The Muckrake Political Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Worst Country You Know Just Made A Great Point Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on the Iran war officially entering quagmire territory, with refineries and tankers getting hit at will while the US has essentially run out of missiles to respond with. They then tear apart Scott Bessent's solution to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, which is to just build underground pipelines and make it irrelevant, a fantasy on par with nuking hurricanes. Todd Blanch gets confirmed as attorney general on the deciding vote of Bill Cassidy, the same man who voted to convict Trump and now can't swallow shit fast enough for him, while Susan Collins pulls her signature move of discovering her conscience only after the votes are already locked. They bid a fond farewell to Ross Douthat, whose 17 years at the New York Times were spent giving conservatives permission to drift further right under the guise of just asking questions. Now he's leaving one of the most influential posts in American media for a cratering 60 Minutes because Bari Weiss told him he'd be a star. The episode closes on Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White declaring themselves eligible for the WNBA, a bad-faith stunt that reveals less about trans athletes than about the right-wing compulsion to hijack anything women build and make it about themselves.

Support the show by signing up to our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

Manifesto Destiny Aug 07, 2026

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This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode, our Tuesday show, and our Discord.

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on Abdul El-Sayed's razor-thin win over Haley Stevens in Michigan's Senate primary, tracing the Islamophobia baked into the attacks on him back through McCarthyism and the original Red Scare against Black Americans. They break down Trump's response and the DOJ's trip to Wayne County polling places, then go point by point through Tucker Carlson's new ten-point platform, one word per point, and land on what he conveniently leaves out. From there it's Rep. Chuck Edwards, the North Carolina Republican censured for showering young female staffers with jewelry, guns, guitar serenades, and thirty flavors of ice cream after a bad breakup, before Jared and Nick close out with what they're watching this week.

The Innovation of Corruption Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on Trump Media's new Truth API, the subscription that lets trading firms pay up to $100,000 a month for early access to Trump's market-moving posts. The scandal isn't that it's insider trading, it's that it technically isn't. The rules were written for corporate insiders who owe a duty to shareholders, never for a president who happens to be the source, the publisher, and a 41% owner of the platform all at once, and the man who'd have to close that loophole runs an SEC built for deregulation.

Jared and Nick trace the feedback loop this creates, where Trump's posts move the very market he's now selling access to, and they make the case that any real anti-corruption platform has to go after not just Trump himself but the think tanks, law firms, and accounting giants behind him. That leads into Capital One, which just admitted it closed hundreds of Trump Organization accounts over flagged transaction patterns, a detail that only surfaced because the Trumps sued and discovery pried it loose, and it says everything about a banking system that treats aiding and abetting as a business model.

The back half turns darker and stranger, moving from the Max Miller abuse case and the extraordinary statement Bernie Moreno released against his own former son-in-law to the GOP brain drain that one staffer described as a generation of rabid, incompetent idiots. Then, on Michigan primary day, the guys break down what the Tucker Carlson cabin meeting says about a coming "America First" realignment, and why the right keeps absorbing its insurgents while the left just fractures.

Support the show, ad-free and editorially independent, at patreon.com/muckrakepodcast, and find us on Bluesky.

Content note: this episode discusses domestic abuse.

A Fifth Of Fauci Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode every Friday, plus special Live Shows and our community discord: ⁠http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast⁠

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman start with a war that keeps getting bigger while almost nobody covers it. Ukraine put a missile into an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, an Egyptian port took a suspected Iranian drone, Iran-backed militias in Iraq are making noise, and China has a shipment of missiles headed for Tehran. Laura Loomer turned up in a room with Volodymyr Zelensky, preaching MAGA solidarity with Ukraine, which is not something that happens by accident. Jared makes the case that nobody in this administration is steering. The people who are don't hold office and don't care whose flag wins.

Then Anthony Fauci in front of Rand Paul's committee, pleading the Fifth over a hundred times while his lawyer gets hauled off the floor. Jared and Nick get into why he's the test case and not the target, who the real target is, and why building bobbleheads of public servants was always going to end this way.

Finally, the number that radicalized Jared: Americans put $166 billion into sports gambling last year, more than they spent on movies, books, art and museums combined. He wants it abolished. Nick ran those ads on the other side of his business and is still paying for it.

What we're watching: Nick says The Invite is the funniest thing he's seen in years and to see it with a crowd. Jared finally caught Backrooms and can't recommend it enough.

PAC It In Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman start with the Democratic Party's implosion: the DNC is $2 million in debt, sitting on a fraction of the Republicans' $128 million surplus, and chair Ken Martin is about to be scapegoated for a crisis decades in the making. The base has stopped giving money, and the gap is being filled by PACs and dark money flooding races like the Michigan primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, where $30 million in outside spending, paid social media posts, and a consultant with Palantir ties are propping up the establishment candidate. Then it's the Iran war: Trump wanted to escalate with boots on the ground and was told the U.S. simply doesn't have the missiles. Over 600 troops have been wounded without a single boot on the ground, and the Houthis are still setting ships on fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The guys connect it all back to oil dependency, the death of the postwar order, and why nobody in power wants to have any of these conversations.

Support the show by signing up for our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as specials and live shows: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast. The Muckrake Podcast is independent media with no corporate backing, and it only exists because of listeners like you.

