All the President’s Tools

Summary

Summary of "All the President’s Tools" Episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Release Date: July 24, 2025
Host: Jon Stewart
Guests: Preet Bharara (Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York) and Dan Pfeiffer (Co-host of Pod Save America)

---

Introduction: The Mechanics of Executive Power

In this episode titled "All the President’s Tools," Jon Stewart delves into the intricate ways presidents leverage their authority to influence and manipulate independent government agencies. Stewart sets the stage by reflecting on a tumultuous week marked by revelations linking Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, illustrating the pervasive reach of executive power in contemporary politics.

Jon Stewart [00:53]: "This episode is about levers of power and coercion from the government and how they use their power to manipulate and force people into authoritarian tendencies."

The Role of Executive Power: Influence and Coercion

Jon Stewart introduces his guests, Preet Bharara and Dan Pfeiffer, to explore how presidents exert influence over independent agencies. He emphasizes the shift from traditional norms to more aggressive utilizations of executive authority, particularly under Trump's administration.

Jon Stewart [05:37]: "How presidents use the leverage of their office and the varieties of independent agencies that exist within the executive."

Dan Pfeiffer discusses the delicacy of presidential intentions behind the scenes, noting that prior administrations maintained a balance through established guardrails.

Dan Pfeiffer [06:55]: "There was a real set of guardrails that even if you had the worst instincts, there were things that would prevent you from exerting retribution."

Historical Context: From Nixon to Obama

Preet Bharara provides historical context, comparing the current administration's actions to those of past presidents like Nixon and Obama. He points out that Nixon's overreach led to the establishment of guidelines to prevent abuse of power, which he argues have since been eroded.

Preet Bharara [07:56]: "These guidelines came into existence because of Nixon's overreach and unlawful activities."

He further critiques Obama’s administration, highlighting instances where legal justifications were crafted to support controversial actions, such as drone strikes and the IRS scandal targeting progressive groups.

Preet Bharara [09:05]: "The famous torture memos... and President Obama’s drone strikes against American citizens turned terrorists."

The Department of Justice and Bureaucratic Independence

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the Department of Justice’s independence. Bharara recounts his tenure, emphasizing that political appointees like himself could be dismissed at will, but career attorneys remained protected.

Preet Bharara [12:34]: "As a political appointee, I was subject to being fired at will, but civil service protections exist for others."

Dan Pfeiffer underscores the challenges in navigating executive influence over independent agencies, illustrating how presidents might attempt to manipulate bureaucratic processes to serve their agendas.

Dan Pfeiffer [13:52]: "The White House counsel would say, 'You can't do that, and here's why.'"

Political Blowback and the Slippery Slope of Power

The guests explore the concept of political blowback—the negative repercussions presidents face when overstepping their authority. Bharara cites examples where presidents faced both political and legal consequences for their actions, suggesting that such backlash acts as a deterrent against abuse.

Preet Bharara [15:06]: "Both political and legal blowback make overt power grabs risky for presidents."

However, under Trump, these guardrails appear weakened, enabling more aggressive use of executive power without the traditional checks and balances.

Jon Stewart [15:34]: "It's a cost-benefit analysis."

Implications for Democracy: Erosion of Norms and Rule of Law

The conversation shifts to the broader implications of executive overreach on democracy. Bharara warns against the dangers of an "imperial presidency," where the executive branch can bypass democratic norms and the rule of law.

Preet Bharara [42:10]: "When the judiciary does not have a general oversight role of the executive, it undermines checks and balances."

Dan Pfeiffer adds that the erosion of these norms leads to a fragile democracy susceptible to authoritarianism.

Dan Pfeiffer [43:59]: "Republicans are so loyal to Trump, and the courts are favorable enough to him that traditional political media has been minimized in its influence."

The Path Forward: Democratic Response and Guardrail Reinforcement

Jon Stewart probes into potential strategies Democrats could employ to counteract executive overreach. The guests discuss the necessity of reinstating and legally enforcing guardrails that ensure the independence of institutions like the DOJ and IRS.

Preet Bharara [44:03]: "Democrats need to take some of these norms that Trump has run over and turn them into laws."

Dan Pfeiffer suggests that Democrats must adopt a "hardball" approach—aggressive yet ethical strategies to reclaim institutional independence without succumbing to the same authoritarian tactics.

Dan Pfeiffer [72:22]: "The question for Democrats is whether to use power aggressively to rebuild institutions while maintaining ethical standards."

Conclusion: Upholding Democratic Stability

In closing, Jon Stewart emphasizes the critical importance of maintaining the rule of law and institutional independence to preserve the United States' democratic integrity.

Jon Stewart [83:00]: "The stability of the rule of law is the secret sauce of why this country has done so well."

The episode underscores the fragile balance between executive authority and institutional independence, calling for vigilant protection of democratic norms against potential future abuses.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Jon Stewart [00:53]: "This episode is about levers of power and coercion from the government and how they use their power to manipulate and force people into authoritarian tendencies."

• Preet Bharara [07:56]: "These guidelines came into existence because of Nixon's overreach and unlawful activities."

• Dan Pfeiffer [06:55]: "There was a real set of guardrails that even if you had the worst instincts, there were things that would prevent you from exerting retribution."

• Preet Bharara [44:03]: "Democrats need to take some of these norms that Trump has run over and turn them into laws."

• Jon Stewart [83:00]: "The stability of the rule of law is the secret sauce of why this country has done so well."

---

This episode provides a comprehensive examination of executive power's evolving role in American politics, highlighting the necessity of maintaining institutional safeguards to ensure democratic resilience.

Transcript

[Preet Bharara]

Not all meals are created equal. For instance, breakfast has the spicy egg McMuffin for a limited time and lunch doesn't. McDonald's breakfast comes first.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This episode is brought to you by Greenlight. Get this, adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes. Us parents invest in so many things to enrich our kids lives. But are we investing in their future financial success? With Greenlight you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving and investing. And this investment costs less than that. After school treat start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk free [e-mail] Spotify greenlight.com Spotify.

[Jon Stewart]

Hey everybody. Welcome to the weekly show. It is July 23rd on a Wednesday, coming out on a Thursday. And let me just begin with what a week this, this I'm, I, I can't even get into the late show Daily show of it all. Watch Stevens from Monday. Watch hours from Monday. I think you'll get a sense of, of, of how we're feeling and, and just how tenuous this moment. Oddly enough, the episode today is about levers of power and coercion from the government and how they use their power to, to, to manipulate and to get what they want and to, and to force people into the, the authoritarian tendencies. And it's, it's hard to even focus on it with. I mean every day now is a new. There was another Epstein Dropbox. You know, the, your iPhone bringing up memories of us. Like there's another. It's them, it's Epstein and Trump at a wedding. Now there's all these photos. It's them dancing. There's, you know, video of them getting matching tattoos and eating spaghetti like lady and the Tramp. Like their relationship, the, the weirdness of it all. And God, thank God social media wasn't around in those times. We'd be, we'd be watching on a loop on CNN and MSNBC the, the tiktoks that Epstein and Trump make in Cabo with beauty pageant contestants like they very clearly dug each other in a deep Starsky and Hutch kind of a way until whatever happened. And all his attempts at, you know, as each new video and photo drop comes out, he gets more unhinged by. There should be firing squads for NPR hosts. You know, he's just losing his mind. And there's nothing that can distract from any of this unless Hunter Biden decides to go out and drop a three hour mixtape of his nuttiness, which is what he did the gift that, that gives some giving, which he said. He goes, oh, my dad had a bad debate, but he was on Ambien. And I'm like, that doesn't make it better, dude. Like, it calls into question the decision making of the whole team. Dad, you got the most important night of your life. You got to be sharp. Here's a couple of Quaaludes to take the edge off so that you're ready to really rock that thing. What was the thing he said? He said something crazy. He goes, oh, he was, he was talking about the deportations and how angry he is about him. He goes, if I, if I'm president in two or three or four whatever years, I'm going to call them up and go, I'm invading you unless you give those people back. And I'm just like, hunter, dig the hypothetical, but I don't think it's going to be a worry for you that that's going to be the thing that happens. So, but, but the main thing is still the main thing. I mean, Donald Trump using every arm of the federal government to intimidate and bully and push things in his direction, and the general compliance that appears to be at the root of all of his power, this fight against him through all legal and ethical means has to be, has to be turned up, as they would say on spinal tap to 11. All of these institutions have to fight back to get to that conversation. Actually, I think our guests today are going to be incredibly apropos to discuss what that sort of coercion looked like in the past, how it has changed, what are the various things. So let's, let's get to them now. First of all, I'm delighted to welcome our guests for the program today. Preet Bahara, who is the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a podcast host. Stay tuned with Preet. He was appointed by Obama in 2009. He was fired by one Donald Trump in 2017. We've got Dan Pfeiffer, co host of Pod Save America. He's an author. He's got Message Box, which is a newsletter about political strategy. And he was a senior advisor to Obama for Strategy and Communications, 2013-2015. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast.

[Preet Bharara]

Good to be here.

[Guest Speaker]

Thanks for having us.

