Trump & Putin’s Alaska Date, Gay Marriage Challenged, and Guest Co-Host Rachel Maddow

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In case you're interested, a report from WeWork Every White Woman in America is doing a skincare line.

Kara, that's the one thing we haven't done together yet.

I know.

Let's launch a skincare line for people who don't care about skincare.

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

Welcome back to

Scott Free August.

This is possibly the most badass day of Scott Free August.

My co-host and I are the Al Pagino and Robert De Niro of lesbian journalists, respected, feared, and often confused for one another because of our hair, our fantastic haircuts, let me just say.

Welcome to the host of MSNBC's, the Rachel Maddow show Rachel Maddow.

Oh, Kara.

I'm so glad.

And when we made that decision to go bulk at the barbershop where we would always go two for one, I just think it was great for both of us.

I mean, we were both 24.

You could have foreseen that it would have been the start of our paths in life.

Right.

And we often dress like each other too.

And people are always like, are you Rachel Maddow?

No, I'm not tall enough.

People don't know.

Rachel's quite tall.

That's the thing.

That's the secret.

That helps us twin in a way that will help us ultimately commit great crimes.

That is great.

Because we will be the alibi for one another.

We should do crimes.

Should we solve crimes or do crimes?

Yes.

Both.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

All the things.

We have so much to talk about.

This is so good.

This is, everybody, let me just say, we're going to gay it up for you here a little bit, but we're going to, we have a lot to talk about.

But how is it going on your show?

You're back to once a week.

Is that correct?

Yes.

So I'm once a week Monday nights on MSNBC, and then I spend every other day of the week working on stuff that people can't see yet.

And so it seems like I'm doing nothing, but actually I'm working harder than I've ever worked.

So you're not lazy.

Like

I'm not lazy.

No.

No.

So can I just ask, I'm just curious, how do you plan that day?

Would you do it on Sunday?

I was trying to think, when do you plan it and how do you decide?

Because it's the one day.

You're like the Jon Stewart does the same thing, the one day, both Monday.

I read all week and then I Sunday is a full, full bore, like 10 or 12 hour workday when I'm like.

reading intensively and prepping and making decisions, including about guests and stuff.

Although I don't like to pre-plan guests before the day of the show if I don't have to.

I don't.

Right.

Because you want it to be fresh.

Yeah.

Because I'm not trying to do a weekend review.

I'm trying to do a good,

here's your Monday newscast.

And so I'm never great at like lining up the big guest for the big get interview weeks in advance.

I just don't do that.

So, but I read all day and then Monday I work all day.

And that's, I mean, it's, it's kind of, it's, it's not that different from when I was, the prep time is not that different from when I was doing five days a week.

It's just that my whole Sunday is dedicated as well.

You went from one day a week to five during

the first hundred days of the presidency.

Do you feel like you need to come back and do more?

I know a lot of your viewers think that.

I mean, I think doing the 100 days was the right thing to do.

I think a lot changed in our country very rapidly over those first hundred days, and I was glad to be there every day for it.

I also think it was, you know, MSNBC kind of signaling to the audience, like, hey, this is not a normal presidential transition.

This is potentially, if this is going to be a transition from one kind of government and one kind of country into another, we need to cover it in a way that is not pretending that this is normal.

And so I like the instinct at the company to ask me to come back and do that to signal that this is a special sort of time, I think was correct.

But

I don't want to do five days a week and I won't.

And they don't want to.

They've moved on.

So they've moved on.

They have gotten more people.

But do you ever feel like, oh my God, something happens and I got to get in there?

Oh, yeah, for sure.

And, you know, and I'm a guest on other people's shows.

And if it ever, we ever tip over into special coverage, I'm able to come back at any time and lead that stuff.

So I just, I think it's a pretty, it was hard to arrive at the system that we're in.

We had to iterate a bunch of sort of different attempts at it before we arrived at this.

But I think this, I think we're in the right.

I think we're in the right place.

I think this is right.

I think this is stable and sustainable.

And this is going to be what it's going to be like for the foreseeable future.

Right.

Now, may I ask you, are you excited about your spin-off of Versent?

What a great name.

Versent.

Talk to your doctor about.

Results may vary.

You could have a rash.

You know, in terms of the practical impact of it, it's been all kind of upside so far.

Yeah.

I mean, we're we're hiring.

What other news organization is hiring tons of reporters and correspondents and editors?

And we're standing up this whole news gathering operation, which was funded as part of, well funded, as part of the spin.

And

in the end, once that is stood up, we will no longer have to compete with NBC News's properties for the news gathering, the product of the news gathering organization, which we otherwise had to.

I mean,

if we're all covering the same outbreak of war or whatever it is,

if we're competing with Nightly and The Today Show and Meet the Press, and it's the NBC News news gathering organization, we're always going to get whatever's left over.

In this case, it's all, we can apply our own instincts our own queries our own priorities to getting stuff that we need um from reporters and correspondents and so it's gonna it's gonna be better once that's all stood up it has to be I like the cut of your jib here because a lot half the people I like that expression I like to say it a lot sounds like it's like this is what is I like the cut of your jib

I didn't even know I had a jib everyone has a jib Rachel where it's the sailing metaphor a jib do you ever sail no obviously you don't a jib gym.

It's a machine.

More of a robot type.

I like robots too.

When I was in,

I went out with someone and they bought me a robot once and we called it a relation dinghy.

But

it's not a relationship.

Anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

I'm here all week.

One of the things I think is exciting, actually, I've been doing a few shows on the podcast about.

what works in media now versus the whole doom the doomness of it.

And I had Oliver Darcy on, I had Katie Drummond from Wired, I had a bunch of different people on it.

And the whole idea was that things are working, like whether it's Mehdi Hassan, even on the right, whether you like her or not, Megan Kelly.

There's all this exciting kind of stuff.

And one of the MSNBC people either split into two groups, people who are sort of, this is the end kind of thing, or this is an opportunity to be entrepreneurial, which I think you're talking about, right?

And it's an opportunity to make things people want.

It's A,

first of all, we make a ton of money.

Second of all, we're spinning off with a huge standalone, newly built news gathering organization that is designed specifically for our purposes and nothing else.

We have an incredibly loyal, very large audience, and we've got, and we're, and we're universally platformed on a device called the television, which Americans use despite media reports to the contrary.

And so I just feel like I'm super, super happy to see, in particular, the success of some of the people you just described, Wired has just been killing it.

Oliver Darcy doing his status media stuff is great.

It's better than anybody else who's doing the media beat from any of the legacy news organizations.

Absolutely.

That's because he's not just writing down what the big say.

Exactly.

And that is forcing, I actually think it's forcing media reporting in legacy news organizations to kind of up their game a little bit because he's so scrappy and good at it.

And

I think there's a lot that's positive.

The business side of it is a challenge for everybody, but it's also unique to everybody.

And MSNBC on that side has a bunch of unique advantages.

We're in a spin that is very well funded, that is, once it's going to be public shares eventually when Versent does that, that means that's going to sort of lock into a system where there's several years where they can't do anything dramatic.

like sell us or anything like that.

But right now, we're going to...

The Elon time is not yet.

No, we make a lot of money.

We have a big audience and

we're growing substantively in terms of what we can offer the audience.

I just think

that's nothing to sneeze at.

And

I'm excited to see how it develops.

Good, because I think that's the good attitude.

I think if you sit around and doom scroll about your industry, they're just not true.

There's all kinds of entrepreneurial stuff.

And it gives you the opportunity if you pull away from bigger organizations to like, you have to make stuff people want.

Anyway, speaking of-

Before we move on from that, you yourself are a media mogul, Kara Swisher.

That's what I call me.

But do you feel like you've wired, you've figured out what makes the most sense for you in terms of owning stuff and multi-platforms and the kind of partnerships that you have?

Well, Rachel, if I, if I were advised, like I, I, I helped Dave Jorgensen leave the Washington Post because he, he's the one who makes all those videos.

And he also was on the podcast because he's different.

