Trump was the chaos candidate, but he’s finding little success as the chaos president. He’s turned off Democrats and the Freedom Caucus, failed to pass a new health care law, and faced blockades in the courts against his travel ban. We call up veteran GOP strategist Mike Murphy to discuss the impossible spot the White House is in, and why Democrats shouldn’t blockade Neil Gorsuch. Murphy’s podcast is Radio Free GOP.
In the Spiel, checkin’ in with the Trump base.
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After a long hiatus, the groundbreaking comedy show Mystery Science Theatre 3000 returns to piteously mock the worst movies ever made. Show creator Joel Hodgson and new head writer Elliott Kalan (The Daily Show) explain how to get some tiny pleasure out of cinematic garbage. The show returns on Netflix April 14.
In the Spiel, why Melissa McCarthy will never keep up with relentless self-parody artist Sean Spicer.
Why does Russia find NATO so deeply offensive? Tom Nichols says it comes down to something quite human. NATO represents all of the successes that Russia couldn’t quite manage to achieve: “Part of the reason Russians hate NATO is because Russia just doesn’t have any friends in the world.” Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. He’ll be back on the show soon to discuss his new book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.
In the Spiel, there was some damn fine inquiry on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
Our resident debunker of nonsense, Maria Konnikova, returns to take on the billion-dollar homeopathy industry. Why aren’t homeopathic remedies regulated in the United States? And what can their dubious history tell us about their effectiveness? Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer at the New Yorkerand the author of The Confidence Game.
In the Spiel, watching CNN go haywire for a pretty banal accident on Capitol Hill.
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Two Whig presidents were elected by the American people—Zachary Taylor and William Henry Harrison. They lasted a grand total of one year and five months. The Whigs cracked up in the 1850s over intense policy divisions. Now, many historians are drawing parallels between the Whigs then and the Republicans now. Philip Wallach recently penned an essay for the Brookings Institution about what can be learned by the last major political party death in America.
Plus, a visit to Vexillology Corner with Ted Kaye, who explains why you can’t cheat in your flag design by trimming the ends off. Kaye is the author of the book Good Flag, Bad Flag.
In the Spiel, the greatest presidential broken promise in history.
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How much time did you spend on an anti-boredom gadget today? We watch entire seasons of television in a day, we scroll through infinite streams of social media, and we are transfixed by games designed as deftly as slot machines. Adam Alter says it’s time to consider measures that will help everyone to cut back. His book is called Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.
For the Spiel, your leggings have become a problem.
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In the Spiel, Republicans weren’t able to come up with a better plan than “Obamacare bad.” Failure was inevitable.
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Why does it feel like our political debate was brought to us by the National Lampoon? Sonny Bunch applies his powers of cultural analysis to the changing face of political conservativism. Bunch is executive editor of the Washington Free Beacon, where he also writes film criticism.
In the Spiel, Devin Nunes really messed this thing up, huh?
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With hours to go before the official vote on Trumpcare, the bill is being altered to make sure moderates in Buffalo and Freedom Caucus members in South Carolina stay onboard. [MW1] Any chance this Frankenstein bill will fail? Slate columnists Jim Newell and Jordan Weissmann look at the costs and politics of the American Health Care Act ahead of Thursday’s consequential House vote.
For the Spiel, let’s try to be fair to Donald Trump. Just for a moment. It’s going to be hard, but dammit we’ll try.
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What did we learn from Monday’s public testimony of FBI Director James Comey? National security ace Ben Wittes says Comey’s statements were intriguingly “gentle,” though they should still distress the president. Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
For the Spiel, Neil Gorsuch talks about a pointless race he once did and quotes David Foster Wallace, but doesn’t talk about his judicial philosophy.
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