Mark Leibovich on Trump’s Chaos!
The Al Franken Podcast
The Al Franken Podcast
4.6 • 8.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're joined by our good friend, Mark Leibovich from The Atlantic, to go through a laundry list of current Trump controversies, including his immigration enforcement, blatant corruption, and focus on retribution. Not to mention, Attorney General Pam Bondi's complete meltdown over the Epstein files in Congress this week.
We also look at how Trump's new management style involves humiliation rather than firing. So far, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has managed to keep her job, but Mark explains how Trump still made her pay.
Plus, we look at Mark's most recent piece about the Democratic Party and its future. With a large majority of the party unhappy with Democratic leadership, how can the party rally to be successful in the midterms and find the right candidate to take back the Presidency in 2028?
READ Mark's work in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/mark-leibovich/
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Transcript
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| 0:39.7 | Hey everybody. It's a great one today. |
| 0:41.8 | You know, for a change, our pal Mark Lieberidge, writer for the Atlantic, joins me again. |
| 0:48.9 | We have what's called a wide-ranging conversation, but with a recurring theme, just how fucking awful this president |
| 0:58.3 | and the people around him are. Here's a good example. The White House announced this week |
| 1:04.0 | that Trump has repealed the 2009 finding by the EPA that climate change is a danger to humankind and is terminating the |
| 1:16.2 | federal government's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Trump, who calls climate change, |
| 1:22.2 | a hoax is touting the elimination of the, quote, radical rule that became the basis for the, quote, |
| 1:30.7 | the green news scam. |
| 1:33.2 | This will be challenged in court and will work its way to the Supreme Court, where we will lose on a 6-3 vote. |
| 1:41.5 | How do you know that, Al? Oh, come on. So big victory for fossil fuels and bad news for |
| 1:48.7 | everyone else on the planet, except for really old people, I suppose, unless they die in a heat wave |
| 1:56.8 | next summer. Let's see. Any good news? No. I guess the government is going to shut now, |
| 2:05.7 | and it seems that Republicans are taking a hard line, no budging on masks, on body cams, on |
| 2:14.1 | wearing name tags, or short of that, badge numbers numbers and requiring the use of judicial warrants |
| 2:21.0 | to enter and search a home. So the Department of Homeland Security, which is huge, will have a |
... |
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