Election Anxiety, Anyone? (with Evan Osnos)
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From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara. You have to believe that this place is worth improving, that it is not terminally and permanently damaged by the flaws in our history and our character. And I think it's that finding that combination of a call it a sort of fierce love, a critical love of this country has been the great challenge, not just for Democrats today, but also for Kamala Harris.

That's Evan Osnos. He's a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work spans everything from national politics to foreign affairs to espionage. Evan has a unique way of analyzing where we are right now, just days out from the election. He looks beyond the headlines and into the cultural and political undercurrents that shape our beliefs about the role of leadership in turbulent times. Today, Evan and I zoom out to take in this moment in American political life.

How should we handle cruelty as a society? What does patriotism mean in a deeply divided country? And does empathy still have a place in modern politics? That's coming up. Stay tuned. Support for Stay Tuned comes from Washington Wise, an original podcast from Charles Schwab.

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Now let's get to your questions.

This question comes in an email from Doug, and I really like this question. Hi, Preet. Longtime listener. I've never missed either podcast. Can you give my high school civic students who can't yet vote some advice for watching this election unfold over the next few weeks? I want them to have faith.

Keep up the good work, Doug. So Doug, that's a great and important and I think central question. I would say as an initial matter, what I'd like your students who can't yet vote to realize and appreciate is how close this election will be.

As the tallies come in, in state after state after state, particularly in the seven battleground states, the separation between the winner and the loser may be hundreds or thousands of votes. That may be true in multiple states. That may be true in the overall electoral college tally. And separate and apart from the presidential election, that may be true in many, many state and local races and congressional races around the country as well. And the reason I mention that is, and the reason I want your students to focus on that, is that hopefully it will give them a lifelong incentive

to understand the value and power of their votes. And they will develop a lifelong commitment to voting, not just in seminal elections every four years that determine who the president of the United States will be, but midterm elections and local elections and state elections and municipal elections for school board, all the way up to the president of the United States. If they take that lesson away from the closeness of this race, that will have been worth it.

Second thing I would say is, and this is true for life generally, is I hope your students think about how to apply common sense and critical thinking. These are challenges in the country. Lots and lots of people in business and in politics, but especially in politics, I think of late, say a lot of things that don't make sense, say a lot of things because they're trying to get a vote, but they don't really hold up under scrutiny. So I hope you and your students have the opportunity, not just around election time, but otherwise, to analyze the positions that politicians and candidates take

and see if they actually add up under the weight of scrutiny. Do their positions have merit or not? No particular politician or particular newspaper or particular editorial board, even when they do take a position, is going to answer that question fully for you. I hope in connection with this, you teach your students to try to get information from multiple sources about a candidate or about a position, not just from one source. Relatedly, I hope your students will pay attention and scrutinize the promises being made

by different candidates and see how they play out after the election. Do the positions have merit or just some popular support? And that would suggest a critical eye be brought to bear on both sides of the presidential divide with respect to anything from the Trump tariffs to Kamala Harris's idea about price gouging. Learn to figure out ways to make up your own mind about the candidates. And as you do that, I would hope that your students would develop their own set of values

so that they come to their own views about what policies resonate, what messages resonate, which candidates resonate. And then finally, I will say, voting is not the only way to be involved in the political process. It's an important way. It's an essential way. And hopefully, as I mentioned, your students will vote in every election for a lifetime. But we know from recent history in particular that there are other things that students can do. You can write. You can organize. You can protest. You can call Congress.

We saw this, for example, and there are many other examples of this, on the part of too young to vote students after the Parkland massacre some years ago. So I love the fact that you are teaching civics. I love the fact that your students are engaged. I love the fact that you're asking this question. And I hope they learn from this election and from future elections as well.

This question comes in an email from Owen, who writes,

Thanks, Owen. First, Owen, thank you for your service. Nine years is a good, healthy amount of time to have represented the United States of America in court. So thank you for that.

I don't know from your question whether you ever served in private practice previously. So my own experience is as follows. I was in private practice after law school for about six years. And during a portion of that time, I did some criminal defense work, white collar criminal defense work, then went to the U.S. Attorney's Office, then worked for Senator Schumer on the Judiciary Committee, then became the United States Attorney, then started this podcast company and wrote a book. And as many of you know, for the last two years plus, I've been back at a law firm practicing law in a lot of my own work.

is criminal defense oriented. So there are a lot of things that are different, but sort of in this season where we talk about sides and controversies, that's what lawyers do, take one side in the controversy. What has really hit home to me is the idea that having varied experiences and having experiences on both sides of a question or an issue, or on both sides of the courtroom, as you put it, will make you better at both.

So I thought that I had appreciated and I thought I was sensitive to the burdens faced by targets of investigations, whether it's

investigations run by the FBI or the police or the DEA or any other federal law enforcement agency. But not until recently, when I've had to be shoulder to shoulder with people who are under investigation, have I really fully internalized and understood the burden they have to carry when they're in the crosshairs of an investigation, which doesn't mean that the investigation is not appropriate. It doesn't mean that the investigation should end in something other than an indictment that happens from time to time. But I think I identify more

and understand better what people and companies are going through when they're under the gun.

The other thing that I've noticed is even on the defense side, when people are being investigated, they don't have a full understanding of what the other side is thinking. So one of the things that I bring to this job as a private lawyer representing companies and individuals who are under investigation is try to explain to them the perspective, whether right or wrong, whether correct or incorrect, of the prosecutors, of the government.

and how they are skeptical and they are suspicious and they're doing the things that they're doing because they have a particular view, they have a particular mandate, and they view their mission in a particular way. Now, that is not to say, as I've discovered in a number of cases not involving the Southern District of New York, that is not to say that some of the actions taken by the government and some of the views and positions taken by the government are correct. Sometimes they're misguided, sometimes they're overreaching, sometimes they're heavy-handed.

And I've experienced that in private practice over the last couple of years as well. But it is sometimes helpful in life

to have had the opposite experience. For example, when I was at the U.S. Attorney's Office, every person who served as the chief of my criminal division, and this is a custom in the Southern District of New York, had the reverse experience, had spent a number of years in private practice understanding what it meant to defend an individual in court, to defend an institution or a business organization in court, and then came to the U.S. Attorney's Office to exercise their discretion as the chief criminal prosecutor at the Southern District of New York and having the other experience

understanding what it's like to be in the shoes of someone on the other side of the V in the caption, I think gave them great wisdom and discretion and respect for both sides of the process. I wish you great luck. It's a bit of an adjustment. Other things, when you're on the defense side, you just don't know what's going on in the minds of the government. They held their cards close, as I'm sure you've been doing for nine years. But your experience having been a prosecutor will make you, I think, a well-rounded prosecutor

and powerful advocate for the people who you'll be representing in private practice. Good luck. I'll be right back with my conversation with Evan Osnos. Support for Stay Tuned comes from Found. Small business owners know that keeping things running smoothly takes work and a whole lot of apps. One for tracking expenses, another for staying on top of your taxes, and another for payroll management. Just switching back and forth between them must eat up practically half your day.

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That's CozyEarth.com slash Preet. If you get a post-purchase survey, say you heard about Cozy Earth from Stay Tuned. New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos has been writing about national politics for decades. He joins me just days before the election. Evan Osnos, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Preet. Great to be with you. Very excited to have you. We are recording this exactly one week ahead of Election Day, one week ahead of

November 5th. Before we get into the substance of things and the conversation I want to have, I want to tell you a quick anecdote. I didn't warn you I was going to tell you this anecdote. I'm ready. You probably know it. It was a couple of months ago, and I was speaking or was planning to speak at the Texas Tribune Festival in downtown Austin.

And I was at a bar with some journalists along with our executive producer, Tamara. And we're talking to people at the table and we get into conversation with this lovely woman who seems very smart and on the ball. And we introduced ourselves. And within like 90 seconds felt it necessary to say, Evan Osnos is my husband. And it was, you know, the way she said it, it was not clear. That's the key question.

What was the valence of this announcement? It was mildly panicked, which I took to mean possibly she was concerned that without transparency about who her legal partner was in life, that Tamara and I might say something negative about you.

So this was a prophylactic announcement. That's what it sounded like. Can you ask her? Well, maybe, yeah, I should probably find out if this is a pattern because, you know, it could have gone a lot of different ways. You could have said her tone was apologetic. Oh, no, it wasn't because that would have been Evan Osnos is my husband. And yet I've fashioned a life for myself. Well, you know, I think there's a lot to unpack there. Do you explain this?

My guess is, yeah, it was probably the preface for her talking about something that the media was struggling to achieve. Where so she could say at the beginning, say, here are my bona fides that I am, that I actually have one. You know, I have somebody inside the house who is a participant in this. Maybe, or maybe it was like a form of fishing. Now that I have to put on the record in a public forum that Evan Osnos is my husband. Yeah.

You must, you're obliged to say nice things, which we did. We didn't feel obliged, but we did. It does hang in the air for that moment. No, I think, you know, look, for, as you know, my wife works in the,

in the world of trying to regenerate local news at a time when local news is under massive threat. And so she's used to hearing- By the New Yorker. By, well, not just the New Yorker. Not just the New Yorker. What role are you playing in the destruction of local news? It's not a zero-sum game when it comes to dog cartoons and local news. All I know is if you live somewhere-

And you read a New York article, there is no time to read a local news article. Where's the lie? Where's the lie, Evan? It's true that...

at times a person begins to search the coming pages for that little diamond at the end of the story that signifies a sense of achievement. Closure also signifies mortality and an oncoming death sometimes. Well, the way we think of it in our house is that I'm at one end of the hall, I have my office and I'm writing about treachery in American politics of one kind or another. And then she's at the other end actually building things. And I think that having the

Two things coexist in the house is probably a healthy balance. So maybe when she quickly, hastily announced who her husband was, it was a call for help. That's very possible. Decode the blanks. We'll have to see if they spell anything out. All right. So, you know, what's funny is this is a week that is very fraught and very important, as have been the last number of weeks.

And I still find it an opportunity to laugh at things and to, you know, I've been watching the penguin as a coping mechanism. I went from the MSG thing to,

To The Penguin, which is not for everyone. Have you been seeing this? Have you watched this series? You know, I'm tempted by it, but I haven't yet. But I'm with you that I find myself looking for increasingly antic entertainment options as a way of avoiding the reality of the news. I hadn't read about it. It took me like an episode and a half before I realized that The Penguin was played by Colin Farrell.

Yeah, that's the only thing I – that's the only part I do know about it, I guess. Well, together we would have complete knowledge. But isn't that pretty dark stuff to be watching before that? It's very dark. It's very dark. But it helps. It's helpful. Yeah.

Okay. Well, all right. I'm putting that on the list. There's not another Ted Lasso on the horizon. See, I need the occasional Ted Lasso. Now, look, I'll be honest. Ted Lasso is not held in particularly high regard by the culture gatekeepers at places like the New Yorker. Oh, you mean the place that's killing local news? You can tell David Remnick I said that. It's a direct quote from me. You know, we consider it just a side benefit of what we're doing.

No, I think the reality is like people right now, all kidding aside, I think that we are completely –

oversaturated in political information. Oh, no. I was about to go to saturation coverage of political information in a moment. That's why you're on the freaking show, Evan. Oh, God, you're right. I'd like to offer a full retraction of my comments about saturation. Although there's a tone in which one can do it, right? Yeah, I think so. I rarely talk to a guest before the taping or before the episode, but I wanted to mention to you over the weekend that

I want to have a kind of conversation that's not just about the horse race and not just about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, although we will talk a lot about them, but about, you know, what these forces are, whether they're tectonic plates, whether they're passing breezes in our politics and in our psyche and our culture. And one way, by the way, I'm coping, which is, you know, some people, I think, look down on a lighthearted tone.

when discussing these topics. I don't. I think you must do that. I agree. Even when times are dire. Otherwise, how are you going to get through a conversation, much less, you know, a Trump second presidency? And we will get through it. Yeah. I think. Let me start with a political question.

