Today I talk with campaign media advisor Mark McKinnon about his new documentary series for Showtime called THE CIRCUS: INSIDE THE GREATEST POLITICAL SHOW ON EARTH. He co-stars with journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann of Bloomberg Politics as they follow all of the Presidential candidates as well as the campaign teams and traveling reporters. They give an inside glimpse into the stress and craziness and the ups and downs of running for the most powerful position in the world. Mark McKin...
Feb 12, 2016•43 min
Today I talk with filmmaker Greg Barker, who won an Emmy for his HBO documentary MANHUNT: THE UNTOLD STORY BEHIND THE HUNT FOR BIN LADEN, about his new film for HBO called HOMEGROWN: THE COUNTER-TERRORISM DILEMMA. In his latest project, he explores the threat of "self-radicalizing" terrorists right here in America through the eyes of the Deputy Directors of the National Counter Terrorism Center and the FBI's National Security Branch, as well as the family members of the Ft. Hood shooter and othe...
Feb 08, 2016•42 min
Today is the Iowa Caucuses when the first votes are cast in the 2016 Presidential election! But what exactly is a Caucus? And why does Iowa get to be the first? Is it different from a Primary? Does the weather really affect caucus results? Can a candidate win Iowa without loving ethanol? And what the heck is a "full Grassley?" We'll answer all of these questions and I take a comprehensive look at the Iowa Caucuses with my guests today - Congressman Steve King, nationally syndicated radio host St...
Feb 01, 2016•52 min
For 10 years The Senate Majority Leader office traded hands between Senators Tom Daschel (Democrat) and Trent Lott (Republican). As the leaders of their respective parties in the U.S. Senate, Senator Lott and Senator Daschle often found themselves on opposite sides of an issue, but they kept things moving in the Senate and got things done for the American people by working together, showing mutual respect, and engaging in that four letter word-compromise. Today they say that politics is getting ...
Jan 29, 2016•39 min
This week National Review Magazine published a special edition with the headline "Against Trump." In that issue, the editors of National Review along with 22 noted conservatives like Bill Kristol, Glenn Beck, Katie Pavlock, Michael Medved, and Dennis Prager made an impassioned plea for Republican voters not to nominate the brash real estate billionaire as the Republican nominee. They look at Donald Trump's record (including his many years as a Democrat) and make a thorough case that Donald Trump...
Jan 27, 2016•48 min
As Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Congressman Michael McCaul has looked into the dark minds of America’s enemies and their most diabolical plans. In his new book FAILURES OF IMAGINATION: THE DEADLIEST THREATS TO OUR HOMELAND AND HOW TO THWART THEM, he lays out 8 horrifying scenarios for how terror groups and hostile nations might attempt to attack the U.S. The scariest part of it all is that these nightmarish situations are largely based on real intel about past, present a...
Jan 21, 2016•40 min
In today's episode, I explore the areas where America's prisons are failing society and the growing call for sensible, results-based criminal justice reform. My guests are Senator Rob Portman, author of the Second Chance Act, Julie Stewart president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and Jeff Smith, author of Mr. Smith Goes to Prison: What Me Year Behind Bars Taught Me About America's Prison Crisis. In the first part, Jeff Smith will recount his eye-opening year in federal prison, and what ...
Jan 12, 2016•59 min
Ben is sick this week, but he'll be back with a brand new episode on Monday. In the meantime, enjoy this rebroadcast. In part 2 of The Political Genius of George Washington, I'll talk again with author and historian John Ferling about motivated George Washington to run for President, what motivated him to leave the office after two terms and what he might think of the political climate today. If you enjoyed this episode, then please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review on Itunes for a ...
Jan 08, 2016•29 min
Ben is sick this week, but he'll be back with a brand new episode on Monday. In the meantime, enjoy this rebroadcast. In this episode, I'll talk with author and historian John Ferling about the hidden political genius of our first President. If you enjoyed this episode, then please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review on Itunes for a chance to win Ben's book of the week. All you have to do to enter is subscribe and leave a review. For more information, visit www.KickAssPolitics.com, an...
Jan 08, 2016•29 min
Ben is a little sick this week, but he'll be back with a new episode on Monday. In the meantime, enjoy this rebroadcast of Part 2 of his expose on E.M.P. In Part 1 on E.M.P. or the phenomenon known as an electromagnetic pulse, guest Dr. Peter Vincent Pry (director of the Task Force on National & Homeland Security) warned that an electromanetic pulse, either caused naturally by a solar flare or by a high altitude nuclear detonation by our enemies, has the ability disable the entire U.S. elect...
Jan 08, 2016•35 min
Ben is a little sick this week, but he'll be back with a new episode on Monday. In the meantime, enjoy this rebroadcast on E.M.P. If you have heard of an electromagnetic pulse at all, it's probably from sci-fi movies like The Matrix or novels, but an E.M.P. is not science fiction. E.M.P. is a real scientific phenomenon that has the ability to destroy not just every single electronic in your home, but the entire U.S. electric grid. It has happened before and will almost certainly happen again. Bu...
Jan 08, 2016•35 min
My guest today is one of the leading scholars on the Middle East and Middle East history. He's Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum and publisher of Middle East Quarterly. Prior to that he was appointed to the Board of the U.S. Insitute for Peace by President George W. Bush, and he served as director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He says it is Islamists, not Muslims, who represent an existential threat to Israel and the West. He says America should support moderate Muslim...
Dec 30, 2015•41 min
In 1955, a 30-year-old conservative intellectual named William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine. Since then it has become the most widely read and influential magazine for conservative news, commentary, and opinion. In honor of the 60th Anniversary of National Review, my guest is editor of National Review Rich Lowry. You've also seen him as a regular political commentator on Fox News, The McGlaughlin Group, and NBC'S Meet the Press. On the podcast, we talk about his late mentor Wi...
Dec 09, 2015•48 min
My guest today is the Garry Kasparov. For 20 years he was the World Chess Champion and is widely considered to the greatest chess master of all time. Then in 2005, he retired from chess to become a political activist in his native country of Russia. He has since become the most vocal and high profile critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2008, he even ran for President against Putin’s hand-picked successor Dimitri Medvedev until being forced out of the election due to rampant corruption...
Dec 04, 2015•51 min
This is officially the 50th episode of KickAss Politics, and we’re celebrating with Karl Rove! He’s a Fox News political contributor and writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. He was the Senior Advisor to the President George W. Bush and Deputy White House Chief of Staff. As Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove masterminded the successful Bush/Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004 as well as the historic 2002 midterm election earning him the nickname “The Architect.” Today he com...
Dec 01, 2015•41 min
Brian Kilmeade is the co-host of Fox News morning show Fox & Friends and host of his own national radio show called Kilmeade & Friends. He's the co-author of the bestseller GEORGE WASHINGTON’S SECRET SIX, and new he and his co-author Don Yaegar have a new book on a often over-looked chapter in American History. The book is called THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE TRIPOLI PIRATES: THE FORGOTTEN WAR THAT CHANGED AMERICAN HISTORY. 200 years before Al-Qauda or ISIS, a young America led by Thomas Jeff...
Nov 17, 2015•36 min
With over 2 billion views on YouTube, The Young Turks has become the largest online news show in the world. Every day, an average of a million and a half people watch The Young Turks or one of many programs from The Young Turks Network. On today's podcast, I visit the Young Turks Studio in Culver City, California to talk with TYT founder Cenk Uygur as well as Ana Kasparian (co-host of The Young Turks) and John Iadarola (co-host of TYT's Think Tank). We'll talk about the future of news in the dig...
Nov 12, 2015•42 min
Forbes Magazine recently announced their annual list of the most powerful people in the world, and for the third year in a row, they chose Russian President Vladimir Putin as #1. In explaining why Putin was picked as the most powerful person in the world for the 3rd year in a row, Forbes said “Russia's president continues to prove he's one of the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants --and get away with it.” Putin has been described as cold, enigmatic, calculating, ruthless, a...
Nov 09, 2015•53 min
This is a rebroadcast of an episode that aired in November 2014 celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's famous "A Time for Choosing" speech. In the final days of the 1964 Presidential election, actor Ronald Reagan gave a 30 minute televised speech in support of Republican Barry Goldwater. Goldwater lost by a landslide, but Reagan's "A Time for Choosing," later known simply as "The Speech," put Ronald Reagan on the road to the White House and defined the Conservative movement ever sin...
Nov 07, 2015•35 min
My guest on this podcast is Bob Woodward. Together with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, he tied the Watergate break-in to the Nixon White House in 1972, bringing down President Richard Nixon and earning the first of two Pulitzer Prizes for the Washington Post. Today he remains associate editor at the Washington Post and has authored a dozen #1 Best-Sellers on the New York Times Nonfiction list. He comes on the show to talk about his new book "THE LAST OF THE PRESIDENT'S MEN" which chronicles the...
