Are Democrats sabotaging their own socialists? | The News Agents

I suppose this is not that surprising, that Bernie Sanders is imagining a world in which, yeah, for the most part, Democrats want to see Saeed elected in Michigan. They want to see the Senate returned to the Democrats' hands. They want to see more power for the Democratic Party and potentially have a whole new raft of candidates, even if they're socialists, to maybe lead the way in the presidential candidacy for 2028. Nobody at the Democratic National Committee is actually, actively rooting for Republican Mike Rogers. But as Bernie was hinting, there's a pretty big difference between wanting El Saeed to lose and quietly deciding not to lift a finger for him. If El Saeed wins, then the progressive wing of the party says, you see, this is our test. This is proof of concept. We have put up someone of this nature in a key swing state, and he has won. This whole question that we often talk about, which is electability, and the other is kind of more fundamental, which is like, I don't want the Democrats to become a party that, you know, that makes me feel uncomfortable. The News Agents USA podcast is brought to you by HSBC Private Bank, opening up a world of opportunity. This is a global production. And you know, I was trying to understand what would motivate a person to say these things, what would motivate a person to do these things. And I realized that there's something about Abdul El Saeed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today. And it's people who see themselves not as citizens of a common nation, fighting for every single person, whether they're Jewish or Christian, whether they're white or black or brown, but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others. That is JD Vance describing the Michigan candidate for the Senate, a Democrat, as very, very evil. Is it possible that there are some Democrats who view this progressive candidate in just the same way and want him to actually lose in November? Welcome to The News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel. It's Jon. It's Maitlis. And this is Miles. And Miles, lovely to have you with us and lovely to have Emily Maitlis back in the studio after a very long sojourn away. So long. How long does it have to be to be a sojourn? Makes me feel there should be a horse and cart involved, really. I like the three of us. This is quite a new thing, right? It's great. It's great to have the three of us together. And let's start with Michigan, because in a sense, I mean, Michigan, you know, go back to the 2016 election. It's one of those must-win states for Democrats. And what the Democratic Party have done in the primary in Michigan is choose a candidate who is very much of the progressive left, who is anti-Israel or very critical of Israel, which has roiled some of the kind of mainstream Democrats. And before we go any further, I just want to play you this clip of Bernie Sanders himself representing that movement, kind of indicating that he thinks there are those high up in the Democratic Party who would rather that the Democratic candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, lose in November rather than win. Do these Democrats want to see El-Sayed lose? Do you think there's Democrats that want to see that happen? Well, you know, it's a funny thing. The answer is there are some who may. I think most do not. Most understand is, hmm, we may not like El-Sayed. We may not like Angie Nixon. But you know what? If we win Michigan and if by some miracle we win Florida, you know what? We're going to control the U.S. Senate. And we would like very much to control the U.S. Senate. On the other hand, are there some, I think a few, who would say, you know what? It's not worth it. These people are a threat to oligarchy. They are a threat to American foreign policy and our continued support for the extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. They're a threat to the never-ending wars that have gone on for decades. So no, maybe we should let them lose. But I think that is a small minority because most Democrats say, you know what? Really would be nice to control the House and the Senate. Look, so I think Bernie Sanders there is pretty nuanced with what he's describing as the state of the Democratic Party. Don't forget, Bernie has always been on the progressive left. I mean, he's an independent, but he coaxes with the Democrats. But he has always seen himself as the outsider, somebody who could take on what he calls the donor class or the people fighting the endless wars. He was the man who stood up and said Clinton is not the right person. Hillary Clinton is not the right person to represent the Democrats in 2016, just before the party lost. So I suppose this is not that surprising that Bernie Sanders is imagining a world in which, yeah, for the most part, Democrats want to see Saeed elected in Michigan. They want