The Bulwark Podcast - Jonathan Swan: We Only Know 5%

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

The co-author of the signature book inside Trump 2.0 says the media only knows 5% of what is happening inside the administration—particularly when it comes to national security, the money-making, and the self-dealing. Jonathan does have new reporting about how the administration keeps pretending that our military is not running low on long-range missiles. In reality, the war is costing us a month's worth of Patriots almost every day. Plus: Stephen Miller has become the White House's resident kingmaker, why Trump is turbocharged on AI, and some contentious moments when Tim and Jonathan discuss how to characterize JD's divergent private and public posturing on the war.Jonathan Swan joins Tim Miller.show notes: Jonathan’s “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” The Bulwark’s campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield Closing Song - MJ Lenderman - She's Leaving You Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK#oneskinpod Bulwark LIVE: Benefit for SpringfieldSome moments require you to step up. Some require you to show up. That’s why The Bulwark is coming to Ohio. Join Tim, Sarah, JVL, Sam and friends Friday, September 25 at the Dayton Masonic Center for an evening of politics and fellowship.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show. It's been way too long. White House reporter for the New York Times, co-author of regime change. You might have heard of it inside the Imperial Presidency. It was number one for, what, like 19 weeks. I've got Jonathan Swan. You know, maybe 19. Nine weeks. Eventually. You might be back up this week. I don't know. We got Sarah Long while you're competing again. We'll learn tomorrow. But who knows. You might, you might maug her in the New York Times rankings. We'll see. Andrew, you have a child now. It's a big. couple months for you. I have three, actually, but yeah, I have a new one. The third is when things go really downhill, I hear. That's what it feels like so far. Oh, yeah. Well, you're looking fresh, so that's good. Praise from Caesar. I was expecting, you know, I don't know, wrinkles, you know, bags, nothing. Well, I've seen your commentary about various men, uh, their skincare routines. So I, um, I did a glow up. I'm doing a service to straight men. Okay. I'm trying to offer a service to straight men. Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to offer a service to straight men.

You can moisturize too. That's all. And I feel like sometimes I do that via positive feedback and occasionally negative feedback. I've only seen the negative. So I'll take your word for it. I'll take your word for it. I want to start here. There's a story about J.D. Vance, another one of my favorites this week, the vice president,

another anonymous sources saying that he had some skepticism about the Iran war. I know you're not going to talk about the sourcing, right? So I don't know. I shouldn't ask you whether J.D. is calling the New York Times. I sort of find the reaction to that kind of amusing slash farcical because we reported in April, Maggie and I, we did a big takeout for the New York Times. There was an extract from our book, which was a big piece on probably the most deeply reported piece immodestly on the lead-ups to the Iran War, which opened with that scene of Netanyahu coming down to the situation room and pitching Trump on the war. And in that piece, we report in detail about how Vance was really the only one in the inner circle to argue against the war in those meetings in front of the other AIDS. Now, as far as I'm aware, every significant outlet who's done any reporting on the war and what happened in the lead up to it and behind the scenes has confirmed that reporting and supported.

And the reason for that is it's true. And we've heard it from people who hate JD, don't mind him. like him, support him. It just happened. It's just a fact. And the other part of that, I would say, like, you know, we're obviously limited in what we can say about sourcing, but the other part of that that I find, like, odd is do people actually think that he's incentivized right now to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump when his single goal between now and January of 2028 is to have Donald Trump's endorsement, which Donald Trump has quite theatrically declined to give so far. Like when he opposed the war early on, it did not endear him to Donald Trump.

Trump was complaining about him, as we've reported. He was pissed off about it. This was not like some wonderful experience that played out really well. It actually empowered some of his opponents, both on the outside and on the inside. So, yeah, I mean, it's true. This is kind of an interesting question, though, about how to deal with that. Because, yeah, let's explore it, because I don't like talking about people behind their back. On Friday's podcast, you're a busy guy, you're not listening to every Bollock daily podcast, most of them, not all of them. But we met he to tease you a little bit about this line from that article where it said, Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from the outset. And like, this is like the challenging part of that, which is, okay, that could be true.

Like, I don't have any reason to doubt you're reporting. You've had the best reporting on this. But then simultaneously to that, like, publicly, he's talked about how Trump is not going to allow us to get into a multi-year. War. Not Trump's a smart president, not a dumb president in July. He said Trump's been successful. He said, we created economic, diplomatic, and military leverage. Let's use that leverage to go accomplish an even bigger win for the American people. It's not over yet. So far, so good. And he said, so far so good in July. And so it's kind of hard to, you know, how do you grapple with that? Like on the one hand, saying that he's opposed the war. On the other hand, publicly,

he's like, so far so good. Yeah, the way we grapple with it is in the same story. who did you say we were saying this about the outset, whatever? I presume they read the story because in the subhead of the story and in the body of the story, we say that he's been saying one thing privately and a different thing publicly. The advance has been out there endorsing the war, supporting it, defending it, whereas privately, as we've reported, as the Atlantic's reported, as the Wall Street Journal's reported, as the Washington Post is reported, presumably, I don't know if you guys have reported on it,

but if you have, I assume you've found the same thing. The sourcing for the bulwark inside the White House is pretty shableness. Well, it is what it is. I mean, that's the fact. But, like, I don't know how much more prominent you can have than, you know, the subhead of the story and in the body of the story. Yeah, I guess it's kind of like, the question is that's like a tough thing for people to navigate, right? Why?