[Jon Stewart]

I am excited to talk about. I feel like the two of you represent good insight into this world of political retribution. How presidents use the leverage of their office and the varieties of, let's call them, for the time being, independent agencies that exist, or formerly independent agencies that exist within the executive. How do, how is that discussed, Dan? I think you've probably got a really good sense of how that's discussed behind the scenes. Preet, I think you've got probably a really good sense of how those wishes are executed and what are the guardrails that exist around there. So I guess I want to start with Dan, you've been in these meetings in the Oval Office. How explicit are our presidents about their wishes to, I don't want to use the word punish, but exert influence on the institutions that may think they don't care for, whether it be the press or conservative or liberal institutions. What are those conversations like?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I mean, you're very careful, right? And you, because there's prior to Trump, there was a real set of guardrails that even if you had the worst instincts, if you wanted to exert influence, you want to exert retribution, there were a set of things that would prevent you from doing that. Right. One is just a general good faith belief in democracy and the rule of law.

[Jon Stewart]

Does that ever, does that ever come up in the office? Do people go like, hey, man, I don't know if this is good for democracy. We've got a good faith respect.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I think it's just it was for a long time, naturally, assumed no more. And so but then the other thing is the agencies really were independent. Like, I just can't emphasize this enough that they take the Department of Justice. Where Preet knows a lot about is as a person who had a political portfolio in the White House, I was never allowed to be in communication with anyone in the Department of Justice on any sort of law enforcement matter.

[Jon Stewart]

I would learn not allowed.

[Guest Speaker]

Not allowed, right. The only people in the White House who could talk to the Department of Justice on a law enforcement matter was the White House counsel. And they were usually on the receiving end of information. Like I would find out I was in charge of the president's communications for six years. I would find out about a major Department of Justice announcement five minutes before it happened. And sometimes that was good news, like an arrest, terrorist plot foiled, a settlement in some sort of large consumer litigation, something like that. And sometimes it was like really bad news, like the appointment of a special counsel to look into a leak investigation. But you would find out five minutes before. And that was a line that no one, everyone believed you should never cross. Right. The president believed it did and did.

[Jon Stewart]

Not and did not and didn't. And Preet, maybe you can speak to this because I remember and this is in the Bush years. You know, they had guys like Jack Goldschmidt who'd be working on briefs that would allow them to do the things that they wanted to do. Clearly there were, there were dictates, and I imagine the Obama administration did it too, to their Justice Department, where they would get their lawyers to try and draw up justifications for political moves that they wanted to do. Is it your understanding that that's how that works?

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, I mean, it depends on what the issue is. And was. I'm not sure it was Jack Goldsmith, but you have an Office of Legal counsel within the Department of Justice that writes opinions on what is or is not lawful, advisable, whatever. There were the so called famous notorious torture memos that were written by John Yoo and others in the Bush administration. And then there are people who will say, just to be fair, on the other side of the coin, that when Barack Obama, President Obama decided to engage in drone strikes against an American citizen who had turned into a terrorist, was that really justified, justifiable or not? Presidents rely on those kinds of things. But just further to what Dan was saying about the allowance of political figures to talk to folks in the Justice Department, there were guidelines about that. And when we say before Trump, it was different. It wasn't different. All the way back to the beginning of the Republic, it was different going back to Nixon. There was a guy named Nixon.

[Jon Stewart]

I'm not familiar. You're talking about Mojo Nixon.

[Preet Bharara]

Look, it's always left to the immigrants to teach the people who have been here longer.

[Jon Stewart]

Yes.

[Preet Bharara]

About their political history.

[Jon Stewart]

Sure.

[Preet Bharara]

And so a lot of these guidelines that Dan is talking about came into existence because of Nixon's overreach and because of Nixon's unlawful activities and the unlawful activities of the people around him. There were serious guidelines with respect to what a Justice Department official could or could not take in terms of a call from a political official. Those are not there anymore. They're gone. Another thing that we may get to, just to put a point on it, is as you mentioned, I was the U.S. attorney in the Southern District for a long time. Hired a lot of people there. One of the people I hired into that office was a very, very able Lawyer, exemplary Assistant U.S. attorney named Maureen Comey. She shares a last name with the former FBI director. Someone who the President of the United States despises with a white hot passion. I believe that her firing was unlawful and remains unlawful because she has civil service.

[Jon Stewart]

Unlawful because the executive is not allowed to exercise hiring and firing over the District Attorney's offices. Why unlawful The President of the United.

[Preet Bharara]

States has absolute ability, as he did in my case, to fire me, to fire cabinet officials, to fire political appointees. We have civil service protections, and you can like them or not like them, but they've existed for a long time. The Trump folks like to call that the deep state. They have their own deep state. And you could repeal those laws if you want. But the interesting thing about the firing of Maureen Comey, which I believe happened because her last name is Comey.

[Jon Stewart]

Sure.

[Preet Bharara]

And not because of some dereliction of duty with respect to Jeffrey Epstein or anyone else, the only justification they gave was article 2. Article 2 is the article that relates to the President.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, that's the justification for everything.

[Preet Bharara]

For everything. Article two. That means you can do anything you want, no matter what. I hope that she takes legal action. But the idea that you can reach into far flung bureaucracies and pinpoint individuals notwithstanding legal protections and process, that's accorded to them because you don't like their name or because you don't like their father or because you got, you got pressure from the right, the hard right. Folks who say fire this person is not right.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, so when, when you got fired, Preet, when, when you got fired.

[Preet Bharara]

Perfectly.

[Jon Stewart]

You're in the same, you're in the same office and.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, but, but I, but I was a political appointee confirmed by the Senate. I was totally subject to being fired at will.

[Jon Stewart]

So political appointees are at will. Totally. Service employees have to follow certain procedures, and if those procedures aren't followed, then that is unlawful.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah. Believe me, there are some people I may have wanted to fire. It was a US journey, but I observed what the legal parameters were, and you can't do that without process.

[Jon Stewart]

But this gets us into this weird cycle. And this is the thing that I want to talk about. So, Dan, you're in the office and the President of the United States decides. I'm not crazy about the way this one federal prosecutor's office is running things. I would like to get rid of these two particular federal prosecutors. They are not political appointees, but I would like to do that. Isn't there a process where they say, great, let me talk to our counsel, see if they can draw up justifications. Another. Isn't this a bit of an ouroboros that we're talking about? You know, we all want to talk about whether guardrails exist here, but isn't the United States bureaucracy complex enough that you can basically justify loopholes in almost any process to do whatever it is that you want to do. And isn't that how presidents often accomplish that? Is that your experience, Dan?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I think it goes to. Motivation matters a lot here. Right. So what is the reason why you're doing this? Like, the way this conversation would go in the White House if, when I was there at least is the White House counsel would be sitting on the couch in the Oval Office two seats over from me, and they would say, you can't do that.

[Jon Stewart]

Talk about the couch pillows on the couch. What do we. Is it tastefully appointed? Are their feet up on the ottoman? What are we dealing with now?

[Guest Speaker]

Now, I think the couch may be fully gold in the White House, but it was a nice stripe when I worked there.

[Jon Stewart]

Do we have dishes with M and Ms. And nuts that are sitting on the table?

[Preet Bharara]

Does JD Vance have access to that couch?

[Jon Stewart]

Now settle down.

[Guest Speaker]

Very on brand for Obama, it was a bowl of apples in the Oval Office.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay, all right.

[Guest Speaker]

I don't think Michelle Obama was letting us put M&M's.

[Jon Stewart]

All right, get America moving.

[Guest Speaker]

But the White House counsel would say, you can't do that, and here's why. And the president could theoretically, like I was never part of any conversation. We wanted to fire random prosecutors in the middle offices. That wasn't a thing you worried about. He would say, well, what about this? And then the lawyer would push back and say, and even if you could justify, you could find a way to justify some sort of reason, you could create some cause for said fire and whatever else, there would be concern about blowback for doing it.

[Jon Stewart]

Right, but that's political. Political or legal blowback?

[Guest Speaker]

Both. Both. Right. So you like the test in any. The president have. Has all this power until a court says you don't have it anymore. And so are you gonna do this? You're gonna try to fire these two people? You're gonna take all this political blowback from the senators from said prose, you know, who are from that district, where these prosecutors are from, and then is a court going to stop you? So you took the blowback for firing them, but then a court says they had to have to go back to work on Monday. And so you have gotten all the downside and none of the upside.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. So it's a cost benefit analysis.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

Look, folks, I don't know where you're getting your comfort during these difficult times, but I'm telling you, man, the good comfort is this cuddling up on the couch with your cat. Now, I don't have a cat, but it does sound pretty nice right now. I have had cats. And they will, contrary to their reputation, cuddle you pretty hard. It's a pretty swell afternoon respite, but this podcast is sponsored by Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. Cats.com that's where cats go when they're looking for information. That's their Google. Now Smalls was started back in 2017 by a couple of guys home cooking cat food in small batches for their friends. Oh, they must have lived in Brooklyn. A few short years later, they've served millions of meals to cats across the United States. After switching to smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. Here's a review from a real Smalls customer. Elizabeth C. Said, my cat was always so so with her usual food, but she is very enthusiastic about Smalls. Her breath is much better and she poops much less frequently and it does not smell disgusting like it used to. As someone who had cats, Elizabeth C. I feel you so deeply. I had the litter box in the closet where I kept my clothes. I'm not smart. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve. For a limited time only because you are a weekly show Listener, you get 60% off your first Smalls order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com backslash twc. That's 60% off when you head to smalls.combash tws + free shipping again, smalls.com tws but like Preet, I'll give you an example. What I'm talking about. Isn't there something that's a bit akin to doctor shopping for pills with lawyer shopping? That and I'll use the example of the election in 2020. You know, the White House counsel sits with President Trump and says, yeah, you lost and you're not allowed to go through and, and get that. And then he says, is there another lawyer that can get me a justification for why we can challenge? You know, isn't that a process that they all go through to lawyer shop to finally get to somebody who will say, actually the Vice President can just deny the certification and throw this whole thing into the House Representatives?

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, look, I'm going back to that guy Nixon again, right? He kept trying to get somebody to do the dirty deed of firing a top official.

[Jon Stewart]

You're talking about John Mitchell when he was going in, right?

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah. And they either do it or they got fired. Now that was sufficient blowback politically and legally that he was undone and he had to leave office. And we established all these guardrails in place of that. Companies do it too. You want to do a thing, it's on the line, or maybe it's over the line and you just want someone to justify it for you. It's not a new thing in American law or American politics or American business. But there are degrees. There are degrees of this.

[Guest Speaker]

Right?

[Jon Stewart]

Right. So we're talking about degrees of this.

[Preet Bharara]

I think so. And look, I'll give you another example of something. Just going back to my expertise in the last couple of days. Not everyone may be following this. There's a woman personal lawyer to Donald Trump who I believe completely and utterly unqualified.

[Jon Stewart]

You talked about Emile Bovet.

[Preet Bharara]

Well, I'm actually talking about Alina Haba. We can talk about.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay, okay, I'm sorry.

[Guest Speaker]

It's a long list. There are a lot of them. Yes.

[Jon Stewart]

All right, tell me about this one.

[Guest Speaker]

Not Judge Gene Pirro, right?

[Jon Stewart]

Yes. Yes.

[Preet Bharara]

No. Oh my goodness. This is a three hour show.

[Jon Stewart]

The list goes on. Right.

[Preet Bharara]

Alina Haba was appointed to be the U.S. attorney in an interim basis in the District of New Jersey. Significant district, very important.

[Jon Stewart]

I live here. Clean the whole place up. We're very important.

[Preet Bharara]

You should be careful. She could come after you. By operation of law, by statute. This is not a norm. By statute, her term ended at 120 days, which depending on how you count, was either yesterday or will be the coming Friday. And under the statute, the judges in the district can decide to appoint her or appoint someone else. And they didn't appoint her for I think clear reasons and instead appointed her hand picked deputy, her number two. And you're like, okay, well now we have a legitimate district that's led by a legitimate person. You know what happened?

[Jon Stewart]

They fired him.

[Preet Bharara]

Pam Bondi. They fired the deputy who was handpicked by Alina Haba. So I don't know who becomes the United States Attorney there. So that's not a norm, that's a law. And a similar thing happened in the Northern District of New York. The lead prosecutor in a very significant district. The judges didn't approve that person. So they designate under the law, so they have a runaround, they have a back end plan. And they appointed him, I think something like special counsel to the Attorney General. And they don't have an actual U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York. They have this guy who's the functional U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York. So it's a pattern of behavior to put his own people anywhere. No matter what the norms are. More importantly no matter what the laws and statutes say. No matter what the judges say.

[Jon Stewart]

So maybe the norm is partisan but competent and this new norm is ideological and slightly insane. But Dan I want to get to. So like when we bring up. Because I want to use the examples that we have in front of us us with President Obama a little bit before we really move into Trump because I think there's a tendency here to think this is a brand new. Like you say it's not a matter of degrees. This is brand new. So Dan. They want to do a seemingly extrajudicial drone strike against somebody who is there. Or here's. You know what, Maybe this is a better example. Dan. The IRS scandal that occurred during the Obama administration. So you have situation where the IRS is allowing progressive people with, you know, words like progressive or democratic their organizations to pass through with the tax exempt status in a way that they are not allowing anything with the word Tea Party or conservative to pass through. So and clearly to a point where it's not random. This is something that is occurring with with purpose. How do you explain that? Is that a rogue bureaucrat within the irs? Is that something that is discussed on a political level? How does that occur?

[Guest Speaker]

Sure. So in this situation there's two important facts here. The first is this was a field office in Cincinnati with career bureaucrats that had never ended.

[Jon Stewart]

Deep state. I believe we call it deep state.

[Guest Speaker]

The deep state.

[Jon Stewart]

Yes.

[Guest Speaker]

And all the investigations showed there had never been contact between that office and anyone of any consequence in the Obama administration.

[Jon Stewart]

So this was rogue.

[Guest Speaker]

This really was rogue. And then the second part is when you actually did the full investigation there was a whole host of progressive terms they were also flagging. And so it turned out to actually not be the scandal that people thought it actually was.

[Jon Stewart]

If I remember correctly and I probably don't because I'm old.

[Guest Speaker]

It has been 11 years now. I think.

[Jon Stewart]

Didn't they. But they paid millions of dollars in penalties.

[Guest Speaker]

There were some.

[Jon Stewart]

The IRS paid millions of dollars.

[Guest Speaker]

Yes. There were lawsuits about it that were settled. I don't remember all the details of it because we said it was a decade ago. But the initial view that they were only doing Tea Party turned out to not actually be true. They were actually had a much wider thing. But either way the fear that someone could do that is a very real fear. We get back to Nixon again. This is how you politicize the irs. You have them audit your political opponents. This individual case was truly people no one had ever heard of working in an office in Cincinnati. And so that is like, it's not, that is like, that's the fear.

[Jon Stewart]

Are those things discussed, Dan, in the office? Like, does someone ever say, like, look, Nick, Trump is very clearly targeting tax exempt status for his enemy institutions. He's threatened it with Harvard, he's threatened their accreditation, he's threatened tax exempt status for a wide variety of organizations that, that might oppose him.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

Is that ever something that is. What are the levers of coercion that are discussed in the Oval Office? And I don't mean, I mean the Oval Office. Metaphorically.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. Those sorts of things never discussed, Right. That is a bright red Watergate style red line. If in a pre Trump era, if you were thinking about the things that could end your presidency, it would be using the IRS to look at, to go audit, regulate, go after your political opponents. Like never once discussed, never thought of. If you brought it up in a meeting, you would never be invited to a meeting back again. You probably would be walking out of the White House holding all of your possessions later that day.

[Jon Stewart]

But they do use, I mean, they do go through, you know, Obama used the, I think it was the 1917 Espionage act where they would go after, you know, they, they prosecuted more journalists under the Espionage Act.

[Guest Speaker]

This is, this is a great example of.

[Jon Stewart]

Here we go.

[Guest Speaker]

The problem. This is a great example of the independence of the Department of Justice.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

These were a bunch of Bush era investigations. Most of them were in Bush era investigations, not entirely. That were then continued. Nothing drove Barack Obama more insane than having to take all the blowback for these investigations like drove.

[Jon Stewart]

But he could not, when he got the records from the AP force, he never saw him.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. Like, they never, they never made it to the White House.

[Jon Stewart]

And he never requested those records.

[Guest Speaker]

No, never, never had.

[Jon Stewart]

No. Nobody in the Oval Office said, no, there is a leak here and we need to investigate this leak.

[Guest Speaker]

No, no, there's never. And it would have. And I promise you, if you had polled the President's top advisors, they all would have just wanted these investigations to stop. Because we're all the ones in my office. When I was the White House communication director, every reporter could walk into my office without just walk right in. And the amount of people who came in, they're very upset, rightfully upset about these investigations, the way it did tremendous damage to the President's relationship with the press, to the use of him as a President who wanted to protect the press, be transparent. But these were decisions made by career prosecutors in the Department of Justice without any contact with anyone in the White House.

[Jon Stewart]

Dan, I may be naive.

[Guest Speaker]

Maybe. We'll see.

[Jon Stewart]

It strikes me as that seems hard to believe that political blowback is swirling around the executive about espionage prosecutions on someone like James Rosen, and they're getting records from ap, and the White House is just sitting passively saying, dear God, there's just nothing I can do here that mean that other than just suck it up.

[Guest Speaker]

I am, I would say I didn't sit in national security meetings. I can imagine that there is great concern within parts of the national security community, intelligence community, about the leaks of highly sensitive intelligence. I don't know what those conversations were like, but I can promise you from a political perspective and from President Obama's perspective, this was a. And even talked about it afterwards about how about these, the problems with these investigations, and took steps in his second term to put guidance in place that would, that would protect journalists in these situations.

