Susan Glasser and Jacob Soboroff: A Dangerous Lame Duck
The Bulwark Podcast
The Bulwark
4.6 • 11.6K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Trump's low approval ratings may be giving people the idea that he is weak and disempowered. But Trump backed into a corner could well be more unconstrained and more dangerous—and it could also fuel his imperialist ambitions toward Greenland, an island he has been obsessed with owning since his first term. Meanwhile, DHS always knew people would die because of their mass deportation efforts and it still wholly accepted the risk of its military-style operations. But the opposition on the street is building. Plus, a year after the LA fires, a look at the role of disinformation in the disaster, the slow recovery, and the lack of emergency planning by government officials.
Jacob Soboroff and Susan Glasser join Tim Miller.
show notes
- Tim on the new videos coming out of Minneapolis
- Jacob's book, "Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster"
- Susan's latest New Yorker column
- Friday's episode of The New Yorker's 'Political Scene' podcast
- Susan’s book with Peter Baker, “The Divider”
-
The National Review piece on Greenland Susan referenced
- Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.
- Get up to 30% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK #oneskinpod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm your host, Tim Miller. |
| 0:15.8 | Two things real quick. |
| 0:16.5 | I forgot to mention yesterday on the mailbag. |
| 0:19.3 | People were waiting for their Monday mailbag. |
| 0:38.2 | We're kind of rejiggering how to do that a little bit to make it smoother for everybody, both on the uptaken for you guys. So it's going to be back. Just stick with us. Mailbag isn't going anywhere. I appreciate all your feedback. Also, yesterday on the board takes feed. I did a breakdown of some of the community video and on the ground reporting that we've seen coming out of minneapolis uh shout out particular to my girl |
| 0:45.3 | amanda at not turtle soup on x for some of that stuff she's been doing um if you are in |
| 0:50.6 | minneapolis i like to hear more of this i just want to caveat this by saying real humans are reading these, I like to hear more of this. I just want to caveat this by saying, real humans are reading these emails. So, like, folks can please be judicious. You know, if you're, if you're in Cleveland and, you know, your cousin's friend heard something in Minneapolis, please don't send it to us. But if you're in Minneapolis, I'd love to hear the stories about what's happening on the ground. I've already gotten some pretty harrowing things from friends of the show. So I appreciate that one more time, Bullwark Podcast at thebork.com. We got a double header for you today in segment two. It's my MSNL colleague, Jacob Soberoff. But up first, she's one of our faves. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her most recent book is The Divider, co-authored with her husband, Peter Baker, it's Susan Glasser. |
| 1:29.7 | What's going on, Susan? |
| 1:30.7 | Happy New Year. |
| 1:31.8 | Hey, Tim. Great to be with you. Too bad we don't have anything to discuss. |
| 1:35.6 | I know. So we're in the green, we're cutting things to discuss because there's just so much in the |
| 1:40.8 | news. I do want to start kind of big picture with you. You wrote for the kind of New Yorkers |
| 1:46.0 | year end compilation on the golden age of awful about what struck you the most from year one. |
| 1:53.5 | You know, inauguration is actually January 20th. We're about, we're about a week away from a full 365 days. |
| 1:58.9 | We haven't lived a full 365 days, believe it or not. |
| 2:01.2 | Thanks for that. |
| 2:01.9 | 2.0 yet. |
| 2:03.7 | Yeah. |
| 2:04.3 | So I just, I kind of want to let you cook. |
| 2:06.2 | The biggest picture, like, what stood out to you from year one and from where we are right now? |
| 2:11.8 | Yeah. |
... |
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