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Is a Trump Dictatorship Inevitable? · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's show, George Santos has left the building. Mike
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Johnson's finding out why Kevin McCarthy's life was so miserable.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And strict scrutiny's Melissa Murray joins to talk about a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: flurry of bad legal news for Donald Trump. But first,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the criminal defendant Republican frontrunner campaigned in Iowa over the weekend,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: where he tested out a new response to accusations from
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: President Biden and others that he's an authoritarian who represents
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a threat to American democracy. No, you are. Let's listen.
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: This campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: from Biden and the criminals and the Biden administration, the
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: criminals that think they can do whatever they want, break
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: any law, tell any lie, ruin any life, trash any
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: norm and get away with anything they want. But Joe
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: is the destroyer of American democracy.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: And it's And because Trump is an aspiring dictator who
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: also seems to be losing a step, he then gave
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: us this Freudian slip.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: But we've been waging an all-out war on American democracy.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: You look at what they've done.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We have, we have.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: We got them.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: People were very excited about that.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign also made placards for the event that said
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Biden attacks democracy. A little long for a placard, but okay.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is pretty long.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Is that on the podium?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Also put those words, they had them up on the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: screen behind him too.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So it was, I guess, I don't know if it
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: was a step-in repeater just on a screen.
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just some Trump ad lib. They were
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: all in on this. They were given quotes to the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Post and the Times saying, yeah, we're turning the tables
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: on Joe Biden. What do you think the strategy is
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: behind this, the placards and the message, all that?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: This is like embarrassing to say out loud what it is. Well,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: it's something he's being accused of. And so to lessen
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: the impact of the accusations, he's accusing his opponent of
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: doing the same.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: You think it's going to work?
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's always doing the Spider-Man meme, right?
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Like, I'm not the puppet. You're the puppet. I'm not corrupt.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: You're corrupt. I'm not a threat democracy. You are.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's always the victim in his own narrative,
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: no matter what. That's the one consistent thing about this guy.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: I watched the whole Cedar Rapids event. It was 95%
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: the same old shit and then 5%, you know, new placards.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: And even the new stuff isn't really that new because
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: if he's saying that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: clearly he thinks he's a threat to democracy. It's sort
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: of like different words to say the same thing. So
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: I think he's just constantly muddying the waters. That's our
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: whole goal.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: It's a Biden hates democracy topper.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And yeah. He's, yeah, I mean, he started with fake news.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: He started, like, he just, he's trying to drain the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: word of all meaning. I do think it shows that
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the Trump campaign knows that, or at least guesses that
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it may be an effective attack. Whether or not it works,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: who knows? But I don't know. I kind of think
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: that if Trump wants to make the race about who's
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the real fascist, I don't know if that's, like, the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: territory he wants to be fighting on.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, they, like, Democracy has been
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: a potent issue. It's clearly they are worried that being
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: tagged as an anti-democratic, anti-abortion extremist is going to be
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: very costly to him.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was trying to think, if I was the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign and I was running against Joe Biden, what
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: would I want the message to be every day? I'd
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: want it to be the economy sucks and Joe Biden's
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: too old and the economy sucks and Joe Biden's too old.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: And that's all I would say, right? I wouldn't be like,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's a fascist.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or immigration. I think sort of immigration and crime
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: are the other two areas where they're really focused.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So we have talked about some of Trump's plans for
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a second term, rounding up immigrant families who've been here
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: for decades, using the military against protesters, repealing Obamacare. Over
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the weekend, the New York Times and the Wall Street
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Journal reported on a few more proposals. An anti-woke online university.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Anti-woke you. It's called the American Academy, I think. A
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: national teaching credential that only goes to true patriots. That
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: one you can still get right now. Tony the Tiger
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: gives those out. No federal funding for police departments that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: refuse to do stop and frisk. And no Medicaid or
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Medicare funding for hospitals or health providers that offer gender
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: affirming care for young people. Did you guys see any
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: other noteworthy proposals in these pieces? And which of all
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: these proposals do you find most alarming and feasible?
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: The one you missed that I think is worth mentioning
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: is he has proposed something called Freedom Cities.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I'm in on Freedom Cities.
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: Oh, you are?
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I want my own.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I want to move to a Freedom City.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: I think if I think if like. And you'd apply,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: you'd have to come up with a cool proposal for
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: your freedom city.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Should we tell people what freedom cities are?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so basically it's just on federal land. It's unclaimed.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Unclaimed federal land.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm guessing like beautiful deserts, forests, places that we
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: want to preserve.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And it's a place where the internet's worst virgins will
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: go to build a new society.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: A bunch of blue checks.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: A bunch of just.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Angry men will go to point at each other and say,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: you're a man, and you're a man, and there's only
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: two genders, except here there's just the one. That's sort
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: of what I think it is. I thought that was seafaring.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Wasn't that a thing for a while?
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, they do. The libertarian floating barges is another
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: place where these people would sell. But now it'll be
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: near Yosemite.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's nice.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Ten freedom cities.
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: Ten.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Did you get the name of them, I wonder? Anyway, yeah,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not... I was more alarmed by.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Immigration, Insurrection Act, NATO, because these are things that presidents
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: traditionally have a lot of power to affect.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think, am I worried about an online... university
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: for wackadoos, not as much.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I know this is a small point, but do you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: think he's going to pay for by suing private colleges
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and suing their endowments?
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: We're going to build an anti-woke university and Berkeley's going
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: to pay for it. That's really the gist of it.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: They're just having a blast at a Heritage Foundation brainstorm.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: What's the most dumb things we can put together?
