Hello, I'm Adam Redd.

And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Wednesday, August 13th.

And this is the Playbook podcast. Good morning, Dasha.

Good morning. How you doing?

Doing good. How are you?

Oh, hanging in. What a week.

Well, let's get right to what's driving the day. First up, the relationship between a prominent member of President Trump's cabinet and one of Maga's most influential voices reaches a breaking point.

After waging a campaign that has ousted many officials from Trump's administration for allegedly insufficient loyalty,

Tamaga, Laura Lumer has turned her attention to her next target, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and one of his top aides, Stephanie Speer. I spoke with Lumer on Tuesday night, Dasha,

and she was pretty clear-eyed that President Trump is obviously unlikely

to fire or excommunicate RFK Jr. someone who, by all accounts, helped him win the election

and endorsed him. Yeah, that bond is going to be tough to fully break. Yeah, but she did say that

he had trouble with staffing and that she thought some of his staffers were disloyal to

President Trump. Of course, she's called RFK Jr. a quote Marxist, end quote, and a quote,

problematic person, end quote. But she's most interested right now in someone named Stephanie Spear.

This is RFK's principal deputy chief of staff and his senior counselor.

And one of his top aides, most importantly on his 2024 presidential campaign,

she's founded a environmental newsletter before she got into politics and seems to be pretty

focused on climate change, which is not an issue that's welcome in the Trump White House.

And so Lumer is trying to oust her next.

Joshua, what can you tell us about how the White House sees RFK Jr., whether they've sort of given him carte blanche to staff himself or whether they want some more sort of handholders around him.

First of all, I think for a lot of the cabinet members, there might be a difference between

...