Rachel Maddow on Trump, Biden’s Dilemma & America’s Fascist History
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Hi, on listeners, it's Cara. I recorded this interview with Rachel Maddow before the shocking assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania this weekend, which also took the life of one man in the audience and left two others critically injured. The shooter was also killed by law enforcement. It should go without saying, but political violence is an abomination and should never be used by anyone living in a democracy.

As you know, I talk a lot about the rise of disinformation, the coarsening of public discourse over social media, and the escalating danger of ever more angry words that can turn too easily into heinous deeds. Both sides are guilty of that, and we must keep in mind that we should always express our differences at the ballot box. Here's what Rachel posted on threads just hours after the attack in Pennsylvania.

I do not have adequate words to describe how disgusted and horrified I am by tonight's events. There is no, no, no, no violent solution to any American political conflict. I am grateful the former president is going to be okay and miserably sad and angry about the other people hurt and killed. This is a very dark day. A dark day in a dark year indeed.

But I think you'll find this discussion with Rachel, especially about how we've been here before as Americans, important and necessary. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today...

Finally, my guest is Rachel Maddow, who I've been trying to get on the show forever. She's obviously the host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. She's also a best-selling author, podcaster, and recently has become a bit of a historian, which is my interest. Over the past few years, Maddow has released a slew of award-winning podcast series that look back at instructive moments in American history, especially in an area I know a lot about, propaganda.

One of those series is Ultra, which focuses on far-right extremism in American politics in the 1940s and 50s. Maddow went so deep for the show that she was inspired to write her latest book, the bestseller prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism.

It's pretty good timing, Rachel. Season two of Ultra is rolling out now with the fifth of eight episodes airing today. I've listened to the first four, and I will be listening to the fifth this afternoon. Matto and I have a lot to talk about. There's no shortage of political drama to discuss right now, and we'll get into that. But what I really want to focus on is history here and how the story she tells in Ultra connects to the present, because it absolutely does, and

And here to help, this episode's expert question comes from author and historian Timothy Ryback, and we've put him on the podcast, too, so you should go back and listen to that one because it's fantastic and it's a good one. It is on.

Hi, Rachel. Thanks for joining me. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. You know, for people who don't understand, we've never met, have we? This is hard to understand in terms of the way the universe knits together and what happens to middle-aged white lesbians, but somehow we've avoided each other. I don't know. We're like in the same asteroid belt. We're in the same orbit, so we'll never touch. I understand. I feel like if we get together, we own everything, pretty much. We take over, we create a militia etherage, and then that's the end of it all. Okay.

So I'll get into militias in a minute. I want to start, obviously, with the news today, but I want to start as you wrote in your latest book, quote, our current American struggle along these lines, it turns out, has a prequel. What is your definition of the current American struggle?

Hmm. That's a good question. I think in the context in which I said that, it's sort of specific to the kind of confrontation with people with an authoritarian intention. But I think broadly, even out of context, it's true. I mean, I think that we are in a moment where we're wondering whether our democracy is up to the task. And the task at hand is standing up for itself, using democratic means to defend a democratic system against people who are both

aiming at an anti-democratic America and willing to use anti-democratic means to get it? Like, can you stand up against force and demagoguery and all the other things that have forced all of the other major democracies in the world, with only a few exceptions, to collapse in the face of a strongman alternative? Also using democratic means to do so.

Which is precisely what Hitler did, correct? Well, yeah. I mean, you use enough democracy to get into power, and then you dissolve the democracy from within. I mean, that's what Mussolini did. That's what Hitler did. That's the way. Using an election to have the patina of respectability in a democratic context is almost always the way in. It's almost never just a coup.

The thing that's important about that, though, is that it means that there has to be democratic enablers. There have to be, you know, the German conservatives. There has to be the Italian king appointing, inviting Mussolini to form a government. I mean, there have to be people inside the existing system who say, yeah, we're willing to make this transition with these people who are going to take us away from small-D democracy. And those people end up, I think, being more important in history sometimes than the leaders themselves.

One of the other things that you had a lot through all of the things you do, actually, is this idea of people not disappearing. They go underground, the anti-democratic forces, that they...

they settle underground almost like cicadas and then come out again constantly, almost constantly. Yeah, there's – we don't have a tradition in our country of discreditation. Like nobody's ever down for the count and discredited. And so, for example, even when you look at something that we think of as an almost like consensus moral crucible, the civil rights movement –

We have no concept in our mind of who the segregationist movement was. We know who the civil rights movement was, and we know who they confronted. But there was a segregationist movement that had lawyers and expert witnesses and politicians, and those folks have sort of –

disappeared in memory. And it's good to remember the heroes, but it's also good to remember the people who embraced the wrong side of that moral issue. It was true in the civil rights movement. I think it's really true in the confrontation with Nazism and fascism in World War II. That's what I've been trying to write about. But when we just let the bad guys

dissolve in our memory, that helps them essentially go dormant and then come back without us remembering why they lost those important fights in the first place. So I want to get to all that because it's really interesting, but let's start with the struggle that's been dominating the news cycle this week because it has...

implications in this area, whether President Biden should bow out of the race. A lot of people think it's an existential issue of him not doing so, and others think it's an existential issue that he has to get out so that Trump doesn't win, which is the existential crisis I think everyone's talking about. New York Times editorial bullet called for him to step down, so have several Democrats in Congress. I'm not sure what Nancy Pelosi's up to. She keeps saying sort of veiled, unusual code words.