At some level. Why is that tough for people to navigate? Yeah, because you can just read it, right? It's in the subhead of the story. Well, because it's like, is that true, though? Like, I mean, is it true in the sense that is this gamesmanship from him? Right? You know, it's hard to, you know, divine. You're trying to say, well, we should trust what's like that there's the behind the scenes,

that privately he's criticized it. But like publicly all people see is him supporting it, you know? Yeah, which we say in the story. But like, again, what I'm saying is these meetings happened. I mean, we reported on them. They were in front of multiple people. And anyone who's done any reporting on it has verified the same thing. So I don't know. You could not like it. How do you think that happened? I mean, how do you think he's navigating? It wasn't like, it wasn't like we're reporting on, like, secret one-on-one conversations between J.D. Vance and Trump.

These were meetings with the core inner circle team in the White House situation room in the Oval Office. Just as we've reported on a whole bunch of. And then he accused your guys of having tapes from the meeting. All I'm saying is like, like, people could say, people on the, could say, well, how do you know the Netanyahu meeting happened? Well, we know it happened because we reported it. We did our work. We verified it.

and we reported it. You could trust the reporting or not, but you don't have to trust our reporting. You have to then question the Atlantic's reporting, the Wall Street Journal's reporting. Nobody's not trusting the reporting. The question is like, no, no, it doesn't. I'm sorry. If it sounds like that, I don't want it to sound like that. I believe what J.D. is saying is privately is what you're reporting.

The question is that, like, you have this situation that is very unique to this administration, which is very often, like, they will call you guys and say something on back. or I'm not saying the JD College, but whatever. There's reporting, they're talking to people, they're trying to spin things on background, and then publicly they say the opposite, and they call you fake news, and then they call you a liar. And so it's like tough to know, like who is, like who is getting pled? You know what I mean? I'll just say, in this situation, two things happened, and we described both of them in the story.

One is in meetings with the Trump's court team and Trump in front of other AIDS, which include people who are big fans of Vance and people who are less so, Vance made an argument against the war. It pissed off Trump. Trump complained about it to people. This happened on multiple occasions. That's a thing that happened. That's a true thing that happened.

Also, at the same time, he has been publicly saying that he supports the president, supports the war, defending the war on television. That's also something that's happened. And we wrote that in the story, that he's saying one thing about, I don't know. I mean. Yeah. And is that working, do you think, for him, like internally with Trump? Like with Trump, with Trump, yeah.

No, as we say in the story, it cost him with trade. This is not something that's helpful to him. Like the existence of this story, this is why I find it so absurd. It's like, Jenny Vance has one job between now and January of 2028 in terms of his political future. It is to get Donald Trump's blessing and endorsement. The notion that he would be thrilled or excited about stories that drive a wedge between him and Donald Trump is like interesting to me that people think that.

But, you know, I'm limited in how I can. I mean, I think that the game, no, I mean, this is why this is why it's so interesting to, like, think about, like, the way, the political machinations of him, the way he's trying to manipulate things, because he's trying to do both, actually. Right. I mean, like, I understand what you're saying, that the number one thing is, number one priority is for Trump to give him the blessing. But it's, like, number two priority is to be the most America first person. But Tim, do you? Right, he's trying to do both. Well, anyway, okay.

And is that not true? You don't think he's trying to do both of those things? I mean, he gave us, he gave a speech. I think right now. Let's talk about this, John. He gave a speech just last week, right, at the Middorm Convention, where the only time that he brought up the Iran War was he created the straw man where the ghost of Charlie Kirk had he been alive, would have opposed the Iran War but still voted for Republicans.

And so, like, that was publicly. That wasn't private. That's not him kind of navigating things behind the scenes. Like, in his speech at the so-called convention, he basically tried to alibi. Like, it's okay to be against the war and also for Republicans, right? Don't you think it's possible that he just is against, like was against this war and that what everyone has reported is accurate? Well, sure. That he was dead against this war and he's been trying to walk this awkward, excruciating tight rope in public and that it may not be the most exciting thing for him to have stories that are elevating a division between him and Donald Trump at the same time that he's trying to.

I think that I think that's possible, but I also think it's possible that he wants to do both. Again, like, okay, if that was, if it was not exciting for him, I don't understand why that was. would be his strategy for the midterm convention. Like, Trump has ears. Like, he was able to watch the midterm convention speech and what shady talked about how Charlie Kirk would have opposed the war. But don't you think that's a slightly different thing? That's, that, to me, you talk to people internally,

they are trying to use him whether it will be effective or not. I'm skeptical as an emissary to that disaffected, alienated younger part of the coalition that has felt betrayed. So this is a different thing then, which is kind of like maybe it's okay. Which is a bit different. Yeah, maybe it's okay with Trump's. That's what I'm saying. That's different.

I'm trying to figure out. But Tim, but Tim, let's be clear. Like, I don't think the piece that we did most recently in the New York Times serves that purpose. It's already on the public record in our reporting, in the Atlantic's reporting, the Washington Journal's reporting in the Washington, the J.D. fans oppose the war. What does. Jonathan, I'm not trying to say you're serving J.D.'s purpose.

I'm not saying you're his PR person. I'm not. No, I mean, I think that it's interesting that J.D. It seems to me that he wants to try to have both. But maybe you're saying he doesn't. And that's interesting also in itself. I don't think it's obvious that he doesn't want those stories out. I think that he's trying to keep in Trump's good graces while also positioning himself as like kind of winking and nodding at people and saying, I'm more with you guys on this.

