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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 is

2:18

publicly threatening to fire him.

2:21

So that's a tough 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

2:48

to social media to say,

2:50

Powell's termination cannot come

2:52

fast enough. These words

2:54

spooked the markets. Enough that

2:56

by Tuesday night, Trump was

2:58

walking back his tough talk.

3:01

But put yourself in the Fed chair's shoes. Would

3:04

all of this back and forth

3:06

reassure you? He's actually handled

3:08

this pressure with a lot of grace,

3:11

but it really complicates his job

3:13

at a time when it

3:15

is already just epically complicated by

3:17

the economy that we're facing

3:19

and the policies that he's trying

3:21

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

3:49

seen Trump fire a whole lot of

3:51

people that no one thought he could

3:53

or should fire like inspectors general, for

3:55

instance. He's put loyalists at

3:57

the 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

4:06

out from the market, try firing the Federal

4:08

Reserve 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

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everyday inspiration. I

6:03

want to go back in time to

6:05

understand why exactly Trump is raging against.

6:07

Jerome Powell, who's a guy that he

6:09

selected to lead the Federal Reserve ages

6:11

ago in his first term. He

6:13

got nominated in 2017. At

6:16

the time, I assume Donald Trump was a

6:18

fan of him. He liked that

6:20

Powell was out of central casting. Like he

6:22

looks like a guy who should be running

6:24

the Federal Reserve. And replaced

6:26

Janet Yellen, who reportedly Trump thought

6:28

was too short. Oh

6:30

boy. Yeah. So yeah,

6:32

he nominated Powell, appointed Powell in,

6:35

you know, what I think we'll look

6:37

back on is kind of the

6:39

easy boom times, pre -pandemic, everything was

6:41

kind of fine, interest rates were low

6:43

and stable, the economy was kind

6:45

of chugging. It didn't seem,

6:48

this is, you know, this is an important job,

6:50

but at various times it can be harder or

6:52

easier. And at the moment, it didn't seem like

6:54

it was that hard a job. So it almost

6:56

didn't matter that much. It was sort of like,

6:58

yeah, this guy looks right, sure, check, bye. Yeah. Anything

7:01

else people should know about Powell,

7:03

but who he is, his approach?

7:06

He's a pretty establishment

7:08

guy. He spent some time

7:11

on Wall Street at a private

7:13

equity firm, but he's a really

7:15

kind of centrist Republican. You

7:18

can think of him kind of

7:20

like a Rockefeller Republican, sort of

7:22

believes in low taxes, free trade,

7:25

stability. He's

7:27

not a real

7:29

controversial character. Yeah, you

7:31

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

7:33

that's like the opposite of a Magor

7:35

Republican. Correct. He belongs to

7:37

the wing of the Republican party.

7:39

I would say that it's just

7:42

like being pummeled into extinction. I

7:45

know Powell talks a lot about

7:47

the dual mandate goals of the

7:49

Federal Reserve, which are maximum employment

7:51

and stable prices, right? And

7:54

the Fed shares tools or interest rates. Can

7:56

you just explain this a little bit for the

7:58

listener? Yeah, you can think

8:00

of the U .S. economy like a

8:02

fire, and the Federal Reserve holds

8:04

the bellows. So their job,

8:06

as you said, is to keep

8:08

as many people employed as possible.

8:11

Historically, that means an unemployment rate, you know,

8:13

three, four, five percent, depending on how

8:15

the economy is doing. It had been historically

8:17

low, you know, for years. This is

8:19

a very tight economy. It got even more

8:21

so after the pandemic. And its

8:23

second job is to keep prices stable.

8:25

This doesn't mean actually stable. It means inflation

8:27

at a pretty low level. The

8:30

Fed usually shoots for around 2%. And

8:32

so the way the Fed controls the

8:34

economy, again, if you think of it

8:36

like a fire and they're holding the

8:38

bellows, so if the fire is dying,

8:40

if it's too cool, if the economy

8:42

is growing too slowly, if

8:44

people aren't spending, they

8:46

can put oxygen in it and they do that.

8:49

simply by putting money into the economy.

