The “Blockers” Who Tried to Stop Trump, and the “Cowards” Who Chose Not To

Michael Lewis 0:00 I don't think we even know what it feels like to genuinely mistrust our government. There's this sur- there's this surface mistrust. If you take it to a place which is where it's headed now, where it is actually untrustworthy, where you can't eat the food, you can't fly on the planes, I mean, it's a completely different environment.

Speaker 0:17 It is on. [upbeat music]

Kara Swisher 0:22 Hi, everyone. The midterm elections are tomorrow, and if Democrats perform well, President Donald Trump could face a reckoning. But he still managed to inflict a lot of damage in the first two years of the second term. So today, I'm talking to journalists Michael Lewis and Jacob Weisberg. Michael's recent book, Blockers, focuses on the targets of the Trump administration's DOGE purge, while Jacob's book points to those who failed to stand up to the administration's worst instincts. Together, these two can give a clear picture of the scale of damage that Trump's been able to inflict on our institutions, and the work the Democrats have cut out for them if a blue wave truly comes. I think it's really important to talk about these issues. Who stands up and who sits down is part of the critical history of this country and of the world. Who is able to focus in on what counts and on ethics and laws and norms, and who are just try to get while the getting's good? It often turns out to be people like Jeff Bezos and others, who really disappoint us with the way they behave. So let's get into it. [air whooshing] Michael and Jacob, thanks for coming on On.

Michael Lewis 1:26 Pleasure, Kara. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:28 Very nice to see you.

Kara Swisher 1:29 You guys have the most bookend of books right now coming out, um, and I wanted to bring you together. I've known you two for a long time, um, and they're both really wonderful books, and for different reasons. Michael, your book

Kara Swisher 1:41 profiles some of the career civil servants who tried to stand up to the Trump administration and got in DOGE's way, not for political reasons, but in defense of laws and norms. Give us a broad sense of what kind of person you were talking about and how they got labeled Blockers by the administration. It was, in fact, the, the DOGE boys who did that, uh, uh, 'cause I've heard that from Silicon Valley people many times, that word.

Michael Lewis 2:03 You've heard the word?

Kara Swisher 2:03 Yes.

Michael Lewis 2:04 You know it? Yeah, no, that's it.

Kara Swisher 2:05 Yes.

Michael Lewis 2:05 It, so, so it was, um, E- Elon, Elon told his little musk-rats when they went out into the, into the administration to find the blockers and get rid of them, that they, they would be there. And, um, and I'd heard it, I heard it enough from, uh, the s- subjects and potential subjects that they'd been labeled blockers when all [laughs] they were really trying to do was stop the law from being broken, that I thought this was the moment to take that word and turn it from insult, insult to compliment. But who were they? Um, they were civil servants, mostly in their, in their 50s, had been in their careers for... They'd gone through the previous Trump administration without any trouble, most of them. Very non- nonpartisan people who were in, in kind of roles that I think we would all agree we would like to see perform well. Like, I don't know, Kathleen Walters was the, uh, chief privacy officer of the IRS. She's the person between your tax return and an administration that might wanna weaponize it. Uh, Tim Curry was at the Office of Personnel Management, and he, he, he was a sort of, the ref- he was kind of the, the, the fair referee between the civil service and the, and the political class that comes in to run them, and had, had, had so, so, like, nonpartisan that no one knew his politics. To this day, no one knows his politics. And had no problem... Every, every, every administration kinda thought he was on their side, but no one could read him, and had no problem functioning in the government until this administration, and then they essentially, they came and they wanted him to be the rigged ref. Uh-

Kara Swisher 3:27 Right

Michael Lewis 3:27 ... they didn't want that. They didn't want fair refs anymore.

Kara Swisher 3:29 They want the calls in their side of the

Michael Lewis 3:30 They want the calls in their favor, right.

Kara Swisher 3:32 Right.

Michael Lewis 3:32 Um, Francis Collins, I mean, he didn't really stand up. He just got whacked like a mob hit, but he was the former NIH, NIH director who was, who was running a la- just running a lab at, at the National Institutes for Health. Uh, and he was objectionable, not to DOGE, but to other people because he is such a powerful voice for science and for the scientific research project, was they, they were-

Kara Swisher 3:53 So they're all different.

Michael Lewis 3:54 They're all different. They're... And the way they came afoul of the Trump administration, um, uh, or how their work was disrupted or how their careers were ended, it was different. It was different in each case. You glue them all together, you get the full picture.

Kara Swisher 4:07 They were blocking, uh, people, but they really weren't. They were doing their jobs, and they weren't-

Michael Lewis 4:11 They were doing their jobs, and nobody was-

Kara Swisher 4:12 And they wanted to use that term to say they're-

Michael Lewis 4:15 Yes

Kara Swisher 4:15 ... sort of-

Michael Lewis 4:15 Correct

Kara Swisher 4:16 ... you know, you know, "Don't, don't yuck my yum," as the kids say.

Michael Lewis 4:19 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 4:19 Um, [laughs] uh, you know. Um, uh, uh, each... Their, their yum is pretty grotesque. But Jacob, your

Kara Swisher 4:26 book does the opposite. You profile eight people who could have stood up to the administration's worst instincts, but didn't. These are people we know, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Chief Justice John Roberts, Brad Karp, the former chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, of course, my personal favorite. Um, and each of these people had justification for the actions in the Trump 2.0. Did you see common threads in their stories of capitulation and cooperation?

Speaker 4:53 Yeah, and I just wanted to say, Kara, it is a great counterpoint because it, from the same vantage point of early 2025, Michael immediately began seeking out and finding the secret good guys, and I, of course, went for the, the prominent villains. Um-

Kara Swisher 5:06 Right. Right

Speaker 5:06 ... and but I didn't want people-

Kara Swisher 5:08 Or quizlings. I would say quizlings is the word.

Speaker 5:10 Quizlings is a great term. Uh-

Kara Swisher 5:11 Yeah. Yeah

Speaker 5:11 ... Norway, Second World War, the dictator-

Kara Swisher 5:13 Yeah

Speaker 5:13 ... who collaborated with, with Hitler. It's a way of kind of referring to Nazism without saying Nazism, which is kind of what you need to do right now. Uh, but I didn't want people who were pure villains. I wanted people who, first of all, knew Trump was dangerous, and who at some earlier point in most of these cases had stood up to him. So the question was, why having done that, did, in 2025, did they capitulate in these waves? And they were institutional waves because so much of it was about the capitulation, not just of one law firm, but so many of the big law firms, the universities, the tech companies, business and finance. And struggling to understa- understand that, I thought, "Well, maybe let's focus on people who are in some way representative of those different institutions, some inside government, some civil society." Um, and I wanted people who'd changed, and I wanted to try to understand why they'd changed.

Kara Swisher 6:07 Was there a through line for capitulation? Is it just, like, money, or are they tired of being attacked? Or it, was there one through line in any of it, or not?

Speaker 6:17 If you only... If you had to do it in one word, it would be money. But, you know, but I think if you get a few more words, they include ambition, fear, careerism, um, fear of violence. Uh, I think there are a lot of factors that are in play, and it's different with each of these people.

Kara Swisher 6:32 Which each, each of them, but I think-

Speaker 6:34 And each is, is an individual story. And you mentioned Bezos. I mean, I think he's, in a way, the perfect example because in Trump 1, Bezos was a hero I mean, he was a really admirable owner of The Washington Post. The Washington Post was doing what it needed to do to hold a reckless president accountable, and Bezos was doing what he should have done as an owner. I mean, democracy dies in darkness. That was the slogan he wanted on the paper, and Trump took this huge contract away from Amazon, tried to go after, uh, Amazon's postal rates.

Kara Swisher 7:04 He did.

Speaker 7:04 I mean, tried to punish him in every way.

Kara Swisher 7:05 Yeah, he called it the Amazon Washington Post.

Speaker 7:07 Exactly.

Kara Swisher 7:08 It was-

Speaker 7:08 He didn't draw any, any distinction between Bezos-

Kara Swisher 7:10 Yeah

Speaker 7:10 ... himself, and he does own it in a personal capacity. Amazon doesn't own The Washington Post. Um-

Kara Swisher 7:15 Right

Speaker 7:15 ... and Bezos did the right thing, and I thought, "That's the owner they need, and thank God he's there." And then-

Kara Swisher 7:20 Yeah

Speaker 7:20 ... beginning of the second term couldn't have been more different. I mean, he's down-

Kara Swisher 7:23 Right

Speaker 7:23 ... in Mar-a-Lago-

Kara Swisher 7:24 Yeah

Speaker 7:24 ... on, on bended knee, you know, paying what's effectively a huge bribe, $28 million to Melania as a minimum payment for this ridiculous-

Kara Swisher 7:32 Yeah

Speaker 7:32 ... documentary. And, you know, p- underwriting the inauguration and defending, defending Trump.

