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- [00:00]
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- [01:22]
Charlie Sachs
Welcome back to the Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sachs. We have a very special guest today, Pulitzer Prize finalist, historian, author and journalist, Garrett Graf, who is also the host of the Peabody nominated podcast, the Long Shadow. So Garrett, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
- [01:41]
Garrett Graff
It is always a pleasure to talk to you, sir.
- [01:44]
Charlie Sachs
Well, let me tell you the background of this story. I'm walking through my kitchen the other day and my wife has the radio on and it's tuned to npr and there's a voice on the radio and she says, you have to listen to this. And it was a discussion about whether or not America had actually tipped into fascism. And so I sat down and I began to listen to it and it was lucid and terrifying and alarming and Garrett, it was you. So I immediately said, I got to get this guy on the podcast. We have to talk about all of this. And it's been a while since we've talked, so let's just dive into this because I think what was. And you published this in your newsletter, the Doomsday Scenario that today is different than before. And it was dated August 25, 2025. And you wrote, I think many Americans wrongly believe there would be one clear unambiguous moment when we go from democracy to authoritarianism. Instead, this is exactly how it happens. A blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged. And then you wake up one morning, our country is different, and today is different. So what triggered that? Why was last week different?
- [03:08]
Garrett Graff
Yeah, I think it was something that shifted in the air in America over the course of August, and again, I don't know that we can point to a specific moment, but it was the accumulation of all of these things that are not part of the American political tradition. And in August, it was things like, of course, the federal takeover of D.C. the deployment of armed National Guard troops to patrol the streets of D.C. against the wishes of local officials, against the wishes of residents. It was the, you know, it's the things that Donald Trump is doing to the economy. It is the, you know, the fact that he's taking. He's having the US Government take a stake in intel that he has, you know, levied this presumably unconstitutional export tax on Nvidia in order for it to be able to export its advanced AI chips to China. It's moments like where we have Apple's Tim Cook come to the White House and on camera, hand the president literal gold in order to curry favor. But then it is also, you know, a big part of authoritarianism is the way that the. The authoritarian believes that they are the one true source of taste and preference. And that, to me, has been a big part of what we have seen over the last couple of weeks. Is Donald Trump beginning to interfere in our history, in the books that we read, in our culture, in what plays can be performed in which theaters across America? And even in the course of August, one of the things that really stood out to me, it sounds stupid, but it's not, is Donald Trump demanding that Roger Clemens be immediately inducted into the Baseball hall of Fame. And it is this idea that Donald.
- [05:33]
Charlie Sachs
Trump, he's the emperor of everything, everything.
- [05:36]
Garrett Graff
That our culture, our history, our arts, our sports depend on the whims of this man and whether you are in his favor or not. And I don't know how, you know, I don't know what to call it other than authoritarianism.
- [05:56]
Charlie Sachs
So I wanna come back to this because you kind of break down, you know, the occupation of the various cities, the threats, the extortion, rendition, purges, the way the courts have responded, the way the Democrats have responded. But. But you and I are talking the Monday after the President of the United States actually posted a meme from Apocalypse now that he loves the Smell of deportations in the morning. We all know if you're of a certain age, Apocalypse now, by the way, did not glorify the Vietnam War. And the original quote from the Robert Duvall character about, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Our use of napalm is not considered one of the great moments in American history, but it's.
- [06:38]
Garrett Graff
He.
- [06:38]
Charlie Sachs
He's talking about Chicago. Has this AI generated picture of Chicago burning. And he says, chicago's about to find out why we call it the Department of War. I mean, you know, I mean, are we just being trolled here, Garrett? Are we being numbed? Is the frog being boiled? What did you make of the President of the United States, at best, joking about declaring war on an American city?
