¶ First 90 days of the Trump administration has been tumultuous
Happy Monday, and welcome to another week of the Trump administration. We are getting awfully close to the one hundred day mark. And just just to put this in perspective, think about how tumultuous this first ninety plus days has been on the American economy, on the American judicial system, on the American democracy, on foreign affairs. Just think about the things that have happened that we have not had follow up on. I think about here as a DC person who uses
National Airport a lot. I'll be honest with you, I'm still I would like to know what happened the night that we had that deadly plane crash where a military helicopter was essentially got in the way of the landing of a commercial airliner. We've not gotten the after action report. There's not been the congressional investment mitigations that you would expect. Yet we really haven't had anything. And you know, and part of this you can maybe chalk up to the
news cycle. Part of it is the whole Trump administrations throw a thousand things at the wall, and things get lost, and you sit there and it appears as if we only have the band that generically the media only has the bandwidth to do one story at a time. So when we were in the middle of the rescue operation, we got a lot of details on everything we could figure out in the seventy two hours in and around that plane crash. But we haven't had any good reporting since.
Congress as usual has been sitting on its hands. I mean, look, we have an issue here where we have a very tumultuous period in American government and in American history. It's
¶ Congress is sitting on its hands
a busy executive branch and a busy judicial branch. The legislative branch is sitting on its hands. Doesn't appear to be doing anything other than figuring out how to not at least the Republican majorities, not to alien Donald Trump or Donald Trump's megabase. Beyond that, it doesn't look like Congress is doing much. There's some rhetoric and about things
that they could be doing or should be doing. I think we're all waiting for the oversight earing on signal Gate and exactly what did Peak hag seth declassify to put on vulnerable private communications systems. We think we have the backstory is how the National Security Advisor put a reporter on that group, but we still don't know why there was so much ease with which the Secretary of Defense shared what was classified information on that. We're still
waiting for those hearings. We're still waiting for that investigation. We know that Donald Trump fired so many inspector generals that it is slowing down investigations that would really be
¶ The administration is slowing down routine investigations
sort of routine. I mean, the fact of the matter is there's always issues that the government has to figure out what went wrong. Bob Gates, the former Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, once said, once said that he tells President said, on any given day, somebody is fucking up, and pardon my French, there in your name, mister president. And he has said that to President Bush, and he has said that to President Obama.
I meaning, the federal government is so big that no matter how well it is run, how efficient things are, there's somebody making a mistake in your name, causing you, at a minimum a political problem and a maximum a policy problem that impacts the public. And yet we seem to be almost paralyzed in our ability to deal in totality everything that's going on. In many ways, I would argue the first ninety days of Donald Trump have been my demolition man. He is just trying to demolish norms
all over the place. He is trying to he is forcing the judiciary branch and trying to see how much executive power he can get the judiciary to essentially approve
¶ This is a dangerous moment for the country
of or not stop. And the way any administration works, this is why this is such a dangerous period in the history of this country because if this judiciary essentially allows some of these things to go, they become precedent, and what happens is future presidents take whatever minimum they have and then push even further. So you know, this is why we're sitting here with essentially vulnerable to one individual's belief on how the economy should work, rather than
having Congress make these decisions on tariffs. We're sitting here because the congressional branch handed all this power to the executive branch. It went back to not arguably this started with nine to eleven. Actually it started before then, when more trade authority was being handed to the Clinton administration. Then nine to eleven, more national security authority got handed the executive branch. With Barack Obama, he had an all his party had full control of the trifecta he got
handed more executive power. Donald Trump grabbed more executive power the first term. Joe Biden grabbed more and pushed the envelope with what he tried to do with student loans, which was another essentially executive branch power grab. And now, of course, this one, which is really doesn't have any precedent arguably unless you go back to FDR and Lincoln, who did grab extra executive power under the guys of war,
and those were actual wars. Right now, we have these various emergencies that the president has declared in order to
¶ Trump is "flooding the zone"
try to fast track deportations in this country, try to fast track trade authority in this country, try to fast track a few things here. So the point is he has done you know, the Steve Bannon had taken Steve Bannon's advice, which is just essentially just flood the zone and try to knock your political opponents and make them woozy and own sort of pick one. And this is
the cynical aspect of what the Trump administration is doing. Ironically, if a democratic administration we're doing, I'm sure Stephen Miller would be filing all sorts of legal briefs to claim
that this is an abusive executive power. All he's doing is essentially testing the electric fence of executive power and pushing the envelope, pushing the envelope at the border, pushing the envelope when it comes to what say so a government should have over a private organization like a university Ala Harvard, pushing the envelope on trade and terrorf authority.
And you have a democratic party that is divided in how to respond, right, you have some that are nervous about drawing a full line in the sand, for instance, when it comes to due process having to do with Killmark Garcia, the accidentally deported Else Salvadoran migrant who is now sitting in a prison cell in El Salvador. Over on Friday, Chris van Holland, Democratic senator from Maryland did
meet with them. We saw that the El Salvador president try to create a create some propaganda claiming they were sipping margaritas, and sort of the absurdity of our information, of our misinformation ecosystem that we all now have to navigate these days. The fact that Chris van Holland had to spend five minutes explaining, hey, look, if you notice nobody took any SIPs out of this. This was essentially the El Salvadoran government trying to create a warped picture
of the situation. The most important piece of news though, out of that meeting is the fact that Garcia is not in the more notorious prison that is nicknamed Seacott. The fact that they put him in another prison, I think tells you the El Salvadoran government is a bit nervous and the Trump administration is a bit nervous. Want to make sure nothing happens to him physically, so if nothing else, the attention has probably kept him alive, or at least kept him physically more safe than he would
be if he were in that more notorious prison. But
¶ There are legal ways to handle deportations but Trump isn't interested
the question I keep coming back to is there is a legal way to do this, but the Trump administration doesn't want to do it. They don't want to abide by a court order, they don't want to even get caught trying. They don't even want to fake it. They don't have the ambassador, you know, getting a meeting with the President of Al Salvador and the president saying sorry,
we're not releasing it. At least that could they could claim they were following the court order that said that the government had to facilitate and essentially make an effort give it the Old College try guys to try to get him out. And they're not even doing that. They're not trying at all. And that's what you got to ask yourself. Why aren't they doing that? Do they just
think this is good politics for them? Well? I do think that they believe that everything they've done so far that individually, if Democrats try to push back on any one thing individually, they can somehow win an argument at least have their base come up and help them own the Libs right. Just notice the sort of demagogic rhetoric that the White House has been using having to do
with kill Mark Garcia. That the fact that anybody questioning whether they followed the law in deporting him and giving him due process, which I promise you they did not,
¶ They've violated amendments four through nine
by my count. You'll hear this in the interview with Ben Wittis. I think he's violated the first, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth amendments. Okay, And on Garcia alone, I think they have violated the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Amendments, okay, all of them. The first Amendment has been violated in other ways, including with their dealings with the Associated Press.
