Tommy Vietor: The Marionette in the White House

The Bulwark Daily

Hosts Tim Miller and Tommy Vietor dissect the Trump administration's escalating military posture toward Iran, highlighting the deployment of additional troops and questioning Democratic

Key takeaways

• The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group and 9,000-10,000 additional troops to the Middle East, raising fears of post-midterm strikes on Iran.
• Jared Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, holds major stakes in Israeli arms manufacturers while he serves as a key negotiator for Gaza peace deals.

Main topics

• Trump's health and physical appearance
• US-Iran military escalation and troop deployments

Notable quotes

"Jared is literally a war profiteer."

Conclusion

The episode underscores how financial incentives and political opportu

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:13) Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of a little show called Pond Save America. He was Obama's, the Obama administration's national security spokesman after being a driver. for Barack Obama. He's also the co-host of Pod Save the World, one of my favorites. The last time you were on, Tommy, which was in 2025. You haven't come on at all this year. Really? Yeah, I went back to the archive. I mentioned that I dozed off after listening to 26 minutes of Pod Save the World. Good news. I made it 39 minutes in this week's episode because I'm like locked in on the horn of Africa. Good. So we're going to be doing a little horn of Africa on Speaker 3 (0:53) the Speaker 4 (0:53) show today, too. That's Speaker 3 (0:54) great to hear. There's Speaker 4 (0:55) a Speaker 3 (0:55) lot going on. I was going to say, did you make it through the 25-minute Ethiopia segment? I'm surprised you did. Speaker 4 (0:59) Yeah, no, I started to doze towards the end. But I was really working. I was kind of fighting off kind of like the nods on the airplane as Eritrea came up. So we'll get back. Much more Eritrea content to come. I want to start here. We're both independent media folks. I think it's important to support independent media. You're a shameless pitch man on your shows. There's been some discussion of the publisher of The Bulwark lately, Sarah Longwell. I thought that for the Clippers out there, I was wondering if you wanted to start off with any thoughts about Sarah Longwell and whether you think people should support her efforts or not. Speaker 3 (1:37) The thing about Sarah is she did steal my car briefly in college. She has told the story. I've not gotten to tell it on my side. You know when you fill up your car when you're in college and it's sort of like all the money you have. And then she and my friend Laszlo returned it completely empty. So she owes me a bunch of cash. So if you subscribe, it would go towards her paying down her debts. If you subscribe to what now? The Bulwark. The Bulwark is great. We need to support independent media because they are not going to kowtow to the Trump administration. They're not going to build a ballroom. or, you know, jump when he says how high. Yeah. That's why he says subscribe. Speaker 4 (2:11) Not going to like nitpick Kamala or anything like that, you know? I'm going to focus on the big picture. I think we're all going to nitpick whoever we want. I have to say, Tim, I don't want to Speaker 3 (2:22) turn Speaker 4 (2:22) this into a reach around. No, we're not. Speaker 3 (2:24) I did really appreciate what you guys did for the Haitian community in Springfield, how much money you guys just raised. Because we also covered on the episode, after you fell asleep, Speaker 4 (2:32) I Speaker 3 (2:33) did an interview with a guy from the Council on Foreign Relations who had just gotten back from Haiti and wrote up a big report on it. And we are sending 350,000 people back to a literal war zone levels of violence. 