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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Ben Wittes
Welcome to this episode of to the Contrary podcast, joined by my good friend Ben Wittes of Lawfare. Ben, welcome back on the podcast. How are you?
- [00:20]
Charlie Sykes
Thanks, man. Great to see you. Oh, I'm just living the dream. Every day you wake up and it's something new.
- [00:27]
Ben Wittes
Yes. And just before we went on, I said, now you've been following the Pete Hegseth story. And you said, I said, oh, yes.
- [00:35]
Charlie Sykes
There'S no part of this story that I don't love. I also have been really inspired by Pope Francis, and I don't mean this, snidely. I think dying in response to meeting J.D. vance. You went there is, is just the right response. I, I think it's, it's like, you know, it reminds me of the queen meeting Prime Minister Truss and then dropping dead. And I, I, you know the headline, Queen meets with Truss, comma dies, Pope meets with JD Vance, comma dies.
- [01:19]
Ben Wittes
Well, it's given birth to all of these memes of people saying, you know, please, Mr. Vice President, could you go meet with, you know, the Supreme Leader of Iran next, could you say hey to Vladimir Putin? Just go down the list of people. Okay. So in recognition of that extraordinary weekend, Easter weekend, the Pope meeting J.D. vance and then, and then passing away, I just can't let this go, Ben. I just, I can't, like, I can't let the President of the United States Easter message. And so if you will bear with me, I'd like to do. I don't know how dramatic a reading, you can't really capture it totally. This is Donald J. Trump. The morning of Easter Sunday, when much of the rest of the world is celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
- [02:06]
Charlie Sykes
Did he say he has risen, Charlie?
- [02:09]
Ben Wittes
Well, let's, let's get to what's not there. Donald J. Trump. Happy Easter to all, including the radical left. Lunatics all capitalized who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring murderers. These words are all capitalized. Murderers, drug lords, dangerous prisoners, the mentally insane and well known Ms. 13 gang members and wife beaters. Wife beaters being capitalized back into our country. Country for some reason being capitalize. Happy Easter also to the weak and ineffective. And you have to see that weak and ineffective are all in caps. Weak and ineffective judges and law enforcement officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our nation. Capitalize to continue, comma, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten. Exclamation point. Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed millions of all caps criminals to enter our country totally unvetted and unchecked through an open borders policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. No. Jesus, no. He has risen yet. Keep reading. He was by far our worst all in caps and most incompetent president. Just capitalize a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the auto pen, perhaps our real president. All in capps. And to all of the people who cheated all in Capps in the 2020 presidential election in order to get this highly destructive moron capitalized elected, I wish you with great love, sincerity and affection, a very happy Easter.
- [03:58]
Charlie Sykes
You know, I think, Charlie.
- [04:00]
Ben Wittes
From the heart.
- [04:01]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, from the heart, no doubt. I think you're missing the bright unifying side of that message. Which is that, which was, which was that he wished all these people a happy Easter even though they were radical left lunatics or weak and ineffective judges or people who cheated to get the worst president in history into office. You know, like he didn't have to wish them Happy Easter. He could have wished Happy Easter only to his MAGA followers. But he had a unifying message yesterday.
- [04:41]
Ben Wittes
I imagine that he thought so. But you know, it is interesting how every once in a while we do get a glimpse into what goes on up there in the mind of Donald Trump. And I'm always fascinated watching all of his evangelical Christian fans who, who are looking at him and going, Mr. President, just, just mention it once, just, just like hint at it that you know what Easter is, is about. I'm sure he put out other statements saying, yes, we are going to be talking about Jesus Christ very strongly, very, very strongly because I'm a big, big, big fan and people are beginning to appreciate him more. Okay, so we have a lot going on. We have the Pete Hegseth story, we have the Jerome Powell story, which you, you know, while you and I are taping this, the Dow Jones average is down about 1200 points. We'll see what, what happens later in the day. This seems to be a reaction to President Trump picking a new target. Who else? Who is the villain of the day? And because it's Monday, it's a day that ends with why he's going after the chairman of the Fed. The markets are absolutely freaked out because there's nothing good that would come from undermining the independence of the Fed. I mean, there's, there's a reason for that. Right? This is a legitimate pre freak out.
- [05:51]
Charlie Sykes
Correct. This is the markets telling the President actually an independent Central bank is important. And that's kind of an economic truism there. And, and so when you. This is in the fuck around and find out department, you know, and the markets are saying, it's a little bit of a pre. Find out. Right. If you fuck around with the. With the independence of the Fed, here's a taste of what's going to happen.
