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Deep State Rebels v. Trump (with Michael Lewis) · Pod Save America

• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I just wrapped a great conversation with Michael Lewis. He
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: is an author of the new book, Blockers, Rebels in
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the Deep State. It is a conversation that not just
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: about what happened when Doge tried to run roughshod over
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the government, but also the people inside who fought back.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: And there are a lot of fascinating stories and lessons
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and ways that we should be thinking about how not
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: only to repair the damage, but build something better going forward.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And just loved getting to talk to Michael Lewis, and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I think you'll like it too.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: It's good to see you. John, good to see you.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: The book is enraging.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Is it? Yeah.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: It was fun to write. It wasn't making me angry
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: as I wrote it.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Well, that seems sort of your quality. So I want
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: to start with Colin O'Brien. He's the head of security
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: for what was then known as the U.S. Institute of Peace.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: What happened when Doge tried to gain entry to that building?
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: In a word, he watched. And he's at a security,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: and he's a more interesting character than that. He presents
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: as like an NFL lineman just to look at him,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: but he's like a college professor in his head. He
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: watched Doge basically rearrange– all the guns on their side.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: So that he thought, first, he thought the Institute of Peace,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: it's not really part of the executive branch. It's a
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: congressionally created organization, and it has got funding from the
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: US government, but it owns its own building. It's a nonprofit.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: They didn't think of themselves as actually answering to the
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: White House in any way. So it's weird when Doge
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: shows up and says, we're taking this.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's also very small, I think. But people are like, oh,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it's the Institute of Peace. They associate it with USAID.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: USAID is Vast compared to what the Institute of Peace is,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred people.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a $ 70 million budget or something, some of
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: it privately raised. And Colin assumed, well, he has a
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: private security firm that works for him. If the federal
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: government tries to invade his building, he can call the
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: DC police before he knows it. He is actually the
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: most successful in repelling Doge because he lasted a few days.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: But before he knows it, the private security firm has
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: been blackmailed by the Trump administration and turned. So they're
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: working for the Trump administration. The DC police sign on.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Whatever diabolical thing they did with the DC police, it's unclear.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: But I loved it as a kind of opening of
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the book because he was physically trying to block them
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: from getting into the building. And in the end, like
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: they get the building. I mean in the end, it's
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: now not the– it's not the US Institute of Peace anymore.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: It's the Donald Trump Institute of Peace.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's such a– obviously, this is why
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: you start the book with it. You're very good at this.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: But it's a signal example, right? Because he's on solid
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: legal ground, right? These people don't have any right. They're
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: just doge. It's like they're coming to your house to
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: take your house. Right. They're just people off the street.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: They're very aggressive. They act like they own the place, right?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And he says, no, you can't come in.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: And they're 26 years old.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Right. They're these kids, right? No, you can't come in.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Then they bring an FBI guy with them. And that
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: person isn't really there other than to facilitate. He says, no,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you can't come in. The private security firm, the reason
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Trump is able to, the administration is able to get
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: this firm to be part of their efforts to take
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: the building is the Institute of Peace has a very
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: small contract. The State Department has a a contract that's
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a hundred times the size, their money is at stake.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: So now all of a sudden, because of that contract,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: not for any legal reason, they're suddenly on the side
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of Doge. And yet still this guy, O'Brien, he locks
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: them in the portico of the building and he physically removes,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: this is a shocking story.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: The third, about the third assault, the third assault, he figures,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Colin figures his only vulnerability is there is one lock
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: on the building that actually a key will open that
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: he can't shut down with the press of a button
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: on his phone. There's one key that's out there. It's
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: in the hands of someone who works for the private
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: security firm. Nobody knows it's out there. He assumes that
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: the guy at the private security firm will just keep
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: it a secret, not use it. But they wake up
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: one morning and the private security firm has broken in
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: using that key to get in. And Colin watches them
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: on the cameras and they all get into a single
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: room in the front of the building. And he realizes
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: he can sort of seal it hermetically shut. So imprison the,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: imprison the invaders. And there's, there's a, there's a, it's
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: a wonderful scene where he, they realize they're locked in
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: and trapped. And so the Colin, Colin's people call the
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: DC police and say, we have trespassers and, and come,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: come and get them. And the, The guys who were
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: trapped called their bosses and resulting in a call from
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Ed Martin's office from– I mean it's like it escalates
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: inside the Trump administration.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: He was the US attorney at the time.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: The US attorney at the time. And in the end,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: DC police do in fact come but they come and
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: they're working for the Trump administration. And it is– so
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: here's the bigger point of the story. Actually, this is
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: what got me interested kind of thinking this was a
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: book because it was such– if you think of Trump won.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Trump won the first administration. Its signature was indifference and ignorance.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Like he didn't care at all about running the government.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: He fired his transition team right after the election. He
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: told Chris Christie it would take him an hour to
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: learn how the federal government worked. He just didn't care.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And I think Trump too comes in and they care
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: more than any administration has ever cared in a funny way.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: They're extending– their power into places that doesn't belong. They're saying,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: we're not only going to run the stuff that we're
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: supposed to run, we're going to take stuff that we're
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: not supposed to run. And, you know, the Institute of
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Peace is set up under Reagan and it's set up
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: to be really– it's not for the president to control.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: It's at arm's length from the American government for a
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: very specific reason. It's set up to– as a kind
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: of instrument of soft power to be able to go
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: out into the And facilitate conversations between warring parties without
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: it being the US government. Sort of quasi-government kind of thing.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And it's done this very successfully. I mean, you know,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: it's like if you go to the Pentagon and ask them,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: are you glad that this place exists? They would tell you, yes,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: it saved us lives and saved us money. It stopped conflict.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: But it only works if this isn't seen as instrument
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: of American power. It's a nebulous kind of thing. And legally,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: they own their building. It's just really clear. The Trump administration,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: what it showed was not only are we going to
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: take everything we can, we're going to show that not
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: only are we going to run everything we're supposed to run,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: we're going to take everything we can and we're going
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: to show people as a kind of statement, we can
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: do this. And we're going to worry about the law later.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So it was– I mean it's blatantly illegal, but it's
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: working its way through the courts slowly.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Right. That is what is sort of stunning about the example.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And I do want to talk about some of the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: ways in which there were aspects of the Project 2025
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: critique that were agreed to by people within the government.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: But part of the reason I say that is because
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: at a certain point, if we're not following the law,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: it really is about who has the keys.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: And the guns.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: And the guns in the basement.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: This is right.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And when the cops show up, Who do they point
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: their guns at, right? Whose side did they take? It
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: becomes about people.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: It's very elemental.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: And here at this place, this institute created by Ronald Reagan,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: supported in a bipartisan way for a very long time,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: you have this security guard basically trying to use the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: physical building to keep Donald Trump out. And he can't.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And he ultimately can't.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: And he can't. And so it is, I think, because
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: no shots were fired, I think we ignore the importance
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: of who has the guns. But Doge was very aware.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: The Trump administration was very aware. We don't want these
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: security guards with guns pointing out at us. We don't
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: want the D.C. police. And that just happened without anybody
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: saying much about it. It's interesting. It's outrageous that the D.C.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: police turns itself into an arm of the Trump administration.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: It's outrageous that a private security firm. It turns itself
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: into– but it's– so that's– I think the very beginning
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: of this story of transforming the presidency from one thing
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: into another, from extending the power of the president, turning
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: the two-million-person civil service into– from a nonpartisan workforce that
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: takes an oath to the constitution, not to a person,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: into– a sort of loyalist operation who was meant to
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: serve the personal narrow interests of a single man. Um,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: like all of that, those changes are just, they're just
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: profound changes. And, um, but, but it all starts with,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: we have the power, like we have the guns and
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: we're going to eliminate the law. We can eliminate and
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: we eliminate fairness. Like we eliminate all the referees.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That, And I do think there's two things happening
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: at once in parallel that get mixed together. One is
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: a shocking and aggressive assertion of executive power either at
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the edge of or in the border between legal and illegal, right?
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Just trying to push executive power in new ways or
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: ways that haven't been used in a very long time.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: because of kind of norms and institutional prerogatives and deference, right?
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And then on the other side, you have just lawlessness
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and just, we're going to go in and do what
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: we want. And the faster we go, the harder it
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: will be for you to catch up to us with
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the courts and all the rest. And those things, I think,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: both are playing out here and playing out across the government.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: But I think it's interesting.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: You talk about this difference between the first term and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the second term. So in the first term, Chris Christie
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: puts together this transition team. Trump fires him, doesn't need him.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: It's neglect. It's indifference.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: It's ignorance. fundamentally different in the second term. And you
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: say in the book, the Trump team blames bureaucracy for
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: their failures, when in reality, their agenda was undermined by
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: their own ineptitude, right? That they chose people with little
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: management experience to run these agencies. And then we're dumbfounded
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: by their failure to be able to kind of yoke
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the machine, get the machine to do as, as to their,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: do their bidding.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Were you in the White House when they came in
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: the first time?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: No, no, I was, no, I was out here. I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: was hosting a post-in. I see.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Okay. Because there are people in the White House who
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: tell you that I can remember stories from the fifth risk.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I wrote a book about the Trump one where like
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Jared Kushner is being, is bewildered that everybody's leaving the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: White House. They thought they just stayed, you know, that
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: they did the level of They just– I don't know
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: what they thought. It just ran on autopilot or something.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: But the level of indifference the first time was incredible.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I mean did that– that I went and got the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: first briefing to be got about how the nuclear arsenal
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: was run because they didn't go bother to do it,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And so this time– and the
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: subsequent complaint that like whatever– Trump didn't have any great
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: policy plans. It's not like he came in with a
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: great plan and then it didn't get executed. He came
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: in without any particular interest in doing anything except the
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: dog caught the bus. He got to be president and
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: surprised him. But he wasn't there for any particular purpose.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And so the idea that like there's this deep state
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: that undermined him was insane. But that's– it's a line
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: they started to peddle very hard towards the end. And
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: it is true that when he broke the law or
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: when he sought to do things that were illegal, that
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: there were– people, there were mechanisms inside the civil service
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: to get in his way. And he didn't like that.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: But that's kind of a separate thing.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: But you see this playing out in all kinds of ways, right?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: He says, like, if you don't let me put my
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: name on the Kennedy Center, well, it's just going to
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: go to pot and then we'll have to tear it down, right?
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And no one's saying that the president can't institute a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: plan to repair the Kennedy Center, just have to do
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: it competently and legally according to the rules, right? The
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: frustration of the kind of shambolic, lawless effort leading to
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: roadblocks and therefore the deep state is stopping us becomes
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of the basis for what Doge does.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:44
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  Speaker 1: to talk about Howard Lutnick because I think with Howard Lutnick,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you see both, uh, the neglect and ignorance and the, uh,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: kind of aggressive destruction. That's sort of, I think the, the,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the kind of marries the two, uh, What happens when
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Howard Lutnick takes over at Commerce? And how did that
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: impact an agency that has very rarely been seen as
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: sort of political, which is the National Institute of Standards
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and Technology, NIST, the place you go to find out
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: what time it is exactly?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Yes. So NIST is one of those agencies every American
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: should know about just because it's fascinating. Established in the
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: early 19th century or late 19th century to– To just
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: make it– to create– it's called the Bureau of Standards.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Like there are arguments about what a yard is or
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: what a pound is. And if you traveled America in
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: 1902 and you tried to buy a pound of butter,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: you found that the pound was not a pound anywhere.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: And so it starts that way. The character in the
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: book who is– who carries the water for the story.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: is a fellow named Alex Merenguides who invented an entire
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: fire science inside of NIST. He invented the science of
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: wildland urban interface fires, you know, palisades.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: The fires that are the fires we're all talking about.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. He's like, how do you study these things?