He's doing videos and trying to create a video-oriented, TikTok-oriented media company.

Uh, yes, I feel much better.

As I often say, I was a terrible employee.

I was like, you fucking idiot all the time.

And I was tired of saying that to people, especially a certain kind of guy, right?

It was often a guy, and sometimes a woman.

And I just was like, I'll make what I'll make.

And if people want to eat it, they can eat it.

Like, and then I get to make all the decisions.

I also own everything.

If I were you, I would own everything.

You do own a lot of your stuff, Rachel, but I would own like everything I make.

And that way I can make decisions.

And then you partner with people.

In my case, it's Fox Media.

But, you know, over time, for example, in Pivot, Scott and I have gotten a bigger piece of the pie because it's our pie, right?

And, but it's great to have partners that help you do things like advertising and distribution and producing that you may not want to do or they can do better.

And so it creates a really great ecosystem of everyone's interests are aligned.

And then you.

And when you own it, you can make decisions that are both temporally specific and specific in terms of equity and all that other stuff

and control as needed.

But you can enter and leave those partnerships while you still own everything.

Right.

And that's what I'm advising everybody.

Like everyone who, like, I get a lot of, like, when they wrote that very nice piece in the New York Times about me, which was a little too nice, Rachel, I'll be honest with you.

It was a, it was a big.

You're the backlash to your own profile?

I, myself.

I'm like, come on.

You couldn't find one bad thing.

I'll give you a list of people that don't like me.

But they're always blind quotes, so they're not any good.

You know, I would say one of the things that was important in that piece was getting people inspired.

But one of the reporter came to me and said, who's lovely, Ben Mullen, and he said,

you know, I've heard you're being paid to advise people to leave media.

Like, I get a fee.

I was like, if I got a fee, I'd be so fucking rich.

I have like people call me.

Right now on my telephone, I have seven people who want to leave media and want to try something.

And so what I try to do is the ones I think are going to be good.

I say, here's what, here's what it takes, like a Jim Acosta or whoever.

You got to be entrepreneurial.

You've got to be.

You've got to work harder than you did because it's all for you.

Right.

And I think that's the hard part.

And some people who come to me, I'm like, yeah, you should stay where you are.

You should stay where you are.

You're giving people the Rosetta Stone here to interpret your advice and feature anybody.

It's only a few people.

But, you know, like I just was with Dina Brown and she's done amazing stuff at her sub stack.

And I think her writing is better.

Paul Krugman, I think, has really come alive.

He's suddenly really great.

There's all kinds of people.

And I think once you find your voice,

if it's really good, people will buy it.

And it's all, and media is not all one thing.

I mean,

I I have a production company now, in addition to being an employee at MSNBC.

But at that production company, I'm not doing cable news.

At that production company, I'm doing documentaries, scripted shows.

Actually, podcasts are all through MSNBC.

So it's the documentaries, scripted shows.

I'm producing a play with them, some other stuff,

feature films.

But that's all, it's all different.

So my employee status is.

podcasts and TV shows at MSNBC, which is all the stuff for which I'm still best known.

Everything else that I'm doing, I'm very low on the learning curve and I'm figuring out how to do it.

And I don't know if I will succeed at any of those things, but I'm trying, but I'm doing that on my own Steam.

Which one do you like better?

I like them both.

I'm better at one than I am at the other.

I mean,

if you're used to it.

Yeah.

And so,

but I like working at something that I'm not great at and learning.

So that's what I'm the problem is, is that I, I can't, once you're better at something, it's easier to turn it on and off to compartmentalize.

Now I'm working.

No, I am not.

When you're not good at something, there's the constant panic about failure, which means you work 24 hours a day, which means your girlfriend gets mad at you.

I've heard, wait a minute.

I've heard that.

I have that issue with my wife, too.

Speaking of Hollywood, I just want to note, the New York Times just called my all-time favorite movie, Roadhouse, the best bad movie.

I don't know if you know, that's my all-time favorite.

Oh, wow.

Movie Roadhouse was Patrick Swayze, not the Jake Gyllenhaal.

That was pathetic.

Jake Gyllenhaus is the remake?

The remake.

And in the Patrick Swayze version, was there also a lot of shirtlessness?

Yes, of course, obviously.

He did Tai Chi and the shirtlessness.

Are you kidding?

And it was mostly him, by the way.

It was not the ladies.

There was a lot of shirtless ladies also, but he was the prime piece of beefcake there going on.

And I love that movie largely because of the lines, like, we can do this the hard way or the easy way, just stuff like that.

Which is like, I say that a lot and no one was, it was.

It's profound.

It's a profound thing.

People go, look, where's that in the bible i i love patrick swayze but such a great fire that i don't understand it myself the late have you ever seen the um amazingly like crazy stars tv show called high town which is about drugs in provincetown yes the lesbian hello yes hello so do what about in uh the the pimp the terrible like evil shirtless pimp character swayzey yeah and there's no reason in the entire there's there's a lot of things about high town that are inexplicable but one of them is that why is the pimp shirtless like the pimp is shirtless at night the pimp is shirtless during the day i'm convinced the pimp is always shirtless because he is swayzy because that is swayzyze you're right yes yes it's a meta it's a meta yes yeah tom cruise always takes his shirt off too there's several actors but in patrick swayzee's case i see the point i get the point i i understand why there's no shirt um let me ask you a question do you have a best bad movie or show you like lately

i gotta i like Hightown.

I gotta say, High Town.

I, uh, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm a real old lesbian who doesn't see a lot of movies and stuff.

Like, my favorite movie is Suddenly, which is an assassination movie starring Frank Sinatra that all takes place in one room and really ought to have been a play.

Like, I, I, yeah, Frank Sinatra.

Like the original mint.

Back to Sin Sinatra.

Yes.

Like, that's my favorite.

That's my era.

I love Patton.

I love Lawrence of Arabia.

Like, I, I'm, I'm a lot older than I seem.

I was born 74 years old.

Excellent.

That is from the beginning, from the get-go.

From the beginning.

I came out nearsighted.

I was 37.

Interesting.

I was born.

I was like, here's how we're going to do things.

But

37 and real bossy.

So suddenly, I'm going to watch that now.

It's good.

It's really good.

I like political thrillers.

It's kind of my thing.

I like psychological thriller stuff.

And, you know, it's great.

It's really good.

Frank Sinatra actually did some.

I loved him in the First Manchurian Candidate.

Yeah, he's great.

That's a creepy movie.

Angela Lansbury is so good in that movie.

Oh, God, she's fantastic.

She's so good.

I love an evil,

like a totally like,

like villainous to the core pretty lady.

Pretty lady.

She is.

Julie Andrews.

She should be a villain.

Has she from the villains?

That's sort of in that genre.

Hello, Julie Andrews Andrews of the Pivot audience.

Tell us what Julie Andrews is.

I'm sure she's listening very closely right now.

Although I do have a lot of weird celebrity fans, which is strange.

I'm I'm sure you have a million of them.

They love the Rachel Maddow.

Let me give you one recommendation, which I mentioned to every show.

See Hunting Wives, please, on Netflix.

Do your favorite.

Oh, this is a new reality series?

No, it is not.

It is a series, Malin Ackerman and Britney Snowstar.

And it is about MAGA, MAGA ladies in Texas who shoot a lot of guns.

And they're very Christian and very MAGA and trumpy.

And they dress up in what you'd imagine Texas ladies would dress up in.

And they're they're all lesbians.

I'm just

suddenly they take this turn into lesbian, and you're like, but then they do it too much.

You're like, stop with the lesbian.

Like, there's way too much.

And then there's murder.

It's not you just like reading a lesbian vibe into it.

They actually in the show.

No, my friend.

No.

It's, it's moving towards softcore porn in a way that's really good.

I actually was like, you need to stop.

You need to, we need some more plot here.

Like, stop make it out, you two.

And Malin Ackerman dives into the role, dives into the role.

Like, you've never seen it.

