Bulwark Takes - We Quiz Tim on the Crazy Stuff That Happened When He Was Out

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Tim Miller and producer Ansley Skipper test how much political news made it through Tim’s vacation bubble, from Trump’s White House correspondents’ dinner insults and the Fauci diaries to Canada tariffs, RFK Jr.’s cooking show, and a bizarre lettuce-recall controversy.Right now get quality window treatments that fit your budget with 3 Day Blinds. Head to https://3DayBlinds.com/BULWARKTAKES for their buy one get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, and drapery.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. We're here on Bullwork takes. I'm back. Look at my tan. Look at that tan. Back from vacation. I'm here with producer Ansley, who I think, as this is correct, you're making your video YouTube debut. You've been Voice of God before. That's right. Let's hope I don't break the camera. I don't know. We'll see. I think you're going to do wonderful people to be really thrilled to get to know you. Ansley, it's kind of like I think a little bit of a stereotype of kind of the gay and lesbian. Wait, what's the modern family thing? Like the Dio. We have a little bit of that. I went on vacation and I totally bubbled myself. I drank rosé. I read gay fiction.

I read some history too. And I just, you know, whatever, checked out. Ansley, producer, Ansley was back at home, still working at the grindstone. Typical, hard-nosed lesbian. And I appreciated that. And so I thought it would be fun for her to come up with a little quiz for me. of things that happened when I was gone to see

what broke through my bubble to see how well I know Trump if I can just if I can just sense it if I had to live this stuff if I can just imagine it myself and we're gonna try it we're doing it live

I'm gonna pass the host baton over to her I've got some politics stuff some stuff that was maybe a little less like politicsie that maybe you were less prioritizing and catching up so I deleted Twitter and slack and so the only things that bubbled me

were assholes that would text me like my pod bro text chain screw you guys and instagram sometimes people you know people post about politics not on instagram that's tough so that's that's hard okay all right let's go um my buddy claude helped me with this first one the summarize a news event so you know you know it's like you never know how much is gonna be real or not so i'm gonna go sentence by sentence and i want you to tell me if you think like each bit of it is true okay so taylor farms you may or may not know is a major lettuce supplier for Taco Bell and some common grocery real tailors. They recalled their iceberg lettuce from Central Mexico after it was linked to a large multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak. Do we think that's real?

I hope it wasn't from Mexico because I was eating lettuce-wrapped tacos, but I'm concerned it's real. It is real. That is real. Just in case you're wondering, cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that is spread through food or water contaminated with feces. Infection causes watery, sometimes explosive diarrhea that can last for weeks if untreated, though it's rarely life-threatening. Now, we did have some really good headlines for Jonathan Cone pieces related to the fact that there was a explosive diarrhea parasite gone around. So there were some perks to this.

But the FDA announced that their positive test result of Taylor Farms led us for cyclospora was actually a false positive and that they had no conditional. confirmed positive product test for the parasite. Real or fake. That doesn't feel right. That is true. Really? So the weird part is FDA comes out and says this was a false positive, but Taylor Farms

didn't resend their recall. So it does it? What is happening? I don't know. I'm more confused than when we started. Yeah, I know. So everybody else is confused too. And the punchline here is that now,

the top Dems on the House Oversight Committee, friend of the pod, Robert Garcia, is looking into whether there was a connection between the fact that Taylor Farms donated a bunch of money to Trump and met privately with the White House the night before the FDA named their lettuce as the source and the fact that we now have this false positive test results.

Is corruption in the diarrhea lettuce? I think there's, I don't know. I'm just asking questions. It seems like there's corruption in the diarrhea lettuce story. So it got weird. It got really weird. And by the way, when there was a lot of lettuce problems here in the Upper Midwest, we also had a lot of smoke from the Canadian wildfires. So it was a real dystopian period there while you were on the beach. Yeah.

All right. That was a fun one. That was weird. Which of these weird things is a real thing that happened? A, Trump posted an AI photo of J.D. Vance as Judas. B. Trump posted an AI photo of Caitlin Collins as Dylan Mulvaney. Or C.

Trump posted an AI photo of James Tolariko as RuPaul. I'm sad to say Caitlin broke through my bubble. Oh, no. I don't know how. Instagram, I think. Caitlin broke through my bubble somehow. So I saw that. Then you know a little bit about the White House Correspondence dinner speech.

I really don't, actually. You don't? Okay. I literally know nothing about the, like, I thickened my bubble around correspondence material. So even if something like appeared on my screen, I just like fucking power scrolls. I know nothing about it. Literally nothing. Okay, great.

