Preet Bharara:

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

Joe Kennedy III:

The point of democracy isn’t that you all get along. The point of democracy is that you have robust ideas and debate, and then if you’ve got an issue, you work it out and you move by consensus forward. That’s the point. Consensus isn’t supposed to be done by domination.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Joe Kennedy III. He’s a former congressman from Massachusetts and the grandson of the late former Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. After an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2020, Joe Kennedy pivoted away from Congress. He founded the Groundwork Project, a non-profit organization which supports local pro-democracy organizers in rural America. The former congressman joins me this week to talk about the Democratic Party’s realignment post-Trump election, the life or death policy decisions made by his uncle, Health Secretary RFK Jr, and how to reconcile the political differences between disparate communities, red and blue, rural and urban, rich and poor. Then I’ll answer your questions about posthumous criminal charges, whether a pardon can be revoked, and how we decide what to cover on this show. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

Joe Kennedy knows what liberals think about rural red states. He’s working to change that. Joe Kennedy, thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Joe Kennedy III:

Great to see you again. Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

I’m very glad we’re talking. There’s a lot of stuff to talk about. First thing, I guess everyone is a little bit of a diagnoser of political travails of both parties. We spend a lot of time on the show and otherwise talking about the failings of the Republican Party, people who are on the Democratic side or adversaries of Donald Trump talk a little bit excitedly about how he’s dropping in the polls, but the counterweight to all that is your party, the Democrat, I say Democratic Party, some people say the Democrat Party. I still give it the respect that it is owed. The Democratic Party is at some kind of crazy 900 year low in its approval, which is a trick since it hasn’t been around for 900 years. You’ve talked about what you think Democrats are doing wrong. What are they doing wrong? What can they do right?

Joe Kennedy III:

Look, the challenge here is politics to some extent are always in flux. Politics at the moment are in a faster rate of flux than I think the Democratic Party has been able to adjust to. A Democratic Party does need to adjust and we need to do that urgently and critically.

Preet Bharara:

Adjust, adjust to what? Adjust to Trumpism, adjust to the modern world, adjust to social media and the difference in how you message and what the platforms are? Adjust to what?

Joe Kennedy III:

Adjust to all of it. I’d say two things. One, I think the Democratic Party has been very good, to borrow your analogy here, at diagnosis and has not been very good at treatment over the course of the past 20-plus years here. And in fits and starts, but diagnosing is telling people what’s wrong with them, treatment is like engaging with a patient to actually get better and healthier. And that takes a level of trust, that takes a level of engagement. That means more than just a doctor saying, “Hey, you’re overweight,” that’s engaging with a patient to put them on a new exercise regimen and not thinking that, hey, if you take some miracle drug, that’s going to solve every problem you got. Right? There’s no Ozempic for this problem.

What there is, is a recognition that politics are changing, that redistricting as we’re seeing today play out across the country, particularly in Texas, but the impact of money in politics, the prioritization of the urgency of now versus the long-term build and health of a democracy has put Democrats focused on winning the next race in highly educated, densely populated urban centers, which then given the structure of our constitution, puts you at a structural disadvantage elsewhere. And it means that we have not been engaging in the longer-term conversation that democracy requires and that elections essentially required. You can’t show up in the last six weeks of an election, tell people what’s wrong with them, expect to win their vote. That’s not the way this works.

So what do we need to do? We need to do more of that, and that’s part of what Groundwork’s trying to do, not on a, hey, go vote for us per se. Voters are smarter than that. They understand transactions and they also understand, hey, who actually cares about me and my community, and are you focused on trying to make our community better? And if you’re focused on that, then earn our vote.

Donald Trump, to finish your point here, I think is very good at saying, “I care about your community and I care about it so much, I can tell you it’s these guys that are the cause for the economic degradation we’ve seen. And instead, I’m going to solve every problem with tariffs.” I’m like, that’s just not true. But he’s offering something and Democrats are offering less, so we got to do better at that.

Preet Bharara:

So I was going to follow up my first question by separating out two things, and then as I hear you speak and as I thought about it while you were speaking, they may not be separable, and that is the message from the substance of policy. And so we’re recording this on Monday, August 4th. Who knows what the world will be like in three days when this drops? But I was watching cable news this morning because that is my fate because I did something bad in a prior life, but I was following cable news and I was hearing various people talk about some of these issues and they were talking about how our Democratic, apparently Democratic nominee for mayor in New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has used a word. This is Joe Scarborough, who I like very much, has used a word that is now also being used by all sorts of other Democratic candidates, centrists and others.

And it seems to capture, zeitgeist may not be the right word because we’re talking about people’s lives, it’s not just sort of a mood or a vibe as the young people say, and the word is affordability. And the reason I decided not to separate a message from substance is because that’s both a message and a policy. Do you agree with that? And is it something as simple as that, like, oh, how about we talk not about it’s the economy stupid or not about inflation, but affordability and that becomes a watchword that everyone jumps on the bandwagon of?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, I think affordability is a critical issue that most, 90 plus percent of Americans are confronting and dealing with, and any political party has to… the most basic piece here is you meet people where they are and you address their concerns. And so we have to do that. That being said, message and messenger, as you said, are linked, right? I’ll put it this way, if you were at a Democratic town committee meeting and my beloved boss in Massachusetts and Tucker Carlson came in and started talking about the importance of affordability, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of people-

Preet Bharara:

How would that go?

Joe Kennedy III:

… in that room that would necessarily receive that message, right? Because with all due respect to Mr. Carlson, I don’t think he has a whole lot of credibility in that room. You can talk policy, but if you don’t talk policy with credibility, you’re not going to get anywhere. And I do think that that’s where this is linked.

Now, part of the question is on these issues that we as a country are confronting and the politics is designed to then channel, are we actually able to have candidates and elected officials that can speak to these issues with authenticity and with credibility? And affordability provides one example of it, but we got to do, part of what Groundwork is trying to do is support and build behind those individuals in communities that have earned that trust and that respect and that support, not so that they’re going to go one for office, but so that people can understand that there are ways out there to make communities better and stronger, and that politics is… The best definition of politics I ever heard, of government I have heard, I should say, was from my predecessor, who you know well, Barney Frank, who said government is simply the name we give to the things we do together. That’s it. It’s people sitting around a table trying to solve a problem. So let’s support folks trying to solve that problem.

Preet Bharara:

So in a couple of minutes, I want to properly let you talk about Groundwork, the Groundwork Project, what it’s about and everything else. But I want to preview for you that I’m going to throw back at you a thing you just said, which is how unusual it would be and what a weird audience it would be if someone like Tucker Carlson showed up in a Boston Town Hall while you’re showing up in deep red states. And we’ll get to that in a minute, but I just wanted to put a pin in that so you can think about it. Is that the reverse of Tucker Carlson or is something different going on? Back to message for a moment for Democrats, and I don’t know if it’s the words that people use, but maybe it’s the tone that people adopt. Do you think that Democrats have a condescension problem?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, 100%.

