High Stakes with HRC: The “What’s Next?” Episode

Welcome back to “the podcast from hell.” Last week, Kara and the Secretary broke down what happened during the midterms; this week, they discuss what comes next. They cover Pete Hegseth’s rare press conference as he faces impeachment proceedings. They throw around potential Republican contenders for 2028. And in the wake of the NVIDIA drama, HRC gives listeners an inside look into the kinds of national security risks she monitored as Secretary of State. Plus, High Stakes welcomes its first-ever special guest: the one and only Rachel Maddow. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:15Speaker 01

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• 1:34Kara Swisher?

  We're coven, everybody. So just so you know, we're going to start like hocus-pocussing the [BLEEP] out of this stuff. Hi, everyone. I'm Kara Swisher.

• 1:51Speaker 03

  And I'm Hillary Clinton.

• 1:52Kara Swisher?

  Well, welcome to what the one internet troll called the number one podcast in hell. High stakes from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Well, at least they're paying attention, Kara.

• 2:04Kara Swisher?

  Oh, they're going crazy, Hillary. You don't know. They're like, after the election and then this. But what is your assessment now? How are you feeling days in, I would say?

• 2:14Speaker 03

  I feel even better. We've won more seats since last Tuesday, when the first results came in. I've been talking to a number of the winning candidates. Their energy is really positive. They have a great idea of what they want to do when they get to Washington, or in the case of the newly-elected governors, when they take over their state houses. It's just been like a poisonous cloud has been lifted over our politics. And people are actually, you know, talking about what they want to get done and trying to set good goals and then figure out how to achieve them. I'm thrilled.

• 2:54Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, the picture from the Senate freshman class was like, it looked like a Benetton ad or something.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  It looked just like America. And that, you know, look, we know that diverse groups actually do make better decisions. So let's welcome the fact that we have so many newly-elected members of Congress and governors who come from different experiences, have different points of view, and are going to bring that into their leadership. I think that's exactly what we should be saluting as Americans.

• 3:25Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. And we're still waiting on a couple of races.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've got our fingers crossed on Mississippi and Alaska for the Senate.

• 3:32Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Lauren Boebert hasn't accepted her loss, even though it's sort of been called at this point.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  No, I think she's whining and carrying on again. So we'll see where that ends up.

• 3:41Kara Swisher?

  Do you know, I was, the last stop on the Pivot Live Tour was in the theater where she saw Beetlejuice, or saw half of Beetlejuice, actually. We couldn't believe it.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Did you have a moment of silence to mark that occasion?

• 3:53Kara Swisher?

  The people of Denver, it's like they're proud of it now. They're like, because the mayor there, Mike Johnston, we had him on stage, and he goes, you know this, we didn't know. And of course, Scott lost his mind, you know, that he was there. We kept saying, which seat? Which seat? Who's sitting in it? Let's give them a free t-shirt. But it was, it was really fun. It was fun. And we told a lot of good.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, you and Scott looked like you were having an amazing time.

• 4:15Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Scott started dancing a lot.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Scott dancing, you know, was one of the highlights for me.

• 4:20Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I think I'm trying to get Hakeem Jeffries to declare white men dancing illegal going forward, but we'll see where that goes. But let's get into the news. There's a huge story broke during the time. And it's something I took very seriously right away. Nvidia's board is investigating CEO Jensen Huang after his admission they had an affair with a woman who US intelligence believes was a Chinese spy. She was reportedly recruited by China's top spy agency to get Huang to push Washington to let Nvidia sell chips to China. And that's exactly what he's been pushing for. Still, Nvidia's board says it has full confidence in him. You've dealt with Chinese intelligence operations as Secretary of State. Nvidia is worth trillions of dollars, and Trump wants those chip sales.

• 5:03Kara Swisher?

  But does the spy scandal change US-China policy? I'd love just your take on the whole thing, and I'll talk about the tech part.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, this is a huge story. And it says a lot about how the Trump administration deals with national security threats. It doesn't appear, from everything that I've been able to read up until now, that they did what is called a defensive briefing, where they actually went to Jensen Huang and said, we believe, based on intelligence, and remember, this is not people sitting around speculating, this is hard, what's called signal intelligence, intercepted calls, emails.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  And they should have gone to him and said, we believe that this woman, Alice Wong, is a Chinese spy, that she is part of the Ministry of State Security in China, and she is extracting information from you. This is not a moral issue about his personal relationships, it's a national security threat.

• 6:14Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  But as far as I know, they never went to him.

• 6:16Kara Swisher?

  No, yeah, that's what Trump said.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  But when I was running for president, Kara, I got a defensive briefing about Russian interference. Not that I could talk about it, which sadly kind of, you know, kept me from explaining a lot of what was going on in that campaign. But the intelligence community came to me. I also know they gave a defensive briefing to Trump. And not that he cared, because he wanted the help from Russia. So if your government knows that an American citizen is a target of an espionage operation, and you have reason to believe he does not know that, that he has fallen into what's called, you know, a honeypot operation, where a beautiful woman, you know, seduces the

• 7:02Speaker 03

  target, then you owe it to him to tell him. They didn't tell him. And now we know, not only did they not tell him, they actively encouraged the continuing sale of the Nvidia chips. As you say, it's not a huge amount of their business. It's in the single-digit percentage, but it is enough to give a real advantage to the Chinese, who had been told in the Biden administration they couldn't have access to these chips.

• 7:31Kara Swisher?

  Let me ask a specific question. So these are these defensive hearings that you have. Trump was seeing yesterday, off the top of his head, he said it didn't matter. That was one of the things he seemed to say. The second thing is that we didn't tell him. Tell me the ins and outs of this, because something, it looks like Marco Rubio leaked all this stuff, because there was a memo Rubio wrote before Jensen Huang went to China, and he wasn't on the plane, and then he was.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that decision that Rubio, Rubio sent a memo talking about the seriousness of this, contrary to either the White House or the Commerce Department. And maybe because of Rubio's memo and whatever follow-up he did, they initially left him off the plane on Trump's trip to China. But as you know, Trump then intervened and said, no, no, I want him to come, so he should fly and meet me in Alaska. So I have no doubt that Trump was briefed on this. He was told, we have intelligence. But remember, Trump doesn't believe the American intelligence community if it in any way contradicts what he wants to believe.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  I will predict to you what will happen when he sees Xi Jinping in, you know, a few weeks. He will say to Xi Jinping, like he said to Putin, is this true? And Xi Jinping will say, of course it's not, Donald. You know, that we wouldn't do that to you. And then Trump will come out and he will say, I asked President Xi if it were true, and he assured me it wasn't.

• 8:59Kara Swisher?

  That's right.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  You can't make it up.

