Pod Insights On with Kara Swisher Robert Reich on Democrats’ Failures, Trump’s Fascism & Populism About this episode Democrats have abandoned the working class, according to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, leading working people to fall for President Trump’s hollow and hateful cultural populism. But he argues that an economic populist message that exposes how corporations and wealthy people abuse their power could turn the tide.
Kara and Reich discuss how that would work in practice, why Democrats have repeatedly sided with Wall Street, how Americans should fight back against Trump’s fascist tendencies, and other questions drawn from his upcoming memoir, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America. Plus, Reich answers an “expert question” from his longtime debate partner, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Are you short too?
0:01 Kara Swisher? I will not as short as you, but yes, I'm short. When "Short People" came out, that Randy Newman song, people sent me 900 copies. It was very irritating. Well, I like being short.
0:10 Speaker 00 Well, I think that from an environmental standpoint, we short people are much more responsible. We take less oxygen. If everybody were our size, things would be better, don't you think?
0:21 Kara Swisher? Yes, and if not, if not, we're going to bite your fucking knees. That's what I say.
0:25 Speaker 00 That's right.
0:37 Kara Swisher? 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 Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary, retired professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, and author of over a dozen books, including the forthcoming memoir, Coming Up Short. He is also Louis Swisher's favorite person on the internet, apparently. In his book, Reich tells the story of how he was bullied relentlessly as a child for being short. I can relate. He didn't receive a diagnosis until he was an adult, but he suffers from Fairbanks Disease, a genetic mutation that slows bone growth, and he's only 4'11". But some of Reich's teachers realize how smart and ambitious he was, and they nurtured his talents.
1:20 Kara Swisher? He was voted class president at Dartmouth University, and from there, he went on to Yale Law School. He eventually got a job in, of all places, Gerald Ford's administration. And from that point on, he bounced between policy work and academia. Along the way, he maintained a relentless focus on income inequality, money in politics, abuse of power, and the working class. He's also got an amazing social media talent. I'm excited to talk to him for lots of reasons. He's a delightful person, if anyone's ever spent time with him. He's got a lot to say. He has great debates, and he really is someone who is very open-minded, and he's actually very genuine and willing to debate people. And in that vein, our expert question comes from Larry Summers, the former Secretary of
2:03 Kara Swisher? Treasury, chief economist of the World Bank, and president of Harvard, with whom he has debated for decades. So stick around.
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4:19 Kara Swisher? Hi, Robert. Thanks for coming. Good seeing you again.
4:22 Speaker 00 Well, good to see you, Cara. How are you?
4:23 Kara Swisher? Good. My son is so excited. He knows everything about you, just so you know. He said to ask you about your childhood friend who was killed.
4:32 Speaker 00 Yes, Michael Schwerner.
4:33 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
4:34 Speaker 00 I mean, it still shakes me when I think about it. When I was about eight years old, I think that Mickey, Michael Schwerner, I didn't know him as Michael Schwerner. I knew him as Mickey. Must have been about 13 and had such a kind and radiant disposition that he tended to make everybody around him calmer and happier and less prone to cruelty. And so I, who had been up until that point teased and ridiculed and bullied because of my height.
5:15 Kara Swisher? You open the book about that, how you were viciously bullied as a child.
5:18 Speaker 00 Yes, yes. And so Mickey, in that sense, kept me safe from the bullies. And then, years later, when I was a freshman in college, I learned that the real bullies of America, the Ku Klux Klan, had murdered him, along with two other civil rights workers. Cara, that shook me to the core because I saw, instead of bullying being the tufts in my elementary school, you know, threatening me, bullying really was all over. I saw it all over society. Every time the powerful abused their power with regard to people who are weaker.
6:03 Speaker 00 That really, in many ways, is the core theme of the book.
6:08 Kara Swisher? It's shaped your sense of justice. You know, many Americans feel like they're being bullied by a rigged system. Many of them voted for Trump. And as you put it, quote, "The most powerful force in American politics has come to be anti-establishment fury at the rigged system." Talk a little bit about your personal experience being bullied because I don't think there's anyone who hasn't been in some fashion.
6:28 Speaker 00 Oh, I think that's a very, very common experience. The only thing that... Perhaps was unique is that I was a head shorter than everybody else and I felt like a freak right from the beginning. And the bullying was a little bit maybe more, I won't say violent, but more uninhibited. You know, the little boys of my elementary school who were in, when I was in kindergarten, five years old, they must have been in second or third grade, they seemed to take delight in their bullying and their threatening me physically.
7:08 Speaker 00 And I felt something that I only later learned the word for, which is humiliated, powerless. And I think a lot of people in this country, certainly over the last several decades, have felt the same kind of powerlessness and humiliation. But I think that we have become very much a nation of bullies. And Donald Trump is the quintessence. I mean, he is the bully of bullies, but I think in many respects, he is the consequence, the culmination of 40 or 50 years of allowing bullying, economic bullying and other forms
7:52 Speaker 00 of bullying in this country to get out of control.
7:54 Kara Swisher? So talk about your vision for this idea of, you have all these people who've come to feel this anti-establishment fury. Give us your vision of how an economic populist message from the left could channel this fury at the rigged system, or is it impossible to do so?
8:10 Speaker 00 Well, it's difficult, but it's not impossible. I think that instead of looking at cultural culprits like the Republicans do, like Donald Trump does, you know, immigrants and the deep state and transgender people and so on.
8:27 Kara Swisher? Cats and dog eaters, yeah.
8:28 Speaker 00 What you want to do is really talk about the real sources of economic bullying. And those are big corporations, they're monopolistic, they're using their political power to get changes in laws that hurt many, many people, wealthy people who are also getting changes in laws and rules and regulations and lowering their taxes in ways that ultimately hurt everybody else because there's not enough money in the system to finance what we need done. I mean, you don't have to go far to see the sources of bullying in our society. Now, I'm not saying everybody is rich or every large corporation is to blame,
9:09 Speaker 00 but the abuses of their power, their economic power, those abuses are to blame. And I think that we have to stand up to them. Now, occasionally, there are Democrats like Bernie Sanders and AOC, and I expect Mumdani and others who are standing up. But as a strategy, the Democratic Party used to stand up to that kind of bullying, but is not doing it any longer.
9:35 Kara Swisher? You say that you watched Democrats abandon the working class, and they started abandoning the labor movement over half a century ago. Walk us through the timeline of how the party left behind its working class roots and why it chose to prioritize college-educated voters over working-class ones. And was it the only choice, or one or the other, or could they have done it?
9:54 Speaker 00 Well, it's certainly not the only choice. They could have done something different. I mean, they abandoned the working class, not just the white working class, but the working class in America. And they did it. I was there. I mean, this book is the story of what I saw and lived and was frustrated about. And I think it's also, you know, to some extent, I allowed it to happen. I didn't fight as hard as I should have fought. But even in the Clinton administration, and I, Kara, make no mistake, I'm proud to have been part of the Clinton administration. I think we did some important things, like the Family and Medical Leave Act and expanding something that makes people's eyes glaze over even to this day, which is the earned income tax credit.
10:39 Speaker 00 I mean, there are a lot of very important policies. But the problem was that that administration really didn't understand that deregulating finance and allowing global trade to dominate the way it did and taking their eyes...
10:57 Speaker 00 Our eyes off monopolization and not really encouraging unionization as much as we should have. I mean, all of these ways contributed to disempowering millions of people in this country and ultimately helped lead to Donald Trump.
11:15 Kara Swisher? The backlash, right. So why? Why do that? Why prioritize college-educated voters over that?
11:22 Speaker 00 Well, I think that there was a mythology in the Democratic Party that the swing vote, the suburban swing voters, really made all the difference. Kara, I can't tell you how many conversations I had with Democratic operatives, you know, political operatives, who said, "We don't want to go back to the old Democrats, the old Democrats, you know, who worried about the poor and the working class and had this notion of class in their minds. No, we really want to do something that is very different." I saw this begin in the 1980s with the so-called Atari Democrats. Remember the Atari Democrats?
12:01 Kara Swisher? Indeed.
12:02 Speaker 00 You know, I mean, they asked me to help and I would Gary Hart, who, you know, I think had some very important and good ideas, and Walter Mondale, who is not exactly an Atari Democrat, Bill Clinton. But they thought about where the economy was heading, which is appropriate.
12:19 Kara Swisher? Right.
12:20 Speaker 00 But they didn't think about bringing everybody along to where the economy was heading.
12:24 Kara Swisher? You also wrote about the abandonment goes back even further to the Port Huron Statement in 1962, that idea that class politics were passe.
12:32 Speaker 00 Yes, and I am guilty of that. I read the Port Huron Statement and I thought, "Oh, this is really exactly right." And I read John Kenneth Galbraith, one of my heroes, my intellectual heroes, and Betty Friedan, all of the people who formed the intellectual basis for the so-called New Left. But what we left out was the working class.
12:59 Kara Swisher? Right.
12:59 Speaker 00 You know, there used to be a labor movement. Well, by the 1960s, 70s, there was not any longer a labor movement as such. There was organized labor as an interest group. There was the women's movement. There was the movement toward equal marriage rights and gays. There was a movement.
13:19 Kara Swisher? Civil rights, yeah.
13:20 Speaker 00 The environmental movement. There were a lot of movements, but there wasn't the worker movement. I mean, we forgot about workers.
13:28 Kara Swisher? So, talk about the psychology of working-class voters. And you explained that Americans who have fallen behind their own economic expectations were drawn to Trump. You also quote a former Democratic congressperson who said, "Many working-class men have been humiliated," as you noted, "and emasculated by the economy that doesn't value their work." Talk about that role in that pride, status, and respect play.
