Playbook Deep Dive

By POLITICO

What's Playbook Deep Dive about?

Welcome to Playbook Deep Dive, the stories behind the power. From Congress and the White House to bar stools and back rooms, POLITICO Playbook’s Ryan Lizza brings you interviews with the most compelling and important figures who explain what’s really going on in Washington.

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Katherine Clark names the D...

09.22.2023

After losing a series of votes this week to avoid a government shutdown, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has effectively lost his majority. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza asks the number ...

Playbook Deep Dive episodes:

09.22.2023 Katherine Clark names the Democrats’ price to save Kevin McCarthy After losing a series of votes this week to avoid a government shutdown, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has effectively lost his majority. On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza asks the number ...
09.15.2023 Who’s really in charge? McCarthy, moderates, or the Freedom Caucus? It would be easy to look at the House of Representatives and assume that the members of the Freedom Caucus — and not Speaker Kevin McCarthy — are the ones who are actually in charge. But is that actually true? ...
09.08.2023 Revelations about Biden’s White House from the first inside account What makes President Joe Biden? We’re all pretty familiar with Vice President Biden and Senator Biden. But in his latest iteration as commander-in-chief, it hasn’t been as easy to see inside his mind. Cracking into Biden’s brain and inside the ...
08.25.2023 Behind the scenes at the GOP debate with Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier On Wednesday night, eight Republican presidential candidates gathered in Milwaukee for the first GOP primary debate. There was a lot on the line for each of them. But there was also an enormous amount at stake for the news organization ...
08.18.2023 How Doug Burgum plans to disrupt the GOP debate & scale his campaign This coming Wednesday, something big is happening in Milwaukee: the first Republican presidential debate. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host & Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talks with North Dakota Governor & GOP presidential candidate Doug Burgum about ...
08.11.2023 How to beat Trump in Iowa – and survive the state fair This week, almost every Republican running for president is headed to the Iowa State Fair, famous for its fried Twinkies and statues of farm animals made out of butter and — every four years — extremely embarrassing photos of candidates ...
08.04.2023 What American leaders don't get about the new Europe In 2023, there are two Europes: the Europe of the museums and the beaches – and the real Europe as lived by its people. And that Europe has changed dramatically in recent decades. The end of the Cold War collapsed ...
07.28.2023 What Republicans, Democrats, and the Pentagon don’t want to hear about the NDAA This week, the action in the Senate was all about the annual defense authorization – the NDAA. Usually, the argument about what goes into this enormous bill that governs everything the military can and can’t do is a word soup ...
07.21.2023 Behind the scenes at DHS with Alejandro Mayorkas When Alejandro Mayorkas was tapped to run DHS – the now 20-year-old behemoth with 260,000 employees created in the aftermath of 9/11 – Mayorkas said that he was determined to be the Secretary of Homeland Security, NOT the Secretary of ...
07.14.2023 Lost & broken in Congress “Early one morning in April of 2016 I woke up and seriously contemplated the possibility that I would never be able to generate the strength, focus, and courage to get out of bed. The combination of crippling anxiety, chronic pain, ...
07.07.2023 The British ambassador spills the tea on Biden, Sunak, & Ukraine This weekend, President Joe Biden is headed to Europe. His first stop: the U.K. Biden is scheduled to meet with both His Royal Highness King Charles, an old acquaintance and fellow head of state; and the Right Honorable Rishi Sunak, ...
06.30.2023 Rahm “the un-diplomat” Emanuel reports from Japan In American politics, there is a small group of leaders who are – to borrow a term from Hollywood – hit makers. Everything they touch seems to turn to gold. There is perhaps no better example of this in Democratic ...
06.23.2023 How evangelicals are setting the stage for Trump's return The big debate in Washington this week is about realism versus idealism. It played out first in foreign policy, when Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a state dinner. Biden has made big claims about how democratic ...
06.16.2023 Why federal prosecutors may have handed Trump a huge gift Timothy Parlatore spent over a year working for Donald Trump on a number of legal challenges, including the Department of Justice’s probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 and the investigation of all those documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago. Parlatore was ...
06.09.2023 How gamblers, party animals, and true believers are hitting it big in Washington Ben Terris is a feature writer at The Washington Post, where he’s carved out a unique role: reporting on what he calls, “the weirdo beat.” While Ben’s colleagues focus on what’s happening on the main stage in politics, he keeps ...
