About this episode
Don Lemon may just be the luckiest man in cable TV. The “CNN This Morning” co-anchor set the media and political worlds ablaze yesterday morning with his on-air suggestion that GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley wasn’t “in her prime” at age 51. “A woman is considered to be in their prime in [their] 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” he said. Yet by day’s end, the vicious backlash to Lemon’s remarks had been stunningly eclipsed by blockbuster revelations about CNN’s chief rival, Fox News Channel, revealed in a new court filing made public in the $1.6 billion lawsuit over Fox’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election results. The internal communications revealed by Dominion Voting Systems paint a stark and damning picture — a split screen between the false and conspiratorial claims beamed to Fox viewers about rigged Dominion voting machines, and the private, candid opinions of the network’s hosts and executives, who repeatedly admitted to each other that the claims were utter, unsourced garbage. And Labor Secretary Marty Walsh confirmed he's leaving the post in March to become the next Executive Director of the National Hockey League's Player Association. The question then, who will take over his seat in the Biden administration? West Wing Playbook co-author Eli Stokols shares some names he's heard as potential nominees. Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing. Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.