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Hi, I'm the sinners, it's Kara. I recorded this interview with Rachel Maddow before the shocking assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania this weekend, which also took the life of one man in the audience and left two others critically injured. The shooter was also killed by law enforcement. It should go without saying, but political violence is an abomination and should never be used by anyone living in a democracy. As you know, I talk a lot about the rise of disinformation, the coarsening of public discourse
over social media and the escalating danger of ever more angry words that can turn too easily into heinous deeds. Both sides are guilty of that and we must keep in mind that we should always express our differences at the ballot box.
Here's what Rachel posted on threads just hours after the attack in Pennsylvania. I do not have adequate words to describe how disgusted and horrified I am by tonight's events. There is no, no, no, no violent solution to any American political conflict. I am grateful the former president is going to be okay and miserably sad and angry about the other people hurt and killed. This is a very dark day.
A dark day and a dark year indeed, but I think you'll find this discussion with Rachel, especially about how we've been here before the Americans important and necessary. Hi everyone from New York Magazine of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Cara Swisher and I'm Cara Swisher. Today, finally, my guest is Rachel Maddo.
She's obviously the host of the Rachel Maddo show on MSNBC. She's also a best-selling author, podcaster, and recently has become a bit of a historian, which is my interest. Over the past few years, Maddo has released a slew of award-winning podcast series that look back at instructive moments in American history, especially in an area I know a lot about propaganda.
One of those series is Ultra, which focuses on far-right extremism in American politics in the 1940s and 50s. Maddo went so deep for the show that she was inspired to write her latest book, The Best Seller Prequel, an American fight against fascism. It's a pretty good timing, Rachel. Season two of Ultra is rolling out now with the fifth of eight episodes airing today. I've listened to the first four, and I will listen to the fifth this afternoon.
Maddo and I have a lot to talk about. There's no shortage of political drama to discuss right now and we'll get into that. But what I really want to focus on is history here and how the story she tells an ultra-connects to the present because it absolutely does. And here to help this episode's expert question comes from author and historian Timothy Ryback, and we've put him on the podcast too so as you go back and listen to that one because it's fantastic, and it's a good one.
Hi Rachel, thanks for joining me. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. For people who don't understand, we've never met, have we? This is hard to understand in terms of the way the universe knits together and what happens to middle-aged white lesbians, but somehow we've avoided each other. I know, like in the same asteroid belt, we're in the same orbit, so we'll never touch.
I understand. I feel like we get together, we own everything, pretty much. We take over, we create a militia etharage, and then that's the end of it all. I'm getting to malicious in a minute. I want to start obviously with the news today, but I want to start as you wrote in your latest book, quote, our current American struggle along these lines, it turns out has a prequel. What is your definition of the current American struggle?
That's a good question. I think in the context in which I said that, it's sort of specific to the kind of confrontation with people with an authoritarian intention, but I think broadly, even out of context, is true. I mean, I think that we are in a moment where we're wondering whether our democracy is up to the task.
And the task at hand is standing up for itself, using democratic means to defend a democratic system against people who are both aiming at an anti-democratic America and willing to use anti-democratic means to get it. Can you stand up against force and demagoguery and all the other things that have forced all of the other major democracies in the world with only a few exceptions to collapse in the face of a strong man alternative?
Also, using democratic means to do so, which precisely what Hitler did, correct? I mean, if you... Yeah, I mean, you use enough democracy to get into power and then you dissolve the democracy from within. That's what Mussolini did, that's what Hitler did, that's the way. Get using an election to have the patina of respectability in a democratic context is almost always the way in. It's almost never just a coup.
The thing that's important about that, though, is that it means that there has to be democratic enablers, there have to be the German conservatives, there have to be the Italian king appointing inviting Mussolini to form a government. I mean, there have to be people inside the existing system who say, yeah, we're willing to make this transition with these people who are going to take us away from small-d democracy.
And those people end up, I think, being more important in history sometimes than the leaders themselves. One of the other things that you had a lot through all of the things you do actually is this idea of people not disappearing, they go underground. The anti-democratic forces is that they settle underground, almost like cicadas, and then come out again, almost constantly. Yeah, we don't have a tradition in our country of discreditation. Like, nobody's ever down for the count and discredited.
And so, for example, even when you look at something that we think of as an almost like consensus moral crucible, the civil rights movement, we have no concept in our mind of who the segregationist movement was. We know who the civil rights movement was, and we know who they confronted. But there was a segregationist movement that had lawyers and expert witnesses and politicians, and those folks have sort of disappeared in memory.
And it's good to remember the heroes, but it's also good to remember the people who embraced the wrong side of that moral issue. It's true in the civil rights movement. I think it's really true in the confrontation with Nazism and Fascism and World War II. That's what I've been trying to write about. But when we just let the bad guys dissolve in our memory, that helps them essentially go dormant and then come back without us remembering why they lost those important fights in the first place.
So I want to get to all that because it's really interesting. But let's start with the struggle that's been dominating the news cycle this week, because it has implications in this area, whether President Biden should bow out of the race. A lot of people think it's an existential issue of him not doing so, and others think it's an existential issue that he has to get out. So that Trump doesn't win, which is the existential crisis, I think everyone's talking about.
New York Times Editorial, called for him to step down, so several Democrats in Congress. I'm not sure what Nancy Pelosi's up to, she keeps saying sort of veiled unusual code words. Senator Michael Bennett is that he fears a Trump landslide victory Biden stays in the race.
So is this from your perspective covering it because you've got a weekly show? Is it a bad news cycle for the President? Are we looking at sort of one of those facilitating events that you've written about in history so many times? That's a very good question. I mean, I think if I were Joe Biden, I feel like all of my conflicting emotions and conflicting impulses on this. I feel like if I were Joe Biden, I would probably have all the same things too, plus the ego of wanting to stay there.
