On with Kara Swisher - Watergate to Trump and Today’s GOP: A Throughline

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

From the verdict in Trump’s sexual assault case to the Santos indictment and the Supreme Court saga, scandal is rife in Washington. Today we turn to the OG: Watergate, as examined in the new HBO series, “White House Plumbers.” Writers and creators Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory and director David Mandel discuss how the show compares to their last collab (“Veep”), trace a line between the blind allegiance to Nixon in the 1970s and the “Big Lie” of 2020 and contemplate what a Trump scandals series may look like 50 years from now would be like (think: Timothée Chalamet as Rudy Giuliani). You can follow Kara and Nayeema on Instagram - search for @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot.

It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Tucker Carlson with 100% more bloviating speech. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. You called it. I called it.

After Tucker's first hostage video, you called that he would be doing something with Twitter. Yes, and here he is. Well, allegedly. I think he's in fights with Fox, it looks like. And so he's saying he's going to do a show on Twitter and just be just another creator, says Elon Musk, which I also don't believe very much. Yeah, there is no economic deal as of yet, says Elon. Let's keep that comma. Some people may not know what we're talking about if they haven't seen the hostage video, so maybe we should play a clip of it. The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can. But there are always limits. And you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it. That's not a guess. It's guaranteed.

Every person who works in English language media understands that. No, they don't. Yes, if you are racist enough for long enough, you ultimately have to get off your things. Whatever. He's so irritating. The freedom to tell the fullest truth you can, unless you can tell elaborate lies that make you more money than we see your truth in text later. So ridiculous. He's such a grievance grifter.

It's such a grievance grift. It's such a grift. Look, I see why people like it. But honestly, I think it's going to be less impactful on Twitter. It just is. It's just is. YouTube, I wondered if he could do it on YouTube. That would be more important for him, I think. Instagram probably wouldn't tolerate it for very long. They don't want to be in that business, I don't think. You know, all of social media is dissipating in some weird way or fracturing in a really interesting way. And everyone's going multi-platform. And so we'll see if he has a real pull here or makes money. Certainly not going to attract advertising. Maybe subscriptions, I guess.

I don't know. It could be lucrative, but it's small. It also keeps his audience warm, which has a value in and of itself, regardless of the— He may not be able to do it because he hasn't gotten out of his contract. He's trying to twist the narrative here. He's implying that his firing was about his truth-telling in that sentence, right? And earlier in the day, he had accused Fox of fraud and breach of contract. His letter had alleged that Fox broke an agreement to not leak his private communications or

use his text to, quote, take any adverse employment action against him. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He is a very good lawyer who, this is what they do. Honestly, it feels desperate. It feels like he's trying to poke them. I don't think they care. I think they're just going to find another Tucker Carlson and they'll move on. We'll see what happens. He's on a collision course with Rupert Murdoch, which I wouldn't want to be going up against him. I wouldn't want to be going up against him. I'm sorry, Rupert Murdoch is always the winner. Unless you're Dominion.

They'll find a newer, younger one. I'm sorry, Tucker, you're too old. Like, seriously, they'll find someone else. Actually, he was very popular in a young demographic. Extremely popular, I think, number one in the young demographic. What do you think the economics of the deal are? I mean, Dylan Byers at Puck reported that Tucker will forego $25 million from Fox in order to launch this new show. I mean, Elon could pay out the breach cost. Yeah, he could pay it out to get it to attract the creator. They could do a revenue split if they have advertising. They might have MyPillowGuy come in for $20 million. I don't know.

Or merch. There'll be merch. There'll be Tucker merch. We'll have to get you that. Tucker Carlson jumpsuit. He could piece together something and then have some TV deal with Newsmax or whatever. He could piece together something. But it's tiring to piece this stuff together.

It's very easy to be a network bigwig and get the $25 million just delivered to your home in Maine. You said that social media is dissipating. What do you mean? You can feel the emptiness of Twitter much more. delivered to your home in Maine. You said that social media is dissipating. What do you mean? You can feel the emptiness of Twitter much more. Amanda was just saying to me that last night, and I agree with her. It's just people are going, are in lots of places now, wherever they may be. That ubiquity was always the case, but not for a certain category of people. Twitter would be the first place where they're breaking something or sharing something. Yeah. It's just, I feel like people are going to be using it a lot less and that there's other ways of communicating.

I don't know. I think it's still where the conversation around AI is happening, which is definitely the cutting edge conversation. And that is happening on Twitter. That's where Hinton is clarifying his comments to the New York Times. That's where Sam is talking about what he's thinking about in terms of venture capital. It's still going to be a primary place for a certain type of people for right now, tech and- Tech and politics. Still a small business. It's still, you know, it's just a news breaking place, but it's the financials of it. Where are they going to make money? Keeps promising more and more products that aren't coming.

What did you just promise? Audio? That was an old thing. Twitter didn't work. Longer video. I mean, I think it's a good thing, ubiquity and platforms, no platform being too powerful. And I hope Twitter stays a place where people disagree because that's actually what I like about Twitter is seeing two people

kind of go back and forth. Free speech, blah, blah, blah. This is like an ad for Twitter, by the way. Tucker is like, there are no places left for free speech except for one in the whole wide world

and it's Elon's backyard. Anyways, Tucker may detest Trump as we learn in the text, but the two of them and Elon share a soapbox on this idea of free speech, which is ironic because all they do is speak freely. They, as you say, never shut up. They don't just speak freely. They say terrible things. And that's what they want, an excuse for saying terrible things over and over and over again.

