A Republic, If You Can Keep It

We’re on indictment watch again this week. By the time you are listening to us, Donald Trump could be completing his 2023 “indictment hat trick”, this time for his leadership of efforts to steal the 2020 election. In addition to his two already issued criminal indictments, he’s also facing a court date in the continuation of his losing civil battle with rape victim E. Jean Carroll … an...

What a week: Donald Trump on the cusp of another criminal indictment – if you’re keeping score, it would be his third… 16 of the more prominent names in the Michigan Republican Party are indicted for the Fake Electors plot… And Marjorie Taylor Greene appears in a Biden campaign commercial – supporting his record of accomplishment. As much as we wanted to focus on BarbenHeimer, we’re also loo...

For a second time, physical violence breaks out at a Michigan Republican Party leadership meeting … this time, complete with criminal charges pending. And speaking of Republican criminals, the federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election now involves testimony from Jocelyn Benson as the investigation spreads to Michigan, Arizona and Georgia. Donald Trump’s apparent “get ou...

This week’s guest: House Ethics Committee Chair Erin Byrnes (D-Dearborn). Michigan has some of the weakest government ethics and openness laws in the nation. After years of empty promises, Democrats in the Legislature are moving on a comprehensive reform package. Joining the podcast is the chair of the state House Ethics Committee, Dearborn Representative Erin Byrnes. After weeks of a U.S. S...

This week’s guest: Trygve Olson from the Lincoln Democracy Institute on growing violence in politics. We now have an audio tape of Donald Trump committing a felony: sharing classified military information that he stole from the White House and giving the details to people with no security clearance. Despite that, Oakland Republicans hand him a certificate for a made-up award as “Man of...

This week’s guest: award-winning Detroit News Lansing reporter Craig Mauger. Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot — while Joe Biden stands alone in focusing on actually dealing with the challenges facing ordinary Americans. We’ve got another Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justice eyebrow-deep in a scandal over luxury vacations paid for by billionaire GOP activists; U.S. House...

Mark and Jeff are taking a little me-time this week. With the historic 37-count federal indictment of the Defendant in Chief, nothing seemed more appropriate than going into our archives. We revisit conversations with two men who know DJT as well as anyone: outspoken Trump critic/Twitter nemesis George Conway, and onetime Trump fixer Michael Cohen. Don’t say they didn’t warn us…...

UPDATE: This episode of the podcast was recorded about an hour before Donald Trump announced that he’s made history again by being indicted on multiple felony counts … Michigan’s Quality Guru Perry Johnson now has a lot of competition for the most obscure Republican presidential candidate as the field of GOP wannabes grows to about an even dozen, and as we learn that North Dakota has a...

Another crisis averted after the political pros take charge in Washington. Joe Biden quietly cleans up a right-wing created mess, avoiding the shock of a first-ever U.S. credit default with deft negotiating skills and public confidence that he could get it done (and did!). Governor Whitmer takes what could be a major step for Michigan’s future, or could end up as just another report getting dusty...

Ron DeSantis teams up with everybody’s favorite billionaire for a 404-error campaign launch … while Donald Trump hunkers down in Mar A Lago waiting for what could be his summer of indictments.  In Michigan, politics and government is a little more on track – the Governor signing another major gun safety law, the state’s attorney discipline board takes aim at the lawyers who led the Big Lie l...

The polling shows Michigan voters unhappy with the economy, yet the numbers tell a different story. Unemployment rate dropped to 3.8% in April, tying the pre-pandemic February 2020 rate.  Since the mid-1970s, Michigan’s unemployment rate only fell below 4.0% during three periods: periodically from 1998-2000, from November 2019 to March 2020, and now.  In April, Michigan had a total labor force of...

The two biggest liars in politics had an especially bad week. It’s 5-million dollars for one of the many crimes of Donald Trump followed by a 13-count felony indictment over the Congressman currently known as George Santos. It was topped off by a truly bizarre hour organized and broadcast by CNN, which called it a Town Hall but in reality should have been labeled a Trump campaign rally. On a much...

Still no big-name Republicans in the Senate race, but a deep pockets candidate may parachute in. On the Democratic side, a potential deep pockets challenger to Elissa Slotkin drops a hint that he’s running — a hint dropped on national TV. Led by Florida and Texas, red states have launched a book banning binge unlike anything we’ve seen since the days of McCarthyism in the early 1950s. It’s probabl...

