MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Iran & the Limits of Trump’s Power

Speaker 2 Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 2 Today, I'm talking to Nicole Wallace, a White House communications director during the George W. Bush administration and a senior advisor to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Speaker 2 She is now the host of Deadline White House on MSNBC and the host of a new podcast called The Best People.

Speaker 2 I recently went on The Best People because I am one of the best people, clearly, and I actually had a great time.

Speaker 2 I've always been a fan of Nicole's and think she's a very canny and smart observer of politics and a lot of other things.

Speaker 2 On this podcast, I'm turning the tables on her and we're going to talk about the media business, turmoil in the Middle East, domestic politics, the Republican Party, and her experience on John McCain and Sarah Palin's 2008 campaign and the challenges facing journalists and civil society.

Speaker 2 Our expert question comes from Charlie Sykes, the host of To the Contrary podcast and co-founder of The Bulwark and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. So stick around.

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Speaker 2 Nicole, thanks for coming on on.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having me. I love this.
Good. I'm glad.

Speaker 2 So welcome to the podcast game. Are you liking it?

Speaker 1 I feel like such a beginner, and I know all the self-help is, you know, try something new. But I thought, what am I going to try new? You know, and this is really new.

Speaker 1 And the night before the first episodes drop, I tried to pull them. I listened to them and I thought they were terrible.
and I tried to yank them,

Speaker 1 but it was too late. It was a little TV Devo.
I just was so embarrassed. I thought, oh my God, it's so much of me oohing and awing and talking and I was mortified.
Right. But

Speaker 1 I think that might be part of it. You learn in front of everybody and maybe that's what people come along for.
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 They want to meet you. It's a marathon.
They'll give you that next piece of advice. You did ask me on your show about that.
And you can't just stop.

Speaker 2 It's an endless maw of content creation that I think a a lot of people and media aren't used to.

Speaker 2 But for people who don't know, you're best known for Deadline White House, the political news program on MSNBC.

Speaker 2 You recently launched this, we're talking about the best people, a podcast where you have personal conversations with, I would say, A-listeners, but I was on it.

Speaker 2 But it was Jason Bateman, you've had Sarah Jessica Parker, NBA coach Doc Rivers, which I really liked actually.

Speaker 1 He's so cool.

Speaker 2 He's really interesting. So talk about why you decided to call it the best people.

Speaker 1 Well, the real reason is I thought it was Trump's best brand in 16. I think that the way some people who liked him, and you and I talked about this in our conversation,

Speaker 1 they liked the celebrity. But if a little colonel of them worried that, well, maybe he doesn't know how to run the government, he promised to bring in the best people.
Right.

Speaker 2 So you're making a little joke there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And when he tapped Mattis and Ketley and people that seemed trusted, he seemed to fulfill that.

Speaker 1 When he won the second time and tapped Matt Gates to be attorney general, it it was clear that the best people was over, right? Like the season for the best people had passed. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Don't need the best people.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I thought I would reappropriate what I, what I actually thought was a good branding effort on his part and platform the people who really are the best people to me.

Speaker 2 But I'm curious, why did you start with a human interest podcast? Because everyone's going to expect you to do another deadline, I guess. That would be the first pitch I would guess you got.

Speaker 1 The funny thing is we didn't have any parameters. I mean, you and I talked politics.
We talked podcasting, we talked parenting. You know, people talk about whatever's on their mind.

Speaker 1 And there's not a lot of production. You know, you can't make someone talk about what they want to talk about.
And you can't keep a topic off bounds. It's too long and it's too honest.

Speaker 1 And you're just, you know, two people with your headphones on. So the conversation is all veered into politics, but people weren't booked because of a political moment.
Right.

Speaker 2 You're in a media environment. And this is something from a piece that Charlie Wurzel wrote today.

Speaker 2 The right-wing media complex has disproportionate presence and is populated by extreme personalities who have no problem embracing nonsense, AI imagery, and flagrantly untrue reporting that fits their agenda.

Speaker 2 It's not just in politics, it's in health, it's in all kinds of things. Is that harder to do human interest to get people to be real? Because presumably you want a range of people, right?

Speaker 2 In the best people that aren't necessarily people you're in agreement with.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, look, we picked people who

Speaker 1 I felt like helped unlock something that helped me get through the last nine years.

Speaker 1 And I think I said this to someone the other day that if we're going to get through this moment and we look back and we wonder what, what was this about?

Speaker 1 I think it was about reconnecting all of us to our communities.

Speaker 1 And I think that's, and I think that's, you know, to your point and to your sort of model and your leadership in this space, I think that's why it works. It doesn't just work.

Speaker 1 I think that's why it soars. And I love what I do at MSNBC, but I think I wanted more, and I think people want more.

Speaker 1 And I think they want to feel like they're sitting in a community with you, and you're not reading a teleprompter, and it's not going to stop when you have to go to break.

Speaker 1 And they get a little deeper if they want. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 Well, so far, so good. We're going to talk a little bit about media in a minute, but let's talk about hard news right now because this is what you're steeped in every day.

Speaker 2 So, Israel began bombing Iran last Friday, although Iran is retaliating.

Speaker 2 It's also signaling it's also ready to de-escalate, but Israel has aerial superiority over much of Iran and little incentive to step back.

Speaker 2 When Prime Minister Benjamin Yetanyahu addressed the Iranian people directly last week, he said he was, quote, clearing the path for you to achieve your objective, which is freedom.

Speaker 2 You were White House Communications Director for George Bush, George W. Bush during the Iraq War.
Talk a little bit about that experience when you're looking at this.

Speaker 2 Obviously, you bring expertise here, specifically in the context of a potential regime change. Talk a little bit about how it applies to this situation.

