Recently, the former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to eleven years in prison for accepting bribes in cash and gold worth more than half a million dollars. He is the first person sentenced to prison for crimes committed in the Senate in more than forty years. Menendez did favors for the government of Egypt while he was the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and intervened in criminal cases against the businessmen who were bribing him. In New York, he broke down in tears before a federal judge, pleading for leniency. Upon emerging from the courtroom, he made a thinly veiled plea to the man he had once voted to impeach. “President Trump is right,” Menendez declared to news cameras. “This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.” WNYC’s New Jersey reporter Nancy Solomon explores how the son of working-class immigrants from Cuba scaled the heights of American politics, and then fell dramatically. But will he serve the time? Solomon speaks with the constitutional-law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, who says, “It’s hard to know who Trump will pardon next. One of the more recent pardons was for the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. He was a Democrat. . . . [Trump] seems much more interested in undermining anti-corruption laws left, right, and center.”
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From the online spectacle around Leo XIV's election to our favorite on-screen cardinals. This week on Critics at Large, we're talking all things Pope.
The Catholic Church was made for this moment. I think 2,000 years ago, the Catholic Church basically anticipated TikTok, Instagram, X. You don't have those little Swiss guard outfits and think they're not being photographed. Oil painting is not enough.
I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts for an episode on what can only be described as Pope Week. New episodes of Critics at Large drop every Thursday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In the through-the-licking-glass world of Donald Trump, he's the guy who drained the swamp of corruption, even as he orders the Department of Justice to drop corruption cases and stop investigating new ones. The situation with New York City Mayor Eric Adams is a case in point.
The Justice Department suggested they would drop serious federal charges if Adams would just assist the feds on the immigration issue. The mayor's attorney insisted there was never any deal, but even so, a pack of federal prosecutors quit their jobs in disgust. So this, too, is surprising, but maybe not too surprising.
Weeks ago, Bob Menendez, the former New Jersey senator known as Gold Bar Bob for the gold and cash tucked away in his house, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on corruption charges. Menendez walked out of the courtroom and directly made a plea to guess who.
President Trump is right. This process is political and it's corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.
How did Bob Menendez, who voted to impeach Donald Trump, end up begging him for a get-out-of-jail card? We turn to WNYC's reporter, Nancy Solomon, who's been covering New Jersey politics for many years. So Nancy, ipso facto, knows a thing or two about corruption.
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