The Biden campaign is officially underway – with Gretchen Whitmer the only Governor among the campaign’s 7 co-chairs. A signal of things to come? There are media r eports of a special grand jury on election machine tampering add to state Republicans’ unenviable list of criminal investigations, even as one scandal brings a guilty plea from a former Republican House Speaker whose cooperation may bri...

It’s now official – Fox News lies, but that’s just a cost of doing business as the media giant buys its way out of getting caught … while failing to share the news with the millions the company has willingly deceived. Also this week: t here’s a nationwide contrast on two hot-button issues: gun safety and reproductive healthcare rights look to be the pivotal issues in 2024, and Republicans ar...

In a study of contrasts, Donald Trump and Trump wannabes are gathered in Indianapolis as we recorded this week’s podcast. They are all paying homage to the National Rifle Association at the gun manufacturing groups annual convention … even as Governor Whitmer signs two more gun safety laws opposed by the NRA into law with state and national leaders of March for Our Lives at her side…and additional...

Photo credit: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/Pool But of course Mark and Jeff weigh in on the first indictments handed down against career criminal Donald Trump. Their focus: the potential political impact on Michigan (site of one of the nation’s first presidential primaries)…and on the multiple criminal investigations into prominent Michigan Republicans. Also this week: In 1866, New York state surrogate Gi...

Another mass shooting with an AR-15 armed shooter brings more thoughts and prayers from NRA-owned politicians … and that’s about all. In Washington.  While Republicans in the U.S. House focus on protecting kids from drag queens and classic books … instead of protecting them from being shot in their classrooms … Michigan’s Legislature continues to do just the opposite. Gun safety is the latest issu...

Artificial intelligence — A I — is all the rage. It’s more than a tool for school kids to get help with papers, or pass the bar exam without breaking a sweat. But it can be a dangerous new tool for manipulating elections by unscrupulous campaigns, hostile foreign governments … or Tucker Carlson. No longer can we say with certainty that “hearing or seeing is believing.” While what...

Clearing the field for Slotkin, a battle over worker rights (including a potential petition drive) and a homeless GOP. That tops the conversation this week. Mark and Jeff focus, however, on the drive in Lansing to finally do something about the epidemic of mass shootings. Joining the conversation is pollster Richard Czuba of the Glengariff Group . His recent polling shows overwhelming bipartisan p...

Yes, it’s the  “March Madness” edition of “A Republic, If You Can Keep It”. This year, the orgy of college basketball is joined by the madness that is Tucker Carlson and Fox News, along with the incredible productivity of the Michigan’s new legislative majority in Lansing. That new Democratic majority is moving major legislation at a record-setting pace. Several huge bills have cleared...

Contact Us! This weekend marks the beginning of our third year with the podcast. This is show Number 108 since we kicked off our weekly chat with columnist Bill Kristol. Since then, we have had the opportunity to talk with many of the top national and state political leaders, journalists and political operatives. We thank them all, and especially thank our growing cadre of weekly listeners. .   El...

Just when we thought Michigan Republicans couldn’t edge further into the chasm of conspiracy theory crazy, the once Grand Old Party bypasses Trump-and-Pillow-Guy endorsed Matt DePerno for party chair because he just wasn’t extreme enough. Jeff offer an R-rated analysis of the current status of his former party under the dubious leadership of the Tin Foil Hat brigade.  Meanwhile, the new Democratic...

The horror of this week at Michigan State University casts a cloud over our state, and especially the campus just five miles east of the Capitol building. It was the 67th mass shooting in the first 46 days of 2023. As we recorded this week’s podcast, a memorial service was gathering in the center of the East Lansing campus in remembrance of Arielle Anderson, Alexander Verner and Brian Fraser … and...

The State of the Union becomes a soft launch for the Biden reelection campaign; the Governor’s budget takes full advantage of a massive state surplus; Michigan is officially in the first tier of presidential primary states; and more state Republicans are under criminal investigation.  Our guest is the chair of the state House Elections Committee, East Lansing Representative Penelope Tsernoglou. Re...