Melissa Murray and John Avlon: The Dark Legal Clouds Ahead

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We've got a double today. We've got a bonus segment in segment two with John Avalon, who's got a new podcast with us.
So stick around for that. But first, she's a law professor at NYU, co-host of Strict Scrutiny and a contributor on MSNBC, occasionally across from me.
It's Melissa Murray. How are you doing? Hi, thanks for having me.
First time, welcome to the Bullard Podcast. There's a hazing ritual.
Wow, long-time listener, first-time caller. Thank you.
Thank you for having me. We have to start with Pam Bondi, though.
As somebody that's been kind of a watcher of her and of the MAGA legal world, I was wondering just your broadest thoughts on her nomination as attorney general. Well, so I watched the confirmation hearing yesterday, and I think from the start, it was pretty evident that unless Pam Bondi did something extreme, like literally sort of doing cartwheels on the table, she's going to be the next attorney general.
And so I think you have to consider her nomination in the context of everything that came before it and that is happening alongside it. So, you know, the zone has been flooded with a lot of stuff.
And I think the mere fact that Pam Bondi isn't a frat paddle turned into a real live boy makes her in this context, a credible candidate to be attorney general. I think in more normal times, there are aspects of her resume that I think might raise some questions, which is not to say that she's unqualified.
She's a lawyer, she has graduated from law school, she's been a prosecutor. But attorney general and being the head of the DOJ is not simply being a lawyer or a prosecutor or even the chief prosecutor.
It's a managerial position. You are not only managing the lawyers in main justice in both the criminal and civil divisions.
You're also managing the lawyers in the 93 U.S. attorneys offices across the United States.

You are managing lawyers and other employees across a number of federal agencies that fall in the remit of the DOJ, like the FBI, like the DEA, like the U.S. Marshals Service.
And so it's a really complex and unwieldy organization. And so it's not simply that you're a lawyer, you actually have to be pretty experienced as a manager.
And I think that might actually have come up if this was a more normal confirmation process, but it isn't, and it's not going to be. And so I think Pam Bondi is our next Attorney General.
And that raises some questions. And we should talk about those.
Pam Bondi definitely exists in the context of which we live and what came before us. That is true.
She did not. We are not unburdened by what has been.
We are burdened by what has been. Pam Bondi was unburdened though, I think, based on the hearing.
And that's kind of what I wanted to get at. I want to play a clip.
I mean, this, there was a little bit of an Abbott and Costello thing at this hearing yesterday with everybody asking a similar type thing to what Adam Schiff did. But I thought that Adam Schiff kind of encapsulated the major question for Pam Bondi and the challenge here.
So I want to listen to that and talk about it. As you know, the Supreme Court in Trump versus United States held the president has absolute immunity to commit crimes in certain core areas of the President's responsibility.
One of those core areas is the Justice Department. So in a breathtakingly dangerous and irresponsible decision, Justice Roberts and the majority held the President can commit crimes using the Department of Justice and be immune from prosecution.
Justice Sotomayor correctly said this new immunity lies about like a loaded weapon. So the fear and the concern we have is that the incoming president will use that loaded weapon, that immunity, to commit crimes through the Department of Justice.
And for that reason, it is all the more important that we have an attorney general who has the independence, the strength, the intestinal fortitude to say no to the president when it is necessary. So my first set of questions has to do whether you have the independence to say no when you must say no.
So it's a good set of questions that came after that. But the problem was that Pam Bondi just sort of refused the premise.
She acted as if, you know, Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions didn't exist. Right.
And so we didn't ever get there. I actually thought her responses would have been great if she had been nominated to the Supreme Court, because, you know she talked like, I refuse to answer hypotheticals.
I don't want to play in these gray areas that might come up in the future. Those are standard responses in a Supreme Court confirmation.
A little surprising to hear it in this context where it's not necessarily hypothetical. You know, it is the question.
The DOJ is part of the executive branch, but it's also unusual because it stands apart from the executive.

Like it's not beholden to the president, or at least it's not supposed to be. Its client is the United States, not the president of the United States.
And that was basically the thrust of this question. I think there was also an undercurrent here about whether or not Pam Bondi could not only stand up to Donald Trump, but also stand up to the other individuals appointed in the DOJ who are Trump loyalists.
And, you know, someone whose name came up, even though this was not his confirmation hearing, was Kash Patel, and his name came up repeatedly. Would she follow Kash Patel's enemies list and double down on prosecutions against individuals who are quote unquote enemies of Donald Trump? And, you know, she was really kind of evasive about some of those questions on you.
She said she was looking forward to hearing more about QAnon. Like she'd never heard of that.
A lot of things she actually hadn't heard of, which, you know, might have been surprising. She hadn't heard of the Raffensperger call.
She was like, I was aware this existed,

but I don't, I don't actually, I don't think I've actually seen the transcripts or something. That actually beggars belief because, you know, Pam Bondi was out in front after the 2020 election talking about how votes had been stolen and, you know, or, or insinuating that votes had been stolen.
And she was among many of those individuals who are leading the charge that then fueled the election denialism that plagued the 2020 election going forward. So, I mean, the idea that like, no, I've never heard of this call, you know, kind of surprising.
I was surprised. But, you know, for the most part, she didn't have any missteps because, again, she benefits from not being Matt Gaetz.
And as long as she is not Matt Gaetz, this is plausible. And she's likely to sail through this confirmation.
And I think she knew that. I mean, there were moments during this confirmation hearing where she injected some levity into it, like made little jokes that were surprising.
At one point, a friend of mine texted me and was like, is she flirting with John Kennedy? Like she was a little flirty. I was like, you can take the girl out of the sorority, but you can't take the sorority out of the girl.
I mean, she was comfortable in part because I think she knows how this ends. I think that was the frustrating part for me.
I'm just gonna have to admit to the audience. I got called out yesterday because I did, I didn't miss Elizabeth Warren's questioning of, of Pete Hegseth.
You can only watch so much of this stuff. I mean, I suffered through hours of Pete Hegseth and I did at least a good couple hours of Pam Bondi, but it was, I guess it was first because you just kept going round and round in this same thing that we're talking about, right? Where there'd be legit questions to her, like in this, in the situation that Bill Barr was in, in the situation that Jeff Sessions was in, would you do what they did, right? And stand up to Trump.
And she wouldn't even acknowledge like the premise of the question, right? Like that this had happened. And so we are living in this, in this like imaginary world where who knows what Trump might do.
And I don't need to answer your hypotheticals because why would we assume that Trump might pressure me to do something illegal, right? And so, you know, the Democrats kept pushing on that. And then the Republicans would say they had TDS.
And then she would pretend like she was a baby born yesterday. And I think that you're right.
And she's gonna end up being confirmed. But I just wonder, there certainly wasn't anything there that assuaged my concerns that she would actually stand up to Trump.
I don't know how you felt about that. No, I don't think that was the case.
Again, you have to think about what are these confirmation hearings for? Obviously, there is some degree of kabuki theater to this. This is performance.
And especially in the case of a nominee like this one who is virtually guaranteed to be confirmed, what is the other purpose? And I think this is where the Democratic senators kind of fell down a little. Part of this is alerting the public, like, there is a real threat here, if you see one, and communicating what that threat is.
And so there were questions that I wish had been asked, there were follow ups that I wish the Democrats had asked, instead of just, you know, sort of playing on her turf, like, you know, she was evasive on a lot of different questions. You know, she didn't know things.
She was unfamiliar with certain things. And, you know, even though we assume she would be familiar with them, but keep pushing.
So I think it was Alex Padilla of California who asked her about her stance on Obergefell versus Hodges, which of course is the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage around the country.

And, you know, he asked her about whether or not she would abide by that decision and whether she as attorney general would facilitate any moves that would endanger the integrity of marriages that were constituted between two individuals of the same sex. And she's saying, I will follow the law.

The follow-up question that I wish Senator Padilla had asked is, what if the president says the law is X? What if the president says that there is an executive order that says we're not recognizing these marriages for purposes of this federal law or benefits or X, Y, or Z? Like, if that's the law, is that what you're following? Like harder questions, more incisive questions. A similar kind of thing came up with regard to abortion.
She said repeatedly that she is pro-life, but she would follow the law. What if the law is now the Comstock Act, the 1873 law passed at a time when women didn't even have the right to vote that that Republicans have said very explicitly in Project 2025 that they are going to use and revive to essentially make it illegal for individuals to send any kind of implement that might be used in an abortion, whether that's medication abortion pills or a speculum that could be used in a procedural abortion.
You can't send those through the mail anymore. I mean, it's basically going to be deployed in the manner of a nationwide ban to effectively have a nationwide ban.
If that's the law, are you following that? Are you enforcing that? And nobody asked that question. And it made me absolutely crazy.
I was going to ask you about ComStack next. What else concerns you the most, thinking about Bondi just substantively as far as her potential powers at the Justice Department? I mean, like Obergefell, certainly anything is on the table these days.
I don't want to say it's a 0% chance, but to me, that's lower down the list of my concerns. I think Comstock's a legit concern.
What are some specific things that you think that she might be doing at the Justice Department that has your warning flare up? I think just generally her evasiveness on questions about her loyalty to the man who has nominated her raises questions about who is the client here. DOJ's client is and should be the United States, not the president of the United States.
And I think the fact that she would not be clear about that makes it really difficult to feel confident that going forward, this is going to be business as usual. It's not going to be business as usual.
Donald Trump has already nominated Todd Blanche to be the deputy attorney general. John Sauer has been nominated to be the solicitor general.
We can talk more about those appointments. Yeah, I want to get to that next.
More on that in a minute. But the fact that his personal lawyers who represented him in the immunity case before the Supreme Court, that was John Sauer, or who represented him in the New York hush money case, that was Todd Blanche, are now in the DOJ as really huge players, the deputy AG, the solicitor general, that suggests that maybe DOJ is being transformed into the president's private law firm, or worse, the president's personal prosecution arm.
And I think that should make a lot of people really uncomfortable, even afraid. Yeah, that worries me about the cash thing too, right? Because it's one thing to be like, oh, well, at one point she said, I don't think he actually had an enemies list.
I think you're referring to something he said on a podcast. It was a book.
It was an addendum to the book. It was an actual list.
Read a book. Yeah.
So luckily I wasn't on there. But a lengthy list of friends of the pod were on there.
And so to say that leads me to believe that this is the type of person that if Cash is hassling people, using the power of the FBI to go after people without subpoenas

or just using the investigative power to go after people.

Does this seem like a person that's going to intervene in that or that's going to put

her head in the sand and be like, well, you know, who knows what's going on over there?

I'll worry about it when it comes to me.

I wasn't familiar.

I wasn't familiar with the subpoena.

That's what it seems like to me.

I didn't know he was doing that.

All right.

Well, the more Bondi today, we'll keep an eye on it. You mentioned John Sauer.
I was listening to your pod from this week at Strict Scrutiny. I can tell you, I've done no coverage of the Solicitor General nominee here at the Bulwark.
A lot of bad nominees, you know, so there's only so much time in the day. But you guys had me cackling, kind of just sort of reviewing some of the briefs that he put forth and the absurdity of this person being the Solicitor General.
So I just kind of want to put a quarter in the machine and let you roll on John Sauer as Solicitor General. Let me just first say, like, John Sauer isn't an unqualified individual.
I mean, he is, from what I understand, he's eminently qualified, all the credentials, all the things. but in his role as a lawyer for Donald Trump, he's actually been asked and has done things that I think would make other lawyers with his credentials pause.
So one of the things we talked about on the strict scrutiny podcast from last week is the brief that John Sauer filed on behalf of Donald Trump in the recently argued TikTok case. So this is the case about whether a law that would require TikTok to either divest its Chinese ownership or go dark in the United States is within Congress's authority to enact.
And this was a case between the federal government and TikTok, but Donald Trump, as president-elect, decided to file an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief. And John Sauer wrote this brief on his behalf and filed it and put his bar number on it.
And it's wild. It is an absolutely wild, insane, like, if a student gave this to me as a first-year legal writing exercise, I would pull the student aside and ask them whether or not this was the career for them.
Because the brief basically says what the court should do is pause this law, pause the effective date of this law to allow Donald Trump to step in because he is a quote unquote consummate dealmaker, end quote,

and he should be allowed to intervene here and negotiate with China to figure out a resolution

to this. So that is just wild.
This president elect, instead of all of the usual procedures

for how we do policy and how we enact laws and how the court addresses laws that may or may not be

invalid because they are constitutionally infirm. Let's put all that to the side for a minute and just let America's number one dealmaker step in and handle this.
Only he can fix it. Number one TV dealmaker.
I mean, like seriously, that was crazy. The other crazy thing about it, and this should actually alarm individuals who are thinking about what's going to happen in this new administration.
One of the theories behind letting Donald Trump consummate dealmaker come in and handle the whole TikTok flap is that Congress doesn't have the authority to pass this law because all of this is within the purview of the president. So if you thought we had separation of powers and there was a lane for Congress and a lane for the judiciary and a lane for the president, it's just one road.
It's an autobahn and it's an autobahn for the president. That's basically what John Sauer was arguing in this brief.
And reading this, it made my head explode. It's so insane.
It's so divorced from constitutional reality. It's so wild.
And I literally was like, you really put your bar number on this? Okay, I guess. And that's going to be the new Solicitor General, the federal government's lawyer, before the Supreme Court, the 10th justice, as it were.
So talk about that a little bit for listeners who aren't familiar. The remit of the Solicitor General is what exactly? The Solicitor General argues cases on behalf of the federal government before the United States Supreme Court.
So this is the lawyer in the whole country who probably will appear before the Supreme Court the most during the administration. So it defends any laws or actions that the administration takes that are challenged in court.
It may intervene in certain cases where there are private parties, but where the federal government has particular interests. It's a really big deal.
And typically, we've had some really great people step up to the podium as Solicitor General. I'm not saying John Sauer is not a really great lawyer, but this brief, like, got to say, not the finest hour.
But, you know, Elena Kagan was the first woman to serve as Solicitor General. Ted Olson, who, you know, I did not share the same political sensibilities with, but, you know, I really came to admire and respect Ted as a friend.
And he was a really good Solicitor General on behalf of George W. Bush's government when he was in that position.
So there have been really good advocates in this role. This brief was not the best example of advocacy, certainly not written advocacy.
Yeah, I just I'm kind of imagining a Solicitor General, like speaking in truth social, you know, for presenting to this court, but that might work in this court, actually. Maybe.
I mean, like, this is not a court that's super teched up. So not clear if they are on truth social or any platform for that matter.
But I just meant the type of rhetoric. No, for sure.
You know, the Trumpian bombast, you know, the writing it in digital crayon. You know, they're at least a handful of justices.
Alito, Gorsuch, they're probably susceptible to that. Thomas are definitely red-pilling on Newsmax and Fox.
They have a very steady diet that is fueled by that kind of media. So yes, they would be receptive.
This takes us to the game I wanted to play with you. Since you're monitoring the court briefs and the Q&As that these justices are asking closer than I am, we saw the 5-4 ruling with regards to New York.
And I don't really want to get into that because to be honest, I just don't care that much about the New York case at this point. But I am interested in what, if we learned anything about how these justices are going to act when being put in a bad place by Donald Trump.
Let's put it that way. Over the next four years, where they have to decide whether they're siding,

where it's not a constitutional question really,

but it's a question of whether they're siding with Donald Trump.

Well, it is a constitutional question,

where they're forced to choose

whether they're siding with Trump or the law.

And I'm wondering,

I would like for you to rank the six conservative justices

as to who you think is the most likely

to stand in the breach in defense of the Republic,

if it becomes necessary to the least likely.

Oh, wow.

Well, can I say something first about the five to four?

Let me stall for a minute while I think about this.

Yeah, use the Pam Bondi tricks here.