Senator Michael Bennett has said he fears a Trump landslide victory if Biden stays in the race. So is this, from your perspective, covering it because you've got a weekly show, is it a bad news cycle for the president? Are we looking at sort of one of those facilitating events that you've written about in history so many times? That's a very good question. I mean—

I think if I were Joe Biden, I feel like all of my conflicting emotions and conflicting impulses on this, I feel like if I were Joe Biden, I would probably have all those same things too, plus the ego of wanting to stay there. I don't know. I mean, I feel like the one thing that's clear is that the existential threat to the country is death.

Donald Trump winning and it is aggravated by the prospect of him winning with an electoral landslide in the House and the Senate. That is something that I don't, I mean, if that happens, I am one of the people who thinks that there then isn't an election in 2028, provided that Donald Trump is still alive at that point. I do think it's that desperate. Now, what the Democrats should do to prevent Trump from winning, I do not know.

History affords examples in both directions. Biden's own recent electoral history, including the unexpected Democratic victories in 2022, that also counts in his favor. I think it's a really hard decision. I don't think that Democrats are trying to do anything other than beat Donald Trump. I don't think there is some other motive that they're hiding from anybody. But it seems like an almost impossible decision.

It seems like an almost impossible decision and yet one that needs to both be made and be made immediately. So draw that out a little bit from history. You know, you said you've seen it happen before in history. Talk about that idea because I think one of the assets of democracy is the ability to draw things out, to weigh things.

But right now, it seems like you don't know what to think. So what do you get from history that helps you make that decision? Well, I've been, you know, the last time we had the same two major party candidates running against each other in successive elections was Stevenson and Eisenhower in 52 and then in 56. And in 56, when Ike was the incumbent in 1955, he had a devastating heart attack.

and was hospitalized and not heard from for many weeks. And that led to lots of discussions about...

what was going to happen to him in '56. He also had a vice president, Richard Nixon, who people thought was unelectable and unlikable and not a great substitution for him. And then in '56, it got worse. He had emergency stomach surgery in June of 1956, the year of the election. And yet the Republicans in 1956 put him back on the ticket without a challenge at the convention. And when he went up against Stevenson again,

He beat him even worse than he beat him in 1952. There's also this interesting parallel on the other side of that where Stevenson, trying to get an edge on Eisenhower, actually trying to highlight Nixon as Eisenhower's unpopular vice president, decided they'd put a little spice in the mix on the Stevenson side of things, and they had a contested convention where

on the Stevenson side to pick his vice president because they thought having a contested convention will make everybody very excited and will put a lot of spotlight on it and make it seem energized. And they lost. So, I mean, a lot of the things that the Democrats are considering right now, there have been sort of runs of a type through this

That said, neither of those sides was proposing anything like what Donald Trump is proposing to do. Right, absolutely. No, absolutely. So it seems like President Biden is standing firm. He released a letter to Democratic critics in Congress. We're taping this episode July 10th. So this is now the latest and strongest comment from Biden. But he's been saying it over and over again.

He says he's the best person to beat Trump, he believes he is, and stepping out of the race would defy the will of the American people. Quote, we held the Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. What do you make of his argument? I mean, it's all true. Yeah. Everything that he's saying. The other thing that's true is his debate performance, which is not a solvable problem.

Like, I just don't think looking at—there's nothing you can say about that debate performance that mitigates the impact of it. It is what it is. And so it seems very, very difficult to me. I mean, I don't know if—I think, obviously, if the election were held today and the polls are broadly accurate, the Democrats would get shellacked and would lose the White House and likely lose—

a considerable number of, well, at least the House and Senate would be hard to call. If the Democrats replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris or with any other candidate, will they have a better chance at beating Trump? I don't know and neither do you. We can't tell from this vantage point. But if Joe Biden were running against Donald Trump today, he would lose and likely lose badly if the polls are accurate. The Democrats might say the polls haven't been accurate. No.

Which they have, many times. Yes. So, I mean, what do you think about it? Well, you know, interestingly, Biden had said many times that there, he said there was no red wave, and there was no red wave. I do, I worry about someone who is losing so badly to such a bad candidate. That's my biggest worry. I think that's where I stick most.

I think it's very hard to be complex these days because the minute you say, I'm a little worried, you get attacked from the left. Well, I wouldn't left. I don't know what to call it. I don't know what to call it. But a lot of people are angry if you even mention his age. On the other hand, if you support him, others are saying, don't you understand the great existential threat of Trump? And they're essentially making the same argument. So like you, I think I'm quite confused. Right.

I think it's good faith. The one thing that we should expect with the fight on the left here and the fight among Democrats and centrists here is that it is a good faith argument. Everybody wants to beat Trump. It's a question of how.

And if you can put aside the, like, you're a bad person for disagreeing with me on this, I think we'll get further. That's sure. But words like bedwetting doesn't help or whatever, the pearl-clutching bedwetting. It's all the adjectives they use. Now, Biden's clearly frustrated. He calls out elites in his own party, and there's an incredible level of infighting going on. Is that a negative thing about the Democratic Party? You said it's just sorting it out. Is that a positive or negative thing?

I am a person who thinks that the people who are fighting about this are fighting within democratic politics. I think that it is a good faith argument. I think there's a lot of emotion and there is some, you know, there's name calling and all that stuff. But, you know, this isn't a fight about...

You know, you didn't endorse Donald Trump, Bob Good, and so therefore we're going to come into your district and get you ousted because you didn't show feel to— You know, it's not that kind of a fight, like, which is the fights that the Republicans are having. You know, this isn't your dad killed JFK, Ted Cruz. You know, like, those are the Trump-era fights in the Republican Party. The Democrats, I think, are having a fight, a real fight—

That's on solid ground to fight on about a really important thing that they agree on. And that seems healthy to me. This seems like this is a difficult fight for the Democrats to be having. I'm glad they're having it for their sake in July rather than October. Right? Yeah.

