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David French
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David French
Opinion Columnist, The New York Times
David French is an opinion columnist for The New York Times and co-host of the podcast Advisory Opinions. He is also the author of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. Previously, French wrote for The Atlantic and National Review and was a senior editor at The Dispatch, a conservative media company.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group's Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 27, 2025. It has been annotated and edited for accuracy and clarity as part of an editorial and legal review. See a more complete description of our process here.
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Trump’s Speech at the DOJ
Let me just start where we might start the film, because it's sort of a dramatic moment, which is when Donald Trump goes to the Justice Department to give an address at the Great Hall.What happened there?What did you see?What was the meaning at that moment?
I think the meaning of Donald Trump going to the Great Hall was extremely clear.It was saying to the Justice Department, “You are mine now.”That was the clear indication.That was the clear message, and why that matters is that the Department of Justice—although it's an executive branch agency obviously within the purview of the president's control—has always had a view of itself that it is the guardian of the rule of law.It is not just the instrument of the president's policies.
And so there is a world of difference between a Department of Justice that views itself purely as an instrument of the president's legal policies versus a department that views itself, while subordinate to the president, also an indispensable element of the rule of law in the United States of America.Those are two very different conceptions of a Justice Department.He walks in, and he says to that collection of lawyers, to that collection of legal professionals: You are mine now.You will do what I say.
What do you make of what he says, which is this department had been weaponized; lawfare had been conducted against me; there was a sort of sense of, that he had been the victim?
Right. Trump walks in with an enormous amount of resentment because he had been prosecuted, for a brief time, by Department of Justice prosecutors.This is the first time we had seen indictments filed against a former president of the United States by the Department of Justice, so this was new.This was something momentous.And it would be something monumentally scandalous if there wasn't cause for complaint, if there wasn't cause for the indictments, but in both the Jan. 6 case and the Mar-a-Lago documents case, there was ample cause for indictment.Other people who had committed similar acts have been indicted and convicted for, again, committing similar acts.What Trump did is essentially delegitimized these prosecutions not through defeating them in court but by winning at the ballot box, which gave him, of course, the power to have these cases dismissed.
But it's not persecution when there's probable cause for an indictment, and this is the great charade, the great con to MAGA, is that the Department of Justice was weaponized against Trump; that these cases were brought with no cause.That is the opposite of the truth.In fact, had there been no cases brought against Donald Trump, that would have been a greater threat to the rule of law than bringing cases against Donald Trump, because in the United States of America, every public official is subject to the rule of law.We have seen governors be indicted and convicted, imprisoned.We've seen federal judges be indicted.We have seen members of Congress.Nobody is immune.
And so the president, presuming to argue that the mere fact of his indictment is weaponization, was just completely and fundamentally wrong.There was more than enough legal cause to bring these claims to court.
One other thing that stood out to us, because we talked to Norm Eisen, who was one of the people who was named by name in that speech with the attorney general, with the director of the FBI sitting by the president.1He called him “scum” and “vicious” and “violent.”2What do you make of that, of the president calling out individuals in the Great Hall, in that moment?
It's indefensible.It's absolutely indefensible.Presidents are subject to critique.Presidents are subject to legal challenge.All of this is part and parcel of living in a constitutional republic as opposed to a monarchy.But what Donald Trump has done is he has taken justice, and he personalizes it.He accuses his enemies not just of being against him politically, but being fundamentally corrupt, being fundamentally lawless.
And so what we have begun to see, at the beginning of the administration, is that Trump, who has once accused the Department of Justice of being weaponized against him, is now saying I'm going to weaponize multiple elements of the federal government against his enemies, and he's doing it blatantly.He's doing it directly up front.If you read the contents of his executive orders, it's very clear.It's stated in the executive orders why he is taking action against many of his political enemies.Because they've done something, because they have opposed him politically, he takes action.
This kind of conduct, I have not seen it in my adult lifetime.I've been a First Amendment lawyer my entire career, and often, when you're trying to prove that the government has retaliated against you for your political expression, for example, it becomes difficult, because the government will never admit, “We're doing this because of politics.”They always find a pretext to justify it, and the challenge of a lawyer is to shatter the pretext.
Here, they don't even offer the pretext.In executive order after executive order, whether it's targeting [law firms] Paul Weiss or Perkins Coie or targeting universities, they are targeting political speech; they are targeting political activity.And this is a grave threat, not just to our First Amendment but again, to the sort of the foundations of what a constitutional republic is about.
Trump’s Executive Orders
Let's go back a little bit to the very first day.The flurry of executive orders starts in an arena and moves to the White House.And lots of presidents sign executive orders on the first day.Was there something different in what you saw President Trump doing from the very beginning?
From the very beginning, you saw a difference in both volume and scope of the executive orders.You had more of them, and they were more ambitious.For example, an executive order that purports to reinterpret the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, that is a broad—that is an ambitious executive order.It's a very ambitious way, in particular, to try to achieve legal change, because executive orders are among the least potent legal instruments in the American government, far less potent, say, than a statute enacted by Congress, far less potent than even a regulation promulgated by an executive agency.
But he's very ambitious with these orders, and so, right from the beginning, you saw that he was attempting to achieve sweeping legal change through one of the weakest possible mechanisms for achieving change, through an executive order.Right from the beginning, while Republicans were cheering his big, sweeping changes, they weren't realizing he was doing it through an instrument that is most vulnerable to legal challenge, and that is the executive order; through an instrument that is most ephemeral in the federal system.They can be immediately revoked by the next president.
And so he was attempting sweeping change through a weak instrument and now is confronting, time and time again, federal judges who are fully aware of the weakness of the executive order, fully aware that there are many other ways to accomplish the same goal, that are accomplished through the democratic process, and these executive orders are starting to fail and to falter time and time again.
Rather than going back and trying to do it the right way, going through Congress for example, promulgating regulations through the Administrative Procedure Act, they're attacking the judiciary and saying and arguing that we're living under some sort of judicial tyranny, but they're facing a problem of their own making.They went for the cheap shortcut, and that is blowing up right now in court to no one's surprise.Rather than do things the right way, they're now attacking the legitimacy of the courts.
Some people close to the administration say they knew there were going to be challenges.The idea was flood the zone, provoke, get to the Supreme Court, where they would expand executive power, where they would have a chance to quickly expand the president's powers.Do you think that wasn't a good strategy?
… I actually think, if executed well, that strategy had some hope for success.I'm not going to necessarily predict how the Supreme Court is going to rule on all of these different cases, but if you had come in prepared with very tightly, well-drafted executive orders that were very specifically focused, you could have had some test cases get to the Supreme Court in a reasonably short order that would have sharpened the issues and would have presented the Trump theory of executive power very cleanly to the court.
But that is not what happened, and there's a very interesting piece written by Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer not long ago where they said—both of these, one's a Democratic attorney that worked in Democratic administrations; another one is a Republican attorney that worked in Republican administrations, and they said these executive orders are not like classic test cases.3They're just too sloppy.They're just too over-broad.So in many cases, you don't necessarily get the precise issue in front of the court that the administration is wanting to push on.
