Politix

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The race is on between Donald Trump, who’s desperately trying to put down the raging scandal surrounding his Jeffrey Epstein lies (whatever they happen to be) and Democrats who are finally engaged, and trying to pry the truth loose. Who’s gonna win? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * How has the Epstein scandal de...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The Trump administration suddenly wants you to stop asking questions about Jeffrey Epstein. Case closed. Nothing to see here. That client list we promised to release? It doesn’t exist. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What is the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory, and why has it persisted so long? * Why are Epst...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Minutes after recording this episode, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) provided the decisive vote for GOP legislation to kick 15-20 million people off their health insurance and give rich people a trillion dollar tax cut, along with many other horrors. Now it’s back to the House, where hope, which springs eternal, goes to die!...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Welcome to hell, because we’ve reached the hot war phase of the second Trump presidency. Or have we? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What has actually happened, both since 2018, and just in the past couple weeks, and why it’s so unlikely to have left the U.S. and the world better off. * Is there any upside to D...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump may not always chicken out, but his on again/off again, advance-retreat dance does seem to insulate him from lasting blowback. It seems the only way to drag Trump’s popularity down low enough to really hem him in is for his supporters to find out the hard way. In this episode, Matt and Brian tackle the questi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Since last week’s episode, Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a bitter falling out, Republicans encountered new obstacles to enacting their top priorities (cutting rich people’s taxes and poor people’s Medicaid) and Trump ordered a federal siege of Los Angeles. Also, Brian got his first taste of sweet, sweet European health c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Brian’s European Vacation continues as Matt is joined by special guest Jane Flegal of the Blue Horizon Foundation to break down the energy provisions of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. The energy cuts have attracted less attention than the health care provisions in part because they were made much more severe at the last minu...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Brian is on vacation, so special guest McKenzie Wilson joins Matt to talk about Blue Rose Research’s retrospective on the 2024 election and their work on message-testing. McKenzie came to Blue Rose after working in the private sector, working for Jamal Bowman, and working in the Biden administration’s Department of Health...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm By the time you listen to this episode, the Republican bill to give rich people trillions in tax cuts, and throw millions of people off of Medicaid will be…somewhere. It could be on the glide path to passage in the House, or on life support, or somewhere in between. But the basic shape of what Republicans want to do, and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump blinked, as many people suspected he would. This week, he reduced the embargo-level tariffs he imposed on China a month ago, and did so unilaterally. So in exchange for a month-long crisis, a still-looming supply shortage, lost jobs, and lost wealth, we got nothing! But Trump’s supporters are all too ready to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm They won’t come right out and say it this time, the way they did in 2017. But Republicans are still hellbent on repealing the Affordable Care Act—or at least the half of the ACA that expanded Medicaid coverage to millions more poor and disabled Americans. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What do Republican prono...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm On Donald Trump’s hundredth day in office—the day we taped this podcast—he was historically unpopular, driving the country into recession, and responding to the loss of confidence in his administration by escalating his authoritarian threats against the public. In this special episode, Paul Krugman joins Brian to discuss:...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Right-wing religious fanatics want women to have more children with bread-winning men. Donald Trump views masculinity as synonymous with physical toughness. The synthesis: instead of using prosperity to make family formation more appealing, what if we just crushed female employment and made most jobs manual labor? In this...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Two weeks into his trade war, Donald Trump has made at least a few tactical retreats, and markets have stabilized a bit as a result. Are we just in the eye of the storm? Or is it possible the economic fallout from the trade war won’t be as severe as we feared on LIBERATION DAY? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * W...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Last week, in one fell swoop, Donald Trump wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, upended all of our trade relations, and poised the U.S. for a lengthy recession and higher prices. His big money backers are in freakout mode. He’s made himself politically vulnerable in dramatic fashion, but also undermined the foundatio...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm There are signs of life in the Democratic Party, and if Republicans continue to badly underperform in special elections, the vibes could shift. But there are some things even a robust opposition can’t really stop, when a president claims autocratic power, and is insulated from normal political considerations After a brief...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats continue to catch hell from their own voters for caving in the government shutdown fight. But in the coming days, perhaps sooner than most people are expecting, Congress will have to increase the debt limit. And once again, Democrats will have to decide whether and how to use their votes...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump is becoming unpopular, but Democrats are more unpopular than they’ve ever been, reflecting not just Republican voter partisanship, but the fact that tens of millions of Democratic voters are fed up with their party’s conduct in the aftermath of the election. With partisan anger boiling over, calls for Chuck S...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm By the time this episode runs, we’ll be two days from the deadline to fund the government. And if Republicans get there act together juuuust a bit, Democrats will have to decide if and how to wield their leverage to the end of forcing the Trump administration back into compliance with the rule of law. In this episode, Mat...

Just six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump has dragged the country to the brink of recession. He’s become unpopular, lost the public’s trust to handle the economy, and hollowed out the government in risky ways. So in his first speech to Congress, Trump: blamed all of it on Joe Biden, subjected Democrats to a torrent of abuse, lied about Social Security (among many other things), and redouble...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Even in the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, most Americans thought Donald Trump was a good steward of the economy. This misplaced faith has been key to his political durability. But after just one month of indiscriminately firing federal workers, illegally reneging on federal spending commitments, and making erratic...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Explaining the GOP’s rapid slide into authoritarianism is complicated, but you can’t tell the story if you don’t understand that Republicans have been unwilling to abandon huge, unpopular tax cuts for the rich as an organizing principle. In their view of things, if popular majorities don’t support regressive tax cuts, the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump and Elon Musk are now on the receiving end of multiple court orders requiring them to rein in their constitutional crime spree: resume impounded payments, destroy improperly downloaded government data, restore regular government communications. Their response, as of this recording, has been to see how contemp...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Prior to the election, Elon Musk warned non-billionaire Americans to brace for “temporary hardship” (approving) in the event of a second Donald Trump presidency. Over the weekend, after insisting he’d impose 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports, Trump also acknowledged (perhaps for the first time) that h...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm In just the past week, Donald Trump has illegally fired over a dozen federal anti-corruption watchdogs, installed Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, and then claimed the power to arbitrarily withhold congressional appropriation—an unconstitutional maneuver called “impoundment.” In this episode, Ma...