Preet Bharara:

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

Susan Rice:

Democrats have had a belly full and we’re not going to play by the old set of rules when these guys are playing by a very different set of rules. We’re going to play by the law. We’re not going to violate the law the way they do, but we’re not going to be suckers.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Ambassador Susan Rice. She served as national security advisor to President Obama and as US ambassador to the United Nations among other distinguished policy positions. She joined me for a conversation about leadership, decision-making and the state of the rule of law in America. Drawing on her experience serving under three presidents, we explored how policy decisions are made inside the White House, who drives the agenda, why dissent matters, and how leaders should handle disagreement and bad news. We also talked about immigration reform and what a serious legislative framework would require, and at the end of the episode I’ll share some of your comments about what it’s like being a career public servant in the federal government right now. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

How are decisions really made at the highest levels of power and how should they be made? Ambassador Rice shares her thoughts on leadership, immigration reform and what it will take to preserve democratic norms. Ambassador Susan Rice, welcome to the show. How are you?

Susan Rice:

I’m great. It’s good to be with you, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

It’s good to be with you. So, we have a lot to talk about, both foreign and domestic. Nobody better anywhere than you to talk about these things, but I want to ask a personal question that’s personal and professional and that’s this. So, it’s been a year, you have served in many capacities relating, as I mentioned, to domestic policy and foreign policy. When you go to bed at night, of all the things that are worrisome and problematic with our leadership, what’s the thing that may be makes you not be able to sleep most?

Susan Rice:

I try very hard to sleep and sleep well. I don’t always succeed, but usually the things that keep me from sleeping tend to be more in the personal realm than outside of it. But the thing that worries me perhaps the very most is the abrogation of the rule of law in this country and the fact that we are now living in a lawless society when the authorities of what is an increasingly authoritarian state exercises personal police forces to go and execute the will of the president and do so in blatant violation of American citizens constitutional rights, their First Amendment rights, their Second Amendment rights, their Fourth Amendment rights. And when you have masked armed men busting into the houses of American citizens and ripping people out of their homes in their underwear and beating them and throwing them to the ground and putting them in cars and disappearing them and denying them access to counsel or their families, when you have the same people shooting American citizens in the street for exercising their First Amendment rights, we are in a very different place. And that worries me enormously.

And what also worries me, Preet is you won’t be surprised to hear, is that we’re only at the beginning of what I think they may intend to try and that our very elections and the fundamental elements of our democracy are profoundly at risk.

Preet Bharara:

In your mind as you thought about the approach of January 20th, 2025, has the first year approximated what you expected? Has it been less bad than you expected or worse?

Susan Rice:

Well, I expected it to be very bad, and I guess I would confess that it’s probably worse than I anticipated, but not because they’re doing things that surprised me. They told us exactly what they were going to do. Recall Trump saying multiple times on the campaign trail, if you vote for me that this one time you’ll never have to vote again, or his pledge to use the American military against the “enemy within.” You had Stephen Miller foreshadowing not only the use of the Insurrection Act, but potentially the suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition of martial law.

All of these, they tell you interestingly where they intend to head, but what surprised me is the speed and the efficacy of their efforts to do what they set out to do and the fact that they have faced very little resistance from members of their own party, from the private sector, from civil society leaders and university heads and law firms, and all of the pillars of society, media that have rolled over and played dead or hidden under rocks. So, I think the speed and the ease with which they’ve made progress on their agenda, which they laid out very clearly in Project 2025 and elsewhere, is what surprised me more than what they’ve tried to do.

Preet Bharara:

That’s very interesting because my question calls for an answer that doesn’t just aim itself at what the president and the administration are doing, but what people do in opposition. We would be in a much better place if there was more courage, if there was more fight, if there was less cowardice, if there was little less fleeing from the scene. Do you think that after a year of this, I was having a conversation with someone just today about, I’m not going to name them, but institutions that unduly settled quickly, caved, bend the knee, whatever you want to call it, and it doesn’t look great for them. It doesn’t look great for them morally, on principle. It also doesn’t look great for some of them economically, financially and brand-wise as a business decision. Do you have any thought about whether or not in year two some of these institutions private and otherwise will think twice and will fight more?

