Interview Only w/ Garrett Graff - From Nixon to Trump: America’s Nonstop Modern Presidential Scandals - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (01:38):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Joining me now is someone who I've known forever, which
means all of the twenty first century. I first got
to know him when he was an blogger, and I
believe correct me if I'm wrong. What did we call those?
What was the DC version of that thing that predated
TV newser fishfol DC, fishfowl D see you? Is it

(02:02):
fair to say that that's how you feel like you
cut your teeth in the Washington ecosphere with Fishbowl DC.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
That is exactly where I got myself started in journalism
in Washington. As you remember, this was two thousand and five,
Brian Stelter was writing TV newser out of at a
Towson student at Towson University, also for Media Bistro, and
I was writing Fishbowl d C covering Washington politics, all

(02:33):
under the pseudonym.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right, was it in a pseudonym for a while? Were
you a pseudonym? You didn't release?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
No, no, no, no, you might you might be thinking of
want at at the time, the pseudonym.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Right, she did the pseudonym for a while. Right, Well,
look you have taken that, and in some ways you've
always been an entrepreneurial journalist, meaning that you're very comfort
trouble going off on your own. You've dabbled in establishment journalists,
and you ran the Washingtonian for a bit. You certainly

(03:07):
contribute to plenty. But uh, look it's in you know
now you're I think one of our better historian writers
of of I guess recent history is probably how you
would describe it, right, You specialize sort of in looking
back at recent history. I think you've carved a carved
a great franchise there, because, as we now know, with

(03:31):
with so much information being thrown at us all the time,
we forget look at it, look at look at the
killing Netflix is making, just doing nineties bs history, right,
pop culture history like missing kids and balloons and planes
and stuff to do actual interesting political and government stories. Uh,

(03:52):
is going to be pretty uh, a pretty interesting way
to go what uh what made you stumble into that franchise?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
So I've always been on the magazine writing side of journalism,
as you know, was at Washingtonian, as you mentioned, an
editor of political magazine, and then after I left there,
spent the better part of a decade as a contributor
it Wired. And I've always been fascinated at returning to

(04:26):
stories a couple of years after the sort of daily
media has moved on to try to understand what actually
takes place, because you know, you know this as a
student of history, so much of what we think about
an event as it flows by us in the on

(04:49):
rushing tide of daily news turns out to either be
sort of slightly mistaken or not the full picture, or
sort of otherwise not fully understood. And so I've spent
a lot of my career as a writer, as an author, historian,

(05:11):
and now as the host of this podcast series Long Shadow,
returning to events you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty five
years later to try to put them in better context
and help use that history to tell the story of today.

(05:32):
That I think sort of all of the work that
I do is really aimed at trying to make sure
that we understand why the world is the way that
it is today, because I think so much of so
much of sort of what Russia's passed us in the

(05:52):
news today feels unconnected. And you know, journalists love to
throw around this is unprecedented, but it's unprecedented too much.
But the truth is like, nothing is really unprecedented, and
that what's really fun to me in understanding history and
studying history is going back and looking at how the

(06:17):
way that the world is today is the often very
deliberate choice of a small group of people during identifiable moments.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
I'm obsessed with butterfly effects, so I do a series
every year where I just simply call it what if.
Where it takes you take one specific thing that didn't happen,
and what if this had happened, how everything else would
have changed? And you know, it's as as small as

(06:49):
what if Hillary Clinton had run for president in two
thousand and four. I think it's the only time she
would have won. It's the only time or last name
would have been an asset. It's the only time like
so it's sort of a way, you know. So that's
sort of my way of trying to tackle recent history.
What if Bill Clint had resigned in nineteen ninety eight
when his own party kind of wanted him to, we're

(07:10):
kind of opening, he'd read the room, he chose not to. Well,
you know what that would have meant. Al Gore would
have been president during nine to eleven yep. And do
you know how much different politics would be because of that,
Because then you would have had twelve years of democratic,
straight democratic running of the government. There would have been
a more partisan reaction to nine to eleven, and who
knows how everything we have today might have been accelerated forward.

(07:33):
But the point is is that it is always it
strikes me, you know, this is why I love your work,
and that this is how you think you're like looking
for these pivotable pivotabal listen to me, pivotal moments that
were the fork in the road yep, you know, and I.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Think it often takes a long time to put that
framework together.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Well, that's what's going to be my next question. It's
like a piece of fruit, you know, you cut a
peach too soon, and it sucks. You cut a peach
too late, and it sucks. Right, I'm obsessed with peaches,
and it bugs the crap out of me that it's
so hard for me to figure out the perfect time
to eat a peach.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
That is way when peeling back this, how do you
know when an event in history is ready for your
deep dive where the eyewitnesses are ready to talk but
not performatively and stuff like that, Like is there a
specific thing you look for to know? I think that

(08:38):
that's a right piece of fruit, historical fruit. I can
it's time to eat it.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
So there are a couple of different answers to that,
because I sort of think about this in different epochs
of sort of returning to a story. You know. Probably
the most famous piece I ever did, as you know,

(09:05):
was in twenty sixteen, for the fifteenth anniversary of nine
to eleven, I went back and did an oral history
of being a board Air Force one with President Bush.
Ten years later, or not ten years later, for the
tenth anniversary of the killing of Bin Laden, I went
back and did a similar oral history of the killing

(09:29):
of Bin Laden and sort of what it was like
to be part of the Obama White House at that time,
and that ten to fifteen year window I think often
ends up being really fruitful because you'll find that the
major players are out of the.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Job at that point but still alive.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
But still alive, and their memories are still pretty good
that they you know that they'll be able to sort
of talk more freely in off. Usually at the sort
of ten or fifteen year mark, they have sort of
achieved in their career something meaningfully different, so that they

(10:14):
are more comfortable talking about a moment in the past
when they you know, their legacy might sort of still
be in shape. But it can also take a lot longer.
I wrote a book about Watergate actually that came out
in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
I thought that was a brave decision you made to
do that one. Well, thank you, because you know, especially
with Woodward still alive, right, are any of us allowed
to write about Watergate while Bob's still alive?