I don't know. I mean, I feel like the one thing that's clear is that the existential threat to the country is Donald Trump winning, and it is aggravated by the prospect of him winning with an electoral landslide in the House and the Senate. That is something that I don't, I mean, if that happens, I am one of the people who thinks that there then isn't an election in 2028 provided that Donald Trump is still alive at that point.
I do think it's that desperate. Now, what the Democrats should do to prevent Trump from winning? I do not know. History affords examples in both directions. Biden's own recent electoral history, including the unexpected Democratic victories in 2022. That also counts in his favor. I think it's a really hard decision. I don't think that Democrats are trying to do anything other than beat Donald Trump. I don't think there is some other motive that they're hiding from anybody.
But it seems like an almost impossible, it seems like an almost impossible decision and yet one that needs to both be made and be made immediately. So draw that out a little bit from history. You know, you said you've seen it happen before in history. Talk about that idea because I think one of the assets of innocracy is the ability to draw things out to weigh things. But right now, it seems like you don't know what to think. So what do you get from history that helps you make that decision?
Well, I've been, you know, the last time we had the same two major party candidates running against each other in successive elections was Steven Sinan Eisenhower in 52 and then in 56. When I was the incumbent in 1955, he had a devastating heart attack and was hospitalized and not heard from for many weeks. Then and that led to lots of lots of discussions about what was going to happen to him in 56.
He also had a vice president, Richard Nixon, who people thought was unelectable and unlikable and not a great substitution for him. And in 56, it got worse. He had emergency stomach surgery in June of 1956, the year of the election. And yet the Republicans in 1956 put him back on the ticket without a challenge at the convention. And when he went up against Steven Sin, again, he beat him even worse than he'd beat him in 1952.
There's also this interesting parallel on the other side of that where Steven Sin trying to get an edge on Eisenhower, actually trying to highlight Nixon as Eisenhower's unpopular vice president decided they'd put a little spice in the mix on the Steven Sin side of things.
And they had a contested convention on the Steven Sin side to pick his vice president because they thought having a contested convention will make everybody very excited and will put a lot of spotlight on it and make it seem energized. And they lost. So I mean, a lot of the things that the Democrats are considering right now, there have been sort of runs of a tight through this before. That said, neither of those sides was proposing anything like what Donald Trump is proposing to do.
Right. Absolutely. Yeah. It seems like President Biden is standing firm. He released a letter to Democratic critics in Congress. We're taping this episode July 10. So this is now the latest and strongest comment from Biden. But he's been saying it over and over again. He says he's the best person to beat Trump. He believes he is and stepping out of the right. So it defied the will of the American people.
Quote, we held the Democratic nomination process and the voters were spoken clearly and decisively. What do you make of his argument? I mean, it's all true. Yeah. Everything that he's saying. The other thing that's true is his debate performance, which is not a solvable problem. Like I just don't think looking at there's nothing you can say about that debate performance that mitigates the impact of it. It's a it is what it is.
And so it's it seems very very difficult to me. I mean, I don't know if I think obviously if the election were held today and the polls are broadly accurate, the Democrats would get shellacked and would lose the White House and likely lose a considerable number of well, at least at least the House in Senate would be. Would be hard to call. If the Democrats replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris or with any other candidate, will they have a better chance at beating Trump?
I don't know another to you. We can't tell from this we can't tell from this vantage point. But if Joe Biden were running against Donald Trump today, he would lose and likely lose badly if the polls are accurate. The Democrats might say that polls haven't been accurate. Many times. They yes. So I mean, what do you think about it? What do you know? Interestingly, Biden had said many times that there he said there was no red wave and there was no red wave.
I do I worry about someone who is losing so badly to such a bad candidate. That's my biggest worry. I think that's where I stick. I think it's very hard to be complex these days because the minute you say I'm a little worried you get attacked from the left for another one left. I don't know what to call it. I don't know what to call it. But a lot of people are angry if you even mention his age.
On the other hand, if you support him, others are saying don't you understand the great existential threat of Trump? And they're essentially making the same argument. So like you, I think I'm quite confused. I think it's a good faith. The one thing that we should expect with the fight on the left here in the fight among Democrats in Centress here is that it is a good faith argument.
Everybody wants to beat Trump. It's a question of how and if that you can put aside the like you're a bad person for disagreeing with me on this, I think we'll get further. That's sure. But the words like bed wedding doesn't help or whatever. The Pearl clutching bed wedding. It's all the adjectives they use. Now Biden is clearly frustrated. He calls out elites in his own party and there there's an incredible level of infighting going on.
Is that a negative thing about the Democratic Party? You said it's just sorting it out. Is that a positive or negative thing? I am a person who thinks that the people who are fighting about this are fighting within Democratic politics. I think that it is a good faith argument. I think there's a lot of emotion and there is some, you know, there's name calling and all that stuff. But you know, this isn't a this isn't a fight about, you know, you didn't endorse Donald Trump Bob Good.
And so therefore we're going to come into your district and get you ousted because you didn't show field. You know, it's not that kind of a fight, which is the fights that the Republicans are having. You know, this isn't your dad killed, killed JFK Ted Cruz. You know, those are the Trump air fights on the Republican Party. The Democrats are think are are having a fight, a real fight that's on solid ground to fight on about a really important thing that they agree on.
And that seems healthy to me. This seems like this is a this isn't this is a difficult fight for the Democrats to be having. I'm glad they're having it for their sake in July rather than October. But it's, you know, the point of this fight is to do the right thing for the country. Joe Biden thinks that he has the best chance of beating Donald Trump.
