Bulwark Takes - Marco Rubio Got Triggered by a Font

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

JVL and Hannah Yoest break down the Department of State’s sudden font switch: goodbye ‘woke’ Calibri, hello Times New Roman. Why does this matter? Because apparently even fonts are political now, and Marco Rubio thinks professionalism starts with a serif. Get 30% off your entire order with Soul at https://GetSoul.com, promo code BULWARKTAKES.

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For real? No way. Mmm. What a deal. Your new morning groove. Ice coffee from McDonald's any size for just 99 cents till 11 a.m. Price and participation may vary cannot be combined with any other offer. Hello, everyone, I am JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Hannah Yost, and you are here for bulwark font talk.

Graphic design nerds of the world unite, because yesterday, Marco Rubio announced that the Department of State is making a bold change. They are done with the Calibri font, and they're going pure Times New Roman, and design nerds all across the country are now fighting about this. Hannah, let's start with a baseline take here. Where are you on Calibri versus Times New Roman? Ben, our other senior editor who's now back, both agree that this is like the classic case of the Trump administration having the wrong process, but the right outcome.

So, yeah, we should kill Calibri, absolutely. But it has a reputation of being soft and modern. It does not read professional. It reads as kid book should not be set in a kind of more juvenile-looking typeface. It should be in something sophisticated like Times New Roman, something with a seraph that, you know, conveys professionalism and so on and so forth. So Anthony Blinken made this change. of going from Times New Roman to Calibri. It was, I don't know if this is the only reason,

but I think one of the reasons given was that it came out of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which sounds like black people. But in this case really meant people who had eye trouble and like dyslexia. This is, again, unclear if the Republicans just think by saying woke, Everybody assumes that means brown people. This was really just talking about people with eyesight problems. Before Blinken had made his change, for 20 years, you go back before that, they had been using Courier New. Because it looked like a pipewriter.

I am sorry, that is an absolute infamia. The idea that the U.S. government was using Currier New. And if you go back and if you look in like the vaults, like the vaulted files, like you can see. It looks, it's the pantomiming of being still on a typewriter. This is like high school freshmen trying to figure out how odd. This is supposed to be a four page paper, but I've only written three paragraphs. What am I? Courier new.

Three point spacing and courier new 16 point font. Hey, look at six pages. It is legible, though. It's horrible. It's such a hideous font. Such a hideous font. I want to talk about something else here. Because the other reason that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, you know, it's funny,

they often say that being in the presidency age as a man. And Donald Trump has been, on the whole, remarkably non-aged by the presidency. I mean, you know, he's old now, but didn't, you know. Well, when he came out of the first term, it wasn't like the weight of the world of weight on him or something. Right, right, right. Marco Rubio is the first Secretary of State in my memory who seems to have aged by 18. years. Well, he's doing like 30 jobs. He's juggling every department under the sun. He said that the other rationale for making this change, aside from me, anti-woke,

was that Times New Roman would, quote, restore decorum and professionalism to the department's written work. I was not aware that decorum and professionalism were things that this administration were concerned with, I would direct you to the currently the pinned tweet on truth social of the president of the United States, the United States government's

Trump Gold Card is here today! A direct path to citizenship for all qualified and vetted people. So exciting! That's great. I'll do you one better. Did you see as the New York Times reported that part of Rubio's justification

was that the switch to Calibri had been wasteful, which if you, you think about it, it's just patently hilarious because what is, what is changing the Department of Justice to the Department of War, if not grossly wasteful? And it's the same kind of aesthetic change in a not great direction. This is, again, we have a guy who just talked about Arnold Palmer's junk as he was campaigning to be president. He took showers with the other pros. They came out there, they said, oh, my God, that's unbelievable.

Mark Arube's like, actually, we must have decorum and norms. Indeed. What a bunch of garbage human beings they are. So I submit to you, Hannah, that neither of these are the best fonts. I mean, they both have their, they have their pros and cons. It's funny. are sure if if the trump administration really wanted to commit to the bit of returning to how did rubio phrase it echoing trump's calls for classical style in federal architecture mr rubio's order

cited the origins of serotype faces in roman antiquity and chris our video had made the great joke that if they really really wanted to drive this home they should commit to going full trajan which So the origin of Roman square capitals comes from the Trajan column. The inscription at the bottom is set in this beautiful carved marble seraph typeface. And from there we get the seraphs that we all know and love and use day and day out. But that would be if you really wanted to commit to return, aesthetics would be, would be Trajan. I personally would not recommend that, no. Bullwork takes is sponsored by Seoul.