- [06:29]
Ben Wittes
So we're going to get to that a little bit later. And of course, our favorite story of the day, the Pete Hegseth melting down story, which, by the way, has already given birth to these memes of Pete Hegseth and a head of lettuce, you know, which will last longer. But I wanted to talk about what the Supreme Court did in the middle of the night the other night.
- [06:47]
Charlie Sykes
And apparently literally in the middle of the night.
- [06:50]
Ben Wittes
Literally in the middle of the night. And Justice Alito is very, very unhappy about it. You put out on law for a very, very helpful thing, the 20 questions helping us put in perspective the stakes in the El Salvador deportation cases, including questions like can the government unilaterally and without notice vanish a person and put him or her on a plane to a prison overseas without any kind of due process of law? And it can do this. And can it do this based on a 1798 statute which by its terms declares. Requires a declared state of war between the United States other country? So let's just start with that. Supreme Court seems to be rather definitively saying, no, no, you can't do that.
- [07:35]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So the Supreme Court, and it's interesting that all nine justices seem to agree that you can't do that. Right. Seven of those justices, which is to say everybody except Justice Alito and Justice Thomas. Yeah. Believe that some extraordinary intervention by the Supreme Court, which is what happened over the weekend, is justifiable in order to prevent that. Justice Alito's objections are kind of that the Supreme Court didn't wait until this progressed in the natural order of litigation. The other justices are clearly worried that by that point these people would be in El Salvador and the Justice Department would be arguing that they'd lost jurisdiction over the matter as a result of, you know, we stole these people fair and square. Come on, you guys can't hear the case anymore. Alito and Thomas seem less worried about that. But I do think the idea that seven justices of the court, including not merely Amy Coney Barrett, who's, you know, a bit of a squish, and the chief justice, who's, you know, an institutionalist, which means a bit of a Squish, but also includes Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, both of whom are pretty solid members of the conservative four flank. We don't have a good, you know, in the 30s, they called the right wing justices the Four Horsemen, but I don't know what we call the four of them now. But, you know, these are two members in good standing of the conservative majority or the conservative flank of the court. And they are kind of on board with the court jumping in before a deportation can take place and issuing its own order that says, no, you don't freeze in place. You're not taking anybody out of the country without while, you know, until we have a chance to review this. And I think that's a pretty dramatic. Even without Alito and Thomas, that's a pretty dramatic statement.
- [09:58]
Ben Wittes
No, it was extraordinary. And of course, you know, the morning after, you know, we were wondering, okay, so they have blocked Donald Trump's deportation, at least for now. There's always the danger of reading too much into these orders that don't have a lot of explanation. But now we've allowed a couple of days to pass, and it feels even more extraordinary, not just the fact that it was at 1am but they acted and the speed with which they acted. But clearly it seemed to reflect, frankly, a lack of trust in the Trump administration. They weren't going to wait because basically the Trump administration has been flipping them the middle finger all week long. Right. Basically trying to gaslight them, in a sense, scoffing, mocking at them in the Oval Office with that meeting with the president of El Salvador. And it really did feel that this was the fuck around with the Supreme Court and see what happens. This seemed like it was a reaction to the Trump's Trump administration's defiance or pretending defiance. So give me your sense, because the more I think about it and the more you, you go through the timing of this and the fact that the conservative justices, most of them broke with them, this really does seem to be both dramatic and extraordinary.
- [11:19]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So first of all, I think it's a reaction to several things. It's notable that the order here is not affirming some district court order. Right. This is actually order of the Supreme Court saying you don't remove any of these until this order is dissolved. And I think part of what that responds to is this sense. Part of it is that there wasn't a lower court order to uphold here, but there was. Part of it is that, you know, you have these two lower court orders from one of them from Judge Boasberg, which said, turn those planes around. And they just defied that order. And the other one is from Paul A. Zinis, the judge in Maryland, who said, you gotta facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. And the administration's answer to that is literally to put out a tweet that said he's never coming back.
- [12:20]
Ben Wittes
Yeah, Right.
- [12:21]
Charlie Sykes
And so, and that's. So the Supreme Court justices are in this position where they know that there is, let's just delicately say, compliance issues with respect to lower court orders. Right. And so I think part of what they're responding to here is if you want to put these people on a plane and get them out of the country, you're going to have to defy an order of the Supreme Court. And I do think that's part of what the dramatic thing. And by the way, you know, Alito is kind of enraged that they took that step. I do think that step is dramatic, and he's not wrong that that's an irregular thing for the Supreme Court to issue an order like that.
