Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Happy Arraignment Day, the former president of the United States, surrendering to authorities in New York City to describe it as a circus. I think it's unfair to circuses.

For those of you who may have missed it because you actually have a life, the media coverage yesterday was absolutely wall to wall. It was slow bronco driving on the freeway coverage of the motorcade, the Trump flight, everything.

More indication that after all these years, the media has been absolutely nothing about these guys.

So this is an extraordinarily busy news day. I mean, obviously the coverage is going to be dominated by what happens, the highly choreographed appearance of Donald Trump at the New York City Courthouse. The fact that we will be getting real news.

We will finally find out what is in that sealed indictment. These 34 reported class e felonies. There's been tremendous speculation about them. But until today, we actually have not seen them.

And then of course, we'll have the appearance of Donald Trump. Apparently there will not be a mug shot. We're not totally clear about all that he's not going to be Hancock and the notoriously camera shy Donald Trump did not want cameras in the courtroom.

So apparently there will not be cameras in the courtroom. But we're going to see all of these images over and over and over again recycle just a reminder though.

Today is the day of that incredibly high stakes, Supreme Court election in my home state of Wisconsin. There's a hugely interesting race for mayor of Chicago that really illustrates the Democratic divide on issues like education and crime.

And crime and you know, less we sort of ignore this major geopolitical moment Finland joins NATO today, which dramatically expands NATO's border with Russia. All of that is going on.

And our guest today to talk about this extraordinarily. I won't say consequential day because we don't know. I mean, it's certainly going to be theatrical.

We're joined by Tim Alberta staff ready to the Atlantic and author of the book American carnage. Welcome back Tim. I'm dragging you back into this.

Charlie, this feels like a bait and switch here. I thought that we were going to talk some baseball and that we were just going to catch up on.

Cold times and well, I guess we are catching up on old times, right. All that's all this new again. We were just taking one more trip around the Trump sun here.

It does feel like that. So American carnage that had laged well.

Well, I've had to jokingly decline the requests to write a sequel.

And hard because I don't think a sequel is really even necessary, Charlie. I mean, you said it in the intro.

Like we're just sort of doing the same thing over and over again. Trump is certainly doing the same thing over and over again.

It's kind of like when you get to season five of a TV show that's been in hit. And you know, they're recycling some old plotlines and hoping that you don't notice.

You know, because they're changing some of the characters, but they've sort of run out of plot and you're just sort of looking around like, okay, I guess I'll keep watching. Sure.

So the first thing I said to you when you came on is like, I feel like we've had this conversation before or can you believe that we're still having this conversation.

I think that's what I said, right? Can you believe we are still after seven years having this conversation, taking another trip around the Trump being son started drag you back in.

Don't be sorry. I mean, what's most amazing to me, honestly, is how many people are still on board. Like how many people are still all in.

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