John Heilemann: The Year Is Ending a Lot Better than It Started

The Bulwark Podcast

The Bulwark

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Only six months ago, the wheels felt like they were coming off of America, and our democracy experiment. But since the Epstein case broke wide open, the wheels started to come off Trump instead. And he's not just lost his way in politics but in the broader culture too—with his despicable words about Rob Reiner, his trying to get Jimmy Kimmel fired, and his pedophile cover-up. At the same time, we are likely stuck with his family grift, which will last for generations. Over on the Democratic side, the left has the momentum but there is room for a McCain-style reform candidate. Meanwhile, JD may be too repellant to win the presidency and the expectations for Mamdani are likely unrealistic. Plus, some love for Oasis, Geese, and Cameron Winter—and some hope that people are longing for something tangible in their music again. People need a rock star.

John Heilemann joins Tim Miller for the year-end pod.

show notes:

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. This is the last one of the year.
0:18.0	And so we brought an old friend who's going to like make me not have to work that hard because he's just going to talk and give you a lot of thoughts. He's got a lot of thoughts and a lot of takes. He is doing a lot of stuff. You got the Impolitic podcast. Is that what it's called now? Yeah, baby. You're co-hosts of Hacks on Tap. Oh yeah, baby. You're writing for Puck. You're an analyst of MS now.
0:39.0	You used to be on Showtimes the Circus.
0:40.5	It's canceled.
0:42.0	MS now.
0:42.3	MS now.
0:43.5	Are you still saying it that way? Are you still saying it? Yes, now. Yeah, it's the only way I can say it. Right. Like I heard we, when we talked about this when you were on my pod, mostly, it's just impossible for me to resist the MS now.
0:53.5	MS now.
0:54.4	MS now.
0:55.0	It's not MS now.
0:55.3	We're going to be there.
0:55.7	MS now.
0:56.4	MS now.
0:57.6	It's an MS now. MS now. It's not MS now. MS now. It's not MS now. Now. I'm off this podcast for the week. I am going to sneak by MS now on Friday because I'm taking my child to New York for eighth birthday. We're going to see a show. We're going to go ice skating. We're going to take a swing or bye, see the crew. What are you going to see? I think the Lion King, we're kind of on the fence. We're rolling through a couple different things. We think the Lion King, but I don't know. I haven't decided yet. If you're in the mood. Okay. I haven't seen it. But my friend Danny Strong, who wrote the game change movie and people know from a lot of other things.
1:48.5	No, not Danny Boyle. Danny Boyle. Danny Boyle. Danny Strong. How many Danny's could that really be? Who was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, right. You're dope sick. He was dope sick. He did, yes, he did. he wrote and produced, he was on the Gilmore Girls. Yeah, Danny's been on a lot of things. He was in Justified for one season where he played a baddie on Justified. Have you ever seen Justified?
1:53.1	I love Justified. Oh, Justified. It's great. Danny plays a rapist prison warden who does all kinds of bad things to Walt Gagins's girlfriend,
2:03.5	love for his life on that show, which is really not a character for Danny.
2:07.6	Anyway, Danny is producing, directing a revival of chess, the Tim Rice musical that has like
2:16.2	with music from Abba in it
2:17.9	that has like
2:18.4	one night in Bangkok
2:19.1	and all those
	...

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