• 9:01Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  This is a serious breach of national security, which is made even worse by what we have found out in the last 48 hours, which is that the Nvidia General Counsel intervened with the Commerce Department, which was actually trying to investigate that these were phony companies that had been set up as pass-throughs to the Chinese government.

• 9:21Kara Swisher?

  So a couple more questions, and you can ask me some about the tech implication, because they're really quite large. Like, what occurs next, especially when you have a president who's acting like it's no big deal whatsoever?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Well, in ordinary times, with a normal president, this would be a really big deal, having warned Jensen Huang and having sent a message to the Chinese, we know what you're doing, and we're not going to permit it to continue, and basically re-imposing sanctions so that the Chinese pay a price for this espionage that they've conducted against, you know, the CEO of the most valuable company in the world. And I don't see any of that happening with the current crew. They don't seem to care about the national security implications. They don't seem to care about China getting an advantage that I thought we didn't want them to have.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  They don't seem to care about setting up the leader of the wealthiest company, stock value in the world. We may never know, but all we do know is that they are turning their back on a really serious problem.

• 10:25Kara Swisher?

  But that can't be what happens, right? Not the White House, but who else can do something?

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Well, the Congress is having a hearing in the next couple of days, I think, led by the Republicans, by the way, because the new Congress hasn't been sworn in yet. And they're trying to investigate, but I don't think they subpoenaed Wong. I think they invited him. I don't know whether he'll show up, or somebody on his behalf will show up. I don't know what they're going to find, but I think that this is part of why we need accountability and affordability as the two big agenda items when the Democrats do take over. There are some legal restraints that could be imposed, although Trump could very well veto whatever is passed.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  There can be some appropriation plays, where the Congress tries to limit what the White House can do with money. And some of that might very well be a directive, that, you know, we're not going to fund the Commerce Department unless they reimpose the blocks on chips. I mean, there are things that the Congress can do, but all of that To some extent, depends on a law-abiding administration, which we know we don't have.

• 11:34Kara Swisher?

  So that's where it is. So he may do nothing. Until the Democrats come in and they could put pressure on him, presumably.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I do want to ask you, who else in Silicon Valley do you think has been targeted? And what are the implications for tech going forward?

• 11:48Kara Swisher?

  It's really interesting. There's a couple of things. Initially, I've known Jensen for a long time. He actually, when he was onstage at one of my conferences, it was when he was doing gaming chips. And I'll be honest with you, they kind of begged me to get onstage because it wasn't that important, a company. It was a medium-important company, essentially. And I did anyway because I was interested in chips. And so I had him because I was worried about the chip crisis in this country, that it was manufactured in Taiwan, that China was going to, it was a real, to me, a national security threat of our reliance on chips in an area China could really squeeze us. So I thought it was interesting in general. But later, he has not talked to me since this thing has taken off because I suspect I'd be a little tougher on him. He's in charge of this company in a way that I thought was very dangerous in terms of the board being incredibly weak.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  So even before the spy scandal?

• 12:36Kara Swisher?

  Yes. I thought he had unlimited power in a way that was really problematic. I think also, all these round-tripping deals between and among these AI companies was troublesome, with Jensen and Nvidia at its center. I thought he was imposing himself on politics in a way that was really troubling with a president that was coin-operated with the money. I think they put $25 million into the ballroom, Nvidia did. I thought he sort of sidled up to Trump in a way, for his own purposes, to sell more chips to China and had an undue influence on him because Trump thought he was rich and smart, you know? And there was money and like, Trump likes to surround himself, looking better himself. So I was always worried about his, not that tech people shouldn't have an influence, but the amount of influence Jensen

• 13:21Kara Swisher?

  especially had on Trump was problematic when he didn't have any guardrails at his own company, right? That was very clear. But I found it really troubling that there was no strictures on his power, either from a shareholder point of view and that there's this, I worry about the Jenga of it all. Like, if something happens to Nvidia, the rest of them go down, right? Because of the cross-investments. And the last thing is, obviously, Chinese intelligence is going to be all over Silicon Valley. And the sloppiness here is, again, as you said, get away from the moral things. The sloppiness here and the, I bet people knew this woman was doing this. I suspect it was not unknown. I wonder what kind of reaction the other tech CEOs will have

• 14:05Kara Swisher?

  because they're so dependent on Jensen Huang. I worry about the fact that they won't replace him or they won't let him go because they think he's a key man and that there's no way to get rid of him. I think that if you were a regular CEO, just the affair would get you fired, right? So then there's the affair. Then there's the Chinese spy part of the affair. And then there's the, what else was, we don't know what was given to this woman, right? We don't, there's so much we don't know. And so I worry that nothing's going to be done here and that the Chinese intelligence will continue to, in, not just Chinese intelligence, Iranian, Russian, everyone. It's just like open season on these sloppy men.

• 14:49Kara Swisher?

  And again, it comes down to sex and deception, right? Like, ultimately, nothing, you know, nothing can stop that, I guess.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Well, the thing that really struck me is, and you and I were texting about this, there are photographs of them going back at least to 2024.

• 15:05Kara Swisher?

  Well, earlier, 20s, earlier.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Even earlier, yeah. So there were a lot of people who were around them. She posted a lot of these photos.

• 15:13Kara Swisher?

  On WeChat, yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  And that raises some really interesting questions. I'm also curious about what Trump said in, was it the 60-minute interview or one of his many press encounters over the last week, where he said, "We had something really bad on one of the top AI executives and we could have sent him to jail, but we worked it out." Was he talking about Jensen Huang? Was he talking about somebody else? I mean, this whole thing is so troubling on every level.

• 15:46Kara Swisher?

  Right, yeah. I think he was talking about Dara Ammadi. That's what people think, you know, that they pushed him around. It looked like they did push him around. His entire administration is dependent on the success of AI. And so they'll do anything to keep it going, to keep the party going. And these people don't have power anymore because of what's happened, or have less power. They still have power.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  But Carol, let me ask you. Given the power of Nvidia and where it stands in the economy, and as you rightly point out, the interlocking relationships with every other tech company.

• 16:18Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  If you were in charge, what would you do?

• 16:21Kara Swisher?

  I would, I would, he'd have to step down. I don't know how he operates from here on in. Everyone goes, "My bad, I was sleeping with a Chinese, you know, sleeper cell." I just don't know how you have the next meeting. I don't know how, and by the way, we have to be thinking smart about China and how we deal with them, not just that they're stealing our chips. We have to cooperate a lot of stuff on AI policy and everything. And so it's really, this guy doesn't have any more credibility, right? In the room. Now, again, Silicon Valley people have, like, all I've seen, like, Bill Ackman or this idiot Sean McGuire, he's a venture capitalist, is like, "Hey, he made a bad mistake and he's a good guy and water under the bridge." I'm like, "No fucking water under the bridge. No way, no way. There's no water. We need to investigate this fully."

