How Trump's Tariffs & Deportations Are Undermining Democracy | A Conversation with Ryan Lizza

a mag lawyer. Ryan's entanglement in it reads like a novel. Today, Ryan had on Judge Michael Ludig, veteran federal judge, one of the pre eminent conservative legal minds of his generation and a deeply principled believer in the rule of law,

the American Constitution. And you can see Judge Ludiic and his appearance with Ryan on Ryan's podcast and tell Us, and I encourage you to watch it because Judge Ludik is going to in that podcast detail in a way that's very accessible the lawlessness, the disregard for the Constitution, and all of those things we're gonna talk about that.

To kick off, I wanted to make one initial point here as we begin the conversation tonight, and it is I see one of our Canadian community members, and I was walking into a Canadian grocery store earlier and Every item in that store is tagged with the Canadian flag to indicate if it is a Canadian product. And the pride of the country with regard to its prime minister

is palpable. And we're going to talk about Mark Carney tonight as a portraiture of leadership and the oppositional character creates that he has to so much of the Washington DC Democratic establishment. Smart able, obviously noncompetulant, and I thought, and we'll start this, I do have one fact check in the old spirit of things that the Prime Minister said that was deeply untrue in this moment, and it's this.

He said, Canada is not for sale, and that is trip but Dan and the Prime Minister motioned in the Oval Office and he said, in some places are not for sale, but the American Oval Office is most certainly for sale. And Donald Trump is renting it out like a whore from an old West town, one shekel at a time to every hour potentate they can get a bitcoin of them and down to Marilago. It is an appalling, palling,

ethical armageddon and a corruption that we're witnessing. There's a staging and I want to talk about that tonight.

I have awesome respect for him, right, maximum respect for Prime Minister Mark Carney right, as a as a leader who defends liberty, who defends freedom, defends what's right in this in this moment, And so like, how did you read that room?

fifty first state. He went in there with you know, political wind at his back, recently elected popular, whereas Trump is uh suffering from a cratering in the polls in recent weeks he's suffering from hit after hit by federal judges around the country declaring the that his major initiatives so far are don't pass legal muster. And so I

think that's the sort of setup. I mean, I think sometimes we think of Trump as this, uh, you know, a titanic political figure because he's, you know, he's had this incredible comeback politically and you know, he's back in the White House, but he's not doing great right now, Steve. In my view, so that was the first thing. Is a politician on the up and you know, one coming down, and the relationship between them is, you know, this Canadian

Prime minister has been helped by by Trump's nonsense. Parney was, you know, a statesman. He didn't get into. You know, it's amazing to me how these traditional politicians are able to uh not get in the gutter with Trump and not try and come into the Oval office and engage in the kind of antics that he does. He must be I'm sure it's very tempting for them to do that. He didn't do that. He made some jokes. I don't know if you agree or not, but Trump kind of

was a whimp about about everything. I mean, he didn't. He didn't he wasn't pushing him on this, on this stuff. He made a couple of cracks about it. I mean, I think a certain sense to me, it was like Trump actually understands how idiotic and juvenile the whole thing is, and he's almost embarrassed to really push it, uh in front in front of this person. So that was you know that, that was my basic read on it is you know, Trump is very conflict diverse in real life, right.

I think you know, the the Zelenski meeting maybe was an outlier in that sense, but he doesn't like face to face uh, confrontation.

important for people to see clearly what's going on. And what morek Carney did is show the whole world how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump and how incoherent he is, and whether the sycophants like Steven Miller who go on and they say things on Fox like well, you know, look, I'm watching the Grand Chess Master, right, You're watching a ship of fools doing real arson. And so with regard to people, you know, as you cross a border, you know, does.

that clay out right now. It's gonna get worse, right, Because what I wanted to ask you also, is is there a sense in Washington about that seven weeks from now, there's gonna be really a fundamental collapse of inventory and stores and a high consumption society. So there's gonna be a lot of items that suddenly become scarce, Prices will

go up, jobs will disappear. And when you look at agricultural forecasts and some of this maybe the inability to pick crops, the inability to move crops to markets internationally, which has a real implication for long haul truck drivers, which is really the number one living wage job, right for a non college educated white guy in the country, right, a core Trump constituency. Right, all of this, as we move into the September October I think takes Trump down

to about a twenty nine thirty percent approval level. This should be a historic glow. I worried about thirty eight thirty nine hovering right there right now. I think he's headed to the thirty five, and he's going to get lower than thirty five and kind of arc from about and the accumulation of all of this is going to be really devastating in a lived experience for people. And so how do you see that?