And that's critics say that he does not have the best chance of meeting Donald Trump. Everybody agrees that the point is to beat Donald Trump and to save the country from what he and the Republicans want to do to it right now. And I think that's that's earnest and I want this to be well fought. And I think it's a I think it's a sort of no bull thing and a sign of health in the Democratic Party. And you yourself haven't taken a standard. I've noticed it's, but you sometimes do correct.
Yeah, I'm humble enough. I mean, you have to be egotistical enough to have a show with your name on it, right? Yeah, you might have heard me tell you exactly. But I'm humble enough to know that I don't I don't know who would have a better chance whether it be Biden or vice president Harris or somebody else in the Democratic Party. I don't know. I agree that the threat of Trump is is worth having the fight.
So let's shift to Trump. The danger of his potential emergency, which you've mentioned several time poses for a democracy hangs over the entire discussion, especially in wake of the Supreme Court's radical ruling on presidential immunity. You call this decision death squad ruling. Can you explain that? If the president were the type of president who wanted to kill his rivals, this immunity ruling gives him a way to do that without anybody facing criminal sanction for doing it.
And just a so-to-my-art called that out in blood, blunt terms in her, in her dissent. But I think that what she's describing there, which was the hypothetical that was raised at the appeals court, you know, assassinated political rival, use the military to do so.
She's saying when that hypothetical is raised while we were fighting about this in the appellate courts, this ruling gives an answer that is frightening. But if you look at the ruling and that hypothetical in conjunction with what the Justice Roberts ruling explicitly said about the relationship between the president and the Justice Department, it makes it not just a far-fetched hypothetical that involves exotic Navy SEAL teams doing.
It means that the president can just direct the Justice Department to do it in a practical way. Without repercussions, you also call this decision a, quote, a logical apex where the Republican idea of executive power has been leading for years. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, I think you can personalize this moment to Trump. I think that this is a Trump court.
I think that not only Trump's appointees, but the conservative supermajority in the court has realigned itself in ways that in some cases are very ideological, ideologically inconsistent with what they've previously held, just to make sure that Trump gets what he wants. They're effectively acting as Trump partisans. But there's another way to look at it, which is that the Republican party has been increasingly radicalizing on the idea of small D-democracy for most of my adult life.
I mean, for me, I'm the only person for whom this is true, but the Iran Contra scandal was like a crucible for me in terms of what we think of as not just unreviewable, but sort of almost, it's unaccountable, but it's also, it's not just that you can't review a president's decisions. It's not a president should be both expected and encouraged to do even extreme things just to show that he can't be constrained.
That sort of fantasy about what amounts to strong man leadership and the elimination of the idea of checks and balances was just foundational to who we are has been a Republican wet dream since the 1980s, and it's been getting worse and worse. You're talking the line Reagan Dick Cheney, George Bush, George W. Bush, etc.
Dick Cheney's minority report in the Iran Contra affair. He wrote a minority report, which basically said if the president does it, it's not illegal taking, taking Nixon's line there from Frost, the Frost Nixon interviews, but that was a crazy thing for Cheney to do. And he had to do it as a minority report that nobody ever read in Iran Contra.
But as the conservative project claimed and held power in places like the judiciary, that became not just a crazy provocation, but their MO. And now they've got a president who wants to take it to its ends. And so that puts our whole system of government at risk. You know, it's important they've been leading for a long time.
And so that's what we're talking about your podcast, because that's what you're talking about is these attempts to do this over and over again. And we'll get to that in one second, but the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee on July 15th, the day this episode airs.
What do you plan to pay special attention to in your coverage? This idea of small-deed democracy, the strong man, the idea of almost like a cult like following among, because this is sort of what the America first group would have loved to have happened. We lose the war, they negotiate with the Nazis, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, we'll see what they do at the RNC. One of the things that I think has been really interesting and sort of chilling to watch over the course of this fight in the Democratic Party about whether President Biden should stay at the top of the ticket is how disciplined and quiet the Republicans have been about it.
And that I think does show that the Trump campaign believes that if President Biden stays in, they've got this in the bag. And so they don't want to mess up with this process that might result in that that might result in President Biden thwarting his critics and staying in office. They don't want to they don't want to weigh in. That form of discipline is not the hallmark of the earlier run for President of Donald Trump. And so it shows that they're getting their act together. That's always bad.
Getting good at being bad. I do think that the they are planning to showcase a couple of things at this convention. And one is their planned policies. You know, they do want camps big enough to hold millions of people.
They want they want roundups of people. They want the some some of the extreme policies that have been, I think, well, well outlined in project 2025, which is now getting the kind of, I think, attention it deserves all of that is expressed very bluntly in their very short 16 page Republican party platform.
So it's what they're planning to do. But then I think the other thing to watch is not necessarily what they're what they're saying, but what they are doing. And I think that so many things that they do just in a procedural way. Indicate that they want a strong man form of government. They want a they want rule by Fiat. I don't know if you know this, but Donald Trump's never heard a project 25. I don't you just said. Oh, oh, are you saying it's a false flag?
It is. So the reason you go to the convention itself and you broadcast, there's reasons for broadcast companies do that for the spectacle, etc. But do you spend I want to get into ultra now because you obviously have a fascination with the right. Did you spend a lot of time with people on the current right right now? I don't spend a lot of time with anybody. I'm going to go back up to your farm. This padded room from which I'm speaking to you right now. This is basically my mill.
No, I mean, and actually I should say at the conventions, I'm not sure that we're going to be broadcasting from either convention. We may be covering them from New York. That's what we did four years ago. So I think that's a decision. Like we sort of keep all our options open, depending on what's happening and whether it makes sense for us to be there or us to be in New York. But we'll see.