Nov 04, 2015•42 min
My guests today are Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke. Fred Barnes is the co-founder and executive editor of The Weekly Standard and Mort Kondracke served as the executive editor of Roll Call and former Washington bureau chief for Newsweek. For over ten years, they co-hosted the popular weekly political show The Beltway Boys on Fox News. Today they still regularly appear as political commentators on Fox News, and they recently teamed up to write the first ever biography exploring the legacy of the ...
Oct 28, 2015•51 min
My guest in this podcast is former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. From 2007 until just this year, she represented Minnesota’s 7th district in Congress and in 2012 Michele Bachmann ran for the Republican nomination for President. In Congress, she served on the House Financial Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which oversees the CIA, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies. She has been a strong supporter of the Tea Party movement from it’s earliest days and f...
Oct 26, 2015•48 min
Mike Pesca hosts Slate's The Gist podcast 5 days a week and he's a weekly panelist on Slate's Hang Up & Listen podcast. Before that he was a national desk correspondent for NPR covering sports, culture and politics. He's won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for Excellence in Electronic Journalism, and he has a loyal following of fans who tune in daily to heir his "spiel" of the day. Today, he'll talk about the House Speakers race, money in politics, and the filibuster. Plus he'll go off on his on...
Oct 26, 2015•39 min
Just in time for BRIDGE OF SPIES, Dr. Vincent Houghton comes on the show. Vince is historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC and host of SPYCAST, a popular weekly podcast covering all things espionage. On today's show, he'll talk about the true story and the real people behind the U-2 spy plane incident and the movie BRIDGE OF SPIES. Plus he'll talk about the greatest spy who ever lived, Cold War espionage, America's spy history from the Revolutionary War through th...
Oct 19, 2015•52 min
David Axelrod joins me on the show from Politicon in Los Angeles. In his 40 year career in politics, he has advised over 150 Democrat campaigns. He's the campaign wizard behind President Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 and he served in the White House as Senior Advisor to the President. Today he's founder and director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and he now has his own podcast called The Axe Files. On the podcast, he talks about his very first campaign, his...
Oct 13, 2015•49 min
Following the Reagan Library Republican debate, I talk with conservative author, radio host, and speaker, Michael Reagan. He also happens to be the son of the late President Ronald Reagan. He says the 2016 GOP candidates need to stop trying to imitate his father and repackage the Reagan legacy to better match their own political brands. Instead they should embody Reagan's spirit and his leadership qualities. He says if conservatives want to win in 2016, they need to focus on the future of the pa...
Oct 05, 2015•47 min
In the past month, the murder of a Syrian Archeologist by ISIS terrorists and their senseless destruction of two temples at the UNESCO World Heritage site at Palmyra sent shockwaves through the archeological community, and drew media attention to what very well may be the biggest threat to the word’s shared cultural heritage since World War II. The maniacs of the so called Islamic State are blowing up historic monuments and looting and selling priceless ancient antiquities in what is now their s...
Sep 25, 2015•55 min
Following President Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba and re-open the U.S. embassy in Havana, I talk with two men who bore witness the brutality and economic collapse of Cuba under Fidel Castro. They both escaped to the U.S. as young boys, but their fathers weren’t so lucky, and they’ll tell their stories in today’s episode. My first guest is Carlos Eire. Today he’s a history and religion professor at Yale University and a best-selling author who won the 2003 National Book Award ...
Sep 12, 2015•44 min
Just in time for the Senate debate over President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, Senator Lindsey Graham comes on the show to talk about why the deal is bad for America & the Middle East and how he intends to prevent Iran from getting a nuke. Plus we talk about the GOP primary, Trump, and the advice Senator John McCain gave him about running for President. For more information, visit www.KickAssPolitics.com, and if you enjoyed the show and would like to help keep us on the air, then please s...
Sep 08, 2015•27 min
Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson is founding partner at the polling firm Echelon Insights. She's also the co-host of the political podcast The Pollsters and author of a new book called The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (and How Republicans Can Keep Up). She'll talk about what separates millennials from previous generations and how their values and priorities are shaping their politics. Kristen warns that if Republicans write off millennials now, they may never get...
Aug 27, 2015•49 min