Kara Swisher 7:38 So one of the things both your books makes clear is the difference between Trump's first and second term. Michael, in your 2018 book, The Fifth Risk, it was about the first administration's indifference to learning how government works. Essentially, we don't care. This time around,

Kara Swisher 7:50 you write that Trump created, quote, "The most energetic and empowered transition team in history." Um, this caught a lot of people you profiled off guard, even though much of what Trump has done was laid out in Project 2025, especially by Russell Vought, who is a character. Why, why were these... uh, weren't these threats taken seriously by many in the civil service sector? They thought they were gonna get Trump 1.0 again, essentially.

Michael Lewis 8:13 I didn't think they... I think they probably thought he wasn't capable of this sort of organization. Uh, it, uh, uh, it, it's... and it really... you make a, a really good point. These two things, I wouldn't have written the book if it was the same thing, right? It'd be the same book all over again. And the f- Trump w- the first Trump administration plays more like comedy almost. I mean, the, the, the, the, th- this sort of like firing the transition team right after he's elected and telling Chris Christie that it'll take an hour for him to figure out the whole federal government, and just having a complete indifference to the whole apparatus that he's supposed to run.

Kara Swisher 8:44 Right.

Michael Lewis 8:44 Uh, this, this time, and this is how he explains J- you know, it might be, kind of explain a lot of Jacob's characters. This, this projected very quickly as a much more successful and an energetic power grab. When I was thinking about it, the frame of my story, of, of the book, it was, this is how it start... it's, it's a power grab, and they're grabbing institutions like quasi-government institutions, like the Institute of Peace, uh or the Smithsonian-

Kara Swisher 9:08 Mm-hmm. Right

Michael Lewis 9:08 ... or, or all those... all the, the Kennedy Center. All these things that were really not meant to be controlled directly by the president, they're grabbing that. Uh, they're grabbing the power of the purse, and they grab the civil service. You know, they, they, it, it- they grab this two-million person nonpartisan workforce, these people take an oath to the Constitution, and started making them take o- loyalty oaths. Um, and so it, it, it... that once you s- think of it, it that way, that it's, uh, it, it, it is a, it's a massive power grab and an attempt to turn this enterprise into a, into a loyalist sort of partisan thing, then you start thinking about, "Oh, all right. How's the government different then?" Like, it, how are these things... you're gonna change the incentives in this massive workforce. H- how is it gonna behave differently when it, I don't know, it does public safety, or when it collects data, or when it's, you know, uh, investing in long-term scientific research, or all the other things the government does.

Kara Swisher 10:01 Right.

Michael Lewis 10:01 Um, and it... you could see it. You could see through these people, you know, that, that the reason they don't belong is that they're doing it the old way.

Kara Swisher 10:09 Right. Right.

Michael Lewis 10:09 And the new way, and the new way is gonna be different. Um-

Kara Swisher 10:12 Right. Abso- you know, I, my kids go to public school here, and there's a lot of public servants, uh, at the public school. A- and the parents were... they looked shell-shocked, you know. And they knew I knew Elon Musk, and they're like, "What is this? Should we turn in this essay of five things?" I go, "Don't you dare." Like, "Don't do it." Like, [laughs] "Just i- he'll forget. Like he'll..." And which, of course, he did. Like-

Michael Lewis 10:31 They never read them

Kara Swisher 10:31 ... they never read them. They... Exactly. I said, "Don't worry about it." And I, I was like, "I hope you don't lose your job, but don't worry about it." Like-

Michael Lewis 10:37 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 10:37 ... you know, but they were shell-shocked. Um, but they were shell-shocked about... and these were very good, you know, ones at the Weather Service, one person. It w- they were all very great jo- important to... one was in agriculture, uh, you know, doing what I thought were important jobs for, for, for the government. Uh, which was-

Michael Lewis 10:53 Can I ask you a question?

Kara Swisher 10:54 Sure.

Michael Lewis 10:54 I want to ask you a question.

Kara Swisher 10:55 Sure.

Michael Lewis 10:55 Why do you think...

Michael Lewis 10:56 how do you think the stereotype of the bureaucrat has been sold so well? I mean, you know these people.

Kara Swisher 11:02 It's ridiculous.

Michael Lewis 11:03 How do you-

Kara Swisher 11:03 It's ridiculous.

Michael Lewis 11:04 Uh, the different... this is what got me jazzed in the first place.

Kara Swisher 11:07 Right.

Michael Lewis 11:07 It's like the difference between the reality when you meet these people and what they-

Kara Swisher 11:10 Right

Michael Lewis 11:10 ... what you're told they are.

Kara Swisher 11:12 Right.

Michael Lewis 11:12 And it's so shocking. Uh-

Kara Swisher 11:14 It's such a difference. Yeah

Michael Lewis 11:15 ... wh- why do you think that difference exists?

Kara Swisher 11:17 Well, I mean, there's, you know, there's movies and TV and, it is, you know, stuff like that. But I think from Silicon Valley, and it's 'cause you had Elon particularly in place there, is they have the idea that, like, "They're in my way. They're, you know, they're, they're in my jam, my vibe," and so they're useless. They're absolutely useless, and they're... all they are are obstructionists. Um, and they just don't... they've never met any, and, you know, they don't think anything works except their ideas and what they do, even though they've ridden on the rails of the government forever, whether it was the internet or Elon getting his loan. They never notice that they're riding on public roads or that they got, you know, any manner of help from the government or universities. It's just all themselves. So they have this idea. But they've always been that way, very disdainful of people who work in the public service. I, I, I, uh, I just think they think they're gods ultimately.

Michael Lewis 12:05 Yeah. Huh.

Kara Swisher 12:05 You know? But let me... Jacob,

Kara Swisher 12:07 one of the reason you said you wanted to write your book was to understand why the guardrails that protected our democracy during the first term weren't holding this time around, and here I want to talk about Mitch McConnell specifically, uh, when he was speaking. McConnell has said Trump's actions on January 6th were, quote, "About as close to impeachable offense as you can imagine," still he voted to acquit him, and if the Senate had voted to convict, we wouldn't have a second Trump administration, presumably. Was his vote that day the, the decisive failure? Did it reveal- That our institutions were already weaker than we ever realized. I think part of this is w- we don't think they're gonna, they're gonna cross the line, and then they just do it. They just continually do it all the time

Speaker 12:45 Well, McConnell, whatever you think of him, is an institutionalist. He's someone who loved the Senate, believes in the Senate, knew how the Senate worked, and thought the Senate was a crucial component of democracy. And so I think the attack on the Capitol on January 6th was just, you know, rocked his world, and he hated Trump anyway, and he said to his colleagues and, you know, a few people, still privately, "But that's it. I'm done with him. It's an impeachable offense," and he was gonna vote to convict. And he could have... I mean, McConnell more than any other single person could have prevented Trump too, because if he'd gotten those 10 votes that were needed for conviction, which he was in a position to get, Trump wouldn't have been... They, they could have declared Trump ineligible to seek office again. So the mystery there is why did McConnell flip? And there were seven Senate Republicans who voted for impeachment. He was not one of them. They were 10 votes short. Um, so the question is why did he, instead of taking that vote and doing what it seemed like he was ready to do-

Kara Swisher 13:42 Or he wanted to do

Speaker 13:43 ... well-

Kara Swisher 13:43 Like McCain did, for example, and just didn't

Speaker 13:44 Yeah, but why did he recess the Senate and then come back and say, "Actually, we can't, we can't convict him because he's left, left office," which was a pretext. I mean, constitutional lawyers don't think that that's, that that's the right reading of the Constitution. And I think-

Kara Swisher 13:59 Mm-hmm

Speaker 13:59 ... it was fear of losing his position as leader of the Republican Party. It turned out, what, what... One of the things that shook out after January 6th... I mean, remember that night after the, after the, uh, Capitol Police reclaimed the Capitol, Republicans in the House and the Senate still voted against certifying the election. And then when they all went home to their districts, what they found was it was Trump's party. And I think what people like McConnell, who absolutely hate Trump, but I think what they found out was they had lost control of the party to the extent that they were either gonna go along with it or they were gonna do what Liz Cheney did. You know, they were gonna become rebels-

Kara Swisher 14:37 Martyrs

Speaker 14:38 ... get, get kicked out. And, uh-

Kara Swisher 14:39 Mar- he didn't wanna become a martyr. Like, correct. That seems something.