Susan Rice:

Yeah, I think things are starting to change a little bit and I hope the change will accelerate. First of all, what is happening and is the most important positive development is how the American people, regular average citizens have come together and stood up and peacefully insisted that we don’t want this kind of lawlessness and state-imposed violence perpetrated on our streets. The people of Minnesota above all have shown us how bravely it is possible to come together and to have an impact and to do so through peaceful non-violent mass protest. So, I think that is a very important sign and I think it will have knock-on effects in many other parts of the country. And we are seeing increasingly mass mobilization for peaceful protest, but it needs to be much broader and much more sustained. It can’t just be as great as the No Kings Marches have been and I support them.

I wish we could muster that kind of energy with greater frequency. But when it comes to the elites, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media, I agree with you, Preet, it is not going to end well for them. For those that decided that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore as very short-term and take a knee to Trump, I think they’re now starting to realize, “Wait a minute, this is not popular. Trump is not popular.” What he is doing, whether on the economy and affordability or on immigration now is not popular and that there is likely to be a swing in the other direction and they’re going to be caught with more than their pants down. They’re going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box.

And I can tell you, Preet, as I talked to leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats when they come back in power are going to play by the old rules and say, “Oh, nevermind. We’ll forgive you for all the people you’ve fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all the laws you’ve skirted.” I think they’ve got another thing coming because just like when Trump thought, “Okay, I’ll redistrict and the Democrats won’t have the guts to play hardball,” they’re going to be surprised. Democrats have had a belly full and we’re not going to play by the old set of rules when these guys are playing by a very different set of rules. We’re going to play by the law, we’re not going to violate the law the way they do, but we’re not going to be suckers. And so, I think whether you’re a law firm, whether you’re a university, whether you’re a media entity, whether you’re a big corporation, whether you’re big tech, you need to play a long game, not this short game that has been so detrimental.

Preet Bharara:

So, very specifically, if the House changes hands in a few months, what should be the top priority or two in terms of that accountability that you’re speaking of for Democratic leadership in the House?

Susan Rice:

Well, first of all, when the Democrats win the House, which I believe they will and possibly the Senate, they need to appropriately focus on the needs of the American people, which Donald Trump and the Republicans could give a about. Whether it’s healthcare costs, housing costs, food prices, electricity prices, runaway tech companies that are lining their own pockets at the expense of our children, our jobs, maybe even our very existential future, there’s a lot of stuff that we need to do in service of the American people. But in addition to that, there will be an accountability agenda. Companies already are starting to hear they better preserve their documents, they better be ready for subpoenas. If they’ve done something wrong, they’ll be held accountable and if they haven’t broken the law, good for them. If they’ve done the right things, good for them. That also will be noted and remembered, but this is not going to be an instance of forgive and forget. The damage that these people are doing is too severe to the American people and to our national interest.

Preet Bharara:

And some of these things, it strikes me, and I totally hear what you’re saying with respect to some of the bending of the knee, people didn’t break the law, they just caved and people are allowed to make bad deals, so for example, ABC or CBS or other media outlets who settled for a lot of money even though they had very strong and meritorious defenses to a defamation claim, probably not something you can do there in terms of legal violation. Maybe you can shine a light on it and have hearings to sort of expose some of those outlets. Is there anything else you think can or should be done with respect to the fourth estate giving Trump a blank check to intimidate them? Careful media people are listening and watching.

Susan Rice:

First of all, we ought to lift up those that have not bent the knee and there are those, The New York Times and The Atlantic. Even The Wall Street Journal deserve credit for standing up and among the broadcast networks, NBC has taken a different approach than CBS. And so, I think part of this is consumers voting with their feet and their dollars, but it’s also to examine what may lie behind the scenes. On the surface, it doesn’t appear that one could argue that laws were broken, but some of the stuff that seems to be going on at CBS is dubious at best, and so I do think that there ought to be inquiries, but no replication of what Trump has done, which is essentially wielded the authority of the FCC and crony capitalism to benefit his ideological allies in the media and disadvantage the American people.

Preet Bharara:

What was a question about how decision-making happens in the White House?

Susan Rice:

This White House or real White Houses?

Preet Bharara:

Well, I was speaking generally-

Susan Rice:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

I was going to talk about the paradigm as drawn from, I was starting to say you work for how many presidents? Seven, eight?

Susan Rice:

There hasn’t been that many. How old do you think I’m? Three. Three.

Preet Bharara:

It was not a comment on your age. It was a comment-

Susan Rice:

It had to be.

Preet Bharara:

… in your wisdom and experience. Okay.