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Some expert that was looking at these proposals said that
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of this is not policy proposals. They're just
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: proof points in the culture war. I think that that's True.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I think the scarier, bigger threats are the ones you mentioned,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act, his threats around immigration.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I do think it is worth being worried about a
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Republican administration trying to use federal funding in this way,
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: like requiring hospitals to do X, Y, or Z, requiring
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: police officers to do X, Y, and Z. That is
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: a response to a way in which Democrats have tried
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: to wield federal power to put rules on how federal
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: funding can be used to make sure that abortion is protected,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: to make sure that trans people can get health care,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things. And so I think that is
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: their version of that, I think, if they have the Congress,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: could be scary. Yeah.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And I will say that when the federal government said,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: we're going to cut off Medicaid or Medicare funding, or
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: we're going to cut off some health care funding for
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: you if you don't expand Medicaid to some states, the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: courts ruled that the federal government couldn't do that, famously,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: in the Affordable Care Act. So I do think that
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: like when you get into some states, right, stuff, it's
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: going to play out in courts and it's complicated. It's
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: not great. They're not great.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: We're being worried about.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not as he probably doesn't have
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: as much power from the federal government to do stuff
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: like that, but it's not great. So the fear underlying
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: all these proposals was spelled out very clearly in a
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Washington Post piece from editor at large, Robert Kagan, that's
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: been getting quite a bit of attention. It's from over
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the weekend. Here's the headline. A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: We should stop pretending. Very long piece. I think it's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: very much worth your time. Kagan argues, as we have,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that Trump has a very good chance of becoming president again.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: And he also makes the case that if he does
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: become president again, he'll likely be able to carry out
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: his plans to crush any political opposition. Kagan says, sure,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: none of this is inevitable. But, quote, what is certain
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: is that the odds of the United States falling into
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to it have been cleared and only a few are left.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It's a really fun read. Very light, light, fun read.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: You want to take it in late at night. What
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: did you guys think? Terrifying or overstated? And did you
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: find any parts of the piece especially noteworthy?
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: So first of all, I think the piece kind of
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: confuses two things. One is, is it possible that Trump
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: becomes president again?
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And then what will Trump do as president? That's obviously
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: more speculative. The piece opens with a lot of, we
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: aren't taking the threat seriously enough. We aren't facing the
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: fact that he could be come president again. We aren't
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: doing what we should do.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: It's like, what's this?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: We stuff, man. Like there's a lot of us who.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Are saying that is more directed towards, uh, the Republican party.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: That's about to just fucking coronate the girl.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: So that's sort of, I think my, my problem with
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: it is that like, he does a lot of lumping together, uh, and, uh, of,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: of saying like he, he makes the mistake that I
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: think he's trying to indict the media for making as well,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: which is like opposition only counts. If it's coming from Republicans,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: he's clearly beseeching, I guess, Republicans and mainstream pundits and
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: analysts to take this more seriously. And good, he should
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: do that. Of course, he should do that. But I
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: think in the way that he does it in this piece,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: it kind of dismisses a lot of opposition that already exists,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: sort of denies its power. And I think as a
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: result becomes kind of resigned to the threat Trump poses
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: in a way that I think is like almost self-fulfilling.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Like at one point in the piece, he calls Trump,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: he compares him to Caesar. He compares him to King Kong.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Napoleon got a shout out, I believe.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Trump will not be contained by the courts or the
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: rule of law. On the contrary, he is going to
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: use the trials to display his power.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And that's what he's trying to do now. Yes, but
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think he'll. I don't. I would argue that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: he probably might not succeed.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the point. I think that like there's a
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: lot of rhetorical questions like what if Trump does this
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: and what if Trump does that? And I think I'm
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I'm at this point a little bit more interested in
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: the answers to the rhetorical questions that are, I think,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: a little bit more nuanced and like about who's going
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: to fight, who's not going to fight, who. what kind
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: of people have stood in Trump way? What kind of
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: judges have stood in Trump's way? What happened? Like then,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: then this kind of like almost kind of panicked worst
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: case scenario, which by the way, I just want to
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: say here and here in 2023, who knows where we'll
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: be in 2026 could all come to pass.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think we're, everyone is slowly coming to
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: terms with the fact that Trump seems like he's almost
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: certainly going to be the Republican nominee. There's, there's obviously
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: some hope, but you know, it feels bad. And so
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I think the, the Constant hard question with Trump is
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: how much to highlight the threat that he poses without
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: sounding hyperbolic. I think Kagan is right in a lot
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: of places in this piece. Like he's right that the
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Republican Party will rally around Trump if he's the nominee.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: That includes powerful people like Mitch McConnell, right? They've shown
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: not a lot of courage so far. He covers a
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: lot of the same ground, the Times and the Journal
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: pieces that we talked about earlier cover. Trump will very
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: likely have all the personnel he wants and no people
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: pushing back on him. I share his concerns about a
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: vengeful Trump surrounded by cronies, the DOJ or the FBI
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: or the IRS punishing their enemies. But I do think
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: like there's some pieces that are like informed speculation, like
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: you mentioned, love it. Like Kagan does, he argues that
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: Trump wants to use the court hearings to display his power.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: That might be true. But in the past, we've also
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: seen a lot of instances where Trump at a deposition
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: or Trump in a courtroom looks kind of small and
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: he's forced to tell the truth for once and not
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: be like the bombastic guy that does well politically. He
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: also writes, The Democratic coalition is likely to remain fractious
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: as the Republicans unify and Trump consolidates his hold. That
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: may be true, but it's a guess. And, you know,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: so we'll see. So there's a bit of this, like
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of this is worth reading and helpful.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: There's a little bit of catastrophizing that might come true
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: or not. We don't know. None of us can tell
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: the future, but like, you know, it's sobering.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I found it very alarming because you were talking about
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the opposition, right? And I don't think it's a given
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: at all, of course. Hope not. that the left stays fractious.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: But everything we have seen over the last several weeks
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: does not bode very well for where we're headed in 2024.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And all you have to do is look, I mean,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: hopefully what we're seeing online and what we're seeing in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: comments and everything else is just a small subsample. But
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: we have third parties everywhere. Third party runs everywhere. And
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: if you haven't, the anti-Trump majority that elected Joe Biden
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: in 2020, like elected him by 40,000 votes, you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and you have a couple people go to Cornell West,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: couple people go to RFK Jr., couple people stay home, whatever,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: suddenly we have a Trump presidency. So I think, but
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I actually don't think that the power of the piece
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: is in could Trump win or not. I think we
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: all know that Trump could win.
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I think the question is, there could be a lot
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: of people in the country right now who think, you
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: know what, I don't want Trump to win. I think
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that would be awful. But we survived a first Trump term.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Couldn't we survive a second? And I think the chances are,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: of the country surviving a second Trump turn are much,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: much less than they were in the first for a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: lot of the reasons that he points out. And I
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: think on the court stuff, whatever Trump does in trial, whatever,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: if he is convicted and still wins, or even if
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: he is exonerated and wins, Trump will take the message
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: forward into the White House that courts don't really matter.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Well, at the very least, it's a constitutional crisis. Will
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: he pardon himself? Will he throw out? Like, but all
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: of this, we know all this, right?
