The Ezra Klein Show

I’ve been watching since the election to see what timeline we’re in. And Donald Trump’s first wave of selections for appointees were pretty straightforward. But then came the turn: Pete Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” host, to helm the Pentagon; Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence; and the real gut-punch, the former representative Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

In the parts of government that can be weaponized most dangerously — the military, the intelligence services, the Department of Justice — Trump is putting true lackeys and loyalists in charge. I fear we’ve entered the bad timeline.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of a new book, “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.” In this conversation, we discuss how she’s been processing Trump’s picks, what to make of Elon Musk’s role in Trump’s inner circle, the indicators to look out for when governments slide in an autocratic direction, the appeal and excitement of autocratic regimes that often get missed in our history books, the relationship between autocracies and futurists, the politics of performance and more.

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Book Recommendations:

Moneyland by Oliver Bullough

Offshore by Brooke Harrington

American Kleptocracy by Casey Michel

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging nonwhite and working-class voters. There are a lot of theories about why that has been happening, blaming it on the party’s ideas or messaging or campaign tactics. But I think the problem might be deeper than that — rooted in the structure of the Democratic Party itself.

Michael Lind is a columnist at Tablet magazine, a co-founder of New America and the author of “The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite.” He argues that the Democratic Party in recent years has become more beholden to special-interest nonprofits, which claim to represent large constituencies but actually reflect the interests of the donor class. In this conversation, we discuss why he thinks the nonprofit complex became so powerful, how that might have led to a disconnect between the Democratic Party and its core voter base and what he thinks Democrats could do to course correct.

Book Recommendations:

Where Have All the Democrats Gone? by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari

Mother Jones by Elliot J. Gorn

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

To understand the 2024 election results, it helps to go back to 2020. Donald Trump lost the election that year, but he made significant gains with nonwhite voters. At the time, a lot of Democrats saw that as a fluke, a hangover from Covid lockdown policies. But the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini saw it as bellwether.

In his 2023 book, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,” Ruffini argued that Trump was ushering in a party realignment. A trend that had been happening for years in the white electorate – college-educated voters moving to the left, and non-college-educated ones moving to the right – was now evident, he said, among voters of all races, breaking up the core of the Democratic base.

And so far, the data we have from this election suggests that Ruffini was right.

In this conversation, Ruffini, a founding partner at Echelon Insights, contextualizes the 2024 election results by looking back at 2020’s. We discuss what Democrats missed about these voter trends; the appeal of Trump’s brand of class politics; why Democrats might have been better off with a red wave in the 2022 midterms; and how Kamala Harris’s campaign may have hurt her with nonwhite working-class voters.

Book Recommendations:

Steadfast Democrats by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird

The Real Majority by Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg

The New Americans by Michael Barone

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, Jack McCordick and Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In a couple weeks, the archives of our show will only be available to subscribers. Here’s why that’s happening and what to expect. 

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Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?

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You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.