• 17:06Kara Swisher?

  And then look at sort of Chinese intelligence within Silicon Valley. And the first thing they're doing now is saying, "When Democrats take over, they're going to do surveillance and censorship and this and that." And I'm like, "Every accusation is a confession with you sloppy, power-mad people." Like, I don't know what to, it's just not good for the industry overall, where we have been leading.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Well, also, the Justice Department has totally decimated its counterintelligence expertise. The personnel who used to conduct counterintelligence investigations are largely gone. Even if we were serious about wanting to get to the bottom of what potential problems Chinese spying is causing beyond this one incident, we'd have to staff up again because we don't have the people with the expertise who even know where to look to find answers.

• 17:54Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, also the FBI. Like, someone was like, "Oh, now the FBI."

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Oh, the same with the FBI.

• 17:58Kara Swisher?

  I was like, "I don't want the FBI. Who looks at it?"

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Cash Patel is on it, or whatever.

• 18:02Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, he's having a beer first and then he's on it. But it's just, there's nobody to investigate this but congressional, one of the Democrats. There are significantly good people on this. I'm going to ask you one last question on this. Did you ever have a situation like this, besides you being briefed yourself about Russian intelligence?

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Well, as Secretary of State, I was privy to a lot of classified information about Americans who were targets of surveillance and approaches that were deeply disturbing. And some of these were totally clueless. They were business people, they were government officials. They would be, not just the usual suspects, not just China and Russia, but other agencies would be targeting them when they traveled to Europe or they traveled elsewhere in Asia besides China. And we would pick up signal intelligence about them being targeted. And we would find out, for example, that an American businessman

• 19:02Speaker 03

  went out for dinner in a foreign capital. And while he was gone, intelligence agents broke in, totally copied his laptop. I mean, just, you know, took a thumb drive out with everything on it. And so we saw this. It's incredibly active. And before anybody yells, "Well, we do it too." Yeah, we do it too because we're trying to protect America and America's interests and America's security. So, yeah, we are both on offense and defense, or we used to be on offense. I'm not sure we are on either offense or defense anymore. But I saw a lot of classified reporting about individual Americans being targeted. And sometimes when you pick that up, we pick it up

• 19:45Speaker 03

  with American sources and methods unless it's provided to us by one of our allies, particularly in what are called the Five Eyes group, the English-speaking countries.

• 19:54Kara Swisher?

  Who don't trust us.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so when we pick it up, the name of the American is what's called masked because that wasn't our target. We were surveilling a Russian agent or a Chinese businessperson, but we picked up American references or even...

• 20:09Kara Swisher?

  Which is what happened here. He was masked.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so then we have to go through a process to, quote, "unmask." And that's what happened here.

• 20:16Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  You know, the original signals intelligence didn't identify who the Chinese were talking about. It might have been obvious, but it wasn't identified. So they had to unmask who it was. And that's how we then find out which Americans are either frankly being targeted or, in some cases, complicitous.

• 20:37Kara Swisher?

  And you yourself have been the subject of this, like, with emails, everything else.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  I mean, that's why I got the defensive briefing from the intelligence community, is, you know, we were being bombarded and some of them sadly were successful with, you know, breaking into the DNC and breaking into my campaign and pulling up emails that were, in retrospect, totally vanilla bland but turned into crazy conspiracy theories. So we knew that the Russians were attacking me personally and attacking anybody associated with me.

• 21:09Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, so you knew that. In any case, it's a developing story. It's quite serious and we're going to probably have to wait until it happens. I would assume as more information gets brought out about this, including her, there's more, even more reporting today. It's going to get worse and worse for Jensen Huang. I don't see how he stays, but, you know, they think of him as a key man and if he goes, the shares of Nvidia will collapse. I don't think they should. He hasn't also put a successor in place. That's the other part, like, because he's so arrogant in that regard. In any case, nice leather jackets. Okay, that should have been a clue. Let's add in Stephen Miller here. He has a new role at the White House, real doubling down on Trump's part against everything the election was about. RFK Jr., by the way, is thrilled for his Maha buddy.

• 21:53Kara Swisher?

  But, you know, you were in the White House after 1994. Your husband changed course after that midterm wipeout.

• 22:00Kara Swisher?

  Trump is sticking with Hegseth. He's picked Miller, who was an ally of Hegseth. It looked like Susie Wiles was not and was trying to force Hegseth out. Talk about this appointment itself, because that's the first thing he did, right? Like, the first thing he did was shove Susie Wiles out. And then it protects Hegseth. There is really no way to get rid of him if the trial in the Senate doesn't happen, correct?

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Probably, yep, probably that's right. It looks like Trump is standing by Hegseth. And he appointed Stephen Miller to be his new chief of staff. And it was an odd moment in the 60 Minutes interview when he admitted that maybe his deportation policy went too far. And he started talking about people who were waitresses or landscapers or worked in hotels and they were sent away. And it made no sense, because he has just elevated the person who has been the architect of the cruelest deportation policy you can imagine.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  So I think that this is a bit of a split screen moment. We talked at an earlier podcast about how I thought Trump would double down. Well, Stephen Miller is doubling down.

• 23:19Kara Swisher?

  Tripling down.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  There's no two ways about it. This is like his, you know, this is his id. He's going to put it in the chief of staff office because he wants to be totally unleashed, even unhinged. But at the same time, he recognizes that maybe one of the reasons he lost in some places in the country is because the deportation policy went too far. I think you're going to see a lot of that from him, where he's going to be kind of pondering, you know, whatever he might do differently. But at the end of the day, he is going to revert to who he is. He likes having people around him who are just as vicious and cruel to those who don't agree as he wants to be.

• 24:03Kara Swisher?

  Hegseth probably won't go anywhere. Most presidents would have gotten rid of that person, right? And the same thing your husband did when you were in the White House in 94, you shifted, right? He's not going to do that. He's not going to react to the election. That's your feeling, is that? So Hegseth stays and he keeps, he doubles, triples down on someone like Stephen Miller. That's what you continue to think.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  I think that's where we are right now. Because to admit anything other than that would be to admit that Trump bears the large measure of responsibility for what happened on Tuesday. And he can't live with that. He can't brand himself as a loser. He can't admit that his policies, he has to protect himself. And right now, he sees protecting those who are his most ferocious culture warriors, his most dedicated enforcers, like Hegseth and Miller, is a way of protecting himself.

• 25:02Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  So he'll continue to get rid of people that he thinks are not sufficiently loyal or sufficiently strong, right?

• 25:11Kara Swisher?

