1081: Secret Podcast: Trump's $1.7b Friends and Family Fund
The Next Level
The Bulwark
4.8 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Secret Podcast is available exclusively to paid subscribers of The Bulwark. You can join on Apple Podcasts, Substack or YouTube!
Last night news broke that President Trump would drop his $10b lawsuit against the IRS if the people who work for him at the Justice Department would create a $1.7b fund out of taxpayer dollars and allow him to appoint five commissioners to run this fund and they would award money to anyone they deemed fit.
Oh, and that the list of people given money would be secret. And Trump could replace the commissioners any time he wanted, for no reason.
The Trump administration is positioning this as a “truth and reconciliation commission.” Which is amazing.
For a decade JVL (and to a lesser extent Sarah) have wanted a truth and reconciliation commission to document accounts of what people did during the Trump era. And now the monkey’s paw has granted their wish.
We get a truth and reconciliation commission designed to help the people who did the Trump era.
As you can imagine, Sarah and JVL have a lot to say about this. Strap in.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, Tom Allen here from the Pottering podcast. This episode is brought to you by My Garden Escape at QVC. |
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| 1:15.7 | Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the |
| 1:21.7 | bulwark coming to you live. Not quite zero dark 30, but earlier than normal. |
| 1:33.8 | So early. We have to talk about an amazing development since since wednesday so on wednesday we sat and we talked about donald |
| 1:38.9 | trump's 10 billion dollar lawsuit which was ne nearing settlement with the IRS. |
| 1:45.0 | You mean in person when I was putting my hands on you? |
| 1:47.6 | Do you know how many people were shocked by A, how tall you are, and B, what you look like in |
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