Columnist for MSNBC and The Daily Beast. Formerly: Washington Post, The Week, American Prospect. Host of The Cross Section podcast and author of The Cross Section newsletter: paulwaldman.substack.com
34,094 followers 985 following 1,908 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
I don't think our political system has realized urban areas (and those who like them, even if they don't live currently) are tired of being demonized, being called criminals and moral degenerates. What the right doesn't realize is there's both a positive and negative version of this, and…
Taylor Townsend is utterly on fire, thinking maybe she should pay a random Latvian to insult her before every match so she gets this mad
Zohran Mamdani is the happiest politician in America, his whole campaign is about how New York is awesome and can be even awesomer. Meanwhile, there has never been a politician in history who talked as much about what a shithole he thinks America is as Donald Trump does.
October 2025: "Grok is just for porn now," Elon Musk announces November 2025: Musk becomes world's first trillionaire December 2025: Musk in coma after ill-fated scheme to replace all his body's blood with liquid ketamine and achieve god-like power over time and matter futurism.com/elon-musk-gr...
This is one of the few current major use cases for AI: as a machine to do something immoral on a mass scale, while pushing off accountability with a thin pretense of the AI tool “carefully selecting” cases in a targeted and reasonable way
yo this guy is cooking
Still boggles the mind how Republicans can so vigorously claim they love America when they spend so much time and energy looking for ways to honor traitors
Can We Please Talk About the Racism of Trump's Attack on Lisa Cook? This is excellent from @paulwaldman.bsky.social Also ties into what I see as Trump's "genius," his ability to personify how the politics of strategic racism are inseparable from corruption.
See here: charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/you-are-fa...
1. The president is an obvious bigot 2. His administration is pursuing a panoply of racist and sexist policies 3. Lisa Cook is the first Black woman on the Fed board and has done research on economic effects of racism How are we not talking about this? paulwaldman.substack.com/p/can-we-ple...
"There is a clear pattern here" says very smart science guy Elon Musk, when we have a mass shooting about once a week, the vast majority committed by white men, and literally one out of every thousand mass shooters have been trans
I am laser focused on three different things which is definitely how a laser works
"We are troubled by how this completely predictable thing could have happened and are taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again, but of course it absolutely will," chapter 43,899
Trump's gangster state capitalism is about one thing: power. His power. My latest at Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-inte...
What if Russia sends sharks with lasers on their heads and they grab onto the windmill at the bottom and then the centrifugal force hurls them onto our territory and then boom, there's laser sharks right on your street, President Trump is very concerned about that and every American should be too
Seriously, "issuing statistics on the blockchain" is nonsensical. He might as well have said "We will issue statistics on a flea flicker ramjet labubu scrapple juice." These people are morons.
Very reassuring that as this administration ensures there will be no regulation of crypto scams, key cabinet members have no idea what things like "on the blockchain" mean but they like to say it because they think it makes them sound cool
One of the things @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is great at is showing *exactly* why he loves New York. It’s a lesson candidates anywhere can learn: Don't tell me, show me. Republicans don't know how to do it, and that gives Democrats an opening. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/how-democr...
Also, remember how Michelle Obama did a thing where she encouraged everyone to exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables, and conservatives on Fox and talk radio absolutely lost their minds with rage at her temerity for telling kids what to eat? Yeah, that was something.
Melania Trump is leading a White House initiative to get kids to use AI. She cites the fact that her publisher made an AI audiobook for her as her qualification for this. We're in hell. nypost.com/2025/08/25/o...
Any reporter writing about Lisa Cook who uses a passive voice phrase like "after allegations emerged" and not something more accurate like "after a Trump crony went digging through the private mortgage information of officials Trump wanted to target looking for dirt" should quit their goddamn job
The most revealing thing about this is not that Trump is too dumb to understand the mistake he's making, but that he keeps saying it and no one around him has the guts to tell him he's making himself look like an idiot
Great, thanks!