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It's all true.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: And I totally agree with you. I just, you know,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: it felt, it was a dark read.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: You know, I agree. But like, and let's think of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: like the other guardrails, right? So there's the courts. Then
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: there's what stopped Trump from doing even more damage last time? Well,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Mark Milley, who he now wants to investigate, we had
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: him as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the military, right? Now,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: imagine Mike Flynn is chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Imagine...
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: The personnel piece.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Is the really scary part.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've been talking about Schedule F, and it
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: sounds so weird to talk about it, right? Because that's
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: like a smaller part of it, right? Like, yes, he
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: can fire a bunch of civil servants, but the people
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: in the top positions have a lot of power, right?
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Bill Barr fucking sucks, but you know what? You could
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: have worse than Bill Barr in there as Attorney General,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and that person could do a lot more damage. Same
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: thing with the Defense Secretary. Same thing with the Secretary
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: of State. Same thing with the CIA Director, right? It
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: goes on and down the line. We're not talking like,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: people who are conservatives who we just disagree with. We're
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: talking about like Laura Loomer, fucking like crazy, crazy people
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: in government.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why I do think part of like
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the kind of doom and panic in these pieces, the
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Atlantic has a whole set of them that they're releasing
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: in increments to make sure.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: That we're- No, it's the whole issue.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: No, no, I know it's a whole issue, but I've
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: only kept, I think they're going on the internet by
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: the hour, like just to keep us all amped.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Did the Cafe Milano bat signal go up? Like the-
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: public your catastrophe piece?
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: The Kagan piece, plus the Atlantic pieces, plus, and then
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the Bulwark did a bunch of them. I think every,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I think it, I think we're off the cycle of,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: oh my God, Joe Biden could lose that started with
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the New York times polls. And everyone was like, okay, oh.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: My God, Trump could win. Yes.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: But that's where I think this is all.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I think that like, I think all of these fears,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: like this is, I think what we talk about, it's,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: it's what a lot of people reading and writing these
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: pieces talks about, but there's this There's a part in
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: the Kagan piece that jumped out to me where he,
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: where he said the Trump dictatorship will not be a
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: communist tyranny where almost everybody feels the oppression and has
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: their lives shaped by it. And conservative anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: it is not a problem for them only to, to
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: the degree that they value those freedoms. And many people
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: do not. And like, I think that jumped out at me.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I see why, uh, jumped out at me too. I
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: see why a neoconservative would, would frame it in those terms.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: But what I saw when I was, was, I think it,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: It points to, I think, the sense of disorientation that
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of people in this big we, you can
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: be Democrats, small L liberals, hyper-engaged people, anti-Trump people, whatever,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: that this disorienting experience of feeling like we collectively understand
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the threat, but how do we get other people to
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: understand it? We can't seem to get it through. We
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: can't seem to get through. And that's been, I think,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: really scary and hard for a lot of people, including
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: people that have paid attention to politics for a long time,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: and why these pieces tend to have the feeling someone
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: screaming in a dream but nobody can hear. Like everyone's
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: pressing the alarm and pressing the alarm and everybody's just
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: going about their business. And I think my, like stepping
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: back from this piece, my feeling in reading it is, okay, yes,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: this threat is real. But I do think it is
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: in some ways counterproductive to talk about Trump as this
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: colossus standing astride our country. He is an asshole. He's
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: not the emergent property of American failure. There's this one
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: part where he Kagan says something like, we will pay
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: the price for every transgression ever committed against the laws
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: designed to protect individual rights and freedoms. As if like,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: as if it's almost like, like Lincoln's like second inaugural,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: like Trump is like God's punishment for American sins. Like, hey,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of shit that's gone wrong in this country.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Like the social fabric is crumbling. He is taking advantage
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: of it. That doesn't make him magical. That doesn't make
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: him a Messiah. It makes him extremely dangerous, but also
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: someone we can defeat. And like, getting it back into that,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: like coming back to earth a little bit, I think
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: is valuable.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Stipulated.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Long essay in the Washington Post. He's crossing the Delaware
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a bunch.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: High dungeon, for sure.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is, when you have conversations with friends,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: or people who don't pay attention to politics, and they're like,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Trump's running again? Yeah, Trump's running again. I had a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: friend the other day who was like, Trump's probably going
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: to win again, huh? And I'm like, no, but I'm like,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: it could happen. And they're like, eh, well, like four years.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And it's like, no, no, no. That's when you have
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to say, I get that from a political strategy. I
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: have advocated this myself that you have to, we have
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: to treat them like a clown too. But at some
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: point we also have to be very clear about what
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: could happen if Trump wins again and how it's very
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: different than what happened over the last four years. And
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I do think getting that message out is extremely important. Now,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: what's really important is to break beyond this fucking bubble
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of all of these opinion writers and the Atlantic and
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: everyone else just talking to each other about it. Totally
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: agree there. And to do it in language that like
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: people really understand. But I do think you have to
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: communicate those stakes because otherwise I don't know how else
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: do you beat them.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Completely agree.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: I do think it's worth questioning whether the tone of this,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: the length of this, the overt comparisons to Hitler is
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: the right way to actually convince people. Because I do
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: think like some people, your friend in that conversation might
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: read this and be like, this is some hyperbolic shit.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like this is a little
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: over the top. Or whether a more measured like, you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: specific policy by policy reputation or a you know, sounding
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: the alarm of what he might do might be more
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: effective than all of this in its big, you know, sweepingness.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I do think that the end of that paragraph you mentioned,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: it said a Trump dictatorship will mean that Americans' rights
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: can go about their daily business, they might not care
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care. I
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: think that's the key is into where you started. People
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: think like a dictatorship and maybe the use of the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: word Hitler and stuff like that lends itself to that.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you think of like some kind of tyranny where it's
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: either like Nazi Germany or it's like Stalinist Russia, right?
