Trump Always Chickens Out

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Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known.

I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Corey Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Katanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God, and so many more.

That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

On today's show, we'll shed some tears over Elon's official White House departure, talk about Trump's push to kick international students out of the United States, and dig into the president's latest pardon spree, which I'll get into more with the Justice Department's former pardon attorney who was fired by Trump for not giving Mel Gibson his guns back.

Liz Oyer.

It's just a sentence I never thought I would say.

Like many of the sentences here on the show.

But first, bad news for Trump's favorite economic policy.

Good news for everyone who doesn't like higher prices.

Most of the president's tariffs were ruled illegal Wednesday night in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel at the U.S.

Court of International Trade, including a Trump appointee.

Not only did the court order an immediate pause on the tariffs, Trump has to refund every American company that's already had to pay tariffs, the Trump administration immediately appealed the ruling, which led to an appeals court deciding that the tariffs can remain in effect while the case is being considered.

So slight setback there.

The initial ruling came the very same day the president lost his shit when a reporter asked him about a phrase that's become popular on Wall Street to describe his trade policy, taco, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out.

Here's a clip of that exchange.

Mr.

President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade.

They're saying Trump always chickens out under tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week.

What's your response to that?

I kick out.

Chicken out.

Oh, isn't that nice?

Chicken out.

I've never heard that.

You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set?

down to 100 and then down to another number.

Six months ago, this country was stone cold dead.

We had a dead country.

We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive.

And you ask a nasty question like that.

It's called negotiation.

You said a number, but don't ever say what you said.

That's a nasty question.

Go ahead.

To me, that's the nastiest question.

I like that he finally went just full biff from Back to the Future.

Also, that he immediately thought it meant kick out, because that seems to be what he's doing.

And then he was like, to porch.

Trump always deports.

Then he's like, chicken out.

Chicken.

I've never heard that.

Oh yeah, you've never heard chicken out.

Yeah, no.

That's good.

But then it daunts on him that he's being made fun of and it hurts.

Deeply, that's all you can tell.

So it is important to note that this ruling doesn't apply to some tariffs, including those on aluminum and steel, and that there may be ways, we will not get into them, don't worry, for the administration to get around the ruling by using other laws to implement tariffs.

It's a very, it's a complicated matter, Dan.

That's not for this podcast.

That's not for this podcast.

No, we're not going to bore you with that.

You can go listen to Lovett talk about that when he talks about salt on some other podcast.

With all that said, what is your reaction to the court ruling, which at the very least may save Trump from more taco jokes for the time being?

Well, if it does nothing else, it's still a win.

I mean, it's...

I've been sort of waiting for this to happen.

There's just been, it's always been interesting that the International Emergency Economics Powers Act, which Trump is, whose authority Trump has used for all these tariffs, does not include the word tariff in it.

It's not listed as one of the

remedies that a president can undertake here.

And that sort of just got lost in all of the tacos we've had since then and been sort of waiting for that.

Because in a lot of the things that Trump does, the immediate thing is he has done something.

A court will probably stop him because the thing he wants to do is

stopped by the Constitution or this explicit law or whatever else.

This one was always sort of the subtext of what was going on.

And it's notable that it's finally happened.

This is going to make its way to the Supreme Court, I assume, and they will render a judgment.

But the short version of this now is more chaos, right?

There is

like the chaos came from Trump's taco strategy.

I'm so sick of saying the word taco already.

But of tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs on, tariffs.

Now you have the court involved.

Like, what happens if, could you have brought products in in the 12 hours between the ruling on Wednesday night and the ruling on Thursday afternoon and not pay tariffs on them because you just like brought a like fuckton of iPhones over and got those in for free.

So it's just, it's very chaotic because this is a short-term stay on the ruling while they figure out what's happening.

I'd be surprised if they kept the tariffs off as it wound its way to the Supreme Court, but it just, it's more uncertainty for businesses, which is bad for the economy.

Yeah,

and, you know, the markets reacted positively, very positively, as one can imagine.

I wonder how they'll react tomorrow.

This is Thursday that we're recording this.

Once they find out that the

tariffs are back on while the process goes to the Supreme Court, I also, like, I don't know.

The Supreme Court, obviously, quite a conservative majority.

I don't know if it feels like there are a lot of free traders.

I feel like there's some real traditional conservatives on that Supreme Court that might not like the trade war, but hard to say.

There's also people who really like to, who believe very much that the executive executive has all the power, the president has all the power.

Though this goes to the, it does go to the Alien Enemies Act question too, which is Trump just gets into office, declares everything an emergency when there is no obvious emergency or any emergency, and then tries to take a lot of moves that you're not supposed to take just based on this false pretext that there's an emergency.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, it's interesting because this is not really an economic question for the court.

It's a question of executive power and whether

this use of this authority, which is not granted in law, oversteps his executive authority and abridges Congress's.

And so, I mean, you, you do have free traders, but you also have people who believe, as you say, who believe in some version or something approximating the unitary executive theory that would suggest that they would give this to him.

So this will be interesting.

I tried to go to Twitter to find some good legal analysis and I discovered that they'd all moved to Blue Sky.

Like all our favorite lawyers are on Blue Sky now.

Did you go there?

I did go there, yes.

And there are mixed opinions about where this is going.

Caroline Levitt at the briefing today sort of previewed, I think, what their legal argument is going to be because someone asked, I think Peter Doocy asked, like, well, Trump has a Republican Congress that usually does what he says.

Like, why not just go have them pass the law if it's up to Congress to do it?

And she basically said, well, they tried to pass something through the Senate to pause the tariffs and couldn't get enough votes.

So that's that.

Congress declined to do anything, and the courts have no role here.

That's their position.

That's not, look, I'm not, like I said, I'm not a legal expert on Blue Sky or elsewhere, but that's not really how the Constitution works.

Absence of action from one body means

whoever they want.

If the vote fails, that's all you need.

That's all you need.

Of course, Stephen Miller's out there calling it judicial tyranny.

They're using it as the whole.

So, you know, I'm also wondering if they're going to take this as far as they can and then try to figure out a way to just go around the law as they have been around on immigration things.

Trump's approval, let's talk about the politics on this.

Trump's approval was at its lowest over the last few months after he announced the retaliatory tariffs on Liberation Day.

But the approval rating has been climbing in the last few weeks as he keeps going back to the taco bar.

I'm sorry.

Keep going.

Keep going.

Get him all in.

Do you think this ruling could end up being good politics for Trump?

Did this court save Trump from himself?

I don't think having your signature policy pieces struck down by the court is ever great politics.

It makes you look weak and ineffective over the course of time.

If the courts were to rule that Trump did not have the authority to do these tariffs, that would probably help him politically.

It's sort of the legal equivalent of putting a cone around a dog's neck, right?

It keeps him prevents him from doing damage to himself by hurting the economy further with tariffs.

I do think the fundamental political, like, as you look at 2026, if we are in a tariff-sparked recession and prices are incredibly high because of Trump's tariffs, that would be incredibly bad for him.

But even having said that,

What has happened over the first 140 or so days here is the way Trump has done the tariffs has undermined the central premise of his presidency, this idea that he was a, even no matter what else you thought of him, that he was an able manager of the economy, you have seen that come down significantly.

Even if his approval rating has gone up a little bit, it's reaching just like still historically bad for a president at this point in their term.

It's not getting anywhere near where you would expect it to be in a typical honeymoon period.

But I think there has been real damage done by the tariffs.

So

that damage will linger no matter what else the court does between now and then.

Right.

And crucially, tariffs or no tariffs, prices have not come down.

Inflation has come down, but prices haven't really come down.

And it's not like he's been getting excellent economic news anyway.

So, yes, chances of recession, if these tariffs stay off, certainly go down.

But people's feelings about the economy, which going into Trump's term were already, you know, there were a lot of concerns about prices and costs.

Those don't go away, nor does

his only signature piece of legislation that he's trying to pass through Congress do anything about that.

In fact, it makes it worse for a lot of people.

Yeah, for the people who need the most help, it makes their raises their prices.

Yeah.

In other good news, the White House's biggest dogebag has finally left the building.

Elon Musk, my good friend and mentor, announced on his platform that his time as a special government employee has officially come to a close after 128 days, where he destroyed vital government services and his reputation, while saving taxpayers just under 8% of the $2 trillion in spending he originally promised to cut.

But don't worry, the Trump White House's own Kato Kalen is going to be coming back and popping into meetings once in a while, so he's not gone for good.

And he has also said that, quote, the Doge mission will only strengthen as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.

You...

Where'd the Kato Kalen reference come from here?

He's like been, he's been sleeping at the White House.

I just, no, I know, I know what it means.

I'm just, it's like a very,

it's like a 1940.

Well, in my, in my mind, I'm thinking of like, there's all those stories that he was like sleeping in the EEOB.

Like he's got like a sleeping bag on the floor and he won't leave.

And the cabinet's like, this guy, we've had enough of him, but he still won't leave.

That's like the house guest.

When you say house guest who won't leave and you grew up when we grew up, you think Katie won't leave.

Okay, all right, all right.

I buy it.

I mean, it is, it is correct.

I just, I was, I was surprised to read it today.

And I have to insert a reference in every pod that the 35 or under set doesn't really understand.

So that's important.

I mean, this one is for like the 40 and underwear was pretty close.

Anyway, what do you think?

Will Doge become a way of life?

Has Doge become a way of life?

I mean, isn't it already?

I mean, don't you wake up every day and pray to the Doge God?

You're wearing your Doge gear.

Yeah, no, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

Doge will not be a part of it, will not be a way of life for me.

I don't know about you.

What do you think is next for Doge?

Do you you think this is just going to be something we forget about?

I know there's a Doge package of cuts that are apparently that's apparently heading to Congress.

Yeah, I think Doge, they're going to theoretically and reportedly send up some cuts for Congress to enact and put into law.

They're doing that somewhat reluctantly.

They've basically been bullied by the Doge bros online into doing this.

But Doge, as we know it, I think is toast.

It's just

this effort.

It just lives on in our hearts.

Yeah,

we won't forget it.

Like we will always know where we were the day the Doge started and the day Doge ended.

We will think fondly of our time, our time with Doge,

but it just Elon Musk had the ability.

He did it in the most, the least effective, most chaotic way possible.

But because he was someone with real political capital, a massive media platform in the ear of the president, he was able to end run the cabinet secretaries secretaries and make some of these cuts.

That most of them got upended by the courts, but he was able to do things that are not going to be possible with some, you know, flunky in charge of the program now.

Right.

So it was like, I think, I just don't see it having any sort of the same impact that it had in the first hundred or so days.

The guy originally said he was going to be able to cut $2 trillion.

Then he revised that down to $1 trillion.

Now he says that he cut about around $165, $175 billion.

That number is what Elon Musk says.

You know, reporters have dug into that as much as they can and found that some of that money is counted twice, some of its contracts that had already been canceled when Elon got there.

So it's probably less than $165 billion.

They are sending a package of Doge cuts to Congress for Congress to codify, to pass, so that

they're there for good, that is only $9 billion.

So now we're down to $9 billion.

The package that they are trying to pass, the one big beautiful bill, is going to add about $4 trillion to the deficit.

So $9 billion,

it's about,

that's a lot less, Dan.

I see you trying to do that math in your head right there.

It's about 0.25%, I believe.

Yeah.

Of

$4 trillion.

Did you just write that in there?

I did.

I did.

Okay, well, we'll check that out.

Well, let's see.

I don't know.

We'll see.

I'm not the math major host on

the map.

Neither am I.

Neither am I.

Even

it is true that he cut a lot less than he said, but actually the cuts he did are probably going to end up costing the government money because he made things so much more inefficient.

And he cut the IRS, which is going to now collect less in taxes and allow more people to cheat on their taxes, which is going to...

So in the end, all of the excitement, the chainsaws.

The weird hats, the weird press conferences, the attention, Elon Musk ended up costing the government more.

He increased the deficit through his own ineffectiveness and stupidity.

Yeah, a couple of other items he's going to be able to put on his resume that are

under the Doge section.

He closed a bunch of social security offices around the country.

He tried to change how you

call social security office for help

and basically screwed a bunch of seniors who were trying to make calls and they couldn't get through anymore because you couldn't, they had to walk that back, all the changes to social security.

So he fucked that one up.

There were a bunch of layoffs at after-school programs that he tried to cut.

We're still dealing with a bunch of FEMA cuts as we head into hurricane season.

So, that's something he can be proud of.

This is from Reuters from just a few weeks ago.

Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are rotting in warehouses around the world because of US AID cuts.

These food rations could feed over a million people for three months.

So, that's just a great example of government efficiency there because U.S.

taxpayers have already paid for the food, but then they fed USAID into a wood chipper, which he was quite proud of.

And now the food is rotting places all around the country

all around the world that could feed millions of people.

So that's another thing he did.

1.6 million people could die within a year because we cut HIV prevention and treatment.

Nick Christoph of the New York Times, he actually traveled to Africa because Elon was going around saying, no, what do you mean people have died?

No one's died.

That's liberal exaggeration.

It's hysterical, blah, blah, blah.

And sure enough, you know, Christoph went to a bunch of different places in Africa and found that people are dying right now because they've lost

the funding from USAID.

Kids are dying of hunger, tuberculosis, polio.

Those are all threats now that people have to worry about again.

This was from The Guardian yesterday.

A 43-year-old woman and mother of two with advanced cancer is experiencing life or death delays in treatment because of NIH cuts.

So here at home, if you don't care about people dying all over the world for absolutely no reason because we could keep them alive on pennies a day, we have a bunch of people here who are counting on cancer treatments and other medical treatments who are not able to get them now because we have cut medical research in some of the world's best medical research institutions here in the United States.

So that's what Elon can be be proud of.

That's his legacy.

Does great work all the way around.

How do you think the Elon

rehabilitation tour is going to go?

You think he's going to be able to rehab his image?

I do not, John.

I think no amount of rehabilitation is going to help his image.

I think he has done permanent damage to his image.