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And how do we defend ourselves against them? Getting quickly,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: just to set this up. So NIST, why is NIST
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: doing that? In 1904, there is a.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: The Great Baltimore Fire, which becomes the Great Baltimore Fire
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: because when a fire starts in a warehouse and fire
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: trucks come from surrounding areas, the threads on their hoses
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: don't match the fire hydrants in Baltimore. So they can't
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: put out the fire and it just spreads. It's kicked
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: to NIST to create a standard for a fire hydrant
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: and a hose. So that's how they get into fire.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: The reason your smoke detectors are where they are and
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: they work the way they work, the reason your sprinklers
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: are where they are and they work the way they work,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: the reason buildings are designed with exits where they are,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: all came out and NIST did a lot of the
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: original research. It's filled with these tinkerer types. It's kind
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: of a– I mean it twists the dial on the
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: kind of person who works at NIST and they end
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: up in some academic science department. But they like to–
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: they're handsy. They do stuff. They do stuff. And Alex,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: the character in the book, came to NIST because– And
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: he had been one of the world's great fires– big
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: fire experimenters. He set fire– he worked for the Navy,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: set big fires on ships to see– to test various
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: retardants and how you would put them out. So he
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: had the experience with setting huge fires and getting information
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: out of them. When the World Trade Center– in 9-11,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: when the World Trade Center falls, NIST is assigned to
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: figure out like, why did it fall? Like, why did
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: those towers fall? They weren't supposed to fall. And the
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: arguments were that the fire could never have gotten so
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: hot that it melted the steel beams. And Alex has
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: brought in, he recreates, he rebuilds floors of the World
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Trade Center and sets them on fire. And he's, he's
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the reason we know, he's one of the, part of
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: the reason we know why the towers fell. Because the Jews. Yes.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Because, no, God.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Sorry. You just had to say that. You just had
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: to say that. So this is all backstory because you
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: need to know this. Howard Lutnick is, I mean, it's
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: kind of a downstage voice in the book, but, Alex,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: you know, and the point of the story of Alex is,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: so he comes to NIST in 2002, thereabouts. And he
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: has enough flexibility to invent. Like, he knew he wanted
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: to invent this new science. He knew he wanted to
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: go study big fires and wiped out communities and see
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: if he could create new standards of how you build
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: communities or design communities to make them more defensible.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So just one example that comes from the book, this
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: is the kind of thing where no one has to
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: be doing this work. Exactly. It's just good that they are.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: So for example, where should people clear things that can
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: burn from their houses? Well, clear it away from the house.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: How far away?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: How far away? Well, it turns out that actually those rules,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: which are common sense, you're moving stuff away from your house,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: but towards your neighbor's house.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: That's like a small example from the book of just
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: a smart guy thinking things through on our behalf.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: When you walk through his suburban Maryland neighborhood with him,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: and by the way, what he would tell you is like,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: we spend a lot of time talking about West fires
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: out here. He said the East is the tinderbox. He
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: said that all it takes is six weeks of dry
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: and of no rain, and the East Coast is waiting
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: to go up. So he says, you walk through one
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: of these neighborhoods and you see it in a completely
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: different way through his eyes. You'll see a wooden fence
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: that runs the length of a block. He'll go, that's
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: how the fire is going to travel from that house
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: to that house. That fence is a really dangerous thing.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And it's all fallen out of this research he's done
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: basically by himself. Very small team at very little expense.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And he's been doing it. The point of his story
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: is that, and this is, I don't want to undermine
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: your point, but.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: No, please.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: The point of the story is that it isn't just Trump.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: It's that we have– that the way we run our government,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: it's made it harder and harder for people like Alex
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: to do what they do. When he starts, he's able
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: to use the NIST fire lab just on the side
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: when it's open to just throw some trees in and
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: burn them and see what happens kind of thing. He
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: creates this science sort of like in his spare time.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: That's how it begins until people start to see how
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: valuable it's going to be and then he gets some
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: proper funding. But But five years in– this is an example.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: This is an example of how government gets kind of kludgy.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Five years in, at a NIST lab in Colorado, someone
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: has an accident with plutonium. It triggers a congressional investigation,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: which triggers all these new rules about experiments. And Alex
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: then– when this downtime in the NIST lab, which happens
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: in the spur of the moment, he now needs to
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: get six signatures to get– to run an experiment. So
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: his life had gotten a little harder and harder and
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: harder until you get to Trump II. He was able
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: to keep doing his work until he gets to Trump II.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: And he gets to Trump II. He's already kind of
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: tired and worn out. And Howard Lutnick comes in and
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: NIST is inside the Department of Commerce. And by the way,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Howard Lutnick lost his whole firm in 9-11. One floor
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: up from the building.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: The floors that Alex– Just floors up from– yes. That
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: he modeled.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Alex actually explained why Howard Lutnick's whole firm died. Howard
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Lucknick doesn't see this connection, but there's a connection between
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: these two people. You would think in a perfect world,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Howard Lucknick would know exactly about this research. He would
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: know all about the Department of Commerce. He'd go in
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and shake Alex's hand and say, what do we need
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: to do to help you?
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Or at least when he gets the job, you'd think
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you're excited to go meet the people that work for
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: you because it's a job. You have a job now.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: You're going to go do your fucking job.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. So Howard Lucknick is the reductio ad absurdum of
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: a bigger problem. And it is that We stopped asking
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: what qualifications should a person have to run one of
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: these federal agencies. It's very weird what they get tested for.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Did they know Jeffrey Epstein? That's sort of– I mean
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: you don't want them to know Jeffrey Epstein. But you
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: really want to know that they know what's inside the
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Department of Commerce. And you really want to know that
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: they can run this sort of organization. Some felt experience
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: with the things the Department of Commerce does, the weather
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: service or whatever it is. That would help. It's remarkable
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: how we install people to be the temporary heads of
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: these places with enormous power over them without knowing anything
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: about them. So Howard really knows nothing about the Department
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: of Commerce and he doesn't care. So what he does
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: is he arrives, doesn't really show in his office much.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: He's in the White House all the time because he
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: wants to be with Donald Trump. But at the same time,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: insists on micromanaging what's going on– the Going on in
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: commerce by proving checks. It's just like anything over $ 10, 000
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I have to sign, which just shuts things down because
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: he's not there to sign them. They're like lines of people.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: He shows up in the evening for an hour and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: there are lines of people outside his door waiting to please,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: could you just look at this and sign the check?
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Alex's credit card is taken away. He can't buy supplies
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: for his lab. It basically grinds him to a halt.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And he was already at a point where they're making
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: it so hard. I'm exhausted. I can't do the work.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And so he leaves. He leaves. And funny enough, I
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: can tell you the code of this. So Alex left
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: about a year ago. But he was so worried about
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: the research. The research is research that will save our lives.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: It's the research that will help us defend against this
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: coming threat, this growing risk. And he says, like, that
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: knowledge that we created, it's one person deep. Alex had
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: a young assistant. He's trying to kind of jam into
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: the young assistant's brain all he needs to know. But
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Alec kind of needs to be there. So for the
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: last year, he's worked for free just before he leaves
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and goes back to Greece where he came from. And
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: he said to me, he just read the 20,000 words
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: in the book about his fire science. And he said,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: nice job. He said, but I'm going to have to
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: go turn in my laptop because I'm sure they're coming
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: for me now. And it was– he's afraid that He's
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: afraid that just the public exposure of the consequences of
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: the way they're running this thing in the person of
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: him is going to cause trouble for NIST in him.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: When it really should, it's going to cause someone to
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: come and get rid of Howard Lutton and get someone
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: in there to run the place. But it's incredible. I
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: don't know what your like just broad view of the
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: government is as opposed to politics. But whenever you kick
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: around the government, you find all these Alex Maranguitis. You
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: find all these people who've got some weird expertise who
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: are doing something that you might think in the back
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: of your mind the market would do. Like you might
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: think like the insurance industry would be doing this. And
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: they kind of do a little bit of it. But
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: in fact, no. The market, especially with public safety stuff,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: The market is terrible and the government does all this
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: great stuff and it's usually someone like Alex who has
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: just an obsession with the problem and he sees how
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: big the effects are going to be if he can
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: solve the problem and he goes down the rabbit hole
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and he works 100 hours a week and he doesn't
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: get paid very much and he could be being paid
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: way more in the private sector and doesn't even expect
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: you to cheer for him. He doesn't even want attention.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: He just wants the freedom to solve the problem. And
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: that we as a society have created these obstacles and
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: that the Trump administration comes in and sees it says like, oh,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: that's deep state. It's insane. It's insane.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You look at the moments where there are these innovations
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: or discoveries or sort of promising research that produces results
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: like this. And it is these sort of moments of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: small groups of people with the freedom to maneuver, try things, right?
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: You can talk about DARPA, you could talk about the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, but startups that make incredible things, talk about
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Facebook at the beginning, whatever. And it's a group of
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: people with a passion and a freedom to explore their
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: ideas and no one kind of watching every, you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you don't want to waste money, but no one watching
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: every dollar and every little penny that goes out the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: door whether that's because they're independent or that there's leadership
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that has enough trust and respect for what they're doing,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: trust in and respect for what they're doing to give
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: them the space to operate. And one example you have
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: in the book is that long before Trump shows up,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: there used to be a travel agent.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I forgot about that.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: There used to be a travel agent. And the travel
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: agent worked for this department.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: For NIST. For NIST.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: And so when you wanted to go look at a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: forest fire or go to a research lab or whatever,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: you would call this person and say, hey, I need
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: to do this trip. And that person would say, all right,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: let me get you the information. And so in order
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: to quote unquote save money, they cut that department. And
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: now the scientists have to book their own travel and
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: they have to go to seminars where they learn about
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: how to save money on airplane tickets. And you may
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: be able to show on a ledger somewhere that some
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: money was saved. But in the end result, the government
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: is less efficient and less effective. And the The people
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: that you have presumably hired to do– to provide their
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: comparative advantage now have to spend more time doing administrative tasks.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And you see that fucking everywhere.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: You see it everywhere. And at the bottom of it–
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: there's probably something at the bottom of what I'm about
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: to say. But at the bottom of it, it's this–
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: it's so– once you start generating mistrust of government– It's
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: so easy to distort what's going on inside of it
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: for political gain to point to and go, look at
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: how outrageous it is. They have a travel agent inside
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: of NIST.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: You don't have a travel agent.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: They have a travel agent. They have a travel agent.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: And the fact is you want them to have a
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: travel agent because you want them doing the science. You
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: don't want them learning how to book airline tickets. And
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: it's– we have paid an enormous price for people just
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: not understanding what the This cyclone of mistrust that has
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: spun up and then it just gets– ends up like
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: running through the government and hitting whatever it hits willy-nilly.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: And it creates this– I mean, one, it creates the
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: travel– the elimination of the travel agent. But in the
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: minds of the people who are working there, if you're
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: there– I mean, not everybody in the two-million-person civil service
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: is great. I'm sure there is waste. Of course, there's waste.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: There's not a lot of fraud because they get watched
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: so close. It may be fraud perpetrated on the government
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: by American citizens. But the idea that people in the
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: government like stealing a lot of money from the government,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: that's probably unlikely. It is inefficient in ways.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Contractors are making money.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's why, I mean, it's a fair question,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: like why we subcontract so much, why we don't have
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: the capabilities inside. But the over and over in these
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: things I've written about the government, I didn't go looking
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: for like the rare person who was doing something good.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: They're all over the place. People who who bust their ass,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: who really have a sense that like they want their
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: lives to mean more than just like they made money
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: for themselves or they got famous. They want to serve.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: They care a lot about the democracy. They care a
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: lot about whatever thing they're doing inside the government, whatever
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: specialty they're practicing. And they really just want to keep
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: their heads down and do their work. And the idea
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: that whenever they look up, They're seeing a more and
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: more hostile gaze. It's like the best of them are
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: the best among us. And if you treat them with
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: this kind of cynicism, you're driving out something that's just
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: essential to the society. It's like, why should I bother?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: You know we're going to become Greece. Why should I
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: bother throwing my weight into something that's going to help
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: the collective? if I'm going to be punished for it.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Right. Doing work that might make more in the private
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: sector or with the skills and talent that could get
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: a much more high-paying job, but instead choosing to do this,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: maybe one of the perks is, yeah, there's somebody that
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: helps you with the travel so that you can– right?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: There are advantages to working for the government that come
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: with some prestige and some respect, if not money, especially
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: when The rounding error that is NIST, the rounding error
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: that is the U.S. Institute of Peace compared to like
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: when people talk about where our tax dollars go, right?
