The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the Long-Term Consequences of Trump 2.0

Summary

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

Release Date: June 2, 2025
Host: Kara Swisher, Vox Media
Guest: Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic

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1. Introduction: Jeffrey Goldberg and His Role at The Atlantic

Kara Swisher opens the episode by introducing Jeffrey Goldberg, highlighting his pivotal role at The Atlantic and his investigative prowess, particularly in stories that have antagonized former President Donald Trump. Goldberg’s tenure at The Atlantic has been marked by impactful journalism that challenges powerful figures and holds them accountable. Swisher notes Goldberg's excellence in maintaining the magazine’s relevance in Washington’s volatile landscape, emphasizing its ability to "punch above its weight" despite not being a massive publication.

Notable Quote:

"If the story isn't actually interesting to read, people aren't gonna read it."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (51:08)

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2. Signalgate: A Case Study in Operational Security

The conversation delves into the Signalgate incident, where Goldberg published a story embarrassing President Trump by revealing Trump’s derogatory comments about fallen American troops. Swisher recounts how Trump retaliated by attacking Goldberg, yet paradoxically, this backlash boosted The Atlantic’s subscriber base.

Goldberg discusses the broader implications of Signalgate on national security, expressing concerns about the use of encrypted messaging apps like Signal by government officials. He underscores the lack of improvement in operational security, noting that despite the potential risks of such platforms being compromised by adversarial nations, there has been little to no systemic change within the administration.

Notable Quotes:

"The actual issue of Signal is national security."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (07:01)

"When the attack is happening in two hours, the bombs will literally start dropping in two hours."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (11:32)

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3. Corruption and Authoritarian Tendencies Under Trump

Goldberg critiques the blatant corruption within the Trump administration, particularly highlighting how the White House has been monetizing its position. He points to the crypto grift as a clear example of transactional cynicism, where Trump openly enriches himself using the presidency. Goldberg draws parallels to historical figures like Richard Nixon and Abraham Lincoln to illustrate how Trump’s blatant corruption diverges sharply from past presidential behavior.

He also touches upon the challenges of investigating and holding perpetrators accountable when crimes are committed transparently, as Trump often dismisses wrongdoing as mere transactions without acknowledging their moral implications.

Notable Quotes:

"The Atlantic is doing great... make the best possible quality, highest quality stories..."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (50:38)

"Donald Trump doesn't think there's anything wrong with enriching his family openly by using the White House as a kind of money making."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (20:32)

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4. The Media Business and The Atlantic’s Strategic Success

Goldberg shares insights into the media landscape, explaining how The Atlantic has thrived by prioritizing high-quality journalism over mass ad-based revenue models. He attributes the magazine’s success to producing compelling stories that engage literate audiences willing to pay for premium content. Despite predictions that digital-native media like BuzzFeed and Vice would overshadow traditional publications, The Atlantic’s subscription model has proven resilient, particularly in attracting subscribers through provocative and influential stories.

He emphasizes the importance of crafting excellent leads to draw readers into the stories, ensuring that the content remains engaging beyond the initial paragraphs.

Notable Quotes:

"Make the best possible quality, highest quality stories, as many of them as you can make by writers who are known and appreciated by literate audiences..."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (50:30)

"If your podcast isn't interesting, isn't entertaining, people aren't gonna go to the second paragraph."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (51:08)

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5. Democratic Party Challenges and the Future of American Politics

The discussion shifts to the Democratic Party’s struggles in the current political climate. Goldberg criticizes the party’s inability to effectively communicate and connect with a broader electorate, suggesting that internal divisions and a lack of clear leadership are hindering its resurgence. He highlights the risk of the Democratic Party becoming a regional entity, confined to coastal strongholds while failing to appeal to voters in other states.

Goldberg also addresses the existential threat posed by Trumpism, emphasizing the need for strong congressional oversight to balance presidential power. He expresses uncertainty about how Democrats can overcome these challenges but underscores the importance of proactive measures to restore effective governance and accountability.

Notable Quotes:

"The Democrats aren't really good at politics, which is probably a problem."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (40:53)

"I'm focused on Congress in the next year."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (16:19)

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6. The Impact of Distraction and Populist Tactics

Goldberg analyzes how Trump’s mastery of media distractions undermines serious political discourse. He likens Trump’s attention-grabbing tactics to a predator’s natural advantage, making it extraordinarily difficult for meaningful issues to gain traction amidst constant sensationalism. This environment forces media and the public to constantly triage what matters, often sidelining critical national security and governance issues in favor of trivial distractions.

