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Alaska and Hawaii. Liz,

1:07

if you were chair of the Federal

1:09

Reserve Jerome Powell right now, would you

1:11

be worried about your job? I

1:16

would be screaming into a pillow

1:18

if I were Jerome Powell right

1:20

now. Liz Hoffman is

1:22

Semaphore's business and finance

1:25

editor. She says Jerome

1:27

Powell should be screaming into

1:29

a pillow because his handiwork

1:31

is being ripped apart with

1:33

tremendous speed. After the

1:35

pandemic, he was tasked with figuring

1:37

out how to get the country's

1:39

finances back on track. A

1:42

lot of people doubted he could. He

1:45

proved them wrong. The

1:47

consensus was that he had done

1:49

it, that he had sort

1:51

of pulled off the rare feats

1:53

of cooling the economy in

1:55

a responsible, sustainable

1:58

way. Without triggering

2:00

unemployment. It is a real

2:02

threading the needle, and he did it.

2:05

And then Donald Trump showed

2:07

up. And

2:09

Donald Trump's policies are

2:11

making Jerome Powell's job

2:13

very hard. And on

2:16

top of that, he

2:18

is publicly threatening to fire

2:20

him. So that's a tough

2:22

hand. Facing

2:29

this tough hand, Powell

2:32

has pushed back with

2:34

mild -mannered but consistent

2:36

honesty. He said

2:38

Trump's tariffs could lead to

2:41

higher inflation and slower growth, which

2:43

is a politician's nightmare. That's

2:46

when President Trump took to

2:48

social media to say,

2:50

Powell's termination cannot come fast

2:52

enough. These words

2:54

spooked the markets. Enough

2:57

that by Tuesday night, Trump

2:59

was walking back his tough talk. But

3:01

put yourself in the Fed chair's shoes. Would

3:04

all of this back and

3:06

forth reassure you? He's actually

3:08

handled this pressure with a lot of

3:10

grace, but it really complicates

3:13

his job at a time when

3:15

it is already just epically

3:17

complicated by the economy that we're

3:19

facing and the policies that

3:21

he's trying to respond to. How

3:23

much job security does the chairman of

3:25

the Fed typically enjoy? A

3:28

lot. You know, we're gonna,

3:30

I keep getting asked, can the president fire

3:32

Jerome Powell? And the answer is, I don't

3:34

know, I'm not a lawyer. But two

3:36

years ago, your answer probably would have just

3:38

been no, right? That would have been my

3:40

answer two years ago. But look, like everything,

3:42

like a lot of what this White House is doing, no

3:44

one's ever tried it. We've

3:50

seen Trump fire a whole lot of

3:52

people that no one thought he could

3:54

or should fire like inspectors general, for

3:56

instance. He's put loyalists at the

3:58

Department of Defense and the FBI. Why

4:01

would the chairman of the Fed be different? If

4:04

you think you've seen a total freak out from

4:06

the market, try firing the Federal Reserve

4:09

Chairman. Today

4:11

on the show, the ongoing battle

4:13

between the president and the Fed.

4:16

Who will blink first? I'm

4:18

Mary Harris. You're listening to What

4:21

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5:45

I want to go back in time to

5:47

understand why exactly Trump is raging against Jerome

5:49

Powell, who's a guy that he selected

5:51

to lead the Federal Reserve ages ago

5:54

in his first term. He

5:56

got nominated in 2017. At

5:58

the time, I assume Donald Trump was a fan

6:00

of him? He liked that

6:03

Powell was out of central casting. Like

6:05

he looks like a guy who

6:07

should be running the Federal Reserve and

6:09

replaced Janet Yellen, who reportedly Trump

6:11

thought was too short. Oh boy.

