The Politics Guys

Mike and Jay received so much listener feedback on our discussion of President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord (in episode 102) that they decided to do this special follow-up. In it, they cover the 'We Are Still In' movement, what states - especially California - are doing, whether or not Jay believes human activity is responsible for climate change, an...

Mike and Jay start the show talking about the story that dominated the news this week: the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey. Neither of the Guys think that Comey dropped any bombshells, though Mike believes that this is still early days in an investigation that will go on for years and cripple the Trump administration. Jay thinks it might wrap up sooner than that, but that once again,...

Mike talks with Economist senior editor and columnist Ryan Avent, author of The Gated City and, most recently, The Wealth of Humans: Work and its Absence in the Twenty-First Century. In addition to The Economist, Mr. Avent's work has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Atlantic, and the Washington Examiner. Prior to coming to The Economist, he...

This week, Mike and Jay start off by talking about President Trump's announcement that the United States will be leaving the Paris Climate Change Accord, making it one of only three countries in the world to not be participating (the other two are Syria and Nicaragua). Mike, who was hoping against hope that US would stay in, is disappointed, feeling that President Trump is stuck in the past and th...

Mike talks to Samuel Sinyangwe, co-founder of OurStates, an initiative that connects communities to actionable information and tools to reject the Trump / GOP agenda in every state and protect communities from harm. Mr. Sinyangwe is a policy analyst and data scientist who also co-founded Mapping Police Violence, which collects and analyzes data on police violence in the United States. He’s been fe...

This week's show opens with Mike and Jay talking about something they *won't* be covering - the continuing drip, drip, drip of Trump scandal leaks. That doesn't mean that they aren't concerned with the serious allegations that have been raised (especially true in Mike's case) but that the leaks don't tell us much of anything. For the most part, they're going to hold off until there's substantive n...

Mike talks to author, ABC News chief political analyst, and die-hard independent Matthew Dowd. Mr. Dowd has extensive experience in politics where he's worked for candidates and officeholders on both sides of the aisle, including Democrats Dick Gephardt & Lloyd Bentsen and Republicans George W. Bush - on whose campaign he was chief strategist - and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's co-author of the...

This week, Mike is joined by Trey, filling in for Jay. They start the show with an overview of a tumultuous week for President Trump, featuring the president revealing classified information to Russia, allegations that Trump asked then FBI Director Comey to drop the investigation against Mike Flynn, and the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to head the investig...

Mike talks to journalist and researcher Dr. Sarah Kendzior about the threat posed by the Trump presidency, media elites & 'flyover country' and lots more! Dr. Kendzior is a columnist for Canada's Globe and Mail, and her work has has appeared in multiple national outlets in the U.S. including Politico, Slate, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. She’s also the author of the best-selling essay...

This week's show starts out with President Trump's surprising and, some would say, far-too impulsive firing of FBI Director James Comey. Mike and Jay consider if this is Trump fearing that the FBI is getting too close to finding ties between his campaign and Russia, Trump simply being his erratic, 'act first and consider the consequences later' self, or possibly some combination of the two. After...

Mike talks with Dr. Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Dr. Drezner is the author of multiple books, including Theories of International Politics and Zombies, The System Worked: How The World Stopped Another Great Depression, and most recently, The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transf...

The Guys start out this week's show with a detailed look at the American Health Care Act, which the House of Representatives passed in a squeaker of a vote. Both Mike and Jay expect that the Senate will take up and pass some version of the AHCA, but that it's likely to be somewhat different from what the House approved. In their discussion of the bill, the Guys discuss where people get their insur...

Mike talks with James Fallows, a legendary figure in American journalism. Mr. Fallows was chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, editor of US News & World Report, a program designer at Microsoft, and is currently a national correspondent for The Atlantic, a magazine he’s written for since the late 1970s. His work there has won great acclaim, including a National Magazine Award. In addi...

This episode marks a return to our roots, with a focus on deeper analysis of what's most important, and less coverage of the ephemeral events that so often dominate the weekly news cycle. Mike and his fellow political scientist Trey - who's guest-hosting this week for Jay - start with a look at Donald Trump's first 100 days. They consider how '100 days' became such a big deal, what a president's f...

First up is Mike's interview with political scientist Larry Sabato. Professor Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, which includes Sabato’s Crystal Ball - the foremost election forecasting site in the United States. Professor Sabato is the author of many books, including ‘A More Perfect Constitution’, ‘The Kennedy Half-Century’ and, most recently he was the le...

This week's show starts with Mike and Jay talking about the 'not-quite' Democratic win in the special election in Georgia. Mike thinks it could be a (positive) sign of things to come for Democrats in Congress, but Jay isn't so sure. After that, the Guys talk about whether Fox was right to give Bill O'Reilly the boot, President Trump's executive orders on steel, the H-1B visa program, and Wall Stre...

Mike talks to Jeremy Haile, co-author of the Indivisible Guide - a practical guide to influencing Members of Congress, written by a team of former Congressional staffers. From 2008-2012, Jeremy served as a legislative aide to Rep. Lloyd Doggett along with Indivisible board members Ezra Levin and Sarah Dohl. Since then, Jeremy has worked in criminal justice reform advocacy at The Sentencing Project...

This week, the Guys start out by looking at President Trump's foreign policy in a dangerous world. First it's Syria, where Assad's chemical attacks and the U.S. retaliatory missile strike has brought US / Russia relations to their lowest level in quite a while. Then it's North Korea, the unstable regime getting ready for it's sixth nuclear test. Can the U.S. exert enough pressure on China to deter...

Mike talks to Republican pollster and political analyst Kristen Soltis Anderson. Ms. Anderson is co-founder of the research and analytics firm Echelon Insights, a contributor at ABC News, a Washington Examiner columnist, a regular guest on shows like Morning Joe, Fox News Sunday, and Real Time with Bill Maher, author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Ca...

This week, we have our very first sponsor - Blue Apron! To get three of their great meals for free as well as free shipping, go to blueapron.com/TPG It was a crazy week in foreign policy, and the guys start with the biggest of all the big stories - the missile strike on Syria authorized by President Trump in response to Syria using illegal chemical weapons on its own people. The move was a major d...

Mike talks to Professor Andrew McAfee, Co-Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Initiative on the Digital Economy and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Professor McAfee's work has appeared in numerous academic and popular publications, including the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He is the...

This week, the Guys start out by looking at the latest news on the multiple Russia probes. The House investigation has slowed to a crawl amid claims from Democrats that Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes can't be trusted to conduct an impartial probe. The Senate investigation seems to be far more bipartisan to this point. Mike and Jay talk about why this is, along with what to make of former...

Mike talks to UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong. Professor DeLong, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, blogs at 'Grasping Reality with All Tentacles' - one of the best economics blogs around. Topics they discuss include economic inequality, economic growth, why this is the best time ever to be poor (in the United States, at least), grifters and s...

This week, Mike and Jay start by taking a look at the first big legislative push of President Trump and House Republicans: The failed repeal and replace vote on Obamacare. They talk about what happened, why it happened, what it means for Obamacare, and the possible paths forward for Republicans. Then it's on to Judge Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Com...

This week, Mike and Jay tackle a bunch of great listener questions, such as whether or not progress is always a good thing, if being transgendered is a choice, what our philosophical beliefs concerning abortion are, the best case for liberalism (made by Jay) and for conservatism (made by Mike), and lots more. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-politics-guys/donationsAdvertising In...