You can talk about the California fires and how sad you're feeling for all the victims and anything to run the clock. She really did everything but call Adam Schiff shifty schiff in that moment.
Yeah. Okay.
So one thing I'll say about this, and, you know, if your listeners are not following the Supreme Court closely, you should be. Please tune in to strict scrutiny.
The court is wild right now, and it is a really critical part of the government and facilitates a lot of the Republican agenda, whether it is done in a very visible way or in more set of vote-y ways. I will just say about this decision, it was handled on the court's shadow docket.
The shadow docket is essentially the place where the court handles emergency petitions, often in the context of the death penalty, but not always. And this case came up on the shadow docket.
The New York case you're talking about. Right.
So you've heard of the shadow docket. Generally on the shadow docket, the critique about handling cases on the shadow docket is that they're typically not argued in full before the Supreme Court like a regular case would be.
And when the justices make their decisions, they're not obliged to issue a full opinion, nor are the justices necessarily signing their names to the position that they took. So you don't actually, you'll know the number lineup, but you don't know which justices were in the majority or in the dissent or whatever.
What was so interesting about this particular case was a 5-4 decision. And that's all we might have known if the four conservative justices had not taken that moment to publicly identify themselves.
That was really unusual. And it was really purposeful because it shows, like they are signaling, like we would have reviewed this case.
We would have taken this up for Donald Trump. And that's a signal maybe to the United States, but more likely to Donald Trump that we're watching out here.
And I think that was really intended to send a message like we would have taken this case. It's these three liberals and these two wobbles who foul this up for you, sir.
And with that in mind, who's going to step into the breach and defend the Republic here? Certainly not the four justices who would have taken up Donald Trump's challenge to the decision to allow his New York sentencing to go forward. And those were the eldest justice or the longest serving justice on the court, Clarence Thomas, Justice Alito, perhaps the most valuable justice on the court, Justice Gorsuch, perhaps the most confident justice on the court, and then Justice Kavanaugh, the justice who wants to be liked the most.
And the other five justices were the three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by the Chief Justice, John Roberts, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The Chief and Justice Barrett are typically among

the six conservatives in many of the cases that count, including the immunity decision from last July. I think before July, I would have said John Roberts is the justice who would be most likely to stand in the breach and defend the Republic because Chief Justice Roberts, I think during his tenure as Chief Justice, has been more publicly conscious and concerned about the court's institutional standing.
However, I will also note that John Roberts has also written the decisions that have done more to erode democracy and democratic institutions in this country. He wrote the majority opinion in Ruscio versus Common Cause, which essentially blessed partisan gerrymandering and said that there's no role for federal courts to play in policing partisan gerrymandering.
And obviously he wrote the majority decision in the immunity case that effectively allowed Donald Trump a get out of jail free card and also a license to crime as president and any future president who feels like emulating that model. So I think before July, I might've said John Roberts.
Now I think it's basically a toss up. Justice Barrett, I think, occasionally shows flashes of independence.
I don't know if that's a sustained thing. I mean, I think she is a conservative.
She's a former law professor. And maybe that means she's not just principled as a conservative, but like sort of kind of philosophical about her conservative priors.
And she's not, maybe she's not purely ideological. I don't know.
I mean, I think it's a little early to make broad judgments like that about her as a justice. So I'm watching, but I think in this moment, it's kind of a toss up between her and the chief justice is who will stand in the breach.
I don't think it's the other four at all. Yeah.
I'd maybe throw Kavanaugh in the mix just because your point about how he likes to be liked. You don't think that only if the chief justice is in the mix too.
Yeah, sure. If the chief justice is in the mix.
Sure. I think he wants, he'll, he'll go with that.
But he didn't. I don't know.
I just think that Kavanaugh says sometimes, this is a freebie. Donald Trump will like me if I go on the side of the floor here.
But you know, is he calculating? Might he make a different calculation at every time? You don't think so? I mean, he has on occasion, I think. Yeah.
But not always. I mean, think about the Dobbs case.
This was the case that overruled Roe versus Wade. The chief justice refused to join the five conservative justices in forming a majority to overrule Roe versus Wade.
Justice Kavanaugh was in that majority and then wrote like an insane, well, not insane, but like a really facile kind of concurrence. Stride.
arguing that like, you know, the constitution is neutral on the question of abortion. This is just going to the states.
And obviously it's just going to stay at the states. Obviously it's not going to stay at the state level because if you are someone who thinks abortion is murder, you can't be okay with California allowing it and Missouri not allowing it.
Like if that's where you are ideologically and philosophically, you have to have a nationwide solution to this. And so, I just thought Justice Kavanaugh, like, yes, he wants to be liked.
By whom? I think that's a toss-up. And there are moments where he's with the conservatives and he's not as independent as some of his other colleagues might be.
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That's 10% off and free shipping at trust and will.com slash the board. Another thing you guys you've been covering that I have been unable to get to, but is absolutely worth focusing on is really quick.
This North Carolina Supreme Court steal really, I don't know what else to call it. Allison Riggs is a Democrat, won by 734 votes in the Supreme Court election.
It's past November. Jefferson Griffin is a Republican.
He's challenged 60,000 votes. What's the latest on that and how serious are your concerns that that might be an effective challenge or steal, however you want to call it, whatever you want to call it? So this taping, I think we're still waiting to hear what the courts in North Carolina will say about this.
But it seems like the only thing Alison Riggs did wrong was win an election. And her Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin, which is literally straight out of Tennessee Williams as a character name.
I say, I say, I say, great name. It's an SAE at one of the, at Ole Miss maybe, Jefferson Griffin.
It's in the vein for sure. You know, he took that personally and she's up by 734 votes and he is asking to throw out the votes of 60,000 North Carolinians, including members of the military who says, failed to file their votes properly because they didn't show ID, which according to federal law, you don't have to do.
So this is truly anti-democratic behavior, you know, silencing a group of individuals, throwing out their votes. And one that makes clear, I think, the effort to steal this election makes clear how important state courts are and are going to be going forward.
The North Carolina High Court changed ideological composition in the last election. It had been under Democratic control, like a majority of Democrats.
It then shifted to Republicans. As soon as it shifted to Republican control, it authored a decision that essentially let the state do what it liked relative to partisan gerrymandering, again, to continue consolidating Republican control in that state.
And they know that if this seat is occupied by a Democrat, and here the Democrat would be the winner, Alison Riggs, it's going to be harder for the state high court to continue to ratify Republican policy preferences in the state in state court challenges. And so the court's really important, not just the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court's at the state level.
And that's why this election is one that they're trying to take away from the people. Yeah, we're gonna keep monitoring this one.
I was glad you guys have been covering it. DeMarco Elias has been on this as well.
So we'll put some resources on that in the show notes for anybody who's in North Carolina and wants to send a message to some of their elected officials or at least I guess North Carolina, despite the fact that Donald Trump won, a lot of Democrats did win down ballot, maybe thanks to a porn shop. Mark Robinson certainly gave us an assist on that.
It's not just Mark Robinson. Like there's actually been a really active democratic machine that's been developed and cultivated in North Carolina.
They've done a lot to turn out the vote in major urban areas like Asheville and Charlotte. And they deserve a lot of the credit.
I will say to your point that gerrymandering the North Carolina one, well, we can do a whole another podcast on gerrymandering. I'm a little less up in arms about it than maybe some in the democracy movement, because I think we're gerrymandering ourselves in a lot of ways.
But the North Carolina gerrymander is insane. It's 10 Republicans and four Democrats in Congress in North Carolina in a state where the Democrat won the governor's race.
It's a ludicrous breakdown. Yeah.
I mean, that's usually the tell. Like, that's the tell.
Final thing. You were on with Dan Pfeiffer.
You were guest hosting over on, what's that other podcast called? I don't know. Whatever.
We'll try to think about it. But you were guest hosting over there.
God Save America. And at the end of it, you were like, I want to get out of my legal Out of my box.
Yeah, out of my legal box. I want to have some hot takes about the election.
And I loved your hot take. Thank you.
I want to hear what you think about what the Democrats could learn from 2024. I do feel like in 2016, there was all this talk about kind of gender after the Hillary loss, and that's gotten lost here with Kamala.
And part of that, I think is there's a reason for that, which is that there was just such a uniform move towards Trump. But at other times, I sometimes think maybe I'm, I'm not considering other, you know, perspectives of people with other experience than me.
So I want to hear your hot take on both the kind of race and gender question, but also what you were talking to Dan about, about democratic management of blue states. So I think the race and gender question, Erin Haynes at the 19th has probably said the most and the most interesting things about this.
So I would refer to her takes on this to you. I think they're really spot on.
I think you can't separate race and gender from what happened here. Like Kamala Harris was running as a black woman.
She tried very hard, I think, to downplay the fact that she was a black woman, but it was all there, like right on her face, as it were. And I think there are some people in people in the country who are a not ready for a woman to lead them and definitely not ready for a black woman to lead.
And, you know, there may be other factors, but you know, many things can be true at once. And I, and I think it certainly was at issue here, but I think, and I just think my one thing on this just as we can get to the other thing is just that this whole conversation afterwards afterwards is like, was she, you know, the manosphere and was she tough enough and all this.

