The FRONTLINE Interviews
Eugene Robinson
Former columnist, The Washington Post
Eugene Robinson is an MSNBC analyst. He was previously an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group's Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 26, 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
One place we're thinking of starting the film is the moment that President Donald Trump goes to the Justice Department and speaks at the Great Hall.Obviously he had been prosecuted by that very department just a few months before.What do you see in that moment, as the president goes there?
I see a man who is going into the den of his enemies, only he has conquered.And his whole attitude, his whole being, says, “I'm in charge now.” And he's there for his revenge.He's there for his revenge.That's what this has been about.
And for the Justice Department, at least since the Nixon years, has had this idea of independence, of being separate.What does it mean that he says, “I'm in charge,” and he does it there?
It's shocking, number one.Now, we should remember the Justice Department was not always as independent as it has been in my adult lifetime.John F.Kennedy did name his brother attorney general, and I don't think anybody thought there was daylight and any sort of arm’s length relationship between the White House and the Justice Department then.But post-Nixon, because of who Nixon was and what he did and how the Justice Department abetted what he did, it has been separate.
There has been not just the sense but the reality that the attorney general has had quite a degree of independence from the White House, to the point of friction and conflict between many presidents and attorneys general, if you look at Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, for example.Yet it was understood that this was the role of the attorney general.The role of the Justice Department was to be independent.The Justice Department could in fact investigate and, if it indeed did, could disapprove of actions that the president was taking.So it was not technically legally an independent branch of government or anything like that.It was still part of the executive branch, but it was functionally independent, and the president essentially had to go along with that.This is utterly changed now.That this is not the way the Justice Department functions under Donald Trump.
He's standing there, and he has—the attorney general is there, the director of the FBI is there, and he names individual people.He says what the press does to criticize the courts should be illegal.He names people.We talked to Norm Eisen, who he calls “scum,” who he says is “vicious” and “violent.” What does it mean?1What do you see, when you see the president call out somebody like that, in a moment like that?2
It's terrifying.In a literal sense of the word, it is terrifying.The most powerful man in the world is using that power and position to attack individuals he believes has wronged him.He did say, during the campaign, “I am your retribution.” He said that to his supporters.What he meant, I believe, was that, “I am my own retribution, and I will have my retribution.” And he's having it against individuals.
One thing I think we've learned about Donald Trump is that so much is personal to him, and therefore it's not just that he was wronged, in his view, by the Justice Department, by investigators, by prosecutors.The individuals who investigated, the individuals who brought charges against him, those are the people he's determined to have his revenge on, not just them but, in recent weeks, on their law firms.He's going after law firms in a way that I don't think has ever been done before by any president, certainly not that I know of.And the crime of these law firms, in his eyes, is to have been associated with people like Special Counsel Jack Smith, people like Norm Eisen, people like Marc Elias, people who he believes have wronged him, and he's going to get them back.
Trump’s Executive Orders
Thank you.So let's start at the beginning of his very first day.He goes to the Capital One Arena, and he's signing executive orders and throwing pens, and he continues signing more executive orders and more executive actions back at the White House.And a lot of presidents do start their first day signing executive orders.
Absolutely.
But was there something different about—
Was there something different?
—about his approach?
Yes, there was definitely something different about his approach.Number one, no one has ever gone to the Capital One Arena to publicly, in front of an arena crowd, sign executive orders and throw pens into the crowd and that sort of thing.Also, what was different was that the blizzard of executive orders designed to not just to overwhelm the system, to overwhelm the country, but also to make the point that he was going to exercise every bit of the power of the presidency and then some.He wanted to, I think, move the bar, and he began moving it that first day.
He signed orders mandating things that I'm sure his legal advisors told him he couldn't really do—taking away birthright citizenship, for example.That's not something you're likely to be able to do with an executive order.And ultimately that will be decided by the Supreme Court, but lower courts have already said that's totally illegitimate.3Many of his executive orders have either been challenged or delayed in some way by the courts.
But again, he keeps pushing against that boundary, pushing away the other branches of government, invading their agency space, doing things that really are the preserve of the legislature or the preserve of the judiciary.And, in most cases, maybe he'll get pushback, but in some cases, maybe he does get to expand the power of the presidency, his own power.
Do you think that it was a strategy, that idea?There's a phrase, “flood the zone,” that some people say is connected with Stephen Miller.
Yes, absolutely.
Was this intentional?
Oh, absolutely.I believe, absolutely, he intended to flood the zone, and that has been the modus operandi of this second Trump administration in a way that it wasn't in the first Trump administration, and I think he and Stephen Miller and others learned a lot.One of the things they learned is that it's possible to overload the system, to overload the attention system, to overload the capacity of the systems that react to what he's doing, to overload their capacity to even react to everything that he's doing.
