The Weekly List

Amy Siskind
  • 4.7 (393)
  • News
  • Updated Biweekly

The Weekly List is a podcast hosted by Amy Siskind, author of The List. It supplements the popular Weekly List on our website, www.theweeklylist.org, which tracks the ever changing new normals of American politics. The podcast gives greater context to the "not normal" news items from the previous week, and will highlight a few stories and changing norms from the Trump regime that you may have missed.

  1. Aug 27

    Week 94 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    This week Trump continued his inexplicable targeting of what were formerly some of the strongest U.S. allies, while coddling and cozying up to former adversaries. In what the WSJ Editorial Board dubbed “the dumbest trade war,” Trump escalated tensions with Canada, including threats to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America, while Vice President JD Vance mused that “Canada is a state.” Unlike during his first regime and earlier in his second, now countries are pushing back against his antics rather than being bullied into submission. Speaking of pushing back, the Iran war, now in its sixth month, is at a standstill. Americans’ approval of the war hit a low point of 31%, as support even from Trump’s Republican base faltered. Experts questioned the efficacy of Trump’s new tactic of imposing an “economic D-Day” on Iran, which had previously faced decades of sanctions to little avail, other than pushing Iran to sign the JCPOA, which Trump exited. Trump and Defense Department Sec. Pete Hegseth’s strategy back home continued to be to silence dissent. Meanwhile, Trump kept his focus this week on his pet projects and targeting his perceived enemies. Trump enjoyed two Supreme Court wins on his ballroom and mail-in voting, with midterms approaching. In a sign that Trump knows what is coming with midterms, he sent Jared Kushner to meet with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, likely to become the House Speaker after midterms.

  2. Aug 20

    Week 93 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    In a relatively quiet summer week, with Congress out of session, Trump pushed forward on his personal agenda, while the issues impacting most Americans got left by the wayside. There was nary a focus on the issues impacting Americans like affordability, healthcare, and rising rates. Instead, Trump and his regime pushed full steam ahead on his D.C. pet projects, and pursuing his petty grievances and political adversaries. Trump continued to lose the support of the American people, with his approval hitting new lows, while 7 in 10 Americans said his business dealings were influencing his decisions as president. In a sign of his waning influence within his own party, Trump-endorsed candidates lost three primaries this week, bringing the total this season to 10, the highest number since 2022. Trump’s Iran war came to a standstill, with no end in sight, and seemingly no strategy going forward. Reports of poor living conditions and sailors’ mental health issues aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships made headlines, while Trump and his Pentagon denied and deflected. Meanwhile, Trump saved much of his ire for longtime U.S. allies, like South Korea and Canada, with his continued erratic and nonsensical foreign policy.

  3. Aug 13

    Week 92 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    This week, as Trump’s failures mounted and his polling continued to fall, he tried a new tactic ahead of midterms: blame the Republicans. In an interview, he bragged that he had “already won” his race, and said of the American people’s discontent, “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.” The shift seemed to be a tacit acknowledgment of what lies ahead on November 3, and Trump preemptively looking to shift the blame. Once again this week, many of the broken norms, and much of Trump’s continued focus, is on his Washington D.C. vanity projects. Along with these projects, Trump spends his time searching for ways to impact the midterms, targeting his perceived enemies and pursuing his petty grievances. One time this week reporting indicated that a light bulb went off, and Trump wanted to offer an economic favor to the American people to gain support for Republicans on Election Day. Then we learn his ‘bold’ idea is cutting the capital gains tax rate, further illuminating how out of touch Trump has become, ensconced in his cocoon of yes-people. Trump’s Iran war is a complete disaster. He and regime senior officials are desperately searching for an off ramp, but finding none. Trump looked incredibly weak as Iran threatened to cut off negotiations until he left office, leaving him open to comparisons to former president Jimmy Carter, whom he often cites as a complete failure. As well, a story about him being sneaked off of Air Force One in a catering cart, while leaving journalists and regime officials on a decoy plane out of Turkey, further chiseled away from his strongman image.

