The End of Trump’s Power Grab?

0:00In 2024, a truck crashed into Canaw in Moresque, where I work. 146 of our dogs needed homes fast. We asked for help on Facebook. Our story spread through WhatsApp messages and Instagram reposts, immediately people stepped up. And just six hours later, every dog was fostered. I'll never forget how our community showed up for us. Learn how over 3.5 billion people connect to what matters with meta at meta.com slash community. Here's a shift worth noting, better healthcare is care that meets patients where they are. United health group is bringing it directly to living rooms. This is a win for patients managing chronic conditions. And here's the interesting thing, by closing those care gaps, administering in-home exams and identifying risks earlier, more diseases can be prevented and patient outcomes can improve. In 2025 alone, United Health Group patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. Saturday, March 7th, and we begin this hour with the growing body of evidence that Donald

1:11Trump's authoritarian experiment is on the decline. Pulling is consistently shown that Americans' top concern is the economy and affordability. And here's where Donald Trump's economy stands today. The economy lost 92,000 jobs last month, and there were downward revisions again to previous months, marking the fifth time in the last year that we've seen job losses due to revisions. There have been so many downward revisions this year that it's raising fears of a recession. Overall, the U.S. economy has been shedding jobs since the president launched his supercharged tariffs last April, which also continues to cause prices to rise. The stock market is down all around. The Dow Jones industrial average, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, which closely tracks to most Americans' retirement accounts, are each so far down that they've erased all gains made since the beginning of the year. And the war that Trump just launched against Iran has already estimated to cost taxpayers more than $7 billion. That's just the cost of the actual war, not the ancillary costs of a war.

2:12But it's not just an expensive war. It's a deeply unpopular war of choice. Being waged by an historically underqualified defense secretary who talks about it in public like a kid playing a video game and does not think that the deaths of American service members should be front-page news. It's a war that this administration appears unable to coherently explain to the American people. It's a war that's already killed about 1,700 civilians and soldiers, including six Americans. It's a war that a majority of Americans do not want. 56% said they oppose it according to a new NPR-PBS news-marist poll conducted this week. Meanwhile, the president's brutal and deadly deportation campaign has turned even those who supported his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail to vote against some of his policies. It is in fact one of the main reasons why Trump's approval rating has plummeted since he retook the presidency. Americans have witnessed the horrors that his federal immigration agents have visited on their neighbors, their immigrants and citizens alike, and on Thursday, he was forced finally,

3:13finally to fire his homeland security secretary, Kristi Nome, the woman he tapped to lead that crackdown. It happened on the heels of her humiliating performance in a pair of congressional hearings where she faced questions about the violent tactics that federal agents used during immigration operations. The repeated violations of citizens' constitutional rights, the $200 million that DHS spent on an ad campaign that she starred in after awarding the no-bid production contract to a brand-new firm that then hired a company with extensive ties to some of her own college political allies. Now, Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin has been chosen to replace Nome. Maybe you know him, maybe you don't, but if you don't remember who he is, here he is seen here suggesting that he might want to settle his differences with the teamsters president, Sean O'Brien, with a fist fight. You want to run your mouth? We can be too consenting adults. We can finish it here. Okay, that's fine. Perfect. You want to do it now? I'd love to do or I know. We'll stain your butt up, then.

4:14You stand your butt up. Oh, hold on. Oh, stop it. Make a solution every follow. Sit down. I'll try. I'll call it out. Okay, you know, you're a United States Senator. Sit back. Okay. You're a United States Senator. Sit down. That is Trump's new nominee for DHS secretary. And there's new trouble for his attorney general. Pam Bondy is facing what political calls an existential threat to her political future as five Republicans joined with Democrats this week in a vote to force her to testify in front of the oversight committee about the Epstein files. This is the Trump administration right now. If it all sounds like a deeply unpopular crisis, that's because it is. When Donald Trump retook the presidency last year, he thought he could be a strong man, but unlike what he thought, it turns out that running the United States of America purely on the worst impulses of an amoral wannabe dictator with no regard for the rule of law, the balance of power, common decency, and the good of the people is not actually sustainable. And this week we saw evidence of that. The beginning of Democrats and resistors walling off Donald Trump's power.

