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Bulwark on Sunday: Trump is Forcing the Military to Break the Law (w/ Rep. Jim Himes)
00:33:27
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here for Bulwark on Sunday. I believe that Representative Jim Himes will be joining me, but may have been a slight. He is the ranking member on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the House. Very respected and influential voice on questions of national intelligence. The intelligence community has been quite worried and critical about Tulsi Gabbard and Trump's management of that important part of the US Government. Here we are, maybe with. There he is. Hey.
- [00:32]
B
Hello. Sorry. Minor technical difficulties there.
- [00:35]
A
That's quite okay. I was just filibustering and something you're familiar with as a member of Congress. I know I gave your bio, so I think people now know you are this Representative Jim Hymes, 4th congressional district of Connecticut. Thank you, Jim, for joining me here, and I really appreciate it. You know, I was saying. I can tell this was so. Just as I was filibustering, I was saying that you succeeded Chris Shays, who's a pretty good friend of mine, a Republican, McCain. Great. We met because we were both pretty close to Senator McCain and among other reasons in Washington. And I was saying that your district has been well represented for a long time.
- [01:07]
B
Right.
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A
Chris was there for like 20 years, and you've been there longer than I.
- [01:10]
B
I think of you as a young.
- [01:11]
A
Member of Congress was. I was already here. I'd been here for so long when you showed up. And you've been. You've. What is this, your eighth term?
- [01:17]
B
This is my ninth term. Yeah, I know. You're right. Chris J. Is very good man, by the way. You know, attended the Chicago Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention. I mean, it shows you. Sort of shows you the, you know, sort of the, the turmoil of our politics. And I have this theory, Bill, probably interesting to no one other than folks in Connecticut, but, you know, before Chris shays was Stuart McKinney, very liberal Republican. And by the way, the nation's sort of landmark homeless rule law is named after the McKinney bento act. And so my theory is that going from Stuart McKinney, liberal Republican, to Chris Shay's pretty quite liberal Republican to Jim Himes, who's a centrist Democrat in this era is actually not all that much of an ideological shift in the representation district.
- [02:01]
A
Not at all. I wish there were more like Chris and like you, honestly. And on your side of the aisle, though, there's certainly you or at least are in the mainstream of your party, whereas Chris Shay's. I last saw Chris in October of 2024. We were both at an event supporting vice president, Vice president Harris for president. So he, he is, he had basically crossed the aisle as, as others have. I also mentioned this. I'm curious. This wasn't what I intended to talk about, but Mike, you and Mike, Mike Turner was chair of the committee when you were ranking member last year. And so you guys were presiding over it. And I think in a very bipartisan way and in a very well respected way in terms of doing the oversight, very important oversight that House Intelligence does. I do. Don't you think that Mike Turner's purged by the Trump people at the beginning of this term? It didn't get that much attention because it's kind of inside baseball, I guess. But I don't know, I felt like that was a very ominous side, and I don't. Do you agree with that?
- [02:52]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, there's no question. I mean, the, the, the purging of Mike Turner, who, you know, to his credit, had his own mind and he had his own mind intellectually and temperamentally. And, you know, so I think the fact that he was willing to, on certain items, break with Donald Trump made him inexcusable in a position of leadership. And it's not just the replacement of Turner with, with Rick Crawford, with whom, by the way, I should say I have a detente. We have sort of a way of working together because we both feel strongly about not letting the committee, which, as you know, is critical, go the way that it went under Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff. But, you know, it's not just that. It's also putting, you know, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who's, you know, right out there in the vanguard of cutting edge MAGA warriors and conspiracy theories onto the committee. So, yeah, the tone is changing.
- [03:43]
A
Well, let's get to the work of the committee. I want to get back to various breaking news items, maybe on what the Defense Department's doing in terms of press coverage and all that. But since we started with the committee, I mean, you are the ranking member there without obviously getting into anything that you shouldn't be talking about, which you don't do. You're very careful about that. I mean, how worried should we be about the status of the intelligence community here? What are we, eight months into the Trump administration?
