Tim Miller: If You’re Feeling Hopeless, Hear Me Out

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Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz.

I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast,

a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC.

And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out

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Hey everybody, Tim off in the bulwark here

on the bulwark take speed.

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I'm not going to get over about this.

I think it's the second time I've done this this week.

But I'm going to give you guys a little hope, you know,

you're going to be positive and optimistic

about the state of affairs.

It's actually a nice appetizer for no kings.

First, I'll have a positive day of activism and outreach

and a primal yop about protecting our democracy.

That before that, I give you a little bit of optimism

because who the hell knows what Monday will have in store for us.

But I was on with the ECM and NDS and much other folks

on MSNOW and the deadline White House Hour.

And we talked about a bunch of stuff.

We talked about the efforts to screw with the elections

coming up in the midterms.

We talked about the TSA funding fight

that gave kind of my update on the latest on why

the Democrats have now won that funding fight.

And we talked about the cracks in the Republican coalition

over the Iran War.

And in each segment, how is the optimistic one?

I don't think that their election efforts are going to succeed,

that the Republican efforts to mess with the elections.

I don't think it's going to succeed.

We have to be vigilant.

We've got to fight.

We need lawyers out there and activists and folks in the ground

and media figures like us watching and alerting people.

Everyone has role to play and ensuring

that the pro-democracy size overwhelms the mega effort

to rig or screw with the elections.

And I think it's going to happen.

On the funding fight in Washington,

I've called it officially second straight shutdown fight

victory for the Democrats.

Is that really even close?

Republicans don't know what the hell they're doing.

The House Republicans are now left holding the bag

where it's their fault because there's been a bipartisan

Senate vote to find the TSA.

We've got a text from a Democratic congressman just a couple

of minutes ago about the House Republicans positioning

on this.

The text reads, House ours are a train wreck.

They don't know what they're doing.

They can't cover it.

And then obviously the cracks in the mega coalition

over Iran are showing up everywhere.

So in each segment, midterms,

Iran war, shut down fight on Capitol Hill.

I was the optimistic one,

dubious for the Democrats on each one of those.

Bad news for the Republicans for Trump on each one of those.

Like it doesn't mean that Trump is going to collapse

and resign and we're going to end up with

Speaker Hakeem Jeffery's ascending to the House.

You know, look, we've got to deal with almost three more years

of this.

Who knows what the future will hold?

I can tell you this.

The Trump coalition has been permanently wounded

by the actions of the last three weeks.

This Iran war is going to be an unbelievable shit show.

It already is, but the fallout from it

will be a disaster of epic, epic proportions.

Said a few weeks ago, and I stand by it,

this decision to go into this war

was the most catastrophic decision of either term

from the president.

That's a competitive category.

A lot of bad choices, a lot bad.

He's mismanaged a lot of stuff over the course of two terms.

This one is the worst and I think it's the worst

by a wide margin.

And that is why the Democrats have regained power

on the Hill because the Republicans are divided

and they see the mess that they've made

and they don't know how to deal with it.

That is why we see the mega coalition breaking up

because influencers and commentators and politicians even

don't want to be made out to be fools to their voters

or to their listeners or viewers.

It's going to be pain as a result of this terrible decision.

So we shouldn't be light about it.

But he has caused himself a massive, massive political problem.

One that I think that his coalition may never recover from.

So that's what we are right now.

I'm not that guy.

If you've been watching this feed,

there's some other YouTubes out there

where people have been like, the walls are closing in on Trump

every day.

What Trump's going to be in jail does ever mean.

I've been negative.

I'm still negative.

I'm still worried.

I'm still concerned.

But as a political analyst, I think

that people are slow to recognize what is happening.

And that is that the wheels are really coming off of mega

and that maybe the wound is able to be sutured,

but the wound is deep.

Then it is as bad for mega.

And that's good news for us.

So please subscribe to the feed.

Go out to the No Kings rally.

Have a little extra skip in your step.

We'll be talking to you all soon.

Donald Trump's latest probe into his 2020 election

loss is facing its first major legal test.

Today, lawyers for Fulton County, Georgia

argued in federal court for the return

of thousands of election ballots seized

by the FBI earlier this year.

As part of the Justice Department's reinvestigation

of Trump's claims of fraud in Georgia debunked

by multiple audits, court rulings,

and Trump's own former attorney general.

Fulton County says agents misled the court

with transparent conspiracy theories

about what happened in Fulton County during the 2020 election

in order to obtain a warrant for that unprecedented raid,

which included a baffling appearance

by Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

Today's hearing, and whatever the judge decides,

it is a test run for Trump's DOJ,

whose latest probe has alarmed election officials.

It will set a precedent for future elections in Fulton County

and other jurisdictions where Trump has yet to accept defeat.

Joining me now, host of the Bullwork podcast,

political analyst, Tim Miller.

A cool thing to me feels like a stretch, stress test,

of course, not just retrospectively but prospectively.

Yeah, look, I think that's right.

This is, I think that it's important to kind of disentangle

what is happening with MAGA with their efforts

across a lot of different verticals

because there are some areas in which

they're actually pretty effective and competent.

