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- [00:00]
Anne Applebaum
The interesting thing is that he has spent more than a year, that there's been more than a year of stability.
- [00:07]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, and I was going to ask you, Susie Wiles is supposed to be one of the people that has ensured that.
- [00:12]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, no, I think that that's a fair understanding. And I know that one of the things that when she came in and she told Trump that among her priorities here is to run a stable White House, I think it's just a pervasive sense of, of dissatisfaction. Who can I blame? I don't think it really relates to any one issue. I think it relates to things are bad, somebody needs to be blamed other than me, me, Donald Trump. So I'm gonna fire somebody.
- [00:51]
Peter Pomerantsev
Michael.
- [00:52]
Anne Applebaum
Joanna.
- [00:52]
Peter Pomerantsev
Oh, big news, big news, big news. Well, what you've been predicting last week, I think Pam Bondi has been fired.
- [01:05]
Anne Applebaum
Another one down.
- [01:08]
Peter Pomerantsev
So go on. Another one down. What do you mean? What do you mean? Many to go, many to go.
- [01:14]
Anne Applebaum
So I mean, I've been here before and this is Trump's go to move. When things, when he feels things are out of control, he fires somebody. Now, the interesting. So the interesting thing is not that he is firing someone and last week fired Kristi Noem. Now he's firing Pam Bondi, others to come. The interesting thing is that he has spent more than a year, that there's been more than a year of stability.
- [01:44]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, and I was going to ask you, Susie Wiles is supposed to be one of the people that has ensured that.
- [01:50]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, no, I think that that's, that's a fair understanding. And I know that one of things that when she came in and she said, told Trump that among her priorities here is to run a stable White House, which is to say that revolving door of the first administration looked bad, had a bad effect. That was the chaos that Trump won, became known for. So she said, and she got a relative commitment, to the extent that you can get any commitment from Donald Trump, that she would be able to, she would be able to keep the staff in place and keep cabinet officers in place, too. So the executive branch would be her department to effectively manage.
- [02:47]
Peter Pomerantsev
So Susie Wiles, as we know, last month announced that, or the president announced on her behalf that she had breast cancer. She's being treated for breast cancer. We don't quite know what stage it's at. Do we think that she is less involved than she is?
- [03:01]
Anne Applebaum
She's less, I'm hearing that she's somewhat less present, yes.
- [03:07]
Peter Pomerantsev
So is he firing people while she's out of the office? Is that what's going on here?
- [03:12]
Anne Applebaum
I would say, I would say yes. I mean, I wouldn't set it up that she runs out to get whatever treatment she's getting and then it's like done and then he fires somebody. But that sense of her always being there, of him having to somewhat look to her for, you know, I'm going to do this and then she's not there. So I just think it's, that has created part of a new environment along with the fact and I think this is the bigger headline. I think the, the arc of history is beginning to bend to the downfall of Donald Trump. So the inflection point has happened. Nothing is going right for him. Everything is going wrong for him. This is, I don't think, and probably the war represents the inflection point. I don't think he can recover here. Also, he is going in very shortly into his formal lame duck period. Plus we are approaching the midterms, which are going to be a catastrophe. He can't, you know, all of these efforts, the voting, the, this that, you know, to try to, you know, the initiative in the various states to reapportion the elector, all of that is not going well. He's going to lose. It is finally, I mean, at this point, and I've been watching doing this for more than 10 years now, it is going south. So, and his go to move in that case is starting to fire people, which is going to increase the chaos, which is going to increase the trip how deeply south this is going.
- [05:06]
Peter Pomerantsev
Okay, so why Pam Bondi now? Was it because the two of them walked out yesterday together from the Supreme Court?
- [05:17]
Anne Applebaum
I don't think that that has anything to do with, I mean, she would have had relatively little to do with, to do with this. This was a case that the administration had decided to bring. He obviously wanted to bring this, this case. I mean, he, I'm sure, I'm sure was told that he would lose this case. I mean, it is possible, of course, that Pam Bondi said we're gonna win this case and then. But I doubt that she did that.
- [05:43]
Peter Pomerantsev
We're going to talk about birthright citizenship and the whole case and him storming out in a minute. So is it really the Epstein files, her mishandling of the files?
- [05:50]
Anne Applebaum
No, I don't think, I think it's just a pervas of dissatisfaction. Who can I blame? I don't think it really relates to any one issue. I think it relates to things are bad, somebody needs to be blamed other than me, Donald Trump. So I'M gonna fire somebody. And I don't think, I mean, Kristi Noem last week, Pam Bondi this week, Tulsi Gabbard next week, RFK Jr. The week after, Howard Lutnick Inevit coming up.
- [06:27]
Peter Pomerantsev
I'd forgotten about that.
- [06:30]
Anne Applebaum
This is just now a set of dominoes. So he goes to, this is a go to move. And he was held in check from that move for the first year, plus for I think, a lot of reasons, including Susie Wiles. But now we're back in the, he's back in the, he's back in, he's
- [06:53]
Peter Pomerantsev
back in the sort of control seat. And what does Pam Bondi do at this point? She can't have been, this can't have been wholly unexpected because certainly you've been predicting it. A lot of people have been saying at some point she's vulnerable. What does she do? Does she go into private practices?
- [07:10]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, it's what everybody who leaves government there usually is a whole wealth of money making opportunities, boring jobs, jobs that you don't want, but you do them because you make money. Now, in the first Trump administration, people left the administration and no one wanted to hire them. You were kind of tainted by Donald Trump. Is it different now? I think it probably has been somewhat different. But on the other hand, if the arc of history is bending in the direction that I think it is, bending, bending, then it could get dicey for all of these people.