He might be able to recoup some of the shareholder value of Tesla's other companies by being less public and cutting less cancer research and maybe showing up to work every once in a while.

But in the end, the damage to Musk himself and to Tesla and the other companies, I think, is pretty close to permanent.

I mean, it's just, it is just a notable thing when your customer base feels a need to put a bumper sticker that says, fuck Elon on the back of the car from the company you own.

And also, just what is this, like,

what in his recent history has shown he would have the self-discipline to

stay quiet and help his image.

Like he's going to be immediately, he's going to be going through withdrawal here very quickly.

He was the center of the universe for over a year, right?

Heading back in the 2024 campaign.

He's out on the campaign trail.

He's got his black MAGA hats on.

He's in the Oval Office the whole time.

He's doing press conferences.

He is in the center of attention.

He loves attention.

His tweets are driving their, he was killing legislation with his tweets and appointments with his tweets.

And now he's just going to be tweeting about the latest features in a Tesla car or the latest SpaceX launch.

I just find that hard to believe.

He's going to be able to stay away from the controversy of politics.

I'll be looking forward to the first profile that's done in like a month or two about how Elon's feeling and how he's been a little depressed since he's been out of Washington and all that and what his next moves are.

Because I agree with you that it seems hard to believe that he's just going to stay out of the spotlight after this.

Yeah.

I mean, he was

nice for attention.

He spent $45 billion to buy Twitter.

He sure did.

He sure did.

And boy, was that a worthwhile purchase.

One important legacy from Elon is the work he did to help keep a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by making his polarizing self central to that Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.

Do you think Democrats will miss having Elon around as a punching bag?

Yeah, probably.

I mean,

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, being in charge of an effort to cut food assistance to poor people, cancer research, firing federal employees was like the perfect metaphor for the plutocratic cruelty that is Donald Trump's Republican Party.

It was like, it was perfect and it was used to great efficacy in Wisconsin.

And you could see that happening everywhere.

It's a very mobilizing thing for Democrats when the world's richest man is trying to buy elections, as he tried to do in 2024, and he really tried to do it in Wisconsin.

I mean, it was to it, it was like a great gift to Democrats that Trump appointed one of the world's most famous people, someone with an amazing ability to get attention, to implement a series of really, really, really unpopular policies.

Yeah.

Like normally, if you want to do things like, you know, cut food assistance or cancer research or food safety inspectors or cut public education, you want to do that under the radar.

Putting someone who gets attention from every single thing they do was a huge gift.

It's sort of like if you want to rob a bank, you probably don't want to hire Kim Kardashian as your getaway driver.

And so like that, that was a gift to Democrats.

We're not going to have that going going forward.

But the underlying arguments that we used in Wisconsin without Elon Musk's name still are very resonant and have potential to be very powerful in 2026.

I also am hoping that less attention on Elon, who does consume quite a bit of attention, means more attention on all the people who we can defeat in an election, Republicans in Congress, who I feel like haven't been getting the attention they deserve from people because they have been just rubber stamping every single thing Trump does and basically just giving up all of their power to just be extensions of the White House staff.

And I do think that maybe, you know, now that we're going to be debating this bill for the next month or so,

it's a good opportunity to make sure people know that it is the Republicans in Congress who have quite a bit of power that they are using to screw people.

Do you think this is, I'll take this on a

diversion here for a second, but do you think as we head into 2026, the

more energy should be spent on

Trump and what he's doing with this bill or on the individual Republican, the House Republicans who are voting for it?

I don't think,

I think it's both.

I think you've got to tie them together in a way that we have not tied them together yet.

And I don't think, I think individually, I mean, like individual races, obviously they're going to have the person you're running against.

But I think Donald Trump and Republicans control Washington, right, together.

And they are in lockstep.

No Republicans have broken from them.

This is what they're doing.

This is the damage they're causing.

And Congress has basically, Congress is an extension of the White House staff.

You know, I kind of think that's, I think that's the best way to do it, but I don't know.

What do you think?

Yeah, I don't know.

There's a the House races are going to rise and fall together, right?

It's like, it's none of these members are so important.

They're like, oh, I have such a personal connection to Mike Lawler that it's going to, I want to vote for him despite my incredible concerns with what's happening in Washington with Trump.

I mean, Trump's a double-edged sword.

He, like, we, the way our electoral coalition works, as we talked about last week when we were talking about the catalyst data, is we want midterm turnout.

We don't want anything above midterm turnout.

Right.

And Trump, if it's, Trump has potential to turn people out.

So I don't know.

I don't know the answer to it yet, but there's no question that it can't be just Trump, right?

It's got to be Trump and Republicans.

And there is a

we, that's also just playing the long-term game of presuming Trump doesn't upend the Constitution and engage in a military coup between now and 2028, we're going to run against a Republican who's not Donald Trump in 2028.

And so we need the bad stuff of Trump to infect the rest of the party, too.

Yes.

And I do, that's sort of why I brought it up originally, because I do think that is a task that we have not we have not focused on as much.

But I think also like just thermostatic public opinion, people, voters who don't pay close attention, but who do turn out in midterms, just think to themselves, oh, Trump's doing a bunch of bad shit.

We got to have a check on Trump right now.

It's full Republican control of Washington.

We need some balance back in Washington.

Even the people who sort of like Trump, right?

So I do think there's that dynamic as well.

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Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Where do you come from?

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And what have you learned?

New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like julie bow and ted danson tig nataro will arnett phoebe bridgers and more you can also tune in for my weekly andy richter call-in show episodes where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters bad teachers and lots more listen to the three questions with andy richter wherever you get your podcasts

All right, as Trump bids farewell to his favorite foreign-born foreign-born Ivy League graduate, he's trying as hard as he can to make life miserable for over a million others.

The administration has decided to stop issuing all new student and exchange visitor visas while they create a new process to monitor the social media accounts of anyone who wants to go to school in America.

National archivist Marco Rubio said the State Department, where he interns, will be, quote, aggressively revoking visas for an unknown number of the 275,000 Chinese students studying in America, and said the crackdown would include, but not limited to, those students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in, quote, critical fields.

Trump also floated the idea that colleges should just cap foreign enrollment at around 15%.

In better news, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's attempt to bar Harvard University from enrolling foreign students, at least for the time being.

This comes as the administration is trying to cancel basically all federal funding to Harvard, most of which is really just the federal government essentially hiring Harvard to do medical and scientific research that benefits the whole country.

Here's Caroline Levitt on Fox News talking about Trump's policies here.

Electricians, plumbers, we need more of those in our country and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University.

And that's what this administration's position is.

And we also are not going to tolerate the illegal, criminal, anti-Semitic behavior that we saw take place at Harvard and many other college campuses across the country.

LGBTQ graduate majors.

Is that a

half-major?

I'm very confused by that.

They're majoring in gay?

Yeah, that's not.

Are they majoring in gay or are they gay graduate students?

Probably either way.

Either way, she was here.

Either way, you do not want them anywhere near our colleges.

That's for sure.

We need more plumbers.

We need people going to Harvard so they can be plumbers is what we need.

I don't know I'm not going to deal with that.

You could really

nauseate yourself with dizziness by trying to follow the logical thread of that comment.

Yeah, no, I'm sure, you know, someone's going to try, like, you're going to get the J.D.

Vance's or someone else to intellectualize this argument.

You'd be like, you elites, you don't understand that our trade schools are important and that we need people who are going to make things again and not all these email jobs with all these beta males and women behind their computers just producing nothing.

We need to build things again in this country.

And you're all just a bunch of elitist snobs for thinking otherwise.

That's the wrap.

I assume Trump's free community college plan is coming out any moment now.

Well,

he does want to donate some of the federal funding that's going to Harvard to the trade schools, which I don't even know how that works.

He's probably not going to actually do that.

And I don't know what those trade schools would do with the funding because there is no evidence that they need federal funding because they are not research universities.

So if we expel enough international students from America and destroy some of the world's best colleges, is that going to lead to more jobs for Americans, Dan?

No, John, I don't think it's going to.

I think it's going to lead to less jobs.

And let's even, let's just, let's put us, let's put aside the destruction of American higher education for a second and just focus on just if we reduce or eliminate the number of foreign students coming to American colleges.

What happens is the best and the brightest from around the world come come to college in the United States because this is the best place to get an education.

It is a cultural centerpiece of the world and educational centerpiece of the world.

Many of those, that best and the brightest, they go to college here.

They stay here.

They work in American companies.

And most importantly, they start American companies.

Google, eBay, YouTube, Nvidia, all huge.

Tesla as one, yes.

SpaceX.

SpaceX, all companies that employ huge amounts of Americans, have generated tons of wealth wealth, have been some of the most innovative companies in the world started in America by immigrants who came here to go to college.

So now the people are going to go elsewhere.

They're going to go to college elsewhere.

They're going to start companies elsewhere.

And that's going to be, it's a huge brain drain for the United States.

It's one of the most self-defeating things we could possibly do.

It just fundamentally misunderstands what our strength is as a nation.

Where we lead the world is in innovation.

And we are going to make that we're that's the Trump is basically running an anti-innovation anti-innovation agenda.

It's not just keeping these, kicking these kids out of school.

It's also cutting the research that you're talking about.

I just was reading this day about how China is now leading the world in drug trials.

They're beating us in that game because we, and we're going to make that easier because of what Donald Trump's doing.

I just heard a story.

We're losing doctors to Canada.

Doctors are starting to leave to go to Canada because they don't want to be in the United States anymore because of everything RFK Jr.

is doing, because of Trump's cuts to NIH, because of everything.

And it's just easier to go somewhere else.

Students,

in the academic year, 2023, 2024 academic year, international students contributed $44 billion to the U.S.

economy, supported 378,000 jobs.

That's just the students before they go off and start companies, just because of all the research they do.

International students comprise 5%

of higher ed enrollment in this country.

And the thing is, they are heavily, heavily concentrated in graduate programs.

So this isn't even a big undergraduate thing.

This is they're in graduate programs and they are especially in graduate programs around subjects like engineering, computer science, research.

And we also have a situation in the country where college application rates, not like acceptance rates, application rates are falling among U.S.

students.

So if you have those falling, basically what you have is a lot of graduate programs in the STEM areas, in science and math, and engineering, all those very important areas.

And U.S.

colleges can't really fill those slots.

It's not because it's so competitive and oh, the international student got in and the U.S.

student get in.

That's not happening.

It is they need international students to fill those slots.

And without them, and by the way, international students also tend to pay full tuition, right?

That's another thing that we're getting from international students.

And because they pay full tuition, that allows these colleges to help subsidize their operations, their staff, and financial aid for American students.

So if we kick out all the international students who are paying full freight to college, that's going to mean more cuts to colleges.

That's probably going to mean higher tuition for other students.

And that's going to mean less students being able to go.

Yeah, it's

so fucking stupid.

It's so dumb.

There is no purpose to what is happening here.

I was yelling about this, but like JD fucking Vance, you know, he posts this long tweet over the weekend.

And he's like,

here's the deal with, you know, the Trump administration's policy towards universities.

You know, there is a reproducibility crisis where published papers from research universities fail to replicate and turn into commercial adoption.

And so basically all this research is being done is not generating enough jobs and businesses.

And that's a problem with these elite institutions.

And also all of these professors, their voting patterns, it's like North Korea.

All they do is just vote for liberal, vote for Democrats.

And also there's racial discrimination against whites and Asians.

And these are the problems that that President Trump is looking to change.

And if he would only, if the colleges would only work with Trump to change these policies instead of just yelling fascism, then we could be all better off.

And so could the colleges be better off.

And that's what this is really about.

It's about, he said, basic democratic accountability.

So he gives this long, this long bullshit intellectual argument for why Trump's doing this.

And then the next day, Trump gets off the plane and a reporter.

asks him why he's doing this.

And he's like, too many foreign students at Harvard.

Too many.

Some of them could be terrorists.

Too many.

We got to watch them.

They could be some bad people.

It's like, okay, well, there you go, J.D.

Vance.

Yeah, you can do your reproducibility crisis, but Donald Trump just thinks there's too many foreigners in our colleges.

That's it.

What a sad existence that J.D.

Vance lives in.

So fucking sad.

Just, he just, he goes out there.

He tries to, he twists himself into a fucking pretzel to try to justify.

His entirely new set of beliefs that he's just adopted for the purposes of acquiring power and to somehow make Trump seem less like a fucking moron.

And then every day day Trump goes out and just acts like a fucking moron.

And in doing so, makes J.D.

Vance look weak and dumb and like a fucking moron.

Yep.

And it's, you know, it's all the, all the tech bros, the oligarchs, the Elon Musks, the all-in crew and their podcast.

When Trump went on the all-in podcast and was like, I'm really for, you know, stapling a green card to the diplomas of international students who come here for college.

And the all-in guys are like, see, Trump's really much more moderate on immigration.

What a great thing.

And it was a fucking bullshit the whole time.

No one believed that that was Donald Trump's actual position.

And now not only is he not stapling a green card to their diploma, he's kicking them all out of the fucking country.

And it's not even just like future students who may come here.

There are students who are here, Chinese students who are, what about Marco Rubio who's going to fucking revoke visas from Chinese students?

We have 275,000 Chinese students in this country.

And he's just going to take their visa away for what?

For what?

Because they're tied to the Chinese Communist Party, meaning they're from China.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're from China.

As at the same time, like, it's all so fucking incoherent that it is like hard to take because we are, we're going to kick out students who might have ties to the Chinese Communist Party, but we are going to bend the law to allow the Chinese Communist Party's social video app to exist for as long as humanly possible.

You can have an opinion.

on the TikTok band.

You can have an opinion on it, but your opinions have to at least have some sort of ideological coherence.

You can say we're in a giant race to compete with China and we don't want China to be the way it is, but we're not going to allow their students to come here and be culturally acclimated to the United States and go back there.

And we're also going to be in a race with China and we're going to gut all of our innovation initiatives to allow China to get the head start on things like solar and wind and green energy and all that.

It's so stupid.

Well, Dan, you know, J.D.

Vance is very upset that admissions policies are discriminating against Asian students.

And so the best way to rectify that is to make sure that the largest group of Asian students in this country who are international Chinese students, actually, the largest group of any ethnicity who's in this country is international students.

We're going to kick them all out.

So it all works out.

It all works.

I mean, J.D.

Vance grew up the way he grew up in Appalachia, gets into an Ivy League college, succeeds because of it through while sacrificing a lot of his dignity and morals and the above, and then burns the fucking bridge behind him.

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Hi there, it's Andy Richter and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Where do you come from?

Where are you going?

And what have you learned?

New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, in a moment, I'm going to talk to Liz Oyer, who's the DOJ's former pardon attorney, about Trump's latest pardon spree.

But before we do, I thought we would talk a little bit about the political implications of those pardons in another

corrupt date.

Corrupt date.

There you go.

That's asking ye shall receive.

Complaints.

You ask a thousand times, and one time you will get it.

But the truth is, you have to ask publicly on a podcast.

I did, but you know what?

Elijah came up with that sting really fast, right away.

That's great.

So that's it.

Now we are Trump's toast now.

This was the thing.

This is it.

This did him in.

So this week, Trump and his new pardon flunky, Nazi simp Ed Martin, extended pardons and commutations to at least 25 people, among them.

Former reality TV stars Todd and Julie Christley, who were convicted of tax evasion and defrauding banks out of over $30 million.

but are also huge Trump supporters.

Also, former Congressman Michael Grimm, who was also convicted of tax fraud.

A former Virginia sheriff, who then became a minor MAGA celeb, who was caught on video accepting bags of cash, caught on video, over $75,000 worth of bribes that he got for making wealthy businessmen

deputy sheriffs with no training.

They paid him money.

He gave them a badge.

There was no training.

There was no training.

They gave him a bag of cash.

They caught it on video, but he's MAGA, doesn't like immigrants, so he gets the pardon.

But my personal favorite is Paul Walzak, a convicted tax cheat who pleaded guilty to tax evasion and fraud, but received a pardon after his mom,

a major Trump fundraiser, recently attended that $1 million a plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

The best part, she made sure to include the fact that she's a major Trump donor in the application for clemency,

which was of course granted.

And guess what?

Now Walzak doesn't have to pay over $4 million in restitution to the people he screwed.

What do you make of this clemency spree?

Seems pretty corrupt.

I mean,

the Walzak one.

Now everyone will know where it is because we finally have the sound that proves it.

Yes.

We did the right thing here.

Yes.

I mean, all Trump's doing is just pardoning his political cronies and financial supporters.

Like, that's what's happening here.

And we're all just fine with it.

I mean, the Walzak one is fucking perfect.

Just goes to the beam.

Put the bribe in the application and got the pardon.

And look, this is, you know, we've talked about Trump's corruption and how it's out in the open and whether it's an effective political message and whether it's really going to piss people off.

And

I would bet that a lot of people aren't necessarily surprised that Trump's going to abuse the pardon power and abuse his office to help his friends and cronies.

But the situation with Walzak is extra infuriating because he ripped off a bunch of people, right?

His own employee, people, nurses, he withheld more than $10 million from the paychecks of these people who worked at his facilities, nurses, doctors, et cetera.

So he stole money from the people who work for him.

He used some of the money to buy a $2 million yacht.

and then gave a million dollars through his mom to Donald Trump, got a pardon, and now he doesn't have to pay the money back, which he was going to have to do.

So he committed a crime, screwed over a bunch of working class people who were at his facilities, and now he gets off and those people get screwed.

And if that's not like, if that doesn't make you mad, if you think that's okay and like good for Donald Trump, great.

You've got your president.

But like, that's pretty fucked up.

There is just something.

about

that pardon in particular.

They're all bad.

Every single one of them are bad.

There's something about that pardon in particular that just speaks to the sort of depraved world in which we live, where it's just like, that was a story.

New York Times wrote a great story about it.

Read lots of stories about it.

No one cares.

Nothing happened.

In a different world,

we've been doing a lot of 90s reference in this pod.

But on his way out the door, Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, a financier.

Mark Rich's wife, Denise Rich, had donated money to Bill Clinton.

They'd been at fundraisers.

Rich himself had been a big fundraiser.

It was a national scandal for weeks.

In a normal world, what would happen with his Walzak pardon is, because it looks like bribery.

Can a court prove that like that it was bribery?

I don't know.

But by the definition of bribery, like in a dictionary, this is bribery.

And the attorney general, who would be an independent figure, would appoint a special counsel to look into it and then determine what communications happened between Walzak's mom and Trump aides to explain, to do the quid pro and the quo in this?

And none of that's happening.

Just, we're just going to move on.

And it's, it's pure, there is just, we're going to get to this in the next topic, but it is pure pay-to-play in Trump's White House.

Then there would be impeachment hearings, most likely.

I know there was.

And then Trump's approval rating would go up and it would be terrible.

So

can we just stick with a conviction?

Or we would get convicted that he could be able to run for a third term.

But point being, there should be a fucking investigation somewhere somehow about some of this stuff.

And this is, and you know, I talked with this about Liz Oyer in our interview a bit, but what really gets me about that, this is like the financial corruption around the pardons.

But remember, he pardoned all of the January 6th rioters, many of whom were convicted of assaulting police officers, journalists, like really badly.

They're all free now.

And by the way, he frees those people.

One who was convicted of assaulting a police officer has been convicted again

soliciting a minor online.

Another who was convicted of assaulting a police officer was convicted after released by Trump, after this person was released by Trump, of sexually assaulting a minor.

Another, also convicted of assaulting a police officer, freed by Trump, has been convicted of reckless homicide after drunk driving.

So these are people, these are criminals that Donald Trump freed, who should not have been freed because they violently assaulted police officers and journalists.

And the broader implication here is if you are a foot soldier for Donald Trump, whether you're a January 6th rider, whether you're a law enforcement official, if you do his bidding,

if he orders you to hurt someone, to kill someone, to commit crimes, you know that you're going to get a pardon.

You know that you're going to get a commutation if you go to jail.

And so what message does that send to people who want to commit crimes in Donald Trump's name?

It tells them that it's fucking fine.

It's a very clear message.

Go commit crimes on my behalf.

It's just.

And I know that like that this, like the January 6th thing happened, the pardons happened on January 6th, and it didn't really stick with voters.

And it wasn't like what made voters the angriest about Trump and his appropriating is still where it is.

But like, I don't know.

If you're sitting around in your community and there's a bunch of like MAGA crazies who want to commit violence, I'd be worried.

I think that's something that actually affects voters.

It affects most people in this country.

That we're going to have a country full of people who just know that it's okay to commit crimes in the president's name if they're rich or if they're Trump supporters or if they're rich Trump supporters.

This is where a little bit of the media disparity comes into play.

And I know that this whatabattalism is could be very frustrating, but I think it's important.

Like these examples are illustrative to make a larger point about how the media world works and how we're getting outgunned.

Imagine a world in which Joe Biden had pardoned some Black Lives Matter's protesters who had been convicted, certainly not even convicted of any of peaceful protests, right?

Not convicted of nothing like vandalism, right?

Burning car, that's whatever.

Had pardoned them.

And then one of them had

assaulted a child or killed someone in a cracks.

Can you imagine what the political environment would be like?

Every person in America would know this happened.

Every single person.

It would be 24-hour coverage on every right-wing media channel and show.

And then also then it would move to CNN and everywhere.

And all the corporate media and all the legacy media would all cover it.

And it would be a big fucking thing.

Every Democrat would be asked to, whether they disavow Biden's pardons.

They would, someone would be forced, you know, some like Gerald Golden or someone would be forced, like pressured into putting a censor motion into place.

The

White House press briefing would be an absolute shit show every single day.

You know what?

Like those examples that I just mentioned, those happened weeks and months ago.

That wasn't this week.

Those were those were old examples that I found that I just remembered because we were talking about the most recent pardons that have to do with financial corruption.

I mean, and you just like I was listening to Ezra Klein's podcast with Zeke Fox, the crypto reporter, and they're going through all of the crypto crimes.

And it's just, and Ezra makes a point that Trump is, it's muzzle velocity corruption, using Steve Bannon's term.

They just, you're doing so much corruption, so many crimes so fast that it's impossible to keep up.

That is true, but it's also a failure of the media.

And I don't mean just entirely the New York Times or something like that.

I just mean the media world, which includes the Democratic Party, Democratic influencers, people with podcasts like us, to have the power to actually drive a conversation that informs people about this.

And we don't have that power yet.

One last item just to make us mad before

the interview.

There was news that Paramount, parent company of CBS, has offered Trump $15 million

to settle the lawsuit that he has against 60 Minutes for, you know, choosing the edit on their Kamala Harris interview,

choosing which parts of the interview they put on television and which parts they put online, because you can see the whole thing either online or on TV.

If you want to find it, no one's hiding anything.

Still won, still beater, didn't matter.

But anyway,

so they offered Trump $15 million to settle this case, but he said no because he's demanding more than $25 million plus a public apology.

And his lawyers are arguing in court that Donald Trump suffered, quote, mental anguish from CBS News editing the 60 Minutes interview.

What do you think?

Somebody just have to step back and explain these things to realize just how fucking crazy they are.

Paramount has a merger with Skydance before the FTC.

There's nothing particularly controversial about this merger.

You know, we can talk all we want about media consolidation, but this one's pretty pro forma, certainly with the Republican administration.

It would be green lit under any scenario.

Donald Trump sued

CBS, as you pointed out, for a completely absurd case that would be tossed out of any court.

But the owners of Paramount desperately need this merger to go through.

They were going to make billions of dollars when it goes through.

And so the Trump administration is holding up the merger to force Paramount to pay tribute to Trump, to pay Trump personally.

This money presumably would go to his library, his foundation, his pocket like the ABC settlement did, of $25 million to get their merger approved.

I mean, this is pure oligarch stuff.

This is Russia.

It is unbelievable.

Yeah, I feel we've like skipped Orban at this point.

We're past Orban.

We're in Putin territory.

And it is, I mean, it is.

I mean, I can't even imagine what it's like to work at 60 Minutes or CBS right now as a journalist who's doing their, this is not their fault.

They're doing their jobs.

People at CBS, the president of CBS News, has resigned.

The head of the executor of 60 Minutes has resigned.

And it is, it is what Paramount is doing is gross.

What Trump is doing is gross.

And it's, once again, bribery in the purest definition of the word.

They are exchanging money for government for a government approval of a merger.

That's it.

Wild.

Wild stuff.

And then you put on top of that all the other stories that are out there about,

they're all anonymous sources, but about various media executives telling like the folks at The View to tone down their anti-Trump stuff.

You're seeing this at multiple media organizations because these are media companies owned by large corporations with large interests before Trump.

And they are afraid of Trump and they don't want to anger him because they don't want to get in their way.

And so this is how you get, this is like, if you read the books about what happened in Hungary to the media, this is exactly what happened.

This is exactly what happened, how the government ended up getting functional control over much of the media apparatus to stifle dissent.

And that's what's happening here.

Yeah.

And look, it is a choice not to fight back.

And I don't think in some cases it's necessarily, it's necessarily even a hard choice between fighting back or capitulating.

We are already seeing Trump lose in court.

I don't know how many different fucking times on some of these, like all the law firms that he went after, he's losing in court on all those because they're obviously unconstitutional.

A fucking judge just put multiple exclamation points in their ruling on the latest law firm,

Wilmer Hale, that just beat Trump in court because the judge just couldn't believe how unconstitutional it is.

He's racking up losses with Harvard already.

I mean, so you can fight him.

And I realize that for corporate media, it's different because they, you know, have a bottom line and they don't, maybe they don't give a shit.

They just care about their money.

But like,

we're able to stop this.

If people get off their asses, pay attention, fight back, show a little courage, we could fight this as opposed to just like letting this happen.

And the way you were, like, we can't for like the folks at CBS can't, they can resign.

They can't force Sherry Redstone and the folks at Paramount to not be terrible here.

And we can't force that Sherry Redstone to do what we want, we, the public.

But ultimately, the answer here is for people to support independent media.

Like that, like that, that is where this is going at every step of the way.

It's just proof that media companies owned by large corporations with interest before Donald Trump cannot be trusted to do the right thing in these situations.

Right.

Right.

And for all the wonderful reporters and journalists working there who are doing a great job for the most part doing a great job.

Hopefully there's enough independent media that they can go work there too, you know, because it's not their fault.

And of course, one way to support independent media,

you know, we're independent media.

Just saying, you can support lots of independent media, but we'd love if you support us as well.

You can sign up to be a friend of the pod.

And you could, what's easier than that to sign up at being a friend of the pod is just go to the YouTube channel and just hit subscribe.

Very easy.

How do you sign up to be a friend of the pod, John?

You go to crooket.com slash friends, and you can sign up, and you get access to exclusive subscriber-only shows, like the one you host, Polar Coaster, also terminally online, which is our most hilarious show.

And you get ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Love It or Leave It, and offline.

So it's great.

And you get all kinds of other fun stuff too and exclusive only

goodies from us.

So go sign up for Friend of the Pod and, you know, support independent media.

All right.

When we come back from the break, you're going to hear my conversation with Liz Oyer.

But before we do that, on June 6th, Lovett is teaming up with the Bulwarks Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell for Free Andri, a fundraiser at World Pride hosted by Crooked Media and the Bulwark at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C.

The show will be like a love it or leave it slash the Bulwark podcast crossover live event, which means great conversations and probably some fun insults thrown between love it and tim i've read this housekeeping twice poor sarah doesn't even like is she gonna get a word in edgewise this is a love it and tim show i mean

i asked her this is a very funny housekeeping which is what else did you think it was gonna be other than a crossover between a love it or leave it in a bulwark podcast

i feel like it's surprise so funny surprise this episode apart in the interruption like what

oh anyway it's a serious thing too they're gonna be celebrating pride but most importantly, raising money for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the group representing makeup artists and actor Andri Hernandez Ramiro and others who've been disappeared to El Salvador without due process.

Before the live show, Vote Save America will join forces with the human rights campaign for a protest outside the U.S.

Supreme Court to bring more attention to this important case.

It's going to be a big gay DC live show for a great cause.

So get your tickets and RSVP for the protest at cricket.com/slash events.

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Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Where do you come from?

Where are you going?

And what have you learned?

New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call-In Show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

Liz Ayer, great to have you on.

Thanks for having me, John.

You were the pardon attorney at the Justice Department, and there is quite a bit of pardon news right now.

None of it good.

But before we get to all that, I want to start with your story for people who may not be familiar with it, because it's a wild one that ends with the Trump administration firing you after you argued against restoring Mel Gibson's gun rights.

So what happened there?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

So I was very much hoping to be able to stay on and do some good work in this administration.

My role as pardon attorney is intended to be a non-political role.

The idea is to make recommendations to the president about how he can use his clemency power in a way that is fair and free of political influence.

So I hoped and expected to be able to continue on into this administration, but that was not meant to be.

In March, I was very abruptly fired from my position on a Friday afternoon and walked out of the building by security officers.

The events that you referred to leading up to my firing are where it gets pretty weird, and I'm happy happy to talk about that.

Please do.

So, I was asked to be part of a project involving restoration of gun rights to people who've lost their right to own a firearm because of a criminal conviction.

There are millions of people in this country who are in that position.

And the idea was that the Department of Justice wanted to start giving gun rights back to some of these people.

I was asked specifically to make a recommendation to the Attorney General that she restore the gun rights of a friend of the president, the actor Mel Gibson.

Mel Gibson was actually appointed to be some sort of ambassador to Hollywood by President Trump at the start of his administration, and he had sent a letter to the Department of Justice explaining that he lost his right to own a gun in 2011 when he was convicted of domestic violence.

He was convicted of abusing, assaulting his former girlfriend, and as a result of that, he's no longer allowed to own a firearm.

So I was asked to recommend that he get his gun right back.

And really, the only reason given to me to make that recommendation was the fact that he has this personal relationship with the president and he's a famous actor.

And that wasn't enough to convince me that he's someone that could safely own a firearm.

There's a lot of data

there.

Yeah, there's a ton of data that suggests that people with domestic violence histories are much more dangerous when they're armed.

And so I couldn't make that recommendation.

And within hours of communicating to the leadership of the department that I was unable to fulfill that request, I I was fired.

And from what I understand, Pam Bondi ended up granting him his gun rights back anyway.

She did, yeah,

after I left.

She did it anyway.

So it seems to me like them firing you might be more of an excuse, might have been more of an excuse than direct, like they were just using the Mel Gibson thing

as a pretext to fire you if they could have restored it themselves anyway.

So they definitely didn't need me to make the recommendation, and they've never told me why I was fired.

No one's ever explained it to me.

I got a three-sentence memo telling me I was fired under the president's power of Article II of the Constitution.

But what I will say is that The Department of Justice is using people in career positions like mine to try to give a veneer of legitimacy to decisions that are really just political favors, trying to wrap them up in some kind of legitimacy by having a non-political appointee like myself make a recommendation when a recommendation isn't even needed.

And that was shown here because as you've noted, Pam Bondi gave Mel Gibson his guns back anyway.

And they not only fired you, but then they tried to silence you shortly after that.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, so I was asked to testify before members of Congress about my firing from the Department of Justice, and that testimony was scheduled to take place on a Monday.

On the Friday before that night, I was at a performance.

I took my parents to a performance with my husband, and we were leaving the Kennedy Center just after nine o'clock that night.

And I received a call from someone in the Department of Justice who was calling really just as a favor to give me a heads up that there were armed law enforcement officers on their way to my home to deliver me a letter.

And the letter was a warning against testifying before members of Congress on Monday.

So I very fortunately was able to talk with this person about the fact that my teenager was at home alone.

It would be very upsetting for these folks to show up at my door at about 10 o'clock in the evening.

And this person was able to help me call those officers off.

But the intention was to have these armed officers deliver a warning to my home at 10 o'clock on a Friday night.

Aside from that being just absolutely thuggish behavior, what basis did the officers have for giving you a letter that said you're not supposed to testify?

Well, there's no basis.

The letter was written by a political appointee who works for the Deputy Attorney General, or at least that's whose name was signed to it.

And the leadership of the department is really now just a collection of President Trump's former personal attorneys.

So, this is a woman who was a junior member of his defense team, who is now has oversight of matters of ethics and professional responsibility within the Department of Justice.

And she fired off this letter

warning me that I would be violating all sorts of legal obligations if I were to testify in front of members of Congress.

I read the letter carefully.

There's no basis to any of it.

And I went ahead and testified anyway because I believe that that was the right thing to do to shine a light on, frankly, the corruption that is taking place right now in the Department of Justice.

Yeah, it sounds like it was the right thing to do.

And also, you're suing the Trump administration now, I believe.

Yeah, I am.

I actually have two different pieces of litigation going.

One relates to an appeal of my unlawful firing.

My firing from the department plainly violates civil service laws.

I mean, laws that have been around for many, many decades to protect career federal workers.

And I have another lawsuit that involves the Freedom of Information Act.

I have asked the department to produce information about the reasons for my firing, and they have refused to do so to date.

So I am now taking that matter to court and hoping that the court will require the department to comply with their legal obligations and give me that information.

Can you talk a little bit about what it was like being the pardon attorney at DOJ back when that process was much different before Trump?

And like, how was the process supposed to work in the pardon attorney's office?

Yeah, it was much different.

It was much different before the change in administration.

Ordinarily, the way pardons work is there is this office within the Department of Justice that reviews and vets applications for clemency that come in from people around the country.

About 80% of applicants are people who are incarcerated and serving a prison sentence.

Those people are generally seeking a commutation of their sentence, which is a reduction of the imprisonment portion of their sentence.

Then the rest of the applications are generally from people who are living in the community who've already completed their sentence and they are seeking pardons.

Pardons are usually reserved for people who have completed their sentence sometime in the past, were convicted of a minor crime, and have demonstrated exemplary conduct and rehabilitation in the community in the years since.

So, all those applications typically come through the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

We would review them closely, vet the applicants carefully, and make recommendations to the president about who should receive clemency free from any type of political influence.

That's the process in ordinary times.

That is not what's happening now.

Yeah, clearly.

I mean, you were ultimately replaced by Ed Martin after his nomination for U.S.

Attorney for D.C.

was withdrawn due to, in part, his praise and support of a Nazi January 6th convicts.

He's since been on something of a pardon spree himself with Trump,

handing them out to various Trump donors and supporters.

What's your take on Ed Martin's tenure at DOJ so far?

It's really quite a shock to reflect on the fact that he is my successor.

My position is one that was non-political and he is just about the most political person in the administration.

He recently tweeted,

he said, no MAGA left behind, which was a reference to a pardon that was granted to a sheriff, a corrupt sheriff who is a Trump supporter.

He seems to be on a mission right now to identify other MAGA loyalists who he believes are deserving of pardons, which, as far as I can tell, is everyone.

There's been some news recently that he has been working with an attorney who has a relationship with Trump and who is representing a whole bunch of members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys who are seeking pardons.

He's also considering apparently pardons for the men who plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.

So he's really out there in terms of what he's looking at and the criteria that he's applying to the extent there are any are completely different from the criteria that the Department of Justice has always applied in recommending pardons.

He does not seem to feel bound at all by this document called the Justice Manual, which kind of lays out all the guidelines and rules that Department of Justice employees are supposed to follow.

It's really quite quite shocking.

I thought my successor was bad.

I got Stephen Miller, but yours is much worse.

Well,

we could have an extended debate about where we landed.

So

your colleagues who are civil servants who are still in the Justice Department, like, is there, they must be going crazy watching Ed Martin sort of go through some of these pardons.

Is there anything, I mean, I know the pardon power is so absolute for the president.

Is there anything that can be done to slow these down?

Or is there anyone in DOJ who is trying to slow this down, do you think?

Well, the thing that's tricky about the pardon power is that it's in the Constitution and the Constitution puts no limits on it.

So there really are no rules.

There have always been norms and there have always been policies that have applied to pardons, but those have gone out the window under the current administration.

And really, the only way to address it when you have someone in the White House who is abusing the pardon power in this way is through a constitutional amendment, which is really, really difficult to accomplish.

We've seen a lot of presidents use pardons in different ways.

And you know this as somebody who worked in the Obama White House, really the high point was President Obama's use of clemency.

He used it in a way that was very disciplined and principled and fair and that was intended to really show mercy to people who had earned it and people who deserved it.

And as a result, those people have gone out in the community and have done really well.

The recidivism rates are low.

There are people who are doing extraordinary things and they earned those second chances and are using them well.

But we're already seeing now people from Trump's first term in office who got clemency, who are back in prison, who have committed violent crimes in just a few short years.

The approach of not vetting people, of granting clemency on the basis of political loyalties and affiliations rather than merit is just one that is not consistent with public safety and it's really destructive to our system of justice.

I do feel like the pardons have been sort of an undercovered aspect of the Trump administration.

And I've sort of been wondering why it hasn't broken through more.

I started thinking about this with the January 6th protesters and convicted criminals all being pardoned and released by Trump early on.

I mean, people like you and I and a lot of people who pay close attention to this are horrified by a lot of these pardons, most of these pardons.

What would you say to someone who doesn't follow politics or even the news that closely about why Trump's pardons should worry them, why they should matter to them?

There are a couple of different reasons.

One is that there is just no process in place.

It's a free-for-all, it's a marketplace for pardons, and people are paying exorbitant amounts of money to get them.

It's just a pure corruption of the powers of the presidency.

We're hearing about people paying millions of dollars to get access to the president with the hope of their pardon being granted.

So that should be alarming to all Americans because most people, even who are Trump supporters, certainly cannot afford that type of access and they can't get those benefits in that same way.

The other thing that's really destructive is that the president is just showing total disregard for verdicts that have been imposed by juries,

for prosecutions that are being pursued by his own Department of Justice.

It's creating essentially a two-tiered system of justice that gives the rich special and preferential treatment.

There was this case recently that was really particularly disturbing.

A guy named Paul Walsack, who was convicted of essentially skimming money off the tops of paychecks of the doctors and nurses that he employed.

And he used the money to buy a $2 million yacht, jewelry, clothing, all sorts of lavish items.

The judge who sentenced him decided that he needed to spend some time in prison and said at his sentencing, I am sending a message that wealth is not a get-out-of-jail free card in this country.

And then literally days later, Trump swooped in and he granted Walsack a full pardon, which not only

totally goes in the opposite direction of what the judge was trying to do.

I mean, it sends the exact opposite message.

Wealth is a get out of jail free card, but it also had the effect of wiping out the obligation that Walsack had to pay back the money that he owed.

There's this thing called restitution, which is required in cases involving financial crimes.

You've got to pay back the money that you owe to your victims if you're convicted of that crime.

And the pardon just wipes it all out.

So Walsack's victims will not be repaid.

He will not have to spend a day in jail.

And the real kicker is we just learned from reporting of the New York Times a few days ago that Walsack's mother spent $1 million to attend a dinner with Trump just days before he got that pardon.

So it's totally corrupt.

It's totally destructive to our system of justice.

It's really just, it's just awful.

And I worry that I think I worry most that it sends a message to would-be criminals that if you have enough money, or if you're a Trump supporter or if you're a rich Trump supporter, you should go commit a crime if you want because there's always the chance that you can get a pardon.

In fact, there's a very good chance that you can get a pardon.

And I would tell people who are like, well, what does this matter to me?

Like, look, do we want a policy like this that leads to more crime and more criminals?

Because if someone wants to harm you or someone wants to scam you, they know that the president's got their back or Ed Martin's going to say no MAGA behind.

So I really worry about sort of the potential crime and violence that this could lead to.

Well, it almost becomes a business calculation.

I think there are people who are probably thinking, I could make X millions of dollars if I commit this crime, and then I could spend a small percentage of that to get myself a pardon.

So it's worth it.

And that's the way the calculation is working out for a lot of people.

There's another guy named Trevor Milton.

Milton launched this company that was supposedly going to build the world's first electric-powered semi-truck.

And Milton defrauded investors to the tune of almost $700 million.

Milton made a donation of around $2 million to Trump's campaign.

Then he got a full pardon that wiped out his obligation to pay back almost $700 million in debt.

So that was actually a really sound business decision.

He, you know, he made $700 million, he paid off $2 million, and that's a win.

Wow.

It's just horrifying.

It It was obviously difficult and risky for you to speak out and fight back and continue speaking out as you are.

What do you say to your former colleagues at DOJ or other civil servants still in the administration who want to do the right thing, who want to speak out, but are understandably scared?

Yeah, I think that this is the time to be brave.

This is the time to lead with conviction and courage.

And it's hard.

It's lonely.

it's scary.

But once you compromise your integrity, you cannot get it back.

So, I've tried to set that example that you know, despite the challenges of standing up, it is ultimately the right thing to do.

It's very hard in the Department of Justice to do that.

The people who are still in the department are very limited in their ability to speak up, and folks who have left are very scared because there is this culture of silencing people.

But I would really just encourage my fellow civil servants to stand on their principles and just have confidence that ultimately that will be what prevails.

Well, thank you so much for speaking up and thank you for joining the pod.

Where can people find you?

I know you have a sub stack now.

Yeah, I have a sub stack.

It's called Lawyer Oyer.

I'm also on Instagram and TikTok as Lawyer Oyer and I'm doing a lot with pardons.

I'm covering pardons,

talking about the $1 billion in debt that President Trump has forgiven through pardons.

So I encourage everybody to check me out either on Substack or Instagram or TikTok.

Thanks, Liz.

I really appreciate you joining.

Take care.

Thanks so much for having me, John.

That's our show for today.

Thanks to Liz Oyer for coming on.

Love it.

We'll be back on Sunday with a special conversation about what a series of historic labor strikes can teach us about organizing and building political power today.

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