And I'm like, Kamala kicked his ass in the debate. Yeah, repeatedly.
Like stood right next to him. He was scared to look at her.
Kicked Brett Byer's ass. Kicked a lot of people's asses.
Yeah. And even still, after that, the one time they stood next to each other,

like her being clearly the alpha in the situation,

there was still like this sense broadly, it's like, well, I don't know, you know, we need somebody tough like Trump. And I just, I think that was a little bit of a tell for me.
Anyway, that's my one thought on that item. I heard some men, you know, talking about this, like, you know, in my own family milieu, like no one I'm married to,

but like, like relatives were just like, you know, can she stand up to Putin? And I'm like,

yeah, like I could stand up to Putin. I really think I could.
I like, I think she's there. Like,

you don't know enough black woman if you are having this conversation, like black women are

fierce. And I think she could have done that.
But I think the real issue in this election,

you know, and the economy sort of relates to this, but it's not the central thing here. I think

Thank you. And I think she could have done that.
But I think the real issue in this election, you know, and the economy sort of relates to this, but it's not the central thing here. I think part of what spurred some voters to Trump is not some sense that this is my guy.
I'm deeply committed to what he's selling. I don't think his support is deep in that way.
And, you know, I know a lot of people talked about the growing redness of certain core democratic areas like New York, like parts of California, things like that. I don't think that's about an interest in conservatism or in Donald Trump particularly.
I think it's about a disinterest in disorder and the view that blue state governance or blue city governance leads to disorder. So, you know, I live in New York City.
I ride the subway. The thing about New York is that it is incredibly democratic, not big D democratic, but small D democratic in that everyone has to take the subway.
Unless you literally want to be in traffic for three hours, you are taking the subway, whether you can afford other modes of transportation or not. And I know there's been a lot in the New York Post and other outlets about how unsafe the subway is.
And I think there have been incidents of real unsafety. But I think for the most part, it's not that the subway is unsafe, like millions of people ride it every day safely.
But it is the case that the subway is unpleasant. Like, you know, I was just riding the train and we were between like a very long set of express stops and someone riding on the train with me defecated and like literally on the train.
And we all were just like, oh my God. And not that kind of thing happens, but it's the case that you can get on the subway at any time and someone's having a mental health crisis, something's happening, it feels disordered.

