Eric McDaniel

speaker

1,503 appearances 116 recordings 4 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard yesterday

Eric McDaniel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 116 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 38.

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The NPR Politics Podcast · How power, corruption & lies influence voters' choices · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

I'm Eric McDaniel.

I cover Congress.

And Eric, I want to start with you to start big picture.

How are voters thinking or are they thinking about corruption right now?

They definitely are.

I mean, I recently saw some polling from the Brennan Center for Justice, which is a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for various kinds of small d democratic reform, good governance stuff.

And they polled, they asked voters of this.

And what shocked me was how many voters think about corruption as a huge problem in American politics.

We saw 90 percent of Republicans say it's a problem, 93 percent of Democrats and 93 percent of self-identified independents.

So basically all voters.

Right.

And two-thirds of them, of voters, think of corruption as a systemic problem in governance, something that is part of the way American government is almost designed and functions rather than an ethical problem with politicians, right?

So it's not that folks without ethics are going into politics hoping they can make a buck, but rather that the system incentivizes, voters think, lawmakers to prioritize their own self-interests and those of big corporations' interests.

over the interests of regular voters.

Oh, I do feel like the alarms start going off when I hear poll numbers where a wide majority of Democrats and Republicans feel a certain way.

But the word corruption does feel a little squishy, Mara.

I mean, when voters say something like that, what are they actually talking about?

Yeah.

And what's interesting, Mara, that I think about is when you and our colleague Ashley Lopez watched those swing voter focus groups in Pennsylvania and corruption came up.

Those voters, I mean, responded to Trump specifically when asked about it.

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