Latest / Pod Save America / Trump Always Chickens Out

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Trump Always Chickens Out · Pod Save America

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Speaker 6: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
2:18
Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
2:19
Speaker 6: On today's show, we'll shed some tears over Elon's official
2:22
Speaker 6: White House departure, talk about Trump's push to kick international
2:25
Speaker 6: students out of the United States... And dig into the
2:28
Speaker 6: president's latest pardon spree, which I'll get into more with
2:31
Speaker 6: the Justice Department's former pardon attorney who was fired by
2:33
Speaker 6: Trump for not giving Mel Gibson his guns back, Liz Oyer.
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Speaker 6: It's just a sentence I never thought I would say,
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Speaker 6: like many of the sentences here on the show. But first,
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Speaker 6: bad news for Trump's favorite economic policy, good news for
2:47
Speaker 6: everyone who doesn't like higher prices. Most of the president's
2:51
Speaker 6: tariffs were ruled illegal Wednesday night in a unanimous decision
2:54
Speaker 6: by a three-judge panel yesterday. at the US Court of
2:57
Speaker 6: International Trade, including a Trump appointee. Not only did the
3:01
Speaker 6: court order an immediate pause on the tariffs, Trump has
3:04
Speaker 6: to refund every American company that's already had to pay tariffs.
3:08
Speaker 6: The Trump administration immediately appealed the ruling, which led to
3:11
Speaker 6: an appeals court deciding that the tariffs can remain in
3:14
Speaker 6: effect while the case is being considered. So slight setback there.
3:19
Speaker 6: The initial ruling came the very same day the president
3:21
Speaker 6: lost his shit when a reporter asked him about a
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Speaker 6: phrase that's become popular on Wall Street to describe his
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Speaker 6: trade policy, TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out.
3:32
Speaker 6: Here's a clip of that exchange.
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Speaker 7: Mr.
3:34
Speaker 3: President, Wall Street analysts have.
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Speaker 8: Coined a new term called the TACO trade.
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Speaker 5: They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats,
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Speaker 5: and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your
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Speaker 5: response to that?
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Speaker 7: I kick out?
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Speaker 5: Chicken out.
3:47
Speaker 7: Oh, chicken out.
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Speaker 6: I've never heard that.
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Speaker 7: You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set?
3:54
Speaker 7: down to 100, and then down to another number. Six
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Speaker 7: months ago, this country was stone cold dead. We had
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Speaker 7: a dead country. We had a country people didn't think
4:03
Speaker 7: it was gonna survive, and you ask a nasty question
4:06
Speaker 7: like that. It's called negotiation. You said a number, but
4:10
Speaker 7: don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question.
4:13
Speaker 6: Go ahead.
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Speaker 7: To me, that's the nastiest question.
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Speaker 6: I like that he finally went just full biff from
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Speaker 6: Back to the Future. That's what I'm saying.
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Speaker 3: Also that he immediately thought it meant kick out, because
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Speaker 3: that seems to be what he's... Deport! Deport! Trump always deports!
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Speaker 6: And he's like, chicken out.
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Speaker 2: Chicken?
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Speaker 6: I've never heard that. Oh, yeah, you've never heard chicken out. Yeah, no,
4:33
Speaker 6: of course.
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Speaker 3: But then it dawns on him that he's being made
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Speaker 3: fun of, and it hurts deeply in his soul, you
4:38
Speaker 3: can tell.
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Speaker 6: So it is important to note that this ruling doesn't
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Speaker 6: apply to some tariffs, including those on aluminum and steel,
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Speaker 6: and that there may be ways, we will not get
4:47
Speaker 6: into them, don't worry, for the administration to get around
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Speaker 6: the ruling... by using other laws to implement tariff. It's
4:55
Speaker 6: a complicated matter, Dan.
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Speaker 3: That's not for this podcast.
4:59
Speaker 6: That's not for this podcast. No, we're not going to
5:01
Speaker 6: bore you with that. You can go listen to Lovett
5:03
Speaker 6: talk about that when he talks about salt on some
5:04
Speaker 6: other podcast. With all that said, what is your reaction
5:10
Speaker 6: to the court ruling, which at the very least may
5:13
Speaker 6: save Trump from more taco jokes for the time being?
5:17
Speaker 3: Well, if it does nothing else, it's still a win.
5:21
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been sort of waiting for this to happen.
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Speaker 3: It's always been interesting that the International Emergency Economics Powers Act,
5:30
Speaker 3: whose authority Trump has used for all these terrorists, does
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Speaker 3: not include the word tariff in it. It's not listed
5:34
Speaker 3: as one of the remedies that a president can undertake here.
5:38
Speaker 3: And that sort of just got lost in all of
5:41
Speaker 3: the tacos we've had since then and been sort of
5:44
Speaker 3: waiting for that. Because a lot of the things that
5:47
Speaker 3: Trump does, the immediate thing is, He has done something
5:50
Speaker 3: a court will probably stop him because the thing he
5:53
Speaker 3: wants to do is stopped by the Constitution or this
5:56
Speaker 3: explicit law or whatever else. This one was always sort
5:59
Speaker 3: of the subtext of what was going on, and it's
6:01
Speaker 3: notable that it's finally happened. This is going to make
6:03
Speaker 3: its way to the Supreme Court, I assume, and they
6:06
Speaker 3: will render a judgment. But the short version of this
6:09
Speaker 3: now is more chaos. The chaos came from Trump's taco strategy.
6:15
Speaker 3: I'm so sick of saying the word taco already. But
6:19
Speaker 3: of tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs off. Now you have
6:21
Speaker 3: the court involved. What happens if you have brought products
6:24
Speaker 3: in in the 12 hours between the ruling on Wednesday
6:27
Speaker 3: night and the ruling on Thursday afternoon and not paid
6:30
Speaker 3: tariffs on them because you just brought a fuckton of
6:33
Speaker 3: iPhones over and got those in for free? It's very
6:37
Speaker 3: chaotic because this is a short-term stay on the ruling
6:40
Speaker 3: where they figure out what's happening. I'd be surprised if
6:44
Speaker 3: they kept the tariffs off as it wound its way
6:46
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court. But it's more uncertainty for businesses,
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Speaker 3: which is bad for the economy.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 6: And the markets reacted positively, very positively, as one can imagine.
6:58
Speaker 6: I wonder how they'll react tomorrow. This is Thursday that
7:02
Speaker 6: we're recording this. Once they find out that the tariffs
7:08
Speaker 6: are back on while the process goes to the Supreme Court.
7:12
Speaker 6: I don't know. The Supreme Court, obviously, quite a conservative majority.
7:17
Speaker 6: I don't know. It feels like there are a lot
7:19
Speaker 6: of free traders. I feel like there are some real
7:20
Speaker 6: traditional conservatives on that Supreme Court that might not like
7:24
Speaker 6: the trade war, but hard to say. There's also people
7:26
Speaker 6: who really like to, who believe very much that the
7:29
Speaker 6: executive has all the power, the president has all the power.
7:33
Speaker 6: Though this goes to the, it does go to the
7:34
Speaker 6: Alien Enemies Act question too, which is Trump just gets
7:38
Speaker 6: into office, declares everything an emergency when there is no
7:41
Speaker 6: obvious emergency or any emergency, and then tries to take
7:45
Speaker 6: a lot of moves that you're not supposed to take
7:47
Speaker 6: just based on this false pretext that there's an emergency.
7:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because it's not really an economic question
7:54
Speaker 3: for the court. It's a question of executive power and
7:57
Speaker 3: whether this use of this authority, which is not granted
8:03
Speaker 3: in law, oversteps his executive authority and it bridges Congress's.
8:07
Speaker 3: I mean, you do have free traders, but you also
8:10
Speaker 3: have people who believe, as you say, who believe in
8:13
Speaker 3: some version or something approximated the unitary executive theory. that
8:17
Speaker 3: would suggest that they would give this to him. So it,
8:20
Speaker 3: this will be interesting. I tried to go to Twitter
8:22
Speaker 3: to find some good legal analysis and I discovered that
8:25
Speaker 3: they'd all moved to blue sky. Like all our favorite
8:27
Speaker 3: lawyers are on blue sky now.
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Speaker 2: Um, did you go there?
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Speaker 3: I did go, I did go there.
8:31
Speaker 7: Yes.
8:31
Speaker 3: And it, there are mixed opinions about where the, about
8:34
Speaker 3: where this is going.
8:36
Speaker 6: Caroline Levitt and the briefing today sort of previewed, I
8:39
Speaker 6: think what their legal argument is going to be because
8:41
Speaker 6: someone asked, uh, I think Peter Ducey asked like, well,
8:46
Speaker 6: Trump has a Republican Congress that usually does what he says. Like,
8:49
Speaker 6: why not just go have them pass the law if
8:51
Speaker 6: it's up to Congress to do it? And she basically said, well,
8:56
Speaker 6: they tried to pass something through the Senate to pause
8:59
Speaker 6: the tariffs and couldn't get enough votes. So that's that.
9:04
Speaker 6: Congress declined to do anything and the courts have no
9:07
Speaker 6: role here. That's their position.
9:09
Speaker 3: That's not, look, I'm not, like I said, I'm not
9:12
Speaker 3: a legal expert on blue sky or elsewhere, but that's
9:15
Speaker 3: not really how the constitution works. Absence of action from
9:18
Speaker 3: one body means the voters can do whatever they want.
9:21
Speaker 6: If the vote fails, that's all you need. That's all
9:23
Speaker 6: you need. Of course, Stephen Miller's out there calling it
9:26
Speaker 6: judicial tyranny. They're using it as the whole. So, you know,
9:28
Speaker 6: I'm also wondering if they're going to take this as
9:32
Speaker 6: far as they can and then try to figure out
9:33
Speaker 6: a way to just go around the law as they
9:35
Speaker 6: have been around on immigration things. Trump's approval, let's talk
9:38
Speaker 6: about the politics on this. Trump's approval was at its
9:40
Speaker 6: lowest over the last few months after he announced the
9:44
Speaker 6: retaliatory tariffs on Liberation Day. But the approval rating has
9:48
Speaker 6: been climbing in the last few weeks as he keeps
9:52
Speaker 6: going back to the taco bar.
9:57
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
9:58
Speaker 6: Keep going.
9:58
Speaker 3: Keep going. Get them all in.
10:00
Speaker 6: Do you think this ruling could end up being good
10:03
Speaker 6: politics for Trump? Did this court save Trump from himself?
10:06
Speaker 3: I don't think having your signature policy pieces struck down
10:13
Speaker 3: by the court is ever great politics. It makes you
10:15
Speaker 3: weak and ineffective over the course of time. If the
10:19
Speaker 3: courts were to rule that Trump did not have the
10:21
Speaker 3: authority to do these tariffs, that would probably help him politically.
10:26
Speaker 3: It's sort of the legal equivalent of putting a cone
10:28
Speaker 3: around a dog's neck. It prevents him from doing damage
10:32
Speaker 3: to himself by hurting the economy further with tariffs. I
10:37
Speaker 3: do think the fundamental political– as you look at 2026,
10:42
Speaker 3: we are in a tariff-sparked recession and prices are incredibly
10:45
Speaker 3: high because of Trump's tariffs. That would be incredibly bad
10:47
Speaker 3: for him. But even having said that, what has happened
10:52
Speaker 3: over the first 140 or so days here is the
10:56
Speaker 3: way Trump has done the tariffs has undermined the central
10:58
Speaker 3: premise of his presidency, this idea that he was a–
11:01
Speaker 3: no matter what else you thought of him, that he
11:03
Speaker 3: was an able manager of the economy. You have seen
11:05
Speaker 3: that come down significantly. Even if his approval rating has
11:08
Speaker 3: gone up a little bit, it's reaching just like still
11:11
Speaker 3: historically bad for a president at this point in their term.