  Would that be Rubio? Because it looks like Rubio dropped the dunn.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  No, I think, I think he views Rubio as a useful member of his administration. Because he knows that Rubio is better liked than most of the people in his administration, whether that's true or not. That's what he thinks.

• 25:29Kara Swisher?

  I want to get your reaction to some of the things President Trump said in his 60 Minutes interview with Ross Douthat. On Iran, he admits voters didn't like the war, but said he emphatically'd do it again and that history will prove him right. He asked about his net worth, jumping by billions since he took office. He said he doesn't care and doesn't even know, and said everybody got rich. And on UFOs, he says the Air Force pilots have told him very strange things. He also said pilots are very handsome, and he wants their haircuts. And then the interviewer, Ross Douthat, asked the president whether he could forgive his enemies, which you were referring to, to get to heaven. Here's what he said.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Mr. President, you have had the most charmed and remarkable life of any American in my entire lifetime. And you are telling me you couldn't find it in your heart to forgive some of your enemies? After all that's been given to you?

• 26:20Speaker 05

  I mean, it's such an easy answer. All I have to do is say, yes, I can.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Again, I don't think it's an easy answer. That's why I asked you.

• 26:27Speaker 05

  Can I be honest? I probably cannot do that, no. Because I do hate some of my enemies, and I always will.

• 26:33Kara Swisher?

  Wow, I guess he's talking about you, I'm guessing, too, among other things.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  I think that's one of the most honest things we've ever heard him say.

• 26:40Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  To be commenting on how he really feels and how he really believes. His allies in the far nationalist Christian right are in that same camp. Their view of Christianity is so extreme, so results oriented, so frankly, political and partisan politically, that, you know, when they hear him say that, they don't say, oh, wait. That's the whole message of the New Testament. We're kind of supposed to, you know, forgive over and over again. No. We can't forgive our enemies, because our enemies are implacable foes of the way we want to run the world.

• 27:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, they like the Old Testament, Hillary.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  They like the Old Testament, the worst parts of it, yeah.

• 27:22Kara Swisher?

  So you're not surprised by that? I assume one of the people he's referring to is you. So let me ask you that. You have had the most charmed, remarkable life of any American in my entire lifetime. And you are telling me you couldn't find it in your heart to forgive some of your enemies after all that's been given to you? Hillary, how would you answer that?

• 27:38Speaker 03

  You know what? I, I don't think about them that much. I try to sort of depersonalize it in a way. Like, I have a very low opinion of Donald Trump as a human being. But I stay focused on what he's doing that hurts other people. And he's gone after me repeatedly. You know, in his first term, he tried to go after me. He claims he didn't, but he did. He went after me repeatedly and tried to, quote, "find something on me." So I'm well aware that I remain not only rent-free in his head, but in his mind about how to get even, whatever that means. Because, you know, I did get more votes. He can't live with that. The Russians did help him. He can't believe that. I mean, all of this is so much more about him.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  So I don't spend a lot of time thinking about who hates me, because, you know, that's a long list.

• 28:30Kara Swisher?

  Yes, that is. Would you find it in your heart to forgive them?

• 28:33Speaker 03

  I'm going to forgive people for what they've done to me. But I'm going to try to make sure that they're not in positions of power

• 28:42Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  to hurt other people.

• 28:43Kara Swisher?

  Do you know what, Hillary? I don't forgive anybody. I, you know. Now, I told you, my whole plan is not ready to make nice by the chicks. Not, I just am not. And I doubt I ever will be. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, J.D. Vance is no longer the obvious 2028 presidential candidate, but who is?

• 29:04Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. On high stakes, Hillary and I talk about the choices shaping our democracy. Here's a fundamental one: who should hold power in America? The people or religion? Our founders created a constitution that bars religious tests for public office. And the First Amendment protects your freedom to believe or not believe. Yet we're seeing a growing efforts to blur the line between religion and government from public schools to public policy. When the government takes sides on religion, everyone's freedom is at risk. The Freedom from Religion Foundation works to keep state and church separate. FFRF also stands up for free thinkers, atheists, agnostics, and millions of nonreligious Americans whose voices deserve to be heard.

• 29:47Kara Swisher?

  Visit ffrf.us/kara or text KARA to 511511 to learn more or to join. Because protecting democracy means protecting freedom for everyone. Text Kara to 511511 or go to ffrf.us/kara. Text fees may apply.

• 30:11Speaker 06

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• 30:47Speaker 03

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• 31:37Kara Swisher?

  HRC, we're back. The 2028 Republican primaries started the morning after the midterms. Ron DeSantis is on a media blitz, now running against the Iran war and against AI data centers. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who crushed the Trump-backed challenger in 2022, is thinking about running. He should, actually. Others in the mix include Glenn Youngkin, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and even Mike Pence. So I'd love to, I know, I know, I know, I know. I know. But what do you think about this? Which Republican should Democrats be most worried about? And which one least worried about?

• 32:09Speaker 03

  It is way too early to tell. I think the person who was hurt the most by the election results on Tuesday was Vance. Not only because he was so unctuous and obnoxious during the campaign. His defense of Ramaswamy alone should disqualify him from even running for president. But we don't know. We don't know what the next months will bring. People will start announcing not long after the first of the year, certainly. March, April will be fertile time for people to decide whether or not they're going to run. So at this point, we don't know who's going to emerge from the Republicans. We don't know who's going to emerge from the Democrats.

• 32:48Kara Swisher?

  Of all these people, who do you think is? I think Kemp would be a potent challenger because he sort of kept his nose clean in a lot of ways.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Well, I think for the sake of the Republican Party, somebody who is not associated with Trump, either having served with him in either term or having supported him in the Congress. And that kind of leaves governors or outsiders who might be inclined to run. I think somebody who can turn the page on Trump is going to be attractive to all but the hardcore Trump base.

• 33:23Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  If you're, if you're a Republican voter, I would think you're going to want somebody who can say, look, that was then, this is now, we've got to run for the future and Trump is gone and we thank him for his service, but let's pick a leader who's going to represent the best interests of the Republican Party. Now, I hope they don't do that. I hope they nominate somebody who is, is as big a loser as they can, but we'll see. We'll see how the voters and the candidates behave.

• 33:55Kara Swisher?

  So do you see the return of Liz Cheney?

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Liz has earned every bit of her I told you so because she tried to not only stand up for the truth, but also to warn the Republican Party that they were lashing themselves to a sinking Titanic of a candidate with Trump. Eventually, it would come back to haunt them. So I don't know what she is thinking or if she thinks she has any future in politics. But some group of Republicans need to rebuild the Republican Party so that it can once again, not just win elections, but be viewed as a viable Republican Party and not a Trump cult.