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It's interest, Pentagon, healthcare, and social security.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Can we talk about this for a minute? Because it
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: is interesting to me. It's interesting to me what the
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: difference between what Doge and the Trump administration this time
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: around said they were doing and what they are doing.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Because what they said they were doing in the very
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: beginning was we're coming to cut the deficit, right? Elon
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Musk said we're going to cut $ 2 trillion out of
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: a $ 7 trillion deficit. But then he ignores interest payments
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: on the debt, military, and entitlements, which is about 75%
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: of the budget. So it's mathematically impossible to cut $ 2
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: trillion out of this last little slice he's attacking. What
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: he's attacking is a nonpartisan civil service that does lots
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: of other things. And– and then doing it in a
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: kind of very haphazard way, cutting things willy-nilly, firing people willy-nilly,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: not really for cause, just because fire whoever you can
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. And so clearly, this is not a
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: stupid person. Clearly, the way he went about it was
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: not going to achieve what he said he wanted to achieve.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: So either he is a stupid person, he just really
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: didn't know, and he was like, an attention-starved, drug-addled attempt
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: to do something and he wasn't thinking about it. Or
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: he was actually trying to do something else. And what
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: is the something else then? Like what did they actually–
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: assume for a minute they got what they were after
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: as opposed to it was one giant failure. And I
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: think that what they have done is so– They've traumatized
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: the workforce, the government workforce. They have eliminated a lot
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: of the checks on presidential power, firing inspectors general. The
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: referees are all gone.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Also, culturally shifting what is acceptable for a president to do.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's sort of like
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: if we can do that– we've established we can do
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: this so we can do anything. And they've created– What
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: it really is were the preconditions for a big power grab.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: That was what it was. And I'm not sure they
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: were smart enough to think that way, but it's possible
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: that's just what this was. And all the noise about
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: we're going to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, that was
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: just noise. They actually never thought they were going to
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: do that in the first place.
• 34:01
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• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I do think a little bit of this is looking
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: for your keys where the lights are shining. This is
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: where they can make trouble. It's actually very difficult. At times,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: he's talked about cutting entitlements. At times, he said he won't.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: There's obviously not a lot of good politics there. in
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the Paul Ryan style of entitlement reform. He's made all
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: kinds of claims about cutting taxes, which he's done, right?
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And about cutting the debt, which he has, of course,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: not done. By the way, you know how much the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: debt has grown in his first two years? Three and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: a half trillion dollars.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: And by the way, any big gains you would have
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: potentially gotten, right? Like there's some debate as to where
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: there is going to be legitimate savings from Doge, legitimate
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: meaning like actual long-term reductions in what they're spending, which
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: is going to be dwarfed by not just payouts to
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the people that were fired in the first year, fine,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: that's one year. The IRS has been gutted. We're not
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: able to do the auditing. And by the way, people say, oh, well,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: this is the amount that was coming in on audits
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and that's gone down. What about all the people that
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: are taking a flyer on a risky tax scheme because
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: they're pretty sure they're not going to get caught?
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: That's money.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: It's hard to measure what that cost is. So I
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: want to talk about- It does get measured. I mean,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: when they came in, it was already like $ 600 billion.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: It's not insignificant, right? So you're right. It's just going
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: to grow. All I mean by that.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is there's the actual amount coming
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: in because of audits and that's going down. But then
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: there's the kind of amorphous number of how many people
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: are just paying less in tax, right? And they can
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: take an estimate of that, but we'll never fully know
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: exactly how much has been lost because somewhere there's a
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: A person who's like, I don't think anybody's going to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: read this thing.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Here's another tax loss. It's an interesting one. So one
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: of the things they did, and it was a sin,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: is DHS, ICE, asked the IRS for the tax returns
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: of undocumented workers. There's a separate file of about 7
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: million people, and it's got the best information on their
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: most recent home address. It's supposed to be sacred and private.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: It's supposed to be as private as citizens' tax data.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: We've been telling that population for 30 years that file
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: your taxes and it will help if you decide you
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: want to become a citizen one day. And no one
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: will ever use any of this information against you. It's
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: generated hundreds of billions of dollars. dollars in taxes that
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: people have paid. We now know that they actually took
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: this data and went and used it to grab people
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: in their homes. If you're an undocumented worker, what are
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: the chances that you're going to pay taxes now? It's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: just It creates a climate of such mistrust. It's so poisonous.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: And once the mistrust starts, I mean, I keep thinking
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: of Greece. It's like the Greeks don't pay their taxes.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Once you start to lose the sense of the collective purpose,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: it's amazing how quickly it can unravel. Why should I
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: pay my taxes? Yes. Nobody else is paying their taxes.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It's going from a high trust to a low trust society, right?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And that's his MO. It's so Trump. That when I
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: think about, I mean, Trump is not a huge part
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: of this book, but he's hovering in the background. He's
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: like this gas everywhere. And when I think about how he, like,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: if you're going to try to kind of predict what
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: he's going to do, he's going to find where there's
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: trust and try to destroy it. And he might not
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: think quite this way, but his blizzard brain operates this way.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: He knows at some deep level that if he doesn't
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: do well in a high trust environment, Because he's so untrustworthy, right?
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: So if there are eight of us in a room
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: and we all trust each other, we'll quickly realize that
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: this is the guy. This guy is just lying all
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: the time and we won't want to deal with him.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: If he can somehow get us all to mistrust each
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: other as much as we mistrust him, he's on a
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: level playing field and he's ruthless in his ability to
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: operate in an untrustworthy way. He has an advantage. So
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: he's sort of like instinctively hostile to places where there's trust.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: And you know what's odd is if you said to people, like,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: do you trust the government? They'll say, oh, no, I
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: don't trust the government. People trust the government every which
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: way still. Of course. In their revealed behavior. They drink
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: the water. They eat the food. They hold the dollar.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: They invest in treasury bonds. People still basically trust the
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: government even if they say they don't. And they act
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: as if they do. He's coming for the trust. And
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: you feel it. You feel it right through the book.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Every section has that feel like, oh, he's just undermined
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: something I used to just take for granted. I used
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: to just take for granted that my tax return wouldn't
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: be weaponized against me.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a name for this.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Is there?
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: There's a name for this idea that before you eliminate
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: a rule– Even if you can't.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: Chesterton's fence. Yes.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Chesterton's fence.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Are you impressed?
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: I'm very, that was crazy.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: I am impressed.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: But basically.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Can you explain Chesterton's fence?