3
Executive Functions: The Trump Executive Orders as “Radical Constitutionalism”
So yes, they did flood the zone, but they flooded the zone with substandard orders, with substandard work, and by doing that, they, in many ways, blew their own plan.Now a lot of these cases are in front of courts and procedural postures that are very bad for the administration, with facts that are very bad for the administration, so they're not getting the kind of clean cases that an actual intentional, deliberate strategy would give them.Instead, they're going to court with bad cases, and they're getting defeated in court so far.They're getting, from their perspective, bad outcomes, and then again, rather than going back and doing it the right way, they're challenging the legitimacy of the judges.
The other thing that happens that day is the pardons of those involved in Jan. 6, which was a campaign promise, but the president does it in a way that may have surprised even some of his own supporters.What did you think of what he did?Was he sending a message?
Oh, he was absolutely sending a message when he pardoned his supporters.And then, the message wasn't fully sent, though, until he also began revoking security clearances of his opponents, so what you had was two things happening at once.To his friends: Even attacking police officers, even brutally injuring police officers, on my behalf and for my sake, I will relieve you of the consequences.You will escape further punishment.
Then he turns around to even people who served in his own administration and executed his own orders in his own administration, if they publicly criticized him later, then he yanks the security clearance and even worse than yanking the clearance, he announces it publicly, essentially telling Iran or telling foreign enemies who have made threats against some of these individuals—like John Bolton, like Mike Pompeo—that they don't have federal protection anymore.4That is malicious.
4
The New York Times: Trump Revokes Security Detail for Pompeo and Others, Despite Threats From Iran
So on the one hand, his friends receive the benefits of his grace and magnanimous extension of pardons and clemency, and his enemies have their lives placed under threat.So you can walk through this again and again over the course of the next weeks and months of this administration.Friends have no accountability for wrongdoing.Enemies lose their jobs; enemies face executive orders; enemies face attempted destruction of their companies.
This is very classic authoritarian bullying, and we're watching it unfold right in front of our eyes.
The Unitary Executive Theory
He walks in with this desire to expand the executive, and he said things like, in this first term: I have Article 2, and it says I can do what I want.There were also lawyers around him who have theories, like the unitary executive theory.Help me understand how important that sort of framework is and the lawyers who have theories about executive power that are around him.
It's difficult to overstate how important it is that Trump now has a legal infrastructure around him that he did not have his first term.When he came into office his first term, Trump had a lot of impulses.He had a lot of authoritarian impulses, but he populated his administration mainly with establishment Republicans.Of course he had some MAGA figures in there, like [former chief strategist] Steve Bannon.But he had [former Chief of Staff] Reince Priebus. He had [former Defense Secretary] Gen. [Jim] Mattis; he had [former Chief of Staff] Gen. [John] Kelly; he had [former national security adviser] Gen. [H. R.] McMaster.He had [former Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson.He had Paul Ryan as speaker of the House.Time and time again, his impulses were thwarted by the establishment Republicans that were in his administration.
This infuriated him.This frustrated him.By the end of his first term, by the time he's fully challenging the 2020 election results, he's largely purged his administration of those figures, and he is Trump unleashed.In the four years between his first term and now his second term, the Trump world was very busy in building a legal and policy infrastructure.Now, as he walks into his second term, his impulses are not checked, they're empowered, and he even has a legal infrastructure around him that says, “Well, sir, you can even go further.We can argue that you can go further.”
Now he has a new MAGA establishment around him that enables him, and they have a theory of the case.They have a legal theory.It's a specious legal theory.It's a dangerous legal theory, but they actually have a legal theory.[White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller articulated it not long ago in a press briefing.He essentially said that because the president of the United States is the only elected official that is elected in a nationwide election, he is actually, in reality, the expression of America's democratic will.The president of the United States is the expression of America's democratic will.He is the only one who represents the whole of the body politic.And so therefore, Congress, where each senator or representative represents only a fraction of America, or judges, who are not elected and represent no one, are subordinate to this individual, who represents sort of the whole of the body politic.That is the legal theory that is advanced by the MAGA, by the Trumpist movement.
It puts the president at the absolute apex of the American government pyramid.The problem with that is it's completely wrong.It is upside down.Anyone who says that the American government has three co-equal branches is not correct.If you look at the text in the history of the Constitution, Congress, while checkable by the other branches, is supreme.It is supposed to be supreme.No, you cannot spend money without Congress.Congress can fire the president through impeachment and conviction.It can fire the Supreme Court through impeachment and conviction.Congress can override presidential vetoes.Even if a president vetoes an act of Congress, if Congress is united enough, it can override.
In addition, Congress was actually intended to be the primary representative body in the United States … especially the House of Representatives.Think about it like this: Donald Trump won 49.9% of the vote, but he occupies 100% of the presidency, so all of the people who did not vote for him, in many ways, do not really have any representation in the Oval Office at all.
Now, let's contrast that with the House of Representatives.The Republicans control the House of Representatives, but there are many, many, many Democrats in the House who represent their own constituents.And so the House of Representatives is far more reflective of the actual popular will than the occupant of the Oval Office.
This whole argument turns democracy upside down.It is actually Congress that is the representative body, And the role of the president—when you talk about the role of the president as chief executive—it's really a very much more administrative position than you might think.It is a position that is designed to administer and to execute the will, the acts of Congress.But again, Trump is turning this all upside down.He's putting himself at the absolute apex of American power, and that is not how our country was designed.
Did the Supreme Court make it easier for him to make that claim with Trump v. United States?5
5
Oyez: Trump v. United States
The Supreme Court has sent mixed messages about executive power.On the one hand, you have Trump v. United States, where in my view, it just concocted an expansive view of presidential immunity out of whole cloth.You're not going to find the immunity structure that the Supreme Court created in the Constitution.It's not there. …
The defense of the Supreme Court immunity opinion is that there are some things and some powers that are in fact exclusively presidential and that if you somehow criminalized these acts that are exclusively presidential, you'd be breaking down the structure of the Constitution, and in that regard, they do have a point.
For example, Congress couldn't pass a law that says presidents can't pardon anymore, and if they pardon somebody, they can be thrown in prison.That would be criminalizing an exercise of core constitutional power, so from that standpoint, there is a point.However, let's suppose the president accepts a bribe to administer a pardon.Is that a core constitutional power?Is that exercising a core constitutional power?Yes, but corruptly, and we've always said that the exercise of power, if it is undertaken corruptly, can be criminalized.
And so, this decision didn't just protect core presidential prerogatives.If you read it, the actual language of the decision really even protects presidents when there's evidence they're exercising core powers corruptly, and that gave President Trump a zone of immunity, a zone of impunity that no president should possess.But I said there's mixed messages, and there are, because in many other areas, the Supreme Court has really cut back presidential power.
If you go back to the first Trump administration, they were defeated at the Supreme Court more than any other administration that came before them.They lost at the Supreme Court a lot.If you look at the period between the Trump presidency and the next Trump presidency, the MAGA legal movement faced numerous frustrating defeats at the Supreme Court.So while the Supreme Court has given presidents more immunity than it should, it has also pared back presidential powers a great deal.
