David French (3:17)

Well, thanks for having me, Charlie. I always, I always enjoy hanging out with you even when times are grim. And you're right, I have been talking about this for a long time. I've been talking about this Insurrection act stuff for years.

Charlie Sykes (3:30)

So I want to come back to that in a moment. You are just for our listeners to understand that David is broadcasting to us from war torn Chicago. A little bit like Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from Berlin during World War II. He's kind of feel that way. I mean, feel siege.

David French (3:49)

Is it okay I had to dodge the helicopter gunships on the way into my apartment, Charlie. No. I mean, look, nobody should say that Chicago has got it all together. Like, I mean, nobody would say that. But we're also in a situation where, thank goodness, we've had fewer murders, lower murder rate than we've had since 1965. So one of these very weird situations where there has been dramatic improvement in the city. Again, lots to do. Still lots to do. But in the face of dramatic improvement, we're getting a military escalation. What?

Charlie Sykes (4:29)

Well, but we are dealing with the mouthy priests, apparently, who are showing up at these nonviolent protests and they're being shot in the head by masked agents. You saw that video, right?

David French (4:40)

Yeah.

Charlie Sykes (4:41)

I mean, yeah. Really? What? Okay, sorry, go ahead.

David French (4:45)

I think it's very important to say that I, you know, one of the things that appears to be happening, and a federal judge said this yesterday, what appears to be happening is normally when you do a deployment of troops, normally when you really escalate your deployment of law enforcement, it's when there is an actual breakdown in civil order. It seems as if what they're trying to do is to deploy troops for the purpose of triggering a breakdown in civil order. In other words, what they're doing is being intentionally provocative. They're being intentionally Aggressive. Now, I want to be clear. I have not seen that out of the National Guard. I have not seen the National Guard being provocative and aggressive. I have seen ICE be very provocative, very aggressive. And then I think what is happening is you're seeing the provocation and the aggression being used to try to generate conflict. And then the conflict that results is the justification for the deployment of the Guard. And this is a process that's very dangerous. I mean, this is, this is very, very dangerous stuff. And, and look, no matter how provocative the Trump administration gets, the response should be peaceful, you know, along the lines of the civil rights movement. That should be the response. But there's just no question in my mind that there are, there is a series of very deliberate provocations that are engaging that are occurring across the country with the goal, with the objective of creating sufficient chaos to justify crackdown.

Charlie Sykes (6:19)

You know, I want to read you something. We may be all over the map here today, but, you know, I was thinking about this image of these, you know, heavily armed ICE agents, you know, masked, you know, agents, you know, firing these non lethal pellets, you know, at folks, you know, paintball guns. And you can tell they're doing it with a certain amount of glee. But also, you can also tell that these are people that are not at all concerned that they will ever be held accountable for this or that anyone's going to call them into it. And you want to talk about a sort of softening up or normalization, the casual way in which these agents point weapons at unarmed civilians and shoot at them for sport and for people who think I'm exaggerating, look at the videos. Got me thinking about something that I put in my newsletter on Friday morning. It's from, and I'm sure that you've seen this. And it was from a week ago. A federal judge named William Young, a Reagan appointee, issued 161 page ruling in a First Amendment case. And he's talking about, you know, I'm just going to one little section here where he's talking about, you know, the, the massed agents and the, the arguments the administration is using. And he writes, and again, this was a scathing opinion, and that word is overused, but this was scathing. ICE goes masked for a single reason, to terrorize Americans into quiescence. The judge, a Reagan appointee, called the Trump administration's justifications for the mask disingenuous, squalid, and dishonorable. It is a matter a matter of honor. And honor still matters. And honor still matters, he said. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all of our history, we have never tolerated an armed mass secret police carrying on in this fashion. Carrying on in this fashion. ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration, everyone who works in it. And he quotes Abraham Lincoln saying, we cannot escape history. It will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.

David French (8:33)

So just talk to me a little.

Charlie Sykes (8:34)

Bit about this, because this has now become kind of routine. But here you have a very. A veteran federal judge saying, you know, focus in on the fact that we have never in this country had masked secret police. And what is with the mask? And he completely rejects all of the arguments the administration makes for sending out agents who commit acts of violence and arrest people with. With their faces covered. Your thoughts?

