Reporter Chris Whipple penned a column for Vanity Fair about Vice President JD Vance and his political transformation at Yale Law School, prompting The Bulwark's Sam Stein to question how Vance's relationship will likely unfold for the 2028 presidential election. Whipple made it clear, he thinks Trump will "destroy" Vance "come next year."

Speaking on the Wednesday podcast, Whipple said that when people in the White House were still talking to him, he recalled Vance defending Trump's remarks about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"He told me, 'No! The media got that totally wrong!' I don't know what the media got wrong about Trump referring to 'very fine people on both sides' who were marching with neo-Nazis with tiki torches chanting 'blood and soil,'" said Whipple.

"But I think Vance is in a really difficult, fraught position because, as one person put it to me on background, at a certain point he's going to start to get traction," Whipple said. "Vance is, if he is indeed the frontrunner, he's going to start to run ads. He's going to start to have rallies. People will pay attention. Trump will not be able to stand that. Trump will not be able to share that spotlight. And come next year, he will destroy him. He will take him down."

He added that he's spoken with Steve Bannon about Vance as well and Bannon agrees that it won't go well.

"Bannon told me that he thinks this relationship is only going to go south in a hurry," Whipple said.

Stein questioned whether there's any relationship that Trump has "in politics that hasn't eventually gone south" at one point.

"I mean, there's no amount of, you know, loyal. The loyalty is usually in one direction and you can be one of the great suck-ups of the world. You can acquiesce as much as you possibly can, but eventually those relationships go south," Stein said.

"Almost inevitably, almost inevitably," Whipple agreed.

The other question Stein asked was whether Vance cares about anything other than his own advancement.

"It seems to me there are two schools of thought about JD Vance. One is that we've already discussed, which is the notion that he's a cynical opportunist who will just go with the wind. But the other school of thought is that he is unlike Trump, who has no convictions or beliefs and is transactional about everything," said Whipple.

"Vance is actually a true believer in a post-Trump MAGA ideology, a worldview that is more authoritarian, and is in fact a kind of Catholic theocracy. And it goes back to this guy, Patrick Deneen at Notre Dame," Whipple said.

He noted that both Vance and Peter Thiel both have been influenced by Deneen. Thiel is searching for a more apocalyptic, anti-regulation world than a church-run state. He argues that an “Antichrist” could emerge as a seemingly benevolent global authority that uses fears about AI, climate change, nuclear war and safety to centralize power, restrict technology and impose a one-world government.

"That's a real worry about Vance — is that he actually believes in this stuff. And that he has the intellectual shock troops in place," Whipple said. "But there are people who think that Vance is actually a true believer in something that is much more ideological than MAGA."

Stein doesn't buy it. He said that a person "can't go from secretly advising Jake Sullivan on how to clean up the 'deplorables' so that Trump won't win, to now believing in this stuff. Like, something seems a little bit off-kilter."

Whipple thinks both options could also be true.

Sam Stein, chatting with Will Sommer, spoke on The Bulwark podcast Monday about Sommer's bombshell report that the Pentagon is using taxpayer dollars to pay far-right influencers to promote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth online and in various articles.

Sommer, who reports on the far right, had his previous report last Monday, and the Washington Post followed up with its own piece Sunday, exposing several other influencers who were being paid as special government employees. One included

Among the details they found, however, is that Rob Maness was among those making money at the Pentagon when he wrote a story for the Daily Caller. Stein pointed out that the site still hasn't posted a disclaimer on Maness' report attacking "disloyal careerists" at the Pentagon, saying that he was being paid by the Department of Defense at the time he wrote the piece.

Another mentioned by Sommer and the Post was "Data Republican," who has been tracking people they believe to be "Antifa," which stands for anti-fascist.

"The anonymity here, a bunch of these people, if you were just perusing online and you had no clue or the wherewithal to investigate who these people were, you know, 'Cynical Publius,' 'Infantry Dort,' I guess he lists his name there. But, 'Data Republican.' They operate with anonymity. And I have a proposition to you," Stein posed to Sommer. "Was the — was Elon Musk basically scraping any sort of verification requirements on Twitter. Was that not one of the most consequential social media maneuvers ever? We live in a world where people can do this now."

Sommer pointed to "Data Republican," who is able to be "verified" on Musk's X and poses as an expert online, is actually just "a random lady with, I guess, Excel? Maybe not even that."

In the case of "Infentry Dort," Sommer said that anyone looking at him doesn't "realize this guy is, like, essentially a Pete Hegseth spokesperson."