So I mentioned Madison Square Garden and Trump and his entourage came, invited some people that maybe he should not have invited, who he's now forsaking and distancing himself from. There was the quote-unquote comedian. Yeah. I don't understand what the joke was. Look, I watch off-color comedy. I don't watch all politically correct comedy. I don't know what politically correct comedy is. But the quote-unquote joke made about the island –

Or like, you know, the barge of trash and it's called Puerto Rico. Not funny. There are references to a black friend and a watermelon. Not funny. And lots of people are up in arms and I understand why they are. And on the one hand, people are saying, well, that was a strategic error on the part of Trump because Bad Bunny and a number of others have reached out to their 50, 45, 50, 55 million supporters.

Instagram followers are endorsing Kamala Harris and the Puerto Rican community is very upset and they're an important constituency in a lot of states, including Pennsylvania and Florida and elsewhere. And Republican politicians have repudiated those comments. So that's one view. On the other hand, other people I respect like Pete Buttigieg and others say, stop talking, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, stop talking about it. It's bait. It's another example of Trump and his cohorts saying some crazy shit

And rather than focusing on reproductive rights or the economy or foreign policy or our alliances with NATO, et cetera, we are now churning away all the time talking about the guy who insulted Puerto Rico. Which side of that are you on? Well, I tend to think that –

In a way, these two things can coexist, meaning Pipu to judge is right that part of the whole strategy here is that the cruelty is not a bug. It's a feature. It's a way of announcing a position. When I say a moral position, I'm not describing it as something rich with moral character. I think you understand that I'm describing, in a sense, his contempt for a certain set of ideas.

And there was nothing accidental about that lineup, about that tone, about the people they chose to speak. As we all know, when an event like that comes together, it is the product of a whole culture. You're sitting backstage. They're joking in the green room. They're deciding how they're going. And then they're putting things on the teleprompter. I think that the conventional argument, right?

now and has been for months among political professionals has been that whichever candidate is getting talked about the most on election day is the candidate that's probably going to lose because we're in a mood. I've not heard that. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Because if you think about it, in 2016, Hillary Clinton's

The problem for Hillary Clinton at the very end was, of course, as everybody remembers, there was this resurgence of talk about her emails. There was the James Comey announcement and so on. Put that aside for a second. The point being that really the center of energy and discussion was about whether Hillary Clinton could win. And so it put aside the question of Donald Trump winning.

At the crucial moment, I think the hardest thing for people to absorb, if you're somebody like us who pays a lot of attention to politics, is that most people don't. And we know that intellectually. But remember, a lot of people are just tuning in, believe it or not now, and they're tuning in.

Particularly if you're one of the 400,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, people of Puerto Rican descent or 100,000 in another state here, that the first time that they're being fully drawn into this process is around an incredibly insulting comment at a Trump rally.

I do think that that has meaning at this point in a way that it wouldn't have had as much meaning two months ago. So we won't know until the end, of course, what the dispositive effect is. But I don't think there's a lot of ways in which that kind of comment is redounding to his benefit at the moment. You probably haven't done this poll, but are most funny comedians funny?

Conservative or liberal? I think by and large. I think it's always been a puzzle how conservatism feels with humor. What's very funny to me is – funny is the wrong word given that we're talking about funny – that there are conservatives who say all the time liberals have no sense of humor and liberals often say the same about conservatives. I'm not sure which one is true. And people can have a view that the late night comics are not funny anymore and some people think they're too political.

But the fact remains is they're the ones who have the shows. And one conclusion you can draw from that is there's some barriers to entry for conservatives. Other than that Greg Gutfeld guy, who is super, super not funny. Right. Yeah, I walked by the line outside his studio the other day. I was kind of amazed, actually. Doesn't he have an exclamation mark at the end of his name for the show? Yeah.

I thought that went out with Jeb. That worked out for Jeb really well. It's a bad sign when you're forcing people to be enthusiastic with your punctuation. If you did that, Evan, given that you're from the New Yorker, would it have to be Osnos semicolon? Yes. Thank God. I'm so glad you chose a semicolon because we're droll and uncertain. That's our goal. It could be Osnos M-dash.

Nice. I like that. We'd accept that. But, you know, I will say that remember Al Franken made the observation that turns out to be a really durable observation, which is he said that he'd never seen Donald Trump laugh. Yeah. Oh, we've talked about that a number of times on the show. Yeah. And part of that is Orwell had this great observation. He said a joke is a tiny revolution. And what he meant by that is that there is a way in which

an authoritarian mindset, set aside authoritarian governance, but like an authoritarian mindset, which is rooted in the idea of hierarchy, in dominance, in politics of force, which, you know, say what you will, that is certainly how Donald Trump thinks. And in fact, some of his followers think of that as a great asset and a great credit to him. But that does not have the philosophical entry points to be mocked. I mean, this is the reason, you know, in some ways, right, Trump's greatest

mission is to avoid being mocked and uh i that's why i think humor has always had a hard time dealing with conservative political ecosystem you would think he would if that's really his goal he might make different personal choices i would think well you know i think uh

It's sort of, you know, who's doing the mockery. I think part of what drives him kind of crazy is, I mean, you know, there is this theory, of course, that he was sitting in the audience at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Yeah, yeah. You've talked about it at that moment. I don't think that theory is a terrible one. No. Can I ask you another question about, we're going to just jump around here for a second, and feel free to ask me questions. Yeah. So a lot was made of, I think appropriately made of,

the autocratic tendencies of Donald Trump. And there's this whole debate about whether he is or is not a fascist. Some Republican leaders got, you know, all bent out of shape because Kamala Harris answered a question about Trump. Is he a fascist? Yes, I think he is. Then Jake Tapper and others played a series of clips in which Donald Trump, forever getting away with stuff that other people complain about when the Democrats do it, calling Kamala Harris not just a fascist, but calling her a Marxist, communist, fascist. Right. Right.

There's some sort of political science inconsistency and self-contradiction in giving all those appellations to one person. But the one thing, I sort of have a rule about this. I don't think I've ever violated my rule, but I've been doing a podcast for seven years, so maybe I have. I've never compared either Trump or anyone else to Hitler. I feel it's a pretty good rule of thumb to avoid the Hitler comparison.

