Speaker 1: Happy Monday, and welcome to another week of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: We are getting awfully close to the one hundred day mark.
Speaker 1: And just just to put this in perspective, think about
Speaker 1: how tumultuous this first ninety plus days has been on
Speaker 1: the American economy, on the American judicial system, on the
Speaker 1: American democracy, on foreign affairs. Just think about the things
Speaker 1: that have happened that we have not had follow up on.
Speaker 1: I think about here as a DC person who uses
Speaker 1: National Airport a lot. I'll be honest with you, I'm
Speaker 1: still I would like to know what happened the night
Speaker 1: that we had that deadly plane crash where a military
Speaker 1: helicopter was essentially got in the way of the landing
Speaker 1: of a commercial airliner. We've not gotten the after action report.
Speaker 1: There's not been the congressional investment mitigations that you would expect.
Speaker 1: Yet we really haven't had anything. And you know, and
Speaker 1: part of this you can maybe chalk up to the
Speaker 1: news cycle. Part of it is the whole Trump administrations
Speaker 1: throw a thousand things at the wall, and things get lost,
Speaker 1: and you sit there and it appears as if we
Speaker 1: only have the band that generically the media only has
Speaker 1: the bandwidth to do one story at a time. So
Speaker 1: when we were in the middle of the rescue operation,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of details on everything we could
Speaker 1: figure out in the seventy two hours in and around
Speaker 1: that plane crash. But we haven't had any good reporting since.
Speaker 1: Congress as usual has been sitting on its hands. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we have an issue here where we have a very
Speaker 1: tumultuous period in American government and in American history. It's
Speaker 1: a busy executive branch and a busy judicial branch. The
Speaker 1: legislative branch is sitting on its hands. Doesn't appear to
Speaker 1: be doing anything other than figuring out how to not
Speaker 1: at least the Republican majorities, not to alien Donald Trump
Speaker 1: or Donald Trump's megabase. Beyond that, it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: Congress is doing much. There's some rhetoric and about things
Speaker 1: that they could be doing or should be doing. I
Speaker 1: think we're all waiting for the oversight earing on signal
Speaker 1: Gate and exactly what did Peak hag seth declassify to
Speaker 1: put on vulnerable private communications systems. We think we have
Speaker 1: the backstory is how the National Security Advisor put a
Speaker 1: reporter on that group, but we still don't know why
Speaker 1: there was so much ease with which the Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense shared what was classified information on that. We're still
Speaker 1: waiting for those hearings. We're still waiting for that investigation.
Speaker 1: We know that Donald Trump fired so many inspector generals
Speaker 1: that it is slowing down investigations that would really be
Speaker 1: sort of routine. I mean, the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is there's always issues that the government has to figure
Speaker 1: out what went wrong. Bob Gates, the former Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, once said,
Speaker 1: once said that he tells President said, on any given day,
Speaker 1: somebody is fucking up, and pardon my French, there in
Speaker 1: your name, mister president. And he has said that to
Speaker 1: President Bush, and he has said that to President Obama.
Speaker 1: I meaning, the federal government is so big that no
Speaker 1: matter how well it is run, how efficient things are,
Speaker 1: there's somebody making a mistake in your name, causing you,
Speaker 1: at a minimum a political problem and a maximum a
Speaker 1: policy problem that impacts the public. And yet we seem
Speaker 1: to be almost paralyzed in our ability to deal in
Speaker 1: totality everything that's going on. In many ways, I would
Speaker 1: argue the first ninety days of Donald Trump have been
Speaker 1: my demolition man. He is just trying to demolish norms
Speaker 1: all over the place. He is trying to he is
Speaker 1: forcing the judiciary branch and trying to see how much
Speaker 1: executive power he can get the judiciary to essentially approve
Speaker 1: of or not stop. And the way any administration works,
Speaker 1: this is why this is such a dangerous period in
Speaker 1: the history of this country because if this judiciary essentially
Speaker 1: allows some of these things to go, they become precedent,
Speaker 1: and what happens is future presidents take whatever minimum they
Speaker 1: have and then push even further. So you know, this
Speaker 1: is why we're sitting here with essentially vulnerable to one
Speaker 1: individual's belief on how the economy should work, rather than
Speaker 1: having Congress make these decisions on tariffs. We're sitting here
Speaker 1: because the congressional branch handed all this power to the
Speaker 1: executive branch. It went back to not arguably this started
Speaker 1: with nine to eleven. Actually it started before then, when
Speaker 1: more trade authority was being handed to the Clinton administration.
Speaker 1: Then nine to eleven, more national security authority got handed
Speaker 1: the executive branch. With Barack Obama, he had an all
Speaker 1: his party had full control of the trifecta he got
Speaker 1: handed more executive power. Donald Trump grabbed more executive power
Speaker 1: the first term. Joe Biden grabbed more and pushed the
Speaker 1: envelope with what he tried to do with student loans,
Speaker 1: which was another essentially executive branch power grab. And now,
Speaker 1: of course, this one, which is really doesn't have any
Speaker 1: precedent arguably unless you go back to FDR and Lincoln,
Speaker 1: who did grab extra executive power under the guys of war,
Speaker 1: and those were actual wars. Right now, we have these
Speaker 1: various emergencies that the president has declared in order to
Speaker 1: try to fast track deportations in this country, try to
Speaker 1: fast track trade authority in this country, try to fast
Speaker 1: track a few things here. So the point is he
Speaker 1: has done you know, the Steve Bannon had taken Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon's advice, which is just essentially just flood the zone
Speaker 1: and try to knock your political opponents and make them
Speaker 1: woozy and own sort of pick one. And this is
Speaker 1: the cynical aspect of what the Trump administration is doing. Ironically,
Speaker 1: if a democratic administration we're doing, I'm sure Stephen Miller
Speaker 1: would be filing all sorts of legal briefs to claim
Speaker 1: that this is an abusive executive power. All he's doing
Speaker 1: is essentially testing the electric fence of executive power and
Speaker 1: pushing the envelope, pushing the envelope at the border, pushing
Speaker 1: the envelope when it comes to what say so a
Speaker 1: government should have over a private organization like a university
Speaker 1: Ala Harvard, pushing the envelope on trade and terrorf authority.
Speaker 1: And you have a democratic party that is divided in
Speaker 1: how to respond, right, you have some that are nervous
Speaker 1: about drawing a full line in the sand, for instance,
Speaker 1: when it comes to due process having to do with
Speaker 1: Killmark Garcia, the accidentally deported Else Salvadoran migrant who is
Speaker 1: now sitting in a prison cell in El Salvador. Over
Speaker 1: on Friday, Chris van Holland, Democratic senator from Maryland did
Speaker 1: meet with them. We saw that the El Salvador president
Speaker 1: try to create a create some propaganda claiming they were
Speaker 1: sipping margaritas, and sort of the absurdity of our information,
Speaker 1: of our misinformation ecosystem that we all now have to
Speaker 1: navigate these days. The fact that Chris van Holland had
Speaker 1: to spend five minutes explaining, hey, look, if you notice
Speaker 1: nobody took any SIPs out of this. This was essentially
Speaker 1: the El Salvadoran government trying to create a warped picture
Speaker 1: of the situation. The most important piece of news though,
Speaker 1: out of that meeting is the fact that Garcia is
Speaker 1: not in the more notorious prison that is nicknamed Seacott.
Speaker 1: The fact that they put him in another prison, I
Speaker 1: think tells you the El Salvadoran government is a bit
Speaker 1: nervous and the Trump administration is a bit nervous. Want
Speaker 1: to make sure nothing happens to him physically, so if
Speaker 1: nothing else, the attention has probably kept him alive, or
Speaker 1: at least kept him physically more safe than he would
Speaker 1: be if he were in that more notorious prison. But
Speaker 1: the question I keep coming back to is there is
Speaker 1: a legal way to do this, but the Trump administration
Speaker 1: doesn't want to do it. They don't want to abide
Speaker 1: by a court order, they don't want to even get
Speaker 1: caught trying. They don't even want to fake it. They
Speaker 1: don't have the ambassador, you know, getting a meeting with
Speaker 1: the President of Al Salvador and the president saying sorry,
Speaker 1: we're not releasing it. At least that could they could
Speaker 1: claim they were following the court order that said that
Speaker 1: the government had to facilitate and essentially make an effort
Speaker 1: give it the Old College try guys to try to
Speaker 1: get him out. And they're not even doing that. They're
Speaker 1: not trying at all. And that's what you got to
Speaker 1: ask yourself. Why aren't they doing that? Do they just
Speaker 1: think this is good politics for them? Well? I do
Speaker 1: think that they believe that everything they've done so far
Speaker 1: that individually, if Democrats try to push back on any
Speaker 1: one thing individually, they can somehow win an argument at
Speaker 1: least have their base come up and help them own
Speaker 1: the Libs right. Just notice the sort of demagogic rhetoric
Speaker 1: that the White House has been using having to do
Speaker 1: with kill Mark Garcia. That the fact that anybody questioning
Speaker 1: whether they followed the law in deporting him and giving
Speaker 1: him due process, which I promise you they did not,
Speaker 1: by my count. You'll hear this in the interview with
Speaker 1: Ben Wittis. I think he's violated the first, the fourth,
Speaker 1: the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the
Speaker 1: ninth amendments. Okay, And on Garcia alone, I think they
Speaker 1: have violated the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Amendments, okay,
Speaker 1: all of them. The first Amendment has been violated in
Speaker 1: other ways, including with their dealings with the Associated Press.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't see any evidence yet that they
Speaker 1: have violated the second or the third, and we can
Speaker 1: have a debate about whether they violated the tenth yet.
Speaker 1: But again we're not even at day one hundred, so
Speaker 1: give them time. There's always a chance. But the cynical
Speaker 1: view of this administration is that they believe if they
Speaker 1: have the Democrats all are all sort of standing up
Speaker 1: for Garcia because of the lack of due process, that
Speaker 1: instead they can say, hey, look, Democrats are willing to
Speaker 1: fight harder for non citizens than they are for you.
Speaker 1: They weren't fighting for you when they were letting these
Speaker 1: folks in. And so it's a mindset where they believe
Speaker 1: the ends justifies the means as long as they have
Speaker 1: shut the border down, and they have used some very
Speaker 1: aggressive means to shut the border down. But frankly, there
Speaker 1: means that the Biden administration only started using in the
Speaker 1: last six months of that administration. The fact is the
Speaker 1: Biden administrations in the first two years refuse to let
Speaker 1: DHS do its job. Secretary Orcus when he was deputy
Speaker 1: with Jay Johnson and the second Obama administration, they knew
Speaker 1: how to control the border, and he was trying to
Speaker 1: implement the exact same policies that they did the first time.
Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is that first White
Speaker 1: House would not do it. There was absolutely an ideological
Speaker 1: brick wall that Mayorcis ran into during the ron Klaan
Speaker 1: era of the White House, and then when that went
Speaker 1: from Clain designs, the thing that changed the most if
Speaker 1: you actually look at border policy, that was the biggest
Speaker 1: dramatic change. So I don't want to sit here and
Speaker 1: say that the Democrats didn't help create the mess at
Speaker 1: the border and certainly didn't do enough that could be done.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump left them a legal quagmire when he left
Speaker 1: office during the COVID era at the border, But it's
Speaker 1: not as if the Biden administration managed it very well
Speaker 1: in the first two years. They did get their arms
Speaker 1: around it eventually, but it was after there was a
Speaker 1: new chief of staff and after frankly, it had already
Speaker 1: become a political problem. So the Trump folks just believe
Speaker 1: that if they can just make this an immigration issue.
Speaker 1: First of all, Notice what we're not talking about tariffs.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about the economic disaster that is coming. Now.
Speaker 1: This is a bit of a lagging indicator, right. All
Speaker 1: of the current economic figures that have been coming out
Speaker 1: are of what's happened in the previous thirty days, or
Speaker 1: the previous sixty days, or the previous ninety days. The
Speaker 1: fact is we're going to start to see arise in
Speaker 1: prices probably in the next sixty to ninety days. You're
Speaker 1: not seeing them right in the moment, right, because plenty
Speaker 1: of American companies have inventory that they got in before
Speaker 1: the tariffs hit, so prices are only just now starting
Speaker 1: to creep up, and that, of course will then start
Speaker 1: this spiral that could get really ugly for a while.
Speaker 1: Rising prices, inflation, stagnant wages, layoffs. You can see where
Speaker 1: this is headed. But in the short term, as all
Speaker 1: the folks, because it has been on the one issue,
Speaker 1: because apparently only one issue can be done at a time,
Speaker 1: there's been this debate in the Democratic Party about whether
Speaker 1: how hard they should go. You have had Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: who sees the Kilmore Garcia story as a distraction. You
Speaker 1: have others that say, if you don't draw a line
Speaker 1: in the stands somewhere. Then what's the point of being
Speaker 1: a political party you're in the opposition. The fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is, I do think the party needs to
Speaker 1: figure out how to have one message, and I think
Speaker 1: the chaos message which worked in the first administration, right,
Speaker 1: The fact is the public doesn't like the chaos. Individual
Speaker 1: goals that Donald Trump has outlined are things the public
Speaker 1: would like to see a safe and secure border, more
Speaker 1: manufacturing jobs in America. But how he's gone about doing it,
Speaker 1: upending the world economy, upending due process and the rule
Speaker 1: of law. That isn't what the public wants. They don't
Speaker 1: like how this is being done, and the political opposition
Speaker 1: I don't think has done a good enough job sort
Speaker 1: of framing this as that as incompetency, because ultimately that's
Speaker 1: what this has been, complete and utter incompetence. On the tariffs,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do this, there was a more
Speaker 1: systematic way to do this. On the border, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to do this, there was a more systematic way
Speaker 1: to do this. But ultimately, the only conclusion one can
Speaker 1: come to is it looks like the conclusion that our
Speaker 1: friends at National Review came to over the weekend when
Speaker 1: it seems as if the administration wants to test the
Speaker 1: limits of executive power, so they don't care if they
Speaker 1: knowingly essentially violate the law. And see how hard is
Speaker 1: the judiciary going to push back? How hard is the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court going to push back? And I promise you
Speaker 1: this is you know, I keep using this metaphor, but
Speaker 1: if you give a if you give this administration a cookie,
Speaker 1: they're going to come back and take more, and take more,
Speaker 1: and take more and take more. So it is a
Speaker 1: very cynical view of the executive that this administration has taken.
Speaker 1: And you have people around the president that are looking
Speaker 1: to essentially turn this country into a It's not a
Speaker 1: republic if this is if the executive gets as strong,
Speaker 1: it's a borderline monarchy. And in fact, I do find
Speaker 1: it interesting that the governor of Massachusetts on April nineteenth,
Speaker 1: the anniversary of the shot heard around the world, had
Speaker 1: this to say at a rally. She said the following,
Speaker 1: this is more healing democratic Governor of Massachusetts. She was
Speaker 1: in conquered Massachusetts again, home conquered in Lexington, right home
Speaker 1: of the shot heard around the world. We live in
Speaker 1: a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack
Speaker 1: from the highest office in the land. We see things
Speaker 1: that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors, the silencing
Speaker 1: of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands
Speaker 1: for unquestioning fealty. So that was an attempt by at
Speaker 1: least one Democrat to try to take everything President Trump
Speaker 1: has done and try to put it in a larger context.
Speaker 1: And I think that what the Trump administration is counting
Speaker 1: on is to be able to isolate each of these
Speaker 1: criticisms into one and turn it into oh, so you
Speaker 1: want terrorists to be roaming free around the country type
Speaker 1: of type of you know, have you stopped? You know?
Speaker 1: In one of the metaphors we like to use in media,
Speaker 1: when did you stop beating your wife? Right? What's an
Speaker 1: example of the worst kind of leading question what I
Speaker 1: just said, when did you stop beating your wife?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: When did you stop supporting terrorists? Is essentially the conversation
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration wants to have every time a
Speaker 1: Democrat says, hey, how you did this? How you are
Speaker 1: deporting these people is unconstitutional and against the law. What's
Speaker 1: interesting is that there's plenty of Republicans that believe this,
Speaker 1: most of them don't want to say a word. By
Speaker 1: the way, have you noticed you may need to put
Speaker 1: an a out for Lindsey Graham. One of the patterns
Speaker 1: to Lindsey Graham in particular, if you want to know,
Speaker 1: when he can't defend what Donald Trump is doing, he
Speaker 1: goes radio silent, completely radio silent. He has sort of
Speaker 1: two versions of it. Sometimes what he does is he
Speaker 1: doesn't defend the actions, but he defends the goals. But
Speaker 1: this is a guy who was in the Jaguar in
Speaker 1: the military. I think actually does care about the rule
Speaker 1: of law, and I think is probably I would like
Speaker 1: to think. I don't know if he's personally outraged by
Speaker 1: how this administration is dealing with the rule of law,
Speaker 1: but it's clear he's not supportive of it because it
Speaker 1: is crickets. You don't see him anywhere. You don't see him.
Speaker 1: This is a guy who knows his state has benefited
Speaker 1: from a open and free market economy with a company
Speaker 1: like BMW and Mercedes both I believe, with plants in
Speaker 1: South Carolina. And here's a guy who actually seems to
Speaker 1: care about the rule of law, and clearly this administration
Speaker 1: right now doesn't care if it's following the rule of law.
Speaker 1: So you can see sometimes by the lack of positive
Speaker 1: affirmation from some of these folks that they if they
Speaker 1: can't defend it, they're staying silent because, as at Lisa
Speaker 1: Markowski's admitted last week, speaking out comes with a threat
Speaker 1: of retaliation, and that is something that many Republicans are
Speaker 1: very very nervous about. All Right, I'm going to sneak
Speaker 1: in a break when we come back. My conversation with
Speaker 1: Ben Whittis says, we try to understand exactly if there
Speaker 1: is any actual legal strategy behind what the executive branch
Speaker 1: is up to, or if this is all lawsuits that
Speaker 1: are designed for maximum political advantage and or pain. And
Speaker 1: joining me now is the editor in chief of law Fair,
Speaker 1: which is a publication that's devoted to legal issues having
Speaker 1: to do with with national security. But these days, the
Speaker 1: definition at least what the White House uses for national
Speaker 1: security keeps broadening, which means in many ways, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be counting on Ben Whittiss here to be our
Speaker 1: tour guide in understanding, frankly, all of the legal fights
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration has decided to take on, whether
Speaker 1: it's we'll concentrate for first and foremost on the immigration case,
Speaker 1: but I'm hoping to tap into Ben's nimble legal mind
Speaker 1: on all sorts of things, including what's going on with
Speaker 1: Harvard and those form Ben. What is good to see you, sir,
Speaker 1: Great to see you.
Speaker 2: It's been a while.
Speaker 1: It has been a while back when both you and
Speaker 1: I took financial rewards from NBC. It might be one
Speaker 1: way to put it, but one thing you can't be
Speaker 1: upset is that Donald Trump is giving Lawfair plenty of
Speaker 1: material to I mean, I guess he's made people paying
Speaker 1: attention to the law great again.
Speaker 2: Not to mention that he keeps using our name. You know,
Speaker 2: when we named the site lawfair, which was back in
Speaker 2: twenty ten, this was a very specialized term. And now
Speaker 2: Donald Trump tweets about lawfair. He you know, he.
Speaker 1: Completely decided the word means yes. Is that what it is? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, litigation against him, or it's any litigation he doesn't like,
Speaker 2: is lawfair, And so he keeps you know, it's like
Speaker 2: somebody tweets out Ben Wittis all the time, and it's
Speaker 2: it's it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations, that's nice. Thank you, that's nice.
Speaker 2: We look at the bright side.
Speaker 1: You have to. So I was preparing for this, and
Speaker 1: I was looking at, you know, this handy dandy list
Speaker 1: of rules that I thought we all abided by. It
Speaker 1: was called the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, this crazy thing.
Speaker 1: And I have him violating the first, the fourth, the fifth,
Speaker 1: the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth amendments.
Speaker 1: I can't find evidence as violated the second and third,
Speaker 1: and we'll see on the state front right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about the tenth.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I mean. I'm not going to sit
Speaker 1: here and say I don't I don't have a good
Speaker 1: I don't have an easy case to say he's violated
Speaker 1: the tenth yet, although I think what he's doing with
Speaker 1: the Department of Education arguably might be doing that. But
Speaker 1: well that that might be a stretch. But when you
Speaker 1: just look at this one case, I am I crazy
Speaker 1: to say that he's that in some ways the Trump
Speaker 1: Justice Department and what the immigrant I mean, we may
Speaker 1: say a violation of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth,
Speaker 1: and ninth. I mean these are the amendments that are
Speaker 1: there too, essentially put some boundaries on what the state
Speaker 1: can do to somebody that they think might be a criminal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you would think that if the notion of
Speaker 2: human liberty and rule in a society of ordered freedom
Speaker 2: had any meaning at all, it would be that when
Speaker 2: you have been you're living here, your deportation case has
Speaker 2: been adjudicated six years ago, and the immigration courts have
Speaker 2: said you can't be deported to El Salvador. You would
Speaker 2: think that if the notion had any meaning at all,
Speaker 2: it would mean that the government can't arrest you apropos
Speaker 2: of nothing, with no criminal allegation that you did anything wrong,
Speaker 2: stick you on a plane, and send you to a
Speaker 2: kind of suit max prison in the one country that
Speaker 2: they are not allowed to deport you to, without anybody,
Speaker 2: without a judge ever hearing about it. And your wife
Speaker 2: only finds out about it because the head of DHF
Speaker 2: DHS goeses and poses in front of your jail cell
Speaker 2: for a picture. You would think that that's what it
Speaker 2: would mean, But apparently not so it is.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Supreme Court ruling here and the
Speaker 1: word they chose to use. The administration does not believe
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court has ordered them to have him returned
Speaker 1: they believe that the Supreme Court simply says said, and
Speaker 1: this is I'm sort of interpreting based on what you wrote.
Speaker 1: You seem to think that their interpretation is, if El
Speaker 1: Salvador chooses to send him back, the United States has
Speaker 1: to accept him.
Speaker 2: Correct, that is their interpretation. So the word that the
Speaker 2: district judge used was facilitate. And the genuine complexity here is,
Speaker 2: let's say, and how.
Speaker 1: Do you interpret the Supreme Court order.
Speaker 2: Well, so the Supreme Court says, the district court said
Speaker 2: facilitate and effectuate. Yeah, And the Supreme Court says, be
Speaker 2: careful with the word effectuate because that implies that the
Speaker 2: court can order the government of El Salvador around. It
Speaker 2: implies that the court can order the outcome of a
Speaker 2: US foreign policy thing, and the president kind of runs
Speaker 2: foreign policy. So be careful with the word effectuate. But
Speaker 2: you but you're certainly within your rights district court to
Speaker 2: order that the government facilitate his return. So the district
Speaker 2: court turns around and says, okay, you have to facilitate
Speaker 2: his return. And the government interprets the word facilitate as
Speaker 2: in exactly as you said that if the government of
Speaker 2: El Salvador wanted to send him back. We wouldn't erect
Speaker 2: domestic obstacles to that, and Christy nom actually or Pambondi
Speaker 2: even said we would send a plane. That is not
Speaker 2: if you read the Supreme Court's ruling. I think what
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court had in mind, which is they were saying, basically,
Speaker 2: we want to be careful of ordering around a sovereign
Speaker 2: foreign government and ordering the mechanics of the way the
Speaker 2: president interacts with that government. But the government clearly screwed
Speaker 2: up here, and it's totally reasonable for the Court to
Speaker 2: try to get it to correct its error.
Speaker 1: So do you believe the Supreme Court watered their order down?
Speaker 2: No? I think this is very much the order I
Speaker 2: would have expected from this Supreme Court, which.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me stop this Supreme Court, would you That's
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, this is what you expected from
Speaker 1: this version of the Roberts Court, not what you would
Speaker 1: have expected from a generic Supreme Court on this issue.
Speaker 2: So to be fair, I think there is the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court the conservative justices here do have a quite legitimate
Speaker 2: in my view, care about getting interfering in the way
Speaker 2: the president conducts foreign policy.
Speaker 1: And it is for the most part this Court's been
Speaker 1: consistent on that stage. Yeah, very They're very light on
Speaker 1: the executive branch in general.
Speaker 2: Correct, and particularly in foreign policy and national security matters.
Speaker 2: So I don't have a problem with that, actually, And
Speaker 2: I think if John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett want
Speaker 2: to say, you know, the District Court is wholly with
Speaker 2: its right to demand a remedy here, it's got to
Speaker 2: be a little bit careful about how it does that.
Speaker 2: That doesn't bother me a bit, actually, and it cheered
Speaker 2: me in fact, that nine justices of the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: agreed on the premise which is a, this is not
Speaker 2: okay for this to have happened, and B that the
Speaker 2: district Court has some real latitude to require a remedy.
Speaker 2: Now we're because the district judge, whose name is Paula Sinis,
Speaker 2: has been pretty aggressive about doing that. The Justice Department
Speaker 2: is now appealing the matter again, and you'll see, we'll
Speaker 2: see this time around whether the Supreme Court means something
Speaker 2: as narrow as what the government interprets it as having said,
Speaker 2: and I don't believe that will happen, or whether it's
Speaker 2: going to give her some latitude to say, hey, when
Speaker 2: I said facilitate his return. I mean, you kind of
Speaker 2: do some stuff to get him back.
Speaker 1: So let's come up with some things that might fulfill facilitate.
Speaker 1: Does that mean the ambassador formally petitions the Salvadorian government?
Speaker 1: Is that? I mean, what what do you think will
Speaker 1: generally fall under that umbrella actions?
Speaker 2: So I think the first thing is something, right, So
Speaker 2: what's happened so far is nothing except that the President
Speaker 2: met with the Salvadoran president in the White House and
Speaker 2: the two of them made fun of the court's order. Right,
Speaker 2: So that's what's happened so far. So I think if
Speaker 2: you were going to satisfy the Supreme Court that you
Speaker 2: were facilitating, you would probably have to do more than
Speaker 2: zero and then mock the court and, by the way,
Speaker 2: baldfacedly lie about what the Supreme Court did. So look,
Speaker 2: if you were dealing with a normal administration, what you
Speaker 2: would expect would be for a official to either come
Speaker 2: into court or file a declaration that listed all the
Speaker 2: steps that they had taken and said, I mean, you've
Speaker 2: read a hundred of these executive branch declarations. Here are
Speaker 2: the steps we've taken to comply with the Court's order.
Speaker 2: Here is the results that we've gotten. We're planning to
Speaker 2: do the following things. And this is what the judge
Speaker 2: has asked for. And I think if you did all
Speaker 2: those things. First of all, if the president asked President
Speaker 2: Bukele to send him back, they would. The Salvadorans don't
Speaker 2: have a particular interest in detaining this guy. But the
Speaker 2: hard place would be. You know, if you did all
Speaker 2: those things, you pro went through that pro forma exercise,
Speaker 2: but then you also had a wink and a nod
Speaker 2: understanding with Bouquele that he would say no, and that
Speaker 2: would put the court in a very difficult position because
Speaker 2: all of its formal boxes would be checked and yet
Speaker 2: the guy. But short of articulating something that you've done,
Speaker 2: I don't think you can actually go back to the
Speaker 2: district court and claim to be in compliance with the
Speaker 2: order and expect the Supreme Court to accept that.
Speaker 1: And now she's asking for daily update and the updates
Speaker 1: are no for we have no updates from yesterday.
Speaker 2: The updates are the first day, first update is he's
Speaker 2: alive and in this Salvador in Supermax, and the subsequent
Speaker 2: updates are we have nothing further for you.
Speaker 1: You know, I look at this case, and I look
Speaker 1: at the AP case just those two specifically, and you
Speaker 1: and I both know that if the White House wanted
Speaker 1: to pretend it was following the law, they could. I
Speaker 1: am just shocked that they're choosing to brazenly essentially not
Speaker 1: even try, not even fake it. Like with AP they
Speaker 1: used an unconstitutional rationale to bar them, like it was
Speaker 1: blatantly obvious, which is why it was easy court case
Speaker 1: to win. Now they're you know, they the irony is
Speaker 1: how they've responded since as actually why they they could
Speaker 1: have done that the first time and never had an
Speaker 1: AP doesn't have a leg to stand on. They seem
Speaker 1: to almost want the confrontation with these judges, like they're
Speaker 1: almost going out of their way to say I don't
Speaker 1: care and it you know, to me, you just sit
Speaker 1: there and like, I don't know why you to accumulate
Speaker 1: more political You're just daring more members of the judiciary
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, these guys aren't even pretending
Speaker 1: to respect what we do. So I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not asking you to figure that out. I mean that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think.
Speaker 2: You but the problem is worse than you say yeah, okay, good,
Speaker 2: because they're also doing the same things with the law firms.
Speaker 2: And so the law firm issue is and they're they're extorting,
Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in legal work
Speaker 2: from from these firms.
Speaker 1: So this another Justice Department could actually charge extortion here.
Speaker 2: They chose to might think about it, but the you know.
Speaker 1: If we're going to commit, if we're going to commit
Speaker 1: law their and like.
Speaker 2: The AP, these court the the firms that have gone
Speaker 2: into court have won in a matter of hours. Right,
Speaker 2: so you know, no, no firm has gone into court
Speaker 2: and challenged one of these executive orders and not got
Speaker 2: in a temporary restraining order in a matter of hours.
Speaker 2: The Justice Department has not appealed to these, meaning that
Speaker 2: they actually know they can't win. And yet law firms
Speaker 2: keep capitulating and making these extravagant promises to the executive branch.
Speaker 2: And why are they capitulating for exactly the reason that
Speaker 2: you just described, which is that the president can screw
Speaker 2: them and there's nothing they can do about it, just
Speaker 2: like he's doing to the AP. Now, you can freeze
Speaker 2: it out with a freeze them out with a wink.
Speaker 2: And if you're one of the firms that challenges this,
Speaker 2: you know, good luck getting a meeting on behalf of
Speaker 2: your client with the senior levels of the Justice Department,
Speaker 2: say before an indictment.
Speaker 1: This is my frustration that one the law firms haven't
Speaker 1: banded together. Two that the press, the traditional press, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I've just I'm absolutely appalled by the folks
Speaker 1: that are running traditional media companies not standing by ap
Speaker 1: because about the only the only option you have is
Speaker 1: collective action to at least make a point. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it might might not work, but if you can't
Speaker 1: stand up for your basic constitutional rights the First Amendment,
Speaker 1: if you're a member of the press, frankly, the fourth Amendment,
Speaker 1: if you're a law firm you know or you know,
Speaker 1: just the then what are you in this? What are
Speaker 1: you even doing here? That? I mean that that's my
Speaker 1: I just I'm so angry about the press aspect of
Speaker 1: this because I was one of the people who stood
Speaker 1: up who we stood up to Obama and said you
Speaker 1: can't do that to Fox and we refuse to participate
Speaker 1: in their pool unless they included Fox. And the inability
Speaker 1: of collective action because we know what's happening. The media
Speaker 1: executives who are not journalists have chosen to a buy
Speaker 1: by their bosses who have said, please, don't pick a
Speaker 1: fight right now. And I understand that from a fiduciary standpoint,
Speaker 1: right from a business standpoint, but this is the slippery slope,
Speaker 1: and we're now watching it in real time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and you can say with respect to
Speaker 2: the press, the press is in a relatively weak position administration.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Law firms are not, you know, law firm.
Speaker 1: But why are they behaving as if they are?
Speaker 2: Because they are wisses. And you know, because hundreds of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars in law firm revenue is on the line.
Speaker 2: And it is one thing when you are playing with
Speaker 2: other people's money to take risks. But you know, law
Speaker 2: firms are organized as partnerships, and that means that every
Speaker 2: dollar that the law firm of X, Y and Z
Speaker 2: doesn't bring in is you know, thirty three cents from X,
Speaker 2: thirty three cents from Y, and thirty three cents from Z,
Speaker 2: and so they are really looking at their own pockets here,
Speaker 2: and you know, the only thing to do about it
Speaker 2: is to shame them. But they're in a much stronger
Speaker 2: position than the than journalists who represent actually an industry
Speaker 2: in a somewhat precarious position. A lot of them are
Speaker 2: not healthy organizations. These are, you know, the powerful acting
Speaker 2: like the weakest of the week.
Speaker 1: Arguably. I guess Harvard decided they were going to fight.
Speaker 1: Do you think that? And it was interesting to me
Speaker 1: the day after Harvard essentially said no, Columbia said oh yeah, no.
Speaker 1: They were like, oh yeah, we're going. We're right behind you.
Speaker 1: How Harvard, you know on that front? Do you expect
Speaker 1: Harvard's decision to UH to have any effects on these
Speaker 1: law firms?
Speaker 2: No. I think the law firms are making different calculations
Speaker 2: than the universities. Look, I think it's great that Harvard
Speaker 2: did what it did. I think they're going to pay
Speaker 2: a price for it.
Speaker 1: They will, and I think they're just banking that it's
Speaker 1: a two or three year price.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two or three year price and one that they're
Speaker 2: going to have to litigate over because they're going to know,
Speaker 2: because they're going to have to litigate over.
Speaker 1: They're going to win the suit, but it's gonna cost
Speaker 1: them a lot of money. I mean, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like I don't know how they lose.
Speaker 2: Here, but well, but they lose again. There is that similarity,
Speaker 2: they lose even if they win. If you're you know,
Speaker 2: the government is going to really tighten the screws on
Speaker 2: all kinds of federal grants, research grants to universities. They're
Speaker 2: going to dry up entirely in certain areas, and you're
Speaker 2: going to find that, you know, Liberty University is a
Speaker 2: very attractive location to do all kinds of research that
Speaker 2: you would have once done at Harvard.
Speaker 1: Right, And so that brings me back though to my
Speaker 1: other question. It's funny you brought up Liberty like that
Speaker 1: because I thought the same thing. You know, he's going
Speaker 1: out of his way, he and Stephen Miller, and Stephen
Speaker 1: Miller is obviously the guy seems to be executing all
Speaker 1: of this because I think we all know Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: too lazy to actually do some of the work that
Speaker 1: it would take.
Speaker 2: To n Miller didn't get into Harvard.
Speaker 1: Right there you go, I don't. I don't either. Look,
Speaker 1: he's a smart guy. I mean, I wouldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want I wouldn't want to know he was
Speaker 1: working on a case against me, right Like he's he
Speaker 1: is willing to push the envelope. He's willing to you
Speaker 1: know he's he's willing to do things that most ethical
Speaker 1: people wouldn't do. He's willing to cross certain ethical lines.
Speaker 1: But uh, why not just simply reward friendly university? And
Speaker 1: you know, they keep their going out of their way
Speaker 1: to force these fights, which I guess they just see
Speaker 1: it as political distractions that feed the base something to
Speaker 1: eat while they destroy the global economy. And hope they're
Speaker 1: not paying attention.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's just that, all right, So, remember
Speaker 2: when he's coming in and we are all worried about
Speaker 2: them going after their political enemies, using the FBI, using
Speaker 2: the Justice Department right to to attack his political enemies,
Speaker 2: And there actually hasn't been very much of that in the.
Speaker 1: Criminal I was just going to say, Chris Krebs might
Speaker 1: have I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't say that there's been none. I said there
Speaker 2: hasn't been a lot. Right, most of what's happened on
Speaker 2: the criminal side has been all about creating impunity for friends.
Speaker 2: So this started with the January sixth pardons, and then
Speaker 2: it proceeds to things like Eric Adams and shutting down
Speaker 2: the entire you know, sort of public integrity apparatus of
Speaker 2: the Justice Department firing a whole lot of prosecutors who
Speaker 2: worked on January sixth cases. Right, It's all about creating
Speaker 2: the impression that if you're on Trump's side, he will
Speaker 2: protect you. But then you have this problem on the
Speaker 2: criminal side on using it for offensive purposes, which is okay.
Speaker 2: You can say we're going to have an investigation of
Speaker 2: Chris Krebs, but you can't actually indict Chris Krebs because
Speaker 2: you don't have shit right, right, And so what do
Speaker 2: you do to go after your political enemies to make
Speaker 2: them hurt if you can't really sick the FBI on them?