[Jon Stewart]

Even that. That's what I mean. Like, that just strikes me as an incredibly passive executive in the way that Trump may be. But, Preet, what's your experience in that, you know, you're in the Department of Justice, Is that in any way realistic that a president of, of status would not, if something is spiraling out of control within justice, because they are, that is, in the executive, that they wouldn't reach out through various channels and try and rectify this situation legally? Look, it's hard to believe.

[Preet Bharara]

Look, it, it depends on what the thing is. So there's, there's, there's a range of things that the Department of Justice does or can do that a president would care about. Right? And so at the one end of the spectrum, that's totally legitimate, totally lawful, and I think no one would dispute if crime rates are rising and the papers are reporting we have a crime wave in these various cities. President of the United States, whether it's Barack Obama, George Bush, or Donald Trump, can call his attorney general and say, what are you doing? Can we surge prosecutors? Can we do some stuff? Can we change policies? Can we enhance penalties? All of that is totally fair game and clear on the one end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum, a president of the United States calls up his attorney general, or worse, calls up the head of public corruption at the Southern District of New York and says, I really hate Bill de Blasio, and I know you do, too, that MF's gotta go. So can you help a brother out? And by the way, I'm the commander in chief, and under Article 2, I can fire you. That's like probably the worst thing at the other end. Worse than the irs. Right. And in between, you have a lot of stuff. Right. So if something is spiraling out of control and it can be, I think, assessed to be properly a policy issue, like what's the policy of the department on subpoenaing journalists?

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Preet Bharara]

I think that's more legit than. But if you call up and you.

[Jon Stewart]

Say, listen, well, that's why it's hard.

[Preet Bharara]

To believe that it's not only subpoena the Wall Street Journal, but don't subpoena the New York Times, then it's more like the other category I'm talking about. So it's a judgment call, part of which is police, not by statute or by judges, but by this other thing, blowback, which seems to be a little bit of a thing in the past, because blowback doesn't seem to matter to some people, including Donald Trump, so long as his MAGA base is in tow.

[Jon Stewart]

But I guess. Yeah, go ahead, Dan.

[Guest Speaker]

I was gonna say, the thing I'd say about this is, in hindsight, given everything we've learned in the decades since, would there have been so much blowback if the president, if Barack Obama had called Eric Holder and said, this is, this is, this is not worth it, you cannot subpoena journalists, stop these investigations, Would there have been huge blowback for that? I don't know. Probably not. So clearly not. Trump has gone much closer to the end of the spectrum. But the question is, here's why. And this is where lawyers are very cautious when they're advising presidents, is there's a slippery slope there. So one day it's don't subpoena James Rosen, the next day it's don't subpoena this Democratic donor who's under investigation or this Democratic politician who's under investigation, or even worse than that, go subpoena this political opponent of ours. And so they're like, the lawyers are very careful about this slippery slope, if you care about these things.

[Jon Stewart]

But it's hard to believe that the, the president himself wouldn't say these espionage investigations are unfairly targeting journalists. But I'm not going to call to find out, because that's a pretty slippery slope for me. And, you know, I hate Bill de Blasio. And I'm just like, I'm going to use.

[Guest Speaker]

But like, in hindsight, should he accept that, sense his position, right in Hindsight.

[Jon Stewart]

Here' where I'm like, it's hard for me to believe that someone with the strength of conviction that Barack Obama had, that he would sit back passively and watch something spiral. I. I'll give you, like, just a stupid example. During the Obamacare rollout, my show did a, like a little skit. We had. Kathleen Sebelius.

[Guest Speaker]

I remember this quite well. I was in the role. This happened. Yes. Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay. So you remember.

[Preet Bharara]

I have no recollection of it.

[Jon Stewart]

Preet, God bless you. You shouldn't. It's a tiny. It is a blip in the history, not just of this country, but in the humankind. Kathleen Sebelius came on and my first question, I took out two laptops and I gave her a laptop and I had a laptop and I said, we're going to try two things. I'm going to sit here and I'm going to try and download on Limewire every movie and song that has ever been written. And on your computer, you're going to try and log on to the Obamacare website. We're going to see who gets there first. Dumb bit. But anyway, that sort of spiraled into kind of a long interview with Sebelius about if you believe that the government has the opportunity to improve people's lives, isn't job one kind of a technical competence? I mean, for God's sakes, your, your fundraising emails are 22nd century technology, and yet this thing. So, anyway, I get a call. I can't remember how much later, but it wasn't much later. The President would like to talk to you in person. And I have to go down to Washington because you. The President, United States calls you and says, hey, man, talk. And it was, I don't want to say terrifying because I didn't have the sense of Obama that, you know, that I would have with Trump, but it was intimidating. And you're standing in a room wearing a suit during the day, which for me is a standup comic, is hive inducing. And you're, you know, you're in front of the Teddy Roosevelt picture in front of the Coolidge desk in front, and you're surrounded by history, and you go into the Oval Office and the President, United States gives you shit. And I'm not saying it's the same thing, obviously, in terms of. But it is. I can't look at it any other way than a form of intimidation or coercion. Now, to his credit, we got past it and like, we had a much longer conversation that I thought was, was fruitful. But Dan Isn't the point of that in some respect to get me to shut the fuck up?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I remember the reason. I remember that even though it was, you know, what 12 years ago now is. I don't know how the president, I don't know, I mean, he's a big fan of yours. I don't remember him watching the Daily show on a daily basis.

[Jon Stewart]

But it was a tremendously hot show.

[Guest Speaker]

Yes. There's a different era of television. You just turn it on. There it is, right?

[Jon Stewart]

The Apprentice.

[Preet Bharara]

Good old days.

[Guest Speaker]

And he had two questions for me. One was, how did Kathleen Sebelius end up on your show? And two, what was your phone number? I can answer the second one. The first one was a much harder question to get to the bottom.

[Jon Stewart]

All right, folks, it's summertime, clearly. And look, you want to have fun, you know what I'm talking about. You need a little bit of the cabbage to do that. You don't get burned by wireless bills. You could beach trips, barbecues, three day weekends, four day weekends. In my case, I think it's like five or six day weekends. Quite frankly. I really do have quite a bit of time off. But the wireless bill, it's got to be the last thing holding you back. That's why a lot of people are switching to Mint Mobile. Mint gets you the coverage and speed you're used to, but for like a lot less money. Limited time. Mint Mobile is offering three months. Three months get you through to October of unlimited Premium wireless service. 15 bucks a month while your friends are sweating the data, overages and surprise charges. And you'll be chilling, financially speaking. Chilling. All plants come with high speed data, unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Goodbye, overpriced wireless plan. Mint Mobile's here rescue you this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com TWS that's mintmobile.com TWS upfront payment of $45 required. It's really the equivalent of $15 a month. Limited time. New customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on the unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. C Mint Mobile for details. All right, we're back. Dan.

[Guest Speaker]

There's certainly no norm or historical precedent of a president not calling a member of the media to talk to them. Yeah, this all comes down to the question is like, I feel like we're sort of wrapped around the axle of These journalist investigations are like incredibly serious. And in hindsight, in the real time, they were bad, they were wrong. The government should not do that, should not have happened. Is there more the president could have done to stop them? I don't know. I know that there was. We took the idea that you don't tell the Department of Justice how to wish and how to conduct investigations. Like there is this idea, as serious as these are, that the president states in any investigation, telling them what to telling the career prosecutors whom they should subpoena or not subpoena in investigation is a very, very bad precedent. Right. Could he maybe have said like a public statement like no journalist should be subpoenaed, which would have the, the same effect as the, as the private phone call, but would it be maybe more transparent? I don't know. Maybe.

[Jon Stewart]

What's your understanding of the reality of this?

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, look, every president wants good press. Every president wants things to go his way. But again, there are degrees of this look to stick up for Barack Obama for a moment in one regard.

[Jon Stewart]

This is not. I'm only making the point.

[Preet Bharara]

No, no, no, look, Lyndon Johnson, I was picking on Nixon. Lyndon Johnson was the master of putting the arm on people personally and otherwise. As intimidating as it must have been to go to see Barack Obama, probably you're happy it wasn't lbj. But all the US Attorneys were gathered early on in the Obama administration, the first term, and we had a photo op with the president and we all went to the White House, we went to one of the big rooms and waited there. And did he ask you guys for.

[Jon Stewart]

My phone number when you guys were in there?

[Preet Bharara]

Oh, he had it. And he said a simple thing. And Patrick Fitzgerald was still one of the U.S. attorneys at the time. And he says, I hired all of you, but you don't work for me, you work for the American people and you act independently. And that seemed quaint, whatever, until Trump shows up. Trump from the White House podium, from the Oval Office on a regular basis, pronounces the guilt of political adversaries every frickin day.

[Jon Stewart]

Sure.

[Preet Bharara]

And, but here's the.

[Jon Stewart]

Now I think their view is, and this gets us now to this new administration, their view is there is no independence in the executive branch from the executive. But that is an opinion that is Lawyer shopped. Yeah. That gets us back to Goldsmith and you and the unitary executive. And this idea that the executive is based on solely the whims of one man and the Supreme Court has amplified that by granting immunity to the executive. So Preet, when We talk about these guardrails. Haven't they been removed not just by Trump, but by the Department of Justice itself and the Supreme Court?