But it's, you know, the point of this fight is to do the right thing for the country. Joe Biden thinks that he has the best chance of beating Donald Trump. His critics say that he does not have the best chance of beating Donald Trump. Everybody agrees that the point is to beat Donald Trump and to save the country from what he and the Republicans want to do to it right now. And I think that's

That's earnest, and I want this to be well-thought, and I think it's a sort of noble thing and a sign of health in the Democratic Party. And you yourself haven't taken a stand, I've noticed, which you sometimes do, correct?

Yeah, I'm humble enough. I mean, you have to be egotistical enough to have a show with your name on it, right? You might have heard. Me too. Exactly. But I'm humble enough to know that I don't know who would have a better chance, whether it be Biden or Vice President Harris or somebody else in the Democratic Party. I don't know. I agree that the threat of Trump is worth having the fight.

So let's shift to Trump. The danger of his potential presidency, which you've mentioned several times, poses for our democracy, hangs over the entire discussion, especially in wake of the Supreme Court's radical ruling on presidential immunity. You call this decision death squad ruling. Can you explain that? If the president were the type of president who wanted to kill his rivals, this immunity ruling gives him a way to do that without anybody facing criminal sanction for doing it.

And Justice Sotomayor called that out in blunt terms in her speech.

in her dissent. But I think that what she's describing there, which is the hypothetical that was raised at the appeals court, you know, assassinate a political rival, use the military to do so. Like she's saying when that hypothetical was raised while we were fighting about this in the appellate courts, this ruling gives an answer that is frightening. But if you look at the ruling and that hypothetical in conjunction with what the Justice Roberts ruling explicitly said,

about the relationship between the president and the Justice Department, it makes it not just a far-fetched hypothetical that involves exotic Navy SEAL teams doing things. It means that the president can just direct the Justice Department to do it in a practical way. Without repercussions. You also called this decision, quote, a logical apex where the Republican idea of executive power has been leading for years.

Yeah. I mean, in some ways, I think you can personalize this moment to Trump. I think that this is a Trump court. I think that not only Trump's appointees, but the conservative supermajority in the court has realigned itself in ways that in some cases are very ideologically inconsistent with what they've previously had.

held just to make sure that Trump gets what he wants. They're effectively acting as Trump partisans. But there's another way to look at it, which is that the Republican Party has been increasingly radicalizing on the idea of small-D democracy for most of my adult life. I mean, for me, I'm the only person for whom this is true, but the Iran-Contra scandal was like a crucible for me in terms of what we think of as...

Not just unreviewable, but sort of almost – it's unaccountable, but it's also – it's not just that you can't review a president's decisions. It's that a president should be both expected and encouraged to.

to do even extreme things just to show that he can't be constrained. That sort of fantasy about what amounts to strongman leadership and the elimination of the idea of checks and balances, which is foundational to who we are, has been a Republican wet dream since the 1980s, and it's been getting worse and worse and worse. You're talking the line Reagan, Dick Cheney, George Bush, George W. Bush, etc.,

Dick Cheney's minority report in the Iran-Contra affair. He wrote a minority report which basically said if the president does it, it's not illegal, taking Nixon's line there from the Frost-Nixon interviews. But that was a crazy thing for Cheney to do, and he had to do it as a minority report that nobody ever read in Iran-Contra. But as the conservative project went

claimed and held power in places like the judiciary, that became not just a crazy provocation, but their M.O. And now they've got a president who wants to take it to its ends.

And so that puts our whole system of government at risk. And this is where they've been leading for a long time. It's important when we're talking about your podcast because that's what you're talking about is these attempts to do this over and over again. And we'll get to that in one second. But the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee on Monday, July 15th, the day this episode airs.

What do you plan to pay special attention to in your coverage? This idea of small d democracy, the strongman, the idea of almost like a cult-like following among? Because this is sort of what the America First group would have loved to have happened. We lose the war, they negotiate with the Nazis, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, we'll see what they do at the RNC. One of the things that I think has been really interesting and sort of chilling to watch over the course of this fight in the Democratic Party about whether President Biden should stay at the top of the ticket is how disciplined and quiet the Republicans have been about it. And that

I think does show that the Trump campaign believes that if President Biden stays in, they've got this in the bag. And so they don't want to mess up with this process that might result in President Biden thwarting his critics and staying in office. They don't want to weigh in. That form of discipline is terrible.

not the hallmark of the earlier run for president of Donald Trump. And so it shows that they're getting their act together. That's always bad. Getting good at being bad. They're getting good at being bad. I do think that the

They are planning to showcase a couple of things at this convention, and one is their planned policies. You know, they do want camps big enough to hold millions of people. They want roundups of people. They want some of the extreme policies that have been, I think, well-designed.

well outlined in Project 2025, which is now getting the kind of, I think, attention it deserves. All of that is expressed very bluntly in their very short 16-page Republican Party platform. So it's what they're planning to do. But then I think the other thing to watch is not necessarily what they're saying, but what they are doing. And I think that

So many things that they do just in a procedural way indicate that they want a strongman form of government. They want rule by fiat. I don't know if you know this, but Donald Trump's never heard of Project 25. He just said that. Oh. Oh. Are you saying it's a false flag? Yes, apparently it is. Soup.

