Trump’s War on Truth and Science (with James Morone)

Within 30 minutes of [music] the incident, Trump held a press conference, and instead of assuring a raw, weary nation, [music] instead he pivoted to demanding his proposed White House ballroom. Drone proof, it's bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom. Men in power don't [music] want to solve gun violence, they want to use gun violence to make us hate each other even more. Moderate voices in the Republican Party thought they could let these dogs run, but keep them leashed, which is not introduce something new, he unleashes the dogs. Welcome to the Oath and the Office podcast. I am John Feigelstock. It's great to be with you, and we are joined as always by the man, by the Mac, by the one and only author of the book The Oath in the Office, constitutional law professor, Corey Brettschneider. Professor, it's good to see you.

Thanks so much, John. We're going to talk about the information universe that we're all living in, the war on truth that this administration has waged. Uh and also the war on science and where it came from and Trump's role in it with my amazing friend and uh colleague from Brown University, Professor Jim Morone. But of course, first we're going to start with uh the news of the day, the horrific violence that this country is facing, including uh at the recent um um uh uh recent events, um president's speech. So um uh and Sorry, let me say that again. Sure.

Uh what is it called the what's the event called? The press The White House Correspondents Dinner. Yeah, yeah. Including, John, I should say, we'll we'll start with uh recent events at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the horrific uh attempted violence uh that happened there. So, let's talk about that because there's a lot of information we don't know. What we do know is that this man, armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives, got inside the hotel hosting the Correspondents Dinner where the president and vice president and cabinet officials and reporters and half of the Washington, D.C. ego infrastructure were gathered in one room. Uh we know that Cole Allen is 31 of Torrance, California. Ladies, he he appears to be single. Um and he allegedly went to a security checkpoint with his weapons. Uh the one thing he didn't bring with him was good assassination planning skills because he was stopped at the perimeter.

Um he never entered the White House Correspondents Dinner's uh dining area. He was never on the same floor as the ballroom. No reporters or uh administration were ever actually in danger. We know this is bad for comedy fans because Kash Patel will probably be fired. We know Corey, if he'd worn explosives instead of carrying firearms, this could have been one of the worst security disasters in American history. Uh we know the line of succession was strangely all in one spot except for Chuck Grassley cuz he goes to bed at 2:30 in the afternoon. So, we could have had a a scenario where Chuck Grassley becomes president for America's 250th birthday and he's 250.

And we also know that Trump is already exploiting the attempt and using this as justification to threaten more Americans, attack more Americans, and try to expand authoritarian powers. Uh Professor, I was in D.C. the night this happened. What were your first thoughts when you heard of this would-be attack? Well, you know, it's not a good thing for democracy when violence is on the front burner, when there are attacks on our leaders. And as much as you and I are critical every week of this president and this administration, in no way, of course, is violence the answer.

In fact, not only is it not the answer, but we're talking every week on this podcast about the threat of authoritarianism, not only from Trump, but the way that the Supreme Court has enabled it. And one of the worst things that can happen in the face of an authoritarian threat is violence. Because what authoritarian leaders are going to do, and we we saw this immediately, I mean, no I mean, yeah. Less than 30 minutes. What is to use the threat of violence in order to try to shut down democracy. And you know, you need to have a brief second of recognizing that his speech would have been inappropriate to give, which was going to be an attack on the media, an attack on, as he calls it, on the enemies of the people, by which he means press. And you know, those people were under threat, too. The press and the administration were on one room together. They were all facing potential violence and potential danger. And even if the president and his administration were the target, certainly in the crossfire, the press press might have been caught. But he just dropped it extremely fast. Saw this in the in the

interview with 60 Minutes and the comments about um trying to shut down Jimmy Kimmel to uh use the the moment in order to continue his assault on free speech, on dissent, on democracy. And so, you know, this is a tragedy, not just um because of the the the threat to the president himself, which is terrible, but to the way that it is just enabled him to continue his uh rhetoric and his his attempt to destroy our democracy. You're right, within 30 minutes of the incident, Trump held a press conference, and instead of assuring a a raw, weary nation, instead he pivoted to demanding his proposed White House ballroom be approved after a judge uh halted construction on the grounds that it's totally illegal. I mean, like clockwork, Corey, and it was a it was an incredibly coordinated response of right-wing influencers, including you, Senator Fetterman, who right out came and said, "Well, uh more gun violence, uh an armed man failed to breach security at a hotel. This means

Trump needs taxpayers to fund his illegal ballroom." I mean, I knew they'd exploit it for some reason, Professor. I I expected yeah, the insurrection act, shut down an election. I didn't expect a ballroom and fire Jimmy Kimmel. They're they're They need to think bigger, these fascists. They really do. But I mean, at some point, this seems to be the pattern. Political messaging after trauma is now just exploiting violence for political gain. He has just a iron clad focus on uh usurping the powers of Congress to do what he wants, and I think the ballroom is not just about the ballroom. It's really about being able to to do what he likes without approval of Congress. He's somebody who has no interest in legislation, no interest in negotiating in the normal way of American politics.

