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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. As I was saying, David, good. Good to see you. As I was saying a year ago, we have to figure out what's going on. Hey, by the way, thank you for being the first guest on the new to the Contrary podcast. The reason I'm mentioning a year ago is that you were my last guest on February 9, and I had to have you as my first guest on February 9, 2025. Kind of bookending, but also inaugurating our new thing.
- [00:40]
David French
Well, I'm so honored, Charlie. I was honored that I was the last guest. I'm honored that I'm the first guest. And I think this is what you call the circle of life here.
- [00:50]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, it is. That's right. It is the Circle Lab. You're there at the end and you're there at the beginning.
- [00:57]
David French
Exactly.
- [00:58]
Charlie Sykes
We are 20 days into the Trump administration, and I think I'm speaking for everybody when I say that we are sitting here in front of this fire hose trying to figure out what to look at as the zone is flooded. And I actually had to make notes here on the first 20 days, David. I mean, where do we begin with all this? The gutting of the doj, purging of the FBI, the annihilation of foreign aid, Maybe Elon Musk's co presidency, or about the aborted trade war with Canada and Mexico, or the takeover of Greenland, Panama and Gaza? The pardon of the January 6 rioters, including the rioters that beat up the cops, you know, backing the blue. Should we start with, I don't know, the mass deportation that seems to be scooping up some American citizens because not all the ICE agents seem to be able to distinguish between Puerto Ricans and other immigrants? Or should we talk about the wretched hive of misfit toys? And I am intentionally mixing the metaphor there. That's Trump's cabinet. I mean, you know, it's really bad, David, when the woman whose main qualification is the fact that she shot her puppy in the face is. Is the non controversial Normie nominee, you know, Kristi Noem. So I don't know where you want to begin all this, because the zone is flooded every. And this, I think, is the challenge, right, is to separate what we should pay attention to, to just kind of the performative nonsense. So where do you want to start?
- [02:39]
David French
So actually, Charlie, I think it's the many. There are many things just like you talked about, but it's also there's one thing. And so it's like I use this analogy in my newsletter this week where I said it's like the hydra. Do you remember the hydra from Greek mythology? You. You had the. The one body and the many heads. And just when you chopped off one head, you know, you. You solve one problem, here comes two more. But you have to understand, it's still.
- [03:08]
Charlie Sykes
One beast, one crisis with many manifestations.
- [03:12]
David French
Exactly. Exactly. So what is the one crisis? The one crisis is that Trump is deciding to blow through the constitutional restraints on the presidency. And this is a very deliberate strategy. Now, I'm not going to be saying for a minute that Trump is sort of a constitutional theorist. No. But he has in his administration people who are constitutional theorists who do have very radical ideas about the power of the presidency. And they happen to dovetail quite nicely, Charlie, with Trump's own kind of will to power, that desire to do whatever he wants to do. So it's the marriage of a legal theory to a demagogue. That's what we're dealing with. And the legal theory is, in essence, that the. The President of the United States.
- [04:01]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [04:02]
David French
Is not just in control of enforcing the law. That in many ways, the President of the United States is going to take up all of the branches of government under his purview. That, in essence, the separation of powers is yesterday's news. Even judicial review, because Russ Vaught, who's head of omb, JD VANCE VICE President, they both have kind of scorned the idea that Trump is going to be bound to follow Supreme Court precedent. So what you're talking about is a giant executive branch power grab. And this is a serious, serious constitutional issue, Charlie. But it's one that doesn't have a lot of resonance sort of in the broad general public. No one is around, no one is chanting, going, separation of power.
- [04:55]
Charlie Sykes
It doesn't roll off norms, bring back the norms.
- [04:58]
David French
Norms, norms, norm. No, that. That doesn't, like, get the people going. But it's incredibly, incredibly important to know what is happening and how serious it is.
- [05:09]
Charlie Sykes
So, you know, we have been warning about this for months, if not years, Right. I mean, yeah, you look at every single thing they're doing, and they basically said, we're going to do that. And I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said, you know, I was expecting they were going to do a lot of this stuff, but actually watching it happen, I'm not sure that I was prepared for all of that. So this is one of those moments where it's shocking but not surprising, or how do you want to look at it? Because it is all happening at once. And I guess here's the Key question that I wanted to ask you. You know, we, in the campaign, we're talking about that Donald Trump was an existential threat to democracy and the constitutional order and we were dismissed as well. That's Trump derangement syndrome. You're exaggerating it kind of feel vindicated, like, okay, we were talking about this, but is it going too far to say that we are in a constitutional crisis or headed for one? You use the term that he's launching a constitutional revolution. So talk to me about that because I don't think that people have fully. There's like lots of different orders here, but this is the coherent theme here, that we are actually seeing a constitutional revolution.
- [06:20]
David French
Well, let me, let me piggyback on top of two very serious people, very sober minded people, not hot take artists Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer. So Jack Goldsmith who is in the Bush doj, Bob Bauer who was legal counsel for Barack Obama. So these are very serious people. JACK Goldsmith Harvard LAW PROFESSOR Sober people.
- [06:44]
Charlie Sykes
These are not, these are not given to hyper verbally.
