NTK: Killing Baby Hitler: A Conversation with Mike Tomasky

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sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, DC, and from other, undisclosed locations across America and around the world. "Hello and welcome to Need to Know. This is a special episode. I'm David Rothkock and we are joined by our friend, Mike Tamaskis, the editor of the New

Republic. And we'll probably talk to him about a bunch of that kind of new Republican stuff at the end of this thing. Because, you know, the world is going to hell and nobody covers a world going to hell better than Mike Tamaskin, the New Republic.

But first, I want to start with something in a bit of a change of pace here from Mike.

Because he's got a new book at, and the new book is called, "Killing Baby Hitter." This is a copy of the book right here. I've read it. I think it's a great book. It is a funny book.

It is a, I don't know, do you call a book like this science fiction? I mean, it's sent in the future, it's got science, goes into the past. But what do you call it as a genre?

“No, it's genre-defying, David, that's what I call it.”

It is genre-defying, that's what the great authors go. It is genre-defying, but it is, absolutely fantastic, and literally it's the beginning of the summer. You need something to read for the summer. This book is the perfect book to read, because it is funny and it is an escape.

It is also thought-provoking, and you know, you're lying on the beach, and you're getting burned, and you think, is all this for nothing. But if a thought is provoked, then it's for something. So this is, this is, this is perfect. I'm going to leave a tear to reveal as much of the plot as you would like to.

But basically, there are people in the future that discover the ability to go back and

time, that go back and time, and you know, the title of the book's killing, baby, he'll all right, you know, do the math, although that's not exactly the way it works out.

“How, like, what dark moment led you in this direction, Mike?”

I don't know. Thank you for having me on first of all, and your kind words, I really appreciate it. I got this idea sometime in the late 2022, one morning while I was exercising, I don't know why, I mean, it's not, you know, the question of killing, baby Hitler is not, obviously, original to me or this novel, but one morning it just popped into my head, and I started

thinking about it for some reason, and I started thinking that I could write it, and that I could do something interesting with this idea. And so I started writing on New Year's Day 2023, and it basically took me that year and the next year to finish the first draft, you know, it felt, it just felt like a resonant thing, and the reelection of Trump has made it even more so, I have to say, and there are

a couple of things in this book, they would, that are like too close to reality, like I'll give away one. There's a section in the book that covers like the 2040s, 2050s, and 2060s when the United States of America in my telling is breaking into two. And so I talk about the Republicans of 2048, who got elected, but squandered their mandate

by among other things, tearing down the Lincoln Memorial, and building its place. The Nathan Bedford Forest Mixed Marshall Arts Center.

It's a little too close for comfort there, Mike.

Anyway, and also don't give them any ideas, I know, well, anyway, there's a lot of little tumour in the book like that.

“I think there's a lot of big humor in the book.”

It's one of those books that I was reading it, and I kind of felt sort of elevated, because I don't get to spend that much time in the world's where there is humor, right? Because you watch the news, there's no humor, you turn on the TV, it's not, and it takes you there. But there is this dark undercurrent.

This is a kind of dystopian future you describe, and then you've got these people with

this mission, which is a kind of, I don't know, idealistic mission, but that doesn't

turn out so well either. Right. Right. So, yeah, on what to give away and not give away, I guess I've just been saying interviews that they go back, two of these scientists go back to 1889 Austria to try and

kill the baby. They bought you the job, and he survives, but he ends up not becoming the Adolf Hitler wheel, no one hate. He becomes a different person, his life takes a very different course, and so history is altered in interesting ways, and there are some sections at the end of the book where I go into

“that alternate history that I think are pretty entertaining.”

So, you know, that's all I'll say about what happens. I think the fate that awaits Hitler, I don't know, I think it's really funny. I'm not going to say it. It is funny. Suffice it say he does not become a lounge singer someplace, or it's not like, you know,

he still plays a role. Yeah. He still has the same poisonous patrons. I'll say this much, like in real life, Edolf Hitler's mother Clara died, he was a real mama's boy, and he loved her, and he apparently wasn't, there wasn't anything I'm usually

poisonous about him, as long as his mom was alive, and then she died when he was 17, I think, a breast cancer. So, in this alternate reality, this other version of Hitler also is a mama's boy, and his mother dies a breast cancer at 17, because there's this whole theme about time and how we can't control time and things like that.

And then that's when this other non-Hitler Hitler becomes filled with fury and rage and becomes an anti-Semite.

He just fortunately doesn't become an all-powerful dictator who has the power to kill millions

of people.

“You know, why do we blame everything on our mothers?”