Speaker 2: And the answer is that's where all these civil remedies
Speaker 2: civil attacks come from. You can go after democratic law firms.
Speaker 2: You can go and ruin their businesses. You can actually
Speaker 2: put Chris Krebs out of business. He's a cybersecurity consultant.
Speaker 2: He just had to resign from his job. You can
Speaker 2: really make universities hurt. Universities employ some conservatives, but really
Speaker 2: they're a power base of the left. And you can
Speaker 2: go after the press, but not after the press who
Speaker 2: were sympathetic. And so I think the way to understand
Speaker 2: these attacks is these are the things that he would
Speaker 2: the people he does want to put in jail, but
Speaker 2: that's hard, and so this is the repressive apparatus that's
Speaker 2: actually available to him.
Speaker 1: So you just view this as because he can't put
Speaker 1: the bidens in jail or get them harassed or all
Speaker 1: of that business.
Speaker 2: This stuff is so much easy.
Speaker 1: He can so mess around with government contract And yet
Speaker 1: here's been an assumption that I've made about DOGE in general,
Speaker 1: but AID specifically, and frankly even many of these, many
Speaker 1: of these weaponizations that the Trump administration has done on
Speaker 1: various things, is that there are the government is eventually
Speaker 1: going to lose all these cases, and in some cases
Speaker 1: they're going to lose and have to pay damages. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume there's small businesses are going to
Speaker 1: essentially have breach of contracts with the federal government, and
Speaker 1: they're going to be able to prove that what was
Speaker 1: done was illegal, their owed restitution and et cetera. But
Speaker 1: although this is going to take years, but I assume
Speaker 1: that the government ends up paying more money in damages
Speaker 1: over the next decade for the last ninety days than
Speaker 1: they have in money saved by DOGE.
Speaker 2: Oh, it'll be.
Speaker 1: By a lot.
Speaker 2: So you know, what they're arguing in court in these
Speaker 2: cases in which they've fired people, for example, is that
Speaker 2: all of these cases belong have to go through the
Speaker 2: Merit Systems Protection Board, right, And that doesn't mean and
Speaker 2: those are you know, that doesn't mean that they win.
Speaker 2: That means that they can't be stopped. Now. Now, if
Speaker 2: you go through the Merit Systems Protection Board and then
Speaker 2: you file suit later, well you know you're gonna get.
Speaker 2: You're gonna win because they actually just aren't allowed to
Speaker 2: fire civil servants like that. And so you're going to
Speaker 2: get back pay, you're going to get reinstated, but you'll
Speaker 2: have already had another job, so you're going to be reinstated,
Speaker 2: and then they'll owe you all the pay that you
Speaker 2: should have done. And by the way, you won't have
Speaker 2: to have done the work, so they're not merely gonna
Speaker 2: lose and have to pay a lot of restitution. By
Speaker 2: the way, this is true for a bunch of contractors too.
Speaker 1: Is in the contractors, and it's going to be again,
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be small businesses these you know,
Speaker 1: some of these contractors are small businesses that facilitate some
Speaker 1: of these aid contracts. Correct, and the business really is
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the business is the federal contract. So
Speaker 1: the cancelation bankshrup the company, and then.
Speaker 2: There are damages and so get you get all of
Speaker 2: the back stuff, you get damages. And by the way,
Speaker 2: the government doesn't get the work done. And so if
Speaker 2: you do the accounting for it later, it's going to
Speaker 2: be hugely expensive.
Speaker 1: And describe figure.
Speaker 2: But what you won't have had is any moment where
Speaker 2: a court says, no, you can't do that. And so
Speaker 2: they get to say all along the way, we're saving
Speaker 2: the taxpayer x amount of money we're cutting. And by
Speaker 2: the way, when they lose, it'll be the fault of.
Speaker 1: Some judge, right, those pesky judges.
Speaker 2: A pesky judges.
Speaker 1: Speaking of those pesky judges, it's pretty clear to me
Speaker 1: that John Roberts is petrified that Donald Trump's going to
Speaker 1: ignore an order he should be, so he's desperate to
Speaker 1: find ways to create rulings that give him something but
Speaker 1: not everything. Am I being a little cynical about this?
Speaker 2: You're being cynical? But the cynicism isn't. First of all,
Speaker 2: courts behave that way a lot, right, They look for
Speaker 2: ways to avoid confrontations to make it possible for litigants
Speaker 2: to comply, and when you're dealing, when you're litigant is
Speaker 2: the most powerful nity in the world, and you have
Speaker 2: no independent ability to enforce your judgments. Being careful with
Speaker 2: what you order is not the worst thing in the world. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't want to countenance being uh, cowardly, but being
Speaker 2: But he's not wrong to want to be careful here Trump.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for him and for the other justices who feel
Speaker 2: this way, which certainly include Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for them, Trump isn't giving them the space like
Speaker 2: he's not saying. You know, so he in the Oval
Speaker 2: Office just lied about the Supreme Court's decision in Abrago Garcia.
Speaker 2: And you know, the justices aren't morons. They hear this right,
Speaker 2: and so they they see, we gave you a face
Speaker 2: saving out. We didn't say a word in criticism of you.
Speaker 2: We didn't use words like illegal or you know, authoritarian
Speaker 2: or terrifying. We didn't do any of that. And you
Speaker 2: turned around and described a nine to zero Supreme Court
Speaker 2: opinion that said, we're not even ordering you to get
Speaker 2: this guy back, but just facilitate it. And you spat
Speaker 2: in our faces. This is going back up to them,
Speaker 2: and so he is sort of systematically taking away from
Speaker 2: Roberts and others the ability to not have a confrontation.
Speaker 2: Now that does two things. One is it it? You know,
Speaker 2: it takes away the face saving solution from the justices.
Speaker 2: It also takes away the face saving solution from Trump.
Speaker 2: And once you force that confrontation, eventually the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: has to say, Okay, the district Court ordered you to
Speaker 2: facilitate that's what we said she could do. You know,
Speaker 2: we affirm. And that's going to be a bad moment,
Speaker 2: and not just a bad moment for the Court, but
Speaker 2: a bad moment for true because it's one thing to
Speaker 2: defy a district court order, which he's now really done twice.
Speaker 2: It's another thing to defy a unanimous Supreme Court opinion, say,
Speaker 2: written by Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito. And I don't
Speaker 2: know how he responds to that moment, And I honestly
Speaker 2: don't know either, how members of Congress respond to a
Speaker 2: moment in which the Supreme Court has unambiguously said, you know,
Speaker 2: a district court has ordered you to do X, and
Speaker 2: we affirm. And he turns around and says, the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: can you know, put it where the moon don't shine.
Speaker 1: Well, he's you know, it's interesting here, you're right, and
Speaker 1: he's putting so much stress on his own party right now.
Speaker 1: Right the tariffs are putting stress in the farm state
Speaker 1: senators who are just uncomfortable with it, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the free market to your guys who are just
Speaker 1: like I knew he was for this, but I always
Speaker 1: believed he wasn't that serious. And now they're freaking out.
Speaker 1: Now there's this idea of raising taxes on millionaires, right,
Speaker 1: which is like freaking out the Grover nor Quist crowd
Speaker 1: and that, and they're they're desperately trying. I saw Steve,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of amusing to me to watch these
Speaker 1: mega converts be shocked when you know, they start behaving
Speaker 1: unpredictably and a little more responsive to what they believe
Speaker 1: their populace base won't just accept but actually wants. Here
Speaker 1: But going back on the court, do you think these
Speaker 1: this is oddly bringing the justices together a little bit,
Speaker 1: just even because it's pretty clear that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of discomfort, right, you know, your Sony Sodomayra and you're say, Alito,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing maybe they say hi in the halls, you know,
Speaker 1: if they if there's other people watching. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if they do if nobody's watching, right, I'm saying that,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm you know, it's so hard to read the
Speaker 1: tea leies with these, with these nine folks. But I
Speaker 1: you know, in a normal environment, right when you've had
Speaker 1: these are the type of things that could actually bring
Speaker 1: an institution together. Do you have any sense of that?
Speaker 1: I know you have some insights sometimes with clerics and
Speaker 1: all that.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Look, I mean, I think from
Speaker 2: the opinions themselves, you can tell that they have been
Speaker 2: brought together on certain matters and that they're very divided
Speaker 2: on closely related matters. So if you look at the
Speaker 2: two Venezuela cases or the two uh sorry, El Salvador cases.
Speaker 2: In the first one, they all agree that you can't
Speaker 2: just declare someone in an alien enemy, put them on
Speaker 2: a plane and fly them out of the right.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to make your case, you
Speaker 1: have to do process again. And they all those all
Speaker 1: the most of the Bill of Rights is about moments
Speaker 1: like this exactly.
Speaker 2: And they all that's unanimous, and they dispense with that
Speaker 2: in the first couple of sentences, and then they go
Speaker 2: on to have a very bitter division about whether you
Speaker 2: can whether this very technical question of whether that do
Speaker 2: process has to occur through a habeas process or whether
Speaker 2: it can occur through a different process, and therefore whether
Speaker 2: this judge had jurisdiction over this case properly or not.
Speaker 2: And you know, on the one hand, they're all together
Speaker 2: on the biggest question there right, which is is this
Speaker 2: lawful to do? There's no daylight on that between Sonya
Speaker 2: so To Mayora and Clarence Thomas. But so they're all
Speaker 2: brought together and they deal with that in a sentence
Speaker 2: and a half and then they have a real fight
Speaker 2: about the other thing.
Speaker 1: Just over jurisdiction. But it almost feels like it's like
Speaker 1: they're all looking around here, all right, we got to
Speaker 1: have some escape hatch here, so we don't rule fully
Speaker 1: against well. And then they.
Speaker 2: Do it again two days later or three days later,
Speaker 2: right where with Abrago Garcia, all nine of them look
Speaker 2: at it and say, yeah, I'm sorry, you can't do that,
Speaker 2: and then six of them are like, but be careful,
Speaker 2: District judge with that word effectuate. We're comfortable with facilitate,
Speaker 2: but be careful with effactuation. And three of them are
Speaker 2: screaming yes, uh, you know, come on, you're gonna fight
Speaker 2: about you know, somebody's being essentially a press release. Look.
Speaker 2: I thought that, honestly, that was this is the division
Speaker 2: that I want to see the Supreme Court have. If
Speaker 2: if you had told me, if you had described to
Speaker 2: me in the abstract the facts of this case and said,
Speaker 2: based on you know, don't just don't don't, don't be
Speaker 2: cynical about it, don't read tee leaves, don't do anything,
Speaker 2: just based on people's stated judicial philosophies, how would you
Speaker 2: expect them to handle it? I would say, wow, you know,
Speaker 2: the liberals on the court would be full throated behind
Speaker 2: the district court, and the conservatives would get a little
Speaker 2: bit uncomfortable when you start using words like effectuate. But
Speaker 2: and that's exactly what happened. So this felt to me
Speaker 2: like like if there were no politics, if there were
Speaker 2: no how a court that actually had these ideological divisions
Speaker 2: and these philosophical divisions in a platonic ideal, how what
Speaker 2: a disposition of this case would look like? And so
Speaker 2: I found it very cheering actually, and that they divided
Speaker 2: exactly that way on that issue, because it's like you
Speaker 2: you look at people who you know, have certain stated
Speaker 2: judicial philosophies and they believe in certain things, and then
Speaker 2: you get disappointed when they don't behave the way they
Speaker 2: say they believe what they And this one was one
Speaker 2: where like you really could have predicted it based on
Speaker 2: who they purport to be, and I thought they were
Speaker 2: all being their real selves, and so I liked it actually.
Speaker 2: But the point is the dispute was pretty bitter, and
Speaker 2: even though they all are but over.
Speaker 1: A technicality over me, that's right, right, It's like having
Speaker 1: a knockdown, drag out fight over a semicolon.
Speaker 2: And so I do think in some big sense they're
Speaker 2: being brought together in these two cases on the biggest issues.
Speaker 2: They're nine to nothing, and yet they are really angry
Speaker 2: at each other, and they really they treat every one
Speaker 2: of these cases as though, you know, like the fate
Speaker 2: of a lot of things depends on it, and that's
Speaker 2: not bad. A fate of a lot of things does
Speaker 2: depend on it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I can't help but assume that the three
Speaker 1: liberals are reacting to probably private conversations they've had with
Speaker 1: the other with many members of the other six who
Speaker 1: all probably privately express alarm and and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and then like, come on, can't you say it publicly?
Speaker 1: Like that's how I kind of read it for it.
Speaker 2: So I don't disagree with that. And I also think that,
Speaker 2: you know, being a being a member of a permanent
Speaker 2: Supreme Court minority is a very hard thing. You know.
Speaker 2: It's not like being a member of the minority in
Speaker 2: the House of Representatives, where there's always two years from
Speaker 2: now right, you have your eye on the next mid terms,
Speaker 2: and by the way, you can feel it when things
Speaker 2: are going your way because fundraising picks up right, there's
Speaker 2: always you know, for those three to become the majority
Speaker 2: requires people to die. It requires the right person to
Speaker 2: be the president when that those people die. These are
Speaker 2: very long way of things, and until then, on the
Speaker 2: issues that they care most about, they're going to lose
Speaker 2: almost every time, and that is a hard life.
Speaker 1: Two other cases I want to ask you about. One
Speaker 1: is California's the State of California's lawsuit against the administration
Speaker 1: on tariffs. I assume the administration is going to say
Speaker 1: that a state can't get involved in national security issues, right,
Speaker 1: in the same way that when Texas was trying to
Speaker 1: get involved with immigration issue, you can't make immigration policy.
Speaker 1: I assume the federal government's going to say, hey, a
Speaker 1: state can't decide trade policy, though they can make their
Speaker 1: own sometimes agreements. Sometimes has to do with state taxes
Speaker 1: and things like that. But what's your sense of that
Speaker 1: lawsuit and what and whether it's going to go anywhere?
Speaker 2: So I, first of all, I'm not an expert on tariffs.
Speaker 2: I do have the impression that the administrations, to the
Speaker 2: extent that the administration is making tariff policy under the
Speaker 2: statute known as AEPA, which is the International Economic Emergencies.
Speaker 1: Right, it's in a national emergency, which I assume becomes
Speaker 1: national security exactly.
Speaker 2: So, to the extent that they're making tariff policy based
Speaker 2: on AIPA, I think that there may be serious legal
Speaker 2: defects with the tariff policy. Whether California is in a
Speaker 2: position to successfully challenge it, I'm not sure. Honestly. I
Speaker 2: suspect the better plaintiffs will be private plaintiffs that are
Speaker 2: affected by the tariffs and don't want to follow And.
Speaker 1: What are those law what are those lawsuits against the
Speaker 1: tariffs themselves, or do they become essentially the same type
Speaker 1: of lawsuits we were describing with with aid contractors. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I think they're your tariff policy bankrupted me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, I think not. I think the I
Speaker 2: think these would be prospective. You have no authority to
Speaker 2: issue these tariffs the the UH. And I believe that A.
Speaker 1: You're over you're over reading your power in the Emergency
Speaker 1: Acts exactly.
Speaker 2: And and you can't declare a worldwide emergency that covers
Speaker 2: all trade under AYEPA. And by the way, even if
Speaker 2: you could, tariffs are not one of the authorities that conveys.
Speaker 1: And however, the discovery of of life on another planet,
Speaker 1: now he could worry, that's an emergency for the entire globe. Right, Sorry, I'm.
Speaker 2: Just I would think so right, like this could be,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I I think that there's a
Speaker 2: there's I think that there are some substantial arguments that
Speaker 2: the tariffs are overreach of his power. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: whether California is in the best position to litigate that,
Speaker 2: but I but I wouldn't you know, they have some
Speaker 2: They have a serious Attorney General's office that has a
Speaker 2: lot of capacity there, so I wouldn't rule it out either.
Speaker 1: The other one I have for you is about Chris
Speaker 1: Krebs and I and it's about a lawsuit. I don't
Speaker 1: think he's filed, but I wonder if he could. And
Speaker 1: that is and I know that there are some protections
Speaker 1: that when a sitting president. When you're a sitting president,
Speaker 1: you basically can't be sued in civil court, right, or when.
Speaker 2: You're a past president you can't be sued.
Speaker 1: He can defame anybody he wants that. He has blanket
Speaker 1: authority to defame people as long because this is blatant
Speaker 1: defamation a character, Yes, blatant defamation.
Speaker 2: As long as he does it as an official act
Speaker 2: of the presidency rather than outside in his personal capacity. Order.
Speaker 2: This is clearly to.
Speaker 1: Pay nearly a billion dollars. Essentially it's a settlement, So
Speaker 1: I guess there technically wasn't an adjudication of defamation, but
Speaker 1: but essentially that's what they're paying. If Fox could have
Speaker 1: somehow declared themselves a public official to get out of this, no, it's.
Speaker 2: Not public official. It's the president. So the relevant cases
Speaker 2: case called Nixon v. Fitzgerald, and it held that the
Speaker 2: president is absolutely immune for civil liability for all matters
Speaker 2: within for all official acts, within the four corners of
Speaker 2: the outer reaches of his presidential authority. It's a sweeping
Speaker 2: opinion from nineteen eighty or seventy nine.
Speaker 1: I mean, because I mean he is the blatant defamation
Speaker 1: on individuals. I mean it is shocking. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: then why Didniejine Carroll's why did she succeed? She exceeded
Speaker 1: because it happened before he was president, correct.
Speaker 2: So it happened he repeated the defamation during the period
Speaker 2: in which he was not president.
Speaker 1: But he also did it while he was president.
Speaker 2: Correct, But in the interregnum he did it again.
Speaker 1: Well, he also defamed Chris Krebs in between his president.