13:49 Speaker 00 Well, it's not just economics, obviously. But you see, if you lose your economic base, if you lose your job, or if you lose a good job, a unionized job, the chances are you are also going to feel that your pride, your place, your status, your role in the economy and in your community and in the world has altered, has been degraded. You are going to feel looked down upon. And I saw that. You know, when I was Labor Secretary, I'd go out to the country and I'd talk to people, and people who were losing their jobs, good factory jobs, good unionized jobs. Now, let me just make sure we're all together on
14:30 Speaker 00 this. Because bringing back manufacturing is itself not the answer, because if it's not unionized, well, it's not going to be good jobs. The key in the 1950s and 60s and 70s was that these were unionized jobs. So that, you know, you had a third of the private sector workforce in unions. That gave them strength, solidarity. And if there's another theme that's quite central to this book, it's that we can't take on the bullies unless we are together, unless we are organized and mobilized. We who are not bullies, we who want to take on the bullies, there has to be countervailing power. And that is critically, critically important in terms of doing anything in this country.
15:16 Kara Swisher? So you were Labor Secretary during the Clinton administration, as you noted, and then Economic Advisor to President Obama. In both cases, Larry Summers emerged as your foil, although you loved getting lunch with him when you were both at Harvard. You write that he played a role in convincing Clinton to join NAFTA and to avoid regulating financial derivatives, which helped lead to 2008 financial crisis. After the crisis, he helped persuade Obama to bail out banks instead of homeowners. Why did they both side with Summers and other advisers who favored Wall Street interests? And why didn't they have the political will to fight for everyday Americans, who you championed?
15:49 Speaker 00 Well, I can't speak for what was in Larry Summers' head, but I can say that Wall Street was becoming more and more powerful. Powerful economically, powerful politically. Bob Rubin, who is a very important character in this story, he persuaded Clinton, I think in part because, you know, the financial sector of the economy was so critical. It could bring down Clinton. Clinton knew that. Obama knew that. They, in a sense, were being manipulated. That's maybe too strong a word, but I think, looking historically back on what happened, it is accurate. Being manipulated by the titans of Wall Street. Why did we get a bailout of the financial sector?
16:34 Speaker 00 Well, maybe you could argue that had they allowed big banks to go down, the whole economy would have gone down with them. But there's also something called bankruptcy. Maybe we could have allowed some of the big banks to go into some sort of reorganization of their debts. Maybe we could have helped the homeowners instead of helping the banks. A lot could have been done. You know, the book is bipartisan in the sense, Cara, that it's not about just the Republicans' failure, it's about Democrats' failure as well.
17:06 Kara Swisher? What caused them to not side with you, for example, from your perspective?
17:11 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, number one, maybe I wasn't persuasive enough. I grant that in the book. I mean, it is a, it's a confessional in terms of my inability to sway the people I wanted to sway. But it's also, again, I want to emphasize, Alan Greenspan, who was Fed Chair...
17:33 Speaker 00 And the financial markets had huge power and they continue to have huge power. They can bring down an administration. It was very clear. I mean, look, look what happened to Jimmy Carter. Look what what happened to George H. W. Bush. They were brought down. They became one-term presidents because finance turned on them, because, you know, the the the Fed turned on them and the financial community turned on them.
18:02 Kara Swisher? So how do you fight that if you're a Democrat?
18:04 Speaker 00 Well, you fight it by, number one, establishing with the public your understanding and the public's understanding that the real problem here is power. It's power that is allocated in a way that it is is bad for average working people and bad for most people. And what you want to do is build countervailing power. And a part of building countervailing power is controlling finance, regulating finance, making sure that finance doesn't get out of control. This is a kind of repeat of what we went through after 1933. Certainly after the Great Depression, after the crash of 1929, we learned these lessons, Kara.
18:46 Speaker 00 And we forgot them. We learned them as Democrats and we forgot them.
18:51 Kara Swisher? So you love Bernie. You endorse Senator Sanders, speaking of someone who's been in that zone in 2016 and 2020. And you said in 2016, the DNC, quote, tipped the scales against him by deriding his campaign and rigging the campaign financing in favor of Hillary Clinton. Many people feel that's what's happened. Some people do not. How do you persuade voters who think the party is corrupt and beholden to corporate interests that it's still worth supporting? Numbers are in the basement, even though Trump is unpopular, so are Democrats.
19:20 Speaker 00 I love Bernie, and I have a whole chapter about my love for Bernie Sanders. I love Bernie because he's he's right. He has guts enough to say what is going on. He has sufficient intestinal fortitude to go after the big corporations who are abusing their power and the wealthy who are abusing their power. And that's what the Democrats need to do. The reason Democrats are so unpopular is they don't have a a coherent and authentic message that translates.
19:53 Speaker 00 To average people as authentic and real? Because the corporate Democrats, the financial Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, don't allow them to. You know, a lot of Democrats I know are scared. They don't want to bite the hands that feed them. And the corporate and financial Democrats are the ones that essentially feed them during election time in terms of campaign donations. So I understand this. But my point is that if they actually, if they actually followed what they ought to be doing and kind of got rid of their dependence on the corporate and financial Democrats, they would actually do much better. They would win elections to a much greater extent.
