Bulwark Takes - Watch Mike Johnson Squirm Over Trump’s $5,000 Bribe

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Sam Stein and Will Saletan take on Mike Johnson’s defense of Republican congressional candidate Brandon Herrera despite the gun YouTuber’s grotesque comments about women and children—and the stark contrast with how Democrats police their own candidates. They also dissect Donald Trump’s proposed $5,000 payout if Republicans retain Congress, then debate the administration’s lack of urgency as AI insiders warn of catastrophic risks and Johnson invokes competition with China to resist rapid regulation.

Hey, everyone. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullock. I'm here with my man, Will Salatin, on Sunday, the 13th, had to double check. Been a long weekend of kids sporting activities. But I did manage to sneak in a bit of viewing of Mike Johnson, our speaker of the house. He did two shows this morning. Am I right? Meet the Press and Jake Topper. He was on CNN and Meet the Press. All right. There's a couple things that popped off to me. But the first one is his answer on this guy. Brendan Herrera. So for folks who don't know, it's Brandon Herrera, not Brendan. Brandon Herrera. He's running in Texas, and he, we've covered him a bit on, like, Will Summer and the trio. We had Brendan Hartnick go to the hill and ask a couple on makes about it. He's a real shock jock. Will, do you know this guy? Have you seen any of his stuff? I've just heard the clips that they

played, yeah. So no. He's, he's a number. He spent his time prior to running for Congress doing like this whole YouTube streamer stuff where he just worships guns and says outrageous, provocative stuff, hangs out with dudes and talks about women in the most deplorable way possible and thinks it's cool. All right. So our guy, Brendan Hartnett, has been digging into the archives and he's found some stuff. Some stuff, it's like almost uncomfortable to talk about, honestly. There's one episode where he just talks about the supplements he takes to make his penis bigger

and his semen more... Sorry, sorry, not a wet bigger, just larger? He wants to see him to be more plentiful. Let's put it that way. Oh, I see. He's one of these wet guys, yeah. Yeah, and he talked a lot about it. It's not, it's so grotesque.

It's really, it's uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about that. The thing that is more political is that he went after Shannon Watts, who's a gun control activist, and, you know, they went back forth a lot because he's a gun nut. And he talked about kids as what he said. And this is just me quoting the guy. He called him cum trophies. And, you know, it's really nasty stuff.

Anyways, he's the type of guy that in normal circumstances you don't want around. You're kind of repulsed by him. But he happens to be running for Congress. It's kind of an importance of for Republicans. And finally, Mike Johnson was asked about this on CNN by Jake Tapper. Take a listen to what Mike Johnson says. I want to ask you, you talked about some of the more extreme DSA-type candidates that Democrats have. Republicans have some candidates like that on their own.

For instance, Brandon Herrera, he's a House candidate in Texas. You've endorsed him. You've fundraised him for him. He's a before he started becoming a congressional correspondent, I mean, congressional, not candidate. He's a YouTuber. And he has said some offensive, sexually explicit, crude things about women and children. Here's a little bit of what he said just three years ago. and I want to warn viewers that this language is pretty gross.

Now directly to Shannon Watts. Hi Shannon. Long-time viewer, first-time caller. First off, I want to get it off my chest. I think moms demand action is fucking stupid. Being a mother doesn't make your opinion any more or less valid. Just because you let somebody cream pie you doesn't mean I have to give a shit about your political opinions.

The fact that you kept your cum trophy doesn't make you any less wrong about the dumb shit that you say. That's him disparaging moms. He's also in a video testing a Nazi-era submachine gun. He called it the, quote, original ghetto blaster. You see him goose-stepping to a Nazi marching song. In a podcast two years ago, he joked, we should abolish old people. I have to say, I know you're not a voter in that district.

You didn't nominate this guy, but I was surprised to see you endorse him and fundraise him. What does his candidate say about the Republican Party's more extreme candidates? Look, detestable language. You know how I feel about all of that, Jake. But I also know Brandon Herrera has been out running a very effective campaign and explained to people that he has apologized for all that. He was a podcaster and a provocateur and tried to get attention. That's not the way I speak or think, and that's not the way most do. But that was his persona online, right?

