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Political Junkie PodcastNews you can use about politics, culture, and media Author: Claire Potter and Neil J. Young
Where contemporary history and politics meet the challenge of today. clairepotter.substack.com Language: en Genres: News, Politics, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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"The Moment Trumpism Died"
Episode 12
Friday, 12 December, 2025
We begin with influencer Milo Yiannopoulos on December 6, 2025, in conversation with ex-Congressman and pardoned felon George Santos on Tim Poole’s podcast.Sporting a sequined “Make America Straight Again” cap, self-described journalist and “ex-gay” Milo Yiannopoulos served as the Parade Grand Marshall for the Boston Straight Pride Parade and Rally on August 31, 2019. Photo credit: Maverick Pictures/ShutterstockNews Summary:* On Monday, Colin Allred dropped his Senate bid to run for Congress in the new, redrawn TX-33; this cleared the way for two-term Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (TX-30) to compete with State Representative James Tallarico for the Democratic nomination: new polling shows her with an 8-point advantage. But there’s an interesting race shaping up on the Republican side: three-term incumbent John Cornyn is facing a challenge from a MAGA normie, two-term Congressman Wesley Hunt (TX-38) and whack-job Attorney General Ken Paxton, who survived impeachment for bribery and corruption in 2023 and settled federal securities fraud charges in 2024. Paxton leads Cornyn by 8 points, Hunt by 9: the nominee must win 50%, or face a run-off* Democratic candidates had another great election day on Tuesday, holding two state house seats in Florida, and flipping one in a Georgia district that Trump won in double-digits and the same candidate lost by 22 points a year ago: some analysts are blaming the gerrymander. A Democrat, Eileen Higgins, will be Mayor of Miami for the first time in 30 years. Around 20% of Little Havana voters who supported Trump shifting to the Democrats: Higgins won by 19 points.* In 2025, Democrats flipped 21% of GOP-held seats up for grabs in regular and special elections, won the largest majority they have had in the Virginia House since the 1980s, expanded control of the New Jersey Assembly, and torpedoed supermajorities in Iowa and Missouri. The GOP has not flipped any seats. In FL-11 on Tuesday, Ralph Massulo, Jr. held a Republican seat—but by a margin that is 18 points lower than Trump’s tally a year ago.* Democrats are now imagining districts Trump won in the single or low two digits in North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and California as potential flips, the total of targeted districts for 2026 is 39. And for the first time in modern history, Texas Democrats—a state party recently said to be dead in the water—are contesting every congressional seat in the redrawn map. In an odd twist, Trump’s pardon of Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar has moved TX-28 from tossup to Lean D (as per the Cook Political Report.)* In the face of the Senate’s failure to pass healthcare legislation, Mike Johnson is losing control of a GOP caucus running for the exits. On Wednesday, 16 Republicans cosponsored a discharge petition to extend ACA subsidies, demonstrating that the legislation can pass the House—also, that Leader Mike Johnson is losing control of his caucus. In addition, 13 Republicans joined Democrats to nullify a Trump executive order that eliminated Federal workers’ labor rights. Finally, just yesterday, after multiple visits by top Trump administration officials, including JD Vance, the Indiana legislature turned down the gerrymandering bill 31-19. Twenty-one Republicans voted against it.Your hosts:Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).Right-wing influencer Candace Owens at a TPUSA event at Texas State University-San Marcos, 2018. Owens has since broken with the organization, and promotes conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s assassination that have splintered the MAGA-verse. Photo credit: Carrington Tatum/Shutterstock News Focus: Is MAGA Cracking Apart?* The Daily Beast is reporting a full-blown social media war featuring deeply personal attacks, often from the fringe, on Trump and his allies.* Podcaster Candace Owens is spreading rumors online that Turning Point USA committed financial fraud, and that Charlie Kirk’s assassination is related to that. This week, the Treasury Department sent Erika Kirk a letter confirming that none of the four organizations under the TPUSA umbrella are being investigated or audited. The organization appears to have pulled in $85 million in the fiscal year ending in June, 2025.* Podcaster Tim Poole has gone after Owens, who also claims that Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson did not act alone: she has implicated the American military, Israel, financier Bill Ackman, and French President Emmanuel Macron. Her fans see efforts to stop or debunk her as further proof there is a conspiracy to cover up the “facts” surrounding Kirk’s death.