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The Bulwark Podcast

Jonathan V. Last: Trump's Decadence Is Rubbing off on Americans

The Bulwark Podcast

The Bulwark

News, Society & Culture, Politics, News Commentary

4.6 • 11.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With a shooting at Mar-a-Lago and some real counterterrorism issues associated with Trump's threat of war on Iran, Kash Patel probably had more important matters to attend to than shotgunning beer with the U.S. hockey team. And the team itself might have remembered that Patel himself is standing in the way of investigating the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. But too many people at the top don't give a crap, and others are taking their cue. And that includes the larger media, which has moved on from Minnesota, even though women are having to resort to giving birth at home out of fear that federal agents will snatch family members in the labor & delivery ward. Meanwhile Trump is aggressively promoting regime change in Iran, and Sam Altman sounds like he thinks Neo was the bad guy in "The Matrix." Plus, does Netanyahu's role in helping get Trump back into power—and perhaps pushing him to war— open up a political opportunity for Dems to put pressure on Israel?

JVL joins Tim Miller.

show notes


Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I am your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, but Bill Crystal and I couldn't work out the schedules.

0:20.5

So what we did instead was I did a Sunday conversation with him, which you can get over on the Bullwork Takes Audio Feed or Substack or YouTube. And today we got a special sub, a very special sub. It's my next level podcast co-host. He's the author of the Triad Newsletter, which if you aren't reading, I don't know what you're doing. He's also an editor at the bulwark. It's Jonathan V. Laster, JVL. What's up, buddy? I'll try to make everybody feel a little more comfortable. All right. So, Tim, made me think about Bill Abzug. I remember being dinner with her back at every, I don't know, maybe it was 72. But, you know, it's funny.

0:54.8

She was actually closer with Bill Buckley than you would have imagined.

0:57.8

And, you know, it just shows that things used to be different.

1:00.8

What's fun of time back there in America?

1:04.8

That was great for like 11 of us.

1:07.2

That was really wonderful.

1:08.6

We are back.

1:09.4

We and JVL.

1:10.0

I still have my cold. We're back from

1:11.4

Minnesota. My Lebanese ancestry, Louisiana residents. I was not built for that, so I still

1:18.3

have a cold, but I'm doing okay. We're going to save some time at the end because JBL's

1:22.4

newsletter from over the weekend on Minnesota was really powerful in what we learned there.

1:26.2

So I want to chew over that on the end.

1:28.2

But we have some news first. Obviously, the big news is the Dutch have finally installed Rob Jett in his

1:33.7

prime minister. He's the first of many gay, millennial, neoliberal world leaders that we'll have.

1:38.4

Everything will be well once every country has a gay millennial.

1:42.8

You see the Dutch Jared Polis? Yeah, he's kind of like the Netherlands Jared Polis. Yeah. Is that a good thing? For me? For me it is. Yeah, I mean, you know, nobody's perfect, JVL. Okay. Sure. Nobody's perfect. But, you know, given the options on the table, it's not bad. Fair. But I want to really start in Milan. We have the

2:02.4

ecstasy and the ignominium. How do you fucking say that word? Ignominy. The ecstasy and the

2:10.9

ignominy of being an American, watching U.S. hockey, defeat Snow Mexico for gold and overtime. Just a beautiful victory.

2:21.1

Jack Hughes and his handsome brother missing a tooth. I didn't get to watch because I was live with

2:25.7

Bill, but I watched the whole thing late last night on replay. It was wonderful. But then we had to

...

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