This will be a great test of like how well, you know, the Trump insults them. He really, it was like sort of an all time, ugly, gross rant from him in the speech of just like a cavalcade of insult. So I'm going to give you an insult. And I want you to see if you can like identify who it might be about. Okay. So what about one of the sloppiest human beings you'll ever meet? I'm going to say, hmm, Chris Christie came to mine initially, but why would he talk

about Chris Christie anymore? And so then that makes me think about J.B. Pritzker. And so J.B. Pritzker. Okay. Well, your first instinct was correct. It was Chris. Chris. Chris. Again, I mean, how did he come up? I couldn't even tell you. Couldn't even tell you. It was incomprehensible. And we got down memory lane a little bit with like when Obama made front of Trump at the

Correspondent Center. That was a reference. So maybe we were doing like a little flashback to the 20s. Chris Christie was the first mainstream Republican to endorse Donald Trump. And it's like if you listed the people who are responsible for the hellscape that we're in right now, he's kind of the top couple. So yeah, totally. He's one of my least favorites.

Okay. Dumbest man on television. Dumbest man on television. You know, my first thing that came to mind is Don Lemon. because he likes to call black people dumb, but Don isn't on TV anymore. And so it's probably not that. I think that...

I don't even know. Does he I can even know the MS now hosts anymore? I don't think so. I'm going to say Jake Tapper. Okay, again, like, new rule. You have to go with your first answer. It was Don Lemon. Oh, really?

And like, yeah, I mean, it just shows you... Man, I'm fucking mailing it. He is, though, that, like, he doesn't realize that Don Lemon's not on television anymore. But I guess dumbest man on Substact doesn't quite have the same ring to it. I don't know. Yeah. I guess.

I was being on video. I was fan on YouTube. Whatever. I mean, yeah, I don't. I think Trump has bubbled himself. Like in the first term, I think he was watching a lot of CNN, and I don't think that's happening.

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Close, Gavin. Is that true about Gavin? Does he struggle to read speeches? So this is about the dyslexia. Oh, this is about the dyslexia thing. You know, you know, so did a dyslexia joke. Yep. Okay, yeah. I mean, like, the dude is not, like, I really didn't know any of this. But my sense, like, he just doesn't have his A game.

I mean, like, Trump was pretty good. Like, the insult comedy, you can see what you want about Trump. The insult comedy was never exactly, you know, my bag. He never really made me laugh that much. But, you know, like sometimes, sometimes he'd sneak me with something. Like, back in 2016, I forget what he said. He said something really funny about Rand Paul on, like, the first debate and how, how sloppy he looked and how he's at the end of the row or something. And I did remember catching myself chuckling and then feeling bad about myself for that.

And I just, I feels like he's lost his touch a little bit on this. This might be part of the dementia. Okay, what else? Okay. I've got five quotes that may or. may not be from the Fauci Diaries. Did you hear about this? The Fauci Diaries only

breached my bubble in that people who like Fauci and respect him, like there was on one of my text chains, there was some joking about how Fauci it's like a little bit of a star fucker, I guess. Again, this is I don't, this is secondhand because I've not read, now I'm doing the Trump pants,

I haven't read anything. But I guess he was like in his diaries, he was like talking about like how like if somebody was an a plus dinner date or a minus sort of like he's like grading like the people he's got anyway so there was some teasing or joshing of him about how much he cared about you know that kind of stuff um on one of my text chains and then i you know i saw the like republicans for like yelling at them but that's all i've got we've got five of these i'll try to go for him pretty quickly um first one katie miller and i laugh at each other in the sit room.

I remember this from when it from before. This, this was some, so there's some references before the diaries. This is true. Yeah, that's right. It started this whole thing because he also talked about in the diaries how Katie Miller would call him and ask him for advice about staying healthy while pregnant. And she like went crazy on Twitter saying that basically the whole reason she was chummy with him was that she wanted to keep her enemies close.

Like, implied this dude that she was trusting for medical advice was she was doing that because he was her enemy. Yeah. Like performative, he's not really my friend signaling. Oh, yeah. Sorry, the doctor that was helping you with advice when you're nervous and you were pregnant, when there's a new disease, people didn't know anything about. Yeah, you're keeping them close as part of a plot. God, I hate these people.

Okay, what else? This gets in a more sort of what you were talking about. Julia Roberts is so charming, natural, fun, and amazingly beautiful. When my image came up on the screen, she gasped and said that every time she sees me, her throat gets dry and she gets nervous. That's too embarrassing for you to make up, I think. I think that's got to be true. Yeah, that's true.

This was one of a few different, particularly female stars that he was kind of pining after. That's a diary, I guess. But, you know, act like you've been there. before. Yeah. I don't chill out a little bit. Okay. Here's another one.

It would have seemed utterly insane just a few months ago, but I actually think I could run for president and win. Whether I want to do that is another question. I'm praying that that's fake. You would be correct. That was my best attempt to like come up with something crazy that somebody would say who just sort of had his 15 minutes. Yeah, not real.

