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- [00:01]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing.
- [00:04]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
You're managing all the things so why.
- [00:06]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:35]
David French
Wait, we're going on tour?
- [00:36]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
Not a tour. We're delivering and setting up customers phones so it's easier to upgrade.
- [00:41]
David French
Let's get in the tour bus and hit the road.
- [00:42]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
No not a tour bus. It's a regular car we use to deliver and set up customers phones at home or work.
- [00:47]
Podcast Advertiser
Are you a groupie on this tour?
- [00:48]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
We deliver and set up phones. It's not a tour.
- [00:51]
David French
Oh you're definitely a groupie.
- [00:53]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
Introducing store to door switch and get a new device with expert setup and delivery wherever you're at.
- [00:57]
David French
Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com Boost.
- [01:00]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
Mobile is now sending experts nationwide to deliver and set up customers new phones.
- [01:04]
David French
Wait, we're going on tour?
- [01:05]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
We're delivering and setting up customers phones? It's not a tour.
- [01:08]
Charlie Sykes
Not with that attitude.
- [01:09]
Stamps.com/Boost Mobile Advertiser
Introducing store to door switch and get a new device with expert setup and delivery.
- [01:13]
David French
Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com.
- [01:18]
Charlie Sykes
What an extraordinary week. I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of his return to power by insulting NATO, alienating our allies and threatening to invade Greenland. Now, he backed off during a speech at Davos that may well rank as one of the most bizarre presidential addresses ever. But then announce his so called Board of Peace, which is a sort of United nations for misfit toys. And meanwhile, Jack Smith makes an appeal for the rule of law on Capitol Hill and the violent occupation of an American city continues. Hey, a quick reminder that if you haven't subscribed yet to my to the country newsletter, please consider doing that because we're trying to make sense of all of this while maintaining our sanity. And better yet, it's free because you really cannot defend democracy from behind a paywall and subscribers can listen to an ad free version of this podcast on the Substack site. So let's get down to it because we have a lot of ground to cover on this weekend's edition and our special guest this weekend to mark the first anniversary of Donald Trump's return to power, the Trump 2.0, it's our good friend David French. David, how are you?
- [02:32]
David French
I'm good, I'm good, Charlie. I am down in Nashville where we, there was a Twitter meme yesterday that pretty much summed up our condition exactly, which was expected forecast for Nashville, anywhere between 0 and 30 inches of snow. Okay.
- [02:50]
Charlie Sykes
Now, I have to admit that normally we Wisconsinites kind of look askance at other people who are talking about snow apocalypse, but that's pretty amazing because here in Wisconsin, we have all the snow equipment, right? We have the salters, we have the trucks, we have the plows, we have the snow plows. You know, you guys are just basically going to have to like, what, you know. Oh, hibernate.
- [03:13]
David French
The law, the jungle. It's going to be the law of the jungle here, Charlie. Within hours, you know, people are already friend groups and families are already allocating. Like, who's going to eat which member of the family first if it gets really bad? Like, it's, you know, cannibalism is already on the table down here, Charlie.
- [03:33]
Charlie Sykes
It's okay. So you don't just, you don't just draw lots? Well, by the way, up here, we haven't got that much snow, but. But when I woke up this morning, it was minus 14. It was minus 14. And so if there are any power outages, it gets to be pretty significant.
- [03:47]
David French
So anyway, so we're prepping for the Donner party down here, Charlie. We've got the big Donner party.
- [03:56]
Charlie Sykes
We have not even started this. I mean, we're okay. So congratulations. Making it on the first year through Trump administration. Let me just start with this. This may seem a little bit random, but as you and I are beginning this conversation, Donald Trump continues to escalate his insults against NATO and our allies. And the most recent comments are that he's questioning, he's questioning the NATO troops who served with the United States in Afghanistan. You know, he keeps coming back. We can't count on NATO. NATO never did anything. So here's the story. Trump angers allies with claim NATO troops stayed a little back from front lines in Afghanistan. I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? And that's really the ultimate test. I'm not sure of that. I know we would have been there or we would be there, but will they be there? He said on Fox News. And then he said we never needed them. We never really asked anything of them. You Know, they'll. They say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed back a little, a little off the front lines. All right, deep breath here. Because the allies are all pointing out the reality check, that, no, they did fight, they did die next to American troops. So, David French, you served in, in Iraq. Just the insults just keep flowing from the President.