  4. Aug 6

    Week 91 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    This week Trump finds himself hitting all sorts of unenviable records for lowest approval, least public support for a war, and lowest approval on economic issues, even as midterm elections are now just three months away. Trump dismissed the polls as fake — a tactic he used during his first regime — but there is also a vast difference in his sentiment and approach this go-round. In his second regime, Trump does not seem to care about his polling data or Republican losses; rather, he has other priorities. An NYT reporter explained that Trump’s major focus now is on his legacy projects: putting his name and image wherever possible, especially in Washington D.C., before his time in office runs out. Since he has also been reported as saying he will pardon his entire regime before leaving office, he is less worried about what Democrats can do with control of the House and potentially the Senate. He has also shown little interest in actual policy or governing in this second year of his second regime. His cabinet likewise has little to show for their time in power. Other than his legacy, Trump continues to focus on personally enriching himself, and raising hundreds of millions to pay for all his pet projects. Trump is facing some pushback this week, although minor, and hardly a profile in courage given that most of it is coming from outgoing members of Congress. U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro dropped charges relating to Trump’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, raising his ire while revealing his lies and his regime’s incompetence. Federal judges continued to rule against Trump’s efforts to federalize midterms and other extreme measures. Trump’s Iran war is a complete mess, and risks turning into an endless quagmire, which will further mar his disastrous performance.

  5. Jul 30

    Week 90 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    This was a disastrous week for Trump. Little is going his way, and the American people are increasingly turning against him. Trump continued to focus on his personal priorities, not issues that his party wants 100 days away from midterm elections, and not on what the American people want either. Nearly three-quarters of Americans said Trump was not paying attention to the country’s important issues, like the economy and affordability. Although Trump had promised his Iran “excursion” would last mere weeks, months later he is caught in an increasingly unpopular quagmire of a war. Trump suffered setbacks in a number of legal battles this week, including being forced to withdraw subpoenas of NYT reporters; losing an appeal on his efforts to thwart mail-in voting; a judge requiring significant financial disclosures in his BBC lawsuit; a long pause on Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros., parent company of CNN; and more. At a rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump gave a rambling, insult-laden keynote, which fell flat. The irony of the mission of the association being to defend the First Amendment, while Trump continued to use the levers of his regime to attack both journalists and media outlets, left some attendees wondering if at long last it was time to “rethink” the dinner, or consider other alternatives while an autocrat was in office.

  6. Jul 23

    Week 89 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    While we are in the lazy days of summer, this week had story lines that made the country feel as if in chaos, with a much ballyhooed speech by Trump on the 2020 election, and an escalation of the Iran War. Much to his chagrin, Trump’s prime time speech was not covered by all the networks, causing him to call for licenses to be revoked. The speech was a rehashing of past conspiracies, with Trump blaming the “deep state” for withholding the information he was about to release from him while, ironically, he was president during the alleged election fraud. Materials released after the speech fell flat, and the response was muted. The Iran War escalated this week as the ceasefire came to an end, and while the U.S. struck Iran, Iran in turn struck U.S. bases in the region, killing more U.S. troops. Once again, the Pentagon tried to withhold information on wounded soldiers. After failing to hold a press conference for two and a half months, Defense Department Sec. Pete Hegseth came hat in hand looking for more money for the Iran War. Little was offered by way of explanation for where the war was headed, let alone the U.S.’s objectives. All the power and decisions continued to be made by one man. Chaos and incompetence continued to rule at federal agencies. This week at confirmation hearings, Trump appointees appeared bound by their loyalty test not to say out loud that Joseph Biden won the 2020 election. Other agencies like Health and Human Services, which still has no confirmed leader at the CDC, showed signs of its inability to handle basic tasks, amid growing outbreaks of the measles, and now cyclospora.

