Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Kurt Andersen:

The culture has changed, America has changed. What the standards are and what lines can’t be crossed has changed. And Richard Nixon, as bad as he was in so many ways, was still an institutionalist. And that just doesn’t exist with this present day Republican Party.

That’s Kurt Andersen. He’s the host of the new Public Radio Exchange podcast, Nixon at War. Andersen is a veteran chronicler of American power and politics. In the 1980s, he founded the influential Spy Magazine, where he was an early critic of Donald Trump. For 20 years, he hosted the taste making radio show, Studio 360. And recently, he’s written two books, Fantasyland and Evil Geniuses, which dissect the roots of our nation’s current problems with truth, money, and extremism. Andersen and I discuss President Nixon’s fragile psyche and the lessons our own leaders can learn from his mistakes. We also break down the state of modern media and the shifting relationship between the New York Times and an iconic expletive. And just to note, we do use that expletive towards the very end of the show, so listener discretion is advised. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

It’s time for some listener questions. This question comes in an email from Jeff, who writes, “I saw that Andrew Cuomo was questioned this weekend by investigators in Manhattan. How would an investigator go about conducting a sensitive, high stakes investigation like this one? When can we expect that the investigation will conclude and there will be a report on Cuomo’s conduct?” Now, of course, Jeff, you’re talking about an investigation that’s being conducted as to allegations regarding Andrew Cuomo’s alleged sexual misconduct, sexual harassment in the workplace as governor of the state of New York. As many of you also know, that investigation is being led by New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, Tish James, who has appointed two outside counsel, including my successor at the US Attorney’s Office and old friend, Joon Kim, and the leading employment lawyer, Anne Clark, who have been investigating the matter. So, it’s a broad question you ask, how do you go about conducting a sensitive, high stakes investigation?

Well, these two individuals and their teams have a lot of experience doing that. And I guess most importantly, you have to be meticulous, you have to be thorough, you have to talk to everyone you can think of. Sometimes you have to interview people for hours. You look at documents, you look for corroborating evidence. And I think the fact that Andrew Cuomo was himself interviewed over the weekend, as has been reported, I have no personal knowledge of that, indicates that in all likelihood, the probe is nearing its end. In my experience, and my experience overlaps with Joon Kim’s experience, you interview as many people as you can, you look at as many documents and communications as you can during the course of your inquiry, and then you leave the final subject for the end. That’s what happened before the case against Hillary Clinton was closed, as Jim Comey made clear a few years ago. That’s what happens in most investigations of this nature. You get as much information you can about the alleged conduct of the subject, and then if the subject is willing, you interview that person.

So, I don’t know how long it will take them to write up their findings. My guess is, and again, I have no personal knowledge, probably in the coming weeks, not months. What I can also predict based on my understanding of the professionalism of Kim and Clark, is that the report will be fact-based, professional, it will be without innuendo, it will be a cold look at the facts, mentioning corroboration if there is any, dismissing some allegations that may have been reported if there was no evidence to support them, and the report will speak for itself. So, I expect the report to be an honest and accurate piece of work, in contrast, say, to a certain doctored report on nursing home deaths.

We also got an email from Christie On a related point. She writes, “Hi, Preet. I saw your name tied up in the news around the Cuomo investigation, and some rumors that you’re going to run for governor. Any truth to any of that?” Christie, I assume you’re asking that question because you may have seen a story on page six in the New York Post, the headline of which is, quote, “Governor Cuomo’s team promotes fishy story about Preet Bharara as smokescreen,” end quote. So, this gets a little complicated, and I guess I should explain. But let me begin by taking a step back.

As you know, and as I’ve said many times, people don’t like to be investigated. People don’t like to be prosecuted. I’ve never gotten flowers or chocolates from people that I’ve investigated over the years. And Andrew Cuomo, in my experience, is a poster child for this proposition. He’s engaged in conduct over the course of time, not just with respect to this investigation that we just talked about, but prior investigations as well. He seems to be scared of what will come out. He has adopted a strategy that a lot of other people adopt, and maybe it will sound familiar to you, given the prior president, and that is one way to undermine an investigation is to undermine the investigators, undermine the prosecutors, and suggest, even without any evidence at all, that an investigation or a probe is political in some way, or to coin a phrase, is a witch hunt. Does that sound familiar?

How do I get tied into all this? It’s kind of bizarre, frankly. At the end of last week, I was told by a reporter that the Cuomo camp, and it was very clear that it was the Cuomo camp, was trying to put out word and get it reported that I was meeting with party leaders in the Democratic Party in the state of New York because I was very interested in challenging Andrew Cuomo in the primary for governor next year. And at first, I was confused as to why that would be said, because it’s not true. I’m not meeting with anybody, and I’m not planning to run for governor next year, and everyone who knows me knows that. It gets suggested to me from time to time, and it’s very flattering, but that is not my plan. I’m sticking with what I’m doing right now, and I hope you appreciate that.

So, I wondered, well, why would it be that of all people, Andrew Cuomo would be suggesting to folks that I or someone else would be a primary challenge to him? And as became clear when I was talking to the reporter, they wanted to be able to argue, the Cuomo camp, that because Joon Kim is doing the investigation with respect to sexual harassment allegations, and because Joon Kim has been a friend of mine for a long time, he would be intentionally trying to make it worse for Andrew Cuomo, goes the logic, I guess, so that I would have an easier time in the primary. Kind of demented if you ask me. Doesn’t make any sense. But it fits part of the pattern.

The other thing that Cuomo’s people have been doing is declaring without evidence that Tish James, the Attorney General, by the way, the person to whom Andrew Cuomo referred the matter when it wasn’t going away, his people are now claiming she also is trying to slam Andrew Cuomo because she wants to run for governor. There’s no evidence that she wants to run for governor. She has not stated she’s running for governor, and people around Andrew Cuomo are just stating blithely that she is. Why? To undermine whatever comes out in the investigation, which is a tactic used by, among other people, Donald Trump. And by the way, for what it’s worth, based on my experience over a number of years in the state of New York and as US Attorney, there is no way on earth that people around Andrew Cuomo, spokespeople, allies, those speaking on the record, off the record, are making any of these statements, including the lies about me, without the direct approval and/or direction of Andrew Cuomo himself. That you can take to the bank. So, just to end the point, Andrew Cuomo and the people around him should do that which he himself said folks should do when these allegations of sexual harassment first arose, and that is, let’s wait for the report. And I bet it will speak for itself.

This question comes in an email from Maria, who asked, “What do you make of the indictment of Thomas Barrack, the chair of Trump’s inaugural? Do any of his alleged crimes implicate Trump himself?” Now, Tom Barrack, of course, has been a very long time associate and friend of Donald Trump. He’s reportedly a billionaire in his own right. He’s on business with Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. And of course, most prominently in recent years, he served as the chair of Donald Trump’s inauguration committee. Tom Barrack and some other folks are facing serious federal felony charges, chief among them, failure to register as a foreign agent, because they were doing work for a foreign power, namely, the United Arab Emirates or UAE. There’s also charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements, as we’ve talked about for many years now on the show, is a federal crime.

I think anytime that you are the subject of charges by the federal government, it’s serious. Each of the counts, there are seven in total against Tom Barrack, carries a penalty of a maximum of five years in prison. So, that’s serious. I think there are other notable things about it, number one, that the conduct in the case in the onset of the investigation occurred not when this administration was in office, but when Donald Trump was the president, and Donald Trump’s own appointees ran the US Attorney’s offices and ran the Justice Department. So, when there’s a debate about whether this is a witch hunt or political, I think that’s an important fact to keep in mind. It’s a long indictment, what we call a speaking indictment. It’s 46 pages long. There are a lot of details and a lot of allegations that the government did not have to put into the indictment. But to the extent that they did, to the extent that they can prove the facts that they cite, and there’s a lot of direct quotation of communications between Tom Barrack and officials at the UAE, I think it’s a serious case for him because it’s strong.

It alleges, among other things, that the UAE officials basically were directing Tom Barrack to do various things, up to and including inserting a passage that they pre-approved into a speech that was going to be given by Donald Trump. They had conversations about who the UAE wanted to be the US ambassador to the UAE, and Tom Barrack is heard saying that he would help them with that process. That goes to the heart of what the allegations are, an effort to affect and change and shape American foreign policy in favor of the UAE without having registered as an agent to do so with the Department of Justice, which is a pretty easy thing to do. And then you have the allegations of lying and obstructing justice. And I know a lot of people like to say the cover up can be worse than the crime. The way I think about it is the cover up is the thing that helps to prove the underlying crime. The lying indicates that he knew and was conscious of the fact that he was committing crimes before, or that there was something wrong with his conduct.

He lied, according to the indictment, about whether or not he’d been directed to do anything by the UAE. He lied about whether or not he had a dedicated telephone with a messaging app on it with which to communicate with the UAE officials. And he also denied and lied about whether or not he tried to facilitate contact between the UAE officials and the White House. Those charges and the failure to register charges, I think mutually reinforce each other. So, I think he’s in trouble. Maria, you also ask if any of this implicates Trump himself. Well, not in this indictment. It’s fairly clear from the indictment, I think from other things that have been indicated from the Department of Justice, that this is all about Tom Barrack and his co-defendants, and he was running this surreptitious influence game without the knowledge of candidate Trump, or President Trump, or anyone else.

Now, people ask the question, will he flip? Even if these counts don’t have anything to do with Donald Trump, Tom Barrack, could he flip on the former president? And based on the precedents we’ve seen, I don’t think it’s likely. I think that, obviously, Barack has known. This has been going on. The lies that he’s alleged with telling occurred when he was interviewed by FBI agents back in 2019. So, he and his lawyers have known this is coming. Presumably, he and his lawyers have had some conversations with prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, which brought the case, about potentially cooperating. Just like Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization, Tom Barrack chose not to do that. It’s always possible there’s some information he can substantially assist with in the future, but given the nature of the charges, given his long standing loyalty to Donald Trump, and given the fact that prosecutors went ahead with charging him rather than announcing a guilty plea in a cooperation agreement, I for one, at least, think the likelihood of cooperation is low. But stay tuned.

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this. My guest this week is Kurt Andersen. He’s the host of the new seven part history podcast, Nixon at War, which uses archival audio and Andersen’s unique wit to make sense of President Nixon’s tragic mishandling of domestic dissent and foreign conflict. The final episode of the podcast is out this coming Monday. Kurt and I talk about why Nixon’s story still matters, and what his fall from grace can tell us about the current state of American politics. Kurt Andersen, welcome to the show. Glad to have you.

Kurt Andersen:

Such a pleasure.

Preet Bharara:

So, in some ways, you are in the category of favorite kind of guests, because you are, or purport to be, a fan and listener of CAFE podcasts, including the CAFE Insider podcast. So, that’s-

Kurt Andersen:

You can check. I said that because I knew-

Preet Bharara:

I don’t check.

Kurt Andersen:

…you didn’t actually check.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t check. I don’t look at the list. Should I look at the list and see what kinds of people are actually subscribing? That seems like an odd thing to do.

Kurt Andersen:

It would be. But yes, I am. I am a fan. And although I’ve not listened to the podcast based on your book, I’ve read the book.

Preet Bharara:

Well, thanks for doing that. So, you have a new podcast series that is underway, and people can listen to now, called Nixon at War. But before I get to the podcast itself, since I have you and since you’ve become something of a Nixon expert in connection with doing this podcast and other things that you’ve explored and written about, can we talk generally about Nixon for a moment and see what kind of parallels we draw to the current day?

Kurt Andersen:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Just as a raw, strategic, tactical, smart, intuitive, calculating politician, how good a politician was he?

Kurt Andersen:

He was an amazingly great politician for the American circumstance of the second half of the 20th century. He was great. And what he was not, famously and obviously, is losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy 1960, is attributed to the fact that he wasn’t so great on television. So, apart from that, he was a fantastic politician. He was not a natural politician who loved to do the retail part of it. He was not good on television, which became, obviously, more and more an important part of the thing as his career went on and afterwards. But in terms of the brain, amazing.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think television, being good at television, is an absolute requirement now for national politicians, and maybe even for local politicians?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, I don’t know about local. One sees Congress people and US senators who are not good on television, and they still get elected-

Preet Bharara:

Get elected anyway.

Kurt Andersen:

Yeah. But-

Preet Bharara:

But to become president of the United States, the commander-in-chief.

Kurt Andersen:

No question, no question. And again, as soon as it was around, and as soon as everybody had it, there was Jack Kennedy running for president, and he became president. And to lesser or greater degrees, we’ve seen it proven again and again. Ronald Reagan, obviously, Bill Clinton was good on TV, Barack Obama was good on TV, Donald Trump was whatever he is on TV.

Preet Bharara:

Well, look, TV got him to where he got.

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, he is a TV star, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

There’s another kind of media. So, every generation has its new forms of media that affect and influence politics, and politicians have to learn how to be good at those things. As you point out, in 1960, Nixon and Kennedy, we have this new thing called social media. And I think most people would agree, whether or not you like Trump on social media, where he’s now kicked off, mostly, he was very good at it, and got a lot of attention, sucked up a lot of oxygen. But would you say about social media, that it is necessary for a national politician to have a great and powerful presence there, or no, because of Biden?

Kurt Andersen:

I don’t think we know that yet. I don’t think… It has not heretofore, but let’s see what Nikki Haley does on TikTok in a year.

Preet Bharara:

Did you just say that? Is she on…

Kurt Andersen:

No, but I’m saying-

Preet Bharara:

Even I’m not on TikTok.

Kurt Andersen:

And by social media, obviously, in Donald Trump’s case, we mean Facebook and Twitter. He used that as no one had, so now anybody who’s able and willing will certainly try. But it goes to that larger question of whether Donald Trump is a sweet, generous figure in terms of saying anything and just doing anything to get attention that, yeah, there are the Matt Gaetzs and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world who share that. But to be good on social media requires a certain kind of perhaps slightly reckless, performative ability that I think still, even Republican politicians are a little afraid of doing probably.