You know, I was just doing a podcast this morning about Trump and some of the disaster in the world today, and I was thinking, think of the money we saved and the lives that could have been saved, if only Trump's mother had liked it. But it's not entirely her fault, although I think we can pin this one more on Fred. Well, Fred was a bad guy, but didn't this mother say it was an idiot?

I mean, she was kind of quoted as saying all of that. But it doesn't raise an interesting philosophical question, right? And an interesting philosophical question quite apart from time space and all that kind of thing, which is, you know, I lead that to the scientists behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Is the amount of evil that we see in the world today inevitable?

Is the decline of these civilizations or the wars or the conflicts baked into the cake? By some larger forces that are out there. Do you have a view on that? I mean, you seem to, it seems to be a thread there, but I mean, is that like a a reason to view, or was that just something else that happened to you in the gym?

I don't know. That's too philosophical for me. I'm not feeling that deep, but, you know, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's in us. It's in all of us to different degrees, obviously some people much more than others. And then, you know, events conspire to, to bring out the worst in people at times.

And, and we see that it's easy, you know, I mean, we see in our own time in the United States as they saw in Germany in the 1920s and '30s that it's pretty easy to get people worked

But, you know, it comes down to a really interesting issue here.

“I mean, some of it's baked into the cake, but another dimension of it, if you look at Germany”

in the '20s and '30s, they come out of a catastrophically mismanaged war into a mismanaged society rampant inflation, why more Republicans, etc., etc. And that takes angry people and it exacerbates their anger. And so when you have dysfunctional governance, it makes things worse in many ways, not just in public policy.

And I mean, you know, we've lived in the United States for the course of the past 50 years, started to change it to the, you know, the theme of all of us crazy lefties. But, you know, we've had growing inequality in the United States for 50 years. We've had growing disproportionate power being shifted to the few and away from the many. We've had social programs and things that benefit the few, being shut down in order to provide

more benefits for billionaires than the one trillionaire out there. And that does make people angry, and that exacerbates what's within the people. In other words, you create environments that bring out what's worse than people rather than what's best in people. And I do think that there are message, you may sort of shrug and say you're not a philosopher,

but I baked into the cake of this book is there a lot of provocative philosophical thoughts like that. I hate to interrupt this thrilling podcast, but we have some exciting news at the DSR Network. Our Substack is now live. Our Substack is going to be the new home for free and paid content here at the DSR Network.

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Good, just for Aldi. I hope so. I hope people read it that way. I mean, I'm conscious of trying to raise those questions. And then there's aside from the killing of the infant, there's this B plot.

Because the book takes place at two different periods of time. As you said, it opens in the future. Because I decided it had to open at a point in time when time travel might theoretically

be possible, even though it's probably never possible.

But it might be in the future from things I read. So I just said it in 2144. No, wait a second. How much research did you do into time travel here, Mike? I mean, I want to know.

How confident do you feel that you understand the physics of time travel? I read a few peer-reviewed papers. So I didn't actually read one whole book. I read some papers. Still pretty dirty.

And if the general consensus seems to be that it's really never going to be possible,

“you have to bend the speed of light somehow.”

And other things that you complicated from me that understand. And I don't think there's any way that human beings can change the speed of light.

Although we never know what's going to happen.

So that's, you know, anyway, you're getting it to your B plot. Yeah. Yeah. So part of the book is set in the future, 2141 and 42, and part of the book is set back in 1889.

The future part has this B plot where there's this evil corporation that's planning

And so our heroes, in addition to trying to kill Hitler, also find themselves once back

in their time in the future, having to fight this. And so the book raises toward a conclusion where we see what's become of the non-Hitler Hitler and we see them trying to confront this future crisis for humanity. So it was an evil corporation, isn't there? That's what I expect of you.

Pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, I found that also fascinating and provocative.

“And, you know, honestly, I read it and I was like, I want to see the move.”

Are you going to make a movie? I do too. I want to see the movie. I also want to, I want to see the Broadway musical. I want to see the Netflix series.

Yeah. The theme park. The theme park. The theme park. The theme park.

Retire. You know, start worrying about where to give my money away. Yeah. Oh, don't we all. Don't we all.

When that happens, I volunteer to become like your house boy or something like that. You know, you can just, I just a minute of an ongoing existence would be fine. I just, I can't recommend the book more enthusiasticly. It is exactly what people need. And I really should just go click on Amazon or better yet a local bookseller.

And get the book in it or make your summer and your life a lot better. I can't have the opportunity to talk to you without talking about the reasons their lives, the listeners lives are, may not be better.