They're people, he continued, who don't indicate that they have been paid to post many of the things they're doing online. In the case of Kurt Schlichter, Sommer said that the man has spent time writing short stories about another U.S. Civil War and that the red states would destroy the blue states.

"So, is this a guy we really want working for the Pentagon? I don't know," Sommer asked.

Cynical Publius does include his real name on his account, but Stein doesn't think anyone on the right would ever have taken him seriously if he had used his own photo as a regular, "glasses-wearing nerd," rather than hiding behind the image of a Greek statue.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough opened Thursday morning's show by unleashing an epic rant on everyone he thinks is "stupid," but his biggest insults were for Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), President Donald Trump and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

After a rant about the Yankees game on Wednesday night, Scarborough addressed recent reporting from MS NOW's Carol Leonnig and others that Schmitt was warned that the text messages hadn't been vetted or confirmed.

"And going back to what Donald Trump was saying, I love this whole 'oh, it wasn't, you know — we haven't communicated it well,'" he said about the GOP's excuses around election failures when chatting with co-host Mika Brzezinski.

"You know, they lie when telling the truth would be better. They can lie about January 6. They can lie about a rigged election. They can lie about everything else. It ends up that what they found, Mika, is that they can't lie about grocery bills. They can't lie about gas bills. They can't lie about diesel bills. They can't lie about the cost of living. They can't lie about how much somebody has to pay for rent. They can't lie about how things are more expensive today than they were when Joe Biden left office. They just can't lie about it," said Scarborough.

"So, they [get] caught — they found themselves in this position where suddenly they can't lie even about whether somebody goes to an Atlanta Hawks game. And boy, what about that? That guy was warned. He was warned not to use the text that just made him look like a jackass in front of the world!" Scarborough exclaimed about Schmitt, who was caught lying about former special counsel Jack Smith being at an Atlanta Hawks game when he was at an Iowa Hawkeyes game.

"He used it anyway because they don't think facts matter, but facts matter when people get their receipts from the grocery bills, and it's costing them so much more today than it did even when Joe Biden left office," said Scarborough.

When it comes to the report that Ken Paxton was caught on tape bashing Trump, Brzezinski read pieces of the report noting that Republican numbers have dropped across the board after the Dallas mid-term convention.

"Yeah, because you're a liar!" exclaimed Scarborough. "You're a stupid liar. But you can go ahead and do that. Nobody believes you, just like they don't believe what the DHS says — when the DHS lies about shooting people. But that's just what you do. So good luck with that. Let's see how it works in November."

He went on to mock Trump for lying about his television ratings. Veteran reporter Katie Kay said Trump doesn't appear to understand the difference between the number of impressions of a video and the "ratings" for television.

The leak from Paxton prompted The Bulwark's Sam Stein to explain that Trump trash-talking the Texas candidate in his own state at the convention likely wasn't helpful in increasing his numbers. Now that Trump is headed to Texas, Stein said that it's fairly likely that Trump will go there "and call Ken Paxton ugly."

Stein said that it might be enough to "save" Paxton, but that it's coming at the expense of a high number of Republicans, and Paxton ended up costing the GOP hundreds of millions of dollars, whether he wins or not.

Jonathan Lemire said that he reported for The Atlantic about the deep-red states where Trump will be campaigning. They were once safe Republican seats, but what a difference the GOP has made in squandering away any progress in 2024.

They continued with more mockery for Schmitt from Scarborough as the lawmaker continues "living in ignorance" and "[spreading] the lies around" and even "after he was caught lying he still shamelessly continues to spread the lie."

'"You're right. It's a perfect snapshot. Incompetence, dishonesty, and then being completely unapologetic," said Willie Geist.

During a panel discussion about President Donald Trump’s embarrassing switcheroo to avoid Iranian attacks (while leaving aides and reporters to take the blow), Bulwark Editor Sam Stein could not subdue a tirade on the president’s consummate lying.

Stein’s explosion preceded a clip of Trump unleashing yet another legion of lies before a Tuesday night press gaggle.

“The country is doing well,” Trump said, ignoring bad job reports and consumer and voter polls. “Iran is going fine — going just absolutely fine. We totally control the Strait of Hormuz. We have control over it. Nobody else, only us. Our Navy is unbelievable and things are going great for our country.”

“I mean, the only true statement there, Sam, is that the Navy is unbelievable,” said “Deadline: White House guest host Alicia Menendez on Wednesday. “Everything else — Iran is not going great. The Strait of Hormuz is not going great. And nothing is as the president described, being smuggled in a catering truck with your Diet Coke valet. Is that supposed to express confidence to the American people, from an administration that purports to be the most transparent administration in American history?”

