The Bulwark Podcast

S2 Ep1034: Derek Thompson: Trump's War on Dolls

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Just imagine Fox's histrionics if a President AOC had said that American kids have too many dolls and that she's raising the price on them. Now the su...

S2 Ep1033: Tom Nichols: The Hollow Opportunists

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marco Rubio was supposed to be one of the only adults in the room, and now he's become a shell of himself executing Trump's unwinding of the US role i...

S2 Ep1032: Tony Blinken: America Alone

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For 80 years, the United States built strong economic, military, and political alliances around the world. But in just 100 days, that trust has been d...

S2 Ep1031: Joe Weisenthal: Everything Screams Recession

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The markets may be hanging in there but they also held strong in early 2020—right up until Covid hit New York. Meanwhile, tariffs are driving consum...

S2 Ep1030: Bill Kristol: Creepy and Wrong

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration keeps showing it's sooo tough on immigration that it deported three U.S. citizen children, arrested the wife of a member of t...

S2 Ep1029: Beto O'Rourke: Never Lose Hope

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since this country's founding, we have been tested. And the Americans before us somehow stood up and fought the good fight. We can't be the generation...

S2 Ep1028: Cory Booker: A National Crisis and a Global Crisis

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is trying to foist the worst peace deal in the last 100 years on Ukraine, as he gets repeatedly played by foreign leaders on the world st...

S2 Ep1027: Jonathan Rauch: Focus On the Corruption

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump may be brilliant at assaulting us with his daily distractions, but Democrats need to relentlessly target his corruption because that may be his ...

S2 Ep1026: Michael Steele: Your Voice Matters

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump and the people around him are trying to weaken our constitutional protections like due process. But the administration is getting rattled, becau...

S2 Ep1025: Bill Kristol: Hegseth Keeps Proving his Unfitness

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Republican senators could have insisted on someone who was even minimally competent to run our military, but because of their spinelessness, we've now...

S2 Ep1024: Anne Applebaum: Everything Is a Game to Trump

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sen. Van Hollen showed that Congress actually does have agency, and a federal judge finally scorched the administration in crystal-clear language abou...

S2 Ep1023: Ben Wittes: Sorry, We Still Have Due Process

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The White House is doubling down on justifying its extra-judicial actions around Abrego Garcia by trying to incriminate him in the court of public opi...

S2 Ep1022: Stephanie Ruhle: Only Trump Is Happy

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Manufacturing orders are down, stocks are down, and mortgage rates are up. But Trump and his family are wealthier than they've ever been. He's got his...

S2 Ep1021: Josh Barro: Total Idiocy

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump & company want to turn us into Taiwan circa 1985. But the brilliant minds behind the idea of intentionally weakening the dollar are prioriti...

S2 Ep1020: Bill Kristol: Staring Down the Barrel

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We are here: Trump is openly defying the Supreme Court while sitting side-by-side with a Latin American strongman who openly mocked our judicial syste...

S2 Ep1019: David Frum: It's Too Late to Stop the Pain

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump has effectively imposed a trade embargo on China, which means that after the inventory runs out, American retail will soon dry up. And since Eur...

S2 Ep1018: Andrew Weissmann and Patrick Gaspard: Naked Corruption

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Just before he paused the tariffs on Wednesday, an unusual spike in activity on the S&P 500 prompted speculation that Trump was orchestrating an i...

S2 Ep1017: Catherine Rampell: Trump's Tariffmageddon

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The White House is pumping out a lot of happy talk about countries wanting to make deals over the tariffs, but the tumult Trump has created has spread...

S2 Ep1016: Jonathan Cohn and Mark Lilla: Lobotomizing America

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to biomedical research, America is already great. We are the world's leader in the field. But the Trump administration is gutting resear...

S2 Ep1015: Bill Kristol: The High Cost of Stupidity

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Part of the reason for the market bloodbath is because the finance wizzes didn't factor in that Trump would actually do the truly moronic thing he kep...