- [06:47]
David French
No. They are not talking heads and late night cable TV who are just whipping everybody up. No. So what they said is, look, what's happening with these executive orders doesn't look like what you would call a series of test cases. In other words, it's, presidents have been doing this for years where they have kind of incrementally tried to grab more power and it generates a case to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court either says yes or no. So this has been going on for a long time. This is Trump's daca. This is, I mean, Obama's daca. This is Trump's census changes, this is Biden's student loans. I mean, you go through the process and there have been multiple times where they're testing, probing, pushing, but this doesn't look like that. For one thing, the, the, it's a shotgun blast of poorly drafted orders. So if you're, if you're going to.
- [07:41]
Charlie Sykes
Some of them look like just press releases, right? I mean, they're not actually really orders. Yeah, okay.
- [07:45]
David French
For sure. Like you read the DEI orders that like the conservative MAGA sphere is just falling all over itself and exuberance over. They're just very poorly drafted, sloppy orders. So if you want to engage in a very serious, deliberate constitutional strategy to use the courts to sort of test the boundaries of your authority, it would look like something different than this. The executive orders would be much more tightly drafted. There would be much less chaos.
- [08:14]
Charlie Sykes
Is it.
- [08:15]
David French
So this is what Jack Goldsmith and Bauer raise is Wait a minute, are we actually looking at something? And again, let's be very careful here. This is what you would call informed speculation or informed concern that are these really test cases or they actually hoping in some ways to get the negative outcome on an issue of real importance to them, that they then just blow through, that they just ignore the court. And, and the reason why you raised that, it's not just okay because Trump is a bad guy, it's because as we said earlier, there are people very influential in the Trump orbit, J.D. vance, Russ Fox, others who have flat out said that Trump should defy the Supreme Court under the right circumstances. And so this is something that is not, I'm not going to say that we're in a crisis now, we're in a pivotal moment, but we could escalate to crisis very quickly if, say, for example, the Supreme Court upholds or prevents the spending freezes on usaid and Trump just continues to spend to freeze the.
- [09:26]
Charlie Sykes
Money anyway, for example, which is certainly possible. So the Goldsmith and Bauer article was really, really very, very chilling. And it said that they argue that Trump may be attempting to, and this is the quote, to instill fear in the Supreme Court that the presidency is prepared to resort to outright defiance in its decisions. So their argument is that this is like a shot across the bow of the Supreme Court. Really part of, look, I mean, the Trumpists have intimidated and bullied virtually every institution in our society. And they're arguing that he may be basically saying, you know, nice court you have there, Justice Roberts, but do you really wanna test. Because the moment I defy your ruling, people will realize, well, exactly what is a Supreme Court ruling? You know, you made the ruling, but now you go enforce it.
- [10:16]
David French
Yeah, this is, you know, I want to emphasize again, we don't know for sure if Trump will defy the court, but we're heading in that direction. He has people who have urged him to do it under the right circumstances. And also the other thing is, we have to learn, learn larger context here. Charlie, if you look back to the founding and you were going to say, what is it that restrains the president? So if you're going to go back and you're going to have this argument that they had in 1787 and 1788 about the ratification of the Constitution and the anti federalists and I quote one in one of my.
- [10:50]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, I wanted to get to this.
- [10:51]
David French
This is, okay, this guy named an old wig, but we'll get to that. But the argument from the founders was, wait, wait, there's Several things that will restrain a president. Number one, the character of the person in the office. So George Washington was the paradigmatic. You know, he, he set the tone for a long time as to the restraint and dignity of the American President. Then you had this institution, Congress, which was supposed to have its own power and authority. Well, that's basically.
- [11:22]
Charlie Sykes
And jealousies of any jealousy, of any encroachment on their power. I mean, the founders really believed that, of course, Congress would not let the President steal their Article 1 powers because the nature of human beings is that you, you know, you're jealous of those powers, and that's gone, too.
- [11:41]
David French
You're ambitious. Right. If you're a member of Congress, you want to be somebody, and if the President is taking all your powers, you're nobody. But what they didn't anticipate was that you can be somebody, even if you're powerless as a member of Congress, by getting on like Fox News all the time or whatever. And so, so then if Congress is just prostrate before the President, if Congress has bent the knee and that Republicans have, then what's the remaining check? The last check that remains is judicial review. So we have no checks. The character of the presidency. Trump is a man of poor character. So there's no self restraint.
- [12:17]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and the electorate was supposed to play a role in there too, right? That the electorate, the voters would never put a man of, you know, complete lack of character in the Oval Office. They wouldn't do that. That's why we structured it the way we did. Right.
- [12:29]
David French
Yeah. Well, and also, I mean, they would, they would be appalled that voters were selecting the president to begin with because they thought what, what we're going to have is this committee meeting called the Electoral College. But that's a whole nother. That's a whole nother rabbit hole. But the. So if all the barriers are gone and only one remains, and that's judicial review, and the man who's pushing against the court is the same guy who triggered a violent attack on the Capitol? Why would anyone have any confidence that the. He's blown through every barrier beginning, but he's going to walk up to Marbury versus Madison and say that one's sacred.
