Impolitic with John Heilemann

John Heilemann talks with two-time Peabody Award-winning comedian Hasan Minhaj, best known for hosting six seasons of the Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and his widely acclaimed Netflix special, Homecoming King. Heilemann and Minhaj discuss his early career as a comic and the centrality of his background as a first-generation Indian- and Muslim-American to his work; his breakout stint as a correspondent for The Daily Show and how it shaped his political and social commentary; his 2017 performance at the White House Correspondents dinner and his return to the capital two years later to testify before Congress on the student loan crisis; and the embrace of Homecoming King as a "calling card for a new brown America." They also discuss The King’s Jester, Minhaj's current one-man show and the subject of his next Netflix special, in which he examines his pursuit of fame and social media clout — and the unexpected risks it ultimately posed both to him and his family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann talks with Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, national political correspondents for the New York Times, political analysts for CNN, and authors of the newsmaking account of the 2020 election This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future. Heilemann, Burns, and Martin discuss revelations in their book about the chaotic days following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, including secret audio recordings of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy telling colleagues that he planned to urge President Trump to resign; the depth of the private disdain for Trump among other GOP stalwarts such as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell; why the moment in which Republicans seemed determined to purge Trump from the party proved so fleeting; how President Biden's ambitions to be the next FDR or LBJ blinded him to his own team's warnings of the political peril he faced due to inflation, immigration, and crime; the thinly veiled rivalry between Biden and President Obama; the tenuous relationship between Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and its potential implications for the 2024 Democratic ticket.  They also unpack the stunning leak of a draft opinion suggesting that Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade, and what it might mean for this year's midterm elections — and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann talks with Bob Crawford, bassist for The Avett Brothers and creator of Concerts of Change: The Soundtrack of Human Rights, a new audio docu-series on SiriusXM. Through conversations with artists including U2's Bono, Bob Geldof, and Joan Baez, historian Douglas Brinkley, and civil rights icon Andrew Young, Crawford explores the surge in humanitarian and political activism by musicians -- particularly focused on Africa -- in the seventies and eighties. Heilemann and Crawford discuss the rise of star-studded benefit shows from George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh to Live Aid; the genesis and behind-the-scenes stories of the chart-topping charity singles "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" and "We Are The World"; the singular influence of Geldof in launching Band Aid and Live Aid; the role played by Steven Van Zandt's "Sun City" in ending apartheid in South Africa; and how Bono institutionalized his activist impulses to help combat poverty and AIDS in Africa. They also reflect on Crawford’s career with The Avett Brothers, and how his daughter Hallie's battle with cancer changed him and his band. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann talks with Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” columnist and assistant editor at the New York Times and founder and editor-at-large of the paper’s financial news franchise, DealBook, and author of the best-selling book Too Big to Fail. Heilemann and Sorkin discuss the two enormous business stories dominating headlines in the past week: the stunning $44 billion acquisition of Twitter by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose roughly $275 billion net worth makes him the world’s richest person, and the Walt Disney Company’s increasing embroilment in the culture wars, particularly as a whipping boy for Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida. They also reflect on Sorkin’s precocity as a young journalist at the Times, his role as co-creator of the hit Showtime series Billions, and the apparently insatiable appetite for movies and TV shows about the one percent — from Succession to WeCrashedto Super Pumped.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann talks with comedians Mike Birbiglia, best known for his acclaimed one-man shows Sleepwalk With Me, Thank God for Jokes, and The New One, and Alex Edelman, whose buzzy new monologue Just For Us, produced by Birbiglia, is one of New York's hottest tickets.  Heilemann and the two performers discuss why Birbiglia took Edelman under his wing and how their mentor-pupil relationship works; what Just for Us — in which Edelman unfurls an extended, acutely observed, often hilarious yarn about the night he crashed a meeting of white nationalists in Queens — says about broader questions of identity in American culture; and what drove Edelman’s decision to focus the show on his Judaism, which has long been central to his sense of self but not his comedy. They also assess the arc of Birbiglia’s career from stand-up to storytelling; his biggest influences, from Mitch Hedberg to Steven Wright; the personal experiences that have inspired him to be vulnerable on stage and take emotional risks; and why, for both Birbiglia and Edelman, a pair of comics who readily and repeatedly land killer jokes, there’s a lot more to comedy than making people laugh. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann talks with Michael Beschloss, NBC News Presidential Historian, host of Fireside History with Michael Beschloss on Peacock/MSNBC, and author of ten books focusing on occupants of the Oval Office – Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and more. Heilemann and Beschloss discuss Joe Biden’s handling of Russia-Ukraine war, and why Biden isn’t benefitting politically from his leadership on the world stage; the ongoing risk of Russia deploying nuclear weapons and the lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis; and how foreign policy crises have reshaped American presidencies from World War II's effect on the legacies of FDR and Truman to Vietnam's on LBJ's. They also discuss the historic dimensions of Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the Supreme Court, along with Mitch McConnell’s hint that, if Republicans take control of the Senate, he might take the unprecedented step of denying Biden the opportunity to put another justice -- any justice, under any circumstances -- to SCOTUS.