And the ballroom has really become a symbol of that. Uh and the other thing that he is so focused on is why Pam Bondi lost her job. It was not because she um uh you know, um was uh not willing to release enough of the Epstein files. It's the opposite. She released too much. That she wasn't willing especially to go after his political opponents and to be more aggressive in their prosecutions. And you know, he had about just a few seconds really of digesting the the the attempt attempted violence before he turned back to both usurping Congress, that's the ballroom story, also uh going after his enemies. I mean, you even saw in the 60 Minutes interview, um I know we'll play some uh where the uh the question came, you know, about the manifesto and the idea that this person was um posing a government of pedophiles. Trump wasn't mentioned by name, and he immediately jumps in, "I'm not a pedophile. And by the way, you were

careful." Yeah, beautiful. And the press, even 60 Minutes, which is, you know, more CBS has been friendly to this administration way more than it should be. And yet But not 60 Minutes. And as the enemy of the people, I would say that's true, that is true, CBS generally, but 60 Minutes has proven itself uh to in this case, at least certainly to this case, See. uh appropriately hidden. Yeah, I got to say, you know, folks, live your life in such a way that uh you never find yourself on 60 Minutes saying the words, "I am not a pedophile" out loud on camera, on 60 Minutes. But wow, he he had to come out and say it. And I mean, we've we've seen this sort of thing throughout history where where it's exploited, but in this case, there are so many side shows to all of this, Professor, that we've talked about. And uh obviously, a big thing is the many conspiracies theories that that flew up that night. I was getting calls to to to comment on on all of the people across the aisle who within minutes were saying it had to be staged.

Now, I I generally don't encourage people to read the manifestos of these losers, um but in this case, I read his manifesto, and I don't think anyone's going to read what this damn fool wrote and still think that this was any kind any kind of conspiracy. I mean, you'd have to believe they hired a California math coach to carry out the stupidest, most inept false flag event in assassination history because Trump wanted to fall down on stage and look scared and weak. Um I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories, don't get me wrong, but I don't like when they're sold as conspiracy facts. I mean, Corey, you agree, right? We have to Not everything's a false flag. Sometimes a disturbed idiot with guns is just a disturbed idiot with guns. But at the same time, after what happened in Butler and the lies and lack of congressional investigation and the fake bandage on his head, and the fact that AR-15 rounds generally leave a little bark if you've been shot, I can't blame any of these Americans, left, right, or center, for casting doubt on the official story here. I think we need to get used to the

fact that we're going to have a built-in system of conspiracy theories with this president based on the false reality that he's created. As I've suggested, you know, there are two thoughts that we can hold together. The first, which is really important, is that we don't want to report out anything that's not based on fact. Right now, what the evidence suggests that this was a lone attacker with a really um not well-planned-out plan uh try to attack this ballroom. And um you know, we have his motives in the form of the manifesto, but we have a court process.

There's going to be an indictment. There'll likely be a trial, or at least a trial court proceedings. That's how we find out evidence. And so, I don't want to speculate. We shouldn't be speculating about uh conspiracies. Um but, and this is your other point, which is so crucial here, we live in an information universe that has been so attacked, the very idea of truth, by Trump himself, that of course people are going to have doubts about any official story, about anything to do with this president, because he has lied to us so office. And we don't want to just dismiss those who are more skeptical, because you know, this is a president who couldn't care less about the truth. He repeatedly lies. His instinct is often to lie, and who lies to us all the time directly through the ironically named Truth Social, which is often anything but truth. Mhm. One of the things that I'm so excited about By the way, the Pope made the same exact language point last week, Corey. You're in good company, but go on.

I was going to say, one of the things I'm so excited about for this episode is in the second We really have an expert on where this war on truth, this war on science came from, and that's my colleague at Brown University, uh Jim Morone. He's going to talk about um how uh Trump and this war on science Go on. Yeah. I mean, Trump has almost been a casualty of his own war on the truth a couple times now. And I'll say again, I won't fault anyone who believes this might have been staged, unless they know otherwise and they're just lying for clicks, my influencer friends. And if I found out tomorrow this was staged, I would be 0% surprised, of course. But Corey, is there a is there a broader historical pattern where political leaders simultaneously call for unity while targeting cultural or or media critics as scapegoats? I mean, we've seen it a lot under this president. Uh And I guess you could say after 9/11 how how how somehow Iraq was scapegoated for something that Saudis

did. But throughout history, is there a lot of precedent for for this whole weaponizing a near disaster to hurt people you already hate? You know, there's a temptation, and listeners will will find this familiar, because I'm often turning to history as um examples and parallels. There is a tendency of a lot of commentators to say, "This is unprecedented." And I think that really isn't the right way to see it. If you know history well, there always are parallels, there always are precedents. And this one, the thing that comes to mind most directly is John Adams. Because if you think about what's going on with Trump, why is he going after Jimmy Kimmel? Why is he having uh what is supposed to be an independent federal uh FCC going after a comedian?

Well, it's because he feels hurt. He feels targeted. His wife feels hurt. She feels targeted. And I should say, one of the things that they're attacking Jimmy Kimmel for are jokes that he made before this assassination, and before this violence. And you know, they're they're using the moment in order to read back in history something that he couldn't have known. He wouldn't have made those jokes after the violence. Uh he made them before. But the way that Trump operates is purely personal. He takes that dangerous idea that often the powers of the president are really manifested in one person, and that psychology, virtue or lack thereof of that person is really going to affect power. So, we saw it once before in particular with John Adams, who um not only signed the Sedition Act, but it's commonly acknowledged by historians that the Sedition Act, which really wasn't an attempt, I should say, not just to limit free speech, but to shut down the opposition party. Amen. Targeted a series of newspaper editors, and targeted the vice president, John Adams,

just to remind listeners, it made it a crime to criticize the president, but not a crime to criticize uh his chief rival, which under the rules at the time meant vice president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. And in particular, just to get into the details, there's a newspaper editor named Benjamin Franklin Bache, who was the grandson of Benjamin Frank, uh who is relentless in his criticism, and including criticism of the family, and um Adam's son. And Adams and his wife in correspondence make it very clear that he's gone too far. He's criticized our family. Let's shut it all down. Let's use that as the excuse to shut down the opposition party. Wow, if that's not a parallel.