S2 Ep1014: Adam Kinzinger: Mortal Damage to the American Empire

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's been great to live in America since World War II, but Trump is in the process of blowing up that whole order. Even Canada is looking to lead a ne...

S2 Ep1013: Mallory McMorrow and Tracy Alloway: A Self-Inflicted Crisis

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The market plunge is just pure Trump chaos, and perfectly matches his record as a businessman. From his numerous bankruptcies and many failures—incl...

S2 Ep1012: Sam Stein: Elon Is Toxic

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Musk was so high on his own supply that he thought he and his money were magic—but Wisconsin voters turned out in droves to prove to him just how to...

S2 Ep1011: Susan Rice: This Is Bloody Serious

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The administration admits it mistakenly sent a Maryland father with protected status to the Salvadoran penal colony—but at the same time, it says th...

S2 Ep1010: Bill Kristol: Stiffen Your Spines, Democrats

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If Joe Rogan is the voice in the wilderness on the disappearing of migrants to El Salvador, then the Democratic leadership really needs to rethink its...

S2 Ep1009: Amanda Carpenter: Daddy? No, Manny Trump

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is siccing the thought police on the Smithsonian, he's got an FBI task force set up to protect Elon's car company, and he's turning random tatto...

S2 Ep1008: Jon Lovett: A Worst Case Scenario Comes Into View

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump so far is not delivering on his promised spike in deportations, but he is creating a permission structure where we lock up people without due pr...

S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

No matter how hard Republicans try to spin the sharing of top secret military attack plans on an insecure app, the colossal f***up of an administratio...

S2 Ep1007: Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Wehner: What's Going on with Our National Security?

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Senior members of Trump's Cabinet got caught sharing attack plans—down to details of who they were planning to kill, and with what kind of weapons, ...

S2 Ep1006: Live from Phoenix

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bill Kristol joined Tim Saturday in Arizona to rip the atrocious behavior of our government—depriving even lawful Venezuelan migrants of due process...

S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump loves to complain about the deep state while Elon claims he's rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse with all his mass firings. But DOGE should be ...

S2 Ep1004: Wes Moore: The System Doesn't Work for a Lot of People

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is a vessel for frustration over the status quo, but he is not a vehicle for a solution—since he has no idea about how to make things better f...

S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Art of the Deal guy gave a master class on how to get worked over by Putin: First, wait around for an hour like an obedient puppy only to have you...

S2 Ep1002: Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov: The Cheap Whore at the White House

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The fastest growing demographic class in America is billionaires—we've gone from 500 to 2,500 in the past 10 years. And they know the cheapest, easi...

S2 Ep1001: Bill Kristol: Give Back the Statue of Liberty

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is taking liberties with our country's role in the world as a land of hope and opportunity by summarily locking up and deporting law-abiding imm...

S2 Ep1000: David French: Trump Admits He's Violating the Constitution

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump & company aren't even attempting to create a pretext for why they're punishing the free speech of political opponents. They are basically co...

S2 Ep999: Sam Stein: How Do You Negotiate with Nihilists?

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democrats are stuck with two terrible options: Either facilitating a government shutdown or allowing Republicans to pass a spending bill that would de...

Mark Hertling: Aiding and Abetting a War Criminal

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Putin has been named a war criminal because of the Russian way of war in Ukraine—bombing Kyiv and other cities, attacking civilians and first aid wo...

Will Sommer: Across the MAGA-Verse

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To find out what's really going on in Trumpistan, the AP is out and random lifestyle Instagrammers and MAGA conspiracy posters are in. Meanwhile, hoth...

S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This time around, Trump has dispensed with the ribbon-cutting side of being president—he's just not giving average Americans anything to feel good a...

Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

They end up sounding ridiculous whenever they try—like the treasury secretary saying that access to cheap goods is not part of the American dream. A...

Neera Tanden and John Fetterman: They're Playing With People's Lives

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is hurting the American people. The DOGE cuts are not only waging war on jobs, they're also harming the American public and undermining t...

Jim Acosta: Trump Can't Take the Heat

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Once upon a time, presidents used to take tough questions from the press, but the current White House occupant can't handle any scrutiny from cantanke...