6:13

Yeah. So yeah, he nominated

6:15

Powell, appointed Powell in, you know,

6:18

what I think we'll look back on

6:20

is kind of the easy boom

6:22

times, pre -pandemic, everything was kind of

6:24

fine, interest rates were low and stable,

6:26

the economy was kind of chugging. It

6:29

didn't seem, this is, you know,

6:31

this is an important job, but at various times it

6:33

can be harder or easier. And at the moment, it didn't

6:35

seem like it was that hard a job. So

6:37

it almost didn't matter that much. It was

6:39

sort of like, yeah, this guy looks right,

6:41

sure, check, bye. Yeah. Anything

6:44

else people should know about Powell,

6:46

but who he is, his approach?

6:49

He's a pretty establishment

6:51

guy. He spent some time

6:53

on Wall Street at a private

6:55

equity firm, but he's a really

6:57

kind of centrist Republican. You

7:00

can think of him kind of like

7:02

a Rockefeller Republican, sort of believes in

7:04

low taxes, free trade,

7:07

stability. He's

7:09

not a real

7:11

controversial character. Yeah, you

7:14

say Rockefeller Republican, and I think, uh -oh,

7:16

that's like the opposite of a Magor

7:18

Republican. Correct. He belongs to

7:20

the wing of the Republican party.

7:22

I would say that it's just

7:24

like being pummeled into extinction. I

7:27

know Powell talks a lot about

7:29

the dual mandate goals of the

7:31

Federal Reserve, which are maximum employment

7:34

and stable prices, right? And

7:36

the Fed shares tools or interest rates. Can you

7:38

just explain this a little bit for the listener? Yeah,

7:41

you can think of the U .S. economy like

7:43

a fire, and the Federal

7:45

Reserve holds the bellows. So

7:48

their job, as you said,

7:50

is to keep as many people employed as

7:52

possible. Historically, that means an

7:54

unemployment rate, you know, three, four,

7:56

five percent, depending on how the economy is

7:59

doing. It had been historically low, you know,

8:01

for years. This is a very tight

8:03

economy. It got even more so after the

8:05

pandemic. And its second job is

8:07

to keep prices stable. This doesn't mean actually

8:09

stable. It means inflation at a pretty

8:11

low level. The Fed usually

8:13

shoots for around 2%. And so

8:15

the way the Fed controls the economy,

8:17

again, if you think of it like

8:19

a fire and they're holding the bellows,

8:21

so if the fire is dying, if

8:23

it's too cool, if the economy is

8:25

growing too slowly, if people

8:27

aren't spending, they can put

8:29

oxygen in it and they do that. simply

8:32

by putting money into the economy. They

8:34

lower interest rates, which makes it easier

8:36

for people to borrow, to start businesses,

8:38

to buy houses, to buy cars, to

8:41

put things on their credit cards. They

8:43

also often grow their own balance sheet,

8:45

which means they're buying bonds from the

8:47

market and putting cash into the system

8:49

that way. And then if

8:51

the economy is running too hot, if the

8:53

fire is out of control, they do the

8:55

opposite. They dampen it. They raise interest rates,

8:57

which makes everything more expensive and is meant

8:59

to cool the economy down. That is their

9:01

main tool. And in

9:04

most normal

9:06

situations, it works pretty well.

9:09

Are we in a normal situation?

9:12

No. No.

9:15

Look, we were, you know,

9:17

as weird as it sounds to say the

9:19

pandemic was a normal situation and the

9:21

post -pandemic craziness was normal. It was

9:24

textbook economically normal, which is that the

9:26

economy shut down. There was a shock

9:28

that shut down the economy. A lot

9:30

of people got laid off. And

9:33

so what the Fed did is it

9:35

and Congress helped here too by writing a lot

9:37

of checks to Americans, it

9:39

put oxygen into the fire. It

9:41

pumped up the economy artificially to

9:44

counteract the just massive dampening

9:46

of demand that the pandemic caused.