- [05:27]
David French
Yeah, look, if you served, you know, I mean, when I was in Iraq, the British army was responsible in large part for the areas around Basra. And the Brits had taken Basra in the invasion, initial invasion of Iraq, which was. Basra is one of the largest cities in Iraq. And so the Brits held down that area of operations. You know, Afghanistan, they were a huge part of the fight in Helmand province, which was one of the deadliest provinces in Afghanistan. And the Danes actually served alongside the Brits, often down in Helmand province. And so, I mean, you know, we had, on our base, on our base, we had Australian soldiers who were out there all the time. And so this idea that our NATO partners that are allied, you know, that are. That allied armies that rallied to our side, all they were doing was what, serving food back at the dining facility. No.
- [06:21]
Charlie Sykes
This is so insulting. Yeah.
- [06:23]
David French
You know, and the thing is, I think that a lot of Trump supporters have kind of taken the position that nothing he says that's negative or bad really matters now. Now, they love insulting, you know, the opponents that they hate. But, you know, if Trump does something, says something silly or Trump says something dumb, they sort of take the position of, oh, you give him a pass. Now, they don't take that position with anybody else. But I'm sorry, that is not the way anyone should view the American president, and it's certainly not the way the world views the American President. The American president has a responsibility for his words, and the fact that his name is Donald Trump doesn't relieve him of that responsibility. And so it's just grossly false. And the other thing that it does, it's worse than. It's worse than false. It's also dangerous because it feeds this perception that millions of Americans apparently have that our alliances are not assets, but they're liabilities that we kind of carry them. And I have been using this statistic a lot lately, but there was a RAND Corporation study that was done, gosh, a few months ago, updated a few months ago. And what the Rand Corporation does is it has periodically evaluated the total American share of the allied defense burden. In other words, if you're going to look at the total defense burden of defending liberal democracy around the globe. What share does America carry? And it's 39%. Now, that's disproportionately high. We don't have. We're not 39% of the total economic power or whatever, but it's probably too much relative to the various sizes of the countries and economies. But it's still not a majority, you know, so if we extricate ourselves from our alliances, we're losing 61% of shared defense capability. And, Charlie, you can see the telltale hints that the Trump administration perhaps is beginning to be aware of things like this, because, you know, a few weeks ago, Trump trumpets that he wants the defense budget to increase to $1.5 trillion a year. You know, something that will add. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said, you know, this is something that's going to add almost $6 trillion in new deficit spending over 10 years if we do it. And why would we need to increase our budget now? Our current budget's a little over 900 billion. That's a lot. But he wants to move it quickly to 1.5 trillion. That's enormous increase that we cannot afford.
- [09:05]
Charlie Sykes
More than a 50% increase. More than a 50% increase in one year, year over year.
- [09:09]
David French
Yeah, we cannot afford that. And why would we need to do that? The only reason we would really need to do that in peacetime is if we're replacing the lost defense capacities of all of our alliances. And so I just don't think Americans realize how much our power is rooted in cooperation, not domination. And by removing ourselves from these cooperative alliances, we're diminishing our strength dramatically.
- [09:36]
Charlie Sykes
You know, and this week did feel like kind of a breakpoint. We've been heading here, heading along this path for some time. But I do think that it's possible historians will look back on this week and maybe the address by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, as the moment when the west recognized that it was going to have to move on without the United States. The rest of the world, I think, has come to a couple of conclusions. Number one, that appeasing Donald Trump does not work any longer and that the Western alliance may need to move on without the United States. So let's talk about that speech by Mark Carney, because you wrote about it. The Carney Doctrine.
- [10:15]
David French
Yeah.
- [10:16]
Charlie Sykes
Which I think was truly extraordinary. I mean, most political speeches are disposable. That one bears rereading your thoughts about the breakpoint in the West.
