The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello, welcome to As For Client Show. My guest this week is Dennis McDonough in his first

interview since leaving the White House. So Dennis McDonough was Brock Obama's chief of staff.

He had the name among some of Obama's Obama. He is a guy who served on the National

Security Council has a lot of foreign policy experience. But in the back half of Obama's presidency

was his chief of staff as close as advisor and was also considered to represent his style of

thinking, his style of management better than anybody who had served in that role before in this

White House. So this is a fascinating conversation. The reason I wanted to have Dennis on the show is

that I wanted to talk about the parts of running the White House, running the federal government,

running the presidency that don't make the headlines. I wanted to talk about administration,

management. How do you think about the pieces of federal management that are are humming in the

background that they're not done well, create real problems. But if they are done well, people

don't really notice. So this is a very in the weeds discussion of how the government actually works,

what it actually does and what the role of the president of the chief of staff is, how they did

this in the Obama White House, what looks like it's happening in the Trump White House and what the

potential consequences that might be. As you'll hear Dennis, he's a very thoughtful, measured guy,

does not get out over his skis. So I think this is a this is a very worthwhile podcast to listen to.

I think this is a pretty good take on these issues. One request this week, a different one that I

normally ask you for actually, it's not really a quest. It is a plug. So my colleague Todd van der Wurff is

the best cultural critic I know. He's Vox's cultural critic at large. He is a genius about how pop

culture reflects America's subconscious. Things very hard about its technical aspects, how it's put

together, how shots are framed, how music is constructed. And it's also very good in its broader

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