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Matt Mackowiak's Mack On Politics

Smart political talk every week from Austin, Texas political consultant Matt Mackowiak, who has served in senior roles for two U.S. Senators and the Bush administration.
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Matt Mackowiak's Mack On Politics
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Now displaying: April, 2017
Apr 24, 2017

We begin the 22nd episode with a fascinating conversation with Jonathan Allen, the best-selling co-author of “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” where we delve in to how Allen and his co-author Amie Parnes kept their reporting secret throughout the campaign, if they book would have been different had she narrowly won, and whether overconfidence, arrogance, and disrespect for Donald Trump cost them the election. We explore Hillary and her campaign’s relationships with her husband Bill Clinton, as well as Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. And finally, we consider what regrets Hillary and her campaign have now.

Then, we turned to author, CNN contributor, and Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis to take his temperature on the Trump era. What does he make of Trump’s White House, the GOP and the conservative movement?

Apr 21, 2017

The singular man of the moment Roger Stone, taped live in Austin.

We talked about his 40+ years of friendship with Donald Trump, how Trump won the election, what’s really going on inside the West Wing, and how Roger answers questions about Russia and his own activities. He’s offered to testify in public, under oath, in front of Congress.

Apr 13, 2017

The situation in North Korea is our subject for the 20th episode of the “Mack on Politics” and our guest is former Pentagon Chief of Staff and former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert.

We preview Vice President Mike Pence’s upcoming visit to Seoul, discuss the recent transition in South Korean leadership, examine the offensive and defensive options that President Trump may be considering, consider what China’s options may be, and then talk about the differences between what life is like in North Korea vs. South Korea.

Finally, we reviewed what it was like when Amb. Lippert survived a gruesome assassination attempt in March 2015, and whether he has hope for North Korea in the future.

Apr 6, 2017

Two foreign crisis are dominating the news this week, so in the 19th episode, we are focusing on the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump, as North Korea continues to test ballistic missiles and the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons on its own citizens.

First, we talked to former U.S. Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the U.S.-China Commission, about China, North Korea, defense spending, the budget, NATO and Syria. Then we talked about how the U.S. Senate has changed and what he misses about serving in the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Then, we spoke with Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World.” In this conversation, we dive deep into what Xi’s agenda will be with Trump, what leverage the U.S. has over China, why the ‘One China’ policy is so important to China and then what advice Chang would give to President Trump ahead of this meeting.

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