In that circumstance, a lot of these executive orders are launching up to the Supreme Court, a Supreme Court that has proven to be very skeptical of expansive presidential powers, even if it does grant excessive immunity in presidential prosecution.
When you look at the people who he's appointed to the top of the Justice Department, to the top of the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, what do you see?Who are they? What's the—
While there are some individuals—I'm not going to say this is universally true—there are some very capable and smart and ethical individuals he has appointed to high office.… But they all have one thing in common: They're loyal.They’re loyal.
So remember, in the first term, he was frustrated all the time by the staff around him, all the time.These were establishment Republicans who had their own independent political careers before him, hoped to have political careers after him.They did not totally depend on him.And so time and time again, they were throwing themselves in front of bad policies.They were stopping him from doing his worst.
He's cleared out of all of those people, and now he's got people around him that the only possible way they would ever land in this position is if they wrapped both arms around Donald Trump.A Kash Patel is not going to lead the FBI in any other administration.A Pete Hegseth is not qualified to be secretary of defense.We can just do this again and again.Pam Bondi is a former state attorney general, has the qualifications to be [U.S.] attorney general, but she is so sycophantic to Trump that she's disqualified herself by her own conduct.
You get this time and time and time again.… Only Donald Trump would select them for these positions, so they have every incentive to do everything that he wants because he is the key to their power.He is the key to their authority.If anyone else is at the top of the Republican ticket, they're nowhere to be seen close to the halls of power. But he's been very shrewd in this political brain that he has, this sort of Machiavellian political brain, to know that if he puts around him people who have no future but through him, he's going to get absolute loyalty.
When he comes in and he fires a number of prosecutors who were involved in cases against him, there's a request for a list of FBI agents, what does that tell you?What sort of a priority is he putting on the Justice Department?Is it central to him?
Again, when he comes in and he fires people who were involved in the prosecution against him, when he begins purges of people that he considers to be threats to him, he is saying, in word and deed: You're mine, Department of Justice; you are mine.And so, when you see things like the Department of Justice and the FBI trying to determine who are all of the people who worked on Jan. 6 cases, for example, again, that's a message that says: This is mine now.If you were not with me—and how do I know you're not with me?Well, one way I'm going to know you're not with me is if you worked on one of these cases that was against me.If you're not with me, you're on perilous ground.
Again, this is a fundamental shift in the way that presidents view the Department of Justice, because the Department of Justice has a mission that extends really beyond anything to do with the president's own personal will or the president's own particular policies.There are drug crimes to be prosecuted; there are sex crimes to be prosecuted; there's kidnapping.There's all kinds of criminal justice activity that should not vary that much from president to president.
Now presidents will come in, and one president will want to emphasize drug crime; another president might want to emphasize white collar crime.But as a general matter, the business of law enforcement should continue regardless of the president in office, and what he's clearly saying is that era is over.The new era is: I am in charge.You are doing what I say, and including and up to, you are my Praetorian guard.You will protect me from legal accountability.
The Eric Adams Case
The story of the Justice Department that we're focusing on is the [New York City Mayor] Eric Adams case and the fallout of it as an early sign of what's going on.Tell me about that case, about what you make of how it played out, of what happened.
Well, one of the characteristics of the MAGA movement is that if you're somebody who is facing public corruption charges, or let's say you're somebody who has been purged from social media or censored out of social media, or if you're someone who's run afoul of the establishment in almost any way, MAGA has been very shrewd about collecting all of those people under its wings.And so if you're discontent, if you're angry, if you're being prosecuted, whatever, MAGA is very good at saying we can give you help if you help us.
And so Eric Adams was facing an indictment, a public corruption indictment, so he did what some other folks have done, such as former Gov. [Rod] Blagojevich of Illinois, which is get friendly with Trump, get friendly with MAGA.So he got friendly with Trump, he got friendly with MAGA. And the Trump administration decided it was going to drop the charges against him, the public corruption charges against him but not with prejudice, which would mean the case would go away entirely.They would drop it without prejudice, meaning they could bring the case again.6
It was very clear that you had a deal there—what was he going to give MAGA?He was going to cooperate fully with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.But what if he didn't?Well, then the case could come back.The criminal case against him could come back.That smacks of a quid pro quo, a political quid pro quo.
And a number of Department of Justice attorneys, including Trump-supporting Department of Justice attorneys, including Department of Justice attorneys with unimpeachable conservative credentials, said, “No, this is too far.”That's when you began to see letters of resignation.That's when the issue catapulted into national prominence.It's not when liberal or Democratic lawyers in the Department of Justice objected to this; it's when conservative lawyers in the Department of Justice objected to this, because they knew what this was.They knew this was a quid pro quo, and that was deeply unethical.And so that was one of the early indicators, and now there are many, many, many indicators of the attack on the rule of law.
The letters that go back and forth between Danielle Sassoon, who's the acting U.S. attorney of the Southern District of New York, and [Emil] Bove, who's the acting deputy attorney general, she says: This is political objectives.7These are improper aims.Basically I can't ethically and legally do this.He has a different view about what her obligation is and about whether she's being insubordinate and not following the president and the attorney general's interpretations of things.Can you help me understand that conflict between the two of them that plays out in those letters?
7
Well, one thing that's important is, of course she is subordinate.She has a subordinate position.She is supposed to carry out the lawful directives of her superiors.That's absolutely correct.What she did here, though, was in the finest traditions of the Department of Justice and of the finest traditions of the legal profession, she did exactly what you're supposed to do, which is register your objection internally, and then, when your objection is overruled, resign.Resign.
So she registered her objection, and then she resigned.That's what other attorneys did as well.This is what you are supposed to do.And what the Trump administration essentially did was cast aspersions on this very honorable course of action, treating it as inherently illegitimate, but in fact, this is exactly in the finest traditions of the Justice Department.This is in the finest traditions of democracy to, when you are in a subordinate position and your superior is directing you to do something you believe to be illegal or unethical, in our system you push back, and then you can resign and tell the world what you were being asked to do.Again, that is honorable.That is ethical.
But the Trump administration, to no one's surprise, is infuriated by that, absolutely infuriated, and we begin to see a pattern that we're seeing repeat itself.That pattern is, the Trump administration initially does something on the basis of a stated reason or stated purpose that's facially unethical or illegal.On its face, it's unethical or illegal.When they're called on the illegality or they're called on the ethical violations, they will scramble to find another reason.
You saw this thing in play with Eric Adams.At first it was very clear, which is what triggered the resignations, that this was a quid pro quo.Then, when they're called out on the quid pro quo, they go back to plan B, which was, "Well, this was a weak case anyway," and so, again, you see they state their reasons upfront, create an objection, and then when they face the objection, they retreat to a fallback position that at least has some greater … it's somewhat more plausible, somewhat more acceptable.But if the plausible or acceptable reason was the reason for the action, why was that not stated upfront?
… And it seems like it plays out in this moment where it’s not just the acting U.S. attorney who resigns.There's multiple prosecutors, there's multiple people at Main Justice who resign in what would seem to be a historic scandal, but they leave, and it moves on.What does that tell you, that it wasn't the Saturday Night Massacre or other conflicts we've had recently, where the president backed off in the threat of resignations?8
8
CBS News: What was the Saturday Night Massacre?
It was a historic scandal, but it was playing out amongst about seven other historic scandals.Again, there are a lot of elements of the Trump administration that are quite incompetent.There are many elements that are quite malicious.But he has been a dominant figure in American politics for a decade now, and it's time to realize that he has some shrewd political instincts.He does know how to dominate political discourse and warp it in the way he—and to warp the debate to be conducted the way he wants it.
And that's part of the diabolical genius of this flood of scandal right now.Because there's so many things happening at once, it's very hard to focus on any one of them and give it the treatment, investigation and thorough analysis that it deserves, so what ends up happening is you hop from thing to thing to thing to the point where, in a week, you might have trouble actually recalling what you were angry about on Monday by Friday, because in between Monday and Friday, there were two to three other significant scandals.
For example, right now, as we record this, America is consumed with the scandal over the Signal chat group, where military planning was shared in a civilian, unsecured system.9
9
Incredible scandal, incredible scandal.It's also happening at the same time that the Trump administration is openly delegitimizing the judiciary.That is happening.It's also happening at the same time that we're seeing evidence of the Trump administration yanking people off American streets, sending them to an El Salvadoran prison with no due process.Again, I'm just walking through various scandals that in previous presidencies would be the subject of weeks and months of outrage and investigation, but in the Trump administration, they're almost coming by the day or even the hour.Again, the diabolical genius of that is that it prevents anyone from really drilling down and imposing political accountability for any of these given scandals.
Now, the good thing is, the lawyers in the cases are not overwhelmed, so a lot of these cases are going to continue to proceed.There're going to continue to be very viable legal challenges to a lot of Trump actions, and we'll see how those shake out over the long term.The legal system is not overwhelmed right now.America's political public square is overwhelmed.
But every time he survives that, and Congress doesn't immediately call hearings and say, "I want to hear from the former U.S. attorney from New York," but every time it moves on, does it strengthen him inside the Justice Department when he sort of can get away with it?
I think he's about as strong now as he's going to be.One of the problems that Donald Trump has is that he won a significant victory.I'm not going to call it historic.It was actually quite narrow by historical perspective, very narrow.But it was clear.It was a clear victory, and that gave him some political capital that he is spending at an unbelievable rate right now, just at an unbelievable rate.
And so, as greater degrees of chaos start to filter their way through the American system, he is going to start to diminish in power.He's going to start to diminish, to some degree, in authority.And so right now, I see him as frantically—his frantic action, in a way, is a version of him racing against the clock.He's trying to get as much done as he possibly can while his political capital is at its absolute peak.
And then the hope of the Trumpists is that when they do all of this, when they create that sort of convulsive response within the system, that by the next election, or by 2028, that everything will have calmed down a bit, and there will be prosperity, there will be peace, and they're going to be able to run with a lot of this chaos in the distant rearview mirror.That would be the plan. That would be the hope.
The problem is that a lot of these actions that are being taken, there isn't really a foreseeable way that they're going to work out well for the United States.For example, an extremely aggressive tariff regime is an economic challenge for the United States.Trade wars with two of our largest trading partners, Mexico and Canada, again, an economic challenge for the United States.Mass layoffs of highly paid federal workers, economic challenge.All of these things are presenting economic challenges for the U.S. Abandoning Ukraine could create a geopolitical catastrophe that could create even more world chaos.That's a political challenge for the president.
So, a lot of these policies, really the administration's best hope for peace and prosperity is that they actually back away from their policies, but they're pressing in now.They're doubling down now, and the consequences of pressing in and doubling down, I think, are going to be politically dangerous for Republicans.This great Republican renaissance, this massive Republican victory, may result in only two years of undivided control if they continue on this present course.
Elon Musk and DOGE
… The next theory is not unrelated to that.How unusual in the American constitutional order is Elon Musk and DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency]?
There's a scripture that there is nothing new under the sun, and so one of the things you will often see in politics is that a lot of the things that we think are brand-new are not only not new, but they've been tried a lot.This is one of those things where I would say, this might be the closest to a new thing that I have seen.And how is this a new thing?Well, you have a billionaire who heads a very small, relatively secret team that is being granted what seems to be unchecked access to government computer systems, to government facilities, granted what seems to be unchecked authority to hire and fire workers, mainly to fire workers, at the same time that this individual also has massive contracts with the federal government, massive invested financial interest in the federal government, which gives him the ability to not just turn the federal government towards him and his corporations but also against his enemies and against his competitors.I have never seen a private citizen possess this level of direct and immediate government control in my lifetime.Never seen it.I have seen billionaires be influential.I have especially seen Silicon Valley billionaires be influential.We have seen billionaires have the president's ear many times in American history.We have seen corruption between the wealthiest class of Americans and America's political class too many times to count.
But this is something I've not really seen, and again, I look at this through a political lens.We have to understand MAGA is going to be with Trump no matter what, just no matter what.But there are a lot of normal—what you might call normie Republicans—who are uncomfortable with this.Now, when push comes to shove, they're still with Trump.They're still Republicans, but they don't love this.You're beginning to see some of the ripple effects of DOGE's actions filter through the body politic.
The legal system, interestingly enough, is more immediately responsive to what Trump does.Now, it sometimes takes weeks or months for courts to rule, but lawsuits are filed right away; court hearings are happening as we speak, for example.In the political world, it's easy for those of us who follow politics very closely to forget that most Americans do not.So sometimes we'll reach a conclusion about a policy or an action in an afternoon.Sometimes it takes three, four, five, six months for other Americans to even be aware that that policy has happened, to be aware that the government acted in a particular way, and sometimes they never ever know until they experience the direct and immediate consequence of it.
Behind the scenes, how consequential are the ideas of somebody like [Director of the Office of Management and Budget] Russell Vought, the idea of impoundment, the idea that Elon Musk, who's got the chainsaw but not necessarily the theory, but basically that the executive branch can control the purse, can eliminate an agency?How important are those theories, and how consequential are they?
Well, the theories of the people around Trump are extremely important for two reasons.One, because they are so loyal to Trump and because they will do what Trump says, Trump listens to them, so after this years-long relationship between Trump and the core elements of MAGA, they really do have a symbiotic relationship.What the MAGA legal theorists will do is they provide a frame, not just to argue for their cases in court.That's actually, in an interesting way, less important than taking the legal argument to the public, OK?
So when Stephen Miller says the president is really the representative of the whole of the democratic republic, those are words that judges are just going to roll their eyes at.If Stephen Miller says the executive branch is tasked with interpreting the application of the law to the executive branch, judges are going to roll their eyes at that.For more than 200 years, the judiciary's interpretation of American law has controlled over the executive branch.
