16: Bulwark On Sunday: The Velociraptors Have Learned How To Open Their Cage

Summary

Episode Summary: "The Velociraptors Have Learned How To Open Their Cage"

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Host/Author: The Bulwark
Episode Number: 16
Release Date: June 29, 2025
Episode Title: Bulwark On Sunday: The Velociraptors Have Learned How To Open Their Cage

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Introduction

In Episode 16 of Bulwark Takes, host Bill Kristol engages in a profound and urgent conversation with Tom Joslin, a seasoned political analyst and senior fellow at Just Security. The episode, titled "The Velociraptors Have Learned How To Open Their Cage," delves deep into the authoritarian tendencies emerging within the Trump administration, exploring the implications for American democracy and constitutional norms.

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Setting the Stage: Early Signs of Authoritarianism

Bill Kristol begins by reflecting on the initial weeks of the Trump presidency, emphasizing the systematic approach to consolidating power:

“...those nominations, we fought them. We both stuff. But I mean, if you had told us on, even on November 4th that Trump's going to win and we're going to have Bondi and Patel and Hegseth and Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., I don't think even we might have been doubtful.”
(00:35)

Tom Joslin concurs, highlighting Trump's strategy to place loyalists in key positions to neutralize internal checks:

“He was going to make sure he had loyalists in place. He made sure he wasn't have anybody who was gonna put the brakes on him and what he wanted to do as the head of the executive branch.”
(02:13)

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Politicization of the Department of Justice

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the overt politicization and personalization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Trump:

Bill Kristol underscores the unprecedented nature of this shift:

“The incredible overt politicization and personalization of that department... it seems to be no signs of it abating either. There was a little bit, oh, well, that'll just be the first few weeks and then it'll calm down to business as usual. But I don't know, I feel like it's why they're just chugging right ahead. And it's Trump's department. It's not the Department of Justice.”
(04:19)

Tom Joslin elaborates on the erosion of ethical and legal boundaries, citing Trump's declaration of himself as the nation's chief law enforcement officer:

“He referred to himself as the nation's chief law enforcement officer in that speech. Now, think about that. Since Watergate, we've had this wall separating Department of Justice from the White House when it comes to prosecutions. But Trump really comes in and he says, there's no wall. I am the nation's chief law enforcement officer. I'm going to dictate, you know, how things go here.”
(04:27)

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Pardoning January 6th Participants: An Orwellian Reversal

The conversation intensifies as they examine Trump's pardoning of January 6th participants:

Bill Kristol expresses deep concern over the normalization of such actions:

“It feels like it's been more normalized than not. And finally, I'll let you talk, because I really want to hear you on this...”
(06:30)

Tom Joslin describes the pardons as a dangerous reversal of the narrative, positioning the government as the antagonist and supporters as victims:

“By pardoning all the January Sixers, what he was saying was, yeah, you're right, you know, the government was the bad guy here. You guys were the good guys and the victims. And that's a type of Orwellian reversal of the narrative.”
(08:36)

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The Role of Conspiracy Theories in the Trump Project

A central theme is the strategic use of conspiracy theories to galvanize support and undermine trust in established institutions:

Bill Kristol underscores the strategic targeting of conspiracy-minded individuals:

“...the best way to get someone to believe in a conspiracy that you want them to believe in 2020 election was rigged is to find people who believe in other conspiracies.”
(10:51)

Tom Joslin reinforces this by citing RFK Jr.'s nomination as a prime example of leveraging conspiracy theories for political gain:

“His nomination and confirmation... shows how powerful as a political constituency this online conspiracism is.”
(11:21)

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Aggressive Immigration Policies and Authoritarian Infrastructure

The discussion shifts to the Trump administration's stringent immigration policies, highlighting the construction of an authoritarian infrastructure aimed at mass deportations:

Tom Joslin warns of the catastrophic implications of mass deportations, describing them as a pathway to authoritarianism:

“The path to an authoritarian regime does lie in mass deportations... if they were actually to follow through on that and do do that, think about what it would entail... that whole infrastructure, that whole process.”
(15:58)

Bill Kristol adds concern over the substantial funding allocated for ICE and border control, suggesting the build-up of authoritarian mechanisms:

“They're building up the authoritarian infrastructure.”
(16:15)

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Corruption and Financial Grift within the Administration

A critical examination of Trump's financial dealings reveals alarming levels of corruption and grift:

Tom Joslin dissects Trump's financial filings, exposing extensive income from dubious crypto offerings and foreign investments:

“He made more than $57 million in cash from selling really kind of dubious crypto sort of offerings to the public.”
(28:11)

Bill Kristol draws parallels between Trump’s financial malpractices and the long-discussed Hunter Biden laptop controversy, emphasizing the magnitude of Trump's corruption:

“What Hunter Biden was running or the Bidens were running, it just insignificant compared to the sons we're talking... $57 million... dwarfs anything that was on Hunter Biden's laptop.”
(31:05)

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Future Implications and the Threat to Constitutional Norms

Both Kristol and Joslin express grave concerns about the future trajectory of the Trump administration and its potential to further erode constitutional safeguards:

Bill Kristol highlights the administration's aggressive use of military force domestically and the lack of checks by Congress and the courts:

“They’re in no rush to demobilize anyone... they're doing it. And the courts are, for now, at least, not stopping them.”
(24:14)

Tom Joslin warns of the fundamental threat to constitutional rights, emphasizing the erosion of due process and free speech:

“Our fundamental rights, our constitutional order and our constitutional rights are at risk... what they're doing is really a fundamental threat to the constitutional rights that conservatives are supposed to value.”
(37:09)

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Conclusion: The Urgent Need for Vigilance and Resistance

In their concluding remarks, Kristol and Joslin underscore the imperative to recognize and combat the administration's authoritarian maneuvers:

Tom Joslin uses a vivid metaphor to illustrate the precarious situation:

“The Velociraptors have learned how to open their cage. And they did. They learned how to open the cage. And so they're out now and they're strutting their stuff and it's going to take a lot of effort to put them back in the cage.”
(40:43)

Bill Kristol reinforces the urgency, calling for imaginative and steadfast resistance to safeguard democratic principles:

“...this is such a, I think important conversation, I hope useful one for people and one that really just... we need to really think imaginatively about what they're doing.”
(37:30)

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Bill Kristol (00:35): “If you had told us on November 4th that Trump's going to win and we're going to have Bondi and Patel and Hegseth and Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., I don't think even we might have been doubtful.”

