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- [00:00]
Harry Littman
Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless and if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should 1. It's $15 a month.
- [00:09]
Juliette Kayam
2.
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Harry Littman
Seriously, it's $15 a month.
- [00:12]
Juliette Kayam
3.
- [00:13]
Harry Littman
No big contracts 4. I use it. 5. My mom uses it.
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Juliette Kayam
Are you.
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Harry Littman
Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront.
- [00:23]
Total Wine and More Announcer
Payment of $45 per 3 month plan $15 per month equivalent required New customer offer first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.
- [00:32]
Bill Kristol
About sharing their New York.
- [00:33]
Juliette Kayam
Times accounts My name is Dana. I am a subscriber to the New York Times, but my husband isn't and it would be really nice to be able to share a recipe or an article or compete with him in wordle or connections.
- [00:47]
Bill Kristol
Thank you Dana. We heard you introducing the New York Times Family Subscription one subscription up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more@nytimes.com family.
- [01:07]
Harry Littman
Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Littman. It must be nice to live in a country where popular entertainers can't get fired because they displease the president. But that's no longer the United States of America. In a jagged line running from the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to a pretty mild reference to MAGA in a Jimmy Kimmel monologue, Kimmel found himself instantly out of a job this week. Kimmel's sacking deepened the bitterness and polarization in the country, especially after Trump weighed in and called it great news. And it suddenly became hard to tell the difference between the world's oldest democracy and autocratic regimes such as Russia or Hungary, where the president's peak dictates the course of lives and livelihoods elsewhere, the administration sought to take a final giant step in its campaign against independent agencies with an emergency brief in the United States Supreme Court arguing that the president has the constitutional prerogative to fire a Fed governor for basically any reason at all. The court previously had singled out the Fed for a continued measure of independence, but the court will now get another chance to weigh in. FBI head Cash Patel had a volatile week, struggling to find his footing in the Kirk investigation and then engaging in Bully Boy 3rd grade shouting matches with members of the United States Senate. His performance has served to increase the whispers that the Bureau is a poorly managed mess, and that Patel's tenure may be short lived. To understand how we've come to live in a country where the President's displeasure leads to the firing of a popular late night comedian and the interplay between Trump's vindictive agenda of reprisal and the kowtowelling of corporate interests, I'm really pleased to be able to welcome two of the country's most insightful commentators with broad expertise in politics, policy and law, both great friends of the show. And they are Juliette Kayam, it's Been a Little While, is the Faculty Chair of the Homeland Security Program at Harvard's Kennedy School. She's also a senior National Security Analyst at cnn, a contributing writer at the Atlantic, and that doesn't begin to cover her portfolio. Juliet was President Obama's Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. Juliette Kyem, great to see you.
- [04:06]
Juliette Kayam
Great to see you again.
- [04:08]
Harry Littman
And always a pleasure to welcome Bill Kristol, Editor at large for the Bulwark, founder and director of Defending Democracy. Together, his extensive public experience includes co founding and editing the Weekly Standard and senior positions in two different White Houses. He hosts the excellent video series and podcasts conversations with Bill Kristol. And very happy to have one with you today, Bill, thanks as always.
- [04:39]
Bill Kristol
Good to be with you.
- [04:40]
Harry Littman
Harry and Juliet, let's move right away to the Kimmel firing, which is itself at the sort of end of a series of moves. But let's just start off by framing the stakes. So what about this situation beginning with the Kirk killing and culminating in the Kimmel firing, becomes such a flashpoint when other attacks on speech, and they've been plentiful in this administration, have not. What does it tell us about the intersection of politics, media and free speech at this moment?
- [05:14]
Bill Kristol
I underrated, I guess, how big a story this would be, partly because I forgot, of course, that the media loves stories about the media and Jimmy Kimmel's in a different part of the media than, I guess, Juliet and I, and you are, Harry, but still, it's sort of a cousin, right? And so everyone's outraged. First Amendment, that's the easiest amendment to focus on, especially if you're a journalist, and which is fine. I don't mean to in any way minimize this. It's really bad. Yeah, but it is part of a pattern. It's just important to say it's part of a much broader pattern. Not just an assault on speech, but an assault on all kinds of laws and constitutional rights, ranging from areas from immigration to national security. I mean, in the last two, three weeks, we've blown up boats without any legal authorization, in my view, or illegal, putting our soldiers at risk of committing war crimes, honestly. And that's just one of the tiny, one of the zillion things that have happened. So it is important. This is part of what it means to have an authoritarian administration, though. They go after speech, they go after, they politicize the military, they weaponize the Justice Department, they go after the private sector in all kinds of ways. And so I do want to make that broader point because I do think there's been an awful lot of this is the, it isn't the worst thing they've done. It's a very bad, it's a bad thing. And it's part of a pattern of very bad things. The other thing I would say is it's really, for me, though, even more than what Trump doesn't like the media or would like to boss around and intimidate reporters. That's not a surprise. The capitulation of the owners though, of business, that is very important and very bad. I mean, you know, authoritarians get away with being authoritarians partly because they try to be authoritarians. And if you have the whole weight of the federal government, as you guys know, having been in the federal government, and I have too, I mean, it's a lot if you put it to these ends, it shouldn't be a lot in other ways, but it's only a lot if people go along, right? And the degree to which they could, the speed of the capitulation and the thoroughness apparently of it. And of course, it doesn't stop with one person being removed and there are subsequent demands. So I think in that respect it's very ominous.
- [07:09]
Harry Littman
Just the lickety split nature of the capitulation, right? Kimmel makes these comments, the next day he's gone. And they won't even permit him to come back Wednesday and give his side of things. It is just boom. Which adds to the flavor of the remarkable kowtowing, I think, of the corporate folks here, which could seem like an independent actors, but I think properly analyzed really are not. And that's the amazing story here, the dovetailing. We've seen aspects of that before, including in different lawsuits that Trump likes to tout. But they're the same story of he threatens with different kind of executive power. They get frightened of their own or narrow corporate interests, do what he says. I mean, some version of that with universities, law firms, media, especially Disney and the like. I'm Glad that I'm the only lawyer here because I don't want to fuss about First Amendment so much for us here. Now, this is no different, and I think functionally it's no different. But then here we are, and the maximum leader says, I don't like Jimmy Kimmel making fun of me, and he's off. That's essentially, it seems to me, what's happened. Juliet, do you agree and what are your thoughts?
- [08:29]
Juliette Kayam
Yeah, I mean, I have a couple thoughts. I don't make light of this. In fact, like, Bill, I'm sort of surprised how engaged I am with this. Like, I don't know what it was about Jimmy Kimmel that, like, there's just something about it. Maybe it was the swiftness, maybe it was like the fact that there seemed to be no intervening thought between whatever the FCC guy says and what ABC decided to do when we know that they're moving on to the next person. Like, if they'd only given themselves a couple hours, he probably would have moved on to the next person. So a couple thoughts. I mean, one is the gap between me not caring about Jimmy Kimmel on any given day and Trump caring a lot and he's the President of the United States just still overwhelms me. Like, it's like, literally you're, like you're sitting around and this is the target that you're choosing. We know why he's choosing it, because he can have leverage over it. But I hate it never ceases to amaze me how petty, besides other adjectives for it, that Trump is something to be called out is the right wing wants to clearly assert their power through the FCC. It's part of Project 2025 is controlling licensing. And yet if you live in the world we live in, they are just calling it cancel culture. And they know it's not cancel culture. Cancel culture is we all the liberals get mad at Bill and tell him to go away and we don't invite him to parties anymore. Right? Like, that's like, cancel culture. This is censorship. This is state sponsored silencing. And it drives me nuts that I have to pretend like they're stupid, they know exactly what it is, but they're walking around like all of the President's people, the editorialists, the, the bloggers say, now you know what it's like. You know, I was like, actually, like, you're. Come on. Do I really need to explain it? I don't. But their inability to man up honestly may be our saving grace. Like, you know, it may be provide a Window where you can have a rational discourse. But they're so both heavy handed and weak in the narrative of what in fact they're doing and they're trying to hide behind. You know, this is cancel culture, retribution rather than what it really is. Biden did not cancel Roseanne Barr.
- [11:04]
Harry Littman
Heavy handed and weak is a really good combination here. And you do the analogy. What if he had actually canceled, had Biden, Roseanne Barr? Well, you know, let's just think. We read in the paper that there's a late night comic and you can imagine this pretty easily in Russia and he made jokes about Putin's height and now he's telling jokes in Siberia. You would right away say, what an obvious totalitarian society. That could never happen here. Let's talk a little bit more about this. The difference you could say, but I'm not even sure which way that cuts legally. I know, but in terms of the gravity of this is the intervention of the corporate parents who want to jump up and condemn. I'll come back to you. And something you tweeted out, Juliet, which is the exploitation of Kirk's assassination by Vance and Miller, is jaw dropping here. It's absolute political profiteering based on lies and speculation. I guess that goes both to the heavy handed and the weak part. But spell that out a little, especially the lies part. How are they the sort of heavy hands here? And of course we have to put in Brandon Carr. We'll get to him.
- [12:25]
Juliette Kayam
Yeah, I mean, we're talking on, you know, Friday, September 19, and there's been no federal charges. So that's, I'm just reporting.
- [12:34]
Harry Littman
You mean in the, in the Kirk assassination?
- [12:36]
Juliette Kayam
In the Kirk assassination. Right. There's still no federal charges, just the state ones. This is a really complicated one of which it is absolutely clear that Robinson, the lead shooter, had a ideological transformation towards a very conservative world to a obviously not conservative world, which. Which included a relationship with a roommate who was transitioning to be a woman. So that we know. Right. And the leap that Trump is making between what we know about those motivations. A political assassination. I'm not debating that. Political assassination based on a hatred towards what Charlie Kirk was saying. But someone who was not very political, did not seem to be very interested in either partisan side. Lived a lot in the gaming world, had a lot of irony and memes and things that the three of us at our elder ages don't quite get. Like there's a whole world out there that we're not, we don't, we're not seeing it. It's like not even that. It's like. And kills. And Trump has blamed them. And I put that in quotes. And Vance and Miller are taking off with that, which is this now political attacks of which lots of people are getting swept into for utilizing Kirk's assassination for. And a narrative about assassination for political gain by saying he was radicalized by them. The left. The radical left. Some of them are even saying the Democratic Party. And it is such manipulation of the facts as it's legal, it's factually wrong, but it's also improvable. But they're going to run with this narrative about Robinson. And I want to say again, I got a little bit into trouble this week. I think this was a political assassination. I think he clearly had a turn from conservative world of which we come to understand his family is maybe maga, maybe not. And that that transformation may have led. That transformation led to an assassination. What I can't get my head around and what no one can yet is how did that guy become an assassin? What was that radicalization process? I wasn't coming from the Democratic Party. That wasn't coming from Chuck Schumer. That was coming from something that we can't quite figure out yet. JD Vance and Stephen Miller think they can figure it out. I focus on the violence.
- [15:08]
Harry Littman
All true. And moreover, the way I see this adamantly is as a law enforcement investigative matter. Let's just bring it back to Kimmel, whose incendiary statement was something along the lines of MAGA is desperately trying to show he isn't one of them. You know, just to sort of not even the punchline yet. Just the kind of lead in how should we apportion. I don't mean legally, really socially, responsibility for the Kimmel firing between administration officials, including Carr to Vance and Miller and the decision to pull the show. What's most illuminating to you about this episode and how it all went down?
- [15:54]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I mean, I think Trump and Vance and Carr knew what they were doing and the corporate fake shots went along as they have in many other areas, as you said earlier, Harry, and that's how authoritarianism progresses. This is not a very new story. This is in fact, if Trump and Vance and Miller were screaming and yelling and people were saying, forget it. Kimmel had one sentence that was based on what he thought the facts were. A few days ago when it looked for a minute there was some reporting that maybe he was disillusioned MAGA guy or something like that, Kimmel could have easily clarified and apologized the next day or two days later. No one was actually, I don't think mattered, you know, no one thought Kimmel was seeking to insult anyone or insult Charlie Kirk. And even if he were, incidentally, it's free speech, so.
- [16:35]
Harry Littman
And he's a late night comedian, you know.
- [16:37]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, right. But also, but that's sort of the point. This is where they know what they're doing. Right. If they can go after Kimmel, they can go after a lot of smaller fish and a lot of other people. If they can go after a rather anodyne or at least unfortunate, I'm going to say statement, but not a, not a bitterly hostile or mean one, just a foolish one. He just got it wrong sort of about the, about the murderer. They can go after a lot of people and the weaponization of the killing of Kirk. I mean, individual assassins have, and murderers have many, many, many voters and many combinations of voters. I always refuse to talk about that.
- [17:09]
Harry Littman
We don't know.
- [17:10]
Bill Kristol
We don't even know now, incidentally. We don't know for sure. We don't know what is. And I don't even want to speculate about it for that reason. And it wouldn't matter that much. Incidentally. The murderer of the Minnesota state legislator and her husband and her husband was clearly ideological. He got a list, that guy of Democrats he didn't like because he thought they were too mean to Trump and so forth. And he killed. It's a murder. It doesn't mean that, you know, you blame, you can make some comments about overheated rhetoric and so forth, but none of us blamed, I don't think thought the administration should be that Charlie Kirk should be shut up. Because this other guy, who probably was a fan of his for all I know, killed the state legislator and her husband in a very brutal and cold blooded way and then wounded a couple other people, incidentally. So no, I'm very. It's terrible, but this is classic authoritarianism. It's really more like classic fascism. You have someone dies, terrible, in this case, a terrible tragedy and murder and you exploit it. You make him a martyr, you make the other side responsible. And suddenly it's not just normal. Paying respects to a friend and an ally and a young man who's cut down with a very promising future and his family and appropriate praise. And appropriate especially if you were sort of an ally of his, lifting him up, so to speak. You go after anyone who can conceivably have been disrespectful of him or disrespectful of his memory or quoted things he said and Say, you know, it'd be better if I'm sorry he was killed. But I don't, still don't think these things were correct things to say. Now, if you say that, apparently you get fired from the military and you get fired from, you get pressure put on you if you're at a university or any other place to get fired. So that is really dangerous. And again, I think it's in a way ridiculous, you can say, but it's, of course they know what they're doing. And I do think these things have a very big chilling effect and that's what they want. Oh, yeah.
- [19:05]
Harry Littman
At this point, it is not ridiculous. And by the way, I think it's been pretty clear that it's more as Trump has diagnosed the problem, it's criticism of him who needs now to be suppressed, people who, including big media who've been. So it's really the direct autocratic play critics often want to point out. What would it feel like if the shoe were on the other foot? We've changed so much. But, you know, imagine if Obama's president, a left wing icon, was killed and he used it to try to cancel MAGA tights. You know, what the country would go into like a convulsive lockdown.
- [19:43]
Bill Kristol
Well, there were mass murders that were clearly racially motivated and ideologically motivated and motivated by hatred of gays and others under Obama. And Obama mourned those people. And he did not blame politicians with whom he had deep differences about gay rights or about racial policies and so forth or about, he didn't blame them for that. I mean, maybe the most you would say is, look, I think we should all tone down the rhetoric or something general like that. I mean, right. I mean, he gave a speech literally at a church in South Carolina after nine black men and women had been killed worshiping in that church, gone to that church to worship. And he didn't decide to attack every single person who has said racially insensitive things on the right. So we have a real case study, a bunch of case studies here of how to behave responsibly. And I think the same can be said about Bush.
- [20:35]
Juliette Kayam
Yeah, I mean, Bill, though, we had a real time case study which was Governor Cox. I mean, that was the Republican Party, I remember. Right. A conservative and moral leadership. I may not agree on the policies. And for a brief moment, Governor Cox had the microphone. And I am sure in the world in which the White House functions that Donald Trump needed the microphone. And I do think this, you know, he doesn't try to hide it. He is focused on people that criticize him. Not necessarily Charlie Kirk, but I was really, for a brief moment, you could see an image of a party that's not the one we see in D.C. maybe it only lives in Utah, but someone who took the responsibility of that moment and did not try to exploit it.
- [21:28]
Harry Littman
I think it's a really interesting point, but especially what happened. Cox was impeccable until he wasn't. He got woodshedded and began to then spout rhetoric blaming Democrats and the like. Not as vicious and teeth bared as we've heard, even from up to the president. But what do you think? Just this morning, Senator Cruz is calling out Brandon Car. Do you think on this one there's a chance that they have overplayed it and gone too far and too fast after Kimmel and it's going to come back to bite?
- [22:06]
Bill Kristol
I don't know. I mean, Cruz before he totally sold out to Trump, one forgets he was anti Trump. I mean, he can't speak against him at the Republican Convention in 2016. And Cruz was a kind of very dogmatic libertarian of a certain sort. And therefore he vaguely remembers that he's kind of pro First Amendment. And I think in that respect he's willing to say we shouldn't go down this road. And to be fair, other people have. And one thing about being in the radio, in the podcast business or the radio business or the journalistic business or running some kind of website is you sort of are a little more sensitive probably to that. I wouldn't put a lot of money on these people really ever quite going the next step and criticizing Trump or Vance. Maybe they'll say a word to Carr to tell him to cool it a bit, but I'm not so convinced that many of them will do that.
- [22:52]
Harry Littman
Well, I meant Americans more broadly. And there is this sort of deep irony that, that, that MAGA has been bitter before because they want to engage in this very kind of nasty rhetoric that they're charging that the sort of woke Dems censor them with.
- [23:09]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I guess I, I think their attempt to. I've been. We'll see. They're trying to make Charlie Kirk this, you know, martyr and have impeccable taste and judgment while he was alive and someone who can't say a negative word about. I'm dubious that that will work. I mean, over short term, there'll be a lot of momentum in that direction. And I. So I don't know, though. You know, I really don't know. I mean, I think Generally, liberals overestimate. They underestimate how successful Trump's authoritarianism is. They overestimate how popular he is. He's not that popular. He's not really convincing anyone of anything. And therefore, I don't know that this will work in that respect.
- [23:46]
Harry Littman
Will it work? The.
- [23:47]
Bill Kristol
But, but do business leaders now think that the fcc, which on paper has quite a lot of authority and power, and the antitrust division of justice and ftc, which has a lot of power over mergers, which media companies are doing a lot of these days, and other acquisitions, do business leaders think that they need to get along and go along and get along with Trump administration? Yes, for sure. This isn't about the public. Who cares? Trump's going to lose. What pointed to popularity or something. There's some Jimmy Kimmel fans who are annoyed. I don't know, but I think for them they're pretty, I won't say strategic exactly, but they focus on the power centers. They want to neutralize power centers that could be hostile. They want to use their leverage to get other power centers to go along with them. And I think short term popularity, they feel they can ride that out.
- [24:34]
Juliette Kayam
The amazing thing about the corporations is what is their strategy? These aren't idiotic CEOs. These are smart CEOs who are calculating some, you know, cost benefit analysis. But it's like they just sort of, like, sort of end with, okay, well, will I get the merger? Will I get Trump to go away? Like, play it out right? And they just seem unable to think about what, you know, what is your exit strategy? What is your end game for capitulating? Now, you may want to capitulate later, but if you don't capitulate, you may have bought yourself more time because this White House does have risk averse tendencies. They do. I mean, look at Chicago. They basically saw a big problem that probably wouldn't have gone over very well and they moved to a red city, a blue city in a red state. That's not great. So I just, I don't understand why you capitulate first. It may be part of a strategy, but we certainly have seen enough evidence that this, that they, you know, that they blink or the taco, you know, that, that they definitely will blink. The other thing is, like, I just wanted listeners of your podcast to hear Bill say this, which is, you know, I know it's very distressing, lots of stuff going on, but like, and I'm not a huge fan of Chuck Schumer's or whatever, but like, the strategy of just Remembering how wildly unpopular he is and how wildly unpopular these policies are is helpful because it is working. These are not anything from the immigration raids to the craziness with tariffs. And now you're seeing the farmers and everything. He's wildly unpopular. Not unpopular enough. But if I'm the White House and looking at various things, yeah, I'm pretty aware how unpopular I am.
- [26:26]
Harry Littman
All right, I want to serve up, maybe close with a point of legal privilege, because Bill made this point. Well, we've been there. We know how the FCC works or how other regulatory agencies work. But that is. That is Trump 2.0. And you've just put it out the way you've just explained it. Juliet totally aligns what's happening here with what he's done successfully in large part with universities, with media, with other parts of the private sector. And to the extent you want to call them rational, if cowardly, it's because they make a quick calculation that these guys and cars, the perfect example. He comes out, this happens, he's in a conservative podcast and starts talking about how we may have to do it the hard way and shit. They're understanding that if they don't move, the administration writ large is going to come down on them with other power. That's going to be perfectly inappropriate. This is how the law firms talk, and this is how you would imagine that in the closest recesses of the Disney board, how they talk. We're going to need this deal down the line. We're going to need the Comcast merger. We've got 80 million on the line, total garbage. No president before would have kept it from us, but he's going to do this. And for that reason, et cetera, et cetera. I just want to close with a general note. I think it's both tricky and important to really keep clear the lines of responsibility between government and the private sector here. And I just want to give my bottom line, you know, because how this feels is. No. Is no different from the most ranked Putinesque, you go to Siberia kind of command. It really is. Yes. We have cowardly, kowtowing corporate ranks. We're going to have that anyway. We have some that have more guts than others, whatever, and, you know, how should they be rewarded? But this is, in effect, in practice, in feel, in life, the equivalent of a really new bad, autocratic move that just affects everyone. What, we can't fucking watch Jimmy Kimmel because he displeases Donald Trump? I really think that it's fair to insist on that vantage point. All right. It is now time for a spirited debate brought to you by our sponsor, Total Wine and more. Each episode you'll be hearing an expert talk about the pros and cons of a particular issue in the world of wine, spirit and beverages.
- [29:15]
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- [30:58]
Harry Littman
Thanks to our friends at Total Wine and more. For today's a spirited debate, I want to go to a sort of older, quieter story in this case, the effort to undo independent agencies. So I wanted to touch the Lisa Cook firing. We're now let me do a legal setup here. You know, court has let Trump get very close to being able to ignore all of Congress's efforts. And there were, you know, a dozen or more as of just 10 years ago to require some measure of cause before dumping people who have, you know, either co equal or at highest positions in agencies. But what about the Fed? It feels like the sort of final frontier. Its expertise, its political insulation has been, you know, since its charter was established. And now we have this Showdown where they want to be able to say with Lisa Cook, we can fire for any reason. Oh, and by the way, this tawdry reason of mortgage stuff is good enough in any event. Let me serve it up to you, Bill. You said, because you drew the line expressly including today, but also during the week. As in Kimmelgate, you wrote Trump has relied on a loyal functionary wielding a formerly nonpartisan executive branch post as a political weapon. In Kimmel's case, that's been Carr and Cooks. It's been Federal Housing Finance Agency and apparently general policeman for mortgage fraud, Bill Pultkey. So I wanted to ask you about the pattern and what are the stakes of what's going down here in the Cook case?
- [32:35]
Bill Kristol
I mean, what's amazing to me, I think maybe Lisa Cook will has won court. She has won a court so far. Maybe she will actually win in court because the Fed is the hardest case, I think, for the unitary executive to trample over. But we're giving up so much. I mean, think where we are now. This is an Overton window or goalposts moving situation. We would have been a little bit outraged. I'm just going to say before last year, even in the Trump first term, incidentally, wouldn't even have occurred to us. You can just fire half the lawyers of justice divisions because, you know, it's not 100% clear that they have civil service protections. And furthermore, we're of course going to overcome Humphrey's executor and fire all these independent people at independent agencies. That's not even really a question that much anymore. And when you get down in the ranks, actually with schedule F and some other changes, we can schedule pretty much all the sesame. We could fire all the SES people and we could put political people into places like the CIA and Pentagon and elsewhere where there's some traditions of not having excessive numbers of political appointees or having at least a parallel, you might say, independent standing for certain parts of those agencies, that's all gone. So I think the degree of politicization of the entire executive branch and personalization of power up to the White House and up to Trump is something we shouldn't lose sight of. It's a little less sexy than taking someone, you know, than the story of First Amendment stories have, you know, famous victims and, you know, Clarence Darrow and Jimmy Kimmel and, you know, it's something people can kind of really get their heads around more easily. But the degree, what are we going to do? I mean, this is for me the big question, what If Trump leaves office, which I'm by no means certain he will in 2028, what's it going to be? What is the next president going to inherit? The thing about the Kimmel situation, I don't mean to in any way make light of it, but at the end of the day, if Trump leaves, Jimmy Kimmel can come back on TV, probably, or someone else will come on TV and tell jokes about the president. It's more like McCarthy. If you want to think of something that's very bad and people get punished and suffer, don't get me wrong, but it kind of can be overcome. The system can revert, as it were, or move on at some point when the offenders move away. What is the intelligence community? And Juliette knows more about this than I do, but what is the Justice Department? I'm now very worried about the Defense Department, which I thought was holding the line a little bit better. And now there's a lot of evidence of very bad, in my view, politicization there and destruction of very longstanding norms and rules and procedures, which did a pretty good job, all things considered, given what's happened in human history of establishing reasonable civilian control over the military and military accountability to the law and having jags, just everything. I mean, oath to the Constitution, not to the individual. I mean, I don't even know how you put that back. Honestly, I'm very worried that it's going to be very difficult to put that back. So for me, the destruction within the government is maybe the single most worrisome part of the whole authoritarian project.
- [35:24]
Harry Littman
One of dozens of situations like that. Really imagine in the happy day that it all vaporized. The Herculean task. I mean, I think of doj, and I try to focus on it. It's like Zombieland there. But I want to stay with Bill's hypo, because you have, by hypothesis, a court that's basically said, president, you can now fire anyone you like. Justice Kagan's dissent in Trump v. Wilcox, and she knows administrative law, it's basically taking away 100 years of it. Now you have a new president, a nice guy president, whatever. But she or he has this power that the court has said, and this person's making trouble, I mean, literally, with the law destroyed, how is the norm to be restored and won't all of the president's advisors, and you've been in the center of this kind of political policy discussions. Juliet, not gonna say you sucker. I mean, the Supreme Court says, fire em. Fire em.
- [36:25]
Juliette Kayam
I'm glad we're talking about this, because I think about this all the time as sort of the, you know, you describe DOJ as Zombieland. Like, I think about things like ice. Oh my God, like, what's the fix to ice, really? Like that, like make them nice. That's not. And one of my worries is that ICE's abuses will be so excessive and we likely couldn't get more right, is that Democrats or the opposition party will be inclined to, to give up on enforcement, which I think Democrats are inclined to do sometimes because ICE in this case is so abusive. And then you're sort of stuck in a. Well, do you want to control the borders or you don't? And it's a really hard thing to say, yes, I want to control the borders, but these guys are not the people you want to keep. So we're sort of. It's a very difficult position to be in because generically, you know, Bill was talking about the Pentagon. You're for a strong defense, you're for strong borders. Generic, you know, and, but now you're kind of like, I don't want to be rooting for some of these systems to go down, but I'm not sure if fix is the right word. I'm sure both of you have had this reaction where Modi in India tells Trump that he's not going to nominate him for the Peace Prize. And you're kind of like, good for Modi. You know, like, he's like, I don't want to root for Modi. But like, yeah, I'm sort of being funny forced to root for Modi. So I hear you. And I think, I think when we were talking about corporations, what's their calculation? Their calculation is that if Democrats ever get in, they won't do this. That's their calculation. And part of me wants to say they're right. Like, that is true. We won't abuse the fcc. And maybe there are abuses on the left and progressives with trying to cancel people, but those aren't state sponsored. But it's really annoying, honestly, that ABC can think, well, let's just try to see what happens the next three years and we'll get through this. And then if Democrats ever come in, we know everything will be fine. Yeah, that's really annoying. But you know what? The law is not self. Executing. People have to assert it, institutions have to assert it. And their failure to see their role in all of this rather than just delay, it's just absolutely shocking.
- [38:55]
Bill Kristol
Can I just add one point? I mean, Julia served at dhs. I mean, honestly, it's really huge. What if you have great residents that comes in at 29? ICE will have recruited tens of thousands of people with all this money. They're doing it a very political way. In terms of the recruiting messages, we've all seen those DoD is now going to recruit apparently at Turning Point USA campus headquarters and so forth, and use Charlie Kirk as kind of a, I don't know what the word is, even an emblem or something for why you should now join the military. You can't come in, I don't think as president, just fire everyone. But are they going to really carry out some Democratic president's orders not to behave the way they've been taught to behave and the way in which they were the basis on which they were recruited, let's put it this way, in which they were encouraged to behave for the next three years? I think it's a genuinely big problem and it's part of it is what Juliet was talking about of kind of, you know, you don't want to stoop to their level. But also just a practical matter, it's sort of like a post communist Europe situation. You can't fire everyone. On the other hand, you can't really trust these people. Doj, a lot of liberals, I think very foolishly in the first two or three months, I think Harry and I discussed this and agreed it was like, ho, ho, they can't. They need those people to do these jobs. Their lawsuits aren't going to be very well done, which is probably true. And they can't fill all those jobs immediately. They filled most of those jobs. I looked at this. They filled them with Trump loyalists. And they may not have literal tenure the way civil servants have had in the past, because soon the courts are now going to say you can get rid of people. But what is the next Democratic president going to fire? Half the people in Civil program, the appellate part of doj? I don't know. And those people will be there and they'll have a certain claim they're working there. Some of them will be okay. It'll turn out. A lot of them won't be. I just think the practical damage that's being done to the US Government, which God knows had plenty of limitations and problems and so forth, is really something we just haven't seen. We just haven't seen this in this country.
- [40:47]
Harry Littman
You know, Ruth Ben Guillet has made the point, you know, analogizing to Pre World War II Europe. They're ready made in the bleak scenario to be almost the kind of private security force for Trump Himself, which when you start playing war games of ultimate kind of control and of course, you know, could, could figure in. Oy vey.
- [41:12]
Juliette Kayam
I mean, Bill, can I just answer your question? What do you do with ice? The next president has to be utterly ruthless in one regard and I think it's with ice. In other words, don't get rid of it. I'm no Democrats. The words abolish. I should never. Which is I'm gonna detail 10% over to the National Forest Service and I'm going to detail another 10% over to Oklahoma and protecting the National Weather Service. And I am going to detail because that's what they're doing, right? They're detailing and you've got to divide it and then you figure out who's okay. But the only way this works, as I think about how do the next three years is that Trump continue to be wildly unpopular. So we have no obligation to make this work at this stage. I have definitely changed my tune. No obligation. That was Trump won. No obligation to make. He has to remain wildly popular. And if there is an event where people need government to work, they will see eventually that this guy can't manage much. I mean, I think the Texas flooding was a reminder to Republicans in Texas of why government matters. And it's no surprise to me that FEMA survived after that. Right. People are going to have to recognize and we're going to have to narrate why government matters in their life.
- [42:44]
Harry Littman
The prospect on the one hand we should be so, you know, lucky, but nevertheless the prospect of what we'll inherit and the evisceration of norms, that's how we started Trump 2.0. Right. Was all the norms matter. They're doing this and that. And now, you know, it's really mowing down with the acquiescence in a lot of places than the US Supreme Court flat out doctrine what it looks like for we should be so lucky a Good President in 29. All right. Speaking of which, another great prize among the partisans in government was in the spotlight this week. Kash Patel, who seemed far from sure footed in the investigation of the killing, but sort of front and center, had a very confrontational, nasty two day hearing in Congress seemed to have enemies on both sides of the aisle. Let's just start in general terms. If you've seen that lawsuit by the three senior officials, you've seen a scenario every bit as bad as doj with the north star of the place being every bit as much as loyalty to Trump, including the stunning run of firings for Anybody who was anywhere near what at the time was a really important, righteous investigation into January 6th. Juliet, do you have a sense what in the world's going on at the FBI?
