Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
Rubio sat with El Salvador's Bukele in his palace and personally hashed out the CECOT arrangement, which was supposed to target only verified gang members. The vetting proved to be fiction — innocent people, including Venezuelans with no-deportation orders, ended up in the gulag. Rubio is not the moderate anyone hoped for.
Where this was said
At 14:15 · chapter starts 10:40
Haberman turns to one of the most astonishing periods in the book: the Musk co-presidency. Musk rejected his cramped West Wing 'hovel' and relocated to the magnificent Secretary of War suites in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which he made his own with large video game screens. According to Haberman's reporting, he would call Trump late at night to propose cutting government entities — including, in one instance, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. His unilateral decisions often surprised Trump's own official staff. He didn't always align with Stephen Miller or Russell Vought on methods, creating internal friction. His most aggressive target was USAID — a congressionally established agency — which he effectively dismantled, leaving Marco Rubio to clean up the mess. The Musk era, Haberman notes, feels like ancient history now, but it dominated the first several months of the presidency and had lasting consequences.
Elon Musk operated out of grand Secretary of War suites in the EEOB, making unilateral decisions about cutting government agencies while often leaving Trump's own staff in the dark.
Rubio personally negotiated with El Salvador's Bukele in his palace to create the CECOT deportation arrangement, which ultimately sent innocent people to the foreign prison.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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