Speaker 1 Look, I think all the time about

Speaker 1 when they'll miss their credibility with the whole country, right? Trump has incredibly high negatives and lack of trust and approval from more than half of the American people.

Speaker 1 And when you miss it most is when the country has to speak with one voice.

Speaker 1 And it's why the old sort of politics end at the water's edge used to apply because you had a national interest in the whole country being behind your leader on the foreign policy stage.

Speaker 1 And that started to go away with Bush and and Obama as well. But I think it's a scary moment and probably scariest for people living in Israel and Iran.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if it's just a sign of my own age, but I just keep thinking about, and I think about this when I cover the Ukraine war.

Speaker 1 You know, think about being a parent and worrying about keeping your family safe with these two adversaries fighting about missile and aerial dominance. That's a military term in real life.

Speaker 1 It's people terrified in their own homes. And I don't know

Speaker 1 much about what Trump is going to do from day to day, but I do think there's a pattern over nine years where he seems to have an aversion to military intervention.

Speaker 1 He likes to talk about displays of military might. That's what the parade was about.
But I find his language around getting, I mean, everything about Russia and Ukraine seems to be about.

Speaker 1 taking Putin's side, right? And about ending a war. So I am waiting along with the rest of the world to see what his reflexes are because he doesn't have a big foreign policy apparatus.

Speaker 1 He doesn't seem to have the capacity for a policy process. I think that what he says will be what he thinks.
And I think we'll have a sense of it really soon.

Speaker 1 I think it's probably a very precarious feeling. I've been watching the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu more closely than anything because I think when

Speaker 1 he started to lose a little bit of interest in Putin, I wondered if Netanyahu would be next. And he didn't lose interest in Putin, but his first trip was to be celebrated by all these Mideast leaders.

Speaker 2 Right, and not Netanyahu.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and he didn't go to Israel. And then his first term, he went to Saudi Arabia and Israel.
So I think it's an open question how much affinity he has for Bibi Netanyahu.

Speaker 1 And I think it's an open question how much appetite he has for getting involved really at all.

Speaker 2 Well, now, Iran is a heavily secured uranium enrichment site called Fordo that's built into a mountainside. Everyone seems to know this now.
Only the U.S.

Speaker 2 has specialized bombs that can penetrate underground bunkers and have aircraft to drop them.

Speaker 1 Now, MAGA is really split.

Speaker 2 Hawks like Lindsey Graham says America should go all in. Well, isolationists like Tucker Carlson have called those encouraging Trump to approve airstrikes.

Speaker 2 Warmongers, he's said a lot of things this week, and Trump has slapped back at him, of course. Explaining the trade-offs for Trump, and more importantly, the U.S.

Speaker 2 in deciding whether to help Israel, it's a lot of mixed messaging. If you're messaging this, what is happening? Do you think it's just complete id?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, if you're so messaging emanates from a policy, and I messaged for a president for whom the policies were very unpopular, but the ideology was very clear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I don't honestly, I don't. I mean, the bunker-buster bombs are what you're talking about.
And I think that's the debate on the right around which they're split.

Speaker 1 But I think they're split on something more that's going to cleave that movement open at an emotional level.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think there's a place where Trump is so right, he's left, where you get some of these far-left guys that become MAGA characters, is around non-interventionalism.

Speaker 1 And so, I don't, I don't know how he keeps his coalition together at all. Right.

Speaker 1 If I were him making a calculation, and if I were a foreign country trying to make a bet, I would bet that he doesn't do all that Israel wants him to do, knowing that the elected Republican officials have sacrificed their identity and their ideals and their values from the moment he was on that Access Hollywood tape through good people on both sides, through Big Beautiful Bill, through all the, they've never abandoned him because he he doesn't share their principles or policies.

Speaker 1 So, if I were him and he had to decide

Speaker 1 where to compromise, I would guess that Trump would feel most confident abandoning the elected Republican establishment.

Speaker 1 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 2 Let's pivot to domestic issues. This past week, there were over 2,000 No Kings protests across the country.

Speaker 1 You cover them.

Speaker 2 The rallies came after Trump sent the National Guard and active duty Marines to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests that featured sporadic violence.

Speaker 2 It did not exist, but it was not, you know, what

Speaker 2 they're putting out in the right-wing arenas. Surveys show most Americans disapprove of Trump's response in LA, but Trump seems to want to bait protesters into giving them an excuse for a crackdown.

Speaker 2 What's the political calculus here? Would he ultimately benefit from a show of force? Given most of the polls are underwater, including one today about his big, beautiful bill.

Speaker 2 Most people think it's small and ugly. So does he ultimately benefit or is this an old trick that's not necessarily working?

Speaker 1 I think that he is choosing unpopular things with more popular things right there for the taking. I don't think the shows of force are necessary.

Speaker 1 At the end of the day, the men and women of the National Guard are patrolling their own streets. That's a terrible story for Trump.

Speaker 2 And so, why pursue it?

Speaker 2 I mean, as long as the stock market is up and the inflation stays down, he can more or less do what he wants, presumably, around whatever it is, protests, immigration, universities, crypto scams.

Speaker 2 Although economists say we're likely to see higher inflation this summer, so did Elon Musk, by the way, his friend, his former friend. But so far, it's not there yet.

Speaker 1 Well, why? I mean, I think it answers a more important question about who's around him.

Speaker 1 And I think for people who, I was one of them, were constantly critical of the guardrails, people like H.R. McMaster or Dina Powell or John Kelly, you know, how could they stay?

Speaker 1 How could they work for someone like that? They were there to keep Trump from escalating with Kim Jong-un, from launching a global trade war, from invoking the Insurrection Act.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think folks close to Millie and Esper or Millie and Esper have talked about what they did the last time Trump wanted troops on the street. They told him it was a bad idea.

