Political Gabfest - Maybe That Nazi Tattoo Was a Clue
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss why an insurgent candidate with so many red flags got so far, how shocking new details about Trump's 2025 income show billions in earnings while those who bought his crypto lost billions, and what everyone lost when the president decided World Cup rules didn't apply to us.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David talk with guest Jesse Wegman, Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, about his new book The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution. Wilson, a Scottish-born delegate at the Constitutional Convention, argued that the people—not the states—held true governing power, pushing for a directly elected president, only to be erased from history after his career collapsed into debt and disgrace.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily Bazelon talks with Senator Chris Murphy about his new book, Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. Murphy lays out a provocative agenda for Democrats to call Americans to national service, break up corporate power, rebuild local communities, and create a bigger tent that reaches disaffected conservatives hungry for change.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Nina Porzucki
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
Want more Political Gabfest? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Political Gabfest show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/gabfestplus to get access wherever you listen.
Find out more about David Plotz's monthly tours of Ft. DeRussy, the secret Civil War fort hidden in Rock Creek Park.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. |
| 0:10.7 | July 9th, 2026, maybe the Nazi tattoo was a clue edition. |
| 0:20.5 | I'm David Plotz of CityCast in Washington, D.C., that mildly appreciative chuck |
| 0:26.0 | all came from the New York Times Magazine and Yale University's Emily Baslon. |
| 0:30.6 | Hello, Emily. |
| 0:31.6 | Hello, hello. |
| 0:32.6 | Yale University Law School. |
| 0:34.0 | Are you suing the president or something this week? |
| 0:37.3 | I saw something about the law school. I certainly know. The law school is trying to stop a settlement, um, that Yale is apparently negotiating with the Trump administration over its admissions policies. But you have nothing to do with that. I'm not suing anyone. Uh, Johnny D. Back from somewhere. |
| 0:55.4 | Hello, John Dickerson. |
| 0:57.0 | Hi. |
| 0:57.8 | It's going to be back. |
| 0:58.6 | I was at the Aspen Ideas Festival, just panelling away. |
| 1:03.2 | Were you planting ideas or harvesting ideas? |
| 1:06.7 | So do you come back with more ideas or did you leave more ideas there? |
| 1:10.4 | Oh, that's a great question. |
| 1:11.7 | I have so many more ideas coming from there because I was just, I was mostly a moderator. |
| 1:17.9 | And so I was there just to facilitate and, uh, except on one panel. |
| 1:23.7 | You have like seven bushels of ideas. |
| 1:25.7 | You went with one bushel of idea and you're back with seven |
| 1:27.9 | bushels. I did. I had to check extra baggage. This week on the Gab Fest, Graham Platner seems to have |
| 1:37.1 | dropped out of the main Senate race. How did Democrats get it so wrong with him? Then Trump is earning |
... |
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