I don't know who it persuades. Maybe it animates some people. Do you have a view on that? Well, in some ways, the risk, of course, is that it exhausts the power of the comparison. Yeah, it does. It certainly does. And there's something obscene about invoking Hitler unless you're making a very earnest and real comparison. I mean, there's always been this... The problem of Trump is that he...

really invites all of that kind of analogy because he really does inhabit that set of instincts, those set of ideas. And yet we don't bring ourselves to say, all right, we're going to equate this guy with the worst genocidal leader in history. And I guess I've always stopped short of it. But I'll be honest, the problem of writing about Trump is that

We've tried these different techniques. You know, we started with understatement. I remember the first piece I wrote about him in 2015. It was almost just sort of allow the what at the time seemed to be self-evidently disqualifying. Just let that play out on the page. And at the same time, then there was a different mode. And I remember doing it, too, at various points, you know, saying, OK, no, I'm going to adopt the maximalist approach.

position of describing what is the conceivable range of political violence he could achieve. I don't mean violence with force and mayhem. I mean, sort of the undoing of institutions and norms and so on.

And I think part of what we're feeling now as a group of people who think and write about politics is that we've tried these different techniques. And it's very hard to say, well, one of these breaks through. One of these actually lands. I mean, that's – I am curious how you think about this. We've been at this now for nine or ten years. And –

trying to figure out how to make people pay attention to the stakes. For a while, the mantra was, let's talk about the stakes, not the race. And there's some real, I think, real value in that. But have you found that there is a way to talk about, is it, if you talk about the law, does that make it clear and concrete? Or do you talk about the culture? Do you talk about, what is it? What do you find has been the most effective? I think it depends on who your audience is.

I mean, I said on the other podcast, or the Insider podcast, and I said this at a dinner last week. I've been thinking about this lately. You know, I have a platform, you have a platform. We're very privileged to have our platforms, even if it's at the expense of local news, Evan. I'm just going to keep calling that back. I'm going to tell her you said so. I think that's referred to as a callback. In the business. Now I've got one for the whole hour. Yeah.

So, for whatever reason, I don't find it persuasive, given the voice I have and given the background I have, to sort of yell and scream and pound the table. A lot of people who listen to me, and I'm guessing a lot of people who read you, are already on one side of the fence on Donald Trump. I don't have a lot of Trump lovers in my feed, and to the extent I have them, they're there to sort of hear what the other side is saying or to attack me on social media or whatever. Mm-hmm. And...

There are certain things if you begin to do them, and I'm not begrudging anybody their own tone or their own style, and everyone is different, and that's good, right? But I feel if you do the Hitler comparisons or you spend a lot of time focusing on some— I remember once during Trump's presidency, he said something about the White House. He's like, you know, the White House is a piece of shit or it's a shithole or something. Right. I saw the reaction, and you shouldn't say that.

I saw the reaction and I said something like on social media, I said something like, you know, his criticism of the White House, his crude criticism of the White House is like the 55th most important thing today that you should worry about with Donald Trump. And the reaction was not like, oh, yeah, that's right. There's some perspective. The reaction from a lot of people was we can multitask. Mm-hmm.

We can hit all the things. So, you know, I've also never, I don't think, but people will call me out if I made this error. I don't think I have ever made fun of Donald Trump's appearance. Right. Neither his hair or his skin tone or his tan or his weight. I just feel like, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not trying to be huller than now. Right.

I don't know what it gets you. I don't, I don't, I don't, I mean, it's fine for a comedian and every once in a while people do the orange thing. I try not to do that either. Yeah. Is that, is that, is that? Yeah. Look, I- Is that virtue signaling? No. This gets to this, this larger question, which has been, which is sort of lurking here, which is this question about how we think about

character in public life, because you don't have to be a rose-tinted glass-wearing nostalgist to say that there is a moment not too long ago when we really did want to have, in the simplest terms, a public life that we felt good showing our kids. Just a point of personal anecdote for a second, my mother-in-law, we talked about Sarah Beth a moment ago, my mother-in-law

Was at a protest early. It was the first, you know, the protest right after Trump was elected, the Women's March in Washington. And I just remember this really distinctly. I loved this. She made a hand-drawn sign that said, I'll get it mostly right, but she said, please be decent. The children are watching.

And there's just something about that that stayed with me because partly because I, you know, we have little kids and I do think constantly about what they see and read and think. But also because to your point about, you know, do you descend into that into that pool where we're talking about each other's appearances and frailties and physical blemishes and everything else or not? And.

But I asked the question I'm curious about on that is, was it always an illusion that we cared about character? Were we being falsely decorous and behind closed doors people were nasty to one another? Or is it really true that Trump is both a catalyst for and an agent of and a harbinger of a cruder, more disregarding approach to one another? Yeah. So I think it depends on who you're talking about.

I think in any population, there are people who like appeals to their better angels, as they say, and believe in kindness, and they raise their kids that way. And they're drawn to that. I think there are other people who think that that's silly and naive, and it's a tough world, a Hobbesian world. Right. And they raise their kids to be go-getters, and they might use the term alpha. Yeah.

And they like people. Look, there's some people who like professional wrestling. The WWF. I did when I was a kid. I grew out of it. And there's some people who don't like that. There's a subset of people in this country who believe the earth is flat. A subset of people in this country who believe the moon landing was faked. That 9-11 was orchestrated by the Republican administration at the time. And most shockingly to me, and less sort of frivolous and trivial...

is what one of my guests once said, in any even Western liberal democratic society, there are 25 to 30% of people who are sort of latently attracted to strongmen, to autocrats. That's true, yeah. And I bet, I'm going to say some things that maybe not everyone will be pleased by, this is not just on the right. People like you and I and other people who are trained in the law who say, this is a little bit off the character issue, but I'll come back to that.

who say that democracy is important and process is important, the Constitution is important. One of the most important concepts in the rule of law is due process. Due process is not the result that you want. Due process is a process. And by dint of a process that's provided for in the Constitution of the country and the state constitutions and the laws, state or federal, that are applicable to one's case, there's an outcome. And people, I think, not everyone cares about the process. They care about the outcome.

