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Bulwark Takes

Could an 8-Year-Old Beat Up the President?

Bulwark Takes

The Bulwark

Politics, News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.71.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sarah Longwell and Catherine Rampell react to the absurd new YouGov poll asking whether Americans think they—or even an 8-year-old boy—could beat Donald Trump in a fight.

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Bulwark Live: California tickets are on sale now! Sarah and gang return to sunny Southern California for two nights May 20 & 21. For details and tickets go to https://TheBulwark.com/Events.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the bulwark. And I'm joined by Catherine Rampel,

0:04.9

who writes our incredible receipts newsletter. If you're not reading this all the time, go check it out.

0:10.0

But we want to talk about a very non-economic topic. But because we're polling people, you and I,

0:16.3

we digest polls. We think about these numbers. We decided we wanted to get on and talk about a new

0:21.9

U-Gov poll, which asked a serious sample at 2,609 Americans. That is a good sample size,

0:29.1

whether they thought an eight-year-old boy, a typical American or themselves could win a physical

0:36.4

fight with Donald Trump.

0:38.6

Catherine, I don't know why YouGov decided to ask this question.

0:43.5

Oh, I do.

0:44.5

Okay.

0:45.2

Do you know?

0:45.6

Tell me why.

0:46.2

You don't know the background?

0:47.0

Because Trump was at some sort of presidential fitness test boosting event, and he, like, asked an eight-year-old boy if he thought

0:57.8

that he could beat him up, something like that.

0:59.8

I think you can take me in a fight?

1:03.0

I think you could.

1:05.0

That would be embarrassing.

1:09.0

So it was Trump who, you know, threw down the gantlet to begin with. And then UGov was like, let's see what America thinks because that's what UGov does. Oh my gosh. I had no idea. I thought somebody was just like, let's just, you know what it would be funny just to see whether an eight-year-old could beat Trump in a fist fight. I was like, who comes up with these

1:28.1

poll questions? And I thought, well, maybe there's like a deeper psychological reason. Like,

1:31.8

they're trying to get at the partisan way, because it does break down in funny partisan ways,

1:36.1

like everything else. So they were going to make a point about polarization or, okay, I want to

...

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