They say no, no, I insist on putting it. Then they putt it and they miss it. And their partner gets angry at them. You know what, remember that, Sam Snead, when they give you a putt, you pick it up and you walk to the next hole and you say,

thank you very much. So if you got a gimme, if you're given a putt, you're given a gimme, I don't know if anyone's a golfer out there, usually it's like within two feet. They say, yeah, you can take it, you don't have to hit it in. He says, you take the gimme. And on that front, I actually do agree. But I don't think that's the actual

analogy here. You don't think this is a gimme? You don't think taking a $400 million bribe from a country that was also funding the Palestine protests that we are – I guess if you are a participant in the Palestine protests and you are on a student visa, America's policy is that we are going to jail you without due process. It's the current Trump administration's policy is that we're going to jail you without due process. It's the current Trump administration's policy. If you are a funder of those protests and a funder of Hamas itself, and you want to give a bribe to the president of the United States, the attorney general says that not only is that a gimme, the attorney general is like, yes, great.

Well, the attorney general did lobby on behalf of the same country like a year ago. This is just as a meta topic about the conversation around Trump. I think this is a good example of like, you know, you can't have a hard and fast rule over how to deal with crazy stuff. Right. Because like, you know, sometimes like, oh, don't chase this thing because it's like not actually going to happen. Like this was one of those right or this thing comes out john carlson because not in people like okay i mean this is are this really going to happen we're going to like the president's going to be on cutter's plane and then you know there's some pushback on it and then trump is just like no yeah no this is happening it's like a gimme that was the best

part when all the mag accounts are like oh fools, once again deranged media, making shit up, and then Trump just was like, actually, yeah. Yes, this is actually happening. No, you're the fools. I'm taking this shit. Have you seen the origin story of how this actually came to be? This is my favorite little anecdote. Oh, no, because I had speculation.

What is this story? The Qatari, I guess, I wonder if it was maybe for the golf tournament. I haven't seen what they were there. But the plane, the air palace that we're taking, was parked at the West Palm Beach FBO. Oh, come on. Yeah. And Trump saw it. And they asked Trump to tour it.

He was like wanting to tour it. So they gave him a tour of it back in February when they happened to be at Florida. I guess, I don't know if they were at the FBO for Mar-a-Lago or for one of the golf tournaments. And it's like a bad episode of Homeland. Yeah. And it's like,

you know, this is pretty nice here. You know, I'm liking, you know, I'm liking the gold toilet, you know, I'm liking the furnishings around here.

Put an extra gold. Yeah. Yeah. We've got, you know, fully reclined seats. So he just liked it a lot. And that was it.

Yeah. I guess that's how the conversation got started and like and then here we are i mean that was the this is just this reminds me that sam sneed story where he's sitting over sitting over a little bit of an ancient golf reference i should mention not exactly a culturally no like bryson j sambo yeah no that's trump though he likes the oldies jack sam you know whatever all right buddy thank you so much really appreciate you walking through another one of these press conferences one a day no he's going overseas now so we might be actually the press conferences will still happen just at odd hours um all right

thank you guys for listening appreciate that too subscribe to the feed and we'll talk to you later