Beyond Politics

Former Democratic Congressman and prosecutor Paul Hodes, conservative consultant Alicia Preston, and host Matt Robison break down the early legal and political fallout from the surprise FBI raid on former President Trump.  Paul explains from a prosecutor's standpoint what the behind-the-scenes mechanics are of getting a warrant like this, Alicia analyzes the Republican reaction, and Matt runs through the short and longer term political implications. 

The Senate passage of the Inflation Reduction Act caps a surprisingly successful summer for President Biden and Congressional Democrats in which they passed major legislation to help veterans exposed to toxins, to increase manufacturing competitiveness against China, a bipartisan deal to rein in gun violence...not to mention President Biden holding together the western alliance against Vladimir Putin‘s war in Ukraine, adding two new members to NATO, and taking out the world's number one terrorist. So have Democrats turned around what seemed to be a disastrous trajectory.  And has the picture now changed for the 2022 midterms? Our guest is Navin Nayak, President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, one of the major organizations that focuses on how policy impacts politics. He previously served as the director of opinion research for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and you may recognize him from his numerous television program appearances including CNN’s “Crossfire” and MSNBC’s “Hardball.”

Recently, legendary West Virginia broadcaster Howard Monroe has been wondering: has something deeply changed about the 2024 picture?  It seems like both Donald Trump and Joe Biden's position has been softening in measurable ways. So what is the trajectory of the next presidential race?  Matt Robison joins him to walk through what the indicators are -- and aren't -- telling us. 

The day before Joe Manchin made his thunderbolt announcement of the new Inflation Reduction Act, I had a conversation with one of the Democratic Party's top communications strategists. Jim Manley - who served as senior communications advisor and spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - walked me through the question of whether all this wrangling over President Biden's economic agenda had been all negative, or whether Senator Manchin had actually helped steer Democrats ultimately to a better place.  In the interview, you can hear Jim hint that there's some news coming, and his analysis of what's happened over the past year sounds even more prescient and on-point now that we know what's emerged in recent days. A fascinating discussion about negotiating, finding compromise, and trying to create a coherent message for a party that is frequently all over the place. 

In this crossover edition of Great Ideas and Beyond Politics, we take a closer look at Christian nationalism. Recently, controversial Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she’s a Christian nationalist...and the Republican party should be too. In fact, increasing numbers of candidates have embraced the language of Christian nationalism, if not the outright label, in the past year. But what does it actually mean? Is Christian nationalism an extreme religious and political ideology as practiced by Viktor Orbán of Hungary, or simply an expression of patriotic fervor combined with religious identity that fits into long-standing American traditions? Our guest today, Dr. Paul Miller, is a political scientist and a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is a devout Christian, a fervent patriot and military veteran, a conservative Republican, and the author of The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong With Christian Nationalism. And he explains why Christian nationalism is fundamentally un-Christian and un-American.

Late last week, a blockbuster report from Jonathan Swan of Axios detailed how former President Trump’s top allies are prepping a plan to purge the federal government. They want to remove thousands of key decision-makers and replace them with MAGA loyalists, all through an Executive Order called "Schedule F."  The report shows that even beyond the usual targets like EPA and the IRS, the Trump shadow team is targeting our entire law enforcement, intelligence, and defense apparatus. The end result? If Donald Trump were re-elected, there would no longer be any guardrail between the American people and Trump’s whims, once the core of the federal service is replaced with a new army of rabid MAGA foot soldiers. The Congressman who has been leading the fight against this threat is Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). He successfully passed an amendment in the House of Representatives to this year’s defense bill to prevent any future president from executing the Schedule F maneuver, but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate. We are very privileged to have Congressman Connolly here with us to tell us all about it.

Chris Hill, host of Motley Fool Money, explains what the low earnings reports and downward guidance from major retailers really reflects about the economy.  Does it mean that the biggest sellers see troubled times ahead, or is something else going on?  Also, why is Google forever?  And is now a good time to buy...grills?!?

Did last week mark a major crumbling in Donald Trump's pillars of support? Today, we bring you another episode of our in-depth roundtable analysis show "Balance of Power" in which we look at a not-so-subtle turn in conservative media around the former President.  Also, is it time for both parties to turn the page to a new generation? Why is one of the biggest Senate races in the country swinging toward the Democrat? And do recent revelations show that the media has been messing up the Hunter Biden story all along, or that they mostly got it right? Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash

If you’re like us and most of the Internet, you spent last week goggling at the very first, and absolutely stunning, images from the James Webb Space Telescope. These images lead us right into the most profound questions about the cosmos, and our own existence...and they help to put some of our fights, disagreements, and problems here on this pale blue dot (the kinds of things we normally cover on this show) into some proper perspective.  To give us that perspective, our guest is Dr. John Mather, Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. In 2006, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) which helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science." In 2007, Mather was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.  ***Note: we had low audio quality on Matt's portion of audio, because when a Nobel Prize winner agrees to come on the show to talk about one of the most exciting stories in the world, you make it work even if one of your hosts is traveling and using sub-standard equipment. We apologize for the slightly hollow sound.***

Also, have the January 6 hearings been valuable? Are in-party challengers emerging for Trump and Biden? And will the horrifying Ohio case and similar tragedies that are surely coming change the impact of the Dobbs decision for voters?