Susan Rice:

Three Democratic presidents.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So, those presidencies occurred on earth one I believe, which is not a partisan ideological statement. So on earth one, when you served for those presidents and also from your understanding pre-Trump of how it worked in a Bush White House, whichever Bush or a Reagan, White House, et cetera, who drove the agenda? Let’s talk about domestic policy first. Who would come up with the idea that we want to focus on?

Susan Rice:

Well, it’s interesting, and every White House is different. I mean, in the three that I worked in, they were all very different. Certainly the president has a strong perspective on what his priorities are, what he campaigned on, how he wants to sequence the key elements of his agenda. I keep saying his because that’s the way it’s been. A good and confident president will assemble a high-quality team of thoughtful, creative, hardworking, independent public servants who want to advance the president’s agenda, implement it, but may also have creative interesting ideas to bring to the table that weren’t campaign promises or weren’t prior priorities.

And so, depending on the topic, certainly the cabinet members and their teams ought to be bringing ideas to the table on domestic policy in the White House, the domestic policy adviser, the national economic adviser, on national security, the National Security Council and the National Security Adviser alongside the agencies. I mean, policymaking should be a team sport in service of a president and the broad strokes of his agenda, but with ample room for creativity and then the president is the decider as to what he wants to do or not do and when he wants to do it.

Preet Bharara:

You said an interesting thing when you described the qualities that one wants in advisors, you said independent. What do you mean by that and why? Why independent?

Susan Rice:

What I mean by independent is people who are free thinkers, who are not sycophants, who are willing to disagree and offer dissent when that’s warranted. I don’t mean independent as in rogue or going off on their own and doing things that are inconsistent with the president’s priorities, but a strong and confident president wants people around him who will give him their honest best assessment as to what the right course is and won’t just rubber-stamp and validate any idea that comes across a transom or even something that at one point might have made sense and in the current context no longer does. You want advisors who are willing and able to say, “Wait a minute, Mr. president. Actually my recommendation is different. I would say we ought to do this and here’s why.” Obviously the president is the one who makes the final decision, but you want the benefit of thoughtful people willing to honestly express their views even when they may not be what one expects the president wants to hear.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, it’s funny. Early on in my tenure as US attorney and I was appointed by President Obama as you know, I read an article and the point was, when you have a meeting, the principal calls together the meeting, the principal generally speaking should not begin the meeting with his or her sort of first preliminary view about what the decision should be. And I realized in particular, it was about President Obama reportedly starting meetings and keeping his own cards close to his vest and heard from everybody in the room and made sure that even people who were sitting in the back would be called upon because their advice would be less distorted because they didn’t know what the president already maybe wanted to do. That had a big impact on me because I had always thought not thinking deeply enough about it that you go into a meeting to have an efficient meeting, the principle in those cases, it was me, would say, “Look, we can either do this or do that. We can do X or Y, indict or not indict.”

My inclination is hear the pros of X, hear the pros of Y, but I have an open mind after I’ve now stated my proclivities. Very different answers from the group, even from independent thinkers. Could you talk about that, sort of how a meeting is run and how decisions are made and should be made?

Susan Rice:

Yeah, I mean it’s a great question and I would say it’s not a one-size-fits-all, even for the same president and the same team around the president, there are some issues and some occasions where you need to cut to the chase and get on with it. And if there is a dissent, you want people who have the guts to say it. There are other occasions, and I would say more often than not with President Obama, where he would do just what you said. He would open a meeting without necessarily putting his cards on the table, and he would in any case, almost always solicit the individual opinions of each of the people sitting around the table. And as you said, the experts sitting behind the people sitting at the table who he often credited with having the best insights because they really knew the subject most deeply.

Preet Bharara:

Sometimes the quietest folks are the wisest folks, and that took me a while to learn also.

Susan Rice:

That also is often true, but then what Obama would do is weigh the perspectives that were conveyed, probe them, question them, challenge them sometimes, even if not especially push back on the people who might be espousing a perspective that was closest to his own to sort of pressure test his own logic. And then often he would say, “Thank you very much. I’ll get back to you tomorrow with the decision.” And he’d spend a little bit of time privately sleeping on it or thinking about it, but he also did not typically prolong a decision once he felt he had the information he needed to make it. I’ve worked for other presidents, it could be months where we’d revisit the same issue and-

Preet Bharara:

We’ll do that in the second term.

