The Ezra Klein Show

Trump has been making some foreign policy moves I didn’t entirely expect. He seems determined to get a nuclear deal with Iran. He’s been public about his disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu. He called Vladimir Putin “crazy.” And he keeps talking about wanting his legacy to be that of a peacemaker.  So what, at this point, can we say about Trump’s foreign policy? What is he trying to do, and how well is it working? If he succeeds, what might his legacy be?  Emma Ashford is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank, and the author of the forthcoming book “First Among Equals.” She comes from a school of thought that’s more sympathetic to the “America First” agenda than I typically am. But she’s also cleareyed about what is and isn’t working and the ways that Trump is an idiosyncratic foreign policy maker who isn’t always following an “America First” agenda himself.   Book Recommendations: A Superpower Transformed [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-superpower-transformed-9780195395471?cc=us&lang=en&#] by Daniel Sargent The Strategy of Denial [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300268027/the-strategy-of-denial/] by Elbridge Colby A World Safe for Commerce [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172552/a-world-safe-for-commerce?srsltid=AfmBOooims4hGYx8-RX-I7yk_2GFpdHw135QRFuyYgKy1PGplA9usBPB] by Dale Copeland Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript 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.html 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 Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director 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 [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This is a bit of a strange episode. It’s an attempt to explore the difficulty of everything we’re supposed to feel in a day. We’re in a time when to open the news is to expose yourself to horrors — ones that are a world away, others that are growing ever closer, or perhaps have already made landfall in our lives. And then many of us look up from our screens into a normal spring day. What do you do with that? But that’s not new or exceptional. It’s the human condition. It exists for all of us, and it always has: life intermingling with death, grief coexisting with joy. Kathryn Schulz’s memoir, “Lost & Found,” is all about this experience — the core of her book isn’t losing a parent or finding a life partner. It’s the “and” that connects them both. How do we hold all that we have to hold, all at once? How do we not feel overwhelmed, or emotionally numbed?  I found this to be a beautiful conversation. But it’s also a conversation — particularly at the beginning — about loss and grief. That was the part that felt truest to me, and so I hope noting it doesn’t warn you off. But I wanted to note it.  Book Recommendations: A Place of Greater Safety [https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780007250554/a-place-of-greater-safety/] by Hilary Mantel Spent [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/spent-alison-bechdel?variant=43095391764514] by Alison Bechdel Who Is Government? [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/788713/who-is-government-by-edited-by-michael-lewis/] Edited by Michael Lewis Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript 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.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to the Talbot County Free Library. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Steve Bannon famously talked about using “muzzle velocity” as a strategy: doing so much so quickly that you overwhelm the ability of the media to cover it. I think what the Trump family is doing with crypto is muzzle velocity for corruption. What they’re doing isn’t necessarily illegal. It would be if these were official campaign donations; the sums involved are so large, and the buyers include foreign nationals. But the Trump family is making this money personally. And they’re doing it across so many different crypto ventures, it’s almost impossible to keep track. So that’s what I wanted to do with this episode: try to track at least some of it. The person I’ve enlisted to help me out is Zeke Faux. He’s the author of the fantastic book “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711959/number-go-up-by-zeke-faux/]” and an investigative reporter at Bloomberg, where he’s been covering many of these strange Trump family crypto schemes. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “Trump Crypto Venture Has Talked to Binance About Doing Business [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-13/trump-crypto-venture-has-talked-to-binance-about-doing-business?sref=B3uFyqJT&embedded-checkout=true]” by Zeke Faux Book Recommendations: A Distant Mirror [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/180834/a-distant-mirror-by-barbara-w-tuchman/] by Barbara W. Tuchman Nixonland [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Nixonland/Rick-Perlstein/9780743243032] by Rick Perlstein Gretel and the Great War [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374614249/gretelandthegreatwar/] by Adam Sachs Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html] This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Richard Painter. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is the cruelest and most irresponsible piece of domestic legislation to be seriously proposed in my lifetime. When you think about this bill, you should think about risk. It would increase our risk of a fiscal crisis by adding a hefty sum to our nation’s debt, at a time when we’re alienating the countries that typically buy our debt. It would slash food stamps and strip health insurance from millions of people, increasing the risk that the safety net won’t be able to catch any of us, at a time when President Trump’s tariffs have increased the risk of a recession. It’s what I’m calling the Big Budget Bomb. And if it passes, we’ll all be in the blast radius. My guest today is Catherine Rampell. She’s an opinion columnist at The Washington Post and an anchor on MSNBC. She’s been covering this closely, so I asked her to come on the show to help talk through all the different risks this bill brings. Editor’s note: This episode was recorded before the House passed Trump’s domestic policy package. Mentioned: “Arkansas’s Medicaid experiment has proved disastrous [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arkansas-says-it-wants-to-help-the-poor-its-hurting-them-instead/2018/11/19/8e61f0a2-ec3c-11e8-96d4-0d23f2aaad09_story.html]” by Catherine Rampell “The Time Tax [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/how-government-learned-waste-your-time-tax/619568/]” by Annie Lowrey “Barbara Kingsolver Thinks Urban Liberals Have It All Wrong on Appalachia [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-barbara-kingsolver.html]” by The Ezra Klein Show Book Recommendations: Our Dollar, Your Problem [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300275315/our-dollar-your-problem/] by Ken Rogoff Demon Copperhead [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/demon-copperhead-barbara-kingsolver?variant=41227655118882] by Barbara Kingsolver Shy [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374298623/shy/] by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html] This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Tyson Brody. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This episode is about a seemingly simple question: Was there a Joe Biden cover-up? Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book argues there was. “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/799924/original-sin-by-jake-tapper-and-alex-thompson/]” details how Biden’s top advisers closed the circle around him and tried to conceal the extent of his decline. But I think the story here is more complicated. If Biden’s top advisers were misleading the public, I think they were also lying to themselves. And if there was a cover-up, it had a lot of holes; voters had been telling pollsters they were worried about Biden’s age for years. So I wanted to have Tapper on the show to talk about the discoveries in his book, but also about some of the bigger questions raised by the Democratic Party’s decision to almost renominate Biden: How do you see what is right in front of your eyes? How do you avoid letting loyalty to a person or a party blind you? This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html]” by Ezra Klein “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping [https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/joe-biden-age-election-2024-8ee15246]” by Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes Book Recommendations: Lorne [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/532520/lorne-by-susan-morrison/] by Susan Morrison Hitler’s People [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653631/hitlers-people-by-richard-j-evans/] by Richard Evans The Holy Roller [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Holy-Roller/Andy-Samberg/9781534397323] by Andy Samberg, Joe Trohman and Rick Remender Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html] This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kelsey Kudak. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director 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 [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.