Preet Bharara:

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

Margaret Hoover:

Nothing is going to impair the base’s perception of Donald Trump. They’re there, they’re with him, they’re going to vote for him. But in the New Hampshire primary, there are a lot of people who are looking for somebody other than Trump that have Rs by their name.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Margaret Hoover. She’s a political journalist and the host of Firing Line, the weekly talk show started by the conservative icon, William F. Buckley in 1966. The PBS show is in its sixth season and also available as a podcast. Hoover previously served in the White House during President George W. Bush’s administration. She joins me to discuss whether any of the GOP presidential primary candidates can effectively challenge Donald Trump for the nomination, what to expect from the upcoming debates and the legacy of her great-grandfather, the 31st US President, Herbert Hoover. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

Q&A

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes from the new social media platform Threads from @mpaiss who asks, “Is the Georgia case more important than the federal cases due to the fact a POTUS can’t pardon him or is a state pardon still possible?” So it’s an interesting way of putting the question. I wouldn’t say that the Georgia case, which has yet to be seen, but maybe it’ll be soon, is more or less important than any other case. I think the general consensus is that the most serious charges that will be brought to bear against Donald Trump are contained in the most recent indictment relating to January 6th because it goes to the heart of democracy and the charges are quite serious. But any accusation of the violation of a statute that’s a felony, whether state or federal, is a serious matter.

Now, the interesting question here is that there are likely two possibilities of a presidential pardon on the federal side. If Joe Biden gets reelected, some people will suggest that he should pardon Donald Trump. I think the likelihood of that is very, very low, vanishingly low, close to zero if not zero. If Donald Trump becomes the president again, even after having been convicted of a federal crime, there is speculation that he will attempt to pardon himself. I actually think it’s likely that he will seek to do that. The overwhelming consensus in the legal community is that one cannot pardon himself for the same reason that one can’t be a judge in one’s own case, but that would have to be litigated and it would take a long time, so that’s on the federal side.

It is true in the Georgia case that a president can’t grant a pardon, but the governor can. And that governor right now is Brian Kemp, who’s Republican, and if he sees fit, if he thinks it’s in his political interests, if he think justice requires it, even if Donald Trump is convicted in Georgia, that Republican governor can pardon Donald Trump. You didn’t mention the other case, the fourth case, which is pending in Manhattan. If there’s a conviction in that matter, Donald Trump can also not be pardoned by the president, but could, as in Georgia, be pardoned by the governor, that governor in my home state, Kathy Hochul. And I think the likelihood that she would pardon Donald Trump if there’s a conviction is even lower than the likelihood of Biden doing the same.

This question comes in an email from Clover. “I’ve heard several knowledgeable folks say that Trump will never be put on the stand to defend himself because he’s too likely to perjure himself. When a defendant doesn’t speak in his own defense, is the jury ever provided with a reason for that choice? Are they left to speculate? Are they instructed not to speculate?” Well, there are many reasons why Donald Trump would choose not to take the stand, in part because he’s a terrible witness, in part not just because he might perjure himself, but also if you lie in the stand, that makes it more likely that you’ll be convicted. So you ask a very important question.

It is a bedrock principle of criminal justice in this country that, in a criminal matter, no defendant can be compelled to testify. You have a right against self-incrimination, which is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. And beyond that, juries are commanded not to consider the issue of whether the defendant testified or didn’t testify. They’re not to speculate. They’re not to consider it. The burden of proof, as judges tell juries all the time often repeatedly, the burden of proof belongs with the government. It has to meet its case, that the defendant has no obligation to speak, the defendant’s lawyer has no obligation to make an opening statement, a closing statement, cross-examine witnesses, do anything of any kind, but can choose to do so.

By the way, in my experience, defendants seldom testify. It’s usually the case that depending on what conduct the defendant has previously engaged in or otherwise engaged in, if the defendant takes the stand in his own defense, lots of that other information, some of which can be incriminating and prejudicial would come in. And if he doesn’t take the stand, it doesn’t come in. So notwithstanding what you see on television, most of the time, defendants don’t testify. One of the most important principles in our system and in our trial practice is defendants don’t have to speak and jurors are not allowed to consider the fact that they didn’t speak.

This question comes in a tweet from Dr. Kenjo who asks, “Do judges have any guidelines about consuming news? How likely is it that Judge Chutkan has seen the Truth Social posts other than in filings by the prosecutor. Is Judge Cannon discouraged from reading about Trump cases in other venues?” So there is no such guideline. There’s no such rule. Jurors are repeatedly admonished by judges not to read news accounts, not to do any independent research, not to Google, not to go on the internet and read facts about the case that they’re considering at the trial.

Judges are free to read about anything that they want. Judges are allowed to know about facts and background issues relating to the defendant and are presumed to be able to put those things aside to make their decisions about matters in the case based on the law and the facts as applicable in their circuit. So individual judges may have particular practices and may choose not to read about cases. I think many of them do. In fact, I remember one time a judge called me up, literally called me up when I was US Attorney in SDNY to complain that the judge’s name had not been included in the press release relating to a significant sentencing of a defendant whom we had prosecuted. So there are judges who follow the news, follow the news in the cases that they deal with and also read the press releases issued by the prosecutor.

This question comes in an email from Leslie who asks, “What’s your reaction to the dismissal of Trump’s defamation countersuit against E. Jean Carroll? Did you expect the judge to dismiss it?” That judge, by the way, is Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s a very good judge in the Southern District of New York. So I did. I did expect the dismissal. Joyce Vance and I discussed on The Cafe Insider the lack of merit in this counterclaim. Now what’s the counterclaim to go back for a moment and remind folks of the context? You’ll recall that among other things, E. Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump some time ago for defamation and for sexual abuse and rape. A jury deliberated and found Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but couldn’t come to a consensus on whether or not the technical definition of rape in New York State was met.

The day after the verdict finding Donald Trump liable, E. Jean Carroll was on CNN and was asked a question about the fact that the jury did not find that there was a rape. And E. Jean Carroll said on television, “Oh yes, he did.” So Donald Trump and his lawyers filed a countersuit saying that her claim that Donald Trump had raped her was defamatory and untrue and that’s what the judge was considering in this matter. Now given the jury’s verdict, you might think there’s a very, very surface appeal if you don’t know anything about the law and the facts to the claim that that was defamatory.