• Tom Joslin (04:27): “I am the nation's chief law enforcement officer. I'm going to dictate, you know, how things go here.”

• Tom Joslin (08:36): “By pardoning all the January Sixers, what he was saying was, yeah, you're right, you know, the government was the bad guy here. You guys were the good guys and the victims. And that's a type of Orwellian reversal of the narrative.”

• Tom Joslin (15:58): “The path to an authoritarian regime does lie in mass deportations... that whole infrastructure, that whole process.”

• Tom Joslin (28:11): “He made more than $57 million in cash from selling really kind of dubious crypto sort of offerings to the public.”

• Tom Joslin (37:09): “Our fundamental rights, our constitutional order and our constitutional rights are at risk.”

• Tom Joslin (40:43): “The Velociraptors have learned how to open their cage. And they did. They learned how to open the cage. And so they're out now and they're strutting their stuff and it's going to take a lot of effort to put them back in the cage.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode serves as a critical examination of the Trump administration's drift towards authoritarianism, highlighting the dangers posed by politicized institutions, the strategic use of conspiracy theories, aggressive immigration policies, and rampant corruption. Kristol and Joslin call for heightened vigilance and proactive measures to defend constitutional norms and democratic institutions against these encroachments.

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Transcript

[Bill Kristol]

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[Tom Joslin]

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[Tom Joslin]

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[Bill Kristol]

Hi there. Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bulwark Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend Tom Joslin. We've done one of these before, I think, who longtime colleague at the Weekly Standard, a key staffer, really the main author of the January 6 committee report, a senior fellow at the excellent Just Security organization and website, which people should look at. And I thought we'd take a look together. Maybe a slightly depressing look, but important look, I hope, at or useful look at where we stand sort of, you know, what are we almost, almost half a year into the Trump presidency, more than half a year after his election on November 5. Try to look at the forest rather than the trees, which Tom is good at. So, Tom, thanks for. Thanks for joining me.

[Tom Joslin]

Oh, thanks for having me, Bill.

[Bill Kristol]

It's great to be with you. And so I thought we'd just go back to the beginning briefly, because I do think we've sort of forgotten what happened in the transition, really. And in the transition, and then the immediate post transition, let's just call it the first week or so, where I think we really began to see what I think you and I agree as a pattern of the authoritarian project being implemented and being done so a little more systematically and a little less goofily than maybe some people had hoped. And unfortunately, a little more successfully than people had hoped. Right. I mean, those nominations, we fought them. We both stuff. But I mean, if you had told us on, even on November 4th that Trump's going to win and we're going to have Bondi and Patel and Hegseth and Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I don't think even we might have been doubtful. Or would we have been doubtful. You were always on the extremely alarmed side.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, I mean, I thought this is how it would start and how they would go. I mean, I've always said, you know, I think that if Trump got back into power, he was essentially going to start where he left off on January 6th, and that's what he did. He was going to make sure he had loyalists in place. He made sure he wasn't have anybody who was gonna put the BR brakes on him and what he wanted to do as the head of the executive branch. And he was going to really go pedal the metal. And that's what he's done. And what you've seen is that, you know, with minor exceptions, you know, with a few of the more minor nominations, a lot of these big wig nominations got through with no real resistance from the Republicans. And, you know, a guy like Cash Patel, for example, I wrote, you know, co authored several articles at the Bulwark about, you know, what he'd been doing for four years between the first Trump administration and this one. And it was peddling conspiracy theories about January 6th and blaming the FBI and all sorts of crazy stuff. And, you know, none of that seemed to matter in the end formulation, you know. So I think that that speaks a lot to where they started from and where they're going.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. I just don't you think getting those people through and they were, you know, getting them confirmed immediately turned out to be a real indicator of where we're going, both in terms of Republican capitulation on the Hill, obviously in the Senate, but also that Trump had learned this key lesson from the first term. No, no, no internal checks, no guardrails, no Jim Mattis, no John Kelly, none of that stuff. Right.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. And at Department of Justice, you mentioned Pam Bondi. I mean, you know, one of the big checks on him in the lead up to January 6, 2021 was the Department of Justice. You know, it was Barr, it was Jeffrey Rosen, it was, you know, Richard Donahue was these, these senior officials in the Department justice, all Trump appointees, all Trump supporters, who nevertheless would not support his efforts to overturn the election or use the corruptly use the power of the Department of Justice to overturn the election. You know, he's going to start, he started making sure he doesn't have those people in place this time. Right. Those people are not around. He started with people like Pam Bondi who are going to do what he wants them to do.

[Bill Kristol]

And just on justice for a minute, I mean, the incredible overt politicization and personalization, if you want, of, of, of that department in a way that we, we've just never seen that, in my opinion. And it's, and it seems to be no signs of it abating either. There was a little bit, oh, well, that'll just be the first few weeks and then it'll calm down to business as usual. But I don't know, I feel like it's why they're just chugging right ahead. And it's Trump's department. It's not the Department of Justice.

[Tom Joslin]

Well, that's exactly right. In fact, he even said that. So there was a speech that I. That he gave some months back that I thought was perhaps the most alarming speech about the Department of Justice. Well, no, it is the most alarming speech about the Department of Justice I've ever seen. He referred to himself as the nation's chief law enforcement officer in that speech, you know, at the Department of Justice. Now, think about that. You know, since Watergate, we've had this wall separating Department of Justice from the White House when it comes to prosecutions. It's more of an ethical wall than a legal one, as we've come to find out. But, you know, Trump really comes in and he says, there's no wall. You know, I am the nation's chief law enforcement officer. I'm going to dictate, you know, how things go here. And there's no. There's not gonna be any independence to any of this. And so I think that, you know, all those norms that we had really seen throughout my entire adult life, I was born in the mid-70s. You know, from then to now, that was just gone. You know, like that. When it come. When he comes into power and the.

[Bill Kristol]

Pardon power, which he used. So he used a lot in the first term in ways that people were a little horrified by, but the utterly extremely extensive use of it early in his administration to signal, basically, if you're on his side, you're fine. And conversely, I'm going to prosecute people who've gotten in my way, whether it's, you know, FBI agents doing their. Or go after people, at least fire people, maybe prosecute them, whether it's lawyers and FBI agents doing the job they were told to do with respect to the January 6th insurgents, attackers or. Or outside entities, obviously, we can get to that in a minute. The universities, law firms, the whole thing. I mean, again, I just am so struck how far we've gone and how there's been some resistance. But I've got to say, it's. I feel like it's been more normalized than not. And finally, I'll let you talk, because I really want to hear you on this. You were very alarmed by the January 6th pardons. You predicted them. You thought they would all get pardoned. Everyone else was, no. I was even like, yeah, proud boys, maybe they'll commute some. Them a clemency, but I can't really just pardon them, you know, the actual ring leaders. And he understood, in a certain weird way, not weird way, in a certain way, that he was in his interest to do it and he could get away with doing it.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you know, he referred to when he commuted the sentence of all the January 6th defendants and convicts, you know, commuting the sense of all of them and pardoning nearing all, nearly all of them on the first day, and then commuting the sentence of just a handful or smaller set, he referred to it in executive order as a grave national injustice, the prosecutions of these people. So, you know, what I take away from that, I think a lot of people don't really get is that Trump really did ride a wave of anti establishment, anti government fervor into power. And by pardoning all the January Sixers, what he was saying was, yeah, you're right, you know, the government was the bad guy here. You guys were the good guys and the victims. And that's, that's a type of Orwellian reversal of the narrative that I think is very dangerous for a society where the truth becomes the lie and the lie becomes the truth. And that's what you saw with those pardons. And, you know, we talked about, Bill, you know, I talked to some journalists and they said, wow, he's not gonna pardon everybody, right? He's not going to pardon all the extremists, for example, attack cops or people who actually plan to attack the Capitol and overthrow it. He's not going to pardon the leaders of these extremist groups. And of course, I said, you know, I think he is. I think he's going to go all the way. All the way. He's going to pardon all of them. And that, that speaks to how deep this sort of fervor on his side, this opposition to the government as existed under the Biden administration, that the establishment, how much that's a motivating ideological force for him. And also, you know, it keeps, you know, part of the January 6th stuff. One of the big things about it that I discovered was these January six conspiracy theories that are really so stupid, Bill. I mean, like, stuff that we, we've talked about, like the Ray eps conspiracy theory where they try and blame the whole thing on him, and this is all this idiotic nonsense. And you wonder, you know, what's the purpose of all that? And I, I came to understand, I think that the purpose of all that was to inoculate or inculcate his own followers, his own movement against any moral or political responsibility for that day and himself. Right. The whole idea was let's, let's push blame onto others for what we did. And that way you don't have to leave my cult, you have to leave the bubble that is maga. And pardoning everyone was consistent with that, right? It was, it was consistent with being in the bubble and saying it really isn't our fault, really isn't my fault, it isn't their fault, it's somebody else's fault.

[Bill Kristol]

I guess two things that I'm prompted to ask you about this, and take them whichever order you want. They're both pretty big topics. But the first sort of, there's also a practical effect, of course, of these pardons, which is he's setting up a sort of possible paramilitary forces out there in the country that can be used for his agenda, feeling like they pretty much have a free hand if, you know, if they're doing stuff for Trump in terms of pardons. And I don't think that's nothing in the current circumstance. And secondly, the conspiracy theories themselves, we have discussed this a bit the last time you were on, but it's really worth coming back to that in a minute. The power of the importance of conspiracies as part of the Trump project. I feel like I did, I thought it was like a weird aspect of it, but it's really central, isn't it?

[Tom Joslin]

It's completely central to it. I mean, you know, you go back, look for his entire political career, you and I talked about this, and I think you actually took the words right out of my mouth the last time we were talking about this, because you hit it right the nail right on the head, which was that what Trump saw early on, unlike others, and I think others like Romney or McCain wouldn't play this game, but he saw early on the value in embracing this right wing online conspiracism as a base of support. And he does that very early on. And he does that with, remember the whole, the absolutely insane idea that Obama wasn't born in the United States and his birth certificate was covered up to hide the fact he wasn't born in the United States. You know, other senior Republicans are repudiating this. You know, Fox News early on is reputing this. There's a lot of people who aren't playing this game. Trump's the one who plays the game. Trump's the one who goes out there and says to Romney, you know, Throw that out there. The crazies love it. He, he was willing to embrace this stuff as a source of political power for a combination of reasons, I think. And he saw that as an anti establishment character and an anti establishment political figure. These people, people believe this stuff are going to go along with them. They're going to support him because he's coming in as a wrecking ball. And that I think is also an important way to frame what's happening in the second administration. What we're seeing now, right. I think what motivates Trump's movement and the heart of the movement, not all the Republicans, you know, I have family members who voted for him, for example. But what heart motivates the, the heart of his movement is this animus to the government and to the establishment. And I don't think he can go through these four years without acting on that animus, without being the retribution, culturally and politically for this hardened base of supporters.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. And I think, I guess the conspiracy, conspiracy stuff, I guess it's been shown by some of these studies that Renee Diresta cites these, that the best way to get someone to believe in a conspiracy that you want them to believe in 2020 election was rigged is to find people who believe in other conspiracies. It's not actually to find ideologically necessarily adjacent people. That doesn't hurt, probably, but it's not, it's not necessarily the most right wing people who will believe that. It's the most conspiracy minded people.

[Tom Joslin]

Right, right. Well, look, I mean, here's the perfect example. This is something we talked about last time too. RFK Jr you mentioned his nomination and confirmation. Perfect example. This is a guy who traffics in conspiracy theories that cut across the left. Right Pendulum. Right. These are anti vaccination conspiracy theories. You know, a key leader of the online maha movement, Make America Healthy Again. And what his nomination and his political deal with Trump last year showed was how powerful as a political constituency this online conspiracism is. And his online conspiracy movement is because in exchange for his support, Trump promises him a cabinet spot and delivers on it. Right. And he delivered. That shows you how powerful it is. And, and as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he's put in this position to validate all those conspiracy theories he was trafficking. Right. That's what a lot of his actions now are. They're. He's trying to basically say that he and the conspiracy theorists were right and how they looked at this stuff. And that shows you that's what's motivating Maga That's a good portion of maga anyway. It's what's motivating Trump and his administration. And again, I don't think he can't. I don't think he can get away from that. I think he has to act on this stuff, and he is.

[Bill Kristol]

No, that's so important. I mean, I think the general was, the conventional wisdom was Kennedy did maybe believe these things or use this as his, you know, path to power or prominence or something, or money. But, but, you know, now that he's confirmed, of course he's going to back off some. And that's really not been the case. Right. I mean, it is interesting how much they, they can't really back off the conspiracies.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean, he's backed off a little bit at times, but not overall. No. And I mean, I think, you know, I, I always find it very dangerous to play the game of, well, they can't really believe this stuff, right? Because, yeah, they can. You know, there are all sorts of people who come to believe all sorts of crazy stuff, you know, and even smart people come to believe crazy stuff. I mean, this is something we've seen over and over again. You know, I, I always use this anecdote, right? Sir Isaac Newton, the, you know, discoverer of calculus, a guy who was a prominent mathematician and scientist. You know, he also dabbled in alchemy and thought there were hidden codes in the Old Testament of the Bible. Right. So, you know, you could simultaneously be very bright and believe some very crazy stuff, and you can also be not so bright and believe a lot of crazy stuff. So there are a lot of people, I think now, who, with this anti establishment mood that the country is in and that really all the west is in, this is a time for these people to ride this conspiracism to power, Right.

[Bill Kristol]

If they sort of turned away from it, it would, it could undercut the whole thing. Right. It's sort of like if you believe in a whole bunch of things, the faith in Trump depends on not actually letting reality or truth penetrate that bubble. Right. I think they understand that that was.

[Tom Joslin]

The point of the January 6th conspiracy theories. Right. You can't, you can't let the bubble burst. You have to stay in the, the bubble of Trump is this messianic deliverer for our side against the corrupt establishment. And anything that says that their side is actually the aggressor, their side is the one that's wrong, is actually on the attack against fundamental American values and fundamental constitutional order. Anything that does that is A danger to their belief system. So psychologically they had to sort of put themselves, keep themselves in that bubble.

[Bill Kristol]

How about immigration? You and I discussed this a bit offline. Yeah. I mean, it does seem like that's if conspiracies is, as you say, the kind of a key aspect. Immigration seems like the, so much of the, I don't know what the driving force behind the whole movement is that right?

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean, even there they're intertwined. Right? I mean, Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, others, they've all pitched versions of the great replacement theory, which is this idea that the elites and the Democratic establishment are trying to replace white people with black and brown people abroad to change the constituency of the American electorate. So conspiracism. And that was a, that was a fringe Internet right wing conspiracy theory a decade ago and now it's being trafficked on X and elsewhere by senior political figures in the Trump administration. I think the point you made in a post bill, and I keep coming back this, I tell everybody this because you really should, I think this is really true, is that, you know, the path to an authoritarian regime does lie in mass deportations. And if you just think what would take, what would be needed to sort of fulfill Stephen Miller's fantasies or what Trump has said he would do in orchestrating the largest mass deportations in American history and potentially even millions of people if they were actually to follow through on that and do do that, think about what it would entail in terms of sending mass numbers of armed forces, security forces into blue cities and rounding up people at businesses and homes and then having the infrastructure to detain them on American soil, which is something they're already building up, and then also fly them out with charter flights or other types of military flights, or however they decide to do it, or however the courts allow them to do it, that whole infrastructure, that whole process, if they were actually follow through on what they've said they want to do. I think you're exactly right that that is an authoritarian regime.

[Bill Kristol]

And incidentally, that bill that I guess has just been, they've just moved to proceed with in the Senate has a huge amount of money for ICE and the border control. It's kind of an underreported my mind side of the bill. I mean, the tax cuts, the Medicaid stuff's all very important obviously as well, but they're building up the authoritarian infrastructure.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, I haven't confirmed the figures for myself yet, but I was just looking at my, just before this, this, this meeting here because it Seems to be a massive growth in those.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, yeah. Like four or five times of what they currently can do in terms of deportation.

[Tom Joslin]

Right.

[Bill Kristol]

And you're talking about detention and deportation, I believe.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially with detention facilities and these types of things. This is again, this is what speaks to, they at least are again signaling in these, in these figures that they are planning on moving forward with these plans.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, I suppose, look, if you believe in the great replacement theory. I struck thinking about this again also just before this conversation. You believe you got to get rid of these people. And we say, I always say the media says people report accurately. This is a nice hard working person who's been here 30 years. This is a person whose kids are in the Marine Corps. This is a person who doesn't deserve this. What are you doing? You're not going after criminals. But of course they need to. They don't want these people here and they don't want their kids here as citizens, which they might be if they're even naturalized, were born here, obviously. And they don't want them as part of the, this country's political and social fabric. I mean from their point of view, all of us saying, hey, this seems kind of mean spirited and this seems like a case where you've gone too far. The case that they haven't got too far. This is part of the, this is the essence of the agenda. Right. It is. What is the word they use? Re. Not, Not Denatural migration. Yeah, Re Migration. That really is, I guess I've been.

[Tom Joslin]

Another far right concept from the Internet that is now being pursued in the administration, you know, terrible.

[Bill Kristol]

It's also with the masks, I'm curious. I mean I, I for a while thought, you know, look, they can just say, okay, these masks have gone a little too far. We're going to try to make sure all of our agents have at least identifying, you know, sort of things on their chest. But also when not necessary, they're not going to wear a mask, which is not necessary to see some 50 year old woman somewhere outside of a courthouse. Right, but they want to wear the masks. Right. I mean, that's what strikes me. We're sort of people who are lecturing them that don't you understand that this is kind of unpleasant and attractive? They're sort of missing the point. The point is that it is unpleasant and, and a signal.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, well, I mean if you're just enforcing law and order and you're on the side of good, why are you hiding your face? I mean, if I Think if you're doing what's right and what's necessary to preserve America, as they claim, you know, what are you ashamed of? Why, why are you worried about it? You know, I mean, they would say it's a security thing, they don't want retribution, that kind of thing. But you know, look, there's enough videos online. You know, one of the things I, when you talk about ICE and these, these agents, one things you get for pushback is, well, they're just following orders, they're just doing their thing. That's true for some of them or even a lot of them, maybe even a majority of them.

[Bill Kristol]

Right.

[Tom Joslin]

But we now have enough clips online where you can see these agents roughing up people in a way that's certainly not consistent with my understanding of the law and certainly not consistent with, with what's necessary for law and order. You know, and I think that all is part of it. That's a very authoritarian push itself. You're dominating, controlling people that you've deemed to be your enemies. You know, and why is anybody surprised that this is sort of the culmination of Trump's political agenda? Since he rode down that escalator more than 10 years ago, the xenophobia has been the number one part of his campaign, number one part of his political platform. You know, enriching himself and his friends and xenophobia, those are the two things that really drive Trump's sort of agenda in my view, more than anything else.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, and just getting people sort of normalizing the rough behavior of the masks, I feel like that's useful for them going forward. Right. They got three and a half years to maybe use some rough behavior and that. And yeah, fear not just on, you know, hard working gardeners who are immigrants from Mexico or Central America.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean, it's all about intimidation and fear and trying to force your will. I mean, you can even see the Department of Homeland Security is putting out really ridiculous propaganda. I don't, you know, in my household we have NBC on in the morning, you know, as the, the news rolls for whatever reason. And I've been struck by how many ads that Christine Ome and DHS play during these mainstream news broadcasts, during this, on this, you know, this NBC obviously is still going to be one of the lodestar of our media ecosystem, you know, a load star in that system and it's going to reach a lot of people and it's really propagandistic. The, the video, the, the things they put out and it's all highlighting how they're what they're doing and putting it in the best possible terms for the majority Americans as opposed to what they're really doing. And you know, even on social media, on X, you can see the dhs, you know, put out this picture of ice hats on alligators for Alligator Alley. Did you see that the other day?

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah.

[Tom Joslin]

You know, it's all, it's all like just really iny face, over the top aggressive sort of messaging when it surrounds these policies.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. And the normal political thing with the youth, you're losing some of the in between the swing voters or this kind of thing. But I think that's not, they correctly in a way understand that that's Ms. Somehow misunderstanding what the current moment is about.

[Tom Joslin]

And the scary thing to me as someone who studied extremism my entire adult life, is that there are a significant number of people who are attracted to it. Right. That's, that's, that's the point that we're not allowed to say or not supposed to say, but we should say, I think is that there are a number of people who like the, the, the rough stuff, who like the authoritarian push, who like the idea that people are being trampled. They, they love it. You know, and so that's something that is, you know, there's, I still believe that the majority of Americans don't, at least I hope that they don't. But you know, they're certainly acting, the administration certainly acting as if they have no price to pay for acting this way.

[Bill Kristol]

And they're paying a little price maybe in public opinion polls, but no price in Congress yet and very limited price of the courts, wouldn't you say? I mean that, that if you had told me on January 20th, this is where we'd be in terms of deportation and this money for more of it going through Congress and they're getting away with sending almost all but one of the peoples, I guess so far to El Salvador. Right. I mean, you know, I mean, and generally just, you know, huge amounts of detentions and stuff. They've got to think they're kind of, they may not get to the 1 million number. It's a very ambitious number on their part. But I get nervous on some of our friends and allies say, oh that's so silly. They don't understand how the system works. There aren't enough immigration judges. You know what, they're going to find a way to ignore it, to get it work around. And they are finding a way incidentally to work around the immigration judges. Right?

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean they're going to keep pressing the issue. I mean, they, you know, you look at those flights that left in mid March of this year, they violated the due process rights of 261 migrants. You know, the, you know, Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment combined contain the same clause that applies to all US Persons, not US Citizens. So there is, there is a right to due process and it's very, even under the Alien Enemies act, there's a right to a certain degree of process. And these 261 migrants, some of whom, maybe even many of whom are bad people, you know, who knows, right? I mean, some of them are clearly innocent in my view. And, and we're, no, we're certainly not the aggressors, not the enemies weren't even criminals, a lot of them. There's no evidence they even had any kind of serious crim. Background at all. But they violated due process rights. And it seemed, you know, you look at the opinion that with the dissenting opinion by three of the female justices on the Supreme Court, I think they were right in saying that this was a very deliberate thing that happened here. You know, they staged all this such that these migrants were detained and held and ready to go. The, the moment, for example, that Trump invoked the Alien Enemies act, it was all done in a way to make sure there was no due process. You know, so again, that speaks to their intentions and what they're all about. And it's a, it's a fundamental threat to the constitutional, constitutional rights that conservatives are supposed to value.