- [13:06]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so what do you, what do you think? I mean, this, this, this is, this is like the big one. We, our first podcast, and we're at the big one right here because. And let me bounce something off you, because you follow this a lot more conclusion closely than I do. And I'm gonna circle back to this. But you know Watching the surrender of all of the institutions, one after another, not just within the government, but also in civil society. This, this, this sense that, you know, Trump must be appeased because he can't be limited. How much of that goes back to the erosion of faith in the judiciary as a guardrail? I mean, it used to be that institutions, news media would have a certain amount of confidence that, you know what, no matter what the president does, we're not gonna be afraid of the president because we have a constitution and a court that will support these. But after the decision they granted him the sweeping immunity powers, you get the sense that no one really has the confidence that the court is going to hold the line. So what do you think?
- [14:11]
David French
So I am cautiously optimistic that the court will. Charlie. And I'll give you a couple of concrete reasons, or I'll give you one concrete reason to. To be cautiously optimistic. And I'll give you one concrete reason to be nervous. So the concrete reason.
- [14:26]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, my. Cautious. By the way, cautious optimism did not work out well for me in 2024.
- [14:32]
David French
I totally understand that, but I will. It is just a fact that Donald Trump performed worse at the Supreme Court during his first term than any other modern president. So the Supreme Court, during Donald Trump's first term, even with a majority of Republican nominees on the court, it rejected Trump administration arguments more than it rejected the Biden administration, Obama administration, Bush administration. You go down the line. And so the Supreme Court has, Has indicated it will stop the. It will stop Donald Trump. And then that continued in the Biden term. So during the Biden term, a bunch of MAGA legal cases came to the Supreme Court, and they blocked them all. They blocked them all with a couple of exceptions. Immunity, 14th amendment. These were the cases around, can Trump be on the ballot? And then the cases around, under what circumstances can you prosecute him? Both of those cases, I disagreed with the court's reasoning. I disagreed with the outcome. But it still remains the case that they turned back mag arguments about getting the Voting Rights Act. They turned out mag. Turned. Turned back MAGA arguments about the independent state legislature theory, turned back mag arguments about standing and immigration. And this is also including rejecting the MAGA League arguments about the election in 2000, rejecting MAGA arguments about the census. I mean, you can go down the line where the Supreme Court has shown that it's independent. And it's just. It's a shame. I think that popular perception of the Supreme Court is just so focused on, for example, the immunity decision that they've forgotten everything else.
- [16:14]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. Well, that is fair. So you're taking a cautiously optimistic approach to. Let's talk about getting into the weeds here a little bit. You know, Justice Roberts, of course, is an institutionalist. Amy Coney Barrett has turned out to be a far more interesting justice than I think that many of her critics said she would be. She didn't go along with every part of that immunity decision. So is part of your cautious optimism looking at you, Justice Roberts, looking at you, Justice Barrett?
- [16:47]
David French
Yeah, it's actually, and I'll add a third, Justice Kavanaugh. So what you have with Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts is they have indicated, for example, that they're going to be more independent minded. I would say. I don't want to say Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas aren't independent minded. They are. There's just differences in their judicial philosophy. In particular, I think that Barrett and Kavanaugh, Roberts, are less comfortable with revolutionary change, let me put it that way, and hope so. And, and so. Whereas, you know, I affectionately sometimes refer to Justice Gorsuch as the YOLO justice. Like, if he, if he thinks that, like, originalism leads to conclusion X, he's going for it, man. Even if, like, there might be a more incrementalist way to get there, he's gonna go all the way. Not always, but that's sort of his tendency. But with Barrett and Kavanaugh and Roberts, Roberts, I mean, Kavanaugh and Barrett are both originalists, but they also pay attention to consequences more. And Alito has even pointed this out. He pointed this out, I believe, as an interview in the Wall Street Journal where he talked about that some of his colleagues, Republican nominated colleagues, are more. Are more consequentialist. In other words, they think through consequences. But that's an indispensable element of judgment of the judicial role, is to think through the law, the consequences, how it plays out. And so that's why I'm more cautiously optimistic. You do have a number of Republican judges. And also the other thing that makes me cautiously optimistic is if you're going to look at some of the changes, changes in the jurisprudence over the last few years, the court has been paring back the power of the presidency quite a bit. And so Trump is trying to extend the power of the presidency at the exact moment when the court has been restricting its power consistently, really, for, you know, a decade or so.
- [18:48]
Charlie Sykes
So let's go back to the worst case scenario. What if the court, for example, says, okay, no, Trump, you know, Trump Musk cannot freeze all these domestic payments by the way, when I listed all the things that happened in the last 20 days, remember that day when all the payments were frozen, we haven't even gotten to the fact that on Friday we find out that Elon Musk is messing around with Social Security Administration. I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong there? So what happens if they rule against Donald Trump and Trump, Vance Musk basically say, okay, you know, thanks for your opinion. We're doing it anyway. What happens?
- [19:26]
David French
Boy, this, this gets. I mean, who.
- [19:29]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, we keep talking about the law, but at this point, who enforces the law? What is the accountability mechanism? Or does it just crash? What happens?
- [19:41]
David French
Yeah, you raise a great question, Charlie. So, and in fact, I, we're publishing an interview that I did with Judge Sutton, the chief judge of the six Circuit Court of Appeals at the Times. We're publishing an interview coming forward or coming out very soon. And this was a question I asked him, okay, if I didn't say what happens if Trump defies the Supreme Court? I said, what is your power to enforce your judgments? And the reality is 99.99999 of the time.
