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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. Welcome to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Very fortunate to have my good friend David French joining me this weekend because we have a lot to talk about. David.
- [00:22]
David French
Oh, is this going to be Joe Rogan links? Charlie, are we going to go three to four, five hours? Somewhere around there, We.
- [00:30]
Charlie Sykes
Does he really go three to five hours? See, I don't ever listen to that stuff.
- [00:33]
David French
I don't think it's about three. I think it's typically around three. Yeah, yeah.
- [00:37]
Charlie Sykes
See, I actually, I actually go for the shorter ones, but I don't know, there's, there's, there's different philosophies about podcasts. There are some people who say that, you know, make them short and pithy, others who say, no, people want to wallow in it. They want to go on for hours and hours. We won't, though. So. Okay, so as I was just telling you, I have a very, very short list. We have the collapse of the law firms, the group chat fallout. You had a fantastic piece about Donald Trump's faith advisor, Paula White, by the way, Laura Loomer back in the White House. We're in a period right now where it is impossible to come up with something too absurd. I mean, it's, there's no, you know, have you thought about this? That if somebody would have said 12 months ago, yeah, Pete Hegseth is going to be the Secretary of Defense, Kash Patel is going to be the FBI Director, Tulsi Gabbard will be a Director of National Intelligence, you would have thought, okay, no, seriously. And Laura Loomer would be choosing who are, you know, works in the national security agencies, whatever.
- [01:42]
David French
You know, I, when, when I was telling people about Trump 2.0, I remember telling people things like, we could have an Attorney General, Pam Bondi, like that was my worst case scenario. I had no idea that Trump. Well, I did. I won't say I had no idea. I, it was not as big a concern that Trump would nominate somebody like a Matt Gates, who is initially choice number one. And I didn't think that he would actually go all Cash Patel and Bongino in the F. I did not know he was going to go with Hexith and dod. You knew he was going to have loyalists. You knew he was going to have sycophants. You did not necessarily know he was going to be raiding some of the worst elements of right wing media to bring them in to run American national security and American law enforcement. And in fact, had I told Trump voters before the election, including A lot of the Trump voters around me, I'm not talking about the core maga. MAGA people who would have, you know, if I told them, hey, it's going to be FBI Director Cash Patel, they would have celebrated. I'm talking about your more normal Republican voter, the people who actually put him in the White House. And if I said, it's going to be FBI Director Cash Patel, they would have said, stop being alarmist. You have Trump derangement syndrome.
- [02:56]
Charlie Sykes
Trump, absolutely.
- [02:57]
David French
Yeah.
- [02:59]
Charlie Sykes
No, I had those. You know, when you think about it, the kinds of people that he's chosen, I mean, they send a couple of messages. Number one, I mean, these are the most slavishly loyal people that you could possibly have. Most of them have no constituency outside of MAGA world. So in some ways, he's basically saying, I'm gonna surround myself with people who will never push back. That's on one level. The second level is just the pure sort of humiliation of making Republicans in the Senate vote for people like this. That he actually does know how to use humiliation as a cudgel, doesn't he? That I am gonna demand such loyalty, that I'm gonna demand you vote for Pete Hegseth, that you vote for Cash Patel, that you confirm RFK Jr.
- [03:46]
David French
So there. Charlie, I'm glad you brought that up right off the jump, because this really helps explain the dynamic of what we've seen. He does relish the public spectacle of bending the knee. And what's interesting to me, one thing that's absolutely fascinating, is how he will elevate people who were once his absolute harshest critics to extreme pinnacles of power. After that.
- [04:14]
Charlie Sykes
Rubio.
- [04:15]
David French
Rubio. J.D. vance. I mean, all of my discussions about Trump over 10 years, I have never compared Trump to Hitler. I have zero. I don't think I've ever done that. J.D. vance did that, and he's Vice President of the United States, and so. And Rubio went after Trump, hammer in tongs, that it's going to be a humiliation, it's going to be indignity if he becomes President, United States, and now he's Secretary of State. Charlie, here's my theory. If you're tired of your current job, go bend the knee. And hey, maybe in the latter half his administration, you could be like Secretary of Treasury or something like that, because he relishes. He loves that capitulation. He does something that he. And. And he incentivizes it. He's very clever about that. He's very, very clever. You know, we can talk about his Incompetence, which is very real. We can talk about his malice, which is very real. But you cannot argue that the man doesn't have super shrewd political instincts. He wouldn't be where he is if he didn't have them. And I think this is one of the shrewdest assessments that he made, was that these people are weak. If I dominate them and I can establish control, they will that that by establishing a process that says, convert to me and the ceiling is unlimited. You can go anywhere you want.
- [05:36]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, but I own you forever.
- [05:38]
David French
But I own you forever.
- [05:40]
Charlie Sykes
And you can never push back. So when you go in, it's all in. Right. I mean, it's not just. I agree with you on this, it's everything.
