Two stories this week. One is absurd. One is alarming. Both are real. The New York Times, backed by multiple outlets, reported that during Trump's NATO trip to Turkey last month, the threat from Iran on Air Force One was so credible that the Secret Service didn't want Trump on the plane at all. So instead of boarding Air Force One and staying on it, Trump walked through the plane, exited the other side, hid in a catering cart with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was loaded onto a flatbed tru...
Aug 11
20 min
This is the election night conversation. On Tuesday, as the Michigan primary returns came in, Grant sat down live with Mike Madrid from The Great Transformation and Jeff Timmer, the former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and Lincoln Project co-founder, to watch the Abdul El-Sayed vs. Haley Stevens race in real time. They called El-Sayed the winner before the night was over — and left before things got really interesting. But the conversation they had while the votes were ...
Aug 7
1 hr 15 min
Abdul El-Sayed beat Congresswoman Haley Stevens in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary by one point. He had a 15-point lead in polls going in. Grant was on the ground for election night and breaks down exactly what happened, why the race was so much closer than expected, and why the gap between the polling and the result almost certainly came down to Black voters in and around Detroit — their connection to Obama's auto industry rescue, lingering resentment over El-Sayed's ties to the Uncom...
Aug 6
16 min
Four stories today, none of them good for anyone in charge. On Iran: Trump said the US was on the verge of its largest attack since World War Two. He called it off just before markets opened Monday. A CNN exclusive revealed the Pentagon is now asking rank-and-file troops for "creative and unconventional" ideas for how to punish Iran because there is no plan. A Reuters exclusive revealed the US has used virtually all of its interceptor missiles — not low, not running short, nearly all of them...
Aug 4
16 min
When Trump released a tranche of declassified documents to support his national address claiming China stole the 2020 election, most reporters treated them as intelligence products. A 20-year CIA analyst and a former head of the National Security Council looked at them differently. Julia Curlee spent two decades as a CIA analyst, including serving as a presidential daily briefer and director for the National Security Council for both the Biden and Trump White Houses. Steve Cash is a former C...
Jul 31
45 min
Two stories this week, connected by one thread: what happens to people who don't follow Trump in lockstep. Todd Blanche, Trump's personal criminal attorney who lost the New York hush money trial making Trump a felon 34 times over, may have his attorney general nomination withdrawn. Two outgoing Republican senators, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, want Blanche to sign a piece of paper agreeing to follow a federal judge's order shutting down the $1.8 billion slush fund and ending Trump's IRS immu...
Jul 30
22 min
98 days to the midterms. Here is where both parties actually stand. Republicans: Trump has a 30% approval rating and every Republican running has to tie themselves to it. The party has raised $130 million plus Trump's $400 million war chest... but Trump is withholding all of it until the Senate passes the Save America Act. The votes aren't there. The clock runs out August 4th when states enter the 90-day quiet period and can no longer touch voter rolls. Seven Republican senators are threaten...
Jul 28
18 min
Eric Zuleger is back on the show! He's the reporter and analyst behind The Under Report. He spent 10 days on the ground in Lebanon during active conflict, got clearances from the Lebanese Ministry of Information, the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hezbollah itself, and just returned. This is his first extended conversation about what he actually saw. Grant and Eric open on Trump's election speech and what it looks like from a national security and information operations perspective. Eric's frame...
Jul 24
1 hr 17 min
The House of Representatives left for summer recess today. In their final 48 hours they passed three bills and sent them to the Senate. The continuing resolution: the government stays funded at current levels until December 4th, kicking the budget fight to just before the holidays, again. The stock trading ban: it bans members of Congress from buying stocks but not selling them, which is where the money is made, and Republicans slipped a federal voter ID mandate into the bill specifically to...
Jul 23
16 min
Last weekend was the deadliest stretch of the Iran war in months. Three US service members were killed and one is still missing after strikes on US bases in Iraq and Jordan. The total US death toll is now 17, higher than the Afghanistan evacuation that nearly derailed the Biden presidency. The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had withheld nearly 100 casualties for weeks. The Wall Street Journal found that service members on the Jordan base were being housed in sheet metal prefabricat...
Jul 21
16 min
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