• 34:34Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I see like Cheney, Mike Gallagher, there's a whole bunch. All right, last quick thing, what's coming in, Jr. Trump said the Democrats' plan to investigate him are sleaze bags who should go to jail. His Attorney General, Todd Blanch, we'll be talking about in a second with a special guest, went further suggesting Democrats could be prosecuted for what they've said about holding Trump officials accountable. Now, I don't know if you remember this, but you testified for 11 hours before the Benghazi Committee and you know the difference between oversight and a show trial better than anyone. Give Democrats a piece of advice that now that they're about to get the gavel, what they have to do and what they shouldn't do.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  They have to run really disciplined hearings. And that's going to be challenging because they have such a big caucus now and a lot of new members will be on these committees. And the chairs of these committees, particularly judiciary and oversight, but really all of them, are going to have to empower their councils, who are going to be expert in the facts, the evidence, the law, to do the bulk of the questioning. Because if you just throw it open to the usual five-minute round, it's hard to know at the end what happened and, and what did we find out? Because everybody goes off on their own tangent. And then the chair and the council are going to have to work with the members to make them

• 35:54Speaker 03

  experts in something. So for example, if you're going to go after Todd Blanch, you need to have members who really know everything he did to protect Trump, to block the investigations and violate the law about the Epstein files. And then you can have others who are looking at the corruption of, you know, Trump's family and, and all of their deals. So we need to be really disciplined and organized because these are going to be high stakes hearings. I think they're essential to do, but let's look like we are very much on top of our game when we start.

• 36:30Kara Swisher?

  When we start and very disciplined. All right. We're going to break now and we'll be back with our first guest on our show. I'm excited.

• 36:40Kara Swisher?

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• 37:17Speaker 03

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• 38:03Kara Swisher?

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• 38:47Kara Swisher?

  We are back. And Madam Secretary, we are adding a third today. This is our truffle situation. She is the anchor of the award-winning Rachel Maddow Show and like 5 million other things, her latest book, Department of Fate: The Promise, The Power, and The Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution, is out now. You'll remember that Rachel and I are the Pacino and De Niro of lesbian journalists. Just keep that in mind. So I'm going to start. Rachel, welcome, by the way.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Welcome, Rachel, and congratulations on the book release. Thank you. Well, congratulations on how successful your podcast is, you two. I feel like the three of us, like clearly, we should be a thing.

• 39:26Kara Swisher?

  We should be a thing.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  We are definitely going to be a thing. 100%.

• 39:30Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it's like, right now, we were just saying, we were called the podcast from hell by a bunch of Elon stans on Twitter. It's like the 10th ring of hell. But now that we've added you, it's created, they're probably going to lose their minds.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, their heads are exploding as we speak.

• 39:43Kara Swisher?

  Exploding right now.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  We've now started, our circle of hell is swirling to a degree that it's going to suck all of them into it.

• 39:50Kara Swisher?

  It's like a coven. It's a coven. We're a coven, everybody. So just so you know, we're going to start like hocus, focusing the shit out of this stuff. But let me, let me get to your book because it really comes at a perfect time. You're head witch. You're like the Bette Midler character, HRC, just so you know.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Oh, God, please.

• 40:07Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm the dumb one. I'm the Sarah Jessica Parker and you can be Kathy and Jimmy. All right. Your, your new book is about the collapse of the Justice Department, which you described in The Atlantic as staffed by C-list podcasters, QAnon-adjacent influencers, weirdo cable news gadflies, and the kind of friendless indoor boys who try to choose their own nicknames. Very well said. In the weeks since the midterms, it's been losing people fast. Four top officials have resigned, including heads of the civil rights, civil, national security divisions, plus the prosecutor whose office ran Trump's grand conspiracy probe into his enemies. In your Atlantic piece this week, you called the department "missing," presumed dead. So perfect timing.

• 40:49Kara Swisher?

  Talk about what's happening right now and then we'll get to your book, the book itself.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  The Justice Department in Trump's second term has been a clown car and a joke and a disaster. And lots of things in the government have been a clown car and a joke and a disaster under Trump, especially after Doge and what they did to the government. But I think that's a surprising thing. One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I was wrong about what Trump was going to do at the Justice Department in his second term. I thought that he would supersize it, turn it into a nuclear weapon, use it, you know, put all the most effective people that he could there and use it for everything he possibly could. Instead, it's effectively been raised. It's effectively gone. So that's very interesting. But under Todd Blanch, still, in its decrepit state, it's been kind of a crime scene.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  I think regardless of how it goes with Hegseth, I think that Todd Blanch will be impeached for what he's done at the Justice Department. And I think the Democrats have to think about sort of refounding, reforming, reestablishing the Justice Department in a way that makes it more resilient and makes some of this stuff not possible again.

• 41:55Kara Swisher?

  What, are people leaving right now? Is it clearing the decks before the subpoenas arrive? What is happening in this moment with so many people leaving?

• 42:03Speaker 03

  It's very interesting. So they've lost, as you said, the head of the Civil Division, head of the Civil Rights Division, head of the National Security Division, the guy who was running the grand conspiracy investigation. I mean, they're just, all of these people are just fleeing, more so than any other cabinet agency since the election. Why is that? And I've talked to reporters who have been working on this in very specific ways, trying to figure out the individual motivations of all of these people. Because as a group, it looks like, oh, they probably aren't looking forward to the Democrats taking control of Congress and having subpoena power and being able to investigate this stuff. They'd rather be former officials than current officials when those investigations eventually come. I think in political science terms, that's what you'd suppose.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  I don't know if that's actually what's happening. They all have individual personalized explanations for why they're leaving, but this is the agency where people are fleeing the fastest. And the agency is a disaster. And I think they've got a long list of impeachable offenses and, and really juicy investigations they're going to be facing very quickly, including from the Jamie Raskin-led House Judiciary Committee, and he is no slouch.

• 43:14Kara Swisher?

  So slouch. Hillary?

• 43:16Speaker 03

  You know, Rachel, let me just say, having read your book, which I highly recommend, I learned a lot from reading it. Thank you. Some stories that I maybe knew vaguely, but you brought them to life, as you do. I ended trying to think in my own mind, do you think that a Justice Department is scarier if it's been weaponized or if it's incompetent? Or in the case of this Justice Department, maybe both? It's a good question. And that you get your, as, as you do, you are getting right to the heart of the book in the, in the first place. The book is a look at the elements of the history of the Justice Department.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  It's not the entire history of the Justice Department, but moments in history where we've seen the Justice Department be terrible, be weaponized, be corrupt. We've seen it, the Justice Department used to support the interest of the most powerful and moneyed interests in the country against the people who the Justice Department ought to be protecting. We've also seen it do some good things, you know, taken on the Klan at the formation of their Justice Department right after the Civil War, some of the stuff it did during the Civil Rights Era, not all, but some of it in the 1960s. So it's an incredibly mixed bag. But the thing that I think is unique now, there's so many stories about Trump where it's like, things were good and then Trump got there and now things are bad. That is not the story of the Justice Department.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Things were really bad along the 150-year timeline of the Justice Department. What's different about Trump now is that I really do think that he has rendered it not only inept in a way that is very unfamiliar to everybody who has ever worked at the Justice Department or studied it. Not only inept, but in some ways, gone. I mean, the National Security Division is basically gone, Public Integrity Division gone, Tax Division gone. I mean, it's just donezo, you know? It's been shut down. And that, I think, is, among everything else, it is ominous. Because I think Trump is a different type of cat. I think he has a different type of goal for this country.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  I think he wants to rule in defiance of the Constitution. I think he doesn't want the constitutional republic to persist. And I think that getting rid of the Justice Department, rather than using it as his weapon, is more the operative concern that he's been using, rather than just trying to make them go away.

