-Our next guest
is a "New York Times" best-selling author.
Her new book, "Hiding in Plain Sight,"
is available now.
Please welcome back to the show Sarah Kendzior.
How are you, Sarah?
-As well as can be expected. How are you?
-I'm good. I like that in your bookshelf
behind you, you're using it to very --
very smartly promote your new book.
-Oh, yes. Of course.
-Well, we were talking.
You obviously had a book tour planned.
You were actually gonna be on our show in the studio
back in -- I guess, in March.
So, how has it been having a book --
a new book out that obviously you worked on for years
and not being able to go out and promote it?
-I mean, I'm sad about it. I'm sad that I didn't get to,
you know, see my readers face-to-face.
But I'm mostly thinking about safety,
and I don't want to put anyone in that position.
And there's certainly people who are having a much harder time
in this economy and in this public-health crisis than me.
The book itself is about the danger of this administration
and the erosion of stable institutions,
not just in the present but over the last 40 years.
So, paradoxically, this is a good time
for the book to come out.
-So, I want to talk about the book, but real quick,
you recently tweeted the last time you were on the show,
and, again, it was nice that you got to see the other guests.
-Mm-hmm. -You were backstage.
You got to meet Ice-T.
And here is the photo that you tweeted.
And is it true that your mother --
Your mother has this framed? -Oh, yeah.
I gave it to her as a Mother's Day gift.
Because I sent it to her, and she loved it,
and then, you know, I surprised her.
She has it on her mantel.
Just like every baby boomer, huge Ice-T fan, "Law & Order."
Completely forgot that she confiscated
my "Body Count" cassette in like 1991.
So, you know...
-Well, it's a shame because, you know,
the first guest tonight was Ice Cube.
So I like that there's something thematic
about the times on your show.
-As long as this doesn't lead to Vanilla Ice
the third time around, then I'm all good with this trend, so...
-So, last time you were on, you were talking about
your book, "View from Flyover Country."
And it was a lot about, sort of --
You had studied autocratic regimes
and how they, you know,
have this way of sneaking up on people.
Exactly what is happening to the, you know,
systems they rely on.
When you obviously wrote this book,
you couldn't have imagined the moment we are in right now,
but it does sort of predict that if things don't change,
this is the sort of thing
we were gonna end up with, right?
-Yeah. I mean, I didn't predict
that I would be talking to you
during a plague from our self-quarantine,
but in terms of malice, in terms of kleptocracy,
in terms of the profound erosion of institutional stability
and social trust, this is what I expected
from the Trump administration.
Because we've had this kind of facetious, unearned reliance
on checks and balances that were never really there.
They were not applied at the start of his administration,
and he has spent the last four years annihilating them,
purging agencies, packing courts,
you know, basically stripping this country down
and selling it for parts.
And so, yeah, here we are.
-You point out that the media sometimes
will focus on Trump's ineptitude,
but you think the mistake there
is it ignores the more sinister side of it.
-Yes, absolutely. I think that the media,
as well as many people, are just comfortable
thinking of him as a buffoon
that stumbled into the presidency,
like it was an accident, but that's not true.
And as I lay out in the book,
he ran or nearly ran for president five times --
1988, 1996, he ran in 2000,
he ran in 2012, he ran in 2016.
And one of his enduring strategies
has been to cover up his crime with scandal
and to cover up his malice with incompetence.
A lot of people are shocked by his reaction to the pandemic,
that we haven't had a national mourning,
that the flag hasn't even been lowered to commemorate
the victims and the people who tried to save them.
But that's completely in line with his character.
You know, when 9/11 happened, his first reaction was to say
it made his buildings look taller.
When the 2008 financial collapse happened,
he said that it was a good thing for him, that he would profit.
And back in 2014, he went on Fox News and said
that he wanted economic collapse,
and he wanted riots and violence in the street,
because that's what makes America great again.
-You don't hold back in your book
as far as, like, naming names. -No.
-And I think the way, a lot of times,
some journalists not only fear, you know,
the shutting down of access for projects they may do
in the future but also, you know, for personal safety.
Do you -- When you are specific
about people, do you ever -- do you ever fear for your safety
when you write? -I mean, of course.
Of course I fear for my safety.
And we've seen a lot of examples of this administration
and people connected to it threatening people.
You know, we just had an impeachment hearing
where the ambassador to Ukraine basically said
that Trump and his goon squad ordered a hit on her.
That's a huge deal,
and there's a long history of that kind of action.
You know, so, yeah, I worry about my safety.
But I'm more worried that the truth of this administration
and its history isn't being told.
And so that's what, you know,
I have chosen to do in this book and through my other work.
And I don't care about access.
You know, I live in Missouri.
I'm not worried about not being invited to a cocktail party
or whatever the hell people do in D.C.
And so that's never really been an issue for me.
And then, you know, perversely,
it gives me a certain kind of freedom.