20:35 Kara Swisher? But look what happened to, as you note, Bernie Sanders, someone you are a fan of.
20:40 Speaker 00 Yes, and before Bernie Sanders, you know, one of my great heroes was Paul Wellstone. And Paul and I used to talk a lot about being authentic politically. That is, saying what you understand to be truth, even if it's not popular. And Paul Wellstone used to say to me, you know, in fact, he laughed about it. He said, Bob, don't worry about my polls because by the time election time comes around again, I can explain to people why I'm voting the way I am. Even if they disagree with me, they respect me and they will want me to be their senator.
21:13 Kara Swisher? And you write that, quote, "The central question is not capitalism versus some different system, it is what form of capitalism." And you want a system called democratic capitalism. So explain what democratic capitalism looks like in practical terms and then tell us how you maintain that dynamism and innovation of American capitalism, which is very clear to both of us, I think, while also curbing its excesses.
21:35 Speaker 00 You make capitalism more humane and carrot. I mean, we are the most extreme form of inhumane capitalism among all advanced nations. I mean, take something that is as prosaic as paid family leave. I mean, I worked my tail off in 1991, 1992, getting the Family and Medical Leave Act enacted. It was the first thing that Bill Clinton signed into law. But why don't we have paid leave? Every other advanced nation has paid leave. Or take labor unions. We have now, I mentioned, over a third of the private sector workforce in the 50s and 60s and early 1970s, they were unionized. Now it's down to 6%.
22:22 Speaker 00 Six percent, you can't build a union movement on the basis of six percent. I mean, there's so many ways. We can talk policy and I don't want to make this about policy. My book is really about what happened, what should happen, what I saw happening. But we could talk about it. If you want to talk about policy, Kara, I'm here to talk about policy.
22:44 Kara Swisher? But I want you to get an idea of how you do that. I mean, and because this is from your history, because you're trying to go with your history to understand how to get to the future, presumably.
22:52 Speaker 00 Again, authentic politics in which you say to people, the reason you are struggling is because big corporations and very wealthy people have too much power and they are abusing that power. And here is how they're abusing it. And you go through five or six or 10 or 20 examples. And then you say to them, the way we get our politics and our economy and our country back is, and then you go through how we actually do that. It's through organizing and mobilizing. And then you say, for example, here are the things that we could do. Paid family leave, universal basic income, childcare.
23:35 Kara Swisher? A whole panoply of policies.
23:37 Speaker 00 But the policy is at the end. I mean, you have to tell a story that people understand and resonates with their lives.
23:44 Kara Swisher? So here's a good story. Elon Musk, he spent close to $300 million to get Trump elected. He and a phalanx of tech billionaires lined up to support Trump at the inauguration. It was kind of untoward. I recently asked Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, if Democrats should try to win back tech entrepreneurs. And he thought they should. Do you agree with that? Or would they inevitably pull the Democratic Party again away from working class voters and towards policies that once again benefit the wealthy?
24:12 Speaker 00 Listen, if there are tech entrepreneurs who actually agree with what's happened, see what's happened and see that corporations have too much power and see that the wealthy have too much power and influence, fine, that's good. In fact, there used to be some tech entrepreneurs like that. Elon Musk is a completely different creature. In fact, the Democrats ought to be using Elon Musk as an example of what happens when too much money is in the hands of too few people. You can buy a presidency, you know, for a quarter of a billion dollars. That's what he did. Use Elon Musk as your Exhibit A. I mean, use Donald Trump as Exhibit B. What happens when people are fed up and angry and they think that the system is rigged
24:57 Speaker 00 against them, and they're right. But they don't want to elect a demagogue who is actually a front for the wealthy and powerful. They want to elect somebody who cares about them and is going to be actually for them.
25:10 Kara Swisher? So if we go back to originalists, working-class voters choose bigoted cultural populism Trump offered because there was no economic populist message coming from Democrats to fill the void. Would economic populism be enough to win them back, aligning voters on cultural issues like religious values, sexual mores, language norms? It is powerful.
25:29 Speaker 00 I think economic populism is much more powerful than cultural populism. If you, but Democrats have not done it, apart from, you know, Bernie and AOC and, you know, here and there a little bit. But no, you have not had a Democratic Party really since FDR that embraced economic populism. So we don't have a fair test of economic populism. But where it's been employed, and again, I want to emphasize Bernie Sanders, the least likely presidential candidate, when he came along in 2015, 2016, people said, are you kidding? He's an old white man, Jewish.
26:13 Speaker 00 He calls himself a social Democrat. How can he? Well, look how close he came.
26:17 Kara Swisher? But Bernie's share of the Democratic primary vote did decline from 2016 to 2020. He won plurality in some cases in early primaries, but his overall share of primary vote declined. What's the takeaway from that? Does it mean we need a Bernie version that's more appealing or what? What's the takeaway?
26:33 Speaker 00 I think we need a younger Bernie.
26:34 Kara Swisher? Mm-hmm.
26:35 Speaker 00 And ideally, I would say it would be a female, younger Bernie.