Saudi's Enrich Quick Scheme Jul 24, 2026

Show notes

This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode every Friday, plus live shows and our community Discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dig into the leaked Saudi Arabia nuclear deal: a 30-year agreement that hands the Kingdom nuclear energy and the potential to enrich uranium with no IAEA oversight, all while the U.S. is bombing Iran over its nuclear program. The guys trace it back through the petrodollar, 9/11, and America's long history of arming the people who eventually turn on us. Then it's Zohran Mamdani declaring Netanyahu a war criminal and what moral clarity actually looks like when everyone else is running political calculus. Plus: an OpenAI model escaped containment and hacked Hugging Face to cheat on an evaluation, and it didn't think it was cheating. The guys unpack why that's the AI story everyone should be paying attention to. Finally, Jared reviews The Odyssey and Christopher Nolan delivers.

The Muckrake Podcast has no corporate backing. It only exists because of listeners like you.

Diarrhea Straits Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open with the Iran war, where every incentive now runs against the United States: bases getting hit, stockpiles that were never replenished, the Houthis moving to choke off the Red Sea, and a president who responded to all of it with "I don't really care." Jared deteremines: Iran doesn't need to win anything, it just needs to keep bleeding a country that can't admit it lost. Then it's the Cyclospora outbreak sickening thousands across 34 states, and the FDA's suspiciously timed reversal clearing the mega-producer at the center of it, a case study in what monopolization plus a pay-to-play administration does to something as basic as being able to eat lettuce. Finally, two quieter stories with loud implications: the FBI has been told to stop investigating assaults involving ICE agents, and a new four-year visa cap for foreign students that could quietly demolish American PhD programs.

If you want to support the show and get access to the Weekender every Friday, plus specials and live shows, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast. The Muckrake Podcast is independent media with no corporate backing, and it only exists because of listeners like you

Made In China Syndrome Jul 17, 2026

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This is only a preview of The Weekender. Want the rest? Sign up for our Patreon to hear the full episode every Friday, plus special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman waited to record until after Trump's Thursday primetime speech, and both came out of it angrier than they expected. They break down what Jared calls one of the most consequential and openly authoritarian speeches an American president has ever given, delivered by a man who can barely read the Stephen Miller script in front of him. The speech claimed China compromised over 200 million voter profiles, that a deep state hid it all from Trump, that Barack Obama personally handled burn bags full of evidence, and that 280,000 noncitizens are on the voter rolls, with WhiteHouse.gov supposedly holding the proof. Nick actually went and checked. The site was down, and when it loaded there was not a single document. The pair walk through why none of this is really about 2020, and everything about building a permission structure to rig the 2026 midterms and beyond, how intelligence agencies purged of anyone competent now feed Trump whatever he wants to hear, and why the echoes of Iraq War cherry-picking should worry everyone. It closes on the media trap where even networks that refused to air the speech will now repeat its claims for months.

What we're watching: Nick is working through A History of Violence, the Cronenberg film written by friend of the pod Josh Olson, and enjoying the Viggo Mortensen slow-burn. Jared put on the newish Superman and found it a case study in how wall-to-wall James Gunn quipping drains every scene of tension, though Lois Lane comes out looking great.

A Grave Situation In The Senate Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on the death of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who came back from Ukraine feeling unwell, skipped medical treatment to go do Meet the Press, and then died at 71. They argue over the legacy: whether Graham was blackmailed into MAGA or was simply a weak, attention-hungry climber who traded his soul for a seat at the club, plus the parade of Democrats falling over themselves to mourn a man who spent a career pushing wars. From there it's the Mitch McConnell proof-of-life photo, the internet hunting for clues in an Adidas logo, and the darker truth underneath the conspiracy talk: a geriatric political class clinging to power long past the point of elder abuse. Then the New York Times bombshell that Israel recruited former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an intelligence asset and planned to install him after toppling the regime, a plan that fell apart when the Revolutionary Guard caught on. It closes on Trump gutting the Election Assistance Commission down to zero members while teasing a primetime speech about 2020, and why November may not be free or fair.

Support the show by signing up to our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

Mitch Ado About Nothing Jul 10, 2026

Show notes

This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode, plus special Live Shows and the community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open with the collapse of Graham Plattner's Senate run in Maine, and the ugly 11-minute video where the presumed nominee blamed powerful forces instead of taking any responsibility. They dig into what his exit means for the seat, why Susan Collins built her whole strategy around scandal, and the bigger trap facing anyone who tries to carry a genuine class-based movement without getting torched by their own party. From there it's Trump's corruption-mobile, the Qatari jet he abandoned for the old Air Force One over security worries, plus his NATO summit bullying and an instant-classic reference to the Islamic Republic of Japan. Then the main event: Mitch McConnell has been missing for nearly a month, and the pair work through whether he is convalescing, on life support, or being kept afloat by suspiciously identical 20-minute phone calls that his allies keep claiming to have. There is an August 3rd deadline, a Kentucky seat in the balance, and a wife who is somehow still in China. It closes with Mr. Beast admitting he hid GoPros in Walmarts to spy on his own crumbling candy bars, which is either a business story or one more sign the whole country is quietly coming apart.