Jonathan Swan

speaker

362 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 15 Jul

Jonathan Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

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

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Fresh Air · Gold, secrets, never-ending meetings: Inside the Trump White House · 15 Jul 2026 podcast

I remember in term one covering Trump, and you would have so many conversations with senior officials, including senior national security officials, and the overwhelming impression that you would receive from talking to these people was, A, they thought they were working for someone who was dangerous, B,

And they saw their own roles as protecting the country and the world from the person that they were ostensibly working for.

Those type of people don't exist anymore in this administration.

They really don't.

Not in any meaningful way at a senior level.

I'm sure they exist.

I know they exist at a more mid-level.

But at a senior level, it's really a group of people who believe in him, are loyal to him.

in some cases went through the campaign with him.

Many of them were radicalized on the campaign through the investigations and the efforts to prosecute Donald Trump.

Many of them received subpoenas themselves and viewed the stakes of the 2024 election as not so much about policy but about staying out of prison.

So that's the mindset of Trump and his inner circle.

And it's created a situation where there's very little friction between a Donald Trump

idea that might have just leapt straight from his internal monologue out of his mouth with no filter to an effort to make it actual American policy and execution.

It didn't happen in this instance with the Gaza thing, but it's happened in many, many other instances, including starting a trade war with the whole world.

Yeah, I think it's slightly more nuanced than that in the sense that there are people at different moments in this government who have confronted him with uncomfortable truths.

We have a section that's a couple of areas, but particularly on Iran, where the vice president, J.D.

Vance...

quite aggressively argues against this war and actually cost him with Trump.

But you're correct that in the main, that's absolutely the dynamic.

Showing 41–60 of 362 · page 3 of 19