Thanks, I'll check it out
Anyone else who uses DuckDuckGo noticed that just in the last couple of days it has become absolutely overrun with useless AI results? Not just a lot (as it was before), but exclusively AI crap, page after page of sludge. It's become utterly unusable. Weren't they supposed to be good guys?
Ooh, I can answer this one! They would fucking love it, because "small-government" was always bullshit. Economic conservatism was always bullshit. "Judicial restraint" was always bullshit. It was all, always, a pretext for power & permission to impose cruelty on out groups.
I’m sorry but I’m bucketing the Cracker Barrel crisis under “muh heritage.” The oil company wanted to sell more gas!
You’re unemployed in 2025? Tough shit. But we’ll definitely give all the unemployed people of the future free money. Because of robots or something. We’re still working out the details.
Trump is absolutely hoping that one of these guys shoots somebody, then there are protests with vandalism, which can then become the excuse for the REALLY violent crackdown. I wrote about this the other day: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/trump-want...
As a Gen Xer who is supposed to be the target of this horror, let me say: Fire this right into the goddamn sun and tell us whoever thought it was a good idea so they can be scorned and shamed forever
They're going to spike everyone's energy prices. Your energy prices are going up and it's Trump's fault. Plain as day.
Props to Politico for getting this right
Resolved: If you use "compute" or "spend" as a noun, for the ensuing 60 seconds, anyone who wants to is allowed to smack you in the face
Sounds familiar... But seriously, @schaller67.bsky.social and I cited Mettler and Brown extensively in "White Rural Rage"; unlike some rural politics scholars they aren't slave to the myth of rural people being the finest Americans who are blameless in all things. So I'm looking forward to this.
Uh...
Trump WANTS the situation in DC to become violent. It'll give him the excuse to do what he was held back from doing in the summer of 2020. I explain here: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/trump-want...
This hasn't gotten nearly enough attention. In earlier times, officials even LOOKING at confidential files was considered a major scandal. Today a Trump crony is scouring mortgage files to find dirt on the president's political enemies and it's being greeted with "New allegations emerge!"
In many cases it's where people saw their community decline, even if they're personally doing fine
In a book draft I once referred to Dobson as "America's foremost advocate of child abuse," which he was (see "Dare to Discipline"), but the publisher made me take it out.
One of the most frustrating things about working on the Hill was when we demonstrated to a reporter that Republicans were negotiating in bad faith their editor would just kill the story because their standard for pointing out that a legislator is full of shit is on the order of proving a crime.
If you loved Clippy, just wait until MechaClippy seizes control of your computer and destroys all your work
Went ahead and updated my map of cities with higher crime than D.C. to accommodate the two new states from the Deep South who are sending troops to the capital. In the five states there are 64 cities, home to 1.7 million people, that had more crime in 2024 than D.C. www.pbump.net/o/more-peopl...
If you read German and want to understand why rural white people love Donald Trump so much, the German edition of White Rural Rage is for you: www.m-vg.de/finanzbuchve...
These data from @adambonica.bsky.social are shocking. Scam PACs and the deluge of fundraising texts are an absolute cancer on the Democratic Party, and it ought to excised with extreme prejudice. data4democracy.substack.com/p/spam-pacs-...
Always nice when a senator comes right out and thanks a sketchy special interest group for buying an election. But when crypto bros spend $40 million to put a literal used car salesman in the Senate, you've got to give them their props, I guess. (from Punchbowl News)
Least surprising news ever. Of course he was going to find this too difficult, then get bored and move on.
I talked about that here: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/elon-musk-...
If you're very very special, the idea of government restraining you in any way becomes intolerable.
The people who run the tech industry and dominate our world grew up being told they were Very Special Boys and never had the opportunity to learn humility. That’s going to be a big problem. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-proble...