- [10:30]
David French
Yeah, yeah. That speech, I think, is very significant. You know, I'm reminded of the old proverb that for want of a vision, the people are lost. And he provided a vision, a vision for an alternative future. A free world. When America Goes Rogue was sort of the subhead we used for my piece. And so, you know, look, and this nicely fits in with your really nice little, wonderful little story about the commercial and Denbigh, I think the view of America right now has changed abroad. It's broken in a way that's very important and Americans need to realize. So if you have Donald Trump as President of the United States once, I mean, everybody gets a mulligan, right? Americans didn't know what they were voting for. The checks and balances held internally. General Mattis and, and Rex Tillerson and others helped hold NATO together. January 6th happens, but the system shakes. It trembles, but it holds. He loses decisively in 2020. And there's sort of, I think, this sense that a lot of people had that was okay, that was a little scary, but that's a little scary. And then a couple of things happened to really, in the interim, just utterly shock and shake the system. And event number one is Putin's invasion of Ukraine. So all of a sudden that's a very clear symbol that even though Donald Trump is gone, there is no return to normalcy right now, that we are in a different era of history, that something happened and we can debate when and how it all happened. But the deterrence of the west against Russian aggression failed and Putin launched the largest war. Now, to be clear, he didn't think he was doing this. He thought he was launching a short, like 72 hour military operation. But he ultimately ended up launching what is now the largest land war in Europe since World War II, with casualty rates that are terrifying. So this is something that was huge shock to the system. And then you have Donald Trump gets reelected and he doesn't get reelected in the way that he was initially elected, sort of squeaking through where he loses the popular vote. No, no, he won on every metric. And so if you are a European defense planner, just to take this for an example, what do you know now? What you know now is there is an, this is well beyond Donald Trump. There is an immense faction of American life that from your perspective, either is hostile to NATO or does not view it as any sort of priority in any way in their political calculus. There is a Now fully formed MAGA movement that did not exist in 2017, that absolutely exists in 2026, that is deeply hostile to NATO. And then in some ways, Trump Might be the high water mark of support for NATO in a MAGA movement going forward. J.D. vance, I think he hates Ukraine more than Trump does. I think JD Vance hates NATO more than Trump does. So think about this. That's why Mark Carney says rupture. When Mark Carney got up in Davos, he said, we're not in a period of transition, we're in a period of rupture. And I know there were Americans who immediately said, no, no, no, no, wait, no. In the midterms, we could repudiate Trump. In 2028, you could have a new president who really reaffirms international commitments. But think of it like this, Charlie. Defense planners are working on 20 year and 30 year time horizons. Why? Because defense industrial bases, you can't put them, snap them into and out of existence. If you're going to have a shipbuilding program, that's a multibillion dollar, multi year, sometimes decade plus commitment. So defense planners now are looking at the United States and saying, can we count on America? And the answer right now has to be no. You might, maybe even probably, America will come to your aid. But you can now no longer say certainly. And if you can now no longer say certainly, that is a rupture. That is a rupture in geopolitics. And so he was right to use that word. And his solution, his solution, I think was laying out there all the time. And it just took him a moment and it took sort of people a moment to realize it. Now, I don't know, I saw some initial reporting that, and I don't know if this was confirmed, that he wrote the whole thing himself, that he sort of took command of the drafting process. But it is a speech that does feel very much like the kind of speech that can only truly originate in the mind of the leader. And so what he does, and just to put it in plain English, is to say the middle powers submission is off the table. We are not going to just submit to Donald Trump. So that's point number one. Submission is off the table. So right there you blow up the Trump theory. Because the Trump theory is we are so powerful, they will submit. So here comes Mark Carney, says, no submission. So how do you deal with no submission? Well, there's really kind of only two paths. There's one, what he called sort of creating in the middle powers nations like Canada, Britain, France, et