The reason you go to the convention itself and you broadcast, there's reasons for broadcast companies do that for the spectacle, etc. But do you spend, I want to get into ULTRA now because you obviously have a fascination with the right. Did you spend a lot of time with people on the current right, right now? I don't spend a lot of time with anybody. You go back up to your farm.

Basically, this padded room from which I'm speaking to you right now, this is basically my milieu. No, I mean, and actually, I should say, at the conventions, I'm not sure that we're going to be broadcasting from either convention. We may be covering them from New York. That's what we did four years ago. So I think that's a decision. Like, we sort of keep all our options open, depending on what's happening and whether it makes sense for us to be there or us to be in New York. But we'll see. So...

Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, the truth about me is that I am a middle-class suburban kid who has a hard time interrupting people. And I know this is one of my weaknesses as an interviewer and as a reporter, that it's, I like to make nice with people. And so this is, knowing this is my personal limitation, I try not to have personal relationships with people that I cover.

And anybody, you know, there's and there are some exceptions to that. Like every once in a while, somebody who you went to college, you knew in college gets elected to a thing. Right. There's some things like that that happen. But I don't, you know, go to awards things. I don't go to dinner parties. I don't go to the White House Correspondents Dinner. I don't.

I don't do anything like that because I don't like to have personal relationships with the folks that I cover. I definitely talk to people as sources. But if I'm friends with you, I'm not going to likely invite you on my TV show to talk about anything. Sure. But beyond that, in terms – I interview a lot of Republicans. I interview a lot of conservatives because I think it's important to understand what they're saying. Do you – you have a fascination with historical context.

conservatives and the right. Do you have the same fascination here? Have you spent time, say, Steve Bannon, who to me is the, he recalls so many people in your podcast. It's astonishing. Well, the funny thing about Bannon, too, and all the stuff that I'm podcasting about is that the, like, the really bad guys are

on the intellectual right are all like, you know, they're all like little icons on his mantle behind him on the War Room podcast. Yeah. He's really, he's bringing all those guys, especially all the like obscure European fascist thinkers and stuff, like those are all his guys. So, yeah. No, I mean, do I want to have a conversation with Steve Bannon? No. Do I pay attention to what Steve Bannon is saying? Yes.

I'm sort of, you know, I kind of like observing folks in the wild as much as I can. That said, I also have an issue that people don't say yes to me when I ask them to come on TV. I don't do, you know, 10 and 15 guests over the course of an hour. I usually do one or two guests. And over time, the longer I've been on MSNBC, the less people have been willing to come on with me. So I've had, you know, great long conversations with Rick Santorum and Rand Paul and all these people, but...

none of those folks will come on with me now. So what you're interested in is historical. They're dead, so you don't have to talk to them. I'm thinking about Charles Coughlin all the time. Does he speak to me? No. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this episode comes from SAS.

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All right, let's turn to the past then. A lot of historians are offering historical parallels to explain our current crisis. And boy, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes, I think is the expression. Your podcast, Rachel Maddow Presents Ultras, starts in 1940. I'm fascinated.

I'm fascinated that you're fascinated with this. So explain how you got there, including bringing up the issues that I knew about, the Great Sedition Trial of 1944, for example, which was a critical trial. And one of your themes is, and it just goes away, or they got out of it. Essentially, everyone got out of it. Talk about how you got to decide to focus on these historical fascists, essentially. Well, first of all, I just...

I just want to interrupt my own train of thought here for a second just to say that I'm so glad that you knew. I know that you study propaganda and disinformation, and that's been your sort of academic interest for a long time. And the thing, part of the reason the Great Sedition Trial is forgotten is because of the politics of it, because nobody really wanted to remember it because of the way that it worked out. But I think another reason, just between you and me, why it was forgotten is because at the heart of it was this huge...

multimillion dollar in 1940s dollars propaganda campaign run by the German government run by the Hitler government in this country that propaganda campaign targeting the American public was the biggest propaganda operation that the Nazis ran anywhere outside of Germany and

I think that as Americans, we think of ourselves as immune to propaganda. Or we think of propaganda as something that isn't important, that it isn't forceful. And it can't make us do anything that we don't want to do. I have a sense that you disagree with that from your own work. But I think that's part of why people didn't think it was a big enough deal to report on. And I just, I don't know how to put a big enough exclamation point on it to talk about

to talk about how important those kinds of foreign influence operations are on us and how they shape our thinking and our own politics. And then what we do about it. But explain, how did you get to this idea of wanting to do this issue? Because obviously the resonance is clear to today. You don't say it very much, but it's very obvious what the point you're making. It's partly because of the way my brain works. I just...

Like, I read trashy detective novels, for example, but trashy detective novels usually come in series. And, you know, you'll read a review, and it's like, oh, book 17 in this series is amazing. You should read book 17. And I'm like, well, if I'm going to read book 17, I need to read not only book one, I need to find out that everything this author wrote before they started writing this series and read all it. So I'm a completist. I have to go back to the beginning. And so, like, I have to know when people were born.

And where in order to understand what their impact was in their life once they got into politics in their 50s. Like I just, I like origin stories in terms of organizing things in my own brain. And so I ended up right after Trump was elected.

being interested in the origins of American Holocaust denial, because we were seeing this shift in Republican politics and the not just Democratic victory or the Republican victory in 2016, but the alt-right stuff that was going on around that. Those guys in that D.C. ballroom going, hail Trump and giving the Roman salute. Why are we seeing this?

effectively neo-Nazi resurgence and Holocaust denial resurgence around the celebration of the ascension of Trump. Where does American Holocaust denial come from? Turns out it goes back to the very immediate post-war years in a surprising way.

when the Holocaust was not just history, it was current events, and denying it was a logical impossibility. And so you can't assume that it was a good faith thing. It was a political strategy. Well, how does Holocaust denial work as a political strategy? How does that interact with electoral politics? Why are we seeing that again now? And looking into that got me back to the 40s and to the sedition trial period.

And season two of Ultra is about what happens after the sedition trial falls apart. Explain the sedition trial for those who don't remember. I spent a lot of time explaining the whiskey rebellion to people today, but it's important.

Look it up, Rachel. Go down that rabbit hole. You'll be surprised. There's a reason that people like us should be invited to your dinner parties, even though we will not come. We can tell you about these things. The Justice Department brought a sedition indictment against almost 30 people, alleging that they were part of a conspiracy with the German government, with the Nazis, to overthrow the U.S. government and to induce...

Americans not to support the war effort and people not to obey the draft. That was the technical strategy behind the indictment. But the basic idea was that there were pro-Nazi and pro-fascist elements here that were trying to prepare us either for a German invasion or for a domestic revolt in this country that would install a fascist dictator here. And they got put on trial. And the trial was...

A total circus. They tried all 29 defendants at once in the summer in Washington, D.C., with no air conditioning in a small courtroom. And while it was sort of wild charges, and this is a wild cast of characters, in some cases some very dangerous people doing very dangerous things, it ultimately ended in a mistrial when the judge died in the middle of the trial. The stress of the trial seems to have killed him. Yeah. Yeah.

So it didn't work out well. It's always little things like that that create the thing, but they never paid for it. The trial's a failure. One example of how the justice system and law enforcement sometimes failed to respond to Nazi propagandas and ultra-right groups across the country, just sort of forgetting it, just letting them move along. Is there a lesson from these systemic failures into this moment? Because, you know, I've spent a lot of time yelling at Mark Zuckerberg about anti-Semitism on his platform. We got into a very famous...

where he got in a bit of trouble when he called Holocaust, he told me Holocaust deniers don't mean to lie. And I was like, huh, seems like that's the definition of a Holocaust denier. But talk about this failure of this trial, because it's a resonant thing in your podcast. They have these moments where they could have done something and then don't. One of the resonant failures that I feel like is a real problem

clarion for us right now is the way the Justice Department failed. So you can't control whether or not the judge dies, but then the Justice Department has to decide whether or not to bring the case again. When you have a mistrial, you can bring the charges. And so the prosecutor who was leading that case got permission from the Justice Department to go to Germany because, again, the allegation was that Americans were working with the Nazis. And it was in the immediate post-war era. He went and he interviewed

Nazi war crimes, crimes defendants at Nuremberg. He went through the German foreign office files. He found from the German side in German, because he spoke German, thankfully, he found the confirmation of all the Americans who the Germans had been working with. He found the proof of their collusion.

And he brought it back to the United States, and he brought back the names of 24 members of Congress who had been involved. And one of those members of Congress was very close friends with the president and said, you need to fire this prosecutor and get rid of him. And the president did. And there were two times, actually, during the prosecution of that case when somebody who was implicated in what was happening had enough political sway to get the Justice Department to remove the prosecutor from the case.

The Justice Department has a bad track record of holding people with political power.

to account. And it's because political pressure brought to bear on the Justice Department very often works. And we saw that in this historical entity in a way that I find shocking and terrifying. Just put it in the drawer. Just put it in the drawer. Yeah, just put it away. Just get, you know, and that evidence is never going to see the light of day, and we're not bringing this case again. Well, one of the things I always say is the Butwatch and Post, which is, of course, struggling right now, it has the idea of democracy dies in darkness. I'm like, democracy dies in the full light of day. Yeah, like, just...

Just FYI. It dies when we're too overwhelmed with stuff to pay attention to all the details. That's correct. If you're going to focus on one thing, look at the abuse of the Justice Department because it's happened already and the Supreme Court just opened all those lanes wide. And that is, I mean, Trump will announce, will make a televised announcement of who his politically motivated arrestees are, you know, as soon as he is in office and as soon as he feels clear to do it. He kind of has. Yeah. But one of the things that goes through this list

latest season of the podcast, season two, it jumps into the aftermath of World War II, and your latest episode is focused on the America First movement, which had hoped to become that, had hoped to become Donald Trump. They use the word America First now. They revived a lot of the ideas around Charles Lindbergh, et cetera. Talk about sort of the failed effort of the America First to become what the Trump administration did become. America First is interesting because...

They were huge and fast-growing. They were very, very influential. Everybody from, you know, the head of the Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, to the most famous industrialist in the country, Henry Ford, to the most famous national hero, Charles Lindbergh, to the biggest media figure in the country, Charles Coughlin. I mean, everybody...

with influence outside of FDR's sphere was in this movement. You know, we had another famous aviator, a woman named Laura Ingalls, distant cousin of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was prosecuted as a paid Nazi agent. And her Gestapo handler said the best thing you could do for Nazi Germany right now is keep giving speeches for the America First Committee.

So we've got both very, very influential, very respectable, very moneyed, powerful people and the most radical, seditious people you can possibly imagine. And so you have America First rallies and they're full of, you know, blue-haired ladies going like this and then people giving the Nazi salute in the back. And that integration of power and radicalism is the secret sauce of how you lose your democracy. We'll be back in a minute.