[Bill Kristol]

And Christine Omen shows up down there in El Salvador. Again, I always come all the things that seemed over the top are part of the point of it.

[Tom Joslin]

Exactly. Yeah, that's it. I mean, Christy Gnomes stand, you know, standing there with her sixty thousand dollar Rolex in front of a cage of human beings, you know, you know, trumpeting herself and what DHS has done. You know, this is the type of thing that in the normal political atmosphere that we were accustomed to for much of our lives would have been scandalous and would have really dinged them and, and doesn't mean, again, maybe a little bit at the margins, but doesn't seem to overall have. Although, you know, some polls do show people are disapproving of their, their, the deportations and the immigration policies. They're put in place. So, you know, and poll I, I'm always skeptical of those types of snap polls anyway, but you know, we'll see.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, polling suggests also people are doubtful that he should have mobilized or should continue to be mobilizing The National Guard and the Marines and in la, or actually now it's in a very broad area around la. But they seem, again, I think they know what they're doing. They're in no rush to demobilize anyone. And in fact, all the rhetoric they've used and the executive order itself explicitly sort of indicates that they feel they have the right to do this. Anywhere they see that there could be a pro, there is a problem, there could be a problem. State and local authorities aren't doing enough in their judgment. They have reports that they could be disturbances. I mean, they've left themselves a very wide door to use the military here domestically, which I think six months ago we all thought, well, that's really a red line, and surely they can't get away with that. And the courts have objected to some parts of it, but basically they're doing it. And the courts are, for now, at least, not stop. Not even trying to stop them.

[Tom Joslin]

Yes. And the other part about it is that it's a very explicit threat and political threat to blue governance, to blue states and blue cities. That's, you know, the mess I'm struck by every time Trump announces this or talks about it, he talks about how blue governors and blue mayors are doing X, Y and Z and are supposedly failing to secure these areas, and that red America, him and MAGA are going to step in to do it. We're using the military force. And I think that type of political messaging to it, that type of political intent can't be missed in our analysis of all this. And I think it also is a challenge to these blue governors and mayors that they have to step up. They have to understand that this is actually a big part of the authoritarian project, is to show, to discredit blue governance, to say, you know, just as Joe Biden and the Biden administration had supposedly failed America at the federal level, which is a big Trump talking point, these blue governors, blue mayors can't be trusted to govern you at the state and local level. And that's, that's really the whole ball game to what they're trying to do with all this. They want to basically say to the American people, you can trust us to keep your. You secure, keep your city secure, keep the nation safe and prosperous. You can't trust Democrats at all.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, I think people haven't focused enough on the red state, blue state side of this. It's not that he's not doing anything in red states. There are blue. Indeed, there are blue dots. Excuse me, there are blue pockets or dots. And red states where they want to make this point as well. Right. Where it's in sync with the Republican governor's agenda. But yeah, the pure discrediting of blue governance, that's a very important point, actually.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. And I mean, you look at Los Angeles, which is where they first deployed the Guard and the Marines. I mean, this is Stephen Miller's fantasy, right. Goes back to his nightmares in high school of the supposed invasion of immigrants. And he, you know, he and what the administration are doing, you know, they didn't go into a red state or a red city to do this first. They went back to this place where they consider to be the heart of, you know, Miller's nightmarish vision of America. And when they did so, explicitly attacking Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, the mayor of la, in doing it. So this is the type of thing where I think if I were in, if I were an official in New York, for example, which is where I live, I would be thinking about how to head off these types of incursions that are probably coming my way. There's already much heavier activity in and around New York City area when it comes to rounding up migrants. But it could get, it could get a lot worse.

[Bill Kristol]

And then if, if, if a mayor says to the police department, don't cooperate, then you really could get some serious crises in terms of who's actually got the power and who's got the ability to order the people with guns to do this or not do this. Right. Yeah.

[Tom Joslin]

I mean, they want to just run roughshod over state and local authorities. And I think that if I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking right now about how to put up some roadblocks.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. You mentioned earlier the amount of corruption and grift that's going on, which also I think stunning. It is really stunning. So you've been looking into it. Say, say a few words about. Just about it.

[Tom Joslin]

You know, I don't know if I have it here, a hold of. Pardon me for one second. So this is, this is Trump's 278 filing. These are his, his sources of income and assets as of December 31, 2004. He had to file this. 24, sorry, 2024. Showing my age there. And the. I, you know, he had to show, you know, it's a very lengthy document. There's a lot. And it's really stunning when you go through it. I mean, just amazing. I mean, he's getting income streams from Saudi owned construction companies. You know, his golf courses are intertwined with Saudi interests. In a lot of cases, the crypto, you know, the pseudo crypto stuff he's selling and marketing enormously profitable for him. I mean, he made, you know, between mid October of 2024 and December 31st of 2024, according to his own financial filings, he made more than $57 million in cash, just cash from, you know, selling, you know, really kind of dubious crypto sort of offerings to the public. And there's just all sorts of stuff throughout his entire filing and throughout his entire presence publicly about how he's really selling the presidency and marketing the presidency from his meme coins to this world Liberty financial interest that he's, he's selling to other things. I mean, it's really stunning. I mean, and having foreign, foreign governments or foreign actors anyway, tied to foreign governments invest in all this in a way that we haven't really seen before. And, you know, the first time around there were all these emoluments chart trying to basically challenge him on the emoluments clause and the fact that he was, you know, getting these gifts from foreign actors. You know, none of those succeeded that time around. And he sort of, again, he started where he left off and has really pedal the metal on all that.

[Bill Kristol]

And the pardon power gives him the right, if someone does fall afoul of some federal at least authority against the. It doesn't help with the states, but somewhere he, he can pardon them. And you know, so again, I think it's, it is just, it is amazing how on.

[Tom Joslin]

I mean, he's, he's potentially made hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah.

[Tom Joslin]

You know, off the crypto, the crypto stuff alone, you know, and a lot of it's pseudo crypto because it's like fake. Like meme coins are not really crypto. You can't really use them for anything. And not the crypto is. Can be used in a lot of cases either. But, but it's just stunning to watch this. You know, you think about, I think about it in terms of the politics of it too, where for five years, really, Republicans focused on Hunter Biden's laptop. You know, Hunter Biden's laptop became this evil, magical talisman of corruption that everybody knew about, that everybody would talk about, even if they didn't really know it was on it. And it supposedly showed, you know, all the corrupt influence peddling from then Vice President Biden and his son Hunter. And let's, let's just grant off the top everything Republicans said about that just as a, just for the sake of argument. Right. Just Say that it all was corrupt influence peddling. It all was, you know, something that we should be offended by. Okay, look at what Trump's doing now and tell me that you can't, you can't make the same argument about what he's doing now. Now, this isn't what aboutism? Because I'm not throwing away the Hunter Biden stuff. I'm not saying that. That's all. That doesn't count. Not saying that. I'm just saying if you're going to be consistent in your arguments and spend five years, 100. Biden's laptop, you can look at the first five months of the Trump administration. You have way more to work with, you know, in terms of corruption, in terms of influence peddling.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, orders are back at you more.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, it's Himalayan mountains versus a small mound of pebbles. You know, I mean, it's, I mean, what, what Hunter Biden was running or the Bidens were running, it just insignificant compared to the sons we're talking. I mean, just even again, the more than $57 million, that money that Trump brought in between October and December of last year through World Liberty Financial, selling the pseudo crypto stuff and marketing himself and marking his family as the head of it according to his own financial filing, that dwarfs anything that was on, you know, alone, before you get to anything else, dwarfs anything that was on Hunter Biden's laptop.

[Bill Kristol]

So less than six months into the Trump presidency, he's got four years. I mean, I think one thing you've been good at is looking ahead and realizing this is a dynamic situation and that we can't just take a snapshot and say, okay, we've seen Trump's authoritarianism and that's bad. But, you know, that's kind of what we now can expect for three and a half years. But of course, it's a moving thing and probably in some ways a self radicalizing thing, isn't it? The movement. It's not just, you can't just assume that, okay, they're finished with what they've been trying to do. So say a little bit about where this could go and what worries you the most?

[Tom Joslin]

I think what worries me the most is there are a lot of people in the elite, and even on the Democratic side and even in the opposition to Trump, who still see him as somebody who's just sort of a corrupt businessman, a self dealing, self promoting, sort of con man or charlatan who's not really interested in the deeper, darker fantasies of the far right. I just think if you look at the way the administration is composed, is comprised in terms of personnel, the policies it's pursuing, this desire to move forward with mass deportations on a level we've never seen before, and so many other things that motivate them. From the conspiracy world online, I think that people need to reframe how they think about him and what they're up to. You know, I, I don't think, you know, yes, the grift, the corruption, it's all baked in. It's all part of the story. But that doesn't mean it can't be extreme at the same time. It can't mean that they're not focusing on an extremist agenda at the same time. I would say a lot of this is very extreme, you know, in terms of what we've already seen. And I don't, I don't think they're going to back down from that. I don't, I don't think Trump is just going to say, you know, that's it, that, you know, that's it for the day. I'm calling it. I think that's, that's sort of the central mission for him are certain extreme items on the agenda that he has to push this people have to push and will push.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. And I think I just struck Tucker someone the other day, a lawyer, very well informed, very, very anti Trump about the deployment of the troops in the LA area, said, well, yeah, but that's going to end. And I said, they're going to deploy them elsewhere. I mean, who knows, right? Maybe I'm, maybe I'm being too alarmed. But why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they were there as an excuse just to establish the principle, just to further the. Connect the sense that he's entitled to do this, maybe further the sense among some of the military that they kind of, some of them would like to do this and help Hegseth find the people who were willing to do this. I just feel like, again, the, the dynamic character of this authoritarian progress, if you can use the word progress, is, Is underestimated somewhat.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, I, I mean, look at what they did with the executive branch and sort of, you know, completely taking a wrecking ball to it in the first few months using Doge and Elon Musk and what they're doing, you know, they found very little in terms of actual real waste, but they did find quite a few enemies to cashier and get rid of and p. And, and a lot of control over the executive branches and also, you know, encroaching on the powers of Congress. I mean, this is a big theme and all this. I mean, you sent me an article on this, and I've written about this myself, too. There's, there's, there's a fundamental problem here in America where the separation of powers, as it's sort of constitutionally thought of and was set by the founders, has been under attack or been basically being undermined for a long time. You know, Congress has really abdicated its legislative power, its power over the purse and various other things in different ways over time to the executive branch, for example. And Trump comes back into power in a second administration at a time when that was a trend. You know, it's something where the executive branch has been capitalizing off of. Across administrations has been capitalizing off of Congress's inability to, you know, act on its own and use its own constitutional powers. And I think they came in and they just, they just sort of, you know, again, went pedal the metal on it. They decided to go even faster on it. You know, that. That's something that a trend that helps the authoritarian doesn't hurt them.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. They have a certain. Trump personally has a kind of feral instinct for what the weaknesses in the system are. And whereas a normal president might, out of a sense of response, might take advantage of some of them a little bit by student loans, but out of a sense of responsibility, might also try to fix some of them and generally might just restrain from taking advantage of everything he could take advantage of. Right.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah.

