Ruby Cramer: The Power of MAHA

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1. 

   8 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

   Adam Jentleson and Pablo Torre: This Country Is Being Scammed

   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 win on a grand scale and pass the kind of policies that help regular people. Part of the trick is cooling it on the purity tests over fraught issues like Israel. And in this Trump era, when accountability is so scarce, Pablo shows with his Pulitzer-winning reporting on the LA…

2. 

   7 Sep 2026 · 1 hr

   Bill Kristol: A Blue Wave vs. the Toxic Red Tide

   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 scandal, and a disappointed base. What do those wave elections suggest about the prospects for a big blue year in 2026?

3. 

   4 Sep 2026 · 55 min

   David French: MAGA Is Making America Less Free

   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 Founders always intended our Constitutional liberties to apply to noncitizens as well—including even despicable Milo Yiannopoulos.

4. 

   3 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   Jonathan V. Last: How Much Stupid Can We Possibly Take?

   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 Senate colleagues over Trump’s agenda—even though on almost every occasion she has made sure that her vote won’t matter.

5. 

   2 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 14 min

   Michael Weiss: The Clown Car at the Pentagon

   The Army is currently operating without any Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders at the top. For Navy secretary, Trump is nominating an election-denying veteran who thinks witches and wiccans are taking over cities. And when Hegseth is not busy purging the DOD’s leadership, he seems to be under the spell of a Rasputin-like character who failed a polygraph and may have taken the supposedly sober defense secretary out for a bender.

6. 

   31 Aug 2026 · 49 min

   Bill Kristol: Keep Up the Pressure, Dems

   Trump’s war is far from over, top military leaders are warning Hegseth that prolonged ops in the region are unsustainable, and Americans have been financing Pentagon propagandists who’ve been secretly collecting taxpayer money to try to convince us that things are going great in Iran. This is not the time for congressional Democrats to allow Republicans to easily pass a spending resolution that keeps the government open. At the same time, Trump keeps handing gifts to Democrats—like his sell-out to tech oligarchs and his praise of data centers.

7. 

   28 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

   Ben Rhodes: Is Trump Stumbling into a Wider War?

   The wars in Iran and Ukraine are increasingly entangled, CIA Director John Ratcliffe had to personally deliver a message to Moscow, and Trump is driving our Gulf allies into the arms of China. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Israel relationship keeps mucking up our domestic politics, particularly in Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign in Michigan. But it also turns out that podcast host (and senator) Ted Cruz seems to be pocketing money from the state of Israel itself.

8. 

   27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

   Sam Stein Used to Be a Thief

   We’ve hit the August doldrums, so Tim is taking the daily pod on a little excursion. The Bulwark community delivered some epic mailbag questions, one of which prompted Sam to make one of the nerdiest confessions ever. Also, Tim and Sam adjust their Cabinet member rankings: Marco is an utter catastrophe, RFK Jr. is failing on all fronts, and Kelly Loeffler is proof that aliens exist.

9. 

   26 Aug 2026 · 48 min

   Neera Tanden: How to Win

   The only likely way to end the nightmare of Trump—and Republicans supporting him no matter how much he ruins the country—is for Democrats to win in Republican-leaning states and congressional districts. That means giving moderates the grace to compete for people who voted for Trump. Likewise, moderates also need to recognize that the left will be swing voters in key races this election cycle.

10. 

    25 Aug 2026 · 1 hr

    Tracy Alloway and Will Sommer: A Cabinetful of Clueless Grifters

    Yield curve control has gone mainstream (seriously, just ask the Asheville Beatnik with a message for Scott Bessent), so Tracy Alloway is here to explain the latest economic turmoil to Tim. Bessent’s bond buyback gambit seems to have flopped, but apparently, according to the President, there’s always the option of military intervention to bring the market to heel. In the meantime, consumers are going to pay more interest on everything, and there’s no plan to reduce the federal debt.