11:14
Speaker 3: It's not getting hot anywhere near where you would expect
11:17
Speaker 3: it to be in a typical honeymoon period. But I
11:20
Speaker 3: think there has been real damage done by the tariffs.
11:23
Speaker 3: So that damage will linger no matter what else the
11:28
Speaker 3: court does between now and then.
11:29
Speaker 6: Right. And crucially, tariffs or no tariffs, prices have not
11:33
Speaker 6: come down. Inflation has come down, but prices haven't really
11:35
Speaker 6: come down. And it's not like he's been getting excellent
11:38
Speaker 6: economic news anyway. So yes, chances of recession if these
11:42
Speaker 6: tariffs stay off certainly go down. But people's feelings about
11:47
Speaker 6: the economy, which going into Trump's term were already, you know,
11:51
Speaker 6: there were a lot of concerns about prices and costs.
11:53
Speaker 6: Those don't go away. Nor does his only signature piece
11:58
Speaker 6: of legislation that he's trying to pass through Congress do
12:01
Speaker 6: anything about that. In fact, it makes it worse for.
12:03
Speaker 2: A lot of people.
12:04
Speaker 7: Yeah.
12:04
Speaker 3: For the people who need the most help, it raises
12:07
Speaker 3: their prices.
12:08
Speaker 7: Yeah.
12:08
Speaker 6: In other good news, the White House's biggest doge bag
12:11
Speaker 6: has finally left the building. Elon Musk, my good friend
12:15
Speaker 6: and mentor, announced on his platform that his time as
12:19
Speaker 6: a special government employee has officially come to a close
12:22
Speaker 6: after 128 days where he destroyed vital government services and
12:26
Speaker 6: his reputation while saving taxpayers just under 8% of the
12:31
Speaker 6: $ 2 trillion in spending he originally promised to cut. But
12:36
Speaker 6: don't worry. The Trump White House's own Kato Kaelin is
12:40
Speaker 6: going to be coming back and popping into meetings once
12:42
Speaker 6: in a while, so he's not gone for good. And
12:45
Speaker 6: he has also said that, quote, the Doge mission will
12:49
Speaker 6: only strengthen as it becomes a way of life throughout
12:52
Speaker 6: the government.
12:54
Speaker 3: You– where did the Cato Kaelin reference come from here?
12:58
Speaker 6: He's like been– he's been sleeping at the White House.
13:01
Speaker 3: No, I know what it means. It's like a very–
13:04
Speaker 3: it's like a 1994.
13:06
Speaker 6: Well, in my mind, I'm thinking of those stories that
13:10
Speaker 6: he was sleeping in the EEOB. He's got a sleeping
13:13
Speaker 6: bag on the floor, and he won't leave. And the
13:16
Speaker 6: cabinet's like, this guy, we've had enough of him, but
13:18
Speaker 6: he still won't leave. That's like the houseguest. When you
13:20
Speaker 6: say houseguest who won't leave, and you grew up when
13:22
Speaker 6: we grew up, you think Katie O'Kane?
13:24
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, all right. I buy it. It is correct.
13:27
Speaker 3: I was surprised to read it today.
13:30
Speaker 6: And I have to insert a reference in every pod
13:32
Speaker 6: that the 35 or under set doesn't really understand, so
13:35
Speaker 6: that's important.
13:36
Speaker 3: I mean, this one is for like the 40 and under.
13:38
Speaker 3: It's pretty close.
13:41
Speaker 6: Anyway, what do you think? Will doge become a way
13:43
Speaker 6: of life? Has doge become a way of life?
13:45
Speaker 3: I mean, isn't it already? I mean, don't you wake
13:48
Speaker 3: up every day and pray to the doge god? You're
13:51
Speaker 3: wearing your doge gear. Yeah, no, I'm not sure. Doge
13:54
Speaker 3: will not be a.
13:55
Speaker 2: Way of life for me.
13:56
Speaker 3: I don't know about you.
13:58
Speaker 6: What do you think is next for doge? Do you
14:00
Speaker 6: think this is just going to be something we forget about?
14:02
Speaker 6: I know there's a doge package of cuts coming. that's
14:06
Speaker 6: apparently heading to Congress.
14:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Doge, they're going to theoretically and reportedly
14:12
Speaker 3: send up some cuts for Congress to enact and put
14:16
Speaker 3: into law. They're doing that somewhat reluctantly. They've basically been
14:19
Speaker 3: bullied by the Doge bros online into doing this. But
14:23
Speaker 3: Doge as we know it, I think it's toast. It's
14:28
Speaker 3: just this effort.
14:30
Speaker 6: It just lives on in our hearts.
14:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, we won't forget it. We will always know where
14:35
Speaker 3: we were the day that Doge started and the day
14:37
Speaker 3: Doge ended. We will think fondly of our time with Doge.
14:42
Speaker 3: But Elon Musk had the ability. He did it in
14:48
Speaker 3: the least effective, most chaotic way possible. But because he
14:51
Speaker 3: was someone with real political capital, a massive media platform
14:55
Speaker 3: in the year of the president, he was able to
14:57
Speaker 3: end run the cabinet secretaries. and make some of these cuts.
15:01
Speaker 3: Most of them got upended by the courts. But he
15:04
Speaker 3: was able to do things that are not going to
15:06
Speaker 3: be possible with some flunky in charge of the program now.
15:11
Speaker 3: So I just don't see it having any sort of
15:13
Speaker 3: the same impact that it had in the first 100
15:15
Speaker 3: or so days.
15:17
Speaker 6: The guy originally said he was going to be able
15:19
Speaker 6: to cut $ 2 trillion. Then he revised that down to
15:23
Speaker 6: $ 1 trillion. Now he says... that he cut about around $ 165,
15:30
Speaker 6: $ 175 billion. That number is what Elon Musk says. You know,
15:35
Speaker 6: reporters have dug into that as much as they can
15:37
Speaker 6: and found that some of that money is counted twice.
15:40
Speaker 6: Some of its contracts that had already been canceled when
15:42
Speaker 6: Elon got there. So it's probably less than $ 165 billion.
15:47
Speaker 6: They are sending a package of Doge cuts to Congress
15:51
Speaker 6: for Congress to codify, to pass so that they're there
15:54
Speaker 6: for good. That is only $ 9 billion. So now we're
15:57
Speaker 6: down to $ 9 billion. The package that they are trying
16:01
Speaker 6: to pass, the one big beautiful bill, is going to
16:04
Speaker 6: add about $ 4 trillion to the deficit. So $ 9 billion, that's.
16:12
Speaker 2: A lot less, Dan.
16:13
Speaker 3: I see you trying to do that math in your
16:14
Speaker 3: head right there.
16:15
Speaker 6: It's about 0.25%, I believe, of $ 4 trillion.
16:19
Speaker 3: Did you just write that in there?
16:22
Speaker 6: I did. I did.
16:24
Speaker 3: Okay, well, we'll check that later.
16:25
Speaker 6: Well, let's see.
16:25
Speaker 2: I don't know.
16:26
Speaker 6: We'll see. I'm not the math major host on Platinum.
16:29
Speaker 3: No, no, no.
16:29
Speaker 6: Neither am I.
16:30
Speaker 3: Neither am I. It is true that he cut a
16:35
Speaker 3: lot less than he said, but actually the cuts he
16:37
Speaker 3: did are probably going to end up costing the government
16:39
Speaker 3: money because he made things so much more inefficient. And
16:42
Speaker 3: he cut the IRS, which is going to now collect
16:45
Speaker 3: less in taxes and allow more people to cheat on
16:46
Speaker 3: their taxes, which is good. So in the end, all
16:49
Speaker 3: of the excitement, the chainsaws, The weird hats, the weird
16:53
Speaker 3: press conferences, the attention, Elon Musk ended up costing the
16:56
Speaker 3: government more. He increased the deficit through his own ineffectiveness
17:00
Speaker 3: and stupidity.
17:01
Speaker 6: Yeah, a couple of other items he's going to be
17:03
Speaker 6: able to put on his resume that are under the
17:07
Speaker 6: Doge section. He closed a bunch of social security offices
17:11
Speaker 6: around the country. He tried to change how you call
17:16
Speaker 6: social security office for help. and basically screwed a bunch
17:20
Speaker 6: of seniors who were trying to make calls and they
17:22
Speaker 6: couldn't get through anymore because they had to walk that back,
17:25
Speaker 6: all the changes to Social Security, so he fucked that
17:27
Speaker 6: one up. There were a bunch of layoffs at after-school
17:30
Speaker 6: programs that he tried to cut. We're still dealing with
17:35
Speaker 6: a bunch of FEMA cuts as we head into hurricane season,
17:39
Speaker 6: so that's something he can be proud of. This is
17:42
Speaker 6: from Reuters from just a few weeks ago. Food rations
17:45
Speaker 6: that could supply... 3.5 million people for a month are
17:49
Speaker 6: rotting in warehouses around the world because of USAID cuts.
17:53
Speaker 6: These food rations could feed over a million people for
17:58
Speaker 6: three months. So that's just a great example of government
18:01
Speaker 6: efficiency there because U.S. taxpayers have already paid for the food,
18:07
Speaker 6: but then they fed USAID into a wood chipper, which
18:09
Speaker 6: he was quite proud of, and now the food is
18:12
Speaker 6: rotting places all around the country that could, all around
18:15
Speaker 6: the world, that could feed millions of people. So that's
18:18
Speaker 6: another thing he did. 1.6 million people could die within
18:23
Speaker 6: a year because we cut HIV prevention and treatment. Nick
18:26
Speaker 6: Kristof of the New York Times, he actually traveled to
18:29
Speaker 6: Africa because Elon was going around saying, no, what do
18:32
Speaker 6: you mean people have died? No one's died. That's a
18:34
Speaker 6: liberal exaggeration. It's hysterical, blah, blah, blah. And sure enough,
18:38
Speaker 6: you know, Christophe went to a bunch of different places
18:40
Speaker 6: in Africa and found that people are dying right now
18:43
Speaker 6: because they've lost the funding from USAID. Kids are dying
18:48
Speaker 6: of hunger, tuberculosis, polio. Those are all threats now that
18:53
Speaker 6: people have to worry about again. This was from The
18:55
Speaker 6: Guardian yesterday. A 43-year-old woman and mother of two with
18:59
Speaker 6: advanced cancer is experiencing life or death delays in treatment
19:03
Speaker 6: because of NIH cuts. So here at home, if you
19:07
Speaker 6: don't care about people dying all over the world for
19:10
Speaker 6: absolutely no reason because we could keep them alive on
19:12
Speaker 6: pennies a day, we have a bunch of people here
19:15
Speaker 6: who are counting on cancer treatments and other medical treatments
19:18
Speaker 6: who are not be able to get them now because
19:21
Speaker 6: we have cut medical research in some of the world's
19:24
Speaker 6: best medical research institutions here in the United States. So
19:28
Speaker 6: that's what Elon can be proud of. That's his legacy.