- [20:13]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [20:13]
David French
It's voluntary compliance, that Right. That both parties agree to abide by the results. And there's no need at any point to bring in. In contempt citations, to bring it. You know, but in theory, they can issue contempt orders. They can issue injunctions against specific public officials. So the contempt orders can, can. And this raises a question. Does could Trump, could Trump then pardon the. Pardon his employees from any contempt order? And you really get into this contest of wills where all of the actual real world force lies with the President and the persuasion and court orders lie with the judges and then Congress, which ideally would then step in and say, president Trump, look, you know, we're Republicans, you're Republicans, but this is the Constitution at stake. You better comply or you're going to be impeached.
- [21:15]
Charlie Sykes
That could happen, David.
- [21:16]
David French
That's not going to happen.
- [21:17]
Charlie Sykes
No, it's not going to happen.
- [21:19]
David French
And so this is the most.
- [21:21]
Charlie Sykes
This is a genuinely scary scenario, isn't it?
- [21:23]
David French
Right. So if Nixon. Let's just rewind the clock because I think the closest analog to Trump is Nixon, although Nixon was more, in many ways less, less, much more subtle and less brazenly corrupt than Trump. But the difference with, in the situation with Nixon is so Nick Nixon's corruption just starts pouring out. Like all of the details about Nixon's corruption just start coming out into the public square. And it was Republicans who went to him and said, time's up, Time's up. We're not going to be, we're not going to stand with you anymore. And the instant that he knew that he didn't have Republicans standing with him was the instant that the system held. And so we look back on Watergate as both a scandal, but we look back on water to gate as a test. Our system passed.
- [22:11]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [22:12]
David French
What will we look back on now? Well, already you look back on January 6th and impeachment as a test. The system failed because if anything, married merited impeachment and conviction. It was January 6th in the effort to steal the election, and Republicans said, nope, nope. And so is defying the Supreme Court worse than storming the Capitol? You know, and so, well, see, this.
- [22:37]
Charlie Sykes
Is, this is part of, I mean, this goes back to this, this Bauer Goldsmith argument that, that at some point he's going to, that they're attempting to instill this anxiety, fear on the part of the justices that, you know, that we will be reduced to potted plants if we issue a ruling that is then ignored. And the people will kind of realize that we've had two centuries of bluffing you about all of this. They don't use that. They don't use that language. So, you know, again, we don't know where we're going, but, you know, we're talking about constitutional crisis and whether we're there or not, the role that Elon Musk is playing. And I actually was doing some interviews with some European reporters and I said, look, you can challenge me on this, but there is no precedent at all in American political history for the world's richest man basically giving the tools to this vast, unaccountable power and claiming, really, they appear to be claiming the right of impoundment. Right. I mean, this is a big thing for the Russ Boats of the world, which is basically like, screw Congress, screw that Article 1 stuff about the power of the perspective. We are going to decide what we spend money on. And on a regular basis, Elon Musk is bragging about the guy does not have a, he doesn't work for the government. He has all kinds of conflicts of interest. And he is right now, his fingers deep into every data point, you know, conduit of money. I mean, this is an amazing moment, David. So that's why some people say the, the constitutional crisis is happening right now because Congress is doing nothing about its Article 1 powers being usurped by Elon Musk.
- [24:23]
David French
Right. Yeah. I mean, it is hard to overemphasize just how much Congress has bent the knee. I mean, it's just, you just cannot overstate how much the Republicans in Congress have bent the knee to Trump, how little willingness there is to confront him. How have they have no spine. They're completely intimidated. I mean, it is, it's embarrassing.
- [24:46]
Charlie Sykes
Charlie, it's an old story, right? We've been talking about this for eight years, but it feels so much worse this year. So much worse than it was in 2025 feels, you know, just much uglier than 2017. And we thought 2017 was pretty ugly.
- [25:03]
David French
2017 is much uglier because in 2017, Trump was surrounded by a bunch of serious people. General Mattis, General Kelly, you know, H.R. mcMaster. I mean, just go on. But I just want to give people a taste of how absurd this impoundment argument is. So the Constitution does actually very explicitly provide for the President to have the ability to register an objection to a con, a congressional appropriation. It's called a veto. Okay? It's called a veto. And if President Trump vetoes something and it's over overridden, it's still law. And you can't then go in and say, well, you overrode my veto, but I'm not going to spend the money anyway.
- [25:43]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [25:44]
David French
And it's similarly, if he's president and a previous president has signed into law an act of Congress, he's bound by that law. And the fact that the previous, the thing about law.
- [25:57]
Charlie Sykes
Right, right.
- [25:58]
David French
He doesn't get a second secret veto. That's like, okay, President Biden signed something into law, but I didn't sign it into law. So I'm not going to spend this money. That is not the way the system works. If it worked like that, Charlie, America would become a failed state pretty quickly because you would start to have wild swings back and forth in power. How difficult would it be, for example, for the government to make any kind of long term financial commitment at all? Because any new president could just unwind everything done before. It's, it would bake extreme instability into the system. And so that's, it just makes no sense constitutionally that a president can just refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated in a mandatory appropriation. Now, if Congress says the president. Let's just use an example. If Congress says the president may spend, just use an example, $25 billion on five submarines. That's not, that would be, that's discretionary. If it says con, the pre. That the Department of defense shall spend $25 billion on five submarines, well, they got to spend the money on five submarines. So this, this is just civics 101. But Russ Vaugh and others essentially are saying, no, no, no. What. What we. And what we mean is that you don't actually have a chief executive if that chief executive can't refuse to spend money or can't fire any person and every person in. And that's just not the law. It's never been the law. It's not the constitutional structure.
- [27:37]
Charlie Sykes
And, you know, and he was confirmed with, I believe, every single Republican senator voting for his Constitution. I mean, if there was one area where if Congress was going to assert its prerogatives and draw the line, it would have been the guy who's basically arguing that, yeah, we're going to gut Article 1 powers from Congress.
- [27:56]
David French
And, Charlie, can I vent about something quickly, please?
- [27:59]
Charlie Sykes
No.
- [28:00]
David French
Is this a safe space for venting? I'm getting a lot of people sending me messages saying, david, why are you talking about all this constitutional stuff so much when, look, he's. He's accomplished some things that you should, like, like his executive order revoking the. Or, you know, regarding the Mexico City abortion policy, where we're not going to be funding abortion overseas. I'm glad about that. His executive order about biological males participating in women's sports, or his executive order about some elements of de. Things like that. I'm like, guys, okay, let me quote Yuval Levin for a second. Yuval said something on Ezra Klein's podcast that was great. He said, I am more concerned about constitutionalism than policy. As long as we're complying with the Constitution, let's have the policy debate.
- [28:51]
Charlie Sykes
But we're in a minority there, aren't we?
- [28:53]
David French
Totally.
- [28:54]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, that, that, that used to be the heart of American conservatism, and now it feels very last century. Right? These folks, MAGA folks, care. They have turned that on its head, don't they?
- [29:06]
David French
Yes. And then the second thing is, guys, all of you telling me about these big victories that Trump is winning, they're not big victories. An executive order is about the weakest form of legal directive that exists in the federal system. They would be big victories if he had a statute passed, if a law was passed. But the fact that he writes an executive order, number one, executive orders are far more vulnerable to legal challenge. Number two, executive orders are ephemeral by their very nature. And so the next president who comes in, if they don't agree with Trump's big victories and all the winning, he just undoes it all. And so this sort of, this triumphalism that I'm seeing. I'm like, guys, you're smashing through the Constitution for a bag of beans. And they're not magic for just a bag of beans. Because all of this stuff can be unwound by the next Democratic president.
- [30:01]
Charlie Sykes
But it's giving them the dopamine hits, right?
- [30:03]
David French
I mean, it's big dope.
- [30:04]
Charlie Sykes
It's, it's almost. And by the way, it almost feels. And I'm just going to throw this out here. This is the danger of doing the podcast where you're just thinking as you go along. There is kind of this weird psychosexual thrill in watching the cruelty, the violence, the breaking of the norms. They're genuinely excited by things that at one time I think would have shocked people. I mean, just the, the, the arrogance out there.
- [30:29]
David French
It's gruesome, Charlie. Like, yes, you can go and you can talk to people about kids, vulnerable people overseas who are suffering and may die as a result of USAID cutoffs. And people on the Christian Twitter, right, will accuse you toxic empathy or emotional.
- [30:52]
Charlie Sykes
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Toxic empathy? This is a thing?
- [30:55]
David French
Yes, among Christians, my friend.
- [30:57]
Charlie Sykes
Like God loves too much. God. God did not intend you to love that much. So. Well, we got the Gospel according to JD Vance this week, right, where he explained that, you know, the. Forget that Good Samaritan parable, the Good.
- [31:10]
David French
Samaritan beginning a few years ago. This is a trend that bubbled up from the extreme religious right a few years ago. And it happened in the aftermath of George Floyd and the racial reckoning. A lot of people are saying to pastors, don't listen to people who are emotionally sharing their experiences of oppression or discrimination, because that is manipulation. That is toxic empathy. And so then this, this concept took off and it's taken off. There have been best selling books about this, Charlie, in Christian circles where they're taking off saying if you're talking about the level, if your argument involves appealing to the suffering of other human beings, you're engaging in emotional manipulation. Now, this is mind blowing, considering I recently wrote a piece where I was trying to chronicle how many times in scripture does scripture admonish us to take care of the poor, the marginalized? The suffering seems to be kind of a theme. Thousand scriptures. Yeah. Like, let me put it this way. The number of scriptures dealing with the poor, the marginalized, the suffering is so much more than the number of scriptures dealing with, for example, sexual ethics. And it's not that I don't think sexual ethics are important, it's just that, my goodness, if you're a Christian movement that's going to circle everything around sexuality and nothing around reaching the poor, then you've lost the plot, man. You have.
- [32:40]
Charlie Sykes
Well, see, this is the thing. This is the part that is kind of mind blowing boggling because after, you know, after listening to J.D. vance, I mean, I did go back and reread the parable of the Good Samaritan and many of these other things. And as a couple of theologians pointed out, Vance's position is the exact opposite of what's in the New Testament. And yet they've absorbed it. You know, I mean, part of it is that you, you listen to the ends justify the means. Will to power. You use the phrase will to power before. This administration's philosophy seems more Nietzschean than New Testament.