And that's fine. They can do it, but they have to stop pretending they're defenders of anything but their shitty words. That's all. But this desire to sow distrust in the press has always been a characteristic of powerful people, including, of course, former President Nixon. And that's relevant to our guests today who have gifted us the new HBO series, White House Plumbers, which revisits Watergate. We'll bring on writers Alex Gregory and Peter Heick, as well as series director Dave Mandel. They're part of a gaggle of brilliant people, including folks like Frank Rich, who made this show and also made Veep.

And you know Dave Mandel well, right? I do. I think he's one of the smartest. He just creates great shows. He's always involved with great shows. And so very funny, too. I went to the screening in D.C., which you had to miss, but it was surreal because I was sitting next to Bob Woodward and his wife, journalist Elsa Walsh. I was kind of watching them as much as I was watching the TV show, I have to say. Yeah, it was a lot of Watergate people were there, right? Yeah. Sally Quinn there, too.

Sally Quinn was there. Sally was there, yeah. It was the wife of Ben Bradley and also a great reporter herself. Yeah, you know, I think it really did begin, you're right, with Spiro Agnew, really. Yes, the vice president. And then Nixon. And they just had such a disdain for the press. It was a vicious disdain.

It started that idea of the press being suspect. And, of course, the such a disdain for the press. It was a vicious disdain. It started that idea of the press being suspect. And of course, the press took them right down in the end. Which was shocking because the number of editorials, I think it was above 80% of the nation's editorials, supported Nixon in both his campaigns, not the one against Kennedy. And I think that's where his kind of grudge started. Yeah, he wasn't pretty enough. Well, yeah, he wasn't charming and dapper enough. But you've spent a lot of times in power centers like Silicon Valley, New York City, et cetera, so have I. I think DC is different. When we were watching this, Dave Mindell compared it to the New York screening where everyone was laughing out loud. And he said the show

was a little bit like a giggle in a funeral. And that's exactly how the DC one felt. Like, anytime someone laughed, it's like there's so much scandal in D.C., and yet everyone is so shocked and scandalized by scandal. New York is a lot of fun. D.C. is not a lot of fun, I have to say. They don't have a sense of humor as much as those elsewhere. And, you know, I think this is a send-up, and at the same time, it's based on really real stuff that actually happened, so it seems ridiculous. They used real material, spent a lot of time with individuals involved. They had a wealth of real information, which you ask them about what's real, what's not.

Much of it is real. And it must have been surreal for them making this because this was the low point in American scandal. But do you think that Trump has moved kind of Watergate into second position or 20th position? Trump is the worst thing that's ever happened in terms of scandals and it just but it doesn't be we've had we've had an ability to now before we were shocked and horrified and everybody was united and now everyone's got a take on you know well he wasn't convicted of rape like today he was convicted of you know sexual assault in a civil case not convicted yeah okay I know, it doesn't make it any better. But no, I think it's funny when people are like, oh, he's being persecuted. This is all like, he's being hunted. There are so many charges against this man and against his company. His

company has been found guilty of criminal fraud in many cases. He's been impeached twice, quitted both times, but that's politics. And he's facing criminal charges for falsifying business records, the hush money Stormy Daniels case in Manhattan. There's two ongoing criminal investigations, one in Georgia, one by the Justice Department Special Counsel.

He has a $250 million civil fraud suit being brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. And then there's this civil case. And then again, the Trump Organization is found guilty on 17 counts of tax fraud and other crimes. How do people look at this and say, there's no pattern? I don't know. I have no idea. You know, that's where we are. I mean, it's a real shift from Watergate, where everyone was sort of the, you know, politics has always been dirty, but it was a very big event for people to be sort of who really believe in the government to see this kind of petty thievery and cheating

and lying and everything else. And I think people have just gotten immune to it at this point. I mean, honestly, I think there's a lot to be said about him talking about shooting someone walking down Fifth Avenue. I think people are tolerant of his behavior because they have to believe in him or believe that there's not him, they believe that people are out to get people like him and them. And it's sad. This amount of scandal and the amount of scandal we're seeing in the country and, you know, the revelations from everywhere from Trump to Supreme Court to George Santos are part of the reason we wanted to speak to our guests today. Because in revisiting Watergate, they're revisiting kind of Scandal 1.0 and the beginning or the blossoming of the fissure between parties. Absolutely. In the modern age, there have

been scandals before in presidential politics. But there's more scrutiny now. Yes. And I think this, it was, it was modern political Scandal 1.0. And I think it's good to look at it because it has so much resonance and it keeps coming in some ways and had a real impact on how we think about politics. A hundred percent. And looking forward to talk about the scandals with these three. One note, we taped this before the WGA strike on the eve of it, so we didn't get into it. And our guests were not yet on strike at that point. But let's take a quick break and we'll be back with White House Plumbers writers, Peter Heick and Alex Gregory, as well as director Dave Mandel. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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You and I have spoke before a lot when you were EP and director on Veep, and the three of you worked on that show together. I know there are other folks from Veep involved with this show too, like Frank Rich. Explain how you got linked up and why this group of people came together. I actually blame the two guys. I blame them. Basically, this was something they started working on at the back end of Veep. They were already sort of thinking about the next thing.

And I really came in, I'm sort of almost like the late arrival. I came in after the fact where they kind of put it together, got it to HBO with Woody and Justin attached. And that's when I joined. I actually initially joined, how does one say it? Just to lend a hand, basically a mini room, which of course we'll be striking about. Yeah, it was a mini room. Although I was under a deal, so I was not being exploited, I guess. I'm not sure. Maybe I was being exploited. But anyway, a mini room to kind of just help out as a favor. And somehow at the end of like a week or two, somehow I was the director of this thing. So Alex, do you see White House plumbers as having a similar tone? How did you think of it at first?