cetera, Germany, creating what he called national fortresses or a fortress mindset or a cooperative mindset. And he said, pick both, pick both. Canada, he said, is going to double its defense spending. At the same time, Canada is entering into new relationships and new alliances and new agreements that don't include the United States. And when you do that, and when you think about it for five seconds, you realize, oh, if the middle powers bind together, they create in essence collectively another rival great power. Because when you combine the strength of a Canada, a Britain, a Germany, a France, an Italy, et cetera, and all of these countries have joint defense arrangements, they have transnational defense industrial arrangements. So this is a natural fit. And they also have a nuclear deterrent that France and Britain have, that when you combine those, you actually create something that could rival and certainly not be bullied or intimidated by the US and that is not the Donald Trump plan. The Donald Trump plan is not to create new rivals. His plan is to dominate and subjugate and subordinate allies. But they're not willing to be dominated, subordinated and subjugated. And so what that does is I fail to see how creating a new rival international bloc, now I didn't say enemy, but I did say rival, would be in the American national interests. Why? This is one of the greatest own goals in history that we're watching unfold right in front of us. And here's the thing that's frustrating. I do think, Charlie, that more people are paying attention to this foreign policy issue than typically pay attention to foreign policy issues. But I still don't think it's enough. And the pattern of foreign policy that I've seen my entire life is probably going to hold true, which is not enough. People pay attention to very significant events and then something terrible happens and then everybody pays attention and says, how did this happen? Well, we'll just go ahead and tell you right now how this is happening. And how this is happening is these alienating allies who have helped America keep the peace and keep great power peace for generations. And for what? Why? Why? I mean, so he can put a Greenland sized feather in his cap? I mean, it's three times bigger than Texas, Charlie. You know, if he adds it to the Union, boy, he's done big things. It's a one and a half times bigger than Alaska. He's done big things. If he adds it. And, and yeah, no, it is. You look at this and what really helps you clarify how bad this is? So you just ask the question, how is alienating one of the most powerful military and economic blocks in the world? How is that in America's interests?
- [19:18]
Charlie Sykes
And again, for what? Because of course, we have the treaties with Greenland and Denmark that would allow us to do pretty much anything that we want. And his rationale about the Chinese submarines was completely delusional. I mean, this is a man who is increasingly divorced from reality, international law, law and, and, and morality. So, I mean, and, but, and I think that in the past week, it was as if the Europeans were sitting there and realizing that, that, okay, we have, we've just crossed every conceivable red line. Can you imagine being a European leader sitting there in Davos and listening to that speech? You know, I describe it as one of the most bizarre speeches ever, but, you know, only in. But, but that's put in the category of these rambling, incoherent things that we used the usually would hear at a Trump campaign rally. But this could not have reassured the rest of the world that everything was okay in this country. I mean, that speech, the more you look at it and summaries don't capture it, I mean, unfortunately, I think a lot of the media coverage sanewashes how incredibly incoherent that rant was.
- [20:30]
David French
Yeah. Because 99% of Americans only see him in bite sized segments. And so, you know, in any given moment he comes across as eccentric. Like if you, if you pull out 17 seconds or 33 seconds, it comes across as weird, but you could chalk that up to eccentric. If you watch the whole thing, it doesn't come across as eccentric anymore and it comes across as deranged. And, and there's an irony here, Charlie, because a few weeks ago, JD Vance gave an interview, I believe it was to Unherd, the UK based publication, and he was talking about, and if you want to see JD Vance get angry at somebody, get him talking about Europe. So again, this is the thing about what Europeans are looking at the heir apparent to maga, and he is more angry at Europe than Trump is. And so, you know, he even had the gall to sit there and sort of say about France and Britain that, yeah, they're nuclear powered and if some of these weird ideas that are in France and Britain take hold, they could become dangerous to us.
- [21:46]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, yes, right.
