Trump’s “Bonkers” Immunity Claim, with Neal Katyal

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has never held elected office but is related to many people who have, is emerging as a potential threat to Democrats and Republicans in the 2024 Presidential race. “There’s nothing in the United States Constitution that says that you have to go to Congress first and, then, Senate second, or be a governor before you’re elected to the Presidency,”  he told David Remnick, in July, when he was running as a Democrat. Now, as a third-party Presidential candidate, his numbers have grown in the polls—enough to push votes away from both Biden and Trump in November, especially, it seems, among younger voters. Besides his name, the seventy-year-old environmental lawyer is known as an anti-vaccine activist and a proponent of conspiracy theories. This election season, we’re eager to hear from you. What questions do you have? Let us know at: [email protected] interview originally aired on the New Yorker Radio Hour on July 7, 2023.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss  the unusual and dangerous aspects of Donald Trump’s reëlection campaign, from his quid-pro-quo offer to oil executives to his daughter-in-law’s new leadership position in the Republican National Committee.This week’s reading: “On Trump and the Elusive Fantasy of a 2024 Election Game-Changer,” by Susan B. Glasser “Can You Believe What Michael Cohen Just Said at the Trump Trial?,” by Eric Lach “It’s a Climate Election Now,” by Bill McKibben “Stormy Daniels’s American Dream,” by Naomi Fry “The Historic Trump Court Cases That We Cannot See,” by Neal Katyal To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Naomi Fry, a staff writer and co-host of the New Yorker podcast Critics at Large, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her impressions of Stormy Daniels’s testimony in the hush-money trial of former President Donald Trump. Having spent weeks doing a deep dive on the adult-film star’s life, Fry explains her understanding of Daniels’s motivations in accepting the hush money and what the sordid tale says about American culture today.This week’s reading: Stormy Daniels’s American Dream, by Naomi Fry Can You Believe What Michael Cohen Just Said at the Trump Trial?, by Eric Lach To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

David Remnick talks with Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired magazine, about the TikTok ban that just passed with bipartisan support in Washington. The app will be removed from distribution in U.S. app stores unless ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, sells it to an approved buyer. TikTok is suing to block that law. Is this a battle among tech giants for dominance, or a real issue of national security? Drummond sees the ban as a corporate crusade by Silicon Valley to suppress a foreign competitor with a superior product. She finds the claim that TikTok is a national-security threat to be “a vast overreach that is rooted in hypotheticals and that is rooted in hypocrisy, and in … a fundamental refusal to look across the broad spectrum of social-media platforms, and treat all of them from a regulatory point of view with the same level of care and precision.”  For another perspective on the TikTok ban, listen to David Remnick’s conversation with the tech executive Jacob Helberg, who lobbied lawmakers to pass it. The segment will publish on the New Yorker Radio Hour feed on Tuesday.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and the potentially decisive role that the youth vote will play in the Presidential election. Cyrus Beschloss, the C.E.O. of The Generation Lab, a company that studies trends among young people, joins the show to break down the latest polling data. This week’s reading: “Biden’s Public Ultimatum to Bibi,” by Susan B. Glasser “Israel’s Politics of Protest,” by Ruth Margalit “The Kids Are Not All Right. They Want to Be Heard,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “A Generation of Distrust,” by Jay Caspian Kang To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The New Yorker staff writer Eric Lach joins Tyler Foggatt to share a firsthand account of the bizarre stories coming out of the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. President. Lach explains why the former publisher of the National Enquirer testified about catch-and-kill schemes involving celebrities like Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and describes Trump’s real-time reaction as adult-film star Stormy Daniels testified in lurid detail about the alleged affair at the heart of the prosecution’s case. This week’s reading: What Is Hope Hicks Crying About?, by Eric LachTo discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

In December, the presidents of three universities were summoned to Congress for hearings about whether a climate of antisemitism exists on campuses. Politicians like Elise Stefanik made headlines, and two of the presidents, including Harvard’s Claudine Gay, were soon out of their posts. The Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote an essay for the London Review of Books about the reverberations of those events. “Folks were out to get Claudine Gay from the get-go,” he thinks, “and were going to use any openings with which to do that”—for reasons that had little to do with protecting Jews. Kennedy tells David Remnick about a lawsuit against Harvard that would equate opposition to Zionism with antisemitism, and render a range of thinkers (including many Jews) unteachable. And “this,” Kennedy asserts, “is very dangerous.” This segment is part of the New Yorker Radio Hour’s episode devoted to the protests and the speech issues that college campuses have raised.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the Presidential candidacy of the anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and explore the ways his run for the White House as an independent might spoil the election for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. “He’s not a serious threat in terms of being able to win,” says Jane Mayer, “but he is potentially a serious threat in being able to spoil this election for one side or the other.”This week’s reading: “Is 2024 Doomed to Repeat 1968 or 2020—or Both?” by Susan B. Glasser “Trump Is Turning Victimhood Into His Legal Strategy,” by Eric Lach “Donald Trump’s Sleepy, Sleazy Criminal Trial,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The New Yorker staff writer David Kirkpatrick joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson from office, just seven months after her colleagues forced out Kevin McCarthy. Kirkpatrick explains why Greene’s likely doomed effort is potentially lucrative for her, and walks through the ways in which her strategy is influenced by her predecessors. This week’s reading: How Marjorie Taylor Greene Raises Money by Attacking Other Republicans, by David KirkpatrickTo discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

Brad Raffensperger, who holds the usually low-profile office of secretary of state in Georgia, became famous after he recorded a phone call with Donald Trump. Shortly after the 2020 election, Trump demanded that Georgia officials “find 11,780 votes” so that he could win the state. The recorded phone conversation is a linchpin in the Fulton County racketeering case against Trump. Refusing that demand, Raffensperger—a lifelong Republican—received death threats from enraged Trumpists, and the state senate still wants to investigate him for it. But the politician tells David Remnick that he hasn’t lost faith in his party. He believes he can convince election deniers of the fairness of Georgia’s methods. And, by the way, that story line on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” about the Georgia crime of giving a person water while they wait in line to vote? Raffensperger has a suggestion for Larry David.