“This is the underlying thread that ties all this together, which is dishonesty,” said Stein “I mean, I couldn't agree more with … [panelist] Carol [Leonnig]. Like, obviously it was a serious enough threat that the president should have been moved, that a decoy flight was totally acceptable. The Secret Service made a determination. No one should begrudge the president for getting on the catering truck, as silly as that is, and going to this other military aircraft, you can even make the case that a bit of sort of deception was probably necessary in order to make sure that nothing leaked.”

“However,” raged Stein, “there is a widespread lack of honesty and transparency and outright lying that is accompanying the administration throughout this. And Carol is too kind to say it because she's a good person. But when she initially reported that they had to switch from the Qatari jet to the Air Force One … the White House was very public in saying that she was a liar. They did. They went out there and said, ‘she's a liar.’ And it turns out she was right and they were wrong.”

“And that's just the M.O. for this administration,” said Stein. “And you saw with President Trump last night where he's saying,’ oh, we control the state of Strait of Hormuz. We do not. There's nothing going through the Strait of Hormuz. Eight ships, when there used to be 130! Things in Iran are fine? They are not. We are a couple of days before the 60-day target for the MOU, when we're supposed to have a negotiated a settlement. No one's acting like that's going to happen. Things are not going well, but they're asking you to believe that the sky is green, that two-plus-two is five. And there was no security threat to air force One.”

- YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump was reportedly awaiting Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle's resignation shortly before she tendered it. The US diplomat representing American interests to Greece was accused of abusing her office to make money — and one of her accusers celebrated her downfall even as he vowed to hold her accountable if necessary in the courts.

"My first response when asked that today is going to be: It's a great day for American diplomacy," Eric Deters told conservative pundit Sam Stein. "I'm glad. I'm glad she's gone. Kimberly Guilfoyle is a wicked, evil, manipulative grifter. And the reports that were coming out of Greece weren't good. But I'll take full credit for the resignation, because I think she would have survived everything in Greece. They could have told her to cut it out. It was over there in Greece, and she would have survived that."

He added, "What she could not survive was the black-and-white text messages, the embarrassment, the humiliation of her asking me for $100,000 to pay off her Amex, and at the same time wanting to keep it a secret and cover it up."

Deters continued, "And just to let you know, too — not to monopolize the conversation here at the outset — I'm going to sue her for defamation this week. I have to, because she's concocted this thing that, oh, this was for money that I owed her for prior work. And that's not true, and she knows it. She started out telling the Wall Street Journal that the messages were fake and [unclear: "I didn't fly"]. Then she said I was a known blackmailer, whatever the hell that freaking means."

He concluded, "So I'm going to be really aggressive against her, and I'm suing her for defamation right here in good old Kentucky, near Cincinnati, which means I will get to take her deposition, and it'll be fun."

Deters added he also hopes to depose Guilfoyle himself.

"I'm looking forward to that day," Deters told Stein. "You have to understand something about a lawsuit. They're very dangerous, because a lawsuit allows you to issue subpoenas. A lawsuit allows you to request documents. A lawsuit allows you to take depositions under oath, which means I can depose everyone on her staff. I can subpoena documents."

Deters, who accused Guilfoyle of trying to shake him down for $100,000 so she could pay an American Express bill, broke the story about Guilfoyle even as other reports focused on her leading a lavish lifestyle with powerful Greek business interests during her time in office. As the reports continued to leak, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted a private meeting in Greece with Guilfoyle that was reportedly very heated.

In addition to the ethical concerns involved in Guilfoyle's alleged conduct, former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos told The Bulwark's Michael Weiss earlier in October that they are also controversial because Greece has recently had a positive relationship with the United States, one the government does not wish to disrupt.

"But it's really interesting, because there also is this tendency in many elements of Greek society, the press and the government, to downplay this, because U.S.-Greek relations are actually quite good," Polymeropoulos told Weiss. "So what's going to be interesting to see is how much more traction this gets, with the notion that both you and I know there are numerous journalistic outlets that are following stories of the ambassador's kind of nightlife and other proclivities."

President Donald Trump repeatedly promised during his three campaigns that he would not touch Social Security. As a conservative commentator pointed out on Wednesday, however, he seems prepared to break that pledge.

"Peculiar line from Trump, who ran explicitly on not touching social security and now invites attacks that he may try to," noted The Bulwark's Sam Stein on Wednesday.

He referred to a moment in Trump's press conference the same day when he said, "I wanted to ride with Social Security being fully invested in the stock market in the first month of my first year, so 2016."

The president added, "I was met with tremendous criticism by the Democrats and some Republicans. I wanted to do it so badly."

