GOP tariff woes, Musk's unforced error, Booker's speech - podcast episode cover

GOP tariff woes, Musk's unforced error, Booker's speech

Apr 04, 202533 min
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Summary

This episode discusses the political fallout from President Trump's new tariffs, including Republican reactions and potential congressional resistance. It also analyzes recent special election results in Florida and Wisconsin, highlighting Democratic gains and Elon Musk's impact. Finally, the episode examines Cory Booker's lengthy Senate speech and the Democratic Party's search for new leadership in the Trump era.

Episode description

With the stock market roiling following the announcement of new tariffs, Republicans are confronting a challenge. Will they support President Donald Trump’s economic plans, even if they don’t believe in them? Or will they seek to temper his moves and draw criticism from a president who hates disloyalty?

Senior reporter Aaron Blake talks with Post congressional correspondent Liz Goodwin and Senate reporter Theodoric Meyer about the mixed reactions to this week’s bombshell economic news. They also discuss how special elections in Florida, and a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, provide Democrats with some positive data points after their stinging 2024 defeat. In particular, Elon Musk’s spending push in support of the conservative candidate in Wisconsin may have backfired, motivating liberal voters to turn out en masse. Plus, what Cory Booker’s more than 25-hour speech from the Senate floor did and didn’t accomplish.

Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter. 

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

Transcript

So earlier this week, President Donald Trump finally announced his long-awaited tariffs on most of the countries and territories around the world. But I think one territory caught the most people's attention, and that was a small group of islands called the Heard and McDonald Islands. These are way off the coast of Australia, actually closer to Antarctica. They are not home to humans, and yet they have been slapped with a 10% tariff.

I don't believe, guys, that they are actually exporting things, although maybe the penguins there are producing something that's really important to American industry. I wondered if you guys have seen all these penguin memes that are floating around. They are amazing. Though I would say, Aaron, you're very quick to assume that these penguins do not produce an export. I'm not going to rule that out, honestly. I did see a social media post from an account.

penguins against Trump, tweeting, what are you going to do? Deport us? We've been dealing with ice for centuries. Oh, my goodness. Oh, man. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Aaron Blake, senior politics reporter and host of The Post Reports Weekly Politics Roundtable. It's Friday, April 4th. Good morning, Aaron.

So guys, we've got a couple of themes running through today's show. The first one is things President Donald Trump threatens to do and what happens if he actually follows through. And then we're going to talk about the Democrats' signs of life in some recent elections. With the start, Trump is someone who says, well, lots of things. And sometimes it's all talk. But at the very top of the list of things that Trump has long threatened to do and actually is now doing are large-scale tariffs.

We did a whole episode about this on Thursday. So if you haven't listened to that, make sure to check it out. But today, I wanted to focus more on the political fallout from this sweeping economic policy. Now, Theo, you wrote about how tariffs put a lot of pressure on Trump's fellow Republicans and how they're reacting to this. Can you just talk a little bit about how they're dealing with this pressure and what the gist of that pressure is?

Yes. Well, I think the gist of the pressure is that so far the most tangible effect that we have seen is the stock market dropping significantly on Thursday, likely to drop again. It just opened a few minutes ago here on Friday. Yeah, we're talking Friday morning. Yeah. So I think there's really a wide spectrum of reaction here. You have Republicans who are cheering this announcement. There were four Republican senators with Trump in the Rose Garden when he announced these tariffs on Wednesday.

Some of them have been, you know, very bullish about them. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said yesterday that he wanted Congress to have more control over tariffs, but only so that they could put on even more tariffs. So you have certainly seen... Republicans very excited about this, or at least acting very excited. Then there is a spectrum, you know, sort of in the middle where some Republicans are not necessarily thrilled about these tariffs. They see the stock market dropping.

Maybe they're not big believers in tariffs to begin with. Tariffs are not typically associated with the Republican Party, at least traditionally. But they're willing to wait and see and give Trump a chance. to, you know, prove that this is a viable strategy. Maybe they're waiting for him to

take up negotiations with some of these countries, hoping that these tariffs are not going to stick around for too long. And then there are Republicans who have openly expressed concern and have openly said that they are, you know, sort of worried about where this is going.