Okay. Whew. Yeah. Thank goodness. Because I want to like Fauci. Well, it's about to get harder. Okay. Intense publicity about me continues

with stories of grandmothers who have crushes on me. Petitions to vote me, sexiest man alive. Oh, I'm getting secondhand embarrassment for Anthony Fauci. I guess that's real. Yeah, it's real.

Okay, last one. Fauci Madness continues with multiple articles and every sort of paraphernalia and restaurants. I'm sorry. He wrote Fauci Madness. I don't even want to hear the rest.

He wrote that. that? He wrote the phrase Fauci madness? Yeah. Oh, my God. I just, it's tough. You know, I'm about to say something that I'm going to give a very big wind up to

because I just realize it's about to come out of my mouth that it's going to feel very bad. And so I'm not in any way comparing Anthony Fauci, good man, hero of the AIDS epidemic, somebody who's doing the best that he could, and face a very challenging, virus that came to our shores, don't want to compare him at all

to the people in the Epstein files. There is like a, there is this, like one of the weaknesses of people in the Epstein files, though, like, that has nothing to do with the pedophilia. Because like, well, it has something to do with the pedophilia, but it's like none of these people are pedophiles, right? Some of you that look really bad in the Epstein files

are not pedophiles, are not, pedophile protectors are not like whatever what they are is there people that are weak and want um to hobnob with other famous people like this is just a human weakness like people love to like feel important and like you end up getting sucked into bad things when you like care so much about that but you like cares which will be really important you see this in the files like people are like oh i went to this dinner because epstein invited me so it was like oh mel brooks is going to i don't want to and ain't people, Mel Brooks. So, I don't know if he was at any dinners.

But, you know, like, these fucking famous director or famous people was there. So I'll go. And, like, now you're in the Epstein Fowles. It's like, dude, like, you had a little discretion. Ugh, people really just, poor Anthony Fauci. You know, vanity. Vanity's tough. It's true.

That was good. I didn't know how you were going to bring that back around. But, but, yeah, that makes sense. I brought it up. All right. True or false rapid fire, and then we'll be done because I think you think you're mostly caught up on the news. Okay. All right.

True or false. Mitch McConnell offered proof of life by calling into Hannity. False. Correct. We just got that second picture. Same pose? Weird.

Weird. Kimberly Gilfoyle got married in Las Vegas and celebrated with Joe Kent, Tucker Carlson, and Thomas Massey. True or false? I want... False? So it's false, but the only thing that's incorrect about that is that it was Kimberly Gilbert Gilfoy because it was actually Marjorie Taylor Green who got married in Las Vegas.

Oh, good for MTV. G, Mazel Toff, M-TG. I did not know that she got married. It's too bad Joe Kent was there, but okay. Cheers. True or false. Trump imposed additional tariffs on Canada because their wildfires made American cities smoky. True.

Yep. Really? That really happened? That really happened. Yeah. There was a, he announced new tariffs and there was contemporaneous reporting from folks that he was, when he discussed the tariffs he was talking about the fact that they had sent their smoke down to us. God.

Okay. That's depressing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to pause here and I have to chastise you Ansley. We don't get money from the tariffs. Okay.

It's important that as free markets. We don't get money. We pay the money. No, no, no. Somehow we're going to get checks, right? No, no. We pay the money. So they put tariffs on and then the very,

within the people that buy the goods pay more. So anyway, just FYI on the smoke tariff. All right, last one. Back to MaguWorld. True or false, RFK Jr. launched a new cooking show featuring celebrity chefs called The Real Food Show. I mean, that's so stupid. It has to be true. Yeah, that's true.

That's what he's doing. He's not taking care of the cyclospora lettuce, but he is doing. With the measles outbreak. Oh, yeah, that too, that little thing. Yeah. Hi, Charles, welcome back to my cooking show. We're going to get some bear carcass. I'm going to eat the bear ears.

All right. Well, that's good. I feel like I did pretty good. Yeah, you did. I mean, I feel like maybe you didn't, you unbubbled pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, you know, look, I'm a rapid fire consumer of information. But some of that stuff I did not know.

and who the hell knows. It could have been weirder. So we'll see. We'll see what August brings forth. I have to imagine there's some surprises I had. I appreciate you for grinding this out, though, Ansel. Yeah, of course. You know, I mean,

got to make sure none of these weird headlines go unnoticed. Appreciate everybody. Let us know what you think about the quiz. Trio's back soon. Speaking of weird stories. Some of the stuff I'm hoping, Anzley kept out of the quiz because we'd just save it for the trio.

So we'll be reuniting later this week. subscribe to the feed give Anzley some praise well-deserved praise from working while i was tanning myself and uh we'll see everybody soon