Let me say too, you know, as bad as things were, things were worse then. 1798, 1799, 1800, the opposition party was shut down. And this is an attempt to do that, but uh he hasn't succeeded. Of course, he's also writing about uh Democrats as being kind of, you know, he often has said, actually, kind of terrorists. So, he he really has that rhetoric. He hasn't succeeded yet, but that is what he's trying to I just want to wrap this one up by saying uh folks, the real conspiracy is that until this country deals with our addiction to guns and grievance and hate and male rage, this is going to keep on happening. Just because it appears to be a figure from the left this time uh doesn't make it any different. Men in power don't want to solve gun violence, they want to use gun violence to make us hate each other even more. Um and Corey, I do wonder how you think Trump and the Republicans would feel if a future Democratic president pardoned someone who attacked them politically the way Trump pardoned January 6th rioters. Just putting that

one out there, too. Um I don't know if we have to take a quick break. We will be back in just a moment. I want to ask you a bit about what's happening to the Southern Poverty Law Center and this unprecedented attack on the people who go after the Klan by people in the government who don't want to go after the Klan. We'll be right back on The Oath and the Office. Welcome back to The Oath and the Office. I'm John Fugelsang, along with Professor Corey Brettschneider. If you haven't heard yet, um this uh Department of Justice's position is that the anti-racists are the real racists. We're talking about how they've indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center. Corey, the Southern Poverty Law the the organization that spent decades not fighting the Ku Klux Klan, bankrupting them in the most innovative moral strategy of making racism really expensive and hauling their horrible arguments into court. And these henchmen, Todd Blanken and Kash Patel, have alleged that the SPLC was actually secretly helping the Ku Klux Klan. This is a stupid case for stupid people

designed to tie the SPLC up in court and bankrupt them with legal costs like Donald Trump does to everyone else. I'll turn it over to you, Professor. I have many thoughts and questions about this. Well, let me just say, you know, our our theme this entire episode, it was true of the last story, it'll be true of the discussion with uh Jim Morone, is about the war on truth. And what better example of the war on truth than to just invert, you know, gaslighting isn't often the way to describe when you make somebody believe the inverse of what's actually happening in reality.

>> Yeah. So, imagine taking, you know, it's almost like somebody was sitting around thinking to themselves, "How do we take an organization that is devoted to combating a group, the Southern Poverty um uh Law Center, and and accuse it of racism. Accuse it of white supremacy." Mhm. And it makes no sense. >> Especially when you're especially when you're an entity that doesn't mind white supremacy and racism and never protested it. Go on, please. Right. Or at least says there are good people on both sides and has part huge part of their constituency white supremacists, including many of some of the uh those who were pardoned on January 6th. And we heard from Don Jocelyn how when they did that report on January 6th, how many white supremacists were part of that uh movement on January 6th to to return our election. A really underreported part of the story. So, yes, that is part of Trump's uh constituency, and it's white supremacists. So, anyway, this group that as you say, in the 1970s, had a strategy of bankrupting the Ku Klux Klan

and other groups, uh is being targeted. And I just to set the stage of why this has happened. Uh they've expanded beyond just the Klan and groups that are extremely obviously white supremacists. And they've talked about the ways that this Trump administration has enabled and furthered white supremacy in less obvious ways. And so, as they've done that, as they called out the white supremacy associated with this administration, they've become increasingly a target. And so, there was pressure, if you're going to go after Trump's enemies, there was pressure to do that in reference to this group. But it's the way that they do it that really makes it a symbol of this war on truth that we've been talking about. Yeah.

>> And what they've said is, in particular, let me just give you their argument. Please, that's hilarious. I love it. This group was using paid paid informants. That's how you find out and infiltrate white supremacist groups. Mhm. The FBI, with police departments, do. They have paid informants to find out what's going on in these groups. And they used that strategy. Um this the interim CEO uh CEO Brian Fair says they're not using it right now, but they did in the past, and very effective. Uh that this is a sense uh enabling and furthering the goals of white supremacy, because money is flowing to these groups. They just completely purpose, which is to uncover what's going on in these groups and to expose them, lawsuits and other techniques, and say somehow it's funding white supremacy.

So, the argument is, and this is a criminal case against the organization. No individual is going to go to prison for this, but there will be repercussions for the group as a whole if they're found guilty. The accusation is that there's a kind of fraud in their fundraising, because they're fundraising, after all, to oppose white supremacy. And then yet supposedly they're funding these groups and furthering the aims of white supremacy. But when you just dig just not even an inch, like a half inch deep into this story, you see what's going on. Yeah. Isn't that furthering white supremacy? They're using paid informants in order to find out what's going on. It is absurd even in terms of the facts that are being revealed by the Department of Justice. And it only makes sense in the context of not just war on opponents, but again, the war on the Yeah, that's it. I mean, the the Kash Patel and argument, which I think you summed up very nicely, was, "Hey dude, you you know those guys, the ones who infiltrated the hate groups and expose them and sue them into oblivion? Bro, they were secretly funding them." And and they expect us to nod along like that makes sense. This case This case is

going nowhere. It's like Kash Patel sued against the Atlantic. It's not making it to discovery phase. It's not making it to the snack table. The They paid informants inside hate groups. That's the case. They paid people inside the groups to gather information so they could expose and dismantle those groups, which I think, Professor, is a thing every law enforcement agency has done since the invention of crime. I love the Mississippi Burning movie. Gene Hackman as the FBI agent terrorizing the KKK. Boy, howdy, is it a fun view. In real life, the FBI in that case used paid informants to help take down the Klan. I know it's shocking, but J. Edgar Hoover was not passionate about civil rights.

