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POLITICO's Off Message

POLITICO takes you behind the scenes with Washington's power players to uncover what's really driving politics and policy in the nation’s capital.

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“If we miss this opportunity, God help us.” Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski. Two moderate senators smack in the middle — and on either side — of a split 50-50 Senate. On our first episode of Playbook Deep Dive, the two friends open up in a rare interview with POLITICO’s Burgess Everett. They get personal: about reconciliation, frustration over the Senate’s hurdles — even why Murkowski hogs the best fishing holes. And Manchin reveals a major endorsement, heard first on this show.Subscribe to our new weekly politics show, Playbook Deep Dive, wherever you listen to podcasts.Rachael Bade is a co-author of POLITICO Playbook.Burgess Everett is co-congressional bureau chief at POLITICO.Adrienne Hurst is a producer for POLITICO audio.Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO audio.
Special thanks to Elana Schor, Anthony Adragna and Ben LefebvreSHOW NOTES

Democrat Manchin backs Republican Murkowski's reelection, by Burgess Everett

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Bonus: The Senators at the center of the 50-50 split

Presenting a sponsored episode of “Global Translations”: Over the past year, businesses, employees and families across the globe were forced to rethink what it means to “go to work.” Now, with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout underway, many corporate leaders are focused on ensuring the return to work is equitable for all employees.

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The page who took down the GOP

On a special episode of POLITICO's Nerdcast:
"It became clear that Scott Pruitt had sought to purchase a used mattress from the Trump hotel. And I thought, 'This is not what I expected this job would look like.'" At the close of Donald Trump's presidency, POLITICO's reporters and editors share their strongest memories of the last four years. Shocking moments they witnessed, conversations they overheard and what will stay with them forever. Plus, new Playbook co-author Tara Palmeri talks to Scott Bland about what she really wants to see in Biden's first days in office.
Scott Bland is a politics editor at POLITICO.Tara Palmeri is a POLITICO Playbook co-author. Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO audio.

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"I haven't been able to get this moment out of my head"

"Off Message" presents Episode 9 of the new season of POLITICO's podcast "Global Translations": 
The pandemic sent shockwaves through a global labor market already upended by digitization and the green energy transition. It left tens of millions jobless and amplified skills gaps. Even as we spent trillions keeping the economy on life support, investment in the skills of the future has been scarce. So how do we get the right skills to the right people, to get the economy motoring again? Hosts Ryan Heath and Luiza Savage speak with experts about these major labor disruptions.Ryan Heath is the host of "Global Translations". Luiza Savage is a host of "Global Translations".Saadia Zahidi is a managing director at the World Economic Forum.Marianne Wanamaker is a economics professor at the University of Tennessee and former chief domestic economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisors.Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.
Check out Ryan Heath's article on how workers are struggling for skills support here: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/workers-are-struggling-for-skills-support-during-pandemic-455063And check out the other POLITICO newsletters: Global Translations: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-translationsWeekly Shift (labor): https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-shiftTransition Playbook: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/transition-playbook 

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Cures for an Ailing Labor Market

"Off Message" presents Episode 8 of the new season of POLITICO's podcast "Global Translations": [Sponsored Content] As the world looks to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net zero by 2050, the financial sector is playing a critical role in facilitating this low-carbon transition through the deployment of innovative financing solutions and by rethinking how climate risk is analyzed and managed.

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Digging for Solutions: Securing Minerals for Green Energy

"Off Message" presents Episode 6 of the new season of POLITICO's podcast "Global Translations": To understand how essential critical minerals are to our world, we turn to a case study: cobalt. This mineral is proving key to the future of green energy, defense and high tech manufacturing — not to mention electric vehicles. But cobalt has its challenges. Hosts Luiza Savage and Ryan Heath look at China’s dominant role in global cobalt mining and the serious problems that can arise if other countries can't get enough supplies.Luiza Savage is the host of "Global Translations".Ryan Heath is a host of "Global Translations". Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.Nedal T. Nassar is Chief of Materials Flow Analysis Section at the U.S. Geological Survey.Bryce Crocker is the CEO of Jervois MiningAimee Boulanger is the executive director of Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA)Read Luiza Savage's article on how America got outmaneuvered in a critical mining race:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/02/china-cobalt-mining-441967And check out the other POLITICO newsletters: Global Translations: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-translationsMorning Energy: https://www.politico.com/morningenergy/The Long Game: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-long-gameChina Watcher: politico.com/chinaMorning Tech: https://www.politico.com/morningtech/ 

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Why green energy means mining: the case of cobalt

"Off Message" presents Episode 5 of the new season of POLITICO's podcast "Global Translations": The technologies that protect us, move us and power our daily lives require mining minerals and metalsin distant places. But access to these essential materials is increasingly under threat. Hosts Luiza Savage and Ryan Heath talk with experts who are sounding the alarm. 
Luiza Savage is the host of "Global Translations".Ryan Heath is a host of "Global Translations". Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.Sharon Burke is a senior advisor for the International Security Program and Resource Security Program at New America. Nedal T. Nassar is Chief of Materials Flow Analysis Section at the U.S. Geological Survey.Tom Duesterberg is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He is an expert on trade and foreign policy. Luiza Savage's article on how America's dependence on critical minerals from China: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/18/china-could-strangle-biden-agenda-437171And check out the other POLITICO newsletters: Global Translations: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-translationsMorning Energy: https://www.politico.com/morningenergy/The Long Game: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-long-gameChina Watcher: politico.com/chinaMorning Tech: https://www.politico.com/morningtech/

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Critical Minerals: The next dirty fight over clean energy

"Off Message" presents Episode 3 of the new season of POLITICO's podcast "Global Translations": 
The pandemic and the rise of China are prompting Republicans and Democrats to turn to government power to grow industries important to America’s security and place in the world. “Industrial policy” is an idea long reviled among Washington policymakers. Hosts Luiza Savage and Ryan Heath talk to the people trying to make industrial policy cool again.
Luiza Savage is the host of "Global Translations".Ryan Heath is a host of "Global Translations". Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO Audio. Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.Jennifer Harris  is a sentior fellow at the Hewlett Foundation, formerly at the US State Department during the Obama administration.Mariana Mazzucato is an internationally recognized economist and professor at University College London (UCL), and Founder/Director of UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.Check out and subscribe to POLITICO's Global Translations, and China Watcher newsletters. Read Luiza Savage's article on the new industrial policy emerging in the US to counter China's ascent.Global Translations newsletter: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-translationsChina Watcher newsletter: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-china-watcher
POLITICO article: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/china-us-economy-industrial-policy-global-translation-433954

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How can the US compete with China, Inc.?

