The Bulwark Podcast

Trump keeps filling out his administration with the unqualified and the inexperienced, including the recent addition of borderline literate hack Dan Bongino at the FBI. Meanwhile, Trump's Friday night DOD purge was another step in embedding autocracy in our government. Plus, Elon's and Vance's efforts to influence the German elections seem to have backfired. And before the Proud Boy drama and the...

Boos at a Republican town hall in Fulton County, and boos at the White House: We're beginning to see signs of people refusing to be ruled by unelected billionaires, oligarchs and CEOs. This may be the time for Democrats with some heterodox views to run for office. Meanwhile, the supposedly free speech president and his shadow are trying to intimidate people from criticizing them—including a member...

If Marco Rubio was NOT playing the long game masquerading as a patriotic neocon who gets placed in the State Department to then give Russia everything it wanted, what would he be doing differently? Meanwhile, a Democratic version of the Tea Party may be brewing, the tensions between Elon and Russ Vought are likely to pop out, and a psychoanalyst needs to explain Mitch McConnell. Plus, the Saudis a...

Crypto should be one of the biggest stories out of the Trump administration, but the crypto guys are really good at making it seem more complicated than it is. Bloomberg's Zeke Faux joins Tim to run down the ins-and-outs, and the players—including the Chinese businessman facing SEC charges who swears the $56 million he gave Trump has absolutely nothing, zero, zilch to do with his case. Meanwhile,...

Trump is A-OK with all the murder and mayhem Russia has unleashed on Ukraine, and he's making a mockery of all his enablers who claimed he'd do a Reagan-esque kind of deal. Instead, Ukraine wasn't even invited to the "peace" talks, while Trump tries to impose an extortion deal on the Ukrainian people for daring to fight back against the Russian invasion. Plus, the danger to our constitutional syst...

Firing air traffic controllers over a busy holiday travel weekend, cutting a veterans crisis hotline, axing and then rehiring people who maintain and keep our nuclear arsenal safe: Musk and his minions aren't trying to "fix" the government. They're trying to make it more susceptible to Trump's personalized leadership. And the MIA Dems need to get out there and throw some punches since the media lo...

Unlike the cowardly Republican senators who are rolling over in the face of Kash Patel's bald-faced lies, the men and women of the Justice Department are taking their oaths of office seriously by refusing to comply with a blatantly political order to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Meanwhile, Trump is just over the moon with Vladimir Putin—even though his army is perf...

While Elon claims he's storming the government to cut waste, he's also getting himself a big fat check for $400 million from the State Department for Tesla armored vehicles—though administration officials are now trying to hide the grift because the Trump glow does not extend to the weird dude. Meanwhile, McConnell may have voted against confirming RFK Jr, but he's the one who drew up the blueprin...

If Republican senators had any shred of dignity left, they'd demand that Kash Patel answer why he brazenly lied under oath to them about the purge of agents at the FBI. Credible sources have come forward to say he was directing the whole thing. Meanwhile, Trump has leveled the playing field so companies doing business overseas can do all the bribing they want. Plus, our modern "boy problem," our g...

The Democratic Party was made for different times, when rules were followed. But to preserve the basic power of Congress, and to prove that the Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, the troublemakers in the Dem caucus have to get busy fighting over tariffs and a looming budget deal. Besides, Trump's strongest hand is performative outbursts—making threats and pretending he got something...

The new administration has been routinely breaking the law, including on Friday when it announced it was cutting funding for universities doing medical research, specifically in violation of legislation passed by Congress last year. And over the weekend, Trump, Musk, and Vance signaled a willingness to ignore court orders—a federal judge on Monday declared that the White House was doing just that...

Partly because of the courts and partly because the White House keeps stepping on rakes or trying to break everything, the Dems who were too chill about Trump pre- and post-election have fully moved into 'threat to the Republic' mode. Meanwhile, angry bureaucrats, particularly at the FBI, are digging in. But don't be sanguine because the administration is still trying to take a wrecking ball to th...