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: But the kind of authoritarian government we're talking about is
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: like Russia now, like Hungary, right? Where freedoms just get
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: chipped away and suddenly people don't really want to oppose
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: trump like they did the first time because if you
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: stick your head up and oppose trump maybe he sends
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the irs after your business or maybe he prosecutes you
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and maybe the court throws out the indictment but yeah
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: you still have to get a lawyer and now you're
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: dragged through the right like This is not going to
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: happen all at once, right?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, look, that like slow raising of the
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: stakes of opposition a few years ago, it was not
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: wanting to get a mean tweet about you. Then you
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: have Mitt Romney recounting how many Republicans were afraid to
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: speak out against Trump because they were physically they felt
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: physically unsafe. Like the judge in Trump's New York civil
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: fraud trial and in trying to make sure that the
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: appellate court upheld the gag order documented an incredible torrent
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: of threats and abuse directed at the court and at
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: court personnel by Trump, including a ton of anti-Semitic and
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: just terrible, violent stuff. And it's all become just sort of,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know, part of the background radiation of what
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: it's like to live with Trump as a figure in
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: political life.
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Look, I've just, when I first read the first Barton
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Gellman piece in the Atlantic, I remember reading them and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: be like, ah, this is a little much. I don't
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: know if this is right. And look, it certainly wasn't
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: 100% right, but we did get January 6th. I was
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: surprised by that.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: The frustration about a piece like this is the fact
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: that it has to be written after January 6th. I
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: think the frustration comes from the fact that we all,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: like Lev was saying earlier, we're all sitting here feeling
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: like this is so obvious to half the country and
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: there's a whole other half that kind of doesn't give
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: a shit.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: And my frustration is like, I take this as a
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: worst case scenario that is completely plausible and not being
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: taken seriously enough. Do not use your fear that that
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: will take place as a reason to kind of play
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: down the agency of the people trying to fight it.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: You don't need to pretend that the opposition is an
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: important and hasn't had big successes and can't be successful again.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that Kagan is saying that. I think
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: he like points at the ways in which people have
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: opposed Trump. But like, I think people are reading this
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: saying like, oh my God, I got to move to Canada. Like, no, no, no.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: We have to fight really hard over.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: The next year.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: It is not inevitable.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And I also think you're right for the half the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: country that doesn't give a shit. First of all, they're
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: never going to even know this op-ed happened, right? Whatever.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: But a lot of political leaders are going to read it.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And I think what it tells you is this is
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary moment that we're in and like acting like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: politics as usual kind of stuff. Oh, I'm pissed at
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: this Democrat because they didn't pass this policy and now
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I might stay home and blah, blah, blah. Understand, understand
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: you're upset, but like, We're in an existential crisis here.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't seem like we are right now because
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: everything's like fine and we're a year away from the election.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: But this stuff could all happen, you know?
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Did you see our friend Liz Cheney? Now she's got
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: a new book out and she was with Savannah Guthrie
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: on Today. And Savannah asked, do you believe if Donald
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Trump were elected next year that he would never leave office?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And like Cheney, without like blinking an eye, just said,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: there's no question.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she's pretty plain spoken about this stuff.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And then Savannah's like, you think he would try to
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: stay in power forever? She's like, absolutely. He's already done
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: it once. And we love her. Now, maybe he'd be
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: tuckered out by.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Four more years. I mean, odds are he'd die because
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: he's old and unhealthy.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: He'd be 82 at the end of four years.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Which I consider young. Which, remember, is very chipper. He's
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: a young, energetic 82. Bye.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go from one well-functioning institution to another.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: The House of Representatives. We talked last week about how
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Republicans are demanding that Democrats accept a tougher border policy
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: in exchange for passing aid to Ukraine, Israel, Palestinians, and Taiwan.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: As of Monday, it looked like House Republicans might be
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: asking for too much. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said that
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Republicans want a bill that would, quote, essentially close the
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: border and that there's currently, quote, no path forward on
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: a border deal. Mike Johnson, like his predecessor, meanwhile, is
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: busy worrying about his MAGA hardliners, some of whom are
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: already pissed that he relied on Democratic votes to temporarily
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: fund the government. That may be one reason why Johnson
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and the House Republican leadership voted against expelling George Santos,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: even though 105 Republicans voted for expulsion. And it may
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: be why Johnson has flip-flopped on impeaching Joe Biden just
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: weeks after saying he didn't see enough evidence to move forward.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: He announced now he's holding a vote. possibly this week,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to open an official impeachment inquiry, again, based on nothing.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Let's start with Santos. Were you guys surprised to see
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: that many Republicans vote to expel?
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: No. Not really.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: I thought he was just so egregious at this point.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: He was sort of rubbing in all of their faces, too,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: threatening them the night before. I mean.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: The dam kind of broke that one of those members that,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I think it was Max Miller, that went on the
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: floor and said, he personally stole $ 5, 000 from my mother.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I was like, they stole from Max's mother?