So you focus on one executive order that clearly oversteps the bounds, but there are five others that you're also trying to tend to, and then three others might slip past.This flooding the zone, I think, has been an effective tactic for Trump, and I think it's been to the detriment of the country.
One other thing he does that day that was a campaign promise, but the way that he does it surprises some of his own closest supporters, is the pardons for everybody who was involved in Jan.6.What message did that send when you heard that it was going to be everybody?
First of all, I was surprised that the pardon covered everybody, and I had not imagined until then that President Trump would actually go that far.In fact, that's not what he had said.4He had said, essentially, “Well, if they're violent, that's a different thing.” And that was the whole sense of the incoming administration, was that there would be some sifting, that some who he would have described as just “tourists” exercising their right of peaceful protest, meaning maybe not charged with all the crimes, OK, he might pardon those, but there was a sense that people who beat up on police officers, injuring 140 police officers, some quite seriously, that they wouldn't get pardoned, and so it was stunning that he actually pardoned everybody.5
The Unitary Executive Theory
It seems clear that Donald Trump has a desire for power, believes the presidency should be strong.How important is the fact that there were lawyers around?People who have been talking about this for sort of decades, the idea of the unitary executive theory, how important is that to the story of what would happen?
Well, I think that the whole unitary executive theory of the presidency gives a certain potential legitimacy to what is, on the surface, a power grab.And it is a theory.It's not one that has really been accepted throughout American history, but there are legal scholars who say, “No, the Constitution says you have Congress, and you have the courts, and you have the president.And it's him.” And then he gets to sort of shape and do whatever he wants with the executive branch, and he has enormous power, individually.That's the way I think Donald Trump would like to see his presidency.He'd like it to be that way, and so this gives it a certain scaffolding of legal theory to build on.
The other thing, sort of foundational thing, is the Trump v.United States case, which was the Supreme Court decided, just the summer before, in the middle of the election, about the immunity and the power of the presidency.6How important do you think that was, as a signal, as a legal thing?
6
Oyez: Trump v. United States
Oh, I think Trump v.United States was an enormously important—it gave a huge boost to President Trump, to not just to his sense of the power of the presidency, but, as he has said, he has interpreted that decision to mean, “I'm the president.I can do whatever I want.” And he's actually said that pretty much in those words.That's not what the decision said.The decision gave the president immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken in an official capacity while president, so that does limit it.
Nonetheless, I believed the decision did, in fact, say that the president could potentially get away with more than he or she could before, and Trump has broadened that interpretation and seen it as a much more general statement that the president is unbound by the law, basically.And that's certainly the way he acts.
As you said, there had been presidents who put close allies at the top of the Justice Department.But in this post-Watergate era, when you look at Pam Bondi, Emil Bove, Ed Martin, Kash Patel, what does that message tell you, the people who are in there right at the beginning?
Presidents sometimes put allies, sometimes, almost always put people in those kinds of jobs who generally share their vision of the law, for example, but I don't recall an administration that put political associates into those jobs in a way that the Trump administration has, not just at the top of the Justice Department but down at somewhat lower levels.And it seemed to be, and I think has proven to be, an indication that he expects the Justice Department to be a weapon in the fulfillment of his political agenda, as well as being the nation's law enforcement agency.
I guess it must have been also a lesson from his first term, because if you think back at Jeff Sessions, who he attacked for appointing a special counsel.
Exactly.
Even Bill Barr, after the election.
Exactly.The whole first term.Even Jeff Sessions and even Bill Barr, each reached a point where they said, “No, this is improper.” Jeff Sessions: “I need to recuse myself from matters in which I have a conflict.” And Bill Barr, at the very end, would not go along with all the stolen election claims, would not falsely state that there had been something wrong or improper with the 2020 election.
And so I think President Trump learned from that, and I think he learned that, “OK, no you don't want people who are going to have those limits.I set the limits.” And he has put in place, or he certainly believes he has put in place, people who are more loyal to him than to any abstract notion of what their limits are, of conflicts of interest, of where politics ends and the law begins.
The Eric Adams Case
First, the case that's really early on that seems to be a signal of where things are going is the Eric Adams case, where there's this conflict with the acting head of the SDNY [Southern District of New York] and others inside the Justice Department.What does that moment tell you so early in his presidency?
I don't want to overuse the word “chilling,” but again, I think this, in my recollection, in my memory, this is unprecedented for a president to directly intervene in the prosecution of a public official and to mandate that the charges be dropped or suspended and to do this as part of a deal, essentially, to guarantee Mayor Adams' cooperation in the president's immigration act or the president's activities against illegal immigration and attempt to deport illegal immigrants, and also to do it after this sort of very obvious public lobbying campaign by the mayor, the defendant in a case brought by the Justice Department.That is not the way American justice is supposed to work.It's just not.And yet that is what happened, and there's nothing to prohibit it really, because again, the Justice Department does report to the president, the president gives the order, and the charges get dropped.
You think back to Nixon, to threats during the Bush administration of lawyers resigning, in the first Trump term, the power of the threat of lawyers resigning.And in this case, they threatened to resign, and the letter back from Bove sort of says, “See you later.”
Right, right.“You can't quit; you're fired,” right, basically is what it said.7So no.In the past, for senior attorneys, U.S.attorneys and other senior lawyers in the Justice Department to threaten to resign had huge impact, and it was something that an attorney general, that a president, would have to take into account and anticipate huge blowback if they pursued whatever policy it was that was causing these threats to resign.
7
The American Presidency Project: Letter from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon
But it's been made clear by this Trump administration that, “OK, go.You don't like it, go.We can do without you.” They simply refuse to be shamed and exposed in that way, and they lean into it in a way that, thus far, has been effective for them.We'll see what the impact is, ultimately, on the administration of justice in this country and on, for example, other unrelated prosecutions that may suffer, say, from the fact that people have left.But for now, Trump is getting what he wants.
I won't ask you if you're surprised, but the fact that Republicans in Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn't hold hearings about it, the things that you might have expected even from members of a president's own party to do after a case like that, how important is that, the lack of pushback from Congress?
The lack of pushback is hugely important.And—OK, so we all know how the House functions, especially how it has functioned over the past few administrations.If it's the same party in power in the House of Representatives as in the White House, the House tends to be overwhelmingly supportive of the president, and the House is run pretty much like a dictatorship, so you can kind of understand why members are inclined to try to stay in line.It's been difficult for some of them, and if you speak with them privately, they will roll their eyes and sometimes speak candidly about their distress or concern at the administration and what it's doing, but publicly, they will not.
I am actually a bit surprised that there has been zero pushback in the Senate from Senate Republicans, just because the Senate works very differently from the way the House works.Senators, in particular, every one of them looks in the mirror every morning and sees a president.Senators are big deals in Washington, and they tend to have—I'm just surprised that they have not found a way to express more alarm at what President Trump is doing to the rule of law because so many of them are lawyers.So many of them are actually—and I know this for a fact—appalled at some of the things that are happening, yet there has been none of the kind of backroom cooperation with Democrats to allow some sort of pushback, even pushback that the Republicans might be able to keep their fingerprints off of.But there's just been none of that.They have pretty much kept a lid on it, which has surprised me.
When you say you know, have you talked to some people who are senators?
Yes, I have.I have talked to some senators, and they are not living in some parallel universe.They see what I see.They see what their Democratic colleagues see.Their view of what the Trump administration is doing is not identical to that of most Democratic senators, but it's close, and yet you hear not a peep of that in public.
Because they're afraid?
I think they are afraid.Now, there's a theory that they're keeping their powder dry, that there will come a time that is so perilous, or there may come such a time that's so perilous, so fraught, that then they will have to step forward and stop or do what they can to stop or slow down the freight train of this presidency.
I don't know that I buy that.It seems to me that we've passed several such points already.It's only been a couple—it hasn't been very long.We're just getting started here, and I just think if that's a tactic or a strategy, I think it's the wrong one because they are—the more they allow President Trump to expand his power and to essentially negate our traditional understanding of the rule of law and where the boundaries are for a presidency versus the legislative branch or the judicial branch—the more they allow those barriers to be pushed back, I think, the harder it's going to be to try to reestablish them at some future date in some future crisis.
Elon Musk and DOGE
How unusual is Elon Musk and DOGE and the idea of being able to stop spending money?And when you see Musk standing next to Trump in the Oval Office with that task, what do you think?
We could do an hour on Elon Musk and DOGE and how, again, how shocking, unprecedented and just plain crazy it is.This is a private citizen who happens to be the world's richest man, who happens to have contributed nearly $300 million and a whole lot of work and brain power and everything else to getting Donald Trump elected.To have him come in and put him in charge of this enormously powerful, far-reaching new thing that he wants to call DOGE, that has the mandate, the writ to meddle in the entire executive branch, every agency; and to fire people; to get control of payment systems; to halt payments that were going out for either, for example, food aid through USAID that is much needed, for services that had already been performed by agencies that Musk decides he no longer wants the government to pay for—I've never seen anything like this.Courts, again, every time—almost every single time there's a lawsuit filed to—injunctions are being issued by federal judges who say, “No, you can't do this.No, you can't do this.These checks have to go out.No, you can't fire all these people peremptorily.You can't just say, ‘All you probationary employees, federal government employees out.’ You can't shut down an agency like USAID that's authorized by Congress unilaterally.8You can't do that.”