Speaker 1 And I think you see that there are no, I mean, it's obvious, but you see the impact or the consequences of not having anyone like Mark Esper or Mark Milley or John Kelly or Don McGann around Trump.

Speaker 2 One of the things I kept saying is people are for deportation for the most part. Not everybody is, but enough people are, but not like this.

Speaker 2 Or the universities, but not like this, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Or we want better crypto rules, but not like corruption, like that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Does that have an effect from your perspective?

Speaker 1 Does it matter politically? We'll see. I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't think you can get ahead of the story. And so I just

Speaker 1 think we know. Right.

Speaker 2 But so far, he's had success. He's had success.
Have you been surprised by the success?

Speaker 1 Look, I've been surprised by

Speaker 1 the lack of attention that he seems to pay to the things that he was obsessed with last time. He was obsessed with cable coverage of himself.

Speaker 1 He was obsessed with New York Times and Washington Post coverage of himself. He was obsessed with the stock market undulations.

Speaker 1 Now, other than the alarm bells that went off when he threatened to fire Jerome Powell, he doesn't seem to really ride the market, highs and lows. And I'm not on X anymore.

Speaker 1 So I don't see all of the sort of ebbs and flows anymore of MAGA world. But Trump doesn't seem as agitated by press coverage and market twists and turns as he used to.

Speaker 1 But he does seem to be aware of the political pressure bearing against him. And I think the fight with Musk is an example of that.
I mean, he was aware of how bad that looked for both of them.

Speaker 1 They looked like assholes.

Speaker 2 Meaning what?

Speaker 1 I think, look, in some ways, it's a relief, right? I mean, and he used to watch Morning Joe, and I used to watch too, just to see what was going to set him off that day.

Speaker 1 And I think he probably still watches, but he seems much more focused on self-enrichment unless the story is big enough to get under his skin. And the Elon Musk story looks so bad.

Speaker 1 The world's richest man who seemed to indiscriminately cut funds that went to programs that kept the poorest people on the planet, the most desperate people on the planet alive.

Speaker 1 A fight between the two greatest villains that the pro-democracy movement's ever seen in this country was a debacle. And he seemed aware of how bad that was.

Speaker 1 He seemed to try to get into that news cycle in a way that was more reminiscent of his first term.

Speaker 1 But there don't seem to be a ton of stories like that where he seems to want to try to manage the news cycle in the middle of it.

Speaker 2 But he did have a reaction to the taco thing, which is interesting.

Speaker 2 Yes, but then now he's gone back again on the immigration thing. So he was don't arrest farm workers and hotel workers or hospitality workers.
But now he's back to that.

Speaker 2 So he's a reverse taco in case you're interested.

Speaker 1 Correct. And I think the relief that I felt when I saw that he was not interested in deporting farm workers.
I mean, these are people that I'm from California. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they are so central to the economy, not just in California, but all over the country. But he is really, at a policy level, more erratic than ever.

Speaker 1 And maybe it's because there's not as much that that breaks in terms of investigative journalism. He's doing it all out in the open.
He had the crypto investors to the White House.

Speaker 1 It wasn't, you could imagine that being the kind of thing that the Times or the Post, you know, would have uncovered in a first term. Now it's just all out in the open.

Speaker 1 Maybe there's, there's less that he's trying to hide.

Speaker 2 Right, right. But he is a person governed by the last person.
He's seen probably Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, got to him, and then Steve Miller. got to him again.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 That's which is what happens, correct?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I mean, and his instinct is to deport everybody. So it goes back to his main instinct.

Speaker 1 But everybody, everybody that you don't know, and I think it's hard to,

Speaker 1 I have been amazed by some of the early reporting around individual deportations. Carol in Missouri, in an all-red town, in an all-red county, in an all-red state.
Carol's deported. The town goes.

Speaker 1 batshit to get her back. She's been released.
In Texas, there's some incredible reporting in the New York Times about local businesses who've had their workers deported.

Speaker 1 And these MAGA bubbles inside MAGA states have hated it.

Speaker 1 And you're in California where Marines are, I mean, Jacob Severoff has spent the last two days with a Marine who fought for his country and has been in the streets since the ICE raids started saying, look, I was willing to die for my country.

Speaker 1 This is not American.

Speaker 1 So a couple more political things.

Speaker 2 So as we mentioned, Republicans are working on this massive reconciliation bills. And although they're acting like it's not going to pass, it'll probably pass would be my guess.
It always does.

Speaker 2 It always does. That's exactly right.
Like, oh, oh, is Mike Johnson going to do it? I guess so. But it does involve kicking millions of people off of Medicaid in the process.

Speaker 2 They'll also add nearly $4 trillion to the debt. And experts have been warning that our debt is unsustainable.
This is something Elon Musk was upset about, genuinely upset about.

Speaker 2 How do you look at that story? Because I think that's one that doesn't get, because many people feel we're at an inflection point in

Speaker 2 debt, which is something that's dull to look at and not as interesting. You know, it's not easy to tell that story.
But how do you look at this bill? Because it's very unpopular right now.

Speaker 1 Two to look at. It's very unpopular.
It's very unpopular. I think at the end of the day, there's nothing Republicans have defied him on.
I mean, they confirm cash fate

Speaker 1 and hexeth with bipartisan opposition.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I was thinking. They don't care what the voters think.

Speaker 1 They don't care. And they don't care about these institutions.

Speaker 1 But I think Medicaid might be different. I think the result of this bill, according to CBO, is that 16 million people lose their health insurance.

Speaker 1 And I think if Bannon had prevailed in in sort of the Bannon-must clash over Trump's soul at the beginning, I don't think this bill would exist.