- [21:46]
David French
And you know, what he's talking about is, and what he's talking about in context is sort of like the immigration demographic issues in France and Britain where there's a rising Muslim population. But okay, even if you assume for a moment that a rising Muslim population necessarily means that they would become enemies of America, which is a giant leap all by itself, I mean, we have Muslim majority allied nations around the globe. Right. But it's a fancy, it's absurd. I mean, the demographics of France and Britain are nowhere near like some sort of takeover by jihadist immigrant. I mean, what? No, that's a Twitter thing. That's not a real life thing. But here's the irony, Charlie. The irony is presently the largest. Well, Russia's got more warheads. I believe we have more immediately deployable warheads. Let me say this. The most lethal nuclear power in the world is already in the grips of a deranged person and around whom the checks and balances that are supposed to block such a person from indulging in his worst instincts are crumbling. And so that's the irony here. He looks at France and Britain, which, even though they have their own internal issues, have been far more, at least on the international stage, more stable and calling them potentially dangerous, while we have now twice elected somebody who is one of the most profoundly corrupt, vengeful, erratic and veering towards deranged people that's ever been in the Oval Office. And we're pointing fingers out there, you know, physician, heal thyself.
- [23:48]
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- [25:46]
Charlie Sykes
What do you make of his Board of Peace, which seems like United nations for misfit toys? What's interesting about it is a lot of people are trying to figure out what is this all about. It's obviously under his complete control. He has veto power over everything it does. He can dismiss anyone. You have to pay a billion dollars to be a permanent member of it. It's allegedly, I think people thought of it that it was be focused on reconstructing Gaza, but apparently its charter doesn't even mention Gaza. So what do you make of that? And that scene of all of these sort of weird collection of regimes that we're signing up, Most of our friends are like, want nothing to do with it. But what do you make of the Board of Peace? What is it an alternative UN What?
- [26:35]
David French
It's giving off huge UN Human, Human Rights Commission vibes. Charlie, do you remember how for years conservatives used to, like, look at the UN Human rights apparatus and like, Iran is on the commission? Like, you would have these horrific countries that were on the UN Human rights, you know, in the human, human rights community. It was a pitiful joke. Like, it was just disgusting. Yes, that's what this is. So, you know, here's some of these countries. So the Board of Peace. The Board of Peace has got Argentina, Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Qatar, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Morocco, Paraguay, Pakistan, Russia and China have their invitations. Charlie, the invitations are in the mail to Russia and China, but they haven't confirmed yet. It's, you know, this is. That was sort of like a lineup of what you might call, say in Hungary, for example, you know, a bit of MAGA light is in and, you know, runs Hungary and Viktor Orban. A lot of these other countries are just, they're marginal countries. Even if they're, you know, decent allies of the US Some of them are just corrupt countries, just thoroughly corrupt. Qatar is one of the most malign forces in international geopolitics. And so what are we doing here? It looks like Donald Trump is essentially trying to set up a rival UN under his sole authority.
- [28:14]
Charlie Sykes
We need to come up with a word for it. The Coalition for the Willing has been replaced with a coalition of the. Let's work on that. We'll have to workshop that now. This is one of those strange sorts of things, and what a strange week it was with the backing off on Greenland. And I think it's important to, you know, to put it in context that the Europeans did, I think, deter. Deter military invasion of Greenland. But then, of course, losing 180 was it.
- [28:44]
David French
I'm sorry, the stock market did, too.
- [28:45]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I was going to say 871 point drop in the Dow probably got his attention as well, but clearly his goal of swallowing Greenland is still in place. Okay, so I want to pivot to what's happening in this country because even though we are not apparently going to have a military invasion of Greenland, the military occupation of Minneapolis continues, and it continues to be violent and unrestrained in many ways. And this is what I wanted to ask you, David, because as I'm watching the scenes there and as it continues to escalate, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking that this is the kind of thing that can lead to a cold or a hot kind of quasi civil war. You wrote a book about this some time back. Just give me your sense on where we're at. I'm not predicting that we have a civil war here, but it certainly feels as if we now have that. We're trending toward this justification of us versus them in a way that we had warned about, but feel. Feels like it's coming to fruition on the streets of Minneapolis and perhaps other cities, maybe Milwaukee, who knows? What do you think?
