← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
Podcast extra: Rachel Maddow talks with Nicolle Wallace about Trump's early Cabinet picks
00:20:13
From the November 14 episode of Deadline White House, Rachel Maddow talks with Nicolle Wallace about Donald Trump's clown car of Cabinet picks and how they fit into his broader authoritarian project, and what Americans who care about democracy should keep an eye on as the second Trump administration takes shape.
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- [00:01]
Sam Sanders
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- [00:48]
Nicole Wallace
Today we have added the Secretary of State, the undersecretary of State for public diplomacy, the NASA administrator, the head of the Forest Service, and the President's personal assistant. We have gone to the big wall in three columns. Anybody else going tonight? There needs to be a new director of the CIA as well. And now tonight the national Security advisor is out too. And so, yeah, we're going to need another wall soon.
- [01:17]
Rachel Maddow
Hi again everybody. It's 5:00 in New York. One of the hallmarks of the first Trump administration was, was our friend and dear colleague Rachel Maddow and her wall, her giant wall, keeping tabs on and listing all of the many, many, many, many people who left the White House under Trump, often under duress, often fired after a blow up, many of them unceremoniously fired on Twitter by the ex president himself for not giving him ex he wanted. We share that blast from the past, that time capsule with you because this time it's not clear that Rachel's going to need a wall. And maybe not one that big because Donald Trump is now surrounding himself with the kind of people who would never have any tension with him. The kind of people who only say yes. People whose only qualification for the kinds of jobs they're getting are that feature, that fact that they're loyal only to him, not the Constitution, not the expertise once associated with the agencies they've been tapped to lead. Just take the most recent Cabinet pics. A Fox News weekend morning show anchor to head the Department of Defense, a former Democratic congresswoman who publicly spreads Russian talking points, who has been now tapped to lead the nation's spy agencies, and a man who was the target of a years long federal sex trafficking investigation to lead the Department of Justice. And of course, the breaking news we just Brought you in the last hour, a world famous anti vaccine activist, Robert Kennedy Jr. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Of course, the choices still have to come to pass either bypass Senate confirmation or by some ultimate humiliation of the Republicans in the Senate, be confirmed by the Senate. But as the New York Times editorial board writes, quote, trump clearly expects the Senate to simply roll over and ignore its responsibilities. He wants to turn the leaders of major important agencies into his deputies, remaking the federal government into a Trump Inc. Org chart entirely subordinate to him. He recently demanded that the Senate give him the ability to make recess appointments, a way of bypassing the Senate's consent process when the chamber is adjourned for 10 days or more. And it's not just the positions at the top of the agencies that Trump is filling with on qualified yes men and women. He has threatened to purge these departments of civil servants who he believes are not loyal enough to him. The Republican Party has already demonstrated over the last nine years that they almost always let him have his way with whatever his attention demands. Here's Congressman Troy Nels of Texas yesterday, right after Trump spoke to the House Republican Caucus.
- [04:16]
Sam Sanders
Donald Trump is, he was in there. Everybody loves listening to him. He could have sat in there for another hour, two hours, three hours, and we'd all be listening attentively. He's the greatest thing since sliced bread. If Donald Trump says jump 3ft high and scratch your head, we all jump 3ft high and scratch our heads. That's it.
- [04:36]
Rachel Maddow
At least they admit it. Now, year nine, it is sort of a helpful feature. So we're going to forget about the Constitution, the guiding principle of the country and the Republican Party and replace it with Donald Trump. Liz Cheney warned us we are slow walking into autocracy, although at the rate this week is going, it looks more like we are running. It's where we start the hour with the host of the Rachel Maddow show right here on msnbc, New York Times bestselling author, My colleague and dear friend Rachel Maddow is here. Rachel, where to start? You go.