19:32
Speaker 3: That's great work all the way around.
19:34
Speaker 6: How do you think the Elon rehabilitation tour is going
19:38
Speaker 6: to go? You think he's going to be able to
19:40
Speaker 6: rehab his image?
19:41
Speaker 3: I do not, Sean. I think no amount of rehabilitation
19:43
Speaker 3: is going to help his image. I think he has
19:44
Speaker 3: done permanent damage to his image. He might be able
19:48
Speaker 3: to recoup some of the shenanigans. value of Tesla's other
19:52
Speaker 3: companies by being less public and cutting less cancer research
19:58
Speaker 3: and maybe showing up to work every once in a while.
20:00
Speaker 3: But in the end, the damage to Musk himself and
20:04
Speaker 3: to Tesla and the other companies, I think, is pretty
20:07
Speaker 3: close to permanent. I mean, it's just It is just
20:09
Speaker 3: a notable thing when your customer base feels a need
20:12
Speaker 3: to put a bumper sticker that says, fuck Elon on
20:14
Speaker 3: the back of the car from the company you own.
20:17
Speaker 3: And also, what in his recent history has shown he
20:22
Speaker 3: would have the self-discipline to stay quiet and help his image?
20:28
Speaker 3: He's going to be going through withdrawal here very quickly.
20:31
Speaker 3: He was the center of the universe for over a year,
20:35
Speaker 3: heading back in the 2024 campaign. He's out on the
20:37
Speaker 3: campaign trail. He's got his black MAGA hats on. He's
20:40
Speaker 3: in the Oval Office the whole time. He's doing press conferences.
20:44
Speaker 3: He is in the center of attention. He loves attention.
20:47
Speaker 3: His tweets are driving their... He was killing legislation with
20:51
Speaker 3: his tweets and appointments with his tweets. And now he's
20:53
Speaker 3: just going to be tweeting about the latest features in
20:56
Speaker 3: a Tesla car or the latest SpaceX launch. I just
20:57
Speaker 3: find that hard to believe. He's going to stay away
20:59
Speaker 3: from the controversy of politics.
21:01
Speaker 6: I'll be looking forward to the first profile that's done
21:04
Speaker 6: in like a month or two about how Elon's feeling
21:07
Speaker 6: and how he's been a little depressed since he's been
21:09
Speaker 6: out of Washington and all that and what his next
21:11
Speaker 6: moves are. Because I agree with you that it seems
21:14
Speaker 6: hard to believe that he's just going to stay out
21:16
Speaker 6: of the spotlight after this.
21:17
Speaker 3: But it would be nice. He was so thirsty for attention,
21:19
Speaker 3: he spent $ 45 billion to buy Twitter.
21:21
Speaker 6: He sure did. He sure did. And boy, was that
21:24
Speaker 6: a worthwhile purchase. One important legacy from Elon is the
21:27
Speaker 6: work he did to help keep a liberal majority on
21:30
Speaker 6: the Wisconsin Supreme Court by making his choice polarizing self
21:35
Speaker 6: central to that Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. Do you
21:39
Speaker 6: think Democrats will miss having Elon around as a punching bag?
21:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably. I mean, Elon Musk, the world's richest man,
21:48
Speaker 3: being in charge of an effort to cut food assistance
21:51
Speaker 3: to poor people, cancer research, firing federal employees was like
21:56
Speaker 3: the perfect metaphor for the plutocratic cruelty that is Donald
22:02
Speaker 3: Trump's Republican Party. It was perfect, and it was used
22:06
Speaker 3: to great efficacy in Wisconsin. And you could see that
22:10
Speaker 3: happening everywhere. It's a very mobilizing thing for Democrats when
22:12
Speaker 3: the world's richest man is trying to buy elections, as
22:14
Speaker 3: he tried to do in 2024, and he really tried
22:16
Speaker 3: to do it in Wisconsin. I mean, it was a
22:19
Speaker 3: great gift to Democrats that Trump appointed one of the
22:23
Speaker 3: world's most famous people, someone with an amazing ability to
22:25
Speaker 3: get attention, to implement a series of really, really, really
22:29
Speaker 3: unpopular policies. Normally, if you want to do things like
22:34
Speaker 3: you know, cut food assistance or cancer research or food
22:38
Speaker 3: safety inspectors or the cut public education, you want to
22:42
Speaker 3: do that under the radar. Putting someone who gets attention
22:46
Speaker 3: from every single thing they do was a huge gift.
22:49
Speaker 3: It's sort of like if you want to rob a bank,
22:51
Speaker 3: you probably don't want to hire Kim Kardashian as your
22:53
Speaker 3: getaway driver. And so that was a gift to Democrats.
22:58
Speaker 3: We're not going to have that going forward. But the
23:00
Speaker 3: underlying arguments that we use in Wisconsin without Elon Musk's
23:04
Speaker 3: name still are very resonant and have potential to be
23:08
Speaker 3: very powerful in 2026.
23:10
Speaker 6: I also am hoping that less attention on Elon, who
23:14
Speaker 6: does consume quite a bit of attention, means more attention
23:18
Speaker 6: on all the people who we can defeat in an election,
23:22
Speaker 6: Republicans in Congress, who I feel like haven't been getting
23:25
Speaker 6: the attention they deserve from people because they have been
23:28
Speaker 6: just rubber stamping every single thing Trump does and basically
23:31
Speaker 6: just giving up all of their power to just be
23:35
Speaker 6: extensions of the White House staff. And I do think
23:37
Speaker 6: that maybe, you know, now that we're going to be
23:39
Speaker 6: debating this bill for the next month or so, it's
23:43
Speaker 6: a good opportunity to make sure people know that it
23:45
Speaker 6: is the Republicans in Congress who have quite a bit
23:48
Speaker 6: of power that they are using to screw people.
23:50
Speaker 3: Do you think this is, I'm taking us on a
23:53
Speaker 3: diversion here for a second, but do you think as
23:56
Speaker 3: we head into 2026, the more energy should be spent
24:00
Speaker 3: on Trump and what he's doing with this bill or
24:05
Speaker 3: on the individual Republican, the House Republicans who are voting
24:08
Speaker 3: for it?
24:10
Speaker 6: I don't think, I think it's both. I think you've
24:13
Speaker 6: got to tie them together in a way that we
24:15
Speaker 6: have not tied them together yet. And I don't think,
24:17
Speaker 6: I think individually, I mean like individual races, obviously they're
24:19
Speaker 6: going to have the person you're running against. But I
24:22
Speaker 6: think Donald Trump and Republicans control Washington, right, together. And
24:27
Speaker 6: they are in lockstep. No Republicans have broken from them.
24:31
Speaker 6: This is what they're doing. This is the damage they're causing.
24:34
Speaker 6: And Congress has basically, Congress is an extension of the
24:37
Speaker 6: White House staff. You know, I kind of think that's,
24:41
Speaker 6: I think that's the best way to do it, but
24:43
Speaker 6: I don't know.
24:43
Speaker 2: What do you think?
24:44
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know.
24:44
Speaker 3: There's a, the House races are going to rise and
24:47
Speaker 3: fall together. None of these members are so important. They're like, oh,
24:53
Speaker 3: I have such a personal connection to Mike Lawler that
24:57
Speaker 3: I wouldn't vote for him despite my incredible concerns with
25:00
Speaker 3: what's happening in Washington with Trump. I mean, Trump's a
25:02
Speaker 3: double-edged sword. The way our electoral coalition works, as we
25:07
Speaker 3: talked about last week when we were talking about the
25:08
Speaker 3: catalyst data, is we want midterm turnout. We don't want
25:12
Speaker 3: anything above midterm turnout.
25:14
Speaker 2: Right.
25:15
Speaker 3: And Trump has potential to turn people out. So I
25:20
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know the answer to it yet.
25:22
Speaker 3: But there's no question that it can't be just Trump, right?
25:25
Speaker 3: It's got to be Trump and Republicans. And there is a...
25:30
Speaker 3: That's also just playing the long-term game of presuming Trump
25:33
Speaker 3: doesn't upend the Constitution and engage in a military coup
25:35
Speaker 3: between now and 2028. We're going to run against a
25:38
Speaker 3: Republican who's not Donald Trump in 2028. And so we
25:41
Speaker 3: need the bad stuff of Trump to infect the rest
25:44
Speaker 3: of the party too.
25:45
Speaker 2: Yes.
25:45
Speaker 6: And that's sort of why I brought it up originally,
25:47
Speaker 6: because I do think that is a task that we
25:49
Speaker 6: have not... we've not focused on as much. But I
25:52
Speaker 6: think also like just thermostatic public opinion, people, voters who
25:56
Speaker 6: don't play close attention, but who do turn out in midterms,
25:59
Speaker 6: just think to themselves, oh, Trump's doing a bunch of
26:01
Speaker 6: bad shit. We got to have a check on Trump
26:02
Speaker 6: right now. It's full Republican control of Washington. We need
26:05
Speaker 6: some balance back in Washington, even the people who sort
26:07
Speaker 6: of like Trump, right? So I do think there's that
26:09
Speaker 6: dynamic as well.
26:19
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28:11
Speaker 6: All right. As Trump bids farewell to his favorite foreign-born
28:18
Speaker 6: Ivy League graduate, he's trying as hard as he can
28:20
Speaker 6: to make life miserable for over a million others. The
28:23
Speaker 6: administration has decided to stop issuing all new student and
28:27
Speaker 6: exchange visitor visas while they create a new process to
28:31
Speaker 6: monitor the social media accounts of anyone who wants to
28:35
Speaker 6: go to school in America. National archivist Marco Rubio said
28:39
Speaker 6: the State Department, where he interns, will be, quote, aggressively
28:42
Speaker 6: revoking visas for an unknown number of the 275,000 Chinese
28:48
Speaker 6: students studying in America and said the crackdown would include,
28:52
Speaker 6: but not limited to, those students with ties to the
28:55
Speaker 6: Chinese Communist Party and those studying in, quote, critical fields.
29:00
Speaker 6: Trump also floated the idea that colleges should just cap
29:02
Speaker 6: foreign enrollment at around 15%. In better news, a federal
29:06
Speaker 6: judge blocked the Trump administration's attempt to bar Harvard University
29:10
Speaker 6: from enrolling foreign students, at least for the time being.
29:13
Speaker 6: This comes as the administration is trying to cancel basically
29:16
Speaker 6: all federal funding to Harvard, most of which is really
29:20
Speaker 6: just the federal government essentially hiring Harvard to do medical
29:24
Speaker 6: and scientific research that benefits the whole country. Here's Caroline
29:29
Speaker 6: Levitt on Fox News talking about Trump's policies here.
29:33
Speaker 8: Electricians, plumbers, we need more of those in our country
29:37
Speaker 8: and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's
29:42
Speaker 8: what this administration's position is. And we also are not
29:45
Speaker 8: going to tolerate the illegal criminal anti-Semitic behavior that we
29:49
Speaker 8: saw take place at Harvard and many other college campuses
29:52
Speaker 8: across the country.
29:53
Speaker 6: LGBTQ graduate majors. Is that happening a lot?
29:58
Speaker 3: I'm very confused by that.
30:01
Speaker 6: They're majoring in gay? Yeah, that's what's happening.
30:03
Speaker 3: Are they majoring in gay or are they gay graduate students?
30:06
Speaker 6: Probably both.