"Off Message" presents the second episode of the new season of POLITICO's podcast "Global Translations": Once there is a working Covid vaccine, manufacturers across the globe will need to scale up production to produce billions of doses — meaning billions of pharmaceutical-grade glass vials, rubber stoppers, packaging and storage and refrigeration. In a special airing of POLITICO's Global Translations podcast, hosts Luiza Savage and Ryan Heath look at the challenges of making enough vaccines for the world.Luiza Savage is the host of "Global Translations"Ryan Heath is a host of "Global Translations"Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO AudioKara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO AudioJenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO AudioIrene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO AudioSarah Owermohle is a POLITICO health reporter covering vaccines. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.Jim Robinson is a former MERCK executive (manufacturing lead for ebola project); currently with CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations).Dan Diamond is a POLITICO health care reporter and the host of the "Pulse Check" podcast and newsletter. Check out and subscribe to POLITICO's Global Translations, POLITICO Pulse, and Global Pulse newsletters. Read Luiza Savage's article on why nationalism is the next big challenge for Covid-19 vaccines. Global Translations newsletter: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-translationsPOLITICO Pulse newsletter: https://www.politico.com/politicopulse/Global Pulse newsletter: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-pulsePOLITICO article: "The next vaccine challenge: Nationalism": https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/28/covid-vaccine-challenge-nationalism-433023

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Can we get enough vaccine?

"POLITICO's Off Message" brings you a special episode of POLITICO's new podcast series "Global Translations." From closed factories to closed borders, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of our systems, creating a period of scarcity where demand skyrocketed — from freezers to PPE — and we couldn't supply items fast enough. In this episode of "Global Translations", POLITICO hosts Luiza Savage and Ryan Heath take a deep dive with experts into global supply chains and what "decoupling" and "reshoring" are all about when it comes to America’s reliance on China and the rest of the world.Luiza Savage is the host of "Global Translations". Ryan Heath is a host of "Global Translations".Annie Rees is a producer for POLITICO Audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO Audio.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio.Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.
Adegoke Oke is a professor of supply chain management at Arizona State University.Tom Duesterberg is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He is an expert on trade and foreign policy. David Wertime is POLITICO's editorial director for China and author of the China Watcher newsletter.
Check out and subscribe to POLITICO's Global Translations and China Watcher newsletters, and Luiza Savage's in-depth piece on how the pandemic is forging a new consensus on globalization.
Global Translations: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/global-translations China Watcher: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-china-watcher Supply chain tug-of-war article: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/21/pandemic-forging-new-consensus-globalization-430605

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Introducing... Global Translations: The world's tug-of-war

Rahm Emanuel — former Chicago mayor and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama — talks to POLITICO founding editor John Harris about his new book, "The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World," his "toy phone" in Bill Clinton's White House and his thoughts on the 2020 field.

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Rahm Emanuel weighs in on 2020

We're bringing you an episode of POLITICO's Global Translations, a show about big global problems that will take a certain amount of creativity to solve. 
Driven by a public clamoring for action and pressure from corporate CEOs, lawmakers are noting an evolution in attitudes toward climate action among some of their Republican colleagues – a subtle but significant shift in tone that could pave the way for modest legislation this year. Guests include:Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL)Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE)Catherine McKenna, Canada’s first foreign minister for climate and the environmentDan Byers, U.S. Chamber of CommerceIf you like the episode, check out the show wherever you listen. 

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A new tone from some in GOP on climate change -- but mostly behind closed doors

To get the inside view from the only people in the world who know what it’s like to run in a primary field so large -- and do so in the shadow of Donald Trump -- we invited the strategists for four of the top GOP primary campaigns of 2016 into a Washington cigar bar, a literal smoke-filled room, to talk shop. Which Democratic candidate has the most raw political talent? What weaknesses of Donald Trump's would they exploit in 2020? And why is everybody still so ticked off about the Virginia primary?
Guests Danny Diaz (from the Bush campaign), Beth Hansen (Kasich), Jeff Roe (Cruz), and Terry Sullivan (Rubio).

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Which 2020 Democrat should Donald Trump most be afraid of?

Kirsten Gillibrand is a U.S. Senator with a soaring national profile, but her presidential campaign has yet to take flight. She’s even at risk of failing to have enough donors to make the debate stage under DNC rules, leading her to ask people for just a dollar, to boost her numbers. But that’s not what bothers her most about running for president. 

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This is what Kirsten Gillibrand hates about running for president

In a crowded field of Democratic presidential contenders, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper makes an impression on voters as a genuine candidate, even if he's a bit quirky. He colors outside the lines of the political conventions -- a geologist by training, a brewer and restauranteur by profession, and a politician only later in life. 
In this episode, he talks about his temper as a child, his pragmatic approach to politics, and how he's managed to succeed in a people-driven business despite a condition commonly known as face blindness, a condition that keeps him from recognizing familiar faces. 

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Is John Hickenlooper too normal to be president?

For our post-midterms edition of Off Message, we talked to Corry Bliss and Charlie Kelly, the two men who led the largest House campaign organizations in 2018. This election, Bliss led the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, and Kelly led its Democratic counterpart, the House Majority PAC. They talk about what went on behind the scenes, their biggest regrets of 2018, and where things go from here.
 

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How it feels to win (and lose) a House majority

The strategist behind Obama's presidential campaigns gives his midterms predictions, shares his lightning-round thoughts on 2020 candidates and tells Tim whether he thinks any politician can recapture the Obama magic.
David Axelrod doesn’t like the path the country—or the Democratic Party—is on. 
The chief strategist who steered Barack Obama’s winning White House campaigns worries that President Trump has laid a trap—and that his party is walking right into it. “Escalation breeds escalation,” Axelrod said in an interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast. “And within the Democratic Party, I think there is a big debate about how to deal with Trump because he has no boundaries. He’s willing to do anything and say anything to promote his interests. It’s a values-free politics; it’s an amoral politics. And so, there is this body of thought that you have to fight fire with fire and so on. But I worry that we’ll all be consumed in the conflagration.” 
Stressing that “civility actually is a really important element of politics,” Axelrod criticized Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder for recent comments they’ve made, and described the backlash he has faced for urging Democrats to avoid confrontation. The best way to defeat Trump, Axelrod argued, is by nominating someone who can appeal to an exhausted electorate. 
“I don’t think people will be looking for a Democratic version of Trump,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll be looking for people who can go jibe for jibe and low blow for low blow. I think people are going to be looking for someone who can pull this country out of this hothouse that we’re in.” 
At his offices in Chicago, where he directs the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, we discussed Axelrod’s predictions for the midterm elections, the risk of overreach with a new House majority, and the strengths and vulnerabilities of the top-tier 2020 Democratic hopefuls. 