8:51

They lower interest rates, which makes it

8:53

easier for people to borrow, to start

8:56

businesses, to buy houses, to buy cars, to

8:58

put things on their credit cards. They

9:01

also often grow their own balance sheet,

9:03

which means they're buying bonds from the

9:05

market and putting cash into the system

9:07

that way. And then if

9:09

the economy is running too hot, if the

9:11

fire is out of control, they do the

9:13

opposite. They dampen it. They raise interest rates,

9:15

which makes everything more expensive and is meant

9:17

to cool the economy down. That is their

9:19

main tool. And in

9:21

most normal situations, it

9:24

works pretty well. Are

9:27

we in a normal situation? No.

9:32

No. Look, we were, you

9:34

know, as weird as it sounds to

9:36

say the pandemic was a normal situation and

9:38

the post -pandemic craziness was normal. It

9:41

was textbook economically normal, which

9:43

is that the economy shut down. There

9:45

was a shock that shut down the

9:47

economy. A lot of people got laid

9:49

off. And so what the

9:51

Fed did is it and Congress helped here

9:53

too by writing a lot of checks to

9:55

Americans, it put oxygen into

9:57

the fire. It pumped

9:59

up the economy artificially to

10:01

counteract the just massive dampening of

10:04

demand that the pandemic caused.

10:06

And then on the way out

10:08

of the pandemic, inflation

10:10

is soaring. The economy is running way

10:12

too hot because everyone has come out of

10:14

quarantine and said, I want to own

10:16

everything. I want to do everything. I want

10:18

to spend everything. They have these stimulus

10:20

checks in their pockets, stock markets out of

10:22

control. So they raise interest rates and

10:24

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

10:27

a little stubborn. But by

10:29

the end of 2024, It

10:31

is clear that that has worked. And

10:33

you can see a glide path back

10:35

towards a more normal interest rate somewhere,

10:37

never going to be as cheap as

10:39

it was for a lot of the

10:41

2010s where money was essentially free. But

10:43

you're going to end up with an

10:45

interest rate that is much more sustainable,

10:48

that puts mortgages within reach for most

10:50

people, that feels like a steady state.

10:53

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

10:55

pandemic as like a proof of concept

10:57

for the Fed. But that's kind of

10:59

what you're saying. It was the

11:01

ultimate proof of concept because it happened in

11:03

such a chaotic and traumatic way, and

11:05

yet it basically worked if you can take

11:07

the 30 ,000 -foot view of it. They

11:09

managed to avoid a deep depression on

11:11

the way in and a financial panic on

11:14

the way in, and managed to kind

11:16

of guide the economy back towards normal footing

11:18

on the way out a little longer

11:20

and slower than people might like, a little

11:22

more painful, and inflation almost certainly swung

11:24

the election in a major way, but it

11:26

basically was proof of concept for that

11:28

playbook. The problem is that

11:31

playbook doesn't work in a

11:33

situation like we have now where

11:35

you are worried about low

11:37

growth, so a fire that is

11:39

dying, but high

11:41

prices, the tariffs make

11:43

things more expensive than they would

11:45

otherwise be in an economy

11:47

with these characteristics about employment and

11:49

consumer demand and sentiment. So

11:52

you've kind of created a

11:54

lab experiment where the normal playbook

11:56

that the Fed would unveil

11:58

doesn't work. And that is the

12:00

predicament that Powell finds himself in now. Yeah.

12:03

And I want to talk

12:05

about how reporters like you kind

12:07

of began to see this

12:09

not normalness start to play out

12:11

over the last few weeks. Because

12:14

right after Trump announced his

12:16

liberation day tariffs, the stock

12:18

market went wild, which I think everyone clocked

12:20

if you had a television or a radio

12:22

because it was all people were talking about. But

12:25

also the bond market started

12:27

wilding out in this abnormal way.

