The Playbook Podcast
POLITICO’s Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns bring their fresh insight, analysis and reporting to the biggest story driving the day in the nation’s capital.
- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 6 minutes
- Episodes
- 1944
- Years Active
- 2016 - 2025
July 19, 2021: Schumer channels his inner McConnell
Chuck Schumer seems to be channeling Mitch McConnell these days. The Senate majority leader is taking a gamble worthy of the last guy to have his job by scheduling two major deadlines this week to fo…
00:05:54 |
Mon 19 Jul 2021
July 16, 2021: Caitlyn Jenner’s reality TV campaign
It’s fair to wonder whether Caitlyn Jenner is running for governor of California or filming another reality show. Well, it turns out she’s doing a little bit of both. Jenner is showing up at campaign…
00:06:01 |
Fri 16 Jul 2021
July 15, 2021: McCarthy’s big Jan. 6 decision
Back in 2019, when the House Intelligence Committee was about to kick off public hearings for Donald Trump's first impeachment, Trump and his allies pressed Kevin McCarthy to yank centrist Republican…
00:06:40 |
Thu 15 Jul 2021
July 14, 2021: What we’re watching for as Biden starts twisting arms
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer proclaimed Tuesday night that Democrats are “very proud” of the $3.5 trillion budget agreement he had just unveiled, before adding: “We know we have a long way to…
00:04:55 |
Wed 14 Jul 2021
July 13, 2021: GOP Senators go wobbly on BIF
It was after 9 p.m. on Friday, and staff for the bipartisan Senate infrastructure working group were hammering out legislative text over Zoom. Suddenly, the girlfriend of a staffer for Sen. Angus Kin…
00:05:15 |
Tue 13 Jul 2021
July 12, 2021: The Gray Lady hits Fox over anti-vax talk
The Uprising’s Hunter Walker scooped that the likely next mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is headed to the White House today to meet with President Joe Biden, Attorney Garland Merrick Garland and…
00:04:58 |
Mon 12 Jul 2021
July 9, 2021: Antitrust the process + Guilfoyle signs up with Greitens — and incurs Trump’s wrath
The White House is scheduled to issue an executive order Friday to promote competition throughout the U.S. economy in the most ambitious effort in generations to reduce the stranglehold of monopolies…
00:06:06 |
Fri 09 Jul 2021
July 8, 2021: BIF, Delta, Russia, Afghanistan — Is Biden doing enough?
With Congress gone, Joe Biden, our low-key president, has been the main story in Washington. He’s already addressed two major issues this week: how to respond to the Delta Covid-19 variant, and attem…
00:06:34 |
Thu 08 Jul 2021
July 7, 2021: Putin ignores Biden’s tough talk
Back when Biden’s aides were debating whether to have a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the pro-meeting side argued that if he ignored Putin, the Russian leader was more likely to act o…
00:05:23 |
Wed 07 Jul 2021
July 06, 2021: The issue Joe Biden doesn’t want to talk about
With the House and Senate on break, President Joe Biden will be at the center of political coverage this week — and the three big Biden stories are Afghanistan, Covid-19 and infrastructure.
All three…
00:06:42 |
Tue 06 Jul 2021
July 01, 2021: Trump aide says ex-prez emboldened by indictment news
The former president was on a conference call with his advisers Monday discussing his favorite topic — revenge — when he was interrupted with an update on the Manhattan D.A.’s investigation. He would…
00:07:01 |
Thu 01 Jul 2021
June 30, 2021: Nutso in New York
Tallies released Tuesday afternoon indicated that New York City mayoral Democratic candidate Kathryn Garcia had come within 2.2 points of leading candidate Eric Adams after ranked-choice tabulations …
00:06:53 |
Wed 30 Jun 2021
June 29, 2021: Who will be Pelosi’s Republican?
Speaker Nancy Pelosi surprised Washington when her office announced Monday that she was open to appointing a Republican to fill one of her party’s spots on the select committee to investigate Jan. 6.…
00:06:53 |
Tue 29 Jun 2021
June 28, 2021: Manchin vs. Sanders — Let the staring contest begin
The GOP rebellion over President Joe Biden's Thursday veto threat of the bipartisan infrastructure bill seems to have been quelled. ICYMI, on Saturday the White House released a long and windy statem…
00:05:29 |
Mon 28 Jun 2021
June 25, 2021: Can Dems land the infrastructure plane?
President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a rather daring new strategy Thursday for getting the president’s agenda passed.
The gist is this: If Biden…
00:05:18 |
Fri 25 Jun 2021
June 24, 2021: Biden catches his white whale
Joe Biden appears to have all but secured that elusive bipartisan infrastructure deal that both parties have been prattling on about for years. The core group of ten Senate centrists working on the p…
00:06:42 |
Thu 24 Jun 2021
June 22, 2021: Liberals fume at Biden over demise of voting rights bill
The top legislative priority of progressive Democrats is set to die in the Senate today with barely a whimper of protest from the White House. Republicans will easily filibuster the For the People Ac…
00:05:24 |
Tue 22 Jun 2021
June 21, 2021: A big week lies ahead for Washington
Not to be too dramatic, but this is a big week for democracy.
The Senate is back in session today at 3 p.m., and by the end of the week we’ll know a lot more about how broken the upper chamber is. As…
00:04:28 |
Mon 21 Jun 2021
June 18, 2021: ‘I want to be the next John McCain’
Kyrsten Sinema's advisers heard it constantly from her during her 2018 campaign for Senate: “I want to be the next John McCain.”
After she won, Sinema called the late senator a “legend” and “my perso…
00:05:51 |
Fri 18 Jun 2021
June 17, 2021: The inside view from the West Wing on infrastructure
As he returns from Europe, President Joe Biden faces a major decision that will have consequences for the rest of his agenda: Does he take a bipartisan compromise on infrastructure and hope the rest …
00:05:38 |
Thu 17 Jun 2021
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