Yet it is not clear at all that the federal courts' orders are being complied with.In fact, it certainly appears that they're being ignored.And again, how do you enforce a federal court order against the executive branch?
And it seems like Musk, who has not been involved in politics for that long, and sort of says, “We should run this like a business”—
Yeah, right.
—but there are people, Russ Vought, people behind the scenes, who have got theories about impoundment, about the power of the presidency.
Yes, yes.
How important is that?
Again, right.You could certainly have that intellectual argument.In fact, we've had that intellectual argument about impoundment, for example.Russ Vought believes that the law passed after Richard Nixon's impoundment of funds, that that law is unconstitutional, that it unconstitutionally restrains the president.And that's not what the courts have found.That's not what the Supreme Court has found so far.However, you could bring a case—and who knows?Maybe the Supreme Court's view has changed.But until it does, you can't unilaterally impound funds.The president just doesn't have that right.Congress has the power of the purse, and that's in Article 1 of the Constitution, very clearly written out, one of the clearest things in the Constitution.
And that's what lower courts are consistently finding and pointing to that, and saying, “You can't do this.” And until the Supreme Court has a different view and enunciates it, that is and should be the law.But again, how does that get enforced?And there's just evidence that these courts keep ruling and saying, “No, Elon Musk was wrong in doing this.He can't do this.He needs to rehire these people, or he needs to make these payments.”
And in case after case, plaintiffs are coming back and saying, “Yeah, but they're not—they're still not doing it.” And again, this is a great problem for our legal system, if the president won't follow the law.
When the moment happened with USAID, and some people have said it felt like a test case.They picked an agency.
Yeah, exactly, they picked a poster child.Yeah.
And you wrote that, at the moment, right after that, that that was one of the most important things, or the most important thing that had happened up to that point.Why?And what were they doing?And why was that so important?
Well, I thought it was a—choosing USAID, I think, was—I think the target was carefully chosen, and I think it was chosen to advance several of President Trump's goals.Number one: foreign aid.It's easy to demagogue foreign aid.It's easy because, almost by definition, there's no immediate direct benefit to U.S.citizens, to voters, to taxpayers.We are providing assistance to other countries.
And so, if your slogan is “America First,” then it's easy to say, “We can't afford to just give any money to these other countries.Let them fend for themselves.” Now, does it matter that this is only maybe 1% of federal spending, that in the context of the U.S.budget, it's a tiny amount of what we spend every year?Yeah, that matters, but again, the administration looks past that and sort of pretends that significant savings are being made.
But it not only allows the administration to expand its power—you know, “We are the unitary executive.We get to just wipe out this agency because we don't like it.And too bad that Congress authorized it and gave it this money.We'll take the money and send it wherever we want.” Would have been harder to do that with, perhaps, some other agencies.But I think, in terms of public opinion, maybe easier to do it with USAID.
And it also sort of reinforces, I think, the foreign policy stance and objectives of this administration, which is to show how tough the United States is, how it won't be pushed around, how everybody else is freeloading off the United States, and that's over.That ends now, and in fact, everybody ought to be paying us for having been the world's policeman, and that's sort of the general stance.
And so that's what getting rid of USAID also says.It is actually a very foolish thing to do, and it sort of denies the reality of soft power in this world.And if you don't believe that, just look at how China and even Russia are stepping into some places, where we had USAID projects that are no longer able to function, and stepping in and saying, “Oh, we'll take that over.We'll take that over,” because they understand, the leaders of those countries understand, that alliances are important; that sort of goodwill is important.
And this administration doesn't believe that.It believes more in intimidation than in friendship, say.…
As I understand it, you write the column about USAID and go on Morning Joe and talk about some of those same things.
Yeah, right.In fact, I talked on Morning Joe actually more than I wrote about USAID.And I didn't even talk that much about it, but I did that morning get a tweet, or a “truth,” I guess, on Truth Social, from the president, who posted that I should be immediately fired for defending this “radical left, terrible” USAID.9
9
The New York Times: Trump and Musk Attack Journalists by Name in Social Media Posts
What is it like to have the president “truth” about you, send a message like that?
