The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to this late political cabfest for Friday, April 21st, the Bill

Comes Due edition.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington, and I'm joined this week as I am every week by Emily

Bazelon in the New York Times, who is not in New York. But this time is in Nashville, Tennessee. Congratulations, Emily, on the recording contract. Just do wait for my first album. You're going to love it.

Joining us in New York, in place of David Plotz, is Adam Davidson. He is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a friend of the show and a repeated guest on the show. And we're very grateful to have you, Adam, with us. Thank you so much. I feel very Plottsian today. I will be as Plotseon as I can be. Oh, oh dear. Well, for those viewers, listeners, sorry, who may have heard that, please don't run away.

Adam's just kidding. That's a joke. We love David. And we're sorry that he's not with us, but we're very glad that Adam is. And Adam is in the Panoply Studios in New York. Our first topic. We're going to talk about North Korea. Then we're going to talk about President Trump's executive order, which related both to highly skilled immigration, also U.S. imports of steel, or not U.S. imports of steel. Well, I guess it did affect U.S. imports of seal, but a variety of economic issues. And then we'll also talk about tax reform, which is the other big white whale of the early Trump administration in addition to health care reform.

And then third topic will be Bill O'Reilly's quick demise, the rise and fall of Bill O'Reilly.

And then we'll have cocktail chatter.

And then in Slate Plus, we are going to talk about pricing.

Pricing fluctuations.

So tensions have been escalating between the United States and North Korea

over the last several weeks, bringing the countries to the brink or not at all to the brink of anything.

Things feel really tense, but they are also uncertain. The American President Donald Trump has

been saying the U.S. will act in North Korea if the Chinese don't help them. And the North Korean

government has been saying

that it will respond to provocations, but nothing in this drama is sort of as it seems, including

the location of the U.S. Carrier Battle Group, the Carl Vinson, which was reportedly speeding

towards the North Korean Peninsula. But this week we learned may have been going in exactly the

opposite direction.

So I'm looking to you, Emily, for your sense of where things really are and what's happening with North Korea.

That is so optimistic of you to look toward me.

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