David French (9:00)

Yeah, I was very glad to see that from the judge. I mean, that's strong rhetoric. It's strong rhetoric, but there's a reason for the rhetoric. Look, the defender's advice will say the reason they have masks is they're being doxxed, and that people are posting their, you know, their. Their faces online, et cetera, trying to find out where they live. And to the extent that's happening, that's just purely wrong. That's just purely wrong. However, what I will say is that that is something that every member of Congress has been facing. Every police officer faces, every journalist faces, every school board official faces, every election worker face. I mean, all of us, Charlie, all of us, look at us. Hey, here's our face right here. We're critiquing Donald Trump. We've been doxxed, we've been threatened, Right? And so this idea that ICE gets a special dispensation. When I was in Iraq and we were arresting Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, Charlie, we had our name tapes on, we had our faces. So this sort of idea that it's just too dangerous to show your face when cops do it, FBI agents do it, soldiers do it, journalists do it, election workers do it, school board members do it. I mean, everybody does it. They're not a special class of person that is entitled to a special degree of anonymity. And that's especially true when they're agents of the state, armed agents of the state. In that circumstance, the need for accountability is very, very high. This is. Who is arresting me? Who is grabbing me? If you don't have to show ID or if you're masked, you know, these kinds of things are terrifying. And why would you presume that a Masked person grabbing you is a member of law enforcement when law enforcement has not previously acted like that. And so, look, doxxing is completely wrong. Yes, it is completely wrong. Why is ICE getting special protection when every other class of public servant and private citizen is not getting that same level of protection?

Charlie Sykes (11:05)

Yeah, I mean, you know, teachers are not. Are not masked. We don't have. We don't usually have the troops. Police officers not only don't go around masked, usually, they often will have their name tags. And of course, you know, when you ask to see their badge or their badge number, you know, I think the assumption is that they will give it to you. Okay, so, okay, let's get into the Insurrection act because a lot of this is, in fact, terrifying in your hometown. The president is, you know, continues to escalate despite the very strong resistance from the governor and the mayor to what he's doing. And he is sending in National Guard troops from Texas, who, I don't know if you saw Jimmy Kimmel last night, is, you know, they had. They had pictures of the National Guards, you know, the Texas National Guard, and they were wearing camouflage. And he said, hey, just. Just a, you know, pro tip here, you know, wearing camouflage will not. Will not disguise you in. In Chicago. You know, it's, you know, perhaps not a problem.

David French (12:03)

I mean. Yeah, yeah, I, you know, look, I feel for these guys. I feel for these guys. I. There might be a few of them who are thinking, you know, what I really want to do this fall is leave home in Texas and go spend undefined a period of time in Chicago, Illinois. Doing what exactly? Being a provocative presence. I mean, there might be a few of these soldiers who, you know, enjoy the change, change of scenery, the change in routine, whatever. But I served in the Reserves, Charlie, and it's not like people love being called up and sent around the country unless they feel like the mission really has meaning and purpose to it. And, you know, it will be interesting to see how a lot of these guardsmen react as days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months where they're away. Months and they're away from home in these circumstances where they're not needed or wanted. And it's. I feel for them. Honestly, I feel for them.

Charlie Sykes (13:07)

Well, as I mentioned before, a judge has temporarily halted that, but we'll see how that actually plays out. I thought the comments from Oklahoma Governor, Republican Governor Stitt, was kind of interesting. He broke with Trump on the invasion of Chicago, and he said something which, I mean, it just should be obvious, which is that people in Oklahoma would have lost their minds if troops from Illinois had been sent into Oklahoma during the Biden presidency. And I think people need to sort of think about that because, you know, I mean, not everybody stays in power for forever. But, you know, this takes place in the context of the reports. The administration is thinking of the imposing the Insurrection Act. And my familiarity with the Insurrection act basically comes from you, David. And for years, you have been describing it as one of the most dangerous laws on the book. And back in 2023, you were urging Congress that you really, really need to fix this. It is a poorly drafted law that opens up really dangerous, scary powers for the President. So talk to me about that. Why might they invoke it? And if they do, what does it mean?