He underscores the difficulty in countering this dynamic, suggesting that journalists must continually prioritize and highlight substantial stories to maintain public awareness and accountability.

Notable Quotes:

"Donald Trump is a genius of attention, a genius of attention grabbing and so good and natural at it."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (29:46)

"The unserious thing becomes the serious thing. So it's very, very hard to know."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (30:00)

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7. Reflections on American Democracy and Future Outlook

In the concluding segments, Goldberg reflects on the state of American democracy, expressing anxiety over its fragility. He warns of a potential civic catastrophe driven by systemic incompetence and corruption, likening the current decay to an untreated terminal illness. Goldberg stresses the importance of rebuilding the civil service and restoring public trust in governmental institutions to avert a dystopian future.

He remains cautiously optimistic, believing that sustained public pressure and institutional reforms could steer the nation back towards democratic resilience and accountability.

Notable Quotes:

"I think we are heading towards civic catastrophe for really quotidian reasons."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (53:46)

"That terminal illness is not hospice ready. It just might be, you know, it might be a very serious illness, but I just don't know which one we're doing yet."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (55:21)

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Conclusion

Kara Swisher and Jeffrey Goldberg engage in a profound dialogue covering the intersection of media, politics, and national security in the Trump era and beyond. Goldberg provides a meticulous analysis of the systemic issues undermining American democracy, offering both critiques and insights into the media’s role in shaping public discourse. The episode underscores the urgent need for accountability, robust journalism, and effective governance to navigate the complex challenges facing the United States.

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Note: All timestamps correspond to the provided transcript and indicate the approximate location of the quoted statements within the episode.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

It's on. 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 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 Krebs, 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. This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist. And I'm Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist. Between us, we have decades of experience studying the indicators that drive the economy and how they can have a direct impact on your investments.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

We know that investors have a lot.

[Kara Swisher]

Of questions about the markets and the.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Economy, and we're here to help.

[Kara Swisher]

So download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for this show comes from smartsheet. Your team is innovative. Your team is ready to achieve the impossible. Innovative teams use smartsheet to defy expectations, spur growth, and make the impossible possible. Smartsheet is the work management platform that allows teams to automate workflows and seamlessly adapt as their work evolves. Whether you're managing projects or scaling operations, smartsheet gives you the tools to cut through chaos and reach your team's full potential. With Smartsheet, the extraordinary is just another day at work. Smartsheet Work with Flow See how Smartsheet can transform the way you work at smartsheet.com that's smartsheet.com Support for on with Keraswisher 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 Lyndon Heathrow, you can glide from car to clubhouse lounge, a destination in its own right, in 10 minutes or less. On board, 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.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It is all.

[Kara Swisher]

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.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Not a great place to be.

[Kara Swisher]

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. And when you.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It was the right group chat.

[Kara Swisher]

Indeed, it was the right group chat. 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. But Mike Walz got demoted, mostly because he was coordinating with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over plans to bomb Iran. Plus he pissed Laura Loomer off. Nobody else got fired. What's your takeaway from Signalgate in general?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I mean, I think Waltz was already on thin ice. He and Susie Wiles weren't getting on very well. Waltz, from what I understand from inside, forgot that he was staff. National Security Advisor is staff. And you're not a principal, even though you have a big title.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 actually thought that was slightly witty.

[Kara Swisher]

Slightly.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 Ashley Parker and Michael Shearer and we got word from the White House, they said, bring Jeff with you. So I got to go to talk to him.

[Kara Swisher]

To the Trump interview.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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. That's just the way you welcome somebody to the White House these days.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, that's a technique, right?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, no. And I said, when we walked into the Oval Office, he was like. And he was very friendly, and I could explain the dynamic there if you want, but he was very friendly. 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 he's correct, because he understands how things work. But here's. 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, the Iranians, et cetera. To hear what you're talking about, the 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. This is the track his mind goes down. 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?

[Kara Swisher]

Like, in other words, I'm concerned with national security.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, no, no. I mean, he was. Finally, I said, did you learn anything about operational security? And he said, in that kind 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. And that's kind of like. That's the language.

[Kara Swisher]

That's the coin of the realm.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

That's the coin of the realm is the language he understands, and he has to contend with that. The issue raised by journalism are not as interesting as the fact of who's getting the attention at any given moment.

[Kara Swisher]

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.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Not I. Not that I can see.

[Kara Swisher]

Not that you can see in.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

And know what he's saying on his phone, knowing what he's typing. And that's just the. That's just the reality. So, no, I don't. I. There's no reason to believe that things have gotten better.