It's very weird.It's very weird.So what happened?I had actually left the Morning Joe studio.I had gone to my gym.I was on the exercise bike, and somebody texted me, and says—with a screenshot of the president's post, and it just said, “You have a friend,” and showed the post.I said, “Oh, that's interesting.”
And then I started hearing from people, including the security office at The Washington Post, which says, “We just want to let you know that we're monitoring online traffic and chatter, and we are on it,” right?Because that's the way things are in 2025.There's a certain—it's intimidating to be attacked personally by the president of the United States, and then that immediately becomes echoed by some of his millions of followers on social media and of his supporters.And so I'm getting that from the security office.I'm getting—I look at my Twitter mentions, or X mentions, and there's a wave of sort of an echo of abuse coming from followers, and so I pay a little more attention to that than ordinarily.
And then I'm getting notes from colleagues, not just at the Post but elsewhere in the media and journalism, people I know, who are saying, “You're being brave.” And I don't think I did anything particularly brave.I just—I did what I do.That is, I wrote the column, and I gave my analysis on television, and that doesn't feel like something you have to be, or you should have to be, brave to do.But there's a sense, just a kind of a sense of menace in criticizing this administration and this president, in a way, and you feel that when you are singled out personally for attack.
Because I'm sure, in your reporting, in your work as a columnist, you've had other people say, “I don't agree with what you wrote.You've left something out.I've got a problem with the facts.” But this is something different.
Yeah, this is something completely different.And I get that all the time.That comes with the turf.And you develop a thick skin if you're a columnist and you're writing about current affairs.And I get it from supporters of the Trump administration; I get it from Democrats, sometimes, who think I'm not being hard enough on Republicans.…
And then you also get notes of support: “I agree with this.I agree with that.” And that's sort of part of what you do, and you feel good that you're stimulating debate.That's completely different from being attacked by name by the president of the United States.That's a different thing.And it sends a chill.It does.
And so for about a week or so, it was like a little—a little nervy, but then it goes away.And it hasn't been repeated, but one is aware that it could be.You just never know.
Trump Takes on the Courts and Law Firms
So as you were talking about all of the things that the administration is doing, it seems like there's a battle going on in the courts.And maybe it's going on because Congress—we've talked about it before, but here's a congressionally authorized agency, funds allocated by Congress.Is our three branches, the way we understand our democracy, working in this moment, with USAID, with what DOGE is doing?
Well, look, in my opinion, Congress is not playing its role.The architecture of the Constitution is based on the idea, according to James Madison, that each branch will defend its turf jealously and vigorously.And so yes, the executive will fight for its prerogative, but so will Congress.Congress will defend the power of the purse.Congress will insist that the laws it passes be properly executed, which is what the president is supposed to do.And the judiciary, similarly, will defend its turf and rule against, by the other branches, when it traduces the law, when it goes too far.
So far, I'd say the judiciary has done its job.The federal courts at the district level and the appellate level have considered these alleged violations of the law by the Trump administration, and in cases, in some cases, in many cases, have ruled against the administration.And that's what they can do.That's all they can do.We have not seen, really, the Supreme Court have a chance to weigh in on all of this because again, this has been a very short time.It takes time for things to work up to the Supreme Court.
But we have seen an extraordinary statement, not so much for its content as for its rarity, that Chief Justice John Roberts, who simply does not comment on current events, spoke out.And after the president and others had called for the impeachment of a judge who had ruled against the administration, in the Venezuelan deportation case, and Justice Roberts issued a statement saying impeachment of a federal judge is not the appropriate remedy or step for a ruling you don't agree with.10The step to take is an appeal.
That's kind of elementary.And again, this was established very early in the history of the republic, under Chief Justice John Marshall.It was established that no, you don't impeach a judge just because you got a ruling that you don't like.You appeal it, and then you appeal it again, if necessary, and then you get to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court gets to rule, and you abide by that.
But impeachment is just not the remedy.So I think the judiciary is doing what it ought to do.I think Congress is not, certainly not yet.It's simply not doing what the founders intended for Congress to do, which is to jealously guard its prerogatives and to not let its powers be usurped by the executive branch or the judicial branch but to insist that Congress writes the laws, Congress decides how the government spends money, and how much, and it's the job of the other branches to follow and, yes, interpret those laws and to implement those policies.And Congress is not insisting on its right to do its job.
As you say, there's all of these injunctions.There's over 100 cases, if not more, that are going against the administration.I think one of things that surprised me was that the president in some ways started going after the lawyers, issues an executive order, started with Perkins Coie, but many others, including other actions going after security clearances.What is going on when he issues an order saying, “You can't go into a federal building.You can't—your security clearance.You can't do business with the government”?
This is just gangster stuff.It really is.This is mob-style intimidation, because what it is saying, nakedly, is that, “A law firm that employs a lawyer who has tried to prosecute me, Donald Trump, or that has investigated me, President Donald Trump, or that has crossed me in some way, that I can essentially destroy the law firm.” And he is making these threats by taking away security clearances but also imposing restrictions on the firms, saying they are no longer eligible for federal contracts, and worse, that federal contractors that do business with this firm, they have to choose between their federal contracts or doing business with these firms that are targeted.11
11
The White House: Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP
And that is a dire, maybe a mortal threat to some of these firms.And while it's hard to feel that sympathetic for big law partners who are making millions of dollars a year, in fact, this is just wrong.The Constitution prohibits bills of attainder, which is essentially a punishment without any judicial process, without charges, without a trial, without any finding—just a decision by an official to punish an individual or a company or whatever.
And the courts, I hope, will ultimately find that that's what's taking place here.And indeed, that's the one firm, Perkins Coie, which was targeted in this way because of its association with people that Donald Trump doesn't like, went to court and got an injunction against the executive order on the grounds that it is a bill of attainder, that this is not constitutional, flat out, and can't happen.
But other law firms, one in particular, have settled, because you could win in court, but your firm has been marked as being out of favor with this administration, and that's like the Scarlet A or something like that, the mark of death, because clients start dropping these firms and saying, “Well, we can't afford to be associated with you because that's going to threaten our ability to do business with the federal government.”
And other big law firms that are not targeted then come in and also try to pick off the firm's most profitable partners and say, “You can come over and work for us.Name your price,” basically, is the—I've read that that specific offer is being made to lawyers at some of these firms.
And so it's hard.It's hard for them to do what that one firm did and stand up, but ultimately, somebody's got to.12You can't just let the bully win every time because that just encourages the bully to push further and to continue.And you’ve got to take a stand at some point, and hopefully more firms will.
Are you surprised more haven't, that other firms haven't come?Some have, but not very many.
Some have.Some have.And yes, a few have.But I am a bit surprised.And I understand partners in a law firm have a fiduciary duty to the law firm, and if you have that sort of legal responsibility to a business entity or anything like that, sometimes you have to make tough decisions.But I don't see how you can argue against the proposition that fighting back against an unconstitutional persecution is somehow the wrong thing to do.I don't think you can—that has to be the right thing for a law firm to do, because if you don't, you are putting yourself at the mercy of a president or a governor or a mayor or anybody who wants to target your firm in that similar way.You're making yourself more vulnerable.
And I guess the question is, if Congress is not there, and you need lawyers, and lawyers with big pockets to challenge—
Exactly.Exactly.You have to have lawyers, right?It's very clever.Go after the lawyers, right.Because what are the—who are the knights in shining armor who fight the battles against executive overreach, by definition?You need lawyers to go into court.And so you can intimidate the lawyers and make it so they don't—they're afraid to do battle for clients that want to take legal action in opposition to the administration.
You are, at the very least, you are succeeding in weakening that potential opposition.I don't think it's gone to some sort of fatal death-spiral point at this point because there have been quite a few law firms that have come out in support of the idea that this is unconstitutional.13This is what mafia bosses do.This is not what presidents do, and we have to fight it, we have to resist it, and ultimately, we're confident that the Supreme Court is going to agree.
One of the things I noticed in reading the article about Paul Weiss, one of the phrases that I noticed, and then I've noticed other places, is that either they “bent” or they “bent the knee.”14
14
The New York Times: How a Major Democratic Law Firm Ended Up Bowing to Trump
Yes.
Is that unusual in American politics, that kind of a reference?
Yeah.That is unusual because to bend the knee, you think of bending the knee to a monarch.And it is unusual that to have a president who unabashedly sort of assumes the stance of a monarch, who does not at least play lip service to the notion of the president as primarily a servant, as a servant of the nation, as a public servant.The president works for all of us, works for the country.There is no sense in the Donald Trump presidency that he works for us.There is very much the sense that everyone works for him, and that everyone bows to him, and that everyone must take the knee to him, or they can be punished, and that punishment can be severe.
And that's the clear message that he's sending.And so, yes, it is unique in my understanding of our history.Certainly in my lifetime, there has never been a president who actually pretended to be a king.
And he jokes about it.
Yeah, he jokes about it.
He sends pictures of himself as a king.
Right.
“And it's just a joke.”
