SchadenFriday: The Week MAGA Turned Cringe
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There was a moment, when the tech CEOs and media moguls were lining up to kiss Trump’s ring, when it looked like almost all the demographic arrows were pointing right, where it looked like Trumpism was, if not widely embraced, at least too big to be written off. After a year of Trump back in office, the culture cries out for Woke 2.0.
Guest: Brian Beutler, founder of Off-Message.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Happy Friday Saitsters. It is that time again. Time to feel the warm glow of some good, old-fashioned |
| 0:09.1 | Schadenfreude. And I gotta say, I need a tall glass of Shoudenfroeder this week, a little light to combat the darkness. |
| 0:17.5 | As you know, every week, we choose a person or an event from the news that is making |
| 0:23.1 | us feel that special smiling purple devil emoji energy. This week, we've got a special guest |
| 0:29.5 | for a very big question, which is, is this the week we can truly say Donald Trump has lost |
| 0:36.6 | the culture? Brian Boitler is here to talk it out |
| 0:39.9 | with me. You know him, you love him from his essential writing over at offmessage.net. He also hosts |
| 0:45.2 | the politics podcast that has an X at the end. I assume because, I don't know, it's X rated or something, |
| 0:50.1 | right, Brian? It was just a cheaper URL to buy. |
| 0:56.3 | That's a better story, actually. |
| 0:57.8 | Brian, welcome to the show. |
| 0:58.9 | Thanks for having me on. |
| 1:00.3 | Okay. |
| 1:02.6 | Brian, so much went wrong this week. |
| 1:08.7 | I literally just came into this interview from watching, like, body cam footage of some immigration agents ramming an American citizen's car and then attacking |
| 1:12.5 | her. So I really need something good. That's why you're here. Why do you argue this is the |
| 1:19.2 | week that Donald Trump has lost the culture? I guess what I would say is this is the week that it |
| 1:26.3 | dawned on me that Donald Trump has lost the culture. |
| 1:29.5 | I don't know if you can. |
| 1:30.2 | To lose the culture, I was going to say, you kind of have to capture the culture first. And we can debate that too. But let's talk about the evidence that Donald Trump has lost the culture. Yeah, I'm glad you said it's possible that he never had a claim on it because even though it felt that way when he |
| 1:44.3 | won the election, I think there are some reasons to believe that it was a bit of a mirage |
| 1:48.5 | having to do with Biden and having to do with how social media is tilted in the favor of |
... |
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