And you go to CVS and you got to reserve like three hours to do your shopping because every single item has to be liberated from behind the plexiglass locked wall. And I don't want to shop on Amazon Prime.
I'd prefer to do something else that's more economically sustainable, doesn't make Jeff Bezos my personal savior and is better for the environment. But I don't have three hours to liberate the shampoo every single time.
And it feels disordered to have that. And so I think one of the things that people want here is some assurance that blue state or blue city governance works and works well.
And that's a reason to put it at the top of the tippet and make it national governance. I think it's why Jared Polis has been so successful in Colorado because he's making shit work.
Like they've lowered prices. They've done things on leave.
I mean, if you look at the polls in the election, places like Missouri, which we think of as like ruby red states, they voted for ballot initiatives that allowed for a rise in the minimum wage, that allowed for paid family leave. These are core redistribution policies, core democratic policies, and ruby red states are going for them.
People want things that make their lives better, make my life better, free my shampoo from CVS, make the subway more pleasant to ride, all of those things. And I think we're seeing a species of this right now with what's going on in California and the backlash against Karen Bass.
If you're making things better in California, why are you in Ghana? And maybe it's not fair. And again, fires are an act of God.
I lived in California for many, many years, but I think some of this is deeply unfair with the misinformation that's being spread about her response to this. But that seems to be the core.
Show me that democratic governance is effective. And I think if Gavin with the good hair wants to be the president of the United States in 2028, he's going to have to clean up San Francisco.
He's going to have to clean up Oakland. He's going to have to clean up Los Angeles and show that blue state governance is good and should be for the whole country.
That's my take. I'm snapping over here.
Amen. I love every bit of that take.
I was in Medellin a couple of years ago, Columbia, and I was on the subway and I said, this subway is great. Like if Medellin can make it work.
They're great. And some of that's money and I get that investment and all that, but you know, taxes are pretty high in New York city and LA and some of this money is being wasted and not, not being used to actually make people's lives better.
I think that's part of it. Like People in these cities are like, my taxes are...
I mean, I lived in Oakland for years. Oakland has extraordinarily high taxes.
And you know, if your house gets broken into, the police aren't coming. We actually have private policing in neighborhoods in Oakland because of that.
Well, Oakland just kicked out its mayor. It's all part of the same ethos.
Show me that it works. It's expensive, but if it works, I'm fine.
Melissa Murray, I love that. Thank you for coming on the pod.
Let's do it again soon sometime.

People should go listen to strict scrutiny if they want to get nerdy on legal stuff.

Not nerdy.

Cool nerdy.

Strict scrutiny.

Vibey nerdy. Knowing about the Supreme Court is sexy right now.

Sexy nerdy.

How about that?

People are going to love it.

I'm on board with that.

Okay, maybe not sexy.

Check out strict scrutiny.

Nerdy sexy. Nerdy sexy.
Nerdy sexy. I'm on board with that.
Okay, maybe not sexy. Check out Strict Scrutiny.
Nerdy, sexy.

Nerdy, sexy.

Nerdy, sexy.

I'll get the order right.

Check out Strict Scrutiny.

It's nerdy, it's sexy, it's Melissa Murray.

Up next, John Apple. All right, we are back with John Avalon, author, journalist, recent congressional candidate.
We'll get to that in a second. He's also a host of the new Bulwark podcast, How to Fix It.
What's going on, man? Hey, man, it's good to talk to you as always.

Good to talk to you too.

I want to get to the new pod.

I want to do just briefly on some run for something lessons.

But first, we got some news on the Hill that I really wanted to pick your brain about.

Mike Turner, who is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, or was set to be the chairman of the Intelligence Committee,

has been purged by Trump and Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson says that apparently trump asked him to get rid of turner this might seem like kind of inside baseball congressional news but to me it is very ominous because mike turner is a strong national security hawk pro-ukraine and it seems to me to signal that they don't want anybody in these top intel, top secret meetings, pushing back on Tulsi or pushing back on whatever it is that Trump is trying to rationalize.
So I don't know, pretty ominous for me. I'm wondering if you had thoughts on it.
It is ominous to anyone paying attention. And don't dismiss this as some kind of inside baseball house politics.
This is ominous on three different levels. First, it shows a complete destruction of the separation of powers as the founders intended, because Congress, the Speaker of the House, is acting like a willing laptop for the incoming White House.
And for the President of the United States to get involved with a committee chairmanship means this is a priority for him who is not traditionally focused on the details of governing, right? So all of a sudden you're removing a strong conservative who happens to be strong on national security by also blowing up the lie that a lot of Republicans were telling themselves that this would be some kind of new Trump with a bigger tent. And we wouldn't actually, right, how many times in history do we need to learn that people who do what they say they're going to do? He is going to commit himself to what seems to be a neo-isolationist foreign policy that is weak on autocrats around the world.
And one of the stakes of this election, as many of us were making the case, is the fate of Ukraine, is the support for our fellow democracies against autocratic aggression. And the removal of Turner is about a quashing of dissent, something we've seen a lot of, this falling in line.
It shows that there's a voluntary sort of self-castration of the congressional branch out of fealty, this lapdog impulse in the House of Representatives, even by the Speaker of the House. And it says very bad things about the United States laying claim to any credible vision of remaining the leader of the free world, because that's not what Donald Trump is interested in.
And kneecapping Mike Turner is parcel of that. So watch out, pay attention.
Also, it shows that you don't actually get anything in the end for sucking up to Trump, as long as you want to do one thing that is against Trump's interest. Because Mike Turner, it wasn't exactly Adam Kinzinger over there on the Hill.
I mean, he maintained his views on national security, but he didn't vote for impeachment. He voted for Trump.
He surrogates for Trump sometimes on TV. So what was his reward for all that? Nada.
That's exactly right. This is about fealty.
This is about walking in lockstep. And look, you can try to say, you know, I'll give Trump administration one credit for the Abraham Accords, let's say.
There are always good things that can come about. But this persistent focus on kneecapping strong foreign policy, traditional what had been bipartisan American foreign policy and knocking out one of their own at the incoming president's behest, that is sinister.
And if you don't think so, you're probably not paying attention. I'm going to have more on this over on YouTube.
I've got the ranking member on that committee, Jim Himes. Couldn't get to him this morning, but I think we're going to talk this afternoon.
So folks can check it out on our YouTube feed. I want to get also your take on the Biden farewell.
Daily listeners of the podcast will probably know that I was not overcome with warm feelings when it came to this farewell. And I really just had to turn it off actually and read it on my phone.
But you as maybe somebody that has a little bit more distance or a little bit more of a historical view, having been a speechwriter, having written about this, wondering what your thoughts were on his speech last night. Yeah, I thought it was a strong farewell address that will stand the test of time.
And I do view it through a historic prism. Don't get caught up in the politics of the moment for things like this.
You're writing for posterity. And I wrote a book on George Washington's farewell address.
So I see it through that prism as well. George Washington started off an occasional tradition of the most powerful farewell addresses being focused on warnings, which is not typically the thing you think of with a farewell address.
Usually they're going to take a victory lap and ride off onto the sunset. Washington warned primarily about the dangers of what we would call hyper partisanship, also excessive debt and foreign interference in our elections.
All things we're dealing with today. probably the second most famous farewell address is Eisenhower, where he warns about the rise of the military industrial complex.
And so if you look at this speech- Ronnie, you got Ronnie defining shiny city on the hill, throw him in there too. Ron Reagan's written by Peggy Noonan, as I understand, is a beautiful farewell address.
And it is a kind of touchstone document, but it is a love letter to