James Carville and Michael Weiss: The Whole Country Could Go Under

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is anti-American and seems to hate this country: How else can his behavior be explained? The tariffs, the austerity, the threat of a default, al...

Bill Kristol: Kleptocrats and Plutocrats

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump is trying to chuck the post-WWII order and firmly pivot American foreign policy away from Europe and toward Putin—the poor guy who got dragged...

BONUS EPISODE from Tim's New "FYPod"

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tim has a new Gen Z podcast, co-hosted by Cameron Kasky. The most recent episode is called "Nazi Parties Aren't Ragers," and features guest Joshua Rus...

David Frum: Both Pro-Jesus and Pro-Sex Trafficking

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Forget the Epstein files hullabaloo. Members of the Trump administration, perhaps at the urging of Barron Trump, seem to have directly intervened to g...

Mike Murphy: The Chinese Own Elon

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The not-so-shadow president's largest Tesla plant is in Shanghai, but the People's Republic of China has the pink slip and can take it back at any tim...

Ruben Gallego and Zerlina Maxwell: Make Them Own It

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Republicans are aiming to gut Medicaid to pay for trillions in tax cuts for the richest of Americans, and they're trying to hide it. The Dems need to ...

Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump administration lawyers don't know or won't tell a federal judge who is running DOGE because Elon doesn't formally exist as part of the governmen...

Bill Kristol and Jared Polis: Send In the Clown

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump keeps filling out his administration with the unqualified and the inexperienced, including the recent addition of borderline literate hack Dan B...

Adam Kinzinger: It's Starting to Happen

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

David Graham and Pablo Torre: Is Lil Marco a Cuban Communist Agent?

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Jared Moskowitz and Zeke Faux: Scams Galore

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Reag...

Bill Kristol: Taking A Wrecking Ball to the Government

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Firing air traffic controllers over a busy holiday travel weekend, cutting a veterans crisis hotline, axing and then rehiring people who maintain and ...

BULWARK TAKES: Wrecking Ball TODDLERS Trump and Elon Are Making Susie Wiles' Life HELL

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Miller and John Avlon join forces to talk about Trump and Elon's growing relationship, Susie Wiles having to deal with them, and much more.

Andrew Weissmann and Michael Weiss: Valentine's Massacre

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Alex Wagner: The Poster Child for Corruption and Grift

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Carol Leonnig and Robert Putnam: Lies and Moral Obligations

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Consti...

Bill Kristol: The Law Be Damned

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The new administration has been routinely breaking the law, including on Friday when it announced it was cutting funding for universities doing medica...

Ezra Klein: The Resistance, Back from the Dead

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 abo...

Michael Steele: Gum Up the Works

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After the dumbest member of the Senate, Tommy Tuberville, was able to block military promotions for months during the Biden administration, Dems shoul...

Ben Stiller: 'Severance,' but Real Life

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 som...

Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 c...

Will Saletan and Scott Lincicome: A Crime Boss Has Taken Over

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 wh...

Andrew Weissmann: A MAGAtocracy and a Babytocracy

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Mona Charen: A Moment of Truth

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 approp...

Chris Hayes and Alex Kantrowitz: Trying To Break the Whole Thing

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 governme...

Bill Kristol: Trump Loves Fraud

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gullible Republicans have really been proving what they're made of recently, including Susan Collins, who claims Trump wants to root out corruption, e...

David French: Vengeance and Rage

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 o...

Sam Stein and Adrian Carrasquillo: We Are in a Simulation

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emotionally-stunted video game boys, who are also government contractors and/or quasi government officials, are fighting on Twitter, a POTUS who went ...

Stephanie Ruhle: Unlimited Money and No Rules

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 warrior...

Tom Nichols: A Farce and a Sham

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump tried to pencil out literal words in the Constitution and then freed 1,500 violent insurrectionists—while the media attempted to normalize it ...

Bill Kristol: Resist the Nihilism

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump wants us to believe that nothing matters, so we'll brush off all his corruption and grifting as though everybody does it. That's what aspiring a...