Preet Bharara:

Explain. And try to do it, Joe, without being-

Joe Kennedy III:

Condescending?

Preet Bharara:

Condescending. If you can.

Joe Kennedy III:

You’re going to have to indulge me on this one. One of my favorite scenes out of movies is, do you remember that movie Patch Adams?

Preet Bharara:

I do. You know what’s funny? I was thinking what movie is going to be, I invoke movies all the time, there are a lot of possibilities. I did not have Patch Adams on my list.

Joe Kennedy III:

Patch Adams, baby. Patch Adams is the secret to Democrats coming back in from the wilderness.

Preet Bharara:

I got to watch that again.

Joe Kennedy III:

So the end of that movie, not to spoil it, right, but you’ve got Philip Seymour Hoffman, you’ve got Robin Williams, right? And Philip Seymour Hoffman is this genius doctor, Robin Williams is ends up being the better doctor and there’s a rivalry between the two of them, and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s [inaudible 00:09:35]. Philip Seymour Hoffman then approaches Robin Williams’ character at the end of the movie and says, “I’ve got a patient,” the amazing Betty White, “and I can out-diagnose every doctor in this hospital. I know what’s wrong with her, but I can’t get her to eat. You can get her to eat. Can you help me get her to eat?” A couple scenes go by, Robin Williams comes back and says, “You want to help her eat?” And the scene cuts and Betty White wakes up in a kiddie pool full of spaghetti, right? Joy on her face, love of life and back from whatever ailed her before.

And I think of that all the time about a Democratic Party to say, we are so good at running regression analyses and we’ve got lots of smart people from lots of great universities and think tanks that can tell people what’s wrong with them, that can diagnose their problems. We have very few folks that can say, “Hey, how can we help you get better?” And diagnosing is obviously a critical component to that, but that’s not the only thing that has to happen. You actually have to have built up a level of trust and support with folks who do so.

Now, another perhaps more natural Democratic example to this would be the beloved Paul Farmer who was this incredible doctor based here in Massachusetts, did incredible work all over the world, Rwanda, Haiti other places, and kind of created this field of medical anthropology saying, I can diagnose people, but unless I can put their diagnosis through a culturally competent narrative, I can never treat them. So how do we take western medicine and translate that through communities in rural Sub-Saharan Africa or the Central Plateau in Haiti?

It’s not all that different from what a Democratic Party needs to do across this country, which is to say this place is different. That’s great, that’s what we want. But it means that the way in which you’re talking about economic development is going to be different from Boston, Massachusetts or East Boston or your greater Boston area and rural Texas. And so you have to have people that are grounded in that community, that have credibility in that community, helping build that vision for what those folks want. Not coming in and saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of coal miners in Appalachia. You know what really you should do? Move to Pittsburgh, become a nurse because it’s a higher, more disposable income.” No, I don’t want to do that.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve written about this and you’ve talked it, people who are in a hard-up industry that is fading economically know it. They don’t need to be told not to do that. Therein lies part of the condescension problem. You mentioned Patch Adams, I became kind of a little bit sad realizing that the two great actors you mentioned met very untimely demise. Betty White though still lives, right?

Joe Kennedy III:

That’s not the point of the story, but nevertheless.

Preet Bharara:

No, I know. I know, I know.

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s a great movie.

Preet Bharara:

Let’s talk about the Groundwork Project and then we’ll circle back on the other stuff. By the way, do you say circle back in your common-

Joe Kennedy III:

I say circle back all the time. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Do you say, let’s circle back so we can level set?

Joe Kennedy III:

I do not use level set as often.

Preet Bharara:

Combine circle back and level set.

Joe Kennedy III:

But I do circle back often.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, so we’ll circle back.

Joe Kennedy III:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

So the Groundwork Project is super interesting to me and one of the reasons I reached out to you was because I read a little bit more about that work in an article in the New York Times. Could you explain what that is and what you’re doing, not in Massachusetts, but in these other four states that we don’t really associate with your branch of Kennedy? There’s an Arkansas branch of John Kennedy, but that’s a totally different, that’s totally different. What are you doing and where are you?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes. And I, like the good law student, won’t fight the hypothetical too hard here, but I will say part of my family history narrative that I am quite proud of is the part of my grandfather and Robert Kennedy and his brother John, President JFK, and the work that they did through Kentucky and Appalachia, West Virginia. I mean it was a West Virginia primary that was so critical to JFK’s election in 1960. But the fact that there was, and I think from our family’s perspective still is, a value in work and an understanding that for folks that as they say, take a shower at the end of the day rather than before you start, that there is extraordinary honor for that and that we as a country depend on these folks who built our nation and power our nation and continue to run our nation and that other industries are kind of built on top of it.

Just on one last point there, Preet, my main day job is running a renewable energy company that my dad actually started. And I’m reminded of a stat that somebody told me, which is like the energy industry is about 7% of our GDP, but it’s the first 7%, right? Without that, nothing else works. And so if you think of it that way, those folks that are out there trying to find ways to turn the lights on, whether that, yes, from my would love to have more of that from renewable energy, but at the moment, the folks that are powering that base load, whether that’s gas or certain circumstances coal or nuclear power, without them, the country doesn’t work. So let’s remember that.

And part of what Groundwork’s doing is to say, Hey, we don’t need another set of white papers to tell us what needs to happen in certain communities around this country. We got plenty of those, which you need to do to make sure that people have faith in and can build common visions for their communities going forward is they need faith in people and organizations and the folks that can bring people together.

And those oftentimes, in my experience, end up being local organizers, and those organizers don’t have to, aren’t sitting there saying, “Hey, go vote Democrat or vote Republican.” They’re saying, “Hey, there’s a creek that was polluted by a chemical company here and we need their help to clean it up and no one’s holding them accountable.” Or, “There’s workers throughout the Mississippi Delta that are being exploited because there’s no enforcement of wage and hour laws or minimal enforcement of wage and hour laws or sexual harassment laws in parts of the Mississippi Delta. So they need lawyers out there that are able to hear those cases and prosecute those cases.”

And investing in those folks that have credibility in those communities to help those communities be able to realize the vision that they have going forward. West Virginia, not somebody from Boston telling West Virginia what the future of West Virginia is, but knowing that West Virginians know what that future should be and just needs some support to get there. And that’s what we’re trying to do at Groundwork.

Preet Bharara:

Just going back to the Tucker Carlson point, Kennedys are associated with Yankee territory, the Northeast.

Joe Kennedy III:

Red Sox nation, but yes.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s the reaction to a Northerner like you down there?

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s been pretty warm, but I have to say, I think a lot of that depends. Depends on how you go into it and depends on how those conversations take place and how you set them up, right?

