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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
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- [01:00]
Anne
Hi, it's Anne. You've probably read about the Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to a government group chat in Signal. I had the opportunity to interview Jeff at the New Orleans Book Festival the week the story broke. We wound up talking about autocracy, democracy, freedom, resistance, as well as the absurd situation of the Signal chat. And so we thought fans of the Autocracy in America podcast might appreciate hearing our conversation too.
- [01:33]
Jeffrey Goldberg
So here you go.
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Anne
Thanks for listening.
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Ian
Well, that's embarrassing.
- [01:42]
Jeffrey Goldberg
So this is the second standing ovation I've witnessed this week for Jeffrey Goldberg. So one more time. So thank you all so much for coming. It's a real pleasure to be in this enormous packed room full of people who read books. So thank you so much for coming and contributing to the festival and listening to us talk about things that happen in real life as opposed to things that happen in culture wars far away. I'm in the unusual position of interviewing my editor, so you'll forgive me if I make mistakes. It's a first time. There's been some news over the last week and I thought we might focus on that. I wanted to start with my own experience. So I was at the Atlantic offices on Tuesday. So if you remember, I won't recount to you the content of Jeff's story that was printed on Monday, because I think if you're here, you probably know what was in it. But on Tuesday there was an interesting decision to be made. So. So the story was published. As you know, Jeff was put on a Signal chat of the leading members of the Trump administration, and then they reacted to the chat. Then they began denying it. They said it was a hoax. And I walked in on Tuesday morning, and there was a decision to be made about what to do next. And Jeff had printed out the copies of the screenshots from. From the chat and was looking at them. And what were you thinking?
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Ian
Let's just go off the record for a minute, just between us. Well, I was thinking a. I wish I weren't in this position because I didn't want. I mean, obviously you made a decision early, before the first story, that we weren't going to publish certain texts because I felt that they were too sensitive from a national security perspective to publish, obviously, information about specific operations. So I felt like I was being put into a kind of a box, but I don't. I didn't want to be put into a box. So I felt like we had to get out of it. And the way we got out of it is to say to ourselves, well, if the Trump administration is going to say that, I mean, there were so many different lines of attack at once. It's a hoax. It's not a hoax, but it's not sensitive. It's sensitive, but it's not top secret. Jeff Goldberg is a scumbag. That was one of their main arguments.
- [04:26]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Actually, the word scumbag.
- [04:27]
Ian
Yeah, that was one of their main arguments. Or sleaze bag, sleazebag. I want to be accurate. Sleazeback. And, you know, calling. Calling mean names, obviously calling the Atlantic. I mean, Donald Trump has been running that play, the Atlantic as a failing. He's been saying the Atlantic is a failing magazine for about eight years now. We were half the size when he started. So sometimes I joke that he's like our circulation director in a kind of way. It's not. That's been a weird help. So if they hadn't done all those things, I wouldn't have had to decide to publish. But we were faced with this dilemma. I'm not going to be called a liar. I'm certainly not going to have my magazine be called a liar. And more to the point, it's a serious thing. Like, don't. Like, you guys made a mistake. It's a serious mistake. It's a serious breach in national security. They had an opportunity to just accept that they made a mistake, tell us how they're going to fix the mistake, and then move on. But they instead went on this weird kind of attack, attacking the messenger, which is part of the play, the playbook. And so what we did is we started reaching out to all of the agencies. This is once Donald Trump said there was nothing serious in the material. We reached out to all the different agencies, CIA, dni, NSC and so on, and said, look, you know, Trump says this, Tulsi Gabbard says that, but we want to know, just because we're belt and suspenders, right. Is there anything you actually think shouldn't be put out into the public eye? Because the last thing that we want to do is put American service people in harm's way. Like, that's just my. I mean, other people in journalism have a debate about this kind of thing. No, no, it's a serious debate. I'm just not going to. I'm not going to do that. Like, that's not going to happen. And so what happened? We got some feedback. Some people ignored us. We finally got a sort of anodyne statement from the White House, like, it's not secret, but don't publish it anyway. Was the request, which didn't really hold a lot of water. The CIA actually did ask us to withhold a specific piece of information, which we did. They explained why, and it seemed like a good explanation. And so, you know, we just. They essentially goaded us into publishing the full transcript. And so we did, because we didn't have a choice at that point. And so that was the decision. We put that out. Was it yesterday? I guess it was just yesterday feels.
- [07:28]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Like a lot longer.
- [07:29]
Ian
Yeah, it feels like a little bit longer, but it was yesterday. And, you know, it's funny, because you get to. When you're in journalism, you get to. We love talking in kind of highfalutin, idealistic terms about what we do. And, you know, and this is an opportunity to actually say to ourselves what is in the best interest of our readers, of the people of the United States. They should see the whole truth, and then they should make up their own minds about whether this is a serious breach of national security or not. Our goal is to, like, all good journalists or people who are trying to be good journalists, to hold powerful people to account. And so if they're going to tell the American people that this isn't important, and we feel it's important, we're going to let the people decide. And that's what we did.
- [08:33]
Jeffrey Goldberg
But let me return to the attack on you, because this is something that we know from other times and other places. I mean, it's not just, you know, something that the Trump administration does that. Attacking the messenger, attacking the journalist, attacking the institution of journalism, attacking the Atlantic. This is a way this is something that autocrats and dictators do in other countries in order to be able to create their own reality. Right. I mean, they want to say nothing. Don't believe anybody except me. You know, ignore Jeff Goldberg. He's a. He's a scumbag and a loser and a sleaze bag. You know, only listen to our. Into what we are saying. Do you think that by publishing the texts, you injected that little dose of reality into the conversation?
- [09:25]
Ian
I hope so. I mean, you know, it's. It's. Look, and Ian, as you all know, is one of the great experts in the world on authoritarian behavior. I mean, wrote the book on the Gulag, on the history of the Gulag, and has been writing about totalitarianism and authoritarianism ever since. So not telling you certainly anything you don't know. Their goal, the goal of people who are authoritarian minded is to force compliance. Right? They can only do what they want to do if no one fights them, if no one argues with them, if no one counters it. And so if you have a. If you have a dose of reality that you can inject into the system, into the cognitive system of the United States, well, then you should do it, because they're counting on people not doing it. I mean, I've been saying this for a long time. I mean, saying this before Donald Trump was reelected, if there were eight or nine, I think nine or 10 additional Republican senators who would have voted for impeachment after the January 6th rebellion, or whatever you want to call it, uprising, Donald Trump would not have been allowed to run for president. But they enforced compliance, and they do that in the Republican Senate caucus, and they enforce compliance through intimidation, through threat, through fear.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
So how does it. So Mike Waltz calls you a loser on tv, implies that you're, you know, that you've somehow mysteriously made your phone number appear on his telephone.
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Ian
It was sucked in using my brain waves.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
That's right.
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Ian
Yeah.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
You know, so how does that work in your brain? So you're accused of these very bad things, and, and you're meant to be intimidated, and you're meant to say, you're right, you, Honor, we won't publish anything.
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Ian
Yeah, well, I mean, he could. Mike Waltz can call me a loser if he wants, but at least I know how to text.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
And did you break into his phone?
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Ian
You know, can I just tell you something? Did I break into his phone? So one of my kids. In our. In our family chat.
- [11:56]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Where you only use initials, Right?
- [11:58]
Ian
Yeah. Yeah, our family chat, which is now, you know, entirely encrypted. In code. I mean, our family. Most of our family chat consists of, does anyone have the Hulu password? You know, I mean, that's basically the family chat, right? In our family chat, one of my kids the day before last said, the most amazing thing about this story is that daddy has learned how to take a screenshot. So, you know, I don't have the. I don't really have those skills to. I mean, I think, you know, you know, this goes back to, you know, what you're saying. You throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and you. You hope it sticks. So instead of. This is what I don't understand. And anybody who's in a leadership position in any organization knows. It's like, it's when you make a mistake and you're called out on it, and you know it's a mistake. You know, you have choices. You can own the mistake. If you have to fall on your sword, you fall on your sword. If you get a second chance, great. You learn from it. You just deal with it. Like, he did invite me into the Signal chat and just. And you could just say, wow, that was a doozy. And we're not going to do that again. And we're going to not use Signal and other private commercial apps to communicate war plans or attack plans or we're going to. You know, you could just. You could do. I mean, I'm being entirely serious. Like, we. We have to be open to the idea that people in government, just like everybody else, make mistakes. And sometimes the mistakes have profound consequences. And the test is, how do you respond to the mistake? Do you just say, well, we made a mistake and we're going to do X, Y and Z. By the way, we wouldn't even be talking about it today if they had done that. I mean, maybe we would be, but it would be ebbing, right? But the waltz Hegseth tactic in this case was to say crazy things and push back in a way that, you know. And what I would say is, it's like, it's literally. It's literally one of those situations where before you start calling a person an editor, a magazine, names, you really make sure that the person doesn't have the receipts. Because if you have the receipts, you're forcing us. In all seriousness, you're forcing us. Forcing us to say, actually, we're not lying. Here's the truth.
- [14:35]
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- [15:06]
Jeffrey Goldberg
But there's. There's something else here, which is that almost. Not almost, I'll be more. More definitive. Any other administration in recent years, Republican or Democrat, in which something like this or some similar incident took place would have, at the very least fired somebody or would have acknowledged that this was an important breach or would have made some concession and would not have merely focused on making up names about you. And so the question is, what's different about these guys? What is it that they're doing? That's what is.
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Ian
We only have 13 minutes.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
13 minutes, 4 seconds.
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Ian
What's different? I mean, I don't want to. I'm trying to repress my desire to make jokes about this whole thing. Obviously, what's different is that the leader. The leader in this case, was taught from an early age or learned either from his father or Roy Cohn, his first lawyer of note, a valuable lesson. You don't apologize, you don't explain. You double down. And by the way, it generally speaking, works.
- [16:25]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, this is what I'm gonna ask.
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Ian
Well, this is the thing, and we've talked about this. We're both, I think it's fair to say, admirers of John McCain, the late John McCain. And in 2015, I guess it was 15, the summer of 15d, Donald Trump is being interviewed about John McCain, who he doesn't like. And he says, I don't like people. He was talking about pow. I don't like people who are captured. I don't like people who are shot down. I'm watching that, and I'm thinking, oh, I mean, according to the ordinary rules of political physics, that's the end of his campaign, right? I mean, for any American, any American politician to say that about John McCain or any POW, or any honored veteran is absurd. Right? Especially in. And he's trying to get the nomination of a party that is associated with patriotism and support for the troops, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But then we watched in the coming days, he didn't apologize for it. He doubled down on it, and he just rode that wave. And so I realized then that I'm not understanding Something crucial about politics in America or about this party or about what he's doing. He's discovered some kind of trick, right? Trick is not even trick, doesn't treat it seriously. He's discovered a pathway to success that no other American politician that we can think of has ever discovered, which is you. Literally, you take the criticism and you turn it into, into. You refashion it into a weapon. Remember when, when people said to you, people said, america first. Oh, Donald Trump. You can't say that. That was Charles Lindbergh's theme. That was what the Nazis were saying in America in the 30s. And he goes, I think it sounds great, right? And then everybody's like, okay. And then they moved on to the next kind of moment. And it's like, that is like that's kind of a political. I mean, it's a. Maybe it's a dark art, but it's a genius dark art.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I mean, there's something about it. To me, what he seems to have is he does things that other people can't do. In other words, he keeps breaking taboos and he keeps saying things. He has no self control at all.
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Ian
So he can say, or maybe it is self control.
- [18:47]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Maybe he knows, but something about it makes people admire it. I'm not allowed. I have to be careful. I have to be polite to people. And he doesn't have to.
- [18:58]
Ian
Well, let me. I mean, you know, as I said before, you're the expert, especially in the European context, Eastern European and Soviet and then Russian context. Why do. It's a genuine question. Why do people, so many people, why are they drawn to the, the autocratic figure? Why. Why is democracy not as popular as maybe you would think it would? Or the idea of democratic self restraint, why is that not popular?
- [19:31]
Jeffrey Goldberg
I mean, so in almost every country on the planet where there is a harsh dictatorship, there are also people who want democracy. So, you know, I've been in all kinds of places in the world, as you know. I was recently in Sudan. Yeah, you can go into very far corners of countries where there has never really been democracy, where there's a civil war. And you will meet somebody who says, what we need here is democracy. So there's a way in which people who live in the harshest societies understand intuitively that it's not fair. You know, it's not fair that the judges are controlled by the leader. It's not fair that people have no influence over politics. It's not fair that people are treated unequally or that people don't have rights. So There is actually something intuitive. Intuitive about democracy as well as dictatorship. But what dictators usually do is they create. It goes back to what we were talking about a minute ago. They create an atmosphere of. It's a combination of fear and greed. In order for me to get ahead and keep my position, I need to play this role. They create a world in which it's very difficult. People don't have incentives to put.
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Ian
Break out of it. Right.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
And that's what's changed, it feels to me in Washington is that there are now a lot of people who. Who have incentives not to say things they know are true or incentives, you know, to attack Jeff Goldberg for something that they know is true.
- [21:00]
Ian
Are you surprised by how easily it is to scare people?
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I've been surprised by some people, but not overall.
- [21:11]
Ian
No.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I mean, really, there's no, you know, there's no such thing as an exceptional society where these rules don't matter.
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Ian
Right.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I mean, I suppose the strange thing about the United States is that it's not like we're living in a world where, you know, if you. If you lose your job as National Security Advisor, you go to the Gulag, you know what will happen? Well, maybe you'll go to Fox. You'll go to Fox, or, you know, you'll teach at the Kennedy School or, I don't know, you know, you'll be at a think tank. So. So the, so the. So the pressure that's being put about on people is pressure to do with careers and status. It's not. It's not. There's no violence.
- [21:49]
Ian
Yeah. And by the way, I should say Mike Waltz, who says he doesn't know me, is I have found to be an interesting guy. You've probably encountered him as well, and he is in the camp. I mean, one of the interesting things that's not being discussed. Discussed as much is that in that long discourse, there are definitely sides within. There are definitely teams within the Trump administration. J.D. vance is definitely more of a, kind of a soft isolationist. And Mike Waltz is more of, you know, in the old kind of conservative, muscular interventionist kind of model internationalist almost. And you could see that he's a patriot. He uses patriotic language, and he uses patriotic language. And I'm sure he's not comfortable with our. What would you call, pivot to Russia. I'm sure he's not comfortable with that. But it's. I mean, this is just as an aside, it's interesting how people like that. I mean, you and I both have a lot of experience in the past with Lindsey Graham. And I have him in my mind as kind of the ultimate shape shifting political character. Because when I knew Lindsey Graham, well, it was when he was Sancho panza to John McCain's Don Quixote. Right. And he was like 100% lockstep with John McCain. And he knew that John McCain couldn't stand Donald Trump and everything that he stood for, both from a political perspective and from a character perspective. But now he's all in. And, and you've written about that. And so I mean, that is maybe one of the great operative examples like how does that. I mean, I guess the question is how does that happen?
- [23:33]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, usually there are different paths. I mean, people tell themselves various stories. If I'm on the inside, I'll be influential or if I don't do this job, then somebody else will or my mother in law is ill and my wife is worried about our mortal and I can't afford to lose this job right now. I mean, there's a, you know, there's a sort of range of excuses and.
- [23:58]
Ian
That'S the legitimate fears. There are some legitimate fear.
- [24:02]
Jeffrey Goldberg
If you're in a really repressive society, then you're, if I don't do this, I'll go to jail. And that's the thing that we don't have here. And that's that. Well, I was thinking about Mike Waltz. I mean, you maybe.
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Ian
No, no, no, I'm not. Well, let's leave that aside for the moment.
- [24:21]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Sorry.
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Ian
No, no, no, it's. No, but by the way, by the way, this is one of the things about this general moment. You have to be, if you want to stand for reality, you have. And there are people who don't want you to do that. You have to be prepared to suffer the consequences of that. You really do.
- [24:44]
Jeffrey Goldberg
But it's also true that one of the things they're doing, and you see it with you, but you've seen it with law firms, you've seen it with universities. They're also looking at picking out individuals, one university, one law firm, one journalist, and intimidating them that way. I mean, clearly one of the answers or one of the things that I hope happens in the next few months even and let alone the next few years is that people begin to work together. I mean, if all journalists, you know, or all lawyers or all universities are on the same page.
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Ian
Right, but the problem, you know, no, it's a good.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
That it's much harder to pick the most.
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Ian
It's a good point. But what we've seen from some reporting this week on the law firm issue. You know, you had Paul Weiss, the big law firm, being attacked by the Trump administration. And according to some of the reporting, at least Paul. Officials from Paul Weiss went to other big firms and said, hey, would you stand with us? And what was going on was that Paul, these other firms were trying to raid Paul Weiss for their best lawyers and their clients. I mean, it was not, it was not Solidarity forever.
- [25:53]
Jeffrey Goldberg
No, but. And it's very short sighted because then down the road, you know, they'll be next.
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Ian
Yeah, yeah.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
And it's a, you know, I suppose they're not used to thinking along those lines.
- [26:03]
Ian
Well, that's kind of the ultimate question is what do people who. And it's not a partisan question because there's not at all. There are plenty of Democrats and Republicans and everybody who are concerned about this. But we're not used to this. We're just not used to this. I mean, we're not. I mean, if we lived in Poland or Russia or across most of the world, actually, we've experienced, we would have experienced things like this. But what do people and institutions have to do to expand their thinking or to not have a failure of imagination about what might be coming?
- [26:43]
Jeffrey Goldberg
I mean, you know, it helps to read the Atlantic.
- [26:47]
Ian
Oh, it does.
- [26:49]
Jeffrey Goldberg
It helps to know history. It helps to know some American history. I mean, you know, you can find incidents and reflections like this in our own history, including right here in Louisiana. There was a governor of Louisiana who, some of you might know his name, pushed the limits. Who pushed the limits here? Huey Long. And so there's a tradition of it and you can study the tradition and learn what people did before.
- [27:15]
Ian
Right. I mean, the very fact that America first is rooted, I mean, maybe Donald Trump didn't know where it came from, but it was rooted in a stretch of American history, means that we've been through times like this before.
- [27:32]
Anne
That was the Atlantic's Editor in Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, talking with me at the New Orleans Book Festival. You can get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe to the Atlantic. A subscription gives you access to all of our award winning journalism and you can listen to as many articles as you want online or in the Atlantic app. Your subscription helps fuel all of our journalism in the magazine, on the Internet and on our podcasts. So subscribe today@theatlantic.com Podsub and thank you.