Trump Turns Kirk’s Killing Into a Weapon

[Music] Welcome to the Oath in the Office podcast. I'm John Fugle saying, you know, Donald Trump just said over 300 million people died from drugs last year, and I still can't get a cab. What I can do is introduce you to the star of our show, Professor Corey Brett Schneider, author of The Oath in the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents, and the of course the more recent book, The Presidents and the People. Uh Corey, it's been quite a week. Let's just dive right into it. How are you, sir?

>> Uh I'm good. I'm, you know, we're facing an increased threat to democracy, one that we've talked about since the beginning of this show, but um that's uh getting more and more intense in the aftermath of the awful murder of Charlie Kirk. And I know we're going to talk about it. Um not just the uh attack on Kirk, but but on the the aftermath and and the continued threat to democracy. I do want to just add a a positive note, John, and say I've heard such great things about our interview uh yesterday.

Separation of church and hate is of course uh in the top hundred of all books being sold on Amazon, which is an incredible >> thing. Um uh and uh I also want to give a shout out from my dad who uh I had a really extensive conversation of not just about the interview but he read the book and was talking about the details of it and what he learned and how much it was both a new perspective but one that he he he really has gained from and he's giving it to all his friends. And so my dad Eric uh longtime uh civil servant in New York uh just wants to to to send you that shout out.

>> Oh well please please uh thank your dad for me. I'm really honored. He raised quite a great scholar who I've learned a lot from. So, if my if my jokes about uh scripture and Christian nationalism uh were entertaining or or enlightening for him, I'm so grateful. Please convey my my gratitude. It was a very strange week, Corey, for me to release a book about how to take down Christian nationalism nonviolently with scripture and humor to then see one of the most famous Christian nationalists in our country taken down with more violence with another bullet. The details are still coming in. It does appear that the murderer, and I'm comfortable saying that. I mean, Cash Patel is trying to take credit for the FBI, but this guy's Republican dad made him turn himself in.

That's the that's the hero here. And clearly, he was raised in a Republican house. He was he was raised around guns. Um, there's a lot we're going to have to get to. And it's a very scary time. Republicans just have spent several days now blaming gun safety advocates for what appears to be another Republican onreublican shooting. exactly like what happened in 2024 when Donald Trump was shot at by another 20some white male who was a registered Republican. The the it's not just the deflection onto the wrong parties. It's the inability of a society to face the core issues and and using scapegoating to avoid addressing.

So there's a lot to cover, but I want to begin with historical perspective on this. I I I I Charlie Kirk was someone who came at me. Um I I only interacted with him in person a little bit. It's an unspeakable tragedy and um I'm proud to have been on the side that's been fighting my whole to make it harder for someone to pop off and murder somebody in an outdoor political rally. And I'm hoping that many of our friends on the right will have a renewed perspective on the importance of limiting access to weaponry now that someone they love has been taken by gun violence. But I got to ask you about the history here. You've written so extensively about the American presidency. How has our democracy historically, professor, responded to political violence?

Well, I should say and echoing uh your comments that I didn't agree with Charlie Kirk certainly um I abhored um much of what he had to say, probably all of it. Uh except uh I I will say he had a right to say it and he had a right to say it free from violence. Uh and he certainly had a right not to be murdered. Uh and that being said, the moment of political violence is a profound moment and it is an assassination that's captured uh the country and how a president in particular responds in moments like this is so crucial to the question of how we're going to move forward. Uh and I think it's a test of the kind of president um that you're going to be.

And we've had some amazing moments even in the midst of tragedy. think of the tragic horrific killing of Martin Luther King Jr. Uh I went and looked in depth at what LBJ said and you know it was an ode to democracy. He used the moment to talk about the ideals of King uh the hope for the future of democracy and also the danger that violence poses to destroying this fragile >> system. The other moment that comes to mind is uh Lincoln uh on the first inaugural the civil war is about to h happen. Of course he can't prevent it but he talks in the last line of that inaugural address about the better um angels of our nature and that becomes a beacon throughout American history throughout the war itself and after. And then we've had other moments which resemble this one. Just to get to the point, uh Andrew Johnson in the 19th century uh not only fails to stop and condemn the massive violence that's

happening around the country against black Americans as he and his party uh the Democratic Party actually of the time tried to bring slavery back under a different name. >> That's correct. >> But he stokes it by threatening a sitting congressman. And what this president has done far from appealing to the um uh the as Lincoln did to um uh our best aspects of ourselves is appealing to our worst demons and blaming and just to get into it what he has done is blame an entire political party the Democratic party the so-called radical left he sometimes says but he means the democratic party that is the worst thing that you could do in a moment like this instead of an ode to the constitution an ode to idea that all are protected under a constitutional democracy. That's right.

>> He's trying to blame an entire political party for the actions of one person. >> Yeah. I mean, and I agree with you. You've talked extensively about Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson as examples of presidents who were able to rise to the moment. Um, looking at Andrew Johnson as a president who failed catastrophically in at a moment of violence and division, what what do Johnson's failures after the Civil War teach us about the dangers of bad leadership in this century?

>> Well, I think that it shows you that um, and remember in some ways uh, Malcolm Nance and I just had an amazing conversation about whether we've seen things this bad before. And one of my examples of where we have is Andrew Johnson because it's not just that he fails to stop violence. It's that he's advocating it. He really is himself. And uh series of lectures that he gives uh campaign rallies essentially around the country uh threatening violence against those who would um protect against violence. So he's defending it actively and himself engaging in violent rhetoric. uh 1868, the election that that follows his presidency, uh is marked by some of the worst political violence in American history. Throughout um the country, uh black Americans are being murdered for trying to engage in a right to vote. So, it shows that the aftermath of violence, we have two choices. We could either create more and more or we can try to quell it. And this president has failed to do so. I was on MSNBC with the mayor of Oklahoma City.

uh really a great man doing the opposite of what um Trump is doing in this moment. But I also urged him and other lawmakers, you know, the in the Nixon presidency, Republicans turned on uh Richard Nixon, >> and that's what we've got to see here. We can't just be one political party saying, "Hey, don't bother us. It's the whole nation condemning this horrible rhetoric from this president." The problem, professor, for me with that thinking, while it's true, is that, as we've discussed, if Nixon had had Fox News, he would have been able to confidently slam the door in Barry Goldwater's face, and he never would have left office, and he would have had an entire media apparatus that would have covered for his lies and corruption. I mean, Fox News just spent three4ers of a billion dollars in fines for covering for lies and corruption.

Where does this presidency fit into the historical continuum of presidents responding or failing to respond to violence? >> Well, I I I don't want to I want to really highlight that point because um I did another show with John Dean recently who turned on Nixon, but you know, the reality was that we were all watching that Watergate hearing and Dean's testimony and others. Not only did Republicans turn against him and defend the Constitution, in fact, one of the members of the House Judiciary Committee uses the phrase in voting up articles of impeachment, the full House never votes for them, but the Judiciary Committee does. That this impeachment is a guide to the Constitution for future presidents. But part of what enabled that, as you're saying, is that we were all watching one show that these three networks were covering it. Most Americans were tuning in and there was one reality. And now we live in multiple realities. We live in a reality in which what Trump is saying is um you know that it's the Democrat's fault and Democrats

caused this and we need to shut down Democratic speech. Uh the attorney general seems today to be saying things just like that that they're going to try to bring back prosecutions. >> That's right. For speech to honor Charlie Kirk's commitment to free speech. >> We're going to shut up any speech we don't like about Charlie Kirk's actual free speech. But we did have moments in history before where we had two realities and that was true in 1798, the federalist reality, a democratic republican reality. Um I think to some extent it was true during the civil war that there were not just moral differences but factual differences about what was happening. You see that um you know not just recently but for a long time and in the basic facts of what the civil war was about with uh some lying and pretending it had nothing to do with slavery. it was just about states rights or or some nonsense like that. And you know, we live in a in a bifurcated universe. But I do think too we have recovered in those moments before by galvanizing people on behalf of even though it sounds like a

contradiction, using a fragmented media to galvanize Americans on behalf of shared values. And I think that's what you and I are doing on this podcast. This is a tragic moment. Um, and um, I I I think it's important to keep the temperature down, not to see more violence, but I also am hopeful that we'll be able to use this vocabulary. You know, sometimes we're talking about courts and law, but the language of the Constitution, I think, really does provide a beacon for us as as Lincoln showed. >> Absolutely. And you know what? I want to talk to you about the the alternate realities throughout history uh a little bit later in the show. But >> right now, the New Yorker just ran an article called Did Trump just declare war on the American left? And it's interesting, Corey, the people who I I keep calling for civil war and saying we need more guns and pushing the racist great replacement theory. The people who mocked the murder of George Floyd and mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi, who are totally okay with beating capital cops for a lie. They they they would

like us to tone down our rhetoric, professor. I don't know if you know that, but they'd like us to stop all the hate out there. Uh because apparently it's the people fighting for gun control that are making all these young Republican men get guns and shoot at Republican figures. I mean I mean you're right. It is an alternate reality. And and how do you interpret this recent rhetoric from Pam Bondi, from the president? Is it merely political hyperbole? We know they're panicking. The tariffs are coming. Epstein is coming. People don't like having the National Guard in their cities. Texas is already trying to cheat 15 months early in the midterms because they're so terrified of what's going to happen. The prices are going up. The Fed came up and said that consumer spending has flatlined or dropped and inflation's affected every sector. So, we know how terrified they are. We know they're going to try a lot of things that are stupid. But is is this talk right now merely political hyperbole or do you think that their desperation could lead to an intentional strategy to criminalize opposition?

Yes, I do. I think that the there this is a real danger as much as it's both an attempt to galvanize the base, it also is a threat to democracy and that's what we're facing at this time. And you know the contradictions that you and I are calling out, they don't care about there's a sort of sense in which they're just irrational and after their own power and when your sole ambition is authoritarianism, you look at the different mechanisms that you can use. So, you know, some said, well, his threat to call out the military is just uh hyperbole. And then it turned out it wasn't. His threat to use ICE to build it up into a massive national police force to shut down people's right uh rights to seize them uh anonymously and throwing them in vans was hyperbole.

It's not. And unfortunately, the threat to prosecute political opponents after the Nixon administration, there were a lot of reforms to the Department of Justice. It was uh an attempt to um uh isolate political decisions from people like presidents like Nixon, but largely they were based on norms and we had a moment of an independent prosecutor being created to try to create a real check on power but that ended during Clinton. So in the end norms you know this sort of phrase that you hear used by um political scientists and commentator like what does that really mean? It doesn't matter anymore because Pam Bombi, he found he found the way around this. That the attorney generals that he chose, Trump during his first term had some sense that it was immoral. It was a lack of virtue, as the framers would have put it, to prosecute your political opponents. What Pam Bonti wants is what Trump wants.

>> I think they I think they knew it was stupid, Cory. I think more than I think more than more than than than than his two attorney generals having a moral compass. I think they knew it was politically stupid to go after your enemies. But >> their own careers and the ABA, they probably cared about being condemned and then she doesn't care about any of that. She is willing to do it. And there are, you know, the way that you prosecute during the this the the kind of classic instance of of um or two, one uh during the Wilson administration, but earlier I think the most dramatic 1798, the Sedition Act provides a law for doing this in public. And the law, just to remind listeners, makes it a crime to criticize the president, but not to criticize the leader of the opposition party, the vice president. And they use that in the open. They're not embarrassed of it either, that John Adams is a kind of monarchist, a constitutional monarchist who thinks that there's nothing unconstitutional or wrong with punishing his own critics.

