Rise of the Trump Loyalist

Autocracy in America

The Atlantic

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kathleen Walters was only 23 days away from qualifying for early retirement at the IRS when she decided to quit, rather than acquiesce to a Trump-administration request that she break the law and compromise millions of people’s privacy. She’s one of hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have left or been fired from their federal-government jobs in the past year. In this episode, host Anne Applebaum speaks with Don Moynihan, an expert in the history of public policy from the University of Michigan. He explains how the destruction of America’s civil service is part of the administration’s greater effort to create a government that derives its power through unprecedented means and fundamentally disrupts democracy as we know it. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I thought I would be at the IRS for six months when I joined,
0:05.0	and those six months turned into almost two decades.
0:08.0	My name is Kathleen Walters, and I was an executive at the IRS for nearly 20 years,
0:18.0	most recently serving as the agency's chief privacy officer.
0:23.1	I've kind of worked with every administration all the way back to the early 90s.
0:29.7	No other administration has personally ever asked me to do anything that was illegal.
0:36.8	No. No.
0:38.1	No.
0:40.9	From the Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America.
0:44.1	I'm Ann Applebaum.
0:45.7	In this new season, I'm asking how the Trump White House
0:48.7	is rewriting the rules of U.S. politics
0:50.8	and talking to Americans whose lives have been changed as a result.
0:59.8	Today's episode examines the destruction of the civil service, the removal of professionals and their replacement with loyalists. I've seen this kind of transformation before in other
1:05.7	failing democracies. Everyone suffers from the degradation of public services. Government institutions run by lackeys are also more easily manipulated by autocratic leaders
1:16.1	and no longer serve the public interest.
1:19.9	Kathleen Walters found herself in the center of this story in 2025.
1:26.7	So on day one of the second Trump administration, it was clear things were going to be different because of the flurry of executive orders that were issued.
1:37.8	I got word that some of our leaders might be negotiating with DHS over a memorandum of understanding an agreement to share tax data.
1:50.0	I was contacted by our acting commissioner, and they wanted to have an agreement signed with DHS to share data on immigrants.
2:04.4	Certainly name, address, contact information was high on their list.
2:12.9	And really, whatever we could give them, and they wanted to compile it and mix it with the data they received from all the other agencies.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Atlantic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Atlantic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.