Speaker 1 But here we are. And I think that the consequences of this, the political ones, will be felt a little bit in the beginning, but not really until people start suffering.

Speaker 1 And I think Trump is obsessed with, you know, not my voters, you know, or a storm hits, or those my voters. There's no way to protect his voters from losing health care.
None.

Speaker 1 And so I think the politics are disastrous in the near term and the long term for Republicans.

Speaker 2 In the long term, for sure.

Speaker 2 Political violence is rising, obviously, is the story we've been working on all week. A Minnesota man killed a state lawmaker and her husband.

Speaker 2 And before that, two Israeli embassy staffers were killed by a shooter who yelled, Free Palestine. A man tried to kill Pennsylvania Governor Josh Ape and his family with an arson attack.

Speaker 2 He also referenced Gaza. And of course, there were two assassination attempts on President Trump during the campaign.

Speaker 2 The best way to reduce the risk of violence was for political leaders from opposing parties to make joint appearances where they denounce all political violence and call for respecting the right to protest.

Speaker 2 And it's unfathomable that Trump would do that. In fact, today he said, why should I call the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz? Essentially, he said he's stupid.
I don't want to talk to him.

Speaker 2 And I could be nice and do it, but I'm not going to. After the assassination, Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah who's slowly losing his mind or quickly, posted his personal ex account.

Speaker 2 This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way. He retweeted Elon Musk, who said the far left are murderously violent.
This suspect is a Trump supporter.

Speaker 2 Well, now the police are saying that he seems to be motivated by anti-abortion zealotry. Aside from the heinous behavior of Mike Lee, he's wrong too.

Speaker 2 Like being inaccurate is also on top of his soulless statements.

Speaker 2 Talk a little bit about this, because this is something that political violence is not a new thing in our country, but it certainly seems

Speaker 2 we just move on to the next thing once this happens, including the attack on Trump, by the way.

Speaker 1 It's an atrocity. And it's a one-party problem, largely.
Yes, it is. When the attempt on Trump's life broke, there was universal condemnation and relief that he was okay.

Speaker 1 And frankly, praise for how he handled himself in the moment. On the other side, there's what you just described.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, were you surprised by that?

Speaker 1 I mean, I try not to be surprised. Something happened to him.
I remember Senator Lee used to be a normal Republican, and he has slowly drifted to something unrecognizable.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's drifted towards something not purely purely small D Democratic over the recent years, but this is something, this is a deeper rot.

Speaker 1 This is in your character, I think, if you celebrate the murder of anybody.

Speaker 1 But I think when it's someone from the other political party, forget about all the damage you do with the sadistic celebration of the violence. Think about the missed opportunity to elevate yourself.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's a be graceful for 15 minutes. It hurts nobody.
It might help you.

Speaker 1 Republicans like Republicans who are more popular because they're viewed as more powerful. And think about all of the people who say, nah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to sound a grace note.

Speaker 1 I'd rather just be a dick. And that's what's really disappointing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but would you be, would John McCain be surprised by this? You spent so much time with him. He was certainly a decent.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 he would have, I don't know if he would have been surprised. I think he had.

Speaker 1 I think he was so complicated in part because he saw the dark and the light, but I think he would have fought against it.

Speaker 2 Is there any room for a John McCain-like character in the Republican Party anymore?

Speaker 1 I mean, they've all left, they've all removed themselves from the arena, either because it hurts too much or it's too dangerous. Mitt Romney might have been the last one, most change.

Speaker 1 And they've all removed themselves. Liz, they've all removed themselves or been removed by the base of the Republican Party from the arena.

Speaker 2 And was it only because of losing? I mean, obviously, you were on that campaign. John McCain, by the way, made that point to avoid even the appearance of racism in the 2008.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was standing 10 feet away from him. And

Speaker 1 look, he disagreed with President Obama on the issues that meant the world to him on foreign policy.

Speaker 1 And it was like a very robust policy debate between two men who were in the same body, but believed in very different things.

Speaker 1 But McCain was the first to rush out at that event.

Speaker 1 I was sitting like 10 feet away from him and correct his own supporter when she impugned President Obama's sort of loyalty to the country and the Constitution and his character.

Speaker 1 And you just can't imagine that happening anymore, can you? No, not at all.

Speaker 2 Were you surprised more that he did that or that someone said that?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think because I had visibility into the things that were happening in Palin's rallies, I wasn't surprised that that was surfacing in the base of the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 And Bush had warned about it. Nativism and isolationism are these isms that are always under the surface, and we have to watch out for them.

Speaker 1 But I think you're always impressed and surprised when someone confronts it at their own event.

Speaker 1 And I think this is where the Republicans have lost their way. It's become this dysfunctional codependency where the base will tolerate increasingly craven activity.

Speaker 1 So Mike Lee sends a violent, hateful message after someone's assassinated. You know, it's become a dysfunctional codependency.

Speaker 2 Let me ask you one last question.

Speaker 2 You were nominated for a 2025 news and documentary I made for your series, American Autocracy, which aired on deadline before the presidential election.

Speaker 2 When you look at that, and you were there with Sarah Palin, to me, she is the OG of this, right? Even if she was unsuccessful, she was successful, or the things she was putting out there.

Speaker 2 It was vaguely violent. It was, you know, very folksy.
Even though she's a comic figure now in many ways, it's really, if you really look at that,

Speaker 2 she was that. So when you were saying it could happen here, it...

Speaker 2 feels like it has right or did you see that in the moment when you were her comms person or dealing with her did it ever worry or think or just this clown is just a clown and that's why she's losing?

Speaker 1 It's funny. I mean, I never thought she was a clown.

Speaker 1 I thought she was clownish.

