Jonathan V. Last and Carol Leonnig: The Danger of a Weakened Bully

The Bulwark Podcast

The Bulwark

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Trump took it on the chin in Tuesday's elections, SCOTUS sounds skeptical about his tariffs, and his plan to 'gerry-rig' the midterms looks like it is slipping away—but he is still the most powerful president since FDR. And murmurs about a lame duck may prompt him to take even more extreme actions. Plus, the still infuriating inability to hold Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 election, and the long-term damage he has done to the DOJ.

Carol Leonnig and JVL join Tim Miller.

show notes

Carol's new book, "Injustice" on the DOJ, Merrick Garland, and the Jack Smith investigations
JVL's Wednesday Triad on Hispanic voters and 2028
Tim's 'Bulwark Take' with Rep. Pat Ryan on sports blackouts
Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a double header up today.
0:17.2	It could not be more excited about the second block with Carol Lenig, one of my favorite reporters who's moved over to MS now from the Washington Post. She's got a new book out about the Justice Department that I've been devouring. But first, my buddy, my co-hosts on the Next Level podcast, author of the Triad Newsletter, your favorite, Jonathan Victor Las, JVL. What's up, JVL? Hey, man, it's nice to be here when things
0:39.3	aren't like totally terrible. That's the first for in a while. Yeah, though we're going to do
0:46.9	some feelings at the end. I'm having some mixed feelings. I'm going to save that for people.
0:49.7	We're going to do happy talk at the beginning. Then we'll go over my mixed feelings about
0:52.8	everything. JVBL, I wanted to
0:54.6	grab you because it was just such a big win for the Democrats on Tuesday night and such a big wave.
1:00.8	And we were all, we were talking on the next level, kind of live as it was coming in, kind of processing everything.
1:05.8	So I want to just have a little bit of a deeper, both analytical and emotional kind of recap of where things
1:12.8	stand right now. And you did a newsletter yesterday on the Hispanic vote. That was a banger,
1:19.4	as they all are. So I want to start talking about the Hispanic vote and then we'll get into some
1:22.5	more big picture stuff. Pretty stunning, just the degree to which the Republicans tanked all of their gains and
1:31.0	then some with Hispanic voters. You know, again, admittedly, these are in blue states. Maybe
1:35.5	things are a little bit different in the border states. But why don't you talk about what you found?
1:39.8	Yeah. So here's what we found. I was looking at Union City, which is the most heavily Hispanic township in New Jersey.
1:50.1	It's like 81, 82 percent Hispanic.
1:53.4	So overwhelmingly Hispanic.
1:54.9	And it's a pretty big place.
1:56.3	They're up in Hudson County.
1:57.9	And here is how Trump's vote share grew. He went in 2016, 19%. Okay.
2:05.5	2020, 2028%. 2024. 44. 41%. So this is like the big Hispanic realignment.
2:16.2	The Hispanics in Union City were like, man, the more I see of this guy, I like to cut
	...

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