John Heilemann
A bestselling author and former staff writer for New York, The New Yorker, and The Economist, a national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and the creator and host of the Emmy-nominated docuseries The Circus, John offers indispensable political reporting and analysis in the Sunday edition of Puck’s The Best & The Brightest.
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Leigh Ann Caldwell, Peter Hamby, Julia Ioffe, Marianna Sotomayor, John Heilemann, & Abby Livingston
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Sunday through Thursday
Puck’s daily political newsletter from Washington—featuring Leigh Ann Caldwell, Peter Hamby, John Heilemann, Julia Ioffe, Abby Livingston, and Marianna Sotomayor—on what’s really happening in this town, from the White House to the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, K Street, and the campaign trail.
THE LATEST ARTICLES
John Heilemann
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August 25, 2024
Kamalot Revisited
Following a convention that was exceptional by every measure—ratings, volunteer sign-ups, fundraising, crowd size—here’s what Democratic operatives and political professionals are saying privately.
John Heilemann
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August 21, 2024
The Brief Return of Obamalot
A convention conversation with political columnist James Bennet about the lasting power of the Obamas, what the G.O.P. has lost with Trump, and whether Kamala can sell America on generational change.
John Heilemann
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August 19, 2024
The Biden-ing of Donald Trump
With the octogenarian incumbent out of the picture, Trump finds himself facing a less forgiving split screen opposite Kamala Harris—and a press corps finally starting to focus on his own cognitive decline. Can Team K turn the tables and do to Trump what Trump and his campaign did to Biden?
John Heilemann
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August 5, 2024
Harris’s Hot Streak & Team K’s To-Do List
With the Democratic convention two weeks out and the Labor Day kickoff of the fall campaign looming, Kamala Harris and her people have a jillion big decisions and tasks to tackle in no time flat. But three items on their punch list matter most of all: map, message, and running mate.
John Heilemann
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July 29, 2024
The Harris Honeymoon & Team K’s Quest to Make It Last
The first week of Kamala Harris’s wholly unexpected, wildly unlikely stint as the de facto Democratic nominee was more smashingly successful than she or her team could have dared to hope or the political class expected. Now comes the hard part.
John Heilemann
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July 22, 2024
After Biden: Pelosi’s Power, Kamala’s Positioning & What’s Next
News, notes, and the four most pressing takeaways on a historic day.
John Heilemann
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July 18, 2024
Trump’s 25 Paths to 270
At a private lunch just outside of the R.N.C., longtime Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio confidently expounded on the campaign’s view that it has myriad—and growing—paths to 270 electoral votes: “We literally stopped counting at 25.”
John Heilemann
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July 18, 2024
J.D. Vanceology & Biden Game Theory
An insider conversation with G.O.P. turned #NeverTrump strategist Stuart Stevens and The Bulwark’s Tim Miller about the foibles and pitfalls of J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, the opening of the Republican convention, and the ongoing existential drama in Bidenworld.
John Heilemann
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July 15, 2024
The G.O.P.’s Martyr Complex & The ’24 Inevitability Question
In Milwaukee this week, a Republican Party that already saw Donald Trump as a righteous victim even before he dodged an assassin’s bullet will hail him as more than a martyr: as a bona fide hero, a literally bloodied warrior, maybe even a messiah. But many Democrats fear that Trump’s brush with death will make him something else: a landslide winner in November.
John Heilemann
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July 8, 2024
Biden vs. The World
He may have already lost the backing of Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the donor class. But in the face of Joe Biden’s go-for-broke, damn-the-torpedoes embrace of sheer defiance—along with denial, delusion, and desperation—as a strategy for survival, will being abandoned by his own party be enough to make him quit the race?
