Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Midterm Nightmare Is Starting Early

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Taking care of your health just got easier – start here with Zocdoc: https://zocdoc.com/BULWARKTAKES #sponsoredTim Miller joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline: White House to discuss Donald Trump’s declining approval ratings, voter frustration over the economy and the war in Iran, and Democrats’ midterm opportunities. They also consider the limits of Republican campaign spending and the party’s response to abuse allegations against Rep. Max Miller.Watch Deadline: White House on MS NOW: https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from The Bullwork. I was just on with Nicole Wallace on Deadline White House and my friend Jen Palmieri. We're on the circus together. It's good to see her. She has a new podcast over at Crooked Media. We're discussing Donald Trump's flagging popularity across even his, like, maybe not his core base, but across places in Red America. Jen's been traveling the south, talking to people to the south, talking to Republicans in Texas about why they're interested in James Talley. voting for James Tellerico, she's just talking to evangelical moms, white evangelical moms, Republican in Texas, who are planning to vote for Tala Rico. And, you know, we're kind of analyzing what is happening, like, why, you know, the laws of political gravity are applying to Trump now when they haven't so many times before. And, you know, we get into some of that as fatigue. Paul Meera reminded us that it would be, by the time it's over, it'd be 13 years of Trump. I mean, they talked about the seven-year itch in a marriage. 13 years. It's a long time to have to have this fucker in our life, in our brains, him to think about it. And, you know, even as fans are getting beaten down by a little bit of it.

I referenced this Sean Ryan clip. Actually, why don't we just put that in right here so you guys can see it? I just don't see any positivity coming out of this administration. It seems very self-serving. I have a list of shit printed I could go through. But what was the last one? He fucking made it. So he had Tom Blanche do the dirty work so that him or anybody in his family could ever be audited by the IRS. What the fuck is that shit? The drone company, the $400 million jet from Qatar, the what is it, the executives club? You know about that?

Yeah, yeah, that they started in DC. You don't hear about any of this shit. Yeah. Does this shit look like he's serving the fucking people? No. So you're going to serve that? Are you going to speak out against it and let everybody know what the fuck is happening? You think he'd be better off?

Fox News sure as fuck isn't reporting any of the shit. None of it. That's a little teaser. We get into a lot more. Look at the poll numbers discuss what Democrats need to do to take advantage of this. Hope you enjoy it. Subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends.

Give us a like, comment. What old John McCain used to say? Comments, questions, insults. Right down there. I'll take them all and we'll be seen to go soon. This message is sponsored by Zoc Doc. So if you're anything like me, going to the doctor, is one of the things that's incredibly easy to put off and then put off again.

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Find and book the right doctor with Zockdoc. Head to Zock.com slash bulwark takes to get started and check the appointment off your to-do list. That's ZOC, DOC.com slash bulwarktakes. New York Times puts these numbers in historical perspective, writing this, quote, the latest surveys indicate that Trump is now all but the most unpopular second term president at this stage of their tenure in the history of polling. Going back to the 1940s, the only exception is not one that would give Trump much solace. Richard Nixon had even less public support at this stage in his second term, but at that point, he was days away from resigning.

over the Watergate scandal. With just under three months to go before November's midterms and Trump's polling deep underwater, it could and should spell disaster for Republicans, as the Times points out, quote, the worry for Republicans is not just that voters

disapprove of Donald Trump's handling of the presidency, but that they strongly disapprove, suggesting that they would be more motivated than Trump loyalists to show up this fall. And there's another notable marker, according to the latest findings from Reuters Ipsos, Americans pick Democrats over Republicans as better stewards of the economy for the first time in nearly a decade. The economy, the single issue Donald Trump won the 2024 election

by campaigning on, is now viewed by the American people as something that would be better handled if Democrats were in charge. That's where we begin the hour, some of our favorite experts and friends. Political analysts, host of the Bullwork podcast, Tim Miller makes his triumphant return from vacation. We missed you. Jim Palmeri is also back with us. We're so happy to see you. She's the host of Crooked Media's Longplay podcast. She was a White House communications director under President Obama. So nice to see both of you. So Tim, while you were gone, Donald Trump actually got more a little bit crazier and a lot more unpopular. Your thoughts about where he stands in the polls? I don't know if he could have gotten any crazier, Nicole.