- [07:06]
Garrett Graff
And again, I think you even have to take one step back from that, as outrageous as it is, to see how it builds on everything else that took place last week, where we start the week with Donald Trump, basically, as an aside, in another Oval Office press conference, saying that we blew up a Venezuelan drug smuggling boat with no due process, with no legal rationale in a crime that every single legal scholar who has looked at it since says, you know, is a war crime. And that, you know, we partially know it was an illegal strike because the Pentagon is still working on coming up with a legal rationale for how they are going to justify the strike, which, again, I am not a lawyer, but I do know if you are looking for the legal rationale for your military strike after the fact, that means there was no legal rationale for it when you took that action. So then by the end of the week, you get to the insanity that sort of builds into the meme you're talking about where Donald Trump just decides that the sec, The Department of Defense, would sound better if it was the Department of War. I'm a military historian. I just finished my second book about World War II that came out in August, looking at the actual structure that led to the evolution of the Department of War, the Department of the Navy, and other entities into what was then called the Department of Defense. And, you know, that's. That was a legal act of Congress that is enshrined in statute. And Donald Trump sort of has just invented this new process for renaming it against, you know, the stated wishes of Congress. And then when asked, do you think Congress needs to act on this to make this change real? He actually said, I don't see there's any reason that Congress would need to. Which, again, sounds very authoritarian to me. And to be fair, There is no evidence across the first nine months of this administration that Congress feels that Congress is needed in Donald Trump's Washington.
- [09:41]
Charlie Sachs
You know, what's interesting about going back to the, you know, blowing up the Venezuelan boat, this is really very consistent with what Donald Trump has been lusting for for years. He's made no secret of his. Of his admiration for the, you know, extrajudicial killings in the Philippines under President Duterte. He's talked about, you know, immediate execution of drug dealers. There is a. There is a. You can tell that he's been itching to do something like this. And of course, we've all seen the movies, you know, where the bad guys are blown up, you know, very, very cinematic. But to your point, we don't know exactly who was in the boat. They haven't shared the evidence with us. They have said that they could have actually interdicted the boat. They chose to kill them anyway. There's a possibility that there were migrants in that boat rather than drug smugglers. And as you point out, no due process whatsoever. And when they've been asked about this, you have J.D. vance saying, I don't care what the shit. You know, what he's actually. What he say, you know, I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit. And who was it? Was it Tom Cotton who was on. Was one of the deplorable senators who was saying, I'm glad we didn't read them their Miranda rights. So we are having this sort of watching the brutality. He changes the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Now, this is a guy that ran against endless wars, but he is really itching for war. And to your larger theme, Donald Trump really wants to be a wartime president, doesn't he? A wartime president who can deploy the military, who can declare emergencies, and who is the commander in chief. And this is not irrelevant to the kind of way that he is conceptualizing his power, is it?
- [11:35]
Garrett Graff
No, it's not. And I think it, you know, again, we have to fit into this model where what he is doing to federal law enforcement alongside this, where, you know, the, the takeover of D.C. you know, we, by the time this podcast posts, you know, we could see the takeover of Chicago. You know, who knows what other cities might be in the, the, the coming hours, days and weeks ahead, but you can tell that these federal occupations are being done to the residents of these cities and not on their behalf, which, again, is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Go to any authoritarian regime in the 20th century. Or the 21st century. You know, what you see is armed paramilitary units policing the capital and policing major cities. And you can tell in D.C. very particularly that the residents feel that they are being intimidated by this and not being helped by it because of the collapse of restaurant reservations, the collapse of tourism, the. I was just in D.C. actually, over this past weekend, and hotel rates were as cheap as I have seen them since March of 2020. And that, you know, downtown is deserted, parks are deserted, monuments are deserted, because no one wants to bring themselves out into a situation where they could end up in one of these arbitrary encounters with armed officers of the state. You know, D.C. had a huge protest down 16th street, marching toward the White House this weekend, which, again, is as clear evidence as you could possibly have that these residents don't want this federal presence.
- [13:43]
Charlie Sachs
Well, now, occupying Washington, D.C. is one thing. Under the law, given the sketchy home rule, you know, status of Washington, D.C. having National Guard troops come from the state of Texas to go to Illinois over the fierce objections of the governor of Illinois, the mayor of Chicago, that strikes me as a completely different category. And I wonder what you think about that. And again, you know, I'm trying to. We're all trying to calibrate, you know, not to be too hysterical, not to be too alarmist, but also to, you know, wake up and look at what is actually happening. So talk to me about that, because that feels like the invasion of Chicago would be very much. I mean, would be much more dangerous than what we've seen so far. So what happens when you have Texas? What is the state of the law? Do you have some sense of that? Yeah, the Texas National Guard to go into Illinois over the objections of Illinois officials.
