The Bulwark Podcast

ICE and Border Patrol are kidnapping people in the suburbs near New Orleans based on racial profiling—it’s like the South of 70 years ago. Mini Greg Bovino cares far more about his video team capturing him menacing and harassing people going about their lives than he does about due process and the Fourth Amendment. But despite her own pinup-style social media spreads, Trump may be readying to dump...

Trump is overseeing extrajudicial killings off the coast of Venezuela but nothing was going to stop him from getting a peace prize—even if it’s a fake one from super highly reputable FIFA. He also helped himself to a federal agency that used to work on peace initiatives, but which Elon DOGE’d. Democrats should embrace the spirit of McCain and focus on the massive corruption in the administration a...

Trump’s use of his pardon power is downright crazy, and that’s not even counting his rescue of a convicted drug kingpin. He’s also sabotaging his own redistricting plans in Texas by pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar, and wasting taxpayer money absolving a sports executive who was indicted by his own Justice Department earlier this year. Meanwhile, down in NOLA, two men with a Napoleon complex are unlea...

Trump’s rallies have been his signature event, but since he returned to the White House, he has stopped doing them. And his allies are worried he’s losing touch with voters, as well as his political antenna. Instead of traveling the country, he’s dining with billionaires, playing golf, and going abroad in search of his elusive peace prize. Meanwhile, he can’t stay awake in own Cabinet meetings. Pl...

There are no shortage of scandals plaguing Washington D.C. right now. One that has captivated much of the political and media professions involves Olivia Nuzzi, a political writer formerly of the magazine New York , and now an editor with Vanity Fair , who was involved in a relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the 2024 campaign. Nuzzi’s relationship has provided incredible fodder for the...

As a candidate, Trump knew to steer clear of Project 2025. But as president, he embraced its deeply unpopular policy goals and it has been driving down his poll numbers. Meanwhile, what are we doing with Venezuela? No one in the administration has made a remotely convincing case for the intimidation campaign against President Maduro. And the boat bombings are putting members of our military in leg...

Not only are the opportunities for personal financial gain for Trump and his White House cronies driving the administration’s foreign policy decisions, his tariffs look more and more about grift. Trump also inexplicably granted clemency to a private equity exec who ripped off ordinary Americans in a Ponzi scheme, while he plans a pardon for a former Honduran president who trafficked cocaine to Ame...

Americans were already losing touch with basic decency before Trump came along—and he exploited that indecency, distrust, and division to win power. In his new novel, George Packer spins a story of an imaginary country that just collapses, and how ordinary people have to learn to live together again. Fiction has a way of making the real world more clear. Plus, Charlie Kirk’s influence on our polit...

Trump needs to quit the games and his defamatory accusations about who's in the Epstein files, and just release the 300 gigabytes of data from the Epstein case—even if he has an army of elves trying to redact or whitewash any references or images of Trump himself. Meanwhile, the dismissal of charges against Comey and Tish James show how bad Team Trump is at political retribution. Plus, the command...

A troika of foreign policy amateurs—Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and JD Vance—are trying to impose a Russia-drafted peace plan on Ukraine. While Trump was in the loop, other senior officials in the administration were in the dark, even as Kushner was using backchannels to work with a Putin ally. Vance eagerly got on board because he’s desperate to stab Ukraine in the back and declare himself MAGA...

Unrest has broken out in MAGA, and Mike Johnson looks like he’s losing control of the House—which means that Trump could be losing control of the party. And the fear of Trump is morphing into loathing because Republicans are not winning. Meanwhile, DOGE has ended in another total Elon failure: Not only was no money saved, the program’s biggest success was cutting assistance to the world’s most vul...

As a man who’s not used to losing, Trump is going through a bit of a rough patch since his party turned against him over the Epstein case. He’s flailing, lashing out, and acting afraid. After all, he knows how many times his name comes up in the Epstein files, and Ghislaine Maxwell continues to enjoy a bevy of special perks at her cushy prison for some reason. At the same time, the economy isn’t h...

Tim Cook and the other tech titans who dined with bone saw murderer MBS—and who’ve given millions to Trump to knock down our history for his gilded ballroom—expect the people who use their products every day to protect American democracy, while they reap its benefits to freely act against the public’s interest. Meanwhile, Trump’s special envoy is acting like an agent of the Russian government, and...