However, as Judge Kaplan points out, and this might get a little bit graphic, so I apologize, as the judge in the case pointed out, the narrow legal definition of rape in New York can be considered quite differently from the everyday understanding that people have of the term rape. So the judge points out in throwing out the lawsuit, “Indeed the jury’s verdict in Carroll establishes as against Trump the fact that Mr. Trump raped her, albeit digitally rather than with his penis. Thus, it establishes against him the substantial truth of Ms. Carroll’s rape accusations.” And the importance of that last sentence from Judge Kaplan is that truth is always and always has been an absolute defense to a defamation suit. I’ll be right back with my conversation with Margaret Hoover.

THE INTERVIEW

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover on PBS engages viewers each Friday night on the leading political and societal issues of the day. Hoover recently returned from Iowa where she’s been covering the presidential primary. Margaret Hoover, welcome to the show.

Margaret Hoover:

Thanks for having me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

So why don’t we talk some politics?

Margaret Hoover:

Let’s do it.

Preet Bharara:

There’s an election coming up. Is it in five minutes or is it in seven years? I can’t really decide. What does it feel like to you?

Margaret Hoover:

It feels like a long time away to feel a lot of dread, like a slow-motion car crash over five years, seven years-

Preet Bharara:

So why do you feel dread?

Margaret Hoover:

I feel dread because I see few scenarios that are plausible in which I believe Donald Trump will not rightfully and lawfully obtain the Republican nomination. And-

Preet Bharara:

Wait, that was a double negative, I think, so I want to make sure I understand.

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, I see very few scenarios in which Donald Trump, that are plausible or believable in which he doesn’t get …

Preet Bharara:

Right. So he’s getting the nomination.

Margaret Hoover:

… the Republican nomination. I think it is a very strong possibility that Donald Trump will get the Republican nomination to be president of the United States. And I think when anybody gets a major party nomination, there’s a very good chance they could become the president. And I think I’m very clear about how I think about the possibility of Donald Trump becoming the next president of the United States I think it’d be very dangerous for our-

Preet Bharara:

We’re going to come to that. You leaped ahead of me there. We’re going to talk about some-

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I have a lot to say about the …

Preet Bharara:

Well, I asked you about dread.

Margaret Hoover:

… Republican process.

Preet Bharara:

Is it correct that as you talk about Trump and the other Republicans that you are, Margaret Hoover, a card-carrying Republican still?

Margaret Hoover:

I’m still a Republican. Man, I’m still a Republican.

Preet Bharara:

We’re going to talk about that also.

Margaret Hoover:

A whole set of ideas got to go somewhere.

Preet Bharara:

Whole set of ideas, yeah, exactly.

Margaret Hoover:

And there’s increasingly a few Republicans that are elected to public office that I can identify with, but there are a few and you put them all together and those ideas got to go somewhere.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about one of the steps in the process. You said there are a lot of steps. One step at least for the Republicans remains Iowa. You were just in Iowa.

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, I just spent 10 days in Iowa.

Preet Bharara:

What’s cooking on the ground in Iowa?

Margaret Hoover:

It’s so always fascinating about being in … I love Iowa. Herbert Hoover, my great grandfather was born in Iowa. He was orphaned and was actually raised in Oregon and then went to Stanford in the very first class at Stanford University. But his presidential library is in Iowa, his birth cottage, he was born in is in Iowa, his grave site is in Iowa. I spent a lot of time in Eastern Iowa in particular. Now Eastern Iowa is a slightly less conservative part of the state, but I met with Republican fundraiser types in Iowa. I met with former electeds in Iowa. I met with current electeds in Iowa.

Trump is going strong in Iowa, but there is a group of Republicans that really takes seriously the role that Iowa plays as the first caucus state and thinks it’s really important that the person who is nominated be somebody who can win nationally and has real concerns that Trump cannot win a general election. There’s a group of, I would say, both Republican elites and Republicans slightly more moderates and also I would say Republican grassroots types that would like to see another outcome, but doesn’t know how that could come about. But I noticed real pause amongst some in Iowa.

Preet Bharara:

Amongst some. So let’s talk about some of those other possibilities. So there’s a new guy on the field named Vivek Ramaswamy, who seems to have come out of nowhere. He’s obviously not a significant threat to Trump and probably not even to DeSantis, but he’s outpolling a lot of other famous people, including I think Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and others. You sat down with him. What do you make of him, but more importantly, what do you make of his candidacy and why it’s caught a little bit of fire, at least in some quarters of the Republican Party?

Margaret Hoover:

It’s caught fire in Iowa. I’ll tell you people …

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Margaret Hoover:

… like Vivek. He has an optimistic message. He has a lot of energy. He’s been a successful entrepreneur. They like that he … In Iowa, your approach and how you deal with your competitors on the field is really important. They really care about collegiality. Think about it. Iowa is an agrarian society.

Preet Bharara:

They care about collegiality. I’m now forgetting, how did Trump do in Iowa?

Margaret Hoover:

Remember, he skipped that last debate in 2016 and so Cruz won Iowa, but that was in 2016, and then in 2020, of course, he ran away with it. Trump is very, very popular in my world.

Preet Bharara:

It’s that collegiality aspect of Trump.

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, but he had time then to solidify the party, and then once you own the party, the party supports you. This is one thing that people missed about Iowa. I mean, because the state is built around agriculture and the history of the community and the politics is built around agriculture, you couldn’t make enemies with your neighbor because you needed your neighbors during a long winter and people just really depend on each other. So Vivek has an approach that I think works really well with Iowa. He is not getting up there and trashing Trump.

Vivek Ramaswamy:

My view is Trump was actually a very good president, but he fell short of the level that I would want to see us go to. We didn’t solve the border crisis. I’ve said I would use the US military to secure the Southern border.

Margaret Hoover:

He draws distinctions very subtly, but then does make the point that, “I’m running against him,” but he also has a more optimistic message for the country while still wrapping his arms around Trump policies, but he puts … They’re sugarcoated. I mean, they’re more optimistic and they’re frankly just more attractive to the primary voters in Iowa. So-

Preet Bharara:

So what’s interesting about what you say about Ramaswamy’s attitude and approach is it’s diametrically opposite from what Chris Christie is saying and doing. Chris Christie says, “The only way to get the nomination is to run right through Donald Trump and disparage him in all the ways that are appropriate to disparage him,” although he was one of the earliest greatest supporters of Donald Trump back in 2015 and 2016. Do you think that in the long term or the medium term that Ramaswamy’s gentle glove on Trump is more likely to lead to success than Chris Christie’s, “Punch him in the face”?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, Christie’s skipping Iowa altogether. So look, I think the thing we have to remember is there’s no national poll here. There’s 50 or 25 primaries and each state’s different. And Christie’s approach could really work in New Hampshire, and frankly, New Hampshire, Trump is less popular than he is in Iowa and Democrats can vote in the primary. And he also understands New Hampshire pretty well, has good deep relationships there that he doesn’t have in Iowa. So I think there are two different approaches for two different states, but Chris isn’t trying to win South Carolina or Iowa, that’s for sure.