  7. Jul 16

    Week 88 - The Top 10 Things You Need to Know This Week

    This week Trump pushed boundaries to new extremes, while the judicial branch pushed him back on others. In the aftermath of NYT reporting that Trump had switched Air Force One planes to return from the NATO summit in Turkey due to security concerns, federal agents showed up at the homes of some Times reporters with subpoenas, an extraordinary measure of targeting the press. At the same time, Trump and his regime suffered some dramatic losses and pushback from judges this week on his IRS settlement, his attempts to interfere with midterms, and his efforts to avoid payment to E. Jean Carroll, which this week he finally made. In the days after the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had hatched a new plot to kill Trump, he returned to strikes against them, bringing the U.S. back into an active war. Trump, who is used to relying on his impulses and improvisation, gyrated from saying the U.S. would control the Strait of Hormuz and charge a 20 percent protection fee, to flip-flopping back to alleged investments from Gulf states. It was unclear where Trump’s Iran War, which he is running unilaterally, was heading, or how it could possibly end. As Trump pressed to ramp up deportations, this week three men were killed by ICE, two of whom were shot in their cars despite not being ICE agents’ intended targets. While the Department of Homeland Security sought to pull back traffic stop arrests in the aftermath, Trump overruled them the next day. Notably, the ICE agents did not have body cameras in any of the incidents, despite promises to equip officers two months ago. This week Trump lost one of his closest allies with the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, while the state of Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has been out of public sight for weeks, is unknown. While speaking of the loss of Graham, Trump pivoted to his SAVE America Act, continued his push to interfere in the midterms, and baselessly cast doubt about election results. Overall, it was a week of pandemonium.

  8. Jul 9

    Week 87 - Trump Hijacks the Nation’s 250th Anniversary, Resumes War, Insults Allies, Grifts and Leaves His Supporters Holding the Bag

    In a week when the country should have been coming together to celebrate our 250th anniversary, Trump instead chose to make the Independence Day celebrations highly partisan, and all about himself. He made speeches attacking his political enemies as “communists,” and made repeated baseless claims about the dangers they posed to the country. He continued to push unfounded claims about the infiltration of others into our country, who were not only tainting the fabric of our country, but also secretly helping to elect Democrats. Toward that end, Trump has continued his efforts to muddy the waters and sow doubt about the midterm elections. While continuing to push Republicans in Congress to end the filibuster and pass his SAVE America Act, Trump has also deployed federal agencies, this week including the FBI, the Justice Department civil rights division, and FEMA, to pressure states to change the way voting is conducted, a role that the executive branch does not have according to the Constitution. Even after 18 months in office, Trump continued to push for baseless investigations into so-called fraud in the 2020 election, of which his regime has uncovered none. U.S. foreign policy is being decided by one mercurial man, as former alliances in Europe and the Middle East are being tested. At the NATO summit, Trump again threatened to annex Greenland, re-engaged in battle with Iran after calling their leaders “scum,” and said he would cut off U.S. trade with Spain. He also continued his castigation of our former allies for not helping in his Iran War. The grift and quid pro quos of this regime continue to be simply astounding. This week has seen more pardons, a process that has become pay to play; continued reporting on Trump and his family’s widespread efforts to enrich themselves, even as supporters are left holding the bag with losses; countries and corporations seeking favor with Trump, and by extension our federal agencies, by being sycophantic, including lavish donations and gifts. At our 250th anniversary, the state of our democracy is weak and teetering.

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About

The Weekly List is a podcast hosted by Amy Siskind, author of The List. It supplements the popular Weekly List on our website, www.theweeklylist.org, which tracks the ever changing new normals of American politics. The podcast gives greater context to the "not normal" news items from the previous week, and will highlight a few stories and changing norms from the Trump regime that you may have missed.

Information

  • Creator
    Amy Siskind
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    253
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Amy Siskind
  • Show Website
    The Weekly List

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