David French (14:20)

Yeah, so this is going to take a little tiny bit of legal explanation, Charlie. So basically, the default reality of American life is that US sold soldiers, soldiers under the command President. Active duty soldiers, whether they are active duty or National Guard, activated by the President under the President's command, cannot engage in law enforcement activities. This is posi comitatus. So, you know, if there's a crime problem in a city, you deploy civilian law enforcement. You don't deploy uniformed troops. And there's a. A million good reasons for that. I mean, there's a. A very long history in the United States of private resentment, of military engagement in. In cities. This is one of the triggers for the American Revolution. The. The deployment of British regulars to Boston to enforce the law. Was it one of the triggers for the American Revolution? We have a Third Amendment, one of the most successful amendments in the Constitution, preventing quartering of troops in homes. This is. There's a long tradition in the US that you just don't use troops against your own people. They're not trained for it. The people resent it. We have more than enough law enforcement resources. And so at the same time, however, as we know from history, Charlie, that sometimes law and order just completely breaks down. Whether it is firing on Fort Sumter in 1861 and the mobilization of a Confederate army, whether it is Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, whether it is some of the resistance to Reconstruction or school desegregation, or some of the riots that you saw in the late 1960s or the 92 LA riots, where things just went out of control. And so American law has long recognized that there are certain limited circumstances where troops are necessary on American soil. And for a very long time, we've been operating under the conditions of the Insurrection Act. And the Insurrection act is a law, a Very old law that allows presidents to deploy soldiers to maintain when order breaks down, when there's no other alternative. And one provision of the law is very benign. It basically is when a governor is saying, or when state officials say, we cannot enforce the law anymore, they can request the President deploy troops. That's 92. That's LA riots, for example. That's the LA riot situation. Governor of California said, I need help. So that's a pretty uncontroversial provision. But if you keep reading in the Insurrection act, what the Insurrection act does is it places, whether or not there's in other provisions of it, allow a President to call out the troops in a capacity where he's under their direct command. They could engage in direct military activities on American soil if he deems it necessary. If he deems it necessary. So it delegates other provisions of the Insurrection act delegate this authority entirely to the President. And so right on the black and white words on the page, it's saying the President decides. Now, why is that so important? Because there are other laws that allow the President to deploy troops. For example, in Title 10 of the US Code, there's a law, 10 USC 12, 4 06, I believe, that allows the President to deploy the National Guard when there is a, an invasion or rebellion or a threat of rebellion. But that statute, that's the one he used for Portland, that's the one he's probably using, that he's used for Chicago, that's the one he's probably going to use around the country for other deployments. That doesn't say reserve it to when just the President decides. It allows for court review. Right. And so this is where you've had the blocking of the deployment in Oregon, you've had the blocking of the deployment in Chicago. It may be temporary, we'll see this is being appealed. But what you're seeing is that that law doesn't leave it all up to Trump. And so here's the concern. The concern is if he can't deploy under that law, if the courts block him under that law, will he just go to the Insurrection act and just use the Insurrection Act? And if he does that, that gives him maximum power over the troops. It also, I think the reason he hasn't done it yet is it really ratchets up the political risk, invoking something called the Insurrection Act. And the absence, and the obvious absence of an insurrection is going to be politically problematic with everyone but his core base.

Charlie Sykes (18:57)

But the core base is being softened up. I mean, they use the word insurrection all the time. I mean, you can see, you know. Oh, yeah, everything Stephen Miller doesn't like. Invasion, Insurrection act, all of those things. In fact, when a judge. The judge ruled against the deployment in Portland, Stephen Miller described it as what, a legal insurrection. Now, that can't be coincidence, can it?

David French (19:21)

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Charlie Sykes (19:22)

Over and over and over again.

David French (19:24)

Oh, yeah, yeah. If you listen to Stephen Miller, it's very clear that what he's doing, he's laying a predicate through his rhetoric to use extraordinary presidential powers against ordinary political enemies. So what he's doing is he's relabeling. I mean, he's even extended his. His extremist rhetoric to just the Democratic Party itself, you know, that the Democratic Party itself is just fundamentally, you know, a illegitimate, dangerous, violent, terroristic, you know.

Charlie Sykes (19:56)

Right.