So, when Scott did his last episode of Pivot Before Scott Free August, his advice to your, you and your co-hosts while he was away was he wanted a lot more lesbian content.

There we go.

And now here you are.

Here you are.

We've done it.

You're bringing me new lesbian content.

I didn't know.

I'm just telling you.

Text me after you watch it.

All right.

Trust me on this one.

All right.

We've got a lot.

Now we're getting to serious stuff because Trump is having quite a week with his federal takeover, DC, a review of the Smithsonian and the meeting with Putin.

First, you know,

I am a huge fan of your work on the 30s and 40s, all the stuff you've done.

I just re-listened to Prequel, which I adore, and all the characters.

And I assume that's what you're making movies about because there's so many great characters there.

We've been hearing Trump using this America First line for years, but it's coming into play more than ever in his second term, as if it's fresh and new.

He slapped the label on foreign policy, trade, immigration.

He told the Atlantic a few months ago that the America First means whatever he says it does.

He said that he was the one that developed it.

Obviously, not so.

In both Ultra, your podcast, and your, which you've been on

talking about this in your book, Prequel,

you talk a lot about this and the deep, deep roots of this, what's happening now in the U.S., which we have forgotten about in a lot of ways.

So talk a little bit about the backstory and this rhetoric at this moment in time.

So the America First Committee was a real thing.

It only existed for about 15 months, but it was 15 really important months.

It was from, I think, September of 1940 until December of 41, Pearl Harbor.

But they formed, it was one of the largest anti-war organizations ever in the U.S., and they formed to basically try to block FDR from affording any assistance to Britain when Britain was fending off a Nazi invasion.

And

their basic idea, at least their public-facing idea, was that we were impregnable.

We were protected by our oceans.

Nobody was ever going to attack us.

And who cares if the Nazis took all of Europe?

Europe kind of sucks anyway.

We give money to them.

Why should we give them to them?

We shouldn't give money to them.

And if we give any money to them, they're going to plow under every fourth American boy.

It'll get us

into the war.

And we don't want to be in another war after World War I.

That was the public facing line.

The problem the America First Committee had is that even as they were huge and they had all these really respectable people associated with them, most founded by the guy who was the heir to the Quaker Oats fortune,

they kept slipping into kind of liking the Nazis and blaming everything on the Jews.

And the American public eventually came to see that, especially when Charles Lindbergh, who was the most famous man in America, not named Roosevelt, when Lindbergh became their spokesman and started it flat out saying, this is just the Jews trying to get us into the war and the Jews are the big problem in the world.

So the America First Committee,

I mean, has

a short, very pungent history.

And then what the idea of America First became after that is even worse.

After the America First Committee disbanded following Pearl Harbor, we then later got other iterations of that concept, like the America First Party, which in 1944 campaigned explicitly on the promise of deporting and or sterilizing all Jews in America.

So that's the history of America First.

And there were senators that put these things force, the forced sterilization of Jews, of blacks, of things like that.

The insidious nature of it, even if it wasn't called America First, was the thing I was thinking of, is the idea that, first of all, there was Nazi infiltration in

our country very significantly through Congress and also throughout media and everything else.

But that it was much more insidious America First in a lot of ways because there are all things attached to it.

Yeah, I mean, that phrase, that plowing under every fourth American boy, that was

that originated in Berlin in Goebbels's office, and then it made its way into

the

speeches of an anti-FDR, America First American politician.

And there was a huge, one of the things that Ultra and Prequel are about is

this

huge multi-million dollar at the time, which makes it, I mean, in 1940s dollars, multi-million dollar secret Nazi propaganda effort that was shunted through Congress.

They used the congressional franking privilege to mail out millions of pieces of Nazi propaganda to American homes using members of the Senate and members of Congress who were on the Nazi payroll

in the lead up to World War II.

And it's a forgotten history, I think, because of World War II.

It seems to overshoot, you know, that overshadows everything that went before.

But

we had a big Nazi sympathizing and American fascist movement here in this country.

That continued after the war through McCarthy, which is what the second season of Ultra is about, correct?

I mean, that it didn't stop.

So this never stopped.

This is one of the things that I took away from your book is that so much as, you know, it begins with Gogols, who was, you know, I think they had stolen some ideas from us and Jim Crow.

and or borrowed or whatever and thought that was a great thing.

And then they put it back here and continued.

That's what the lost history part.

I mean, the biggest figure, there's two figures in your books that I think are so, McCarthy gets all the attention, right?

Always, because he's such a tragic and horrible figure.

But two people I thought was Lawrence Dennis

and O.

John Roghy, two opposites.

So

similar.

Lawrence Dennis was considered to be the intellectual godfather of American fascism

and was like, he was receiving money from the Germans, and they brought him over to like observe Nuremberg rallies and blah, blah, blah.

He was connected to all sorts of American politicians and to these fascist movements, including the violent fascist movements.

And he was also half African-American, correct?

He was secretly black and passed until the very end of his life, while meanwhile,

you know, articulating the beautiful fascist American future, right?

The Nazis, when you say that they got ideas from Jim Crow, the Nazis

used,

they actually sent an agent to the University of Arkansas Law School school to study jim crow the legal the liminal legal world

how to set it up and then they used it for the as the basis for the nuremberg laws the idea of second-class citizenship based on racial purity so

that's on on the sort of on the dark side and then ojohn raghi was a wunderkind um prosecutor who brought sedition charges against dennis and against these american fascists who were both working with the nazis and trying to undermine the American war effort.

And he was all but destroyed for having done it, including being fired in the Justice Department for having had the temerity to name the members of Congress who were involved in this scheme.

And write a report that got lost, really, to history for 25 years.

Yeah.

And then it didn't matter by then because everyone had moved on, right?

Yeah.

They didn't publish it till the 60s.

I got to tell you, the resonance to today, it's you're, that prepoque particularly sticks with, has stuck with me so hard because it feels like there's so many links to today.

How do you, and one of the things, you have these heroes like Ojohan Roger or Leon Lewis in Los Angeles, Leon Lewis, right, in Los Angeles, who also did all this sort of secret spy work against these people, against these, these fascists and militias and things like that.

Who is that today?

And could you link them to what's happening now?

I don't think there's any.

You sound like you're, is there a problem?

Yes, there's a noisy man, but go ahead a noisy man yeah sorry i just saw you kill him with your eyes it was amazing i stopped doing that

um i don't i don't think there are exact parallels but i do think that there are sort of inspirational currents so um one story that hasn't had a lot of attention that i've sort of been watching percolate recently is that there's been a lot of um

stealing from armories and military bases that's been happening recently.

That was something that happened in the lead up to World War II, as well as violent fascist groups like the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front and others not only recruited from the military and from the National Guard, but also used essentially insider threat people inside the military to steal U.S.

military weapons for the use and what they hoped would be a violent overthrow of the U.S.

government.

And so that happened, that's happening now, very sort of quietly.

It's only getting a little bit of attention.

That happened there.

That was in part what led Leon Lewis, who was a World War I veteran, to get other World War I veterans, German-American World War I veterans, to go infiltrate those groups to figure out what was happening.

They could not get law enforcement interested in it because these guys proclaimed themselves to be anti-communists.

And so therefore...

Law enforcement liked the idea of them.

They couldn't get law enforcement interested in, so they pursued it and pursued it and pursued it themselves.

They publicized their findings.

They ultimately went to U.S.

Navy intelligence, which was willing to prosecute them in part because it was military facilities that are being burgled in order to get these guys their weapons.

So that sort of intrepidity by a self-styled civilian spy, I don't know that we've got that sort of singular hero right now.

But when I see people who are building apps and building online networks to watch what ICE is doing and to monitor effectively the secret police operations that we've got going right now, I see some of those same instincts sort of in the American character.

Yeah.

You were saying they aren't the same.

I mean, right now, for example, Trump, let's go right to this.

Trump says he's looking to extend the 30-day federal takeover of Washington, D.C.'s police and could bypass Congress declaring a national emergency.

I guess he could decide what a national emergency is.

His comments come as National Guard troops arrive in D.C.

with 800 guards and 500 federal agents set to be deployed in total.

They're often in places that are very loud, although they're over on 14th Street where they're being punneled with sandwiches.

That guy.

The felony for hurling the sandwiches.

I know.

Hurling.

I'm like, I would, I would, I feel like I wish I had done that.

D.C.

Mayor Mira Bowser is calling all of this an authoritarian push, although she initially said the city could benefit from it.

She's being a little bit quiet about it.

The U.S.

Attorney for D.C., Janine Pierrow,

she of the box of wine, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that she's working to overturn some local laws so juvenile offenders would be be prosecuted.

I just, you know, a lot of the stuff you wrote about was implicit.

It was quietly being done.

Although the silver shirts, they appeared, all these people appeared in Madison Square Garden.

They had all kinds of rallies.

It was very explicit, but nothing like, it wasn't the government doing this.

Now he's also focusing his attention on DC's landscaping, saying we need to redo the grass with the finest grasses.

I agree with that.

I'm going to agree.

We have shitty grasses.

I think America can actually come together around the idea of fine grass.

Fine grass, yeah.

So, talk to me a little bit about what's happening here because this is explicit.

In the time you were writing about it, the government itself wasn't doing things like that, or was in a way in certain areas, like concentration camps and things like that for the Japanese.

Yeah, I mean, fascist groups in the United States before World War II wanted an authoritarian takeover of our country, in which there would not be in the American system of government anymore, there would be a strongman leader who would

run things at his own whim,

with autocratic capabilities, and would

serve the white Gentile population above all else and kick everybody else out of the country.

That's what fascist groups before World War II wanted in this country, which is why they wanted us to not only

either not fight the Nazis or to fight with the Nazis rather than to go over there and fight them.

And they didn't like democracy explicitly.

They talked about it, Lawrence.

They thought democracy was decadent and it was a way for liberals and women.

Women and, well, minorities of any kind to have any say.

Like they don't, these are folks who don't want, don't believe in sharing power with people different than them.

They think that they should be able to have a say on their own terms of what happens not only in government, but in everything.

And so now in our generation, in our time, we have an elected authoritarian leader who doesn't just want to control the executive branch.

He wants to control, you know, universities, their curriculum and their admissions and their, you know, student discipline policies.

And he wants to decide what economists work at what banks.

And he wants to control

businesses.

He wants to control the Smithsonian.

He wants to control high school sports.

He wants to control the legal profession.

He wants to control what's on television and what's in the news.

And guess what?

Like they're,

this is what they were after.

And

this is a president who does not see bounds on the presidency set by democratic processes, but he also doesn't see bounds on the presidency set by what counts as government.

He wants to autocratically rule the country in every aspect of the country, both to shut down the possibility of criticizing or opposing him, but also because he believes that he should run everything.

That he should be center.

He should be handing out the Kennedy Senator honors, and he should be administering.

the police force of Washington, D.C., and he should be choosing the CEO of Intel, and he should be setting the recipe for for Coke.

And that's what they were after.

And that's what we have.

Are you more alarmed by any part of it, or is it part of the same idea?

And for people who don't know, the White House plans to review the Smithsonian Museum Exposition's materials and operations for America's 250th anniversary next year.

The administration sent a letter to Smithsonian this week explaining how the museum content is in line with Trump's restoring truth and sanity to American history executive order.

And recently, the National Museum of American History removed a placard that mentioned Trump's two impeachments, which has since been replaced.

Is there one thing, like this is like a cornucopia of stuff for you to focus on?

What do you look at?

What do you think is the thing that troubles you the most?

Or is it in whole?

Is it the takeover of the city or the attempted takeover of the city?

Or is it the museum?

I assume it's all of it, but is there something you find most disturbing?

Well, it's all of a piece in the sense that I

guess I have two answers to this question.

One is that what Trump is doing is so textbook.

Like, there's not anything that's very surprising about what he's doing.

And we now know who he is and what his intentions are.

That's not, there isn't going to be a big reveal.

Oh, he has authoritarian inclinations for our country, our intentions.

Like, we now know who he is.

He is, he is Victor Orban, he is Vladimir Putin, he is Duterte, he is Berlusconi.

You know,

pick your poison.

They all do the same thing, right?

We're only lucky that Trump isn't taking his shirt off in photos.

But so on that, to me,

sorry, I just put that image right in your head, didn't I?

You did.

I just totally saw his chest.

Anyway.

Swayzy.

He's not Swayze.

I take this shit from Twayzey, but not from this guy.

But because he's...

predictable, because he is playing two-type and it is A-type and it's a very noble thing.

I feel like there's only so much value in focusing on every new thing he does

because it's predictable what he's going to do.

We know what this is.

So it makes me more interested in the question of the country's durability and how we're responding and the strength of our institutions in standing up to it.

So that's one thing there.

But the thing I'm most worried about is the military stuff.

The military, the meaning the takeover of the city or?

Well, I mean, he's using the military to project force inward, you know, domestically, everywhere.

Immigration enforcement doesn't just look militarized.

They're integrating with the military.

They're building these immigrant prison camps with no due process, and a prison with no due process is a camp.

They're building them on military bases.

They've got hundreds of miles of territory in Arizona and New Mexico and Texas that they're calling military zones, where they're giving U.S.

active duty troops the authority to stop and search and arrest people on U.S.

soil.

He threw himself a military parade for his own birthday.

They're using military flights, incredibly expensive military flights, inexplicably for deportation flights.

We've just found out that they've got a, they're building, they're considering building a new rapid reaction force where they've got 600 troops on one-hour standby, 24 hours a day, to go deploy into American cities.

They put the National Guard and the U.S.

Marines in L.A., and now they've got the National Guard and he's threatening active duty troops in D.C.

I mean, he is reimagining the use of the U.S.

military as his own Praetorian Guard facing his critics and facing his citizens and normalizing.

He's already in this many months, normalized the presence of American troops in American cities with us at the end of their guns.

Right.

And when I think of any country I go to where there's troops on the streets, I'm always like, I'd like to get out of this country, right?

That's the, like, it makes you feel, I just interviewed Jason Stanley, who you know from Yale, left this country.

He's written about propaganda and fascism.

I'm sure you know him him well.

And one of the things he said is he's sort of a kind of a cloddish playbook of a fascist.

And I was like, well, does it matter if he's clownish and cartoonish, if he's effective in some way?

Do you find all this effective?

Well, he's doing it, right?

Yeah.

I mean, the thing that makes him effective is not any genius on his part or even any ambition or speed on his part.

The thing that makes him effective is the

cowardice and collapse of American institutions that should be saying no to him.

That's the problem.

Do you see any heroes emerging?

Yes.

The heroes that are emerging are emerging from not the leadership class, but the people.

I mean, the fact that there's protests against Trump on every day of the week in every state in the country is important to me.

And I think I've...

You feature that on your show quite a bit, which is yeah.

And I'm doing that not

because

I think

that's what everybody's talking about.

And I want to get in on that conversation.

I recognize that it's not getting a ton of attention, but I do think that shows you that

the people in this country, you look at the opinion polls and you look at the ongoing protests, especially the small protests in red states and stuff against him, and you realize that nobody's into this.

Poor individuals, when someone's taking someone away, they start filming.

I find those really powerful.

Like some like lady coming out of yoga, like suddenly saying, what the fuck are you doing to this man?

Exactly.

Which is interesting.

And that instinct in the American people is really healthy and is unafraid and is uncowed and is repulsed by this.

And that's why Trump has such terrible approval ratings.

He's upside down, even with men, even with, you know,

with the number, the way he's dropped with young people.

It's a stunning drop.

And that, to me, is very important.

The crisis that we've got in our country is a crisis of elite cowardice.

The law firms, the universities, the politicians,

and the business leaders in particular.

Were they ever courageous, Rachel?

I mean, I would make the argument they weren't.