- [07:52]
Peter Pomerantsev
So she could either go to, she could go and work for Paul Weiss. I mean, Paul Weiss that bent the knee, unfortunately, quickly.
- [08:01]
Anne Applebaum
She can't, I mean, she can't go to Paul Weiss. I mean, she can't go to a liberal law firm, which is already, I mean, Paul Weiss is already riven by all kinds of discontent. I mean, if you're a big law firm, the thing that you most probably have to do most of all, it's not really even about keeping your partners happy. It's keeping your associates happy. Cause if they run, then there's no one to do the work because the partners don't do the work. So they can't. That's not going to happen. But I mean, obviously there are law firms that she could go to. Are there corporations that she could go to to represent tech companies? Yeah, possibly. But I just have the feeling that things that the climate is about Ready
- [08:49]
Peter Pomerantsev
to goes to Dancing with the Stars like Sean Spicer did his first press spokesperson.
- [08:56]
Anne Applebaum
Bingo.
- [08:57]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right?
- [08:57]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah.
- [08:57]
Peter Pomerantsev
Pam Bondi, you better get your dancing shoes on and limber up.
- [09:04]
Anne Applebaum
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- [09:21]
Peter Pomerantsev
Just a reminder, if you are watching this episode and you're enjoying it, please share it with a friend. We're independent media, and we finally got to 600,000 subscribers. Thank you very much. And we've crossed the line. We've crossed the line. I think we crossed the line yesterday. Or perhaps it's about. We're about to cross the line. But anyway, we're right there. But we are independent media, so we have to.
- [09:40]
Anne Applebaum
Sometimes on these subscriber numbers, they unsubscribe and then you fall back below the line.
- [09:46]
Peter Pomerantsev
That might happen to you, but it hasn't happened to us yet. And we've got our hundredth episode, two weeks today, and we can't decide how to celebrate it, Although. Is that when you're in Venice?
- [09:56]
Anne Applebaum
No, I'll be here.
- [09:57]
Peter Pomerantsev
Okay, good. So if you have any thoughts of how to celebrate it, we would be up for it. And when we embarked on this journey last August, we had no idea quite how bad things were gonna get. Not on the podcast, but in the world.
- [10:11]
Anne Applebaum
No. And we had no idea that we would be able to do this over and over again together. Or at least I was a little leery of that. But here we are.
- [10:25]
Peter Pomerantsev
Great. Thank you very much. Well, here we are. We've also got tons of stuff to talk about. That crazy speech that Trump gave last night, the strange timbre of the Attorney General's voice as he's presenting to scotus and Trump walking out. What else have we got? The fact that Mr. Nome. Oh, Mr. Noem. Mr. Noem. I mean, where to even begin to start with looning? But we will be talking, obviously, about looning. And they've closed the ballroom down. The ballroom construction. Sorry. Shalom Baremus. Not a good week. So it's been a moment.
- [11:04]
Anne Applebaum
They've closed windows. We should start. It would be an interesting pool, actually. I'm sure one of these betting pools you can put money in.
- [11:11]
Peter Pomerantsev
Okalshio.
- [11:12]
Anne Applebaum
Yes. Will there be a ballroom before Trump leaves office?
- [11:16]
Peter Pomerantsev
Oh, that's a great. We should start that immediate. Maybe that's how we should celebrate our hundredth. We should open a kind of regular account at Calshi or what's the other one that begins to be.
- [11:28]
Anne Applebaum
I know nothing about this. I've never placed a bet.
- [11:30]
Peter Pomerantsev
In my life, anyway. Did you see the speech last night when Trump addressed the nation?
- [11:36]
Anne Applebaum
Well, it was Passover last night, so I was at a Seder, but I did see it this morning. I woke up to it. That voice, when you wake up to it, and it's kind of worse than an alarm, waking up to the alarm.
- [11:54]
Peter Pomerantsev
I thought his voice was subdued last night, actually.
- [11:57]
Anne Applebaum
Well, you know, I was thinking. I thought this was an unusual speech. I thought that he probably did not want to give it. I thought that he had been cajoled into doing it. And then I thought, I know. His speechwriter, who gets very little attention, is a guy by the name of Ross Worthington. Perfectly nice guy. I wouldn't say the top of the class, but a nice guy who has been doing this for a long time, since the first administration. And I think about what that would be to have to be Donald Trump's speechwriter, a. Because he doesn't, you know, he deviates. So it really doesn't matter what you say. And then you have to supply the words that Donald Trump would say. So imagine that. I mean, this is, you know, as I say, not the top of the class, but a reasonable, completely normal type of person. And then he has to get into the head, as we do, of this utterly inarticulate subverbal man.
- [13:16]
Peter Pomerantsev
Subverbal. He's not really in his head, though, is he, in his mouth? Because I feel like there's often stuff coming out of Trump's mouth that doesn't really connect with any part of a brain.
- [13:26]
Anne Applebaum
Well, that's part of this. Part of the.
- [13:28]
Peter Pomerantsev
Part of the struggle.
- [13:29]
Anne Applebaum
Yes.
- [13:31]
Peter Pomerantsev
I mean, I should have counted, and I meant to count, and then I realized I had more important things to do. But the number of times he said, never seen anything like it. Never seen anything like it. And then there was a strange phrase of. He took over a dead and crippled country and made it the hottest country.