David French (19:57)

Extremist organization. That. So what he's doing is he's applying extraordinary rhetoric against ordinary political enemies and then using that extraordinary rhetoric to match the extraordinary language of these statutes. So when a statute says invasion, you and I know what invasion means. Charlie, we've experienced invasions in this country before. I mean, when the, when the, when the British army burned the. Burned Washington, D.C. in the war, that's an invasion, guys. That's an invasion. When the Confederate army invaded Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg, or invaded Maryland before Antietam, that's an invasion. What Putin is doing to Ukraine, that's an invasion. Now they're reclassifying an invasion as migration. Just immigrants coming into America not to take over the country, but to participate in the country's economy and system of government. That's not what an invasion is. And so they're using this extreme rhetoric to describe ordinary events, and then trying to use that extreme rhetoric to unlock extreme power.

Charlie Sykes (21:04)

Well, and this is not a new phenomenon. I think that everybody got to go back and read Orwell's Politics in the English language about the manipulation of language to manipulate truth. I mean, the fact when we started equating speech we didn't like with violence, that was a slippery slope in a dangerous way. So this has been going on for a while. So let's put this in a little more. A little bit of context, which is a way of saying that I want to just, like, move on to, you know, another topic that Donald Trump is really upset this weekend that he did not win the Nobel Prize. And the news dropped at the moment. He brokered one of the biggest peace deals in modern diplomatic history. I mean, can we at least take a deep breath and say, at least for now, this Israel, Gaza thing, as you point out is an unmitigated positive if, in fact, those hostages are released, if there is a temporary pause in the cycle of violence. But I guess one of the things that I've learned over the years is that don't judge success or failure on one news cycle. It's like, let's see how this plays out. So give me your take on the Israel, Gaza deal. At least we have a ceasefire and we've been told the hostages are coming home.

David French (22:26)

Yeah. So first, if this initial deal can hold, if, if the. The hostages do return home, living and dead, if there is an actual pause or ceasefire, then that aspect of this deal is just, as I said on Twitter, an unmitigated good for which Trump deserves real credit, I think. Look, we. We have to just be honest here. If you're looking at Trump's foreign policy, I would say in Eastern Europe, disaster, Southeast Asia, China, Taiwan, North Korea, ugly stuff. The Middle east, however, he's had a lot more success, even going back to his first term with the Abraham Accords, the killing of Soleimani from Iran. I think this term, he has two big feathers in his cap. One is bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. The other one is brokering this deal. And I think there are interesting reasons why that is the case. I think that the Middle east is, as a place in the region that is very, very. Its politics and diplomacy are extremely amoral. It is a. It's a place where power rules and might makes right. And. And so, you know, I talked about this in the Dispatch podcast a couple of days ago, where what I'm reminded of constantly when you talk about the Middle east is that I remember the Bing west book about the surge called the Strongest Tribe. And it was rooted in a conversation some Marines had with a Sunni sheikh at the beginning of the surge after he had switched sides from Al Qaeda to the U.S. and he, when asked for the reason, he said, you Marines are the strongest tribe. And so what happened is that Israel, in the weeks and months and years since October 7, 2023, has exerted itself as by far the strongest military force in the region. That it broke the Iranian stranglehold around it. It shattered Iranian military strength in many respects, including the military strength of its allies. And that created the. That those military victories that are the IDF deserves credit for created the conditions that Trump was able to exploit. Well, to push to this conclusion, or at least this preliminary conclusion. Now, Charlie, you and I have been our. This isn't our first Middle Eastern rodeo. And so we know that declaring any sort of Permanent victory or permanent change can be really Im premature. So we'll see what happens. We'll see. Is Hamas going to disarm? I. Doubtful. Although I, I'm open. Would Hamas voluntarily surrender power in Gaza? The fighting is over, right?

Charlie Sykes (25:12)

I mean, that means part of that 12 point plan.

David French (25:15)

Well, you know, but they've only agreed to phases of it. Yeah, well, see, that's the thing.

Charlie Sykes (25:19)

I mean, history is full of, you know, historic world shaping treaties and deals that at the time seemed like they were really a big deal. And we now look back on them very, very, very differently. You know, when, you know, Munich being the most, you know, cliched. But I mean, the Treaty of Versailles and others. And the Middle east is the Middle East. And Trump's record on all of this is, shall we say, mixed, especially when we talk about what will the reconstruction of Gaza actually look like. Is Benjamin Netanyahu a good faith partner in all this? Does he really want to end the war? Does anyone think that the cycle of violence that's been put on pause has been eliminated? And I also think that the damage long term, politically. I agree with your military analysis of Israel.