I don't I don't see any evidence yet that they have violated the second or the third, and we can have a debate about whether they violated the tenth yet. But again we're not even at day one hundred, so
give them time. There's always a chance. But the cynical view of this administration is that they believe if they have the Democrats all are all sort of standing up for Garcia because of the lack of due process, that instead they can say, hey, look, Democrats are willing to fight harder for non citizens than they are for you. They weren't fighting for you when they were letting these
folks in. And so it's a mindset where they believe the ends justifies the means as long as they have shut the border down, and they have used some very aggressive means to shut the border down. But frankly, there means that the Biden administration only started using in the last six months of that administration. The fact is the Biden administrations in the first two years refuse to let
DHS do its job. Secretary Orcus when he was deputy with Jay Johnson and the second Obama administration, they knew how to control the border, and he was trying to implement the exact same policies that they did the first time. And the fact of the matter is that first White
House would not do it. There was absolutely an ideological brick wall that Mayorcis ran into during the ron Klaan era of the White House, and then when that went from Clain designs, the thing that changed the most if you actually look at border policy, that was the biggest
¶ Trump left Biden a legal quagmire over the border, but Biden didn't handle it well
dramatic change. So I don't want to sit here and say that the Democrats didn't help create the mess at the border and certainly didn't do enough that could be done. Donald Trump left them a legal quagmire when he left office during the COVID era at the border, But it's not as if the Biden administration managed it very well in the first two years. They did get their arms around it eventually, but it was after there was a new chief of staff and after frankly, it had already
become a political problem. So the Trump folks just believe that if they can just make this an immigration issue. First of all, Notice what we're not talking about tariffs. We're not talking about the economic disaster that is coming. Now. This is a bit of a lagging indicator, right. All of the current economic figures that have been coming out are of what's happened in the previous thirty days, or
the previous sixty days, or the previous ninety days. The fact is we're going to start to see arise in
¶ Prices will rise in the next 60-90 days
prices probably in the next sixty to ninety days. You're not seeing them right in the moment, right, because plenty of American companies have inventory that they got in before the tariffs hit, so prices are only just now starting to creep up, and that, of course will then start this spiral that could get really ugly for a while. Rising prices, inflation, stagnant wages, layoffs. You can see where
this is headed. But in the short term, as all the folks, because it has been on the one issue, because apparently only one issue can be done at a time, there's been this debate in the Democratic Party about whether how hard they should go. You have had Gavin Newsom who sees the Kilmore Garcia story as a distraction. You have others that say, if you don't draw a line in the stands somewhere. Then what's the point of being
a political party you're in the opposition. The fact of the matter is, I do think the party needs to figure out how to have one message, and I think the chaos message which worked in the first administration, right, The fact is the public doesn't like the chaos. Individual goals that Donald Trump has outlined are things the public would like to see a safe and secure border, more
manufacturing jobs in America. But how he's gone about doing it, upending the world economy, upending due process and the rule of law. That isn't what the public wants. They don't
¶ Incompetence has defined Trump's administration thus far
like how this is being done, and the political opposition I don't think has done a good enough job sort of framing this as that as incompetency, because ultimately that's what this has been, complete and utter incompetence. On the tariffs, if you wanted to do this, there was a more systematic way to do this. On the border, if you wanted to do this, there was a more systematic way
to do this. But ultimately, the only conclusion one can come to is it looks like the conclusion that our friends at National Review came to over the weekend when it seems as if the administration wants to test the limits of executive power, so they don't care if they knowingly essentially violate the law. And see how hard is the judiciary going to push back? How hard is the
Supreme Court going to push back? And I promise you this is you know, I keep using this metaphor, but if you give a if you give this administration a cookie,
¶ Administration is trending toward monarchy
they're going to come back and take more, and take more, and take more and take more. So it is a very cynical view of the executive that this administration has taken. And you have people around the president that are looking to essentially turn this country into a It's not a republic if this is if the executive gets as strong,
it's a borderline monarchy. And in fact, I do find it interesting that the governor of Massachusetts on April nineteenth, the anniversary of the shot heard around the world, had this to say at a rally. She said the following, this is more healing democratic Governor of Massachusetts. She was in conquered Massachusetts again, home conquered in Lexington, right home of the shot heard around the world. We live in a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack
from the highest office in the land. We see things that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors, the silencing of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands for unquestioning fealty. So that was an attempt by at least one Democrat to try to take everything President Trump has done and try to put it in a larger context.
And I think that what the Trump administration is counting on is to be able to isolate each of these criticisms into one and turn it into oh, so you want terrorists to be roaming free around the country type of type of you know, have you stopped? You know? In one of the metaphors we like to use in media, when did you stop beating your wife? Right? What's an example of the worst kind of leading question what I just said, when did you stop beating your wife?
So?
When did you stop supporting terrorists? Is essentially the conversation that the Trump administration wants to have every time a
¶ Lindsey Graham has gone radio silent
Democrat says, hey, how you did this? How you are deporting these people is unconstitutional and against the law. What's interesting is that there's plenty of Republicans that believe this, most of them don't want to say a word. By the way, have you noticed you may need to put an a out for Lindsey Graham. One of the patterns to Lindsey Graham in particular, if you want to know, when he can't defend what Donald Trump is doing, he goes radio silent, completely radio silent. He has sort of
two versions of it. Sometimes what he does is he doesn't defend the actions, but he defends the goals. But this is a guy who was in the Jaguar in the military. I think actually does care about the rule of law, and I think is probably I would like to think. I don't know if he's personally outraged by how this administration is dealing with the rule of law, but it's clear he's not supportive of it because it is crickets. You don't see him anywhere. You don't see him.
This is a guy who knows his state has benefited from a open and free market economy with a company like BMW and Mercedes both I believe, with plants in South Carolina. And here's a guy who actually seems to care about the rule of law, and clearly this administration right now doesn't care if it's following the rule of law.
So you can see sometimes by the lack of positive affirmation from some of these folks that they if they can't defend it, they're staying silent because, as at Lisa Markowski's admitted last week, speaking out comes with a threat of retaliation, and that is something that many Republicans are very very nervous about. All Right, I'm going to sneak
in a break when we come back. My conversation with Ben Whittis says, we try to understand exactly if there is any actual legal strategy behind what the executive branch is up to, or if this is all lawsuits that are designed for maximum political advantage and or pain. And
¶ Benjamin Wittes joins the show!
joining me now is the editor in chief of law Fair, which is a publication that's devoted to legal issues having
to do with with national security. But these days, the definition at least what the White House uses for national security keeps broadening, which means in many ways, I'm going to be counting on Ben Whittiss here to be our tour guide in understanding, frankly, all of the legal fights that the Trump administration has decided to take on, whether it's we'll concentrate for first and foremost on the immigration case, but I'm hoping to tap into Ben's nimble legal mind
on all sorts of things, including what's going on with Harvard and those form Ben. What is good to see you, sir, Great to see you.