- [05:17]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I don't know. I don't know where to start. I mean, I do feel like, Nicole, that you maybe more than anyone has been very clear eyed about what was coming and about what was being promised here and that there was no reason to expect this to be moderated or normal or that this is going to tack back toward the center or towards anything that looked like traditional American politics. I mean, you did your Autocracy in America series and listen, we saw what was gonna happen. And now it is happening. And so I do feel like this is a moment for people to get real and for people to stop saying, like, this is gonna end up being much more moderate than anybody expected. When are you gonna stop? When are you gonna start apologizing for saying that democracy was threatened? I mean, I think it's time to get real and realize that this is really what we're up against. But I also think the fact that we all feel a little bit, I don't know if flummoxed is the right word, sort of rocked by the increasing incredulity of these choices is that it is meant to shock us. It's meant to adjust our sense of what is normal, what is possible, and to sort of so disorient us as to what it counts to propose governance in the United States that we're ready for the most radical pronouncements and actions. And I do think we're supposed to feel the way that we do right now. I think that's part of this. It's a shock and awe campaign against American traditions and mores. And that's, I think, how most of the country feels about it.
- [06:53]
Rachel Maddow
I mean, I think to sort of sustain the military analysis. The Iraq war starts with a shock and awe bombing campaign. The war is a catastrophe. I mean, it doesn't connote competence. It doesn't signal that he will succeed in successfully demolishing American democracy. It does mean that we as a press still every single time, chase the shiny object. And this week, the shiny objects are named Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. Next week they'll be named, or maybe by 9:00 they'll be named Steve Bannon and Cash Patel, and they may be running the FBI. Those are the shiny objects. But the movement is propelled by this hatred of the Democratic Party and the media elites. But also a promise, a promise to deliver on the economy, on immigration, and the people in charge of those two things. One of them is an alleged child's sex trafficker, and the other is, by her own telling, a dog killer. I mean, the competence may be where he gets sort of bollocks up.
- [07:57]
Nicole Wallace
I think that the idea of authoritarian, the authoritarian promise is that everything shrivels in government other than the will of the leader. Right? So you don't necessarily put a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In charge of HHS because you're hoping for great things from HHS. I mean, Matt Gaetz, among all the other things we can say about Matt Gaetz, he has explicitly proposed abolishing the Justice Department. Not specifically just abolishing the FBI and the atf, but talking about abolishing the Justice Department. I mean, Tulsi Gab as the Director of National Intelligence is, I mean the idea that Tulsi Gabbard in a normal circumstance could get a security clearance to be like a Walmart style greeter at any US Intelligence agency, let alone get past the security barriers is insane. So you do that because you want the worst for these agencies, because you want the worst for the US Government, because you think that the US Government is worthless. That's part of consolidating power to make, make the US Government nothing other than the leader and people who will do what he says and there not being any repository of expertise, let alone just general day to day know how anywhere. So it's a sort of, I mean as Steve Bannon used to say, it's a sort of Leninist project. Right? Destroy the state. This is the cabinet that you nominate not to run the US Government to do anything, but to destroy the US Government so that the US Government can be fundamentally reimagined as something much more like a unitary authoritarian or autocratic for lack of a better term system.
- [09:49]
Rachel Maddow
What are you looking at as the friction points? I mean, in the first Trump presidency it was the firing of Jim Comey after he refused to, quote, see to it, to let Mike Flynn go. Let Mike Flynn go. Comey says no, Trump embarks on a four year long crusade against the FBI and the Department of Justice. He's, I mean, to your point, Matt Gaetz is going to be in charge department and an as yet named person expected to replace his last handpicked head of the FBI, Christopher Wray. He's sort of threatened Jerome Powell who said it's illegal for him to replace me. I mean, where do you expect any friction between Trump 2.0 and the institutions that stand?
- [10:34]
Nicole Wallace
Well, the first one is going to happen over the question not of the appointment of any particular nominee, not of the confirmation process for any particular nominee, but whether there will be a confirmation process for nominees. Right. The first point of confrontation is going to be between Trump and the Republican controlled Senate and it's going to be over the basic question of whether or not the Senate has any role in confirming any of these nominees. Right. Trump will have to go to very arcane, very, very unusual and untested corners of the Constitution and precedent to find any way that he can shut down the House and the Sen. Himself. He's going to tell Republicans in Congress to shut themselves down, thus marginalizing themselves as one of the three supposedly co equal branches of government, so that he can set up the executive branch himself without anybody having a say about it. Now why would you want to do that rather than just have all of your nominees confirmed by the Senate, which I'm sure the Republicans in the Senate would be happy to do? You want them not to have a role in the confirmation process because you want the legislative branch branch to shrivel. You want the legislative branch to go away, because what authoritarians do is they consolidate power both within the executive and then in the person of the authoritarian leader. And so that's why it's an advantage to get a recess appointment rather than a Senate confirmed appointment, even if he's guaranteed Senate confirmation for even the craziest of these folks. And I think that confrontation will be first as to whether or not Congress essentially folds and becomes something like what Troy Nels wants, rather than what the founders intended, which was a coequal brand of government that has a say in how we run the place.
- [12:23]
Rachel Maddow
You said shriveled twice, so I'm going to go there. We have an alleged child sex trafficker as Trump's pick for doj, an adjudicated sexual abuser and the President elect himself, and a man who believes that a violent marriage is better than a divorce and women should stay into it. I think of all the post election analysis that is undisputed. Joe Rogan's influence is clear. The massive audience. I think I saw somewhere that Trump's interview there was seen by 34 million people. And Vice President Harris podcast appearances were seen by maybe hundreds of thousands of people. What role do you think the manosphere influencers have in saying, no, that actually isn't masculinity in America to brag, in the words of A Republican senator, J.D. vance, quote, Crushed Ed Medicine, chased it with an energy drink so he could go all night, end quote. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that Republicans are saying about Matt Gaetz the pig to bag. And to your point about shock and awe, I mean, how much can we sort of clinically ask the people who influenced more Americans than maybe anybody else to either own these kinds of men and this definition and this example of masculinity, or say maybe not.
- [13:49]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, I don't think you ask those folks for what you're asking. I mean, one of the things that we know from looking at the rise of authoritarians in other countries and throughout history is that there's almost always a machismo play right there's almost always a performative masculinity and dominance sort of pageant that goes along with it. And it's always ridiculous, right? I mean, you get like a schlub, like a Berlusconi, or you get a schlub, frankly, forgive me, like Donald Trump, you know, or you get Robert F. Kennedy, who's like 160 years old and he's like, juiced to the gills and talking about how we need to get all the chemicals out of our. Out of our food. And it's like, yeah, dude, could you say that with, like, I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the biceps, you know, in your seventh decade. Yes.
- [14:42]
Rachel Maddow
I think he does push up videos. Very Putinesque, though, right. Who also rides horses in the winter without shirts on.
- [14:50]
Nicole Wallace
Yes, exactly. It's a very shirtless vibe, despite the type of man who does it. And that's part of it, right? That's their performance of dominance. And that's why there isn't a female dictator who we put in the list of all of these things, right? This is part and parcel of how you sell strongman leadership, right? I don't need process. I don't need rules. I don't need traditions. I don't need anybody else who knows anything. I don't know anything. But that's what you love about me, because I'm just going to flex until my shirt sleeves fall off and get it done. And that's the sale. And so asking guys who have been selling this their whole lives, like Joe Rogan, look at what his career has been up until the point where he got into his podcast, looking at the people who have themselves been profiting off that kind of salesmanship in terms of what they have to offer. They're all sort of proudly dumb, right? Like, I don't know, but I know I don't know, and I know I could do a better deal. It's all the same shtick. And, you know, you can. This goes back to gladiator. Times like this has been around for a very long time. So, no, I don't think those guys are going to have a conscience about it and suddenly decide to cash in against their own monetary interests. I do think that most people have critical thinking skills, right? And I think that most Americans are capable of answering to our better angels. And so I think there's an alternative to asking people to sign up for the sort of Dana White, Joe Rogan model, Hulk Hogan model of masculinity. And, you know, it's a matter of one side sort of prevailing over the other, not asking the other side to have a conscience.
- [16:32]
Rachel Maddow
I still believe that, too, that people, if the better angel reaches them when they're home and they're not on their phones, that they can be reached. Why do you think that didn't happen in this election?