You know, they're saying that universities were woke i'm like have you met a university president before this all happened

they hated those professors they hated law firms hated those you know pro bono people on their staff and i don't know i just never thought they were particularly courageous but they're big prestigious um institutions with a lot of capital and a lot of connections and a lot of money and a lot of people who have a lot of room to maneuver without ever putting themselves in real danger.

And those are the people that are failing us.

And I actually think that if we're going to like kind of protest and try to put steel in the spines of people and try to appeal to conscience, which is what nonviolent direct action does,

some of that protest should be probably usefully, strategically directed at the institutions that are failing, not just at Trump.

One of the things Jason was saying is one of the things the civil rights things work is

those people became empathetic given the visuals of civil rights, right?

The hoses and everything else.

And you've got to, he was wondering if the immigration raids will make everyone everyone else who is comfortable angry enough or empathetic really enough in a lot of ways, if you think about it.

Yeah, but you need to see not just the rage.

You need to see people standing up against them.

So what you remembered about that woman in the yoga clothes in the parking lot there yelling at those guys was not just what was happening to those guys that was, that had, that had, that had inspired her to action.

It was seeing her be courageous and outraged and unafraid that stuck with you.

Right.

Even the sandwich guy, all joking aside, I was, when he did that, I'm like, oh, dear.

And then I thought, well, good for him.

Like, you know, and I was talking about it with my, my wife was saying, what should I do now?

Like, should I go throw a sandwich?

Should I, you know, get myself a, you know, a tate.

They're in front of tate.

That's the best part.

Like, they're just like, like, grab as their sandwich and throw it at them.

But what do you, what is the action you take?

I think is a lot of people are trying to figure out of those people who become empathetic to what's happening.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't, I don't think the sandwiches deserve this.

I mean, I think sandwiches deserve to be treated with respect.

And that, you know, like I'm sure that guy, that was like probably a meatball sub, like with exactly the right kind of cheese and just the right, I mean,

he probably had that scooped out, you know, which took a lot of exercise.

I'm sorry, you shouldn't attack police.

Let me just say that.

No, no.

So it does not encourage attacking police.

But if you insist, the sandwich is probably the best.

No, no throwing anything at anybody.

Rachel and I do not recommend throwing sandwiches, though.

If only for the sake of the sandwich.

Only for the sake of the sandwich.

It's like, let me have a bite.

I mean, we've got one of the things that's different between now and what Americans were facing in the 30s and 40s is that we have the example of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s to show

the apogee, the moral apogee of what it means to take incredibly difficult action against incredibly violent, entrenched opponents and to win on the strength of your moral case.

And that is,

that's a moral cornerstone of our country.

And we would be remiss to not learn from that in this moment.

I mean, there's not going to be a civil war in this country.

There's not going to be a violent confrontation.

There's, I mean, all true, all Trump wants is for somebody to, you know, throw another sandwich or do something that they can consider to be a crime and use as a provocation.

Nonviolent direct action gets the goods always.

And it's our American inheritance.

And

it's the thing that will ultimately push them back.

ultimately.

And also time.

Let's go to a quick break.

We come back.

Trump's warning to Putin ahead of their Alaska getaway.

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Rachel, we're back.

President Trump and Vladimir Putin are about to meet in Alaska, and Trump is warning that Russia will face, quote, very severe consequences if Putin doesn't agree to stop the war in Ukraine.

The White House downplayed expectations for the summit earlier this week, describing it as a listening exercise.

He said, talking about feeling people, feeling people out, which was relatively creepy in the efforts.

Feeling people up, out?

Up, feeling out, feeling out.

Feeling out.

Out.

Feeling, feeling out.

You might feel them up.

That's grotesque.

Trump also says, you've already gotten like lots of pictures in my head, and I don't appreciate it.

Trump also spoke with European leaders and Ukraine's president Zelensky ahead of the summit.

European leaders asked Trump not to strike a unilateral peace deal, so gave him some key points of negotiation.

Zelensky said he warned Trump that Putin was bluffing on pursuing peace, obviously.

He's called this meeting Putin's personal victory.

What are you looking for?

I just had David Remitch on

the last episode, and he said,

you know, as long as he doesn't fuck up or give anything away right away,

it'll be a victory.

Like if he has a second meeting, if there's, and he's been talking that way recently.

I mean,

I, this is all just so embarrassing.

You know what I mean?

I mean, yeah, was

Jimmy Fallon had that very good line where he was like, oh, listening and exercise, two of Trump's favorite things.

He is funny.

Do you remember the

red line?

Obama and the red line with Syria.

So this was like 2012, I think it was.

Obama gave a speech where he described Bashar al-Assad potentially using chemical weapons as a red line, that that's how the United States would treat it.

And then in 2013, Assad absolutely did that.

And Obama responded by saying, all right, I'm going to Congress to get authorization for the use of military force against Syria.

And Congress debated it a little bit.

And then it kind of looked like it wasn't going to pass.

And then it fell.

And then they didn't do it.

They did not pass the authorization for the use of military force.

That went down in political commentary, common wisdom, as like, Obama was such a wuss.

He blew it on that red line thing.

That was such an embarrassment.

First of all, Obama didn't do anything wrong there.

He went to Congress for an authorization for the use of military force, which is how it works in our system.

And it was Congress that blew it.

But that...

That supposed failure, which wasn't a failure at all by Obama, 12, 13 years later, people still talk about that as like a nay dear, a terrible thing about the Obama administration well meanwhile here's Trump wasn't it going to be like if by Friday the war wasn't over

it was going to be the end of days for Putin and there was going to be sanctions oh and there was going to be tariffs oh that's the worst thing in the world it was going to be all of this terrible stuff and instead what does Putin get Putin gets a trip to Alaska Go visit the former the former Russian Empire and a one-on-one meeting.

Trump will fly as far as you're flying to come have a one-on-one man-to-man summit with you.

The first time that you've been in this country, except for the UN since 2007.

And we get to talk about the war in Ukraine without Ukraine here.

I mean, that's, I mean, talk about, talk about a red line moment.

I mean, I think it's what I'm just worried that we don't end up in the post-press conference with Trump in his lap or like

delicately like touching his hair, you know, or like cupping his face, spooning him.

What would you consider a success?

Is there no success here?

It's already given away.

The success here would be if the U.S.

government

arrived at this summit, which has been put together on, what, four days' notice, a bilateral summit between the American and Russian president.

If we arrived at this meeting and then somebody opened a door from a supply closet and Vladimir Zelensky walked out and sat down and Trump said, you guys talk, I'll be right outside this door.

That would be a victory, right?

That, but as if I give him the Nobel Peace Prize for that.

Well, I don't know that they allow us to vote.

But I mean, Trump is the right word here is lick spittle.

He is so afraid of Vladimir Putin.

He is so afraid of him.

He will do absolutely anything.

I mean, we've got a 35% tariff on Canada and Russia has what percent tariff?

Right.

Russia is

mysteriously missing from the whole tariffs on even uninhabited islands that only have penguins, but not Russia.

And these, the, the way the media responds to Trump as if his word is his bond, right?

Oh, Trump is explaining that he now has a new feeling about Putin and he's very upset with Putin.

Oh, he's very disappointed.

He's really changed his tune.

I think he's soured on Putin.

Really?

Watch what he does, not what he says.

He's literally in the man's pants.

Right, right.

And

there's no distance here.

There's no distance between them.

So you think just the fact that he's flying there is just, it's already given away.

This is something that no American president has done in 18 years.

In many countries in the world, if Vladimir Putin stepped foot on their soil, he'd be arrested and dragged off to The Hague.

This is an abject humiliation for the United States of America and for the U.S.

presidency that we will be reading about for 75 years.

So what is the best thing that could come out of this?

Short of Zelensky's not head out of the supply closet?

Right.

What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the supply closet?

What?

Supplies!

Sorry.

Oh, my God.

I'm sorry.

What is that?

That's not even a dad.

That's a dad joke.

That's a bad dad joke.

That's like a stepdad joke.

Anything good?

Anything.

No, no, I don't.

No, I don't.

I mean, what the Ukrainians say is nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.

