Derek Thompson: Ruling by Emergency
The Bulwark Podcast
The Bulwark
4.6 • 11.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Not only is Trump failing to provide any clarity on why the United States went to war against Iran, the administration is also sticking to its habit of declaring an emergency based on some arcane legal provision that supposedly gives the executive branch the power to do whatever it wants. It's almost as though the American legal system can justify authoritarianism if a lawyer can dig deep enough. And Anthropic is currently feeling the sting of this monarchical-style power grab. Meanwhile, the tech overlords wanted free rein on AI under Trump, but they got a Maoist approach instead. Plus, Mamdani's embrace of abundance, the movie industry's troubles, and how parents fall in love with their children.
Derek Thompson joins Tim Miller.
show notes
- Derek's interview with Karim Sadjadpour on the "Plain English" pod
- Derek's Substack
- Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A quick correction on yesterday's show received many notes that a 55-year-old is not, in fact, a boomer. |
| 0:23.1 | And while that is technically true, colloquially on this podcast, anyone who's a single day older than me is actually a boomer. |
| 0:30.0 | And so it's not it's not Gen X Eurasia. |
| 0:33.7 | It is just more about my Peter Pan syndrome. |
| 0:36.0 | Delight to welcome the show today, one of our faves, long-time tech and culture |
| 0:38.9 | and political writer for the Atlantic, but now he's got his own substack. He also hosts a plain English podcast. His books include hitmakers and another one that didn't get much attention called Abundance, which he co-wrote with us for Klein. It's Derek Thompson. What's up? Hey, has he grown, man. Am I older than you? |
| 0:53.3 | Am I a boomer? |
| 0:54.2 | No. |
| 0:54.9 | Okay, good. |
| 0:56.1 | No, we're just, we're millennials. |
| 0:57.6 | Okay. It's Derek Thompson. What's up? Hey, has it grown, man. Am I older than you? Am I a boomer? |
| 1:12.0 | No. No. No, we're just, we're millennials. Okay. It's fun. I think so. We're dealing with the linear nature of time differently in different ways, but we're just doing our best to survive it. As typical, when you're on, I just have a whole kind of grab bag of various things. were to hop all over the place to various Derek interests and Derek interviews |
| 1:14.6 | on the place to |
| 1:12.0 | various Derek interests and Derek interviews on the plain English pod, which I'm a frequenter. I don't |
| 1:17.8 | think I've heard your opinion on this yet, so we'll see if you have one ready. But you, I associate you |
| 1:23.1 | with like, you know, having unified theories of various things, a unified theory of everything, |
| 1:28.8 | or, you know, a theory of how something explains something else. I wonder if you have a unified |
| 1:33.0 | theory of what we're doing in Iran, because currently, and we have American soldiers dying, |
| 1:37.8 | gas prices rising, tariffs going into effect this week, we're arming the Kurds. We have no |
| 1:42.9 | clear regime transition plan. Donald Trump |
| 1:45.8 | his whole careers and J.D. Vance, like they said, they weren't for this sort of thing. |
| 1:50.4 | Why are they doing it? What are they doing, do you think? I just had Ruben Gallego on my show, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Bulwark, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Bulwark and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.