Stephanie Ruhle: The Trump Family’s Massive Side Hustle

**Tim Miller** (0:13)
Hello and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm glad to welcome back to the show.
My buddy, MSNOW Senior Business Analyst, host of The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle. She was, or is, for just a little while longer, the host of The 11th Hour. We're gonna be moving on June 15th to a new morning show, Money, Power, Politics, with Stephanie Ruhle airing from 9 to 11 a.m. on weekdays. It's Stephanie Ruhle, of course. How are you doing?

**Stephanie Ruhle** (0:41)
I am great, and there's only one, there's only one, because everything else is excellent, terribly sad part of the new show, Money, Power, Politics. There's only one terrible part.

**Tim Miller** (0:52)
It is terrible. I know what you're gonna say. It airs at the time that I tape this podcast.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (0:57)
Yes!

**Tim Miller** (0:57)
It's gonna be very challenging for us to be on air together. But we're gonna try to make it work.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (1:02)
We're gonna make it work, especially because the show, one day a week, is going to have a live studio audience. And if there is one thing that makes Tim Miller light up like a Christmas tree, it's this boy with an audience.

**Tim Miller** (1:17)
I do need an audience.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (1:19)
I'm aware that you tape at the same time, but I have a feeling we're gonna lure you to the Big Apple on those days when there's an audience standing by.

**Tim Miller** (1:27)
Talk to the producers, find me a podcast studio and building, and then we can just kind of pop, I can pop right over. We'll figure it out.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (1:34)
All right, then we're on the case.

**Tim Miller** (1:35)
We'll figure it out.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (1:36)
We'll talk offline.

**Tim Miller** (1:36)
Okay.
There's a lot of real news. This is real news too, but there's a lot of news affecting what's happening in our country that you would think we'd want to start with. But I'm obsessed and I feel like I absolutely need Stephanie Ruhle's take on this story first, and it is what is happening in Tirana, Albania. I don't know if you've been following this.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (1:55)
Where Ivanka once spotted this beautiful vista while she was on a super yacht. Is that what you're talking about?

**Tim Miller** (2:04)
Yes. For anybody who has missed it, I want to play for you. Ivanka Trump was doing an interview discussing one of the many grips and businesses and entrepreneurial opportunities and daddy's gifts that she is focused on right now.
At the beginning of this, we're going to play Ivanka in this interview, which it feels like, what was the guy's name in The Hunger Games? Who's just like the gay guy doing the suck up interviews. It feels like one of those types of interviews.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (2:34)
I'm going to have something to say about that on the other side as well.

**Tim Miller** (2:37)
So we're going to listen to Ivanka. Then in the most veepish fashion possible, after we listen to Ivanka, I'm going to play for you some audio of what the fallout has been of this interview and this attempted conquest. So let's listen.

**Stephanie Ruhle** (2:52)
I'm going to pay attention to Ivanka. Here I go.

**Ivanka Trump** (2:56)
An unbelievable, beautiful, 1400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean.
We were on a friend's boat and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the islands, we went on a hike barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated, and it stayed with us ever since.

**Tim Miller** (3:17)
Had to have it.

**Ivanka Trump** (3:18)
Over the course of many years, we developed the opportunity to help realize its potential and transform it.

**Tim Miller** (3:30)
I'm sorry.
Those explosions are the fallout of Ivanka. That is the streets of Tirana. They're so pissed that Ivanka is raping and pillaging their Flamingo Island. And anyway, Steph, what do you make of that?

**Stephanie Ruhle** (3:47)
But let's just start there. And I want to start with the problem with the media landscape and Ivanka's announcement. OK? And obviously, I'm not dogging on independent media. Here the two you and I are on your absolutely fantastic podcast. But the problem is as follows. Because there are so many outlets that just want the opportunity to talk to a person of significance. When a person of influence or significance wants some free PR and wants to just get their message out there, whatever their message is, they never ever, ever have to sit down with a person who's actually going to not even take them to the mat, but just ask them critically important questions. Right? So Ivanka got to sit there at a podcast that was probably like, great, amazing. We're getting the first daughter. We're going to get to sit down with her for 90 minutes. I can't wait to ask her when she is great at being great.