The Lawfare Podcast: Rational Security — “The ‘Wea Culpa’ Edition”

Date: November 5, 2025
Panelists: Scott R. Anderson (Host), Benjamin Wittes, Alan Rosenstein, Kate Clonick

Episode Overview

In this episode of Rational Security, the Lawfare team returns to dissect three complex national security stories making headlines:

1. The internal crisis at the Heritage Foundation over the defense of Tucker Carlson’s hosting of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and what it means for the right’s reckoning with antisemitism.
2. The astonishing collapse in the enforcement of the TikTok divestiture law, with Alan Rosenstein offering a public mea culpa for policy assumptions that proved deeply flawed.
3. The Trump administration’s deployment of “war on terror” legal concepts—unlawful enemy combatants, terrorist group designations—against narcotics traffickers, and what this says about law, rhetoric, and power.

The show is characteristically sharp, self-reflective, and darkly funny as the hosts probe the legal, historical, and political threads connecting these seemingly disparate stories.

1. Cracks in the Foundation: Heritage, Carlson, Fuentes, and the Politics of Antisemitism

Key Segment: [06:07–38:24]

Main Points

• Crisis at Heritage Foundation:
  Heritage president Kevin Roberts defends Tucker Carlson after Carlson hosts white nationalist Nick Fuentes. This sparks resignations and intense intra-conservative conflict.

• Roberts’ “Pseudo-Apology”:
  Attempts to recast his comments as standing against cancel culture, but his explanation is hard to square with initial remarks.

• Antisemitism on Right and Left:
  The panel explores the enduring, cross-partisan nature of antisemitism and its recent escalation among young conservatives.

• Political Use vs. Reality of Antisemitism:
  Benjamin Wittes and Alan Rosenstein highlight the folly of weaponizing antisemitism politically, warning that centuries-old prejudice transcends contemporary ideological divides.

Notable Quotes

• Alan Rosenstein (on antisemitism’s political dynamics):
  “The problem with the ‘no enemies on the right’ is that the right has Nazis… There are out and out antisemites on the far right. And there are more of them on the far right than on the left. This is just a fact you can confirm with a ton of social science data, both historical and current.” [11:20]

• Benjamin Wittes (on the depth of antisemitism):
  “Antisemitism is old and it is primal and it exists in all political movements. The mistake that the conservative movement under Trump made was to declare war on antisemitism as though it is a creature of the left.” [17:57]

• Kate Clonick (on inevitability of MAGA schisms):
  “MAGAs had an insane white nationalist faction... and then there was the Jewish son-in-law of the president and all he brought under the tent. There’s just an inevitable point... suddenly Nick Fuentes is going to be sitting next to somebody with a yarmulke.” [26:16]

Panel Dynamics & Tone

• Moments of dark humor, references to generational divides (“elder millennials”), and an unusual degree of candor in confronting both institutional hypocrisy and Jewish communal naiveté about political alliances.
• The panel repeatedly warns against drawing simple left/right conclusions, noting that political expediency cannot exile such an enduring, protean form of hate.

2. Turning Back the Clock: Law, Failure, and Mea Culpa in the TikTok Ban Saga

Key Segment: [44:04–60:45]

Main Points

• The TikTok Policy Failure:
  Despite bipartisan support and a clear legal mandate, the divestiture law has been ignored by major tech companies and the Trump administration. No enforcement, no penalties.

• Alan Rosenstein’s Mea Culpa:
  Rosenstein admits he failed to anticipate the degree of institutional breakdown and non-compliance:

  “I did not appreciate that the President would come in and just refuse to enforce [the law]... I did not appreciate that Congress... would say, ‘We passed that thing, I actually don’t want to talk about that anymore’...” [46:09]

• Institutional Breakdown:
  The hosts reflect on how U.S. legal and administrative machinery has melted down—especially the willingness of companies to violate obvious legal mandates with impunity.

• Law, Policy, and Nihilism:
  If law is honored only when institutions care to enforce it, what is the point of legal analysis? The panel asks what role remains for legal experts when lawlessness is routine at the highest levels.

Notable Quotes

• Benjamin Wittes (defending reasonable assumptions):
  “It is not the job of a policy analyst to assume the entire system fails to work... We are always operating within an understanding of how the system operates. Usually in the United States, the law—capital T capital L—is one of those parameters.” [54:24]

• Alan Rosenstein (on the meaning of legal analysis):
  “If the law doesn’t apply anymore... I’m just the umpire. If the players start hitting each other with bats and knives, I’m no longer the umpire. I’m just some guy.” [60:27]

• Kate Clonick:
  “There was no path... everyone would have thought you were batshit if you had argued, in 2024, that what was really going to happen was now that the law was just going to get ignored... sticking [it] in a drawer and making sweetheart deals with DOJ.” [51:18]

3. A Foe By Any Other Name: “War on Terror” Rhetoric and the Trump Administration’s Campaign Against Drug Traffickers

Key Segment: [61:04–74:47]

Main Points

• Repurposing Terrorist Rhetoric:
  The Trump administration, led by figures like Pete Hegseth, labels Caribbean and Pacific drug traffickers as “terrorists,” even calling detainees “unlawful enemy combatants” and drawing direct parallels to post-9/11 policies.

• Legal Subtleties vs. Political Theater:
  Anderson argues this rhetoric is mostly about creating a “camp” spectacle of toughness—not about legal reality. There’s no AUMF, no genuine legal predicate.

• Danger of Precedents:
  Benjamin Wittes expresses personal regret, noting that techniques and legal authorities built in good faith post-9/11 are now being misapplied to fundamentally different situations, without legal or moral justification.

Notable Quotes

• Benjamin Wittes (on post-9/11 legal structures):
  “Some of it is window dressing, but some of it’s worse—some of it is bullshit. The idea that you can conduct kinetic strikes against members of an organization because you have designated that as a terrorist organization is gibberish.” [63:37]

• Scott R. Anderson (on the legal reality):
  “When you are using that rhetoric, you’re doing two other things... You’re saying, ‘This is the same thing as we did after 2001 and the terrorist acts.’ And it’s absolutely not—you don’t have an AUMF, you have no congressional authorization. That matters a lot.” [71:43]

• Alan Rosenstein (on losing track of legal logic):
  “I have utterly lost the plot on what it is that we are doing right now. Please someone explain this to me.” [71:08]

Additional Memorable Moments

• Millennial and Jewish Identity Banter:
  The episode opens with lighthearted ribbing about names and generational divides, and pops back into the repetitious motif of having a “horseshoe next to the mezuzah” as a reminder of history’s cynical symmetry.
  “Every Jew should have next to their mezuzah a horseshoe just to remind them of the reality of politics.” — Alan Rosenstein [24:13]

• Darkly funny object lessons:

  • Ben’s delight in a new projector; Alan’s literary rabbit holes; Scott’s fervor for a hard-sci-fi tabletop RPG; Kate’s aesthetic celebration of Romanesco cauliflower.
  • As always, the show mixes national security seriousness with playful, self-effacing closure.

Segment Timestamps

| Section | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|--------------| | Technical Banter, Panel Introductions | 01:10–05:03 | | Antisemitism and the Heritage Foundation | 06:07–38:24 | | TikTok Law, Policy Analysis, Mea Culpa | 44:04–60:45 | | Trump Admin’s New “War on Terror” vs DTOs | 61:04–74:47 | | Object Lessons & Sign Off | 75:23–end |

Summary for New Listeners

This episode is an essential listen for anyone interested in how the US legal/policy apparatus is being stretched and strained by contemporary politics. The hosts offer rare candor—confronting not only the facts, but their own roles, limitations, and miscalculations as experts. You’ll come away with a deeper understanding not just of the week’s news, but of the structure and fragility of our institutions, the dangers of political expedience, and the persistence of prejudice across the partisan spectrum.

“Your political borders don’t map onto our reality... that’s how I feel about antisemitism. If you want to understand antisemitism, you gotta start in ancient Greek.” — Benjamin Wittes [21:16]

“If the law doesn’t apply anymore... I’m just some guy.” — Alan Rosenstein [60:27]