I think he's trying to do both. What do I know? Maybe. I thought I didn't realize that you were going to like, you know, feel that. strongly that the article was out contra J.D. Vance's political political interests. I just saw all this. I just, it's like it's a, it's a weird experience as a reporter when you write a story and you know how the stories you write come about. And then you see all these people like comment on it. And then you also know that in the same story that people are like, well, how

could you say that this when he's saying this public? It's like, yeah, bro, it's in the, it's in the subhead and the main body of the story. Like, is this? just like a literacy problem? And we reported it in April. To me, this is just Javanka all over again, though. So you can maybe separate yourself out for that because you weren't doing that. You know, you're in a different role then. But like, we lived this, right?

Like, is that not true? Like, Jared was trying to stay in the father-in-law's good graces. And also he was, like, leaking about how he was a little bit concerned about things. Like, is this not just the same thing that does that? I don't think it's the same thing, but at all. In fact, couldn't really be further from it. In what way? Was it further, do you think?

Because what I just told you is true, which is that privately in these meetings... J. J.B. is worried. Do you think Jadis worried? You don't... Because privately, I think Jared and Ivanka didn't like some of the stuff from the first term, but, you know, they're trying to do... No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is the Vance stories, the reason everyone's reported that he's against the war is because there were meetings where he argued against it aggressively to Trump. That happened. I understand if people don't like that or whatever, but it's just a fact. We reported it.

And the Javanka stuff was more, as far as I'm aware, it wasn't actually me. I mean, I covered it. It wasn't there was this big meeting in the sit room in the office where Jared Navanka said, you know, dad, don't do this. And then all these other aides were like in the room. It was always Ivanka went off privately with her father and said, like, I don't recall a big scene. And that's what I'm saying. And there was like these things.

Well, that was true. I mean, Jared was in a war against Canada. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, things can be true. Like, I guess, I guess, I'm sorry, I want to move on. We've belaborated the point. But what I'm trying to say is that things can be true and also political strategory and machinations, right?

Like, you can choose to oppose Trump and try to keep it as quiet as possible and, like, say things to him behind the scenes. Or you can try to do it and then also kind of signal to Tucker, your friend Tucker, that, like, you're still on side. And like, I think he's trying to signal to both people that he's still inside. But maybe that's wrong. I don't, maybe that I'm open to being wrong. I can't be in JD's head. The challenge I mean is we just don't talk about sourcing. So I can't say to you, Tim, that's wrong.

Actually, the way we got this story is XYZ. But, you know, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. I might be wrong. I might be wrong. He's mad at you. Hold open the possibility in your mind. What you think about the origin of this story might be, in fact, the exact ones. No, John, I look, I'm wrong all the time.

So I'm holding open the possibility. Yeah. I also watch Jay. I guess I just, I keep going back to, I watched JD's speech last week. So put it your story aside. Like, I don't need to, like, no, like, the sources could be the generals that called you. I don't care, like, who the sources are. My point is that J.D. is trying to have it both ways because he wants to stay in Trump's good

grace and he wants to be the nationalist. And I think that tension is probably the big tension of the next two years, don't you think? I think that's right. I think that's right. But I do think that he's not trying to, in those speeches, drive a wedge between him and Trump. He's trying to keep open. He's trying to drive an olive branch and the dead Charlie Church.

Put out an olive branch to those people who feel betrayed by them. I'm skeptical it will work. But I think that's what he is trying to do. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeat? This shirt, for example, this purple. white piped shirt. I've been loving it lately. The sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants, the tea that you somehow always reach for first, those are the pieces that making, getting dressed easy. And that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe

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Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash the bulwark. Get free shipping on your order in 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. That's QINCe.com slash the bulwark. On the other around the worst stuff, you have some other sourcing issues. People are very interested in your sources,

including the president. You reported about the weapons depletion. You guys were the first on this. NBC is now out this week and others with the Inspector General's report, like basically confirming you're reporting. You also report there's polygraph testing after 50 members of the U.S. military's joint staff had to take a lie detector about whether they're telling people yourself

in particular that, you know, we're running low on weapons. Take us a little bit behind that. Like, what's the level of alarm? Well, we started reporting on this in the spring. And to be fair, to the Trump administration, it's not a problem that suddenly came out of nowhere. that there were problems with the weapons supply before the Iran War, but it has gotten dramatically worse. And it's gotten worse in two key areas. One is long-range missiles, and the other is air defenses. And we started to learn pretty early on in the war that they were raiding the supplies of Ucom, European Command Stocks, and also Indo-Pacom, the Pacific Command, stocks. So basically, weapons that would be potentially used to deter Russia and China were being

pulled into Centcom to fight the Iran War. And they were running very, very low on all kinds of long-range weapons, including attackams, precision strike missiles, Tomahawks, the Patriot supply is low. And of course, our defense industrial base is not up to speed. So you keep hearing these projections from the defense companies saying, we're going to produce, you know, these huge numbers. It's not actually the case. So you're seeing some instances where they're using, you know, a month supply of patriots in terms of the production in a day or two of heavy fighting. It's really bad. It's of great, great concern within the military and the national security community. And the president is, and pretty much every member of his administration publicly,

is pretending that this is not an issue. But it's a very serious issue. And it could have really serious strategic and tactical implications. And what's the degree do you think of the relationship between that and Driscoll resignation? Another, I guess, just ties us back to Vance a little bit since he was Vance's friend. Some a little. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a small part of it. I think the larger part of it was that Pete Hagseth and Driscoll were in a Cold War, maybe not even a Cold War, maybe just a shooting war, maybe just like, you know, Gulf War won.

and Pete Hakesef came out victorious. Maybe for now. And it's interesting that Pete's, like, it's funny, when it's reading the book, like, Trump does this thing, and this is another thing that's hard for us to kind of interpret from the outside, right? Where he likes to pick on people inside, right? Like, he picks on cash, he picks on Pete from time to time. And yet, like, Pete's still there.