They bribed people. And by the logic of this case against the Southern Poverty So, by the logic of this SPLC case, Kash Patel's own FBI is a criminal enterprise. I mean, Like tonight on Hannity, the FBI's been funding the mafia by paying informants inside the mafia. Why is the FBI pro-mafia? Am I getting the stupid right, Corey? Cuz I was going to say, it is that stupid because, you know, one of the most popular shows in America is Law & Order. And if you watch Law & Order, you know, every episode, there's a paid informant. It's like, that doesn't mean that the prosecutors are helping the defendants. That That's That's just how law enforcement sees it. That's how groups that are You know, and let me just say something. This is a serious group. They're not just They are trying to expose white supremacy, show its link to violence.

And you know, this isn't These aren't groups that are just, you know, have podcasts and they're saying what they think. They are going out there and doing violence. That's They're linked to violence or incentivizing violence, and that's what's going on with this group. That's why they're using paid informants to try to find out the real danger, especially in the absence of what have often been government officials unwilling to do it. If I may, though, I think I think the the the real play here, even more than bankrupting an anti-racism organization that's a cornerstone of America's moral center, um what they're doing is they're they're they're taking paid informants to infiltrate hate groups and they're rebranding that as secretly funding racism.

And then the right-wing white male outrage industrial complex says, "Okay, we'll handle the rest." So, now Southern Poverty Law Center staged hate crimes. Now they created racism all over Twitter that that Nazi incel chat room. It's all about they organized Charlottesville. They organized They organized the Charlottesville and they paid Trump supporters to murder Heather Heyer and chant Jews will not replace us. So, this is why they're doing the case, right? Like they're they're helping normalize racism.

They they they have no case. There's like wire fraud, but there's no lie. The whole justice here is narrative laundering. If people who fought white supremacy have been the villains all this time, that means white supremacists have been the real victims here. Like those white supremacists who were the victims of affirmative action. Like all those innocent people on January 6th. So, suddenly Charlottesville wasn't a bunch of racists and Nazis organizing a rally to defend statues honoring Confederate scum. It was a crooked civil rights group secretly orchestrating it. And that's it. This is all over Twitter.

They're trying to shift reality from racists did bad things to nice people were manipulated into doing racist things by crooked people who oppose racism. And they're telling every extremist, "It's not your fault. You were tricked. You're the real victim." You know, I've got to write call that one. I mean, it it it looks bizarre if you just look at the case on its own, but when you see it's really part of a wide wide strategy that this administration is using, it it makes perfect sense as an element of that strategy because, you know, one thing they could do is try to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act legislation and say, "You know, we're opposed to civil rights." They don't want to do that.

They saw that in the 19th century, you know, and in the early 20th century, that over racism like that often doesn't work, that it creates a pushback. So, instead, what they're doing is trying to co-opt these words and these ideas. And they say, "Well, we're for civil rights. We're going to use the 1964 Civil Rights Act to try to defend white rights and to shut down anti-discrimination policy, shut down affirmative action." And you know, it really is in the name of civil rights attacking black America. Yeah.

And now, you know, what they're doing here is the extreme version of it because they're saying, "Oh, we're we're fighting a white supremacist group. The name of it is the Southern Poverty Law Center." And you know, it's ex- I should say too, a personal thing, which is, you know, I don't know the teacher James or James Callis. We've talked a lot about the attacks on them. I do know Brian Fair. He's a professor at the University of Alabama. This is the interim CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center. And I was invited actually to Birmingham Law University of Alabama Law School at Birmingham, and he commented on a paper I gave on hate speech, and we had a amazing exchange. This is a serious principled person, a scholar who's really devoted his life to civil rights, and is now leading this organization.

And what's he getting in return? He's being accused of being a white supremacist. I don't think so. Okay, well, I have to I got to cram one more thing in here before our guest cuz the Supreme Court is reportedly considering this case involving geolocation data and mass surveillance techniques like geofencing. Corey, this one hasn't gone big yet. Why is this case potentially a turning point for Fourth Amendment doctrine? Well, it's you know, it's amazing the way that so many of our civil liberties and civil rights are being eroded. I'm talking about how civil rights legislation and the idea of a civil rights movement is being co-opted and turned towards its inverse.

One of the main protections of have against dictatorship is the limit on unreasonable searches and seizures. But there are ways that modern technology might try to make those rights irrelevant or to wipe them away. And using, for instance, geolocation on phone. And through this technique that the police have the ability to do, they basically have an enormous area in which everybody becomes a suspect, and where the the data on everybody's phones within a broad map becomes fair game without a specific kind of search.

That's the danger that the Supreme Court is going to address in this case, and I'm not sure how it's going to come out, but it's certainly possible that they're going to allow modern technology to allow all of us to be searched. Now, there are responses to that. Drop your phone. Well, good luck. You know, we all live on our phones. That's how things are. All of these, you know, why would talking about it on the Open the Office podcast, it's not just because, you know, unreasonable searches and seizures are bad. They are one of the bulwarks against tyranny. And especially in the face of a president who wants to destroy our democracy, they are you know, it would be really dangerous to get rid of unreasonable searches.

We Yeah, we do have this Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, all of a sudden, we'd be subject to the whims of this government and increasingly the whims of law enforcement, the FBI, that are acting at the behest of this president. And I you know, I really don't want the government to be able to to know everything that I have on my phone or on my email without committing no crime. I think this is such an important area where we could find common ground between liberal and conservative brothers and sisters. I mean, modern digital surveillance in the age of aggregated cell phone data and the quaint concept of a reasonable expectation of privacy. We're hearing so much about these private contractors and tech firms like those charming patriots at Palantir, who are you know, supporting the marriage of government data analysis and private surveillance infrastructure. I mean, this is what gets scary for me, Corey.

