Episode #168: A New Tone for Trump, A New Chair for Dems

President Trump seemed to catch his critics off guard Tuesday evening, as he gave an address to a joint session of Congress that lacked finger-pointing or vitriol.  NPR’s Ron Elving makes a return visit to the Political Junkie with analysis of Trump’s remarks and observations about the President’s tone. There was something new about the Democrats as well: they have a new national party chair.  DNC members elected Tom Perez, the labor secretary under President Obama, who now has a tough task ahead of him.  Susan Swecker, the Virginia Democratic chair, talks about what her party needs to do get back into the game. Trump’s relationship with both the media and the entertainment world is precarious enough that there was not much surprise when he announced he would skip this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner.  Patrick Gavin, who has produced a film critical about the much-maligned dinner, offers his observations on the pros and cons of Trump showing up. Finally, we speak to Matthew Albright of the Wilmington News-Journal, regarding last weekend’s special election in Delaware that broke a tie in the state senate, and which Democrats — including favorite son Joe Biden — worked hard to get the victory. Photo via Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Image via AP Music used in this podcast: I Wanna Grow Up To Be A Politician by The Byrds Airwaves by Thomas Dolby Virginia by Whiskey Myers Ain’t No Room by The Vines Amazing Grace by Judy Collins  Creep by Radiohead La La Means I Love You by The Delfonics Moonlight Feels So Right by Starbuck This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License