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

Hello and welcome to the Bullard 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.
Here's the state of play as we tape this on Friday morning. The Senate will vote this afternoon to overcome a filibuster of the House's continuing resolution, which funds the federal government through September 30th.
Schumer

Schumer

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. And then presumably Republicans would pass it without any Democratic votes.
Here's the most generous spin on this before I start ranting. 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. I want to say, even if you

grant that, right? Even if you grant that the end of this process was going to be some kind of fold,

because there was no way to actually stop Muskk's reign of terror with only 47 senators even if you acknowledge that that there wasn't a real end game for schumer to stop the horribleness that we are all experiencing 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 he could have held an actual filibuster today on the senate floor on behalf of veterans jobs 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. He could have said that he's going to hold up all the nominees.
Dr. Oz is supposed to be confirmed today.
He could have said he's going to hold up all the nominees as long as Elon Musk continues to illegally fire government workers.

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 about actually appropriating the funds that Congress has approved. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not co-kings.
You can make them negotiate. Force them, force Donald Trump to negotiate with you.
Bring him to the table. The era of letting Republicans break all the rules, not follow any of the laws, run roughshod over the Democrats, while the Democrats continue to just try to protect every possible existing norm and institution, that era is over.
Okay? 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.
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, you know, 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.
Don't be a participant in the chaos they're creating. 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.
And we're already seeing that online right now. There's already a discussion of AOC primary, Chuck.
There is enraged members of Congress. I've been hearing from them.
We've been seeing it publicly. 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. They want someone that's going to actually do something.
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, 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? I don't know anybody who does.
This thing can't wait for a primary until 2028. The Democrats need leaders that are up for this moment right now.
The time for Chuck Schumer to pass the torch is right now. And 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. We'll see how the vote shakes out tonight ahead of the shutdown deadline.
In the meantime, I want to bring in a guest to talk about all of the illegality that these guys need to be fighting. He's the opinion columnist for the New York Times.
He's also co-host of the legal podcast, Advisory Opinions. He served as an army lawyer in the JAG Corps during the Iraq war.
It's David French. Hey, David, welcome back to the show.
Tim, always great to see you. All right.
We've got Advisory Opinions Legal Potpourri here to start with. I'm going to let you pick.
Free speech issues, Khalil, Georgetown.

We've got Trump asking to go to send birthright citizenship today.

Perkins Coy.

We've got Amy Coney Barrett.

Mag is pissed at her.

Are there any legal remedies to what's happening with Elon and Doge,

illegally firing people?

We've got the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 coming soon.

What has your hackles up the most out of that list?

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. And, you know, Tim, it's just kind of funny that the 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. Just unbelievable stuff unfolding.
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.
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. 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.
A case is a really big overstatement to call it that. But even still, again, the fact that it is the acting US attorney threatening a private school is pretty jarring and is the type of thing that 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.
You know, Tim, there are so many incidents in the last 10 years, you know, since Trump came down the escalator, where he does exactly the thing that a lot of conservatives were warning the government might do in the future, right? Except it's coming from the Republican president. No Sharia law, yes.
No Sharia law. Who knows what the rest of the term will hold.
The feds are going to try to dictate your curriculum. They're going to try to dictate higher education.
You know, like this kind of thing has been something that conservatives have been worried about for a while. And Georgetown, Georgetown is just particularly egregious, Tim.
I mean, but it's egregious in much the same way so many other things are egregious. So it begins with this letter from Ed Martin, who's the acting or interim U.S.
attorney in D.C. 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? Anyway, it has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach and promote DEI.
This is unacceptable. 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.
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. 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. 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. So if you celebrate the achievements of women in science or sports or whatever, that's DEI.
If you celebrate the achievements of a black athlete or scholar or thinker or pilot or war hero, that's DEI. It's all, everything one ounce, millimeter to the left is DEI.
And left isn't even right, like the right, like, you know, who knows? We don't even have a spectrum anymore. But just any like minimal acknowledgement, right? I mean, like the type of

stuff that schools were just trying to do when they were making sure that the curriculum was

not just all old white guys, right? I mean, that was not even really a partisan kind of thing

initially. I mean, in their view, it's even evidence of quote DEI when they see that somebody's

black or a woman being hired. Right.
Or having a job. I mean, this is the kind of thing that, you know,