Yeah, I mean, I listen, I mean, the truth about me is that I am a middle class suburban kid who has a hard time interrupting people. And I know this is one of my weaknesses as an interviewer and as a reporter that it's I like to make nice with people.
And so this is knowing this is my personal limitation. I try not to have personal relationships with people that I cover. And anybody, you know, there's and there are some exceptions to that like every once in a while somebody who you went to call it new in college gets elected to a thing right there. There's some things like that that happen, but I don't, you know, go to awards things. I don't go to dinner parties. I don't go to the White House correspondents dinner. I don't.
I don't do anything I thought because I don't like to have personal relationships with the folks that I cover. I definitely talk to people as sources. But if I'm friends with you, I'm not going to likely invite you on my TV show to talk about any.
Sure, but I'm getting beyond that in terms of I interview a lot of Republicans. I interview a lot of conservatives because I think it's important to understand what they're saying. Do you, do you, you have a fascination with historical conservatives and the right. Do you have the same fascination here? Have you spent time say Steve Bannon, who to me is the, he would call so many people in your podcast. It's astonishing.
Well, the funny thing about Bannon too and all the stuff that I'm podcasting about is that the, like the really bad guys on the intellectual right are all like, you know, they're all like little icons on his mantle behind him on the war and podcast. Yeah, he's really bringing all those guys, especially all the like obscure European fascist thinkers and stuff like those are all his guys.
So yeah, no, I mean, I do I want to have a conversation with Steve Bannon. No, do I pay attention to what Steve Bannon is saying? Yes. I'm sort of, you know, I kind of like observing folks in the wild as much as I can. That said, I also have an issue that people don't say yes to me when I ask them to come on TV. I don't do, you know, 10 and 15 guests over the course of an hour.
I usually do one or two guests and over time, the longer I've been on MSNBC, the less people have been willing to come on with me. So I've had, you know, great long conversations with Rick Santorum and Rand Paul and all these people, but none of those folks will come on with me now. So what you're interested in is historical. Absolutely. With his dead, so you don't have to talk to him. I'm thinking about Charles Coglin all the time. Does he speak to me? No. We'll be back in a minute.
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All right, let's turn to the past then. A lot of historians are offering historical parallels to explain our current crisis. And boy, history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes, I think, as the expression. Your podcast Rachel Maddo presents Ultra starts in 1940. I'm fascinated that you're fascinated with this. So explain how you got there, including bringing up the issues that I knew about the great citizen trial of 1944, for example, which was a critical trial.
And one of your themes is, and it just goes away, or they got out of it, essentially, everyone got out of it. Talk about how you got to decide to focus on these historical fascists, essentially. Well, first, I just want to interrupt my own train of thought here for a second just to say that I'm so glad that you knew I know that you've studied propaganda and disinformation, and that's been your sort of academic interest for a long time.
And the thing, part of the reason, the great citizen trial is forgotten, is because of the politics of it, because nobody really wanted to remember it, because of the way that it worked out. But I think another reason, just between you and me, why it was forgotten, is because at the heart of it was this huge multi-million dollar in 1940s dollars, propaganda campaign run by the German government, run by the Hitler government in this country.
And that propaganda campaign targeting the American public was the biggest propaganda operation that the Nazis ran anywhere outside of Germany. And I think that as Americans, we think of ourselves as immune to propaganda, or we think of propaganda as something that isn't important, that it isn't forceful. And it can't make us do anything that we don't want to do. I have a sense that you disagree with that from your own work.
But I think that's part of why people didn't think it was a big enough deal to report on. And I just, I don't know how to put a big enough exclamation point on it to talk about how important those kinds of foreign influence operations are on us and how they shape our thinking in our own politics. And then what we do about it, but explain how did you get to this idea of wanting to do this issue?
Because obviously the resonance is clear today. You don't say it very much, but it's very obvious what you're the point you're making. It's partly because of the way my brain works. I read trashy detective novels, for example, but trashy detective novels usually come in series. And you'll read a review, and it's like, oh, book 17 in this series is amazing. You should read book 17.
And I'm like, well, if I'm going to read book 17, I need to read not only book one, I need to find out that everything this author wrote before they started writing this series and read all it. So I'm a completist. I have to go back to the beginning. And so like I have to know when people were born and where in order to understand what their impact was in their life once they got into politics in their 50s.
Like I just, I'm a, I like origin stories in terms of organizing thing in my own things in my own brain. And so I ended up right after Trump was elected, being interested in the origins of American Holocaust denial because we were seeing this shift in Republican politics and the not just Democratic Victor, the Republican victory in 2016.
But the alt-right stuff that was going on around that those guys in that DC ballroom going hail Trump and giving the Roman salute. Why are we seeing effectively neo Nazi resurgence and Holocaust denial resurgence around the celebration of the ascension of Trump? Where does American Holocaust denial come from? Turns out it goes back to the very immediate post war years in a surprising way.
When the Holocaust was not just history, it was current events and denying it was a logical impossibility. And so you can't assume that it was a good faith thing. It was a political strategy. Well, how does Holocaust denial work as a political strategy? How does that interact with electoral politics? Why are we seeing that again now?
And looking into that got me back to the 40s into the sedition trial. And season two of ultra is about what happens after the sedition trial falls apart. Explain the sedition trial for those who don't remember. I spend a lot of time explaining the whiskey rebellion to people today. But it's important to look it up. Go down that rabbit hole. You'll be surprised. There's a reason that people like us should be invited to your dinner parties, even though we will not come.