26:40 Kara Swisher? Sounds like someone he was on tour with.
26:42 Speaker 00 It might be AOC.
26:43 Kara Swisher? Make the case for her. Because she gets a lot of pushback from the Republicans for certain and definitely from the Democrats.
26:49 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, the fact that she gets pushback from Republicans is probably the one of what it makes my case for me.
26:55 Kara Swisher? But Democrats, too, I was gonna say.
26:57 Speaker 00 What people really value is authenticity and charisma and saying stuff that rings true to average people. And she has all of that. And she's young and she knows, you know, everything from social media on through the way people talk. You know, I've been teaching for 42 years, Kara. I know young people. I hang around with young people. They're slightly different culturally. You know, the 18 to 22-year-olds or 25-year-olds, we've got to get them engaged and involved. And they are, they want to be. This is one of my things that keeps me most optimistic.
27:37 Speaker 00 Because as dark as it is right now, the generation that's coming up, they are fabulous.
27:43 Kara Swisher? They are.
27:44 Speaker 00 They are ingenious and bright and dedicated and committed, and they want to change the world. They want to do it, and they will do it if we give them a chance.
27:54 Kara Swisher? So every episode, we get an expert to send us a question for our guest, and yours comes from Larry Summers. We called him up and we got a question from him. Let's hear it.
28:02 Speaker 04 Bob, congratulations on your memoir. I have so many fond memories of our conversations and our debates. Here's my big question for you. You have stood for a populist approach to economic policy. Many argue that Bill Clinton's corrective of the Democratic Party's tendency to move too far left was what reoriented the party for victory, that Joe Biden's move back towards
28:42 Speaker 04 the kind of policies you advocated contributed to Democrats' poor standing on economic issues in 2024, which contributed to Donald Trump's coming back into office. People don't
28:59 Speaker 04 Have the desire to take from the rich that you think they should have? Isn't the evidence somewhat against your views as to what people want?
29:12 Kara Swisher? The debate continues.
29:14 Speaker 00 Larry, if you're listening to this, I appreciate your question. But implicit in your question is bullshit, truly bullshit. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have not had an experiment, a president who is actually an economic populist. I mean, Joe Biden is as close as the Democrats have come, and his problem was largely a communications problem. I mean, he just, you know, we all know it. A lot of people around him apparently did not want anybody else to know it, but we all found out about it. Had Joe Biden been charismatic and younger with the kind of policies that he was using,
29:58 Speaker 00 he would have clearly won reelection. Over, what, over Trump? I mean, remember, I mean, put this in context, we are dealing with an authoritarian fascist. If the Democrats ever had a time to show what Democrats can do and what Democrats are, this is the time. In terms of Bill Clinton, I'm proud of being part of Bill Clinton's administration, but the economic outcome of Bill Clinton's administration was a slight upward tick in the business cycle, followed by the implosion of the stock market in terms of what we had in 2000 after
30:41 Speaker 00 people got less inclined to buy all of these wild internet stocks. And then we didn't really, we didn't really see the underpitting start to fall apart. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, and I'm going to blame you a little bit, Larry, and Bob Rubin, you did, you wanted to deregulate Wall Street, and look what happened. I mean, your deregulation of Wall Street led almost directly to the Wall Street financial crisis, which made it almost impossible for Barack Obama to do much of anything except try to bail out Wall Street and get the economy back on track. So if you don't mind me saying so, Larry, I love you, but you're full of shit.
31:27 Kara Swisher? We'll be back in a minute.
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34:40 Kara Swisher? So, let's switch gears and talk about recent news items. We'll jump around a little bit, since there's so much to talk about. Trump has been using the tariffs, or threats of tariffs, to bully other countries into accepting trade deals. In the book, you criticize Democratic leaders for embracing NAFTA and lowering tariffs. On China, in your Substack, you say Trump's tariffs will lead to higher prices. Should the Democrats have been implementing a smarter version of Trump's tariffs and used trade policy to protect American workers from foreign competition? And how do they do that without also raising prices for consumers?
35:09 Speaker 00 What you want to do is have selective tariffs that are helpful to you in engineering and promoting the industries of the future. I mean, this goes back to Alexander Hamilton. This is what Hamilton got us to do. But you also, at the same time, you want to help gain the skills, help workers gain the skills they need to flourish in these new industries. Artificial intelligence is going to make this more complicated. It's not going to change the... Thrust of what I just said. So you need a tariff policy that is selective and smart, and you need an industrial policy that complements that tariff policy. And right now, we have
35:52 Speaker 00 the opposite. We've got a stupid tariff policy, and we've got an industrial policy that what the coddles oil and gas and steel and, you know, the 19th and 20th century industries of America.
36:03 Kara Swisher? That's where you agree with Elon Musk in that regard. Israel is also causing mass starvation in Gaza, and death toll in the Palestinian enclave is close to 60,000. You say in the book that Biden's legacy, quote, "will be forever tainted by his failure to stop Benjamin Netanyahu from creating a bloodbath in Gaza." And you recently posted on Blue Sky that Netanyahu is a war criminal, and the US must halt military assistance to Israel. Why is the Democratic gestalt so reluctant to criticize Israel? And what will it take to change that? I certainly know young people have changed rather dramatically.