- [14:41]
Garrett Graff
Yeah. I do know enough of my US History to know that when we have armed troops from. From one state invading another state against that governor's will, we actually have a chapter in our history that we refer to as the War between the States or the Civil War that encompasses that exact set of definitions. Now, by the way, I will mention it worked out a lot better for Illinois than it did for Texas. But that, you know, I think that there is no other way to look at this than some type of, you know, armed authoritarianism and. Or internal insurrection that is taking place here. And, Charlie, one of the things I've tried to do in my newsletter across this year is write some of these columns in the guise of a foreign correspondent covering this elsewhere, because, again, I think we would have a much clearer way of understanding this if we were reading about this taking place in a foreign country where someone said, you know, armed paramilitary units loyal to governors, you know, were being deployed against separatist states, you know, in distant provinces, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's language that we are familiar with, that we are sort of. That are easy for us to understand in the context of what's taking place elsewhere. And I think we are numb to what the conclusions of these events are here because we're trying to fit them into the sort of normal standard deviation of American politics.
- [16:43]
Charlie Sachs
I think that that's really an interesting point. I had a conversation earlier this morning with somebody talking about what's going on here, and I said, I find it more and more valuable to talk to people who have experienced or have knowledge of authoritarianism abroad, because American history doesn't provide that many guides. It provides some.
- [17:01]
Garrett Graff
But.
- [17:01]
Charlie Sachs
But to understand what's happening now, you need to talk to somebody like a Garry Kasparov, or you need to talk to somebody that understands Hungarian authorit, like Ann Applebaum, because those are the analogies. So let's walk through some of the things that you point out as this. As this tipping point. And again, everything seems so timely. Your second one was, you know, the President, you know, extorting, you know, private businesses. And we had another one of those scenes where the, you know, Silicon Valley moguls all, you know, trooped to the White House and sat around and made, you know, pledges of support for the President. You had Mark Zuckerberg there. You had, I assume Tim Cook was there. So give me your sense of that and why the titans of industry are willing to go in and bend the knee to Donald Trump.
- [17:56]
Garrett Graff
What it's telling you, because they are being very pragmatic in the sense that in an authoritarian structure, the right of their businesses to exist and conduct commerce is dependent on the personal whim of the President of the United States. And that. That is not the way that the American economy has typically operated. And it is worth, again, sort of noting this as part of the slide into authoritarianism, which is when CEOs feel obligated to make these types of pilgrimages, to sort of plead for support and, you know, offer, literally offer tribute to the president in a personal capacity. You know, that is not the normal structure of American capitalism.
- [19:02]
Charlie Sachs
So why. Why was Bill Gates there? Do you have any insight into all of that? I mean, okay, these guys are richer than. They're richer than fuck. I mean, and yet they feel the need to do it. I mean, what does Bill Gates have to gain or lose why is he has he joined the, you know, the gravel parade?
- [19:24]
Garrett Graff
Well, I think what we have seen, and I don't have any sort of specific insight into the Gates operation, but what we've seen from public support is the Gates foundation changing some of its giving strategies to more closely align with the President's and MAGA's priorities, which, again, is not the normal way that the nonprofit and philanthropic community in the United States is supposed to operate. And, you know, when you talk about, you know, the Russian experience, the Hungarian experience, you know, a big question for.
- [20:04]
Charlie Sachs
Me.
