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A few weeks ago, a book arrived in the mail that immediately caught my attention.
The cover looked remarkably like Profiles in Courage, the book written by my dad’s hero, President John F. Kennedy, about senators who risked their careers to stand on principle.
Jacob Weisberg has written the inverse.
His new book, Profiles in Cowardice, looks at powerful Americans who, in his telling, knew better and bent the knee anyway in Trump’s second term.
His subjects include Jeff Bezos; Steve Schwarzman; Megyn Kelly;Mitch McConnell; Dartmouth President Sian Beilock; Chief Justice John Roberts, Brad Karp, former chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss; and former President George W. Bush, the one inclusion I challenged.
I just spoke with Weisberg about the book. We talked about what makes immensely powerful people submit. If unimaginable wealth was supposed to buy independence, why are so many billionaires still bending the knee? In other words, what happened to FU money?
He describes Chief Justice John Roberts as a radical who uses equanimity as “his armor.”
In Weisberg’s view, we spend a great deal of time focused on what Trump is doing to American institutions and democratic norms, and not nearly enough on the people helping him do it.
We also talk about what happens when people do resist, including the AI researcher who recently blew the whistle.
Weisberg’s larger point is that courage and cowardice are both contagious. When powerful institutions capitulate, others follow. When someone finds a spine, that can travel too.
You can watch our discussion here. Below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. Each of our responses is marked with a timestamp, so you can find that moment in the video, should you wish.
**Jessica Yellin **00:00
Hello, everyone. I am thrilled to be bringing you this conversation today. I am speaking with Jacob Weisberg. He’s a former editor of Slate Magazine, co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. Today we are talking about his new book, which I have right here, Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era. You could call this book a dark inversion of JFK’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage. Former President Kennedy, in that book, profiled eight senators who risked their political careers to stand on principle. Well, in this book, Weisberg profiles eight powerful Americans who, in his telling, did the exact opposite since Trump’s re-election. They are business leaders, a media star, a senator, a Supreme Court justice, and Jeff Bezos — people who, he would argue, know better, but accommodated Trump and enabled an attack on our democratic institutions. Jacob, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for your time today.
**Jacob Weisberg **01:01
Thanks, Jessica. I’m really glad to be here.
**Jessica Yellin **01:03
I have to tell you that when I got this book in the mail, I yelped when I opened the table of contents, because each chapter is an indictment of somebody who had the power to resist Trump and instead found a reason to fall in line. You did the very thing so many people are afraid of doing today, which is calling folks out for working with this administration. So I’m curious what moved you to write this, and did you know from the start that you wanted to use the JFK parallel?
People are familiar with the concept of "F-You" money, but you know, at some point it becomes "I'm F-ed" money.