[Preet Bharara]

No, I think. I think you have a very good argument in favor of that position. The only thing I guess we can be thankful for at least, and I mean this semi ironically, is that they feel the need to at least paper a legal justification for it.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Jon Stewart]

Look, it's one of those things where you're like, no, I've got a Xanax prescription. Sure. Hold on, let me just.

[Preet Bharara]

It's a tiny. So, for example, right, in the case of the deportation of Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, everyone's talking about constitutional crisis, and the Supreme Court and other courts said, facilitate his return. And they, like, bullshitted around about what facilitate means. We don't know what that means. We'll get him a plane ticket if he shows up in an Uber. But at the end of the day, they did bring him back. Now, they filed criminal charges against him, but they brought him back. And I don't mean to put too much store on these fine distinctions, but maybe I'm overly lowering it. They still do feel the need to have some justification for it. I disagree with the justification, but there are scholars who think it's true. There are members of the Supreme Court who think that's a viable theory. I think both as a matter of law and also as a matter of like, do you want to live in a country, put aside the Constitution, and do you want to live in a country where the executive of the country, the president of the United States, can pick and choose which individuals in different states should be prosecuted, investigated by the federal government? You don't want to live in a country like that.

[Jon Stewart]

I don't, but that's pre. Unfortunately, that's a political question. Yeah. And what we're seeing is there are an awful lot of people who want to live in that country. As long as the people he's picking are the other guys are the other guys. Exactly. And Dan, to that point, politically, when you watch it happen now, I mean, he faces no political blowback. You talked about the political blowback in the thing, and you see it when he's in trouble with Epstein, what's the first thing he does? Arrest Barack Obama? Strip the accreditation. As long as he's attacking the people his base hates, they're fine with it. And so when you see him doing what he's doing at. At Harvard. Right. What does. What. What recourse do they have that then to comply? What. What else can they do to an executive like that?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I mean, they can, they can fight back. Right. And have. And have one in court. Like they're like, they're obviously Trump has the courts on his side. He has a Supreme Court that is in his favor, but the court, they'll.

[Jon Stewart]

Throw it to some guy in Texas that'll just be like, sure, right.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. They'll forum shop or whatever else.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

A lot of the things they have done have been stopped by the courts, held out by the courts. And so there are limits here. What I think has become clear, Matt Iglesias, the center left writer, has the one said that democracy is just a bunch of norms in a trench coat, which is something that Trump has really exploited. Is that a lot of the.

[Jon Stewart]

I think it's flashing us in a subway right now.

[Guest Speaker]

That's exactly how that trench coat is long gone. Yeah. Has exploited. Is that a lot of things that prevented you from doing certain things were not law. They were just ways in which everyone had done things before. And this belief that there would be political blowback from not just the other party, but your party, from the public, and in particular from the media if you did those things. The world has changed so much. The Republican Party is so loyal to Trump, the courts are favorable enough to him. The sort of traditional political media has been minimized in its influence enough that it doesn't matter. In the same way that he can get away with a lot of things that previous presidents thought they could not get away with. But to say he's not facing political accountability is to judge it only in the context of his base. Right. Because the fact of the matter is he does have the lowest approval ratings of any president ever at this point in their term since being elected.

[Jon Stewart]

I mean, he's almost had that his entire political career.

[Guest Speaker]

And he lost. Right. And he lost the House in 2018. He lost the White House and the Senate in 2020.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, they've got a strategy for that too, Dan. I don't know if you've heard. They've just decided to go in and be like, what if we gave ourselves five more seats in Texas?

[Guest Speaker]

Right. Which I think we'll get. Which gets to a question for Democrats about how you use power in this environment, but how they respond to that.

[Jon Stewart]

That's a great one, Preet. What for you.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

As you watch. So is it the taking away of funding for things that he disagrees with? Is it the threatening of tax exempt status? Is it the threatening of prosecution? Is it what for you is the Most egregious then unguard railed action that the Trump administration takes. That in your mind you just go, I can't even go back to Nixon on this one. This is just, you know, so you.

[Preet Bharara]

Know what it is? Yeah, it's actually not in my wheelhouse. It's the pro measles policy of this administration.

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Preet Bharara]

The, the, I mean, when I think about my, so I care about democracy, this is what I talk about. I'm a member of the legal profession. I was the United States Attorney. I'm a rule of law guy and I fight those battles. And maybe it's because I don't understand medicine, but when I think about my kids and my family members and other people, what bothers me the most is the ruination of healthcare and the false debunking of what vaccines can and cannot do. And when I see these, the thing that freaks me out the most as an American are the measles numbers. Now on the other side of the coin, I'm worried about all of it. The weird thing about the legal strategy of these guys is they lose a lot.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Preet Bharara]

And they will be losing a lot from a person.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, is that pre. Because you know, look, you can go on cable news and you can say anything and you can talk and you're seeing that now in their conspiracy theory stuff. Is it all false? You know, where's Ray Epps? You know, remember before they got in there, Ray Epps was the Fed that made the J6ers storm the Capitol. Well now you're the Feds, you're the FBI, you're the, you're all those guys. Why isn't that guy being prosecuted for doing that? Because he didn't. Because it was all bullshit. And. But is it because courts force you? And this is what I think the press should be doing more of to litigate courts at their best, litigate the parameters of our shared reality.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

And is that why they fail so much in there?

[Preet Bharara]

I think they fail because sometimes they take over reaching positions. So for example, in my personal experience, I work at a law firm. My law firm, Wilmer Hale is one of the four law firms who decided not to bend the knee and fought. The law firms who fought back on these executive orders are four for four in D.C. courts and it's going to go up for appeal in scathing.

[Jon Stewart]

What was the purpose? Explain to me a little bit because I've heard about what is the justification? And Dan, I don't know if there were law firms when you were there with Obama in this situation. But what's the justification of going after a law firm that represented people that you don't like?

[Preet Bharara]

Well, I think, as the court's found, there isn't one.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Preet Bharara]

There isn't one. In the same way that it makes no logical legal or pragmatic sense to cut off science research funding at Harvard because of antisemitism, it's going after your nemesis. In my firm's case, we had the temerity to have employed Bob Mueller, former FBI director and special counsel, who was gone from the firm in the case of Perkins Cooey.

[Jon Stewart]

Wait, is that why they went? Do they say specifically they make a.

[Preet Bharara]

Reference directly to the employment of Robert Mueller in the executive order and another person who still remains at the firm?

[Jon Stewart]

What right and what is the penalty for employing someone like that?

[Preet Bharara]

Well, apparently the intended penalty is a business death penalty. Because what you have. The point I was going to make was even though they lose a lot, they still accomplish a lot because they have a chilling effect on other people and on other firms, some of whom are not as strong, but some of whom are just making proper businesses. Look, when they argue falsely that the Constitution says something different about birthright citizenship, they know that lots of people are not going to rely on that provision of the Constitution when they come to the United States anymore. When they do things like question FBI agents and have them fill out a questionnaire and say, did you have anything to do with January 6th? Maybe that's lawful, maybe it's not, maybe it's proper, maybe it's not. But what it does is it tells every other FBI agent going forward for all time during this administration, hey, I got this order to follow this lead or to subpoena this witness or to talk to this guy, I now have to think, is that in any way related to Donald Trump or to Melania or to Donald Trump? Because my life or my livelihood could be affected by that. It's a process by which it doesn't matter if they're right or wrong so much as having the chilling effect that they want to have. That's not a great thing. And I don't know how much there is to be able to do about it.

[Jon Stewart]

It's the tentacles, though. Dan, is that your feeling as well? It's the tentacles and the effect of their action much more so than the. It's almost the collateral damage.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

That their.

[Preet Bharara]

That's exactly right.

[Jon Stewart]

That their actions, Dan, you think in that, too?

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, I agree with that. It's. There's a. It Creates a chilling effect. Right. Like, I'm sure, you know, we're all in media and I'm sure everyone has gotten a very aggressive defamation training about how. Because now they're suing everyone for everything.

[Jon Stewart]

I don't recall that. It's.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, I'd call your lawyer then, but it's like, you know, and because in the sense is that if that someone is watching you and they are going to make. And even if they can't win the case, they can get your case either to discovery, they can just make you pay a bunch of money and lawyer fees. And for media, it's like this is Trump suing Ann Selzer for a poll, an incorrect poll in an election he won. Right.

[Jon Stewart]

That's the Iowa pollster who said that he was doing worse than he was actually doing.

[Guest Speaker]

But still winning.

[Jon Stewart]

But still winning. Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Guest Speaker]

And that could have bankrupted the newspaper there if they eventually dropped that suit. And that affects everyone. Like, it affects, like every company now has to make a decision. Like, we have just been through this with media companies. Like, is it worth, you know, should you just settle and maybe pay a price for it over the course of your business or not? Like, you have talked about this a lot and it does people, some people will stand up. Wilmer Hill stood up. You know, folks in the media have stood up, but not everyone stands up. Right. And you have to do that. And then now everyone in society is doing that cost benefit analysis of is this worth the potential blowback that I am going to get if I become targeted?