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David Axelrod: Voters don't want a ‘Democratic version of Trump’

When Chip Roy was a top staffer for Ted Cruz, he was an architect of the Texas senator’s strategy to shut down the government over Obamacare.
Now, in all likelihood, he’s heading for Congress with a House seat of his own, and top Republicans worry he’s going to make Cruz look like a squishy moderate.
Roy is ready to play hardball with GOP leaders in Congress. He has pledged to support House Freedom Caucus founding chairman Jim Jordan for speaker, and is expected to quickly establish himself as one of the House GOP’s most outspoken and combative members.
As with so many conservatives, however, Roy is treading lightly when it comes to Donald Trump. Once a fierce critic—described by friends as a committed “Never Trump” advocate in 2016, when he was working in support of Cruz’s presidential campaign—the congressional hopeful now talks fondly of the president, praising his assault on “the swamp” and sharing his concern about a “deep state” acting as a shadow government.
And while most Republicans campaigning for Congress this November are touting the accomplishments of President Trump and his GOP majorities: tax reform, regulatory relief and a soaring number of federal judicial appointments. In the deep-red 21st congressional district of Texas, Chip Roy is running on a different message: Republicans haven’t done nearly enough.
“If there is a thousand miles to go, we’ve gone maybe 50 miles,” Roy tells POLITICO’S “Off Message” podcast. “So now, we’ve got to focus on the things that the people really want to see done. We’ve got to have healthcare freedom, we’ve got to balance the budget and we’ve got to secure the border.”
POLITICO's "Off Message" podcast is hosted by Tim Alberta, produced by Zack Stanton and executive produced by Dave Shaw. Intro/outro music by Podington Bear.

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Meet the next Ted Cruz

Steve Scalise was nearly killed last summer when a gunman opened fire at the Republican congressional baseball team’s practice. Last September, after months of surgeries and intensive rehabilitation, the Louisiana congressman was met with a thunderous ovation when he returned to work at the Capitol. The emotional scene—cathartic for Scalise and so many colleagues who were on the baseball field with him—might have obscured just how far he has to go. He’s still undergoing regular physical therapy and walks with the assistance of a cane; the wounds to his pelvis, hip and left leg were so severe that Scalise still doesn’t know whether he will ever be able to run again.
Mentally, however, he claims to have fully recovered. Scalise says he was able to process the incident and put the trauma behind him, by reconstructing the events of the day with the help of his teammates and security detail. That included a trip back to the baseball diamond with David Bailey, one of the two U.S. Capitol Police officers who saved his life.
“We went back to second base, and he showed me where the shooter was,” Scalise told me in an interview for Politico’s “Off Message” podcast. “We’re looking at first base, where [U.S. Capitol Police officer Dave Bailey was] in a gunfight with the shooter. And he [was] standing just kind of isolated on an island at first base with no protection, and the shooter is kind of hiding, pigeonholed behind this cinderblock dugout behind third base.”
Of course, Scalise doesn’t want to be defined by that event. And he’s a fascinating character for other reasons.
Control of the House of Representatives isn’t the only thing at stake in the Nov. 6 midterm elections—it’s the future of the House speakership. Paul Ryan is retiring, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi faces an uprising among younger Democrats and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has not demonstrated the ability to collect the requisite 218 votes needed to become speaker. That makes Scalise, the House majority whip, a popular dark-horse pick to become speaker of the House—that is, if Republicans hold the majority.
Scalise, one of Washington’s most reliably on-message lawmakers, is even more cautious than usual these days. He’s spending the home stretch of the election season traveling the country with his House Republican colleagues, raising money and collecting favors while hugging President Donald Trump at every turn. Right now, with a career-climaxing promotion potentially awaiting him next month, Scalise can’t afford to alienate Republicans on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The internal dynamics are fragile: McCarthy’s allies have eyed Scalise warily for months, worried that he is undermining his superior’s bid for speaker. Scalise, for his part, promises not to run against McCarthy for the top spot if Republicans hold the House, and moreover, he tells me, “I think Kevin would have the votes.”
Politico's "Off Message" podcast is hosted by Tim Alberta. Zack Stanton is producer. Dave Shaw is executive producer. Intro/outro music by Podington Bear.
 

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Steve Scalise thinks he knows who'll be the next House Speaker

Isaac's last episode: The former secretary of state has led a Forrest Gump-like life, from his high-school days playing hockey with Bob Mueller to introducing John Lennon at a Vietnam protest to running for president and almost winning. Some people think he should run again in 2020.
He probably isn’t, but says he wants to be part of the future of the Democratic Party, and the country, no matter what. 
He’s sticking to his insistence that any White House talk distracts from 2018. But there’s clearly still an ember of desire to run again. “I’ve only done it once, unlike a lot of people who’ve been out there, and came pretty close,” he said in our interview. It was a conversation he ended with a standard-politician four-point list of priorities, some 40 minutes after delivering a standard-politician evasive answer about a 2020 candidacy: “I haven’t eliminated anything in my life, period, anything—except perhaps running a sub-four [minute] mile.” 
But that is not the point for Kerry, whose public life stretches across modern political history, from the day in 1971 when, as a young Vietnam veteran, he testified before the Senate in opposition to the Vietnam War, to walking out of the State Department for the last time in 2017. He’s already done fundraising, and endorsed several Democratic candidates in 2018—including a few of his former State Department aides running for House seats. He says he’ll be out campaigning for the midterms. And he says he’ll keep proselytizing in speeches on college campuses from the example of his own life, about how activated young people have always been the ones to change the course of political history. 
“I’m engaged, man, I’ve done this my whole life. I’m not going to suddenly stop and say I’m not going to be involved in these choices, you know,” Kerry said. “You know that old question that sometimes was asked [after] World War II or Korea: ‘Daddy, what did you do in the war?’ Well, people are going to ask, ‘Daddy, Mommy, kid, what did you do in this moment in our history, where our democracy is threatened, where the challenges are as great as they’ve ever been, and where the world is not coordinating very effectively?’ That’s a big challenge.” 

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John Kerry on 2020, Trump and why we need to ask ourselves "what did you do?"