5:18On Tuesday, a handful of states held the first primaries of the 2026 midterm cycle and voters, especially in Texas, delivered a warning to the White House that has set Republicans scrambling. For the first time in more than 20 years, more Democrats participated in the Texas primaries than Republicans. A sign of how enthusiastic and motivated the Democratic base is to vote for a change in leadership. In total, more than 2.3 million Democrats cast a vote in the state's closely watched Senate race compared to 2.2 million who turned out for the Republican Senate primary. Democrats are energized. Republicans in Congress are turning against Donald Trump's cabinet, putting up roadblocks against his unfattered power. His economy and his war and his brutal immigration crackdown are deeply unpopular. Roadblocks will become walls if Democrats take control of Congress in November, which we now have every reason to believe will happen if American voters claim their agency and take back their country. Joining me now is the Congressman Robert Garcia. He's the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and government reform.

6:22Congressman Garcia, good to see you. I don't know how you have time to come on here and talk to me. You're awful busy. You could probably fill out the next six years with potential oversight hearings and do various people in this government. I mean, that's absolutely correct. I mean, the corruption just goes on and on. And I've said it before, this is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history. I'm glad that Chrissy Nome is gone. Pam Bondy should absolutely be next. And the level of corruption, whether it's on the Epstein files, which on the Trump family enriching themselves every single day, whether it's the catastrophic changes that are happening right now within our health system, the attacks on vaccines. This is a corrupt administration. I think what you're seeing across the country is people are beginning to stand up against it, including the Republicans in Congress. Yeah. And by the way, the Epstein files were sort of the one of the first examples of that, right? Where Republicans got together with Democrats. I have to wonder when we talk about this war in Iran, I have to wonder sometimes whether

7:25this is the Epstein war, right? This is a war that is created to have us not talk about it. Just as the intersection of Donald Trump and the Epstein files started to emerge, all of a sudden we got a war we have to talk about. Look, there has been consistent distractions. There has been consistent initiatives that Trump has launched every time the Epstein files case and investigation moves forward. So look, I'm not going to speak to the war. It's obviously a war that I oppose and Trump's motivations there, which we're still trying to figure out exactly what they are. What I will say is that this investigation around the Epstein case is the single largest bipartisan initiative. People support this and it's not just people on the ground, it's people in Congress. The fact that we had a United Democratic Committee and we were able to pull five Republicans to get us to actually bring the Attorney General in front of our committee with huge progress. All these subpoenas that we're getting as a committee, it's because Democrats are forcing these votes.

8:26So there is strength right now. There is support and Republicans are feeling their base is pushing back on Trump and saying that they want justice for the survivors and they don't want corruption. Talk to me about Pam Bondy, because the last time Pam Bondy testified before Congress, she was asked about Epstein files and she talked about the Dow and all sorts of things. She was really, she was performing for Donald Trump. How is this set of hearings going to be different? Well, there's two things that are different. The first is that for the Attorney General's last hearing, she got asked a variety of different topics, obviously a variety of subjects. There's corruption in every part of the Department of Justice. This upcoming deposition which will have Pam Bondy is solely specific to the Epstein files. It's also one that was driven by Democrats but had Republican support. Look, I don't agree a lot with Nancy Mace, but she's the one that actually made this possible. We teamed up with her and other Republicans to actually get the Attorney General in front of us.

9:26She'll know going into this, this is Epstein specific and the question remains, why are half of the documents, half, 50% of the documents still missing from the Epstein file release? You can imagine what is in that 50% of documents that the DOJ has withheld from the public and the Congress. We have serious questions about documents and make out allegations against the President that redact co-conspirators, we need answers from the Attorney General and from the White House. Let's talk about seven of those documents, including the DOJ saying that the FBI memos in the Epstein files that included these uncorroborated accusations, again, Donald Trump, were part of a batch of documents that were in their words incorrectly coded as duplicative. I mean, there were eight documents, right? Four of them were the actual, so-called FBI reports of an interview and then four of them were the notes taken of that. So there were eight documents having to do with this uncorroborated allegation against Donald Trump. Seven of which were missing. Right.

10:26I mean, look, I think first I personally went to the DOJ and saw these documents and I saw the index that basically listed all the documents that needed to be within that piece of the files and it's just so convenient that it was these documents about the President that were somehow gone or missing or removed. I mean, I think it's clearly intentional and we shouldn't buy anything that DOJ tells us they've been lying this entire time. But also, I think it's important for folks to know that even within that group of documents, which make these, of course, allegations from someone that was interviewed four times by the FBI, four separate times on these allegations, all the documents aren't still there. There are still some actual pages that are missing. They appear to be some of the notes between some of the agents back and forth and so there still isn't disclosure. On this one pretty serious allegation that's made, the DOJ continues to hold back information and documents and there are, with me understand, thousands and thousands and likely tens of thousands of pages of additional files that the DOJ has not given to the public in Congress.