Speaker 14:42 Absolutely. He wasn't done. He was ready. Although he was, I would say, had had enough career for anybody at that point, he wasn't, he wasn't ready to conclude it.

Kara Swisher 14:50 Right.

Speaker 14:50 And I think, you know, there's this panic in the face of... I mean, it is a kind of bullying, the things that Trump was saying about him and his wife, Elaine Chao, these kind of racist remarks. And th- there's an environment that has a lot of threat of violence in it. I remember there's a striking comment, um, that Mitt Romney made after, afterwards to McKay Coppins where he said he thought if every senator had the pr- the private security he had, Trump would've been convicted in the Senate.

Kara Swisher 15:18 Ah, see, right.

Speaker 15:18 And it was really physical fear of violence that prevented him from being impeached and convicted.

Kara Swisher 15:23 And coming right after-

Speaker 15:25 Yeah

Kara Swisher 15:25 ... right after the insurrection. So every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Yours comes from MSNOW's host of Deadline White House, Nicole Wallace. Let's listen to it.

Nicole Wallace 15:33 [swoosh] Hi, guys.

Nicole Wallace 15:34 What a coup to have you together. So here's my question: I wanna know, Michael Lewis, what your Blockers think of Jacob's Capitulators? Hmm. [swoosh]

Kara Swisher 15:44 [laughs]

Speaker 15:45 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 15:45 And vice versa. I'd like vice versa.

Speaker 15:48 All right. So-

Kara Swisher 15:48 Go ahead, Michael

Speaker 15:49 ... so I actually know the answer to this question. At le- at least for, for a couple of them because right after Jacob's book, Profiles in Cowardice, let's name the book, uh, came out, Kathleen Walters, the, the, the privacy officer of the IRS called me and said, "There's this amazing new book by this guy named Ja- Jacob Weisberg. Y- you got, you gotta get..." I said, "Jacob Weisberg's one of my best friends." You know, and he, and, uh, so I, I think the ones I've heard from loved his book and noticed his book without me pointing it out to him. Th- they're also connoisseurs of a s- a, a d- a... It's a slightly different situation, but the capitulation that occurred inside the civil service. You could do what Jacob did. It would be a different, slightly different kind of story with the people who were faced with choices inside the civil service. Do you g- do you go along? Do, do you get promoted in exchange for breaking the law, in exchange for violating the norms, in exchange for, you know, violating the spirit of your institution? And you can go from agency to agency and you could find a person who was, like, plucked from eight, eight rungs deep, like, i- in East Jesus, Georgia, doing something ad- administrative-

Kara Swisher 16:53 Yeah

Speaker 16:53 ... and small-

Kara Swisher 16:54 Yeah

Speaker 16:54 ... and made head of the a- agency s- because they signed-

Kara Swisher 16:57 Ooh, and he saw that. Yeah

Speaker 16:58 ... they'd signed the documents. You know, a- and, and that, th- there is that character that really gets under their skin. Uh, so the, the, that k- and kind of rhymes with Jacob's characters. Uh-

Kara Swisher 17:10 Right. Right

Speaker 17:10 ... it's like, "What did you do during the war, Daddy?" And, and these-

Kara Swisher 17:12 Right. Right

Speaker 17:13 ... my characters are all people who, like, made a decision they'd give up their career rather than violate the s- you know, you can get another job, you can't get another soul, is what they like to say.

Kara Swisher 17:20 Right.

Speaker 17:20 [laughs] Uh-

Kara Swisher 17:21 Right. Right. And Jacob, what did-

Speaker 17:22 Well, exactly. And, and, and sadly, I don't have the ongoing relationship with my subjects [laughs] like Michael Hazzard has. In fact, I have no relationship with them at all. You know-

Kara Swisher 17:30 Yeah

Speaker 17:30 ... only one of them even talked to me for the book. And, and-

Kara Swisher 17:32 Yeah

Speaker 17:32 ... none of them-

Kara Swisher 17:33 And one of them can't talk anymore, but go ahead.

Speaker 17:35 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 17:35 Allegedly.

Speaker 17:35 Exactly. But so I don't... But I do know what they think, and I, and I think because I know this situation, which is what, how unprincipled people view principled people, and it's the opposite of what they say. What they say is these people are preening puritans, not realists, you know, are, are kind of, like, standing up for public applause. What they really feel is a kind of ethical envy, a moral envy.

Kara Swisher 18:00 Right. Right. Right.

Speaker 18:01 They know-

Kara Swisher 18:01 So you insult them.

Speaker 18:01 Because they know they've taken the money, they've taken the easy road, and th- and these people are kind of a living rebuke to them.

Kara Swisher 18:07 Right. Right.

Speaker 18:08 And these people don't... And just honestly, the just, you know, this, this book even exists, all you have to do is kind of, like, wave this book and people understand exactly, "Oh, shit, there are people who in this situation actually stood up and did the right thing, and I wasn't one of them."

Kara Swisher 18:23 Uh, and do you think they feel any remorse? And if given a second chance, would any have done things differently for both of, of you? And let me give you an example. I interviewed Tom Tillis relatively recently- And I called him Too Late Tom, which annoyed him greatly. Um-

Speaker 18:37 And he voted for Todd Blanche-

Kara Swisher 18:38 Right, exactly

Speaker 18:39 ... when he was already, he was already g- on the way out. So what was-

Kara Swisher 18:42 Right

Speaker 18:42 ... what was the cost?

Speaker 18:43 Well-

Speaker 18:43 What, would've been the cost of doing that?

Kara Swisher 18:44 Right. But talk about what, what, what... Did they feel remorse for their actions? In, in, in your case, Michael, did they go like, "Why did I do that? How did I... Why did I do that?" Jacob, you first.

Speaker 18:55 Well, the Washington definition of martyrdom is, you know, you're reduced to living on a million dollars a year. Like, it's-

Kara Swisher 19:00 Right. Yeah

Speaker 19:00 ... you know, it, it's-

Kara Swisher 19:01 Right

Speaker 19:01 ... to, to talk about that, I mean, the metaphor is, is actually a little bit inapt. I think the people for whom it has worked out badly regret it. That, that is, I think they don't regret it for the right reasons.

Kara Swisher 19:11 Oh.

Speaker 19:11 Brad Karp has to regret his capitulation, because he lost his job. Now, he lost it over Epstein, but it just worked out badly.

Kara Swisher 19:19 Oh, that. Yeah.

Speaker 19:19 The firm has lost it. Paul, Weiss has lost its reputation. It's now the same as every o- other firm. So many of its most prominent lawyers left, and they have a kind of real Paul, Weiss firm in, in exile. And yeah, they've kept their, their income, but the thing is, when he looks at the other firms that did stand up, and one of them, Jenner & Block, is a very big firm like Paul, Weiss, it hasn't suffered. It's done great. And you know what? People would rather hire a lawyer who's a fighter than a lawyer who kind of surrenders at the, you know, first smell of, of tear gas. So, you know, I think it just, it worked out badly, and I haven't talked to him. He has to regret it, because what he did, you know, failed so badly, but that's not the right reason to regret it.

Kara Swisher 19:59 Right.

Speaker 19:59 The right reason is, you know, not based on hindsight.

Kara Swisher 20:02 I did the wrong... I made-

Speaker 20:03 Yeah

Kara Swisher 20:03 ... the wrong choice. Um-

Speaker 20:04 Did anybody-

Kara Swisher 20:04 Michael, would w-

Speaker 20:05 Jacob, d- has

Speaker 20:06 any, has it worked out really well for any of your characters?

Kara Swisher 20:09 Bezos.