were in the teeth of a recession, right. It was just a big, big warning sign from that market drop, and it absolutely the bottom fell out of his polls. To the extent that can happen for any president these days, I think you're probably saying twenty nine to thirty percent, because that's probably the sort of dead end or base that he has that will, you know, will just never

say they disapprove of him. And so I think you're absolutely right that considering just the freakout of what the tariffs could do produced that kind of hit the actual ech. And remember, the market has recovered, you know, most of what it lost. Trump has not recovered most of the polling support that he lost. And so at the actual economic effects of these tariffs, which we haven't seen yet, right, that is like a storm on the horizon that every day that he keeps these tariffs uh intact, uh is

more likely to uh hit landfall. So I completely agree with you if you if you read closely the what you know, small businesses, large businesses, what's happening with uh uh shipping, and just the sort of uh slow accretion of everyone preparing for especially the China tariffs. It's going to it's it's going to hit, and it's going to hit hard. And he doesn't really have, you know, uh a plan to you know, say, oh, sorry, these these

tariffs are gone now. I mean they only just started talking to the to the to the Chinese this week, even though Trump said they've been in negotiations for for uh for weeks. That was an obvious lie. So I agree, you know, I I'm not a I don't make predictions about Trump and support anymore, because if you know, if I was doing that, I you know I wouldn't be very accurate. I never thought he'd be in the White House again. So I'm always, I'm always very cautious of

those predictions, Steve. But I think it's an absolute fact that we have not seen the worst hit yet from these tariffs, and just the freakout last month produced his biggest his his lowest approval ratings as president.

until it stops. And I just wonder why there is not anybody in the Senate that seems to appreciate that the moving of the line two greater absurdities, two greater desecrations of tradition of restraint in a democracy and a republic. Why do we have such a contaminated.

think this through. If they did that, I mean, all the arguments they made against what Tubberville did would be thrown back in their face and they would say what they would say, yes, we need you know, this is necessary because it's the one tool. I'm just thinking out loud here, Steve, because you've you've you've triggered this conversation, and let's think of this through whether this would actually

be politically smart to do or not. They would say, yeah, this this parade is a is a disgrace and one tool that we have is we can we can hold up these military promotions. We uh support them, we uh, but we need to make a stand here. I don't know I would that sell got wrong?

able to do that single handedly so could they do that? Yeah, but what what's is that gonna Is that gonna be smart politically to say?

but there is a distinction between those two things. But on the Waltz thing, they can't do it. This guy, Ed Martin, Steve, I don't know how much you followed Ed Martin.

He is a He was at January sixth. He has routinely described it as a day of you know, I'm paraphrasing here, you know, peace and joy and love, and obviously celebrated Trump's pardons of all the January sixth criminals. And by the way, he has absolutely zero prosecutorial experience.

If by my reckoning, he was perhaps in the in the top three, but maybe number one in terms of the most disturbing Trump nominees if you get past like you know, Tulsea and RFK and some of these others, but he was in that pantheon and you know, Pambody, but really really scary because this guy was going to be the US attorney for Washington, d C. Where there is a just target rich environment of people and institutions that this White House hates and we were looking at

you know, so right now because Tom Tillis did the right thing and said, you know, I'm not a big fan of January sixth sympathizers. It looks like Ed Martin's nomination is dead. Uh, he's still current, he's still the acting US Attorney, but it's going to expire, uh in a couple of weeks.

still it's still possible. But he's someone that your your viewers should keep an eye on because he's just an absolute worst of the worst in terms of being unqualified and having views that are just so out of step with what you would want in a in a US attorney. So anyway, right we gotta. I've got to brush up on Senate procedure for next time.

use it recently. But you gotta you gotta do that. Uh you know, there's only so many hours you can actually uh do that.

one person, you know, Chuck Schumer. He you know that's not what he wants to be doing.

of it. Right, And so one of the reforms right for democrats, I think that bar associations, right, should be filled with non lawyer, certified professionals that are bound by a fiduciary responsibility, by a code of conduct. So, for example, you have a couple of doctors on the Bar Association board. You have a couple psychologists, right, anybody who has a fiduciary trust. You have some accountants, right, you have a

certified board member training. But lawyers should not be judging other lawyers because in the obvious aftermath if any of these legal codes of ethics mean anything, and people like Pambondi and Marco Rubio and others are going to be disbarred over the next over the next decade, right as it winds out through a process, through some of the

illegalities of actions. Because I believe the Constitution is the law of the land, and it's immutable, less amended, and that we will prevail here, and that what's happening is, though an abomination, not unprecedented.

