The Most Abusive and Destructive
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2020
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Dickerson, Emily Bazelon and David Plotz discuss the Iowa debacle, Mitt Romney’s impeachment vote, and Trump’s expanded immigration ban.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, David, and John discuss George Packer’s acceptance speech for the Hitchens Prize, published in the Atlantic: “The Enemies of Writing.”
You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter or post it to our Facebook page. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank.
Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for February 6th, 2020, the most abusive and destructive edition. |
| 0:13.3 | I am David Plotz of Atlas Obscura. |
| 0:15.6 | I'm in Washington, D.C., where I am sick as a dog. |
| 0:18.8 | So if I sound low energy, Deb Bush-like low energy, attribute it to that. |
| 0:25.1 | Joining me from New York is John Dickerson of CBS of 60 Minutes. |
| 0:30.5 | Hello, John. |
| 0:31.4 | Well, hello. |
| 0:32.2 | Hello, hello. |
| 0:33.5 | And from the campus of Yale University, Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine. |
| 0:40.0 | Hi, Emily. |
| 0:41.0 | Hey. |
| 0:41.9 | On today's Gab Fest, the debacle of the Iowa caucuses and what that debacle means for the Democratic presidential race and for the general election even. |
| 0:51.9 | Then the president is acquitted in an extraordinary vote in the Senate. |
| 0:58.4 | Mitt Romney casts an unprecedented vote to convict him on one of the counts that he was impeached for. |
| 1:05.3 | Plus, we'll talk about that spectacle of the state of the union. |
| 1:07.8 | There was so much going on on Capitol Hill this week. And then another |
| 1:13.1 | despicable change to immigration policy brought to by the Trump administration. We'll talk about it. |
| 1:18.0 | Plus, of course, we will have a cocktail chatter. So Iowa, Monday night, it's generally true that |
| 1:24.6 | anything in life you think you're going to fix with technology, you are going to mess up with technology or going to make it worse, at least for a time. |
| 1:30.5 | Early technology is almost always bad. Political technology is almost especially bad because |
| 1:35.2 | basically you use it once every four years and use it one time and then it becomes obsolete |
| 1:40.2 | because you don't need it again for four years, at which point the technology is completely |
... |
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