The Bulwark Podcast

Bill Kristol: Trump Wants Troops in Portland

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump orders the National Guard to be deployed to Portland, Ore., after declaring it a war-ravaged city. And reports surface that the admini...

Adam Kinzinger: We Can’t Be Intimidated

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump’s quest for revenge escalates, as a grand jury indicts former FBI Director James Comey days after Trump forced out a prosecutor who ...

Ezra Klein: Protecting People Means Winning Power

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The White House readies plans for mass firings in the federal government as Democrats weigh the stakes of forcing a government shutdown. The Justice D...

Angie Craig and Glenn Thrush: Don’t Be Called Weak Sauce

24 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A government shutdown creeps closer as President Trump cancels a meeting with Democratic leaders. Former Vice President Kamala Harris embarks on a pre...

Bakari Sellers: The Danger of RFK Jr.

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The injecting-bleach president is getting some super-strong pseudoscientific information to scare mothers and blame them for autism while conveniently...

Bill Kristol: Where Is the $50,000?

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We thought Tom Homan was just an extreme border hawk and ideologue. Now we know this powerful law enforcement official, who's depriving immigrants of ...

Thomas Chatterton Williams: How MAGA Learned to Love Cancel Culture

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cancel culture lives on, but it's taken new turns, especially among some of the loudest opponents of woke culture who simply can not abide one word of...

Brian Stelter and Jonathan V. Last: Worst Case Scenario

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The administration wants people to believe that Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air because he supposedly crossed a red line when it came to Charlie K...

Susan Rice: A Cancer in the Body Politic

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This country has been dealing with an increase in political violence for nearly a decade, and leaders from across the spectrum need to do everything t...

Joe Manchin: The Man in the Middle

16 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The former senator and former Dem has some not-very-nice things to say about Schumer and Obama—as well as progressives—who he blames for hounding ...

Bill Kristol: What Does 'They' Mean?

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The administration is threatening to take away money and power—and maybe even freedom—from some vague Trump opponents because of the Kirk assassin...

David Frum: Leveraging Violence as a Tool of Power

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump and the people around him want to use the Kirk assassination to suppress their political opposition. And Trump is clearly laying the groundwork ...

Erin Ryan: The Murder of Charlie Kirk

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This country has too many guns and too many crazy people. And the social media oligarchs are fanning the flames of violence by constantly trying to pi...

Stephanie Ruhle and Tom Saenz: Why Aren't People Freaking Out?

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If Zohran Mamdani, as NYC mayor-elect, held a dinner with finance bros and threatened them with a huge wealth tax if they didn't sweet-talk him and sa...

James Bennet: Trump Is Still Hacking the Media

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

More than 10 years in, journalists still have not figured out how to cover Trump. He understands the media environment better than a lot of reporters,...

Bill Kristol: Escalating the Authoritarian Project

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In seven months, Trump has accumulated an astonishing amount of unchecked power. No one inside his administration is challenging his will, and Trump i...

David French: Maybe the Tariffs Are the Problem

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, Trump fired the "woke" job numbers person after she released weak employment data. Now, we have even worse jobs numbers—and burgeoning s...

Mark Hertling: Performative and Deadly

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The lethal U.S. military strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean was more about putting on a show than countering the drug trade out of South America. ...

Lina Khan: The Impunity of the Elites

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The economic populists at the Nat Con conference may be talking a lot about elites screwing over the little guy, but the Trump administration itself h...

Stuart Stevens: Say They're Not Patriots

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democrats need to learn to fight like Republicans. So when senators with serious foreign policy chops vote to confirm a middling weekend talk show hos...

Jonathan V. Last: Burning Things Down

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Red States are flexing their muscles and imposing their will on the other states through their coordinated redistricting efforts. And if they deploy t...

Tom Nichols: America's Problem Child

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is like a dysfunctional 8-year-old whose parents are always in the principal's office arguing that their son is a good boy. The media, CEOs, and...

Sam Stein and Talmon Smith: Brain Drain

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The resignations of senior leaders at the CDC is a calamity. People with decades of expertise in infectious disease are leaving the agency because the...