to see the Senate returned to Democrats' hands. They want to see more power for the Democratic Party and potentially have a whole new raft of candidates, even if they're socialists, to maybe lead the way in the presidential candidacy for 2028. But I think what he's talking about there is a small number of Democrats who are deeply unsettled by what they see going on in the party now. And I think there are two points. And Miles, I'd be interested to know your thoughts about this. Is it that they think broadly that Saeed can't win and can't actually, you know, sustain the sort of socialist wing of the party? Or is it that they think he can win and are really nervous about what that then does to the whole party? Because I think there's sort of slightly, there are two different issues here, right? One is this whole question that we often talk about, which is electability. And the other is kind of more fundamental, which is like, I don't want the Democrats to become a party that, you know, that makes me feel uncomfortable. Well, let's be clear, I mean, about a couple of things. First, you know, with regard to Bernie's comments, nobody at the Democratic National Committee is actually actively rooting for Republican Mike Rogers. But as Bernie was hinting, there's a pretty big difference between wanting El Saeed to lose and quietly deciding not to lift a finger for him. And the donor class in the United States and its ambivalence that Bernie describes is very real. I mean, you know, in a four-point race, that kind of passive, that sort of passive neglect of El Saeed could be viewed as sabotage in that race. And, you know, the issue of electability is actually kind of the giveaway here, because the premise for some of these folks that Bernie talks about is that El Saeed is not electable, and therefore they shouldn't spend their time on him. But go back to that number that I pointed out. Right now, he's not unelectable. He is winning. If the election was held today, the epic poll that shows him four points up in a state that Trump carried means he probably carries away that election. So the electability thing, at least right now, at least based on the numbers, is a ruse. So you've got to think, Emily, it's the second thing you mentioned, which is what Bernie also hinted at. They don't want that type of person in an official government capacity. They don't want him to win the Senate seat because of his policies. They would have an easier time making that case if he was down in the polls and dragging the party down, but it's not. He's winning in a state, again, that Trump carried in 2024. And by the way, El Saeed is running against a very well-funded, very experienced opponent who I've worked with in American politics. Mike Rogers is not to be dismissed, but he is keeping pace with him and at this moment running ahead of him in that race. I suppose the argument goes something like this, doesn't it? That you've got mainstream Democrats who think that everything is being challenged by the insurgents on the left of the party. And it would be really handy if El Saeed lost in November because then they would be able to say in 2028 when they're running for the presidency, if I could say presidency, which is a difficult word because we don't use that word very often on this podcast, no idea what it means, that it would be very much better for him to lose. And then you could say, look, we've tried putting these left wing candidates up. It just doesn't work. Nobody wants to vote for people like that. We need someone of the mainstream. Conversely, of course, if El Saeed wins, then the progressive wing of the party says, you see, this is our test. This is proof of concept. We have put up someone of this nature in a key swing state and he has won. So what is to stop us having a more progressive candidate in the 2028 presidential election? OK, so I think we have to go back a stage and just explain some of JD Vance's comments at the beginning, because when he called Saeed evil and El Saeed's response has been actually evil is taking away people's health care, evil is kind of destroying people's livelihoods, evil is starting foreign wars and pushing everyone's gas price up and bombing children, blah, blah, blah. But where this came from is essentially not anything that El Saeed himself has said, but in the company that he has kept. And I think, frankly, there are more than just a few Democrats who have a real issue with the people that have been endorsing him. OK, let's put it that way. One of them is Hassan Piker, who is this Twitch streamer who is really pretty far out, actually, when it comes to views on October 7th, views on 9-11, views on where he would put, I guess, the, you know, the sort of the left wing vote. He's made people really uncomfortable with some of his, I think we're going to say anti-Semitic views, aren't we? I mean, I think at this point, you know, pretty, pretty clear. And just