- [05:51]
David French
Right? Right. You know, it's funny, there is this really interesting phenomenon, I think, which gave Republicans an advantage in 2024. It was, you can believe anything. You can be anti Vax, you can be pro Vax, you can be pro Ukraine, you can be anti Ukraine, you can believe anything as long as you believe one thing in addition, which is Donald Trump is lord and master.
- [06:20]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [06:21]
David French
As long as you say you put on the red hat. Anything else you're free to believe. And, you know, at first, here was my mistake, Charlie. My mistake was that that condition was going to shrink his tent, but in reality, it oddly expanded his tent because the Democrats had more conditions. You know, especially the far left of the Democratic Party had more conditions. And so, you know, you had this whole population of people who'd been attacked, for example, because their position on. You go through the laundry list of sort of culture war issues, and they found out that I can totally be me as long as I've got on that red hat if I just move on over to the other side. And. And so I had. That was something that I, I did not assess I accurately. I thought that the condition of putting on the red hat and yielding to Trump would be just a bridge too far for, quote, unquote, independent thinkers. But I, What I forgot was the element of both how many, quote, independent thinkers had been repelled by some of the culture of the left, and then how much people are just basically very, very greedy and ambitious. And so if you impose a pretty low threshold on them, or at least what appears initially to be a low threshold of acceptance on them, but then you give them sort of an unlimited level of advancement, then you can create a almost culture of sycophancy that.
- [07:58]
Charlie Sykes
And he has.
- [07:59]
David French
Is unlike almost anything we've ever seen.
- [08:03]
Charlie Sykes
Well, it is and so this gets us into the first topic that I wanted to talk to you about, which is the tariffs, because I cannot tell you how many people in the business community assured me, absolutely, Charlie, don't worry about the tariffs. He doesn't really mean the tariffs. He's going to bluff on the tariffs. The tariffs are negotiating to him. And they seem genuinely shocked when, in fact, he did what he has said he was going to do all along. But what is amazing is, again, how economically illiterate and politically reckless this is. So give me your take on this. And by the way, I just want to draw the line for people who say that Donald Trump is just your traditional conservative Republican. You just had a Republican president, the same Republican president who switched sides in the Ukraine, Russia war last month, impose a $6 trillion tax increase on American consumers. $6 trillion, which is three times the tax increase that we passed in 1942 to pay for World War II. That's adjusted for inflation. So give me your take on what's happening, because the stock market, you and I are talking on Friday. Market crashed on Thursday. Markets crashed on Friday. Donald Trump had to know that was going to happen. Right? And he's doing it anyway.
- [09:22]
David French
So I, the one thing is that Donald Trump had to know it was happening. Had to know it would happen. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I do think that he's so delusional that he, he thinks that because he declares it, that the, that he, that people, that this business community that he believes is incredibly loyal will rally to his side. But also he's so. He has so little self doubt that even the tanking of the stock market isn't going to shake his confidence in himself. It's going to make him believe the stock market's out to get him.
- [09:55]
Charlie Sykes
He is a true believer.
- [09:57]
David French
Right. But here's what's happening, Charlie, and this is something that I think is really important for people to understand. There's a huge difference between Trump 1.0 and 2.0 in this regard. In Trump 1.0, Trump was in love with tariffs. Trump's been in love with tariffs forever, but he was also surrounded by people who were a lot of traditional establishment Republicans who threw their bodies in front of a lot of his worst instincts. And so, yes, there were tariffs in term 1.0, but they were much more modest. Much more modest. So, so now in Trump 2.0, it's too simple to say he's now surrounded by sycophants. He's surrounded by Sycophants who are also weird ideologues. And they have their own worldview and belief system that they are using Trump to facilitate in many ways. So Trump looks at tariffs and says, tariffs are wonderful. Tariffs are great. Tariffs are something that bring us revenue, make us rich, which is all delusional stuff. But he's got this arena, these people around him who, they know that tariffs can suppress economic growth. They know that. And that's the point. Charlie, you have a lot of people in this larger orbit who believe things like Americans have too much cheap stuff. Americans are getting miserable because they're too focused on GDP growth and economic growth. They want Americans to have a more simple life. You know, they look back at the 1950s with smaller homes, one. One breadwinner, you know, less sort of consumer options. And they think, who believes that?
- [11:38]
Charlie Sykes
Is this J.D. vance?
- [11:40]
David French
Some of this is coming from like the, the far right, the, the new sort of religious right. You see echoes of it in J.D. vance. You, you see echoes of this in Oren Cass and kind of this sort of whole. It's a, it's a Republican degrowth move, truth be told. And look, I'm the last person to say you need more stuff, like I'm a believer in a simpler life in many ways, but that's an argument, that's a moral argument to make. That's a cultural argument. You don't go to America and say we have too much stuff. So I'm going to enact policies that make sure you have less, that constrain your ability to.
- [12:20]
Charlie Sykes
This is so different from the Republican message for the last 30 years. I mean, this is so different from the prosperity message in the past. And for it to come from. This is why I think people are having a hard time getting their heads around this because, you know, the Republican Party has been growth at all costs. That's why we cut taxes. Right? We cut taxes because we want to create jobs, because we want to, you know, boost the gdp. And now we basically have them making peace with, I don't know, something that if it was coming from a Jimmy Carter, Republicans would have their hair on fire.
- [13:00]
David French
Yeah. Charlie, I don't think people are fully understanding the political realignment and ideological realignment that is unfolding in front of us. And why would they, I mean, 80, 90% of Americans really don't pay a lot of day to day attention to the news. So they haven't heard or seen a lot of the online commentary from sort of the really ideological corners of the Trump right that are like you're going to have to take your bitter pill and you're going to have to swallow this bitter pill. But on the other end of it, some of them say greater prosperity, but that what they actually do. Again, if you read some of the Oren Cass stuff, he scorns, like GDP growth. He's like, why are we looking at that as a measure of well being? They want us to focus on things other than material prosperity as a measure of well being, which, again, that's a great religious and moral and cultural argument that you as a free citizen should be able and should choose, choose maybe to live a simpler life or to have less focus on material goods. It is a terrible policy for a national government to just decide that 330 million people are just too materialistic and too greedy and too focused on, and on, on wealth and GDP growth. And so we're going to suppress all that, whether you like it or not. And at the end of the day, trust us, you'll like this new lifestyle much better. You know, that is much more what you would hear from sort of the degrowth left often for, say, environmentalist reasons or egalitarian reasons. We need to be closer together in income, etc. And that's why it's interesting, Charlie, why you've seen some of this migration far left to Trumpism. And in the meantime, you have my colleague Ezra Klein talking about abundance and talking about growth and talking about prosperity and doing big things. And so it's very hard to kind of wrap your mind around this transition, this realignment. And I think the American people are going to be a trailing edge indicator of this realignment. The leading edge indicator is what you're seeing happen right now in these policies.
- [15:14]
Charlie Sykes
But does this explain Donald Trump, I mean, and the political class? Because, you know, Trump's been a true believer in tariffs, never been a believer in austerity and lifestyle. This is not Donald Trump saying, live with less. He wants everything to be great. And the biggest, right, the gaudiest. So, you know, number one, he's a true believer. But number two, and I want to talk about this as well, because I think this connects to so many other things. This is also a power grab, right? I mean, you know, in my newsletter on Friday, I quoted Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, what a complete idiot, saying, let Donald Trump run the global economy. Whoa. You want to talk about a hubris run the global economy. And so, you know, what Donald Trump has figured out is again, finding weaknesses that instead of a market based on free market principles, now it's fear and favor, and he's waffling on the question of negotiation. But basically everybody in the world now, all nations and industries, have to come on bended knee to mar a lago and say, oh, please, please, Mr. Trump, can you give us some relief? Can we get some exemptions? And he sits back and he has the world by the short hairs. So not only does it scratch his fetish ID for tariffs, but also it is a power grab and it feeds into the arrogance because he, he's brought everybody to the knees. The billionaire Tech Bros. Right. When I get to law firms, you know, media. Why does he not think that now this kind of power extends to the entire economy?
- [16:50]
David French
Well, you know what's interesting, Charlie, is I think that one thing we need to know about, like, the billionaire tech Bros. And one thing we need to know about, like, the, the elite law firms, and of course we can talk about this more is, is a lot of the people who are very, very, very successful in American life are not exactly what you would call giants of moral courage and stature. They are in many ways often extremely smart, extremely shrewd in business. They have, you know, extremely creative and entrepreneurial. Yes, all of those things. And we should respect those things that they're good at. But in reality, they're also very good at bending to the wind, which is one of the reasons why they are so successful. So, you know, if you go back, rewind the clock on the Tech Bros. For example, in the 2000 teens, these guys were some of the, you know, leading progressive voices being hosted at Aspen and all of these places. And then, you know, you put your finger into the wind and it starts to shift and they're like, oh, well, you know, Trump has some good ideas. I mean, this is, this is the way business often operates. They bend to the prevailing winds. They are not leaders, they are followers. And so when the winds shift, they shift as well. Trump. But here's the mistake Trump is making. The mistake that Trump is making is looking at people like, you know, an Elon Musk who was once on the left, now on the right, or a Mark Zuckerberg once on the left, and now it is inauguration. Same thing with the Google guys and Bezos and all of these people. And he says, oh, that's France, that's Canada, that's Germany, that's all of our allies that they will just bend to me. But it's a different thing when you're talking not to some guy who created a company that has invested sort of all of his personal identity in. And there's a fear that it could be hurt or damaged by the existing American government. We're talking about some of the oldest, proudest, most powerful, in some cases most powerful nations in world history, and which.