90 % of Port-au-Prince is controlled by gangs. The sexual violence is just like through the roof. And like what Trump is doing is so unbelievably evil and to support people here is a pretty big deal. For no reason Speaker 4 (2:54) also. I just, I guess to kind of follow up on the smear and the lie about like pet eating. Yeah. It's just totally, and it's just dehumanizing, disgusting. So I appreciate it. It was really good to be there. And frustrating in a lot of ways. JVL wrote about this. Like the tough part about it is, you know, and you guys are out there doing this stuff too, but when you go to Minnesota, like there really was this kind of community rallying around. know each other in minnesota uh in the face of like these jackbooted thugs and not exactly what's that and we were very grateful for the people that came out people donated in our community that's like not exactly what is happening really Speaker 3 (3:27) in Speaker 4 (3:27) ohio a lot of the politicians are too scared to stand up for them and mike dewine's not no tim waltz on this front and um you know there's just a lot of fear so it's terrible all right We have very serious topics like that to get to. I want to start with foreign policy stuff. We'll get into politics. But just as a little appetizer, I just have a question for you about something I've been obsessing about lately. Have you seen Trump's legs? Have you been looking? Do you have the picture? Yeah. Can you put it up? Have you been looking about his legs? It's incredible. Yeah, we can pull it up here. The way he's standing, I mean, there's been some discussion for a while that he might have some sort of brace. Or I don't know, maybe just like the weight from his top portion is such that it's like creating downward pressure onto the joints. Speaker 3 (4:12) Yeah. One of the photos I saw, the direction his feet are facing compared to his torso looks like they're about to spin around his body like the Exorcist. It conjures up like Lord Farquaad. Do you remember him from the Shrek movies? Speaker 4 (4:25) Of course. Or when you were Speaker 3 (4:26) little. If you like ripped the legs out of an action figure and stuck a tiny ones in, he kind of looks like that. What I'm trying to figure out is how does he stay upright? Cause he's leaning forward so much. It feels like he should just be constantly falling. Speaker 4 (4:37) And there are a lot of different angles. I've been studying it. You know. I was pretty sold on the fact that he had leg braces until I had Ben Terrace on the pod and he had just spent some time with Trump. And I was like, did you get a good look at the – and he said he got a good look at the hands and the legs. And it looked – the leg looked real to him, natural. But something's happening, I think. That's a good reporter. Yeah, I always assumed it was just like lifts in the shoes Speaker 3 (5:00) to make him from like 6 to 6'3 or whatever they claim he is. Speaker 4 (5:03) I have been very reticent to do the like Trump. dementia stuff or whatever because he's like always been crazy but it's been more and more stark for like if you accidentally come across like a 2016 campaign rally video different person it's really jarring actually it is different Speaker 3 (5:21) it's like watching a biden debate from 2007 frankly compared to where he was the end of 2024 or Speaker 4 (5:27) just like you know pushing paul ryan around a little bit yes that was brilliant Speaker 3 (5:31) bullying paul ryan i did enjoy that i mean Nothing they say about his health is honest, right? I mean, I think they release a height and weight for Donald Trump that makes him like the equivalent of DK Metcalf or like John Elway in his prime, right? So, of course, we don't believe the cognitive stuff Speaker 4 (5:45) either. I have some John Elway stories. You kind of made a pass at my mother one time. Really? That's neither here nor there. Yeah. What's Paul Ryan up to now? Is Speaker 3 (5:53) he still on Speaker 4 (5:53) the board of Fox? Yeah. I'm Googling. Yeah, he's still on the board. That's kind of a – that's not really a courageous path traveled by Paul Ryan. I just kind of slink away. Just quit. That kind of crowd, this is a funny little inside gag about, you don't kind of, this isn't your world, you don't know about these people, but like the people that are like the balanced budget conservatives that never got on board for Trump, but also, you know, they kind of wrote in, you know, Edmund Burke or something for president or Jack Kemp or whatever, like that kind of crowd. They're kind of starting to... Their mouth's watering a little bit. They're looking at 2029, and I think that Paul Ryan might think that things are coming back for him. Speaker 3 (6:34) I have a hard time thinking that debt and deficit is going to be the winner this time. Hope springs eternal, guys. I mean, I guess, what are we at, like $40 trillion? You don't think in Speaker 4 (6:42) the Democratic primary we're not going to get a debt and deficit Democrat in the 2028 primary? Speaker 3 (6:48) I think we're going to fight about modern monetary theory again. Remember that was hot in the streets for a while. Speaker 4 (6:53) I don't know. I mean, if you're