And I think that we've seen that from Stephen Miller

and the immigration regime, the deportation regime,

obviously some of the ICE thugs they've hired

have not been competent, but like the effort of,

we're gonna do a mass deportation

and they followed through on that.

Roosevelt with Project 2025,

we are gonna dismantle the government.

They followed through on that

and been successful in a lot of ways,

less successful in other places.

This, the DOJ effort to target foes

and try to create a rationale for stealing the next election,

that effort so far has been a disaster.

I mean, these guys are keystone cops.

They've been rejected by judges left and right.

They've been unsuccessful at going after the folks

on their enemies list despite trying to.

And they've been successful so far in their efforts

to try to unbalance the playing table

for the midterm election.

I mean, they first tried to do,

they're the midterm redistricting thing.

That has blown up in their face

and large part of things to get

up and use them in Abigail Spamberg or in others.

And I think this effort is in that vein, right?

We're there trying to come up with pretext and rationale

to create problems in November

and so far they're coming up with upkiss.

You know that I generally feel

that you are way less optimistic than me.

So if Michael Feinberg is less optimistic than you,

then we are in a pretty dark place,

but I do think he's connecting dots

that you too often connect, right?

Which is, each piece of this is a part of the larger hole.

Whether it is the president, Republicans,

demanding nationalized elections,

whether it is redistricting,

whether it is what they're trying to do with the SAVAC.

I mean, they are approaching this from every angle

with the understanding that any gains

they can make advantage them.

And so I wonder sort of where you see us

on the ladder of escalation when it comes

to their efforts to mess with these midterms?

Yeah, that's true.

And they're climbing up additional rungs on the ladder

to go along with your metaphor of escalation

of trying to mess with the midterms.

And I've, you know, we've been on the floor with Mark Elias.

And for me, I think one thing that worries me in particular,

and I've talked to Mark about is,

you know, this post-election, you know,

as Mike played out there,

you create doubts about elections,

you know, happening in certain states,

certain cities, and then, you know,

you challenge whether or not those people can be seated.

I guess, though, I just, I do want to caveat this,

I think it's important to be vigilant.

I'm glad that there are people like Mike,

Mark Elias out there that are fighting this

and many others, and I do think we need to be ready for it.

I just think we should also be clearied about the ways

in which they fail,

don't which the ways that are political project

is failing right now.

And, you know, it's, you notice,

I use this example a lot.

After Doug Masteryano, you probably don't even remember him,

he ran against Josh Shapiro in 2022.

He was an insurrectionist,

he ran for Governor of Pennsylvania,

and he was talking like Trump,

like, I'm not gonna accept the election,

this is regged, it's fraudulent.

And Josh Shapiro beat him by 18 points.

And Doug Masteryano just conceived it.

Nobody stormed the Capitol in Harrisburg

because the election wasn't close enough to steal.

And I think that, like, all of that is a play here.

And I think that that part of the democracy movement,

you know, making sure that the people who oppose

this administration turn out in an interim election

and turn out in such numbers

that these efforts, these kind of half-baked efforts

to try to screw with the election

just don't match, you know, the scale of the opposition.

And that's the trajectory I think we're headed on.

I don't believe that we're,

that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be vigilant,

that there won't be monkey business,

that they're not gonna try to pull whatever levers that they can.

But I just think it's important to kind of see clearly

or add and not let people get to, you know,

hopeless about the importance of actually voting in the midterm.

After subjecting millions of Americans

to long lines at airports across the nation,

while thousands of TSA agents worked without pay for weeks,

Donald Trump in an attempt to clean up a mess

entirely of his own making just signed

an executive order which will pay TSA workers

as the Homeland Security shutdown drags on.

That move would not have been necessary

if House Republicans would have voted

for the bill passed unanimously by the Senate

to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security,

the exception of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson instead

is refusing to bring that bill to a vote,

which will extend the shutdown as lawmakers leave town

for eight to two week recess.

We are back with Tim Miller.

Listen, this has always been a very tricky caucus

for Mike Johnson, but they just, they own this now, right?

There's a question about that.

Yeah, I mean, this is like the least important element

of it, which is who's winning the spin battle

of this in Washington.

But to the extent that it matters,

the Democrats have officially won the spin battle

on this shutdown in Washington.

Just I'd Trump absolutely own this.

The Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate

came back together and they said, look,

this is getting out of hand.

This is unfair to the TSA agents that they're getting paid.

It's a disaster for travelers.

And let's just pay, that's just fun.

The other parts of DHS besides ICE and CBP

and deal with those conversations later.

It's a totally reasonable thing.

That's what the Democrats have been proposing for a while.

Republicans of the Senate agreed.

And now Republicans in the House are holding it up.

So there's really only one group of people

that can be blamed for the long lines

and the lack of pay for TSA.

And it's the House Republicans.

And I don't even really know what they want

to plan to get out of it at this point.

I guess maybe they, in theory, they would think

that they would have leverage to pressure the Democrats

to fund ICE or CBP.

But why would the Democrats do that right now

when the House Republicans are the ones holding the back?

