This is the John Fugel-Sang Podcast.

So we talk a lot about the awful things Donald Trump did in the White House, but I think we need

to be a bit more mindful of all the awful things he tried to do and failed at because of

civil service guardrails that keep us from being a complete dictatorship, from going way too easy on

Russia, to trying to blackmail President Zelensky, from wanting to have an alligator-filled moat

along our southern border, so many bad ideas were thwarted and the

thwarters have not gotten quite enough credit for it. Jonathan Swan did a whole

piece about this

on Axios recently and apparently it's all been a long-term strategy of Donald Trump

and his circle this government overhaul they dream of that could possibly

should they return to office push as many as 50,000 of those career officials out of their

job and move us a bit closer to authoritarianism.

Now this is something Trump tried to do late in his administration when he was pushing reclassifying thousands of federal

employees as Schedule F, making them easier to get rid of.

And retidling them was a centerpiece of his effort.

So I'm so pleased to welcome back to the show David Rothkopf,

the CEO of the Rothkopf Group,

which is a great media company that has podcasts,

including Deep State Radio, which he hosts.

He was deputy undersecretary of Commerce

for International Trade Policy and Development,

later served as acting US Undersecretary of Commerce

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