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And then he was like, you're a domestic abuser. Back
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to Max Miller.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: He's like, I know also I need to direct my
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: comments to the chair, but fuck you, George. And then
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: he went back.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: But then also, by the way, like the Max Miller stuff,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: like that's from Stetson. Santos was referring to an allegation
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: made by Stephanie Grisham, Trump's White House press secretary, which
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: she made it an op-ed, didn't name him. He went
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: after her, then withdrew it. The point being, these are
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: all assholes.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: They're all assholes.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Let's flip it then. Why do you guys think that
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the House Republican leadership all voted against expulsion.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: It's really strange. It felt like, because clearly they were
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: not telling their members, like, they let it go, right? Like,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: this was all happening. It wasn't like they, like, there
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: weren't whipping votes for Santos.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike Johnson said it was a vote of conscience.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: A vote of conscience.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, that's why Mike Johnson decided to
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: vote to keep him. It was for him a vote
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: of conscience. I don't really understand it.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: It is very confusing.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: It doesn't, because obviously they were fine with letting him go,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: and that's the most important piece of it.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, they now have a three-vote majority. But so
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: like maybe they were that concerned because it's the leadership
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and they're the ones supposed to be counting votes on
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: other stuff. And they're like that concerned for the, that
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: they need him as the fourth vote.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: But it's like, then, then try to stop it from
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: happening altogether. Once it's happening, it's like almost, it's like, okay,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: so you're proving that you wish it didn't happen. You're
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: on the record of saying you were against it while
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: letting it happen. It doesn't, The same result, they have
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: a smaller majority because they let this vote happen.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: They also, as a result, got a lot of shit
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: from some of these House Republicans. Like some of the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: couple of members in the Ethics Committee were like- About
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to resign. Threatening to resign. If they didn't let the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: vote of conscience go forward.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, to their point, what's the point of having
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: an Ethics Committee if we release this kind of report
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: and then you won't vote to expel the person who
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: did all these horrible things?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Well, that's it for George.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think so. I don't know about that.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Well, coming to a cameo near you.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: We haven't heard the last. First of all, he's got
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: his trial coming.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: 200 bucks.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Only 200 bucks.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Did you see that on, I don't know why I
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: saw this, Z-Way was like, oh, I'd love to interview
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: George Santos, and then he responded to her, and he
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was like, anytime, let's do it.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: On pay-per-view. It's going to be on pay-per-view. It's fight night.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: I wonder what the split is on that.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I can't.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: I think we have to let him drift off into
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: the ether.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Feels like of all of those indictments, maybe one will hit.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: with George Santos. Oh yeah.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's so, it's so brazen. I don't think
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: he's getting away with all this now. I mean, there's
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: too many counts.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Unless of course Trump wins and there's a part in them.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: There's chaos, pardon.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: And the first cameo out of the gate seems to
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: have been John Fetterman getting a message from George Santos
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: telling Bob Mendez to resign.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: So that is so funny.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: A lot of trolling happening.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: One of the people, so after Santos was expelled, it
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: seems like he had a kind of Twitter Chardonnay experience.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: And then one of the people that went after was
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Bob Menendez Jr., who's a congressman from New Jersey, and
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Bob Menendez's son saying, well, I don't know of anything,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: but we should look into whether or not he had
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: any awareness of what his father was doing.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: What's your take on these bipartisan border talks? Chris Murphy
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: saying they're falling apart. Republicans are saying not so fast.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, it seems like Chris Murphy is reflecting the
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: fact that Democrats feel like they gave up a big
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: priority in these talks already because they're reportedly not going
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: to include any support for the Dreamers to help them
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: protect them. And yet still Republicans seem to be pushing
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: harder and harder and harder for harsher policies. Democrats seem
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: to be okay with limited changes to asylum policy and
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: some limited changes to humanitarian parole, but it's not clear
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: that that was enough for the Republicans. And we're just
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: talking about the Senate side here. So if they're having
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: this much trouble with Republicans on the Senate side, God
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: help us with what the House will say. So Politico
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: said Republicans have demanded Pentagon detention camps on U.S. military bases,
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: long detentions for families with children and unworkable nationwide mandatory detention.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So pretty draconian stuff.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: It's interesting, too, that Democrats are basically saying, hey, they're
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: not giving. We have to walk away. There's nothing to be.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: We can't find a deal. If these are going to
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: be the terms, then you have someone like Langford on
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: the Republican side saying, no, no, no, no. We're still talking.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Everything is still still deals to be done.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And I was cinema too saying that.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: And I think it's, well, it speaks to like, there's
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: a real desire on the part of a lot of
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Republicans to pass Ukraine funding.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: And if a deal is possible on immigration, then a
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: deal is possible in immigration that can be tied to, to,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: to Ukraine funding. But Democrats in the Senate say, no,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: this is, we're not, we can't find, there's no agreement here.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: We can't find it. Then all of a sudden the
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: possibility of putting these things together seems more remote. And
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: then it becomes a question about whether or not they
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: can pass just Ukraine funding again.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think, Tom Tillis from North Carolina said,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: if it's just border security funding, we're filibustering. And I
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: wonder if it comes down to the pro-Ukraine funding Republican
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: caucus in the Senate trying to figure out how much
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: they want that funding for Ukraine, because they're the ones
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: that will ultimately have to push the House Republicans. who
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: want much more extreme immigration measures to, to swallow some
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: kind of a compromise that Democrats are willing to. And
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know the answer to that.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: I don't know the answer either. And presumably it'd be
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: McConnell kind of fighting it out in the conference committee.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, that's our, that's our hero here.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I also, I also wonder if they're going to like
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: at some point split Israel off. from this package because
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: they think that there's more support they think that there's
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: more support in both houses for israel funding but i
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: think but i think the longer that goes i don't
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: i mean i don't know how i think the democrats
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: i think.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: There will be universal republican votes for the israel funding
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: on republican you'll get enough democrats.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: You get enough democrats so that it makes me feel
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: like this all makes me think that they will eventually
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: split israel off if it starts getting You guys think
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Mike Johnson's going to get more leeway here than Kevin
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: McCarthy from the far right? Or is this just, it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: seems like he's having similar problems to me.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I think, first of all, he's already gotten more leeway.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that, like, McCarthy, like, there are
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: times when, like, McCarthy had to represent reality. There's already
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: been times when Mike Johnson has to represent reality. And as, like,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: when these guys decide that they're going to represent reality
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: to the caucus, like, what does the caucus say? And
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: with McCarthy.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: It's like, is he telling me the truth? Is this
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: really the best we can do? Do we really have
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: to do this? Or is he just a lying, smarmy
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: fucking weasel I can't trust? And the answer is usually both.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: But with Johnson, he has some more credibility and that's
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: given him, I think, more space because when he says like, hey,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: we got to do this, I think they're more inclined
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: to believe him because he has actual, I think they
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: see him as someone correctly that has more core principles
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: than McCarthy does. Yeah.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we talked about earlier, there's just