- [20:06]
Garrett Graff
In all of this is, are we Germany 1933 or are we Hungary 2015? You know, are we sort of on the track for, you know, Orban's semi autocratic, kind of quirky Hungary under Donald Trump or sort of are we headed toward an American Reich? And as I mentioned, I just finished this book about World War II, an oral history of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. And I'll tell you, the most chilling chapter of that book to work on was the story of the mostly Jewish refugee scientists fleeing the enveloping cloak of Hitler's fascism and them talking about how clear eyed they were about where Germany was headed, how little German democracy actually resisted the rise of Adolf Hitler, in part because, and this is going to sound pretty familiar about the Republican Party, the sort of sense that, oh, we can control Hitler once he gets into power. Like, we can put the guardrails around him and, you know, use him to our own advantage. And then also what was so chilling in reading the memories and the testimonies of these Jewish scientists was how accommodating so many of their colleagues were. You know, one of the scientists tells the story of being stopped by, you know, Hitler, you know, brown shirt, neighbor in the street who basically just said, you know, I didn't really want to join them, but it was going to be good for my career and it wasn't really worth it to, you know, not joining. And I feel like we are watching that take place across American society right now, sort of one institution after another where, you know, whether it's America's law firms or whether it's America's CEOs or universities or a lot of the universities with a couple of very notable and important exceptions. You know, it is this sort of sense of so many of the things that we think of as the bedrocks of American society and American institutions saying, you know, it's just, it's just going to be real complicated for us to try to object to this. So, you know, we're going to just go along with it.
- [23:09]
Charlie Sachs
And I think that's the big shock of the last year. I mean, Trump is Trump. Trump is doing what he was going to do. It is the hollowness of those institutions and their unwillingness. Do you have just some thoughts about. I think that we expected that there would be more pushback. Were they hollowed out? Were they lacking the courage of their own convictions? Why have they been so willing to, to cave in even after it's become obvious the direction that it's taking? That's why I asked the Bill Gates question.
- [23:40]
Garrett Graff
Yeah.
- [23:41]
Charlie Sachs
Because in, in early September of 2025, you can't really simply rationalize, well, if I'm in the room, you know, we can stop bad things from happening because the bad shit's been happening, you know, at ramming speed. Right. So what, what's, what's your theory of the case here?
- [24:00]
Garrett Graff
My theory of the case is sort of a couple fold. One is, and I actually talked about this a little bit in the essay that, that we started this conversation talking about because, you know, I covered politics and government in Washington for, you know, most of the last 20 years. I was editor of Washingtonian magazine, you know, sort of right at the center of Washington society and politics and, and then went on to edit Politico magazine, sort of similar access to political figures. I had always assumed that there was some red line that Republicans would not trade for greed and power. And I tell the story in the, in the essay about sort of one of the first moments where I saw that, where I began to doubt that. And it was in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. I was at one of those sort of backgrounder reporter luncheons. You have been to approximately 10,000 of this exact same lunch in Washington over the years with Eric Cantor right in the midst of the fall, as Congress.
- [25:24]
Charlie Sachs
Was majority leader at the time.
- [25:26]
Garrett Graff
Yes. And who was, you know, huge rising star in the Republican Party and was, you know, heading in the whole Congress was debating sort of the first big bailout of Wall Street. President Bush said he wanted it. Hank Paulson, the Secretary of the treasury, said he wanted it. Ben Bernanke, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said we needed it. John McCain, the presidential nominee, said we needed it. And Eric Cantor said in this luncheon, yeah, we're going to go ahead and vote it down. And we were all incredulous in this luncheon of, you know, every single leader in your party and in sort of American life right now says this is necessary to prevent the collapse of the American economy. And Eric Cantor was basically like, who cares? Like we're just going to vote it down on principle. And I walked out of it feeling that I had glimpsed this sort of nihilism that was beginning to take over the, the core of the Republican Party at that time, which, you know, you sort of lived this, this transition as well and made a very sort of important choice to not participate in it along the way. But it made me sort of realize like, these are not people who have some grander vision for sort of a better America in the sort of realm of normal politics that we are used to. And so I think, you know, when you talk about the institutions being hollowed out, you talk about sort of the collapse of the moral heart of a lot of America. To me, Congress is right there at the start of it. And that the thing that I am most astounded by is not all of the sort of ancillary civil society and corporate and individuals who have collapsed this year. It's that Congress doesn't care whether Congress exists in the future. You would think sort of at some point in this there would be some self preservation kick where they would say, hey, no, no, no, we really mean it when we pass a federal budget and that is a law for a reason that the President needs to actually abide by. And you can't not, you can't shut down agencies of government just because you decide you don't want them. You can't not spend the money. You know that, that, that question of impoundment was a core part of Richard Nixon's impeachment deliberations in the heart of Waterg, where you had a Congress that understood that it had an important role as a co equal branch of government to hold the abuses of the executive in check. And the thing that's just astounding to me is watching all of Congress, you know, on the Republican majority side at least, sort of, just sort of say, well, you know, like who cares whether the President abides by any of the laws that we pass? Like, I support what he's doing and I don't care if all of our constitutional checks and balances are run. Heard of over right now?