We can tell you about these things. The Justice Department brought a sedition indictment against almost 30 people, alleging that they were part of a conspiracy with the German government with the Nazis to overthrow the US government and to induce Americans not to support the war effort and people not to obey the draft.
That was the technical strategy behind the indictment. But the basic idea was that there were pro Nazi and pro fascist elements here that were trying to prepare us either for a German invasion or for domestic revolt in this country that would install a fascist dictator here. And they got put on trial.
And the trial was a total circus. They tried all 29 defendants at once in the summer in Washington, DC with no air conditioning in a small courtroom. And while it was sort of wild charges. And these were this is a wild cast of characters. In some cases, some very dangerous people doing very dangerous things. It ultimately ended in a mistrial when the judge died in the middle of the trial. The stress of the trial seems to have killed him.
Yeah. So it didn't work out well. It's always little things like that. They never paid for the trials of failure. One example of how the justice system and law enforcement sometimes failed to respond to Nazi propaganda is an ultra right groups across the country, just sort of forgetting it, just letting them move along. Is there a lesson from these systemic failures into this moment? Because I've spent a lot of time yelling at Mark Zuckerberg about anti-Semitism on his platform.
We got into a very famous row where he got in a bit of trouble when he called Holocaust and he told me Holocaust deniers don't need to lie. And I was like, ah, seems like that's the definition of a Holocaust denier. But talk about this failure of this trial because it's a think that it's a resident thing in your in your podcast. This they have these moments where they could have done something and then don't.
One of the resident failures that I feel like is a real clarion for us right now is the way the justice department failed. So you can't control whether or not the judge dies. But then the justice department has to decide whether or not to bring the case again when you have a mistrial.
And so the prosecutor who was leading that case got permission from the justice department to go to Germany because again, the allegation was that Americans were working with the Nazis and it was in the immediate postwar era. He went in the interview to Nazi work crimes, crimes defendants at at Nuremberg. He went through the German foreign office files. He found from the German side in German because he spoke German, thankfully.
He found the confirmation of all the Americans who the Germans had been working with. He found the proof of their collusion and he brought it back to the United States and he brought back the names of 24 members of Congress who had been involved.
And one of those members of Congress was very close friends with the president and said, you need to fire this prosecutor and get rid of him. And the president did. And there were two times actually during the prosecution of that case when somebody who was implicated in what was happening had enough political sway to get the justice department to remove the prosecutor from the case.
The justice department has a bad track record of holding people with political power to account. And it's because political pressure brought to bear on the justice department very often works. And we saw that in this historical entity in a way that I find shocking and terrifying. Just put it in the drawer. Just put it in the drawer. Yeah, just put it away. Just get get you know, no, in that evidence is never going to see the light of day and we're not bringing this case again.
Well, one of the things I always say is the put Washington Post, which is of course struggling right now. It has the idea of democracy dies in darkness. I'm like, democracy dies in the full light of day. Yeah, like just FYI. It dies when we're too overwhelmed with stuff to pay attention to all the details. That's correct. If you're going to focus on one thing, look at the abuse of the justice department because it's happened already in the Supreme Court just opened all those lanes wide.
And that is, I mean, Trump will announce, will get make a televised announcement of who his politically motivated arrestees are. You know, as soon as he is in office and as soon as he feels clear to do it. He kind of has. Yeah, but one of the things that it goes through this latest season of the podcast season two. It jumps into the aftermath of war two and your latest episode is focused on the America first movement, which had hoped to become that.
Had hoped to become Donald Trump. They used the word America first now. They revived a lot of a lot of the ideas around Charles Lindbergh, etc. Talk about sort of the failed effort of the America first to become what it what Trump administration did become. America first is interesting because they were the huge and fast growing. They were very, very influential.
Everybody from the head of the Olympic Committee, Avery Brendage, to the most famous and just realist in the country, Henry Ford, to the most famous national hero, Charles Lindbergh, to the biggest media figure in the country. Charles Cogland, I mean, everybody with influence outside of FDR's sphere was in this movement. You know, we had another famous aviator, a woman named Laura Ingalls, a distant cousin of Laura Ingalls, Wilder, who was prosecuted as a paid Nazi agent.
And her Gestapo handler said the best thing you could do for Nazi Germany right now is keep giving speeches for the America first committee. So that we've got both very, very influential, very respitable, very moneyed, powerful people, and the most radical, seditious people you can possibly imagine. And so you have America first rallies and they're full of, you know, blue-haired ladies, Cogland like this, and then people giving the Nazi salute in the back.
And that integration of power and radicalism is the secret sauce of how you lose your democracy. We'll be back in a minute. President Biden was working all through the holiday weekend. On a call with Democratic governors, he apparently said his help was fine. It's just my brain. And at a rally, he said he'd beat Donald Trump, but in the past. I'll beat Donald Trump. I will beat him again in 2020. By the way, we're going to go in again in 2024.
Nevertheless, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, he said it would take divine intervention to get him to step down. With the fans, I'm with the Lord Almighty, Kim Zahin, tells me that I might do that. He also said his terrible debate performance was his fault. No, we just fault mine. Nobody's fault for mine. Everyone agrees, sir. Not my fault. Nobody else is fault. Joe versus himself, you can find it right now over at today's explain.
We drop an episode every afternoon, Monday through Friday. You'll love it. So every episode we talk, we ask their expert to phone in with a question. You've got a good one. Let's play it. Hi, Rachel. I'm Kim Ryback, author of TakeOver about Hitler's final rise to powers Chancellor, just published by Knoll. There's some rather stunning parallels between your brilliant new book Prequel and TakeOver. Conspiracy theories, fake news, iron militias, legislative dysfunction, just to name a few.