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: a small now even smaller margin for error for Mike
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Johnson with his caucus now that Santos is gone. For
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: some of these members, their power, their fundraising basically comes
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: from being perceived not to be team players. Like McCarthy,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: for all his smarminess and for all his faults, had
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: figured out how to co-opt Marjorie Taylor Greene and bring
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: her into the tent. She is fully out of the tent.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: She is.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: You know, pissing all over the party. And, you know,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: she wants to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security. She
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: wants to impeach Biden. She's attacking Mike Johnson on the record. She's,
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: you know, floating sort of mystery issues with other members
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: in the caucus.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: That was really strange, by the way.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: She had an issue with a male member that did something.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: There's all these sort of things swirling out there. And
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: I think the question for Johnson is whether he can
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: placate the caucus with red meat like impeachment or if
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: even that is not enough for some of these goobers.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: A bunch of them are griping, Chip Roy and some others,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: that he allowed for a temporary funding bill to pass already,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: another seat and continuing resolution. So they're mad at him
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: for that. Max Miller seems like he's mad at him
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: for a whole bunch of shit.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Max Miller's mad.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Including attaching the IRS thing to the Israel funding. He's
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: really mad about that. I did find it hilarious that
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the House Freedom Caucus is now, or at least some
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: number of members in the House Freedom Caucus are now
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: saying they're willing to do a spending deal for a
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: full year that Kevin McCarthy negotiated with Joe Biden, which
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: is the deal that ultimately led to his ouster. Which
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: is just so, Kevin McCarthy must be somewhere just screaming
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: into a paper bag.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then also, by the way, the whole thing
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: was about whether or not there was going to be
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: a vote to have an impeachment inquiry. Remember, McCarthy said
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: they would, and then he wouldn't, and then he went
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: to the podium, he did a speech, and it was
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: like when Michael Scott declares bankruptcy, and he just went
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: to the camera and goes, I declare up an impeachment inquiry.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Is that good enough? Wasn't good enough. But didn't Johnson get,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: he got Marjorie Taylor Greene to withdraw her Mayorkas resolution.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Briefly.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I just can't believe they're moving forward on an impeachment
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: inquiry and they're going to get every single, because they'll
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: need all but three Republicans.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: They'll get them all.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: And I think Ken Buck has said no already, but
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: they have all the preps with no additional evidence.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Jonathan Turley, their first witness being like, I don't think
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: there's enough here. Right.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I do think like that.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Nothing has changed since then.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Nothing has changed. Well, Mike, what Mike Johnson has been
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: saying is something like, They've been stonewalling us. They've been
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: stonewalling us. They've been stonewalling us. So he's, I think
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: they're trying to say, we're opening this inquiry because it's
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: the way we're going to get the information that we need.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: And the reason that the Biden administration has been stonewalling
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: them is because during the Trump administration, during the Ukraine impeachment,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: they tried to subpoena this. And the Trump people said, no,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: do an inquiry. Hey, I just want to be clear.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not on Mike Johnson's side. Yeah, this is Mike Johnson.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: But so you can tell the impeachment inquiry, it's also,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: it's a bone to the right. Like he's trying to
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: do the balance. I think it's funny that the House
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus has backed off the spending demands, but I
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: think it's because they just don't care. Spending doesn't get
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: these people going anymore. That's not the MAGA kink. The
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: MAGA kink is like social, cultural issues. That's where they
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: want to make their mark. That's where they want to,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: they don't really care that much about spending.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Right. They're onto House too, right? They're onto draconian anti-immigration policies.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: The other great, just, we mentioned Liz Jane earlier, apparently
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: in her book, She says that Kevin McCarthy told her
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: that he flew down to Mar-a-Lago infamously right after impeachment
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: because some of Trump's staff called him to say, Donald's
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: not eating. He's an emotional wreck. He just needs you
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: by his side, which is on its face ludicrous, right?
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: But then Trump, I think, put out a Truth Social
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: today where he said, no, in fact, I was overeating.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, this is the quote. I wasn't sad.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: I wasn't depressed. I was angry. And it wasn't that
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I wasn't eating enough. I was eating too much, but
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: that wasn't the problem.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: So maybe he's not a liar?
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: It's so funny.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's more honesty to Trump than we think.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Every once in a while he does a self-aware thing
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: like that. And that was such a good joke. I
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: was overeating. Oh, that's a kind of depressing.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Very believable.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: That looks, and listen, who among us hasn't faced a
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: setback and then found themselves eating a little too much?
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: Imagine Kevin McCarthy saying that to Liz Cheney of all people.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: He was like, Liz, come on, Donald.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: He wasn't eating. He was sad.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: He was having a hard time. She's like, they just
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: tried to kill us. Like they're cleaning up the glass
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: on the floor of the Capitol. He's like, ah, but
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: he's sad. I love it.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I love it. Brought him back into the fold. Mitch
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: McConnell prevented an impeachment, and here we are. All right.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Before we go to break, two quick housekeeping notes. Pod
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Save America is down to its last two live shows
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: of the year. We're going to be in El Cajon
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: this Thursday, December 7th, with co-host Sam Sanders and San
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Jose on December 13th with co-host Adisu Demissi. Grab your
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: tickets at cricket.com slash events. And tomorrow, December 6th, join
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Cricket's group thread event covering the fourth and hopefully final
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Republican primary debate. I noticed in the copy it always
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: says in hopefully final. Maybe this time it'll stick.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: As of this recording, Chris Christie had not made it.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: I think he's on the cusp.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I think he's on the cusp.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: He's trying to convince him that his polls count.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, Doug Burgum dropped out. Yeah, Doug Burgum. It's tough.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I thought he was going all the way. He was
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: my Tim Scott. Love it.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: He's Dekowda. Out.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Anyway, it'll be a Friends of the Pod exclusive. So
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to get access, visit cricket.com slash friends to learn more
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and sign up. That'll be Wednesday night. We'll be on
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: the group thread for the hopefully last Republican debate. Okay,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: when we come back, Love It Talks to Strict Scrutiny's
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Melissa Murray.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Joining me now to help break down the latest developments
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: in the various and sundry cases... against Donald Trump. She's
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: one of the hosts of Strict Scrutiny and co-author with
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Andrew Weissman of the new book, The Trump Indictments, the
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: historic charging documents with commentary, which you can pre-order now.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Melissa Murray, welcome back to the pod.
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: So let's start with what many are referring to as
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: the biggest ruling against Trump, but by no means the
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: only ruling against Trump in the past week. Judge Chutkan
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: ruled against Trump's attempts to claim that he has presidential immunity.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: It's also, I think, a ruling that The judge took
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: great pride in writing. It had a real Crossing the
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Delaware vibe. What did you make of the ruling and
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: the arguments it had?
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: So Judge Chutkin's ruling in the D.C. District Court about
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: the invocation of presidential immunity in this criminal suit is
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: the first opinion of its kind to ever say that
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: a former president cannot invoke presidential immunity in as a
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: defense to prosecution. You know, it's unprecedented for a number
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: of reasons, not the least of which we haven't ever
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: had another former president be indicted for crimes, much less
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: be indicted four different times for crimes. But there was
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: this broad question outstanding, like, is there the opportunity for
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: someone to claim that they are immune from suit because
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: they were a former president or whatnot? And Judge Chutkan
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: basically said that These acts here, the election interference, were
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: not undertaken. If they were undertaken, these alleged acts were
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: not undertaken as part of Donald Trump's duties as president.
