John is joined by his Puck partners Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby to discuss Donald Trump’s reelection: the remarkable scale of his victory and the unexpected breadth of the coalition he assembled to achieve it; whether anyone paying attention to the campaign—or the Trump era in our politics and culture more broadly—should have been surprised; the Democratic finger-pointing that’s already begun in the wake of Kamala Harris's loss; whether VP Harris or President Biden bears more responsibility for ...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 30 min
John is joined by MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace for an Election Day special episode on the final hours of the presidential race. The two close friends examine Kamala Harris’s decision to close out her campaign by dropping all references to Donald Trump and returning to the themes of unity, change, and joy that animated her early days as the Democratic nominee; the contrast presented by Trump’s off-message, off-kilter, at times off-color turns on the stump, as he toggled between anger and exhaustion...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 28 min
John is joined by radio host and burgeoning media mogul Charlamagne tha God—whose nationally syndicated morning show, The Breakfast Club, has emerged as a key conduit to Black America for political figures from Kamala Harris to Lara Trump—to dig into the interplay of politics, media, and culture that led to a photo finish in the 2024 election. Charlemagne discusses his staunch support for Harris and his reaction to seeing Donald Trump’s team weaponize his words against her in an anti-Harris (and...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 20 min
John is joined by Robert Costa of CBS News and Jonathan Martin of Politico to discuss the state of the presidential race as it enters the final weekend before Election Day. Costa and Martin weigh in on Kamala Harris’s speech on the Washington Mall, her closing argument writ large, and the factors boosting her prospects and those weighing her down; Joe Biden’s garbled Zoom comments about Trump supporters (or one specific Trump supporter, depending on whom you believe), the kerfuffle they caused, ...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 26 min
John is joined by George Conway, Bill Kristol, Sarah Longwell, and Tim Miller from The Bulwark—the #NeverTrump startup that emerged as one of the 2024 election cycle’s breakout media success stories—to discuss the presidential campaign's final sprint to the finish line. The Bulwark Fab Four discuss Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s closing arguments; the tightness of the race in the battleground states and what might sway the tiny cadre of remaining undecided voters; Michelle Obama’s return to ...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 11 min
John is joined by actor and director Jason Bateman to discuss the runaway success of SmartLess, his podcast with Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, which was recently snapped up by SiriusXm for $100 million. Bateman—whose Emmy and Golden Globe-winning career spans four-plus decades, carrying him from “Little House on the Prairie” and “Teen Wolf Too” to “Arrested Development” and “Ozark”—reveals the recipe for SmartLess’s secret sauce; why A-list Democrats (Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill C...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr 17 min
John is joined by two celebrated scholars and best-selling authors on authoritarianism, autocracy, and tyranny—Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer at The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, and Yale University history professor, Timothy Snyder—to discuss this week’s headline-making reporting on the dark assessments of Donald Trump by former White House chief of staff John Kelly and other top military brass. Applebaum and Snyder argue that Trump’s fascism is beyond dispute; his use of language echoing Stal...
Oct 25, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back. Unlike previous seasons, writer and host Jed Lipinski brings listeners new episodes every week with no end in sight. Each episode of Gone South Season 4 tells a different story about one of the South's most interesting crimes. 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
Oct 24, 2024•11 min
John is joined by Maryland’s Democratic Governor, Wes Moore, to discuss the state of the presidential race. Currently America’s second-youngest governor, only the third African American ever to hold that office, and a 16-year U.S. Army veteran, Moore discusses the challenge Kamala Harris faced in being elevated so recently to the top of the Democratic ticket; how serious a mistake it was for her to say she wouldn’t have done much differently from Joe Biden; and why Donald Trump’s attitude toward...
Oct 23, 2024•44 min
John is joined by Obama 2008 and 2012 campaign guru and Harris 2024 senior strategist David Plouffe to assess the state of the presidential race two weeks out from Election Day. Plouffe explains why he believes his candidate has a higher ceiling and more appeal to the remaining pool of persuadable voters than Donald Trump; how most of the public polling you're obsessed with is so worthless that he doesn’t even look at it; what he’s seeing in the early vote data that buoys his optimism; why repor...
Oct 21, 2024•46 min
John is joined by Michigan Democratic congresswoman Debbie Dingell to discuss the razor's edge race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for the Great Lake State’s 15 electoral votes. Although national Democrats have recently begun to fret about Harris's standing in Michigan, Dingell—who was the among the first in 2016 to call out Hillary Clinton’s fatal weaknesses there—explains that she’s believed that the VP's position in the state has always been precarious; how Harris finally found her vo...
Oct 18, 2024•1 hr 9 min
John is joined by Beltway journalistic power couple Peter Baker, the New York Times's chief White House correspondent, and Susan Glasser, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to discuss the state of the presidential race three weeks out from Election Day. Baker and Glasser assess Kamala Harris’s shift to harder-edged attacks on Donald Trump; Trump’s threat to use the National Guard or U.S. military against American citizens, to terminate the Constitution, and to seek "retribution" against his poli...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 18 min
John is joined by legendary campaign guru James Carville to discuss the new documentary about his life, “Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid,” alongside the film’s director, Matt Tyrnauer. James and Matt explain how they came together to make a kind of sequel to “The War Room,” the iconic 1993 documentary that helped turn James into a celebrity; how his boisterous campaign to convince his party to replace Joe Biden caused many allies to see him less as Cassandra than Brutus, until Biden’s de...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 16 min
John is joined by Susanne Craig, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter and co-author of “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created The Illusion of Success,” to discuss the divergent myth and reality of Trump’s career in business. Craig recounts the nine years she has spent delving into the former president’s finances and the revelations that work unearthed—from the staggering $1 billion in accumulated losses Trump once reported to the IRS to...
Oct 11, 2024•1 hr 10 min
John is joined by Mark Cuban, the billionaire former owner of Dallas Mavericks and recently departed star of ABC's Shark Tank, to discuss his new role as Kamala Harris’s most voluble—and arguably most valuable—backer in the business world. Cuban explains why he likens Harris to a start-up CEO in “founder mode;” how her policies would benefit business (especially small business) more than those of Donald Trump; why Trump’s push for sweeping tariffs is “lunacy,” his answers to economic policy ques...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 17 min
John is joined by the host of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the emergence, just five weeks before Election Day, of damning new evidence of Donald Trump’s central role in the January 6 insurrection. O’Donnell assesses the legal and political significance of that evidence, contained in a newly unsealed court filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith, well as the insight it offers into Mike Pence’s role in thwarting Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election—just one day af...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 18 min
John is joined by his colleagues Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby to discuss the vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. The Puck Superfriends analyze Walz’s wobbliness in the debate’s first half, his recovery in the second, and his late-stage landing of the night’s strongest and most sound-bite-friendly attack (on the topic of January 6); Vance’s undeniable forensic chops, apparent allergy to factual accuracy, and stubborn refusal to admit that Donald Trump lost the last election; ho...
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min
John is joined by the world’s most celebrated data nerd, polling aggregator, and election forecaster, Nate Silver, to discuss the 2024 election. Nate offers unnervingly precise takes on just how close the race is (it won’t calm your nerves a bit); Kamala Harris’s likelihood of winning each of the battleground states; the thesis advanced in the New York Times that the GOP’s advantage in the Electoral College is shrinking; whether the polling industry has cured what ailed it in 2016 and 2020; the ...
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 38 min
John is joined by Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC, The New York Times, and Too Big Too Fail fame to assess the state of the American economy and its political dimensions six weeks from Election Day, with Sorkin offering his takes on an array of related topics: how Jerome Powell stuck the landing and why that achievement isn't more widely heralded; the tax-cutting ardor of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump; why so much of the business world is backing Trump despite considering him a knucklehead, a loose ...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 21 min
John is joined by former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and once and future presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to discuss the state of the presidential race with 45 days to go before November 5: why Kamala Harris is playing a stronger homestretch hand than Donald Trump; what Trump and J.D. Vance’s incendiary lies about the Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, have in common with Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare; and how Harris-Walz can seal the deal in the Blue Wall states of PA, MI, and WI. Mayor...
