The Bulwark Podcast

Elon went nuclear, accusing Trump of being a pedo, taking credit for his election victory, and calling for his impeachment. Trump in return may try to destroy Musk's businesses, or worse. While the public feud is entertaining—Thursday was one of the best days for Twitter and Steve Bannon—their meltdown is also frightening. It shows that we are at the mercy of two emotionally unstable men who can b...

Trump's and Musk's very public breakup may be amusing, but don't lose sight of the fact that DOGE was a failure—despite what the manosphere says. Elon's ego trip found no fraud and cut only a minor amount of spending. But those cuts are meaningfully hurting the global poor as well as scientific research at home. And now, Republicans are trying the same kind of DOGE sleight of hand on their spendin...

The lovelorn TACO trader has been hanging by the phone at 2am hoping China's Xi will call him to make a tariff deal. But that call is not coming without America paying a very high price— because world leaders know that Trump is a feckless, desperate negotiator. Meanwhile, Republicans are blowing off Elon's take-down of the reconciliation bill and prepping to turn themselves into roadkill in the mi...

Jamie Dimon is spooked about the bond market, business uncertainty about tariffs is dragging the economy, and it seems like no politician will get serious about our nation's debt until it's too late. Meanwhile, Republicans don't even like their own spending bill since they only lie about it—it's just in service of making Trump happy. Plus, Stephen Miller reportedly wants ICE to step up raids at bu...

Mike Johnson and Russ Vought outright lied on camera about the proposed Medicaid cuts and the impact they would have on millions of Americans. Marco Rubio lied about the children who are dying because of USAID cuts. And Joni Ernst is reimagining Christianity to be about Jesus teaching his followers not to care about the sick and the poor because they're going to die anyway. And through it all, Pet...

The Trump administration is trying to exert ideological control over every knowledge-producing institution in the country. And the assault on colleges is not only about having fewer highly-educated voters, but also depriving Americans of trusted sources of information—much in the way Trump in 2020 wanted to stop counting Covid cases so it looked like he had the pandemic under control. Meanwhile, w...

Adam Kinzinger joined Tim on stage in the Windy City Wednesday night to dis Chicken Trump, who's made bitcoin bros, private prisons, his family and friends—and himself—the main winners in his 'TACO' trade economy. Meanwhile, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran may be getting resurrected, and Trump finally seems to realize that Putin is a warmonger. Plus, Dems should put Qatar and El Salvador on notice...

Our VP used to think his path to power was through the ruling class at Yale Law School. But after 2016, he saw that his route was through Trump, so he swapped one set of elites for another. And now as a lord among the MAGA ruling class, he's embracing his true cruel, lying self—and railing against the globalists who nitpick about this silly due process thing. Meanwhile, even Elon doesn't like the...

Democrats need vastly more imagination to confront the enormous challenges the country faces politically, economically, and on climate. The party can't just focus on stopping what is happening in Washington. Meanwhile, Trump can't stop insulting the intelligence of the American people, every part of the political spectrum has something to hate about the reconciliation bill, and libertarians need t...

Despite our missteps in some of our more recent wars, we were fighting to bring freedom, democracy, and self-governance to others. Now, Trump's mercantilist agenda is showing us what it looks like to not have an American-led world order. And even after Russia's largest aerial assault on Ukraine since the war began, he still won't threaten Putin—only Zelensky. Meanwhile, just looking at the math al...

Public corruption used to be a congressman hiding $90,000 in his freezer. Now, we have a president taking "me time" to rake in $40 million from a Chinese crypto billionaire who was facing fraud charges under POTUS 46. And that's just a drop in the bucket of some of Trump's recent haul. Of course, today's FBI will do nothing about it, and his buddies at the top of the bureau are instead focusing on...

Republicans moved at such lightning speed that even they don't know how many people would lose health insurance— or how much they'd be spiking the deficit with their highly risky and big, ugly turd of a bill. And they don't care because they're cosmically committed to stopping the government from making rich people pay for healthcare for people who aren't. Plus, Dem leaders have an age culture pro...

On deportations and on foreign policy, the Trump administration is swapping out American values and violating everything the U.S. has stood for in exchange for kleptocracy and transactionalism with the world's worst tyrants. But at the same time, Trump can't even seem to grasp that Putin has been waging war for decades to accomplish his goals and is not interested in cutting a deal to end the bloo...

