It might seem like the 2024 U.S. presidential election is happening in a vacuum, but it will have

global repercussions.

All of America's allies are thinking very, very hard about how they should reconfigure themselves in case

an isolationist president is in the White House.

Swamp Notes from the Financial Times brings you insights on the race through an international

lens. You can listen to Swamp Notes on the FT News Briefing Podcast every Saturday. Hello and I got Mark Leibich-Leibbo.

He's formerly

the New York Times. Now he's at the Atlantic. There are a lot of good people at the

Atlantic. He's the author of five books. His most recent is Thank

you for servitude. And we might talk a little bit about 2013's this town. In the green room we were discussing the nuggets, futility, Bob Seger, office Atlantic Gossip. So we're kind of screwing you guys over about leaving everything in the locker

room. How you doing, Libel? Great, it's great to be with you too. We'll come up with good

material for the crowd too. You know I do have to say you know so this is the first time

you've been on with Charlie, first time on with me is when I called the editor, the guy that was going to edit my book, his first question for me was, it's like, what are some political books you like?

And my answer to that question was,

I pretty much only read fiction,

and like the only political book I've read that I've liked

in like the last hundred years is this town

by Mark Leibovitch.

He's like, well, there you go. So you have one model to work for and then he gave me five other books that I should read. So now I have to read political books all the time. It's the burden of this job. And even with that model I had for you I still struggled

until we sat at an Indian restaurant together I forget the name of it you'll know because

you wrote this town and you did a diagram on the table for me of how you organize a book, the long and short of it was basically

you can organize it however the fuck you want and the readers will go along with you because you are the

...