11:31You know, when people can sometimes take these things for granted that the hearings happen and depositions happen, if you lie under oath in Congress, that's a serious matter. Supreme Court has said that Donald Trump can get away with a lot of stuff. That doesn't extend to Pam Bondy. That's right. And I think you look, I think you just, earlier in your show, you talked about Secretary Nome and what happened in large part, she's not here because of her horrific performance in front of Congress. And because Congress is able to ask tough questions, demand answers, they're under oath, and the same goes for the Attorney General. And people need to understand, and I've been very clear, that as Democrats, as we move forward and try to win this majority, which we're doing trying working on right now this November, when we win, we've got to have a forward look in agenda, but also accountability. And that means ensuring that all of these cabinet secretaries and others that cause real harm that hurt people, that defy the Constitution, that sent American citizens

12:33to detention centers and shot and kill people in our own streets. These people also need to be held accountable. We can't just move on from this accountability and justice will be very important. All right. So for my viewer who would like to play a role in this accountability. By the way, they have, they have in primaries, they have in elections, they have in local protest, they have in town hall meetings, they have in no Kings marches. But if they want to support the momentum that Congress seems to be building in accountability, which is not a partisan matter at all, what can they do right now? What can they do this week? What can they do to support those in Congress, Republicans and Democrats who would like to hold members of this administration accountable for corruption and illegality? Look, when Democrats have that majority, we will have immediate subpoena power, the ability to call cabinet secretaries in, the ability to slash Donald Trump's budget in ways that we just don't aren't able to right now. And so continuing to support winning that majority, the vote that happened this last week, staying engaged, not, I know that

13:34is a difficult moment. We oftentimes want to disengage from politics. We've got to lean in and continue to talk about Trump's damage in any space that we're in, whether that's at the supermarket, at the barber shop, at the family table, all of that momentum, those conversations that we're having in the pushback is actually putting pressure on that mega base, which is why we're getting these wins right now. I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene before she resigned, saying that her office was inundated by phone calls about cuts to the Affordable Care Act, the effect on rural Americans, the Epstein stuff, the, the doge cuts. Does that help if people call their members of Congress and, and complain? It does. We track, like anyone else, every member of Congress tracks calls. And what is happening right now is you're getting more and more Republican members of Congress getting calls, for example, about the Epstein files, about corruption. The Epstein files as an example, it's the most bipartisan issue in America. I mean, Republicans

14:37at, I think in the 70th percentile supported to full release, it's Donald Trump's worst issue, and they're getting hammered by their own base because they don't understand why we're protecting pedophiles and billionaires who harmed and raped women and children. And so we've got to be very clear at this moment, if this is about justice, this is not partisan, we want to get corruption out of government. I think that is a message it's got to resonate across the country for us. Obviously, the, the main story here is, is the survivors. The sort of a secondary story is this, the sense that the rich and the powerful are not subject to, to fairness. But, but really the story that is building here is this horrible process, this prolonged release of these files that, that the Department of Justice knew they had to release and the re-traumatizing, the, the causing of new anxiety amongst these survivors. One of those survivors, Marina LaCerta told MS now, quote, every time files are released, it's like survivors are just left holding on, waiting. It feels almost deliberate. Why can't we just have one comprehensive release of all the files,

15:39so we don't have to go through this piecemeal? Haven't they put us through enough? So the hell of a good question. She's absolutely right. And I talk to survivors all the time. And I think just a disregard of their privacy, the release of photos, the photos and in documents have not been redacted with their names, not just re-traumatizes them, it actually puts them in their families in danger. But Donald Trump and Pambondi don't seem to care. And one thing you just, you said this, I think is really important. Look, what this is about, this moment we're in, this is about the people at the very top that can get away with anything. Not only do they get huge tax breaks for themselves and their friends and large corporations, they can get away with hurting and terrorizing women and children, they can get away with almost anything in this country because Donald Trump protects them. And so as we move forward, these elections in this debate in this country has to be about those at the very top who are getting these massive breaks who are

16:40taking our money, taking our wealth, who are hurting our kids, and everyone else in this country who just wants a fair shot. And I think that's what this election coming in November is going to be all about. Thomas, good to see you as always. Thank you for being with us. California Congressman Robert Garcia. He's the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. All right, coming up, Donald Trump gathered leaders from 12 Latin American countries at his golf club this morning. And he hinted at which country could be next on his list for a quote, friendly take-off. Today in Daryl Florida at the president's golf club, leaders from 12 Latin American countries gathered for what the White House is calling the shield of the America's summit. The president spoke mostly about preventing cartel violence in the western hemisphere, but he also previewed what could be his next foreign adventure toppling the regime in Cuba. As we achieve a historic transformation event as well, we're also looking forward to the great

17:45change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba's at the end of the line. They're very much at the end of the line. They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that's been bad for a long time. Four of you said, actually, could you do us a favor? Take care of Cuba. I'll take care of it. Okay. The White House foreign policy brain trust was all there with Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivering his speech entirely in Spanish, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth following the president with these remarks. We share a hemisphere and geography. We share cultures, western Christian civilization. We share these things together. We have to have the courage to defend it. Notably, the newly minted special envoy of the shield of America's did not take the podium with the president at the summit. In case you don't know who that is, that is the newly ousted

18:48or the ousted DHS Secretary Christie Nome. She's been named to the envoy to the shield of America. She was there, by the way. We'll be right back. That's pure automotive joy. I'm Peter, the owner of Muscle Car Junior. It started as a hobby, then I started posting about it. Before I knew it, I built the business for storing muscle cars on Facebook Marketplace, and the community of car lovers on Instagram. Today, new customers send me what's that message is from all over. Not bad for a hobby. Learn how meta helps over 35 million American businesses, like Peter's Grow at meta.com slash community. Now, finding a doctor is a little less challenging. United Health Group is investing in tools that make it easier for patients to navigate health care and pay less. These transparency tools help patients find providers, and this is the big thing. Compare costs up front. The big picture, more transparent pricing benefits everyone. And these tools from United Health Group can help patients save hundreds of dollars annually.

19:51Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart, and about a thousand decisions a day. That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you. With the right guidance and customized solutions to help you reach your business goals. So whether you're planning your next move, upgrading your space, or scaling to meet demand, we make sure your business is ready for what's ahead, because we're big enough to support you. It's small enough to know you. Atlantic Union Bank. Anyway, you bank. After the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, then President George W. Bush achieved 87% public approval. According to NBC News, Wall Street Journal polling from the time. That number would slip as the war ground on over the years, but Bush had broad support from Congress and the American public in the beginning, because Americans backed military retaliation for the 9-11

20:54terrorist attacks on American soil. President Donald Trump has no such support for his war of choice in the Middle East today. There's no shot heard around the world he can point to for striking at Iran now. He's got no timeline to end this conflict, and his Secretary of Defense sneers at the suggestion of even having one. 56% of Americans in a new NPR PBS Marist poll say they oppose the latest US military action against Iran. 54% told CNN pollsters they fear Iran will become more of a threat now to the US as a result of this latest action. Among the many questions for the White House is why now and why just as negotiations with Iran over its controversial nuclear program appeared to be bearing fruit? Well, the official line from the White House appears to be essentially call it a hunch. This decision to launch this op-your operation was based on accumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America, and the president's feeling based on fact that Iran does pose an imminent indirect threat to the

21:56United States of America. The president's feeling based on fact administration officials say they do not believe that Iranians were negotiating in good faith. Trump now says any deal is off the table. He's called for quote Iran's unconditional surrender and the scope of the war is widening. Every day Iran is on the receiving end of a barrage of US and Israeli strikes and is retaliating by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and US military bases across the Persian Gulf. Although the decreasing number of launches suggests that Iran's munitions supply might be dwindling, however, America's arsenal may be diminishing too. It needs more interceptor missiles which are used to shoot down Iran's rockets and drones. The Guardian reported last year that the Pentagon only had 25 percent of the interceptors it needed for its stockpile and that was before this war began. A Pentagon spokesman denied that report telling the Washington Post that the military has quote everything it needs. Trump has also said that defense contractors have agreed to quadruple their production of weapons. Either way the US military typically fires two or three interceptors