12:30

And I'm wondering if you can

12:32

explain why that in particular

12:34

was something that folks like you

12:36

focused on and thought, huh, it's

12:39

a sign of something abnormal

12:41

going on. So a lot

12:43

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

12:45

stock market. And I understand that

12:47

it's visceral. You look at your 401k

12:49

and it feels tangible to you. But

12:51

the dirty secret is that it doesn't

12:53

really matter. The bond market

12:55

matters a lot. Why? Both

12:58

because of what it can tell you about

13:00

the economy and what it means for the

13:02

economy. A bond, for those

13:04

wondering, is kind of like a loan.

13:06

You give the government. Most often over

13:08

a 10 -year period, they use your

13:10

money now and pay you back later

13:12

with a little interest. Sometimes

13:14

people talk about it as buying

13:16

government debt. Credit like

13:18

this is what makes our

13:21

economy hum. So think

13:23

about the Great Depression. It started

13:25

with a stock market crash, but

13:27

what caused the actual depression was

13:29

an evaporation of credit. People couldn't

13:31

borrow. They couldn't borrow to start

13:33

businesses or buy homes or... on

13:35

layaway at the shop down the street.

13:38

And that is how you end up

13:40

in an economic doom loop. So people

13:42

pay a lot of attention to the

13:44

bond market. There's a famous quote from

13:46

James Carville, who was President Clinton's top

13:48

advisor to President Clinton. And he said,

13:50

I want to be reincarnated as a

13:52

bond trader because they can intimidate everybody.

13:55

Well, let's explain why the bond market is so important

13:57

in this way. It finances

13:59

the entire economy. If

14:01

any business had to pay for a

14:03

factory out of its own cash reserves, it

14:05

would never build a factory. Everything

14:08

is financed, is borrowed on

14:10

some level. And the

14:12

reliance that the U .S. economy in particular

14:14

has on borrowing is a bit of

14:16

a weakness. But when the

14:18

system is functioning, it's

14:20

incredibly dynamic. And it's why we

14:23

tend to come out of economic downturns

14:25

faster than the rest of the

14:27

world, because we're good at creating credit.

14:29

and encouraging people to take risks.

14:32

And that all hinges

14:35

on debt being affordable

14:37

and being functioning, that

14:39

market functioning smoothly. Basically,

14:42

other countries like China come to the

14:44

U .S. buy our bonds and like

14:46

kind of park their money there. And

14:48

it functions as a loan to the

14:50

federal government to do all the things

14:52

we like the federal government to do.

14:54

And it's why Congress can spend a

14:56

lot of money, yeah? It underwrites our

14:58

entire deficit. model. If people,

15:00

you know, most households have to balance their

15:02

budgets every year. In fact, most states have

15:05

to balance their budgets, but the federal government

15:07

does not. It runs a deficit and it's

15:09

able to do that to spend more than

15:11

it takes in on services that we all

15:13

want and demand because people are willing to

15:15

buy its debt. And so

15:17

that means that any

15:19

flicker, any signal that that

15:21

has broken down, that

15:23

people now are a little

15:25

wary about lending, to

15:27

Washington is hugely important and

15:29

is watched really, really

15:31

closely. And that is what

15:33

happened on the back

15:35

of tariffs. The bond market

15:37

lost its mind. Yeah, people

15:39

started selling their bonds. People started

15:42

selling their bonds. What

15:44

does President Trump want

15:46

Jerome Powell to do to

15:48

fix that? What

15:50

you have to remember about President Trump is that

15:52

he is at heart a real estate guy. And

15:55

real estate works best when interest rates

15:57

are low, when money is cheap. You can

15:59

think about that, that like your mortgage

16:01

is more affordable when interest rates are low.

16:03

But that's also true with commercial real

16:05

estate, like the kind that Donald Trump came

16:08

up developing, developers borrow money for very

16:10

little and they build these big projects. And

16:12

that it's a merry -go -round that kind

16:14

of relies on debt being cheap. And so

16:16

Trump has always liked low interest rates.

16:18

He's sort of the king of debt, right?

16:20

Calls himself that. And so that has

16:22

always been his starting point. What

16:25

he would like Jerome Powell to do explicitly

16:27

now is start to cut interest rates. And

16:29

the irony of all of this is that had

16:31

Trump not done any of this stuff on tariffs, we'd

16:33

probably be heading into an environment where the Fed

16:35

was going to do that this spring and summer. Yeah.