Preet Bharara:

Give us an example of one where you turned someone around.

Joe Kennedy III:

I’m going to do the opposite, actually. I was in West Virginia now a couple of years ago and met with this young organizer from a nationally known organization and we met outside of Charleston at a brownfield that is now a park, and he went and took me on a tour of these sacrifice zones. So parts of communities that had been basically contaminated by major chemical companies such that the land couldn’t be used and the water had to be separated and the rest of the stuff, and this extraordinary beautiful landscape.

And we finished up with this coal fire power plant that was five times the size of the old coal plant that used to exist in my old congressional district, which is a massive, massive thing where most of the energy actually was exported outside of West Virginia, but it was situated in West Virginia. And this young guy does a great job taking me around and walk back and I shake his hand and say, “Thank you and good luck. Let me know how we can help going forward.” And he goes, “Hey, will you answer me a question?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “How come you Democrats,” and he pointed at me, he said, “you Democrats think we don’t know how to work?” Now this was a 30-something year old environmental organizer for a nationally known climate organization and he was not willing to call himself a Democrat. And if we lost him, right?

And I said, “Well, listen, give me a little bit more.” And he goes, “We don’t need you to tell us what work is all about. We built the industrial mind of this country. I know coal mining is dangerous. Generations in my family did it. We’re proud of our sacrifice and we’re proud of what we built. So how about instead of telling us that we don’t know how to work, you start by saying thank you, and then you say, how can we help?” I give the guy a hug and I say, “Where have you been for the past five years?” Right? Because I do think that encapsulates a lot of this. It’s not that that young man said coal was the future of our economy, or we need more coal miners in this country, or you guys have been displaced about the economic foundations of this going forward.

It was very clearly, we’ve got an idea of what we want to do, help us realize it, don’t tell us what we’re doing wrong. Don’t denigrate us in this process. And he’s right. He’s 100% right. And so my message to my beloved Democrats is we bemoan the challenges of this moment with a government that is not supportive of the vision that we would necessarily have going forward, because a Trump administration largely is not. No one in Mississippi says, “Oh, it got worse with Trump.” There’s been opposition to equal rights in Mississippi from the time of reconciliation. Alabama, they challenge voting rights out of there every other week. This isn’t new, this is Monday, so get on with it and do the work. So let’s go do that work.

Preet Bharara:

You know, when you’re speaking about this stuff, it just occurs to me that so much of life is just common sense, whether you’re talking about politics or anything else. And what I mean by that is if you ever managed any group of people in your life or if you had kids, the first lesson you learn, and I didn’t learn it right away, but I got to learn it, is when you give feedback to people, you don’t begin by saying you suck.

Joe Kennedy III:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Most people who are working hard are doing a good job overall, but they need feedback. I need feedback, I need feedback still. I’m 56 years old and I still need a lot of improvement in a lot of areas. But when you give feedback, you start with what you said, and we’re talking about just in a workplace, you start with thank you and you say, “These are the things you’re doing well and I appreciate it. Here are the things they need to work on.” I know it’s a totally different context talking to workers in West Virginia or somewhere else, but it’s like a basic human principle of communication.

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s a basic principle of communication. It’s also many of these fights now, it’s been so polarized. And look, the Trump administration has been exploiting a politics of annihilation and domination now for a long time. There’s a tendency obviously to hold onto the worst parts of that and hold that up and that should be rejected. Fine, all of that. Calling somebody a bigot or a racist is not exactly a great way to try to then earn their trust and vote, right? You might be right, you might feel better after it.

And by the way, at least in my conversations with folks, and again, there’s plenty of folks, your goal isn’t to go out there and… The reality is you’re not going to go out there and win every vote. The other reality is that when you go do town halls and when you engage with folks that have different perspectives and you have those conversations and you listen to what they’re saying, most folks’ political perspective isn’t completely well thought out and isn’t completely defensible intellectually for every position. They haven’t had to, they haven’t had run for office and face the press. They’re just, “This is what I feel. This is how I respond. This is the inputs I get from my family and media, et cetera. So this is my reaction to it.”

So if you are willing to listen to it, you can tease out pieces of that that actually are common threads because most people do want a same thing. And I’m pretty convinced of this, and going back to my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic to a member of Congress, it’s like you want your life to matter and you want a better life for your kids. And if you can do those two things, that’s a success.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, your grandfather said that in the most eloquent way that I’ve ever heard anybody say in this speech in South Africa, which we all share the same short movement of life. Part of the problem with what we’re talking about, tell me if I’ve got this wrong or not. I think most schooled and seasoned politicians don’t go into other places and say, “You’re a bigot, you’re a racist, and you’re terrible and you suck.” But there are people who do that. They’re the advocates of the people on YouTube. By the way, this is on YouTube, so maybe I’m talking about ourselves too, but they’re the advocates. They’re sort of the extremes of the MAGA movement and the Democratic movement.

And the other side fuses the very polemical stride and advocates with the sort of more boring, mundane, hair-quaffed politicians. The latter group has its own problems because they’re just boring and stilted and not genuine or authentic. The other side alienates their political adversaries. Is there any truth to what I’m saying that there’s a difference? Is it a straw man a little bit? Because I’ve said what you’ve said a million times too. It’s a bit of a straw man because I don’t think Hakeem Jeffries goes into the south and says, “You’re all bigots.”

Joe Kennedy III:

No, he of course does not. Right. And by the way, most elected officials don’t, and most Republicans don’t. If they come to Massachusetts, they don’t…. Republicans do come here, they come and raise money here. Their message back isn’t, “Hey, you’re all a bunch of communists. You’re terrible. You suck.” Look, I think the public knows if you’re an elected official, and to some extent elected officials, you are a part of an ecosystem. You need votes. And so there’s always a discounting between what a public figure, elected official’s going to say and how people hear it just because you could be saying the truth, but I also know that you need something from me. And so there’s an element of this that I’m going to discount or that is transactional, whatever else.

But how this ends up playing out particularly now though, is you have nutballs on the extremes, and there’s extremes on both sides, but I think we see more extremism coming from the right than the left, that ends up being in parts of Mississippi and parts of Alabama and parts of West Virginia. What people hear about a Democrat where there is no Democratic competition is what a Republican says about a Democrat in the midst of a Republican primary contest. Which is not saying, “Hey, this is what we used to think in West Virginia about Nick Rahall,” who was a congressman that represented those communities for decades. It’s, “This is what we think from the most polarizing national Democratic figures. And if you elect so-and-so, you’re going to get that.” And that’s just not the case. But that is a tried-and-true election tactic on either side of the aisle. Right? I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene ends up being referenced in plenty of places in Massachusetts. She’s probably not going to get elected in Massachusetts. Right?

