Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of The Oath and the Office Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm John Fiegel, sang Happy Christmas and Happy Hanakhod, happy
Speaker 1: everything to hold y'all. So great to have y'all with us.
Speaker 1: And it's so great as always to welcome the star
Speaker 1: of our show. Professor Corey Bretschneider is a constitutional law scholar,
Speaker 1: a political philosopher, the author of the Oath and the
Speaker 1: Office and the Presidents and the People, and he was
Speaker 1: kicked out of both Kiss and the Wu Tang Clan
Speaker 1: for being too hardcore. The Professor focuses on what democracy
Speaker 1: requires of those in power and what happens when leaders
Speaker 1: actively violate those requirements. Corey, it's so good to see you.
Speaker 1: Happy holidays to you and your family.
Speaker 2: Thank you, John.
Speaker 3: Happy holidays to you and your family, and of course
Speaker 3: to all the listeners. And what an intro, you know,
Speaker 3: was an aspiring I loved old school rap as a
Speaker 3: kid and still do. And so if only all that
Speaker 3: was true, I mean, that's the best intro yet just
Speaker 3: the end part, you know, far from it.
Speaker 1: Well, Like I always like to say, hyperbole is worse
Speaker 1: than Nazis. Okay, so we have a lot we have
Speaker 1: to cover on today's episode special Holiday Malfeesi's edition between
Speaker 1: Corporate Power and the sixty Minutes Crisis. Of course, the
Speaker 1: Epstein files an inherent contempt, which I thought was just
Speaker 1: how my wife's family viewed me. And we have to
Speaker 1: talk a bit about dishonesty and how used we've all
Speaker 1: become to disinformation because this was the week where we
Speaker 1: found out who was the perpetrator of the Brown University shooting.
Speaker 1: Of course, we lost Ella Cook, nineteen years old, a
Speaker 1: sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama. She was the vice president
Speaker 1: of the Brown College Republicans and a musician. Muhammad Aziz
Speaker 1: Imerzakov was eighteen. He was a freshman from Virginia. He
Speaker 1: was an Uzbek American, an aspiring neurosurgeon. Their deaths were
Speaker 1: completely senseless, and their deaths were manipulated, as seems to
Speaker 1: be the norm now by actors looking to place blame
Speaker 1: and stereotype large groups of people. Professor, let's start with
Speaker 1: what we actually know. AUTH already say that the Brown
Speaker 1: University shooter was Claudio Nevis Valente, Portuguese immigrant, acting alone,
Speaker 1: later found dead by suicide. No one else was involved.
Speaker 1: And as you know, while you and your fellow faculty
Speaker 1: were grieving almost immediately. Right wing social media blamed a
Speaker 1: transgender student and framed the murder as ideological. And I'd
Speaker 1: like to begin, Professor by just first asking how you
Speaker 1: and your colleagues are and what does this reflex tell
Speaker 1: us about how disinformation is functioning as usual after mass
Speaker 1: violence in the Trump era, Because I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: was surprised that transgender students were blamed. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone was surprised that that was a lie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think in some ways it wasn't surprising, but
Speaker 3: the whole tragedy, you know, when it had happens to
Speaker 3: you and your community, it just.
Speaker 2: Hits in a different way.
Speaker 3: And we talked about this last week as the investigation
Speaker 3: was ongoing, and part of what was happening then was
Speaker 3: really an immense fear on campus from students, from faculty,
Speaker 3: And so there is some relief now that we know
Speaker 3: who did this and we know that it was just
Speaker 3: a hard to comprehend, clearly very disturbed individual who had
Speaker 3: very little contact with the university ever. In fact, two
Speaker 3: thousand and one was the last time that he was
Speaker 3: involved with the university. He was a graduate student, in physics,
Speaker 3: and he's the same person, I should say too, who
Speaker 3: murdered the MIT professor, who he knew from Portugal where
Speaker 3: he was from Portuguese national And I suppose they were rivals,
Speaker 3: and one of the two thrived in physics, the MIT professor,
Speaker 3: and the other out of resentment, took his life. And
Speaker 3: then the Brown story is very hard to comprehend. He
Speaker 3: returned to the building and I guess the room that
Speaker 3: he was often in where he thought. I think he
Speaker 3: was murdering physics students. Now that of course is completely senseless,
Speaker 3: but they weren't physics students. Even they were students in
Speaker 3: a review session in economics and in the hallway. So
Speaker 3: it is just an immense tragedy. There is some relief
Speaker 3: that we caught this person. The two students who were murdered,
Speaker 3: horrific violence, horrific senseless young death. As all my colleagues
Speaker 3: and as the entire Brown community, we grieve for them
Speaker 3: and for their families and their friends.
Speaker 2: Many of my colleagues knew them.
Speaker 3: And it's been an enormous tragedy. And then to go
Speaker 3: to your question in the midst of all of this,
Speaker 3: to watch the internet blame transgender student who had absolutely
Speaker 3: nothing to do with this because they claimed that they
Speaker 3: had the same body type as the person that was
Speaker 3: being looked for, but just jumping to conclusions as if
Speaker 3: there was some conclusive evidence about this, and then another
Speaker 3: right wing conspiracy that this was somehow an ideological attack
Speaker 3: because the female student who was murdered was a member
Speaker 3: of the Young Republicans, And you know, neither of those
Speaker 3: are based in any fact, and yet the Internet went
Speaker 3: crazy with them. So we were seeing, you know, the
Speaker 3: connection between the horrible storm of misinformation of really anti
Speaker 3: democratic politics, not anti democratic party, but against democracy that
Speaker 3: we're seeing online. You know, the misinformation with it and
Speaker 3: the kind of views that go with it, lack of
Speaker 3: reason just turned into a weapon against the brown community
Speaker 3: community I've been part of for twenty four years.
Speaker 2: So it was just tragedy upon tragedy.
Speaker 3: And now there is a new victim, who's this transgender
Speaker 3: student who was targeted for absolutely no reason and without
Speaker 3: any evidence.
Speaker 1: I know that slowing down and establishing facts before assigning
Speaker 1: blame is woke, but Professor, this podcast, I guess if
Speaker 1: we have a theme, it's about something that's present in
Speaker 1: your work. Democratic norms under pressure. I mean, how dangerous
Speaker 1: do you find it when entire communities, say transgender people,
Speaker 1: say immigrants, say Muslims, become default suspects every time violence occurs.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the unfortunate reality of the world in
Speaker 3: which we're in, that there is a narrative of, you know,
Speaker 3: who's to blame for all of our problems that's not
Speaker 3: based in facts.
Speaker 2: We talked last week.
Speaker 3: About the real problem, which I think is gun regulation
Speaker 3: and the lack of gun regulation in the United States.
Speaker 3: We compared New Zealand and Australia and the massive progress
Speaker 3: that they made when it came to mass shootings and
Speaker 3: mass killings compared to the United States.
Speaker 2: That's a real issue.
Speaker 3: But instead, because the conservatives of the Republican Party the
Speaker 3: President don't want to do anything about that real issue,
Speaker 3: they've got to manufacture fake issues. So blaming transgender people
Speaker 3: with again zero evidence, can't say that enough. Blaming non citizens,
Speaker 3: permanent residents, green card holders, students from ad that's the
Speaker 3: playbook that we're watching unfold. And you know, here's where
Speaker 3: the personal tragedy intersects with the tragedy of our politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Corey, I mean, let me ask you, is this
Speaker 1: less about truth and more about permission, like just the
Speaker 1: permission structure to punish groups the right already hates that
Speaker 1: already likes to target.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's they clearly have an agenda, which is the
Speaker 3: shutdown of immigration into the United States. The belief in
Speaker 3: this phrase, horrible phrase that I keep hearing of heritage
Speaker 3: American referring essentially to white Americans who have been in
Speaker 3: this country for generations as the true Americans. Nothing could
Speaker 3: be further I should say, from the American idea, which
Speaker 3: is essentially that America is based on principles of freedom,
Speaker 3: of a commitment to equality. Those are the ideals of
Speaker 3: American democracy. And you know, this is a nation based
Speaker 3: on ideas of freedom, not ideas of blood. And yet
Speaker 3: this of heritage Americans is trying to change that. And
Speaker 3: so any time that this can unleash itself with facts
Speaker 3: in the news, it doesn't matter how tangential, they'll do it.