- [13:46]
Anne Applebaum
You can't. I'm banning you from doing something.
- [13:48]
Peter Pomerantsev
You're not allowed to ban me. Lots of people wrote in and said, you're not allowed to ban me. I'm trying to give him.
- [13:54]
Anne Applebaum
They like your Trump imitation.
- [13:56]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, they appreciate that. I'm not trying to give him the benefit of a British accent, a normal British accent. So I do it with an adenoidal British accent.
- [14:05]
Anne Applebaum
Could you maybe give him a Cockney accent?
- [14:07]
Peter Pomerantsev
Could you do that? I don't think I could do that. That would be strange. But the overuse of. No one's seen anything like it. I took over a crippled and dead country and made it the hottest country. The attack on Barack Hussein Obama for his deal with Iran, it all felt desperate. Straits.
- [14:29]
Anne Applebaum
It did. I felt. I mean, he's in this position. I mean, we said in the beginning of this, we said he was going to declare victory and get out. And that's what he tried to do last night, to declare victory. What we didn't anticipate and what he didn't anticipate is that he couldn't get out. So, you know, so it's that kind of thing which we've discussed before, the split screen reality of how Trump operates and in which he usually. Because he's. Because he's an actor, because he can command attention, because he is. Because he just loves the screen. He usually prevails in the split screen. So during the campaign, the split screen was there were four criminal indictments against him, which had never happened before in the history of almost any politician. But then in the other screen, it was Donald Trump outside of the courtroom saying the judges are scum and the prosecutors are scum and they're Democrats and everybody was scum. And he actually somehow won in that split screen battle. And that was who you paid attention to. That was, if not the argument, the narrative that was so unexpected, shocking, compelling. And the court grinded on like that. And so they lost that. But in this split screen, which you have Trump saying, we've won, we've achieved all of our goals, you know, they're all dead, whatever. And then that other split screen where you have the Iranians still firing missiles, closing the Strait of Hormuz, and so nobody has any oil, and even though they've all been killed, somehow the government is still functioning. And not only functioning, but able to repress any kind of uprising that Donald Trump had previously promised would certainly occur.
- [16:47]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. He said last night that they'd shot 45,000 protesters, which was a higher number than we'd heard. They may well have done. We don't know. But I thought that was interesting.
- [16:56]
Anne Applebaum
Well, yeah, I mean. I mean, that would be. And I hesitate to say it may be true, because every number out of
- [17:04]
Peter Pomerantsev
Donald Trump's mouth is always not true and always exaggerated. But in this case, it might actually be true. Certainly people you talk to who have inside knowledge of Iran say it's much higher than the sort of 7 to 10,000 that was initially thought.
- [17:20]
Anne Applebaum
So the question what was his goal last night? Again, this is kind of normalizing it, to assume he had a goal other than a kind of irritation that the perception is that the war is not going well, that this is a forever war, that the MAGA people are annoyed that Democrats are on him, other Republicans are beginning to complain, and the economy could go into the crapper because of this. So that was channeling his. This is what I heard. That was channeling his annoyance at everybody else's annoyance, essentially. And always saying, why don't you? I mean, any objection to anything he does makes him cranky.
- [18:19]
Peter Pomerantsev
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- [19:03]
Anne Applebaum
No, no, nobody, I mean, anybody would have said that to any other president. No one would have said that to Donald Trump. So this would be, this would be. They would have. Would have said, you know, people want to hear you. You know, if you go out there and talk about things that'll really, you know, people will, will really respond to that. They respond to you.
- [19:33]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right? They respond to you. They need to see their president.
- [19:35]
Anne Applebaum
So it's all about. You would have pitched this on the greatness of Donald Trump, not the failures of Donald Trump to get him out in front of the camera last night,
- [19:46]
Peter Pomerantsev
because it was short for Donald Trump. I mean, we saw him at the State of the Union, and that was 1 hour, 47 minutes. And I sort of, you know, I was sort of sitting there last night bracing for impact of a long speech, but it was pretty short. She was whatever at 15 minutes.
- [20:03]
Anne Applebaum
No, I think it was 20 minutes. But it's just kind of shocking, actually. Yeah, I mean, to get Donald Trump off the stage in 20 minutes is a major accomplishment. I mean, it's almost a signal, I think, that something is going wrong.
- [20:19]
Peter Pomerantsev
Interesting. So. Right. So it was a short speech. His voice seemed weak to me. There wasn't the usual range. He didn't look like he was enjoying himself at the State of the Union, which is the Last big speech, he looked like he was having a great time, and he did that where he turns his head to the crowd and you can hear him listening and judging what to say next and when to go off script. There was none of that last night.
- [20:41]
Anne Applebaum
I think that he must suspect that he doesn't know what's gonna happen here.
- [20:47]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. And so actually, what we saw was a little bit of panic last night masquerading as an address.
- [20:54]
Anne Applebaum
And I think even he must understand that as you sort of all of the. The initial goals are now folding into so much less. He must. I mean, I'm always hesitant to say what he must understand about reality, but even he must understand that you've taken the essential nuclear material issues off the table. The central issue off the table. The central issue of regime change, essentially off the table. The central issue now of the Strait of Hormuz off the table. Is there anything left on the table?
- [21:46]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, I thought the way he talked about the Strait of Hormuz reminded me actually, of how he talked about women. You can grab them by the pussy. Just take the straight of hormones. Just take it. It'll open for you. And you're like, oh, that's how you had sex with people. And in this particular kind, he's like, oh, you take it, you take it. Just take it. You know, as if there's no ownership of anything. And he doesn't understand it.