Preet Bharara:

How’s DeSantis going to do in Iowa?

Margaret Hoover:

His fumbles are real and they’re not just perceived. They’re real.

Preet Bharara:

So how are they real, other than and you can talk about his personality?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, people notice and that’s giving Iowa voters and a lot of, even the elites, the electeds, they notice the stumbles and they think, “Huh? Well, that’s not good.”

Preet Bharara:

Well, let’s enumerate something. So that very homophobic anti-gay ad he put up, does that count as a fumble or something worse?

Margaret Hoover:

In Iowa, that is not a fumble. The fumbles are losing a 30-year staff, having to cut them, having to reorganize three times. They see that, especially in Iowa because he had a pretty robust operation in Iowa, which is thinning out. “Okay, well, then if he can’t go the distance, maybe he’s not our guy.” It’s really structural and operational that impacts the Iowa caucuses.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, so is the story, the narrative that people are disappointed in DeSantis as a candidate or they’re disappointed in the way the campaign is being run or they’re losing optimism about his chances and that’s why they’re bailing early?

Margaret Hoover:

It’s a marathon, not a sprint and they notice that he’s losing steam. They also saw him at the Lincoln Dinner, which was on July 28th, 29th, week and a half ago. And Ramaswamy had this really positive, he stole the show because nobody expected him to do so well. Everybody loves Trump. Pence is really nowhere and DeSantis was fine, but he’s just not a heartthrob anymore. He’s not the new thing that can win everybody over. Others are getting another look. And that’s also the nature of Iowa. They expect to see everybody and see them a lot and you have to go the distance and keep up a strong pace throughout the entire marathon.

Preet Bharara:

How about Nikki Haley? She seems to be somewhere in between in her approach to Trump, between Ramaswamy and Christie. Is that fair?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, look, no. I mean, I think Ramaswamy and Nikki just- Look, if you’re looking at the critique of the Republican primary field altogether-

Preet Bharara:

I’m talking about the two Indian Americans who are in the Republican field.

Margaret Hoover:

I think it’s interesting. They do have their own approach to threading the needle. I haven’t really … I mean, Ramaswamy will say things like, “I’m going to put out all of my tax returns. In fact, I already have. The last 20 years, you can go see where all of my assets are and what I’m invested in. And I believe that they should be in a private trust because that’s the appropriate thing for a president to do. Truly private if you’re a president and that’s what I would do if I’m president.” Okay, so that’s how Ramaswamy is drawing a contrast with him and Trump.

“So, Vivek, are you saying that Trump should have done that?” “Yes, I believe that Trump should have done that and I’m going to do that.” See, so he tries to create a positive contrast. Nikki hardly contrasts herself at all. It’s like she’s not even running against Trump. Have you heard her say anything about Trump? Very, very rarely does she decide to pull a contrast with the former president.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you about another guy?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Michael Pence whose hanging was sought on January 6th, 2021. Boy, you’re talking about threading a needle. How small is that needle for him?

Margaret Hoover:

Look, it’s very hard, because especially in a place … I think his strategy is Iowa. He’s not going to pick up any votes in South Carolina. That’s going to be split between Trump, Nikki and Tim. And New Hampshire’s not his place, so he has an Iowa strategy, and frankly, he doesn’t have … I mean, the way he’s talking about Trump, which is he loves to dark contrast between himself and former president on January 6th, but aside from that and foreign policy-

Preet Bharara:

Well, he loves that or he has no choice? He has no choice.

Margaret Hoover:

No, he loves it.

Preet Bharara:

He does.

Margaret Hoover:

If you read his book, if you really talk to him, he loves to say, “It was very clear to me what I needed to do on January 6th. I needed to defend the Constitution.” He does. He really, really likes talking about that difference between himself and Donald Trump.

Preet Bharara:

And does that distinction resonate with any Republican voters at all?

Margaret Hoover:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that say more about the party than your party, Margaret.

Margaret Hoover:

That says a lot about the base of the Republican Party, my party.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I was going to get into this in a moment, but I guess implicit in this discussion is an acknowledgement that there are three indictments so far. Maybe there’ll be a fourth before this airs. We’re taping this on Tuesday afternoon, August 8th, so maybe there’ll be a fourth indictment, but it doesn’t seem to matter one wit, does it?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, actually, it makes them stronger.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, it matters in the reverse.

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, matters in the reverse.

Preet Bharara:

How do you feel about that as a continuing member of the Republican Party?

Margaret Hoover:

It’s awful. I mean, it’s awful. I mean, the program I host is program that was initially hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr., a man who is a cohering factor in the modern American conservative movement, which was, in its founding, an amalgam of ideas, of factions of people who thought deeply about the economy and about foreign policy and about communism and the Cold War and ideas and matters of real consequence. And now it’s a cult of personality.

Preet Bharara:

But there’s still a veneer of ideas, I think, or they’re suggested-

Margaret Hoover:

Look, there’s even some ideas around Trumpism.

Preet Bharara:

What are the animating ideas of the Republican Party at this moment?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, the party at this moment, the animating ideas are Trump and Trump and what he wants. I mean, at the last Republican Convention in 2020, there wasn’t even a platform. I mean, there’s not really a veneer of ideas. There was, “Whatever I say,” and it’s just become even increasingly so and I think the America First think tank, such as it is, I think there is a think tank that is an organization which is sort of a holding pattern for White House officials when they’re out of office and that includes people like I believe Lighthizer is still there. Remember the USTR, the trade policy guy?

They have white papers about, I think, trade and border policy and probably a non-interventionist foreign policy that includes handing the keys to Ukraine back to Vladimir Putin. I mean, that’s where the through line is for the base of the Republican Party and Donald Trump. And those aren’t, of course, any ideas that I connect to, relate to the party I grew up in. But Preet, there are a lot of people like me. There are a lot of people like me in Iowa.

Preet Bharara:

There are not enough.