Jake Sullivan: Trump Is Making China Great Again

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A year ago, China was globally isolated and its economy was struggling. But once Trump was back in office pursuing his own personal and political gain...

Susan Glasser: An Exercise in National Humiliation

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Some rando far-right social media suck-up, who Trump rewarded with an appointment to his administration, is pushing mortgage fraud investigations of A...

Bill Kristol: March to Dictatorship

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump and his people have used the summer months to up the despot game—sending armed troops into the streets, taking over the police in D.C., and pr...

Tommy Vietor: Trump's Security State

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The fears of jack-booted thugs and the military in the streets that filled the fever dreams of numerous people on the right since the 90s have come to...

Garry Kasparov and Jerusalem Demsas: Democracy Can't Defend Itself

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While Trump keeps working hard on his own monetization and glorification—and delivers a Watergate practically every hour—the pro-democracy coaliti...

Adam Kinzinger: Don't Feed the Dictator

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Russia is losing the war in Ukraine. More than 1 million Russian troops have been killed or injured, and it's been estimated that it would take anothe...

David Kirkpatrick: Trump's Self-Enrichment

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the day, Trump used to puff up his wealth to get on the Forbes list. Lately though, he doesn't talk about how much money he has, especially no...

Bill Kristol: Authoritarian Takeover

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Militarizing the nation's capital is not a distraction, and Democrats really need to stop using that term. Trump is trying to seize power, intimidate ...

Hakeem Jeffries: More Is More

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While Donald Trump delivers chaos, cruelty, and corruption—and Republicans play the facts-and-hypocrisy don't matter game— Democrats have to do mo...

Michael Weiss: Helsinki in Anchorage?

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the Alaska summit, Putin will likely be angling for a sequel of the Helsinki meeting, the infamous tête-à-tête in 2018 where Trump got rolled an...

Jason Calacanis: Anarcho Capitalism

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Cook groveling to Trump with a golden trophy and a dash of MAGA identity politics is probably a sign that we are not currently living in a healthy...

Amanda Carpenter: Fake Emergencies

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump keeps creating all these phony crises—an 'invasion' at the border, immigrants in the interior, crime in D.C.—so he can put on a show of forc...

Bill Kristol: The Lawless Administration

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Crime is down in D.C., but Trump is using the pretext of an attempted carjacking of "Big Balls," the former 19-year-old DOGE employee, to take over th...

Lis Smith: Dems Need to Burn Down the Party Establishment

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's a direct line between when the Democratic Party got nationalized and when it started getting wiped out in red states. Dems need to embrace het...

Anne Applebaum: What USAID's Absence Looks Like on the Ground

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The United States, through USAID, not only supplied a big chunk of the world's humanitarian aid, it also provided almost all of the logistical support...

Zerlina Maxwell and Josh Barro: We Are in a Bad Place

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gerrymandering has always been partisan, but what's happening in Texas is straight-up racial politics. Republicans are targeting and trying to disenfr...

Chuck Todd: Is the Economy the Biggest Political Threat to Trump?

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Voters in the seven swing states that elected Trump in 2024 thought he'd make the economy better. His perceived strength on the economy is the corners...

Bill Kristol: This Is So Third World

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The boss only wants to hear good news: that's the takeaway from Trump's high-profile firing over the weak job numbers. So if a government worker has s...

Dan Osborn: Connecting with Working People

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Osborn, the populist independent who ran a surprisingly close campaign for a Senate seat in Nebraska last year, is back for another run in the 2026 mi...

Marc Elias: An Election War Machine

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Texas Republicans are busy gerrymandering their already gerrymandered congressional map, and other red states are looking to do the same—all aimed a...

Franklin Foer: Elon, the Man Who Ate NASA

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The rise of Elon—and why he is still involved with our government—has everything to do with the dimming of America's one-time crown jewel, NASA. W...

David French: Israel's Humanitarian Obligations

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gaza is strewn with rubble, the war's end is nowhere in sight, and an entirely predictable humanitarian disaster is unfolding. With daily reports of s...

Bill Kristol: Trump Is a Moral Monster

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The man who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years never even bothers to feign empathy for Epstein's victims—even a sociopath would fake it. And...