30:07
Speaker 3: Either way, I'm not sure what the issue is here.
30:09
Speaker 6: Either way, you do not want them anywhere near our colleges.
30:11
Speaker 6: That's for sure. We need more plumbers. We need people
30:14
Speaker 6: going to Harvard so they can be plumbers is what
30:17
Speaker 6: we need.
30:19
Speaker 3: You could really nauseate yourself with dizziness by trying to
30:24
Speaker 3: follow the logical thread of that comment.
30:27
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I'm sure, you know, someone's going to try, like,
30:29
Speaker 6: you're going to get the J.D. Vances or someone else
30:32
Speaker 6: to intellectualize this argument and be like, you elites, you
30:35
Speaker 6: don't understand that our trade schools are important and that
30:38
Speaker 6: we need people who are going to make things again
30:40
Speaker 6: and not all these email jobs with all these beta
30:43
Speaker 6: males and women behind their computers just producing nothing. We
30:47
Speaker 6: need to build things again in this country. And you're
30:50
Speaker 6: all just a bunch of elitist snobs for thinking otherwise.
30:53
Speaker 6: That's the rap.
30:56
Speaker 3: That, that's, I assume Trump's free community college plan is
30:59
Speaker 3: coming out any moment now?
31:01
Speaker 6: Well, he's got, he wants to, he does want to
31:03
Speaker 6: donate some of the federal funding that's going to Harvard
31:05
Speaker 6: to the trade schools, which I don't even know how
31:08
Speaker 6: that works. It probably, he's probably not going to actually
31:11
Speaker 6: do that. And I don't know what those trade schools
31:13
Speaker 6: would do with the funding, um, because there is no
31:15
Speaker 6: evidence that they need federal funding because they are not
31:19
Speaker 6: research universities. So if we expel enough international students from
31:24
Speaker 6: America and, uh, destroy some of the world's best colleges.
31:27
Speaker 6: Is that going to lead to more jobs for Americans, Dan?
31:30
Speaker 3: No, John, I don't think it's going to. I think
31:31
Speaker 3: it's going to lead to less jobs. And let's even,
31:34
Speaker 3: let's just, let's put aside the destruction of American higher
31:36
Speaker 3: education for a second and just focus on just if
31:40
Speaker 3: we reduce or eliminate the number of foreign students coming
31:42
Speaker 3: to American colleges. What happens is the best and the
31:46
Speaker 3: brightest from around the world come to college in the
31:48
Speaker 3: United States because this is the best place to get
31:50
Speaker 3: an education. It is the, it is a cultural centerpiece
31:53
Speaker 3: of the world, an educational centerpiece.
31:54
Speaker 2: Of the world.
31:55
Speaker 3: Many of those that best and the brightest, they go
31:57
Speaker 3: to college here, they stay here, they work in American companies,
32:00
Speaker 3: and most importantly, they start American companies. Google, eBay, YouTube, Nvidia,
32:07
Speaker 3: all huge. Tesla as one, yes. SpaceX. SpaceX. All companies
32:14
Speaker 3: that employ huge amounts of Americans have generated tons of wealth,
32:18
Speaker 3: have been some of the most innovative companies in the world,
32:20
Speaker 3: started in America by immigrants who came here to go
32:22
Speaker 3: to college. So now those people are going to go elsewhere.
32:25
Speaker 3: They're going to go to college elsewhere. They're going to
32:28
Speaker 3: start companies elsewhere. And it's a huge brain drain for
32:31
Speaker 3: the United States. It's one of the most self-defeating things
32:34
Speaker 3: we could possibly do. It just fundamentally misunderstands what our
32:38
Speaker 3: strength is as a nation. Where we lead the world
32:41
Speaker 3: is in innovation. And we are going to make that.
32:46
Speaker 3: Trump is basically running an anti-innovation agenda. It's not just
32:50
Speaker 3: kicking these kids out of school. It's also cutting the
32:53
Speaker 3: research that you're talking about. that just was reading us
32:55
Speaker 3: today about how China is now leading the world in
32:58
Speaker 3: drug trials. They're beating us in that game because we,
33:02
Speaker 3: and we're going to make that easier because of what
33:03
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's doing.
33:05
Speaker 6: I just read a story. We're losing doctors to Canada.
33:07
Speaker 6: Doctors are starting to leave to go to Canada because
33:10
Speaker 6: they don't want to be in the United States anymore
33:12
Speaker 6: because of everything RFK Jr. is doing, because of Trump's
33:14
Speaker 6: cuts to NIH, because of everything. And it's just easier
33:16
Speaker 6: to go somewhere else. Students in the academic year, 2023,
33:19
Speaker 6: 2024 academic year, International students contributed $ 44 billion to the U.S. economy,
33:27
Speaker 6: supported 378,000 jobs. That's just the students before they go
33:31
Speaker 6: off and start companies, just because of all the research
33:33
Speaker 6: they do. International students comprise 5% of higher ed enrollment
33:39
Speaker 6: in this country. And the thing is, they are heavily,
33:43
Speaker 6: heavily concentrated in graduate programs. So this isn't even a
33:46
Speaker 6: big undergraduate thing. This is they're in graduate programs, and
33:49
Speaker 6: they are especially in graduate programs where around subjects like engineering,
33:54
Speaker 6: computer science, research. And we also have a situation in
33:59
Speaker 6: the country where college application rates, not like acceptance rates,
34:03
Speaker 6: application rates are falling among U.S.
34:06
Speaker 2: Students.
34:06
Speaker 6: So if you have those falling, basically what you have
34:09
Speaker 6: is a lot of graduate programs in the STEM areas
34:12
Speaker 6: and science and math and engineering, all those very important areas.
34:16
Speaker 6: And U.S. colleges can't really fill those slots because It's
34:20
Speaker 6: not because it's so competitive and, oh, the international student
34:22
Speaker 6: got in and the U.S. student didn't. That's not happening.
34:24
Speaker 6: It is they need international students to fill those slots.
34:28
Speaker 6: And without them, and by the way, international students also
34:30
Speaker 6: tend to pay full tuition, right? That's another thing that
34:34
Speaker 6: we're getting from international students. And because they pay full tuition,
34:37
Speaker 6: that allows these colleges to help subsidize their operations, their staff,
34:42
Speaker 6: and financial aid for American students. So if we kick
34:46
Speaker 6: out all the international students who are paying full freight
34:48
Speaker 6: to college and That's going to mean more cuts to colleges.
34:51
Speaker 6: That's probably going to mean higher tuition for other students.
34:54
Speaker 6: And that's going to mean less students being able to go. Yeah,
34:57
Speaker 6: it's so fucking stupid.
34:59
Speaker 3: It's so dumb. There is no purpose to what is
35:03
Speaker 3: happening here.
35:04
Speaker 6: I was yelling about this, but like J.D. fucking Vance,
35:07
Speaker 6: you know, he posts this long tweet over the weekend.
35:11
Speaker 6: And he's like, here's the deal with, you know, the
35:14
Speaker 6: Trump administration's policy towards universities, you know. There is a
35:18
Speaker 6: reproducibility crisis where published papers from research universities fail to
35:23
Speaker 6: replicate and turn into commercial adoption. And so basically all
35:28
Speaker 6: this research is being done is not generating enough jobs
35:31
Speaker 6: and businesses. And that's a problem with these elite institutions.
35:35
Speaker 6: And also all of these professors, their voting patterns, it's
35:38
Speaker 6: like North Korea. All they do is just vote for liberal,
35:41
Speaker 6: vote for Democrats. And also there's racial discrimination against whites
35:45
Speaker 6: and Asians and And these are the problems that President
35:48
Speaker 6: Trump is looking to change. And if he would only,
35:51
Speaker 6: if the colleges would only work with Trump to change
35:53
Speaker 6: these policies, instead of just yelling fascism, then, you know,
35:58
Speaker 6: we could be all better off and so could the
35:59
Speaker 6: colleges be better off. And that's what this is really about.
36:01
Speaker 6: It's about, he said, basic democratic accountability. So he gives
36:04
Speaker 6: this long, this long bullshit intellectual argument for why Trump's
36:08
Speaker 6: doing this. And then the next day, Trump gets off
36:10
Speaker 6: the plane and a reporter asks him why he's doing this.
36:12
Speaker 6: And he's like, too many foreign students at Harvard. Too many.
36:15
Speaker 6: Some of them could be terrorists. Too many. We got
36:18
Speaker 6: to watch them. They could be some bad people. It's like, okay, well,
36:21
Speaker 6: there you go, J.D. Vance. Yeah, you can do your
36:23
Speaker 6: reproducibility crisis, but Donald Trump just thinks there's too many
36:26
Speaker 6: foreigners in our colleges.
36:27
Speaker 2: That's it.
36:28
Speaker 3: What a sad existence that J.D. Vance lives in.
36:30
Speaker 6: So fucking sad.
36:32
Speaker 3: He goes out there.
36:34
Speaker 2: Pathetic.
36:34
Speaker 3: He tries to, he twists himself into a fucking pretzel
36:37
Speaker 3: to try to justify his entirely new set of beliefs
36:40
Speaker 3: that he's just adopted for the purposes of acquiring power
36:44
Speaker 3: and to somehow make Trump seem less like a fucking moron.
36:47
Speaker 3: And then every day Trump goes out and just acts
36:48
Speaker 3: like a fucking moron and in doing so makes JD
36:51
Speaker 3: Vance look weak and dumb and like a fucking moron. Yep.
36:55
Speaker 6: And it's, you know, it's all the, All the tech bros,
36:57
Speaker 6: the oligarchs, the Elon Musk's, the all in crew and
37:00
Speaker 6: their podcast. When Trump went on the all in podcast
37:03
Speaker 6: and was like, I'm really for, you know, stapling a
37:06
Speaker 6: green card to the diplomas of international students who come
37:10
Speaker 6: here for college. And the all in guys are like, see,
37:12
Speaker 6: Trump's really much more moderate on immigration. What a great thing.
37:15
Speaker 6: And it was a fucking bullshit the whole time. No
37:17
Speaker 6: one believed that that was Donald Trump's actual position. And
37:20
Speaker 6: now not only is he not stapling a green card
37:22
Speaker 6: to their diploma, he's kicking them all out of the
37:24
Speaker 6: fucking country. And it's not even just like future students
37:27
Speaker 6: who may come here. There are students who were here,
37:30
Speaker 6: Chinese students. What about Marco Rubio is going to fucking
37:33
Speaker 6: revoke visas from Chinese students. We have 275,000 Chinese students
37:37
Speaker 6: in this country. And he's just going to take their
37:39
Speaker 6: visa away for what? For what?
37:42
Speaker 3: Because they're tied to the Chinese communist party, meaning they're
37:45
Speaker 3: from China.
37:46
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.
37:47
Speaker 6: From that's yeah. They're from China.
37:48
Speaker 3: As at the same time, like, It's also fucking incoherent
37:52
Speaker 3: that it is hard to take because we're going to
37:55
Speaker 3: kick out students who might have ties to the Chinese
37:58
Speaker 3: Communist Party, but we are going to bend the law
38:01
Speaker 3: to allow the Chinese Communist Party's social video app to
38:05
Speaker 3: exist for as long as humanly possible. You can have
38:08
Speaker 3: an opinion on the TikTok ban, you can have an
38:10
Speaker 3: opinion on it, but your opinions have to at least
38:12
Speaker 3: have some sort of ideological coherence. You can say we're
38:15
Speaker 3: in a giant race to compete with China, And we
38:18
Speaker 3: don't want China to be the way it is, but
38:19
Speaker 3: we're not going to allow their students to come here
38:22
Speaker 3: and be culturally acclimated to the United States and go
38:24
Speaker 3: back there. And we're also going to be in a
38:26
Speaker 3: race with China, and we're going to gut all of
38:28
Speaker 3: our innovation initiatives to allow China to get the head
38:30
Speaker 3: start on things like solar and wind and green energy
38:32
Speaker 3: and all that. It's so stupid.
