Trump Melts Down as Congress Pushes Back

Welcome once again to the Oath and the Office. I am John Fugel, saying it is a pleasure to have you, and I am happier than a garden full of knicks fans booing the President to welcome the man who is the star of the show, the author of the Oath and the Office. People of Earth, please welcome Brown University Political Science Professor Corey Bretschneider.

Hello, Sir, Hi John, what a pleasure to speak with you. And on a week two in which there are going to be things again to continue to celebrate because there is pushback against this president, there's assertion of congressional power, and although we've had a lot of weeks where things were looking bleak, this is another one where I'm feeling at least more optimistic than I was.

Well.

I'll never forget the first time we ever met, Professor over ten years ago at SiriusXM, because that was the day you said to me, you're either crooked or you're stupid. Let's call it quits. And wow, the coincidence that Donald Trump said those exact words in the latest man Baby meltdown.

I just have to apologize for that. John. It was you know a rough moment. That's okay.

Now, listen, you were going through audience, We're very hard, and listen.

You were going through a lot at the time. You had multiple indictments at the time, and you got booed by a stadium full of Knicks fans. So I understand you, weren't you.

And I think you were also just refusing to admit that I had a lot of evidence of the election fraud.

That that that is correct. I would I would not acknowledge your evidence because you hadn't produced any. And it's so funny how how history repeats itself.

So same thing you got to.

Talk about Meet the press obviously, because I think the most fascinating thing about the meet the press tantrum we've heard so much about it's it's not that it you know, I mean, it ended the way you'd expect. He didn't end the interview. He rage quit Democracy. Kristen Welker asked Trump for evidence that California's election was rich, and he said it's cheating because the ballots are getting counted after election day and I'm watching this like, yeah, that's how counting works. The score changes while you're counting the score. You know, like like it was like walking out of a restaurant because the waiters still adding up the bill, like I like this bill until you counted the appetizers. Now it's cricket and Professor, everyone's talking about the tantrum. The real story is what the President was tantraping about. He wasn't running from Kristin Welker. He was running from the question about election legitimacy. And I need to go deep on this with you. Before we even get to that, you knew the interview is going poorly over Kristen Welker's questions for the President about what shall we call it? The slush fund, the bribery fund, the reparations for terrorists, the anti weaponization fund. Republicans and Democrats were furious over this, and they blocked the immigration bill Trump liked. In protest, Todd Blanche came forward and defended the fund before the committee, saying, Okay, well, we're not going to do it, but we're still going to do part of it. Corey, we've talked about this before. Constitutionally speaking, what alarms you the most about a government compensation fund aimed at people who the president personally believes were treated badly by prosecutors for their crimes.

Well, I think you know, the substance of the matter is that Trump is trying to rewrite history and to reward those who engaged in insurrection. Without question, that's the fundamental problem here, that it really is an attempt to create a slush fund that will be used to just support his not just his supporters, but those who are willing to commit insurrection in order to destroy our democracy.

And it's one thing to lie about what happened.

It's another thing to give the pardons, but now to pay the people is a whole other level. But there is a you know, more wonky explanation of what's wrong here, which is that he doesn't have the authority to do so. That there is no congressional authorization to create a slush fund to fund insurrection, certainly, and so you know, the complicity of Congress up until now of not saying anything has been part of the problem. And so starting to see the pushback on behalf of even members of his own party, partly because they're.

Worried about their own survival.

They see that this president is abandoning them in the midterms out of care only for his own revenge and his own personal desires. But it is a recognition that not only that this is wrong, but that not only that it's a threat to democracy, but that he doesn't have the legal authority to do it.

Yeah, and again Todd blanche announced before the House Appropriation Subcommittee that the DOJ would not be moving forward with the Weaponization Fund. Oh but they still want to have the irs rigged, so Trump and his ghastly children can never be investigated for any crimes in perpetuity. I mean, it's madness. Now they're saying that the fund is being abandoned while they're still defending the concept behind it. Corey, what does this say about how executive power is being understood inside this administration?

Well, you know, I think that for Trump, and this has just been true from the beginning, what executive power is is a kind of kingly power. So of course he has the power, as he often says, to do anything that he wants, and that includes the ability to fund your secret slush fund, your fund, your insurrectionists.

And you know, there couldn't.

Be anything further from the truth of how government is supposed to operate under law. And you know that's why I think the attorney general is the president's personal lawyer and sees his job as doing whatever Trump wants. But finally, the pushback from Congress, I think, the pushback from the courts, the recognition, as we talked about last week, that the initial deal that led to the creation of this fund with the IRS, that all of this is illegal, has led to the Attorney General to start to back off and to publicly say, I don't think so now, you know, as we're going.

To get acting attorney general, guess that's important.

Let's not promote him.

And you know, I think though, when you listen to Trump, you see in this interview how much he cares about this fund and how emotionally connected he was to it. And so you know, that idea that he's being told no, the petulant child that he is can't stand it because he wants to be able to not just pardon, not just praise and reward his supporters, but pay them and again pay them for insurrection. So this is, you know, attention between somebody who you know, although he's an extreme version of a loyalist, the acting attorney general, he knows that there's no lawful basis for it.

Yeah, And again, they finally believe in reparation scory. Not for the descendants of slavery, not for the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants of this land, but for terrorists who beat up cops for a lie. They get reparations and we pay for it. Now, he started to get angry when she was questioning him about this proposal, and we're going to play some clips of him getting really angry. But historically do presidents tend to react strongly when challenged about efforts that blur the line between public authority and person grievance. I mean, I mean, the mere existence of this proposal just normalizes the idea that the government exists to reward your friends and punish your enemies.