someone who clerked for Scalia. This is someone who Ted Cruz once said. Ted Cruz worked for Judge Lutig. Ted Cruz once said that he wishes George W. Bush had appointed or nominated Lootig to the Supreme Court instead of John Roberts. In other words, that was Cruse's statement of saying John Roberts was too liberal. We should have had

a real conservative like Michael Ludig. And you know, Michael lud to his great great credit, has been clear eyed about the threat that Trump represents to democracy from the beginning. I think he's someone who has become more and more outspoken over time, peaking with his public testimony in twenty twenty two before the January sixth Committee. And he's written a piece that's coming out this week that is going

to be just explosive. And I've known Looted for a while now, and we were talking and he started previewing the piece with me, and he was kind enough to come on Substack Live with me this afternoon and take me through what he's going to say in this article.

And I'm going to start at the end of our interview Steve, because I just think this line from Lootig, given his pedigree and his history, it just kind of unsettled me because I asked at the end, you know, you know what, what's your level of optimism that things will get better and you know, we'll you're back on course here, and he was pretty pessimistic, and he said this, He said, it would be impossible to say after Donald Trump's first one hundred days in office that America has

a government of laws, not of men. You know, this is a guy who spent fifteen years as a federal judge dealing with some of the most complicated cases, especially in the wake of nine to eleven, deeply serious person, and for him to reach that conclusion is it's it's shocking,

it's astonishing, it's frightening. And I don't think our current media environment and our current you know, public forums about what's going on have grappled with this kind of core act of the lawlessness that people like Luting see in Trump. I think people don't, you know, people are still in denial about it. And I want to let me just go through his sort of like main paragraph in this piece, and I might just read the whole thing, Steve. You

can cut me off. It goes on too long. Please just this paragraph, which is going to blow up the internet. We're getting a preview of it here compliments of looting. But this piece is gonna blow up there.

one hundred days in office. Does Donald Trump even have the authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States, And now he starts listing these signature initiatives not for the crippling global tariffs he ordered unilaterally. Not for his unlawful deportations of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador Squalid maximum security prison. Not for his deportation of US citizens to Honduras. Not for his defiantly corrupt vow and order from the Great Hall of the Department of Justice to

weaponized the Department against his personal political enemies. Not for his evil executive orders against the nation's law firms and lawyers in personal vendetta for their representation of his political enemies and clients of whom he personally disapproves. Not for his corrupt executive orders against honorable American citizens and former officials of his own administration Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, a former DHS chief of staff who dared criticize Trump

anonymously during his first term. Not for his unlawful bludgeoning of the nation's colleges and universities with unconstitutional demands that they surrender their governance of billions of dollars of congressionally approved funds, or his politically motivated threats to revoke tax exemptions. Not for his attempt to alter the rules of federal elections.

Not for his direct assault on the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship guarantee, not for his mass firings of federal employees, not for Elon Musk and DOJ's ravaging of the federal government, not for his threats to fire Federal Reserve Board Chairman J Powell, not for his unconstitutional attacks on press freedoms, and finally, not for his appalling arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan.

Yet I counted that there's there's basically sixteen policies he mentions in there, and he's not just like riffing through this, you know, to be cute. These are the inner sixteen policies that he goes through and explains as a as a judge would why they have no foundation in law

or authority under the Constitution. And I don't know, just blew me away reading this and listening to him go through that, because I think so much of the conversation is, you know, partly that you know, Trump's bad and things suck, but so much of the media coverage of this is like, you know, Trump, did you know crazy thing X. It's being challenged in the courts, but it's this kind of both sides ism without any clear statement of yeah, that was that's illegal, Like we don't need a lawyer to

tell us like that's illegal, like uh, the you know, birthright citizenship, like we can read we can all read the fourteenth Amendment. And so I think the power of looting and his conversation with me today and this piece that's coming is just stepping back looking at the last hundred days days of the most important things that Trump did and explaining only like a federal judge can that the rule of law has just evaporated when it comes to this president. And this has been one hundred days

of lawlessness in his view. And I've known looted for a while. Well, he's not hyperbolic. He's a really serious guy. And it took him a while to sort of, I think, get dragged into the to and fro of politics, and it's not comfortable for someone like him, like a federal judge. And this is to me the most important statement I've seen by someone of his reputation and credentials on the

right explaining the lawlessness of the president. And you know, he concludes with what I started with, you know, it should be impossible to say, it would be impossible to say after Donald Trump's first hundred days in office that America has a government of laws, not of men. So pretty depressing, pretty unsettling.