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Right?

Speaker 1 (10:45):
So this was you know, that's why I found you brave.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Right the fiftieth anniversary of the burglary in nineteen seventy two,
and yet it had taken most of those fifty years
to answer two of the central questions of Watergate, who
is deep throat? And sort of why did Nixon launch

(11:12):
the Watergate cover up? And so when I I.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Think there's a third question that we've never pursued well enough,
by the way, not to go down a rabbit hole,
all right, what actionable intelligence did they learn from the
phone tapping?

Speaker 2 (11:34):
We have the phone tapping of the DNC.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Now I've talked to sources who have given I've gone
down this rabbit hole, and I've talked to people that
were you know, that were convinced that John Connolly sold
them out for a variety of reasons. And but that
part of Watergate doesn't get told very well. Right, it's
always through the prism of Nixon. But the manipulation of

(12:01):
the nomination was real, you know, the the what Nixon
did with the Texas delegation to make sure McGovern was
going to get was gonna was to make sure nobody
could have basically so that McGovern could win it at
the convention. I think was the intelligence they got over
the over the over what they learned from the DNC.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
But you know, when I sat down in to write
that book to come out in twenty twenty two, no
one had ever been able to tell the story of Watergate,
knowing the identity of deep Throat as we now know
FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, and no one had ever
been able to write it knowing the sort of original sin.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
That kicked off the Nixon Well, Woodward and Bernstein and
Theory knew, No, they they.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Definitely didn't the documents. So the original sin of Watergate,
the reason that Nixon doesn't sort of launches the cover
up and doesn't hang the burglars out to dry, is
the way that it traces all the way back through
the Pentagon papers and to the Nalta Fair in nineteen

(13:15):
sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Well, that this was a whole but he's been doing
this in multiple ways, and this was part of a
larger operation where the Democratic nomination fight was just the
latest operation that he was running.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yes, but what no one understood until the documents were
declassified from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in twenty eleven
was the extent of Nixon's treachery in the sixty eight
campaign and how he had been exposed by Johnson, confronted
by Johnson, and that this sart is over the South

(13:52):
Vietnamese right the South Vietnamese treachery where Nixon is interfering
in the Paris peace talks, and that this becomes sort
of the Edgar Allen Poe telltale heart beating away at
the center of the Nixon presidency that he is then
desperate to cover up in when the Pentagon papers start

(14:15):
to come out in seventy one, which brings him to
hire the plumbers in the first place to sort of
set and sets g Gordon Liddy sort of at loose
inside the Nixon white House. But you know, until you
understand sort of those two central parts of the narrative

(14:36):
of Watergate, you know, identity of deep throat and the
sort of original sin of the Nixon administration, you know,
we've never really understood Watergate, and it took us forty
forty five years to actually begin to piece together the
totality of what that story actually was.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
You know, the one of the unintended consequences of Watergate
was was the destruction of the White House taping system.
I don't know if you watch, if you've seen the
Apple television show for All Mankind.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
I'm aware of it.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, So they it's an alternative history, and they do
have this sort of American politics in real life. Back
they don't, it's not part of the show. It's sort
of in the backdrop. They do a fun little like
little vignettes to sort of And in this scenario, because
Nixon loses the race, Nixon's president when we lose the

(15:32):
race to the moon, he's of course a one termer,
not a two termer. Well, what does that mean? The
White House taping system never gets discovered by the public,
nor by Congress or anything like this, and it doesn't happen.
And in the way this TV show worked, it makes
it all the way to the nineties before people find
out there's a White House taping system, and each president
subsequently anyway, but it's made me like I remember when

(15:56):
I saw it. I remember thinking, can you imagine how
much richer are knowledge of presidents would be if we
always had this information like this eventually available to us?

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, And I actually I really worry about that as
a modern historian, in the extent to which you know,
the future historians of the White House and you know,
US government, and really.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Look at this White House. You know we already we
already have caught Donald Trump meaning to direct message his
attorney general on truth social he ends up making a
public the infamous you know, what are you doing? Go
get Camy, Go get you know, James, go get Shift.
And we learned it's intended to be a direct message.

(16:46):
And now you're thinking, think about Presidential Records Act? How
many direct messages? What are we not seeing? What don't
we know? And we know this president has had no
interest in seeing records percent served for history's sake.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, and you and so so much of that conversation
is now taking place, you know, over text message, over
direct messages, over encrypted signal chats which may or may
not be being properly maintained for Presidential Records Acts. And

(17:24):
I really do worry about how hard it's going to
be to recreate some of what we are used to seeing.
And you know, everyone one of their first questions about
Watergate ends up being you know, well, if it took
us forty years to figure out the truth about Watergate,

(17:44):
you know, what are we going to learn about Trump's
presidency in forty years, fifty years? You know, what do
we not know now about what is going on? And
I don't know, there's clearly a lot that we don't
know about what's going on behind the scenes that we'll
have to wait for memoirs or future declassified documents. But

(18:09):
I would like to think that this administration is we
sort of know more, at least of what's transpiring in
real time.

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unless they win. Well, that's funny you say that. I
don't disagree like I think i've I find it fascinating

(19:29):
how often what you think is the case is the case.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Have you noticed that?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (19:37):
And now part of it is I joke that, you know,
if I'm not a great poker player, but I'm a
better poker player than Donald Trump. I'd love to play
poker with him because he shows his cards constantly, right,
you don't have to work very hard to figure out
what he's holding. I actually think that's what what is

(19:57):
some of his appeal as I I think people think, well,
I know exactly what he's doing and thinking I don't
love it either, But he's pretty you know, it's the
what's it's the It's one of my favorite things that
Mike Johnson likes to try to use as a rationale.
You know, well, Donald Trump's very transparent about what he's doing.