Hey, Karis Fisher listeners. Sue Bird here. I'm Megan Rapinoe. Women's sports are reaching new heights these days, and there's so much to talk about. So Megan and I are launching a podcast where we're going to deep dive into all things sports, and then some. We're calling it

a touch more because women's sports is everything pop culture economics politics you name it and there's no better folks than us to talk about what happens on the court or on the field and everywhere else too and we'll have a whole bunch of friends on the show to help us break things down we're talking athletes actors comedians maybe even our moms that'll be a fun episode

Whether it's breaking down the biggest games or discussing the latest headlines, we'll be bringing a touch more insight into the world of sports and beyond. Follow A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

What is up, people of the internet? I'm Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, and I just wanted to quickly tell you about my podcast, Waveform. So after making tech reviews on YouTube for over a decade, I've had the chance to check out some real groundbreaking tech and some real dud products. And so on Waveform, along with my co-hosts Andrew Manganielli and David Amell, we capture our immediate reactions to new technology that's coming out every week, from smartphones to EVs, and even AI finding its way into everything. We've got you covered.

And you also get a bit of a sneak peek into what it's like working at a YouTube channel closing in on 20 million subscribers. So if you want to stay up to date with the latest tech and internet news and culture and all sorts of stuff like that, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen. See you over there. So every episode we talk, we ask another expert to phone in with a question. You've got a good one. Let's play it.

Hi, Rachel. I'm Tim Ryback, author of Takeover, about Hitler's final rise to power as chancellor, just published by Knopf. There's some rather stunning parallels between your brilliant new book, Prequel, and Takeover. Conspiracy theories, fake news, armed militias, legislative dysfunction, just to name a few.

But one big difference between America and Germany, Hitler never polled more than 37% in a free and open election.

In America, we're looking at numbers approaching 50% for a demagogic presidential candidate who openly flaunts democratic values, which makes one wonder whether this toxic right-wing radicalism runs deeper in America than it ever really did in Germany. So my question, is this rise of the radical right in the American anomaly, or is the country perhaps showing its true colors? Perfect question.

Very good question. The short answer is I don't know. I do think that us having a two-party system has proved to be an accelerant here rather than a multi-party system, which was what Hitler was contending with in the 30s or the 20s and the 30s.

having a sort of with us or against us two-party dynamic, having a dyad where people need to go to one poll or the other will get you to 50% in a way that a multi-party system may only get you to 30%. So I think that's the simple answer to it. In terms of how dark our hearts are and what we are capable of as a nation,

I don't know. I don't think that there's anything in American political culture and American culture that makes us any worse than anybody else, but I also don't think we have any more insulation against that.

sort of authoritarian dictatorial winds than any other country does. I mean, there was nothing wrong with the Italians that brought Mussolini to power. There was nothing wrong with the Spanish that brought Franco to power. There was nothing wrong with the Germans that brought Hitler to power. It was a movement that succeeded. And I think that we're as susceptible to that as anyone. And I think that

The fact that we have been unwilling to diagnose, contend with, sort of name, shame, and fight authoritarian impulses on the American right for a long time leads us to be slightly less well defended against this than we ought to. I think in those other countries, they knew that the authoritarian right was a possibility and that that was possible.

anti-democratic aims were live and active on the political right. And I just think we've been a little bit in denial about that. That's part of why I've been focusing on history. Well, we also have a vision of ourselves that's quite different than the reality. I mean, the national narrative, essentially. Well, America is, I think, a different type of country. I mean, our constitutional inheritance is amazing. I mean, the idea of natural rights is

that is mediated by a government that has purposely divided power, that is, I think, genius. And I do think that that is something that we deserve to think about in a way that we want to protect and that we think of as singularly wise.

But it doesn't mean that we're inherently resistant to the types of movements that would tear that down. I don't know. I think we have a pretty dark history. I'm a little more negative than you are. But do you agree, though, that the basic constitutional idea that the risk now is— Yes, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are critically important. It's different from everyone, including why we're able to be so susceptible to conspiracy theories because of the First Amendment. Obviously, in other countries, they don't have to be bothered by—

And in our country, we use it proudly and then it gets misused, especially by tech people in this particular era. But it gets used as a cudgel versus the great gift it is, of course. But along these lines, you did tell CNN's Oliver Darcy that one of your takeaways from working on Ultra Season 2 is the country seems, quote, quite susceptible to factually unhinged conspiratorial narratives.

Again, is that a unique American susceptibility or, you know, especially when you were looking back, so many people were buying this line of crap that a lot of these America First people and a number of people in your narratives were willing to believe. Yeah. I mean, conspiracy theories...

are, in the end, an anti-democratic force, right? If you are told that there is a secret and secretly powerful evil cabal that is really controlling things, that is really behind things, that robs you of your ability to work practically to improve your lot in life. Because why would you spend time, you know, making sure that a good person runs for state representative and that your drinking water and potholes get fixed?

when it's George Soros pulling the strings who's making the World Bank do the blah, blah, blah, right? It's disempowering and angering at the same time. And it makes you think of democracy as futile, and it makes you prone to suggestion that radical... It must be someone else. It must be somebody else, and that radical and extreme and even violent tactics are justified and will be the only thing that works. So...

Conspiracy theories aren't just entertaining. They're exciting and disempowering for citizens in a way that's really important. But you also said the history you uncover in Ultra is a comforting one. I'd love to understand that because, like, maybe I'm in the four right now and I'm like, oh, Jesus, it's coming back. You know, you talk about journalists. Five is dark, too. You have a lot of heroes. You have journalists who provide critical course correction. And, you know, Lester Hunt is a hero.

And by the way, did you break up a little bit crying there when you were talking about him in the first episode? I felt like your voice cracked.