I don't know how many people cared as deeply as they might about the process by which Donald Trump is being prosecuted. Yeah. But you've made it, you know, people have made a judgment about him that he must go to prison and the process is not, it's not as important. And there's, I'm guessing there's a subset, people may not admit it, there's a subset of people on the left who have given the choice between, you know, open process like we mostly do in this country, but there are flaws that has resulted in a 6-3 Supreme Court majority against the left and

And that may produce in a week a future 7-2 or 8-1 court because, you know, the normal processes are going forward. And you said, well, how about we have a benevolent person on the left who would have all sorts of autocratic powers. You have a much stronger presidency. He or she could overrule Congress. Executive orders could have so much more force. That person wouldn't have to have Supreme Court justices confirmed by the Senate.

But that person would nominate people like Justice Sotomayor or Brennan, people that you like, and his policies would be the policies you like. How many people would vote for that? Do you think – I mean, am I making that up? Yeah, I think it's – I hear and encounter that instinct a lot, this feeling that in a sense –

The only way to fight fire is by being tough-minded and by recognizing that this isn't patty cake. This isn't – we're not going to get our way through this with symposia and high-minded marches. And that – I do think – I remember very early on sensing that –

That in a sense, the extremity of this period and everything that Trump had pushed us toward had unleashed the appetite for somebody who could cut the Gordian knot on the left or on the right. And that is a – I will tell you, I mean that worries me. I've lived in societies that had –

You know, I've lived in China, lived in Egypt. I've lived in these places that have succumbed at various times to the temptation for refuge in order, refuge in a strong man. And it's the inevitable result of a period in which people feel basically fearful. It doesn't end well. It doesn't end well. I'll be right back with Evan Osnos after this.

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Robinhood is introducing forecast contracts so you can trade the presidential election. Through Robinhood, you can now trade financial derivatives contracts on who will win the U.S. presidential election, Harris or Trump, and watch as contract prices react to real-time market sentiment.

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Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Commodity interest trading is not appropriate for everyone. Displayed prices are based on real-time market sentiment. This event contract is offered by Robinhood Derivatives, a registered futures commission merchant and swap firm. Exchange and regulatory fees apply. Learn more at www.robinhood.com slash election. On the character point, I'll make a more sort of specific observation. I think character flaws...

are fatal to politicians who elevate character as a reason for their either running for office or

We're asking you to vote for them, right? So if you run as a boy scout, if you run either directly or indirectly on a theme, again, explicitly or impliedly of virtue, then a transgression will fail you. You're vulnerable. Yeah. And also I think there are issues of racism and other things that are going on. You know, Barack Obama, I don't know if he said this, but people would, I think, correctly say this. He had to be twice as good. He couldn't be angry. He had to be very careful about

And he had to be extra excellent. And his brand, a little bit, is, you know, virtue. And so if he did one-tenth of the things that Trump has done, he would be done, probably.

Trump never ran as a virtuous politician. Bill Clinton, who also survived scandal, ran a little bit like you knew he was a rascal. He never pretended otherwise. Don't you think that makes a difference? Yeah, I do think so. I mean, Van Jones had a line the other day that has been circulating, which is a thoughtful point, actually. I mean, he said, why is it that Donald Trump can be lawless?

But Kamala Harris has to be flawless. And I think there are elements of – there's some racism and some misogyny in here. And it is also that Trump has put himself out there as the icon of a – he says we are fallen, all of us. That's his view. Now, I think that that is actually a dire conception of human affairs. I mean that is actually like a – that is what Putin wants us to believe actually.

I mean, I think there is a way in which they are – it's not just that they're asking you to succumb to your worst instincts, to your worst angels. But that they're saying that anything that is above that is an act of inauthenticity, an act of fraudulence. And I just don't buy it. I just don't buy it. And having – it's saying something, having now worked in this kind of –

political work for a long time and working in – I was covering wars and authoritarianism and I actually don't come away with the sense that our default position is this – as you put it earlier, this kind of Hobbesian state. I actually think that this is where the power of leadership comes in. I mean this is –

This is now like a caricature of a China hand. But like what I, you know, there is this old Confucius line where he says that the leader is like the wind and the people are the grass. And as the wind blows, the people will lie in that direction. And I think Trump is just the most dramatic example of that. We live through that. Do you think if times were different and the order of history were shifted some?

that a candidate like Barack Obama, like the 08 Obama, it's hard to do this counterfactual because, you know, different times are different and reward different qualities and characteristics and people have different fears and hopes depending on what year it is. But don't you think a politician as talented as Obama would be running away with it against Trump or not?

I do. I really do. Because I think if you go back and you look at the way that people felt a sense of inspiration, you know, somebody once described it as philosophical reach. That's what Obama had. It sounds – I mean this is the part that's hard to quantify. But you've got to be pretty special to do that. Exactly. Really, this is the part that's very hard to quantify. The difference between good and great –

or between great and once-in-a-generation kind of talent, yeah, is not just a difference of degree. It's a difference of kind. It has this ability to pull people towards you. And it's so rare. And I think in some ways...

I mean, it's amazing to think back that Barack Obama was winning counties in Iowa. He was winning in, you know, Missouri. He was winning in all of these places because people allowed themselves to be open to that. Yeah, I think people will ask the question.

What's more effective? What are people more attracted to, a message of hope or a message of fear? And it's kind of like in the middle of the World Series not going great for the Yankees, unfortunately, for me and my family. But it's a little bit like asking what's a better pitch, a knuckleball or a fastball. Well, it depends on the freaking pitcher. Yeah, right. Right? So if you take the – I think that if you take a messenger –

the most artful messenger you can find, the most talented artful messenger you can find in both categories, fear and hope, the hope candidate wins. But that's not what you're presented with often, right? Yeah. I also think

That the big difference between now and 2008 is the fact that nobody is consuming – they're not reading from the same hymnal. The fracturing of our information culture, which we all talk about sort of constantly in one way or another, is really the defining –

underlying fact here that there is just that it would be very hard even for Obama with his rhetorical power to get up today and reach enough people without it being twisted and distorted along the way for him to be able to for them to hear him. It's not impossible, but it would be that much harder. Yeah, but it's even worse than that, Evan, I think. So people might not hear the speech you're talking about or people might not watch the interview that Trump does on Fox on the other side.

But there are occasions like the debates when everyone is watching, right? You have tens of millions on one side, tens of millions on the other side, and they're watching with their same human eyes and listening with their same human ears.