Preet Bharara:

My old boss, Chuck Schumer, is in ads all around the country.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yeah, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Republican ads all around the country every time. And there are other sort of sinister reasons for that as well.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, there are.

Preet Bharara:

So the person I was thinking of doesn’t go and call people bigots, but has in recent times sort of had some fun stoking red state versus blue state rivalry in a particular way that I understand and get because I’m from New York and I live and work in New York, and I’m very proud of my state and very proud of my city, and I think we kick ass. And I think a lot of the statements made about crime in New York City are off, and it offends me, I will tell you, when I hear Southern politicians talk about New York, when they have worse homicide issues in their own cities that are just not as productive for the country or for the world, so they should just take a seat. That’s my view. I don’t say it very often, but I’m saying it here.

And the person I’m talking about is Gavin Newsom, who makes the point, and sometimes people in Blue State celebrate this, that it seems to be a rite of passage to talk about the evils of the blue states and the blue cities and the blue city mayors, which are the economic engine of the country. And in the words of Gavin Newsom and others are the states that provide more money than they take from the government, giver states, having to get lectured by people from the taker states who don’t even make enough revenue to pay for the stuff that the government gives them. It’s very rich and it’s galling to a lot of people. What do you make of that? Is Gavin Newsom setting the cause back that you’re advocating for bringing us together or is he making a sound point?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think he’s certainly making a sound point. I mean, what you articulate there is true, right? Like, objectively true.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to get a lot of emails now from people.

Joe Kennedy III:

So I think the observation is accurate. I do think that it hearkens back in my mind of the myriad fundraisers that I used to do when I was in office. Inevitably, somebody in New York would say, “Hey, Democratic messaging sucks, what’s the matter with Kansas? You go out there, you got somebody that’s lower income that’s out there voting against their Medicaid, that’s voting against raising wage, voting against their economic interest. If only your message was better, you could convince them to vote Democrat.”

And look, there’s some truth to that part too, but I would then also normally would say, “Thank you so much. Really appreciate the question. How many of you want me to raise your taxes?” Every hand goes out. They’re like, “Great. You are willing to vote against your economic interests.” And almost to a person, you think that’s an act of patriotism because you’re investing in our country. But when a poor guy from Kansas or Kentucky says that they’re willing to do the same thing, we think that’s because they don’t know any better. Maybe that’s the case.

Preet Bharara:

Right, that’s a very interesting point.

Joe Kennedy III:

Or it might be that they actually are saying, there’s other things here that I value than what you say you’re going to do with that money. And in fact, I would say again, Governor Newsom’s not wrong. I would also say that there’s a second part to that, which is particularly given the way that which Donald Trump has kind of vilified governance and government and what we do together. You have folks from Southern states, but from conservative areas that are just saying, “We don’t want any of that. We want to be left alone.”

And one question that I wrestle with all the time that I actually don’t know if I know the answer to what a Donald Trump supporter would say to this, and I’m curious about it, the fundamental question that our country seeks to address, right? Our founding documents, and again, you never answered this, but it’s what do we owe each other? You could get more [inaudible 00:27:54]. What are the responsibilities of citizenship? But just what, as a nation, what is it that we owe each other? What do you owe other people in your community? How do we define that?

And I, for a long time thought that if you asked the Donald Trump supporter, they would say, Donald Trump, he would say, “We don’t owe you anything. You’re on your own. Like, we take care of us first.” I’m not sure that’s true, actually. I don’t think that’s what his supporters say, and I think there’s a loyalty that they obviously continue to demonstrate towards the president that I think he’s selling a snake oil, but there’s a visceral connection there that is about more than nihilism.

And I think what Democrats, a Democratic Party has to do, and I do, again, you have to rebuild this from literally the ground up, is to say, look, if you think that we are going to be stronger as individuals given the challenges that we confront our nation, our communities in this moment, then fine. If you think that the world has actually never seen the power of 300 and now 40 million Americans grabbing an oar and rowing together for the sake of a common vision to benefit our community of states and communities of neighborhoods across this country, that’s what I wish this president would say because he actually has the connection with so many communities and so many different constituencies to be able to do that. He won’t. I wish he would.

Preet Bharara:

So just one related point can I get off my chest?

Joe Kennedy III:

Please.

Preet Bharara:

Because I’ve not really done this. So I made the economic point about why there’s in some sense a red state, blue state divide, and the next issue is a Democratic one, which is not necessarily red state, blue state, depending on the state you’re talking about, but it is true that your vote counts more, you have more power if you live in a sparsely populated state like Idaho or Wyoming or a number of others than in my state. And it’s lawful, it’s constitutional. That’s the way it was set up. You can have a disagreement about it. That’s the way it’s going to remain for a long time. But it’s galling also to hear people lecture folks in these big populous states about how they run themselves. When you’re talking about living in a place where your power, given the representation of the Senate is like 40 times a New Yorker or something like that. Are you 40 times more important than a New Yorker? I don’t know. Open question, but you don’t have to answer that. I just wanted to make mention of that fact too.

Joe Kennedy III:

So that again, that is true and it is a challenge dynamic set up by the structures of our country. Look, and our founders deserve an awful lot of credit. They were brilliant people and they did a lot of great things. This was also a compromise and-

Preet Bharara:

That was Joe Kennedy. I’m sorry, that was Joe Kennedy putting into practice the principle we talked about, even when you’re giving feedback to the founders, you have to start with the good, and you did. The founders are really great. They did a lot of great things.

Joe Kennedy III:

They did a lot of great things. They did some things that were not so great either, like recognizing that not all people were qualified as people in those original documents and plenty of other issues. It is one of the reasons why actually moving towards a national popular vote for the presidency I think helps invigorate a democracy. Why? Because you could have a Republican candidate that could then campaign in the Central Valley of California and those votes would matter, or a Democratic president, they could go campaign in Dallas and Houston and San Antonio, and those votes would matter. You could have Republicans that go campaign in parts of Long Island or upstate New York, and those votes would matter. Rather than just saying, Democrats are going to win New York, so we don’t have to campaign, we can’t campaign there. You’re just writing off millions and millions of people. So let’s get to a point where if we actually think that every person counts and matters, let’s get to a point where we can then compete so that every person counts and matters.

Preet Bharara:

So further to that then, does the Groundwork Project have an explicit or implicit political goal and over what timeframe?

Joe Kennedy III:

Groundwork’s goal is not necessarily to say, hey, we’re going to go flip X, Y and Z seats in however many states. It’s not that. I think from my perspective, Groundwork’s goal is A, almost more ambitious. It is a robust, healthy, functioning and accountable democracy. And you do that when you have local organizations and institutions that can hold elected officials to account on either side of the aisle. And we started this, Preet, by saying, what if Tucker Carlson, to give an example, would come to Cambridge and do these town halls? Wouldn’t it, isn’t that the same thing as what we’re trying to do? On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, Tucker Carlson should do that. If you believe in the foundation of a Republican Party and you believe that a Republican Party is not invested in the way it should be in places like Massachusetts, then somebody should come here and explain what it is a Republican Party is and stands for, explain Trumpism to people in Massachusetts.

