The Mona Charen Show

Thomas Edsall tells Mona Charen Democrats can recover from Trump's bad ratings by moderating on three fronts: transgender policy (affirm two sexes, restrict sports/prisons/youth surgery), immigration (pro-legal, pro-enforcement), and crime (oppose lenient DAs and no-bail policies). 
His diagnosis: the party's become too elitist and needs working-class voters back to beat MAGA.
If the Democrats Actually Want to Win, This Is What They Have to Do

Mona Charen and Eric Edelman examine how Trump stumbled into the Iran war without a clear plan, alienated allies, strengthened Tehran's position, and left the United States looking weaker.
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Links mentioned in this episode:
Inside Israel’s Secret Operation to Cultivate Ahmadinejad
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/us/politics/israel-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-iran.html
US lacks scores of ambassadors in Africa
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/10/2026/us-lacks-scores-of-ambassadors-in-africa

Democrats swore they'd never do what Republicans did with Trump. Then came Graham Platner. Mona Charen and Will Saletan on the fake oysterman, the vetting failure, and the death of shame—plus Trump's World Cup meddling and the loss Mona says America needed.
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Mona Charen is joined by historian Lindsay Chervinsky—executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library—for the Bulwark Book Club, discussing her book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic. They cover Adams's besieged first days in office, a cabinet secretly loyal to Alexander Hamilton, the mob of 10,000 outside the president's house, the Alien and Sedition Acts, Hamilton's plot to change the rules of the election of 1800—and how Adams invented the peaceful transfer of power by simply going home.
Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Presidency-Precedents-Forged-Republic/dp/0197653847

Mona Charen and FT columnist Ed Luce dig into Giorgia Meloni's public  dressing down of Trump, the UK's political chaos, and the fallout from Trump's Iran war—including the case that the U.S. is now paying Iran reparations and Israel is boxed into an impossible corner. Plus: Luce's surreal Sunday phone calls with Trump himself.
Upcoming: Mona will interview presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky about her book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic.