On with Kara Swisher - The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the Long-Term Consequences of Trump 2.0

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Jeffrey Goldberg has been a thorn in President Donald Trump’s side since the real-estate developer–turned reality-show host first ran for office in 2016. Back then — ten months before he took over as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic — Goldberg wrote a piece headlined “A Brief Exercise Meant to Illuminate the Prejudices of Donald Trump.” The magazine has continued its unsparing criticism of Trump ever since, and Goldberg’s recent Signalgate story was just the latest in a series of blockbuster scoops that have nominally embarrassed the president.  On Friday, Goldberg sat down with Kara for an on-stage interview at the WBUR Festival in Boston. They discussed Trump’s corruption, the unserious people staffing his administration (as well as with the very serious Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect who heads the OMB), the Democratic Party’s travails, and the state of the news media.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic and I interviewed him live on stage at the WBUR Festival in Boston. Goldberg was the reporter behind Signalgate and despite Mike Waltz's assurances that he didn't know him and couldn't pick him out of a lineup, it's not the first time Goldberg has published a story that embarrassed President Trump. In 2020 he broke the story that Trump had called American

troops who died in war suckers and losers. And the Atlantic has been warning about Trump's authoritarian tendencies since at least 2017. I think he's done a lot as editor in chief of the Atlantic in making it incredibly relevant in Washington today and holding people's feet to the fire and demanding accountability. It's really tough to do if you're a huge publication. It is not a huge publication.

And it's really punching well above its weight. Our expert question comes from Chris Krabs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who recently had his security clearance stripped by the Trump administration in what seems like a clear case of retribution. So stick around. Music Gen Z has a hot new hangout spot, church.

And it's definitely not their parents making them go. We always assume religion's gonna continue to decline and it doesn't look like that decline is continuing. It shocked experts because it sort of upended everything that people thought they knew about American religion. Gen Z is in its prodigal son era. That's this week on Explain It to Me. New episodes every Sunday morning

wherever you get your podcasts. This is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about what happens when media and tech collide. And this week I'm talking to Katie Drummond, runs WIRED. She's found a way to breathe new life into that publication by covering news. We started covering Doge, like several stories a day, every single day. And after like a week, I sort of looked around and was like, where is everyone else?

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Virgin Atlantic. Trains, planes, and automobiles, besides being a good movie, they are an essential part of our travel experience. But we don't want just essentials, we want to have a bit of luxury doing it. Virgin Atlantic takes the VIP treatment to the next level. With a private wing to check in and your own security channel at Linden Heathrow, you can glide from car to clubhouse lounge, a destination in its own right, in 10 minutes or less. Onboard, you'll find a dedicated

bar and social space and your own private suite to stretch out in, with lots of space to store all your bits and bobs, a lay flat bed and delicious dining from beginning to end. Just be sure to leave room for dessert. Their Mile High Tea with all the little cakes and sandwiches is a showstopper. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond and see for yourself how traveling for business can always be a pleasure. Hi everybody. Thank you and welcome. I'm very excited to be here with you. You have been in the news a little bit as a newsmaker.

Yeah, not a great place to be. Oh, you love it. Stop it. We're going to talk about the media business, the Democrats and of course President Trump. So let's start with him. Someone you know a little bit. You famously got added to the wrong group chat. Maybe it was the right group chat. Indeed. It was the wrong group chat. And when you were, it was the right group. Indeed. It was the right group. Fair point.

When you reported the story, Trump attacked you and said, there was no secret information in the text, the strategy failed because you published the text, which I knew you were going to do. Um, but Mike walls got demoted mostly because he was coordinating with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu over plans to bomb Iran. Plus he pissed Laura Lumeroff. Nobody else got fired. What's your takeaway from Signalgate in general?

I mean, I think Waltz was already on thin ice. He and Suzy Wiles weren't getting on very well. Waltz, from what I understand from inside, forgot that he was staff, National Security Advisor staff, and you're not a principal, even though you have a big title. Sure. There are a lot of things going on there.

I mean, the signal thing didn't help, obviously, his career development. Thank you for laughing at that. I thought that was, I actually thought that was slightly witty. Um. Slightly. Just slightly.

So it's interesting because after all of this happened, I had two reporters going in or trying to go in to see him for a cover story we ran on Trump, Ashley Barker and Michael Shearer, and we got word from the White House they said bring Jeff Jeff with you So I got to go to talk to the Trump interview Yeah, and he right before the interview we were set to meet him at 3 at 11 He posted on truth social a big attack on me, which I thought was hysterical I think that's the way you welcome somebody to the White House. That's a technique No, no, and I and I said when we walked into the Oval Office He was like and he was very friendly. I could explain the dynamic there if you want, but he was very friendly and

And I said hey, thanks for that. Thanks for that truth social post really helped a lot And he said I was just trying to up the pressure on you a little bit And then he said anyway, you'll sell five times more magazines this way And you know, he's correct because he understands how things work. But you know, here's what's so interesting about the actual problem of signal, right? The issue is national security, the issue is operational security. It's like what, who's listening, how do you know, making it as hard as possible, the Chinese, the Russians, Iranians, et cetera,

to hear what you're talking about. It's serious stuff. I asked him, because in that truth social post, he said, Goldberg was somewhat successful with Signal. I asked him, what does that mean, somewhat successful? And his answer was, because this is the track his mind goes down, his answer was, you got a lot of attention.

Right. And I said, his answer was, you got a lot of attention. Right. And I said, well, was it successful because I inadvertently discovered a gap in our operational security that, and he's like, no, no, no, you got a lot of attention. Right. Like in other words, in other words, I'm concerned with national security. No, no, no. I mean, he was, I finally, I said, did you learn anything about operational security and he said, in that kind of cat of Catskills delivery that he sometimes has, he says, don't use signal maybe?

You know, he just kind of like, you know, he was just sort of joking. It didn't concern him. What concerned him was that somehow I rested the news cycle away from him for a period of time. Right. And that's kind of like, that's the language. That's the coin of the realm. That's the coin of the realm, it's the language he understands, and he has to contend with

that. The issues raised by journalism are not as interesting as the fact of who's getting the attention at any given moment. So in that regard, the fallout from Signalgate is not an improvement in our national security in any way, or there's a lack of concern. And this is someone who keeps the classified documents in a bathroom. So talk about that.

Has there, from what you understand, been any worries about improving security? Because it seems like- Not that I can see. Not that you can see. If we weren't through the looking glass, what would have happened in an ordinary presidential administration is,

there would have been an investigation, an IG investigation, maybe a justice department investigation. Certainly, people would have either been fired or admonished, new systems would have been put in place. You would have had an outside expert come in and talk about this. They would have immediately banned people from using Signal.

They're still using Signal, obviously. But that's not the way it works here. So I mean, the assumption has to be, and I think the US intelligence apparatus assumes that the Russians and the Chinese in particular know what's going on in his phone. Right. And know what he's saying on his phone, knows what he's typing, and that's just the reality. So no, there's no reason to believe that things have gotten better.

Listen, the Democrats have been messy with national security. A lot of people, the way we do our national security is really porous, and we have an enormous landscape in that regard. Is there any way to solve that problem? Because what typically happens is there are these investigations, these are very serious crimes really. Is there a way you could just say from tomorrow forward if you have signal on your phone you will be prosecuted for everybody? Yeah, I mean the problem is is that you will be prosecuted for everybody. Yeah, I mean the problem is that

to competing demands, one, these people have to talk to each other in order to know what, I mean the best possible circumstances, they're talking about plans and operations and intelligence that they're getting. The challenge is that you do that most securely from a SCIF, a secure facility. It could be like almost even a tent within a room

that presumably is blocking people's collection activities. But that means you have to go to your SCIF every time you wanna call the defense secretary. It means you have to, it's, it's not, it's not reasonable to ask busy people. I mean, obviously within the White House complex and the Defense Department, the State Department, there's rooms next to your office that you can go to, but it's, it's really difficult. And by the way, we don't even know for sure. You always find out later that, oh, that four years ago, the Chinese figured out a way to listen to the skiff in the State Department. I don't know. But so there are technical issues here.

You know, there's the high side and the low side. The high side is the government language for closed systems. They are not connected to the internet. They are just communication devices talking only to each other and they're monitored directly by the government. And the low side is regular communication. Signal is good. The problem is signal works, and you have it on your phone.

I mean, signal is better than WhatsApp. It's better than whatever you're using to text. And so there are challenges, but I'll tell you that the actual issue to me, or an important issue, Pete Hegseth, okay? So Pete Hegseth, okay, so Pete Hexeth on the signal chat, right starts

Telling the members of the signal chat which include the vice president the CIA director the national intelligence director and me And one of their cousins but go ahead. Yeah and when they're going when the when the when the attack is happening in two hours you know like the bombs will literally like the bombs will start dropping in two hours you know so I'm looking at this and see this is this is a human frailty this is not a technical issue. Pete Hegseth did not have any good reason to put that information into signal.

The Vice President doesn't need to know when the Tomahawks are being fired from what ship. Correct. He was showing off. He's cosplaying Secretary of Defense. Yes. This is what I realized. And I thought to myself, but he doesn't have to cosplay Secretary of Defense because he is Secretary of Defense. Right. Like, you need to just chill.

Right. And just understand that we all know you're secretary defense. You're cool already. Right. You got like an armored limousine and you got guys with guns protecting you and you get your own plane. The plane, the secretary defense plane is literally called the doomsday plane. What's cooler than that?

Right. Right? And so this is the problem of inexperienced, unser people right taking on very very grave jobs right I do understand account for that no you can't there's no technical fix for that kind of unseriousness and seriousness and insecurity and possibly possibly three bourbons in I'm not saying that, you are. I am saying that. I know I heard you.

We'll be talking about the New York Times Stereo on Elon's drug use in a second. Please read it while we're waiting here. It is serious, but it is serious. These are national security users. Military people could be in harm's way very easily. Literally they're sending pilots to a place, Yemen, that has anti-aircraft capabilities.

And I'm sitting on my phone reading about it. And you know this. And would you be in touch with the people who want to attack those people? It would be a real problem for them. And a deadly one. It's not a situation you want to put the pilots in. So this is a quote from Adrienne LeFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic, which you run. She wrote, unless Trump's power is checked and soon, things will get much worse very

quickly. When people lose their freedoms, it can take a generation or more to claw them back. That is, if you're lucky. What should Americans do to check this power? In this case, it's President Trump. He happens to be there. But any executive's president's power, when there's this much sloppiness and lack of care, and how much time

Writing something that in the Atlantic is a pretty tough sentence to write I Don't like to get overly prescriptive because our job is to tell people what's going on and try to analyze what it means but I I Think that's a good piece of analysis of what's happening. I mean, I've been focused lately. You know, it's after four or five months of this, it's good to sort of breathe, take a long walk, think about the enormity of what's going on. Because we can't, I don't think cognitively we can get our,

this is too big to get your mind around all of the changes. Just talk about, spend the entire hour talking about corruption. That's my next question. Go ahead. OK, well then we'll do five minutes on corruption. But any one of these subjects is enormous. It's like we're having a Watergate sized crisis every day,

or maybe three times a day, depending on how many planes Qatar is giving to the president on that day. Nothing is real. Look, the courts are obviously still active. day depending on like how many planes cutter is giving to the president on that day nothing is look The courts are obviously still active Republican appointed judges are still active and checking power here to some degree I mean, you know, there's 20 different things going on whether it's immigration or harvard or this or that and much of the press

is engaged in a much of the press is engaged in a muscular way, much of the press because of bad ownership is not engaged in as muscular a way, for fear as it should be, but there's still a very, very active press. We know about most of the things that we know about are because reporters found them out. But if you don't have Congress in them,

there's no, the system only works when you have three co-equal branches of government and Congress under the control of the Republican Party, which is not the Republican Party anymore. It's the party of whatever Trump decides It doesn't the whole thing doesn't work It will eventually grind to a halt if you don't have congressional oversight real Honest to goodness congressional oversight of what people are doing so that the judges are straining The press is under attack constantly but the most important component in any of this the congressional check on presidential power that doesn't exist in in the current state because

the republicans are that doesn't exist in the current state because the Republicans are too frightened of him or Many of them just go along with it because they like it So I you know, it's like you got to focus on Congress in the next year and that's what you'll be focused in I'm focused on a lot of things. But I mean, I think I think Again, one of those stories that's too big to be believed in a kind of way is the abdication of individual responsibility A lot of people were sympathetic to Lisa Murkowski the senator from Alaska when she said it's very scary And I don't like to do it and people

I'm sympathetic in an abstract sense, but leadership is not supposed to be easy. It's like Your job and by the way, she's obviously an outlying Republican on these questions, right? She's not marching in lockstep, but Having a an American leader an elected member of the Senate tell the American people that she's scared Come on. Your job is not to be scared. Right? I am be okay fine and in your in your in your night sweats You know in the darkness in the pit of night in your bed, okay, you can acknowledge yourself that you're scared but like that was Disturbing to say the least it's disturbing cases. They're not scared. They're actually going along. It's not just scared I know there is no no, there's a there's a there's a people who love it, right? And then there are people who know

That he has authoritarian instincts and they they just are like I'm not gonna withstand not crossing house Yeah, well, I'm not gonna like subject myself to social media pressure or actual violence So we we've never seen speaking of corruption a president monetize the White House Like Trump and Scott and I talk a lot about this on pivot is ignore all the distractions even Harvard Look at the money look at what's happening here in terms of giving money to the very rich or taking money for himself The crypto grift is particularly blatant But crypto is popular in a way it burnishes his credentials as an outsider and crypto money helped swing this election There was a great amount of money in Ohio and other places.

So talk about what brazen explicit corruption does. Now, we've always had corruption in our government at some level, but although the lack of trust in other stock markets, like the Russian stock market and others has created a tiny stock market, ours is roaring because people do have trust in the idea of it. So how do you think This brazen sort of corruption is going to play out. Well deeply corrupt governments and societies Don't work very well And sometimes they bring themselves to a crisis point at which point the people say enough and something good happens out of that So, I mean, I think that's ultimately where we're heading.

Unless the American people who are supplied with cheap calories, abundant video entertainment, and actual drugs just have given up on the idea of standing up for traditional American principles. I mean, we have to consider that. As long as you feed people enough food and give them enough diversion, I mean, it sounds very Roman, because it is. Right, bread and circuses. Yeah, bread and circuses.

Maybe it won't, but you know, there's this, generally speaking, corruption means that things don't get done that the people want to have done, but building roads to having good schools, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think that many of the people around Trump believe that it's not corruption because it's transparent. Right. They've said that to me. It's really interesting theory. It's like we're not hiding anything. We're just taking the plane.

And he was asked the other day, I forgot which foreign leader said if I had a plane, I would give it to you. This was last week. South African. South African. South African. South African. South African.

South African. South African. South African. South African. South African. We're not hiding anything. We're just taking the plane. And he was asked the other day, I forgot which foreign leader said, if I had a plane, I would give it to you. This was last week. South African was the South African president. And and said I would take it. Right. I mean, it's a very less. I don't think Abraham Lincoln would have the same reaction. Right. To that kind of that kind of transactional cynicism. So explicit or Richard Nixon, by the way. I don't think Richard Nixon would have the same reaction to that kind of transactional cynicism. So explicit corruption. Or Richard Nixon, by the way.

I don't think Richard Nixon would have the same reaction to that kind of transactional cynicism. I like my money under the table, would be his policy. Hypocrisy is actually useful in some way. At least it's a recognition that I'm doing something wrong. I think that he literally doesn't, Donald Trump doesn't think there's anything wrong with enriching his family openly by using the White House as a kind of as a kind of money-making. Yeah, I've called him a coin operated president

Right, that's funny, but thank you. Yeah good with those phrases Do you know what tech bro stands for? technically broken I Have a lot of them Thank you. Feel free to use them. But what is that? What does that do? How do you then investigate that when they're doing the criming in plain sight? You know, it's hard because by the way, they're pretty competent at it I wish they were as competent as governing as they are at climbing building bridges would be cool, too, right? Yeah

the it's interesting because a lot of the energy in It's interesting because a lot of the energy in investigative journalism comes from exposing the cover-up, not the crime. I mean, there's cliches around this, right? So they don't give you any room for your big revelation. It's like, imagine how much power there would be in the headline, Trump secretly takes 747 from Qatar dictator. Right. There's no there's none of that power and none of that energy because he just says yeah I took it. He says

yeah I took it. By the way that's one of his that's one one manifestation of his political genius. It's like he doubles down on the thing that ordinary people would be embarrassed about or have to explain, right? This is why he is successful. He has figured out something in the shamelessness and in the sort of again, the cynical transactionalism that is his actual ideology to the extent that he has. So again, like Signalgate, is there any accountability then in the end? Or is it at some point it gets to be too much or just voted out of all? Well, if you don't fix these problems and they don't take that problem seriously

eventually something bad happens. There's a non-zero chance that something bad happens because they're sloppy, unserious, incompetent, blase, whatever you want to call it. Somebody, God forbid, will get hurt or killed because they have no control over their information flow just used in the narrow Signal gate sense of the question There are real-world consequences to incompetence and in this kind of cynicism and On the one hand we know that Donald Trump is above all else lucky. He's the luckiest man in America right but on the other hand eventually you know you come to a

situation in which real lives are affected. On the other other hand I have to say, serious studies have shown that had Trump's reaction to the pandemic been different early on and throughout the pandemic, and if the Republican Party or elements of their own party hadn't convinced large numbers of their own followers that vaccines are something to be wildly distrusted, many more Americans, and by the way, Republican voters would be alive today.

Right, so there is an oppress. There doesn't seem to be a consequence for, I mean, I've never seen a political party not see- Hurt so many people. Of their own followers. It doesn't make any, nothing- Makes sense. Here's the thing,

when you just accept the fact that nothing makes sense, it becomes easier to understand. Okay, got it, okay. So we're living in a simulation. So speaking of that- Through the looking glass. Right. Like it's just, it's read Alice in Wonderland.

Right, so speaking of incompetence, Elon announced he's leaving Doge and the administration. He bad-mouthed the president's deficit busting bill on the way out. He hasn't deposited the 100 million he pledged to Trump. It's not surprising. I did notice that they were eventually bound to leave each other. That said, they are declaring it a victory, of which it is not.

It probably has cost the American people more money than it's saved. I think the White House is sending a $9 billion dollar rescission package to Congress, which is how much we spend on probably paper clips. Talk a little bit about Doge and Elon's effect. And I will note that today in the New York Times, something else we've talked about a lot on pivot, according to the reporting, Elon is taking recreational drugs like ecstasy and psilocybin mushrooms on the campaign trail. He was also using so much ketamine that he told people it was causing him bladder issues. How do you look at this Elon period in the Trump

administration, which is supposedly ending, but definitely began with his $280 million he spent on getting President Trump elected? I did not know that ketamine has bladder side effects, by the way, until this morning. Well, now you do. Yeah. It's good knowledge to have.

Yeah. I guess, in theory. Yeah. Have you taken ketamine? I'm just curious. I have never taken ketamine. I have. What's it like?

Not good. Not good. No. Disassociates yourself? Yes, indeed. Why do you want to be disassociated? I was doing it for a TV series, but, and I want to understand what Elon's going through, honestly.

I didn't like it. I'm not gonna ask about bladder problems. Okay. I only did it once, so I'm fine. Well, good, I'm glad. Go ahead. I think Doge is a sideshow. Yeah.

I honestly think. One of the tricks of populism is to Is to conduct these? Performances of prestidigitation like look over here. Look at the bird over here Meanwhile over there like Elon's doing all this crazy like we're invading VoA right and we're gonna throw all the journalists out the window and saying okay fine in the meantime You have a serious person named Russell vote who, who runs the OMB, that was Management and Budget,

who is one of the primary authors of Project 2025, which is being systematically carried out. And he has, and others associated with that project, have a view that government should be radically smaller, the executive should be primary, right? The executive should, it's not a co-equal, they have a philosophy here. I'm not, I'm not.

The unitary executive there. The unitary executive and that, you know, they're very happy that Congress is acquiescing and they wanna keep that. Russell Vogt is a serious man who doesn't take ketamine and cocaine and all the rest and has a vision and is and has staying power and has patience and focus and is going to carry out that vision.

I'm not judging it. I'm just saying that this is what's actually happening. Right. And so it's as boring as Elon Musk is exciting. Right. With the chainsaw and the distraction. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Roosevelt just goes to work every day and works. One of the things that you find is that, and this is true of the He chainsaw and the distraction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Roosevelt just goes to work every day and works. So one of the things that you find is that, and this is true of the Hegsats and the Dan Bonginos and the Elon Musk, government is actually hard, right? Running things is hard. Bureaucratic complication is hard. Dealing with the law is hard. They're not equipped for that.

Dan Bongino was almost crying yesterday on TV about how hard it is to be the deputy director of the FBI. It's so much harder than being a Fox host. I'm like... Really? Deputy director of FBI is a hard job. Who would have thunk? Right?

So Elon Musk is the same thing. This is boring. This is annoying. People are actually not letting me do what I want to do all the time. Right. Which he's allowed to do at his own company. The Treasury Secretary is cursing me out in the White House. I'm the world's richest man.

I have my bag of drugs and I have my electric cars and rocket ships and I'm just going to go have fun. Watch OMB, don't watch Doge, that's the show. I mean I'm not saying that they didn't do, they didn't have an effect in various departments. Damaging. Yeah, yeah, but the interesting thing is that, and I don't know the percentage to which the vision of Project 2025 has already been fulfilled. Maybe they're at 15%, maybe they're at 20%, I don't know. But they're moving. And they're going to create conditions in which, over time, the government is not capable of doing what the government was once capable of doing.

I'm not saying that government was perfect, from it, etc, etc, etc, but their project is to unravel the New Deal Their project is to unravel the idea of a civil service and they're moving So how do you stop the distraction? Because again, this is something we talk about a lot because there's a distraction a day whether it's Greenland or Canada is a 51st state Or the plane all of which are serious issues How do you get away from the distraction then? Well, Russell vote and I think you're absolutely right It's it's about a making government smaller and rewarding wealthy people with tax breaks that will sit very heavy on our future

generations it's about the money and the getting rid of government. In ideology, yeah, in ideology, and I have to be honest, I don't really understand the impetus for the ideology. Better government, sure. No government doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And it doesn't make a lot of sense even from a red state perspective.

Most of the things that the government do are purely apolit a political meat safety tornado prediction You know and on and on and on and on and on so I don't I don't Understand it The question is how did how do you how do you ignore the distraction given the distractions are so pretty from a meeting perspective? Donald Trump again is a genius of attention. A genius of attention grabbing.

So good and natural at it. I mean, he's like, you know, what a leopard is to hunting prey on the savanna, he is to grabbing attention. Right? So like, you're dealing with a guy who's better at this than anyone. And he's trained up a bunch of people who understand Oh turns out you can get away with this turns out you can get away with the you know I don't know the answer I do Here's one challenge just from an editor perspective

When the Greenland thing started I thought it was hysterical. Yeah. Right? What are we talking about? But he's serious. He keeps bringing it up. He can move 50,000 soldiers into Greenland tomorrow and say, it's ours. I mean, that'll destroy NATO.

Denmark's a member of NATO. We're a member of NATO. He's invading another NATO country. Not something that you had on your bingo card either, right? The unserious thing becomes the serious thing. so it's very, very hard to know. I didn't think in December that the executive branch was going to go to war against Harvard University. That was not something that we could have predicted. And then when he starts complaining about things, it's amazing because he

puts so many words out into the universe. It's very hard to pick what to do. I actually don't know the answer from a citizen perspective. I know from a journalism perspective, it means that we have to do triage all the time. We do sit around and say what's actually important and what's entertainment. It's entertainment. And that's why we covered Doge, obviously we wrote about it, but I think that Russell Voate is a more interesting, consequential person in the government.

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about things and makes it easy for people. I did listen to a recent one about explaining the tariff situation that was very easy for most people to understand at the same time wasn't stupid. Tune in to Planet Money every week for entertaining stories and insights about how money shapes

our world. Stories that can't be found anywhere else. Listen now to Planet Money from NPR. We get an expert to send us a question for our guests. So let's hear yours. Hi, I'm Chris Grabs, first director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The big question I would ask is in the context of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The big question I would ask is in the context of the current state of technology in the

U.S. Federal Executive Branch. From the Trump administration to the Biden administration, the U.S. government has encouraged the use of encrypted messaging apps like Signal, particularly in the wake of the Chinese spy services compromise of government networks and telecommunications providers. The most recent episode with this app creates an opening to have a serious discussion about how to safely and securely use technology to communicate even at the highest levels of government. So what is your sense of the U.S. government's current efforts to adopt new technologies

to ensure our civil servants, our leaders, our government employees have the connectivity they need to communicate in a secure way. Thanks a lot. So this is Chris Krebs who was fired for saying the election was secure. He worked for Trump and now there was an executive order which forced Chris out of his job. By the way, the Chris Krebs episode is among the most serious. So I'm ranking what represents an actual threat to the American way of life, the American system of accountability and governance.

It's the attack on Chris Krebs, very kind of Hungarian vibe here. And the craziest part of that is in the actual order, it said, in enumerating his alleged sins, it said, Chris Krebs denied that Donald Trump won the 2020 election Come back to Alice in Wonderland, right? You know listening to and I don't have a specific I Have a general answer which is like obviously in

Even if you had serious people in government, I mean, we know that communication systems because of the acquisition process, because of all of the problems of enormous bureaucracies and the lobbying power of, let's say, larger traditional firms in Washington. By the time many agencies adopt systems, the systems are outmoded and they can't talk to other

systems. We know all that. But what his question reminds me of is one of my favorite quotes from E.O. Wilson who said that the, mostly paraphrasing, but the central challenge facing Americans or facing all humans is that we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology, right? So the connective tissue between our own lizard brain and the technology that somehow we've created are these institutions that are not capable of mediating between the two. And again, I come back to the human failure

that we see in signal which is Not taking it seriously not taking what they're doing seriously And again, what are the eventual real-world consequences of that? We don't know but there will be real-world consequences Let's talk about the Democrats for a minute You recently interviewed Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about their book original sin Whether or not you agree that Biden's team engaged in a cover-up. Democrats clearly have a problem with voters and their handling of Biden's decline, it was part of it.

You interviewed Trump in the White House when you did. He said, I don't think they know what they're doing. I think they have no leader. And he told you he didn't see anyone on the rise and you suggested Governors Westmore, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear. Talk about where they are right now. Actually, that was a very interesting conversation with, you know, there's two Donald Trumps.

There's Donald Trumps with the cameras on, and then it's professional wrestling. And then when the camera is off, people don't understand this, those who haven't met him. But in a strange way, he's smaller than life. When you go in, he's like, oh, hi, hi, nice to see you. Oh, yeah, what's going on? And we had this conversation about the Democrats.

It wasn't like the Democrats are scumbags or the Democrats are this. It was he was doing political analysis and it wasn't bad. And one of the things he said, by the way, and he was asking this with what I took to be almost genuine, like, I don't understand the answer to this question. He said, he said 80 90% of Americans are opposed to trans girls in girls sports. So why do the Democrats keep pushing that? It's killing them. I mean, he's just asking like as a political question,

I think that gives you an insight into where he, you know, what he thinks are important issues, you know, that could break the Democrats. I think writ large, the Democrats aren't really good at politics, which is probably a problem because that's their business They're in at risk of becoming basically a regional party Coastal California, New England, New York City and environs some, you know, Austin Texas and whatever they've learned Nothing, it seems to me. I'm just trying to be analytical about it

They don't have learned how to figure this out any party without power, which is what they are They don't have any branch of government, is gonna have a bunch of, and we'll see this in the upcoming primaries, I mean the 27, we'll see it. Everybody will use these derogatory terms for all these governors who come out and try to convince you. There's a lot of talent on the bench, the question is who breaks out and how they break out. They have, there's almost this,

there's a sort of funny thing going on now where it's like they have study groups to figure out how to talk to men. You know, I mean, it sounds like a joke. It's like maybe just talk. Yeah. You know, use regular, Andy Beshear is very interesting.

Obviously one of the, a very successful Democrat in a red state went right wrong or Laura Kelly from Kansas You know, he will say things like, you know, they want me to they want me to use the term I've heard him say this they want me to use the term justice involved individual and I said what is that and I said Someone in prison and I said why can't we just say, you know in me? I mean, I've heard this from a lot of politicians. It's like the imposition of academic language or specialized occult sensitive language on things turns people off. I don't think they've gone through a process yet

where they're figuring out how to be effective. How does that happen? Because there's a war of ideas happening. Ezra Klein and Atlantic writer, Derek Thompson are championing abundance agenda. Jonathan Chait points out in the magazine, a lot of progressive less vehemently opposed. If Trump is this existential threat that you've just discussed, why is the

argument so academic and where do you see anyone breaking out and how far does he have to go before the Democrats actually mobilize or does that just play into his hands? before the Democrats actually mobilize? Or does that just play into his hands? I'm just surprised by everything. I mean, it is obviously a democratic crisis, small d, democratic crisis we're in. The country's never seen anything like Trump or Trumpism.

I mean, maybe Andrew Jackson, but there are a few people in this room remember Andrew Jackson. Huey Long had he lived. Huey Long, yeah, but that was a local variant. I mean, he had a national following, but he didn't become president. There's a larger question,

which these are questions I would ask you, but I'm not, because it's your podcast. I don't know if we can have a democracy the way we understand democracy in an age of social media. I don't know. You know, one of the things I always say this to, it's funny, I always say this to younger journalists. You know, it's okay to say,

I don't know when you're being interviewed. I, you know, and then when I'm being interviewed, I am always hesitant to say, I don't know, but I can't know when you're being interviewed. And then when I'm being interviewed, I'm always hesitant to say I don't know, but I can't explain to you. Which is an answer in and of itself. I can't explain to you why the Democrats aren't in the street. I don't mean in a violent way, but I mean, I just assumed, I just assumed that Lafayette Square would be filled every day with people protesting on behalf of academic freedom or immigration or rule of law or against corruption. I don't know. I mean, I think, I think a lot of people

are still paralyzed and in shock. They don't have organizing principle. They don't have people who are organizing them. I don't necessarily. Is there anything you see at all? It could happen all of a sudden. You know, these things sometimes happen. Something breaks. I mean, you know, you would have. Nobody understood that the George Floyd

moment was coming until George Floyd happened, and then all of a sudden the dam broke. I mean obviously people who studied carefully know that there was a welling up of frustration and various factors that led to that break so maybe something will occur. I don't know. That's a very good answer actually. We'll be back in a month. Learn more at pcexpress.ca. Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Maven AGI. We all want more efficiency in our day to day. And if you're a business leader,

efficiency is no longer optional, but a requirement. So if you're looking to up your percentages across the board, a good place to start is with Maven AGI. Maven automates complex workflows across the entire customer journey, from sales to success to support. It plugs into your existing go-to-market systems

to unify every touch point, offering a personalized white glove experience to each customer. No silos, no handoffs, just fast, consistent experiences your customers will love. It plugs into your existing go-to-market systems to unify every touch point with personalized real-time experiences, lower costs, better outcomes, happier customers, plus Maven cuts support costs by up to 80%

and resolves up to 93% of inquiries autonomously. Maven AGI, AI agents for the entire customer journey. Book your trial today at mavenagi.com. Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For 35 years, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been fighting to make sure that when you go online, your rights come with you.

EFF has rescued podcasts from patent trolls, helped encrypt the web to protect your privacy, and prevailed in lawsuits against government secrecy and surveillance. And on their podcast, How to Fix the Internet, available now, they want to let you know all about what happens if they ultimately win the fight. Through curious conversations with some of the leading minds in law and technology, they explore creative solutions to some of today's biggest tech challenges. It's a way to become deeply informed on vital technology issues and join the movement working to build a better technological future. Today the fight for digital rights is

bigger and more urgent than ever and EFF is member supported. That means more members they have, the stronger they can fight, in state houses, courthouses, and on the streets. Visit eff.org slash podcast, listen to how to fix the internet and join EFF. I wanna talk about the news media business. The Atlantic is doing great.

This has been actually a good time for you. In fact, for people who don't know, David from wrote a piece for the Atlantic in 2017 called How to Build an Autocracy, which was very prescient actually. And you've been unequivocal about the danger. You keep bringing up the dangers that are posed. Having a strong editorial voice has certainly worked for you guys. You've profitable. You have over 1.1 million subscribers. 1.3. What?

1.3. Okay. Sorry. Excuse me. It's okay. That fixed. Check my phone. I check my phone every 10 minutes to see how many new people come on.

Talk about the lessons you've learned. Not too late for all of you, by the way. Those who don't have... You've learned as a media operator. Now you have an owner who's been willing to endure the lean years in Lorraine Powell jobs. Someone who is actually not a fucking asshole, I would say, like certain people who own the Washington Post.

So can you talk about that? And then maybe look just very briefly about how you think that will change with AI affecting the news? I know you've seen this recent Google Veo Veo, excuse me. I know you have partnerships with open AI. So does Vox Media. So Talk a little bit about what the how you've done this here very quickly. I'll give you a chance to Celebrate yourself. I don't

Especially when Trump is threatening news organizations. He's he's there and they're a baby No, the truth is I mean, this is the thing and and and like we have to acknowledge It's true Trump is my circulation manager in some in some ways I mean after signal gate look going back five five years ago He you know in six years ago Whatever it was when I wrote a piece about how he referred to American soldiers as suckers and losers He they went ballistic and whatever and all it did was generate interest in subscribers for the...

So, you know, he calls me scumbag and sleazebag and this and that and the other thing. Then we also have a nice time talking in the Oval Office. It's a very strange thing right now, obviously. But he calls me these names, and all it does to serve is is to build up the Atlantic. I mean it's not the only reason. Look, I mean, so when I became editor nine years ago I was told that BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice, HuffPo, Insider, Business Insider, Mike, they were all gonna eat our lunch and you know we were gonna die.

We're a 168-year-old magazine founded right here in the great city of Boston. And they were all going to eat our lunch. And I went to so many presentations and so many PowerPoints and slide decks and theories of the case. And my theory is always make the best I'm not like this is not the Baker praising his own bread But like the theory was the only my theory was the only thing I actually wanted to do make the best possible quality

highest quality stories as many of them as you can make but writers who are Known and appreciated by literate audiences, and then convince those literate audiences to pay for the privilege of reading them, just like any other business. Making a good product by using a recording. Make a high quality product. I thought the other places, all those web operations,

were doing like mass plays. Like, we'll get 100 million readers, and we'll get all this programmatic advertising revenue. And that works until it doesn't work but I want to have a I much prefer to have a direct relationship with 1.3 million smart people who Subscribe to the Atlantic and the number just goes up and up and up knock on wood I hope it keeps going but like it's like make make make a good product and then have a have a Smooth system for bringing that product to audiences

that will pay you for it is like the business plan. Is the basic business plan. Is the basic business plan. Is there something to make this good reporting more relevant to larger audiences? I hate all this sort of new agey storytelling. Snackable content? No, we're not a snack.

Yeah. I mean, we have shorter stories. Oh, come on. There's good Atlantic and bad Atlantic. You have snack and then. No, we have shorter stories. You do? But they're delicious snacks.

They're delicious snacks. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Not just like, kind bars. Right. OK. You know, ho-hos and ring dings. Right.

You do have ring dings. No. yeah. This is going down a weird path. The only choice, we don't have a choice except to keep going and going and going and, and you know, I wish more journalism organizations would join us. You're right, we have an owner who is smart and tough, unlike the owner of the Washington Post or the people who run CBS or the people who think that they can make side deals with Trump and get away with it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's just silly and it's not good thinking. But I think we just have to get better and better and better. And one of the things I tell, this is a little bit of, you know, Goldberg J School, which would take six minutes to run. This is my, you know, my understanding of journalism, and people don't seem to understand as much as they should,

is that if the story isn't actually interesting to read, people aren't going to read it. If your podcast isn't interesting, isn't entertaining, people aren't going to go to the second paragraph. You know, I mean, there's this expression in journalism, after the lead, it's just typing. And that originally meant work on your lead so that people read the story and then just put the rest of the stuff in. I interpret that a different way now, which is like if you're, if you don't have an excellent lead that gets you to the second paragraph and the second paragraph doesn't interest

you enough to go to the third paragraph, it's all just typing. It's meaningless. So we have to do, we have to do a better job of of Telling our stories and presenting this information in compelling and interesting ways But that's a craft issue as much as anything. There's a lot of thriving media now actually So we're gonna finish up with this quote something someone named Jeff Goldberg wrote the leaders of the Republican Party the soul-bladed Donald Trump and the sat reps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behavior are attempting to destroy the foundations of American Democracy you wrote that in 2021. Let's assume a Democrat wins the White House in 2028. Maybe they win in 2026 and

Donald Trump the Republicans haven't managed to destroy the foundations of democracy What is the first step people do or or do you think we are really in a situation of civic catastrophe and authoritarian? I mean we're heading towards civic catastrophe for really quotidian reasons. I haven't gone there to talk to people yet but I want to but like let's take the Kennedy School at Harvard. It used to be that people would want to go into civil service and go into government work because they're idealistic. They know they're not going to make a lot of money and they want to do things and many

of them are good. Some of them are bad, but many of them are great at their jobs. I think we are rotting out the core of what government does because it's going to be harder and harder and harder to convince people to apply, to go into this work and personnel is policy and personnel is destiny. And so that's actually the thing that I kind of worry about the most right now is that we're going to have, we're going back to the 1880s before there was a civil service. And that's not a great thing.

And I don't think you just fix that by having the Democrats win Congress. I don't know how long the half-life of this is. Here's the thing, and I've said this in talks in Europe, people, you know, they're obsessed. Can I just finish with one quick thing? I don't know if we're having, as we approach our 250th birthday, I don't know if we're having a midlife crisis a nervous breakdown or experiencing a terminal illness

I just don't know it's too early to say so But but you can change the course of these things that terminal illness is not it's not hospice ready It's just might be you know, it might be a very serious illness But I just don't know which one we're doing yet, and it's I think it's too early to say all right We'll leave it at that. Jeffrey Goldberg everywhere. Thank you. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Rosell, Kateri Yocum, Dave Shaw, Megan

Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch. Neshat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eric Litke. Our engineers are Rick Kwan, Steve Bone, and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you already follow the show, you get to be in the new secret Signal Chat with Elon Musk and all the ex-employees of Doge. If not, you also get to be in the Signal Chat with Elon Musk and all the ex-employees of Doge. If not, you also get to be in the Signal Chat with Elon Musk and all of the other ex-employees of Doge. Go wherever you listen to podcasts,

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