we release it. You can find Ryan to tell us support good independent journalism, because I want to tell you what I see at a at a strategic level, what I observe in terms of assessing the fight ahead, and it's it's this that.

fucking ever right, So it's not going to happen. Just like the first Amendment is not debatable, just like the Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the fourteenth Amendment. None of these things are debatable. The eighth Amendment is not debatable, right, It is not at the whim.

in fights. But when we do, and the American people are judging by the size of the protests and the building consequences, Like, what I don't get, right, is there's something that's happened over the last fifteen years in the society. Right, I'm fifty four, that's been a change, right that I very successful guy.

right with not with anything on them. When it's and he's like and he and his response to it was, well, we'll see and I said, well, it's not we'll see we we know, right, it takes a month for the ship to get here. You can you can look at data people follow this, right, it's all transparent what's flowing around the world, and it's all in a state of collapse.

I said, what I don't know understand. I said, if you if you and I were like, it's standing at the ocean's edge, right, and the hurricane was coming right, and we're standing there with a beer, right, you know, and it's like time to go inside. And I'd be like, the hurricane is coming, And would you say, we'll see right or do you know the hurricane is coming?

I love I love a good contrarian, counterintuitive take, but it gets it gets pushed to the extremes where there's this sort of unwillingness to just state clearly the sort of not that there aren't complications in these things, not that there aren't uh you know, uh other views to platform and to privilege, but there's just this unwillingness to be really plain about what's going on, you know, just to be like the fourteenth Amendment says what it says,

you know, and the you know, a lot of journalists don't like to play lawyers because you know, they think everything's up for interpretation when it comes to the law. But you could read a lot of statutes and just get the plain meaning. And there's just this like in the corporate media. There's just this obsession with everything has to have two sides, and if Trump does something, then there's got to be an equally good and smart argument for it, and you know, just report out the debate.

And it's just like blinding to a lot of media institutions these days who don't realize that these traditional conventions of journalism are being used against the media and the media's obsession with uh, with with overinterpreting, over interpreting everything, and you know, giving the benefit of the doubt to the loudest political actor when when they when they do something,

it's all being weaponized against them. They are these media conventions that serve really important purposes, but they're failing us now because there they should be at the service of our principles.

up in the traditional system are going wrong. There they have this like anachronistic attachment to both sides ism and these old school journalists conventions and anything that states clearly that one side is doing something more wrong than the other side. They just it seems uncomfortable to them. That can't be the case. That means they're they're biased or or somehow partisan. And so it's a huge, huge problem, Steve, and it's it's preventing the public from seeing a lot

of this clearly. And that's why when you, as you point out, when you when you see someone like an expert like Looting put this all together in one place, it's like, yeah, why why can't other people just make that case? Why can't they just say that clearly? And you know, look, that's one of the one of the things I love about leaving that world being on sub stack. And you know, there's a reason this platform and the journalists,

a lot of them come through your show here. It's the reason why it's booming, and it's reason why people who are hungry for to get out of the corporate media bullshit are coming here and looking for independent journalists. And so I appreciate you pushing at a lot of those voices. It means a lot.

off the deck of the Truman yesterday. But we now see this crisis between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, that is that is escalating. You know, Donald Trump was incoherent talking about that. We have a moral crisis in that we have a real issue with an out of control jack boot federal agency that is acting like American Gestapo,

not American law enforcement. It's unacceptable, it's outrageous, and that Tom Homan for sure will be packed up on the American whole of villainy someday of that, I have no doubt, like all of these people, but in this in this moment, you have a lot of stories, and you have thirty nine Democrats Senator sign a letter demanding insight and oversight over these detention facilities, including foreign black sites, where people

are being shipped, attained and apparently, according to reports, profoundly mistreated.

we are. Right, the idea that the American flag would be viewed as a symbol of fear by a twenty six year old Canadian actress trying to cross the American frontier doing nothing wrong at all, and the sinister nature of the threats by the Vice President with Christy Nome, the sadism, the cruelty, where there's an embrace of a policy, we're the most powerful amongst us have taken the license to persecute the least amongst us with the cruelties of

the meanest amongst us. And it is a abomination that John McCain would have thunderously dissented from from the floor of the United States Senate and would have argued with the deepest passion about the affront to the fundamental values of the country. And so as we're moving ahead right into this political season, one of the things is we begin to wrap up the hour. Ryan and I are going to get together once a week in the evening, and we're gonna We're.

of these candidates in the Democratic primary? And I just want to close it out and say one thing before I turn it over to Ryan and I just want to give everybody a point of view to think about with regard with regard to opposition, I think that one of the dumbest things that I've ever heard is the dismissal of the energy and the necessity of the protests that are being led by Bernie Sanders and by AOC.