- [22:11]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, that was essentially his attitude about regime change. Here, you can take it. It's your country. You can grab it. This is to the people of.
- [22:21]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. The Iranian. The protesters.
- [22:23]
Anne Applebaum
Yes. Of the 45,000 who have been killed. So, again, from the inside Trump's head standpoint, it is waging war is a set of declarations. It is not a complex strategic problem to be solved. And now he's frustrated that his set of declarations means essentially meaningless. And his set of declarations have gotten him into a mess, which he doesn't know how to get out of.
- [23:04]
Peter Pomerantsev
And the thing I resent about him, as we now have, as he set up, essentially, a David and Goliath struggle with Iran, is that he makes me want to root against him with all this, which means that I'm essentially rooting against America, which I don't want to do. I mean, it's a complicated situation when a president like this goes into another country because you don't want to root for Iran. Nobody wants to root for Iran. It's a horrible regime, regardless of who's running it at the moment. And nobody seems to know I mean,
- [23:37]
Anne Applebaum
it's just, I mean, because you also don't want to, want to root for incompetence and you don't want to root for a bully and you don't want to root for, I mean, all of these asymmetric situation. Yeah, obvious. I mean, you could root for, I mean, high gas prices. I mean, his rationale last night was that this eliminating the Iranian leadership is worth the economic pain. And that actually may well be true. But to make the case for that, I mean, first you have to do it with a certain degree. I mean, that also has to represent plan and strategy and competence and a certain degree of faith that this is all going to be achieved and that this is not all hit or miss and maybe, and nobody knows what they're talking about and another forever war.
- [24:47]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, and our allies have ganged up against us. I mean, what he's managed to do is Canada, Europe, they're all sort of anti the US in this. They're not coming to the table to help. He's saying, summon up some delayed courage and get in there, take the straight. And essentially what he's ended up doing is put the Strait of Hormuz in play in a way that it wasn't before. So he's actually complicated the situation and done nothing for the US and used billions of dollars which Maga assumed was gonna be spent on America, you know, on the infrastructure, on schools, on healthcare, on all the things America needs.
- [25:22]
Anne Applebaum
You know, and the language too. I mean, he literally used the language about the Stone Age, you know, so this was, we've talked about this,
- [25:40]
Peter Pomerantsev
that
- [25:40]
Anne Applebaum
there was that moment in time that post war, post World War II America when we had a military capability and a weapons capability, nuclear arms that nobody else had. And the generals, and the generals at that moment in history were famous troglodytes, I mean, not very bright men who were not very educated, except just in their singular military focus. And the generals and the right wing where their language was, bomb them back into the Stone Age, always bomb them back into the Stone Age. And then what we found, and really from the Vietnam War on, was that it was that bombed them back into the Stone Age did not achieve what that theoretically meant. It actually just created a greater and greater asymmetric situation which redounded not to our benefit.
- [26:49]
Peter Pomerantsev
And just a point on the language, the way he says the word dead, dead, he really enjoys it in the way that you hear a sort of five year old child when they're pretending to shoot their parent or pretending to shoot their friend. And they're like, bang, bang. There's a strangely unsophisticated sort of relish. He seems to take in using the word relish and describing how we've killed the regime and then we've killed the people under the regime.
- [27:21]
Anne Applebaum
There's the insistence of the child, you're dead, you have to lie down.
- [27:26]
Advertisement Voice
You're dead.
- [27:27]
Peter Pomerantsev
Yeah. Anyway, it's extreme.
- [27:29]
Anne Applebaum
You're not playing fair. Lie down.
- [27:33]
Peter Pomerantsev
Anyway, he was not having a good day yesterday. Although the more we go inside his head, the more I wonder if it doesn't really matter if it's a good day or a bad day, as long as he gets attention. So yesterday he goes the first time a sitting president has gone to sit to hear arguments at the Supreme Court. Obviously the argument yesterday was over birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment, whereby someone who is born here is entitled to American citizenship, which is one of his things that he thinks know people are coming here for tourist citizenship.
- [28:08]
Anne Applebaum
And just let's clarify the context here. This has not been, I mean, first thing, it's crystal clear within the Constitution of the United States. So there's not a lot of dispute about this. I mean the best you might argue is that there are some minor marginal nutcase right wing dispute about this from, from every other point of view. That's what it says. The Constitution says, were you born here? Okay, You're a citizen. So this is a dispute that he has created and it's one of those disputes that he's created even though a, he's wrong and even though everyone else will agree that he's wrong. So this is going to get him nowhere. So why did he do this? And I don't think you can reach any other conclusion but that it's performative and that's the reason for showing up at the Supreme Court. All part of this performance. I have come to power. I mean this is how he came to power, by taking this hard hardcore anti immigration line. That's what I represent. There's nothing else really. I don't have any other ideas. This is the fundamental idea. So I just have to keep being out front of that. Everything that I do has to represent that. Not that I have to accomplish anything. Not that I have to build a wall which I never built. Not that I have to, not that I have to get rid of birthright citizenship, which I'm not going to be able to do. It's just a series of performative identification with this issue.
- [30:06]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. And very specifically for his MAGA base, the story of immigrants coming here to have a child, then they can stay here. And he did it on. He signed the executive order on his very first day. And then he becomes the first sitting president to turn up in the Supreme Court. And interestingly, three of his three justices he put in, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett, all take issue with his lawyer. And we have to have a moment on Jim Salva.