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we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, evidence of quote DEI when they see that somebody's black or a woman being hired right 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 the pilot or the driver or whatever of 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. 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.
That's just free speech right there, teaching and promoting. 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? Again, this is about expression, Tim.
It's just about expression. And then he says that nobody who is affiliated with a law school or universities that continues to teach or utilize DEI will be considered for their fellows program, a summer internship or employment.
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. 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.
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. We could literally talk about how bad this case is for an hour, but it's just one instance.
Man, there's nothing but uncertainty right now out there.

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Politics, culture, you name it, we're talking about it and we're keeping it 100% real right here on the Michael Steele Podcast. I'm Michael Steele.
I'm the host of the Michael Steele Podcast. Each week, I'm having conversations with political analysts, writers, and activists who aren't afraid to shake things up a little bit like yours truly.
It doesn't matter if you're on the left, the right, or somewhere in that strong middle. This is the space you want to be in because we cut through the noise and hit the heart of the issue.
Oh, and we're definitely going to have some fun while we do it. So grab that drink, hit play, settle back, and let's get into it.
Catch the Michael Steele Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast groove on. The highest profile instance this week is the case of Makamut Khalil, which we talked about a bunch yesterday with Sam Stein.
But I'm wondering where you fall on this because, you know, obviously there's a free speech element to it, of course. Is there a First Amendment element to it? Is I guess maybe a little grayer, but how do you kind of assess the case? So this case really does kind of hit all the parts of the First Amendment.
You know, so you're talking about free speech, you're talking about freedom of association, you're talking about religious free exercise, you're talking about the full spectrum of First Amendment rights at Georgetown. Go to Perkins Coie, which I haven't even gotten into Perkins Coie.
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 law firm, from employment in the federal government. Why? Why? Because they represented Democrats and were opposed to Donald Trump.
I mean, so 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. 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 Coie.
It's because you engaged in these constitutionally protected legal and political activities. And Perkins Coie, 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, there's just something about my eyes where it just looks like it should be Coal and I don't see the little spot between the line and the dot. I think Bill Crystal said Perkins Coie 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 on Morning Joe on this. I just wanted to have you kind of elaborate on this case.
Yeah. Because 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.
This seems to be the rare instance where the administration is saying, no, yeah, no, that's what we're doing. Like we are, we are targeting them.
This is a, this is political targeting and we're trying to silence and punish a foe for political reasons. Yeah.
Yeah. So I said this on morning, Joe, because it is such a gobsmacking element of this case.
So I, I litigated, as I said, 20 plus years in higher education and other places where I was litigating these cases that were

First Amendment retaliation cases.

And in 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.

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.