a certain kind, to his vision of America. It's not a warning.
And that's the tradition I would put this in. Biden gave a very full throated warning about the rise of a new oligarchy rooted in technology that is undermining our ability to reason together as a democracy.
He did not pull punches. It was stark, especially by any historical standard.
And he also talked about, look, you know, we've dealt with oligarchies in the past. They can't undermine not just democracies, but any form of government.
The founders were incredibly concerned about deep disparities between the super rich and the working poor, because that's how governments have been destabilized throughout human history. And what he said is, look, we just made the robber barons, you know, have the laws that apply to everybody else apply to them.
And it led to the greatest economic period in our history and the growth of the great American middle class, which I think Biden does deserve a lot of credit for and will receive more in the eyes of history than maybe from you. Look, I give credit the economy is fine the economy is good i might my the things that i worry about in the eyes of history is that the thing we'll be a member for is just the disastrous decision that allowed us that got us to this place where donald trump is coming back in the office and so i you know everything else kind of gets overshadowed by that a little bit the chips act i don't know if they're know if they're going to be talking about the CHIPS Act in 2019.
Look, obviously, you know, if you see the pantheon of presidents, he's going to be like Benjamin Harrison, sort of sandwiched between two Trumps and Harrison's class, the guy's Grover Cleveland. I will history nerd with you all day long.
But, you know, he did between the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS Act and 300 bipartisan bills and the climate change things he got passed, probably did more in the fullness of time to help rebuild the middle class. Now, that could easily get derailed.
He has certainly problems with perceptions of vigor, which reminds us how much politics is on a strength weakness access. But if you look at his economic record, job growth, wage growth, certainly stock market, although that was not his focus.
I think one of the things people will puzzle over is that there was such disquiet. I think the deal is, is that the affordability crisis, the middle-class squeeze that's been going on for decades was really insulted by inflation.
And that's a lesson Democrats, one of many lessons Democrats need to keep in mind going forward. But I thought it was a strong speech and one worth reading, not necessarily listening to if you can't handle the halting time.
One worth reading. That's true.
If people can read in the future, after TikTok and Redbook, if people can read, then I think they'll be in better shape. If they can only watch short form video, I don't think it will probably age that well.
One last thing on the Biden speech that struck me, just this focus on the tech oligarchs and the modern day robber barons.

Yeah.

All of that has congealed in the last month.

It's intriguing to do a speech that is really quite different from what the speech would have looked like in any different moment of his presidency. That it is, you know, based upon just how quickly, you know, these tech billionaires have cozied up to Trump and gotten their claws in our government.
When he was a candidate, he wasn't really talking about this. Kamala didn't really talk about this that much.
And it's just pretty striking that you're using your farewell address to address something that has really only come into focus in the last month. I don't know what you think about that.
Well, I think that shows how urgent it is, but I think it is about tectonic plates as well as a reaction to sort of the lining up to kiss the ring, which a lot of CEOs have convinced themselves are basically a form of fiduciary duty to their shareholders, that Trump is transactional. If people kiss the ring, maybe you get beneficial.
And by the way, that's not the way democracy traditionally works, certainly here in America. The larger issue, I mean, he had a very pointed paragraph about the free press, about the way that disinformation and misinformation is free flowing through these social medias, that he referenced Zuckerberg's recent decision obliquely to sort of pull the goalie when it comes to fact checkers and the way that that spells dangerous things for our democracy and probably made a nod to some of the work that Jonathan Haidt's been doing about protecting our kids from these algorithms as well.
So I don't think it was just sort of, you know, short term sour grapes about these shows of fealty we're seeing. I think it's about something deeper.
And I think in Kamala's case, look, she's from the Bay Area. She, I think, was not full-throated enough, but trying to say that, look, the extent this administration has not been pro-technology, she comes from a different perspective.
But obviously, all that's academic at the moment. Here's a really quick academic item on running for office.
One thing I'm going to be urging people, including you,

I'm not putting you on the spot right now.

You know, it's still only two months.

