Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara. So it’s Donald Trump’s first week in office again, and it’s off to a hot start. Between the executive orders over a thousand pardons and a veritable vibe shift in Washington, there’s been much to talk about during this historic week. So I’ve gathered some of the smartest people I know for a conversation about Trump 2.0. I’m joined by historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson, who writes the popular newsletter Letters from an American and co-host of the CAFE history podcast Now & Then. Also with us is New York Times National Politics Reporter, Astead Herndon, who also hosts the podcast The Run-Up.

And last but certainly not least, is Kara Swisher, the tech journalist and host of On with Kara Swisher and Pivot. And if you’re listening to this episode, you can watch it too. Just head to cafe.com/youtube. You’ll find other video content as well. Well, we have quite the collection here with Astead Herndon, Heather Cox Richardson, and Kara Swisher. What’s that joke about the greatest collection of talent with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone or podcasted alone? Heather, do I have that right?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yep, you do.

Preet Bharara:

We’re a little arrogant this morning. So there’s a lot to talk about. We are recording this about 48 hours after the second swearing-in into the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Let me start with the shy and reclusive, Kara Swisher.

Kara Swisher:

That’s me. I have nothing to say.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, there are a lot of things to talk about, the pardons, the executive orders, politics, media coverage, a million things, oligarchy. But you said an interesting thing on your Pivot podcast, a wonderful podcast in our own network. Before the inauguration you said, “I’m not going to be elegant or graceful about this. We’re not being civil. I refuse to normalize this shit.”

Kara Swisher:

Yes. Well, yeah that’s-

Preet Bharara:

Before you explain further and elaborate on what you mean by that, I think it was somebody, Ezra Klein perhaps who was talking about the question of normalizing, maybe it was even on your podcast.

Kara Swisher:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

What does normal mean? The guy got elected president again. He got the majority vote, he got the popular vote, he expanded his margins. What does it mean to normalize something that is arguably already normal?

Kara Swisher:

I think you can take that word and mean it any way you want. I guess normal is not the word to use anymore, is it? I’m not going to say that letting criminals out of jail or assault of criminals or letting the guy from the Silk Road is a good thing. I’m not going to say, “Well, it’s a price of getting along and bipartisanship.” I’m going to call out when things are so obviously ridiculous, such as a lot of the moves Mark Zuckerberg made at Facebook, and that’s what I mean by it. And I guess normal is not the word to use anymore, but when things are sort of… I guess heinous would be the word I would pick.

Heinous is a better word when they’re making moves and then trying to cosplay the way people want them or they’re with the people. I just don’t agree. Half the people didn’t think that. And so I’m going to talk for half the people that didn’t think those things and to call out, especially… There can be disagreements on a wide range of things, which is fine, which is fine, but there’s certain things that are just beyond the pale. And so I’ll just say those. The Democrats tend to be like, “Let’s all try to get along.” Sort of have a Coke and a smile kind of attitude and I don’t find the other side to do that at all, so I don’t know why.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s sort of interesting because there was an interesting article in the New York Times, maybe Astead you want to talk about this for a second, and I don’t have it in front of me so I can’t quote from it, but it essentially said, “Where are the protests?” First time around, there was a lot of protesting, there was a lot of noise, there was a lot of discussion, there was a lot of high volume talk. And this time maybe further to what Kara’s saying, there seems to be more resignation than defiance or resistance. Astead than Heather, what do you think about that assessment?

Astead Herndon:

Well, I think it’s undeniably true. I mean was at the…

Preet Bharara:

Why?

Astead Herndon:

I was at the Capitol in 2017 with the protesters as getting tear-gassed and all of that kind of craziness. We didn’t see those things outside the inauguration this time. So I think it actually is a culmination of a downturn that’s been taking place over a while. If you look back at those groups that popped up in 2017 for Democrats, those organizing groups like Swing Left, like Run for Something, like all of those things that were built to channel resistance energy into a political project, a lot of those have been bleeding funding over the last three, four years. It hasn’t been that level of interest in fighting back in the same ways that I think Democrats were sort of used to. That’s not to say that there’s no anti-Trump energy. I think that there is some, but I think it flows differently, right? It’s in media now. It’s in a liberal ecosystem of podcast and MSNBC and all those type of things. It’s not like a in-real-life project in my opinion. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing or says anything about where Democrats are.

I think that there’s a long road back for them that probably doesn’t even start till the midterms, but I would say that could have a tangible impact on what Trump’s able to do. Remember his first term in office, if we see the same scenes as the immigration enforcement using whips, if we see family separation and those things, those things caused outrage that it actually really forced Donald Trump and that administration to wrestle with public outrage. I don’t know if those scenes inspire the same level of pushback this time, and frankly I just don’t think they care as much. And so I think they’re living in a more unchecked ecosystem. And to Kara’s point, we shouldn’t act like that’s what everybody voted for. I think there was a lot of people who voted for him just for a large desire for change or disruption with status quo, not as an endorsement of Project 2025. So we could be very much getting an administration that completely overextends the kind of Remaking America project and even what some of its own voters wanted.

Preet Bharara:

What do you think, Heather, and can you put this in some historical perspective? There was one other guy who served two terms non-consecutively. Can you remind us?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah, I will start with that. That was Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland in 1888 actually won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college because of some shenanigans that took place in the New York delegation. It’s not really the same thing because what Grover Cleveland really was about was reforming a system of robber barons essentially. And there’s a backlash against that in ’88 when the Republicans are like, “We’re going to roll out a whole new way to elect candidates with these large war chests in order to guarantee that the American people can’t control the White House.” And then when he’s reelected in ’92, they crashed the economy. So that’s kind of different, but I think that I’m seeing something sort of different in some ways and similar in others to what we’re talking about here. And the first is that I think one of the reasons there was such visible in the streets push back in 2017 was because people were shocked and had no other ways to channel their fury and concern.