It's been a while.
It has been a while back when both you and I took financial rewards from NBC. It might be one way to put it, but one thing you can't be upset is that Donald Trump is giving Lawfair plenty of material to I mean, I guess he's made people paying attention to the law great again.
Not to mention that he keeps using our name. You know, when we named the site lawfair, which was back in twenty ten, this was a very specialized term. And now Donald Trump tweets about lawfair. He you know, he.
Completely decided the word means yes. Is that what it is? Yeah?
Yeah, litigation against him, or it's any litigation he doesn't like, is lawfair, And so he keeps you know, it's like somebody tweets out Ben Wittis all the time, and it's it's it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Well, congratulations, that's nice. Thank you, that's nice.
We look at the bright side.
You have to. So I was preparing for this, and I was looking at, you know, this handy dandy list of rules that I thought we all abided by. It was called the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, this crazy thing. And I have him violating the first, the fourth, the fifth,
¶ Trump is violating multiple constitutional amendments
the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth amendments. I can't find evidence as violated the second and third, and we'll see on the state front right now.
Yeah, what about the tenth.
Well, that's what I mean. I'm not going to sit here and say I don't I don't have a good I don't have an easy case to say he's violated the tenth yet, although I think what he's doing with the Department of Education arguably might be doing that. But
well that that might be a stretch. But when you just look at this one case, I am I crazy to say that he's that in some ways the Trump Justice Department and what the immigrant I mean, we may say a violation of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. I mean these are the amendments that are there too, essentially put some boundaries on what the state can do to somebody that they think might be a criminal.
Yeah, so, you would think that if the notion of human liberty and rule in a society of ordered freedom had any meaning at all, it would be that when you have been you're living here, your deportation case has been adjudicated six years ago, and the immigration courts have
said you can't be deported to El Salvador. You would think that if the notion had any meaning at all, it would mean that the government can't arrest you apropos of nothing, with no criminal allegation that you did anything wrong, stick you on a plane, and send you to a kind of suit max prison in the one country that they are not allowed to deport you to, without anybody,
without a judge ever hearing about it. And your wife only finds out about it because the head of DHF DHS goeses and poses in front of your jail cell for a picture. You would think that that's what it would mean, But apparently not so it is.
¶ Is Trump violating the Supreme Court ruling?
Let's talk about the Supreme Court ruling here and the word they chose to use. The administration does not believe the Supreme Court has ordered them to have him returned they believe that the Supreme Court simply says said, and this is I'm sort of interpreting based on what you wrote. You seem to think that their interpretation is, if El Salvador chooses to send him back, the United States has to accept him.
Correct, that is their interpretation. So the word that the district judge used was facilitate. And the genuine complexity here is, let's say, and how.
Do you interpret the Supreme Court order.
Well, so the Supreme Court says, the district court said facilitate and effectuate. Yeah, And the Supreme Court says, be careful with the word effectuate because that implies that the court can order the government of El Salvador around. It implies that the court can order the outcome of a US foreign policy thing, and the president kind of runs foreign policy. So be careful with the word effectuate. But you but you're certainly within your rights district court to
order that the government facilitate his return. So the district court turns around and says, okay, you have to facilitate his return. And the government interprets the word facilitate as in exactly as you said that if the government of El Salvador wanted to send him back. We wouldn't erect domestic obstacles to that, and Christy nom actually or Pambondi even said we would send a plane. That is not
if you read the Supreme Court's ruling. I think what the Supreme Court had in mind, which is they were saying, basically, we want to be careful of ordering around a sovereign foreign government and ordering the mechanics of the way the president interacts with that government. But the government clearly screwed up here, and it's totally reasonable for the Court to try to get it to correct its error.
So do you believe the Supreme Court watered their order down?
¶ Did the Supreme Court water down their ruling?
No? I think this is very much the order I would have expected from this Supreme Court, which.
Okay, let me stop this Supreme Court, would you That's what I mean, Like, this is what you expected from this version of the Roberts Court, not what you would have expected from a generic Supreme Court on this issue.
So to be fair, I think there is the Supreme Court the conservative justices here do have a quite legitimate in my view, care about getting interfering in the way the president conducts foreign policy.
And it is for the most part this Court's been consistent on that stage. Yeah, very They're very light on the executive branch in general.
Correct, and particularly in foreign policy and national security matters. So I don't have a problem with that, actually, And I think if John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett want to say, you know, the District Court is wholly with its right to demand a remedy here, it's got to be a little bit careful about how it does that.
¶ All 9 justices agreed on the premise
That doesn't bother me a bit, actually, and it cheered me in fact, that nine justices of the Supreme Court agreed on the premise which is a, this is not okay for this to have happened, and B that the district Court has some real latitude to require a remedy. Now we're because the district judge, whose name is Paula Sinis,
has been pretty aggressive about doing that. The Justice Department is now appealing the matter again, and you'll see, we'll see this time around whether the Supreme Court means something as narrow as what the government interprets it as having said, and I don't believe that will happen, or whether it's going to give her some latitude to say, hey, when I said facilitate his return. I mean, you kind of
¶ What would satisfy the court's order to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia?
do some stuff to get him back.
So let's come up with some things that might fulfill facilitate. Does that mean the ambassador formally petitions the Salvadorian government? Is that? I mean, what what do you think will generally fall under that umbrella actions?
So I think the first thing is something, right, So what's happened so far is nothing except that the President met with the Salvadoran president in the White House and the two of them made fun of the court's order. Right, So that's what's happened so far. So I think if you were going to satisfy the Supreme Court that you were facilitating, you would probably have to do more than zero and then mock the court and, by the way,
baldfacedly lie about what the Supreme Court did. So look, if you were dealing with a normal administration, what you would expect would be for a official to either come into court or file a declaration that listed all the steps that they had taken and said, I mean, you've read a hundred of these executive branch declarations. Here are the steps we've taken to comply with the Court's order. Here is the results that we've gotten. We're planning to
do the following things. And this is what the judge has asked for. And I think if you did all those things. First of all, if the president asked President
¶ If Trump asked for the prisoner back, Bukele wouldn't say no
Bukele to send him back, they would. The Salvadorans don't have a particular interest in detaining this guy. But the hard place would be. You know, if you did all those things, you pro went through that pro forma exercise, but then you also had a wink and a nod understanding with Bouquele that he would say no, and that would put the court in a very difficult position because all of its formal boxes would be checked and yet
the guy. But short of articulating something that you've done, I don't think you can actually go back to the district court and claim to be in compliance with the order and expect the Supreme Court to accept that.