Ron Brownstein: Don't Take the Bait

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump governed as a wartime president against blue America, so expect him to keep stirring up culture battles—but the Dems have to avoid getting dra...

Melissa Murray and John Avlon: The Dark Legal Clouds Ahead

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Pam Bondi is likely to sail to confirmation—even if she's an election denier and pretends she was born yesterday—because she meets the simple qual...

Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Being secretary of defense is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. But after Pete Hegseth was plucked from a part-time Fox & Friends gig, Republ...

Peter Hamby: The Politics of a Firestorm

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Real estate is everything in Los Angeles. Karen Bass's absence from the city when the fires broke out, and now her seeming aloofness, has instantly ma...

Bill Kristol: Cannons All the Way Down

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump's favorite judge, Aileen Cannon, has been attempting to exercise authority she doesn't have over Jack Smith's required report on his investigati...

Amanda Carpenter: We Are Team Karen (Pence)

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"Mother" Pence is owed an apology. She snubbed Trump so hard and so beautifully at Jimmy Carter's funeral—and wasn't about to make nice with the man...

Derek Thompson and Elizabeth Weil: The Trend Toward Solitude

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Americans have been spending more time alone—and less time doing face-to-face socializing—than we have for at least 60 years. And our alone time i...

Liam Donovan and Brendan Boyle: The Great Grift

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Trump talked a lot more about Hannibal Lecter during the campaign than one of his actual top priorities: extending his 2017 tax cuts. With those $4.5 ...

Charlie Warzel: Zuck Sucks Up to Trump

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Zuckerberg is doing all he can to get an audience with the big man at Mar-a-Lago, including praising Trump's (faux) free speech bona fides and re...

Bill Kristol: The Preposterous and Ridiculous Lies About the FBI

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kash Patel's Jan 6 lie requires FBI officials to have been able to see into the future: to *know* that Trump would lose in 2020 and then try to get Co...

Jonathan Martin: A Resilient City

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New Orleans is the most special city in America, but it's a place that also breaks your heart. Local leaders will have to reassure the world that the ...

David Frum: Sociopaths and Political Tribalism

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Apart from the death and carnage on New Years Day in New Orleans, Americans revealed another darkness once again: an eagerness to pin violence on some...

Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While some media outlets may be moving to accommodate Trump out of fear he'll target them, The Bulwark will not be recalibrating. We'll keep providing...

Bill Kristol: Exploit the Rifts

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

MAGA v DOGE, the Christmas gift that keeps on giving, is an early sign of the coming infighting that could diminish Trump's power—we're definitely n...

'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Do you have to pick a side in politics? That was the question Reason Magazine, the flagship publication of the libertarian movement, invited The Bulwa...

Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While it's still going to be bad, for the first time since the election we're beginning to see that we may actually have a little fun watching these i...

Heather Cox Richardson: The Reality Show-ification of the Government

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We are seeing in real time what it looks like to turn a democracy over to an oligarch, namely the unstable guy from South Africa who thinks he's going...

Mark Hertling: Putin's Weakness

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Russia is on its weakest footing since it invaded Ukraine: Putin has destroyed his military, his economy is in the toilet, and the North Korean troops...

Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness

17 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The existential dread has a strong pull, especially since Trump has made a lot of Americans worse people, but we've had other bad, immoral, and creepy...

Bill Kristol: Fake Nicey-Nicey Sh**t

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have joined the preemptive capitulation parade by settling Trump's defamation suit—and by conspicuously paying ou...

Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The billionaires rushing to get on board with Trump, and contributing millions for his inauguration, may have missed this key detail: Enhancing the po...

Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper: Popularism v Populism

12 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The origins of the Democratic party's current malaise include ineffective messaging on climate and economic policy, too rigid a tent on cultural issue...

Adam Kinzinger and Pat Ryan: Bring It On

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Team Trump is trying to intimidate the opposition. Stop showing them your fear. Plus, Gaetz moves from AG nominee to low-rent MAGA cable channel host,...