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: And that's actually consistent with extant precedent related to civil suits.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: So there are two Supreme Court cases, Nixon versus Fitzgerald
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: and Clinton versus Jones, which deal with presidential immunity in
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: the context of civil suits. And earlier last week, Another court,
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: this time the D.C. Circuit, heard an appeal and made
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: a decision based on whether or not Donald Trump could
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: be immunized from civil suits from Capitol officers who claimed
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: that he had incited the riot on January 6th and
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: therefore should be held liable and should pay them damages.
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: The federal appeals court said that, you know, this didn't
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: fall into any of the categories that would immunize him.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: They weren't official acts. And Judge Chuck can essentially echoed
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: that same kind of logic. If Donald Trump did the
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: things that Jack Smith says that he did in that indictment,
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: they weren't acts that were undertaken as part of the
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: scope of his official duties as president. And in fact,
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: on January 6th, he wasn't even the president. He was
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: sort of the outgoing president. There was a president-elect, and
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: he was essentially a candidate for re-election at that point.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: And You know, riots aren't part of presidential duties. Sorry.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Game over.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's sort of like it seems like in both
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: of these cases, Trump is kind of perverting what it
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: means to be president.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: It's like he's actually using.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: The office like the whole four years.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: Well, for sure. But but in this it's like there's
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: there's there's the argument that, you know, this is what
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: what the out of the two cases that you mentioned are. that, oh,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: if the president is facing a bunch of different civil
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: lawsuits all the time, the president can't do their job.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: That's one.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: The other is you can't prosecute someone for what they're
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: doing in their official duties. That's two. And then the third, right,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: is that, like, in some way, it's really dangerous to
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: be prosecuting senior officials in a government. That's a terrible precedent.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: It's a dangerous precedent. It is, right? It is actually
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: very serious. It could be a very serious and dangerous
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: thing to live in a country where once you leave office, predecessor,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: your successor may prosecute you. What do you make to
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: that argument that there needs to be a special threshold
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: or care taken when prosecuting former government officials?
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: Well, so let me address the first couple of things
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: that you mentioned. So with regard to civil suits, I
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: think in any case, whether it's a civil suit or
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: a criminal suit where someone has invoked immunity or here
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: a president has invoked immunity, you're dealing not only with
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: balancing the rigors of that official position here, you know,
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: being the chief executive of the country versus the interest
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: in the justice system of seeing justice done. So, for example,
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: in Clinton versus Jones, the court and then ultimately the
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: Supreme Court said that Bill Clinton could stand for a
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: civil suit that Paula Jones had brought against him because
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: deferring it until after he was no longer president made
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: it really difficult for Paula Jones to have her day
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: in court. Witnesses might die, evidence might evaporate, who knows?
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: But it wasn't going to necessarily impede his work as president.
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: There are lots of ways that the imposition on him
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: could be minimized. They could do depositions in the White House,
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: for example, and they did.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: And they did.
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: Some other things, but leaving that to the side, there
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: are ways to minimize it. So, you know, those are
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: the kinds of things that the judge is sort of
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: thinking about here. Just this broad question of, the integrity
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: of the legal system on the one hand and the
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: ability of the chief executive to do his or her job. Now,
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: to your last point about whether this is unprecedented and
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: if it is unprecedented, should we set this precedent here
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: or are we going to be sliding down a slippery
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: slope where every former president is going to be indicted
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: by his or her successor? Well, this is unprecedented for
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: the United States. It's not actually unprecedented in other systems.
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: Andrew and I talk about this the Trump indictments in
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: other countries and other systems, it is actually something that
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: happens not with regularity, but in cases where the misconduct
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: or the alleged misconduct is truly egregious, then those former
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: officials are held to account. It has happened in Italy,
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: for example. It's happened in France. It's happened in Argentina.
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: It's happened in South Korea. It just hasn't happened here
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: in the United States. But some might argue that that
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: failing to hold a leader accountable for the most egregious misconduct,
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: and I think trying to subvert an election, if that
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: is in fact what he did, and a jury believes
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: that that's what he did, holding him to account for that,
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: I think is actually consistent and necessary for the rule
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: of law.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Also last week, the New York Appeals Court reinstated Trump's
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: gag order in the civil fraud case. This was a narrow...
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: order because Trump and his lawyers had been kind of
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: inciting a bunch of terrible comments about Judge Ngaran's law clerk.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: That came after it was revealed that the judge and
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: his staff had received an unbelievable torrent of threats, just
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: anti-Semitic threats, violent threats. Trump has faced a couple of fines.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: They've amounted to $ 15, 000. The judge has said that he
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: will enforce it rigorously and vigorously. like he's in a
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Gilbert and Sullivan musical. What did you make of the reinstatement?
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: What do you think happens next?
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: Well, we know what's happened next. He's going to appeal this.
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: He's going to appeal this to the Intermediate Appellate Court
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: and hopefully on to the New York Court of Appeals. Again,
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: I don't know that he's going to get much traction here.
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: I mean, this is sort of, again, another balancing act
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: between Donald Trump's right to engage in political speech as
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: a candidate for president or as someone who just has
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: stuff to say about the civil proceedings against him and
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: what he believes is bias in the judicial system, and
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: the public safety and the safety of these court employees.
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, this woman has been doxed. Her information has
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: been disseminated online. She's received huge numbers of threats from
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: Trump followers. And To be very clear, the Trump lawyers
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: insist that that's a different thing. He is not threatening
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: her and he can't help it if other people do.
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: But we know how this is. And he sort of
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: whips up and, you know, gets his followers into a
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: froth and a lather. And then, you know, you have
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: these real questions about public safety. You know, Judge Chutkan
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: in D.C. was threatened by a Trump supporter who said that,
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: you know, if Donald Trump is convicted by Judge Chutkan,
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: Judge Hutchins is going to die. I mean, like, so
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: these are not idle threats. But again, I think it
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: is this balancing act. And the gag order, I think,
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: threads the needle pretty well. He can rail against the prosecution.
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: He can rail against the attorney general. He can rail
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: against the judge. He just can't rail against the courtroom staff.