Speaker 20:10 Um, I mean, Bezos in the sense that he's doing what he wants to do, and he's, you know, back in the space race with Musk, and I think it's fundamentally... I mean, Kara was sort of getting at this, but being this new version of himself who's, you know, a, a kind of astronaut and a hero. Um, and so he's living his, you know, he's living his best life. I mean, he hasn't won the competition with Musk. I don't know that he has to win it. Uh, Musk is richer now, but, you know, Bezos has the biggest yacht. Um-

Kara Swisher 20:36 Yeah

Speaker 20:37 ... and, uh, you know, it's so telling. I mean, like, if I wanted a yacht, which I don't. I mean-

Speaker 20:42 [laughs]

Speaker 20:42 Don't give me one-

Kara Swisher 20:43 Mm-hmm

Speaker 20:43 ... please. But, you know, I'd be-

Kara Swisher 20:44 No, probably

Speaker 20:45 ... I'd be fine with the fifth-biggest yacht or the eighth-biggest yacht.

Speaker 20:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 20:48 Right

Speaker 20:48 Why does it have to be the biggest yacht?

Kara Swisher 20:50 Oh.

Speaker 20:50 It can't go under bridges. All-

Kara Swisher 20:52 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 20:52 It's, the only thing is-

Kara Swisher 20:53 Yeah, he has a bad yacht

Speaker 20:54 ... it's the big- it's the biggest penis.

Kara Swisher 20:55 Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, uh, which means one thing. Um, uh, yeah.

Speaker 20:59 [laughs]

Speaker 20:59 So, you were asking my characters?

Kara Swisher 21:00 Yes. Yes. Are they like, "Ugh, God, I can't believe-

Speaker 21:03 No

Kara Swisher 21:03 ... I was ethical."

Speaker 21:04 No.

Kara Swisher 21:04 "Good God."

Speaker 21:04 Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Kara Swisher 21:06 All right.

Speaker 21:06 [laughs]

Speaker 21:06 No, no, no, no, no. I think the kind of people who, uh, who, the chara- who, who, who are, who I write about, generally had sort of figured out how to lead a meaningful life. [laughs] That they, that they were already pretty clear about why they were doing what they were doing, and the minute that, that, that purpose is perverted in any way, they were, they, they knew exactly what they had to do. Now, they've suffered. I mean, uh, that some of them, I, I mean, uh, some of them are still unemployed. Um-

Kara Swisher 21:35 Mm-hmm

Speaker 21:36 ... m- m- all, most of them are poised to come back in. Like-

Kara Swisher 21:40 Mm-hmm

Speaker 21:41 ... if, if, if there is an effort to repair the government, an effort to repair-

Kara Swisher 21:44 Yeah

Speaker 21:44 ... these institutions, they've set themselves up to come back in. Um-

Kara Swisher 21:48 Mm

Speaker 21:48 ... I don't think... I, uh, uh, so no, no, not, not a one of them regrets the, what, what they've-

Kara Swisher 21:53 Mm-hmm

Speaker 21:53 ... done.

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Kara Swisher 23:10 knock-on effects which you two are laying out. Michael, the people y- y- you profile are extremely dedicated public servants. There are thousands like them, as you said, who either resigned, retired, or were fired by the Trump administration. And, um, and Jacob, I see a lot of parallels between your book and the fallout from the Epstein files, the story of powerful people who looked the other way in the face of wrongdoing, or worse, enabled it or participated in it, across, uh, education, politics, finance, law. Um, they chipped away at the m- integrity of these major institutions. Um, uh, first, Jacob, how did their actions seed even more mistrust in our society, and what are the knock-on effects, if any, or does it repair itself?

Speaker 23:49 Well, I just think there's this huge tension between accountability and getting back to normal, and I think we're gonna be right in this issue, assuming Democrats at least take the House after the midterms, because they're gonna have the, the question of, what kind of accountability do we bring? Um, and it includes, uh, the kinds of people I'm talking about in the book, you know, the heads of media companies who made these legal settlements that were, in effect, bribes. These... They wanna look into the settlements with law firms to try to find out exactly what the law firms c- c- uh, agreed to, you know, when they said they'd do pro bono work for Trump and so on. And I think it's really a difficult question. It's a qu- it's a question that societies that go through some kind of democratic rupture have to face. If you put all the emphasis on justice and accountability, you know, you b- the, you, that you may not be able to do what you wanna do, and the Democrats can't-

Kara Swisher 24:39 Move forward

Speaker 24:40 ... move forward.

Kara Swisher 24:41 Move forward.

Speaker 24:41 And but, you know, I think Biden was sort of the example of, "Well, let's not go into that right away. Let's, let's, you know, let's not... We don't wanna look like we're seeking revenge." And he soft-pedaled the justice part too much and waited too long, and justice was never done. So I think it's, I think it's a really interesting and really hard question, but I think that accountability's essential. I think you can't just let Republicans who, you know, voted against certifying the election on January 6th pretend it never happened. I think-

Kara Swisher 25:11 Right

Speaker 25:12 ... there has to be... I'm not saying they should all be prosecuted. I don't think most of them committed prosecutable offenses, but I think it has to be acknowledged-

Kara Swisher 25:19 Mm-hmm

Speaker 25:19 ... before we can get back to any kind of-

Kara Swisher 25:21 Yeah, there is, there is that-

Speaker 25:22 ... democratic normality

Kara Swisher 25:23 ... there is that worry among, that Democrats will be too s- and they think that. I know the tech moguls think, "Well, Democrats won't come after ... us the way Trump did. So Michael, in your case, can they recover? Like, you sort of touched on it, 'cause you may not wanna build it back the same way.

Michael Lewis 25:38 No.

Kara Swisher 25:38 You may have an opportunity to do it in a new, fresh way, for example.

Michael Lewis 25:41 So let's, if we just take the... It's... I think it just depends function to function. So let's take the, let's take the, the pillaging of the, of tax return data, uh, that DHS steals 50,000 tax returns from the, from the IRS to go find undocumented workers. Uh, a- that... I mean, you can't let the law get broken in that way and not go back and prosecute, right? You've got to hold people accountable for, for having violated the, the, the IRS privacy laws. Um, but then you need to reinforce the laws. It feels to me, I'm... Ja- Jacob is a, is more of a political historian than I am, but it does seem to me that it, it feels a lot like right after Watergate, that, that when, when a, a lot of these guardrails around the presidency were placed, they were placed in response to a power grab. And things like restoring and reinforcing inspectors general. I mean, the, the, the, the fact that that happened, that they, uh, re- removed the, the, the, the, the, the chief mechanism for identifying corruption, for identifying waste, fraud, and abuse, and nobody really fought back, uh, I mean, that, that, that's those kind of-

Kara Swisher 26:46 Or could

Michael Lewis 26:46 Or-

Kara Swisher 26:46 Or could fight back

Michael Lewis 26:47 ... or could fight back, right. That's right.

Kara Swisher 26:49 Could fight back, I think is more the point.

Michael Lewis 26:50 I don't mean the inspectors general themselves. I mean the Congress.

Kara Swisher 26:52 No, but I don't think there was... People didn't expect you ha- There was no protection to fight back.

Michael Lewis 26:56 Right. I th- so some combination of public education about what happened in these agencies, like explaining what happened, I think will lead to some natural reform. Uh, but be- I don't know if you c- I don't know how much you can actually do with Trump still in the White House. I mean-

Kara Swisher 27:14 So where does that lead the civil service with an overall ability of the government to function for its citizens?

Michael Lewis 27:20 I mean, m- it's in a... It's messy. Depends on the, it depends on the, which part of the civil service you're talking about. But, but, um, s- here's another example. I mean, right now, Russell Vought is sitting there strong-arming individual universities. I mean, there, there's not a medical school in the country that is not getting a call saying, "You need to fix your, your... We want you-"

Kara Swisher 27:40 DEI.

Michael Lewis 27:41 Yeah, all that stuff. Whatever it is he wants. Um, once you accept that as a principle, it's, the game is over. Like, once you accept that that's acceptable, so y- you've gotta... The, the, those sort of like specific a- violations need to be addressed, and I, I-

Kara Swisher 27:57 Maintained

Michael Lewis 27:57 ... what I don't understand is even if you give the, if even the Democrats take both, both the Senate and the House, h- how much you can do when you have a president who's just gonna veto?

Kara Swisher 28:08 Now, Michael said in an interview, Jacob, once you start generating mistrust of the government, it's easy to de- distort what's going on inside for political gain. And look, mistrust in the government isn't a new phenomenon, and DOGE was excellent, Elon, about distorting what was happening, making things up, and you saw this when they dismantled USAID, casting them as corrupt, all corrupt, or the US Institute of Peace and which Michael wrote about in the book. Um, y- I'd love to... Do, do, do... When you have that mistrust of government, it's very easy for people to be quislings, presumably, and that's where your characters slid into that idea.

