Bulwark Takes - Wes Moore Calls Out Trump’s Lies (w/ John Avlon)

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Maryland’s Democratic governor Wes Moore is not known, exactly, as a brass knuckles guy. And when Donald Trump won office in the fall of 2024, he didn’t plan to become one, even as he recognized that life would become much harder for Democrats like himself. But recent events have tested Moore’s approach. It’s not just that Trump is now threatening to withhold bridge funds for his state because Moore pushed back on Trump’s criticism of crime rates in Baltimore. It’s a series of other decisions, too: from the denial of disaster relief for Maryland flooding, to the DOGE cuts impacting Maryland’s federal workforce, to the decision by the president to stop the FBI from relocating to the Terrapin State. In an interview with The Bulwark—parts of which we are teasing now—Moore delivered some of his sharpest pushback against Trump to date, accusing him of being motivated by pettiness and partisanship. And he outlined how Maryland has responded creatively to the challenges Trump has posed. John's full interview with Governor Wes Moore drops Sunday morning. Don't miss it!

This is a hunger alert. We've detected dangerously low burger levels in your vicinity. Symptoms include spontaneous stomach growling, dramatic sighing, and sudden kale intolerance. Proceed immediately to Jams, Burgers and Shakes for burgers juicier than Aunt Edna's diary. Waffle fries crispier than Mom's hairspray and shakes thicker than Uncle Frank's wallet. Retro vibes, family fun, and flavor that will rock your socks off your blue suede shoes. Visit Jams, Burgers and Shakes, ate Jam Lane Bedford, before hunger claims another victim. Hey, everybody. It's Sam Stein, managing editor at the book. I'm joined by my bud, John Avlon, who is coming fresh from a interview with Westmore, Governor of Maryland. We're here to talk about that. And I guess sort of just how Democratic governors are handling Donald Trump in this moment. John, thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate it. Totally, man. Just to tee up the audience, we're going to give them a little bit of a clip, a preview clip of your interview. The full thing is coming out on Sunday. What time, roughly?

6 a.m. is when it posts. All right. Nice. Okay. So tell me about Wes. How did it go? What did you guys talk about? I know this came in the midst of this kind of tension he has with Donald Trump, where Donald Trump is going after him, threatening around bridge money. Just give us the lay down here. Yeah. So, you know, Westmore is a very engaging, high energy kind of earnest guy. And he's really been rolling up his sleeves as governor, first elected office running for reelection right now. But we had scheduled this a while ago. But in the last couple of days, he's been in some very public tiffs with Donald Trump on social media. Trump at one point in one of his interminable cabinet meetings saying he called him the greatest president of my lifetime, which then the tape existed. The tape did exist. Yes.

So we have the receipts. And spoiler alert, Trump lied. But what he told me was is that Trump has been incredibly petty in ways that hurt the people of Mexico. Maryland, right? So, I mean, denying FEMA funding for flooding in major disasters. There's a fight over the FBI building, which had been authorized by Congress and then was rescinded. You know, look, you know, 12,000 Marylanders lost their jobs because of Doge and other cutbacks. And yet still they've lowered the unemployment rate, a point lower than the national average. What was really striking, though, is the fight over, you know, Trump threatening to send troops to Baltimore.

Right. Right. As it turns out, I mean, I mean, violent crime and homicides are down, you know, 30% or more in Baltimore. And, you know, I think Wes understands that, you know, Democrats need to be tough on crime, but that this is sort of a dangerous despotic theatrics. Right. And he, as a guy who served, says, look, the National Guard troops are being misused. They're being mismanaged. And I'm not going to have it happen on my watch with the National Guard, of whom he serves

Commander-in-Chief. So very insightful, very interesting insight into how you navigate this, but Wes isn't quite doing the Gavin Newsom of trawling on social, but he's punching back. Yeah. Well, let's watch the clip, and I have some thoughts the other end of it. I want to start off by talking about a tussle you've been in with President Trump, not the social media fights, but his sort of threatening to send the National Guard into Baltimore, which I just noticed an article in The Guardian today, violent crime is at an all-time low in Baltimore. Murder rates been cut around 40% since 2020.

So what do you think he's talking about? Honestly, I'm just, I'm deeply offended by what he is doing and personally offended. You know, as someone who, unlike the president of the United States, has actually served and served in combat, led soldiers in combat. for him to use the National Guard in such a theatrical way and such a frankly just nakedly political way is just very deeply offensive. And I think about the members of the National Guard

and I feel bad for them. I feel bad for their family members. I feel bad that they're being used this way, that they're being used as these political pawns in frankly a very cynical game that the President of the United States is doing. Because this idea of deploying the National Guard, inside of our American cities. It is, it is, it is, it is not sustainable. He's now costing the

American taxpayer well over a million dollars a day. And do you know what these guard members are doing right now? They're literally picking up trash. They're mulching. They're raking mulch. Like over a million dollars a day. That's what these National Guardsmen are being asked to do because they're not trained in doing municipal policing. The second thing, it's not sustainable. You're not going to send the National Guard to every major American city, particularly every major American city, that the data doesn't reinforce them being there, but you just want to pick and choose which ones you want to start fights with. And not to mention the fact that it's unconstitutional. And so we're doing this game with these men and women and violating the trust with their families, violating the

trust they put inside of this chain of command. And for what? And so that's why I have just been very vocal and I will continue to be very vocal in saying that this is, this is a distraction from the fact that his policies are continuing to make everything more expensive in people's lives. And I, as the commander-in-chief of the Maryland National Guard and someone who actually takes that role seriously, I will not authorize our National Guard and for our men and women to be used as political tools and political pawns, and especially in a mission that I do not deem to be mission-critical or mission-aligned. So, yeah, that's what sort of not to me because, you know, I happen to know Wes a little bit when our paths crossed from his

punditry days. The guy is just like, I mean, he's stand up and he's also, but he's not like a pugnacious bomb thrower type. He really isn't. And so it seemed like it might be odd for him to have to punch back at Trump. And he's not Newsom. He's just not. And it got to me that I got to thinking about sort of like the different types of approaches that Democratic governors have had to take vis-a-vis Trump. And you have like the Gretchen Whitmer approach, which is I'm going to try to find ways to work with the guy. I'm actually going to go into the Oval Office. I'm going to get pictured with a binder in front of my face in the Oval Office. You have the Newsom model, which was maybe I could try, but ultimately I'm going to have to go toe to toe with this guy. And then you have the,

you know, West Moore model, which is I don't know how to define it because I thought his initial letter to Trump where he said, come walk the streets with me, was not actually an attack. It was just sort of like, hey, we're doing good things here. Let me talk to you about it. But it does seem like he's being forced to be a bit more of a puncher here. I think that's right. I think, you know, West, West could be categorized, you know, love or not a fighter. But his, his email is sort of response to Trump, I think, was done exactly. And I mean, let's take, let's let's, let's walk together. Let me show you what we're doing. Because actually, it's working. But of course, Trump, you know, anything that's not a supplicant Trump takes as an assumption. Right. Right. Right.

And so there's a limit to how you can play that game. What's interesting about Newsom is Newsom made a calculation that in the attention economy, the only way he could fight back and tell his story was to, one, start playing offense on media in a way that is unusual for a sitting governor, sitting down for three-hour podcasts with folks on the far right and the brosphere, which is interesting. But then also, using a governor's press office to become sort of a, war room with a, you know, almost satirical trolling of Trump, well, is a stereotypical trolling of Trump. He's just putting a zero up to them.

Yeah. And so, look, I think what's interesting is that it's worked, even though I don't think it's actually Newsom's natural gear. Where Wes, who's a much more earnest guy, and I think that reads, right? He has a very different soul than Donald Trump. He's not, like, his style and his substance are just very different. it's a more difficult dance, and you've got to work, especially the governor of Maryland, you know, the governors of Maryland and Virginia have the greatest proximity to D.C.

is a practical matter. Yeah, I want to talk about that because they, I mean, here, the issue, of course, and all of this is the dependency that the states have on federal largesse, right? And FEMA is obviously case study of this. But in West's case, of course, it's also that a huge number of his citizens are federal government employees, and then, of course, the Francis Scott Key Bridge. There's just no way to get around the fact that Trump's going to hold that stuff over you, that he's going to use federal funding as a leverage point on you. And, you know,

you see it with like Kathy Hockel and even governors in the Northeast with these wind projects. It's like every single thing becomes a leverage point. And I'm curious in your conversation with West, did you sort of, how do you think he approaches that, knowing that at any moment or some project or some initiative that Trump might turn against him? I don't think he's doing it with on on mental defense, right? I don't get the sense that he's constantly calibrating that this lever could be pulled that would cause him political or practical pain. Neither is he being like, you know what, screw it.

I'm just going to throw a bunch of haymakers because it's good politics. I don't think either of those things are his natural mode. And I, look, when you're dealing with the bullet, what do we know? he's only respect strength and you can't try to get in their head because that's the moment you'll lose the game right right you can't start trying to anticipate everything they could do because the logic of fear is is that itself is corrupting so i i don't think he's over indexing every last thing um but i think he is trying to be principled and clear but civil when he can be you know he's not you know by his nature going to do a performative troll but you know when you hear him he's

really pissed that FEMA denied aid for two cases that clearly warranted it without any explanation. And he clearly feels that Trump is playing politics, you know, just because he's trying to punish blue states that don't have supplicants. Yeah, everything's leverage payment. Everything's leverage. Well, listen, I'm really excited to see the full interview. It is like a fascinating moment for Democratic governors, especially in the context of what you're doing with the podcast, which is like, how do you go about doing productive solutions-oriented governance in this

moment? It's extremely difficult. Wes is trying to figure it out. But people should tune in. It's coming out. The full interview, you're going to see the clip you saw just now, but you're going to see the full interview on Sunday morning at 6 a.m. John, thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Right early. All right, brother. Be well.