Speaker 3: And this anti immigrant narrative that's being attached to this
Speaker 3: tragedy is probably inevitable, but horrific to see, especially when
Speaker 3: it's about your own community.
Speaker 1: Again, it's strange how Yeah, our friends on the right
Speaker 1: always have to believe in what's that word again, supremacy
Speaker 1: to other roots right, Christian supremacists, American supremacists, and Jesus's
Speaker 1: whole mission was about humility. It's a good thing they
Speaker 1: don't read the Jesus parts. But you know, Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: response was not targeted law enforcement. And this is why
Speaker 1: I really wanted to open with this story today as
Speaker 1: opposed to sexier stuff like Bari Weiss burning down CBS News.
Speaker 1: But Donald Trump is turning to collective punishment, suspending the
Speaker 1: diversity visa lottery, imposing more immigration restrictions that will affect
Speaker 1: and hurt millions. No, this is what I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about, because this is what the bad guys
Speaker 1: always do throughout history. Professor, From a constitutional standpoint, how
Speaker 1: does collective punishment of entire groups fit into authoritarian history?
Speaker 3: Well, the American ideal is supposed to be that we
Speaker 3: don't blame individuals for the supposed characteristics of other individuals.
Speaker 1: And the Biblical ideal too.
Speaker 2: And what we're.
Speaker 3: Seeing, I think increasingly, is not only the stereotyping and
Speaker 3: grouping of people, but the desire to punish certain individuals
Speaker 3: as responsible for the ls of society. It is the
Speaker 3: worst example of prejudice and stereotyping coming together to fail
Speaker 3: to deal with our real problems. And you know, I
Speaker 3: can't help but think about this documentary. There's an amazing
Speaker 3: thinker about the history of Nazi Germany named Professor Hett
Speaker 3: and I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to have him.
Speaker 3: We're going to have him on the podcast in the
Speaker 3: new year. And if you watch on Netflix, the documentary
Speaker 3: based largely on his work Hitler and the Nazis. Things
Speaker 3: don't start off with the Holocaust that comes later in
Speaker 3: the war. What starts off is this idea of collective punishment,
Speaker 3: of the punishment of the Germans for the Reichstag fire,
Speaker 3: which by the way, might have been set by Hitler himself,
Speaker 3: but the idea that you'll blame collectively an entire group
Speaker 3: for an individual action that the group, of course can't
Speaker 3: be responsible for. Now, we're not seeing the Holocaust or
Speaker 3: any of the cars that we saw later in Germany.
Speaker 3: But what we are seeing are the foundations for that
Speaker 3: way of thinking, blaming groups, for instance, for the actions
Speaker 3: of individuals. This Portuguese professor was in a unique situation.
Speaker 2: He was clearly disturbed person.
Speaker 3: He had been a graduate student for just a few months,
Speaker 3: evidently a promising one who it didn't work out for.
Speaker 3: That's not an example of somebody that you can then
Speaker 3: generalize into Green card holders or permanent residents generally. And
Speaker 3: the idea that they're trying to do that and really
Speaker 3: to blame people have absolutely nothing to do with this
Speaker 3: tragedy is horrible. And yet that's what they're trying to
Speaker 3: do with new immigration restrictions.
Speaker 1: And historically collective punishment. I mean, you said they've used
Speaker 1: it against Jews, They've used it against indigenous folks, They've
Speaker 1: used it against political dissidence, against enslaved Africans. We've seen
Speaker 1: it in our lifetimes used against Muslims in many ugly
Speaker 1: ways in this country. I mean, Trump's logic seems to
Speaker 1: collapse under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Professor Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald was American, Timothy McVeigh was American. No one said, hey,
Speaker 1: we should go after you know, white veterans, or go
Speaker 1: after the areas they come from. Selective punishment seems to
Speaker 1: be one of the clearest tells of radicalized authoritarianism. Is
Speaker 1: that fair to say?
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right, and if you think of
Speaker 3: the opposite of collective punishment, it's the entitlement in our Constitution,
Speaker 3: the Fifth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment to do process.
Speaker 3: That's a right of individuals to be accused of crimes,
Speaker 3: to face legal proceedings, to know what the charges are
Speaker 3: against them, to face courts of law on an individual
Speaker 3: not a collective basis. There is no consistent and group
Speaker 3: punishment that's consistent with the due process clauses of our Constitution.
Speaker 3: And yet increasingly, you know, you're seeing the eroding of
Speaker 3: those values in favor of values of collective punishment. You
Speaker 3: don't have to look very far. And I know we'll
Speaker 3: talk about sixty minutes later, which is directly on point,
Speaker 3: but to the handling of the supposed enem nation of Venezuela,
Speaker 3: the handling of individuals who are often fleeing by the
Speaker 3: way the dictatorship in Venezuela. Those people were denied due
Speaker 3: process by this administration under the claim that the seventeen
Speaker 3: ninety eight Alien Enemies Act revokes due process, even though
Speaker 3: the Constitution says the opposite. That's what this administration is saying.
Speaker 3: That fits into the idea of group punishment. The punishment
Speaker 3: of an enemy nation, regardless of whether any individual, and
Speaker 3: many of those who were shipped in particular to the
Speaker 3: Gulag and Al Salvador that we're going to talk about,
Speaker 3: were not guilty of any crime. And in fact, the
Speaker 3: more investigation, including the sixty minutes show shows that a
Speaker 3: huge u percentage of those who were removed committed no
Speaker 3: violent crime or no crime at all.
Speaker 1: And let me point out study after a study after
Speaker 1: a study shows that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are
Speaker 1: far less likely to commit violent crime than native born Americans.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to repeat that, Corey, so people can
Speaker 1: hear it in the back. Illegal immigrants and legal immigrants
Speaker 1: both commit crimes at lower rates than natural born American citizens.
Speaker 1: The reason fear of deportation, which kind of makes me
Speaker 1: think we could, you know, put some fear into the
Speaker 1: hearts of homegrown criminals if we began shipping them off
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump does all over the place, But he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to do that to Americans. And we see
Speaker 1: authoritarian movements persist in pushing these narratives that directly contradict
Speaker 1: empirical reality because it serves them politically. It's not helping
Speaker 1: the economy. I mean Trump's own family emigrated from Europe, Professor,
Speaker 1: So let me just put a button on this by
Speaker 1: asking you, I mean, how central is racial hierarchy rather
Speaker 1: than law, or to the way this administration is defining
Speaker 1: deserving immigrants versus dangerous immigrants.
Speaker 3: They really are trying to rewrite the idea of America,
Speaker 3: based on an idea of freedom, into one that looks
Speaker 3: like it's based in blood and heritage. Now, when you
Speaker 3: look at the actual United States, including many of the
Speaker 3: members of this administration, including JD. Vance, you know, what
Speaker 3: are you talking about their families like my family don't
Speaker 3: fit some story that that you know, the eighteenth century
Speaker 3: is the origin of that of their families. Stephen Miller
Speaker 3: certainly does not have anything like that story. His story
Speaker 3: of his family is much more like mine, as his
Speaker 3: uncle has reminded us in a kind of heroic way.
Speaker 3: And yet they keep having this fantasy that there's sort
Speaker 3: of this blood that goes back to the founding of America.
Speaker 3: Steve Bannon also's family doesn't fit that profile. And you know,
Speaker 3: I guess they're doing it either out of some mix
Speaker 3: of fantasy or of course political expediency, because othering people
Speaker 3: making this tapping into the unfortunate narrative that there is
Speaker 3: in the United States. The United States has two realities.
Speaker 3: One is the aspirational one that I keep talking about.
Speaker 3: America is an idea of freedom. And the other is,
Speaker 3: of course, the deep history of racism and nativism that
Speaker 3: runs throughout the United States. And that kind of awful
Speaker 3: counter narrative is one that they're tapping into. And that
Speaker 3: isn't what America is supposed to be, but it's what
Speaker 3: they're trying to turn it into.