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, 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 these Democratic clients 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 DC white shoe 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.
But there are actual Americans that need the services of firms like Perkins Coie that are going to be conceivably hurt by this, right? Like it's two of the big law firms. There are only so many lawyers that, you know, have the security clearances that have the experience of the expertise in these types of cases, right? I mean, like, don't you think that there's actual harm potentially even beyond just the law firm itself? Oh, for sure.
I mean, you make it very difficult. Let's put it this way.
Let's suppose you're somebody who is a dissenter or a whistleblower in the Trump administration and you're looking for legal representation. So, if the order against Perkins Cooey would be allowed to stand, you couldn't go to Perkins Cooey.
have other firms that are now- Can't go to Covington. Covington and Burling.
Are they going to work with you after what's happened to them, revocation of their security clearances? 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? And so, I will fully acknowledge it.
A lot of of elements of Donald Trump are he's incompetent and ignorant in a lot of areas. But after we've watched 10 years of him dominate the American political scene, you can't say the man isn't politically shrewd.
And one thing that he does that is very politically shrewd is he picks the right targets. 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.
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.
I'm sure we'll end up talking some about Mahmoud Khalil in Colombia. Let's just do it right now.
Yeah, let's go right to that. 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 at Colombia.
Some of the groups he was belonged to were actively sort of pro-Hamas. You know, the campments in Colombia were uniquely terrible, more so than many other universities.
They had a takeover of Hamilton Hall, you know, an illegal takeover of Hamilton Hall. 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.
And not an American citizen. I need a legal green card holder on top of that.
Yeah. 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.
And she said something that I think is really, really important. One of the things that made the Red Scare sustainable for so long was the targets.
they were targeting communism at the height of the cold war okay well a communist or somebody who has 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 and so that helped sustain this sort of frenzy in american life for years and years. 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.
Like, I can't think of a single thing Mahmoud Khalil has said about the Middle East. I mean, there are a few things he said that I, when he condemns anti-Semitism, obviously, I agree with that.

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

I thought the 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.
I disagree with Mahmoud Khalil. But also, know the constitutional issues that are at stake and you defend the constitution, not through the popular voices, because they don't need defense.
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.
Yeah. I mean, to me also, like the treatment of Khalil, the fact that he has been sent across the country, he's being held here in Louisiana, he's like shackled in the ICE detention center where his wife is pregnant.
I just, I'm sorry, you know, even if you thought, and I guess, 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 yeah that he doesn't that 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 i think they're making the weakest form of what could be a strong argument imaginable okay 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 then they're golden that's not what they did here what they did here in part part that's not what they did here because at least at this point there's no evidence of that right like i mean no evidence so you would think that they would have shared right there's no evidence of it as yet and 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 yeah learn later he's here on he's here with a 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.
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.
They said specifically, actually, to the free press, they gave a statement to the free press that said they don't have to. Exactly.
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, you know, the foreign policy of the United States. There's no reasons listed for that, it's just the conclusion.
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 US and engage in disruptive protest. Now, 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 and not because he's engaged in any illegal activity at all which 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 this is the other thing like what is the rationale for detaining him at all like forget for sending him across the country to louisiana to have him detained and put in a detention center right like if you took them with their word that they believe the state department believes that marco can decide you know based on you, whatever the judgment of the Secretary of State that a screen card holder is a threat to national security.
And that person challenges it in court. Like there's no imminent threat.
There's no like, what is the purpose of detain? Like, what are you worried about that he's going to run away? 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, right? 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. I mean, 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. 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? 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 yeah 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 uh they're bringing the tate brothers back in to the united states so the tate brothers yeah these guys are grotesque anti-Semites, just grotesque.
It's not even, 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, like this person, Kingsley Wilson, who's the deputy press secretary in the department of defense.
Yeah. I was just going to bring this up.
Kathy Young wrote about her this week. He nominated a guy named Amir Ghalib to be impastor of Kuwait.
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,ined 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. And you can do this all day in the larger right.
I mean, look at what Joe Rogan has been doing with some of his recent guests, Candace Owens. Trump dined with Nick Fuente.
I mean, you can just do this all day long. We can do it all day long.
And unfortunately, we have much more to do the rest of this day. So we'll leave that part there.
So as I mentioned, Trump is asking SCOTUS, there's an emergency appeal. Maybe that's a charm of a heart.
I don't understand what the emergency is to end birthright citizenship.

There's no chance this is going anywhere, right?

Please tell me there's no chance.

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 they said that Trump executive order.

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. It's been a long time.
It's been a long time. Yeah.
But I would be completely, utterly shocked. 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.
But the court may just decide to let it wait and percolate because there's no, there's no court in the country who's upheld so far this birthright citizenship order. It's on pause, it's on hold.
And so I don't know they may, I don't know that they'll 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. I just don't know that they're choose to hear it now.
I think they'll hear it. I do think this is a case

that they will hear. I just don't know that they're going to hear it now.
All right, let's do some

gambling. I'm giving you six and a half Supreme Court justices as rejecting their end to birthright

citizenship. Do you think there'll be more than that or less? Am I over under seven?

You're expecting seven too? Still taking over. I'm thinking it's seven minimum.
So yeah, I might even be over under seven and a half, Tim. I'm getting aggressive here.
Okay. All right.
Well, 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. And she's ruled against the Trump administration on two, frankly, pretty narrow cases.
You can explain them. But they're both 5-4 rulings.
And now it 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. Talk to us about what you see happening with Coney Barrett.
Is this a broader shift from her? Or are these like two pretty narrow cases? No, this has been building for a while, Tim. 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.

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.

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, where MAGA legal initiatives were defeated, were turned back. So voting rights, you had other cases, you know, the independent state legislature theory, the various different kinds of cases.
Barrett was consistently voting with, say, Roberts or Kavanaugh, but then also, interestingly, would write her own opinions that were very independent minded. You could tell that she has her, she's her own person, right? 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.
She is just not an automatic joiner. And so you began to see that.
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 in aid funds. And so that's what kicked it off.
And that was the previously like appropriated to two billion dollars right it wasn't just previously appropriated it's previously appropriated funds where the work had been completed right okay yeah okay so i know so this is so for me as i'm hopeful i'm always hopeful that people are coming into a light but you know the mega folks are really mad. 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 what I mean? Like it's such a, it's such a obvious situation. We should pay the people that did the work that had already been appropriated.
And so I look at it and I'm like, Oh, maybe is she just, you know, kind of trying to get 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. That's the cynic in me that looked at it from that perspective.
Well, in defense of the four on that five to four, the case had a little bit, a few more quirks than a lot was widely reported. And one of the quirks was that one entity sued, and I they were owed and i may be off on this a little bit they were owed a few hundred million dollars okay the order granted them their money but it also granted the rest of the two billion to other parties who were not parties to the case got it okay so some of alito's disagreement in his descent was related to that point.
And I think that's fair. I think that's Got it.
critique of the five there. Being in the four is not some sort of sign that they are in Trump's back pocket.
Okay. I guess what are we seeing from, you know, going forward? Like, what is your sense now? I know we're very early, right? Like there's only been a couple of these emergency cases that have risen to SCOTUS so far, but like, what's your sense for how they're going to be handling all the things coming down the pike.

I kind of put what I expect to see from the Supreme Court into three categories, or to use 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. Like, for example, I think we're going to have to see a Supreme Court resolution on birthright citizenship.
And I think it's, I'm virtually certain Trump is going to lose that one.

I think you're going to have to see a Supreme Court resolution on birthright citizenship. And I think it's, I'm virtually certain Trump is going to lose that one.
I think you're going to have, you're going to end up seeing some sort of resolution on, from the Supreme Court on the employment rights of members of the civil service. And so I think you're going to see the Supreme Court there.
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. 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. 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.
And then you might see something around some of these college or university cases. And which of those buckets do you expect the court to be the most friendly to what Trump and Musk in most of these cases have been doing? 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.
We've long had beef with the way these independent agencies are structured and run because they're kind of- Like such as, explain to listeners, like, which are the independent agencies? So, for 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 in other words that there's some tenure or some ability of the agency to have some autonomy from direct you know presidential control and there have been cases along these lines talking about, wait, no, hold on. The president runs the executive branch.
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.
In my view, that question is resolved by saying these agencies are part of the executive branch.

The president can hire and fire if the Congress doesn't want an agency to be in the executive branch.

They can create legislative agencies.