Speaker 2: So he's not immune from that that Chris could sue
Speaker 2: him for that. Look, this is one of the most
Speaker 2: egregious abuses of his second term so far, both with
Speaker 2: respect to Chris Krebs and with respect to Miles Taylor
Speaker 2: and the idea you know this is it's so outrageous
Speaker 2: that there's actually a specific provision in the Constitution designed
Speaker 2: to prevent things like this, And it's called the Bill
Speaker 2: of a Tainder Clause, right, and a bill of attainder
Speaker 2: was what the British Parliament used to do, which was
Speaker 2: to name to have like the Chuck todd As an
Speaker 2: asshole statute where they would declare you a criminal and
Speaker 2: then prescribe a for you, like getting your head cut off.
Speaker 2: And the idea was they could just name you and
Speaker 2: accuse and pass a bill convicting you of a crime.
Speaker 2: And the US Constitution specifically forbids bills of attainer only,
Speaker 2: this isn't a bill of attainder, right, it's an executive
Speaker 2: order of attainer, which is even worse right because there's
Speaker 2: no legislative process behind it. There's no doubt it's unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt that you know that it's a horrific abuse.
Speaker 2: The only question is whether it's worth Chris's time to
Speaker 2: sue because it doesn't actually do very much right, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's an executive order that primarily defames him.
Speaker 1: And of course, yeah, I mean, I just I get
Speaker 1: really frush because this guy has been essentially defaming our profession.
Speaker 1: He's been all sorts of and you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: he he deserves to be under a wave of constant
Speaker 1: lawsuits that he has to like that drown over based
Speaker 1: on you know, his inability to keep his mouth shut.
Speaker 2: But but with with Chris and I like, you know,
Speaker 2: he and I aren't aren't close, and I know him
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: But not about I think I have about the same relationship.
Speaker 2: Right, It's not you know, he's somebody who professional just
Speaker 2: a professional, professional acquaintance. And I admired his work in
Speaker 2: government very much. We do a lot of cybersecurity work
Speaker 2: at law Fair, and so our worlds have overlapped a
Speaker 2: fair bit. But this is somebody when when when when
Speaker 2: you sign up as a journalist, you're signing up to
Speaker 2: play in a public space, and.
Speaker 1: To you know, know, I accept it.
Speaker 2: We take upon ourselves the obligation not to engage in
Speaker 2: frivolous attacks, but not an immunity from them. But when
Speaker 2: you sign up to be a government official, one thing
Speaker 2: you are not supposed to is not supposed to happen,
Speaker 2: is that you get savagely attacked by the government for
Speaker 2: telling the truth. And what people hate in the Trump
Speaker 2: world hate Chris Krebs for is two things. One is
Speaker 2: that he protected our elections from foreign attacks that they wanted,
Speaker 2: and the second is that having done that he told
Speaker 2: the truth, that the election in twenty twenty was secure.
Speaker 2: And the idea that the head of government, head of
Speaker 2: head of state of this country would issue a formal
Speaker 2: order attacking you for those things and accusing you of
Speaker 2: you know, treason, is my boggling.
Speaker 1: I look, it's it's I had a friend of mine say,
Speaker 1: you know, the mistake we made in Trump one point
Speaker 1: oh was failure of imagination and that you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: we well, he wouldn't do that, right. You know, markets
Speaker 1: completely didn't believe he would go as far as he
Speaker 1: did on tariffs. Right, They didn't price it in. They
Speaker 1: messed up, They didn't do that. And I think the
Speaker 1: biggest mistake, probably some swing voters made was assuming that
Speaker 1: he'd be more like Trump one point oh, right. And
Speaker 1: I think the biggest, the most important thing people have
Speaker 1: to understand is that this is an entirely different presidency,
Speaker 1: an entirely different administration. And the first one had real
Speaker 1: guardrails because there were real serious people who were not
Speaker 1: mag and this time this is a government of true
Speaker 1: believers who well, some are true believers and some are
Speaker 1: on the livers. You know, there's true believers, and then
Speaker 1: there's the ones who just want to be reactionaries. If
Speaker 1: the left upset, then we must be winning, even if
Speaker 1: I'm losing money in the stock market. Do right. But
Speaker 1: this is an entirely different proposition we're facing with Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero.
Speaker 2: That is clearly right. And it is also the case
Speaker 2: that his personality is not in the same place as
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: No, he's a changed man.
Speaker 2: He's Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: Always manic as he was. He's more manic now.
Speaker 2: More manic now, and more obsessed with vindictive retribution more
Speaker 2: of the time. And not that he was free of
Speaker 2: those things right four years ago or eight years ago,
Speaker 2: but he was. He was less obsessed with it all
Speaker 2: the time than he appears to be now.
Speaker 1: When when people ask you your level of concern about
Speaker 1: the future of the democracy and I get this question,
Speaker 1: and I'm of the we're not a turkey. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can make some early stage hungry comparisons. I think that's
Speaker 1: where I go. Where do you go when you when
Speaker 1: you get asked that question, which I know you get
Speaker 1: asked a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get asked it a lot. I mean I
Speaker 2: almost as much as I get asked the what if
Speaker 2: he defies a court order question? Look, anybody who's not
Speaker 2: concerned is not paying attention, and anybody who but it
Speaker 2: is also wrong to catastrophize it. I went out the day.
Speaker 1: Where I try to go. I just like, don't I
Speaker 1: trust our I trust the public to eventually figure this out.
Speaker 2: The day after the Trump Zelensky White House meeting, so
Speaker 2: I went, I took my laser projector and I went
Speaker 2: to the base of the Washington Monument and I projected
Speaker 2: on in giant letters on the base of the Washington
Speaker 2: Monument Trump advance betrayed it America in the Oval Office,
Speaker 2: and this was visible from the White House and I
Speaker 2: was there doing this. By the way, the video of this,
Speaker 2: which is available on Instagram, has been seen by two
Speaker 2: million people now. And I was there for more than
Speaker 2: an hour and no police showed up. I've had no
Speaker 2: harassment of any kind as a result of having on
Speaker 2: the base of the Washington Monument that Trump had betrayed
Speaker 2: the country. And by the way, I'm going to do
Speaker 2: it again. You know, the next time he drives really
Speaker 2: really pisses me off, I'm going to do it again.
Speaker 2: And I'm not afraid of being arrested because in fact,
Speaker 2: by the.
Speaker 1: Way, projecting images though. I mean this is I learned
Speaker 1: this with GW when we were dealing GW was dealing
Speaker 1: with the with the the gods of protesters, and there
Speaker 1: was nothing they could do. They couldn't claim the thing
Speaker 1: was being defined because it was a projection.
Speaker 2: This is why I use projectors, and I do it
Speaker 2: on the Russian embassy, you know, project Ukrainian flags on
Speaker 2: the Russian embassy. And so it's a it's a technique
Speaker 2: of protests that I've used a lot. But here's the
Speaker 2: thing is, in police states, you don't get to project
Speaker 2: that the president betrayed the country within sight of the president,
Speaker 2: and you don't get to put your name on it
Speaker 2: and expect to be left alone.
Speaker 1: Right you haven't. You haven't been audited yet from the
Speaker 1: I R S. We'll see what well, well, I'll ask
Speaker 1: you again in September.
Speaker 2: So am I concerned? Yes? Do I think people are
Speaker 2: being a bit too hasty to catastrophize the concern? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And look, when I get arrested for uh for this
Speaker 2: sort of activity or get you know, I'll announce it
Speaker 2: when I have an I R S audit, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I I do think there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of room to do political organizing in the United States.
Speaker 2: And I do think by the way, that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is likely to get shull ACKed in the next midterms.
Speaker 1: I do too, which.
Speaker 2: Again dictators don't really let themselves do. So I don't wanna.
Speaker 2: I don't want to confuse the concern for a sense
Speaker 2: that we don't have anything left to fight over.
Speaker 1: That's essentially an answer, a form of an answer I
Speaker 1: heard from Condi Rice who basically said, you know, our
Speaker 1: democracy is pretty ingrained in the people itself, and how
Speaker 1: these things that it's going to be. One person can
Speaker 1: do a lot of harm there, but it's really hard
Speaker 1: for one person to rip out the entire fabric of
Speaker 1: the nation in one turn.
Speaker 2: I agree with that, but I also don't think we
Speaker 2: should be complacent about it. And you know, and I
Speaker 2: think the erosion itself is awful. And look and your
Speaker 2: if your answer, if your question had been focused on
Speaker 2: are we still a place where uh, you know, people
Speaker 2: who are not citizens of the United States, or.
Speaker 1: We're not a beacon anymore, I would have given you
Speaker 1: a very different answer. No, no, no, no. The you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that we're a beacon of freedom and a
Speaker 1: beacon of new the beacon got turned off. We are
Speaker 1: not you know, nobody is saying come here, we're a
Speaker 1: safe haven. I mean, you know. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I always constantly have to remind people the Constitution constitutional
Speaker 1: rights are for anybody in the on the in the
Speaker 1: United States, whoever's in the United States, you get some
Speaker 1: constitutional protection, not all of it, but a lot of it.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, although you know less than you did four
Speaker 2: months ago.
Speaker 1: And well, you know, just counting on the courts not
Speaker 1: to erode that away, right.
Speaker 2: And well, but you know those are if you're a
Speaker 2: Palestinian sympathetic student on a student visa or you're on
Speaker 2: a green card, you have less rights than you may
Speaker 2: have thought you did four months ago. And so I
Speaker 2: want to be I want to be careful to acknowledge
Speaker 2: the degree of erosion and not say it's all fine,
Speaker 2: but also not to say things like we're not a
Speaker 2: democracy anymore, or you know, we're we've slid into authoritarianism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we may be sliding, but we're still pretty high up
Speaker 2: on the hill.