And so if this is being negotiated, this is like, if you're like getting a divorce or something and the person from whom you're getting a divorce is going through the court proceedings without you.

Like, how do you, how do you think it's going to, how do you think your side of the divorce is, you know, you think you're going to get your alimony?

You think you're going to get your custody agreement?

No.

Like this is this, there's nothing, there's nothing good about this.

I will also say that Trump

always.

Always, after he talks to Putin, although now he admits he talks to Putin without telling anybody that he's doing so, every time we know he talks to Putin, he comes out after those discussions and starts parroting a new Russian line.

Just like we're going to plow the boys under, right?

Where it went from goebles to senators, U.S.

senators.

He repeats any, he's absolutely,

he will just parrot whatever Putin tells him to say, which he has done.

I mean, back to Helsinki, back to the very beginning.

And he also adopts whatever position was last presented to him.

And so in this case, he'll adopt whatever.

Whatever Putin says.

Have you ever thought of calling him on the phone, Rachel, yourself?

There is a cell phone that he's.

Yeah.

I did speak to him on the phone once during the 2016 campaign, which was funny.

I was trying to get an interview with him.

This is early in the primary process.

And

they had gone through this whole big like swearing me to secrecy thing that in order to get the interview, I needed to call him personally.

And even the fact of the call had to be off the record.

And they made us like swear there was no listening there was no recording device and then like going through all this rigmarole and so then I have I call Rona like I get I have the appointed time I get on the phone with him I ask him to do the interview and at the end of my conversation with him he goes well you can air this this was nice I was like first of all tape it this is off the record right I didn't tape it I can tell you now I agreed to it being off the record but because he said that I can now tell you Karis Wisher today that he said it was it was now I was allowed to to air it.

And I was like, my dude, like, do you, are you aware when you were in the media versus when you were having a,

he doesn't care.

If it goes well, he wants it out there, right?

If it goes, you know, if it's a very good call and stuff like that.

So you're not expecting anything here.

You just get, it's going to be a roll.

It's already a rollover.

No, this is a, this is a bad thing.

This, the meeting itself is a bad thing.

Vladimir Putin being invited to the United States of America to meet one-on-one with the American president is all I need to know.

And that's a bad thing.

There's nothing substantively that's going to come out of this meeting except for Trump getting more of his instructions, right?

I think he's going to come back to Alaska.

I'm telling you.

We're going to lose Alaska.

We're going to lose Alaska.

They're going to trade Sarah Palin and

you know you can see Russia from her porch.

Anyway, let's bring that one back.

I'm going to move on to something totally different.

The U.S.

Supreme Court has officially been asked to overturn the 2015 decision that granted equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

If you remember, Kim Davis, Heinus Kim Davis is what I call her, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple.

She's filed an appeal in July for the compensation she was ordered to pay that couple.

Davis is taking her case to the court on the grounds that

Obergefell v.

Hodges, which established marriage equality, was wrongly decided and infringes on her First Amendment rights.

Davis has been unsuccessfully appealing the order for years to lower courts.

She is the only one standing to do this, from what I understand.

I did

predict an attack on marriage equality back in January.

Let's listen to a clip.

And that's all they're doing is a naked grab for overturning the gay marriage Supreme Court decision, like they overturned Roe v.

Wade.

And it's very vulnerable.

Two court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said it should be reconsidered.

So we'll see.

It's theater.

It's theater, but they are going to try to do this.

They're trying to get a case up there that will make it happen.

Are you concerned about this at all?

Well, on this, I'm sort of of two.

I'm of two minds about the, about the decision.

I feel like I agree with your prediction from January that they want to overturn.

At least there are parts of the court that want to overturn it.

I mean, remember, Obergefell was 5-4

decision.

And now, yeah, and now the court is 6-3 in the direction that had been in the minority.

And so I think they want to.

But I also feel like the sort of legal common wisdom on this case, as I understand it, I'm not a lawyer, but the legal common wisdom is that this is not the case, that while Kim Davis is appealing to the Supreme Court her illegal actions in denying a marriage license because she says God told her to,

she is, in appealing that part of her case, she is also asking the court to overturn Obergefell.

And this doesn't, just doesn't seem like legally the right vehicle.

to do that.

The court also doesn't have to take up any of this.

And even if they did take up the Kim Davis part of it, they don't have to address the Obergefell request in it at all.

So I I think, yes,

the anti-gay movement in this country senses it's got the wind in its sails.

They've got a newly reactionary Republican Party on these issues that's getting really demagogic on these issues.

And they think that they've got victories ahead.

I just don't think this is the case by which they're going to do it.

That said, I mean, they've been doing all sorts of stuff that isn't.

warranted or necessitated by the by the material that's being put before them.

That's the whole shadow docket idea.

So this is a pretty radical court.

And

I don't really want to stand here on plant two feet and say it's not going to happen, but it would be a, it would be a weird way for them to do it if they were going to.

Weird way for them to do it.

Well, I think they, I mean, they go through trans people and then to gay.

Like ultimately, marriage really chapped their ass.

They really did, a lot of these people.

And I think that was

like more than two-thirds of the country

is in favor of

same-sex marriage, which is a reversal from what it was when they decided it.

Right.

But still, look at abortion, gun gun control, all that stuff has the 80-20 rule on so much stuff.

There's so much stuff that has an 80-20.

People are for it, and it doesn't matter.

That's part of the reason they don't like democracy is because they actually don't have the people with them on this stuff on which they're making some of the worst

the largest advances at least.

Yeah, I'm not getting gay married again.

That's all I have to say.

Anyway,

good luck taking away my marriage.

Honestly, it's so ridiculous.

It's such a waste of time.

All right, Rachel, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll we'll talk about what the women of the right are up to.

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This month on Explain It to Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.

Hey everybody, it's Andy Roddick, host of Serve Podcast for your fix on all things tennis.

U.S.

Open's coming up and we're covering it on our show.

Can someone knock off Alcarazzan Center?

Can Coco Goff win her second U.S.

Open title?

Can Shviatek win her second Grand Slam title in a row?

Can Sabalenka break through and win her Grand Slam in 2025?

You can watch our coverage of the U.S.

Open on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast.

Brought to you in part by Amazon Prime.

Rachel, we're back with a quick update of the women on the right.

Let's start with Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, former employee of Elon Musk.

She launched her own podcast, the Katie Miller Podcast, and kicking it off with a J.D.

Vance interview, that charmer.

Let's listen to some of the hard-hitting journalism happening over there.

Oh, God.

If you could only eat one condiment for the rest of your life, what would it be?

One condiment?

Yeah.

Does barbecue sauce count?

Yeah.

Okay, barbecue sauce.

Not mayonnaise?

No.

No, mayonnaise is like in low doses is good, but it's kind of like I had a buddy who used to eat French fries with mayonnaise.

I thought that was disgusting.

It's the only thing my husband eats.

With french fries or like period?

Period.

Okay.

Wow.

I never realized.

He's only a mayonnaise guy.

Okay.

I learned something about Stephen I didn't know.

Yeah.

It's whatever.

God.

Oh, Kara.

Why did you put that in my head?

Because you put Naked Donald Trump in my head.

Oh, my God.

I don't want to think about mayonnaise at all.

And I don't want to think about Stephen Miller at all.

Now, Stephen Miller and mayonnaise are the same when they're on.

Oh, my God.

What's your favorite concept?

Joke.

Whatever the opposite of this moment is, is my favorite thing.

Oh, my God.

Is she going to steal our thunder?

Good God.

So

why does Katie Miller have a podcast?

That is, there you go.

That's the question.

I think that's

PRC.

What was Katie Miller doing for Elon Musk?

I don't know.

Wasn't she working?

She was.

She was working from PR, presumably.

There were other.

comments about their relationship, but

I don't, I allegedly.

Was she working for Tesla or she was working for Doge him personally.

No, she worked for Doge.

Remember, she was the Doge lady, and then when he was knocked out, um, she went with him, and that was the big, like, what's happened here, you know.