Now he's running as a very serious candidate for Congress and a very thoughtful guy. I was with him at the convention. So what do you think of that, well? Well, okay. Mike Johnson, correct me, Sam. I thought Mike Johnson was Mr. Family Values. He's the guy who supposedly evaluates everything by its sort of moral, whether it's morally appropriate. And suddenly that filter is just gone.

Like when he says that this guy has an online persona and like somehow that's supposed to be free. First of all, I don't see Republicans forgiving, you know, Abdul El-Sayed or any other Democrat for stuff they said when they did a podcast. They didn't write that off and say, oh, that's his online persona. No, they hold a person accountable. But suddenly, when this guy says this completely disgusting stuff in a context where you feel like that's the real guy and everything else is a front, suddenly that's just an online persona and isn't relevant to them making public policy. I don't get it. And it's not just that. His online persona was his job.

It's like one thing to be like goofing off on Reddit and saying nasty things, which are, you know, was one of the big problems for Grand Platner, obviously. it's quite another thing to have your online persona be the entire reason that you are running for office. I mean, this is why he's the candidate, is that he generated an online following and became popular. Then, of course, Tony Gonzalez, the congressman who had the seat, had an affair with his aide. The aide tragically killed herself. He left office, and this is the guy that they have to replace him. But it really does get to the sort of asymmetry between the parties. I'm going to read a tweet that our boss, Sarah Long will put out, and I'd love your thoughts on this well.

she says one of the assemblies between these parties is dem candidates like abdul el-said are carrying the baggage and paying the price for campaigning with someone who says disgusting things Republicans are straight up running the people who do and say disgusting things and no one blinks and that's true no one blinks like Brendan hartn went to the hill and asked all these Republicans about those quotes from brandon Herrera and no one was like oh yeah he shouldn't be elected he shouldn't be running I'd rather have someone else they're just like nah whatever Right, right. Okay, a couple things. So first of all, I'm really glad you brought up basically Hassan Piker, because the Republicans at their fake midterm convention, they weren't just holding El Cayed accountable for stuff he said in his podcast, right? They're saying, oh, no, you campaign one time or whatever with Hassan Piker. And now we're going to hold you accountable for everything Hassan Piker said. And we know Hassan Piker is doing a lot of shtick, too, right? So that's one step removed from the candidate. Here we have the act, this is to Sarah's point. Here we have the actual candidate has said the disgusting stuff. And it's not even sort of disgusting stuff that like has some sort of a policy background to it. It's just gratuitously nasty and shows sort of an ugly side to his character. So I totally agree with her point about the double standard. But the larger thing that I would add to that is what we have here is a party. I think the reason why these Republicans on the Hill are telling Brandon, not Brandon, you know, that they're like ignoring

this is because they've been trained in the age of Trump, right? And the age of Trump. Yeah. So like, that's what Max Miller said, right? I mean, Max Miller is the entire reason that he's sticking around. He was like, Trump stuck around. Totally. You know, and I, and he's my hero, right?

Like, so yeah, it's Trump. Yeah. And there's, so I would take people back. To me, this goes back to 2015. There was a moment when the, the former Republican Party thought, oh, we can't say this kind of stuff. We can't run this kind of candidate. And basically it was when Donald Trump, who would, but that,

time was sort of a nobody, not a nobody, but like not a politician. He runs for president and he insults John McCain at a Republican forum in Iowa. Like I like people who weren't captured. And there was this massive intake of breath around the Republican Party. You can't do that. You can't say that. And he did it and he got away with it and he won. And all the Republicans looked at that. And ever since they have basically seen this guy expose Americans or expose Republicans as not giving a damn about this kind of gross behavior. And so now they just look the other way. And even Mike Johnson, Mr. Family Values, does it. It's true. The sanctimony from Mike Johnson when it comes to anyone else that's not a Republican. It does raise the question, though, like, should Democrats

