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- [00:00]
Al Franken
Wondry plus subscribers can listen to the Al Franken Podcast ad free right now. Join Wonder plus in the Wondry app this new year.
- [00:09]
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- [01:03]
Al Franken
Hey everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change. David Weigel, who writes for Semaphore, is my guest today, here to talk about some of President Elect Trump's nominations for his administration, some really odd ones. Topping off that list, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General Gates went to law school.
- [01:25]
David Weigel
That's the closest thing I can get.
- [01:27]
Al Franken
To as a qualification for him being the top law enforcement official in our nation, but that's it. But there's a long list of reasons not to confirm Gaetz. He resigned from the House this week because the House was going to decide whether to release a report that Gaetz allegedly had sex with a 17 year old girl while he was in Congress and she was in high school. But because he resigned the House, the House can no longer release the report because he's no longer a member. But there is some suggestion that the report might somehow leak.
- [02:05]
David Weigel
Hope that happens.
- [02:07]
Al Franken
After I had spoken with David, news came out that Trump had also named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To be head of Health and Human Services, which runs, among other things, Medicare and Medicaid and the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. It is huge. RFK Jr is a vaccine skeptic and for that and other reasons should not.
- [02:33]
David Weigel
Be put anywhere near the Department of Health and Human Services.
- [02:38]
Al Franken
David and I discussed Trump's other loony nominations, Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence. That would put her in charge of the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, with no experience in intelligence operations. In addition, she has echoed Russian propaganda, has traded in conspiracy theories about Ukraine. She met with Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who's committed war crimes. This is a horrific and dangerous idea. Oh, and the MyPillow guy got the Commerce Department. We discuss a few other matters. You know, we wonder how more than half Americans voted for Trump, and it has to do with where people are getting their information. And David watches these podcasts that millions of Americans are tuning into. Not just Joe Rogan, but there's a whole world out there that the rest of Americans listen to and watches that those who listen to this humble broadcast I have no experience with. Also, Dave went to eight Trump rallies but watched 60 of them and he said they didn't get better. Oh, and I'll end with the idea that Norm Ornstein mentioned last week that Biden should resign before January 20th so that Kamala will be the 47th president making all of Trump's 47th swag worthless. Well, we got a scary one today again. David Weigel from Semaphore joins me.
- [04:17]
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- [04:48]
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- [05:31]
David Weigel
Hey, David. Welcome.
- [05:33]
Oh, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [05:34]
Yeah, I've been reading your stuff, so it's really good. And I wanted to talk about some of your writing and some of the stuff that's happened in the last day or so. It's been a very eventful day in terms of nominations.
- [05:49]
Yeah, I like your euphemism. That's a good. I'm gonna use that one Eventful.
- [05:53]
Eventful, yeah. Well, it was. I was there last time when he nominated people and it took him forever. But this time he just knew what he wanted out of the gate. So which is your most troubling?
- [06:07]
Nothing is surprising. This is one of the frustrations for I was talking to Barbara, listening to. I wouldn't talk to her exactly, but Barbara Comstock and Michael Ludig and some of the people warning that Trump was going to break the guardrails or I guess step over the broken guardrails if he won. And Lytig was saying Judge Michael Lytich, the Bush pointing who was warned about this said, yeah, this was election was a mandate against democracy and the rule of law. And so that's how I see it too, that just they feel like voters, 50% of voters, 49.9% of voters said, yeah, if you need to smash some guardrails and nail some enemies before that. So which is what I find troubling. Knowing Gates and covering Gates. Yeah, he is a true believer operator. He got there two years before Trump, but he's a huge Trump guy who just believes. What you need to do with DOJ is take out the enemies inside the bureau and pursue investigations of people who cross Donald Trump. So the whole, I think the Durham investigation, the idea that you need a multi year probe to go after Trump's enemies, I would expect that. Right? I expected probe of Jack Smith's investigation. I'd expect a probe of the January 6th committee. I don't expect a lot of those voters who said I'm voting for low prices to, to care or to appreciate that. But with Gates it's yeah, anyone he picks, if Gates falls, it'd be Ken Paxton or it'd be Mike Davis. I think they just do the same thing. Gabbard I think is different. And I'm not a foreign policy reporter. I don't like to freelance on stuff that I will cover every day. But that's one where I don't think the UK government is warning Tom Cotton about Matt Gaetz. I do think they're saying this might be bad if somebody who's objectively pro Russia and Assad would have access to intelligence.
- [07:56]
Is Cotton on the committee of jurisdiction?
- [07:58]
He's on the intel committee, he's on the Intelligence committee. Just as an example, the sort of things that everyone else might consider dangerous.
- [08:05]
She doesn't have any experience, but also she's a little suspect. Right. I mean she kind of seems like a friend of Russia. She was against the, you know, our helping Ukraine in the invasion. And that scares me.
- [08:19]
Yeah, that's what I mean. That's, that's the sort of change because the way Trump ran and I was talking to last week too, some people who, who in safe states where they knew Harris is going to win but they couldn't vote for, they weren't convinced by the Trump pitch, but they heard the Trump pitch that I'm going to be the peace president. I'm going to get some deal immediately with Bibi. I'm going to get a deal immediately in Ukraine. We're going to have. Yeah, but peace defined as just give up territory for Ukraine and let him have it. Beyond that, Gabbard's one of these people who says that the, though it's the whole premise, it's that there is a permanent national security state that tried to undermine Trump and Trump wants peace. They don't. Therefore, we need to expose them for who they really are. That's, that's the worry. Because that now, on the one hand, this is why I think the Joe Rogans of the world like that idea, because you go back to the church committee, you go back to the mid-70s turning over some rocks and saying, hey, why was the CIA doing that? That did some stuff that I think everybody appreciated after the fact. But in this moment, when it's, it's in the service of, well, we're against wars, but we're for letting Putin carry out and finish his aggressive war or letting Netanyahu, that gets a little complicated that, that makes you ask what are they going to be undermining?