Liz, Theo brings up something that I think is really important here. The Republican Party for many decades had defined itself with free trade. The idea that there should be no barriers to trading with other countries. There should be open markets. Of course, the Republican Party has also defined itself as being against any kinds of tax increases, and tariffs are, in effect, taxes on import.

In their heart of hearts, a lot of these Republicans who just aren't speaking out really are not comfortable with what the president is doing right now, or is that oversimplifying things? Absolutely. I think that the majority of the Republican conference, at least in the Senate, is like dying on the inside right now. As you're saying, tariffs have been like absolute enemy number one for the Republican Party for decades.

Ronald Reagan has this speech he gave about it that's going viral on X right now. At first, when someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, It looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. and sometimes for a short while at work. He's just laying out so clearly why he thinks tariffs are bad. Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. This was the orthodoxy and...

Even in the era of Trump, where a lot of things that are Republican orthodoxy get pushed aside, this is one that is pretty ingrained in most Republicans' minds and hearts. And then you layer on top of that the way that these tariffs in particular are very incoherent on the foreign policy level. So you still have some Republicans who are hawks, right? And they want to, like, for example.

B, you know, getting with our allies to counter China is one example. And then you have these huge tariffs being levied on. Other countries that are in the region that are, you know, allied with the U.S. in a way that's like supposed to. counter China's influence and now you know our policy is essentially punishing them and then you have like a tariff on Israel that a lot of

senators were raising their eyebrows at, you know. Yeah, Israel had actually canceled their tariffs on us before Trump's announcement and thought they would be spared. Right. Yeah. So I think the combination of this economic policy that they hate, aside from a few that are really more in this new populist MAGA. mold. And then also layered onto that is this foreign policy piece where we're economically punishing our allies. It's almost like a sanction on our allies.

So that is really making people nervous. And I think that's like looming over all of this. Yeah, Theo, Liz mentioned something that I think is important here, and that's that a lot of this, I think, to a casual observer might look a little bit... haphazard you know we mentioned earlier the the tariffs on you know in uninhabited territory and there's also some other kind of curiosities here

One is that there are a handful of countries that escaped these tariffs. One of them is Russia, and it's very closely allied former Soviet Republic Belarus. Canada and Mexico were not included because they already have had tariffs put on them. A few African countries are not included for some reason. There's less than a dozen countries that have not been included in these tariffs, and Russia happens to be one of them, which I think is a really interesting...

part of this. Guys, I wanted to get into what happens next. There is an idea that Congress could potentially take back some of it. Power over the tariffs, which it has handed over to the executive over the years. This is a proposal from Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington State.

Can you just talk about the prospects for any of these? I think we all assume that Republicans are not going to do anything about these tariffs because they never want to do anything that's going to be seen as rebuking Trump. Is this a serious enough situation where they could potentially do something like that? I think the answer is not yes. A handful of Republicans came out yesterday and said they were supporting Grassley's legislation or were at least open to supporting it.

But others, you know, panned it and said they didn't think it would ever win the 13 Republican votes that it would need to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Democrats are already talking about bringing up resolutions similar to the one that Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, introduced this week and which actually passed the Senate with the support of four Republicans. to disallow Trump's previous tariffs on Canada.

But that measure, House Speaker Mike Johnson has said, is not going anywhere in the House. Trump has vowed to veto it, so that's not going to have any practical impact on the Canada tariffs, and it's hard to imagine, at least in the short term, that Any future resolutions that Cain or other Democrats introduce, even if they pass the Senate, are actually going to strike down any of these tariffs.

But Liz, we often see a handful of senators that are willing to criticize the things that Trump is doing. And the four people who voted against the Canada tariffs very much fit that profile. We're talking about... Susan Collins from Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, who has increasingly voted against Trump on certain things.

And then Rand Paul, who's kind of a very libertarian-minded kind of Republican senator who doesn't like tariffs. But am I wrong that it seems significant that Senator Grassley, who is not one of those senators, would so quickly come out with this proposal? Does this feel like a warning sign to Trump to maybe kind of slow his roll a little bit here? Or, you know, Republicans could potentially do something, even if it's just a threat?

