The Bulwark

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Will Sommer and Sam Stein went live for a special Thursday edition of MAGA Mondays. They give their takes on the fallout from Trump’s marathon RNC midterm convention speech, including his bizarre promise to give every American adult a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win the midterms. The proposed payout could cost mo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Andrew Weissmann turns the tables on Sarah Longwell for a conversation about her new book, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time —and what a post-Trump political future could look like. They get into Trump’s unusual hold on his voters, the right-wing media ecosystem, why Democrats too often let polls dictate wha...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com This is a long one, folks! If you’re not strong enough to endure Trump’s speech, skip to 2:07:00 for post-ordeal commentary. Join Sam Stein, Catherine Rampell, Will Sommer and Sonny Bunch for live coverage of Donald Trump's keynote address to the RNC's midterm convention. If you think Sam, Sonny, Catherine and Will de...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Sam Stein and Michael Weiss take on Steve Witkoff’s groveling meeting with Vladimir Putin, the growing power struggle inside Trump’s administration over Russia, and why CIA Director John Ratcliffe is emerging as a counterweight to Witkoff’s approach. Plus, Weiss explains why the reality on the battlefield may be consi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com With Republicans in tight races stripping Trump’s name off their campaign websites, the president is in need of some love from Republicans he has summoned to Dallas to celebrate him. The fake convention also conveniently serves as a distraction from the surging price of oil. Plus: Vance may be the source who’s leaking...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) look back at 9/11, Trump’s bizarre remarks at a commemoration, and the lessons Hertling wishes America had learned over the last 25 years. Then they turn to the escalating Iran war, attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, Pete Hegseth’s sidelining of Gen. Christopher Donahue,...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Sam Stein and Will Sommer preview Trump’s strangely low-energy midterm convention, where Republicans are skipping town, lawmakers are being asked to cough up $25,000, and even the convention website has become an embarrassment. Plus, they discuss the increasingly bizarre campaign attacks coming from Elon Musk’s PAC an...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Tim, Sarah, and JVL discuss Trump's Labor Day Weekend with his favorite person, Corey Lewandowski's possible ‘light extortion,’ and whether Trumpworld will circle the wagons around him. Plus: why the GOP's midterm convention shows Trump losing his fastball, ABC News's bizarre framing of Rudy Giuliani's Islamophobic co...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com From politics to sports, business, and tech, the rich are breaking the rules, looking out for their friends, and still getting rewarded in the end—maybe with the help of a little trip to the White House with a POTUS gift in hand. For the midterms and beyond, Adam is bullish in his new book about the Dems' prospects to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol discuss Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic social media posts, his proposed triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery, and the GOP’s Trump-centered midterm convention in Dallas as the elections draw closer. They also consider the expanding Senate battlefield, looming Supreme Court...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com With just under two months until Election Day, Tim and Bill revisit the run-up to the midterms in 2006 and 1994, two major wave election cycles where the bottom just fell out from under the party in power. The 1994 blowout was more about the end of an era, while 2006 was about an unpopular war in the Middle East, a sc...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com A quick note: Joe’s reporting from Capitol Hill adds something you won’t get from the headlines—what vulnerable Republicans are actually saying and doing when Trump isn’t nearly as useful to them as he used to be. If you value that kind of reporting, become a Bulwark member and help us keep making more of it. Catherin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Tim Miller sits down with New York Magazine’s Ben Terris to discuss his extraordinary reporting on Donald Trump’s obsession with the new White House ballroom. Ben spent 90 minutes with Trump, toured the ballroom construction site, and got a firsthand look at the massive project, which is already employing hundreds of...

Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell discuss Longwell’s new book, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time , tracing the origins of The Bulwark and their efforts to oppose Trump while drawing lessons from years of voter focus groups. They consider how the media environment has changed, what Democrats can learn from Republican political infrastructure, how a broad pro-democracy coalition can manage i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Mona Charen is joined by Bill Galston, Linda Chavez, and Damon Linker for a "Beg to Differ" reunion! They discuss the Trump administration’s foreign policy and corruption, America’s standing in the world, Israel and Gaza, antisemitism, the Democratic Party’s internal battles over the DSA, and the political significanc...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Tim Miller and Sam Stein take on Fox firing Maria Bartiromo after she reportedly shared internal network information with the Trump White House, and revisit some of her most infamous conspiracy-theory moments. Then, they discuss the wild IG report on former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, featuring strip clubs, a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com North Carolina has been a difficult nut for Democrats to crack for nearly two decades. But relatively popular former Gov. Roy Cooper appears to be on the verge of changing that this year, partly because NOBODY knows who his opponent is. Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper joins Sarah t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Mark Hertling and Ben Parker react live to Trump dismissing the mounting costs of the Iran war as “small potatoes.”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Marco Rubio is using dubious powers to create a new class of immigrant political prisoners. Meanwhile, DHS officials are bragging about how they're brutally shackling and frog-marching Haitians who came here under protected status. On this American holiday weekend, David takes a "nerd moment" to explain that the Found...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com It’s almost Book Week! How to Eat an Elephant drops on Tuesday and the Best Friends really want to get it to #1 on the NYT best seller list. To do that, we have to unseat . . . a biography of Clarence Thomas by Ted Effing Cruz. Don’t let Teddy Cancun and High Life Clarence win. Order a copy of Sarah’s book now. (If yo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Catherine Rampell and JVL break down Donald Trump’s latest economic claims—and explain why his understanding of interest rates, inflation, and economic growth is so badly detached from reality. They also dig into a disturbing new trend: European countries are moving gold and other assets out of the United States as al...

This week I’m joined by Godfrey Cheshire to discuss his new book, Cheshire on Film: Life & Writings . Cheshire is a longtime critic—in addition to writing for Variety and RogerEbert.com, among many other outlets, his stint at the New York Press with Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White was a legendary run during the golden age of the alt-weeklies and was recently collected in The Press Gang —and his...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Donald Trump wants Ken Paxton in the Senate, but he really wishes Paxton would do something about those ugly outfits. Trump has repeatedly praised Paxton as a loyal ally while taking bizarrely personal shots at his clothes, his appearance, and his interviews. Joe Perticone and Sonny Bunch give their takes on Trump’s o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Will Saletan takes on Trump’s Venezuela oil deal, as the president openly brags that Venezuelan oil has already paid for the war “many times over” and Republicans argue that U.S. oil companies deserve benefits for the next 100 years. Saletan follows the money—and shows how the administration is putting oil profits ahe...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.com Thom Tillis was the pivotal vote to confirm a buffoon to run the Department of Defense, and now he’s shocked about Hegseth’s incompetency. JD wants everyone to know he’s a Catholic now, but he doesn’t seem to have absorbed even the basic teachings of Catholicism. And Susan Collins claims she has influence with her Sen...