(20:18):
He doesn't say whether it should be should be happening?
You know, you always know what he's doing, you know,
when you ask him about crypto or the or a
you know, an insider trading deal or a pardon. You know,
he's a very transparent president. Well that's kind of true.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, yeah. Mike Johnson to me is always fascinating as
the world's least informed human being. Like you can sort
of walk up to him with any Trump story and
he's like, ah, never heard of it.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
That's first I've heard.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
First I first time. I'm really gonna have to look
at I just heard about that as I was walking
into this room.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Well doesn't it though, Like weirdly, you know it is.
But then it's it's funny to be that Mike Johnson
saying well I don't think he can serve a third
term was a headline, right because you're like, Mike Johnson
never says anything definitive, so what he does take it
to the bank.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, yeah, But just sort of the idea that like,
you're Speaker of the House and you appear to have
no access to news information on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
So let's take your theory of ten to fifteen years
maybe as far back as we're right at the we're
just past fifty with Watergate. Now Watergate, as you noted,
there was a specific thing to get released, yep, that helped.
So the Iran hostage crisis, have you thought about that?

(21:45):
You know, there's allegations. You know, there's a couple of
books that were written at the time right about you know,
the EA that's where October Surprise sort of got mainstream
back in the day. And there certainly were plenty of
sort of you know, conspiracy theorists about what did the
Reagan campaign know about the hostages and when did they
know it, et cetera, which has always had a little

(22:06):
bit of echo to the South Vietnamese allegation with Nixon.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I actually would love to do a book on
Iran contra. I have noodled that. I've got a big
stack of research materials here in my office to that
I've been saving over the years, assembling it. I think
it is something that we don't understand how fundamentally it

(22:34):
reshaped American politics thereafter. Of course, you've got Bill Barr
right there in the midst of it, you know, Oliver
North infamously a huge part of that.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
But like Watergate, you know, you described how the burglary
was actually you know, there was a whole other you know,
this all began in sixty eight. Like Iron Contra as
the way some people may remember it, they may think
of it as a late Ay scandal, Arguably it started
before Reagan became president, right.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yes, And I actually just read Jonathan Blitzer's amazing book
on immigration that I think came out last year. Everyone
here is Gone, Everyone who is gone is here. Couldn't
couldn't recommend it more sort of history of US policy
in Latin America. And it's fascinating to sort of realize

(23:29):
how much of Iran Contra and the sort of Reagan era,
Bush era efforts to you know, destabilize Central American politics
are what kicks off downstream the immigration crisis that we
are now living with today. And like you know, I'm

(23:51):
scribbling in the margins of this book as I'm reading,
like Iran Contra in some ways is what gives us
Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, it's an interesting through line. Look, I constantly so
let me run a theory by you. I have thought
that one of the reasons why the CIA just won't
come clean about what it knew about Oswald is not
because they were involved. It's just the opposite, right, it

(24:21):
was the fear that everybody would think they were involved,
but more importantly that he was simply a thread into
a larger what they were doing in the Western hemisphere,
and that copping to Oswald could be a string that
you start to pull that unravels a whole lot of
bad shit that we did in Latin America in the

(24:43):
fifties that could actually be problematic today. Because here's why
I think about it this way, Garrett, how is it
that we've had back to back presidents Biden and Trump
who have had CIA directors, one of whom Trump appointed,
one of whom Biden appointed, who when the laws said

(25:03):
you got to release it, all the CIA directors is no, no, no, no,
you can't let this happen, and somehow both Trump and
Biden agreed to it. I've always wondered, what do these
CIA directors say to these presidents to make them say,
got it, Okay, I won't do it, I'll figure it,
I'll shut this down. My thesis has been that, yeah,

(25:27):
and that because it would only extend like our playing
around with Latin America has sort of like bid us
in the ass on multiple times in our sort of
recent history. And if you told me that was the
reason why Oswald gets this special, weird, special treatment. It's
less about Oswald's person and Kennedy the assassination, and more

(25:47):
about what bad shit we were doing in Latin America.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, but Chuck, don't worry what we're doing in Venezuela
right now, it's going to go great. This is the
time when the US meddling in the foreign politics of
Latin America will go great.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Garrett, I speak as a Miamian. I want to see
Chavez and Maduro, that entire regime out of there. I
have plenty of friends, I get it, right. I be
more honest with us, mister president, right, like, tell us
the truth about what you're up to, and you might
actually get some support for supporting democracy in Venezuela. But

(26:26):
to do it this backhanded way, the unintended consequence could
be what if Maduro is popular?

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, to answer your real question about the Oswald stuff,
you know, I don't know whether your thesis is right,
but you get at what to me is sort of
my central organizing principle of understanding conspiracies, which is my

(26:57):
challenge as someone who has covered government for twenty years.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
And usually debunk conspiracies. Yes, is you're pretty good at
debunking them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Is that government conspiracies presuppose a level of competence, foresight,
and strategy that is not on display in the rest
of the work that the government does. And it's only
cya right, right, And that the government is sort of
able to keep two kinds of secrets. They're able to

(27:32):
keep big secrets for a short period of time.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
This is the Lodden's you know, beIN Laden's whereabouts.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
No, I'm talking about something different actually, like the Manhattan
Project or the D Day invasion. Okay, something that is
thousands of people, but we only need to keep this
for a period of months or weeks. Or they can
keep sort of small secrets for a long period of time.