Speaker 2 She seemed in the end.

Speaker 1 She became cartoonish.

Speaker 1 And I think that what the lesson of Palin

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 the party fractured in that moment and we just didn't know it, right? So it fractured right between the top of the ticket and the bottom of the ticket.

Speaker 1 It was fractured between the nominee for president and the nominee for vice president. And that fracture played out in the campaign.
And when you're on a campaign and

Speaker 1 it's so raw, you think it's about you.

Speaker 1 But it was really about the cleaving off of the Republican Party from its past, which was embodied by John McCain, and its future, which was embodied by Sarah Palin.

Speaker 1 Now, the fact that Sarah Palin didn't grab the party's future and run with it is all about Sarah Palin. I mean, she'll, I think, to this day, attack her advisors.
Like, I haven't seen her since 08. So

Speaker 1 she's been free of us for almost 20 years and has never mustered a successful run for anything.

Speaker 1 But she was on the night that the election was called for President Obama, she was the rightful heir to the Republican Party, what it had become and where it was heading.

Speaker 1 And in terms of, you know, it could happen here, was about something a little different. I mean, that was about the Republican Party sort of plunging into something darker than what we thought it was.

Speaker 1 But the voters obviously thought that was baloney, And they thought that there was maybe nothing darker than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and free trade that didn't help them.

Speaker 1 So, you know, that might be in the eye of the beholder. But certainly the celebration of someone more,

Speaker 1 as you said, folksy was where the party was heading. And maybe if she was a man, she would have defeated Donald Trump in a primary.

Speaker 1 You know, we just weren't, the party wasn't ready to sort of embrace her and elevate her, or she wasn't ready to run to take over the party.

Speaker 1 But I think that what happens in 08 is the party fractures from its past to its future.

Speaker 2 And as American autocracy, this aired before the presidential election, how are you feeling now? What would it be called now from your perspective?

Speaker 1 So when I was on maternity leave,

Speaker 1 I wasn't reading the news every day. And

Speaker 1 I reread On Tyranny and I read

Speaker 1 Ruth Van Giat's book. And I was like, oh my God,

Speaker 1 all this stuff is happening. And so when I came back, I had a little bit of that perspective.
And we had all these autocracy experts on.

Speaker 1 And what's amazing to me is that Trump has done so many of the things they warned. I mean, and he didn't have to.
I mean, he won and Republicans swept both houses.

Speaker 1 So the thing about autocracy is you have to opt into it. You don't stumble into it.
A country can stumble into it, but a leader can't.

Speaker 1 It's harder and less popular.

Speaker 1 So taking on the universities, destroying scientific research, destroying private law firms, ruling by intimidation, destroying the Department of Justice, taking over the FBI with political sycophants.

Speaker 1 I mean, these were all things we warned about in the series that starts in, I think it started March 1st of 2024.

Speaker 1 And then to see him carry all these things out in January of 2025, less than a year later has been stunning to watch.

Speaker 2 How are you feeling now at this moment? How successful is that? Something you would warn about?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think he's been successful at moving the country away from our democratic norms. And I think it begs the question,

Speaker 1 what else are you going to leave to the norms? They don't do you any good when you have a want to be autocrat.

Speaker 2 If you were doing that right now, would you say he's going to be successful? Because you can be incompetent and successful. You can also just break up.

Speaker 2 It could just break up in terms of the pressures.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it goes back to what his mirrors are. Is he looking at the stock market? Does he care about that anymore? I don't know.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I I don't know.

Speaker 1 This is where I really, you know, my discipline and mantra is to not get too far ahead of the story. I think the warning was apt.

Speaker 1 I think he has successfully pursued all the paths that people like Tim Snyder and Ruth and others warned about. And I think the only question is how far does he get?

Speaker 2 And from right now, how do you look at it?

Speaker 1 He's made a lot of progress. It's been five months.
He's made a lot of progress.

Speaker 1 Now it's resulted in something Rachel focuses on every week and every day when she was anchoring every night, the people are not behind it. They're They're taking to the streets in historic numbers.

Speaker 1 But he has successfully moved the country away from democratic norms quickly and efficiently. And the only people really pushing back are the courts.

Speaker 2 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 2 All right, let's talk a little bit, finish up talking about the news business. Trump has been suing the news media, and he's had a lot of success.
That's one of the norms he has done rather well.

Speaker 2 Disney settled a winnable lawsuit over ABC News. Paramount is in an active settlement discussions with Trump over a 60 minutes, they did nothing wrong in his 60 Minutes lawsuit.

Speaker 2 Comcast, whom we work for, is planning to spin off its cable TV business along with digital offerings. So MSNBC will have a new corporate parent called Versent.

Speaker 2 I think they could have tried a little harder for the name.

Speaker 1 You don't have to comment.

Speaker 2 What do you think about the ability to withstand the potential pressure? Is that something you're thinking about?

Speaker 2 And is any publicly owned corporation in a strong position to resist this?

Speaker 1 What's funny is,

Speaker 1 who is it? Is it Romney that says corporations are people? Yeah. Yeah, he did.
Yeah. And which I thought was a boneheaded political statement, but it's true in this context.
We are all only as

Speaker 1 protected as the people for whom we work.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you and I talked about this before. I mean, I am fortunate to work for someone, and this has been tested.
I said something viewed as controversial by the MAGA-right, and they came for me in a minute.

Speaker 1 Trump attacked me in the Oval Office. This was at his sort of political apex.
It was in March of this year. And Rebecca talked there.
Sorry, I don't, I think.

Speaker 1 It was his address.

Speaker 1 And he had this lovely young man who wanted to be a cop and he was a cancer survivor. And it was a beautiful moment.

