Episodes
Andrew Kirtzman joins to discuss his new book, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor.
Published 09/21/22
Corn's book raises the question that hung over the events of 1964, can the Republican Party be saved? And if it can't, can American Democracy be saved?
Published 09/16/22
Kabul Falling podcast host Nelafur Heydayat, as well as the series' executive producer, Bradley Hope, join to discuss the aftermath of the US pulling out of Afghanistan and its lasting effects one year later.
Published 09/12/22
Author Jonathan Darman joins to discuss his new book Becoming FDR.
Published 09/09/22
Is the evidence that has been made public so far enough for Merrick Garland’s Justice Department to bring the first criminal charges in history against a former president?
Published 08/29/22
Elliot Ackerman, former Bronze Star Marine, joins to discuss the fallout of the US pulling out of Afghanistan one year ago.
Published 08/15/22
Mary McCord and Dana Milbank join to discuss the recent raid of Trump's home, Mar-a-Lago, by the DOJ and FBI.
Published 08/09/22
Many chilling images and voices were displayed by the January 6th Committee on Thursday Night including audio tapes of some of the rioters talking among themselves about hunting down and possibly even killing members of Congress. The Rioters wreaked havoc on the US Capitol, smashing windows, detonating smoke bombs, assaulting police officers, while President Trump sat watching Fox News in the White House dining room, indifferent and unmoved, rejecting repeated pleas from his top White House...
Published 07/22/22
"The point with Trump is he's in on the joke." So said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham about his odd relationship with the 45th President as quoted by veteran journalist Mark Leibovich in his new book Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the price of admission. The idea that Trump's entire chaotic rollercoaster presidency was a giant joke and his army of Republican enablers were in on it all along is a continuing theme of Leibovich's book, as he charted how one...
Published 07/21/22
Liz Cheney dropped one more nugget at the end of Tuesday’s January 6th Committee hearing, new evidence that Donald Trump may be contacting witnesses who are being called to testify in an apparent effort to influence what they might say. If true, it’s a federal crime. And Cheney’s statement that the Department of Justice had been alerted immediately set off speculation about another possible avenue for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prosecutors to pursue. As the committee moves to wrap up...
Published 07/14/22
"Nobody on planet earth was more horrified by the notion of Donald Trump as President." So writes Tim Miller in his new book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. Miller was a longtime GOP operative, a spinmeister, a dirt disher, who worked for the McCain and Romney and Jeb Bush Presidential campaigns. And also served as a top spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. But his revulsion towards Trump knew no bounds and caused him to sever ties with virtually...
Published 07/01/22
"We're going to get charged with every crime imaginable." So said the White House Counsel, Patrick Cipollone on January 6th to White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson. The 26 year old former Deputy to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Hutchinson presented some of the most jaw dropping testimony yet to the January 6th Committee. Recounting how Trump was informed that morning that supporters of his with guns had gathered for his rally but were being refused admission because the weapons would be...
Published 06/29/22
On Friday, the most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades came down, a 6-3 ruling overturning Roe v Wade. For nearly half a century women have had a Constitutional right to abortion, now they don't. Because, as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, Roe was, "egregiously wrong from the start." Informed by what he called, "exceptionally weak reasoning." The new ruling from the court ditching what seemed like well settled precedent is certainly to inflame passion. And as...
Published 06/25/22
"Do you know what it feels like to have the President of the United States target you?" Those were the haunting words of Ruby Freeman, an election worker in Fulton County Georgia describing to the January 6th Committee what it was like when Donald Trump and his allies spread grotesque lies about Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Shaye Moss, accusing them of illegally dredging up suitcases of Biden ballots late at night to throw the 2020 election. None of it was true of course. The FBI, the US...
Published 06/23/22
An excerpt from the video taped testimony of Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann revealed this past Thursday described a phone call he got from John Eastman the day after Jan 6th in which the supposed constitutional scholar was unrepentant. Still clinging to the idea somehow some way, the results of the 2020 election could still be overturned. It was a remarkable moment that. was too much for Heerschmann, telling Eastman that he was out of "f'ing mind." And he needed a great criminal...
Published 06/17/22
An excerpt from one of the video clips played at Monday's January 6th Committee Hearing in which Donald Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, recounts the debate that went on within the White House on election night. Stepien and other top campaign aides were telling Trump to hold off on declaring victory that night, that there were still lots more votes to be counted. And that his slender but steadily slipping margins were starting to fade away. But Trump would have none of it and listen...
Published 06/13/22
“Stay the hell out of it!” Those were the key words from the so-called smoking gun tape, the conversation between Richard Nixon and his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman about how to get the FBI to back off its investigation into the Watergate break-in that occurred fifty years ago this week, June 17th, 1972. The plan they came up with in the days after the burglary was to get the CIA and its powerful director Richard Helms to tell the then head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray to back off, to stay the...
Published 06/13/22
Congresswoman Liz Cheney Thursday night laid out the case that Donald Trump orchestrated an attempted coup to block the peaceful transfer of power. And then sat back and watched in apparent approval while his supporters ransacked the US Capitol. It was the opening night of six public hearings on the January 6th attack that committee members will hope galvanize the public to what they believe is an on-going threat to American democracy. The hearing was marked by a compelling new video,...
Published 06/10/22
They may be the most anticipated and consequential of congressional hearings in decades. After eleven months of work and over one thousand interviews the committee investigating the January 6th 2021 attack on the US Capitol will premiere this week in primetime on Thursday at 8pm. With all the TV networks except for Fox News of course planning full coverage. The committee is touting evidence of what its members are calling a criminal conspiracy led by Donald Trump to subvert the will of the...
Published 06/07/22
Uniquely Nasty, a Yahoo News documentary from 2015, explored the little known story of the US Government’s relentless persecution of gays in the Cold War era, focusing in part on how the FBI under Hoover’s direction, tracked the names of tens of thousands of suspected gays and lesbians working for the Federal Government. And then took steps to have them fired. It was just one piece of a so-called lavender scare that left in its wake a trail of fear, paranoia, and destroyed lives. The full...
Published 05/31/22
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy addressed the Senate on Tuesday afternoon after the gut-wrenching news out of Texas. Another school massacre in which twenty-two people were killed, nineteen of them young children. Murphy could barely control himself. It was in his state where ten years ago there had been another slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School where twenty-six people were killed, twenty of them school children. Yet no matter how many of these senseless tragedies, the congress of...
Published 05/26/22
Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke to a small group of supporters Tuesday night explaining how he pulled off his surprise victory for re-election over a Donald Trump backed opponent. It was a truly extraordinary comeback for Raffensperger, barley a year ago his chances were viewed as hopeless. After refusing Trump's entreaties to find just enough votes to flip Georgia's electoral tally, Raffensperger was denounced by the ex President as an enemy of the people. And he got...
Published 05/25/22
The new podcast series Will Be Wild focuses on the run up to and the aftermath of the January 6th assault on the US Capitol. It's a deeply reported and at time astonishing series that explores the violent undercurrents that were circulating amongst far-right circles in the years leading up to the attack. The encouragement that those activists got from Donald Trump, and the catastrophic failure of law enforcement and intelligence officials to connect the dots and protect the US Congress from a...
Published 05/17/22
Recent tapes of Senator Lindsay Graham talking to New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin on the afternoon of Jan. 6th, 2021 have now been released. It reaffirms what many Republicans were thinking that day about the riot that Donald Trump had just unleashed upon the US Capitol. And expressed hope that the new Democratic President, Joe Biden, could lower the temperature and bring the country together. But as Martin and his Times colleague Alex Burns document in their new book, This Too Shall...
Published 05/13/22
Politico dropped a bombshell story that stung the political and legal world last week after obtaining a leaked draft opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would appear to be an overturning of Roe v Wade, the 1973 opinion that gave women the constitutional right to abortion. The story was astonishing on multiple levels. It showed that a majority of the court was in fact preparing to discard a core freedom that has been relied on by American women for nearly half a century....
Published 05/11/22