How does the public private fusion of surveillance capability affect constitutional accountability? I mean, the the tech CEO is encumbered the way the government is by quaint little old 20th century concepts like law. Well, Alex Porras, for instance, is running for Congress in the New York 12th Congressional District having worked for Palantir, and he didn't like what he saw. It inspired him to really turn to politics. What's going on in that company is the building up of surveillance technologies that are made to enable the government to really know everything about what's going on in our lives. In China, they have this thing called social credit in which basically all of our the data of Chinese citizens is being used to evaluate them. Whether they have have good credit in the sense of credit cards, in the sense of are you loyal or not? Do you criticize the government or not? And if you want to know how our data can be abused, just look to China. And look to the question of whether or not we're criticizing Trump. Now, you and I are criticizing

Trump on Serious XM and on the And we sure are doing it too in our email. Big surprise. Yeah, that's the thing. And in the emails, too, man, in your private emails. People don't understand it's not just your social media posts at this point. It's the stuff you do on Messenger you think is private to your mistress friends. Right? A really frightening moment in the anti-ICE protest where a member of ICE says to a protester, "Well, we're compiling a database of all the protesters. We know who you are." Uh that very well might be happening. We're going to find out if Democrats take the House of Representatives because we'll have real oversight for the first time.

But that is certainly the kind of thing that is in the realm of possibility that a database of bad citizens, meaning those who criticize the president is being compiled and that those people will be targeted. And that's why we've got to really care about surveillance. And this case is why the places we're going to see is the Supreme Court going to defend against unreasonable searches and seizures or not? Now, you know, what's on the agenda is not dictatorship or not, but it's one piece of that puzzle. I mean, one last question before the break cuz we got a guest waiting, but I mean, I think Nixon's enemies list in the digital age here. I mean, could we realistically see databases tracking protesters or political dissidents or critical voices under some broad national security rationale? I mean, I don't know if there's any safeguards currently existing to prevent abuse of that sort of thing and there's really no way to know if they've already done it.

Uh what an amazing question. You know, I interviewed the two last remaining members original enemies list from Richard Nixon for my book The Presidents and the People. Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers who I spoke to in depth and a a less well-known person Sid Davidoff uh who also got on Nixon's bad side because he was a working for for John Lindsay, a liberal Republican and they were supporting the anti-war movement. Now, those were lists that were kept on a kind of quaint piece of paper. Imagine now a list that's digitized to not just include a few people who the president doesn't like, but to try to figure out the millions of people who don't like him or involved in protest, people who don't want to be political even, who just have private opinions. What does that do? The chilling effect is devastating. It really destroys the possibility of of having our own opinions because we'll live in fear of governmental power. Woof, well, it's too late for us. I'll see you over at Alligator Alcatraz, Professor. Let's

take a quick break. I'm back in just a moment. This is The Oath and the Office. Welcome back to The Oath and the Office. Corey, I'm very excited about this next guest. I just did an event with with with our guest co-author and I am a big fan of of of Whiplash and what we're about to discuss. Great, John, and what a pleasure to do this introduction. Uh James Morone, the author of the book that we're going to talk about today, Whiplash from the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science. I'll also mention his other books, Health Care Empire Nation and also The Democratic Wish.

Books that really had a huge influence on me when I write when I'm thinking about what I want to do. These are the books that matter to me. And I can't resist, of course, a personal note, which is this is my colleague Yeah. 24 plus years at Brown University, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Public Policy. Well, let me say what a pleasure it is What a pleasure to have you, Jim. On your podcast. Thank you for being here. Uh so, let's jump into it. Jim, um I want to just begin by with Trump actually, which of course is a big part of the book. Uh and you have an amazing scene in the book where you're describing the famous moment where he proposes that bleach might be a way of dealing with COVID. Uh and you're He said disinfectant. He said inject disinfectant. Let's go. He didn't say drink bleach. We got to be fair. The truth is he didn't say inject disinfectant. Sorry. Thank you for the correction. As and They'll mock him. And you know, so I guess I'll just begin by asking you, you know,

a lot of times we focus on that moment alone and what the book does so well as as a lot of your work does is it traces a connection uh to an earlier period, a more happy period for science and truth. So, how does the just destruction of science, the destruction of truth in the moment in which Trump is giving all out all this false information linked to this this earlier victory for health care? Yeah, well, So, you know, we did the way to see the Trump COVID era is through three acts.

In the first act, he's just being crazy and he thinks he can spin this thing away. Uh COVID hits the United States while Trump is being tried for impeachment in the Senate. And he and his staff try to link impeachment with the COVID scare. It's impeachment failed, so now they're coming after me with COVID. Now, we know from recordings he did with Bob Woodward that he knew better. But in public, on Zoom, on tweets, he was constantly just spinning it away. Yes. Then the panic hit. Uh he was he was really moved. He had a real estate buddy named Stanley Chera who he had worked with, done some deals with in New York. And one day Chera calls him and says, "I got COVID." And Trump goes, "What are you going to do?"

And Chera goes, "I'm going to hospital." The next day, Trump calls him unusually that Trump would be that personally connected to someone. And Chera is in the ICU intubated and dies before Trump can talk to him. Really, he he mentioned it a lot to his staff. Um this shook him up. Uh and for a brief period in March, April and the first week of May, Trump acted like a normal executive making decisions that were sensible. You know, the the staff comes in and says, "You got to shut down travel." And he shuts down travel. He says, "Okay, we're we're shutting it down." Now, there are lots of loopholes.

He sort of blew the speech, but um uh but he was acting really like you would want an executive to act. At one point, the economics team and the health team had a whole battle about shutting us suggesting that the people stay home. Trump really couldn't shut down anything, but he recommended shutdowns. And he just said what any sensible executive would say, "Go in there, sort it out and come back with a recommendation. Jared, you go with them." And Jared guided them to recommendation. And with Operation Warp Speed, Trump's way of doing things, "I'm not getting permission for this.