Speaker 1: Well, let's take a very quick break, because when we
Speaker 1: come back, I want to bring us to another moment
Speaker 1: where law and power and selective transparency collide, and that
Speaker 1: would be the Epstein Files and everybody's favorite new words
Speaker 1: to learn for the Christmas season, inherent contempt. We'll get
Speaker 1: to CBS as well. In just a bit. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. This is the Oath in the Office.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the oath in the office. I'm John Fiegel, saying, well, professor,
Speaker 1: you know what I can say about Jeffrey Epstein is
Speaker 1: I like it when dead rapists destroy the careers of
Speaker 1: living rapists. So I plan on enjoying every step of
Speaker 1: this once the files are finally released, as was required
Speaker 1: by law. Last Friday, Congress voted to release the Epstein files,
Speaker 1: and every single page of grand jury testimony one hundred
Speaker 1: and nineteen pages was redacted. I mean, just stunning, page
Speaker 1: after page. I haven't seen that many blackouts since my
Speaker 1: three way with Courtney Love and Liza Minelli. So in
Speaker 1: constitutional terms, Corey, we expected this, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot going back and forth, a lot of
Speaker 1: protest about it. I think that by continuing what could
Speaker 1: be the greatest cover up in our lifetimes in presidential history,
Speaker 1: it's just creating a festering wound in this White House
Speaker 1: that will continue to make it bleed all over the midterms.
Speaker 1: But in constitutional terms, I've wanted to ask you this
Speaker 1: since I tried to read the report, Corey, when does
Speaker 1: redaction stop being legitimate privacy protection and turn into obstruction?
Speaker 1: Where is the line?
Speaker 3: A great series of questions, the stuff about lives in and Elli,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure we're the only constitutional law podcast that
Speaker 3: has a lead in like that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep on pushing the limits of your tenures, sir.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to keep on seeing how far I
Speaker 1: can take you into dangerous So thank you for that.
Speaker 3: So going to the reaction part of the question, you know, look,
Speaker 3: there is a purpose, of course of redaction, and they're
Speaker 3: not doing it. It's to protect the privacy of victims.
Speaker 3: And there was one victim that cnnas reported today who
Speaker 3: hasn't been identified until now, and the files are releasing
Speaker 3: her name even though she's requested and had been given anonymity.
Speaker 3: So that's what reaction is supposed to be about now
Speaker 3: is reaction is supposed to protect the person who by.
Speaker 2: The way the law not by the way.
Speaker 3: That's the main point, that there's a law that was
Speaker 3: past demanding the release. The administration is and doing this
Speaker 3: out of the kindness of their own heart.
Speaker 2: The whole purpose of it.
Speaker 3: The point of the legislation was to find out more
Speaker 3: about Epstein and his crimes. But equally important, maybe more important,
Speaker 3: is whether or not the President was complicit or involved
Speaker 3: in those crimes.
Speaker 2: That's the reason this legislation was passed. So the fact that.
Speaker 3: They're redacting so much of the material that would implicate Trump,
Speaker 3: and they release some more today and there is information
Speaker 3: including a letter from Epstein talking about the president and
Speaker 3: his similar attraction to underage girls and potentially implicating him
Speaker 3: in the crimes that are associated with Epstein.
Speaker 2: That's the latest. But the idea that we'd be redacting.
Speaker 3: The Department of Justice is trying to walk the line here,
Speaker 3: which is to release as little as possible but not
Speaker 3: find themselves in violation of the law.
Speaker 2: And that's where we are now.
Speaker 3: The good news, just to get to the headline here,
Speaker 3: is that there is legislation here that demanded this release,
Speaker 3: and so they can go to court, and in fact,
Speaker 3: Charles Schumer, leading the Senate Minority bringing case, and Thomas
Speaker 3: Massey and others in the House are suing in court
Speaker 3: to get the full files released in a way that
Speaker 3: is not hiding what actually happened.
Speaker 1: That's right. Then again, like Kilmar Abrigo Garcia, Pam Bondi's
Speaker 1: doj in the White House had to be forced into
Speaker 1: doing this. It took a nine to nothing Supreme Court
Speaker 1: last summer to force Pam Bondi to comply with the law,
Speaker 1: and now it took an Act of Congress passing a law,
Speaker 1: and Trump is still not complying. Pam Bondi is still
Speaker 1: not complying. And as the non academic on the show
Speaker 1: who has no credibility to project, let me remind you
Speaker 1: at the very best case scenario, friends and neighbors, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump knew about the abuse of children for years and
Speaker 1: didn't pick up the phone to call the cops. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's best case. Best case, magafins who are listening to
Speaker 1: this to get angry and get your heart rate up,
Speaker 1: because that counts cardio. Best case, donald Trump knew and
Speaker 1: did nothing, but Corey the files that mentioned the president
Speaker 1: were briefly posted then quietly removed the same night. From
Speaker 1: a rule of law perspective, how alarming is that sequence,
Speaker 1: or should I say, how comical? I can't decide whether
Speaker 1: it's bitterly hilarious or deeply scary.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think the million dollar question is
Speaker 3: what does the law say? And the law's purpose, as
Speaker 3: they said, was to demand release of the documents that
Speaker 3: potentially implicate the president. And what they are doing clearly
Speaker 3: is editing these files, redacting not with an interest of
Speaker 3: protecting victims, but with the interest of doing the opposite
Speaker 3: of what the law requires of protecting the president. You
Speaker 3: mentioned the idea of inherent contempt. One real question now
Speaker 3: is what are we going to do, we the people
Speaker 3: to try to demand that the law is followed and
Speaker 3: that the files are released. And Thomas Massey and others
Speaker 3: have talked about this inherent contempt power. I think that
Speaker 3: really is a red herring that the inherent contempt power,
Speaker 3: which goes back hasn't been used by Congress since the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties. Talks about the idea that violating the will
Speaker 3: of Congress can be a crime, and there actually was
Speaker 3: at one point a jail in Congress that could be
Speaker 3: used for this purpose.
Speaker 2: I think they still have the jail, but it has
Speaker 2: all of this.
Speaker 1: Sergeant of Arms can lock them up if he was too.
Speaker 1: We've learned that many times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it hasn't happened since the nineteen thirties and
Speaker 3: I don't think it will. But the good news is
Speaker 3: there is this legislation and so going to court and
Speaker 3: getting court orders that demand the release. Now, of course
Speaker 3: the administration could refuse to follow a court order, as
Speaker 3: it did in the Obrego Garcia case, but that would
Speaker 3: trigger not inherent contempt, but the kind of normal process
Speaker 3: of criminal and civil contempt that would happen in the courts.
Speaker 3: And that there is no kind of hard question about.
Speaker 3: It's used all the time. So yes, Pam Bondi and
Speaker 3: refusing to release these documents, if she really goes to
Speaker 3: the point of refusing the a court order to release them,
Speaker 3: might find herself in contempt.
Speaker 1: So now we're hearing really interesting bipartisan support, including you
Speaker 1: mentioned Thomas Massey for inherent contempt charges against future disbarn
Speaker 1: Attorney General Van Bondi. Corey, can you please explain what
Speaker 1: inherent contempt is I think we're going to need to
Speaker 1: learn a lot about this in the next few weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and why does this exist as sort of a constitutional backstop?
Speaker 3: Well, the origin story is, you know that Congress really
Speaker 3: needs a way of protecting itself, and so if the
Speaker 3: branch is being attacked, and I think the idea too,
Speaker 3: was that rather than relying on another branch, the legal process,
Speaker 3: that should have its own powers to enforce say, subpoenas
Speaker 3: to testify or you know, defiance perjury for instance, at
Speaker 3: congressional hearing. Anyway, the theory is, and again it hasn't
Speaker 3: been used since the nineteen thirties, that Congress has its
Speaker 3: own power. Inherent in Congress's power, that's the inherent part
Speaker 3: to defend itself. But I just think, you know, as
Speaker 3: much as the media is covering this, Thomas Massey likes
Speaker 3: this idea. It does stand for a nice symbol of
Speaker 3: Congress trying to reassert itself. We're not going to return
Speaker 3: to the nineteen thirties. We're not going to return to
Speaker 3: this kind of anachronistic power. But there are other ways
Speaker 3: to do it and Congress's normal legislation, and just to
Speaker 3: lay this out, even more. You know, Congress passed the law,
Speaker 3: passed both houses, and the President signed it. The President
Speaker 3: signed the law demanding the release of the Epstein files
Speaker 3: with the thought that, of course, will tell you his
Speaker 3: attorney general to not really do it. But that's not
Speaker 3: how legislation works. If there's a law in the books,
Speaker 3: no one is above it. Everyone has to follow it.