If Democrats retake the House, Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings will likely become the new chair of the Oversight committee. Here, a preview of what to expect from their coming investigations of the Trump administration.
Cummings says President Donald Trump “is a person [who] calls a lie ‘the truth’ and the truth ‘a lie.’” He thinks the president violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause daily, and sees an abnormal tolerance for corruption and misconduct emanating straight out of the Oval Office. And, in the eyes of the 67-year-old Democrat, just as troubling is the notion that Congress has fallen flat on its Constitutional duty to check the administration’s whims.
Expect that to change if Democrats retake the House in November. Then, Rep. Cummings will likely become the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, giving him subpoena power and the ability to call as many hearings as he wants on whichever topics he chooses. In light of everything he’s learned about Trump—and especially after Senate testimony last week by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which Cummings saw as dishonest—the congressman doubts he’ll be able to believe any denial from anyone in the administration, regardless of whether or not they’re under oath, he said in an interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear. Get more at politico.com/podcasts/off-message

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Elijah Cummings is ready to investigate Trump

The Clinton-era independent counsel weighs in on Brett Kavanaugh, why Trump has an obligation to answer Mueller's questions and whether he plans to support Trump in 2020.
Ken Starr would love to hear from Donald Trump. He thinks he could help. The former independent counsel whose investigation into President Bill Clinton led to Clinton’s impeachment says President Trump has enough to be worried about that he’ll need good lawyers around him as he decides whether to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller. “If I’m on [Trump’s] criminal defense team, I would be very concerned,” Starr said in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast. “I don’t know what President Trump knows, but there have been a number of guilty pleas. Some of those guilty pleas go to false statements, so I would just be cautious” before answering questions from Muller.  Starr says he’d advise this even while he believes that Trump has a duty to answer investigators’ questions under oath, just as Bill Clinton did 20 years ago. “He is the president of the United States, and I think that carries with it an obligation to cooperate with duly-authorized federal investigations,” Starr said.
“You’re not above the law. You think you’ve got a time-out based upon your service as president. We respect you, you are occupying the presidency, you have a very important job,” Starr said. “But there’s no time out. You have to respond when you’re summoned to the bar of justice. That’s the way I respond to all this. You have to be a rule of law person if you’re going to occupy a position of trust.” As he promotes his new memoir, “Contempt,” Starr—who says he probably wouldn’t have written the book if Hillary Clinton had won, reasoning that it would have damaged her presidency unfairly—says “President Trump would be well-advised” to a take lesson from the book to heart: rules matter. “Facts will come back to haunt you eventually,” said Starr. “The truth ends up coming out, and so you better deal with those facts.”
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear. Get more at politico.com/podcasts/off-message

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Ken Starr: If I was Trump's lawyer, ‘I would be very concerned’

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono gets candid about why she believes Kavanaugh's accuser, what it's like being the only immigrant in the U.S. Senate, and shares her own #MeToo story.
Mazie Hirono thinks Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is not telling the truth about the sexual assault he allegedly committed as a teenager. She thinks he wasn’t telling the truth to the Judiciary Committee when he claimed not to remember any sexual misconduct by a judge he clerked for who was forced to resign last year after allegations from more than a dozen women.  And the Hawaii senator says that if she gets to question Kavanaugh in another hearing, she’s going to tell him that the revelations over the weekend—when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her at a high-school party in the early ‘80s—now make her doubt what the nominee said under oath two weeks ago even more. “It somewhat stretches credulity, let’s put it that way,” said Hirono in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast. “I think he didn’t want to lie about it, so one way you get through that is saying, ‘I don’t remember.’” If Kavanaugh’s nomination fizzles and President Donald Trump has to name a replacement, Hirono says he better find someone whom she considers less of a conservative ideologue, or else prepare for Senate Democrats—especially if they win a majority in November’s elections—to keep the court seat vacant until after the 2020 election. “I think we’ve had those kinds of vacancies before, and we certainly had over a one-year vacancy with Merrick Garland,” said Hirono. “So the world does not come to an end because we don’t fill all of the nominees.” Hirono is short. She is quiet. She’s not much of a tweeter. She’s not running for president. She doesn’t have an outsize personality in a chamber bursting with them—her hobbies include making her own paper and folding origami cranes. She does pottery, too, but says she lacks the patience to use a wheel. Yet the unassuming senator has become Democrats’ firmest pillar of resistance on judicial nominations, refusing to vote for cloture for any Trump nominee, and asking every man who appears before her at a committee hearing if he’s engaged in physical or verbal sexual assault as a legal adult. Nominees “can lie,” Hirono said, explaining why she’s made that her standard question, “but they better hope that nobody that they did this to will come forward.”
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear. Get more at politico.com/podcasts/off-message

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Mazie Hirono: Brett Kavanaugh is fudging the truth

Ben Jealous is a venture capitalist. Opponents call him a socialist. He says that’s the cost of wanting “people to be treated in a way that’s just.”
Ben Jealous campaigned all over the country for Bernie Sanders, but he has a platinum American Express card in his wallet. He got his first campaign experience as a 14-year-old volunteer for Jesse Jackson in 1988, but the presidential candidate from that year he has since reconsidered is Steve Forbes, whose ideas about transforming schools into vocational training Jealous cites as a model for his own approach to education reform. He may be the lone liberal Democrat running this year who says he doesn’t want anything to do with socialism, but is for “Medicare for all” and free college tuition. Jealous is the first major player to come directly off Sanders’ 2016 campaign and have done this well. He’s the first leader of a civil rights organization—from 2008-2013, he was president of the NAACP—to ever be even this close to winning a statewide office. He’s a test case to see if someone with his kind of politics can win something more than a primary, even in a heavily Democratic state. But first, he’ll have to get past Republicans who insist that he’s a socialist—and he’ll have to overcome the clear anger that attack stirs up in him, despite his public statements that he takes their label as a badge of honor. “It’s unfortunate if we get to a place where we believe that you have to be a socialist to simply want people to be treated in a way that’s just. I would not like to live in that country,” Jealous says.
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear.

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Ben Jealous: ‘Americans are suffering under the weight of half-measures’

A reprise episode: It wasn’t all porn star hush money: Michael Cohen once tried to negotiate an appearance by Donald Trump on Seth Meyers’ show, for what the “Late Night” host pitched as a fun way of coming together after torching Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.
Meyers had invited Trump after running into him at the “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary special in February 2015, a few months before the real estate developer’s presidential campaign launched.
Trump, Meyers told me in an interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast, started out receptive to appearing on “Late Night,” but the conversation ended once Meyers refused a demand Cohen relayed that was non-negotiable to Trump: He wanted Meyers to go on air and publicly apologize for making fun of Trump at the dinner four years earlier.
Neither a White House spokesman nor Cohen responded when asked what happened.
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear.