[Kara Swisher]

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?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. I mean, the problem is, is that two competing demands. One, these people have to talk to each other in order to know what I mean, in the best possible circumstance. They're talking about plans and operations and intelligence that they're getting. The challenge is that you do that most securely from a skiff, 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 skiff every time you want to call the Defense Secretary. It means you have to. It's not reasonable to ask busy people. I mean, obviously, within the White House complex and the Defense Department and State Department, there's rooms next to your office that you can go to, but 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. 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. 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 here, but I'll tell you that the actual issue to me or an important issue. Pete Hegseth. Okay, so Pete Hegseth on the signal chat starts telling the members of the signal chat, which include the Vice President, the CIA director, the national intelligence director, and me.

[Kara Swisher]

And one of their cousins. But go ahead.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, and when they're going. When the, when the, when it's happening.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 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 who. When the Tomahawks are being fired from what. Correct.

[Kara Swisher]

He was showing off.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

He's cosplaying Secretary of Defense. 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. Like, you need to just chill and just understand that we all know you're Secretary of Defense. You're cool already. You got like an armored limousine and you got guys with guns protecting you, and you get your own plane. The plane, the Secretary of Defense plane, is literally called the doomsday plane. What's cooler than that?

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Right. And so this is the problem of inexperienced unserious people taking on very, very grave jobs.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. I do understand that you can't account for that. No, you can't.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

There's no technical fix for that kind of unseriousness.

[Kara Swisher]

Unseriousness and insecurity and security and possibly three bourbons in.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm not saying that you are.

[Kara Swisher]

I am saying that.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I know. I heard you.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be talking about the New York Times story 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. Military people could be in harm's way very easily.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Literally. They're sending pilots to a place.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

That has anti aircraft capabilities. And I'm sitting on my phone reading.

[Kara Swisher]

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 it definitely won.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's not the situation you want.

[Kara Swisher]

So this is a quote from Adrienne LaFrance, 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 like that in the Atlantic is a pretty tough sentence to write.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 think that's a good piece of analysis of what's happening. I mean, I've been focused lately. 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.

[Kara Swisher]

That's my next question.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Okay, 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 like how many planes Qatar 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 muscular way. Much of the press, because of bad ownership, is not engaged in as muscular way or 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, 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 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 it's like, you gotta focus on Congress in the next year, and that's.

[Kara Swisher]

What you'll be focused in on.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm focused on a lot of things, but, I mean, I think, again, one of those stories that's too big to believe 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. So 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 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? Okay, fine. In your night sweats, you know, in the darkness, in the pit of night, in your bed, you can acknowledge yourself that you're scared.

[Kara Swisher]

But, like, that was disturbing, to say the least.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's disturbing because in some cases, they're not scared.

[Kara Swisher]

They're actually going along. It's not just scared. There is a.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, no, no. There's people who love it, right? And then there are people who know that he has authoritarian instincts, and they just are like, I'm not gonna withstand.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm not crossing him.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, well, I'm not gonna, like, sub to social media pressure or actual violence, right?

[Kara Swisher]

So 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 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?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, deeply corrupt governments and societies 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. 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. Cause it is bread and circuses. Yeah, Bread and circuses. Maybe it won't. But you know, there's this, you know, generally speaking, corruption means that things don't get done that the people want to have done, but building roads to have good schools, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe that leads it. In the meantime, I think it's very interesting. I think the many of the people around Trump believe that it's not corruption because it's transparent.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. They've said that to me.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 just last week.

[Kara Swisher]

South African president.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Was a South African president. And Trump said, I would take it.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I mean, it's a very. I don't think Abraham Lincoln would have the same reaction to that kind of transactional cynicism. So explicit correction or Richard Nixon, by the way, I don't think Richard Nixon would have the same reaction to that kind of transactional cynicism.

[Kara Swisher]

I like my money under the table would be his policy.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 money making.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I've called him a coin operated president.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Right. That's funny.

[Kara Swisher]

But thank you.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, you're good with those phrases.

[Kara Swisher]

Do you know what tech bro stands for? Technically? Broken. I have a lot of them.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

That was good.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you, thank you. Feel free to use them. But what does that do? How do you then investigate that when they're doing the criming in plain sight?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

You know, it's hard because, and by.

[Kara Swisher]

The way, they're pretty competent at it. I wish they were as competent as governing as they are at criming.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Building bridges would be cool too, right? It's interesting because a lot of the energy in investigative journalism comes from exposing the COVID 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.