38:35
Speaker 6: Well, Dan, you know, J.D. Vance is very upset that
38:37
Speaker 6: admissions policies are discriminating against Asian students. And so the
38:42
Speaker 6: best way to rectify that is to make sure that
38:45
Speaker 6: the largest group of Asian students in this country who
38:47
Speaker 6: are international Chinese students, actually the largest group of any
38:51
Speaker 6: ethnicity who's in this country is international students. We're going
38:54
Speaker 6: to kick them all out. So it all works out.
38:56
Speaker 3: JD Vance grew up the way he grew up in Appalachia,
39:01
Speaker 3: gets into an Ivy League college, succeeds because of it
39:05
Speaker 3: while sacrificing a lot of his dignity and morals and
39:07
Speaker 3: the above, and then burns the fucking bridge behind him.
39:19
Speaker 2: Pod Save America is brought to you by Strawberry.me. So
39:22
Speaker 2: here's the thing.
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40:32
Speaker 7: All right.
40:32
Speaker 6: In a moment, I'm going to talk to Liz Oyer,
40:34
Speaker 6: who's the DOJ's former pardon attorney about Trump's latest pardon spree.
40:39
Speaker 6: But before we do, I thought we would talk a
40:41
Speaker 6: little bit about the political implications of those pardons in
40:44
Speaker 6: another corrupt date. There you go. That's asking you shall receive.
40:54
Speaker 3: You ask a thousand times and one time you will
40:57
Speaker 3: get it. The truth is you have to ask publicly
40:59
Speaker 3: on a podcast.
41:00
Speaker 6: I did, but you know what? Elijah came up with
41:02
Speaker 6: that sting really fast, right away.
41:04
Speaker 2: That's great.
41:05
Speaker 6: So that's what we got.
41:06
Speaker 3: Now we are Trump's toast now. This was the thing.
41:08
Speaker 2: This is it.
41:09
Speaker 6: This did him in. So this week, Trump and his
41:11
Speaker 6: new pardon flunky, Nazi simp Ed Martin, extended pardons and
41:16
Speaker 6: commutations to at least 25 people among them. Former reality
41:21
Speaker 6: TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of
41:24
Speaker 6: tax evasion and defrauding banks out of over $ 30 million,
41:27
Speaker 6: but are also huge Trump supporters. Also former Congressman Michael Grimm,
41:32
Speaker 6: who was also convicted of tax fraud. A former Virginia sheriff,
41:36
Speaker 6: who then became a minor MAGA celeb, who was caught
41:39
Speaker 6: on video accepting bags of cash. Caught on video. Over $ 75, 000
41:45
Speaker 6: worth of bribes that he got for making wealthy businessmen
41:51
Speaker 6: deputy sheriffs with no training. They paid him money. He
41:56
Speaker 6: gave them a badge. There was no training. There was
41:59
Speaker 6: no training. They gave him a bag of cash. They
42:02
Speaker 6: caught it on video, but he's MAGA, doesn't like immigrants,
42:05
Speaker 6: so he gets the pardon. But my personal favorite is
42:08
Speaker 6: Paul Walzak, a convicted tax cheat who pleaded guilty to
42:12
Speaker 6: tax evasion and fraud, but received a pardon after his mom,
42:18
Speaker 6: a major Trump fundraiser, recently attended that $ 1 million a
42:22
Speaker 6: plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago. The best part, she made sure
42:26
Speaker 6: to include the fact that she's a major Trump donor
42:29
Speaker 6: in the application for clemency, which was of course granted.
42:34
Speaker 6: And guess what? Now Walzak doesn't have to pay over
42:37
Speaker 6: $ 4 million in restitution to the people he screwed. What
42:41
Speaker 6: do you make of this clemency spree?
42:43
Speaker 3: Seems pretty corrupt. I mean, The Walzak one, they're all bad.
42:48
Speaker 6: That's why it's in the.
42:49
Speaker 3: Corrupt date section, Dan. Well, now everyone will know where
42:52
Speaker 3: it is because we finally have the sound that proves it.
42:54
Speaker 6: We did the right thing here.
42:56
Speaker 3: I mean, all Trump's doing is just pardoning his political
42:59
Speaker 3: cronies and financial supporters. That's what's happening here. And we're
43:02
Speaker 3: all just fine with it. I mean, the Walzak one
43:05
Speaker 3: is fucking perfect.
43:08
Speaker 6: Just goes to the dinner.
43:09
Speaker 3: She put the bribe in the application and got the pardon.
43:14
Speaker 6: And look, this is you know, we've talked about Trump's
43:18
Speaker 6: corruption and how it's out in the open and whether
43:21
Speaker 6: it's an effective political message and whether it's really going
43:23
Speaker 6: to piss people off. And I would bet that a
43:27
Speaker 6: lot of people aren't necessarily surprised that Trump's going to
43:31
Speaker 6: abuse the pardon power and abuse his office to help
43:34
Speaker 6: his friends and cronies. But the situation with Walzak is
43:39
Speaker 6: extra infuriating because he ripped off a bunch of people, right?
43:42
Speaker 6: His own employees, people, nurses, he withheld more than $ 10
43:46
Speaker 6: million from the paychecks of these people who worked at
43:50
Speaker 6: his facilities, nurses, doctors, et cetera. So he stole money
43:54
Speaker 6: from people who worked for him. He used some of
43:56
Speaker 6: the money to buy a $ 2 million yacht and then
44:01
Speaker 6: gave a million dollars through his mom to Donald Trump,
44:05
Speaker 6: got a pardon, and now he doesn't have to pay
44:07
Speaker 6: the money back, which he was going to have to do.
44:10
Speaker 6: So he committed a crime, screwed over a bunch of
44:12
Speaker 6: working class people, who were at his facilities, and now
44:16
Speaker 6: he gets off and those people get screwed. And if
44:18
Speaker 6: that's not like, if that doesn't make you mad, if
44:20
Speaker 6: you think that's okay and like good for Donald Trump, great,
44:24
Speaker 6: you got your president. But like, that's pretty fucked up.
44:28
Speaker 3: There is just something about that part. They're all bad.
44:34
Speaker 3: Every single one of them are bad. There's something about
44:36
Speaker 3: that part in particular that just speaks to the sort
44:40
Speaker 3: of depraved world in which we live, where it's just like,
44:43
Speaker 3: That was a story. New York Times wrote a great
44:44
Speaker 3: story about it, read lots of stories about it. No
44:46
Speaker 3: one cares. Nothing happened. In a different world, we've been
44:50
Speaker 3: doing a lot of 90s reference in this pod. On
44:52
Speaker 3: his way out the door, Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich,
44:55
Speaker 3: a financier. Mark Rich's wife, Denise Rich, had donated money
44:59
Speaker 3: to Bill Clinton. They'd been at fundraisers. Rich himself had
45:02
Speaker 3: been a big fundraiser. It was a national scandal for weeks.
45:08
Speaker 3: In a normal world, what would happen with as well
45:10
Speaker 3: as that pardon is, Because it looks like bribery. Can
45:13
Speaker 3: a court prove that it was bribery? I don't know.
45:18
Speaker 3: But by the definition of bribery, like in a dictionary,
45:21
Speaker 3: this is bribery. And the attorney general, who would be
45:25
Speaker 3: an independent figure, would appoint a special counsel to look
45:28
Speaker 3: into it and then determine what communications happened between Walzak's
45:33
Speaker 3: mom and Trump aides to do the quid pro and
45:37
Speaker 3: the quo in this. And none of that's happening. We're
45:40
Speaker 3: just going to move on. And it's pure, there is just,
45:44
Speaker 3: we're going to get to this in the next topic,
45:46
Speaker 3: but it is pure pay to play in Trump's White House.
45:50
Speaker 6: Then there would be impeachment hearings, most likely.
45:54
Speaker 7: There was.
45:54
Speaker 6: And then Trump's approval rating would.
45:55
Speaker 3: Go up and it would be terrible. So can we
45:58
Speaker 3: just stick with a conviction or we would get convicted
46:01
Speaker 3: that he could be able to run for a third term.
46:02
Speaker 3: But point being, there should be a fucking investigation somewhere,
46:04
Speaker 3: somehow about some of this stuff.
46:06
Speaker 6: And this is, and you know, I talked, with this
46:08
Speaker 6: about Liz Oyer in our interview a bit, but what
46:11
Speaker 6: really gets me about that, this is like the financial
46:13
Speaker 6: corruption around the pardons. But remember, he pardoned all of
46:18
Speaker 6: the January 6th rioters, many of whom were convicted of
46:21
Speaker 6: assaulting police officers, journalists, like really badly. They're all free now.
46:27
Speaker 6: And by the way, he frees those people. One who
46:31
Speaker 6: was convicted of assaulting a police officer has been convicted
46:34
Speaker 6: again of soliciting a minor online. Another who was convicted
46:39
Speaker 6: of assaulting a police officer was convicted after released by Trump,
46:44
Speaker 6: after this person was released by Trump, of sexually assaulting
46:48
Speaker 6: a minor. Another, also convicted of assaulting a police officer,
46:53
Speaker 6: freed by Trump, has been convicted of reckless homicide after
46:57
Speaker 6: drunk driving. So these are people, these are criminals that
47:01
Speaker 6: Donald Trump freed who should not have been freed because
47:03
Speaker 6: they violently assaulted police officers and journalists. And the broader
47:09
Speaker 6: implication here is if you are a foot soldier for
47:13
Speaker 6: Donald Trump, whether you're a January 6th rioter, whether you're
47:16
Speaker 6: a law enforcement official, if you do his bidding, if
47:21
Speaker 6: he orders you to hurt someone, to kill someone, to
47:23
Speaker 6: commit crimes, you know that you're going to get a pardon.
47:27
Speaker 6: You know that you're going to get a commutation if
47:29
Speaker 6: you go to jail. And so what message does that
47:31
Speaker 6: send to people who want to commit crimes in Donald
47:34
Speaker 6: Trump's name. It tells them that it's fucking fine.
47:37
Speaker 3: It's a very clear message. Go commit crimes on my behalf.
47:41
Speaker 6: And I know that this, like the January 6th thing happened,
47:45
Speaker 6: the pardons happened on January 6th and it didn't really
47:47
Speaker 6: stick with voters and it wasn't like what made voters
47:49
Speaker 6: the angriest about Trump and his approval rating is still
47:51
Speaker 6: where it is. But like, I don't know. If you're
47:54
Speaker 6: sitting around in your community and there's a bunch of
47:56
Speaker 6: like MAGA crazies who want to commit violence, I'd be worried.
48:02
Speaker 6: I think that's something that actually affects voters. It affects
48:05
Speaker 6: most people in this country, that we're going to have
48:06
Speaker 6: a country full of people who just know that it's
48:08
Speaker 6: okay to commit crimes in the president's name if they're rich,
48:12
Speaker 6: or if they're Trump supporters, or if they're rich Trump supporters.
