Impolitic with John Heilemann

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Join Puck’s chief political columnist, MSNBC/NBC News national affairs analyst, and best-selling author John Heilemann as he roams the corridors of power and influence in America on this twice-weekly interview show, taking you behind the scenes and beyond the headlines with the people who shape and shift our culture: icons and up-and-comers, incumbents and insurgents, moguls and machers in the overlapping worlds of politics, entertainment, tech, business, sports, media, and beyond. The conversations are rich and revealing, unrehearsed and unexpected … and reliably impolitic. A Puck-Audacy joint, new episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday.

Episodes

Peter Hamby: The First 100 Days (Almost) of Trump 2.0

April 28, 2025 • 72 mins
On the eve of Donald Trump’s 100th day back in office, John is joined by his Puck Political Superfriend and partner Peter Hamby to look back on what 45/47 hath wrought since January 20 — what has mattered and what hasn’t; the most truly surprising, most entirely predictable, and most grievously overlooked developments and storylines; and both the state of the Democratic Party generally and the broader anti-Trump resistance specific...
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Susan Morrison: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night (Live)

April 25, 2025 • 82 mins
John is joined by Susan Morrison, articles editor of The New Yorker, to discuss “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” her biography of SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels. Morrison argues that no one has done more to shape modern America’s sense of humor than Michaels, an enigmatic Canadian about whom most Americans know nothing; and that while Michaels a figure of enduring obsession among comics, he remains a myst...
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Introducing: What We Spend

April 24, 2025 • 11 mins
Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. On What We Spend, people from across the country and across the financial spectrum are opening their wallets—and their lives—to tell you everything: what they make, what they want, and—for one week—what they spend. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choi...
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Conway & Stevens: Kilmar’s Fate, Harvard’s Fight & America's Last Best Hope

April 21, 2025 • 72 mins
John is joined by a pair of former GOP panjandrums turned NeverTrump stalwarts — attorney George Conway and political strategist Stuart Stevens — to discuss the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and Donald Trump’s efforts to turn the U.S. into a police state. Conway and Stevens argue that the guardrails preventing that outcome are banged up but still holding; that the real test of them will come when (not if) the administration defies the ...
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Maya Wiley: The Rule of Lawlessness

April 18, 2025 • 78 mins
John is joined by Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to discuss the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and its implications for the rule of law in America. Wiley argues that the case -- and Donald Trump's open defiance of the Supreme Court's unanimous order that the administration facilitate Garcia's repatriation from a notorious penal colony in El Salvador -- is about more than Garcia's...
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Steve Rattner: No Way to Run a Railroad (Let Alone the World Economy)

April 14, 2025 • 66 mins
John is joined by longtime Wall Street eminence and former “car czar” Steve Rattner to discuss the impact of Donald Trump’s tariff jihad on global financial markets and the American economy. Rattner explains why the theory of the case animating Trump’s protectionist agenda is “disjointed,” “illogical,” and “incoherent,” and its execution has been even worse; why the reputational damage the U.S. is suffering as a result among its al...
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Chris Krebs: Cyberattacks, Cyberdefenses & Trump 2.0’s Cybersurrender

April 11, 2025 • 68 mins
John is joined by former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs to discuss the Trump 2.0 rollback of the nation’s cyberdefenses—an interview taped just an hour before Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Krebs, who earned the president’s enmity four years ago by declaring the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” Krebs details the rapidly escalating and dramatically ...
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Marc Elias: Trump’s War on Big Law & Most Perilous Power Grab

April 7, 2025 • 65 mins
John is joined by Marc Elias, the attorney whom Donaled Trump has cast as his bete noire in the legal profession, to discuss the president’s war on the judiciary, the bar, and the rule of law itself. Elias explains why the executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” is designed to do just the opposite, making it the most dangerous of Trump's myriad power grabs; why we aren’t yet in a const...
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Ron Fournier & Ben Wikler: Appetite for Destruction

April 4, 2025 • 76 mins
John is joined by former AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier and current Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler to discuss a week in which America’s de facto co-presidents seemed trying to outdo each other in terms of wreaking havoc and stoking panic. Fournier assesses the motives behind Donald Trump’s market-crashing tariffs and their potential political implications; explains why the results of Tuesday’s special election...
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Peter Baker & Susan Glasser: Moscow on the Potomac