Yeah, I think Grassley's involvement shows how broad the discomfort with tariffs is, like even people who aren't. out there, out front on the issue on TV, the way like Rand Paul has made it his mission this week to sort of make this argument against Tara. There's a lot of Republican senators who are not out front that really hate them, like truly, really do not like this policy.

I think it's going to affect their state negatively, think it's a political disaster. So, you know, Grassley, I happen to know that he hates tariffs, too, because I wrote a profile of him earlier this year. And, you know, I asked him about his relationship with Trump and he said. Well, the thing I like about him is he'll listen. You know, like one time I told him. tariffs are really bad blah blah blah and like went through the history and then he said but he

He'll listen, but it never changes his mind or something like that. So this is something he's... been worried about with Trump for a long time, but he just, you know, he's been dealing with it privately. He's been telling him that he's been trying to influence the policy. And now it's past that point, right? This is like a really sweeping policy move he did this week.

really, really big impact globally. So I think now you're just going to have to see how these senators move forward on the issue because it ended up being a lot more broad and like, you know, a bigger move than even they were expecting. Liz, we've been talking about Grassley, and I think that points to something significant here, which is like... in addition to these lawmakers, maybe philosophical opposition to tariffs that they've expressed over the years.

These could have very localized impacts on their constituents. Grassley has been talking about the idea that fertilizer, known as potash... would be more expensive for farmers. We've had Senator Tom Tillis, Republican from North Carolina, talking about how a lot of farmers in his state are, quote, one crop away from bankruptcy. This is also like a kind of an all politics as local thing too, right?

Yeah, exactly. A lot of these senators are worried about the impacts on their state of the tariffs. I think if there's one way that this might resolve itself, it would be that... There's some kind of a negotiation that takes place and they cut a deal and then the tariffs go away. I think a lot of Republicans are kind of hinting and hoping that that's what's going to happen with this.

But we have seen some very conflicting signals from the White House about whether negotiation is even possible. And our colleagues. Jeff Stein and Natalie Allison reported on this late Thursday. Basically, the White House had said that these tariffs are not a negotiating posture. These are in place for the foreseeable future, and they weren't going to talk to these countries about relaxing them moving forward.

And then we had President Trump come out on Thursday and basically completely undercut all of that. I think we've got some tape here. The first one is of White House advisor Peter Navarro on Wednesday on Fox News. And the second is Trump himself on Thursday. This is not a negotiation, Jesse. This is a national emergency. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. Always have. I've used them very well in the first administration, as you saw, but now we're taking it to a whole new level.

How do you guys read this talk about negotiating or not negotiating? I think Trump undercutting his own advisors is one of the most durable tendencies, certainly of the first Trump term. It does happen occasionally, yes. Of his second one as well. The only person who speaks for Trump is Trump. Yeah, I mean, I wonder, I could be totally wrong, but I don't see the point of these tariffs as a grand negotiation with the whole world. So I see him talking about negotiation as like...

If he hears that something might actually really be bad for the economy, like if people are willing to come and make the case for him that this one tariff is too high for XYZ reason, that he is willing to bring them down. Sort of as an off-ramp, I don't think there's any way you can make it make sense that you need to negotiate with the whole world right now. Like the point of the policy was that they think they're going to spark like an American renaissance of manufacturing.

And they're hoping that that's going to happen. Guys, I wanted to move on from tariffs and briefly consider another Trump hypothetical that we were talking about this week. And that's him talking about seeking a third term in office in 2028. That is, of course, unconstitutional, but he has talked about this many times.

The difference now is that he assured in an interview this weekend with NBC's Kristen Welker that he was actually quite serious about it. He said that he was, quote, not joking and that, quote, there are methods which you could do it. What are you seeing from Republicans on the Hill and others reacting to this? Is this something that they're now taking more seriously?

Yeah, it's funny because this now feels like it was a lifetime ago, but I guess he just made these comments on like Sunday. Five days ago, Liz. Five days ago. It's truly been a journey. But yeah, I think this is something that his allies try to sort of laugh off as like, he's trolling y'all. Like he likes to get the media all worked up in a lather.

Ha ha. And then, you know, a few Republicans will say, well, you know, that's not constitutional. But people aren't treating it as like a big deal at all. It's actually interesting, like no matter how many times Trump jokes about a third term. I don't feel like Republicans do take it seriously. Like, I don't think this is just something they're saying to us. Like, even in like off the record settings, like no Republican lawmaker thinks that he's running for a third term.