48:15
Speaker 3: This is where a little bit of the media disparity
48:19
Speaker 3: comes into play. And I know that this whataboutalism can
48:22
Speaker 3: be very frustrating, but I think these examples are illustrative
48:26
Speaker 3: to make a larger point about how the media world
48:28
Speaker 3: works and how we're getting outgunned. Imagine a world in
48:31
Speaker 3: which Joe Biden had pardoned some Black Lives Matter protesters
48:36
Speaker 3: who had been convicted– certainly not even convicted of any–
48:39
Speaker 3: of peaceful protests, right?
48:41
Speaker 6: Nothing like– Vandalism, right? Burning a car. Graffiti, whatever. Yeah, right, whatever.
48:46
Speaker 3: Had pardoned them, and then one of them had assaulted
48:51
Speaker 3: a child or killed someone in a car accident. Can
48:53
Speaker 3: you imagine what the political environment would be like? Every
48:56
Speaker 3: person in America would know this happened.
48:58
Speaker 6: Every single person. It would be 24-hour coverage on every
49:02
Speaker 6: right-wing media channel and show. And then also then it
49:07
Speaker 6: would move to CNN and everywhere. And all the corporate
49:11
Speaker 6: media and all the legacy media would all cover it.
49:12
Speaker 6: And it would be a big fucking thing.
49:14
Speaker 3: Every Democrat would be asked to whether they disavow Biden's pardons.
49:19
Speaker 3: They would. Someone would be forced, like Gerald Golden or
49:23
Speaker 3: someone would be pressured into putting a censor motion into place.
49:27
Speaker 3: The White House press briefing would be an absolute shit
49:30
Speaker 3: show every single day.
49:31
Speaker 6: You know what? Those examples that I just mentioned, those
49:34
Speaker 6: happened weeks and months ago. That wasn't this week. Those
49:36
Speaker 6: were old examples that I found that I just remembered
49:39
Speaker 6: because we were talking about the most recent pardons that
49:42
Speaker 6: have to do with financial corruption.
49:44
Speaker 3: I mean, and you just, like I was listening to
49:47
Speaker 3: Ezra Klein's podcast with Zeke Fox, the crypto reporter, and
49:50
Speaker 3: they're going through all of the crypto crimes. And it's just,
49:53
Speaker 3: and Ezra makes a point that Trump is, it's muzzle
49:56
Speaker 3: velocity corruption using Steve Bannon's term. They just, you're doing
49:59
Speaker 3: so much corruption, so many crimes so fast, it's impossible
50:01
Speaker 3: to keep up. That is true, but it's also a
50:03
Speaker 3: failure of, The media, and I don't mean just entirely
50:08
Speaker 3: the New York Times or something like that. I just
50:09
Speaker 3: mean the media world, which includes Democratic Party, Democratic influencers,
50:14
Speaker 3: people with podcasts like us, to have the power to
50:16
Speaker 3: actually drive a conversation that informs people about this. And
50:20
Speaker 3: we don't have that power yet.
50:22
Speaker 6: One last item, just to make us mad before we
50:24
Speaker 6: move on to the interview.
50:24
Speaker 3: I'm so mad about this.
50:35
Speaker 6: That he has against 60 Minutes for, you know, choosing
50:39
Speaker 6: the edit on their Kamala Harris interview. Choosing which parts
50:45
Speaker 6: of the interview they put on television and which parts
50:49
Speaker 6: they put online because you can see the whole thing
50:51
Speaker 6: either online or on TV. If you want to find it,
50:54
Speaker 6: no one's hiding anything. Still won, still beater, didn't matter.
50:58
Speaker 6: But anyway, so they offered Trump $ 15 million to settle
51:03
Speaker 6: this case. But he said no because he's demanding more
51:07
Speaker 6: than $ 25 million plus a public apology. And his lawyers
51:13
Speaker 6: are arguing in court that Donald Trump suffered, quote, mental
51:18
Speaker 6: anguish from CBS News editing the 60 Minutes interview. What
51:25
Speaker 6: do you think?
51:26
Speaker 3: Some of you just have to like step back and
51:27
Speaker 3: explain these things to realize just how fucking crazy they are. Paramount.
51:34
Speaker 3: has a merger with Skydance before the FTC. There's nothing
51:38
Speaker 3: particularly controversial about this merger. We can talk all we
51:41
Speaker 3: want about media consolidation, but this one's pretty pro forma,
51:45
Speaker 3: certainly with the Republican administration. It would be greenlit under
51:47
Speaker 3: any scenario. Donald Trump sued CBS, as you pointed out,
51:51
Speaker 3: for a completely absurd case that would be tossed out
51:54
Speaker 3: of any court. But the owners of Paramount desperately need
51:58
Speaker 3: this merger to go through. They're going to make billions
52:00
Speaker 3: of dollars when it goes through. And so the Trump
52:03
Speaker 3: administration is holding up the merger to force Paramount to
52:09
Speaker 3: pay tribute to Trump, to pay Trump personally. This money
52:13
Speaker 3: presumably would go to his library, his foundation, his pocket
52:17
Speaker 3: like the ABC settlement did of $ 25 million to get
52:20
Speaker 3: their merger approved. I mean, this is pure oligarch stuff.
52:25
Speaker 3: This is Russia.
52:27
Speaker 6: It is unbelievable. Yeah, I feel like we've like skipped
52:30
Speaker 6: Orban at this point.
52:31
Speaker 3: We're past Orban.
52:33
Speaker 6: We're in Putin territory. It is.
52:35
Speaker 3: I mean, it is. I mean, I can't even imagine
52:38
Speaker 3: what it's like to work at 60 Minutes or CBS
52:40
Speaker 3: right now as a journalist. This is not their fault.
52:43
Speaker 3: They're doing their jobs. People at CBS, the president of
52:45
Speaker 3: CBS News has resigned. The head of the executive producer
52:48
Speaker 3: of 60 Minutes has resigned. And it is what Paramount is.
52:54
Speaker 2: Doing is gross.
52:55
Speaker 3: What Trump is doing is gross. is gross, and is
52:57
Speaker 3: once again, bribery in the purest definition of the word.
53:01
Speaker 3: They are exchanging money for a government approval.
53:04
Speaker 2: Of a merger. That's it.
53:07
Speaker 6: Wild, wild stuff.
53:09
Speaker 3: And then you put on top of that, all the
53:11
Speaker 3: other stories that are out there about, they're all anonymous sources,
53:14
Speaker 3: but about various media executives telling the folks at The
53:18
Speaker 3: View to tone down their anti-Trump stuff. You're seeing this
53:21
Speaker 3: at multiple media organizations because These are media companies owned
53:25
Speaker 3: by large corporations with large interests before Trump. And they
53:28
Speaker 3: are afraid of Trump and they don't want to anger
53:30
Speaker 3: him because they don't want to get in their way.
53:32
Speaker 3: And so this is how you get... If you read
53:35
Speaker 3: the books about what happened in Hungary to the media,
53:38
Speaker 3: this is exactly what happened. This is exactly what happened,
53:41
Speaker 3: how the government ended up getting functional control over much
53:46
Speaker 3: of the media apparatus to stifle dissent. And that's what's
53:48
Speaker 3: happening here.
53:49
Speaker 7: Yeah.
53:50
Speaker 6: And look, it is a choice. not to fight back.
53:53
Speaker 6: And I don't think in some cases it's necessarily even
53:57
Speaker 6: a hard choice between fighting back or capitulating. We are
53:59
Speaker 6: already seeing Trump lose in court, I don't know how
54:02
Speaker 6: many different fucking times on some of these, like all
54:04
Speaker 6: the law firms that he went after, he's losing in
54:07
Speaker 6: court on all those because they're obviously unconstitutional. A fucking
54:10
Speaker 6: judge just put multiple exclamation points in their ruling on
54:14
Speaker 6: the latest law firm, WilmerHale. that just beat Trump in
54:19
Speaker 6: court because the judge just couldn't believe how unconstitutional it is.
54:23
Speaker 6: He's racking up losses with Harvard already. I mean, so
54:27
Speaker 6: you can fight him. And I realize that for corporate media,
54:30
Speaker 6: it's different because they, you know, have a bottom line
54:32
Speaker 6: and they don't, maybe they don't give a shit. They
54:33
Speaker 6: just care about their money. But like, we're able to
54:37
Speaker 6: stop this. If people get off their asses, pay attention,
54:41
Speaker 6: fight back, show a little courage, we can fight this
54:44
Speaker 6: as opposed to just like letting this happen.
54:46
Speaker 3: The folks at CBS, they can resign. They can't force
54:52
Speaker 3: Sherry Redstone and the folks at Paramount to not be
54:54
Speaker 3: terrible here. And we can't force Sherry Redstone to do
54:58
Speaker 3: what we want, we the public. But ultimately, the answer
55:01
Speaker 3: here is for people to support independent media. That is
55:05
Speaker 3: where this is going at every step of the way.
55:08
Speaker 3: It's just proof that media companies owned by large corporations
55:12
Speaker 3: with interest before Donald Trump cannot be trusted to do
55:15
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Speaker 7: All right.
56:16
Speaker 6: When we come back from the break, you're going to
56:17
Speaker 6: hear my conversation with Liz Oyer. But before we do that,
56:20
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56:48
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56:58
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56:58
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59:17
Speaker 6: Liz Oyer, great to have you on.
59:18
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me, John.
59:20
Speaker 6: You were the pardon attorney at the Justice Department, and
59:23
Speaker 6: there is quite a bit of pardon news right now.
59:26
Speaker 6: None of it good. But before we get to all that,
59:29
Speaker 6: I want to start with your story for people who
59:31
Speaker 6: may not be familiar with it, because it's a wild
59:34
Speaker 6: one that ends with the Trump administration firing you after
59:37
Speaker 6: you argued against restoring Mel Gibson's gun rights. So what
59:43
Speaker 6: happened there?
59:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly right. So I was very much hoping
59:47
Speaker 5: to be able to stay on and do some good
59:49
Speaker 5: work in this administration. My role as pardon attorney is
59:52
Speaker 5: intended to be a non-political role. The idea is to
59:55
Speaker 5: make recommendations to the president about how he can use
59:58
Speaker 5: his clemency power in a way that is fair and
1:00:01
Speaker 5: free of political influence. So I hoped and expected to
1:00:04
Speaker 5: be able to continue on into this administration, but that
1:00:07
Speaker 5: was not meant to be. In March, I was very
1:00:11
Speaker 5: abruptly fired from my position on a Friday afternoon and
1:00:14
Speaker 5: walked out of the building by security officers. The events
1:00:18
Speaker 5: that you referred to leading up to my firing are
1:00:22
Speaker 5: where it gets pretty weird, and I'm happy to talk
1:00:24
Speaker 5: about that.
1:00:25
Speaker 6: Please do.
1:00:26
Speaker 5: So I was asked to be part of a project
1:00:29
Speaker 5: involving restoration of gun rights to people who've lost their
1:00:32
Speaker 5: right to own a firearm because of a criminal conviction.