Like, that's interesting that Pete won that internal war. war, right? Because he's kind of losing the public war. What do you make of why that is? Well, when you say losing the public war, yes, he's getting a lot of critical coverage in the mainstream press. But I don't know that that would be considered in Trump's sort of way of thinking about Hegsef. I think he definitely was the lowest on Hegset in our reporting after Signalgate. and he did this appearance on the White House lawn, which looked very erratic at the time, and Trump was very low on him.

But since then, we haven't had any report. We've seen lots of rumors kind of being floated, you know, Hagsets next to go and what have you. I've never verified any of that, and he survived through, you know, months and months and months. Cash Patel kind of the same. Last summer was a real low point for him. I thought as the New Year was approaching,

that he potentially was going to be one of the people that Trump replaced. And he ended up surviving. So the short answer is, I don't know what to say beyond the obvious, which is that these are two men who ostentatiously flatter Trump publicly, privately, do what he wants. I mean, Trump has in Pete Hague's the defense secretary that he really wanted in term one. If he had a version of his term one defense secretaries, there would have been objections raised when he said, you know what? I'm deciding in my mind that these people who are riding on fishing boats with cocaine are actually enemy combatants. And instead of it being a law enforcement issue, instead of sending the Coast Guard to interdict

them, we're just going to kill them. And there's no appeals process. You were just going to kill them. Hegseth enthusiastically supported that. People like Esper would not have. So the other thing that Hegseth has in his corner is he's got a really, strong ally in Stephen Miller. They are very, very close. And Miller has seen Hexheth as a key ally in using the Defense Department to help with immigration enforcement and some of these operations.

So again, another area where people like Mattis and Esper threw up roadblocks and wouldn't have gone along with it. That's interesting. I mean, so in that sense, is it too simple to say that like Driscoll was trying to like raise concerns about the way that the war was being prosecuted and like Hagseth is just, you know, telling Trump what he wants to hear. Is that too simple, do you think, about why Hagseth is? I don't know the extent to which Driscoll ever raised any concerns to Trump. Based on our reporting, he certainly was concerned about the munition stockpiles and various other things. That could have been part of it, and I'm sure some of that filtered back to Trump.

But I also think part of it was, there was a period of time where there were lots of media stories coming out that Driscoll is going to be the next sec deaf and all of this. And I suspect that that may have had an effect as well on the way that Ageth viewed him. Again, it tells the JD thing and like, man, they still have two and a half years left. And who knows? And I think that you've reported others that Trump would love for this war to be magically over. But like Iran has a vote in that and you go through a period next year where you have, JD has expressed some concerns of the inside, Dressicle is now out, things are going badly.

That's a challenging thing that they're going to have to navigate ahead. Hugely, hugely. And the public is heavily against this war. They can see a linkage between the war and their own lives and the cost of goods, gas in particular. and there doesn't seem to be any way of spinning that Trump has tried pretty much every method of spinning had in the public just isn't buying it. The polygraph thing is kind of crazy and it sort of reminds me of Meet the Fokkers a little bit where you have, you know, De Niro giving Ben Stiller the polygraph. It's like it feels like you're losing control of the situation when you've resorted to that. I don't know.

I was talking to someone, I was talking to someone, I'm not aware of a single example of Alika being caught and prosecuted. based on a polygraph. It's possible that it's happened, but I'm not aware of it. And they're famously, you can game them. Certainly people we've spoken to who have been polygraphed and have expecting to be polygraphed, view it as a tool of intimidation. Yeah. At the beginning of the term, I mean, there was a lot of reporting,

because Hankscept has been using this from the start, the polygraph technique. And this seems like the most expansive version on a specific story. But like that caused blowback. And, like, Hanks had lost, like, one of his good friends who, like, quit early. And he does seem, you know, while he might be not doing so well in the war in Iran, he seems to have clamped down on that a little bit internally. I don't know. What do you make?

Is that still right to you? Explain what you mean. What do you mean? Clamp down on, like, the pushback. but like, I mean, it seems like, no, he's just kind of won that battle. No, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, again, this most recent polygraph,

mass polygraphing that we were pulled around 50 members of the joint staff and others, by the way, other senior people in the Pentagon, we're not aware of any precedent in modern history for this scale, in modern US history of this scale of polygraphing. I'm not aware of anything. And we've spoken to, you know, people who serve in the military and serving this area. and they're not aware of any precedent for it.

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I don't have fun to the AI stuff, which is like really hot in the news right now. And you guys covered this in the book. I think maybe on the first round of the book tour, we weren't in AI doomsday mode. So probably weren't asked about it as much. But you have this kind of remarkable scene. It's in Vegas. I'm going from memory. I think it's in Vegas where Greg Brockman from OpenAI goes in briefs Trump about chat, GPT. just regale the listeners with that if they haven't made it to that part of the book yet. You know, there's actually been, I think, relatively little reporting on this area in terms of Trump's own interaction with AI compared to the importance of the topic. I mean, when we look back on the Trump administration, this may end up being one of the most consequential things that he did, his policy of basically go for it, essentially, unleash the growth of these AI companies. and I'm going to put myself firmly on the side of the AI accelerationist. The interesting thing about that story, which we get into in the book,

is that Trump is, I would say, the most extreme version of a tech late adopter. He only began text messaging in 2022. I mean, that's like, you know, 20-some years after most of us began text messaging. And he really knew nothing about AI. and really hadn't ever interacted with it to any meaningful extent until the 2024 campaign. And what we describe in regime change is this scene in Vegas where the Open AI executives meet with Trump in this hotel. And he's with his team.

