S.E. Cupp
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, basically. I mean, everyone complains. Not everyone. Let me be more judicious with my words. But I've heard a number of Republicans in the House and Senate and staffers complain about, like I said, cabinet picks in these security positions, right? Specifically Tulsi.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
One person I talked to called her a clown and voted for her because not being with this president on everything is, I feel like, not an option.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Just that. Just that. Yeah. I know that there was some relief when she pushed back on Doge, when she pushed back on Elon and the firing he's trying to do. There was a little relief of that, but she has since come out and said some propagandist shit about Russia that confirmed she is exactly who we thought she was.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
But no, I think there's definitely anxiety among a lot of Republicans on the national security front, but a total unwillingness to do anything about it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And then threatening that he might. Then he might turn it off.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Ridiculous, stupid, terrible, awful. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this interest in cutting the government, streamlining the government, making it leaner and smarter, because this is the rare conservative thing that this administration seems to have been interested in. And it's a bedrock of small government, limited government conservatism. So I thought this is good.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I did not like the idea of putting an unelected man-child in charge of it, but that wasn't my choice. Yeah. But, no, I was very open-minded to this, but I cannot believe how clumsily and dumbly they've gone about this. I mean, no expert in anything would say that this is the way to fix any problem. Right. What a waste.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
What a wasted opportunity because there is bipartisan support among the electorate for cutting fraud and waste and making the government smaller. That's such an easy win. It's low-hanging fruit. You could easily win at this if you just did it in like a normal way.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
But Elon is, like I said, he's such a man child who I feel like is running around the country playing at politics, like with toys, like the economy is a toy. All these agencies are little chess pieces on his like big game board. It's ridiculous. And I don't know when or if Trump will ever get tired of Of him embarrassing us on a world stage. Will that ever get tiring for Trump? I don't know.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, I've heard that. How long he wants that kind of heat shield, I don't know. But I don't know. I wouldn't want to be embarrassed this way, especially if I had as thin a skin as Donald Trump. This is just, it's laughable. It's humiliating. We are a laughingstock because Elon tweets at foreign leaders like they're just trolls, like they're Twitter trolls he's swatting away. It's crazy.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I think that's right. I think that is true. But then again... What does Elon have over Trump that Trump can't say, hey, let's cool it with this. Let's rein this in or let's do it this way. Let's get a little more responsible, a little less reckless. Like, why can't he rein him in? He doesn't want to. That's the part I don't. I guess I just don't get.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
What's crazy is... I thought the 2016 campaign was incredibly disorganized. Yeah. And then his first term... For all the things. Sure. Was a bit more organized, or at least it efforted at it. It brought in some good people. He kicked them all out when he realized they were actually too good and wouldn't do his bidding. But this is the reverse.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Psychologizing Trump has never been my strong suit.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, it's this sing for your supper. Yes. And it's a theme, right? Why didn't he thank us? Why isn't he more thankful? This theme of... You have to earn. You have to earn your democracy. You have to earn your government. You have to earn services you've already paid for. You have to re-earn our support, even though you've thanked us a thousand times.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
It's so much about them as if – and I said this before, like, in that meeting with Zelensky – Trump and J.D. Vance looked like two losers on bar stools, trying to be like, we own this bar. Who are you coming in here? You don't own the bar. That's not your house. The White House isn't yours.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
It's our house. You are public servants. There is no awareness of the public service aspect of this job. And the only people that could really get in their way are Republican lawmakers, and they're not doing that. So there's no stopping this.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I found this 2024 campaign to be run in a very high-level way by Suzy et al., And the collapse of that organization and order on day one of this term has been, I guess, shocking, but not. I mean, I am shocked at the level of disorganization and chaos, considering he came in, I think, with a way bigger mandate this time. I mean, I judge people for voting him in the first time.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I don't know. I know having covered Elon a bit before Doge, people are scared of him too inside his companies. He is vengeful inside his own companies. He fires people when they say things he doesn't like. So I don't know, there might be a culture, even among his shareholders, of a fear of retributions. I don't know. And Dave is right, and it's a great idea.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
But I just wouldn't put a ton of hope in the idea that someone out there is going to hold him accountable.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Also a plutocracy, what I'm calling a plutocracy because of the tech specificness of our plutocrats today. Yeah. We do. And yeah, the Starling contracts, I think I said something like, it's like making the arsonist the fire chief, but also... The accountant, the head of HR.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, the insurance payouts and awarding him contracts and accelerants, right? Because Elon is overseeing agencies that regulate his businesses and decide whether his businesses will live or die. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. And this should be a huge, the story. Imagine the Clinton era, right? Of trying to find bits of corruption anywhere you can, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
With whitewater, these really kind of complicated, you really have to look for the corruption. It was there, of course, but you really have to find it. This is such obvious corruption and self-dealing.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