One day Trump sounds like Bernie promising the government will provide for everything. Then the next, he's like Paul Ryan the belt-tightener, prepping for austerity. And Code Pink was the order of the day when Mr. Tough Guy was in Saudi Arabia—attacking the foreign policy of the United States in the land of the 9/11 hijackers. Plus, Trump's SCOTUS appointees show some spine, Marco is truly patheti...

No, the Trump administration is not focused on the forgotten man or bringing industrial jobs back. Instead, the real estate developer is handing out threats left and right—fresh off his Middle East trip, where he scored numerous deals with Islamofascists for himself, his family, and his cronies. And no matter what he says, the 'Palace in the Sky' is for him, once taxpayers pony up all the funds fo...

MAGA is having a performative tantrum calling for James Comey to be jailed over a seashell meme because the daily job of Trump's supporters and Cabinet members is to try to warm his heart—that includes Kristi Noem changing her face and Tulsi firing top intel officials because they told the White House the truth it doesn't want to hear. Meanwhile, fentanyl deaths and violent crime fell dramatically...

American taxpayers may have flown Donald Trump to the Middle East, but he's not there to negotiate on behalf of our strategic or national interests—he's on the prowl for goodies, and happy to make policy changes in return. Like, the new Syrian president offering a Trump Tower in Damascus: Zap, sanctions on Syria are over. Or the jumbo jet-giving Qataris requesting that Trump go 'easy' on Iran: 'No...

The five men on the Supreme Court are so easily triggered and seem to be making law based on their emotional needs. Meanwhile, they also see discrimination in some of the best things about America—like equality or the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. And at the White House, the press office got totally bored with the worshipful questions from MAGA media and invited The Bulwark's Andrew Egge...

China sounds downright Reaganesque and is acting like a more stable, attractive trading partner than the country that launched a trade war. And even though Trump loves play-acting businessman, and calling CEOs by their first name, no one on Wall Street and no one who studies economics likes his continuing tariffs—they know they hurt American companies and American consumers. And the uncertainty is...

Trump can't abide flying around in crusty, old Air Force One. Qatar—funder of both Hamas and the leading U.S. college Gaza protest group—just happens to have a spare, pimped-out 747 lying around, which they'd like to gift to Trump so he can use that instead. Pay no attention to the complete hypocrisy of an administration that says that students protesting for Gaza are a threat to our foreign polic...

First, the Vatican chose a Bulwark pope, not an AR-15 loving, immigrant-hating pope. Then, in a major blow to Steve Bannon, Trump pulled his nominee for U.S. attorney in D.C.—forcing the avid TV watcher in the Oval Office to turn to Fox News for the 23rd time to help fill his administration—this time with Jeanine Pirro. And in the North Carolina Supreme Court race, the Stop the Steal candidate fin...

Protest is the new brunch again. We're witnessing historic levels of pro-democracy grassroots engagement across a broad-based movement of everyday people. The leaders of Indivisible join Tim to discuss how the movement needs to stay focused on what it agrees on— no kings—and to save ideological disputes for another day. Plus, it also needs to get more young people involved. But it definitely shoul...

The Supreme Court is working hard to tend to Mr. Presidential Immunity's wounds because he just can't abide lower federal court judges telling him he can't kick trans people out of the military, or that the 14th Amendment is a real thing. Meanwhile, Kristi Noem is defiling her own birthright citizenship by kidnapping people and sending them to a foreign gulag. Plus, how the Dems should fight the p...

Because Donald Trump's stupid trade embargo has us reading shipping charts, we now know that 40% of containership traffic between Asia and the U.S. has been canceled. That means a shortage of consumer goods, which will push prices higher. At the same time, the business environment is too unpredictable for companies to plan. Meanwhile, Trump is reorienting the American economy to a corrupt oligarch...

Trump 2.0 is showing so little concern for his political standing that even Fox made primetime room for Karl Rove to vent about how he's failing at the fundamentals. Our aspiring Gaddafi doesn't care that tariffs aren't popular or that he sounds like Mr. Scrooge when he says kids should have fewer toys. And while belt-tightening is good enough for average Americans, he's throwing himself a giant,...