And they're having completely different reactions. Yeah. That's a little – I feel like that's a little bit different. Everyone is now – it's not only that they're siloed, but when they're unsiloed, the same people are seeing different things. Yeah. Well, this is where I sometimes come back to this observation that somebody made to me once just offhand. It was like a political strategist saying –

For all of the time and energy and money that we expend on all of this stuff, in the end, the most powerful thing you can project in politics is the idea that this candidate is on your side. I don't mean that in the cheesy local – but just literally that they represent, they see your problems, they –

I mean, I'll give you an example. I saw not too long ago I was dinner with a CEO who I can't really name, but he's a guy who, you know, he's a pretty prominent guy. And he basically, to my utter astonishment, and it was pretty depressing, basically indicated that he thinks that Trump is.

will be better for him. And he said, I think most people in my world agree with me, even though they won't say it publicly. And I said, but hold on. Goldman Sachs has said Donald Trump's going to be worse for the economy. He's going to have four times the debt that a Harris agenda would produce and on and on and on. We all know this.

And he said, yeah, but fundamentally he gets it. And that idea, he gets it. It's the most impossible thing to quantify. And it is also at the heart of

of why I think there are still people today that are willing to go along. I mean, for me, at least, I don't know what you think, Preet, but that's always the mystery. He's the opposite. It just occurred to me when you were speaking, this may be a terrible analogy, but I'm good at terrible analogies. He's kind of the opposite of a visionary entrepreneur, and his followers are the opposite of visionary investors. Because, and I'll explain what I mean by that.

To succeed at a new business as an entrepreneur, the idea, the vision is not nearly enough. I've often said that I've been very irritated over the years. My brother and his best friend from high school started a company called diapers.com. Enormously successful. They sold it to Amazon for half a billion dollars.

a decade ago, right? And I come across people who will say, oh, I should have thought of that. Diapers on the internet. I'm like, f*** you. Yeah. That was all it took, the idea. Yeah, it's about execution. And the reason I mention that in this context is

Donald Trump seems to get away with just getting it. Yes. Having the, you know, he has the thought about grievance and his execution, whether it's about the border or it's about our alliances, is complete crap. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How is he selling just getting it? I mean, is that a, I wonder, is that a function of just how...

left behind, a lot of people feel that the mere getting it is almost a whole battle? I mean, the irony is it's not the people that are feeling left behind that...

are often the ones who say that Trump gets it. It's often people in some of the most privileged positions in society. It's the people, you know, I've written about essentially some of the wealthiest Trump supporters over the years because they're almost the biggest mystery, or it's not that much of a mystery. In some cases, they're doing it for tax policy or for deregulation. That's fine, and I understand why. The part that is a mystery to me is, to your point,

They say that he is ideologically sympathetic because he is business-oriented. On the other hand, he has run one business into the ground after another. He has proven himself incapable of executing. And were he not essentially born on third base, would he ever have been able to do anything? That's the part that I find bizarre. I think the people who are really left behind, and in some ways –

I understand their instincts more because what they're doing is essentially saying we have felt overlooked. We have felt abandoned by the Democratic Party, and this guy is paying attention to us. I mean I wrote about West Virginia a lot, and I think –

I remember this, you know, the prime example is when I went to the historical society in Clarksburg, West Virginia, in the northwestern, north central part of the state. And I said, you know, tell me about the Democratic Party.

candidates that have been here over the last few decades. And because it used to be a fully democratic area. And they say, and they went back and they checked and they said, you know, what we can find really is just the Jesse Jackson came in 1988. And that's it hasn't been here. But if you go back to the 60s, they had this huge amount of attention from the Democratic Party. So I think in some ways, I've been reading a lot about status and culture, status, anxiety, what it is that people need, what gives them a feeling of

And it's ultimately it's the awareness that others are seeing you are are acknowledging you that you matter. And in his horribly crude way, Trump's gaze is the thing that people respond to. That's does that sound off to you? Does that sound right? No, that sounds look, Trump says some things that are deeply, deeply, fundamentally true.

And the first speech I gave after I was fired at Cooper Union, I said that he is right and it resonates when he says that the system is rigged. That there is a swamp and there are people who have been left behind and forgotten. So those three things are absolutely true. They were true in 2015, in 2016, in 2017. It's true in 2024. More or less, I'm not sure. But the mere fact that he recognizes those things

does not make his prescriptions or his election a good thing for the people who identify with that diagnosis. It's like, you know, you have COVID, now take bleach. But his political sensibility is kind of like his medical sensibility. There's no science, there's no logic, but I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist.

But going back to this question of just understanding people, I mean, you and I know that in real life that half of getting someone to feel better, even if you don't have a solution to their problem, your friend got broken up with or lost their job or is having a fight with their parents or has an identity crisis or whatever the case may be. The most important thing you can do, firstly, is not administer medicine to them or get them a job.

or a divorce lawyer or whatever the case may be. Those things can be important. But the first thing is to have empathy and to understand where they're coming from and have them believe. Now, it's a very odd thing for people on one side of the aisle, myself included, at first blush to think Donald Trump has empathy because I think he doesn't actually have interpersonal empathy. But it's the great paradox of Donald Trump who is a freaking liar. He lies as he breathes, but is perceived to be by a lot of people

as somebody who is emblematic of truth. He speaks truth to power, he speaks truth to the system, and that manifests itself in other ways too, right? He is utterly unsympathetic and not empathic, and not empathetic towards individual human beings, but the fact that he understands the language of that grievance

makes him empathetic in some other sense. Does that make, does that? Yeah. Yeah. I think it does because I think, you know, to borrow a line that Joe Biden has always used, you know, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. And the reality is that part of the reason why Trump happened was because the conventional liberal idea of

And this is something that Michael Sandel and others have written about really effectively, Sandel in particular. It became punitive in the sense that if you didn't succeed within the meritocratic culture, well, then it was on you. And ultimately, we didn't. The Democratic Party didn't create the kinds of systems that would help people through the

honest-to-goodness adversity that would come with the decline of their status and of their professions and of everything else. I mean, it's, you know, Preet, I look back on this moment of back in 2016 when it seemed as if Hillary Clinton might win. One of the things she was talking about that is really thrilling, that would have actually had real impact, was to finally introduce some kind of

real, you know, what's known as trade adjustment or retraining or helping people whose jobs are being engulfed by globalization and are going away either because of mechanization or because of trade and so on. And that she was sort of finally saying it took this campaign to make it clear. She said, we're going to need to invest in that in a real way. And if you look in places in Europe that have actually been able to

Places like Norway that have avoided some of the most disruptive experiences of having industrial jobs go away. It's partly because they do figure out ways of cushioning that blow. And had she been elected, that was something she was actually going to do. And of course, Trump has done none of that. He's done none of that.