It is apples and oranges. And suddenly, nobody cares. Nobody cares that the George Soros of MAGA Suddenly, I mean, I feel like I had my memory erased. Like someone's trying to erase my memory from the past 20 years of conservatism. We're like, remember when that stuff mattered? Boom, severance. You're at work now. You forgot all of that. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I judge them harder for voting him in the second time. And there were more of them.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
So I actually expected, and I think I said this various places, that I was going to go into this administration with an open mind, Tim, and try not to get sucked into the industrial outrage complex.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
He is. He is. Yeah, those are the kinds of things. I don't know if it's bubble or not really understanding where we're at.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Money, right? Yeah, and solving big problems, right? It feels a little like bringing a knife to a gunfight when you're like, this is not what's going to win your voters back, which you need. And this isn't addressing your policy problems. The policy problems that Democrats have are that the top three concerns of the country were not being solved by Democratic policies.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
We've already said the economy, inflationary economic policy didn't work. At the border, open borders didn't work. And crime, soft on crime policies didn't work. Whether perception or real, that is where we're at.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
The FBI had to revise its numbers and no one said anything about the fact that they then showed crime was actually going up.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I wonder why. I gave you the perception part. I gave you that some of this could be perception, but these are the top three problems. Democratic policies did not solve them for many Americans. So to ignore those top three things, And decide it's really a question of leadership. David Hogue is going to fix this over at the DNC. Or it's really a question of how we message this.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Or it's a question of whether we protest at the joint's address and hold paddles up. That's going to solve it. Or Stacey Abrams' big solution. Here's what I did with Billions of Dollars. This is so missing. This is so missing the obvious point.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Right. Which is hard in cable news, but also in general. But impossible in this second term because it feels like the outrage is the point of everything they're doing. Because it's certainly not fixing shit. That's not the point. So yeah, it's more chaotic than I thought. It's unnecessarily chaotic. There are lots of people in place that could help with some ordering of things.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And Alyssa Slotkin, who I know and really like, got the closest to that, got the closest to it in her address when she talked about, listen, people want cuts. Okay, that's acknowledging something that many Democrats do not acknowledge. People want cuts. I have a different way to do that than the current administration is doing it. People want to lower the cost of goods.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I would have a different approach to that than this administration is doing. Democrats need to accept the problems that Americans are telling them they have and offer different solutions instead of protesting about Elon or Trump paying taxes. I mean, none of that is it. That ain't it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I haven't gotten a raise in five years. I'm working three jobs. I'm worried about my kid and opioids. I'm worried about crime in my town. But give me a new oven.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Or what if the government offered like a GE program? some subsidies for giving people new energy-efficient appliances.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Good. We're on record. We also want to solve this problem.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
The corrosion of the Republican Party and the place MAGA has pushed it into is one now where you have to reflexively... You don't have to, but... people believe that you have to reflexively defend the worst kinds of people to own the libs, to champion free speech.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Whatever it is, you have to, because it's not, it's the young Republicans, a group that helped bring me into a movement of conservatism with principles. It's, you know, Dana White and these other Trump acolytes
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
It's the vice president following these boys, and it's a ton of right-wing influencers giving them a moral pass and even saying, though they haven't been proven guilty, they've admitted to doing what we're saying that they're doing, as if there's some technicality so we can ignore all of that, is insane, but so reflective, so illustrative of how far
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And then I look at his cabinet and I'm deeply, deeply scared for some of the people in there.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
the Republican Party has devolved and in jettisoning all the principles, this is what's left. This is what they're moored to. I think more than anything else. I don't mean this like child predators. I mean, defending the indefensible is kind of what they're left with because the principles are gone. The things binding conservatives together inside the Republican Party, that's gone.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And it's nihilism and it's... Personal grievances, right? Matt Gaetz is mad at Ron DeSantis. That's why he tweeted this. This has nothing to do with the Tates. Just like nothing has anything to do with morality or principles or even whether things are working. It's just personal grievances and what you can get from people.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I am pleased to see a lot of Republicans and sort of conservatives come out against the Tates. Saying unashamedly, you know, people on the far right in right-wing media saying unashamedly, these people are terrible. Stop defending them. I've seen more of that than I thought maybe I would.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And also, you should raise your own chickens if you want to lower the price of eggs.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
That's steel wiring, too. That's going to go up. But, yeah. I don't want to laugh about measles in 2025.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
It's happened. This is heartbreaking and disgusting and preventable. And if this happens in numbers, we are no longer a first world country. Right? If we're dying, if our children are dying of diseases... We can prevent. Science has a tool for this. I don't know how we call ourselves a civil society. I don't know how we call ourselves a first world country. It's crazy.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I'm pleased at how quiet he's been, but that also makes me nervous. What's he doing in this? When we're all paying attention to Elon, what is he doing?