Yeah, right, it's just a meme, another meme, another joke.But again, he keeps doing it.That is the way—that is his vision of this job.That is the unbounded nature of this job's powers, which he is trying to establish through overreach, to turn overreach just into reach, by making these outrageous claims of power and then exercising that power and not being stopped, so he gets to do it again.
We've never had a president like this.And I try not to be hyperbolic.I try not to overreact to things, but I really do think this is unique, a unique threat to our understanding of how our government is supposed to work, how our democracy is supposed to work.I don't think we've ever seen anything quite like this.
Deportation of Venezuelan Migrants
The area where they feel like, the administration feels like it really has a mandate is on immigration, where for decades, the U.S.government has struggled to address the issue, to pass some sort of legislation.And it seems to be the area where they feel most comfortable exercising really unusual authorities, going back to the 1700s.What is the administration's approach to immigration?Why is that an area where they seem to be so aggressive legally?
Well, look, immigration was the first issue that Donald Trump raised when he launched his first campaign in 2015, so he's been running on and governing on the immigration issue for a long time.And I think, at some level, this must be something.There must be a set of genuine beliefs there about undocumented immigrants.He makes claims about crime and violence being committed by immigrants that are not borne out by statistics.Undocumented migrants are not more violent.They don't commit more crimes than native-born Americans, and indeed, most studies show the opposite.
But he has always seized on anecdotal instances of crimes, homicides committed by people who are undocumented in this country and amplified them.And I don't think that's all for show.I think, again, I think there's some actual belief in there, and I also think that there's a lot of public sentiment about illegal immigration, about people crossing our borders in a way that's not orderly, that sometimes is chaotic, and this has been an issue for many, many years.Everyone has known the solution for a long time, yet we can't quite get to it, right?Our political system hasn't been able to get to the sort of comprehensive immigration reform.A couple of times we've been right up to the wire.It looked like finally a package might get through, and then it dies.And so nothing gets better.A lot of people are frustrated by this.It's an issue that really resonates with a lot of voters.
So all of this gives the Trump administration a lot of running room on this issue, and it is much easier to basically do whatever you want to non-citizens than it is to citizens, right?And so, in the case of the Venezuelans, who are alleged to belong to the Tren de Aragua gang, dusts off this 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act, contrives to say, I guess, that under that act, Venezuela is an enemy, although we're not at war with Venezuela.15Rounds up hundreds of men without due process, puts them on a plane, and flies them on—several planes—and flies them to El Salvador in defiance of an order from a federal judge saying, “Don't do that,” putting a hold on it until he can look at this Alien Enemies Act claim.16
While the legality of that seems—it seems clear that it was illegal, and it also seems clear that some of the people they swept up almost surely are not members of Tren de Aragua, are not horrible gang members.17But we have no way of knowing that, because there was no due process for them.
17
There hasn't been a huge upswelling of public outrage that I have heard.There's been a lot of commentary from people who are knowledgeable about immigration, who work on various sides of the issue, are sort of up in arms about it.But again, it's something that I think the Trump administration believes it can get away with, and it will, until the Supreme Court says, “No, you can't really do that.”
So it's almost as if, on this end and so many other issues, we're sort of in this waiting period, until issues actually reach the Supreme Court.And during this waiting period, the administration does basically whatever it wants because there's no other court that can sort of impose its will on the administration.The courts don't have any enforcement mechanism except the Constitution.And so we're sort of waiting, still, to see what's going to happen when this sort of imperial presidency runs into a Supreme Court ruling that says something the president really wants to do is unconstitutional, and he has to stop it.And he has to more than stop it; he has to put things back the way they were, OK?And so what happens then?And we haven't reached that point yet, but give it a few months.I think we'll get there.
Trump and the Judges
And that's what's happening inside the court system.Outside of the court system, they seem almost gleeful to have this as an issue.Their administration is retweeting the president of El Salvador saying, “Oopsie.”
“Oopsie,” right.
This is the moment that causes Roberts to react, and it's not just impeachment.The president saying this is a “radical lunatic left” judge is—there's a drumbeat from the administration sort of attacking the courts and their legitimacy.
Right.And so first of all, let's not leave aside truth, right?This is not a radical left judge.This is a judge who was initially appointed to the D.C.Superior Court, which is—because of the District of Columbia, because of the federal jurisdiction, judges who are appointed to what would be our municipal court have to be appointed through the presidential appointment process.Appointed by George W.Bush, and then he was elevated to the federal bench by Barack Obama.He's served in the federal judiciary in various other capacities.18He is a good friend of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who went to school with him, I believe.This is in no way a radical or even a liberal judge, but that doesn't matter to the president.
