The Bulwark Podcast

So joining me on the podcast today to talk about his blockbuster new book with amazing timing, Ellie Honig who's a former federal prosecutor and who's worked for eight plus years as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, senior legal analyst for CNN and is out with a new book, Untouchable, How Powerful People Get Away With It.

What your rant today brought to mind was the way that Donald Trump has a hold over people around him to prevent them from testifying against him, to prevent them from becoming witnesses against him.

The engaging book demonstrates how those who can exert substantial power of some kind through public office, great wealth, control of a crime family have consistently been able to avoid paying a price for serious wrongdoing.

I go inside the Justice Department. I got people to speak to me. I say in the book well over half a dozen people who were all over this case, different perspectives. And the story, the inside story is really revealing.

He has successfully intimidated witnesses. He's intimidated prosecutors. He has intimidated his political opponents. And there is that sense that he is kind of Untouchable.

I did a paperback version of my book and the publisher said you need to do a new chapter I said can do I had plenty to add um one of the funny things about bill bar is I write on my book you know he always put on this act of like I'm too old for this crap.

So to join us to talk about everything that's going on today, as well as their new book, Julian Zelizer and Kevin Kruse are back on the podcast. Both of them are professors of history at Princeton University and they are co-editors of Myth America. Historians take on the biggest legends and lies about our past.

Our book certainly is an effort to explain to people what we know about all these major areas of American history, but what's going on in Florida I suspect will be replicated.

So let's get these historians together and put it all in a single place of volume where we can dress a wide variety of these myths and lies and try to set the record straight.

And we also are responding to what we've now discussed about this assault attack on the classroom, on educational leaders.

The book is Myth America historians take on the biggest legends and lies about our past.

I wrote a biography of Jimmy Carter that came out fairly recently and he was scrupulous about these things.

I wrote this book about Jimmy Carter. So in 1979, right before the 1980 election, already the Kennedy-Carter split was flaring into view.

He now writes the sub-stack newsletter Old Goats and you can subscribe.

also the author of The Show That Never Ends the rise and fall of prog rock.

Mike Schmidt joins Charlie Sykes today. . . author of Donald Trump versus the United States and that book's paperback edition is out this week and includes a new 12,000 word afterward which is a basically a biography of General John Kelly in details of his time as Trump's chief of staff

Mike schmidt, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Mike is washington correspondent for the new york times winner of the Pulitzer prize author of donald trump versus the united states the paperback edition of that book is out this week And we've been talking about the 12 000 word afterward which discusses general john kelly, um and his His tenure as trump's chief of staff

Mike Schmidt joins Charlie Sykes today. . . author of Donald Trump versus the United States and that book's paperback edition is out this week and includes a new 12,000 word afterward which is a basically a biography of General John Kelly in details of his time as Trump's chief of staff

Author of donald trump versus the united states the paperback edition of that book is out this week And we've been talking about the 12 000 word afterward which discusses general john kelly, um and his His tenure as trump's chief of staff

something that the late Tom Wolf chronicled in great detail.

I think every every speaker every every politician should be handed a a copy of the memoirs of Marcus Aurelius who was a Roman emperor who wrote you know nobody's gonna remember me very soon

So he showed this to Tim O'Brien who wrote the book Trump Nation.

Also, the author of a critically important book, which I strongly recommend where the law ends inside the Mueller investigation.

Andrew Weissmann's book where the law ends inside the Mueller investigation really a must read for that period

Susan Glasser and Peter Baker's book, "The Divider" captures the threat Trump posed. But as they told Charlie Sykes, their book is not just history: It's also a prologue if he returns to power.

Nobody ever took a look at the full four year history of this presidency, right? They did pieces of it. There's some remarkably good books out there, but they all did a piece of it a year here or a topic there. Nobody sat back and said, okay, what is this whole four years add up to?

As Peter said, we did something like 300 original interviews, all of them after Trump left office and his second impeachment in order to essentially take testimony, but it's also a pretty urgent guide to understanding the vulnerabilities in the institutions that Trump tested and tested over four years.

The book is The Divider Trump in the White House 2017 2021 Susan Glasser staff writer at the New Yorker Peter Baker chief White House correspondent for The New York Times thank you both so much for coming on the podcast today

No look that was actually one of the interesting sort of backdrops to finishing our work on the biography of Secretary Baker was that it was taking place during the rise and then the presidency of Donald Trump

I actually know this and I don't need you telling me this because I learned it as a really, really young woman when I saw a John Sayles film called Lone Star.

And I described the scene in Lone Star. And then he cut me off and said, God, don't you love John Sayles? I love John Sayles.

Probably right now my hero far and away is Elizabeth Strout. She wrote Olive Kitteridge that won the Pulitzer several years ago, but she just writes in a style that I'm always trying to emulate, which is very, very spare, never saccharine or indulgent.

She just writes about people that she comes up with and their very ordinary lives and the fact that she can make them so enthralling and have her prose just kind of, just have me not being able to go to sleep at night because I can't stop thinking about it is everything I would hope to accomplish in my own writing.

his latest book is Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

Mark is a staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest book is Thank You for Your Servitude, Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission.

David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, the author of 10 books most recently, Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic author of 10 books. Most recently, Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy.

I mean, one of my favorite movies is LA Confidential and there's a great line where the corrupt captain says to the corrupt officer we must have a clarification session one of these days and I think you know this is going to be the clarification.