Preet Bharara:

Here’s another quality that strikes me about Nixon. And you could make the same point about other politicians, although not that many. But that category would include Joe Biden, and that is, a person who became a national figure, was successful early on. Nixon was pretty young when he became vice president to Eisenhower. But then he lost the presidential election to somebody who, although he won the election, many folks thought was not as experienced. And then he ran for a lesser office, as is described and talked about in the podcast, governor of California, in part because the podcast also suggests he was the least Californian person to ever run for statewide office in California, arguably. So, he’s got failure after failure, including at the state level. But he sticks to it and comes back in 1968. What is the quality there that causes a guy who has been a heartbeat away from the president, but then suffers incredible, and painful, and perhaps humiliating electoral defeat want to stick with it? And is that important to politicians generally?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, certainly that incredible, almost, to me, unfathomable tenacity, given those double rejections, is-

Preet Bharara:

I’m not a quitter, but I think I might have quit at that point.

Kurt Andersen:

Give me a try. Fire me a couple of times, and maybe I’ll quit. No, he is incredibly tenacious. And was, I think, correctly convinced of his own shrewdness, smartness, I’ll do anything I need to do to get elected, all of those necessities for a successful politician that had nothing to do with the performative presentation or retail aspect. So, just that. And why, as you know, having listened to the podcast, the premise here, if this was his last shot, even though he wasn’t that old, this is, I should be president, I’ll be the best president, and it’s now or never. So-

Preet Bharara:

He wasn’t going to be Adlai Stevenson.

Kurt Andersen:

No, I don’t think so, in any sense was he going to be Adlai Stevenson. And I think, too, he understood that in some way, as the late ’60s were happening, and he was running for president that first time, he understood how he could use the backlash against the late ’60s to win. It’s implicit in the podcast, but from my reading about him, he just thought, oh, this is a good moment for me.

Preet Bharara:

I made a mention of Joe Biden earlier, and I don’t think there are a lot of people who compare Biden to Nixon. But in the sense of Biden had multiple embarrassing runs to the presidency, failed, is there any comparison there with respect to their qualities

Kurt Andersen:

That’s a very interesting comparison. Sure, and they almost… They don’t share a generation, but Biden is only one generation younger than Richard Nixon. In terms of they are both from this saner time, I guess, I don’t think… I think, though, that in the terms of Joe Biden, he seems to have achieved some level of wisdom, and if I get it, I get it, if I don’t, I don’t, whereas Richard Nixon was just, I got to get this, I got to get this, I deserve this, I got to get this.

Preet Bharara:

He’s like, Nixon is always, I’m the Phoenix and I’m going to rise from the ashes.

Kurt Andersen:

Well, and I’m the Phoenix that the bastards, the liberals, the press, the whomevers, are keeping me from my rightful place.

Preet Bharara:

People talk a lot, and you do also, about Nixon’s paranoia. Is that an unusual quality for a nationally successful politician?

Kurt Andersen:

I think, well, on the one hand, look who we’ve just had as president, who the neediness and paranoia of Donald Trump obviously makes us think, I guess it’s a natural thing. But no, I think the degree to which he had it, and it drove him, and the whole package of resentments that fueled it is, from my reading of history, unusually high of presidents in my lifetime. Ronald Reagan, paranoid, no. Gerald Ford, no. Jimmy Carter, not really. Barrack Obama, no. So, I think it was pretty exceptional.

Preet Bharara:

And would you say that that’s the reason for his ultimate undoing, his paranoia?

Kurt Andersen:

Oh, yes, sure-

Preet Bharara:

Or his lust for remaining in power?

Kurt Andersen:

If you want one word for the reason for his undoing, it is paranoia, absolutely. And/or resentment. They come, in his case, as flip sides of the coin.

Preet Bharara:

Well, there’s something else that was interesting that I noted in the podcast. And that is this observation that Nixon, although he’s from California and he had all this resentment towards lots of different classes of folks, he did still want to be admired and accepted by the New York City elite. And you have a little bit of that on the part of Donald Trump, who grew up among the New York City elite, although depending on how you define the elite in what these establishment institutions are, he was not necessarily accepted. Is there any parallel there between Nixon and Trump?

Kurt Andersen:

I think absolutely. I didn’t mention that in the podcast, because it seemed more about Trump than Nixon, but absolutely, Again, they come from different classes, or certainly different levels of wealth, but I think in a certain way, a guy, the son and grandson of these guys in Queens, and he, Donald Trump, just wishing and wanting to, in a Saturday Night Fever kind of way make it in Manhattan, is not unlike Richard Nixon coming from small town, nowheresville, California, and running against John F. Kennedy of Harvard. I think there is definitely a connection there. And just as Nixon’s visceral resentments of the elites, the liberals, all that, was real, and I think his silent majority, his supporters understood that…

President Richard Nixon (archival):

To you, the great, silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.

Kurt Andersen:

…the same with Trump. As he was running the first time, when the press would say, “But he’s a billionaire. He’s a rich guy. He has nothing to do with you working folks.” Yes, he does. They sensed that his rage and resentments and contempt and feeling the contempt toward him, they saw that it was real. They saw that except for his gold fixtures and his third wife, he was just like them.

Preet Bharara:

Except for those things.

Kurt Andersen:

Except for those things, yes-

Preet Bharara:

And the casinos, and the bankruptcies.

Kurt Andersen:

But seriously, I think that they both used or had the benefit of the authenticity of their resentments and insecurities and paranoia that some of their voters shared.

Preet Bharara:

So, I asked the question in a particular way. I asked you what it said about Trump and Nixon that they wanted to be accepted by the New York City elite, whatever that is, what does it say about New York City, that it engenders that kind of approval seeking on the part of powerful people like that?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, it is, as Paris is to France, New York is to the United States. There’s Los Angeles, there’s Washington, and there’s all these other nodes of where you want to be approved of, but certainly, again, in the 20th century, for in all ways except political power, New York was the place. And so, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s natural. There was, in Richard Nixon’s day, certainly no alternative. There wasn’t at the time, right? George Wallace was trying the grassroots anti elite candidacy that Donald Trump successfully did. So, in that sense, again, looking back to 1968 and Richard Nixon, now that you mentioned this, Nixon plus Wallace equals Trump in the algebra of politics.

Preet Bharara:

Is the illegitimate child of the two of those people, Donald Trump is, in some ways.

Kurt Andersen:

Something like that, yes.

Preet Bharara:

Or maybe the legitimate child.

Kurt Andersen:

With a lot of a lot of artificial coloring.

Preet Bharara:

Here’s, I think, a final background personality question. And the reason I’m asking these is because I think it helps to explain, and give context to, and even drive the narrative of how Nixon handled, in parallel, the Watergate issues and the Vietnam War. If you could graph Richard Nixon’s personality, and there are only two things you could graph on in a pie chart, and one was insecurity, and the other was arrogance, what percentage of the pie chart would each take up, do you think?