So, he does it in the open. Now, we don't have a sedition act. We don't have that legislation, but you can trump up charges. You could look at people as they often do for things like, you know, mortgage u applications that weren't filled out correctly and just try and try and try and investigate, investigate, investigate till you find it. And that's the kind of thing I think we'll see from Pam Bondi. And I think she wants to deliver. Trump wants these prosecutions of high levelic uh opponents. And I'm I do think that she'll use and weaponize her department to do it. And as much as I want to think lawyers, you know, take an oath, the the attorney general takes a note to the constitution. She doesn't care about that. And they don't care about logic or consistency. uh the the vice president, you know, hosting Charlie Kirk's uh podcast um talking about how, you know, the left is to blame. Well, echoing Trump, that's somebody that called Trump America's Hitler and now >> called him Hitler.

>> Going along with it all. >> Well, I mean, and that's the whole thing, right? The guy who murdered Charlie Kirk, not Antifa, not a Black Panther, not a transgender barista with a bunch of pronouns on a name tag. 22-year-old white boy from Utah, Tyler Robinson, grew up in a Republican family surrounded by guns. They told us it was a liberal sniper or it was a trans Antifa Muslim rad. No, not a registered Democrat, not trans, not an immigrant. No leftist ties. No leftist ties. His dad's a minister, former law enforcement, and his parents introduced him to weapons at very at a very early age. This is a homegrown gun experienced shooter from a conservative white family, not some fringe outsider. This was a white man, a white man raised in conservativism, murdering a white man raised in conservativism at one of the whitest colleges in America, in one of the whitest states in the nation. And and and again the same day, another young guy shoots up a school in the next state at the same and who do Maggas

blame? Liberals, queer folks, Muslims, immigrants, black people. When they thought the shooter was queer or Muslim, Cory, they were ready to launch a second civil war. They were frothing at the mouth. Trump never condemned violence, did try to calm down the country. He's out there saying, "Crack down on the far left." And then it turns out another white Republican boy, well, the rage, you'd think, would disappear faster than Trump's respect for a prenup. But this is this is a right-wing product. It's not a left-wing conspiracy. This is a right-wing product. And so you've got Donald Trump recognizing that they can exploit this murder just as they exploited four murders of men in Benghazi. Men whose names they never bothered to memorize because they didn't need the names. They needed the corpses to get more power.

And now this elderly amphetamine adult narcissist is framing his enemies not just as political rivals but again as you said as enemies of the state. Professor, I hate that I have to ask this question. What is the danger of that framing for a constitutional democracy? >> Well, the you know I I'd say and this is a theme we've talked about, but we're really seeing it there. There are two dangers to constitutional democracy. One is the sort of hard coup, the use of the military. Uh and related to that closely is the use of the prosecution function of the Department of Justice to shut people down. But there also is the network of lies and we're seeing that here too. the information war, the falsehoods, the in either indifference to truth or willingness to lie in order to commandeer a situation. So, let's just unpack what happened here. Uh, we don't know the motive of this shooter and some of the casings, for instance, have what seemed to be anti-gay sentiment. That doesn't sound like the left to me. And you haven't heard a lot about that. Uh, there was a anti-fascist

slogan, but it's one that's used in gaming culture. >> That's right. a song that's used in gaming culture. Uh so, you know, some speculation is that this is a follower of somebody influenced by Nick Fuentes or somebody an antiqu >> uh the pro-Israel views of Charlie Kirk. Uh so, you know, we don't know. That's the point. And rather than saying that and rather than acting as a president should or a vice president, they immediately are engaged in a kind of motivated reasoning to use this moment to try to destroy the left and to destroy their political opponents. I've really tried to stay away from the analogy of the Reichag fire, the famous moment in which um the um the the the German legislative body burns down.

There is a debate among historians that credible idea is that of course Hitler ordered it in as a pretext in order to No, I don't think that Trump ordered this murder, but the the analogy is the willingness to use something that might have nothing to do with an attack on Republicans. >> But that's it, right? That's it. That's why they're murdering people in boats on the coast of Venezuela. They've got a hundred Reichtock fires. That's what they do. They're all backwards Nazis, Cory. this is the administration that had the beer hall push after he'd been president. Like, but you've you've written about the balance between free speech and incitement. And and so I want to I want to close out this block by just asking at what point does Trump's language cross over from protected political speech into something that genuinely threatens democratic stability? And I guess if it did, there'd be no guard rails cuz Pam Bondi would approve. Well, what's so wild to me is that if any speech is going to be prosecuted, it it

often is the speech on the on the right that is incentivizing violence that is um engaged in hate speech and in its classic form, anti-black hate speech, for instance. You see that all the time. Uh yet in this country, we have an extremely protective um Holocaust denial. I mentioned Fuentes. Fuentes would be in prison in Germany. It's illegal. And so throughout the rest of the world there is an idea of militant democracy that we limit speech in order to protect democracy in our country. The way we do things uh we have a first amendment. The Supreme Court has long said this that guarantees even evil even wrong viewpoints are protected. all opinion essentially aside from that which and this is important not just long term but immediately sparks violence in which lawless action is imminent is the language in the Brandenburgg case uh is protected >> and yet the so they want of course the right-wing wants to and Trump and the MAGA base want to help themselves to

those rights >> but they also want to take it away for those who they view as their opponents that's what's so frightening there is no principled way to understand that except for authoritarianism writes for me but not for you. And that's the the weirdness of this idea of free speech. It's very impossible really to engage it at the level of reason. You just have to call it out for what it is. It isn't some principled approach to the First Amendment. It's just I want rights and I don't want you to have rights. And you know throughout American history that's been a a common theme of groups. Um the 19th century I've talked about the clan.