Susan Rice:

Yeah, or never. Or not yet.

Preet Bharara:

Not yet. I want to go back to personnel for a second and I’m going to utter a name that I say with great trepidation, but no fear, and that is Stephen Miller. Generally speaking, in a White House, whether the person is benevolent or not, is it a good idea for somebody to have that much influence, and that’s presuming that he has the influence on the president and on policy in this country that everyone ascribes to him or should power be more diffuse among staff so there are competing interests or factions? How do you think about that?

Susan Rice:

Well, I will refrain from commenting in the obvious way on Stephen Miller, who’s obviously one of the most odious people who’s ever lurked in the White House. But to go to your broader point, which is how should power be diffused or concentrated? Again, it really depends on the interests and the preferences of the president. There are presidents who opt to have very strong White House chiefs of staff who can act almost like a prime minister and have enormous influence, but that influence also might be exercised by managing the staff and the team, the senior people in the White House to debate and dissent and then ultimately come to a recommended course of action. There are others who want a much more diffuse distribution of power and responsibility, and then sometimes things operate quite differently in the national security realm as arguably they should than in the domestic or economic policy realm.

So, I don’t know that there’s one size that fits all. I think it’s very dependent on the president and the people around him and the degree of trust and confidence that he has in them. But one thing I do know is that if you have a White House where there is no debate and dissent and everything revolves around the latest tweet or offhand comment of the president, then you’re not giving ample consideration to the complexities of the issues and weighing the risks and the benefits and the consequences of the most important decisions that come before the most powerful office in the world.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. What you’re saying is calling to mind the concept of the team of rivals. I’ve always wondered in practice, is that a real thing or is that a little bit BS?

Susan Rice:

I mean, it’s a concept. I think Obama’s first term-

Preet Bharara:

Let the record reflect that Ambassador Rice is saying it’s BS.

Susan Rice:

I’m not saying it’s BS. I’ll give you-

Preet Bharara:

You can’t have true rivals on policy issues. What you’re talking about is sort of respectful debate with everyone loving each other, or are you talking about very, very strongly held, somewhat polarizing views within an administration? How much tension-

Susan Rice:

I’ve seen both.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, which one works better?

Susan Rice:

I think when people are working at cross purposes and seeking to actively undermine one another and leaked about each other and screw each other, that is dysfunctional, that is unhelpful, that doesn’t serve the president, doesn’t serve the national interest, but when you also have people who are so like-minded and so obsequious or subservient that they don’t have or don’t voice a dissenting opinion, that’s also extremely dysfunctional. So, the balance lies in between where you have, as I said earlier, thoughtful, independent, smart people who are there for the right reasons and who may find themselves differing over important issues, but can express those differences sometimes aggressively or loudly, but in service of reaching the right decision and helping the president to reach the right decision. And fortunately, I’ve seen more of that than the other models.

Preet Bharara:

Has anybody ever tried to screw you?

Susan Rice:

Hell yeah.

Preet Bharara:

You named them?

Susan Rice:

I wrote a whole book. I wrote a memoir, Preet, called Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, and in there, I mentioned a few, the late Richard Holbrooke was probably the most well-known among them, but they have to read my book to see the story.

Preet Bharara:

When that happens, how do you react as a person? How do you react as a professional? Are you supposed to be above it? Are you supposed to fight back in the way you say that Democrats are going to fight back when they’re as an institution being screwed? What’s the MO for budding policy advisors and operatives who are going to come back into the government in droves when the other side takes back power, Susan?

Susan Rice:

No one-size-fits-all. Situational-

Preet Bharara:

Because it depends.

Susan Rice:

But it’s true, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Were you once in diplomacy?

Susan Rice:

I was once in diplomacy, but I was known as a straight shooter and I still am. Look, here’s the thing.

Preet Bharara:

Yes, true. In basketball too?

Susan Rice:

Yes, I try to be a straight shooter in basketball. I was less successful there, but let me say this, somebody who I won’t name, but a very prominent public figure who has served at nearly the very highest levels once told me the following. They said, “Revenge is best served cold,” and the older I get, the more I see the wisdom of that. You don’t roll over. You don’t allow yourself to be bullied or manipulated. Sometimes you have to meet hardball with hardball. Sometimes they’re more subtle ways to accomplish the same, but it’s important to let bullies know that you won’t be bullied and if need be to make them pay a price for trying to bully you or smear you or whatever. But the tactics, I think are situational and situationally dependent.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Ambassador Susan Rice after this.