And what I see is much more determined, much more organized groups trying to push back at the state level, at the local level, and by organizing to make concerted pushbacks against specific things. So for example, in North Carolina right now where the Republican candidate for the state Supreme Court is trying to steal an election from Allison Riggs that’s being fought minute by minute on the streets of the Supreme Court steps. I’m sorry, on the steps in front of the Supreme Court and so on. So I don’t think there’s less concern, and I do think that rather than thinking about it, at least for the folks I deal with, it’s less about Democrats versus Republicans than it is about preserving democracy versus authoritarianism. And that in this moment is important. But I think the thing that has really surprised me, and I keep saying this and I would love to hear other people’s reactions, is I’ve been talking about the fact that Americans don’t talk about class and really haven’t since the 1960s, maybe the 1970s, everything that was class related has been subsumed into culture war issues.

And the shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO in early December of last year, the reaction to that struck me as showing this extraordinary pent-up fury at the concentration of wealth and power at the top of the American government at the same time that Trump was wedding himself to that very visibly. And to me, that throws a whole monkey wrench into what we’re looking at going forward because I can tell you what’s happened in the past in a moment like this, but it’s really surprising to me how it came out, not out of nowhere for sure it’s been there, but with such incredible anger and popular support for the guy who shot Thompson.

Preet Bharara:

So I want other people to respond to what Heather said, but let me just put this gloss on it. You have this weird coalition within the Trump world of populism and wealth. Some call them oligarchy. Aren’t those uncomfortable bedfellows?

Kara Swisher:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

How’s that going to play out, Kara?

Kara Swisher:

Well, yes they are. How funny you say that. You’re seeing it with Bannon, who I tend not to agree with. Agreeing with the Bannon is sort of agreeing with Hitler that Mussolini is an asshole. You see it with Bannon, you see it with Vivek Ramaswamy leaving, not exactly a non-elite, but they had very different ideas of what Doge was supposed to do, which was remove power from government. And Elon’s main goal is to technologically improve the government to make it more efficient and mostly get to Mars. That’s really been his big push for many years.

It was really interesting in the recent story about what happened between Vivek and Elon at Doge, this department of government efficiency, how different the theories were and Vivek’s was to tear down government and Elon’s was to make it more efficient so I can get to Mars, right? Or I can do whatever I want to do. And so there is those… The tableau that Trump put up there of those wealthy people. I don’t know how Sam Altman and Tim Cook managed to get out of the picture, but they did. If you notice, they were in the back, which I thought was fascinating but that tableau…

Preet Bharara:

Right, because they’re not as rich as the other guys.

Kara Swisher:

No, they are.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, they are?

Kara Swisher:

They just knew they didn’t want to be in that tableau. That’s what I think exactly what happened is they made it for the back row and tried to hide as much as they could. I think that was a really interesting thing because in a lot of ways, if they had been outside, it would’ve been harder to see what he was doing there. But Trump is a TV person and therefore he was putting these very wealthy people on display for people. “This is who I control, a trillion dollars in wealth, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk particularly, and then Lauren.” And there for some whatever reason she manages to get there. But, “That was a tableau of my control over these people.” And I thought it was very deft. I think it was a mistake because there is as Heather said, a great deal of anger about oligarchs, about rich people controlling everything, and it’s just bubbling beneath the surface of a lot of people.

And you’re seeing Bannon do it, and they’re writing that off as, “Oh, he’s not relevant anymore and therefore he’s mad.” I don’t think so. I think he represents a real strain among those people who do distrust government but also distrust power in general or concentrated power. And there’s something really interesting that is going to happen I think going forward. To me, this election was a lot about incumbents across the world losing power. It just was. I mean, if it was left or right, they lost power. In Britain, it was the right that lost power. And so I think this concentration of wealth thing is going to be a really interesting political situation for a lot of people, and I suspect the Democrats would do well to focus more on that than anything else.

Preet Bharara:

Does it matter how someone came by their wealth, whether they were a real estate tycoon like Trump, whether they’re in information technology, whether they’re in tech, whether they’re in manufacturing? Are there different feelings that the MAGA masses feel about different versions of rich?

Astead Herndon:

I mean, yes. And this isn’t really new. There’s been the awkwardness of the relationship between Trump as both populist and billionaire has been there for a little bit now. I don’t think it’s that unique though, to be honest. It’s so much easier to run as a challenger because people have a shared beef with the incumbent, right? And so in the same way that Joe Biden’s 2020 coalition was fully united, was not a united coalition, more so than the anti-Trump one. I think the same coalition that led Donald Trump to power is not united around a set of ideals. I think there’s a lot of disagreements within them. Bannon and Elon Musk represents one. I think what happens to funding in Ukraine and foreign intervention represents another, what happens to social services programs, things like, “Do you want to touch Medicaid and Medicare?” Represents another one.

There are real fundamental differences between the type of people who have Donald Trump’s ear. I think what’s different about Donald Trump is that he’s so purely transactional, and so you don’t actually know which way who’s going to have the lasting power here, because in the same… I agree with Kara honestly, that I think a lot of people are describing that row. And I think Democrats has an incentive to frame that row as people controlling Donald Trump, which it might be, right? And I think if it plays out like that, that probably does play to Democrats’ hands. But it’s also who Donald Trump controls right now.

Kara Swisher:

That’s correct.

Preet Bharara:

He keeps changing his mind, so it’s…

Astead Herndon:

And I think that that is an important distinction. And so as long as it feels like the ideology is flowing from the top, then I think that’s a world that Donald Trump can handle and he’ll take these little fiefdoms fighting each other all the time.

Kara Swisher:

He likes that.

Astead Herndon:

He likes that. He’s totally fine with that. I think the opposite is the where Republicans can get in some big trouble is if they become deferential to these large corporations. Because frankly, and I think again, Kara’s point is a true one, Bannon represents a full wing of the party that’s been super motivated by calling out big tech, by acting like they were the ones who made the steal of the last election possible. They’ve been a villain of the Trump rally for the last several years. So I do think there’s a portion of the base who would be uncomfortable with those images if it looks like they are the ones who are dictating policy to Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Well, so how does that play out? Maybe Heather, you have a thought on this from history. If you have Steve Bannon saying Elon Musk must be cast out, and Elon Musk has his own ideas, how do they both coexist as close advisors to Donald Trump or will they cease to coexist that way?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, I think we’re touching on something that speaks to that, again, in the present, but also historically. And that’s that you can paper over those differences so long as you can turn your people against someone else, which is what the Republican Party has done so effectively since the 1980s. But that seems to be getting a little tired when you think about where we are right now. But also when you think about the extraordinary fury over things like healthcare. So how they stay together going forward is not clear to me. And if you think of the 1890s, which is the parallel you see here, quite frankly, with things even like Trump lionizing William McKinley. And can I just say this is such a non-starter. I know William McKinley probably better than almost anybody in this country. There is no reason for us to try to go back to an era in which we lionize William McKinley just saying.

Preet Bharara:

Well, what are we calling the mountain now?

Kara Swisher:

McKinley.

Astead Herndon:

Denali.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Wealth.

Kara Swisher:

Well, he was Denali, but now it’s McKinley.

Astead Herndon:

Yeah, but he’s going back to McKinley.

Preet Bharara:

Why isn’t it the mountain of America?

Kara Swisher:

It’s big.

Heather Cox Richardson:

You know what? There you go. There is something that we can do.

Kara Swisher:

It’s the biggest, right?

Preet Bharara:

It’s the biggest, the mountain of America.

Kara Swisher:

Right.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Let’s do it. To match the Gulf, right? But in the late 19th century, you had a very similar set of circumstances in which you had a group of people who were bitterly divided and couldn’t come together to stop the concentration of wealth until they recognized what was happening. And when they did, what was interesting about that was that you did get these movements within the Democratic Party within alternative parties like the Alliance members of the populists and so on. You got all of those things, but you also got a recognition among the Republicans who are controlling things that they were not going to be able to contain a revolution or to contain the loss of their power unless they started to acknowledge those voices and to make an accommodation with them.

And from that, we got the Progressive Era because it came from within the Republican Party, although it was the Democrats who first articulated it. So I’m just really interested in the fact that we are using the word oligarchy again, which again for this is… In the 1850s, it was everywhere. And when was the last time you heard people talking in that way, in the modern papers in America in this era? But it just hasn’t been there.

Kara Swisher:

It’s hurting Mark Zuckerberg’s feelings to be called an oligarch, by the way. Just so you know.

Heather Cox Richardson:

You know what? It hurt Andrew Carnegie’s too.

Kara Swisher:

I’m sure.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I feel bad about that.

Kara Swisher:

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s interesting that that was the Fox that was… I’m referring to where, whatever one of those people that sits on that couch at Fox, was articulating that Mark was hurt by it and he’s really upset. But then again, he got upset by a slightly testy email from the Biden administration. His feelings get hurt. One of the unique characteristics of these people is they get hurt by your calling them that. Whatever you call them, they’re not that, and they want to sort of have this regular Joe kind of thing when they live in ways that are so far apart from the way most of America lives and suck up all the juicy bits for themselves.

And I think if you can continue to paint them as this, that this elitist isolated group of people that’s in it for themselves where they have everything and it’s not enough is a very good, and at the same time lean into say an entrepreneur like a Mark Cuban or whoever where it’s a progressive capitalist, that kind of thing I think is a very powerful thing is, “I’m a capitalist. I love capitalism. I’ve done really well, but I’m also here to lower prescription drug prices. I’m here like a Reid Hoffman.” Or something like that. Progressive capitalism is a much more attractive thing than say left policies, defund the police, et cetera, et cetera. To me, if you celebrate forward-thinkingness without greed, it’s a really interesting message to send to people.

Preet Bharara:

But the high rank of these people and their proximity to the ear of Donald Trump does not appear to be causing any hemorrhaging of the MAGA support.

Kara Swisher:

Today.

Astead Herndon:

It’s too early.

Preet Bharara:

It’s too early? It’s been a few years.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Okay, so…

Astead Herndon:

Governing is what’s going to bring out the differences in these people. And I think we don’t have a crisis to really test those connections yet.

Preet Bharara:

What about H-1B? I watched that and there was a lot of casting of aspersions on people who originated in India. I feel like I did. Is that going to be a real rift or is that a harbinger of other rifts between working-class MAGA supporters and the tech folks?

Kara Swisher:

I think so. I think you’re seeing it with Vivek and Elon. You’re seeing it with Bannon and Elon. Elon sort of personifies that in a lot of ways. He has a lot of fans for whatever he does. He’s more of a P.T. Barnum and a business person. He’s more akin to a Henry Ford than he is to a Thomas Edison, that’s for sure. He did not invent Tesla. He did not invent a lot of the things he’s doing, but he’s quite a good business person and one of his greatest things was to invest in Donald Trump at a very low rate and then get a rate of return of $250,000,000,000 for his $250,000,000 he spent. And so I think one of the things that’s happen there is if you start to see… I’m hearing from Trump people about Elon. I had a call from several Trump people, I’d been pretty critical.

I’m like, “He’s in it for himself. He wants to get to Mars. This is a person who does not have any values that I had ever understood to be… These are just new ones for him.” And they were like, “Oh, you just don’t like him. You had a falling out.” And recently, I’ve gotten so many calls from Trump people who are like, “Kara, he’s crazy.” Or like, “Wait a minute, he’s a power grabber.” I’m like, “I told you.” And they’re like, “What do we do about it?” And I’m like, “Good luck.” And I hang up. I was like, “Good luck.” He has enormous amounts of money, power, and he’s useful as a cudgel to Donald Trump on these people that resist him. We’re going to primary you, we’re going to do that. Nobody likes that ultimately. So it ultimately breaks apart when you feel like you’re being forced to not be who you want to be because some rich guy’s going to come and primary you.

Preet Bharara:

So is there some opportunity instead, Heather, for Democrats seeing the makings of a rift, these two tectonic plates of populism and wealth, or should they just buy popcorn and sit back?

Astead Herndon:

I imagine this is going to be a downer to Democrats, but I have no faith.

Preet Bharara:

All right, put away the popcorn guys.