9:48

And then on the way

9:50

out of the pandemic, inflation

9:52

is soaring. The economy is running

9:54

way too hot because everyone has come

9:56

out of quarantine and said, I

9:59

want to own everything. I want to

10:01

do everything. I want to spend everything. They have

10:03

these stimulus checks in their pockets, stock markets

10:05

out of control. So they raise interest rates and

10:07

they do. It takes a little while. It's

10:09

a little stubborn. But by the

10:11

end of 2024, It is

10:13

clear that that has worked. And you

10:15

can see a glide path back towards

10:17

a more normal interest rate somewhere, never

10:19

going to be as cheap as it

10:21

was for a lot of the 2010s

10:23

where money was essentially free. But

10:26

you're going to end up with an

10:28

interest rate that is much more sustainable,

10:30

that puts mortgages within reach for most

10:32

people, that feels like a steady state.

10:35

It's funny. I hadn't thought about the

10:37

pandemic as like a proof of concept

10:39

for the Fed. But that's kind of

10:41

what you're saying. It was the

10:43

ultimate proof of concept because it happened in

10:45

such a chaotic and traumatic way, and

10:47

yet it basically worked if you can take

10:49

the 30 ,000 -foot view of it. They

10:52

managed to avoid a deep depression on

10:54

the way in and a financial panic on

10:56

the way in, and managed to kind

10:58

of guide the economy back towards normal footing

11:00

on the way out a little longer

11:02

and slower than people might like, a little

11:04

more painful, and inflation almost certainly swung

11:07

the election in a major way, but it

11:09

basically was proof of concept for that

11:11

playbook. The problem is that

11:13

playbook doesn't work in

11:15

a situation like we have

11:17

now where you are worried about

11:19

low growth, so a fire that is

11:21

dying, but high prices,

11:24

the tariffs make things more expensive

11:26

than they would otherwise be

11:28

in an economy with these characteristics

11:30

about employment and consumer demand

11:33

and sentiment. So you've

11:35

kind of created a lab experiment

11:37

where the normal playbook that

11:39

the Fed would unveil doesn't

11:41

work. And that is the predicament

11:43

that Powell finds himself in now. Yeah.

11:46

And I want to talk about

11:48

how reporters like you kind of

11:50

began to see this not

11:52

normalness start to play out over

11:54

the last few weeks. Because

11:56

right after Trump announced his

11:58

liberation day tariffs, the stock

12:00

market went wild, which I think everyone clocked

12:02

if you had a television or a radio

12:05

because it was all people were talking about. But

12:07

also the bond market started

12:09

wilding out in this abnormal way.

12:12

And I'm wondering if you can

12:14

explain why that in particular

12:16

was something that folks like you

12:18

focused on and thought, huh, it's

12:21

a sign of something abnormal

12:23

going on. So a lot

12:25

of people, when they say the market, they think the

12:27

stock market. And I understand that

12:29

it's visceral. You look at your 401k

12:31

and it feels tangible to you. But

12:33

the dirty secret is that it doesn't

12:36

really matter. The bond market

12:38

matters a lot. Why? Both

12:40

because of what it can tell you about

12:42

the economy and what it means for the

12:44

economy. A bond, for those wondering,

12:46

is kind of like a loan.

12:48

You give the government. Most often over

12:50

a 10 -year period, they use your

12:52

money now and pay you back later

12:55

with a little interest. Sometimes

12:57

people talk about it as buying

12:59

government debt. Credit like

13:01

this is what makes our

13:03

economy hum. So

13:05

think about the Great Depression. It started

13:07

with a stock market crash, but what

13:09

caused the actual depression was an evaporation

13:11

of credit. People couldn't borrow. They couldn't

13:13

borrow to start businesses or buy homes

13:15

or put, you know, things on layaway

13:18

at the shop down the street. And

13:20

that is how you end up in

13:22

an economic doom loop. So people pay

13:24

a lot of attention to the bond

13:26

market. There's a famous quote from James

13:28

Carville, who was President Clinton's top advisor

13:30

to President Clinton. And he said, I

13:33

want to be reincarnated as a bond

13:35

trader because they can intimidate everybody. So

13:37

explain why the bond market is so important in

13:39

this way. It finances the

13:41

entire economy. If

13:44

any business had to pay for a

13:46

factory out of its own cash reserves, it

13:48

would never build a factory. Everything

13:50

is financed, is borrowed on

13:52

some level. Reliance

13:55

that the U .S. economy in particular has on

13:57

borrowing is a bit of a weakness. But

14:00

when the system is functioning,

14:03

it's incredibly dynamic. And it's why

14:05

we tend to come out of

14:07

economic downturns faster than the rest

14:09

of the world because we're good

14:11

at creating credit and encouraging people

14:13

to take risks. And

14:15

that all hinges on

14:17

debt being affordable and

14:20

being functioning, that

14:22

market functioning smoothly. Basically,

14:24

other countries like China come to the US,

14:26

buy our bonds, and like kind of

14:28

park their money there. And it

14:30

functions as a loan to the federal government

14:32

to do all the things we like

14:34

the federal government to do. And it's why

14:37

Congress can spend a lot of

14:39

money. Yeah? It underwrites our entire

14:41

deficit model. If people, you know,

14:43

most households have to balance their budgets every

14:45

year. In fact, most states have to balance

14:47

their budgets, but the federal government does not.

14:49

It runs a deficit and it's able to

14:51

do that to spend more than it takes

14:53

in on services that we all want and

14:56

demand because people are willing to buy its

14:58

debt. And so

15:00

that means that any

15:02

flicker, any signal that

15:04

that has broken down, that

15:06

people now are a little

15:09

wary about lending to Washington, is

15:12

hugely important and is watched

15:14

really, really closely. And that is

15:16

what happened on the back

15:18

of tariffs. The bond market

15:20

lost its mind. Yeah, people

15:22

started selling their bonds. People started selling

15:24

their bonds. What

15:27

does President Trump want

15:29

Jerome Powell to do to fix

15:31

that? What you have

15:33

to remember about President Trump is that

15:35

he is at heart a real estate

15:37

guy, and real estate works best when interest

15:39

rates are low. when money is cheap.

15:41

You can think about that, that like your

15:43

mortgage is more affordable when interest rates

15:45

are low. But that's also true with commercial

15:48

real estate, like the kind that Donald

15:50

Trump came up developing developers borrow money for

15:52

very little and they build these big

15:54

projects. And that it's a merry -go -round that

15:56

that kind of relies on debt being

15:58

cheap. And so Trump has always liked

16:00

low interest rates. He's sort of the king

16:02

of debt, right, calls himself that. And so

16:04

that has always been his starting point. What

16:07

he would like Jerome Powell to do explicitly now

16:09

is start to cut interest rates. And the irony

16:11

of all of this is that had Trump not

16:13

done any of this stuff on tariffs, we'd probably

16:15

be heading into an environment where the Fed was

16:17

going to do that this spring and summer. Yeah.

16:21

I mean, Jerome Powell gave

16:23

a speech last week where

16:25

he basically laid out his

16:27

dilemma. He said the central

16:30

bank could find itself caught

16:32

between controlling inflation and supporting

16:34

economic growth, which raises this

16:36

specter of the 70s, right?

16:39

stagflation. What would that look

16:42

like? That is the

16:44

word that everyone is trying to avoid saying

16:46

out loud. Especially Jerome

16:48

Powell. Yes, especially Jerome Powell.