- [29:13]
Charlie Sachs
No. This is so amazing. And of course this is something that the founders did not anticipate, I'm sorry to say. They assumed that there would be a certain jealousy that the members of Congress would not turn themselves into potted plants. And there are people alive today who can remember when the speaker of the House of Representatives sat down for a meeting with the President, they dealt with one another as equals. And often it was the speaker who dictated to the president what was possible and what was not possible. They didn't think of themselves as potted plants. They didn't think of themselves as, you know, spear carriers for the administration. And it has been amazing. But I want to go back to the point that you made that I think is just critical to understand all of this. And earlier today I was saying that I had a conversation with somebody about what's happening to conservatives. The cognitive dissonance that you have of, you know, conservatives who claim they were for small government that are now embracing this interventionist government, you know, the free, free market conservatives who are now embracing the sort of quasi state socialism of Donald Trump. And I do think that the key point you made, though, is to understand the nihilism that was taking over the party, that if you're looking for any kind of intellectual consistency, forget it, that, that all of that was kind of a thin gloss over what was happening. And in order to understand, I think a lot of things that are happening, you have this nihilism that at their heart, there is no fundamental principle, there is no red line. There's nothing they will say that is too unacceptable for us. And for a lot of us who had taken for granted or perhaps even naively face value, the fact that Republicans and members of Congress claim to stand for something to watch all this is really vertiginous. It is truly extraordinary.
- [31:02]
Garrett Graff
And it's just sad. It's sort of part of it. Like, you know, one of the things I sort of keep coming back to over the course of this spring and summer is at the end of the day, there's only, it turns out there is only one check and balance that actually matters and that is good moral character. And that sort of everything else in American life and constitute the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And, you know, sort of normal politics is downstream of have you elected someone who gives a shit? And we now have very directly JD Vance on the record this weekend saying he doesn't. And that to me is sort of as clear a statement about where America is headed as we can get. Because, you know, go back to any other moment in modern American politics and imagine the vice president of the United States saying, I don't give a shit about international law. You know, I don't give a shit about due process. I don't give a shit about, you know, civil liberties. And civil rights, you know, that alone would be considered an impeachable offense for, for a president or vice president. And now it's something that the vice President is putting out on Twitter himself.
- [32:38]
Charlie Sachs
Yeah. And as I wrote over the weekend, I didn't have a woke Rand Paul on my bingo card for 2025. Rand Paul pushing back and saying, whoa, wait, I mean, okay, we're all for law and order here, but did you ever watch To Kill a Mockingbird? Do you ever think that, by the way, Rand Paul ever watched To Kill a Mockingbird? I found that rather extraordinary. So how are the courts? And a lot of people have put a lot of faith in the courts to limit this. That record has been, shall we say, mixed. Your take on that.
- [33:09]
Garrett Graff
Yeah.
- [33:10]
Charlie Sachs
And is the call, is the court a reliable guardrail any longer?