16:38

I mean, Jerome Powell

16:40

gave a speech last week

16:42

where he basically laid

16:44

out his dilemma. He said

16:46

the central bank could

16:48

find itself caught between controlling

16:50

inflation and supporting economic

16:52

growth, which raises this specter

16:54

of the 70s, right? Stagflation.

16:58

What would that look like?

17:01

That is the word that everyone is trying

17:03

to avoid saying out loud. Especially

17:05

Jerome Powell. Yes, especially

17:07

Jerome Powell. Other Fed officials have tied

17:09

themselves in linguistic knots over the last

17:11

two weeks, not to say that, to

17:13

instead say that they are going to

17:15

have trouble fulfilling their mandate. But that's

17:18

what they're talking about this period. And

17:20

you have to go back to the

17:22

70s to see it of. high prices,

17:24

that's the flation part, and stagnant economic

17:26

growth, that's the stag part. And

17:28

in normal economics, those two

17:30

things don't... occur together

17:33

because lower economic growth, people feel poor,

17:35

they spend less. Those two things

17:37

tend to, prices go down. Those two

17:39

things tend to move together. On

17:41

the flip side, when the economy is

17:43

hot and wages are going up

17:45

and people are spending, prices tend to

17:47

move up. So those two things

17:49

tend to move together. Stagflation is when

17:51

they move in opposite directions. And

17:53

they don't, that doesn't naturally

17:56

occur. It requires an external shock.

17:58

Here, the concern is that

18:00

the external shock is the tariffs

18:02

that have artificially made something

18:04

and a lot of things that

18:06

Americans buy more expensive and

18:08

are putting upward pressure on prices

18:10

at the same time that

18:12

it is disincentivizing businesses to invest

18:14

and people to start businesses

18:16

because they're afraid of what's going

18:18

to happen. We'll

18:21

be back after a quick break.

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20:04

apply. If

20:08

you scroll through President Trump's

20:10

social media feed, you'll see

20:12

that he's come up with a nickname for

20:14

Jerome Powell, Mr. Too

20:16

Late. It's a dig

20:18

meant to emphasize that Powell is stalling

20:20

on lowering interest rates, which Trump

20:22

thinks is going to cure the ailing

20:25

economy. Even as the president

20:27

sought to reassure investors this week that

20:29

he is not going to fire Powell, he

20:31

couldn't resist throwing another little

20:33

ask in, saying, This is a

20:36

perfect time to lower interest

20:38

rates. Hint, hint. The

20:41

question for Liz is, what happens

20:43

if Powell does not budge? What if

20:45

Trump gets bored, changes his mind? If

20:48

the markets didn't like the idea of

20:50

firing a Fed share, how

20:52

would they react if he actually got the

20:54

boot? Yeah, pretty quickly, I

20:56

think people would absolutely dump their

20:58

treasury bonds. The

21:00

movements that spooked people two

21:02

weeks ago, The interest

21:04

rate that investors charge the government

21:06

to lend the government money,

21:08

it's called the yield, and

21:10

the yield on the benchmark bond, which is

21:12

a 10 -year bond, went from somewhere in

21:14

the high 3 % to about 4 .5 %

21:17

over the course of a couple of

21:19

days. And that doesn't seem like

21:21

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

21:23

a lot? Because it's just

21:25

a very quick move. I mean, the

21:27

last time there was a move that

21:29

dramatic was in the 2000s, I mean

21:31

around 2008. And it's a sign of

21:33

real stress. The

21:35

US Treasury bonds have been,

21:37

for all of modern history,

21:39

the safest investment in the

21:41

world. And so the price

21:43

that people charge to hold them shouldn't

21:45

change all that much. And when

21:47

they move that dramatically, people get spooked.

21:50

A disastrous US bond market? the

21:52

major trouble for Americans and how

21:55

the government pays for everything? But

21:57

Liz says that's not the only

21:59

risk here. The global

22:01

economy could get screwed too.