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: And I think that's a pretty modest ask at this
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: point and one that seems quite reasonable.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: How does the standard Trump is being held to in
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: these cases? versus what any normal defendant would be expected,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: how any normal defendant would be expected to behave.
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: Well, so he says that he's being treated terribly relative
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: to any other normal defendant. But I'm like, if you
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: had a black man, if this was like Donald Trump
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: was a black man and was putting out the name
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: and number of a judge's clerk, I imagine he would
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: already be in the pokey, not merely the subject of
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: a gag order. And so there are lots of ways
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: in which he's actually being treated more favorably than many
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: of the individuals who are currently in the criminal justice
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: system and in the civil justice system.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Well, you feel like it does seem like Trump is
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: testing these judges. And I'm curious if there's any way
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: in which this differs from what the gag order in
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: the D.C.
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: Case.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: But it does seem in all these cases, Trump is
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: basically seeing how much he can get away with, how
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: differently he can be treated, and basically betting on the
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: fact that these judges are incredibly reluctant to hold a
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: former president in contempt and then throw him in jail.
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: So I think another way to think about it is
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump is playing to at least two different audiences.
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: One is a court of law. One is the court
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: of public opinion. And he's running for president. He's trying
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: to appeal to a base where his bravado, his bombast
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: is really part of the equation. It's part of the
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: appeal of him to them. And so I think it
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: ties in with that. I also think in terms of
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: the court of law, all of these motions, whether it's
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: about the gag order, whether it's about presidential immunity, have
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: the effect of applying some drag to these cases. I
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: think that's certainly the case in the presidential immunity claims
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: that were made before Judge Chutkaan. Those have been decided
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: by Judge Chuck Kim, but they're going to be appealed
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: to the D.C. Circuit. And from there, they're going to
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: be appealed to the United States Supreme Court. That could
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: potentially slow this trial down so that it doesn't start
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: on March 4th, as Jack Smith had hoped it would
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: and indeed had planned for it to. And I think
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: we're just going to see these kinds of motions like
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: he's raised immunity claims and other contacts. I think all
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: of this is to slow everything down, play to the base.
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: and present himself as someone who is being victimized by
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: the current administration and a judicial system that he says
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: is being orchestrated and operated in the name of the
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: current administration.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Last question. Last week, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: first woman on the Supreme Court, passed away at 93.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: What do you think she would make of today's court?
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: Well, gosh. You know, Justice O'Connor was... appointed by Republican
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: Ronald Reagan. And I think she was a disappointment in
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: a lot of ways to conservatives. You know, Reagan vouched
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: for her when she was appointed that she would be
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: very staunch in terms of abortion, would be very pro-life.
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: She was very much a moderate, a compromiser in a
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: lot of ways, not on everything, but on a lot
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: of the hot button issues where she really sort of,
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: you know, using her political acumen, she'd been an Arizona
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: legislator before being a judge. she really kind of honed
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: in on where the public was on a lot of
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: these hot button issues, whether it was campaign finance or
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: affirmative action or abortion. She really tried to kind of
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: find that middle ground, find compromises, and also to decide
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: cases really narrowly, focusing on the four corners of the
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: case before her. She wasn't necessarily interested in advancing some
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: broader theory of constitutional interpretation. And I think that makes
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: her very, very different from the six conservatives who are
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: currently on the Supreme Court. And regrettably, she is the
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: architect of the dismantling of her own legacy. Her vote
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: in 2000's Bush v. Gore gave the White House to
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: George W. Bush as From there, she was the first
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: justice to retire. He nominated John Roberts to take her seat,
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: and then William Rehnquist dies. He elevates John Roberts to
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: chief justice and appoints Samuel Alito to take her spot.
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: And you can't imagine two more diametrically opposed individuals, both
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: in terms of judicial philosophy and temperament. So she's seeking compromises.
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: She strikes down a spousal notification provision in the Pennsylvania
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: abortion law in Planned Parenthood versus Casey in 1992, it's
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: the same spousal notification provision that Justice Alito, as a
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: judge on the Third Circuit, voted to uphold. So, I mean,
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: she couldn't be more different from him. And as we've seen,
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: he's the one who writes the decision that overrules Planned
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Parenthood versus Casey. He's part of the majority that overrules
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: her decision in McConnell, a campaign finance case that was
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: overruled in part by Citizens United, and he's also in
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: the majority to dismantle affirmative action, which she saved in
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger. I don't know what she
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: would make of this, but I think she would have
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: to look at what has happened and recognize her own
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: part in this.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: I also will always appreciate that not only was she
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: the first woman on the Supreme Court, but she served
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: with William Rehnquist, whose marriage proposal she had rejected. How
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: cool is that?
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: I mean, like that story came out later. Nobody knew
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: about that.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Nobody knew. Nobody knew.
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: Like her biographer reveals that like not only everyone knew
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: that they had been friends and friendly at Stanford, but
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: not that she'd gone on a date with him, brought
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: him home to the ranch. And basically he couldn't hack
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: it on the ranch. And when he proposes to her,
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: she's like, no, you can't rope a steer. Get out
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: of here. and sends him packing. And then they still
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: become really good. She friend-zoned him and then worked with
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: him for 25 years.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. You think, I mean,
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: what are the odds? There's only nine people. There's only
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: nine people. You're William Rehnquist. There's never been a woman
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: here before. You're fine. You're safe. No exes.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: No.
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: I mean, and I love that he also went to Arizona.
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: I mean, it was almost like, was he stalking her?
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: What was going on there?
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, of all the.
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: Places you could have gone, he went to Arizona.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: That's love.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: That's love.
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: I mean, unrequited for sure.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: Love it or leave it. She said leave it.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: She said leave it. Melissa Murray, thank you so much.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: The book, which she co-authored with Andrew Weissman, another friend
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: of the show, is The Trump Indictments, the Historic Charging
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: Documents with Commentary. The commentary is so important.
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: Super important. It's the big value add, like putting all
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: of this in context so lay audiences can understand what's
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: going on and follow along with these trials when and
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: if they happen.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: When and if. Melissa, thanks.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Melissa for joining us today. We're going to
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: have our live show Thursday night. So that pod will
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: drop Friday. So we'll talk to you guys then. Pod
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari.
• 52:45
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• 52:49
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• 52:52
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