Robert Reich on Democrats’ Failures, Trump’s Fascism & Populism

22:30Kara Swisher:But I want you to get an idea of how you do that. I mean, because this is from your history, because you're trying to go with your history to understand how to get to the future, presumably. Again, authentic politics in which you say to people, the reason you are struggling is because big corporations and very wealthy people have too much power and they are abusing that power. And here is how they're abusing it. And you go through five or six or 10 or 20 examples. And then you say to them, the way we get our politics and our economy and our country back is, and then you go through how we actually do that.

23:11It's through organizing and mobilizing. And then you say, for example, here are the things that we could do. Paid family leave, universal basic income, childcare. A whole panoply of policies. But the policy is at the end. I mean, you have to tell a story that people understand and resonates with their lives.

23:31Kara Swisher:So here's a good story. Elon Musk, he spent close to$300 million to get Trump elected. He and a phalanx of tech billionaires lined up to support Trump at the inauguration. It was kind of untoward. I recently asked Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, if Democrats should try to win back tech entrepreneurs, and he thought they should. Do you agree with that, or would they inevitably pull the Democratic Party again away from working-class voters and towards policies that, once again, benefit the wealthy? Listen, if they're tech entrepreneurs who actually agree with what's happened, see what's happened, and see that corporations have too much power, and see that the wealthy have too much power and influence, fine, that's good.

24:11In fact, there used to be some tech entrepreneurs like that. Elon Musk is a completely different creature. In fact, the Democrats ought to be using Elon Musk as an example of what happens when too much money is in the hands of too few people. You can buy a presidency, you know, for a quarter of a billion dollars. That's what he did. Use Elon Musk as your exhibit A. I mean, use Donald Trump as exhibit B, what happens when people are fed up and angry and they think that the system is rigged against them. And they're right, but they don't want to elect a demagogue who is actually a front for the wealthy and powerful.

24:51They want to elect somebody who cares about them and is going to be actually for them.

24:57Kara Swisher:So if we go back to originalists, as working class voters choose bigoted cultural populism Trump offered because there was no economic populist message coming from Democrats to fill the void. Would economic populism be enough to win them back? Aligning voters on culture issues like religious values, sexual mores, language norms is powerful. I think economic populism is much more powerful than cultural populism. But Democrats have not done it. Apart from, you know, Bernie and AOC and, you know, here and there a little bit. But no, you have not had a Democratic Party really since FDR that embraced economic populism.

25:39So we don't have a fair test of economic populism. But where it's been employed, and again, I want to emphasize, Bernie Sanders, the least likely presidential candidate, when he came along in 2015, 2016, people said, are you kidding? He's an old white man, Jewish. He calls himself a social Democrat. How can he? Well, look how close he came.

26:04Kara Swisher:But Bernie's share of the Democratic primary vote did decline from 2016 to 2020. He won pluralities in some cases in early primaries, but his overall share of primary vote declined. What's the takeaway from that? Does it mean we need a Bernie version that's more appealing or what? What's the takeaway? I think we need a younger Bernie. And ideally, I would say it would be a female younger Bernie. Sounds like someone he was on tour with. It might be AOC. Make the case for her, because she gets a lot of pushback from the Republicans for certain, and definitely from the Democrats. Well, I mean, the fact that she gets pushback from Republicans is probably one of the, it makes my case for me.

26:41Kara Swisher:But Democrats too, I was going to say. What people really value is authenticity and charisma and saying stuff that rings true to average people. And she has all of that. And she's young and she knows, you know, everything from social media on through the way people talk. You know, I've been teaching for 42 years, Cara. I know young people. I hang around with young people. They're slightly different culturally. You know, the 18 to 22-year-olds or 25-year-olds, we've got to get them engaged and involved. And they are, they want to be. This is one of my things that keeps me most optimistic, because as dark as it is right now, the generation that's coming up, they are fabulous.

27:30Kara Swisher:They are. They are ingenious and bright and dedicated and committed, and they want to change the world. They want to do it, and they will do it if we give them a chance. So every episode, we get an expert to send us a question for our guest, and yours comes from Larry Summers. We called him up, and we got a question from him. Let's hear it. Bob, congratulations on your memoir. I have so many fond memories of our conversations and our debates. Here's my big question for you. You have stood for a populist approach to economic policy. Many argue that Bill Clinton's corrective of the Democratic Party's tendency to move too far left was what reoriented the party for victory.

28:23that Joe Biden's move back towards the kind of policies you advocated contributed to Democrats who are standing on economic issues in 2024, which contributed to Donald Trump's coming back into office. People don't have the desire to take from the rich that you think they should have. isn't the evidence somewhat against your views as to what people want?

