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
February 9, 2026 • 72 mins
John welcomes Bulwark economics editor and MS Now host Catherine Rampell to discuss the fragile state of the Trump 2.0 economy and how the president’s policies — on China, tariffs, tech, manufacturing, and more — are undermining it in both the short and long term. Catherine also explains why Wall Street’s collective view that Trump’s pick to be the next Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, is an inflation hawk and fierce defender of the Fed's i...
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February 6, 2026 • 72 mins
John welcomes back his pal Alex Wagner, host of the new Crooked Media podcast “Runaway Country” and author of “How The Hell with Alex Wagner" on Substack, to discuss the week’s three biggest political stories: the ongoing saga of Operation Metro Surge, which Alex covered on the ground in Minneapolis; fallout from the DOJ’s release of three million documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files; and Donald Trump’s ominous suggestion that ...
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February 2, 2026 • 77 mins
John welcomes Harvard legal eminence Laurence Tribe back to the show to discuss the constitutional dimensions of the chaos in Minneapolis, the fragile state of the rule of law in the Trump 2.0 era, and whether the Supreme Court will salvage or sacrifice what remains of its public legitimacy with its rulings on a handful of key cases in the months ahead. Tribe also discusses his new essay in the New York Review of Books critiquing h...
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January 30, 2026 • 73 mins
John welcomes former Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill back to the show to discuss the execution-style shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and its political and cultural fallout.
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January 26, 2026 • 75 mins
In the second installment of John’s two-part talk with Patrick Gaspard, the former Obama political director, DNC executive director, and U.S. Ambassador to South Africa explains how he came to be Zohran Mamdani’s political sherpa; the qualities that fueled the new mayor’s rise; his similarities to Obama (and how they differ); why his advocacy of abolishing ICE makes political sense (for him); and how his impact on the Democratic Pa...
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January 23, 2026 • 64 mins
John welcomes longtime Democratic strategist, former White House adviser and U.S. Ambassador to South Africa for Barack Obama, and current Zohran Mamdani political sherpa Patrick Gaspard back to the show for a special two-part episode. In this installment, Gaspard assesses the first year of Donald Trump’s second term; how Democrats are faring in their efforts to counter and cope with a pathological president; and what the national ...
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January 19, 2026 • 95 mins
John welcomes pop culture savant and bestselling author Chuck Klosterman back to the show to discuss his new book, “Football.” Klosterman explains how America football went from overtaking baseball as the country’s favorite sport and national pastime to utterly dominating its cultural landscape – and why, despite its power, pervasiveness, and influence today, football is all but certain in the next few decades to become a marginal,...
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January 16, 2026 • 70 mins
Ahead of Donald Trump's return to Davos next week, John welcomes Harvard professor and former Council of Economic Advisers chair Jason Furman to discuss the DOJ’s bungled attack on the Fed, Jerome Powell’s unlikely emergence as an anti-MAGA paladin, and the state of the American economy under Trump’s second-term stewardship.
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January 12, 2026 • 86 mins
In the second installment of a two-parter with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul on American foreign policy in Donald Trump's second term, Mike and John look back on 2025 and ahead to 2026, focusing particularly on the president's approach to Russia, Ukraine, and China. McFaul also discusses his new book, “Autocrats vs. Democrats," which examines the struggle between authoritarianism and classical liberalism among the...
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January 9, 2026 • 54 mins
John welcomes back Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and the author of “Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, & The New Global Disorder,” for a special, two-part deep dive into Donald Trump’s foreign policy. In the first installment, McFaul weighs in on the headline-making, world-shaking events of the past week — from America’s invasion of Venezuela and exfiltration of Nicolas Maduro to Trump’s increasingl...
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January 5, 2026 • 74 mins
John welcomes former federal prosecutor and top Justice Department and FBI official Andrew Weissmann back to the show for a look back on 2024 and look ahead to 2026 when it comes to the rule of law – in particular, its prospects for surviving the sustained assault by Donald Trump and his administration.
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December 29, 2025 • 93 mins
John welcomes New York Times columnist and podcasting dynamo Ezra Klein back to the show for the second installment of a two-part, year-end review of the national political scene in 2025
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December 26, 2025 • 78 mins
John welcomes two of the Pod Save America dudes, Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett, to the show for the first installment of a two-part, year-end review of the national political scene in 2025.
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December 22, 2025 • 91 mins
John welcomes celebrated photojournalist Christopher Anderson to discuss the controversy over his portraits of Donald Trump’s inner circle in Vanity Fair. Anderson explains his trepidation over taking the assignment and his approach to it once he did; why the outrage over his pictures in some quarters is a result of a growing confusion between political figures and celebrities, the proliferation of photo filters and A.I. image dist...
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December 19, 2025 • 74 mins
John welcomes The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper back to the show for a fond remembrance of the lives and legendary film and television careers of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner. Klepper also discusses his latest Daily Show special, which took him from Mississippi to Norway to Portland, Oregon, where he took part in a naked anti-ICE protest and got pepper-sprayed in the process; the challenges of finding the funny amid the fear and loa...
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December 15, 2025 • 74 mins
John welcomes lapsed Republican strategist and Lincoln Project cofounder Rick Wilson back to the show to discuss the mounting signs that, less than one full year into his second term in office, Donald Trump has reached his sell-by date – and the implications of Trump's political decline for the MAGA-fied Republican Party.
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December 12, 2025 • 72 mins
John welcomes retired four-star U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey to discuss the rapidly escalating conflict between America and Venezuela. McAffrey argues that Donald Trump appears to be hellbent on regime change in Venezuela; that his stated motivations related to narco-terrorism make virtually no sense at all; and that his primary motivations instead revolve primarily around seizing the South American country’s oil reserves. McC...
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December 8, 2025 • 71 mins
John welcomes retired Major General Steven Lepper, a former Deputy Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Air Force, to discuss the legal dimensions of the Trump administration’s Venezuelan boat strikes. Lepper contends that there is no basis in domestic or international law for any of the 23 boat strikes and 87 related fatalities that have taken place so far; that the now infamous second strike on September 2 is more likely to have be...
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December 5, 2025 • 79 mins
John welcomes retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling to discuss the Trump administration’s air strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug boats and the mounting charges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may be guilty of a war crime – or just plain murder. Hertling, who served as commander of U.S. Army Europe among other posts, offers a withering perspective on Hegseth’s explanations of his role in the disputed strike and his leade...
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December 1, 2025 • 82 mins
John welcomes ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl to discuss his new book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.” The author of three previous bestsellers about 45/47, Karl describes how Trump has – and hasn’t – changed in the 30-plus years since the two first met; how Trump's desire for vengeance against his political foes became the driving force of his 2024 campaign and has dominated...
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