1:00:35
Speaker 5: There are millions of people in this country who are
1:00:37
Speaker 5: in that position. And the idea was that the Department
1:00:40
Speaker 5: of Justice wanted to start giving gun rights back to
1:00:43
Speaker 5: some of these people. I was asked specifically to make
1:00:47
Speaker 5: a recommendation to the attorney general that she restore the
1:00:50
Speaker 5: gun rights of a friend of the president, the actor
1:00:53
Speaker 5: Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson was actually appointed to be some
1:00:56
Speaker 5: sort of ambassador to Hollywood by President Trump at the
1:00:59
Speaker 5: start of his administration. And he had sent a letter
1:01:02
Speaker 5: to the Department of Justice explaining that he lost his
1:01:05
Speaker 5: right to own a gun in 2011 when he was
1:01:08
Speaker 5: convicted of domestic violence. He was convicted of abusing, assaulting
1:01:13
Speaker 5: his former girlfriend. And as a result of that, he's
1:01:16
Speaker 5: no longer allowed to own a firearm. So I was
1:01:19
Speaker 5: asked to recommend that he get his gun right back.
1:01:21
Speaker 5: And really the only reason given to me to make
1:01:23
Speaker 5: that recommendation was the fact that he has this personal
1:01:26
Speaker 5: relationship with the president and he's a famous actor. And
1:01:30
Speaker 5: that wasn't enough to convince me that he's someone that
1:01:33
Speaker 5: could safely own a firearm. There's a lot of data
1:01:37
Speaker 5: out there.
1:01:38
Speaker 7: Yeah.
1:01:38
Speaker 5: There's a ton of data that suggests that people with
1:01:41
Speaker 5: domestic violence histories are much more dangerous when they're armed.
1:01:44
Speaker 5: And so I couldn't make that recommendation and within hours
1:01:48
Speaker 5: of communicating to the leadership of the department that I
1:01:51
Speaker 5: was unable to fulfill that request, I was fired.
1:01:55
Speaker 6: And from what I understand, Pam Bondi ended up granting
1:01:59
Speaker 6: him his gun rights back anyway.
1:02:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, after I left, she did it anyway.
1:02:06
Speaker 6: So it seems to me like them firing you might
1:02:10
Speaker 6: be more of an excuse, might have been more of
1:02:12
Speaker 6: an excuse than They were just using the Mel Gibson
1:02:15
Speaker 6: thing as a pretext to fire you if they could
1:02:19
Speaker 6: have restored it themselves anyway?
1:02:21
Speaker 5: So they definitely didn't need me to make the recommendation,
1:02:24
Speaker 5: and they've never told me why I was fired. No
1:02:28
Speaker 5: one's ever explained it to me. I got a three-sentence
1:02:30
Speaker 5: memo telling me I was fired under the president's power
1:02:33
Speaker 5: of Article II of the Constitution. But what I will
1:02:36
Speaker 5: say is that the Department of Justice is using people
1:02:40
Speaker 5: in career positions like mine to try to give a
1:02:43
Speaker 5: veneer of legitimacy to decisions that are really just political favors,
1:02:48
Speaker 5: trying to wrap them up in some kind of legitimacy.
1:02:51
Speaker 5: by having a non-political appointee like myself make a recommendation
1:02:57
Speaker 5: when a recommendation isn't even needed. And that was shown
1:02:59
Speaker 5: here because, as you noted, Pam Bondi gave Mel Gibson
1:03:02
Speaker 5: his guns back anyway.
1:03:04
Speaker 6: And they not only fired you, but then they tried
1:03:08
Speaker 6: to silence you shortly after that. Can you talk about that?
1:03:14
Speaker 5: Yeah. So I was asked to testify before members of
1:03:17
Speaker 5: Congress about my firing from the Department of Justice. And
1:03:20
Speaker 5: that testimony was scheduled to take place on a Monday.
1:03:24
Speaker 5: On the Friday before that night, I was at a performance.
1:03:28
Speaker 5: I took my parents to a performance with my husband
1:03:30
Speaker 5: and we were leaving the Kennedy Center just after nine o'clock.
1:03:34
Speaker 5: And I received a call from someone in the Department
1:03:37
Speaker 5: of Justice who was calling really just as a favor
1:03:40
Speaker 5: to give me a heads up that there were armed
1:03:43
Speaker 5: law enforcement officers on their way to my home to
1:03:46
Speaker 5: deliver me a letter. And the letter was a warning
1:03:49
Speaker 5: against testifying before members of Congress on Monday. So I
1:03:54
Speaker 5: very fortunately was able to talk with this person about
1:03:57
Speaker 5: the fact that my teenager was at home alone. It
1:04:00
Speaker 5: would be very upsetting for these folks to show up
1:04:02
Speaker 5: at my door at about 10 o'clock in the evening.
1:04:05
Speaker 5: And this person was able to help me call those
1:04:08
Speaker 5: officers off. But the intention was to have these armed
1:04:10
Speaker 5: officers deliver a warning to my home at 10 o'clock
1:04:13
Speaker 5: on a Friday night.
1:04:15
Speaker 6: Aside from that being just absolutely thuggish behavior, what basis
1:04:21
Speaker 6: did did the officers have for giving you a letter
1:04:25
Speaker 6: that said you're not supposed to testify?
1:04:27
Speaker 5: Well, there's no basis. The letter was written by a
1:04:30
Speaker 5: political appointee who works for the deputy attorney general, or
1:04:33
Speaker 5: at least that's whose name was signed to it. And
1:04:36
Speaker 5: the leadership of the department is really now just a
1:04:38
Speaker 5: collection of President Trump's former personal attorneys. So this was
1:04:42
Speaker 5: a woman who was a junior member of his defense
1:04:45
Speaker 5: team who is now has oversight of matters of ethics
1:04:49
Speaker 5: and professional responsibility within the Department of Justice. And she
1:04:54
Speaker 5: fired off this letter warning me that I would be
1:04:57
Speaker 5: violating all sorts of legal obligations if I were to
1:05:00
Speaker 5: testify in front of members of Congress. I read the
1:05:04
Speaker 5: letter carefully. There's no basis to any of it. And
1:05:07
Speaker 5: I went ahead and testified anyway, because I believe that
1:05:11
Speaker 5: that was the right thing to do to shine a
1:05:13
Speaker 5: light on frankly, the corruption that is taking place right
1:05:17
Speaker 5: now in the Department of Justice.
1:05:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, it sounds like it was the right thing to do.
1:05:21
Speaker 6: And also, you're suing the Trump administration now, I believe.
1:05:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am.
1:05:25
Speaker 5: I actually have two different pieces of litigation going. One
1:05:29
Speaker 5: relates to an appeal of my unlawful firing. My firing
1:05:33
Speaker 5: from the department plainly violates civil service laws. I mean,
1:05:37
Speaker 5: laws that have been around for many, many decades to
1:05:40
Speaker 5: protect career federal workers. And I have another lawsuit that
1:05:45
Speaker 5: involves the Freedom of Information Act. I have asked the
1:05:48
Speaker 5: department to produce information about the reasons for my firing,
1:05:52
Speaker 5: and they have refused to do so to date. So
1:05:55
Speaker 5: I am now taking that matter to court and hoping
1:05:57
Speaker 5: that the court will require the department to comply with
1:06:01
Speaker 5: their legal obligations and give me that information.
1:06:05
Speaker 6: Can you talk a little bit about what it was
1:06:07
Speaker 6: like being the pardon attorney at DOJ back when that
1:06:11
Speaker 6: process started? was much different before Trump. And like, how
1:06:15
Speaker 6: was the process supposed to work in the pardon attorney's office?
1:06:18
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was much different. It was much different before
1:06:21
Speaker 5: the change in administration. Ordinarily, the way pardons work is
1:06:26
Speaker 5: there is this office within the Department of Justice that
1:06:29
Speaker 5: reviews and vets applications for clemency that come in from
1:06:33
Speaker 5: people around the country. About 80% of applicants are people
1:06:37
Speaker 5: who are incarcerated and serving a prison sentence. Those people
1:06:40
Speaker 5: are generally seeking a commutation of their sentence, which is
1:06:43
Speaker 5: a reduction of the imprisonment portion of their sentence. Then
1:06:48
Speaker 5: the rest of the applications are generally from people who
1:06:50
Speaker 5: are living in the community who've already completed their sentence
1:06:53
Speaker 5: and they are seeking pardons. Pardons are usually reserved for
1:06:57
Speaker 5: people who have completed their sentence sometime in the past,
1:07:01
Speaker 5: were convicted of a minor crime, and have demonstrated exemplary
1:07:05
Speaker 5: conduct and rehabilitation in the community in the years since.
1:07:09
Speaker 5: So all those applications typically come through the Office of
1:07:12
Speaker 5: the Pardon Attorney. We would review them closely, vet the
1:07:15
Speaker 5: applicants carefully, and make recommendations to the president about who
1:07:20
Speaker 5: should receive clemency free from any type of political influence.
1:07:25
Speaker 5: That's the process in ordinary times. That is not what's
1:07:28
Speaker 5: happening now.
1:07:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly.
1:07:31
Speaker 6: I mean, you were ultimately replaced by Ed Martin after
1:07:35
Speaker 6: his nomination for U.S. Attorney for D.C. was withdrawn. due to,
1:07:40
Speaker 6: in part, his praise and support of a Nazi January
1:07:44
Speaker 6: 6th convicts. He's since been on something of a pardon
1:07:47
Speaker 6: spree himself with Trump, handing them out to various Trump
1:07:53
Speaker 6: donors and supporters. What's your take on Ed Martin's tenure
1:07:57
Speaker 6: at DOJ so far?
1:07:58
Speaker 5: It's really quite a shock to reflect on the fact
1:08:02
Speaker 5: that he is my successor. My position is one that,
1:08:06
Speaker 5: you know, was non-political and he is just about the
1:08:09
Speaker 5: most political person in the administration. He recently tweeted, he said,
1:08:15
Speaker 5: no MAGA left behind, which was a reference to a
1:08:19
Speaker 5: pardon that was granted to a sheriff, a corrupt sheriff
1:08:24
Speaker 5: who was a Trump supporter. He seems to be on
1:08:27
Speaker 5: a mission right now to identify other MAGA loyalists who
1:08:32
Speaker 5: he believes are deserving of pardons, which as far as
1:08:34
Speaker 5: I can tell is everyone. There's been some news recently
1:08:38
Speaker 5: that he has been working with an attorney who has
1:08:41
Speaker 5: a relationship with Trump and who is representing a whole
1:08:44
Speaker 5: bunch of members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud
1:08:47
Speaker 5: Boys who are seeking pardons. He's also considering apparently pardons
1:08:52
Speaker 5: for the men who plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan,
1:08:56
Speaker 5: Gretchen Whitmer. So he's really out there in terms of
1:08:59
Speaker 5: what he's looking at. and the criteria that he's applying
1:09:02
Speaker 5: to the extent there are any are completely different from
1:09:07
Speaker 5: the criteria that the Department of Justice has always applied
1:09:10
Speaker 5: in recommending pardons. He does not seem to feel bound
1:09:14
Speaker 5: at all by this document called the Justice Manual, which
1:09:18
Speaker 5: kind of lays out all the guidelines and rules that
1:09:20
Speaker 5: Department of Justice employees are supposed to follow. It's really
1:09:23
Speaker 5: quite shocking.
1:09:26
Speaker 6: I thought my successor was bad. I got Stephen Miller,
1:09:28
Speaker 6: but yours is much worse.
1:09:30
Speaker 5: Well, we could have an extended debate about where we land.