- [30:05]
David French
Well, in 2020, I wrote a book called Divided We Fall. And I wasn't predicting civil war. What I was saying was that there's no truly important social, cultural, political, religious trend that is pulling Americans together more than it's driving us apart. And that is creating the conditions under which, in the best case scenario, we are at each other's throats. Worst case scenario, we start to contemplate a national divorce. That's the worst case, was national divorce, not actual open civil war. But what I would say is that, Charlie, we are creating the conditions for a monumental crisis. That what is happening is they're flooding streets with poorly trained, essentially paramilitary militia. ICE is a poorly trained quasi paramilitary force at this point. I mean, some of the stories that you have about the lack of effective training, the low quality of your ICE recruits, I mean, they're trying to vastly bulk up this force. And it's not as if America just has a whole bunch of. Of highly capable, talented, ethical men, unemployed Men and women lying around. We don't have that. That's a myth. Right. And so if you're going to try to bulk up quickly, you're going to be getting it. A lot of people are under qualified. I mean, there was this incredible story out of, I believe it was Slate recently where somebody went through the hiring process just to see how easy it was. And it was pathetic. Yeah. And so you've got heavily armed, poorly trained people who are being recruited by sort of in an explicitly ideological way, hostile to their fellow citizens, as if they're warriors defending the homeland. Right. Not law enforcement officers humanely enforcing the law and you're flooding the streets with people and then they're engaging in just incredibly aggressive tactics. We've now seen multiple court cases and multiple reports where you see that ICE agents are dead, actually trying to engineer traffic collisions. So, you know, how dangerous is this? Right?
- [32:17]
Charlie Sykes
Yes. Right.
- [32:18]
David French
And it's unreal. And so you really are at a point where on any given day I would not be shocked to wake up to a story that overnight there was a outbreak of gunfire and five or six or seven people are dead. That there was some sort of horrific incident in the streets. Because a lot of these protesters are also, you know, there's a lot of good, peaceful protest that's occurring and there's some protest that is not good, not peaceful. And so when you, you combine angry crowds with elements of violence in them, with poorly trained, hyper aggressive paramilitary forces, I don't have to. I don't have to complete the two plus two equals what here?
- [33:05]
Charlie Sykes
We've already seen it.
- [33:06]
David French
Yeah. This is what worries. I mean, I'm worried that the Renee Goode killing is the beginning. That, you know, that we're headed towards a Kent State type situation or a Boston Massacre type situation. And I could imagine it happening almost any time. And I hope and pray it doesn't. I hope and pray that people have enough, still have enough restraint and regard for each other that it doesn't lurch into that. But Charlie, if that happens, if you have something like that, I don't know what comes next. We're off the roadmap, so to speak.
- [33:44]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I can take one step beyond that. And by the way, one of the things that just kind of continually surprises me are the number of videos in which it appears that the ICE agents are making routine arrests or routine encounters in which they have their guns drawn immediately. I mean, most cops that I know, they do not unholster their gun every time they make a traffic stop or that they answer a domestic violence call. There was one video where, you know, all of these armed ICE agents with their guns are out. They're pointing them at, at this, at this woman who is screaming at them. These are my children. Don't. Don't point the guns at the children. Who does this sorts of thing. Yeah, I do. I do worry about a Boston Massacre type thing or a Kent State incident. But, you know, it's not totally inconceivable that in some city, in some place in America, there might be an exchange of gunfire between local police and, and ICE agents. I mean, at that point, then you've moved into a completely different world. If they fire on one another.
- [34:47]
David French
You're seeing pictures of some residents of Minnesota now, of Minneapolis, open carrying AR15s. It was always, yes, ludicrous to think that only right wing Americans own guns. No, no, Americans own guns right and left. And so now you're seeing some open carrying of AR15s the way you saw, and some of the anti lockdown protests from the right. So now, now you're talking about people walking around heavily armed who don't just. They don't have any training. None. Right. And so think about what we're risking here. I mean, this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills that people aren't running around saying, we have to get this absolutely under control. Future generations would look back on a violent, a vicious, horrible, violent incident and say, well, of course that happened. Why did these idiots think it wouldn't happen?
- [35:40]
Charlie Sykes
Right?
