Tim Miller: Trump Goes From Kingmaker to Bystander

Hey everybody, Tim Miller from The Bulwark here. It's been a big afternoon. I just spent the full hour with Nicole Wallace, and we were talking about the way that Trump is really struggling to navigate the economy and Epstein issues that are dogging him

in the poll numbers. And in addition to that, I think we're seeing evidence that it's dogging him politically in other ways and limiting his political power. I didn't get a chance to bring this up on the show, so I wanted to add to it right here. The news out of Indiana, where the Indiana Senate bucked Donald Trump's effort to pressure them to try to rig the state to squeeze out two more Republican House members is a pretty shocking and encouraging rebuke of

this administration. I mean, as we've covered on here, some of these state senators have received real threats. They've been bullied, they've been intimidated, and they said to the administration, no, we're not going to do it. And so I give them a lot of credit for that. And so they deserve credit for being principled. Also, I think it's just worth noting that this is happening in part,

not to take anything away from the Courage and Principle. It's happening in part because of Donald Trump's weakness. It's just it's hard to imagine this happening six months ago. Maybe it would have, I think there's some Mike Pence work behind the scenes to help stiffen some spines, help get some payback at Trump, you know, and obviously there was the senators upset about Donald Trump's use of the R slur.

You cannot know a counterfactual, but I think we can suspect suspect just based on what we're seeing in other states and other places that Donald Trump is just weak right now. He's weak. He had ruled the Republican Party with an iron fist for nine or ten years and right now he smells like a lame duck, the economy sucks, he's out of touch and some Republicans are slowly, not as much as we'd want, but slowly starting to say, okay, well, I'm not going to go down with the ship. You know, at this point, I get to the end of this Nicole segment that like the writing

is basically on the wall for what's going to happen in the midterms. Now huge fights ahead, scale of the House win is important, the Senate is going to be such a big fight. But like what's going to happen in the House of Representatives at this point seems almost a fait accompli and anything can happen in a year, who the hell knows in our crazy politics what could happen. But the effort to rig it has failed, I guess we can say that.

The effort to rig it has failed and it's failed in part because of the pushback from Democrats like Gavin Newsom, whose podcast I was on today, go check that out. And it failed in part because his political standing has weakened to such a degree that Republicans feel comfortable backing him even in the face of bullying and threats. That's some good news for you. I don't know, I'm not always offering you good news here on this YouTube feed.

Happy to do it when I get the chance. Subscribe to the feed. I'm carrying a pencil right now. I'm carrying a pencil because Donald Trump said we're only allowed to have two pencils and you know what? I've got two here and I might go get a third because I'm a free man. This is a free country. I'm not going to get bullied by the president. Stick around for me and Nicole Wallace.

Let me start with you, Tim Miller. this is the worst week for donald trump in late night comedy entertainment and i can remember between sleeping and fantasizing about mom donnie uh... and then the line about you know just do it to pencils uh... and to dot i mean, I've never seen him be more sort of mocked on grounds that he is creating.

I mean, he is giving us all of our material to criticize him with.

Yeah, indeed.

I mean, I guess it does. We don't have to rank the worst weeks. I guess it does harken back to the Epstein stuff, right? You know, just happening as well. And I remember being on here, we were talking about this, Nicole, and I said, you know, just happening as well. And I remember being on here, we were talking about this, Nicole, and I said, you know, the one thing back then,

I was thinking more about kind of the more pro-Trump type comics, not just the late night guys at the time, but they don't like to be made fools of, right? And if Trump's vulnerability, you know, is him being mocked, right?

I think sometimes those of us who've opposed him, for good reason, me first in line, attack him with outrage and horror and say, he's being racist, he's being cruel. And he feeds on that, like a lot of his supporters feed on that.

But he doesn't really like being mocked. And right now he like being mocked and right now he's being mocked on the issue that was core to his campaign, which was the economy. And he was elected really based on saying that he was going to fix what what he had criticized in Joe Biden's economy and and he's gonna fix the things that people were uncomfortable with in Joe Biden's economy, particularly

inflation. And now here he is, we're a year in, we're coming up on Christmas and his message is, you know, fewer pencils. And like that's mockable. It's extremely mockable. And it's mockable for people that that had been critics of him, like Stephen Colbert or Saturday Night Live or whatever.

But it's also mockable among kind of the cultural types that had been open to or even supportive of him. And I think it's a sign of kind of how bad of straights he's in that he's just getting roundly mocked on this stuff across the board. Because he doesn't have a non-mockable message to offer,

at least in the economy.

I understand the economic picture. I've worked hard to try to learn it. And this sort of discrepancy between the market and the real lived experience of the vast majority, 80, 90, 95, 96, 97% of all Americans is totally divorced from what's happening on Wall Street.

But Trump used to have people around him like Steve Bannon and others that made sure that that was always, if not in his mind, he was reminded of it. How did he lose the ability, because he's always been ostentatious, he's always, he had a gold toilet before he gilded the Oval Office with 37 gold things just on that one wall, but how did he lose the ability

to make his wealth feel contagious to his supporters? Yeah, well I think there are two

things that are happening there. One, as you're alluding to, the people that have the ability to help him do that aren't around him anymore. People that had the savvy to do it. He's around a lot of billionaires now and the people he's around is like Scott Besant and you know the other, Lutnick and Whitcoft, people that they're in the crypto scam deals with and he's just around a lot of very rich out-of-touch people. And you know, the Bannons of

the world I don't think have the influence. And I remember a story, I believe it was on election night of 2016 when Kellyanne Conway, or it was in the lead-up to the election, we thought he was gonna lose in 2016 and Kellyanne Conway was like trying to remind him that this wasn't all about him on the plane, this isn't one of the books about the campaign. It's like, you know, it's about that you gotta keep in mind the forgotten people. So I think there's been a challenge for him

going all the way back. It's just that he had advisors that were better at reminding him that he should at least pretend to care about the people for a while. But the other really big difference here is that the economy was pretty good in the first term. You know, how much credit does Trump get for that versus, you know, economic cycles, you know, people can debate.