28:59Kara Swisher:The debate continues. Larry, if you're listening to this, I appreciate your question, but implicit in your question is bullshit, truly bullshit. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats have not had an experiment, a president who is actually an economic populist. I mean, Joe Biden is as close as the Democrats have come, and his problem was largely a communications problem. I mean, he just, you know, we all know it. A lot of people around him apparently did not want anybody else to know it, but we all found out about it. Had Joe Biden been charismatic and younger with the kind of policies that he was using, he would have clearly won re-election.

29:48over, what, over Trump? I mean, remember, let me put this in context. We are dealing with an authoritarian fascist. If the Democrats ever had a time to show what Democrats can do and what Democrats are, this is the time. In terms of Bill Clinton's, I'm proud of being part of Bill Clinton's administration, but the economic outcome of Bill Clinton's administration was a slight upward tick in the business cycle, followed by the implosion of the stock market in terms of what we had in 2000 after people got less inclined to buy all of these wild internet stocks. And then we didn't really see the underpinnings start to fall apart.

30:41Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, and I'm going to blame you a little bit, Larry, and Bob Rubin, you wanted to deregulate Wall Street. And look what happened. I mean, your deregulation of Wall Street led almost directly to the Wall Street financial crisis, which made it almost impossible for Barack Obama to do much of anything except try to bail out Wall Street and get the economy back on track. So if you don't mind me saying so, Larry, I love you, but you're full of shit.

31:13Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

31:23Kara Swisher:Megan Rapinoe here. This week on Why Are You Like This, I got to sit down with legendary Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve in Chicago during All-Star Weekend. We get into her personal style of activism, how she supports her players as people, and why she proudly considers herself a dyke. Then we learn if she's more of a mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

31:53Kara Swisher:Hey, girl, it's Teffy. This week on Teffy Talks, we're talking about parasocial stand-ups with Ariana and Perez Hilton, a Harry Potter star joining OnlyFans, and the Met Gala's questionable theme for next year. If you're not already following the show, find us everywhere at Teffy Talks. Subscribe on YouTube and all the podcast platforms and Instagram and TikToks you can share with your other work bestie. Promise? Swear. You're so sexy when you swear like that.

32:32Kara Swisher:Concerns about dark money in U.S. politics date back years, at least to Citizens United. the 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed barriers on corporate spending in elections. During midterm cycles and presidential races, there's always grumbling about dark money. And this year in Michigan, it sometimes seemed like the whole race. The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC spent about$30 million boosting the campaign of Haley Stevens. Her opponent, Abdullah Syed, drew attention to this again and again, and she lost. AIPAC is in a difficult position. Its support can now be a liability. And some people are questioning the way the organization disperses money.

33:07I'm going to sound crazy when I say this, but Crush Magapack is affiliated with a different pack called Save Democracy.

33:13Kara Swisher:And Save Democracy has received$100 ,000 from United Democracy Project, which is APAC Super PAC. So sometimes the layers here are two or three or even four packs deep. On Today Explained, the backlash against APAC. Today Explained drops every weekday. So let's switch gears and talk about recent news items. We'll jump around a little bit since there's so much to talk about. Trump has been using the tariffs or threats of tariffs to bully other countries into accepting trade deals. In the book, you criticize Democratic leaders for embracing NAFTA and lowering tariffs. On China, in your sub-stack, you say Trump's tariffs will lead to higher prices.

33:50Kara Swisher:Should the Democrats have been implementing a smarter version of Trump's tariffs and use trade policy to protect American workers from foreign competition? And how do they do that without also raising prices for consumers? What you want to do is have selective tariffs. tariffs that are helpful to you in engineering and promoting the industries of the future. I mean, this goes back to Alexander Hamilton. This is what Hamilton got us to do. But you also, at the same time, you want to help gain the skills, help workers gain the skills they need to flourish in these new industries. Artificial intelligence is going to make this more complicated.

34:28It's not going to change the thrust of what I just said. So you need a tariff policy that is selective and smart, and you need an industrial policy that complements that tariff policy. And right now we have the opposite. We've got a stupid tariff policy, and we've got an industrial policy that coddles oil and gas and steel and the 19th and 20th century industries of America.