- [35:41]
David French
And we're really in a, in a place where if we don't have something like that, that happens. We are fortunate, we're lucky. And luck is not a strategy for getting through a national confrontation.
- [35:56]
Charlie Sykes
No, I agree with you. And the other day on this podcast, I was joined by Peter Wehner, who wrote in the Atlantic about the fact that rather than de escalating everything, DHS has those videos out where they show the fully armed agents rappelling from helicopters. And they have Bible verses, including quotes from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, which is so mind blowing. We will answer your call as soon as we can.
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- [39:00]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so you made a reference to some of the protesters and what's really interesting and then people who are watching this need to understand when we talk about bubbles, you know, we want to the the alternative reality bubbles about what's happening in in Minnesota. If you are on the right. The story that dominated the week was not Renee Goode was not, you know, the, the children who were being used as bait. The story that overwhelmingly dominated all right wing media was this disruption of a church service in Minneapolis where protesters and apparently were accompanied by Don Lemon go into a church, disrupt the service because the pastor was an ICE agent. And I saw one study that if you were on Twitter. There were something like. And I'm just kind of spitballing this, something like 3.2 million posts about the church disruption compared to maybe a couple hundred thousand about that elderly Hmong man who was, you know, brought out in his underwear. So if you're on the left, you know, all of those stories, but if you are on the right, you know, we. I don't think you can overstate how, how much that church disruption weaponized the right and talk about, I'm sorry, and people don't, like, you know, this, this. This sort of thing, but this was so counterproductive. What were they thinking? That they would go into a church service? And I know you've talked about this and you've written about this as well, David.
- [40:37]
David French
Yeah, you don't do that. I mean, first, you do not have a right to disrupt a church service right then and there. You are not. You do not have a First Amendment right. This is not your exercise of free speech to obstruct a church service or any other event where other people are speaking. You do not have a First Amendment right to stop others from expressing, from speaking, from worshiping. So you don't have a right to do that. They actually have the right to their own speech and worship. Number two, you may. A lot of you guys out there may not know this, but it's arguably a federal crime, what they did. So a lot of people are familiar with, called the FACE act, which is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act. And this is 18 USC section 248. And section A1 prohibits those who, by physical obstruction or force or threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interferes with, interferes with another person who's seeking reproductive health services. That's A one. Lots of people know about that. The Biden administration prosecuted pro life protesters under this. But there's A two. A two has the same prohibition that applies to places of religious worship. So if by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction, you interfere with a person lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights at a house of religious worship, that's a federal crime, okay? And so all of those people are out there saying the DOJ is going too far by arresting those protesters. That's the FACE Act. It's right there in black and white. Now, of course, since this is the Trump doj, they go too far. They do too much. So they arrested one of the activists and then digitally manipulated the picture of the arrest to make it look like she was crying. So they falsely portrayed, they defended it.
- [42:29]
Charlie Sykes
The memes will continue.
- [42:30]
David French
The memes will continue. But I'm sorry, there is no circumstance where this church intrusion is A, legal or B, productive for your cause at all. And, and then let me say one final thing, Charlie. A lot of what these violent protesters do and these disruptive protesters are doing is not civil disobedience, okay? Civil disobedience is one, peaceful, it's not forceful. And number two, when you have civil disobedience, you accept the legal consequences of your actions. That's why, as you know, my friend Sarah Isger at our co host at Advisory Opinion said, she said that's why it's letter from a Birmingham jail and not letter from a Birmingham Starbucks. Right? That this is pretty good, actually. Yeah, it's very good. And so a lot of these left wing protesters now are not engaged in civil disobedience. They are lawless. Okay? The thing that gives civil disobedience power is accepting the consequence that I care so much about this cause that I'm willing to, to accept a criminal penalty for peacefully standing up for it. But if you are forcing your way into a place, if you are frightening children, if you're violating federal criminal law and then turning around and saying, how dare you impose consequences on me, you're not engaging in civil disobedience, you're engaging in outright lawlessness. And this is inexcusable. It is not by any means necessary to protest Trump.
