On the latest episode of Nir & Rupar, our live weekly video show, David Nir of The Downballot and Aaron Rupar of Public Notice hold their noses as they dissect the politics of Donald Trump’s nightmarish “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Aaron and David discuss:

* Why passage of the bill is by no means assured, thanks to the competing demands of prickly Republican senators.

* Why you shouldn’t buy any of the soft-focus encomiums to Elon Musk, whose reign was pure disaster (and may not even be over).

* Who’s the flat-out dumbest member of the Senate?

And much more! We also took some excellent questions from viewers about Trump’s attacks on the courts and whether “DOGE” might be more effective with Musk supposedly receding from view.

If you missed our livestream, you can watch it by clicking above!

Nir & Rupar goes live every Friday at 2 PM ET. The easiest way to participate is by downloading the free Substack app.

Folks who are paid subscribers to either of our publications can participate in our Q&A!

If you haven’t yet subscribed to Public Notice, which offers insightful and independent commentary on U.S. politics and media, click the button below:

And if you haven’t yet subscribed to The Downballot, which provides unparalleled coverage of the thousands of critical elections below the presidency, sign up below:

On the latest episode of Nir & Rupar, our live weekly video show, David Nir of The Downballot and Aaron Rupar of Public Notice talk with Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, the indispensable media watchdog organization.

Matt sheds light on today’s right-wing media ecosystem, including:

* How two dozen people with Fox News on their résumés now occupy senior posts in the Trump administration.

* How the James Comey “86 47” story shows how quickly things now move from MAGA influencer to the Oval Office—with Fox as the conduit.

* Why the right-wing media bubble can inflict damage on Trump, with tariffs just the latest example.

And much more!

If you missed our livestream, you can watch it by clicking above! You can also find a complete transcript by clicking here and looking for the “Transcript” button.

Next week, we’ll be taking off for the Memorial Day holiday, but we’ll be back on Friday, May 30, at 2 PM ET with another episode. The easiest way to watch is by downloading the free Substack app.

Folks who are paid subscribers to either of our publications can participate in our Q&A!

If you haven’t yet subscribed to Public Notice, which offers unique insights and independent commentary on U.S. politics and media, click the button below:

And if you haven’t yet subscribed to The Downballot, which provides unparalleled coverage of the thousands of critical elections below the presidency, sign up below:

I’m putting the Aaron Rupar Show on indefinite hiatus, and this brief episode explains some of the reasons why.

Thank you for listening, and please subscribe to my Public Notice newsletter to follow my work. Cheers!

This week's episode of the Aaron Rupar Show features Melissa Hortman, speaker of the Minnesota House, reflecting on her two decades in the legislature, the state’s Democratic trifecta and this year’s historic legislative session, and much more.

Speaker Hortman and I touched upon everything from lessons she took from losing her first two legislative campaigns in resounding fashion to Jesse Ventura's legacy to why Trumpism is such a bad fit for Minnesota Republicans.

This week’s episode of the Aaron Rupar Show features Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of America’s foremost authoritarianism scholars and author of Strongmen and the Lucid Substack. We discuss the factors that contributed to Trump’s rise and MAGA’s parallels to other authoritarian movements, the bizarre GOP primary as a reflection of Trump’s personality cult, the current state of the global struggle been authoritarianism and democracy, and much more.

This week's episode of the Aaron Rupar Show features lawyer and political commentator David Lurie. Topics include a premortem of the DeSantis campaign that David just wrote for Public Notice, the Trump indictments as well as the legal defenses and delaying tactics David expects from Trump's attorneys, why Hunter Biden is actually being treated unfairly by the DOJ, and more.

This week’s episode of the Aaron Rupar Show features Justin Higgins, host of the Politics+Media 101 podcast, on his remarkable political biography and the insight it provides into today’s Trumpified GOP. Higgins is a former RNC staffer who did opposition research during the 2016 cycle, but was so turned off by the reality of President Trump that he became a Democrat and ended up working for the Democratic governor of Puerto Rico.

We talk about what working for the RNC during Trump’s rise was like, the factors that led to Higgins leaving the GOP, the demise of John Boehner’s speakership and how similar dynamics could take down Kevin McCarthy, why Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is floundering, and much more.

This week’s episode of the Aaron Rupar Show features Liz Dye, who needs no introduction for readers of this newsletter. Liz has done fantastic work here in recent weeks documenting Trump’s mounting legal problems and nonsensical defenses. Now, she joins my podcast to unpack Trump’s January 6-related indictment, including the specific laws he’s accused of breaking, important scenes from Jack Smith’s charging document, the identities and roles of his six co-conspirators, and much more.

This week’s episode of the Aaron Rupar Show features comedian Jay Black on his stand-up and the state of political comedy more broadly. Topics include how rising authoritarianism has made joking about politics more challenging, conservatives’ one joke and why Jay is so turned off by it, right-wingers’ difficulty to grasp what censorship is and isn’t, and much more. (“If you start screaming about your diarrhea at a Starbucks and they remove from the Starbucks, you’re not being censored.”)

We had a lot of laughs, and I think you will too!

This week's edition of the Aaron Rupar Show features Simon Rosenberg, author of the Hopium Chronicles and a longtime Democratic strategist, on the political state of play as we head toward 2024. We discuss the stakes of this election cycle and the importance of MAGA suffering a decisive defeat, Biden's strong record and why Simon isn’t especially worried about it not yet showing up in polling, how Trump's legal problems are an albatross for the whole Republican Party, and much more.