And now she's asking for daily update and the updates are no for we have no updates from yesterday.
The updates are the first day, first update is he's alive and in this Salvador in Supermax, and the subsequent
¶ The White House is brazenly violating court orders
updates are we have nothing further for you.
You know, I look at this case, and I look at the AP case just those two specifically, and you and I both know that if the White House wanted to pretend it was following the law, they could. I am just shocked that they're choosing to brazenly essentially not even try, not even fake it. Like with AP they used an unconstitutional rationale to bar them, like it was blatantly obvious, which is why it was easy court case
to win. Now they're you know, they the irony is how they've responded since as actually why they they could have done that the first time and never had an
AP doesn't have a leg to stand on. They seem to almost want the confrontation with these judges, like they're almost going out of their way to say I don't care and it you know, to me, you just sit there and like, I don't know why you to accumulate more political You're just daring more members of the judiciary to say, you know what, these guys aren't even pretending to respect what we do. So I you know, I'm not asking you to figure that out. I mean that, you know, I think.
You but the problem is worse than you say yeah, okay, good,
¶ The administration is extorting law firms
because they're also doing the same things with the law firms. And so the law firm issue is and they're they're extorting, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in legal work from from these firms.
So this another Justice Department could actually charge extortion here.
They chose to might think about it, but the you know.
If we're going to commit, if we're going to commit law their and like.
The AP, these court the the firms that have gone into court have won in a matter of hours. Right, so you know, no, no firm has gone into court and challenged one of these executive orders and not got in a temporary restraining order in a matter of hours. The Justice Department has not appealed to these, meaning that they actually know they can't win. And yet law firms keep capitulating and making these extravagant promises to the executive branch.
And why are they capitulating for exactly the reason that you just described, which is that the president can screw them and there's nothing they can do about it, just like he's doing to the AP. Now, you can freeze it out with a freeze them out with a wink. And if you're one of the firms that challenges this, you know, good luck getting a meeting on behalf of your client with the senior levels of the Justice Department, say before an indictment.
This is my frustration that one the law firms haven't banded together. Two that the press, the traditional press, I mean, you know, I've just I'm absolutely appalled by the folks that are running traditional media companies not standing by ap because about the only the only option you have is
collective action to at least make a point. I'm not saying it might might not work, but if you can't stand up for your basic constitutional rights the First Amendment, if you're a member of the press, frankly, the fourth Amendment, if you're a law firm you know or you know, just the then what are you in this? What are
you even doing here? That? I mean that that's my I just I'm so angry about the press aspect of this because I was one of the people who stood up who we stood up to Obama and said you can't do that to Fox and we refuse to participate in their pool unless they included Fox. And the inability of collective action because we know what's happening. The media executives who are not journalists have chosen to a buy by their bosses who have said, please, don't pick a
fight right now. And I understand that from a fiduciary standpoint, right from a business standpoint, but this is the slippery slope, and we're now watching it in real time.
Yeah, I mean, and you can say with respect to the press, the press is in a relatively weak position administration.
That's right.
Law firms are not, you know, law firm.
But why are they behaving as if they are?
Because they are wisses. And you know, because hundreds of millions of dollars in law firm revenue is on the line. And it is one thing when you are playing with
other people's money to take risks. But you know, law firms are organized as partnerships, and that means that every dollar that the law firm of X, Y and Z doesn't bring in is you know, thirty three cents from X, thirty three cents from Y, and thirty three cents from Z, and so they are really looking at their own pockets here, and you know, the only thing to do about it is to shame them. But they're in a much stronger position than the than journalists who represent actually an industry
in a somewhat precarious position. A lot of them are not healthy organizations. These are, you know, the powerful acting
¶ How will Harvard's decision to fight back affect them?
like the weakest of the week.
Arguably. I guess Harvard decided they were going to fight. Do you think that? And it was interesting to me the day after Harvard essentially said no, Columbia said oh yeah, no. They were like, oh yeah, we're going. We're right behind you. How Harvard, you know on that front? Do you expect Harvard's decision to UH to have any effects on these law firms?
No. I think the law firms are making different calculations than the universities. Look, I think it's great that Harvard did what it did. I think they're going to pay a price for it.
They will, and I think they're just banking that it's a two or three year price.
Yeah, two or three year price and one that they're going to have to litigate over because they're going to know, because they're going to have to litigate over.
They're going to win the suit, but it's gonna cost them a lot of money. I mean, it doesn't seem like I don't know how they lose.
Here, but well, but they lose again. There is that similarity, they lose even if they win. If you're you know, the government is going to really tighten the screws on all kinds of federal grants, research grants to universities. They're going to dry up entirely in certain areas, and you're going to find that, you know, Liberty University is a very attractive location to do all kinds of research that you would have once done at Harvard.
Right, And so that brings me back though to my other question. It's funny you brought up Liberty like that because I thought the same thing. You know, he's going out of his way, he and Stephen Miller, and Stephen Miller is obviously the guy seems to be executing all of this because I think we all know Donald Trump's too lazy to actually do some of the work that it would take.
To n Miller didn't get into Harvard.
¶ Is the administration going out of their way to pick fights?
Right there you go, I don't. I don't either. Look, he's a smart guy. I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't want I wouldn't want to know he was working on a case against me, right Like he's he is willing to push the envelope. He's willing to you know he's he's willing to do things that most ethical people wouldn't do. He's willing to cross certain ethical lines.
But uh, why not just simply reward friendly university? And you know, they keep their going out of their way to force these fights, which I guess they just see it as political distractions that feed the base something to eat while they destroy the global economy. And hope they're not paying attention.
I don't think it's just that, all right, So, remember when he's coming in and we are all worried about them going after their political enemies, using the FBI, using the Justice Department right to to attack his political enemies, And there actually hasn't been very much of that in the.
Criminal I was just going to say, Chris Krebs might have I didn't.
I didn't say that there's been none. I said there hasn't been a lot. Right, most of what's happened on
¶ They're creating criminal impunity for allies
the criminal side has been all about creating impunity for friends. So this started with the January sixth pardons, and then it proceeds to things like Eric Adams and shutting down the entire you know, sort of public integrity apparatus of the Justice Department firing a whole lot of prosecutors who worked on January sixth cases. Right, It's all about creating the impression that if you're on Trump's side, he will
protect you. But then you have this problem on the criminal side on using it for offensive purposes, which is okay. You can say we're going to have an investigation of Chris Krebs, but you can't actually indict Chris Krebs because
¶ Administration is using civil litigation to target enemies
you don't have shit right, right, And so what do you do to go after your political enemies to make them hurt if you can't really sick the FBI on them? And the answer is that's where all these civil remedies civil attacks come from. You can go after democratic law firms. You can go and ruin their businesses. You can actually put Chris Krebs out of business. He's a cybersecurity consultant. He just had to resign from his job. You can
really make universities hurt. Universities employ some conservatives, but really they're a power base of the left. And you can go after the press, but not after the press who were sympathetic. And so I think the way to understand these attacks is these are the things that he would the people he does want to put in jail, but that's hard, and so this is the repressive apparatus that's actually available to him.