paying 6%, 7%, 7 % now on a home mortgage, higher, 8%. It's getting up there, buddy. Yeah, I mean, you would think that there might be a deficit hawk Democrat. Who do you think might – who would be the person to do that, do you think? Bashir, you know, someone coming from that kind of balance of budget kind of lane. This is what I'm looking for in 28, which goes against kind of what I think the discourse wants. Like, I want somebody that is – you know that goes full vitor roads on foreign policy like bordering like not quite all the way to like ban hamas roads but like you know the u.s yeah really should just like totally back away okay from the middle east all together okay like go and then maybe go like try to outflank the leftist candidate on health care be like you're medicare for all like i i'm fully taking over the entire healthcare system. I'm going full left on healthcare. And also too, by the way, I really care about the debt and deficits and I want to fund cops. That's what I want. Can somebody shake things up a little bit? Speaker 3 (8:03) I mean, that's not a bad strategy to win. That's a bit of a unicorn just in terms of how we're going to fund all these things. But I guess the nice thing about 2028 is I think everyone's going to give up on pretending that they really have a plan. so to speak, or a way to pay for all the things we're proposing. I think Trump has given us all permission to just get to that later. We're going Speaker 4 (8:22) to fund it. I don't know. We're going to tax the AI companies and we'll save some money on the Department of War. Tax Speaker 3 (8:28) the Speaker 4 (8:28) embalmen. And we're going to get rid of ICE. And we're going to stop giving rich people... Oh, no. The boomers are going to get mad about this. We're going to stop giving rich people Social Security. Okay. I don't know. Speaker 3 (8:38) Great. Speaker 4 (8:39) And then, you know, we're going to balance the budget and give everybody health care. This sounds great, right? I Speaker 3 (8:43) think it's a good plan. I also think we just need to make sure. Speaker 4 (8:45) If you're listening, one of the people who's at 2 % right now in the 2028 poll, something to think about. We Speaker 3 (8:49) also need someone just that's really good looking saying all of it. Speaker 4 (8:53) Really handsome. Got to be hot. Like Zoolander. Speaker 3 (8:56) Yeah. Speaker 4 (8:56) Like kind of, yeah. Like a Zoolander style guy. Okay. Maybe Rob Sand. Speaker 3 (9:02) I Speaker 4 (9:03) mean, he kills me when I mention this. He was a male model. If Rod wins that race, Speaker 3 (9:08) people are going to start talking about him as a 2028 VP nominee or whatever. And it's going to make him insane. He doesn't want to do it, but it will be part of Speaker 4 (9:16) the Speaker 3 (9:16) conversation. Speaker 4 (9:17) Let's do some foreign policy, then we'll get back to politics. Let's do it. Iran war news today. The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group and additional Marine Corps ships to the Middle East, adding 9,000 to 10,000 more troops, obviously a bunch of sailors, to the region as President Trump considers renewing strikes on Iran after the midterm elections. This feels like this is happening. Right. I think so. There's going to be an escalation period after the midterms. I Speaker 3 (9:45) mean, how many times do Speaker 4 (9:46) we Speaker 3 (9:46) have to read it? Trump is floating constantly to his staff that he's thinking about or planning on re-escalating after the midterms. They're certainly reloading their capacity in the region. Like, I think there's a good chance that one of those carrier strike groups comes home and gets rotated out. So we have two there and one comes back. And maybe the same for the ARG is one of the amphibious ready groups. But still a lot of service members permanently in the region. It's wildly expensive. And I think people don't realize that like we have 11 aircraft carriers by statute, but usually it's like a third of them are deployed. A third of them are doing training stuff and a third of them are in the dry dock getting fixed or like maintained in some way. So there's not like there's not 11 just like ready at all times. If you have three of them in the Middle East, that means one in China that we're not covered in a lot of places. Speaker 4 (10:35) I don't know. I mean, I'm not a military strategy expert, and I know that we do have the best and the brightest working on this right now. I mean, Pete Hegsap's making sure that we don't have any femboys, no