You know, there have been slush funds before, and as listeners know, I'm very consumed with Richard Nixon, who I wrote a lot about in my book The Presidents and the People, And certainly he did have a slush fund. He was paying clandestine operators to do his bidding illegally, including the most famously, of course, the break in at the Brookings Institution. Less famously, but equally important, the role of Howard Hunt and breaking into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in order to get dirt. All that was funded by secret funds. Now here's the difference. This is a slush fund of that kind on a much larger basis being used to fund insurrection. Yeah, and being done in public because there's no embarrassment about what's happening.

That's what makes this so frightening.

Yeah, I agree. And now we move to the meltdown of this because, as you know, Professor, every time Donald Trump sees votes being counted after election day, he reacts like Dracula sing a sunrise. You know, California has counted ballots this way for years. Republicans know it, and election officials know it, and political scientists know it, and Donald Trump knows it. But he needs his base to think that counting votes is suspicious. Give a listen to this clip with Kristen Welker and listen to how it goes. How they've shifted their narrative now from voter fraud to vote counting fraud. Here's the first clip.

To me, let's talk.

This tremendous evidence is nothing, but the election was rigged. It was a dirty election. This is happening again right now in happening now in California. Right now, it's looking. Look at what's happening. It's in California. It's now, they're not there. They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you, it's four days and they aren't even close.

To That's how they can why.

They're doing that, because they're cheating on the election.

There's what do you have evidence to support?

You have to do his look or and I listen to people.

I have to do is look, Corry. That's the perfect summary to his entire approach. It is no proof, no fact, no investigations. It's a guy arguing with like a ceiling fan. Right, and that's the tantrum. Again, he threw a fit on television. That's not the shocking thing. We've seen the meat goblin melt down. But this is exactly what he did before twenty twenty. He's teaching his supporters that any result he doesn't like is illegitimate. Right, that's what this is.

Well, I love that that line. All you need to do is look.

It reminds me of when he asks for the specific number of votes that he needed in Georgia to claim victory. You know, it's of course the evidence, the truth doesn't matter. It's all motivated by his goal. And it's somebody who's just so immune to the truth. You know, the technical term is bullshit for not caring at all about what the truth is.

He just wanted to get the result.

And here he is just bullshitting so vigorously in the face of a lack of evidence. And she says, where's your evidence? So I don't need evidence. You just have to manufacture the evidence. That's what he's saying. But you know, unaware but real confession of what this presidency is about. And of course as he's losing it, things just go downhill.

Yeah, and again this is not about California at all. He doesn't care about California. He knows how this is going to go. They knew that Republicans were going to be leading in some California races on election night. But then the mail ballots get counted, then the Democrats gained votes. It's not because votes are appearing, the votes are being counted. And this is a distinction that this man professor has spent six years pretending he doesn't understand. Because he is preparing his supporters to view the counting itself as evidence of cheating. This is no longer about illegal immigrants votevoting because they want to go to a polling place and get caught. Now the con is not voter fraud, it's vote counting fraud. That election should stop the moment Republicans are ahead, you know, like we've got to declare the Super Bowl over after the first quarter. So here is the meltdown. And at the end of this he gets up rather unsteadily. It's disturbing watching him get out of a chair, Professor, and he throws his mic on the ground and steps on it and walks off the set.

That they have an election, and five days later they're nowhere close to picking.

Local officials acknowledge they are slow.

They're urging, or they're crooked.

They're urging the votes to.

Be counted quickly.

That's how they bar crooked.

Just like your crooked.

Your pressure's crooked, and meet the pressure's crooked. To be fair, I'm not crooked, but's when you play right into their hands zone you're either crooked or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with this rep You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged.

You know that I won an.

Election in a landslide and I got presented because you have no credibility, But you've.

Never presented evidence there was ringed.

Let's keep talking about I want to talk about Tom.

You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented. Let's talk to your elections were like a third world country. Your elections are crooked, and you're crooked. You're suppresses crooked, and show is ABC and CBS and CNN, the one sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had anough Thank you, darling, have a good time for president on the ground all the way to Wisconsin.

I've shot all I know.

On and off in the rain, and I've given you.

Enough time, and you understand there's nothing he hates more than going out in public in the rain, Corey, because that melts the hair. Did law school prepare you to talk about stuff like this?

Professor?

Did years of teaching in the Ivy League give you the schools to talk about male behavior like this.

You know a lot of law school tea, and I teach undergrad's law as well, and use the same techniques as you come up with the most wild hypotheticals you try, they're almost like films if you do them well. And outrageous situations and the idea of a president who was simultaneously trying to fund insurrectionists and then justifying that insurrection with his old theme that the election was rigged, and trying to institute a coup by lying about evidence and claiming evidence when you know it would just seem too wild. It really is jumping the shark that that episode, of course, where Arthur Fonzarelli, I think he's in Hawaii, you know, jumps over a shark with water skis, and wow, this is a different level of jumping the shark than we could have ever imagined from Happy Days. It's it's just, you know, it's another level, and yet it keeps happening.

I think, you know, to go back to our.

Theme that we've been talking about the payments and the slush fund to try to really institutionalize and that's what was so threatening about it.

I can't say that enough.

That it was an attempt to have payment for engaging in insurrection and to have a you know, a militia force. Essentially that civilian militia force is being paid in order to destroy our democracy. That I think is what got him going that as she's attacking that and saying what this really is and calling it out, and he's getting emotional thinking about his supporters who he had to pardon and who he abandoned for a period of time. That then leads him into the justification for why he needed the coup of January sixth, which is that he won the election, and that kind of lie then starts spiraling into the discussion of California and the evidence of supposed fraud there.

So you know it's all intertwined in his mind.

And when you call it out, when you pierce the veil of bullshit with truth, that just freaks him out. And there you had him melt down in real time and we just heard him.