Margaret Hoover:

There are a lot of … So I push back on that. Look, I agree. There aren’t enough. There should be a lot more people like me. Yes, that’s true. I’m joking. But I would like to think that the base of the Republican Party was a lot more animated around ideas than they are around an individual or a cult of personality. And that’s not true. But what I also know is true is that we have a really sick system in the Republican Party, a winner takes all, closed partisan primary to select. Well, in many cases all of our candidates, but certainly our presidential nominee has led us to a position where we may renominate a three times, four times indicted potential criminal. He hasn’t had his day in court, but well, he’s had some days in court. He hasn’t done very well.

So I think there’s … Look, there’s a problem with Trump. There’s a problem with Trumpism. There’s a problem with the base of the party going along with a cult of personality, but you know there also is? There’s a system that needs desperately to be reformed. I mean, if you look at Alaska, which has opened up their primary process and gone to rank choice voting. Lisa Murkowski, senior senator there, voted to convict Trump in his impeachment, didn’t vote for Brett Kavanaugh, is really very strongly a pro-choice Republican. People forget that there are two pro-choice women Republicans in the United States Senate and she easily won her reelection and there’s no way she would’ve under a closed partisan primary system, the way we choose the president or the nominee for the party. So I think there’s a party that system doesn’t necessarily represent the majority of its voters.

Preet Bharara:

I want to run through a couple of other candidates and then we’ll talk more about your party. Tim Scott, would you say he’s catching fire a little bit?

Margaret Hoover:

He’s got more juice in Iowa than Mike Pence has. And look, he’s a huge treasure trove of support in his super PACs. They’re very, very well funded.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. And what is the Republican betting … The people who are betting on him, are they betting on him because he’s a sunny campaigner, a little bit like Ramaswamy as you’ve described or something else?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, look, the reason he has so much in his super PAC is because of a couple of big donors, big billionaires who have decided to support him, but I think those people like him because he has an optimistic message.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know if it matters at all, but apparently, Tim Scott’s colleagues actually like him unlike Ted Cruz.

Margaret Hoover:

He’s a nice guy. He’s a great guy. Yeah, hard worker.

Preet Bharara:

In contrast to the standard-bearer, who I don’t think anybody says is a nice guy.

Margaret Hoover:

Not a nice guy, not a hard worker.

Preet Bharara:

Is there anyone else I’m leaving off the list of the Republican hopefuls?

Margaret Hoover:

Look, I mean, I think it bears mentioning always that three of them are explicitly running in the mold of Chris Christie to try to go straight through Trump. They’re calling him out. That’s Will Hurd, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie. Okay, now Will Hurd may not make the stage-

Preet Bharara:

I like Will Hurd.

Margaret Hoover:

I like him too. I like him a lot.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance though, does he?

Margaret Hoover:

May not. Yeah, he may not. I mean, that’s for voters to decide. He thinks he’s got a New Hampshire strategy, right? We just can’t see this as a national primary situation. You just have to-

Preet Bharara:

I guess, at this stage … I interviewed Pete Buttigieg, and obviously, he didn’t win the nomination, but belatedly, he was declared the winner of Iowa, which was a big deal. And I don’t think people saw that coming really this far in advance. So going back to DeSantis, and I think I know your answer, but I want to press you a little bit, is DeSantis really crashing and burning or is this the typical media cycle in which people are up and down and the coverage of the race depends a little bit on there being different winners depending on what month we’re talking about and will he rise again because the media narrative necessitates his rise, so that we keep an interesting dialogue going in the press?

Margaret Hoover:

I don’t think that DeSantis’ rise or fall has been about a media narrative. I think his rise was because there was a thirst in the wake of 2022 for an alternate to Donald Trump and it was so clear that Donald Trump had been a drag on the ticket in 2022. And DeSantis had had a remarkable electoral success in his reelection. That media narrative he fed, he fed that, he kept that going as long as he could and then he took that to the legislature to pass a series of bills that he thought would help him in his race, the six-week ban on abortion and all the anti-LGBT legislation, so on and so forth. All of that, tried to stretch out the popularity he was feeling in contrast to Trump.

But I have met Ron DeSantis, I have interacted with a lot of people who have met him and seen him and he is not a dynamic politician or personality. And you need more than anger, especially if you’re in Iowa. So I think he came in strong because he had these really good polls on the wake of his reelection, but as people get to see you, and that’s the thing about Iowa, they get to see you 20, 30 times and then they finally make a decision maybe the day before they caucus. So you have to go the distance. It really is a marathon and I think what they’re doing is they’re getting to see Ron DeSantis and they see he’s so good at angry, he’s really good at red meat to the crowd. He’s really good on picking on the LGBT folks and women’s rights.

But aside from anger and these sort of punitive measures that frankly have bit him in the back, especially with picking the fight with Disney a bunch, they get to know him and they’re not so sure he’s got all the other things. Frankly, they like positive.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about debates. Are you putting money on the fact that Trump will blow off the debates and will he get away with that? And is his best interest to blow off the debates given how popular he is among the base? Does he gain anything by going to a debate?

Margaret Hoover:

I think he loses something actually. I do. I think he can maybe afford to miss one, but after a while, people won’t respect you if you’re not going to show up and fight for them. And I suppose he could go do a big rally, but I think also-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, counterprogramming, right? Why not?

Margaret Hoover:

He could do that. I do think … So Chris Christie is persuaded that he understands Trump’s psychology so well that he will be successful at bullying and shaming him to the stage eventually. He thinks maybe he can get away-

Preet Bharara:

Do you buy that? I don’t think I-

Margaret Hoover:

I do.

Preet Bharara:

I think Trump is very hard to debate.

Margaret Hoover:

I mean, Chris Christie did his debate prep for Biden in 2020. So Christie has a pretty good sense of how …

Preet Bharara:

That’s true, that’s true.

Margaret Hoover:

… he’s thinks at the table. And actually, I’ve sat across from Chris, I’ve talked to him both on my show and off for the record and I think he’s got a pretty good sense of how to goad Trump into showing up eventually.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So there’s two questions, goad him into showing up, and then when he shows up, is he going to lay a glove and not lay a glove as perceived by Margaret Hoover or Preet Bharara, but lay a glove as perceived by the enchanted base of Donald Trump.

Margaret Hoover:

Nothing is going to impair the base’s perception of Donald Trump. They’re there, they’re with him, they’re going to vote for him. But in the New Hampshire primary, there are a lot of people who are looking for somebody other than Trump that have Rs by their name. I think there’s a real chance that Christie … Christie’s making headway in New Hampshire. Christie could lay a hand on Trump. And I think, at that point, Preet, the thing that Republicans have to ask themselves is, “Okay, well here’s somebody who really can make a dent in Trump’s lead. Does the party want to continue to divide itself amongst 16 candidates or five candidates, seven candidates or do we want to give Trump the nomination through the plurality or do we want to rally around an alternative?”

Preet Bharara:

So can I ask you to put a percentage figure on the likelihood that Trump gets the nomination?

Margaret Hoover:

75%.

Preet Bharara:

75%.

Margaret Hoover:

I think it’s really strong. I think it’s really likely, right now.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So I want to talk about before we get to Biden and how he’s doing.

Margaret Hoover:

I hope I’m wrong, by the way. I’d love to be wrong.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I don’t think you’re wrong. I think it’s higher than 75%. I don’t think the people who view that as a disaster for American democracy are really taking it seriously enough. There’s a certain amount of …

Margaret Hoover:

I totally agree with you, I absolutely agree.

Preet Bharara:

… denial going on. Even by me, I’m happier sort of than I should be given the prospect that you were handicapping.

Margaret Hoover:

What that means is that we have to, I mean we, as Americans and Republicans. I don’t know how Republicans can defeat them in the primary. I really don’t know how to do it. What I am thinking about is the jurisdictions that will be very close on election day because not only do we not have a national election, we have 50-state elections for electors. And I think people need to be thinking really carefully about the states that are closest and how to avoid turmoil in those states. Because the second you have anything close to what Trump can say as a contested election or result, you give he and his base and his people space to cast doubt on the ultimate result of the election. So I have a lot of thoughts about what we can be doing to strengthen our democracy ahead of the election in order to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to ask you about those after we go through the third-party prospects and Biden. So Biden gets the nomination, Trump gets the nomination. That’s a fight that we can talk about and we can make predictions about. Now you have somebody running as a third-party candidate. It could be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, it could be somebody else. How do you think that plays out? Could that make the difference?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, yeah, I think the conventional wisdom is that that ends up helping reelect Trump. People that just can’t vote for Trump, can’t vote for Biden, it ends up favoring Trump. There was one poll in New Hampshire that suggested very recently and it was ahead of the No Labels rollout, so I wonder who paid for the poll. And it suggested that a third-party candidate would actually hurt Trump, not Biden. But that’s an outlier. I haven’t seen anything else like it. And every way you model it that I’ve seen suggest that it would help Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Why is Biden so low in the polls?

Margaret Hoover:

I think there’s a lot of reasons. I think-

Preet Bharara:

I mean, I’m biased. I think he’s doing a great job. I think he has real accomplishments. I think he has bipartisan achievements. Inflation is going down. We’ve avoided so far a recession. Now experts are saying we may not have a recession at all. Why is he in a slump?

Margaret Hoover:

I think Biden’s not energetically owning his successes in a way that people connect the dots and give him credit and …

Preet Bharara:

What more is he supposed to do?

Margaret Hoover:

… I do think that’s a function of his age. Well, I don’t know. Look, I worked for George W. Bush in the White House and George W. Bush-

Preet Bharara:

Mission accomplished.

Margaret Hoover:

Mission accomplished, I mean, right? But actually, where’s the mission accomplished banner? That’s what I want to know. Where is Joe Biden on the airplane, landing on the aircraft carrier with the mission accomplished sign, okay? Maybe mission wasn’t accomplished, but you know what George W. Bush could do?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, George W. Bush looks foolish.

Margaret Hoover:

You know what? He looked foolish several days later when there was no plan to stabilize Iraq, yeah, but why isn’t Joe Biden doing a victory lap every five minutes? He has success.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, he tweets. He’s got a Twitter account.

Margaret Hoover:

Oh, really? Oh really?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, he says-

Margaret Hoover:

It’s like this is-

Preet Bharara:

No, I follow that guy on Twitter and Threads. He’s on Threads.

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, I’m joking with you. I’m joking with you because that’s outrageous. You and I both know what it takes when you have the bully pulpit to get on a plane and go do a rally and be like, “All of you have jobs now because of the Industrial Policy Bill that we passed or the Infrastructure Funding Bill that we passed,” or whatever policy success he wants to mark. He should be doing a lot more on the road showing people that he’s doing it.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Is it also partly-

Margaret Hoover:

It’s a permanent campaign when you’re president.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, maybe substantially his age and people are just tired of somebody who’s been on the scene for a long time now.

Margaret Hoover:

I don’t think so. I think you can-

Preet Bharara:

I wonder why that doesn’t apply to … You don’t think that’s it? You think he’s not bragging enough?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, I think he’s just not out in front of people enough saying, “Look what we did for you.” And by the way, the person to do it is not his vice president. He’s got to do it. He’s the guy people voted for. They just have … People have to be reminded. We have short attention spans and we turn on the news at night and who’s leading the news? Trump in an indictment, not Joe Biden and look what he did for us. So I think you got to use the bully pulpit, not your Twitter. You got to be on the front page of the local newspaper and you got to be leading the local news at night. And that’s how you remind people what you’re doing.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Margaret Hoover after this.

So I want to now get into the area that you mentioned a few minutes ago about how, generally speaking, we can improve democracy and maybe more specifically how your party can resurrect itself. And you said in an interview recently, people like Chris Sununu, who by the way represents the more sane wing of the Republican Party right now, you mentioned him and you say it is on people like him and Chris Christie and Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker, the folks who have stood up to the extremes. Are they sane because they’re moderate or are they in some independent way sane?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, I was criticizing Chris Sununu because he basically had given a statement, I don’t remember exactly what he said that was incredibly supportive of Donald Trump in a way that was felt incredibly inauthentic.

Preet Bharara:

And you’re saying it was a shame because he otherwise is in this more sane wing of the party?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, I mean, Sununu has been a successful governor. He represents a tradition in the party that … Look, I mean, he’s hued, I think, a little bit towards Trumpism while still representing some of the more traditional Republican ideas that I think most of us recognize from, I don’t know, Rockefeller Republicans through maybe the beginning of the Bush era, George W. Bush era. The party really hasn’t reconstituted itself since the Bush era and that’s why I think Trump walked in the front door and then turned it into a cult of personality.

Preet Bharara:

So what are people like Larry Hogan and Chris Sununu is supposed to do? And by the way, Larry Hogan chose not to run for president. By the way, we should mention Larry Hogan, former governor of Maryland.