It's not that they didn't believe in free speech for themselves. said they didn't believe their opponents and they didn't believe it for black Americans or Jewish Americans. >> Coming back to that >> and we're coming back to religious fundamentalism because if you're on the side of God, the speech of others doesn't really matter because you're doing everything you're doing, you know, for God. Um, all right. >> I I was going to say one last thing, too. I mean, you see it too in every moment. So, a lot of the right uh criticizes what they call cancel culture where people get fired for uh saying inappropriate things and yet they're engaging in it looking for people who didn't handle the you know I might not agree with the way that some people have handled Kirk's death but to be fired for it. I mean, that's a cancel culture or they've um opposed doxing where um members of extremist groups have their uh names released and yet the they claim to oppose it except when they see leftists that they don't like or liberals uh or moderates, they're willing to dox. So there is no philosophy. Um uh you know John Adams as

much as I criticize him, he had a philosophy of monarchy and you could see what it was and and criticize it. And um here there's no philosophy. It's just irrationality and power. I just want to say I'm still on the side of we just want better safety and background checks at the federal level and register all guns like we do cars and no assault rifles for civilians and limit uh uh magazine capacity. Uh that's the side they're saying is proviolence. That's that's all we're still calling for and it's all much more popular than the current Congress. All right, quick break. We'll be right back. I want to talk to you a bit about the two information universes. Corey, a lot of our listeners have been kind of expressing the same sentiments to me and I'd like to go a little bit deeper about that in the past and the present and talk about you with a real Watergate guy on CNN. We'll be right back. This is the Oath in the Office. Welcome back to the Oath in the Office podcast. I'm John Fugles joined by Professor Corey Brett Schneider. Corey, we you you've talked uh in the first bit about the surreal

reality that we now seem to live in these two separate information universes. Uh there's folks out there who don't know to this day that Donald Trump admitted that Barack Obama was born here on September 16th, 2016. I talk to them all the Trump admitted Obama was born here because the news they consume chose to never tell them that. Um was there ever a time in American history when our country was this divided with this understanding of basic facts? You you mentioned the civil war before, but that was more about ideology, more about perspective. I'm talking sky is blue, 2 plus 2 is four.

Have we ever been this divided on on an understanding of what is real? Um, you know, I think that we we're coming off the 1970s, the last real crisis of a before Trump won of a president threatening democracy. And we saw how the country reacted by having one media universe and there really wasn't, I think, a division about Nixon's crimes, uh, at least the crimes of Watergate. And you saw in kind of real time 1972 wasn't much of a story.

as it became a story, as the hearings took off, as Congress took them on, his numbers go way down from really around, you know, 40 plus percent to in the end by Watergate, it's in the low 20s. And we haven't seen that happen. Why does that not happen even after the Mueller report section two in particular showing 10 instances of obstruction of justice? Even after the president just nakedly attacks democracy on January 6th uh and now attacking political opponents for a crime whose motives we don't we don't even know but blaming a whole party for the actions of one individual. And the answer has to do with the way media has become so fragmented. Um, partly it's Fox, but it's also podcasts like Kirks that now the vice president has uh taken over that where you're just hearing two different universes of information. And that is a kind of inherent threat to democracy. But, you know, I'm always looking for the hope and it isn't the only time that we've seen this. When Frederick Douglas was writing, uh, his

Frederick Douglas's paper in the North Star has circulations in the thousands. I looked at that. Not in the millions. It's not a most of the country. It's an attempt to galvanize a group to see the facts of the evils of slavery. Not just the morality, but the facts of what was happening, what was denied, the lie that somehow this wasn't an evil institution. I keep talking about 1798 and the sedition act. There really were two information universes. We had a federalist party that was the president's John Adams monarchist in its uh ambitions and believing and this is the factual part that America was on the cusp of an invasion that there were French warships and um that after the French Revolution the French military was going to invade the United States and that was a sincere belief that people had because they were reading federalist reports about that. Now did the president believe it? I I'm a little unclear but certainly many Americans believed it. that set up the authoritarian crackdown on the opposition party. And if we were reading a different set of papers, the

Democratic Republican newspapers, you weren't hearing that idea. There was no idea. And so that is an example where it's not just a moral differences, which we've always had, but an information difference. So I I use these to try to say, you know, yeah, it's frightening, but we have been in this kind of information war before. >> And and I kind of I'm kind of like now Corey feeling a bit touchy about the framing of all of this. the two information universes. I mean, it almost makes it seem like they're equal equally virtuous virtuous entities. I mean, we're talking about the people who are lying all the time for power because they're allowed to because we the people seem to own these airwaves, right? We own the airwaves, but there is no effort made whatsoever to have any accountability for those who would abuse the public trust by knowingly spreading falsehoods, evil or costly falsehoods. I mean, I'm looking at Sean Hannity alone.

And this is a man who who helped lie us into a war. Look at how Fox News spread so many lies, deliberate lies, and attacked the Americans who were telling the truth as being terrorists and and and and hating freedom. Look at the lies led by Sean Hannity. The first black president wasn't really one of us. Every every racist cracker that he could take a dollar bill at showed up at his studio and they were treated as experts all in the name of a racist lie. And look at the smears and lies about the 2020 election. I mean, they had to pay $787 million in fines. That was actual accountability. It only came because a private corporation with the resources fought back. our attorneys general, they don't do anything about it. It Fox News is allowed to lie freely. I mean, I I mean, it's one thing if it's pro wrestling, it's another thing when it's affecting the world economy. I should say, too, and that's exactly right. It isn't uh two equally good information universes, and it wasn't true in 1798

when one party was lying about this French invasion, and the other wasn't. wasn't true uh in the leadup to the Civil War and during it when one information universe was claiming that slavery was a benign institution and the other was claiming otherwise and it's not true now. Uh here's where it gets really twisted. The president of the United States is um threatening to sue uh his political opponents including the New York Times >> um and to use the tool of liel the same thing that was used to go after Fox News to go after his political opponents.