23:00per target, which suggests that Iran is burning its drones at half the rate that America is using up its defenses, which could ultimately turn this into a war of attrition. Iran's threats to close the strait of Hormuz, which is a crucial corridor for shipping one-fifth of the world's oil, is spiking global fuel prices, the barrel of oil shooting up to $91. That's a 36 percent increase in a single week. That's already having an effect on the price of gas. The US Navy says it will escort ships through the narrow strait, which is only 21 miles at its narrowest point, but Qatar's energy minister predicted that Friday that the energy exporters in the Gulf would be forced to shut down production if the war worsens. No one at the White House seems to have anticipated that either. An energy executive told Politico that the administration is, quote, looking under every rock for ideas on improving energy prices, especially gasoline prices. Looking under every rock. Here's an idea. No one's asking me, but here's an idea. Don't start a surprise war without a clear objective near a key oil conduit. Either way the ultimate goal of

24:02this war continues to remain unclear. In the first video announcing the strikes exactly a week ago, Donald Trump told the Iranian people to rise up against their government. On Monday, after the strikes began, Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth dismissed the idea of nation building. He did say, however, this was not a regime change war, but the regime did change. Those are his words. But it didn't really. Iran's supreme leader was assassinated, but the people who ran Iran are still running it. Notably, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, which permeates every level of the state, of politics, and of the economy. Nonetheless, Trump told one reporter, quote, it's going to work like Venezuela did and praise that country's socialist vice president, Nicolas Maduro's right hand woman, Delsey Rodriguez, who's been in charge since the U.S. captured Maduro in January. That's not really regime change. If a complete toppling of the Islamic Republic is in fact the White House's goal, the U.S. may not be able to rely on air strikes alone. In Iran, there's no armed opposition to the government on the ground. And as far as we know,

25:05there's little notion of the country's armed forces turning on the regime. Joining me now is Nancy Yusuf. She's a staff writer at the Atlantic. Nancy, great to see you. Thank you for being with us. You recently reported a story titled The Glaring Oversight in the U.S. War Plan. Now, that could stand for a lot of things, but you had something very specific in mind when you wrote that. What's the glaring oversight that you're talking about? Well, you referenced it. It's the inability to defect against drone attacks by the Iranians because our intercepts cost millions and millions of dollars. They're drones cost thousands of dollars. But we have an ally in partner that have confronted the very same drones. These are called Shahid drones. That's a new crane because Iran shipped those drones to Russia. And so what we didn't see in the lineup to this is really reaching out to the Ukrainians and saying, what can we learn about how to combat this threat? It's perhaps the most formidable threat that the Iranians possess because right now the United States is very aggressively going after its ballistic missile

26:07capability. But those drones are resources and weapons that the Iranians can continue to produce and can continue to pose a threat not only to U.S. troops in the region but to allies and partners. And so how do you combat that with, as you noted, a limited supply, a very expensive interceptors? So we wanted to point out that there was a partner who could have guided the United States on how to come up with cheaper alternatives because the Ukrainians have had to do that throughout the war. And part because the United States has started to provide fewer and fewer weapons to Ukraine over the last year. I saw an Iranian-made Shahid drone when I was in Ukraine. They're relatively small. As you say, they're relatively inexpensive. And what Russia was doing is you toss a lot of them. Sometimes it'd be 20, 40, 70 drones and it becomes very hard for the interceptors to decide which one they're targeting. You can't send 70 interceptors up whether it's a FAD or a Patriot or a JDAM. These are American-made and they're super, super expensive to do. And you just can't,

27:11the mechanism doesn't work the same way. So the drones can in fact, in some cases, sort of overcome the missile defenses. That's right. Because when a missile goes up, let's use Patriot. It's looking for a target. If you have a sort of swarm of them coming near the Patriot, it gets confused, basically. It doesn't know where to target. So even if it hits some targets, others might get through. And so how do you defend against that? And again, this is a price differential. A Patriot missile could cost or a FAD missile can cost in the millions. As Shahid drone costs 30,000. Some of the alternatives that the Ukrainians have come up with are in the similar price point range. What the United States did develop was an offensive drone capability, which you might have heard about this week called the Lucas, but that doesn't help against that defensive threat that the Iranians are clearly using. While we've seen a drop in ballistic missile capabilities from them over the last week, it's been less of a drop on drones. And so it's clear that they're going to be leaning on these to sort of create pressure points and execute their plan, which is to make this work costly,