Social Security currently faces a funding shortfall, yet even many of Trump's fellow Republicans balk at the idea of modifying a program that is widely popular and on which over 71 million Americans depend (out of roughly 350 million in the total population).

Speaking with AlterNet in August, President Joe Biden's Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley warned that Trump's signature economic legislation — the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill — has accelerated the agency's problems rather than ameliorating them.

"His policies have certainly accelerated the depletion date by a year," O'Malley explained. "At the end of President [Joe] Biden's administration, that date had actually been pushed further into the future by a year. So there you go — a net swing of two years. That's what his policies have done to make the situation more imminent and worse."

He added, "Having said that, the damage he's done to the trust fund and the damage he's done to customer service at the agency and its operations are both solvable problems — but he doesn't appear to be in a mode to solve them. He appears to be in a mode of wanting to privatize Social Security."

O'Malley added that the Trump administration has used its economic programs as a sneaky way of privatizing the Social Security fund.

"Treasury Secretary Bessent said that those Trump accounts — which were ostensibly wedged into that 'big, ugly' or 'beautiful' bill, depending on how you look at it — were set up as their backdoor way of privatizing Social Security," O'Malley said. "He's said this himself, on the record. You can look it up. It's not just Max saying it or imagining some motive — Bessent stated it out loud: this is their backdoor way of privatizing Social Security."

He also expressed deep skepticism about the impact of privatizing the fund.

"And let's keep in mind, in all of this, that Wall Street and cryptocurrency are gambles," O'Malley told AlterNet. "Social Security is a sacred trust backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Wall Street is a gamble; Social Security is a guarantee — a guarantee that has been there without fail every month for 91 years."

Just a few weeks ago, Democrats in Maine joined forces to pressure Democratic primary winner Graham Platner off the state party’s ticket after accusations of abuse.But Bulwark Editor Sam Stein said that’s not the Republican way, which instead involves defending and doubling down on controversial candidates. That is, if they don’t bolt when asked their take.

“There is like a real thing going on here, which is that there's a number of Republican candidates for office who have been caught saying depraved things, committing alleged acts of violence, doing the type of stuff after a few weeks ago, the entire political universe … said Graham Platner was unacceptable for public office because he was alleged to have done similar things.

At that point, Stein introduced Republican candidate Brandon Herrera, who is running in the 23rd District of Texas.

“So, yeah, Trump has endorsed this guy. It's kind of, it's a, toss-up district in Texas, so it's not like this is a safe seat. It's kind of crazy that he's not being thrown or being pushed out by Republicans,” said Stein to False Flag Newsletter writer and co-host Will Sommer.

Among some of Herrera’s most notable statements included a claim that he counts as “an honorary veteran” because “I often think about putting a gun in my mouth.”

Another of Herrera’s hits include a rant to gun reform advocate Shannon Watts, a mother of five, in which the YouTuber described Watts' kids as body fluid trophies, along with other sexually explicit references.

Referring to mothers’ kids as body fluid trophies was too much for the Bulwark staff, who responded by confronting GOP lawmakers with Hererra’s quotes and asking their reaction.

“Congressman, quick Texas question,” called the reporter catching U.S. Rep Chip Roy (R-Texas) on the Hill.

“Real quick,” said Roy.

“Representative Brandon Herrera, who's a Republican nominee for House seat in Texas, has called babies [explicit] trophies. I was wondering if you agree with that?”

“I—I gotta go. I don’t want to talk about it,” said Roy, dodging away quickly.

“Just in your home state, Brandon Herrera has referred to babies as [explicit] trophies. I was wondering if you shared that assessment,” said the Bulwark reporter to another Texas Republican lawmaker who was fleeing too fast to easily recognize.

“Congressman, in your home state, there's a Republican, Brandon Herrera, running for the House who's referred to babies as [explicit] trophies. I was just wondering if you—,” the reporter asked U.S. Rep. Roy Nehls.

“I got nothing for you,” Nehls appeared to have responded, while puffing a cigar.

This appears to be a trend, said Stein. Sitting Congressmen Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Max Miller (R-Ohio.) continue to face domestic abuse allegations. And what does Mike Johnson say when he's asked directly about it? He dodges.

“Well, the key word there is allegation,” said Johnson when asked about Republican hypocrisy after Platner’s removal. “We have a process here. The House Ethics Committee works on those things. If allegations are made, they work through a process. So, I'm not in the business of commenting on investigations as they're in process. And we'll see how that shakes out. That's how this always works.”

“It’s a dodge,” confirmed Sommer.