36:34 Speaker 00 Well, AIPAC, the Israeli, basically pro-Israeli political action committee, has been a huge problem for the Democrats, very active in Democratic primaries. If I were head of the Democratic National Committee, I'd say, let's get rid of all special interest groups in primaries. Let's not have allow AIPAC to have the kind of influence it has. And the other thing that Democrats need to say, and particularly people like me, Jewish, we ought to say, we're not anti-Semitic. Obviously, we're not anti-Zionist, but we're anti-Netanyahu. There's a difference. Netanyahu is, in my view, a war criminal. That doesn't
37:16 Speaker 00 mean I'm anti-Zionist. I, you know, I think Israel is extraordinarily important, and I am not anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination. We've got to be a little bit more precise. And Democrats, this is not difficult. Democrats can do this.
37:33 Kara Swisher? Now, the Trump administration has been attacking universities for allegedly allowing the Gaza protests on their campus. It has sent into rampant anti-Semitism. You recently retired after teaching approximately 40,000 students across your career as a professor at Harvard, Brandeis, and UC Berkeley. Do American universities... Have this antisemitism problem that Trump touts. There were protests that crossed the line and made Jewish students feel unsafe. That's for sure. That's obviously wrong, but many protesters are pointing out what is becoming now conventional wisdom. Even Israeli human rights groups are accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Talk a little bit about this, about being on a campus at this point.
38:09 Speaker 00 It's exciting to be on a campus where students are protesting about something as basic as human rights in Gaza and against what is happening there. And let me just say, I have not only taught for 42 years, but I used to be a student myself in the 1960s of all times. You know, there's protests are not bad protests that are based in moral outrage are good. Hello. And if some people are offended by them, well, you know, that's unfortunate. And maybe they could be a little bit more sensitive, the protests, to the feelings of particular groups and individuals.
38:51 Speaker 00 But I think that the Trump administration is using antisemitism, so called, as a pretext for cracking down on universities. It's doing the same thing with DEI and it's doing the same thing with transgender people and students. It's they are just excuses for the Trump administration cracking down on what conservatives for years have thought were, you know, were bastions of liberalism. This goes back to the 16th century.
39:21 Kara Swisher? Having been on the college campuses as long as you have, where does it go from here? What's the next step?
39:27 Speaker 00 Well, I think the next step is for universities, not like Columbia and not like my alma mater, Dartmouth, universities to get together, to join together. In unity, there is strength. It's not just labor unions. Universities have to join together and have got to say to Trump, no, we are not going to bow and scrape and we're not going to give up any academic freedom. We're not going to allow you to intimidate us.
39:56 Kara Swisher? But there is money at stake.
39:58 Speaker 00 Well, there's a lot of money at stake, but if universities are all together. They have much greater possibility of pushing back than if Trump can divide and conquer.
40:10 Kara Swisher? Which is what he's doing right now. Moving along, you said recently that you fear that Zoran Mamdani and Representative Ocasio-Cortez won't appeal to working people and that you fear that, quote, "they will be carried in the currents of progressive politics," which right now are overwhelmingly college graduates in urban and coastal centers. That's not bad, but you have to be inclusive. You have to include working class and the poor. What should politicians like them, who are very compelling to people, do to include working class and the poor that they aren't already doing? In the case of Mamdani, a lot of the working class voted for Cuomo.
40:43 Speaker 00 Well, yes, I tried to explain that in a recent interview. I think the reason that a lot of the working class voted for Cuomo is Cuomo has the name and he has the endorsements. And Mamdani is not that well-known yet. When he becomes better known, I think the working class will understand and respond to him. So I don't think it's a major, that neither he nor AOC has got to go through a major change in what they're saying. I think they're saying the right things.
41:13 Kara Swisher? But there seems to be a paradox at the heart of the progressive movement. College-educated intellectuals develop policy ideas that are meant to uplift working-class people, but they're oftentimes divorced from many of the core values that working people care about.
41:26 Speaker 00 Well, more to the point, though, I think college-educated people, who are now 40% of the adults in this country, look down their noses at non-college people. There's a kind of, the divide is not just economic, it's also social and there's a snobbery that goes with being a college graduate. I think that's what we have to, and that's what our leaders should be helping us overcome.
41:53 Kara Swisher? So I want to go to a couple more things. I want to talk about Trump at the end. ICE raids have been in the news since Trump took office and labor unions are lending their way to protest against Trump's mass deportation plans. But historically, they've been wary of undocumented immigrants. For example, people don't know this, I didn't, Cesar Chavez spearheaded a 300-person effort to patrol the border. In the 1970s, more recently, construction unions are often opposed to competition from undocumented workers, even if their businesses are getting hurt right now. What do you say to American workers who believe they're losing work or seeing their wages decline because of undocumented immigrants? And what's the argument for being against mass deportations if you're a labor union person?