Margaret Hoover:

Larry Hogan is exactly the kind of person that can’t … I mean, this is the problem. My criticism, aside from the criticism of Trump and the criticism of the party becoming a cult of personality around Trump, is also a criticism of a party that could never let the most popular Republican governor in America get the nomination for its own party. I mean, Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker and Phil Scott, Phil Scott is the Republican governor of Vermont, that maybe our listeners know or not, Charlie Baker, of course, was the Republican governor of Massachusetts for many years, those are the three most popular governors in America three years ago. Not Republican governors in America, the three most popular governors in America. What do they have in common? They’re all blue state Republican governors.

Why are they popular? Because they’ve figured out how to work in a state where there are a really wide array of political opinions and they’ve been able to effectively legislate, get a lot of reforms through, make things better for the people in their state, handle COVID and the crisis in a way that guarded the confidence of people from every sector in their state. [inaudible] reelected with the majority of women, the majority of Hispanic voters, 40%, 30% of African American voters. The head of the NAACP endorsed him in his reelection. So there’s just a totally different way to be a Republican that can’t get another look through a Republican primary process for president.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, but as you point out, they’re in a certain kind of state, Maryland, Massachusetts. If you’re Liz Cheney, and you have some sanity about yourself, although remaining conservative ideologically and in a way that William F. Buckley would probably enjoy and appreciate, you get kicked out of office.

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So going back to how your party, the Republican Party resuscitates itself, the opportunities for people to be sane, to keep using that word, and bipartisan, there are only a few states that are like that. If the nation is so polarized, and I know you have an idea about electoral reform, which I want to ask you about and hear about, but if the nation is so polarized that you have more and more counties that are guaranteed red and more and more counties that are guaranteed blue, the people from those red counties and vice versa don’t have to do anything to appeal to the other side, right?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, that’s certainly part of the problem, but there are increasingly places … I mean, there are purple counties in every state. Even in Iowa, in the year where Governor Branstad had the highest margin in his reelection of any Republican governor ever, there were still counties that were straight, straight blue where he couldn’t get a look. Look, the process is what is making us more extreme, right? If you have closed partisan primaries.

Preet Bharara:

Right, so explain that. So your husband, who’s also terrific, John Avlon was on the show some time ago and he talked about the primary process, explain why the current system in most of the country is not good and why a new system would be better.

Margaret Hoover:

Every single state from Texas to New York, the people who are active in the primaries of a particular party end up representing, even within the context of the issues of those parties, a more extreme version of candidates and ideas for the party than the general election voters. They’re mobilized around one or two issues that are issues that they care so deeply about that they’ll show up on a cold Tuesday in March when nobody else has a clue that there’s a primary election and nominate a candidate that represents their check-the-box idea, but is pretty unpalatable to a moderate majority of the rest of the voters who are just going about their everyday lives on that Tuesday in March. They’re getting their kids to school, they’re going to work, they’re taking their parents to surgery, they’re doing all the things that regular people do when they don’t think about a single issue every day when they wake up and then go to bed.

And the extreme activists in the Republican Party, and this happens on the left too, are the ones who end up selecting the candidates that you have to choose from when it comes time for the general election. And they often don’t reflect the taste or the palette or the views of the majority of Republican voters. And that’s the sick system that we have, certainly on the right, and I’ll let you speak to what goes on in the Democratic Party. You certainly have your own version of it.

Preet Bharara:

No, I think nonpartisan primaries are a good thing. They certainly work very well, I think, in municipal government combined with or otherwise rank choice voting, right? The more moderate-

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, and the problem is you have rank choice voting in New York for a closed partisan primary, which is …

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Margaret Hoover:

… not the reform we’re looking for, but I think open primaries is one way to get more representative candidates on the ballot.

Preet Bharara:

What do you think about term limits in the federal system?

Margaret Hoover:

I think it’s fine. I think it’s not going to solve it. And I also think it has to be paired with term limits to staff because otherwise the institutional memory will be held by people who are unaccountable to voters. And so staff have to be limited as well.

Preet Bharara:

Any other reforms you would suggest?

Margaret Hoover:

Look, I don’t think the biggest one … I mean, the biggest one is open primaries. These independent redistricting commissions that are truly independent to balance out the insane gerrymandering that’s happened everywhere, I mean, I think those are good too.

Preet Bharara:

Campaign finance reform, is that ever going to see the light of day in the way that is really needed in this country?

Margaret Hoover:

Here’s what I think. I actually don’t have a problem with the money in elections. I mean, I think it’s crazy that we spend so much on elections. I don’t think it’s great. I like it to be transparent and it’s not transparent. I mean, you have all these independent social welfare, C4 organizations that can lobby for-

Preet Bharara:

But you don’t think Citizens United was a bad thing?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah, no. I mean, look, I don’t think it’s been great, but the place that it has most-

Preet Bharara:

My listeners are liking you a lot up until now.

Margaret Hoover:

I know, I know. Look, I am not saying it was good, but I’m saying the thing it was supposed to do was get money out of campaigns and it didn’t. It fundamentally failed at that. Money is in campaigns and we have not figured a way to excise it unless we go after a British system and just say, “Everybody gets this and that’s it and we campaign for six weeks.”

Preet Bharara:

Can I say something unpopular …

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

… or at least propose something unpopular? So we spend a lot of time talking about the system and rank choice voting and term limits and closed primaries and open primaries in the press and all these other factors and things that we could improve or reform to get better results of people with integrity and who are not out of the mainstream, whether on the right or on the left. At the end of the day, how much blame can we place on the voting public itself? Fair to say, arguably a good bit?

Margaret Hoover:

Well-

Preet Bharara:

Isn’t it our fault?

Margaret Hoover:

Voting public, yeah. I mean, look, the voting public did the right thing. They didn’t reelect Donald Trump last time. And so we have to rely on the voting public to do the right thing this time and not reelect Donald Trump. I really think there is just a fundamental existential challenge to our democracy in the potential renomination and potential reelection of Donald Trump. And I think we have to do everything we can to prevent him from returning to the White House.

Preet Bharara:

I’ve had others do this and I’ve done it myself, but let’s take a moment, Margaret, for you to describe in a minute or two what a second Trump presidency in this context and given all the background and the water under the bridge, what that would look like.

Margaret Hoover:

You can just think of it really simply in terms of domestically with the economy. You can think about it in terms of foreign policy and then in terms of just, I think, the Department of Justice immediately. I mean, that is probably the first place your head goes, Preet. But I think this is a man who has been prosecuted by the third branch of government, right? The founders conceived of these three equally powerful branches of government that would then check each other. And the political system hasn’t been able to hold Donald Trump fully accountable, although he was not reelected. The Congress has not been able to hold him politically accountable. That’s really what the founders designed. While he was impeached twice, he was not convicted. So he’s still a political force.