Speaker 1: So I got a lot of you know, I'm new
Speaker 1: to this. I've had my podcast has been audio only
Speaker 1: up until the last couple of weeks. So I'm new
Speaker 1: to this world of YouTube. So I'm going to make
Speaker 1: you answer a question that I know some viewers are
Speaker 1: going to say, what are you sitting in? Tell us
Speaker 1: about your tell us about your backdrop? What do you say?
Speaker 2: So I do all my my zoom meetings from what
Speaker 2: I call the Hammock Studio, and uh if I I mean.
Speaker 1: You should name your production company that EMI Studios.
Speaker 2: You know, so something hang on, let me let me
Speaker 2: pull up my I can I can zoom out so
Speaker 2: you can see the whole thing. And uh, it's.
Speaker 1: A special treat for check podcast viewers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I don't do this for just anybody. I
Speaker 2: built this studio in the in the pandemic, and I
Speaker 2: just said, you know, if I'm gonna uh uh it
Speaker 2: wants to.
Speaker 1: Upload, it's not zooming.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, I guess it's not. It's not working.
Speaker 1: So basically you're sitting in a hammock. Not necessarily in
Speaker 1: a hammock.
Speaker 2: You can see, Yeah, it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 2: handmade hammock with a Ukrainian flag hanging on it, made
Speaker 2: in in Latvia and I bought it on on Etsy
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the pandemic, because I said, if
Speaker 2: I'm going to be stuck in this little room for
Speaker 2: the next I thought it was three months. It turns
Speaker 2: that to be tweens. I'm going to be in a hammock.
Speaker 1: Well, look a hammock. Hopefully that's all you're going to
Speaker 1: be in. The government's not going to.
Speaker 2: Try to create hanging from something else.
Speaker 1: Not going to be trying to create a different type
Speaker 1: of of incarceration for us. Mister Whittis. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: going through this. It's I do think my biggest concern
Speaker 1: about all these lawsuits is that the public isn't paying
Speaker 1: a lot of attention right and that in some ways
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is counting on counting on the idea
Speaker 1: that that unpopular people, unpopular people are going to get
Speaker 1: defended by the left because like they're comfortable violating the
Speaker 1: constitutional rights of unpopular people and think they can get
Speaker 1: away with it. And it's a really it's a disturbing pattern.
Speaker 2: Yes, and especially so because they are doing it by
Speaker 2: It would be one thing if they were taking people
Speaker 2: who were had genuinely done things that were objectionable and
Speaker 2: demonizing them. But some of the people that they're going after,
Speaker 2: they've gone after so randomly that they then have to
Speaker 2: concoct these kind of legends about them, that they were
Speaker 2: gang members or that they're terrorists or whatever. And they
Speaker 2: often have very little basis for saying these things. And
Speaker 2: so the gay makeup artist with a tattoo becomes a
Speaker 2: scary gang member and the and there's a fair bit,
Speaker 2: you know, speaking of defamation, there's a fair bit of
Speaker 2: simple defamation going on there. And you know, you compound
Speaker 2: locking people up in a salvador in gulag with lying
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's a put it this way, I understand
Speaker 1: and why some people feel that this is a catastrophic
Speaker 1: moment because in individual cases it's absolutely appalling and alarming.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're trying to preach, and what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to preach is sort of, look, this is bad.
Speaker 1: It could be worse, and the goal should be to
Speaker 1: stop this so that it doesn't get worse.
Speaker 2: Yes, and also to not confuse this. Look Kilmar Abrego
Speaker 2: Garcia was not deported to a salvator in prison because
Speaker 2: he was doing political organizing or expressing his opinions or
Speaker 2: denouncing the treatment of others. He was deported as best
Speaker 2: as I can tell, because he was looking for work
Speaker 2: in a home depot parking lot with some people who
Speaker 2: turned out to be members of a gang and he
Speaker 2: got scooped up. So if it's randomly coming for you, uh,
Speaker 2: there's not that much you can do about that. And
Speaker 2: it's not coming for you because you're giving to political
Speaker 2: candidates or because you're raising your voice and objection. And
Speaker 2: so you know what I'm saying is, don't confuse the two.
Speaker 2: We can all still do our parts. And the purpose
Speaker 2: of all of this is to scare you, so don't
Speaker 2: let it.
Speaker 1: Well, people are going to be looking for you and
Speaker 1: your projector around Washington, DC, so it'll be fun to
Speaker 1: look for you. It's where's Waldo. We'll be looking for
Speaker 1: the projector.
Speaker 2: You can always find me in front of the Russian Embassy.
Speaker 2: And these days, just below the south lawn of the
Speaker 2: White House, that mound that they put the Washington Monument
Speaker 2: on makes a great, great spot to project.
Speaker 1: Weather's great today too.
Speaker 2: Look for me Sunday evening.
Speaker 1: Well there you go, all right, that's an interesting Uh.
Speaker 1: This is actually going to drop right after Sunday evening.
Speaker 1: So if that does happen. I will let let my
Speaker 1: listeners know, mister wet it's a pleasure, Thank you, sir,
Speaker 1: thank you. So look, we're gonna wait to see what
Speaker 1: does the Supreme When does the Supreme Court go a
Speaker 1: little bit harder? Right, they didn't order the return of Garcia,
Speaker 1: they ordered the government to make an effort to bring
Speaker 1: him back. So we are still the Roberts Court still
Speaker 1: seems to be tiptoeing to the moment that there is
Speaker 1: going to be a there's certainly going to be some
Speaker 1: constitutional confrontation. Perhaps it's over the FED Chair. I mean
Speaker 1: to hear Donald Trump go after the FED Chair for
Speaker 1: essentially trying to do his job and trying to If
Speaker 1: he tries to upend the independence of the FED Chair,
Speaker 1: not only could he creator the economy quicker and faster
Speaker 1: and certainly cause all sorts of disruption there, but that
Speaker 1: probably and if I were to if the Roberts Court,
Speaker 1: knowing Roberts, I think he would be willing to draw
Speaker 1: a line in the sand over the FED before he
Speaker 1: might be willing to draw a line in the sand
Speaker 1: over immigration policy. I know that sounds very cynical of me,
Speaker 1: but I think when it comes to the economy. I
Speaker 1: think he would see potentially more cover in that. Maybe
Speaker 1: there'd be more Republicans willing to stand by a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court decision that pushed back on any effort to other
Speaker 1: president to try to fire fire pals simply because Powell's
Speaker 1: not not bowing down to him and following the policy
Speaker 1: that he wants at the FED rather than what the
Speaker 1: Fed governors believe is in the best interest.
Speaker 2: In the country.
Speaker 1: With that, I do want to just do one quick
Speaker 1: sports wine if I could, and my sports wine is
Speaker 1: the NATS bullpen. Why why why can't this? There seems
Speaker 1: to be a systemic problem in the NATS organization when
Speaker 1: it comes to pitching coaching. For whatever reason, we can't
Speaker 1: develop good relievers. We have a half decent time at development,
Speaker 1: and perhaps we're just scouting. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: one of two things. Either we only care about finding
Speaker 1: starting pitchers. The experience of the twenty nineteen World Series
Speaker 1: led our front office to believe relief pittures don't matter
Speaker 1: because you just use your best pictures once you get
Speaker 1: to the playoffs. But guess what, you need to get
Speaker 1: to the playoffs, and you need to have functional bullpen
Speaker 1: to do that, or maybe we have owners that are
Speaker 1: just too cheap and are not giving them whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's an embarrassment. This is a young team. They deserve
Speaker 1: a chance to win. When you have a bullpen where
Speaker 1: you're not even trying, and you may not even have
Speaker 1: professional baseball players in that bullpen, then you do. You're
Speaker 1: not forget the fans, You're not supporting those young teammates.
Speaker 1: You're only messing with their confidence. So get it together
Speaker 1: front office, Mike Rizzo and the learners and figure out
Speaker 1: either is it coaching and you just need to improved coaching.
Speaker 1: I certainly wish we had Mike Maddocks back as our
Speaker 1: pitching coach. Or are we just being cheap? Either way,
Speaker 1: you're being unfair to this organization that is still only
Speaker 1: six years removed from a world championship. All right. See,
Speaker 1: this is the joy of having your own of having
Speaker 1: your own podcast. You can ran about pretty much anything
Speaker 1: you want, as long as it doesn't, you know, totally
Speaker 1: set the entire enterprise off the rails. So there's my
Speaker 1: little Nats rant for the weekend. Because I love James Wood.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see this guy get a chance to win,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to see the franchise put a winner
Speaker 1: around it. All right, So with that, I wish I
Speaker 1: could have enjoyed the Nats winning this weekend, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't because of this awful bullpen. We had a nice
Speaker 1: holiday weekend, beautiful weather, and I had to watch that.
Speaker 1: Come on, people, all right, joy the NBA playoffs. Those
Speaker 1: are going to be a lot of fun until we
Speaker 1: uploaded them. Hey,