- [16:45]
Nicole Wallace
I don't know. I mean, I feel like my electoral politics antenna have always been about yay long and not very well tuned. I don't feel like I ever know who's going to win an election or why. But it does feel like, you know, I mean, some of the, Some of the. Some of the global. The global forces at work here that have. That have caused every governing party in every industrialized democracy to lose in every election that's happened in recent years. Like, I think some of those global forces are at work here. I also think that America is, Is willing to go for the strongman promise. And I think that the same way that it worked in lots of other countries, both in our own time and in previous generations, it worked here for all the reasons that it always works. And it never works because you think that this guy is secretly competent at something that looks like governance. It never wins because you think this guy is going to be more normal than you expected. It wins because this guy says, I'm going to get in there and break everything. I'm a real man. I'm a strong man. Nobody else is worth anything. I alone can do it. It's the same pitch from every other guy. And why can I alone do it? It's because there's an enemy within and we have to use force and violence against them. And this is an emergency. And it's been, you know, we're in decline and we need to make ourselves great again by defeating the enemy within. And we're gonna have to be ruthless and crush them. And I can do that because I'm the one who's willing to break all the rules. I mean, it's the same stupid, preachy pitch going back for more than 100 years in industrialized democracies. And it always ends the same way, but it doesn't make it less appealing to voters. And that's why most of these guys do get into power by the choice of the people. Then once they're there, it's also the choice of the people whether they stay there. And in the very short term, for us, it's the choice how much they get away with, how much pushback they're gonna get. And honestly, what they find difficult to do. People who oppose what they're doing right now owe it to the country to make what they're doing right now hard. If it's easy, they're going to do it and more, if it's hard, they're going to do less of it. And that's where we are right now. That's the clarity of purpose that we all have and how to try to save the country from further autocratic slide.
- [19:00]
Rachel Maddow
Just quickly, your New Yorker piece is also about a defining feature of all autocrats. They fleece you, they rob you blind. Talk about how that might be a rubber.
- [19:12]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean, this is, I think, just something for us in the media to keep in mind, but also something for us to be aware of in terms of what we can learn from other countries, what we can learn of American experiments with this kind of governance in the past. Autocrats would be authoritarians are always crooks, they always steal. I mean, why bother getting rid of the rule of law if you can't then steal from the country blindly? I mean, it just always happens every time. And it's happened with all of our American demographics throughout history. They've all been incredibly corrupt and have stolen from the people who they've in some cases persuaded to vote for them. So there's no reason to expect that this will be any different, particularly the way the run up to this next term for Trump has gone. And it just, it's worth being aware of that, both in terms of self protection, you know, watch your wallet. But I think it's also worth us being focused on as the Fourth Estate in terms of looking out for kleptocratic stuff, looking out for the establishment of an American oligarchy that isn't just sort of scary because it's unaccountable power, but it's scary because it's stealing the country out from under us. They do it in every country, they do it everywhere. And I don't think the American people are going to like it if it's well documented. It's our job to document it.
- [20:27]
Rachel Maddow
Rachel, our North Star on and off the air, and also someone who says every time we talk on and off TV that these jobs are such a tremendous privilege. I've thought about that. I've repeated that to my team and my staff and myself more than a few times over the last 10 days. Thank you very much for the privilege of getting to talk to you at the top of this hour. It's great to see you.
- [20:51]
Nicole Wallace
Thanks for having me. I'll be back anytime you want me.
- [20:53]
Rachel Maddow
Nicole, any day, any day. Stay free. You know where I am.
- [21:02]
Sam Sanders
Hey, I'm journalist Sam Sanders.
- [21:04]
Nicole Wallace
I'm poet Syed Jones.
- [21:05]
Sam Sanders
And I'm producer Zach Stafford. And we are the hosts of a podcast called Vibe Check. On Vibe Check, we talk about everything. News, culture, and entertainment and how it all feels. That's right. We talk about any and everything on our show, from real life issues like grief to music and movie critiques. And that barely scratches the surface.
- [21:24]
Nicole Wallace
Yes, indeed.
- [21:25]
Sam Sanders
And it doesn't stop there.
- [21:26]
Nicole Wallace
We have got a lot to say.
- [21:28]
Sam Sanders
So join our group, chat, come to.
- [21:30]
Nicole Wallace
Life, follow and listen to Vibe Check wherever you get your podcast.