- [44:08]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, right. But it provides Trump and his supporters with ammunition. It gives them a narrative to counter. And the reality is that Trump, MAGA and ice, they're looking for a pretext. We are one violent incident away from the, and you've written about this extensively, his imposition of the Insurrection act or some form of martial law, they are looking for that excuse. So hopefully there are people the saner, more, you know, calmer, more prudent voices up there saying, okay, you know, think about what you're doing. Are you advancing your cause? Are you hurting your cause? Are you giving, are you giving them aid and comfort by doing this? Or are you shaming them? And finally, are you perhaps giving them exactly what they want, which is they pretext? Okay, so in the few minutes we have left, David Jack Smith gets his moment on Capitol Hill. And you know, he made a point that I thought we have talked about before where he talks about that he fears that we have taken the rule of law for granted. This is just a little excerpt of what he had Yesterday. After nearly 30 years of public service, including in international settings, I have seen how the rule of law can erode. My fear is that we have seen.
- [45:30]
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- [45:31]
Charlie Sykes
Country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. The rule of law is not self executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it. So, David, your thoughts about Jack Smith. This whole thing just reminds us that we continually go through this stress test in this country about whether or not the rule of law actually continues to apply. Remember, when we say no one is above the law, I don't think you can make that case anymore. Obviously, Donald Trump is above the law and he's telling his supporters they are above the law. But your thoughts about Jack Smith on Capitol Hill?
- [46:14]
David French
I'm going to reverse that. I would say it's not that he's telling his supporters he's above the law, his supporters are telling him he's above the law. And I think that that is a very, very important distinction because it is very clear, and this actually is great. Full circle to the beginning of the conversation. It is very clear that the primary reason that Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy is not because of who Donald Trump is, but because of the preferences of millions and millions and millions of American voters. Okay? And that, that's what we have to just grasp. And that's what makes this moment so much more dangerous. If this was just a guy who, well, oopsie, we did it again. You know, oops, we did it again. We put this guy in the White House, he's not really what we wanted, oh, we made a mistake and etc. Okay, then that's one thing. But no, what we're dealing with, and this is what our European allies are realizing, this is what we should all realize, is that at this present moment in American life, and hopefully it will pass, and popular and social and cultural trends do change. There are tens of millions of Americans who are either enthusiastic or at least accept Donald Trump's absolute defiance of the rule of law. And we could see this coming from January 7, 2021, because one of the worst and most ominous charts I've ever seen was a chart that said that showed the approval ratings Amongst Republicans of three people, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. I've talked about this a million Times before. After January 6, the approval rating amongst Republicans of Pence and McConnell plunged. And Trump's it went down a little, but very little. And so even after that, after that you got what you have is millions of people saying, yes, sir, yes. And so in 2017, I think it was very fair to say Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law in 2026. I think it's very fair to say it's quite clear that countless millions of Americans don't understand and or value the rule of law. They are so negatively polarized that they are very happy. They are very happy to see their opponents suffer and their friends rewarded. I mean, we are in a friend, enemy, distinction era of American politics and we are not in a constitutional, liberal, small l liberal, rights based sort of rule of law era of American politics. And it is very dangerous.
- [49:03]
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- [49:03]
Charlie Sykes
And you know, I keep coming back to the same point that you're making is that, you know, I look at Donald Trump and he, he's alarming. Like his speech at Davos, the things he says. But far more alarming is when you shift that focus to fact that there are millions of people who are watching the same thing and they're okay with it. That is far more dangerous. That poses a much graver threat. And unfortunately, this is where we're at. David, thank you so much. Unfortunately, we're ending on that kind of dark note, but thank you so much for joining me for the weekend podcast. I always appreciate it.
- [49:35]
David French
Well, thanks so much for having me, Charlie. And pray for us down in the mid south, we don't know what's gonna happen over the next few days.
- [49:43]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, we're all gonna be cold and we're gonna be probably inside. So people will be watching a lot of podcasts. So thank you for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. You know why we do this, why these conversations are so urgently necessary? Because we continually need to remind ourselves and our neighbors that we are not the crazy ones.
- [50:16]
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Charlie Sykes
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