- [18:56]
Charlie Sykes
Have their own politics, too, right? I mean, they have their own politics, right? Yeah.
- [18:59]
David French
And in some cases, their own nuclear umbrella. And so you're looking at them and you're trying to just put them under your thumb. And what you're beginning to see already is these nations are rallying against Trump. I fully expect to see retaliation almost as much as you'll see capitulation. And then look at the stand that Canada took. I mean, if there was ever a mismatch in power between two countries, the mismatch between U.S. and Canada is far greater than the mismatch between Russia and Ukraine, for example. And Canada has stood up. What Donald Trump has done is essentially made Canadians more patriotic than make Canadians more tempted to yield. And so I think what you're going to see over time is that you're going to see a gap like a pebble becomes a landslide. You're going to begin to see a lot of the international community recapturing their own national pride and dignity and confronting Donald Trump and refusing to yield to Donald Trump. And all that is going to be terrible for us, Charlie. It's going to be terrible for the average American.
- [20:12]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and also, if you're. And I think you're right here, that Donald Trump probably thinks, well, you know what? If things get too bad, I will just simply back off. I'll declare victory. Right. I will negotiate. I will do the things that I just said he was going to do. I'm not sure that he has all of those options. Also, if he starts doing that, then you have. You're ramping up, you're ratcheting up the uncertainty. And this whole notion that people are going to come and invest in the United States, they're gonna make all these decisions, seems incredibly naive, given the fact that he's created a world that is governed by his whim, Completely unpredictable. So who's going to decide to invest massive amounts of money based on what they think is the playing field? When Donald Trump can change the playing field five minutes from now. So, I mean, he has created this environment of such uncertainty. I think people were also blown away by just the incredible. I'm sorry to use this word, but the incredible fuckery of. Of the. Of the formula where nobody could figure out exactly what he was doing. It was basically junk science. You end up Imposing tariffs on these two islands that have just penguins, but not Russia, not Belarus, not North Korea. It raises questions about not just the recklessness, but about the competence and the understanding of, of the, of the economy. And I think that seemed, that seemed to have really rattled the CNBC guys, you know, even the, you know, who thought, we have this pro business president, and now they're going, what the hell?
- [21:51]
David French
Yes, absolutely. And, and I think one of the things that is at work here is there was a lot of frustration in the business community against the Biden administration. There was a lot of frustration. Inflation was high, spending was giant. There was a sense often, especially when you, you talk to some folks who were interacting with the Biden administration on foreign policy and economic policy, that they were arrogant, that they sort of viewed themselves as the smartest people in the room. Biden had sort of these second FDR kind of ideas. So you had a lot of reason for frustration. And so, but, and so what happened is the business community began to talk itself into Trump 2.0. And by the time they were halfway into that process of talking themselves into it, they really did not want to hear from people like you or me. They just did not want to hear it. I know, yes, because they thought that you don't understand what we're dealing with in the business world. Right. And we are saying, got it. I'm the last person to say that the, the Democrats were getting all of these things. Right. They were not. There were problems. But to turn around and say that the solution then to use the John Mulaney sketch is to put the horse in the hospital is insanity. But they didn't want to hear it because they had been. So by that point, you know, we're very good at rationalization, we human beings. We're just great at rationalization. So they did, they didn't want to hear this. They didn't want to hear how bad Trump was going to be and why didn't they want to hear it? Because they had memory erased, basically, or minimized basically everything that happened after 2019 in the Trump administration, their, their sort of view of it was that, oh, the real Trump administration is 2017 to 2019. They had, but we began, we knew that as Trump's first term went on, Trump became more himself with every passing year. And the question is, what was he going to be in 2024? He was in 2025. He was not going to be the guy. It was not going to be the administration in 2017. We all knew it, but unfortunately, they have to Experience it. We have to experience it now in part because they weren't willing to see what was as plain as the nose on their face.
- [24:15]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, they misread the man and the moment. And going back to this realignment, you know, there's a lot of the Trumpian base that loves the radicalism, that loves the let's burn it all down. But I think that you had a lot of voters, including in the business community, who thought, no, we're not gonna take that literally. He doesn't mean it. That's what he throws out at the rallies when he actually gets into office. And I think this is the thing that I think people need to get their heads around, which is how deeply radical and transformative this administration is. Donald, quite serious. He wants to be the most consequential president, I don't know, of the last century. I mean, he wants to be in, you know, in the league of Ronald Reagan and FDR and, and, and quite frankly, you see the pace of change. I mean, the, the through line, whether you're talking about, you know, race, gender, deportations, doge, the universities, law firms, pardons, all of that stuff, they are taking the most. This is not. They're not going for incremental change, are they? I mean, this is a deeply radical administration.
- [25:23]
David French
It is, it is a deeply radical administration, and in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time.
- [25:31]
Charlie Sykes
Right?