Speaker 28:45 I, I think, Kara, the thing that has to happen is s- Republicans have to break with Trump. Not all of them, but some of them. And Michael, you know, Watergate is exactly the right reference point, but the crucial difference is you had Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker, and, you know, you had these Republicans who felt some higher responsibility beyond their loyalty to the president. Most didn't, but enough did. In the f- as in the Tr- in the first term, some, some did. Now they're not. I mean, there's not a single elected Republican who is comprehensively standing up to Trump. Until that dam breaks, and I think it does break if he gets unpopular enough, it's probably pretty close to breaking right now, then you can start to have, you know, some kind of return to truth, as you put it, or accountability. But I mean, I just wanna give Michael another example, 'cause I think it's so... It, it is part of his book, and it fits so well. It's USAID. So USAID was illegally destroyed by, by Musk and DOGE, and in... When the Democrats come back, there are gonna be two things they're gonna wanna do about USAID. One is expose what happened. Why did, why did Elon Musk decide to take a sabbatical to kill three-quarters of a million people? Like, you know, and just, it was... I mean, Congress appropriates-

Kara Swisher 29:58 Or how could he?

Speaker 29:59 Co- Congress appropriates money for USAID. The president cannot say, "I'm gonna close it instead." That's what he did. So there's an investigation that may involve criminality, and it's a proper congressional investigation. But the most urgent thing, in a way, is to get USAID back up and running and, and deal- dealing with all the global health issues that it's, it can't get dealt with without it. And so it's not that you can't necessarily do both things, but there's a tension between it, between them, and an environment where maybe the House can pass a bill, and maybe even the Senate if the Democrats take it-

Kara Swisher 30:33 And, and will

Speaker 30:33 ... and they get rid of the filibuster, can pass it.

Kara Swisher 30:35 Right.

Speaker 30:35 Trump's just gonna veto it, and they're not gonna have a two-thirds majority.

Kara Swisher 30:38 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 30:38 So it's an argument, actually, for focusing on the investigation and the accountability-

Kara Swisher 30:44 Right

Speaker 30:44 ... because even if-

Kara Swisher 30:44 For, first, 'cause they can't do it

Speaker 30:45 ... the MAGA people won't testify, they can do that.

Kara Swisher 30:47 Yeah, they can do that. Now, Michael, in... It, it, it begs the question, even though DOGE is over, uh, the effects and what's to come, because on its face, it, it's an abject failure. It cost the government more money than it saved. You float the idea that cutting $2 trillion in the federal budget was never... It was... I agree with you. I said that at the start. The real goal was about the data.

Michael Lewis 31:04 Can I, can we say that again? Because this is interesting.

Kara Swisher 31:06 What?

Michael Lewis 31:06 I'm curious what you think of this. I, it is...

Michael Lewis 31:09 It, it's a c- it's a funny question, what Elon thought he was doing as opposed to what he said he was doing.

Kara Swisher 31:14 Mm-hmm.

Michael Lewis 31:14 Because if you are actually going to try to cut $2 trillion out of the budget, you can't, you can't do it the way they even... You can't do it if you're gonna ignore the military-

Kara Swisher 31:21 No, you have to go to the military and-

Michael Lewis 31:22 ... and entitlements and all the rest

Kara Swisher 31:24 ... entitlements. That's the only way.

Michael Lewis 31:24 So, so he wasn't trying to do that. He, he was-

Kara Swisher 31:26 Mm-hmm

Michael Lewis 31:26 ... saying he was trying to do that.

Kara Swisher 31:28 Mm-hmm.

Michael Lewis 31:29 And, and th- the, the, th- th- it's not even that clear I mean, if they were really interested in waste, fraud, and abuse, they did a really poor job of finding it. I, that-

Kara Swisher 31:37 Right

Michael Lewis 31:37 ... so it, it, it was-

Kara Swisher 31:38 Or maybe it wasn't there

Michael Lewis 31:39 ... maybe it wasn't there. That's exactly right.

Kara Swisher 31:42 Right. Right.

Michael Lewis 31:42 So then the question-

Kara Swisher 31:42 I-

Michael Lewis 31:42 ... is, like, what does he think he was doing? And-

Kara Swisher 31:45 I think he was... I'll tell you exact- I said at the start, I was like, "He wants the data," because it's never been compiled the way, it, it's across the government, that's one.

Michael Lewis 31:53 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 31:53 Very interested in the data, especially 'cause he was so interested in AI at the time, and Grok and his stuff was, was lagging behind others. And the other is, he got rid of all the government, um, investigations into him. He fixed it to work for him and others like him.

Michael Lewis 32:06 You don't think-

Kara Swisher 32:07 Um [laughs]

Michael Lewis 32:07 ... you don't think that put- putting his friend in s- i- to, in to run NASA was part of his wish list?

Kara Swisher 32:13 All of it. All of it.

Michael Lewis 32:14 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 32:14 Every bit of it was about him.

Michael Lewis 32:15 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 32:15 Like, whatever it was, whether it was getting a sweet, sweet government contract, whether it was m- um, pushing out Bezos, whether it was... You know, it was all about self-enrichment. That's, to me, in terms of... Uh, but specifically, the existential crisis of those investigations that were happening at... If you noticed, all the agencies that were investigating him got ki- got ki- their ass kicked, right? Every single one of them. And so that was one. And, and the other was that he does have this idea about the deficit in his head, and you saw him pop out about the deficit several ti- He couldn't help himself. Um, and he does have this sort of godlike feeling that, that Western civilization is at risk, and he is its savior. He's said that to me many times. Um, and, and so-

Michael Lewis 32:56 But if he actually cared about it, why didn't he do something about it?

Kara Swisher 32:59 Because, well, it's just like, why would you give a share of SpaceX stock to every child for 10 billion rather than just give them the 10 billion? I wonder why. Because he wants to support SpaceX stock.

Michael Lewis 33:08 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 33:09 Like, it's all about the mo- Like, uh, to me, it's all about the money. And let me give full disclosure. He recently challenged me to a sword fight and said I'd go to prison.

Michael Lewis 33:16 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 33:16 So, uh, I, I, you know, I, I, uh, when, only thing I pointed out was what Jacob mentioned, was that there are criminal things attached to these things that the government is looking at. Um, but, but-

Speaker 33:26 Ka- Ka- Kara, I would go a little farther than you even-

Kara Swisher 33:28 Sure

Speaker 33:28 ... if that, that's, and you go pretty far-

Kara Swisher 33:30 Sure, please

Speaker 33:30 ... I, which I appreciate. But think about why Putin's interested in US politics. It's to, uh, it's to undermine the system. It's to... And the sowing distrust that you were talking about is itself the goal. And it's not that he's gonna invade America and, and try to make it a Russian colony. It's that the worse we're doing, the weaker we are, the more room there is for him to do what... And I think there's a version of that that applies to Musk, that, you know, there's this libertarian mindset. He doesn't want the government to interfere. I mean, he wants it to fund a space, a, a, a SpaceX for contracts, but he doesn't want AI regulation, even if a few days of the week he says he does. He wants a weak and disempowered federal government. And what he delivered with... I mean, if you try to make any coherent motivation out of DOGE, I think it's just damage.

Kara Swisher 34:20 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:20 I think it's just saying-

Kara Swisher 34:22 Yes

Speaker 34:22 ... "I want a government that is in less of a position to challenge and constrain me."

