Primary Concerns

[1:40] Liam Donovan [39:30] Claire Landsbaum The second presidential debate Sunday night at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, was the beginning of Donald Trump’s last stand. How does this all end? Former Republican operative, and political writer Liam Donovan joins New Republic Senior Editor Brian Beutler to assess the damage. Then, Trump has been a challenge for all journalists to cover, but especially for the female reporters embedded with him campaign. That was true before the hot mic disclosure late last week, but it’s even more true now. Claire Landsbaum, staff writer for New York magazine’s The Cut has explored the topic in a recent feature called “What It’s Like To Be A Female Reporter Covering Donald Trump.” We discuss how recent events have changed that experience.

Deadspin Senior Editor Ashley Feinberg joins The New Republic's Brian Beutler to explore how the key to winning the VP debate was getting into Trump’s head one way or another. At the first vice presidential debate in Farmville, Virginia Monday night, where her running mate Tim Kaine browbeat Trump’s running mate Mike Pence repeatedly, forcing Pence to choose between defending the indefensible and lying. In the immediate aftermath, pundit-theater critics declared Kaine the loser against Pence, and perhaps the public will reach the same conclusion. But already we’re seeing clear signs that winning in the moment was less important to team Clinton than relitigating Trump’s basic indecency and driving a wedge between him and his running mate.

Vox cofounder and senior correspondent Matthew Yglesias joins us to discuss the debate and how it has been covered so far. Monday night, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squared off in the first presidential debate of 2016. It was perhaps the first time Clinton and Trump were in the same room together since she and Bill Clinton attended Trump’s wedding 11 years ago. Kind of a lot’s happened since then. As political theater, the debate did not disappoint. In many ways, it was a beatdown. Clinton baited Trump into demonstrating all of his shortcomings: racism, sexism, volatility, and general ignorance. But debates are supposed to be about persuasion, and if not persuasion, then at least about teaching attentive people new things. If you’re one of the few just tuning in, and managed to watch the debate without any of the spin that came before or after, you learned a great deal about how important this election is. But if you pay close attention to politics, or cover this election for a living, it offered nothing more than a capsule summary of everything you already know about the 2016 campaign.

Slate's Chief Political Correspondent Jamelle Bouie describes how he sees journalists underestimate the real stakes and potential consequences of a Trump presidency on people of color.

James Fallows, The Atlantic’s national correspondent, has undertaken a detailed pre-game analysis of presidential debates every four years going back to 2000. In 1996, he wrote a comprehensive criticism of the media in his book called Breaking the News, whose lessons are as relevant today as they were 20 years ago. He joins us this week to discuss the campaign, the coming debates, and whether Trump exploded into public consciousness just as the country was prepared to turn the corner on his brand of politics.

[2:32] Glenn Greenwald [49:35] Rebecca Traister What is the proper role for liberals in the media? What constitutes fair intervention and can liberals work the refs without falling into the conservative trap of objecting to all scrutiny of their favored candidates? Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of the investigative journalism website, The Intercept, has been heavily critical of liberals who cry foul over the media’s Clinton coverage. Rebecca Traister, New York magazine contributor and author of All the Single Ladies, is the most insightful chronicler of Clinton’s life in the public eye. In back-to-back interviews, these leading writers look for a sweet spot of liberal media criticism and explore whether the coverage of Hillary Clinton has fallen out of whack.

Stuart Stevens, who was Mitt Romney's chief strategist in 2012, and Real Clear Politics' Senior Elections Analyst Sean Trende discuss the factors that allowed Trump to succeed and whether the Republican party can avoid a similar crisis in the future. Stevens recently published a novel about a fictional strongman taking over the Republican party, and reckons with seeing the themes of his book play out in real life. In 2013, Trende wrote about neglected blue-collar white voters, a group that has fueled Trump's rise.

How will Bernie Sanders' campaign influence future insurgent campaigns? We spoke to Becky Bond, co-founder and former political director of CREDO, about how she advised a 74-year-old socialist's campaign to harness technology to build a young enthusiastic following.

As chief speechwriter for President Barack Obama from 2005-2013, Jon Favreau’s job was to help Obama show without telling. He’ll help us get a handle on the conundrum this poses to Obama, Clinton, and the Democratic Party as a whole.

Jay Rosen discusses whether the media and the Clinton campaign can rise to the Trump challenge without fundamentally changing themselves.

Alex Wagner, senior editor at The Atlantic, has been on hand for both conventions. She has written most recently about the Democratic Party divide and calls in from the parking lot of the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia to discuss all of it.

Ezra Klein, Vox.com Editor-in-Chief and host of The Weeds and The Ezra Klein Show, is our guest this week. He joins us in studio to talk about the RNC, the long-awaited union of Trump and Pence, and a question at the center of his recent feature for Vox: “Why is the Hillary Clinton described to me by her staff, her colleagues, and even her foes so different from the one I see on the campaign trail?”

The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty is our guest this week, and boy, is there news to discuss. FBI director Jim Comey lashed out at Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information, while determining that she shouldn't be prosecuted for a crime. Trump, meanwhile, praised Saddam Hussein, tweeted out Neo-Nazi propaganda, and defended both actions. Amidst all this, senators Bob Corker and Joni Ernst dropped out of contention to be his running mate. If Trump is determined to campaign by his own rules, is there anything conservatives can do about it? And is Clinton really as untrustworthy and corrupt as the media narrative goes?

This week, the Supreme Court handed the abortion-rights movement a major victory in its Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt decision. Irin Carmon, MSNBC reporter and author of the bestseller “The Notorious RBG," joins the show to discuss the implications of the decision, and the future of the Court. Also this week, the conclusion of the House’s Benghazi investigation is the latest reminder of the paranoia and hucksterism running through conservative politics. New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer explains how Donald Trump is exploiting this weakness to run the greatest political scam of all time.

To call Donald Trump’s campaign a dumpster fire would be an insult to dumpster fires. This week, he fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, less than a month before the convention. So...why’d he do it? Conservative Matt Lewis assesses the damage, and talks about how his Palin wake-up shaped his reaction to Trump’s candidacy. Meanwhile, Trump’s incompetence frees up Hillary Clinton to pick basically any running mate she wants. The Washington Post’s political satirist Alexandra Petri joins us to talk and mock Veepstakes 2016.