• 45:40Kara Swisher?

  He wants it destroyed rather than operating. It can, operating incompetently is like destroying it, correct, presumably?

• 45:47Speaker 03

  I think we'll find out if they investigate and impeach Todd Blanch, right? The degree of incompetence that we've seen is stunning. I mean, we've got two different federal judges right now, one in Chicago, one in Washington, investigating Justice Department lawyers, apparently lying overtly to federal judges in ways that judges are now acting on and could potentially disbar those folks. Their incompetence in terms of going after people like Cassidy Hutchinson and James Comey and Tish James and all, I mean, we've seen all of that. But getting rid of the Justice Department, essentially rendering it non-functional, is something that you would want to do if you wanted to make sure there was no agency in government in charge of protecting the constitutional rights of the people of this country. And that's, that's, I think, the difference. It's not just turning it into a weapon, it's, it's ending it.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just wanted to underscore that point because we're going to see that as the Democrats begin their investigations. And we all hope their investigations are really disciplined, focused, and they're going to be calling people who are going to refuse to appear, they're going to be then subpoenaing them, they're going to be defying the subpoenas, they are then going to be voting to hold those people in contempt, and they're going to then have to refer it to the Justice Department, which is going to do nothing. So I, I think it's going to be very challenging in a lot of these investigations because when you find wrongdoing on the scale that I think is there across the board with the corruption and everything else, who do you go to?

• 47:16Speaker 03

  You go to the Justice Department. But how are we going to go to this Justice Department? It is non-existent in terms of the role it is supposed to play to protect the rule of law, our constitutional republic, to work with the Congress, to enforce their will. So I think we're going to see a big crisis within a couple of months.

• 47:38Kara Swisher?

  Who then does that if there are subpoenas? Or if they need to bring people in, et cetera? Will it be the Capitol Police?

• 47:45Speaker 03

  I mean, it depends on what the, what the end game is. One of the bad attorneys general who I talk about in the book is this guy, Harry Dougherty. And Harry Dougherty was wildly corrupt in terms of just personally taking bribes at the Justice Department, doing all sorts of terrible stuff. But the Justice Department, under Harry Dougherty, also just stood by while the presidential administration at the time was as wildly corrupt almost as what Trump and his family are doing. I mean, it was really, really, really bad. And the press and the Senate started investigating the corruption in the administration. And with Harry Dougherty, they knew that they couldn't refer anything to him for prosecution because he was part of it. And he was like, he was likely taking kickbacks for some of the worst stuff that they were investigating.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  So they appointed a special counsel to pursue the prosecutions. But then they started investigating Harry Dougherty himself. And that investigative power brought to light what Dougherty and the Justice Department had been doing that was so bad. It resulted in Dougherty being forced out of his job. And then, once he was forced out of his job, he was ultimately indicted. And so the sort of resolution of all of these things comes in lots of different ways. And ultimately, it comes from the people. We just saw corruption as the number one issue for voters who voted in last week's election. I think it's really important to make that point because the Congress is going to have to get really creative. And your book, I think, points to some ways of doing that, that Jamie Raskin and others are going to find, I think, quite enlightening.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  But I, I wanted to also underscore the heroes in your book, because you do have some incredible stories about people who did what they were supposed to do. And one of the people you highlight is John Doerr. And I actually worked for John Doerr on the Nixon impeachment staff. So I was thrilled to see you giving him the attention you did as somebody who was a really rock-ribbed Republican who joined the Justice Department and became eventually close with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  And he was so instrumental in standing up for the rule of law and standing up for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and bringing to trial and successfully convicting murderers of civil rights workers. So there's some really good stories in there because a lot of the people that I've known in the Justice Department over a long time, and I've had my own experiences, as you know, with the Justice Department, were really honorable public servants who may not have been led well or may not have been listened to. I mean, what you write about Bill Barr is jaw-dropping.

• 50:30Kara Swisher?

  Well, talk about that.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  In two administrations obfuscating the law, protecting the lawbreakers, it is just stunning. So I think it's important to take your book, have almost an instruction manual, if you will, Rachel, about how we can get more good guys back in and deal with the wrongdoers.

• 50:50Kara Swisher?

  Talk about that. Because in a lot of your books, whether it was Japanese internment or before that prequel, you talk about heroes. There's always a hero, whether it was people in Los Angeles that were fighting the white supremacists, et cetera. At the same time, Trump is in power, right? Right now, the Justice Department sued to block certification of Alaska's Senate race, Republican incumbent law, as a judge threw the case out and reportedly sent letters about 20 Democrats, including a prominent elections lawyer, warning there might be targets of criminal investigation as we tape. Alaska's Senate race still isn't called. They sent monitors to 50 states, the first in American history, the Justice Department says it did, et cetera. So talk about the heroes, what the heroes can do versus the blockers. And if you'd like to zero in on Bill Barr, by all means do.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  I never, I didn't set out to do this, but in the Japanese incarceration podcast, Burn Order, in prequel and ultra about American fascism before World War II, in this book, I seem to have a theme, which only emerges to me after I've done all the work. I didn't set out to do it prospectively. But the theme is that the heroes that you find are people who don't necessarily expect the fight that is coming to them. It is not necessarily the person who is the Attorney General. It is not necessarily the person who is running for high level office or the person who is intending to be taking on a gigantic fight and then marshals everybody behind them and takes the hill.

• 52:15Kara Swisher?