It's a great point, and I want to point out to our listeners that was the peak of Donald Trump's week, by the way, being a petulant man baby who then in the end, and you got to see it because the best part. I know we're an audio medium, but folks to try to just watch the ending, to watch Donald Trump try to stand up from a chair and almost grab Kristen Welker to steady himself before waddling off the set like the penguin abandoning the Gotham super villains meeting deep under Gotham, going.

Wow wow, wow, wow wow.

I mean, it's it's appalling, But you know, a day later, he's getting booed by thousands of people at MSG, and it made me realize he's going to spin that too. I mean, he knows what a scene he threw, but he's not running to make Americans believe him. He's running to keep one third of the country angry. He's running to keep that one third of the electorate he can count on infuriated and on his side, because he's proven in the past one third of the country can sometimes be all you need. And I thought the same thing watching him be booed at the National Anthem. I'm like, why would they let him do that? Why would they let him into MSG for a bunch of New York City NBA fans. Susie Wild should be fine? And then I realized they knew he was going to get booed. I will bet you anything, Professor, now, the narrative of Trump and the minions, it won't be the thousands booed him. You know, what they're going to do. It's all going to be for division. He's going to spread the narrative that urban NBA fans booed our sacred national anthem. That's going to be the message that they booed our anthem. He is grasping at dog whistles, and once again it seems like, well, this is crazy, but there's method in it, right, I mean, there is more strategy to some of this belligerent behavior than might be a parent, you.

Know, and he'll try all the above.

I did see him say actually was well received in Madison Square Garden. He tried to pretend there was no booing, and there are some versions of the video where you don't hear him, of course we're talking about at the Knicks Championship in Madison Square Garden. There are some versions of the video where you can't quite hear the booing as loud as it was, and so he tried to spin it as that becomes untenable.

Well, then he'll just swim.

He'll use the narrative that he needs to try to look good. I don't want to lose sight too. Just going back to the interview of when he has his meltdown, The way he tries to recreate calm is through his sexism. He calls her darling, the interviewer Ristin Walker, and you know, starts in his typical way to just condescend not just to this interviewer, but to all women.

And wow, it's really is his greatest hits.

The support of the insurrection, the lying about the election, and then the misogyny, all to.

Attack the intelligence of a woman reporter. It's everything. It's Yeah, he's at the State Fair doing Freebird. This is this is what they've come for.

Yeah.

And I just want to say, by the way, I get to commute by bike through this midtown circus to get to serious XM studios. Last night, the Knicks are trying to win the NBA Championship, and Trump somehow found a way to make the whole evening about Donald Trump. But one other thing I want to ask you about, professor, is that the House just passed measures rebuking military involvement in Iran, which no but he saw coming. Four Republicans joined Democrats two fifteen to two away to vote to pass this measure encouraging the end of the war in Iran, and separately approved Ukraine assistance despite Trump's raging opposition. Corey, it's war powers time. Finally, it seems like there's almost a reclaiming of the power of Congress over foreign policy. We've discussed it so many times. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to declare war, and over decades presidents of both parties have gotten all of this unilateral military authority for themselves. How far has the balance shifted? What would James Madison say about concentrating war making authority in one guy?

You know, I love that question.

I love when we can frame what's happening in terms of the founders of this country, who really laid out so clearly in our Constitution a division of the war power that had been united in England and the British King had the power both to initiate war or British Queen the monarch to initiate war and to carry it out. And the genius in part of our Constitution you can see it right there in Article one, which says it's Congress the lawmaking body that has the power to initiate or declare war, and on the other hand, Article two, the President of the United States the power of commander in chief. Now what's happened to that in recent months is just a total disregard, not even a recognition of this, just an ignoring of it, and the particular initiation of war with Iran. And this was not a defensive war, which is an exception to that idea that Congress declares war. It was a clearly initiated war.

And you know, there's a lot that has to happen, and it's.

Related, I think to the pushback that we saw in the Weaponization Fund. But the immediate politics before I get to the founders, is that Republicans are seeing this guy does not care about them. He is really doing whatever it takes to advance himself. He cares about revenge, he doesn't care certainly about the constant. And there's a ripple effect as they push back on the Weaponization Fund, Suddenly there are votes too to say, hey, we have a constitution in this country and to recognize, to go back to your point about Madison that you know it was just to show you how far we've trade and the founding. There was a debate in Washington's cabinet about whether or not Washington, George Washington, the first president, could even discuss his foreign policy goals and even mention, you know, his views about possible war with foreign nations or even what he thought America's foreign.

Policy should be.

That's how focused on Congress the Framers were.

And now we're in a moment where where the explicit.

Power to initiate war is just taken away from Congress. Well, now this week we get pushed back in two areas.

One the votes.

Also there's emotions both in the Senate and also in the House to reclaim the war power and to say no, you can't continue, you can't initiate war without US Congress to Claire's war, it's in some way symbolic, but it is a recognition that it is Congress that has this power, and it's a kind of threat to him to not continue to engage in war without authorization in Iran.

And then one other thing that you mentioned is.

The real power, of course, is tied to the related power to allocate funds, and so saying you better, you know, we are funding the Ukrainians regardless of what you think. That's another really important, non symbolic assertion of Congressional power.

I mean, it's a symbolic vote, but symbols can matter in constitutional governments, So I mean symbolic votes can evolve into meaningful institutional resistance. And you know, I think it seems like we've reached a point where so many Americans just assume foreign policy belongs exclusively to the president because we haven't legally declared war since the year nineteen forty one. And this is both presidents. We grew up watching Bill Clinton bomb other countries when he felt like it too. I think a lot of Americans don't realize how unusual it is for longres to publicly challenge a US president on military matters. Professor, how how historically significant was this moment? He was furious at these four Republicans, but I thought they were acting like, what's that word they used? Conservatives?

Yeah, that's conservatives, you know.

