This week, the action in the Senate was all about the annual defense authorization – the NDAA. Usually, the argument about what goes into this enormous bill that governs everything the military can and can’t do is a word soup cooked-up by defense nerds. You may recall things like SDI, the GWOT, and closing GITMO. All controversial in their own day, and all eventually resolved through the historically bipartisan NDAA process. But this time around, many in Washington are beginning to wonder if a n...
Jul 28, 2023•45 min•Ep. 424
When Alejandro Mayorkas was tapped to run DHS – the now 20-year-old behemoth with 260,000 employees created in the aftermath of 9/11 – Mayorkas said that he was determined to be the Secretary of Homeland Security, NOT the Secretary of Immigration. How’s that going? Yesterday, Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza sat down with him on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum to find out. Mayorkas’s department is charged with preventing foreign and domestic terrorist attacks. It monito...
Jul 21, 2023•37 min•Ep. 423
“Early one morning in April of 2016 I woke up and seriously contemplated the possibility that I would never be able to generate the strength, focus, and courage to get out of bed. The combination of crippling anxiety, chronic pain, muscle atrophy, and the fascinating mix of pharmaceuticals coursing through my body had, I feared, finally broken me.” Those are the words of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, on the first page of his new book, Lost...
Jul 14, 2023•46 min•Ep. 422
This weekend, President Joe Biden is headed to Europe. His first stop: the U.K. Biden is scheduled to meet with both His Royal Highness King Charles, an old acquaintance and fellow head of state; and the Right Honorable Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister and a fellow head of government – who just visited Biden in Washington this past month. On the agenda for these meetings: climate change, the war in Ukraine, and the “Atlantic Declaration” – that’s the diplomatic term for Biden and Sunak’s pu...
Jul 07, 2023•36 min•Ep. 421
In American politics, there is a small group of leaders who are – to borrow a term from Hollywood – hit makers. Everything they touch seems to turn to gold. There is perhaps no better example of this in Democratic politics than Rahm Emanuel. For those who need a refresher, Rahm is a former Bill Clinton advisor, turned Illinois Congressman, turned DCCC chair, turned Barack Obama chief of staff, turned mayor of Chicago… and currently, he is Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan. In his new posting, Rahm...
Jun 30, 2023•44 min•Ep. 420
The big debate in Washington this week is about realism versus idealism. It played out first in foreign policy, when Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a state dinner. Biden has made big claims about how democratic ideals are at the heart of American foreign policy; but he spent two days lavishing time and attention on Modi, who is persecuting Muslims and cracking down on public dissent from reporters and political opponents. Biden needs India to be an ally against China an...
Jun 23, 2023•49 min•Ep. 419
Timothy Parlatore spent over a year working for Donald Trump on a number of legal challenges, including the Department of Justice’s probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 and the investigation of all those documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago. Parlatore was inside the secret grand jury room in Washington. He oversaw the search for documents in Bedminster. He coordinated the former president’s response to Jack Smith’s subpoena for the national security files that eventually landed Trump in so much trouble....
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 418
Ben Terris is a feature writer at The Washington Post, where he’s carved out a unique role: reporting on what he calls, “the weirdo beat.” While Ben’s colleagues focus on what’s happening on the main stage in politics, he keeps an eye on the freak show that’s happening just out of sight. This week, Ben published his much-anticipated book “The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind.” “The Big Break” has a novel argument:...
Jun 09, 2023•51 min•Ep. 417
In this episode of Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Rachael Bade joins House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) just hours before final passage of the debt ceiling bill they shepherded through the House. This is the behind the scenes story from inside the Republican whip's office of how Kevin McCarthy's leadership team convinced House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling for two years and embrace his agreement with Joe Biden, which many on the right d...
Jun 01, 2023•39 min•Ep. 416
This week, the rumors became reality as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott announced their long-awaited presidential campaigns. The contrast between the two events foreshadowed all of the big questions for next year’s Republican primaries. Tim Scott, who is a favorite among his senate colleagues — but who is mostly unknown outside of his home state and the Washington, D.C., fundraising circuit — preached optimism and unity while sharing the stage with his mother. ...