  You know, it's like the direct mail guy is the direct mail guy, for example.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, in prequel and in ultra, it's the guy who has experience in direct mail and finds himself the national expert on direct mail, who can then accidentally sort of prove that the Nazis are running this huge propaganda campaign in the United States through direct mail. And that's wasn't why he developed that expertise, but because he had it and his country needed him, when the fight came to him, he was ready. Similarly, like John Doerr was an Attorney General when the Viola Leozzo murder happened. And Louis Post, who's another hero in the book, he wasn't the Attorney General, he wasn't even a Cabinet Secretary, he was a second level official in the Department of Labor. But in all of these cases, when the fight came to them, these guys had the moral fortitude

• 53:03Speaker 03

  and the sort of ethical eyes on the horizon in terms of understanding what their role was and what the opportunity was to do the right thing. And they seized the moment and did what was right for the country, even though they weren't necessarily positioned in some hollowed leadership job to be able to do it.

• 53:20Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  And it's sort of like, I talked to Chris Hayes on Sunday night in Washington about this, and he said, a lot of people have a great man theory of history. You, Rachel, seem to have a good man theory of history, meaning good people in the right place at unexpected times can literally save the republic, can do things that move the country.

• 53:41Kara Swisher?

  Then what about here at this moment, then?

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Well, I think that part of the reason I want to tell these stories is because I want Americans broadly to have in mind stories of heroism for what it means to do the right thing when your country needs you. And whether that means you are a poll worker who's facing off against one of these goons who the Justice Department has hired to be election watchers, they brought in all these election denialists to do it, whether you are the lieutenant governor, the Republican lieutenant governor of Utah, who's having the voter rolls from your state subpoenaed by Justice Department for what appear to be totally improper purposes, whether you are right now counting ballots, counting absentee and affidavit ballots in one of the counties in Mississippi, and you're standing up against efforts to try to make sure that people are thrown off the rolls despite the fact that they deserve to have their vote counted.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  At every step of the process, good people are called on to do the right thing, even when it's not going to make them famous, it's not going to be easy, and it's not necessarily what they woke up knowing was going to be the fight of their lives.

• 54:40Kara Swisher?

  And Bill Barr?

• 54:41Speaker 03

  Bill Barr, God bless him.

• 54:43Kara Swisher?

  Maybe not.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Part of the reason I wrote the book is because of how bad Bill Barr was in Trump's first term. I just think it's underappreciated how much he messed up the Justice Department and turned the powers of the Justice Department inward to try to destroy the institution itself. I think Barr really struck kind of the fatal blows, and then the Justice Department died in Trump's second term. But Barr deserves credit, I think, for the murder. You know, one of the good men that Barr set out to destroy was Bob Mueller. You know, I served with him when I was Secretary of State and he was the FBI Director. And talk about rectitude and honor. I mean, the man was just a paragon of what public service should look like.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  And he took on that assignment as a special counsel to investigate the connections between Trump and the Russians. And he did all he could within the writ that he was given, because they, in my view, severely restricted the writ. And his report then was basically obstructed by Barr, so that the real report that talked about all of the efforts by Trump and his allies to obstruct the investigation were an afterthought, because Barr tried to characterize the report as finding nothing. So he really, not only in the end of the George H.W.

• 56:10Speaker 03

  Bush administration, trying to cover up the Iran-Contra scandal and everything that went on there, then comes back for a reprieve. In fact, as you point out, Rachel, he auditioned for it. He wanted to get in there and destroy the Justice Department's ability to actually investigate Trump and get to the truth about Russia and so much else. Yes, that's exactly right. And the way that Barr turned the powers of the Justice Department against FBI personnel and Justice Department personnel, he turned those powers inward to try to make sure, as you say, Hillary, to try to make sure that the Justice Department would never be able to hold Trump to account, would never be able to tell the truth about what was happening in the administration. That's just fatal. It's just fatal.

• 56:54Kara Swisher?

  So you keep saying fatal, dead. Is it completely dead? That's the first thing. And then before the election, this could really kill it, but Trump said he'd consider broad preemptive pardons for administration officials and allies of Democrats. Go after him. He pointed to Biden's last minute pardons as precedent. He specifically named Elon Musk, although Musk hasn't been charged with anything. And then he repeated his intentions on 60 Minutes. There is a twist that Hillary pointed out, someone who's been pardoned can't plead the Fifth, which means they'll have to talk about it. But does this completely put a stake in the idea if presidents could do this? And then what happens next with the Justice Department? Where does it go from here? Because like, right now, we were just talking about Jensen Huang, they're supposed to be investigating this stuff, so is the FBI, this Chinese interference.

• 57:39Kara Swisher?

  And Trump is basically saying, I don't care, I don't care. And they never even told him it was a Chinese spy, according to Trump, that he was sleeping with. So where does it go from here? And then especially with pardons as sort of the overlay to the entire thing.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  They shut down the public integrity section at the Justice Department. They shut down the public corruption unit at the FBI. They shut down the foreign influence, essentially policing operations inside the FBI and the Justice Department. They shut all of this stuff down. And so, I mean, the one thing that does is clarify, well, that means the Congress must investigate it, because the cops have essentially signed off. The cops are not working this beat anymore. And so to the extent that we need to protect ourselves in national security terms, somebody else needs to step up, and that has to be the Congress. So I think that's clarifying. In terms of pardons, I mean, the president has pardon power. That is clear as day in the Constitution, and he can do that.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  But Secretary Clinton is right that there's no escaping other forms of investigation, even if you have been pardoned in terms of federal prosecution. It certainly wouldn't protect Todd Blanch from impeachment or any other Senate-confirmed official in any cabinet agency from the threat of impeachment, and impeachment comes with it, investigation. And then there's also the prospect, and to the extent that some of this is just breaking criminal law, the states could prosecute it, and you can't plead the Fifth. And again, though, I do think that if we're realistic about the end game, the most important thing about corruption is that it be, A, stopped, and B, exposed. And exposure of it should righteously open people up to prosecution, but even if it doesn't, it exposes it to the American people.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  And the American people have very, very strong views about corruption. There's all this cynical stuff that like, people don't care about the grift and people don't care about the thieving and the corruption. People absolutely do, because people know it's their own pockets being picked.

• 59:34Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  And people don't like to be insulted and made chops, made into chops and patsies. And so the exposure of it comes from investigating it, and that itself, I think, is a lot of what's ahead and a lot of what ought to be ahead.

• 59:48Kara Swisher?

  All right, Madam Secretary, one more quick break. We'll be back for more with Rachel Maddow.

• 59:56Speaker 06

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• 1:01:04Speaker 03

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• 1:01:38Kara Swisher?

  Welcome back. Madison Secretary and I are here with the legendary Rachel Maddow, author of the new book, Department of Fate, The Promise, The Power, and The Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Well, we've talked a little bit about this, Rachel, but I would like to hear you give us some historical perspective because we have faced these choices before, whether to hold an administration accountable or to move on. Ford pardoned Nixon. Bush pardoned the Iran-Contra defendants on literally his way out the door. Obama decided not to prosecute Bush officials over the CIA's use of torture, saying the country should look forward, not backward. So when the country chooses to move on, does it work? And what precedent should Democrats follow now?