[Supreme Court Justice] Brett Kavanaugh gave a speech to Notre Dame, I believe it was in 2014, where he talked about one of the elements of judicial review is it means that the judicial branch is the ultimate interpreter of the law as it applies to the executive branch as well, not just the legislative branch.10And so these judges hear these MAGA legal arguments and by and large roll their eyes.
10
As I said, the Trump administration's record, in its first term, was the worst record of a president at the Supreme Court in modern times.However, the people who don't roll their eyes, the people who really empower MAGA are the voters who, when Stephen Miller goes and he spouts off a legal theory, they're not lawyers; they're not—and they're certainly not constitutional lawyers.So it sounds plausible; it sounds, OK, this is a serious argument.
And so what a lot of that MAGA infrastructure does is it's not so much that they're very effective in court.It's that they're very effective in the court of Republican public opinion.So you saw this first really develop in the 2020 election contest.A lot of the arguments, the legal arguments, that Trump made were a joke.They were pathetic.They were absurd, and they lost and lost and lost and lost.He did not win a single significant case in the election challenge, not one, and including Trump judges.Trump-appointed judges rejected him time and time again.
But I still run into people who are MAGA Republicans, who think all of that was illegitimate because they believe in the independent state legislature theory that they had never heard of before John Eastman starts talking about it, and MAGA starts talking about it.So these legal theories that have very little purchase in court have a great deal of purchase in the Republican base because they are the instrument by which they rationalize Trump's actions.“You say Trump is lawless?Well, Stephen Miller just said...”“You say Trump is lawless?Well, John Eastman just said… ,” or, “Judge Jeanine [Pirro] just said…”
And so these legal arguments, honestly, are less designed to influence courts, because they largely do not, and very well designed to influence the Republican public.
USAID and Inspectors General Cuts
People have told us that something like USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] was sort of a test case as far as withholding funds, shutting down an agency that Congress created.What do you make of that?What do you make of Congress' response to that?
… Trump is very shrewd about selecting targets for his unlawful actions, and so when he walks into office targeting foreign aid, that was very politically shrewd even if it was morally problematic.It was politically shrewd because Americans across the political spectrum are ambivalent about foreign aid.A lot of Republicans are very deeply suspicious of foreign aid.It was also shrewd because a lot of the grants and contracts that are given in the course of administering foreign aid are cancelable.They do have language in them that gives the administration some flexibility—not all of them but some of them certainly do.So he had the right target; he had a degree of legal flexibility that he doesn't necessarily have with some of these other agencies; and then he had the right messaging for his public because he was able to pull out a grant here or a grant there that seemed super woke or weird or dumb and says, “Look, this is what they are doing,” ignoring and brushing over the vast majority of the work, which is life-sustaining, which is lifting people out of miserable, horrific conditions, sparing people from horrific diseases.So he skips over that and focuses on the minority of the grants that are politically suspect or maybe a little weird or wild, and you can find those out there.
By doing that, he executed what was a pretty shrewd political strategy.He attacked a target that not as many Americans love.Again, same thing with attacking big law firms.You're not going to find a million people going into the streets to protect Paul Weiss, for example, or Perkins Coie or one of these big firms.He attacks major elite universities, attacks the academic freedom of universities—universities that you're not going to get a million Americans in the street to defend Columbia University or some of these others, especially after some of the ways in which Jewish students were harassed and mistreated on campus.
So he has picked targets that don't generate a lot of public outrage when they're attacked, and there's historical precedent.The Red Scare had so many legs because Communists were so despised, and Communists were so feared.So if you pick on people and institutions that other Americans don't like, that's going to grant him more political room to run in the violation of their rights.I said political room to run, not legal.They get stopped in courts, but they have that political room to run.
You see this just constantly. If you bring up that he has gone too far in attacking Columbia, then, “Well, Columbia did X or Y or Z.”Or if you say that he's done too much in attacking or he's violating the rights of Perkins Coie, “Well, Perkins Coie did X and Y and Z.”So as a political matter, he's chosen his targets very shrewdly.
As for Congress, a Republican Congress exists to serve Donald Trump.That is why it exists.That is its self-conception, is the entity that exists to serve Donald Trump.This is beyond dispute at this moment.Congress will be prostrate before Trump unless if control changes hands, and that is terrifying for our constitutional republic because the Madisonian vision of American democracy says that a speaker of the House would actually be jealous of his power, would actually be jealous of his or her prerogatives and would not willingly lay down in front of a president.
But what we've seen in this very, very highly partisan time is that [Speaker] Mike Johnson has no desire to cross Donald Trump, and he's thinking from a standpoint of his own office quite rationally.If he crosses Donald Trump, it doesn't matter if he's speaker of the House; he might lose the next primary.So if he wants to keep his butt in that seat, he has to do what Donald Trump says.But that is a total perversion of the intended structure and ethos of the American government.
We talked to one of the inspector generals [sic] who was laid off, and early on, he goes after, I think, 18 of them, some of them who he had appointed, the USAID one after he issues a report.What is the strategy?What is he doing with the inspector generals, and why bother with them?
Well, what he's doing is systematically removing any instrument of independent accountability in the government, so again, you can't look at one action.The inspectors general are part of a larger apparatus of accountability.Especially within the military, inspectors general operate as sort of watchdogs.If you are a soldier and you believe you have been mistreated, one of your recourses is to an inspector general, is to try to initiate an IG investigation and an IG report, so that's an instrument of accountability.
He also, through Pete Hegseth, fired all the JAG generals in the military.11JAG officers are instruments of military justice.They're instruments of accountability within the military.If you go through and you see it, if he has taken action against the prosecutors who prosecuted him on Jan. 6, in the special counsel's office, again, these are elements of the Department of Justice that are designed to ensure accountability.
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So at each point, he is eliminating any institution or individual that he can see as sort of a power center or a source of any degree of independence at all, so that's why he is doing this.Remember, he views all of the executive branch; he looks at that, and he says: Mine.This is my executive branch, and I don't want any dissenters in my executive branch.I do not want anyone pushing back against me in my executive branch.If Congress was healthy at all, it would say: Well, yes, you are supposed to administer the administrative agencies that we created.The only reason these agencies exist, and are under your authority, because we put them there, and we have rules and guidelines about how these things are to be administered, and you have to follow this.
And so that's where you should see conflict because Congress should rise up and say: Our creations—we're going to protect our creations.But because Mike Johnson and [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune and Republicans in Congress are utterly, utterly prostrate before him, that clash is not occurring.They are yielding to him, and that's why the only really relevant arena of combat right now, of political combat, to stop Trump is the courts, because Congress, so long as it's under Republican control, is going to do what Donald Trump wants.
Trump Takes on the Courts and Law Firms
So if the only battle is inside of the courts, it's in that context that he starts issuing executive orders against Perkins Coie, other firms.Tell me about the power of those and the effect of them and what you think was the intended effect.