Speaker 3: And that's why these court cases are the place to watch.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't watch this sideshow of inherent contempt. I think
Speaker 3: that's not what's a red herring. It's not really going
Speaker 3: to work. But this legislation could work, These lawsuits could work,
Speaker 3: and I think actually will work. And that's why I'm
Speaker 3: optimistic we'll eventually see these files unredacted.
Speaker 1: Well, Rokana says fines could reach up to twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per day until there's compliance. What do you
Speaker 1: make of that. Is that Congress in a last ditch
Speaker 1: effort to prove they still have teeth or is that
Speaker 1: Congress actually reclaiming authority.
Speaker 3: I'm not seeing that again, the fines, I think all
Speaker 3: of this are interesting way of thinking about it, But
Speaker 3: what's really going to do the work is when there's
Speaker 3: a court order from one of these two lawsuits that
Speaker 3: says release the files. And now the Department of Justice
Speaker 3: is going to hear from its lawyers Bam Bondi despite
Speaker 3: what she heard the last time. You can't defy a
Speaker 3: court even if you don't like the order. That's the
Speaker 3: way American law works. You're not above the district court.
Speaker 3: Now they are going to use a lot of rhetoric
Speaker 3: and have that says, well, courts can't tell the president
Speaker 3: what to do, but they see what they're facing in
Speaker 3: the case of Judge Boseburg and the a Brego Garcia case,
Speaker 3: which is potentially that some of.
Speaker 2: Them might go to prison.
Speaker 3: Now, are they going to be charged right now that
Speaker 3: we had a listener question about this.
Speaker 2: No, but it might be that.
Speaker 3: They're charged after this administration, or if you get a
Speaker 3: very aggressive judge like Judge Boseburg, that he will insist
Speaker 3: on moving forward with an investigation. And so you know
Speaker 3: there's a danger in defying a court order. I don't
Speaker 3: think they're going to be willing to do it again,
Speaker 3: although they did do it in the case of Abrego Garcia,
Speaker 3: just to protect this president.
Speaker 1: I mean, the president is not in fact being investigated
Speaker 1: for child molestation. There is no ongoing investigation. This is
Speaker 1: just evidence in the trial of the dead guy that
Speaker 1: the President promised to release, campaigned on releasing, and once
Speaker 1: achieving power, has tried rather publicly to distance himself from
Speaker 1: and in the most clumsy and stupid of ways, try
Speaker 1: to cover it up. I mean, the second batch had
Speaker 1: more information on Trump. It's all damning, and it just
Speaker 1: seems Corey like, the longer they go on with this,
Speaker 1: the more it's going to hurt them. Even Bill Clinton's
Speaker 1: former press secretary is now demanding full disclosure and the
Speaker 1: Clinton statement Warren Selective releases create insinuation without accountability. I
Speaker 1: got to say, it feels like the nineties watching Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton finally get in front of a scandal with his
Speaker 1: name on it again. But I mean, can you explain
Speaker 1: why selective transparency is almost always more corrosive than just
Speaker 1: outright secrecy.
Speaker 3: Well, I think in this case especially, there was transparency
Speaker 3: of a specific kind that was demanded, and that's the
Speaker 3: demand that we release information about the President's lack thereof
Speaker 3: or involvement with Epstein. That's the whole purpose of the law.
Speaker 3: So it's not just that they're being inconsistent in targeting
Speaker 3: Bill Clinton, which they are doing. Noticed that a lot
Speaker 3: of the photos of him have been released, but not
Speaker 3: the photos of Trump. It's not just a question of inconsistency.
Speaker 3: It's that the target of the law was not Bill Clinton, who,
Speaker 3: after all, hasn't been involved in politics, hasn't been president
Speaker 3: in quite some time. The purpose of the law was
Speaker 3: the release to find out, you know, what was the
Speaker 3: president's involvement or lack thereof. So it's not just inconsistency,
Speaker 3: it's that they really are defying the purpose of the law.
Speaker 2: That's how I'd put it.
Speaker 3: Right on.
Speaker 1: Well, let's move it then to the story on everyone's
Speaker 1: lips as well. This fully vetted, legally cleared sixty minutes
Speaker 1: investigation into the brutal El salvn Or prison where people
Speaker 1: have been renditioned to was spiked, not allegedly for political reasons,
Speaker 1: deeply transparently obviously for political reasons. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the legacy of Barie Weiss. This is what she promised.
Speaker 1: I mean, we used to watch sixty minutes to see
Speaker 1: the powerful held accountable, and now it seems like that tick, tick,
Speaker 1: tick is the sound of CBS counting down to its
Speaker 1: own funeral with these fascists and shills and billionaires who
Speaker 1: confused journalism with obedience to Donald Trump. I mean, they
Speaker 1: didn't just spike the story, Cory. They spiked the credibility
Speaker 1: of CBS News, the legacy. They spiked Edward R. Murrow's grave.
Speaker 1: This again was approved by standards and practices promoted on
Speaker 1: social media. The story was screened five times, but Bari Weiss,
Speaker 1: whose newsroom experience is right wing op eds, decided the
Speaker 1: story needed more context, like maybe a cameo from Stephen Miller. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot to unpack here, and it's
Speaker 1: very depressing from a democratic theory standpoint. What happens when
Speaker 1: journalism begins deferring to government silence Because the structure of
Speaker 1: this was really quite diabolical. The White House gave no comment,
Speaker 1: and so Barry Weiss's decree was, well, we can't do
Speaker 1: this without commentary from the White House. So essentially the
Speaker 1: government is now allowed to censor and stop investigations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know what a horrible moment. I
Speaker 3: should say too that I had an opportunity to watch
Speaker 3: the bootleg version, as many of our listeners have.
Speaker 2: It's available online.
Speaker 3: Canadian television did post it at some point or allow
Speaker 3: it to be viewed.
Speaker 1: It was on Canada, Canadian television on and turns out
Speaker 1: those people are able to record it and share it with.
Speaker 3: Us, right and somebody clearly linked it from CBS, So
Speaker 3: I can say the story is great and important. It
Speaker 3: shows what was happening in this prison in Al Salvador,
Speaker 3: that you have prison guards bragging about the fact that
Speaker 3: they leave the lights on for twenty four hours, that
Speaker 3: there were stress positions used to essentially torture individuals, that
Speaker 3: the isolation rooms are beyond cruel. They were able to
Speaker 3: get all this information partly by looking at footage filmed
Speaker 3: by independent podcasters and media figures and content makers, partly
Speaker 3: through investigations that were conducted by a team out of Berkeley, California.
Speaker 3: And it verifies our worst fears and shows the details
Speaker 3: of what was going on there. Now, why did they
Speaker 3: spike it Because they don't want us to know the
Speaker 3: truth because Barry Wise is clearly complicit in Trump's agenda,
Speaker 3: and they're unwilling to let us know the truth. Now,
Speaker 3: she's not going to say that, She's going to say
Speaker 3: something else, and what she's been saying is Oh, she
Speaker 3: wants some more balanced version.
Speaker 2: We'll see it eventually.
Speaker 3: I guess she wants Stephen Miller to be able to
Speaker 3: edit it so that it makes him look good.
Speaker 2: And you know, that's not journalism. That's something else.
Speaker 3: And it is of course not censorship in the sense
Speaker 3: of putting people in prison in the way of the
Speaker 3: Sedition Act. But it is a form of corporate censorship
Speaker 3: that in some ways is more pernicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, I think I'd rather be
Speaker 1: married to Stephen Miller than be the person in charge
Speaker 1: of making him look good. I mean, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he's okay after he goes out at night to feed.