- [13:09]
Ben Wittes
And it's a pretty dramatic rebuke to the Trump administration. I mean, he understands how harsh it was to take that step at 1am we do not trust you. We've been paying attention to what you're saying. And in case there's any ambiguity here, we are not being bullied, we are not being intimidated, we're not backing off.
- [13:28]
Charlie Sykes
Right. And, and critically, we're not going to let you paint some individual district judge who may be appointed by Barack Obama or may be appointed by, you know, we're not going to let you demonize an individual district judge over this. If you want to do this, you have to do it over the order of nine justices, two of whom peel off. So it's seven justices whom, four of whom are appointed by Republican presidents and three of whom are appointed by you. And so it's a very powerful way to do it. And it's not rhetorical. It's not what J. Harvey Wilkinson did, which is a very powerful individual written statement, you know, that presumes these people read, which is not necessarily supported by facts and evidence. So, look, I think it's an extremely important moment. It's also either will be backed up by or not subsequent action by the court. And that's going to happen this week.
- [14:46]
Ben Wittes
Well, let me get to that in a moment. Okay, so, but you didn't mention Harvey Wilkinson. You know, he is a Reagan appointee. Very, very solid conservative judge in the 4th Circuit who wrote that. Very, very eloquent, very Very dramatic opinion the other day, clearly. Do you think, Let me ask you this. I mean, can you draw a line between the fact that you have conservative jurists like Wilkinson who are seeing the enormous stakes here and what the court did, the timing felt like he sent out a signal and the court was, yes, we understand how big the stakes are. Any influence there?
- [15:28]
Charlie Sykes
Well, so Jay Wilkinson, first of all, somebody I've known and admired for 30 years, is, we've been out of touch of late, but I've, you know, consider him a friend. And look, it is enormously significant when a judge of that stature in the conservative legal movement makes a statement like that. That's a, you know, that's a big, big deal. Jay Wilkinson is an important figure. He was this close to being on the Supreme Court at the time John Roberts was appointed Chief justice. And he is a figure of enormous intellectual prestige in, in the world in which conservative judges operate. That said, I think the evidence is that the Supreme Court was already there because the remember that the order that he's interpreting was a nine justice Supreme Court decision saying facilitate is fine, effectuate. Maybe we have some concerns about, but facilitate is fine. And the Justice Department and the White House's position in response to that was we interpret facilitate to mean don't facilitate. And Judge Wilkinson is saying, are you freaking kidding me? This is the Supreme Court of the United States. And affirming a very fine district judges. And noted that he used the words to refer to Paul Asini's as a very fine district judge. He didn't say, you know, Polissini's Obama appointee or Right. He specifically says, you know, she's a very good judge and she's right. And nine justices of the Supreme Court say that she's right. And so I think the Supreme Court was kind of already there that said, if they were wavering about it having somebody as substantial in their world as Jay Wilkinson say, as something as strong as what he said matters. And you know, yeah, there was a time when I was a young editorial writer at the Washington Post where there were these two lions of the conservative world on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals who were vying for the sort of to be the kind of preeminent lower court, lower appeals court conservative intellectuals. One was Harvey Wilkinson and one was Mike Ludig. And Mike Ludig then left the court to become. Neither of them ended up on the Supreme Court and Mike Ludig then left to become the general counsel of Boeing. And now both of these men are back in very different ways they were kind of adversaries and rivals at the time. And they are both back now in this conscience, rule of law, conscience, adversarial posture vis a vis the Trump administration. And it's a very interesting development.
- [18:58]
Ben Wittes
Well, okay, so as you know, I resist, you know, any, any sort of irrational exuberance, but it does seem as if there is now a gelling of opinion among conservative jurists. And I'm not talking about the San Melito, but this broad consensus from Ludig to Wilkinson to others, that we're not gonna go along with Donald Trump. And this is one thing that Trump obviously does not understand, that his appointees are not loyal to him. Conservative judges do not mean necessarily conservative outcomes. But it is interesting watching and for some of our listeners might find this to be counterintuitive. The more traditional Federalist Society judges who are now lining up saying, no, there, there's a line that we're not going to let you cross. President Trump.