Whether or not that's, you know, the correct take, I don't know, but that's definitely the sense I get. Yeah, I think Liz is right in that people have laughed it off as a joke. You know, on Thune, the Senate Majority Leader went so far as to say, like, you know, I think he's trolling you guys. Like, why are you taking this seriously? But I'm not sure if Trump is ever entirely joking. Yeah, I think that's the message of a lot of things is that...

Like, yes, he does troll people. But a lot of times he like really likes the idea. It might be impractical. It might not ever happen. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't want to try to do it. Like the idea that he would be president for life is something that seems to appeal to Trump. There was a. there were comments i think the first first really set off this talk back in 2018 where he was talking about chinese president xi jinping being president for life and was basically like

Yeah, I like the sound of that, actually. Yeah. Remember when he was like, let's delay the election? Kind of. And he sort of just floated it like maybe we should delay the election. But that was a time when all the Republicans were like, no, like they took it. They weren't like he's joking like. So it is interesting how like if they don't come out and just say no, it has. Saying this thing like he had to stop saying the election thing because he got so much pushback. Yeah.

One of the other things that that seems like a joke and some people might not take seriously and maybe one day it becomes serious, a lot like these tariff. After the break, we're going to talk about the Democrats and how they are viewing the results in some state and local elections this week. We'll be right back.

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Right? Well, the Washington Post has a lot of people you can turn to at any hour. You can read the most important and interesting stories. We can help you cook something delicious, give you advice on a tricky friendship, rave about a movie or book that you shouldn't miss. When you become a Washington Post subscriber, you have a companion for whatever part of your day needs it most. Get it all for just $4 every four weeks.

That's for an entire year. After that, it's just $12 every four weeks. Cancel any time. Go to WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe. That's WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe. Liz and Theo, I wanted to turn to something that I always love to talk about. They're not my beloved polls, but about actual voters voting. We had some actual elections this week. They took place in Wisconsin and Florida.

And to a casual viewer, this would look like a split decision. We had the Democratic-backed candidate winning in Wisconsin. We had Republicans winning in a pair of congressional special elections. in Florida. I think the big story here is the shifts that we've seen relative to the 2024 election. In all three of these races, there were two special elections in Florida, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. We saw Democrats do a lot better than they did in 2024.

Liz, can you just talk about how encouraged Democrats might dare to feel after these election results? Their popularity has sunk. You know, when you just ask people, what do you think of the Democratic Party? There's a very like a pretty worrisomely for them small amount of people who are like, yeah, I like them.

And that has been really worrying. Even Democrats don't like Democrats right now. Exactly. I mean, that's part of why the number is so low is there's like fired up people within the party who are angry at them because they want them to be doing more, yada, yada. And I think there was a lingering question of like. Does that mean they aren't even going to show up and vote? You know, they're so mad at Trump, but maybe they're so mad at Democrats, too, that they just stay home.

elections definitively answered no. Like there are very pumped up Democrats who are going to show up, who are very motivated by, you know, in Wisconsin, you could argue, very motivated by Elon Musk's role in that race. So people were pumped up and they really showed up. And I think that sort of now retroactively explains a little bit Trump freaking out.

last week and saying, nope, Elise Stefanik, I know you were going to be in my cabinet, but instead I need you to stay in the house and run your special, which will be sometime. this year, because even though she's in a plus 20 Trump district, he's worried that even plus 20 districts could be in play if you have some unknown Republican trying to defend that seat.

Yeah. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, was, of course, Trump's pick for United Nations ambassador. It was actually one of the first nominations that he announced when he was elected president. But yeah, Liz, as you mentioned, and I think this points to some of the stats that I wanted to get to, which is Elise Stefanik comes from a district that Trump won by 21 points. The shift towards Democrats in one of these Florida races was 22 points. It was actually the biggest...

over performance for Democrats in a special election in the Trump era out of about three dozen special elections. I did the math on this earlier this week. The other Florida race shifted towards Democrats by 16 points. And then we come to Wisconsin, which was the most high profile race that we saw this week. This race got... Tens of millions of dollars spent on it. Elon Musk spent a lot of that money. He was campaigning hard for the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimmel.