06.01.2023 Inside the debt ceiling vote with GOP Whip Tom Emmer In this episode of Deep Dive, Playbook co-author Rachael Bade joins House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) just hours before final passage of the debt ceiling bill they shepherded through the House. This ...
05.26.2023 How Ron DeSantis went from GOP prom queen to MAGA wallflower This week, the rumors became reality as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott announced their long-awaited presidential campaigns. The contrast between the two events foreshadowed all of the big questions for next year’s Republican primaries. Tim ...
05.19.2023 AOC’s advice to Joe Biden on the debt limit showdown In the last year, a lot has changed in Washington for progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). In 2021 and 2022, with Democrats controlling the House, she and her allies could block any piece of legislation if they held together. ...
05.12.2023 Moderate Dem says Title 42 was Biden’s border blunder This week, after years of criticism from immigration rights activists and many progressive Democrats, President Joe Biden has ended the use of Title 42. That’s the public health law that Donald Trump first used during the pandemic to expel millions ...
05.05.2023 Why Asa Hutchinson isn’t scared of Trump, Biden, or impossible odds If you talk to Democratic strategists about the 2024 presidential election, there is a certain type of Republican nominee who they fear: Someone who knows how to speak in the language of inclusion; who can discuss abortion and guns without ...
05.02.2023 Bonus: Live from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner This past week, luminaries from politics, media, and Hollywood came together for the annual White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington. Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza joined forces with Major Garrett, CBS News’s Washington correspondent and host of ...
04.28.2023 Why this week’s media meltdown was years in the making – and what comes next This week in Washington – more so than anytime in Joe Biden’s presidency – the news has been all about… the news. To start, it’s the weekend of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. But outside of the brunches and ...
04.21.2023 White House Plumbers On May 1, the hotly-anticipated HBO series White House Plumbers will premiere. The 5-episode series takes viewers along on a darkly funny ride with the fumbling ex-spooks and misguided “patriots.” E. Howard Hunt, played by Woody Harrelson and G. Gordon ...
04.14.2023 DeSantis & the Florida speaker are just getting started. Here’s what’s next. This week, Florida’s statehouse cleared the way for Gov. Ron DeSantis to sign a six-week abortion ban. The man who shepherded the bill, House Speaker Paul Renner, joins Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza for this episode of Playbook Deep Dive. You ...
04.07.2023 How Vivek Ramaswamy thinks he’s got Trump & DeSantis beat The 2024 Republican presidential primary is off to a bit of a slow start. Donald Trump and former governors Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson have entered the race, but other likely candidates, such as Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, are ...
03.31.2023 Donald Trump’s indictment: Our reporters dig into the repercussions for 2024 Playbook Deep Dive host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza gathers three of the best journalists in the POLITICO’s newsroom to break down the immediate questions of what Trump's indictment means. Joining him is Jonathan Martin, POLITICO’s Politics Bureau Chief; Meridith ...
03.24.2023 Porn stars, felons, and spin doctors: Who will jurors believe in Trump’s case? Lanny Davis long ago established himself as the go-to operative in Washington when you’re in the middle of a PR crisis. He was famously the public face defending Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. But today, 25 ...
03.17.2023 What Iran and China stand to gain from an Iraq AUMF repeal On Thursday, the Senate began to re-evaluate one of the most controversial episodes in American history: the Iraq war. After a generation of use and abuse, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling a vote to repeal the Iraq AUMF, ...
03.10.2023 AI is advancing faster than Congress. Here’s why that’s a bug Last November, when the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT launched, an old science fiction question suddenly became very real: How long until the machines are smarter than the humans? It marked the beginning of a new era in technology – one ...
03.03.2023 Finnish Ambassador: Here’s the right way to poke the Russian bear The war in Ukraine is just over one year old. There is widespread talk of a major spring offensive from both sides. War in Europe, once unthinkable, is now the new normal. But for one nation on Russia’s northern border, ...
02.24.2023 How to investigate the president, his predecessor & keep your job Until last month, Anthony Coley was Director of Public Affairs at the Justice Department and a Senior Adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Coley was in the middle of some of the most extraordinary episodes at DOJ over the last ...
02.17.2023 What experts get wrong about Nikki Haley’s run Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, and President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is running for president. But not everyone on the right is impressed. In a brutal Valentine’s Day editorial, The Wall Street Journal said ...