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: So. The Chesterton fence idea is that, I think it's
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: GK Chesterton. It was in response to some numb nut,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: probably doge-like movement inside the British government. But if someone
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: comes in and tears down a fence and the fence
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: actually served a purpose and Chesterton said, it's okay to
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: come down and tear down the fence. But before you
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: can tear down the fence, you need to know why
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the fence was put there in the first place.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Then you can tear it down.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Because even if you can't tell why it's there, even
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: if it's not blocking anything today, there was a reason
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: this fence was built.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: And it may still be– have a purpose. Right.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: And so why is it that we have a rule
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: where– you can file your taxes even if your income
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: is from breaking the law. It's because we want the revenue. Yes.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: And we want people to file their taxes and pay
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: taxes even on illicit gains. Yes. And by protecting that,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: that brings in more revenue. There's a function to it.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: There's a value to it.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: And when you play with those fundamental things without enough
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: understanding or care, you do real damage. And that is
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: what they do over and over and over again. Either
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: by ignorance or ideology, they don't care what the rule is.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: They don't trust that the rule was made in good purpose.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And so they just eliminate it. And then we live
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: downstream of those consequences. When you see a story like there's, uh,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: lettuce contaminated by cyclospora, for example, are you just at
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: the point where you just assume that that is because
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of the effect of Donald Trump? Or do you think that, that, that,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that underneath a lot of these signals, these sort of
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: more acute examples, a lot of the functions are still
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: working and shit just happens to lettuce and otherwise.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Some combination, I wouldn't blame him for everything. In that case,
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I think you can trace it back to, um, the
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: reduction in the number of inspectors, of the FDA inspectors.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: And I do, I got to say, when I was
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: on a casting search for this book, it was very
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: easy to cast it. I had a choice for each section.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: But this was the public safety section. And Alex Maranghetti
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: is the fire, my fire science guy ends up being
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: the character. But while I was roaming the government, looking
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: for who I might write about, one of the people
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I did interview was the head of the former head
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: of the FDA food safety division. And he said bad stuff.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: This is before the lettuce and the cyclospora. But he said, look,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: this is bad stuff is coming. I can tell you
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: that they're doing it in a way that is just not,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: it's just not going to work as well. And a
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: lot of good people are being run out. So it's not,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: there is a connection. Of course, there is a connection.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Tell me if you think this is dumb. I mean,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: you know, the book has a frame. And the frame is,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: The government does– we all basically agree with a possible
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: handful of people who've read too much of Ayn Rand.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: We all agree that there's some things the government needs
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: to do because the private sector won't. The private sector
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: won't make long-term investments in scientific research, research that won't
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: pay off for a very long time. The private sector
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: just doesn't do that. The private sector– probably won't generate
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: a useful military that's better than a government to do that.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: The private sector won't actually invent a new fire science
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: to protect us from wildland urban interface fires. So there
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: are these things that the private sector won't do. You
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: can kind of carve these things up into these buckets,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: like there is a public safety bucket. There is the
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: science bucket. There is the data collection bucket. The private
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: sector won't do the census. It won't collect climate data.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of stuff like that. And what interested
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: me was to wander through the Trump administration, the second
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Trump administration, and ask how, when you turn the executive
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: branch from what it was to what it is now,
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: from this nonpartisan sort of task-oriented thing into a loyalist
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: operation serving the interests of Donald Trump, how does it
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: affect the different functions? And it's a little different in
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: each case. It's not all one story. And so that's
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: the frame of the book. So my question is, do
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: you think that's a dumb frame or do you think
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: it's an interesting frame? Do you think that way about it?
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: So I think it's an accurate frame for describing what
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: you describe in the book. I guess what I was
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: thinking about, so there's this moment where this guy, Tim Curry,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: he's at the Office of Personnel Management. He's Liked by everybody,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: it seems.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Management-like. Trusted by everybody. Trusted, trusted. Unions liked him. He
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: actually has some street cred, bipartisan street cred. Everybody, every
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: administration thinks for some reason he's secretly on their side.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Right, which is an incredible talent for somebody at the
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: intersection of political appointees and career appointees.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, an important intersection.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: And as you say this in the book, that he
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: sees Project 2025. And one of the things that Project
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: 2025 talks about in between some ridiculous ideological bullshit around
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: the deep state is- hey, the civil service is rated
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: as being 99% effective and only 0.1% performing poorly.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Right. Come on. Yeah. That's absurd. It is absurd.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: There are too many bureaucratic hurdles to giving people good feedback.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Too many managers are not holding standards.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: And that's something this guy agrees with. Yes. And it's true.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: It is true.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: And yet the hard work of addressing that problem is
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: not something the administration's interested in. And so when he's
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: in this job, And he doesn't get the– who comes
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: knocking on his door? It's not the authors of Project 2025.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: It's a bunch of fucking doge twerps who seem to
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: have absolutely no idea what anyone at this place does,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: but they're sure it's unimportant or at best it's destructive.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the way they go about cutting the workforce
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: is interesting. They're just told cut it how you can
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: cut it. And they don't address the basic problem, which
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: is it has gotten– it is too hard to fire people.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: It's too hard to hire people. They do need protections.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: If you're going to have a nonpartisan workforce, they do
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: need some protections because you can't have the Republican coming
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: in and firing all the Democrats and the Democrat coming
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: in and firing all the Republicans. And the truth about
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: the workforce is that– I mean most of them are
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: not– they're not living their politics in their job. They're
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: usually– the politics is like that's not a part of it.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: But instead, the Doge people go from place to place
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: and they figure out pretty quickly– That while it's very
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: hard to fire someone with civil service protections, it's not
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: at all hard to fire people who are the so-called
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: probationary workers. And that's people who have been in the
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: job for like two years or 18 months for a
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: short time. So it's a pool of people. It's quite
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: a large pool of people who have only been around
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: for a couple of years. Now, who are those people?