Speaker 1: But generally, so this is the rule now, right. If
Speaker 1: the White House refuses to comment, the story dies, which
Speaker 1: means the White House gets a kill switch over journalism.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you read the memo that Sharon
Speaker 1: el Fonsi, the producer, wrote to the staff, but she warned,
Speaker 1: and it's really well written that if government refusal becomes
Speaker 1: a veto, then journalism is just stenography for the state.
Speaker 1: Would you say, professor, that's an accurate description of the
Speaker 1: battle that's happening. More broadly, in American media right now,
Speaker 1: stepping over the grave of the Stephen Colbert Show to
Speaker 1: ask this question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that it's a brilliant way to put it.
Speaker 3: And I will say it's a form of censorship that
Speaker 3: I find particularly difficult to deal with because, you know,
Speaker 3: if there was a law passed, the Sedition Act, or
Speaker 3: even in the case of Trump prosecuting his opponents, there's
Speaker 3: a legal process that we could clearly use to stop it.
Speaker 3: And the First Amendment says that Congress shall make no
Speaker 3: law bridging the freedom of speech, and so if Congress
Speaker 3: were to do that, or the President were to do that,
Speaker 3: Congress there is a stand in for government. That's what
Speaker 3: the First Amendment was meant to stop the sedition of
Speaker 3: the British king or British monarchs who put their opponents
Speaker 3: in prison. And although we went through a period of
Speaker 3: time the Sedition Act in which that was done by
Speaker 3: John Adams, as you know from the presidents and the people,
Speaker 3: that was stopped not in court but by citizens over
Speaker 3: time refusing to accept that.
Speaker 2: Now here's the problem.
Speaker 3: What if the censorship is coming through influence on corporate media,
Speaker 3: on CBS in this case, what's the legislation. What's the
Speaker 3: court process for stopping that? There isn't one. It isn't
Speaker 3: clear that we can use the legal process. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think it would be very difficult to do that.
Speaker 3: In fact, CBS, with its on First Amendment lawyers will say, well,
Speaker 3: we have the right to spike a story that we
Speaker 3: don't like, we have the right to endorse the president.
Speaker 2: We have the right to do what we like.
Speaker 3: And so it still is censorship. It still is dangerous
Speaker 3: for democracy. Without this information about the cruelty that's being
Speaker 3: done in this gulag, this prison and al salvad or
Speaker 3: this deprivle, intentional deprivation of due process, we can't know
Speaker 3: what's being done in our name. And yet because it's
Speaker 3: being done in this way through pressuring and putting somebody
Speaker 3: in charge of CBS who is sympathetic to the President's agenda,
Speaker 3: it's very hard to know how to stop them.
Speaker 1: I mean this is as his parent company settled the
Speaker 1: lawsuit with Trump that was complete rubbish over sixty minutes,
Speaker 1: having their own editing of a Kamala Harris interview, they
Speaker 1: eliminated DEI policies, got Colbert fired appointed the right wing
Speaker 1: of Budsmen installed Barry Weiss as editor in chief despite
Speaker 1: no newsroom experience. To me, this is what establishment controlled
Speaker 1: of media looks like. Not jack boots, not book burnings,
Speaker 1: just polite emails, spike stories. And let's get to what
Speaker 1: is really going on here, because it's what was at
Speaker 1: play with Colbert just sours. After the story was killed,
Speaker 1: Paramount magically sweetened their bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery.
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison is personally guaranteeing forty billion, So that's it, right,
Speaker 1: It's this journalism committing ritual suicide at the exact moment
Speaker 1: the company really needs Donald Trump's blessing for a merger
Speaker 1: so billionaires can get more billions. This is a tribute offering.
Speaker 1: Ellison is courting Trump support for a major corporate acquisition. Professor,
Speaker 1: when we had decisions align with political interests of owners.
Speaker 1: How close are we to a soft authoritarian press system.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say it's state run media, but
Speaker 1: it seems to be state run media via bribe.
Speaker 3: Well, in some ways I think it's worse than state
Speaker 3: run media because if you were getting you know, punishment
Speaker 3: of media organizations who failed to comply with the administration,
Speaker 3: as I said, I know how to handle that. There's
Speaker 3: a First Amendment right to freedom of speech. There's a
Speaker 3: related right to the freedom of press. And when government
Speaker 3: is forcing the hand of media, you know that's not allowed.
Speaker 2: I can't do that.
Speaker 3: But now, what do you do when media is complicit?
Speaker 3: When there's an incentive system, and in particular are the
Speaker 3: mergers of and acquisitions incentive to go along with what
Speaker 3: the administration is done, not because you're afraid of the stick,
Speaker 3: but because you want the carot of the approval of deals.
Speaker 2: That's much harder.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not censorship any the less, it's not
Speaker 3: any less authoritarian, although you know, we might call it
Speaker 3: soft authoritarianism to just symbolize the idea that is not
Speaker 3: doing in this most straightforward way. But in some ways
Speaker 3: the less straightforward way is more dangerous. Let me say
Speaker 3: just an analogy so you see that it's not just
Speaker 3: in the media landscape. One of the real puzzles was
Speaker 3: why are so many of these law firms going along
Speaker 3: with Trump when it comes to his authoritarian agenda. Remember
Speaker 3: that moment where some of the firms essentially agreed not
Speaker 3: to take a stand against Trump or even to provide
Speaker 3: pro bono services for his hours. Some of the most
Speaker 3: noted firms, and we covered this when it happened. Well,
Speaker 3: it turns out a lot of those same firms a
Speaker 3: lot of their businesses through the administrative approval process of
Speaker 3: mergers and acquisitions. That's where the bottom line comes from.
Speaker 3: So you know this puzzle of why so many people
Speaker 3: sixty minutes, many of these huge law firms, storied firms
Speaker 3: are going along with the authoritarian agenda. It's because they
Speaker 3: want the reward system that comes from from this administration.
Speaker 3: Northwestern I'm hearing too University has made a deal with
Speaker 3: the Trump administration is going on, and so they're able
Speaker 3: to use incentives. Don't forget a few weeks ago Brown
Speaker 3: rejected the so called compact that would have given us
Speaker 3: advantages in grants.
Speaker 2: These are all their way.
Speaker 3: Of doing things that they've realized that using the power
Speaker 3: the incentives of the federal government might be the quickest
Speaker 3: road to authoritarianism. And that word that I keep using
Speaker 3: self coup. It can happen in a variety of ways.
Speaker 3: It can happen through the stealing of the power of
Speaker 3: the purse, through the shutdown of civil servants and firing
Speaker 3: of them, and it also can happen.
Speaker 2: You're seeing this year through the use of.
Speaker 3: Incentives and approval of mergers, and what a frightening moment
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, in her memo, Sharon Alfonsi referenced the Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Wygan scandal, which some may remember the whistleblower for the
Speaker 1: tobacco industry played by Russell Crowe in the Michael Mann
Speaker 1: film The Insider, which I'm talking about, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: love al Pacino.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm lowel bergman of CBS News.
Speaker 1: But it's a great film and it brought back for
Speaker 1: me why sixty Minutes mattered and how sixty Minutes earned
Speaker 1: their credibility. I mean, I'm convinced this is why John
Speaker 1: Dickerson has just quit being the anchor over there.
Speaker 2: Edward R.
Speaker 1: Murrow confronted McCarthy and Mike Wallace confronted Nixon, and today
Speaker 1: CBS is confronting its own reporters.
Speaker 2: Corey.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. You know, we think about the great figures
Speaker 1: in journalism who stood up to power in the name
Speaker 1: of democracy. For you, who's doing that now? Who's doing
Speaker 1: I think that CBS is that sixty Minutes is trying to.
Speaker 3: Do I think, you know, the unfortunately Walter Cronkite, or
Speaker 3: that moment in which Murrow stood up to the red
Speaker 3: scare to Joseph McCarthy, that might not be where we
Speaker 3: see the resistance coming from. And there's pressure certainly now
Speaker 3: on all the networks on CNN, which I appear on regularly,
Speaker 3: but the reality is they are also facing huge pressure.
Speaker 3: MS now of course has been spun off from NBC.
Speaker 2: So far, so good.