[Kara Swisher]

Right?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

There's no, there's none of that power and none of that energy because he just took it.

[Kara Swisher]

He says, yeah, I took it.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Because he says, yeah, I took it. I mean, 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? That this is why he's, 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 an ideology.

[Kara Swisher]

So again, like signal gate, is there any accountability then in the end or is at some point it gets to be too much or just voted out of all?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 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 the Republican 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.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

So there is a. There doesn't seem to be a consequence for. I mean, I've never seen a political party.

[Kara Swisher]

Not hurt so many people of their own followers.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, got it. Okay. So we're living in a simulation. So speaking of that, through the Looking.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Glass, like, it's just. It's read Alice in Wonderland.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. So, speaking of incompetence, Elon announced he's leaving Doge and the administration. He badmouthed the president's deficit busting bill on the way out. He hasn't deposited the 100 million he pledged to Trump. It's not the surprising. I did notice that they were eventually bound to leave each other. That said, they're 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 rescission package to Congress, which is how much we spend on probably paperclips. 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, 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?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I did not know that ketamine has bladder side effects, by the way, until this morning.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, now you do.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. It's good knowledge to have. Yeah, in theory, yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Have you taken ketamine? I'm just curious.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I have never taken ketamine.

[Kara Swisher]

I have.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

What's it like?

[Kara Swisher]

Not good.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Not good?

[Kara Swisher]

No.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Disassociates yourself?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, indeed.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Why do you want to be disassociated?

[Kara Swisher]

I was doing it for a TV series, but. And I wanted to understand what Elon's going through. Honestly, I didn't like it.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm not going to ask about bladder problems.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. I only did it once, so I'm fine.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, good. I'm glad. I think Doge is a sideshow.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I honestly think one of the tricks of populism 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 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 Vogt who runs the OMB of his 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. Is not a co. Equal. They have a philosophy here.

[Kara Swisher]

Unitary executive therapist.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

The unitary executive, and that they're happy that Congress is acquiescing and they want to 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 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.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

And so Elon is as boring as Elon Musk is exciting, right?

[Kara Swisher]

With the chainsaw and the distraction.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, yeah. Russell just goes to work every day and works. One of the things that you find, and this is true of the Hegseths 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. And 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.

[Kara Swisher]

Time, which he's allowed to do at his own company.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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.

[Kara Swisher]

Damaging, right? Yeah, yeah.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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, far from it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 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 pay attention.

[Kara Swisher]

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 as the 51st state or the plane, all of which are serious issues. How do you get away from the distraction then? Well, Russell Voten, I think you're absolutely right. It's about a making government smaller and rewarding wealthy people with tax breaks that will sit very heavy on future generations. It's about the money and the getting rid of government.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. And 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 doesn't make a lot of sense even from a Red State perspective. Most of the things that the government do are purely apolitical. Meat safety, tornado prediction, you know, and on and on and on and on and on. So I don't understand it. The question is how did.

[Kara Swisher]

How do you ignore the distraction, given. The distractions are so pretty. From a media perspective, Donald Trump, again.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Is a genius of attention, a genius of attention grabbing and 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 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, it turns out you can get away with this. Turns out you can get away with that. 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, right. I was like, 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, TARS. 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 gonna 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. Cause he puts so many words out into the universe, it's very hard to pick what to do. I actually don't know the. I don't know the answer. From a way no. 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 Vogt is a more interesting, consequential person in the government.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Trinet. Trinet's full range of HR solutions were built for purpose driven companies such as Zymo Research, whose focus on biomedical innovations have advanced the early diagnosis and prevention of disease with a goal to positively impact human lives and deliver the next generation of healthcare. And when they needed a provider of HR solutions to help them recruit top talent, they went with Trinet. TriNet's industry leading HR expertise can help your business too, whether you're looking for support with payroll, compliance, access to Benefits or strategic HR. That's because TriNet understands the real key to success is in taking care of people that make it all happen. Trinet can also help you scale, providing industry leading expertise to help you grow your team, attract top talent and stay competitive regardless of your size. So if you're a visionary looking for a must have HR advisor to help you grow your business, consider Trinet. You can learn what Trinet can do for your [e-mail] Vox that's T R I N-E-T.com Vox to get started. Trinet your path Their Purpose Support for On with Keraswisher comes from Deleteme. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. These days, it's easier than ever to find personal information online. Having your address, phone number and family members names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and make everyone vulnerable. More and more online partisans and nefarious actors will find this data and use it to target political rivals, civil servants, and even outspoken citizens posting their opinions. With Deleteme, you can protect your personal privacy and the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. I've actually gotten to try Delete Me, and as always, I'm surprised by how much information is out there on me. And even though I'm incredibly careful about my privacy, I'm surprised by how many numbers are out there, how much inaccuracy is there. You can take control of your data and keep your private light private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Cara and use the promo code CARA at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Cara and enter the code Kara at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Kara CodeCara Support for this show comes from NPR's Planet Money. Tariffs, Meme coins, Girl Scout cookies. What do they all have in common? It's all about the money. Economics is everywhere, in everything, fueling our lives even where we least expect it. If you're curious to learn something new and exciting about economics every week, I recommend you listen to the Planet Money podcast from npr. Planet Money is a kind of economic show where they make the complexities of the economy actually make sense. Where human stories supersede abstract theories, they discuss the economy in ways that's clear, compelling, and even fun. From the job market to the stock market to the fluctuating prices at your local supermarket, Planet Money breaks it all down with wit and curiosity, and the Planet Money team lives to tell a good story. In just around 30 minutes, it's econ for the rest of us. I listen to NPR regularly and have listened many times to Planet Money, and I really appreciate how clear and concise they are 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.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Hi, I'm Chris Krebs, first director 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 US 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 service's 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 US 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.