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

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.
I also think that the employment cases get tricky, Tim. Yeah, it's interesting.
I was listening to Steve Vladek with Crystal, with Bill Crystal on this over the weekend. And one of the points he made is like, it's kind of related.
I mean, you think of it as your point about in the USAID case about how, you know, some of the money was dispersed to people that weren't actual complainants. Is that like, there's so many, right? And so if you can't do a class action, if there are 20,000 of these cases, like the amount, you know, 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 this stuff is case by case.
So, you know, he was very bearish just on the fact like on, 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. What do you make of that? I'm bearish on the real world short term outcome.
I'm somewhat more bullish on the longer term legal outcome. So in other words, they'll win their cases eventually.
Yeah, exactly. So I think there will be cases, especially dealing with lower level employees.
If you're a policy making employee, then then the's going to say that the president has the power to hire and fire you. Yeah.
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. 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 can't sort of say, well, the deep state's against me, so I'm getting rid of all of them, right? 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. 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. We're probably going to end up having to pay a bunch of people to not work as well, which is a really key part of the efficiency and budget balancing process, is having to pay a lot of lawyers to defend your illegal firings, then to have to pay the people that you fired illegally to not work.

That's going to be, that's a really efficient use of government research.

Well, I don't know if you saw there as a post.

Do you follow Jessica Riedel from the Manhattan Institute?

I do, of course.

Yeah, she was on the Mona Charan podcast maybe a week ago.

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

Jessica is cutting through the BS on this like nobody else. and there was a post just a day or so ago saying doge may well end up costing the government more money in part because by gutting enforcement in the irs that has hundreds of billions of dollars of consequence going down the line and that's in addition to doge it's that you also throw throw what Bondi's doing, the DOJ.
I mean, I guess I'm interested in your view on this. And it sure seems to me like they're gutting big parts of the kind of white collar, kind of criminal enforcement.
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.

Well, here's what's crazy, Tim, because, okay, you can, a Trump administration say,

we're not going to be prosecuting white collar crime, or we're deemphasizing 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. Yeah, go ham.
This is your moment. But you know what? 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 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. This is the kind of David French optimism that I bring you to the podcast for, you know, because it's hard for me to see the silver lining.
Maybe these white collar criminals will get there in 2029. 2029 is coming, Tim.
But this does raise a really interesting point, which is

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

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?

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. If the Republican nominee loses in 2028, the Republican Party, many members will not accept the results.
Oh, I think that's a safe bet. I'm going to make a bold prediction.
I think that bet's a little safer than the birthright citizenship bet even. I'll take it.
Easier money on that one. 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. They just deny it when they lose often.
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.
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. I saw a sort of a Christian nationalist figure a day or two ago post that he thinks 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.
And that's the kind of triumphalism that I see is that essentially, we've cracked the code, it's over. 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.
We're hoping that it's hubris and confidence and not just an intention to not give up power again. 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.
Like the major chord is we're going to win forever because we've cracked the code, but there's a minor chord of, we're never going to let them take power. We're never going to let them.
Yeah. 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, here's the state of play as of this morning. Trump sent out this bleat.
We have good conversations with president Putin yesterday and there's a good chance this will come to the end but all caps at this very moment thousands of ukrainian troops are completely surrounded by the russian military in a very bad and vulnerable position i have strongly requested president putin that their lives be spared we're begging putin for mercy now as part of negotiation. What do you make of the state of play?