I mean, this is supposedly concerned with the meaning of being a conservative in this country since the Reagan administration at least has been that you care about the Constitution's text. Well, what clear example of congressional power than the war power, which is right there in clean words, given to declare war is given to Congress, And yet nobody's been talking about it. And I want to come back to your point that symbols matter, because they absolutely do in this case. Think about the absence of Congress having done what it just did, speaking up against the usurpation of its war power.

You know what that means is complicity.

When you say nothing, it's essentially just agreeing to the president's ability to initiate war. So it's the pulling back on the failure to speak, the pulling back on the complicity that we've had up until now in the acquiescence and really the and let's call it what it is, the illegal war by the president. It's not, by the way, too, that you know somehow it's legal because Congress didn't say anything. What was happening was Congress has to initiate the war without that, you know, especially after the thirty or sixty day period that the War Powers Act passed to clarify the war making powers gives a president to engage in in action short of war, but after that sixty days and even before that, if it's a war, not just an action military action, it's illegal. And so Congress being quiet, isn't agreeing to it. It doesn't have that ability. It's complicit in the violation of the law. And now finally Congress is saying, hey, there's a law here, there's a constitution, and that is you know, we've been calling it symbolic, but it's obviously more than that. It's the assertion of the fundamental framework of our government.

Well, this Ukraine vote was quite a bit more substantive. This was very again Trump's wishes now again friends. For those who don't remember, the United States once was part of a treaty to get Ukraine to give up their nukes and give them to Russia, because Ukraine once had the largest amount of nuclear stockpile of any European nation. And of course, when the curtain came down, we signed the Budapest Memorandum, where the US, the UK and Russia all signed a deal saying that we will always protect Ukraine if they're ever invaded in exchange for them giving up their nukes. Of course Russia did. And if there's one thing we know about right wing Christian nationalists, that the Indians taught us, they love breaking their own treaties. So Trump is furious that we're continuing to honor our agreement to fund our ally. Eighteen Republicans voted to pass this. It was a two twenty six one to ninety five vote. It gives eight billion in loans to Ukraine and NATO military programs, a billion dollars to other funds for Ukraine. Does the power of the purse still remain Congress's strongest constitutional weapon?

You know, I think they're tied together, and I think that's the reason I was very eager to talk about these two stories as one story, that the reassertion of the war power and the real use of the allocation power of Congress, because you know, the Framer is designed not just you know, individual powers, but a system as a whole that was meant to work together and how to make it clear that Congress really had control over war. It wasn't just meant to be symbolic. They have the requirement of funding any war, and this is a kind of implicit recognition that you know, look, if we can dictate that this money has to be spent and implied in that is the threat that if you ignore us on the war powers, if you continue to go to war without our permission, we can withdraw the funds.

And that's by design.

That really is the James Madison technique that's there from the beginning. So I think these two stories, you know, it's not a coincidence that they're happening together, and it's really important that we talk about them together because what we're doing is, you know.

These powers are rusty.

We've been letting them lay vacant and they don't get used. Well, now they're being used. The power to initiate a war or to refuse to initiate it, and the power to fund or not fund certain you know, foreign policy, including wars, if Congress makes that decision. Now, you know, we're so used to just deferring to a president, and in the reassertion of congressional power, we're starting to get the law back. I didn't want to say one other thing, John, because this is a less obvious point. But you know, when you're mentioning the idea that Trump is dishonoring the prior agreement to fund Ukraine.

For Trump, you know, he is the state, he is the government, and.

The idea that the nation would have prior agreements, I actually think that's beyond his comprehension. And yet the idea that we are one nation led under the law. It requires the idea that no, it doesn't matter who's occupying the office at the particular moment. What the bindingness of agreements transfers through administrations And when you think that you're the law, when you're the dictator, it's just impossible to understand that. And it's another deep failing well.

And also, these guys want to invade Cuba, Corey, we know it. They're starving the people of Cuba, like the media blockout on the human rights catastrophe that's happening in Cuba because they think it should be our colony and Marco Rubio should be viceroy. This is all still going on. So like, this is what I think when I see this vote, because tell me if I'm wrong here. If Congress keeps on reclaiming authority over military decisions, this could be one of the most significant constitutional developments of this whole bloody period. I mean, what would genuine congressional oversight of warpowers actually look like. I can't see this Congress ever being that strong against this man.

I mean, you know, just to before we get into the politics of it, there is no legal authority of the President of the United States to go in.

And to seize Cuba. And in the same way.

There wasn't a legal authority to go in and seize the president of Venezuela. Now, you know, if Congress voted to do so, we could talk about the justice or injustice, the pragmatism or lack thereof of doing it, but at least that would give it a legal authority. There is none here. And yet this president, you know, has that aim. Whether or not he's going to view these two votes that we're talking about as a possible pushback on his own power, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure that it will.

I mean, Rubio is so despite having been a senator himself so so intent on it. They might again disregard it, and I would hope that the Congress would start to see its obligation.

This isn't new.

By the way, I talked about Nixon, and you know, I'll just mention some Nixon parallels.

I can't get it right.

Nixon, Kissinger and Nixon, of course, were involved in the in the destruction of a democratic government in Chile. I don't know that political sounds who study Latin America disagree about the extent to which this was a US coup or whether or not it was, you know, some combination. But we know for a fact that Nix and Kissinger war involved, and by Kissinger's own acknowledgement, in destroying a democratic government.

So there's a long history of that.

But the whole point of the War Powers Act was not just in regard to Chile and the coup of Pinochet, but also of course in Vietnam and the illegal actions beyond Vietnam and Cambodian laos.

The Congress said no more.

That was it happened at the end of Nixon's administration over his veto and what did they do.

They passed the War Powers Act.

That was meant to be a reassertion of congressional power. Now, for a variety of reasons, that's just been pushed to the side.