I’ve often found that people are scared of the principal, even the principal’s a pretty nice person, and no one wants to give the principle bad news. Have you had occasions when, I know you have, but maybe give an example of one where you were, “I really don’t want to be the one to give this bad news to the President of the United States,” or have you always thought, “It’s my job and I’ll have a Cabernet after?” How have you dealt with that? Give some advice on how you get bad news to the boss.

Susan Rice:

Well, first of all, Preet, let me say that having been a boss of, when I was 32 years old, a whole Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department or the National Security Council staff or the staff of the US Mission to the UN, I learned as I got older and more experienced and more mature that, just what you said, that the boss is an intimidating figure whether they intend to be or not, and sometimes by just your disposition, you may be more or less intimidating. I’ve been told that I can be intimidating and I don’t intend to be. It’s not how I set out to be, but I learned that even if that weren’t the effect that I sometimes had on people, that you as a boss have to go out of your way to reinforce people’s sense of permission to bring the difficult news or the dissent or the, “I think you’re wrong. I think you’re making a mistake.”

And when I was younger and serving at very senior levels, probably at levels that exceeded my experience, I learned that the hard way in some instances, and particularly back when I was an assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and I had the great good fortune of having colleagues and one or two in particular who were much older than I and more experienced than I, but that were reporting to me do me the incredible service of taking me aside privately and saying, “You’re screwing up and I don’t want you to fail, and here’s what you’re doing wrong.” And I was at least mature enough to appreciate it and to listen and to try to learn from it. The older I got, the better I got at ensuring that I was mining for all of those different perspectives. But I’ve never been the kind of staffer or cabinet person that has refrained from telling the president what I think or the hard truths. And as National Security Advisor, you are literally every day bringing the President of the United States something that he doesn’t want to hear.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, how many days in a year is there good news?

Susan Rice:

I mean, I could count on one hand-

Preet Bharara:

I guess we got Bin Laden. That was a good one.

Susan Rice:

I can count on one hand the days where it’s all unvarnished good news, right? There are days when there are pieces of good news, which we try to elevate, but you want a president who can handle it, and if they can’t, then I’ve had bosses that are, Obama never blew his temper. You could tell when he was mad, but he didn’t like scream and yell. I’ve had bosses who scream and yell and scared people from saying the things that they need to say. I would say it and didn’t mind if I got yelled at frankly.

Preet Bharara:

Do not call me late at night or do not call me early in the morning or not when I’m having lunch or whatever the case may be in any event. So, when a decision or a policy preference, let’s pick one out of the hat that this administration seems to be pursuing, like the annexation of Greenland. On earth one, on earth one, let the record reflect for people who are only listening to this on audio that the ambassador is shaking her head.

Susan Rice:

And laughing

Preet Bharara:

And laughing. So, when something like that comes up, explain to folks how, because I don’t think a lot of people, even in the administration think it’s a great idea, also true probably of a lot of tariff policy. How should they go about it? Or is it just an impossible proposition because of the nature and personality of Donald J. Trump?

Susan Rice:

I mean, if you’re asking me to advise Trump advisors on how to advise Trump, I’d take a pass on that. I don’t have the experience with him. I don’t know. I don’t have that insight.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, how about the more general question then? When a president is on a foolhardy, I’ll give you an example that we gave to the Senator for whom I worked. It was a story. I wasn’t involved in it. It apparently turned the tide and the Senator was arguing vociferously with… He was a very good staff, smart members of the staff, and then someone famously said to him because they really felt passionately that he was going to do the wrong thing, and this person said, “You may be smarter than each of us individually, but you’re not smarter than all of us collectively.” And for whatever reason, that was persuasive, probably not persuasive to Trump. When you had to try to persuade your boss not to pursue a course, did you do that with honey? Did you raise your voices too?

Susan Rice:

How you approach that I think depends again on so many things, but it depends in part on your relationship to the president. If I had something that I felt very strongly about, felt president was going in the wrong direction, I would try to convey that in the smallest possible room and with some humility, but with some clarity and confidence.

Preet Bharara:

You wouldn’t do an interview with Rolling Stone?

Susan Rice:

No, you don’t publicly jam the president and publicly can be in a room with too many people, and sometimes you have to explain, look, you agree with the objective, but the approach perhaps is wrong, or if the objective is batshit crazy, you have to wonder how you got there in the first place.