And they give him this demo of chat GPT. And he's like, he's really tired. It's the end of the day. He's like being campaigning. He's kind of exhausted. And they put it up on the screen. And his eyes kind of like, whatever. He's like, you know, it's this sort of, yeah, yeah.

And they start putting in prompts. And from memory, one of them was like, they got the chat GPT. Remember, this is 2024. Chat GPT was not that great in 2024. They get chat GPT to turn an executive order on AI into poetry, into a poem. Yeah. And Trump's, say, he goes, man, this is beautiful. It's like he's reading the poet.

He goes, the poet, these words. They're so beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was just thunderstruck. It was like, he was reading Wordsworth or something. And he turns to one of his age, he's like, you know, this is going to take your job. And he went from being uninterested, tired, whatever, to immediately asking, you know, it was like zero to 100. He immediately started asking these executives, what do we need to do?

What are the obstacles to you guys growing? How much energy do you need? What regulations can we get rid of? He went from sort of extremely skeptical asking them questions about, well, what happens if there's a deep fake of me declaring nuclear war? You know, he was all worried about it. It was all on the risk side and skeptic and whatever to full on David Sachs, Jensen Huang. How can we put this thing on turbo charge? And that is the posture that he has continued into this administration.

I think what's really interesting about it is Trump won both times. as a populist. And he is squarely on the side of the wealthiest, most powerful tech elites and against the coalition that you see with Bernie Sanders and others saying no data centers, you know, against public opinion. You had a line on this in the book that really struck me.

He started to be interested in Operation Warp Speed for data centers, which is such a funny thing to think about that that's where his head was in 2024 versus where we are now. Just this week, he called Jensen Wong while he was on stage at the All-In podcast. Right. And Jensen's like, I'm here with the besties, Mr. President. So, I mean, he is just both feet in.

Both feed in. And one thing we also write in the book, which we'd heard from several people around Trump, is that, you know, if you think back to the first term, his whole promise was, I'm going to bring back sort of Norman Rockwell, America, and these. old heavy industries. I'm going to bring back the coal mining jobs. I'm going to, you're going to see an industrial revolution in America. Obviously, that didn't happen. And, you know, he obviously pretended it happened, but it didn't happen. And he knows on some level it's not going to happen. So what we had been hearing from people around him is that when he started to hear these investment

figures from people like Zuckerberg and these others, you know, I'm going to invest a trillion dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. In his mind, this became the way to create a new golden age in America. And, you know, each time he would look at the valuation of invidia, it seemed to have gained a new trillion. And Trump himself is a shareholder, by the way, in Nvidia. So he became seduced by these figures. Jensen Huang, who had never really had much of a Washington presence, realized. Trump is a personalist leader. You need to engage directly. He started to call him. He started to drop in at Mara Lago.

Zuckerberg is on the phone with him. So they all play the game. And you're seeing the effects of that now. I have to have any sense that J.D. disagrees with him on any of this? I mean, J.D. seems pretty aligned with this world, too. It's interesting just from that populace framework that you talked about because you are seeing this. As we're taping right now, Bannon is having a press conference with Bernie Sanders against this. Is there any sense that there's dissension inside the administration on this? I think it's going to be a really challenging area for Vance in 2028 because in some of his public statements, he has indicated that he's not entirely comfortable with the flourishing of AI. He described it in one of his interviews, elements of AI, certain uses of it as satanic, which is very much Bannon-esque, Tucker-esque language. at the same time, he's towed the line with Trump in terms of we need to stay ahead of China.

He hasn't broken with Trump in any meaningful way on this issue. And his biggest donors are probably going to be people like Elon Musk, David Sachs, Silicon Valley. Right. So I don't expect that it's going to be feasible for him to run as a pure populist on this issue. You glossed over it. Do you have any reporting on Trump's personal? personal AI use? Is he doing the

slot memes? It kind of sometimes it seems like he might be. I don't know. In the book you talk about how they, he was with Doug Bergum and they, you know, they asked it to do an image of his wife on a horse or whatever.

And you see some of these, I don't know, Trump is Jesus. Obviously he's taking a lot of them from just random people on true social. But, okay, we'll try to do some reporting on that. Tim, if you're inspired by his true socials feed,

I would say you have to give a lot of credit to Bill Palti. Really? Because, yeah, he, so on the weekends these days, Trump is essentially unstaffed. I mean, he really, the main, most of his staff are not with him at the golf clubs. Well, Natalie. Natalie's there often. But Bill Pulte is usually there, and he brings these foam boards.

And often what you see Trump truth out on the weekends originated as a Bill Pulte phone board. Just so people know, I'm sure your listeners are familiar with Bill Paltz. Of course. Yeah, okay, fine. You guys are hardcore. But I just talk about Bill Pulte's all because that's good. Well, no, but Pulte would bring in these boards that would have, you know, the fraudster in all caps. And it would have this like photo of Lisa Cook's face blown up and, you know, diagrams of how frauds are supposedly committed.