But what we need now.

That a president is engaged in initiating war in Iran and wanting to refuse to follow Congress and supporting Ukraine, refusing to honor our agreements, is a reassertion of that idea that it's Congress, not the president, that declares war. So what I'm hopeful is in the same way that Nixon's abuses led to reform that what we're talking about right now, well not in this Congress, but in the next Congress lead to a real reassertion of the war powers. And even if we won't see it in the next few months, I'm assuming that the Democrats will retake the House. At least I'm hoping that the moment has to be seized. And as you said too, the Democratic Party is not focused on the reassertion of the congressional war power. But it is long overdue that we do exactly that.

Okay, we got to take a breaker. Wendy's going to throw me in podcast jail. Professor, please sit tight. We'll be back in just a second. We have a lot to cover, including oh, his name was Blanche. Let's talk about twisted Todd when we return. This is the Oath in the Office. Welcome back to the Oath and the Office. I'm John Fugel Sang along with Professor Corey Breschneider Corey. Two controversial personnel decisions right now generating just a bit of scrutiny. The nomination of Donald Trump's personal attorney, Todd Blanche, who defended him in his fraud cases in New York because he's a criminal defense attorney and he lost the case. This is Todd Blanche, who was dispatched to go to Jules Maxwell's cell and when he walked out, this child rapist had a cushy deal to go to a very nice club fed prison that child rapists normally don't get to go to. So this is where we're at. Todd Blanche is dirtier than Donald Trump's hamper. But there's also the appointment of William Pulty as acting Director of National Intelligence while he's still running the Federal Housing Finance Agency. This is creepy. Let's start with the fact that the Senate has to approve this. The Framers really placed enormous importance on Senate confirmation, and it feels like that's pretty relevant right now. Right Hamilton said appointments are one of the most important checks on presidential power.

Was he right? Absolutely?

You know, I think we've been talking about the Framers and their design and how although we've been wondering where these supposed checks and balances are, He's starting to emerge.

A little bit.

And I think one of the most powerful is the requirement that principal officers, including certainly the Attorney General of the United States, face Senate confirmation and what that means, certainly in contemporary times, is a hearing questions and in some instances, and this is what I want to get to, a requirement agreements that are made that will have consequences later on. So one of the most important confirmation hearings in the United States history was the confirmation of Elliott Richardson. And when Elliot Richardson was confirmed this attorney general, before the Senate voted to confirm him, they asked him a very specific question, will you pledge here to promise not to fire the person investigating Richard Nixon, Archibald Cox, promise not to fire him? And when Richardson said yes, even though he was a party loyalist, he saw himself not as a Todd Blanche, but it's somebody who really cared about the party, cared about the future of the party, cared about Nixon. When he was told fire Cox, fire the Nixon said, fire the person looking into my wrongdoing. The president, the protocol said, wasn't supposed to do it himself. He needed the attorney general to do it and the law arguably, and Richardson said no, I can't why because I promised in my confirmation hearing. And although Richardson, by the way, is often seen as a kind of hero, and it was a moment of virtue. It really was the senators who pressed him to say, you know, to pledge publicly that he wouldn't do it.

It was just too embarrassing.

And so that starts to show you these hearings matter both in hopefully they'll just reject the nominee because no way is he qualified. And in the same way that Harriet Myers and Bush's personal lawyer wasn't confirmed to be a Supreme Court justice, this guy could be confirmed to be Attorney General by a mile. But at minimum, if even any principled Republican is going to claim to vote for him, they shouldn't. They've got to really get these pledges on the table to what number one, not engage in the kind of prosecution of enemies that's been going on.

Yeah, exactly right. I have to bring it back to the DOJ position again because we always hear the Department of Justice must be independent, right, I mean, god forbid, you know Bill Clinton talks to someone on a tarmac, But constitutionally speaking, what does that actually mean that the Justice Department must be independent? Like I think there's Republican senators who will still be conservative enough, not obedient enough that they'll be appalled. I remember I brought it up to you last night on SiriusXM, the outrage of Republicans over the Harriet Meyers nomination twenty two years ago. Now there's going to be Republicans appalled by the fact that this guy's trying to put his own criminal defense lawyer from his own shady crimes as our nation's top cop. When this guy's already proven to be quite amenable to above others child rapists who get preferential treatment. Do you think that Congress is this Senate is still craven enough this man can pass.

That's what I'm hoping is going to start to play out, that the recognition that, first of all, remember you know, as as hard as it's been for this administration to recruit good people and it might be hard to recruit a decent attorney general, having his personal lawyer serve as attorney general is really an insult.

To the entire system of government.

The idea, what is an independent department of justice supposed to be? First of all, I'm going to go back to the origin of the Department of Justice in the nineteenth century, during the Grant administration. What was it created for it to enforce civil rights, to enforce the rights of the most vulnerable, And what is it being used for? What is the opposite of that, to prosecute political opponents. And that's how Trump views the Department of Justice the same as a kind of Roy Cohen, his personal lawyer for a long time. Who he you know, he's always saying, get me my new Roy Cohen. That's what he wants, somebody who's just totally couldn't care less about the law, totally corrupt, vicious Cohan. Of course, Roy Cohen was the lawyer for McCarthy going out the Red Scare alleged communists in the government.

That's arguably Donald Trump's Sith mass and Trump was his evil sith Padawan.

Go on, So what is independence? It's the opposite of that. It's saying no, it's saying what we often did see actually in the first Trump administration, that the job of the Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer, not to serve the personal interests of the president. And so as that idea comes out and Democrats will hammer at it, I just have to think that Republicans are going to see no way can the guy who's the opposite of that, the.

President's personal lawyer, be this person?

And as you said last night and as I mentioned before today, Harriet Myers is sort of the perfect example. By the way, Harriet Myers a much better would have been a much better Supreme Court justice or attorney general than.