And because obviously, Miller is the most significant player in that administration at this point.

And then she's left, she stopped doing stuff for him.

She had to get out because she's she knows where her mayonnaise is buttered.

I'm gonna sue.

I'm gonna sue.

I've been irreparably damaged.

I'm on a temporary restraining order from any more mayonnaise talk out of you.

Anyway,

she has a podcast.

Everyone has a podcast.

There's all these ladies of the right that are now pushing.

There's this whole movement of ladies of the right.

You know,

she's like, we need to be heard.

I'm like, you need not to be heard.

You've been heard enough.

I love that.

Just the idea of ladies of the right is also great because the whole Lord of the Rings thing was so weird, but I think that if we could change the acronym so it was Ladies of the Right rather than Lord of the Rings and name all our companies on that, you know?

Yeah, they just they're getting into podcasting and some are more successful.

Other guys said Megan Kelly is very popular.

But there's a whole, there's a whole movement of these people.

They feel like, oh, I got a microphone.

I can say whatever I want.

Like I just think it's a movement.

It's not specific to them, though.

I feel like everybody, like every, every, every homeowners association and PTA has a podcast now too.

Yeah.

It's just that it's the way that people are.

It's the blog.

It's the blog.

Remember when everybody had a blog?

Yeah.

It's the blog of today that everybody has a blog.

Well, she'll get, she's sort of a house organ for these people.

So they can come on and say adorable things and it'll get, so to speak, eaten up like mayonnaise.

Did you listen to more of the podcast than the mayonnaise clip?

I do.

Does she have an ⁇ does she have a private?

No, it was literally that was the highlight of it.

The mayonnaise was the highlight.

It was sort of like, so what do you do for fun?

Like it was, it was, it was painful.

Do you remember in the first term, first Trump term, when he appointed Jared to a job at the White House?

And then it was like, Jared's in charge of Middle East peace.

Jared's in charge of, like, Jared's in charge of everything.

Jared's in charge of COVID.

He's in charge.

And as he was accruing all of these jobs and more jobs and more jobs and more jobs, Jared Kushner was starting to really loom as maybe this is the person who's actually kind of running the federal government.

Jared Kushner, oh, and like lots of things are being ascribed to him and dark things being ascribed to him.

And he's really seen as the power behind the throne, especially post-Bannon and everything.

And then it occurred to sort of the collective mindset at some point that like nobody had ever actually heard from Jared.

And then they rolled him out and they had him do a White House press briefing or White House press conference statement at some point.

And everybody's thinking like Jared Kushner is the man.

Jared Kushner is the power.

He's the Sith Lord here.

And he walks up to the microphone and he says, Hello, everybody.

He's like, open his mouth and it was like, oh no,

all illusions have gone.

There's something about his uh presentation in particular his voice that was like oh yeah i don't have to worry about this guy i felt the same way about ron de santis and his um much heralded presidential campaign it was real in on paper it looks fantastic and then he walks up to the microphone hey yeah looks and sound well do you remember uh what's his name howard dean had the same problem right like there is an element of looks and presentation that matters to people yeah although with howard dean i think that was a little bit of a it was the scream right that it was the scream and it was just like a weird pickup it was a weird pickup thing but he didn't otherwise speak like a weird no i think that he got he got mumdanied he got yes democrats were scared of him mamdani's doing pretty well getting yeah well howard dean was for a while too but democrats got all scared because he actually had class analysis right that's true that's a fair point um so you're not worried about katie miller taking a show from you

oh no um

yeah are you still haven't answered the condiment issue i the weird thing about me in condiments is that i put mustard on my eggs oh that's okay I like things with vinegar in them, and mustard has vinegar in it.

And so when I get like a bacon, egg, and cheese,

I put mustard and hot sauce on it.

That's acceptable.

And by the way, many people in Belgium eat mayonnaise with, many people in Europe eat mayonnaise with fries.

There aren't that many people in Belgium, though.

Well,

they enjoy their mayonnaise.

And we're not even going to get into Aioli.

All right.

Some more ladies of the right.

Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene are beefing.

And the last week, Laura Loomer claimed the Trump White House can't stand Marjorie Taylor Green in a depositional lawsuit against Bill Maher.

By the way, please go read that whole deposition.

It's one wacky thing after the next.

Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested Laura Loomer was bankrolled by Israeli intelligence, and Loomer is called MTG a rabbit dog and a lying fake Christian whore.

I don't think we could do any better from that.

What is happening?

I think a bigger question is on the right, what happens post-Trump?

Because there will be eventually a post-Trump, unless they weakened Bernie's this guy.

What happens?

Because there seems to be so many fissures in this gang of like

one of the things, you know, I've done a lot of work in the past few years on like the far right and the far right in American modern history and what they've, what they've done and

who they are and how they network with mainstream and elected right-wingers and stuff.

And they're good at it.

Let's just be clear.

Yeah.

And there's, it's always been much more seamless between the far right and the center right than it is between the far left and the mainstream left.

But one of the things that has limited the ascendance and the power and the sustainability of the very far right in the past is that they're all crooks and mean girls, and they steal from each other and get in fistfights and set each other's houses on fire and sleep with each other's wives and husbands.

And there's so much infighting that they can't keep it together for more than a single generation ever.

And that's true in everything everything from the American Nazi Party, where we have George Lincoln Rockwell assassinated by one of his own people, to the Liberty Lobby, which was a Holocaust denial

neo-Nazi organization that was very integrated with the elected right in the Reagan era, where they descended into incredible fistfights and smashing each other over the head with iron bars.

Like there's all this and there's all this stuff.

And it always goes that way.

And right now,

we do have, with an authoritarian in the White House, we do have greater and more scary, more powerful integration between the very far right and the right than we've ever had before.

But it doesn't expunge that dynamic, which I think always exists on the far right, which is your

Israeli intelligence.

No, you're Israeli intelligence.

And you're a whore and you're a

buying fake Christian whore.

That's the name of my band, but go ahead.

Actually, the name of my band is Pregnant Women Smoking, but go ahead.

I would buy merch from either.

Yeah.

So you feel like a crackup is inevitable in that regard, without the organizing glue of Donald Trump.

I just feel like the constant cracking up.

Like I feel like constant warring and cracking up and

they're polygraphing each other in the defense secretary's office.

Right.

And they're all the same people.

They're all on the same side.

And, you know, and Bannon is out there denouncing

Bannon and Musk or they're going to kill each other.

And these, these guys are fractious by nature because they're conspiratorial and

purist and they're not awesome when it comes to rational argument and compromise.

And so they're always denouncing and beating one another to death.

And I don't think that will change.

And I think that's to all of our benefit.

Right.

And I, and I hope they never change.

Right.

Cause they will continue to do so.

Yeah.

You're going to see more of that no matter how I agree with you.

I'm always like, the minute Trump leaves the picture, it degenerates really rather quickly.

The conspiratorial right is inherently fractious, and that's part of why they're a bad bet for governance.

Um, because they're constantly schismaning.

Well, they're bot throwers by nature, right?

They're and they're shitsterers and breakers of things, they're sort of like toddlers, almost like the tech bros.

But you know what I call tech bros now?

Technically broken.

I keep repeating that stuff.

It catches on.

You can use it anytime, Rachel.

Please, you'll popularize it if you will.

Technically broken.

All right, Rachel, one more quick break, and we will be back for our last seminar on predictions.

Hey, this is Peter Kafka.

I'm the host of Channels, a show about the biggest ideas of tech and media and how those things collide.

And today we're talking about AI, which is promising and maybe terrifying.

And if you happen to be in a very select group of engineers that Mark Zuckerberg wants to hire, it's incredibly lucrative, which is why I had the New York Times Mike Isaac explain what's going on with the great AI pay race.

I'm talking to executives across the industry who are pissed off at Mark Zuckerberg because he has dumped the entire market for this stuff, right?

And like, this is something that's painful for OpenAI, I think, because they can't shell out a quarter of a billion dollars for one dude.