34:56Kara Swisher:That's where you agree with Elon Musk in that regard. Israel is also causing mass starvation in Gaza, and death toll in the Palestinian enclave is close to 60 ,000. You say in the book that Biden's legacy, quote, will be forever tainted by his failure to stop Benjamin Netanyahu from creating a bloodbath in Gaza. And you recently posted on Blue Sky that Netanyahu is a war criminal and that U.S. must halt military assistance to Israel. Why is a democratic nostalgia so reluctant to criticize Israel, and what will it take to change that? I certainly know young people have changed rather dramatically.

35:26Well, AIPAC, the Israeli, basically pro-Israeli political action committee, has been a huge problem for the Democrats. I'm very active in Democratic primaries. If I were head of the Democratic National Committee, I'd say, let's get rid of all special interest groups in primaries. Let's not allow AIPAC to have the kind of influence it has. And the other thing that Democrats need to say, and particularly people like me, Jewish, we ought to say, we're not anti-Semitic. Obviously, we're not anti-Zionist, but we're anti-Netanyahu. There's a difference. You know, Netanyahu is, in my view, a war criminal.

36:07That doesn't mean I'm anti-Zionist. I, you know, I think Israel is extraordinarily important, and I am not anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination. We've got to be a little bit more precise. And Democrats, this is not difficult. Democrats can do this.

36:25Kara Swisher:Now, the Trump administration has been attacking universities for allegedly allowing the Gaza protests on their campus to descend into rampant anti-Semitism. You recently retired after teaching approximately 40 ,000 students across your career as a professor at Harvard, Brandes, and UC Berkeley. Do American universities have this anti-Semitism problem that Trump touts? There were protests that crossed the line and made Jewish students feel unsafe, that's for sure. That's obviously wrong. But many protesters are pointing out what is becoming now conventional wisdom. Even Israeli human rights groups are accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

36:57Kara Swisher:Talk a little bit about this, about being on a campus at this point. It's exciting to be on a campus where students are protesting about something as basic as human rights in Gaza and against what is happening there. And let me just say, I have not only taught for 42 years, but I used to be a student myself in the 1960s of all times. You know, there's a protest or bad protests that are based in moral outrage are good. Hello. And if some people are offended by them, well, you know, that's unfortunate. And maybe they could be a little bit more sensitive, the protests, to the feelings of particular groups and individuals.

37:43But I think that the Trump administration is using anti-Semitism, so-called, as a pretext for cracking down on universities. It's doing the same thing with DEI, and it's doing the same thing with transgender people and students. They are just excuses for the Trump administration cracking down on what conservatives for years have thought were bastions of liberalism. This goes back to the 16th century.

38:13Kara Swisher:Having been on the college campuses as long as you have, where does it go from here? What's the next step? Well, I think the next step is for universities not like Columbia and not like my alma mater, Dartmouth, universities to get together, to join together. In unity, there is strength. It's not just labor unions. Universities have to join together and have got to say to Trump, no. We are not going to bow and scrape, and we're not going to give up any academic freedom. We're not going to allow you to intimidate us. But there is money at stake. Well, there's a lot of money at stake. But if universities are all together, they have much greater possibility of pushing back than if Trump can divide and conquer.

39:02Kara Swisher:Which is what he's doing right now. Moving along, you said recently that you fear that Zoran Mamdani and Representative Ocasio-Cortez won't appeal to working people and that you fear that, quote, they will be carried in the currents of progressive politics, which right now are overwhelmingly college graduates in urban and coastal centers. That's not bad, but you have to be inclusive. You have to include working class and the poor. What should politicians like them, who are very compelling to people, do to include working class and the poor that they aren't already doing? In the case of Mamdani, a lot of the working class voted for Cuomo.

39:36Well, yes, I tried to explain that in a recent interview. I think the reason that a lot of the working class voted for Cuomo is Cuomo has the name and he has the endorsements. And Mamdani is not that well known yet. When he becomes better known, I think the working class will understand and respond to him. So I don't think it's a major—neither he nor AOC has got to go through a major change in what they're saying. I think they're saying the right things.

40:06Kara Swisher:But there seems to be a paradox at the heart of the progressive movement. College-educated intellectuals develop policy ideas that are meant to uplift working-class people, but they're oftentimes divorced from many of the core values that working people care about. Well, more to the point, though, I think college-educated people, who are now 40 % of the adults in this country, look down their noses at non-college people. There's a kind of, the divide is not just economic. It's also social and there's a snobbery that goes with being a college graduate. I think that's what we have to, and that's what our leaders should be helping us overcome.