That's the kind of stuff that he's serving up for Trump and often it turns into. I mean, Bill Pulte gums to prominence like during COVID over meme stocks and like doing that, you know, like game stock and all that. So he knows how to manipulate the internet. He's good at the meme economy. TBD and the rest. Things aren't great in the interest rate department. I want to talk about the library. There's another thing that I feel like just people miss and kind of, you know, everybody realizes

that there's kind of a lot of money sloshing around in Trump world. But like just how kind of direct is it overstated to say quid pro quo, do you think? in some of these donations? I mean, it's one half step short of it, if not. I don't know. How would you describe it? If you are a company in America, major company in America,

you understand that when a request comes in from the Trump team for money, and they come in very directly, you either have to play ball or risk Donald Trump using the government to punish you or not to reward you. And he's made very clear that he's willing to do that, seen it. I mean, when you do things like demand the resignation, the firing of the head of Intel, and then he comes in and flatters you and tells you his life story. And then you say at the end,

well, very nice. I don't think you're a Chinese spy anymore, but I'm going to need a cut of your company. And then he gives you the cut. Yeah, 10%. That was one of the things in the book. They said that Trump now says privately to people he should have asked for more of Intel. 100%. I think Dick Cheney used to have a phrase, you know, the educational use of power or the instructive use of power, something like that. This is Trump's version of that. And we have reporting in the book that his fundraiser, Meredith, would sit with him with a list of companies or individuals, and Trump would literally write next to them the dollar figure that he wants. And it just comes out of his head, you know, whatever he feels, you know, 20 million,

whatever he's feeling, 5 million. This is what I think is person. And the asks come in. It's created this cycle whereby the companies are afraid they give money to Trump entities. The Trump entities amass huge war chests. And then they use that money to intimidate and defeat Republicans who step out of line, people like Thomas Massey, Bill Cassidy and others. And so it's this cycle, really. It's fear to raise, fear to spend, fear creates fear, fear begets fear. It's a cycle.

With the library, I think this is another area just because there's been so much of this money sloshing around Trump family entities, Trump political entities. You can lose sight of different elements of it. But the library, we had two parts in the book that we thought were very interesting. One was the Trumps have been soliciting from the Gulf Arabs for the library, including the Saudis. And the other is that at a moment when Trump was complaining about Howard Lutnik, and his sons making money, Lutnik gave $25 million to the Trump Library. This is the Commerce Secretary. And Trump, in meetings in front of Lutnik and others, would say, you know, the only reason I'm putting up with Howard's bullshit is because he gave me $25 million. You know, he'd also say, how great is Howard? You know, I asked him for the money. He gave it straight away, what have you.

But I'm not aware of a cabinet secretary doing something like that. Maybe it's been done before, but... Or maybe after, but in the middle of the... In the middle of the administration. And the most telling thing to me about that anecdote is, is like, Trump acknowledges basically that the Lutnik family is grifting off the administration, right? I mean, kind of. He's like, hey, why don't you throw some money at my library and, you know,

I'll look the other way at these problems that you're causing me? I mean, it's very mafia-esque. Trump doesn't like to hear about other people making money, obviously. And during the Interregnum period, I was talking to a source, and they were with Trump. And Trump was complaining about Brooke Rollins, who is now his agriculture secretary. And he's like, you know, she's got this group. It's called America First Policy. He goes, you know, they do policy stuff, like very dismissive.

And people think, you know, they think they're giving to me, but they're not giving to me. They're giving to this group. And he goes, you know, I think she owes me like, she should give me like half. And he thought she had like 50 million sitting in this account, which of course was a true. So he had this idea that she was basically, you know, taking money that rightfully belonged to him. And that's the mindset, I think, across all of these areas. Can I ask you a question from the Trump-Darrangement syndrome crowd on all this? Sure.

People hear these stories. And it does make you wonder, can you have, afford to give this up when you think about like the succession plan. I mean like the degree and the scale of the of the grift is it's hard to even wrap your head around. And it's hard, you know, usually people don't give that away, I guess, would be one way to put it. Just elaborate. Well, I mean, the kids are making a lot of money. Right. Trump's personally making money. Like the idea that he would have like this kind of again goes back to the JD. The idea that he had, pass on to a successor that would not be, you know, in on the game, if you will, is a little

hard to imagine. Or I don't know, or maybe not. Maybe he sees that this is a sprint for, you know, him to cement his legacy as you guys talked about your interview as the next Attila the Hun and his kids make as much money as they can in the next two years and then it's over. But I don't know, that doesn't really seem like him. I mean, if a Trump ally like J.D. Vance is the next president, would the Trump kids, you know, how much would their money making diminish? I don't know. They've made so much money during this term that they're obviously set for life. I mean, not enough money if they can fund their own second wedding, I guess. I think the sense I have from people around Trump is that he feels that 2024 was his big victory,

and since then he's essentially untouchable. Yes, he doesn't want to lose the house. He doesn't want to get in impeached again, but ultimately, it's not the greatest fear for him. We have reporting the book that he said he's going to pardon anyone who came within 250 feet of the Oval Office. His family's wealthier than it's ever been by orders of magnitude. He's building monuments to himself. He has sweeping immunity conferred by the Supreme Court. I mean, what does he have to worry about? The lights turning off. Same thing everybody has to worry about who's in the public sphere. I mean, he's been... Yeah, I think that's the big thing. I think that's the big thing. I think the lack of attention is actually, I think that when that drug goes away, I think that's

probably going to be the biggest loss. I'm sorry to keep tying everything back to JD, but I think that's another worry that you have over the next year is like somebody asked him yesterday. He gets asked this about who the next, you know, whether he's going to endorse a successor. He gets annoyed. Like, he gets visibly annoyed at the question. That's my point. That was my whole point to you at the start is that Vance is not in a secure, it's not like he's

like cruising in cruise control right now. He needs Trump's blessing. And Trump is very ostentatiously holding that back. And we have a lot of reporting in our book. I mean, we have a scene in our book where Rupert Murdoch comes to dinner at the White House in the blue room. And Vance and Rubio are at the table. And Trump essentially does a beauty pageant with Murdoch. Do you like JD?