- [25:31]
David French
So one of the things that we're, one of the things we're, we're used to is defining radicalism, as I'm going to, especially conservatives have been used to defining radicalism as I'm going to enact a sweeping new big government program. So, for example, back in the Obama administration, we would have said the Affordable Care act was a radical piece of legislation because it was a big, huge, sweeping change in American health care. Now, in hindsight, that looks like normal governance compared to, I'm going to take Greenland and Annex Canada. And, you know, if you're listening and you say, well, David, the Affordable Care act was legislation. This is just trolling, guys. We're well past, we're well past this. Take him seriously. Not literally, bull crap. I mean, how many times do we have to sit, watch him try to do the, exactly the things he says he wants to do before we're going to actually take him seriously. The reason why you look back at Trump and you go through that seriously, not literally nonsense is because of the way he, the, the people who threw their bodies in front of him in the first term. That's why you take you have that seriously, but not literally frame. You should look at Trump from 2020 on January 6th on and understand that the man means what he says in and especially when it's repeated and repeated and repeated. Now, I'm not going to say that in some ways, he doesn't just kind of try to throw chum in the water. But, you know, even the third term stuff, I think that's mostly chum in the water. But I'm going to say mostly because I guarantee you, guarantee you, if you had a guy like John Eastman walk into his office and present him with a position paper that said, Mr. President, this is how you can have a third term, he's going to go, the Constitution gives me a third term, and he'd roll with it. And so this is who he is. He wants maximum power. His version of radicalism isn't so much I'm going to enact a new policy. It's, I'm going to conquer new territory.
- [27:45]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, I, I don't think this is, you know, completely speculative. Well, I'm sorry, it is completely speculative. But we've seen this happen over and over and over again. And we've talked about this, how ideas that, you know, seemed just absolutely absurd, that were out there on the very, you know, edges of the fever swamp make their way into the mainstream. And then, you know, out of the mouth of Steve Bannon, they become GOP orthodoxy. And you're absolutely right. People should watch for this, because there is going to be that article by John Eastman or somebody like John Eastman that makes sense. You're gonna see it in some of these obscure publications at first, and then they're going to start spreading. And for people who think that Donald Trump is not serious about this, that's naive. After, after what he did with the big lie and what he did with January 6th and his success in making that the Republican standard position. So once he begins making that case, you're going to see MAGA begin to move. And I have very little confidence, I want to get your take on this in Republicans to stand up against him and say, no, no, no, no. I mean, there's, there's, there's a line here. I don't know. And I guess we always have to ask this question with Donald Trump. Who is going to stop him? Because that's what they're asking. They're sitting in the Oval Office saying, let's try it. Who's going to stop us?
- [29:07]
David French
100%, right? Here's what I say to people if you're going to tell me Donald Trump has a line, you bear the burden of proof, of proof, of demonstrating that at this point, right? If, if there was. Where was the line in 2020? Where was that line? Where was the line when he pardoned and granted clemency to some of. To his violent thugs? Where was the line there?
- [29:32]
Charlie Sykes
Beat up cops?
- [29:34]
David French
So where was the line when he nominees Kash Patel? Where was the. Where are the lines? Excellent.
- [29:40]
Charlie Sykes
Excellent.
- [29:41]
David French
This is the thing that keeps coming back to me again and again, again in my community. These are people I love, friends. He would not do that. Really? Or if you talk about the Senate. No, they would stop that, would they? You know, the fact that the Senate did not convict him after January 6, I think tells you everything you need to know. Absolutely everything. And the fact that right now, as the stock market is plummeting and the Republicans in Congress have the absolute ability to stop this nonsense, they can pass a bill tomorrow that rips the Tariff Response Authority from President Trump. They could do it tomorrow, and it's not even on the table. You know, they're going to wring their hands and then they're going to say, trust Trump. Almost like in Trump we trust. And instead of in God we trust. And in that circumstance, you really have to ask yourself when, at what point, at what point will they grow a spine? Because you have to understand every single line that is crossed, the ground is laid before it is crossed. So what we're watching now on the attacks on due process, relentlessly, they're laying the groundwork for more systematic denial of due process. And by that time, it's going to be received conventional wisdom and the Republican base that due process exists just for criminal gangbangers.
- [31:06]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so this is so alarming. I mean, the success that he has had in delegitimizing one institution after another, his attack on the criminal justice system, on the judiciary, and now on due process. And you see some of these poll numbers among Republicans, and it is genuinely alarming, because if you're drawing up a scenario for how do we become an authoritarian nation? And again, I understand that we were accused of Trump derangement syndrome when we talked about this last year. But if you're drawing this up, the loss of belief in the rule of law, the loss of belief in due process, that millions of Americans can see somebody, you know, snatched off the street by, you know, masked agents of the government and, you know, sent off to prison camps in El Salvador without due process. And they look at that and they go, yeah, I'M okay with that. That takes us into a dark place, doesn't it, David?