“I think this week, Mike, may be a, I mean,”

maybe, you know, reading your book or something has made me into a giddy optimist. But I think this week may have had some, at least for shadowings of a watershed in it. And I think the foreshadowings go a little like this. It is now virtually universally apparent that Donald Trump's Iran war was an absolute fiasco in every way and, you know, and it may have cost the world to trillion dollars

according to one report, it may have cost DOD, odd $120 billion and there's three, four,

five thousand dead people in Lebanon, three, four, five thousand dead people in Iran. And enormous pain to people everywhere with rising prices and so forth. And Trump has been from the outset unable to manage this thing. And he shouldn't have launched it. It was managed poorly. Pete Heggsett has done a terrible job.

And then, you know, trying to get out of it, he just hasn't been able to do that in this deal,

“which was the main news story of the week as we are talking at the end of the week,”

is coming apart at the seams for perfectly good reasons. It contains promises that the, the, the, the signatories to the deal were in no conversation to keep and, and frankly, one's not sure of the motives of any of these people, but Republicans are against it, Democrats are against it, Trump is stumbling and stumbling and stumbling. And, you know, you saw him at the G7 or you saw him yesterday

trying to award a medal of honor to somebody and he couldn't do the clip and he had to tie it and a bow and it. And the guy looks old and decaying and it looks like he's at the end of his rope. Meanwhile, across the ocean, Beebe Netanyahu, who has spent his whole

life saying, let's destroy Iran and he finally thought he had an American who would go along

with this thing. And a year ago, everybody was going, oh, Beebe was so great. He killed all the proxies and now he's got us going against Iran. All that's blown up in his face. The US has abandoned him. The left has abandoned him. The far right has abandoned him. And now it looks like Trump is on the verge of abandoning him. J.D. Nance was going after him. Beebe is going to lose. Beebe is going to lose in the fall in his campaign. Now he's

not going to be replaced by somebody much better, but he's done. Trump and Trumpism and the Trump party is going to lose in no number, uh, seemingly have elections. And I just wonder if this is kind of a watershed that the period of these two really bad leaders is coming to an end. Putin is also getting old. Um, and I just wonder, you know, everybody is like, when they talk about 2029, there are 2028. It's like, well, you have to do this

all going to be done by that. I wonder if the subject is going to change to something

different, but not that the problems in our society will have gone away, but that the big personalities at this moment may not be seen as big personalities anymore. I'm just wondering what you thought to me. Oh, God, you know, things move so fast. It happened so fast and unexpected things happen so frequently. It's just really hard to say David, but I mean, let's start with the fact of this week that you started with. Um, the United States of America, for

“what I think is only the second time in its history, has clearly an unambiguously lost”

a war. You know, some people call a rock a loss. We did depose Saddam Hussein. A rock

was complicated. Vietnam was lost. This is a loss. There's just no question about it. And Donald Trump had no idea how to manage this. As you said, you checked off many of the things that were just disastrous results of him just starting to start this war. I asked myself, you know, will this matter to the American voters in November? I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, that's up to the Democrats to make it matter. And, you know, it's dismissible in a sense

because people don't care about quote unquote foreign policy, but this trend sounds foreign policy.

This isn't foreign policy. This is about the man Donald Trump is the incompetent buffoon and cruel

buffoons that he is. And so the Democrats have to keep that front and center. And Netanyahu's opponents, I suppose, have to do something similar. He's been, yeah, he's been written off before, especially in that one election when he started culminating against the Arab parties, you know, toward the end and pandered to the worst elements and pulled it out by a whisker. So, you know, I don't know. There's a lot of water that's going to come out of the bridge between

now and then, but I do think that this, you know, putting political calculations aside for the moment.

“This is a, this is like a never chamberland moment for the United States of America. Is that too much to say?”

No, I don't think it's too much to say. Look, I know some very, you know, I'm from the foreign policy community. I know a lot of various sort of dry academic foreign policy types who call this defeat, call it unconditional surrender, call it, you know, foreign policy malpractice, national security malpractice. And we're not, you know, most people aren't even doing this sort of the next level map, like global long-term global economic consequences of consequences of

depleting our forces or the consequences of undermining our alliances in the region or undermining our alliances with NATO, where the knock on consequences of pissed off Pete Higgs at this week, going and saying, we're going to review our involvement in NATO and we're going to undo all of that in a bunch of Republicans going, hey, whoa, slow down, buddy. And, you know, these acts don't, you know, it's like in your book. Every act has consequences. And, and we're not really good at