Well or then right, wasn't no, But it wasn't Harriet Myers the one when he had to pull back on her, we got Alito, Like, it's an interesting point. I remember when they had to pull back on you know, Oh god, who's the one who smoked weed? And we got Kennedy out of that one. Back in the eighties.

It was a Ginsburg Ginsburg.

Thank you so much, Corey. What questions should senators ask Todd Blanche regarding prosecutorial independence? What would you most want to hear them ask this guy on camera?

Yeah, I think, you know, we've got to move beyond the abstractions to the personal and to say, you know, do you believe that it is the job of the attorney general, if asked to prosecute the president's personal enemies, to say no? And then I think they've got to ask him about the specific cases of Letitia James and James Comy and how can the government be involved in what are clearly political prosecutions? And this has to be a moment, you know, whenever you have the focus of the American public to really embarrass the Department of Justice and the Attorney General for allowing this to happen and for acting as not just the president. I should say personal lawyer. Doesn't quite capture it, because the personal lawyer is still.

Bound by the law. That's the obligation of any lawyer.

This guy is acting as a thug and the Department of Justice is acting as a criminal d tired and that's what they've got to bring out. So do you not agree that this is the obligation of the Department of Justice to stand up to a president that would use you as his personal tool of revenge.

You know, the Attorney General serves the Constitution, not the president personally. We keep having to teach people this scory. I want to move off with this, but why is that distinction so critical here?

Because when you have you know, the truth is at the same time that we have this idea that we've been talking about all episode of dividing the powers between the Congress, the judiciary, and the president. That the modern presidency is just so powerful, more than two million people, and when you have a president intent on crime, intent on dictatorship, it turns out that these other branches can be crushed. And one of the places where the vulnerability is most clear is in the office of the attorney general. I am going to go back and do a little more history the reason why the term unitary executive got its name.

You know, there's a lot to WoT with it.

But there is a factual basis for it, which is the Framers disagreed about whether or not we should have an independently elected attorney general. Letitia James, who I just mentioned, is in New York and was at the founding. The Attorney General of New York was independently elected, and the Framers rejected that. They said, you know, we can trust a president. A president will be a person of virtue, and so we'll put the attorney general not as an independently elected person, but within the president's cabinet. What a mistake that turned out to be. Man, how much should we have been saved if they didn't do that.

Well, So, this whole appointment of Bill Pulti as Acting Director of National Intelligence is a whole different issue because again he's replacing Telsea Gabbard, who resigned just recently. This guy is still the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He is a rabidly obedient Trump henchman, and he will hold both jobs at once. So because this guy only the acting DNI, he's not going to have to go before the setup for confirmation. But I think a lot of Senators, including Republicans, are furious about this. How weird and disturbing is it when one guy simultaneously holds multiple powerful positions.

Scoring Well, it's a symbol of how dysfunctional our government has become.

Because what is it about.

There are very few people who are going to pass the Trump loyalty tests, and this is one of them. And having done an okay job of loyalty, not of doing the actual job in one position, why not put him in another?

Now?

What's scary here is the DNI is created as a cabinet position precisely out of the traditional worry that foreign policy is not independent of Congress, that a minimum there has to be oversight, and so requiring as was required by.

Legislation, the nineteen eighties.

A confirmation of the person who is really going to be in charge of the entire intelligence oparatus is a way for Congress to reassert its control. Now here's the problem you mentioned, and I just want to lay out what this means. The idea that he's not going to be subject to confirmation because he's not being appointed as the true DNI is being appointed as an interim on an interim basis, and that what that does is it avoids confirmation, and that is a real loophole in what we're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, this is how they are bypassing constitutional scrutiny. This is how they're getting around it. I mean, the Senate confirmation feels increasingly less meaningful as these presidents mainly Trump and others, have done it rely on the acting officials. What questions would you want Congress asking this guy Pulty if he had to appear before confirmation hearing, because again, this guy has no experience in security agencies at all. He's here because as director of Federal Housing Finance Agency, he uses his access to mortgage documents to harass people. Donald Trump doesn't like. This is the guy that Donald Trump used to harass Letitia James, to harass Lisa Cook, to harass a Shift. So now he's taking this henchman who only uses government jobs to go after people at the behest of the executive and he's going to give this guy access to all the apparatus of national security to go after his enemies, right.

I mean, that's exactly the reason why you know, the Senate confirmation was required for the DNI, and now Trump is avoiding that by using this I said interim or acting, appointing him on an acting basis.

But there still is a possibility of hearings.

You know, the president's principal officers can be compelled to testify before Congress and oversight hearings. And so even though we won't get the questions that I'm about to suggest as a matter of confirmation, we might get them as a matter of oversight. And yeah, I think the same questions that I was suggesting Blanche has to be asked. You know, did you think it was appropriate to use your position in order to enable the president's political prosecutions and handing over information that was really used to go after the president's political opponents.

That's got to be exhibit number one.

But I think too the incompetence in the same way that the lack of independence of Todd Blanche, the incombinance of this individual has to be brought out. You know, what gives you the ability to manage the entire foreign policy apparatus of the United States? You know, when it comes to intelligence, at least, what qualifications?

What job have you done?

And so I think it's partly you know about his past violations of ethics and law, but it also is going to be about his incompetence and totally in the inappropriateness of the appointment. I think too they might use these kind of hearings too to point out the fact that, you know, why are you acting in a role that's supposed to be subject to confirmation?

Why is this being abused?

Because you could obviously not withstand up confirmation hearing, So they can use it as a kind of they can find a way to congress to create a kind of proxy confirmation here.

And even if this acting position is what's being used.