- [32:05]
David French
Oh, it takes us in a very dark place, Charlie. As right before I logged on, I was, I was working on a column about this attack on due process. And one of the points that I make in the, in the column is that in many ways the due process clause is one of the most difficult elements of the Bill of Rights to defend because there is this perception that due process only benefits criminals, right? Yes, there's this perception that due process, and then there's also this perception that I'm never going to need due process. You know, most, you know, middle class, upper middle class Americans living in nice communities, they don't worry about a knock on their door in the middle of the night. And so to defend due process, you really have to appeal to transcendent moral norms, our shared human dignity, our, that we're all human beings created in the image of God and by. And it's appealing to that share that, that transcendent moral norm that we preserve the right. And the problem is the Trump administration is attacking that transcendent moral norm because it really does see kind of two tiers of humanity. Tier number one are the Trump supporters. Tier number one are the, are the patriotic U.S. citizens. And then tier number two is everyone else. And immigrants are tier number three. They're, they're a lower level. And so it is very difficult in that circumstance because a lot of Americans don't have that, like, practical sense of why due process is good. You have to make the moral argument. How long can we sustain a defense of due process when one of our two political parties, led by a man who has one of the most sycophantic cult like followings I've ever seen in my entire life, are placing those values, including the notion that we're all human beings created in the image of God, equally worthy, equally worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. When that's under direct assault, when the moral framework of the American experiment is under direct assault, how long will we maintain the legal doctrines of the American experiment?
- [34:18]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so I really wanted to talk to you about this because I think there's so many alarming things that are happening right now, it's hard to pick a target on any given day. But the, but the thing that is, I think in many ways the most alarming and it's not a top of mind for most people, but it is the acquiescence of these big law firms to Trump, where Trump, you know, goes to these big and These are billion dollar law firms, and he issues executive orders targeting them because of their political activity. It seems to me, you know, I want to get your take on it, that these orders are clearly illegal. They're clearly unconstitutional. If the law firms fight back, their chances of, you know, victory are, I think, pretty solid. And yet we have this division. We have some of the law firms that are fighting back on principle. You have Jenner and Block. You have Perkins and Coie. Am I pronouncing that correctly?
- [35:22]
David French
Yes.
- [35:24]
Charlie Sykes
And then you have some of these big law firms who basically have bended the knee and said, we will provide you with 100 million because of your governmental threat. We will provide your political allies with hundreds of millions of dollars of free legal services. It's breathtaking to me, David. I understand that they are rationalizing this like, we need to do this to protect our businesses.
- [35:50]
David French
Yeah.
- [35:51]
Charlie Sykes
But on the other hand, do they really understand that they have basically put themselves into receivership to Donald Trump? And so give me your take on this, because in the reason I'm so alone is clearly he's going root and branch through the attack of the rule of law that at a certain point, people like you and me will have a hard time finding a lawyer who would represent us if we are adverse with the government. So your take on all this.
- [36:16]
David French
Yeah, well, I. You know, one thing, I think that we can console ourselves, Charlie. You and I both know some lawyers who would rather die than yield. So I. I feel like there are. There are still people out there who will. Who will never, ever yield. But I will say this. Here is how the law firms are rationalizing it, and here's where they're. Why they're wrong. So if you talk to, say, someone who's defending Paul Weiss or one of these other firms, they'll say, look, we are under existential threat to our business. We wanted everyone to rally around us. That's what Paul Weiss said in an internal statement. We were ready to sue, but we found out that other law firms were swooping in and trying to get our clients. Other law firms were swooping in and trying to get our lawyers. We were about to die as a firm. And then if you look at the language of the agreement, it's all vague and mushy, and really, it doesn't bind us to nearly as much as you think it does. So some of them are actually proud of themselves for negotiating an agreement that they think doesn't really give much away. In truth, the reality is what they've done is they've incentivized Donald Trump to keep doing it, as we're seeing time and time again. And then anytime you take this position, like, well, I'm going to yield a little bit, but trust me, I won't yield the whole way. We've seen this movie before, Charlie, that's called the Republican Party, right? Oh, trust us. We, you know, we'll give in. You know, he, he, he's the head of the party, but we're still the same core. We're still this. No, everything falls away. You know, it's, it's, you know, this biblical principle. If you're, you know, one indicator that you'll be faithful in a lot is when you're faithful in a little. One indicator of whether you'll be courageous when the chips are really down is if you show courage when things are more. Amanda, if you show courage when the cost is a little bit less, maybe. But what they've done here is they have shown that they have really no courage at all. And by doing that, by demonstrating to. Yes, it's not just the Republicans who will bend the knee. It's big law. It's not just Republicans will bend the knee. It's the biggest universities in the world.