Yeah. I've talked with Michael Sandel, who was my own professor in college. Me too. That's great. That shows you how long he's been doing this too. I love that. He's teaching it again. You know, he's still teaching. I know. Justice. It was called Moral Reasoning 22. Exactly. When I was in college. Look, this valorization of college is, I think, an important issue. Part of the reason I want people to understand why we're having this, at least I feel like the need to have this conversation.

which might seem odd to some people a week in advance. We haven't talked about the polls. We haven't talked about who's likely to win. I hope Kamala Harris wins. I have great confidence in her, and she would be about 4 million times better than Donald Trump. But she may not win. And so we're going to have to grapple with all these things. And I would submit, even if she does win, she's going to probably eke it out. All these questions are still relevant. What happened to the country last

How could someone that has all the features of Donald Trump, which I think are deeply, deeply, deeply flawed and problematic, how can half of our fellow citizens think that's the guy? Whether it's, you know, a shade below 50% or a shade above 50%, because that's going to be the result. Next week, I'll give you another example of something that I wonder about, because I know you talk about it and I think about it, and I have as well. This idea of patriotism, why do, and maybe this is unfair, I feel like

Often liberals, people on the left, shrink a little bit from unabashed patriotism. A, do you agree with that? And B, what do you think of that? Yeah, I think there certainly was a time when...

it became dishonored as an idea for a couple of reasons. I think one, there was the legacy of the post 9/11 kind of jingoistic surge when patriotism led into this harsher form of kind of, you know, freedom fries and then everything worse that followed. This idea that it was a harsh and punitive form of pride in this country.

I think, though, then there was another thing, which is that, you know, at a certain point, the flag was taken up as a essentially a tool and a weapon by the right. That it was that they had sort of exclusive ownership over the language of patriotism, USA, USA. And and then there was a third thing, which is, I think, that as we sort of began to talk about American history, history.

with clearer eyes and began to talk about the history of racism and of slavery that it became hard to have a an unambiguous full-throated announcement of love for the idea of the United States without having all of the clauses and qualifications that come with it so that became sort of baked in that was the inhibition that surrounded the idea of liberal patriotism and

But we forgot something along that path. I mean, there's this really interesting little passage that now reads like prophecy, frankly. But Richard Rorty, who's a theorist at Harvard, he wrote – this was back in the late 90s. He had this incredible –

prescient description of what was coming in our politics. And this little bit went viral for a while where he said basically that workers who feel increasingly left behind by forces of

Control and capital in this country will eventually turn to a strong man, he said, and they will turn against all of the people who they think have been keeping them down or abandoning them. And that circulated for a while. It's an echo of what we talked about earlier. Exactly. And what's amazing is to read it now, it just reads like crystal ball. But we missed something.

We missed something, Preet, which was in that very same piece of writing back in 98 when he wrote this. He also said that a necessary precondition for –

call it national self-improvement, is that you have to have some pride in the nation. You have to believe that this place is worth improving, that it is not terminally and permanently damaged by the flaws in our history and our character. And I think it's that finding that combination of a call it a sort of fierce love, a critical love of this country has been the great challenge for

I think really almost specifically, not just for Democrats today, but also for Kamala Harris. I mean, that's – I watched it at the convention. I think she succeeded at it. I really do. I think the – watching the way that patriotism was –

had sort of found its place again in Chicago was encouraging because that was a step beyond some of that conflicted, inhibited feeling that people had a few years ago. Do you think is patriotism a superpower for Democrats or is it something that's always got this asterisk next to it? I think it can be a superpower for anybody who in good faith and with authenticity embraces their country.

And it's interesting to me, and I haven't analyzed this, so maybe this is unfair. I feel the people who talk on the left most passionately and persuasively about their love of country are immigrants. Yeah. Exactly. They don't take this place for granted. And I'm one of them. And I have always, it has never felt awkward or corny to me.

I can never ever remember it being awkward or corny to me or bordering on some kind of, you know, weird right-wing flag-waving thing for me to talk with great love and affection for the United States of America. Yeah. I've done it, you know, I do it a lot in public life when I became, you know, the head of an office and I have a platform. But, you know, my Twitter handle says you have limited characters.

patriotic American made the cut. And I don't see any, and I think, you know, people have come up to me after I've given talks and I have different political views from conservatives, but, you know, boy, if you believe what they say, there's no daylight. They don't have anything on me when it comes to how much I love the country. And yeah, I want to improve it. And I think it's imperfect, but there's not any thinking person in America who doesn't feel that way. By the way, Donald Trump,

beacon of patriotism, that guy, he calls the United States a trash can. He bashes the United States all the time. And in his case, I'm not sure why people think, well, that's just a patriot trying to bring back America's greatness. And when liberals do it, it's something different. I think part of it is there is a little, I don't know if it's a cultural thing or not, or a rhetorical thing, there's a little bit of discomfort sometimes on the, I think this is true, on the intellectual left

Speaking in those terms about their country. And, you know, I think it's I think it's sort of not the right way to be generally, but it's also politically damaging. Yeah, it really has been in a way it's been self hobbling to the left because people want to be. And this is something that that Barack Obama was very effective at doing. You know, he was running in a overtly patriotic voice saying.

And when he talked about the idea of the United States. That's a great example. Democrats ate it up. Exactly. So why don't we learn from that lesson? Well, I think there's something there. I think, you know, Kamala Harris is the child of two immigrants, meaning two people who chose this country, you know, at tremendous risk.

and dislocation and all of the things that we all know that comes with this. Look, my father came to this country as a refugee. His parent, it's a quirky fact, but my father was born in India because he was in a Polish Jewish family that was fleeing the Nazis in Poland. And so he came to this country and grew up with this very explicit idea

sense in the house that we've chosen to be here. This country has sheltered us. And by no means did that ever allow a kind of complacent disregard for America's failings. But it meant that actually this was a place that it was a chosen love. It was the chosen family, which is a very fashionable idea now.