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Seth Meyers: Trump wanted me to apologize for making fun of him (REPRISE)

A reprise episode: Donald Trump is still the answer to many conservative evangelical leaders’ prayers. Or at least to their continuing grievances. They embrace Trump the policymaker, despite being uneasy about Trump as a man, says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group.
Perkins knows about Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claimed, in a 2011 interview, that in 2006 she had sex with Trump four months after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. He knows of the reports that Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) was paid off to keep the affair quiet in the waning weeks of the 2016 election. He knows about the cursing, the lewdness and the litany of questionable behavior over the past year of Trump’s life or the 70 that came before it.
“We kind of gave him—‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins said in a January 2018 interview for Off Message.
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear.

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Tony Perkins: Trump gets ‘a mulligan’ on Stormy Daniels and other past indiscretions (REPRISE)

Michael Hayden doesn’t know whether Donald Trump colluded with the Russian attack on the 2016 election—but he’s sure the president helped the Kremlin and is continuing to do so every day.
Hayden, a retired general who led the NSA and the CIA under President George W. Bush, is sure, too, of what he calls a “convergence” of interests between Trump and Russia. And he thinks it risks destroying America.
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear.

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Why Michael Hayden says Trump is helping Russia (Reprise)

The president of the American Federation of Teachers says that union members haven’t just cooled on Trump—they’ve turned on him. Union leaders and members now “know who the bad guys are,” says Weingarten, the longtime head of the American Federation of Teachers—President Donald Trump and the five justices who signed on to the court’s Janus decision in June. Early on, Trump’s support among organized labor was at astronomical levels for a modern-day Republican, with November 2016 exit polls showing him with the support of more than 40 percent of union households. A March 2017 Reuters-Ipsos poll gave him a 62 percent approval rating among union members, but by spring 2018, it had dropped to 47 percent. The union members who ruled out voting for Hillary Clinton don’t appear to be sticking around as the president actually moves forward on his trade war and economic agenda.  Weingarten says the combination of an antagonistic administration and hostile high court has driven union members to the barricades. And though she acknowledges that the AFT and its allies may now be in a fight for their existence, at least they’re in the fight.
POLITICO’s "Off Message" podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is a proud member of the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Special thanks to Dave Shaw. Intro and outro music by Podington Bear.

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Randi Weingarten: For unions, this is a ‘which side are you on’ moment

The founder of Moms Demand Action talks about how she created one of the most successful gun control groups in the country—and where they go from here.
Shannon Watts has a bodyguard who travels with her. He doesn’t carry a gun—his job is to scope out the local hospitals and know which one to rush her to if she gets shot. That’s been life for the mother of five since late 2012, when she founded Moms Demand Action, an organization that advocates for stricter regulation of guns. Watts says the threats of violence and rape started coming in within 24 hours of the group’s formation. Threatening strangers have shown up at her house. The National Rifle Association regularly features her in its magazine. Right-wing provocateur Dana Loesch, before she went on the NRA payroll, showed up with a camera crew to confront Watts off-guard at a protest she was leading near the NRA’s annual meeting.  It all started that day in December 2012 when 20 first-graders were mowed down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and a frustrated Watts wrote a Facebook post about the need for new gun laws. She figured she’d just join a group that existed—something like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, except for gun violence—sign up for a few events, write a check. Instead, sitting at her kitchen table and almost without realizing what she was doing while talking with the fellow mothers who reached out to her, Watts started what has quickly become one of the largest and most far-reaching organizations in American politics and an aspirational model for how a group of like-minded political amateurs can quickly move from liking each others’ social media posts to having a real impact on policy.
For more: https://www.politico.com/podcasts/off-message
Politico's "Off Message" podcast is hosted by Edward-Isaac Dovere, produced by Zack Stanton, and is a proud member of the Panoply network. Intro/outro music by Podington Bear.

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Shannon Watts: How to create an ‘army of angry moms and women’ from your own kitchen

This week, an encore presentation of an interview we first brought you earlier this year. John Dean was the star witness of the Watergate investigation — the counsel to President Richard Nixon who famously flipped and became the prosecution’s star witness in the process that helped take down the president. The Russia scandal is far from over, said Dean, but Trump has advantages that Nixon didn’t.
“There’s social media, there’s the internet; the news cycles are faster. I think Watergate would have occurred at a much more accelerated speed than the 928 days it took to go from the arrest at the Watergate to the conviction of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and [John] Mitchell, et al.,” Dean told Off Message host Isaac Dovere in our first episode of 2018. “There’s more likelihood [Nixon] might have survived if there’d been a Fox News.”
POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of the Panoply network. Zack Stanton is its producer. Theme music by Podington Bear.

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John Dean: Nixon ‘might have survived if there'd been a Fox News’ — Reprise

Marty Walsh is a college drop-out and recovering alcoholic who grew up in a union household and worked his way up through organized labor and local politics. In many ways, he fits the profile of the kind of white working-class man who put Donald Trump in the White House.
He also happens to be the Democratic mayor of Boston, and he has a bracing assessment of the blue-collar white voters backing Trump: They “forgot where they came from.”
Walsh says it bothers him how many of the people he grew up with and worked with—or fit that same profile all around the country—support Trump policies. And he talks about what Democrats can do to turn things around.
Read more at politico.com/podcasts/off-message

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Marty Walsh: Working-class Trump voters ‘forgot where they came from’

Francis Suarez believes he may be the first Miami-born mayor of Miami. He also has a front-row seat to his swing state's senate and gubernatorial races. He didn't vote for Trump, but Mar-a-Lago isn't far. 

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Francis Suarez: Miami's almost-millennial, Latino mayor doesn't like labels

How does Mike Pence keep his boss happy? By staying out of the spotlight, for starters, says journalist Kate Andersen Brower, whose new book looks at the relationships between presidents and their vice presidents. She describes the Trump-Pence dynamic, and sizes up how Pence compares to his predecessor in the job, Joe Biden.

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Kate Andersen Brower: Making sense of the Trump-Pence relationship

Tom Arnold talks about his hunt for Trump tapes, his selfie with Michael Cohen, and the mad coincidences that have injected him into a handful of political scandals. 

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Tom Arnold: 'Donald Trump is a D-list president, and his enemies are D-list, like Tom Arnold'

Congressman Seth Moulton is amassing an army of service-oriented Democratic candidates. His goal isn’t simply to defeat Trump; it’s to change politics — and maybe form his own national campaign in the process. He joins us to talk about military service, Donald Trump, 2020, and how he's hoping the Democratic Party will change. 

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Seth Moulton: ‘We have a commander in chief that we fundamentally can’t trust.’