I think a good way of putting it is, Trump is trying to nuke the legal opposition against him because if you look at these executive orders, as the chair of Paul Weiss said in his own message to his firm, these executive orders represent an existential threat to the existence of these firms.So if an executive order says government contractors cannot work with these firms, well, you've immediately cut these firms off from billions upon billions upon billions of dollars in potential legal fees and resources because government contractors include companies like Boeing or McDonnell Douglas or Raytheon.These are huge companies that hire big firms, for example.If you're saying that the government is not going to hire people who worked at these firms, then, if you're a young lawyer and you're looking for a firm to work for, then going to a firm like that cuts you off from possible future government employment.You're not going to do it.
So there is just this existential threat to the existence of these firms, and one thing that was so disappointing—now Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, they have ample ability to challenge this in court, and they would win.These executive orders are explicitly designed to retaliate against them for their expression, for their First Amendment rights, for their own rights, so they would absolutely win.
But what the chair of the firm said was, “We were preparing to challenge this, and already clients were telling us, 'We're going to fire you.'Opponents were recruiting our clients away from us, and they were trying to recruit our lawyers away from us.”And so some of their competitors were viewing this attack on Paul Weiss not as an existential threat to the independence of the legal profession but as a business opportunity to get more business and to pick at the carcass of Paul Weiss.
The defense of democracy requires all of us.If Donald Trump is going to target a law firm, and the legal profession is not going to rally around the law firm, then we're instruments in our own destruction here. Because there is ability to confront Trump on this issue.There is an ability to fight him, but if you're going to attack Paul Weiss or Perkins Coie or any of these other law firms and seek to exploit their vulnerability, then it's like trying to steer the Titanic into the iceberg.
When you said that people don't understand why they should care about these law firms, why should they care if Paul Weiss makes a deal with Trump?How does it affect the story that we're talking about?
Do you care about the Constitution?That's my question, OK?My question is not do you care about Paul Weiss?I would say most Americans don't even know what Paul Weiss is, have no clue.Do you care about Perkins Coie?Even fewer people know what Perkins Coie is.Paul Weiss at least is one of the oldest, most respected, largest law firms in the United States.But do you care about the Constitution?Do you care about the First Amendment?And if you do care about the First Amendment—and most Americans I interact with do—then the attack on these law firms should become something that you care about, not because you love Paul Weiss, not because you love Perkins Coie but because we have a rule in this country that says that the government cannot retaliate against private citizens for the exercise of their First Amendment rights.It's just a bedrock principle.
And if you allow the government, in all of its power and all of its wealth, to attack private citizens and punish them for their constitutionally protected activities, we do not have a free society any longer.We don't, and the fact that Trump has picked targets that people don't like or targets that are easy to critique, it makes his action all the more dangerous.
What you have to do—and I've been a free speech lawyer my entire career, and one of the hardest things about being a free speech lawyer is that when somebody doesn't like another person or movement, they're often quite willing to see them get censored.And it takes an education process; it takes time to teach people and to show people that that censorship is ultimately dangerous for them as well, that any freedom you take away from another person is actually also taken away from you and that everything inflicted on your political opponent can be inflicted on you when there is a change in power and control.
But it takes time to explain that.It takes time to absorb that.It takes time to overcome people's visceral disgust at their political opponents, so one of the things Trump is doing is he's exploiting that visceral disgust, and he's moving very quickly, and those of us who are trying to explain to the American public why attacking law firms is dangerous for you and you and you, that takes time.And in the meantime, Trump is moving very quickly.
One thing that stood out to me in reading articles about it is a phrase that's come up a couple times, “Bend the knee.”The president just said yesterday they want to come—he was talking about all the law firms that want to make a deal with him—they want to come; they want to bend to me.What does that imply?What does that sort of language in American democracy, the idea that a law firm would bend the knee or would bend to the president?
You know, look.At some point, you get tired of doing this, but it is absolutely true.If you want to know, to my Republican friends, if this is acceptable language, how would you feel if [former President] Joe Biden said the same thing about, say, some conservative law firms and said the same thing about conservative lawyers?You would be absolutely outraged.You would see this very clearly for what it is.
So one of the most helpful things that any one of us can do to analyze whether something that has happened is fair is ask ourselves, “If it happened to us, how would I feel?If this was directed at me, what would I think?”That's a good way of thinking about this because it's really interesting how rarely people do that analysis, and the reason why they don't do that analysis is this very interesting phenomenon that every political movement in modern recent American history, after it has won an election, is absurdly confident, just absurdly confident that they have cracked the code, that they have figured it out.
And it actually doesn't cross their minds that much that they might lose, and lose quickly, because they feel like they figured it out.We can walk through this.In '04, Republicans were talking about a generational majority.That lasted two years.In '06, the Democrats took the House and Senate.In '08, when Obama won, they were talking about a coalition of the ascendant; that the demographic changes in America were going to create an enduring Democratic majority.They got wiped out in 2010, won in 2012, but wiped out again in 2014, lost in 2016.
We can do this all day.Each side wins, they say, “We've cracked the code.We’ve figured it out.”They push a little too far too fast, and then they get clipped back by the American people.This time, the Trump administration, “We've won the biggest victory, the greatest mandate”—it was not; it was a very close election—and now they're going farther and faster than any other administration in our lifetimes.Now, let's make no mistake: This is making a lot of Republicans very happy, no question about it, but a lot of Democrats and independents are turning radically—Democrats, of course, were already against Trump, but independents turning radically.
So the question is, how long can this go?And if he keeps going like this, if he keeps being more chaotic every week, if there's more instability in the stock market every week, then this huge Republican victory that signals a turning of the page and a vibe shift and all that rhetoric will disappear in the ashes of defeat in the midterms.So, this is a pattern that we've seen before.They've just amped it all the way up.
One last question in this area.Have you talked to others in the legal profession, other lawyers, about the president naming individuals, the president naming individual firms?Is there a sense of fear in the legal community?What effect is it having?
Well, I would say it depends on who you're talking to.The lawyers I talked to are more defiant than afraid, no question, but I'm also talking to a lot of people who spend a lot of time in the trenches taking on government actions.A lot of us know what it's like to be on the other side of fighting the government, and so a lot of the lawyers I talk to are very, very defiant.
But the lawyers who are not in that world, who are not in that sort of business of taking on the government and challenging government power, they are responding in a very different way.As you saw in the Paul Weiss situation, you had other law firms trying to take their clients, other law firms trying to take their lawyers.You had Paul Weiss ultimately go hat in hand to Trump to try to figure out some sort of settlement or agreement to escape from Trump's grasp.
And so I think the people who really have not prepared themselves for this moment are some of the people who are going to be least equipped to address the moment, the people going to be most afraid of the moment.Because let's just be honest, the vast majority of Americans, the vast majority of the legal profession, it hasn't really crossed their mind that their political activity can result in some sort of crushing response from the government.This is new territory for people, and a lot of people are very courageous in their heads when they imagine themselves facing the government, but then, when the actual reality is looming in front of them, they don't want any piece of it.