Michael Lewis 34:27 It's, so this is, this is kind of the deep level on which Trump and Musk are aligned. They, they, they're both invested in sowing mist- mistrust, that Trump can't function in a trusting environment, that Tru- Trump does better if, if nobody trusts each other, because he's so personally s- untrustworthy, right? It's like it, it's strateg- it's strategy for him. First he-

Kara Swisher 34:46 Everybody's a criminal

Michael Lewis 34:47 ... they, every-

Kara Swisher 34:47 Everybody's a criminal

Michael Lewis 34:47 ... yeah, everybody's a criminal, everything's rigged. So the, the, the, and, and, and so that, that he, he creates a, uh, a pl- an environment in which he can compete when nobody trusts each other. Um, but the government, back to that, like, the trusting of the government, it's such a funny thing. Uh, I mean, Americans, if you ask them, I think they all say they don't trust the government, basically. [laughs] The polls show that. But, but in their behavior, they s- th- they say, "Oh," they do. Right. You, they drink the water, they eat the food, they fly in the air- they fly on the airplanes, they hold the Treasury bonds. That we, I don't think we even know what it feels like to genuinely mistrust our government. There's this sur- there's this surface mistrust. There's this unease about it or whatever it is. But-

Kara Swisher 35:27 Which is a good thing

Michael Lewis 35:27 ... but y- but, but if they, i- if, if you take it to a place which is where it's headed now, where it is actually untrustworthy, where you can't eat the food, you can't fly on the planes, I mean, it's a completely different environment. Uh-

Kara Swisher 35:40 Right. Right

Michael Lewis 35:40 ... uh, so-

Kara Swisher 35:41 Right. Then you become, yes, you become countries that have that-

Michael Lewis 35:44 Yes

Kara Swisher 35:44 ... as a, as a daily occurrence. But do you think h- when you think about th- then DOGE was successful in doing that, right?

Michael Lewis 35:52 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 35:52 In terms of making... And of course, everyone sucked up to him because the world's richest man, and we have this idolatry of innovators and wealthy people, so he must be smart because he knows, uh, cars, right? He must be able to fix this. What, how do you assess DOGE at this moment? Especially 'cause some, and you, you actually focused in on someone who noticed that the government does work. Um, one ca-

Michael Lewis 36:13 Ha

Kara Swisher 36:13 ... one-

Michael Lewis 36:13 Can I tell that story really briefly?

Kara Swisher 36:14 Yes, please. Very quick.

Michael Lewis 36:15 'Cause I thought that-

Kara Swisher 36:15 Yeah. Yeah

Michael Lewis 36:15 ... I thought this was kind of funny.

Kara Swisher 36:17 Yeah.

Michael Lewis 36:17 Uh, so, so Sahil Laving- Lavignia is his name, and he actually came, unlike most of the musk-rats, he came with a- an actual purpose. He was, he was, he had this OCD thing about the IRS sending him paper, like, "Why does the IRS send me paper?" And he thought he could do, that we should all be able to file our tax returns on an app, and he could build the app. But he, he didn't have any particular worshipful feelings towards Elon Musk. They didn't let him go do what he wanted to go do. They stuck him in the VA, and he w- he, and he saw what they were doing in the VA, and he said it was madness. And, and he sort of wandered around in the spirit of curiosity rather than the usual DOGE contempt. And, and in the middle of his reverie, he gets a call [laughs] from an, a reporter at Fast Company magazine, and he makes the mistake of saying to this reporter that, "The government's not quite as inefficient as I thought it was. And a lot of these people in here, they really like their jobs, and they do them well," and that kind of stuff. It was amazing how hard it was to get fired from DOGE. Like, uh, what you c- the, the things you could do and stay in DOGE, you could tweet white nationalist stuff, that JD Vance would stand up himself and protect your job. But if you said, "The government's not quite as inefficient as I thought," your head got whacked off. So he got-

Kara Swisher 37:27 Yeah

Michael Lewis 37:27 ... fired from DOGE, uh, and for, for saying what was, like, obvious to anybody who was wandering around the government. And, and, and he come... But, but after DOGE ... collapses, ends, is a failure, uh, um, he gets called back and invited to actually figure out his app problem. I thought it was sweet, and also I was telling that not, th- that everything in DOGE wasn't just awful, that there were people-

Kara Swisher 37:51 No

Michael Lewis 37:51 ... and there was a possibility. It could have been-

Kara Swisher 37:53 Mm-hmm

Michael Lewis 37:53 ... something so different if Elon Musk-

Kara Swisher 37:55 Oh, yeah

Michael Lewis 37:55 ... was a different character. And, uh-

Kara Swisher 37:57 If

Michael Lewis 37:57 ... but given that p- power, I know, I know, I know.

Kara Swisher 37:59 Yeah.

Michael Lewis 38:00 But that, that-

Kara Swisher 38:00 If pigs had wings.

Michael Lewis 38:01 If pig- [laughs]

Kara Swisher 38:03 Okay. He's not.

Michael Lewis 38:05 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 38:06 What, 100% less ketamine? Sure, why not?

Michael Lewis 38:08 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 38:08 But no, the, he, they are unqualified to do this job-

Michael Lewis 38:11 They weren't qualified to do the job

Kara Swisher 38:12 ... end of story.

Michael Lewis 38:13 Yeah, yeah. But they-

Kara Swisher 38:13 Period

Michael Lewis 38:14 ... but, but they had a mandate to do stuff that actually-

Kara Swisher 38:17 Yeah

Michael Lewis 38:17 ... could've been useful to do. And-

Kara Swisher 38:19 Well, that's why a lot of Democrats went along initially, like Ro Khanna and others.

Michael Lewis 38:23 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 38:23 I, I texted him, I go, "It's not gonna work, uh, but go right ahead and support it. Like, it's not, uh, trust me"

Michael Lewis 38:28 One, one of the odder strains of the stuff that came into me about Musk, he, Musk wouldn't talk to me, but I talked to his friends and, and they were kind of adamant. They would say, it's, th- they would say basically this, "You, if you're gonna understand Elon, you have to understand that Elon doesn't lie." And I said, "What on earth are you talking about? Like, he, e- everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie." And, I mean, he-

Kara Swisher 38:52 Yeah, hello, he lie, yeah

Michael Lewis 38:53 ... yeah, he li- Yeah. But, but they said, "No, he doesn't think he's lying."

Kara Swisher 38:57 That's, that's correct.

Michael Lewis 38:58 And that's interesting.

Kara Swisher 38:59 That's true.

Michael Lewis 39:00 I mean, that's-

Kara Swisher 39:00 Different

Michael Lewis 39:00 ... it's, it's different, it's, uh, it's m- more unsettling. Uh-

Kara Swisher 39:03 He's, he lies to himself. He doesn't lie-

Speaker 39:05 D- different from Trump.

Kara Swisher 39:07 Yes.

Michael Lewis 39:07 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 39:07 Yes.

Speaker 39:07 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 39:07 Yeah.

Michael Lewis 39:08 Trump-

Kara Swisher 39:08 Trump knows he's lying

Michael Lewis 39:09 ... do you think Trump knows he's lying? I probably not.

Kara Swisher 39:10 Not now. He used to.

Michael Lewis 39:11 He used to.

Kara Swisher 39:12 Not now.

Michael Lewis 39:12 Right.

Kara Swisher 39:12 He used to. So let me, g- you know, 'cause

Kara Swisher 39:15 it goes higher, 'cause people who don't, who are more like, "How did you do this?" Jacob, you save Ch- Chief Justice John Roberts at the end of your book, uh, who of course wrote the majority opinion in the court's 2024 presidential immunity decision. He's also overseen the court's shift to conservative super majority. Their decisions have undermined his mantra that justices are just calling balls and strikes. What, what sets Roberts' failures apart from others you write about, and what happens when the American people stop believing the justices are applying the law evenly?

Speaker 39:42 Yeah, I think Roberts is, in his own mind at least, an institutionalist, too. Like Mitch McConnell, he cares about the respect for the court and the credibility of the court, and I think a lot of the bad decisions he's made, either not taking cases or not ruling on cases, like waiting a year and a half to rule on birthright citizenship, is actually to avoid confrontation with Trump, where the, where the law and the Constitution are totally clear, although the birthright citizenship case amazingly was a five to four decision. But, um, I think he's wanted to protect it by avoiding a conflict, the Supreme Court has no army, it can't enforce its decrees. If Trump actually w- went so far as to defy the court, you would, that would be a real constitutional crisis. But I think he's also had his own agenda, which is he wants a much more powerful executive. He didn't particularly want a more powerful Trump. Again, I don't think he necessarily has any sympathy for Trump at all, but he's had this version of, you know, the unitary executive-

Kara Swisher 40:40 As many of them do

Speaker 40:40 ... get rid of congressional control over the independent agencies, which they've now done, you know, after 150 years. Um, and that immunity decision was sort of a case in point. I mean, this, this decision is a cat- cat- catastrophe because it essentially says that there will be no way to hold Trump legally accountable for any crimes he commits in office-

Kara Swisher 41:00 Mm-hmm, or after

Speaker 41:01 ... even after he l- leaves office. And that, I think that would be a catastrophe in our American democracy in any time or place. But to rule that way just before he comes back into office, you know, the self-pardon, nobody talks about Trump pardoning himself anymore. He wouldn't need to. He's unprosecutable under that decision. And even if you, as Justice Roberts, believe that is what the Constitution says, that the only way to ever hold a, a president accountable is through impeachment, couldn't you wait a little bit on that decision until you had [laughs] somebody else in office, or Trump on the way out? Because you are giving total impunity to the most dangerous person who's ever been president in 250 years of American democracy.