The New York senator has a different word for the family separation policy which the attorney general and White House press secretary call “Biblical.” Her word is “evil.” In the Biblical sense. 
Referencing the “devil’s schemes” from the Book of Ephesians, the New York senator said President Donald Trump’s administration qualifies for that label “if you were talking in Christian language.” “To me? Yes, these are all things that come from the darkness that are ripping children from their mothers’ arms. That’s outrageous. I mean, that is not a positive, good thing. It is an evil, dark thing,” she says in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.

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Kirsten Gillibrand: Trump is pushing the ‘devil’s schemes’

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was the first Obama appointee to win a major election after his presidency. She's part of a network of Obama administration officials that want his presidency to mark the start of a new progressive era — and in order to make it a reality, they’re focused on defeating Trump, not simply by opposing him, but by out-organizing him.
“‘Resist’ is too passive,” said Durkan. “We’ve got to focus and build a progress and a movement going forward,”
“We saw the immense amount of positive we could do in our communities,” Durkan said, adding that she saw also how much gets done when no one is looking, which she said is happening every day with the Trump administration.
“Not only are they rolling the clock backwards—they are—they’re in there dismantling, brick by brick. What he tweets in the morning drives the news cycle, and in the meantime, there’s an enormous amount of harm being done to the country,” she said.

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Jenny Durkan: ‘The baton got dropped,’ and Obama alums are running to finish what he started

For Congressman John Delaney, the 2020 campaign is already underway. The money is there. So is the commitment. And people in are starting to pay attention.
The little-known Maryland congressman thinks that’s part of what will transform a presidential run that pretty much no one takes seriously into the next Jimmy Carter-style, out-of-nowhere explosion onto the presidential debate stage. Delaney, who made his fortune founding two commercial lending companies, has already spent $1 million out of his own pocket, using it for TV ads in Des Moines and a campaign office in Iowa. Since last summer, he’s taken 11 trips to the caucus state, plus eight to New Hampshire. He’s even written a new campaign book.
 
What does he have to show for it? While he’s been all but ignored in the national media, Delaney has an internal poll from Iowa that ranks him fifth in terms of name ID among potential Democratic candidates. Fifty-two percent of those likely 2020 Democratic caucus-goers polled know who John Delaney is, which puts him behind only Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker—and ahead of buzzed-about figures like Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Terry McAuliffe.

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John Delaney: The 2020 long-shot candidate who’s gaining ground in Iowa

The billionaire California activist says Democratic leaders who don’t take up the cause aren't just writing off millions of potential voters, they are like those who told civil rights activists to be patient in the 1960s. 

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Steyer: Pelosi is ‘normalizing’ Trump by not talking about impeachment

Former President Jimmy Carter joins us to talk about the lack of moral leadership in the White House, faith, and what it would take for Donald Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize. We spoke to Carter at Liberty University shortly ahead of his delivery of the keynote speech at the school's commencement ceremonies. Though he and Jerry Falwell make an unlikely pair due to their very different politics (Falwell is a conservative Republican, Carter is a proud Democrat), Carter's deep and abiding Christian faith — and the lifetime of humanitarian work it led him to — is the reason he was invited to Falwell's school.
Read more at https://politico.com/podcasts/off-message

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Jimmy Carter: ‘Democracy has reached its peak and is declining’

Trump has lived his whole life in the city. So why does he have such an adversarial relationship with mayors? Mayor Steve Benjamin, the head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, joins us to discuss what cities are doing next in their battles with the Trump administration.

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Benjamin: ‘I don’t know exactly what the president cares and doesn’t care about’

The “Late Night” host talks about President Trump, the White House Correspondents Dinner, and the time Trump sent Michael Cohen to negotiate a mea culpa from the comedian.

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Seth Meyers: Trump wanted me to apologize for making fun of him

The host of MSNBC's "Hardball" and sharp observer of politics talks about 2020, what Trump understands about white ethnic politics and what you don't understand about cable news.

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Chris Matthews: ‘I’m not sure trust is what people want from Trump’

Michael Tubbs is the 27-year-old leader of one of California’s biggest cities. And he’s using that position to try out some truly radical policy ideas.

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The millennial mayor who could make universal basic income a reality

Jennifer Rubin has become a leading voice for conservative intellectuals who don’t fit comfortably in either political party—and sees the party she left behind as ‘immoral’ and ‘anti-American.’ “Republicans have permanently eliminated themselves from credibility to govern,” says Rubin, who writes the Washington Post's "Right Turn" blog. “You can’t be willing to sacrifice core American values for the sake of a tax cut and be deemed to be worthy of trust going forward.”

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Rubin: Trump’s GOP ‘has become the caricature the left always said it was’

Frustrated by Congress’s response to Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló is preparing to drop a ‘hammer’ in targeted states in 2018.

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Inside Puerto Rico’s Plan to Influence the Midterm Elections

Rep. Matt Gaetz has emerged as Trump’s apprentice in Congress, receiving late-night phone calls from the president after his TV appearances defending him. He thinks the time has come for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself, call up special counsel Bob Mueller and maybe even shut down Mueller's investigation.

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Should Sessions wrap up the Mueller probe?

The 36-year-old South Bend mayor is an Afghanistan veteran, Rhodes Scholar, out gay man and plain-spoken Midwesterner. He also has a PAC spending money in Iowa, is staffing up with presidential campaign vets and quietly building key relationships ahead of 2020. Could he be the next president?

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Pete Buttigieg gets closer to a 2020 campaign

The Texas congressman talks about his campaign to oust Ted Cruz, the lyrics he wrote in his old punk band, and the ways he wishes he was more like his dad.

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Beto O'Rourke doesn’t want to be Democrats' next national cause

Live from SXSW, Arnold Schwarzenegger joins Isaac Dovere for a wide-ranging conversation on politics, the environment — and even the upcoming "Terminator" movie. 

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Schwarzenegger lets loose on Trump, Big Oil and #MeToo

Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington and head of the Democratic Governors Association, wants gubernatorial races to become a battlefield for the anti-Trump resistance.

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Democrats Vow to Go After GOP Governors ‘Kowtowing’ to Trump

Retired General and former CIA Director Michael Hayden sees a "convergence" between the Trump campaign and Russia. He's ‘very concerned’ about it—and thinks you should be, too.

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Michael Hayden on Trump, Russia and why you can expect more from Mueller

Utah Governor Gary Herbert explains why he doesn't mind Romney's flip-flop on taking Trump's endorsement, the gun law changes he'd like to see, and why Utah is chasing another shot at hosting the Olympics.

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BONUS: Utah Gov. on Romney’s Trump Endorsement Flip: ‘Things Have Changed’

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy talks about gun violence, what he has in common with Donald Trump, and his time working as a textbook salesman.

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Yes to “thoughts and prayers,” but why not action, too?