40:46Kara Swisher:So I'm going to go to a couple more things. I want to talk about Trump at the end. ICE raids have been in the news since Trump took office, and labor unions are lending their way to protests against Trump's mass deportation plans. But historically, they've been wary of undocumented immigrants. For example, people don't know this. I didn't. Cesar Chavez spearheaded a 300-person effort to patrol the border in the 1970s. More recently, construction unions are often opposed to competition from undocumented workers, even if their businesses are getting hurt right now. What do you say to American workers who believe they're losing work or seeing their wages decline because of undocumented immigrants?

41:19Kara Swisher:And what's the argument for being against mass deportations if you're a labor union person? The notion that average working people are suffering wage drops because of all of the undocumented people who are competing with them doesn't wash. There have been a lot of studies, Cara, showing that actually they're two separate labor markets. Most American workers, even lower working class American workers, don't want to do the jobs that many of the immigrants who are undocumented are willing to do. They're separate labor markets. They don't compete with each other. That's point number one. Point number two is that certain unions like the UAW understand that if you organize immigrants, you're actually going to have more power in terms of fighting unscrupulous employers, which gets back to my theme about we are all in this together.

42:17Now, could we ever have an immigration system that actually was open and fairer and didn't depend on people who are here who are undocumented? The answer is obviously yes. And it wasn't that long ago. You remember when we had almost a consensus in the Senate and in the House among Republicans, Democrats, for immigration law reform. But, you know, there are too many kind of insidious, dark forces out there in American politics that don't want there to be bipartisan reform. They want to harangue and generate a great deal of anger and fear toward immigrants. And Donald Trump is right up there at the top.

43:00Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm. So how do you make the argument that undocumented workers, because in some cases do hurt American wages in construction, for example, how do you make that argument to them from your perspective? If you want, you know, to be on the side of the working class, how do you make that argument to them? Well, first of all, even in construction, I mean, I've seen the data. The construction, it's not clear that American workers are hurting because of undocumented workers in construction. Again, there's certain jobs, but it's very, we're talking about very low numbers. I think you make the argument to American working class people who are unions or non-union members.

43:43you say, look, we are all benefiting from the labor of undocumented people here in the United States. Now, we do ultimately want to regularize this. We don't want to, because they shouldn't have to be second-class citizens. So we want there to be a door that is much bigger in terms of legitimately coming here from other countries to do work. But let's not kid ourselves. You know, not only do we benefit from their work, but, you know, they are contributing to Social Security and to Medicaid and everything else, but they're not getting it back because they're not eligible for it. But they contribute through their, many of them, through their paychecks.

44:25You know, I live in a part of California that has a lot of undocumented workers, and I know them personally, and they're part of the community, and they are woven into the community. You know, we're dealing with human beings who are hardworking community members who have families. Everybody knows them. It's inhumane to do what we are now doing.

44:47Kara Swisher:So let's finish speaking of inhumane, talking about President Trump. His administration is rife with conflicts of interest, obviously. You recently highlighted how Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik's family business empire is benefiting from the administration's policies. And the Trump family's conflict of interest in their crypto schemes is about as blatant as any corruption we've ever seen. They are saying it's transparent, so that's okay. But so far, voters don't seem particularly upset by it. If anything, Trump seems to have normalized corruption. How do you change that? Because being shocked is not seemingly working.

45:16Kara Swisher:Your entire premise is that money is corrupting our politics and our democracy. So there's a problem if the public shrugs it off, correct? I don't think the public is shrugging it off. I think it's getting buried under so much other outrageous news. I mean, Donald Trump is the master of deflecting attention from one thing. He doesn't want people to, for example, Jeffrey Epstein. He doesn't like that one. So what does he do? He accuses Barack Obama of treason. I mean, I think people are outrage-numbed right now. And if we actually focused on some of the corruption going on, you know, most people, I looked at the polls right after Trump got this plane, this palace in the sky.

45:58Right. That he says is actually for the United States government. It's not for the United States government. It's for himself. He gets to use it after he leaves office, and it's his own personal palace. And Qatar. I mean, you know, there is a part of the Constitution that says no emoluments from—

46:18Kara Swisher:I get that, but how do you get the public to not just shrug it off? The way you do this is you talk about it, and you focus the public's attention on it. But right now it's hard because there's so much else that is outrageous. You know, maybe you wait till the August recess. We're now talking during the beginning of the August recess. Well, now maybe is the time for some courageous and thoughtful and articulate Democrats to say one of the biggest problems of this administration is outright bribery and corruption. And we're going to start with foreigners, but even the corporations and the wealthy people who are buying into Trump's businesses, they're getting benefits.