After the dumbest member of the Senate, Tommy Tuberville, was able to block military promotions for months during the Biden administration, Dems should not back down from slowing the roll of Kash and the other remaining abominable nominees. Meanwhile, more federal workers are going to have to speak up—lawsuits don't make good visuals. The nation needs to see the faces of the men and women who are...

With Elon's 20-something operatives running the Treasury Department, it's hard not to feel that we've been severed from reality and a better Earth someplace else. Ben Stiller talks with Tim about metaphysics, avoiding politics in public, and advocating for the millions of people displaced around the world.  Plus, the origin story of Severance, Adam Scott, John Turturro, and whether the show is a m...

If the Chinese hacked the U.S. government the way private citizen Elon has, it would be a major act of cyber warfare. And since Elon is a government contractor, he's now in a position to make policy calls that benefit his own companies and hurt his competitors—following the Russian oligarch model. We are in a completely lawless realm, and this is likely to continue until he is stopped. Meanwhile,...

The president of the United States is putting his Jan 6 accomplices in charge of the Justice Department and the FBI, and clearing out any officials who would be willing to investigate the administration. It's anti-democratic, it's a coup, and it's allowing Elon and his 20-something DOGE buddies to act with impunity as they illegally access classified information and the Treasury's payment system....

While Republican senators worked to protect Kash Patel from answering some ver-wee hard questions at his confirmation hearing, not one of them had the audacity to suggest that he is the best person to lead the FBI. Meanwhile, the new administration is clearing out some of the most seasoned and effective veterans at the bureau who will be needed during a crisis. Plus, Elon is trying to get our priv...

Republican senators don't care that Trump's nominees are lying—like Kash pretending he didn't know a Nazi-adjacent podcaster whose show he's been on eight times—because the confirmation process to them is all a game and truth is irrelevant. And nominees are also mad-flipping on their signatures issues: RFK, Jr. on vaccines, Tulsi on Edward Snowden, and Kash on the Jan 6 cop beaters. Meanwhile, RFK...

Trump is trying to seize powers he doesn't have—like unilaterally rewriting laws and deciding on his own how he wants to spend money Congress appropriated for a particular purpose. Will the Supreme Court stop him? And if it rules against him, will he obey the court's orders? Plus, the money angle behind RFK, Jr.'s conspiracies, and Elon's attempt at a mass buyout is not about making the government...

The directives putting a pause on federal grants and the firing of career DOJ prosecutors is about trying to make the entirety of the federal government the tool of the man occupying the presidency. And it's all illegal and unconstitutional. Meanwhile, Trump is exactly the kind of broken sociopath who can dominate the war for attention—the defining resource of our time. Plus, a rundown on DeepSeek...

Gullible Republicans have really been proving what they're made of recently, including Susan Collins, who claims Trump wants to root out corruption, even though his whole life has been a fraud—the water, the university, and "The Apprentice," just for starters. Meanwhile, the presidents of Mexico and Colombia are showing that they're not going to bend over in service of Trump's vanity. Plus, JD's J...

Trump launched his first week back in office signaling to loyal followers that they are free to break the law on his behalf, while telling political opponents—including John Bolton and Mike Pompeo—that he'll put their lives at risk. Meanwhile, an office full of white faces is not evidence of a meritocracy, a shortage of VA nurses or prosecutors at the DOJ is not government efficiency, and Putin is...

Emotionally-stunted video game boys, who are also government contractors and/or quasi government officials, are fighting on Twitter, a POTUS who went all the way to SCOTUS to get immunity for presidents now would like the last president investigated, and America's premiere scientific research institution, the NIH, can't tell us about the bird flu—a widespread and potentially deadly virus that coul...

All those CEOs cartwheeled down to Mar-a-Lago and then dutifully lined up at Trump's inauguration because they were fed up with social justice warriors and labor having more power—even if their bottom lines were never harmed in the process. Now, they want their next adrenaline rush and more government money without any pesky regulations hampering their highfalutin space-exploration dreams. But the...

Trump tried to pencil out literal words in the Constitution and then freed 1,500 violent insurrectionists—while the media attempted to normalize it all. Meanwhile, much attention is being paid to Elon's salute, and not enough to the facts that he has an office at the White House, he's a government contractor, and paid a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected. Plus, other Trump executive...