That's not true this time. People are feeling the pain in this economy and Trump himself and his policies have made it worse, you know, with the tariffs in particular and also some of the immigration policy and other policies they they put forth. And so this becomes a conundrum for Trump that he can't, you know, he can't figure out, you know, how to get this straight in his brain, which is I've got to care about the people and, you

know, pretend that I care about their interests and talk about them, but I also have to talk about how great I am and how everything is going well, you know. And in the first term you can kind of bridge those things by him talking about how it's the greatest economy for black people, it's the greatest economy for Hispanics and we all know the rant that he would do, you know, of anyone who watched his speeches. He can't do that now and so I think that

is what is underlining his inability to connect with people that are struggling.

Lutnick has provided one of the single best testimonials to his one-on-one time with Jeffrey Epstein. He described his tour of his mansion as quote, creepy and couldn't understand why there was a massage table instead of a dining room table in his dining room, which I thought was actually like fascinating texture

to what sort of Epstein's equally wealthy peers thought of him, but I thought he was creepy. But in terms of the economy, he's not seemed to feel any compunction to operate with credibility. What is his role in all this other than Trump

cheerleader? No, I think Trump likes him because he's a Trump cheerleader. I think that pretty much is the role. And you see reporting from inside the administration. It's obviously anonymous sources, but basically let Nick's peers think that he's the dumb one. And you know, that's pretty hard to stand out.

Says a lot.

You know, if Christine O, Max Heth and the others. I'm just telling you what the anonymous sources are telling you, the Beltway rags. So it's hard to argue though, and he's not making very strong arguments. Maybe I'm hearing things, but in that clip you just played, I think you might have said impossible like Ralph Wiggum instead of saying impossible. Maybe that's wrong, maybe I'm projecting.

One reason why they're out of touch, going back to their being out of touch, it's worth mentioning in seriousness with Lutnick is his kids, the Lutnick children. They reported earlier this year that the best year ever for their firm. And the Wickoff kids are in business with Trump, as I mentioned in the last segment with the Trump kids on crypto. And so these guys are all doing great.

And I do think that contributes to how out of touch they are in the economy, is that it has been a good economic year if most of your money comes from the stock market. It's been an especially good year if most of your money comes from the stock market

and you're corrupt and you have inside deals with the administration. And it's been a really, really great year if you're in the Trump family or you're in the business with the Trump family. And I think that that is both a massive scandal, but also contributing to their disconnect with what's happening with everybody else.

Tim, it strikes me as another sign of how out of touch he is, that he's literally using the same word for the Epstein files as he is for the economy that it's some sort of hoax where as with the economy where there are real victims of our economic challenges there are real victims of Epstein and Maxwell's heinous crimes. Yeah he does have another play you know

look this has worked this worked for him in other areas and I think that's why he has continued to push forward on it and he's it's worked for him in other areas and uh... and that's why he has continued to push forward on it and uh... he's it's worked for him in defending himself against his own crimes that worked for him with the lies around the twenty twenty election and a reason why calling those things hoaxes worked for him is because as you just alluded to

didn't intersect with other people's lives it is easy to be watched news banks are fox all day to believe that there was some hoax out there that was stealing the election from them. That there was some hoax out there in the Justice Department that was going after Donald Trump unfairly. I mean, it's obviously wrong and ridiculous and a lie,

but like you can understand how he got away with it. It doesn't work. You can't call people's grocery bill a hoax. They experience their grocery bill you can call all of these women that have been and girls other than victims of epstein and maxwell hoaxes are there a lot of people out there in the country that have followed

the story and cared about it for years and years now watch documentaries about

it

and and so you know they're not going to buy that they're not going to buy what what he's selling and i think you know it explains a little bit why his numbers are down

and why he's struggling on these topics.

Congressman Garcia seems to be signaling to anyone of the FBI who may be thinking about being part of tampering or helping them conceal something or not release everything. Basically, we're watching you.

What do you think is ultimately turned over to the public?

Well, I thought that was interesting, what Congressman Garcia said. And, you know, there'll be some limits to that power this year, where the Democrats take back the House. You know, I think officials that worked on this

should be aware that subpoenas are gonna be coming from them. And we've seen the public reports at this point, you played in the last segment, that thousands upon thousands of hours of agents who time was spent going through all these files and marking off whether Donald Trump was mentioned

and putting it into a share file. And so we know that that file exists. And so if they release these files and it seems like stuff is missing, well, the people that went through those files you know might be called down to Congress when the Democrats take control which I think is likely and in 2027 and

and folks should be thinking about that and this I don't even think that's really a threat as so much as it is like a reminder you know there are a lot of people in the FBI that are just doing good work. You know, you've had Mike Feinberg on your show and others, people who are doing good work in the FBI and have been pushed out for political reasons by the top of this bureau. And so, you know, I think that those folks, those folks do know the truth and the truth And so, you know, I think that those folks, those folks do know the truth and the truth

is going to come out.