- [44:09]
Juliette Kayam
This is one where it's like any Republican or conservative who is expressing skepticism about Patel, you're sort of like, really? I mean, what did you expect? I mean, it is shocking. So if I were from having been in government, if I were to surmise what is going on with Kash Patel, it is that, for example, what we saw in Utah is that both the regional offices and the state leadership are very uninterested in his contributions. So I thought it was hilarious that Governor Cox had a press conference where he didn't speak. And I would. Where Patel didn't speak. I also worked for a governor. I would suspect that it was the governor saying, this guy is not getting the microphone. He seems behind on information. And that can only be because the top people are not briefing him accurately.
- [45:07]
Harry Littman
He, notwithstanding, he talks sometimes anyway. That would be rule number one, right?
- [45:12]
Juliette Kayam
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. And that he's rushing to the front. You know, he rushes to social media. There's also some argument. I will say, I don't know, you're the more lawyer than I am, but there is an argument that I've been seeing online that some of these statements could actually help the defense, that some of his statements could 100 fucking percent.
- [45:34]
Harry Littman
To try to challenge the death penalty.
- [45:36]
Juliette Kayam
Oh, good. You could say that. Yeah. So look, here's what's going on. The White House already knew this. The White House wanted Patel because it was a test of the Senate. And the Senate folded, as they did with Hegseth, as they did with Kennedy. And I'm finding it hard to feel any sympathy for any Republican who now wonders, what the heck. So the White House has already put in a second deputy director. Well, before everything this last week, even amongst my Republican friends, that second deputy director will be the next director. Kash Patel knew he was a dead man walking. That may explain some of his desire to try to come out in front. And I thought it was hilarious when the New Jersey Senator, Cory Booker opened up his question saying, I believe this will probably be the last time you're before this committee. That was the best line of that day, because he wanted Patel to know that everyone questioning him knew his successor was already in place.
- [46:40]
Harry Littman
Bill, I wonder if you agree with that. But then I also wanted to ask you, Trump 1.0, the name Cash Patel was surfaced for the number two person at FBI. Bill Barr said Over my dead body. Where are the independent professional Republicans who understand what's going on at the DOJ and FBI, and are they somehow so cowed by the figure of Patel?
- [47:06]
Bill Kristol
No, I think the contrast with Trump 1 is extremely important. And I'd say in that I totally agree with Juliet. The confirmation of those people was very important, actually, and I fought it and failed. I mean, but at times people say, what do you care? I mean, you know, Trump's gonna put in loyalists, and that's just the way it is. And you don't really care if it's Patel or some other guy you don't like either. But the fact that they all got through was such a signal to them and to Trump that he could do whatever he wanted. It had a certain reinforcement effect. Once the senators had confirmed him, they had a certain interest in saying, well, we weren't doing anything stupid. So you've seen Cassidy spend months pretending that Kennedy wasn't doing exactly what he said he wouldn't do and finding excuses and so forth. And then it sends a signal all down the chain, of course, in terms of Republicans and to the business world and. And so forth, that this is the kind of administration we're going to have. The contrast with Trump 1 is pretty extraordinary. And I think some of us, I mean, I was not a fan of Trump 1, but some of us saw this was going to happen in the second term. I feel like we totally failed, some of us, to tell enough voters that Trump won. They kind of thought, well, we got through Trump 1. What's the big issue here? And there was a little crazy, little chaotic, but at the end of the day, nothing too terrible happened, except for some pretty bad stuff did happen. But whatever, that's what people's memories were. January 6th. But anyway, they were willing to excuse all that. But Trump, too, was always going to be totally different, and now it's even more totally different because of everything they've gotten away with. Maybe they'll throw. Look, of course, totalitarian authoritarian regimes throw people who can embarrass the big guy overboard. They have internal purges. They get rid of someone like a Patel, someone else comes in. But let's not care that someone else is not going to be Chris Wray. And I say this as someone who has no stake in Chris Wray, one or the other, because he seemed like he was professional and not partisan, particularly. It's not going to be Jeff Sessions type. It's not going to be a Gina Haspel type. If you want to get to the CIA and so forth. It's going to be someone who basically is on board with carrying out Trump's orders, maybe a little less melodramatically and with a little less causing a little less grief for the White House. And for Pam Bondi. They love Pam Bondi. She's, I mean, doing everything in terms of the rule of law and the Justice Department. She's doing as much damage, I would say, as Patel at the FBI, or almost as much. But she doesn't quite make the kinds of mistakes that Patel makes and doesn't seem to, at least, and it seems a little more presentable. So they're fine with that. But the degree to which the second term, I mean, this is learning that the second term, the first term is not a model. I was with Juliet. I knew some of those people. I encouraged people, people I knew to go into the administration because I thought they could do some good. And they did do some good, incidentally, and I don't regret that necessarily. And I do think they stopped a lot of bad things from happening in a lot of places. And others, I thought went pretty far down a bad path. Bill Barr or something. But even he, at the end, stepped up. But we can't expect, I think, much of that in this second term. And you say, where have they gone? Well, some of them, if they're younger, decided, look, the future is Trump, and I'm not going to end up where Bill Barr ended up with Trump. I'm on board. So some of it's pure ambition. Some of them have just gone into the private sector and don't want to say anything. And some of them, if they're in business type things, well, still want to get along with Trump for the reasons we've said. It's really shocking. Just so I can get back to the private sector side. I mean, the Business Roundtable is kind of a big organization in Washington, Chamber of Commerce. They don't like tariffs. You can't go to anything in Washington without having them grumble and complain. They're literally nowhere. They've never publicly come out against them, really. They've never supported congressional legislation to reassert congressional authority, which is clearly there about tariffs. They don't want to be in Trump's crosshairs. And you have very respectable people running those organizations. Josh Bolton, who runs the Business Roundtable, is what I've known forever, a Bush Republican, a very decent person and a very capable person, actually, when he was in government, in my opinion, at OMB and then the White House. So that's what's happened. I mean, the intimidation in that respect, the combination of ambition, intimidation, who needs this? It's not going to work anyway. Why should we pick a fight we're going to lose? Oh, my board, they won't be happy if I do this. I mean, it's just. That's true of the universities, right? I mean, there's such a. It's a combination of motives, but it unfortunately leads in a pretty bad direction. And we can say Juliet was saying earlier, well, don't they understand that down the road they'll end up paying two. Well, maybe they think, what's the expression? We'll jump off that bridge when we get to it. You know, and meanwhile, people always said, I remember this, I had this argument about six months ago. Someone just said, don't they understand with the Mafia, you pay them off and they just come back later and get more. You know what restaurants that paid off the mafia with protection money did okay for the first year or two at least they did better than the ones that didn't pay them off and they got burned down. And maybe Trump doesn't pay much, decides, you know what, the payoff's enough. I'm not going to raise the ante. The law firms that we all chastised a few months ago, Harry and I, I think I was on a couple of your podcasts when that was happening. Right? I don't know. Are they losing money? Is Scadden. There was a lot of talk about, oh, young partner, young junior associates, won't go there. Maybe there's some truth to that. But I'm not convinced that Scadden and all these characters, Kirkland and Ellis, are having terrible years because they accommodated Trump. So I think, unfortunately, the system does not punish this.
- [52:09]
Juliette Kayam
Right. But do the corollary of that or the opposite, which is there's a lot of evidence that people who push back also do not fail.
- [52:20]
Bill Kristol
I don't agree with that. If you talk to people at the law firms, they are under huge pressure at the firms that have behaved well.
- [52:27]
Juliette Kayam
Really?
- [52:27]
Bill Kristol
Okay, maybe not. We'll see. I mean, I think, incidentally, foreign leader, if Xi Jinping pushes back, that's another story. Because Trump's a little scared of Xi Jinping. If Putin ignores what Trump wants. I totally agree with you.
- [52:38]
Harry Littman
That's the taco thing and maybe even Pritzker. But it's definitely true that rational people at these big institutions aren't sure.
- [52:45]
Bill Kristol
But people who are under the thumb of the federal government, and we have a big federal government and lots of people Are.
- [52:51]
Juliette Kayam
That's true. I mean, it can be scary to push back, but it isn't always suicidal.
- [52:57]
Bill Kristol
No, I agree.
- [52:58]
Juliette Kayam
For one, this White House, his lack of focus. I just think. I don't know all the details yet, but the. And this could change in a day. But at some stage, it was going to be Chicago and then it wasn't. So if you can make them rethink their calculation, that's not bad.
- [53:21]
Bill Kristol
I agree with that.
- [53:22]
Juliette Kayam
I am now of the belief that Pritzker is what every person wishes Newsom was like. I think actually Pritzker, that was pretty incredible. And he should be given credit within the party in a way, you know, as should Newsom. I like his. Like his tweet.
- [53:37]
Bill Kristol
I agree with that. I agree with that.
- [53:39]
Harry Littman
All right, so closing on a teeny ray of sunshine after canvassing three areas, right? FBI, independent agencies, and business Roundtable, where we are really deep into, you know, past the line into autocracy. So glad to end with a little sunshine. Except for our final feature of five words or fewer. The question today. Trump has gone to different sporting events where the boobirds are out in force. What cultural event can he go to without being booed? Five words or fewer, please.
- [54:19]
Bill Kristol
I would say he can go to professional wrestling, which they seem to love him, and he loves them, and it's fake, but it's violent, which is what he likes.
- [54:29]
Juliette Kayam
He could possibly. I'm gonna give him a little bit more credit. He could possibly go to a Jason Aldean concert at this stage. I think Jason, I think he's a big country star. I listen to country music. He's a big country star, but has very much aligned with Trump. I'm gonna give Trump a concert.
- [54:53]
Harry Littman
All right.
- [54:54]
Juliette Kayam
Because I'm nice. Thank you.
- [54:56]
Harry Littman
I had in mind a bigger event that he probably could get away, but I'm not sure. The Kremlin made a parade, but I'm going to go with a Disney board meeting. Juliet and Bill, thanks so much as always for being here. Really illuminating, if kind of sobering hour. Hope to see you soon. For those who observe Shanah Tovah, the Jewish New Year's, next week, and may it be a sweet one for us all. Thank you so much to Juliet and Bill and thank you very much, listeners for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and my daily takes on top legal stories. Check us out as well on substack@harrylittman.substack.com where I'll be posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Feds has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this bold new media venture, committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now linked up with an ambitious project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in. And don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Luke Cregan and Katie Uptshaw, Becca Haveian sound Engineering by Matt McGardo, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hamsa Mahadranathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshay Turbailu and Sebastian Navarro. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later. Sam.