Speaker 3: But you know, there's a sense in which these very
Speaker 3: few outlets that are speaking out against Trump are vulnerable,
Speaker 3: especially the more powerful and wealthy they are. But I
Speaker 3: think one of the going back to the issue of
Speaker 3: disinformation and diffusion of information, that as much as that's
Speaker 3: a danger of what podcasts of independent shows and independent
Speaker 3: media popping up, it also is a resource. And so
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why I wanted to start this
Speaker 3: show with you and have been so glad to do
Speaker 3: it every week is because nobody owns this except for us,
Speaker 3: and we can say what we.
Speaker 2: Want, and that is a great privilege.
Speaker 3: We're not reporting to any corporate masters, and so we
Speaker 3: can tell the truth.
Speaker 2: And there are others out there like this podcast.
Speaker 3: We're not as big, of course as MS now or
Speaker 3: Fox News. But we can tell the truth and that's
Speaker 3: what I want to keep doing. And that's the entire
Speaker 3: reason for doing that. And if you look throughout history,
Speaker 3: there have been small media organizations, small newspapers that spoke
Speaker 3: out at different moments in time that made a difference.
Speaker 3: Frederick Douglas's Paper or The North Star, his two publications influenced,
Speaker 3: to my mind, abolition more and especially the pro constitution
Speaker 3: wing of abolition, more than anyone else. And yet when
Speaker 3: I looked at his numbers in the nineteenth century, we're
Speaker 3: talking in the thousands. So you know, it is possible
Speaker 3: that independent media might play a role in holding this
Speaker 3: president to account.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean that's what we're doing, and
Speaker 1: that's what we do a serious XM progress, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think that my hope is that more Democrats
Speaker 1: in the party will realize that the future is with
Speaker 1: independent media and they'll be reaching a lot of people.
Speaker 1: That's no slam on corporate media. I just think a
Speaker 1: healthy diet. I mean, I watch Fox too. You try
Speaker 1: to consume as much as you can. I do take
Speaker 1: a lot of comfort, Professor from a theme that I
Speaker 1: discussed with you quite frequently. That America is saving grace
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century has been that our fascists
Speaker 1: have been so damn dumb. The stupid is always worse
Speaker 1: than the sinister. I call them dim, shady Bush and
Speaker 1: Shadey and this guy as well, because think about how
Speaker 1: stupid they are by by actually getting together and trying
Speaker 1: to cover up this story. And by the way, it's
Speaker 1: a terrific segment about the atrocious abuses committed in our
Speaker 1: name at the Sel Salvador in prison, the lawlessness and
Speaker 1: cruelty and evil of this administration and Corey, so many
Speaker 1: more people are going to see it now because they
Speaker 1: tried to cover it up. This is the Striisan effect.
Speaker 1: And now millions of people who wouldn't have even watched
Speaker 1: sixty minutes on Sunday night are looking this clip up
Speaker 1: and seeing it and getting an even greater education as
Speaker 1: to the unholy things this government has done. And I
Speaker 1: just can't praise the producers of the actual segment enough.
Speaker 3: I think that's such a great point that you know,
Speaker 3: sixty minutes, of course has a large audience, but it's
Speaker 3: habitual and it's limited, and so much of the modern
Speaker 3: audience YouTube more than. My understanding is that if you
Speaker 3: combine all the television stations out there on.
Speaker 2: Cable, basically YouTube is still bigger.
Speaker 3: And so it's a massive thing that's happening online. And
Speaker 3: this is starting to spread like wildfire on line. And
Speaker 3: so maybe that's a good thing that they tried to
Speaker 3: spike it because it's getting Americans to say, hey, what
Speaker 3: are they trying to hide? And that's a theme that
Speaker 3: also fits with our other story. I mean, what is
Speaker 3: in these Epstein files that they are so intent to
Speaker 3: defy the law to keep us from seeing it? Well,
Speaker 3: it likely implicates the president. That's what we're going to
Speaker 3: find out about. So, you know, the more they use
Speaker 3: their authoritarian repression, the history, as you well pointed out,
Speaker 3: shows that Americans start to get suspicious of suppression of
Speaker 3: information they want it. And as much as we might
Speaker 3: have an authoritarian moment in the success of the suppression
Speaker 3: of corporate media, the Colbert situation, the attempt to spike
Speaker 3: this story, the result in the long run might be
Speaker 3: a demand for information and a rebellion against this attempted coup.
Speaker 1: Correct. And I have to just close this out by
Speaker 1: saying I don't blame Barry Weiss. She was not hired
Speaker 1: to commit journalism. She was hired to censor journalism at
Speaker 1: the pleasure of men in power. She's just doing the
Speaker 1: job she was to do. Okay, let's take a very
Speaker 1: quick break back in just a moment with some more
Speaker 1: I have some end of the year questions for you, Professor.
Speaker 1: This is the Oath in the Office.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back one more time to the Oath and the
Speaker 1: Office podcast. I am John Fiegel sang along with Professor
Speaker 1: Corey Bretschneider and by the way, in the words of
Speaker 1: FBI director Cash parttel Smash that like button bra.
Speaker 3: You know that we're in the same profession as Don
Speaker 3: Bongino and Cash.
Speaker 1: Well we are again. Dan Bongino's back on our side
Speaker 1: of the Red Rover Dubai. Corey. Somewhere in Hell, Jay
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover is wearing a dress and he's furious what
Speaker 1: Cash Mattel has done to his beloved bureau. But I
Speaker 1: do want to thank everyone for making our first year
Speaker 1: on the podcast so wonderful and special and so surprisingly popular. Corey,
Speaker 1: what are we looking at the top five again this
Speaker 1: week in political podcasts More?
Speaker 3: We are in the Apple Government section number three, and
Speaker 3: I'll say too, you know, if you haven't subscribed, certainly
Speaker 3: do it. And it's been our subscribers that are driving
Speaker 3: this amazing success and amazing growth. Really every month we're
Speaker 3: seeing massive growth, people telling friends, sending it to one
Speaker 3: or two people.
Speaker 2: That makes a huge difference.
Speaker 3: But just to clarify what we're doing, you know, when
Speaker 3: we have guests, like amazing guests like Senator white House,
Speaker 3: that's terrific, But the people still tune in John, when
Speaker 3: it's just the two of us going in depth on
Speaker 3: these stories, takeing them seriously doing commentary that goes beyond
Speaker 3: service analysis. And so last week we didn't have a guest.
Speaker 3: We don't have a guest this week, and last week
Speaker 3: we were number three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually I actually told everyone on Sirious XM
Speaker 1: that Taylor Swift was going to join us. So that's
Speaker 1: on me. Thankful for the numbers.
Speaker 2: By the way, guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks, thank you. But please everyone do subscribe and give
Speaker 1: us reviews and tell your friends and share our humble
Speaker 1: musings on your social media walls. Corey, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been quite a ride. We're now still in the first
Speaker 1: year of come over Caligula's second term. From your perspective,
Speaker 1: what constitutional guardrails have definitely been breached and are in
Speaker 1: the rear view mirror.
Speaker 3: Well, I do think there's a huge difference, unfortunately, between
Speaker 3: Trump one point zero and this current Trump two point zero.
Speaker 3: And the difference is that, you know, I had this
Speaker 3: piece when the two of us met when Trump was
Speaker 3: running called Trump versus the Constitution, and what I thought
Speaker 3: would happen in the first term is as he would
Speaker 3: propose a shutdown of Muslim immigration into the country, his
Speaker 3: proposed Muslim ban and the Supreme Court would teach him
Speaker 3: lesson each time and say, no, you can't do that,
Speaker 3: you can't do that now. In the first term, a
Speaker 3: lot of that did come to pass. The Court stopped
Speaker 3: a lot of what he was trying to do. Lower
Speaker 3: courts certainly did even if the Supreme Court eventually approved it.
Speaker 3: We had two impeachments that were really a moment where
Speaker 3: although he wasn't removed, he was impeached, voted majority impeachment
Speaker 3: charges in the House of Representatives twice in January sixth,
Speaker 3: and the tempted quid pro quo to get information on
Speaker 3: his opponent, Joe Biden, in return for giving benefits to
Speaker 3: the Ukrainian president Zelenski, who people hadn't heard about. But
Speaker 3: you know, so that was working in many ways the
Speaker 3: constitutional system and Trump one point zero. This is very different.
