Politix

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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm We’ll give Donald Trump this month: Thanks to his efforts, political discourse has moved on (for now) from health care and the Epstein coverup. But … not to anything particularly helpful for him. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What on Earth did Donald Trump think he was doing by ordering a campaign of legal ha...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Gotta hand it to Donald Trump, he got the Epstein Files and the January 6 anniversary off the front page, and all it took was a wee little war, plus a threat to conquer the whole hemisphere In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * WTF? * How has this destabilized the globe? * Can the damage be undone? * What’s the right...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm It’s that time of year again. Self-indulgent mailbag time. Thanks to all who sent questions, and apologies to those who didn’t get answers. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * Whether Gavin Newsom is doomed to become yesterday’s news; * Why there’s never been a better time to tax rich people; * How (and if) liberal...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump suddenly faces defections in Congress, from right-wing influencers, and even from his own White House chief of staff. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * Susie Wiles’s…intemperate comments to Vanity Fair about all the incompetents and cynics in the Trump administration; * The challenge of passing the c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump is suddenly mired in a huge war-crimes scandal, complicating his desire to launch an actual war (also illegal) against Venezuela. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * All the things that make the circumstances surrounding the order to murder shipwreck survivors so strange and suspicious; * How it all ge...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Brian is adventuring in South America, so Matt is joined by Lakshya Jain of The Argument and Split Ticket to talk about his Wins Above Replacement calculations, which politicians are good at winning, and what we know about them. In the episode, Matt and Lakshya discuss: * The importance of “downballot lag” in assessing ca...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump has lost his grip, and it’s making him prone to a variety of political errors, some of which we enjoy with pure schadenfreude, others of which could cause tremendous collateral damage. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What if anything makes Marjorie Taylor Greene’s early exit from the House of Repre...