[Kara Swisher]

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.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

By the way, the Chris Krebs episode is among the most serious. So I ranking what represents an actual threat to the American way of life, the American system of, of accountability and governance. It's the attack on Chris Krepps. 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, 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, like 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, and what are the eventual real world consequences of that? We don't know. But there will be real world consequences.

[Kara Swisher]

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 clear have a problem with voters and their handling of Biden's decline is 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 horizon. You suggested governors Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear talk about where they are right now.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Actually, that was a very interesting conversation with, you know, there's two Donald Trumps. There's Donald Trump's 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 he, in a strange way, is smaller than life. When you go in, he's like, oh, hi. Hi, nice to see you. Oh, yeah, what's. And we had this conversation about the Democrats. It wasn't like the Democrats are scumbags or the Democrats are. 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. Correct. 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 that could break the Democrats, I think, writ large. The Democrats aren't really good at politics, which is probably a problem. Cause that's their business. They're at risk of becoming basically a regional party. Coastal California, New England, New York City and environs, some Austin, Texas, and whatever. They've learned nothing, it seems to me. I'm just trying to be analytical about it. They don't seem to 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 going to have a bunch of. And we'll see this in the upcoming primaries. I mean, the 27. We'll see it. You know, everybody will use these derogatory terms for all these governors who are like, 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, you know, use regular Andy Beshear is very interesting. Obviously one of the. A very successful Democrat in a red state.

[Kara Swisher]

When Trump or Laura Kelly from Kansas.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 they said, at someone in prison. And he said, why can't we just say, you know, inmate? 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 does that happen?

[Kara Swisher]

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?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm. I'm just surprised by everything. I mean, it is obviously a democratic crisis. Small D democratic crisis. We're in. The country has never seen anything like Trump or Trumpism. I mean, maybe Andrew Jackson, but very few people in this room remember Andrew Jackson.

[Kara Swisher]

Huey Long had he long.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, but that was a local variant. Local variant. I mean, he had a national following, but he didn't become president. There's a larger question which, 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 democracy the way we understand democracy in an age of social media. I don't know. One of the things I always say this to. It's funny, I always say this to younger journalists. It's okay to say I don't know when you're being interviewed.

[Kara Swisher]

I.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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.

[Kara Swisher]

Is an answer in and of itself.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I can't explain to you why.

[Kara Swisher]

The.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Democrats aren't in the street. I don't mean in a violent way, but, I mean, I just assumed that Lafayette Square would be filled every day with. 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 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. And I don't necessarily.

[Kara Swisher]

Is there anything you see at all? It could happen all of a sudden. These things sometimes happen.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

All of a sudden something breaks. I mean, you would've of 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 study it carefully know that there was a welling up of frustration and various factors that led to that break. So maybe something will. Maybe something will occur. It should. I don't. I don't know.

[Kara Swisher]

That's a very good answer, actually. We'll be back in a minute. Critics and audiences agree Netflix's Nobody Wants this is the best comedy of the year.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

You're the rabbit.

[Kara Swisher]

It's hot, right? The Hollywood Reporter raves. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody share crackling chemistry.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Is there a world where this works?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Nobody wants this is 2024's winner of the American Film Institute TV program of the year.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Godspeed Hot Rabbi.