Preet Bharara:

This might be a little bit easier. What is the Board of Peace that Trump has proposed? Is there any sense? I do think that sometimes, I’m not saying this is an example of it, that when Trump proposes anything, there’s a segment of Democrats and I have friends who are like this, and every once in a while I’m like this and you think, “Well, that’s stupidest thing I ever heard.” And maybe there’s some… Is this one of those or is this sort of a silly idea?

Susan Rice:

It’s a silly idea, but it may have come from a place trying to address a real problem, which is that… Well, first of all, the original concept of having some collection of nations that were invested in reconstruction of Gaza and enabling a durable peace in Gaza, providing peacekeepers, providing funds for reconstruction, investing in Gaza to rebuild, there’s a kernel of a good idea there, and countries in the region, countries with capable military forces willing to contribute them to peacekeeping or the like. Having some gathering of like-minded nations invested in trying to achieve these objectives in Gaza, there is some sense to that, and that the Security Council of the United Nations endorsed the Board of Peace when they were hoodwinked into believing that that’s what his purpose was or its principle and only purpose was. Now, Trump has taken that and morphed it into a body that is supposed to replace the Security Council, if not in law, then in practice to try to address conflicts around the world.

It’s a joke for a following for several reasons. One, it doesn’t have the capacity. It’s a collection of two-bit and quasi-authoritarian countries, very few real democracies, if any, that have all agreed to pay for the privilege of Donald Trump telling them what he wants the world to do. The way this is set up, Trump gets to pick who is on the board, gets to demand a billion dollars for their permanent membership, and then gets the only veto as to what the board does and doesn’t do. No country with any self-respect and with any independent freedom of action is going to find that an attractive prospect. And so, I worry that what could have been a good idea directed and focused on Gaza, again for the specific purposes of reconstruction, rehabilitation and security has now ballooned into another Trump vanity project that has got as much authority and credibility as the so-called Trump Kennedy Center.

Preet Bharara:

We talk about immigration, we’ve alluded to that earlier, just from my own experience when I was working in the Senate as a staffer, and you had a Bush White House and he was open to immigration reform and you had Kennedy in the Senate and you had McCain in the Senate, and I spent some as a young staffer working on these issues, and there was a lot of enthusiasm and optimism we would get comprehensive immigration reform. And when we didn’t do it then, and that’s not 20 years ago, I remember thinking, “Boy, we’re never going to be able to do it.” What’s your sense of optimism or pessimism about something like that given the reaction to what’s been happening in Minneapolis and elsewhere or any other thing that you think is important for people to understand about immigration in this country at this moment?

Susan Rice:

We had another close encounter with comprehensive immigration reform just to remind you, in 2013, with the Gang of Eight in the Senate in a bipartisan effort that sadly failed. Look, we have to be clear-eyed in the following ways. We are a nation of immigrants and unless you are of Native American descent or African American descent like me and actually I’m both and came here against your will or came here, many, many eons before the first European settlers, you came as an immigrant. And I also have an immigrant background. My mother’s parents were immigrants from Jamaica who came to the United States in 1912. So, we are a nation of immigrants, and that is one of the great things that has defined us and been a source of our strength, and we need to preserve and strengthen legal pathways for people to come to the United States to study, to work, when they’ve earned it to become citizens. Point one.

Point two is we need to have strong borders. I come from a national security background. I understand the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity and national defense. We need to have strong borders and we need to ensure that we, like other countries, have control of our borders. Third point is when we deal with the challenge of those who are here, who are undocumented, who have committed crimes of violence, we need to be able to remove them in a targeted, lawful, rational way that doesn’t spread terror and lawlessness throughout our communities. Until the first Trump administration and even including the first Trump administration, we were doing that job without the insanity that we are seeing now as a result of Trump’s “mass deportation policy.”

And fourth, we have a reality that there are many people who came to this country as undocumented people who have lived here, worked here, paid taxes, been lawful, responsible residents who have contributed to our society, and those people still live in the shadows, and we do need a way to enable them to go through a process, a rigorous process that allows them to have regularized and normalized status, and that’s what was the objective with these attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. That is still a challenge, but the first things we need to do are the first three things far more responsibly and effectively, lawful pathways that are open and that are well-greased for those that choose and are able to come here lawfully. Border security, rational interior enforcement targeted against what Trump alleges are the worst of the worst, but in fact, he’s going after everybody from law-abiding US citizens to law-abiding grandmothers who may have come here 40 years ago and paid their taxes but aren’t documented.