Astead Herndon:

I have no faith in the current Democratic Party to seize on anything, to be honest. I think that the sharp truth is the biggest example more than Mark Cuban, a billionaire who has created a brand to fight for working class person is Donald Trump. Republicans have already succeeded in doing that and creating a form of capitalism that a lot of working class people think is advocating for them. And so…

Preet Bharara:

So why would he invent the wheel?

Kara Swisher:

He’s got to deliver now.

Astead Herndon:

He’s got to deliver somewhat. But actually…

Preet Bharara:

Does he?

Astead Herndon:

Delivering, I don’t know, is actually a blessing from the Biden administration. So it really depends on what you deliver on. And so I actually don’t think it’s clean to me that that’s a rift that actually creates some big opening for Democrats. And honestly, Democrats have a separate question completely independent of Republicans, which is do they want to be a working class party? I don’t think they currently are. I don’t think that’s really where they’ve pointed their energy and motivation. And even if Republicans have a big rift on their side, it’s not clear to me that the Democratic Party is set up in some way or has a leadership in some way or wants to focus on the type of issues that the working class folks of America have made clear that are most important to them.

They can seize on it, but to me it would require some level of showiness that I haven’t necessarily had. But I’m saying right now it’s early. I think they’re going to work these messages out in real time. I think they’re going to figure out what they think works and doesn’t work and test try some of those messages in the midterms. So I’m not really blaming them yet. I’m just saying, let’s not act like this is some Democratic Party that’s set up from a place of trust with people who aren’t college educated or are working class because the lesson of the last election is that’s not true.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with our special inauguration week coverage after this.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So can I throw something in here that I’ve been watching and that to build on what you just said is that I think the elephant in the room here is that Donald Trump is 78 years old and he is not mentally healthy. And it certainly looks to me not being a medical doctor like it’s going to be hard for him to live out his four years. So one of the things I am watching is who is trying to grab power from the power sloshing around in Washington? Because I think you’ve got a lot of people on the Republican side trying to do that. And not only just the ones in Washington, the fact that for example, Ron DeSantis refused to put Lara Trump into that senate seat and put one of his own people in there. Similarly, Mike DeWine did the same thing in Ohio. It seems to me that there are a lot of different pieces in flux.

And one of the things that I’ve been watching since the inauguration is that one of the ways that people that I know anyway, excuse their votes for Trump is they said, “He doesn’t mean that. He’s not really going to do that.” And they cherry-picked what they thought that he would do for them. And he is in fact doing what they said he was not going to do. And these January 6th pardons and the pardon of Ulbricht of Silk Road who was a major drug dealer, I think is a surprise to a lot of people. And the degree to which those of us who are concerned about the direction of democracy, hammer on things like that, the more it grabs some of that power that’s sloshing away or sloshing around in Washington and offers to direct it towards somebody else, at least who is going to say, “Yeah, I told you he was going to do that and he did it. How do you feel about the fact that those January 6th people are back in your community threatening their children?” I just think it’s a lot moving.

Kara Swisher:

There’s also interesting in the TikTok fight, which is probably small but large, the ideas behind it, many of the biggest critics are Republicans of what Donald Trump is doing. It’s Tom Cotton. It’s a lot of more people on the right than the left actually who object to this. And what I find interesting to watch that one is you saw the two companies that are critical to this Apple and Google, you cannot download TikTok right now. What is the message they’re sending right there? They may have shown up at the inauguration, they may have given Trump $1,000,000 individually or whatever, but you know what they also did? They’re not letting you download TikTok because they’ve decided that the Supreme Court and Congress have more power than Donald Trump does because they certainly don’t fear…

Preet Bharara:

In that particular instance.

Kara Swisher:

In that particular instance, they don’t feel repercussions. The other part is that there are… I don’t know why Trump people call me, but they do. But one of them, I said, “Well, how long is this going to continue?” Someone not so far from the tops or close to Trump said, “We only need him two more years.” And I was like, “Oh my God.” And it was interesting to hear from a Republican say that. The question is who replaces him as… You’re just talking about actuarial tables, I think his family seems to survive. They’re old, they could go into old age. But actuarial tables, she’s right. There’s a question, that kind of thing of how long it goes on, but who replaces? Who is the standard-bearer? And JD Vance presumably is in the front row for that, but he’s charmless, right? He’s somewhat charmless.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Really is.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, I just want the record to reflect because we are posting this on YouTube and we’re all on video, which didn’t use to be the case, that Professor Richardson was shaking her head when you said JD Vance.

Kara Swisher:

Well, he does… No, she was shaking head because he’s charmless. So who is…

Preet Bharara:

She was shaking her head before the charmless part.

Kara Swisher:

And at the same time, I do think Democrats do have a number of people who are kind of can-do Democrats. I’m not a political person, but to me a very resonant thing is can-do. You have Jared Polis in Colorado. Colorado did very well. You have Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, very popular. “I’m fixing the roads. I’m can-do Democrats.” That message actually does resonate with both, not necessarily working class people, but working class people and the… “What are you doing for me?” You’ve got Daniel Lurie in San Francisco. You can’t imagine having had a candidate like that winning because he’s a can-do Democrat, that kind of thing. And I think that does have a certain resonance if you deliver basic services and you show good government, people like that. People really like that. There’s a lot of those on the Republican side too, Andy Beshear. I mean, he’s a Democrat, but there’s a lot of Republicans that have that kind of vibe too, that I think is going to be popular going forward. I do rather than rich people.

Preet Bharara:

Astead, do you have a comment on the bench that Kara is describing?

Astead Herndon:

Yeah, I think those are all names to watch. As someone who’s spent the last couple of years talking to people about this, I would really bet though that the world is going to look different by the time Democrats have another presidential primary. And the landscape is going to be very wide open. And I think Democrats have to ask themselves how much do they really feel like reflecting? And the answer could be not really, to be honest. I think you can tell yourself a story that Joe Biden made a uniquely bad decision or that Kamala Harris was maybe a uniquely bad candidate and that’s why they lost the close election against unpopular Donald Trump. And they don’t have to change all that much. I think that that can be a version that they tell themselves. But I think that there’s some fundamental things happening among electorate.

