Catherine Rampell and Michael Steinberger: Trump Wants to Cook the Books

The Bulwark Podcast

The Bulwark

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

POTUS is firing or censoring the statisticians who collect data on health and climate, as well as the kind of experts who could verify his lofty claims of an A++++ economy. And while Vance says that Trump is really turning things around, job losses are rising from his destructive tariff and immigration policies. Plus, the back story on Palantir and how it's helping to facilitate the administration's authoritarian ambitions.

Author Mike Steinberger and Catherine Rampell join Tim Miller.

show notes

Tim's 'Bulwark Take' on current China policy
Catherine's newsletter, "Receipts"
Mike's new book, "The Philosopher in the Valley"
For a limited time only, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to Smalls.com/THEBULWARK.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have got a double header today. I told you to get serious. I've been wanting to do an episode focused on
0:21.7	Palantir for a while now and was happy to have a chance to talk to Mike Steinberger.
0:28.2	He's got a new book about Palantir and their CEO, Alex Carp. So we got that in segment two.
0:34.3	Also wanted to throw out to you, I got this flag to me. I'm not going to be there. I'm in New Orleans. I know there will not be actually any bulwark people there, but Bullwork fans are doing a meetup in St. Paul tonight, the dual citizen brewery in the Twin Cities. So go, if you're listening, go meet some other people. I thought I'd help the industrious bulwark listeners who are trying to have revelry
1:00.9	and have gatherings this holiday season, encourage anybody else in the Twin Cities to go check
1:06.0	it out.
1:06.4	But first up, we've got my colleague.
1:08.7	She's the economics editor at the bulwark.
1:10.6	She writes the newsletter receipts, which is published on Thursday evenings. She's the economics editor at the bulwark. She writes the
1:11.3	newsletter receipts, which is published on Thursday evenings. She also co-hosts MSNows, the weekend prime time. It's Catherine Rampel. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, girl? Doing well. Doing well. Or as well as, as well as, as well as, as when can in these trying times. I guess I'm obligated to say.
1:25.5	That's true.
1:25.7	We're in the holiday season.
1:26.9	We don't need a caveat, right?
1:28.3	You know, things are good.
1:29.9	Personally, I mean, you're in the holiday season. We don't need to caveat,
1:27.8	right? You know, things are good. Personally, I mean, you know, the world is full of torment,
1:34.4	always, you know. Maybe it's feeling a little more acute right now. It's certainly feeling
1:38.9	a little more acute in the economy. How about that transition? I wanted to talk to you about
1:42.7	we had some delayed jobs numbers that came out because of the government
1:45.8	shutdown and the fact that the president was considering a scheme to cook the books that
1:50.9	isn't going well so far.
1:53.1	And the numbers that we saw yesterday revealed an unemployment rate that said a four-year high,
	...

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