Bulwark Takes - Wrecking Ball TODDLERS Trump and Elon Are Making Susie Wiles' Life HELL

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Tim Miller and John Avlon join forces to talk about Trump and Elon's growing relationship, Susie Wiles having to deal with them, and much more.

Hey everybody, Tim Miller with the Bulwark here with my buddy John Avalon, who's doing the How to Fix It podcast right here on the YouTube feed. If you haven't been checking it out, I highly recommend it. And I brought him in because I want to talk about a new story from Alexandra Ulmer over at Reuters. She's a great reporter. And she's writing about how Elon Musk's tactics are frustrating some senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

I wanted to palm on because I've got a lot of thoughts about Susie Wiles and what is happening here. But I'm curious, John, just your, and like, all this stuff has changed so rapidly. Like the, you know, right after the election, the Elon thing, I mean, it could have been a blue ribbon commission that was really nothing, you know, or it could have, or it could have been what we've seen, which is just like a radical, illiberal out, you know, extrajudicial effort to remake the whole government. We're at the far end of that, but I'm just kind of wondering what you think, what you've seen on the merits and kind of the political implications.

Well, shit, man. I mean, look, this is, this is the more extreme version of, of, of that Overton window, but nobody should be surprised. And I think Elon was, I think, critical to Trump winning. I don't think without a quarter of a billion from Elon, constitutional, getting data is, you know, if you're not worried, you're not paying attention. If you give a damn about, you know, American democracy and constitutional order. The spinelessness of the Republicans in abandoning every single one of their alleged principles, constitutional conservatism, defense of democracy, due process. I mean, there was always a little schizophrenic behavior with around the unitary executive versus little r republican values, but this is just damn. And obviously using new data and new technology and the world's richest man to do it.

The conflict with, you know, the idea that anyone was going to be sort of the same keeper in the administration. We've seen this movie before. That's the thing. Like, we've seen this movie. You know, John Kelly couldn't do it. And Susie Walls, it's great. You know, you have an alleged adult in the room. But but this place, you know, just like the deal when oligarchs back a demagogue thinking they can corral them, that turns out well. On the flip side, the idea that anyone's going to corral the oligarchs or the demagogues is just a fool's error. Crazy. Yeah. And the story that we've got in a recent conversation, Wiles and her staff delivered a message to Musk. We need to message what you're doing. We need to be looped in. Oh, yeah. Oh, you need to be looped in. That's interesting.

There are four different sources in the story. Among the things they've said is on the press conference with the kid who may have told Donald Trump to hush. We're not really sure. I'm not a lip reader. Unclear. But I don't like talking about people's kids. But he just showed up. Here's what the official said. He just showed up with the kid. So we rolled with it. You know, nobody told him that the emails that were going out the fork in the road email and the fork in the road has closed email. Apparently the White House chief of staff hadn't seen those emails. I mean, this does feel untenable as a way to manage a bureaucracy or I don't know, maybe not. Well, but you're using the word manage.

There's no managing. There's no managing. I mean, this is the wrecking ball. And remember, you know, I think the underlying logic from, you know, the smarter folks engaged in this project, and I think they mean this sincerely, is that you need to destroy the republic in order to save it yeah i think that's the underlying animating idea and so the idea that anyone can manage this and you're going to use all these sort of you know office space niceties to sort of corral this chaos is just it's delusional i mean i think you know presumably that's why you find it funny in addition to the fact you worked for a while yeah i mean it is delusional so it's particularly delusional with Susie Wiles. I worked with her back in the John Huntsman campaign. Were you a supporter? Were you an official supporter? I was always a fan of Huntsman.

I mean, you know, I'm a centrist dem, but I was an independent. I was a journalist, but I've always been rooting for team center. Huntsman definitely was in that space. Yeah, so he was the most moderate Republican in that 2012 primary, and she was the campaign manager, which is, I think, just also just strange. Reporters call me all the time.

They're like, can you explain how she went from being John Huntsman's campaign manager to Donald Trump's chief of staff? I'm like, I wish I could. But isn't there a really obvious explanation? It's not about the ideas. Ambition. It's about power and money. Yeah. That is the obvious explanation though i think if you're you know if you're charged with writing a profile

on the new white house chief of staff you need more than a tweets length explanation so they're trying to look like what is underneath the ambition like what was driving her and what i tell these people when they call is i i kind of saw a saw a mild version of what the must thing is. She was the campaign manager for Huntsman, but we had a very, you know, domineering chief strategist on that campaign who was really running the show. And then Huntsman had kind of coterie of friends around him, you know, in the same way that Trump does, or maybe not in the same way that Trump does, but coterie of other, you know, know kind of business guys and so suzy was tasked on that campaign and this kind of micro version of this of just like i don't mean this in the mussolini sense like keeping the

trains run on time right it's like doing the budget making sure that t's are crossed and i's are dotted like that was her job and it just it didn't work. I mean, you know, she got totally bulldozed on on our tiny little hopeless presidential campaign and ends up leaving, ends up getting pushed out a few months in. And so when he asked me about this, I'm like, I don't see how this how the White House ends any other way. Right. Like to your point about John kelly like john kelly was a general you know i mean like this is a hard-nosed guy who's like led complicated organizations and dealt with big egos and big personalities um you know say we went about this about suzy wiles but like that isn't like that's a she doesn't have that kind i mean certainly i she would even say that she doesn't have john kelly's kind of background and navigating this sort of thing and so the idea that now you throw musk into the mix

that she's going to be able to to control this in any way is just preposterous and and it is i think pretty telling that like anybody was gullible enough to think that it was possible um you know i mean but not that yeah but not that long ago. I mean, you had you had a bunch of sort of Republican donors of the Mandarin class who were speaking very confidently about how this is a more responsible Donald Trump, more tempered Donald Trump. Right. I mean, this was organized. The campaign was so much more organized, so much more just right. That kind of like, you know, beat sweetener, you know, articles you'd see over the course of the campaign. But this really was received wisdom. This was a more temperate, considered responsible Donald Trump, which was always to me self-evidently delusional.

And I'd like to see more of those folks called for comment, you know, from about, about their, their, I guess, but of course, right. You know, this is going to end predictably the road to rights is, is, is, is gonna. Another old boss of mine. How do my old bosses always end up in these positions? I mean, I worked for Rudy Giuliani. So there you go. You know, back when he was, you know, America's mayor. So you take the cake, we'll give you the crown there. I mean, no, I mean, again, I, I, I, nothing. I mean, I was proud to work for him at that time. You know, you're you where's the legalization of corruption on every level, these micro, you know, efforts to, you know, get rid of the Russian kleptocrat division to enforce sanctions. I mean, what's happening to Ukraine, the kneecapping, the Republicans being utterly silent, not only on these nominees, but the kneecapping of, you know, you know, the organizations helped to defend democracy that they've traditionally defended. Yeah, there's no guardrails here. There's no there's no adult

who's going to make this more mature. This was and always was intended to be a wrecking ball. While they denied Project 2025 and lied about it. I mean, yeah, good luck. Good luck, Susie. But by the way, we do need some adults. On the other hand, how many times we hear this from the first administration? Well, I've got to be here because if I'm not, then it's really going to be bad. That's always the rationalization. It just never holds any water. All right. Last topic I got for you, since you were a candidate recently. I'm noodling over this. You know, look, during your campaign, during that campaign last year, obviously, Elon was a big donor to Trump. And there was some messaging coming from the Democrats kind of about the way that, you know, Trump was going to be corrupt and that there would be insider deals with some of these rich guys around them but like what has happened since the election

just as far as like four of the five richest men in the world being in the first row of the inauguration elon you know as we said at the beginning like at you know being the most involved you could have possibly imagined like at the upper end of the imaginable scale of his involvement like we're steve whitcoff like his business buddy is out there like doing hostage negotiations, even though Steve Whitcoff's kid and Trump's kids are in a cryptocurrency like business together. And it's crazy. So I'm curious, like from a political standpoint, as you're thinking about this, you know, how would you if Democrats called you? Like, like, is, you know, is there something is there a populist left angle here?

Is it a cronyism angle? Like, what do you think is the best way to kind of go at this? Because, you know, some of these guys are, you know, I always say Amazon is popular. You know, like there's some populist lefties that are like, just go after the billionaires. And it's like, well, people like getting stuff to their door after 24 hours, right? So it's not quite as clear as it might seem. So I'm wondering what your political. Look, it's not about the it's not about the class warfare. It's the corruption. Right. I mean, history would suggest it's the corruption that ultimately takes these folks down.

I think the best tripart clear messaging and there has not been a lot of clear, consistent messaging is is chaos, cruelty, and corruption. And I think you need to have the broadest coalition to confront those things. What you're fighting for is the Constitution. But I would focus on the corruption and build the broadest possible coalition to do that. I'd focus on defending the Constitution. Some folks say, oh, it's a little highbrow, I like defending democracy. I mean, well, I think Democrats need to be the reform party and not the party that defends the status quo and lean into that,

like calling out the corruption, I think is key. There it is. John Avalon, he's got a podcast, How to Fix It, where he does not do what i do which is obsess over the minutiae of what's happening every day okay we need somebody to take a step back and look at how we start to get back to solving problems i'm happy you're taking on that task somebody's got to do it so thanks someone's got it brother all right uh it's good to see you man subscribe to the feed we'll be seeing you soon absolutely