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: They're the young people. This is exactly who you don't
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: want to fire. And they're people who have been brought
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: in because there's some immediate problem. They have some special
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: skill that is of the moment. They fire these people. Now,
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: it's actually against the law what they did because you're
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: supposed to only fire these people for cause. What they
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: did is they went from place to place and say
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: you're all fired for cause, which was demoralizing to talk
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: about taking a thousand idealists and turn them into cynics.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: If you're like this young person who wanted to work
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: in government because you wanted to give back or you
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: wanted to help or you had some skill that would
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: benefit the society and you're doing well and you get
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: told you're being fired for cause, I mean, it's offensive.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: But they did that. He started– Tim Curry watched that
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: and he realized I can't– my job is to adjudicate
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: fairly the disputes between the political– and it's a naturally
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: fractious sort of environment. That border between the political people
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: who come in to run it and the permanent civil service.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: And by the way, like a tension that is irresolvable.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: It is a real– the spoil system where they could
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: come in and fire everybody, didn't work. They create the
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: civil service in response that it has problems. There's no
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: perfect answer for how to staff a government that is
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: run by political people but ultimately has to provide continuity.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: It is a deep challenge.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: It is a deep challenge. Yeah. But he realized what
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: I loved about Tim Curry is that he seemed to
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: be able to weather any political change. Like Trump 1
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: didn't faze him at all. The Trump people thought he
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: was just great and that this thing is so different.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: He realizes that his job is to ensure that the
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: tensions don't escalate, resolve disputes before they get really ugly,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: to preserve the sense of fairness. And it's his whole life.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have a family. He doesn't have a cat.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: He works 100 hours a week. Everybody trusts him. He
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: has a physical response. His heart rate goes up. His
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: blood pressure goes up. He actually thinks, I physically don't
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: survive in this environment. He could have survived any other environment.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: And I thought it was just, it's the canary in
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: the mine shaft, right?
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: And he doesn't sign off. He refuses to sign off
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: on firing like 7,000 people for cause, right? That's fundamentally.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: And I think, weirdly, the thing that drove him over
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: the edge- was when Elon Musk or the Doge people
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: sent out that email to the two million person workforce saying,
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: list the five things that you did last week that
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: were useful. Which sounds like, I guess if you work
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: in a private company, you think, oh, why are they
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: upset about that? Like we get that kind of thing
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: in the private sector all the time.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I would say if you got that in the private sector,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: that is so stupid. I just, that is so insulting
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: and stupid and trying to solve, like if you believe
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: that you're at an organization where no one is doing
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: anything and everyone is lying to you and the managers
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: aren't managing and the staff isn't working and no one's
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: telling you the truth, that your only solution is to
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: ask every single person what they did last week, you're
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: so far gone from like actually being able to solve
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: a problem.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: Positive America is brought to you by Walmart. Walmart keeps
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: prices low for 150 million Americans every week. They help
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: families save on food, clothing, school supplies, and countless other
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: necessities in every aisle. In fact, Walmart's great value product
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: line saves shoppers up to 35% every year compared to
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: national brands. This means families have more to spend on
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: pizza nights, birthdays, and all the moments that matter. Because
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: when Walmart says save money, live better.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: They mean it.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Learn more at walmart.com slash save money.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: I want to come back to this idea of private
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: sector versus public sector because it's like that's just laziness.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: At root, that is I don't want to do the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: hard work of going through and meeting with managers, talking
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: about individuals as individuals, what's working, what's not. I want
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: to do it. with a cleansing fire. And like that
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: to me is what this problem was.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: They didn't even read the emails. Right. So, I mean,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: and the amount of disruption, I mean, in the extreme case,
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: what does a spy do when he gets that email?
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: What does someone who is in the sensitive part of
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: the IRS and looking at people's tax returns do? What
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: do they do? There were stories, I mean, just to
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: the IRS, like some huge number of people at the
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: IRS don't have a computer. So the stories of in
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: IRS center, you know, processing centers, like lines forming at
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: the computer terminal and you have to wait three hours
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: to answer this question. It was, people took it seriously.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: They were told to take it seriously, except in a
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: couple of places where Trump's appointee said, don't answer. Like,
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: I think maybe the Pentagon did that, but it's, yes,
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: it's stupid. Yes, it's insulting. And, but Tim, you know,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: he knew the whole workforce and he knew just how
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: much trouble that was going to cause. how counterproductive it was.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: And he's the person who they should have gone to
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: before they sent it out. He would have saved them
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: the trouble.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: You can imagine a completely different version of Doge where
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: there's a team and over a few weeks, they go
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and they meet with department heads and they get, you know,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: they go department by department and they say, hey, like,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: you know, your last report said that your workforce is 99.9% effective.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: We think that's probably a little bit of an exaggeration.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: We believe it isn't. We're going to go through and
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: do a 10% cut everywhere. And we really want, we
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: will do it if you don't do it. I don't
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: support doing it this way, but you would get like-
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Much better way to do it. You cut 10% or
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: we'll cut 10%.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: And then we would need, and give us a report
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: as to where and why, and we would love to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: know that and we'll go through it. But they don't
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: They do it in this ham-fisted way.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: And just to come back to a question you asked
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, which is, how do we choose these
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: people to run these departments, right? That we ask if
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: they're in the Epstein files and you shouldn't be in
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the Epstein files, but are you interested in these topics?
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Do you have experience in these topics? Do you have
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: management experience? And I actually, you look at- Do.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: You even want to be there? Are you really coming
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: because you'll get you a ticket to get to the
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: White House and hang out with Donald Trump?
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Right. And by the way, look, there have been times
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: when we've had, I think of like the best and
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: the brightest and these sort of business leaders that all
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: knew each other from college and these prep schools, these
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: high and mighty guys coming in and sort of with
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: these arrogant perspectives on how the world should work. But
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: they were at least civic minded and they were curious, right?
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: And they had a sense.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Of purpose, right?
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Like, do you need the person that runs the commerce
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: department to have a deep knowledge of weights and measures? No,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: you don't. And actually, you could just be a person
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: that was an incredibly successful... Howard Ludnick. He's a very.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Successful business, right?
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Like not him, he's a dipshit, but like somebody that
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: had his expertise, but actually the kind of style of leadership,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: I think the public associates with civic minded corporate leadership
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: who said, you know, I don't know what you do here,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: but I'm a great manager of people. I wanna understand it.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: I wanna help you guys do your job better, right?
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: Like that is not inconceivable.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: But instead Howard Ludnick has a butler who brings him
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: fancy meals into secure compartmentalized information facilities. I mean, that's extraordinary. Yeah.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Like what, what yet? No, what that's, this is,
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: and we're not even, but, but beyond that, why don't, why,
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: why don't we know this already? Like, why, why is
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: this just assume tolerated? What it's, it's, it's, um, it's
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: demoralizing for the people who put their lives, throw their
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: lives into the business. I don't know, predicting the weather
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: or figuring out what a pound is or stopping wildfires
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: from To have someone– Or protecting data at the IRS.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Or protecting data at the IRS. To have someone on
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: top who is so dismissive of the function that they
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: are supposed to be managing. I mean it's just– you
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: wouldn't– look, you would not run– Just for starters, this
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: is a big subject, but you wouldn't run any private
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: sector organization the way we run the government. You wouldn't
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: change bosses every 18 months. You wouldn't do it, right?