[Kara Swisher]

It sets the romantic comedy standard for the new age. You called me your friend in front of the teens whose opinion I care about most.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

That was so sus.

[Kara Swisher]

Nobody Wants this for your Emmy consideration in all categories including outstanding comedy Series. 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 ag. 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 touchpoint, 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 [e-mail] 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 statehouses, courthouses, and on the streets. Visit eff.org podcast to listen to how to Fix the Internet and join effort. I want to 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 Frum 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.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

1.3.

[Kara Swisher]

What? 1.3. Okay, sorry. Excuse me. Have that fixed.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Check my phone. Check my phone every 10 minutes.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, you do talk about the lessons you learned.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Not too late for all of you. By the way, those who don't have it.

[Kara Swisher]

You've learned as a media operator. Now, you didn't. 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 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. Excuse me, I know you have partnerships with OpenAI. So does Vox Media. So talk a little bit about how you've done this here very quick. I'll give you a chance to celebrate yourself.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I don't.

[Kara Swisher]

Especially when Trump is threatening news organizations, and they're amazing.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

You know, the truth is, I mean, this is the thing, and like, we have to acknowledge it's true. Trump is my circulation manager in some ways. I mean, after Signal Gate. Look, going back five years ago, he, you know, six years ago, whatever it was, when I wrote a piece about how he referred to American soldiers as suckers and losers. They went ballistic and whatever. And all it did was generate interest in subscribers for. So 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 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 going to eat our lunch and we were going to die. We're 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, is make the best. This is not the baker praising his own bread. But 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 by 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.

[Kara Swisher]

Making a good product by make a high quality product.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 it's like, make a good product and then have a smooth system for bringing that product to audiences that will pay you for it is like the.

[Kara Swisher]

Business plan is the basic business plan.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's the basic business plan.

[Kara Swisher]

Is there something to make this good reporting more relevant to larger audiences?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I hate all this sort of New agey storytelling.

[Kara Swisher]

Snackable content.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, we're not a snack. Yeah, I mean, we have shorter stories.

[Kara Swisher]

Come on. There's Good Atlantic and Bad Atlantic. You have snack?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, we have shorter stories. But they're delicious snacks.

[Kara Swisher]

They're delicious snacks.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

You know what I'm talking about.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Not just like Kind bars, but like, you know, Ho Hos and Ring Dings. We'll do.

[Kara Swisher]

You do have Ring Dings.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No. Yeah. This is going down a weird path.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

The only choice we don't have A choice except to keep going and going and going 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.

[Kara Swisher]

And get away with it.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 Goldberg J School, which would take six minutes to run. This is 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 gonna read it. If your podcast isn't interesting, isn't entertaining, people aren't gonna go to the second paragraph. 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 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 a better job of telling our stories and presenting this information in compelling and interesting ways. But that's a craft issue as much as anything else.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, 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 blighted Donald Trump, and the satraps 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 do you think we are really in a situation of civic catastrophe and authoritarian.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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 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 gonna 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? Sure. 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 we're experiencing a terminal illness. I just don't know. It's too early to say. But you can change the course of these things. That terminal illness is not hospice ready. It 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 I think it's too early to say.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, we'll leave it at that. Jeffrey Goldberg everywhere.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Thank you.

[Kara Swisher]

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor, Visell, Kateri Yocum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat 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 of the other EX employees. 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 support for this show comes from pure leaf iced tea. When you find yourself in the afternoon slump, you need the right thing to make you bounce back. You need pure leaf iced tea. It's real brewed tea made in a variety of bold flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine. You're left feeling refreshed and revitalized so you can be ready to take on what's next. The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a pure leaf iced tea.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Time for a tea break.

[Kara Swisher]

Time for a pure leaf. Support for the show comes from Mercury what if banking did more? Because to you, it's more than an invoice.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's your hard work becoming revenue.

[Kara Swisher]

It's more than a wire, it's payroll for your team. It's more than a deposit. It's landing your fundraise. The truth is, banking can do more. Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use. Visit mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business. Mercury Banking that does more.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Support for this show comes from WhatsApp. The personal chat on WhatsApp is a place where you share everything from the mundane connections to the memories that mean everything. It's a place that can truly feel like it's your own. And WhatsApp makes sure everything stays protected from outside eyes, even theirs. No one, not even WhatsApp app, can see or hear your personal messages. That includes personal calls, plus any documents, photos or media that you share in your personal chat. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Visit WhatsApp. Com Privacy to learn more.