Is that if you wanted to run for office,

if you got heterodox views on things,

if you want to run for office, if you got heterodox views on things, if you want to run for office as a Democrat and you got heterodox views on things, I should say, 2026 is probably going to be a good time to run. Maybe not, but if you're making a bet, if you're putting your chips down, I would make a bet that Donald Trump does not wear that well back in the White House and that his first midterm will be as disastrous as the last midterm is.
And it's at these moments when kind of new voices can emerge. And so I'm wondering if you, A, agree with that, and B, if so, if there are any lessons you'd like to share for people that might be thinking about that.
I do agree with that. I think now's the time for citizens to step up and sort of strengthen their civic backbone and get in the arena.
That's what I did earlier this year because I cared so much about the stakes of this race that I didn't feel like talking about it on TV. I'm glad I ran.
I do think the pendulum is going to swing back. I would say to folks who want to run, whether it's for Congress or any local, run.
Democracy depends on people who show up. And there are a lot of disincentives to run that we've set up.
But people should not just talk about it or listen about it. They should do something about it.
And I think particularly, I think liberals are about to fall in love with federalism and see the wisdom of those structures. And I think that is yet another safety valve the founders put in place that's worth leaning into.
I would say for my own learnings, if you feel the call, do it. Know that it's going to be difficult.
It's difficult on families and finances and all those things, but it's the right thing to do. You know, we had a big win, a 40 point win in the primary against a self-funded candidate.
And I think that showed that, you know, in primaries, the Democratic Party, there is a pragmatism, you know, they understand the importance of heterodox views, particularly if you're running in a purple district. I do think often these things are the function of wave elections, particularly if you're a challenger.
I think Democrats need especially to focus on building bridges. I've always believed deeply in sort of, you know, the building coalition between the center right and center left, reaching reaching out to moderates, independents.
That's what Democrats uniquely need to do because there's always, you know, 50% more self-identified conservatives than liberals in our country. I think that this is a moment where there's going to be a lot of impulses for people to lean back.
They're going to say, oh, I need a mental health break. In effect, that's an ostrich option.
I don't think that's sufficient. It doesn't mean you need to go crazy every day and have the Trump presidency ruin your quality of life.
You know, there are opportunities in every environment. The core of my campaign was rebuild the middle, right? We got to rebuild the middle of our politics, rebuild the middle of our economy.
Those two things are connected. We hollowed out the middle of our politics.
At the same time, we hollowed out the middle of our economy. My unified field theory of sort of what's been happening is the hollowing out of the middle class.
The squeeze of the middle class has been driving the anger and disaffection. And Republicans have benefited, it's a little bit of an arsonist being a firefighter, from some of the policies they put in place that hollowed out a lot of communities.
Democrats need to focus on getting the big things right, public safety, border security, but rebuilding middle class economic security. And I think Democrats also need to realize how much of politics, I think fundamentally on a guttural level, operates on a strength weakness access.
And Democrats need to be seen as stronger. And reformers need to be seen as stronger.
Democrats cannot be the party that defends the status quo. I've never thought in our recent polarization that the center is the status quo position.
I think it's the insurgent position, but it's got to act like it. And I think you need to see reform as something rebellious, defending our democracy as something rebellious, and really build a movement where there hasn't been that energy in the past.
And if Democrats aren't seen as the party reform, they're going to keep getting their ass handed, I'm afraid. No doubt.
We'll be spending many more hours on that topic in the coming year. Lastly, we're pumped that you're in the family.
We have a new pod from you here at the Bulwark called How to Fix It. You've had a couple of episodes.
You talked to Tom Swazi, a Democrat from New York on Partisan Gridlock, Richard Haas on Civics. At the end, we kind of had a test run last year.
And you had one episode with my man Ryan Holiday on Lessons from the Stoics. It was really good.
Talk to folks about what you want to do with this pod and what you got coming down the pike. Yeah, man.
It's something that we started during the late days of the campaign and got a great response on. And the response has been really phenomenal.
The core idea, and this stems out of a longstanding frustration on my part as a journalist when I was at CNN, is we need to talk more about solutions and not just fixate on problems. And shockingly, there's white space here.
Not a lot of podcasts are focused on finding solutions. And ones that can- There are a lot of problems out there for us to talk about.
Yeah, we can do that all the way along and people do, but really having focused conversations on how can we fix that in ways that aren't just played to the base partisan ideas, but ideas that could get bipartisan support. That's the focus of the podcast of how to fix it.
That I think is something that's hopeful for people. It's empowering for people.
If we only talk about our problems, no wonder citizens feel sort of disempowered and dismayed. If we talk to issue experts about, hey, we can solve this together, not being pie in the sky that it's going to be easy, but there are areas that can find support from the center right and center left together.
And that's the focus. And so as you say, we've talked about civics education.
We talked to Tom Swasey who said, here's some areas where Democrats might be able to work with an incoming Republican administration. And we'll get really focused, but I think it's important just to lay down a marker that we're not as divided as we seem and that we can solve problems if we reason together.
And that is as much as anything is a flag we need to fly right now. I hope you're correct.
Not sure that you're correct, that we are capable. But I hope you're correct.
And I'm excited to for people. It's also good for people to take an hour away from all this.
Like actually think through it. Use your brain.
Think through problems. I think that is healthy.
I think that there's a demand for that. I hope people enjoyed the pod.
Excited that we're welcoming

you. As we say, farewell

to Joe Biden. Thanks so much, John.

Anytime, Tim. Thanks, brother.
Be well.

Everybody else, we'll be back here

tomorrow for a Friday edition of the podcast.

Come on down. Peace.
Every second counts. I don't want to talk to you anymore.
All these little games, you can call me by the name I gave you. It's today.
Every minute counts. I don't wanna watch TV anymore Can you figure me out Just to embrace more time on the couch Can you see me? I'm waiting for the right time I can't read you, but if you want, the pleasure's all mine Can you see me using everything to hold back? I guess this could be worse Walking out the door with your backs Walking out the door with your backs You're walking The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.