John is joined by Atlantic staff writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer to discuss their new cover story on the remarkable political resurrection that returned Donald Trump to the White House and imbued him with a patina of invincibility—and the recent signs that this veneer is starting to crack. Parker and Scherer weigh in on Trump’s tete-a-tete with Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney; the differences between his first and second-term states of mind; and whether becoming an avatar of t...
May 09, 2025•1 hr 9 min
John is joined by hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci to discuss the first White House personnel shake-up of Donald Trump’s second term and the culture of sycophancy in his cabinet. Scaramucci — who served a famously shambolic 11-day stint at Trump’s communications director in 2017 — offers his take on why Mike Waltz lost his job as national security adviser, Marco Rubio was chosen as his replacement (at least for now), and Trump, contrary to his reality-tv persona, is actually terrible at fir...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 5 min
John is joined by Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith to discuss the role of private group chats in pushing Silicon Valley's politics to the right—and many of its most powerful figures into the arms of Donald Trump. Ben lays out how dozens of hush-hush Signal and WhatsApp groups emerged during Covid among the tech elite in reaction to what its members saw as the stifling woke conformity of social media; the seminal role of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in seeding these forums; and how their i...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 18 min
On the eve of Donald Trump’s 100th day back in office, John is joined by his Puck Political Superfriend and partner Peter Hamby to look back on what 45/47 hath wrought since January 20 — what has mattered and what hasn’t; the most truly surprising, most entirely predictable, and most grievously overlooked developments and storylines; and both the state of the Democratic Party generally and the broader anti-Trump resistance specifically — as Trump 2.0 got underway with a bang (really more of a ea...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 13 min
John is joined by Susan Morrison, articles editor of The New Yorker, to discuss “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” her biography of SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels. Morrison argues that no one has done more to shape modern America’s sense of humor than Michaels, an enigmatic Canadian about whom most Americans know nothing; and that while Michaels a figure of enduring obsession among comics, he remains a mystery to them as well. Morrison lays out the singular combination o...
Apr 25, 2025•1 hr 22 min
Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. On What We Spend, people from across the country and across the financial spectrum are opening their wallets—and their lives—to tell you everything: what they make, what they want, and—for one week—what they spend. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apr 24, 2025•11 min
John is joined by a pair of former GOP panjandrums turned NeverTrump stalwarts — attorney George Conway and political strategist Stuart Stevens — to discuss the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and Donald Trump’s efforts to turn the U.S. into a police state. Conway and Stevens argue that the guardrails preventing that outcome are banged up but still holding; that the real test of them will come when (not if) the administration defies the Supreme Court even more flagrantly than it has already; and that ...
Apr 21, 2025•1 hr 12 min
John is joined by Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to discuss the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and its implications for the rule of law in America. Wiley argues that the case -- and Donald Trump's open defiance of the Supreme Court's unanimous order that the administration facilitate Garcia's repatriation from a notorious penal colony in El Salvador -- is about more than Garcia's fate, immigration or foreign policy, the Trump administration's ...
Apr 18, 2025•1 hr 18 min
John is joined by longtime Wall Street eminence and former “car czar” Steve Rattner to discuss the impact of Donald Trump’s tariff jihad on global financial markets and the American economy. Rattner explains why the theory of the case animating Trump’s protectionist agenda is “disjointed,” “illogical,” and “incoherent,” and its execution has been even worse; why the reputational damage the U.S. is suffering as a result among its allies around the world will be difficult to undo; why the claims b...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 7 min
John is joined by former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs to discuss the Trump 2.0 rollback of the nation’s cyberdefenses—an interview taped just an hour before Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Krebs, who earned the president’s enmity four years ago by declaring the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” Krebs details the rapidly escalating and dramatically expanding threats posed by Chinese and Russian hackers to America...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr 9 min
John is joined by Marc Elias, the attorney whom Donaled Trump has cast as his bete noire in the legal profession, to discuss the president’s war on the judiciary, the bar, and the rule of law itself. Elias explains why the executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” is designed to do just the opposite, making it the most dangerous of Trump's myriad power grabs; why we aren’t yet in a constitutional crisis but soon could be; and why Trump’s threats have ...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 5 min
John is joined by former AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier and current Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler to discuss a week in which America’s de facto co-presidents seemed trying to outdo each other in terms of wreaking havoc and stoking panic. Fournier assesses the motives behind Donald Trump’s market-crashing tariffs and their potential political implications; explains why the results of Tuesday’s special elections in Florida and Wisconsin are so ominous for Republicans; and is...