Kara Swisher 41:42 Yeah, that's a fair point. [upbeat music] Support for this show comes from Framer. If your team wants a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship, check out Framer. It's built for exactly that. Framer is the pro AI website builder for creators, teams, and businesses that want a professional site and care enough to get every detail right. Agents and humans work in tandem. Agents bring speed and scale, while people bring taste, judgment, and control. Their agents solve the gap between AI-generated ideas and production-ready website work. They work in the same place where the real site is designed, managed, reviewed, and published. With the help of agents, teams can streamline collaboration on the same canvas, build custom code components, create and manage CMS content, optimize SEO settings, and ship everything all in one place. You can join the world's leading brands like Perplexity and Miro, who rely on Framer for their website building. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist, or get started building for free today at framer.com/kara for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/kara for 30% off. framer.com/kara. Rules and restrictions apply. [upbeat music]

Kara Swisher 42:55 What you're talking about is this idea of reckoning, right? Where the Democrats are in a strong position to take the House and possibly the Senate, we'll see. Um, and, and when they get back, there's these ideas they're gonna investigate and I, they're absolutely w- law, ethics, uh, they're gonna have subpoenas, everything else. Um, y- I think they'll try, I have said, I think they'll try to pick off people like Elon Musk or Pete Hegseth. Um, uh, for, for each of you, what does a reckoning look like? First you, Michael, what is the reckoning here, or is there no reckoning at all?

Michael Lewis 43:24 I mean, it depends on how intelligently it's done. But if you were going to actually, if you, if you b- gave me a magic wand and said You get to orchestrate hearings. You get to orchestrate investigations. Where would I, where would I p- where would I point the magic wand? I'd start, I think, with things that are easily understood by the public, and so I'd start with the money. I'd start with pardons, like, like, uh, the sale of par- of pardons. I, and an- I would do that... What you just said. Like, the, the, the financial corruption would be probably the place I'd start because it, because who could object to that kind of thing? Um, what I would privately love to see is actually an investigation of what happened in the, in these individual agencies, because I don't think-

Kara Swisher 44:05 Mm-hmm. With DOGE

Michael Lewis 44:06 ... uh, uh, every... With DOGE, but not just DOGE, though. Uh, but, but, uh, you know, I'd love to know what Howard Lutnick's been up to. Uh, you know, it's, the, but it would be, uh, that, that I think that, I think that ex- it, the, it starts with actually understanding what's happened, 'cause I don't think... I mean, I got to dive into some of these places, but most of this stuff has not been written about. And so it's, the, I think there is an, an, there's a, like, just what happened kind of thing, but that's slower and that's l- it's, it, it will be harder to sell to the public. The f- going after the financial corruption, in particular the pardons, I think the pardons are easily, like, like-

Kara Swisher 44:41 Yeah

Michael Lewis 44:42 ... popularized

Kara Swisher 44:42 The pardons and the financial cor-

Michael Lewis 44:43 Like

Kara Swisher 44:43 ... corruption. Is that gonna be enough for the public in that regard? Does it... 'Cause, 'cause I personally I think doing a big Trump impeachment's stupid. Like, it's not gonna work, and you go for the lower-hanging capos, I guess. I don't know what else to call them, essentially.

Michael Lewis 44:57 I don't know. Jacob, what do you think? I don't have very many interesting thoughts on this.

Speaker 45:00 I, I think they've gotta go very big picture. I mean, I think the-

Kara Swisher 45:02 Oh, okay

Speaker 45:02 ... January 6th hearings were the great example, where they told a narrative. They were all on the same page. I mean, the tendency is gonna be for five different committees to go in 50 directions, and there'll be time-

Kara Swisher 45:13 Right

Speaker 45:13 ... to investigate all of that. But the beginning, they have to create a kind of master narrative, and I, I think it is about corruption. I mean, you could frame it as how did the Trump family make $2 billion in 12 months? Um, you know, I th- I agree with Michael that the pardon indus- the pardon for sale industry in Washington is so shocking and encompasses so much, including the story of the crypto corruption. I mean, if you had to take one, the, uh, the, the pardon of CZ, you know, the, the crypto billionaire who tr- when he was pardoned, that Trump said he didn't know who he was, and someone asked him. He couldn't remember who. Um, and this is someone who's at the heart of the family self-enrichment. But I think you need that big picture. And again, the most important thing is to get some Republicans to come aboard. January 6th, they had Liz-

Kara Swisher 46:00 So doesn't, doesn't that help Trump?

Speaker 46:02 ... Liz Cheney.

Kara Swisher 46:02 Doesn't that help Trump? He loves confrontation. He loves the circus. That's how he, in a lot of ways he got back with the prosecutions in New York, where he can cast himself as a victim of government evil, essentially.

Speaker 46:13 He'll do that regardless, and he's not gonna... No one's gonna testify, no one in the administration. The Democrats aren't gonna get any help from the re- Republicans on this. But if they can find a few centrist Republicans, the equivalent of the Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, they gave that committee so much credibility even though the Republicans, the party, were boycotting the hearings and wouldn't assign members to it. The leadership said no, but because they peeled off a few brave Republicans, it had a credibility that I don't think it would have had-

Kara Swisher 46:42 Although none of whom are-

Speaker 46:43 ... if it was purely partisan

Kara Swisher 46:43 ... serving, none of whom are serving

Michael Lewis 46:45 Kara, Kara, if I give you-

Kara Swisher 46:46 Go ahead

Michael Lewis 46:46 ... the magic wand-

Kara Swisher 46:47 Sure

Michael Lewis 46:47 ... what, what do you do with it?

Kara Swisher 46:48 Sure.

Michael Lewis 46:48 What do you do with it?

Kara Swisher 46:49 I don't... I, I, I, I pick, I... Musk, Musk. Make a, make a, make an example and see what he did, see what he did there. And of course, as you said, the financial corruption. I think this, the crypto stuff is great. The pardons are great. The self-dealing, that kind... Look at... Because if you're gonna t- restore people's trust in government, showing them, you wanna show them you can be able to improve their lives. And investigating figures like Hegseth doesn't necessarily do that, but if you could show accountability and then actually pass legislation that helps people, to, to me, that's where you get the best bang. And unfortunately, you're gonna have to leave behind some of these people never getting justice, right? That's just, it's just the way you're gonna have to accept it is m- it might tickle your fancy, but I don't think you're gonna get it. That's my feeling. Like, I just don't think it's gonna work. And Musk is gonna slide his way out of it, as he always does.

Michael Lewis 47:39 I mean, I assume Musk will have pardon, a pardon along with-

Kara Swisher 47:42 Pardon, that's right

Michael Lewis 47:42 ... yeah.

Kara Swisher 47:43 Yes. Yeah. So, uh, finishing up just a couple things. You both have talked about the idea of capitulating to Trump and not capitulating to Trump, and many people feel the tide is turning away to capitulating from Trump. I'm not so sure. Uh, but then you see p- regular people, m- many of whom Michael writes about, like a grand jury declined to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, speaking about the January 6th investigations, 'cause she had very strong testimony. Do you see more people, Michael, like yours, or Jacob, do you see

Kara Swisher 48:15 [laughs] more people continue to behave like yours now that, now that maybe Trump is possibly in the rear view mirror?

Speaker 48:22 I think there are more kind of examples that make me smile. The abs- the Cassidy Hutchinson one was a good one, and the, and the media, the broadcast media standing up for CNN and boycotting the press pool on the days when it's CNN's turn on the roster. You know, that's the kind of... I think to stand up to Trump effectively takes a kind of institutional solidarity, and the media's actually showing a little bit of that right now, much more than it did when the AP was attacked at the beginning of the administration over the Gulf of America. Um, and I think, I think it would be different now. I don't think the law firms would bend in the way they have. At the same time, they're not, it's in this interim place where Trump is weaker. There, there's more resistance at the margins. But where are the Republicans?

Kara Swisher 49:07 Michael, what about you? Because look, Paramount just accepted a million, a billion dollars from Elon Musk.