They should do that. I would welcome that effort. I’m not going to welcome necessarily what they say, and I think if you tried to do that in Cambridge, you would have a healthy debate about holding people to account with facts and figures and reality. But the fact is that I don’t want to live in a place that is monolithic in their perspective and where there isn’t diversity of opinion and experience and background expertise. Like, the point of democracy isn’t that you all get along. The point of democracy is that you have robust ideas and debate, and then if you’ve got an issue, you’ll work it out and you move by consensus forward. That’s the point. Consensus isn’t supposed to be done by domination.

Preet Bharara:

Like Cambridge. Like Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Joe Kennedy III:

Right. Look, Cambridge has its own challenges in that.

Preet Bharara:

I was educated in that town in part as I know you were. So it’s a great town, but not a lot of diversity of thinking there.

Joe Kennedy III:

As I said, the world’s most opinionated zip code.

Preet Bharara:

02138, right?

Joe Kennedy III:

02138.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Joe Kennedy after this.

Can I ask you a policy question?

Joe Kennedy III:

Please.

Preet Bharara:

Given what you said about energy?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Why does the president of the United States hate windmills so goddamn much? Did he have a bird that gave its life for wind power? I mean, do you know, or-

Joe Kennedy III:

You think bird, I think more Sancho Panza out there tilting at windmills, but maybe I’m not being generous enough.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a semi-serious question, but I guess the real question is what’s the future of energy and what should the future of energy be in the country?

Joe Kennedy III:

So look, I think the Don Quixote reference here aside, if your framework at this point is to recognize that one, the United States needs a lot more energy, and that was the case even before AI and data centers.

Preet Bharara:

And crypto.

Joe Kennedy III:

And crypto, and we need to put trillions of dollars to invest in that grid. And by the way, that in the long run, we need energy to be cheaper. Then the way to do that is clearly and unequivocally investing in the structures to rebuild the grid, invest in energy efficiency measures to be able to, by the way, put more current on cables and to find, leverage different smart technologies to minimize wildfire risk and all the rest of this stuff. But it’s to maximize energy generation and distribution across the nation. All of a sudden gutting major sources of potential electricity generation, solar and wind, that are domestic and over time cheaper in order to go long on an extraction-based industry is, again, it’s not the dumbest thing he’s done, but it’s certainly not the smartest.

What I’ve heard is that he doesn’t like how they look on a skyline. That’s also not his call, right? If local communities across Oklahoma and Nebraska and Texas think, “Hey, there’s a great way here to generate electricity that can provide local landowners economics and economic resources and can help power our nation, then we should do that.” So I wish you would look at this differently.

I do think that in the long run here, much of what Donald Trump has done is maximize short-term benefit at the pain of long-term benefit for our country. A bill that they just passed that borrows trillions of dollars from my kids to give me a tax cut is bad policy, period. And so that’s what they want to go do. At some point here, hopefully that pendulum swings back and we are able to say, politics and physics don’t always agree. Politics can win out in the short run. We’ve seen people defy gravity. In the long run, physics is undefeated, and climate change is in fact real. The economic costs of doing nothing on this are going to get higher and higher and higher, and it’s going to force us into decisions that I think local communities don’t necessarily want or love. I do think hopefully in the not too distant future, we’re going back to making larger investments in renewable resources because we have to and they’re smart.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you some questions about you, sir?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Do you miss the Congress?

Joe Kennedy III:

No.

Preet Bharara:

You don’t. So you know what? Nobody says they miss the Congress when they’re out of Congress. So why were you in Congress?

Joe Kennedy III:

I enjoyed it while I was there. And look, I think intellectually it’s an incredible place to learn how the way the world works and to-

Preet Bharara:

Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. That’s an interesting statement intellectually. I would’ve thought you would’ve said, I’ve not been in the Congress, but I worked in the Senate for Senator Schumer. I guess there were some intellectual aspects to it, but what I felt like I learned was human nature and negotiation and bargaining and all of that, less intellectual.

Joe Kennedy III:

You learn that too. But if I woke up this morning, I was walking into a hearing on nuclear energy, I all of a sudden could call up any expert, almost any expert in the country to walk me through the nuances of nuclear energy and they would do it right? So you learn something about it. Or Medicaid reimbursement rates for mental health and they’d do it. Or what should foreign policy with the US and Bangladesh actually be? What are the trade-offs that they would do it? So you actually, you get to learn an awful lot. You learn an awful lot about human nature. You learn an awful lot about what powers communities and people at a visceral, guttural level. And so that aspect of it was great.

I will say I missed the camaraderie that was there when I was there. Some of my most fond memories were sitting in the back row with the likes of Beto O’Rourke and Kyrsten Sinema and Mick Mulvaney and Trey Gowdy, folks across a political spectrum and who didn’t agree on basically anything. You’re sitting there at 1:00 AM, our votes were going to cancel each other out. But there was a camaraderie in the fact that you were getting pressured by your office, the press was out to get you, you hadn’t seen your wife or your kids, and you were in this dynamic and there are characters. And so that part of it was great. I think that post January 6th doesn’t nearly exist as much anymore.

I also, look, it is a very hard place to raise a young family, and I’ve got a young family, and particularly now being out of it where I get weekends to be with them, and I never had weekends before when first several years of their lives, I was not around for that. That’s a hard thing to go back to say, you know what? My kids being nine and seven, it’s okay not to be on the sideline of a soccer game anymore. That’s harder. So there’s parts of it I miss, there’s some of the people I miss, and there’s some of the issues that I miss. But in terms of the overall quality of life and ways that I found to live in, I don’t miss that.

Preet Bharara:

I should note this as a constituent of your father when he was in Congress, is the lineage of the seat that you had, who does it trace back to? Did Tip O’Neill have, he had a different seat?

Joe Kennedy III:

Tip O’Neill had… My dad, I should say, took Tip O’Neill’s seat. So my dad succeeded-

Preet Bharara:

Your dad took Tip O’Neill’s seat, but not President Kennedy’s seat?

Joe Kennedy III:

No. Although his I think was adjacent, if I remember correctly, my predecessor was Barney Frank, and obviously it’s been redistricted a bit since then.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Yeah, yeah, I got you. But the reason I mentioned it is, so Tip O’Neill famously said and wrote a book by the same name, All Politics Is Local. Is that still true? Is it more true than it was before or less true than it was before?

