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The Playbook Podcast

March 28, 2025: The Stefanik shuffle

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Government, Politics

3.9699 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s a fitting end to a week of news dominated by foreign policy hands in Trump world: Yesterday, the White House announced that it is withdrawing Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination for UN ambassador. The New York Republican will instead remain in the House as Republicans work to maintain their narrow majority in the chamber. What does that tell us about the outlook for Trump’s agenda? And how does Stefanik return to life on Capitol Hill? Senior Congress editor Mike Debonis joins Playbook deputy editor Zack Stanton to break it all down. Plus, Vice President JD Vance heads to Greenland, and Signalgate fallout continues for a fifth day.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Presented by BP.

0:05.4

Good morning, everyone. I'm Playbook deputy editor Zach Stanton. It's Friday, March 28th.

0:10.7

And for those of you here in Washington, peak bloom for the cherry blossoms starts today.

0:15.3

Here's what's striving the day. A week that was dominated by stories about foreign policy in the Trump administration

0:21.0

ends with that topic still at the center of conversation in D.C. and around the world for that matter. Today, Vice President J.D. Vance heads to Greenland as he leads a U.S. delegation that includes his wife U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S.S. Walts. While on the Arctic Island,

0:41.5

they'll visit a base for the U.S. Space Force, but the trip is decidedly less about the space force than about the Trump administration's increasing aggression towards Greenland,

0:46.1

which it wants to bring under U.S. control. One senior White House official told Politico's

0:51.0

Irie-Sentner and Eli Stokels that Vance could emphasize how Danish leaders,

0:55.5

on whom Greenland relies for financial and military support, quote, have spent decades

1:00.0

mistreating the Greenlandic people, treating them like second-class citizens, and allowing

1:04.6

infrastructure on the island to fall into disrepair, unquote. In other words, it's a lot like

1:10.0

Trump's message to broad swaths of America,

1:12.8

with more than a touch of imperialism thrown on top. Here in D.C., the fallout from Signalgate,

1:18.7

enters its fifth day, with growing whispers about what the ordeal could mean for

1:22.4

Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth, who, of course, texted sensitive military information

1:26.7

about the Houthi strike

1:27.8

in a group chat on the texting app signal. Now, because Trump clearly likes and has publicly

1:33.4

exonerated Hegsess, you're not going to see a huge public outcry, as one senior GOP official

1:39.0

on Capitol Hill close to the White House told my colleagues, but privately there is a lot of concern about

1:44.5

his judgment more than with Waltz. And the other big story on the MAGA foreign policy front

1:49.2

is yesterday's surprise announcement that the administration is withdrawing Representative

1:52.7

Elise Stefanix nomination for Ambassador to the United Nations in order to bolster the House

...

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