David French (26:11)

Yeah.

Charlie Sykes (26:12)

But the image to Israel's status, and I'm talking about American public opinion, is, is so dramatic. I mean, you think about what has happened in the last two years, it is, it feels like a generational shift. And I say this as somebody who has been pro Israel, you know, for my entire life, and I just think that the damage feels like it's, it feels like there's massive cracks in this foundation and everybody is looking strong, they're looking like the strong horse right now. But these things play out in decades, not in a handful of news cycles.

David French (26:53)

No, you're exactly right. I mean, there's a couple of sort of long term issues here. If you're going to say let's put on different hats. So let's put on the hat that says I'm going to, let's put in the defending the Netanyahu strategy hat. So the Netanyahu strategy. Defending the Netanyahu strategy hat would say, okay, yes, we've taken an enormous hit in public opinion in the Western world, we've taken an enormous hit in public opinion in the United States. But you know, we'll have time to repair that. We'll have an opportunity five years from now, 10 years from now for all of this to recede into history. But in the meantime, we'll have defeated Iran, we'll have defeated Hezbollah, we'll have decimated Hamas, and we'll have normalized a lot more of relationships within the Arab world. And the more we normalize our relationships in the Arab world, the less we depend on the United States and Europe for our security. So that would be the best case scenario for Netanyahu. Okay, let's go. The counter. The counter would be. That's a bit naive. You have not settled the Israeli Palestinian conflict. You have no actual, real, true long term agreement on Gaza. You have a phased in agreement. There's a real chance that what you did here wasn't end the conflict in Gaza, but just reset the clock, rebooted it to where at some point in the future it's going to happen again. And in the meantime, you've spent an enormous amount of moral capital in the west. And also you have alienated a majority of young people in your number one military sponsor. And, and even if you get a lot of goodwill, at least for time, from the Arab world, you're never gonna be an independent military power. The country's just too small. It doesn't have the industrial base for it. You're always gonna need arms and resources from allies and the very allies you've been alienating. So that's sort of the two arguments going side by side. And so this sort of idea that what going forward, Israel is now sort of in the clear, that's really, let me put it this way. If you're saying that Israel's alienization of Western public opinion is definitely, definitely going to hurt it substantially, that's unproven. But if you're going to say that this victory coming at the cost that it did, is going to be that the approach is going to be vindicated, historically, that's unproven as well.

Charlie Sykes (29:21)

No, I agree with that. Okay, so here's a little side note to all of this that I was hoping that you could help make sense, you know, make it make sense, David. And I'm. This is my polite way of not saying wtaf, you know, on this podcast, although I may in the next five minutes, you perhaps saw something that happened on Friday. And once again, I'm going to confess that when I first saw this, I thought, no, this can't be true.

David French (29:51)

This is fake news.

Charlie Sykes (29:52)

This is a fake story. Secretary of Defense, which is the legal title. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Friday announced the establishment of a Qatari military installation in Idaho. And I thought, okay, no, they got that. There must be some scrambling. Seated beside the Qatari defense Minister, Hegseth announced the United States is, quote, signing a letter of Acceptance to build a Qatari Emory Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho. The facility, the Defense Secretary said, will host a contingent of Qatari F15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability. Interoperability. Although he provided little else by way of detail. Okay, so, okay, I apologize in advance. I mean, I'm reading this going, what the actual fuck? Are you kidding me? You know, the Qatari, The Qataris, who have been buying influence all over, you know, throughout America, you know, gave the President, you know, give them get that massive winged. Winged bribe. They're going to be getting an Air Force base in Idaho. David, make it make sense.

David French (31:08)

Okay, so for a very long time, we have trained allied pilots. Yeah, you know, so for a very long time. But Qatari air base. And let's not forget, Charlie, that this is coming after the President issued an executive order granting almost Article 5, like security guarantees to Qatar. I mean, what the heck is going on?

Charlie Sykes (31:32)

On his own, no consultation, just, yeah, we got you.