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I challenge this premise a little bit. Please. MAGA hasn't built anything is true a bit, but he seems to be dismissing the, I mean, he is dismissing the online infrastructure. Yes. His indictment is that MAGA is just an online fan fiction kind of movement. And he's not wrong, but that is incredibly powerful.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And for everything that Democrats built, their grassroots and their young Democrats and their It has not made them a dominant force in American politics in a very long time. I mean, since Obama, I don't think Democrats have had a ton of persuasive power. I think he's right about identifying the nature of the MAGA movement, but that is powerful in itself. I would also say...
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Whatever's going to replace Trumpism, the Republicans have not built yet. The Republicans haven't created that. And because, like I said, they've jettisoned the conservatism, the principles, there's nothing mooring. MAGA to anything static. It's only more to what Trump just said. The last Trump impulse is what is currently defining the MAGA movement. Well, that's by design.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Trump not defining his principles, the Trump... You know, the Trump order, the Trump version of foreign policy, not defining that is intentional. And it's actually, you know, people who study mass movements will say that that's a really important thing to do.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
If you want a movement to grow and continue, you can't define it because once it's accomplished those minimal goals, it ceases to be important. So you have to leave it sort of ambiguous. And Trump believes it ambiguous because he doesn't know, and he doesn't know what he wants it to be or what he stands for other than these transactional kinds of ideas.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
So MAGA is moored only to Trump, which means when Trump goes either – you know, he's not in office anymore or he dies, it's really not more to anything. And it's not more to Don Jr. It's not more to J.D. Vance or whoever the successor is. It's really just attached to him and defined by him.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
So that could leave room for a lot of things to come and fill that void, some really ugly, gross things, but also maybe conservatism again, who knows? But it's not going to be It's not, it cannot carry on. Trumpism can carry on in voters, but it can't carry on as a defined movement, I don't think, without Trump.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And I don't see anything past Trump for MAGA other than just the kind of chaos and running around and how do we try to emulate it, but no one's going to be able to do that very well. And so I think you're going to have all these fractious groups of like the white nationalists over here, the America first people over here. And I just think it's going to be kind of a mess.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
because of all of this unmooring, that it could create an interesting opportunity for either or both parties. But by that time, will we survive this? By that time, how much more corroded and eroded and diluted will we be as a country, but also these two parties? Yes. It'll be interesting to watch. I maybe hope I'm not alive for it.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
40 ounce in my right hand watching drunk history alone it's a vibe here working through a few things feeling like i'm jordan in the flu game liquor to alleviate the nightmares yeah i got a whole lot of baggage grew up in a place with a whole lot of static it's been a couple years since i strolled out of traffic and made a lane all on my own i've been living for my soul by that i mean my son they hoping that i fold but i have just begun
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I'm finna tell my story till there's nothing in my lungs and my face turn blue and my fingers go numb. I've been getting over shit. I've been going through shit. Life would be the Titanic if it was a cruel shit, but I ain't no DiCaprio. I ain't finna sadly go. I'm swimming to the shore called the forest. Everybody getting carried home. Never been this happy though.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
The fashion got swaggy, but my legs still assy, bro. I'm still the same fool. I'm still the same dude. The bottle changed up, but the spirit ain't new.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, but elsewhere on Fox, I'm sure you've seen, they're already messaging the Biden recession.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
The other crazy part is the campaign and his voters were so clear on the three issues, the economy being the top thing that they were going to the polls for. They didn't give a shit about pet-seeding migrants in Ohio. Like, all the crap that surrounded the campaign, voters were super clear. Don't care about that. We care about the economy, immigration, crime, period, full stop, end of sentence.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Nothing cracked... the numbers that those three issues did. And again, economy at the top. So to come in and in his joint address, uh, Mention the economy. Spend like, I think, something like 7% of his speech addressed the economy specifically.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