- [19:47]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, so I think there is a clear emergent division among conservative judges. And let's say that, you know, we haven't seen this line in the sand that you've described in the 5th Circuit where, which is the sort of, you know, where as sort of the Trumpiest circuit. Right. We haven't seen it in, you know, in the D.C. circuit, some of the conservative judges, like Karen Lacraft Henderson have been pretty interesting. Pretty, one might say, renegade. And some of them have been pretty Alito Thomas ish. And so I think you're starting to see a split among the conservatives really emerge. And it's precisely the split. This is why life tenure is important. So in the Senate, when this happens, you just get rid of the Jeff Flakes and the Mitt Romney's and, you know, you, you primary them, you make their lives so miserable that they leave. And you can't do that with federal judges. You can't. You know, if.
- [21:11]
Ben Wittes
Interesting point.
- [21:12]
Charlie Sykes
If Brett Kavanaugh thinks that, you know, the Chief and Amy Coney Barrett and the libs are right about, you know, everybody getting a certain amount of due process, you can't really do that much about that. And that's true of Neil Gorsuch as well. And so I think this split is a very important one. And it's precisely the one that we did not see happen among Congressional Republicans.
- [21:39]
Ben Wittes
Exactly. Okay, so let's go to the big question. What do you think happens next? What is the next step? And so how firm is the Supreme Court going to be? The Trump administration seemed to think that they found some wiggle room in that nine nothing decision that said you need to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia but not effectuate it. And they did that winking sort of bullshit gaslighting where sure, if you, if El Salvador releases the guy. And by the way, just parenthetically, your colleague Anna Bauer has really pointed this out and underlined this. We are paying them to keep him there. You know, we write out checks for them. So it's not like totally up to them. But they said, well, sure, if they release him, we will facilitate his return. So has the court kind of, well, again, tell me where you think they're going and whether they've learned a lesson about giving any kind of wiggle room to this bad faith administration.
- [22:36]
Charlie Sykes
All right, so all of this is speculative and therefore, you know, worth what you're paying for it. And I want to say that I've been wrong many times about the Supreme Court and where it's going. So I don't want to hold out a lot of value to my own speculation here. That said, I think the administration is setting itself up for a world of hurt with the Supreme Court on three separate questions. So the first question is this facilitate question. Does facilitate mean nothing? Right. Or purely getting rid of domestic barriers? And I don't believe that's what the Supreme Court said. I don't think that's what the order says and I don't think it's what any of them meant. And so am I relatively confident that when this question gets back to them, by the way, the administrator, the administration seems relatively confident on that. I'm right about this because they're not appealing Jay Wilkinson's order. But this question will eventually get back to the Supreme Court. And I do think there are five justices who are going to be where Jay Wilkinson is. The second question is does you have to give them notice and a chance to contest their status before you deport them to a dungeon? Does that mean you can hand them a slip of paper on the way to the airport? Right. In English or, you know, or Greek for that matter, like, or do you have to give them a reasonable time? And I don't think the Supreme Court is going to, having articulated this principle, I don't believe they're going to sit still for yeah, notice means you can whisper it in their ear in Sanskrit on the way to the airport without giving them a chance to call a lawyer or let the ACLU know. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I don't think so. And then the third issue which nobody's talking about is, is the entire proclamation legally defective? And let's remember this question's going to get litigated. It's going to go up to the Supreme Court. And let's remember what this proclamation is, which is, it says, remember the 1798 statute, the Alien Enemies act says in a circumstance of declared war, while there is no declared war or invasion or predatory incursion of the United States by another country. Right. So their argument is that this gang called Trenda Aragua is actually the government of Venezuela or is being used by the government of Venezuela and is engaged in an invasion of the United States. And that is. That's the predicate facts of this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. Now, I don't believe there aren't five justices for the proposition that that's bullshit. And you don't just get to say, hey, there are these people in the country that I don't like, and so I'm going to declare that they've infiltrated the government of Venezuela and that they're invading the United States. There has to be some relationship between the proclamation and the truth. So I think there's. There's three different concerns, at least. There may be more, but there are at least three major concerns. And that's before you get to the individual cases that, hey, I'm not a member of Trend, I'm a hairdresser from, from Cleveland, or I'm not even a citizen of Venezuela. I'm a, you know, from somewhere else. Right. The individual level cases are all, you know, after that. I don't think there's five votes on the Supreme Court for any of those three propositions. And so I think the government is walking into a circumstance in which it's going to lose a lot of these questions at the Supreme Supreme Court.
- [27:17]
Ben Wittes
Well, let's just go back. You've written about this extensively. The Alien Enemies act, you know, the 1798 law has only been invoked several times. Right. Last time During World War I, during.
- [27:27]
Charlie Sykes
World War II, situations of declared war.
