You have become, if I may say
so
,
enamored with the people that make up
our-- the-- the anonymous heroes, who
on a day to day basis, are working
tirelessly to make this country function better, work better.
How-- how did that come about?
The civil service.
The civil service.
Which is different from what's on cable news right now.
It's all politics.
Yes.
And those people are being elected
to run the government filled with the civil servants.
That's right.
And mostly, they don't know about the government.
And that-- that's what got me interested.
It came about when Trump, the first time Trump was elected,
and he fired his transition team right
after he was elected, it like 550 people
who were supposed to go in and learn
about the government for him.
And I thought, he doesn't know anything about it.
It's like the dog caught the bus,
and now the dog has to drive the bus.
Right.
And-- and-- and you would think the dog would
want the instruction manual.
And-- and when he fired this mechanism,
I thought, it's kind of cool.
I can go in and my readers will know
more about what he's supposed to be running than he does.
Mm-hmm.
And so that like, you will know about the Department
of Energy. -
Right.
And when I did that, when I got in,
I was shocked by the quality of the people I kept meeting.
I was like, there is the stereotype
of the lazy bureaucrat.
You know, I'm sure they exist.
There are two million people in there.
But over and over--
Two million.
I mean, two million federal workers, right?
Wow.
And over and over, I found these people who were like,
working 70-hour weeks and being paid 40,
and were doing wild stuff.
Right.
I mean, everything from like chasing loose nukes
to like, inventing science, whole sciences, to,
it was one thing after another.
To inventing the science to find
people that fall off of boats.
Right. I mean it--
It was insane.
It's one thing after another.
And much of what they did as a group--
Yes.
--they're sort of constitutionally incapable
of telling their story.
They like, don't know.
They're the opposite of Trump.
They don't know how to like, advertise what they do.
And they're not allowed to.
So-- so it was--
They can't name their desk after themselves?
They can't do any of that?
They can't.
So they are, they, they just assume now
at this point, that if they're getting noticed,
it's for a bad reason.
Right.
Like, it's, we have, they're so demoralized that way.
Do they feel the demonization?
Is that--
They-- they-- they know not to call
attention to themselves.
So, the great challenge with them when you're with them,
is to get them, they're like dogs that have been
kicked a little too often.
Like you, just to calm them down,
so that they will tell their story.
But when you get into it, I mean,
the reason I've stuck around, is that they
are amazing characters.
And when this administration came in and
set out to traumatize them--
The new Trump administration in 2024.
He came, he went about it differently this time.
This book is much more about the hostile takeover.
This is more about-- -
That's right.
--DOGE.
That's, it's DOGE, and DOGE plus, other stuff.
And it's-- it's sort of like asking
the reader to understand what's going
on by what they've driven out.
Yes.
Like it's sort of like a meteor hit
the planet and the habitats have changed,
and some species no longer exist.
They can't.
And each species that went extinct,
went extinct for a different reason.
Right.
And these are different people and different functions
of the government who used to do things like, I don't know,
stop your tax returns from being weaponized against you.
Right.
This stuff that we just take for granted
is all of a sudden, no.
It's like part of a big power grab.
They have essentially, they're trying to politicize
a nonpartisan workforce.
And that's going to result in a very
different kind of government.
I mean, when you, like, would you rather have
your air traffic controller--
I love this game. Go ahead.
Yes.
Would you rather have this person selected on the basis
of their ability to--
to actually land a plane safely, or would
you rather them have to go through a loyalty test
to Donald Trump before they get the job?
And--
You know me, I'm a woke liberal.
I'd just rather they all be lesbians.
I don't care about the--
I don't care about the ability.
It's like one thing after another.
Yeah.
It was amazing that, what I found so fascinating
about this, maybe the story of the Institute of Peace
will be revelatory.
It's a hostile takeover.
It reads like somebody stormed a foreign power,
stormed an embassy on the people who work
for them in the government.
Yeah yeah.
No, no, it's-- it's--
it's strange to me.
I mean, I think it's just that they
were able to do this, the amount of both damage and
the like the seizure of power, the only reason it's
been allowed, is that I think people just haven't paid
much attention to what the government does
and how it functions.
Right.
That, but this, I mean, the difference
between Donald Trump 2 and Donald Trump 1, Donald Trump,
he didn't care.
Like, he didn't.
He was indifferent, ignorant.
Well, they came with a battle plan.
And this time, he wants to run, not just the government
he's supposed to run, he's grabbing all kinds of stuff
that he's not supposed to run.
I mean, there are-- there are all these, the Smithsonian and
the Kennedy Center. -
The Institute of Peace.
