Sam Stein: Trump Is Trying to Instigate Unrest
The Bulwark Podcast
The Bulwark
4.6 • 11.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For some reason, the president thinks he is winning the news cycle by occupying a great American city and ordering his agents to violently confront U.S. citizens. But polling and anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. At the same time, Dems have got to stop tying themselves up in knots over what language to use about ICE. Just keep the messaging fight focused on Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and ICE. Plus, a strike on Iran is looking less likely, Jeff Bezos is a chicken and should sell The Post, the administration is pushing food rationing, our European allies are planning military exercises over the threat to Greenland, and what happened to the Epstein files?
Sam Stein joins Tim Miller.
show notes
-
Lauren on the battle among Dems over the term, "Abolish ICE"
-
The reporter who applied to be an ICE agent
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Sam's piece about the Dougs
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Tim and Sam debating the worst Cabinet members
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm your host, Tim Miller. |
| 0:16.4 | It is Thursday, and I'm delighted to be here with my friend, the managing editor of the bulwark, |
| 0:20.1 | the man Stephen Miller called Repugnant, the Interruptor- Chief at Sam Stein. Thank you. Repugnant Stein. Thank you. I'm not going to interrupt you. I promise. I don't believe you. I'm going to be interrupting you. We have an insane amount of stuff to cover today. I had like a concept of where I was going to do a popery of like things that I haven't gotten to that are also in the news. |
| 0:39.3 | But I don't know. |
| 0:39.7 | We might not get to those today either because. I had like a concept of where I was going to do a popery of like things that I haven't gotten to that are also in the news. |
| 0:39.3 | But I don't know. |
| 0:39.7 | We might not get to those today either because I sent you like five. |
| 0:43.4 | I know. We'll see. We're going to try to get to it at the end. We'll see how it goes. But we got to start with more news on a Minneapolis. Last night around 9 o'clock, federal agents shot rubber bullets and released gas canisters in North Minneapolis as protesters gathered after a federal agent shot a migrant in the head really bad. |
| 1:21.9 | This is going to be a photographer from status coup news. |
| 1:24.6 | We're going to be playing a couple things from them today. |
| 1:27.0 | I guess before we get to the DHS's story about what happened, |
| 1:30.0 | I guess initial thoughts on the escalations last night. |
| 1:34.1 | You know, it's getting like, well, past the point of disturbing, |
| 1:38.8 | but it's getting really, like, defeating more, |
| 1:42.4 | you feel defeated watching this stuff because this is a major U.S. city that is under siege |
| 1:48.8 | by its own government. |
| 1:51.1 | I mean, there's no other way to really look at it. |
| 1:53.7 | What they've done is they've sent thousands of ICE agents into a city that doesn't want |
| 1:58.0 | them, doesn't need them, isn't asking for them, and it's just stirring |
| 2:03.2 | shit up. And it's so obvious what the goal is here is they're just trying to create chaos to |
| 2:08.6 | justify more federal authorities going in there. I mean, Trump this morning, as we are |
... |
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