The Bulwark Podcast

Mikie Sherrill and Michael Fanone: Full-Time Criming and Corruption

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New Jersey’s governor-elect credits her big win last week to an affordability message—and ignoring the pundits. But Sherrill also tied rising cost...

Chris Hayes: Trump Has Become 'The Establishment'

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Will Saletan: Sorry, but the Democrats Won the Shutdown

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Jessica Tarlov: Republicans Are in the Barrel

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 kin...

Jonathan V. Last and Carol Leonnig: The Danger of a Weakened Bully

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Dave Weigel: Now That's a Landslide

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The huge Democratic wins in Virginia, New Jersey, NYC, and California spoke loud and clear—and make Trump’s 2024 supposed ‘landslide’ margin o...

Andy Beshear and Terry Moran: The Power of Normal People

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 a...

Bill Kristol: Fake News on '60 Minutes'

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

CBS News heavily edited its ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump, not only removing his lies about 2020, but also conveniently cutting the part about...

Catherine Rampell: Who Are the Socialists Now?

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s hard to find a better example of seizing the means of production than our government seizing an equity stake in a company—which Trump keeps d...

Heidi Heitkamp: How Trump’s Trade Chaos Hurts Farmers

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump meets with Xi Jinping and agrees to an embarrassingly one-sided trade deal, as the “China Hawks” in the administration cower. Mean...

Abby Phillip: Governing by Troll

29 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the jump, the administration has been all about the memes, owning the libs, and pissing people off. But Abby says she wants Trump’s supporters ...

Sam Stein and Francis Fukuyama: A Coming Deportation Blitz?

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While the inhumane and aggressive tactics unfolding in Chicago are repelling many Americans, they are having the opposite effect among Trump's top aid...

Bill Kristol: Diaper Tantrum

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump was so embarrassed by Canada using Reagan’s warnings about tariffs that he had a little hissy fit and decided to punish Americans for buying C...

Ryan Holiday: Life Is Too Short to Be a Bootlicker

24 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the administration, like Stephen Miller, who spend hours every day kissing Trump’s ass look so pathetic—but since the time of the ancie...

Ben Wittes and Anna Bower: Trump's Reparations Demand

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The convicted felon was legitimately prosecuted for hoarding classified docs at Mar-a-Lago. And he was justifiably investigated over the numerous cont...

Jon Favreau: Foundational Freedoms

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the promises of this country has been the freedom to walk down the street without being harassed by the government. But even being an American ...

Michael Weiss and Karine Jean-Pierre: Low Energy Trump

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Putin’s friend in the White House may be back in his safe space with his kindred spirit in Moscow, but Trump is finding that he has limited leverage...

Bill Kristol: Trump Hates America

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nearly seven million Americans peacefully took to the streets out of their love for this country, and Trump in response acted out like a toddler obses...

Peter Hamby: The Mini Dictator Wants What He Wants

17 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The administration under sticky fingers Trump is now pretending it cares about the sanctity of classified documents, while it seems that Marco Rubio i...

Anne Applebaum: The Loss of 'Democratic Faith'

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The U.S. has been a model for other aspiring democracies since 1776. At the same time, the idea of America as the leader of the democratic world has a...

Heather Cox Richardson: An Attack on Our System of Government

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Republicans in Congress know that what they’re doing is deeply unpopular—on healthcare, supporting troops in the streets, and on redistricting. Th...

JB Pritzker and Franklin Foer: Like Living in an Authoritarian Regime

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After a court temporarily blocked the deployment of Guard troops in Illinois, ICE agents began ramping up their operations around Chicagoland. They ar...

Bill Kristol and Ty Cobb: Recapturing America

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peaceful protesters in Chicago and Portland have been so clever and effective at ridiculing the masked Stasi agents in their cities that the political...

Jacob Soboroff and Sarah McBride: Democracy at the Ground Level

10 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The administration may be trying to lay the groundwork for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act by invading Chicago but the real human stories are bre...

Sam Stein: A Bunch of Violent Keystone Cops

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

ICE and other armed federal agents are doing their best to incite violence in blue cities so they can help Trump realize his unfulfilled dream from 20...

Casey Newton: Lawlessness and Danger in Tech's Brave New World

08 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump's TikTok deal looks like classic crony capitalism as well as open theft. But China has bigger fish to fry with trade than its TikTok algorithm—...

Jake Tapper: Trump Is Making the Country Less Safe

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new kind of McCarthyism has settled in at the Justice Department, where career prosecutors—including those handling tough national security cases—...

Bill Kristol and Jane Fonda: The New 'Fierce Urgency of Now'

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

ICE is intentionally provoking violence in the nation’s cities and then glorifying it with their crack video team. Meanwhile, the rhetoric coming fr...

Tom Nichols: All The Circuit Breakers Are Gone

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump’s loyalty purges continue. Prosecutors are fired from the U.S. attorney’s office in Eastern Virginia, including people who had not...

Symone Sanders-Townsend: The White House’s Goal Is Enacting Pain

02 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration is turning up the heat now that the government has shut down, cancelling billions for green projects, targeting funding for i...

Ken Burns: You Have To Be A Bulwark

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A government shutdown begins, as a standoff over spending enters what could be a painful phase. And President Trump kicks off the week warning his mil...

Van Lathan and David Jolly: How To Beat Middle Finger MAGAism

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Pete Hegseth convenes the military’s top leaders to complain about fat troops and generals and plug his book. Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk’s assassinat...

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...