Now, the New York Times won a case called New York Times versus Sullivan that prevents against using as a cudgel liel law um when public officials are being criticized. What that case essentially said is that uh when it comes to public figures and matters of public concern that as long as you weren't intentionally trying to maliciously lie about someone, if you made a mistake, you're protected under the First Amendment. Now, Trump doesn't like that rule, and much of the Supreme Court doesn't like it. unfortunately either, including Justice Thomas. So, what he's going to try to do, and suing the New York Times is quite a way to do it because that's the case that established this idea of free speech limiting liel law. Uh, he might not only do it, he might win by finding a mistake and then using the Supreme Court to overturn that case. That's a frightening idea, but that's the that's the war we're in. But it's one and, you know, I I'm always optimistic, hopeful, but I don't want to be naive. The information war might be won by the wrong people, by

the lies. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if there's one thing Game of Thrones taught me, good lord, the bad guys win quite often. I mean, do you think this current two universes problem is more dangerous now than than say the partisan press of 1798 or or the propaganda of the Civil War? I mean, I don't see 600,000 Americans likely to die from the two Americas we're hearing now, if that gives it any perspective. >> Yeah, it does. And John, I thank you for saying that because when I hear from people, you know, you're too hopeful.

Uh, you know, it wasn't never this bad. Of course, it was. Civil War is the worst period of political violence in American history. And I don't think as bad as things are, we'll see anything that comes close to that. Uh, what was dangerous about 1798, and the reason it was so particularly dangerous, is because there was no free press. that had to be demanded by the Democratic Republican party, the people who were being prosecuted for in one instance revealing a plot to steal an election. And the way they did that was through politics. They the courts were not going to defend them. There was no New York Times versus Sullivan. The Samuel Chase was making sure that these prosecutions were going to happen and that they couldn't even raise issues of free speech. He sat sits on the trial of Thomas Cooper, one of the editors prosecuted by Adams, and ensures he can't even raise the issue of free speech. The point is, the reason it was so dangerous is because if the editors would have lost and Adams would have won, if that election, if Adams would have been reelected, we might never have had a free press, we might never have

had access to information that would allow the truth to prevail. And um so that's why yes, it's frightening now, but no, it's not as bad as it was before. and we have those previous victories to draw on. >> I I enjoyed seeing you with John Dean on CNN. I've had the pleasure of having Mr. Dean on my uh my SiriusXM show and he he really is a link to history and and he's he's the rarest. He was a man in power who was laid low and embraced the truth and uh did his time and came out a much more chasened, honest uh person who's had decades of integrity to his name.

Um, but I was curious how how did the shared reality of the 1970s that you mentioned earlier shape the way Americans processed Watergate compared to today? I mean, we're seeing an ongoing campaign funded by our tax dollars to make white people not care about child rape. Corey, >> yeah, I mean, I think when Dean eventually did turn on Nixon, and let's not be naive about it. It was really interesting to be on with him, but I also don't want to cover up the crimes of Watergate. He's on the tapes when they talk about the smoking gun and the bribes to the plumbers to make sure that the information doesn't come out. He's not saying don't do that. He's going along with it. The reason he was such an important witness against Nixon is because he was in the midst of all these crimes and after being uh serving time um uh and uh coming out of it that's when he came back to see the wrongness I think of what Nixon had done and that certainly is very praiseworthy. But

think of the analogy of somebody like Michael Cohen who was involved in the crimes and now has come along and I know you've had him on your show. Maybe we'll have him on the podcast too. um uh you know he's just easily dismissed by MAGA as a traitor and so so you know that would and certainly there were those who called Dean a rat and a traitor and said he was lying but he was believed because of the one information universe and what makes it so much harder now >> to have a John Dean why Michael Cohen is certainly not a John a John Dean uh is because we we don't have that shared reality anymore >> and they know he lies to them they know Barack Obama was born here they know object Objectively, these people are racist and there were no Haitians eating pets. They know he lost the 2020 election. They know he had cops beaten for a lie and yet their obedience remains blind. This is beyond reason, professor. It's it's it's beyond ideology. I mean, what what responsibility do modern institutions like media companies or social media

platforms or politicians bear for deepening this divide? I know it belongs to all of us, but I mean it just it just seems like if we had accountability uh maybe I don't know a little public shaming uh it could go a long way. I mean lies being freely spread in the name of free speech uh is no different from anti-semites cracking down on university because they claim to care about anti-semitism. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that one problem that we have now in the fragmented universe is, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is in charge of the way these algorithms work and that they're not really designed to try to recreate a unified reality. Uh he I think has especially in the aftermath of COVID um uh just been catering again and again to the right and so you know the tech universe which has so much control over us. Um, I tried to talk to Grock uh the Elon Musk AI about about Musk Hitler salute which I

saw uh with my own eyes and asked it you know what do you think and Grock was not fond of it thought I was seeing things so you know the tech universe is a big part of this problem and uh how we recover from it I I don't know we we're forming our own communities we're forming on this podcast at least an attempt to talk honestly about things to talk about facts and uh I think that's what we can do at this moment. >> I mean, I don't understand why you need to design propaganda robots when you have all those nice blonde people at Fox News. But, you know, Cy, I mean, I'll I'll wrap this up, but like we're we're witnessing it. I mean, JD Vance and Steven Miller went on that podcast to to try to exploit this man's murder to scapegoat the left despite all the evidence that the shooter was from a conservative background. It's disgusting. And that's the real narrative here. And the media is proving to be way too afraid to talk about it when we see a black woman columnist for the Washington Post literally fired for

quoting Charlie Kirk's exact racist language. And yet Brian Kilme can call for the the euthanization of homeless people on Fox News. And we know his job's fine because he doesn't work for a a news organization. But they're they're they're scapegoating the left on this. And I want to ask you, how does that rewriting of reality fit into the broader authoritarian playbook? >> Well, there is no shame in right-wing media. I mean, I I still can't believe it, although I've watched it multiple times, but a Fox News host talking about how the solution to homelessness is mass murder. Um, he he talked about involuntary, that was the word that he used, right? Injections, >> killing veterans. Talk about killing veterans. Killing veterans.