- [30:42]
Anne Applebaum
John, before we get to that, let me just, because I think that was during the campaign in which several issues directly related to Donald Trump came before the court. And some the court was favorable to him, on others the court was not favorable to him. But in several of those situations, he kept threatening to go and sit in the court. And he was always. All of the people around him were like, this is a bad idea. I mean, there's no message that is going to be received by these justices except that he's there trying to intimidate them. This is not a good idea.
- [31:26]
Peter Pomerantsev
He wasn't president then, was he?
- [31:28]
Anne Applebaum
He wasn't. No, he wasn't the president, but he might well become the president. And, you know, I mean, essentially to the same effect. Don't go there. That's the message. I mean, you know, you know, this is a precarious. The Supreme Court justices are like any other justices. They are reading the room and, and that would be not a positive thing for them to read that the President of the United States or someone who might well be the President of the United States was there in a face off with them. So he went in yesterday. And again, I can only see that as this is not a smart thing for him to do, if he was really serious about this, about wanting the court to rule in his favor. So he was just there. This is just again performative.
- [32:23]
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- [32:46]
Peter Pomerantsev
So good you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on car pickup fees may apply. Well, and also perhaps, I mean, he's a man that likes to pit everybody against each other, right? So he's trying to pit European countries against each other. He tries to pit JD Vance and Marco Rubio against Each other. Anybody around him, he likes to try and pit against each other so that no one is united. What felt like what was going on yesterday was because the nine justices felt united in this. I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it comes down and it's a unanimous decision. And he was there for 90 minutes, sort of sitting on the front row of the public gallery. He wasn't sitting with the friends of the lawyers or the friends of the justices. And it felt like they must have. I mean, listening to it felt like they must have got some strength from being united in that they were not going to be intimidated. They must have had a conversation about it beforehand, and they certainly didn't sound intimidated. Who did sound intimidated was John Sauer, the Attorney General and his. Or the Solicitor General. He has a voice that is just like Robert Kennedy Jr. S voice.
- [34:04]
Anne Applebaum
I'm going to defend Sauer here. Most lawyers are not lawyers as they would appear on television.
- [34:13]
Peter Pomerantsev
I mean, they're not Perry Mason.
- [34:14]
Anne Applebaum
Yes, most lawyers are kind of stumblebums. I mean, they don't. This is a kind of a myth that lawyers go into court. It's a television myth. Lawyers go into court and they, uh. And they, um. And they can't get it to thing. And it's really kind of shocking.
- [34:29]
Peter Pomerantsev
Um, you know, who goes in front of the Supreme Court and doesn't stumble, bum around Robbie Kaplan. And you know why? Cause she practices and that's why she's won a Senate.
- [34:38]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, yes. I mean, I mean there's.
- [34:40]
Peter Pomerantsev
Let's just play a clip because I'm going to defend my position here. Let's play a clip of John Sauer at the Supreme Court yesterday.
- [34:49]
Advertisement Voice
Here's a fact about it that I think is striking. Media reported as early as 2015 that based on Chinese media reports, there are 500, 500 birth tourism companies in the People's Republic of China whose business is to bring people here to give birth in return to. To. To that nation.
- [35:08]
Anne Applebaum
Having said all that, you do agree that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us?
- [35:14]
Advertisement Voice
I think it's. I quote what Justice Scalia said in his Hamdan dissent where they had. Where like their interpretation has these implications that could not possibly have been approved by the 19th century framers of this amendment. I think that shows that they've made a mess. Their interpretation has made a mess of the provision will.
- [35:32]
Anne Applebaum
It certainly wasn't a problem in the 19th century.
- [35:35]
Advertisement Voice
No, but of course, we're in a new world now. As Justice Alito pointed out. To where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a U.S. citizen.
- [35:44]
Anne Applebaum
Well, it's a new world. It's the same constitution. I mean, sort of sounds like your imitation of Donald Trump.
- [35:49]
Peter Pomerantsev
No, it doesn't. It sounds just like RFK Jr.
- [35:54]
Anne Applebaum
I disagree with that. But. And I thought.
- [35:57]
Peter Pomerantsev
You don't think it sounds like RFK
- [35:58]
Anne Applebaum
Jr. No, I think it's a sort of sympathetic voice. I was immediately my heart was warming to this guy.
- [36:05]
Peter Pomerantsev
You are being sarcastic.
- [36:07]
Anne Applebaum
I'm not. I think it's fun. Lawyers are. This is what they are before courts. They're not like Donald Trump wants them to be. I mean, this is. But I remember during the campaign, and Sauer, who was not the Solicitor General, but he was the main appeals lawyer, so he was the guy arguing, one of the guys who argued before the Supreme Court. And the Trump staffers who were on hand and Trump was not, but they were like, oh, my God, it's really good that Trump was not here to see Sauer, because he was.
- [36:49]
Peter Pomerantsev
Because he was terrible.
- [36:50]
Advertisement Voice
Terrible.
- [36:50]
Peter Pomerantsev
I wonder. I mean, Trump stormed out yesterday. We actually had a reporter there, and he stormed out. And actually there's a wonderful picture which I think we might be able to show by the courtroom artist of Trump leaving. And so I remember you saying as you were following the court cases and going to court before Trump had become president again for the second time, how he would ream his lawyers out. And I could only imagine how he either called or yelled at how terrible John Sauer yesterday.