It took 30 minutes to even get to the economy and lowering costs.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Renaming Denali came first before the economy. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico hit before the economy. All this shit that no one said, this is why I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. came before the economy. And he doesn't have great economic news, but that's never stopped him. To still not put it front and center and even claim wins he hasn't gotten would be very Trump, and he didn't.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
So I'm just wondering when these three issues are going to come back front and center. And instead of addressing crime and policing, the new MAGA thing is to get Derek Chauvin's conviction overturned or whatever, or pardoned. I mean, it's going around the three big issues, and I just don't understand who this is for.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Even rhetorically, I haven't heard. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off, but also the doge cuts could delay deportations. The other thing of this three-legged stool, like they're getting in the way of their own.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Part of me, at least personally, strategically, politically, I hope he's not bluffing. I hope he gets to do all the things he talks about doing so that we can see in evidence how they don't work. I mean, I think I know how they're going to go, but there's a whole half of the country that doesn't believe that, that believes everything he says. And so I'd like to just give him open reign. Now, I
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I don't want the pain, the economic pain that I know that's going to cause and is already causing. But I hope he's not bluffing. I hope he gets to do it so he can't continue to say, well, if I got to do it the way I wanted to do it with no evidence, just do it. Okay, do it. Show us. Do it and show us how rich we're all going to get. I'm just sick of all the games.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, with friends like these, who needs enemies? We're enemies, I think. We're enemies with a bad guy. We're the bad guy in this. And that's really hard to stomach for all the reasons I know you know. As a child of the 80s and like a Reagan Republican, this is bananas and awful.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yeah, the intelligence-sharing thing is how you know this isn't just, as Trump says, a guy who wants a peace deal, a guy who's neutral, you know. This is a guy who wants Putin to win because you don't take away the intelligence-sharing for any other reason than you want to give Russia a strategic advantage.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
That's it. That's the only reason. Because it's not boots on the ground. It's not even weapons anymore. It's information. And it's super valuable information. And so withholding that is the dickiest part of this. And also, like I said, the clearest indication of whose side he is on. As if we didn't know. But that's how you know.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And if I'm an ally watching around the world, I mean, the stuff he and his folks are saying about... Japan, about NATO, about all the alliances that we've had for so long that I think are really important would make anyone very, very nervous about who America is anymore and what we're willing to do for anybody but ourselves.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Yes, and... The maybe we'll give you weapons again, maybe we'll defend you again is irrelevant. They've already surrendered under the plan of this deal, right? They've surrendered already. Yeah, it makes no sense other than they want Putin to win. They want Russia to win is how this makes sense. And I don't know where that goes.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
I'm not very confident in the deal-making abilities of this administration, to say the least.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
You could say we're becoming weaker. Yeah. For all of Trump's talk, we are becoming a weaker force and presence on the world stage. And that is shockingly by design, it seems like. What they would call America first, I would call a weakening of American exceptionalism and might and power and influence and preparedness. It's in the way he talks about the economy as well.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
There's this economic warfare there. It's not boots on the ground, but it is warfare nonetheless, just to get back to the tariffs. Mucking about in other people's economies, which is what he's doing with threats and real tariffs, is an economic warfare.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
Sorry, I'm so giggly. That was just really funny.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And now all these talks of maybe militarily taking over Panama or Greenland, and then all of the withdrawing from these alliances, and in fact, strategically breaking them on purpose. This is all a weakening of... And it does not feel like isolationism, which is, I think, what he was promising.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
This is a lot of interventionism to change global economic stability, to change global security, to change... long-held geopolitical relationships. I mean, this is incredibly interventionist to me. I don't know that anyone on his side will care, really, but I care about things like consistency and honesty.
The Bulwark Podcast
S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point
And I'm sorry you're sick, honey. I'm sorry.