So you just view this as because he can't put the bidens in jail or get them harassed or all
¶ The government will pay more in damages than money saved by DOGE
of that business.
This stuff is so much easy.
He can so mess around with government contract And yet here's been an assumption that I've made about DOGE in general, but AID specifically, and frankly even many of these, many of these weaponizations that the Trump administration has done on various things, is that there are the government is eventually going to lose all these cases, and in some cases
they're going to lose and have to pay damages. Right, I mean, I assume there's small businesses are going to essentially have breach of contracts with the federal government, and they're going to be able to prove that what was done was illegal, their owed restitution and et cetera. But although this is going to take years, but I assume that the government ends up paying more money in damages over the next decade for the last ninety days than they have in money saved by DOGE.
Oh, it'll be.
By a lot.
So you know, what they're arguing in court in these cases in which they've fired people, for example, is that all of these cases belong have to go through the Merit Systems Protection Board, right, And that doesn't mean and those are you know, that doesn't mean that they win. That means that they can't be stopped. Now. Now, if you go through the Merit Systems Protection Board and then you file suit later, well you know you're gonna get.
You're gonna win because they actually just aren't allowed to fire civil servants like that. And so you're going to get back pay, you're going to get reinstated, but you'll have already had another job, so you're going to be reinstated, and then they'll owe you all the pay that you should have done. And by the way, you won't have to have done the work, so they're not merely gonna lose and have to pay a lot of restitution. By the way, this is true for a bunch of contractors too.
Is in the contractors, and it's going to be again, I think there's going to be small businesses these you know, some of these contractors are small businesses that facilitate some of these aid contracts. Correct, and the business really is ninety percent of the business is the federal contract. So the cancelation bankshrup the company, and then.
There are damages and so get you get all of the back stuff, you get damages. And by the way, the government doesn't get the work done. And so if you do the accounting for it later, it's going to be hugely expensive.
And describe figure.
But what you won't have had is any moment where a court says, no, you can't do that. And so they get to say all along the way, we're saving the taxpayer x amount of money we're cutting. And by the way, when they lose, it'll be the fault of.
Some judge, right, those pesky judges.
¶ John Roberts is issuing rulings meant to avoid confrontation with Trump
A pesky judges.
Speaking of those pesky judges, it's pretty clear to me that John Roberts is petrified that Donald Trump's going to ignore an order he should be, so he's desperate to find ways to create rulings that give him something but not everything. Am I being a little cynical about this?
You're being cynical? But the cynicism isn't. First of all, courts behave that way a lot, right, They look for ways to avoid confrontations to make it possible for litigants to comply, and when you're dealing, when you're litigant is the most powerful nity in the world, and you have no independent ability to enforce your judgments. Being careful with
what you order is not the worst thing in the world. Now, I don't want to countenance being uh, cowardly, but being But he's not wrong to want to be careful here Trump. Unfortunately for him and for the other justices who feel this way, which certainly include Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Unfortunately for them, Trump isn't giving them the space like he's not saying. You know, so he in the Oval
¶ SCOTUS justices are aware Trump is flaunting their ruling
Office just lied about the Supreme Court's decision in Abrago Garcia. And you know, the justices aren't morons. They hear this right, and so they they see, we gave you a face saving out. We didn't say a word in criticism of you. We didn't use words like illegal or you know, authoritarian or terrifying. We didn't do any of that. And you turned around and described a nine to zero Supreme Court opinion that said, we're not even ordering you to get this guy back, but just facilitate it. And you spat
in our faces. This is going back up to them, and so he is sort of systematically taking away from Roberts and others the ability to not have a confrontation. Now that does two things. One is it it? You know, it takes away the face saving solution from the justices. It also takes away the face saving solution from Trump. And once you force that confrontation, eventually the Supreme Court has to say, Okay, the district Court ordered you to facilitate that's what we said she could do. You know,
we affirm. And that's going to be a bad moment, and not just a bad moment for the Court, but a bad moment for true because it's one thing to defy a district court order, which he's now really done twice. It's another thing to defy a unanimous Supreme Court opinion, say,
written by Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito. And I don't know how he responds to that moment, And I honestly don't know either, how members of Congress respond to a moment in which the Supreme Court has unambiguously said, you know, a district court has ordered you to do X, and we affirm. And he turns around and says, the Supreme Court,
¶ Trump is putting tremendous stress on his own party
can you know, put it where the moon don't shine.
Well, he's you know, it's interesting here, you're right, and he's putting so much stress on his own party right now. Right the tariffs are putting stress in the farm state senators who are just uncomfortable with it, and a lot of the free market to your guys who are just like I knew he was for this, but I always believed he wasn't that serious. And now they're freaking out. Now there's this idea of raising taxes on millionaires, right, which is like freaking out the Grover nor Quist crowd
and that, and they're they're desperately trying. I saw Steve, and it's sort of amusing to me to watch these mega converts be shocked when you know, they start behaving
¶ Are Trump's actions uniting SCOTUS against him?
unpredictably and a little more responsive to what they believe their populace base won't just accept but actually wants. Here But going back on the court, do you think these this is oddly bringing the justices together a little bit, just even because it's pretty clear that there's a lot of discomfort, right, you know, your Sony Sodomayra and you're say, Alito, I'm guessing maybe they say hi in the halls, you know,
if they if there's other people watching. But I don't know if they do if nobody's watching, right, I'm saying that, I'm I'm you know, it's so hard to read the tea leies with these, with these nine folks. But I you know, in a normal environment, right when you've had these are the type of things that could actually bring an institution together. Do you have any sense of that? I know you have some insights sometimes with clerics and all that.
What do you think, Look, I mean, I think from the opinions themselves, you can tell that they have been brought together on certain matters and that they're very divided on closely related matters. So if you look at the two Venezuela cases or the two uh sorry, El Salvador cases. In the first one, they all agree that you can't just declare someone in an alien enemy, put them on a plane and fly them out of the right.
You have to you have to make your case, you have to do process again. And they all those all the most of the Bill of Rights is about moments like this exactly.
And they all that's unanimous, and they dispense with that in the first couple of sentences, and then they go on to have a very bitter division about whether you can whether this very technical question of whether that do process has to occur through a habeas process or whether it can occur through a different process, and therefore whether this judge had jurisdiction over this case properly or not.
