Join Puck’s chief political columnist, MSNBC/NBC News national affairs analyst, and best-selling author John Heilemann as he roams the corridors of power and in...
John is joined by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to discuss this year’s election, next year’s Congress, and the agita about his party’s future. Jeffries argues that although the Democratic performance on November 5 was undeniably “disappointing,” it was hardly catastrophic; that of all of Donald Trump’s disconcerting appointments, RFK, Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services may be the most dangerous; and that while he disagrees with Mike Johnson about much, he sees the speaker as a “good man” whom he can do business with (neither of which he could say so readily about Kevin McCarthy). Jeffries also describes how his new children’s book, The ABCs of Democracy, was influenced by Schoolhouse Rock, and offers his (solid) list of the all-time top five rap MCs and (unassailable) opinion that The Wire is the greatest TV show ever made.
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56:08
Pete Wehner: Hegseth’s Redemption Bromides, Trump’s Rampant Blasphemies & Fast Car’s Radiant Beatitude
John is joined by Pete Wehner—veteran of the Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 administrations turned eloquent Never Trumper—to discuss the once and future president's transformation of the GOP, his perplexing appeal to the Christian Right, and more. Wehner explains why the best summation of Trump’s agenda comes from Michel Caine as Alfred in The Dark Knight (“Some men just want to watch the world burn”); Pete Hegseth’s redemption narrative and invocations of his Lord and savior ring so hollow; and so many Evangelicals are so devoted to Trump in spite of his lack of godly virtues. Wehner and John also harken back to the magical duet of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car by Chapman and Luke Combs at this year's Grammy's, and riff on why the emotional outpouring it triggered was a hopeful sign for our politics and culture.
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1:16:06
Tina Brown: Trump’s Extended Middle Finger, Biden’s Shambolic Exit, & Martha’s Sad Denouement
John is joined by Tina Brown, the legendary magazine editrix and his former boss at The New Yorker, to discuss American politics and media at the end of a year of convulsive upheaval in both. Tina riffs on Donald Trump’s reality show transition and its freak show appointments; the soap operatic, still largely untold story of Joe Biden’s family and how it has driven him (notably but not solely by means of the pardon of his son, Hunter) to undermine his legacy as president; the death of the magazine business, her new incarnation as a Substacker, and the broader trends that have leeched both the vitality and sheer fun out of the journalism racket. Tina also explains why she found the new Netflix documentary on Martha Stewart at once so excellent and so sad.
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1:16:37
Figliuzzi & Weissmann: Trump’s Rough Justice & The Looming Kash Clash
John is joined by two renowned veterans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, and Andrew Weissmann, former FBI general counsel under Robert Mueller—to discuss Donald Trump’s plan to appoint one of his most controversial loyalists, Kash Patel, to be the bureau’s next director. Figliuzzi and Weissmann weigh in on Patel’s qualifications for the job, his ideas for radically restructuring and reorienting the FBI, his vows to use federal law enforcement to target Trump’s adversaries, and his espousal of a panoply of far-right conspiracy theories. The two former G-men also assess Pam Bondi, Trump’s replacement pick for Attorney General after the withdrawal of Matt Gaetz; Joe Biden’s blanket pardon for his son, Hunter; and Steve Bannon’s focus on seeing Weissmann jailed for unspecified Deep State transgressions.
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1:11:49
Griffin Dunne: All in the Family
John is joined by the actor, director, writer, and producer Griffin Dunne to discuss The Friday Afternoon Club, his recent memoir about his famous literary family. Dunne offers intimate portraits of his sister Dominique, an actress on the rise four decades ago (having starred in Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist in 1982) who was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend; his father, Dominick, whose coverage of Dominique’s murder trial in Vanity Fair turned him into the marquee chronicler of celebrity true-crime cases of the Eighties and Nineties, from O.J. Simpson to Claus von Bulow to the Menendez brothers; and his aunt, the legendary Joan Didion, about whom Griffin made an acclaimed Netflix documentary. Dunne also discusses the highlights of own acting career, from playing the lead in the Martin Scorsese cult classic After Hours to his memorable cameo in the first season of Succession.
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Join Puck’s chief political columnist, MSNBC/NBC News national affairs analyst, and best-selling author John Heilemann as he roams the corridors of power and influence in America on this twice-weekly interview show, taking you behind the scenes and beyond the headlines with the people who shape and shift our culture: icons and up-and-comers, incumbents and insurgents, moguls and machers in the overlapping worlds of politics, entertainment, tech, business, sports, media, and beyond. The conversations are rich and revealing, unrehearsed and unexpected … and reliably impolitic. A Puck-Audacy joint, new episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday.
USA