42:33 Speaker 00 The notion that average working people are suffering wage drops because of all of the undocumented people who are competing with them doesn't wash. There have been a lot of studies, Cara, showing that actually there are two separate labor markets. Most American workers, even lower working-class American workers, don't want to do the jobs that many of the immigrants who are undocumented are willing to do. They're separate labor markets. They don't compete with each other. That's point number one. Point number two is that certain unions, like the UAW, understand that if you organize immigrants, you're actually
43:15 Speaker 00 going to have more power in terms of fighting unscrupulous employers, which gets back to my theme about we are all in this together. Now, could we ever have an immigration system that actually was open and fairer and didn't depend on people who are here who are undocumented? The answer is obviously yes. And it wasn't that long ago. You remember when we had almost a consensus in the Senate and in the House, among Republicans, Democrats, for immigration law reform. But, you know, there are too many kind of insidious, dark forces out there
43:55 Speaker 00 in American politics that don't want there to be bipartisan reform. They want to harangue and generate a great deal of anger and fear toward immigrants. And Donald Trump is right up there at the top.
44:08 Kara Swisher? So how do you make the argument that undocumented workers, because in some cases do hurt American wages in construction, for example, how do you make that argument to them from your perspective? If you want, you know, to be on the side The working class, how do you make that argument to them?
44:26 Speaker 00 Well, you, first of all, even in construction, I mean, I've seen the data, the construction, it's not clear that American workers are hurting because of undocumented workers in construction. Again, there's certain jobs, but it's very, we're talking about very low numbers. I think you make the argument to American working class people who are unions or non-union members. You say, look, we are all benefiting from the labor of undocumented people here in the United States. Now, we do ultimately want to regularize this. We don't want to, because they shouldn't have to be second-class citizens.
45:06 Speaker 00 So we want there to be a door that is much bigger in terms of legitimately coming here from other countries to do work. But let's not kid ourselves, you know, not only do we benefit from their work, but, you know, they, they are contributing to social security and to Medicaid and everything else, but they're not getting it back because they're not eligible for it. But they, they contribute through their, many of them through their paychecks. You know, I live in a part of California that has a lot of undocumented workers, and I know them personally, and they're part of the community, and they are woven into the community. You know, they're, we're dealing with human beings who are hard-working, community members, who have families.
45:51 Speaker 00 Everybody knows them. It's inhumane to do what we are now doing.
45:55 Kara Swisher? So let's finish speaking of inhumane, talking about President Trump. His administration is rife with conflicts of interest, obviously. You recently highlighted how Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's family business empire is benefiting from the administration's policies, and the Trump family's conflict of interest in their crypto schemes is about as blatant as any corruption we've ever seen. They are saying it's transparent, so that's okay. But so far, voters don't seem particularly upset by it. If anything, Trump seems to have normalized corruption. How do you change that? Because being shocked does not seem lately working. Your entire premise is that money is corrupting our politics and our democracy. So there's a problem if the public shrugs it off, correct?
46:30 Speaker 00 I don't think the public is shrugging it off. I think it's Getting buried under so much other outrageous news. I mean, Donald Trump is the master of deflecting attention from one thing. He doesn't want people to, for example, Jeffrey Epstein.
46:44 Kara Swisher? He doesn't like that one.
46:45 Speaker 00 So what does he do? He accuses Barack Obama of treason. I mean, he, I think people are outraged numbed right now. And if we actually focused on some of the corruption going on, I, you know, most people, I looked at the polls right after Trump got this plane, this palace in the sky. That he says is, is actually for the United States government. It's not for the United States government. It's for himself. He gets to use it after he leaves office and it's his own personal palace and Qatar. I mean, you know, there, there is a part of the constitution that says no emoluments.
47:25 Kara Swisher? I get that, but how do you get the public to not just shrug it off?
47:29 Speaker 00 The way you do this is you talk about it and you focus the public's attention on it. But right now it's hard because there's so much else that is outrageous. You know, maybe you wait till the August recess. We're now talking during the beginning of the August recess. Well, now maybe is the time for some courageous and thoughtful and articulate Democrats to say, one of the biggest problems of this administration is outright bribery and corruption. And we're going to start with foreigners, but you know, even the, the corporations and the wealthy, wealthy people who are buying into Trump's businesses.
48:11 Speaker 00 You know, they're getting benefits and here, look at this, look at this, look at this. It's a huge and important story to tell, but it takes a life. If you do it in the context of what I've been talking about during this conversation, Cara, and that is the wealthy and the big corporations that are abusing their power. It's part of the abuse of power. Put it into that context and people can hear it.
48:40 Kara Swisher? We'll be back in a minute.
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50:43 Speaker 06 I'll admit it, I'm one of those people who gets excited for football season way before the first kickoff. That's why a trip to Total Wine & More has become part of my game day routine. I can get the cooler ready with my favorite beers and ready to drink cocktails. I'm usually picking up enough for everybody, so it's nice knowing I'm scoring the lowest prices. This season, make Total Wine & More part of your game day tradition. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21.