Oh, man. Well, I mean, I don't think there's any question at all that Ukraine faces military challenges, which we exacerbated, by the way.
Big time. Big time.
Big time. But at the same time, Russia is facing massive losses in equipment and personnel.
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.
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. Yeah, right.
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.
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.
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 for serious talks about a ceasefire.
They're needed. And so we're in this terrible position where we need to have talks about a ceasefire.
But the most powerful country in the world has essentially switched sides, occasionally dabbles back with Ukraine by turning intelligence sharing back on. It is an absolute mess, Tim.
And don't think that Vladimir Putin isn't trying to capitalize this. He's very clever.
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, 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 your invasion that's the root cause of this war is you 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 fleet 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 gonna start giving more weapons you know what i mean like there's never any situation where leverage is imposed upon putin it's like please please mr please, Mr.
Vlad, be nice to the Ukrainians. Can we do a deal? Tim, we have to, with eyes open, realize who our enemies are and are not.
Russia is no Canada. Oh, right.
You're the real foe. I mean, the real foe here.
I mean, Trump's got another whole fight on his hands right now. Their beady little eyes.
Who knows be doing crossing the border that maple syrup constantly makes my hand sticky at waffle house you darn you canadians but the the 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 he's very bullying and aggressive our friends. And he's very obsequious in many ways to our foes.
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 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 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. And then when you add on top of that, that he genuinely, at his core, as we are now seeing, this isn't, you know,

it was reading tea leaves in his first term early.

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

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. 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. 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. So, he wants the same sort of rights to dominate our neighbors that Putin is exercising through blunt military force.
I have one more thing on Putin, but just because you brought up the Canadians. I was listening to, I don't have the audio, but I was listening to a Mark Carney 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 hopped up on meds, and it's truly like you're listening to something from another universe. I guess it's like 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're going to be a, 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.
It's not a joke anymore, Tim. And he's a technocrat.
So the tone was not, you know, exactly militaristicistic but the words were like the kind of words you hear from estonia talking about talking about russia and it was like indistinguishable from what you would hear it's crazy from eastern europe a baltic country talking about russia it's just it is just crazy just really quick one more thing on russia the demands for the washington post their current demands territory crimea sevastopol karekzstan, Donetsk, Luhansk, the no foreign peacekeepers at all, return of diplomatic missions seized, that we had seized, sanctions relief. I mean, you compared this to what the Korean armistice actually looked like, and it's nothing like it.
No, no. Their demands are utterly unacceptable.
Essentially Essentially what they're saying is, oh, great. 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. They've been able to take territory.
But they know, 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. 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. Yeah.
Very low. This is exactly the time when you come in and you make your own demands because you know the situation Russia is is in right and you try to reach something that looks more like that korean armistice 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 putin wants to say make zelinski run for election or whatever putin wants to say in Ukrainian politics, number two, and this is the most important thing.
There were security guarantees. There were US troops.
Now there shouldn't be US troops in Ukraine. I don't believe, not yet, but France and Britain have already stepped up to say their troops.
They're willing to put their boots on the ground. And it's so key it's those two countries because those are the two European countries with their own nuclear deterrent.
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.
You don't preemptively concede all your bargaining chips in the meantime i don't think we've actually talked and you were a jag about what hexeth did as far as the firing of the jags and what that what that kind of means i just would like to kind of pick your brain on that and see what your what your reaction was what the potential implications are yeah hex 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.
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 that this was a 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 presidents of fire generals throughout american history well the pattern has been if they're corrupt or if they have failed on the battlefield.
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 army. He's trying to win a war.
He's trying to win a war. Obama fired the general who was running the war in Afghanistan because it wasn't going well.
And then when he replaced him with Stanley McChrystal, McChrystal's team was insubordinate, openly so. And so, those are classic reasons why you fire generals.
This is, by all appearances, including the JAG generals, really is the tell here. It's a political purge.
It's a political purge. He doesn't like that the chairman and the Joint Chiefs, for example, put out a short video after the George Floyd murder.
He has a bone to pick with what he calls the JAG-offs, the JAG Corps, which he thinks is responsible for handcuffing warriors in the field. The reality is JAG officers don't make the law.
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.
We help them accomplish the mission lawfully. So we actually, in many ways, facilitate the American military mission in very important ways.
Well, I don't think he sees any kind of legal oversight over what the military should do, basically. 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? Political loyalty. If you have political loyalty as a criteria in a military, that's death for the competence of the military.
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. Arlington Cemetery's public website has scrubbed dozens of pages on grave sites and educational materials, include histories of prominent Black, Hispanic, and female 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 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 you know they know, they had resources.
It was like, I want to see the most prominent, you know, women, you know, battlefield officers. And I want to look at the map so I can go to their graves and honor them.
And like now we've, we've erased that. Yeah.
I mean, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about what is quote DEI. It's funny how many people will send you a note online and say, DEI is illegal.
What? No. 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.
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.
Now it is not just, as you were saying, it's not nothing to do with the spectrum at all anymore. It is anything that acknowledges, not just on a spectrum of left to right views of race, it's now getting towards anything that acknowledges that America is this diverse country with diverse communities.
That is now. Ow.
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.
All right. I want to close with this, some brief economy talk.
The tariffs, I feel like this is right in your wheelhouse, a couple of areas. 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 faith in the Bible. Let's listen to Dave Bratt give us a little religious lesson on why these tariffs are great.
Economic analyst David Bratt says tariffs aren't preferable, but they are necessary. Trump's going for reciprocity, which is basically the golden rule.
Whatever you do to us, we're going to do to you. Is that the golden rule? It's been a little bit for those since I've been in Catholic school.
No. Was that the golden rule? No, no, no.
That's Lex Talionis, eye for an eye. Like, that's not the golden rule.
And this is, you know, a senior leader at one of the largest Christian universities in the United States that's become, but that's MAGA theology right there. That's not like a deep cut, actually.
It's one thing, you know, 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, you know, one of the kindergarten level Christian theology.