28:15both politically and economically, to the United States and its golf partners. So there's no world in which Iran was posing an existential threat to the United States, even though Donald Trump seemed to imply that during his state of the union or said what it would soon do that. Israel's got a different view of this thing. Netanyahu has built his entire political career on Iran posing an existential threat to Israel. Your colleague, Thomas Wright published in The Atlantic in which he said earlier this week, Trump told The New York Times that what he accomplished in Venezuela would be the perfect scenario for Iran. Israel is seeking a far more sweeping transformation. The country's aim is not merely to remove Iran's supreme leader, but to dismantle the regime entirely. This is a key point because Venezuela, whether you like it or not, you like Maduro, or you like the government there, it didn't turn out to be regime change at all. And taking out the Ayatollah is also not regime change. I wonder if you didn't dodge me. I'll kind of go through. I think the four outcomes we could see in Iran are where we are this as of today. As you know, one aim was that the regime collapses,

29:18that you start to see defections amongst the armed forces and some sort of consolidation within a civilian force. We haven't seen those defections, and because of the repression that the Iranians lived under, it's very hard for those elements to rise up. The other option is that the regime survives. That while the people we have known are not there anymore, that they put in enough replacements essentially that they're able to survive these strikes and slowly rebuild. We've seen that the Iranian regime has clearly been battered. Even that message we saw earlier today from the president suggests that it was hastily put together, but that they're still intact. The infrastructure of the government appears to be intact. The third option would be a fractured state where you start to see parts of the country controlled by one group and other parts controlled by others. We saw signs of this potential as we heard talks about US and Israel working with the Kurds to have them move into parts of the country. Then the other one is total chaos,

30:18where it's just internal fighting. There's no clear control. Infrastructure falls apart. The people of Iran are under jeopardy. I think what you're seeing this week is that while the military strikes have been successful, they have not made a clear link to the goal that the administration said that it wanted, which was a successful transition. Rather, we've seen the regime appear to be intact, fears of fractures and fears of chaos. Iran is 92, 93 million people. It's a fully industrialized country. They're manufacturing country. They've got 650,000 active troops, probably 350,000 in reserve. They're battle hardened. What is the likelihood of US troops on the ground? Pete Hegseth has not ruled that out. So we keep hearing this on the prospect of troops on the ground. What we haven't heard or seen signs of are large formations, thousands of troops akin to what you saw in Iraq. Is there a possibility that you see special forces doing specific missions like the one that led to Maduro's

31:24capture? I think that's still on the table. I think that's what they're hinting. And we've seen reports that those are part of the conversation. The question becomes what can they achieve? Because in Venezuela, it was clear that they had started to put a pathway towards some sort of transition. The president is saying that there has to be unconditional surrender, which means that there isn't space for some elements of the regime to survive. So what can special forces do? How many people can it go into to remove? And what is it leaving its place? I think that's what kind of creates a confusion of how you would utilize them in an award that the United States is defined as aiming to lead to the fall of the regime. We didn't say that in Venezuela. In Venezuela, the US said it was looking to remove the Maduro regime. And that's the challenge in terms of how you employ even a small number of military forces. Nancy, thanks as always for your great analysis. Nancy Yusuf is a staff writer with the Atlantic. All right, coming up, another meeting in the Valshi band book club. What if fascism had won in the 1930s? This alternate reality is explored

32:25in the science fiction classic The Man in the High Castle by the late Philip K. Dick. I'll dig into it with the highly acclaimed author Jonathan Leatham. Thanks. Instagram teen accounts default teens into automatic protections for who can contact them and the content they can see. Explore teen accounts and all of our ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teen accounts. United Health Group is bringing in-home treatment directly to patients, closing caregabs, identifying risks earlier and improving patient outcomes. In 2025, patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at UnitedHealthgroup.com slash commitment. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart and about a thousand decisions a day. That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you with the right guidance and customized solutions to help you reach your business goals. So whether you're planning your next move, upgrading your space or scaling to meet demand, we make sure your business is ready for what's