May 26, 2023•51 min•Ep. 415
In the last year, a lot has changed in Washington for progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). In 2021 and 2022, with Democrats controlling the House, she and her allies could block any piece of legislation if they held together. Their big fights were with moderate Democrats over how many trillions of dollars to spend on President Joe Biden’s agenda. And they had easy access to the White House with Ron Klain as Biden’s chief of staff. Now they are in the minority and far from th...
May 19, 2023•35 min•Ep. 414
This week, after years of criticism from immigration rights activists and many progressive Democrats, President Joe Biden has ended the use of Title 42. That’s the public health law that Donald Trump first used during the pandemic to expel millions of asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden’s decision has drawn predictable outrage from Republicans. But perhaps more worrisome to the president is the growing list of critics from within the Democratic Party who are concerned that B...
May 12, 2023•34 min•Ep. 413
If you talk to Democratic strategists about the 2024 presidential election, there is a certain type of Republican nominee who they fear: Someone who knows how to speak in the language of inclusion; who can discuss abortion and guns without alienating suburban voters; who stands up to the GOP on some of the most fraught issues of the culture wars; who can argue that he or she has almost as much government experience as Joe Biden himself, but is still younger; who handled the pandemic in their sta...
May 05, 2023•45 min•Ep. 412
This past week, luminaries from politics, media, and Hollywood came together for the annual White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington. Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza joined forces with Major Garrett, CBS News’s Washington correspondent and host of the popular podcast, The Takeout, at the POLITICO-CBS News reception to bring you this very special live show. The show features guests such as Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.); Asa Hutchinson, the GOP presidential candidate and for...
May 02, 2023•39 min•Ep. 411
This week in Washington – more so than anytime in Joe Biden’s presidency – the news has been all about… the news. To start, it’s the weekend of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. But outside of the brunches and parties, a different type of media intrigue has been dominating politics. BuzzFeed News, the colossus of yesteryear’s viral reporting and the entity that published the infamous Steele Dossier about Donald Trump, announced that it was shutting down for good. On Monday, Fox ...
Apr 28, 2023•50 min•Ep. 410
On May 1, the hotly-anticipated HBO series White House Plumbers will premiere. The 5-episode series takes viewers along on a darkly funny ride with the fumbling ex-spooks and misguided “patriots.” E. Howard Hunt, played by Woody Harrelson and G. Gordon Liddy, played by Justin Theroux. The duo — along with some helpers — use any means necessary to secure the 1972 re-election of Richard Nixon, including breaking into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate Office Building...
Apr 21, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 409
This week, Florida’s statehouse cleared the way for Gov. Ron DeSantis to sign a six-week abortion ban. The man who shepherded the bill, House Speaker Paul Renner, joins Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza for this episode of Playbook Deep Dive. You might not know Renner’s name – but you definitely know his work: A bill to ban surgeries and prescription treatments for transgender minors, which has passed the state Senate and Renner will soon push through the House One of the most comprehensive new scho...
Apr 14, 2023•42 min•Ep. 408
The 2024 Republican presidential primary is off to a bit of a slow start. Donald Trump and former governors Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson have entered the race, but other likely candidates, such as Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, are still sitting on the sidelines. Almost every Republican senator who flirted with the idea seems likely to pass, with the notable exception of Tim Scott, who’s been making stops in Iowa and New Hampshire. Into this vacuum has come Vivek Ramaswamy, who stated his intent...
Apr 07, 2023•36 min•Ep. 406
Playbook Deep Dive host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza gathers three of the best journalists in the POLITICO’s newsroom to break down the immediate questions of what Trump's indictment means. Joining him is Jonathan Martin, POLITICO’s Politics Bureau Chief; Meridith McGraw, who covers Trump for POLITICO; and Erica Orden, who is new to POLITICO and is one of the best legal reporters out there. All three have been breaking news on this story – and they’re on deadline. These are their thoughts a...
Mar 31, 2023•22 min•Ep. 407
Lanny Davis long ago established himself as the go-to operative in Washington when you’re in the middle of a PR crisis. He was famously the public face defending Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. But today, 25 years later, he’s on the other side of a presidential sex scandal representing Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and self-described “fixer,” who went to jail for a number of offenses, including his role in paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her not t...
