Remembering Dianne Feinstein, and Biden Clashes With The Hard Right
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2023
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
The Washington Roundtable: Dianne Feinstein, who was the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history, died on Thursday, at the age of ninety. The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos remember the Democrat from San Francisco, who leaves a legacy as an advocate for gun control and against the torture of detainees after 9/11. She fought to enable the release of the sixty-seven-hundred-page report of the C.I.A.’s interrogation program, though she worried about the effect on national security of criticizing the program, Jane Mayer recalls on this week’s episode. “But she went with it on her own instincts,” says Mayer, “and then commissioned a study that laid out the guts of that program in a way that was incredible.”
Also this week, President Biden, speaking at Arizona State University, called MAGA Republicans “a threat to the brick and mortar of our democratic institutions” and to the “character of our nation.” “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a President feel the need to say in the course of a speech, ‘I stand for the peaceful transfer of power,’ ” Evan Osnos says. “But that’s actually what’s required at the moment.”
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| 1:10.8 | This is just happening right now. I think you guys probably saw this walking in, but Diane |
| 1:15.2 | Feinstein has passed away. I know. I mean, really sad news. She had an incredible run and was |
| 1:23.3 | just a major figure and a breakthrough figure as a woman in the Senate and as someone who |
| 1:30.1 | had a powerful voice on many issues, particularly gun control, against torture. She was fantastic. |
| 1:37.0 | But, you know, I mean, we've talked about this on the show. I mean, the sad thing is that |
| 1:41.8 | in some ways her exit is overshadowing a tremendous career that she had. |
| 1:48.1 | It won't be like this forever, but right now, I mean, immediately it turns to big political stakes about what's going to happen with this seat and California. |
| 1:58.9 | Well, I mean, look, this is also a reminder, isn't it, that kind of the age when senators |
| 2:04.7 | were household names across the country is fading. |
| 2:10.4 | And we're in this differing, much more contentious era of politics. |
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