Andrew Weissmann: It Stinks to High Heaven

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The deputy attorney general of the United States, who took an oath to help Donald Trump no matter what, is conferring with Jeffrey Epstein's literal p...

Mike Murphy: Trump's Kryptonite

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The one thing Mr. Authenticity was supposed to be was the anti-politician: the guy who would supposedly go after the establishment, clean up Washingto...

Neera Tanden: Aiding and Abetting Trump

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Johnson is racing to shut the business of the House down to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Trump's own criminal lawyer, who's moonl...

Chris Murphy: Time to Break Norms(?)

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Republicans are nullifying bipartisan budget deals and planning a mid-decade redistricting to try to hold the House after the midterms. Trump is metho...

Bill Kristol: It's the Crimes and the Cover-Up

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our government disappeared hundreds of Venezuelans to a hellish Salvadoran prison for 125 days. When Trump's and Stephen Miller's whole CECOT plan eve...

Tom Nichols: Secrets and Lies

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If anyone in America was still thinking that Trump's ties to Epstein were a nothingburger, Trump’s own behavior this week has probably disabused the...

David Wallace-Wells: The U.S. Is Handing the Baton to China

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While the Trump administration is doubling down on fossil fuels, China is annihilating us in the clean energy space. Right now, 75% of all renewable p...

Ben Wittes and Michael Feinberg: Breakdown at the FBI

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In addition to eviscerating the top leadership at the Bureau, Kash Patel has assigned whole squads of agents to immigration enforcement. Seasoned FBI ...

Brian Beutler: Time to Pop Off, Dems

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The majority of elected Democrats would prefer to talk only about policy, but that's not enough for today's freewheeling new media environment. It's w...

Bill Kristol: Has Trump Trapped Himself?

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With the Epstein case, the conspirator-in-chief has finally found a hoax that MAGA isn't buying—and he's risking his credibility among his newer sup...

Sam Stein: This Is the Country They Want

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Republicans are creating, and celebrating, an immigration police state financed by their megabill. Our cities will be militarized, we'll have prison c...

Galen Druke: Americans Do Not Like Trump's Deportations

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump has moved public opinion against his own immigration policy platform by sending masked agents out to nab people off the street. So, Democrats sh...

E. Jean Carroll and Sarah Longwell: Such a Bad Man

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ever the journalist, E. Jean took assiduous notes about her two civil suits against Donald Trump, the only occasions he has been held liable for his l...

Bill Kristol: Limp Opposition

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thom Tillis finally showed some backbone and opposed Trump—because of the giant Medicaid cuts in the Big Fugly Bill—but now he has to self-deport ...

Nicholas Kristof: Gratuitous Cruelty

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A miracle food paste that fights malnutrition in children, that taxpayers have already paid for, is collecting dust in warehouses. Donated drugs for p...

Michael Weiss and Jonathan Cohn: Animal House at the Pentagon

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump was so awestruck by Israel's intel infiltration and air supremacy over Iran that he just had to give himself an executive producer credit. And h...

Derek Thompson: Winning Without Anger

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A DSA candidate winning a Democratic primary in New York City is not an ideal laboratory for other Dems to draw lessons from, but Mamdani sounded auth...

Nicolle Wallace: The Silence of Republicans Is the Bigger Threat

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While Trump and his administration are the ones politicizing the rule of the law, ignoring due process, and annihilating democratic norms, it's Republ...

Bill Kristol: Trump Is Not the Right Man for a Crisis

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tim and Bill may have different takes on the wisdom of the U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear sites—and on potential regime change—but they see eye-to...

Mark Cuban: Character Is Destiny

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What if it had been a Harris-Cuban ticket in 2024? Well, it turns out the billionaire entrepreneur had been seriously considered for the VP slot—and...

Mark McKinnon and Dan Shapiro: Mid-Wreckage

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Because half the country so desperately wanted Trump back, we may now be on the verge of attacking Iran because the fake peacenik president wants some...

Ben Rhodes: The World We Made

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Iran is in a vulnerable spot for a variety of reasons, and Israel sees this as a stars-aligning moment to decapitate the Iranian state. But if the U.S...