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on the political rise of black women, what it would take for Democrats to win Georgia in 2020, and how it feels to visit your father in prison while you're just a child.

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‘Black women are realizing the power of their vote’

Rep. Joe Kennedy III sits down to talk about why Democrats need a big, messy primary in 2020, the reason he thinks Joe Biden would've defeated Trump, his time as Elizabeth Warren's student at Harvard Law, and what it's like to learn about your family members in history class.
Last week, Kennedy gave the Democratic response to President Trump's State of the Union speech. The rebuttal heralded Kennedy's arrival in the national conversation at a time when Democrats are desperate to find the right messenger to lead the part into the future.
Could that messenger be Kennedy himself? He’s a 37-year-old congressman at a time when the best-known figures in the party have wrinkles and gray hair; he’s started to make a name for himself as a leading liberal voice on health care and other issues; he chairs Congress’s Transgender Equality Task Force; he speaks fluent Spanish from his service with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic; he met his wife in Elizabeth Warren’s class at Harvard Law. He has the most revered family name in all of Democratic politics. 
Listen to the full interview now, and visit POLITICO Magazine to read the whole story.

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Joe Kennedy could be the Democrats’ best hope. But is that what he wants?

Congressman Steve Stivers heads up the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. And that means that, among other things, he's faced with figuring out where—and how—President Trump can be helpful to Republican candidates.
Here, he sits down with Isaac to talk about whether he'd send the president to campaign in a swing seat, how he convinces incumbents to run for reelection, and whether President Trump makes him proud to be a Republican.

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House Republicans struggle with what to do about Trump

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, says that evangelical conservatives are willing to overlook Trump’s past behavior—even his alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels—so long as he delivers for them on policy.
“I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully,” Perkins tells us. What happened to turning the other cheek? “You know, you only have two cheeks,” Perkins says. “Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”

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Evangelicals give Trump a ‘mulligan’ on life pre-presidency, including Stormy Daniels

An all-star panel discusses how #MeToo changes the way we think about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, why the scandals of 1998 would play out differently in today's media environment, and what Trump learned from Clinton's example.
Join Politico editor-in-chief John Harris, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, Politico chief international affairs columnist Susan B. Glasser, and Yahoo News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff for a roundtable discussion of the scandal that rocked Washington and changed American politics.

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‘Washington was about to explode’: The Clinton scandal, 20 years later

DNC chairman Tom Perez is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. He shares his personal reaction to President Trump's comment about 'shithole countries,' and explains why he thinks the "party of Lincoln" is dead — despite the fact the GOP controls the White House, Congress, judicial branch, and most state governments.

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Perez: GOP must answer for "appalling silence" on Trump

Jordan Klepper has spent the last three months hosting the Alex Jones-style parody “The Opposition” on Comedy Central, working hard to get into the head of all the conspiracy theorists — including President Donald Trump himself — who’ve latched onto tales of illegal voters and the “deep state” and media witch hunts. And he's scared of what he's seen there.

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Jordan Klepper: Is what we're living through funny?

John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel, has a memo for White House lawyer Ty Cobb and the rest of President Donald Trump’s defenders as they enter 2018: believing the investigation and prosecutions will be over any time soon is “wishful thinking.” And, says the man who famously flipped and became the Watergate prosecution’s star witness in the process that helped take down Richard Nixon, no one in the president’s orbit should assume they’re prepared for everything that cooperating witnesses George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn might be telling Bob Mueller, as they’ve done out of confidence from their own review or just out of public bluster. That’s the mistake Dean saw Nixon, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman make about him.

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John Dean: Trump's inner circle has no idea what’s about to hit them

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio takes a break during his trip to Iowa to sit down with Isaac and assure him he isn't running for president. Hizzoner talks about why he's a polarizing figure, what it's like being a progressive leader in the Trump era, and what he thinks about all the New Yorkers being mentioned as 2020 candidates.

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Bill de Blasio says he isn’t running for president. So why is he in Iowa?

Joe Manchin is a rare breed: a West Virginia Democrat and self-proclaimed “radical moderate.” He's one of 10 Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018 in states that Trump won. Red-state Democrats like Manchin should have been putty in the president’s hands. Instead, he’s alienated them to the point that he’s neither feared nor loved.

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Joe Manchin: How Trump is losing red-state Democrats

An exclusive preview of our upcoming episode with Sen. Joe Manchin, in which he talks about the sexual misconduct allegations against Al Franken, why he hopes Franken doesn't resign, and what he sees as total hypocrisy on the part of his fellow Democratic senators

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PREVIEW: Why Sen. Joe Manchin thinks Al Franken shouldn’t resign

The retired general and former CIA director explains why he thinks Trump’s foreign policy is more continuation than change, what he knows about Mike Flynn, and what his own woes have taught him about life not being an endless series of 'high-five moments.'

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Petraeus: ‘Life is not full of high-five moments’

Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie don’t know if Donald Trump will remain a Republican, but they believe Republicans owe him their loyalty. They join Isaac to discuss their new campaign tell-all, Donald Trump, and why they think Paul Manafort deserves what’s coming to him. Also, Eliana Johnson swings by to discuss Trump’s inner circle.

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Trump’s threat to take down the GOP still stands

Isaac talks with Politico congressional reporters Rachael Bade and Elana Schor about Al Franken, John Conyers, Roy Moore, why Hill staffers fear what leadership will do if they speak out about sexual harassment and what it will take for the ‘dam to break’ and unleash a wave of scandals.

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Capitol Hill braces for a wave of sexual harassment scandals

Chess? That’s not what Garry Kasparov sees Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin playing—three-dimensional or any other kind. But if they did sit down for a game, the former grandmaster knows who’d win: “Both of them despise playing by the rules, so it’s who will cheat first.”

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Garry Kasparov on whether Trump could beat Putin in chess

Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry is America’s nuclear conscience — and he’s worried. We talk to him about nukes, North Korea, and the two times he’s stared down the apocalypse.

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Perry: The Cabinet won’t stop Trump from launching a nuclear weapon

Alec Baldwin inhabits Donald Trump on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Bradley Whitford spent years in ‘The West Wing.’ Here’s what their time with fake presidents tells them about the real one.

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What Jed Bartlet and Jack Donaghy would say to Donald Trump — Alec Baldwin & Bradley Whitford

An Election Day special: Heading out on the campaign trail, we talk with former Attorney General Eric Holder, who has taken to the stump himself to rally Democrats in Virginia, and occupies a newly political role.

