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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to,

and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined by John Rick MacArthur,

who is the president of Harper's Magazine

and a great friend of Americano.

And we're going to be talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

And his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. But, Rick, before I start

on that, I thought I would just ask you to respond to Joe Biden's State of the Union last night.

The newspapers are very clear that he came out firing. He was all guns blazing, the right, political right, saying that he just

uses anger to cover up the fact he's not a great public performer anymore. What did you make of it?

Well, he's never been a great public performer, but the sad thing about the State of the Union

address is that the only thing anybody was really watching for was whether he'd make some terrible gaffe, whether he'd mix up Putin with Solzhenitsyn or Trump with Nixon or something.

I mean, he's he's he's he's famous now mainly for for

garbling sentences. So everyone considers it a triumph that he's able to get through a

speech without making a major mistake. I'm not sure. Maybe he did, but I wasn't aware of any.

No, I don't think there was any major, major gas, no.

...