Joe Kennedy III:

Less true than it was before. I think there’s parts of politics that are unquestionably local, but I think the increasing reality today is all politics are national. Where you are seeing school board races having candidates with MAGA hats on or Defend Election shirts, where all of a sudden politics is pushing down to a local level and it depends on do you support Donald Trump or not that has a infected public utilities’ elections, and again, school board elections in ways that when I started out in office now 15 plus years ago, the issue would’ve just been like, “Hey, what’s going on in local school committee and does somebody want to spend extra time working through school committee budgets?” Not defending Donald Trump’s book bans. It’s nuts.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to ask you about your family. You said that you were comfortable talking about it and you have.

Joe Kennedy III:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

The most governmentally powerful member of your very large family is RFK Jr. He’s your uncle.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Many members of the family, including yourself, came out against his campaign, against him winning the nomination for president. So first, what’s that like? I mean, I have a large family and I wonder how it would be if a bunch of people came out against uncle so-and-so. Does that make the touch football games more difficult? Does everyone spend Thanksgiving together? What insight as a member of the family can you offer about that?

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s terrible. Just on a family basis it’s terrible, right? Not surprising you and I don’t think anybody else, we’re a big family, got politically different ideas, but largely intellectually or ideologically aligned, for the most part.

Preet Bharara:

The Kennedy family is more diverse politically than Cambridge, Massachusetts. I think we can establish that.

Joe Kennedy III:

I think, yeah, at this point, yes. But we’ve had a very public life for a long time now. And with that, I mean, look, one of the great privileges I’ve had is to know that no matter what happens, and there’s been triumphs and there’s been tragedies with our family writ large, but you always had family and you always come together and no matter what happened, no matter what was happening publicly, you had a thing that you could hold onto that publicly folks couldn’t take away. Not that most people think of it that way, but when you’re in a spotlight like that and you’ve got people taking shots at you, it can feel that way. And you could always rely on family.

And so this is hard, a public break on this, this is not something members of my family take lightly. This is not something that we would want to do or seek no joy out of doing. It is I think something that Bobby feels, I’m projecting here, but very passionately about the issues that he wants to advance in this position, which on the one hand I can recognize and appreciate. I would say it’s going to come at an enormous cost at the start, between 12 and 17 million people that are going to lose healthcare underneath your administration while you’re here. And that’s 12 plus million families that are going to be devastated, to pay for a tax cut.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, the pro-measles folks are probably really thrilled. Because it’s so fascinating to me. I would imagine that if your uncle was running on sort of a moderate platform, but as a Republican, and you disagreed on various planks, like let’s say he was McCain, he was running in the category of McCain, there would not have been the family split, I’m guessing. That there had to have been views, maybe you’ve already expressed them, that caused you to do a fairly dramatic public break with a bunch of other members of your family. What’s the thing? Is it this access to healthcare? What’s the thing that caused members of the family to take this step or set of things as far as RFK Jr.’s policies go?

Joe Kennedy III:

Preet, I don’t want to speak for other members of my family because I don’t want to put words in their mouths, but I would say for me personally here, I engaged in a race for the US Senate against a Democratic incumbent that had a long-standing relationship with a lot of members of my family, myself included. That put a number of members in my family in a difficult spot.

Preet Bharara:

Right, right. Ed Markey.

Joe Kennedy III:

Ed Markey, he’s a very decent guy, different perspective on things, fine, but a very decent man and did have a relationship with a lot of folks in my family. My decision to do that has ramifications on some of those relationships, right? And I have to own that.

Preet Bharara:

Did any members of your family support Markey over you?

Joe Kennedy III:

No, no.

Preet Bharara:

Publicly? Okay.

Joe Kennedy III:

No. Not publicly, but I think no. And grateful for the family support in that, I think I would say that-

Preet Bharara:

Thanks, fam.

Joe Kennedy III:

Well, and they have, to Senator Markey’s credit, and to their credit, they have also recognized this was my decision. There’s relationships that continue with him from other members of my family that are different, and that’s fine. That is fine and I’m glad that on both ends of that big family, that they’re able to continue a relationship with the senator and his family. So that is what it is. What I would say though is that there’s, I think also a recognition that despite my decision to engage in that race, that from a national perspective, Senator Markey’s outlook on and voting record is likely not to have deviated all that far from my voting record. So from the perspective of from a nation, what is the differing outcome that comes from me winning that race or him winning that race? Different in style, different forms, perhaps a little bit different substance, but on the stuff that a big portion of what matters there, very, very little difference.

Bobby’s decision to engage in this race as a challenge to President Biden, which again, family kind of spoke out about but weren’t quite as vociferous as when he then decided to run as a independent candidate, and then potentially a spoiler, and then when he joined a Trump ticket, understanding then what Donald Trump had his worldview, what he had said he was going to do, the gaslighting with which he has engaged the American public over the course of the past 10 years, the lies, the deceit and the substance and the policy that he wants to do that was antithetical to much of what generations of my family believes, whether it’s the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act, or USAID and international cooperation, all of this stuff. Bobby’s decision to support Donald Trump’s eradication of this, erasion of all of that means you’re siding with him over this. And so it’s too much.

And that’s a different thing than the personal aspects of family dynamics and such. And so yes, people still will maintain a relationship, but it’s different at the moment. He’s got kids, kids are cousins, and kids are kids, and that’s a different dynamic than the ramifications of this choice. But the ramifications of this choice do have consequences, which is unfortunate.

Preet Bharara:

Does the entire clan get together for people in Hyannis Port?

Joe Kennedy III:

We get together a bunch. We get together a bunch.

Preet Bharara:

And has that happened since this administration began?

Joe Kennedy III:

I mean, the entire clan is like a lot of folks, but 4th of July-

Preet Bharara:

It’s the size of Cambridge.

Joe Kennedy III:

Close. 4th of July a lot of us get together, Thanksgiving a lot of folks get together, and then different pockets get together over Christmas and whatnot. I mean, look, it’s a big family that enjoys spending time together, and that’s a real privilege.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to ask you just one more personal thing about your family that you’ve written about. It’s fascinating to me and interesting. You have said that you made the deliberate decision not to read many, many of the books about your grandfather. I think probably also his brother, the former president, although I don’t know how you avoid that in history class growing up, given how important they were in modern American history. And I would imagine that among the other grandkids and other members of the family, some people might read voraciously about their forebears’ personal decision. I just find that really, really interesting. Could you explain why you’ve chosen not to read the history books about members of your immediate family?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yeah, I mean, look, I think I obviously recognize the fact that these folks were historical figures and well-chronicled historical figures in the contribution they made to history. I appreciate that, I recognize that. They were also like, they were parents, they were brothers, they were husbands. And that part doesn’t often get talked about in that history. You read about the Civil Rights Movement of 1960s, or my grandfather’s time as attorney general, maybe it’s Freedom Riders standing at school, at the store, and a bunch of other stuff, and the Cuban Missile Crisis and these episodes of history. There’s not a whole lot in there about what he was like at home with his kids, what was happening around the dinner table. And if there is, it’s a paragraph or two.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a little bit. Arthur Schlesinger’s book that I already know, but you know what it is? It’s taking his kids to the office.