Yeah, yeah.

This is something, and you don't just have to know about sort of Christian

theology, 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. And so, this idea that he would mistake eye for an eye for the golden rule is amazing stuff.
All right. 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. I want to hear from the vice president that he had an interesting explanation about where he thinks we are economically with Laura Ingraham last night.
Can you rule out a recession, even a temporary one? Well, look,

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.
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.

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 we're in a Biden recession.
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. Which fundamentals are we talking about? The fundamentals.
Like our dribbling? The fundamentals. Bounce passing is still strong? It's the fundamentals, Tim.
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? Because we do live in an interconnected world, interconnected economies.
What is, say, our stock market doing compared to other stock markets in pure countries? 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 that is unique to America in the moment.
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.

So you are seeing some America-specific things that 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. Right.
He'll impose them and the market goes down. He's like, cause he sees the market is sort of like his only focus group that he pays attention to.
But if it keeps going down, he'll, 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
Like the rest of the developed world was saying, how are you guys doing this? 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. 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.
And totally unnecessary and his fault, Randall. To me, it's like America's the wonder of the world.
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.
Well, and look at his targets. His main targets have not been the countries, you know, that are our chief manufacturing,

say, competitors, you know, that are our chief manufacturing, say, competitors. You know, the Canadian manufacturing base is not what's like gutted the heartland.
You know, this is, what are we doing here? 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, like 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 and it's like he's not doing any of that anyway all right i lied i had one last thing for you you looked at the standings lately i have we might be staring down a second round matchup between the grizzlies and the nuggets i have been looking at the standings and and let me just say i don't love that matchup for the Grizzlies 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 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 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 hilt.

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.
We'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Peace.
round and round the world we go again

where we stop

nobody knows

it's a cold, cold world It's a cold, cold world How can we stop the changes Going in America today Come back

Come back to the Golden Rule

Come back

Come back to the Golden Rule Oh, my.

Round and round the streets we go Still seem the same old pain

They still keep building more prisons

To take our kids away

Why can't we show more love to make this a better day Oh, oh, oh Go back Go back to the golden rule

Go back, go back to the golden rule

The golden rule is love my brother. The golden rule is love my sister.
Now you know what I'm talking about Now you feel my heart

And know I'm for real

Look into your heart and know I'm for real.

Look into your souls

and know that the truth is lies.

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing

by Jason Brown.