The Rest Is Politics: US

The Rest Is Politics: US pairs two people who come at Washington from different directions. Katty Kay starts from reporting. She cites a conversation with an official, relays what the White House was leaking to reporters before a prime-time address, including talk of leaving NATO, and describes sitting through an Easter sermon in Virginia with a profanity-laden Trump post on her mind. Anthony Scaramucci starts somewhere else. He shows off his T-shirt slogans, a 'work harder' shirt one early morning and 'read books, lift weights, fight fascists' on another, and jokes about the no-victim-mentality rules of the Scaramucci house. He even announces that the jokes have to come out in the first minute, after which the talk turns to the news. Iran is the story that keeps coming back. Titles such as 'Trump’s Iran Deadline: Will They Call His Bluff?', 'Trump Is Trapped in the Iran War' and 'The Real Reason Trump’s Blocking The Strait of Hormuz' keep the war, its deadlines and the strait in view. The detail can get granular. In a live-streamed episode, Anthony lists the terms of a ten-point proposal, from non-aggression and uranium enrichment to lifted sanctions and a withdrawal of US combat forces, then turns to Katty with a joke that Trump got the Pakistani prime minister to 'taco' for him. Another conversation weighs a 15-point plan and an unexplained Iranian 'gift' to Trump, with speculation that it was an oil tanker allowed through the strait. Katty's reading of the ceasefire is unsentimental. Trump, she argues, laid his cards on the table, made plain he wanted out, and left the Iranians feeling they had a very strong hand; he was, she notes, already posting about Greenland again. One episode changes the shape. With Katty on vacation, Anthony welcomes veteran diplomat Richard Haass back to the show, plugs his Substack, Home and Away, and compares the two men's shirts for anyone listening rather than watching on YouTube. Haass makes the case for a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, claims the idea as his own, and calls it preposterous that Iran decides who passes while it banks billions and others cannot export their oil. The second strand is domestic. The hosts ask whether strong results in Georgia and Wisconsin give Democrats momentum before the midterms, discuss new polling, and flag betting-market trades placed before a negotiation announcement, asking who knew what and when. Trump's appearance at the Supreme Court during the birthright citizenship case is billed with the question of whether the justices are snowflakes. For both hosts together, 'Is Trump the Biggest Loser of the Iran Ceasefire?' puts Iran and the Democrats side by side; for the guest format, start with the Haass conversation.