Episode 211 begins with a review of the New York v Trump trial. That’s followed by a review of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones' epic performance Thursday night at Jazzfest 2024 in New Orleans. Show Troubadour Dave Gunders is on fire as he reviews the experience from the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. We then Play that Zydeco. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiLexPg0piM
Accomplished journalist Eli Stokols keeps receiving historic White House assignments following his near decade-long successful run in Colorado television and magazines. Stokols moved on to become a DC family guy with a great journalist wife and kids. The LA Times and WSJ are former homes, but Eli Stokol’s with Politico again. https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-press/2022/10/18/eli-stokols-joins-politico-as-white-house-reporter-00062346
Eli covered the 2016 election for POLITICO, starting with the Jeb Bush campaign before turning his reporting lens on Donald Trump. He’s covered the White House ever since Trump took office in 2017. Along the way, he interacted frequently with Hope Hicks and Michel Cohen. Spoiler alert – Hicks was much more pleasant than Cohen.
This special name-dropping episode features discussions of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kyle Clark, OJ Simpson, Elizabeth Orden, Doug Lamborn, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, Lauren Boebert, John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, Jon Hamm, Scarlett Johansen, Colin Jost, Elena Schneider, Tim Walz, Dick Wadhams, Dudley Brown, Arthur Sulzberger, Peter Baker, and Howard Stern.
Stokols wrote the explosive Politico Magazine (THE MEDIA ISSUE) titled The Petty Feud Between the NYT and the White House. In it, Stokols identified petty disputes between Biden-Harris and the highest echelons of the New York Times and how it led to caricatures of our President as he ran against Trump. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219
Published right before the wacky weekend, which includes the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Eli Stokols even had President Joe Biden responding with jabs about doing interviews with "strong, independent journalists who millions of people actually listen to... like Howard Stern." Eli Stokols helped make that laugh line happen. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/joe-biden-howard-stern-interview-hillary-clinton-1235887751/
Stokols has fond memories of Colorado and political controversies in the Centennial State. Now, Eli Stokol’s beat remains the White House, where he co-authored the West Wing Playbook for Politico. Stokols studied history at Cal-Berkeley, where he also was a varsity baseball pitcher. He went to Columbia for graduate school. Protests on those campuses get our attention. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook