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Secret Podcast Preview: The Founders Never Imagined a President This Corrupt, Weak and Stupid

2026-05-15 News & Politics
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The Bulwark
The Bulwark
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Description

Last night news broke that President Trump would drop his $10b lawsuit against the IRS if the people who work for him at the Justice Department would create a $1.7b fund out of taxpayer dollars and allow him to appoint five commissioners to run this fund and they would award money to anyone they deemed fit. Oh, and that the list of people given money would be secret. And Trump could replace the commissioners any time he wanted, for no reason. The Trump administration is positioning this as a “truth and reconciliation commission.” Which is amazing. For a decade JVL (and to a lesser extent Sarah) have wanted a truth and reconciliation commission to document accounts of what people did during the Trump era. And now the monkey’s paw has granted their wish. We get a truth and reconciliation commission designed to help the people who did the Trump era. As you can imagine, Sarah and JVL have a lot to say about this. Strap in. Show notes: ICYMI: The gang did a bonus episode this week in meat space: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/tim-cant-stop-laughing-at-rand-pauls Read JVL’s Triad newsletter: https://www.thebulwark.com/s/thetriad ON SALE NOW: Bulwark Live is coming to San Diego on May 20 and Los Angeles on May 21. Just announced! We’re adding some chatty friends to the lineups for both shows. Grab your seats now to join Sarah, Tim and Sam for an evening of politics among friends and keep an eye on https://TheBulwark.com/Events for more announcements.

Top Comments (10)

@PolyglotPfannkuchen 2026-05-16

Oh, the Founders imagined him. They didn't imagine an entire corrupt majority party and corrupt SCOTUS.

249 27 replies
@saltytbone 2026-05-15

Four years I had to listen to my family cry about Hunter's laptop. Four years and THIS is what they voted for. I can't reconcile that.

148 8 replies
@geminiangel01 2026-05-15

Inject dark JVL into my veins

130 3 replies
@itsrightbehindyou 2026-05-16

I don't want to say things are super depressing. But it feels super depressing.

112 3 replies
@Smith9568-y4n 2026-05-16

I love how we can pay a $1 billion ballroom but we can’t pay a $1 billion USAID fund

110 4 replies
@nmandowa 2026-05-15

Better name for this level of corruption: Flagrant Evil.

100 1 replies
@latebloomer5517 2026-05-16

It's time to move the Overton window on court expansion and reform. I'm really thinking of you, Sarah. It is time to think out of the box about how to fix this because the Court is the major problem. The Court has caused many of our ills: a proliferation of guns, money in politics and now a race to the bottom on gerrymandering.

55 4 replies
@fawnbell1370 2026-05-16

The fact that he can have the J 6ers in his head to get compensation but not all of the women who were trafficked and abused by Epstein, Trump and their friends is unbelievable. We are truly living in the upside down.

41 2 replies
@dfresh834 2026-05-16

So he's basically getting 1.7 B of our money to buy elections for the next 3 years.

38 3 replies
@Red-Brick-Dream 2026-05-16

26:35 Sarah, we've been doing that for ten years. It doesn't work. These people will _happily_ dig for canned food in the radioactive ashes before they admit that Donald Trump is merely human, let alone wrong.

30 3 replies

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