(28:06):
And this is where you get in into sort of
secrets that the you know, the Argo plot, you know,
sort of things that the intelligence agencies are able to
keep for a very extended period of time. The challenge

(28:28):
for me with something like the Kennedy assassination, UFOs and Roswell,
which as you know I wrote a book about, or
or you know, nine to eleven Truthers is sort of
you're asking us to believe that the government is able

(28:50):
to keep big secrets for a long period of time,
that sort of secrets that encompass sort of hundreds or
thousands of people for de aids with no meaningful.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Compromise, and that the idea that area fifty one could
be what people what the conspiracy theorists think it is,
and somehow it would be the secret that we could
keep for fifty years, that there wouldn't be some cleaning service,
some spouse, some kid, right, some disgruntled fired employee who

(29:27):
who didn't have the goods right.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Exactly so, And that's where I think that you know,
sort of whatever is sort of left at the core
of the Kennedy records, I think to your point has
nothing to do with Kennedy anymore.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
That it has to be about CIA workflow of some sort, right,
And I you know, I it's it's my version of
Okham's razor. I cannot imagine they weren't, Like, I don't
buy the idea that that they didn't have them under surveillance.
You're telling me a marine who defected to the Soviet
Union wasn't a known person to the CIA.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Is that a believable fact? Absolutely not at least in
that era.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Right, Yeah, but the idea that the CIA would somehow
create this Patsy through this entires program, like our our
version of a reverse Americans, right, Like that also seems
kind of out there. Absolutely, So there's iron contra. Is

(30:41):
there more to be done on Monica Lewinsky in the
first and the first modern impeachment?

Speaker 2 (30:46):
I think I think so in part because again that's
and this is a little bit of what you were
talking about with you know, Bill Clinton resigning hypothetical, right,
I don't know that that history has been meaningfully revisited
sort of post me Too, which I think would be.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
It's an interesting way put it. We were kind of, look,
it's funny Bill Clinton's reputation went into the shitter the
height of Me Too, Right, it was sort of like, hey,
what about all that? And everybody's like, yeah, you're right,
we shouldn't have been toleranted that, and then everybody just
moved on.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Well, and I think that the reputation has changed on
both sides, Bill Clinton's, but then Monica Lewinsky that I
think we as a country have really revisited the you know, stereotypes,
if that's what you want to call it about how

(31:47):
we viewed Monica Lewinsky in the nineteen nineties as this
scandal was unfolding, and that she has done such an
impressive job of not just rebuilding, but I think changing
the way that America thinks about her.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
There is no greater victim and a scandal that we've had.
And I remember, I've always felt that boy that Clinton's
never never fully could ever apologize enough. Yep.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
And I think that, you know, one of the things
that I sort of came to think about Watergate is
Watergate is best understood not as an event, but as
a mindset, and that really Watergate is this umbrella for

(32:52):
like thirteen to fifteen distinct but overlapping scandals that sort
of all merge from the paranoid, conspiratorial mindset of Richard
Dixon that sort of he brings in and.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
That really date back to.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Me.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Shoot, one of my favorite Nixon books is one about
his California Senate race.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
I mean, exactly like his parent is exactly who he's
he is straight through his career.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Nineteen fifty Richard Dixon running for the US Senate against
Helen Kahagen Douglas nineteen fifty two, Checkers speech Nixon nineteen sixty. Right,
it's the same guy, except every loss or grievance fuels him.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, and that he I don't know that we have
ever sort of reappraised Bill Clinton's presidency through that lens.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
That It's funny you say that, because you're right, because
Monica Lewinsky was the Coleman Nation in exactly of what
Hillary Clinton called a vast right wing conspiracy. My only
criticism of her, of her comment was the word conspiracy.
It wasn't being done underground, right, it was we were

(34:17):
all watching it and playing. It started with Trooper game.
It started with Whitewater and Vince Foster and and Travel
Office and you know, the stocks and you know all
of this, you know, attempt until they finally got him
on something.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yep. And that I think we would look very differently
at all of that. I mean, remember, like this is
where a lot of the modern Supreme Court ends up
sort of getting their start in the right. Yeah, you know,
this is where Rod Rosenstein gets his start, and that

(34:55):
sort of there's a long shadow to a lot of
of what transpires during impeachment there and the ken Starr
investigation that I.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
See what you did there, by the way, mister longshadow.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
That I think we would look very differently at now.
You know, I think one one of the things, and
this is just not an impeachment thing. There's going to
be a big biography written at some point about Bill
Clinton that has not been done yet, and I don't

(35:34):
know whether it will be done during his lifetime, that
I think will dramatically rewrite his his presidency as viewed
by history, you know, I think, and you understand this, Presidents,
the view of presidents changes dramatically across decades.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Harry Truman is a great example, right. It's one of
the the easiest ones for people to grasp because he
was an unpopular president when he left. In fact, he
was a punching He was a punchline for Republicans for
a long time. In fact, it was Ronald Reagan that
arguably revitalized Truman's brand before any Democrat did, and before

(36:17):
David McCullough did. And then David McCullough comes out, and
everything changes, right, and Harry Truman is now a top
fifteen president in many historians' minds because.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
It and Dwight Eisenhower sort of I think undergoing that
same change, right, now we're living in you know, this
is sort of someone who there was sort of you know,
he's a doddering old golfer for you know, much of
his and then you've seen sort of work by Evan
Thomas and others that have really made us sort of

(36:47):
rethink that this was a much smarter and more strategic
and more consequential president than we've given him credit for.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
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(38:43):
think we've had two presidents who of who have been independent,
truly less, the least partisan presidents we ever had, and
both of them were commanders, and both of them were
supreme Allied commanders in the army right. One was General
George Washington and the other one was General Dwite Eyesedewer.
So I I want to associate myself with that historical