22:04

Treasury bonds have become kind of the monopoly

22:06

money of the world. Imagine you

22:08

go into an arcade and rather than putting dimes

22:10

and nickels and quarters and all the machines, you just

22:12

buy a bunch of tokens on the way in

22:14

and then everything in the arcade functions off those tokens.

22:17

A lot of financial

22:19

markets, payments, trading, exchanges, rely

22:22

on treasuries as a

22:24

base currency. If

22:27

the price of treasuries

22:29

changes, it reprices all of

22:31

those things. So a

22:33

lot of loans are priced

22:35

off of above what a similarly

22:38

tenured treasury would cost. Treasuries

22:40

serve as collateral for... trillions of dollars

22:42

of transactions, right? If you're a hedge fund,

22:44

you go to Goldman Sachs, you say,

22:46

I want to buy XYZ. They say, fine,

22:48

we'll set that up for you. We

22:50

just need a little bit of collateral in

22:52

an account. You're almost certainly going to

22:54

send them treasuries. And so if the collateral

22:56

gets less valuable overnight, which is what

22:58

would happen if people dump treasury bonds, you're

23:01

going to see margin calls like we

23:03

haven't seen since at least 2008. possibly

23:05

ever, which is that all of these

23:07

trading accounts are upside down and people

23:09

are going to have to sell whatever

23:11

they can to come up with cash.

23:13

And that is how you end up

23:15

with a financial crisis. Has

23:18

something like this happened in

23:20

an economy this big before?

23:22

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

23:25

so no. The

23:27

US economy is bigger than it's ever

23:29

been, and it's the biggest in

23:31

the world, so no. So really uncharted

23:33

territory. In times of

23:35

uncertainty or fear, treasuries have

23:37

been a safe haven. People sell

23:39

stocks and they buy treasury

23:41

bonds. That's the move. And

23:43

that is not happening now. People

23:45

are realizing, I'm not sure

23:47

I feel that much safer holding treasury bonds,

23:49

being a creditor to the US government than

23:51

I do holding a bunch of Nvidia stock.

23:54

That is like a real indictment of

23:56

the political moment. It

23:58

just seems like such a pickle. Because

24:00

to me, it seems like there's a real

24:02

risk of investors just sitting on their

24:04

hands and being like, I'm going to wait

24:06

to see how this plays out. And

24:08

so it's just you're not going to be

24:11

getting as much money coming in, in

24:13

addition to people who already own Treasury selling

24:15

them off. And that seems like a

24:17

long -term problem. I should say

24:19

that the Treasury is always selling new

24:21

Treasury bonds, and the auctions over the last

24:23

few weeks have actually gone fine. So

24:25

the bottom has not fallen out of the

24:27

new issue market yet. So that's something

24:29

to keep an eye on and people are

24:31

watching it very closely. But

24:33

the demand for global treasuries

24:35

has been falling for unrelated reasons.

24:38

The treasury has mostly been able to make

24:40

up for that from allied central banks

24:42

like the Brits and Canadians and the Australians

24:45

and US households have been pretty happy

24:47

to buy treasuries. But, you know, as a

24:49

Wall Street was telling me recently, he

24:51

was reminding me that the Dutch gilder was

24:53

once the reserve currency of the world. And

24:56

after that, it was the British pound. Yeah,

24:58

these things are not set in stone. We

25:01

do not have a birthright to be the reserve

25:03

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

25:05

they call the exorbitant privilege. It lets you run

25:07

your country differently than other people have to run

25:09

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

25:11

privilege for a long time. So

25:13

what are the next moments to

25:15

watch in this Trump Jerome Powell

25:17

showdown? drama. Like I know we

25:20

have this 90 -day pause and

25:22

the tariffs. Are you looking

25:24

at that as a kind of

25:26

deadline to see whether Trump blinks with

25:28

the tariffs given things that Powell

25:30

is saying publicly? I

25:32

would expect the bond market to

25:34

get twitchy again as we

25:36

get closer to that 90 -day

25:38

clock without serious announcements of meaningful

25:40

trade deals that will kind

25:42

of put lower and more predictable

25:44

tariffs in place across the

25:46

board. But into all

25:48

of that, you know, Trump

25:51

called the Federal Reserve Chair a

25:53

major loser and said he wants to

25:55

fire him. So I don't know,

25:57

by the time we get off the

25:59

mic, it could be a totally

26:01

different situation. I think, you know, if

26:03

he really calls for pal's head,

26:05

that's a very, very dicey situation. It's

26:07

just so interesting because he's such

26:09

a mild -mannered guy. But

26:12

he's been really firm on,

26:14

the president cannot fire me. You

26:17

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

26:19

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

26:22

leave people coming to escort them out of the office.