Wow. additional crazy things. Yeah. So we'll quibble. I just want to say, I'm happy to see Jen Palmerie, my former pal on the circus and elsewether. It's been a minute since I've seen her. Look, he is, he's not doing anything to make himself more popular. And this thing, sometimes, like, I feel like you analyze Trump and he gets analyzed separately

from other politicians because he has broken a lot of, like, typical political, obviously norms and traditions, and, like, he's done things that nobody else could do and survived it. And so, you know, people, like, kind of grade him on this weird, like, separate curve, you know, where he has a press conference and they talk about it, you know, where if any other politician had that press conference, they would say, like, this person needs to resign soon or like this person is going to lose their mind. Like, Trump gets graded differently. But, like, one thing that is just the same is that if people don't feel like their needs are being met, like, that their concerns are being addressed, then, like, they're going to look for other options. And Donald Trump, like, say what you want about him in the first term and even in the campaigns. Like, he was always crazy and sometimes seemed to be brought back by his advisors. He always at least, like, pretended to care about people, right?

And, like, pretended to care about what the MAGA base wanted. And he was always somewhat in touch with the MAGA base because he's having these rallies and hearing their response. And he just has totally lost that between the war, economy, prices. You know, we're putting gold everywhere in the capital now. And he doesn't even seem to have a plan. There's no message. There's no kind of idea for what he's going to do to address prices to end the war. And so I do think that's creating a big opportunity for Democrats.

And I'm not that surprised that his numbers have slipped to where they are. Unfortunately, we're so polarized, they probably need to go even lower because of the, and we'll talk about this, because of the kind of states, Democrats need to win to win the Senate. Some of the states Jen's covering on that podcast. But, you know, our states you won by so much. But, you know, I think that it's not looking good. Tim, the numbers don't suggest that the next two plus years are going to be anything resembling. I want to say a picnic, but Trump's never been to a picnic like a carriage ride for Donald Trump.

In terms of who voters blame for the price at the pump, 72% blame Donald Trump, some or a whole lot. I mean, that's basically everybody except, I don't know, the people in his own motorcade. There is no escaping his culpability in the affordability crisis. No, that's nothing he always used to be good at, blaming other people, pointing the finger, not taking responsibility, but he got into this Iran war, which was stupid from the start, obviously stupid. It was a betrayal of his voters. That's obviously the reason why gas prices were up. And if you look at like COVID, for example, he's able to blame a million people. You can blame the Chinese. You can blame Fauci. You can blame Democratic. Like, you know, people could say, well, who could have predicted this virus would come. Like, this was not bad. It was not some exogenous event, right? It was like he started this war after promising that he wouldn't, and now you're paying more. So obviously people are going to blame him. And I think the people being beaten down in the 13 years, the Jen was talking about, I was watching a clip of this podcast, this guy, Sean Ryan, he's a very popular in military

kind of bro podcast. And he seemed so beaten down. I've never seen a podcast or so beaten down. Like he'd gotten on board with Trump, he was excited about it. And like the energy on this podcast, I think he's talking with Tucker. It was just like, I can't. believe it. Who am I going to have to have to hope for anymore? Right. I do think a lot of his, even his excited supporters are now

just like, how can I get excited about this anymore? Like it's hard for me to like get up, you know, if you're being paid millions on Fox to do it, you can do it. But for a lot of other people, it's like how can I get up the just the energy in the morning to be like, I'm really excited about the triumphal arc.

I'm like really excited that we're fighting with Janine Piro about, you know, the reflecting pool, like, he's not giving them anything to be excited about. Your point, I think, about Sean Ryan. Like, polls don't ask the question, but we talked incessantly about the manosphere. Like, I wonder if it's time to start asking questions of people like Sean Ryan. Like, do you feel like less of a man because you fell for Trump's bullshit? I mean, he's played his voters for such fools. He's now, as you point out, literally tacking gold things to the office, and that is a day's work for him. And then in the middle of the

night he'll get up again and work for whatever five minutes it takes him to type out something insane on true social and then charge firms for it to make money based on the policy announcements. The whole thing is a scam. The 80% of voters who think the economy is staying as bad as it is or getting worse include a whole lot of people that were fooled and duped into voting for him more than once. No doubt. And I don't know if anyone would admit that they feel like less a man, maybe some of the comedians would. But I do think that they don't, like they don't have the incentive, right? Like these, the new people in Trump's coalition, right? Like, forget the people who are kind of mega propagandists and that media. Like, they're paid to just spin his BS and

they'll keep doing it up until the last dog dies, right? Some of these other guys that came on board, they thought that they were coming on board for a project. They're mad about whatever. They're mad about the wars. They're mad about COVID. They're mad about woke. You know, and they're like, okay, well, this guy says he's going to deal with all this stuff. And then not only does he not. But like he kind of rubs it in their face. Like he covers up the Epstein files. He gets into a stupid Iran war. He enriches himself. And so I

do think they don't feel like they have to carry his water anymore. And I do think that's a big change. Like my one caution to like the kind of opium on this is just they do still have, Trump's corruption has done one good thing for him. Well, besides his family's intergenerational wealth is that

like he's been shaking down all these companies for money in exchange for you know, tariff write-offs or, you know, regulation rulings. And so their PACs have like so much unimaginable amounts of money. And Elon's putting unimaginable amounts of money again in during the midterms.