- [09:36]
Do you think that Biden. Part of the loss here was that we didn't really do anything as far as Israel is concerned in terms of saying, okay, we're going to withhold weapons now again, while you're using these 2,000 pound bombs while civilians are dying at the rate that they're dying.
- [10:00]
Oh, it definitely hurt and Netanyahu knew that it hurt. And this is, I, I think I'm quoting more just reporting. I've read and Bob Woodward's, his new book that came out before the election. Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, who's the ambassador who met with Trump before he went back to the White House last week. They knew how to play Biden and they knew, they thought how to play Harris. And Dermer is very dismissive of Biden. Dermer just thinks he's an old man who repeats the same stories and they can roll over. So you have these stories that Woodward gets. I trust, I totally trust him. Play by Play the quotes on and just Bibi keeps promising, oh, well, we need to move into this area, but we're, it'll be done in a few weeks. We need, we, we're going to, we're going to expand into this part of Gaza, but we're going to finish the operation. We get the hostages, don't worry. He just keeps saying there's going to be limited operations. We're going to wrap it up. And he drags this out, he expands into Lebanon. So, yes, in the, in that context, could Biden have said, you're lying to me, you're an SOB But Biden thinks he's an sop Biden is quoted on and off the record saying that. But he never did what you said and said, well, I'm actually going to start limit what we're giving this guy.
- [11:08]
Who'S wanting to once, I think he did it once for a few days and that was it. And I think not only did it hurt Biden and Harris, at least in Michigan, I think, and elsewhere, but also it's been an awful way to conduct a war considering who is being killed and what the results of it is. I mean, these are children have died in this and a lot of that has been indiscriminate bombing.
- [11:36]
So anyway, this is, could Biden have approached that differently? Could they have one of these many after they killed leader Hamas and they said, well, now it's time to wrap it up and expand 11. All those things. Right. Those were choices Biden could have made. So you don't need to absolve him of everything that happened in the election by any means.
- [11:53]
Okay. I'm going to try to figure out how I'm weaving. I like the weaves. Now, you went to a lot of rallies, right, to Trump rallies?
- [12:06]
Yeah, I went to for every candidate. I think the last Trump and Vance stuff I went to was probably two weeks before the election. Yeah.
- [12:13]
So how many did you go to? Give me some round figure.
- [12:18]
Probably eight. I will say when it comes to those rallies, because they're all filmed, I go to them. If I say, let me get the temperature, let me talk to people. I watched probably 60 of them, but in person I went, okay, you watched 60 of them.
- [12:32]
Okay, well, that's, that's okay. That's good. All right. I was fascinated by them and I wasn't bored until I was bored. I was bored sometimes. But you watch 60. I watched just a few, you know, and usually they weren't, but I got them on YouTube or something like that when I Got to see them. Was he doing a conscious weave or was he just free associating and talking?
- [13:01]
More of the latter. Because one great reason a lot of people who were paying close attention to the race thought, well, let's say it's November 3rd and the bull case for Harris is she's hitting her turnout numbers in these states or the models. And she was. She actually, I've been doing the math and she ran ahead of Biden's total vote in a few places. In North Carolina, in Georgia, in Wisconsin.
- [13:26]
What do you mean by that?
- [13:27]
She got more votes than Biden in 2020. So it looked like she was.
- [13:31]
Oh, she was out doing this 2020. Okay.
- [13:35]
Which was a lot of votes less than Trump. And also he was a little more off script than usual. He was getting into tangents and cul de sacs that he didn't get back from. Sometimes a weave, sure. He's very into things that he saw on TV and gets annoyed by whether or not the crowd knows about them. So one thing he did a lot of was. Was. Was Harris at one point. This happens a lot. You've been to lots of rallies. Somebody in the front says something funny and you react to it, but it's not clear if somebody's watching the camera, what they're reacting to. So there's one time she Sundays, we have 32 days for the election. Somebody says something funny and she starts laughing. That's right. 32. 32. And Trump is obsessed with this. And Trump could go on like a 3 minute tangent about how did you see how her teleprompter broke? And she said 32. She said 32. And I could tell people in the press rows were like, what is he talking about? What is he referring to? And the crowd barely knew. So there's a lot of that. The consistent messaging was. And even changes the tone of voice. The consistent messaging. All right, here's what Stephen Miller wrote for me. Prices are way up, the border's out of control. We're going to deport all the illegals. That was on message. But he did ramble a lot more than that.
- [14:45]
Yeah. I was just wondering if the rambling was interesting.
- [14:51]
Not that often. Wow.
- [14:53]
Okay.
- [14:53]
Because he didn't have the same material at the end of 2016, every day there was another WikiLeaks dump and he could talk about it. And this time it was more. If you were not really online watching right wing, like Patrick David's YouTube show, you had no idea what he was talking about. Now, who's YouTube show Patrick bet David who is a. This is another story of the election of all these really in the last four years, conservative influencers who have YouTubes and podcasts, I think you can call them YouTubes where they have millions of viewers. And everyone I've mentioned Patrick Bat David to I've had to explain who he is. Cause it's not a very interesting show. It's just a rich guy in Florida and his friends in Florida discussing politics. And he had Trump on. But that's the kind of show where in the method of Joe Rogan they'll say did you see this news? And they'll pull the news from a website and talk about it. There's a lot of that stuff now.
- [15:45]
Well, you talked about that. Which is the non traditional media, which I will confess that I'm guilty of not sampling enough. Sampling is a way of saying I probably wouldn't even if I sampled it listen to it much. But you had a thing about the mainstream media, the legacy media, I guess you called it the average age you had in your article for an MSNBC viewer. Do you remember what it was?
- [16:17]
No. This is. It disappears from my head once on the page. I understand that.