But Democrats, their candidate, Susan Crawford, won this race by 10 points. Theo, the thing that really struck me about this race was not so much the shift. Trump voters aren't as likely to turn out in special elections, and that's been pretty steady throughout his tenure. But this was not a low turnout race. This was like a midterm level turnout race. What are you seeing from reactions to this? And specifically, what are you seeing in reactions to Elon Musk's role in this race?

This looks a lot like what was happening in some of the special elections. In the first year of Trump's first term in 2017, you saw Democrats overperforming in these special elections, even if they weren't winning them. You know, famously, John Ossoff's narrow loss for a house seat in the Atlanta suburbs that was... the most expensive house race ever at the time. And then they went on and had a good 2018. Democrats had a good 2018 midterm election. They won the presidency in 2020, of course.

Yeah, so this certainly fits with that. The race in Wisconsin, I think it is unclear how much of a role Elon Musk played here, how much of this was sort of backlash to his involvement, and how much of this just looks like a typical election, special election, you know.

relatively low turnout election when Trump is in the White House. I mean, I feel like People around him say that he knew this was like a really hard race in Wisconsin because of the political environment, the fact that Dems have actually done well in those court races in general. And he just wanted to sort of like make a stand there anyway and see see what could happen, essentially. But I do think like.

It's been just kind of a stunning thing to watch to have Musk, who's been, you know, looming so large in Washington with Doge and just this huge, like, super figure. here, then, you know, try to take that on the road and on the campaign trail and, you know, wear the giant cheese head and all of that and then just see that, you know, having that be so resoundingly rejected.

There's just no question that is an embarrassment. I feel like he's really kept a low profile this week for the first time since he came to Washington. Like his Twitter feed is all like AI. Robots. Yeah. Did something happen last night? No. Let's talk about robots. Yeah, so I think that's very interesting, coupled with all the things he's been saying about, like, this has been really hard for him. His businesses are taking a hit. It does feel like a little bit of a turning point to me this week.

Even though his pack that spent all that money, millions and millions of dollars, is still going to be active in races, just he himself as the leading figure, the front man of this, I do wonder about the future of that. Yeah, I got to say, I think this was a real unforced error. We have seen Elon Musk as he's been shutting down federal government services and laying off workers, you know, participating in that.

He's become pretty unpopular with the broader American electorate. Like the numbers that he has in the polls are the numbers that. In a bygone era, if a president had those numbers, you'd see these members in swing districts being like, no, I don't want that guy to come campaign for me. And yet, like you said, Liz, he was right there with the cheese head on, being maybe the most prominent person late in that race, I think was a miscalculation at the very least.

guys before we go i wanted to touch on one more story that people might have heard about this week It also has to do with Democrats and kind of their... efforts to decide how to combat Donald Trump and climb out of their funk. And that's a long speech in the Senate by Cory Booker, who's a Democratic senator from New Jersey. Booker actually broke the modern record for the longest speech on the Senate floor. He started at 7pm on Monday and kept it going for more than 25 hours.

Guys, I'll admit I didn't actually watch any of this. Can you guys fill me in on like what happened here, what he was talking about and how this is being received? Yes, I was in the chamber, the Senate chamber when Booker started his speech. And you stayed for the whole thing, right? And I stayed for the whole thing because I am a reporter committed to The Washington Post. No, I was there for at least the first few minutes. And, you know, it started off, you know, very inauspiciously.

I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business. of the united states senate there was almost nobody in the senate chamber for as long as I am physically able. But it really picked up momentum after he made it through the night. Senators showed up early in the morning and asked him questions and cheered him on to the extent that they were allowed to under Senate rules.

And, you know, by the time he finished, more than 24 hours later, it sort of gave Democrats perhaps a shot in the arm. It's getting good trouble. My friend, Madam President. I yield the floor. Even if it didn't actually accomplish anything other than consuming Senate floor time, which is a precious commodity for more than 24 hours. Yeah. Now, to be clear, this was not a filibuster, right? Like usually when we talk about these long speeches.

members are fighting against a particular piece of legislation. Liz, I think a lot of people are looking at this kind of skeptically like, oh, it's interesting that he you know, gave this long speech. And it's impressive that he was able to stand there. Like, you can't go to the bathroom during that time. I think he said he dehydrated himself. Are people looking at Cory Booker and being like, yeah, this guy is showing us how to do it? Or is it kind of less than that?

