Politix

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Brian’s vacation continues for a second week, so Matt is joined by Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist and Third Way fellow, to talk about some of the less-covered but more-successful 2026 senate recruits starting with former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper. In this episode Matt and Caitlin discuss: * Why objectiv...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm With Brian out on vacation, Matt is joined by Alex Seitz-Wald of the Midcoast Village to discuss Graham Platner and the shifting political tides of Vacationland more broadly. In this episode, Matt and Alex discuss: * Troy Jackson, the man who really is the thing Platner sort of pretends to be. * Paul Le Page, the “Trump b...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump, in his haste and corruption, has wrecked the historic reflecting pool that spans the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * How this lazy and corrupt endeavor went to shit so quickly; * Why it serves as a useful metaphor for Trump’s Iran war, and just about every...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump will either surrender to Iran on Friday in Switzerland, or scuttle the deal—sorry, “memorandum of understanding”—in the face of overwhelming opprobrium and humiliation. Who can say! In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * Why the terms of the peace deal, such as we understand them, are so unacceptable to t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The results from California are (mostly? almost completely?) in. They are mixed, and extremely consistent with pre-election polling. Naturally, Republicans are subjecting the country to a blizzard of lies. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * The results, and the merits of the California election system, which maxim...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm It’s a been a busy seven days, so we race through a bunch of topics, with a special focus on Graham Platner, the state of the Maine Senate race, and then some stake driving on how Democrats should prepare for the likelihood that they’ll inherit the country back in economic and budgetary shambles. In this episode, Matt and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump went back to the hospital Tuesday for his third “checkup” in just over a year, but faces fewer questions about his age and vitality than Joe Biden. He lost a war of choice, at serious cost to the U.S. and the world, but we don’t hear much about how weak and discredited he is. Why are these critiques missing?...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump is more unpopular than he’s ever been. But he’s still got a tight grip on the GOP, he keeps making progress on his plan to subvert elections. And Democrats…well it’s unclear what they intend to do about it. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * Jared Polis…what the fuck? * Are Republicans simply winning...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Late in the game, Trump-loyal judges at the federal and state level joined his effort to rig the midterms. Democrats will thus enter this fall’s race for House control at a systemic disadvantage. But for Trump, that’s about the only good news. He’s lost the war he launched against Iran, and keeps falling asleep on the job...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Democrats were winning the gerrymandering arms race Donald Trump kicked off last year, and still seem poised for a good fight. But then things changed. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What does the decision, by Sam Alito and the five other Republican Supreme Court justices to effectively end the Voting Rights A...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump had to be evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, after a “gunman” “attempted” to breach the security perimeter around the dinner hall at the Washington Hilton. But unlike last year, when the entire GOP responded to the killing of Charlie Kirk by attempting a broad civil-society cra...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump has, in fact, damaged the economy. He’s juiced inflation and weakened the labor market and created deep uncertainty. But the public seems to think things are worse now than at any time since the Great Depression. And that is empirically not true. So in this episode, Matt and Brian try to unravel the mystery o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Matt’s away this week. Or since he’s in London, maybe we should say he’s “on holiday” with a funny accent. In any case, Brian’s piloting solo this week, and since he’s always going on about “fighting,” we wanted to give the concept clearer shape. In this conversation, Brian and the veteran political scholar Norm Ornstein...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm As we were all waiting on tenterhooks after Donald Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization, Matt and Brian took a step back to examine why Democratic opposition to the Iran war hasn’t pierced public consciousness. * Is Democratic infighting over the status of Hasan Piker a proxy for internal divisions over the w...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump hasn’t been this unpopular since he incited an insurrection. But he’s still at least a bit more popular than an entity called The Democratic Party. In this episode Matt and Brian discuss: * Do Democrats deserve any credit for Donald Trump’s political woes? * How should we square Democrats’ impressive performa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump seems to want out of the Iran war AND out of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. But only if he can get out by being an even bigger asshole. In this Matt and Brian discuss: * Trump’s latest, inscrutable, and quite likely corrupt machinations to end his war of choice (or at least prosecute the war wi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Democrats are caught in a new and somewhat troubling fad, in which they promise working-class people extremely broad tax cuts, which, in practice, would make expanding the safety net all but impossible. In this Matt and Brian discuss: * The Oscars! * What are these policies, where do they come from, and what would they me...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Depending on whether you believe Donald Trump, or Donald Trump, or Donald Trump, his war in Iran is “very complete” or “just beginning” or “both.” In this Matt and Brian discuss: * Has Trump finally set in motion a disaster he can’t contain? * What does TACO mean when others have a say over the disposition of events? * Ar...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm We’re at war with Iran all of a sudden, and nobody can say why, even the people who started the war. After closing the loop on the Texas Senate primary, Matt and Brian discuss: * What was Donald Trump thinking? * What consequences (regional, domestic, and global) should we be prepared for? * What do we make of the Democra...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm You can’t say Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to distract from the Epstein files! In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * How boring the speech was; * Whether boring is better for Trump, given his political predicament, than stuntiness; * Should the Democrats who chose to attend be ashamed of themselve...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm They’re calling it the liddlest, tiniest government shutdown of all time. Democrats are demanding changes to policy that helps Trump’s immigration police get away with abuses. So they’ve shut down the Department of Homeland Security and only the Department of Homeland Security. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * H...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump has picked big fights on multiple fronts…and lost. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * The narrow question of how Trump and MAGA lost the culture war fight they picked with Bad Bunny and the NFL. * How we ended up in a situation a year ago, when it seemed that MAGA had, on balance, won the fight over t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump ate up several weeks and caused tons of damage as he sought to delay further production of the Epstein files. But now the files are right back in the news. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What’s in this new tranche? * What does it tell us about both the global elite, and Republican elite, leaders o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm On Saturday, DHS agents killed Alex Pretti, a VA nurse who tried to help a woman they’d just pushed to the ground. By Sunday, the Trump administration had initiated an at least tactical retreat from Minneapolis. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * The silver lining of Pretti’s death, in providing proof of concept t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Many people are asking: Has Donald Trump finally, completely lost his mind? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * The importance of getting your flu shot. * Why this latest episode, complete with rambling missives to allied heads of state, feels more like madness than Trump’s other bad ideas, driven by graft, vengean...