Curated playlist

People associated with the 2024 United States presidential election

Hillary ClintonAround 1961, a girl from the Chicago suburbs wrote a letter to NASA. Hillary Rodham, later known as Hillary Clinton, wanted to know what she could do to become an astronaut. The reply was blunt. Women were not being accepted into the…
Barack ObamaObama rejected a plan to bomb a compound in Pakistan and sent Navy SEALs instead. The 2011 raid killed Osama bin Laden.
Elon MuskIn 2001, Elon Musk traveled to Moscow twice to buy missiles, hoping to launch a plant greenhouse to Mars.
Kamala HarrisKamala Harris raised 81 million dollars in small-dollar donations during the first 24 hours of her 2024 presidential campaign, the highest single-day total of any presidential candidate in history. The race that followed lasted only 107…
Chuck SchumerBob Dole once joked that the most dangerous place in Washington was between Charles Schumer and a television camera. Schumer, a Democrat from Brooklyn, has been a United States senator from New York since 1999. Along the way he has led his…
Nancy PelosiOn the 4th of January 2007, Nancy Pelosi defeated Republican John Boehner of Ohio by 233 votes to 202 in the election for speaker of the House. Standing in the chamber afterward, she declared, "today, we have broken the marble ceiling."…
Marco RubioThe New York Times dubbed Marco Rubio the "Secretary of Everything," a nickname earned by holding several government posts at the same moment. Few American officials have ever carried that kind of workload. Fewer still arrived by a road as…
Jill BidenJill Biden shared a cubicle with another teacher at Northern Virginia Community College while her husband was vice president of the United States. She persuaded the Secret Service agents who accompanied her to dress as plainly as possible.…
Mitch McConnellMitch McConnell won his first Senate race in 1984 by 3,437 votes out of more than 1.2 million cast, a margin of just over 0.4 percent. He was the only Republican Senate challenger to win that year, even though Ronald Reagan carried the…
JD VanceJD Vance once called Donald Trump reprehensible, then became his running mate.
George ClooneyIn 1977, a teenage George Clooney tried out for the Cincinnati Reds and did not make it past the first round of player cuts. No contract was offered. Clooney, an American actor and filmmaker, would go on to collect two Academy Awards, a…
Hulk HoganHulk Hogan held the World Wrestling Federation championship for 1,474 days during his first reign. That is the third-longest run in the history of the title. The man under the bandana and the blond moustache was born Terry Gene Bollea.…
Charlie KirkCharlie Kirk, then a senior at Wheeling High School in Illinois, once organized a boycott of the cafeteria's cookies to protest a price increase. Charles James Kirk grew into an American political activist, entrepreneur, and media…
Melania TrumpMelania Trump holds a set of firsts that no earlier first lady of the United States shares. She is the first naturalized citizen to hold the title. She is also the first first lady whose native language is not English. Other names mark…
Marjorie Taylor GreeneMarjorie Taylor Greene walked onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on her first day in office wearing a face mask that read “Trump Won.” Donald Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. The mask told…
Donald Trump Jr.Donald John Trump Jr. was born on the 31st of December 1977 in Manhattan. He is the eldest child of Ivana and Donald Trump, who would later serve as the 45th and 47th president of the United States. When he was twelve, his parents divorced…
Tucker CarlsonTucker Carlson ended his Friday broadcast on the 21st of April 2023 by telling Fox News viewers that he would "be back on Monday." He was not. On the morning of the 24th of April, the network dismissed him, along with the executive…
Mike JohnsonOn the 25th of October 2023, the House of Representatives voted 220-209 to make Mike Johnson its 56th speaker. Every Republican in attendance voted for him. Johnson, a lawyer from Louisiana, became the first speaker in American history…
Stephen MillerStephen Miller holds a senior White House post that no voter chose and no Senate vote approved. He is an unelected advisor, and his positions do not require confirmation. Since 2025 he has served Donald Trump as deputy chief of staff for…
Tulsi GabbardTulsi Gabbard, an American politician and Army officer, faced the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the 30th of January 2025 and turned a hostile question into a punchline. Her critics, she said, implied she was loyal to something…
Jeff BezosJeff Bezos read a single statistic in the spring of 1994. Web usage, it said, was growing at 2,300 percent a year. Within months he had walked away from a senior job on Wall Street to sell books over the internet. He warned many of his…
Russell BrandRussell Brand, the English comedian and podcaster, faced Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight on the 23rd of October 2013. Asked what a revolution would look like, he gave an answer about money. He said: "I say profit is a filthy word, because…
Laura LoomerLaura Loomer is an American activist whose surname has become a verb. To be "Loomered" is to be fired or damaged in some way for alleged disloyalty to Donald Trump. Few people earn that kind of reputation, and fewer earn it after being…