Oct 1, 2026 · 57 min · 12 segments
What can listening closely to voters tell us about the state of American politics—and where the country may be headed? Sarah Longwell, CEO and Publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group…
Sarah LongwellGuest
Patt MorrisonHost
One of the reasons it was so hard to, and it's still like the Teflon Don thing, is because I went back and did a lot of research on this.
I never watched The Apprentice, but I started asking voters in focus groups if they did, and everybody had.
And that was such a disconnect for me because Trump was this carefully curated businessman on television who people saw, you know, he fired Gilbert Gottfried on a soundstage or Andrew Dice Clay.
idea of him as this tough businessman and something different, something irreverent, was the thing where people thought, he's going to do something for me different than this uniparty establishment.
Oh, the thing about The Apprentice that blew me away because I think we just forget our own history.
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger came and took over the show, which means he was doing.
And I mean, if you look at the ratings on The Apprentice, especially in those early years, they were astronomical.
And so I think that's something the elites, all of us missed is we didn't care about that show.
One of the reasons it was so hard to, and it's still like the Teflon Don thing, is because I went back and did a lot of research on this.
I never watched The Apprentice, but I started asking voters in focus groups if they did, and everybody had.
And that was such a disconnect for me because Trump was this carefully curated businessman on television who people saw, you know, he fired Gilbert Gottfried on a soundstage or Andrew Dice Clay.
idea of him as this tough businessman and something different, something irreverent, was the thing where people thought, he's going to do something for me different than this uniparty establishment.
Oh, the thing about The Apprentice that blew me away because I think we just forget our own history.
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger came and took over the show, which means he was doing.
And I mean, if you look at the ratings on The Apprentice, especially in those early years, they were astronomical.
And so I think that's something the elites, all of us missed is we didn't care about that show.
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