(39:04):
line of thinking about Ike. However, how much is Eisenhower's
this renewal of this sort of renewed positive look at
Eisenhower a reflection of how crappy our leaders are today,
and that we're actually judging Eisenhower not through the prism

(39:26):
of what he did in the fifties, but through the
prism of looking back and going, wow, he wasn't what
we have today.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
I think that the revisionism around him is something that
started before we fell into our current age of poor
leadership in America. I think the example you're looking for
is George H. W. Bush, where I think you see

(39:59):
a lot of celebration of George H. W. Bush as
sort of the upstanding, you know, president, dedicated in a
life of public service, you know, sort of not of this,
you know, not of this time anymore like that. That
to me is a big part of the gloss that

(40:21):
we put over George H. W. Bush these days.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Oh interesting Okay, I just it's always you know, I
have found myself and I'm curious if you do this.
There are more and more history books I read where
I realize when the book was written is very important
to understand before you dive into the interpretation of the
of the history that the book is attempting to interpret.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely, And I think, by the way, as
a historian, that's one of the things that is always
incredibly humbling is you never understand a topic more than
when you've only read one book about it, and it's
sort of every book thereafter only makes life more complicated.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
I'll give you an example of where I think this
is the most, where I have run into it the most,
because I spent a lot, I read a bunch about it.
I'm obsessed with the essentially the post Grant politics of
America yep. Eighteen seventy six. I've probably read four or
five different books on the eighteen seventy six election, and

(41:30):
I would argue that the politics of the author are
what distinguishes each of the books, not the information. The
information is mostly the same. The interpretation of the information
is what's different. And that is one that I find
myself pulling my hair out sometimes reading these various accounts

(41:50):
because they're this similar, but they're not the same, and
they really are more about how the author perceives Republicans
versus Democrats in the twenty first century or late twentieth
century when one of them was written versus versus in
that moment in time.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yep, yeah, no, I think that's very true, and I
think that that's a challenge across a lot of the
way that narrative history ends up getting written, you know,
as you know, I spend a lot of time doing
oral history. And to me, part of the power of

(42:31):
oral history and why I think it's sort of so
important as a tradition and a writing form is the
way that it puts you back in moments when the
participants are living them, are experiencing them before they know
the outcome. That I think sort of one of the
drawbacks of a lot of narrative history is it makes

(42:56):
events seem neater, cleaner, simpler, and more preordained than they
felt to anyone who was living through them at the time.
That you know, you and I, you know, think about
where we are right now, like none of us know
where we are in the arc of the American story
right now. And if you if we sit down someday

(43:19):
ten years, fifteen years, fifty years later to write the
story of today, like, we'll know exactly how it goes,
and we'll be able to, you know, sort of plot
our story. But if you're interviewing you and me about
you know, well, what did you feel in September twenty five,
you know, October twenty five, November twenty five, you know,

(43:42):
we're going to give you very different answers.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
On the oral history front, it seems that a great
January sixth is going to be a terrific oral history
at some point. But I'm gonna I don't feel like
it's ripe yet. I assume you don't think it's ripe yet.
My gut is that's not ripe until Trump dies.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, so they're actually you know, January, this January twenty
six will be five years. There are actually two good
oral histories that are coming out, one by Nora Noose
who wrote an oral history of of Charlottesville, and then

(44:31):
the other by Mary Claire Jolanic, who you probably know
from the AP And I think that they are you know,
very solid, good sort of first drafts of oral histories,
you know. Part of the challenge with the January sixth
oral histories, I think forever is going to be untangling

(44:59):
the truth because there are so many villains in that
story whose voices need to be in there that and
they're tough. You know.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
It's funny. I've interviewed Roger Stone a lot for various projects.
I think I know when he's bullshitting, and I think
I know when he's telling me the truth. But I Garrett,
you have to take my word for it. Yep, he's not.
I also know he's not a reliable narrator.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
And my trustee, Roger Stone mug here where I said
I wrote a history of Watergate that was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize last year. And let me tell
you when Nixon said, if the president does it, it's
not illegal, no one believes that was true, to which
Roger Stone replies, your book is laughable fiction, Pullet serprize,

(45:50):
My ass, get the truth now, my coffee mug.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
That's fun. Roger has this. Roger and I have a
love hate relationship. I think he loves to hate me,
and yet he can't quit. He's obsessed with because he
was obsessed with the hotline back in the day, and
that was you know, we covered back when he was
a relevant political consultant and things like that. But you

(46:22):
kind of I'm curious how you we all develop our
bullshit detectors with people that are serial liars, right, you know,
And and I do feel like there are ways to
figure that out. I mean, you know, do you feel
I mean, you've had to I don't know, did you
ever interview g. Gordon Letty for anything?

Speaker 2 (46:43):
No here on his radio show, but never actually interviewed him.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Do you feel like you've interviewed a serial liar and
you knew it going in, and how did you deal
with it?

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah? I absolutely have. You know, a lot of my
has been with in covering federal law enforcement, and so
you know, I've interviewed a fair number of criminals over
the years in one form or another. You know, when

(47:16):
I was doing the Watergate book, you know, I actually joked.
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
The core.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
Primary sources for that are about three dozen memoirs, all
of which were written by people who were later convicted
of perjury or obstruction of justice, and so they are
sort of the most unreliable sets of memoirs you could
ever possibly imagine. And I dealt with it in my

(47:46):
book with a whole lot of footnotes that are like,
you know, it's also possible this meeting never happened because
all three of the participants in this meeting you know
who wrote about it, denied that they said anything in it.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
That's funny. I'm enjoying that sort of going through. But
answer the other question, do you think it'll be easier
to get more truthful answers of the people that were
in and around Trump after Trump is gone? And that
that would be my concern about an oral history of