Do you like Marco? Who do you like more? So, you know, Vance has one job. I mean, this is kind of interesting, though, because Marco just, you don't hear Marco talking about the war. that much. And he's the national security advisor. Very true. So very interesting point. So Marco Rubio, even though his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, has actually not been that engaged on two of the biggest foreign policies, Iran and Russia, Ukraine. And on Iran, you've had Whitkoff and Vance and Kushner lead the negotiations, not Rubio. And then on

Russia, Ukraine, you've had Whitkoff and Kushner. And again, Rubio stepping back. He is much more focused on Western Hemisphere, in Cuba in particular, as the next one, obviously Venezuela. So that's an absolutely accurate observation. Again, I don't know that it's so much political. I don't have any sense that Rubio's preparing for a 2028 campaign. In fact, I don't think he is, but he has certainly been willing and happy, apparently, to let others step into that void. Yeah. And you're reporting, I talked to this about to Maggie when she was on, about, And Rubio, I think people have a misunderstanding of what Rubio is doing and what he cares about in the administration. And you guys had that he was the point person for the Sakat negotiation with Buckele.

I mean, he was like the foreign gulag deal. Like Rubio was the person that made that deal. He's the reason that Oz Turk, the tough student, is jailed. He is on board with the bombing of the boats that you mentioned in the Caribbean. I've been covering this week this Iranian family that's been in six months. the Dilley Detention Center. They did nothing. He took their green card away because they had a family member that's, you know, was part of the hostage takers in the 70s. So like Rubio, it's funny, like there's this perception that he kind of is not on board with some elements of the MAGA part

of the agenda. But it's like he is fully bought in and the point man on a lot of the immigration stuff. And if nothing else, neutral are on board with the rest of the foreign policy. agenda, be that Greenland or on Russia. Besides Pete Hakesh, there may be no cabinet secretary who is closer to Stephen Miller than Marco Rubio now, which is incredibly interesting given that Stephen Miller was his arch enemy, as you know very well, Tim, during the Gang of Eight immigration era when Stephen Miller worked for Jeff Sessions and was trying to kill that bill and Rubio was at the center of it.

We reported in our book that in an email to a Breitbart reporter, and I think it was 2015, Stephen Miller referred to Rubio as pathological. So that relationship is now extremely close. They work very closely together. And Miller has told people that Rubio has been a great ally. Yeah. People like it when you bend the knee to them like Marco did to Stephen Miller. So I understand. I mean, right? It's not like they met in the middle on their big fight from the gang of hate. Marco basically looked at the Stephen Miller wing and said, I'm on board. No, Stephen's vision prevailed. and has become the prevailing vision of the Republican Party. I'm not going to let you go without asking about Natalie just a little bit.

I mean, the mash notes, the love notes. Maggie did have, Maggie did duck the question that I had about whether Trump is impotent or not. No. Oh, my God. Do you have any reporting on that? Wait, what? Well, say that again. Whether Trump is impotent.

Like, for the longest time, I've been trying to match. What are you, Howard Stern? What is this? Well, I think it's noteworthy that Trump spent his whole career section. assaulting people for like 30 years. He has like dozens of women have accused him of sexual assault. And now none, but now he has Natalie writing on his, I wasn't acting to speculate. I was wondering if you had any reporting. I certainly don't have any reporting. So then what's, what do he thinks happening? What do you think's happening with Natalie? Just, I kind of think it's weird. This is my

point. It's weirder than than that other more prurient thing, I think. It's more like, I think it's the story of a young woman who is completely devoted and obsessed. Have you done any reporting on whether her story is real, like the backstory? You mean about her health and stuff? I haven't got any reporting to contradict her version of it. When you had those mash notes, that had to tickle you during the reporting. Was that part of the reporting that made you do your Aussie laugh the most when you I mean, it's always good when you have something on paper.

It makes it harder to deny that something happened. And so, yes, it was very good to have these documents because if people tried to claim that they weren't true, we had them. It could be Howard Stern. Why did you say that negatively? Howard Stern has a huge success. Was it a huge success at a great program. No, he is.

He just does a particular thing. I didn't realize that was your thing. I try to touch all a good podcast for me, Jonathan. is laughter, crying, anger. You know, you try to touch all the whole kind of emotional color wheel. And we've been doing that, I think. We certainly have.

Yeah, we certainly have. He's really mean to Maggie. Do you think I've been overly emotional at times in this podcast? I don't, no. You don't? Okay. No, do you feel like you have?

I don't know. I just, I felt like... You got a little high? Maybe, I probably got a little on my high horse. No, that's okay. We're pals. This happened with Maggie, too. Let's just break the fourth wall.