[Bill Kristol]

Trump's the opposite, and the Trump people are the opposite. And it turns out the system depends. Was weaker than we thought. I think it depends more on a kind of honor code than we thought. And, and here we are.

[Tom Joslin]

I mean, the wall between DOJ and White House we talked about earlier, that's a good example. Right. That was. Turns out there was not as much legal as it was ethical. And, you know, it did. When you come to Trump, you don't have to worry about ethics being a barrier, so.

[Bill Kristol]

Right. And we don't know what an administration looks like. Not after a few months of penetrating that wall and using the Justice Department in a political way, but after a year or after two years or after three years, that's what.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean, you know, looking forward, you know, just to answer your question, too, you mentioned it before, too. I mean, just think about, you know, violating the right to due process. When have we had an administration do that on this level, you know, with people on American soil. Right. Who are being rounded up this early on in administration? It's been a long, long time, if ever that we've seen, seen that you talk about the right to free speech, you know, you know, the attacks on universities, law firms, the media, major media house and the FCC has been going after media, you know, launching investigations or threatening to launch investigations. The major media companies based on stuff that is not had anything to do with anything other really than speech. If you look at it, this is. And rounding up students who wrote, you know, in one case, somebody who wrote an op ed they don't approve of. You know, you go down the board, freedom of the press, you know, free speech, due process, all these things that are sort of norms that are, and constitutional norms undermine how America is constituted. They've been attacking them, you know, very systematically throughout the first six months of the administration. I don't think that's an administration that really wants to stop attacking, attacking or, or wants to just sort of play nice in the next six months.

[Bill Kristol]

That's such an important point. Not a, not a cheering one, but maybe a good one if it makes us really focus and think harder and maybe a little more imaginatively about where to, how to fight back and what's needed to fight back. You know, I, as opposed to kind of just we need to beat back stuff as much as possible, but it can't just be, you know, sticking fate at some point, sticking thumbs in the dyke or whatever the metaphor is. Right?

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean, I, I think people need to understand that our fundamental rights, our constitutional order and our constitutional rights are at, are at risk. That's what, that's the part of the authoritarian equation I find is often missing when people talk about this, when they talk about an autocrat or an authoritarian. What that means fundamentally is that that leader, that ruler has rights that you don't. Right. And your rights are no longer, are no longer sacred, you know, can be abridged by the government, by the whim of the ruler. And this nation was founded on the opposite of that right, that the ruler doesn't get to abridge our rights, you know, on a whim. You know, and I think that what we've already seen this year is that that's what Trump and his administration, that's what they're doing. You know, they're people who are, you know, for example, you know, you know, Andre the, the gay barber who just want people to look fabulous, that they rounded up and treated like a, you know, a gang member and sent him off to El Salvador. I think about him pretty regularly. I mean, I mean, what is that right? Is that he's there now. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Kristol]

I respect but I mean we haven't gotten about out, right? Right.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, no, he hasn't gotten out at all. And why is he there? Right. I mean what, what is the point of roundness? I mean aren't people outraged by this?

[Bill Kristol]

That.

[Tom Joslin]

And he isn't the only one. I mean there are other people in, in these, you know, have been deported who in some cases we've had reports of US citizens being deported or we have, you know, there's a case of a guy who sort of has a weird history where he was born on an American army base and so he doesn't have a citizenship somehow. I don't even know. But I mean they're rounding up people who are hardly a threat to America and in some cases are the very definition of what you'd want to be an American. Right? Yes. Some bad people too. Yes. Some gang members too. I want them out too. I want the bad guys out of here as well. Right. But the point about due process and having constitutional order is that you don't just get to tell us who the bad guys and good guys are. There has to be a process for determining that. You know, and if you leave it up to powers, then it just becomes so easy to corrupt.

[Bill Kristol]

And they've even stopped pretending that it's about the bad guys at this point. It's about getting everyone. It's the mass deportation. 500000 Haitians.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, by.

[Bill Kristol]

We're not going to show that they're committed crimes, they're taking jobs, they're doing anything.

[Tom Joslin]

You know, I mean, I mean, and I mean you think about, you know, the business community too, I think has to think about not just the direct loss of labor to across businesses from all this, but just how much, how disruptive that kind of authoritarian project will be. I mean think about disrupting businesses just in terms of their day to day operations, scaring people, you know, you know, the economic downturn from that this type of thing could be colossal.

[Bill Kristol]

Well, maybe that will be the wake up call though. You need to look for root for that. But anyway, this has been such a, I think important conversation, I hope useful one for people and one that really just. Yeah, we need to really think imaginatively about what they're doing. They're thinking in their own way, fairly imaginatively, I've got to say. Or at least fairly differently. Which can make up for a lot of lack of imagination, you know, if you just decide I'm going after everything and we're going after Every weakness. You don't have to be super imaginative, but you, you have to have the. When you have the entire executive branch of the US government, you can do a lot, a lot of damage. Right?

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah. I mean, my concluding note would be the big fear that we had was that they're four years out of power would be like the Velociraptors learning how to open the cage. Right. And they did. They learned how to open the cage. And so they're out now and they're strutting their stuff and you know, it's going to take, take a lot of effort to put them back in the cage.

[Bill Kristol]

Yikes. Horrifying image, but a very important one for people to think about. Tom, thanks so much for this really interesting conversation. We'll do it again in a few weeks, honestly, and also I think very appropriate. I didn't really think about this, but we're speaking on the Sunday before the 4th of July, so it's a good time to really think afresh about, as you were saying, about what, what a nation dedicated to equal rights really means.

[Tom Joslin]

Yeah, some things are worth fighting for.

[Bill Kristol]

Tom, thanks so much. Thanks for what you're doing in the fight. Thank you all for joining us on Bull Work on Sunday.

[Tom Joslin]

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