- [27:31]
Ben Wittes
Right. So they did not. That was not invoked during the Cold War. It was never invoked during the Korean War. It was never invoked during the Vietnam War. It was never invoked after 9, 11, or the war on, on terrorism. So the, the history of this is, look, it has to be a declared war. There would have been lots of opportunities. You can imagine Richard Nixon would have loved to have been able to use this or frankly, even the Bush administration in the war, the war on terror. Yet none of them did. This is Significant. Okay, so I'm less interested in this question, but I want to throw it up because I talked about it in my newsletter on Monday, which is the politics of all of this. There are some of the smart kids who were saying Democrats might be making a political mistake by continuing to emphasize this because Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want to talk about this. The public supports the tough crackdown on the border. The public likes the Dirty Harry style of deporting bad hombres, to use Mr. Olson's term. But I guess my take on all of this is the stakes are just simply too high. We either care about due process or the rule of law, or we don't. And that there are some times when you have to defend these constitutional rights as aggressively as possible, no matter what the Gallup poll says about this. I'm guessing you agree with me on that, But I'm also not sure it's a political loser.
- [28:55]
Charlie Sykes
So I don't know if it's a political loser. And honestly, I don't care.
- [28:59]
Ben Wittes
That's where I am.
- [29:00]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, the, you know, the knights who forced John at Runnymede to adopt the Magna Carta, which is where all this stuff comes from. Right. You know, maybe they should have focused on kitchen table issues. You know, there was. I'm sorry, right. This stuff is the tectonic plates of democracy. You don't have a democracy if. If the President can pick people up and, you know, send them to a dungeon without charges or, you know, deport them. And like, if you, if you want a democratic culture, this is the fight. This is one of the core fights you have to have. There's an. There's elections and there's this, and there isn't really very much else. This is what prevents political repression. There is some, you know, free speech. That's important, too. There's. But there's very few things, and none of them is more important than arbitrary arrest and punishment. And so I would say, you know, to Gavin Newsom, with all due respect, what democracy are you protecting? You know, you're, you're, you're kind of missing the point if you say about the core democracy protection. You know, it like Frederick Douglass could have demanded, you know, something other than, you know, citizenship and voting rights. Right. I mean, like, there. I'm sure there were more kitchen table issues. Sometimes you have to focus on the most important thing, not the most.
- [30:49]
Ben Wittes
You can do both. Well, that's right. And you know what? Okay. So I totally agree with you there. And, you know, somebody wrote me an email saying Charlie, I can't believe you've abandoned your conservative principles. And I'm going to respond saying, you know, well, one of those conservative principles is due process of law, which conservatives have understood since 1215. So I'm not sure exactly which conservative principle you're talking about. I do think that there is the this too clever by half approach that, you know, let's not talk about anything that Donald Trump wants to talk about. On the other hand, sometimes I think it's a good strategy to go after someone's strengths as well as their weakness. And, you know, even though, you know, people like Henry Olson will argue, well, you know, Dirty and Dirty Harry, we found out that the American public was willing to support extralegal assaults on bad guys. But here's the thing. Dirty Harry killed bad guys, guilty people. He was not locking up innocent people. He was not snatching people off the street. He was not renditioning them to a third world country. He was not yucking it up with, with international thugs. That would have been a completely different movie. So I do think that there is a, you would hope, a just a reservoir of understanding of the principles you just articulated so well.
- [32:06]
Charlie Sykes
So also, one other thing on this, you know, sure, I, this is, I say I don't know what the politics are and I don't care. And that's true. But it's also, I'm not at all convinced that the politics of forcing the president to violate, you know, to go against nine justices of the Supreme Court, to thumb his nose at the Supreme Court, including the justices who he appointed, I'm not sure that that looks good for him. I'm sure that the subject matter, getting rid of bad hombres and, you know, guys who he says are members of MS.13, and I'm sure that that rhetoric is good for him. But when nine justices, when the Supreme Court unanimously says you can't do that and you do it anyway, or you thumb your nose at the Supreme Court, I don't know that that looks good for him.
- [33:15]
Ben Wittes
Well, and also, I think that it also will draw a line saying this guy's not unstoppable, he's not unbeatable. I think one of his superpowers so far since January 20th has been the sense that resistance is futile. And it's one of the reasons why all of these institutions have caved into him. You know, when he runs up against that, it's a signal that, you know what, he does not have unlimited power and that there are still checks and there are still balances and there are still guardrails. Okay, so let's switch subjects to something that we talked about earlier. This Pete Hegseth story. I mean, I want to wallow in it for a little while, but part of it is how completely unsurprising it is that things would be melting down for Pete Haggs.