Can I ask you about what's going on at sixty minutes Scory, because this has been quite fascinating. Scott Pelly just was recorded in a meeting with the program's new EP and pointed out that this guy had very slender qualifications for the job. And he said that Barry Weiss is here to murder sixty minutes, which I think a lot of people would agree with. And they're very proud to say, Hey, broadcast as an ice cube. It's melting. This is after Anderson Cooper steps down from the show, you know, and the First Amendment protects freedom of the press. So they fired him anyway, they fired him for coming out and saying all this. And you've talked all the time about how, yeah, the press has got total protection, but we're in the age of corporate media and we're now in the age of stochastic self censorship. The Constitution doesn't guarantee courageous journalism. Why is that distinction important? You know, the founder's expected conflict between government officials and journalist, right, that was always part of the plan.

Yeah, you know, the government has found a way to both pressure through the FCC and threatening CBS's license to have a kind of classical government censorship without being subject to the obvious First Amendment lawsuits that would come from the government shutting down speech.

In a more.

Direct way, so Scott Pelly can't bring a First Amendment claim against CBS. You know, maybe he could try to figure out how to bring a claim against the FCC head who has just repeatedly threatened the license of CBS, and I do think that is a kind of First Amendment violation, but he certainly can't bring it against CBS itself. You and I had a robust discussion with Mike Pesca, independent journalists and podcaster in a previous episode. I'd urge people to go back and listen to it. It was a great, great discussion slash debate where we were really pushing the idea that this is not normal journalism.

And Pesca was a little more sympathetic to Barry Weiss.

We should have him back, because I just don't see how you could be now we know this from Pelly. We didn't know it before, but now we know it. We suspected it, now we know it directly.

She was doing.

Things like saying in the story that he did about the murder in Minnesota, correct me if I'm wrong.

John Scott Pelley has said that she wanted the editors to show the protesters as looking more menacing and violent and that it was very important to her that CBS's narrative was Trump's narrative that this woman was trying to run a guy over in her car when she was actually turning the wheels away from him to get away from her.

So that's right, she was trying to get away, and I think the car was aimed away.

She wanted to claim the opposite.

So, in other words, she was just manipulating the basic facts of the story in order to Barry Weiss and urging edits that would really just make Ice look good and hide from the fact that there was essentially a murder committed here.

And you know, what better evidence do you need for the fact.

And let's just say it plainly that Barry Weis is a MAGA supporter and not some independent sure, and that she is, oh yeah, crushing the most important This isn't just any news show, of course, sixty minutes the most important journalistic television show probably in history and is being destroyed. And thankfully we're at least learning the truth of what's going on there because of Scott Pelley telling us after his firing.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's just crazy. We are not seeing anticipatory obedience. This is just obedience, and it's gonna be interesting seeing how it plays out. We have to take a break back in just a moment for the final act, and we still have a lot to come. John Bolton versus Trump. Professor, who am I supposed to root against?

Here?

This is the oath in the office.

Don't go away.

Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. I'm John Fugel, said Corey Man. We are just packed with stories this week. Let's talk about John Bolton, the sentence I have never wanted to say, former National Security advisor under Donald Trump, a man who waited his entire life to bomb Iran, and now he doesn't get to be part of the party. John Bolden has reached an agreement with the DOJ to plead guilty for a terrible crime. A terrible crime that Donald Trump's DOJ is very upset about for those who don't know. If you want to know the crime that Donald Trump has taken him down, John Bolton for committing He pled guilty to retaining classified documents in a private diary. In one count. He's going to face up to sixty months in jail in a fine of two point twenty five million, one of several prominent Trump foes indicted already, along with James Comy and New York's ag Letitia James Corey. One of the most difficult constitutional questions is distinguishing legitimate prosecution from politically motivated bullshit. How should citizens evaluate that distinction, especially in this case.

You know, I do think just to start off that there is a first of all, good point about the fact that the President of the United States was under indictment for under the espionage hack, for keeping secrets amar Alago in his bathroom in other places. And yet it's like.

It's like he's attacking people for committing adultery at this point.

You know.

But I have to.

Having said that, you know, and I'm going to go on to raise some complicated issues in the Bolton case, it is different than the others. You know, if you're a prosecutor involved in the prosecution of James Comy for saying that you want to eighty six to the President of the United States and claiming this is some sort of threat, or going after Letitia James for some you know, innocuous form that she filled out in a mortgage application, there really is a question about whether or not you should be disbarred. I just think that anybody involved putting their name on documents involved in any way, those are political prosecutions full stop. They are part of the destruction of democracy that this president is attempting.

The Bolton case is different.

It began, first of all, during the Biden administration. It is more complicated. There's a lot of experts who have looked at this who think that he is guilty of the serious crime. But now here's the button where it gets complicated. What do you do when there is a crime committed, but the motivation for pursuing it, you know, at the behest of a president who's intent on revenge.

You know, how do you understand that?

And I guess my thought is that it's tainted, that the president's motivation of political revenge taints what might otherwise be a legitimate prosecution. Now that's a more complicated sentence than in the Lea teacher James case or in the James Call Me case. But I do think that's what's going on here, that it's both a legitimate prosecution. No, I don't think that the prosecutors involved here are you know, so over their skis that they should be disbarred. But I also think that the president's revenge campaign and his statements about Bolton tainted and make it illegitimate. And you know, he's probably played guilty. That's how he's gotten out of it. It also does show, by the way that without full convictions and going to trial, that the chilling effect is very real at what's going on here, and the fact that this person, with an enormous reason or it's pleads guilty, you know, it shows you you don't need a full conviction in order to have a chilling effect of this president.

Yeah, and again, a prosecution can be legally valid, it can also still raise concerns about selective enforcement, and it can be insanely corruptly hypocritical while still being legally valid. That's what we're living through here, right.

Yeah, it's a nice way to put it.