Zohran Mamdani: FYPod Crossover

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani joins Tim and Cam for a special edition of the daily pod to discuss making the city more affordable, building mor...

Bill Kristol and Terry Moran: True American Spirit

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In contrast to the saddest military junta parade in history, millions of patriotic people took to the streets on Saturday to defend American values an...

Tom Nichols: Remember the Split Screen

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Saturday, Trump would like nothing more than images from Los Angeles of tear gas and balaclava-clad anarchists throwing bottles at Marines to compl...

Andrew Weissmann: Outlandish and Outrageous

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is outright fabricating a justification for sending Guard troops into Los Angeles, and his directive is not limited only to LA. So, if someone a...

Mark Hertling: Contrary to American Values

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump keeps wrapping himself in the American flag while while behaving in a very anti-American way—like threatening to shut down protests at his $45...

Bill Kristol: People Should Be Mad

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Where is Obama? Where is George W. Bush? A Marine battalion and the National Guard have been deployed in response to a spark Trump set off by sweeping...

S2 Ep1060: Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Natural Human Reaction

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump and Stephen Miller wanted a backlash against the immigration raids, because even they know that humans will respond when the federal government ...

S2 Ep1059: Sam Stein: The Divorce

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

S2 Ep1058: Matt Yglesias: Elon's Smash and Grab

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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. El...

S2 Ep1057: Rahm Emanuel: Trump Is a Chump

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 witho...

S2 Ep1056: Catherine Rampell: Slow Burn

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jamie Dimon is spooked about the bond market, business uncertainty about tariffs is dragging the economy, and it seems like no politician will get ser...

S2 Ep1055: Bill Kristol: The Grotesqueness of It All

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 R...

S2 Ep1054: Adam Serwer, Lauren Egan, and Justin Jones: The Attack on Knowledge

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration is trying to exert ideological control over every knowledge-producing institution in the country. And the assault on colleges...

S2 Ep1053: Live from Chicago

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 fr...

S2 Ep1052: George Packer: JD, Hollow Man

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

S2 Ep1051: Pete Buttigieg: Dream Bigger, Talk More Boldly

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democrats need vastly more imagination to confront the enormous challenges the country faces politically, economically, and on climate. The party can'...

S2 Ep1050: Bill Kristol: Something Worth Fighting For

26 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 mercan...

S2 Ep1049: James Comey: Uncomfortably Numb

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Chin...

S2 Ep1048: Jonathan Chait: House GOP Doesn't Care How Bad the Bill Is

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 d...

S2 Ep1047: Susan Glasser: American in Name Only

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On deportations and on foreign policy, the Trump administration is swapping out American values and violating everything the U.S. has stood for in exc...

S2 Ep1046: David French: Schizo-in-Chief

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

S2 Ep1045: Bill Kristol: A New Gilded Age

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

No, the Trump administration is not focused on the forgotten man or bringing industrial jobs back. Instead, the real estate developer is handing out t...

S2 Ep1044: Peter Hamby: All in Service of Kissing Trump's Ass

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Cabine...

S2 Ep1043: Michael Weiss: All Bribes Accepted

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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—...

S2 Ep1042: Leah Litman and Andrew Egger: Grievance All the Way Down

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 discrimin...

S2 Ep1041: Justin Wolfers: Trump's Centrally Planned Economy

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China sounds downright Reaganesque and is acting like a more stable, attractive trading partner than the country that launched a trade war. And even t...

S2 Ep1040: Bill Kristol: A Golden 747 from Hamas's Sugar Daddy

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 happ...

S2 Ep1039: Amanda Carpenter: MAGA's Bad Week

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 f...

S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Protest is the new brunch again. We're witnessing historic levels of pro-democracy grassroots engagement across a broad-based movement of everyday peo...

S2 Ep1037: Katie Phang and Greg Casar: Trump & Co Are the Real Flag Burners

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

S2 Ep1036: Jonathan V. Last: An Economic Tsunami Is Coming

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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. ha...

S2 Ep1035: Bill Kristol: A Reckless, Tin-Pot President

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...