>> And he's not fired. Uh, and he just apologizes. I mean, what what would like, you know, oh, okay. I just happened to come up with that idea. >> But Cy, Cory, you're shocked. We just witnessed an ex-military guy strangle a mentally ill homeless man to death on a subway who never laid a hand on anybody. He was having a freakout session, but he didn't hurt anyone. The only person to lay a finger on anybody else was was was Daniel Penny. Murders him, chokes the life out of him. Could have said, "Hey, man. Can I help you?" didn't try to diffuse the situation, just killed mentally ill homeless man. And that guy gets to go up in a private box with the president and vice president.

>> I mean, if it was a black if it was a black man who killed a mentally ill homeless white man, I don't think we would have seen the same kind of red carpet treatment. >> Yeah, it is craven. And you know, I wish I could say too, it's, you know, people who aren't educated or haven't thought about these things. No, it often is people who are uh educated who have thought about these things. This host had thought about it. JD Vance has a degree from Yale Law School, but yet he is leaning into this more than anyone in claiming that it's the left and that the, you know, without any evidence that this shooter is em emblematic of a wider dangerous rhetoric on the left that's causing people to die. Meanwhile, there's no talk of the murder of uh the Minnesota uh uh legislators, the the right the other attacks.

>> Trump didn't know about it. They asked Trump about it yesterday at the press conference and he didn't know the story, didn't know who the woman was because why would they? Those deaths don't matter. >> Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, this the aftermath of Kirk's murder, which we've condemned rightly, uh, is a frightening moment because they are ready to pounce. And Steven Miller, you know, doesn't talk about even the radical left. I had one note from somebody saying, "Well, doesn't Trump say it's the radical left?" Well, he's using that, of course, as a standin for the Democratic party.

>> The radical left wants everybody to have healthare. That's their agenda, healthare. >> But Stephen Miller tells you how it is. It's the Democratic party that is the the danger that has to be shut down. >> And the fact that somebody that craved has that much power is uh you know, one one of the frightening things about the moment. So, you know, we've I've tried to be hopeful, too, but but also to to be honest. So, so really quick then, I mean, if they're talking about retribution against their opponents, how does that square with constitutional protections like due process and equal protection?

>> Well, I think that, you know, there are still courts functioning. There are is due process out there, but when it comes to the president, we've just seen u unwillingness to apply the rule of law. And you and I have talked about the shadow docket. There's a recent research about it that's come out that just shows that more often than not the president is demanding these cases be solved uh resolved and much more so than previous administrations that they're they're getting what they want. So the court is handing it over and just to define the shadow docket these are emergency orders where the court doesn't even give reasons. Now what does that have to do with the rule of law at least in regard to the administration? lower courts can't figure out how to act what the law is because they don't have the reasons.

>> So that really is an undermining not just bad decisions or the president's winning. It's an undermining of the rule of law. It's it's a kind of arbitrariness in which the default seems to be the president and not just the president but his administration can do what they want. And you know there was a one lower court judge in this study who said uh you know I I I do what I'm told. You know, I'm not trying to disobey the Supreme Court, but I can't figure out what to do. That's really when a judge doesn't understand what the law is because of the shadow doctrine. That's a sign that things are really deteriorating.

>> Or if the judge is pretending not to understand what the law is for professional convenience, if you'll pardon my suggestion, but let me close it with this, professor. If Trump were to pursue this path of criminalizing disscent, right, what constitutional guard rails still exist to stop him beyond the state level a and and and which guard rails do you fear are already weakened? >> Well, one is, you know, I could talk about New York Time I did talk about New York Times versus Sullivan and the idea that you have to show not just falsehoods but intentional falsehoods.

That would be a protection that might be gone. Uh I could talk about the fact that there is no sedition act but there is this ability to um bring prosecution uh that's motivated look for laws that were violated and and often there are so many criminal laws on the books you can find them. So that that's not where I'm going to find it. Where I'm going to find the hope is going back to the founding. Grand juries and juries were seen as the bull work against um authoritarianism and they often did provide that role. When Samuel Chase in several cases demanded prosecution of enemies, grand juries resisted the grand jury during Nixon demanded his prosecution and a lot of the information that we have about his crimes and eventually that the Congress got in the impeachment proceedings that led to his resignation came from a grand jury. So those institutions are still intact. And you know who they're staffed by? Not by professional politicians, but by you and me and by our listeners. And that's who I'm putting my faith in that the legal system, the jury system is going to

prevent the worst abuses. >> Well, we have to take uh one more break. When we come back, let's have some comforting, warm nostalgia food. Uh namely the court stopping Donald Trump from trying to destroy the Federal Reserve uh to lie about his uh inflation numbers. Quick break. We'll be right back. This is the oath in the office. Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. I'm John Fugles. Corey, um, hey, uh, here here's here's a normal story. Um, a Federal appeals court has rejected Donald Trump's bid to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook. Uh, this is the first time he's tried to fire governor of the board. Uh, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that, uh, she is a black woman that he's doing this for. Of course, Donald Trump was threatening to fire Jerome Powell from the Fed, which he cannot do because Powell would not raise interest rates to cover the impact of Trump's deeply stupid, destructive tariffs on the US economy. So, he's we we already know he's trying to rig the numbers, right? He's trying to make math

as corruptible as him. He's fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics head statistician again because he's stupid. It takes 2,000 statistitians to compile that. the boss is just the one who hands in the report. Um, this is the latest in the war on facts. Now, this decision leaves Trump uh not a lot of time to ask the court to fire her. What do you see happening here? This was a two to1 ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and it was two judges who were Biden appointees against one judge who was a Trump appointee.