You know, it's not as simple as did he do it or not? I think again, it's very different than the other cases. There is evidence that he broke the law, and you know, the crimes are not they have a seriousness to the national security matters. But yet, when you have a president of the United States who's just on this revenge tour. Really all of it, all of the actions of the Department of Justice becomes suspect, and especially this one.

Yeah, I just want to ask you one last question about this. Are there lessons of Americans should be learning from other democracies where legal systems turned it to corrupt little tools of political retaliation.

Look, you know, the definition of a system of law is that you don't just have a president going after their political opponents. And if you look at really any dictatorship, you know I mentioned Pinochet before, or the related Argentinian military dictatorship, what happened to political opponents. They were disappeared, they were killed, they were imprisoned. And what defined those moments was a destruction of the rule of law and an instance in which the authorities or the dictators simply imprisoned their political opponents. Trump has made it so clear that that's what he cares about. Nixon himself was sympathetic. In fact, you know, his ally Kissinger couldn't understand why there were complaints in the press when there was a military overthrow of an elected leader Allende in Chile. And when you listen to the president, you know he admires dictators.

So that is what he's trying to do. And if you want to.

Know why we have a podcast called The Oath in the Office and why democracy matters a president taking an oath to respect the law. It's to avoid being disappeared. And you know, any political opponent in Trump's world would be subject to the same treatment as call me and James. I have to just say a sentence about the call me indictments because going after call me for you know, the most innocuous statement eighty six, you know, which means get rid of, not kill or threatened in any physical way. You know, if you can bring a prosecution like that, you could prosecute anyone exactly.

You can prosecute comedians, you can prosecute any kind of satire, which brings me to I want to end the show in a positive note, Corey. Yeah, and Donald Trump lost another massive court case this week. US District Judge Leo serrocan struck down Trump's one hundred thousand dollars fee that he invented to impose on H one B visus in the case of California versus Mark Wayne Mullen. Trump signed Proclamation one oh nine seven three. It adds this one hundred grand payment requirement for H one B petitions. This is the creepiest thing I've ever heard of before. In other words, it's a fast track for immigrants who can afford a bribe. And you know, the plaintiffs have said, we're going to have so much harm from this new payment system. It's going to be harder to hire teachers, and you know, it's going to exacerbate teachers shortages, and it's going to impact our ability to staff public colleges and universities. It's going to hurt academic research. So the judge ruled that this one hundred thousand dollars visa fee was an unlawful tax because Congress never authorized it. Is this fundamentally an immigration case or is this a constitutional separation of powers case?

Well, I think the President wanted to say, and this is a great note to end on because it really does encapsulate the pushback that we've talked about. And we ended by talking about the threat of dictatorship and political prosecutions, but we began by talking about the optimistic moment in which Congress is asserting itself.

And that's what this case really shows. It brings us.

Back to one of my favorite phrases that we've all heard from grade school on which is no taxation without representation. The very basis for the American was to say Parliament can't engage in so called virtual representation, where it says it knows best what it is in our interests. If we're going to be tax we have to be represented. And that's what this case is about. Because the president's claiming all the matters of immigration, I can do whatever I want, and this judge says, no, this is a tax. And any tax, whether it's a tariff, by the way, and this comes on the heel of the tariff's case, it's the same point there, or an international tariff, or a tax on visa or visas, or a domestic tax, it's Congress that does. That's what the American Revolution was about, and that's what was instituted in our constitution. No taxation without representation. We need our representative body, the Congress, to enact a tax. And this judge said so clearly, you're not a dictator. So we talk about the danger of dictatorship, and this is the pushback against it. I've got as a final note mention my dear colleague Gordon Wood, who.

Passed the places this week.

You know, he really talked about the radicalism of the American Revolution, which is partly about no taxation without representation, but it's also about the idea than in this country we all see ourselves as equals, that we're not born into privilege, and this president is really trying to undermine that.

And what Gordon.

Wood taught in his most famous book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, was this idea that no taxation without representation encapsulated a much bigger idea, which is that Americans see each other as equals. He talked about the idea of a credle constitution, one based in an idea of equality, and that you know, that's very different than one based on birth. And that's what we're all fighting for. And so, you know, tribute to my dear Colli. He was ninety two years old, somebody who really inspired me to talk about the American Founding. He is universally regarded, not to you know, often they say in obituaries, a major figure or something in the American Founding. You know, he's being referred to correctly as the most important of the American Founding.

And he really was.

And so I'm pleased to end on that note and like to think that he would have, you know, loved this idea of the pushback of the American people against this wanna be dictator on behalf of the true founders of the United States, including one person that, of course he admired, James Madison.

We've talked for a lot about absolutely, and Ken Burns had a lovely obituary for him as well. Thank you for mentioning mister wood Professor, and thank you for another exciting edition. I feel much smarter and I feel less bleak about facing what used to be America.

Corey.

What's the best way for our listeners to follow you and keep up with your brilliance?

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You can find us also on the oath in the office substack. We're also on YouTube if you want to watch us not just listen to us. And thanks so much. This podcast has really taken off. We started with zero, we're now really every week in the top four of Apple podcasts each episode, and it's growing and growing and we're becoming one of the top podcasts for information about politics, about the law, about government, and certainly about the threat to this democracy.

Well, thank you, professor. I want to thank our listeners as well, and I want to thank you and Wendy and Bewolf and everyone who puts the whole show together. Y'all can follow me on Serious XM Progress five nights a week as well as my substack, and my book is called Separation of Church and Hate. And Corey, I just want to say how amazing it was this week to see Donald Trump get to ruin an NBA Finals game before he goes to ruin the World Cup, which will set the stage for him to ruin the Summer Olympics. We live in amazing times. Thank you so much, professor for keeping us smart and keeping us safe.

Thank you, John, what a pleasure.

We'll see you guys next week on The Oath and the Office.