Speaker 3: It's much more scary. He's figured out how to hire
Speaker 3: and fire, put loyalists over people who care about the law,
Speaker 3: and that.
Speaker 2: Creates a precarious situation.
Speaker 3: And when you compound that with the fact that the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly handed over
Speaker 3: power to this person, including most dangerously in the immunity case,
Speaker 3: saying that he can't be prosecuted while president or even
Speaker 3: as a former president for his official duties, with possibly
Speaker 3: some exceptions. That's a scary moment for democracy. So a
Speaker 3: lot of what I'm hearing from listeners, from friends, for instances,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a scary time, but it's you know,
Speaker 3: there's a solidarity in going through it with the two
Speaker 3: of us and hearing the truth and also hearing about
Speaker 3: the hopefulness. But that's my bottom line. This has been
Speaker 3: a scary nine months, this attempted self coup. It feels
Speaker 3: and is very different than what we saw in the
Speaker 3: first term, and the court is partly to blame.
Speaker 1: I hate to tell you, Professor, ITRI's eleven months. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're having more fun than me, but it's just eleven months.
Speaker 1: We never forget. We inaugurate the racist on MLK Day.
Speaker 1: I live for irony in this world, Corey. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this on this pod. Authoritarianism doesn't succeed by itself.
Speaker 1: It requires enablers, Professor, to your view, who have been
Speaker 1: the most consequential enablers this year? Is it the courts,
Speaker 1: the corporations, the media, the Congress.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll certainly start with the Supreme Court of the
Speaker 3: United States. And while it's not the worst Supreme Court
Speaker 3: in history, not the worst Chief Justice.
Speaker 2: I'd say that's Justice Tawani of Guys.
Speaker 1: I set you an article.
Speaker 2: Saying the opposite.
Speaker 3: And you know, know that the dread Scott decision denying
Speaker 3: all rights to all black Americans. I'm going to put
Speaker 3: that to the thing that helped to ignite the Civil War.
Speaker 3: I'll put that worse. But this is frightening, you know.
Speaker 3: And they I'll put them still as number one in
Speaker 3: the complicity question that handing over that power. And a
Speaker 3: close second is Congress. You know, the Congress should be
Speaker 3: fighting back. We should see the framers. Imagine that when
Speaker 3: it came to assaults on the Constitution, we wouldn't see
Speaker 3: the kind of partisanship that we're seeing. And yet we
Speaker 3: are far from there even being a possibility of impeachment.
Speaker 3: We won't even though they's so deserved. We won't see
Speaker 3: that until Congress switches parties, and at least the House
Speaker 3: of Representatives that might happen. So Congress, and then you know,
Speaker 3: the civil servants, the people who are supposed to be
Speaker 3: civil servants, who had been replaced with the worst loyalists.
Speaker 3: The Pam bondis the cash betels who care not about
Speaker 3: the obligation to law, but the.
Speaker 2: Loyalty to the president. Put them right in there too.
Speaker 3: You know, in some ways it's more expected that they'd
Speaker 3: behave that way than the supposed independent to other branches.
Speaker 2: But they have really enabled.
Speaker 1: They're too dumb. I think they're too dumb to know
Speaker 1: they don't have immunity, professor. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about getting disbarred after he leaves this administration.
Speaker 1: But there's some other folks that I really can't wait
Speaker 1: to see them get their moment. I mean absolutely, we've
Speaker 1: seen that. This is for the first time in our history,
Speaker 1: a president who is in no way constrained by law.
Speaker 1: I mean, he literally gets felony convictions and he still
Speaker 1: walks away. This is someone testing how much law can
Speaker 1: be ignored before it breaks and then stepping over the pieces.
Speaker 1: I do want to ask you, where have you seen
Speaker 1: the most meaningful resistance. We've talked about a few people
Speaker 1: in media and politics, but I mean in the legal world,
Speaker 1: in the institutional world, in the civic world. Who are
Speaker 1: you looking to in twenty twenty six, who are you
Speaker 1: expecting to give us all hope?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, it's not clear who the
Speaker 3: leaders in the resistance will be, but there have been moments,
Speaker 3: certainly in which I've felt heartened at the resistance. And
Speaker 3: so when you think about the No King's Rally, with
Speaker 3: that simple slogan no Kings, the resistance to authoritarianism, this
Speaker 3: want to be dictatorship, it sums up what we're facing.
Speaker 3: And we had millions of people in the streets throughout
Speaker 3: the United States. I went out It's on our YouTube
Speaker 3: channel and speaking to people. I was inspired by that
Speaker 3: those who are fighting back in court really are making
Speaker 3: a difference. We've profiled some of our best episodes. I
Speaker 3: think I'm hearing from listeners. A lot of people know
Speaker 3: what the ACL does their work, but now a lot
Speaker 3: more people know because they listened to Mike Zaymore. They
Speaker 3: heard about the details that they're going out and finding
Speaker 3: these cases. Somebody had to find Abrego Garcia and defend
Speaker 3: him in court to see that this was something that
Speaker 3: needed a national spotlight to see. In the Khalil case,
Speaker 3: Columbia University student who was facing deportation and still is
Speaker 3: for nothing more than his beliefs, the idea that you
Speaker 3: don't have a First Amendment right to free speech if
Speaker 3: you're not a citizen, even though it doesn't say that.
Speaker 3: There were litigant groups that fought back, and of course
Speaker 3: in the tariff case which I got involved with recently,
Speaker 3: Neil Katial, Paul Wilson and his team at Democracy Forward,
Speaker 3: you know, working hand in hand with these groups was
Speaker 3: really you know, their solidarity in that too, in doing
Speaker 3: the podcast, but and also in seeing those who are
Speaker 3: doing the really difficult work of litigation trying to save
Speaker 3: our constitution. Now, what's going to happen in that case,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, as you know, I'm skeptical of the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. But we've got to fight on all fronts,
Speaker 3: the citizen front, the legal front, of course, the political
Speaker 3: front as the elections come up. And I was inspired
Speaker 3: by Sheldon Whitehouse, who spoke with us at length and
Speaker 3: might be the chair of the Judiciary Committe. If you
Speaker 3: haven't heard that, listeners, go back and listen to Sheldon
Speaker 3: white House, and you know hear his power and his
Speaker 3: strength in recognizing that this president doesn't get to determine
Speaker 3: what this constitution is. And we'll have more guests like that,
Speaker 3: legal journalists like Dalia Lithwick, who every week are writing
Speaker 3: about this assault on democracy, on covering what's happening. They
Speaker 3: all inspire me. And I'll add not to mention this
Speaker 3: amazing segment by sixty Minutes, which we did get to
Speaker 3: see despite the fact that their corporate masters were trying
Speaker 3: to destroy it.
Speaker 1: Not only was Senator Sheldon white House brilliant on our show,
Speaker 1: that was, of course, Professor, the first time I've ever
Speaker 1: in my career done in a zoom interview from the
Speaker 1: front seat of a rental car parked in La somewhere
Speaker 1: they're any newit and trying to convince the United States
Speaker 1: Senator I was really in a real room with my
Speaker 1: green screen background. So yeah, I apologize for all the
Speaker 1: honking and gang sounds and did it perfectly confused National
Speaker 1: guardsmen telling me to move my vehicle.
Speaker 3: I'd be remissed to John if I didn't throw the
Speaker 3: question back to you, because we are at the end
Speaker 3: of the year, we're celebrating amazing first year together doing
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 2: I mean, who's inspired you this year?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great question, because there's there. I
Speaker 1: don't even know where to begin you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: not so much in famous names. There are there are
Speaker 1: real heroes out there. I mean, there are true resistors,
Speaker 1: and most of them are people who who aren't well known.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I've got my favorite people. I've got
Speaker 1: my you know, activists and artists and comedians and political
Speaker 1: people that I like. And I'll be cheering on Jasmine
Speaker 1: Crockett and James tallerco and all these good people in
Speaker 1: Texas and the No King's protesters, and you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be in all of the above movement.
Speaker 1: Right Corey Booker doing a twenty five hour speech in
Speaker 1: the US Senate. Okay, maybe that didn't do anything, but
Speaker 1: that has to happen. We got to throw that up there.
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom learning how to read the room and stop
Speaker 1: sucking up to fascists and start calling them out in clever,
Speaker 1: original ways, like that's going to do it. But I
Speaker 1: think I got to be honest, My biggest heroes right
Speaker 1: now are people who walk away from this, Christians who
Speaker 1: actually read the Jesus parts and say, my God, what
Speaker 1: have I been doing. It's going to be very hard
Speaker 1: for a lot of us to handle this. And I say,
Speaker 1: this in my books, too. Right wing people growing beyond
Speaker 1: their programming is not to be met with smug liberal
Speaker 1: I told you sos So. I think as more people
Speaker 1: decolonize their own minds, as more maga folks think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: covering up child rape, that's my line. Or slaughtering innocent
Speaker 1: people in the water with no evidence, no due process,
Speaker 1: that's my line. It's hard to imagine, but I think
Speaker 1: every day more and more folks, especially military and law enforcement,
Speaker 1: are reaching their limit with this. I don't know how
Speaker 1: this thing sustains for a few years, but of all
Speaker 1: the many people and artists I admire, I just want
Speaker 1: to give some special gratitude towards the conservatives who walk
Speaker 1: away from this with all the negative energy and peer
Speaker 1: pressure that they're going to face, because this is an
Speaker 1: authority Harran cult of personality movement, and boy oh boy,
Speaker 1: obedience is rewarded, an independent thought is punished. So God
Speaker 1: bless everyone who, especially the young people who still love
Speaker 1: their parents but can't pretend to go along with this
Speaker 1: nonsense anymore. I want to ask you, Corey, if future
Speaker 1: historians look back on this year, what do you think
Speaker 1: will determine whether they call this a turning point or
Speaker 1: the year we failed to stop the slide? Is it
Speaker 1: too soon to tell. I'm not an optimist. I'm a
Speaker 1: recovering cynic, but I don't see this ending well for
Speaker 1: the Trump movement. I think if Marjorie Taylor Green is
Speaker 1: committing political Harry Carey out of pure self interest, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good bell weather. But I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you think? Is this the year that this thing began
Speaker 1: to end or is this the year that this thing
Speaker 1: really took root.
Speaker 3: I'm loving this conversation, John, and I want to just
Speaker 3: emphasize your great point too about finding those MAGA individuals who,
Speaker 3: whether it be through the Epstein five or some other story,
Speaker 3: ors starting to realize that they were complicit in something
Speaker 3: extremely dangerous for the country, beginning to turn and not
Speaker 3: chastising them but welcoming them into the movement for democracy.
Speaker 3: That's such a profound point on the other question of
Speaker 3: you know where we are and hoping that there are
Speaker 3: more of these people, you know, I take solace in history,
Speaker 3: as you know, and I am glad that I wrote
Speaker 3: this book and did this deep dive into history, because
Speaker 3: I really do get a lot of reassurance from the
Speaker 3: pattern that I see in American history that we've seen
Speaker 3: these dangerous moments before, knowing that during Adam shutdown of
Speaker 3: the Opposition Party, it felt like America wasn't going to recover.
Speaker 3: We talked about dred Scott. President Buchanan, of course, urged
Speaker 3: the court to deny.
Speaker 2: Rights to all black Americans.
Speaker 3: It couldn't have very hard to be optimistic in a
Speaker 3: moment like that. And the same is true with Woodrow
Speaker 3: Wilson and his resegregation of the federal government, his nationalism
Speaker 3: mixed with white supremacy. Nixon as he was reelected in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, were living.
Speaker 2: In those moments.
Speaker 3: It looked frightening, and yet we recovered in each of
Speaker 3: them because citizens fought back Bush.
Speaker 2: And that's what that's what I think is going to
Speaker 2: happen now.
Speaker 3: I think that is where we are, that we're starting
Speaker 3: to see the tide turn because there's an awareness and
Speaker 3: that's the first step in recovery.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bush, Cheney and the Iraq War and their reelection and
Speaker 1: O four, I mean it was exactly like this one.
Speaker 1: We knew that this president had lied to the people
Speaker 1: and that Americans had died in Bush's case, it was
Speaker 1: a war. In Trump's case, it was a plague. And
Speaker 1: yet folks went for the authoritarian they knew were lying
Speaker 1: to them, and it seemed like the end of the world.
Speaker 1: At the time, it seemed like the end of America.
Speaker 1: And yet we persisted and things got better. And I'll
Speaker 1: point out that since we drove Bush and Cheney from office,
Speaker 1: we've gotten marriage equality, we got the first black president,
Speaker 1: we're not throwing people in jail for cannabis anymore. In
Speaker 1: so many ways we are getting better. But Corey, I
Speaker 1: want to close it with this, I mean, your work
Speaker 1: and this show. We talk all the time about what
Speaker 1: democracy demands of office hall. With a new year on
Speaker 1: the horizon, let me ask you, what is democracy now
Speaker 1: demand of citizens?
Speaker 3: Well, I think we've got to do more of what
Speaker 3: you and I were celebrating, more talking to your family,
Speaker 3: more insisting on facts. So much of the problem and
Speaker 3: the assault on democracy is misinformation, calling people out when
Speaker 3: they lie about what's.
Speaker 2: Happening without any evidence.
Speaker 3: And then most of all, you know, there is a
Speaker 3: practical thing that needs to be done, which is as
Speaker 3: we start to look to the midterms, and this show
Speaker 3: will be a force I think in the midterms.
Speaker 2: We're hosting people running for.
Speaker 3: Office, people who will already hold office. We're going to
Speaker 3: have some amazing announcements about people from the judiciary at
Speaker 3: a very high level who are going to be speaking
Speaker 3: to us.
Speaker 2: And that's all for a purpose.
Speaker 3: You know, this isn't just a show that's meant to
Speaker 3: provide information.
Speaker 2: We want to do that.
Speaker 3: We're very careful with our fact checking, but we also
Speaker 3: are trying to see the self coup, this attempted destruction
Speaker 3: of democracy for what it is and the root to recovery,
Speaker 3: and part of that's going to be the midterm. So
Speaker 3: that's a lot of what I'm looking to people to
Speaker 3: do to get involved as this election approaches.
Speaker 1: I want to express so much gratitude to you, Professor,
Speaker 1: and to all of the deeply sexually attractive listeners of
Speaker 1: this podcast. While the brilliance of the people who subscribe
Speaker 1: to this show, who like us, who give us good reviews,
Speaker 1: who shared on their social media is matched only by
Speaker 1: the deep sexiness and benevolent brilliance of Beowulf and Wendy
Speaker 1: and everyone who helps put this show together. It really
Speaker 1: has been a great pleasure for me. I feel like
Speaker 1: every week, I get to be the kid cheating off
Speaker 1: the smart Kets paper. Thanks to you, and I hope
Speaker 1: you and your family have a wonderful holiday season, Professor.
Speaker 3: And a great holiday to you, John, and just to
Speaker 3: all our listeners, thank you so much for making this
Speaker 3: first year such a pleasure to do. We're facing a
Speaker 3: real crisis and real danger, and yet the solidarity that
Speaker 3: comes from doing this show every week is giving me
Speaker 3: a lot of optimism and hope.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: miss Nicki Minaj enjoy Maga Nick Nikki. They'll love you
Speaker 1: over there. Oh it's going to work out so well
Speaker 1: for you. You have so much in common with those folks,
Speaker 1: and like kid rock, they really love your music. So
Speaker 1: good on you. And thanks to everybody who listened to
Speaker 1: this show who bought my book this year, Separation of
Speaker 1: Church and Hate, and helped drive it to the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller list. I'm so grateful to everyone who
Speaker 1: would take a chance on that book, and it's just
Speaker 1: very humbling to have had it be so successful. And
Speaker 1: I look forward to getting to work on the follow
Speaker 1: up in the new year. So thank you once again,
Speaker 1: and I wish a very happy holidays to everyone on
Speaker 1: behalf of Professor Gorey Bretschneier. This is the open the
Speaker 1: Office peace,