* We have also seen Tucker Carlson going after Laura Loomer; Carlson taking fire from Texas Senator Ted Cruz for platforming white supremacist, misogynist, and self-declared incel Nick Fuentes; and Milo Yiannopoulos maintaining that Fuentes is gay.* Some of the rifts, while predictable, are self-inflicted wounds about sex, sexuality, and violence that go well beyond allegations of a Trump administrative coverup in the Epstein case. In the past year, numerous right-wing influencers have collaborated in propping up brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, pornographers who have been charged with rape and sex trafficking in Romania and England. Members of Trump’s circle including, it seems, the President and two of his sons, have colluded to free them and put the brothers—whose penchant for sadistic sexual violence against women is well documented—back in business.* Another little corner of the right-wing world where everyone has their panties in a twist is what Michelangelo Signorile has dubbed “Gay MAGA.” Milo Yiannopoulos, who was canceled back in 2017 for talking enthusiastically about performing fellatio on a priest when he was a boy, characterizes himself as an “ex-gay,” and now operates a crisis management form, is currently waging an outing campaign against influencer Benny Johnson. Johnson is married with four children, and recently on Tim Poole’s podcast, he and pardoned fraudster George Santos tossed it out there that the late TPUSA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk was also a closeted gay man.What we want to go viral:* Neil wants you to listen to “Blood Relatives,” a new season of In The Dark, a podcast produced by The New Yorker and hosted by Heidi Blake, who reported the original 2024 story about then murder of a prominent English farming couple and the son convicted of the crime. But did he do it?* Claire wants you to read Jack B. Reardon and Abigail S. Gerstein, “‘For the Reinvention of Man’: How a Conservative Debating Society at Harvard Pushed Women From Its Ranks,” The Harvard Crimson (December 7, 2025), about how Trumpism is helping elite conservative manhood reclaim single-sex spaces at America’s most prominent university.Short takes:* As Joe Gruters, the chair of the Republican National Committee, makes his media rounds, he is setting expectations for 2026 way low—which tells you something about the upheaval and finger-pointing up on Capitol Hill. “This week, I spoke to a number of swing-state GOP operatives about Trump and the midterm environment,” Andrew Eggers writes at The Bulwark. “And they were pretty blunt. To them, the biggest reason Republicans seem bound for disaster isn’t historical midterm trends. It’s the world the president has built for them to run in—particularly when it comes to affordability.” As one anonymous source on the Hill said to Eggers, Trump’s economic message is “landing like doo-doo.” (December 12, 2025)* President Trump is now trying to get the massively unqualified Lindsey Halligan properly appointed as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Burgess Everett reports at Semafor, but neither of Virginia’s Democratic Senators seems likely to return the blue slip to support the nomination. Neither Tim Kaine or Mark Warner “explicitly confirmed they’ll block Halligan as they seek a nominee they could support; Warner said he’d meet with her but that it would be ‘very hard’ to support her,” Everett writes. “And Senate Republicans aren’t eliminating blue slips, despite Trump’s request, because they want input when a Democrat is president, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.” (December 12, 2025)* At her Substack, Abortion, Every Day, Jessica Valenti reports that the Wisconsin legislation that sought to compel women to bag the residue of their medication abortions, then turn it over to the authorities as “medical waste,” is DOA in the legislature. “Students for Life has been drafting “clean water” bills for lawmakers across the country—legislation that claims abortion pills and pregnancy tissue are poisoning groundwater,” Valenti explains. “Republicans are furious and embarrassed: instead of looking like environmental protectors, they seem like creeps who want to sift through women’s bloody miscarriages.” As Bette Davis memorably said to a terror-stricken Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?— “But you are.” (December 11, 2025)Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. You can subscribe for free or support us for only $5 a month. You can also become an annual supporter for $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican or Claire’s Political Junkies: as a welcome bonus.You can also get all audio content by subscribing on Apple iTunes, YouTube, or Spotify. Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe
