Political Junkie Podcast

Representative Cory Mills (FL-07) firing up the base in August, 2022. Photo credit: Wirestock Creators/ Shutterstock We begin with a clip from the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, in which presidential candidate Donald J. Trump describes sexually assaulting women; it surfaced weeks before the 2016 election, but remains relevant to today’s conversation. You can listen to the whole thing here . In...

We begin our show with a clip from a June 3, 2025 White House Press briefing in which Karoline Leavitt is asked about Laura Loomer’s influence on White House decision making. In the news: * Peeved by revised job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, President Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics late last week. Trump I had a record turnover...

Photo credit: Jim Vallee/ Shutterstock Today’s theme music is Ni Aarin, by Cast of Characters ; the show begins with State Senator Barack Obama’s keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention in Boston, MA on July 27, 2004. In the news: * Journalist Jonathan Capehart has left the Washington Post , and showed up on Substack. For those of you who, like me, look forward to seeing Jonathan...

As the 2020 campaign revved up, MAGA conspiracy theorists once again attempted to portray the Democratic Party as covering up elite crimes: note the triple parentheses around “Epstein” in this 2019 photo, symbols that identify Jeffrey Epstein as Jewish. Photo credit: Marc Nozell/ Wikimedia Commons We begin with a clip of Fox News host Laura Ingraham demanding answers from the Trump administration...

President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson answer questions about the budget bill from the media at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Welcome back to the weekly politics chat with Neil and Claire! Remember that if you prefer to read, you can activate a transcript by clicking the “transcript” button above. We begin this week’s episode with a clip from...

We begin with a response to last Saturday’s attacks on Minnesota State legislators and their families from Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, as well as her comment about Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee’s ugly social media posts. Our title is a nod to Richard Slotkin’s classic text on America’s historical embrace of violence, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Centu...

Thank you to everyone who tuned into today’s live video! This morning, Natalia and I had fun talking about Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) making the transition from SoCal sorority president to class valedictorian at Harvard Law School! If you have not yet watched “Legally Blonde,” go here . Stay tuned for the next film in my series about the cultural obsession with Harvard University. Historian Ne...

Hi friends: You may have seen changes in this neighborhood lately. Starting this summer, there’s going to be more multi-media content that you can consume the way you choose: you will be able to read, or watch, or listen on the Why Now? podcast platform. You can also elect to have podcast episodes download directly to your device from Apple iTunes or Spotify .) In addition to my weekly date with h...

Today’s video cast is available to all subscribers and will also be issued as a Why Now? podcast: this means that you can listen here, on the Substack app. If you want to enjoy this episode as you walk, garden, or work out, you can either download the file to your device or subscribe on Apple iTunes or Spotify . Los Angeles has been organized to defend migrants all year: in a February protests, ma...

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, center, confers with Roy Cohn, chief counsel for House Un-American Activities Committee, on August 23, 1953. Photo credit: Los Angeles Times/ Wikimedia Commons In 1938, in the face of rising fascism in Europe, the United States Congress created the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Preceded by at least two internal security committees meant to e...

Ruby Bridges leaving William Frantz Elementary School, in New Orleans in on or about November 14, 1960. Bridges became one of the first four Black children to integrate a White school in that city after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Federal marshals are protecting her from the violent White mob outside the frame. On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Tessie Prevost woke up and put on one of her...

A 1903 illustration in London’s Daily Graphic of actor Ivan Berlyn as Fagin, one of the “weird and eccentric parts” he was said to specialize in. Descended from German Jewish immigrants, Berlyn (born Isaac Berlin) played Fagin on stage and in silent films. He seems to have made some effort to obscure his ethnicity and religion, but the artist did not: in this drawing, Berlyn has a pronounced, hook...

Image credit: Cookie Studio/ Shutterstock On October 12, 2020, Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was sworn in for her testimony before the Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee. If you were a Democrat and a feminist, it was a galling moment for so many reasons. First, the United States was on the brink of an election, and Majority L...

