Jamal Simmons on lessons from the 2024 election, how Democrats can win in 2028, and who the real base of the Democratic Party is. Plus: Why the White House Correspondents' Dinner feels so out of touch, and The Magician, by Colm Toibin. In this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic's David Frum opens with his thoughts about the White House Correspondents' Dinner. David examines the role of the dinner in an administration that rejects the basic concepts of honesty with and respect toward independent media. During previous administrations, there was some norm of good faith between the White House and the press. But now, as the president systematically misleads the media and is openly hostile to the press, David asks what the point of this night of pretended common purpose is. Then, David is joined by Jamal Simmons, a host of the Trailblaze podcast and a former communications director for Kamala Harris, for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the Democratic Party. David and Simmons discuss Harris's profile among her party's constituents, how much the online left should dictate Democratic policy, what happened in 2024, and what Democrats should do in 2028....

Representative Thomas Massie, the renegade Kentucky Republican who fiercely guards his political independence, doesn't love being on President Trump's bad side. He would prefer not to have the president's allies spend millions to defeat him in a primary. In fact, if Massie had his way, he'd be working for Trump right now. In his telling, in the weeks after the 2024 presidential election, the two men talked about Massie, a farmer who champions raw milk, becoming Trump's agriculture secretary. Massie had formally endorsed Trump late in the campaign, offering to help him win over libertarians who might be tempted to stay home or vote third party in key battlegrounds. Trump had been appreciative, and the two had chatted by phone to hash out the timing of the endorsement announcement. 'Just tweet it. I'll retweet you,' Trump had told him. The rollout went smoothly, but Massie's endorsement didn't get him the job in Trump's Cabinet. He was recounting this to me in, of all places, a bridal suite inside a converted barn in his northern-Kentucky district. Massie had just delivered remarks to a friendly crowd in the wedding hall downstairs, part of an acrimonious campaign that, if Trump gets his way, will be Massie's last. The president's allies are spending big to defeat Massie in a May 19 primary and prop up Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL and a political novice whom Trump personally recruited as a challenger. Massie first won election to the House during the pre-Trump Tea Party era and has handily prevailed in competitive primaries before. But he is also aware of Trump's unique hold on the GOP: When the president decides he wants a Republican out of Congress, he usually gets his wish. Polls have given Massie a lead over Gallrein, who is not well known in the district, but his advantage is far smaller than in his previous reelection bids....

Pity poor Tucker Carlson. Watching Donald Trump's war in Iran'which Carlson has branded 'the single biggest mistake' by a U.S. president in his lifetime'he is ruing his strong support for Trump in the 2024 election. 'It's a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,' Carlson, long the most prominent media personality in the MAGA movement, said this week on his podcast. 'We'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people.' Or, even better, don't pity Carlson. He is one of several media figures who are having second thoughts about Trump'and in some cases, receiving praise for it. But these pundits deserve no amnesty. Their second thoughts are wise, but to have erred so badly, when so many other commentators and journalists saw the truth, disqualifies them from being taken seriously on politics again. The problem is not just that Carlson ought to have known better. It's that he did, as the journalist Jason Zengerle reports in his recent biography, Hated by All the Right People. Back in the early 2000s, Carlson harbored reservations about the war in Iraq, but he swallowed them to be what he felt was a good team player for the right, Zengerle notes. Later, he said, he'd gone 'against my own instincts in supporting it. It's something I'll never do again. Never.' (The Iraq disaster may inform Carlson's vehement opposition to the war in Iran.)...

In a recent story, the Atlantic staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick writes about how FBI Director Kash Patel's colleagues are alarmed by what they describe as erratic behavior and excessive drinking. Sources told Fitzpatrick that, on multiple occasions, members of his security detail had trouble waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated. Last year, Fitzpatrick reports, a request was made for 'breaching equipment,' normally used by SWAT teams to break into buildings, because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. Patel called the story a 'lie' and earlier this week sued The Atlantic for defamation. When asked about it at a press conference Tuesday, he said, 'I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake-news mafia. And when they get louder, it just means I'm doing my job.' Although Patel's erratic behavior has been an 'open secret' in the FBI and other parts of the administration, according to Fitzpatrick, sources have been reluctant to express concerns through traditional channels because Patel has contributed to a climate of fear within the department by making employees take polygraph tests and waging an alleged retribution campaign against the president's perceived political enemies. Patel has fired agents involved in investigations into Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election....