- [04:07]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's, there's a, there's a real worry and then there's a theoretical worry that I, that I'll get into that I can't really talk a lot about. The, the real worry, of course, is that, you know, if you look at the removal of the security clearances of the 37 people, all of whom had something to do with, you know, whatever. Russia. The investigation of Russia's messing around in our election, and Russia did mess around in our election in 2016. The firing of the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency because. And, and again, we're not getting any answers to these questions, but one might presume that. That it was. Because it was a Defense Intelligence Agency report that suggested that Iranian nuclear assets hadn't been obliterated. The firing of the National Security Agency's director, General Hawk. You know, patriotic, squeaky clean, amazing guy. You know, what is happening is that the men and women of the IC are being told that you fall in line with the President's policies. And by the way, they say publicly, right. You fall in line with the President's policies and message or your job is at risk. And the problem with that is, you know, you know, you can say that to the Secretary of State and, or the Secretary of Health and Human Services, but the intelligence community is not there to execute policy. It's there to provide the President, the Congress, and other, as they say, consumers with really good information. And, of course, that is precisely what is being damaged right now, if you want to get into it. You know, I. I'm spending a lot more time looking at covert action. Americans know that the CIA, in particular, other elements of the intelligence community, do things that the US Government explicitly seeks to deny. And it won't surprise you to know that the level of aggressiveness and pushing of legal and other boundaries is consistent with what we're seeing with DoD attacks on boats in the Caribbean. So, anyway, that's a full plate for me.
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A
So it's worrisome is what it sounds like. You.
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B
Yeah, I mean, the one thing you can say, and this is ridiculous, but I don't think the President cares about the opinions or the judgments of the intelligence community. He said so very explicitly, talking about Tulsi Gabbard. I don't care what she thinks. So, you know, for a guy who doesn't consume intelligence, maybe the. The warping of intelligence is a little less. A little less scary than for a president who actually read the President's Daily Brief and consumed intelligence, but, boy, that's not something to be particularly happy about.
- [06:32]
A
Well, you mentioned the boat, so I've been slightly obsessed with that. I mean, I feel now that, I guess we've now hit. Well, these public reports are. Or Trump's own report is that we've hit three boats, killed people in the Caribbean, fishing boats that allegedly were smuggling drugs Allegedly to the US no attempt to turn them around to board them the way the Coast Guard does is done routinely and did actually I saw quite recently. But they've been excluded, I think from this operation. But as you say, it's not just that Trump may not care about intelligence, he also claims to have intelligence in this case that at least publicly. And you know, maybe you all, you all know more than I do, I'm sure, but publicly is not obviously there that right as to what, who the people were on this, on these boats and what they were doing. So I think you had a pretty strong letter about this and with some colleagues in the House. So talk about that, about that. It feels like that has sort of faded out of the news after that first one. And then the, and people thought, well, maybe that was just a one off. And then they've kept on doing it. I mean, how. Well, just tell me what you think about that.
- [07:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, let's not bury the lead here. Having the Defense Department kill alleged, alleged drug runners in the Caribbean is illegal, period, full stop. It is illegal. And what, what mystifies me about that. And by the way, there's not really a debate about that. Right?
- [07:48]
A
I mean, right.
- [07:49]
B
In this sort of hall of mirrors that we live in, we have this situation where they take the first strike and reporters ask the Pentagon what was your legal authority to do so? And the Pentagon says, we're working on it. After there's 11 dead people floating in the Caribbean. Right, That's. So anyway, clearly illegal. What, what blows my mind about that is not that the commander in chief is doing illegal things. That's a normal Tuesday for the commander in chief. But if you think about it, you know, from him on down to the, you know, lieutenant who actually pulls a trigger or releases a weapon, these folks are committing murder. Murder defined as killing without a legal basis. And I am myst over why the rest of the chain of command is quite comfortable with their superior saying, oh, legal authority, we're working on it because, you know, you could see a world and this has happened in our history before, where the worm turns and my Republicans say, hey, this thing about killing alleged drug dealers turns out to not be such a good idea where these guys could get prosecuted. So my mind is blown by that. But first and foremost, this is an illegal action. Now it's another thumb in the eye of Congress's war making authority. It is also probably the first time in American history, you'd have to check me on that, where the military, the US Military has deliberately targeted civilians and then tertiary or like, even, even less important, but important nonetheless is the fact that you know what you'd really like to do with a bunch of drug dealers in a fast boat in the Caribbean. You'd love to arrest them to find out who they're working for, where the networks run to get the intelligence. So again, you know, what's happening right now is that my testosterone and Trump addled Republican colleagues are just cheering on this barbaric killing and they justify it by saying, but they're killing 100,000Americans with fentanyl. Completely setting aside the values of America and the laws of America.
- [09:44]
A
It is, I'm pretty astounded by it. I'm worried about the chain of command situation, which, I don't know, what does it suggest? That maybe they cut out the lawyers, maybe they cut out some parts of the chain of command, incidentally. I mean, how much visibility do you guys have until what actually happened?
- [10:00]
B
Well, that's the other thing. I could have come up with a longer list of things that concern me. You know, I bumped into Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee in the Capitol right before we went home last week. I said, Adam, are you getting, are you getting any more visibility into this than these attacks than we are on the intelligence side? And he said, no, not really. We've had very brief briefings in which, in which legal authorities have not really been discussed. Some of the fact patterns are weird. People have pointed out that the first strike where There were apparently 11 people in a boat. I've never been in the business of drug running, but you don't need to be experienced in that to know that if you're going to try to move drugs, you probably want as few people in the boat as possible because you want cargo space. And so, I mean, there's all sorts of unanswered questions. Was that boat really carrying drugs or was it actually carrying people for human smuggling? One of these days we're going to ask the question, was it just a fishing boat? You know, our intelligence community and our Pentagon, they're very, very good, but they're not perfect. And Bill, let me, let me, let me say 30 seconds more before I end this rant. I've spent years and years and years looking at the lethal action that we take against terrorists. And I can't get into the details. I can't really say much more than that. It's not a surprise to the American people. Barack Obama talked about it publicly that every once in a while we will take lethal action against a terrorist. And when we do that, we go to extreme lengths to make sure we got the right guy to make sure that there aren't, as they so clinically put it, collateral around other people. And so the work that we do when we take lethal action against terrorists, which we have been doing since 9 11, is in total contrast to the trigger happy wildness that we're seeing in the killing of civilians against whom we don't have an authorization for the use of military force.
- [11:56]
A
And with the terrorists, there's usually either they're part of a real terrorist organization that is seeking ultimately to kill Americans, or sometimes there's an actual sort of ticking time bomb almost situation where people think they're going to do something against Americans or others abroad, if not here at home. And this is a boat that's what, a thousand miles away or something like that in the Caribbean. I mean, the idea that this was an immediate threat, I mean, I love. One of the amusing things for me, I'm sure this struck you even more was people in the first couple of days before they just shut up in stonewall, they were trying to throw out what they thought were plausible defenses and they just threw out these phrases that are vaguely in people's minds from, you know, from the war on terror and so forth. It was an imminent threat, it was collective self defense. It was all ridiculous, honestly. I mean it seemed to me, you know, and shows how unserious they are about killing people. And I, they putting, you know, our, the members of the armed services in a position where they either have to carry out an order which is legally dubious or not carry it out which has all kinds of implications. I, yeah, I don't think people have taken this for me at least this is a very worrisome and dangerous road to go down. And they're, and they're continuing to go down it. That's again what strikes me one thought maybe they did it once. They thought it was for you. This, they had no support. I mean, you're absolutely right. All kinds of people who served in Republican and Democratic administrations, Jags and legal types from DoD, but also others, just military folks, said this is wrong, we can't do this. And they've gone ahead to do it.
- [13:25]
B
Yeah, yeah, look, we've covered the ground here and I think Americans, even those who are caught up in the, you know, cult like obsession with MAGA and President Trump, you know, really need to ask themselves the question because, because the what's being articulated. You're right, there's a ton of baloney like, oh, well, these are a terrorist group. Well, they haven't been designated as such. And, oh, by the way, under American law, just because you get designated a terrorist group doesn't give you the authority to kill people in those terrorist groups. Right. It gives you some authority to sanction and do some other things. But there's a whole bunch of other steps. But, you know, Americans need to step back and say, hey, we're comfortable with the president breaking the law to kill some people we don't like. You know, really, is that. Who have we become? And by the way, when there's a Democratic president, there will be someday. Do you want that Democratic president to have that authority? I sure as hell don't. So, again, we're caught up in this hysteria. I've heard. I've heard, you know, behind closed doors in the Intelligence Committee, two Republicans saying, not only do I support it, we get to do with this a lot more. And I just, oh, my God, you've gotten caught up. You're a lawmaker and you've gotten caught up in the hysteria to such an extent that you're showing complete disregard for the laws that you were entrusted to make. I mean, anyway, it's shouting into the void, Bill.