Last week, Boston received a letter from AG Bondi threatening to prosecute officials and withhold funds unless we cooperate with carrying out mass deportations. The US Attorney General asked for a response by today, so here it is: stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures.
And the thing is, when he brings in a group of actual serious leaders, he proudly shows of his collection of dumbass hats and his horrifically gaudy Oval Office with all the chintzy gold crap, and thinks "They're gonna be so impressed with how classy I am." He really does. Such an embarrassment.
We all have pet peeves about history's most corrupt president and his fascist movement - not the big important things, but the little stuff that just makes us crazy. For me one of the biggest that every time the President of the United States goes outside he puts on one of his stupid goddamn hats.
NEW Vet & oysterman vying to beat Susan Collins "Why can't we have universal healthcare like every other first-world country? Why can't we take care of our Vets when they come home? Why are we funding endless wars & bombing children? Why are CEOs more powerful than unions?" zeteo.com/p/meet-the-d...
So many good points from @paulwaldman.bsky.social: "Brandon Scott talking about how he actually brought down crime in Baltimore is more effective than the blathering of some “strategist” whose answer to everything is that Democrats should act like Republicans."
Good thing you put "please" in the headline, WaPo editorial board, we know how well the Trump administration and its army of thugs responds to politeness www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Trump approval among Hispanics down to 32% in this poll, which those who say "Whatever happened in the last election was a profound and possibly permanent realignment and not related to transitory things like inflation" might give some thought to. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Our plan is to DISRUPT the education sector by making sure no student ever learns anything
"We are currently clean on opsec" - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
"But Donald, my hair is - well, was - brown. I'm gonna dye it blonde? That's crazy." "Not blonde, Larry - GOLD. Gold means rich, and nobody'll see the gray that way. I've been doing it for 30 years, it's fantastic. And you'll match my furnishings in the Oval Office." "OK, I'll give it a shot."
I am not familiar with that publication, I have no idea what you're talking about
Looking forward to hearing the conservative advocates of "free markets" denounce this naked cronyism. How many will? I'm guessing approximately...zero. www.axios.com/2025/08/15/w...
"SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times." Capitalism, baby! www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/t...
Perfect illustration of the difference between "having no shame" & "being obsessed with status competition." Trump cannot be shamed, but he can be manipulated into doing nearly anything by offering or withholding status. This is his greatest vulnerability other than health. We should use it. 1/x
Most of Trump's corrupt money-grubbing is happening through crypto, which is the perfect vehicle not only for the huge sums sloshing around and the limitless supply of scammers and criminals involved, but because it's so complex and confusing that ordinary people can't hope to understand it
1. The majority owner of Binance is seeking a pardon from Trump 2. Binance creates a platform to convince people to buy the Trump family's stablecoin 3. Trump family gets 10s of millions of dollars from this scheme The corruption is just mind-boggling. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...
Zuckerberg making a real play to dislodge Elon Musk as Silicon Valley's Top Sociopath, set your DVR to record next week's blockbuster episode
Google, which has more money than god and could hire any pollster they want for this, chooses the one with a reputation as the most hackish, biased, right-wing of all well-known polling firms. So what are they up to here?
You'd think by now Mark Zuckerberg might have learned that destroying human lives in order to serve "the company's emphasis on boosting engagement" might be a problem, but no
In prior administrations, there was a healthy tension between hacks and wonks. In Trump’s Washington, that’s over. You can still be a wonk, but only if you’re also a hack. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/welcome-to...
"Cheap fabric and dim lighting. That's how you move merchandise."
Concise summary from @meredithmeredith.bsky.social of Signal on why AI "agents" that will be your personal assistant are such an extraordinary threat to privacy www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE_C...
Congrats to Lee Greenwood, Ted Nugent, and Scott Baio, your extraordinary contributions to American culture are finally being acknowledged
Your dissertation can be judged on its own merits. But you'd certainly need a couple of publications to apply for any academic position, and even if you weren't trying to be a professor, if you want to be a professional economist you'd be submitting articles to journals. Or apparently not!
