Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to him politics with John Heilman, a puck and

Odyssey joint featuring fresh topical candid conversations with the people who roam the

quarters of power and influence in America from Washington to Wall Street, Silicon Valley,

Hollywood, and beyond, shaping the warp and west of our politics and culture.

With Donald Trump already rolling out cabinet and senior White House staff appointments,

issuing policy pronunciamento, trial ballooning executive orders,

and spending more and way more intimate time with Elon Musk and Mar-a-Lago than he has in years

with Melania, all of it sending his hardcore fans into a state of near erotic arousal.

Those who held their nose and hoped for the best to start gobbling Gaviscon by the handful.

And those who feared the worst to frantically start fingering the panic button.

Democratic elected officials, bitter donors, and political professionals from the party

are reacting in the most precisely predictable way,able by forming a circular firing squad. To take a good, hard look at both

sides of this coin, what's going on with the Trump transition and what's going on the Democratic

Party we have with us today, one of my all-time favorite former members of the United States

Senate and one of precious few cable news talking heads from the left, the right, or the center,

to spend most of her time not on either coast, but in the middle of the country, specifically

in Missouri, a state that for decade after decade after World War II was as deep purple as Prince himself, only to be

recolored so ruby red in the age of Trump that last Tuesday 56% of its electorate voted to

re-elect Josh Hawley, whose fist-pumping salute to the Capitol Hill mob on January 6th earned him the label, quote,

bird-handed seditionist from Joe Scarborough, and who got himself elected the first time by defeating

our guest today, Claire Connor McCaskill, the pride of Rala, Missouri, former member of the

Missouri legislature, former Jackson County prosecutor,

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