[Jon Stewart]

And it's, by the way, it's not just about the people that are on the air. And we saw that ABC paid 15. CBS we just saw paid 15 for nothing just to get that merger through. And by the way, the FCC chairman getting back to our guardrails.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

Shitposts like Colbert and cbs, like the FCC chair, the guy who's responsible for this is just out there like, yeah, motherfucker, how's, how's my ass taste?

[Preet Bharara]

Like, it's like, I missed that one. That one I missed.

[Jon Stewart]

I'm obviously paraphrasing at some level, but.

[Guest Speaker]

Not by that much, honestly.

[Jon Stewart]

But I will say this, and I don't know if it occurs this way in the legal profession, but to the media profession. Right. There's the effect of the people that are on the air now. But I can tell you this, and by the way, it predates Trump, Ron DeSantis suing Disney. I've been in those meetings where with executives who have said to me, like, look, man, we don't want to get on their radar. So there are a lot of things that will never be made that you will never know about that were killed in the bed before they had a chance because of this chilling effect. So the irony is, as Donald Trump famously said, I've brought back free speech. He's done the opposite. And I don't know if that's something that does your law firm now pre. Are there pre discussions about clients that won't get protection? Not even the clients that you have now or have had in the past or people there. Are there people who won't get hired?

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, look, I think there are people who both in businesses and law firms, and I think it's okay to say this. What Donald Trump does is he exposes people who have courage and fight in them and integrity and character from the people who don't. Sometimes over a lot of money, sometimes over a little bit of money, sometimes overemployment, sometimes about ambitions that they want to achieve within the government or outside the government. Yeah, no, it's a big problem. But the way to get after it with respect to these law firms who have these executive orders imposed on them, which are just complete legal garbage. I mean, of all the things we've been talking about, among the most garbage documents we've seen are the law firm documents. As you're a layperson and you immediately understood that to be true is to win and win and win and win and win in the Supreme Court, which I think would send a signal that there's some things that are so egregious and so crazy and so nuts and so unlawful that even this Supreme Court will say the same. I don't know if that's going to be true about other things as well. And the lesson of all this is, or one of the lessons of all this is if a president chooses to exercise all of his discretionary authority and power in a maximal way and Congress doesn't give a shit, and also endorses a unitary executive theory, in part that helps the executive and the judicial branch co equal branch of government also endorses this ever empowering and enlarging executive, we're all in trouble. It's trouble.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages, that could basically become a Podcast your personal messages Stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. This episode is brought to you by Stay Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want, like that dream house or ride, is a great feeling. That's why the State Farm personal price plan can help you save when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

[Jon Stewart]

Preet, do you think we're in this moment then? In some respects. So he's getting the legal justifications that he needs or he's getting the halo effect or the poison cloud from his actions that are deterring people from taking action. But are we in an unusual time because of the abdication? He has the House, he has the Senate, and because he has such control over the base.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

Is this really, are we moving into a new phase of the country or in your mind, are we in just sort of this weird eye that won't occur again a hundred year storm or something?

[Preet Bharara]

That depends on whether Trumpism or whatever Trumpism is survives Donald Trump. The weird quandary is just further what I was saying a second ago there was this opinion by the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship, which wasn't actually about birthright citizenship. It was about this technical issue of nationwide injunctions. Yeah, yeah. Right. And Amy Coney Barrett declared correctly a principle of law. Right. Which is contrary to how we think about checks and balances and colloquial branches of government, separation of powers. She said the judiciary does not have a general oversight role of the executive. That's true. But the problem is. And then she said the solution to an imperial presidency is not an imperial judiciary. Well, that's all nice and wonderful in, in the, on the Supreme Court.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. In the abstract, in the abstraction.

[Preet Bharara]

But it's like it's not our, like you got you elected that crazy guy.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Preet Bharara]

Not our problem called Congress.

[Jon Stewart]

Like she said, the solution to an imperial presidency is class action lawsuit. That I can, I can give you relief for an individual, but I can't, you know, this guy. I can let eat at the segregated counter, but I can't let everybody, I can't let everybody do it. Who, you know, Dan, you didn't have, you guys had a united Congress, Obama's first two years. Yes. You had the House.

[Guest Speaker]

We did.

[Jon Stewart]

Is the temptation there when you're in that position to, to, to do what. What Trump has done to some extent or were the. Was Democratic Congress not as compliant that.

[Guest Speaker]

They were so far from compliant? It was a very different Democratic Party. I mean, you sort of think about who made up.

[Jon Stewart]

That sounds about right.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. I mean, that's part of. That's the nature of Democrats. Part of. It's just what the Democratic Party looked like in 2009. Like we had two senators from Montana, we had a senator from Alaska, two senators from Arkansas. Right. Who had very different constituencies. Maybe it was a Democratic.

[Jon Stewart]

Joe Manchin. You had Joe Manchin.

[Guest Speaker]

I mean, Joe Manchin was one of our two senators from West Virginia at one point. Yeah, he and Joe Manchin actually of the way we think about Joe Manchin today, there were like 15 Joe Manchin or people to the right of Joe Manchin on issues who were the Democratic Party. And there was also the. The Senate and Congress itself viewed itself differently back then. It was a much more of an institutional actor. You know, it was the Democratic Chairman of the Finance Committee who would not let Tom Daschle become the Secretary of Health and Human Services because of a tax problem.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah, that's right.

[Preet Bharara]

How quaint is that?

[Guest Speaker]

They like. It's insane now. It was actually, frankly, he didn't pay.

[Jon Stewart]

Withholding taxes to a green card holder. How dare you, sir.

[Guest Speaker]

He get. You cannot be in government. And so it was just. You could not have gotten away with that. Like there was. You would face blowback from your own party for doing things like that. Like the parties have changed, particularly the Republican Party is obviously much more ideological, ideologically coherent than it was back then. And certainly the Democratic Party was back then, but that was not. Even if we had wanted to do any of the things Trump just talked about, our party would rebel. Some large portion of our party would rebel in two seconds.

[Jon Stewart]

So let's talk about that. Trump is in some ways a white hat, or I shouldn't say white hat, but a black hat hacker, where he goes in and he's exposing these strange holes in our democracy, one of which is emergency powers. You know, you go in, if you, if you look through our 250 years, you can find an emergency power that allows you to do almost anything through the executive as long as you can withstand, I guess, the political pressure. He's using now tax exempt status, he's using funding polls, he's using the legal system. Isn't there a reverse engineering that can be done? And aren't Republicans in any way concerned that he is handing a Blueprint. Look, do you think the federal government only spends on liberal issues? Is there no fear that a Democrat gets in there and goes, oh, no more block grants for Medicaid to red states that are going to buy volleyball stadiums in Mississippi? Like, I'm pulling that, oh, tax exemption for that. Do we really think that Fox News or the Federalist Society or any of these other places don't get some benefit from the federal government or wouldn't face some peril from the federal government? Isn't he handing a pretty devastating playbook to the other side at some level? How are they going to fight that?

[Guest Speaker]

I think he's met Democrats, so he's relatively confident that they're not going to do the same things. So try to think about, try to think about the example. Like, imagine. So what would it, how would a, like, let's say the Democrat wanted to follow that playbook.

[Jon Stewart]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

So like, so on day one, Fox is kicked out of the White House press poll. Like, not involved in anymore. They invite pot Save America. And they, and you know, whoever else is now in there, forget about that.

[Jon Stewart]

How about they threaten their licenses?

[Guest Speaker]

Right. Well, that's the next thing. Right, right. They threaten the license. The, you know, at some point, you know, Fox is going to want to sell, may want to sell its TV business because of this probate case. Is it. How is a Democratic, would a Democratic FCC handle that?

[Jon Stewart]

He would shitpost them.

[Guest Speaker]

Right, right. Like, but I, sometimes I struggle to, like, I have a very conflicted set of emotions here because on one hand, I think one of the reasons why Democrats are in this position is we have too often believed power is simply a means to a policy end. And Republicans believe power, particularly under Trump, is an end and of itself. Right. And then when you have it, you should look to nurture it, grow it, use it, because you believe passionately in your policy goals and you can only execute them if you have power. And the Democrats should be doing more.

[Jon Stewart]

Aggressive, by the way. I mean, it's not just power for power's sake. They're executing enormous changes, but they view.

[Guest Speaker]

Those decisions as helping them maintain power, too. Right. It's not that there is, I don't know, man.

[Jon Stewart]

I don't see how, like, removing NIH funding from cancer research somehow helps them maintain power.

[Guest Speaker]

All it does is. That's a fair point. But all the, the targeting of all these institutions, like weakening institutional opponents, you know, making the cow at making the media bend a knee to Trump. Right. All those things. But at the same time, like, if a Democrat comes in and does all those things. Are we just on a downward spiral where we are just a. Where we become Russia, Right. Where it's just like we are a. Like we sort of live in an oligarchy. There is a real danger in that. And so as a Democrat, how do you think, if you care about democracy and you care about the rule of law, how do you view your responsibility when you come in to. You don't want to naively cling to norms as you're headed towards the iceberg, but what is the way in which you can more aggressively utilize power? One thing I think Democrats could do if they had power would be to take some of these norms that Trump has run over and turn them into laws. Right. If we had to try to actually, like, reinstate some of the guardrails that existed only through voluntary compliance and give them legal teeth.