- [34:00]
Charlie Sykes
It's almost like it takes some management experience to run the world's most complicated bureaucracy.
- [34:10]
Ben Wittes
Well, I mean, between the signal thing, I mean, where do we start? You know, the. All the people who have quit this, this piece. And by the way, you know, today as you and I are speaking, they'll Trump is giving, you know, one endorsement after another. You know, Carolyn Levitt is out saying everybody in the Pentagon is out for him. Well, the problem is a lot of people who've been fired and who are blowing the whistle are Trump people, are people who Pete Hegseth brought in. This extraordinary piece in Politico magazine is written by, and I apologize in advance for getting the name wrong by John Uliot.
- [34:44]
Charlie Sykes
I think it's Uliat. Yeah.
- [34:45]
Ben Wittes
As a former chief Pentagon spokesman, he led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans affairs in President Donald Trump's first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications Advisor on Trump's 2016 campaign. And he writes, and again, this is not anonymous. This is not Deep State. This is one of their guys. It has been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. First sentence from leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings. The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president, who deserves better from his senior leadership. President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it's hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer. So we have the first signal gate in which they were sharing war plans with the editor of the Atlantic. Now, over the weekend, the New York Times finds out that he was sharing details with families and friends, including his wife. We have these leak investigations, reports of screaming fights in the Pentagon. So give me your sense of what's going on, because, you know, the Trump White House is kind of circling the wagons, and maga's circling the wagons. But the reality is that a lot of this shit that's coming down is coming from within the House. The call is coming from within the House, including this Trump loyalist who went so far as to write. People, this is a complete disaster. What do you think?
- [36:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So, first of all, there is nothing surprising about this. I mean, you know, being the Secretary of Defense is a very hard job, and people who are extremely accomplished individuals have failed at it. And Pete Hegseth is not an extremely accomplished individual. He is a. He is a workaday pundit with personal disciplinary problems. Personal.
- [36:52]
Ben Wittes
I have described him as a dipsomaniacal.
- [36:54]
Charlie Sykes
Chode, but, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't fight you. I mean, look, he's. He has a lot of trouble controlling himself in a number of different areas. Areas there's. Other than the fact that he is well spoken, there is not a lot of evidence that he understands the policy issues that the Pentagon confronts any better than he understands the complexity of the Pentagon bureaucracy, which is a hugely complicated mix of civilian and military, involves bases all. All over the world, involves multiple services. I mean, it's a really complicated animal to run. And so the idea that you put somebody with no management responsibility in the federal government or in the military or anywhere else in charge of that. And by the way, the guy is highly ideological, and he's. And he doesn't know what he's doing. And that was all very obvious at the level of, you know, at the level of his nomination before you ever got to the confirmation hearings. And so the idea that he would fail at it and fail sort of spectacularly and quickly is not remotely surprising. And. And so that. That's the first thing. The second thing is that the response of the administration, which is, first of all to do a circular firing squad and have everybody shooting at everybody and have, you know, John Oulad writing a piece that's kind of like, if only the president knew. It has a kind of weird, you know, end of the Russian czarist period feel to it. You know, of course, Trump knew. Trump. Pete picked. Hegseth. Pete picked. That's hard to say. Trump picked Pete Hegseth because he was an unqualified sycophantic toady, and he got.
- [38:59]
Ben Wittes
Exhausted, which is crucial to understand, because the question is, why would you put him in this position? For that reason, and for some reason, he wanted. He wanted somebody who was gonna be the sycophantic unqualified toady.
- [39:11]
Charlie Sykes
Right? And Trump actually does know the difference, because his first secretary of defense was Jim Mattis, who is a highly, highly substantive individual. And Mattis was replaced by, you know, a number of subsequent officials who were not, you know, unqualified. And so the decision to put Hegseth in this position is a decision to have an unqualified toady. And this is what you get when you do that. Now, the question is. And this. To this part, I just don't know these answer. When does that become more embarrassing than useful? If useful is whatever utility Trump is getting out of this. And I don't know the answer to that question because I've never actually seen a situation in which somebody chooses to have a secretary of Defense who has no idea what he's doing.
