← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Full work on Sunday. And I'm joined by Tom Joslin again about what three, four months ago, we discussed the progress of Trump's authoritarian project and we were alarmed. And I guess we're a little more alarmed today with Tom. Obviously. Not obviously, but Tom has been a longtime friend, contributor to the Weekly Standard, contributor to the Bulwark, the main author of the January 6 committee report in Congress, and as a close student of terrorism abroad. And now what they're calling domestic terrorism. I don't worry the Trump's use of the term, Trump administration's use of the term domestic terrorism at home. So, Tom, thanks for joining me today.
- [00:40]
B
Oh, thanks for having me, Bill. You know, I just saw a video where JVL was talking with Sarah and JVL was very dispirited and saying he would never, we never would have gotten into this business. We knew it was going to end this way in the sort of authoritarian threat. And I'll just say, you know, you know, I, we deal with this every day and I find it, you know, very discouraging that we are where we are. But I think we're going to get through this. And so chin up to JBL and everybody else.
- [01:00]
A
I would say that's good. That's good. You're on the Sarah side of the big Sarah jbl, you know, psychological split, which isn't really as big as they pretend. But anyway, so we'll talk, we'll talk about what's, what's been happening, the whole use of the terrorism quote, domestic terrorism, the attempt to assimilate the sort of the way we treat foreign terrorists to stuff at home. Maybe we'll get to the interaction acts as a possibility. But let's begin where I think you, in your writing and analysis of this, you've begun, which is the mass deportation promise that Trump ran on and people kind of didn't take quite as seriously as maybe they should have. And I think you think, I don't want to put words in your mouth. You explain. I think you think that's at the heart of what we're or at least the trigger for what we're seeing.
- [01:45]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think we both do. I think the shortest path to an authoritarian regime is a mass deportation regime, and that's what they're pursuing. You know, there's a lot earlier this year, there are people that didn't think they would actually go through with it because they were kind of stalled out of the gate. But as we've seen now in the Last couple months, they've really accelerated matters. They really are going through with this idea that they're going to carry out as many deportations as they can. And they're trying to portray the people that they're deporting as the worst of the worst. There's an ICE and DHS Department of Homeland Security propaganda campaign right now. It's both recruiting people to sign up and also messaging to the public claiming that the people they're rounding up is the worst. The worst. And simultaneously they want to say this is necessary for the Americans who are going to be staying here at home, that this is all part of, you know, building a new MAGA America. And when you look at it whole thing, you just realize it's just one lie after another. Right? They aren't really deporting the worst of the worst. And a lot of the rhetoric and excuses that they use for what they're doing don't really hold water when you examine them.
- [02:46]
A
I mean, in theory, you could have had a very aggressive ICE deportation effort, which you and I might not have liked. But that then didn't lead, I suppose, to what they're now doing with the National Security memorandum and the use of the National Guard and all that. But talk a little more about. I'm just, I'm curious. Why do you think it's a psychological connection? Do you think it's sort of as a laying the groundwork for it? I mean, what's the sort of connection of the two mass deportation effort and the, you know, militarization and the assault on civil liberties more broadly here at home.
- [03:18]
B
Well, let's talk about what's just happened in the last couple weeks, really since the beginning of September. We saw this militarized raid on an apartment building the south side of Chicago. This is really a shocking event. Blackhawk helicopters hovered above this residential premises in south side of Chicago. And they had, you know, federal agents rappelling from the helicopters down, you know, ripping people out of their homes, attaining them, zip tying people, according to some reports, zip tying U.S. citizens and possibly even children. And the premise of this raid, the idea that Department of Homeland Security put out, was that they were going after Trendo Ragua, which was this gang that, you know, is involved in all sorts of illicit criminal activity. It's a real thing. It's a real gang. And the idea was that this apartment building is frequented by the tda, as it's known, which the administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, and therefore they needed to commit this raid. Well, Bill, you and I both noticed that in the days after the raid, Department of Homeland Security only identified or said that they had allegedly arrested or detained two TDA members. They disrupted the lives of hundreds of people in this building for supposedly going in a militarized raid to go after two TDA members. So, you know, really what they're saying about this doesn't make any sense and doesn't hold up to the facts that we, as we witness them. And certainly what they did is not necessary given the scale of the supposed threat, as you and I have noticed and our friend Ryan Goodman, NYU and a few others have noticed. This is connected to the war that the enemy within, as Trump calls it, or the war within, is connected to the war that they're now have initiated in the high seas of the Caribbean. Because simultaneously, the administration is saying that they need to blow up these boats on the high seas without any kind of due process because they're supposedly operated by tda, same gang, and are supposedly bringing fentanyl into the US and fueling the fentanyl crisis, which we can talk about in a second. There's really no evidence that that's true. But be that as it may, the point is that they're taking extraordinary militarized actions under the premise that they're fighting this gang, the tda, and that's what they're doing across the board. When it comes to foreign, what they're labeling foreign terrorist organizations and drug cartels or antifa or others. They're. They're the ones who are going on the aggress, the aggression. They're the aggressor because they're claiming it's necessary, because these threats are so large. And when you actually inspect or unpack it, it just doesn't hold up.
- [05:34]
A
Say a word about the relation of the foreign terrorist organizations, which is a legal designation and has implications, I gather, for things we can do in terms of seizing assets and the like. And then the current, the last two, three weeks, where they've suddenly started suddenly, but they've talked more about including a presidential memoranda. So not just, you know, in a casual way in interviews about domestic terrorist organizations and domestic terrorism.
- [05:59]
B
So, you know, really before 9, 11, the US government came up with this designation process to label foreign terrorist groups as foreign terrorist organizations. And there's all sorts of legal authorities underpinning this designation, these designations, and they're all, there are all sorts of policy tools that opens up for them to combat them. However, throughout our entire history, there's not been a corresponding domestic terrorist organization label or designation. And the reason for that is because you immediately run into First Amendment concerns. So what's been long understood is that while the US has more latitude when it comes to these foreign groups that are truly based overseas and have foreign leadership and are trying to attack us from without, that you can't do the same thing with groups within. Right. If there really are based domestic groups that they're very precarious here, once you start going down the slippery slope. And what the administration is trying to do is they're trying to use this foreign terrorist organization, this combating foreign terrorist architecture that the US has had in place for years, and they're trying to turn that against domestic groups. So we first saw they had this, this executive order labeling ANTIFA as a, as a domestic terrorist organization. There's no legal teeth to that. Right. And there's no actual process or statutory or legal basis for labeling Intifa or any other group as a domestic terrorist organization. But then a little bit later, they then issued this national Security memorandum, National Security Memorandum 7, which supposedly sets forth this process for labeling other groups as domestic terrorist organizations. And what this is really about is they're trying to find a way to silence dissent. So as they go on the aggression, as they are the aggressor against all these people doing these large scale authoritarian style immigration raids, they want to silence dissent and silence the organizations that oppose them. And they're trying to brand anybody who does oppose them as a terrorist.
- [07:44]
A
Though it is really striking. And Steve Miller's, even, Stephen Miller's even called what the Democratic Party a terrorist entity. And when he first said that on tv, I just. Okay, it's not very bad to use that kind of rhetoric, obviously for our society, I would say, but it's clearly they've always had in mind this progression, don't you think? I mean, that this is, you know, and ultimately it is a crackdown at home. Not just, not just a crackdown at home against undocumented immigrants and not just a crackdown against, you know, people in boats a thousand miles away, either.
- [08:15]
B
Yeah. I mean, look at Portland right now. You see all these videos going around in Portland where you have these protesters who are in frog suits or dressed up as a unicorn dancing and sort of mocking ice and, and protesting in a peaceful way. And what's the rhetoric coming out of the administration? Oh, ANTIFA is this deadly organization that's on the attack against ICE in Portland. It's just not true. Right. I mean, look, to be clear, you know, there, ANTIFA is this Ideological movement. There isn't much of an organization if any behind it, certainly not nationwide or even regional organization. And some Antifa members have committed acts of violence in the past and we're not talking about that here. Right. Like you and I don't support that. We're not supporting any kind of violent violence against ICE or anything like that. But what they're trying to do is use that smattering of violent instances. To say that these non violent peaceful protesters in Portland and other elsewhere are really antifa and are really part of these violent now domestic terrorist organizations is ludicrous. Right. I mean, you see the guy in the chicken suit, you see a person in a unicorn outfit, see the people in the frog outfits, they're dancing and partying in front of the ICE facility there in Portland. It's just not true that Antifa is this sort of looming threat that's really threatening ice. And, and you know, Stephen Miller said they're, they're having hand to hand combat with ICE outside these facilities. Just a brazen lie.
- [09:29]
A
I mean, to be clear, there have been domestic terrorist acts here and more perhaps over the last few years than before. More, more from the right than from the left, but some of both. And they are prosecuted obviously as crimes. If it's murder, if it's conspiracy, as they should be. Right. Destruction of property. And we've had horrible acts, the Oklahoma City bombing and those. And he was convicted and prosecuted and convicted and executed. So it's not as if. Yeah, I mean no one's against law enforcement doing that and that's federal law enforcement often as well as state and local. But what's striking, I think, about the executive order and about the National Security Memorandum is it starts to move from prosecuting people for violent acts and even from a conspiracy to commit violent acts and even in direct incitement to violence to people and organizations who, I don't know what came up with the rhetoric now, but you know, in effect have encouraged perhaps or justified this kind of quote, terrorism. Right. I mean, I do think that's the slippery slope they are cheerfully sliding down.
- [10:34]
B
A couple things on that one, they're going even further than that. The National Security Memorandum. So one of my big concerns when this thing came out a couple Fridays ago was that the FBI has long had a policy, a standing policy, that their strict rules are how they're going to open up an investigation. Right. They have to think a crime was committed. It can't just be investigating speech or advocacy of a position that they find noxious or any of us find noxious, quite frankly. And so what this memorandum apparently seeming seem to do was open the door for the federal law enforcement agencies to start investigating entities purely based on speech. You know, there was a whole host of things in one paragraph for the national security memorandum that they talk about that are purely speech related things like they say, now there are these indices or indices or indicators of what would be, you know, you know, on the road to political violence. And they list things like anti Americanism, anti capitalism, critiques of Christianity, you know.
- [11:30]
A
Gender, extremism about gender, whatever. Yeah, right.
- [11:33]
B
I mean, what, I mean, who are you to define what I mean? They're just, they're just describing really almost certainly the opinions and beliefs held by millions and millions of Americans. Right. So this is really opening the floodgates to potentially use the federal law enforcement against people and organizations to just hold views that disagree with the administration and that, that really cuts to the heart of what America is supposed to be about. Right. We're not supposed to go down that road and yet they very much are down that road and are trying to go even faster.
- [12:00]
A
And some of my lawyer friends, yours too, I think, have been sort of, well, look, this doesn't actually create any crimes. It's a national security memorandum. It's not even an executive order. And so it's sort of, it's tried to intimidate people. It's bad, they don't like it, but it's not, you know, it can't be used in court. But I, I guess I'm curious what you think about that because I wonder if that isn't sort of misunderstanding in a way the situation and the threat that this poses. I mean, I suppose it can't literally be used in corporate investigations can now be launched against either institute organizations or individuals that can be very costly to them and also kind of blackballing them and intimidating them based on this memorandum, which is a memorandum that goes to the different agencies, Justice Department, FBI and so forth, about what they're supposed to be doing. I mean, how do you think some of our friends are a little too little, not quite alarmed enough?
- [12:55]
B
You know, I mean, I, I think, look, the federal government can destroy somebody's life without even bringing charges, right? Just by investigating them and putting them under the microscop scope of the federal government's awesome power. There's a lot they can do and there is a potential chilling effect, a scare that they can put across people even if they don't charge people. But you know, I think it's silly to think that they're not going to move down this path and they're not going to go farther down this road. I mean, they're only open out out there. You can see there's reporting about the types of organizations they want to go after. You know, they're, they're trying to pin violence on George Soros and the Open Society Foundation. You know, they're, even though, you know, there's this report that came out that claimed that Soros was funding pro terrorism and, you know, pro antifa organizations and this and that. And then you actually look at it, and they don't actually produce any evidence of Soros funding any crimes. You know, they want to go after indivisible, according to a report in Reuters, which is just a peaceful protest movement, they want to go after a whole swath of organizations and people under this rubric, you know, so I think you gotta be very careful. I mean, just because things have been a certain way in the past doesn't mean that isn't going to change. Right. The, the, the point of authoritarianism is that they want to give a veneer of the lawful legality to their actions. They want to pretend like what they're doing looks just like what the US Government did against foreign terrorist organizations in the past, but it isn't going to be that at all. And we'll see how fast they move and how much damage they do. But I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the threat.
- [14:18]
A
No. And in fact, what we're seeing now with the Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, and other. JAMES Comey FORMER FBI DIRECTOR those prosecutions is you can, if you target people and investigate them, you can find or plausibly find or allegedly find something. Right? So they're going, I mean, Trump doesn't care about Letitia James's mortgages, and no one cared about them, honestly, and no one complained about them, and there was no issue. And it's everyone I've talked to who's ever worked in the Justice Department thinks it's a ludicrous case. Just as a matter of it's a tiny amount of money that may or may not be correctly designated on one form and not on another. I mean, this is not a typical case that a U.S. attorney's office brings, right? I mean, and if you do, if there's an issue, it's handled by local government or state government and, you know, pays a $10,000 fine if they didn't put something right, didn't check the right box. You know, the idea that this is a federal criminal charge. And I think that is a reminder, though, that they don't have to have the criminal. The criminal charge doesn't have to be necessarily, you know, in the. Something from the national security memorandum. But once you target these groups, everyone has to turn over all their records and their expenditures. And, you know, someone charged a lunch incorrectly at a foundation. I mean, God knows. Right?
- [15:30]
B
Yeah. I mean, you know, this is why you have to be very careful about the power of the federal government, and people should want it under check because it's very easy to abuse it. And what, what Trump is doing here that's so brazen is he's claiming he's the nation's chief law enforcement officer and the law and the criminals are, in fact, whoever he says they are. And that's just a terribly dangerous territory to be in. But, you know, back to, you know, going back to these raids, even the immigration raids and the actions are taken in this mass crackdown that they have across the country. You know, it's very important to keep reminding people that just as they're going after the personal foes deemed by Trump of Trump, right. They're using the law enforcement, they're using this mass apparatus to go after them. They're also detaining Americans in these raids across the country pretty much every week, if not every day, they're detaining people who are here lawfully. They're violating their rights. I mean, you really have an administration here now that if you go through the amendments to the Constitution, the First Amendment and so forth and on, they're violating multiple amendments every week. You know, that's the definition of authoritarianism. And so Letitia James is just one. One example, and James Comey just one example of what they're really doing on a broader scale.
- [16:38]
A
Where do you think this goes? I mean, how. Where do we go to more? I mean, they've installed a little bit in a couple of these cities by federal courts that'll get, I suppose, argued up to the Supreme Court. We don't. Well, I'm curious what you think about how much the courts will slow this down or even stop or reverse it. And where do you think Trump, Stephen Miller, maybe more Miller than Trump, since I don't know how much Trump sort of plans all this stuff out in great detail. Where do they expect to be? I mean, three, six, nine months? One of the things I think you and I have always thought from the very beginning of this second term is people are underestimating the dynamic character of it. You Know, you look at a snapshot and you say, well, okay, this is bad, but I mean, okay, we can 200 troops in, you know, Portland and 500 in Chicago. And I mean, it's not the end of the world, but I feel like these things have a kind of dynamic of their own.
- [17:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I mean, you know, you and I have talked about this in the past privately, that I. I've always thought that history moves on a nice edge, right? That things move very precarious. Like the what in hindsight looks like it was obvious or an inevitable. Wasn't very much so at the time. And what I would say is, you know, the litigators and the groups are litigating against the government and trying to hold. Hold them up, are doing a valiant effort to do that. Right. And they've won a number of temporary restraining orders and a few injunctions, and they're doing things to gum up this, the works of this authoritarian regime as going into places. But what's also telling is that they're still moving forward with it even after they get bad rulings. Right. They still try and find a way to evade Portland. You know, Portland. There's no evidence that Portland is on fire. There's no evidence that Portland is under invasion from antifa or the antifa. You know, Trump is apparently operating on footage it's five years old at this point, you know, going back to 2020. And yet they get adverse court rulings, yet they still try and find a way to keep moving forward with their plans. Right. That tells you something about what they're thinking and how they're going to keep going after it. So I think they're going to keep doing that. I think, Bill, when I take a step back, I think one of the big things here is in these types of political conflicts, we'll call it, is claiming the moral high ground. And who claims the moral high ground and constantly pressing their message to the American people to convert people to their cause. And a lot of what you see from the rhetoric from ICE and Department of Homeland Security and Stephen Miller and the Trump regime across the board is they're trying to claim the moral high ground. They're trying to say that their actions are in the right, that they're the ones who are just enforcing the law and doing this and that. And it's really all these bad actors who are against them, who are. Who are causing violence. I think it's very important as we move forward for people to know that it's actually no, it's the regime that's the one that's the aggressor. They're the ones who are committing state sanctioned violence, whether it be in Chicago or Portland or all the way to the high seas of the Caribbean where they're literally murdering people without due process. And you know, it's not their enemies, by and large, who are. There have been a smattering of incidents, you know, since Trump was inaugurated in 2025. You know, there's been some horrible other types of events, like the Charlie Kirk assassination, which was heinous, but not, you know, by and large, if you look at who's actually committing violence and who is actually the aggressor here and should have the moral low ground, it's the regime.
- [19:39]
A
Yeah, that's so important. Such an important point to make. I'm also struck that by the normalization or the moving of the goalposts or however wants to describe that the things that we just were just considered wrong and not literally illegal perhaps, but ruled out by various procedures and norms within the federal government. Congress would have balked at, the courts would have balked at, for example, the President personally ordering criminal prosecutions, the President personally intervened, meeting and, you know, all kinds of Justice Department things. That wall that was alleged, that was up from Watergate, really. And really before Watergate, if you think about Nixon's, the reason the COVID up in Watergate was so bad was so doomed Nixon is that he felt he had to cover it up. I mean, I was thinking about this Trump. Don't you think Trump is literally doing publicly the things Nixon felt he couldn't do publicly, tried to cover up, didn't succeed in covering up because the institutions pushed back against him. So he had to have private, you know, secret meetings with people from CIA and FBI, but not with the top people because got along, you know, Hoover. The fact that this is all happening publicly and I don't know, some people still say, gee, that's bad that he's doing it publicly. But a lot of it does get normalized, Right? I mean, we get used to it. Okay, Trump's telling Pam Bondi to go after this person. I guess that's sort of the. Then the lawyers, to their credit, say, well, wait a second, it's not a very good case. But we're already, That's, I guess what strikes me, we're already five steps down the road towards authoritarianism, even if it's not a very good case, you know.
- [21:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, Nixon is a good comparison because Nixon pretended to be A moral man. Nixon pretended to be a good man. Right. And was ashamed or was worried when his actions would get exposed to the people. You know, Trump, there's no pretense here, right? He's just out and brazenly doing what he's doing, and he doesn't even pretend to be a good man. That's part of where you see the morality of our society is slid. But when it comes to Department of Justice, you know, he gave a speech. He. So there was this wall, just to back up for a second, there was this wall that a policy wall really wasn't enshrined in law that existed between the Department of Justice and the White House since the Watergate era that said that the White House is not going to direct the Department of Justice and its investigations and its criminal probes because it's so obviously a path to abusing the Austin power of the federal government. Trump gave a speech at the Department of Justice earlier this year in which he actually said, at the Department of Justice, I am the nation's chief law enforcement officer. I mean, he went in and just used those words. He just went in and totally broke down that wall very quickly, you know, and they've been operating that way ever since. I mean, they were operating that way even before. Like, there's no pretense here that Trump is actually walled off in the Department of Justice or that this is. The machinations of the. The law enforcement system are working according to sort of the, the laws and the rules are already in place. No, this is all personalized. This is all political, and it's all part of his authoritarian push.
- [22:31]
A
And another chess piece, I think, on the board that he moved right at the beginning where people didn't think that he would have the nerve to do it. And you did, and you were right and analyzed it right at the time is the pardons, I think, of the J6 insurrectionists and the broader demonstration that he was willing to use the pardon power as he wished, so to speak. And again, I think people didn't. They were upset, some to some of many people by the pardons, but they didn't quite think through the implications of a president willing to use the pardon power so not wait till the end of the term and pardon a few close calls, maybe a couple of people he shouldn't pardon. But okay, it's the end of his term. It doesn't really set a precedent, you know, I mean, signaling, I think, that you commit violence on behalf of this, of him, you're going to be okay. Do you do you think? I think that's an, I think that's an under somehow. I mean, everyone thinks he has that power. There doesn't seem much ground for contesting it in court. And therefore, again, from a sort of lawyerly point of view, it's not worth arguing about much. But in the real world, I think it's a very powerful tool he has and that he showed a willingness to use.
- [23:36]
B
No, I totally agree. I mean, it goes back to the whole moral high ground when it comes to violence. They're trying to claim the moral high ground when it comes to political violence. So they're out there with a J.D. vance or Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem or the president himself or various other people in the administration claiming that the left is the one that's fomenting political violence and their hands are supposedly scot free. But the pardon of the January Sixers showed exactly what you said. It showed that political violence on their side or for their cause or for Trump himself personally was totally acceptable to them. He didn't make any distinction between people who were convicted of misdemeanors or minor crimes. Of the 15 to 1600 people who have been charged and, or convicted at that point, he just did a blanking, commutation of sentences and all but like 14 or something like that were pardoned, including the leader of the proud boys who actually led the attack on the U.S. capitol. So they didn't, he didn't make any distinction here at all. But it also, it's also part of their mythos or their mythology that drives the cult of personality around Trump. Because a big part of this, and this is where another reason we should be very worried in the long run here, especially in short run, is that their entire belief system is based in victimology and grievances, as if their side is the aggrieved party at all times, no matter what happens. So their side attacks. The U.S. capitol, tries to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power for the first time our nation's history does so. And yet somehow they're the victims.
- [24:53]
A
Right?
- [24:53]
B
They're the ones who are the Green Party need and need pardons for, for these right wing extremists and, and conspiracy theorists and others who attacked the Capitol that day. You know, it tells you a lot about the psychology of them and their movement and Trump and where they're heading in all this. That would, and, and really, this is a phrase that I've used with you and on this show before it, since then, since 2020, even since the election of 2020, they've been existing in a broken reality. Right. Their entire movement is unaccountable to the truth of reality whatsoever. So the same types of lies that gave us January six are the same types of lies that they say that Portland's on fire. Right? Right. Trump says it's so, and so everybody acts as if it is so. You know, the election in 2020 wasn't stolen. Portland is not on fire. And yet everybody around him has to pretend that it was.
- [25:35]
A
No, that's so. And people around him are now people at very senior levels of the federal government with actual levers of power. And I am a little surprised that you've work club worked with and observed closely the FBI and other parts of the federal law enforcement apparatus and intelligence apparatus. Are you a little surprised that. Well, I don't know. Are people going along with Bonding Cash Patel more than what expected? Have they cleared out people more than, more successfully than perhaps one could have expected? Do we not know? Because we can't quite see into these agencies? What's your sense of that?
- [26:07]
B
You know, the big difference between now and January, the January 6th time frame is they went in and got rid of a lot of the roadblocks to their power, to Trump's power and what he wanted to do. There's still tension there. There's still people, good people serving, who don't want to, you know, serve the bidding of this would be king. But they've gotten rid a lot of people and they've intimidated a lot of people who remain into, you know, not trying to push back and not silence and trying to silence them. And I think they've succeeded in a large degree. They fired a lot of people who are just doing their jobs, and now they're gone because they wouldn't do what Trump wanted them to do. And that's a distinction between now and late 2020, early 2021. Right. I mean, you know, one of the previous shows we did, you know, we. We described it as the Velociraptors learn how to get out of the cage. Right, right. That's one of the reasons that's what we're talking about. Like what. What Trump learned the first time around was there are all these people at the FBI and Department of justice and all these institutions in the federal government that are part of the executive branch who aren't going to say yes to me whenever I tell them to do something. And so they're gone. I want them out. And so, you know, Christopher Ray is out, even though he was, you know, you know, had many years left in his term as FBI director and put Cash Patel, this sycophant, he was willing to portray Trump as this wronged king, you know, in these children's books he wrote and entertain Qanon and all sorts of other nonsense. That's the world we're living in now.
- [27:24]
A
You know, when Hexeth went as a DOD at emirate, fired several people, the chairman of Joint Chiefs and others, and certainly the Jags, and everyone was like, well, what did he have against this particular guy? Why did he fire that one? Well, he doesn't seem to like office, you know, people of color that much and women and so forth. Some of it's anti d, I think, but I think they missed the. The forest for the trees a little, which is he wanted to establish the principle that you could be fired. And I don't really have to explain why you're being fired. And I'm not going to pay any price for you're being fired and other people are going to get confirmed at DOD and people get promoted, and I do culminate culminates. The next one step along those lines is the speech to the officers, general flag officers, a couple of weeks ago. But I mean, I do think again, there's a little more of a systematic effort. It's sort of chaotic and it's sort of at times looks haphazard. It's two steps forward, one step back. But pretty systematic effort to really reduce. Get rid, as you say, of the internal guardrails in the federal government.
- [28:20]
B
Yeah. I mean, between the FBI and Department of justice, they cleared House. You know, they've got people who are just willing to do Trump's bidding. I mean, you know, Pam Bondi just got in front of a hearing in the Senate. It was totally alarming. Right. I mean, I think you were appropriately alarmed by it. Right. When this was happening, Bill. Right. Because it showed that she had absolutely zero respect. She had actual contempt for the oversight process and was just there to basically do culture war, slash political war with the senators who wanted to ask her basic questions. She didn't want to answer the question. She just wanted to go on the attack. And that that's the sort of thing that's prized in Trump world. Right. That's what Trump loves. He doesn't want to be. He doesn't want to answer to the law. He doesn't want to answer to normalcy or normal rules or norms. He doesn't want any of that. Right. He just wants to go on the attack and he wants people around him will do.
- [29:04]
A
So when you and I were involved in a couple of exercises, kind of war games, I mean, you know, I guess after the election, before the inauguration, the Insurrection act was a big topic of discussion. And it's a very powerful tool and a legal tool. It's a law that the president could use. He hasn't invoked it. Do you think he will? What do you make of that? Did we. Does he need it? In a way, he seems to have gone a fair way down this path without actually invoking it.
- [29:32]
B
I think they. They realized that if he invoked the Insurrection act, that the legal challenges had a very high likelihood of succeeding and stopping him, that there were ways. I'm not sure now how the ground has shifted, but again, it's telling. They didn't come right out of the gate doing that, right? They came out of the game, used other authorities, including this 12406 and other authorities to dispatch National Guardsmen and even other military troops and others to these cities to do their bidding, to do what they wanted to do. That's telling, right? Again, it's showing a level of sophistication or forethought. It's not this clumsy bumbling into what they want to do, but they're trying to figure out a way to move forward and avoid being gummed up by the courts as much as possible. So there is some thinking here. I mean, look, a lot of these people are not the sharpest tools in the shed, right? I'm not gonna say they're. These people are all that bright, but. But they kind of learned a lot about the machinery the first time around, how the federal government works, and they're trying to grease the wheels to make it work faster for Trump's authoritarian ends. This time around.
- [30:31]
A
You said you were sort of less pessimistic, maybe, than jbl. What's facing all this? What. What parts of the government, what parts of society make you a little more hopeful that this can be stopped and turned around? What parts do you think won't be very helpful?
- [30:49]
B
I still. I still think that there's going to be. And there is a lot of resistance to what they're doing. I think it's going to grow. I think there's going to be a lot more people who are resisting what they're doing. I think, you know that the bubble that MAGA exists in, they have this media ecosystem and political ecosystem. It's a bubble where just nonsense is repeated day to day. There's still a lot of people who are not in that bubble. I think more people than not are not in that bubble. You know, I think our side, the pro democracy side has a lot of faults and there's a lot of things going on that don't really make much sense and probably not going to advance the ball very much. But ultimately I still think there's a critical mass of people who don't want this. That's why I think ultimately I have some hope. It doesn't mean, you know, again, I'm repeating myself, but history moves on a knife's edge. It doesn't mean. I think it's predetermined to fail, quite the opposite. Nor do I think it's predetermined to succeed. I just think that they're still. They're not. Their victory for them is not inevitable. They have a lot of problems themselves, a lot of things that are wrong with them. I think the economy is going to be a big issue here where the economy is going to. I think we're probably facing a much more significant economic crisis than people realize in the coming months. I think that's going to compound their problems. I think that culturally they have a lot of problems. Right. I describe it as the MAGA monoculture.
- [32:01]
A
Right.
- [32:01]
B
Versus the American multiculture. The American multiculture is still there. It's kind of lost its groove in the sort of post woke era. And after the 2024 election, I think it'll get its groove back. You know, I mean, the MAGA monoculture has Kid Rock, you know, we've got Lin Manuel Miranda, you know, I'll, I'll go with Miranda any day over Kid Rock. You know, I think there's a lot more to the opp. To the regime, and it is a regime then people give it credit for. And I think it's still finding its way and it's going to keep moving forward, but it'll make a comeback.
- [32:31]
A
Oh, that's encouraging. That's well said too. I think it's important to think dynamically.
- [32:36]
B
Right.
- [32:36]
A
Things just keep going in one direction forever. There are inflection points where things reverse and the question is taking advantage of those inflection points sometimes, whether it's the economy or other things. The no king is protest is next Saturday. I'm curious what you. I'm not a big natural protester, but I'm going to go here locally. I don't. Is it, is it. Does it matter much or, or not? I mean, where are you on that sort of. The sort of peaceful popular protests?
- [33:03]
B
I think it matters. I think peaceful popular protests and growing Peaceful, non violent, civil disobedience. I think that's one of the keys going forward, you know, that, you know, we have to keep pushing forward. People have to keep protesting and say, this is not normal, we're not going to accept this. And, and ultimately we're going to fight for a better day and fight non violently. You know, you can hear them trying to twist my words or anybody else's words and stuff, you know, but, you know, ultimately I think it does matter because what, what ends up happening is. I think as the protests keep moving forward, as no Kings protests keep moving forward, more and more people have to become aware to just how dark this administration's view, his vision of America really is. You know, there's been something really nihilistic and dark about the Make America Great, you know, again, you know, phraseology and ideology. You know, I always, I always say to people, you know, look at how Trump's January 6th speech was branded. It was Save America. That was the brand that they put on it, right? Save America from what? Right? There was a, there was an election. You lost, buddy. You know, there's nothing to save America from, you know, so I think, you know, there's still a lot of signs from my perspective of hope and a lot of things to be positive about in America. And their dark vision doesn't necessarily preordain to win. And these protests, I think, remind people of that, that there are people out there who can see a better, brighter day ahead.
- [34:22]
A
That's so well said, Tom. Well, look, we'll do this again and keep track of all these different levers of power they're using and what levers of power maybe could be more effectively used in response. And thank you for what you've been writing and saying and thank you for joining me today. Really is very important conversation, I think.
- [34:40]
B
No, anytime, Bill. I love it.
- [34:42]
A
And thank you all for joining us and we'll work on Sunday.