And then we also need this last piece of comprehensive immigration reform and people ought to be able to understand that these are not complicated concepts. They’re four elements that need to work together, and Trump has turned everything on its head. He’s jettisoned almost all legal pathways to come to this country at great detriment to our farmers, to our construction industry, to our competition in high-tech, to our medical infrastructure. I mean, all of the ways that he is setting us back through denying lawful pathways. Yes, he’s secured the border, but in ways that probably exceed the law, but that can be debated and tested, and he has completely not failed, I mean, he’s taking this country into the direction of the worst of the authoritarian countries by the way he is conducting mass deportations, and it is beyond dangerous. It’s wholly destructive, not only to the fabric of our country, but I think it’s going to be the undoing of his party.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that the reaction to the overreach in Minneapolis actually provides a political opportunity? Maybe I’m wrong about this. I feel like some people are awakening to the idea of comprehensive reform and a pathway to citizenship in a way they haven’t before. Is that naive, or do you take some hope in that reaction?

Susan Rice:

I don’t think in this moment that many Americans are thinking about comprehensive immigration reform in the way that we have at prior junctures. It’s absolutely part of the equation that needs to be taken seriously, but I think most people are understandably distracted in the first instance by the extreme violence and lawlessness of what DHS is doing.

Preet Bharara:

Ambassador Susan Rice, thank you for your time. Thank you for your insight. A lot of topics we didn’t get to cover, so you’ll have to come back.

Susan Rice:

Great to be with you. Thanks for having me, Preet. Take care.

Preet Bharara:

What will it take to restore the rule of law? My conversation with Susan Rice continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. In the bonus for Insiders, Ambassador Rice turns the tables, asking me how to respond to what she calls the rapid evaporation of Democratic guardrails. To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll share some of the comments about what it’s like being a career public servant in the federal government right now.

Hey, folks. On the February 10th episode of Insider, Joyce and I talked about the wave of career lawyers leaving the Justice Department, particularly in Minneapolis because many of them feel they cannot carry out what the Trump administration is asking while still honoring their oath. At the end of that episode, I invited listeners who work at DOJ or in the federal government more broadly to write in and share what they’re experiencing and how they’re feeling.

And we did hear from some of you. This listener wrote in an email the following, “I’m a former DOJ attorney in the Environment and Natural Resources Division. I still have some friends there doing good work, but like many other parts of the DOJ, they’ve also lost dozens of fantastic attorneys, some of the foremost experts in the country in those areas of the law. I hope one day DOJ can recover from the damage this administration has inflicted so that attorneys can once again be proud to work at DOJ.”

Another listener wrote this, “I really loved your recent Insider episode and wanted to add that across the federal government, many of us are feeling the same way. I’m also a federal employee and it’s widespread. There are people who have waited years to get to certain positions, researchers, CDC staff, public health professionals, and now it feels like it’s all crashing down. I think scientific researchers may be among the hardest hit because it’s not just one institution affected. It’s happening across the board. They’ve put in countless hours and years of schooling to get where they are, and now it feels like they’re losing everything they worked so hard to build. This is a very difficult time to be in the federal government.”

Look, I appreciate the honesty and candor from listeners, and I have heard from a lot of people. Obviously, I still have friends in the government or have recently left the government, and they say the kinds of things that you’re saying, and I understand it’s a deeply personal, not just professional decision. On the one hand, if you think you’re doing the right thing and you think you’re holding the line on what’s fair and right and lawful and appropriate and constitutional, you want to stay and the rest of us want you to stay so the right thing gets done, or at least there’s some voice calling out from the conference room table or on the telephone or in the Zoom saying, “Let’s do this the right way. Let’s not do the wrong thing.” On the other hand, if you get specifically asked to do something that is against your oath or improper, then you may have no choice but to leave. So, keep the letters coming, keep the emails coming, and we’ll be monitoring the situation at the Justice Department and everywhere else for a long time to come.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Ambassador Susan Rice. 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. You can reach me on Twitter or Bluesky, @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes and more. That’s staytuned.substack.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 supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The lead editorial producer is Jennifer Indig. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. The video producer is Nat Weiner. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy, and the marketing manager is Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. Special thanks to Torrey Paquette and Adam Harris. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.