“thinking those through because they're extremely complicated. But I think it's fair to say that this”

war has produced only negative consequences so far. Now, if it produces a change of a leadership or an awakening, as you say, and I think you put it exactly right, this war is not about foreign policy. This war is about irresponsible leadership. It's about a reckless mad king who is destroying the world as he goes. I think the same thing is happening in Israel. I must say, you know, in terms of that relationship, something interesting is going on. The far left and the far writer

done with traditional U.S. Israel relationship, I did not think Donald Trump was going to be the one, however, deliver the coup de grâce and sort of say, okay, I'm done with them. But he made it because I think he's super pissed off. And I don't, I don't think people I know in Israel actually get how far down the road they are to something completely different. But on a more positive note this week, and I'd be interested in your perspectives on this, and I'm not talking

about the next victory parade, although for me, that was a big deal. There was the opening of

just wax-rapsotic about life in the good old days. I went a little far in my book, you know,

it's like the everything is perfect under Obama and Biden and Clinton and Bush and you know, and I'm like, wait a minute, you know, how did we get here from there if everything was perfect then, you know, but, but I was just wondering what your reaction was to the whole extravaganza. Well, I have not yet seen Barack's and Michelle's speeches. I had something else I had to do. I just, I don't know what spoiler alert, but hers was better than hits. Yeah, every people who told

“me that hers was better, so I think I'll certainly watch hers, I'm probably watching both over”

a weekend. Yeah, you know, I mean, look, Barack Obama obviously compares favorably to the incumbent by light years on many, many, many measures. And he was, you know, a remarkable person to be able

to pull off what he pulled off. And, you know, the first incumbent president to win two terms

outright unambiguously since Eisenhower, I think. So a lot of accomplishments and a lot to admire in the man. At the same time, you said 15 or so minutes ago that, you know, demagogues arise when the system isn't, isn't meeting people's needs. And Obama did a lot of good things in the health care and, you know, management of the economy coming out of the great meltdown. I did a lot of good things, but he was president in a period.

“This is also true. And Clinton was in Clinton over saw a roaring economy. But, you know,”

they were both presidents in a period when inequality was rampaging and and the elites, the one percent, the point one percent were accumulating more and more economic and political power. And that gave us Trump. I'm not like blaming them in any direct way, but you're a better man than I because I was on the Clinton economic team. Yeah. And I was around for all of that. And I realized in retrospect that the Clinton economic team, which was largely

the Obama economic team, was a neoliberal economic team that was actually as the economy was roaring, giving a bigger and bigger piece of it to fewer and fewer people. And that that was fundamentally wrong choice. But, you know, there's something else about this that I find interesting is one last question here. And that is that, you know, we've gone from one ideological extreme to another and and I'm not going to dwell on characterization of these past

presidency's. But, something interesting is happening in the United States. Well, Washington this week just elected a democratic socialist to be a candidate, a democratic candidate. She's going to win. You're going to have a democratic socialist mayor of Washington, a democratic socialist mayor of New York, a democratic socialist mayor,

“Seattle. I got to tell you, if you want to say this, there may be Los Angeles and maybe Los Angeles,”

right? She's a real shot 18 months ago. Yeah. No one would have said no one would have said that, no one would have identified themselves with a democratic socialist. But you and I, I'm sure are going to party is going, yeah, okay, I could be, you could call me that. That's all right, I'm okay with that. But I want pollbirds in your mouth. But I am because I, I, I think it's cool.

But here's what I think is cool about democratic socialist mayors in this moment.

They're focused on good governance. Mombani is focused on 100,000 filled tacos, a pre-K, a grocery store in your neighborhood, reducing the cost of rent, and so forth. That's what the focus is in Seattle. That's what the, the message is not democratic socialism in the sense of some ideological descendant of Marxism. It's, we need somebody who actually cares about ordinary people and will govern in a way that helps ordinary people with ordinary thing. To me, this is kind

of the revolutionary aspect of this, and people are missing it. Yeah, they are. And even something that's kind of small and symbolic, like getting New Jersey transit to lower the price of the bus to the world cup in and, and securing a few, $50 tickets for people who want a lottery or whatever it was. The, that shows that he's thinking about these things, and that he's, and that he's thinking

properly understood still means, you know, public ownership of industries and things like that.

“That's not what these people mean. That's not what these people are. They're not real.”

So you, you think Trump is a socialist. Yeah, exactly. Strictly speaking, these folks are social democrats, not democratic socialists. There's the people can Google that historic difference. And I would call myself a social democratic, probably wouldn't call myself a democratic socialist in the historic understanding of the term. But who cares? That's getting really picky you and nobody, nobody, nobody bothers with that kind of

stuff anymore. The point is that the word socialism doesn't scare a lot of people in the way

it used to. And so a lot of data that says that under 40s, are more comfortable with that approach than they are with the way capitalism is practiced in the United States. Yeah, I mean, look at the capitalism that you've seen in this country if you're 27 years old. You know, the capitalism you and I grew up with was a capitalism that we could live with. It was regulated. It was, you know, there was a lot of public investment. The wealth and disparities weren't that great.