16:50

Other Fed officials have tied themselves in

16:52

linguistic knots over the last two weeks,

16:54

not to say that, to instead say

16:56

that they are going to have trouble

16:59

fulfilling their mandate. But that's what they're

17:01

talking about this period. And you have

17:03

to go back to the 70s to

17:05

see it of high prices, that's the

17:07

flation part, and stagnant economic growth, that's

17:09

the stag part. And

17:11

in normal economics, those two

17:13

things don't... occur together because

17:15

lower economic growth, people feel poor,

17:17

they spend less. Those two things tend

17:19

to, prices go down. Those two

17:21

things tend to move together. On the

17:23

flip side, when the economy is

17:25

hot and wages are going up and

17:27

people are spending, prices tend to

17:29

move up. So those two things tend

17:32

to move together. Stagflation is when

17:34

they move in opposite directions. And

17:36

they don't, that doesn't naturally

17:38

occur. It requires an external

17:40

shock. Here, the concern is

17:42

that the external shock is

17:44

the tariffs that have artificially made

17:47

something and a lot of things

17:49

that Americans buy more expensive and

17:51

are putting upward pressure on prices

17:53

at the same time that it

17:55

is disincentivizing businesses to invest and

17:57

people to start businesses because

18:00

they're afraid of what's going to happen. We'll

18:03

be back after a quick break.

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into growing your business. If

19:42

you scroll through President

19:44

Trump's social media feed, you'll

19:46

see. that he's come up with a nickname

19:49

for Jerome Powell. Mr. Too

19:51

Late. It's a dig meant

19:53

to emphasize that Powell is stalling

19:55

on lowering interest rates, which Trump thinks

19:57

is going to cure the ailing

20:00

economy. Even as the

20:02

president sought to reassure investors this week that

20:04

he is not going to fire Powell, he

20:06

couldn't resist throwing another

20:08

little ask in, saying, this

20:11

is a perfect time to lower interest rates. Hint,

20:14

hint. The question for

20:16

Liz is, What happens if Powell

20:18

does not budge? What if Trump

20:20

gets bored, changes his mind? If

20:22

the markets didn't like the idea of

20:25

firing a Fed share, how

20:27

would they react if he actually got the boot?

20:30

Yeah, pretty quickly, I think people would, I

20:32

mean, absolutely dump their treasury bonds. You

20:34

know, the movements that spooked people, you

20:36

know, two weeks ago. The

20:39

interest rate that investors charge the

20:41

government to lend the government

20:43

money is called the yield. And

20:45

the yield on the benchmark bond, which

20:47

is a 10 -year bond, went from somewhere

20:49

in the high 3 % to about 4 .5

20:51

% over the course of a couple of

20:53

days. And that doesn't seem like

20:55

a lot, but it is. Why? Why is it

20:57

a lot? because it's

21:00

just a very quick move. I mean,

21:02

the last time there was a move

21:04

that dramatic was in the 2000s, I

21:06

mean around 2008, and it's a sign

21:08

of real stress. The

21:10

US Treasury bonds

21:12

have been, for all of

21:14

modern history, the safest investment in

21:16

the world. And so the

21:18

price that people charge to hold them

21:20

shouldn't change all that much. And

21:22

when they move that dramatically, people get

21:24

spooked. A disastrous U .S.

21:26

bond market would spell major trouble for

21:28

Americans and how the government pays

21:31

for everything. But Liz says

21:33

that's not the only risk here. The

21:35

global economy could get

21:37

screwed too. Treasury bonds

21:39

have become kind of the monopoly money of

21:42

the world. Imagine you go into

21:44

an arcade and rather than putting dimes and nickels and

21:46

quarters in all the machines, you just buy a bunch

21:48

of tokens on the way in and then everything in

21:50

the arcade functions off those tokens. A

21:52

lot of financial markets,

21:54

payments, trading exchanges, rely

21:56

on treasuries as a

21:59

base currency. And

22:01

if the price of

22:03

treasuries changes, it

22:05

reprices all of those things.

22:07

So a lot of loans are

22:10

priced off of above what

22:12

a similarly tenured treasury would cost.

