Tom Nichols: Trump's Trashy 250 Celebration

**Tim Miller** (0:13)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show for the 37th time. The most decorated guest in the history of The Bulwark Podcast. He was discussing his enlarged prostate with me in the green room. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic, and professor and narratives at the US. Naval War College. It's Tom Nichols. How you doing, sir?

**Tom Nichols** (0:32)
Where's my 37 timers jacket?

**Tim Miller** (0:34)
I know, 350 I feel like at 50, we've got to give you a watch or something.

**Tom Nichols** (0:38)
All right, and then I get this.

**Tim Miller** (0:39)
I was just curious the other day. I was like, who's been on the most? Can I put in some names? You've got it. You're the leader of the clubhouse.

**Tom Nichols** (0:46)
I am honored. And I also, as I say with genuinely, that I always love doing this because it's fun, because we always have a good time.

**Tim Miller** (0:55)
Well, we're going to have some fun. I have for you, and it'll be good the whole time, but I have the final topic category on my outline is silly stuff. So we've got plenty of, there's plenty of that. And I guess the first topic is silly stuff too. So that's just the nature of where we are in our idiocracy. The Great American State Fair, you stayed up for this last night because you're a glutton for punishment. And Jeffrey Goldberg has you in some rains, and he's got a whip.
He's got a guess. Nichols, you're staying up for the Great American State Fair speech. And so you did.

**Tom Nichols** (1:29)
I think it was more like, yeah, I'm going to need you to be staying up. That'd be great.

**Tim Miller** (1:38)
Yeah, because you have a cover sheet on your draft.

**Tom Nichols** (1:42)
Yeah, if you could just file that, that'd be great.
No, I mean, I'm kind of the designated night owl for a lot of stuff because I am a night owl. And I said, sure, I'm happy to do it. And also, you know, I have this long history. I kind of pride myself on being a Trump watcher. You know this, I used to live tweet all of his press conferences.
So I stayed up and watched it. And it was, I mean, it was trashy. The whole business was trashy. And I know that sounds, oh, that's snooty and elitist. But no, it was, it was, it was just trashy. And his speech was small. That's what I wrote about last night. He took, he took this thing that could have been grandiose. You know, I started with a quote from George Washington. Actually, it wasn't a quote. It was from George Washington's last will and testament.
And I think it's really important as the fourth approaches for people to know this, that George Washington in his last, he said, I, George Washington, and he didn't say, you know, father of our country, great guy. He said, a citizen of the United States and lately president of the same. For him, that was the most important thing to be this, to be a citizen, you know? And he understood, like, that we were all sharers in this great adventure, this great experiment, and Trump just doesn't understand any of that. He made it all about me, me, me, and I got, I got no tax on tips. And everybody was laughing at us two years ago, and now we're hot. And I totally trashed the Iranians, even though that yesterday, the Iranians told us to go suck an egg about nuclear inspections.
I'm going to get the vandals who hurt the reflecting pool. I mean, it just went on and on, Tim. As little as I think of Stephen Miller, I don't want to tag him with this speech if it wasn't him, because whoever wrote this, it was a real achievement and crap. But the few times that Trump tried to be elevated, or that he tried to be presidential, he said things like, from the storied alleys of Boston, to the streets of Philadelphia. Okay, first of all, anybody who's lived in Boston, there's no such thing as these storied alleys of Boston. They have some stories, and we won't tell them.

**Tim Miller** (4:04)
Yeah.

**Tom Nichols** (4:05)
But to the streets of Philadelphia, I'm sorry, wasn't that a Bruce Springsteen song about a movie, about a guy with AIDS? You know, I mean, it just went on, and, you know, skyscrapers and railroads and Normandy and Saratoga, but then he would go right back to the really petty, small, you know, look at me and look what I did. And I'll finish with one serious comment, which is that it shows that Trump and his people, they don't understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism. That patriotism is love of one's country for itself, for what it is, for its eternal characteristics. Nationalism is, my tribe is better than all other tribes.