- [33:16]
David French
It's Schmidian. It's Schmittian. Carl Schmidt, the German philosopher who later became a member of the Nazi party, he outlined what he called the friend enemy distinction.
- [33:26]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [33:26]
David French
And if you go down the rabbit hole of maga, you will actually find, believe it or not, Christian voices, Charlie, defending this, the Schmidian friend, enemy distinction in politics. And so what you're talking about is essentially for my friends, everything. For my enemies, nothing. Which is exactly contrary to the American, the spirit of the American founding, which was how do we create a pluralistic society where people have diametrically opposed positions and people can win and lose politically in this country and in this culture and still thrive and flourish. And so this Schmittian friend, enemy distinction is the opposite of the virtue ethics of many of the American founders. And so they really are digging down and digging into friend enemy. And they view USAID as an enemy. No. And they. Yeah, so they. It has to be destroyed.
- [34:19]
Charlie Sykes
Well, okay, so. And it has to be destroyed in the cruelest way possible. And I know this has now become a cliche that the cruelty is, is the point. I don't know. I was listening to the story yesterday about the commandant of the Coast Guard who is, was fired on day one woman, you know, decorated admiral, but was fired by Trump, given a 60 day waiver to move out of the house that she occupies, his commandant. And apparently within the last couple of days, they told her, you have to get out of the house. Trump wants you out of the house. Now. She had three hours to get out of the house. She had to leave a lot of her personal effects behind. And again, you know, this is not Trump derangement syndrome to say it was the cruelty. And let's go to Russ Vogt, who has just confirmed his Own being. You've mentioned him several times. He has made this explicit. This is what he wrote. We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. He said, yeah, when they wake up in the morning, we want them not to go to work because they're increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma. So it's not just the we need to cut the budget. It's like we need to inflict pain, fear, and anxiety. And that's. And that really is central to what we've been watching over the last couple of weeks, isn't it? It's not just that we're having budget cuts, but we just want to spread this and the thrill that MAGA gets and, oh, more tears, more pain, more agony.
- [35:45]
David French
And remember when this is happening. Russ Vaught is an outspoken Christian. So he's saying, I want people to suffer. I want people. So let me circle back to JD Vance for a second, because I want to put some things in perspective for people. Recently, J.D. vance tried to justify some of the cutoffs of aid by appealing to a Catholic doctrine, order armorists, or something along those lines. Forgive me if I.
- [36:11]
Charlie Sykes
Order of loves.
- [36:12]
David French
Yeah, order of loves. And so he was essentially saying, you know, look, you prioritize your family, and then you prioritize your neighborhood and then your community, and then. And so. And a lot of this is just kind of common sense. Like, if you have a choice between, like, let's say your son or daughter is. Has a financial need and a guy 10 rows down, 10 houses down has a financial need, you. You take care of your son or daughter first. And then if. And so he tried to use that as sort of saying, oh, look, you know, what we're doing is we're bringing our. Our priorities in alignment with a big Christian tradition. No, no, no, no, no. If, you know, the way the federal budget actually works, right. This is what he's basically saying. So let's suppose you make $500 a week. Let's just, you know, you're young, you're starting out, you're making 500 a week, not very much money. And you're at the. And you're walking out of the grocery store and said, salvation army person with the bell. And you put, oh, I don't know, $3 in the kettle out of your 500. Would anyone come up and say, you're not taking care of the orders of your love?
- [37:26]
Charlie Sykes
Exactly.
- [37:26]
David French
Because you're not prioritizing your family. And you go, what are you talking about? I kept $497. I just gave three away. Are you absurd? Like, probably I should give more than $3 out of 500. Right? Well, that's about, I think the, the level of foreign aid in the US budget is around 0.7% percent. It's not even 1%. Now, if you include some of the extraordinary military aid to Ukraine, which is not in the same category as USAID, it'll go slightly above 1%. But we are not violating the order of loves by sending 0.7% of our budget for humanitarian causes.7.
- [38:12]
Charlie Sykes
Well, also, part of the irony, of course, is that if you make the argument, as some MAGA folk, one MAGA friend made is like, well, why should we take care of the poor in Africa as opposed to the poor right here at home? And the irony, of course, is that that money is not going to go to the poor here at home because they're going to cut that too. They're going to cut.
- [38:35]
David French
Right.
- [38:36]
Charlie Sykes
They're going to cut all of those safety nets. So much for all of that. So let's step back. Okay, you know what? I'm gonna stick with the const. Since we're nerding out on the Constitution, because this was something that I thought was really interesting in your piece where you, you know, there was a debate about whether or not the presidency was going to be too powerful, whether it could get out. This was something that the founding Fathers had to wrestle with. You know, and in the, in the Federalist Papers, you know, Hamilton, Madison, John Jay were arguing, we got this, we have a system. And, and then the anti Federalists were out there saying, no, we don't think there are enough checks and balances. And so you quote somebody who wrote under the name the old Whig, who was an anti Federalist, by which we mean somebody who was arguing against the ratification of the U.S. constitution. And he wrote in 1787, he said, the office of the President of the United States appears to me to be clothed with such powers as are dangerous to be the fountain of all honors in the United States, commander in chief of the army, navy and militia, with the power of making treaties and granting pardons, and to be vested with an authority to put a negative upon all laws unless two thirds of both houses persist in enacting it and put their names down. Calling the yeas and nays for that purpose is in reality to be a king. And as you point out, okay, he's not going to be the king of England and everything. But here's my question, David, is that you're at the point now where you're quoting the anti Federalists.
