OM DENNE EPISODE
I spent five months tracking every Trump corruption story. Here’s what I found.
Several hours ago, I had to abandon my contacts for glasses. My eyes are still dry and burning. My left leg is asleep. My fingers are cramping. My phone is dead. I’m out of coffee and desperate for a bourbon or perhaps a cigarette (I don’t smoke).
I have a Google document filled with 10,000 words, more than a hundred individual stories, scores of links to dig deeper into — I’m wondering how I’m going to get my editors to read the whole thing, let alone get millions of Americans to care about it. I’ll have to get it to half that length, and maybe even shorter, before I can put it in front of anybody.
This is where I’ve landed after five more months attempting to document all the grifting, corruption, and self-dealing of the Trump administration.
I published my first piece on this topic on May 1, titled “The everything, everywhere, all at once corruption story.” When I finished that piece and read it back, I was astounded at the end result. Not because it was a particularly riveting piece of writing, but because seeing it all together in one place shifted something inside me, solidifying a perspective about this administration that won’t be easily forgotten. I was gratified to see it had a similar impact on others; it was widely read and cited, generating hundreds of thousands of views, over 1,000 comments, and a mention in The New York Times.
At the time, I was pretty skeptical about the degree to which people would care about the corruption permeating our government right now. Everyone seems so fatigued by the news that they aren’t paying attention, or they’re too comfortable in their partisan corners to break ranks, or they’re simply too overwhelmed to get worked up. Our ability to be concerned or even shocked seems diminished. But it turns out I was wrong: In what looks to me to be a historic piece of polling, Fox News recently found Americans are now putting government corruption as their #1 concern heading into the 2026 midterms, ahead of issues like inflation, immigration, and healthcare...
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On this week’s episode, Isaac reveals his big board of Senate midterm predictions to Kmele and Ari, who offer a few disagreements. Then, the three discuss the protests and riots in France. Then, are Ari, Isaac, and Kmele as knowledgeable about Europe as a European is about the United States? All that and more on this week’s episode, which you can listen to here and watch here.
This week, Executive Editor Isaac Saul announced A Grain of Saul, a new iteration of an old favorite column where he’ll share fresh perspectives on politics and culture. Today, he publishes his first piece, exploring a frequently discussed — albeit sensitive — question: Are Americans just stupid?
As the midterms near, campaigns are leaning into a familiar tactic: fear. You’ve probably seen or heard all manner of political advertisements warning of catastrophic consequences if an opponent or their party wins power. In the latest video for his new YouTube channel, Isaac breaks down the psychology of these ads and how to tell when politicians are playing on fear-based emotions. Check it out here.
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