[Jon Stewart]

I'm not even sure that he complies with legal teeth. I don't think Trump complies with legal teeth. Preet, do you think that would be an effective counter? I don't.

[Preet Bharara]

It depends on what the thing is. And some things you can. Some norms you can't legislate. So, for example, some you can. And even those, by the way, that I was thinking of just a second ago, are at risk. So the norm was for almost two centuries in this country that a president would serve two terms, right? That's better for the country, it's better for democracy, it's better for the rule of law and everything else. Washington set the precedent. Then FDR comes along, he's like, fuck it, I'm running four times, and he runs four times. And then you know what we did? We changed the law. And even that, like, solid black and white print in the Constitution can't run again. He's got lawyers, forum shop lawyers making arguments like they are with birthright citizenship. There's a loophole he can serve a third term. So the law is a blunt instrument. And if you have somebody who is completely amoral, power hungry, forum shopping, who has all executive power and a weak judiciary and a weak legislature and is sometimes bending the knee press, it's hard for the law to curtail the worst instincts of that person. Which I know sounds very pessimistic, but I think it's true.

[Jon Stewart]

I think it sounds very realistic. I mean, I think. And look, we're five, six months in, man. Yeah, like, he went from I'm gonna deport the worst of the worst to like, who's that valedictorian at that high school like that, like it's all a romantic.

[Preet Bharara]

I'm a naturalized citizen and I'm like, oh, you know, that's up for grabs. We're not that far away from 24 months in. And I don't think this is an overstatement. Depending on how things go where a naturalized citizen in this country has to be worried about saying something that they will say invokes an emergency power to denaturalize that person and go back to some other country.

[Jon Stewart]

What are the things Democrats can do? Because the Republicans right now are basically solidifying structural advantages that are given by the Constitution that sort of empowers rural states in a way that's infuses them with more power than they might now if he, you know, you get two senators in Wyoming, same as in New York. So it's population wise, you know, there are already structural advantages to right now the Republican Party. There's more red states than there are blue states. There may not be. The, the people may be around the same. But aren't there things that Democrats could do? Let's say it's not punitive in terms of we're going to take away the tax exempt status from this university or we're going to do. And by the way, like all this about the liberal universities and they're just pumping out liberals and you're like, everybody on the Supreme Court that's like a hardline conservative went to Yale or Harvard. Like what the are they even talking about? But aren't there things pre that are structural that Democrats can, can do in the same way that look in North Carolina, what do they do? As soon as the Democrat, as soon as the governor's a Democrat, they're like, oh, the governor, the governor doesn't have power anymore. That's, that's too bad.

[Preet Bharara]

Look, you have to have the votes. So I think the most important thing is to get one or you have.

[Jon Stewart]

To have an executive. Do you need the votes or do you need an executive?

[Preet Bharara]

Well, it depends on what the answer. The new answer, the question is of the first lady in whose White House Dan served. And that is when they go low, we go, what, Dan? We go what do we go low?

[Jon Stewart]

Is there a new answer to that?

[Guest Speaker]

This is a general life practice that served me well. I don't contradict Michelle Obama, but does.

[Preet Bharara]

She have to say, would she have the same answer?

[Jon Stewart]

She does.

[Guest Speaker]

I don't think I'll let her speak for herself. But I think if we had units, if Democrats had the House, the Senate and the White House, what are Some things you could do that would expand power and sort of help rebalance the.

[Jon Stewart]

Scales or that would insulate them from the coercion and expansion of power on the other side undemocratically. I'm not even talking about, well, let's just jam 30 liberals on the Supreme Court. I'm talking about ways to combat what we're seeing now.

[Preet Bharara]

Right. But there's a paradigm. The problem is, even if Democrats are not going to be as extreme in asserting executive power as Trump, they like executive power when they have the executive. And it would seem weirdly self defeating to finally get the White House and now think charitably about the future against immediate self interest and do things that are good for the country so that not only the next president, but that president who finally has power as a Democrat after Trump would curtail his own powers. I don't see how that's sort of possible in the laws of the political universe that we live in.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. Dan, does that make sense? We need a commission.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. I mean it is like where Trump is the current end state of a sort of inexorable rise in executive power. Right. That's been going with every previous president. Every president has had more than the last in part because Congress has sort of abdicated all of their responsibilities for oversight the like. It's the, the entire idea of impeachment is now mathematically impossible. Right. So if you do not care impeachment.

[Jon Stewart]

By the way, like I think that's one of the things that Trump did, you know, that was always held out as kind of the, you know, nuclear weapon, if you will, of accountability for an executive by Trump being impeached twice. What it showed itself to be is just another paper thin political process that really had no, that had no tea. Oh, he was impeached twice, but it almost felt like he got a speeding ticket. Like it seems that impeachment is now even no longer a guardrail of accountability within the executive.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. Because even like I remember, I remember a conversation with the White House staff and President Obama during the middle of the debt ceiling crisis when we were about to the United States was gonna be able to pay us bill, we default on our bills, be huge crisis. And one of the options, as ridiculous it sounds, is for the treasury to mint a coin, declare it worth a trillion dollars and see what happens.

[Jon Stewart]

I remember the op ed by Krugman.

[Guest Speaker]

Yes. And the, you know, so it's on there and what would happen and one of the views is what would happen if you did it. And the idea is that the Republican Congress would impeach President Obama and you'd say, well, the Senate, you're not going to get half the Democratic senators to vote to convict him, but he would forever have that black mark. And the view is that would cripple his presidency going forward. Right. But clearly that's not the case. In fact, Trump's numbers went up during the course of his impeachment proceeding the first time.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, Bill Clinton, too. I mean, when they tried to impeach Bill Clinton, I think Clinton was the first one where you saw impeachment as, oh, this is a bit of a, kind of a pomp and circumstance process that doesn't really have teeth and mean anything.

[Preet Bharara]

It happened a second time. Right. Donald Trump's political fortunes were on the wane, as I understand it, until one inflection point, his indictment by the Manhattan da That's when his fortunes started rising again. And so not only did he have two impeachments that he got through four indictments and one set of convictions on 34 counts. So.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. We talked about in some ways, and not to bring it back to the measles, but it did immunize him to some extent. If you've been impeached twice and you've been convicted of felonies and you're still walking around, well, now you have a certain herd immunity with MAGA that allows you to act with impunity on almost. Look, even this Epstein thing, he's out there. My ratings are up 4 or 5 points. This is awesome.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

The math doesn't actually show that, but I mean, still, I'm not suggesting that that's true.

[Jon Stewart]

I'm just suggesting that that's the way he goes. So, so would you guys advocate at least, though a, a, a close reading for the Democrats of what this type of executive manipulation could mean to at least protecting, in some ways, minority rights in this country or any of those other things that need protecting.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, I think hardball should be in the playbook for Democrats in a way that it hasn't been before. Not to break the law, not to do egregious things, not to be cruel, not to, you know, take away people's rights. But we have seen at least a version of a blueprint of asserting very significant executive power to get your own agenda done. I mean, I wouldn't advocate, and I would repudiate efforts to mimic his overreach in many of the ways that he's done so. But there's a lot of distance between what Democrats seem to be doing now and have done in the past and what Trump is doing. And somewhere in between that, I think is a, you know, is an. Is an ethical but hardball approach to politics. But of course, I'm not the political expert. Dan is.

[Guest Speaker]

But, yeah, I 100% agree with that. Right. Like we. Like there. Trump has set a model that we can follow about just an incredibly aggressive.

[Jon Stewart]

Use of the levels of coercion, the levels of power that you can use.

[Guest Speaker]

I think the question, like here, I think the test case for the Democratic president starting in 2029 is like. Like, you can do all these things. Like, oh, I. I want to.

[Jon Stewart]

Fundamental. Dan's optimism did every.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, just like we got. We got to live with some. We got to live with some hope here.

[Preet Bharara]

You say 30, 29.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, 20. Some century.

[Preet Bharara]

30, 29, I think.

[Jon Stewart]

Right, right, right.

[Guest Speaker]

Like, we should obviously be incredibly aggressive. If there is an agency that's not doing what it should be doing, we should feel we should try to reshape it in the way Trump has. We should use power to build back aggressively the things that Trump has taken apart, like usaid. Right. Like just aggressively do that. Push forward. Be willing to lose in court if you can get a. If you can legitimately believe that there is a ground from which you should do it. Like, the thing Trump really did, because he's lost a lot, is he got caught trying on a lot of things by his supporters. Right. Even if he didn't succeed in him looked like he was trying to do things. And you'd much rather be seen doing stuff than not doing stuff.

[Jon Stewart]

Yes, we can, I think. Is their motto. Isn't that Trump's motto? Somebody's motto?

[Guest Speaker]

It's definitely not CC Puede, but isn't.