But that's sort of a typical way that the Trump administration seeks to delegitimize its opponents or anybody standing in its way, and sort of run over them.And all that sort of truth, the back story, all the details, sort of get plowed over by this false narrative that's very short and snappy and easy to remember.And he says, “A radical leftist judge.” Well, he's actually not, but it takes a minute to hear why.
In the talk about impeachment and now the talk about closing courts, and the talk about from [Tom] Homan, “I don't care what some judge thinks,” is that delivering a message to the judiciary?We talked about how you sort of got a message, the lawyers were getting a message.Is that kind of talk singling out a judge, talking about impeachment, trying to—
Look, I think that that definitely does send a message.And I have this tiny personal experience of being singled out by name by the president.It's not a really comfortable thing to do.It makes you sort of look around and makes you think.Now, that happened to me once, and nothing bad happened.But I think the idea, or part of the idea, is to make federal judges understand that they can be called out, too, if they make a ruling that's unfavorable, and that this will have implications for them, maybe not that anything bad will happen to them, but you're going to have to be more conscious of your security.There might be a sort of pile-on effect, and then other people are talking about you and believing the things that are being said about you.And is that going to intimidate any federal judge out of a ruling that he or she believes is right?I kind of doubt it.The federal judges I know are not in the mood for that sort of thing.They're used to very bad people threatening them in their courts, including Tren de Aragua, for example, and other gangs, violent gangs.
And so I think they'll do what they think is right, and they'll rule for the administration when they think it's right, and they'll rule against it when they think it's wrong.But that doesn't mean the administration will comply with the orders.And I think judges have—they have reasons.There's a good reason for them to think, “OK, well, what do I do now?OK, so clearly, the administration is not in compliance with the order I issued.Now, I can escalate this, and I can start holding individuals in contempt; I can start fining them.But then I run out of weapons, right?Then there's not really much else I can do.”
And so the judicious thing to do, I think, certainly in the view of most federal judges, is to be very incremental and very slow to sort of go to the next step, because they don't have very many steps they can go to, ultimately.They don't have a way to make the administration do what they want it to do.But they do, I think, have the legitimate hope and expectation that an adverse ruling for the administration by the Supreme Court would be complied with and that they get some help from the legislative branch to push back if the administration tried to defy a Supreme Court ruling, that there would be this sort of outcry saying, “No, that you can't do.That's a line you may not cross.The Supreme Court has said it's this way, and that's the way it is.” Now, I hope that's right.I really hope that's right.And I think we're going to see sometime fairly soon.
And as you've said a couple times, it's ending up at the Supreme Court, it's going to end up with John Roberts.He's got to make a similar calculation of how far can we go?
How far can we go and still maintain our credibility and our power?And so I think the Supreme Court is going to want to calibrate its responses to various cases and various issues.They're not going to want to come down with a hammer until it's necessary, and so that's something that Roberts has to think about.It will be interesting.That's one reason I think this attack on lawyers and law firms, I don't think the administration really thought that through, because the Supreme Court justices, who are they?Well, they're all lawyers, and they were all lower-ranking federal judges, and the people who are under attack now are literally their friends and colleagues and people they went to school with, people they live near and see socially and whatever.So I wonder if this is really such a good idea for the administration to go after the whole legal profession in this way.
…In your opinion, if you've got Congress that has pulled back from this, can the courts deal with this situation, deal with all of the things that we've been talking about?Can we expect them to maintain—the Supreme Court to maintain the system as we've understood it, of American constitutional democracy?
The Supreme Court can only do what it can do to maintain the system as we know it.Let's assume that Chief Justice Roberts and his colleagues on the court play their cards carefully but properly.They will do everything they can, I think, to avoid sort of a direct existential confrontation with the president, but eventually that may come.
And so let's assume that they have until, up to that point, done everything they can to show that they have no animus toward the administration.They're like, “We're trying to work with you here, but you can't do this,” right?So assume they've done all of that, and they get to a point where they simply—they can't maintain a system of government without just really slapping the administration down on something it really cares about, something big, and saying, “No.You are overstepping your bounds, and you have to take that back.”
At that point, no, the courts can't do it by themselves.I think that's the point at which you really need at least an outcry, and potentially action from resolutions or something from Congress, and I think it needs to be bipartisan, coming from Congress.You have to have Republicans in Congress joining Democrats and saying, “This issue,” whichever issue it is, “this is about the rule of law, and we are going to uphold the rule of law.We go no further than here.This is where we stand.”
And then I think that'll work.I think that can work, but it will require that sort of courage, because it will take courage for Republicans to do that.That's what it's going to require.The courts themselves can issue rulings, but they’ve got nobody to enforce them.
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