Apr 04, 2025•1 hr 17 min
The Bogie and Bacall of Beltway journalistic power couples — Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker — return to the show to discuss the fallout from the first true crisis of Donald Trump’s second term and an array of ongoing controversies embroiling the new administration. Peter and Susan explain why, despite the serious national security implications of Signalgate and the long knives being out for both Pete Hegseth and Michael Waltz, there’s a decent chance that b...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 21 min
John is joined by Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson to discuss the story eclipsing all other political news this week: Signalgate. Although Warner is a consensus-seeking moderate Democrat and Wilson a bomb-throwing NeverTrump Republican, in their long careers both have come across their share of recklessness, sloppiness, and stupidity in the realm of national security. But neither has seen a more extravagant display of those...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 23 min
John is joined by Leigh Ann Caldwell, Puck’s newly minted chief Washington correspondent, to discuss how congressional Ds and Rs are coping with the new world order of Trump 2.0. Leigh Ann assesses the political aftershocks rippling through the Democratic ranks in the wake of what many in the party see as Chuck Schumer’s disastrous capitulation to the GOP in the government shutdown showdown; the grassroots potency of the Bernie Sanders/AOC road show and its unequivocally populist messaging; the ...
Mar 24, 2025•49 min
John is joined by former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann to discuss Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on the judiciary and what it means for the rule of law. Weissmann explains why the showdown between the Trump administration and federal district judge James Boasberg over the deportation of some 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members last weekend amounts to the first genuine constitutional crisis of the Trump 2.0 era; Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts viewed Trum...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 15 min
John is joined by acclaimed actor Liev Schreiber to discuss his humanitarian aid work in Ukraine, his friendship with Volodymyr Zelensky, and the efforts to bring an end to the war in his ancestral homeland. Schreiber explains why the apparent strategy behind Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a ceasefire and force both sides to the negotiating table strike so many Ukraine allies as baffling at best; in the Oval Office dustup between Zelensky and Trump, it was the Ukrainian president, not the Ameri...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 25 min
John is joined by Massachusetts Democratic congressman Jake Auchincloss to discuss how his party is handling the clash over a government shutdown and the broader challenges of Donald Trump's second term. Jake argues that voting for the Republican measure to fund the government is a mistake in terms of both policy and politics; the freakout in the worlds of business and finance about Trump’s trade war is nothing compared to what we’ll see when (Jake predicts) Trump tries to take over the Fed; the...