And that is exactly how authoritarianism thrives.It takes an awful lot of people who imagined themselves to be strong and brave and courageous and that they would defend and prevent the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, unlike people in the past, who had let bad things happen.But then, when the actual crushing weight of the federal government comes upon you or the thought that you could be publicly named and shamed in a way that could bring threats and intimidation to your family, an awful lot of people are going to say, “Well, somebody else can take on this thing.”
Deportation of Venezuelan Migrants
You said that, with USAID, the president is smart about choosing the right cases.Is immigration an example of an area where you think he's choosing a test case legally?
Oh, immigration is absolutely an area where he is choosing his targets well. …
There is a lot of consensus that immigration was out of control, illegal immigration was out of control in the Biden years.The Biden administration, this is one of their principal failures, their inability to get the border under control, especially in the first three years of his administration, so there were a lot of Democrats and Republicans and independents who believe that we need to do something about immigration.There's a lot of widespread support for deportation.Deportation is a tool that Republicans and Democrats have always used to deal with illegal immigration.There's nothing inherently wrong with deportation.
And so you have a country where there are millions upon millions of people who are dissatisfied with the sheer volume of illegal immigration.There are a lot of people who should be deported from this country.Those two things are both true at the same time.Then what Trump is doing is he's taking the angst and that anger over immigration and is exploiting it ruthlessly, and implementing policies and procedures that, if most Americans knew what they actually were, it would be appalling to them.
But because he's saying, “All I'm doing is deporting criminal gangs,” or, “I'm taking action against murderers and rapists,” he's very effectively obscuring what's happening, and it's very hard to get, again, very, very difficult to get people worked up over concepts like due process.I can't remember the last time I saw a whole bunch of people marching and chanting over due process, the legal term, right?But you know who does get very, very agitated about due process?Judges.And the judges are already demonstrating that they're very agitated at the idea that Trump is going to, through presidential proclamation, relieve himself from the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.You can't do that. You can't do that.
What we're seeing are people snatched off the streets and sent to prisons in El Salvador without due process.12So yes, he's chosen targets that a lot of people appreciate action being taken against, but then he's going about it in a way that's absolutely corrupting our constitutional republic.So once again, we have this lag.He takes a position that seems to be quite popular, and then it takes time to educate the public about the consequences, but in the meantime, he's breaking things.
And by the time the public gets educated, by the time the public is fully aware of the implications of what has happened, often a lot of things are broken that can't be fixed again.
Is he tapping into something that was maybe broken before him?The Congresses that have tried to deal with immigration, the presidents who have tried to deal with immigration for 20 years.He's saying: I don't need new laws; I don't need Congress.I'm going to find a law from the 1700s and take care of the situation.
Let me put it like this.A healthy body politic does not produce Donald Trump, so he was coming out of a very dysfunctional political atmosphere.When he came down the escalator in 2015, he was coming down the escalator at a time of extreme amounts of popular frustration at really both parties.We were in the middle, and are still in the middle, of a relatively unusual period in American history, where you saw control just flipping and flopping back and forth, from one party to the other, which was signifying a lot of popular discontent.
He came down the escalator at a time of very high negative polarization, meaning Americans were hating each other more than they had in years past.So he walked into a situation with an enormous amount of public frustration and an enormous amount of animosity, and presented himself to the Republican Party as an instrument of their own preexisting anger, as the perfect expression of their own anger.
He captured the hearts of millions of Republicans in many ways just by being a very, very angry figure.He was tapping into a preexisting sentiment that he's then amplified and made much, much worse.But the American body politic was not healthy in 2015 when he came down the escalator, by no means.It's not like he walked in and broke up a perfectly well-functioning system.He walked into a dysfunctional system and just started hammering it into pieces.
What do you make of that conflict with the judge over the injunction to turn the planes around?13It continues on to El Salvador?And what do you make of that?
Well, that initial conflict was very ambiguous.If you looked at it, there were things he said from the bench.There were things he said in the order itself.There were some questions about what kind of ability exists for a federal judge to order a plane to turn around when it's in international waters outside of his jurisdiction arguably.There was ambiguity there.
Now, an ethical administration would have complied with the judge anyway, and then, if they disagreed with the judge, they appeal.That's what an ethical administration would do.But I'm not going to declare what happened a constitutional crisis because it was a district court judge and preliminary proceedings, and there was some ambiguity.I don't want to get bogged down too much on that because in reality, what we're facing are now a bunch of appeals moving up through the system, on the way to the Supreme Court, where there is a very, very, very important question hovering over all of this, which is when you start to see courts rendering final judgments, when you see courts of appeals weighing in, when you see the Supreme Court weighing in, what is the administration going to do?
One of the things that worries me about the refusal to turn the planes around is that's an early indicator that they may just defy the courts.They might just do that.It's possible.They are laying the groundwork for it right now, so that was what I would call the leading-edge indicator that they may be willing to go further even than that.But if we focus too much on that one issue, we're going to get lost in the nuances of one very complicated case.We need to keep our eyes on the actual ball here, which is what does the Trump administration do when it gets final orders adverse to it on matters of importance?That's going to be when the rubber meets the road.
I think what's interesting to me about that case is not even as much as what's happened inside the court as outside the court.The president of El Salvador just says, “Oopsie.Too late,” and that's retweeted by administration officials.The president's immigration czar says, “I don't care what the judges think.”The president attacks the judge who made the ruling.What do you make of what is going on outside the court?
All of this is laying the foundation.This is attack on the rule of law.They're laying a foundation of public support for defying the court.That's what this is.There's no real ambiguity or mystery here.This is what you do when you are laying the political groundwork for more significant action later.Now, we don't know for certain that Trump will defy the courts, but it's also designed to intimidate the courts.It's designed to say, “Be very careful in how you rule because if you go too far, we'll defy you, and then what will that do to your authority?”
And so, you kind of have a bit of a game of chicken going on here, and when Trump called for the impeachment of federal judges, [Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Roberts immediately shot back with a polite but firm statement that says this is not appropriate.14That was a very big contrast to Mike Johnson.Mike Johnson is out there saying: Well, we could defund the courts.We could strip districts of jurisdiction.John Roberts is saying something very different.
As of right now, it looks like Congress is just an absolute collection of cowards—sycophants and cowards on the Republican side.The judges are very different.The judges have demonstrated, time and time again, independence—even Trump's own appointees.There was a recent analysis done of rulings against the Trump administration in these first few weeks of his presidency, and he lost a high percentage of the cases brought before Republican-nominated judges, right before left-leaning judges and before the judges that are all independent, or who are more moderate in their outlook.15He just has a terrible record in federal courts.He has a terrible record in front of his own appointees.16So you're seeing the collision looming here, and there is no indication from the judges that they're backing away.
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You said something that's really interesting, that he may comply with all of the court rulings but by attacking the court, by appearing like he's delegitimizing it, by letting people around him suggest that they might not follow court rulings, he's in some way making the court have a, “Is this the one I want a fight about?”; that there's some way of influencing the court, or trying to.
Yeah. I think the goal would be to sort of say to the court: If you have a choice between a narrow ruling and a broad ruling, choose the narrower ruling because the broad ruling would flirt with greater confrontation. Or: If there is a way that you can deal with this case without addressing the merits, maybe you should deal with this case without addressing the merits so that, again, we're avoiding the confrontation.