- [16:23]
70.
- [16:24]
70. Yeah.
- [16:25]
Isn't that amazing? That's scary, isn't it?
- [16:28]
Well, if you watch tv, there's a lot of pharmaceutical ads. There were not that many ads about joining your local volleyball league. And there are a lot more ads about medication to fix your joints. So that's the clue that it skews much older. And podcast skew much younger. Yeah.
- [16:46]
So yeah. And like Fox was like age 68 and CNN and CBS and NBC are in their 60s. So what are. If my listeners are interested in starting to listen to media that isn't legacy media, non legacy media. Where did they go?
- [17:04]
I found. So one of my favorite questions to ask people and I mentioned when I do go to rallies where they get the news from and I would learn about. That's how I knew who Patrick bet David was. Because I was hearing about him and talking to people like Charlie Kirk. He has very popular show, popular podcast. There are people who they won't even watch Fox.
- [17:22]
Would I hate it? Would I enjoy Charlie Kirk?
- [17:26]
I don't think you'd love it. But it's really. It's worth sampling an hour and seeing what animates them and what gets talk about.
- [17:32]
Okay.
- [17:33]
So I accidentally got served a lot of this for which I think is a pretty common reason during the pandemic I had I wasn't going to concerts or shows And I played more PlayStation 4 because of my friends. We could go online, play together. My friends were dads in the suburbs. And I started, oh, I'll go on YouTube and I'll watch a video about this game I played. Then I would get served Jordan Peterson, or I'd get served Ben Shapiro, or I'd get served Matt Walsh. These Daily Wire guys. So I'd say that the Daily wire content on YouTube, some of Patrick Bet David's content, some of Charlie Kirk's content, that's a pretty good survey of what people are seeing.
- [18:11]
Your job is to cover this stuff. So you. You. That's part of your job.
- [18:15]
Yes.
- [18:16]
Would this stuff be enjoyable? For me.
- [18:21]
I think so. I mean, you inhaled so much Rush Limbaugh years and years ago. I don't know how edifying that was for you. So the thing is, these guys are not Fox.
- [18:33]
And Fox, I did that one, too.
- [18:35]
It's a different sort of programming, but it's a lot like talk radio. It really does. It feels like talk radio with a better production and a better set. There's some of the zoo crew element. There are jokes and bits that people return to. It's just entertaining.
- [18:52]
Who's the funniest guy of these? Or woman who does these?
- [18:57]
The funniest is, I would say, because Theo Vaughn's show, which is not right wing but kind of right coded, that could be pretty funny. And his shtick of being a sort of ostentatiously dumb Southern guy who is surprised by things. That's a good bit.
- [19:17]
That's his whole conceit for the show. Or that's his character.
- [19:22]
That's the character, yeah. And that's why he's ended up. He'll end up having an interesting interview. Because, people, you're out of your comfort zone. You're reacting to him like acting. Somebody who just doesn't understand your fancy ways, which seems to be good comedy. Okay, that one, probably. He'd probably enjoy that the most.
- [19:39]
Okay, so I'll start sampling that stuff some more. So then I'm maybe can see more objectively what's going on with people who are not on our side. Right.
- [19:53]
I think that's a good idea. I mean, it really was helpful for me because I would watch some of these shows and Jordan Peterson's not funny, but they're long interviews. He knows how to ask questions. He's an academic. He's studied philosophy, taught philosophy. I listen to that. And then I go to a conservative event and I say, well, I know what they're Talking about I'm on book now. I know that I'm off book. I should say, I know when people refer to something, they're referring to this. When I mean, I wrote stories about the Trump embracing anti trans policies really early, like early 2023. And I knew what he was talking about because I had been watching these, these shows, these Matt. What? Matt Walsh, these podcasts. And I said, oh, he's referring to this, he's referring to this story that.
- [20:34]
Went viral speaking of trans policy. So they ran that, that commercial with the clip of Kamala saying that we're going to pay for trans surgery for prisoners. And they ran that over and over and over again. And I think that had a, had an effect on people. I mean, that's why you spend all that money running it, right?
- [21:00]
It was everywhere. It wasn't just him too. It was the Republican Mitch McConnell's main Senate PAC, the Senate leadership Fund, started running those ads. Not about Harris, but basically what they would do was. So the Harris ad, she sits down with Mara Keisling, who's a long in the movement trans activist in 2019 for this series of interviews, all the candidates.
- [21:20]
When she's running for president, she's running for 20.
- [21:23]
Yeah, her and Biden both, both did these interviews. And the clip that they use is her saying, the question from Mara is why should trans people vote for you? And she said, well, here's an example. In California, I made sure that we cover gender medicine, sex surgeries for prisoners. Biden didn't say Biden had a different answer. There's no Democrat who was on that video running for Senate or House, but they all sponsor the Equality act, which would say, which if passed would say that gender identity is a protected class. Just like you can't discriminate against sex, can't discriminate against gender identity. And the argument all Republicans make is, well, if you pass that law, who knows what could happen? The implication is you could have a, have a 6 foot 5 man playing women's, women's volleyball. You could have a, a lawsuit where.
- [22:09]
Transgender woman who was physically born a man and went through puberty and got a man's body, basically. And then that's how the issue is spoken about.
- [22:22]
That's how it's spoken about. And it's this also where, if you follow conservative media, they were talking about this for years. Not even in America. A lot of the most famous cases they'll talk about happened in British Columbia and Canada or they happened in the UK somewhere. If you know Graham Linehan, the Creator of the IT crowd and Father Ted. And this is. Now this is his thing. This is all he works on. He's obsessed. He'll find this case of somebody in Ireland uses the gender identity law and they get into what used to be a women's space or women's dating app, and it just, again, not even happening in America. But, but they say this could happen here. This could come here if the wrong person votes for us. And Republican campaigns who are paying attention to this say, all right, let's. This sounds like it moves people. This is more interesting to people than we're going to cut capital gains taxes. Let's run this ad. So, I mean, $215 million of these ads, at least that ran this cycle. And that's more than was spent combined in every election in history on that issue up until 2024.
- [23:21]
Trump did Joe Rogan's show.
- [23:24]
Yeah.
- [23:25]
And Kamala didn't. And she had, I think he wrote in your article about it that she would have had to fly there. You have to go to Austin. You have to go to him. Right. And Trump did it and did what, a three hour interview?
- [23:43]
Yeah, he was, I think, two and a half hours late to his next rally because he did it. And some people left, but not most of them. Yeah, he did it. He came to. He came to the mountain to do it. The story that the Harris campaign was telling people was that it would have been. They wanted to get. Because they built a studio out for Call her Daddy. And some of their. They had an influencer part area at the DNC where they'd have people come. They wanted Rogan to come to her, and he didn't. Therefore, it never happened.
- [24:12]
And he endorsed. He ended up endorsing Trump, endorsing him.
- [24:17]
At the last minute, last minute. I'm not even sure how many people voted for Trump because of that. Versus I saw him on the show and therefore I know that I like this guy and I know he can handle the pressure. I mean, I covered Bernie and Andrew Yang in 2019 when they were running for president. Both of them got enormous bump just from going on the show. And he didn't say, I love you, I'm gonna vote for you for president now. It was just, I can hang with you and you can take questions about any topic on my mind for two hours a lot for a lot of people. That's impressive. That's more impressive than you can give a 30 minute speech.
- [24:50]
Sure.
- [24:50]
It definitely helps. Yeah.
- [24:52]
Yeah.
- [24:53]
Al Franken
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with David White.
- [25:00]
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- [25:31]
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- [26:23]
David Weigel
Let's talk about maybe some of the other appointments or nominations. Some of these. Marco Rubio for a secretary of state. They'll that'll fly through.
- [26:35]
Yes. That's the only one I've seen where Democrats out of the gate said we'll, we'll support him. Yeah.
- [26:40]
Yeah. Well, he's a colleague and he's on the intelligence committee and he's smart and he's a reasonable guy. Sort of.
- [26:49]
Yeah.
- [26:50]
Okay. So let's go to Pete Hegseth right now. This is to run his, to be head of the military, right. The armed forces.
- [27:04]
Yes. Of the dod. Floyd Austin.
- [27:07]
Yeah. So he was in the military. Right. He's fought in where? Afghanistan and Iraq.
- [27:15]
Yeah. Yeah. That was. He was fought in decorating. Yeah. And he first kind of started working in politics as he was arguing for the surge in 2007, saying as a veteran, I want Congress to support sending more troops to Iraq. So that's. He got out of the war and became a conservative advocate right away. At that point, I'd say pro war advocate. Not as much now.
- [27:36]
Al Franken
Right.
- [27:36]
David Weigel
But he fought there and he was decorated twice, I think for bravery.
- [27:44]
He was. Yeah. That's one thing they've emphasized is that he is a veteran. It's not always a decorated veteran who has served these things. He has the Bronze Star. He. No one questions this record.
- [27:55]
Usually it's a four star general or something like that, or lately it has been. Or a senator like cone from Maine or.
- [28:03]
Yeah, you remember the deal with Mattis is that it was unusual for somebody to come right from the military itself. They might have the experience, but it's usually. Let's put a civilian in there with some military experience and that's headset. Yeah. Austin was another.
- [28:17]
Mattis was one of the grownups. One of the people that ultimately, ultimately turned on, was left and turned on Trump. So, okay, we got those guys. Hegseth, I think will go through. Feels like that's what I'm hearing. This is going to be interesting. They had a secret vote on who's going to be the majority leader. And because they had a secret vote, people felt safe that they could vote for Thune, which was not what Trump wanted. And so they got Thune. Right.
- [28:49]
That's the only thing where if Trump had decided not to run and Nikki Haley just won, that probably would have been the same thing probably would have happened. John Thune is leader. Yeah.
- [28:59]
Yeah. Okay, so who else we're talking about? Musk and Ramaswamy are gonna run. This is not actually a department, is it Department of Government Efficiency? Is he making a new department or are there things that aren't departments that just exist as.
- [29:18]
It's the second one where they're so. Yeah, Musk. Not that you have to divest anything anymore because the ethics don't matter for Trump and the team necessarily. But so as to not have to leave his businesses and enter the government. Musk and Ramaswamy are going to run the Department of Government Efficiency, which is an acronym joke about the dogecoin. Probably not worth getting into that.
- [29:41]
Okay, I'll trust you on that.
- [29:45]
It's a meme coin that Elon loves to talk about. So he's also making money off the existence of this thing.
- [29:50]
Okay.
- [29:50]
I mean cryptocurrency and both of them, they don't know who's. How many people it's going to have. They don't know what the budget will be. An argument they have been making and this is made during the campaign. But there are more details in the Washington Post, Jeff Stein's story today. There's an idea that Congress, when it restricted the president's power to impound, you know, to say, well, Congress funded this, but I'm not going to. I'm going to spend the Money on something else. There's an argument that you can say, well, that's unconstitutional. I'm going to ignore that. We're going to fight it out in court and we'll win. That's kind of what they want to do is unclear how the funding would happen. Unclear if they'd say, if they'd present things to Congress that could pass in terms of funding cuts in the next reconciliation. They would just say, we have advice for the president. It's we're zeroing out the budget for Noah or something.
- [30:40]
Yeah, that'd be a great idea.
- [30:42]
And Trump is saying. He's doing that by signing a pen and saying, I'm gonna not. I'm not gonna fund this. And we'll have. We'll have that fight out. So the idea is. It's not a Senate confirmed idea. It is. Voters voted for this. They want some very wealthy people. They're both. I mean, wealthiest man in the world and a very wealthy man in Ramaswamy. We want them to root around with total abandon and whatever they recommend, we want Trump to do it. And this is. Was. Was Jared Kushner Senate confirmed. No, he wasn't. Trump is able to bring in people and give them a portfolio, even if Congress never signed off on it. And Republicans have been fine with that. Were they fine with it when Obama had said, I'm going to appoint John Podesta as an advisor to something? No, they had complain. They don't complain about this. It's an independent. Unclear where the budget comes from. But they'll move money around and say new rules, take it up to the courts.
- [31:31]
So. So that won't come up for a confirmation vote, you think?
- [31:35]
I don't expect them to do that. So.
- [31:37]
Because they don't want to put them through that or that they don't think that would happen. I don't think they're going to block much, are they? When they're out in the open, I think they're afraid of Trump.
- [31:49]
The up down votes. No, because Susan Collins is in cycle and she'll vote against. Lost up. But she can.
- [31:55]
Well, in Maine. In Maine, that's okay, right?
- [31:58]
Yeah, in Maine, that'll be popular.
- [32:00]
Trump lost the state and Alaska. Murkowski is also, I think, on the same safe ground.
- [32:06]
Yeah. She's not up for reelection until 2028. And so then it gets to Thom Tillis, Todd Young, the Republicans who've resisted Trump in the past, which fights are they going to pick? Are they going to be out there saying, why I have a problem With Elon Musk proposing this, I'm not sure.
- [32:23]
Well, maybe not on that one, but.
- [32:25]
Maybe on Matt Gaetz, on the nominees, on the nominees. Will they, which ones will they pick to drop? I think no one, no one he's nominated right now, obviously is going to fail. I've seen reporting that says there are people who, there are, there are Republicans who secretly oppose them. There are Republicans who secretly were going to convict Trump in the Senate and they didn't. Right. I don't, I don't. This is a public facing business. I don't buy that anymore. I think it would have to be all right. During the vetting, it turned out that something terrible happened.
- [32:52]
This is a public facing business.
- [32:55]
I think so, yeah.
- [32:57]
Of course it is. Yeah.
- [32:58]
Politics. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how many times are we going to have anonymous aide say something and that doesn't happen? I'm a little fed up with that. So I think it would need to be investigation. Turns up something that shocks them and they say, we're not doing this anymore. The question then becomes, because Republicans run the House and Senate and another thing they didn't do for Obama, they would recess and let Trump recess a point. I think there'll be people who try to fit into that gap. Right. On the record, let me say I'm against this nominee. But then they vote to adjourn. He appoints them in the recess and they say, well, I wouldn't have done that. But the American people have spoken and Trump did. I think there'll be a lot of excuse making.
- [33:35]
They're gonna opening up recess appointments. Time for recess appointments, you think?
- [33:40]
Yeah. Again, this is, this is. They took this away from. As soon as Republicans flipped the house in 2010, they started to fight Obama recess appointments. I mean, you know this history. And then they won at the Supreme Court saying Obama couldn't even in a short recess, like a three day recess, couldn't do it. But with Trump, I think they are going to, I think from the way they're talking about this, they're going to say, no. It's a, we're going back to the old rule where if we're gone for three weeks, you're allowed to make these appointments and they last through the end of the term. They're already laying that groundwork. I think by they, I mean the vast majority of Republicans were not Susan.
- [34:13]
Collins and Lisa Murkowski, but the Democrats have any say in that because they still. I know it's 50. What is it, 53, 47. Is that what we got yeah.
- [34:25]
Unless the Pennsylvania count is reversed because there's ballots in a recount, it would be 53 Republicans.
- [34:31]
Yeah, yeah.
- [34:32]
And so, yeah, they're.
- [34:33]
And then you got the vice president. So it's the same as having 54.
- [34:38]
Right now, the rules do not give them an out. Or another. Another tactic here, the way that they could show up during the recess and protest it. Republicans did some of this when they were out of power in 2009. And, yeah, they just showed up and in the dark, were in the House chamber complaining, but it was still out of session. If there's a tool that Democrats come up with, I'm not aware of it yet. I need to do more reporting and see if they come up with something. But right now, on the record, there are not four Republicans saying, on the record, I oppose Matt Gaetz and I would vote against him. There are reports that there are multiple senators who don't want to vote for him. So what could happen if, let's say, the House Ethics Committee investigation report is released or leaked or whatever, and it turns out he did something that four Republican senators don't want to support? Then there'd be a discussion of whether Trump waits till a recess to appoint the guy or let's say he fails. This happened with John Bolton, remember? Oh, okay. His nomination's not going to work. There's a recess. Bush is going to appoint John Bolton for the rest of the term.
- [35:41]
And that. He was acting. Was he an acting.
- [35:44]
He was acting.
- [35:45]
Yeah, I got it.
- [35:46]
And Trump did a lot of that in his first term. Oh, I can't get a new DHS Homeland Security Secretary confirm. I'm going to have somebody act in this role for the next year and a half. They can't be paid the way that a confirmed secretary is, but when they order something, it's. It happens. He's been very comfortable doing that. And I should. When I talk about Musk and Ramaswamy having this role in the government, an attitude on the right is that people who've made. Who are successful in business, businesses are built for quick decision making, for dynamic action. They're not built to have a committee grind it down for six months. That's just. If you. From the conservative perspective, from the Silicon Valley perspective, that's better. It's better to just make a decision with an acting secretary and have people deal with it than to say, gosh, can we grind this out in six months of hearings? They just, they were very willing to defend that and say, well, it's not pretty, but it's action.
- [36:41]
This is a Silicon Valley takeover of the executive in a way, at least.
- [36:46]
In part the way that they justify this. And JD Vance is friends with some of the same people, Thiel and oh yeah, with Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin. Thiel's obviously much more wealthy, but these guys whose basic argument is that democracy is slow and messy and privileges people who can make the process last forever without achieving anything. Democracy means it takes three years to approve a new condo, whereas a company run by a CEO says this isn't working, we're firing 500,000 people tomorrow. And that's the model that they think would benefit the whole country. A CEO model, not a slow moving republic model. Not that they're saying we're overthrowing the government, just that every tool they can use to say we're not operating like a, like a slow deliberative government anymore, they'd use it. And yet if you say, oh, this is hypocritical because they didn't used to give Obama that, that leeway. Nope, they didn't. This is, this is a new, new set of rules for Donald Trump now.
- [37:45]
Scotus, giving immunity to the president. And with this president being will be the first to really, really make use of that, that immunity, don't you think?
- [37:57]
I would expect so. I mean, he's already benefiting from this. With people who were adjudicating these four cases after the presidency around January 6 and other misbehavior, they're all just kind of giving up.
- [38:10]
Well, any of the federal ones, he can kind of say that he himself is innocent. Right?
- [38:16]
He can pardon himself.
- [38:17]
Pardon himself.
- [38:18]
I mean, yeah, he could. It's a plenary power. The theory there is you can just do it. You can just say that I've signed a piece of paper and I'm pardoned so no one can investigate but the press, the Supreme Court says that you just once you're one, you can't pursue criminal cases against the acting president and two, that anything he does in his official act is a presidential act. And there's all sorts of stuff that you or I couldn't do and say it's for the good of the country. But Donald Trump could claim what is.
- [38:51]
Going to happen to the case that he was convicted in and of the 30 some counts, I think they've delayed it again, the sentencing and are they going to just throw that out? Are they going to say because he can't pardon himself on that because it's.
- [39:09]
A no state case in New York.
- [39:11]
State case and he Can't. No one's going to say, okay, you have to serve time. No one's going to say that. So. And I don't think the judge is right. The judge is going to say, just a little slap on the wrist, right?
- [39:24]
Yeah, that's it.
- [39:25]
If they did that at all, can they throw the case out? Because. Well, evidently Hope Hicks gave testimony from when he was president. So that was part of the evidence is during a period of time when he was the president. So the immunity could kick in there. In other words, is there a way out of this that the judge can. Can throw out the case?
- [39:51]
So the thing is, this is literally unprecedented. That's a word that gets overused. But there's no one else who's been convicted of crimes and then got elected to be president, even if you're even.
- [40:02]
That is true.
- [40:03]
Yeah. So the poor Judge Merchant has to deal with this first ever case of somebody having criminal convictions that normally would you be sentenced on very soon for somebody who cannot be in jail for the next four years. And what I've seen, and I'm not one, I'm not as much of a legal reporter as it's just covering the movement and the campaigns, is that, yeah, the sentencing is delayed. It might say, we can't actually act on this for a sitting president, there's no going to be no sentencing. So he's taking office, this case is on the shelf and nothing's going to happen for the next four years, then perhaps ever. But it's so complicated because no judge has ever had to consider this before. And this poor guy in New York who, you know, Trump was tweeting and telling people the name of and attacking his daughter, he has to just deal with. How do you. How do you. How do you. How do you process these facts for a incoming president who. Otherwise, if he. If he'd lost the election, pretty easy. Okay, he's not going to be president. No more protections. We're going to proceed with sentencing. People will protest. But. But lots of people have lost elections that then gone to jail. No new circumstance.
- [41:10]
That's one of the reasons we wanted him to lose. Just one of the other reasons we want.
- [41:14]
One of the reasons.
- [41:15]
Yeah, yeah. So Jack Smith has resigned and so there's gonna be none of the federal cases against him. Right?
- [41:24]
That's right. And like I was saying, there might be under Attorney General Gates or if he fails somebody else, Trump might get what he wanted, which was investigations of the Smith investigation. He left a Durham probe of the Russia investigation in place. And Joe Biden, really, if you think about things Joe Biden got no credit for, he was not sicking the, his DOJ on Trump. He did not shut down the Durham probe, which, which, which didn't end up making a big a ton of difference. Actually, if you remember Matt Gaetz, one reason he was in the mix for AG is because he was attacking Durham for not getting more gold and dirt on Democrats from, from his probe. He let the special prosecutor be created to investigate Hunter. And Republicans said, yeah, well, you're still, this is still lawfare against Trump. We don't care. I don't think Trump is going to look at the Biden experience and say, boy, I should be careful, because if I'm careful, I'll get goodwill from my opponents. Nope, no goodwill from Republicans for this. That's the question. How much is he going to direct the DOJ to go after enemies?
- [42:26]
How is he going to go after his enemies? How is he going to resolve these charges that he has that he's been talking about? How's he going to do that?
- [42:35]
Well, it's easy to start investigations. It's hard to win. And this was the problem with the Durham probe, too. You can, you can. And this is the thing. This is. Elon Musk does this in the private sector. You can have a case that's not going to succeed, but with infinite resources. If you're Elon, you have infinite resources. You can get it in front of a friendly judge. You can get to the discovery process. You can make your opponents spend more money than they have on legal fees and answer. And time, precious resources, time, digging through all their emails and records. You can do that to your political opponents. So Trump DOJ could launch investigations into his enemies that absorb their time and money, even if they're not likely to succeed.
- [43:16]
When they were sitting in the White House the other day and we heard about 40 seconds of their conversation, do you think there was any conversation about him indicting Biden, the Biden crime family and that kind of stuff?
- [43:32]
No, we, none of us following this, heard them doing that. I'm not sure if it would have been helpful. Trump on the trail liked to give himself credit. Hey, I could have done this for Hillary Clinton, but I didn't. So let's see if I'm so generous next time he might back down again. One thing, obviously, I had a colleague I was having poke around on this. House Republicans had an ongoing investigation into Tim Walls and whether he's a Chinese Communist spy. So they also have the House Oversight Committee which has no problem.
- [44:00]
That was crazy because he was like a teacher who brought his kids to China to see China, Southern Minnesota to China and would do that routinely. And they wanted, you're a spy.
- [44:13]
That reminded me a little bit of the Obama conspiracy theories where it was, you know, who we need to program to be our future Manchurian Candidate, a guy with the middle name Hussein. He's gonna be president. It was, you know who we need to turn into our agent is this teacher from Nebraska and Minnesota. He's gonna be vice president one day. So that. I'm not privileging the idea of doing that. I'm just saying Republicans have had a lot of tools to say we're going to force our opponents to spend a lot of time defending themselves from lawyers that have the doj, that have the House, the Senate, less so. The Senate doesn't do as much of that. And I don't think the Senate would. Would bother because they've already had those investigations. I was only going to say, the problem is that it's hard to win these cases because the defense attorney can say, hey, this is pretty clearly a political case against my client that you brought. But it can be a year before you get to that point. You can waste somebody's life before. Before they can get the thing dismissed.
- [45:07]
Stephen Miller is deputy chief of staff. Right. And he will, I'm sure that he will be, you know, the cruelty is the point with him. And he will be sending millions of undocumented immigrants out of the country.
- [45:28]
Yes. That's another thing that they think they have a mandate to do that Voters said, we want whatever it takes to get migrants. And I just use the word. This has been an interesting rhetorical thing Republicans have done. If I said migrant eight years ago, you'd say what? I know what the word means. But the new lingua franca is migrant. And that covers people who have protective status, like Haitians in Springfield. That covers people who are in the country with a visa. Overstay. That covers everybody. What they say the plan is is all right. It's not like they flip a switch and 12 million people are arrested. They're going to start with the DOJ talking to law enforcement across the country, say, hey, you're a cop. You are now. If you now see somebody running a red light and you stop them and you can. And they can't prove they're a citizen, you can turn them over. So the friend. And if you are, there are criminals, there are people who are non citizens in prison. As soon as you can just start processing those guys, deporting them. And the idea that they were laying out in the campaign is start with people who have committed some crime in addition to crossing the border illegally or overstaying a visa, and then move, move from there. The parts we don't know much about is, are, are they going to build detention, more detention centers, which I think they will to, to house people, because it's, it's, I think there's a cartoon version people have in their heads of this sort. We're deporting somebody, we're going to send you to the airport and you're gone. No, there's a, there's a process for this. But what they're saying is you start with people who have committed some other offense, you move them out. And then, for example, if you're a Haitian with protective status in Springfield, Trump can cancel that as soon as he wants to. If he doesn't cancel it, it runs out in 2026. And they'll just start by attrition saying, anyone who's in the country for asylum purposes, we're just going to find ways to take that away from you. And this includes people who, Venezuelans who fled Maduro are probably not going to be Democrats if they stay here and become citizens. They don't like socialism very much. The idea is, no, just move everyone that you can out every, choke every, every interaction they have with the government. Use that as a way to get them out of the country and use law enforcement where you can to help. And so some Democratic governors have said, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to say my National Guard or our state police or our troopers will do that. You do have a lot of sheriffs. Jessica Pisco has done like a good reporting on this, do have sheriffs who are very conservative and say, my oath is the Constitution. I don't care if my governor says, don't do this, I'm going to do it. I'm the sheriff of this county near the Mexican border and if I see them, I'm going to, I'm going to kick them out. It's going to be a lot of conflict, a lot of different level conflict between different kinds of law enforcement. With the, with the, with the president saying, whatever you need to do, kick him out. With Stephen Miller saying, kick him out.
- [48:11]
Well, Homan, that's the name of the. Yeah, Tom Holman, I saw him interviewed and said, well, what if, you know, the kids are legal and the parents aren't? He said, oh, yeah, Well, I don't care. We'll send the kids out with the parents, send them together. That way they can. The family stays together.
- [48:30]
Yeah, I'd say so. One, I'm answering the question, I'm not trying to make a dare point, but when they look at what they think is a mandate for them, part of it is the country got to see him being accused of very cruel things for four years, and then it got to see him say, I'm going to do more of those things if I win again. And because he won, they can do it. If it gets bad coverage in the press or there's a news video on the scene that looks bad, doesn't matter. Now, when they did the remain in Mexico policy midway through his administration, part of the goal there was there wouldn't be footage instead of cameras showing detention centers with kids playing outside and their parents somewhere else, not with them separated. It was bad. It got very unpopular. The polling for Trump's immigration policy was, was in the 30s.
- [49:21]
But they will do separation again, won't they? Will they do that again?
- [49:25]
That's the idea, in a way.
- [49:26]
That's what I've been hearing.
- [49:28]
But with the one, with the idea that they can get some of this off of TV and not in the public eye, Two, that even if people see it, they're ready for it, that they're supportive of that. And I think the second one they might be overrating, but that's the idea. It's just that, yes, there are going to be people who think this is the second coming of fascism and they just are going to ignore them because they say they have a mandate for it. I'm not trying to privilege Miller's argument too much, but just the way that he talks and thinks about this is he expects there to be people even in his own party that complain and he'll just keep doing it.
- [50:02]
Will they get rid of disfavored generals or is that something that they're looking at too?
- [50:08]
That's one of their big ideas. The news since the election idea has been creating some panel. So it's not just Trump saying it, that there is a panel of probably conservative leaning former military officials who say it's our advice that you get rid of this person. One thing they want to do is roll back, circling the thing we talked about a little bit ago, transgender rights, military, and say, okay, we're anything. Anything in the military that is about funding either transgender people serving the military, gender medicine being paid for by the va that's gone. Anything that's about training. Non sensitivity training or training people on the risks of white supremacy. That's gone. The focus will be on how does the military win wars. And anyone, because you're in the government, you have the records, you'll have the emails. One thing that the Heritage foundation has been doing that I think will be helpful for them is just finding records through FOIA of how people were discussing these policies. They're going to look through the military and other agencies, but military and say, all right, this was a guy, this was a colonel who signed off on a plan to teach people about pronouns in Porthood. Now Portland Liberty, and he's gone. We're going to find these people. We're going to kick him out. That's the dream.
