How President Trump Has Waged 'War' on the Bureaucracy
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. |
| 0:14.9 | Is Donald Trump weaponizing social media to enforce his desired policies, or are conservative social media influencers doing |
| 0:23.3 | more to influence and enforce their policies on him now? Maybe this morning's news conference |
| 0:28.9 | with 10 alleged Jeffrey Epstein victims led by one Democrat and one very MAGA Republican in Congress |
| 0:34.7 | is an example of that. Ben Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the news |
| 0:39.6 | organization Semaphore has a new column called No More Yes Minister, how Trump and social media |
| 0:46.1 | broke the bureaucracy. We'll talk about that now. Maybe some of Ben's other recent columns |
| 0:51.7 | and whatever revelations might be coming about alleged abusers |
| 0:55.3 | other than Epstein, but enabled by Epstein from this news conference. So far, nothing like that |
| 1:01.1 | has emerged from the reports that I'm seeing. As Ben Smith's bio page reminds us, he has previously |
| 1:07.3 | been the media columnist for the New York Times, the founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, a political reporter for Politico nationally, and the Daily News in New York. |
| 1:17.7 | His new column on Semaphore is called Washington View, which he says is designed to help readers understand the Trump administration as it seeks to remake the U.S. government and American |
| 1:27.7 | society and reshape everything from private enterprise to global trade. Ben, always good to have |
| 1:33.7 | you on. Welcome back to WN.YC. Yeah, so you left out longtime Brian Lear, a listener and fan, but it is |
| 1:39.9 | nice to be back on here. It's been a little while. Glad, glad to hear. |
| 1:49.8 | To what end does Trump want to break the bureaucracy? |
| 1:56.1 | Is it really the independence of the bureaucracy, an authoritarian project to make sure every decision about scientific findings or COVID vaccines or interest rates or jobs numbers or court decisions |
| 2:03.0 | or, you know, news reporting, Voice of America, other things that were previously supposed to have |
| 2:09.9 | some insulation from politics, all are now directed to make him look right about everything |
| 2:15.4 | or all powerful, so don't mess with him. |
| 2:18.3 | Is that why Trump and social media are trying to break the bureaucracy? |
| 2:21.9 | Or is it more complicated than that? |
... |
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