Well, it's interesting. We, the three of us had a lot of conversations about tone and we specifically went into it, agreed that it was not going to be Veep. Veep is its own animal and lives in its own space. And because this was a historical thing, we wanted it to have its own tone. And also we wanted it to be a tonal departure just for the three of us to try something new. And so Dave had said the magic two words,

which was boogie nights, when we were talking about him directing. And that, to us, was a great tonal touchstone because it has farcical elements and it has legitimately tragic elements and they all occupy the same ecosystem without bumping each other. And the truth is with this show, the actual historical events are farcical. And to do them justice, you have to acknowledge that you have grown men in wigs with air pistols, breaking in a psychiatrist's office, scattering drugs and pretending it's a junkie. Listening to Hitler. Listening to Hitler. As one does, but go ahead. It was so incompetent and so ludicrous that you have to channel the farts. And at the same time,

the consequences for these people and the country, very real and very damaging. And so it was a delicate dance. And so when we started talking to Dave about it, we all really clicked that it was not going to be Veep, but at the same time, it was going to be played straight with the intent that parts of it would be funny. Peter, most people do, as I was saying, think of Watergate as a terrible scandal in pretty negative terms. And most of the movies have been portentous and, ugh, these people, and not as a bunch of fucking idiots. I mean, which I think they were in lots of ways. And definitely, until recently, a low point of

American democracy. Talk about the idea of injecting satire into it, because it's seen as these geniuses almost got away with it, when in fact, none of them were geniuses. That, for us, was the most surprising thing. The more research we all did, the more we learned just how incompetent they were, just how inept and bumbling, and just the reality that they'd broken four different times before they were caught. So if they had actually planted functional bugs on the third break-in, none of us would even know Watergate had ever happened. So just the depths of the ineptitude and part of it also just came down to budget cuts that they had had a million dollar

budget originally, and then it was pulled down to half a million, then a quarter million. So they kept using this group of Cubans who worked for free, and they had to work with substandard equipment and walkie talkies and bugs. So if they'd had the full budget, none of this would have happened either, I think. Right. You know, the scenes where they have the sort of bad wigs or he doesn't have the tools to open up the things. These are real to life that they kind of messed up. Cara, that's the big difference. On Veep, we wrote jokes.

We wrote jokes. That was our job. We wrote very elaborate jokes, long jokes that no human would ever say. In this, we never had to write jokes. We purposely didn't write jokes. Anything that seemed like a joke left us because the facts, the fact that one of them wore a Prince Valiant-like wig and the other one, what was the description? Howdy doody. Howdy doody, yeah.

A howdy doody-like wig. Those are not jokes. Those are not made up. Those are facts that happen to be very strange and very funny. And that was the world we were traveling in. Speaking of facts and low points in American democracy, when we have a former president facing indictment, who is also, when you start to hear from people in the White House, incompetent, like some guy carrying a box of top secret documents to a basement at Mar-a-Lago or

whatever the different things. Does Trump have a layer in here when you were thinking of directing it? And then both of you, when you were thinking of directing it? And then both of you, when you were thinking about writing it, Dave, why don't you start? Absolutely. As we were doing this, as we were starting this, it's, you know, whatever, three and a half years ago. So at that point, it's been one impeachment hearing, if memory serves. We're not quite up to the second.

But still, you couldn't help but draw those comparisons. And there are definitely places, and they always come to mind, especially number one, anytime the guys are talking about the Democrats, that's sort of labeling them as un-American, the enemy. It's just the absolute, the other is just horrific and horrendous. The war on the press, all of those things are kind of there. And we always sort of talked about it as like ringing the bell. We're going to ring it a little bit, but we don't want to ring it too hard. We never want to say something Trump would say, but it's all in there and it's what we

were thinking about. And then I'll go one step further. You can't look at these guys without thinking about the Rudy Giuliani's and the Michael Cohen's, all these true believers that just went all in on Trump that he could care less about, that he thinks are idiots. He doesn't think much of Rudy Giuliani or Sidney what's-her-name, but they are cogs that serve his purpose. And that notion of the true believers, both in terms of them just being true believers, but also, not that I care about Rudy Giuliani, but that the price that they pay when they start to realize, oh my God, this guy doesn't care about me. It was on our minds a lot. Right. So Alex, I mean, it's sort of extremists looking for glory, right? These extremists looking for another glory because they've been sort of washed up several times. Absolutely. From one angle, it's like a shaggy dog story of these two guys trying

to claw their way back to the top. But as Dave said, it's like Nixon, the current Republican party has its roots in the Nixon administration. Like, I think Agnew was the first guy to go, oh, you accused us of a fact, I'm going to attack the press's liberal bias. So that's where all that started. And Liddy was basically MAGA 1.0. A hundred percent. That sort of unwavering proto-fascism is, he's the guy. He's the template for every person that marched on the Capitol thinking they were saving the

country. for every person that marched on the Capitol thinking they were saving the country. We definitely wanted to, as Dave said, touch the bell without ringing it. But Liddy says, if all we've done is erode the average person's faith in government, we've won. And in effect, the fallout from Watergate is every time the Republicans would say government doesn't work, government's a fraud, drain the swamp, it was because of the things they did in Watergate. No, 100%. It's not even ironic.

They're not even trying to be ironic. It's poetic. Right. Yeah. Now, Peter, you optioned the memoir of Bud Krogh. He was a White House official who was the head of it, right? He had to say, I'm the head of it, who assembled the plumbers and authorized 1971 break-in into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. How much did you draw from the book itself, or was it just a jumping off point? Because I don't think he comes

off particularly well myself, you know? Yes. Our original connection to Bud Krogh was through Dave Burnett, our producer who generated the project, because his father is a neurologist in Washington, D.C., and Bud Krogh was a patient of his. Oh, all right. Okay. And so he kept calling Dave, and Dave produces, you know, White Lotus and a lot of other shows. And he said, I've got a show idea. You've got to talk to this guy, Bud Krogh.

He's got amazing Watergate stories. And Dave would say, I don't think there's a Watergate show to be done, Dad. And he said, just sit with this guy. He's in the hospital, but he's fascinating. And so Dave went in and sat with him and heard all these amazing Watergate stories. And Bud was very earnest, and he told them very straight. And Dave started laughing. And he said, I can't believe no one's told these stories yet.

So that was kind of where he originated the project. So he actually optioned the book. And so that was how Bud got involved. So his book was more of a jumping off point. Bud was a guy that really actually did, in the end, regret his involvement. He did. He refused a plea deal. He did his time.

And in the end, he actually apologized to both Fielding and to Ellsberg. And he ended up being friends with Daniel Ellsberg. And so of all the characters in this mess, I think to us, he was the one who seemed to have the most genuine remorse and to have an actual soul at the end of the day. Right, right. Alex, talk about this. At some points, it's hard to believe certain things happen that way, right? Now, I have actually met Liddy. I met him through his son, Tom, when I worked at the McLaughlin Group 100 years ago, but he was a lot like his father. But he was a comic character, even that. But

the real heart of the series, Dave, is the relationship between the two characters, G. Gordon Liddy, played by Justin Theroux, and E. Howard Hunt, I remember that, played by Woody Harrelson. They are plumbers. Well, explain the plumbering. They started off to fix a leak. Yeah. I mean, it all goes back to the Pentagon Papers. It all goes back to Daniel Ellsberg. Nixon lost his mind over the Pentagon Papers, even though on some level- Explain for those who don't know what they are with the beginning. And it showed consistently back into Kennedy's time that this was an unwinnable war that they had constantly both expanded the scope of and basically lied to the American people about. And it poured out first in the New York Times, later the Washington Post

joined in. And basically, it is that giant leak, but all the leaks and the sense from the Nixon people and Nixon that Ellsberg was a spy, a degenerate, a communist, all these things, that the idea of how we're going to stop these guys is how the initial punch card that Bud Krogh is given to sort of assemble, who leads to SIU. SIU leads to the break-in of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. And that, and the quote-unquote success, which wasn't even really a success, eventually leads to Watergate. Right, right. So it's all part of it. And so the relationship is more Keystone Cops than James Bond. This is episode one, not long after Lydie and Hunt were brought in to work on what was officially called the Special Investigations Unit after the Pentagon Papers had been leaked by Ellsberg. Let's play the clip. So I guess it's just you and me against the entire radical left. Sisyphus had it easy. If you and I are the guys that nail Ellsberg, Nixon will love us.

And by extension, Project Odessa. Odessa? Oh, yeah, new name for SIU. Odessa is the secret network that helped the SS officers get to South America. And how exactly does that relate to our current national security problems i already had the stationery mate you made stationery for covert off

yeah we got to get that file from the psychiatrist fielding what kind of an idiot soviet agent spills his guts to a shrink alex is this a movie? There's some kind of love-hate relationship. It felt like a bad story. Oh, absolutely. We structured it like a love story. It's that these two guys are smooshed together.

Neither one wants... I'm just interrupting to say they literally meet cute. I mean, it is full-on romantic. It's a meet cute, basically. Absolutely. They're put together by their boss.

A technical term. Yeah, I mean, it's like Hepburn Tracy, where they hate each other. They don't want to work together. Wait a minute. I kind of like this guy. Like the cut of his jib. And then there's this crazy romance. And by the way, that was actually something that Hunt's son said, is when the two of them were together, they behaved like teenagers.

There were like a lot of like joshing and laughing and stuff. So there was this love story. And then at the end, Lydia tried to have him killed. So it's the classic, classic love story. But Lydia is still the one that people tend to look at. And now Davey may not have been a very good person, but he, as you say, is an amazing character. I remember thinking I met him, what an idiot, actually. But he's a former FBI agent, probably a fan of Hitler, definitely a fan of Nixon. What do you think motivated him? He's a real person, right? So you can't just make him into a silly person. Yeah. I mean, one thing that stuck with me from talking to some people that knew him and didn't know Hunt, but knew him, was even in the later years where he was, I guess, full-on right-wing radio host yelling into the mic, as ridiculous as he often seemed,

it was pointed out to me, he's always dangerous. And that was something that was very important. And I think Justin captured that a bit where you're laughing, but again, at any moment, there's that sense like, is the gun about to come out or is he about to do something really crazy? In terms of who he is, I think psychologically, you know, look, I think he was, you know, damaged goods. He was a kid that had been bullied and picked on and has that sort of wanting to prove himself. and has that sort of wanting to prove himself. In another way, though, which I think was really interesting, was he's a very modern character in that I think that, again, maybe connected to that same sort of, you know,

I'm being ignored, I'm being bullied, that almost desire to be famous in any way, shape, or form. And much like sort of our modern, whatever, social media people. He would have been good on social media. Infamy is okay. I'm all right if I'm famous for whatever, you know, getting out of a limo without underwear on or whatever the equivalent of that is. You know what I mean? Like he doesn't care how he gets it.

Have you done that, Dave? Not yet. I've never heard of that. Not yet. Okay. I'm just saying. Thinking about it. That was an unusual choice. Thinking about it.

Yeah. I was trying to think of like something really stupid. That was the best I could come up with. I'm sorry. Yeah. I didn't want to say, I didn't want to say sex tape. So anyway, I was trying to do a better choice and I, now I've worked myself into a box, but anyway, so, you know, just absolutely sort of this, this very modern sense of, I want to be famous no matter what. And that desperation, if you will, his desperation to be something mixed with Howard Hunt's desperation to get it back because he's a bit, it's sort of a has been and a never was. And it's the desperation that is so dangerous and motivates this entire thing.

So that's kind of, that was sort of the approach. And the other thing I'll say with Liddy, and it's one of the things that I think Justin did just incredibly well. In was sort of the approach. And the other thing I'll say with Liddy, and it's one of the things that I think Justin did just incredibly well, in the course of the five episodes, and again, we picked those spots. There's about two or three spots, a big one in the third episode on the bench outside the Lincoln Memorial, where just a little bit, there's a moment where he's trying to convince Hunt they got to go back in a fourth time. And he's trying to talk to Howard about how, you know, I watch guys make fun of you and I want you to have everything back. And everything he's saying about Howard Hunt, he's talking about himself. And it's those little tiny moments that Justin kind of lets you, like, just lets you just in a bit.

And just enough to kind of go, oh, he is human. It is a performance. All those things that are true about Liddy kind of lock into place. Yes, exactly. And I think that's what, you know, again, makes his performance so great, but it's why it works. Yeah.

You 100% don't have a mustache like that if you don't need people to look at you, just in general. Now, Hunt, the same way. He was involved. He was a former CIA agent who was involved in the Bay of Pigs and retired as a disgruntled novelist. And he's thrilled when he gets the call to join. Peter, talk about this. It was obviously his redemption.

But give us a sense of Hunt, who someone who met him in the 1950s described him as totally self-absorbed, totally immoral, and danger to himself and anyone around him. Yeah, Hunt was, that's the thing, through the 50s and 60s and even back in World War II, a very capable, successful spy. He was the station chief in Mexico City for the CIA. So he was not an idiot his entire career. He was charged with the Bay of Pigs. And the Bay of Pigs, he accepts no responsibility for the failure of that. He blames it all on Kennedy and the Democrats not providing air support. And that's what allowed Fidel to stay in power. He trained. He got very close with a lot of those Cubans. And a lot of them died on the beach that day. So when the Bay of Pigs went side, he was blamed for it. He was put out to pasture. He got this job where retired CIA agents

go to kind of write PR copy. And he just hid in his basement, wrote spy novels, and just dreamed of getting back into some sort of power. And that's why when he got this phone call from the White House to come in and mess with the Democrats, it was the call he'd been waiting for for 10 years. And that was really what was interesting to us was that Watergate doesn't happen if not for the Bay of Pigs. That drive to take on the Democrats and destroy them really began with Howard Hunt in 1961, 62, when he was trying to take Cuba back, and the Democrats allowed a communist regime to camp out off the coast of Florida, that just made him mental. And it stayed with him for the entire time. So he was going to do whatever it took. And that's why when he found Gordon Liddy, someone else who

had the same kind of desire to just do whatever it took to take down the Democrats, it was a toxic combination. So Jay, that's a true believer's idea in Nixon, the need to reelect him, which makes them both buffoons but also true believers, like when they're pitching crazy ideas to disrupt the Democratic conventions. But as the scandal breaks, they become fall guys, like they all do.

Do you see them as tragic figures in this sense, or just they get what they deserved? You know, I... Like, you can think of Giuliani the same way, or Jenna Ellis, or Sidney Powell, or any of these people. Tragic is tough because I think there's an element of sympathy that when you start to say something is tragic. And again, sort of watch words from the set. I don't want you necessarily to have sympathy for them, but it's okay. Maybe a teeny tiny drop of empathy. So yeah, they definitely, they take the fall. They deserve the fall, but they do take the fall. So I guess that is the honest answer. I think has a moment or two where he actually realizes the price he paid. Liddy in his own

insane defense kind of gets everything he wants out of Watergate. He becomes famous. He becomes very famous for having failed. But at the same time, the name G. Gordon Liddy becomes like a, it's like a James Bond phrase, you know, like, are you going to follow me? Who are you? G. Gordon Liddy. So he gets everything he wants. He becomes the word Kleenex. Which then translated into he was around all the time. And just lived it up.

I mean, he's in TV shows like all the way to the end. Popped up, you know, Miami Vice sitcoms. I mean, he would show up for the opening of a supermarket, I think. So he gets everything he wants. With Hunt, I think there's a moment or two where Hunt actually does maybe realize, oh, my God, what have I done? What are the costs to my family, my life, all of that kind of stuff? And then just buries it because he has no choice. If he lives in that world, he's going to throw himself off a bridge, but he just sort of buries it himself.

Again, it's hard to sympathize with these guys because of what they did. We'll be back in a minute. Your business is ready for launch. But what's the most important thing to do before those doors open? Is it getting more social media followers? Or is it actually legitimizing and protecting the business you've been busy building? Make it official with LegalZoom. LegalZoom has everything you need to launch, run, and protect your business all in one place.

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LegalZoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice except we're authorized through its subsidiary law firm, LZ Legal Services, LLC. Support for the show comes from Indeed. If you need to hire, you may need Indeed. Indeed is a matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. We do also get to look at their home lives. Hunt's marriage to a CIA agent and his desire not to engage with his own kids or be faithful to his own wife. Liddy's

fidelity is kind of cookie cutter kids. You brought a lot of the family in. Alex, talk a little bit about why you brought the family in. As a father myself, it was horrifying to see what he did to his family in service of Nixon. in service of Nixon. And I think at a very, very, very deep level, I can think of the damage that my being a screenwriter has done to my family. And so I think of like, you know, the zeal with which we've pursued projects to, you know, the hours, the stress level, the amount of, you know, baggage I bring home. It's like, oh, good Lord, what have I done? But it also was there to show the human cost of this fanaticism. That's really what we wanted to show.

We needed to show that these are real human beings that are being hurt by this insane devotion to an ideal and to a cult centered around one person. devotion to an ideal and to a cult centered around one person. And in order for it to just not be a Keystone Cops farce and for it to be a cautionary tale, we really had to dramatize the family and what was going on at home. So that was the choice to bring that to the forefront. Go ahead, Peter. I think for us, from a writing standpoint, we really saw the show as a battle for the soul of Howard Hunt between G. Gordon Liddy

and his wife, Dorothy. And Dorothy was very smart, probably the smartest person in our show. Even, you know, in the Nixon tapes, you can hear John Dean saying, she's the brains of the operation. Dorothy Hunt is very, very smart. Yeah, this is Dorothy. She's played by Lena Headey. Yes. And for us, that is something that is from a structure standpoint. I think it was real, having done all the research was Howard was conflicted. And at times he would be drawn towards Liddy and actually perpetrating these atrocities,

you know, and going extra legal. And then his wife, Dorothy, would say, what you're doing is, these ideas are terrible. You shouldn't do it. And he just kept getting pulled towards the dark side. And then when everything goes foobar. The dumb side, yeah. The dumb side.

And when everything goes sideways, he turned to his wife and he said, Dorothy, I need your help. Someone needs to help me blackmail the Nixon administration, distribute the hush money. And she stepped up and she really ran that operation. But she really takes over the series. And so for us, that was always intentional, was to see the home life become... Which you don't know about. Yes. That's the part of the story I think most people know. And his home life, his family life, he involved his son in the cover-up, in destroying evidence. He involved his wife in the past.

So he brought them into it. He had a very conflicted relationship with them. And then you see how it plays out in his actual professional life and how it actually impacts the story. Because if they hadn't been blackmailing the Nixon administration, maybe the story wouldn't have blown up the way that it did. So those two stories really had to be intertwined. Right. So Dave, in the show and in Veep, the characters are real sad, right? Ultimately, they're funny and everything else, but at the heart, they're empty, sad, and really venal and feral in many ways. Let me add those two. So ego, not service, seems to what drives them when they think it's service. Is that how you see Washington? These two have similar tones. and I do like, by the way, ego, not service. It's about power. It's about power or the connection to power, the distance to power, who has the power. I mean, it kind of goes back to like Robert Caro 101. Where's the power? How do I get the power? And that's really what it is.

And I do think there are some lovely people that go to Washington DC wanting to do well. Unfortunately, they want to do good. They're West Wing, they're Kennedy, like ask not what you can do for your country. They do exist. They're still there. Unfortunately, I think there are just a lot of people that are kind of going, well, I can be a finance bro or I can head to DC and I can try and make myself look important. And that's a very reduced version of the world. But unfortunately, it is about this. There's something about that power. I don't know if it's absolute power corrupts.

Absolutely. But that taste of it, that sense of I'm more important that even the way like when Liddy sort of talks about Nixon liking a memo he wrote, like a small child with teacher putting a gold star on it, that sense that he is that much better than you because he was one step closer to Nixon. And they literally, again, back to that bench scene, they talk about it. Liddy says to him, it's about proximity to power.

And right now there's no one closer than us. In fact, when he was saying that, there were hundreds of people closer than them. That's the irony. But in their own weird bubble, it was just this idea that Nixon was thinking and talking about them. And for them, that meant it all. And that's unfortunately, that insanity, that desire for power is unfortunately, I see it in DC all the time. Yeah, it was on display at the White House Correspondents. You know, it's hard not to move to parody with these people. So you think, Alex, Peter, you think Washington is like this from your experience?

Oh, God, yeah. I mean, Liddy actually, I think, ran the memo that he wrote in his autobiography. There's also something sad about all these people and something very empty. And there is a sadness and emptiness in a lot of people. I blame all their fathers. I blame all their fathers. I would say that about tech people. And so power is just a way to validate yourself.

It's an easy path to self-validation that doesn't require a ton of work or introspection. It's easier just to step on someone else and go, I'm good, than to actually search within and examine your own failings and failures. So it's a quick fix. And it isn't a fix. So you try to get more power. Right. And it keeps going. And what about you, Peter?

To me, we just did this big screening of White House Plumbers in DC and it was fun. We had everyone come out. It was Bob Woodward was there and he loved the episode we watched, which was the highest praise we could have gotten. For the three of us to meet Bob Woodward and to watch our show with him was about as exciting as it's going to get. But the thing that's always funny, when we're in D.C., people will come up to us and they will say, I want to talk to you about Veep because Veep is as close to our world

as anyone has ever gotten. And it's better, it's closer, it's more real than the West Wing, House of Cards. Veep is exactly right. You guys just nailed it. And so that's always very satisfying. Yeah, I love Veep. I think it's very funny. I do feel bad after I watch it, though. I have to say it's funny and bad at the same time. And I want to do a lightning round, which Veep characters

or figures in White House Plumber is most like, and you can each answer. All right, starting with you, Dave, Gordon Liddy. Gordon Liddy is Dan in a very strange way. He's like Dan on steroids, I think. Maybe. And a little bit Jonah when he messes things up. Oh, that's good, too. That's good, too. Yeah.

If Jonah and Dan had a love child. Jonah and Dan had a love child. But let's not forget Kent Davidson and his robotic zeal. Yep. Okay. Speaking of which, Mark Felt, who later became Deep Throat, played by Gary Cole, who played Kent Davidson in Veep. Who is he most like on Veep? Kent Davidson. Kent Davidson.

Hence the casting. Okay. All right. Howard Hunt. He's Selena. He's Selena, I think. He's got to be Selena. of once upon a time, maybe they were both good at their jobs. Do you know what I mean? Like, like there's a reason Selena got to be vice president. There's a reason Hunt got put in charge of the Bay of Pigs, but now it's sort of like it's slipping away from them and that insane desire to, to, to get that last brass ring

and just prepared to do anything and often terrible, but often good at it too. You know, that very sort of horrible mix. And most importantly, obviously, the worst relationship with his children possible. So that's the other thing they have in common. Yeah, I would say the episode where Selina uses Catherine's marriage as cover for escaping a country is a classic Howard Hunt move. Okay, Selina, you too?

You agree, Peter? Oh, yes. 100%. John Dean? Probably Jonah. And Dan. Jonah and Dan again. What do you think, Dave?

I kind of like the Jonah of it all, which I'm sure Mr. Dean might not. I kind of like the Jonah of it all, which I'm sure Mr. Dean might not. But at that phase of his life, I think there's a desire there too for him to sort of like, you know, there's like that operator thing or that desire to be an operator. So that's what jumps out at me. Or an accidental hero. Yes. Later on. That's later on, though. Yeah. And I will say also the one thing that we took away from reading every single autobiography of the Watergate era, because everyone wrote a book, is uniformly they all hated John Dean. And that is true of Jonah as well. So that makes sense that he would be Jonah. I would make a case for Dan. It's like that he was Jonah until the moment he realized he was being recorded.

And then he became Dan Egan and was like, oh, fuck all you. I'm not going down. I'm going to outsmart you. And there's something great and lovable in the fact that all of a sudden his vision cleared and he was like, oh, I know what this is about. These fuckers are going to pin it on me. No way.

Right. Well, he was smarter than them. He was the smartest of all of them. He was the smartest. all of them. He was the smartest. Is there a Sue? Is there a Sue? That would have been Dorothy. St. John.

St. John. Fran. Fran. Yeah. Dorothy. I like Fran a little bit more because I feel like Fran sort of knows what Gordon is and just kind of does her thing. Does her thing.

Yeah, sorry. Yes, Gordon Liddy's wife, Fran. Kind of very aware of what it is, but kind of does her thing and tries not to get too involved. Ask no questions. If Selina's doing something terrible, she's just setting the calls. She's unflappable. She's agnostic about things. Fran really didn't want to know.

She was loyal all the way through. And she was a very smart, capable woman, but she did not want to know what Gordon was getting into. And by the way, you know, again, sort of strange things to say about Gordon Liddy. They had a very long loving marriage. I mean, it's a very, it's a very sort of odd thing, but it credit where credit's due. So, you know. So how Veep-like was Trump from your perspective? I mean, he was sort of the Veep wrecker because I always talk about sort of Veep before Trump and Veep after Trump. And if you think about- Explain that.

Well, if you think about what the show was, if you enjoyed the show and watched the first five seasons of which we were involved with the fifth season, but the first four were done by the creator Armando Iannucci and his team in the UK. The show sort of existed on Selena talking one way publicly, but then secretly talking much fouler privately. Trump just talks the way he talks the entire time. There's no public and private. She's constantly messing up and having to then basically grovel, apologize, and change sort of her direction. Trump gets caught, doesn't care, keeps going, tells you that's bullshit, and just keeps – So all of the – if you look at sort of the structures of the episodes, they just they seem outdated. They seem like from a different era, the before Trump and the after Trump stuff.

It just changed the very way we had to tell stories. Yeah. The stakes of every Veep episode are shame. What happens if people really find out what's going on? Oh, no, that'll hurt us. As opposed to I don't give a shit. Right, right. I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it would not hurt my reelection chances.

If I can loop this all around and I'm not sure I'm going to do it. So sit tight, grab onto your chairs. One of the things that I think, you know, again, that thing of like, how do we look at Trump? of like, how do we look at Trump by going back to Watergate and remembering a time when shame actually existed in our politicians and sort of in the world and being able to kind of look through that lens on what's going on right now. This president who's about, who's right now involved in the fraud case, the ongoing rape case. And then, I mean, just, you know, where did the founding fathers think about any of this? And obviously we've got Georgia coming up and then also the documents case. It's like maybe just a little bit, maybe that we can buy-

I think you left out the insurrection case. Sorry, I forgot about that. That never happened. But if we go back, you know, if we can maybe use this show and use Watergate to kind of like re-examine Trump a little bit and remember what shame was, that would be a really great thing. So I think that's passed. All right. Last question, Dave, I'm going to ask you talking about shame. Can you imagine a similar series 50 years from now about Donald Trump? This is almost 50 years.

Yeah, I absolutely can imagine it. And in fact, I actually think it's probably unfortunately, the best way to do it. You know, everybody that's trying to do Trump while Trump is still Trump, just I just they they're unwatchable, because it's just too, it's too fresh. And there's no perspective. And I do think, unfortunately, you know, you do need that perspective. Now, I think there's a larger question, which is 50 years from now when they've destroyed the Writers Guild and AI is writing that show. Assuming all that's the case, I do believe 50 years might give us a little perspective where maybe we can start to figure this thing out. Because right now, it's just, I don't know.