before the Michigan primary, El Saeed was out with Piker and he was kind of on the campaign with him. And it's always this curious thing, isn't it? When Donald Trump had the Ku Klux Klan kind of former chief campaigning for him and Trump had to go, oh, he's nothing to do with me. He's nothing to do with me. He just likes what I do. That is, in a sense, where Saeed has been with Piker, right? He endorses me. It doesn't mean that I endorse him. But subsequent interviews have kept on asking Saeed if he will distance himself from Piker. And I don't know what you think, but I've watched some of those responses. And I think Saeed has got pretty ratty with that question. He's tried to push it away. He's tried to say, oh, come on, you know, Hassan Piker has taken back his own words on 9-11. He's taken back his own words on October 7th. I don't want to talk about some California streamer. It's all in the past. But it's kind of, it's pursued him to a point where it clearly rattles him. Enough for him to say he's not going to go campaigning with Piker anymore. And I think that is what has left a bit of a taste in the mouth for some Democrats who kind of go, yeah, we love the progressive stuff. That's fine. We love the health care stuff. That's fine. We don't even mind the socialist label. That's all fine. We don't really want you hanging out with people who feel like anti-American in the language that they're using and definitely anti-Semitic. Well, it's clear he views this as one of his biggest weaknesses in the race. And I absolutely think it is. I mean, this is the thing that Democrats are worried about. This is the attack line Republicans are using is that his anti-Israel positions are something far worse, right? They're calling his positions anti-Semitic. And El-Sayed has tried very, very hard. And typically when he's responding to his critics, he's quite effective. He's very articulate. He brings in a joke. I mean, he's much better than these other candidates at rebuffing those critics. And, you know, I say that as someone as a lifelong conservative who would have seen El-Sayed as the type of person I would have loved to have run against. But he's very good at defending himself. But you're right, Emily, on this issue, you can see him get a little bit rattled. Now, I will say I've seen this movie on the other side of the aisle. I mean, in 2015 and 2016, inside the Republican Party, we were doing everything we could when I was working under Paul Ryan when he was Speaker of the House to try to contain and outlast or to discreetly starve our own insurgent within the party, Donald Trump, who we thought had no chance of winning the presidency but would ruin the GOP in the meantime. Think about that comparison to El-Sayed. I mean, apparently there's a number of people in the Democratic Party who don't think he can win. They think he's unelectable, but they're worried it's going to do such damage to their brand that they are withholding support. Or as we talked about earlier, sort of engaging in passive neglect. Now, the Democratic risk here, John, as you were noting, is that by strangling their insurgents in the Democratic Party, if they do that effectively, if he loses this seat, they are alienating the young and restless anti-establishment voters in critical states like Michigan, where they need them fired up, especially if they want to flip states on the map in 2028 and win the presidency. I suppose what's so interesting about that comparison, Miles, to when you were working for Paul Ryan and, you know, you had Donald Trump, it goes again to this point that we've talked about before about the kind of asymmetry of the rules of politics, which rules that apply to most politicians just don't apply to, you know, Donald Trump was getting endorsed by QAnon and Donald Trump was turning around when that was blowing up and saying, oh, yeah, but they care about the children. Stand back and stand by with the Proud Boys. You know, so you have Donald Trump getting endorsements from all sorts of whack jobs and nutcases and somehow it's doing him no harm at all. Whereas for El-Sayed, I think Hassan Piker is more of a problem than he is willing to accept at the moment. And probably I was reading that he spent a good part of the weekend talking to the Jewish community in Michigan and meeting up, kind of talking about the bar mitzvahs that he used to go to when he was at school and how he's always been a friend of the Jewish community and the Jewish community should not be fearful of him. I think it's hard to marry while he won't put that distance between himself and Hassan Piker. I mean, if it was Donald Trump, he would get away with it. He'd walk away with it. So I would say that actually, if you step back, the worse you see the Israeli government behaving at the moment, the more sense his candidacy makes. And right now, the pictures that are coming out of, we're not even talking about Gaza