I think the message of democracy working is not a good one, to be honest. I think that the people they’re losing do not think that democracy is working at all. They think that it’s a system that’s rigged. And I think if I was Democrats, I would’ve talked a lot more about improving democracy. I would talk a lot more about why it’s not working right now for a lot of Americans. And so I think that there are some choices in front of them about who they most want to target. And I wouldn’t throw out outsider as a 2028 possibility. In my opinion a lot of the names that we know as Democratic bench will regret not running in 2024. I honestly think that was their moment that they should not have taken the Joe Biden administration’s strong arming of people. They should have ran. There was an appetite.

Kara Swisher:

Who’s an outsider, Astead?

Astead Herndon:

I’m saying…

Preet Bharara:

Like a non-politician, you mean?

Astead Herndon:

I’m saying not Gretchen Whitmer. I’m saying not Josh Shapiro. I’m saying those people in my opinion are going to look back at 2024 wistfully. I think people we don’t even know, to be honest. I think that the traditional qualifications are not the same. And so I can totally see a universe where the Democrats are due for their 2016 type of primary where somebody comes from nowhere and articulates a thing that can win in a crowded field.

Preet Bharara:

See it as an outsider?

Astead Herndon:

And so I just think it’s a very open-y landscape and I think the party… But Donald Trump is going to fundamentally change the country and I think the party’s next candidate will be reacting to that. And so I actually don’t know if that’s the same type of messages we’ve been hearing. I just think the future is much murkier than we’re giving it credit for.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So one outsider is John Fetterman, and my question is if he were to catch fire at his own inauguration, would he wear pants or shorts?

Kara Swisher:

Shorts.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Shorts.

Astead Herndon:

Yeah. I think he’s never [inaudible 00:31:32].

Heather Cox Richardson:

To pick that up though, there’s a huge demographic change underway around the world and also in the United States, and that’s something I’m not sure we pay enough attention to because that demographic change will dictate brand new issues. And that’s really important. And we’re in general…

Astead Herndon:

It already is, to be honest.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah.

Astead Herndon:

One of the huge differences in who voted in ’24 is just between native-born and foreign-born Americans. That’s a huge shift to Donald Trump. Talking to the campaign, the assumption that the international issues would not matter as much because they traditionally have not mattered as much to electorate. I think it’s an old assumption based on an old electorate. You have increasingly have a more foreign-born electorate. So of course there are different types of issues that folks care about. And so I was saying I was going to Biden administration being like, or campaign in late ’23, and they were just sure that Gaza wasn’t going to have this big long-term electoral impact because Americans prioritize domestic concerns.

In my opinion, that’s old thinking. Or when they talk about Black voters and extrapolate that to Black voters, largely, increasingly Black populations, the parts that are growing the fastest are Black immigrants. Those folks don’t think the same in terms of African-Americans, right? The lessons they took from Mexicans to larger Latino populations are not the same people. So that moment of change is already here. It just isn’t flowing in the way that I think some liberals assumed. A lot of people are coming with conservative principles from a lot of other places too. And so I think that needs to be added into that diversity conversation.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So I was talking about the demographic shift from what is now the old, not still… I mean, a few years ago it was the oldest congress we’ve ever had to younger people. So if you are under 55 years old, you don’t remember a time when democracy worked. And your concerns are very different than people in my generation. And again, to be the historical nudge here, when that happens, what you often see, and I think you can see this by the way, in the Trump family, the rhetoric of the grandfathers becomes the absolute mythology of the grandsons. If you start to say, “Well, people like me are better than those people.” As a rhetorical device, by the time you get to grandchildren, those people really believe they’re better than those other people. And that creates an entirely new kind of government. And I’m thinking very heavily here, the 1890s when the rhetoric of the 1860s becomes the reality of the 1890s, but then spawns a whole backlash against it from other young people who are like, “This is not my reality. This is your weird mythology.”

And I’m not suggesting that that’s a pattern for the present, but I do think that we do not factor in the political meaning of a demographic change in the United States the way that we might in this moment. If we’re looking for example at the continent of Africa where everybody is talking about how young it is and how that’s going to matter or Indonesia and the same kind of major shift in the US is going to happen and is going to matter. One of the things I always remind my students is that Lafayette, when he came to fight in America was 19 years old and that matters.

Kara Swisher:

The same thing with Hamilton, I would assume. One of the things that Astead just said about conservatives, I think one of the things you’re talking about, Astead is not necessarily conservative, but entrepreneurial, right?

Astead Herndon:

Sure, yeah.

Kara Swisher:

Hard work, entrepreneurial. Conservative, I’m not so sure. I don’t think they are eager to suddenly… Religious too, a little more religious in some cases, more like you’re thinking of the way people used to portray Cubans in Florida that they’re much more conservative, but tapping into that entrepreneurial zeal and the ability to make your way is a belief in democracy. That’s why they’re here, right? And so there’s a real power in that idea of entrepreneurism if the Democrats can embrace that idea. And they have certain standard boards who are like that, the idea of hard work gets you forward. That to me is a really appealing kind of thing.

And they don’t really necessarily want to traffic in… They’re all different religions too, which is interesting, but they don’t want to necessarily traffic in pulling people down as much, “As we got here, we worked hard to get here. We believe in democracy.” It’s a very powerful and resident American feeling. My grandfather came from Italy and he was, “I’m going to do my hard work. I don’t want to help.” He had that same attitude and I don’t feel like it was in service of billionaire… You know what I mean? There is a way you talk about entrepreneurs in bottom up, “Let’s help you get a leg up.” That kind of thing that is very appealing American thing and the image that people when they come here, so I don’t know if they’re conservative anymore than hard work will get you there kind of thing.

Preet Bharara:

On the democratic side, what do you make of policies, because Heather was talking about class before and some people talk about Caste, that famous book by…

Kara Swisher:

That’s a great book.

Preet Bharara:

… Isabel Wilkerson.

Kara Swisher:

Isabel Wilkerson.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, who tried to shift the spotlight away from race. And I think there’s a lot of merit to those arguments.

Kara Swisher:

Agreed.

Preet Bharara:

But when the Democrats do something like loan forgiveness for college students, how does that play in the current climate with the current rifts that we’ve been talking about, anyone?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, that infuriated me because once again, that was a place where the Democrats allowed the Republicans to frame what was happening. Exactly to what Kara just said, that somebody was getting a handout and other people, hardworking White men essentially were paying for this handout when what they were doing was enforcing the fairness of the laws. It’s a really different way of framing it. I can tell you it never got traction because I still hear from people going, “I don’t want these college kids to get a handout.” And when you actually explain that what this is about was the fact that the terms of the loans were never honored, so these people got locked into predatory lending, then they’re like, “Well, that’s not fair. That can’t be right.”

It’s like, “It is right.” And that’s how it happened. One of the things that again, is in the moment we’re in is the Republicans have framed our public debate for 40 years. As I say, one of the things that interests me about that shooting is you could see that narrative slipping away and you could see the terror over that when you got all of a sudden the newspaper articles everywhere and the media saying, “Well, how can you be lionizing a murderer?” And really pushing back on that because you could see that narrative slipping away. And I think the narrative of the next four years is going to be crucial to how we come out of it.

Preet Bharara:

So can I ask a quick question in that vein for anyone. On the issue of immigration, framing is key and nuance in some ways is anathema to politics. So my understanding is if you ask people generally, “Do you think folks who are here unlawfully should be deported?” The majority say, “Yes.” If you ask more nuanced questions and you say, “Well, should federal agents be going into churches and places of worship?” There’s a slightly different answer. If you say, “What about people who have been paying taxes and have had jobs and have been here for 20 years?” There’s a different answer. Depending on how you talk about birthright citizenship under the 14th amendment, depending on how you explain it, there’s a different answer.

Because it seems to me that all these other rifts and issues and weaknesses in the Trump argument to MAGA, including the benefits being adorned on billionaires and the perks being given to them is all overwhelmed by the immigration message arguably. So if that’s the central thrust of the appeal of JD Vance and Trump and these others, how are they going to continue to frame it in a way that helps them? And what are the opportunities for Democrats on the other side to frame it in a way that’s more advantageous to them? How is that going to play out? Because I think that’s the central issue.

Kara Swisher:

One thing you’re getting at is the impact of social media and other ways of communication. I think that’s what’s changed really. Democrats had relied for a long time on certain ways of reaching people on the street. And I think one of the things that I think Republicans are very effective at, because they had largely been zeroed out of regular media for a long time, the earliest people I saw using a lot of this stuff, I remember doing an interview with Ralph Reed. They started by using radio and then they moved to social media because they got zeroed out of everything else. And I wouldn’t say the media was left more than sort of sentry, kind of sentry and not anywhere kind of amorphous, but had it left feel to it versus their ability to reach people. And I think they missed that concept. And there was a lot made over Kamala Harris not going on Joe Rogan for example.

I do think that was an error. Literally all she had to do was go on there and touch his arm three times and I think he wouldn’t have said a word about any… I said that to them. I’m like, “Just touch his arm three times. I know it sounds terrible, but he loves being loved.” It’s so obvious what his needs are, and they were sort of offended by that. “Well, why should we cater?” I’m like, “Because he has influence. I don’t understand why you don’t get the trade there.” And so social media does shift it rather significantly because it creates a plethora of voices that noise supersedes actual messaging and so that they have not figured out yet. And it’s even fracturing even further in social media with all these different sites. And so whoever comes into play has to really understand. Trump really understood Twitter and FDR really understood radio, et cetera. What is the way you reach people in the next way? And the most effective thing around the immigration thing was sending all those immigrants to New York and into the interior cities because people saw, right? “Oh, oh.”

Preet Bharara:

And they saw resources being diverted from the other priorities that they had.

Kara Swisher:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

But okay, so that’s a strategy for the Republicans. Anyone want to offer a strategy that they think is a winning one for Democrats?

Astead Herndon:

What do Democrats believe in immigration? I have no idea.

Kara Swisher:

Yep, me neither.

Astead Herndon:

I think they believe that Donald Trump is racist.

Kara Swisher:

Yeah.

Astead Herndon:

And I think that they’ve come to believe in the last couple of years that he should have signed the bill that they put up earlier, but that’s not a worldview. I remember in the 2020 primary and all of the time of the big structural plans and the rethinking of government, those candidates did not want to touch immigration. And when I interviewed Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming border czar the first thing he reminds you of is the person who first awarded him a civilian medal for his deportations was Barack Obama, right? To me, immigration’s a good issue to think about how this has happened because it’s one of those issues that I think if we’re being… It kind of defies the conventional rhetoric. Donald Trump has not been wishy-washy on this. He maybe not has provided solutions, but his naming of a problem is much closer to where the country is now than where he was when he first showed up in 2015-16. And I don’t think that Democrats…

Kara Swisher:

Which has happened before, Heather knows this. The immigration’s always been.

Astead Herndon:

For sure. And all I’m saying is I don’t think Democrats were really playing on the terrain of telling people what they thought the countries…

Kara Swisher:

Was okay.

Astead Herndon:

Yeah. What should be the process, should these folks have a process essentially. So I’m saying my first suggestion to them would be to think about what they believe in and then articulate it because I don’t actually think they’ve said that.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a much more fundamental question than how should they articulate… Yeah. I mean, you’re asking the foundational question, which is…

Astead Herndon:

What do they believe in?

Preet Bharara:

What do they believe?

Astead Herndon:

Sometimes I’m like, “People talk about messages.” And I’m like, “You all, messages is how you talk to journalists, but what do they believe in?” They don’t actually believe in shit which is the problem. That’s the reason why their message is bad.

Preet Bharara:

What do they believe in, Heather?

Astead Herndon:

If you’re working from a premise of avoiding what you actually believe in, the message is inherently going to be worse.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So to build on that, it is not inevitable that Americans are against immigration. In fact, it’s the Republican Party in the 1850s who begins to articulate why immigration is important to a country. And they hold to that for various reasons for a long time. But in terms of this moment in immigration, one of the things that interests me is I think that while Trump talked a lot about immigration, I think we all expect that he’s going to try and disrupt democratic dominated cities with his raids. But it’s going to be interesting because immediately after that election, I had it out with a fervent Trump supporter who said that Trump was not in fact going to deport anybody but murderers. Any news to the contrary, he said, “No, that’s not right. He’s not going to go after people who’ve lived here for a long time. He’s not going to go after farm workers, he’s not going to go after construction workers.” This person is from a state where construction workers are primarily immigrants or undocumented immigrants. And of course that’s not at all what Trump is now saying he’s going to do.

And so once again, like the January 6th pardons where people are like, “You weren’t really going to do that.” But he did it. Now it’s going to be interesting to see if that rhetoric… I mean, what we’re seeing to me is that Trump promised everything to everybody. He’s in office now. He wants money and he wants retribution and he wants to stay out of jail, and he doesn’t really care any longer about which constituents he’s pleasing or not. He’s simply doing whatever he wants and forcing people to deal with that. And it’s going to be interesting, I think, to see if in fact, the majority of his voters who are not a majority of the American people continue to stick with him after, for example, he pardons murderers or pardons drug dealers or now throws grandma across the border. I don’t know how that will play out, but I do think that Astead is very right, that the issues in four years are going to be very different than they are now. And that one of the coalitions that’s easiest to make in the United States is everybody against whoever’s in power and that…

Kara Swisher:

Yeah. It’s actually a very resonant thing to do. Rich plutocrats certainly have been a target throughout history, and first they’re celebrated and vetted and then they are attacked. The same thing with immigrants. When my grandfather came here, he would tell me stories, “Dirty Italians.” Before that, it was dirty Irish and before that it was whoever.

Preet Bharara:

And now it’s dirty Indians.

Kara Swisher:

Yes, apparently.

Preet Bharara:

So just throw my hat in there.

Kara Swisher:

And of course it was interesting because it was someone I know. Sriram was attacked. He and I go back and forth. I don’t agree with him on a lot of stuff. And I said, “They should attack you for being incompetent, not for being Indian.” And he’s like, “Should I like that?” I go, “No, I think you’re somewhat incompetent so that’s why…”

Preet Bharara:

That’s been my motto.

Kara Swisher:

Yes, incompetent.

Preet Bharara:

That’s how I’ve advanced in my career.

Kara Swisher:

We think of ourselves in this Emma Lazarus way that we do welcome people and we don’t precisely, right? We don’t actually. It’s much more complex. And I think Astead is right. What did Democrats actually believe? I believe that having covered Silicon Valley, one of the things that was interesting was most of those founders are immigrants, 100%. And so that debate that say, Vivek was having, saying Americans don’t believe in excellence. And I think was an interesting one because I think a lot of people do believe that. And then it was pushed back by the Bannon people saying, “Americans are great.” But the fact of the matter is most… Elon Musk, immigrant.

Preet Bharara:

Which Americans are great?

Kara Swisher:

Well, Americans who were born here versus immigrants who come in. But if you look at the makeup of Silicon Valley, most of the CEOs, many of them are Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin. If you go through them and go way down, that’s who it is. And one of the things will be interesting to see if Trump will give visas to the people… He wants us to attach a green card to every high level tech person that is here. Others are like, “No,” because it zeroes out Americans. There’s a real opening there for Democrats particularly to talk about rewarding hard work by anyone coming here because it has a resonance to it. And then to articulate what they actually feel of… That people still have that fairness idea in their head that there should be fairness once you’ve gotten here and you work so hard to get here, why does this guy get that?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Astead Herndon:

I think that’s a huge point that is going to end up being really resonant in life. There is going to be openings where a cohesive Democratic Party that has come to a agreement about what it wants to stand for can seize on. And I really just think that the next primary will sort some of that stuff out. One of the things I was going to say though, is I will never forget when we were starting The Run-Up in the summer of 2022, I called back 100s of people I had met on the road to the 2020 election. It was our first exercise. And that summer, it was right after dApps had happened. It was as there was a legitimate immigration or at least a crisis on southern border with Venezuela. It was during a legitimate inflation crisis.

These weren’t things that really were in question. They were actually happening. And you could feel these voters have such a sense of malaise and the Biden promise was already broken to them. Summer of 2022 it was already a clear rift between what they felt they were signing up for and what they had got. These are all folks who wanted Donald Trump gone but felt like change was not happening. And so, one of the things I think Democrats, the story of their failure up until 2024 is really what we used to call in debate, an argument of inherency. They weren’t even acknowledging the problem. That was the huge issue, whether it was Biden’s age, whether it was inflation, whether it was immigration, they weren’t even in the room on the problem. I think there’s now kind of clear what the problems were. And so now I think there should be a question about solutions.

And I think they’re probably way better suited to deal with that conversation than the more uncomfortable one of three, four years ago. But that’s why I think their issue has shifted to maybe a terrain they’re probably better suited for because they can promise solutions, they can keep a coalition together by being against what’s happening in the status quo. There will be a legitimate Donald Trump’s succession crisis. Those are all things that I think if you’re someone who did not want Trump to be president or is looking for the way back for Democrats is the direct one. But I think to the point I said earlier, to me it starts with a legitimate questioning of beliefs. And I think a space in the party for a lot of those to exist alongside one another. I don’t think what Fetterman is doing is all that bad.

There probably should be five more of them if Democrats want to win the senate again. If they’re going to claw their way back with some of those rural communities, you got to have space for someone who might be anti-abortion, who might be all of these other things. Either Democrats are going to talk about a structural change and the way that government functions or they’ve got to become a place that can compete in a lot of more areas and that’s going to require a more ideologically diverse party. And I don’t think it just mean that from the centrist way too. I mean that on the left way also. And right now I think they really exist in a neoliberal center. It’s not that that doesn’t work. That just works for the type of people who are most likely to vote Democrat all the time. The people who are not being spoken to are the ones who are most marginal, and that’s who Donald Trump has made gains with.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned more special inauguration week coverage is coming up. So is Andy Beshear the ideal Democrat to run nationally given how well he does in the red state?

Astead Herndon:

Could be. I don’t think that’s out of the question, but I think you need a Beshear. I think the left has a succession question, right? The same way Donald Trump does. I think there’s a Bernie Sanders kind of succession thing that’s going to take place on the Democratic side, but in my head, if they want to get to numbers in senate or overcome gerrymandering in the house, it’s both, not either or.

Kara Swisher:

Yeah. One of the things I’d love to know from you guys, I just recently interviewed AOC. I find her uniquely fascinating. I wrote a column where I said both AOC and Donald Trump are the best trollers in history of Twitter. I was like, “They’re so good at it.”

Preet Bharara:

And there are a lot of people who support both of them.

Kara Swisher:

Interestingly enough.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Kara Swisher:

Her shift has been really fascinating. Watching her modulate and shift without losing a bit of her genuineness is really interesting. They try the hardest they can to peg her, and she’s never pegable, which is really interesting. I’m curious if there’s a character like her because she’s wildly appealing and tends to do things that are surprising to people. She had a thing with Matt Gaetz happening when he was still around, around a certain number of topics around… I forget what it was. Characters like Fetterman and AOC are really interesting to me because the Republicans, they don’t seem to pin her as quite as easily. And I’d love to know from a historical perspective, if there’s been a character like her and right now what her appeal is.

Astead Herndon:

Beyond ideology, they’re also largely of… Both of them, no Democrat will be scared if they’re on Joe Rogan for three hours, right?

Kara Swisher:

Right. Mm-hmm.

Astead Herndon:

There wouldn’t be a second in your mind, you think that person can’t handle that, right.

Kara Swisher:

Right. Exactly.

Astead Herndon:

I’m saying even more than what they believe in. I also think it’s a way of expressing in a way of actually owning your beliefs. That’s something that they could deal with better on the presidential level, because the core Kamala Harris problem was not just the change in beliefs, but the fact that there wasn’t a grounding center. And so of course then two hours becomes more uncomfortable if you’re just calibrating each individual answer.

Heather Cox Richardson:

You’re both touching on the fact that those are both two people who use social media extraordinarily effectively and who use it to illustrate authenticity, and that I think is important going forward as well. In terms of people who are like that, I hate to be a broken record over here, but that’s kind of like Theodore Roosevelt.

Kara Swisher:

Yeah.

Heather Cox Richardson:

He used the media incredibly well.

Preet Bharara:

But he’s dead.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yes, but you asked for something historical.

Kara Swisher:

And he was crazy at the end, I recall.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, yes. He was crazy at the end.

Preet Bharara:

And he was a trust-buster.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And he was not nearly as smart as AOC is. I mean, she’s really smart and I’m sorry, Preet. Now you’re going to get tons of hate mail, but I know Teddy Roosevelt pretty well, and I don’t think he was…

Preet Bharara:

I had been a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt in the arena.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I don’t think he was necessarily going to set the pond on fire with his intellectual acuity, although I could be wrong.

Preet Bharara:

Didn’t he write books by the time he was nine?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. College, he wrote… Which is a very important book, the War of 1812.

Preet Bharara:

Doesn’t that take some intellect… I don’t mean to push back on the historian famous last words, but doesn’t that require some brain power?

Heather Cox Richardson:

I should not have said it because now I’m going to get all kinds of hate mail too. It became known in that period. There we go. That’s the way to put it. He became known in that period, not because he was reinventing American democracy in a new and different way, but that he was articulating what people saw as an authentic set of principles. Those principles were not necessarily profound, let me put it that way. She, I think, is doing something different, but that use of the media and the ability to articulate something that looks as if it stands against a dominant class of people who have taken over the country is what propelled Theodore Roosevelt to the status he had and is echoed, I think, by people in this moment being authentic, using new media and articulating a set of principles to push back against a group of people who’ve been in power for a long time, whether they’re pushing back on the right of center, the right, left of center or left.

They seem to me to have that line. If you want somebody else though, how about Mary Elizabeth Lees who led the Alliance and then the populace, the woman who allegedly said Farmers need to raise less corn and more hell. It was a moment in which people were coming together to push back against a dominant paradigm and doing so most effectively by being authentic. If you compare her to somebody like Ignatius Donnelly, who became known as the person who wrote the introduction to the populace manifesto, he never really got that kind of traction in part because he was bonkers, but also in part because he was acting apart as opposed to saying, “Listen, this is the way it really is.”

Kara Swisher:

And Trump is sort of a Huey Long kind of character in a lot of ways, and he didn’t live. Huey Long was killed, of course. But when you think about historical figures, that idea, “I’m here for you.” Even though he was kind of here for himself, is a very appealing thing. If you want to look at something really brilliant, watch her defense of her not signing the TikTok ban, she both at the same time, made a very good argument why she didn’t, by saying, “They never showed me really good intel.” And then said very quietly was like, “Obviously if I had seen intel, I would’ve voted for it.” She’s very good at these little asides, and she goes, “Of course I care about China coming into our country.” At the same time, and then she moved into this idea of a larger privacy thing and I thought, “Wow, that’s…”

Preet Bharara:

Well, she’s also still growing and developing.

Kara Swisher:

Absolutely. Fascinating.

Preet Bharara:

She’s not fully formed like a 78-year-old Donald Trump or even a 70 something year old Bernie Sanders.

Kara Swisher:

Yeah, she has to pass some stuff, I would guess, but maybe not.

Preet Bharara:

Astead, Heather, Kara, thanks so much. We’ll have to reconvene this group.

Kara Swisher:

Thank you.

Astead Herndon:

Thank you.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Sounds great.

Astead Herndon:

I appreciate it.

Preet Bharara:

Thanks, folks. My conversation with Heather, Kara and Astead continues for members of the CAFE Insider community.

Astead Herndon:

What he stated was the intention of his presidency, restoring trust in government, kind of healing and uniting after an era of Donald Trump. And on those fronts, Joe Biden was an utter failure and not just Joe Biden, the National Democratic Party, just to massively fail.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, Heather Cox Richardson, Astead Herndon, and Kara Swisher. 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 @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, 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 letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.