- [14:44]
A
And they're not doing. And the Republican members don't seem to be doing much, at least publicly, to help members of Congress who have rather important responsibilities here, to actually discover what happened, let alone the public. I mean, to be fair to Obama, Bush, where they did these things, obviously not every detail was revealed. And there were some things that were kept, you know, very, very secret. But in general, there were sort of briefings. They would explain. They would specify to some degree the legal authority. They would explain they had taken precautions as many as they could to avoid collateral damage, etc. Etc. I mean, there's nothing here. I'm very struck by that. The Iran thing, which they were proud of and which was much closer, let's say, to the line of, you know, kind of a legitimate action. I would say they immediately had a briefing the next day with the chairman of the Choi chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, and they explained, maybe not 100 accurately, but whatever. They explained what happened and, you know, that other people could criticize, as you say, what happened with their. Their explanation. I'm very struck that there's none of that in this case. I mean, really, Trump has his little videos on social media, and that is it. And that. Which means the public has no idea what's going on.
- [15:46]
B
Yeah, that's Right. That's right. And you know, we will, we will rue this day. You know, again, I can't. I, I still keep stumbling. My job is to sort of point out when the law is being broken. But I still can't get over the fact that I think for the first time in our history, the United States military, the probably the most respected institution in the United States, is now killing civilians who have been convicted of no crime. There's a reason we do trials in this country, right? Sometimes a trial results in the state taking a life, capital punishment. But we do endless trials to awful people, to rapists and child murderers. We afford them a trial here. We may or may not have intelligence that these guys may or may not be drug runners. And by the way, we should talk about if we want to reach back into the other world where we cared about humanity. These aren't kingpins, Right? I know who these people are. These are guys who lost their job in Maracaibo, Venezuela, who are doing this run for $75 that the United States Navy is taking out. Again, it's just from illegal, from a moral, from a utilitarian standpoint. We're eventually going to blow up a boat full of fishermen or tourists, right? And all my friends who are like, it's all good, you know, you're going to own that in church, my friend.
- [17:04]
A
Now, that's powerfully said. I was very struck by the Friday, I think the Hegseth. Defense Secretary Hegseth announced these new rules, allegedly the COVID of the press, which would, as I couldn't quite understand it, which would prohibit the press from reporting not classified material, but anything they weren't authorized to report. I don't even understand. What does that mean? You can't get, you can't discover a story that the Pentagon is debating what are the million things they debate and that there's a disagreement. I'm making this up, obviously, between the Navy and the Air Force or between, you know, the millions of stories, one. And we can, no, we're no longer entitled to find out what reporters discover in reporting on the Pentagon, I guess. Is that your understanding of it?
- [17:46]
B
Well, you know exactly what's going on here, right? It is censorship. It's what they do in Beijing, it's what they do in Moscow, it's what they do in Tehran. When the government says, you're going to check your reporting with us, which we've never said before, and in fact is very much at odds with the very first amendment to our Constitution, you're doing exactly what Dictatorial regimes do. No surprise, right? Absolutely no surprise. We started this conversation talking about the silencing of people inside the intelligence community who are floating inconvenient truths. Right. We had the, and I'm going to suss out a little silver lining in this cloud, but we had the Attorney General of the United States three days ago say, hate speech is not protected. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America made a factually wrong statement because hate speech, all speech, is protected with, as you know, some very narrow exceptions for inciting violence and that sort of thing. So what we have here is just utter disdain for the Constitution that is manifesting itself the way the Kremlin operates. Silver lining. Ted Cruz, of all people, stands up and says, no hate speech. You know, prosecuting hate speech is not a thing. You know, I saw what is otherwise almost uniform permissioning on the part of the Republicans in the Congress with whatever it is that Donald Trump cooks up on truth social at 3 in the morning. I saw a few Republicans say, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Aren't we the party that sort of won power by saying that we're going to be the party of free expression and we're stomping on the cancellation of people? And so you saw a little bit of, I won't even use the word pushback, but shall we say, anxiety with, from the Republicans as to where the.
- [19:21]
A
Where the administration was going, but not much action. Right. And so, I mean, the degree to which the Congress is just. The Republican majorities in Congress are just, I guess I'm really struck by that across the board. I'm curious what they say to you privately. I mean, they just aren't challenging or requiring any kind of oversight, any kind of accountability about anything, it seems to me. I've never really seen anything quite like it in my time in Washington.
- [19:43]
B
Yeah, it's dramatically different From Trump won 2016-2020. Trump won. You'd be walking down the hallways with your Republican buddies, and I have lots of Republican buddies, and they'd be like, my God, can you believe what Trump is doing? I just can't believe Trump. I mean, they would be openly sort of shocked at the fact that Trump has taken their party in many ways in a 180 degree turn from what they always believed. I'll tell you what, In Trump version 2.0, you got to get three or four glasses of wine in private in a dark bar before any of these guys say boo about the administration, because they live in terror of being held up on True social. And it's, and it's, and it's game over. You know, Bill Cassidy, my good friend Bill and I served in the House together and I so respect him. You know, he was one, as you know, one of the senators, one of the remaining senators that voted for President Trump's impeachment after January, after the turmoil of January 6th. Dr. And he is, you can watch him on TV and it makes me so sad. He's, you know, he just wants to say, hey, Bobby Kennedy, you're out of your mind and people are going to die. But if he does that and he's in cycle, Donald Trump puts up a truth social about Bill Cassidy, his career is done. Which by the way, leads to an interesting question. Why do so many members of Congress so desperately cling to their careers that they are willing to betray not only their long held ideology of decades, but their like fundamental moral principles?
- [21:07]
A
Yeah. What is the answer to that?
- [21:10]
B
Look, I, every day, even in the worst days, I feel enormously privileged to represent the people of southwestern Connecticut. But the job's not that good, right?
- [21:20]
A
It is. No, I'm, I, it's, it's all shocking. And, and again, one sometimes gets distracted by the performative side of the shockingness as opposed to the actual real world consequences, which is we have an unaccountable, I mean, especially if they succeed in cracking down on the press and on the First Amendment between Congress. Congress and the press are two of our major, major sources of accountability to an administration which, unlike in the first term, has no internal guard guardrails either. So there's no Madison Esper and Gina Haspel and the people you knew well, who did stop Trump from doing a fair number of things. There's no congressional oversight because the Republicans won't permit it. And now they're trying to shut down the media. I feel like, you know, all the talk about, gee, it's worrisome, it could be authoritarian. This is kind of what it is, what it looks like, right?
- [22:03]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, and because there is no Congress, right? Because the, because the MAGA adherents, the Republicans control both the House and the Senate. Because there is no Congress. Effectively you just have to watch by, you know, you have to sort of stand by and watch the internal contradictions split the party, right? So they create this massive Epstein fantasy. And who the hell knows what's true or not true about Epstein? But the point is they feed this fantasy that the Deep State is all being protected by Epstein and all kinds of, you know, nine dimensional context conspiracy theories. And they put themselves in the position where Cash Patel has to go in public and say, guys, we have no evidence to this. Fast forward, you know, because the U.S. attorney in Virginia won't prosecute Adam Smith because, sorry, Adam Schiff, because Adam Schiff has committed no crime. That individual gets fired. Right. So you see them, you know, sort of collapsing on their own contradictions. You know, the party that said the Biden administration, you know, pushed the press around and they held up as their example the CDC trying to get people on social media not to make blatantly false statements about COVID which, by the way, we should talk about. I get profoundly uncomfortable with the federal government telling the media anything, but it sure as hell was nothing like what you were describing. Where, hey, any story you want to file from the Pentagon, you got to run it by Pete Hegg says best guy. I mean, you know, what is it? They say that, you know, they say that every charge is a, is a confession, you know, with these, with these people. So all of a sudden they're sitting back and saying, wait, didn't we win power by saying we're going to end the left's cancel culture? And now we're canceling, you know, Disney. We're threatening to cancel the New York Times. You know, so these internal contradictions are kind of the only thing that you have in the face of a, of a completely inert Congress.
- [23:55]
A
And how about to the degree you can talk about this? I mean, you can generally, I think. I mean, how much confidence should we have that. I guess I'll put it this way, just to my own. I, having served the government quite a long time ago, at the beginning, even of this term, I thought it'd be much worse than the first term, and that was certainly correct. But I thought, you know, Defense Department, especially the uniform, not just the uniform military, but the civilians of DoD, the intelligence community in its different parts, that's going to be a little harder. I mean, those people are professionals. They swear an oath to the Constitution. They take it seriously. They've fought for our country in various ways and places. It's going to be a little harder to steamroll them than it might be, I don't know, you know, some other people elsewhere in government and just sort of totally politicize things. And I guess, I wonder what you, I mean, how much, I'm sure you respect a lot of them, personally and individually, so to speak. But how much confidence do you have that those, I don't know what you call them, structures of order and legality and Regularity and public spiritedness are going to, are standing up now. And what happens after three more years of this?
- [25:00]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to see evidence of that, Bill, you know, and you'll remember, and maybe it's worth reminding our audience that, you know, back in the day, the Iraq war, when the government was basically holding alleged terrorists in torture cells, a number of personnel from the United States Navy said this is not legal and this is not okay. And they stepped away. And we don't see that now. Right. I mean, let me give you a specific example. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Kane, has profound respect across the aisle. You know, an accomplished soldier, and now he's in a position of huge leadership. I imagine that he's every day thinking about Mark Milley, his predecessor, who President Trump branded a traitor and suggested should be executed. But he's a soldier and he's a good soldier with lots of respect from all corners of the, of the political universe. What's he saying? Is he comfortable with this? And how is he promising that 25 year old lieutenant who's in an aircraft or on a ship in the Caribbean? How is General Kane Promising that 25 year old, recently graduated Annapolis grad that he's not committing felony murder? I would like to know the answer to those questions. And you know, you're absolutely right. I usually think that the uniformed officer corps is steeped in the tradition, probably going back to the Nuremberg trials that, you know, I was ordered to do so is not a defense that exonerates you. So if we'd had hearings or if we were getting notifications, I might have a better answer to you. All I've got is, you know, what the hell is General Kane doing and how is he explaining this to the 25 year old that's pulling the trigger?
- [26:43]
A
I guess they still have him testify in his usual ways before armed services and I think before you guys and both, or at least other, at least the intelligence chiefs testify before you all and both in private and secret, but also in public committees. So I guess you'll have a chance to ask them a little bit at least. But I guess, I guess maybe I'll close with this question. A lot of my friends have, you know, I think it's quite important personally that Democrats win the House and 2026 to restore some accountability and oversight, honestly, even if you can't pass presumably that much legislation over what could be a Republican Senate and over Trump's objections. But how, I mean, how much difference would that just really, this is an Honest question. I mean, how much difference would it make if you were chair of the committee? Just explain to people who don't know how these, how these things work exactly in Washington. How much greater accountability could you demand or exact? How much visibility would you have that you don't have now? And how much would that then be available to us too, to make judgments about what's happening?
- [27:47]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really good question. And the answer is that in the, in compared to what we have today, which is pretty much nothing, certainly in the House is nothing. You know, the Democratic senators have the filibuster. That's a tool in the House, we have almost nothing. We don't have subpoena power if we are in the majority, which I expect will be true. And by the way, that's something that perhaps the people in the chain of command should remember too, that the worm will turn at some point. We would have subpoena power to demand that people in the administration turn up and testify truthfully. We would control the agenda. So instead of lovingly going over the 40,000th case of a immigrant sneaking across the border, we might ask some questions about the legal authority for killing alleged drug dealers in the Caribbean. So the answer is we would have kind of the only check. And by the way, we haven't talked about the judiciary. The judiciary is by and large still acting as something of a check. I might exclude the Supreme Court from that observation of the, of the administration and the media and of course, popular reaction. Right. The President's numbers are getting really, really bad and that matters. But anyway, we would have some tools. But let me leave you with this one thought in case we all agree that that's the solution. So let's imagine that I'm chairman of the Intelligence Committee and leader in the intelligence community, refuses to appear, ignores a subpoena, which is illegal. What does Congress do? They have to make a referral to the Department of Justice in order to pursue the sanctions associated with breaking the law. Who's running the Department of Justice? Pam Bondi, who seems to be confused about the First Amendment. So the answer is it will be valuable and important to the preservation of our democracy. But it's not everything.