Right, I mean, I understand your point about this

in the broader context being the least important element

of this debate.

And yet the reason that it feels relevant to me

is we are reminded over and over again

that there is a small part of the Republican caucus.

And the larger Republican caucus, notwithstanding,

that makes it very difficult for common sense, practical,

bipartisan measures to move.

And you have made the point to me many times,

like this is not a Republican Congress

so concerned with legislating.

And perhaps given their priorities,

it is best that things aren't just speeding through there.

But in addition to the role that Congress should be playing

in pumping the brakes on this president's worst impulses,

whether that is on Iran, whether that is on tariffs

and all of the power that Republicans

have conceded to the executives,

there's also just a reminder of the opportunity cost

of they're not understanding to him how to get things done.

Well, they just can't govern.

I, this is just fundamentally it, they can't govern.

And we're in a crisis and you need to have people

and watch them they can govern.

And even if, you know, look, we'd been in times before

where you and I disagreed,

at least yeah, where people disagreed with who was in Congress.

We understood that in times of crisis,

in times of emergency, you needed grownups on Capitol Hill

who could come together and say, hey, we need to figure out

something to solve this crisis.

These guys can't do that.

Like they're not capable of doing it.

And so they're to blame for the continued lack of pay

of the TSA agents and the continued lines

that people are going to have to suffer through this weekend.

And you know, look, I think it's an ominous side

as things start to unravel as a result of the Iran war,

be that economically or militarily, or both.

You know, there's nobody home on Capitol Hill

to try to reign the president in it.

I'm not attached to the phrase make America great again.

I don't care.

But if that phrase sucks, here's the thing.

Like first of all, America is great.

Let me make America greater, I'm down.

But make America great again and then it becomes a movement

of a bunch of dorks because a lot of them are dorks.

A lot of them, these really weird,

uninteresting unintelligent people that have got something

they cling to and there's a lot of people

that are just real genuine patriots.

And they're all lumped into this one group

and you got to accept the dorks too, that.

Like the concept of making America great is a great idea.

But as soon as you have a team and you allow anybody

to join up, you don't even have tryouts for your team.

So you've got a bunch of dip, dip,

that are running around spouting out opinions

and you have to go along with them because they're MAGA.

Okay, I just want to say, Tim Miller, I'm not sure,

he didn't name names in that particular clip.

It shouldn't have taken anyone who was listening

or paying attention this long to realize that,

let's just say Steven Miller is a huge dork

and that his ideas are so radically out of line

with where most Americans are

and that he is not actually interested

in making America great in any forward-looking vision.

But still welcome, glad you are here.

Welcome to the party.

I am curious what you think this says,

but also what is motivating this folks?

Because I think we have to be honest about the fact

that they have brands too,

and that they recognize that the brand proximity to Trump

no longer has the prestige that it once did.

Yeah, I think it's gonna be tempting for about a year now

or maybe longer to just do,

how didn't you see this before?

We were so right, we tried to tell you inside of it.

We can all allow ourselves like five minutes of that a week.

So then you can move on to something more productive

because I hear you,

I know that at least they were always dorks.

Like what, if you go on to a,

I've been to CPACs, okay?

It's nothing new, it's not the cool kids table.

So look, I think that the significance

of the Joe Rogan thing to me is twofold.

One, moving from being critical of Trump

and doing kind of what Angela is talking about,

Megan Kelly doing, kind of saying that he's being misurved

or something must be wrong,

there must be something else happening in Washington

doing the conspiracy talk.

That's what's a baby step away from Trump.

Starting to become, just trying to mock him,

trying to mock his movement,

mocking the name of his movement, that is different.

You know, that is somebody that, as you said,

is trying to separate himself brand wise from Trump

and it's someone that's trying to say face with his audience

because he sees that it's going very badly

and he doesn't want him to be made to look like a fool.

And that's extremely potent.

You know, once you move away from disagreeing

or criticizing or trying to do a 40-chest rationalization

for why it's happening into mocking and contempt,

you know, I think that is going to resonate with the audience.

And I think the way you see from these guys

is then moving to, I think as Angela said,

again, like not to the Democrats,

but back to where they had been.

A lot of these guys were non-voters.

A lot of these guys were not engaged in the process.

And I think that's the first step.

Now, I was watching have one of the bar stool podcasts

with a couple of these guys.

It's a smaller show than any of these,

but I thought this was telling.

But the two of them were talking to each other

is two guys and they're like, you know, he's doing terrible.

But like, you can't say it because then the NSNow people

will start to come for you and tell and rub in your face.

And he's like, and then, you know, you lose the fact

that the other side is still unacceptable to me.

And like, I think that is like where they are

in the process right now, like accepting the fact

that Trump has betrayed them, accepting the fact

that he is a disaster and trying to maybe do the first step,

which is maybe I'm not involved in politics at all.

I'm checking out of politics, which, you know,

is better on balance and voting for MAGA.

I've been gifted five minutes a month of saying,

I told you so by Tim Miller.

I think I've used up about 30 seconds of it.

Look forward to the next four minutes and 30 seconds

while March remains.

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