And the third branch of government is sitting there doing its part to hold him accountable for potentially breaking in very egregious ways the laws of our country. And if that process doesn’t play out in full before he is elected, he will go immediately to just destroy that third branch of government that tried to hold him accountable in a way that he has never been held accountable in his life. And so I think that the first thing he does is try to unwind this pillar of our democracy, which is the judicial branch which tried to hold him accountable and so that’s the Department of Justice, that’s the courts. That’s a major unraveling of the system that our founders designed.

And then I think about foreign policy a lot. I think about what gifts he gives to the enemies of democracy and the enemies of the United States because he wants to be in the good favor of authoritarian autocrats, whose strong men feelings he desires and wants to earn the respect of. There’s real concerns about what that does for the strength of this country on the international stage. And I think just between those two, let alone what it does to the rhetoric, what it does to our security, what it does to our feelings about ourselves and our neighbors. Just remember how he would speak about women and Hispanics and minority groups. I mean, I think about the LGBTQ community and these trans kids who are growing up hearing really, really miserable rhetoric.

I mean, that’s just what he has done in terms of the coarsening of how we talk, and by the way, we won’t even talk about ideas. Forget this notion that there’s a party for ideas. I mean, really it just becomes a vengeance play leading the news every night.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you know where ideas get discussed?

Margaret Hoover:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Two places though. One is on this podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet, but also on your show, Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, and I’ll mention your husband for the last time or maybe the last time or second to last time-

Margaret Hoover:

You can mention him as much as you want.

Preet Bharara:

We had a discussion, I tweaked him a little bit. I’ve done work on CNN. Obviously, he does work on CNN and I wondered why segments on news channels are always so short, which was an indirect prompt for him to talk about your show, which is longer form. I’ve been on the show. It’s terrific and you’re terrific. Why don’t we have more shows like this and maybe you could explain why you think we don’t have as many and why the way you do it is, I mean no disparagement to other people, but why it may be better for democracy and debate and discourse than some of the other ways it’s done?

Margaret Hoover:

Well, you’ve …

Preet Bharara:

Softball, right down the middle.

Margaret Hoover:

… got a huge smile on my face. That’s so nice. I’m too bad the camera isn’t on. You’d see me smiling. Look, thank you for saying that. It’s very generous of you, but I think it’s a profit motive, right? I mean, there’s no reason we couldn’t organize it. There are some cable news programs that don’t have to race to commercial, right? Everybody has to pay the bills, they have to keep the lights on, but there are some that really stretch out the segment, so that you can get a more robust, nuanced set of views represented in a 15-minute segment. But most segments are six minutes, five minutes, four minutes, “That’s all the time you have.” And if you have a big guess, they have to get their points in and then you hardly have time to follow up on any of their points and then it’s off to commercial.

The Firing Line is 30 minutes of no commercials, one long conversation. And because we don’t have any commercials, we get to have a long, robust, nuanced conversation, we explores as many ideas and it’s fantastic.

Preet Bharara:

I know. I don’t think I could take a sip of … Although I think I got a very nice mug.

Margaret Hoover:

You could, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

It was a nice mug as a souvenir from the show.

Margaret Hoover:

But look, we’re on PBS and PBS is, actually, while it is the public broadcasting station, my program is 100% privately funded. I haven’t taken a dime from PBS, I haven’t taken a dime from the federal government or taxpayers. It is funded by individuals and foundations and some corporations and you see them at the beginning of my show and at the end of my show. And so it’s all up there, it’s transparent, but that’s the only way I could start this program, is to put it on PBS and to pay for it.

Preet Bharara:

How do you select your guests?

Margaret Hoover:

It’s a mix of … The best guests like you are guests who are in the news, have deep knowledge of something and that people know. People know who they are and they want to get to know them. I mean, sometimes, like in your podcast, Preet, people listen in to hear somebody. They hear somebody talk, they get a better sense of who they are, how they think, how they talk. You get to see somebody think and talk and [inaudible] for 30 minutes. You get to see how they’re going to respond to these questions.

Preet Bharara:

You also can’t fake your way through a 30-minute interview. On some cable channel, somebody can come on and you can filibuster for the four-minute segment, but you get a sense of someone is real or not real or expert or not expert 30 minutes commercial-free.

Margaret Hoover:

I do think there’s something also about seeing the person and seeing how they interact. I mean, the people see me every week so they have a sense of who I am and then they’re able to use that as a benchmark for the guest to see how that person is responding to me for different things. And that’s how people are with your program too. I mean, people listen to you and they hear how people interact with you because you’re the benchmark.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to ask you, and I know you’ve talked about this, the intimidation factor in taking on a role as the host of a show, not changing the name other than adding your name to it, but as you pointed out earlier, William F. Buckley, Jr., who’s a towering figure in the conservative movement, originally did Firing Line for a number of decades. And it reminds me, just if you can indulge me in his story, I was a Senate staffer when I was nominated to be the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And I get in the elevator one afternoon at the Hart Senate Office Building and some guy walks in the elevator and it’s him and me, and I don’t know him, I don’t recognize him, never met him before and he just yells in the elevator looking at me, “Shoes.” I’m like, “Pardon me?” He says, “Shoes.” I said, “I’m sorry I don’t follow,” and he said, “You have big shoes to fill. Mary Jo White had that job.”

Margaret Hoover:

Wow.

Preet Bharara:

Did you have anything like that?

Margaret Hoover:

So no, I didn’t feel that way, but I will preface it by telling you two things. One, I have no aspiration or expectation that I’m going to be William F. Buckley, Jr. William F. Buckley, Jr. is who he was. He’s an extraordinary intellect and also convener of people and ideas and really an activist in a way. He didn’t just put together a magazine and a bunch of intellectuals to push different ideas, but he also helped shape really the modern Republican Party from 1966 to 1999, but he really, culminating in his influence with the Reagan presidency, Buckley was many things and I’m my own person. And by the way, I’ve been doing this for five years, Buckley did it for 33.

So stay tuned, folks. We’re going to keep this thing going. I think there is so much that’s important for us to do in terms of our democracy, in terms of political reform, electoral reform, I think recentering the Republican Party, which by the way might happen or might not, but I’m in it for the long haul. And Buckley, it’s interesting. Buckley had all these different formats. Most people think of him in the context of his debates, but he had eight different formats in the program. I mean, we’ve been going for five years.

Preet Bharara:

Did he smoke?

Margaret Hoover:

We’re starting … Yeah, of course.

