Jack Goldsmith

speaker

462 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard 10 Sep

Jack Goldsmith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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Interesting Times · Trump Is Getting Even Richer. Is That a Crime? · 10 Sep 2026 podcast

If you mean by institutional damage...

that the institution of government will be fundamentally changed because of what Trump is doing here.

That, I think, remains to be seen.

This may be a Trump-unique phenomenon that lasts for three more years, and then we'll have an accounting of it, and then we'll decide as a country whether we want to change the rules on this.

I do think they need changing.

But it could be that all of the institutions of conflicts of interest snap back.

And the reason I say this is because it's hard for me to see, and maybe this is a failure of my imagination or my cynicism, it's hard for me to see a Democrat who's going to come into office and take advantage of the ways that Trump has manipulated the government towards these ends to line their pockets and alter policy in the way.

Now, the Democrat might not win the next election, but... So I just think that while it's terrible for the institutions, I think it's terrible for confidence in government, and I think it's potentially terrible for U.S.

foreign policy and other policies.

I don't worry about institutional change in this context as much as I do in others.

I'm

So I think that topic, to me, moves off of the kleptocracy point to what I think of as the weaponization of government, by which I mean the president using all the tools of his executive discretion to help his friends in questionable ways and to harm his enemies.

Mm-hmm.

That I very much worry about, but I don't, and I think that, and I worry that there already have been institutional changes, and there will be more, no matter who the next president is.

But I don't see that in the same basket as the kleptocracy point.

Although, let me just say, but the IRS fund, so there was the fund...

for the J6 folks to help your friends and send signals.

Then there was the IRS settlement, which was a way for the president to make money and avoid liability and using government tools.

That's a little closer to what we're talking about.

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