In 1938, philosophy professor Edward I. Fenlon testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that that professors and students at Brooklyn College were "deluged" daily with communist propaganda. Photo credit: Harris & Ewing/United States Library of Congress 's Prints and Photographs division ( Wikimedia Commons ) For years now, those of us who are paying attention have heard a range...

Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who transformed the use of television to drive partisanship, speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C. after a 1995 appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” Photo credit: Mark Reinstein/ Shutterstock Back in 2016, like about a million other fans, I was listening obsessively to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show, “Hamilton: The Musical.” Unlike a lot of stage do...

Gift Shop in Trump Tower, New York City, September, 2022. Photo credit: Suiren2022/ Wikimedia Commons In the 1939 movie, “ You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man ,” W.C. Fields played a role familiar to Depression-era audiences: the grifter. Rotund, alcoholic—but nevertheless, quick witted—Fields’s character, Larsen E. Whipsnade (Get it? Larceny ?) is the owner of a virtually bankrupt circus staying afloat...

A Trump baby balloon at the third Womens March, Los Angeles, January 19, 2019. Photo credit: betto rodrigues/ Shutterstock Near the end of Donald J. Trump’s first year in office, the New York Times ran a story about his typical day. It began at around 5:30 am with a frenzy of television watching and channel switching. After a few hours of this, Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Peter Baker wrote,...

Competing reproductive rights protesters outside the Supreme Court on March 26, 2024. Photo credit: Philip Yabut/ Shutterstock On October 28, 2023, the morning of her baby shower, 18-year-old Nevaeh Crain was nauseous, running a fever, and in pain. Soon, the Texas teenager began to bleed and she started to vomit. Nevaeh’s mother, Candice Fails, took her to the hospital, where Nevaeh was diagnosed...

As a freshman representative from Texas, Barbara Jordan sat on the House Judiciary Committee hearing the Watergate case in 1974. Photo credit: United States House of Representatives/ Wikipedia Commons In the summer of 1974, I was glued to the television for most of the day. For the first time in my life, my parents didn’t insist that I shut it off, go outside—do something useful . That was Waterga...

Georgia Congressman John Lewis at the Lincoln Memorial at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, August 24, 2013. Photo credit: Joseph Sohm/ Shutterstock There is no question that Donald Trump, a former President who is on the ballot next Tuesday, November 5, is not only a man in love with violence, but one who also understands violence as a way to get what he wants. On May 1, 1989, Trum...

Republican Nelson Rockefeller (left) with Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House on June 10, 1968. Photo credit: Yoichi Okomoto/Lyndon Baines Johnson Library/ Wikimedia Commons Ana Navarro is probably best known for her work on the popular daytime talk show, The View. But she also has serious chops as a Republican political strategist. She served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s s...

On July 20, 1925 the Washington Times published three front page stories about Tennessee v. Scopes—along with Prohibition, crime, and a woman who was arrested for drinking and driving, the Scopes Trial raised sensational questions about modern American life. In 2016, white evangelical Christians showed up at the polls in force for Donald J. Trump, part of a diverse movement that defied expectation...

Delegates holding a pro-choice banner at the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas. Photo credit: National Archives/ Wikimedia Commons Before Vice President Kamala Devi Harris, there was Hillary Clinton—also, Jeannette Rankin, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Geraldine Ferraro, Patsy Mink, Margaret Chase Smith, Nikki Haley, Carol Mosely Braun, and dozens of other women “firsts” in politics. Most i...

Photographer Corky Lee on 42nd Street. Photo credit: Jennifer Takaki/ Wikimedia Commons On July 23, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris reached the threshold of Democratic National Convention delegates that she needed to become the party’s de facto presidential nominee. In the two days since President Joe Biden had ceded the nomination, a diverse party had become re-energized around the 2024 race a...

Cover art from Susan Stryker, When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader . Photo credit: Loren Rex Cameron. In the early 1980s, Christine Jorgensen, a performer, celebrity, and the most famous transgender woman in the United States, appeared on Hour Magazine , a television talk show. The host, Gary Collins, asked Christine if she felt more socially accepted since 1952, when she was publicly outed...