March 31, 2025 • 80 mins
The Bogie and Bacall of Beltway journalistic power couples — Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker — return to the show to discuss the fallout from the first true crisis of Donald Trump’s second term and an array of ongoing controversies embroiling the new administration. Peter and Susan explain why, despite the serious national security implications of Signalgate and the long knives being out for bo...
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Mark Warner & Rick Wilson: You Cannot Be Serious (But Signalgate Surely Is)

March 28, 2025 • 82 mins
John is joined by Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson to discuss the story eclipsing all other political news this week: Signalgate. Although Warner is a consensus-seeking moderate Democrat and Wilson a bomb-throwing NeverTrump Republican, in their long careers both have come across their share of recklessness, sloppiness, and stupidity in the realm of national s...
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Leigh Ann Caldwell: Capitol Hill as Capitol Hell

March 24, 2025 • 49 mins
John is joined by Leigh Ann Caldwell, Puck’s newly minted chief Washington correspondent, to discuss how congressional Ds and Rs are coping with the new world order of Trump 2.0. Leigh Ann assesses the political aftershocks rippling through the Democratic ranks in the wake of what many in the party see as Chuck Schumer’s disastrous capitulation to the GOP in the government shutdown showdown; the grassroots potency of the Bernie San...
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Andrew Weissmann: Law & Disorder

March 21, 2025 • 75 mins
John is joined by former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann to discuss Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on the judiciary and what it means for the rule of law. Weissmann explains why the showdown between the Trump administration and federal district judge James Boasberg over the deportation of some 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members last weekend amounts to the first genuine constitutional crisis of the Tr...
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Liev Schreiber: Slava Ukraini!

March 17, 2025 • 84 mins
John is joined by acclaimed actor Liev Schreiber to discuss his humanitarian aid work in Ukraine, his friendship with Volodymyr Zelensky, and the efforts to bring an end to the war in his ancestral homeland. Schreiber explains why the apparent strategy behind Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a ceasefire and force both sides to the negotiating table strike so many Ukraine allies as baffling at best; in the Oval Office dustup between ...
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Jake Auchincloss: Acquiescing to Chaos & Corruption

March 14, 2025 • 75 mins
John is joined by Massachusetts Democratic congressman Jake Auchincloss to discuss how his party is handling the clash over a government shutdown and the broader challenges of Donald Trump's second term. Jake argues that voting for the Republican measure to fund the government is a mistake in terms of both policy and politics; the freakout in the worlds of business and finance about Trump’s trade war is nothing compared to what we’...
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M. Gessen: What Putin Wants (Beyond Making Trump His Bitch)

March 10, 2025 • 72 mins
John is joined by New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen to discuss Donald Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin and what it means for Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine, and the whole of Europe. Gessen, winner of the 2017 National Book Award for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, contends it’s now crystal clear that the U.S. has switched sides in the Ukraine war and offers a number of entwined explanations as ...
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Robert Reich: Donald Trump’s Stagflation Nation & Why Dems Can’t Play Possum

March 7, 2025 • 78 mins
John is joined by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich to discuss Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress and his already beleaguered economic agenda. Reich argues that Trump’s speech was most striking for its lack of focus on the concerns (notably, the high cost of living) most responsible for his reelection; his administration's policies (including but not limited to stiff tariffs on foreign goods) are bound to exacerbate thos...
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Marty Baron: Why Bezos Is Debasing the Post & Bending Both Knees to Trump

March 3, 2025 • 75 mins
John is joined by Marty Baron to discuss the changes being wrought by Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, where Baron served as executive editor from 2013 to 2021, and how the Fourth Estate is faring in the Trump 2.0 era. Baron explains his reaction (disgust, shock, fury) to Bezos's recent ban on opinions at odds with his own from the Post's op-ed pages; why that move and others by the paper's owner since Trump's reelection can only...
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Michael McFaul: Whose Side Are We On?

February 28, 2025 • 77 mins
John is joined by Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, to discuss Donald Trump's efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. McFaul explains why the rare earth minerals deal between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky amounts to an act of pure extortion by America against an ostensible ally; how Vladimir Putin views the U.S. siding with Russ...
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Joyce Vance: Eric Adams & The Quid Pro Quo That Dare Not Speak Its Name

February 24, 2025 • 68 mins
John is joined by Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, to discuss the Eric Adams case. Joyce explains why the decision by Donald Trump’s Justice Department to dismiss the corruption charges against New York’s mayor was so unusual, unwarranted, and improper; why the extraordinary fallout from that decision—resignations by all of the SDNY lawyers central to bringing the charges; an open letter by mo...
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