And the Institute of Peace, right.
I mean, had you ever heard of the Institute of Peace?
I did not know that we were even looking towards that.
Yes.
It is, and it's now called the Donald J. Trump Institute
of Peace.
But it was, there's a guy in there.
It's a crazy story.
He-- he evacuates the building and he
locks himself in the building to keep the DOGE guys
from getting the keys.
Close. Can I correct you?
-
Yes. -
Close.
You're close! -
Thank you.
So-- so yeah.
You're very close.
The-- the security guard.
I speed read.
Yeah, the story, that story, that story
is told through the eyes of the security guard
who is defending the building.
That's right, yeah.
And he has a phone and he can lock down
various parts of the building.
Yes.
And when DOGE actually blackmails his private security
firm and turns them, so that they're invading the building
rather than protecting it--
Yes.
--they all end up in a wing of the building,
and he hits a button and, all of a sudden, it's Home Alone.
They're locked-- they're locked in.
JON STEWART: Wait.
And they're calling their moms
and saying, "We're locked in.
Can you come help?"
And-- and they're calling-- they're calling their bosses.
And-- and eventually the hero calls the DC Police because he
thinks we've got the building.
By the way, is not a government building.
It's like-- it's your house.
It's a privately-- it's a private.
It's a non-profit.
They own the building.
So DOGE is invading and a-- a private house and taking it.
JON STEWART: And it's not particularly
part of the government.
No, no, it's not part of the government.
I mean, it's Congress.
Look, it gets funding from Congress,
but it was designed to be kept at arm's length
from political control.
And so-- so he calls the DC Police.
"Come get the trespassers.
Come get the invaders."
JON STEWART: And the invaders, by the way,
are like e 20-year-olds.
-
Muskrats. -
Muskrats?
Yes.
-
With like little black ties. -
Yes.
They just wanna get in there and turn it upside down.
-
No ties, sneakers. -
White.
Sneakers and little black T-shirts.
But they-- but the-- the DC Police, they've been flipped.
And so when they come, they take this.
They march the security guy out.
So basically, I open with that because the security
guy pointed out, he said, you know,
this all starts by them getting control
of all the guns that it didn't look like there
was no one fired a shot.
It didn't look like a--
JON STEWART: By the way, there are guns in the basement
of the Institute of Peace, a little,
like, in the basement where they've got--
they've got a cache-- -
Yeah, yeah, yes.
-
--of guns-- -
Yes, yes, yeah.
--in the Institute of Peace for some reason.
Yeah, well, the security firm keeps them there.
The reason they keep them there is it's against the law in DC
to take your gun home from work.
So they have to leave them behind.
That's actually why they're there.
-
Really? -
Who knew?
But--
You're not leaving with your gun, are you, Bill?
No, I left it in the thing.
But-- but it is when you do take this two-million person
workforce and you say all of a sudden
you don't work for-- it's not an oath to the Constitution.
It's not you work for the country.
You work for this person who's in the White House.
JON STEWART: Right.
It changes the way the whole government works.
Everything is different.
And each-- each function is different in a different way.
But it's the change is like profound.
And you will, you know, you will feel it.
You'll feel like a degradation of of the place.
You make the unbelievable.
So part of this is also, you know,
it's project 2025, and it's--
which is the architect of that is this guy Russell--
Vought.
Vought.
I call him Vought from the boys, but Vought.
So you tell this incredible story about the NIH.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Yeah.
And a gentleman at the NIH, Francis Collins--
MICHAEL LEWIS: Used to run the NIH.
Used to run the NIH, who is identified as a blocker.
They identify people that are blocking progress.
Right.
Francis Collins.
Yeah.
Explain how that all comes full circle with project
2025 and Russell Vought.
So Francis Collins is a threat
to this new administration because he is--
every senator respects him.
I mean, he can speak for science.
And-- and he has--
JON STEWART: Been there forever.
He's one of the been there forever, one of those people,
if they try to do things to the science,
he can go talk to people.
Right.
So when they come in, he's just got his lab.
He doesn't have any official authority,
and they whack him right away.
It's like a bullet to the back of the head.
And-- and the--
the kind of cool thing about the story,
though it's distressing, is that though he
knows he's been whacked, he doesn't
know who did the whacking.
He like, he doesn't know who issued the order.
And so he-- there's a kind of murder mystery to it.
And-- and--
JON STEWART: He wants to find out.
He wants to find out.
But you need to know about Francis Collins is
that among the many things that he has done in his career is,
early in his career, he found the genetic cause
for cystic fibrosis.
And--
JON STEWART: Through government funding.
-
Of course. -
Yes.
Of course.
NIH has been returned like many dollars
for every dollar invested.
And it's-- it's curing diseases and all the rest.
And the-- the chief suspect, the most
likely person to have whacked Francis Collins
is Russell Vought.
JON STEWART: But tell me-- tell me the story about-- yeah.
-
Let me finish. -
I was gonna tell you.
Let me finish.
Russell Vought's child has cystic fibrosis.
Yeah.
That's right.
So you have-- we have reached a point in our politics where
there is no humanity, where it's so tribal that--
that they don't even think.
And it is this-- this kind of darkness
runs right through the story that the people who are getting
whacked in the book are often people-- the people who
are doing-- and the people doing the whacking,
they have some relationship, but
it's not being acknowledged.
JON STEWART: And it's even worse
than that in some respects, because the research
that he began with cystic fibrosis,
and then they brought in other partners,
they actually created a drug treatment recently--
Yeah.
--that allows people with cystic fibrosis to take this
drug that Francis Collins, through this government
research, helped develop.
She takes this drug, and her life is saved.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Yeah, that's right.
From that drug.
Yes.
If she had gotten cystic fibrosis born 10 years earlier,
she would probably not be here.
It would-- it's-- you know you're gonna--
you're likely to die from cystic fibrosis
up until very recently.
And-- and so that's right.
So the man who-- who triggered the process that leads
to the cure to the disease that this
other man's child has is-- yes, that's--
that's their relationship.
And so it's--
I mean, I think we're in a very dark place here.
JON STEWART: Yeah.
Right?
We're-- we're in a place where you kind of-- it's the people
under assault--
Yes.
--the really good ones are the best among us.
They are there not for themselves.
They're not there to get famous.
They don't tell their story.
They don't get paid much.
They're there because they figured
out that the key to their lives is serving other people.
And they do it--
the best of them, do it very, very well.
The idea that these people are under assault is a shame.
I mean, and I think that-- that--
JON STEWART: Astonishing.
And I think one of the things you're feeling right now
is that, I mean, the-- that--
JON STEWART: The darkness of-- of people not knowing,
not being able to name who the real villains are.
Villainizing people that are literally searching for cures
that your daughter may have are being called the villains and
the parasites.
In the name of one thing.
And this is the acquisition of power.
It's like-- it's all about the power.
And you know, there's this line in 1984,
Orwell's book where he says, like,
How do I know if I have power?
And it isn't that I can make you
do whatever I want you to do, because you
might want to do it anyway.
It's I can make you suffer.
And the cruelty that runs right through this story is that.
It's like it's reminding the people in power--
it's a kind of psychological thing,
the need to feel powerful.
He's even said, I mean, Stephen Miller has said,
we're not doing it.
Like, might makes right.
Like, a literal throwback to--
You remember all those ways that government
used to work back when there were World Wars
and back when the continent was a-- a bloody mess?
We're going back to that.
Yeah.
What an incredible, uh, from, we're a shining city on a hill,
moving towards American exceptionalism, to hey,
remember feudalism?
Yeah, I know, I know.
And-- and it takes a while for the country to wake up,
I think.
But I think the country is waking up.
-
Oh. -
It's like--
I hope so.
Yeah, because this is not, this is not a bright future,
this path.
Have you interviewed-- is there any recognition amongst
those like Russell Vought, or, I mean,
some of the DOGE guys have apparently
had a reconsideration of what they were doing there.
First of all, they said we're saving $2 trillion.
Then it turned out, they said they saved 10% of that.
Turns out, most of that's even bullshit.
You know, they didn't even do the thing they said
they were going to be doing.
They were never going to do the thing
they said they were to do. They weren't even--
-
Because it wasn't about that. -
It wasn't about that.
It was, it was-- it was about traumatizing the workforce.
It was about creating a smoke screen for seizing the power.
Russell Vought said it.
He said, I wanted them to feel like they're parasites.
He said that.
Yeah.
So the-- the wild thing about the DOGE kids,
I mean, they were all, the-- the active ingredient in DOGE
was young men ages 19 to like 28.
Mm-hmm.
And that, the ones most of them came in,
they just wanted to be with Elon Musk, you know,
and they would just do whatever he said.
Right.
But there were a couple who actually
started to ask some questions.
And it was interesting, those people, because one of them
ends up in the book.
He comes in with curiosity, not with contempt.
And he's the, I think he's the only one who got fired.
His name was Sahil Lavingia.
Yeah right.
He came in with curiosity and not contempt,
and they're like, get out! -
You know what he did?
No, do you know, do you know how hard
it was to get fired from DOGE?
You could, you could make up the college
you went to on your resume.
You could be a Nazi.
What?
You could, no, you could, you could have a like a history
of sexual abuse reveal.
And JD Vance himself would ride to the rescue.
But if you said, and this guy did.
He-- a reporter called him after he'd
been in the government for a few weeks.
And he says to the reporter, I'm
kind of surprised the government
is not quite as inefficient as I thought it was.
That's what you couldn't say. -
No!
-
You couldn't, yes. -
That's the line.
That was the thing, that's the line.
You can't.
And--
Hitler was right, youthful indiscretion.
Yes right.
Government seems to work OK, get out.
A lot of these people like their jobs
and are good at them.
He said things like that, and got him a lot of trouble.
But that guy, he's a great character actually.
That guy came in hoping to do some good.
And when DOGE washed out, someone called him back
and he came back. And--
Wow.
--and you have an app on your phone that will allow you to do
your taxes on an app, because it's going
to have because of him.
So he has actually figured out something.
So there's--
But isn't that the tragedy?
So when you think about, look, one of the reasons
why Project 2025 happened, is people
were dissatisfied that the government was
no longer reflecting and triaging
their more immediate needs.
Yeah.
And there is ridiculous cascading
plumbing and wires in there that need to be addressed.
Some of these people seem to have the skills.
What a tragedy that they weren't actually applying that
to the real function of it.
Yeah, that's right.
And it was very--
There is a need to go in and refresh the thing.
There's a constant need.
What is hopeful, is that there are people who exist who want
to go in and still fix it.
I mean, I-- I don't think, I didn't
come away from this feeling like, oh, we're doomed.
I came away feeling like, it's good to know that actually,
the spirit of the country is in these people, these people who
are trying to stop the bad things from happening,
and people who want to go in and fix it.
And I think, like, the politics,
our politics has gotten so out of touch with the culture.
Like, Americans aren't like our politics, basically.
Right.
And the minute it becomes-- enough
attention gets paid to this, I think that it gets fixed.
I-- I think that there's a way out of this.
But you got to listen to the right people.
And you got to listen to people who are there for reasons other
than just themselves.
It's so impressive that you're
able to stare into the guts of this
and come out with optimism.
I hear from a lot of young people, one young person.
He's in the audience tonight.
Yeah yeah.
And he said, how do you remain optimistic?
And I said, I don't [BLEEP] know, but I bet Michael does.
And that answers that.
Is you've seen the power of, and that's
what this kid's going to be. -
Yeah.
-
Like-- -
That's right.
--they're-- they haven't been corroded yet.
They still believe in the possibility of uplift.
That's right.
And-- and look, we are not, our politics is so strange now.
But-- but we're a nation of problem solvers.
We're philanthropic.
Communities form very easily.
People-- people don't want to be.
The noise on TV-- -
It's not sustainable.
It's not sustainable.
And-- and the minute this thing, and you're feeling it,
the minute this mechanism, the government,
starts to become really politicized,
it becomes something very different from what
it's been for 100 years, you're going
to feel it every which way.
You're not going to be able to eat the food.
You're not going to drink the water.
You're not going to want to get on an airplane.
You know?
People right now say they don't trust the government,
but they-- they trust the government in their behavior.
They own Treasury bonds.
They-- they-- they are still basically
trusting the government to prevent
bad things from happening.
Right.
And the minute they sense that--
that is being eroded, that function is being eroded,
I mean, I think there's a culture
waiting to leap into action.
That's right.
And hopefully, there is an electoral price.
There's two things that have to happen.
There have to be an electoral price to pay for this kind
of recklessness and cruelty.
And the second thing is, if you are fortunate enough
to be on the beneficial end of that electoral change,
you better get your shit together and start governing.
That's right.
And-- and-- the-- the--
I think the other thing that's going on,
and it's subtle, is there's a kind of narrative war.
Like, Republicans have been telling
a story for a very long time, that all
the people in government are just like, they're unnecessary.
Right.
Waste, fraud, abuse, all that stuff.
The other story has not been told.
And I think that telling that story,
like making a point of explaining what this government
does, is so important.
Like--
Someone should do that.
Someone should put it in a book.
It's fabulous. It really is.
And I so appreciate it.
I urge you to get it.
It's called Blockers.
Our best storyteller, Michael Lewis.
0.5x - Slower
0.75x - Slow
1.0x - Normal
You might also like these videos
If you enjoy using our custom video player, why not join thousands of subscribers who have signed up to our free weekly lessons?