Well, you know, you you and I maybe at at too much length have been uh teaching a a year-long course on the unitary executive, and this is an example of that ongoing battle. And it's a victory for democracy. And just to remind people what's happening in a lot of these hiring and firing cases is there are long-standing protections of civil servants like um uh members of the Fed uh like members in another case of the Federal Trade Commission uh and that independent agencies are protected by Congress, civil servants so that they take their oath seriously to abide by the law or in the case of the Federal Reserve the mandate to balance um uh inflation combating inflation and combating unemployment, not trying to enrich Donald Trump, which is the only thing that he would care about if he was in charge of the Fed. So, um, you know, here's the problem. The law is very clear in all these cases that you can't fire people for political reasons.

That's the whole idea. But the president has a constitutional argument that says the law is wrong. the above the law is the the fact that the executive power is vested in a president, one person, and that he or she can fire whoever he or she wants for any reason. And that's what Trump was trying to do to take this unitary executive theory which started out as a theory during the me um uh uh attorney general period that was Reagan's attorney general and embraced by Scalia in a descent in a case called Morrison, a singular descent with one vote. But that's turning into a majority position. So what you're seeing, you know, I want to be optimistic. The law is being enforced by this appeals court, but ultimately my worry is what we're headed towards is a wholesale embrace of Trump's authoritarianism by the Supreme Court under the theory of the unitary executive. So we're in a holding pattern and that this is the case now. And uh ultimately, it's not really about what happens to any one public official. It's

about whether or not the court is going to destroy all of these uh protections and it might ultimately be a firing in the Federal Trade Commission case that that leads to that. >> Um, wow. Okay, Corey, I want to I want to end uh on a on a more humane note. Let's um open up some of our mail from some of the very attractive uh smart, brilliant, moral people who listen to the show. Uh PJ writes, "Hi Corey and John. Love the podcast. Um, one question that keeps nagging at me is how Americans against authoritarianism can effectively resist. Resisting with our wallets feels like the most effective way I have seen by everyday civilians.

However, the recent ham sandwich incident where a citizen threw a sandwich at a National Guardsman in DC and a grand jury failed to indict seems to be a great example of effective resistance. The Trump administration is so petty and oversensitive they will inevitably overreact to obviously innocuate provocations. This in turn makes the administration look weak and citizens lose further fate in their judgment. Is this a roadmap for the way forward? And if so, how can citizens safely and broadly adopt this template to make authoritarians unravel? Wow.

>> I love I love this question and this comment. >> Yeah. Can I just say I don't I I support wasting food as much as the next shallow first world male. But please folks, let's get back to throwing shoes at politicians. Don't throw sandwiches at National Guardsmen. Corey, I I think it's fraught with peril. I mean, a night in jail uh is nothing for a rich person. It can destroy the life of a poor person or a working person. Um what do you make of it? I mean, could could this work? I agree that they're oversensitive. They're going to definitely overreact.

They're panicking. That's what the executive order on flag burnings is all about. They're trying so hard to get people to burn flags or throw a rock at a national guardsman. But how how could civilians, citizens safely adopt this kind of template? >> Well, I don't recommend throwing ham sandwiches at the National Guard. I do appreciate the peaceful protests that have been there and calling >> nonviolent I think he's talking about nonviolent resistance. Just don't throw the sandwich. >> Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And but what I also love about this comment, the reason why I I I was eager to respond to this. And those of you who have sent them that we haven't responded to, thanks. Keep sending them in.

we're we're getting to them as we can. But what's so important about this is the the both the recognition I think this pulls out the theme that we've been talking about. Um the recognition that you know they will go after people for any reason. Like maybe the guy shouldn't have thrown the sandwich, but this wasn't a threat to national security and yet they wanted to prosecute him in order to make an authoritarian example that we can go after who we want. Uh and yet it didn't work. And the fact that the grand jury didn't indict, I think is really goes to the point that I was trying to make, which is many of the the texts that we think that we have aren't there. Um, but some of them are. And actually going back to the founding, the role of grand juries who decide, just to be clear, the petite jury decides on guilt or innocence after trial. But before you even get to an indictment, the indictment has to be signed. It has to be uh approved by citizens. And that's what the grand jury does. And what I want to see is as these fake crimes come down the pike, as they start

to go after political opponents, that's the place where citizens have to resist. And it's not going beyond your job. That is your job. And that's what the framers imagine. That's why they create rights of grand juries in the constitution. This was a great and important question. I was going to ask a second one which was um uh Steve in DC um wrote to me to ask um we talked about um Justice Kavanaaugh uh and the approval of racial profiling and the question is wasn't there a precedent before Kavanaaugh's uh opinion in the shadow docket and just to remind listeners this was a shadow docket opinion um not an opinion of the court but it seemed to leave way for racial profiling The question is, didn't courts before allow for racial profiling? And it's a really important question. I'll clarify it. It is true that there is um uh an earlier opinion by the Supreme Court that talks about um the use of race by police in short stops