- [40:13]
Ben Wittes
And it's dangerous. I mean, there are real world consequences to this, you know, not just for the men and women in the Pentagon and the armed forces, but for our position in the world. I have to tell you that right now, as you and I are speaking though, it seems to me as a full, all hands on deck MAGA defense of Pete Hegseth, which makes it more difficult for Trump to just simply get rid of him. I mean, obviously he obviously could, but the initial instinct is to be completely defensive, even though the evidence of his incompetence and his recklessness is so overwhelming and none of which has been denied. But generally, if you want to see what's going to happen in the Trump, you know, in Trump world, watch what's happening out here in MAGA world. And right now there seems to be this sort of consensus that we need to fight and die. This is the Hill we want to die on Pete Hegseth, which of course is objectively stupid. But you know, this is, this is the world we live in now.
- [41:08]
Charlie Sykes
So I do not watch MAGA world with the care that you do out of, you know, a self care instinct that I have. That is. So I'm going to defer to you on what the, what the pressure is from the base. I will say that there are points if, if you're Trump in which the, you know, how many embarrassing signal episodes or security lapses do you have to have before you're, before it's a, a problem with the boss. Now he's obviously not that careful with classified material himself. So his appetite for that stuff may be unlimited for all I know. But there are, you know, every day that the story is about Pete Hegseth and how incompetent he is, the story is not about Donald Trump and how great he is. And you know, if you, I, and I'm saying this, I have no idea what the answer to this question is. But if, you know, on a day that the stock market is losing, last I checked, 1100 points, you know, where you're fighting with the entire rest of the world about tariff rates and about, you know, is the United States going to stay the reserve currency? And you know, are we gonna have NATO? Do you really wanna Also have your secretary of Defense, you know, giving classified information to his wife and brother.
- [42:52]
Ben Wittes
And they may think of that as a distraction from that story. I mean, maybe Trump has decided that he wants to because, you know, maybe Trump thinks that the really scary thing for him is this world economy in the stock market. And so let's, let's have some scandal over here that things can blow over. You never know how his mind actually works, but it does feel like.
- [43:12]
Charlie Sykes
But in a reasonable world, you would say, I can't fight an eight front war. And I'm committed to fighting the Supreme Court on immigration, and I'm committed to fighting, you know, to being on Peter Navarro's side of the, of the tariff battles. And I'm committed to Elon Musk taking the federal government apart. So I don't need the distraction of Pete Hegseth setting up multiple.
- [43:43]
Ben Wittes
You think?
- [43:44]
Charlie Sykes
Right, right. Like that's how a normal person would think about it. And I think eventually he'll get there because the guy is a clown.
- [43:54]
Ben Wittes
Yeah. But there's nothing normal or reasonable about all this. So it strikes me, you know, kind of connecting the dots of our conversation. There are three possible guardrails that Donald Trump might be running up against in the relatively near future. Three checks. Number one would be, of course, be the courts in the U.S. supreme Court. Number two are the markets, which he does pay attention to. If the world market continues to implode the way that it is, and particularly if you start to see lack of faith in the US Dollar, he's going to pay. He will pay attention to that. And the third, though, and I guess this now becomes. I'm almost embarrassed to bring this up because it's Lucy in the football, you know, the, his very, very thin margins, the United States Congress, because we're talking about Pete Hegseth. But there has to be at least a handful of Republican senators who are feeling absolutely humiliated because they were given assurances or they made compromises and they voted to confirm this guy, and they have the shot all over their faces as well. So if at some point the court pushes back, the markets push back, and even a handful of Republican senators push back, Donald Trump's in a very different position than we thought he was 10 days ago.
- [45:13]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think there are some other actors that matter here. One is China. You know, I think the administration did not anticipate China's reaction to the tariffs and whether they should have or not. China did not call up and say, hey, we want to negotiate. What they did is they said, we'll see you reciprocal tariff, and we'll raise you a reciprocal tariff.
- [45:42]
Ben Wittes
Right.
- [45:42]
Charlie Sykes
And they. They responded in a very trumpy way to this. And I think the reaction of other states actually matters. You keep seeing these stories about how the Trump administration is, you know, angry that Europe is going to support Ukraine anyway, which, of course, is the logical consequence of everything. They've been saying, we don't want to do this anymore. We've been, you know, exploited too much. This is a European responsibility. But then they're angry when people take it at face value and say, okay, well, we'll. We'll keep Ukraine in the fight. Right. And I do think a lot of countries calling their bluff, they really expect to be able to throw their weight around. And when other countries say, okay, you pursue what's in your interest and we'll do ours, that actually turns out to really flummox them.