26:24

And you just got to wonder, what's

26:26

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

26:29

think he's really committed to not leave it.

26:31

I mean, I think he knows that he is

26:33

sort of one of the last things that's

26:36

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

26:38

you know, look, you are starting to see

26:41

a little bit of. backbone

26:43

get grown in various corners

26:45

that have caught themselves in

26:47

Trump's ire, Harvard taking the

26:49

stand, some of these law firms taking

26:51

the stand. These are not the same, but

26:53

I think the White House looks less

26:55

politically invincible than they did a couple of

26:57

weeks ago. In part,

26:59

their economic bargaining position is

27:02

weakening. In part, looks

27:04

a little bit like a clown

27:06

car on some of the unrelated

27:08

policies. And so I think

27:10

a little bit of the invincibility cloak

27:12

or whatever is dropped a bit and

27:15

may give Powell enough cover to stick

27:17

to his guns. But I'd be very

27:19

surprised if he folded. And I don't

27:21

think anyone knows how this would play

27:23

out legally. Liz

27:28

Hoffman, thank you so much for coming on the

27:30

show. I'm really grateful. Thanks for having

27:32

me. Liz

27:34

Hoffman is Semaphore's business

27:36

and finance editor. She's

27:38

also the author of Crash Landing. She'll

27:41

be appearing at Semaphore's World

27:43

Economy Summit this week in Washington.

27:46

All right, that's our show. What next

27:48

is produced by Paige Osburn, Elena

27:51

Schwartz, Rob Gunther, Anna Phillips, Ethan

27:53

Oberman, and Madeline Dusharm. Ben

27:55

Richmond is the senior director of podcast

27:57

operations here at Slate. And I'm Mary

27:59

Harris. Go track me down on Blue

28:01

Sky. I'm at Mary Harris. You can

28:03

see my vacation pictures. Thanks

28:05

for listening. Catch you back here

28:07

next time. I'm

28:15

Leon Naefach, and I'm the

28:17

host of Slow Burn Watergate. Before

28:19

I started working on this show, everything

28:21

I knew about Watergate came from the movie

28:24

All the President's Men. Do you remember

28:26

how it ends? Woodward and Bernstein

28:28

are sitting at their typewriters, clacking away. And

28:30

then there's this rapid montage of newspaper

28:32

stories about campaign aides and White House

28:34

officials getting convicted of crimes about audio

28:36

tapes coming out that prove Nixon's involvement

28:38

in the cover -up. The

28:40

last story we see is Nixon resigns.

28:44

It takes a little over a minute in the movie. In

28:47

real life, it took about two years. Five

28:49

men were arrested early Saturday while trying

28:51

to install eavesdropping equipment. It's known as

28:53

the Watergate Incident. What was it like

28:55

to experience those two years in real

28:58

time? What were people

29:00

thinking and feeling as the break -in in

29:02

Democratic Party headquarters went from a weird little

29:04

caper to a constitutional crisis that brought

29:06

down the president? The

29:08

downfall of Richard Nixon was stranger, wilder,

29:10

and more exciting than you can imagine. Over

29:13

the course of eight episodes, this show is going

29:15

to capture what it was like to live through

29:17

the greatest political scandal of the 20th century. With

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today's headlines once again full of corruption,

29:21

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

29:23

look at the gate that started it

29:25

all. Subscribe to Slow Burn

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Now, wherever you get your podcasts. Now,

29:53

it's time to hear her real

29:55

story. Over the course of

29:57

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30:01

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30:03

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