Mar 14, 2025•1 hr 15 min
John is joined by New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen to discuss Donald Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin and what it means for Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine, and the whole of Europe. Gessen, winner of the 2017 National Book Award for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, contends it’s now crystal clear that the U.S. has switched sides in the Ukraine war and offers a number of entwined explanations as to Trump’s motives for doing so; that Putin’s larger territorial/...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 13 min
John is joined by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich to discuss Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress and his already beleaguered economic agenda. Reich argues that Trump’s speech was most striking for its lack of focus on the concerns (notably, the high cost of living) most responsible for his reelection; his administration's policies (including but not limited to stiff tariffs on foreign goods) are bound to exacerbate those concerns; the worst fears of Wall Street—that America is headed...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 18 min
John is joined by Marty Baron to discuss the changes being wrought by Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, where Baron served as executive editor from 2013 to 2021, and how the Fourth Estate is faring in the Trump 2.0 era. Baron explains his reaction (disgust, shock, fury) to Bezos's recent ban on opinions at odds with his own from the Post's op-ed pages; why that move and others by the paper's owner since Trump's reelection can only be interpreted as acts of obeisance; and how those actions under...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 15 min
John is joined by Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, to discuss Donald Trump's efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. McFaul explains why the rare earth minerals deal between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky amounts to an act of pure extortion by America against an ostensible ally; how Vladimir Putin views the U.S. siding with Russia at the U.N. and the reopening of diplomatic channels between W...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 17 min
John is joined by Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, to discuss the Eric Adams case. Joyce explains why the decision by Donald Trump’s Justice Department to dismiss the corruption charges against New York’s mayor was so unusual, unwarranted, and improper; why the extraordinary fallout from that decision—resignations by all of the SDNY lawyers central to bringing the charges; an open letter by more than 900 former federal prosecutors sounding the alarm over th...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 9 min
John is joined by Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and current host of the podcast Stay Tuned With Preet, for the first of two back-to-back episodes on the pitched battle playing out in the federal courts over Donald Trump’s agenda. One of the most prodigious federal prosecutors of the modern era, Bharara explains why the velocity, volume, and radicalism of Trump’s blizzard of executive actions are testing the legal system in unprecedented ways; Pam Bondi...
Feb 21, 2025•1 hr 6 min
John is joined by New York Times Magazine writer and bestselling author Robert Draper to discuss his new profile of the unrivaled leader of the MAGA youth movement, Charlie Kirk. Draper explains how, at just 31 and without a college degree, Kirk has emerged as a dominant force on the right through a deft combination of donor courtship (bolstering his organization, Turning Point USA), social media savvy (amplifying his own voice via TikTok and podcasting), and high-level Trumpworld personal diplo...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 14 min
On the eve of NBA All Star weekend, John is joined by former pro basketball reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, whose breaking news prowess and social media savvy made him a star at ESPN and ushered in a new era in sports journalism. Having shocked the world last fall by leaving his TV job to become general manager of the hoops squad at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure University, Woj discusses how his life has changed since dropping his final "Woj bomb;" how the end of restrictions on compensation for ...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 31 min
John is joined by constitutional scholar nonpareil Laurence Tribe to discuss the radical challenge to the prevailing legal order by Donald Trump's actions and agenda. Tribe maintains that it’s no exaggeration to say, just three weeks into the new administration, that Trump, Elon Musk, and their allies are engaged in an incipient coup d’etat; and that the courts — including the Supreme Court, despite its diminished reputation and recent bent towards overt partisanship — remain the last, best, and...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 16 min
John is joined by New York Times columnist, podcaster, and idea merchant extraodinaire Ezra Klein to chop up his latest conversation-sparking Times essay “Don’t Believe Him” about Donald Trump's initial blizzard of executive actions, grifts, and power grabs. Ezra argues that, although Trump's flurry legal and constitutional trespasses has thrust us into dangerous new territory and poses risks to the country great and small, his behavior is more a reflection of political weakness than strength. E...
Feb 07, 2025•1 hr 18 min
John is joined by Jonathan V. Last to discuss The Bulwark editor's contention that, less than three weeks into Trump 2.0, “we are in a constitutional crisis already.” JVL argues that the new administration’s early moves reflect a strategy of subjugating the legislative branch and daring the courts to stop it, then raises the question of whether the White House will comply with the judiciary’s rulings in any case. He also defends his position Democrats should expend no political capital to protec...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 19 min
John is joined by Brian Schatz, the senior U.S. senator from Hawaii, to discuss the second week of Trump 2.0 and where Democrats go from here. Schatz pulls no punches in describing Trump’s attempt to politicize the tragic midair collision over the Potomac by blaming DEI initiatives as“disgusting” and in arguing that “millions could die” if RFK Jr. is confirmed as HHS secretary; but he also warns fellow Democrats against reflexively taking Trump’s bait and letting themselves lose sight of what ma...
Jan 31, 2025•58 min