- [37:25]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, and yeah, have pity on the guy. But the storming out, too, is also performative, of course. And they have during the various trials, during the campaign, or the various courtroom appearances. That would always be a set piece. When am I gonna go out? How am I gonna go out? How am I gonna look? Who should talk to me when I go out?
- [37:49]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, it's. And it's perfectly reality television. I mean, actually, it made me wish that the. The Supreme Court was televised. I don't understand why it's not televised at this point. We should have transparency into it. And so listening to it is. And also, it's hard to tell how
- [38:03]
Anne Applebaum
hateful it's not televised.
- [38:04]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, I think it should be televised.
- [38:05]
Anne Applebaum
The less things that are televised, the better to me.
- [38:09]
Peter Pomerantsev
Why?
- [38:10]
Anne Applebaum
I think it just distorts everything. I don't think anything has ever benefited by being televised.
- [38:20]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, it's true that American business hasn't benefited from the Apprentice being televised, but it was pretty. The whole thing was pretty interesting. And then, of course, well, I have a gift for you. I have a gift for you for our next subject matter, which is just going to require me bending down and picking up the gift. I think this will give you a clue. I'm just going to leave them here as to what we're going to talk about next because we need some merriment and distraction and hilarity in our understanding of looning. Did you know what looning was?
- [38:57]
Anne Applebaum
No, and I'm still not sure, but I really feel sorry for this guy. But tell me your understanding of looning. I want to hear it in detail.
- [39:08]
Peter Pomerantsev
I was going to say I was the editor of Cosmopolitan and I hadn't come across looning. But looning is where you take a balloon. A man takes a balloon. Of course it's a man. Sticks it up his sweater, pretends it's a breast and fiddles with these things and pretends they're nipples. Which according to an interview that we had today with one of the onlyfans girls that Brian Gnome did this with. It's a sort of submissive action. And Brian Noem was looking to be submissive with these women. And I can't help wondering if it's problem a. A reaction to the over.
- [39:46]
Anne Applebaum
Well, I'm just. I'm still not exactly seeing this.
- [39:51]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, did you not see the pictures of him?
- [39:53]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, no, no, I did, I did. But I'm not seeing the whole interactions here of you do the interactions.
- [40:01]
Peter Pomerantsev
I think you should try this. How does anybody get this in your sweater?
- [40:04]
Anne Applebaum
Well, that's what I'm thinking. It seems. No, yeah.
- [40:10]
Peter Pomerantsev
I mean, I wrote about this for Substack at my last.
- [40:12]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, also, these are very large. I mean, are there smaller? What?
- [40:15]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, the only fans cam girl, for those of you who don't know what on earth we're talking about. Kristi Noem.
- [40:23]
Anne Applebaum
I don't know what on earth we're talking about.
- [40:25]
Peter Pomerantsev
Okay. Well, Kristi Noem's husband, Kristi Noemi, you'll remember, is the recently fired head of Homeland Security. And why was she fired? Because she'd spent quarter of a billion dollars on an ad campaign featuring who herself in front of the backdrop of granite cheekbones, which is Mount Rushmore and
- [40:47]
Anne Applebaum
many other reasons that she was fired. Hello, Minneapolis, ice. You know, her complete incompetence, her open affair with her aide.
- [40:57]
Peter Pomerantsev
I mean, which they both denied. Corey Lewandowski. I don't know what came first, Corey Lewandowski or the looning, but her husband was revealed to have spent at least $25,000 with OnlyFans where he was inserting balloons up his T shirt and wearing very tight pants and then having a conversation with him.
- [41:21]
Anne Applebaum
He's an insurance salesman in. Somewhere in North Dakota.
- [41:26]
Peter Pomerantsev
South Dakota, actually, which is where she was governor. South Dakota. And, yeah, he's an insurance guy. And Sean McCreesh for the new York Times did a piece where he went out to talk to local people who didn't believe it and said they'd grown up with him. He was a local boy. This must be AI. It doesn't seem like it was AI.
- [41:48]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, apparently, many, many people are using OnlyFans and.
- [41:55]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, lots of people are using OnlyFans. I think it's a subculture of OnlyFans. But the thing I found really odd is that according to the interview we have with I think she was called Linda. Love you.
- [42:08]
Anne Applebaum
You're not gonna play with that, are you?
- [42:09]
Peter Pomerantsev
He was twiddling the ties as if they were nipples and as if he was getting feeling from them. Anyway, who knew? Who knew? But it sheds a different light on our Department of Homeland Security. And the truth is, none of this would matter. You do what you want to do. You do you in your private life. Except that it opens her to blackmail. And she was the head of Homeland Security whose job is to be responsible for every single American safety.
- [42:37]
Anne Applebaum
That seems completely ridiculous to me.
- [42:39]
Peter Pomerantsev
I don't think it's ridiculous.
- [42:40]
Anne Applebaum
You can't blackmail a narcissist. Impossible.
- [42:45]
Peter Pomerantsev
So if the only fans.
- [42:46]
Anne Applebaum
She doesn't care. I mean, she's. Look at if this is the least of her problems, you know, a husband with balloons. I mean, she's got Corey Lewandowski. I mean, she's having this for a long time. I mean, this has been going on for years now, openly, without regard. She's having an affair with her aide. And he's not only an aide. He's someone who has a very close relationship with the administration. A very close relationship with Donald Trump is hated by other people in the administration. I mean, how could she? Anyone with a scintilla of political regard would realize this is gonna end in tears. So the idea that she would be worried that anyone could blackmail her. Blackmail her? The woman is out there living a. I don't even have the language for the preposterousness of Kristi Noem so that she would worry about someone discovering some indiscretion around her. Everything is an indiscretion.