- [33:15]
Garrett Graff
So I think you have to draw a little bit of a distinction here, which is the lower courts in the appeals courts have actually held up very well. We have seen very brave legal decisions that, you know, not to put too fine of a point on it, like follow the law and sort of follow precedent and, you know, respect the constitutional checks and balances and system that we, we rely upon. Where it has all fallen apart in recent years and particularly beginning last summer with the presidential immunity ruling is at the Supreme Court. And that we have, you know, as of last week, there was this really stunning article that NBC did of getting district court judges on the record criticizing the lawlessness of the Supreme Court. And, and I have sort of talked about this over the course of this spring and summer. Again, I don't think you can sort of separate the collapse of Congress from the collapse of the Supreme Court. Partisan means. But like all of this talk that we are living through a constitutional crisis I don't think is reflective of reality. And what I have referred to it as is it's a constitutional crash. Because a constitutional crisis implies that there's tension between the branches of government, that there is sort of some unanswered or disputed area of power and who's using it to what ends. And what we have seen from the Supreme Court is this sort of broad based, broad, broad based embrace of a unitarian executive authority that basically sort of in ruling after ruling, the conservative majority led by John Roberts basically says, oh, man. Well, it's not up to us to question what the President does. He's the president. He can do what he wants. And I can tell you, as someone who wrote a book about Watergate, when Richard Nixon said, if the President does it, it's not illegal, no one actually believed that to be true in the 1970s, that that was sort of seen as a obviously wrong and sort of insane interpretation of presidential power. And yet it has become basically the precedent for everything that John Roberts looks at is this sort of sense of, you know, hey, we're just, you know, we're just calling balls and strikes. And as far as we can tell, the president only throws strikes.
- [36:31]
Charlie Sachs
Well, you know, looking back on it, I mean, it's hard in the sweep of history, you know, to put your finger on something. But that immunity decision from last year, the grant of such sweeping immunity to the president, I think is going to be one of the landmark decisions, one of the real. I'm sorry to overuse the term inflection points of our time, because everything that you're talking about here does seem to flow from this sense that the president can do anything, that there are no limits, that the president cannot break the law. And right now, Donald Trump can surround himself, you know, with. With any number of, you know, thugs or brute squads and tell them, you know, whatever. Whatever you do cannot be legal because I can't. I'm immune. And I can pardon you. I have unlimited. Between the unlimited pardon power and the immunity of the president, we really are faced with this completely unaccountable, potentially lawless administration. And I think that's. That shapes almost everything that we're talking about. So let me talk about. Let's talk about how the Democrats have responded. You. You are critical. You said the response by Democrats has been unconscionably weak. What do you mean?
- [37:44]
Garrett Graff
Yeah, I think.
- [37:45]
Charlie Sachs
What are you unhappy about?
- [37:47]
Garrett Graff
Well, so one of the things that sort of stuck out for me last week, and again, this came after my. My original essay was we saw this sort of very weird trial balloon from the Trump administration. Probably less a trial balloon than something that they are actively working towards, which is trying to suspend the ability of trans individuals to own firearms. And, you know, there's that sort of.
- [38:20]
Charlie Sachs
The one shooting in Minneapolis.
- [38:21]
Garrett Graff
Yeah. Well, set against the backdrop of sort of this moral panic that they have, you know, stirred up across America about the, you know, seven people in America playing sports who happen to be trans, which does not normally rise to the level of the president. And one of the things that sort of stands out for me is for all of that, I think, very true headline that we are living through, the satirical headline of, you know, the NRA forgets to rise up against tyrannical government. We actually did see the NRA come out at the end of last week with a very strongly worded statement saying that they would oppose, you know, taking away guns from trans people. And that sort of steps further than any Democrats seem capable of, of doing these days. And what strikes me is just how outmatched and outgunned Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer seem to be at every turn and that sort of every step of this spring and summer. You know, they say, you know, we're not going to swing at that pitch because it's just a distraction, as if there's sort of some perfect pitch that they're all waiting for that they are actually going to swing at. But as we have spent the last 30 minutes talking about, like, we're so far down this road now, I don't know what the if you haven't swung at the pitches already, I don't know what pitch you might be willing to swing at.
- [40:05]
Charlie Sachs
So the most interesting debate right now this week in terms of tactics is the question of should Democrats shut the government down? Or the flip side of that same question, should Democrats continue to behave like it is normal and help Donald Trump keep the government open? Ezra Klein had that big column in the New York Times over the weekend making the point, you know, you guys may have made the right decision a few months ago not to shut the government down, but given what's happening right now, that's gotta be your play. What are your thoughts about that? I mean, this is a complicated issue. There's lots of arguments on this. This is not the normal tactic of Democrats because Democrats like government. Right. They don't like to shut government down. But what do you think? Because so far Congress has not been able to use much leverage. The Democrats have been completely powerless. Should they keep the government open?