Let's just break the fourth wall for a second. I love you and Maggie, and we talk a lot. And, like, all of the comments in the Maggie section, you know, sometimes you don't know your audience as well as you think. I thought the comments were going to be mean to her, like access journalism. You do see this sometimes. Not our audience. Our audience is great.

The audience was mad at me. They're like, why were you so mean to Maggie? Why were you so mean to Matt? You were a little rude to her. And I was like, we're, pal, me and Maggie should talk. Like, that's fine. That's how we show love, you know? So, anyway, we're good, right?

You're not. Oh, dude. We're totally good. I just worried. got a little defensive. It's okay. You're doing real fucking reporting out there. The government is calling...

The president is calling your co-author ugly and a maggot. People are trying to go after. They're targeting your reporting. They're targeting alleged people they think are sources, I guess, by suing them. That's a high-stress environment.

It's also a challenge... I mean, I didn't go on TV for a really long time because when you're doing this type of report, you have to be so careful about the way you talk about anything to do with sourcing, because everything we do, almost every story that involves anything to do with munitions or national security results in a leak hunt. Some of my colleagues have the FBI show up at their front door, subpoenas are going out, they're suing the, you know, all this stuff.

And so you're sort of powerless. You sit there watching a public conversation about your story. You know exactly how a story came about. You can't actually. So it's like, it's sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. And you just have to like take the hit. It's like, you know, say what you want. And it's a little different than last, I mean, than the first term, right?

How is it different? Unrecognizable. Completely different. Just from a sourcing standpoint. Completely. Completely. Because they were leaking to you and shit talking each other. This is my, this is kind of why it's tough.

And it is beyond. And it is, they do. And this one I was trying to get to at the start. And I'd say this is the nicest way. Like how they do business is just different. And it's like, how do you adapt to it. And you can, you and Maggie have adapted to. as well as anybody. But like, you know, when I, I would spin you guys when I was in that world

for Jeb. Like, I would sometimes tell you things that weren't fully true. But I would never like give you something. I would never like give you a story about Marco or whatever and have you report it. And then go on Twitter and be like, Jonathan Swan is an ugly prick. And this is fake news. Right. Like that is like it's, it's a different animal. Like the way they do business is different. And now it's kind of more of the first term way. And now this time, I feel like they, you know, just bully, right? I was saying, I can't remember who I said this too. The first time, like, kind of looks like the Eisenhower administration at this point.

Yeah, it's just, you can't even draw any type of comparison at all. So that takes me my final question for you, which is like, I felt in the first time we kind of knew everything. I mean, there were like some secrets, but like there was so much fighting, right, that things just like, leaked out and like eventually and sometimes you had to kind of navigate like what was true and was not because sometimes they lied and leaks like they lied about each other right like for the most part like shit got out what is your sense for that this time like I don't know like the one story that comes to mind is you mentioned like the gulf states and like the amount of business that eric is doing and jared is doing and there's a great dexter filkin story in the new yorker this week but

i was reading it i'm like there's more than this i just i'm reading this story and i'm just like how much more do you think there is i think we know very little i i i i i i I think we know 5%. I think it's going to take a lot of reporting and digging over probably years, not months, to get to the bottom. I mean, I think we just know so this. In what area do you think? I think in almost every area, but in particular, national security and anything to do with money making and self-dealing. I think in those two areas and also probably in the way what's going on actually going on at the DOJ and investigations that we're probably. not aware of and other things like that. Like, I don't think when you started this administration, you wouldn't have thought that the book would be, like the big excerpt would be about deliberations about the Iran war, right?

I mean, that was unexpected. I mean, so what projecting out, like, do you have sense for like what the next big one would be? Well, I also didn't think that the other big excerpt would be his top team, including his attorney general, sitting in the White House situation room, talking about the Jeffrey Epstein firehawks and how to spin them. I have no idea what the next big story is. I still think the Iran war is right now a huge story.

I personally want to do a lot more reporting on AI because I feel like there's a confluence of financial interests and a government that is not really prepared to wrap its arms around this technology and very real concerns about national security, public safety, jobs. It's such an enormous issue. And I just think I've been quite deficient in my. reporting on it. So that's an area I really want to dig into. I think everybody's feeling that way right now. And especially with Trump, I mean, just like that I was saying that in the nice way, I feel deficient in it as well. No, no, no, 100%. Who, like the idea that Trump would end up

being the biggest cheerleader for it, even in this moment is, to me, there's money there too. That ties to the money store, right? Because it's like Operation Warp Speed and this, the Operation Morp Speed for AI. Those are the two times that he has been the most out of step with the base, I guess, and Epstein. Yeah, COVID vaccine. Yeah. That's true.

And Iran. And Iran. Although, to be fair, on Iran, I think it's more complicated. I think there's a part of the base that's against it. Yeah. And I think that it had it been like Venezuela or had it been like Solomani or had it been like last year, it would have been fine. And he just got in over his head.

All right, Jonathan. Anything, do you want to attack? Make fun of me. Do you have any critiques? Anything about my look that you don't like right now? Most dry. She look great. You look great.

All right. Do you come down to visit me sometime? Can we hang out? Sure. Three children. Do you have a lot of free time for that? You do a lot of vacations. I'm always going away.

Yeah, it's great. It's one big vacation is my life. I love to your wife. Thanks for comparing me to Howard Stern. Hi, high praise. And I'll start to you again soon, all right? Give your wife a Maggie a squeeze for me. All right.

We'll see everybody else. We'll be back here tomorrow. See you. Peace. See you. Bye. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you. Thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper,

Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.