But one did a big difference between American and Germany. Hitler never pulled more than 37% in a free and open election. In America, we're looking at numbers approaching 50% for a demagoguic presidential candidate who openly flunced democratic values, which makes them wonder whether this toxic right-wing radicalism runs deeper in America than it ever really did in Germany. So my question, is this rise of the radical right in the American anomaly?
Where's the country perhaps showing its true colors? Perfect question. Very good question. The short answer is I don't know. I do think that us having a two-party system has proved to be an accelerant here, rather than a multi-party system, which was what Hitler was contending with in the 30s or the 20s and the 30s.
Having a sort of with us or against us to party dynamic, having a diet where people need to go to one poll or the other, will get you to 50% in a way that a multi-party system may only get you to 30%. So that I think that's the simple answer to it in terms of how dark our hearts are and what we are capable of as a nation.
I don't know. I don't think that there's anything in American political culture and American culture that makes us any worse than anybody else, but I also don't think we have any more insulation against a sort of authoritarian dictatorial winds than any other country does. I mean, there was nothing wrong with the Italians that brought Mussolini to power. There was nothing wrong with the Spanish that brought Franco to power. There was nothing wrong with the Germans that brought Hitler to power.
It was a movement that succeeded. And I think that we're as susceptible to that as anyone. And I think that the fact that we have been unwilling to diagnose, contend with sort of name, shame, and fight authoritarian impulses on the American right for a long time,
leads us to be slightly less well defended against this than we ought to. I think in those other countries, they knew that the authoritarian right was a possibility and that that was anti-democratic aims were live and active on the political right. And I just think we've been a little bit in denial about that. That's part of why I've been focusing on history.
Well, we also have a vision of ourselves that's quite different than the reality. I mean, the national narrative is actually. Well, America is, I think, a different type of country. I mean, our constitutional inheritance is amazing. I mean, the idea of natural rights that is mediated by a government that has purposely divided power, that is, I think, genius.
And I do think that that is something that we deserve to think about in a way that we want to protect and that we think of as singularly wise. But it doesn't mean that we're inherently resistant to the types of movements that would tear that down. I don't know. I think we have pretty dark history at the little corner of the new war. But, yeah, but did you agree though that the basic constitutional idea that the rest of the constitution and the decoction in defense are critically important.
Yeah, it's different from ever and including why we're able to be so susceptible to conspiracy theories because of the First Amendment. Obviously in other countries, they don't have to be bothered by that, right? And in our country, we use it proudly. We use it, especially by tech people in this particular era, but it gets used as a cudgel versus the great gift it is, of course.
But along these lines, you did tell CNN's Oliver Darcy that one of your takeaways from working on Altru Season 2 was the country seems, quote, quite susceptible to factually unhinged conspiratorial narratives. Is that a unique American susceptibility or especially when you were looking back and so many people were buying this line of crap that a lot of these America First people and a number of people in your narratives or willing to believe.
Yeah. I mean, conspiracy theories are in the end an anti-democratic force. If you are told that there is a secret and secretly powerful evil cabal that is really controlling things, that is really behind things, that robs you of your ability to work practically to improve your lot in life.
Because why would you spend time making sure that a good person runs for state representative and that you're drinking water and potels get fixed when it's George Soros pulling the strings who's making the world bank do the blah, blah, blah.
It's disempowering and angering at the same time and it makes you think of democracy as futile and it makes you prone to suggestion that radicals, that it must be somebody else in that radical and extreme and even violent tactics are justified and will be the only thing that works. So conspiracy theories aren't just entertaining. They're exciting and disempowering for citizens in a way that's really important.
But you also said the history you'll cover in Alchemy is a comforting one. I'd love to understand that because maybe I'm in the fore right now and I'm like, oh Jesus, coming back. You know, five is dark too. You have a lot of heroes. You have journalists who provide critical course correction and you know, Lester Hunt is a hero. And by the way, did you break up a little bit crying there when you were talking about him in the first episode? I felt like your voice cracked.
No, I didn't know, but I have a I have a I cry at the drop of a hat. So it always all it often sounds like a cry because it's always it's always about a quarter of an inch below my vocal cords at any time like the national anthem in any context makes me cry.
Okay, we're not going to baseball game check. All right. So I don't cry at all. But talk about that. The comforting the these these crucial course corrections knowing that we have faced threats like this. And again, like this meaning threats to our system and government.
And from very powerful forces in the past and that we've beat them to me is comforting. And so it's it is one comforting story to tell yourself that America went over to Europe in World War II when we beat those fascists and fascism.
Therefore, it didn't take over the world. That is a comforting story to me. It is and it is an additional and totally different comforting story to know that we faced powerful pro Nazi and pro fascist groups here and defeated them. In some cases without the help of the official authorities.
It was Americans organizing on their own terms and in the free press. We beat them here at home too. That is also comforting. And so knowing, for example, in the Leicester Hunt story that he went up against incredible odds and paid an incredible and ultimately fatal price.
But was nevertheless willing to wage a confrontation that had consequences for the people who were doing something that was set out to destroy the country. I just I just want to know I want to know about our heroes. I want to know about people who who did this stuff and it worked in the past. Why did the worst things not happen to us in the past because American heroes stood up in front of those people and swept the leg and knocked those people out and I want to know all the stories.
I think about William L Shryer, for example, covering the Nazis and stuff like that. Is there is there any one type of person because Hunt is also a hero really.
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's politicians, sometimes it's journalists, sometimes it's citizen activists in prequel and in ultra season one people like Leon Lewis who ran essentially private spy networks to monitor what was going on in the Nazi groups in the United States and then brought that information to law enforcement and law enforcement didn't care about it.