- [41:02]
Garrett Graff
Yeah, I think to my view is the thing that the Democrats have not understood is that friction matters, that the only tactic they're not going to be able to stop much. But the tactic needs to be at every stage that friction matters. That sort of delaying the worst for a few hours, a few weeks, a few months actually does matter in this modern moment. And one of the things you were sort of coming up, you were talking a little bit about this in your last comment there. You know, part of what I think we need to understand is this is a president that is just operating without any of the guardrails of the first term. And I don't mean that in the sort of legal sense. I don't mean that in the constitutional sense. I mean that sort of in the example of the Department of War. Like the Department of War to me is one of those mad king edicts that in the first Term the quote, unquote grownups around Trump would have talked him out of, would have been able to sort of distract him or shunt it off to the side or sort of, you know, just, you know, smile and nod as he, you know, ranted and raved about this. And you wouldn't ever actually see us do something as monumentally dumb as issue an executive order, basically. Gulf of American, our Defense Department. And that the fact that we saw that go in the space of like, barely a week from sort of random musing in the Oval Office to executive order and, you know, bronze signs being changed in the Pentagon really illustrates to me that there is no stopping Donald Trump's whims. And what Democrats, I think, just haven't wrapped their minds around in this yet is that reality, which is there sort of is no deal to be made here, you know, for the better future of America. There is no, you know, sort of agreed upon framework that we can actually trust Donald Trump to carry out on the other side of a budget deal. And, and we sort of saw Chris Murphy, you know, arguing about this on the Senate floor the other day where he's like, look, I've been, you know, I'm the ranking Democrat on Homeland Security. What's the point of me working on writing a budget for the Department of Homeland Security in good faith if you're just going to spend the money any way that you want and ignore any of the rules and policies and laws that we actually write into it?
- [44:35]
Charlie Sachs
Yeah, well, that is the point. Okay, so this comes back to the more fundamental question. Your article uses the F word, connecting all of these dots, talking about the occupation, the extortion of businesses, the rendition and kidnapping of migrants, the purges, the court, all of this. But you call it America Tips into Fascism. And I guess the question is, is that an overstatement? Why did you use the word fascism as opposed to, I mean, this, this is, this is part of the calibration. Because there are folks watching this, listening to this, going, okay, this is Trump derangement syndrome. This is more hysteria. You know, you guys are anti Trump. We get you guys are anti Trump, but fascism? Seriously.
- [45:18]
Garrett Graff
Look at the behavior of ice. I don't know what fascism looks like on the streets in any city in the 20th century or 21st century other than masked, anonymous agents leaping out of unmarked cars, kidnapping people without due process, disappearing them into a system where even if they are US Citizens, it may take days or weeks for them to get themselves free. And, you know, I don't know what it looks like other than a scenario where you wake up here in America on a, you know, one morning and there is a non zero chance that whether you are an American citizen or not, whether you are convicted of a criminal charge or not, you could end up getting disappeared to a torture gulag in Central America before anyone has a chance to review your case in a court of law. And again, I think we would sort of understand all of this better nightmare if it was happening in a foreign country where we could sort of write about it in cleaner language than our White House press corps is used to writing about it.
- [47:00]
Charlie Sachs
Oh my God. Garrett Graff, thank you so much. The article is America Tips into Fascism. We'll have a link to the doomsday scenario in the newsletter. You know, thank you so much for your insight and your time today. I appreciate it very much.
- [47:17]
Garrett Graff
I would say my pleasure, except it's not exactly.
- [47:22]
Charlie Sachs
No, but these are the kinds of things that we need to do. We need to talk about it. We can't be in denial, the denial that the complacency has gotten us to where we are today. And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sacks. You know why we do this, why we're gonna continue to do this, why we are here for the duration, because it is so important to continually remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
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