Preet Bharara:

Did he smoke on camera?

Margaret Hoover:

Of course, he smoked.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, don’t do that.

Margaret Hoover:

See, he smoked all sorts of things too. I mean, there’s a really funny debate about marijuana.

Preet Bharara:

What do you mean?

Margaret Hoover:

There’s a funny debate about marijuana. So here’s the fun part. I mean, actually, this is I guess where I was getting, is that, because I am descendant of Herbert Hoover, I have a great reverence and I’m involved in Hoover’s legacy organizations like the Hoover Institution and the Hoover Presidential Library and the Belgian American Educational Fund. What’s that? It’s another Hoover legacy project I’m involved in. And so I actually have a lot of reverence for legacy and for people who have come before us and for honoring that legacy and then still carrying traditions forward.

And so this program is a new program, it has the same name for several reasons, which really have everything to do with PBS and the need to have widespread carriage of the program if you call it Firing Line. The station managers who probably programmed Buckley 30 years ago knew what the program was and they would pick it up and carry it. So it was really a PBS imperative that it be called Firing Line, which I was in a position to do because Firing Line, the archives and the copyright are actually at the Hoover Institution.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, interesting. So can I ask you further about your great grandfather?

Margaret Hoover:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask this gently. So not everyone in the world of history is in every way super positive about his presidency. Is his legacy, should it be different than what it is, and if so, why?

Margaret Hoover:

Yes. Well, for a lot of reasons. First of all, I mean, what most people don’t know is that, until Trump, Hoover is the only Republican, the only person elected to the presidency without holding elective office beforehand. That’s an extraordinary thing to do in 1928.

Preet Bharara:

I didn’t know that.

Margaret Hoover:

In 1928, why do you think that happened? I mean, how did that happen? There is something there that was going on that clearly set him far apart from everybody else in a time well- Hoover came onto the world stage in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I as a private citizen. He was 40 years old, living in London at the capital of mining finance, having made himself into this international mining engineer and found himself in a position to move materials around the world, to deliver food relief to the country of Belgium, to basically organize independent food relief to stave off a famine for the country of Belgium that was invaded by the Germans, occupied by the Germans who were looking at the Belgians, anticipating they would watch them starved to death because there was no way to get food into Belgium because of the English blockade. Belgium was an industrialized nation, imported 80% of its food.

And Hoover, as a Quaker from Iowa, thought you cannot watch an entire population of individuals perish to death in front of our eyes and he, personally, by himself created an independent republic of relief called the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, which organized food relief to feed an entire nation throughout the course of World War I. And he became so popular that Wilson brought him into his wartime cabinet. He became food administrator to the world. He was at Versailles on behalf of Wilson. He predicted that it would lead to another World War. He just became the … He was the only person, one historian said, that emerged from the calamity in Versailles with an enhanced reputation.

And so then he was brought into Harding’s cabinet and Coolidge’s cabinet and became sort of a Who But Hoover? candidacy. He was considered the secretary for Commerce and the undersecretary for everything else. He was energetic. He was solving problems. He was considered the master of emergencies. I mean, you remember the saying, “A car in every garage and a chicken in every pot.” I mean, people believe that Hoover’s name was tied to prosperity because of all the enormous success that he had had in public office, and frankly, just leading the public in these moments of crisis up until his presidency. I mean his presidency needs a new look. The Great Depression happens six months into it. No president creates depressions in six months.

And Hoover did a couple things differently in his presidency than he had in his public life up until then. He believed suddenly that minding his reputation in the press was beneath the office, so he stopped defending himself and I think that actually … I mean, there’s just a communication strategy that changed for Hoover that I think hurt him with the public.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, you stick with what’s successful. You don’t change.

Margaret Hoover:

But he believed … I mean, he revered the presidency so much, he did believe it was not beneath the presidency. And also, look, I think there is a real critique and review that needs to happen of those four years. I think historians, and some economists, but it has not filtered into mainstream historical understanding of what happened in those four years. And what happened was the monetary policy was all over the place, but we didn’t understand monetary policy. We thought we had a deflationary period that we thought was inflationary. We tightened the money supply thinking there was inflation, but there wasn’t. It caused banks to collapse.

I mean, a lot of people have studied this actually, even in the last 30 years, our understanding of what happened during the Great Depression has really changed. And Hoover ought to get more credit than he gets, but what you also had as a successor to Hoover, who really relied on his own political fortune to continue blaming his predecessor and that political narrative-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, well, it’s a good card to play.

Margaret Hoover:

Well, look, it was enormously effective and Roosevelt was a better communicator than Hoover in the presidency.

Preet Bharara:

Margaret Hoover, thanks for joining us on the show.

Margaret Hoover:

Thanks, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Margaret Hoover continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. And the bonus for insiders, we continue the discussion about Herbert Hoover’s legacy.

Margaret Hoover:

Basically, Democrats have been running against Hoover. I mean, even Barack Obama in 2008 was the only candidate for the Democratic nomination that didn’t run against Hoover.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership for just $1 per month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

BUTTON

Before ending the show this week, I want to talk about something we all grapple with, news fatigue. Recently, the Washington Post reported on a new study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that shows a global decline in interest in the news. In the US, fewer than half of Americans are very interested and 38% reportedly actively avoid it. Maybe you’ve experienced this yourself. I know I have and I’m in the business and I’ve spoken to many other people who have too. Every day we are bombarded with bad news, war, climate change, shootings, political turmoil. It is understood that people tend to engage more with bad news, what’s known as negativity bias.

As Paul Farhi of The Post wrote, “Consider the old journalism cliche. News is the plane that didn’t land, not the many that did far.” Fahri quotes Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of a nonprofit called Solutions Journalism Network, who reminds us, “To be balanced, you need to tell the whole story. If you’re not telling people about how other people went about solving a problem, you’re not telling the whole story.” I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I often end these episodes with a success story. It’s not just about what’s broken, it’s also about what’s working. Whether it’s a policy to teach about our climate in elementary schools, a weekly community walking club or booksellers fighting book bans, these stories remind us of the good happening every day.

We find inspiration for these episode endings, which we call buttons in national and local press and often from you, our listeners. Many of you write to us about stories of good work and we share them here and Stay Tuned. So seek out what’s working, and when you find something positive or inspiring or you have a story from your own life, send it to us at letters@cafe.com and we’ll help to spread the word. Let’s make our news landscape a little more well-rounded together.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Margaret Hoover. 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 @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 senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. And the Cafe Team is Noa Azulai, David Kurlander, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.