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this special two-part episode, Heilemann talks with his pal Nicolle Wallace, host of Deadline: White House on MSNBC, about the battle between democracy and autocracy at home and abroad. In Part One, Heilemann and Wallace focus on recent developments surrounding the House 1/6 committee: the seven-plus hour gap in Donald Trump’s White House phone logs from the day of the attack on the Capitol; Ginni Thomas’s text messages with Trump’s chief of staff advocating the overturning of the 2020 election, and the subsequent failure of her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to recuse himself from cases involving the insurrection; the ruling of a federal judge endorsing the theory that Trump is likely guilty of committing federal crimes related to 1/6; the pressure on the Department of Justice to indict him; and how the same struggle against authoritarianism is playing out in both Ukraine and the U.S. In Part Two, Heilemann and Wallace focus on the rot afflicting the GOP, Wallace's former party: how Republicans went from embracing her former boss, George W. Bush, to worshipping Trump; the role of Fox News and Tucker Carlson in particular in turning the right into a movement fueled by conspiracy theories and anti-democratic impulses (with Wallace averring that Trump, Carlson, and Vladimir Putin comprise a new “axis of evil"); and how the radicalization of the GOP establishment is, says Wallace, “the most underreported story in America.” Plus: Wallace reacts to the return of Sarah Palin — her bête noire as a staffer for John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign, as famously recounted in Heilemann's book and film, Game Change — as a candidate for Congress in Alaska.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this special two-part episode, Heilemann talks with his pal Nicolle Wallace, host of Deadline: White House on MSNBC, about the battle between democracy and autocracy at home and abroad. In Part One, Heilemann and Wallace focus on recent developments surrounding the House 1/6 committee: the seven-plus hour gap in Donald Trump’s White House phone logs from the day of the attack on the Capitol; Ginni Thomas’s text messages with Trump’s chief of staff advocating the overturning of the 2020 election, and the subsequent failure of her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to recuse himself from cases involving the insurrection; the ruling of a federal judge endorsing the theory that Trump is likely guilty of committing federal crimes related to 1/6; the pressure on the Department of Justice to indict him; and how the same struggle against authoritarianism is playing out in both Ukraine and the U.S. In Part Two, Heilemann and Wallace focus on the rot afflicting the GOP, Wallace's former party: how Republicans went from embracing her former boss, George W. Bush, to worshipping Trump; the role of Fox News and Tucker Carlson in particular in turning the right into a movement fueled by conspiracy theories and anti-democratic impulses (with Wallace averring that Trump, Carlson, and Vladimir Putin comprise a new “axis of evil"); and how the radicalization of the GOP establishment is, says Wallace, “the most underreported story in America.” Plus: Wallace reacts to the return of Sarah Palin — her bête noire as a staffer for John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign, as famously recounted in Heilemann's book and film, Game Change — as a candidate for Congress in Alaska.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In which John Heilemann talks with Neal Katyal and Robin Lenhardt, two of the sharpest legal minds of their generation, about the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Katyal is a former acting solicitor general and professor at Georgetown Law Center, where he sits on the faculty with Lenhardt, the co-director of Georgetown's Racial Justice Institute. Both are longtime friends of Judge Jackson, with whom they share a formative bond as members of the elite club of former clerks to retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, whose seat KBJ is all but certain to fill. Heilemann, Katyal, and Lenhardt discuss Jackson's historic status as the first Black woman ever chosen to sit on the high court; how the culture-war preening of a handful of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee turned the proceedings into something more venal and ugly than mere Kabuki; and the degree to which the hearings will further undermine public confidence in the court's distance from petty partisanship and naked ideological warfare. They also reflect on Justice Breyer’s legacy and whether Jackson will take up his mantle as a consensus-builder on a sharply divided court. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A special two-part episode in which John Heilemann talks with international affairs and national security guru Tom Nichols, contributing writer at The Atlantic, longtime senior faculty member at the U.S. Naval War College, and author of eight books on foreign policy and politics, including, most recently, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy. Heilemann and Nichols assess the state of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s calculations in the face of the Russian military's inability to win a swift and decisive victory, and the emerging consensus in the West that war has reached what could prove to be a protracted and bloody stalemate; how President Zelenskyy has wielded a masterful media strategy to galvanize support around the world and dominate the information battlefield; and the difficult decisions facing Joe Biden and the NATO alliance as Zelenskyy warns that we may already have entered World War III. Nichols also discusses his proud status as a five-time, undefeated Jeopardy champion, and his well-known – and well-deserved – reputation for having indefensibly and inexplicably bad taste in music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices