Rachel Maddow Looks Back on a Wild 14 Years
About this episode
Klein welcomes Rachel Maddow, his very first guest, as she steps back from nightly cable news after 14 years. They revisit the political eras her show spanned: the Iraq War's legacy, the 2008 financial crisis and a lasting sense of economic fragility, and the Obama years alongside the Democratic Party's leftward policy shift. Maddow argues Republicans are an electoral project captured by the conservative movement rather than a coalition party, and that figures like Pat Buchanan previewed Trumpism. They discuss the fragmentation of conservative media after Roger Ailes, Tucker Carlson's rise, and why anchors matter less than media structures. The conversation closes with Maddow's narrative podcast 'Ultra,' about the 1940s sedition prosecution of American pro-Nazi sympathizers, and through-lines to today's attacks on democratic norms.