33:30ahead because we're big enough to support you. It's small enough to know you. Atlantic Union Bank. Anyway, you bank. At the center of today's Aussie Band Book Club features an eerily plausible alternate reality. A world is similar to our own as it is different. Philip K. Dick's award-winning 64-year-old science fiction classic The Man in the High Castle. It explores the sort of what-if question that plagues the imagination of anyone who's ever thought critically about our history, our history books are involved in war, our past, and what it all might mean for our present. The man in the High Castle asks what would have happened if in 1933, present Franklin Delano Roosevelt was successfully assassinated at a rally in Florida. Philip K. Dick's answer is an equally likely and catastrophic domino effect, a shift in political control. The new deal is effectively reversed. The US never fully recovers from the Great Depression and turns inward more isolationist

34:30and never joins the Allied forces in World War II. The Axis powers win. Fascism wins. Evil triumphs. The man in the High Castle begins over a decade after the end of World War II. The United States is split between the Nazi-ruled American Reich in the East and the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America to the West. There is enslavement, corruption, and censorship. The war is distant enough so that life, culture, and society have settled into the unstable and violent rhythm of fascism, but the war still exists and in the present as a defining specter. The stories told to us through a number of intertwined narratives, primarily following three characters, the owner of a pre-war Americanic antique shop, a skilled metal worker who hides the fact that he's Jewish, and a devout Buddhist who is a high-ranking Japanese trade official. The growth of these characters is driven by the existence of a band book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. The book, which is a story within a story, is an alternative history where the Allied powers

35:32did win World War II. Crucially, though, the Grasshopper Lies Heavy doesn't tell the story of our real world off the page. It's actually a mirror realm, yet a third potential outcome of World War II. It's important to understand that the man in the high castle is not something you read for cheap thrills. The novel is, of course, interesting because of its conceit, its world-building, its science-fiction aspects. But it's a classic because of dixability to capture psychological depth. His pulpy meets intellectual writing style, his humor, and how heavily researched the novel is. Jonathan Leatham, author and editor of a compilation of Dick's most famous work, says, quote, the man in the high castle is also a work of extraordinarily passionate and scrupulous scholarship. This is not the daydream of someone who's just wondered what if the Nazis won the war. All of the minor Nazi characters are thoroughly researched. Dick has written this almost scholarly, alternate reality. Now, devotees of the late Philip K. Dick are happy to describe his

36:32novels, including the man in the high castle as weird. And it's a compliment. Dick thrives in the metaphysical and the psychological. Aside from the man in the high castle, Dick wrote many books that served as source material for many culturally defining movies like The Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Majority Report. The breadth of Dick's work, including Man in the High Castle, explores what it means to be human and the increasingly relevant question of what defines our reality. The man in the high castle, though, asks something more. It asks what humanity, morality, and creativity look like in the face of evil. Here, Dick explores the complicity of living a normal life under fascism. He forces the reader to evaluate whether living a good life, one where change for the greater good is not the objective is morally acceptable. He asks the reader to consider what they would do when the evils of fascism become present once again. And to read this novel today is to recognize that that day isn't coming. It's already here.

37:35Joining me now to discuss the man in the high castle by the late Philip K. Dick is Jonathan Leatham. He's an essayist, a short story writer, and the author of numerous novels, including The Fortress of Solitude. Leatham added a compilation of Dick's most famous works called Philip K. Dick Four Novels of the 1960s. Jonathan, welcome. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me. Tell me about that. I was trying to give a setup that explains if people haven't read it. I know from my social media, a lot of our viewers have read and are very familiar with Philip K. Dick's work. But it's a complicated story to tell. It's a complicated story to tell because one hand, it's a very plausible and lucid alternate history. And at the same time, it launches a kind of metaphysical conundrum, as you say, where there's a book within the book that people are reading, which points to other possibilities. And this means that their reality is kind of slipping away or typical for Philip K. Dick, slipping away as they try to grasp it. And I think the magic of this book is that it somehow does both things so well. He was obsessed with the history of

38:3920th century fascism, the portrait of the German kind of technocratic management of a colonized US is extraordinarily detailed and gripping. And at the same time, he's asking you to experience a kind of vertigo where you see the US turn inside out. And I think it doubles on itself. It invites the opposite. It allows you to think, well, what if I'm reading the present wrong? What if in some weird way we did lose to fascism at a metaphysical level? Now, you know, this goes, you have to think of Dick writing at this moment, which is the post-war consensus, the height of technocratic optimism, and triumphalism had in theory been defeated. It had been reduced to what Colonel Clink on television. It was laughable, it was comic evil, and we had completely triumphed. And yet there were voices, I mean, if you think of Stanley Kubrick presenting Dr. Strangelove or the great Tom Larissong, Werner von Braun, reminding us that we'd