- [29:37]
A
No, that's a very slightly chastening, but I think important answer for people to hear. We can't just, you know, everyone works very hard in 2026 and there's a 7 seat Democratic majority or 27 seat Democratic majority and everything's fine. Not really. I mean, the executive branch, I mean, I'm an executive branch person. I never worked on the Hill. I mean it's powerful. It's powerful. Especially when there are no internal guardrails. That's the part maybe I will just one last question if you have a second. I mean just come back to that. I just those internal guardrails as well as respect for the norms obviously and laws from the president on down. So important really, you know, and, and, and you don't see them all the time, but all kinds of things. To have a president who just snaps his fingers and the Attorney General of the United States, the Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Defense, yet say yes sir. And what I mean it really especially for this president, obviously the, it's, I don't know. I really, that part I think is just, I don't know. We did not, we've not had that experience before. That really is different from the first term. Right?
- [30:38]
B
Yeah. No, as you know Bill better than I, you know, our entire lifetimes there has been a push me pull you between the President, United States and the Congress. And there's some areas where it's been absolutely bipartisan. Right. Every president has encroached in my opinion as a member of Congress on congressionals, very clear on Congress's very clear constitutional war making authority. But you know, Americans don't raise hell much when the president, you know, exerts authority that might properly reside with the Congress. So you know, maybe we have a conversation about that. And again, as you know, you know, over the decades we've had this poll, what we've never had, what we've never had is a president who showed utter disdain for the law and the Constitution, who simply dismissed it. You know, when Joe Biden wanted to forgive student loan debt for everybody and the Supreme Court said you can't do that. Joe Biden, his administration said we don't like this. But of course we are abiding by this. You know, we. Trump shows his disdain by firing attorneys that he that can't. With whom he can't get his way, trying to fire Federal Reserve governors with whom he can't. That's what we've never seen. The utter disdain and the absolute commitment to bending the government to his will. We've never seen that before.
- [31:56]
A
Yikes. And we'll see it. And this is for three more years probably. He's not going to change. So that's again, I think some of our friends are sort of like, well we've seen the worst of it already. I'm not so sure that's the case.
- [32:06]
B
Unfortunately, you know, I don't view it that way. What we see is, I hate to use the metaphor because it's so tired, but it's boiling the frog, you know, I mean it's just get us a little used to the idea that the Pentagon could approve like Beijing, what you want to write, you know, and oh, when the first report comes out, you know, we're all aflutter and the New York Times editors editorial page goes bananas. Four weeks later we're on to the next thing and it doesn't seem quite so unusual. I happen to believe, by the way, that my folks on my side of the aisle overreacted to the National Guard in Washington. I was there last week. I saw these 19 year olds wandering around looking lost and everything, you know, but, and, and it was, I think it was a mistake to say that this is the catastrophic apocalyptic, apocalyptic end of our democracy. But you know what it is, it's just advancing the tolerance for the forms of autocracy day in and day out. And it's not impossible. Back to the boiling the frog thing that, you know, a year from now, you know, we're just, we look back and we have an autocracy and we say how did we get here? And it was just the daily moving of what we're willing to tolerate. Yikes.
- [33:12]
A
Well, thank you so for this very honest and chastening and bracing conversation. And I thank you for, honestly for what you're trying to do there in Congress. So Jim Himes, thanks for joining me today.
- [33:24]
B
Thanks Bill. Take care.
- [33:25]
A
And thank you for joining us on Bull Work on Sunday.
- [33:28]
B
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