- [40:05]
David French
Yeah, yeah, okay, I know, I know. It's, it's fascinating because I think an old wig. And by the way, how much do I love that name? That was his pseudonym, you know, so like Hamilton would write under Publius, he writes under an old wig. And I don't think anybody actually even knows who he is. And it's Whig. And. But yeah, I think on balance, the Federalists still had the better of the argument on the 1787 Constitution. The anti Federalists had the better argument on the Bill of Rights. And they won. They got a Bill of Rights. And so. But both of these were very smart people going back and forth. And what an old Whig highlights has proven at multiple points in American history. He is highlighting a failing, a flaw in the Constitution. The Constitution does trust the President too much. And that's one of the reasons why I had problems with the Supreme Court's immunity ruling is it extended that trust. It made the trust. It extended that trust in an uncut, in an extra constitutional way, in my view. And so we could.
- [41:12]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [41:13]
David French
Yeah. And so, you know, when, when it, when the old way or an old Whig is looking at the, the powers of the presidency, we forget and we, we don't. We don't acknowledge how much it was the example of George Washington running through, as a thread through American history.
- [41:30]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [41:30]
David French
That says presidents should be restrained. And the only times we've really seen presidents straining at their limits have been in times of existential national crises like the Civil war, World War I, World War II, and then, even then, they've often done it in a way that's pretty grim, like FDR interning Japanese Americans, Woodrow Wilson imprisoning those who protested the war. And so President. When presidents lose their sense of honor, when the presidents violate that honor code set by George Washington, what we found is there's often not a lot of effective structures to pull him back in.
- [42:09]
Charlie Sykes
All right, so that's where we're wrapping up here. And I want to go back through the last 20 days. And I get asked this question every once in a while, and I admit I struggle and probably give different answers to different people. Who is the most. Who are you most concerned about? Who is the most dangerous? Is it Cash Patel? Is it Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is it Pete Hegseth? Is it Russ Vogt? Which one of those is the most shockingly dangerous?
- [42:39]
David French
Oh, easily. Oh. So there's two answers. Micro, level, macro, micro. It's Cash Patel. So Cash Patel is very dangerous, but not as much to sort of the media in America. And he's very dangerous for prominent Trump critics, for example. So Charlie, buckle up, brother. So he's very, you know, by the.
- [42:59]
Charlie Sykes
Way, you, you did the Cash Patel as a warning shot. And actually I got, I got goosebumps because I don't know if, you know, the FBI comes knocking on the door.
- [43:09]
David French
Call your lawyer instantly.
- [43:11]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, immediately. Right. Well, but this changes everything because I mean, up until now, I would not have thought twice about, of course, you cooperate with law enforcement, you cooperate with the FBI. But now, I'm sorry, but go ahead. So Cash Patel is your most dangerous.
- [43:24]
David French
On the micro level. And when I say micro, I just mean you would see more targeted consequences of Cash Patel on the macro level. To me, it's RFK Jr. And it's not close. And I'll tell you why. Even if he doesn't change, doesn't succeed in sort of changing CDC policy regarding vaccines and vaccine schedules, and even if he is ineffective at really mucking up the HHS infrastructure, he's going to have a bully pulpit and already vaccine refusal of all vaccines.
- [43:59]
Charlie Sykes
Not just happening. Right?
- [44:01]
David French
It's already happening. And I could easily imagine you give an anti vax guy like him 2 years, 3 years to spread his anti, his false anti vax gospel and you could begin to see vaccine uptake really plummeting. You could start to see the re emergence of some terrible childhood diseases such as measles at scale. And this is not something that is entirely theoretical. I mean, think about what happened with the Samoan measles outbreak that killed dozens of kids. You know, so that is what worries me that, that if you have an already existing sort of Maha culture that's arising out of sort of the crunchy far left and the homeschool far right, and it's all these moms who've decided that, you know, they understand immunology better than immunologists and all of that.
- [44:53]
Charlie Sykes
They did their own research.
- [44:55]
David French
They, that and then you, you and that starts to permeate through American culture. You could have large scale effects, whereas with.
- [45:04]
Charlie Sykes
Well, okay, well what?
- [45:05]
David French
Small scale. Right.
- [45:06]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so I agree with this analysis. Let me just one other twist on this though is there will be another pandemic. I mean, we are seeing the spread of bird flu. How will an administration with RFK handle the next pandemic? Here in Milwaukee, the zoo just shut down their aviary because there's so many dead birds that showed up along Lake Michigan down in the Chicago area. I, you Know, during this past year, I've kind of taken up feeding all the birds and everything, but that's a, that's a digression. So there, there will be, I mean, one of the most predictable things in, in history is that there will be another pandemic. And I have very little confidence. And I think that's part of this rolling thing that we're seeing, that even the people that are not controversial, like Sean Duffy, the, the rather moronic former congressman from Wisconsin who's now Secretary of Transportation, who's apparently prepared to turn over the keys to what, air traffic control to Elon Musk's 25 year old incels. I mean, these things are scary. We don't know what the consequences. But my level of confidence in every single level of government is eroded. And I'm going to just make it clear, I do think that almost all these bureaucracies do need to be reformed. But reform is different than obliteration.