anymore. We're talking about the settlers. We're talking about the West Bank. We're talking about the horrendous scenes of intimidation and attack that are going on there. I think they are kind of making El-Sayed's case for him that actually, it doesn't make you anti-Semitic to be anti what is going on in Israel and to not want American tax money to fund the Israeli government right now. I think that is totally understandable. There's a lot of democratic, you know, Democrats who support. There are a lot of Jews who support the Democratic Party who are absolutely aligned with that view. I mean, you know, there's not. That's why I think Piker is a step too far. Hassan Piker is a step too far. I think saying that you don't agree with money going to fund Israel's government right now is not that big of a deal, right? I mean, I think that's probably certainly where most young voters in the Democratic Party are today. I mean, by and large, right? Not where AIPAC is, which is the prominent. The guy, well, AIPAC lost the seat for his rival, right? So I just want to talk to you about one other thing, which is I was listening to David Plouffe over the weekend, the Obama campaign strategist, many years ago, and he went back to your word, Miles, electability. And it's so interesting because we talk about electability and generally what we mean by electability is like, well, the Democrats can do whatever they want in the primaries, but they have to go sort of centre right to win the country. And he just said, and it sort of blew my mind a bit, he just said, electability is what gets you elected, right? And we actually don't know what that is right now. And it feels to me so interesting that the old Democratic Party don't really know what electability is anymore. And maybe the new socialists don't know either, but we certainly don't, right? We don't actually know what that looks like yet. Well, and Donald Trump brought that conversation into the fore 10 years ago because it was the unanimous opinion of the political establishment in the United States of America that that man could not win the GOP nomination and he could not win the presidency. And he proved very electable. In fact, I remember my first meeting with Donald Trump in Trump Tower in 2015 during the transition where we went to go sit with him and talk about national security issues to prepare him to take on the presidency. And he pulls out this giant map with every county across the country he won shaded in red. He was still in awe weeks after the election that all of these people who told him he couldn't win were wrong. And so much of the country was shaded red and he had won them over. Now, part of that, Emily, was because of Donald Trump's appeal to blue collar workers in the United States. And that's where I think it's interesting. I think the establishment underestimates El-Sayed at their peril. I wouldn't be surprised if we're talking after this election about El-Sayed Trump voters, about this strange category of voters that we can't understand that voted for Donald Trump and then voted for El-Sayed. And that's because there's something happening here, some sort of populist sentiment that's swinging from the far right over and under to the far left. And we're seeing those and those were, you know, for a period of time, people were calling them Sanders Trump voters, people who voted for Bernie and then voted for Donald Trump. I think those voters are going to be key in this election. But but the Israel issue, the Jewish issue is still going to be something that hangs over his head. There is something, though, that I think differentiates El-Sayed, and that is we are in a political culture right now where no one ever apologizes for anything. And that's something I think you're going to talk about in the next segment later on today is a figure in American politics who sort of created the possibility of never having to apologize. And that is Roy Cohen. I'll put a pin in that, but just say voters have gotten frustrated with candidates who refuse to admit error. And there is something refreshing to them about someone like an El-Sayed who says he was wrong, who confronts it head on and doesn't try to bury it and and get won by the voters. Is that right? I mean, is that right that voters have got tired of that? Because I was you know, I was reading the Roy Cohen book last night. I know we're going to talk about that later, but I'd almost assumed now that it was a political given that nobody apologizes, that you double down, that you attack, attack, attack, and that actually we don't we don't expect anyone to apologize. And we call it weakness if they do. It's interesting that you think that voters are sick of that. Well, I think it's how you do it, honestly. And, you know, when I go back and watch El-Sayed and it's it's funny, I'll just say it's funny for me to defend El-Sayed just because I would have spent so long in the Republican