You might ask this question about E.J. Antoni: How did a guy with zero academic publications become Chief Economist at a "think tank" with a $100 million yearly budget? Because the Heritage Foundation is just a bunch of hacks, and that's who the right values and elevates.
Lotsa cool eugenics stuff happening in Silicon Valley, not disturbing at all www.wsj.com/us-news/sili...
What the everloving what
Yes, what Trump is doing is authoritarian and unjustified. But it’s also WEAK, and so are all the namby-pamby Republicans supporting it, who are such wimps they won’t set foot in America’s dynamic cities. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/time-to-ca...
There has to be a statute of limitations, right? The Ford Foundation is pretty liberal, and they're using his money.
Speaking as an elitist lib who sometimes needs to haul lumber and sheet goods, I would totally buy one of these
"The Trump movement has a distinct aesthetic, one in which even women in high-ranking positions have endeavored to make themselves look as doll-like as possible, lest anyone mistake them for professionals elevated by virtue of their experience and skills." — @paulwaldman.bsky.social
Trump sending in the Beergut Brigade to walk around DC looking for skulls they can crack had me thinking about this piece I wrote two years ago about "Try That In a Small Town" and its vision of rural people inflicting righteous violence on urbanites www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Here's another fun fact: putting aside a very brief one that happened under Carter, the last Democrat who had a recession start when he was in office was Harry Truman, while EVERY Republican president since then had at least one recession start under their tenure.
Every Republican president in the last 35 years has left office during or just after a recession so the Democrat who followed him had to clean up his mess; Trump is just getting started on it early
Seriously, read "Foundation" and the biggest takeaways are 1) There are literally no women in this book (okay one, but she's there for like 10 seconds), and 2) Everyone is constantly smoking cigars. The future!
Kind of amazing that Buttigieg didn't anticipate that this is a question he'd get asked so it would be good if he decides whether his answer is yes or no
This is an interesting report on all the things crypto king Changpeng Zhao is doing to get a pardon, but it's kind of silly because everyone knows it's just a question of how big a bribe he's willing to give Trump. Not complicated! www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/u...
This is a fantastic thread and I assume Emily was heavily sedated while she wrote it which only made it better
Just read Zeke Faux's "Number Go Up" and that really comes through - there are really only three kinds of people deeply involved in crypto: 1. Scammers 2. Morons 3. Scammers who are also morons
Sure, the Democratic Party is run by a bunch of timid, elderly accommodationists. But there are lots of talented young Democrats out there on their way up. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/what-if-th...
Let history remember that this loathsome monster was inciting Rabin’s murder back in the day for trying to make peace. Nobody can say they didn’t know, didn’t see, couldn’t have imagined. This was as inevitable as all the steps that preceded it when he’s left unchecked. No conscience.
Looking forward to Netanyahu condemning this international conspiracy of sinister Jewish financiers www.jta.org/2025/08/06/i...
At last we'll have a census utilizing "modern day facts and figures"
This this this
In 1936, John Maynard Keynes wrote that the govt could bury cash in old coal mines and have people dig it up as an economic stimulus. We're doing to same thing right now with AI data centers; it's masking the damage Trump is doing to the economy. My latest at MSNBC: www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
Does our new campaign chairman Harvey Weinstein come with some baggage? Sure, but nobody's perfect, and we really value his perspective.
Two stories about very bad things happening, united by the fact that we didn’t ask for them and don’t want them. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/who-asked-...
FYI the Supreme Court is going to nullify the entire Voting Rights Act by claiming that racism is over and we're all good now, meanwhile the Trump administration is literally erecting statues to white supremacist Confederate traitor Klansmen
has tim scott done one of those “good jeans” posts yet on twitter all the republicans are doing? i wanna go read the replies from conservatives when he does
Ok that's a fair point