Corruption Never Stops
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 242 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss what Trump is actually trying to buy with his blatantly corrupt "anti-weaponization" slush fund and self-dealing, why Trump can exact primary election revenge on his Republican critics when his own popularity is so low, and how the federal government is obstructing attempts to hold ICE agents involved in shootings accountable with guest Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County DA.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the Slow Burn podcast's new season, Becoming Justice Gorsuch,with host Susan Matthews. They talk about the conservative legal project he was built for, his splits with the president who appointed him, and his seeming conviction that he's the only justice who's doing it right.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, John Dickerson talks with Bloomberg columnist Adrian Wooldridge about his new book The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism. In a moment when American democracy is under assault from authoritarian populists and dogmatic progressives, Wooldridge argues that liberalism itself offers the most resilient framework for pluralistic, self-correcting societies.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Nina Porzucki
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
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Find out more about David Plotz's monthly tours of Ft. DeRussy, the secret Civil War fort hidden in Rock Creek Park.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this late political Gab Fest. |
| 0:10.9 | May 21st, 2026, the Corruption Never Stop edition. |
| 0:20.9 | I'm David Plotz of CityCast in Washington, D.C., joining from New York City, where he has a |
| 0:26.2 | substack, John Dickinson. |
| 0:29.5 | Hello, John. |
| 0:31.6 | Hi, David. |
| 0:33.5 | I guess we should note we should mark this moment as the one where you have finally interred your... |
| 0:41.3 | I interred last week. I interred last week. I capitulated last week. I gave in... |
| 0:47.3 | I displayed myself naked upon the floor and gave myself up to the gods last week. This week, it's just like back to to Norm. Back to norms. Where you have a job. What if next week, John is like the next |
| 0:58.8 | person going to space or something. And then you say that and everyone's going to be like, |
| 1:03.7 | oh, yeah. He knows there's no danger. I'm not that interesting. John is not going to go to space. |
| 1:10.4 | He would do so well. |
| 1:13.8 | He does seem to be like, okay, just like doing nothing, sort of like just he would read in space. |
| 1:19.7 | He would sit there and read. |
| 1:20.4 | He's not doing nothing. |
| 1:21.7 | It's true. |
| 1:22.1 | Oh, I see. |
| 1:22.8 | Read. |
| 1:23.1 | Okay. |
| 1:23.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:24.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:24.6 | That other voice, of course, is the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law Schools and book leaves Emily Bavon. |
... |
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