Mar 24, 2023•44 min•Ep. 405
On Thursday, the Senate began to re-evaluate one of the most controversial episodes in American history: the Iraq war. After a generation of use and abuse, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling a vote to repeal the Iraq AUMF, or authorization for the use of military force, which has been a key underpinning for America’s so-called “forever wars” in the Middle East. But Stephen Hadley, the man who was the architect of many of the national security policies that the Iraq AUMF enabled, has...
Mar 17, 2023•33 min•Ep. 404
Last November, when the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT launched, an old science fiction question suddenly became very real: How long until the machines are smarter than the humans? It marked the beginning of a new era in technology – one that has enormous implications for the economy and the nation’s politics. On the Hill, members of Congress suddenly needed answers about the coming disruption. The expert they turned to for those was a video game developer from Southern California, Rep...
Mar 10, 2023•29 min•Ep. 403
The war in Ukraine is just over one year old. There is widespread talk of a major spring offensive from both sides. War in Europe, once unthinkable, is now the new normal. But for one nation on Russia’s northern border, this feels like deja vu. Like Ukraine, Finland knows what it’s like to share a long border with Russia. The Finns have had Vladimir Putin as a neighbor, and they’ve been performing the same delicate dance of decoupling under his very watchful eye. Before his posting to Washington...
Mar 03, 2023•35 min•Ep. 402
Until last month, Anthony Coley was Director of Public Affairs at the Justice Department and a Senior Adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Coley was in the middle of some of the most extraordinary episodes at DOJ over the last two years: The appointment of two special counsels investigating one current and one former president. Responding to the drama around the investigation of the president’s son. Taking incoming from right-wing pundits saying Garland was protecting President Biden and...
Feb 24, 2023•44 min•Ep. 401
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, and President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is running for president. But not everyone on the right is impressed. In a brutal Valentine’s Day editorial, The Wall Street Journal said that there is “no clear rationale for her candidacy.” Over at The New York Times, the paper assembled 10 pundits to assess Haley’s candidacy, and the majority opinion was that she shouldn’t be taken very seriously. On this episode of Playbook Deep...
Feb 17, 2023•47 min•Ep. 400
In Washington, there is now a bipartisan consensus around being tough on China. This was happening even before the Chinese sent a spy balloon drifting across the United States. Last month, by a vote of 365-65, the House created a new “Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” And with China hawks now dominating the thinking of both parties when it comes to Sino-U.S. relations, Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza decided to check in with Max Baucu...
Feb 10, 2023•38 min•Ep. 399
After losing both chambers of Congress during Trump’s presidency and after waging a disappointing campaign to recapture them in 2022, the Republican Party is having a lot of intra-party feuds. This week, the post-election search for new leadership moved to the Republican National Committee. Right now, there’s no agreed-upon leader of the party, so like the recent battles in the Senate and the House, the RNC election has turned into a fight to define the GOP’s future. And once again, Donald Trump...
Jan 27, 2023•37 min•Ep. 397
What do you do when you are one of the guardians of your state’s most precious political and cultural institution — the very thing that defines New Hampshire — and the president you love and the party you’ve served your whole life, tells you to destroy it? To find out, we spoke to Ray Buckley. Buckley has served as the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party since 2007 and he was involved in every New Hampshire presidential primary campaign since he was an organizer for Jimmy Carter. A bi...
Jan 20, 2023•52 min•Ep. 396
In off-the-record conversations and private emails, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer argued that the pundits focusing exclusively on the fundamentals of the race — Biden’s approval rating and the dismal economic indicators — were missing the bigger picture. Yes, presidents usually lose an average of some two dozen House seats in similar circumstances, but that wasn’t the whole story. While many analysts argued that inflation would be more important than the diffuse issue of democracy...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 395
In late 2014, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) was traveling back to Louisiana with his wife when he had an idea: a plan to empower arch-conservatives to push back against their Leadership, led by then-Speaker of the House John Boehner. Soon after, he and eight Republican colleagues founded the House Freedom Caucus – the same group that is determined to deny Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) the speaker’s gavel. If you want to understand the roots of this week’s far-right rebellion, then you have to understa...
Jan 06, 2023•54 min•Ep. 394