02.10.2023 Have China hawks flown the coop? In Washington, there is now a bipartisan consensus around being tough on China. This was happening even before the Chinese sent a spy balloon drifting across the United States. Last month, by a vote of 365-65, the House created a ...
02.03.2023 Why Kevin McCarthy thinks he’s already won A small group of longtime Kevin McCarthy aides who decamped downtown to lobby are suddenly some of the most influential and sought-after people in Washington. They remain intensely loyal to the new speaker and serve as crucial sources of insight ...
01.27.2023 Behind the RNC's anti-Trump revolt After losing both chambers of Congress during Trump’s presidency and after waging a disappointing campaign to recapture them in 2022, the Republican Party is having a lot of intra-party feuds. This week, the post-election search for new leadership moved to ...
01.20.2023 The people of New Hampshire vs. Joe Biden What do you do when you are one of the guardians of your state’s most precious political and cultural institution — the very thing that defines New Hampshire — and the president you love and the party you’ve served your ...
01.13.2023 The strategist who didn't believe in the red wave In off-the-record conversations and private emails, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer argued that the pundits focusing exclusively on the fundamentals of the race — Biden’s approval rating and the dismal economic indicators — were missing the bigger picture. Yes, presidents ...
01.06.2023 The unauthorized history of the House Freedom Caucus In late 2014, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) was traveling back to Louisiana with his wife when he had an idea: a plan to empower arch-conservatives to push back against their Leadership, led by then-Speaker of the House John Boehner. Soon ...
12.23.2022 The anti-McCarthy faction teases a shadow speaker Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) and his allies are trying to end Kevin McCarthy’s reign as leader of the House Republicans. Good is one of five Republicans in the far-right Freedom Caucus vowing to block McCarthy’s path to the 218 votes ...
12.16.2022 Will the fusion breakthrough ignite a Congressional chain reaction? Department of Energy announced a breakthrough in the decades-long quest to recreate on Earth the process that powers the Sun: nuclear fusion. To simplify slightly, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California recently fired a bunch of lasers ...
12.09.2022 Gov. Chris Sununu surveys the field Gov. Chris Sununu was recently re-elected to his fourth term in office. The Republican governor has been positioning himself for the 2024 presidential primaries for a while now. Before Election Day, there were a lot of reasons to be skeptical ...
12.02.2022 True or false: Colorado is a swing state Michael Bennet is the senior Democratic senator from Colorado, a famously purple state. In the weeks leading up to the 2022 midterms, Colorado seemed to be a place where Republicans might actually flip a few seats. But as it turned ...
11.18.2022 Sen. Markey vs. Musk’s Twitter: The freed bird might get its wings clipped There are some members of Congress who have famously struggled to understand the online world. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) prides himself on not only understanding the internet, but also for passing some of the key legislation that he likes to ...
11.11.2022 How to flip a GOP stronghold: be a normal politician Why were Democrats seemingly able to by and large defy history and avoid a catastrophic result in the midterms? Across the country, Democrats successfully defended seats that Republicans had confidently expected to pick up, while also adding wins in gubernatorial ...
11.04.2022 Democrats' 'optimistic apostle' offers hope for the midterms Simon Rosenberg is the head of the progressive think tank NDN, and he has a message for jittery Democrats on the eve of the midterms: cheer up! This week on the Playbook Deep Dive podcast we sit down with the ...
10.28.2022 The quarter-billion dollar PAC driving a red wave Dan Conston is the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Rep. Kevin McCarthy with the singular mission of making the California Republican Speaker of the House. Most forecasts suggest that Conston and CLF are on ...
10.21.2022 Weaponized (un)truths: Has the GOP ‘lost its mind’? Robert Draper's "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind" focuses exclusively on the GOP during the crucial 18-month period after January 6 and vastly adds to our understanding of the Trump era. Far-right representatives Paul Gosar, ...
10.14.2022 How we predict elections Scott Bland is POLITICO’s national politics editor and leading all of POLITICO’s 2022 midterm coverage. To do it, he has a team of about 15 reporters around the country following campaigns. Despite the cooling temperatures, this is when people like ...
10.07.2022 Dream job disappointment: Testifying against Trump Sarah Matthews has a political resume similar to a lot of conservatives her age. At Kent State, she joined the College Republicans and made her first pilgrimage to the annual CPAC conference in Washington. Matthews interned on Capitol Hill for ...
09.30.2022 Giorgia Meloni's Hard Right Playbook Last Sunday, Italians voted for the most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini. The controversial politician leading the winning coalition, Giorgia Meloni, will become Italy's first female prime minister. Meloni has become a darling of sorts for many Republicans in America, ...

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