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Okay, Rachel, let's hear a prediction.

I can make one too, but I would like you to.

Do you want?

You go first.

Well, I'm living for two things.

I think Gavin Newsom has done very well with his tweeting of Trump.

Fake, you know, he's mimicking Trump, which is really great.

But I'm really enjoying the AI boys fighting.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going at it again.

Musk alleged that Apple engaged in antitrust violations, making it impossible for AI companies other than OpenAI to reach the top of the App Store.

Musk says XAI will take immediate legal action.

Altman responded to a claim saying, This is a remarkable claim, given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like.

And Musk responded, saying, You know, you had 3 million responses to this, and I have many more followers, and I didn't have nearly as many.

And Sam Altman delivered the fantastic, and only gay people can do this, slap, which was skill issues.

I predict this war is going to get worse because I think that Elon will do anything.

There is a weird anger that he has towards Sam Altman, who he used to be a lot, not aligned with, they did a company, they did open eye together.

And he will not rest until he is somehow sullied.

You can have your opinions about Sam Altman all you want or any of these tech people, but this is going to get, I think, worse

as Grock continues to crater.

The founder just left.

And so Elon's going to sort of focus his attention away from Trump, although I do think he did start the Epstein thing and continue to go at anything that has to do with open air and try to kill it.

Does Musk have stick-to-itiveness problems, though?

Does he?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

He is like a, like, you know, like, what's a bird, a hummingbird.

He flips.

He flits.

He flots.

There's a song.

What is that?

Oh, it's in Sound of Music.

It's a Sound of Music song.

It goes back to Julie Andrews, the villainous.

I was just going to say.

we're back to julie no the villainess in that is my favorite character of all time the baroness

the baroness remember her the baroness the baroness she was susan watches susan watches the sound of music like three times a year as she should yeah i just as i go get on i go get on the exercise bike do you watch it it's such a brilliant thing it is but three times a year really you know there's an idea that it's anti-gay because all the germans are gay

gay coding and all the austrians are like hikers or something like that.

I just, I just heard that.

I'm like, what are you talking about?

Rolf is just an asshole.

He's not gay.

Goodness sake.

Also, there can be gay assholes.

It happens.

I agree.

Oh, hello.

Nazis had a whole division of them.

They did get killed, as you know, as you well know, as a studier of the Nazis.

They did kill Ernst Röhm and his band of gays before they got into power.

Anyway, they didn't call them the band of gays.

The band of gays.

The mean gays.

Sounded better in the German.

I know.

There's way more mean gays than you realize.

Okay, let's hear a prediction from you.

Okay, I have a couple of things that are just like a heads up in terms of things that I think are going to get more important.

Okay.

One is the U.S.

attorneys scandal.

So this started in Albany, Northern District of New York, and then New Jersey with Alina Haba, and then in California, and then in Las Vegas.

Trump is...

It seemed, it would appear to be illegally installing U.S.

attorneys.

And U.S.

attorneys doesn't sound like that big a deal, but these are the people who prosecute federal crimes in these states and districts.

And there's a real question as to whether or not

it's possible to have federal law enforcement legally in any of these states where he's effectively illegally installed these U.S.

attorneys.

So this is a slow burn story, but it's going to become a bigger one because he's trying something that isn't working and it's going to result in a confrontation with the courts and with federal governments.

It has in New Jersey, with Olympia.

Which it has already.

And that's just, that's going to break one way or the other.

And Trump is, it's just, it's just worth watching there because that could be an important constitutional moment.

I would say it's also really worth watching Trump's threat that he wants to redo the census.

And again, census sounds boring, but

there is a universe in which Trump is worried that he's going to lose the House in the midterms in 2026.

And so he says, okay, we need a new census because actually the last census, I'm nullifying it because it had immigrants in it and therefore it doesn't count.

Therefore, all the congressional districts nationwide that were set by that last census, those are no longer in effect.

Therefore, we cannot have the 2026 midterm elections.

the way we're supposed to because those congressional districts are illegal and we'll have to delay it.

I mean, it's a sort of doomsday scenario in terms of the technical part of our democracy and continuing to have elections.

But that census part of it is a key piece.

So those are worth paying attention to.

Of course, it's going for the census.

It's going for the census, but

it's a way to go for elections.

Right.

Right.

Over-under on how,

50-50, 40-30?

I don't know.

I mean, I think that they've floated the let's have a new census thing in part to see what the reaction to it is.

And people have treated it like that's weird or that's like

a technically infeasible thing.

Hey, guess what?

He doesn't actually want a new census.

It's not that he's not to slow it down.

That's a very good point.

Yes.

To get a new census.

Don't assume any good faith on the part of these arguments.

The takeover of CC is not about crime.

The attempt to nullify the census is not about the quality of the census.

All of these things are all about what everything he does is for, which is to accrue more power and to make it more dangerous and difficult to oppose him or criticize him.

And slow down the possibly inevitable, which is his defeat.

Yeah.

And so that's that's one of the one

potentially positive thing to look for is that I do think the mRNA funding decision has to be reversed.

I think that that was, I think they blew it.

I think RFK Jr.

blew it in terms of the announcing the cutoff of mRNA vaccine funding.

mRNA technology, it would be like us opting out of penicillin, right?

I mean, it just doesn't.

Right, right.

Did you see that thing, the Washington Post, which is the new house organ for press releases from the Trump administration?

The opinion section ran a piece by why we tabled mRNA.

And we tabled mRNA funding because the American people, for some reason, have suspicions and they don't trust mRNA.

It says, right, we just appointed, Trump just put a guy in the health department who says that Wi-Fi gives you leaky brain, says that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and that COVID was genetically engineered to spare the Jews.

Yeah, I wonder why people have weird ideas about vaccine technologies.

So it's, I think, I actually think the mRNA decision is

bad enough.

And

that pushback in the Washington Post is part of the reason, I think, actually, that they are going to have to reverse it.

Oh, no, the Post didn't push back.

They published a positive piece by the guy who did it.

Yeah, the op-ed.

But that op-ed was so weak.

If that's the argument for why you're doing it, they feel the need to make the argument.

The argument is rising.

That's a fair point.

The Post is a publication.

And it's such important technology.

They also

had an auditorial.

It's such a heinous public, David and I talked about it this week, but saying that, hey, maybe the D.C.

needs more crime fighting.

I was literally, I nearly walked over there and slapped them.

I just was was like, I need to now go down there and slap them at this point.

Turns out having a billionaire running stuff doesn't make it good.

Technically broken, Rachel.

I think actually your prediction was going to be that you were going to the UFC fight at the White House.

Oh, well, I was wrong.

Yeah, I don't know.

Not unless they're going to use me as a prop, like a, you know, like a chair.

Yeah.

They're breaking a chair over somebody's head.

Yeah.

You'd be a great UFC fighter.

You'd be a great wrestler.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Remember, I'm taller than people expect.

That's true.

I'm noodly para shit out of people, I think.

Anyway, I really appreciate you doing this.

I'm enormous, besides someone, I've gotten to know you a little bit.

I think you're a wonderful person, but you are, you're doing God's work, I think.

And I think people don't realize how funny you are and everything else and how substantive you.

Please read her books, all of them.

They have changed my life in a lot of ways.

I wrote stuff I didn't know, and I'm a very big student of history, both ultras.

And is there another season of ultra coming?

There is a new podcast coming.

It is not a season of ultra, but for fans of ultra, you will find a lot that you like.

Great.

That's really good.

Stuff I didn't know, and I knew a lot of stuff.

And Prequel is a wonderful book.

Everybody read it.

They should.

That's the part of, I love your show, but that stuff I just adore.

I think it's amazing.

Kara Swisher, I'm very thankful for you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I'm going to read us out.

We want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about Business Tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-Pivot.

Okay, that's the show.

Thanks for listening to Pivot.

Be sure to like and subscribe.

to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back next week.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver.

Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.

Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech in business.

And Rachel, a jar of mayonnaise is on the way.

Thanks, Kara.

So gross.