- [38:34]
Charlie Sykes
And that incentivizes more. I mean, this is, of course, the other fallacy is they think that somehow this will solve the problem or will make them safer. In fact, as we've seen, it makes this administration more arrogant. And so Columbia yields and they go after Harvard. Harvard yields. They'll go. There is no end to this. And, and this is, this is what is so dangerous watching these guys. So I mentioned this to you before we started recording. I am obsessed by this movie that I just watched the other night. Obviously was not a palate cleanser for me. It's about Quisling. It's called Quizzling the Final Days. It's a Norwegian movie. He, of course, was the traitor who aligned himself with Hitler during World War II, betrayed the Norwegian people. And I don't want to give too much away. It's a. It's a profoundly intellectually serious movie. The plot is basically a pastor is sent to talk with him in prison after the end of World War II and to get him to deal with his sins and his betrayal. And I don't want to give too much away. Well, I mean, obviously it's a historical figure, but I think people will find it resonating because of the power of rationalization, that somebody who has betrayed his own country can convince himself that in fact he was the savior that, that by collaborating and switching sides, you are actually doing the right thing, that you did what everybody else would do in those circumstances. And you hear it and you see it and you're like, this is a man whose name has become synonymous with treason and betrayal. And yet in his mind, he thinks he didn't do anything wrong. And I won't give away the ending to it, but the pastor is trying to say, look, you know, we all make mistakes, we all sin. You know, maybe at the end of your life, could you acknowledge this, but it's so hard for people to do that. But this power of rationalization, the power of saying that even though I have done this terrible thing, I did this terrible thing to prevent some other terrible thing from happening. And then, and then there's no and then there's no break on the way down. So that's, that's, that's my movie take of the day. Okay, so we're only like a week and a half away from Signal Gate. And I wanted to get your take on. This is the group chat. Now. I still think that that scandal has legs, but now I'm starting to think, is this, is this the same old naivete that we've had over the last 10 years? We think, ah, but this time it's going to be different because again, we're a week and a half away and there's no investigation. There doesn't appear to be any fallout. No one has lost their job, and it was one of the most egregious breaches that anyone can remember. So where are we at on that, David? Did they get away with that? Did that just pass? Did that pass, too?
- [41:30]
David French
Did they get away with that? Mostly, yes. But with the qualifier not entirely, Yes. I think the one way to think about each one of these individual instances is to remember that Donald Trump lost once before he lost in 2020. And why did he lose in 2020? It was not any one thing. It was not any sort of one scandal. It was an accumulation of a sense of chaos, a sense of disorder. That, that led just enough, peeled off just enough. And by the time, by November 2020, just enough was millions of people to where he lost decisively in the popular vote. And so the, what, what is happening now is we're beginning to see a kind of an Excel, what I think is an accelerated version of that process. Yes, he came in with more goodwill than he came into after the 2020 election. In 2020, I mean, in 2016 election, he came in with less goodwill than he did after the 2024 election, but he's squandering it at a pretty significant.
- [42:38]
Charlie Sykes
Rate and accelerated chaos.
- [42:41]
David French
Accelerated chaos. And, and the reason why, and the interesting difference between this scandal and other scandals is this. The Signal scandal really only got kicked off the front page because of a greater problem, which was the collapse of the stock market. You know, I saw a statistic on Thursday that the losses on Thursday were one of the. It was one of the top 30 worst days in the stock market's history out of all of the days in the stock market. And so when you look at it like that, yeah, that would knock the Signal Chat scandal off the front page. But I'll tell you why it's going to still be relevant. It's going to still be relevant because that was a leading edge indicator of the total incompetence of this national security team. Yeah, now that's not going to say that I'm not gonna, I'm gonna disagree with everything they do. I, I do agree that we should be attacking the Houthis, for example, to open up shipping in this, in, in the sea, in the Red Sea. But this is a leading edge indicator of what's to come. And just to tell people a bit about the gravity of what they did, I'm a former JAG officer, Army lawyer. And if any officer in the United States military had done the same thing that Pete Hexseth had done, this would be the process. They would be instantly, instantly relieved of command or relieved of their duties if they weren't in a command position instantly. The next thing they would be told is they need to get a lawyer instantly. And they might even be taken into immediate custody pending a further investigation, because there would be probable cause that a crime had been committed. And so this is what would happen to an ordinary service member. And Pete Hegseth does what would get Captain Hexith immediately thrown out of the military and Secretary of Defense Hexis just rolls forward doing push ups with the troops. And that is you. That is, you do not build effective military through lack of accountability. If there's anything we know from military history, you do not build an effective military through lack of accountability. And yet that's what they're trying to do. And the only accountability they impose, Charlie, really, truly, so far, is political purging people politically. So that's what the Russian military does. That's what totalitarian militaries do. The American military is a professional military. It does not purge people for politics. It will purge for corruption or poor performance, but not politics. Here we see corruption and poor performance, protected and politic, and political purges underway. That's the reverse of the military culture.