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  Because we're facing corruption on such an unprecedented level that moving on doesn't seem like it is even feasible because we've got to come to grips and understand what happened in order to repair the damage. Right now, it just feels like a crime in progress that has to be stopped. Like, the robbery is still happening. The State Department awarding of the new testing program for Ebola and other infectious diseases in Africa was just given to a company whose previous experience involves nothing with Ebola and nothing in Africa. They did have massage chairs and chakra beds in airport mini spas.

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  But the company that's got the Ebola contract, which has no qualifications for it whatsoever, just happens to have just been invested in by Don Jr. and Eric Trump. So this is the corruption stuff, the theft, the kleptocracy element of this experience that we're having right now is in progress. And so part of the moving on question, I feel like, is a little bit about like what's happened in the past, but this stuff is still going on and must be stopped. And if the Justice Department won't stop it, well, that's part of the problem at the Justice Department. But that also means that the Congress has to step up, has to do it, has to expose it, and the press does too.

• 1:03:50Kara Swisher?

  So, speaking of the press, we learned that the federal prosecutors told a judge they'd considered charging New York Times as co-conspirator in their leak case against James Comey, Hillary's favorite person, who she's going to forgive, right, Hillary? Okay, we just talked about forgiveness a second ago.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  Talk about forgiveness, man, that's hard.

• 1:04:06Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, you don't have to, it's okay. That came on top of FBI agents searching the Washington Post reporter's home, a grand jury subpoenas to The Times, The Post, The Wall Street Journal. Is it enough to have Democratic Congress help the press here? Or, you know, the Justice Department seems to be targeting the press?

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I mean, to me, it just reeks of desperation. It just is such a sign of weakness. I mean, you know, Pete Hegseth, before he gave his most recent Jeremiah ad, had his security officers in the Pentagon press room physically threaten the reporters in that room before he started speaking, that they would be physically removed if they violated decorum or something. What is like, oh, you scared? Are you scared? Are you guys scared? It's just such a sign of pathetic weakness. And I think that's mostly how it's seen. I also think that the press is, we're good at advocating for our own interests, and we've got good lawyers, and we've got the law on our side, and screw them.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  I do worry about it because I do think they're coming for all of us. But I also think that the fact that they are shows what a pitiful position they're in.

• 1:05:11Kara Swisher?

  How do you build a Justice Department that someone like Trump can't, the next Trump can't break?

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  I do think we have to stop the crime in progress. I do really think that Todd Blanch should be impeached. I think the Justice Department needs to stop doing some of the harm that it's doing right now in its diminished state. But I also think that we should see its diminished state as an opportunity because it needs to be refounded. It needs to be reformed and restructured in a way that doesn't allow for another Bill Barr or another Todd Blanch to be there. If you've ever been a personal lawyer or a campaign worker for a president, you shouldn't be allowed to be in a high position at the Justice Department. We should have higher, I think, Senate confirmation thresholds for people who want to get into high-ranking positions in the Justice Department. I think the inspector general should have stronger subpoena power, including for former officials there. Like, I just, we just need to treat the Justice Department

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  as an institution as important as it really is, which I think is uniquely important. And it should be almost a semi-independent agency along the lines of the Fed in terms of how well it's insulated from political pressure. It's just, what we did after Watergate, turns out, wasn't enough. And so we need to triple down on that kind of protection. In your reporting, have you heard any stories about documents being destroyed? The kind of protective unlawful behavior that we've come to expect from this administration in the Justice Department?

• 1:06:33Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, a burn order, Rachel.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Is there a burn order, exactly, for the incriminating report that they don't want the court to get a handle of? We have heard some of that broadly in terms of the administration's MO. Obviously, Signal Gate, for all the embarrassment about having included accidentally the editor of The Atlantic on the text chain about sensitive war plans. The fact that they were using Signal was obviously a means to avoid the legal requirement to preserve their records. We also have some brand-new reporting at MS Now about the Pentagon, the way they structured their sort of workflow around Pete Hegseth illegally dipping into the promotion lists

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  for military officers to purge non-white and female officers off those lists. And they appear to have done that where they were doing, you know, no electronic communications about it, phone calls only, no emails, no texts, paper files only that were destroyed and were not officially retained. So we are seeing some efforts to cover up their tracks as they go. And Rachel, what about the Epstein files? Are we ever going to get them all? The Epstein files is a story that has only begun being told. I personally believe, in thinking about the impeachment of Todd Blanch, that a good place to start is his meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, with Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator in his child sex trafficking ring, and him meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. And then immediately thereafter,

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  her getting moved to a minimum-security facility, which she was not, because of the classification of her offenses, is not legally allowed to be in. They tried to pass that off as a normal decision by the Bureau of Prisons, just a coincidence. If you start there with Blanch personally and his intervention in the Epstein case in what appears to be an effort to shield the president, and you could then go into what they didn't release from the Epstein files and what Blanch said about what wasn't in them, which we then learned wasn't true, and the way that they redacted potential co-conspirators. Robert Garcia is on that like a dog on a bone. And I think we are going to get to the bottom of that. And I think that's a good place to start with the Blanch investigations, as any.

• 1:08:41Kara Swisher?

  Well, excellent. Rachel's book is Department of Fate, The Promise, The Power, and The Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institutions. It's out now. You can see her Mondays, obviously, 9:00 PM Eastern on The Rachel Maddow Show on MS Now. Rachel, we'll be meeting later in the clearing to do our spells, okay? Later tonight, when the moon is full, okay?

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  Pocus Pocus 3, starring Hillary Clinton, Kara Swisher, and Rachel Maddow.

• 1:09:04Kara Swisher?

  Anyway, read her books. Her books are amazing. Actually, listen to them because I love hearing you tell the stories. Amazing historian, you're a history wonk. People don't realize that. But it's a really important book for this moment.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  You guys are awesome. Thanks for writing it. Thank you, thank you, thank you both. Thank you so much.

• 1:09:21Kara Swisher?

  Well, Hillary, this has been an action-packed show. Wow.

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  Wow, I'm exhausted.

• 1:09:25Kara Swisher?

  We decided on our coven. Anyway, everyone, thank you for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday with more Hillary, more cowbell.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Who knows what's going to happen next?

• 1:09:36Kara Swisher?

  We'll figure it out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman and Madeline LaPlante-Duby. Our editors are Manolo Moreno and Brandon McFarland. Rosemarie Ho provided the fact-checking. Can't tell you what Nick Merrill was in charge of because it's classified. Thanks also to Art Chung, Abby Krinsky, Joe Nebress, Renee Betterson, and Anna Casey. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to High Stakes from Vox Media, the podcast from hell. We'll be back next week.

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