- [46:47]
Ben Wittes
I think the last time you and I spoke, we were talking about this similar subject and about the role that Norway might play, where you told me, right, you compared Norway to. Norway is basically the Saudi Arabia of Europe. Yeah.
- [46:59]
Charlie Sykes
It's a hedge fund with a long coast.
- [47:02]
Ben Wittes
Well, you know, I would strong. I have kept that in mind, particularly because I'm kind of. I've mentioned this before. I'm kind of obsessed with Norwegian television and movies because. And one of the things that I really, you know, struck by, and by the way, there's just some wonderful ones, how deep the democratic values are in that country and. And also how they remember the lessons of history in a very, very deep way. And I mentioned this on a podcast previously, if you have not seen it, Quisling, the Final Days, Norwegian movie about, you know, the final days of the man who. Basically, Norway's greatest traitor. It's really an outstanding movie. And also the movie the King, which is the story of the king of Norway, you know, how they responded. The Battle of Narvik. There's another movie.
- [47:53]
Charlie Sykes
I've been to Narvik.
- [47:56]
Ben Wittes
Have you seen the movie? It's really great. And a movie called Number 24, which is about a true story of one of the resistance fighters in Norway during the war. And in that, I don't want to give too much away, he's an elderly man. He's talking to a group of young Norwegians, and he's telling them how fragile their freedom is, how fragile democracy is, how it took just nine days to lose it. And so these are unlike, I'm afraid to say, Americans. The Norwegians are very, very Serious people. And they have thought this through. And I would just strong, if you are right about this, which I think you are, then it's one of the most hopeful things that I've heard, because I do think there's a real possibility they will step up. Okay, I know you have to run. We have a very, very short period of time. Where are we at in the ongoing betrayal of Ukraine? Over the last seven days, both the President and J.D. vance have expressed impatience. The fact that Vladimir Putin is continuing to humiliate them by not ending this war. What is the state of play today?
- [48:59]
Charlie Sykes
So the state of play is completely obscure, except in the very limited sense that the White House and the State Department are getting fed up with not having a big, beautiful deal to end the thing. And they seem to, on the one hand, blame the Ukrainians for this, which is absurd because the Ukrainians have agreed to the ceasefire deal and the Russians have not. And Steve Witkoff in particular, the President's negotiator, seems to be utterly bamboozled by Vladimir Putin, who he says he likes. On the other hand, they are quite careful when Rubio says, if we don't get a deal in the next few days, we're going to move on. Yeah, it's not at all clear what he means by move on. Does he mean, you know, give up on the negotiations and just keep the status quo, which is US Support for Ukraine? Does he mean abandon Ukraine and go ahead with, you know, deals with Russia and relaxing sanctions on Russia? So everything they say sounds awful. You know, they, they, they, you know, the President, in his meeting with the Salvadoran President Kale the other day was asked about this and went off on a long riff about how this never would have happened under his presidency. And that, you know, you know, Biden and Zelensky were really to blame. And, you know, so everything they say sounds terrible. And yet they have put, you know, a cease fire deal on the table that the Russians keep rejecting. And by rejecting, what I mean is, they say, we love this. Just add these following 70 things to it. And the 70 things are basically, you know, don't. No more foreign support for Ukraine. Right. They're, they're, they're crazy stuff. And so I think there is a, the hopeful scenario is that they at some level understand that the, that Russia is punking them and that they, they will never come out and say it, that, you know, Russia is the impediment to a ceasefire here, but that as they realize this, that they have, that everything they've put on the table, their deranged mineral deal. They're, you know, the Ukrainians play ball and the Russians don't. And that as they realize that, they get backed into this, okay, we're never going to say nice things about Ukraine, but just keep the intelligence flowing. Let the Europeans be the major aid donors, but we keep the tactical cooperation together. Congress can appropriate some more money. We're never going to talk about it, but we'll just quietly do the right thing. Which was, by the way, very much what the Trump won presidency was with regard to support for Ukraine, until, you know, the, the famous phone call. So that's the hopeful scenario. The. I would say that has a, I don't know, 30% likelihood. The other scenario, which is, is that they mean everything they say and walk away means, you know, walk away. Walk away and leave it really in Europe's hands. And that would be a catastrophe.
- [53:06]
Ben Wittes
That would be a catastrophe. Ben Wittes, thank you so much. We've covered so much ground, and it's always a pleasure to talk with you.
- [53:14]
Charlie Sykes
It's a pleasure to see your face, Charlie, and you're a great American, and be well.
- [53:22]
Ben Wittes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We do this several times a week because right now it's more important than ever to remember that we are not crazy.