Conservative Nick Catoggio tells the Dispatch that “it’s a rare case in which a public official was smart enough to have consciousness of guilt about her crime but not smart enough to avoid putting the evidence against her in encrypted digital writing.”

That’s the situation facing President Donald Trump’s most recent embattled ambassador, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Her alleged $100,000 shakedown of Trump campaign donor Eric Deters is making waves after Deter shared texts of Guilfoyle’s coercion to pay off her AmEx bill with the Wall Street Journal.

But Catoggio can’t seem to get past the existence of Guilfoyle’s apparent self-awareness coupled with her sloppy follow-through.

“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she texted Deters at one point. At another, she wrote, “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.” And yet, Catoggio said she made no solid effort to hide her behavior.

“She seems to have assumed that Deters would never reveal the texts she had sent him, even if she stiffed him on the favor he sought. Imagine her shock at seeing a Trump courtier behave dishonorably,” said Catoggio.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that during a recent visit to Bulgaria this year, Guilfoyle allegedly told people that if they wanted natural gas from America, they should do business with the company owned by a lobbyist who had taken to hanging around her meetings with foreign officials.

“How many AmEx bills did he pay to earn that kind of referral? And how many others whom we don’t (yet) know about have also covered some of her debts?” asked Catoggio, citing The Bulwark’s Sam Stein alleging that “we’re hearing that there are more Guilfoyle stories coming.”

This particular scandal might have more legs than the average Trump scandal, with Americans starting to pay attention to political news as the November 3 election approaches. And Guilfoyle is no faceless bureaucrat, said Catoggio. Her Fox News gig made her famous, after all. And her allegations about her dealings with Deters are “unusually straightforward for a bribery story.”

“’Pay my credit card bill if you want a favor’ is a solicitation a sixth-grader could grasp,” said Catoggio.

But despite the perceived certainty of Guilfoyle’s criminality, Catoggio said this is one corrupt Trump lackey who probably isn’t getting fired anytime soon, despite the grenade she landed directly “in the White House’s lap.”

“The president has no good options on how to deal with Guilfoyle,” said Catoggio. “Leaving her in the job after the Journal exposé would amount to endorsing what she’s done, essentially taking ownership of the scandal, but she’s assuredly learned too much about Trump family malfeasance over the years for him to risk alienating her by firing her.”

“My guess is that he’ll do what he usually does and lateral her over to some private-sector position, buying her silence with a well-paid sinecure,” he said.

The North Carolina Appeals Court has cemented the state legislature's "power grab" over elections, taking control from the State Board of Elections and handing it to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek a local reporter said.

WRAL reporter Will Doran said on X on Wednesday that the court said that since the legislature didn't hand power to itself, it was a legal move. Doran noted that elections will be run by someone other than the executive branch "for the first time in 125 years."

The 51-page order walks through the 2-1 party-line vote and said that the legislature didn't violate the North Carolina Constitution’s separation of powers clause by taking away executive authority

The News & Observer reported that the judges did acknowledge that it "resulted in a partisan shift."

After the 2024 election, the legislature changed the law that allowed the governor to appoint members to the State Board of Elections to the lower-level state auditor post. Voters were angry because they cast ballots without knowing that the new auditor would control the elections board.

All 100 county election boards will also now be controlled by the far-right auditor. It means that the elections board has gone "from having a 3-2 Democratic majority to now having a 3-2 Republican majority," WRAL reported.

Democrats believe that it's part of an effort involving the GOP's efforts to overturn the results of a still-uncalled election for the state Supreme Court last year. The current board of elections is fighting not to have thousands of ballots thrown out. The new board, however, could eliminate ballots that supported Democrat Allison Riggs' candidacy.

"I fear that this decision is the latest step in the partisan effort to steal a seat on the Supreme Court," Gov. Josh Stein (D) said in a statement on Wednesday after the ruling. "No emergency exists that can justify the Court of Appeals’ decision to interject itself at this point. The only plausible explanation is to permit [Boliek] to appoint a new State Board of Elections that will try to overturn the results of the Supreme Court race."

The appeals court attempted to keep the identity of who voted for and against the ruling a secret, but Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin's spokesman revealed he wasn't one of the judges who issued the ruling. Griffin still sits on the Court of Appeals while his election lawsuit continues to play out.

WRAL also clarified, "Republican lawmakers have been trying to take elections power away from the governor's office ever since Democrat Roy Cooper unseated former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, in 2016."

Semafor reporter David Weigel commented that the ruling is "One of the funniest power grab stories. Why give the elections power to state auditor, which never handled them before, and not secretary of state? Because NC Dems narrowly held SecState but narrowly lost the auditor race."