“Conventional wisdom suggests that the temptations of Washington, D.C., corrupt all the idealists, naïfs, and ingenues who settle there," Franklin Foer writes in his cover story for the March issue of The Atlantic. "But what if that formulation gets the causation backwards? What if it took an outsider to debase the capital and create the so-called swamp?”

Before Paul Manafort led the campaign to position Donald Trump as the ultimate Washington outsider, Manafort had built a career on being the consummate D.C. insider. Foer tells the story of Manafort's rise and fall, his stint as a consigliere to oligarchs, and the lines he was willing to cross in lobbying and political consulting. Foer joins Jeff and Matt to describe how Manafort's career is a window into the rise of corruption in America.

Links

- “The Plot Against America” (Franklin Foer, March 2018 Issue)

- “How the Swamp Drained Trump” (McKay Coppins, January 30, 2018)

- “Dictatorships & Double Standards” (Jeane Kirkpatrick, Commentary, November 1, 1979)

- The Soul of a New Machine (Tracy Kidder, 1981)

- “Mackenzie Davis Answers the Tough Questions” (E. Alex Jung, Vulture, August 14, 2017)

- Shop Class as Soulcraft (Matthew B. Crawford, 2010)

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