Michael Lewis 49:11 I mean, the economics of it are changing, right? That it's, as, as, as Trump weakens, people's decisions will become, uh, more enlightened.

Kara Swisher 49:18 Correct.

Michael Lewis 49:19 [laughs] Right?

Kara Swisher 49:19 [laughs]

Michael Lewis 49:20 Uh, but, but you know, obviously, but, but the other thing is collective action kind of, it, it takes coordination, takes time. The, the response is slower than, than you would like. But, but if you go into, like, the NIH right now, the researchers, the individual researchers have organized themselves to protest their own management. And, and, and it's, it started with a trickle, and now it's a flood. Uh, so I think I, I'm kind of, I'm kind of hopeful actually. I th- and I think that w- and once you name the thing, once you do what Jacob did and you say, "Look what the, th- th- this is what you don't do," and once you name the thing in the way I did, "This is what you do do," and it, it is a moral decision, and it is, it is made clear, I think it's easier to make the right decision.

Kara Swisher 50:01 Yeah, I think you're... I agree. When I was on the playground the other day, one of the parents who was all worried about the Musk stuff, w- who I advised them not to do the thing, um, came up to me. I said, "How's it going now?" And they go, "You know, fuck those guys." [laughs]

Michael Lewis 50:12 [laughs] There we go.

Kara Swisher 50:13 And I went, "Good."

Speaker 50:14 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 50:14 I said, "Excellent way to approach it." And he goes, "I'm doing a good job. I'm fine. I'll be fine." And I was kind of feeling happy for him 'cause he, they, you know, th- they had real fear. So my last question, um, it, at one... I want to leave it on a hopeful note actually, that, which is, this is one. At one point in the book, you compared the Trump administration to a meteor. You write, "It killed off an entire species and made room for new ones." It's good for us, not so good for the dinosaurs. Um, there's an opportunity to rebuild the system in a way that's more functional, more modern. What has to happen to take advantage of here's a fresh start through destruction, essentially? Um, Jacob, you go first, and then Michael.

Speaker 50:50 Well, I think, you know, uh, Trump's not always wrong about what's broken. I mean, take the, the IRS. I mean, think about how convoluted the tax system is and how hard it is to pay your taxes. He was, he was wrong obviously about e- I mean, I don't believe there was any sincerity about fixing it, but if you look in the many of the same places Trump looked, whether it's government or, you know, in the nonprofit sector or the private sector, I mean, the universities had plenty of issues, and Trump, you know, correctly identified, uh, a bunch of them. But they have to reform themselves. And I think in the best case scenario, the Trump episode is over, and cooler heads come back and say, "But that doesn't mean everything was great before. We had tremendous inequalities and failures in our worlds, in our systems, and let's think about a more plausible reform scheme." But that, it, even to say that, God, it sounds so idealistic, and it's so far from where we are. But that's where I would hope we would get to over a period of time.

Kara Swisher 51:51 Yeah. What about you, Michael?

Michael Lewis 51:52 You know, this sounds kind of woolly-minded, but I think everything starts with public education, and it starts with public attention and interest. And so the silver lining here is Trump sort of electrified the material. Like, nobody cared about the government. You know, n- nobody paid it any attention. People... It was on, it was a train on a track, and no matter what you threw at it, it just kept going down the track. And now I think there's a sense that no, actually, the train has derailed [laughs] and, or the train's interesting all of a sudden. So I, I do think this is, like, a, th- this is a moment of, for public education. It's like one national, great national civics lesson.

Kara Swisher 52:25 It is.

Michael Lewis 52:25 And, and, and-

Kara Swisher 52:26 It is

Michael Lewis 52:26 ... hearings in Congress can be a mechanism for getting stuff across. So I think that's the, I think that's where I, when I think about where you start, you start with that. Let's teach.

Kara Swisher 52:35 Yeah.

Michael Lewis 52:35 Let's get people interested in this so that then there is a c- there's a political marketplace for the kind of reform-

Kara Swisher 52:40 Yeah

Michael Lewis 52:40 ... that makes sense.

Kara Swisher 52:41 I, I think they are. Young people... I was just at the University of Michigan. My son, my second son is there, and they are talking about policy. All the kids were talking about housing, Medicare for All, all these issues, which, uh, before my sons were like, "Ugh, the government doesn't work" And now they're like, "Here's what it takes to work" I- which is a big difference.

Michael Lewis 52:56 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 52:57 Right? But does that mean for all these people, the quislings and the heroes, does... What is the one

Kara Swisher 53:04 thing besides biology that needs to put Trump fully in the rear view mirror? 'Cause biology is undefeated, FYI.

Michael Lewis 53:11 So he, he runs on fear and anger. Uh, I mean, I think the, the, the, his political movement, the fuel is anger. And, uh, so I mean, it, the, the deep answer is how do you address people's feelings of grievance? But the, the shallow answer is I think that if you can... The, the minute the, the wicked witch is dead, the minute he feels like he's not popular, the, I think it could turn so spectacularly. When people are no longer afraid, they'll discover their courage. Uh, so, so I mean, I think it's just like, it, it's happening. There's a, like-

Kara Swisher 53:44 Yeah

Michael Lewis 53:44 ... public sentiment-

Kara Swisher 53:45 Yeah

Michael Lewis 53:45 ... is turning. And you're not as, maybe as hopeful as I am about this, but I think that he, he, that, that, that we may wake up a year from now and say, "How, how did that happen?" Like-

Kara Swisher 53:54 Right

Michael Lewis 53:54 ... "Why did anybody ever listen to him?"

Kara Swisher 53:55 Like McCarthyism early.

Michael Lewis 53:56 Yes.

Kara Swisher 53:56 You know?

Michael Lewis 53:56 That kind of thing.

Kara Swisher 53:57 Yeah.

Michael Lewis 53:57 Yeah.

Speaker 53:57 And we need that J- the Joe McCarthy moment, I mean, that, you know, "Sir, at long last have you no, no sense of shame, no sense of decency?" I mean, hon- uh, uh, but Obama almost got it with the Cheesecake Factory-

Michael Lewis 54:08 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 54:08 ... designed by Saddam Hussein. I mean, you know, there's just gonna be some distill- some funny distillation that just-

Kara Swisher 54:14 Yeah

Speaker 54:14 ... just reveals that the emperor has no clothes. That parable, you know, it only works if everyone maintains the lie. And I agree with Michael. I'm, I'm hopeful that it's gonna crumble, but I've, I've... My predictions have been wrong so far, so I almost don't believe myself about my instincts about what is likely-

Kara Swisher 54:34 Yeah

Speaker 54:34 ... to happen in the next year.

Kara Swisher 54:35 Well, there is one sign of that, $500 million Elon Musk is spending. He's scared out of his mind.

Speaker 54:40 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 54:41 Even though-

Speaker 54:41 Yeah

Kara Swisher 54:41 ... that's just a tiny amount of money. And to me, that says a lot. The, the flying car and the $500 million, I'm like-

Speaker 54:47 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 54:47 ... "Oh, man, you're fucking scared, aren't you?" Like, that to me is the whole, "Ah" You know, that kind of thing, the jazz hand.

Michael Lewis 54:53 More like a h- little hopping car.

Kara Swisher 54:54 Well, n- it doesn't fly.

Michael Lewis 54:56 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 54:56 I'm not, I'm not, we're not going into this.

Speaker 54:57 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 54:57 I c- I, I need to stop people-

Speaker 54:59 Ha

Kara Swisher 54:59 ... from calling it a flying car. Anyway, I really appreciate. These are wonderful books. They... You should read them together, everybody, because they really... Besides them being best friends, which I didn't realize, uh, you should read them together 'cause they're really great bookends on, on those who are heroes and those who are not, and, and what that means. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 55:16 Thank you, Kara.

Michael Lewis 55:17 Thanks, Kara.

Speaker 55:17 It's great talking to you.

Kara Swisher 55:18 Thank you. Today's show was produced by Vicky Vergelina, Michelle Aloi, Katherine Millsap, Madeleine LaPlante Dubé, and Megan Bernie. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Rose Marie Ho, Jim Mackle, and Manolo Moreno. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Quan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, you're a civil servant, emphasis on civil. If not, you're a musk-rat, ew, and more spineless than Mitch McConnell's reanimated corpse. Oh, I said it, so what? Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and Us. We'll be back on Thursday with more. [upbeat music]