- [44:12]
Peter Pomerantsev
Pet owner, Save this TikTok has free training guides and behavior tips. Potty training tricks, healthy diet ideas. No Expensive classes needed. Just scroll and learn. Download TikTok now. Well, I was. I mean, did she. I mean, I wonder if she knew. She said. And the family said. Or they issued a statement saying that they were completely distressed. They had no idea. And I was like, did you notice some, you know, did you not want to say to Brian, the insurance salesman, there seems to be a lot of helium and there's quite a lot of party supplies in the garage. Are we entertaining again?
- [44:52]
Anne Applebaum
First thing, what does he think about Corey Lewandowski then? Corey Lewis? What does Corey. I'm sure Corey Lewandowski knew about this anyway. But again, even the idea of blackmail sets this up in some kind of traditional political reality. Forget about it. These people are so. They don't care.
- [45:15]
Peter Pomerantsev
They don't care. So do you think the FBI knew about it? Because surely they're supposed to do background checks on everything and.
- [45:25]
Anne Applebaum
Well, the FBI, when we just get to the FBI where everybody's been fired,
- [45:32]
Peter Pomerantsev
Kash Patel's own Gmail was by the Iranians. Right. So, again, it's awful because it makes you want to root against the foolishness of America, and we never want to root against America. But this is. It's just been a really astonishing week. You think you can't get any worse,
- [45:48]
Anne Applebaum
and it does, but it is actually this. And the more telling thing is not the balloons, but the more telling thing is Corey Lewandowski, who is now being investigated.
- [46:00]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. And what's he being investigated for?
- [46:04]
Anne Applebaum
You know, I mean, he's essentially being investigated for how he used the Department of Homeland Security to further his interests. So, I mean, there is another thing, and it's a kind of. I mean, it's a theme that I don't think has been addressed in a systematic way, although we see aspects of it all of the time, beginning, of course, with Elon Musk in the administration. And it is all of these tech guys. I mean, the entire tech industry has seen the Trump White House as an invitation. I mean, let's.
- [46:49]
Peter Pomerantsev
An invitation for grift.
- [46:51]
Anne Applebaum
An invitation to how can we get our products adopted by the federal government? And let's go. This is significant. The federal government, the United States government is now the biggest buyer of information technologies. I mean, by factors, I don't know, 100. I mean, overwhelmingly. So it actually is. If you have a tech company, you're supplying information technology, and if the federal government is not your client, it's going to be. You probably won't make it. So the entire technology industry is now, the point of it is how do you get the federal government to adopt your products? And if you don't, you're screwed. If you do, you're fathomlessly rich. So you've suddenly created a situation of enormous grift. I mean, that's your focus. And with the Trump administration, which is open for business, you know that everybody is in there. Everybody, everybody in the tech industry has their person inside the Trump orbit essentially hawking their products.
- [48:20]
Peter Pomerantsev
So that's why they were all standing in his inauguration there to pay homage to Donald Trump. There are definitely all sorts of administrative and bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through to get your product into the government system.
- [48:38]
Anne Applebaum
Almost, in many instances, almost insurmountable hoops unless someone navigates you around them.
- [48:45]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. So that presumably was also why there was such a big deal around the anthropic issues a couple of weeks ago when Pete Hegsed said, well, we're not going to use anthropic anymore. Anthropic were like, well, you can't have us for limitless use. We are going to tell you what you can and you can and can't use our product for. And then OpenAI stepped in and Sam Altman, the founder, said, well, you can use us to do whatever you want,
- [49:11]
Anne Applebaum
but understand how important important this is. And I mean, that's the key things. This is existential. I mean, you are in business if the federal government is your client. If you were a supplier to the federal government, you are out of business if you can't accomplish that. So all of these companies, you're raising $500 million in venture capital. That is against one outcome. You're going to be able to get a deal with the federal government. If you don't get that deal, that $500 million, there's a good likelihood that goes down the drain.
- [49:57]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, and there's a whole group of people who get introducing fees and get commissions for these contracts getting put into place.
- [50:04]
Anne Applebaum
Well, of course, I mean, that is a monstrous ecosystem because there is. Is so much money at stake here. I mean, and it kind of goes in even a bigger way. The entire. The economy, the United States economy is dependent on the tech industry. The tech industry is dependent on the United States government.
- [50:24]
Peter Pomerantsev
Yeah, yeah. And I think I told you so.
- [50:26]
Anne Applebaum
We have a kind of a pyramid scheme here that is really probably quite dangerous.
- [50:31]
Peter Pomerantsev
Yeah. And I think I told you I was speaking to a founder, a big software founder in the Valley a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the war, and he said, nobody's paying any Attention to the war, everything's on fire. We're all inventing the future. It's all about AI this is a fantastic time for us. It was just a complete disconnect from what felt like what's going on everywhere else.
- [50:53]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah. And there's a disconnect in all of this discussion about the invention of AI because on one hand, that's just a technological marvel. On the other hand, that technological marvel or who gets to profit off that technological marvel is all dependent on who manages to sell it to the federal government.
- [51:18]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. Okay. Well, we should talk more about this because it's a really sort of fascinating and under explored subject, I think. Also another a setback for Trump. Not only did he have to address the nation about a war he didn't want, not only did he storm out of the Supreme Court, possibly performatively, but what else happened to him this week? What got stopped this week? Passion project of yours. You love this subject. The east room, the east wing got stopped.
- [51:50]
Anne Applebaum
You know, I totally, again, in the Trump world, all of this stuff, you. You forget about this, right? Yeah. No. So the ballroom.
- [52:00]
Peter Pomerantsev
The ballroom
- [52:04]
Anne Applebaum
has been momentarily kiboshed. Momentarily, Right.
- [52:08]
Peter Pomerantsev
Shalom baramis. You know, if you want to write to him to give him your commiseration.
- [52:13]
Anne Applebaum
Shalom. Shalom.
- [52:14]
Peter Pomerantsev
Shalom. Shalom. It's info at Sbaramis. B A R A M E S if you want to say sorry that your project's been halted for now.
- [52:25]
Anne Applebaum
So we are going to do this. We're setting up a betting pool on whether or not there's a ballroom before Trump exits office. Or maybe he'll stay in office and figure out how to stay in office just to get the ballroom built. I mean, I think we should not underestimate how important this ballroom becomes to Donald Trump. This is Donald Trump. This is his legacy. You know, other presidents think in terms of legacy, a historical legacy. What have I accomplished? What have I. How have I changed the political structure of the country? How have I changed the zeitgeist? I don't think that's true for Donald Trump. For him, the legacy is the ballroom.
- [53:14]
Peter Pomerantsev
It's the ballroom. And I can't help having a sense of schadenfreude that he's now literally living in a demolition site. I mean, it is such a mess. Cause as we know, he tore it down basically overnight under the COVID of darkness, which is what you've said. He always did. He did that with a building on Fifth Avenue. That's what he does. He moves at night. He's a man of the night. And now the project's been stopped.
- [53:40]
Anne Applebaum
And there's another aspect of, of this, and we should come back to this. What Donald Trump can't accept, cannot temperamentally, physically, is no, he can't. And it goes further than that. Anybody who does accept no is a Trump. That is the Donald Trump theory of the game.
- [54:08]
Peter Pomerantsev
So what the judge said in this case was that that they're stopping the project because it's not allowed to go ahead without congressional approval. Donald Trump then said there's never been congressional approval for anything to do with the White House before, which is complete nonsense. It's completely standard to have congressional approval. I think he thought he was going to skirt round it by not having public funds used, because as we know, he's raised the 400 million that he says it's going to take from American companies. But this is actually very interesting because it now appears that Congress doesn't want to help him on this.
- [54:46]
Anne Applebaum
Well, what will happen on this? He will appeal this decision. So it is not unlikely at all that he will get to Trump judges who will give him the authorization to go forward with this and that then that decision then will be appealed. So this is a typical Trump situation of who can outlast someone else and who can outmaneuver somebody else within the courtroom and within the structure of judges who are essentially on his payroll.
- [55:25]
Peter Pomerantsev
I'm not sure there are many judges who want to, to give the go ahead for this. Cause I think there is a fairly united sense that this is a preposterous addition to the White House.
- [55:38]
Anne Applebaum
Well, I think, I mean, I like your optimism here, but I'm not sure that I would count on it. Now, there is, however, I would say that the thing that is somewhat in the favor of all right thinking people is that, is that as the end of the, as he becomes more of a lame duck, then I think people don't have to bend the knee so much. Judges don't have to bend the knee so much. And then also just the time frame to build this is going to be limited. And I do think nobody wants to stick the next guy with this project.
- [56:21]
Peter Pomerantsev
Well, and do you remember he made Shalom Barrame? I think he had to give us some sort of public statement recently. Cause they were terrified he would be the second architect to walk away from this project, which has now swelled 90,000ft.
- [56:35]
Anne Applebaum
A New York Times interview. And they pushed, the administration really pushed him out there to do this because of fears that he was not committed.
- [56:45]
Peter Pomerantsev
Right. Well, and his career might well get sunk by it. Might be farewell Shalom Baroness Inc. Because let's just remind people it's 90,000 square feet, which will be almost three times the size of the existing White House. So we might reach a point where Donald Trump leaves office and there is still just a pile of rubble there.
- [57:09]
Anne Applebaum
You know, my wife has been after me to take the kids to Washington to see Washington before it is remade in Donald Trump's image.
- [57:21]
Peter Pomerantsev
Yeah, it's a very good idea. You should do that. But it's possible it doesn't get remade in his image. And it's always been a metaphor for him. Right. He tears down the east wing under the COVID of darkness. He's going to build this very glitzy ballroom. But an even better metaphor is he leaves the White House and there is no east wing. That he's ripped it down. And being unable to build his ballroom.
- [57:48]
Anne Applebaum
Well, we're setting that up, that bet.
- [57:51]
Peter Pomerantsev
Okay. We're setting the bet up so. Well, who knows what will have happened by Saturday when we're back? I mean, many, many things. I mean, I'd quite like to know a little bit more about looning. Apparently, it's where people get excited by rubbing the loons.
- [58:10]
Anne Applebaum
You're a song.
- [58:12]
Peter Pomerantsev
Balloons. Okay. Rubbing balloons or popping balloons? I hadn't heard it before.
- [58:22]
Anne Applebaum
Okay.
- [58:24]
Peter Pomerantsev
If you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget, as I said at the top, we're independent media. So we appreciate you subscribing to the Daily Beast. You can become a beebeast tier member where you get lots of extra content, actually. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now, there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team. Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.