And you know, on the one hand, they're all together on the biggest question there right, which is is this lawful to do? There's no daylight on that between Sonya so To Mayora and Clarence Thomas. But so they're all brought together and they deal with that in a sentence and a half and then they have a real fight about the other thing.
Just over jurisdiction. But it almost feels like it's like they're all looking around here, all right, we got to have some escape hatch here, so we don't rule fully against well. And then they.
Do it again two days later or three days later, right where with Abrago Garcia, all nine of them look at it and say, yeah, I'm sorry, you can't do that, and then six of them are like, but be careful, District judge with that word effectuate. We're comfortable with facilitate, but be careful with effactuation. And three of them are
¶ What to make of the three liberal justices putting out a press release?
screaming yes, uh, you know, come on, you're gonna fight about you know, somebody's being essentially a press release. Look. I thought that, honestly, that was this is the division
that I want to see the Supreme Court have. If if you had told me, if you had described to me in the abstract the facts of this case and said, based on you know, don't just don't don't, don't be cynical about it, don't read tee leaves, don't do anything, just based on people's stated judicial philosophies, how would you expect them to handle it? I would say, wow, you know, the liberals on the court would be full throated behind the district court, and the conservatives would get a little
bit uncomfortable when you start using words like effectuate. But and that's exactly what happened. So this felt to me like like if there were no politics, if there were no how a court that actually had these ideological divisions and these philosophical divisions in a platonic ideal, how what
a disposition of this case would look like? And so I found it very cheering actually, and that they divided exactly that way on that issue, because it's like you you look at people who you know, have certain stated judicial philosophies and they believe in certain things, and then you get disappointed when they don't behave the way they say they believe what they And this one was one where like you really could have predicted it based on who they purport to be, and I thought they were
all being their real selves, and so I liked it actually. But the point is the dispute was pretty bitter, and even though they all are but over.
A technicality over me, that's right, right, It's like having a knockdown, drag out fight over a semicolon.
And so I do think in some big sense they're being brought together in these two cases on the biggest issues. They're nine to nothing, and yet they are really angry at each other, and they really they treat every one of these cases as though, you know, like the fate of a lot of things depends on it, and that's not bad. A fate of a lot of things does depend on it.
So yeah, I can't help but assume that the three
¶ How alarmed are the six conservative justices?
liberals are reacting to probably private conversations they've had with the other with many members of the other six who all probably privately express alarm and and all that stuff, and then like, come on, can't you say it publicly? Like that's how I kind of read it for it.
So I don't disagree with that. And I also think that, you know, being a being a member of a permanent Supreme Court minority is a very hard thing. You know. It's not like being a member of the minority in the House of Representatives, where there's always two years from now right, you have your eye on the next mid terms, and by the way, you can feel it when things are going your way because fundraising picks up right, there's always you know, for those three to become the majority
requires people to die. It requires the right person to be the president when that those people die. These are very long way of things, and until then, on the issues that they care most about, they're going to lose almost every time, and that is a hard life.
¶ Expectations for California's tariff lawsuit?
Two other cases I want to ask you about. One is California's the State of California's lawsuit against the administration on tariffs. I assume the administration is going to say that a state can't get involved in national security issues, right, in the same way that when Texas was trying to get involved with immigration issue, you can't make immigration policy. I assume the federal government's going to say, hey, a state can't decide trade policy, though they can make their
own sometimes agreements. Sometimes has to do with state taxes and things like that. But what's your sense of that lawsuit and what and whether it's going to go anywhere?
So I, first of all, I'm not an expert on tariffs. I do have the impression that the administrations, to the extent that the administration is making tariff policy under the statute known as AEPA, which is the International Economic Emergencies.
Right, it's in a national emergency, which I assume becomes national security exactly.
So, to the extent that they're making tariff policy based on AIPA, I think that there may be serious legal defects with the tariff policy. Whether California is in a position to successfully challenge it, I'm not sure. Honestly. I suspect the better plaintiffs will be private plaintiffs that are affected by the tariffs and don't want to follow And.
What are those law what are those lawsuits against the tariffs themselves, or do they become essentially the same type of lawsuits we were describing with with aid contractors. No, no, no, I think they're your tariff policy bankrupted me.
Yeah, no, no, I think not. I think the I think these would be prospective. You have no authority to issue these tariffs the the UH. And I believe that A.
You're over you're over reading your power in the Emergency Acts exactly.
And and you can't declare a worldwide emergency that covers all trade under AYEPA. And by the way, even if you could, tariffs are not one of the authorities that conveys.
And however, the discovery of of life on another planet, now he could worry, that's an emergency for the entire globe. Right, Sorry, I'm.
Just I would think so right, like this could be, you know. And so I I think that there's a there's I think that there are some substantial arguments that the tariffs are overreach of his power. I'm not sure whether California is in the best position to litigate that, but I but I wouldn't you know, they have some
¶ The president has civil immunity from defamation lawsuits
They have a serious Attorney General's office that has a lot of capacity there, so I wouldn't rule it out either.
The other one I have for you is about Chris Krebs and I and it's about a lawsuit. I don't think he's filed, but I wonder if he could. And that is and I know that there are some protections that when a sitting president. When you're a sitting president, you basically can't be sued in civil court, right, or when.
You're a past president you can't be sued.
He can defame anybody he wants that. He has blanket authority to defame people as long because this is blatant defamation a character, Yes, blatant defamation.
As long as he does it as an official act of the presidency rather than outside in his personal capacity. Order. This is clearly to.
Pay nearly a billion dollars. Essentially it's a settlement, So I guess there technically wasn't an adjudication of defamation, but but essentially that's what they're paying. If Fox could have somehow declared themselves a public official to get out of this, no, it's.
Not public official. It's the president. So the relevant cases case called Nixon v. Fitzgerald, and it held that the president is absolutely immune for civil liability for all matters within for all official acts, within the four corners of the outer reaches of his presidential authority. It's a sweeping opinion from nineteen eighty or seventy nine.
I mean, because I mean he is the blatant defamation on individuals. I mean it is shocking. I mean, well, then why Didniejine Carroll's why did she succeed? She exceeded because it happened before he was president, correct.
So it happened he repeated the defamation during the period in which he was not president.
But he also did it while he was president.
Correct, But in the interregnum he did it again.
Well, he also defamed Chris Krebs in between his president.
So he's not immune from that that Chris could sue
¶ Targeting Krebs and Taylor are two of the most egregious acts so far
him for that. Look, this is one of the most egregious abuses of his second term so far, both with respect to Chris Krebs and with respect to Miles Taylor and the idea you know this is it's so outrageous that there's actually a specific provision in the Constitution designed to prevent things like this, And it's called the Bill of a Tainder Clause, right, and a bill of attainder was what the British Parliament used to do, which was to name to have like the Chuck todd As an
asshole statute where they would declare you a criminal and then prescribe a for you, like getting your head cut off. And the idea was they could just name you and accuse and pass a bill convicting you of a crime. And the US Constitution specifically forbids bills of attainer only, this isn't a bill of attainder, right, it's an executive order of attainer, which is even worse right because there's no legislative process behind it. There's no doubt it's unconstitutional.
There's no doubt that you know that it's a horrific abuse. The only question is whether it's worth Chris's time to sue because it doesn't actually do very much right, it's it's it's an executive order that primarily defames him.
And of course, yeah, I mean, I just I get really frush because this guy has been essentially defaming our profession. He's been all sorts of and you know, he's he's he he deserves to be under a wave of constant lawsuits that he has to like that drown over based on you know, his inability to keep his mouth shut.
But but with with Chris and I like, you know, he and I aren't aren't close, and I know him a little bit.
But not about I think I have about the same relationship.
Right, It's not you know, he's somebody who professional just a professional, professional acquaintance. And I admired his work in government very much. We do a lot of cybersecurity work at law Fair, and so our worlds have overlapped a fair bit. But this is somebody when when when when you sign up as a journalist, you're signing up to play in a public space, and.
To you know, know, I accept it.
We take upon ourselves the obligation not to engage in frivolous attacks, but not an immunity from them. But when you sign up to be a government official, one thing you are not supposed to is not supposed to happen, is that you get savagely attacked by the government for telling the truth. And what people hate in the Trump
world hate Chris Krebs for is two things. One is that he protected our elections from foreign attacks that they wanted, and the second is that having done that he told the truth, that the election in twenty twenty was secure. And the idea that the head of government, head of head of state of this country would issue a formal order attacking you for those things and accusing you of you know, treason, is my boggling.
I look, it's it's I had a friend of mine say, you know, the mistake we made in Trump one point oh was failure of imagination and that you know, sometimes we well, he wouldn't do that, right. You know, markets completely didn't believe he would go as far as he did on tariffs. Right, They didn't price it in. They messed up, They didn't do that. And I think the
¶ Trump 2.0 is an entirely different proposition
biggest mistake, probably some swing voters made was assuming that he'd be more like Trump one point oh, right. And I think the biggest, the most important thing people have to understand is that this is an entirely different presidency, an entirely different administration. And the first one had real guardrails because there were real serious people who were not mag and this time this is a government of true believers who well, some are true believers and some are
on the livers. You know, there's true believers, and then there's the ones who just want to be reactionaries. If the left upset, then we must be winning, even if I'm losing money in the stock market. Do right. But this is an entirely different proposition we're facing with Trump two point zero.
That is clearly right. And it is also the case that his personality is not in the same place as it was.
No, he's a changed man.
He's Yeah, he was.
Always manic as he was. He's more manic now.
More manic now, and more obsessed with vindictive retribution more of the time. And not that he was free of those things right four years ago or eight years ago, but he was. He was less obsessed with it all the time than he appears to be now.
When when people ask you your level of concern about
¶ What authoritarian model does Trump most emulate?
the future of the democracy and I get this question, and I'm of the we're not a turkey. Maybe you can make some early stage hungry comparisons. I think that's where I go. Where do you go when you when you get asked that question, which I know you get asked a lot.
Yeah, I get asked it a lot. I mean I almost as much as I get asked the what if he defies a court order question? Look, anybody who's not concerned is not paying attention, and anybody who but it is also wrong to catastrophize it. I went out the day.
Where I try to go. I just like, don't I trust our I trust the public to eventually figure this out.
The day after the Trump Zelensky White House meeting, so I went, I took my laser projector and I went to the base of the Washington Monument and I projected on in giant letters on the base of the Washington
¶ Ben projected "Trump and Vance betrayed the country" on the Washington monument
Monument Trump advance betrayed it America in the Oval Office, and this was visible from the White House and I was there doing this. By the way, the video of this, which is available on Instagram, has been seen by two million people now. And I was there for more than an hour and no police showed up. I've had no harassment of any kind as a result of having on the base of the Washington Monument that Trump had betrayed the country. And by the way, I'm going to do
it again. You know, the next time he drives really really pisses me off, I'm going to do it again. And I'm not afraid of being arrested because in fact, by the.
Way, projecting images though. I mean this is I learned this with GW when we were dealing GW was dealing with the with the the gods of protesters, and there was nothing they could do. They couldn't claim the thing was being defined because it was a projection.
This is why I use projectors, and I do it on the Russian embassy, you know, project Ukrainian flags on the Russian embassy. And so it's a it's a technique of protests that I've used a lot. But here's the thing is, in police states, you don't get to project that the president betrayed the country within sight of the president, and you don't get to put your name on it and expect to be left alone.
Right you haven't. You haven't been audited yet from the I R S. We'll see what well, well, I'll ask you again in September.
So am I concerned? Yes? Do I think people are being a bit too hasty to catastrophize the concern? Yeah? And look, when I get arrested for uh for this sort of activity or get you know, I'll announce it when I have an I R S audit, you know. And so I I do think there's still a lot of room to do political organizing in the United States. And I do think by the way, that Donald Trump is likely to get shull ACKed in the next midterms.
I do too, which.
Again dictators don't really let themselves do. So I don't wanna. I don't want to confuse the concern for a sense that we don't have anything left to fight over.
That's essentially an answer, a form of an answer I heard from Condi Rice who basically said, you know, our democracy is pretty ingrained in the people itself, and how these things that it's going to be. One person can do a lot of harm there, but it's really hard for one person to rip out the entire fabric of the nation in one turn.
I agree with that, but I also don't think we should be complacent about it. And you know, and I
¶ The beacon of freedom has been turned off
think the erosion itself is awful. And look and your if your answer, if your question had been focused on are we still a place where uh, you know, people who are not citizens of the United States, or.
We're not a beacon anymore, I would have given you a very different answer. No, no, no, no. The you know, the idea that we're a beacon of freedom and a beacon of new the beacon got turned off. We are not you know, nobody is saying come here, we're a
safe haven. I mean, you know. And by the way, I always constantly have to remind people the Constitution constitutional rights are for anybody in the on the in the United States, whoever's in the United States, you get some constitutional protection, not all of it, but a lot of it.
Right, Yeah, although you know less than you did four months ago.
And well, you know, just counting on the courts not to erode that away, right.
And well, but you know those are if you're a Palestinian sympathetic student on a student visa or you're on a green card, you have less rights than you may have thought you did four months ago. And so I want to be I want to be careful to acknowledge the degree of erosion and not say it's all fine, but also not to say things like we're not a democracy anymore, or you know, we're we've slid into authoritarianism. Yeah,
¶ Ben's hammock studio
we may be sliding, but we're still pretty high up on the hill.