Sep 20, 2024•46 min
John is joined by Doug Emhoff for a wide-ranging discussion of his role as Second Gentleman of the United States and Mr. Kamala Harris. The two Gen Xers talk through Emhoff’s shot-out-of-a-cannon introduction to the American electorate; his current role on the hustings stumping for his wife’s presidential campaign and his prospective one as the nation’s first-ever First Gent; his otherworldly capacity to maintain composure when Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the likes of Laura Loomer cough up Kam...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 30 min
John is joined by Dan Harris, former ABC News anchor of Nightline, World News Sunday, and Good Morning America’s weekend edition, to discuss Dan's transformation into a full-time meditation and mental health guru and entrepreneur — and accidental social media influencer. The longtime pals discuss strategies for staying sane in the face of the flood of anxiety and agitation unleashed by the 2024 election; why failure is often more productive and profitable (mentally, emotionally, spiritually) tha...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 16 min
John is joined by his Puck partners Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby to discuss the first (and maybe only) 2024 general election debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump—a mirror image and diametric opposite of Joe Biden’s debate debacle versus Trump in June. The Puck Superfriends analyze Harris's command of the sphere of battle, Trump's inability to avoid being triggered, baited, rattled, and enraged through much of the night; how ABC News’s David Muir and Linsey Davis handled the task of keepi...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 21 min
John is joined by The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper to discuss the return of Jon Stewart to the show, the challenges of covering the RNC and DNC live, and his signature forays into the dark, savage, achingly comical heart of the MAGA-sphere at Donald Trump’s rallies. The two pals—who worked together when John dragooned Jordan into guest hosting his Showtime series The Circus—also debate the merits of Chicago’s iconic but disgusting local liqueur Malort (and even more iconic and appalling style of ...
Sep 06, 2024•1 hr 21 min
John is joined by Pod Save America co-host, New York Times bestselling author, must-read Substacker, and former Obama campaign and White House communications whiz Dan Pfeiffer to discuss the state of the presidential race as we enter the post-Labor Day home stretch: from Kamala Harris’s performance in her first post-nomination sit-down interview to Donald Trump’s ridiculously desperate shape-shifting on abortion and desperately ridiculous pandering on IVF, Barack Obama’s pearls of wisdom at the ...
Sep 04, 2024•1 hr 20 min
John is joined by two-time Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to chew over the presidential race: from Joe Biden’s decision to bow out and the wave of enthusiasm that has greeted Kamala Harris to Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s speeches at the Democratic convention. They also discuss Kristof's recently published memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life, the work that Nick is proudest of—on Darfur, global health, and international sex trafficking—and a thought-provo...
Aug 30, 2024•1 hr 15 min
John hooks up with his pal Alex Edelman—the young genius behind last year’s sold-out Broadway sensation and this year’s Emmy-nominated HBO comedy special Just For Us—at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to discuss his discovery that lobbyists bum him out but a roomful of Democratic delegates sets his heart aflutter; the bit of his about Joe Biden's age that some found unfunny but cracked Biden up; what professional joke-peddlers can do to help Kamala Harris's cause; and why, even tho...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 15 min
John is joined by CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Patrick Gaspard, and Politico senior political columnist Jonathan Martin to discuss the second two days of the Democratic National Convention. From the rat-a-tat succession of star turns by Bill Clinton, Tim Walz, and Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday to Kamala Harris sticking the landing on Thursday, the three friends chop up what worked and what didn’t, where the Harris-Walz ticket stands coming out of Chicago, and if exultant Dem...
Aug 23, 2024•1 hr 23 min
John is joined by James Bennet—Lexington columnist for The Economist and former editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and editorial page editor of The New York Times—to discuss the first two days of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago: from Hillary Clinton’s roof-raising revisitation of that highest, hardest glass ceiling she cracked but failed to shatter and Joe Biden’s way-past-prime-time political valedictory to Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s reminiscences of courting Kamala and forming t...
Aug 21, 2024•1 hr 24 min
John is joined by veteran Democratic strategist and former Clinton White House political director Doug Sosnik, who helped guide his boss against the odds to a landslide reelection in 1996, to assess the state of this year’s campaign on the eve of the Democratic convention. Having concluded a month ago that Joe Biden no longer had a viable path to victory, Sosnik discusses the top-to-bottom transformation of the race in the weeks since then, why Kamala Harris is (so far) winning the battle to def...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 21 min
