The DSR Network

Journalist and former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll joins this week’s episode and we dig straight into all the important issues, while also trying to recreate her favorite birthday cake from childhood. E. Jean, who brought a defamation lawsuit against former (!) President Donald Trump after accusing him of sexual assault, explains how Trump continues to get away with this behavior, and offers h...

The past two weeks are unlike any America has ever seen. In the midst of a national pandemic and economic crisis, we saw an unprecedented insurrection on Capitol Hill incited by our then president, an impeachment and then the inauguration of a new leader. On Capitol Hill it was a traumatic period of highs and lows. But it has left America shaken too and asking what's next. We discuss this with Rep...

The past four years have left deep scars in the United States. Damage has been done. So can a new administration come in and restore America's role in the world overnight? Just because it wants to? Just because it has experienced senior officials leading the way? Just because the new US president is a foreign policy expert? The short and perhaps somewhat surprising answer is...yes. Yes, the change...

Today's episode features a conversation with therapist and author of Too Much and Never Enough, Mary L. Trump. We make brownies -- because if warm brownies were needed any week, this was surely it. Mary, a psychologist who specializes in trauma and psychopathology, shares new insights into why Donald will never concede, how our traumatized nation can heal, and what Donald’s parents would think of...

We have never seen events like those that occurred on January 6. We have never had a president who posed the kind of threat to our security presented by Donald Trump. We are facing new challenges to our society and government associated with social media and widespread radicalization. How do we respond to these challenges? Who must be held accountable? We conducted a webinar with three experts--As...

Will it read "Donald Trump, only president in history to be impeached twice..." or "Donald Trump who presided over the end of American democracy and became it's first king..." or perhaps, "Donald Trump, former president and father of current President Ivanka Trump..?" This question and others about the impact of this week's impeachment vote were put to noted historian Heather Cox Richardson, polit...

While Donald Trump richly deserved the two impeachments that have placed him in the history books, it is arguable that his greatest offenses and failures were associated with grotesque mismanagement of the COVID crisis. Where has that left us and what challenges does it present for the Biden Administration? We discuss with our two regular COVID experts Pultizer Prize winning author Laurie Garrett...

January 6, 2021 is a date few of us will ever forget. On that day, the president of the United States incited a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol. Five people died. Thousands more were terrorized. And now the nation holds its breath to see if the violence has been quelled or new chapters await. Donald Trump now seems certain to become the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice and to fo...

In the midst of a pandemic, with almost 4000 people dying every day, when the nation should be coming together, the President of the United States once again tore it asunder. Worse, what he did was mobilize the first violent coup attempt in US history on the back of his months long seditious efforts to nullify the November election and steal the sovereign power of American voters. As it happens, h...

A divided US, the future consequences of the pandemic, inaction on climate change, growing tensions between the US and China, the year ahead holds substantial risks alongside its promise. Each year Eurasia Group puts together an outlook for those risks and on this special edition of Deep State Radio we discuss the 2021 list with Eurasia Group founder and CEO, noted commentator and author, Ian Brem...

As we look ahead to the new year, many of us hope to put the constant drama and sleaze and anxiety and pain of the Trump year's behind us. Many hoped that a steady establishment figure like Joe Biden would help to restore normalcy to American politics and to the world. Wouldn't it be nice to be bored with politics again? We asked our experts Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law, Kori Schake of the Americ...

Today's episode features a conversation with comedian Kathy Griffin. I tried to teach her to bake lemon bars and she tried to convince me she was too famous to have to know how to bake. But what she does do, brilliantly, is tell stories and the conversation we had while waiting for her lemon bars to come out of the oven is worth listening to. (The lemon bars are worth making too.) Support this sho...

None of us have ever lived through a year like 2020. What are its lessons? What has it changed forever? And where will it lead in 2021? We bring together an extraordinary group to discuss these issues and the questions they are left with in a year-end special edition of Deep State Radio. Our guests include the author of "Evil Geniuses" Kurt Andersen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garret...

We have endured one of the most massive cyberattacks in history this year. While the US Secretary of State, Attorney General and the intelligence community attribute it to Russia, the president does not. When he has not been silent on it, he has been deflecting attention to the Chinese. All this means we can count on the Trump team doing very little in response to this attack. So the burden shifts...

Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office this weekend discussing whether to send in US troops to declare martial law and nullify a legitimate election. The idea was rebuffed. Perhaps it's the last we'll hear of it. But looking back at the past four years it is clear that we had a president with strongman aspirations and they were far more successful than many imagined possible in the US. How do we resp...

Joe Biden's cabinet will look more like America than any in our history. It will contain more women, more people of color, a wide range of ages, political perspectives and regional points of view. Does that matter? How? And what is still missing? We discuss and then we turn our attention to the latest developments in the COVID crisis, Trump's increasingly erratic behavior as his exit approaches an...

No president has ever entered the job with more foreign policy experience than Joe Biden, who has been playing a role at the highest levels of U.S. international affairs since 1972. Nonetheless, the world continues to rapidly change and the new president will be quickly presented with challenges none of his predecessors have faced. We know what some of those are--from COVID to the challenge of suc...

Donald Trump was the worst president in US history. About that, at this point, there can be no doubt. One measure of the disaster he has been is the damage he has done to US foreign policy. Fortunately for the United States, the next president is coming into office with more foreign policy experience than any president since George H.W. Bush...and arguably considerably more than even Bush. And his...

Despite his historic losing streak in the courts (not to mention his big election loss), Donald Trump continues to argue he was robbed. And many in his own party are supporting Trump's arguments and his baseless conspiracy theories. In fact the vast majority of Republicans now believe what is a complete fairy tale from a president who, whether he likes it or not, has just a few short weeks left in...

Donald Trump is very nearly gone. The damage he has done will take years to repair. Where do we start? Socially? Politically? Economically? At home? With the rest of the world? What should our priorities be? Are there potentially traps? We discuss with Mary Trump, author of “Too Much and Never Enough,” Max Boot of the Washington Post, Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute and Rosa Brook...

We are about to enter a period of national catastrophe unlike any we have ever seen, unlike the past year, unlike wars through which we have lived. Mass death during this time is preventable if you listen to scientists and use common sense. But half the country does not. They have embraced an 11th Century combination of superstition and ignorance and are condemning their relatives, their neighbors...

We went from the bi-polar world to the uni-polar world to WTF. The question now is "What comes after WTF?" Is it a restoration? An attempt to squeeze out another few years of the American Century? Decline? More confusion? Or is it an effort to remake the international order in collaboration with other leading nations? We discuss with Quincy Institute co-founder and author of "Tomorrow the World" S...

Wait, what? A president who actually has foreign policy experience? A national security team that is not comprised of traitors, crackpots, sycophants, and corrupt relatives? Joe Biden seems to be introducing us to some old ideas that seem fresh and vibrant because they contrast so starkly with the disaster of the Trump years. His national security team is professional, smart, proven, diverse, and...

We go where no one else dares: To imagine a Trumpless future, a normal American president doing normal American president-y things like making domestic and foreign policy, succeeding sometimes, faltering other times and doing his best for the American people. Yes, we bring together a great group of experts to have a discussion about what the Biden Administration is likely to look like, how it will...

Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Ricks, one of America's foremost journalists and authors, has a new book called "First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country" and it could not be more timely. It challenges many assumptions about the ideas leading to America's foundings and sheds light on many of the problems we are grappling with today. Ros...