This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The government shutdown just crossed the two-week mark. If you take Donald Trump and his people at their word, it doesn’t seem like it’s about to reopen. But they are also huge bluffers. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * Has Trump hit upon a (legally dubious) way to keep the government “shut down” indefinitely? * Which signs suggest he’s digging in and which suggest he’s bluffing? * Are we about to test, once a...
Oct 15, 2025•37 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm As anticipated in last week’s episode, the government did indeed shut down, and as of this recording Congress remains at an impasse. At the same time Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are trying harder than ever to foment street violence in blue cities and maybe even martial law. In this episode, Brian and Matt discuss: * How the GOP’s ongoing Epstein coverup is prolonging the shutdown and making it likelier that they “lo...
Oct 08, 2025•37 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump has crossed an important redline: He ordered his administration to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, fired the prosecutor who told him he had no case, and installed a lackey who did as ordered. In this episode: * What distinguishes the (weak, losing) Comey indictment from past abuses of prosecutorial power? * Why Comey shouldn’t try to get the charges dismissed on selective prosecution grounds, and...
Oct 01, 2025•42 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm With the firing (and then unfiring) of Jimmy Kimmel, the right-wing crackdown in the name of Charlie Kirk seems to have bumped up against real limits. In light of the week’s developments, we discuss: * The schisms within MAGA that were on display at the Kirk memorial; * How those schisms fused with resistance backlash, forcing ABC and Disney to rethink their decision to take Kimmel off the air; * Whether this is a sign ...
Sep 24, 2025•35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump and several of his top officials have promised to unleash a partisan crackdown in Charlie Kirk’s honor, even as the notion that Kirk’s assassin was in league with the institutional left becomes more far fetched. In light of the week’s developments, we discuss: * Our personal reactions to the Kirk murder, and the contours of the overall public response; * What we know about the GOP plan to use it as a pretex...
Sep 17, 2025•39 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Another government shutdown looms, and, thus, so do more angsty struggle sessions over what Democrats should do, and what effective opposition looks like. In this episode, we discuss: * How does mounting bad news for Donald Trump—bad jobs numbers, defeats in court, and revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein—affect the politics of a shutdown? * Who’s got the better bead on how Democrats should proceed, M...
Sep 10, 2025•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm This week, we indulge all the speculation and look ahead to politics if and after Donald Trump dies in office. For instance: * Is a movement that claims the mantle of making America “healthy” sustainable in a world where the obese 79 year old president croaks after his health secretary takes vaccines off the shelf? * Does JD Vance have the juice required to consolidate all the pro-Trump factions (many of which hate each...
Sep 03, 2025•49 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm This week, a close look at two troubling authoritarian provocations from the Trump administration: Friday’s dawn FBI raid of John Bolton’s house in Maryland, and Monday’s purported firing of Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. We discuss: * How Matt managed to leave his microphone in Maine. * What Trump seemingly hopes to accomplish by making an example out of Bolton. * Whether opposing the re...
Aug 27, 2025•31 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump’s federal occupation of the capital continues, but the context has worsened. It now unfolds alongside Trump’s seemingly related efforts to: 1) gerrymander as many red states as possible; 2) unconstitutionally void and rerun the Census in a manner that would benefit Republicans; and 3) assert unconstitutional control over the time, place, and manner of elections. In this episode we’ll discuss: * To what exte...
Aug 20, 2025•39 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump has commandeered Washington DC’s police force and deployed federal agents and national guardsmen to patrol DC streets, on plainly pretextual grounds. In this episode we’ll discuss: * What makes this affront to DC sovereignty unusually offensive; * Trump’s stated reasons for seizing power, and how to see through them; * What, if anything, elected Democrats should say and do to defend district residents Then,...
Aug 13, 2025•39 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm This week, we’re reassessing both the resiliency of the economy, and the health of U.S. democracy. Why? Because recent data suggests Donald Trump’s reactionary policy blitz (global tariffs, mass deportation) has caused the economy to seize up; and Trump has responded by trying to kill the messengers. In this episode you’ll hear all about: * What the recent jobs numbers actually say, and how do they gel with other recent...
Aug 06, 2025•20 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump is trying desperately to bury the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. In this episode, Matt and Brian explore all the distractions Trump has attempted—implicitly and explicitly—to knock the Epstein files out of the news, why Trump is so desperate and why are his usual tactics failing. * Should we at this point suspect this is a coverup of damning evidence of Trump’s conduct specifically? * If the story is just that Ep...
Jul 30, 2025•36 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The new Superman is a critical hit and box-office smash—despite conspicuous Republican efforts to discourage people from seeing it. It’s the GOP vs. truth, justice, and the American way! In this episode, Matt and Brian explore all the reasons the modern right might have been put off by this movie, and Superman’s longer-running themes: * To what extent are right-wing critics really just evincing old, philosophical conser...
Jul 23, 2025•39 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The race is on between Donald Trump, who’s desperately trying to put down the raging scandal surrounding his Jeffrey Epstein lies (whatever they happen to be) and Democrats who are finally engaged, and trying to pry the truth loose. Who’s gonna win? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * How has the Epstein scandal developed over the past week? * Why have Democrats been uninterested in all matters Epstein, both rece...
Jul 16, 2025•38 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm The Trump administration suddenly wants you to stop asking questions about Jeffrey Epstein. Case closed. Nothing to see here. That client list we promised to release? It doesn’t exist. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What is the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory, and why has it persisted so long? * Why are Epstein’s old, wide-ranging associations distinct from all the other rich guys who hobnob with politicia...
Jul 09, 2025•44 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Minutes after recording this episode, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) provided the decisive vote for GOP legislation to kick 15-20 million people off their health insurance and give rich people a trillion dollar tax cut, along with many other horrors. Now it’s back to the House, where hope, which springs eternal, goes to die! In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What more could have been done to stop this? * By whom? *...
Jul 02, 2025•42 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Welcome to hell, because we’ve reached the hot war phase of the second Trump presidency. Or have we? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What has actually happened, both since 2018, and just in the past couple weeks, and why it’s so unlikely to have left the U.S. and the world better off. * Is there any upside to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu using and playing each other in a way that undermines both of the...
Jun 25, 2025•27 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump may not always chicken out, but his on again/off again, advance-retreat dance does seem to insulate him from lasting blowback. It seems the only way to drag Trump’s popularity down low enough to really hem him in is for his supporters to find out the hard way. In this episode, Matt and Brian tackle the questions: * Does the hyperbolic claim that “Trump Always Chickens Out” serve to insulate him from public ...
Jun 18, 2025•35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Since last week’s episode, Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a bitter falling out, Republicans encountered new obstacles to enacting their top priorities (cutting rich people’s taxes and poor people’s Medicaid) and Trump ordered a federal siege of Los Angeles. Also, Brian got his first taste of sweet, sweet European health care. What do these things have to do with one another? Arguably not much, arguably quite a lot. If s...
Jun 11, 2025•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Brian’s European Vacation continues as Matt is joined by special guest Jane Flegal of the Blue Horizon Foundation to break down the energy provisions of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. The energy cuts have attracted less attention than the health care provisions in part because they were made much more severe at the last minute. Jane breaks down how the Inflation Reduction Act changed America’s approach to clean energy subs...
Jun 04, 2025•37 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Brian is on vacation, so special guest McKenzie Wilson joins Matt to talk about Blue Rose Research’s retrospective on the 2024 election and their work on message-testing. McKenzie came to Blue Rose after working in the private sector, working for Jamal Bowman, and working in the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services — she believes in progressive values and she wants to win elections. In this epi...
May 28, 2025•37 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm By the time you listen to this episode, the Republican bill to give rich people trillions in tax cuts, and throw millions of people off of Medicaid will be…somewhere. It could be on the glide path to passage in the House, or on life support, or somewhere in between. But the basic shape of what Republicans want to do, and what Donald Trump wants them to do, is clear. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * How this te...
May 21, 2025•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Donald Trump blinked, as many people suspected he would. This week, he reduced the embargo-level tariffs he imposed on China a month ago, and did so unilaterally. So in exchange for a month-long crisis, a still-looming supply shortage, lost jobs, and lost wealth, we got nothing! But Trump’s supporters are all too ready to cover for him. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What does Trump’s reversal mean for the e...
May 14, 2025•47 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm They won’t come right out and say it this time, the way they did in 2017. But Republicans are still hellbent on repealing the Affordable Care Act—or at least the half of the ACA that expanded Medicaid coverage to millions more poor and disabled Americans. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * What do Republican pronouncements about their aspirational health care cuts actually mean? * Will cuts to a program that ben...
May 07, 2025•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm On Donald Trump’s hundredth day in office—the day we taped this podcast—he was historically unpopular, driving the country into recession, and responding to the loss of confidence in his administration by escalating his authoritarian threats against the public. In this special episode, Paul Krugman joins Brian to discuss: * What Trump has done to the U.S. economy in just the past 100 days. * Why it’s too late for him to...
Apr 30, 2025•21 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Right-wing religious fanatics want women to have more children with bread-winning men. Donald Trump views masculinity as synonymous with physical toughness. The synthesis: instead of using prosperity to make family formation more appealing, what if we just crushed female employment and made most jobs manual labor? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * How Trump’s economic policy and disdain for white-collar profess...
Apr 23, 2025•33 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Two weeks into his trade war, Donald Trump has made at least a few tactical retreats, and markets have stabilized a bit as a result. Are we just in the eye of the storm? Or is it possible the economic fallout from the trade war won’t be as severe as we feared on LIBERATION DAY? In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss: * Why did markets recover significantly (though not entirely) from the big sell off after Trump launche...
Apr 16, 2025•38 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Last week, in one fell swoop, Donald Trump wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, upended all of our trade relations, and poised the U.S. for a lengthy recession and higher prices. His big money backers are in freakout mode. He’s made himself politically vulnerable in dramatic fashion, but also undermined the foundations of the American age. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss life with (and after?) Trump’s tarif...
Apr 09, 2025•36 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm There are signs of life in the Democratic Party, and if Republicans continue to badly underperform in special elections, the vibes could shift. But there are some things even a robust opposition can’t really stop, when a president claims autocratic power, and is insulated from normal political considerations After a brief discussion of Cory Booker’s filibuster, and the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, Matt and Brian dis...
Apr 02, 2025•40 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats continue to catch hell from their own voters for caving in the government shutdown fight. But in the coming days, perhaps sooner than most people are expecting, Congress will have to increase the debt limit. And once again, Democrats will have to decide whether and how to use their votes to rein in an out-of-control GOP. After some quick observations about the Trump administration’s sn...
Mar 26, 2025•29 min