The genie coefficient, you know what that is. Some of you are some people listening to us may not, but it's a measure of nationwide inequality. And it's like golf, lower scores are better. The worst genie coefficient in the country in the world today is South Africa every year. It's in the low 60s. The best, of course, are the Scandinavian countries. The United States is around

“45, I think, back in 1968, we were like 28 or something. So things were better back then.”

More unionization and so forth. And, you know, the capitalism that we've had for the last 30, 20 years in particular has been well repatious to use a word the Marxists used to like. Well, I mean, you know, there's something to be said for some of what the Marxists were after. And as you and I've talked about in the past and I've talked about another shows with like E.J. Deon, there was a movement of a hundred years ago of something called sewer socialism. What was

sewer socialism? It was, let's get sewers to work. And I think all the labels. Well, you know, call somebody a liberal or conservative or Democrat or Republican or progressive or, you know, mega or whatever, I just think those things don't mean what we think they mean and we don't mean

“what they used to mean. But I think as you said, and this, you know, you and I had a lunch”

conversation not too long ago. And you said this, then you wrote a 10,000 word article about it. And it lives with me. I just want you know, the book lives with me, but this is what they should. But what you said was because you boiled it down, as most Americans think the system is rigged. And Donald Trump won by saying it's rigged. I'm going to fix it. And then it turns out he

was one of the rigors. And the reality is that people are looking for labels aside,

somebody to give them a fair shake to unreg the system to do something for them. They're looking for a system in which power is not always used to help the power. And to me, this seems like the central issue. And it's not progressives versus centrists or it's not conservative versus liberal. It's, it's something else. It's, can we do something to make the lives of ordinary people better? What is it? And, and that's to me super refreshing because I'm kind of frankly sick of the

labels. Yeah. Yep. That's the, that's the core issue. Democrats need to show working people that they're on their side. And as I wrote in that 10,000 word piece, and as I've said, every chance I have, you do that by being forced some things, but you also do it by being against it. Right after they'll work with people who they're going to fight because you're known by the enemies you're willing to make in this world. And Democrats have to not be afraid, not only of Donald

Trump and mega, but Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Peter Teele and Martin Zuckerberg. You know, they better take these people on and break up their companies and break up these monopolies and show people why they're getting through these places and help do some unscrewing. No, seriously, unscrewing up America, unscrewing America is the goal. And by the way,

corruption. He, you know, he gets it. He's one of the new voices. And, you know, Mom Donnie gets it.

A referendum may end up on the ballot in West Coast about doing some kind of small to small tax on billionaires. People are starting to get the message. And I, I got to say what you guys are doing, how you're reviving the new republic. And I'm not just saying this because we

“do your podcast with you guys. Is is is is so important. It is such an essential voice. You are”

covering this stuff so well. But I want to end where I started, which is, you know, again,

here's book, killing baby Hitler. And I'm just going to redo one of the blurbs on the bat. Killing baby Hitler is fabulous in every sense. A super smart romp through the history histories of the last and next century of show. So what a delightful surprise that the terrific political

“writer Michael Tomaski turns out to be a terrific sci-fi writer of the fun thought provoking Kurt Van Gogh,”

Kurt Von Gogh, a doctor who Connie Willis Douglas Adams kind. Those are good comparisons. But this is by Kurt Anderson, who for my money is one of the smartest guys I know. And really gets this stuff and really gets the moment. And he couldn't get as you couldn't lead with a better blurb. And you couldn't summarize it better. So congratulations on the book. Well, thanks so much. And thanks to Kurt and I should just say that Kurt has a novel coming up about the breakup of the United States,

“which is going to come out in the fall, I think, or maybe not. And I don't just say it because”

when my sister was coming out of college, she wrote him a letter saying, I noticed by magazine

has no interns. And she became the first internist by magazine. Wow. And so there have been

contacts with him since then and some of our pot listeners know he comes on here periodically. He is great. He's a good guy. Is it Denly? Do you know who he grew up down the street from? Jenny Thomas. Really? Yeah. Wow. So it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's fastening and he's just is his good funny smart just like you are good funny smart and we need more of them. So get the book. Follow the new republic. Listen to the daily blast here on the DSR network. And hopefully

love Mike back here soon. But for now, thanks Mike. Congratulations. Thanks everybody. Smilton. Bye bye.