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Eric Holder is done holding his tongue

Nancy Pelosi is hated; she’s a hero. She’s the Democrats’ secret weapon; she’s the Republicans’ favorite target. She’s been around politics her entire life — she tells us about a time she ditched her school’s Model UN to sit next to JFK at dinner — and at 77, shows no signs of slowing down. With Democrats out of power and Pelosi under attack from her own members, she has re-emerged as an essential player in Washington. But while the Democratic Party is in a rolling existential crisis, can she hold on?

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Nancy Pelosi isn’t going anywhere

For years, former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was one of the most feared prosecutors in America. Then President Trump asked him to resign. Now, as Robert Mueller’s investigation unleashes its opening torrent of indictments, we talk to Bharara about the president who ousted him, what to make the special prosecutor’s investigation into Trump’s orbit, and a similarity between Donald Trump and Vito Corleone.

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Preet Bharara: Trump, indictments and the Godfather

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis discusses his dream of going to Burning Man and how he sees Breitbart and the Huffington Post as the same. The Republican also explains about the need to focus on results in the Senate and his commitment to conservative ideals.

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Thom Tillis: ‘If they don’t like the process,  change the rules'

Puerto Rico's delegate in Congress discusses what she made of President Trump’s promise to wipe away the territory’s debt, what she thinks will happen now that the White House has backtracked on it, and the new kind of community thinking that’s taken root since Hurricane Maria. 

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Puerto Rico's Jenniffer Gonzalez  to Trump: ‘We are American citizens’

Captain Mark Kelly sits down to discuss gun control in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, how Gabby Giffords feels about returning to stand with her old colleagues on the Hill, and his own feelings about President Trump’s space council.

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Mark Kelly to lawmakers opposing gun laws: ‘You should quit’

Actor and activist Rob Reiner sits down with Isaac Dovere in New York to discuss Russia, Trump, cultural fights sweeping and country and celebrities' role in all of it.

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Rob Reiner tries to find the truth about Trump and Russia

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley discusses what became of the wind turbine he built in his backyard, how an offhand slight in the math-science center in high school got him started in his first race, and the experience of being watched by North Korean troops last month on his trip to the border.

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Jeff Merkley: Meet the leader of the vast left-wing conspiracy

Texas Congressman Will Hurd has a message for Republicans who don’t like the funding deal President Donald Trump made with Democrats: Get yourself together, or quit complaining. Hurd discusses how President Trump handled Charlottesville, bipartisanship in Congress and even brags about how many of his bills Barack Obama signed.

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Will Hurd: Everybody needs to stand up

Dolores Huerta, the famed labor leader who marched with Cesar Chavez and coined his rallying cry, is still mad as hell—and she was spitting fire when I asked her about President Trump’s plans to stop protecting undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as kids.

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Dolores Huerta: I think the '60s are back

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan discusses his unexpected write-in victory, turning around the city's urban decline and turning the street lights back on. Plus, the mayor discusses his close relationship with Joe Biden and what John Kelly told him about the city's immigration policy.

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How Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan became unbeatable

Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Jerry Nadler, who battled Donald Trump for years in New York, consider the lasting consequences of his Charlottesville comments and their own experiences with racism and anti-Semitism.

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Al Sharpton & Jerry Nadler on hate in America

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards discusses women senators' role in the health care repeal vote, the resilience of volunteers and clinics, and what the future holds for the abortion fight.

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Cecile Richards and the future of choice politics

Bill Walker sits down with Isaac Dovere to discuss the last time he saw Sarah Palin, standing in the middle of a river at age 12 when an earthquake destroyed his hometown and what his meetings during Energy Week at the White House were like. 

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Alaska Gov. Bill Walker on the future of independents in politics

Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick sits down with Isaac Dovere at Bain Capital in Boston to discuss his decision to join the investment firm, his tight-knit relationship with President Obama and what's next for his political career. 

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Obama’s inner circle is urging Deval Patrick to run

Comedian Maz Jobrani reflects back on his own immigrant experience as a child and how that has influenced his perception of the world, especially now that the country is charged by policies like President Trump's travel ban. Jobrani discusses white protester privilege, finding the funny in Trump, and the president's appeals to some immigrants. 

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Maz Jobrani on Trump protest comedy

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sits down with Isaac Dovere to discuss gerrymandering, the similarities between politics and show business, and why he gets under President Trump's skin.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's not done with politics

One of the most recognizable journalists from Cuba's state television, Cristina Escobar, sits down with Isaac Dovere to discuss censorship, the impact of President Obama's historic visit in 2016, and Cubans' take on the Trump White House. 

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Debating free journalism in Cuba

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper talks high school sports highlights, gerrymandering and building up the Democratic party at the state levels. The governor has eyes on 2018 state Legislature races and potential special elections before then, he is launching a multimillion-dollar, multiyear effort to knock Republicans out of the state capital. 
Read the full story here: http://politi.co/2uDFX21 

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Can Roy Cooper show Democrats how to win again?

Playbook co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman join the show to discuss how they have reworked their lives around an early morning schedule that keeps them both going 365 days per year and what they think the chances are for any major legislation passing Congress this year.  

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How Trump Is changing the Washington game

Here’s where Senator Mike Lee, the junior Republican senator from Utah, has landed: Trump makes sense in the White House, as the head of the Republican Party, and as a leader of the conservative moment because that’s what happened. It’s more deduction than enthusiasm.
Read full article: http://politi.co/2tEmgpn 

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Is Trump a Conservative? Mike Lee says yes

Julie Pace, the new Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, and Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times discuss how they approach covering a president and White House that clearly wants a war with the media and looks for every opportunity to pick a fight.

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Wrestling with the Trump White House

French Ambassador Gerard Araud gives Isaac Dovere his read on Trump’s personality and the advice he gave Macron on dealing with him before their first encounter. Plus, the ambassador delves into how diplomacy in Washington has changed since the inauguration and what he sees as the possible path back to strength for the European Union. 

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Gerard Araud: Europeans can't build a future without the Americans

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu wants to turn the Conference of Mayors into a powerful national platform as cities work around, ignore and resist the White House.

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Mitch Landrieu: The President of the United Mayors of America

Maryland Senator Ben Cardin details his bizarre meeting with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, how the Trump administration's foreign policy strategy is affecting credibility, his take on Rex Tillerson, and what he's prepared to do if Republicans bring a health care bill to the floor without a hearing.

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Ben Cardin: America in danger of stumbling into war

Jason Kander, who came shockingly close to ousting Missouri’s Republican Sen. Roy Blunt last November despite Hillary Clinton’s blowout loss in the state—has been a man in demand the last seven months. Isaac Dovere sits down with him in New Hampshire to discuss enlisting on 9/11, how "mug shots" contributed to his rise to political prominence and what's next for the rising star.. 

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