39:43made a partnership with Nazi science, with Nazi corporatism. And that in some sense, there was a deep level at which by absorbing the militaristic and authoritarian, centralized world-dominating perspective of fascism, we had, if not surrendered to it, we'd partnered with it, and that it was lurking under the skin of American reality. This is something more than just pointing to the Japanese internment camps or the fact that we'd had fascist rallies at Madison Square Garden. It's saying, in some way, even the victory over Germany and Japan meant that we'd incorporated aspects of this nightmare's possibility into our own forms of social control. One of the things about this particular work, Man in the High Castle, but really all of Philip K. Dick's works that you comment on is it's super textured, it's super detailed, it's not, it's not as you said, the casual musings of what if the Nazis had won. He really creates

40:47a world. Well, and part of that texture is the specificity of the the imperial command of the of the new Nazi leadership of the East Coast of the United States. What he does is so scrupulously paint a picture of a fascism that isn't just one giant soar on like evil entities in total, you know, unification with itself. In fact, it's made up of a scattering of different kinds of craven opportunistic. You use the word complicity when you describe the book and I think this is very much a book about complicity. It's people who are just getting along, it's people who are just making a buck. It's idealistic racist to really believe in purification. It's, you know, Christian apocalyptic fantasists and that model of different elements amalgamating into a fascism is something I should think we would look at and see ourselves in the mirror right now. You know,

41:4810 years ago, I think we're all students now of European fascism and it's relevance to us. 10 years ago, I wasn't as interested. I knew as much as anybody knew about it. Is it your argument that this book is strangely more relevant in this moment or do you maintain this book has been relevant since the day came out? I don't think it's ever failed to be relevant and it was a very brave and almost bizarre gesture when it was written. I think if it were, you know, it's very typical for Philip Padek to be decades out ahead subjects. He had advertisements that got up and walked around and followed you down the street and tugged on your sleeve, you know, back when Madison Avenue was brand new. He had what he called news clowns, which was the sober texture of Walter Cronkite devolving into provocation and cynicism and sneering irony on the evening news. And in this book, he's saying American fascism is somehow encoded in the victory, the post-war

42:50consensus, the ascent of corporatism, the ascent of Madison Avenue, the kind of consensus that was built at that time contains a grain of unresolved fascist yearning. What a remarkable take that you got on a remarkable book. I remember when I read it, not understanding how relevant it might be. It sort of feels more relevant to me. Jonathan, great to have you here. I hope you'll come back and we'll talk about some of your books that you've written. My pleasure. Jonathan Leatham is the author of The Fortress of Solitude and the editor of Philip K. Dick four novels of the 1960s and it's a it's a anthology. All right, thank you to the newest member of our Valshi book club and we'll be right back. I got breaking news from Dubai where MSNOW reporter Josh Ineger has news for us. Josh, what are you seeing? Well, Ali, just in the last maybe hour or so, we started getting alerts on our devices

43:51about pending and impending missile striker that they were fighting off and now we know that in a building close to the Marina district, so maybe about 10 miles away from where I am right now, there has been an incident involving either a drone or a missile or potentially debris from one that was shot down by the United Arab Emirates' missile defense. We know that the upper floors of an 88-story residential high rise have damaged potentially a fire. There's also damage on a car down below and again, we're not sure if this is debris or an active strike, but either way it is an Iranian offensive act against the city of Dubai here in the United Arab Emirates. We're going to keep following this. Find out more about casualties. It's very difficult to get information confirmed in situations like this in this city, so we're working to find out what we can and we'll have more on it at the top of the hour as it continues to develop, but definitely a very busy night here. It is Saturday night. It is about 10 o'clock at night. Things are still moving a lot.

44:56You should see all those brake lights in the background. It is still busy with people just out and about. It seems normal in this part of Dubai, but definitely an active situation going about maybe 10 miles away from where I am and when we have more, of course, we'll bring it to you at the top of the hour, Ali. Josh, thank you. Josh Eininger reporting from Dubai. And that does it for me. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart and about a thousand decisions a day. That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you. With the right guidance and customized solutions to help you reach your business goals. So whether you're planning your next move, upgrading your space or scaling to meet demand, we make sure your business is ready for what's ahead because we are big enough to support you, yet small enough to know you. Atlantic Union Bank, anyway, you bank.