Judges are human.We would like to think of them as platonic guardians of the law, immune to any kind of external pressures, but they're human beings, right?There's no question that there is a hope on the part of those who are attacking the judiciary that this will factor into the judiciary's thinking.
Now also, at the same time, I happen to know an awful lot of members of the judiciary, including an awful lot of Trump's own appointees, and the men and women I know in the judiciary are not easily intimidated figures.And in fact, the attempt to intimidate them is more likely to make them angry than it is to make them afraid, so I think that the administration may be playing with fire here.It may trigger judicial defiance more than it triggers judicial compliance.
Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court
But for, in particular, John Roberts at the Supreme Court, who it’s not just even his own life, or will he potentially be impeached, but it seems like if that is the threat that is being telegraphed, that is playing with pretty high stakes; that if he issues a certain kind of ruling, and Trump decides not to follow it, then that's a huge moment that he has to be thinking about.How hard is this, especially for him and for the Supreme Court? ...
I'm sure the Supreme Court is thinking about what happens if we issue a ruling, and the president doesn't follow it?But we have an interesting precedent here of where the courts will issue the ruling anyway, OK?Let's think back to one of the most famous cases in American history, Brown v. Board of Education.That case was decided in 1954.Do you know how much compliance there was with that decision after it was made?Almost none.Almost none.
The schools remained segregated across the South, for example, for years and years and years after Brown v. Board, and I have little doubt that the justices knew that these segregationist governors across the South were not going to hop to it to comply with the Supreme Court ruling.I suspect they knew very well that massive resistance was coming.
But the case was vital to decide anyway because these cases matter, not just for the immediate consequence; they matter for the legal principle that endures.So there was very little or almost no immediate compliance with Brown v. Board.There was almost no compliance for a decade with Brown v. Board, but Americans are very happy that Brown v. Board of Education exists because the legal principle can have enduring power, even in the face of short-term political defiance.
And I'm hopeful that the Supreme Court recognizes that.I'm also hopeful that the American people understand that even if President Trump defies a Supreme Court ruling, it doesn't render the Supreme Court ruling null and void any more than Southern defiance of Brown v. Board rendered it null and void; that these rulings still have constitutional force long after Trump's presidency is over and long after we've all passed on.
… Can the courts deal with this situation that we've been talking about, of what's happening at the Justice Department, the threats to lawyers, taking apart an agency that might be hard to put back together?What do you make of that?Is it fair to leave it up to the courts?Can the Supreme Court handle this on its own?
The judiciary cannot save us.It cannot.It can mitigate the damage.Absolutely it can mitigate the damage, but it cannot save us.It's an absolute mistake for any one of us to say, “Well, this governmental institution will save us or that governmental institution will save us.”The ultimate reality is nobody can save us but us.That's the ultimate reality.There are things that Congress could do, for example, if it was in different hands that could block some of the worst things that Trump does, that could investigate Trump's team, etc.There are things that judges can do that play their role.But so long as a plurality of Americans put that person in the White House and then put people like him in power after him, the system will crumble.
So ultimately, all of these safeguards are only temporary if the American people are determined to keep this person in power.One thing that I think is frustrating, irritating, makes me angry, is when ordinary Americans constantly deflect responsibility for the condition of their democracy to other people.That is not the case.Ultimately, it is not them.It is not they who define what America is.It is us. It's us.
And now I know there are millions upon millions upon millions of people who say, “What's with this 'us'?I didn't vote for him.”Right. True enough. Fair enough.But unless we can influence the body politic so that a sufficient number of us reject authoritarianism, then all of the—all the powers that we separated, all of the checks and balances, ultimately will wither away.
So the way that I think people should think about this is, we are in a moment where we are trusting the judiciary, trusting various elements of checks and balances to operate as a rear guard action, to operate as a kind of holding action against an onslaught by a populist authoritarian.That holding action can last for a little while.It cannot last for a long time.
And so ultimately, ultimately, if the American people keep electing authoritarian populists, then we will not have the constitutional republic that we think we have, and the one who will have killed it will not be the individual politician.The people who will have killed it will be a plurality of the American people.
What's Ahead in Washington?
I have one big question: What does Trump want?
What does Trump want? That is a great question.… Power, wealth.I don't think he's that complicated.I think if you're going to look at a Donald Trump, you have to understand that when he looks at the world, he sees, say, somebody like Vladimir Putin as his peer or Xi Jinping as his peer.He sees himself in sort of their mold.
And what is their mold?Their mold is a person who marries personal greatness to national greatness, so their own personal greatness is a manifestation of the national greatness.They're a person who uses the instruments of the state to enrich themselves and to enhance their power and their glory.They're a person who then wields that power and glory in a way that's designed to bring more power and glory to themselves, which they then equate with power and glory to the nation.It's not a complicated thing to figure out here.This is a guy who's motivated, as he's always been motivated, by power, wealth, fame, like so many, many other people are.
One of the interesting things about Trump as a revolutionary figure is that unlike, say, French revolutionaries or other forms of revolutionary figures, he's not animated by some underlying ideology or utopian political vision.He's animated by his own self-interest.… This is all over—The evidence for this is just all over the place.This is a person who uses his bully pulpit to help pump up the value of his meme coin.This is utterly absurd.
When he was president of the United States, one of the ways that people curried favor with him was staying at his name-branded hotels, so we're talking about very classic plutocratic corruption here with the twist of marrying personal greatness to national greatness.
What are you watching for? What are you waiting for? What are you worried about?When will you know?What is the horrible thing you'll see, and you'll know, “Here we go”?
I am watching—Obviously I'm watching the president, and I'm looking at his actions.We've already passed through multiple thresholds where you would say, “This is a red flashing warning light.”So we've passed through that in multiple ways.We've passed through it with the Signal—the sharing of sensitive military information with no consequence, in an insecure chat.We've seen it in the direct attack on the rule of law through the Department of Justice and through attacking law firms and people who are opposed to him or he perceives as opposed to him.We've seen red flag after red flag.This stripping of due process from migrants.
So the red flags are waving.But here is when I will get gravely concerned, is after months of this, maybe even a year or more of this, if it is filtered all the way through the body politic, and even the people who don't pay that much attention to politics, who vote for somebody and then sort of tune it all out and watch football instead, if all of this information filters through the body politic and Americans say, “Yes, please, more,” that is when I will be very, very urgently alarmed.
In the meantime, you could have a situation where he does tremendous damage.He's already done tremendous damage.For the next 25 years, is there an ally that will rationally trust us?For the next 25 years, I don't think there will be allies who trust us because of just the last couple of months, so there's an enormous amount of damage that's been done.
But for the existence of the United States as a just constitutional republic, what would be really the red flag for me is if this fully sits upon the American people, they fully understand what Trump is doing, and they vote for it again.They can't vote for Trump again, but if they vote for that MAGA authoritarian populism again, then I'll know this country has really changed.
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