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The Rachel Maddow Show

Bonus: This is how a prosecutor of organized crime sees Trump's corruption and how to defeat it

The Rachel Maddow Show

Rachel Maddow, MS NOW

Madow, Washington, Congress, Msnbc, Government, Policy, President, News, Versant, Public, Ms Now, Rachel Maddow, Issues, Campaign, Maddow

4.435.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade talks with Rachel Maddow about her acclaimed new book, "The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government," in which she draws upon her experience prosecuting fraud and organized crime to understand how to defeat Donald Trump's style of intimidation and inflicting pain on others to dominate them and get what he wants.

Transcript

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0:00.0

So occasionally in this country, we are saddled with a really stupid name for a really serious thing.

0:09.5

Like teapot dome, right?

0:11.5

I mean, teapot dome was actually the most lurid freaking scandal you can possibly imagine.

0:16.8

With, like, dead bodies and multimillion-dollar thefts and the Department of Justice almost collapsing.

0:24.6

But it's called teapot dome. So it sounds like, it sounds like a little mishap with a nice bit of crockery, right?

0:32.5

It happens in medical stuff too, you know, rickets, scurvy, pink eye. They sound like candy bars or something,

0:40.3

right? Or like something you'd pay an extra $1.25 to add to your boba, right? It's like,

0:47.5

they're really bad. As bizarre as it seems, I think this naming problem also sometimes happens with terrorism.

0:57.7

Do you remember, for example, the underwear bomber?

1:01.9

The underwear bomber.

1:03.2

Such a stupid name for such a serious thing.

1:06.9

It was Christmas Day 2009.

1:08.4

It was a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan.

1:12.8

Flight was preparing to land in Detroit when passengers on board the plane hear this loud pop.

1:18.9

And then smoke and flames start rising from one passenger's seat, specifically from that passenger.

1:30.0

It's a 23-year-old man on board the plane,

1:36.0

and he had attempted to ignite explosives that had been sewn into his clothes, specifically sewn into his underwear, hence the lasting term underwear bomber. Instead of setting off an

1:43.7

explosion, which is what he was trying to do,

1:46.0

which is what the whole thing had been designed to do, the man succeeded in setting himself

1:50.8

on fire on the plane. Passengers grabbed him, flight attendants put out the fire, the plane made

1:56.3

an emergency landing in Detroit. So that attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner, a packed U.S.-bound

2:04.6

civilian plane, it didn't work as an attempted bombing because the bomb didn't work. But when

...

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