Kurt Andersen:

Oh, Nixon, that’s a perfectly well put question, because they are major parts of that pie chart. I’d say about half and a half is probably fair.

Preet Bharara:

And do you think that’s unusual, or you think that’s typical among powerful politicians?

Kurt Andersen:

I think that’s typical among powerful people. I think that’s typical among people, or at least successful people.

Preet Bharara:

Is yours? You’re a pretty successful guy. Are you 50-50?

Kurt Andersen:

No, my arrogance is higher than insecurity.

Preet Bharara:

70-30 in favor of arrogance is correct?

Kurt Andersen:

Could be.

Preet Bharara:

This is podcast therapy, one podcaster to another.

Kurt Andersen:

60-40, I think.

Preet Bharara:

60-40. I think it’s higher. You know why I think it’s higher? Because you’re prepared to tell us that it was 60.

Kurt Andersen:

And so, that shows I’m not insecure, certainly, right?

Preet Bharara:

I think that shows that you’re under reporting your own arrogance.

Kurt Andersen:

Okay. How about you? How about you?

Preet Bharara:

You know what? When I come on Nixon at War, you can ask me these questions.

Kurt Andersen:

Okay. All right.

Preet Bharara:

No, you said you read my book. I have written in the book, I didn’t apply percentages, but I said there are times that I have roaring insecurity.

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, indeed.

Preet Bharara:

And also, I’m a quite confident person too. It depends on the situation, the circumstance, how much sleep I got. It depends on a lot of things. But I do think, by the way, that it is important for that pie chart never to be all of one or the other. Do you agree with that?

Kurt Andersen:

Oh, well, of course, of course. And we could attach different words to those, confidence and humility, and it’s kind of the different version of the same thing, but not so negative.

Preet Bharara:

So, this podcast talks about two things, not just one thing. And here’s how you boil it down, and I want you to elaborate. This is a big softball for you, Kurt, to explain the podcast in the following way. You say in it, quote, “I always thought of the Vietnam War as a completely separate topic, a different disaster that happened to occur at the same time as all the misdeeds we know as Watergate. But in fact, the two stories are deeply intertwined.” How so?

Kurt Andersen:

In lots of ways. In terms of the first part of that statement, Watergate came along and eclipsed everything else about Richard Nixon. And when the Watergate burglary happened, I was 17, when Nixon left office, I was just about to turn 20. So, I was, I, like America, because of I was then, at the end of high school and in college paying attention to Watergate obsessively. So, I too suddenly thought of Richard Nixon and Watergate as synonymous, and forgot about his conduct of the Vietnam War to some degree. And certainly in retrospect, and I think in the popular understanding of who Nixon was, that certainly happened because it was the big event, and nothing like it had ever happened.

Vietnam, we tend to understand, well, first of all is, he didn’t start it, he was ending it, he was Vietnamizing it, he was pulling out slowly. And so, in a certain reading of that history, he isn’t savaged as much as he, I believe now, having done this podcast, ought to be. And what I really didn’t know and had never registered is the degree to which his paranoia about having his own misdeeds concerning Vietnam uncovered, especially in the wake of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, were the thing that drove him off the rails and made him start ordering burglaries, and enemies lists, and abuse of the IRS, and all of the gangsterism that then a year later produced the Watergate burglary, and two years after that, his resignation. So, one led just directly to the other, and in pretty short order. Just in my mental catalog of Nixon, Vietnam, the 1960s and ’70s, I had never seen that full on interconnection that was just absolutely the case.

Preet Bharara:

So, let’s take a step back. You mentioned the Pentagon Papers. Remind people who may not be familiar because they’re young what the Pentagon Papers were.

Kurt Andersen:

The Pentagon Papers was this massive history that the Department of Defense under Lyndon Johnson commissioned to find out, what is the history of the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam? They were in the middle of the war, fighting the war in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson had escalated, had sent more than 500,000 Americans there to fight it, but his Secretary of Defense said, “Let’s figure this out.” Now that it’s ready, fire, aim, they went back to create this report to aim, and say, “How did we get here?”

Preet Bharara:

And it was meant to be secret.

Kurt Andersen:

It was secret, it was meant to be secret, and it was finished at the end of Lyndon Johnson administration, ’68, early ’69. And then two years later, one of the people who had actually contributed to it and was part of the defense establishment of Lyndon Johnson and a little bit of Richard Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg, leaked it to the New York Times. The New York Times published it on June 13th, 1971. And it was a big, big deal, because it said, “Look at all this history of lying and falsehood that was at the very core of our our Vietnam policy, let alone immorality and all the rest.”

Preet Bharara:

So, it put the White House in a bad light, and executive branch officials in a bad light, but not the Nixon administration.

Kurt Andersen:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

So, explain a little bit, and you go into this in the podcast, Kissinger tells Nixon, I believe, we don’t have a lot, to the extent that you’re looking at it through the lens of what’s good politically or bad politically for us.

Henry Kissinger (archival):

In public opinion, it actually, if anything, will help us a little bit, because this is a gold mine of showing how the previous administration got us in there. It just shows massive mismanagement of how we got there. And it pins it all on Kennedy and Johnson.

Preet Bharara:

This was the guys from before.

Kurt Andersen:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

So, why was Nixon so angered, and why was this such a propulsive event for Nixon, when he wasn’t even the one who was cast in such a bad light?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, the most charitable version is that he just thought that secret documents, secret government documents shouldn’t be leaked to the press. So, that is the most righteous, charitable, arguable case for Nixon’s reaction. But especially, I think, listening to the tapes, and tracking how his reactions changed quickly over time, that was what he said, and certainly was a part of the engine of his freakout. But it was more about, oh, my God, if the liberals and the peaceniks are going to leak that, God knows what they’re going to leak about me and bring me down. So, it was that. It’s-

Preet Bharara:

But that’s fascinating. Let’s unpack that for a moment. Number one, and there’s some news today that we can talk about that is real relevant to this, so it’s really timely to talk about even now in 2021. There is nothing wrong with an executive branch official, up to and including the president, to be upset with and angered by leaks of classified information. And we can get to the question of what enforcement mechanism there should be and whether there should be investigated, but the fact of something that’s supposed to be classified, and is appropriately classified, not getting into stuff that’s over classified, but appropriately classified material, you read about in the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal, fair for officials to get upset about that, right?

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, absolutely, in many instances. In this case, though, to take that argument in this case, we are talking about reports on the conduct of the war from at the very most recent, three years earlier, and up to 40 years earlier. So, it wasn’t as though it was intelligence methods were being released, or that the conduct of the war now would be jeopardized, or any such thing. But yes, it was a secret document.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think, and listen, I’m asking a very limited question, that most journalists agree that it is fair and understandable for presidents to be upset that properly classified information has been leaked to the press?

Kurt Andersen:

It’s a good question, because there’s the question of, do they understand it posed that way by, say, you in this direct way? But do they really… Were they happy that Barack Obama and the Obama administration prosecuted people for-

Preet Bharara:

Right, but that’s the second part. So, I’m going to get to that, because there’s some news on that, that I want to mention. When I think about people and their views and where they come from, if they’re journalists, whether it’s… I think it’s useful to understand where the other side is coming from. Now, it is often the case, very often the case that people have a justified reaction to something that’s legitimately perceived as bad. And then they overreact, and they try to do things like prosecute journalists in a way that is contrary to the values of the First Amendment and something else. But I’m putting that second. I guess I’m just trying to understand whether or not journalists understand the weightiness as a general matter of the leak of classified information, or if generally speaking, the mission of trying to get as much stuff out in front of the public as possible, that it overrides any sort of, at least understand.

This is a complex question. I think a lot of people approach it as it’s so easy. Of course, this stuff, if it gets leaked, it gets leaked, that’s wonderful. There should be protections for journalists. Bit of news I keep talking about is, you and I are taping this at lunchtime on Monday, July 19th, and minutes before we came on to tape, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, announced a new set of guiding principles that make this department, this administration probably the most protective of journalists against subpoena and compulsory process by the Department of Justice in history. So, certainly there’s a view by this administration that even if they don’t like something that’s coming out, what they can do about it has to be limited because of the principles of the free press. Do you think journalists understand this to be a complicated thing, or a simple black and white thing?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, there’s a lot of different kinds of journalists, as we know. There are stupid, bad faith ones, and there are responsible, intelligent, thoughtful, good ones. I think the people whose journalistic practice entails this kind of secret documents, and classified documents, and reporting them or not, absolutely understand that, 99% of them. But as your question also implies and suggests, the journalistic id of, oh, look at these secrets, I got them, I want to report them, gets in the way of the super ego of, no, of course, I understand the needs of government to keep certain things secret.

Preet Bharara:

You said something else recently, and you used this word a few minutes ago in our talk as well. And the word is gangster, which obviously always makes me interested when people talk about gangs. And you said… And this has been sitting with me for a couple of days, quote, “I never quite realized the degree to which Vietnam, and specifically the Pentagon Papers released, just turned him, Nixon, into the gangster that he was always ready to be.” I love into the gangster that he was always ready to be. There’s a lot going on in that sense, including an implication about whether his gangsterism was latent, why that was the trigger, why you use the word gangster. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Kurt Andersen:

Sure, sure. And I think I said that in an interview. But I’m not backing off it. I’ll stand by that statement, absolutely. Well, it wasn’t as though he was a saint, and then he became this bad guy at the end. He was always willing to do dirty deeds, as we saw in his joining up to being this squishier, anti-communist to Joe McCarthy’s hardcore anti-communist in the ’50s. But he kept to certain basic moral, legal lines, it seems, for most of his career. But he was. It didn’t come out of nowhere. The ordering burglaries, abusing federal power, executive power, all the rest. So, that’s what I meant by the gangster he had in him as a latent piece. Now, I would also say, again, in my sense of the we are all sinners, we can all, in the right circumstance, turn out to be crooks, or gangsters, or bad people, or whatever, when push comes to shove and our character’s tested. But that’s what I meant by that in that case.

And so, I think the other thing I meant, or I mean, to unpack that, is that the national security justification, because we were in this undeclared war in Vietnam, for anything he wanted to do, because as he told David Frost some years later…

Richard Nixon (archival):

But when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition.

David Frost (archival):

Exactly.

Kurt Andersen:

So, he had that kind of proto-autocratic, righteous gangster thing that was then, I think, for the last three years of his presidency, triggered by the Pentagon Papers’ leak and release, decided by name, we’re going to do whatever it takes, and break into the Brookings Institution, breaking into Watergate, break into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, whatever it takes to find every secret we want, and keep every secret about me that I want to keep. And so, that’s what I mean about becoming a gangster. And hiring burglars and thugs and former CIA guys to do this dirty work.

Preet Bharara:

But here’s the thing that I don’t get. And maybe powerful, nationally successful folks are always bundled up in contradiction. But guys who want their secrets kept, and are paranoid about their secrets, and see a lesson in other people’s secrets being revealed as causing them to be even more paranoid about their own secrets, guys like that don’t tape all of their meetings.

Kurt Andersen:

Well, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So, can you explain that to me?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, because I don’t think he understood himself to be having suddenly become a gangster, a smart John Gotti guy, who like, “Yeah, we don’t talk on the phone. We don’t tape. We don’t do any of that.” I don’t think he understood that yet, even as it was happening. Because again, he was the president. Of course, he could order this or X or Y or Z. He was, after all, ordering tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to be killed in a war. So, what’s a little break in? So, I think that’s part of it. But also, as we talked about in the podcast, his insecurity, and insecurity combined with arrogance, led him to the taping. He set up the taping system in the Oval Office, and elsewhere in the White House, and on many phone calls that he had as well, because he wanted history to understand how good he was, that he was the one doing good things. It wasn’t Henry Kissinger. That he was the one who was the architect of the opening to China, not Henry Kissinger. So, it was that insecurity slash narcissism of wanting a record for history that led him to tape it, which of course, is the ultimate irony, tragic irony, I guess, of Richard Nixon.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I guess. You mentioned Kissinger. Is it your view that Kissinger ably manipulated Nixon?

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, he did indeed. And judging by the tapes, of which we play many, it wasn’t too hard to do. And again, who do I think of? The last president. He was-

Preet Bharara:

Except, because there was one more, I guess, foundational question, I should have asked you. Not just that Nixon was very, very smart politician, Nixon is a highly intelligent person, correct?

Kurt Andersen:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

Was Kissinger smarter than Nixon, or was there something else at play here?

Kurt Andersen:

Kissinger was differently smart than Nixon, but no, they were two very, very smart guys. But Nixon was a very, very, very needy person, that insecurity part of your pie chart. And Kissinger shamelessly pandered and played to that like nobody else did. Even his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, you hear him on the tapes like, “Yeah, Mr. President, that was great.” But he gets nowhere close to what Henry Kissinger was willing to do in saying, “Oh, Mr. President, you’re the fantastic. You’re the most wonderful president ever,” and on, and on, and on, and on.

Preet Bharara:

Is that your Kissinger impression?

Kurt Andersen:

If you want me to prepare, yeah, that was my off-the-cuff Kissinger impression.

Preet Bharara:

I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting it. Okay.

Kurt Andersen:

Oh, sorry.

Preet Bharara:

I think that’s the first Kissinger impression we’ve had on the show, though.

Kurt Andersen:

Really? Wow.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So, it’s the best one.

Kurt Andersen:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

I can say it’s definitely the best one.

Kurt Andersen:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that there ever was a time even after the presidency, and maybe this is known, I just don’t know it, that Nixon appreciated that he had been manipulated?

Kurt Andersen:

That’s a very good question. Probably. Again, he was self-aware enough and and ruthlessly honest enough, I think, that he probably understood that. I think he knew at the time that he and Kissinger both used and manipulated each other. And they were these two scorpions in the jar who had made some kind of agreement to help each other and use each other. So, I think he knew that. But if you’re Richard Nixon, and you think about, well, how did Henry Kissinger manipulate me? What did he make me do that I wouldn’t have done? I don’t think that there’s anything I can think of that that would be.