And it took them a decade to get anybody to listen to him. I mean, that's a kind of heroism that I don't even I don't even know what what the parallel would be for that today. But do you look at that as your role to in some ways not to go all ego maniacal on you, but you know, do you think about your role like that.
I think my job is to explain what's going on and sometimes that means investigating for sure. But oftentimes, you know, I get credit for doing investigatory work, which is just finding things that are in plain sight and connecting them. So yeah, I'm I am more interested in finding the people who are doing that work and putting a megaphone on it.
Then I am egotistical enough to think that it's always me who's doing it. But the press of course gets a lot of posts in general trust in the press is eroded in the years. Yeah, that you covered and definitely now and Trump certainly has done a lot of damage. Is there a role for the in the present damaging its own credibility because one of the through lines throughout your
podcast is the role of media in in that and uncovering it and also being a willing participant in spreading lies. Yeah, I mean the media can do lots of different things in the media is a is a complex and not one is a complex organizing. It's not one one thing. I mean, certainly one of the things that you see in time is that there have been a lot of media entities who have been willing participants in dishonest partisan projects.
Right. So you've got Charles Coglin and Henry Ford as the owner of the Dearborn Independent promoting the protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as if it's real or Henry. Henry Regnery, right promoting Holocaust denial in his publishing company and in his his early magazine stuff in the immediate postwar era. That's for real and that's consequential.
And we've always had bad actors along those lines. There's always been something like that. There's also always been crusading opinion inflected reporters, journalists and columnists, people like Drew Pearson, people like Marcus Childs, who have been attacked like you can't believe by their targets by by people they've targeted on the right.
I mean, Joe McCarthy went so far in his targeting of Drew Pearson that he beat him up Richard Nixon had to physically pull Joe McCarthy off of columnist Drew Pearson at a Washington club in the early 1950s. There've always been people like that. And again, you know, their history is sometimes hard to find because their critics have sometimes defined who they are in terms of their historical legacy.
And then there's been straight up reporters who have gone into dangerous situations and into complex information environments and found the truth and told the people. And the press can be all of those things good, bad and indispensable. And I think we all just have to let our work speak for ourselves. And I think the thing that's not helpful is for the press to fight each other. But for us to concentrate on doing the work that we're best at.
The thing that's different now though is that the economics of the at the bottom largely due to tech has fallen out. There's been lots of choices. You know, people a lot of younger people get their news from Reddit or YouTube or TikTok. And I'd love to sort of finish talking about that what's happening now, especially through the lens of yourself and your business of your you have a growing podcast empire.
It's my notebooks and now movies you're adapting bagman your podcast about Spiro Agnew into a feature film co-written and directed with Ben Stiller. I want to know who's playing Agnew. I can't wait to see that. You have an Agnew secret. I can't even think of who could be and Steven Spielberg's production company option the movie rights to ultra with playwright Tony Kushner reporter. He talks to it adapted. He's a terrific guy. I I loved your podcast with him and I've spoken to a bunch of times.
But talk about how you're looking at it because you're doing sort of entrepreneurism now. You've kind of had the traditional broadcast job but now you're doing other things. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, I don't understand the business world all that well. And I don't think of myself as a business person. But I do think that within the NBC News and MSNBC world we've got a good standard system essentially to hold us accountable for doing the work properly.
And that to me has been a real North star and a guide in terms of doing the work in a way that is responsible and credible. And I pride myself in doing work that can take to the bank, but also doing good storytelling. And so I sort of ran out of the ability to do my TV show five days a week.
It was just killing me physically, but they were willing to let me do one day a week and then do these other things. And the I think it's a little bit still up in the air as to what makes sense financially podcasts, books, documentaries, scripted TV series and all these things. I'm working on all of those things and I hope that they all end up making money, but I don't know if they will.
I'm really interested in doing this work in different, the storytelling work in both rigorous ways, but also different types of platforms to see sort of what swims. So you noted you significantly scale back your hosting role at MSNBC, which a lot of people would give up, right? Give up that idea. How do you look at your role now in balancing TV podcasts? Is it just a question of it is exhausting to do five days a week or that you you wanted to try other things and been quite successful in it?
The exhaustion factor was real. For sure, I just was come I was going to end up stopping working altogether if I stayed working five days a week. And so I think had I had I re up at five days a week at the time that I made that transition, I probably wouldn't be doing anything at all right now. It's just physically hurting myself and burning out.
So I wanted to be able to do work in a more sustainable way and that meant it doesn't actually mean putting in less hours. My girlfriend would tell you I actually work more now than I did before, but it was just working constantly, you know, 12 hours a day in the same gear doing the same thing with the same deadline every single day.
Right. Which is burning me out and making me dumb was making me sort of think shorter thoughts and I was realizing I wasn't reading books anymore. I was only reading news information, which is not a great way to be a good thinker. So I wanted the intellectual freedom to think in different ways and on different timelines and have different types of deadlines. So that's what I'm trying to do.
Do you feel like you have a bigger role sort of as the you're obviously the most successful anchor on that network at this point and you you use that power in in March and BC briefly hired former R and C chair,
Rana McDaniel and you called the hiring inexplicable. You are not the only network to object, but I think probably very influential. Do you think you have a bigger role there, even if you're on less, I guess not really no I mean in that, you know, in that case, as you noted, it wasn't just me who said a thing and.
Yeah, and other and other people on MSNBC with her own shows it's I don't think of myself as I also I also don't think very much about myself as a political figure in the in the polity that is the cable news world. So yeah, I don't think my role has changed there very much, but I do also when I say that I have a good relationship with the company that's for real. I mean, and it's I think it is underappreciated.