Party working against him. But I think he's done this very well. He's done a great job of getting out there and not waiting for an interviewer to go after him about something he's done before. He confronts it head on. He points to, you know, the past apology and he takes it and he turns the weakness into a strength. And I think that's the only way to do it. I mean, absolutely. In American politics, if you're apologizing and you're just going out there to apologize, it immediately codes as weakness. But if you're taking that and you're getting ahead of an interviewer or a critic and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know where you're going to go. You're starting to make the critic look like the lame one in the argument. And that's a style of argumentation he seems to be quite adept at. And I think it's something that voters are seeing as a breath of fresh air. Yeah. And I think it's so interesting, the focus not on policy. You've got you've got to, you know, you've got to tack to the center when you're fighting a presidential election. It is about electability. I mean, we're seeing it. You know, they come in different shapes and sizes. Not everyone has to be out of the Donald Trump box to be electable or charismatic to voters. But you've got El-Sayed, you know, you've got Mamdani in New York. There are these politicians, you know, Tallarico in Texas. There are these politicians that are emerging of different shapes. But what they have is they have that kind of core. Sexiness is not the right word, but they have that an appeal. Sell. They can sell. They can sell themselves to voters. And my God, we should never forget that politics is a retail business. And you need to be able to sell yourself to voters. If they're going to put an X against your name, come polling day. OK, to your point, did you just say sexy? So El-Sayed just dropped a new ad, which he's calling the Love Island style. Let's just play you a little bit. I'm Abdul El-Sayed. I'm 41 years old and I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Oh, my name? Yeah, I love my name. My people don't know this. It means servant leader right here on my bracelet. So what's my type? No corporate PAC money. Ready to rock for Medicare for All. I got one goal here on Senate Island, and that's to pass Medicare for All. And I'm not afraid to step on people's toes. What's my red flag? I'm not here for love. I've been married for 20 years with two kids. What gives me the ick? Corporate money. People who think that we can't have guaranteed health care through Medicare for All. Senate Island. Brilliant. I hear that, Anthony. And I go back, though, to think about it. He's doing what Barack Obama did, which is the classic problem in sales and marketing, that if you can't fix it, you just feature it. And for Barack Obama, it was his name. Republicans thought when they heard the name Barack Hussein Obama, as Donald Trump said over and over again in the early days of Obama's career, that that would scare voters away. And instead, you saw Barack Obama go out there all the time and say, you know, I was a kid growing up with a with a funny name. And he would point it out. And there you just hear in the ad El Sayed say, you know what my name means? It means it means servant leadership. Right. If you can't fix it, you feature it. And he's featuring it. And I'll tell you, love him or hate him politically. This guy has got some swag. Well, talk about swag. Sayed is not the only Democrat who's got his comms right. Certainly his sort of new brand of advertising right. In Iowa, we have got the Paralympian Josh Turek, who managed to bring in Obama to his own ad campaign and makes Obama play basketball against him. He's a he's a basketball ballgame. Who's got next? I got it. You ready for me, Josh? I'm ready. Let's go. We playing horse or what? We're playing Iowa. I know a little something about winning Iowa. All right, here we go. We ready? You know when it's in. I'm not going to just give it away. All right. So you see there the game being played between the Paralympian basketball and Obama. And I think Obama actually loses. Right. So it's it's it's pretty punchy stuff just to to suddenly understand how you have to win these Senate races. And it's mainly vertical content now. Right. Well, Emily, I'll just say this goes back to something that our friend Chris Matthews has long said in American politics that we can get all wrapped around the axle about policy and positions and where people stand. But it ultimately comes down to the man or the woman with the sun in their face. And I always cite back to that what Chris meant was the person you can see outside looking vibrant and active and smiling. That's the person in a two person race that typically wins the election. And Democrats race after race are trying to be that person. Well, we're joined now by Kai Bird, who is the author of a brilliant new book called American Scoundrel, which was published at the beginning of the month. And it is about Roy Cohn. And if you don't know Roy Cohn, he was an incredibly important figure to Donald Trump in the early years when Donald Trump was property developing in New York. But also Roy Cohn led this extraordinary life. And Kai, you know, I don't even know where to begin with it, because he was a figure of such influence, such a dealmaker, power broker and an evil little ******. Right. And an evil little ******, to use the technical description. I mean, you've called the book American Scoundrel, which I think is probably quite kind in the round. We had some debate about the title. Scoundrel can mean many things. It can mean your sweet old uncle who is a bit of a scoundrel. But this is a book about an evil protagonist, a fixer in American political life, who just has transformed our American political landscape in the last, over the last few decades. And I guess what you say at the very end, Kai, is that it took you a while to realize that the legacy of Roy Cohn, and we should get you to tell us a little bit of his biographer, is a very young lawyer, very involved in the McCarthy witch hunts and the trials of the 1950s. I mean, he was doing that when he was 20. So he was sort of an extraordinarily powerful man very early. But the legacy that he left is really America today and Trump today. Because for anyone who's seen The Apprentice, you know, the film, Trump is the apprentice to Roy Cohn's school of political thought, right? Or maybe we should just say political bullying. Yes. Well, Roy Cohn was the mentor for Donald Trump. They met in October of 1973. But by then, you know, Roy was a man, a powerful lawyer, fixer in his 40s. Donald Trump was 27. And Roy Cohn had come on the American political landscape in 1952, 53, as one of the prosecutors of the Rosenberg atomic spy case, famous spy case in America. And he's personally responsible in large measure for sending to both Rosenberg's, Julius and Ethel, the mother of two young boys, to the electorate chair. He then goes on to become chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy. He's the brains behind McCarthyism. He's this evil interrogator of hundreds of witnesses in Joe McCarthy's subcommittee. He destroys the lives of thousands of federal civil servants and young gay men, by the way, who lost their jobs under Roy's interrogation, even though Roy was himself a closeted homosexual. He then goes on to back to New York and makes a name for himself as a high-priced divorce lawyer and mob lawyer to all five mafioso families in New York City. And then he becomes, he's indicted three times for bribery and fraud, and he gets off in jury trials. He's a behind-the-scenes fixer for New York City politics. And then he meets Donald Trump in October of 73 at a private dinner venue called Le Club in midtown Manhattan. And he becomes Trump's lawyer and molds him, teaches him his rules, which were, you can break all the rules, you don't need to follow the law. Attack, attack, attack, you know, never apologize. And maybe one of the lessons that we all understand so well is him saying it doesn't matter what the law is, it matters who the judge is, which is how Trump works to this day, right? You just work out who's in charge of the trial, not whether you're right or wrong. Right. So I would argue, you know, we're all living in the Trump era of the last 10 years, and we're all curious about this incredibly charismatic but divisive politician. And I would argue that you can't, with a traditional biography of Trump himself, understand the man. He's too ephemeral. He's too much of a con artist. You can't trust the stories he tells. But you can understand Donald Trump through the life of Roy Cohn. It's his behavior, his lack of ethics, his brazenness, his mafioso language that he uses that we can hear echoed now in President Trump. And it's his values, and he's tapping into something very deep in the American psyche. You know, when I first started out as a biographer and historian, I was, I chose to write about establishment figures, powerful Wall Street lawyers, people like John McCloy and McGeorge Bundy, the Harvard dean, to understand how power works in America. And I'm still doing that with Roy Cohn, but I suddenly realized that the establishment that I had studied for 40 years no longer exists, and it doesn't explain how power works in America anymore. But Roy Cohn does. And it's his behavior and his culture and his ethics that are haunting us from his grave. It seems to be that reading your book and reading about Roy Cohn and the lives that got ruined along the way, I mean, we kind of pass over kind of McCarthyism and the number of people who had their lives totally upended by that sort of, you know, that purge that went on on anyone who might have had communist sympathies. It seems to be power rests with you if you can intimidate, if you can scare the bejesus out of somebody to do something they wouldn't otherwise have done. And that seems to be the Donald Trump modus operandi as well. Absolutely. You know, I used to think as an historian that the McCarthy era was simply an aberration, a low point in American history that we had gotten past and we'd survived it, and it would never happen again. But of course I was wrong. And we're now living through another McCarthyite kind of witch hunt. And it's much more serious. It's as if we elected Joe McCarthy president and given him all these executive powers. And Trump is sort of untrammeled in his, you know, he doesn't think that the rules apply to him. And this comes directly, you know, from Roy Cohn, who taught him that you didn't have to pay attention to the rules. The rules were for the small guy. And Roy's mother, Dora, raised him without guardrails. She told him exactly this, you know, you're special. You can do what you want. You're a privileged boy growing up in Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. And you're special. And the rules and the law don't apply to you. And that's how Roy transferred to Donald Trump. It's interesting. He's often described as this brilliant lawyer. But it wasn't really the law that he managed to make work. It was just bullying either side of the law, wasn't it? I mean, do you think he was actually a talented lawyer? Roy was, you know, very smart. He had a photographic memory by all accounts. But he had a singular style in practicing the law. He didn't take notes. He practiced law over the telephone. His practice was, you know, the practice of a fixer, an influencer. So let me tell you a story about one of his high-priced divorce cases. His client is Ronald Perlman, who is a big cosmetic executive, a very wealthy man. And in his first divorce, he hires Roy Cohn. He walks into the appointed court date with his client, Ronald Perlman. And he's all alone. It's just Roy. He has no papers. He sits down at the defense counsel's desk with his client, Perlman. And Perlman's wife, then wife, is accompanied by half a dozen lawyers and stacks of documents. The proceedings begin. And about 20 minutes into it, Roy whispers into Perlman's ear, sorry, Ron, I have another appointment I have to run. And Perlman says, well, you can't leave me. I'll have no representation. And Roy says, don't worry about it. The judge, it's all been arranged with the judge. And indeed, the judge, Judge Marie Lambert, gives him a very good settlement. Perlman is happy. And it's all been fixed. Roy never sends him a bill. He says, don't worry about it. I'll come to you for a favor someday. Again, mafioso talk. And indeed, a few months later, he calls up Perlman to borrow his private jet to fly down to Acapulco with his boyfriend. And a few days later, Perlman calls up a mutual friend and says, Roy, trash my jet. What can I do? And his friend says, well, you can't do anything. That's Roy Cohn. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is transaction and nothing's ever written down. Right. And I think you... Which is something else Donald Trump learned. Which is something else Donald Trump learned. Right. He hates people taking notes. Right. And I was reading, I mean, it's really interesting. You and Susan Goldmark, who's done a lot of the research in this, tracks down this young man, Richard Kerr, who is a traffic victim of Cohn. Terrible story. Terrible story. This young man who basically gets, you know, brought from Italy and sort of trafficked into New York. And this talks to your question of Cohn's, I mean, obviously he uses and abuses people, but he keeps his own homosexuality secrets until he dies of AIDS. And then there's this whole question, Kai, which is, at the time of AIDS, whether he gets a patch on the AIDS memorial quilt, and they don't know quite how to describe him. Yes. So he was a gay man in the closet until the very end, claiming that he was dying of liver cancer. He had a terrible death. It was just awful. But he did get treatment, experimental AZT treatment at the National Institute for Health in Washington, D.C. Courtesy only, he got ahead of the line, courtesy of Nancy Reagan, who was a good friend. They love trading gossip. But the treatment was too late. He dies in August of 1986. And yes, there is a debate in the gay community who just loathed him. They hated Roy Cohn because everyone knew he was gay, but he lobbied publicly against gay civil rights. He publicly said that, you know, gay men should not be teaching our children in public schools. He, you know, he was a racist who used the Yiddish slur word to describe blacks. He used the word kike to describe Jews, although he was Jewish himself. He was just loathsome in so many ways. But when the quilt was unveiled, there was indeed a quilt made for Roy Cohn. And the organizers decided that his description should be bully, coward, victim. Roy M. Cohn. And that sort of says it all. He was a bully. He was a coward in many ways in his personal life. And he was also a victim of AIDS. At the end of the book, you talk about how when Donald Trump has won the 2016 election, he gets on the phone to Roger Stone, another person of some moral compromise, to just talk about how much Roy Cohn would have loved to have witnessed that. And then Donald says, yes, yes, he would have loved this. And we so miss him. And, you know, I had a similar phone conversation with Donald Trump, President Trump, just last year when I was researching the book. And I cold called him. You know, someone gave, a reporter gave me his number and said, try this number on a slow news day. So with some trepidation, I dialed the number and it was Donald. Hello. And I introduced myself and said, I'm an historian writing a biography of Roy Cohn. And he interrupted immediately and said, oh, that's terrific. He was such a wonderful guy. He was so smart. He was a great lawyer. We've won a lot of cases together. He still really admires Roy Cohn. They were good friends. When Roy died, he went to the memorial service. And by one witness, Peter Manso, a reporter who knew both men, saw Donald Trump weeping. So this is, you know, this is a moment. It's an insight into Trump's relationship. And I don't understand how any of the president's supporters today could read this book about his personal mentor, whom he still talks about in such glowing terms, without wondering what, how could, how could this disgusting individual be the president's mentor? Teach him to fight, what is it, 4,000 legal cases. Qyber, great to speak to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So just before we go, we know that in the, so just before we go, we know at the moment that America is in the grip of Make America Healthy Again, RFK Jr.'s drive as health secretary to get every American to be so healthy. At the same time, we have had the cyclospora outbreak in iceberg lettuces, which has left a lot of people ill. And just as people are getting over that. So we have a new issue of E. coli, which has led to about 431 illnesses, 57 hospitalizations in more than two dozen states, and even dogs getting ill. And I know you can get food outbreaks of food poisoning anywhere. And this happens in this country and any other country. But the gutting of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, does seem to be playing a part in this. What is going on, Miles? Have you given up lettuce? You should see what's happening in our refrigerator at my house. I'm not even joking. There's things I'm not allowed to eat. For instance, the berries in the fridge. I'm not allowed to eat the berries in the fridge because they're only going to be used for jam. Why is that safe? Because my wife has to boil them first. I mean, this is happening in every household. People are scared to eat certain things from the grocery store. Now, what you really need to look to understand what's happening here is the year-over-year phenomenon. And we have seen a more than ten-fold increase in outbreak-related illnesses in the United States since last year. Not double, not triple, a ten-fold increase in outbreak-related illnesses. That's not just a bad lettuce year. That's not some bad growing year. That's systemic failure. And, John, you're right to point to, well, the food safety system itself. Remember, Donald Trump came back into office. And in his first week back in office, he started this widespread revenge campaign against the so-called deep state. And he went after agencies that often told him no and told his friends in corporate America no. And that was the 3,000 staff members they fired at the CDC and the more than 3,000 staff members they fired at the Food and Drug Administration and the more than 11,000 officials at food safety agencies that they canned. Almost a fourth of people responsible for food safety in the federal government. And this is the consequence. You get rid of those people. They can't run the investigations to their source. They can't warn the public. And people get sick. And in some cases, we've had several Americans die. And the big question being asked here in the United States is, who is Donald Trump trying to help by the purging of people in those agencies? Is he trying to help Americans? Or is he trying to help corporate agriculture and other interests that have been big supporters of his candidacy? It is scandalous, isn't it? I mean, the FDA has cut $12 billion in grants for state health departments. And it turns out that cutting red tape is not always a great idea. Yeah, cut red tape, fine. But if you've got to get rid of the people who maintain food standards... It turns out they were actually doing their jobs. Right. It turns out they were actually kind of keeping people from disease. Anyway, make America healthy again. Maha, we'll be back next week. See you then. Bye-bye. 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