(48:21):
January six?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yeah, yes, I don't think we're I actually I talked
a very prominent Washington journalist, or helped to talk a
very prominent Washington journalist out of doing an oral history
of Trump's first term for sort of exactly that first
That reason was, I was like, the only reason there

(48:43):
has been any good journalism about Trump is anonymous sources,
and you can't do an anonymously sourced oral history.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
So I've done a few Q and a's with Bryan
to previous recently work over at US. He's got a
kid at USC, so are doing a little something for USC.
And he is this great line because he told me
the story, so I've used it as a way to
He said, so, why haven't you written a book about

(49:11):
your time in the Trump White House? And he says
that Trump will ask him that how come you have
written a book? Right, And he says, mister President, I
can't tell the truth and I won't lie. Yeah, so
I say that in that you know, there are plenty
of people in this town that have a living to
make in their minds, and they're just not going to

(49:32):
do it. It's not worth it, right Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Well, well, and by the way, what you're talking about
right now is not unrelated to the unraveling and backsliding
of American democracy, which is a whole lot of very
powerful people in Washington and elsewhere in the country, and
a whole lot of powerful institutions making a very cynical

(49:56):
choice that it is not worth their own person cost
to stand up and you know, speak the truth or
object or you know, to be the person who the
Trump administration ends up zeroing in their fire.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
I don't want to assume where your head is at
when it comes to how could what you know on
the defcon scale? Where are you when it comes to
the future of our democracy. I use a phrase that
says I'm long term, I'm short term pessimistic, the long
term optimistic. And I often joke that in nineteen thirty
nine I would have said I was short term pessimistic

(50:40):
and long term optimistic, and by nineteen forty six I'd
have been correct. A lot of bad shit happened between
nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty six. I get the
impression you're more alarmed at times than maybe you think
the rest of us are. And yet at the same time,

(51:00):
I also notice every once in a while you take
a step back the other way, where Yeah, I think
that's accurate.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
I think we are underestimating how bad things are right
now and the trajectory of where we are, you know,
nine ish months into this administration, and sort of how
much worse it can get, because I think we are

(51:27):
still as Americans trapped in a it can't happen here.
We're America. You know this is you know, I think, Chuck,
too many of our colleagues and friends are not speaking
clear eyed in the media about sort of what what

(51:51):
is actually happening that we sort of continue to you.
The more you speak clear eyed. The more you don't
have a job in that well, yes, which is you know,
which which is not not an accident, right, but the
you know, the the way that we sort of still
use a lot of euphemisms of you know, Trump is
pushing the bounds of presidential power.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Uh, but that's editing. That's editing, that's editing, that's not
coming from the journalists. Yes, yeah, just so you know,
I mean, unfortunately, but.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
I do agree with you, and I actually I sat
down at a little bit ago this fault and tried
to organize my sense of hope into sort of three buckets,
because I do I think have long term hope for America.

(52:48):
We will never be the country that we were before,
because we can now never say this didn't happen here.
But I do think we are in a moment where, uh,
there is more reason for long term hope or long

(53:09):
term optimism, as you say. And and the sort of
three reasons that I ended up sort of organizing my
thoughts around were one, uh and and this is all
me speaking for myself and not necessarily associating you, uh
with with with any of this is you know, there

(53:33):
are more of us than there are of them that
Trump is actually a historically unpopular figure. You know that
there two thirds of America did not vote for Donald Trump.
He is institutionally and politically much weaker than I think

(53:54):
many journalists and institutions sort of think that he is
day to day and that.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
You know, we's got a strong grip on a weekend.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Yes, exactly. The second is and this is exactly I
think the what what you were talking about and what
we've talked about a little bit over the course of
this episode is for me, history is a source of hope,
which is America has had dark chapters before. Sometimes those

(54:29):
chapters are long, but that there are many stories of America,
and the one that I choose to believe is that
we are a country that strives to get better. That
sort of decade by decade, generation to generation, we are

(54:52):
a country that tries to get closer to living up
to the very imperfect creed that we were founded upon,
of all men are created equal. That at that point
was a creed that you know, not only excluded women
and minorities and Native Americans, but also you know, white

(55:15):
men who didn't own property. And that sort of decade
by decade, generation by generation, we are a country that
has sort of been generally moving towards progress. And then
the third for me is actuarial, which is, I don't

(55:37):
know where we are in the Donald Trump story. I
don't know whether we are in the beginning, the middle,
or the end. I don't know whether Donald Trump will
figure out a way to hold on for a third term,
maybe a fourth term. But I do know that, you know, actuarily,

(55:58):
Donald Trump's reign over ar in politics is going to
be measured in years and not decades. That this is
not a.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Situation closer to the end than the beginning.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Yeah, that this is not him as America's Franco who
reigned in Spain from nineteen thirty nine right through the
nineteen seventies. And that I think whenever Donald Trump exits
the stage, however that happens, and I'm not I have
no medical conspiracies to offer you. I have no predictions

(56:31):
about how or when that happens, whether it's noon on
January twentieth of twenty twenty nine, or before or after.
But he has failed to build an actual movement in Mada.
He has hearted.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
I talk about this. He's too lazy to be Hitler right.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
That he I mean, I'm sorry, I don't dials to
put it. He has sort of a setumbled, a weird
coalition of a personality cult of white nationalists and conspiracists
and anti government extremists and crypto bros and couple of grifters,

(57:16):
and then a whole bunch of grifters and a group
of people who are genuinely correct in their belief that
they have been you know that the era of sort
of neoliberal Larry Summer's globalization has not worked out very
well for them as workers and citizens and a whole

(57:38):
bunch of people whose brains have been rotted by Fox
News and Facebook. And that the moment Trump exits, that
coalition fractures, and that you know, this is not a
coalition that sort of immediately transfers its loyalty to jd Vance.
It doesn't immediately go to Don Junior, it doesn't immediately

(58:01):
go to Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. And that there
will be a moment at that fracturing where sort of
people in history can begin to try to reassert itself.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
You have, You've given voice to why. I just think
that we're gonna turn a corner. Now. It's gonna be
uneven and I don't know, you know, the Democratic Party
still had you know that there. They still think they're
just going to benefit from a seesaw effect, and until
they sort of come up with a better theory of

(58:44):
the case, we could be living in this sort of
uneven period for for some time.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
And by the way, there's there's an there's a point
there that I think is important, Chuck, which is I
think Democrats have still not appropriately admitted that Trump voters
aren't wrong.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
That's well, until they get there. I wrote this couple
substecs ago. The Democrats don't don't recover until they admit
Trump voters were right about some things. Yes, And because
they have to go win those voters, and you're not
going to win them by telling them how wrong they

(59:28):
were about Trump, that the best shot you have at
them is to say you were right, and Trump lets
you down.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Yes, And then I think Democrats have done this weird
thing where the two times Donald Trump has beat them,
they have just put an asterisk next to that election
and been like, oh, you know, twenty sixteen Russia, Hillary's emails,

(59:56):
that'll never happen again. Oh, twenty twenty four Biden was
too old. We shouldn't have nominated Kamala. There were only
one hundred and seven days. You know, that'll never happen again,
and that sort of We're only.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
One white male.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Away from running a totally normal election that we can win.
And I think it's a lot deeper than that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
No, I don't think Democrats have lost enough yet. It's
not lost in me that they needed a second kick
to the head after eighty four. You know, eighty four
was supposed to be the all time low for them,
and then they went and nominated a technocrat, not a
total liberal, but a technocrat, and that didn't work either, right,

(01:00:56):
because he was a cultural This is sort of culturally
out of touch, and it just was a you know,
that's when they realized they had to have a cultural makeover.
It wasn't just a policy makeover they need to because
do Coccus's policies were fine for the electorate. What it
really was was cultural issues. And that's what Bill Clinton understood.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
I would like to have to live in the country
where Mike Docaucus's rail policies kicked in. Starting in nineteen
eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I had somebody say something made myself I had somebody
who made me feel better about our rail policy when
he noted, because you know, I did, you know, over
a couple holidays ago, did a family did the family
did a family trip to Germany and did the whole thing,
the whole German history thing, which is just amazing. And
we took the train from Berlinda Munich and it's unbelievable, right,

(01:01:52):
unbelievable ride, beautiful train. And as somebody said to me,
he says, because you're a prioritized their trains for people
and their roads for freight, and America prioritize their trains
for freight and their roads for people. And then this
person argues, and you may not love it, but whose

(01:02:13):
GDP is bigger? And I just thought it was somebody
that when this person framed it that way, and they
weren't a lobbyist for CSX for what it's worth, Okay,
I'm not gonna that wasn't like it was more of
an economic economist. And I thought, huh, I hadn't thought
of it that way. That. Look, it's true, and had
we prioritized trains for people instead of freight, we would

(01:02:36):
have better.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Rout I believe that certainly, has some truth to it.
I would like to think in a country with as
much space as the United States has, we could have
gotten both.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
We could have done both that too, right and had
a nice, nice, comfortable rail system. Yeah, and with that,
you ever thought about dabbling outside of politics and government. No,
you're not going to get suckered in like Woodward did
with John Belushi.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Uh, very very boring. Uh answer I because OJ.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Here's what Here's the only thing I would love to
see us do when I say us somebody of your
historical because I do think OJ is a story we
haven't revisited correctly.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
I think we got close with the We got close
with at least explaining why LA responded the way they
did to OJ, and that's what the ESPN, But we've
never fully explained how. You know. I'm I'm one of
those who says, without OJ, you don't get Trump. M hmm.

(01:03:47):
Because OJ fundamentally changed the TV news business. Before OJ,
it was not you know, there there's always been this
obsession that it's a ratings driven business, but it actually
wasn't until OJ. Because that was the moment when news
divisions decided, Hey, why don't we give people what they

(01:04:09):
want to watch as a newscast rather than what they
need to watch. Mh. We didn't do that pre OJ,
but OJ was the first time, Hey, this was this
was an event we wanted treated like a news story,
and the audience asked for that, and CNN said okay.
And CNN made a boatload of money and they made

(01:04:29):
so much money doing it. Then NBC and Fox said,
wait a minute, we want a piece of this cable business.
You guys can't have it alone. So if I were
to throw an eye, if I were throwing pitches at
you for what you should tackle, how OJ changed you

(01:04:52):
know how? I do think the OJ aification of the
news business set us on this course. Yeah, that we
are that we of the algorithmic. You know, before we
had algorithms deciding what we wanted to see. We told,
you know, we told CNN no, no, no, no no, we're
going to watch court TV if you don't cover OJA.

(01:05:14):
And they said, okay, we'll cover OJ. We'll stop covering news,
We'll just do OJ twenty four seven. It's a great
business decision. It changed journalism forever.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
And it gave us the Kardashians.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
I love to remind people of this. You will love this. Garrett.
I teach a class at USC. OJ died on the
day that I was teaching, So I thought, oh, at
USC students, I've got to do OJ. So I said,
all right, we're scrapping what the lecture is going to be.
We're going to do OJ. You know, this is USC
you guys, you know, and before I got there, this

(01:05:50):
is whatever he died last year, I think it was.
So I do a quick ask, you know, what do
you guys know about OJ? The first thing someone says
is isn't he Chloe Kardashian's file?

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
And I knew.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
I was like, oh man, this is going to be
a long couple of hours. I just throw that out there.
I think it's the one pop culture event that had
true political ramification. Yeah, but I think you're right because
of what it did to the news media, and I
don't think we've fully reckoned with it. I've had this
conversation with my friend Andy Lack, who was head of

(01:06:24):
the NBC at the time, and he pushes back on
me a little bit, and you know, he says, oh,
the news business has always covered a little bit of
what people want and a little bit of what people need,
and it's like, yeah, but we used to have a balance.
Yeah the minute we had a metric every fifteen minutes
of what people were thinking. Then all of a sudden
we changed. We let the audience be the managing editor. Yeah,

(01:06:46):
that's an interesting theory.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
What do you got going on with Long Shadow? Before
I let you go? People come in and subscribe, what
do they get.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
So Long Shadow? We are just out with our fourth season.
This is the story of every season. We try to
do a as I was saying at the top, sort
of pick us story in the news today and tell
us how we got to today. And this year's season

(01:07:19):
available wherever you get your podcasts, is the breaking of
the Internet, sort of how a tool that was supposed
to bring us together ended up driving us all apart.
And it was, as I was talking about earlier, I think,
a fascinating example. I lived a lot of the story.
You lived a lot of the story, you know. I

(01:07:40):
think one of the hardest things that we struggled with
in this season was to take people back to the
early two thousands and sort of how promising and exciting
the Internet seemed before we sort of all realized it
was going to ruin our politics and our world was

(01:08:01):
sort of just how exciting the Internet was, and that
trajectory from there to you know, the manosphere and the
red Pill today, you know, turns out to be a
much more linear story of individuals making important decisions along

(01:08:26):
the way that seemed relatively inconsequential at the time, but
really altered the trajectory of the way that we consume information.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
What is the fork in the road moment on algorithms.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
The fork in the road algorithms is Facebook choosing to
be advertiser driven. That's what changes the whole Internet, because
the moment that they decide that they are going to
be advertiser driven.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Max basically driven by shareholders or investors.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Right, Yeah, that was you know, Facebook going public and
you know, needing to make a lot of money really quickly,
and Facebook deciding that begins to optimize the whole site
for how long they can keep users engaged. And what
Facebook figures out pretty quickly with its newsfeed algorithm, followed

(01:09:28):
later by Twitter and you know almost every other social
media site since is that things that make people angry
make them engage, And so if you want engagement, you
want enragement and that sort of they begin to very

(01:09:50):
carefully tweak that algorithm so that what you see in
your news feed is the story of things that make
you mad prize us, and that we now sort of
understand from internal Facebook documents that Facebook weights prioritizes the

(01:10:13):
equivalent of its dislike button five times more strongly than
the like button. And so you know, whatever you're scrolling
through chuck that makes you personally angry, you get five
times more that content than that which you actually like,
and that that it becomes the backdrop of so much

(01:10:35):
of the backlash to the Arab Spring, you know, literal
genocide in Me and mar the Russian interference in the
twenty sixteen campaign, and then of course you know COVID
and anti vaccine conspiracies and sort of the the big

(01:10:59):
lie leading up to January sixth.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
I love what you're doing. There's a similar there's a
business podcast. Do you you ever done the Acquired series?

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Yeah, there they do very it's sort of episodic, big long,
deep dive, slightly different, but like on a company, How
did Google become Google? That sort of thing. It's a
I think it's the best of podcasting yeah, you know,
so I am. I'm glad it's there. Do you do

(01:11:31):
you think it's that I don't think books are getting replaced,
but do you Is this a because these are all
things you could have done as a book, but you're
doing it as a podcast. Is that simply a choice
or it could be in either or and right now
the podcast makes more sense to be.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
There a little bit of either or. You know, podcasts
reach a different audience, which you know is U has
its strengths and from a production standpoint, they're also sort
of slightly different stories that you can sort of tell
and in a podcast where you have good archival sound,

(01:12:16):
where you have you know, good interviews that you can
do that sort of make these stories more come alive
than I think they can on the page.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Well, look, it's what you're what you were built to do.
So it's now it's like you don't you know, usually
big historical book authors they do a big book, they
take a break and they do you're just now you've
I'm guessing you always have how many projects, live projects
do you have going at one time?

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
Oh? I love the mix of sort of the short
term magazine newsletter writing, the you know, sort of mid
term mid length podcast writing and the long term book writing.
You know, I try to do a book every year
or eighteen months, depending on what the topic is, and

(01:13:08):
then one podcast season a year, and then try to write,
you know, more or less weekly for my newsletter.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
It's wonderful, seems very simple, but I'm well aware of
that that you fall behind very quickly, exactly matter what,
no matter what, no matter how well you think your scheduleding. Garrett,
thanks for humoring me. I went a little longer than
I planned to, but you know, you're too good of
a conversationalist. I'm just too into this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Well, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, and
I've appreciated our friendship across a lot of different chapters
of our respective lives.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
No, and at a minimum, I enjoyed the history brainstorming here. Yes,
you know of different ways to tackle different things, and
I have a feeling you would be an interesting candidate.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
On Bill clin I have considered it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Yes, well, I I hope you pursue it, and I
totally agree. I think it's it. Probably it probably needs
to wait until there's there's a un till all the
actuary tables have kicked in yep. So well, I know
we all are interested. We're all interested in what Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Has to say, and I will look forward to crediting
you on the first line of the acknowledgments of the
OJ book. There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
Well, there's more to be done here. I keep trying
to look for a better way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
When I spend time. Let's just say, I wrote an
entire essay and my former company begged me not to
have it air, and they had that right, but I
do think it's it's our it's case, it's television news
is original sin? Anyway, all right, my friend, thanks for

(01:14:59):
the time.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
I Hey,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Interview Only w/ Garrett Graff - From Nixon to Trump: America’s Nonstop Modern Presidential Scandals