Look, it seems to me that what Trump has going for him, and I think these are things we need to think about, he's the anti-politician. I think it's less left or right because he inverts them and twists them up. Tariffs, that's not a right-wing idea, at least in modern times. But people are so fed up with the anodyne

you know, nothings, platitudes that come out of politicians' mouths. Yeah. Or the outright lies that everyone just sort of accepts. You have to tell these fibs and these lies. He doesn't do that. So even when he comes out and he says, I'm not saying we should adopt his style. Yeah, no, I get it. But there's something to learn. You know, how often is it that a citizen listens to a politician give a speech and it seems true? It seems fully and completely true.

as opposed to staged or as opposed to pandering. And there are people who break through and get it done. Now, I would prefer to see somebody do it in the way that Obama and maybe some foreseeable

rising star in the future might, which is to speak in those terms and in those phrases and in a tone that is hopeful and uplifting and inspiring and have it ring true, as opposed to having it ring true with, you know, spewing hatred and division and antipathy, which is what Trump does. Yeah. You know, it's, we've talked a bit earlier about,

about Pete Buttigieg. And one of the things that Pete has been able to do is to speak in a way that is, you know, he's not, it's nothing, there's nothing truly unusual about what he's doing. But what he does is he speaks with the right kind of language, meaning that it is, it's, it's, it's original. It's deeply felt at the New Yorker, you know, which is kind of my intellectual home. And the adversary of local news. Yeah.

I think this is – that would be a tough match to imagine. Look, we're such partisans for local news in our household. The idea that the New Yorker is somehow its mortal enemy is a tough one to imagine. But –

The thing that I think is amazing is there's nothing that people at The New Yorker are more allergic to than cliché because cliché is actually the enemy of an honest connection with the reader or the listener. And in some ways, I think what people recoil from in politics is –

that kind of fuzzy obfuscating language. The worst example of it, the one that I think of most often is after there's been an awful shooting in a school and what do people get? They get thoughts and prayers. It's, it's like somebody mixed it up once and he said prayers, prayers and thoughts. At least that would be original, but he should be cast out to whoever that is. Evan. So I'm glad we're having this kind of conversation in advance of the, of the election. Um,

Whatever happens, either way, I think we need to keep thinking about these issues that are larger than particular candidates, larger than a particular issue or two. It's about where we are as a country, what we need in our politics, what we need in our leaders. And so hopefully you'll be back and we'll talk some more. Evan Osnos, thank you. Glad to do it, Preet. Thank you. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.

To end the show this week, I guess it would seem odd to talk about anything other than the impending election. Tens of millions of people have already voted. That voting comes to a close in just a few days on November 5th. I don't know exactly what to say about it. I don't know what there is to say that I haven't said already. I don't know who will win. I don't know when we'll know who the winner is. I don't have a closing argument like the candidates have given in recent days. I get asked a lot in recent times, how's my mood? How are you feeling? What do you think?

I ask people the same question. I feel like it's a little bit different when you get on a Teams or a Zoom or a phone call now and you ask somebody, how's it going? What do you think is going to happen? Everyone knows what you're talking about. You're not talking about the stock market. Maybe you're talking about the World Series if it's the last couple of days, although that's not going so well for my Yankees. But lately, when people ask the question, how are you? What's going to happen? It seems more weighty. It seems more fraught.

So when people ask me how I'm feeling, I tend to identify with something that was said by the John Cusack character, Marty Blank, from a great film, Gross Point Blank, who says at one point to his shrink, I'm uneasy. I feel uneasy.

That's how I feel. I feel kind of uneasy. I don't know what's going to happen. Everyone knows what I hope happens. We'll see if it comes to pass. What I do know is, whatever happens, I and we will be here next week. We'll be here the week after, the week after that, speaking from the heart and also the brain from time to time about what we think is important, what we need to fight for in this country, and how we can keep the country in line with the ideals we have for it.

Someone also asked me on Twitter in the last number of days, what's your playlist for the week ahead? I don't change my playlist dramatically, but I will say that some of the old standbys are on my playlist, as always and forever. Bruce Springsteen this week a little bit, my favorite of all time, Thunder Road. But also songs like The Promise and Promised Land are a bit on my playlist as

I have a new love for a singer, Jason Isbell, who I saw live in concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville just a couple of weeks ago. Then there's a particular song that I've been playing a lot lately and captures a little bit, reflects a little bit how I'm feeling. It's a song by Jimmy Cliff, but covered beautifully and brilliantly by my friend and collaborator, Zeeshan B, who I've talked about on the show a number of times and whose new record I helped to produce.

It's called A Hard Road to Travel, and we'll take it out to that tune. See you on the other side of the election. A hard road to travel and a rough, rough way to go Said it's a hard road to travel and a rough, rough way to go But I can't turn back, my heart is fixed My mind's made up, no I'll never stop All my fate will see me through all alone

Well, that's it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Evan Osnos.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag AskPreet. You can also now reach me on threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338.

That's 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters at cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tadishore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noah Azoulay and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernandez. And the cafe team is Matthew Billy, Nat Wiener, and Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I'm your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.

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Robinhood is introducing forecast contracts so you can trade the presidential election. Through Robinhood, you can now trade financial derivatives contracts on who will win the U.S. presidential election, Harris or Trump, and watch as contract prices react to real-time market sentiment.

Each contract you own will pay $1 on January 8th, 2025 if that candidate is confirmed as the next U.S. president by Congress. Learn more about the presidential election contracts on Robinhood at www.robinhood.com slash election.

The risk of loss in trading commodity interests can be substantial. You should therefore carefully consider whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Commodity interest trading is not appropriate for everyone. Displayed prices are based on real-time market sentiment. This event contract is offered by Robinhood Derivatives, a registered futures commission merchant and swap firm. Exchange and regulatory fees apply. Learn more at www.robinhood.com slash election.