Joe Kennedy III:

But it’s not, listen if, and there will be, right, folks that will write your biographies. It will be on most likely, a big part of that is the professional impact that you have, not the quiet moments that you have with your wife and kids. And to me, the historical stuff obviously matters, but what matters more is what kind of dad he was to my dad. And you’re not going to get that in a book.

And I say this with respect to field of journalism. Anybody that writes that has to get it published and publishers need to make money. And so there’s going to be a focus on pieces of this or a focus by editors and publishers to talk about the stuff that now, as we say, gets clickbait, rather than the stuff that was who they actually were. And there’s amazing journalists out there that are credible and authentic. And that doesn’t mean stories have to be puff pieces, but it means that they need to be honest. And I’m sure there are, but it’s a version of honesty and it’s gone through somebody’s filter. And for me personally, putting a writer, a publisher, an editor in between me and my grandfather, I choose not to do that. I’ll have my grandmother tell me those stories of my dad and his aunts and uncles, and I’m not ignorant of all of their activities.

Preet Bharara:

Let me just suggest, if you ever change your mind, when I was 19 years old, I read Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur Schlesinger. It’s like a thousand pages, that book. I could never read a book of that length today in the current atmosphere. And it made a big impact on me and is one of the major few things that set me on the path to public service. So thank your forebear for that.

Joe Kennedy III:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

And if you choose to read one book one day, it’s pretty flattering from Arthur Schlesinger. So there’d be not a lot of pain in it for you.

Joe Kennedy III:

No, and let me just say on that, I get the fact that these guys and gals are human too, right? Not everything is roses. And so-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. And not everyone is perfect. Including our own relatives and including ourselves. The Groundwork Project, if people want to support it, how can they do so?

Joe Kennedy III:

Groundworkproject.org, we’re grateful for the help and support. There’s a lot of work to do and great people that are out there doing this work in local communities, and love and appreciate any advice and guidance and obviously support along the way. So thank you.

Preet Bharara:

Joe Kennedy, thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Joe Kennedy III:

Great, thank you.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Joe Kennedy continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. In the bonus for Insiders, we discussed his work in Northern Ireland and what we can learn from its violent past.

Joe Kennedy III:

Did you really want to risk sending your kid out for a cup of coffee for you and have them not come home, because they got hit in a bombing? If the answer to that is no, then we’ve got to work together on this.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll answer your questions about posthumous criminal charges, whether a pardon can be revoked, and how we decide what to cover on this show.

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in a tweet or I guess a post on X from someone with the handle, SR72 Sister Souljah. The question is, “Can we posthumously charge someone with sexual exploitation and trafficking?” By posthumously, obviously this person means after that person’s death. Short answer, no. Not with respect to any crime, much less sexual exploitation or trafficking. So in the federal system, and I’m guessing, and I have to believe this is true in all the state systems as well, you cannot posthumously, meaning after they’re dead, charge someone with any criminal offense, including to answer your question, sexual exploitation and trafficking. I wonder if there’s anyone you have in mind.

Nor can you persist in the prosecution of someone who has passed away in our criminal justice system, charges, which would seem to make common sense, are brought against people who are alive. Among other reasons, the Constitution guarantees defendants the right to a trial, to confront witnesses, to present a defense. And it’s very difficult to do those things if you’re no longer alive. You also can’t attend the proceedings, which is another right that you have. So once someone passes away, criminal proceedings, whether they’ve started or not, are over. Prosecutors can’t file new charges and pending charges are dismissed. Now, sometimes there’s a process for that.

The most famous dismissal that I was ever involved with in a criminal prosecution was when I was the US attorney in the Southern District of New York. People may not realize that way back in 1998, the US attorney’s office before I got there, had a large indictment. The lead defendant on that indictment was an individual by the name of Osama Bin Laden in connection with the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which were done and orchestrated by Al-Qaeda.

Several people who were named in that indictment were charged in the southern district, prosecuted and convicted. But as you know, Bin Laden, who was the mastermind of 9/11, eluded capture for quite a long time. In 2011, in a very daring military operation, Bin Laden was found and killed. So we in the Southern District were left to the mundane task of in the ordinary course moving the court to dismiss the charges against Bin Laden on the basis of this principle that we’ve been discussing. I do remember one wrinkle there, was the judge in the case, a very good judge by the name of Lewis Kaplan, initially rejected our motion to dismiss the case against Bin Laden because he wanted more proof, more than just the say-so of prosecutors in a document that Bin Laden was actually dead. And so we had to provide an affidavit, I believe from an intelligence officer, talking about the DNA match that was done on Bin Laden and the degree of certainty that the government had that it was actually Bin Laden who was killed in the raid.

Now that said, there are a few important things that can still happen after a person’s death that relate to justice. First, investigations can continue. If someone dies, law enforcement might still dig into their actions to figure out what happened, to have transparency for the public, especially if it helps bring closure to victims or leads to charges against other wrongdoers. And you saw that with Ghislaine Maxwell.

Second, victims can bring civil lawsuits against the deceased person’s estate, or if it applies, another living individual or group responsible in some way for the crime. A civil case, as you know, is very different from a criminal case. It’s not about putting someone in prison or holding an individual accountable in terms of their freedom potentially, it’s about financial accountability and making people whole to the extent that’s possible. So a court could find that someone did commit sexual exploitation or trafficking even after their death and award damages to victims. But just to recap, once again, when it comes to a criminal prosecution, charges, trial, sentencing, all of that, that all ends when a person dies.

This question comes in an email from Sue from Lexington, Kentucky who writes, “Hi Preet, just wondered if a pardon can be revoked. If Ghislaine Maxwell tells the world what Trump wants her to, that Trump had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring and is then granted a pardon, what keeps her from coming back a year later with a tell-all book that refutes her original story? Are pardons conditional? Can they be revoked? Thanks, love the podcast.” Well, that’s a series of questions that are sort of interesting. It’s a good question. The answer is no. Once a presidential pardon is granted and delivered and accepted, it cannot be revoked. As we’ve discussed on the podcast on a number of occasions previously, it’s Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. President has pretty much unfettered power to grant a pardon for federal offenses once that power is exercised and the pardon is complete, hold onto that word for a moment, it’s permanent. There’s no constitutional or other legal mechanism to overturn it or take it back. It’s a final solemn action that can be taken only by the President of the United States.

So what makes a pardon complete? Well, according to the law, and there happens to be actually surprisingly some law on this, two things. It’s been formally issued and it’s been delivered and accepted by the recipient. So it turns out like a long time ago, 170, 180 years ago, in 1833, Supreme Court decided a case called United States v. Wilson, where the court ruled that a pardon has to be delivered and accepted to take legal effect. Other cases since have affirmed that principle. Now, there’s one narrow exception which comes up basically almost never. If a president tries to revoke a pardon before it’s been delivered or accepted, that revocation could hold up.

