The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1054: Adam Serwer, Lauren Egan, and Justin Jones: The Attack on Knowledge
30 May 2025
The Trump administration is trying to exert ideological control over every knowledge-producing institution in the country. And the assault on colleges is not only about having fewer highly-educated voters, but also depriving Americans of trusted sources of information—much in the way Trump in 2020 wanted to stop counting Covid cases so it looked like he had the pandemic under control. Meanwhile, we're getting too much information about Elon's bladder control problems on his way out the door. Plus, The Bulwark's Lauren Egan and Tennessee's Justin Jones on courage, conscience, fighting a party drunk with power, and the future of the South. The Atlantic's Adam Serwer joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod, with a side serving from our live Nashville show. show notes Adam's latest piece in The Atlantic, "The New Dark Age" Lawfare's Anna Bower on her search for the administrator of DOGE Adam's book, "The Cruelty Is the Point" The NYT on Elon's intense drug use Tim's playlist
Full Episode
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Just a little note on the scheduling for today. I wanted to do a traditional podcast guest for you all so you didn't have live shows back to back. And so I'm excited to have Adam Serwer coming up here in a second. But last night in Nashville, we were having a blast. And my colleague here at the Bulwark, Lauren Egan...
who's doing a newsletter on what is happening with the Democrats. Y'all should sign up for it at theblog.com. Interviewed Justin Jones as part of the show. If you don't know Justin Jones, he's in the legislature here in Tennessee. He was one of the Tennessee Three that the Republicans tried to boot out.
Man, that guy, if you went down a list of issues, me and him are going to have some disagreements for sure. He is definitely more progressive than I am. But I was just kind of blown away by his authenticity, his passion, his energy, his charisma. Just like I crossed the board. The dude is the real deal.
And we're looking for people in this moment who can speak to the challenges that we have with passion. And I thought that he really knocked it out of the park. And so we weren't planning on doing this, but I want to have his segment from the live show last night. We're going to do that as kind of a B block of this show if you guys want to stick around for that.
But like I said, I want to give you a kind of more traditional podcast experience. Just as a pod consumer myself, sometimes the live show isn't as great in audio because, you know, I'm hamming it up for the room. And you got to wait for the applause and all that. And I don't know, some of you guys listen to me while you're going to sleep at night, I've heard.
And so that's not great when you have random people shouting and throwing their bras on stage. So it was a great night in Nashville. I was happy to see everybody. For those that want to stick around, I recommend the Justin Jones segment that we're going to have up in segment two here. But first... I want to welcome a writer at The Atlantic, author of the book, The Cruelty is the Point.
His latest piece is on the Trump administration's attack on knowledge called The Dark Age. Pumped to have him on the pod. It's Adam Serwer.
Hey, Adam, what's happening, man? Not much. Just down here in San Antonio, finally getting a little rain. You're a San Antonio man? I am a San Antonio man. I mean, I generally don't talk about this. My wife is in the military. She's a surgeon and she's stationed here. So that's why we live here.
All right. Well, you get a lot of Wimby next year. That'll be good. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to have you on. As I mentioned, you have this new piece called The New Dark Age, which I want to get into. First, I just have a couple of news items I've got to mention for folks interested to get your take on. There's a big New York Times takeout on Elon, our former shadow president, who's been kicked out.
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