[Preet Bharara]

There a reason that Rahm Emanuel is gaining some traction? Because he's a little bit of a bellicose Democrat?

[Jon Stewart]

I don't know. In this, I mean, yeah, I think it's probably very early for anybody to have a rise. I think where I put a little bit of faith, and it's probably misplaced, is that as these as. As the actions that he's taking kind of accumulate in their audacity, I do think there's going to come a moment as we get closer to a possible change in power that some Republican institutions, law firms, pre. That you might know that might go, hey, you know, they might do this shit to us. And maybe we need to be allied in some ways with those that have been, you know, maybe you have Claremont College or Liberty University going, you know, What I'm seeing how they're going to destroy Harvard and we're close enough to a shift in power that I might want to throw my hat in allyship.

[Guest Speaker]

That's the question for Democrats. Is Trump is aggressively going after all the institutional opponents to conservatism. Right. The media, universities, law firms.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

Would Democrats do that to the institutional opponents, to progressives. Right. Conservative media, like is would a Democratic FCC chairman?

[Jon Stewart]

I would think at this point, you have to, that has to be on the table.

[Guest Speaker]

Because what about, what about Liberty University? Right.

[Jon Stewart]

Like, no, that's what I'm saying. So wouldn't they stand up and go, oh, they're going to turn this shit on us? Why wouldn't they?

[Preet Bharara]

Dan's earlier answer is. Dan's earlier answer was, which was because they've met Democrats.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I mean, the question, like, like.

[Jon Stewart]

They don't believe it.

[Guest Speaker]

They don't, they don't believe that. They don't believe we will do that.

[Jon Stewart]

You don't think Democrats could elect a vindictive prick?

[Guest Speaker]

I don't know.

[Preet Bharara]

I mean, really, I already, I already mentioned Rahm Emanuel. That's why I mentioned him. And you, you poo pooed it one minute ago.

[Jon Stewart]

I was not poo.

[Preet Bharara]

I mentioned Rahm Emanuel and he might.

[Guest Speaker]

Have other vindictive dicks that he thinks could win.

[Jon Stewart]

I would never poo poo, for God's sake.

[Preet Bharara]

The kind of worry is that the emulation of Trump is not going to be sort of the pragmatic and Nietzschean grab for power. But the trolling. I don't know what people think of Gavin Newsom. He's sort of trolling as opposed to.

[Jon Stewart]

But I'm saying you can learn he has left a roadmap for coercion and levers of power that, you know is not going to go away.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah. Republicans have not read that portion of Article 2 of the Constitution that says what goes around comes around.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. That was, I believe that was Madison when they would make fun of his height. But it's a different thing. Guys, I can't thank you enough. Very, very interesting conversation. Preet bhara.

[Preet Bharara]

Thanks.

[Jon Stewart]

Former U.S. attorney, SDNY podcast. Stay tuned with Preet Dan F. Host of Pod Save America and author about political strategy. Guys, thank you very much for joining us.

[Preet Bharara]

Great to be here. Thanks so much.

[Jon Stewart]

Appreciate it.

[Guest Speaker]

Thanks, John.

[Jon Stewart]

Bye, guys. So I, I guess I, I guess what it comes down to that the takeaway from the whole thing is the Democrats need a vindictive dick. I love the fact that Preet is like, I Don't know. Rahm Emanuel's kind of a vindictive dick. I think he could do it. Yeah.

[Producer]

He had that name real quick.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. It was right, right, right at the.

[Producer]

Time, just off the top of my head.

[Jon Stewart]

But it did still struggle. Like, we're running through all the ways that he is coercing every, like, liberal progressive or things that he deems liberal progressive. And then you're like, so Democrats could do this. Like, I don't know, man. That seems like. I don't know, like, wouldn't people be mad? Like, what?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or have you met a Democrat?

[Producer]

I liked that line.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. Yeah, that was.

[Producer]

Yeah. The Republicans are so unafraid of us turning any of this shit on them.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But imagine if they do. The Republicans will be shocked beyond belief.

[Jon Stewart]

Right? No, it will be, how dare you? At long last. Have you no decency? They will take to. I mean, there is no moral center. Remember, Mike Johnson just said, we all have to get to the. The root of this Epstein conspiracy. There has to be full transparency. A day later, I'm very. I'm okay with the. Meanwhile, the DOJ is saying, oh, yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna talk to Ghislaine Maxwell. Who in their right mind doesn't think that they're just going to go to Ghislaine Maxwell and go, here's what we need you to do to get a pardon. Or here's. You like steak, you like lobster, you want to eat it every night. We can't pardon you right now because it would look too fucked up.

[Producer]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

But we need you to come out and go, they don't even know each other.

[Producer]

Yeah. I mean, for Mike Johnson, morality and transparency is telling your son what porn you're watching starts there and ends there.

[Jon Stewart]

Sounds like you could be the vindictive dick we're looking for.

[Producer]

Yeah. They never said it couldn't be a she.

[Jon Stewart]

And that is the Democratic twist. They'll never see it coming.

[Guest Speaker]

A lady dick from a she.

[Jon Stewart]

A lady vindictive dick. Magnificent. Well, it was. It was, I thought, a very fun conversation. Britney, what are. What are the kids. What are the listeners thinking for us this week?

[Producer]

All righty.

[Jon Stewart]

I'm sure they were. Yes. They always start with John. Did they actually use my name in them? John?

[Producer]

Yes.

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, all right.

[Producer]

This one, they did.

[Jon Stewart]

Mr. S. Senior Stewart.

[Producer]

Why do you think Trump isn't suing Elon for tweeting that Trump is in the Epstein files?

[Jon Stewart]

I cannot for the life of me think why Trump wouldn't sue Elon for Trump is in the Epstein files. Trump is so clearly all over the Epstein files that I mean he's trying.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

To get back at him in other ways too.

[Producer]

Like trying to get a different contractor for their golden dome.

[Jon Stewart]

No, they went in and they were like we're going to get rid of all those SpaceX contracts. And they went in, they're like, actually we can't. There's no one else.

[Producer]

There's no one else.

[Jon Stewart]

Launch a satellite that we can't use NASA because we cut their funding to the point where they are, you know, a non functioning organization. Like we're gutting the very government that they, that would give us options.

[Producer]

That's a good point. Right. And, and who led that charge in some respect, it's, it's almost like the guy that we just give all our money.

[Jon Stewart]

You just, you just blew my mind, young lady. Although Elon has not like, you know, he knows that those contracts are up. Like they, I do think they have a little bit of a China US like mutually assured destruction. Like I think they know enough about each other.

[Producer]

Yeah, but he's been awfully quiet lately, don't you think?

[Jon Stewart]

No question. I think. Yeah. But he's still, he's still got his lovely social media platform which is Mecca Hitlering all over people's timelines. So it's, it's still a very positive net positive for humanity. Really exciting stuff. What else, what else they got?

[Producer]

Not starting with John this time.

[Jon Stewart]

Nice.

[Producer]

Given the current state of politics, could a book like Profiles encourage even be written today?

[Jon Stewart]

First of all, it could absolutely be written. I think the problem with books is not if they can be written is if anybody's going to read them. And I have no idea what profiles. Yeah. I mean and by the way, and to think that Profiles encourage written by Jeff. We have a tendency to lionize and with glossy haze look back and John F. Kennedy wrote that book that was not cynical at all. His father had no designs on making the PT captain the president. Like, it's all a little, little bit of cynical craftsmanship. All those, those books that people, you know, that's, that's one of the first steps to launching the campaign is the hagiography of all kinds of other. So yeah, it could definitely be written.

[Producer]

Would anyone read it?

[Jon Stewart]

And perhaps turned into a, a hot prestige series on Hulu. All right, well this is all, this is all lovely. I, I, I, I got to tell you this, this episode has lifted my spirits in ways that this has been an unpleasant week.

[Producer]

And yeah, I really appreciated those silver.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Linings as thin as they were that they offered.

[Jon Stewart]

No, it was nice because you do realize with all the power that they have, like, we fight, we curse, we laugh, but they still are just like, yeah, I think we're going to pressure them enough to take these people off the air and that person or we're going to pressure them enough that that person won't ever get a chance to get on air. Like, that shit's real.

[Producer]

I mean, Preetz silver lining was like, at least they still feel like they need to have a justification.

[Jon Stewart]

It's nice to read the memo sometimes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The one I've been telling myself is it doesn't come from a place of strength.

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, I kind of like that, Lauren, by the way, that is true. You know, every dictatorship, those movements are not based on how powerful they think they are. It's how fragile they are, you know, and ultimately they are. Look, the thing about the United States and that whole rule of law thing is it has a stability to it that allows our economic progress and our political progress and our power in the world. And if you erode that stability, you really actually erode the secret sauce of why this country has done so well over all this time. And that's the. The irony of his entire operation. He's. He's making us vulnerable. Not great, but a fine, fine episode, as always. Lead producer Lauren Walker. Producer Brittany Mametovic Video editor and engineer Rob Vitola Audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce Researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear executive producers Chris McShane, Katie Gray. I can't thank you guys enough. You rocked it. See you next week. The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Paramount podcasts.