Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carlos Lozada reads political books so that you don’t have to. Here’s what he learned from his close reading of Trump, Biden, Obama and more, and what it reveals about the future of our politics.

How Washington’s top book critic reads between 2024’s political lines

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.

News

Politics

Government

News Commentary

On Wednesday morning, Frank Fahrenkopf received a letter from the Biden presidential campaign that ruined his day. Fahrenkopf is co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has produced 33 debates since 1988, the first election year it was in business.

He was planning on four more this year: three with Biden and Trump as well as the quadrennial vice presidential debate. But the Biden campaign told Fahrenkopf that the president would not be participating in any of them.

Instead, the Biden campaign announced that it would negotiate with the Trump campaign and individual media organizations to plan two debates outside of the Commission’s process.

By the end of the day Biden and Trump were set to debate in June on CNN and in September on ABC.

On this episode of Deep Dive, Fahrenkopf joins host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza to discuss the fall-out from this decision, including the roles of Biden, Trump, and Anita Dunn; why he thinks RFK Jr. may have grounds for a lawsuit against CNN and what some of his favorite behind-the-scenes stories are from his decades of producing debates.

“Political malpractice”: the Debate Commission chief thinks Trump blew it

Fresh off fending off a hard-right coup attempt, the House speaker opens up about his strategy and his future plans for the GOP Conference.

Topics in this lengthy interview include: Johnson’s victory over the GOP radicals; Israel; Ukraine; January 6th; the Trump trials; abortion; and his relationships with key Washington leaders, such as Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, Kevin McCarthy and, of course, Donald Trump.

Mike Johnson told us what he really thinks about Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries and Donald Trump

Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has represented a big piece of Manhattan since 1992, is one of the longest-serving Jewish members of the House. 

He’s also a Columbia University alumnus: he was on campus in 1968 when police cleared Hamilton Hall of anti-Vietnam war protesters.

Nadler is a close observer of the Middle East and the politics of Israel in the U.S. And he’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where he’s long seen himself as a champion of civil liberties.

All of this background helped put Nadler at the center of a swirl of events this week as pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia were ejected from Hamilton Hall, as President Biden made his first public remarks about campus protests, as a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel seemed tantalizingly close and as the House passed, by an overwhelming majority of 320 to 91, the Antisemitism Awareness Act — a bill against which Nadler led the opposition.

On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talked talks with Nadler about all of this and about Trump’s interview in Time Magazine, the potential for disruption at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the vote Nadler most regrets in his long career and the nature of truth.

Rep. Jerry Nadler opposed the House antisemitism bill. Here's why

The biggest movie in the country right now is about a civil war — in America.

If you see the film “Civil War” at a theater in downtown Washington, the scenes of the Lincoln Memorial exploding and the White House being attacked are jarring when you exit into the D.C. air. 

The movie is writer and director Alex Garland’s very in-your-face attempt to imagine the unimaginable in America — an authoritarian leader in the White House, intractable political differences being resolved through violence and the very specific horrors of modern warfare — urban fighting, refugee camps, mass atrocities, the collapse of the currency — all the things that we associate with stuff that can happen over there happening right here in the United States.

“Civil War” is also a movie about journalism.

It follows four reporters traveling from New York to Washington, D.C., via a circuitous route through Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. 

The movie takes on a lot of the weighty issues we talk about on shows like this one: media ethics, political polarization, disinformation polluting our media ecosystem and the potential threat from an autocratic leader.

Wagner Moura plays a hardened war correspondent addicted to the battlefield. He also provides some much needed levity in the movie.

Moura is best-known for his role as Pablo Escobar in “Narcos.” But he’s also a former journalist, a political activist and a writer and director himself. His 2019 movie “Marighella” about the coup and counter-revolution in Brazil in the 1960s incurred the wrath of then-president Jair Bolsonaro in Moura’s home country of Brazil. 

Deep Dive host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talked with Moura on Thursday just as Washington’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner festivities were getting under way. It’s the time of year when the relationship between journalists, politicians and Hollywood is at its peak in this town. 

They had a fascinating conversation about how making a movie about a new civil war changed Moura’s own personal thinking about politics, how his experience with Bolsonaro in Brazil is a warning for Americans and the role of art in politics.

‘I used to be very combative’: How starring in ‘Civil War’ changed his politics

After months of delay, this week House Speaker Mike Johnson advanced his much awaited version of the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan foreign aid package.

Standing between that legislation and the House floor: two very powerful committees. 
First, the House Appropriations Committee, which controls about a third of federal spending. And second, the Rules Committee, which controls access to the House floor, and which has become a problem for GOP leaders in this Congress.

Johnson needed to pick the lock on both of these committees. And there is one Member of Congress who has chaired them both. Not just in the past year — but in the past month: Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole.

Deep Dive host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza caught up with Cole on Thursday afternoon after he’d just testified in support of the foreign aid bill in front of his old committee. 

They got deep into the weeds of why the Rules Committee has been such a trouble spot for recent GOP speakers; and they discussed Johnson’s tenure so far and whether Cole thinks the Speaker can hang on as members threaten to oust him. 

Cole also previewed how he will run the Appropriations Committee, including how he’ll handle the controversial earmarks process. And Cole answered some prying questions from some of his favorite historians on the subject of Donald Trump.

How Washington’s top book critic reads between 2024’s political lines

Download our free app to listen on your phone