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Questions about whether there was any proof about Russians willing to help the Trump campaign disappeared this week, as it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort sat down with someone close to the Kremlin in 2016 who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Aaron Blake …
Read moreEpisode #187: A “Nothingburger?” More Like a Whopper Jr.
There’s no way we can celebrate Independence Day without hearing about significant independent presidential candidates of the past half century. Ron Rapoport of the College of William & Mary takes us on a tour, starting with Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in 2016 and traveling to 1968 with George Wallace. A new book chronicles the …
After all but guaranteeing a vote on their version of a health care bill before the July 4th break, Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, realized they didn’t have the votes and decided to pull it … for now. But either way, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (R) has a dilemma on his hands. He’s already announced he …
Even without the filibuster, it still took a while for President Trump’s cabinet to get confirmed. So just how hard is it to get through the confirmation process? Linda Chavez, who was President George W. Bush’s choice to head up the Labor Department in 2001 talks about her experience. Chavez was forced to withdraw her …
The torrent of political headlines since 2017 began has been enough to bend anybody out of shape, political junkies included. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Ken Rudin underwent back surgery this week, and is now recuperating. But we couldn’t go the entire month without recapping last week’s dramatic testimony by former FBI Director James …
Whoever scheduled former FBI Director James Comey to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on a Thursday clearly had one goal: to mess up the Political Junkie’s recording schedule. Don’t they know we record the show on Wednesday? So instead, we chose to take a look back at three other famous congressional hearings that changed …
In 2005, Mark Felt, a former top FBI official, unveiled what was one of the biggest political secrets in history — that he was Deep Throat, the secretive source that gave information to the Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein that helped bring down President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. But if Felt’s confession answered the …
President Trump seems to be having a successful foreign trip, his first since his inauguration, but back home there are still questions about alleged ties to Russia and whether he has tried to block any investigation. Lisa Desjardins of PBS’ NewsHour focuses on the controversies facing Trump, as well as the latest on his budget package he …
There has been no shortage of comparisons between President Trump and his firing of FBI Director James Comey with what happened during Watergate. But Tom Davis, the former Republican congressman from Virginia who knows the thinking inside the GOP, says we have a way to go before such linkages can be made. But just in case people …
The House passage of the American Health Care Act has a long way to go before it becomes law, and it’s premature to say with any certainty how voters in 2018 will react to it. But one member of Congress who was faced with a tough vote was Marjorie Margolies, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania. Her …