Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: The Muckrake Political Podcast
Episode: How Trump Made 2025 Worse Than 2020
Description: Co-hots Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman return for the final Muckrake episode of 2025, and the vibes are… kinda emotionally stable. They look back on a year that somehow felt darker than 2020, then pivot straight into the current circus: Trump raging at the media, posturing about the Epstein files, hosting Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago, and then parroting Putin’s lines like the Oval Office has a Kremlin teleprompter.
From there, the conversation goes where 2025 always seems to go: Into the flashing dashboard lights of institutional collapse, Trump’s visible decline, and the unnerving signals that J.D. Vance is alr...