
Hey friends,
Now that things have settled down I wanted to close the loop/circle back with you all on the new investments we’ve made in The Bulwark and give a shout out to our Bulwark+ community for making all this possible.
Tim Miller is getting settled into the chair on the flagship podcast and he’s doing a tremendous job.
Last week, Tim had Dean Phillips on and it was amazing, like seeing what The Media could be in an alternate universe. Tim was respectful and kind, but utterly devastating. It’s one thing to demolish a subject while being a jerk. Doing the same demolition job from a place of civility and good faith is next-level awesome. Please go listen/watch it.
Sarah’s show with George Conway continues to crush all before it—who knew that legal analysis would be a podcast and YouTube juggernaut?
On the newsletter front, Bill Kristol is up early, doing his thing in Morning Shots. I’ve known Bill since I was 22 and the reason he drives us nuts is the same reason that we love him: It’s because he believes that the world can be better. In a funny way, it’s that optimism that makes him think Democrats can have a stronger candidate than Joe Biden in November. (I disagree.)
Andrew Egger has gotten a fabled hard pass to the White House, and will start spending time over there to see what the president’s administration is up to and enlarge your understanding of the state of play.
And Marc Caputo is getting scoops and giving us the inside look on MAGA. First he broke the story of how Never Back Down blew up. Then he reported out the gory details on Ronna Romney McDaniel’s defenestration.
We have a long year ahead of us. The Bulwark is well positioned to help you make sense of what’s important while providing you with reporting and analysis you won’t find at other outlets, with no both sides-ism and no kabuki journalism—all of it in service of the mission to help our democracy.
This mission doesn’t have a pre-ordained happy ending. There is a crisis coming that we cannot avoid. Either America will elect a president who once attempted a coup. Or America will defeat that man, and then have to fend off his attempt to overturn this election, too.
Our aim is to embody, as Bill put it last week, a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the will.
If you’re not a member of Bulwark+ yet and would like to join us for this time of testing, we’d love to have you.1 Through the link below you can sign up to get unlimited access to The Bulwark for the next year with a FREE 30 DAY PREVIEW so you can decide if making an investment in us is worth it for you. Cancel before the 30 day trial is up and owe nothing or stick around and you’ll get twelve more months of access to:
All of our newsletters and ad-free and member-only podcasts
Access to our community commenting features and live chats
Weekly livestreams and bonus recordings of our live shows
As a Bulwark+ member you can choose to read us in your inbox, listen to our ad-free podcasts on your player of choice, join us via the free Substack app, or read us on TheBulwark.com.
You decide.2
We don’t take attendance and we don’t expect you to read and listen to everything we put out. We invest in multiple formats and distribute our content on multiple platforms precisely because we know we have to meet people where they are. And to ensure our arguments and ideas reach the widest possible audience in service of the mission.
We’re not going to slow down this year. The forces of illiberalism count on exhausting us. They want us to be tired and dispirited. They want us to turn away and go back to “normal life.” That’s the authoritarian playbook.
But I believe that, as the great coach Tony D’Amato once said, This is a game of inches. And the inches we need are everywhere around us.
We’re going to fight for that last inch. And I bet you will, too.
Best,
JVL
And as always: If you want to be part of Bulwark+, but just can’t afford it, reply to this email and we’ll figure something out. No one gets excluded from this community because of money.
On your My Account page, here, you can customize your personal email preferences and set-up our ad-free and member-only podcasts on your player of choice. Even if you don’t want every newsletter or podcast emailed to you, you’ll always have access to the content through TheBulwark.com. You can update your personal preferences as often as you like.