Speaker 1 And I sort of mixed up talking about how genuinely beautiful that moment was with a critique of Trump's treatment of the cops, which I shouldn't have mixed the two things. I regret doing it.

Speaker 1 But at the time,

Speaker 1 Trump and MAGA and the White House went crazy. They attacked me and Rachel.
And I work for a person who,

Speaker 1 you know, protected me, had me on, you know, on the air feeling confident and as though my company would stand behind me.

Speaker 1 It's just a long way of saying I think that I am ill-suited to talk about the business side of the industry, but well suited to talk about my own experience coming under fire from Trump and MAGA at my company.

Speaker 1 And I think you are, there are, there are currents and there are movements and they're all pushing against the media, no doubt.

Speaker 1 I mean, you can count on one hand, the news organizations that have withstood the pressure. And I think so far we are one of them.
And I would credit the leadership of our company.

Speaker 2 But you're now changing. It'll be interesting to see.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it'll be. Yeah.
And we'll see. Yeah.
We'll see. I mean, we'll see if that makes it harder or easier.
I really don't know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't work for anybody.

Speaker 1 So I right, right. But terrorists wish political pressure.
Right. And

Speaker 1 I think that's why you, and I mean, we could count them here. You, The Atlantic,

Speaker 1 the New York Times, Bryn Stalwart. Yeah.
Right. I mean,

Speaker 1 you can count on one hand. Right.
Right. The news organizations that have, and that's why independent media is flourishing.
I would say this. I am attracted to all of the independent media.

Speaker 1 I think without Trump, it would still be where all this is going. Megan Kelly did

Speaker 1 an interview with the New York Times, and she was talking about, you know, the way the industry is, that if you're, and you're in the same position, that if you have this direct relationship with your viewer, your reader, your consumer, that in a lot of ways, that's, that's that's more pure.

Speaker 1 And I think that's right. I think she's right.

Speaker 2 Just so you know, Megan Kelly doesn't like Kara Swisher, but at the time,

Speaker 1 she doesn't like Nicole Wallace either.

Speaker 2 Let me just say, at the time that happened, she called me and we had drinks, and I talked to her about this, of how to do it. And just so remember, Megan, I did help you.

Speaker 1 She, you know, she was,

Speaker 1 I watched her every night at nine o'clock. I mean, she's one of the best to ever do cable, to ever do the news.
And now I don't watch her anymore, but

Speaker 1 I thought her observations about where

Speaker 1 industry are heading. Yeah, we're right.

Speaker 2 So I think her content is terrible.

Speaker 1 Her content is a confounding choice.

Speaker 2 You're very nice. I think it's just terrible and angry.

Speaker 1 Really angry.

Speaker 2 Especially at women.

Speaker 1 She hates us more.

Speaker 2 She'll have a show on this soon. So good.
Great to give you content, Megan. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So when you have personality trumping accuracy, this is a way it was going anyway. Is that bad for a civic society? Although having that relationship is a good thing, right? Ultimately.

Speaker 1 Well, it's another thing that depends on norms, right? You depend on the character of the people that have trust with the audience. And this is, to me, the new moonshot.

Speaker 1 How do you make the content that goes around the world in a nanosecond the content that doesn't tear the society apart?

Speaker 1 I mean, you tell me. How do you do that?

Speaker 2 Well, you can go either way. It works both ways.
If you do it well,

Speaker 2 it can work. It's worked for me, but you can also be screaming and it works.
It also works.

Speaker 2 Because those are the people that want to, you know, it's like people who are in good relationships and bad relationships. You know, lots of people in bad marriages.
They work just fine, right?

Speaker 1 Where they happen.

Speaker 2 But one of the things that Screamy does work a little better, I suspect, because look, MSNBC's total viewership is down from May 2024, 33%. CNN's numbers have slipped.

Speaker 2 Fox is up because they have a very committed group audience who likes this, although Tucker Carlson just insulted them today.

Speaker 1 That was interesting.

Speaker 1 Why is he mad?

Speaker 2 He said it's manipulation for older people. I'm like, no shit, Sherlock.
I have a mother.

Speaker 1 Like, I know all about this for a long time.

Speaker 2 But during Trump's first term, news organizations saw a Trump bump this time around. You're seeing the reverse.
You've been on TV now for 10 years through these two things.

Speaker 1 What do you think will re-engage? Oh, I think news engagement is up.

Speaker 1 I just think

Speaker 1 there are some, I just think it's spread out over more.

Speaker 1 I bet more people are paying attention. And I bet more

Speaker 1 people are. Right.
On social, listening to podcasts.

Speaker 1 I think that there are people that are getting their news from just you and then and not and not also watching UNCNN or just getting their news from the Bulwark podcast and not also watching.

Speaker 1 I think news consumption is probably at the same level or up.

Speaker 1 I just think it's spread out and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would agree. I would agree.
It's actually spread out. It's just they're getting it in different ways and you then you have to re-engage them in certain ways.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and be in different ways. And I think, you know, that's why that's why I'm here.
That's why there's a podcast.

Speaker 1 And I think that that even during the Bush years, which feels like forever ago, and there was no Twitter, but

Speaker 1 the late night shows were so, I mean, Letterman drove public opinion as powerfully as NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 2 Or the SNL skid on palin.

Speaker 1 You were right in the middle of that. You were there right after it happened.
Oh, God. Yes, I can see Russia from my hat.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 What did you think when you saw that?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's so cool. Well, I think whenever someone's using,

Speaker 1 well, so I mean, SNL, I worked for the Bushes who Bush41 was dear, dear friends with Dana Carvey. I mean, there was a real

Speaker 1 affinity for the, and Will Farrell had played W, and there was a real appreciation for the role of humor. I think, I think Trump might be our first president who's enraged by all of it.
Right, right.

Speaker 2 Talon was enraged, but they got her.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Talin was enraged.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You must have been like,

Speaker 2 nailed it.

Speaker 1 Well, it was so, there's just nothing left to say when they're using their own words. You're done.

Speaker 2 Right. So every every episode, we get an expert to send us a question for our guest.
Let's hear yours.

Speaker 5 Hi, this is Charlie Sykes. My question is this.

Speaker 5 How do we not become our own echo chamber? Do you worry that we, I mean, MSNBC, this podcast, my podcast, are simply preaching to the converted?

Speaker 5 And if so, how do we break out of that silo to make sure that the people who will decide the next few elections get the information and the truth that they need to hear?

Speaker 1 Thanks. That's a good question.
He's so smart. Too smart.

Speaker 1 I think that echo chamber

Speaker 1 is another word for community. And I actually think you have to lean into your community.
And I think that you have to make your echo chamber, your community more inviting, you know, like

Speaker 1 a baseball game you can order from your seat or like a spa. You have, I just think you have to make your community more appealing and you have to reach out and invite more people into it.

Speaker 1 I also think you should go visit other people's echo chambers. I don't think they should be so sealed.
I think they should be more porous.

Speaker 1 And so I think that echo chambers get a bad rap, but I actually think they're communities that people form to make sense of the world and they have social implications.

Speaker 1 And I think they give people a lot of comfort. I think they became more hardened after COVID when people were really isolated.
And so their echo chambers became their communities online.

Speaker 1 And I think we have to break down some of the virtual elements to them. I think, I mean, you do a lot of live events.
I think we should all be doing that.

Speaker 1 And I think we just have to make our chambers or our communities more inviting, pull more people in and visit other people's. Because I think the chamber itself

Speaker 1 is a comfort to some people. And it's probably a better use of our time to visit others.

Speaker 1 Yeah, bring a pie,

Speaker 1 bring a ham.

Speaker 2 Bring a ham. I had a surprisingly interesting interview with Sarah McBride, who I think is not, is decentering her trans status very well.
It's really interesting.

Speaker 2 And one of the things she said was, we have to embrace imperfect allies, which I thought was exactly right.

Speaker 2 And she wants to talk, she says, I represent all the people of Delaware and they're different. So I'm not going to center myself.
This is just stupid for me to say, because

Speaker 2 I don't work for me. I work for them, which was interesting.

Speaker 1 And you talk to anyone under 20, and the whole fixation with identity is not where their heads are.

Speaker 1 They're soccer players or musicians or band members and they include gay, straight, trans, you know, I mean, that decentering is also how the next generation views identity.

Speaker 1 It's almost a relic of our politics to get wrapped around stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's quite effective, actually, decentering. And the fact that she was doing it,

Speaker 2 who they try to drag into fight with Nancy May, she's like, I won't be doing that today. She doesn't take the bait ever, which is really very strong.
But in that vein, just two more questions.

Speaker 2 A lot of young people, as you said, are getting political annotations filtered, say, young men, especially through the manosphere or social media feeds, although that's changing.

Speaker 2 Several of them are turning on Trump, by the way today one of the more prominent ones turned on trump again rogan seems to be in his slow-headed way moving that way but they're not journalism necessarily so put your political communications operative hat on how do democrats reach out to those voters or people that do not want an autocracy how do you do that from your perspective well this is where i i i know I can speak with experience about everything that's happened to the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 The Republicans have said more awful things about Donald Trump than I've ever said on my show in nine years. You know, J.D.
Vance called him America's Hitler.

Speaker 2 I was at an event where he did or he did it to me.

Speaker 1 I was like, calm down. So it's like, I understand what the Republicans have done to themselves.
I don't understand the Democratic Party that way.

Speaker 1 I have voted with them enthusiastically in 1620 and 24. And I can't imagine supporting a Republican because the Republican Party has moved away from small D democracy.

Speaker 1 So I resist giving Democrats any advice. I am sort of a a guest in their coalition because they are on the side of the democracy and there isn't another pro-democracy game in town.

Speaker 1 I am surprised that this is hard, though, because I think if you're a normal person who lives a normal life, who's at the grocery store, and there are some that are very good at this.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think Pete Buttigieg is very good at this. I think Amy Klovichar is good at this.

Speaker 1 I think Gavin Newsom has had a very easy time communicating what is wrong with disappearing people off the streets and deploying the National Guard. I think they need to just do.
And

Speaker 1 I think that people rail against consultants. I mean, consultants aren't the whole problem, but if you're relying on them to figure out how to just do, that's the problem.

Speaker 1 And I don't, you have to be everywhere. They should be everywhere.
They should be in every podcast that will have them.

Speaker 1 Because to your point, you're going to, if you win, you're going to represent everyone.

Speaker 1 I talked to folks close to Obama after the election, and they reminded me that Obama had immigration protesters outside the White House every day for eight years, and they only left when Trump won.

Speaker 1 I mean, you have to figure out how to appeal and excite a majority of the electorate and win before you can make policies that are better than the ones that your opponent is pushing.

Speaker 1 And I think that the Democrats have,

Speaker 1 they've not come up way short, but they've come up short enough to, you know, to lose twice.

Speaker 2 Who's the most interesting character of that side for you that you're like?

Speaker 1 On the Democratic side?

Speaker 1 It's funny. There are a lot that I'm not that interested in talking to.
When they call and they're like, so-and-so is free. I'm like, hmm, I think I'd rather rather talk to Tim Miller.

Speaker 1 But look, I think that Josh Shapiro is a very interesting governor, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know that he's interested in stepping into the national political debate every day, but he's, he's been, and he won, I think, with the biggest bipartisan majorities in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 which is a big swing state. I think swing state elected officials are very

Speaker 2 interesting.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, swing state elected Democrats have won people that pick Trump twice, two or three times, right? So I think Whitmer is interesting.

Speaker 1 I think Shapiro is interesting. And I find them more interesting than

Speaker 1 politicians from reliably blue states because they're too centrist. They're not complaining.
It's not even centrists. It's just,

Speaker 1 it's more about the governing. I mean, I think the stuff Shapiro did of just getting the bridge back.
People in their lives view partisanship as a luxury.

Speaker 1 In their lives, they want to be able to afford housing, school, higher education, if that's their kids' dream, baseball uniform. I mean, it's why they're.

Speaker 2 I heard the romanial message right now,

Speaker 2 which is interesting.

Speaker 2 I saw Laura Kelly, who doesn't get as much attention at an event. And she said

Speaker 2 on her signs, someone was asking her, it was a donor. And she said, I don't put my Democrat on my signs.
And I also use red because I like the color red.

Speaker 2 And so they only know me as Laura Kelly. They don't know me as anything else.

Speaker 1 And I thought, oh, that's smart.

Speaker 2 You smart grandma. Because she does the whole grandma thing.
I'm like, oh, no,

Speaker 1 I love that. Grandma.

Speaker 2 MAGA, of course, uses partisanship as a cudgel.

Speaker 2 That's their game, their move there.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 Let's end by circling back to your new podcast, The Best People. In it, you ask guests to share lessons that listeners can use.
So I'll ask you the same thing.

Speaker 2 We spent the last hour talking about some bleak circumstances that we're in, something you've reported on and done many shows on.

Speaker 2 For people who care about democracy and truth but feel overwhelmed, what's your advice and how can they stay engaged without burning out?

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 tell everybody, and I try to do this myself, to just stay close to your people. You know, check in on all your people.
Everyone in our own orbits is going through something with a sick parent or

Speaker 1 a kid that's struggling or

Speaker 1 a difficult transition, either, you know, a kid going off to college

Speaker 1 or, you know, so just take care of your people. And then if you can sort of

Speaker 1 be sunshine to somebody or be the person that checks in with everybody,

Speaker 1 taking care of the things you can control is,

Speaker 1 to me, what has been advice that I was given and that I give out and that I try to practice every day to make everything else feel less overwhelming.

Speaker 2 Overwhelming. And the feeling of overwhelming is I'm a little more tough love than you, Nicole.

Speaker 1 Whenever they're talking about it,

Speaker 1 that's why you're going to raise all the children.

Speaker 2 You know, like, I know when you say it could happen here, I'm like, it won't happen here.

Speaker 1 Stop it. Just stop it.

Speaker 2 Like, stop whining and get your.

Speaker 1 I think that's right. I think it won't happen here.
But I see America. Yeah.
And I think it's, it's too big. And I think people are like, oh, come on.
We don't want that.

Speaker 1 You know, we wanted Trump. We wanted the gold toilet and the hot wife and the, you know, I don't know, whatever else they think he has.
But I don't think it'll happen here.

Speaker 1 But I do think we have to be vigilant. We don't have any more time to mess around.

Speaker 2 Right. Right.
I'm often struck by.

Speaker 2 I'm always like when the people say you're going to leave America. I was like, why would I? It's my country.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving.

Speaker 2 I used to argue with right-wing people people when they, when I, when they were talking about the, that, the elite does visit Kansas or wherever, or, you know, that whole, that whole trope that was going on.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I've never seen anyone from Kansas in the Castro. They should come and meet me.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 why am I not normal either?

Speaker 1 Well, which is, but the funny thing is, I mean, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. There were tourists from all over the world there all the time.
I live in New York.

Speaker 1 There are people from all over the world. I mean, I see MAGA Hats in Manhattan periodically, not all the time, but

Speaker 1 the people of this country, I mean, this is the other thing with the podcast. I think it's a mistake to cleave politics out of our lives

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 just put politics on one network, you know, 20 hours a day.

Speaker 1 I think politics in people's lives, if you're at a baseball game and you're watching the game and you're talking about, hey, where did you get, you know, catcher's gear?

Speaker 1 It was, it was, you know, 20% more at Dicks. And oh my God, did you see the sign there? I mean, people talk about politics in the context of all the other stuff.

Speaker 1 And so I think there is something false and indulgent about

Speaker 1 the way we do political news. And I don't know how to fix this, but I do understand why people are going to podcasts and going to places where it isn't all politics all the time.
Yeah. Well, welcome.

Speaker 1 You'll like it a lot.

Speaker 1 Thank you for the warm. Thank you for the support and the course.
Anything you need.

Speaker 1 Anything you need.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to help Megan Kelly anymore, but I'm happy to help you.

Speaker 1 I think she did so. You're right about the content.
I think she did something mean about me and Rachel on my first podcast.

Speaker 1 I think she, I don't, I don't, I don't know how to find her, but I'm just sure it's there.

Speaker 2 Win by winning. That's what I say.

Speaker 1 Win by winning. Be nice.

Speaker 2 Be nice. You don't have to be nice.

Speaker 1 Nice stuff.

Speaker 2 You're nice. I'm not so nice.
Anyway, thank you so much. As usual, you're fantastic, and we really

Speaker 2 like talking to you.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Rousselle, Kateri Yoakum, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to Eamon Whalen. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics.
If you're already following the show, Megan Kelly will take you out to drinks.

Speaker 2 She owes me one, for goodness sake. If not, she'll attack you on her podcast, and thanks for that, Megan.
Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow.

Speaker 2 And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at OnWithKara Swisher. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

Speaker 3 We'll be back on Monday with more.

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