And it is important to listen to the merit of what they are saying and to meet them not through the prism of the label, because none of these labels mean anything to me anymore. There are people who appreciate this dangerous moment, as Judge Ludig does right, and they're or in defense of something that is sublime that belongs

to all of us. So what I would say is, for example, I don't know that I would ever vote for AOC, but I forevermore will be in AOC and Bernie Sanders' supporter, And I'm a supporter of theirs because I admire their leadership, and I admire their courage, and I admire their vision of being able to see that what has developed, what has manifested, is something deeply sinister and insidious, and that the fundamental choice is grounded in liberty, and so the people that are on the front line

of this right, that are enunciating a moral prism that explains what's happened, and whether it's Bishop Barber, I will have my friend Ryan Bucy on. And so when you think about coalitions, right, Ryan Busey was the Democratic candidate from the state of Montana. And we're gonna be talking about public lands, I want you to think about my friend Grove, who are going on every Monday into the

Capitol to do moral Mondays and pray. And each Monday, Capitol police have arrested different ministers for praying in there. Cowboys in the West and black ministers together are powerful combination, right, because what they share in common as brothers and sisters, right is a recognition of what's right and what's wrong.

And so when you look at the detainees in American custody, the mistreat that has been documented, the Senate investigation, the economic calamity, the international crises that are building, the rule of law crisis, we're in one of the great crises in the history of the United States. Everybody, and it's going to require acts of citizenship. It's gonna require you

to be involved. It's going to require you to demand, demand compliance with the cornerstones of our civilization, all of them invested deeply in the Constitution of the United States.

a big bluetooth thing on your in your ear. You know, you had about the same amount of hair as you have now. And I think I said this to your face. I hope I didn't just say this like a like a jer to other reporters, but I used to say, uh, God, I hope I'm remembering this correctly. That that Steve reminded me of that the Star Wars character Labbots, which is a kind of uh, that's a very he had a very small role in uh. And I think the secondar I can't remember it now, but some of the Star

Wars nerds will will remember who lab it is. But he was a ball guy with a big headset on it. And anyway, Uh, someone in the comments said that Steve Schmidt is someone you want in a fox hole with you, and I can tell you from personal experience that that is true. And so I'm excited that we're going to do this every every week.

of journalists too. There's UH, journalists have to get used to being comfortable with the act that when the rule of law is under attack in this country, it's not a both sides issue, and you're not partisan just because you happen to line up with the folks who are pointing out that we shouldn't have people trying to tear down democracy and that the rule of law is pretty fucking important. And maybe just one last thing I'll throw

out here is a great quote from Lootig. I remember his testimony in June twenty twenty two, and I remember reading it, and this quote always stuck with me. He said America can withstand attacks on her democracy from without, he is helpless to withstand them from within. And I think the project of the pro democracy.

fearless and honest and calling that ship out. And you know, so, I thank you for for for everything that you said to support the project that I've embarked on, and I'm looking forward to doing this every week with you.

all around us. Surrounded by them, he said, But they're perfectly harmless in a democracy, but in his dictatorship of the left or the right, they turn deadly in an instant. And that's what these people are. Howard Lutnik is a little likeman. Christy Nolman is a Littleikman. Karen Levitt is a Littleikman. This is a gaggle of little Aikman's. And we are watching their snarling menace, their teeth, bearing down,

growing arrogant, more confident. As the destruction they're doing is building, their approvals are declining, and so we're on a collision course between principle and mayhem, between chaos and democracy, and the American citizen will have to defend the republic. And it's not for the first time. And the reality is

there is no end of history there. And the great lesson that will pass down to our children their grandchildren is there may come a day of peace and prosperity when everyone looks the technology and the events in the world and all seems good and well, like it did at the year two thousand and people will say it's the end of something, in the beginning of a paradise, But that's an illusion. And that people mistake quiet for peace, and that's what happened. But now we are in the crisis.

We're in one of the great American crises in the history of the country. As Ulysses Grant observed, there are people that are faithful to the project, to the cause of the American Revolution. There are people who have turned treacherous towards it. Those are the two sides in American politics. And within those two sides, there are appeasers and there are fighters. And this is a moment where you have

to be a fighter. So it'll be for Mickey Charroll in New Jersey running for governor, for Joscelyn Benson in Michigan, Abigail Spamberger in Virginia. These important people who are rising in the Democratic Party of fighting spirit and there remort. We'll talk about them. I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight. Thank you all. Stay in the fight, be engaged.