ShamWow Guy Has America’s Dumbest Campaign Ad
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Miller, Catherine Rampell, and Will Sommer give their takes on the rise of the infomercial wing of the GOP. From ShamWow and MyPillow to the ambassador selling blood-flow vitamins and miracle sleep aids, they unpack how selling stuff became a political credential and why Trump’s brand of politics made it inevitable.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with my pals, Will Summer and Catherine Rampel. |
| 0:05.6 | They are the authors of the false flag and receipts newsletter, respectively. |
| 0:10.5 | Receipts? It's Friday after an annual war tape in this. I'm sorry, it's been a long read. |
| 0:15.5 | It's been a long day. You can sign up at the Bullwark.com. |
| 0:20.5 | Super Bowl weekend's a big commercial weekend. |
| 0:22.8 | You know, the gays, we often watch just for other commercials. I'm going to miss a Super Bowl. I booked a flight during the Super Bowl. I didn't even realize it until about two minutes ago. It's like, oh, well, I don't know. We'll see. Hopefully the airline has it on. but, you know, there's some high-level commercials you get to see during the Super Bowl. |
| 0:38.7 | Some funny ones, celebs, you know, there's some high-level commercials you get to see during the Super Bowl. |
| 0:38.7 | Some funny ones, celebs, you know. |
| 0:41.5 | The Republicans have a series of candidates who are more in the infomercial space than the commercial space. |
| 0:48.4 | And Catherine was flagging this for us, and we thought maybe it'd be valuable just to go through it because it's it's quite a |
| 0:54.7 | notable trend i want to start with uh we're old enough to remember the sham wow everybody |
| 0:59.7 | remember sham wow oh yeah i certainly yeah you own knockoff sham wows yeah you own knockoff sham wows really i |
| 1:05.3 | don't think they're like brand name but they're you know explain to the youth that are watching |
| 1:08.9 | what a sham wow is it's like this very absorbent fabric. |
| 1:13.9 | It's kind of like a felt material that you use to sop up water. |
| 1:18.3 | And there were these crazy infomercials about all of the wonderful things that it did back in the day. |
| 1:25.0 | Well, Mr. Shamwow is running for office. Vince Shlomo. Slomo. Slomie. |
| 1:30.9 | Slommy? We'll figure it out. Um, Sloomy, I think. Slow me. He's running and he's got an ad. Let's watch it |
| 1:38.2 | together. Hey, it's Vince. I'm running for Congress against this guy. Stop having a politician that's worse than |
| 1:43.9 | Biden. Uh, for Congress against this guy. Stop having a politician that's worse than Biden. |
| 1:44.5 | Uh, for a discretionary funding. |
| 1:49.2 | Instead, vote for me, a guy who's not half dead. |
... |
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