And so if you look at, you know, whatever, Jen mentioned Mississippi, a 46% approval. You know, in probably not Mississippi, but like in a state like Iowa or Texas or whatever, like where the Democrats need to win the sentence seat, there's going to be just wall-to-wall ads trying to vilify the Democrats because they can't make Trump look good, right? But just try to at least vilify the Democrats enough to get people to go home to the Republican

or to not flip, et cetera. And, you know, I do think that that is the big challenge ahead for Democrats. It's like, how do you counter that? Because that wave is coming. And they're going to have to go in these places where Trump has won by 10, 11, 12 points. Tim, I think we've both been on campaigns where we had more money and didn't prevail. And we've been on campaigns where we were against. Yes.

Not me. Not the time. What is your sense of the role that money will play? Because I think that could be sort of a head fake, right? And I think you look at other, I mean, this is a nationalized midterm election, no matter what anyone says. And it doesn't override the strengths or weaknesses of individual candidates. But it is more conducive, I guess, to a wave.

Look, I don't think, right, there is a, you know, kind of one-size-fits-all answer to this question. I think that in this Michigan primary tonight, Haley Stevens had more money, and I think in a lot of ways that's going to end up having backfired on her, because a lot of people are kind of unhappy with the special interests manipulation, as they saw it, of the race. We'll see. And, you know, like, I was on Jebs campaign. We had more money. That didn't go well.

So, like, money doesn't save everything. And I think that in a couple of those states that Jen mentioned, particularly Georgia, and North Carolina, like Ossoff and Cooper are running such strong campaigns and swingy states and Trump's so unpopular that the money probably doesn't matter. To me, I think the area to worry is for the Democrats to really take the Senate, they got to win Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, some combination of those four. And, you know, in those states, like, it's just going to be really incumbent on the candidates to distinguish themselves from whatever boogieman brand, the Republicans put out about them on TV.

And Republicans have a lot of money to talk to Republican voters and say, hey, you might not be thrilled about how things are going, but this person is scary for whatever reason. And I think those are going to be the places where that money could matter and where it's just, as Jen said,

the Democrats have to run really strong campaigns. There's going to be a smaller margin for error. They're growing calls for Republican Congressman Max Miller to resign amid allegations that he abused his ex-wife and two-year-old daughter. Axios is reporting that Donald Trump's spoke with Max Miller, informed him that, quote, things aren't looking good, and then repeatedly said his reelection would be tough.

That is according to three sources. Miller has denied all allegations of abuse and has sued his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, for defamation. And in an interview this hour, Jake Tapper on CNN, he vowed to stay in the race. Tim, this shouldn't be a political question. And I guess I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't. But right now, these are the Republicans who have called for Miller's resignation based on what is alleged and what is in the public record. Bernie Marino, his ex-father-in-law, Shelley Moore Capito, Lisa Murkowski, Roger Marshall, Jim Justice, Rick Scott, and Cynthia Loomis.

Max Miller, for his part, says he's staying in and that Donald Trump is standing by him. Of course he is. Your thoughts on why not a single House Republican has come out and called for his resignation? Look, politics. They have a very small majority in the House. And it's been made smaller by resignations by Marjorie Taylor Green and others over the course of the last year and a half. So it's pure politics. It's inexcusable. I understand, you know, Senator Moreno, in his case, going through a personal situation, hard for me to judge what's happening behind the scenes. But, like, Max Miller has other allegations. The former spokesperson for Donald Trump, Stephanie

Grisham alleged that he domestically abused her. So that seems like a pretty credible allegation to me, saying that she was a spokesperson for the Republican Party. That's not some left-wing activist going after him. Not that you should discredit that. But, you know, so if you're a Republican and you're doing this on the merits and you're, and you don't believe that someone that is credibly accused by two women of domestic abuse should be in Congress, then, like, they probably should have been speaking out about Max Miller a lot time ago. We've been covering Max Miller's allegations for a while at the bulwark. So these guys don't care. They wanted to get on their high horse about Graham Platner. All these people,

Wright's Prebis, my former boss, Kevin McCarthy, Kelly and Conway, we're all just condescending going on Fox about how the Democrats are protecting this man and, you know, plenty of potential criticism for Democrats about how they handled the Plattner situation. But like once the credible, the most credible allegation of physical abuse came out. Everyone said that he should resign up to and including his closest political allies. And for Mike Johnson to be silent right now, there's no personal situation there. He's doing it simply to protect his house majority for what, for three months, and they're not even passing anything.

So it's like political power for political power's sake, not even actually for any ideological ends or policy ends. So it's really shameful. We've seen it time and again. There are other Republicans in the House, I should mention that have allegations. Corey Mills, Chuck Edwards, and they're nowhere to be seen.