- [45:24]
Charlie Sykes
Well, also, speaking of purges, I mean, you can't make any of this stuff up. So none of the people involved in that chat have lost their jobs. But just the last couple of days, we found out that Laura Loomer, who is one of the nuttiest, most extreme, freaky conspiracy theorists on the planet, apparently got an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump and convinced him to fire a bunch of NSC officials because of their lack of loyalty. So not only are we doing political purges, but we're doing political purges urged by one of the most toxic. I mean, there's nothing I can say that comes close to actually capturing how loony Laura Loomer is. Let's put it this way. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks that she's a crackpot and a bigot. I mean, that gives you some indication.
- [46:15]
David French
Yeah. This person. You know, again, Charlie, it's so hard to approach. It's very difficult to communicate how wacky this administration is because everything has a deep backstory. So Laura Loomer is no exception. There's a whole Laura Loomer extended universe of weirdness and scandals. Right. And so it's sort of a. Take your own pick. Here's what I did to one of my friends who was saying, what's the big deal? You know, presidents fire people all the time for political alignment. I said, and this is somebody who's like a volume user of chat GPT. And I said, I don't really have time to explain it. Just ask ChatGPT. Why do people believe Laura Loomer is a racist? Just ask that question. And about three minutes later, I get a response.
- [47:14]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, yeah, I'm gonna do this as soon as we get off, by the way, because I. I did it before.
- [47:22]
David French
I asked him just to see what it would say, and it wasn't even complete, you know, it wasn't even everything. But if. If you were going to just say, imagine the wackiest MAGA conspiracy theory theorist you've ever met in your life.
- [47:39]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [47:40]
David French
Double it, add racism. And that's Laura.
- [47:45]
Charlie Sykes
It is. We don't have too much time left, but you did a great piece speaking of, like, nut jobs in the White House. You know, we've talked about, you know, the crisis of evangelical Christianity and their embrace of Donald Trump, but this is like, in a whole different level of that Paula White, who is his spiritual advisor, who is regarded as a heretic by. Even by A lot of the evangelical Christians who support Donald Trump. And yet. So just give me, give me, give me the thumbnail profile of Paula White, who is one of these crazy figures who has Donald Trump's ear.
- [48:21]
David French
Yeah, the reason I was writing about Paula White is because she had just put out a, she had just put out to her followers a message that she was going to be able to bless them with seven supernatural blessings, among them an angel to guard over you and protect you. That God would make your enemies his enemies. Which is a weird thing to say to people. Right?
- [48:47]
Charlie Sykes
Big if true.
- [48:48]
David French
Big if true. So seven supernatural blessings, including health, prosperity, an angel, God wreaking havoc on your enemies. Oh, and a Waterford crystal cross for your home, all for the low, low offering of $1,000 or more. And that was an occasion for me to sort of remind people that some of the evangelical support for Trump is not a mystery at all. Some of it is and has been for a while, but some of it is not a mystery at all. And it's the, the people come from this tradition, which is a, called the independent Charismatic movement, that has one foot in what's called the Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel teaches you that if you have the right kind of bold faith and you can have health and wealth, that's part of it. It also teaches you that you're destined to rule it. Also, you know, I was talking earlier about this two tiered vision of humanity. It creates this two tiered vision of humanity. There's those who are saved and those who are under the influence of demons and Satan. And so you really have sort of the, the righteous and the demonic. I mean, really, that is the, the breakdown. And these people who were very prominent before Trump, mind you, these are people, pastors, megachurch pastors, who have private jets, they have giant mansions, they revel in their wealth in front of their congregations. They're extremely authoritarian to their congregations, saying that they have a divine anointing from God to lead and that if you contradict them, you are essentially defying God. And so the thing that I began to realize is in this culture, this Christian subculture, again, not all of it, this is a minority culture, but deeply influential in maga America, when they saw Trump, they weren't seeing somebody who was that different or even different at all from the pastors that they love. Now, he's obviously quite different from your median Southern Baptist or Presbyterian pastor who lives a modest middle class life and is serving their family and their community faithfully. Donald Trump is 1 billion percent different from that person and that's where that evangelical support gets more mysterious and difficult to explain. But for another faction, when they saw that kind of ostentatious wealth, that delusions of grandeur, that authoritarian mindset, the hatred of enemies, he looks just like their pastor. So it's not a contradiction of their beliefs. It's an extension of their beliefs.
- [51:26]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, gosh. Okay. So I would strongly urge people to read your column about Paula White because this is one of those things where if you're not familiar with this tradition, it just sounds so crazy. I'm sorry. It just if all you know about Christianity is what you might have read in the New Testament, this will have no relationship to it whatsoever.
- [51:48]
David French
It will your mind.
- [51:52]
Charlie Sykes
Which again, David, thank you so much for joining me. And this is one of the reasons why we do this podcast because more than ever need to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.