I'm taking 20 billion dollars out of the budget and just throwing it at this thing, breaking rules, breaking eggs." That actually created a fantastic achievement. But nine months from identifying a pandemic, identifying its underlying biology to having a vaccination, unprecedented. So, here we have this guy acting behind the scenes kind of normally.

And then uh around May, early May, late April of 2020 2020, Mhm. he starts hearing from his buddies and they're like, "Dude, this economy is going to it's tanking. You're going to lose the election." And then something that social scientists will love. It's very weird. Um The health team had produced a model that suggested between 100 and 250,000 people would die by Memorial Day. This is in March. And the economics team and the particularly the economic bootlickers around Trump hated that model. So, they came up with another model that said now it's going to only going to be 26,000. Mind you, when the model came out, 35,000 people had already died of COVID, but never mind that. Fox News reports that this new model is it's it's not even as bad as the flu. Trump hears about this and he decides these people who had contradicted him. He says bleach, they

roll their eyes and say, "No, no, no, don't take bleach." He was calling Fauci at night, in the middle of the night, waking him up and screaming at him, "Don't contradict me." He was so angry at these people. And now there was proof that they just made the numbers up. After all, here's another model and no one ever said who's got the better methodology in the White House. They don't think that way. Another model. And right after that model turns out, he turns. He's there in a small ante-chamber to where they do the um uh press briefings and he turns and Debbie Birx is a small You may remember her her as the woman with the scarves.

Uh she had been standing up from behind the scenes and he turns on her, looms over her. She's caught in the corner and he screams at her, "I will never listen to you again." She told us that she was actually physically frightened. And she said at that point, he stopped listening to her and threw away any any to science. He just brought in people who would tell him what he wanted to hear. And then when he lost the election, he got in his head it was the scientists who had really screwed him.

They came out with the vaccine 2 weeks after the election because he thought they had slow-walked it. There was already a lot of populist anger at experts in floating around the MAGA universe and now he led the charge. The scientists were one of the groups that had defeated him in his in his election or stolen the election, the deep state. And so, that was part of the revenge tour. It was the combination of people contradicting him based on their own alleged expertise. Trump doesn't go for that.

And they contradicted him again and again and again. And behind the scenes, they kept correcting him and telling him, "No, no, you can't say that and he just got angrier and angrier. Then when he lost, he thought they were part of the reason why. So the war on science comes rushing out after this this defeat and this daring to contradict him based on some expertise they have as scientists. The book's amazing and you know, April 2020 was also when we found out that this virus was disproportionately killing black Americans and that was around the time that we began hearing reopen America, reopen America from all the business leaders. But you you and your co-author nailed this in Whiplash.

This this these two realities that first they downplayed the virus, then helped deliver vaccines through Operation Warp Speed without actually implementing a plan to distribute them and then of course his first appearance after he's left the White House, he talks about getting his shot and his booster and he's booed by the crowd. And I he never mentions the vaccine again. Never boasts arguably the one solid great thing he did in the first term was help spearhead Operation Warp Speed and this war on science, this tribal war on science has now made him completely downplay his one great achievement and True. Yes, he got booed in two rallies.

He tried it once, he tried it a second time and he heard that. So he went to the head of the charge. He ran away from his one great success. Yeah, but what what what's amazing about your book is that you you tie all this together into this war on science and the backlash against science really in many cases is a backlash against the success of the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama as well. Yes, this one story you mentioned race and I think you cannot underplay the racial story. Obama staff almost to a person told us again and again, you have no idea how nasty people were about race that uh members of Congress would say things in private that you couldn't believe in public. And uh the way the way the way I would present the story is uh goes back to when Barack was thinking of running for president. It's 2006 and Michelle is no, I'm a no, I'm a strong no. And finally uh David Axelrod who is the sort of

one of his main advisors says, look, we have to have a meeting, we have to decide because if she stays a strong no, if you can't convince her, you can't run. You can't run without your partner. And so they all troop in to the kitchen uh in the Obama house in South Side of Chicago. And Michelle, you know, a Harvard-trained lawyer, looks at Barack and says, okay, Barack, convince me. And what Barack says is this, he says, I know that when I take the oath of office, if I win, when I take the oath of office, everywhere in America, in fact everywhere in the world, little black kids and little brown kids and little kids who've been left behind, they will see themselves differently. They will feel different about their prospects in the world. And no matter what happens, my taking the oath of office will liberate millions of children.

And uh Valerie Jarrett wrote in her book that she began to cry. She was so moved by the speech. And Michelle said, that's pretty good, Barack. Okay, I'm in. So when we heard those kinds of stories and we thought about Obama, for people in our end of the world, this was incredibly exciting. The Census Bureau had come out with a prediction in 2004 that this would be a majority-minority nation or and it was Obama representing that, embodying that and bringing health care to the poorest white Americans, the lowest rate of uninsured in the history of the country.

Exactly. But we didn't think there was someone else representing the other America that hated this. So the orange menace going from studio to studio saying, the guy's not legitimate, the guy's not American, the guy's a Muslim. And that so those two forces get into play and when Barack Obama chooses health care over everything else he might have chosen, that became the vehicle for all the racial uh optimism and hope and animosity in America. And so we had to this battle to come to try to cover people um all wrapped up. You know, health care is usually a snooze. It's about all kinds of boring stuff that you no one wants to hear about unless you're a total wonk. But now it was about who was an American, what is America?

And that made it incredibly volatile and you know, to my way of thinking, incredibly interesting. And the challenge is to evidence-based medicine. That's a bad thing though. Yes, yes. The idea that that other America would have this this populist surge. Although if you go back and you look at the writings on uh at populist and anti-intellectual movements in American history, they rise, they go back to before all the way back to colonial America. They were they were loading around in in against Harvard University in the in the 1660s.