- [51:23]
Okay. Jesus. Okay. Well, they're. But now, do they kick out transgender soldiers? I mean, there are transgender soldiers and sailors, I assume. And are they getting nixed? Are they getting kicked out?
- [51:41]
Yes, that is the plan. And they're more focused, from what I've seen, on preventing any funding of. Because let's say there are people who are not. They're not transgender, but let's say you're in the military, you live on a military base, you're. You're making a career out of it, and you have a kid who wants to get maybe at least even just therapy, the first stage of gender medicine. And they'll say, well, we're not paying for that anymore. We're not. We're going to make sure that we're rolling back any coverage for these rights because we don't think they're real. I mean, Trump, the Trump has been pretty vivid on this. But when it comes to. You are trans, want to be in your unit. Yeah. There would be an effort to remove. Remove trans military service members. Absolutely.
- [52:23]
Okay. Oh, boy.
- [52:27]
Yeah. All this fun stuff I'm giving you, is it really.
- [52:31]
How many days in are we of this administration? I just see it getting worse and worse.
- [52:36]
Course, I guess since the election was called eight and a half days and it's not administration yet. It's just eight and a half days since it was called. Yeah. And you're right, it was much more slow and chaotic in 2016. It was really hard to tell who would. You know, he had this sort of bake off where people would come to Bedminster in New Jersey and try to impress him. And this is moving a lot quicker with a lot more allies. And again, people like Elon in the room helping advise, even though they're not part of the government. So it is moving Faster.
- [53:06]
And the whole Republican Party, senators and House members basically have their tails tucked under them and are just, you know, maybe if there's a secret ballot, they'll elect Thune, but other than that, maybe, you know, Enthune can do some stuff, I suppose. I just think that he's totally confident that he can do whatever he wants and will push it as far as it'll go.
- [53:30]
Yes, I think that's a fair way to say how they think about this. Everything I'd say about Thune in the Senate, other people have made this point. He came into the Senate in 2017 and you had Bob Corker, you had Lamar Alexander two years later, you had Mitt Romney, people who would go out of their way. And reporters knew if we admit John McCain, you could talk to them. And they say, I'm not on board with this. And that does change how the things get covered. If there's a divided party, it's not going to be that divided this time. We mentioned the senators who they think can't be gettable, but I mentioned Corker and Alexander have been replaced by total Trump loyalists who support everything. So he's not going to have much opposition in the House or the Senate.
- [54:13]
I saw one of the guys from Tennessee today. Who?
- [54:16]
Hagerty?
- [54:17]
Yeah, Hagerty who? Boy, he's on board.
- [54:20]
Yeah, but that's the thing. They've now got people lined up who see it as their mission. Yeah, they see it as their mission to help Trump succeed. You saw Troy Nils, who. He's a great story because Troy Nails is this Texas Republican. He won what was a very competitive seat in 2020 because it was outside Houston, moving to the left. He wins very close race. And then they redraw the seat so it's now safely Republican. And he wears a tie that has Donald Trump's face on it. And he's telling reporters last night, if Trump says jump, we jump, that our job is to help Trump be successful.
- [54:57]
Oh, if this is jump three feet and scratch your face, we jump up three feet and scratch our face. That was him.
- [55:03]
Yeah. Yeah. He speaks for a lot of these guys who came into office after Trump ran in 2016 who say our job is following this guy who is our leader, who is popular, who brought us back to Washington and who is our loyalty to a reporter asking us questions or an interest group or this guy. It's this guy. That's not what the oath says. But that's what they say. That's they tell us.
- [55:26]
So this is just going to get more Depressing as more stuff unfolds.
- [55:31]
Well, there's, I mean, hubris is a thing at this point. In 2004, you were listening you in 2004, and they were feeling like, well, this is a mandate to privatize Social Security. It's a mandate to continue this war in Iraq. And then within six months, Bush was unpopular and Democrats were winning special elections.
- [55:50]
I also think that the war was falling out of favor. That was a big.
- [55:54]
And the war was falling out of favor. Yeah. And Katrina happens like there is a pride goeth before the fall. That that's, that's another rule that, that has not that hasn't affected Trump as much as some other people. But they could be taking this, this vote they got and saying, all right, thank you, voters who want us to lower prices. We're going to do a bunch of stuff you didn't vote for and become really unpopular really quickly because even the house compared to 2017, 17, even this is a very tiny House majority. You got members who are going to vote against a lot of their priorities. Enough to sink them. I'd say some of their tax changes. Enough to sink them. They're feeling good right now, but they are going to have problems that they're not even predicting. And there's no one they're putting in saying, here's our. All right, well, there's a lot of Democrats who took their first ever Republican vote for Trump. So we're going to appeal to them. Not really at all. I mean, I guess in their view of things, Tulsi Gabbard is an olive branch of Democrats. But you and I know why that's not true.
- [56:49]
Yeah. Well, thanks. Well, that was a little bit of good news at the end there that things can unravel.
- [57:01]
Yes. The facts may be not making Democrats happy right now, the potential mistakes they're making, those are the things I guess Democrats would look forward to.
- [57:10]
Okay, we'll be looking for those. Thanks.
- [57:14]
Thank you.
- [57:14]
Al Franken
Well, I hope you enjoyed listening.
- [57:17]
David Weigel
That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke.
- [57:20]
Al Franken
The great Leo Kottke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.
- [57:42]
David Weigel
If you like the Al Franken podcast, you can listen to all episodes ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey packages by Expedia.
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