Preet Bharara:

Part of the theme here, as we’ve been discussing, is that things that happened in Vietnam from the perspective of Nixon and things he did with respect to Watergate are intertwined. Is that unusual, given that there was a domestic issue and a foreign policy issue? Or are there many other occasions that perhaps we should look more closely at these things in other presidencies, policies that look to be separate and distinct, and involve different personnel and different considerations, but are actually very, very, very intertwined and wrapped up with each other because they are overseen by the same human?

Kurt Andersen:

Yeah. Well, I think if we can proceed to Donald Trump, who is this-

Preet Bharara:

Permission granted, sir.

Kurt Andersen:

Who is some kind of devolved Frankensteinian version of Richard Nixon, and that’s unfair to Nixon, in many ways. But I think we see there that what he did in Ukraine, what he did with Russia, everything he did, obviously, was simply and purely about, how does it help me? How does it accrue to my reputation, my feelings, my money, my whatever? So, again, he’s an extreme example, but he’s not in that, as otherwise, entirely an outlier. So, yeah, I think your point is a really good one. And I think, are there ways in which the distinctions between this part of a presidency or that part of a presidency are more permeable and fungible than we think? For sure. The thing with Nixon is, well, Watergate was such a one off so far as a thing that is hard saying, what would be the Watergate equivalent in other presidencies? I don’t know. And Vietnam is not a one off, but it certainly is in its tragic import a huge and different thing.

So, yes, I think that’s true, and we should regard presidencies as much as reflections of the guy in all of his respects, as opposed to this bucket of policy or this silo of issues. But I think there is a certain peculiarity to Nixon and what he presided over, which is to say, the end of the Vietnam War, which was destroying so much of the American fiber and solidarity, and Watergate, which was destroying the rest of the sense of American self-confidence and trust in government, in institutions, and the rest.

Preet Bharara:

How naive is it to ask whether politicians ever asked first, what is the right thing to do? Rather than what is the thing that will most advantage me or my party or my position?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, you have spent much more time with professional politicians than I have so you probably have a better answer of that question, but I would say, and what making this podcast one thing that astounded me was the end of episode two, I don’t want to spoil too much. But there’s this conversation between the president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, his Democratic Secretary of State, his Democratic Secretary of Defense, talking about whether they should confirm this news story that’s about to be published the day before the election that could win the election for his Democratic vice president against Richard Nixon. Nobody was listening to this as far as they knew in the future. But they were very earnestly saying what would be the right thing to do here?

President Johnson (archival):

Time is of the essence and as much as Davis has a deadline to meet he speculated that should the story be published, it will create a great deal of excitement. Now, what he gets from Saigon is well and good and fine. But if he gets it from us, I want to be sure that we try to do in such a way that our motives are not in question and two, I want to be sure that what we say can be confirmed.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk (archival):

Well, Mr. President, I have a very definite view on this.

Kurt Andersen (narration):

Secretary of State, Rusk.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk (archival):

I do not think that any president can make any use of telephone taps in any way that would involve wiretaps. The moment we cross over that divide, we’re in a different kind of society.

Kurt Andersen:

And from their point of view, they did the right thing. So, it might be naive now, or more naive now. But at that moment in November of 1968, it’s the way it went down.

Preet Bharara:

Many years later, decades later after the time period that you study and describe in the podcast, one of the lingering consequences for us today in 2021?

Kurt Andersen:

I think, other than, as I say, Vietnam and Vietnam plus Watergate maybe permanently crippling America’s ability to govern itself and get along. I think what Richard Nixon did as a way to politically use Vietnam and the anti-war protests and the anti-war feeling setting up what he did so brilliantly, such a work of evil genius in his famous silent majority speech at the end of 1969, as the anti-war movement was really becoming scaled and mainstream to create this us regular Americans, silent majority, white suburbanites, describe it how you will versus them, protesters, hippies, liberals, the press, professors, Black people.

Kurt Andersen:

The way he set that up very explicitly as president, which to me is different than doing it as a candidate in 1968,. As president, around an issue of foreign policy, not around the cultural issues that he is making the issue, this us versus them thing, set that up to eventually and egregiously and horribly in the Trump presidency to become the central primary Republican issue, if you can even call it an issue or platform, if you can even call it a platform, but the way they run is us versus them. And that really, along with all of the politicization of the Justice Department. Were that well, sure. We saw Bill Barr, but look at John Mitchell, and Richard Nixon, and taping trying to find spy on journalists. Yeah, Trump administration, but look at the next administration.

Preet Bharara:

I keep getting… Nixon, I’ve realized that I’m much more confused by Nixon and his legacy than I had been before.

Kurt Andersen:

Good.

Preet Bharara:

And all the things… You know I don’t have a large mind. A lot of the things you described, I totally get it. But the end of the Nixon story is not that these things worked. The end of the Nixon story is that he was completely ruined, and humiliated, and had to leave the White House grounds on reign one, and is on every list, we’ll get to this in a moment. It’s on every list of viable contender for worst president in the history of the country, and most corrupt. So why are people learning these lessons from before the end of the story?

Kurt Andersen:

Well, I think what you just said tells this and why I cringe and pushback when people say, “Oh, look, it was a great moment in 1974 when he resigned, and it was peaceful, and it was good, and justice, and dignity, and rule of law triumphed. Sure, that’s all true. But in some ways, the rot and the decadence that began in that time and out of that administration, so significantly, is part of what led us to the 2010s. And now the 2020s, where we have moved way beyond the pale that we’ve never moved before. We’ve moved way beyond the Rubicon, where famously, 1974, the elders of the Republican Party went to Richard Nixon and said, “Mr. President, you got to go, time to go, this isn’t going to work. And absolutely nothing like that happened, obviously, with Donald Trump.

And so the culture has changed. America has changed. What the standards are, what lines can’t be crossed has changed. And Richard Nixon is bad as he was, in so many ways, was still an institutionalist, who understood as did the rest of his party understand you stepped out of the line, you’ve been caught, you’ve got to go. And that just doesn’t exist with this present day Republican Party.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I just been thinking about this conversation, I’m getting more concerned, and it might be because of my simpleton prosecutor brain, which has been pressed for a very long time into the belief that there’s such a thing as deterrence. And so people do bad things, and they get punished. And other people see that, and they’re generally deterred from doing the same thing. Now, they’re always going to be some subset of folks that maybe Trump is in that category, who don’t care and are just going to be corrupt, and no amount of there, but by the grace of God go I stuff ever penetrates their brains. But in hearing us talk about this, you had Nixon doing all these terrible things.

He was cast into political oblivion for it. And still people learned the wrong lessons. Trump did all these terrible things, and was on multiple occasions tried to be held accountable by the Congress. Who knows what other accountability awaits him? I’m not quite sure that there will be. It seems to be compounding the legacy of Nixon. If Nixon was punished politically, at least, and not everyone learned the right lessons. If Trump is not punished politically, or otherwise, how much worse are the lessons learned now?

Kurt Andersen:

That’s a very complicated question.

Preet Bharara:

You have 60 seconds to answer it.

Kurt Andersen:

Well, I will just return… I mean, it’s virtually a rhetorical question, which is to say, yes. It feels like we’re a little bit… in this way because Trump has not been really held accountable in any meaningful way. And moreover, leaving him aside, the Republican Party, and the senior Republicans have not held themselves accountable, have not… Mitch McConnell has not held Josh Hawley really accountable, even though they yell at each other. They did for briefly. So, it’s all a measure of how your neat rule of law, prosecutorial deterrence, oh, they won’t commit those crimes anymore. At that level with these people isn’t working.

When we talk, I think legitimately about this role of the Republican Party and it’s so many of its supporters being members of a cult, which I think is no longer a metaphor. Well, how do you deprogram people from cults? And I’ve known people in cults, and I’ve seen them get out the other side. And we saw what happened in Germany and Japan after the war, after World War II. But what I’m saying is, it’s a larger sense of this, wait, this is supposed to be a deterrent, and somehow two generations after Richard Nixon, that isn’t so anymore. And similarly, it seems to me is because so many millions of people have come to believe that no, it’s simply about who has the power, and it doesn’t matter how you get it. It’s just about who has the power.

Preet Bharara:

You used a word earlier on the podcast that is not often used on this podcast, and we’re a family podcast, you used the F word. And you must know why I’m bringing up the F word. Because you recently did a meditation on the use of that four letter word in the great lady, The New York Times. What made you think of delving into the frequency over time of the usage of some people’s favorite word of the F bomb in the New York Times?

Kurt Andersen:

Because I was slightly shocked at the beginning of the summer when I saw in a long essay by the esteemed and great, Salman Rushdie, a use of that word in its past tense in a literal way. See, I’m avoiding using it now.

Preet Bharara:

You can use it. We can bleep it.

Kurt Andersen:

Oh, okay. It sounds… She’s talking about A Thousand and One Nights, and saying Scheherazade’s sister sat at the foot of the marital bed watching her sister get fucked for 1,001 nights. Whoa, it was funny to me that I was shocked to see that in the New York Times.

Preet Bharara:

You’re not shocked generally. You’re familiar with the word.

Kurt Andersen:

I’m very familiar-

Preet Bharara:

And you’re familiar with that usage.

Kurt Andersen:

Of course. And back when I was editor of New York Magazine, one of my things was, yeah, we can use these words. And this asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, thing is stupid. And either use them or don’t. Anyway, so I thought, that’s interesting. And then I heard the word on an Ezra Klein podcast, and saw, yeah, it’s printed in the transcripts. And then yet, one comes across all these like, “And then he uttered a certain barnyard epithet,” or, “Then he used the word…” All these contorted ways that journalists, to my mind, ridiculously sometimes get around saying the four letter words in question. When they’re in the news, right? So, I was curious, just what is the policy here? And so, I started searching my New York Times archives. As a subscriber, I could do, and we discovered exactly how many times over the years from what apparently was the first use back in 1984, or at least that’s as far as I found it, and how it ebbed and flowed, and how the floodgates would be open and then closed. And it was just amusing to me that it seems as though there is no clear policy for that word and other dirty, naughty, smutty, whatever-

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a view, other than the observation that there’s an inconsistent application of some non-existing rule about when you use that word in a newspaper, if you were asked to write the policy for the New York Times, what would be an inappropriate F word… I’m going to say it because we’re going to bleep it, because it’s weird to say the F word all the time. What would be your guidance if you were asked on usage of the word fuck in the New York Times?

Kurt Andersen:

I would have to sit down and consider that and write it. But I would-

Preet Bharara:

Would you read books of philosophy or books of etiquette?

Kurt Andersen:

No, but it’s interesting that some of the the comment I got from people afterward was they have actually a different policy for print and and online occasionally, which is odd. And then somebody was saying, “Oh, well, that’s because some grandparents may be reading the printouts. ” That’s ridiculous. And that’s-

Preet Bharara:

Well, grandparents should know better than anybody.

Kurt Andersen:

Well, exactly-

Preet Bharara:

What that word means and the context in which it’s used. I’d be more concerned about children than grandma and grandpa.

Kurt Andersen:

No, I don’t know. It would be very difficult to codify the policy and not do it as they’re now obviously doing it on a case by case basis. But I don’t know, I think if I were the editor, I would not make it so weirdly inconsistent from day to day that there is no… I would try to have the… Obviously, when Donald Trump used it, and it was noteworthy, or when the First Lady used it to talk about Christmas decorations, and it was noteworthy, they used it. But pretty recently, when it’s come up in news events, they don’t. And as I say, in the Supreme Court decision about the cheerleader in Pennsylvania, who was suddenly free to do her Snapchat with fuck everything in her little Snapchat cutely, they didn’t say it in that. Why? That seems like… That, in my code of when to use it, is exactly when you should use it.

Preet Bharara:

It’s literally the basis of what the Supreme Court was deciding was protected speech or not. The basis of her punishment is the court found in contravention of the First Amendment.

Kurt Andersen:

Right, right. What if she had said F, and as a reader of the New York Times, you don’t know what she said until you had to go somewhere else. And in this day and age, and as you say, with an important first amendment Supreme Court case, come on, say it.

Preet Bharara:

What about television? You think there’s a difference between television and print?

Kurt Andersen:

I don’t know. At this point, some people-

Preet Bharara:

I’ve turned you into a standard and practices expert.

Kurt Andersen:

I know. And the internet has mooted all of that, right? What kid-

Preet Bharara:

It’s weird to me, and I’m very good about my language on these programs. I may not always be good about my language privately. But it does, in some ways over the last few years, jars me a little bit to see anchors say the words bullshit and shithole. In part, it may be necessary, because in those instances that I can think of, they are direct quotes from the President of the United States. And how do you report it in a way that the people can understand the context without using the words? Do you think that’s fair?

Kurt Andersen:

I do, and again, they haven’t caught up. TV, even though what is TV in the age of the internet, is different. I get that. And in terms of, as you say, being whatever you are, alarmed, startled, offended-

Preet Bharara:

No, not offended. It was just jarring, just jarring.

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, no, jarring. Well, my strong experience of that was having young children in the 1990s, in 1998, with the dress and the DNA. “What are we talking about, daddy?” And that was quite something.

Preet Bharara:

What kind of job?

Kurt Andersen:

Yeah, exactly. So, that’s why I wrote this piece, because it’s not an easy all or nothing thing. It used to be, we never say these words. I never have these words in print. And to me, the various solutions, the F bomb, the asterisks, all those things, I just think they’re coy and stupid. Because, of course, what they’re doing is, oh, you, the listener or reader, are forming that word in your head, but we’re not going to put it here. What is that? That’s like-

Preet Bharara:

Wait, so now I feel I’m treating me to do this. Now, I feel that you will be judging me, or will have judged me, to use a tense formulation that you use earlier, when you hear this podcast. And if we beep out these words, then you think we’re being coy and stupid.

Kurt Andersen:

Well…

Preet Bharara:

It’s fair. It’s totally fair, I get it.

Kurt Andersen:

Not you. You’re not coy and stupid. But yes, I-

Preet Bharara:

You’re stammering. I think we have an answer.

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, I do. I think it’s silly. And frankly, the reason I said the word myself is I thought, well, podcast, no SEC. We can say whatever we want.

Preet Bharara:

Kurt, fuck-

Kurt Andersen:

Yes, sir?

Preet Bharara:

Fuck it, we’re going to put it in.

Kurt Andersen:

I’m shocked.

Preet Bharara:

Kurt Andersen. The podcast is Nixon at War. It’s great. You can get it wherever you listen to your podcasts. Kurt, thank you so much for being on the show.

Kurt Andersen:

Oh, such a pleasure.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Kurt Andersen continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

Preet Bharara:

So, folks, to end the show this week, I want to take a moment to address what to me is a very important controversy. Now, it’s not the most pressing issue facing our nation today, but it matters significantly to a subset of the population, one that I find myself in. And that is a subset of people who are true fans of Bruce Springsteen. The controversy is simultaneously, I should say, about music, and language, and evidence, and even strict textualism. So, for those listening to Stay Tuned every week, you know that I talk about Bruce all the time, most recently, when I went to see him live on Broadway with my son a couple of weeks ago. You may have also heard me say, and I’ve said it multiple times on the record, that the song Thunder Road on the 1975 album, Born to Run, is not only my favorite Springsteen song, it’s my favorite song, period. And I don’t want to hear anything about that. In fact, I started one of the chapters in my book, the one about cooperating witnesses, with the line as an inside joke to fellow Springsteen fans…

Bruce Springsteen (archival)

The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways/waves.

Preet Bharara:

…which of course, is the first line of Thunder Road. Now, the second line of that song is where the controversy arises. Depending on your lyric, after this green door slams, the lyric either goes Mary’s dress waves, or Mary’s dress sways. The same night I saw Springsteen on Broadway, New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman, was coincidentally also in attendance. And as a recent Variety article notes, just before the show started, Maggie tweeted out, “A screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways,” immediately taken a side in this controversy. Little did she know that would ignite a Springsteen fan Twitter storm. My whole life, I have thought that Mary’s dress waves, and I’ve sung it as waves at home, and even at karaoke. To be clear, this isn’t a new debate sparked by Maggie. Springsteen fans have been fighting over whether the dress belonging to Mary waves or sways for the last 46 years. Yeah, that’s how old the song is. And though many have argued that it sounds like sways to their ears, this is an important bit of evidence. The original vinyl pressing included lyrics that clearly stated waves. It’s in writing. That’s the original text that would suggest the original intent of our founder, Bruce Springsteen.

Well, not so fast. Last weekend, as the controversy was renewed, New Yorker editor, David Remnick, who is also a former Stay Tuned guest, reached out to Springsteen’s longtime manager, Jon Landau, via email to see if he could settle the debate. And so, here’s where the news comes in. Landau responded with some official word on the subject. He said despite the text on the original liner notes, the word he says is not waves, it sways. And he said that any typos in official Bruce material will be corrected. Typos, that’s a 46 year old typo. He also, by the way, interestingly, claims that there’s an even earlier writing, that Bruce wrote the song that way with the word waves in his original notebooks. But he’s produced no evidence of it. I don’t know how courts would interpret drafts of legislation. I don’t think they put a lot of stock in them. But nonetheless, that’s what Landau says. And that’s not insignificant evidence.

He also pointed out a potential common sense argument in favor of the word sways. He said, quote, “By the way, dresses do not know how to wave.” I don’t know if that’s true. We’ll come back to that in a moment. There’s another common sense argument because of the next line of the song. So, it’s the screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves or sways.

Bruce Springsteen (archival):

Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays

Preet Bharara:

And plays and sways is a better rhyme for plays, so the argument goes. So, I get that. So, I’ll admit there’s some real evidence that Mary’s dress sways, but some people are still not buying it. This week, I tweeted simply, “Mary’s dress waves.” I know, pretty daring of me. And there was a lot of reaction. Let me share some of it with you. Some folks agreed with me. Christine responded, “Yeah, amendments are for the Constitution, not Springsteen lyrics. I stand with the printed lyrics on the original album.” Good for you, Christine. David responded, “We have all been seeing that since 1975 because we read the words on the album cover. It’s over. No take backs.” That’s a decent point. Marvin wrote, “This is like that black and blue, or white and gold dress controversy from a few years ago. You see what you want to see. You hear what you want to hear. My ears have heard waves for 45 years.” Marvin, great point. But it may be that the better analogy is that business about whether you heard Yanni or Laurel. Remember that? And Jeff said, “I’m with you. For all those saying a dress can’t wave, I say if the Star Spangled Banner can wave, so can Mary’s dress.” Amen, Jeff.

Many folks, however, we’re on the other side. [Spector Hair Day 01:07:28] posted, “I stand with the lyric he sang, not the uncorrected misprint.” Yeah, 46 year old misprint. Sean replied, “Preet, much as I respect your opinion on all things Bruce, I have to disagree. This one sounds clearest to me, both the S for sways and the lack of a V for waves.” Sam wrote, “Sorry, my friend, but Mary’s dress sways. Sways rhymes with plays. Besides, dresses can’t wave.” Okay, that’s your opinion, Sam. But I think we’ve addressed that. And some folks didn’t take a side. Rosalita replied, “That dress can do anything it wants to. It’s the boss for God’s sakes.” That’s a fine point, too. So amid the turmoil, some members of the East Street Band got into the act. Nils Lofgren’s wife tweeted, quote, “A band member has waited in. Nils Lofgren is going with Sways.” So, that’s significant. But another East Street Band Member had a different reaction to the controversy. According to the Variety article, Steven Van Zandt, also known as Little Steven wrote, quote, “Oy vey! Get this Bruce lyric shit out of my feed.”

I have always been a waves guy, and perhaps to some of your dismay, that’s how I will continue to sing it. I think I’m too old to change now. But as a trained lawyer, and someone who really values evidence, and someone who is not a Scalia disciple, I don’t think the text is everything. I am prepared to believe that Mary’s dress did indeed sway and not wave. I will note, however, that at the moment that I’m recording this, the ultimate authority on the subject, the boss himself has yet to confirm or deny. So, stay tuned.

And there was another relevant party, who was also not weighed in. As Variety notes at the end of the article on this controversy, quote, “Mary could not be reached for comment on this, or I’m not being particularly beautiful,” end quote.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Kurt Andersen. And if you like all that history Kurt and I talked about today, don’t forget to check out our new weekly history podcast Now and Then, wherever you listen. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338, that’s 669-24-Preet, or you can send an email to staytuned@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE Studios and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Your host is Preet Bharara. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The senior producer is Adam Waller, the technical director is David Tatasciore. The CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Jennifer Korn, Chris Boylan, and Sean Walsh. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.