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The Bulwark Podcast

S2 Ep1016: Jonathan Cohn and Mark Lilla: Lobotomizing America

The Bulwark Podcast

The Bulwark

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.68.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When it comes to biomedical research, America is already great. We are the world's leader in the field. But the Trump administration is gutting research and innovation on things like cancer, Alzheimer's, and arthritis—and the amputation of our scientific expertise under RFK, Jr. has been about as thoughtful as the tariffs rollout. Meanwhile, when it comes to the developing budget bill, Medicaid is getting some surprising red state support from people like Josh Hawley. Plus, when people willfully choose ignorance as a way to cope with an uncertain world.

Professor Mark Lilla and The Bulwark's Jonathan Cohn join Tim Miller. 
show notes

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast.

0:10.6

I'm your host Tim Miller.

0:11.7

We've got a two-parter today.

0:13.9

But first, I wanted to mention yesterday, many of you emailed me.

0:18.0

I appreciate that about the fact that I guess I said that the Dave Chappelle

0:21.1

clip I played was from last week when it was from 2017. So whoopsie. I will say, though,

0:26.9

the fact that Dave Chappelle was making this very poignant critique of Donald Trump's tariff policy

0:33.1

eight years ago does kind of undermine the arguments from, you know, some of the Trump

0:39.3

fluffers on Wall Street who were so blindsided by this, the Bill Acman's of the world.

0:44.3

Bill Ackman's out there tweeting about how could this possibly be? It must be, it must be a

0:47.9

conspiracy. It must be Howard Nutlick, who's long on bonds, trying to hurt the economy.

0:52.3

No, Trump's been warning you that he was going to

0:54.5

do this for a long time now. You just didn't believe him. So anyway, kudos to Dave Chappelle for his

0:59.5

2017 prescience. And one other news item I just wanted to get to before we get to our guests,

1:05.0

because I don't think we're going to cover it in either of those conversations. There's some

1:08.7

Supreme Court rulings last night with regards to

1:12.0

the kidnappings, deportations, whatever you're going to call them, to Sikot in El Salvador.

1:18.2

The first one was with regards to Kilmer Abrago Garcia. He's this father in Maryland,

1:23.3

who the government admitted was wrongly sent to El Salvador, you know, since the Justice

1:29.7

Department lawyer that was making that argument was put on leave by Pam Bondi for, I guess,

1:35.2

not being sufficiently supportive of the administration's lawless deportation regime.

1:41.7

So anyway, this went to the Supreme Court and John Roberts put a stay on the

...

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