We begin this episode with a clip from a four-hour segment of testimony by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She appeared before the House Oversight Committee on February 26, 2026; former President Bill Clinton testified the following day.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Dec. 3, 2009. Image credit: Chad J. McNeeley/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
The big news this week is the Trump administration, minus Congressional authorization or an explanation, and in partnership with Israel, starting a war with Iran. You can see a timeline of the conflict here. Although the administration continues to insist that this will be a short war, there are no war goals or a timeline. Trump hints at regime change (hence the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in an Israeli air attack within the first 48 hours), as well as the Islamic Republic’s long history of sponsoring terrorism in the region. Trump also announced yesterday that he plans to be personally involved in choosing Khamenei’s replacement. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and others are scrambling to get out of the region: there was no evacuation plan.
In related news, cracks in the MAGA coalition widen. On the extremely far right, influencer Laura Loomer has leapt to Trump’s defense, Groyper Nick Fuentes announced he will vote for Democrats in 2026 because Trump has broken all his promises, and antisemite Candace Owens blames the war on Israel. Hawks in the GOP have surfaced for a victory lap, while former Trump champions like Ann Coulter, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, who were high on the deportation supply, have crashed to earth. Trump’s response? MAGA is what he says it is.
War or no war, the midterms approach: on election day we saw incumbents in both parties struggling or knocked off. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper had a big win in North Carolina; incumbents on both sides of that state legislature’s aisle were pummeled. In Texas’s Senate contest, DemocraticState Representative James Talarico defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, while incumbent John Cornyn faces a runoff with Attorney General Ken Paxton. Can Talarico win?
On Thursday, Trump fired ICE Barbie: could it be because Kristi Noem passed the buck to Trump for that $220 million ad campaign—about herself? She has been given a soft landing, a newly created job securing the Western Hemisphere, where she will be Marco Rubio’s problem.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
In an earlier moment of grace under fire, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary Clinton, now also a defeated presidential candidate, attend Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017. Photo credit: Cristian L. Ricardo/Wikimedia Commons
News focus: Hill and Bill—Still?
After months of negotiating that included threats to jail them, Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee last week.
The Clintons were treated by, and responded to, the committee, quite differently. Hillary Clinton seemed annoyed and exasperated as she repeatedly said, in response to a battery of repetitive and stupid questions, that she knew nothing about Jeffrey Epstein, and had never visited any of his homes. Republicans also quizzed Clinton about Pizzagate and UFOs.
Former President Bill Clinton was charming, polite and voluble; he said he saw nothing, and did nothing, wrong when in Epstein’s company. As a point of interest, even the Daily Caller reported Ghislaine Maxwell’s claim, under oath, that Clinton never received “a massage.”
But why is the GOP still obsessed with the Clintons? Conspiracy theories about them first emerged during the 1992 presidential campaign, when Bill—then governor of Arkansas—seemingly came out of nowhere to win the Democratic nomination, then ejected a sitting Republican president. That campaign also featured the fracturing of the GOP by a serious populist candidate, Pat Buchanan, as well as rumors of serial infidelities.
In 1993, when White House counsel Vince Foster committed suicide, right-wing outlets promoted the story as a murder, paid for by the Clintons. Later, Bill Clinton was investigated and nearly impeached for real estate dealings and an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; subsequently, former campaign worker Juanita Broadrick accused him of raping her.
Many of these investigations were generated by right-wing actors who Hillary Clinton characterized in 1998 as a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” They were, in fact, targeted by operatives who promoted outlandish tales about them.
Conspiracies were also spread by Fox News, new media actors like Matt Drudge, as well as operatives and ordinary people using free social media platforms.
By 2008, Ron Paul’s libertarian bid for the presidency highlighted the extent to which conspiracy theories powered the right.
These falsehoods gathered new life during the 2016 campaign, when MAGA influencers promoted rumors that she was hiding a terrible illness and a story, spread by Fox News’s Sean Hannity, that DNC staffer Seth Richie had been murdered by his employers (Fox later retracted this story to settle a lawsuit.) As election day approached, and Wikileaks dumped a tranche of Clinton’s emails into the public domain, Clinton conspiracists noted that many of them mentioned “pizza.” This morphed into accusations that the Democratic party was running a pedophilia ring out of Washington’s Ping Pong Cosmic Pizza.
Only last May, Donald Trump—for no apparent reason—dredged up an old video from 1994 called The Clinton Chronicles that falsely alleges the Clintons had numerous political enemies murdered.
What we want to go viral:
Neil wants to endorse a walk on a college campus to enjoy the beauty of these places, but also to take in the infectious joy of diverse young people engaged in a common enterprise at an exciting and life-changing moment.
Claire wants you to read Ellen Cushing, “The McDonald’s CEO’s Big Burger-Eating Mistake,” The Atlantic (March 5, 2026), in which fast-food CEO Chris Kempczinski makes an unconvincing stab at eating his own product—and gives us a window into what the world of food influencers expects.
Short takes:
Is Donald Trump about to lose the unreality shield that protects him from the consequences of wreaking havoc on a global economy? “It is unsettling how often Trump affects astonishing indifference, as though the most powerful man in the world were merely a spectator to events he himself has set in motion — and who in any case has little investment in the outcome,” Lydia Polgreen writes at The New York Times. “But that curious passivity reveals a darker truth. Trump seems to believe that he, like his fantasy America, exists on a different plane, utterly untouchable by the swirl of global events. The devastating consequences of his actions are not just someone else’s fault. They are someone else’s problem, too.” Not for much longer. (March 6, 2026)
At The Atlantic, Phillips Payson O’Brien argues that Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attitude that war is about relentless aggression may be degrading the United States’ military capacity by neglecting technology and strategy. “On multiple occasions after President Trump launched a massive air campaign against Iran this past weekend, retaliatory attacks by simply constructed Iranian drones have penetrated American defenses with serious results,” O’Brien writes. “In Bahrain, a lone Iranian drone penetrated the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which oversees 2.5 million square miles of the world’s oceans. The incoming weapon destroyed an AN/TPS-59 radar unit intended to provide 360-degree air surveillance for U.S. forces. In a moment, Iranian equipment that cost perhaps $30,000 devastated a piece of U.S. military hardware estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.” (March 5, 2026)
It’s spring break in Florida—which is having a measles outbreak! “Florida measles (rubeola) cases increased five-fold from January to February, making Florida third-highest in the nation for measles this year, behind South Carolina and Utah, according to state and federal health data,” Laura Cassells writes at The Florida Trident. “In this high-stakes setting, state lawmakers voted Tuesday to send the Florida Senate a bill that guts school-age vaccination requirements, including the MMR shots that prevent measles, by granting a “conscience” exemption for any reason. The bill does not suggest that vaccines are unsafe nor recommend against their use, but is part of a conservative, anti-regulation movement in Florida.” (March 5, 2026)
You can get all audio content by subscribing for free on Apple iTunes, YouTube, or Spotify.