22:15

Treasuries serve as collateral for trillions

22:17

of dollars of transactions, right? If you're a

22:19

hedge fund, you go to Goldman Sachs, you

22:21

say, I want to buy XYZ. They say,

22:23

fine, we'll set that up for you. We

22:25

just need a little bit of collateral in

22:27

an account. You're almost certainly going to send

22:29

them treasuries. And so if the collateral gets

22:31

less valuable overnight, which is what would happen

22:33

if people dump treasury bonds, you're

22:36

going to see margin calls like

22:38

we haven't seen since at least 2008. possibly

22:41

ever, which is that all of these trading

22:43

accounts are upside down and people are

22:45

going to have to sell whatever they can

22:47

to come up with cash. And that

22:49

is how you end up with a financial

22:51

crisis. Has something

22:53

like this happened in an

22:55

economy this big before? Well,

22:57

there's never been an economy this big before, so

23:00

no. The US

23:02

economy is bigger than it's ever been,

23:04

and it's the biggest in the

23:06

world, so no. So really uncharted territory.

23:09

In times of uncertainty or

23:11

fear, treasuries have

23:13

been a safe haven. People sell stocks

23:15

and they buy treasury bonds. That's the

23:17

move. And that is not happening now. People

23:20

are realizing, I'm not sure

23:22

I feel that much safer holding treasury bonds,

23:24

being a creditor to the US government than

23:26

I do holding a bunch of Nvidia stock.

23:29

That is like a real indictment of

23:31

the political moment. It

23:34

just seems like such a pickle. Because to

23:36

me, it seems like there's a real risk

23:38

of investors just sitting on their hands and

23:40

being like, I'm going to wait to see

23:42

how this plays out. And so it's just

23:44

you're not going to be getting as much

23:46

money coming in, in addition to people who

23:48

already own Treasury, selling them off. And that

23:51

seems like a long -term problem. I

23:53

should say that the Treasury is always

23:55

selling new Treasury bonds, and the auctions

23:57

over the last two weeks have actually

23:59

gone fine. So the bottom has not fallen

24:01

out of the new issue market yet. So

24:03

that's something to keep an eye on

24:05

and people are watching it very closely. But

24:08

the demand for global treasuries

24:10

has been falling for unrelated reasons.

24:13

The treasury has mostly been able to make

24:15

up for that from allied central banks

24:17

like the Brits and Canadians and the Australians.

24:20

And U .S. households have been pretty happy

24:22

to buy treasuries. But, you know, as a

24:24

while Schrader was telling me recently, he

24:26

was reminding me that the Dutch gilder was

24:28

once the reserve currency of the world. And

24:31

after that, it was the British pound. Yeah,

24:33

these things are not set in stone. We

24:35

do not have a birthright to be the reserve

24:37

currency of the world. It's earned and it's what

24:40

they call the exorbitant privilege. It lets you run

24:42

your country differently than other people have to run

24:44

theirs. And I think we've taken advantage of that

24:46

privilege for a long time. So

24:48

what are the next moments to

24:50

watch in this Trump Jerome Powell

24:52

showdown drama? Like I know we

24:54

have this 90 -day pause and

24:57

the tariffs. Are you

24:59

looking at that as a kind of

25:01

deadline to see whether Trump blinks with

25:03

the tariffs given things that Powell is

25:05

saying publicly? I would

25:07

expect the bond market to

25:09

get twitchy again as we get

25:11

closer to that 90 -day clock

25:13

without serious announcements of meaningful

25:15

trade deals that will kind of

25:17

put lower and more predictable

25:19

tariffs in place across the board.

25:22

But into all of that, you

25:24

know, Trump called the Federal

25:27

Reserve Chair a major loser and said

25:29

he wants to fire him. So

25:31

I don't know, by the time we

25:33

get off the mic, it could

25:35

be a totally different situation. I think,

25:37

you know, if he really calls

25:39

for pal's head, that's a very, very

25:41

dicey situation. It's just so

25:43

interesting because he's such a mild

25:45

-mannered guy, but he's

25:47

been really firm on, the

25:49

president cannot fire me. You

25:52

know, there have been versions of this that we've seen

25:54

over the last few weeks of people saying, I won't

25:56

leave, people coming to escort them out of the office.

