The Political Scene | The New Yorker

• How Experts Became the Enemy

  The Northwestern history professor and New Yorker contributor Daniel Immerwahr joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the ways in which the COVID crisis deepened Americans’ distrust of institutional experts and propelled R.F.K., Jr., to the height of political power in the Trump Administration. Plus, they talk about how Anthony Fauci’s clashes and eventual reconciliation with AIDS activists in the nineteen-eighties and nineties could serve as a guide to repairing the rift between Americans who are skeptical of experts and the officials who set public-health policy today.This week’s reading:“R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise,” by Daniel Immerwahr“Who Gets to Be an American?,” by Michael Luo“The Stakes of the Birthright-Citizenship Case,” by Ruth Marcus“Donald Trump’s Culture of Corruption,” by Isaac Chotiner“The Mideast Is Donald Trump’s Safe Place,” by Susan B. GlasserTune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected]. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up

  Nearly a year ago, a Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN, began the end of Biden’s bid for a second term. The President struggled to make points, complete sentences, and remember facts; he spoke in a raspy whisper. This was not the first time voters expressed concern about Biden’s age, but his decline was shocking to many, and suddenly Trump seemed likely to win in a landslide. New reporting by Tapper and Thompson reveals that the debate was no fluke at all. In “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump” (an excerpt from their new book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”), they lay out a case that the latter half of Biden’s Presidency was carefully stage-managed by his top aides; Biden would often end the workday as early as four-thirty.  “What [aides and] others would say is, ‘His decision-making was always fine.’ The job of the President is not just decision-making. It’s also communication,” Tapper tells David Remnick. “If you are a President . . . and you’re not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for ten minutes, then there’s something wrong. And that was happening in 2023.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• Biden, Trump, and the Challenges of Covering an Aging President

  The Washington Roundtable discusses new information that has emerged about Joe Biden’s decline while in office, and his advisers' efforts to downplay it, as chronicled in several new books. The group also discusses the challenges faced by members of the press as they report on Donald Trump’s signs of aging and his long-standing incoherence. “I think that’s where we run into trouble,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. “Donald Trump has always been quite ignorant. He’s always been a fact checker's nightmare. He’s always rambled. He’s always lied. And, yes, he’s always not known basic facts about the American system of government. So where do we discern a trajectory with him? How does age factor into it?”This week’s reading: “The Mideast Is Donald Trump’s Safe Place,” by Susan B. Glasser “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “The Real Audience for Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Spectacles,” by Jon Allsop “Donald Trump’s Culture of Corruption,” by Isaac Chotiner “Justice David Souter Was the Antithesis of the Present,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer,” by Charles Bethea “The Astonishing Threat to Suspend Habeas Corpus,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• What Is Jeff Bezos’s Plan for the Washington Post?

  The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the changes that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, is making at the paper. They talk about why Bezos decided to purchase the paper, in 2013, how his recent exertion of editorial influence has caused the paper to hemorrhage both staffers and subscribers, and the future of a news media dependent on the support of “benevolent” billionaires to support it. This week’s reading: “Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washington Post?” by Clare Malone “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer,” by Charles Bethea “Will the First American Pope Be a Pontiff of Peace?” by Paul Elie “Brazil’s President Confronts a Changing World,” by Jon Lee Anderson To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected]. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• Elissa Slotkin to Fellow-Democrats: “Speak in Plain English”

  When Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate seat in Michigan last fall, she was one of only four Democratic senators to claim victory in a state that voted for Donald Trump. It made other Democrats take note: since then, the Party has turned to her as someone who can bridge the red state–blue state divide. In March, Slotkin delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal to Trump’s speech before Congress, and she’s been making headlines for criticizing her own party’s attempts to rein in the President and the Republican Party. She thinks Democrats need to start projecting “alpha energy,” that identity politics “needs to go the way of the dodo,” and that Democrats should drop the word “oligarchy” from their vocabulary entirely. Slotkin prides herself on her bipartisanship, and she believes that Democrats must use old-school collegial collaboration in Congress. And, as different Democratic leaders have appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour in the past few months, discussing what the next four years might have in store, Slotkin tells David Remnick about a different path forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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