reassess how they hold or how they respond to these instances? I mean, I'm not saying, well, I guess, I don't know. Why play on a higher playing field when you don't have to? It does raise that question. question. Yeah, I don't know. Look, all of us at the bulwark, we believe in institutions, we believe in norms. We would like to restore those. And at the other party is, if the Republican party isn't going to do it, then let's find a way to do it ourselves. We must uphold these values. But at the same time, Sam, I think you're getting at the dilemma, which is, are we going to be the only ones who do that? Because one of the things Trump has done is he's identified people who uphold institutions and norms. He's identified us that as a weakness. And then,

he can exploit it. You guys can worry about that stuff. I'm going to trash the norms and I'm going to get the votes. And the sad thing is it's working and it's kind of driving Democrats to ask the question that you're raising. Should we give up on the institutions on the norm too? Should we put up a bunch of shock, a bunch of shock shocks too? I don't know. What do you think? Well, no, I don't think so. That might make me naive, but I do think there's actually value in, you know, holding up good character. And I think people will reward you for it. it's not the problem is not going to be always consistent right it's like let's be real about it if you're in like i don't know if you're in a situation where like you're going to lose the senate seat if this guy has to be

kicked to the curb right democrats would probably think differently about whether to hold response it's just truth it's the reality of it right the grand planter thing was kind of an interesting case study in this it's like they did hold him accountable they did force him to the race uh for force him out of the race but if we're being honest like they're That sort of accountability came when the polls showed that he had, that more or less he was on the path to losing. And so this is, you know, I'm not saying the two parties are the same. I do think Democrats are way more invested in holding up character and defending institutions than Republicans at this point. But there is political expediency in all this. Right. Can I ask you a gut check on this?

Sure. Suppose that Graham Platner polls on Max Miller. He stays in past the point where. That's a good point. Now you have to choose. Are you going to stay with Platner? Now that he's your only option. Are you going to try to do some write-in thing? What are you going to do? No, I mean, that's, that is the ultimate question. I guess the distinction here is that Democrats in a way for that choice. They said you have to get out. Everyone said they had to get out. Leadership on down. Whereas with Max Miller, Trump has been fine with him. Mike Johnson has said he's fine with him. The NRCC is actually raising money for him. Like they didn't, they didn't. They didn't. They didn't. make the choice for Max Miller and Democrats did. I think that's the most, that's the most relevant contrast right there. But yeah, if the hypothetical that you presented was there, I don't know what they would do. I honestly don't know. There's a couple of things that Johnson said that you flagged. He was on, again, he's on Meet the Press and CNN. He was asked about this $5,000,

I don't know, bribe, let's just call him a bribe. It's a bribe. Why are we playing around with dividend here. It's a bribe. John Trump wants to give every adult citizen $5,000, but only if Republicans retain both houses of Congress. It's ridiculous. And Johnson's asked, like, well, do you support it? Where is this coming from? Let's watch what he says. Let's turn to the midterms because President Trump is proposing to pay every American adult $5,000, but only if Republicans keep control of the House and the Senate. For that $5,000 check, doesn't the president need Congress, to act and are you going to carry out his wishes? I would assume, yes, he'd need Congress to act, and that's a creative idea.

He launched it at our convention and got a lot of people excited. Of course, devil's in the details. We have to figure all that out. But I think what he was articulating there, Jay, is that he's saying that if you want more money in your pocket, you have to keep Republicans in charge. Why? Because we're talking about the record of achievement. Look at what we've done since President Trump took over.

Republicans have had control of the House and Senate. Well, you seem tickled by this. Why? So maybe this is kind of a shade-in-foot. I'm watching Johnson squirm because he doesn't want to say that he's going to like pass this $5,000 bribe. First of all, he can't do it. He can't do it because the Freedom Caucus people won't even let him do it,

let alone the Democrats, right? But he's trying to like turn this into something else. But at the same time, he knows this isn't bonkers. But he can't say that because the big orange guy will get mad at him, right? So if he comes up with this language, I love this what he says. Oh, it's creative, right? Like creative, like a lunatic showed up like a bribe. A Republican is offering money to trillions of dollars and bribes.

So it's creative. And then he says it's out of the box. It's outside the box. Yeah, of course it's outside the box. It's definitely outside the box. So it's just a wild sort of existence. of like how to sound like you're being complimentary when you really think the idea is nuts. Yeah, he's like, Trump's a big ideas guy. And this is a big idea. And it's like, no, it's not.