But they always recede because facts end up being stubborn things. And we actually believe that the war on science has it has reached its high point and now is just beginning to run out as the previous wars against experts had gone. I was going to ask you Jim about the broader trends here because you do an amazing job. Of course you interviewed Obama for the book. You do an amazing job of going into detail about this this Whiplash, this counter-reaction from the Trump era.

But of course as you've just been saying, there's a broader trends here. We saw in the area of environmental science for instance, that become politicized a kind of anti-science, anti-climate change movement. And the QAnon movement which is associated with Trump of course is an anti-science, anti-truth movement more generally. So how does that fit in? It's not that you know, Trump created this this sort of anti-science culture, but but how does how do the wider trends in the culture react react uh respond and interact with Trumpism and Trump specifically? Yes, so that has been a very powerful uh theme in American history. This the elites don't know what they're you know, they're they're arrogant and they don't know as much as they think they know. It was George Will who said he'd rather be governed by 200 names picked at random from the Boston

phone book than the faculty of Harvard University. That's a sentiment that's there. Now the Republican Party which didn't was not really part of that, the mainstream Republican Party, they set themselves up for it. They in part because they accepted uh the racial dog whistles and we can't understate the as I keep saying the racial part of this. But they also accepted this angry anti uh Affordable Care Act. And the Affordable Care Act was a very modest uh effort to get everybody covered in the United States and we should probably talk about its remarkable and unmarked on success. But the Republicans became so ferocious in their opposition and embraced the Tea Party as it rose up. Um and uh all in an effort to defeat this this relatively modest legislation. Now the legislation had been designed

designed by Republicans in Exactly. It was only care. There is a great uh there is a great pattern that that developed across the 20th century in which uh the Democrats come up with a plan. Republicans say, that's socialism. They scream, they yell and they come up with a more modest, more market-based plans. Democrat plan goes down in flames. 10, 15, 20 years later the Democrats come back and say, let's do national health insurance. They take the old Republican plan. The Republicans say, socialism. They come up with a more modest plan. The Democrat's full plan goes down in flames and next time around they pick the old Republican plan.

This is the last iteration of that cycle. There's nothing nothing more modest So if I understand you right that there's long been this anti-science anti-truth part of conservative politics. You see it in the John Birch Society for instance and many other movements. But the Republican Party itself had retained a sort of integrity on a lot of on health care, on education and yet what defines Trumpism is the merging of this sort of anti-science movement and the Republican Party as he takes over the party and also himself becomes so enmeshed in this anti-scientific worldview that that really is the kind of the danger that we're facing right now.

Yes, that's yeah, it's really good point. Thanks for bringing back to me back to that essential point. There was always a John Birch Society. There was always this conservative. And there was always racism. Yeah. through the party particularly when they made their move in South. But a moderate voices in the Republican Party thought they could they could let these dogs run but keep them in check, keep them leashed. And what Trump is not introduce something new, he unleashes the dogs. And they knock over the cattle. We believe it comes, you know, the Reagan Republicans are displaced by Gingrich Republicans. The Gingrich Republicans are displaced by the Tea Party people, and the Tea Party people are displaced by MAGA. And one gets angrier and stronger, and this theme, this John Birch {slash} white white supremacy, let's call it what it is, theme is completely loosened to the horror,

really, to the horror of many Republicans, many mainstream Republicans who then discover if they try to stand up against this this force will come and threaten their careers, or maybe their physical being well-being. I can't tell you how many people we interviewed on the Republican side who said, "Please don't quote me by name. I'd be afraid. I'd physically be afraid, and my family would be afraid." Almost everybody I've already mentioned has said that. People who worked in the Trump White House and are not still full MAGA are really are they paying for their own security services now cuz Trump lifted them, but it was very frightening what he did.

Just loosening these right-wing dogs, and somehow they became characteristic, they became dominant in the coalition where they'd always been there but had been kept in check. So, you have to blame the Republicans. They never stood up and said, "We will not We will not play the race card. We will not go sort of batshit crazy." Can I say that on this That's encouraged here. We will not go batshit crazy with the John Birch Society. They always did it with winks and nods until it consumed them.

But this makes me think, Professor, of your of your earlier book, Republic of Wrath. Yes. Republic of Wrath is all about tribalism, which is one of my favorite subjects here. And it's interesting to think how this tribalism shaped attitudes towards science and medicine. I mean, how does distrust of scientific institutions fit into this broader populist movement associated with Trump? Is it primarily about ideology, about identity, cultural belonging? It's interesting because one thing that had been true through all this period we've been talking about, uh Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, they disagreed ferociously about um whether we should get whether we should have the government pay for health care. Democrats believe in right to health care. Republicans say no or hell no. But everybody agreed that science was a great boom. I mean, coming out of World War II, there was no disagreement on that. So, we could fight like mad against um against uh health insurance, but agree that well, we

should be funding the National Institutes of Health, the National uh Science Foundation, and so forth. Um but this great division between Democrats and Republicans that became a division, and this is the point of the Republic of Wrath, that became a division about race. That traditionally Democrats were with immigrants. Republicans were the party a liberal party on race. Democrats were the white supremacy party. So it was. When in the 1960s and '70s, when the Republican Party became the anti-race anti-immigrant party, um the uh that tribal story became all consuming.

