JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Let me change this subject.

I want to talk to Nancy for a minute about -- it's not an unrelated topic, but, you know, presidents from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and including Ronald Reagan.

Richard Nixon, have always believed that in a democratic country, there's a role for the press in covering military affairs, matters of war and peace.

The secretary of defense, the current secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, believes otherwise, it seems as does his president, presumably.

And so the ouster of the Pentagon Press Corps was just engineered this week.

There'd been press at the Defense Department for as long as there's been a Defense Department.

What was it like to be part of the last week of the Pentagon Press Corps in the Pentagon?

And what does it mean for coverage of these matters of life and death in the future?

NANCY YOUSSEF: I mean, frankly, it was sad because the Pentagon is such a heartbeat to cover, you often stay in a minimum for five years.

So, many of the -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You were there for?

NANCY YOUSSEF: 18.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: 18.

NANCY YOUSSEF: And so you had decades and decades and decades of experience walking out the door.

These are people that we've gotten to know, and I'm not just talking about the troops and the civilians, but the staff that work there, the people who will never have a story written about them but are such an intricate part of the running of the Pentagon.

And you felt sad journalistically because I think it's important that we have the ability to ask leaders questions, especially when they're in charge of a trillion of taxpayer dollars and have the tremendous responsibility of deploying as many as too many people into harm's way in addition to another million civilians.

Having said that, I also felt this week a tremendous sense of pride because in the time since we have been evicted, we had journalists do exceptional coverage just this week, including Tyler, about the Southcom commander being removed, about military lawyers being removed after raising questions, the CNN story.

Reuters broke the story that two narco-terrorists who were part of a strike were put onto -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Alleged narco-terrorists.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And we have a hard time knowing what's going on.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

We're -- survived a military strike and moved onto a Navy ship.

Those are not stories that the Pentagon put out first.

Those are stories that journalists put out first.

And so in this bid to sort of limit our ability to do our jobs, I think we also saw a press corps this week that continued doing their job.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

I think it's important to say that the eviction of the press court from the physical premises doesn't mean that we're stopping to cover.

In fact, I've decided to hire more Pentagon press reporters.

I want to find more colleagues for Nancy and her colleagues because we have to work harder at this.

And I know other organizations are going to double down on covering this because that's what happens in a democracy.

Let me talk to Tyler just for one second about this.

You mentioned Southcom.

This is the combatant command that runs American operations in the Latin American sphere, very mysterious sudden departure of the guy who runs that, Four Star Admiral Alvin Holsey.

Do we know anything more about why he was removed?

This comes obviously at a time when we're blowing up Venezuelan boats.

TYLER PAGER: Yes.

So, after we reported this story, the Pentagon announced that he was retiring.

But based on, you know, the reporting I did with my colleague, Eric Schmidt, we have -- there's two interesting things here.

One, is that we know that the admiral had privately raised some concerns about the U.S.

's military operations in Venezuela and in the larger region.

This comes as the president has ramped up his sort of bellicose rhetoric about Maduro and Venezuela, and we've seen numerous attacks on ships in the region.

The president's saying this week he wanted to go on land next.

And also what's noteworthy here is that this is usually a three-year job and he left after basically one.

That's not normal.

And so the retirement announcement is definitely - - there's some questions there about it.

NANCY YOUSSEF: And if I could add quickly that there was no successor name.

This doesn't -- they're -- they have -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: This happened in a rush.

NANC YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Let me talk about one more subject in a very, very busy week.

Let's listen to President Trump talk about some of the people he doesn't like very much.

DONALD TRUMP: A deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal.

And I noticed his interviewer was -- I think that was Weissmann.

And I hope they're going to look into Weissmann too.

Weissmann's a bad guy and he had somebody in Lisa who was his puppet worked in the office really as the top person.

And I think that she should be looked at very strongly.

I hope they're looking at Shifty Schiff.

I hope they're looking at all these people.

And I'm allowed to find out.

I'm allowed to -- you know, I'm, in theory, the chief law enforcement officer.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Steve, Anne, let me start with you, Anne, and then go to Steve.

I'll give him the last word.

You cover, Eastern European quasi authoritarian regimes.

You've covered authoritarianism around the world.

When a leader, a chief executive, deploys prosecutors to go after his political enemies, what do you call that?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: I call that it not rule of law, meaning the law is what it says is, but rule by law, meaning the law is what the leader or the political party in charge says it is.

In other words, it's an enormous, clear break with an American tradition that goes back many decades.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Have we ever seen this in America, Watergate, period?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: You could find people attempting to do it.

You can find it at the state level.

I don't think in modern times there's ever been this blatant attempt of the president.

By the way, he's not just using prosecutors, he's using different, using the IRS, he's using other kinds of American institutions that are supposed to belong to all of us that are supposed to be politically neutral.

He's using them to investigate, to do kind of fishing expeditions on his various enemies to find out if what they're -- whether they've made a mistake in their mortgage application.

I mean, this is stuff that -- you know, I hate to make these comparisons.

I mean, this is exactly what happened in Putin's Russia in the early 2000s.

You know, if Putin wanted to get rid of somebody, he didn't arrest them.

That was old fashioned way of doing it.

He would just have a tax investigation.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Steve, I'll give you the last word on this.

Is this a crisis, in your mind -- a democratic crisis, in your mind?

STEPHEN HAYES: Yes.

I mean, for a long time you heard people, including some Republicans, sort of wonder when we'd get to the point where this was an emergency, when this was a crisis, we're here.

This is it.

He campaigned on retribution at virtually every one of his public comments.

He talks about the people he wants to go after.

He's very clear.

He names them, as we just saw.

There's no question what he's doing here.

I think the only question is who and how can we stop him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And Congress, is it possible that Republicans in Congress would think that's enough?

STEPHEN HAYES: I mean, you have some of the people in Congress who have said that they wanted to remain non-Trump.

People wanted to remain in Congress so that they could be there in a moment like this.

We'll see.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, we're going to have to leave it there.

I want to thank our guests for joining me.

And thank you at home for watching us.