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't have ignoramuses being brought in to run places
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: every 18 months. You wouldn't change the budget every year.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: The amount of instability that they already deal with, it's
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: such a problem. It's such a hard thing to run,
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: and there are reasons it is the way it is
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: to add on to this this, we've just thrown out
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: the window, any, any standards for who runs the places,
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: it's not going to function. Eventually it's just going to
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: cease to function. So this is, I'm coming back.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: To your question about sort of the, the framing of
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the book. What I was thinking about is, I remember
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: reading Mancur Olson, and I will maybe get it a
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: bit wrong because I read it a very long time ago. The,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the rise and decline of nations and about what happens
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: over time as institutions.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: Build up.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Interests, bureaucracies, guilds, rules that get layered and layered and
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: layered and layered and layered. And that after World War II,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the reason Germany can come back so quickly and the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: reason Japan can come back so quickly is they got
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: to start again, right? Now, there are problems with this
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and there are ways in which this is way too simple, obviously.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: But At the end of the book, you talk about
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: somebody that was at Doge who comes back and decides
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: to actually work at the IRS in part because he
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: seemed to have learned something about the government and what
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: was needed inside the government.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: And he had tools that would be useful. He wanted–
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: he's got the spirit, right? He wants to fix the
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: tax system– or not the system. He wants to– what
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: bothered him– his name is Sahil Lavingia. What bothered him–
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: he's a technologist. What bothered the hell out of him,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: he had to get paper from the IRS. Why can't
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: I do it all on an app? He wanted to
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: build an app and he's done it. He's come back
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: and he's done it. But it's the story of how
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: hard it was for him to do little things is
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: also the story of government. The spirit still exists. The
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: big problems still exist. I thought where you were going
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: with Manker Olson was have we hit a point where
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: we can just rebuild it because it's effectively been destroyed?
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Well, this is what I did want to talk about
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: because– This guy who was at Doge is now at
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the IRS. A lot of empty desks.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: He's alone.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: He's alone. And I'm wondering if you're seeing anyone, any Democrats,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: any policymakers, anyone who's thinking that this is now an opportunity.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: I keep waiting for this. I seem to be a
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: hole in the political marketplace. For someone to talk about
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: government as opposed to talk about Trump. Maybe it's just
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: a boring subject. Maybe it's that people just don't care.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: But I don't believe that. The books I've done have
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: way outperformed what anybody expected. There seems to be an
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: appetite for this stuff. I keep waiting for the candidate
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: to arise. who says we're going to rethink how we
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: govern ourselves because a lot of it makes no sense.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: And Trump is a symptom of a lot of big problems.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: If everything was working just beautifully, Doge would never have
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: been allowed to come in and trash it. They're allowed
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: to come in and trash it because people have a
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: sense that some of this isn't working. Maybe they can
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: fix it. And it's vague enough.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Or they take it for granted.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: Or they take it for granted. So it does feel
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: to me like there is a vacuum in our politics
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: and that there's a hole there waiting for someone to
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: walk into it, a role that's waiting to be played.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: And it is a person who, it's an explainer and
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: a builder role. Explain and rebuild this thing. And that
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's that hard to interest people in it.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: And this is.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Where I also was just thinking about the way Democrats
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: talk about the government and the way Trump talks about
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: the government.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: There was a.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Piece the other day talking about how Trump wields executive
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: power and with all the downsides in how he does it.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: But we haven't had a president in our lifetimes that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: has been so aggressive at making decisions from the White
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: House to great ill effect, right? But when I, you know,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: I talked to Barry Diller, long time media, ran Paramount,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: ran Fox, kind of created this company. And he talks
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: a lot in his book about how he'd be in
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: these meetings with people that would give them all the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: research data, what people wanna see on television, right? And
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: of course that data is always wrong. It just gives
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: you a frame by which you can make decisions. But
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: of course, what matters?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: Is it good? Is there a great writer? Do you
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: love it?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Does my instinct tells me something, right? And I think
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes Democrats, valiantly believe in making data-driven decisions, right? But
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: then you end up with a bureaucracy that's 99.9% effective.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: And then Trump comes in and has no respect for
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: past and no respect for numbers and no respect for facts, right?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: But knows how to wield power. He knows how to
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: tell story. And has an instinct, right? An instinct that
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: defies the polls and often shocks Democrats by being effective, right?
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm like looking for, when I'm reading what you're,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: I'm like, where is the person that can understand power, right?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: And understand where you should and should not be making
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: evidence-based decisions, but rather decisions based on philosophy or theory, right?
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: But actually respects and cares about the civic purpose of
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: our government. And that to me is the opening that
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Right. From the very beginning in writing about Trump's approach
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: to government, I've had this feeling that we're in this
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: narrative war, that he has a story and the other
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: side doesn't have a story. And that what the purpose
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: of blockers, the purpose of this is to show you
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: a story that's a true story that is a constructive story.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: And it's that surfacing these narratives is actually, it isn't
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: just entertainment. It's kind of fun to read about kind
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: of thing, but it's that it is actually absolutely essential
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: to the preservation of the democracy, that you need to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: have the narrative. And we've sort of lost the narrative.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I do think it's about Who can appreciate this?
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Who sees what's been happening with the government? Sees the
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: value of what people are doing at the IRS and
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: NIST and at the Office of Personnel Management, but actually
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: understands that.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Without just a platitude.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: Of we're not going back or we're going to build
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: something better than before, but actually is going to have
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the people that are eager and excited for the project
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: that of building a functional, working, faster, better government than
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: what we can. And that's the conversation that I think
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: is missing. Michael Lewis, thank you so much for your time.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: The book is called Blockers. This is out Sunday. You
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: can pre-order it now. It's out on Tuesday. It's really
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: worth your time. Thank you for your time.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk to you next time. Thanks, John.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you to Michael Lewis for joining us. Thank you
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: for listening. And we will be back in your feeds
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: with a brand new episode on Tuesday.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: and Michael Goldsmith, with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.
• 1:03:36
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• 1:03:42
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• 1:03:44
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• 1:03:46
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