From Obama to Trump: Ten Years of The Political Scene
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2017
⏱️ 64 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Dorothy Wickenden hosted the first episode of The New Yorker’s politics podcast in 2007, at the beginning of Barack Obama’s first Presidential campaign. The Obama Administration oversaw the recovery from the financial crisis, multiple foreign wars, health-care reform, and the Paris climate agreement. In Donald Trump’s first year, he has vowed to overturn Obama’s legacy on virtually every front.
On its tenth anniversary, “The Political Scene” examines how the country arrived at this unprecedented moment in its history. Ryan Lizza assesses how the Republican and Democratic Parties arrived at their existential crises, Evan Osnos discusses the emergence of white nationalism in the mainstream of American politics, Jeffrey Toobin considers the landmark cases of Chief Justice John Roberts’s Supreme Court, Elizabeth Kolbert talks about climate-change denialism, Jelani Cobb looks at how the war on truth has deepened political divides, Jia Tolentino talks about Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 and recent revelations about sexual misconduct by powerful men, John Cassidy explains the economics of the “lost decade” and the perverse politics behind income inequality, and Dexter Filkins describes how the Trump Administration’s retreat from diplomacy exacerbates tensions around the world.
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| 1:11.5 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. |
| 1:17.5 | It's Monday, November 13th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. |
| 1:22.9 | This week marks our 10th anniversary. A decade ago, when the magazine's web editor proposed that I host a political podcast, I asked, |
| 1:31.0 | What's a podcast? |
| 1:33.1 | At the time, Barack Obama was a first-term senator from Illinois running in the Democratic |
| 1:38.0 | primaries against Hillary Clinton. |
| 1:40.6 | The Tea Party didn't exist. |
| 1:42.7 | Twitter was in its infancy, and the U.S. was mired in President Bush's War on Terror. |
| 1:48.4 | Now Donald Trump is president. The Republicans control both houses of Congress. Twitter is a political tool, |
| 1:55.5 | and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election already has resulted |
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