And there are a couple of examples. Back in 1869, outgoing president Andrew Johnson issued a pardon that his successor, Ulysses S. Grant, attempted to revoke before it reached the recipient. President Grant literally called off the US marshal’s delivery of the pardon, perhaps by horseback. And the federal court ruled that because it was not yet delivered, it was not considered a completed pardon, and therefore could be revoked. Lesson to presidents who are leaving office, maybe don’t wait till the last day. And the judge in that case found that the pardon had not been delivered and had not been accepted, but also affirmed the principle that I’ve mentioned, quote, “The law undoubtedly is that when a pardon is complete, there is no power to revoke it any more than there is power to revoke any other completed act.”

Now, in more recent history, and you may remember this, and I had forgotten about it until I got your question, George W. Bush, as recently as 2008, issued a pardon to a New York City real estate developer. Right after that, a lot of news stories broke that the recipient of the pardon had a father who had made significant financial contributions to Republicans. So that led to a political firestorm for a departing president. And what’s interesting about this is after the firestorm, President Bush could have persisted in his issuance of the pardon. After all, he was a lame duck, was not seeking reelection. Barack Obama had been elected, someone from the opposing party.

Some of the things that were written at the time include a New York Daily News opinion piece saying the pardon was, quote unquote, “Unthinkable” and also quote, “A breathtaking abuse of discretion that smells of cheaply bought political favoritism.” End quote. And so, on this principle that you can revoke a pardon before it’s been delivered and been completed and accepted, George W. Bush, even though he’s a lame duck, even though it was his right, even though I don’t think the money went directly to his campaign, but to Republicans generally, revoked the pardon just a day later. How quaint.

Now, the other question you pose is an interesting one. Is there an exception made for fraud? In other words, if a pardon was granted based on something fraudulently misrepresented or through bribery, as you say in your question, maybe it’s a quid pro quo between Maxwell and Trump, could a court step in then? I don’t think that question has ever been addressed, and it’s an interesting possibility, I suppose. But there still is no precedent for a court overturning a pardon on grounds of fraud. And as I’ve said, there is no precedent for a pardon being revoked after it’s been delivered and accepted. So probably it’s the case that if you’ve done so by bad conduct or bad faith or deception, possibly even bribery, people may be held accountable for that misconduct, for that bribery. But I think, but I don’t know, I think the pardon may still stand.

This question comes from Richard, who posted the following on Bluesky. “It’s nearly eight years since you started the podcast, and unfortunately much of this time the lead story has been Trump. What topics do you find most interesting and what do you cover because your audience wants to hear about them? #AskPreet.” Well, that’s a really super interesting question in a subject of, I’m telling you weekly conversation, deliberation and debate on the podcast. So if I may, let’s tear down the fourth wall for a moment, even though it’s a podcast and there are no walls. So I started the podcast in a particular set of circumstances, right? I had been fired by Donald Trump, he was doing things that I thought were harmful to the country, the most important legal matter that could be in my wheelhouse in the country, and that fixated everyone in the nation was the Bob Mueller special counsel investigation.

So the podcast began a little bit under the auspices of a former federal prosecutor who knows a thing or two about investigations and prosecutions and trials covering the news of the day, and the news of the day that people would come to me for naturally was that kind of legal news, sort of at the intersection of law and politics. And people listened to the show and we continued to do the show week after week after week. Then we launched a year later, a second show behind a paywall, the CAFE Insider Podcast, which you should all subscribe to. But with respect to this podcast, the Stay Tuned podcast, I sort of get to decide every week. It’s a little bit my kingdom and I can decide whether something is interesting enough to cover, but I don’t sort of think of it only in terms of what is interesting or not interesting.

Obviously, I’d like to be interested, I’m a curious person, and the best part of this job and doing this podcast is not only teaching other people and informing other people, but informing myself and teaching myself through the thoughtfulness, intelligence, maturity, and expertise of I think, the best guests of any podcast that covers these kinds of topics. So there’s two things that I think about, not just is a topic interesting, but is a topic important? And I’ve had this debate with listeners and even producers on the show from time to time, why are we covering this issue relating to Trump again?

And we try to make some decisions about what is worth covering, what is not. Part of the decision-making is, is it important? If Trump has done something that harms democracy or that should be called out or that should be explained to the public who’s trying to understand what guardrails he’s knocking down or what consequences there may be, like sending the National Guard to Los Angeles, like taking away birthright citizenship, 100 other things I could mention. It seems to me to be an impossibility for a person like me with my background, my understanding of these issues and the importance of the issues, not to cover it.

The other thing I’ll say is, I don’t always think about things in terms of topics that are interesting, but people that are interesting. Any topic I think can be deeply, deeply interesting and worthy of learning about if the person talking about it, the expert, the guest is interesting and thoughtful and understands how to explain ideas to people. I think about it a little bit like some advice I got in college and advice that I give to other people, particularly outside of your major, but even within your major. Don’t take classes for the topic. Take classes for the professor. I made a mistake my first semester of college, I thought it’d be really interesting to learn about the French Revolution, and there’s a class called the French Revolution, and I don’t remember the name of the professor because he was very forgettable, but I didn’t learn a thing about the French Revolution or anything else because it wasn’t a good teacher.

And then I took other classes in more obscure areas or outside of my expertise. I took a class on Rembrandt. Art history and art was not really my thing. I learned a lot more because of the excellence of the professor in the Rembrandt class than I learned from the professor in the French Revolution class. And I think that’s a little bit the case on the podcast too. I really enjoy having people talk about things that are outside my wheelhouse. We’ve had physicists on the show, we’ve had other scientists on the show, we’ve had economists on the show, we’ve had professors of philosophy on the show, and I think that all of those people that we think about very carefully before we invite them on the program have thoughtful, interesting things to say and also important things to say.

Now, obviously, when you ask the question, do you cover topics because your audience wants to hear about them? Well, sure, we have an audience that’s built up over time. In fact, this very exchange that we’re having right now is a function of a listener, you, Richard, asking a question and I’m answering it because you want to hear about the issue. So it’s a give and take between what the audience wants to hear, what’s interesting, what’s important, what I’m in the mood for. From time to time, we cover a rules change in baseball. Is that important? It’s important to baseball lovers. Is it interesting? Sure as hell it is. So that’s kind of how we think about it. But while we’re on the subject of what people want to hear and what’s important and what’s interesting, this is an opportunity for me to ask listeners, as I do from time to time, what do you want to hear about? What guests would you like to ask me to bring on the show? Let us know at lettersatcafe.com.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Joe Kennedy III. 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 Bluesky, or you can 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 presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.