David French (31:36)

And look, I get it for you. We have a. We have American military presence in Qatar. But guess what? I mean, we can defend our American military presence in Qatar without guaranteeing the nation the use of American military forces or promising to that nation the use of American military forces if it is under attack, not us, if it is under attack. It's remarkable. And Charlie, you want to be able to say that Occam's Razor isn't applying here, that it is not the case, that you have sort of, hey, you get a brand new Air Force One, we get security guarantees in an air base. You want it to not be like that in this country. It's just, it's just utter. And especially after Qatar has poured so much money, we don't even know that. We haven't even seen at the tip of the iceberg of Qatar pouring money into the US for influence operations. So this is bizarre. This is. This is bizarre.

Charlie Sykes (32:34)

Well, okay, so, you know, we. I've been playing this game for years where you go, well, imagine if so and so had done this kind of thing. This one you don't have.

David French (32:43)

This is not.

Charlie Sykes (32:44)

This is not a hard one. I'm trying to imagine being anywhere in red America sitting around going, what would you think if Barack Obama or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden gave the Arabs a military base in this country in return for a bribe. What would you think about that? America first. A military base with actual F15s in this country. Now see, I am old enough to remember back in the before times where if you would have said, what was the one deal? There was a deal involving a port that were one of the more benign Middle Eastern countries had some say on this, and it was nuclear, red hot. You know, you turn on conservative talk radio and it was like, are you kidding me? You are going to let. Who was it? I can't even remember what the deal was. But people lost their minds. If Barack Obama had given the Saudis a military base in this country, I mean, half of America would have lost its shit, right? I mean, you're neighbors in Tennessee. Can you imagine sitting around a bar going, hey, how many people think this would be a great idea? What would happen, David? What would the reaction be?

David French (34:01)

I mean, we don't have to speculate about a lot of this stuff. I mean, we've seen, you know, we've seen it before. The port situation that you're talking about, I remember that. I mean, I don't remember all the details, but I remember what you're talking about. There was a situation, I don't know if you remember this, during the latter part of Obama's second term, where there was a sort of training exercise domestically in the US that used military forces in training in American cities. And a lot of people on the right were like, there it is. Obama's planning to deploy the troops at us.

Charlie Sykes (34:34)

And remember that.

David French (34:35)

And Trump's doing it. Trump's actually doing it. Right. And so you can just walk through this time and time again, and it's the if the shoe were on the other foot analysis. Just when you walk down that road, you realize just sort of how extreme this action is. But I will tell you, when you use that analogy, they are. The MAGA is unmoved by it. And I'll tell you why they're unmoved by it, is they say, well, yeah, if the shoe was on the other foot, we'd be outraged because we don't deserve it. They do. Yeah.

Charlie Sykes (35:10)

No, I get it.

David French (35:12)

That's the reasoning. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All of this would be outrageous if directed at us, because we're great. We're the real patriots. They hate America. They're horrible. So of course they're going to get this punitive reaction.

Charlie Sykes (35:27)

So, David, walk with me a little bit deeper into the rabbit hole of crazy, okay? Because among the people who reacted to all of this, the news about the Qatari base in Idaho, which is a real story, not a spoof, not a parody. This is Laura Loomer, who I seldom quote on this podcast, is described here as informal Trump advisor, frequent purveyor of Islamophobic hysteria. Her reaction, what the hell is going on? Why are we trying to train more Muslims how to fly planes on US Soil? Didn't we already learn our lesson? She wrote on whatever she said it would allow the Islamic enemy to gain so much ground in our country. So, okay, the usual kind of stuff from Laura Loomer, but there are going to be people in, in MAGA who are going to go, all right, it's. I didn't care when, when Donald Trump did X, Y or Z, or when he took the plane, but I don't know the military base. So your reaction to Donald, Donald Trump, there's big hurt going on right now. I mean, right now, even as we speak, big hurt in MAGA over the loss of the Nobel Peace Prize. Do you think that Donald Trump actually thought he was going to win the Nobel Prize? Do you think it was any part of him that really thought he was going in?

Momentous Brand Representative (36:46)

Yeah.

