John is joined by Tom Nichols, professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and staff writer for The Atlantic, to discuss Donald Trump’s foreign policy appointments and the challenges he will face upon his return to the Oval Office. Nichols offers a tour d’horizon of global hotspots, from Ukraine to the Middle East, that will test Trump’s mettle immediately and with huge implications for U.S. vital interests; his assessment of how America’s foreign...

John is joined by America’s best-known presidential historians, Michael Beschloss and Jon Meacham, to discuss the first two weeks of the transition to Donald Trump’s second term. Beschloss and Meacham assess the most head-spinning of Trump’s initial appointments and their prospects for confirmation; why the sense of shock these picks have elicited, even among Republicans, is ludicrous on its face; the role of Steve Bannon as the intellectual architect of Trump’s radical governing agenda and...

John is joined by two up-and-coming Democratic congressmen—Seth Moulton, of the North Shore of Massachusetts, and Ritchie Torres, of the Bronx—to discuss what went wrong for Democrats in 2024. Moulton and Torres have little in common besides their relative youth; Moulton, 46, is white, straight, and holds multiple degrees from Harvard, while Torres, 36, is Afro Latino, openly gay, and never graduated from college. But their diagnoses of what ails their party (and, in particular, what allowed...

John is joined by Claire McCaskill, former Democratic U.S. senator from Missouri, to discuss the fallout from the election and transition to Donald Trump’s second White House term. McCaskill assesses Trump's first batch of cabinet and White House staff appointments, calling it a “mixed bag," with some picks mildly reassuring and others decidedly not; the practical and political challenges of mass deportation; the potential for (or inevitability of) friction between Trump and Elon Musk; and...

John is joined by political and cultural historian—and literary executor for Hunter S. Thompson—Douglas Brinkley to discuss the end of the 2024 election and Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Brinkley explains the harsh impact of Kamala Harris’s defeat on Joe Biden’s legacy, and how Biden only has himself to blame; how Trump managed, despite his clear political liabilities, to increase his share of the vote all over the country; why Harris’s extreme caution was her greatest weakness...

John is joined by his Puck partners Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby to discuss Donald Trump’s reelection: the remarkable scale of his victory and the unexpected breadth of the coalition he assembled to achieve it; whether anyone paying attention to the campaign—or the Trump era in our politics and culture more broadly—should have been surprised; the Democratic finger-pointing that’s already begun in the wake of Kamala Harris's loss; whether VP Harris or President Biden bears more responsibility...

John is joined by MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace for an Election Day special episode on the final hours of the presidential race. The two close friends examine Kamala Harris’s decision to close out her campaign by dropping all references to Donald Trump and returning to the themes of unity, change, and joy that animated her early days as the Democratic nominee; the contrast presented by Trump’s off-message, off-kilter, at times off-color turns on the stump, as he toggled between anger and...

John is joined by radio host and burgeoning media mogul Charlamagne tha God—whose nationally syndicated morning show, The Breakfast Club, has emerged as a key conduit to Black America for political figures from Kamala Harris to Lara Trump—to dig into the interplay of politics, media, and culture that led to a photo finish in the 2024 election. Charlemagne discusses his staunch support for Harris and his reaction to seeing Donald Trump’s team weaponize his words against her in an anti-Harris...

John is joined by Robert Costa of CBS News and Jonathan Martin of Politico to discuss the state of the presidential race as it enters the final weekend before Election Day. Costa and Martin weigh in on Kamala Harris’s speech on the Washington Mall, her closing argument writ large, and the factors boosting her prospects and those weighing her down; Joe Biden’s garbled Zoom comments about Trump supporters (or one specific Trump supporter, depending on whom you believe), the kerfuffle they...

John is joined by George Conway, Bill Kristol, Sarah Longwell, and Tim Miller from The Bulwark—the #NeverTrump startup that emerged as one of the 2024 election cycle’s breakout media success stories—to discuss the presidential campaign's final sprint to the finish line. The Bulwark Fab Four discuss Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s closing arguments; the tightness of the race in the battleground states and what might sway the tiny cadre of remaining undecided voters; Michelle Obama’s return...

John is joined by actor and director Jason Bateman to discuss the runaway success of SmartLess, his podcast with Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, which was recently snapped up by SiriusXm for $100 million. Bateman—whose Emmy and Golden Globe-winning career spans four-plus decades, carrying him from “Little House on the Prairie” and “Teen Wolf Too” to “Arrested Development” and “Ozark”—reveals the recipe for SmartLess’s secret sauce; why A-list Democrats (Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Joe Biden,...

John is joined by two celebrated scholars and best-selling authors on authoritarianism, autocracy, and tyranny—Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer at The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, and Yale University history professor, Timothy Snyder—to discuss this week’s headline-making reporting on the dark assessments of Donald Trump by former White House chief of staff John Kelly and other top military brass. Applebaum and Snyder argue that Trump’s fascism is beyond dispute; his use of language echoing...

Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back. Unlike previous seasons, writer and host Jed Lipinski brings listeners new episodes every week with no end in sight. Each episode of Gone South Season 4 tells a different story about one of the South's most interesting crimes. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John is joined by Maryland’s Democratic Governor, Wes Moore, to discuss the state of the presidential race. Currently America’s second-youngest governor, only the third African American ever to hold that office, and a 16-year U.S. Army veteran, Moore discusses the challenge Kamala Harris faced in being elevated so recently to the top of the Democratic ticket; how serious a mistake it was for her to say she wouldn’t have done much differently from Joe Biden; and why Donald Trump’s attitude...

John is joined by Obama 2008 and 2012 campaign guru and Harris 2024 senior strategist David Plouffe to assess the state of the presidential race two weeks out from Election Day. Plouffe explains why he believes his candidate has a higher ceiling and more appeal to the remaining pool of persuadable voters than Donald Trump; how most of the public polling you're obsessed with is so worthless that he doesn’t even look at it; what he’s seeing in the early vote data that buoys his optimism; why...

John is joined by Michigan Democratic congresswoman Debbie Dingell to discuss the razor's edge race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for the Great Lake State’s 15 electoral votes. Although national Democrats have recently begun to fret about Harris's standing in Michigan, Dingell—who was the among the first in 2016 to call out Hillary Clinton’s fatal weaknesses there—explains that she’s believed that the VP's position in the state has always been precarious; how Harris finally found her...

John is joined by Beltway journalistic power couple Peter Baker, the New York Times's chief White House correspondent, and Susan Glasser, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to discuss the state of the presidential race three weeks out from Election Day. Baker and Glasser assess Kamala Harris’s shift to harder-edged attacks on Donald Trump; Trump’s threat to use the National Guard or U.S. military against American citizens, to terminate the Constitution, and to seek "retribution" against his...

John is joined by legendary campaign guru James Carville to discuss the new documentary about his life, “Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid,” alongside the film’s director, Matt Tyrnauer. James and Matt explain how they came together to make a kind of sequel to “The War Room,” the iconic 1993 documentary that helped turn James into a celebrity; how his boisterous campaign to convince his party to replace Joe Biden caused many allies to see him less as Cassandra than Brutus, until Biden’s...

John is joined by Susanne Craig, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter and co-author of “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created The Illusion of Success,” to discuss the divergent myth and reality of Trump’s career in business. Craig recounts the nine years she has spent delving into the former president’s finances and the revelations that work unearthed—from the staggering $1 billion in accumulated losses Trump once reported to the IRS...

John is joined by Mark Cuban, the billionaire former owner of Dallas Mavericks and recently departed star of ABC's Shark Tank, to discuss his new role as Kamala Harris’s most voluble—and arguably most valuable—backer in the business world. Cuban explains why he likens Harris to a start-up CEO in “founder mode;” how her policies would benefit business (especially small business) more than those of Donald Trump; why Trump’s push for sweeping tariffs is “lunacy,” his answers to economic policy...

John is joined by the host of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the emergence, just five weeks before Election Day, of damning new evidence of Donald Trump’s central role in the January 6 insurrection. O’Donnell assesses the legal and political significance of that evidence, contained in a newly unsealed court filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith, well as the insight it offers into Mike Pence’s role in thwarting Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election—just one day...

John is joined by his colleagues Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby to discuss the vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. The Puck Superfriends analyze Walz’s wobbliness in the debate’s first half, his recovery in the second, and his late-stage landing of the night’s strongest and most sound-bite-friendly attack (on the topic of January 6); Vance’s undeniable forensic chops, apparent allergy to factual accuracy, and stubborn refusal to admit that Donald Trump lost the last election;...

John is joined by the world’s most celebrated data nerd, polling aggregator, and election forecaster, Nate Silver, to discuss the 2024 election. Nate offers unnervingly precise takes on just how close the race is (it won’t calm your nerves a bit); Kamala Harris’s likelihood of winning each of the battleground states; the thesis advanced in the New York Times that the GOP’s advantage in the Electoral College is shrinking; whether the polling industry has cured what ailed it in 2016 and 2020;...

John is joined by Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC, The New York Times, and Too Big Too Fail fame to assess the state of the American economy and its political dimensions six weeks from Election Day, with Sorkin offering his takes on an array of related topics: how Jerome Powell stuck the landing and why that achievement isn't more widely heralded; the tax-cutting ardor of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump; why so much of the business world is backing Trump despite considering him a knucklehead, a...