Anyone else? And I might be focused because I think in the way that we didn't do it about Nixon, we did it about kind of the side characters. I think it would be Rudy, exclamation point. And I think it's Timothee Chalamet. Timothee Chalamet in about 40 years is going to be a perfect Rudy Giuliani. It's going to be a great character piece

for him you got all the other characters in there Rudy with an exclamation point seems like a terrible musical is what that seems like I think it is I feel like

yeah yeah we're a 90s multi-cam sitcom of drag queens in Provincetown right now working on that

right it's the second for the summer please write us care of the show and we'll talk yeah the my pillow guy the my pillow yeah they'll be seem funny but i'll be like dead and again people will say wait a minute this didn't really happen this is cartoonish wait a second they didn't charge the capital on january 6th that's insane right four seasons landscaping with this stuff dripping down the side of his face. Oh, you guys are already coming up

with jokes. Oh my God. So many great scenes. So many great scenes. Anyway, I really appreciate it. It's a great series, White House Plumbers, for those who haven't seen it. It really happened. It really did. And at the time, it was terrifying, as I recall, as a young person. I really appreciated

Dave, Alex, and Peter. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much, Carol. I cannot believe you met Liddy. I did. Say more. I worked for, you know, I covered parties for the Washington Post,

and I met him at one of those. But I also worked with his son at the McLaughlin Group, Tom Liddy, who was a big defender of John McLaughlin. I was not. We were on opposite sides of that equation. Not a surprise. Shocking. Well, he was quite like his father in that regard, like very loyal type of person. So did he like bring his dad to work day?

What happened? No, it was at some event that I was introduced to him. And he was, he had the mustache, the whole thing. He was such a cartoon character. And, you know, he was so performative. I mean, he'd do very well in the internet age. He was highly performative of himself. He knew what he looked like.

And he had a sense of, he had to be sort of, he played a character named G. Gordon Liddy. I think he was kind of larger than life and kind of ridiculous, and it worked really well for him for a long time. He's kind of locked into that character till the end of time with this series. I love their point about shamelessness today versus the shame after Watergate. That is the key difference. Well, I'm not so sure. Some of them were ashamed and some of them weren't. But I think that he, I think he was not ashamed his whole life. I think he was proud and he, of course, became a figure on the right, you know, kind of stuff for many years. But yeah, you're right.

These people, you know, some of them went into prison and became prison preachers. Some of them, sorry, John Dean is all over the map on TV now. But Nixon, there was a resignation. There was appropriate, I don't know if appropriate, but there was some, what seemed like remorse and some kind of accountability. I guess. I don't think Nixon ever was sorry for what he did. I just don't get the sense that he ever apologized. But he knew that he had no future.

He knew he got caught. Right. He didn't have the future. And now Trump can come back and run for it. If Nixon ran for president again right after that, that would be what it would be like. Yeah. But I also loved his parallels between Lydian Hunt and the Giuliani slash MAGA enthusiasts. Dave almost seemed a little empathetic.

He kept saying, well, I'm not saying I feel sorry for them, but the cost that they've paid and the fact that Trump kind of doesn't love them back, it was interesting to hear him tread that line. Well, I think he's right. I think they all are these loyal people to these ridiculous megalomaniacs and malignant narcissists are going to be the ones that pay, not them, that this loyalty is misplaced on some level. The other day we were talking about kind of shows about marriage and how now all of the shows about marriage are kind of about broken marriage, Fleshman's Trouble, et cetera. I really like White House Palmer's. I love Veep. But I do think that we don't have West Wing. We don't have aspirational shows about government as much as we used to.

They exist on CBS, Madame Secretary. I know, Kara, you love it. I know. But actually, The Diplomat is. The Diplomat is on Netflix. I think it's quite, it's about service, too. It is about service, but she's like a lone horse. There's a lot of ego in it. Yeah, well, so is White West Wing, if you really watch it. You know what I mean? There are all kinds of characters. Everybody wasn't so inspirational in that show.

But he was an inspirational president, and many people in his cabinet and his staff were motivated by the right things versus like one person motivated by public service and a sea of egos, you know? For sure. It just seems like, I don't know, I love these shows, but I sometimes wonder if, do they help or hurt? Because watching West Wing made me, you know,

want to spend time with government, go into government. I don't know that. I don't think we should turn to Hollywood for our cues. I think we should turn to working civically and locally and in government. You know what I mean? Stories matter. I guess, but not like this is not where we should be getting our cues from what we think of our government. Unfortunately, we do. Every time I spend time with public officials, the good ones, you really do feel good about the government. I 100% agree. And there's so much more competence. There's a lot of stuff that actually does get done. It

just doesn't get covered. It also doesn't get seen. And the noise drowns out some of the good things. And I find many, many politicians very competent and trying very hard to do the right thing. And I have friends who, you know, my age, who've gone into government, who've tried public service. And I think there's a lack of respect socially for it versus kind of other countries or other places and other times where being a civil servant would have been a very, you know, well-paying and prestigious job. I don't know that that's any more the case. But alas, it's a very good show. People, check it out.

HBO, White House Plumbers. I wish we could have gotten into the writer's strike with them. Well, but we'll see where that ends up. Maybe we'll's a very good show. People will check it out. HBO, White House plumbers. I wish we could have gotten into the writer's strike with them. Well, but we'll see where that ends up. Maybe we'll do a show on it. We should do a show on it. I look forward to reading the chat GPT rendition of the Trump scandal series though.

Limited series. I'm off to actually wrap the guild and pick it with Amina Tussauds right now. Have a good time. Enjoy yourself. I hope you write really good placards. That should be fun. I know, it's such a high bar when you go to the picket. You've got to really think about your

sign. Because that's going to make the difference. Do you have a sign for me? No. Leave it to you. Leave it to you writers. All right. Can you read us out, please? Yes. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis. Aaliyah Jackson engineered this episode. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get to see Timothee Chalamet play Rudy Giuliani in 50 years. If not, you have to see Rudy the musical.

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 Monday with more. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making content that no one sees and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze.

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