1:09:36
Speaker 6: So your colleagues who are civil servants who are still
1:09:39
Speaker 6: in the Justice Department, Like, is there, they must be
1:09:42
Speaker 6: going crazy watching Ed Martin sort of go through some
1:09:46
Speaker 6: of these pardons. Is there anything, I mean, I know
1:09:49
Speaker 6: the pardon power is so absolute for the president. Is
1:09:51
Speaker 6: there anything that can be done to slow these down?
1:09:53
Speaker 6: Or is there anyone in DOJ who is trying to
1:09:57
Speaker 6: slow this down, do you think?
1:09:58
Speaker 5: Well, the thing that's tricky about the pardon power is
1:10:01
Speaker 5: that it's in the Constitution and the Constitution puts no
1:10:04
Speaker 5: limits on it. So there really are no rules there.
1:10:07
Speaker 5: There have always been norms and there have always been
1:10:10
Speaker 5: policies that have applied to pardons, but those have gone
1:10:14
Speaker 5: out the window under the current administration. And really the
1:10:17
Speaker 5: only way to address it when you have someone in
1:10:21
Speaker 5: the White House who is abusing the pardon power in
1:10:24
Speaker 5: this way is through a constitutional amendment, which is really,
1:10:28
Speaker 5: really difficult to accomplish. We've seen a lot of presidents
1:10:32
Speaker 5: use pardons in different ways. And you know this as
1:10:35
Speaker 5: somebody who worked in the Obama White House, really the
1:10:38
Speaker 5: high point was President Obama's use of clemency. He used
1:10:41
Speaker 5: it in a way that was very disciplined and principled
1:10:45
Speaker 5: and fair, and that was intended to really show mercy
1:10:49
Speaker 5: to people who had earned it and people who deserved it.
1:10:52
Speaker 5: And as a result, those people have gone out in
1:10:54
Speaker 5: the community and have done really well. The recidivism rates
1:10:58
Speaker 5: are low. There are people who are doing extraordinary things,
1:11:01
Speaker 5: and they earned those second chances and are using them well.
1:11:04
Speaker 5: But we're already seeing now people from Trump's first term
1:11:08
Speaker 5: in office who got clemency, who are back in prison,
1:11:12
Speaker 5: who have committed violent crimes. In just a few short years,
1:11:16
Speaker 5: the approach of not vetting people, of granting clemency on
1:11:20
Speaker 5: the basis of political loyalties and affiliations rather than merit
1:11:25
Speaker 5: is just one that is not consistent with public safety.
1:11:28
Speaker 5: And it's really destructive to our system of justice.
1:11:32
Speaker 6: I do feel like the pardons have been sort of
1:11:35
Speaker 6: an undercovered aspect of the Trump administration. And I've sort
1:11:41
Speaker 6: of been wondering why it hasn't broken through more. I
1:11:44
Speaker 6: started thinking about this with the January 6th protesters and
1:11:47
Speaker 6: convicted criminals all being pardoned and released by Trump early on.
1:11:52
Speaker 6: I mean, people like you and I and a lot
1:11:54
Speaker 6: of people who pay close attention to this are horrified
1:11:55
Speaker 6: by a lot of these pardons, most of these pardons.
1:11:58
Speaker 6: What would you say to someone who doesn't follow politics
1:12:02
Speaker 6: or even the news that closely? about why Trump's pardons
1:12:07
Speaker 6: should worry them, why they should matter to them?
1:12:10
Speaker 5: There are a couple of different reasons. One is that
1:12:13
Speaker 5: there is just no process in place. It's a free-for-all.
1:12:17
Speaker 5: It's a marketplace for pardons. And people are paying exorbitant
1:12:22
Speaker 5: amounts of money to get them. It's just a pure
1:12:25
Speaker 5: corruption of the powers of the presidency. We're hearing about
1:12:29
Speaker 5: people paying millions of dollars to get access to the
1:12:32
Speaker 5: president with the hope of their pardon being granted. So
1:12:35
Speaker 5: that should be alarming to all Americans because most people,
1:12:39
Speaker 5: even who are Trump supporters, certainly cannot afford that type
1:12:42
Speaker 5: of access and they can't get those benefits in that
1:12:45
Speaker 5: same way. The other thing that's really destructive is that
1:12:49
Speaker 5: the president is just showing total disregard for verdicts that
1:12:53
Speaker 5: have been imposed by juries for prosecutions that are being
1:12:58
Speaker 5: pursued by his own Department of Justice. It's creating essentially
1:13:02
Speaker 5: a two-tiered system of justice that gives the rich special
1:13:07
Speaker 5: and preferential treatment. There was this case recently that was
1:13:10
Speaker 5: really particularly disturbing, a guy named Paul Walsak, who was
1:13:15
Speaker 5: convicted of essentially skimming money off the tops of paychecks
1:13:19
Speaker 5: of the doctors and nurses that he employed. And he
1:13:23
Speaker 5: used the money to buy a $ 2 million yacht, jewelry, clothing,
1:13:26
Speaker 5: all sorts of lavish items. The judge who sentenced him
1:13:31
Speaker 5: decided that he needed to spend some time in prison
1:13:33
Speaker 5: and said at his sentencing, I am sending a message
1:13:37
Speaker 5: that wealth is not a get-out-of-jail-free card in this country.
1:13:40
Speaker 5: And then literally days later, Trump swooped in and he
1:13:46
Speaker 5: granted Walsak a full pardon, which not only... Totally goes
1:13:51
Speaker 5: in the opposite direction of what the judge was trying
1:13:53
Speaker 5: to do. I mean, it sends the exact opposite message.
1:13:56
Speaker 5: Wealth is a get out of jail free card, but
1:13:59
Speaker 5: it also had the effect of wiping out the obligation
1:14:04
Speaker 5: that Walsak had to pay back the money that he owed.
1:14:07
Speaker 5: There's this thing called restitution, which is required in cases
1:14:12
Speaker 5: involving financial crimes. You've got to pay back the money
1:14:15
Speaker 5: that you owe to your victims if you're convicted of
1:14:17
Speaker 5: that crime. And the pardon just wipes it all out.
1:14:20
Speaker 5: So Wallsack's victims will not be repaid. He will not
1:14:23
Speaker 5: have to spend a day in jail. And the real
1:14:26
Speaker 5: kicker is we just learned from reporting of the New
1:14:29
Speaker 5: York Times a few days ago that Wallsack's mother spent
1:14:32
Speaker 5: $ 1 million to attend a dinner with Trump just days
1:14:36
Speaker 5: before he got that pardon. So it's totally corrupt. It's
1:14:39
Speaker 5: totally destructive to our system of justice. It's really just awful.
1:14:45
Speaker 6: And I worry that I think I worry most that
1:14:48
Speaker 6: it sends a message to would-be criminals that if you
1:14:52
Speaker 6: have enough money or if you're a Trump supporter or
1:14:55
Speaker 6: if you're a rich Trump supporter, you should go commit
1:14:58
Speaker 6: a crime if you want because there's always the chance
1:15:01
Speaker 6: that you can get a pardon. In fact, there's a
1:15:02
Speaker 6: very good chance that you can get a pardon. And
1:15:04
Speaker 6: I would tell people who are like, well, what does
1:15:06
Speaker 6: this matter to me? Look, do we want a policy
1:15:10
Speaker 6: like this that leads to more crime and more criminals?
1:15:13
Speaker 6: Because if someone wants to harm you or someone wants
1:15:16
Speaker 6: to scam you, They know that the president's got their
1:15:18
Speaker 6: back or Ed Martin's going to say no MAGA behind.
1:15:22
Speaker 6: So I really worry about sort of the potential crime
1:15:24
Speaker 6: and violence that this could lead to.
1:15:26
Speaker 5: Well, it almost becomes a business calculation. I think there
1:15:29
Speaker 5: are people who are probably thinking I could make X
1:15:32
Speaker 5: millions of dollars if I commit this crime and then
1:15:35
Speaker 5: I could spend a small percentage of that to get
1:15:37
Speaker 5: myself a pardon. So it's worth it. And that's the
1:15:40
Speaker 5: way the calculation is working out for a lot of people.
1:15:44
Speaker 5: There's another guy named Trevor Milton. Milton launched this company
1:15:48
Speaker 5: that was supposedly going to build the world's first electric
1:15:52
Speaker 5: powered semi truck. And Milton defrauded investors to the tune
1:15:56
Speaker 5: of almost $ 700 million. Milton made a donation of around
1:16:02
Speaker 5: $ 2 million to Trump's campaign. Then he got a full
1:16:06
Speaker 5: pardon that wiped out his obligation to pay back almost
1:16:09
Speaker 5: $ 700 million in debt. So that was actually a really
1:16:13
Speaker 5: sound business decision. He made $ 700 million, he paid off
1:16:17
Speaker 5: $ 2 million, and that's a win.
1:16:21
Speaker 2: Wow.
1:16:21
Speaker 6: It's just horrifying. It was obviously difficult and risky for
1:16:26
Speaker 6: you to speak out and fight back and continue speaking
1:16:29
Speaker 6: out as you are. What do you say to your
1:16:32
Speaker 6: former colleagues at DOJ or other civil servants still in
1:16:36
Speaker 6: the administration who want to do the right thing, who
1:16:40
Speaker 6: want to speak out, but are understandably scared?
1:16:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that this is the time to be brave.
1:16:47
Speaker 5: This is the time to lead with conviction and courage.
1:16:50
Speaker 5: And it's hard. It's lonely. It's scary. But once you
1:16:56
Speaker 5: compromise your integrity, you cannot get it back. So I've
1:17:00
Speaker 5: tried to set that example that despite the challenges of
1:17:04
Speaker 5: standing up, it is ultimately the right thing to do.
1:17:08
Speaker 5: It's very hard in the Department of Justice to do that.
1:17:11
Speaker 5: The people who are still in the department are very
1:17:13
Speaker 5: limited in their ability to speak up. And folks who
1:17:16
Speaker 5: have left are very scared because there is this culture
1:17:18
Speaker 5: of silencing people. But I would really just encourage my
1:17:22
Speaker 5: fellow civil servants to stand on their principles and just
1:17:26
Speaker 5: have confidence that ultimately that will be what prevails.
1:17:30
Speaker 6: Well, thank you so much for speaking up. And thank
1:17:33
Speaker 6: you for joining the pod. Where can people find you?
1:17:36
Speaker 6: I know you have a Substack now.
1:17:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a Substack. It's called Lawyer Oyer. I'm
1:17:40
Speaker 5: also on Instagram and TikTok as Lawyer Oyer. And I'm
1:17:43
Speaker 5: doing a lot with pardons. I'm covering pardons, talking about
1:17:48
Speaker 5: the $ 1 billion in debt that President Trump has forgiven
1:17:52
Speaker 5: through pardons. So I encourage everybody to check me out
1:17:56
Speaker 5: either on Substack or Instagram or TikTok.
1:17:59
Speaker 2: Thanks, Liz.
1:17:59
Speaker 6: I really appreciate you joining. Take care.
1:18:01
Speaker 5: Thanks so much for having me, John.
1:18:08
Speaker 6: That's our show for today. Thanks to Liz Oyer for
1:18:09
Speaker 6: coming on. Love It will be back on Sunday with
1:18:12
Speaker 6: a special conversation about what a series of historic labor
1:18:14
Speaker 6: strikes can teach us about organizing and building political power today.
1:18:19
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