yaoi. No weirdos. Yeah, no bearded ladies. No people who are into yaoi. You know, no piss play. So, it's making sure it's just, just, you know. It's true. guys with muscles and I don't know. And they're doing a lot of T and a lot of push-ups. But like we're kind of, it seems like we're kind of signaling to the Iranians. They've now had a period of time also to regroup while we're discussing our testosterone replacement therapy. And I don't know, you know, the different asymmetric options they have in the straight. I'm not optimistic, I guess I would say. Speaker 3 (11:29) No, I'm not. They live there. They have nowhere else to go. The IRGC lives in Iran. They have nowhere else to go. And so we can conduct another six month bombing campaign and re-hit all the same sites over and over again that apparently weren't taken out the first time. But they have a capacity to rebuild. They obviously have ballistic missiles left. They have lots of drones left. They can hit all our bases in the Middle East. They're clearly getting intelligence or targeting information from the Chinese, maybe the Russians that are aiding them. being pretty effective. They've killed, what is it, 19 or 22, if you believe the Washington Post, U.S. service members. They've injured 800 more. The cost is going to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Like, there's no strategy to win this war. We can send as many aircraft carriers as we want. There's still not a strategy to end this war. And also, we're running low on all the interceptor missiles that keep people in Israel or on U.S. bases or anywhere else in the Gulf safe. So, like... They're playing for time, and I think they have a Speaker 4 (12:25) better hand here. Yeah, they do. They do have a better hand. For example, they're like, we got a fatty who's into fisting. We're using him. The Iranians are using him. They're not leaving anybody on the sidelines. Yeah. Speaker 3 (12:37) This guy's going to throw a punch. All right. Okay. Speaker 4 (12:43) I had a serious question. Oh, I bet. Speaker 4 (12:49) Am I – I am nitpicking. So I've already fallen down on my promise in the beginning of the podcast. I am going to nitpick the Democrats a little bit. Are they capturing Speaker 3 (12:59) as Speaker 4 (12:59) much of the political benefit from this shit show as they could be right now? Because I just don't feel like they are. Speaker 3 (13:07) No. Every time I read like a story about Trump secretly telling his team that they're going to go back to war after the midterms, I would like to hear every single Democrat out. saying something like release the secret plan or like, you know, calling on their opponent to tell Trump not to, you know, resume the war with Iran or like framing the entire debate as, or sorry, framing the entire election as your last best opportunity to actually check Trump and end the war and prevent him from escalating. From the very beginning of this war, there were a bunch of Democrats who were like unsure what to say about it because They hate the Iranians. They've been lobbied forever to take out the regime. Like they kind of like wanted to wait around and make sure the war didn't go well before they criticized it. I think they need to be full throated in opposition. They need to point out what a disaster it's been, that it could only get worse, that Trump is not reliable or good at this. Like, no, they're not even coming close to capturing the political benefit. Speaker 4 (14:04) They're pretty good at if you listen to Democrats talk about the war, the war comes up. Like if we were playing a part of their game and, you know, we've DVR'd, we've paused, you know, the Sunday show that whatever Democrats out on, they get the Iran war question. They're going to pivot to the economy. Right. And they're doing that well. And that's fine. And that's good. It is important for voters to understand the connection between the higher gas prices are playing, the higher food prices are playing and the war. But like the war is also bad on the merits. Right, and I do feel like they're jumping straight ahead to that. And instead of focusing on they have no exit strategy, it's fucking outrageous that they're sending our troops. It's not fair to our troops, to our sailors, to send them to the region, to sit on this boat when there's no plan, there's no exit strategy. It's not patriotic. It's not powerful. It's not strong. It's fucking idiocy. They're right. They are cowboys. They're acting like dumbass fucking cowboys. What do you attribute that to? Kind of like