25:59

And you just got to wonder, what's

26:01

Powell's red line? What's he going to do? I

26:04

think he's really committed to not leave it.

26:06

I mean, I think he knows that he is

26:08

sort of one of the last things that's

26:10

keeping the U .S. economy on semi even footing. But,

26:13

you know, look, you are starting to see

26:15

a little bit of backbone

26:17

get grown in various corners

26:20

that have caught themselves in

26:22

Trump's ire, Harvard taking the

26:24

stand, some of these law firms taking

26:26

the stand. These are not the same, but

26:28

I think the White House looks less

26:30

politically invincible than they did a couple of

26:32

weeks ago. In part,

26:34

their economic bargaining position is

26:37

weakening. In part, looks

26:39

a little bit like a

26:41

clown car on some of the

26:43

unrelated policies. And so I think

26:45

a little bit of the invincibility cloak

26:47

or whatever is dropped a bit and

26:49

may give Powell enough cover to stick

26:51

to his guns. But I'd be very

26:53

surprised if he folded. And I don't

26:56

think anyone knows how this would play

26:58

out legally. Liz

27:03

Hoffman, thank you so much for coming on the

27:05

show. I'm really grateful. Thanks for having

27:07

me. Liz

27:09

Hoffman is Semaphore's business

27:11

and finance editor. She's

27:13

also the author of Crash Landing. She'll

27:16

be appearing at Semaphore's World

27:18

Economy Summit this week in Washington.

27:21

All right, that's our show. What next

27:23

is produced by Paige Osburn, Elena

27:25

Schwartz, Rob Gunther, Anna Phillips, Ethan

27:27

Oberman, and Madeline Dusharm. Ben

27:30

Richmond is the senior director of podcast

27:32

operations here at Slate. And I'm Mary

27:34

Harris. Go track me down on Blue

27:36

Sky. I'm at Mary Harris. You can

27:38

see my vacation pictures. Thanks

27:40

for listening. Catch you back here

27:42

next time. Woodward

28:02

and Bernstein are sitting with their typewriters,

28:04

clacking away. And then there's this

28:06

rapid montage of newspaper stories about campaign

28:08

aides and White House officials getting convicted

28:10

of crimes about audio tapes coming out

28:12

that prove Nixon's involvement in the cover

28:14

-up. The last story we

28:16

see is Nixon resigns. It

28:19

takes a little over a minute in the movie. In

28:21

real life, it took about two years. Five

28:24

men were arrested early Saturday while trying

28:26

to install eavesdropping equipment. It's known as

28:28

the Watergate Incident. What was it like

28:30

to experience those two years in real

28:32

time? What were people thinking

28:34

and feeling as the break -in in Democratic

28:37

Party headquarters went from a weird little

28:39

caper to a constitutional crisis that brought down

28:41

the president? The

28:43

downfall of Richard Nixon was stranger, wilder,

28:45

and more exciting than you can imagine. Over

28:47

the course of eight episodes, this show is going

28:49

to capture what it was like to live through

28:51

the greatest political scandal of the 20th century. With

28:54

today's headlines once again full of corruption,

28:56

collusion, and dirty tricks, It's time for another

28:58

look at the gate that started it

29:00

all. Subscribe to Slow Burn

29:02

Now, wherever you get your podcasts. Now,

29:27

it's time to hear her real

29:30

story. Over the course of

29:32

four episodes, you'll find out what was

29:34

done to Linda Taylor, what she did to

29:36

others, and what was done in her name. The

29:38

great lesson of this for me

29:41

is that people will come to their

29:43

own conclusions based on what their

29:45

prejudices are. Subscribe to The

29:47

Queen on Apple Podcasts or wherever

29:49

you're listening right now.