Omnishambles

This week, we discuss what it’s like operating as a Washington lobbyist in the Donald Trump era. Fortunately, we have a former Trump adviser and longtime Republican operative on the show to take us through the gory details, what it was like working for The Donald, and how President Trump changed and repopulated the “Swamp” that he campaigned to destroy with extreme prejudice. This week’s guest: Barry Bennett, a former senior adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign and a founder of lobbying firm Avenue Strategies.

This week’s guest: Adam Jentleson, Public Affairs Director at Democracy Forward and former Deputy Chief of Staff to former Senator Harry Reid. This week we discuss the latest policy debates pulling the Democratic Party sharper to its left, how to separate the noise from the actual substance with candidates such as Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, and lastly, we try to solve the age-old puzzle: How do you make discussions about the costs and benefits of nuking the filibuster sexy??

Today's guest is Jason Miller, a former top Trump campaign adviser, who, among other things, talks about the time when Donald Trump called one of his favorite athletes—New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady—to wish him a happy birthday and to give him a gentle ribbing.

On this week’s episode of Omnishambles, host Jackie Kucinich welcomes The Daily Beast’s White House reporter Asawin Suebsaeng, and our very first guest from the upper ranks of Trumpworld: Marc Short, President Donald Trump's former legislative affairs director and a current Miller Center senior fellow at the University of Virginia. On this episode, Marc talks about his experience working in the Trump White House, the advice he would give Republicans and Democrats today caught in the border-wall and immigration standoff, what "the administration should have done from the start," and why he believes Trump's emergency declaration is now all but an inevitability.

On this week’s episode of OMNISHAMBLES, host Sam Stein welcomes The Daily Beast’s tech reporter and "Extremely Online" expert Will Sommer and White House and Trumpworld reporter Asawin Suebsaeng to discuss an almost quaint topic: What is truth, even, in the era of Donald Trump? Will breaks down the online and conservative backlash to the Covington students, and how the immediate, social-media-fueled fury rivaled partisan passions not seen since perhaps the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Swin and Sam discuss how when Trumpworld and Rudy Giuliani denounce Michael Cohen as a proven, prolific liar who cannot be trusted, they—well—have a point. And all three take a much-unneeded jaunt down Memory Lane, to conspiracy theories and racist rumor-mongering of years past, and how it all paved the way for the current era of political and media "post-truth." Subscribe and listen to Omnishambles for free on Apple Podcasts and Google Play.

On this week’s episode of Omnishambles, host Jackie Kucinich welcomes The Daily Beast’s national-security reporter Erin Banco, as well as White House and Trumpworld reporter Asawin Suebsaeng. Erin breaks down the latest Donald Trump-Russia bombshells that detonated over the president's snowed-in weekend, and also offers up listeners a new, hot scoop: the ongoing government shutdown has led the Pompeo-era State Department officials to come into work to do little more than clean their offices—while literally still wearing their pajamas. Jackie and Swin also discuss their reporting on the latest shutdown bedlam self-inflicted by Trump and his team, including a scene from Friday morning (a particularly perfect metaphor for the state of play...) in which senior White House official Mercedes Schlapp urges Republicans on Capitol Hill to rebut Democratic chatter that a Trump national-emergency declaration is imminent—even though she conceded on the call that Trump's own senior staffers had no idea if such a declarati

On this week’s episode of Omnishambles, hosts Jackie Kucinich and Sam Stein welcome The Daily Beast’s national-security and immigration reporter Betsy Woodruff and White House and Trumpworld correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng, the latter of whom Sam and Jackie failed to keep locked in a broom closet during podcast taping, eventually acquiescing to his pleas to get mic'd. On the issue of President Donald Trump's proposed big, beautiful, steel(?) wall, Betsy stopped by the show to discuss why the idiotic arguments on border security and immigration are not exclusively the domain of Team Trump and the right. Betsy also breaks down how the conversation of border barriers sounds behind the scenes and in the halls of places like the Department of Homeland Security, as opposed to how they sound splashed across cable news and @realDonaldTrump's frenetic Twitter. Sam asks the class if we may be headed for an endgame of a big, secret, invisible Trump wall. Swin ponders that liberals would still hate the "racism wall&q

On this week’s episode of Omnishambles, host Sam Stein welcomes The Daily Beast’s White House and Trumpworld reporting duo Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng. The topic of outrage and fascination for this week is President Donald Trump’s lead attorney for the Russia probe, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who refers to Suebsaeng as “Mr. Swin.” The trio get into how Giuliani’s wild, at times seemingly flailing public defenses of the president are merely an extension of Giuliani’s client and Team Trump as a whole, and how Trump’s lawyers essentially try to confuse the media into submission. The host and his guests delve into how Trump’s West Wing has long been anesthetized to this kind of chronic disarray and “noise”—as have, sadly, many of the correspondents covering it. And Markay, campaign finance and corruption expert, breaks down exactly why Team Trump’s excuse-making for the president in Michael Cohen and AMI’s ongoing legal sagas might actually not be as batshit insane as they at first sound. An

Can anyone actually manage an administration run by Donald Trump? That’s just one of the questions tackled on the latest episode of OMNISHAMBLES, in which Sam Stein, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng break down another chaotic week in Washington. There were big staffing shakeups, Special Counsel sentencing memos, and detailed descriptions of just how much Paul Manafort lied to prosecutors. Swin gets into the blow by blow of John Kelly’s time as Chief of Staff in the White House, and how his removal is welcomed news among some at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and many outside of it. He also breaks down why Trump’s first choice as a replacement, Nick Ayers, refused to serve for a two year term, and whether anyone who does take the role will ever be good enough for the president. Erin jumps into a conversation about what’s still to come in the Mueller investigation, including revelations on how the infamous Trump Tower Moscow deal died. And Sam talks about the fabulous life of a D.C. media superstar—including managing

Co-host and Beast D.C. Bureau Chief Jackie Kucinich is joined this week by White House correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer, The Beast’s senior bizarroworld reporter. The trio kicked off the show by discussing how President Donald Trump handles—or, more accurately, spectacularly fails to handle—the presidential duty of public mourning the dead, and how this bodes for this week's funeral services for George H.W. Bush. (Hint: famous people dying and Donald J. Trump do not mix well—just ask Aretha Franklin's loved ones...) They also go deep on far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, the man who's found himself at the center of Robert Mueller's investigation who Trump used to affectionately call "Jerry." For one thing, did you know "Jerry" authored a trippy children's book about a dragon, a king, and a "wicked witch," long before the right-wing activist became a Trumpworld associate and a Mueller probe fixture? (Well, listen to, and read, Will to find out!)

President Trump is once again demanding cash to build his border wall. But does he really want it? Like, really? Immigration will dominate the conversation as Congress heads because into session for what promises to be one of the least lame, lame duck sessions in recent memory. The spark: a confrontation between U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and migrants at the border in Tijuana on Sunday afternoon escalated to a point where tear gas was shot into the crowd of migrants—including women and children. The president immediately used the incident to fuel his push for the wall—a refrain that will likely become deafening as the Dec. 7 deadline to fund the government looms closer. But there are indications that he’d rather fight over the wall than actually get the thing up.

Do you read the news coming out of D.C. and wonder “How the hell did this happen?” If so, Omnishambles is for you. Join The Daily Beast’s D.C. Bureau Chief Jackie Kucinich and Politics Editor Sam Stein every Monday as they try to make sense of the chaos in Washington, with a rotating cast of your favorite voices from The Beast. They’ll set you up for the week and share the interesting little nuggets that often get left on the cutting room floor.