- [46:27]
David French
You know, I'm glad you raised that, Charlie, because here's why it's so difficult to combat populism. Okay? So populism is often rooted in a real issue. So the Great Depression or the long wars in the Middle east or stag shuttered factories in the Midwest or rising deaths of despair, these are very real things. Right? And so there is an actual need for reform. Well, along comes a populist and the populist comes stampeding in. And like that John Mulvaney skit, John Mulaney skit, Horse in the hospital.
- [47:00]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [47:01]
David French
You're like, okay, wait a minute, like this isn't a perfect hospital or anything, but we've got a horse in the hospital and he's not making it better. What you don't want to do, though, is to slide into the role of. I'm defending the status quo because.
- [47:15]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [47:15]
David French
What people do is they say, well, I'm discontent with the status quo. You're not offering me an alternative.
- [47:21]
Charlie Sykes
I want change. Right.
- [47:22]
David French
I got to go with this other guy. And I feel, I fear that in the response to Trump, there has been too much sort of defense of the status quo and not enough highlighting people's actual real concerns and saying, I have the better answer. And I think that's that. But that's a difficult thing to do because Trump is then trying to jam everyone into. You're defending the broken status quo. No, no, no, no, no, I don't.
- [47:50]
Charlie Sykes
This is a really important, this is a really important point. And I think it's one of the reasons why the Democrats, you know, flailed so much back in 2024 because rather than providing an alternative vision going forward, they, they were the, the party of the status quo. And I, you know, saved the blowback about, you know, going back to Biden. We didn't even get into Biden's pardons or any of that stuff. So, David, when will we know whether the judicial guardrails hold? Somebody was saying, what is America going to look like at the end of four years? And I said, you know what? I'm wondering what America's going to look like at the end of four months or a year. Are we going to know this year whether your cautious optimism is justified?
- [48:33]
David French
I think we'll have a very good idea. I think we're going to have some significant Supreme Court decisions within the calendar year. And that will be the test. That will be the test. Now, you might see reasons for alarm early. So, for example, if a district court issues an injunction and the supreme and Trump doesn't pay attention to that, or courts of appeal issues injunctions or uphold injunctions and court and Trump doesn't pay attention, that's a big flashing red warning light. But the break glass in case of emergency is if, if is if Trump defies scotus, if Trump defies the Supreme Court. And I think we might know that within a year.
- [49:13]
Charlie Sykes
So if you got a phone call today before the super bowl from, from somebody who works in the federal government who's wondering, do I stay or do I go? Should I take one of these buy it offers? Should I be part of this shit show or should I get the hell out? What would you advise them, David? Stay or go?
- [49:32]
David French
That's a. I think my default would be to stay if you like, you know, if the job is a good job and it's good for you and your family, my default position is to stay. But here's what I'm worried about. Charlie Yuval said this very well in his interview with Ezra was, look, there are a lot of people who are in the federal government. Some of the most important people are people who could make a lot more money in the private sector. They have tons of options, but because of a sense of calling and public spiritedness, they stay in the, in the federal bureaucracy. We need those people, okay? We need the people who voluntarily choose to give up sometimes seven figures to work in these low six figure range jobs. Well, if you're somebody that talented and you're looking at, well, on the one hand I can get a buyout and go make a million dollars or I can stay Here, make a fraction of that and get hounded by these mag idiots.
- [50:25]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [50:26]
David French
Well, then they're gonna go. And you know who will stay is a lot of the people who didn't necessarily have that many options, who were not sort of at the tip of the spear. Now, some tip of the spear. This is generalities. I don't. If you're a federal employee and you're listening and you think, oh, I'm staying and I'm the tip of the spear, so I think you're insulting me. No, no, no, no. If you're at the tip of the spear, we need you to stay. And some people will stay. But there are an awful lot of people in the federal government who. They're not top of the world, and they're some of the ones who don't have the options. Right.
- [51:01]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I tend to agree with you. I guess, you know, one of the arguments in Trump 1.0 was people who, you know, thought, I'm going to stay because I can be in the room and I can influence them. Those people, forget it. That, that is not going to work. You're never going to be able to do that. You'll just simply be complicit in all of this. But I agree with you that it's very important that I think some of the most experienced people stay, because, you know, it is much more. It's much easier to run through the china store smashing things than it is to reassemble. And these institutions that are being destroyed are going to be very difficult to recreate and reestablish after this range, this Muskian rage that's going through. David French, thank you for helping us launch this new endeavor, the first ever to the Contrary podcast. Thank you so much.
- [51:58]
David French
It's been such a treat. Charlie, it's always great to talk to you, and I'm so honored to be your first guest and best wishes on the new podcast.
- [52:06]
Charlie Sykes
Well, thank you, and thank you all for listening to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back later this week and we'll probably do this all over again. Thanks for listening.