No, I didn't know, but I have a... I cry at the drop of a hat, so it often sounds like I'm about to cry because it's always about a quarter of an inch below my vocal cords at any time. Like, the national anthem in any context makes me cry. Okay, we're not going to a baseball game, check. All right, so I don't cry at all. But talk about that, the comforting, these crucial course corrections. Knowing that we have faced...

threats like this, and again, like this meaning threats to our system of government, from very powerful forces in the past and that we've beat them, to me is comforting. And so it is one comforting story to tell yourself that America went over to Europe in World War II and we beat those fascists and fascism therefore didn't take over the world. That is a comforting story. To me, it is an additional and totally different story

comforting story to know that we faced powerful pro-Nazi and pro-fascist groups here and

and defeated them, in some cases, without the help of the official authorities. It was Americans organizing on their own terms and in the free press. We beat them here at home, too. That is also comforting. And so knowing, for example, in the Lester Hunt story that he went up against incredible odds and paid an incredible and ultimately fatal price, but was nevertheless willing to wage a confrontation that had

consequences for the people who were doing something that was set out to destroy the country. I just want to know about our heroes. I want to know about people who did this stuff and it worked in the past. Why did the worst things not happen to us in the past? Because American heroes stood up in front of those people and swept the leg and knocked those people out. And I want to know all those stories. Do you think that, I mean, I think about William L. Schreier, for example, covering Nazis and stuff like that. Is there any one type of person? Because Hunt is also a hero, really.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's politicians, sometimes it's journalists, sometimes it's citizen activists. In prequel and in ultra season one, people like Leon Lewis, who ran essentially private spy networks to monitor what was going on in the Nazi groups in the United States, and then brought that information to law enforcement, and law enforcement didn't care about it, and it took him a decade to get anybody to listen to him. I mean, that's a kind of heroism that

I don't even know what the parallel would be for that today. Do you look at that as your role, too, in some ways? Not to go all egomaniacal on you, but do you think about your role like that?

I think my job is to explain what's going on. And sometimes that means investigating, for sure. But oftentimes, you know, I get credit for doing investigatory work, which is just finding things that are in plain sight and connecting them. So, yeah, I am more interested in...

finding the people who are doing that work and putting a megaphone on it, then I am egotistical enough to think that it's always me who's doing it. But the press, of course, gets a lot of, because in general, trust in the press has eroded in the years. Yeah.

that you covered and definitely now, and Trump certainly has done a lot of damage. Is there any role in the press in damaging its own credibility? Because one of the through lines throughout your podcast is the role of media in that, in uncovering it and also being a willing participant in spreading lies.

Yeah, I mean, the media can do lots of different things, and the media is a complex organization. It's not one thing. I mean, certainly one of the things that you see in time is that there have been a lot of

media entities who have been willing participants in dishonest partisan projects. Right? So you've got Charles Coughlin and Henry Ford as the owner of the Dearborn Independent promoting the protocols of the learned elders of Zion as if it's real. Or Henry Regnery. Right. Henry Regnery, right, promoting Holocaust denial. Right.

in his publishing company and in his early magazine stuff in the immediate post-war era. That's for real and that's consequential and we've always had bad actors along those lines. There's always been something like that.

There's also always been crusading, opinion-inflected reporters, journalists, and columnists, people like Drew Pearson, people like Marquis Childs, who have been attacked like you can't believe by their targets, by people they've targeted on the right. I mean, Joe McCarthy went so far in his targeting of Drew Pearson that he beat him up.

Richard Nixon had to physically pull Joe McCarthy off of columnist Drew Pearson at a Washington club in the early 1950s. There have always been people like that. And again, you know, their history is sometimes hard to find because their critics have sometimes defined who they are in terms of their historical legacy. And then there's been straight-up reporters who have gone into dangerous situations and into complex situations.

information environments and found the truth and told the people. And the press can be all of those things, good, bad, and indispensable.

And I think we all just have to let our work speak for ourselves. And I think the thing that's not helpful is for the press to fight each other, but for us to concentrate on doing the work that we're best at.

And I'd love to sort of finish talking about what's happening now, especially through the lens of yourself and your business. You have a growing podcast empire. It's spun up books and now movies. You're adapting Bagman, your podcast about Spiro Agnew, into a feature film co-written and directed with Ben Stiller.

I want to know who's playing Agnew. I can't wait to see that. Do you have an Agnew? Secret. It's a secret. I can't even think of who could be. And Steven Spielberg's production company, Option, the movie rights to Ultra with playwright Tony Kushner reportedly talks to Adapted. He's a terrific guy. I loved your podcast with him. I've spoken to him a bunch of times. But talk about how you're looking at it because you're doing sort of entrepreneurism now.

You've kind of had the traditional broadcast job, but now you're doing other things. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, I don't understand the business world all that well, and I don't think of myself as a business person. But I do think that within the NBC News and MSNBC world, we've got a good –

standard system, essentially, to hold us accountable for doing the work properly. And that, to me, has been a real north star and a guide in terms of doing the work in a way that is responsible and creditable. And I pride myself on doing work that you can take to the bank, but also doing good storytelling. And so I...

sort of ran out of the ability to do my TV show five days a week. It was just killing me physically. But they were willing to let me do one day a week and then do these other things. And I think it's a little bit still up in the air as to what makes sense financially. Podcasts, books, documentaries, scripted TV series, and all these things. I'm working on all of those things. And I hope that they all end up making money, but I don't know if they will. I'm really interested in doing this work in different...

ways, but also different types of platforms to see sort of what swims. So you noted you significantly scale back your hosting role at MSNBC, which a lot of people would give up, right? Give up that idea. How do you look at your role now in balancing TV, podcasts? Is it just a question of is exhausting to do five days a week or that you wanted to try other things and have been quite successful in it?