51:13 Kara Swisher? So you point out in the book that America needs two parties that are capable of governing, but that the Republican Party has turned into a crazed cult. Is it possible to have a functioning democracy in a two-party system where one party doesn't follow the rules? And what happens to the party when the cult leader is gone?
51:28 Speaker 00 Well, we're gonna find out. You know, I think J.D. Vance is a dangerous character, from all I know about him.
51:37 Kara Swisher? Why's that?
51:38 Speaker 00 I think he's more intelligent than Trump. Now, he may not be as much of a con man as Trump, in terms of Trump's natural instinct is to lie. I don't know that J.D. Vance has that much of a natural lying instinct, although he does a lot of it. I worry that Vance's backers in Silicon Valley, you know, some of the very, very
52:00 Kara Swisher? Yes, me too.
52:01 Speaker 00 ... big billionaires who don't like democracy, who are afraid of democracy because they think democracy is going to ultimately lead to confiscation of their income through tax increases. I worry about that. But I think that once Trump leaves the scene, one way or another, I think it's going to be hard to rebuild democratic institutions. But let me make this point, and it's a very, it's one that I believe in very strongly. We were on the road, even before Trump, to needing some fundamental reforms in our system. I mean, campaign finance was a dead letter.
52:44 Speaker 00 You know, the Supreme Court was allowing just everything in terms of big money, at the same time it was narrowing civil rights laws and voting rights. So we do need fundamentally to
53:01 Speaker 00 Change course. We've got to get big money out of our politics. We need to change the Supreme Court. Maybe we have to have an amendment to the Constitution if that's what it takes.
53:13 Kara Swisher? So I'm going to read a quote from the book. "Authoritarianism is inadequate to describe what Trump wants for America. Fascism would be more appropriate." You're not missing words, obviously. Trump is heading us towards fascism. What will it take for Americans to fight back? You have noted younger generations are ready to fight. You've criticized boomers for leading us into this mess. Are millennials and Gen Z'ers capable of getting us out of it?
53:35 Speaker 00 Oh, they certainly are capable. And I don't want to, again, it's a little, I try in the book not to tar with too broad a brush. I don't say it's all boomers. I mean, I think that my generation, the boomer generation, did come up short in terms, we did a lot of good things, but compared to what we were handed by our parents and the kind of legacy and trust that we were given, I think we did come up short. But I'm very optimistic about the future. I think the young people are fabulous and they have the energy and boldness of vision. They want to support candidates who are as energetic and bold
54:19 Speaker 00 and they have an uncanny sensibility when it comes to what we might say is authenticity. They can smell a fake a mile away.
54:34 Kara Swisher? So a documentary film crew filmed you during your last semester for a film called The Last Class. In it, you say, quote, "A true leader helps people overcome cynicism." Some listeners may like your message of inequality and money and politics, but feel jaded about what other possibilities exist outside the current system. Why does our current economic model feel inevitable to so many people? And how do you persuade Americans, especially young Americans, that it's not? You do sense, if you do know young people, I have two young sons who are in that age group you're talking about, and they are both positive and very negative, I would say. They're like, they feel that they can't overcome it. At the same time, they seem to feel like they can. So how do you persuade all Americans that it's not written in stone?
55:19 Speaker 00 Well, it's a very good question. I draw this distinction with my students between pessimism and cynicism. I say it's perfectly fine to be pessimistic. You can even be skeptical. I want you to be skeptical. That's part of critical thinking. But I don't want you to be cynical. Because once you are cynical, once you think it's hopeless, that nothing can change, then nothing will change. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. And I was fortunate enough, and my generation fortunate enough, to have been part of the civil rights movement and part of the anti Vietnam War movement, and we saw change. And so there's a sense
56:00 Speaker 00 of agency that people, you know, as old as I am, have. We naturally think that it's possible. A lot of these young people, as you just pointed out, really don't have that kind of experience, that direct experience.
56:15 Kara Swisher? No, they have Trump.
56:16 Speaker 00 And so I tell, you know, my students, start locally. Start in your communities. Your communities, every community needs, has problems. They need things done. Organize and mobilize locally. You'll see that you can make a huge difference and build on that sense of agency locally.
56:35 Kara Swisher? Robert, as usual, you're wonderful. And it's a really fascinating career you've had here. It's a wonderful book, and I hope everybody reads it. And in fact, I'm going to give it to my son.
56:44 Speaker 00 Thank you.
56:45 Kara Swisher? Thank you so much.
56:46 Speaker 00 I appreciate this, and good to talk to you.
56:54 Kara Swisher? On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Wessel, Kateri Yokum, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Claire Hyman. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're a moral giant like Robert Reich. If not, you use too much oxygen. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.
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59:02 Speaker 03 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution. Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start. Film for IMAX. Make them remember you. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.
Previous Journalists or Creators? How Media Entrepreneurs Are Reshaping News Next Kids These Days: The Impact of Tech, Social Media and AI on Adolescents Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated