S2 Ep1000: David French: Trump Admits He's Violating the Constitution

Transcript

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Speaker 19 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Before we get to our guest, I got to get something off my chest about Chuck Schumer. I bet you all do too.

Speaker 19 Here's the state of play as we tape this on Friday morning.

Speaker 19 The Senate will vote this afternoon to overcome a filibuster of the House's continuing resolution, which funds the federal government through September 30th.

Speaker 19 Schumer announced yesterday that he would support not the bill, but that there's an assumption that Schumer, saying that he will support cloture on this bill, will unlock the requisite number of Democrats, seven Democrats or eight Democrats, depending on Rand Paul, that are needed to bring this to the floor.

Speaker 19 And then, presumably, Republicans would pass it without any Democratic votes. Here's the most generous spin on this before I start ranting.

Speaker 19 The most generous spin I've heard is that getting into a shutdown makes Trump's Musk's job of dismantling the government easier, firing people easier, that it wouldn't achieve anything on a policy standpoint, that there was no real plan to end it, and that it would both hurt the government workers and potentially hurt the Democrats' political standing.

Speaker 19 I want to say, even if you grant that, right? Even if you grant...

Speaker 19 that the end of this process was going to be some kind of fold, because there was no way to actually stop Musk's reign of terror with only 47 senators.

Speaker 19 Even if you acknowledge that, that there wasn't a real end game for Schumer to stop

Speaker 19 the horribleness that we are all experiencing,

Speaker 19 he still had a political imperative to do everything in his power to fight it in the meantime. There are a lot of things that Chuck Schumer could have done besides just folding.

Speaker 19 He could have held an actual filibuster today on the Senate floor on behalf of veterans' jobs.

Speaker 19 He could have held an actual filibuster on the Senate floor today that demanded that all of the Social Security offices stay open so our seniors can get the money that they paid into the system.

Speaker 19 He could have said that he's going to hold up all the nominees. Dr.
Oz is supposed to be confirmed today.

Speaker 19 He could have said he's going to hold up all the nominees as long as Elon Musk continues to illegally fire government workers.

Speaker 19 He could have shut the government down for a little while until the Republicans met one simple, easy popular demand. Maybe it was about the VA.
Maybe it's about Social Security. Maybe it's

Speaker 19 about actually appropriating the funds that Congress has approved.

Speaker 19 Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not co-kings.

Speaker 19 You can make them negotiate. force them, force Donald Trump to negotiate with you.
Bring him to the table.

Speaker 19 The era of letting Republicans break all the rules, not follow any of the laws, run roughshot over the Democrats, while the Democrats continue to just try to protect every possible existing norm and institution, that era is over.

Speaker 19 That era ended the moment Donald Trump won in 2024. All right.
We might not like that. I don't like that.
I'm an institutionalist.

Speaker 19 I wish that we could protect our institutions, but that's not what time it is right now. It is a time for fighting.
It is a time for sometimes having to sacrifice some turf, having to sacrifice even

Speaker 19 certain members of the public interest for the greater good of taking these guys on and making them own their chaos. Make them own the chaos they're creating.

Speaker 19 Don't be a participant in the chaos they are creating.

Speaker 19 Less than a month ago, I was on here and on Twitter warning that if Schumer and Jeffries weren't up for the fight when it comes to this budget, then there'd be a Democratic Tea Party.

Speaker 19 And we're already seeing that online right now. There's already a discussion of AOC primarying Chuck.
There is enraged members of Congress. I've been hearing from them.
We've been seeing it publicly.

Speaker 19 We've been hearing reporters report on it. And to be honest, I expect all this is just the start because from what I, my sense from Democratic voters is that they are pissed.
They want a fighter.

Speaker 19 They want someone that's going to actually do something.

Speaker 19 And so a new order is coming. A new leadership is coming to the Democratic Party.
It's a question of when, because this thing, look,

Speaker 19 even if Chuck Schumer did all the things I said, does anybody think that he's a man for the moment right now? Does anybody think that he could have executed on that maximum pressure strategy?

Speaker 19 I don't know anybody who does. This thing can't wait for a primary till 2028.
The Democrats need leaders that are up for this moment right now.

Speaker 19 The time for Chuck Schumer to pass the torch is right now.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 I think that you're going to increasingly be hearing that, even from his own colleagues. We're going to have much more on this next week.

Speaker 19 We'll see how the vote shakes out tonight ahead of the shutdown deadline. But in the meantime, I want to bring in a guest to talk about all of the illegality that these guys need to be fighting.

Speaker 19 He's the opinion columnist of the New York Times. He's also co-hosted the legal podcast, Advisory Opinions.
He served as an Army lawyer in the JAG Corps during the Iraq War. It's David French.

Speaker 19 Hey, David, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 22 Tim, always great to see you.

Speaker 19 All right. We've got advisory opinions legal potpourri here to start with.

Speaker 19 I'm going to let you pick. Free speech issues, Khalil, Georgetown.
We've got Trump asking Skylist to end birthright citizenship today, Perkins Coy.

Speaker 19 We've got Amy Coney Barrett. Mag is pissed at her.
We've got, are there any legal remedies to what's happening with Elon and Doge illegally firing people?

Speaker 19 We've got the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 coming soon. What has your hackles up the most out of that list?

Speaker 22 You know, let's just start with the wheelhouse. You know, let's just start with free speech.
You know, I mean, this is the area that I litigated in for 20 plus years before I became a journalist.

Speaker 22 And, you know, Tim, it's just kind of funny that

Speaker 22 J.D. Vance goes to Munich and lectures the entire European world about free speech and then comes back home and the Trump administration just says, Europe, hold my beer on censorship.

Speaker 22 Just unbelievable stuff unfolding.

Speaker 19 It really is wild. And I mean, look, I know you and I are aligned on this.
Some of the European free speech stuff makes me very, very queasy. I'm happy that we have the First Amendment here.

Speaker 19 But these guys, it's just so phony and the hypocrisy on it is so striking. I know that you wrote specifically about the Georgetown case.

Speaker 19 We talked about Khalil yesterday, but I haven't really gone that deep on the Georgetown case. So why don't we start with a case is a case is a really big overstatement to call it that.

Speaker 19 But even still, like, again,

Speaker 19 the fact that it is the acting U.S. attorney threatening a private school is pretty jarring.

Speaker 19 And it's the type of thing that, you know, back in the day when you were a conservative in good standing was in your wheelhouse and in everybody that you associated with' wheelhouse, you would have thought.

Speaker 22 You know, Tim, there are so many incidents in the last 10 years, you know, since Trump came down the escalator, where he

Speaker 22 does

Speaker 22 exactly the thing that a lot of conservatives were warning the government might do in the future, right?

Speaker 22 Except it's coming from the Republican president.

Speaker 19 No Sharia law, yeah. No Sharia law.
No Sharia law. Who knows what the rest of the term will hold.

Speaker 22 The feds are going to try to dictate your curriculum. They're going to try to dictate higher education.

Speaker 22 You know, like this kind of thing has been something that conservatives have been worried about for a while. And

Speaker 22 Georgetown is just particularly egregious, Tim. I mean, but it's egregious in much the same way so many other things are egregious.

Speaker 22 So it begins with this letter from Ed Martin, who's the acting or interim U.S. attorney in D.C.

Speaker 22 This guy's hardcore MAGA zealot fanatic. But it begins with him sending a letter that says, it has come to my attention reliably.
What does that mean?

Speaker 22 Anyway, it has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach and promote DEI.

Speaker 22 This is unacceptable.

Speaker 22 Now, the letter does not define DEI, which, Tim, you and I know the definition of DEI in MAGA land is not simply unlawful race preferences.

Speaker 22 So, for example, I fully supported the Supreme Court's decision in the Harvard Fair case where it eliminated race-based preferences from university admissions.

Speaker 22 Okay, if a letter was saying that the university was engaging in unlawful race-based preferences, that's one thing. But this was teach and promote DEI.

Speaker 22 But we know that the definition of DEI isn't just unlawful race-based preferences. It's anything on race that is one millimeter to the left of MAGA.

Speaker 22 So if you celebrate the achievements of women in science or sports or whatever, that's DEI. If you celebrate

Speaker 22 the achievements of a black athlete or scholar or thinker or pilot or war hero, that's DEI. It's all everything one

Speaker 22 ounce millimeter to the left is DEI.

Speaker 19 And left isn't even right, like the right, like, you know, who knows? We don't even want a spectrum anymore. But like just

Speaker 19 any like minimal acknowledgement, right?

Speaker 19 I mean, like the type of, you know, stuff that schools were just trying to do when they were, you know, making sure that the curriculum was not just all old white guys, right?

Speaker 19 I mean, that was not even really a partisan kind of thing initially.

Speaker 22 I mean, in their view, it's even evidence of, quote, DEI when they see that somebody's black or a woman being hired.

Speaker 19 Right. Right.

Speaker 22 Or having a job. I mean, this is the kind of thing that, you know, whenever there's a disaster or something terrible that happens, they want to know, was the pilot or the driver or whatever,

Speaker 22 you know, a woman or were they black or were they Hispanic? And you immediately get into this demographic game looking for DEI. It's even beyond that because it's talking about what he says.

Speaker 22 It's not, it has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School is engaged in illegal conduct. It says that continues to teach and promote DEI.
That's expression.

Speaker 22 That's just free speech right there, teaching and promoting.

Speaker 22 And then he said he's begun an inquiry, and he demands to know if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in any way, will you move swiftly to remove it?

Speaker 22 Again, this is about expression, Tim. It's just about expression.

Speaker 22 And then he says that nobody who is affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach or utilize DEI will be considered for their fellows program, a summer internship or employment.

Speaker 22 What are we doing here? Even if you're MAGA and you disagree with Georgetown, the mere fact that you went to Georgetown is going to disqualify you.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 22 So, you know, this is not the kind of thing where, you know, you need to be a legal scholar to understand that this is bad.

Speaker 22 The federal government cannot dictate the viewpoint and curriculum of a private Christian school. They can't even do it entirely with public schools, Tim.
But this is just one.

Speaker 22 We could literally talk about how bad this case is for an hour, but it's just one instance.

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Speaker 19 The highest profile instance this week is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, which we talked about a bunch yesterday with Sam Stein. But I'm I'm wondering where you fall on this because, you know, obviously

Speaker 19 there's a free speech element to it, of course. Is there a First Amendment element to it?

Speaker 19 I guess maybe a little grayer, but how do you kind of assess the case?

Speaker 22 So this case really does kind of hit all the parts of the First Amendment.

Speaker 22 You know, so you're talking about free speech. You're talking about freedom of association.

Speaker 22 You're talking about religious free exercise.

Speaker 22 You're talking about the full spectrum of First Amendment rights at Georgetown. Go to Perkins Cooey, which I haven't even gotten into Perkins Cooey.

Speaker 22 That's free speech, where this is the government issuing an order, a mandate, barring a law firm from access to federal buildings, barring employees or former employees of the law firm from employment in the federal government.

Speaker 19 Why?

Speaker 22 Why? Because they represented Democrats and were opposed to Donald Trump. I mean, so

Speaker 22 you're actually going instance after instance after instance where there's a direct, explicit, and this is the key, Tim, it's very explicit attack on free speech.

Speaker 22 They're saying it right up front, like in the Georgetown letter, they say it right up front. It's because you're teaching DEI with Perkins Cooey.

Speaker 22 It's because you engaged in these constitutionally protected legal and political activities.

Speaker 19 And Perkins Cooey, and by the way, up until this past week, and I think even on this podcast, I've been pronouncing this Perkins Cole for like 20 years. I don't know.

Speaker 19 There's just something about my eyes where it just looks like it should be coal and like I don't see the little spot, you know, between the line and the dot. I think Bill Crystal said Perkins Cooey.

Speaker 19 And I was like, what are you talking about? And he's like, yeah, that's what it's called. Anyway, I think you're a morning Joe on this.
I just wanted to have you kind of elaborate on this case. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Because, you know, the interesting thing here, as you're saying, is there have been many cases in the past where, you know, people are suing the government, saying essentially, you know, this is unlawful targeting of a private business for political purposes, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 19 This seems to be the rare instance where the administration is saying, no, yeah, no, that's what we're doing. Like we are targeting them.

Speaker 19 This is political targeting, and we're trying to silence and punish a foe for political reasons.

Speaker 22 Yeah, yeah. So I said this on Morning Joe because it is such a gobsmacking element of this case.
So I litigated, as I said,

Speaker 22 20 plus years in higher education and other places where I was litigating these cases that were First Amendment retaliation cases.

Speaker 22 And a First Amendment retaliation case, what you're saying is I engaged in free speech, and because I engaged in free speech, I'm now being punished.

Speaker 22 But never would universities say, you did free speech, now we're punishing you. Never would the government say, you engaged in free speech, now we're punishing you.

Speaker 22 We had to prove that their reason that they stated, it might be, well, we actually terminated you for poor job performance, or we actually terminated you because you were late all the time.

Speaker 22 That their reason that they put forward just a pretext, that they were making it up in this circumstance you don't even have to do that tim because they just say it in the document it's because you spoke because you're teaching or promoting dei because you represented that he's a democratic client and engaged in activities in support of your clients that's why we are taking action it's unlike anything i've ever seen they're just right up front confessing to the constitutional violation yeah i mean the principle of this is bad as you just laid out very well From a political standpoint, obviously, like D.C., White Chew law firm lawyers aren't exactly the most sympathetic victim of the various victims of the Trump administration's extrajudicial attacks so far in the first two months.

Speaker 19 But there are

Speaker 19 actual Americans that need the services of firms like Perkins-Cooey that are going to be conceivably hurt by this, right? Like it's two of the big law firms.

Speaker 19 There are only so many lawyers that, you know, have the security clearances, that have the experience, that the expertise in these types of cases, right?

Speaker 19 I mean, like, don't you think that there's actual harm potentially even beyond just the law firm itself?

Speaker 22 Oh, for sure. I mean, you make it very difficult.
Let's put it this way.

Speaker 22 Let's suppose you're somebody who is a dissenter or a whistleblower in the Trump administration, and you're looking for legal representation.

Speaker 22 So if the order against Perkins Cooey was be allowed to stand, you couldn't go to Perkins Cooey. You have other firms that are now

Speaker 22 Covington and Burling.

Speaker 22 Are they going to work with you after what's happened to them, revocation of their security clearances?

Speaker 22 So it puts a pall, it has a chilling effect on really one of your most fundamental elements of participation in the legal system. Can I get a lawyer?

Speaker 22 And so I will fully acknowledge that a lot of elements of Donald Trump are he's incompetent and ignorant in a lot of areas.

Speaker 22 But after we've watched 10 years of him dominate the American political scene, you can't say the man isn't politically shrewd.

Speaker 22 And one thing that he does that is very politically shrewd is he picks the right targets.

Speaker 22 And so just as there's not too many people who are really worried about the fate of white shoe law firms, the American elite higher education, it does not exactly have a lot of defenders right now.

Speaker 22 Foreign aid that Trump has gone after, historically, Americans have had really mixed feelings about foreign aid. So he's taken a lot of targets.

Speaker 22 I'm sure we'll end up talking some about Mahmoud Khalil in Colombia.

Speaker 19 Let's just do it right now. Yeah, let's go right to that.

Speaker 22 Yeah, not a sympathetic target to millions and millions and millions of Americans because this was a guy who was a leader in student protests in Colombia.

Speaker 22 Some of the groups he was belonged to were actively sort of pro-Hamas. You know, the encampments in Colombia were uniquely terrible, more so than many other universities.

Speaker 22 They had a takeover of Hamilton Hall, you know, an illegal takeover of Hamilton Hall.

Speaker 22 So this is a guy, to the extent that he participated in all of that, is not somebody that most Americans are looking at and saying, We need to protect this guy at all costs.

Speaker 19 And not American citizen. I need a legal green card holder

Speaker 19 on top of that. Yeah.

Speaker 22 Right, exactly. And what's interesting, my colleague Michelle Goldberg had this really good column where she was talking about the Red Scare and this moment.

Speaker 22 And she said something that I think is really, really important.

Speaker 22 One of the things that made the Red Scare sustainable for so long was the targets.

Speaker 22 They were targeting communism at the height of the Cold War. Okay.

Speaker 19 Well,

Speaker 22 a communist or somebody who's far, far, far left, they possess First Amendment rights just as much as a Republican or a Democrat, but they're much less sympathetic.

Speaker 22 And so that helped sustain this sort of frenzy in American life for years and years.

Speaker 22 And similarly, here you have a situation where the Trump administration is taking on institutions and people that are not sympathetic, sometimes for good reasons.

Speaker 22 Like I can't think of a single thing Mahmoud Khalil has said about about the middle. And I mean, there are a few things he said that I, when he condemns anti-Semitism, obviously I agree with that.

Speaker 22 But when he's talking about Israel and Hamas and Palestine, I disagree with him.

Speaker 19 I thought the

Speaker 22 encampments were out of control. They were violating the rights of others.
There was a wave of anti-Semitism on campus that still hasn't fully abated. All of those things are dreadful.

Speaker 22 I disagree with Mahmoud Khalil, but also I know the constitutional issues that are at stake. And you defend the Constitution, not through the popular voices, because they don't need defense.

Speaker 22 That's when the First Amendment isn't really necessary. You defend the First Amendment by defending the unpopular people and voices and defending their fundamental rights.

Speaker 19 Yeah. I mean, to me, also, like, the treatment of Khalil, expect that he has been sent across the country.
He's being held here in Louisiana. He's like shackled in an ICE detention center.

Speaker 19 His wife is pregnant.

Speaker 19 You know, even if you

Speaker 19 thought, and I guess, well, well, let me just ask you, like, what do you think of their legal defense? And they're basically saying that they have a right to do this,

Speaker 19 that

Speaker 19 he doesn't have to have actually engaged in any illegal activity, that this is at the jurisdiction or judgment of the Secretary of State. What do you make of that argument?

Speaker 22 I think they're making the weakest form of what could be a strong argument imaginable. Okay.

Speaker 22 Here's what the strong argument would look like: the strong argument would be he's here on a student visa and that we are deporting him because he is a threat to the foreign policy and national security of the United States for reasons A, B, C, D, E, and F detailing illegal activity or material support for terrorism.

Speaker 22 Then they're golden. That's not what they did here.
What they did here.

Speaker 19 And part of that's not how they did here because at least at this point, there's no evidence of that, right?

Speaker 22 Like, I mean, no evidence.

Speaker 22 You would think that they would have shared that. Right.
There's no evidence of it as yet.

Speaker 22 And part of what seemed to have happened is they thought this was going to be a much easier case because they thought he was just going to be that he was just here on a student visa.

Speaker 22 Learn later

Speaker 22 on he's here with a green card. And so the strong version of the case is you take somebody on a visa who has done things you can point to that are unlawful and you say deport him.

Speaker 22 That's a very strong case. They would win that case.
Here, you have a green card holder, so a lawful permanent resident. They have not articulated a single thing that he's done that is illegal.

Speaker 19 They said specifically, actually, to the free press, they gave a statement to the free press press that said that they don't have to. Exactly.

Speaker 22 Their notice of appearance that requires him to show up only listed as the grounds that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has deemed that he's a threat to the foreign policy of the United States.

Speaker 22 There's no reasons listed for that. It's just the conclusion.

Speaker 22 And so what they're doing is the weakest possible version of what could be in other circumstances a strong argument that foreign non-citizens cannot come to the U.S. and engage in disruptive protest.

Speaker 22 No, instead, what they've done is they've essentially said that a green card holder could be summarily detained, isolated from his family, isolated from privileged conversations with his own attorney,

Speaker 22 and not because he's engaged in any illegal activity at all,

Speaker 22 but because the Secretary of State, in his wisdom, has determined that he's a threat to the foreign policy, a student protester is a threat to the foreign policy of the United States.

Speaker 19 This is the other thing. What is the rationale rationale for detaining him at all?

Speaker 19 Like, forget for sending him across the country to Louisiana to have him detained and put in a detention center, right?

Speaker 19 Like, if you took them with their word, that they believe, the State Department believes that Marco can decide, you know, based on, you know, whatever, the judgment of the Secretary of State that a green card holder is a threat to national security and that person challenges it in court.

Speaker 19 Like, there's no imminent threat. There's no, like, what is the purpose of detaining? Like, what are you worried about? That he's going to run away?

Speaker 22 You want him to run away like why are you detaining him besides cruelty the argument would be well we don't want him hiding we don't want him hiding but there are ways to deal with that you right and and also yeah this is something tim a lot of the things you just articulated are just gratuitous so for example detaining him in louisiana not allowing him to have a privileged phone call with his own lawyer i mean a judge had to order that a judge had to order that they get a privileged phone call look if i am accused of murder I get to talk to my lawyer on a privileged basis.

Speaker 22 I mean,

Speaker 22 this is where that malice comes in. They're trying to do everything that they can while they have him in custody to punish this guy, to make his life miserable.

Speaker 22 And so this is where it just starts to get even more cynical. They're self-righteously wrapping themselves in the flag of combating anti-Semitism.
Okay.

Speaker 22 However, at the same time, this is a movement that if you're the right kind of anti-Semite, you can get jobs and you can get favors. Like, look at some of the hires in this administration.

Speaker 22 Some of the hires in this administration include people who've engaged in just unbelievably anti-Semitic speech. And then, you know, there's this,

Speaker 22 they're bringing the Tate brothers back into

Speaker 22 the United States. So the Tate brothers, these guys are grotesque anti-Semites.
Just grotesque. It's not even,

Speaker 22 it's not even close. And so if you're an anti-Semite and you're on the right, you can get hired by the administration.

Speaker 22 Like this person, Kingsley Wilson, who's the deputy press secretary in the Department of Defense.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I was just going to bring this up. Kathy Young wrote about her this week.

Speaker 22 He nominated a guy named Amir Ghalib to be ampassed of Kuwait.

Speaker 22 This is a guy who was a mayor of a Muslim-majority town in Michigan that passed the strongest version of the boycott, divest, sanction resolution that liked a Facebook comment that referred to Jews as monkeys,

Speaker 22 declined to discipline an appointee who suggested that the Holocaust was cosmic punishment for October 7th. And he's ambassador to Kuwait now because he endorsed Trump.
He endorsed Trump.

Speaker 22 And you can do this all day in the larger right. I mean, look at what Joe Rogan has been doing with his, you know, some of his recent guests, Candace Owens.
Trump dined with Nick Fuente.

Speaker 22 I mean, you can just do this all day long.

Speaker 19 We can't do it all day long. And unfortunately, we have much more to do the rest of this day.
So we'll leave that one, but that part there.

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Speaker 19 So as I mentioned, Trump is asking SCOTUS, there's an emergency appeal. Maybe that's just a charm of a heart.
I don't understand what the emergency is, to end birthright citizenship.

Speaker 19 There's no chance this is going anywhere, right? Please tell me there's no chance.

Speaker 22 Let me put it this way, Tim. I don't like to say no chance, but I would fall out of my chair in shock if

Speaker 22 they said that Trump executive order.

Speaker 19 When was the last time you fell out of your chair in shock? I'm just trying to get a sense for how often that happens to you.

Speaker 22 It's been a long time.

Speaker 19 It's been a long time. Yeah.

Speaker 22 But I would be completely, utterly shocked.

Speaker 22 In fact, the case is so one-sided that I don't necessarily think the court, they may, they may just decide to take it right now and to deal with it right now.

Speaker 22 But the court may just decide to let it wait and percolate because

Speaker 22 there's no court in the country who's upheld so far this birthright citizenship order. It's on pause.
It's on hold.

Speaker 22 And so I don't know they may, I don't know that they will even choose to hear it now. They may, I think they'll hear it.
I do think this is what a case that they will hear.

Speaker 22 I just don't know that they're going to hear it now.

Speaker 19 All right, let's do some gambling. I'm giving you six and a half Supreme Court justices as

Speaker 19 rejecting their end to birthright citizenship. Do you think there'll be more than that or less?

Speaker 22 My over under seven.

Speaker 19 You think so? You're expecting seven, too.

Speaker 19 Steal taking over.

Speaker 22 I'm thinking it's seven

Speaker 22 minimum.

Speaker 22 So,

Speaker 22 yeah, it might be, I might even be over under seven and a half, Tim. I'm getting aggressive here.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 19 Well,

Speaker 19 that's good to know. Speaking of the fifth, I guess, on that list of nine, Amy Coney Barrett.
I haven't really talked about this much.

Speaker 19 And she's ruled against the Trump administration on two, frankly, pretty narrow cases.

Speaker 19 You can explain them. They're both 5-4 rulings.
And now

Speaker 19 it just seems like she's enemy number one on my MAGA Twitter feed. So maybe I'm forgetting somebody else.
But you've been following this closer to me.

Speaker 19 Talk to us about what you see happening with Coney Barrett. Is this a broader shift from her? Might she be challenged? Or are these like two pretty narrow cases?

Speaker 22 No, this has been building for a while, Tim.

Speaker 22 So essentially, what happened is there was a little bit of discontent, but it kind of got lost in the maelstrom, the literal maelstrom of January 6th.

Speaker 22 There was a little bit of discontent that you could feel in MAGA that none of the three Trump appointees had helped him out during the election contest, that the Supreme Court was nowhere to be found in helping Donald Trump in the election steal effort in 2020.

Speaker 22 And that would be in deep MAGA. Like deep MAGA was upset that the Trump appointees didn't help.
But then you began to have a series of cases that were decided when Biden was in office

Speaker 22 where MAGA legal initiatives were defeated, were turned back. So voting rights, you had other cases, you know, the independent state legislature theory, various different kinds of cases.

Speaker 22 Barrett was consistently voting with, say, Roberts or Kavanaugh. But then also, interestingly, would write her own opinions that were very independent-minded.

Speaker 22 You could tell that she has her, she's her own person, right?

Speaker 22 So even before now, at the end of last term, last summer, you began to see some pieces circulating in the legal world that were like, Amy Coney Barrett is her own person.

Speaker 22 She's just not automatic, you know, an automatic joiner. And so you began to see that.

Speaker 22 And then it really kicked off just a couple of weeks ago when Roberts and Barrett joined with the three more liberal justices, the three Democratic appointees, to uphold an order that was ordering the Trump administration to disperse about $2 billion

Speaker 22 in aid funds. And so that's what kicked it off.

Speaker 19 And that was the previously appropriated $2 billion, right?

Speaker 22 It wasn't just previously appropriated. It was previously appropriated funds where the work had been completed.
Right. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Okay. So I knew it was.

Speaker 19 So this is so for me, as i'm hopeful i'm always hopeful that people are coming into the light but you know the maga folks are really mad at her over this i'm looking at it i'm like like it's kind of a crazy case that it's five to four at all right like the work had been you know you know i mean like it's such a it's such an obvious yeah yeah situation we should pay the people that did the work uh that had already been appropriated and so i look at it i'm like oh maybe is she just you know, kind of trying to get

Speaker 19 a couple of easy points on the board because there are going to be harder ones ahead where there's going to be more pressure on her. And maybe they don't think like that.
I don't know.

Speaker 19 That's the cynic in me that looked at it from that perspective.

Speaker 22 Well, in defense of the four on that, on that five to four, the case had a little bit few more quirks than a lot was widely reported.

Speaker 22 And one of the quirks was that one entity sued, and I think they were owed, and I may be off on this a little bit, they were owed a few hundred million dollars. Okay.

Speaker 22 The order granted them their money, but it also granted the rest of the $2 billion to other parties who were not parties to the case. Got it.

Speaker 22 Okay, so some of Alito's disagreement and his dissent was related to that point. And I think that's fair.
Sure. I think that's fair.

Speaker 22 Normally, you have to be a party to the case or a member of a class and a class action to receive compensation in a case. And so I do think that there is a fair critique of the five there.

Speaker 22 Being in the four is not some sort of sign that they are in Trump's back pocket.

Speaker 19 Okay. I guess what are we seeing from, you know, going forward? Like, what is your sense now? And we're very early, right?

Speaker 19 Like there's only been a couple of these emergency cases that have risen to SCOTA so far. But like, what's your sense for how they're going to be handling all the things coming down the pike?

Speaker 22 I kind of put what I expect to see from the Supreme Court into three categories, or to use AO, advisory opinions terminology, three buckets, where I think you're going to have to see, at the end of the day, some sort of Supreme Court resolution.

Speaker 22 Like, for example, I think we're going to have to see a Supreme Court resolution on birthright citizenship. And I think it's,

Speaker 22 I'm virtually certain Trump is going to lose that one. I think

Speaker 22 you're going to end up seeing some sort of resolution from the Supreme Court on

Speaker 22 the employment rights of members of the civil service. And so I think you're going to see the Supreme Court there.

Speaker 22 I also think you're going to end up seeing the Supreme Court make definitive rulings maybe on impoundment and the impoundment control, the constitutionality and application of the impoundment control act.

Speaker 22 Also, that's my three. I'll add another bucket or two.
I think you also might very well see the Supreme Court make definitive rulings about independent agencies.

Speaker 22 Under what circumstance can these independent agencies continue to have any sort of autonomy from the rest of the executive branch? I think you're going to see that.

Speaker 22 And then you might see something around some of these college or university cases.

Speaker 19 And which of those buckets do you expect the court to be the most friendly to what Trump and Musk and most of these cases have been doing?

Speaker 22 The independent agencies, I think, is where you're going to see, because it has long been, you know, as a conservative lawyer, old school conservative lawyer, I'm classical liberal conservative lawyer and originalist.

Speaker 22 We've long had beef with the way these independent agencies are structured and run because they're kind of such as explain to listeners which are the independent agencies.

Speaker 22 So for example, when I say an independent agency, that means an agency where the head of the agency is protected in some way from being hired or fired by the president.

Speaker 22 In other words, that there's some tenure or some ability of the agency to have some autonomy from direct

Speaker 22 presidential control. And there have been cases along these lines talking about, wait, no, hold on.
The president runs the executive branch.

Speaker 22 And if this is an executive branch agency, the Congress can't shackle the president too much in how he's able to run the agency. And so that's been a long-running fight.

Speaker 22 In my view, that question is resolved by saying these agencies are part of the executive branch. The president can hire and fire.

Speaker 22 If the Congress doesn't want an agency to be in the executive branch, they can create legislative agencies.

Speaker 22 There are ways to deal with this that are not exactly by placing something within the executive branch.

Speaker 22 So I think that is an area, because this is something that's a legacy legal issue that's been sort of overhanging for decades. That's an area where I see that Trump could win.

Speaker 22 I also think that the employment cases get tricky, Tim. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 19 I was listening to Steve Vladdick with Crystal, with Bill Crystal on this over the weekend, and one of the points he made is like,

Speaker 19 it's kind of related when you think of it as your point about in the USAID case about how some of the money was dispersed to people that weren't actual complainants is that like there's so many, right?

Speaker 19 And so if you can't do a class action, if there are 20,000 of these cases,

Speaker 19 it's not as if there's one ruling and then that is going to apply to everybody else, right? Because there's a lot of the stuff is case by case.

Speaker 19 So, you know, and he was very bearish just on the fact, like on,

Speaker 19 you know, broadly speaking, there'll be specific cases where, you know, the employees win employees' rights cases, maybe many cases, but just about the timing and like the ability to unroll what Elon and Doge has been doing.

Speaker 19 What do you make of that?

Speaker 22 I'm bearish on the real real-world short-term outcome. I'm somewhat more bullish on the longer-term legal outcome.

Speaker 19 So in other words, they'll win their cases eventually.

Speaker 22 Yeah, exactly. So I think there will be cases, especially dealing with lower-level employees.

Speaker 22 If you're a policy-making employee, then the court's going to say that the president has the power to hire and fire you.

Speaker 22 If you're a lower-level employee, I think what you're going to end up seeing is the court saying, no, you know, civil service protection is lawful. It is legal.
You have to comply with it.

Speaker 22 Now, you can fire an employee, a lower-level employee, if they don't do what they're told to do, and it's lawful, but you just can't sort of say, well, the deep state's against me, so I'm getting rid of all of them, right?

Speaker 22 And so I think you'll end up having that. But to get from A to B, you're just going to have an enormous amount of disruption in people's lives, some of which will not be fixed.
by the legal system.

Speaker 22 And you'll have disruption in government that won't be fixed. It's not like you can go back in time and undo the chaos that's happening right now.

Speaker 19 We're probably going to end up having to pay a bunch of people to not work as well, which will be really

Speaker 19 key part of the efficiency and budget balance

Speaker 19 process

Speaker 19 is having to pay a lot of lawyers to defend your illegal firings and then to have to pay the people that you fired illegally to not work.

Speaker 19 That's going to be a really efficient use of government resources.

Speaker 22 Well, I don't know if you saw there's a post.

Speaker 22 Do you follow Jessica Riedel from the Manhattan Institute?

Speaker 19 I do, of course. Yeah.
She was on the Mona Charon podcast maybe a week ago.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I interviewed Jessica about Doge a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 22 Jessica is cutting through the BS on this like nobody else. And there was a post just a day or so ago saying Doge

Speaker 22 may well end up costing the government more money in part because by gutting enforcement and the IRS, that has hundreds of billions of dollars of consequence going down the line.

Speaker 19 And that's in addition to Doge, that you also throw

Speaker 19 what Bondi's doing is DOJ. I mean, I guess I'm interested in your view on this.

Speaker 19 And it sure seems to me like they're gutting big parts of the kind of white-collar, you know, kind of criminal enforcement.

Speaker 19 And so if you add that on top of what you're talking about, like getting rid of IRS enforcement officials, great news for tax cheats, not exactly great for budget balancing.

Speaker 22 Well, here's what's crazy, Tim, because, okay, you can...

Speaker 22 A Trump administration say we're not going to be prosecuting a white collar crime or we're de-emphasizing it or whatever, or it can sort of say, as seems to be happening, like if you're a MAGA businessman right now, it's hard to imagine like an aggressive criminal enforcement against you.

Speaker 19 Yeah, go ham. This is your moment.

Speaker 22 But you know what?

Speaker 22 You don't repeal the law when you don't enforce the law. And a lot of these statutes of limitations will not have run by the time there's a new administration.
You could very well have a situation.

Speaker 22 in which there's this sort of legal holiday, this sort of perceived legal holiday for a few years that really comes back and bites people hard. And that gets to a theme, Tim.

Speaker 19 This is the kind of David French optimism that I bring you to the podcast for, you know, because I don't, it's hard for me to see the silver lining.

Speaker 19 Maybe these white-collar criminals will get theirs in 2029.

Speaker 22 29 is coming, Tim. But this does raise a really interesting point, which is

Speaker 22 these guys are governing like they're never going to lose power.

Speaker 19 Which is ominous. If we had JVL on the podcast with us, if you would ask me to ask you, doesn't that concern you?

Speaker 22 Oh, of course it does. But I think that here's where I think a lot of that's coming from.
So here's a prediction I'm going to make, Tim.

Speaker 22 If the Republican nominee loses in 2028, the Republican Party, many members will not accept the results.

Speaker 19 Oh, I think that's a safe bet. I'm going to make a bold prediction.

Speaker 19 I think that bet's a little safer than the birthright citizenship bet, even. I'll tell you

Speaker 19 your money on that one.

Speaker 22 So my bold prediction. So that's what I think of when I say these guys, that's one aspect of these guys believing that they're not going to ever be out of power.

Speaker 22 They just deny it when they lose often.

Speaker 22 The other element here is it's hard to overstate, and I'm sure you see this kind of in the MAGA circles that you connect with.

Speaker 22 It's hard to overstate the extent of the confidence that they feel that they have cracked the code politically, that 2024 was an absolute massive turning point in American political history.

Speaker 22 I saw a sort of a Christian nationalist figure a day or two ago post that he thinks the the Democratic Party is just going to dissolve, it's going to go away, that it's going to be replaced by the Republican Party is just going to become so big and powerful, it's going to kind of split in two.

Speaker 22 And that's the kind of triumphalism that I see is that essentially we've cracked the code, it's over.

Speaker 22 And so they're running the country like they are the Republicans post-Civil War or they're the New Deal Democrats, that they have generational control is the way they're running the place.

Speaker 19 We're hoping that it's hubris and confidence and not

Speaker 19 just an intention to not give up power again.

Speaker 22 Feels hubristic, but I am very much worried that the major strain is, wait, I don't know about music. I'm about to just totally major chord, minor chord.

Speaker 22 Like the major chord is we're going to win forever because we've cracked the code, but there's a minor chord of...

Speaker 19 We're never going to let them take power again.

Speaker 22 We're never going to let them. Yeah.

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Speaker 19 Speaking of a place where there's a one-party state where they never let people take power again, I wanted to get your take on Ukraine. We have a couple other.

Speaker 19 Here's the state of play as of this morning. Trump sent out this bleat.
We had good conversations with President Putin yesterday, and there's a good chance this will come to the end. But all caps.

Speaker 19 At this very moment, thousands of Ukrainian troops are completely surrounded by the Russian military in a very bad and vulnerable position.

Speaker 19 I have strongly requested President Putin that their lives be spared. We're begging Putin for mercy now as part of the negotiation.

Speaker 22 What do you make of the state of play?

Speaker 19 Oh, man.

Speaker 22 Well, I mean, I don't think there's any question at all that Ukraine faces military challenges, which we exacerbated, by the way.

Speaker 19 Big time.

Speaker 22 Big time. Big time.
But at the same time, Russia is facing massive losses in equipment and personnel.

Speaker 22 So there is a situation where with competent leadership, you might be able to engineer a ceasefire in some way. Both parties are suffering in this war.

Speaker 22 But the problem that you have is when Trump begins to switch over and instead of sort of saying to Putin, this is exactly the time you say to Putin, yeah, Ukrainians are suffering and now we're going to really backstop them.

Speaker 19 Yeah, right.

Speaker 22 Instead, the message has been much more, Ukrainians are suffering and we're going to be, we're going to have an off-on switch on aid. And when I'm ticked at them, the switch turns off.

Speaker 22 And when I'm not angry at them, the switch turns on. And all that tells Vladimir Putin is to keep pushing, to push the troops harder, to push harder and harder.

Speaker 22 And it's deeply demoralizing if you're Ukraine. It's deeply invigorating if you're Russia.
I mean, the dynamic here is unbelievable. But at the same time, at the same time, there is a need

Speaker 22 for serious talks about a ceasefire. They're needed.

Speaker 22 And so we're in this terrible position where we need to have talks about a ceasefire.

Speaker 22 But the most powerful country in the world has essentially switched sides, occasionally dabbles back with Ukraine by by turning intelligence sharing back on. It is an absolute mess, Tim.

Speaker 22 And don't think that Vladimir Putin isn't trying to capitalize this. He's very clever.

Speaker 22 The way he responded to the ceasefire proposal was essentially, well, no, because the proposal doesn't deal with the root causes of the conflict,

Speaker 22 which causes all the Putin-sympathetic people on Twitter to go, yeah, look, Putin wants to deal with the root cause. You know what the root cause is? Your invasion.

Speaker 19 That's the root cause of this war, is you decided decided to invade you being a genocidal maniac actually i want to get to the moscow demands in a second but i just want to reread that sentence one more time in the trump tweet i have strongly requested to president putin that their lives be spared a strong request like we are in the middle of negotiations with them right now how about like demand it's so beta like how about demand I'm demanding that you stop, that you do not do a massacre in Kursk or else we're going to start giving more weapons.

Speaker 19 You know what I mean? Like, there's never any situation where leverage is imposed upon Putin. It's like, please, please, Mr.
Vlad, be nice to the Ukrainians. Can we do a deal?

Speaker 22 Tim, we have to, with eyes open, realize who our enemies are and are not.

Speaker 22 Russia is no Canada.

Speaker 19 Like the real foe.

Speaker 22 I mean, the real foe here. I mean, Trump's got another whole fight on his hands right now.

Speaker 19 Their beady little eyes. Who knows what they could be doing? Crossing the border, that maple syrup.

Speaker 22 Constantly makes my hands sticky at Waffle House.

Speaker 22 Darn you, Canadians. But

Speaker 22 there is a very real trend here, which he is very bullying and aggressive to our friends, our historic friends. He's trying to make them not our friends.

Speaker 22 He's very bullying and aggressive towards our friends, and he's very obsequious in many ways to our foes.

Speaker 22 And to understand, it's not even hard to understand why. I mean, it's really a couple of things happening at once.
One is

Speaker 22 Trump personalizes everything. And he knows that the Europeans did not want him to be president.
He knows Zelensky did not want him to be president. He knows all of these people

Speaker 22 preferred that Kamala Harris would win. And so in his mind, that means that they are in the category of enemy.
And his enemies are America's enemies.

Speaker 22 And then when you add on top of that, that he genuinely at his core is, as we are now seeing, this isn't, you know, it was reading tea leaves in his first first term early.

Speaker 22 Now it's just like reading, you know, dog whistles have become bullhorns, right?

Speaker 22 And he sees himself as that kind of bullying strongman. And so in that circumstance, the way he treats Russia and Ukraine actually has a lot of resonance to how he's treating Canada and Mexico.

Speaker 22 He sees Ukraine through Putin's eyes. a smaller, weaker, neighboring country that I can bully towards my own interests.
He turns to Canada. He looks at Mexico.
That's our Ukraine.

Speaker 22 Smaller countries, less powerful that he can bully. And so he doesn't see anything necessarily.
I mean, remember going back to some of the early invasion, he complimented the brilliance of Putin.

Speaker 22 So he wants the same sort of rights to dominate our neighbors that Putin is exercising through blunt military force.

Speaker 19 I have one more thing on Putin, but just because you brought up the Canadians.

Speaker 19 I was listening to, I don't have the audio, but I was listening to Mark Carney's speech when he kind of accepted becoming the successor to trudeau at the liberal party i had the flu this week and so i was on i was hopped up on meds and it's truly like you're listening to something from another universe like it's like it's this canadian leader talking about how we need to protect ourselves the americans are coming for our way of life you know we need to plan for a future where they are going to be a foe like it's total upside down stuff and like you have like a lot of Republicans going along with like 51st state jokes and all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 22 It's not a joke anymore, Tim.

Speaker 19 And he's a technocrat, so the tone was not, you know, exactly militaristic, but the words were like the kind of words you hear from Estonia

Speaker 19 talking about Russia. And it was like indistinguishable from what you would hear

Speaker 19 from Eastern Europe, a Baltic country talking about Russia. It was just crazy.
Just really quick, one more thing on Russia.

Speaker 19 The demands for the Washington Post, their current demands, territory, Crimea, Sevastopol, Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, the no foreign peacekeepers at all, return of diplomatic missions seized, that we had seized, sanctions relief.

Speaker 19 I mean, you compared this to what the Korean actually armistice actually looked like, and it's not, it's not even, it's nothing like it.

Speaker 22 No, no. Their demands are utterly unacceptable.
Essentially, what they're saying is, oh, great.

Speaker 22 We're going to try to accomplish in the negotiating table what we haven't been able to accomplish on the battlefield. They have been able to take territory, absolutely, at horrifying cost.

Speaker 22 They've been able able to take territory but they know

Speaker 22 they know that if we continue to support ukraine they cannot they may make continued incremental gains but by sometime in late 2025 this year or early 2026 they just won't be able to sustain this level of offensive combat so on the one hand they know they've taken territory but they also know the sands of the hourglass are running out for them and their ability to continue putting all these men and all this material in the meat grinder.

Speaker 22 And so this is exactly the time where you go in and look, I'm also quite realistic. I know the odds of Ukraine taking back that territory are very low.

Speaker 19 Very low.

Speaker 22 This is exactly the time when you come in and you make your own demands because you know the situation Russia is in. And you try to reach something that looks more like that Korean armistice.

Speaker 22 And the thing about the Korean armistice that was so key, were a couple of factors. One, North Korea has no say in South Korean politics.
So South Korea is fully independent, right?

Speaker 22 Putin wants a say, make Zelensky run for election or whatever. Putin wants a say in Ukrainian politics.
Number two, and this is the most important thing, there were security guarantees.

Speaker 22 There were U.S. troops.

Speaker 22 Now, there shouldn't be U.S. troops in Ukraine, I don't believe, not yet.
But France and Britain have already stepped up to say they're troops. They're willing to put their boots on the ground.

Speaker 22 And it's so key it's those two countries because those are the two European countries with their own nuclear deterrent.

Speaker 22 And so if you could have an armistice with French and British troops on the ground, guarantee Ukrainian political independence, that is worth pursuing. That's what you bargain towards.

Speaker 22 You don't preemptively concede all your bargaining chips in the meantime.

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Speaker 19 I don't think we've actually talked, and you were a JAG, about

Speaker 19 what Hag Seth did as far as the firing of the Jags and

Speaker 19 what that kind of means. I just would like to kind of pick your brain on that and see what your reaction was, what the potential implications are.

Speaker 22 Yeah, Hexeth has long had, so you have to look at this in totality. So it's the JAG generals and key leader, you know, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, other key leaders, the JAG generals.

Speaker 22 And the reason why you look at that in total is a couple of things. One, it becomes very clear when you include the JAG generals in the firings.

Speaker 22 This was more of a political purge than a classical military firing, which is for corruption or incompetence. So, you know, all these people who go, hey, you can't criticize Trump for firing generals.

Speaker 22 Presidents have fired generals throughout American history. Well, the pattern has been if they're corrupt or if they have failed on the battlefield.

Speaker 22 So, you know, for example, Abraham Lincoln changed generals like he was changing clothes for a while because they kept losing battles to the Confederate.

Speaker 19 He was trying to win a war.

Speaker 22 He was trying to win a war. Obama fired the general who was running the war in Afghanistan because it wasn't going well.

Speaker 22 And then when he replaced him with Stanley McChrystal, McChrystal's team was insubordinate, openly so. And so

Speaker 22 those are classic reasons why you fire generals. This is, by all appearances, and including the JAG generals, really is the tell here.
It's a political purge. It's a political purge.

Speaker 22 He doesn't like that the chairman of the joint chiefs, for example, put out a short video after the George Floyd murder.

Speaker 22 He has a bone to pick with what he calls the Jagoffs, the JAG Corps, which he thinks is responsible for

Speaker 22 handcuffing warriors in the field. The reality is JAG officers don't make the law.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 22 The law is what the law is. And so what we are is legal advisors.
I say we because I'm a former JAG officer. We're legal advisors who advise commanders of their existing legal obligation.

Speaker 22 We help them accomplish the mission lawfully. So we actually, in many ways, facilitate the American military mission in very important ways.

Speaker 19 Well, I don't think he sees any kind of legal oversight over what the military should do, basically.

Speaker 22 Right, I agree with you. And the other layer to this is, again, if you look at how Trump views himself, he views himself as a Putin figure.
And what do Putin figures demand from their military?

Speaker 22 Political loyalty. If you have political loyalty as a criteria in a military, that's death for the competence of the military.

Speaker 19 We already did DEI, so we can do this quick, but I would be remiss not to mention a task and purpose article out about Arlington Cemetery.

Speaker 19 Arlington Cemetery's public website has scrubbed dozens of pages on grave sites and educational materials, including histories of prominent black, Hispanic, and female service members, along with educational material and dozens of Medal of Honor recipients and maps of prominent grave sites of Marine Corps veterans and other services.

Speaker 19 Cemetery officials confirmed that these pages were unpublished to meet recent orders by Trump and Hegseth. And this is insane.
Like somebody wants to go to Arlington Cemetery and they had resources.

Speaker 19 It was like, I want to see the most prominent

Speaker 19 women

Speaker 19 battlefield officers and I want to look at the map so I can go to their graves and honor them. And now we've erased that.

Speaker 22 Yeah. I mean, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about what is, quote, DEI.

Speaker 22 It's funny how many people will send you a note online and say, DEI is illegal.

Speaker 19 What?

Speaker 22 No.

Speaker 22 There are circumstances where explicit race-based preferences are illegal, but DEI, in other words, like acknowledging the accomplishments of women and of black citizens, of Latino citizens, I mean, that is not illegal.

Speaker 22 And I'm going to have to upgrade my definition of DEI or woke. It used to be anything one millimeter to the left of MAGA would be DEI or woke.

Speaker 22 Now it is not just, as you were saying, it's not nothing to do with the spectrum at all anymore.

Speaker 22 It is anything that acknowledges, not just on a spectrum of left-right views of race, it's now getting towards anything that acknowledges that America is this diverse country with diverse communities.

Speaker 22 That is now

Speaker 22 out.

Speaker 19 We can't honor black soldiers. I guess they were suckers and losers.
I don't know. But it's just, it is, it is crazy.
That's America first. That's patriotism now.
It's pretty sick stuff.

Speaker 19 All right, I want to close with just some brief economy talk. The tariffs, I felt like this was right in your wheelhouse a couple areas.

Speaker 19 You know, it's going after economic conservatism, but it is coming from a former Republican congressman that is now a Liberty vice president. So, you know, somebody who should really understand

Speaker 19 the Bible. Let's listen to Dave Bratt give us a little religious lesson on why these tariffs are great.

Speaker 24 Economic analyst David Bratt says tariffs aren't preferable, but they are necessary.

Speaker 22 Trump's going for reciprocity, which is basically the the golden rule.

Speaker 22 Whatever you do to us, we're going to do to you.

Speaker 19 Is that the golden rule? It's been a little bit for me since I've been in Catholic school.

Speaker 19 Was that the golden rule? No, no, no.

Speaker 22 That's Lex Talionis, eye for an eye. Like, that's not the golden rule.
And this is, you know, a senior leader at...

Speaker 22 one of the largest Christian universities in the United States that's become, but that's MAGA theology right there.

Speaker 19 That's not like a deep cut, actually.

Speaker 19 It's one thing, you know,

Speaker 19 you can let them loose if they, you know, if they miss something from Paul to the Ephesians, you know, if there was an Old Testament deep cut that they had forgot, this was, it's kind of, kind of, you know, one of the kindergarten level

Speaker 19 Christian theology.

Speaker 22 Yeah, yeah. This is, this is something, and you don't just have to know about sort of Christian theology.

Speaker 22 The golden rule, you know, sort of do unto others as you would have done unto yourself, or love your neighbor as yourself, sort of that formulation is kind of a common theme from a lot of religious perspectives.

Speaker 22 And so this idea that he would mistake I for an I for the golden rule is amazing stuff.

Speaker 19 All right.

Speaker 19 The economy itself also seems very shaky. I'm curious your take, but I want to close before we get your final word on this.

Speaker 19 I want to hear from the vice president that he had an interesting explanation about where he thinks we are economically with Laura Ingram last night.

Speaker 20 Can you rule out a recession, even a temporary one?

Speaker 25 Well, look,

Speaker 25 you never can predict the future, but I think the economy, the fundamentals of the economy are actually quite strong right now. And we'll see how this unfolds, Laura.

Speaker 25 But I think that by inducing more businesses to invest in American workers, by reshoring some of those critical supply chains, we are going to make this economy stronger over the long haul.

Speaker 19 I have to admit, I'm a little bit confused. I don't know how the fundamentals can be strong when the Biden administration ruined the economy and

Speaker 19 we're in a Biden recession.

Speaker 22 And now they've only been in for two months and every economic indicator has gotten worse since biden left but yet the fundamentals are strong i don't know what the fundamentals are that he's referring to there look everything good is trump's responsibility everything bad is biden's fault tim okay that's easy like let's just understand this and so if you have a long-term concern that's all going to be good because trump is in charge If you have a short-term alarm, that's all fine because that's Biden's fault.

Speaker 19 Which fundamentals are we talking about there, though? The fundamentals. Are dribbling? The fundamentals.

Speaker 19 It's the fundamentals, Tim.

Speaker 22 Everybody knows the fundamentals. One thing that I look at when I'm looking at, okay, is something happening that is sort of unique to American political circumstances versus part of bigger trends?

Speaker 22 Because we do live in an interconnected world, interconnected economies. Sure.
What is, say, our stock market doing compared to other stock markets in peer countries?

Speaker 22 And if they're having big downturns while we're having big downturns, maybe there's something really deep and systemic. But what we're seeing right now is this stock market correction

Speaker 22 that is unique to America in the moment.

Speaker 19 The Spanish stock market is crushing it. That's that halcyon place of free markets and economic growth, Spain.
They're crushing us right now in the market.

Speaker 22 So you are seeing some America-specific things that

Speaker 22 you can watch in real time be tied to Donald Trump's actions and statements. And Trump knows this better than anybody because it's one of the reasons why he keeps yanking back the tariffs.

Speaker 22 He'll impose them and the market goes down. He's like, because he sees the market is sort of like his only focus group that he pays attention to.

Speaker 22 But if it keeps going down, he'll have to tell MAGA to stop paying attention to it. But we know in the short term, he has paid close attention to market moves.

Speaker 22 And we also know in the short term that the market has moved as a direct result of his actions. You can see it.
right in front of your face.

Speaker 22 You know, I think Vance is right to sort of say, look, long term, we don't know how things are going to shake out. And a lot of that is because the American economy has its own independent strength.

Speaker 22 We often overestimate the influence of presidents on the economy. We're always overestimating.
So the American economy is kind of a wonder all its own.

Speaker 22 The economist wrote about this in the run-up to the 2024 election, that the American economy in 2024 was kind of the wonder of the world.

Speaker 22 Like the rest of the developed world was saying, how are you guys doing this?

Speaker 22 And so there are some elements of the American economy that I think are just very, very strong that are not directly related to who's in Washington.

Speaker 22 But to the extent that who's in Washington matters to the economy, and it ultimately does a lot, what's happening right now is entirely negative in my view.

Speaker 19 And totally unnecessary and his fault, Randall. It's kind of like, to me, it's like America is the wonder of the world.

Speaker 19 It's the wonder of Trump that he's managed to have this much of a negative impact in six weeks. And it's crazy.

Speaker 22 Well, and look at his targets. His main targets have not been the countries

Speaker 22 that are our chief manufacturing, say, competitors.

Speaker 22 The Canadian manufacturing base is not what's like gutted the heartland.

Speaker 19 And he's also saying we're going to stop giving the funds for the chips plants. We're not doing any manufacturing stuff.
I keep saying this.

Speaker 19 You can imagine a different Trump term where he's just out there doing ribbon cuttings and getting rich guys to say they're going to invest in factories and places.

Speaker 19 And it's like, he's not doing any of that. Anyway.
All right. I lied.
I had one last thing for you. Have you looked at the standings lately? I have.

Speaker 19 We might be staring down a second-round matchup between the Grizzlies and the Nuggets.

Speaker 22 I have been looking at the standings. And

Speaker 22 let me just say, I don't love that matchup for the Grizzlies.

Speaker 19 Well, as long as we avoid the Timberwolves in the first round, I'd be okay with the Grizzlies matchup. But okay, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we're just going to keep our eye on it.

Speaker 19 And maybe, I don't know, maybe I'll pop up to Memphis or maybe a live stream, maybe a live stream together. We'll see how it goes.

Speaker 22 If the confrontation goes down, we got to do something about it, Tim. There's got to be a bat.
There's got to be something because I'm going to back my grizzlies to the hill.

Speaker 19 We'll figure it out. We'll keep an eye on it.
David French, thank you so much as always for coming on the podcast. Everybody else, have a wonderful March weekend.

Speaker 19 We'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Peace.

Speaker 19 it's a cold cold world

Speaker 19 It's a cold cold world

Speaker 19 How can we stop the changes going in America today?

Speaker 19 Come back

Speaker 19 Come back to the golden rule

Speaker 19 Come back

Speaker 19 Come back to the golden rule.

Speaker 19 Round and round the streets we go.

Speaker 19 Still seeing the same old pain.

Speaker 19 They still keep building more prisons

Speaker 19 to take our kids away.

Speaker 19 why can't we show more love

Speaker 19 to make this a better day?

Speaker 19 Go back,

Speaker 19 go back to the golden rule.

Speaker 19 Go back,

Speaker 19 come back to the golden rule.

Speaker 19 The golden rule

Speaker 19 is love, my brother.

Speaker 19 The golden rule

Speaker 19 and love my brother

Speaker 19 Now you know what I'm talking about

Speaker 19 Now you feel my heart

Speaker 19 And know I'm for real

Speaker 19 Look into your souls and know that the truth is lying The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown

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S2 Ep1000: David French: Trump Admits He's Violating the Constitution

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