The exhaustion factor was real, for sure. I just was, I was going to end up stopping working altogether if I stayed working five days a week. And so I think had I re-upped at five days a week at the time that I made that transition, I probably wouldn't be doing anything at all right now. It's just physicality.

physically hurting myself and burning out. So I wanted to be able to do work in a more sustainable way. And that meant, it doesn't actually mean putting in less hours. My girlfriend would tell you I actually work more now than I did before. But it was just working constantly, you know, 12 hours a day in the same gear, doing the same thing with the same deadline every single day. Right. It was just burning me out and making me dumb.

It was making me sort of think shorter thoughts. And I was realizing I wasn't reading books anymore. I was only reading news information, which is not a great way to be a good thinker. So I wanted the intellectual freedom to think in different ways and on different timelines and have different types of deadlines. So that's what I'm trying to do. Do you feel like you have a bigger role sort of as the – you're obviously the most successful anchor on that network at this point. And you use that power extensively.

In March, NBC briefly hired former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, and you called the hiring inexplicable. You were not the only network talent to object, but I think probably very influential. Do you think you have a bigger role there, even if you're on less, I guess? Not really, no. I mean, in that case, as you noted, it wasn't just me who said a thing. Right, Chuck Timmons.

Yeah, and other people on MSNBC with their own shows. I don't think of myself as – I also don't think very much about myself as a political figure in the polity that is the cable news world. So, yeah, I don't think my role has changed there very much. But I do also – when I say that I have a good relationship with the company, that's for real. I mean, and it's – I think it is underappreciated that –

that at NBC News, at MSNBC specifically, there isn't somebody saying, okay, we need to get X person elected, and so therefore we're all going to say this. Now, your role is this, and your role is... There just isn't that environment. We have editorial freedom to do what we want within the bounds of NBC News standards. And that is gold. And that, I mean, I really... These are the good old days. You know, this is the way it should be. And I...

try to be trustworthy and I try to be a good investment. And I have the freedom to say what I want and I take that really seriously. All right. My final question for you, the medium of your work has obviously evolved over the past years. Do you think your mission has changed too? And how would you describe yourself? You're kind of a historian now in a weird way, but how would you describe yourself and what you're doing right now? We have an internal...

like mantra, a motto that's on my show, which is that we try to increase the amount of useful information in the world. And I think about that every day in terms of trying to focus on what it is that I'm doing.

I don't know what I would call myself. At this point, I enjoy and am very grateful for the chance to be covering the news at an incredibly important time in our country. And I also tell other

historical and news-based stories on the platforms that I can get. So it's, you know, when I made this change in the way that I work, I asked for forgiveness and fluidity and for none of my staff to lose their jobs. And so far, I've needed all those things. Is there anything else you would want to do, run for office? I know, I think, correctly, were you a landscaper? Yeah.

I was the world's worst landscaper. When I met Susan, it's because she hired me to, like, haul dead things out of her yard. Yeah, yeah, that's a famous lesbian history story, just so you know. It's true. I still have the T-shirt I was wearing when I showed up.

How exciting for you. To pull out those raspberry bushes. Is there anything else? Would you think about running for office? Would you rather just become a historian and do this? No, I don't think... I mean, I'm not a trained historian either. I do have a PhD, but it's not in history. No, I mean, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I've got another season of Ultra in me for sure. I've probably got another couple books in me. There's a bunch of different podcast projects and long-form projects that I want to do. I've got a couple of documentaries that are...

on their way. I've got a scripted TV show that's on its way. I've hopefully got those two movies on their way. I've got all sorts of stuff cooking and I just, I'm just going to do this as long as I can hold out. So a professional shit-stirrer, I see. Yeah.

Speaking of which. I'm sorry, that's me. I'm talking about myself. I hate projecting. I am. I just absolutely projected at you. Anyway, I really appreciate it, Rachel. It's so nice to meet you, finally. Nice to meet you, too. Ever meet in person, but I kind of like to say that. I was just going to say, we have to be careful if we ever meet in person. There's going to be some sort of rift in the universe. Somebody's going to explode somewhere. There's a rift in the universe, and then we shall take the ultimate power that we deserve, so clearly. Yeah.

And we will tell everyone what to do because lesbians should run everything. I don't know if you know that, but they should. Once again, projecting. Once again, projecting. I do think that. I do think that way. I mean, we're very good people. Anyway, all right. Rachel, thank you so much. And I do urge everyone to listen to Ultra. It's really an astonishing podcast and really interesting. And I know a lot about the topic, and I was surprised continually. Anyway, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

As you know, one of the issues we follow closely on the show is the impact of social media and tech on young people. I have four kids, and it's an issue that many parents are worried about, including me. But the experts seem to be divided, so we want to hear from you. I'm going to be talking to clinical psychologist and parenting guru, Dr. Becky Kennedy. You probably have seen her on your social feeds as Dr. Becky. She's being touted as the biggest parenting expert since Dr. Spock, and I want to give you the opportunity to ask her your parenting questions.

What would you like to know about kids in tech? Leave a voicemail at 1-888-KARA-PLEASE, K-A-R-A-P-L-E-S-E, or 1-888-527-2759, or send us an email at on at voxmedia. That's on at voxmedia.com.

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yochum, Jolie Myers, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Kate Furby, and Kaylin Lynch. Our engineers are Rick Kwan, Fernando Arruda, and Aaliyah Jackson. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are instantly dragooned into the militia etherage. If not, you have to listen to Father Coughlin on Endless Loop.

Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.