It's just a pretty simple idea. It's bribery. It's been around for a while. You're paying people to vote for you. That's kind of like the interesting. The thing about Trump is he does the stuff out. This is not a new thought. But this is yet again a case where he does the stuff you're not supposed to do public and he gets away with it. Like if he were to pay everyone $5,000, privately for their votes, we'd be like, you cannot do that. That's illegal. But he announces it and says, yay, if we get this vote, you'll get $5,000. You know, like Trump is this giant experiment, and what if you had no values at all, right? You're just trying to win elections. So you're in this party that says, like, we believe in small limited government and you only get paid if you

work and this kind of thing. But then, like, so you're trying to do things within that framework, like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, et cetera, right? Okay, it's no tax. That's still a Republican. But then, like, you're still trailing on the polls, and you're like, how about if I just throw money at people, like, from the government? Then you've got to come up with this language. Oh, we'll call it a dividend. Does that make it a Republican idea?

And it was, and like, even, I mean, I'm crudous to Tapper for calling him out. And to Christiwalka, he's like, you know, it doesn't have to be from the, you know, from, it doesn't have to contribute to the debt because we have all this tariff rebate coming in. They're like, there's like $300 billion in tariff rebate. This is one

$1.3 trillion. What are you talking about? But he kind of skirts around that. He just doesn't even answer. Like, okay, so Tapper totally flagged him on this. There's not enough tariff money. But like, what is tariff money? It's taxed.

It's our money. You're taxing and then you're giving the money to people. Like, how is this a Republican party, you know? We're taxing Americans to give money back to Americans that we don't have. So, no, it's wild shit. It would be, it's like, I would be curious. I actually kind of want to see it come to a vote because I would like. like to see people take stands on this and see what they have to say. Who's the, who's the freedom

guy who was against it? Oh, Ralph Norman. But like, there are people in the Freedom Caucus who actually think the Republican Party should still be conservative in the sense of like, you know, not spending money, it doesn't have. Like, we're $40 trillion in debt. We're going to like throw another. The will. If it actually came to a vote, they'd all get on board, right? I guess Norman doesn't have anything to, you know, vote for anymore because he's all supposed to primaries. But most of them, 99% would probably just get on board. right? If they had to, if they get the vote, that's probably what would happen. But Mike Johnson's job, and he's really good at it, is to take this moron, this orange moron and his crazy ideas and finesse it,

massage it into something that Republicans could vote for. So they'll try to make it like a tax rebate or something like that. You know, that'll sort of fit within their parameters. As if that won't hurt the debt. Okay. Last thing, and I'll take this one, but if you have thoughts, I'm curious. Johnson was asked about this AI regulation. So I'm not like an AI expert at all. I've done no reporting about it, but I am reading like everyone else,

what is like abject panic over the past couple of weeks sparked by a couple of AI executives and workers coming forward saying, hey, this thing's getting out of control. There's like a 10% chance that it could, you know, decimate humanity. We could go extinct. The type of shit that, you know,

normally you would kind of like sit up and be like, oh my God, that's the cost coming from side of the house. Then we had a couple executives come out over the weekend and be like, hey, we really do need to slow down. The White House's posture has been sort of bewildering to me. Trump basically is like, eh, whatever.

It will all work out. It always does. And then he juts off to Ireland to watch a golf course at his golf resort. And it's like, you know, I don't know. That just really bothered me for some reason. Like, just you don't have to do that. And the contrast is ridiculous. David Sacks, who's basically the AI guy and the crypto guy in the White House, he was like,

oh, yeah, if you want to slow down, go for it. We're not going to get in your way, but don't act like, you know, this isn't a problem of your own creation. I thought that was ridiculous, too. Like, if you are an elected office, if you are serving the president, if you are entrusted by the people to protect them, you can't just be like, ah, we're not going to do anything, okay? I mean, that's absurd.