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That's get soul promo code bulwark takes for 30% off. So do you have strong font preferences? for yourself. Because this may not surprise you, but I do. What are yours? So people who work with words, I think, feel really strongly about this because it is the equivalent of a guy who works in construction having a preference for like Milwaukee tools over DeWalt or something like that. And I have a very strong preference for Ariel. When I am sitting down to edit 5,000 words of somebody's piece. I want it on Ariel. I want it on Ariel 12 point and with the one and a half spaces between lines and the automatic paragraph break. I just find Ariel much easier to work with

when I'm going to be staring at the screen and at the same words basically for like an hour or two hours on end. And I'm happy when it's just a question of consuming content, you know, If I'm just sitting back to read, I can roll with most of the things you give me. I can roll with Times New Roman. I could roll with Calibri if you wanted to. I could roll with Helvetica. Whatever. But for working with words, I want Ariel.

How about you? Have you tried universe? I haven't. What is universe? So the Swiss had basically this battle between Zurich and Basel. and one camp was Helvetica all the way and the other camp was Universe and a great quote came out of this

where that Helvetica was the blue jeans of typefaces but Universe was the tuxedo and they look identical like there is like there is very little differences but like Universe is more sophisticated for like the tiny little. Is it the kerning is the difference?

The spacing between them? Because that's the other. I mean people don't realize the font isn't just the letters themselves and the form of them. It's the space between them. I would love for you to give universe a try. You can tell us if you. I mean, maybe. I don't like change. Maybe you've noticed that about me, Hannah. I don't like change one bit. So you don't have a favorite font that you like to work in. So I, like all poets, I am partial to Garamond. It is the poet's choice. I never knew that. It's so beautiful. Have you not worked with it? It's so delicate.

thinner. It's smaller and fun to tie back to the politics. Back in 2014, a high schooler did a science project or something where he looked at government wasteful spending. And he found that the government could save something like $14 billion on ink. He made this really strong argument that ink is more expensive than French perfume. True. And he found that the government could save all this money on ink by simply switching from Times Room into Garamond. And it's kind of like a trick because Garamond is not like, it wouldn't actually save you ink because you're, you're printing it smaller. Like you'd have to, in order to keep the same level of legibility and accessibility to the people that you are supposedly corresponding with or giving this

information to, you would need to still keep it within the same size and keep it so that you can read it. and he wouldn't actually end up saving them but it is funny it is a smaller more delicate typeface it is i'm looking at it right now and especially the vertical strokes are really really as you say delicate it's a pretty fun words the letters a little too close together for me i appreciate a little bit more spacing i'd like to let them breathe like to let those letters breathe i've also become more partial to all of the old style typefaces if you go into apple books i think iowen is the old style that is the standard type phase and it is such a delight to read like it just scans so nicely so old style old style i am partial personally to old styles in general and like transitional

phases so ariel and philvetica are in the modern families i i personally i love a seraph i am i am partial to the seraph interesting so i i am interested in the idea of fonts as accessibility So there is a font called Open Dyslexic, which supposedly helps people with dyslexia read if you go and look at it. I think it's available for download for free. So if you have dyslexia, it's a thing that you can just use to make your life better. I was looking actually at a new, a new Kindle scribe the other day. And the new Kindle scribe, the texture of the screen is supposedly. done in such a way is to, again, help with, especially with people with dyslexia.

Which is just fun, there are all these little things that, you know, just contribute to the way we uptake information and the way our brains work. I don't think of it as woke. I think it is kind of amazing. I feel like it should all be celebrated. I guess I don't understand the antipathy towards the idea of. It's like every person who has a stroller should thank the ADA and all kinds of handicapped compliance because they made sidewalks accessible. Like, accessibility is not just for the disabled. It's not just for people who are actively in need of it. It helps all of us because, like, all of us are, like, one bad day away from, you know,

tragedy striking and, like, facing challenges that we're not familiar with. Look, I've recently just got new glasses. And the doctor, she, like, kind of upsold me a bit, but she was like, they're anti-fatigue. No, they're baby bifocals. She was basically like, you're old now. But you know what? They help a ton. And I'm like, does that make my glasses woke?

I don't think so. It's just, it's just, you know what? You should not wear them to protest woke. And if it means you can't see, then that's a small price to pay for freedom, Hannah. Right. I mean, be a patriot. Ditch your glasses. God, what a world we live in with these.

Absolute cretons trying to politicize everything. So there we go. We have moved back to the glorious past. We've made America great again by going back to Times New Roman for official correspondence from the U.S. Department of State. I guess that'll make it better when we take Vladimir Putin's side against Europe. It'll be done with more decorum. Have seraphs on them, for sure. Yeah, there'll be serfs on it.

So it'll be bad that America has switched sides, but it will be classy. For sure. Good luck, America. It's the Kia season of new tradition sales event. So don't just hang your own lights. Venture out and look for the northern lights. Drink cocoa on the beach. Or be a drive-by karaoke caroler.

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