David French (36:46)

Oh, I think a part of him did. Yeah, I think a part of him did. I mean, you know, but it's interesting, as you're reading that that Loomer quote, it's very telling that she doesn't aim her anger at Trump at all. And in fact, this is very common in this current era of maga, which is there's a number of things that Trump has done that are very antithetical to what we believe MAGA believes. So, for example, calling Epstein files a hoax, that's not what MAGA believes, right? Bombing Iran, that's not the MAGA way. MAGA way is no new wars. Bombing Venezuelan boats, that's at tension with maga. No new wars. But also MAGA doesn't, you know, MAGA wants extreme measures against drug trafficking. So there's a tension there. Here you have America first, but we have a. Qatar has a base. MAGA is very hostile to sort of the Islamic world, and yet Qatar is going to get a base and a security guarantee. So. But what you see in all of this is almost always they blame people other than Trump. So the buck stops with Pam Bondi or the buck stops with Pete Hegseth. And so even in that very online MAGA world that's fighting with each other, the buck doesn't stop with Donald Trump. They will go at a cabinet secretary. They will not go at Trump. Right. So that's one thing. And then the other thing that's really interesting about this is that I think Trump and his team understand that all of these online controversies that you and I Talk about Charlie. That fire up podcast audiences, that fire up people on Twitter. They just passed through the ether with basically no one else in America knowing about it. And so what they've realized that American, the, the fact that the majority of Americans are so passive politically, so disconnected from the news cycle gives them a remarkable permission structure. It's just remarkable, right?

Charlie Sykes (38:52)

Yeah, yeah.

David French (38:53)

Because, you know, when you talk about these issues and you say, what will MAGA think about this? My first answers, nothing, because they won't know about it. The vast majority.

Charlie Sykes (39:03)

See that. That, by the way, is the answer to almost all these questions. You know, when you get asked on a cable TV show, you know, well, what will the blowback be? There will, you know, nine times out of 10, there will be no blowback because you understand that we are in a completely different alternative reality than, than most of those MAGA voters. Okay, so let, let's move past the Nobel Prize because that, that's like too easy a target. This was also the week where Pam Bondi goes in front of the US Senate and does her triumph, the insult dog imitation. You saw those pictures, by the way, that she came in with prescripted zingers and insults for the senators. I mean, oh, my God. So just another embarrassment for the Department of Justice. But again, clowns with flamethrowers. We have the indictment of Letitia James, which comes just a couple of days after the arraignment of James Comey, who was criminally charged at Trump's explicit order. David, this last couple of weeks have felt like very much an escalation of what we knew was coming, and yet it's here.

David French (40:10)

Yes, Charlie. And you're actually hitting on something that I'm writing about right now, which is, was hoping that the essential argument that Trump is making, when you look at these, it's a Wizard of Oz argument, which is, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. In other words, Trump is sitting there saying, pam Bondi, prosecute these people. Highly improper. Right. And, and what the Justice Department is saying, pay no attention to that. Pay no attention to that. Just read this indictment. That's the only thing to look at, not the explicit direction of the president to indict his political enemies. Similarly, when you look at deployments to Portland or wherever, Trump is out there venting just crazy bad faith nonsense about Portland. Right. War ravaged, absurd stuff. But then when asked to defend all of that, it's, well, pay no attention to that. It's about this documented incident or that document. And it's always, don't Pay any attention to what Trump is saying, but pay attention to our very carefully crafted legal argument that only exists because of what Trump just said that you're telling me to ignore. And here's the pattern. Every time, Charlie. Every time, when you watch it and see it, you can't unsee it. When he's moving fast and breaking things, they're saying he is a president like no other. And then when he's called to account for it, when they say, hey, defend this in court, they say, why are you treating him like if he's a president like no other, you should be treating him like he's a president like any other and give him all the deference that have been given to other presidents. You can't have it both ways. He's a president like no other, which means that he's going to have a legal response and should have a legal response like no other.

Charlie Sykes (41:57)

So what's your mood right now? The mood's not the right word. A lot of these big cases are headed up to the US Supreme Court, and we could spend a lot of time talking about what the lower courts have been doing. There's been tremendous pushback from the federal bench, including Trump appointees at the district level, even at the circuit level. But of course, ultimately, it doesn't matter until it gets to the US Supreme Court. Any sense? I mean, you're a court watcher. What's going to give you an indication about whether or not the John Roberts court gets what time it is, if you follow me.