That at NBC News at MSNBC specifically there isn't somebody saying, okay, we need to get X person elected and so therefore we're all going to say this now your role is this and your role is there isn't there just isn't that environment we have editorial freedom to do what we want. In within the bounds of NBC News standards and that is gold and that I mean I really these are the good old days you know this is the way it should be and I try to be trustworthy and I try to be a good investment.
And I have the freedom to say what I want and I take that really seriously. All right, my final question for you, the medium York is obviously evolved over the past years, do you think your mission has changed to and how would you describe yourself your kind of historian now in a weird way. But how would you describe yourself and what you're doing right now? We have an internal like mantra, a motto that's on my show, which is that we try to increase the amount of useful information in the world.
And I think about that every day in terms of trying to focus on what it is that I'm doing. I don't know what I would call myself at this point I enjoy and I'm very grateful for the chance to be covering the news at an incredibly important time in our country. And I also tell other historical and news based stories on the platforms that I can get.
So it's I you know when I made this change in the way that I work, I asked for forgiveness and fluidity and for none of my staff to lose their jobs and right so far that I've needed all those things. Is there anything else you would want to do run for office? I know I think correctly. You would landscape her. I was the world's worst landscaper when I met Susan because she hired me to like call dead things out of her yard.
Yeah, that's a famous lesbian history story just so you know I still have the t-shirt I was wearing when I showed up how exciting to pull out those raspberry bushes. Is there anything else you would you think about running for office? Would you rather just come out? I'm not a trained historian either. I have a I do have a PhD, but it's not in history. No, I mean, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I've got another season of ultra in me for sure.
I've probably got another couple books in me. There's a bunch of different podcast projects and long form projects that I want to do. I've got a couple of documentaries that are on their way. I've got a scripted TV show that's on its way. I've hopefully got those two movies on their way. I've got all sorts of stuff cooking and I just I just going to do this as long as I can hold out. So a professional shits do I see. Speaking of which I'm sorry.
I'm talking about myself. I'm projecting. I am. I just absolutely projected at you. Anyway, I really appreciate Rachel. It's so nice to meet you. Finally. Nice to meet you too. Ever meet in person. I was just going to say we have to be careful if we ever meet in person. There's going to be some sort of rift in the universe. There are rift in the universe somewhere. And then we shall take the ultimate power that we deserve. So clearly.
And we will tell everyone what to do because lesbians should run everything. I don't know if you know that, but they should. Once again, projecting. Once again, projecting. I do think that. I do think that way. I mean, we're very good people. Anyway, all right. Rachel, thank you so much. I do or do everyone to listen to ultra. It's really a staunt as an astonishing podcast and really interesting. And I know a lot about the topic and I was surprised continually. Anyway, thank you.
Cara, thank you so much. Thank you so much. As you know, one of the issues we follow closely on the show is the impact of social media and tech on young people. I have four kids. It's a issue that many parents are worried about, including me. But the experts seem to be divided. So we want to hear from you. I'm going to be talking to clinical psychologists and parenting guru, Dr. Becky Kennedy. You probably have seen her on your social feeds as Dr. Becky.
She's being touted as the biggest parenting expert since Dr. Spock. And I want to give you the opportunity to ask her your parenting questions. What would you like to know about kids and tech? Leave a voicemail at 1-888-Kara, please. K-A-R-A-P-L-Z or 1-888-527-2759 or send us an email at on at Vox Media. That's o-n-at-VoxMedia.com. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Rosell, Katari Yokem, Jolly Myers, Megan Cunain, and Megan Bernie.
Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Kate Furby, and Kaelin Lynch. Our engineers are Rick Juan, Fernando Aruda, and Alia Jackson, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are instantly a drug-ooned into the militia etharid. If not, you have to listen to Father Coglin on Endless Loop. Go wherever you listen to podcast search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow.
Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more. If you've been enjoying this podcast, here's a look into what else is happening at New York Magazine. I'm Corey Seka, and I'm here with Reeves Wideman, who has written about the American obsession with NDAs. Where did they come from? Why are they everywhere? And are they good for anything besides covering up for abusers?
After you've poked around NDAs for a while, do you see NDAs used mostly as tools of abuse and coercion? Do you see positive results like where did you land on NDAs? I think in most situations, it is used as a way to sort of claim power, but not even necessarily to do a bad thing. It's just kind of, it is now this sort of boring standard tool in the toolbox of corporations or powerful people. But now it's being used on the people at the bottom.
It's the warehouse workers at Amazon being made to sign them. Or I was just trawling job listings while doing the story, and there were NDAs for forklift drivers and people working in butcher shops. And I think on the one hand, it's just kind of like, well, I might as well. There's no downside for me to do this. But it is also just another way that you sort of keep your employees or people you get into a relationship with, that you sort of keep your thumb on them.
So I do think it is at the end of the day that people who are giving them out by and large are trying to control someone. Do you think that they're going to become standard for like literally every interaction in job interview and possibly relationship as well, or do you think they're just finally going to die or become outlawed? Like where do we go from here? You know, it was corporations first. Then it was celebrities.
Then it was just rich people who aren't famous, but they also want to protect their privacy. The next frontier is people like you and me. And are we going to start giving them to their partners? You know, I think some people are going to start experimenting with it. It doesn't take much to go online, download a free NDA, and without even consulting a lawyer and hand it over to someone. I did as a joke, send one to my girlfriend. She hasn't signed it yet, but I, I, I, I, I, at least sent it.
So that's Reeves Widermint, who may or may not be single soon. You can read his work on NDAs in our beautiful print magazine in your own home or on NY Mag.com slash lineup.