47:04And here, look at this, look at this, look at this. It's a huge and important story to tell. But it takes a life, if you do it in the context of what I've been talking about during this conversation, Cara, And that is the wealthy and the big corporations that are abusing their power. It's part of the abuse of power. Put it into that context and people can hear it.

47:32Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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48:12Kara Swisher:Ready to hit this school year with a fuller bank account and zero buyer's remorse? Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff. So you point out in the book that America needs two parties that are capable of governing, but the Republican Party has turned into a crazed cult. Is it possible to have a functioning democracy in a two-party system where one party doesn't follow the rules? And what happens to the party when the cult leader is gone? Well, we're going to find out. You know, I think J.D. Vance is a dangerous character. from all I know about him. Why is that?

48:46I think he's more intelligent than Trump. Now, he may not be as much of a con man as Trump in terms of Trump's natural instinct is to lie. I don't know that J.D. Vance has that much of a natural lying instinct, although he does a lot of it. I worry that Vance's backers in Silicon Valley, you know, some of the very, very big billionaires who don't like democracy, who are afraid of democracy because they think democracy is going to ultimately lead to confiscation of their income through tax increases. I worry about that. But I think that once Trump leaves the scene one way or another, I think it's going to be hard to rebuild democratic institutions.

49:36But let me make this point, and it's one that I believe in very strongly. We were on the road, even before Trump, to needing some fundamental reforms in our system. I mean, campaign finance was a dead letter. You know, the Supreme Court was allowing just everything in terms of big money. At the same time, it was narrowing civil rights laws and voting rights. So we do need fundamentally to change course. We've got to get big money out of our politics. We need to change the Supreme Court. Maybe we have to have an amendment to the Constitution if that's what it takes.

50:21Kara Swisher:So I'm going to read a quote from the book. Authoritarism isn't adequate to describe what Trump wants for America. Fascism would be more appropriate. You're not missing words, obviously. Trump is heading us towards fascism. What will take for America's to fight back. You have noted younger generations are ready to fight. You've criticized boomers for leading us into this mess. Are millennials and Gen Zers capable of getting us out of it? Oh, they certainly are capable. And I don't want to, again, it's a little, I try in the book not to tar with too broad a brush. I don't say it's all boomers. I mean, I think that my generation, the boomer generation, did come up short in terms, we did a lot of good things, but compared to what we were handed by our parents and the kind of legacy and trust that we were given, I think we did come up short.

51:15But I'm very optimistic about the future. I think the young people are fabulous and they have the energy and boldness of vision. They want to support candidates who are as energetic and bold, and they have an uncanny sensibility when it comes to what we might say is authenticity. They can smell a fake a mile away.

51:42Kara Swisher:So a documentary film crew filmed you during your last semester for a film called The Last Class. In it, you say, quote, a true leader helps people overcome cynicism. Some listeners may like your message of inequality and money and politics, but feel jaded about what other possibilities exist outside the current system. Why does our current economic model feel inevitable to so many people? And how do you persuade Americans, especially young Americans, that it's not? You do sense, if you do know young people, I have two young sons who are in that age group you're talking about, and they are both positive and very negative, I would say.

52:17Kara Swisher:They're like, they feel that they can't overcome. And at the same time, they seem to feel like they can. So how do you persuade all Americans that it's not written in stone? Well, it's a very good question. I draw this distinction with my students between pessimism and cynicism. I say it's perfectly fine to be pessimistic. You can even be skeptical. I want you to be skeptical. That's part of critical thinking. But I don't want you to be cynical because once you are cynical, Once you think it's hopeless, that nothing can change, then nothing will change. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I was fortunate enough and my generation fortunate enough to have been part of the civil rights movement and part of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

53:06And we saw change. And so there's a sense of agency that people, you know, as old as I am, have. We naturally think that it's possible. A lot of these young people, as you just pointed out, really don't have that kind of experience, that direct experience.

53:23Kara Swisher:No, they have Trump. And so I tell my students, start locally. Start in your communities. Your communities, every community needs, has problems. They need things done. Organize and mobilize locally. You'll see that you can make a huge difference and build on that sense of agency locally. Robert, as usual, you're wonderful. And it's a really fascinating career you've had here. It's a wonderful book and I hope everybody reads it. And in fact, I'm going to give it to my son. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate this and good to talk to you.

54:02Kara Swisher:On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Wassell, Kateri Yoakum, Megan Burney, Alison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. special thanks to Claire Hyman our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda and our theme music is by Trackademics if you're only following the show you're a moral giant like Robert Reich if not, you use too much oxygen go wherever you listen to podcasts search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine the Vox Media Podcast Network and us we'll be back on Thursday with more Thank you.