So I got a lot of you know, I'm new to this. I've had my podcast has been audio only up until the last couple of weeks. So I'm new to this world of YouTube. So I'm going to make you answer a question that I know some viewers are going to say, what are you sitting in? Tell us about your tell us about your backdrop? What do you say?
So I do all my my zoom meetings from what I call the Hammock Studio, and uh if I I mean.
You should name your production company that EMI Studios.
You know, so something hang on, let me let me pull up my I can I can zoom out so you can see the whole thing. And uh, it's.
A special treat for check podcast viewers.
Yeah, exactly. I don't do this for just anybody. I built this studio in the in the pandemic, and I just said, you know, if I'm gonna uh uh it wants to.
Upload, it's not zooming.
Huh yeah, I guess it's not. It's not working.
So basically you're sitting in a hammock. Not necessarily in a hammock.
You can see, Yeah, it's a it's a it's a handmade hammock with a Ukrainian flag hanging on it, made in in Latvia and I bought it on on Etsy at the beginning of the pandemic, because I said, if I'm going to be stuck in this little room for the next I thought it was three months. It turns that to be tweens. I'm going to be in a hammock.
Well, look a hammock. Hopefully that's all you're going to be in. The government's not going to.
Try to create hanging from something else.
Not going to be trying to create a different type of of incarceration for us. Mister Whittis. I appreciate you
¶ Administration is targeting people the public doesn't care much about
going through this. It's I do think my biggest concern about all these lawsuits is that the public isn't paying a lot of attention right and that in some ways the Trump administration is counting on counting on the idea that that unpopular people, unpopular people are going to get defended by the left because like they're comfortable violating the constitutional rights of unpopular people and think they can get away with it. And it's a really it's a disturbing pattern.
Yes, and especially so because they are doing it by It would be one thing if they were taking people who were had genuinely done things that were objectionable and demonizing them. But some of the people that they're going after, they've gone after so randomly that they then have to concoct these kind of legends about them, that they were gang members or that they're terrorists or whatever. And they
often have very little basis for saying these things. And so the gay makeup artist with a tattoo becomes a scary gang member and the and there's a fair bit, you know, speaking of defamation, there's a fair bit of simple defamation going on there. And you know, you compound locking people up in a salvador in gulag with lying about them.
Yeah, no, it's a put it this way, I understand and why some people feel that this is a catastrophic moment because in individual cases it's absolutely appalling and alarming.
¶ The goal is to stop it from getting worse
And I think what you're trying to preach, and what I'm trying to preach is sort of, look, this is bad. It could be worse, and the goal should be to stop this so that it doesn't get worse.
Yes, and also to not confuse this. Look Kilmar Abrego Garcia was not deported to a salvator in prison because he was doing political organizing or expressing his opinions or denouncing the treatment of others. He was deported as best as I can tell, because he was looking for work in a home depot parking lot with some people who turned out to be members of a gang and he got scooped up. So if it's randomly coming for you, uh,
there's not that much you can do about that. And it's not coming for you because you're giving to political candidates or because you're raising your voice and objection. And so you know what I'm saying is, don't confuse the two. We can all still do our parts. And the purpose of all of this is to scare you, so don't let it.
Well, people are going to be looking for you and your projector around Washington, DC, so it'll be fun to look for you. It's where's Waldo. We'll be looking for the projector.
You can always find me in front of the Russian Embassy. And these days, just below the south lawn of the White House, that mound that they put the Washington Monument on makes a great, great spot to project.
Weather's great today too.
Look for me Sunday evening.
Well there you go, all right, that's an interesting Uh. This is actually going to drop right after Sunday evening. So if that does happen. I will let let my listeners know, mister wet it's a pleasure, Thank you, sir,
¶ Showdown with SCOTUS looming?
thank you. So look, we're gonna wait to see what does the Supreme When does the Supreme Court go a little bit harder? Right, they didn't order the return of Garcia, they ordered the government to make an effort to bring him back. So we are still the Roberts Court still seems to be tiptoeing to the moment that there is going to be a there's certainly going to be some
constitutional confrontation. Perhaps it's over the FED Chair. I mean to hear Donald Trump go after the FED Chair for essentially trying to do his job and trying to If he tries to upend the independence of the FED Chair, not only could he creator the economy quicker and faster and certainly cause all sorts of disruption there, but that probably and if I were to if the Roberts Court, knowing Roberts, I think he would be willing to draw a line in the sand over the FED before he
might be willing to draw a line in the sand over immigration policy. I know that sounds very cynical of me, but I think when it comes to the economy. I think he would see potentially more cover in that. Maybe there'd be more Republicans willing to stand by a Supreme Court decision that pushed back on any effort to other president to try to fire fire pals simply because Powell's
¶ Chuck's Nats rant - Fix the bullpen!
not not bowing down to him and following the policy that he wants at the FED rather than what the Fed governors believe is in the best interest.
In the country.
With that, I do want to just do one quick sports wine if I could, and my sports wine is the NATS bullpen. Why why why can't this? There seems to be a systemic problem in the NATS organization when it comes to pitching coaching. For whatever reason, we can't develop good relievers. We have a half decent time at development, and perhaps we're just scouting. I don't know if it's one of two things. Either we only care about finding
starting pitchers. The experience of the twenty nineteen World Series led our front office to believe relief pittures don't matter because you just use your best pictures once you get to the playoffs. But guess what, you need to get to the playoffs, and you need to have functional bullpen to do that, or maybe we have owners that are just too cheap and are not giving them whatever it is, it's an embarrassment. This is a young team. They deserve
a chance to win. When you have a bullpen where you're not even trying, and you may not even have professional baseball players in that bullpen, then you do. You're not forget the fans, You're not supporting those young teammates. You're only messing with their confidence. So get it together front office, Mike Rizzo and the learners and figure out either is it coaching and you just need to improved coaching. I certainly wish we had Mike Maddocks back as our
pitching coach. Or are we just being cheap? Either way, you're being unfair to this organization that is still only six years removed from a world championship. All right. See, this is the joy of having your own of having your own podcast. You can ran about pretty much anything you want, as long as it doesn't, you know, totally set the entire enterprise off the rails. So there's my little Nats rant for the weekend. Because I love James Wood.
I'd like to see this guy get a chance to win, and I'd like to see the franchise put a winner around it. All right, So with that, I wish I could have enjoyed the Nats winning this weekend, but I couldn't because of this awful bullpen. We had a nice holiday weekend, beautiful weather, and I had to watch that. Come on, people, all right, joy the NBA playoffs. Those are going to be a lot of fun until we uploaded them. Hey,