as among the factors that can be considered in a larger inquiry. Uh so isn't Kavanaaugh just doing that? He cites this case and he tries to say I'm not doing anything different. and I'm just applying the law. But it's such a good example where the justices never want to admit that they're getting very seldom that they're getting rid of a previous opinion. So in the case for instance of abortion, you did see that, but it's pretty rare. >> Uh and he's lying to you. I think Kavanaaugh uh he's claiming that he's using this earlier opinion which talked about races being one factor in a quick stop but this is a detainment throwing somebody in permanently into detention uh or or at least for a long period of time and it isn't just and this is what soda says in her descent it isn't just uh one factor among many he's really willing to allow um uh race to be and language to be the dominant factor and The earlier court's opinions were meant to minimize just to say here's a way to put it. The old rule as I understand it

was that race isn't disqualifying if it was an awareness or it was one of many things that were taken into consideration. That doesn't mean that the stop was illegal. Now Kavanagh is trying to twist that into the idea that really this is all you need is to pull up to people at Home Depot and you know let's talk about the real cases on the ground that were happening. people were being tackled uh detained because of the color of their skin, because they were speaking Spanish. There was no >> balancing of the totality of the circumstances. And that's what Soayor is saying. And one of the worst things about what Kavanaaugh uh and this this emergency shadow docket decision does is it disregards the facts. That was what was going on in the lower court. They saw that race was the main factor and they're just disregarding it. So, he can say all he wants. I'm just implementing previous decisions. Uh, thanks Steve.

That was a great question. >> What a great question. Your your your listeners send in the best questions. Corey, my listeners just write in about like rare Beatles trivia and their passionate political rants about Star Wars. You you you're you're raising the bar for me. Um, professor, it's a scary week when we see the US media deifying a person who thought that ending racial segregation was a mistake. And like many of our listeners, I'm not looking for the media and I'm not looking for politicians necessarily to provide leadership. I think it's going to have to come from a majority of good citizens. But let me ask you, how should responsible leaders on both the left and right be speaking right now if they'd like to deescalate this situation?

>> Well, I think you know, as we've seen members of both parties say, and as you and I have said many times, we condemn the violence against Charlie Kirk. He he had a right to free speech. She had a right not to be murdered. No question. But now the question is how do we move forward to to make sure there's no more violence. We can't weaponize the idea of free speech to protect it for one political party but not another. We can't demonize for the actions of one individual who again, and we've covered this, but just to make it so clear, uh it's so unclear what the motivation was.

And the idea that it's a leftist in some way seems unlikely to me given the anti-gay message on the casing, giving the uh relationship to um gaming culture and maybe to the fuentes wing of um extremism, critical of Charlie Clerk for being uh too in their view uh pro-Israel, too pro-Jewish is the way that that these anti-semites put it, a holocaust denier who would have been in prison quentes uh in in most countries in the world. So, if we're going to if we're going to use this moment, we can't use it to demonize. We need it to reaffirm principles. Now, maybe that sounded high-minded, quoting Lincoln um um and um better angels of our nature.

>> No, it's not high-minded. The other side's quoting Kid Rock Professor, please continue. Please. >> But I I think that's what we need to do. We need to not just lower the temperature. We need to up the level of the thinking of the vocabulary and and try to save this democracy in the face of a president who really is threatening to destroy it. >> Uh, Professor Brett Schneider, it is always such an honor to be with you. I want to close by asking you one last question that's keeping the up at night. What should citizens be watching for in the months ahead to gauge whether Donald Trump's war on the left is rhetoric or whether it really is a real threat? My take, and I got a lot of hate for it. If you support killing Charlie Kirk, you're worse than Charlie Kirk.

>> You're a worse person than he is. And now Charlie Kirk is dead at 31. And he's never going to get a chance >> to grow up. He's never going to get a chance to watch Trumpism fail and to lose some arguments and lose some funding and have to struggle a bit. He's never going to get to have a black friend or an immigrant friend or a gay friend or a trans friend. He's never going to get to have his heart and mind grow. Those hateful comments he made, don't worry. The world won't forget. They are now permanently stapled to his obituary for all of time. And his kids are going to grow up very aware of the very real things their dad said. Um, I think that is a a great tragedy for me and it's why this renews my hopes more than ever that our friends on the right might get serious about trying to make it just a bit harder for emotionally unstable 20something males to murder people in this country. Um, thank you so much, professor, and I want to tell everyone again to please uh uh subscribe and give us a good review and and send us your mail. Cory will read it. Any last words, Professor Bretchin? Uh just

to have people look forward to we're talking about times that were less partisan, less of a division. Um one that we idealized which is partly true is um you know the 1980s and one of the most important maybe the most important person in in the Democratic party throughout a lot of that time was uh Representative Dick Gart. I'm glad to announce that he'll be on podcast with us in a couple of weeks. We'll revisit the past. I think he's also going to uh destroy some illusion that this was a ideal moment that he remembers uh full full well um dealing with some of his uh partisan opponents including Nuke Gingrich who we'll ask him about and um look forward to that conversation and others. Stay tuned. Um we have some some great guests coming up. Uh subscribe.

You can follow me at democracy uh prof. And of course, I just have to put another plug in for my co-host and great friend John Fuglesang and to buy his book uh Separation of Church and Hate recommended by my dad. >> Please thank your father for me. I'm I'm very moved uh that a that a like me could uh could reach so many people. The amount of the amount of of Jewish and atheist friends who have written with nice words about this book has been very moving. And uh yeah, Simon and Schustster was kind of surprised at how well the sales are going. Um, so we sold out Sous City, Iowa. We sold out. So, uh, hopefully, uh, this will have legs and your listeners will have to deal with me, uh, whoring myself well through Christmas. Professor, thank you so much.

Uh, I want to thank Wendy and Beaywolf and everyone who helps us staple these bits together. And thank you guys most of all for listening and supporting the oath and the