Yeah, I think you're right that within Congress, a lot of reporters and maybe lawmakers are sort of like, OK, like it's a little bit, you know, OK, you're going to go give a really long speech. Whoop-dee-doo. That's not legislation. That's not policy. But I think that as his speech started to pick up more and more steam and attention online, and there's so many comments from...

Democrats being like, thank you for doing something. And like it seemed to really energize sort of regular liberal voters. It sort of shows that there's just a hunger for like anything at all in the Democratic base. There's a hunger to see people doing something different, trying something new. They're sick of hearing Democrats be like, oh, well. You know, we can only do X, Y, Z thing like this, how it works here. Like they just don't want to hear that. They don't like that.

And so anything that kind of shows you trying to do something different, I think, is getting like a really warm reception. And I think other senators like saw that and took note. Yeah, guys, it got me thinking, like... Who are the Democrats who have filled this vacuum right now? You know, the party is searching for leadership. There's been talk about whether Democrats need to move on from

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. Like, are there members who are taking advantage of the situation and kind of making a name for themselves aside from Cory Booker? And who would you point to? I would point, I think the most obvious example is, you know, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have been touring the country and drawing really enormous crowds, more than 30,000 people in Denver.

You've also seen others trying to do this as well. Senator Chris Murphy, who was with Booker on the floor. Murphy is, of course, a Democrat from Connecticut. Did his own, you know, sort of town hall event with a House Democrat. who is a Gen Z member from Florida. So you've seen Democrats trying to get out there like this, but it seems like Booker broke through in a way that most others have not.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think also like the tension of Congress is a lot of the stuff that plays well. doesn't play well inside. And a lot of stuff that plays well inside does not play well outside. So there's people like, for example, Kyrsten Sinema, senator from Arizona, recently retired. She actually was able to just like broker these huge deals in her time in the Senate.

And her reputation on like X or social media among liberals was like the most useless, annoying lady who didn't do anything, who just hated liberals or whatever. And you could not get those two realities to converge in any. in any sense of the word. So there's this weird inside-outside tension in Congress that's always been there. It's not new. And so the people who are best at seizing on this moment and energizing people on the outside are often...

the most hated inside and also sometimes ineffective inside too. Like Elizabeth Warren used to have this reputation back in the day before she was going to run for president. She no longer does, but people felt like she was always pandering to the outside audience and not really. doing things inside. And I think Booker's very well liked internally. And I don't think anyone's like rolling their eyes at this, but.

The sense internally is kind of like, what did this really accomplish? And there's always that tension between those two kind of like realities. Yeah. The idea of giving a long speech on the Senate floor is not a totally novel idea. Like this is something that happens from time to time. But I think it does speak to the fact that the Democrats are just looking for something, like try something, give us something. And this week, Cory Booker at least gave them something.

That's it for today's episode. Thank you so much, Liz and Theo. Thanks. Thanks, Eric. Theo Meyer covers the Senate for The Post, and Liz Goodwin is our congressional correspondent. Today's episode was produced by Laura Benshoff and mixed by Sean Carter. It was edited by Reena Flores, and thanks also to Emily Rahala.

Our team also includes Maggie Penman, Lucy Perkins, Ted Muldoon, Alana Gordon, Ariel Plotnik, Renny Svarnovsky, Sabby Robinson, Emma Talkov, Peter Bresden, Allison Michaels, Renita Jablonski, Colby Itkowitz, Alaha Izzati, and Martine Powers. I'm Aaron Blake. Have a great weekend. Think about why you listen to podcasts. It's like having a friend who makes you think or can help you wind down, right?

Well, the Washington Post has a lot of people you can turn to at any hour. You can read the most important and interesting stories. We can help you cook something delicious, give you advice on a tricky friendship, rave about a movie or book that you shouldn't miss. When you become a Washington Post subscriber, you have a companion for whatever part of your day needs it most. Get it all for just $4 every four weeks. That's for an entire year. After that, it's just $12 every four weeks.

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