David French (42:35)

So, great question. So first, I think that everything that the court has done so far is, has been quite predictable, if you understand the court's jurisprudence and the philosophy of the judges. So when the issue is how much control does President Trump have over the executive branch, this is like who to hire and fire, etc. The court has tended to rule for him. Why? Because the conservative majority has long had this pre exist Trump, a very high view of the power of the executive, the president over the executive branch. Okay, now I disagree with a lot of that. I think that some of this unitary executive theory is not originalist, but it is a pre existing legal philosophy that the president, United States has a high, high, high degree of authority over the executive branch and Congress can't limit it very much. Okay, so that's one. But at the same time, this court has also ruled against the Trump administration time and time again. When Trump moves outside of the executive branch and begins to try to intrude upon Congress or intrude upon the court's roles. And so that's why Trump, for example, in the first term had a terrible record at the Supreme Court, because these were very substantive questions and substantive issues that the court disagreed with. So far, he's had a better record at the Supreme Court because a lot of the issues that have come up now have been temporary orders about his own power over the executive branch. But this term, we got other issues. We've got the birthright citizenship, we've got tariffs. So I think you're going to learn a whole lot more about how the Supreme Court responds to this administration at the end of this term. A lot of the assessments about it right now are very preliminary, based on preliminary rulings where the court believes the president has his most power. So it's very much an open question how this is all going to shake out.

Charlie Sykes (44:36)

No, that's what I'm not a lawyer or a legal scholar, but that's what I've been able to glean. And I understand that people, there's a certain level of real revulsion and panic about some of the rulings, and they are very, very disturbing. But I think this context is important. I was at a seminar, Jack Goldsmith FORMER DOJ OFFICIAL and he made exactly the same point. He said, you know, just look at the cases that they have taken and there's a specific nature to them. Do not necessarily, do not necessarily extrapolate from them. And I just wonder, look, it's no secret that, you know, the justices are, you know, they read the newspaper, they know what's going on. They know what's happening to the Department of Justice. They see what's happening at the, you know, federal, federal court level. They see the attacks on the judges. You know, they have to have some sense of the this is a president like no other, which means this is a moment like no other. And so there are jurisprudence about this president will be like no other. You know, that's what I want to know, whether they get that.

David French (45:51)

I will give you a perfect example of the case that is really fleshing this out. This is the Aliens Enemies act case that is coming up through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where we had a 2 to 1 decision by the Fifth Circuit saying that the Alien Enemies act cannot be invoked against trendor agua td I'll call it TDA because I have trouble pronouncing the name. And so two judges, including the judge who wrote the majority opinion, who's a Bush appointee, said there's no basis. The only times that the Alien Enemies act has been invoked in American history have been when the US Is engaged in war against global superpowers. So that would be The War of 1812, when Britain was the global superpower, invaded America, burned our capital to the ground. World War I, when we're fading, facing Imperial Germany and the Austro Hungarian Empire to world powers in World War II, when we're facing Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And here comes the fourth time. Trinder Agua.

Charlie Sykes (47:00)

Yeah.

David French (47:00)

Not a military force. And so how do you respond to that? Not since World War II.

Charlie Sykes (47:06)

Yeah, absolutely.

David French (47:06)

Not since World War II.

Charlie Sykes (47:07)

Terror. Not even after all kind. None of that. Not since World War.

David French (47:11)

Not Korea, not Vietnam, not the Gulf war, not after 9, 11. So the dissenting judge said this, and this is a great way to. I think it's a perfect distillation of the difference. He says for 227 years, every president of every political party has enjoyed the same broad powers to repel threats to our nation under the Alien Enemies Act. True. And he says, and from the dawn of our nation until President Trump took office a second time, courts have never second guessed the president's invocation of the act. True. Because it was only invoked during declared wars. So the answer is, isn't it equally true to say that for 227 years, no president of any political party has invoked the Alien Enemies act in the absence of a declared war. It's Trump who created the unprecedented condition, not the court. Right. So if the court treats the unprecedented as if it was precedented, that's when you're going to see that courts are not waking up to the reality of the moment. But if the courts respond to unprecedented actions in a way that is appropriate to the action, that's not a departure from norms, it's enforcing them.

Charlie Sykes (48:31)

That's brilliant. No, that is the case that will tell us so much. David, once again, broadcasting from war torn Chicago, being down there in the bunker. So I especially appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

David French (48:47)

It's a pleasure, Charlie. Really appreciate it.

Charlie Sykes (48:50)

And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this even in these fraught times? Because we have to continually, continually remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.

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Charlie Sykes (50:51)

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David French (51:46)

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