Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
Natalie Harp, Trump's constant information aide known as the 'human printer,' was leaving raw emotional notes in Trump's private White House spaces — one read 'You are all that matters to me.' The Secret Service was alarmed. Trump openly tells people she loves him as much as his wife and children.
Where this was said
At 28:40 · chapter starts 27:40
The conversation turns to one of the book's most striking chapters: how Trump's cultural campaign extended to the Smithsonian. Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who became a White House staffer, visited a Smithsonian museum, saw something she didn't like, and flagged it internally. This ultimately led to Trump demanding the firing of National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet, issuing executive orders about museum content, and pressuring Lonnie Bunch — the Smithsonian's first Black secretary and founder of the African American History Museum — over his institutions' exhibitions. Haberman recounts a pivotal scene at the Smithsonian Board of Regents' June 9th meeting, where a 30-something aide to Vance named Ben Moss pulled out an iPad and showed an image of Amy Sherald's trans-themed painting (based on a trans model) to the assembled regents — including Chief Justice John Roberts — and declared it was 'not what Americans want to see.' The episode, Haberman says, is unlike any directive from a White House to a cultural institution she can recall.
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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