But Johnson basically took that posture. Johnson was like, I love to, he pointed everyone to David Sacks's. tweet. He thought it was brilliant. I didn't think it was brilliant. And then he raised the prospect that we might lose the a IRA to China as a reason to not go quickly on regulation. He did say, let's get everyone into a room, but he's like, we shouldn't rush it. We shouldn't rush it. Like, we need to be careful here. And I don't know, man. I get like Republicans don't like to regulate and that's part of their DNA. But when you have people saying our product could kill humanity and you are the highest person in the House of Representatives,

and you can write the laws to help. Right. Have some urgency. Like, take it seriously. You don't have to, like, be so nonchalant about it. And that really bothered me. Yeah. Well, this China angle is actually pretty important

because you've got the threat that you're articulating about. It's the AI going to kill humanity, do stuff to us. And then you've got the counter argument, which is, hey, if we restrain our AI in the United States and in the West, China or some malifactor is going to have their own AI and their AI is going to beat our AI because we're restraining ours and they're not. It's like an arms race thing, right? And I don't know exactly how to sort out those arguments, but I do know this, Sam. If you're an AI and you're watching this debate, you are learning how to play humanity, right? You're like, okay. Yeah. If I can, I mean, seriously, like, you know,

we'll have the transcript of this up and there'll be people writing articles and the AI is going to look at what we say and the AI is probably figuring out, okay. So if we want to kill off the humans, what we want to do is create this sort of pit the humans against each other, this whole China argument. Let's get that going, right? So the Americans will restrain theirs and then we'll do something with the Chinese and we'll get them fighting each other. And meanwhile, we'll team up against them. Totally. Although I don't like to think about it like that because it makes it very dark. It's just weird to me. It's like, again, he's a president of the United States, the speaker of the house, and they're just like, let's let's like not go crazy with the regulation. And it's just in a normal universe,

I think what you would get is from the White House or from the Speaker's Office, we hear what they're saying. We take it very seriously. We want to convene everyone immediately. Start the process. We're not going to be prescriptive, but we've got to get this conversation going. President Trump's going to speak with President Xi in some summit in a couple of weeks, it will be brought up there. We need to get on a legislative framework. It's going to take time, but we are on top of it. You'd want to show that you're on top of it. And yet that's not at all the posture from Johnson and certainly not the posture from Trump, who seems totally disinterested in this. Yeah, well, Trump has been laissez-faire about this the whole time. Even when

other Republicans were literally, they're looking at polls, they're looking at political indices and they can see that there's a backlash against AI and data centers and all that stuff. Trump has been pro the whole time. And he's been making the China argument, you know, and that's, So is it, is it just because he's in the, he likes, I mean, they've given him so much money and he feels like, you know, he wants to keep him on on his good side or is it just? I don't know. But Sam, he gets ideas in his head. He gets a framework like Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That drives everything forever.

No argument can overtake it. I won the 2020 election. Here it's we have to beat China at AI. That is completely driving everything. He says it's going to take a lot to turn him around. Maybe the AI companies coming out and saying it, maybe that can do. Trump's a product of the 80s. Hear me out, right?

That's when he really burst out, 80s and 90s, right? He saw the Terminator. He saw Terminator 2 as well, right? He knows what SkyNet is. Maybe the answer to this is we get Schwarzenegger to call him up and be like, Donald, you must regulate AI. I'm like not even joking. I feel like that could possibly work.

Arnold's the only one here. Okay, Sam, you just accomplished something, which is that you've produced a bulwark product that people in the White House are going to grab onto and say, Stein's got a great idea. Get Schwarzenegger on the phone. Get Schwarzenegger on the phone. Absolutely.

That's the thing that's going to turn Trump around. That's a better shot than anything else I've heard. It's not the worst idea I've ever had. I've had bad ideas, though. So we'll see. If you want to use it in the White House, you can credit it called the Stein idea. I won't demand royalties.

I'll just take the flowers for saving humanity. It would be amazing if it worked and if it started here. That would be incredible. I hope that happens. All right, Will, thank you so much. We appreciate it. For those who watched on Sunday, we do this out of love.

We do this so that you don't have to watch these shows. We know it's a burden. And we hope in exchange that you can, you know, see it in your heart, maybe to subscribe to the bulwark. Just a little token of appreciation. Thank you. All right.

Well, talk to that, buddy. All right.