Before a live audience in Nashville Tuesday, Kamala Harris discussed what it takes to fight back against Trump. But she also threw punches—against the corrupt and callous administration that's trying to gaslight Americans about Jeffrey Epstein, and the tech titans who are bending the knee to a tyrant. Also noteworthy: Both MTG and Mamdani come in for some praise. Plus, the power of a consumer boyc...

The White House leaks may be more contained in Trump 2.0, but the slavish loyalists who POTUS has surrounded himself with do nothing to keep him within the bounds of the law, ethics, or decorum. So in this round, the chaos is more consequential for the country. Meanwhile, the administration may be prepping to bury the Epstein files. Plus, the bitterness and resentment that drives Trump, the war on...

Not a lot of people predicted that Trump would fold and let Congress vote on the release of the Epstein files. But his retreat shows that Democrats have more leverage than conventional wisdom has suggested, and they should not rule out long shots in the fight against Trump’s authoritarian project. Meanwhile, MAGA looks to be fracturing in real time and Trump looks more and more vulnerable—on his b...

Our commander-in-chief and breaker of mores can only muster the energy to beg Republicans to stop talking about Epstein. Where is the blustery guy who's declared that only suckers pay taxes and that he could shoot anyone on 5th Avenue? Because of the lame duck smell he's giving off—and the economic problems Trump himself brought on—he's not getting the support he needs from the outer MAGA media wo...

Trump's involvement with Epstein is simultaneously a "hoax," but he was also a "perfect gentleman" when he spent hours with one of Epstein's underage victims, Virgina Giuffre, at Epstein's pad. And Trump was an FBI informant on Epstein's sex trafficking, but again, it's all a hoax. The White House and Fox's defense is not working, and Trump may be in the worst political shape he's been in since th...

New Jersey’s governor-elect credits her big win last week to an affordability message—and ignoring the pundits. But Sherrill also tied rising costs and declining economic opportunity to Trump’s laser-like focus on the worldwide extortion racket he’s running out of the Oval Office. Plus, former D.C. cop Michael Fanone says the current FBI won’t follow up on the threats against him and his family, t...

While Trump won the first time as an anti-status-quo hero, the low-trust podcast cranks like Rogan and Tim Dillon who put him back in the White House now see him as the establishment. And they’re making Trump own the economy, the security state of masked marauders and bombing campaigns—and his close ties to the tech companies. The Democrats have not had a better moment to run against the status qu...

The very online crowd is very upset, but Dems did fight like Republicans. This was a longer shutdown than anything the Tea Party pulled and real pain was being caused. And Democrats have now made the cost of healthcare front and center—while Republicans keep showing that they are the party of billionaires, Mar-a-Lago soirées, and golden ballrooms. Plus, President Al Capone pardoned all the people...

Our economy may be in the early days of stagflation, Democrats are winning the shutdown fight, and Republicans aren't getting help from the tariff king—who is just sticking his fingers in his ears and lying about the price of Thanksgiving dinner going down. Maybe it's time for the Dems to declare victory and let them reopen the government. Plus, Jeanine Pirro's complete humiliation over the sandwi...

Trump took it on the chin in Tuesday's elections, SCOTUS sounds skeptical about his tariffs, and his plan to 'gerry-rig' the midterms looks like it is slipping away—but he is still the most powerful president since FDR. And murmurs about a lame duck may prompt him to take even more extreme actions. Plus, the still infuriating inability to hold Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 electio...

The huge Democratic wins in Virginia, New Jersey, NYC, and California spoke loud and clear—and make Trump’s 2024 supposed ‘landslide’ margin of 1.5% look even more wimpy. Trump is not delivering on his economic promises and the backlash was across the board. Voters are also rejecting the overreach of Stephen Miller’s nativist immigration policy, particularly Latino voters. One of the biggest impac...

With Trump slashing SNAP benefits, Gov. Beshear is asking the people of Kentucky to look out for their neighbors so they don't go hungry—since the administration won't. Meanwhile, Trump's tariffs are hammering farmers in the Bluegrass State at the same time Republicans are sabotaging rural healthcare. And reporting from Chicago, Moran finds his hometown still full of tough, independent people who...