There were checks and balances that did not map on the party map. You know, some culture wars the Democrats were on one side, like immigration. Uh on other culture wars the Republicans were uh on the what you might call the good side. They were racially progressive. Now that you map all the anti-race anti-immigrant sentiment in one party, it just becomes a wildfire, and it starts to consume all kinds of things. And because of the patterning of the Trump administration in the first uh first administration and his defeat, that fire began to consume science, knowledge, expertise itself. Trump has always been an anti-intellectual, but he brought this great partisan story, this great partisan crusade with him uh in a in a in a really uh quite ferocious way. Now, uh I thought Republic of Wrath was out of date because uh hey, Trump won 48% of the

Latino vote. And I thought, "Well, there goes that story. Now we've got you know, now we've got uh uh the whole immigrant uh equation taken out of it." But you know, you often mock the Democrats for not attending to their base. Never did someone smash his own coalition with more gusto uh than by in the White House. Mr. Miller has smashed the idea of uh Spanish-speaking people coming in with the Trump Excuse me a minute. ISIS blown that up. So, Jim, uh this has been a great conversation, and as we get towards the end of it, you know, one thing that we're always doing on the the Office podcast is looking for hope.

We're talking trying to be honest as we have through this conversation about the threat to truth, the threat to science as you've helped explain that Trumpism really uh not just demonstrates, manifests, and and spreads. But we also, you know, we're thinking about how we can get through this, and then sometimes there's a sort of worry that once you destroy science, you'll never be able to bring it back. But I heard a glimmer of hope in some of what you said that we're towards the end of this destruction of science. So so give us some hope at the end. How do you see science being reclaimed, truth being reclaimed from Trumpism, uh and and where's your optimism? We need some of it that He has about to die.

>> Yes, I know. Well, as Trump is discovering in Iran, factors are winning things. Uh Pew came out with a study recently that showed even a majority of Republicans think vaccinations are very important. And that hit the White House like like a meteor. Uh oh my god, we're on a fringe perspective, and Bobby Kennedy is fringe, and they kind of got that. And going into the midterms, they're realizing people are really worried about their children. They're worried about them dying of measles. And so they're beginning to pull back even in the Trump anti-intellectual White House, they're beginning to pull back, and we're beginning to see all kinds of signs that the war on science is beginning to recede because science performs, if not miracles, then extraordinary things, and it does it all the time. You can see, if you squint just a little bit, you can see the Democratic Party and many of its people beginning to find their populist voice,

their idea that maybe having too many billionaires in a society is a bad thing. So you mean you mean be Democrats. You mean act like Democrats. Yeah. They like Democrats. Democrats acting like I don't know, Democrats. >> Democrats. So, I think I think what you're going to say in fact we've got a piece coming out in the New New England Journal of Medicine uh in the next couple of months saying the war on science is coming to an end. And I think the great anti-intellectual moment is beginning to recede. And moreover, uh the great um gilded age of our time, we're we're now going to enter a great battle over that. Uh am I 100% sure? No, of course not. Uh and things may only get worse. But I would say I'm 55% confident that all kinds of backlashes will now begin. Or to put it slightly differently, you know, Trump screwed his base, and slowly but surely people are figuring out we have populist sentiments, but that was not the way to

take them. And so I think there's a pretty good chance that by year four Trump will have been a failed presidency, and right-wing populism or American populism will be looking for a new direction. Yeah. That science itself, too, will be refurbished. It'll take a decade. I mean, it's going to take a long time to recover from this. But I do think I do think all the all the things are in the right direction. And if Democrats take the Senate, which is looking increasingly likely, what would you say? 50/50 at this point? It was 95/5 against just 6 months ago.

That will send a message throughout the political circles, the talking head circles, like the vibes has has has shifted. So, that's the best like You want to hope, but that's not too bad. Well, that is a great end. And Jim Morone, thanks so much. Professor Jim Morone, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, my friend, in many ways my mentor. What a pleasure to have you on the Office and the Office. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for giving us a reality check about the war on science, but also some hope that it might be nearing its end. Thanks so much. Thank you for co-writing Whiplash as well.

It's an essential read. I'm a big fan of your podcast. I always look forward to the email that says new new new new edition available, so it's a pleasure to be on it. Uh talk to you both soon. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Bye-bye. Peace. Another great interview, Corey. Man, you've got a great Rolodex. How can our listeners follow you, Professor, and keep up with your brilliance all the rest of the week, except for Monday nights when you're on SiriusXM Progress with me? I look forward to that, too, every week in addition to being on the Office and the Office podcast. You can also find the Office and the Office Substack. Our podcast is wherever you get podcast, but be sure to leave us a review. Be sure to send it to a friend. Of course, be sure to subscribe. Um and you can find us on YouTube if you want to watch us, not just listen to us. Uh and let me just add a personal note. You know, Jim Morone is not just long-time colleague.

He hired me at Brown. He's a friend. Uh and he just to my mind is one of the smartest thinkers about American politics. So it really was an honor to do something you, John, to have him on this podcast and to introduce him as well to our amazing audience. Well, um thank you, Corey, and I want to thank all of our listeners. Remind everyone, uh I'm on SiriusXM 5 nights a week or my podcast, the John Fugelsang podcast. My book is called Separation of Church and Hate, a sane person's guide to taking back the Bible from fundamentalist fascists and flock-fleecing frauds. And like most carbon-based life forms, I have a Substack, and I would like to invite folks to go to my Substack this week because I have a really deep dive on the Southern Poverty Law Center case and uh why it is so egregious and silly.

Professor, I want to thank you. I want to thank, of course, Wendy and Beowulf and all the brilliant folks who uh who keep this monster train on the tracks. And congratulations again about the crazy ratings for this podcast, Corey. Everybody listening, please subscribe. Tell your friends. Post about us in social media. Be unseemly and surly and rude about it, too, right, Corey? Absolutely, John. What a pleasure. Do this every week. I'm so grateful to the audience for making this a podcast, and it's always in the top rank of Apple podcast government and other rankings. And uh it's it's you know, we're facing a real threat to democracy, but we're facing it with humor and especially without the Thanks so much. Thank you, and we will see all you guys next time on The Oath and the Office.